Tag: politics

Delicious Disunion

In Kansas, they’ve declared that they won’t abide by any federal law having to do with guns. In North Carolina, some folks tried to pass a law that would allow them to establish a state religion, and it enjoyed a great deal of popular support. Louisiana not only wants to teach creationism to its kids, but it cites the Loch Ness Monster as proof. And Texas. And Florida. Need I go on.
More often than not, I feel that a populace that thinks along the lines of the aforementioned states, an electorate that chooses lunatics and frauds and Bronze Age theocrats for its representatives and leaders, is not one that I want to share a body politic with. (I know it’s not everybody in those states, obviously, but I’m speaking in broad terms here.) There was a lot of kidding-on-the-square after the 2000 and 2004 elections about the blue states seceding from the red states, but I didn’t think it was funny. I thought it was necessary. Can you blame me?

But maybe it’s not as black and white as cutting the country in two. In The American Conservative, Joseph Baldacchino reviews the ideas presented in a book that explores the idea of mutually beneficial disunion.

According to Rethinking American Union for the Twenty-First Century, edited by Donald Livingston, those seeking a cure for America’s political dysfunction should consider a rarely mentioned topic, that of size and scale. The thesis of this collection of essays is that American government has grown too large and too centralized to be compatible with free, effective, or truly representative politics. The authors agree on the unacceptability of top-down government as practiced in this country: having 435 House members, 100 senators, nine Supreme Court justices, and one president rule more than 300 million people in one-size-fits-all fashion. The authors share the belief, dating back to ancient Greece, that, to be genuinely self-governing, republics must be small in population and territory, i.e., wholly unlike America. They consider ways to devolve political power to smaller, more manageable units of government. With varying degrees of persuasiveness, the authors address philosophical, political, moral, and constitutional issues bearing on such a task.

Livingston, in a thoughtful essay, presents several possibilities. One, suggested as a starting point for debate by the late George Kennan, architect of the U.S. policy to contain the Soviet Union, is to divide the Union into “a dozen constituent republics”: New England, the Middle Atlantic states, the Middle West, the Northwest, the Southwest, Texas, the Old South, Florida, Alaska, and three self-governing urban regions, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Livingston concedes that Kennan’s idea “will cause some to panic,” but he insists that the idea of dividing America into several allied federations was shared by numerous early American leaders, including Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, Henry Clay, and possibly James Madison.

Hey now. This sounds more like it. If it were as simple as Blue America and Red America, one concern I’d have is Red America deciding that, what the hell, let’s go ahead and liberate the Blue Americans from liberal tyranny with a full scale invasion. And if not, you’d have instead one hyper-industrial state and another that makes most of the food. Awkward.

With lots of smaller nation-states, you have more incentive for normal, peaceful trade among allies, but no ideological interference. If the nation of New England (where I’d live) wants to enact socialized medicine and nationalize its banks, the opinions of legislators or voters in the conservative Old South or even the financial empires of the Middle Atlantic or New York City would be irrelevant.

It sounds…glorious.

Yes, yes, yes, I’m sure it’s far more complicated than I’m giving it credit for. And I want to check this book out to see what ideas are inside it.

But let me dream, goddamn it.

May 3, 2013

politics
Bowser the Fascist, Mario the Warchief

I’ve just finished Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August, and I’m generally trying to get myself better acquainted with the societal and political conditions that surrounded the World Wars.
But who needs real history? For a serious lesson in statecraft and warcraft, check out Domhnall O’Huigin’s explanation of the political context of the universe of Super Mario, as explained on Quora:

The Mushroom Kingdom is currently ruled by Princess Peach who is a member of the minority human population.

As the least numerous faction, humans in the Mushroom Kingdom are under constant threat from within and without.

Internal threats include a significant terrorist faction led by Bowser, the leader of the Koopas; one of the most populous species in the Kingdom.

It is important to note that Bowser does not command the allegiance of all Koopas, but those under his authority are organised into paramilitary ranks or units in a caste-like system. This concentration of political power in a single leader arguably makes Bowser a fascist. Although as he self-styles himself “King Koopa” it is apparent that he claims (or is seeking) parity of esteem with Princess Peach; that is to say that he does not regard himself as a ‘terrorist’ but as a ‘freedom fighter’ or entitled ruler in his own right.

It is precisely this self-contained, quasi-military structure that has allowed Bowser to remain a thorn in Princess Peach’s side for this long, culminating in his kidnap of her, in an attempt to force her to marry him and therefore achieve ‘legitimate’ control over the Kingdom. Only the intervention of the independent oligarch (or ‘warchief’, depending on your point of view) known as “Mario” – see below – prevented this from occurring.

Sounds to me like Mario’s a kind of Genghis Khan, marauding across alien lands. But I’m no historian.

April 30, 2013

politics, technology
I’m on HuffPost Live, Talkin’ Nazis!

I think their usual lineup of guests must have all simultaneously perished, because HuffPost Live invited me to join a panel this evening, literally minutes before air time. I was happy to oblige, of course. (The host, Josh Zepps, has my boss on a lot.)
We’re discussing he recent moves by Hungary to ban Nazi and communist symbols, and whether laws that prohibit vile speech can ever be justified. I think I managed not to embarrass myself or my employers too badly. You be the judge.

http://embed.live.huffingtonpost.com/HPLEmbedPlayer/?segmentId=516f3c7878c90a2a30000374

Note: The protest I refer to in the piece was suddenly postponed to May 2 right after the broadcast.

April 24, 2013

free expression, politics, video
Jon Huntsman, a Deeply Flawed Political Role Model

Jon Huntsman ran what turned out to be a pretty pathetic campaign for president in the 2012 cycle. Running to capture the nomination of a party that at several times was in the thrall of figures like Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum, he was already fighting an uphill battle to become acceptable to the GOP’s Bronze Age base. It didn’t help matters that he was weak in debates and generally mush-mouthed in interviews.
One is tempted to give him a lot of credit, though, for the fact that he was obviously so willing to stand up to much of the insanity to which the other candidates were pandering. He expressed support for science and acceptance of evolution and climate change, he chastised his fellow candidates for being immovable in their anti-tax zealotry, and there were other examples. I am not so quick, however, to shower him with praise.

With the GOP in something of a frazzled state following their substantive defeat in November, there is a lot of noise about the party finally, finally, no really this time, moderating itself to be more acceptable to a general national electorate. And that noise often leads to chatter about how Huntsman is the model for the modern, reformed GOP. Conservative, yes, and quite, but also not heartless, not backward, and not unmoored from reality. He recently came out for gay marriage in the pages of The American Conservative, and a new Daily Beast piece makes the case that the Republican Party may be inching toward a kind of Huntsmanization.

On paper, I’m okay with all of this. I’d much rather have a political debate that had two parties that, though disagreeing about solutions, were at least in agreement about what is and is not true, what is and is not fact, and what is and is not discrimination. So a Hunstman-like GOP? Fine, you can’t do much worse than what we’ve already got, at least before Ted Cruz gathers a private army to invade Vermont.

But I think the Beltway media and political establishment are wrong to lionize Huntsman the man. I think there is, underlying his moderate-ish, sane-ish policy branding, a very real and disqualifying character flaw.

And, forgive me, but I’m going to allow the loathsome Erick Erickson to introduce my point. Erickson wrote in 2011:

The reason I will never, ever support Jon Huntman is simple: While serving as the United States Ambassador to China, our greatest strategic adversary, Jon Huntsman began plotting to run against the President of the United States. This calls into question his loyalty not just to the President of the United States, but also his loyalty to his country over his own naked ambition.

It does not matter if you are a Republican or a Democrat. Party is beside the point here. When the President of the United States sends you off to be Ambassador to our greatest strategic adversary in the world, you don’t sit around contemplating running against the very same President you serve. It begs the question of did you fully carry out your duties as Ambassador or let a few things slip along the way hoping to damage the President? Likewise, it begs the question of whether our relations with China have suffered because the President felt like he could not trust his own Ambassador?

Now put aside whether you feel like China is our “strategic adversary,” and consider Erickson’s point. I don’t care whether Obama’s motivation for appointing Huntsman as his China ambassador was a hedge against having to face him in 2012. Huntsman accepted the job, the job of representing the United States, and more specifically this president in China. And there’s little doubt that while he was there, he was also getting ready to do political battle with that president. If that’s you’re thinking, you don’t take that job.

I understand realpolitick. I understand that a shot at the presidency is the rarest of opportunities, and as Obama himself shows, you have to move with speed and blind determination if you ever hope to seize that opportunity. I think it’s pretty clear Huntsman won’t have another realistic shot. He perceived (correctly) that 2012 would be it for him, and he acted on it. I get it.

But then, you don’t take the job of being the embodiment of a president’s policy in a foreign country when you’re simultaneously plotting to politically undermine him. Erickson is right: Huntsman should have satisfied his ambition at the expense of something other than his commitment to the United States.

This is not the only example. Last year, it was revealed that Huntsman was also vastly overstating his fluency in Mandarin. Now, no one really thinks that one’s ability to speak a foreign language is the lynchpin to a successful presidency, but it speaks to Hunstman’s character. He doesn’t speak Mandarin very well, but still he claimed over and over that he does, touting is as an example of his worldliness and qualifications, and didn’t think anyone would notice when he spoke it in public and came out with nonsense. Jon, just because you don’t speak it well, doesn’t mean that no one else does.

It’s a small thing, but I think it says something about his overall character. He’s a clumsy national politician, no doubt (though obviously did rather well in Utah), but he also seems weak of integrity.

So if the GOP is moving toward Huntsman on policy and acceptance of reality (something about which I am deeply, deeply skeptical), that’s fine. But in terms of Huntsman the man, they should find another role model.

April 21, 2013

2012 presidential election, politics
Seduced by Trinkets of Power

David Kuo, 1968-2013:

I have seen what happens when well-meaning Christians are seduced into thinking deliverance can come from the Oval Office, a Supreme Court chamber or the floor of the United States Congress. They are easily manipulated by politicians who use them for their votes, seduced by trinkets of power, and tempted to turn a mission field (politics) into a battlefield.

April 6, 2013

politics, religion
Mecha-Obama and Micro-Payments
Technology guru-turned-Cassandra, Jaron Lanier, thinks he knows why Obama won reelection. In a recent interview with UK’s Spectator, he said:

If you have the biggest computer and the biggest data, you can calculate how to target people with a political message, and have almost a guaranteed deterministic level of success. Politics then becomes about who has the biggest computer instead of what the agenda is. The way Obama won the last US election was by having the best computer strategy. That method of winning an election works, but if that is to be the future of politics, it will no longer have meaning. The path we are on is not compatible with democracy.

It is also not compatible with reality. Obama didn’t win because he was 3D-printed into a Mecha-Candidate based on a vote-maximizing algorithm. He won because his positions line up with a majority of the electorate’s, because he is more likable than his opponent, and because his opponent espoused views that many people found extreme. The Obama campaign’s tech operation surely aided his quest, and would have mitigated a razor-thin race by goosing turnout, and it will no doubt be of use down the line, but he won because the voters liked him best.

Now, Lanier’s horror scenario is, of course, highly undesirable and is certainly possible in the future. Indeed, had he not had to weather a Republican primary, Romney might well have been this computer-generated candidate. But that’s not what happened in 2012, and it’s silly to say so. Confirmation bias, anyone?

All that said, Lanier also has a neat idea about all that data that Obama, Romney, as well as Google, Amazon, and every other company and entity in the world is harvesting about you, and using for all manner of purposes, be it advertising, crowdsourcing, or what have you. You should get paid for it:

. . . this data actually comes from a large number of people who have been anonymized and disenfranchised. If there was proper counting of where the data came from we would see that even in this highly advanced hypothetical automated loom, there would be real people who make the data possible to create a design.

And you are suggesting that they get paid, right?

Yes. If there were micro payments made to the people who fed the big data . . . then there would still be an economy. It’s not as if the people have disappeared from the economy, it’s just that we pretend they don’t exist.

Well I’m all for that. It’s true, we are all, every day, contributing mostly-unwittingly to a vast number of companies’ knowledge of the world, of markets, of trends, of locations, etc. We are accidentally providing enormous value moment by moment, and other than in our use of some free electronic services, we get nothing in return.

If Lanier could dial back the paranoia, he might make some sense to people.

Previous posts of mine reacting to Lanier:
- Social Lasers of Cruelty
- You Are Your Own Paywall
March 27, 2013

2012 presidential election, politics, technology
The Blood Will Not Come Off, Ctd.

There is a torrent of Iraq War soul-searches in the media right now, and they continue to stick in my craw for their evasiveness, especially after the brutally self-critical tone of Andrew Sullivan’s professed regrets for his support.
I was looking forward to something similar from former Bush speechwriter — Mr. Axis of Evil himself — David Frum, and I did not get it:

My youngest daughter was born in December 2001: a war baby. When my wife nursed little Beatrice in the middle of the night, she’d hear F-16s patrolling the Washington skies.

In October, I attended a crowded briefing in the fourth-floor auditorium of the Executive Office Building, at which the Secret Service explained its plans to protect the White House against a biological attack. They weren’t very reassuring. Basically, we’d all be dead. Even more disturbing were the small-session briefings by staffers for the new Homeland Security adviser. They warned of simultaneous car bombings at strategic intersections, targeted assassinations of officials as they retrieved their morning papers from their stoops, and poisonous gases released in Metro stations.

Like many Washingtonians, my wife and I had prepared an emergency kit in the basement: canned goods, bottled water, flashlights, batteries. We had an evacuation plan, a rendezvous point two hours outside the city, and a stipulated wait time after which she was to presume I was a casualty.

These anxieties may sound luridly overdramatic today, but they suffused the mental atmosphere of the government of the United States as President Bush made the fateful decision to launch the Iraq War.

Frum goes on to talk about his own growing misgivings, how they were pointless given that he was ‘just a speechwriter,’ and how he recognized the incompetence of the occupation.

I am not impressed.

Everyone was scared after 9/11. Fine. Threats were suddenly appearing in subtle and unpredictable places, sparked by Islamist rage. Understood. What on Earth did that have to do with a hobbled, mainly-secular dictatorship? Could not even David Frum, surrounded by tales of impending doom though he was, not distinguish between the threat of radical Islamist terrorism from the imaginary threat of an unrelated despot in an unrelated country? Was no skepticism of any kind brought to bear?

Even Ezra Klein, of whom I am a fan, in copping to being wrong in his initial support of the war, is saying “sorry” for the wrong thing:

. . . at the core of my support for the war was an analytical failure I think about often: Rather than looking at the war that was actually being sold, I’d invented my own Iraq war to support — an Iraq war with different aims, promoted by different people, conceptualized in a different way and bearing little resemblance to the project proposed by the Bush administration. . .

. . . It wasn’t worth doing precisely because the odds were high that we couldn’t do it “right.”

I leave it to Jordon Bloom at The American Conservative to answer this:

To say “It wasn’t worth doing precisely because the odds were high that we couldn’t do it ‘right’” assumes it’s actually a matter of odds, not morality or Constitutional prerogatives. Can Klein answer what odds would have been good enough to justify the death of thousands of American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians in a war in which the United States only had the faintest national interest? . . . in light of being deceived, is a little skepticism of either the information the government releases to the public or the projection of American power abroad too much to ask in light of his mistake?

There it is: a lack of skepticism. A stunning, troubling lack. That credulity, that “unforced error,” is the moral crime that Sullivan recognizes. Klein gets there, however, somewhat:

the people who are most persuasive aren’t necessarily the people who are actually right. Argument is a skill. Authority is a position. Trusting too much in either can lead you astray.

What’s difficult for me here, even as I witness those whom I greatly admire rending their garments about their support of the war, is that even to someone as distant from it all as me, it was glaringly obvious that the case for war presented by the Bush administration was a giant crock of shit. Speeches and responses to questions full of spooky hypotheticals and what-ifs; a sudden fixation on a rogue state that also happened to be one rich with oil and a former target of the same folks who had been in power a decade before; the convenience of a military conflict that would not be so covert as one waged against shadowy terrorists, but rather ready for television; a president, clearly too dumb to grasp nuance or tolerate details, smirking and strutting his way into a decade of atrocity, barely able to keep a straight face while he dishes out his rhetorical flak.

Why did anyone buy it? At times, in 2002 and 2003, I thought I might be going crazy, as so many smart, connected, informed people were so sure this was not only a good idea, but critical. To me, it was snake oil. And I wasn’t even thinking about how well or poorly the occupation might go, or whether Iraq would become a liberal democracy. I was still at square zero: We should not have this war because its justifications are fake.

This is why we need a skeptics’ movement, folks. Because skepticism ain’t just for deities, aliens, and alt-med. It’s for the shit we’re told by people twirling their mustaches right in our faces.

March 20, 2013

politics
The Blood Will Not Come Off

This feels like an academic debate. But it isn’t. I have blood on my hands. However many times I try to wash them, the blood will not come off.

Andrew Sullivan, on the explanations and mea culpas given by those like himself who supported the Iraq War.

Warning: Image that accompanies the above link is pretty freaking awful.

March 20, 2013

politics
John Kerry, Still Tolerating It

Right wingers got all squirrelly in their pants the other day because Secretary of State John Kerry had the audacity to say, while visiting Germany, that in America we have “the right to be stupid.” because, UC, saying something like this obviously means that John Kerry thanks all Americans are stupid. Because he’s French, you see. Or something.
(The Breitbart site wrote, ” Portraying Americans as idiots disconnected from the world or reality is a Kerry specialty.” Just as an example. I know.)

Well here’s what Kerry actually said.

We live and breathe the idea of religious freedom and religious tolerance, whatever the religion, and political freedom and political tolerance, whatever the point of view. I mean, you know, some people have sometimes wondered about why our Supreme Court allows one group or another to march in a parade, even though it’s the most provocative thing in the world, and they carry signs that are an insult to one group or another. And the reason is, that’s freedom, freedom of speech. In America you have a right to be stupid, if you want to be, and you have a right to be disconnected to somebody else if you want to be. And we tolerate it. We somehow make it through that. Now, I think that’s a virtue. I think that’s something worth fighting for.

You’re goddamn right.

February 27, 2013

politics
Mining Value from Machiavelli: You Need Me On That Wall!

As mentioned in the previous post, which is about something else entirely, I was delighted by a 41-year-old essay in the New York Review of Books by Isaiah Berlin on Machiavelli’s The Prince, a piece that kind of bowled me over.
Berlin makes a case for where he thinks Machiavelli is coming from morally: Is he an evil bastard who thinks it’s fine to just crush people underfoot? Or is he a pragmatist who understands that sometimes you have to be an angel, and other times you have to be a son of a bitch? Is he simply amoral? Berlin says none of the above:

There are two worlds, that of personal morality and that of public organization. There are two ethical codes, both ultimate; not two “autonomous” regions, one of “ethics,” another of “politics,” but two (for him) exhaustive alternatives between two conflicting systems of value. If a man chooses the “first, humane course,” he must presumably give up all hope of Athens and Rome, of a noble and glorious society in which human beings can thrive and grow strong, proud, wise, and productive. Indeed, he must abandon all hope of a tolerable life on earth: for men cannot live outside society; they will not survive collectively if they are led by men who . . . are influenced by the first, “private” morality; they will not be able to realize their minimal goals as men; they will end in a state of moral, not merely political, degradation. But if a man chooses, as Machiavelli himself has done, the second course, then he must suppress his private qualms, if he has any, for it is certain that those who are too squeamish during the remaking of a society, or even during its pursuit and maintenance of its power and glory, will go to the wall.

This, according to Berlin, is what has been blowing people’s minds for centuries: Machiavelli isn’t talking about one moral system, he’s talking about two. Two systems that have absolutely nothing to do with each other, both pursuing ends that are justified only within their own systems. You can have men (and in this context, they’re only talking about men) who live in a traditionally “moral” way (Berlin refers to this as “Christian” morality), valuing altruism, sacrifice, and a kind of spiritual wholeness; and you can also have princes who get shit done however they must for the good of the state. More Berlin:

If you object to the political methods recommended because they seem to you morally detestable, if you refuse to embark upon them because they are . . . too frightening, Machiavelli has no answer, no argument. In that case you are perfectly entitled to lead a morally good life, be a private citizen (or a monk), seek some corner of your own. But, in that event, you must not make yourself responsible for the lives of others or expect good fortune; in a material sense you must expect to be ignored or destroyed.

And woe be the society that is led by such men, because, the argument goes, it takes Machiavellians to actually conduct affairs of state and realize what we think of as civilization:

If men practice Christian humility, they cannot also be inspired by the burning ambitions of the great classical founders of cultures and religions; if their gaze is centered upon the world beyond—if their ideas are infected by even lip-service to such an outlook—they will not be likely to give all that they have to an attempt to build a perfect city. If suffering and sacrifice and martyrdom are not always evil and inescapable necessities, but may be of supreme value in themselves, then the glorious victories over fortune, which go to the bold, the impetuous, and the young, might neither be won nor thought worth winning. If spiritual goods alone are worth striving for, then of how much value is the study of necessita—of the laws that govern nature and human lives—by the manipulation of which men might accomplish unheard-of things in the arts and the sciences and the organization of social lives?

This started to make me a little nervous, as though we’re no longer just talking about princes, but any secular person who values the meaning and value that can be extracted from our short, mortal existence, rather than aspiring to some fuzzy posthumous reward.

Reading through this piece, I found myself feeling a kind of sympathy for the Machiavellian position. Trying to erase images of Dick Morris and Karl Rove from my mind, I understood how, as Spock would remind us, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few — or the one. And that good can often only be attained by the “prince” behaving in such a way that would not meet the “traditionally moral” smell-test. Just think back over the past 150 years or so of American history, and recall all the morally dubious actions taken by presidents that may have also saved civilization (or not!) or at least maintained American superiority (or not!). The prince’s moral system has no qualms about these actions, it has no room for qualms. The “good person,” meanwhile, looks on in horror.

(I suddenly hear the “sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide” monologue from A Few Good Men in my head. “You need me on that wall!”)

But Karl Rove came back. As I read this passage of Berlin, I felt like I was reading a manifesto of the Republican Party, particularly circa 2003:

Let me cite the best known of his most notoriously wicked pieces of advice to princes. One must employ terrorism or kindness, as the case dictates. Severity is usually more effective, but humanity, in some situations, brings better fruit. You may excite fear but not hatred, for hatred will destroy you in the end. It is best to keep men poor and on a permanent war footing, for this will be an antidote to the two great enemies of obedience—ambition and boredom—and the ruled will then feel in constant need of great men to lead them (the twentieth century offers us only too much evidence for this sharp insight). Competition—divisions between classes—in a society is desirable, for it generates energy and ambition in the right degree.

Religion must be promoted even though it may be false, provided it is of a kind that preserves social solidarity and promotes manly virtues, as Christianity has historically failed to do.

It screams Bush administration, Iraq War, War on Terror, “Jesus is my favorite philosopher,” etc. It reeks of everything the neoconservative GOP, using the religious right as its tool, tried to entrench into the American psyche, and everything they tried to do to Iraq and other parts of the world. America could only be “glorious” at the expense of a conquered state, along with other cowed lesser states. The American public would be kept in line by believing that their Prince was, like them, pious and religious. And we’re all pious and religious, right?

So that caused something of a shudder.

Berlin in 1971 saw the flaws in this approach, and if the Bushies of the 2000s were Machiavellians, Berlin would have clearly seen right through them and disapproved:

[Machiavelli’s] distrust of unworldly attitudes, absolute principles divorced from empirical observation, is fanatically strong—almost romantic in its violence; the vision of the great prince playing upon human beings like an instrument intoxicates him. He assumes that different societies must always be at war with each other, since they have conflicting purposes. He sees history as one endless process of cutthroat competition, in which the only goal that rational men can have is to succeed in the eyes of their contemporaries and of posterity. He is good at bringing fantasies down to earth, but he assumes . . . that this is enough. He allows too little to the ideal impulses of men. He has no historical sense and little sense of economics. He has no inkling of the technological progress that is about to transform political and social life, and in particular the art of war. He does not understand how either individuals, communities, or cultures develop and transform themselves. Like Hobbes, he assumes that the argument or motive for self-preservation automatically outweighs all others.

I have to admit, as I began to cozy up to a little Machiavelli, despite the recall to the Bush era, this passage was the coffee that sobered me up.

Berlin has inspired me to revisit Machiavelli all the same, to better understand what the fuss has been about. Because, as Berlin says, he does bring fantasies down to earth, and champion a political leadership that values the here and now over the imaginary eternal. There must be something to be mined from that.

February 17, 2013

culture, politics
Me vs. the Western Canon
As part of a recent initiative of mine to read a bunch of the foundational classics that I’d so far missed, I finally got around to reading Machiavelli’s The Prince, maybe about a year ago. Though it’s something that has had a tremendous impact on political thought for centuries, I had somehow managed not to be compelled to digest it. Heck, I even got my master’s from GWU’s political management program, which could well be described as a graduate school for Machivallianism itself, now that I think about it, (when the school was established, The New Republic dubbed it “The School for Scoundrels”), but I still missed it.
But despite all this, when I finally read it, it didn’t land with me. I partly chalked this up to the fact that its tenets had, by this point in history, been so thoroughly digested by Western culture, that perhaps there was nothing left to resonate with me — it was all, by now, old news.

Suffice it to say, I am not actually convinced by this explanation, as it feels more like an excuse for my own inability to comprehend it, or perhaps, more generously, a problem with my failure to read it with sufficient slowness and closeness.

When I first read Montaigne’s Essays, not too long after I read The Prince, I had a similar experience. But because of the breadth and conversational tone of much of Montaigne, it was not quite so alienating. Some of it I truly loved, while much of it remained beyond my ability — or really, willingness — to grasp.

Then I read Sarah Bakewell’s How to Live, a brilliant exploration of Montaigne the person through the essays, and I found myself falling in love with Montaigne after the fact. But what was I so enamored by, really? Montaigne’s own words, or Bakewell’s interpretation?

I am faced with the same question today. The New York Review of Books has recently put online a 1971 piece by Isaiah Berlin on The Prince and what it tells us about Machiavelli’s morality. The piece is wonderful, long but an easy read, and totally understandable despite its many references to philosophers and academics with which I am not, and likely never will be familiar. Berlin’s explanation of what is so goddamned important about Machiavelli — why he has stirred the centuries-long furor that he has — has made my mind spark with ideas and appreciation. Just as Bakewell has inspired me to return to the Essays, Berlin will drive me back to The Prince. To rediscover.

But I must come back to the central question of this post: Why the hell didn’t these masterpieces of Western Civilization land in the first place? What was I doing wrong?

Some possibilities, a couple of which were mentioned previously in this post:
- I didn’t pay close enough attention, and devote the kind of slow, thoughtful time required of such works, wanting instead to have checked them off my to-read list. (Possible.)
- Having chosen free versions of both works for reading in the Kindle format, I was stuck with public-domain translations that are very old, written in such a way as to feel very antiquated and archaic to me. (Only a slight factor, I suspect, if at all.)
- The ideas contained in these works are now part of our cultural fabric, and don’t resonate because they are at this point entirely assumed or humdrum. (Almost certainly not correct, or else Shakespeare is a phone book.)
- I’m simply not smart enough, or sufficiently educated, to appreciate these works. (Possible on both counts.)
I, being a master of self-loathing, am inclined toward the last bullet in that list, but for the sake of this post, and of giving myself the all-too-rare benefit of the doubt, I have one final possible explanation that pleases:
- Bakewell and Berlin, in their works, served as the teachers I never had, instilling in me an appreciation and excitement for Montaigne and Machiavelli that might have otherwise come from a brilliant college professor.
I went to undergrad for theatre. I went to graduate school for what is essentially a vo-tech for politics — not “political science” or political philosophy, but the practical navigation of the modern political industry. Montaigne and Machiavelli would not appear in these classes, not explicitly anyway. Much as it takes an enthusiastic science teacher in high school to turn a kid into a physicist, or it takes a crazy and overdramatic English teacher to make a student fall in love with literature, I posit that Bakewell and Berlin have been my teachers, and her book and his article have been my classes. And so my eyes were opened, and my mind awakened to what I would have otherwise missed from casual readings.

So maybe I’m not so dumb after all.

No, I probably am. But still.

* * *

Note: I’ll have more about the Berlin piece specifically in a separate post, and I’m considering delving back into Montaigne’s Essays and beginning a new blog project in which I write posts in reaction to each essay. We’ll see. Oh, and my current selection from the Western canon is Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. I am going to understand conservatism if it kills me.
February 17, 2013

books, culture, personal, politics, writing
The Bodies of Those Who Happen to Be in the Way

Ta-Nehisi Coates on our perpetual state of war:

The president is anti-torture — which is to say he thinks the water-boarding of actual confirmed terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was wrong. He thinks it was wrong, no matter the goal — which is to say the president would not countenance the torture of an actual terrorist to foil a plot against the country he’s sworn to protect. But the president would countenance the collateral killing of innocent men, women and children by drone in pursuit of an actual terrorist. What is the morality that holds the body of a captured enemy inviolable, but not the body of those who happen to be in the way?

Good question. Is it the idea that unbearable pain is more immoral than a quick death-from-the-skies? Is it because the calculations for potential blowback work out a certain way? Post-Bush, I think these kinds of issues are far more nuanced than progressives have allowed themselves to believe. I hope our consciences are limbered up, because there’s still a lot more wrestling to do.

February 14, 2013

politics, war
The Home of Lost Causes and Nostalgic Lunacy

Gary Wills, a conservative, shakes his head at his native South:

This is a region that rejects sex education, though its rate of teenage pregnancies is double and in places triple that of New England. It fights federal help with education, preferring to inoculate its children against science by denying evolution.

No part of the country will suffer the effects of global warming earlier or with more devastation than the South, yet its politicians resist measures to curb carbon emissions and deny the very existence of climate change—sending it to the dungeon with evolution and biblical errancy [ . . . ] it just digs deeper in denial. The South has decided to be defeated and dumb. [ . . . ]

This is the thing that makes the South the distillation point for all the fugitive extremisms of our time, the heart of Say-No Republicanism, the home of lost causes and nostalgic lunacy. It is as if the whole continent were tipped upward, so that the scattered crazinesses might slide down to the bottom. The South has often been defeated. Now it is defeating itself.

Wills casts the blame for the South’s willful spiral into self-inflicted destitution on its misplaced sense of “dignity,” a dignity that will not allow it to accept a black man as president, that clings with desperation to whatever fictions it needs in order to maintain some sense of time standing still.

The problem, recognized by Wills, is not just what the South is doing to itself, but what it’s doing to the rest of the country and the rest of the planet. (And of course, we’re using “the South” as shorthand for the Tea-Party, Christianist culture about which Wills writes in his essay, not “everyone who lives in the South.”) In Washington, its “la-la-la-I-can’t-hear-you” attitude toward reality gets enormous influence, if not total veto power, over national policy, particularly as low-population states are overrepresented in Congress, which, if not of the South itself, tend to be ideologically aligned. And of course you have the southern states (and non-southern states run by GOP governments) that intentionally obstruct any modicum of genuine progress that might accidentally spill out of Washington.

This means that on these crucial, existential issues such as environmental policy, energy policy, civil rights, health care, and the need for an educated population, the whole country suffers. And since the U.S. remains the world’s superpower, and because it consumes energy and emits waste at a highly disproportionate rate, particularly on climate change, we screw the whole planet. The South defeats not only itself, but all of us.

January 26, 2013

politics
John Kerry, Goddamn Class Act

A young protester interrupts his confirmation testimony, and he says, yeah, that’s what I was here to do when I got here. Word up, sir.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=on9RoCbpIXE&feature=youtu.be

Hat tip to Weigel.

January 24, 2013

politics, video
Toby (3 Years Old) Assesses the 2012 Presidential Race

My three-year-old boy Toby and I were talking about presidential politics in the car this morning, like we do. (While his baby sister Phoebe said, “RaaaUUUuUuurrrrRRrgh.”) We were looking back at the 2012 election, and Toby has drawn some interesting conclusions.
He often asks whether such-and-such a politician “did a good job,” and this time, after asking about Paul Ryan (I said, no, Paul Ryan did not do a good job), he had this to say:

Paul Ryan is a big guy who used to knock Mitt Romney down.

I asked Toby to elaborate on what he meant by this. He said:

Paul Ryan is a big guy who used to gink other people and hit other people with his long arms.

I’m not certain what “gink” means, but I suspect it’s a kind of knocking about.

Anyway, I then asked Toby what he thought of the winning ticket for 2012, and he told me:

Barack Obama is the president but Joe Biden is the big guy and he doesn’t need to hit everybody.

No he doesn’t, Toby. You’re absolutely right.

January 23, 2013

2012 presidential election, parenting, personal, politics