What really matters in life

Watching this election, and just having a stronger expectation of what we get from democratic elections and democratic discussion, and just a lot of reflections and realizations in my own life, I think I've finally found some perspective on politics, education, public service and service to others, money and career, love and family and how all those other things fit into the scheme of the last two and my life.

What I've had to come to accept is that the world is really full of quite a bit of bullshit. We live in it. We make money off of it. We make it sport. We, tragically, make life and death decisions by it. Much policy gets made on its basis. Even very smart people often get lost in it, because it is so pervasive, and sometimes in the hopes that their lives and contributions mean something.

Palaver is what James Combs and Dan Nimmo called it in their brilliant book The New Propaganda. Bullshit is what it is and what I'm sure Combs and Nimmo would call it in less politic moments.

It informs who we are, and yet so much of it is both bullshit and us taking our own bullshit too seriously. For many people, it is the only way they know how to identify themselves, and so much of it is for often self-centered or self-righteous purpose that ignores larger questions and answers that reason might offer. We swim in it so constantly and we want so badly to know that there is something outside of it. And yet politics, in particular, but also so many other areas of our public and private discourse, make it all so much more likely the more we center our attention around power and ego and wanting to prove to the world that we matter or that we have proven our worth.

There's nothing wrong with that motivation. It's just that we can't really find it the way we search for it and the way we treat one another. What we all really want is to have people say, "You've really contributed something important to life. You've really contributed something important to my life. You've really done something important. You've really proven your worth."

But no matter how much we do it, we're constantly tearing one another down or seeking out all that recognition or power or money or whatever for all the wrong reasons, out of our own fears that whatever we do or offer or contribute or make or whatever is just never enough. And, really, what we all want is just someone to say, "You matter. Your contributions matter. You deserve to be rewarded for what you have to offer."

And I guess, at some level, though having some more money wouldn't be such a bad thing and contributing something important to the world before I leave would feel like my time here was worth it, I guess the older I get, the more I realize that what really means something to me is having a life where I feel good about myself and my contributions, where I share love and have it shared with me, where I have as honest a relationship with people I care about as I feel I can, and where my efforts and my contributions feel like they mean something and are not just some irrelevant blip on a giant and forever cynical and denigrating screen.

The world has taken a turn, here, in the last few years, where that cynicism has become much more pronounced and where decency and honesty have been treated much less worthy than they obviously are when we're not trying to rationalize what cynics and shitheads we've become.

It occurred to me, today, that I am responsible for all of my failures in my life. That, though there have been times, as in everyone's life, that I haven't felt like and probably wasn't treated fairly and as generously or with as much forgiveness as I might have liked, that I am responsible for my failures as much as for my successes and that my life, at this point, is a consequence of my choices, good and bad.

My relationship with Brandi, my experience in graduate school, my first teaching job, all of it.

And what I would really like in my life, more than any of the money or attention or any of it, is love like the kind I've known before, and maybe a little bit more honest, even, than the fairly honest and open relationship that Brandi and I shared by the standards of most relationships, and definitely more loving and stable. I'd like a job that makes some kind of real difference in the world. I wouldn't mind making some money, but not at the expense of doing real good. I'd like to be somewhere where the important questions get explored and where my contributions might make some real difference in the world, whether that is close to people with power or not, since I'm pretty convinced that such people might make for some uneasy company, often.

Mostly, though, I'd just like to have a nice life that means something, in the bigger picture, without a lot of fanfare or attention, necessarily.

More than anything else, I just want to find someone that I can spend my life with and share some of these things that matter to me and weigh on my heart. I want to make some real successes in my life. Successes that matter, not these trite ones that we, myself included, so often settle for. And I want to share them with a woman and a family and friends and colleagues who are not all lost in the bullshit and propaganda and the bitterness and the cynicism and all of the stuff that makes life so much worse for the wear.

I want to live life sharing about the opportunity for us to do better, by being more honest with ourselves, and live lives that we love, not constantly staring at our navels and wondering why we always feel so afraid. I want to offer more real solutions to problems we face that transcend our tendency to propose ideas that fail and then to blame others for their failure because we lack the courage to acknowledge our failures. I want to offer a more honest and better example to my children.

But, mostly, I want to be share love with people, and especially one person who I spend my life with and who has comparable love to share with me. I want to be loved by someone with as much love as I have to offer. And I don't want to spend my life wondering if it's real because I've been burned in the past. That's why I wanted to be a teacher, actually. But it's always been why I wanted to fall in love and keep that flame alive for a lifetime. And to have a family and to have kids that I love with all my heart.

And what this election has taught me is that all of the successes that I've sought out before - in my career, for my favored political or social causes, financially or otherwise (though, being a teacher, that kind of success is not something that has figured highly in my estimation of my life), all of it - is much less important to me than that kind of love in my life.

I've spent a lot of time in my young adulthood after Brandi and I broke up - since Brandi had been the benchmark for me of what I wanted in life - wondering what kind of woman I might want to marry and to spend my life with. Smart women were often bitchy, I found, which I could not tolerate. Nice girls were often hard to hold a conversation with. I can't handle a snotty girl and a snotty anyone, for that matter, and must have someone I can have an honest and low-down-dirty sense of humor with. I need someone I can share openly and honestly with and as much as I need to, but I need someone to share back with me.

But the one thing that really rings true for me, these days, knowing how most people are, at this point, and knowing what I really admire in other people and what I really need in a spouse if I'm going to have a happy, loving, functional marriage for the course of my lifetime is someone with a lot of love to offer.

This is why I liked Brandi so much, when I first met her. It wasn't sexual. It was just a really loving spirit. And I just know, today, after much experience, that though women my age who still have that kind of love in their hearts and who are not lost in pain and fears and bitterness and the cynicism that follows is far too rare, that I will never really be happy in that way, again, until I find someone with that kind of heart, again.

And I realize, today, over the course of this election, that it is because politics and the world is so fucked up and so cynical and so nasty and repressive and illiberal and so dysfunctional, that I really need to have that kind of love in my life to feel any real sense of honest emotional safety and happiness in my life.

It was on a search for that kind of love, ironically, that really put my life in a tailspin, at one point, in so many ways. But it is only that kind of love that will ever really feel like something more honest and decent and real animates my life.

And now I know that I can only live a life with that kind of commitment. Because most of the world is too full of bullshit and the pursuit of bullshit to ever really come close to offering that kind of honest happiness.

We could have that kind of life if we would give up the bullshit. And, until we do, bullshit will never be something more real and honest.

I'll never feel that with having written or having read a book or as a teacher or helping to solve any of the problems that have animated the larger purposes in my life, I realize today. Those all might be fine things to do with my life.

But the truth is that I will not feel that except in the love of someone that has as much love to offer as I do. And nothing else is too much worthy of my time or efforts. And I just don't care about that other stuff, is the truth.

I have absolutely no clue where I'm going to find her. Which is ironic, because I have more interest from girls, these days, than I have ever had in my life. But having interest from a lot of women, even women who wouldn't have thought twice about me 10 or 20 years ago, is really not at all the same thing as having the love of someone with a lot of love to give. It really doesn't even compare, actually, I can say confidently, after experience with both.

I just wish I knew where to find her. Because nothing else matters at all really, to me, anymore, in even close to the same way.

Maybe that's why my apartment is still in boxes, why my ambitions just never feel quite as passionate as passion I have known in my life before, and why life just never feels quite right, no matter how much more I do with it. It's the only explanation that really makes any sense. I just wish I could translate that understanding into something real with someone and stop obsessing so much about a politics, a financial world, a world of unending public inquiry and opinion that really means so little that is real in my life and in this world as long as it so consumed with the bullshit as a means of avoiding what is real and meaningful.

I guess, at least, it offers perspective for my life. For what really matters.

When the dust settles

This Obama flap about Barack telling the truth about the ugly insecurities that are at the heart of what is wrong with the world and the politics meant to deal with the challenges of that world has got me thinking.

This whole godforesaken period of romanticism of the rules and force, like they solve more than they do, is reflective of a complex reality. On the one hand, it reflects all of those insecurities, which is why things have gotten so much worse. Because instead of challenging us to be better - which is what Obama has been doing with remarks like those he made about how many, especially uneducated, people tend "cling to guns and religion," when the going gets tough - so many people have chosen, instead to pander and coddle and genuflect and otherwise avoid the harder discussion which would involve challenging us to be better than our insecurities about life would suggest.

Our fears have driven us this period. That's what has fucked everything up. That's why I chunk it together the way I do. From about 2000/2001 to the current time, fear and insecurity has dominated the way that we have engaged in politics and the world. And it is reaped all sorts of bad consequences. And like the impulse that leads us to run with fear and insecurity as better guides than they are, we just keep rolling with those consequences until we can find the courage to face up to our failures.

Some people rarely or never find such courage. Many of those people are those who Barack was addressing. Neo-Nazis, Communists, radicals of all stripes, street thugs, serial killers. If you want a list of all of the people who fail to find the courage to face up to themselves, I'm sure it's quite long. And a lot of those folks, even when they don't situate themselves out in the extremes of contemporary life, are ordinary folks like you and I.

So, on the one hand, all this talk of rules and force is reflective of those fears and insecurities.

On the other hand, it is also a well-intentioned, if failed, effort to try to keep the world straight through all this mess.

The truth is that only our consciences can do that. Rules and force just complicate things, when they are used when other options are available and more effective. They always have. That's the nature of the bulk of our illiberal and repressive past. That's how it worked. We saw problems. We made rules. We used force. Things got fucked up. If you need a four sentence explanation of much of our tragic history, that will probably do. Our fears and insecurities drove us then, too. And they had consequence. And, luckily, then, as now, we had a handful of more honest people in the world - intellectuals, scholars, thinkers, compassionate and decent thinking folk all around made up the bulk of these people - who helped point us in better directions when our pride did not lead us to face up to our fuck ups.

Thank goodness for those folks, no matter how much we have always taken them for granted. Because this world would be in a much bigger mess if it weren't for their honesty. We'd be one big glob of bullshit and confusion. Which is why societies like Cuba and North Korea and Iran and Iraq and Syria and China and so many of the most repressive places in the world are such godawful messes. Because without the room for that kind of honesty - without that kind of freedom - there is no room to correct for the bullshit.

Nevertheless, all the talk about the rules and the rule of law, etc., is also, in part, a well-intentioned, if foolishly conceived, attempt to provide some kind of compass through all of the bullshit. But the truth is that the only compass that matters is a moral one, a compass of conscience and reason and judgment. And rules and force just make it all the more difficult to see through the bullshit, in great part because they help enhance it. Which is why so many indicators of well-being in the last 7-8 years have gotten worse and not better while we have rationalized them both.

If you have any doubts about that, go spend some time in places where rules and force are really taken seriously as governing philosophy, like any of those repressive countries I just named, and you will find a world of cynicism and ugliness with very little responsibility for the consequences they offer humanity.

There's really only one way forward. It's very much like any other regressive period in our past. You bullshit and bullshit all you want, but as things keep getting worse, people eventually start wanting better. They will today, too, just as always. It just takes some time to own up for the bullshit.

And when the dust settles, the only way forward is one of more freedom and more genuine, honest, and democratic engagement. Those who have studied liberal values know that deep down, even as many of them rationalize what they must know in their hearts is a bad direction.

And when we finally find our way, after fumbling around with this unfortunate path, we will not find a perfect world. Ever, really. What we will find is a world where more freedom and more genuine, honest, decent democratic engagement offers us better solutions, institututions, opportunities, etc., not perfect ones. Perfection and a perfect world doesn't exist. It's an illusion, and a dangerous one, at that, when it is used to rationalize all of the worst and most cynical gambles for power, greed, and a whole world full of ugliness. That's where the ulginess stems from, actually. That rationalization.

If the world isn't going to be fair, too many people rationalize, then I want to be on the side of the unfair stick that is to my advantage and to the disadvantage of others. It's an ugly gamble. It also happens to be one that doesn't pay off, much of the time, as it turns out. Honesty and virtue really do pay. Dishonesty really does end up fucking you in the end. I know from being on both sides of that stick, unfortunately. Most people have spent some time on both sides of that stick, unfortunately. Which should give us some compassion in a world where we all end up lost in the bullshit, some.

When the dust settles, we won't have a world that is completely fair. Even given a more honest commitment to our highest values, we will have a world that is more fair. There will never be a world that is perfectly fair. It just doesn't exist. We can make it more fair, with work. But this period has not been about making life more fair, really. This period has been about us rationalizing what shitheads we are.

Progress happens as we learn to own up for that tendency. And that is the only claim on progress that will ever be real. Everything else is a cheap shot meant to satiate our pettier natures that have just not learned to own up. Meaning, everything else is us avoiding the hard work that real progress necessitates. Which is fine. We're just never going to experience real progress without it. Avoid it all we want, I say. We're just not going anywhere until we own up.

That was the beauty of Barack's remarks. They reflected real progress. The need to be honest about ourselves. And to the extent that people resist that honesty, they can claim all kinds of things, but real progress isn't one of them.

A freer world will guarantee nothing. But that's the beauty of it. It places responsibility for our most important values and most important commitments - education, health care, retirement, employment and ownership, our democratic discussion, even national security, the most important priority that governments are responsible for - squarely in our laps. And if we don't take that responsibility, if we abdicate it, as we too often do today, then we are responsible for it, no excuses.

And that is the only way that we will make any real progress. Everything else is a well crafted illusion. And what always gives away illusions is that they never deliver.

It took 70 years for people to get figured out the illusion of Communism. I don't know how long it will take people to get this one figured out. At some level, I don't care. Because it's still an illusion, no matter how much its proponents prop it up. And eventually, whether it takes 70 years or 70 minutes, eventually people figure it out. It took thousands of years for humanity to get figured out that slavery was wrong. It took thousands of years for humanity to figure out that religion and unbridled force should not be the basis for governance and that reason and pragmatic, scientific, secular evaluations of ideas on their merits should be the basis for government. We eventually got it figured out. But it was wrong the whole time, no matter how much people pretended otherwise. This period is no different.

When the dust settles, we will choose freer lives. Because less free lives do not ever realize the illusion they promise. They just continue to sell the illusion. And when we do, that freedom will not solve all of our problems or make the world fair, out of the blue. We will need to make choices about how to solve our problems more effectively and how to make the world more fair. But it will be squarely up to us and noone else. And that will become clearer the more freedom we have and the more we take seriously that freedom and finding solutions that solve our problems on their merits and not based on some insecure, bitter, self-centered notion of how the world should be if it were perfect. It isn't and never will be. And facing that fact is probably the most important move towards progress that we could make.

More pandering and bullshit

Obama concedes remarks were ill-chosen

This is what I fuckin' hate about politics more than anything else.

"MUNCIE, Ind. - Democrat Barack Obama on Saturday conceded that comments he made about bitter working class voters who 'cling to guns or religion' were ill chosen, as he tried to stem a burst of complaints that he is condescending.

'I didn't say it as well as I should have,' he said.

As Obama tried to quell the furor, presidential rival Hillary Rodham Clinton hit him with one of her lengthiest and most pointed criticisms to date.

'Senator Obama's remarks were elitist and out of touch,' she said, campaigning about an hour away in Indianapolis. 'They are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans.'

At issue are comments Obama made privately at a fundraiser in San Francisco last Sunday. He explained his troubles winning over working class voters, saying they have become frustrated with economic conditions:

'It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.'

The comments, posted on the Huffington Post political Web site Friday, set off a storm of criticism from Clinton, Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain and other GOP officials. It threatened to highlight an Obama Achilles heel — the image that the Harvard-trained lawyer is arrogant, aloof and carries himself with an air of superiority.

His campaign scrambled to defuse possible damage caused with working class voters that Obama needs to win in upcoming primaries in Pennsylvania and Indiana.

'Lately there has been a little typical sort of political flare up because I said something that everybody knows is true, which is that there are a whole bunch of folks in small towns in Pennsylvania, in towns right here in Indiana, in my hometown in Illinois who are bitter,' Obama said Saturday morning at Ball State University. 'They are angry. They feel like they have been left behind. They feel like nobody is paying attention to what they're going through.'

'So I said, well you know, when you're bitter you turn to what you can count on. So people, they vote about guns, or they take comfort from their faith and their family and their community. And they get mad about illegal immigrants who are coming over to this country.'

After acknowledging that his previous remarks could have been better phrased, he added:

'The truth is that these traditions that are passed on from generation to generation, those are important. That's what sustains us. But what is absolutely true is that people don't feel like they are being listened to.

'And so they pray and they count on each other and they count on their families. You know this in your own lives, and what we need is a government that is actually paying attention. Government that is fighting for working people day in and day out making sure that we are trying to allow them to live out the American dream."

But Clinton struck hard, calling Obama's comments 'demeaning.' The increased attack showed that Clinton is eager to hold on to her working class support and is looking to open new questions about Obama's judgment that would make voters and Democratic officials reconsider their support for the Illinois senator.

'I was raised with Midwestern values and an unshakable faith in America and its policies," she said. 'Now, Americans who believe in the Second Amendment believe it's a matter of constitutional right. Americans who believe in God believe it's a matter of personal faith.

'I grew up in a church-going family, a family that believed in the importance of living out and expressing our faith. The people of faith I know don't 'cling' to religion because they're bitter. People embrace faith not because they are materially poor, but because they are spiritually rich.

'Our faith is the faith of our parents and our grandparents. It is a fundamental expression of who we are and what we believe.'

'People don't need a president who looks down on them,' she said. 'They need a president who stands up for them.'"

What Barack Obama said was not ill-chosen. It was honest. And you know how I know that? Because I've spent my entire fucking life amongst such people. This is where I come from. They are bitter. They do turn to guns and religion and anti-trade and anti-immigrant impulses to rationalize their bitterness and insecurity in a world where they can never be responsible for their own situation. It is THE problem in poor communities, white, black, and otherwise in America, in liberal democracies, but probably in illiberal areas of the world, as well.

Why are people so generally afraid of speaking such truths?

Because there is a lot of these people. And they think, and the politicians who pander to them think, that if they just get together and rail against the world en masse, that noone will be able to speak such truths to such people.

They're bullies, is what they are. And if you notice, the policies they are advocating and people like Hillary Clinton are advocating for them, in her legacy of pandering endlessly to the bitter dumbasses of the world, are bullying too. They all involve repressive, illiberal, bullying measures looking to fuck with the guy you are competing with because you can't compete on your own merits. It's a fuckin' useless and destructive exercise. And working class people notoriously engage in it.

It's the Michael Barone philosophy of politics. It's why I don't like that guy. Or Hillary Clinton. Because they're both assholes looking to capitalize and pander to such bullshit, dishonestly, for their own weasley and dishonest ends, and fuck with every reasonable policy or policy discussion, in the meantime, because such discussions are held by people who are smarter and more honest than they are and such folks, Michael, in particular, explain their failure not because they can't compete but because those who are smarter and more honest then they are are just elites who can't understand the lives of salt-of-the-earth average people.

Michael Barone, Hillary Clinton, and those of their ilk pander and exploit the bitterness, insecurity, ignorance and other ignoble features of average Americans to have power over them rather than enlighten them and offer them real opportunities that only come with taking on real challenges.

I spent my entire life growing up with this bullshit. I spend my entire life with it now, working with such families and their kids.

But the difference between my approach and Hillary Clinton's approach is that I am honest with them about what is actually going to create the opportunities they are looking for.

And so is Barack Obama, here. Bitter dumbasses just often don't want to hear that truth because it pains them to face up to it. Which is goddamned foolish, because it costs them more in the long run to not face up to it. But Hillary Clinton doesn't care about the long run for working class people, is the truth. Neither does Michael Barone. What they both care about is the political and economic opportunities they create for themselves, right now.

And average Americans need to decide: am I going to go for the bullshit artist in the present or the honest leader for the future?

Honesty doesn't always feel good.

But it's better for you in the long run.

And the absence of it fucks with every legitimate policy and policy discussion in America and in liberal democracies that we face.

This is what I hate about politics. All of the bullshit. And the lying.

The problem for people like Hillary Clinton and Michael Barone and all of the dumbasses who fall for this bullshit is that dishonesty really doesn't serve you in the end. It's not a fairy tale. It's just a fact, jack.

So Michael Barone's legacy is that he's just some insecure asshole who worked at the U.S. News and World Report - not the most intellectually rigorous publication in the world, any sophomore in high school should be able to get figured out - and Hillary Clinton was some poorly reasoning, pandering, intellectually dishonest Senator from New York and has-been Presidential candidate who should have won it all but didn't because of all of those qualities. And all of the dumbasses that Barack is trying to be honest with in these comments can either go on being stupid, bitter, insecure, shitheads, lost in all that bullshit, and clinging to guns and religion and anti-trade and anti-immigrant impulses to rationalize all of it - just as similar dumbasses have and continue to cling to racism, nationalism, religious bigotry, homophobia, and any number of bullshit feelings about people to rationalize what fuckin' shitheads they are, or they can listen to the honesty, digest it and reflect on it a little, and use it to their advantage rather than forever trying to defend against the fucking obvious.

I got news for such people: none of those ways of looking at the world rationalize jack shit. You're just a shithead. Face the fuck up, shithead. It's better for you. I know from experience. Facing up to the bullshit makes you a better person. And it pays in the long run. And there is not a fuckin' pyrrhic victory in the world that could make up for that.

The problem with people is that they don't want to face their bullshit. And that is all of us. Just some of us have an easier time of it and some of us have a harder time of it.

Shitheads of the world thought they were going to pull a fast one on more honest people there for a bit. And more honest people have their own issues with being more honest with themselves and one another, of course.

But what the fuck do you know? Honest people come out on top. How the fuck about that?

And too fuckin' bad for the shitheads until they face up. But once you do, once we all do, things go better for us, for all of us. That goes for all of us. Me too.

Charles Krauthammer and the delusions of power

Charles Krauthammer writes a thoughtful column on deterrence, today, against an Iranian strike on Israel that is worth a read, I think.

The Holocaust Declaration

Deterring the Undeterrable

Charles' comfort with American hegemony is hardly comforting to me, much of the time. It's an impossible policy to maintain, of course, nor is it liberal (in a classical sense), democratic or desireable. But even an embrace of America swaggering its power about is reason to be concerned about anyone's thinking about power. Lord Acton had wiser things to say about the matter, I think.

Having said that, it is true, I think, that America should make clear that America will stand with Israel and respond to any attack on her soil.

That's not as ambitious a policy as I would adopt, nor is it enough to ward off any attack, as Charles concedes may be true. I actually do not believe that Iran would attack Israel without some serious provocation, which, I would acknowledge is more likely with Iran having the bomb. The leadership in both Israel and Iran operate under policies of fear and insecurity and are too ready to use military force when fear-driven rhetoric is used rather than diplomacy. That is the problem, fundamentally, which is why, though, obviously any American security policy must be backed by a clear and credible deterrent of military force, it is not nearly enough to resolve the issues between Israel and any of her neighbors, including Iran.

On-going regional security/peace discussions, like the ones already convened by the Bush Administration to deal with the situation in Iraq, that has been bandied about would be a good idea to explore. But so would direct bilateral talks with Iran, as Barack Obama has suggested.

As long as our relationship with Iran is one based on premises that seek to manipulate their sense of insecurity - by withholding engagement, by trying to isolate their regime, and by otherwise trying to establish dominant status that only serves to further reinforce their sense of real and imagined insecurity that drives their nuclear ambitions, right now - which, by my lights and, I think, by the objective evidence given Iran's recent announcement of their intentions to build 6000 new centrifuges, have become more ambitious and not less since our efforts from 2003 - rather than genuinely engage their security and other interests, the Iranian regime, with or without Ahmadinejad, will likely resent and resist American efforts to get them to give up their pursuit of nuclear weapons.

The deeper issue is not just deterrence, though that may be necessary since there are all kinds of reasons to suggest for us that diplomacy may fail to dissaude the Iranians from using a nuclear weapon.There are also all kinds of reasons to think that diplomacy would fail to prevent Pakistan from bombing India, at any particular point that those relations might heat up.

But that hasn't happened yet. And there's not much reason to think that it would happen in the near future.

The deeper issue is addressing Iran's sense, as a nation, Ahmadinejad's sense, as a political leader, and the sense of most Mideast states and political leadership of insecurity in an often violent and chaotic Middle Eastern world, especially in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That is why on-going regional conferences that address such issues make sense. But it is also why bilateral diplomacy makes sense, as well, and

To all those advocating force as a governing philosophy

Thanks. You just made this shit all the more likely.

Caught on tape: Teacher attacked

Guess what kids are learning from the political and popular culture, right now?

I'll give you a clue. It has something to do with force.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for contributing to such rationalizations.

It's makes the job all the more rewarding. So much more rewarding than it is today.

Getting honest with ourselves

Eboo Patel has a really refreshing column, today, on the schism between religious pluralism and religious extremism, in the wake of the release of the movie, "Fitna" (Strife), by Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders, arguing that the Koran inspires terrorism.

We've Seen This Movie Before

It is a column worth reading. And its message - that the real schism is not between Islam and the West but between those who respect religious pluralism and those who espouse religious extremism - is not only an important and valuable message, I think, but is equally true of contemporary politics, as well. The on-going troubles in politics and religion in and between liberal democracies and illiberal forces within and outside of them is a schism between those who respect religious and political pluralism and the differences that allow us to engage and learn from one another and those who self-righteously impose upon that conversation and shut down a more honest and open engagement.

It has always been bizarre for me to watch the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and say to myself, "Isn't it completely obvious that these parties must sit down and negotiate a political and security agreement that brings together those who want peace for this region in a common effort to end the violence that so fruitlessly kills innocent people?"

And it is equally clear to me, today, that most of our most persistent squabbles have, at their center, self-righteous leveraging that obscures more honest engagement and effort and which seeks to undermine and manipulate the efforts of those who seek more honest resolution to problems so that less honest and more manipulative actors, who have decided that lying and manipulating for a favored cause is more important than seeking genuine and honest resolution to our most persistent conflicts, can exploit the pain and anguish that such manipulative efforts create.

Some people would rather hurt and impose on those they identify against, now, rather than resolve, when possible, the substantive differences that they face between them for some honest resolution for a more sustainable future.

And it is refreshing to read someone with a longer-term, more honest effort to find such resolution amidst a period of self-righteous posturing pretending to be something more honest.

I have to say that it's been a particularly bullshit period watching less honest actors persistently duping the public to the disfavor of more honest actors because most people both don't know the difference and because those doing the duping hope to capitalize on the pride of most people that the most honest and thoughtful folks aren't nearly as smart and good as they want everyone to believe. Intelligent folks have plenty of disagreements and I do think that the most intelligent observers have done their share to fuel many of the problems we have witnessed this period. But more honest engagement has been overwhelmed, often, this period, by leveraging and pressuring for position rather than developing stronger and common understandings. Just as it was in King's time. Just as is has been since the beginning of time, I am quite sure.

But it needn't be that way, if we can only get honest with ourselves as much as with one another.

That is the problem with sanctimony and the reason why it has taken us down such dark roads for most of our existence: it does not allow for being wrong and for learning from others. It only allows for being right and imposing one's will on those who one believes are not.

And letting go of that legacy is the final chapter of illiberalism. Or at least the beginning of the end.

Perhaps we can take our strongest values that seriously.

If not, this is the world we choose.

Maybe things are looking up after all

Wow.



And Andrew Sullivan is right. Obama should approach Colin Powell. That ticket would be near unbeatable, as much as I'm not voting that direction, at this point. It would also be the most genuinely bipartisan and thoughtful ticket in my lifetime.

If we play our cards right, this election could just be one that makes us proud to be Americans.

Colin Powell steppin' out of the cave

This is why I respect the shit out of Colin Powell.

Powell Praises Obama, Fears Afghanistan Growing 'More Difficult' Than Iraq

This is why I appreciate Republicans like Colin Powell and think arrogant pricks like Charles Krauthaumer can kiss my ass.

News bulletin for Charles Krauthammer: arrogance is a vice, not a virtue, asshole. I don't mind vices. Just stop confusing the two.

I think Colin Powell may be right that boycotting the opening ceremonies may be a useless and counterproductive move. I've been open to the idea of boycotting the opening ceremonies. But I think Powell may be right that it probably will lead the Chinese to pull away more rather than constructively engaging them in a resolution to the situation in Tibet, but also the situations in Taiwan and Hong Kong, both of whom (likely, in Hong Kong's case; definitely, in Taiwan's case) would want autonomy or independence if autonomy or independence is granted to Tibet.

I'm voting for McCain, at this point. But I respect the shit out of people who think outside of political boxes, these days. Because the boxes make me goddamned claustrophobic.

And it's nice to have company with people who have stepped out of the goddamned cave. If you have no clue what I'm talking about, I'd suggest you read the one really quality passage in Plato's Republic. Plato got a lot wrong in that book. But that allegory surely fits for anyone who has stepped outside into the sunlight.

Thanks, Colin. It's nice to have the company.

Sanity

Finally, some reasonableness amidst this insane political period and the current economic downturn.

High Finance, Laid Low

"It is often wrongly said that the present problems originated in the mindless financial deregulation begun in the 1980s, as if everything would be fine if the old financial system had remained. Actually, the old system -- dominated by banks and savings and loans -- collapsed. Many S&Ls failed when high inflation raised interest rates on their short-term deposits above the levels on their long-term mortgages. Banks suffered huge losses on energy, commercial real estate and developing-country loans. Securitization and other new forms of financing filled the void left by weak banks and S&Ls.

So modern finance has a split personality. Greed, shortsightedness and herd behavior compromise its usefulness. But regulation cannot cure this dilemma, because regulators can't anticipate all the problems and hazards, either. The best protection against human fallibility is to insist that major financial institutions have ample capital to absorb unexpected losses. Paulson's recommended reforms barely dwelled on that; Congress should."

Everything Samuelson says here, is sound, I think, though I think people like Samuelson and the surrounding democratic discussion and democratic and financial institutions would be better off insisting on financial institutions having ample capital than Congress passing a law to make it so. A more reasonable investing philosophy less subject to greed and quick profit turnover would better prevent such problems and make them all more money, I think, with Warren Buffet's success during this period being the best example of that point, but that can hardly be legislated. Congress could pass a law. And reasonable institutions would likely comply, more because it is a good idea than because Congress said it. And such a requirement could only apply to institutions which have large amounts of capital, of course. Everyone else will just need to learn to invest more wisely and with a more reasonable idea of returns to be seeking and the tendency of the market to leave people trying to get rich quick getting poorer much more reliably.

The truth is that there just isn't anything that can be done to prevent greed and the unsound investing it produces. It's as futile to legislate it away as it is to legislate away gluttony, vanity, sloth, lust, envy, or wrath (though actual violence - not metaphorical versions, either, for all those looking for an angle on that argument - associated with any of these must be dealt with). All such sins are endemic and timeless feature of humanity as much as any of the virtues that humanity rightly values and celebrates.

The best financial wisdom teaches these values in the context of finance. If you doubt that, I highly recommend Benjamin Graham's Intelligent Investor. There is a reason that Warren Buffet has made all that money. And this question has everything to do with that. The market, and the people who make it up, really do and will reward virtue, in the long run, often after periods like this where their greed and other vices get the best of them.

Economic and all sanity is found in taking all that wisdom seriously and being honest about the places where we do not. What liberal values and liberal economies offer us is a much stronger and open opportunity to be honest about that wisdom and about where we fall short. Illiberalism and our propensity to use force to get our way has always undermined the probability and capacity for us to get honest with ourselves and one another about our mistakes and shorcomings, because it makes people more afraid to be honest, even with themselves, about those failings.

Progress is found in our recognition of this fact of life, our propensity to engage in the hubris that we have somehow escaped its reach and our tendency to fall short in our pursuit of virtue.

Virtue is found in our honesty about our propensity to fall short. Even financial executives. All of us. And in the wisdom to let us learn from the lessons rather than giving in to the temptation of illiberal and repressive practices, policies, and impulses that compound our problems - by shutting down that freedom and the honesty and responsibility that come with them - rather than curing them.

Finally we seem to be edging toward sanity.

A sign of progress

Iran Report Redux

"Gen. Petraeus and Mr. Crocker have gotten more confident about calling the surge a success, and rightly so. 'It's worth it,' said the general. 'We have seen a significant degradation of al-Qaeda's presence and its abilities," said the ambassador. 'Al-Qaeda is our mortal and strategic enemy. So to the extent that al-Qaeda's capacities have been lessened in Iraq -- and they have been significantly lessened -- I do believe that makes America safer.'

What hasn't much changed is the partisan debate over Iraq, which as Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) lamented, remains resistant even to established facts. Republicans tended to follow Sen. John McCain yesterday in arguing that 'success is within reach" and that American goals can be achieved "perhaps sooner than many imagine.' Democrats, including presidential candidates Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Mr. Obama, remain locked within the "this war is lost" prism the party adopted a year ago. Yesterday Ms. Clinton, Mr. Obama and others chose to focus on the costs of the war -- whether Iraq was spending too little of its own money, and whether U.S. resources would be better dedicated to Afghanistan. Those are fair questions, but they are far different from Ms. Clinton's argument last September that accepting that the surge had made progress 'would require a willing suspension of disbelief.'

What also hasn't changed is the sobering but firm bottom line the two envoys offer --one that neither party wants to hear. While "progress is real," as Mr. Crocker put it, it is also 'fragile' and 'reversible,' as Gen. Petraeus said. That's why Gen. Petraeus is recommending -- correctly, in our view -- that troop withdrawals be suspended after the five surge brigades are withdrawn and that further reductions be based on conditions in Iraq.

Contrary to Mr. McCain's suggestion, success will require a prolonged commitment, and even then it will not be guaranteed. But the general and the ambassador both argued that such a commitment is justified. Even with all the travails of the past five years, 'Iraqis, Americans and the world ultimately will judge us far more on the basis of what will happen than what has happened,' said Mr. Crocker. And an early or unconditional withdrawal would, as he noted, invite disaster "with devastating consequences for the region and the world."

The Post does a better job, generally, in my estimation, of sifting out better arguments. I think they have done so, here.

I think the best argument is that whatever policy is adopted must be done with the consultation of the Iraqis who will be, ultimately, responsible for security in their own country after American troops eventually leave and with the American troops who are responsible for security, in the meantime. I have very little confidence, at all, at this point, that American politicians, of any stripe, understand the security challenges we face better than troops on the ground. And I have even less confidence in the self-righteous activists that pressure and leverage them on issues that they have generally thought very little about relative to the challenges we face. The pressure and leveraging has clearly distorted the debate and discussion, by any objective standard.

What is needed is for us to face up to that, to be honest about it, and to proceed to a more honest, engaged, bipartisan conversation moderated by a sober recognition that there are many, many lives on the line, for this question. That is the virtue of moderation. It is about those who are wise enough to recognize that humility is one of the most serious virtues in a world full of strong opinions and that there are things more important in the world than their opinions. Moderation and independent wisdom is about sorting through those priorities and opinions to come to something more reasonable and thoughtful unclouded by our strong and often wrong-headed and foolish passions. Catholics and Protestants in 17th century England were driven by such passions, remember. And to most 21st century liberal democratic citizens, their wars and political battles look like so much needlessly tragic foolishness. And so it is with us. And so it will be till the end of the time. The Greeks warned us of this tendency. Hubris, they cautioned us, is the universal sin, the timeless mistake of humanity.

We're all sinners. Now we just need to move on to a more reasonable discussion of this war based on a thoughtful and practical concern about what policies might offer us the best way to a more democratic and secure future for Iraq, for America, and for the world.

Engaging those soldiers and security officials on the ground as well as their representatives in the Iraqi government might be a good start. Pressuring, leveraging, and bulling them has clearly backfired. Perhaps honest engagement might be a more effective and honest route.

That is what our deepest liberal values would have us believe, anyway. Perhaps we should give them a shot.

Gotta say it was a good day

The kids listened and engaged. They were pretty respectful, overall. I even had a couple of classes that felt like real classes, with intellectual curiosity, and everything. It was the biggest sign of hope in this work that I've experienced, yet.

I have considerable confidence in my thinking about issues of teaching and learning, power and manipulation, at this point. Much more confidence than I have in either of the major political parties, that's for goddamned sure, and many of their ideological surrogates, as well.

It's nice, while watching the world go to shit, to watch what has seemed like an otherwise impossible task to me and my colleagues to be coming to fruition: kids who did not give two shits about school or education are starting to care.

And all of us are learning a lot in the process.

Imagine that.

Is anyone else tired of failure?

Is anyone else tired of the failure of our Iran policy?

Iran starts installing new nuclear centrifuges

5 years since this conflict first heated up. All evidence, despite the protestations of the NIE, point in the direction of accelerated nuclear ambitions rather than decelerated ambitions.

Many conservatives, including the President, threaten attack on Iran. It would never be authorized, of course, because we are just not that stupid and they could never get the votes. But it was always about the bluff, anyway. You bluff long enough, by the way, noone listens to you, anymore. That's why bluffing is bad policy.

This is how a nation premised on a governing philosophy of force behaves, by the way:

"State television was repeatedly playing patriotic music while children at schools around the country chanted the familiar mantra of "nuclear energy is our natural right."

Gotta be proud of that. Congratulations to all of those who have taken that noble route.

"The United States has never ruled out military action to bring Tehran to heel, and Iran's arch enemy Israel has expressed alarm about the nuclear drive, especially after Ahmadinejad predicted the Jewish state is doomed to disappear.

Underlining the tensions, Israel's National Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer warned on Monday that Israel would respond to any Iranian attack by destroying the 'Iranian nation.'"

Gee. All this progress just makes me want to pee myself. So much progress, these days. It's amazing how things just keep getting better and better, isn't it? Yay for progress.

And isn't this interesting.

Look at how Iran deals with those who seek to moderate and find a resolution to all of this provocation and confrontation.

"In a warning to Ahmadinejad's domestic rivals, the semi-official Fars news agency reported that Iran had handed former nuclear negotiator Hossein Moussavian a two-year suspended jail sentence for "harming national security."

Moussavian was a leading nuclear negotiator in the moderate team that made a deal with EU countries to temporarily suspend enrichment during the presidency of reformist Mohammad Khatami until 2005."

With force. How the fuck about that. Not too harsh though. I mean, they could have chopped off the heads of that guy's children. Thank goodness they weren't too strict, huh? You got to hand it to the power-hungry. They got a big bag of tricks, don't they?

Damn. The progress is just overwhelming isn't it? Whew. Sometimes when I sit back and think about all the progress from all of this use and threat of the use of force, I just can't contain my enthusiasm and hope for the future. It's all just too progressive for me, I suppose. Thank goodness there are plenty of smarter folks to explain all this progress to me and how much it is really for my own good.

It's amazing, isn't it? In Iran, when people and governments engage in such behavior, we call it illiberalism. We call it backwards. We call it undemocratic.

And when Americans or Westerners do it, we call it progress.

Do you ever wonder why people have such a hard time taking our example or leadership seriously? Me neither.

And what I love about this whole mess, right down to my very soul, is that I am quite confident that at the end of all of this business, when the dust has finally cleared, and these matters with Iran, Iraq, and the world are finally resolved, that Democrats and Republicans, alike, will sit down in a moment of honor and integrity and take responsibility for everything that has gone so swimmingly.

You gotta hand it to the powerful. When they fuck up, they are fucking brilliant about finding the courage to face up to their failures.

And that, dear children, is why they are so goddamn smart and have all that power and influence, and why you and I are so dumb that we could not possibly imagine anything else but to be forced to do their bidding.

It's all so honorable, it almost makes you cry, doesn't it?

This, ladies and gentleman, is what our Founding Fathers fought for. This is what democracy is all about. The right to force, pressure, manipulate, bully, leverage, piss on, fuck with, and otherwise be an asshat to your neighbor in the name of any cause you're feeling friendly to in the moment.

God Bless America.

Torture, hubris, and our humanity

If proven true in a war crimes trial, some of the torture charges the Bush Administration is being accused of are fairly damning.

This discussion puts those charges into perspective.

The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb reads 1984 as a playbook

Andrew Sullivan may be right about a war crimes trial.

We can only hope that the most damning of these accusations are not true.

If they are, the Bush Administration, the American government, and anyone ultimately responsible for these most serious actions will need to account for them.

I am inclined to give American servicemen and women leeway around this issue, to account for hypersensitive political reactions to treatment of prisoners that does not amount to torture. But many of these claims are too serious to pooh-pooh away.

This is a serious discussion for America to be having, right now.

National fuckin' champions, baby!

Two teams, one title: Kansas WINS

The sweetest victories are the ones your work fuckin' ass off for.



Nice job, boys.

A real debate

An interesting read from Henry Kissinger.

The Three Revolutions

"...The quest for a single, all-inclusive remedy is chimerical. In a world in which the sole superpower is a proponent of the prerogatives of the traditional nation-state, where Europe is stuck in halfway status, where the Middle East does not fit the nation-state model and faces a religiously motivated revolution, and where the nations of South and East Asia still practice the balance of power, what is the nature of the international order that can accommodate these different perspectives? What should be the role of Russia, which is affirming a notion of sovereignty comparable to America's and a strategic concept of the balance of power similar to Asia's? Are existing international organizations adequate for this purpose? What goals can America realistically set for itself and the world community? Is the internal transformation of major countries an attainable goal? What objectives must be sought in concert, and what are the extreme circumstances that would justify unilateral action?

This is the kind of debate we need, not focus-group-driven slogans designed to grab headlines."

I don't know if I agree with his analysis completely (I'd have to do a more thorough critique at another time), but I like that he's thinking.

And that last line is undoubtedly true. We need a real debate and not the bullshit we've been settling for.

The hubris and responsibilities of power

This is why I read the Washington Post.

George Will delivers in a serious way in his commentary on the crisis in finance and the economy, the issue on which he delivers best.

McCain's Minimalism

Jim Hoagland also emphasizes his strength in global politics, recognizing well the humbling that American power is facing right now.

No Cushion Against Hubris

I'm not sure David Ignatius' suggestion of "blowing up the CIA" is a good one. But the rest of his analysis is solid, I think. And it is refreshing to read a liberal defend the effort by the Bush Administration to insulate telecommunications companies from lawsuits over their role in domestic spying, recognizing that they acted in good faith, even if Americans are angry with the Administration's investigative activities.

Repairing America's Spy Shop

And Eric Reeves, professor at Smith College, has an excellent guest column highlighting the need for security efforts to protect humanitarian aid supplies during the rainy season in Darfur. As American and European leaders can find it in themselves to trust and work with one another on the crisis and genocide in Sudan, a workable intervention for security and to end the killing, as much as to sustain aid efforts, needs to be engaged.

Genocide by Attrition in Sudan

This is why I consult the Post everyday. Diversity of outlook and ideas is our strength in America and liberal democracies, not our weakness. And the Post has the most diversified set of quality columnists that I have found in any daily newspaper, nevertheless an American daily.

The larger theme is becoming clear: the hubris of power, and how it undermines the responsibilities of both those in power and those who are not, during this period, is slowly being recognized for what it is. It's a sign of hope. And it is in that recognition where real progress lies.

Freedom

I was having a conversation about freedom, last night, with a friend of mine and her dad. And I think I made the argument about as plain as possibly could.

The truth is that we have had freedom, free will, since the beginning of humanity. There's plenty of power and control that has figured into that, too, and, when properly understood, it becomes clear that it is all that power and control that has forever fucked up humanity and made people more likely to do all of the most awful and tragic things in our history. Nazism, Communism, The Holocaust, Imperialism, the Crusades, the oppression that has undermined humanity for most of its history.

All of that power and repression has been driven, fundamentally, by a fear of that freedom, that free will.

But the truth is that it has never left us. We have always had it. We have always had all of the freedom that the world has had to offer. To do good. To do bad. All of it.

And since the beginning of humanity, with all of that freedom, and all of the risks that it has always carried, we have always done much good and much bad.

But freedom has always carried with it responsibility. And it is that responsibility that more real freedom better and has always better facilitated that has made us decent people, improved our lot, and produced real progress in our lives.

It clearly always has. More liberal societies, for all of their many, many faults, have clearly been more responsible in looking out for humanity and correcting for its mistakes than any other society in our history. And illiberalism has forever been the mistake most in need of correction. And so it is today.

Freedom offers us the clearest path to responsibility for every problem that humanity faces. Especially the problem of when and how frequently, and more to the point, how infrequently, force is used when it is needed. Liberal democratic societies will correct for this mistake, just as they have corrected for every other mistake that liberal democratic societies have corrected for. Because that is what it means to be liberal democratic. It means to correct our own mistakes and get ourselves on the better path towards real progress.

I better head down to Massachusetts Street, here. It sounds like KU beat North Carolina. And there is a whole lot of freedom and debauchery likely to take place downtown, tonight, for everyone celebrating.

I love this fuckin' country.

Into the Wild

I finally saw Into the Wild. If you haven't seen it, it's Sean Penn's labor of love. It's quite the love's labor, too. I definitely recommend it.

I won't tell you how I came to see it. I've actually been wanting to see it since I saw it in the video store.

But yesterday I happened on a recommendation for it by an old friend. She was right. It's a nice reminder of the stuff that really matters in life.

She read it as a reflection on how little material things mean in life. It's definitely that. But it's more than that. It's a story about freedom. And to what lengths some of us will got to get it.

I hope that something better comes along

"A skunk was badgered. The results were strong."

That's fuckin' hilarious. I've watched the Muppet Movie fuckin' 600 times and I never noticed how fuckin' piss-my-fuckin'-pants funny that fuckin' line is.

It's my favorite scene in the movie. It's why I bought the Muppet Movie, actually.

Did you know that I spent about 6 months in grad school seriously exploring puppeteering I fuckin' love Jim Henson and that fuckin' movie so much?

If you haven't seen the Muppet Movie in a while and your wondering what is worth emulating in this world fucked up by self-centered, power, money, status and sex-obsessed adults, check it out, when you get a chance. It's the gold standard of children's entertainment, as far as I'm concerned.



Rowlf: Eh, broken heart, right?

Kermit: Does it show?

Rowlf. Listen. When you've been tickling the ivories as long as I have, you've seen a broken heart for every drop of rain. A shattered dream for every fallen star.

Kermit: Exactly. She just walked out on me.

Rowlf: Yeah, typical. That's why I live alone.

Kermit: You do, huh?

Rowlf: You bet. I finish work, go home, read a book, have a couple of beers, take myself for a walk and go to bed.

Kermit: Nice and simple.

Rowlf: Stay away from women. That's my motto.

Kermit: But I can't.

Rowlf: Neither can I. That's my problem.

Classic.

The Dream

Memphis marchers honor legacy of MLK

If you have not been the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, I highly recommed making some time to go. Brandi and I visited on our way back from Washington, D.C., in 1997, when I drove with her back to Wichita. Housed at the Lorraine Motel, where Dr. King was assassinated, it was a really moving memorial to Dr. King.

In a world consumed with an obsession with power, emnity, and division, Dr. King's legacy is not a bad one for us to reflect on, today.

I'm sure that partisans will try to coopt that legacy for their own purposes. It's true that Dr. King was more of a liberal, in a contemporary sense. But his legacy belongs to all of America and all the world, independent of any of the divisive ways that we look at the world or treat one another.

It does seem to me that it would be healthier for all of us if we took more time to think about life, in these terms. But that always seems to get in the way of who is going to be elected and when, to finally rid us of all our anxieties in the world. And we wouldn't want to get in the way of that.

Dr. King's dream was that people would be judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin. And if he were alive, today, perhaps he might say that people should just be judged by the content of their character, by how much good they do in this world. Maybe we have come far enough that our common dreams are bigger than our pettier divisions. Maybe not. But they need to come that far.

Thanks to Dr. Martin Luther King for articulating that dream to make so much clearer just how far we have to go.

A turn for the bizarre

I just listened to this insane story, on the way in, on NPR, Boeing protesting with the Government Accountability Office over an Air Force decision to hire competing manufacturer Northrop Grumman and its European partner EADS to build refueling planes.

This political period has taken a turn for the bizarre.

Americans are the whiniest, most self-centered, entitled people on earth, I think.

Whatever happened to competing on your merits?

Isn't that what this country is all about?

Except when it doesn't go our way. In which case, what we are about is getting our way.

Can you imagine why the rest of the world does not trust our good intentions?

All I know is that you cannot compete with manipulation for long. Soon enough, people see through you. And they start paying attention to your real merits or liabilities.

And I have to say that I am quite embarrassed by my country and many of my fellow countrymen, right now. I'm embarrassed by a world where people think that this is just part of the game. I'm embarrassed by a politics where this is so much of the game, that people stop being able to distinguish between what is honest and what is bullshit.

But mostly I'm just embarrassed for people who behave in such ways and call it good.

How sad that all Americans and all people do not have more self-respect than that.

I have to say that this is the first time in my life when I've felt like my country was on a prolonged and serious bad path. Most Americans agree, apparently, according to a new poll.

Unfortunately, the things they propose to improve life in America are often and generally the very things that undermine real progress.

"Fifty-eight percent of respondents said they would support raising taxes on households making more than $250,000 to pay for tax cuts or government programs for people making less than that amount. Only 38 percent called it a bad idea. Both Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidates, have made proposals along these lines.

More broadly, 43 percent of those surveyed said they would prefer a larger government that provided more services, which is tied for the highest such number since The Times and CBS News began asking the question in 1991. But an identical 43 percent said they wanted a smaller government that provided fewer services.

And although both Clinton and Obama have blamed trade with other countries for some of the economy's problems, Americans say they continue to favor trade — if not quite as strongly as in the past. Fifty-eight percent called it good for the economy; 32 percent called it bad, up from 17 percent in 1996.

At the same time, 68 percent said they favored trade restrictions to protect domestic industries, instead of allowing unrestrained trade. In early 1996, 55 percent favored such restrictions."

This is a period when Americans have decided that manipulation rather than our most serious liberal values are what should guide our thinking and our efforts. And it is just hard for me to recognize my country, often, these days.

We have taken a seriously bad path. The question is whether we can find the courage to own up on that one.

All I know is that I have no interest in pretending that things have gotten better for our efforts. Or that I have more reason to be proud of my country, today.

I want to be proud of my country and its efforts, again. But we have to earn it.

And that is one value that I hope we have not completely lost sight of.

Booyakashaw

Holy shit this is so fuckin' funny.

Ali G clownin' the political classes.

First, James Baker...



Then Noam Chomsky...



And check out how classy Brent Scowcroft handles this interview...



Big up, Ali G. Keep it up. They need it.

OK, no more fuckin' self-pity

I've been really fuckin' bummed, lately.

The toughest part of my job is always having to deal with so much fuckin' bullshit about how thinking doesn't matter, how education doesn't matter, how these kids will never amount to anything, how it's all doomed, how there is a million explanations, labels, diagnoses, and whatever other fuckin' bullshit for why they don't fuckin' like school and why they don't want to either do their fuckin' work or be decent human beings in the meantime.

It wears on me, like a fuckin' emotional albatross from hell.

And these last 2 weeks, it has depressed the shit out of me. Because giving into that bullshit means giving up a commitment I have had since I was in grad school to prove to these kids, these families, these teachers, and to the fuckin' world that these kids are not retards, forgive my french. That these kids are not beyond the pale of intelligence and decency. That these kids can learn, they can be smart, if they so choose, or at least smarter than they were yesterday, that they can take on more serious intellectual challenges, if they so choose, and that, generally, the problem of intelligence and stupidity in the world is not one of heritable differences or biological destiny. It is a matter of deciding that you're going to do the fuckin' work to ante up and make your contribution.

And, lately, it is not just too many academics and teachers who seemed to have given up on these kids. It is the kids who have generally given up on themselves that was the real fuckin' problem.

And I was left with a quandry.

If intelligence and developing it really is a matter of choice and doing the work, if people don't want to do the work and you really can't force them to if they don't want to - if you doubt that, I would highly suggest that you visit my school and my kids will teach you a thing or two - why would I spend all my time and energy doing something that even the kids don't want for themselves?

But the truth I think I saw today was is that, in addition to the kids kicking and screaming and trying to avoid the work that they don't like doing and which gets harder the more they avoid doing it, a lot of my kids are scared that they can't do it. And they are so used to swimming in this bullshit that they begin to confuse it with something more honest.

And the much bigger truth, of course, is that, like most kids, my kids often don't really want to be in school. Most adults don't like to be at work. It's just something they have to do. And, like most people, my kids just want to be able to direct their own lives, and they get tired of being made to do a lot of things they don't want to do. I can't say it's without their input, because I ask for their input, all the time. But they really just don't like doing things they don't like to do, like most people, really. They're just much shittier about it, unfortunately for me.

And I decided, today, feeling myself wallow a little in some self-pity about the whole situation, and thinking about how weak I think Michael Barone, of the U.S. News and World Report, is for acting all tough when the truth is that he is constantly wallowing in self-pity about how the scholarly world has not recognized his brilliance, that there will be no more self-pity for me.

I will prove myself as a teacher, as a scholar, as a writer, as an investor, and as whatever the fuck I put my energies into, or I will not. And that is the one and final fuckin' bottom line on that one. And there will be no fuckin' self-pity in my life. Not a shred. Either I do the job or not. And that is all there fuckin' is to it.

I've got an IEP to finish. And I've got lessons I need to jazz up and make more fun and interesting and light-hearted for the kids. And I have a world of intellect and education that I need to make available even to the shittiest behaving kids. Because that's my fuckin' job. And I don't give two shits what excuses I might have about that job or not, anymore.

Time for me to get to work.

I had a feeling

Robert Mugabe is not going without a fight.

Zimbabwe Police Raid Opposition Offices

"Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga said Mugabe was ready for a run-off.

'President Mugabe is going to fight. He is not going anywhere. He has not lost,' Matonga said on British Broadcasting Corp. 'We are going to go hard and fight and get the majority required.'"

Sound like anyone you know? Ms. Clinton emulates the best, doesn't she.

You have to read this whole story to believe it. It's not just America where people are constantly rigging the contest for their own benefit. All I can say is thank God for a free media and a free marketplace of ideas.

Power for its own sake. It is the most dangerous idea in the history of humanity.

And it is a history that is hopefully taking a step forward in Zimbabwe.

Michael Barone showing off his brains

I only have a couple of seconds, right now. But I do have one or two things to say about the pitifully self-pitying wannabe intellectual Michael Barone.

Michael wrote this pathetic pro-Andrew Jackson - you mean the same Andrew Jackson who slaughtered all those Native Americans and embarrassed himself in the White House, so much so that the Founding Fathers could hardly believe that such an ignorant asshole could ever take up residence there? That's the one - anti-Obama/pro-Clinton/pro-McCain piece in this week's U.S. News and World Report, the bastion of thoughtful argumentation, that stinks of all of the bullshit, self-deceiving, self-pitying "I'm tough, therefore I don't really need to be as smart," whining that has come to characterize Michael Barone's writing.

In Terms of Geography, Obama Appeals to Academics and Clinton Appeals to Jacksonians

Michael Barone's writing always stinks to high heaven of both self-pity that intellectuals don't recognize the giant intellect that he does not have and of partisan deception. And this piece is no different. He pretends to be a moderate. Really he is a conservative. He pretends that he is trying to be even-handed. Really his pieces are always pretedermined in their outlook almost without exception. He pretends that he is an academic. But his anti-intellectual bias is borne out in almost every piece he does where he talks about academics. And he pretends that he has more to offer intellectually, because he paid all that money to go to Harvard and Yale, when really he just very little original to say.

Michael carries this enromous chip on his shoulder in almost everything I have read from him. I almost want to feel sorry for him if he wasn't such a dick.

"I really am smarter than all those people who are smarter than me. I really am one of the great intellects of my time. Come on guys. Give me my due. I am really am smarter."

OK, Michael. We heard your whine. We hear it every fuckin' time you write any two words. It's never really all that hot. Hard America, Soft America is one long argument for why all those soft academics just really don't understand the world like Michael Barone. It's the most pathetic form of self-glorification I have ever seen or read.

Michael thinks if he holes himself up in his own little intellectual cocoon then he will not have to deal with all the disagreement that he encounters, especially that of those who are smarter than he is. Hence his obsession with tough in lieu of smart. Because there's got to be some reason that all those smart people don't like my arguments.

It couldn't just possibly be because they're weak.

It's the saddest and most pathetic spectacle in the known media world. A grown man who can't engage honestly those who disagree with him, pretending that it is because he is so tough, when really it is because he and his arguments are so fuckin' weak.

Grow a fuckin' spine, Michael. Engage all those smart people. Who knows? You might just learn something.

But if you don't, Michael, when they don't like your arguments, it's not because you're conservative. So are Milton Friedman, E.O. Wilson, David Gergen, Francis Fukuyama, Fredrick Kagan, John Keegan, and a million other really brilliant conservative thinkers. And it's not because you're tough. Tough minds engage the debates, like grown ups. It's only weak minds that try to whine their way out of the discussion.

It's because you're not all that brilliant.

And you'd be better off trying to get smarter.

Buck up, little soldier. Tough guys know when to engage a fair debate. Self-pity and weasling your way out of the discussion is for the weak. I know you're stronger than that. So cut it the fuck out. Because you're wasting your goddamn time with these weak-ass arguments and trying to pass them off as deeper and more thoughtful than they are.

And if you don't, so sorry that people don't like your arguments.

Maybe it's because they aren't all that strong.

Eye of the Tiger

23/6 reminds Hillary Clinton that Rocky lost.

I will remind Ms. Clinton that Rocky was not a washed up "inevitable" insider.

But you got to give it to them. They are desperate, aren't they?

Being happy

I need another job. It's got to be independent. I don't think I could ever be happy with anything else.

I think I just decided to give up my dream. And I don't think I care anymore. Because I think my dignity is more important.

That's not true. Well, the dignity part is. I'm not giving up my dream. I'm just taking a very different path, at this point, I think.

And no matter what, that path, for now on, involves me taking what I think more seriously than what the fuckin' crowd thinks.

War of the Roses

Ruth Marcus has recently been winning back my confidence after a stint that is hopefully winding down as the Washington Post's resident scold.

And she has a good suggestion for the two Democratic nominees, and really all politicians.

Too soon to stop this movie

"The other day, Obama compared the primary season to a movie that's gone on for too long. Like Clinton, I don't mind a good epic.

This one, though, reminds me of "The War of the Roses," the Kathleen Turner-Michael Douglas movie about a couple who build a beautiful house but manage to destroy it -- and themselves -- in the course of an ugly divorce. This would cast Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean in the Danny DeVito role as the divorce lawyer powerless to stop the carnage.

Maybe both candidates should rent the DVD. Dean, too. They need the break -- and they might learn something."

I agree that the contest should go on. But a night with the War of the Roses might end the bloodletting, which serves no purpose other at all except to reinforce our most destructive tendencies.

War of the Roses is a pretty good parable for all politics, with all of its self-destructive, ugly, and tragic tendencies and consequences.

Perhaps everyone in American and international politics should take a moment to watch that film and have a long hard think about the romanticism of force and aggression to resolve difficult problems.

Chinese Democracy Now!

This is likely the absolutely dumbest post I have ever made.

But I have to say that I am all in favor of this campaign.

Chinese Democracy When?

Dr. Pepper is launching a campaign for Axl Rose to finally release his 17 years in-the-making album, Chinese Democracy. They are saying that if Axl finally puts out the long overdue album, they will give every American, "except estranged guitarists Slash and Buckethead," a free can of Dr. Pepper.

When was the last time you heard a new release from a Guns and Roses album?

I, for one, say, far too long.

Release the goddamn album, already, Axl.

America is counting on you.

Force as a governing philosophy in a democracy - a case study

This is what governance by force looks like in a democracy.

A threat of turmoil in Turkey

What d'ya think about them apples?

All I can say is, another day in paradise.

Hope for democracy?

Wow. This would outstanding if this holds true. And if Mugabe will honor the results or if the opposition will challenge his efforts to resist them.

Zimbabwe opposition claims a big victory

It's amazing to me how much liberal democratic values take flower even as illiberal forces are on the move.

Which values will prevail, ultimately, regardless of the outcome of this election? I'll let you think on that one.

American international policy in the 21st century

The Economist does a nice review of the problems in American foreign policy with the next Presidency.

After Bush

Many of the polarized political problems the Economist cites would settle out with a more honest, engaged, and thoughtful public political discussion. I have ideas about international security policy that attempts to transcend these schims to make empirical, thoughtful policy analysis and formulation independent of ideology, while drawing upon strengths in liberal and conservative ideology and within the best of liberal democratic thought.

But is interesting how the multilateral nature of most issues we face mean policy options that cannot be dominated by any one player and even options that multiple players will find very difficult to dominate in tandem. We have been learning that the hard way during this period. We have much learning to go, I'm quite confident.

The problems that liberal democracies and illiberal and undemocratic nations of the world face will involve, as always, greater commitments to our strongest liberal democratic values - especially our commitment to honest, engaged, thoughtful, open-minded and open-hearted discussion - not weaker substitutes. We have been settling for poorer substitutes these last 7-8 years. And they have had consequences. And we are responsible for those consequences, whether anyone has the courage to take responsibility for those consequences or not.

May we learn those lessons sooner rather than later.

Ending the war

I have to say that I still find this a more persuasive case for what will occur in case of a pullout.

How Not the End the War

But what really matters is not what I think, but what those Iraqi and American troops and governing officials think, since they are both closer to the action and more likely to have an idea of what the Iraqi military is ready to handle on their own or not. That is whom we should be talking with and listening to, which is why I largely agree with Max Boot's assesssment, here.

It is amazing, I must say, watching the course of this war, how the oldest democracy in the world ignores more genuine liberal democratic principles in the name of liberal democracy. All of us. Illiberalism serves to abate our fears. And it is now and always an illusion. And this war should demonstrate that fact better than any other political fact we face, right now.

If we could only be honest with ourselves about that fact.

Just as aside

I just wanted to say that though I was disappointed with the limited vision of Samantha Power in that Colbert interview, I want someone with that kind of passion for doing good in the world and with that kind of honesty in her words and her feelings on my side in a policy discussion.

I just want her to think bigger than the circumstances, at hand. And not get lost in politics like it means more than it does.

Solving problems like the genocide in Sudan and the mess in Iraq mean an awful lot.

And I, for one, would want Samantha Power right by my side while we worked on it.

What we need is an open, no-holds-barred discussion

Perhaps Brzezinski is right. It is possible that a pullout, with coordination with those responsible for security, might work.

I don't know, is the truth.

What we need is a free, open, no-holds-barred discussion, especially with the American and Iraq troops responsible for security and the Iraqi political leaders responsible for political resolution of outstanding issues, about what should be done.

When you look at that Iraqi situation - the civil war and its relationship to the issues of power in the Iraq parliament - the problem of power and its distorting, and intentionally manipulative consequence, on resolution of important issues becomes all the more crystal clear. Radicals and terrorists and despots of all stripes have figured out that they can use and manipulate the disagreements of otherwise good faith citizens of liberal democracies and illiberal nations and cultures, alike, and newly democratized countries, like Iraq, to try to accomplish self-centered or self-righteous political ends that, generally, undermine more decent aims for the people of those nations or cultures, and for all of us.

They fuck everything up and make it really difficult, often intentionally, to find more decent resolutions that they believe undermine their power and the self-righteous aims that feed their power.

Everyone should have their two cents. Though I will say that I, for one, will not be taking everyone's input as seriously as those who I trust, more, are on the up and up about looking out for the welfare of the Iraqis and the American soldiers trying to protect them, right now.

This is what we should have for all policy questions, if we weren't such fuckin' ninnies. But it is definitely what we need with something as serious and high stakes as this question of what to do with this situation.

All I know is that I'm tired of liberal democracies and liberal peoples acting like liberal values only matter in some fantasy world that only matters in the land of make believe because we're too fuckin' pussy to take those values seriously in this world. Surely we can do better than this.

But that's what we need.

Power

The more I think about it, the more I am completely convinced that the most serious problems we face in the 21st century are around the question of power. How is distorts, manipulates, undermines, and fucks up otherwise legitimate and decent efforts.

On so many questions - war and peace, international security, law and order, criminal and civil justice, the economy, wealth equity, universal health insurance, education, psychology and individual and general mental health, language, communication, and honest discussion, race and gender issues, sexuality, even medical issues and the sciences - power undermines honest thought, discussion, and debate and honest resolution of long-standing issues.

It's not just that power corrupts. It confuses us. All of us. It makes everything hazy. And we all have to pretend like it's all so much clearer or that we understand it all more than any of us actually really do. It creates all sorts of tragedy with many of left with so many questions about whether such tragedy is really worthwhile, largely because it does so before a more open and honest and decent discussion can sort such matters out, which is exactly what ends up more genuinely sorting those matters out, over time, only after much distortion and confusion created by resorting to power to try to resolve the same problems.

It creates an environment of fear that is generally far worse than the original vices or problems it is meant to resolve. It is bad for everyone and their mental health as well as substantively making it more difficult, often to sort out and resolve problems. It makes bad choices and routes all the more tempting. It causes all kinds of tragedies and then doubles up to make it very difficult for those responsible for those tragedies to apologize or take responsibility.

It distorts our lives with fear and ugliness that then reifies itself as the reason for our need for it.

Power fucks us up in very serious ways, is the truth. And then it pretends that it is the fucked up nature of a world that it often creates is all the more reason we need it. It is like an abusive husband rationalizing his relationship with us. And we are gullible wives to its rationalizations.

And it is never satisfied until is has trapped all of us in its clutches, and even then it is never satisfied. And that is why it corrupts, and why absolute versions of it corrupt absolutely.

Because it often creates and amplifies the very fear that makes it hard for those who covet it to sleep without it.

Power fucks us up. All of us. And it has my soul sick with despair that we will never give it up.

And the only reality that gives me hope is that we always seem to fumble forward. Always. Even when we move backwards, as I believe we have in the last 7-8 years. Even as we fuck up our own and one anothers' lives with it. Even as we make it very, very difficult for people of good faith to believe in the world and the liberal democracies where it is still coveted so much.

Hope lies in the fact that we always fumble forward, eventually, even as we cling to the ugliness and abuses and bullshit - the power - for far too long.

That hope needs to become reality for even hope to be real. Perhaps even I, as well as my children, might be able to see that come to fruition.

What to do about universal health care

Regina Herzlinger, a professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School, has a proposal for universal health insurance that gets closer to a real solution, I think.

America, Insure Thyself

Her argument in toto:

"As Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama continue their battle for the Democratic presidential nomination, they also sustain a debate over what constitutes universal health care. Obama says Clinton's 'mandated' health-care plan is unaffordable for working-class Americans; Clinton says Obama's voluntary plan would leave millions uninsured.

Yet both candidates agree that affordability relies on government and big employers' continued involvement in deciding what kinds of products and services insurers can offer consumers -- and that's their big mistake. Instead, the candidates should step back and embrace a new way of thinking about health care: putting consumers first by empowering individuals to buy portable health coverage. Moving to a consumer-driven system will enable the universal coverage both candidates seek, because it will control costs and improve quality far better than governments or businesses can.

Since the 1970s, U.S. health-care financing has become increasingly centralized, with large employers and government programs now managing roughly 90 percent of spending. At the same time, health-care costs have routinely outstripped growth in GDP, wages and general inflation. The government's track record in picking winners and losers in health-care markets is terrible.

For example, Duke University Medical Center's innovative congestive heart failure program reduced costs by 40 percent by integrating the many providers needed to treat the disease and thus substantially improving patients' health. But Medicare pays only for fixed-price procedures, such as surgeries or doctor visits. The result? As Duke's enrollees became healthier and used hospitals less, Duke lost the revenues it once earned by filling those empty beds.One-size-fits-all payment systems used by massive buyers like Medicare help drive away the innovators who could lower health-care costs.

When it comes to embracing health-care innovation, however, Big Business fares no better than Big Government. In order for employers to get big discounts, they have to buy health care in bulk, offering just one or two basically identical plans to their employees. The result is consistent mediocrity. After all, how can Chrysler find a single health plan that works just as well for a 55-year-old diabetic with a bad back as it does for a 30-year-old triathlete who sees a doctor once every few years for a sprained ankle? Splitting the difference in these cases means that people do not get treated in the preventative or chronic-care settings that they really need.

Both Clinton and Obama support continuation of this dysfunctional model by leaving in place the existing employer tax deduction, and even offering additional federal spending to supplement it.

To expand health-care access and lower costs, our best option is to turn health-care purchasing over to the American people. Sectors driven by competition for consumer spending, like retail, display increasing specialization as providers offer niche products and services -- unlike our health-care sector, where, to paraphrase Henry Ford, you can have any plan you want as long as it's an HMO or a PPO.

Here's how to right the ship: First, as John McCain has proposed, end the employer tax deduction and give every American a tax credit to buy health care coverage -- in his proposal, $2,500 for individuals, $5,000 for families. This will almost instantly create an enormous 'pull' mechanism for insurance competition. Next, make even the sickest patients into true health-care consumers by paying insurers more for sick patients than healthy ones. About 80 percent of America's health-care spending goes toward 20 percent of the patients, typically those with one or more chronic diseases like diabetes or cancer. Giving a chronically ill patient the ability to choose among competing private plans would transform not only the insurance industry but also the health-care delivery sector, by spurring competition to offer better treatment models at an affordable price. People with congestive heart failure, for example, would favor health insurance policies that offered them an integrated care program, like Duke's, over ones that feature today's fragmented providers.

For an example of how universal, consumer-driven coverage can help control costs and improve quality, consider the system in Switzerland. Swiss employers enforce universal coverage by requiring individual employees to provide proof of health insurance; the poor and the sick are subsidized so that they can buy health insurance as readily as everybody else. The Swiss have excellent health status, at far lower costs than ours. Switzerland's health-care consumer satisfaction ratings are the best in the world.

In arguing the issues of universal coverage and affordability, Clinton and Obama rightly focus on the critical pieces of the health-care puzzle. But unless they address the question of consumer choice, their debate is much ado about nothing: We won't have truly universal health care until we have a mechanism to bring everyone into the system, and it won't be affordable until individuals and families can choose their own insurance coverage from competing insurers. Only consumer-driven health care will give entrepreneurs the flexibility to fashion a wide variety of appealing plans and services while allowing consumers to choose the most cost-effective coverage for themselves. Americans need and deserve a health-care system that is universal, affordable and innovative."

The logic of the Swiss system contradicts what I think is the sounder reasoning of Professor Herzlinger's proposal. But that is largely, I think, because Professor Herzlinger is holding a higher standard, as I do and as I think most Americans do and should, for what quality universal health insurance and access to health care should mean.

Professor Herzlinger's argument is exactly why I favor John McCain's health care proposal over what I do believe are the well intentioned proposals of both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, with my more marginal approval for Barack Obama's proposal.

I do think that we should seriously consider giving a free market with a democratic conversation about the need for universal health insurance and care a try, with a role for non-profits and voluntary giving to fill in gaps, and only mandated giving as a compromise in emergencies that cannot be handled any other way, and, perhaps, let some chips fall where they may. My thinking on mandates, at this point, is that they are generally counterproductive, even when they are understandable. A tax credit is certainly preferable to a mandate.

I think this is what has fucked up liberal democracies since their inception. Our lack of faith in our own values. Our lack of faith in liberty and democracy, for real, to help us help ourselves to solve even our most serious problems.

Me too, probably, when I think about it.

It would not just be nice for us to find and have that kind of faith. It would resolve many of our most serious challenges, especially the challenges of terrorism, despotism, totalitarianism and other forms of illiberalism that feed off of our lack of faith.

If I had only wish for my children, it would not be that they never experience hurt or pain, which is not possible. It would be that they are able to live in a world that stops taking seriously the legacies of fear and aggression to resolve our differences that have long dominated the world, and starts taking those liberal values seriously.