Getting too invested in the fight

I'm realizing after a weekend of reflection about Brandi, about the sad and polarized state of American and international politics, right now, about other problems in my own life, that the central problem - bigger than any of the particular problems we face - is the persistent and counterproductive and foolish fighting we engage in which generally undermines both solutions to our problems and the relationships that make those solutions possible.

It takes me back to Brandi and I in the fall of 2001, when it was perfectly clear to both of us that the problem was the constant fighting rather than any particular thing we fought about. It was the fact that we just kept fighting instead of discussing solutions calmly or making peace with reasonable compromises. We wore our passion on our sleeves as a pride that we cared so much about one another and about the things we gave our energies to, in life. Which was true. But perhaps too much passion by half.

Because when all was said and done, we took down that relationship. We don't even talk today. And really, which one of those fights was worth all that? I can't think of one.

Most of the fights we have in politics and the world, these days, are about the fights, rather than an effort to understand and discuss problems and their solutions more fully. Most of the issues around peoples' behavior and having people behave better are a function of fights that people have with the society at large and fights that the society at large has with making people conform to various norms.

Most of our problems are functions more of the fighting and the refusal to cut it out and to work more collaboratively than around particular issues and challenges we face.

We can stop. We choose not to. And the world is a serious mess, today, because of it.

I really have no clue where human beings got the notion that aggression would solve more of their problems than it would. I suppose it's about being an aggressive animal, too often getting our way through aggression - though we know it is contrary to our values that we need to earn others' trust rather than forcing their hand - and learning to be responsible for that freely rather than being restrained externally, which really feels natural to noone, if they're honest about it. Usually people feel much more comfortable restraining someone else than with being restrained. We just play bullshit semantic games to pretend otherwise.

I'll never forget those waning days in our apartment in Kansas City when Brandi and I knew - and fought, ironically and sadly, about the fact - that it was the fighting that was our most serious problem and none of the particular issues we fought about. It's all so foolish and sad, in retrospect. But we just keep fighting, despite knowing that this was the problem. And within a month, Brandi had signed a lease on a new apartment on her own.

It's so sad and foolish. This sport of fighting that people play with one another that is constantly interrupting the more important priorities we face.

But I suppose what we are learning to be responsible for is what to do with all that aggression that we, generally, have not thought nearly enough about. And that we alternately suppress, avoid, engage needlessly, and otherwise handle poorly while we figure out what to do next.

It's all so foolish and needlessly tragic. But I suppose that it is the lesson we have to learn until we've got it more figured out.

So maybe that is the purpose of the current period. Maybe that was the purpose of Brandi's and my relationship imploding. So that we could learn the lesson better. So at least I could learn the lesson better.

I've got a paper to finish up. And many fights in my life that I need to give up. And many fights that we all need to give up if we're to be the self-governing, free, democratic people that we have the promise and the need to be. And maybe just so we can get some stuff done and get home to our family and kids and learn to treat one another with respect and not like pets or servants or handmaidens or slaves. Or friends or family to be taken for granted until we wisen up.

Maybe we just need to learn to treat each other decent.

Love,
Ben

Morality

It's amazing. All the controversy and conflict and failure and tragedy. All a part of one long fight over an idea and how best to teach it.

Moral

"A moral is a message conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or event. The moral may be left to the hearer, reader or viewer to determine for themselves, or may be explicitly encapsulated in a maxim. As an example of the latter, at the end of Aesop's fable of the Tortoise and the Hare, in which the plodding and determined tortoise wins a race against the much-faster yet extremely arrogant hare, the moral is 'slow and steady wins the race.'

The use of stock characters is a means of conveying the moral of the story by eliminating complexity of personality and so spelling out the issues arising in the interplay between the characters, enabling the writer to make clear the message. With more rounded characters, such as those typically found in Shakespeare's plays, the moral may be more nuanced but no less present, and the writer may point it up in other ways (see, for example, the Prologue to Romeo and Juliet.)

Throughout the history of recorded literature, the majority of fictional writing has served not only to entertain but also to instruct, inform or improve their audiences or readership. In classical drama, for example, the role of the chorus was to comment on the proceedings and draw out a message for the audience to take away with them; while the novels of Charles Dickens are a vehicle for morals regarding the social and economic system of Victorian Britain.

Morals have typically been more obvious in children's literature, sometimes even being introduced with the phrase, 'The moral of the story is …'. Such explicit techniques have grown increasingly out of fashion in modern storytelling, and are now usually only included for ironic purposes. As Oscar Wilde observes wryly, The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.[1]"

Morality

"Morality (from the Latin moralitas 'manner, character, proper behavior') has three principal meanings.

In its first descriptive usage, morality means a code of conduct held to be authoritative in matters of right and wrong, whether by society, philosophy, religion, or individual conscience.

In its second, normative and universal, sense, morality refers to an ideal code of conduct, one which would be espoused in preference to alternatives by all rational people, under specified conditions. To deny 'morality' in this sense is a position known as moral skepticism.[1]

In its third usage 'morality' is synonymous with ethics, the systematic philosophical study of the moral domain.[2]

Ethics seeks to address questions such as how a moral outcome can be achieved in a specific situation (applied ethics), how moral values should be determined (normative ethics), what morals people actually abide by (descriptive ethics), what is the fundamental nature of ethics or morality itself, including whether it has any objective justification (meta-ethics), and how moral capacity or moral agency develops and what its nature is (moral psychology).[3] In applied ethics, for example, the prohibition against taking human life is controversial with respect to capital punishment, abortion and wars of invasion. In normative ethics, a typical question might be whether a lie told for the sake of protecting someone from harm is justified. In meta-ethics, a key issue is the meaning of the terms 'right' or 'wrong'. Moral realism would hold that there are true moral statements which report objective moral facts, whereas moral anti-realism would hold that morality: is derived from any one of the norms prevalent in society (cultural relativism); the edicts of a god (divine command theory); is merely an expression of the speakers' sentiments (emotivism); an implied imperative (prescriptivism); falsely presupposes that there are objective moral facts (error theory). Some thinkers hold that there is no correct definition of right behavior, that morality can only be judged with respect to particular situations, within the standards of particular belief systems and socio-historical contexts. This position, known as moral relativism, often cites empirical evidence from anthropology as evidence to support its claims.[4] The opposite view, that there are universal, eternal moral truths is known as moral absolutism. Moral absolutists might concede that forces of social conformity significantly shape moral decisions, but deny that cultural norms and customs define morally right behavior."

Liberal values hold that freedom is the best way to teach this idea. Illiberal values hold that force is the best way to teach this idea.

All the controversy and conflict and failure and tragedy. All about this one idea and how best to teach it.

Hundreds of millions of people over the course of history have died because of this fight about how to teach about this idea.

And, yet, despite all the controversy and conflict and failure and tragedy, the illiberal forces who have dominated this discussion for much of humanity's history still insist that they have finally, once and for all, proven the superiority of their means.

And, still, there is controversy and conflict and failure and tragedy. "That," they say, "is proof is just how much our means are needed. It will never go away without us. But, really, it will never go away. That is how much you need us."

Hundreds of millions of people have died, been tortured, been imprisoned, been censored, been silenced, one way or another. All based upon this logic of the need for force to remove the controversy and conflict and failure and tragedy from our midst.

"That is how much you need us," the proponents of force and illiberalism as governing values tell us. "It will never go away without us. But, really, it will never go away."

All of that tragedy. About one idea.

Sad. Amazing. And needlessly tragic.

Love,
Ben

Steroids, like drugs, finally a problem of the past

Baseball star Barry Bonds faces perjury charges, 30 years in prison

Just as young rock and rollers have been spared the plague of illegal drug use with the arrests of Keith Richards and Jerry Garcia, it is high time we finally remove the plague of steroid use among young ballplayers with the indictment of Barry Bonds.

Thank goodness this sordid period of America's past is finally behind us.

One day, our children will look to us and say, "Daddy, Mommy, thank you for finally ridding the world of drugs and steroids. If only more people would have had the courage to give Barry Bonds 30 years."

It's all about the children.

Pot calling the kettle black

China calls for quick reforms in Myanmar

"YANGON, Myanmar - China called on Myanmar to speed up democratic reforms, state media reported Saturday — an unusual move for Beijing, which has traditionally refrained from criticizing the military regime.

The call came as a U.N. human rights investigator wrapped up a trip to the country that he said had helped him to determine that at least 15 people died during the junta's crackdown on pro-democracy protests in September.

China's Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi also expressed support for U.N. attempts to reconcile the regime and the suppressed democracy movement during a two-day meeting with the junta that ended Friday. The state-controlled New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported the meeting only after Wang had left the country.

China, a communist country whose own record on democratic reforms and human rights has been criticized, is one of Myanmar's largest trading partners and its main political ally."

Many more than 15 people died in Tiananmen Square in 1989, of course. By the estimates of student groups and aid agencies, 2000-3000 people.

The truth is that for all of the celebration of China, force as a governing philosophy, and more authoritarian measures in general, a liberal democratic path - meaning more freedom and more democracy - is the only path forward in either China, Burma, or the rest of the liberal democratic and illiberal world, no matter how much an illiberal path has been embraced even in liberal democracies.

The truth is that liberal democracies have been setting a terrible example for illiberal and authoritarian regimes of the world like China and Myanmar. You can hear it in their words. Their embrace of the rule of law. Their emphasis on rules. Their whole-hearted agreement with the need to force change upon their people.

All of it has been one long smokescreen for accumulation and exercise of more power, both in in illiberal and autocratic corners of the world and in the liberal democratic cultures that are supposed to offer a better model. Liberal democracies share some responsibility for these crackdowns - and the ones in Georgia, Pakistan, Venezuela, and all over the world - as much as the regimes that have cracked down. Because we keep telling the world that force as a governing philosophy is the wave of the future and the path of progress. And so they watch our example and do as we say and as we do. And so we decry their efforts as undemocratic, even while we avoid acknowledging that it is exactly what we said.

Do we really believe that historians will look back at this period and see how much freedom was lost and compromised, how much power trumped a more genuine democratic discussions, how much leverage was substituted for substantial engagement about important issues, how much free trade and free economies were set back, how much intimidation and the illusion of inevitability of being overpowered were asserted, how much real, empirical regress we experienced - two straight years of spikes in violent crime in America and a spike in crime internationally, an increase in American hegemony and disregard for more genuine democratic norms, crackdowns and more brutal activity of authoritarian regimes, an increase in nuclear proliferation by rogue regimes - and say, "That is what progress in liberal democracies looks like."

Really?

Lord Acton was right. And it doesn't matter which party or ideology or group or country is pursuing the power. It always corrupts. And thank god there are so many opportunities in liberal democracies to keep it from corrupting absolutely.

Democracy doesn't make countries ideal places to live, that should be clear by now. But it does keep us from destroying one another completely.

And for those who do not pursue power, it gives us a much stronger opportunity to build one another up, for real, and not as a means to some corrupt and powerful end.

Thank a political philosopher or an economist or a historian or a sociologist or a journalist or a novelist or even an activist for that. Plenty of mistakes made by these folks as well. But the more diverse their outlooks and the more freely and empirically they think about the world and arrive at important conclusions about the world, the more they, generally, come to the conclusion that it is all that freedom that keeps us honest in this world, and the more they keep us all honest about the need to take that freedom and the responsibilities that come with it seriously. And they are right.

May China and Myanmar know that freedom to take it for granted, just as we do, one day.

Looking the IAEA in the mouth

The International Atomic Energy Association and Mohamed ElBaradei hand the world community a gift and they just keep looking him and the arms control experts at the IAEA right in the mouth.

Iran hands IAEA nuclear blueprints

If I am Mohamed ElBaradei, right now, I would say, "Go ahead and declare war you fuckin' morons. Why don't you set up sanctions for a 10 year regime, as stiff as you can make them."

"And then, when the 10 years is up and it has failed to deliver the goods - which it clearly will given the track record on this one you, you fuckin' nimrods - give me a call and maybe we'll make progress once you're done fucking it up."

You have to wonder, sometimes, if the Bush Administration and the various U.N. member countries are more committed to soothing their wounded egos because their efforts have so clearly failed in the last 4 years, or whether they actually want to get the job done and get to a real resolution of this situation that allows the IAEA to inspect, that negotiates an end to any weapons program, that makes some kind of allowance for genuine self-defense on the part of the Iranians - who have every reason to be suspect of a world community when lead players are persistently threatening invasion - and which actually reduces nuclear proliferation rather than accelerating it, as the current policy has clearly done to any objective observer not just trying to defend the present failed approach.

So, if I'm Mohamed ElBaradei and the IAEA, right now - who are all, clearly, much more genuine team players than any of the people involved in those inspections or the policy discussion about those inspections - certainly more than the snide, unreflective, and defensive bunch at the Washington Post editorial board and among member countries who can't even consider that they might be on the wrong track with Iran, no matter how much failure they encounter; what foolish, foolish men and women lead the world, sometimes - I would be very tempted to tell the world community:

"Go ahead. Declare war. Set up the harshest sanctions regime you can imagine, you fuckin' dipshits. Go right the fuck ahead, you stupid, petty little shitheads. And when you finally get tired of your failure, you schnooks, you give me a fuckin' call and maybe I'll come help you unravel this fuckin' mess you've created for yourselves, you arrogant pricks."

"In the meantime, get the fuck out of my way while I make things happen you ungrateful little dimwits."

Some people don't have the decency to just say, "Thank you." It gets in the way of their big fat egos and their big fat assumptions about the world that get wounded when they turn out to be wrong. It's a sign of courage, you know. The stubborn refusal to acknowledge you might be wrong. My President carries this "courage" around with him and neither he nor his critics can acknowledge just how much "courage" is involved with such a position because it makes them cranky to face such a difficult fact about their outlook on the world.

That's what courage looks like, children. Just look to the examples of our world leaders who just don't know if they can find it in themselves to admit when they are wrong. And, there, you will find courage.

If I'm Mohamed ElBaradei, I would retire to some island, and tell the world community that when they are ready to pony up, give him a call.

But, alas, I am not Mohamed ElBaradei. Mohamed ElBaradei is a bigger man than all that. And he sticks with this bunch of self-righteous pricks no matter how much they keep fucking up his work and impugning his integrity while he fuckin' gets the job done.

Me, I'd tell them to fuck off and do the job on their own, fuckin' cowards.

Thank goodness Mohamed ElBaradei is in that job. Because I'd let the world nuke itself into oblivion until it faced up to its failures. Then, again, maybe I'd just suck it up and listen to all the bullshit a man of the integrity of ElBaradei has had to listen to and keep plugging away making the only progress the world community has seen in this situation, up till now.

Thank you, Mohammed ElBaradei and all the folks at the IAEA.

Note to Washington Post, the Bush Administration, and the U.N. Security Council: that's what it looks like to appreciate the efforts of those who understand what they are doing better than you. Learn some fuckin' appreciation, you miserable ungrateful fucks.

Love,
Ben

Perhaps hope for New York's public schools after all

The Economist has a far more favorable take on Mayor Bloomberg's efforts to open up New York City's expansive public school system.

New York's schools - The great experiment

With this kind of decentralization and choice and some healthy competition (and better teacher salaries, to boot), perhaps New York's school reforms might be more successful than the top-down model described in that New York Times article led me to believe.

If Bloomberg's strategy is take control to give it up, I'll all for it.

And that, and only that, as far as I am concerned, is likely, at all, to reform public education in New York or anywhere in America. I'm open to something different. But I've worked long enough in public education systems to know that the only thing likely to create the kind of ownership necessary to really dramatically improve American public schools is for the responsibility and the freedom to run those schools, and take credit or blame for them, lies squarely in the laps of teachers and administrators and parents and students who are responsible for them.

Everything else is, generally, people wanting all the power with none of the responsibility. And that, like most politics, is how school politics too often work, as is. And that will only change, I think, as the system opens up and day-to-day decisions are made by the people who are intimately responsible for schools and not people with the comfortable distance of ideological blinders and plausible deniability for responsibility for the problems of schools.

Teachers and schools will take more responsibility for the results produced by their schools the more they are able to live and die by the choices made on their watches of their own making and without the meddling of various agencies and bureaucracies for which noone is ever responsible in any meaningful way.

I have very little confidence in any other means of fixing schools, partly, because so many of the alternatives have been tried and failed. but, largely, because this is the only model that has really ever worked in every other important area of liberal democratic life.

To thine own self be true

"This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."

- William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1204

I can't imagine living any other way.

Thanks to Bill and Mark and H.L. and Socrates and Amartya and Abraham and Mary and Edna and Harper and Henry David and Walt and e.e. and Dar and Annie and Brad and Amy and Emily and David and Natalie and Emily and Marty and Stephen and Tom and Warren and Bill and Carlos and Joe and Frank and Andrew and George and John and Stephen and everyone I've ever read or studied or appreciated for showing me the way.

And thanks to every teacher or mentor or parent or friend I ever had who made my life worth living.

Love,
Ben

Requiem for our repressive times

Myanmar. Georgia. Venezuela. Pakistan.

According to conventional wisdom, the force used in each situations - the crackdowns by governments and the violence on the part of some protesters - is what, indeed, makes the world-go-round.

If it weren't for these shows of force, goes that powerful, inevitable, futile-to-resist insight, there would be none of the peace, freedom, democracy, and reasoned thought that you and I take for granted.

Christ, Buddha, Ghandi, King, Tutu, Muhammad Yunus, and the Dalai Lama. These are kind-hearted, soft-headed fools who do not nearly understand well enough the power of force, the power of aggression, the power of raw power, or even its softer forms, to shape the world in its most genuinely and powerful liberal democratic mold. Thank you, you kindly old fools, goes the contemporary political calculation, but now real men must do the dirty work of democracy.

Men like Malcolm X and Bull Connor, Subhas Chandra Bose and Brigadier Reginald Dyer, Myanmar's supreme leader General Than Shwe, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, Pakistan's General Pervez Musharraf, and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. These are the beacons of progress in the world. Their use of force demonstrates just what can be done when enough power is brought to bear on a recalcitrant people. Soft power. Hard power. Whatever power is needed to make people do what you want. That is how progress makes its way through this stubbornly foolish world unawares of the beneficence of Those Who Know Better and their forceful ways.

So goes the conventional wisdom. They would not claim this mantle. It would make their claim too obvious and their mistakes of judgment too public. But this is what they claim, whether they take responsibility for that claim or not.

And the world spins around that logic like a serpent following its own mating call, its own Siren hiss, until we face more honestly the consequences of that claim.

And so the world spins and spins into oblivion until we take responsibility for its spin. Which we will. Because the world will continue to spin out of control until we do.

There is no world where force or aggression replaces reason or supplants it with wiser and tougher leadership. There is the possibility of a world where force and aggression are better guided by reason. But that is a world led by reason, not by force. And the only way to know what reason might offer in the way of the wiser use of force is to engage without force, as much as possible, since force obstructs reason. Power, the ability to manipulate others for our own ends or even the ends of others, undermines and subverts reason, as a rule, and so should be avoided as a rule, to avoid suppressing, and thus failing to resolve, the quiet but still present conflicts that animate our lives.

This is a fact of a life, not a flight of fancy. And, hence, there are only two ways forward. Ever escalating aggression and the consequences that comes with it. Or a presumption against aggression, as much as possible, but not as an absolute, and a preference for engaged thought and discussion that might more genuinely resolve problems through greater understanding and reason rather than the mindless menace of ever escalating aggression.

If we are to find our way out of so many of our current predicaments, the least possible necessary aggression, and no aggression at all, when possible, should be engaged, as a rule, to avoid the escalating conflicts that can be resolved by reason, and, when they can, will only be resolved by reason. Force and aggression, as much as is reasonably and realistically possible, should only be used when reason is not an option, when aggression and danger are imminent, and when no other alternatives are available. They should not be avoided as an absolute. But, then again, Ghandi, King, and Tutu, at least, never said they should. They just chose wiser paths amid the alternatives.

Or so I say.

Alas, the conventional wisdom says otherwise. And such wisdom has led us into the all-too-wise and unchallengeably thankful path of forceful, aggressive, and repressive times that we find ourselves in, today. With all this wisdom and its fortunate consequences, one would think that the liberal democratic mood would be cheerier and more hopeful.

But something is missing.

Perhaps the reality of a repressive spirit and time does not live up to the fantasy of undaunted safety, peace, and resolution that gave it birth.

Perhaps there is still more for us to learn.

Perhaps there is still a lot more for us to learn.

Why do we love power so?

DOES THE RACE OF MAN LOVE A LORD?
by Mark Twain (thanks to Project Gutenberg)

Often a quite assified remark becomes sanctified by use and
petrified by custom; it is then a permanency, its term of activity
a geologic period.

The day after the arrival of Prince Henry I met an English friend,
and he rubbed his hands and broke out with a remark that was charged
to the brim with joy--joy that was evidently a pleasant salve
to an old sore place:

"Many a time I've had to listen without retort to an old saying
that is irritatingly true, and until now seemed to offer no chance
for a return jibe: 'An Englishman does dearly love a lord';
but after this I shall talk back, and say, 'How about the Americans?'"

It is a curious thing, the currency that an idiotic saying can get.
The man that first says it thinks he has made a discovery.
The man he says it to, thinks the same. It departs on its travels,
is received everywhere with admiring acceptance, and not only as
a piece of rare and acute observation, but as being exhaustively
true and profoundly wise; and so it presently takes its place
in the world's list of recognized and established wisdoms,
and after that no one thinks of examining it to see whether it is
really entitled to its high honors or not. I call to mind instances
of this in two well-established proverbs, whose dullness is not
surpassed by the one about the Englishman and his love for a lord:
one of them records the American's Adoration of the Almighty Dollar,
the other the American millionaire-girl's ambition to trade cash for
a title, with a husband thrown in.

It isn't merely the American that adores the Almighty Dollar,
it is the human race. The human race has always adored the hatful
of shells, or the bale of calico, or the half-bushel of brass rings,
or the handful of steel fish-hooks, or the houseful of black wives,
or the zareba full of cattle, or the two-score camels and asses,
or the factory, or the farm, or the block of buildings, or the
railroad bonds, or the bank stock, or the hoarded cash, or
--anything that stands for wealth and consideration and independence,
and can secure to the possessor that most precious of all things,
another man's envy. It was a dull person that invented the idea
that the American's devotion to the dollar is more strenuous than
another's.

Rich American girls do buy titles, but they did not invent that idea;
it had been worn threadbare several hundred centuries before America
was discovered. European girls still exploit it as briskly as ever;
and, when a title is not to be had for the money in hand, they buy
the husband without it. They must put up the "dot," or there is
no trade. The commercialization of brides is substantially universal,
except in America. It exists with us, to some little extent,
but in no degree approaching a custom.

"The Englishman dearly loves a lord."

What is the soul and source of this love? I think the thing could
be more correctly worded:

"The human race dearly envies a lord."

That is to say, it envies the lord's place. Why? On two accounts,
I think: its Power and its Conspicuousness.

Where Conspicuousness carries with it a Power which, by the light
of our own observation and experience, we are able to measure
and comprehend, I think our envy of the possessor is as deep and as
passionate as is that of any other nation. No one can care less
for a lord than the backwoodsman, who has had no personal contact
with lords and has seldom heard them spoken of; but I will not
allow that any Englishman has a profounder envy of a lord than has
the average American who has lived long years in a European capital
and fully learned how immense is the position the lord occupies.

Of any ten thousand Americans who eagerly gather, at vast inconvenience,
to get a glimpse of Prince Henry, all but a couple of hundred
will be there out of an immense curiosity; they are burning up
with desire to see a personage who is so much talked about.
They envy him; but it is Conspicuousness they envy mainly, not the
Power that is lodged in his royal quality and position, for they
have but a vague and spectral knowledge and appreciation of that;
though their environment and associations they have been accustomed
to regard such things lightly, and as not being very real; consequently,
they are not able to value them enough to consumingly envy them.

But, whenever an American (or other human being) is in the presence,
for the first time, of a combination of great Power and Conspicuousness
which he thoroughly understands and appreciates, his eager curiosity
and pleasure will be well-sodden with that other passion--envy
--whether he suspects it or not. At any time, on any day, in any part
of America, you can confer a happiness upon any passing stranger
by calling his attention to any other passing stranger and saying:

"Do you see that gentleman going along there? It is Mr. Rockefeller."

Watch his eye. It is a combination of power and conspicuousness
which the man understands.

When we understand rank, we always like to rub against it.
When a man is conspicuous, we always want to see him. Also, if he
will pay us an attention we will manage to remember it. Also, we
will mention it now and then, casually; sometimes to a friend,
or if a friend is not handy, we will make out with a stranger.

Well, then, what is rank, and what is conspicuousness? At once we
think of kings and aristocracies, and of world-wide celebrities
in soldierships, the arts, letters, etc., and we stop there.
But that is a mistake. Rank holds its court and receives its homage
on every round of the ladder, from the emperor down to the rat-catcher;
and distinction, also, exists on every round of the ladder,
and commands its due of deference and envy.

To worship rank and distinction is the dear and valued privilege
of all the human race, and it is freely and joyfully exercised
in democracies as well as in monarchies--and even, to some extent,
among those creatures whom we impertinently call the Lower Animals.
For even they have some poor little vanities and foibles, though in
this matter they are paupers as compared to us.

A Chinese Emperor has the worship of his four hundred millions
of subjects, but the rest of the world is indifferent to him.
A Christian Emperor has the worship of his subjects and of a large
part of the Christian world outside of his domains; but he is
a matter of indifference to all China. A king, class A, has an
extensive worship; a king, class B, has a less extensive worship;
class C, class D, class E get a steadily diminishing share of worship;
class L (Sultan of Zanzibar), class P (Sultan of Sulu), and class W
(half-king of Samoa), get no worship at all outside their own little
patch of sovereignty.

Take the distinguished people along down. Each has his group
of homage-payers. In the navy, there are many groups; they start
with the Secretary and the Admiral, and go down to the quartermaster
--and below; for there will be groups among the sailors, and each of
these groups will have a tar who is distinguished for his battles,
or his strength, or his daring, or his profanity, and is admired
and envied by his group. The same with the army; the same
with the literary and journalistic craft; the publishing craft;
the cod-fishery craft; Standard Oil; U. S. Steel; the class A hotel
--and the rest of the alphabet in that line; the class A prize-fighter
--and the rest of the alphabet in his line--clear down to the lowest
and obscurest six-boy gang of little gamins, with its one boy
that can thrash the rest, and to whom he is king of Samoa,
bottom of the royal race, but looked up to with a most ardent
admiration and envy.

There is something pathetic, and funny, and pretty, about this
human race's fondness for contact with power and distinction,
and for the reflected glory it gets out of it. The king, class A,
is happy in the state banquet and the military show which the
emperor provides for him, and he goes home and gathers the queen
and the princelings around him in the privacy of the spare room,
and tells them all about it, and says:

"His Imperial Majesty put his hand upon my shoulder in the most
friendly way--just as friendly and familiar, oh, you can't imagine it!
--and everybody SEEING him do it; charming, perfectly charming!"

The king, class G, is happy in the cold collation and the police
parade provided for him by the king, class B, and goes home
and tells the family all about it, and says:

"And His Majesty took me into his own private cabinet for a smoke
and a chat, and there we sat just as sociable, and talking away
and laughing and chatting, just the same as if we had been born
in the same bunk; and all the servants in the anteroom could see
us doing it! Oh, it was too lovely for anything!"

The king, class Q, is happy in the modest entertainment furnished him
by the king, class M, and goes home and tells the household about it,
and is as grateful and joyful over it as were his predecessors
in the gaudier attentions that had fallen to their larger lot.

Emperors, kings, artisans, peasants, big people, little people--at the
bottom we are all alike and all the same; all just alike on the inside,
and when our clothes are off, nobody can tell which of us is which.
We are unanimous in the pride we take in good and genuine compliments
paid us, and distinctions conferred upon us, in attentions shown.
There is not one of us, from the emperor down, but is made like that.
Do I mean attentions shown us by the guest? No, I mean simply
flattering attentions, let them come whence they may. We despise
no source that can pay us a pleasing attention--there is no source
that is humble enough for that. You have heard a dear little girl
say to a frowzy and disreputable dog: "He came right to me and let
me pat him on the head, and he wouldn't let the others touch him!"
and you have seen her eyes dance with pride in that high distinction.
You have often seen that. If the child were a princess, would that
random dog be able to confer the like glory upon her with his
pretty compliment? Yes; and even in her mature life and seated
upon a throne, she would still remember it, still recall it,
still speak of it with frank satisfaction. That charming and
lovable German princess and poet, Carmen Sylva, Queen of Roumania,
remembers yet that the flowers of the woods and fields "talked to her"
when she was a girl, and she sets it down in her latest book;
and that the squirrels conferred upon her and her father the valued
compliment of not being afraid of them; and "once one of them,
holding a nut between its sharp little teeth, ran right up against
my father"--it has the very note of "He came right to me and let
me pat him on the head"--"and when it saw itself reflected in his
boot it was very much surprised, and stopped for a long time to
contemplate itself in the polished leather"--then it went its way.
And the birds! she still remembers with pride that "they came
boldly into my room," when she had neglected her "duty" and put
no food on the window-sill for them; she knew all the wild birds,
and forgets the royal crown on her head to remember with pride
that they knew her; also that the wasp and the bee were personal
friends of hers, and never forgot that gracious relationship
to her injury: "never have I been stung by a wasp or a bee."
And here is that proud note again that sings in that little child's
elation in being singled out, among all the company of children,
for the random dog's honor-conferring attentions. "Even in the very
worst summer for wasps, when, in lunching out of doors, our table
was covered with them and every one else was stung, they never
hurt me."

When a queen whose qualities of mind and heart and character are
able to add distinction to so distinguished a place as a throne,
remembers with grateful exultation, after thirty years, honors and
distinctions conferred upon her by the humble, wild creatures of
the forest, we are helped to realize that complimentary attentions,
homage, distinctions, are of no caste, but are above all cast
--that they are a nobility-conferring power apart.

We all like these things. When the gate-guard at the railway-station
passes me through unchallenged and examines other people's tickets,
I feel as the king, class A, felt when the emperor put the imperial
hand on his shoulder, "everybody seeing him do it"; and as the child
felt when the random dog allowed her to pat his head and ostracized
the others; and as the princess felt when the wasps spared her
and stung the rest; and I felt just so, four years ago in Vienna
(and remember it yet), when the helmeted police shut me off,
with fifty others, from a street which the Emperor was to pass through,
and the captain of the squad turned and saw the situation and said
indignantly to that guard:

"Can't you see it is the Herr Mark Twain? Let him through!"

It was four years ago; but it will be four hundred before I forget
the wind of self-complacency that rose in me, and strained my
buttons when I marked the deference for me evoked in the faces of my
fellow-rabble, and noted, mingled with it, a puzzled and resentful
expression which said, as plainly as speech could have worded it:
"And who in the nation is the Herr Mark Twain UM GOTTESWILLEN?"

How many times in your life have you heard this boastful remark:

"I stood as close to him as I am to you; I could have put out my
hand and touched him."

We have all heard it many and many a time. It was a proud
distinction to be able to say those words. It brought envy to
the speaker, a kind of glory; and he basked in it and was happy
through all his veins. And who was it he stood so close to?
The answer would cover all the grades. Sometimes it was a king;
sometimes it was a renowned highwayman; sometimes it was an unknown
man killed in an extraordinary way and made suddenly famous by it;
always it was a person who was for the moment the subject of public
interest of a village.

"I was there, and I saw it myself." That is a common and
envy-compelling remark. It can refer to a battle; to a handing;
to a coronation; to the killing of Jumbo by the railway-train;
to the arrival of Jenny Lind at the Battery; to the meeting of the
President and Prince Henry; to the chase of a murderous maniac;
to the disaster in the tunnel; to the explosion in the subway;
to a remarkable dog-fight; to a village church struck by lightning.
It will be said, more or less causally, by everybody in America who has
seen Prince Henry do anything, or try to. The man who was absent
and didn't see him to anything, will scoff. It is his privilege;
and he can make capital out of it, too; he will seem, even to himself,
to be different from other Americans, and better. As his opinion
of his superior Americanism grows, and swells, and concentrates
and coagulates, he will go further and try to belittle the distinction
of those that saw the Prince do things, and will spoil their pleasure
in it if he can. My life has been embittered by that kind of person.
If you are able to tell of a special distinction that has fallen
to your lot, it gravels them; they cannot bear it; and they try
to make believe that the thing you took for a special distinction
was nothing of the kind and was meant in quite another way.
Once I was received in private audience by an emperor. Last week
I was telling a jealous person about it, and I could see him wince
under it, see him bite, see him suffer. I revealed the whole episode
to him with considerable elaboration and nice attention to detail.
When I was through, he asked me what had impressed me most.
I said:

"His Majesty's delicacy. They told me to be sure and back
out from the presence, and find the door-knob as best I could;
it was not allowable to face around. Now the Emperor knew it would
be a difficult ordeal for me, because of lack of practice; and so,
when it was time to part, he turned, with exceeding delicacy,
and pretended to fumble with things on his desk, so I could get
out in my own way, without his seeing me."

It went home! It was vitriol! I saw the envy and disgruntlement rise
in the man's face; he couldn't keep it down. I saw him try to fix
up something in his mind to take the bloom off that distinction.
I enjoyed that, for I judged that he had his work cut out for him.
He struggled along inwardly for quite a while; then he said,
with a manner of a person who has to say something and hasn't anything
relevant to say:

"You said he had a handful of special-brand cigars on the table?"

"Yes; _I_ never saw anything to match them."

I had him again. He had to fumble around in his mind as much
as another minute before he could play; then he said in as mean
a way as I ever heard a person say anything:

"He could have been counting the cigars, you know."

I cannot endure a man like that. It is nothing to him how unkind
he is, so long as he takes the bloom off. It is all he cares for.

"An Englishman (or other human being) does dearly love a lord,"
(or other conspicuous person.) It includes us all. We love to be
noticed by the conspicuous person; we love to be associated with such,
or with a conspicuous event, even in a seventh-rate fashion,
even in the forty-seventh, if we cannot do better. This accounts
for some of our curious tastes in mementos. It accounts for the large
private trade in the Prince of Wales's hair, which chambermaids
were able to drive in that article of commerce when the Prince made
the tour of the world in the long ago--hair which probably did
not always come from his brush, since enough of it was marketed
to refurnish a bald comet; it accounts for the fact that the rope
which lynches a negro in the presence of ten thousand Christian
spectators is salable five minutes later at two dollars and inch;
it accounts for the mournful fact that a royal personage does not
venture to wear buttons on his coat in public.

We do love a lord--and by that term I mean any person whose situation
is higher than our own. The lord of the group, for instance:
a group of peers, a group of millionaires, a group of hoodlums,
a group of sailors, a group of newsboys, a group of saloon politicians,
a group of college girls. No royal person has ever been the object
of a more delirious loyalty and slavish adoration than is paid
by the vast Tammany herd to its squalid idol in Wantage. There is
not a bifurcated animal in that menagerie that would not be proud
to appear in a newspaper picture in his company. At the same time,
there are some in that organization who would scoff at the people
who have been daily pictured in company with Prince Henry, and would
say vigorously that THEY would not consent to be photographed
with him--a statement which would not be true in any instance.
There are hundreds of people in America who would frankly say to you
that they would not be proud to be photographed in a group with
the Prince, if invited; and some of these unthinking people would
believe it when they said it; yet in no instance would it be true.
We have a large population, but we have not a large enough one,
by several millions, to furnish that man. He has not yet been begotten,
and in fact he is not begettable.

You may take any of the printed groups, and there isn't a person
in the dim background who isn't visibly trying to be vivid; if it
is a crowd of ten thousand--ten thousand proud, untamed democrats,
horny-handed sons of toil and of politics, and fliers of the eagle
--there isn't one who is trying to keep out of range, there isn't one
who isn't plainly meditating a purchase of the paper in the morning,
with the intention of hunting himself out in the picture and of framing
and keeping it if he shall find so much of his person in it as his
starboard ear.

We all love to get some of the drippings of Conspicuousness, and we
will put up with a single, humble drip, if we can't get any more.
We may pretend otherwise, in conversation; but we can't pretend
it to ourselves privately--and we don't. We do confess in public
that we are the noblest work of God, being moved to it by long habit,
and teaching, and superstition; but deep down in the secret places
of our souls we recognize that, if we ARE the noblest work, the less
said about it the better.

We of the North poke fun at the South for its fondness of titles
--a fondness for titles pure and simple, regardless of whether they
are genuine or pinchbeck. We forget that whatever a Southerner
likes the rest of the human race likes, and that there is no law of
predilection lodged in one people that is absent from another people.
There is no variety in the human race. We are all children,
all children of the one Adam, and we love toys. We can soon acquire
that Southern disease if some one will give it a start. It already
has a start, in fact. I have been personally acquainted with over
eighty-four thousand persons who, at one time or another in their lives,
have served for a year or two on the staffs of our multitudinous
governors, and through that fatality have been generals temporarily,
and colonels temporarily, and judge-advocates temporarily; but I
have known only nine among them who could be hired to let the title
go when it ceased to be legitimate. I know thousands and thousands
of governors who ceased to be governors away back in the last century;
but I am acquainted with only three who would answer your letter
if you failed to call them "Governor" in it. I know acres and acres
of men who have done time in a legislature in prehistoric days,
but among them is not half an acre whose resentment you would not
raise if you addressed them as "Mr." instead of "Hon." The first thing
a legislature does is to convene in an impressive legislative attitude,
and get itself photographed. Each member frames his copy and takes
it to the woods and hangs it up in the most aggressively conspicuous
place in his house; and if you visit the house and fail to inquire
what that accumulation is, the conversation will be brought around
to it by that aforetime legislator, and he will show you a figure
in it which in the course of years he has almost obliterated
with the smut of his finger-marks, and say with a solemn joy, "It's me!"

Have you ever seen a country Congressman enter the hotel breakfast-room
in Washington with his letters?--and sit at his table and let on
to read them?--and wrinkle his brows and frown statesman-like?
--keeping a furtive watch-out over his glasses all the while to see
if he is being observed and admired?--those same old letters
which he fetches in every morning? Have you seen it? Have you
seen him show off? It is THE sight of the national capital.
Except one; a pathetic one. That is the ex-Congressman: the poor
fellow whose life has been ruined by a two-year taste of glory
and of fictitious consequence; who has been superseded, and ought
to take his heartbreak home and hide it, but cannot tear himself
away from the scene of his lost little grandeur; and so he lingers,
and still lingers, year after year, unconsidered, sometimes snubbed,
ashamed of his fallen estate, and valiantly trying to look otherwise;
dreary and depressed, but counterfeiting breeziness and gaiety,
hailing with chummy familiarity, which is not always welcomed,
the more-fortunes who are still in place and were once his mates.
Have you seen him? He clings piteously to the one little shred that
is left of his departed distinction--the "privilege of the floor";
and works it hard and gets what he can out of it. That is the saddest
figure I know of.

Yes, we do so love our little distinctions! And then we loftily
scoff at a Prince for enjoying his larger ones; forgetting that if we
only had his chance--ah! "Senator" is not a legitimate title.
A Senator has no more right to be addressed by it than have you
or I; but, in the several state capitals and in Washington,
there are five thousand Senators who take very kindly to
that fiction, and who purr gratefully when you call them by it
--which you may do quite unrebuked. Then those same Senators smile
at the self-constructed majors and generals and judges of the South!

Indeed, we do love our distinctions, get them how we may.
And we work them for all they are worth. In prayer we call
ourselves "worms of the dust," but it is only on a sort of tacit
understanding that the remark shall not be taken at par. WE
--worms of the dust! Oh, no, we are not that. Except in fact;
and we do not deal much in fact when we are contemplating ourselves.

As a race, we do certainly love a lord--let him be Croker, or a duke,
or a prize-fighter, or whatever other personage shall chance to be the
head of our group. Many years ago, I saw a greasy youth in overalls
standing by the HERALD office, with an expectant look in his face.
Soon a large man passed out, and gave him a pat on the shoulder.
That was what the boy was waiting for--the large man's notice.
The pat made him proud and happy, and the exultation inside of him
shone out through his eyes; and his mates were there to see the pat
and envy it and wish they could have that glory. The boy belonged
down cellar in the press-room, the large man was king of the
upper floors, foreman of the composing-room. The light in the boy's
face was worship, the foreman was his lord, head of his group.
The pat was an accolade. It was as precious to the boy as it would
have been if he had been an aristocrat's son and the accolade had
been delivered by his sovereign with a sword. The quintessence
of the honor was all there; there was no difference in values;
in truth there was no difference present except an artificial one
--clothes.

All the human race loves a lord--that is, loves to look upon
or be noticed by the possessor of Power or Conspicuousness;
and sometimes animals, born to better things and higher ideals,
descend to man's level in this matter. In the Jardin des Plantes
I have see a cat that was so vain of being the personal friend
of an elephant that I was ashamed of her."

It's so sad and curious, isn't it? So much tragedy, so much pain, so much foolish and unnecessary misery caused by this dismal, petty little instinct of ours.

Twain saw it better than anyone I've encountered. It is the source of most of life's piddling and grave sufferings. And, most pitiful of all, it is our own goddamn fault.

I imagine Twain, were he wise to our current situation, would hang his head and laugh. It is America at her most unbearable. And even America, I suppose, it subject to her vanities, pitiable though they may be.

But it'd still be nice to have Mark around to counsel her. If only to console her when her accomplishments don't match her ambition. Bigger they are, the harder they fall, and all that. But someone's got to pick up even a bullying schoolmarm when she falls on her face. At least someone decent would.

And that's why we have Twain.

Sentimentalism

A romantic outlook on the world.

Maintain it without question, and you're a fool.

Maintain it with question, and you're a cynic.

Make peace with it knowing what the world could, must, and will be, with enough courage, and you know wisdom.

Love,
Ben

I wonder why?

Ruth Marcus asks the question with a quite obvious answer, "Why don't the candidates want to talk with us?

Meet the Press

I don't know, Ruth. You think it has something to do with the aggressive, gotcha journalism, activism, and politics that has dominated American politics for the last 6 or 7 years?

And here's the best part.

It will only end, when the gotcha games end.

Meaning: as long as you pursue an approach that makes the problem worse, the problem will persist and/or get worse.

The only solution: changing your ways.

Why government should not be in control of education

A big strike against a President Bloomberg and an indication of the inanity of government running schools.

50 New York Schools Fail Under Rating System

The idea that someone who has never taught in a classroom would understand enough to decide which schools should stay open and which ones shouldn't is just so much inanity and foolishness that I can hardly believe that we live in 21st century America.

This is why we need school choice and a free education market. Adam Smith and Milton Friedman have more to say to create better schools than the whole lot of politicians and bureaucrats in Washington D.C., New York City, and every major city in the country, combined - even politicians committed, in principle, to and who have benefitted from the free market like Michael Blumberg.

Smith and Friedman are right. What America and every liberal democratic country needs is to live up to its liberal ideals, to take liberty seriously, and to set free non-profit and for-profit markets in schools all over the world.

The truth is that illiberal forces in the world will always use everything that goes wrong in education and in any area of life to argue for as much power as they can acquire. We need strong liberal commitments to make our cultures stronger. It is perfectly clear, really, that it is liberalism that makes our cultures stronger since liberal democracies are, by far, the strongest, most vibrant, most decent societies in the world, today. All cultures need stronger liberal commitments, meaning a greater commitment to the freedom of people to choose their destinies and to use that freedom to build all of the best institutions that we take for granted. But liberal cultures, in particular, need to live up to their liberal commitments.

And Milton Friedman was right. The single most important basic institution that needs our strongest liberal commitments - meaning commitments to the freedom of people to choose their destinies and how to live their lives - is education and the schools that support it.

And if Michael Bloomberg, a millionaire made rich beyond most peoples' wildest dreams, cannot be trusted to let schools, teachers, administrators, parents, and students to sort out these matter on their own, then no politician, in all likelihood, can be trusted to do so. Schools should be run by the people closest to their day-to-day operations, and government should only have a say in a law enforcement capacity in situations where there is imminent physical danger that schools cannot possibly be expected to care for on their own. Other than that, the education market should be free, meaning people should figure such matters out on their own. They will make mistakes. But they will be their mistakes. And they can be mistakes on a road to learned lessons rather than no lessons because central school operations are so bound up in district, city, state, and federal regulation.

There is no better case for a free market in the U.S. than public education, today. Because it is the one area of our lives where efforts to create the kinds of opportunities we imagine will only be available once people are free to choose. And, as Milton Friedman was convinced, it is the most important institution for us to set free.

President Bloomberg?

I'd be interested in a Bloomberg run.

How Bloomberg could shake up '08

If Bloomberg ran, he would be my favorite Republican or independent candidate.

Interesting what he has to say in the video interview about Mitt Romney. I've heard this a lot. Mitt does have some important accomplishments in Massachusetts. But running to the right has probably seriously hurt him in terms of general election electability calculations. I happen to think the Massachusetts health care legislation that he helped pass was a bad piece of legislation, despite its decent intentions. But Bloomberg is right that, given his record and how most people feel about the accomplishments that Mitt has as a Governor, it is surprising that he's not doing better nationally. He is a Mormon and he ran hard for that religious right vote, followed the conventional wisdom out of Washington about primary elections, and lost that bet.

Maybe candidates should just be honest? Except that the cynics in Washington are always undermining that route as well.

It would be refreshing to have another more honest candidate in this race. I hope Bloomberg thinks more seriously about a Presidential run than he is now. It'd be good for America and the world if he would, I think.

Newsflash: Hillary Clinton follows political winds; would lick the bottom of ash trays for votes

Whatever the political winds tell her to say in the moment. That is the mantra of the Clinton candidacy.

Jeffrey Lewis, the always brilliant Arms Control Wonk, writes a far too generous piece about Clinton's flip-flops on nuclear policy last Thursday.

More Senator Clinton on Nuclear Weapons

As one of his commenters noted, Clinton shape-shifts so much on the campaign trail, I don't trust her anymore, in office or as a leader, generally. Hillary Clinton wouldn't be the worst President ever (she's got some steep competition with the likes of Ulysses Grant and Richard Nixon). But I'd hardly call her fine Presidential material. She's got work to do to demonstrate that capacity. And that Foreign Affairs article doesn't cut it for me. To be fair, Obama's article is not terribly strong, either, by my lights. But at least Obama is trying to think America out of its foreign policy ruts, right now. If Clinton is thinking, seriously, she's not sharing it. And then she wears her failure to dig deeper for solutions as a badge of ignorance to flatter the pride of every dumbass, foolish, incurious Joe-Schmoe she can hoodwink into voting for her.

That kind of arrogance is scary, it's not just stupid.

People just get used to politicians lying. They forget that's what they're doing. Jeffrey is just too used to the lying.

But I'm not.

And I'll call that lying bitch on her bullshit every fuckin' chance I get. I wouldn't speak that strongly on the matter, except that I don't like it when more honest people get muscled by liars and bullshit artists. And Barack Obama and the rest of the Democratic pack are most definitely getting muscled by the junior Senator from New York.

Hillary Clinton needs to sit out this Presidency. David Geffen is right. The Clintons are far too skilled as liars. And Hillary and Bill need a serious comeupance.

At this point, I don't care who gives it to them. I would prefer Obama. But I might settle for Rudy.

No wonder that pair's relationship is so fucked up. They wouldn't know an honest impulse between people, anymore, if it came up and bit them in their big, fat progressive asses.

You make me choose between the lesser of the two evils, you better make damned sure that you're the lesser. Because in Hillary Clinton's case, there's no way to tell anymore.

Calling the bluff on Iran

How do you handle the Administration's threat to attack Iran? Call the bluff.

Jim Hoagland tries to act like the threat to attack Iran is for real and is, thus, an argument for sanctions to cool off the pressure for military attack.

How to Rein in Iran

Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and I both think sanctions would be counterproductive. And we're right. And there is almost 4 years of experience with failure with that strategy to support that point of view of advocates of that approach would just look more squarely at their failure.

I say blow off that threat. I'd call the Administration on that bluff.

They don't have the military manpower. They don't have the political will. They wouldn't have the support from Congress. They wouldn't have the support of the IAEA, the Security Council, the United Nations or the international community.

You can only work off of a bluff for so long.

Bluff called. Hawks lose.

It's a race now

It's bad enough that Obama sounds so confident in his argument about offering better leadership for the country.

Obama Slams Clinton's 'Textbook' Calculations

It's worse, for Ms. Clinton, at least, that he's right.

Maybe, just maybe, more honest leadership might get rewarded at the polls, this time around.

Why Obama might be the best pick

Andrew Sullivan captures well why Obama appeals to me as well.

"[T]he most persuasive case for Obama has less to do with him than with the moment he is meeting. The moment has been a long time coming, and it is the result of a confluence of events, from one traumatizing war in Southeast Asia to another in the most fractious country in the Middle East. The legacy is a cultural climate that stultifies our politics and corrupts our discourse.

Obama’s candidacy in this sense is a potentially transformational one. Unlike any of the other candidates, he could take America—finally—past the debilitating, self-perpetuating family quarrel of the Baby Boom generation that has long engulfed all of us. So much has happened in America in the past seven years, let alone the past 40, that we can be forgiven for focusing on the present and the immediate future. But it is only when you take several large steps back into the long past that the full logic of an Obama presidency stares directly—and uncomfortably—at you.

At its best, the Obama candidacy is about ending a war—not so much the war in Iraq, which now has a momentum that will propel the occupation into the next decade—but the war within America that has prevailed since Vietnam and that shows dangerous signs of intensifying, a nonviolent civil war that has crippled America at the very time the world needs it most. It is a war about war—and about culture and about religion and about race. And in that war, Obama—and Obama alone—offers the possibility of a truce...

None of this, of course, means that Obama will be the president some are dreaming of. His record in high office is sparse; his performances on the campaign trail have been patchy; his chief rival for the nomination, Senator Clinton, has bested him often with her relentless pursuit of the middle ground, her dogged attention to her own failings, and her much-improved speaking skills. At times, she has even managed to appear more inherently likable than the skinny, crabby, and sometimes morose newcomer from Chicago. Clinton’s most surprising asset has been the sense of security she instills. Her husband—and the good feelings that nostalgics retain for his presidency—have buttressed her case. In dangerous times, popular majorities often seek the conservative option, broadly understood.

The paradox is that Hillary makes far more sense if you believe that times are actually pretty good. If you believe that America’s current crisis is not a deep one, if you think that pragmatism alone will be enough to navigate a world on the verge of even more religious warfare, if you believe that today’s ideological polarization is not dangerous, and that what appears dark today is an illusion fostered by the lingering trauma of the Bush presidency, then the argument for Obama is not that strong. Clinton will do. And a Clinton-Giuliani race could be as invigorating as it is utterly predictable.

But if you sense, as I do, that greater danger lies ahead, and that our divisions and recent history have combined to make the American polity and constitutional order increasingly vulnerable, then the calculus of risk changes. Sometimes, when the world is changing rapidly, the greater risk is caution. Close-up in this election campaign, Obama is unlikely. From a distance, he is necessary. At a time when America’s estrangement from the world risks tipping into dangerous imbalance, when a country at war with lethal enemies is also increasingly at war with itself, when humankind’s spiritual yearnings veer between an excess of certainty and an inability to believe anything at all, and when sectarian and racial divides seem as intractable as ever, a man who is a bridge between these worlds may be indispensable.

We may in fact have finally found that bridge to the 21st century that Bill Clinton told us about. Its name is Obama."

The war Andrew describes of polarized ideological opponents is a self-righteous war fought by hyperaggressive combatants who, like Hamas and Al Queda, seem to care more about propping up their own artificial sense of monopoly on wisdom in human and polical affairs. Obama, unlike Hillary or any of his Democratic opponents, for all of my disagreements with him - and my disagreement with him on the war is a pretty important one, to me and to him - seems to understand better the need to end this dysfunctional and senseless war of propaganda and bring some genuine thought and discussion about the most important policy issues to Washington.

That, among many reasons, is why I am so unenamoured by Ms. Clinton. Because she doesn't seem to understand or have ideas for resolving this and many other much deeper problems of politics and policy-making in Washington, right now. She is symptomatic of all of its larger problems. She thinks positioning as a winner in this self-righteous battle will effectively work at resolving this schism. And she reflects the cynicism of self-righteous liberal baby-boomers and elders, alike, yearning for the days of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal when progressives could just argue that they were right about every policy issue and conservatives were wrong and there was no use having the discussion or engaging more serious thought about resolving our most serious policy schisms, anyway, because those who disagreed with her were never going to fully comprehend her infinite wisdom and "experience" anyway. It's arrogance grabbing for power. And it is the reason that Hillary Clinton needs serious humbling, right now. And why Obama is a better alternative.

That is why Obama offers more real hope. Because he is genuinely committed to finding a way past all this ugliness. And what many party loyalists like in Hillary is validation of their own cynical inclination that others could never fully comprehend why they are right on every issue, anyway, no matter how much historical and empirical evidence indicates any number of serious cracks in the progressive project. And that kind of arrogance does not need validation. It needs humbling.

A country or ideology must know that its ideas are bankrupt when it relies on force rather than ideas to articulate their vision for the world. That intellectual bankruptcy cannot possibly lead anywhere, which is why real progress will only come with that more genuine and engaged discussion and debate. Because everything else will leave us stuck in the same dysfunctional, hyperaggressive, unsuccessful, stubborn mess Washington and the various party and ideological warriors have us in, today.

Obama offers some hope out of that mess, as imperfect as his and every candidate's brand of hope may be.

Whether the country chooses that kind of hope or the cynicism that is the oxygen for the arrogance and corruption that power tempts will depend on whether Americans are committed to a genuinely confident, strong, thoughtful future or whether they will pretend that the way things are going is just a-ok, if only a Democrat and a winner were in office. The latter will not lead to our ruin. But neither will it lead us forward.

And that is the uselessly sad fate that awaits an America that will not face up to the consequences of its cynicism around matters of liberal democratic policy and politics.

And like every other generation of ascendant and final authority, people will move forward even as governments fight their quite predictable loss of influence and power and as those governments who aspire for the most power suffer the biggest losses. America may not be in decline. But the power of her government is. And that is the positive development that will come out of this historical period, no matter who gets elected.

Now the key is electing leadership who can make use of the limited power that government should be afforded to use it more effectively, equitably, respectfully, and with more thought and engagement and less hubris and dominance.

Barack Obama would be the best pick among Democrats for that kind of future, I think. Hillary Clinton would only stall that future. Ron Paul represents the need for limits on that power without an appreciation for the positive uses for that power. Rudy Giuliani understands those positive uses with some but still not enough appreciation for the limits that power needs.

Perhaps someone like Barack Obama might best lead a discussion about how to lead with all of America's and the world's best qualities and ideas getting a voice in the discussion.

For my health

The Economist publishes a great synopsis of findings of the World Cancer Research Fund about avoiding cancer.

To avoid the Big C, stay small

I calculated my Body Mass Index at 27 tonight. The best cancer risk is an ideal BMI of 21 to 23. I have exercise to do (I love exercise; I just need to build it into my schedule over more petty work concerns).

A nice check-up for me, of what I need to do to get healthier. I eat well - lowfat and vegitariant. But I need to exercise regularly and wear sunscreen regularly when I'm out in the sun. And I need to schedule a physical and a dental visit soon and regular each year.

But it's a nice reality check on what I need to do to live a long life.

Enjoy.

A Mighty Heart

If you have not seen the Michael Winterbottom/Angelina Jolie/Dan Futterman film depiction of Mariane Pearl's recounting of her husband's brutal murder by Pakistani terrorists, I highly recommend it.

I rented this movie wondering whether any kind of public service work mattered when the prevailing conventional wisdom has centered around the heart of illiberalism - force - as some kind of governing philosophy befitting liberal societies.

Judea Pearl, Daniel's father, has something to say about that at Daniel's memorial service on March 10, 2002.

"Thrity eight years ago, Ruth and I had the great fortune of observing a unique biological phenomenon. The child that we brought home had a peculiar syndrome: he had not one shred of malice in his bones.

This child grew into a young man who filled our lives with joy, humor, love, and meaning. We feel fortunate to have been influenced by him so profoundly, and we are lucky to have beautiful memories to guide us into the future...

Kids sought his company not because he was outgoing - he wasn't - but because he was secure, unassuming, and unintimdated. He was not intimidated by bullies, or by rules, or by teachers - not even by his parents.

He was not intimidated even when one teacher stuck a swastika in his face and said, "You are wearing a Star of David, Danny. Look at what I am wearing!" As Israelis, we were terribly upset. This was our first exposure to Anti-Semitism, and we were sure that Danny would be scarred for life. We even called experts from the Anti-Defamation League to assess the damage.

But Danny just narrated this incident in a matter-of-fact way, as if to say, "Upset? Why would I get upset if a teacher make a fool of himself?"

One day, Danny came home from school with a booklet full of new safety instructions. Among them, we found one popular rule of the 1970's:

"Don't talk to strangers."

After some discussion, we decided that we would not press the rule too seriously with Danny.

Little did we know then that "talking to strangers" would become Danny's hobby, then his profession, and, eventually, his mission and ideology...

We know now that the last strangers Danny talked to were strangers of a different breed, from a different planet. They were strangers who knew no talking.

They have silenced Danny's voice, but not his spirit. The legacy of Danny's lifelong "talking with strangers" will be forever in our heart."

In April of 2002, Mariane Pearl, Danny's wife, had this to say in the forward to the book of his collected writings, At Home in the World:

"It was in London that I first stepped into one of Danny's offices.

The office floor was divided into little cubicles. Danny wore a stylish suit topped with a splashy tie pulled from his trademark crazy collection. He introduced me to his cramped space, inviting me to lounge in a beach chair that sat beside him, a totally inappropriate piece of office furniture filling most of his cubicle. I sat in that beach chair and took a good hard look at the man of my life as he spun out a tale from another of his reporting adventures in the Middle East, quickly sweeping his fingers over the keyboard without looking at the keys, surrounded by mountains of papers and books. Touchstones from his travels surrounded him. He had spread a big black tapestry that said "Allahu Akbar" -- "God is great" -- in scrolling red Arabic letters. He had propped a larger-than-life-sized picture of Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini, brought back from one of his countless trips to Iran. He also had the most amazing collection of little monster figurines perched on a shelf.

I could tell he was a fast thinker, constantly synthesizing new ideas. He was a man who was going to illuminate my life. Sharing his existence would be like turning the pages of a comic book packed with lots of fun, unexpected turns of events and plenty of plane rides. Most important, I felt I had met the man who shared my approach toward the world and stood committed to change the world for the better. Lying in his beach chair, an exotic spot in London's gray, I felt great respect and trust in him.

As a journalist and sojourner of the world, Danny held no prejudices about the people we interviewed and met. He first and foremost considered the human being in front of him, regardless of religion, race or social status. Very suspicious of groups and organizations, he had a natural tendency to trust individuals. Once he started to work on an article, he would literally throw himself at it, working days and nights, tracking facts for weeks and experiencing pure delight when he found the littlest detail that would make the story livelier. He liked to walk on beaten paths and discover tales of the unexpected. He was a hunter of human contradictions, as well as of the small and immense absurdities of existence. In reporting from mosques and villages, deserts and world capitals, he was witness to the difficulties of communication between humans. He was like a tightrope walker, a funamble, happily linking worlds with his writings.

As journalists, Danny and I traveled so much that we began to live without acknowledging borders. We were truly citizens of the globe. We were beyond cosmopolitan. Danny was Jewish; I am Buddhist. Danny was born in Princeton, New Jersey; I was born in Paris, France. Danny's father was born in Israel, his mother in Baghdad, Iraq; my mother was born in Havana, Cuba, my father in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. We last lived together in Bombay, India, and last traveled together in Pakistan.

Our commitment to journalism as our means of changing the world deepened every day. The world often seemed to be a mess, but it was our world and somehow our mess. It became clear to us that we enjoyed a privileged position. That enabled us to expose corruption, injustice and ignorance. It empowered us to question vested interests, fundamentalism and untruths. For us -- for Danny -- journalism epitomized the path for charting a better world future. Danny cherished truth more than anything. He called it his religion. He had undertaken a lifelong struggle against conventional wisdom. In all those respects, Danny was a hero -- an ordinary hero.

We were legitimate citizens of the 21st century.

I can only hope that more individuals will think independently, give voice to their thoughts and take responsible action so that this world starts belonging to its people. It is our task to educate, inform and provide keys to people so that they will not be held hostage to the ignorance bred in every corner of the world. It takes courage.

Danny's kidnappers tried to behead freedom. The absurdity of his death belied the life we lived together. We were journalists. We were free. We met people and told their tales to the world. Nobody could harm us. Why would they? We were open-minded and respectful. We were not corrupt. We were not running after power or fame. We were not political or militants. We needn't hide anything. We were ambitious. We believed ordinary people like us could change the world by changing the way people think about each other. We believed you only had to be a journalist armed with intellectual courage, curiosity, a writing talent, a solid sense of humor and a genuine willingness to fight your own limits.

The terrorists who killed Danny stood at the other extreme of what Danny represents. They could only wield their knife and cowardice against Danny's intellectual courage and bold spirit. Danny died holding only a pen. They stole his life but were unable to seize his soul. By killing Danny, terrorists took my life as well but could not lay claim to my spirit. Dead and alive we will never let them win."

That is the kind of spirit that animates what is best in a liberal democracy. If only the world had a thousand more Daniel Pearls.

The movie reminded me why public service work is important, even when bad ideas dominate the public discourse and democratic politics. Because without the Daniel Pearls of the world, the only alternative people would have would be the cynicism that is the source of terrorist thinking as much as more cynical democratic politics. And there would be no honest reality check for how ugly that thinking can be without people like Daniel Pearl to stand for something better.

Love,
Ben

Leaning towards Obama

If Barak Obama keeps thinking in these more deeply-considered ways and in directions that could move us out of our foreign policy ruts, I may vote for him.

This is an excellent article on Obama's foreign policy thinking and the campaign by James Traub in the International Herald Tribune today.

Obama's guide to leading a "post-post-9/11" America

I need to hear him say that he'll stick with the war until the Iraqis say they are ready for us to leave. But the debate is shifting in that direction, anyway, I believe, so this may become a mute point.

And can I say that I have grown increasingly disappointed with Joe Nye over the course of this war. He says he didn't support the war up front. The New York Times says different. I'm less concerned with that than I am with the fact that everything I've ever heard him say on behalf of Hillary Clinton has lacked much real substance. Which wouldn't bother me so much if Hillary Clinton, herself, had something more substantive to say about foreign policy.

But both of them seem to be tacking cautiously with more attention to a Democratic victory than to a more effective and thoughtful international policy. And that is a sure sign that you are going to fuck up. Because you're more focussed on your own ambitions than you are on doing a good job. And that is what bugs me about Hillary Clinton.

And anytime that you have a leader who prioritizes power over knowing better what to do with that power, you know you're in trouble.

It's not a good sign for an international policy thinker when a political candidate, like Obama, is thinking more out loud and more substantively than you are. And it's a good sign for Obama that so many international policy thinkers in and outside of America are favorable to what I have to say are, generally - with exception for this thinking on the war, which has not impressed me - refreshingly open-minded and thoughtful.

And his skepticism about the use of force articulated in this article is exactly the kind of thing I need to hear from an American head of state, right now, given the American propensity to bully the world on whatever issues Americans face, right now.

None of the candidates are thinking as broadly and with as much willingness to question and rethink their own conventional wisdom as well as the conventional wisdom of others as I want. But I do have to say that Obama is doing so more than the other candidates, even as I'm disappointed with his shortsightedness on the war, and moving in the right directions, generally.

We'll see.

Michael Gerson is my hero, right now

Can I just say that I am impressed with almost everything that Michael Gerson writes, these days. Another great column today.

A Second Home for Religious Voters?

And David Brooks has this hilarious, if imaginary, dialogue between the would be Democratic candidates.

Feel the Love

At a time when liberal columnists seem to never cease to get on my nerves, it is refreshing to read something thoughtful. Perhaps when liberal columnists get over their fetish with force and their self-righteous notions on the war, they might write something that might have something to say, again.

In the meantime, I'm reminded that thoughtful commentary is hardly a commodity where anyone has a monopoly.

Because I can. And because you told me not to."

You know what the motivating force behind most of the bullshit in the world is?

"Because I can. And because you told me not to."

Pretty fuckin' sad, ain't it?

Same goes for all my dumbass bullshit.

So much ugliness and cynicism and destructiveness in the world created by this rationalization. All because people can. And because people told them they can't.

I've had that fight. I know what it's like to tell the world to fuck off because they tell you you can't.

And I'd have more sympathy, even for myself, if it weren't so fuckin' sad and dumbass.

What's this world fuckin' coming to?

Sad and dumbass, same as it ever was.

Now if only we could make it less sad and dumbass.

I think I may have one or two ideas.

Love,
Ben

Why power politics drives me crazy

Because it persistently overwhelms better arguments and ideas.

I don't have time to go into all the fine details at this particular moment. But here's the crux of this problem in a nutshell.

Eugene Robinson writes this really weak criticism of Rudy Guliani's New Hampshire ad talking about rates of diagnosis for colon cancer in America and Great Britain, illustrating the relative strength of America's free market health system over the socialized system of the United Kingdom.

Guliani's Bogus Diagnosis

And the bottom line of Eugene's argument is: the British system isn't as bad as he says it is, even if it's still weaker than the U.S. system.

Do you know how often a scholarly consensus would ever develop around an argument like that? Do you know how often that kind of argument would bring some kind of final resolution to something as serious as how to handle inequities and the quality of a health care system in a liberal democracy? Do you know how many debate rounds you would win with that weak-ass argument: ZERO. And you would deserve to. Because you got nothin'. And you're trying to pretend it's something. I've seen it a million times over the course of my speech and debate and academic careers.

And the fact that it was the strongest argument you could think of is a sign that your arguments are in trouble on their merits.

David Gratzer of The Manhattan Institute, the doctor who wrote the article that support Giuliani's claim in his ad, clarifies his data in a follow-up article.

Malignant Rumor

Neither of these articles end the debate about health care in America by a long shot. There is a long and involved discussion and debate that America needs to have.

But one thing is for sure: this is what fuckin' drives me crazy about politics. That people with bad arguments are constantly trying to overwhelm people with better ideas with force rather than with better arguments and ideas. It is the essence of illiberalism and it is an affront to every basic ideal of a liberal democracy.

And that is the essence of what has been wrong with this political era.

And that will never, ever, ever be corrected with enough force. Not even if the proponents of force as a governing philosophy over rigorous thought could keep up their battle till the ends of humanity. It would still be wrong, as a matter of fact completly independent of those arguing about the facts.

That is the nature of an empirical political reality independent of ideology, party, or those arguing about that reality. The reality just is, whether we like it or not.

And no amount of force could ever change that.

Taking time to appreciate people

It's beginning to occur to me, today, as I work with teenagers and all of their teenager ways...

Most of us spend a lot of time thinking about all the ways that people around us disappoint us. I do it. Regularly. It can be a good thing, because it gives me an idea of things I want to avoid and things I want to do better.

But it's occurring to me, today, that none of us, me included, take nearly enough time to just enjoy and appreciate the people in our lives when they are with us. We get so caught up in how they disappoint us, how they make us angry, how they makes us sad, how they hurt us, that we lose track of just appreciating them as they are, right now, and not 10 years down the road when we hope their not so flaky or have such a bad attitude or such a jerk. But just right now, when they are as they are, good and bad.

It's a good reflection to have when you're working with kids. But it's really just a good thought to have with the people you care about in your life.

Most, if not all, of the family, friends, colleagues, kids, and other people in your life are going to disappoint you and fall short of your expectations. All the time. It seems like more often than not, when you think about it, really.

But the truth is that all of them, for the most part, are doing their best. Even when they're slacking or falling down on the job, as I've done a million times, they are generally learning or trying to learn some lesson that you just aren't aware of or clear about. Because you're not them. And you wouldn't have the foggiest idea what it is to be them, until they tell you what their experience of life is. That doesn't mean that we all get a free pass. It just means that we all do better and worse in our lives, and, as a general rule, most people are trying to get life figured out the best they know how.

I have some kids I work with who just seem incomparably arrogant and foolish and sometimes mean and too often whiny and aggressive and lame all at once. They are kids who would be easy for people to give up on.

If they weren't also kids. Human beings. Kids I like, even when they're being such shitheads. Kids who I want to do well, even when they're pissing me off royally which is every day with someone and most days with all of them.

But I love 'em anyway. And though they aren't grown and mature and take school and life seriously the way I want them to take school and life seriously, I care about them an awful lot, is the truth. I want them to have decent lives. I want them to have bright futures and big dreams just like other kids. I just want them to learn how to handle themselves more decently and responsibly and with much more compassion and sensitivity for others, so that they're lives can be productive and meaningful and so they can realize some of their dreams, even with so many obstacles they will face, many of which even they are not really fully aware of yet.

I want to appreciate them for who they are, and not just who I want them to be someday. Although I want to take seriously and I want them to take seriously their need and aspiration to be better people their whole lives.

I want to appreciate them just as they are at 14 or 15 or 16 or 17, just as I wanted to be appreciated for just who I was at the same age and not just who I could be.

It gives me some perspective as I one day have kids of my own. I want to appreciate them just as they are. And not just who I want them to be.

It's my most serious regret from grad school, other than fucking up my relationship with Brandi. That I got so caught up in who I wanted my teachers to be, that I lost track of just appreciating them for who they were. Brandi too. They did the same, in the end, I suppose. As have plenty of people in my life, sadly for them almost more than me, it seems.

I don't want to do that anymore. I've got a good number of decades on this earth, I hope. And I want to enjoy them and the people who I get to spend them with. For who they are. And not just for whom I want them to be.

What a waste of our lives we make wishing for the day that people will be better than they are instead of hoping for better and appreciating people, more, for just who they are in our lives, today, shitheads or not.

That's why I'm more Twain than Mencken. I just like people. Even when they're shitheads. And I miss them when they're gone. Even when they're not everything I want them to be all the time.

And isn't that what we all hope that everyone thinks about us and will think about us when we're gone? That they'll miss us, even with all our faults and mistakes and foolishness.

Loving people for who they are. People who can do that are the people I respect the most. Above smart or accomplished, any day of the week. Though having a big heart and being smart and being accomplished is to be someone I admire. And those folks are too rare and special to ignore.

I better get to bed, here, soon.

I have kids to teach tomorrow. And it's hard to appreciate them when I'm cranky.

It's harder to appreciate them when they're being little shitheads. But it gets easier the more I remember that even when some of them are being dumbasses and shitheads, they're just kids trying to find they're way in the a world that, for many of my kids, at least, has been unkind, topsy-turvy, ungrounded, and generally not stable enough for kids, at this point in their lives. And my hope is to provide them with a life that offers them a bit more wholesomeness and steadiness and genuine concern for their long-term welfare above the more self-centered concerns that occupy too many of the people in their lives, and even too many of the folks who could probably give two shits about them, most days.

Anyway, I got to be up for them, in the morning. And they count on me to be in good shape, mentally. Otherwise it's harder to appreciate them and my time with them.

Love,
Ben

Attention U.S. Presidential candidates:

This is what real courage looks like.

100 monks head back to the streets in Myanmar

Now that is the heart and essence of democracy.

Democratic and Presidential candidates, Ms. Clinton, in particular, take notice:

This is the quality we call courage. It means taking responsibility whether it is popular or not and doing it despite the consequences. It is rare. All too rare in this Presidential election. And it involves doing it out of your own free will whether people force you to do it or not.

This is the lead you need to follow.

And if you can't figure that out, you're not worthy of that office.

So get worthy.

Love,
Ben

P.S. I say that knowing that I need to get worthy, too. I have a long way to go. Most people do, I think. And most public servants - politicians and teachers and cops and military personnel and judges and all sorts of people serving and leading us - especially. Because, like it or not, we look to them for leadership. And so leadership, not confusing our basest impulses with our most worthy, is what we need them to provide.

I'll keep doing my best. They'll keep doing theirs', I assume. But the bottom line is that we all need to do better.