Dana Blankenhorn

The Wright Reality

No matter how we feel about "phony" controversies they usually have an important point behind them.

They define the limits of acceptable speech.

Take the Jeremiah Wright mess, which Bill Moyers is still agonizing over. Why is Wright condemned for statements like "God Damn America" while preachers like John Hagee, who (along with Falwell and Robertson) said the exact same things (only with different reasons) go merrily on. Isn't that a double standard?

Well, yes and no.

It's a double standard in that one man's speech is seen as out of bounds and another man's speech is seen as within bounds. True. But the whole purpose of the exercise was to define the bounds of acceptable political speech. It was to make Wright, and everything he says, out of bounds while enabling extremists on the other side free rein. (Actually, free reign.)

In this, as in other phony controversies over the years, the Right has been masterful. Through this process of phony controversy the acceptable discourse within our society has been pushed ever-more to the right, so it's becoming impossible to even publicly utter obvious truths. I'd say that's an important result.

For instance, the following sentence is, politically, completely out of bounds within the American political discourse:

A World Without a Moral Center

As I may have mentioned here before I'm scheduled to visit Chengdu, China next month. Blogging will be sporadic.

Given the recent headlines over the torch run I'm certain you're wondering what I might tell my hosts.

The answer is -- not much.

For one thing I expect few there to know English. But even without the language barrier I'd mainly want to listen. Listen to my son try to puzzle out the language barrier after three years of Mandarin. Listen to people greet me, and try to explain things by speaking Szechuan ve-ry slow-ly (as though that would help).

But there's another, more important reason. I no longer have cause to condemn anyone.

Neither, frankly, do you.

Ending the Zero Sum Game

Perhaps the grossest myth of the last American generation is the Zero Sum Myth.

This myth was very much on display yesterday during the Iraq testimony. This is why it seemed at times that Gen. David Petraeus and the Democrats questioning him were speaking different languages, living on different planets.

To Petraeus, as to John McCain and the great majority of Republicans, there can only be two outcomes in Iraq. You win, you lose. The idea of some different, muddier, more real outcome is entirely foreign to them. Listen to any of them closely, listen to them tolerantly, and this comes through. You don't have to argue with it. It's simply their reality.

The point was brought home by Barack Obama's questioning (above). Is there an outcome other than a fully democratic (well Republican) Iraq, under American control, with no Al Qaeda and no influence from Iran, which you might define as victory, he asked? Petraeus reacted as though Obama were speaking his father's native Luo language. It was, to him, inconceivable.

This is in the nature of the Nixon Thesis of Conflict. It's at the heart of it, really. Life is a zero sum game. You either win or you lose. Peaceful coexistence is impossible. There can be no meeting of the minds, no agreeing to disagree. 

Don't Get Killed in the Semi-Finals

I was told this a lot in 1968, by conservatives I considered knowledgeable friends.

It summed up their attitude toward Vietnam at the time, and their feeling the Vietcong would be reluctant to risk death. (They were wrong, of course.) The real fight wasn't with us, but between them, they assumed. So don't get killed in the semi-finals.

The good news from Iraq is we seem to be past the semi-finals. The current Battle of Basra is really the Bush Administration's last stand.

If Nouri al-Maliki should win, we will have chosen Iraq's new Saddam. He'll be a Shiite Saddam, he'll be a Saddam allied with Iran, but we'll have put him there. The point is this may be "victory" enough for our troops to get the heckoutofthere.

Unfortunately, right now he doesn't look like a winner. He's already had to call on Uncle Sam to hold Baghdad and we're hearing the same-old same-old about bad planning further south.

Final Warning

After the shiny, happy people feeling you got from reading my last post, now I'm going to bring you down.

Over at Juan Cole's shop, former University of Chicago professor William Polk reads the tea leaves and pronounces the War With Iran to be at go time.

To last week's US News warning he adds the personal recollection that Dick Cheney also made a trip to Saudi Arabia in March 2002 -- ostensibly diplomatic but (we now know) his warning, and assurance, that Saddam Hussein was a dead man.

The article contains the tantalizing possibility that Israel's recent attack on Syria was just a test of its radar and anti-missile defenses, but Polk then adds news that there has been an unprecedented build-up of U.S. Navy assets in the Persian Gulf:

Of course, deploying forces along Iran’s frontier does not necessarily mean using them. At least that is what the Administration says. However, as a historian and former participant in government, I believe that having troops and weapons on the spot makes their use more likely than not.

Instead such forces create a "climate of war" like the one which set off The Guns of August and World War I, a climate which both Bush the Wiser and Bush the Dumber have given in to before. He adds that the rationale for war is contained in the 2005 National Defense Strategy, which asserted America's right to engage in first-strike warfare anytime, and anywhere, it chose.

What can halt the march to war? Just one thing.

The Manchurian Presidency

The Manchurian Candidate is about a Communist plot to install a dupe, played by James Gregory (left in the photo at right), as President. He claims to be fiercely anti-communist, but he's really controlled by the communists through his wife, played by Angela Lansbury. (Sorry if I spoiled it. Watch it for Frank Sinatra next time -- one of his best roles.)

Ever since the movie returned to vogue politicians have been warning that their opponents are secretly working for the other side. The claim is made this cycle about Barack Obama. That is, Barack Hussein Obama.

Of course, this deliberately misses the plot. The James Gregory candidate is a perfect conservative, a neo-McCarthyite. In 2008 parlance, he's McCain.

But what if the Manchurian Candidate has already been elected? What if, in fact, he's been in office for over 7 years?

The End of Impunity

One thing which has marked the last two decades, and it's as true for ordinary people as for our leaders, has been a sense of impunity.

Democrats complain often of how the Bush Administration displays impunity. The rules don't apply to them. They make up their own reality. The President cannot break the law.

We talk a lot less about our personal impunity. We can buy what we want. We can walk away from our debts. We don't have to make hard choices.

Democrats most fear talking about the impunity inherent in their own positions. We'll get out of Iraq on our own schedule, and stay in Afghanistan "to win," they say. We'll give ordinary people tax cuts and raise spending on health care and education.

The end of all this impunity is a big theme in our current crisis and all of us -- Democrats, Republicans, consumers, businesses -- remain in the denial stage of the process.

Last week's biggest story may have been Joseph Stiglitz' (above) estimate of the Iraq war's cost -- $3-5 trillion. (It's all here in his book.) The figure seems unimaginable so let me put it into perspective.

It's going to cost the U.S. its autonomy. It's going to cost our currency. It's going to cost you your life savings, and me mine. It's going to end the era of American impunity.

People and their Government

My friend Tariq Mustafa wrote from Karachi this morning.

He was complaining about a New York Times editorial shedding crocodile tears over President Pervez Musharraf's open threats against a journalist.

Tariq's point was that the Times said nothing when Musharraf fired the nation's judges and attacked civil society last year. Instead, the Times (like the U.S. government) seemed more concerned with whether Pakistan would remain an ally in our own "War on Terror" than whether its society was allowed to function.

Today the ZDNet blog Threat Chaos is filled with similar condescension toward Pakistan. First, President Musharraf demanded that access to YouTube be shut, accusing it of blasphemy. Then, a local ISP trying to deal with the order cut itself off entirely from the Internet, taking the whole country with it.

Richard Steinnon concluded, with enormous condescension:

I could say: “be careful what you wish for” to those elements that object to free and open access to information and expression of ideas. But to put it in terms they might understand better: Do not anger the Internet gods or  you will suffer their wrath!

He's right, but....

Have You Heard The Good News About Pakistan?

Pakistan has recently taken on the role Americans once reserved for Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia, Iran, and (before that) the Soviet Union.

It's the unknowable, foreign, other, dangerous in the extreme. It frightens the children. It's meant to.

We're told, for instance, that Pakistan harbors Al Qaeda, its government is unstable and autocratic. It's the world's most dangerous place.

Maybe. But when you see Pakistan through Pakistani eyes, as it is my privilege to do, it's not so black-and-white.

My friend Tariq Mustafa IM'ed me from Karachi this morning with some of the good news:

• Every corporation in the Karachi area filed their tax returns electronically for 2007. I'll bet you money that's not true in Georgia. Many companies here haven't even started in on their returns.
• A job board launched by two Pakistani emigrants to Stanford now powers some of the biggest blogs in the valley. Silicon Valley, that is.
• oDesk is illustrating their outsourcing capabilities by showing off opportunities in Pakistan.

Revenge, Reform and Justice

Think of this as Volume 11, Number 6 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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The countdown to the end of the Bush era has begun.

We think.

But as we gaze over the immense crimes of this time, and seek justice for the damage to our world, our people, and our finances, the demand for revenge and justice is getting in the way of reform.

I share the thirst for revenge.

If no one pays for all this, if no one is held legally responsible for Iraq and Katrina and torture and the massive thefts which may add up to trillions of dollars we don't even have, then the whole country becomes like the Reagan labor secretary Raymond Donovan (right), plaintively wailing (after being found innocent of corruption) "where do I go to get my good name back?"

Fact is, with countries, it's not so easy. The guilt for this era will never wash off our hands. Not entirely. No matter our politics, the crimes of George W. Bush, his henchmen, and his followers, done in our name, are our crimes as well.

Entering the Year of Crisis

Following is the essay you can designate as Vol. 1I, Number 1 of A-Clue.Com, my weekly newsletter. Enjoy.

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The year 2008 represents the start of the generational crisis we've been sliding toward for decades. The games of the last two years are over. Now we get serious.

That's because the myths and values of the Nixon Thesis, on which our political assumptions and power are based, have proven themselves irrelevant. (Image from Tom Tomorrow.)

It's not that they don't answer the questions of today. They don't address those questions. They weren't meant to.

The Nixon Thesis of Conflict holds that we must hold "them" in check to save the nation. In terms of foreign policy, them meant Communists. Russian Communists. Chinese Communists. In the context of the time, Vietnamese Communists. Vietnam was a Cold War activity, and the Nixon Thesis was designed, first and foremost, to support the Cold War. It made that war the nation's partisan divide, with the dominant side supporting it without question. With 9-11 the enemy simply changed -- the 1990s represented the Thesis' search for this new enemy.

Domestically the Nixon Thesis of Conflict also opposed "them" -- represented by any force which questioned societal norms in dress, demeanor, values or lifestyle. Initially this referred to the Dirty Fucking Hippies and their enablers in the academies and the media. Gradually, as that threat receded, new groups were thrown off the majority coalition -- first feminists, then blacks, then gays, then browns. Those who protested at the exclusion of these interests were also tossed overboard, and the full weight of societal scorn heaped upon them.

Great (Wo)Man Theory

One key difference between the TV era we're leaving and the Internet era we're entering lies in the "Great Man" theory of history.

In TV World, the camera must be on one person. There is always just room for one story.

In the last few years, as the Internet has come to mean more to us, the insanity of this attitude has become apparent. First, with O.J, then with Monica, and now with just about every story TV chooses to obsess on.

This is especially true when it comes to politics. One man, one House, one set. The TV has room for no more than that. This has helped concentrate power in one person, even when that person was, as this President is, a worthless piece of shit. It has also helped create the explosion of "horserace" coverage. Since all that matters is the identity of the face in front of the camera, the minutiae involved in getting someone in front of that camera becomes the only story.

The world doesn't work that way. The Internet certainly doesn't. Even the most important site in the world, Google.Com, is merely a conduit, a connection on the way to somewhere else, an enabler.  Yet notice how the business press has covered Google as though it were a destination, just as it pushed Yahoo into being a destination, just as it pushed Microsoft as a destination. One camera, one destination, one story. TV assumptions are everywhere.

Which brings us to the news of the day. Benazir Bhutto was a product of the TV age, imbued by TV values with TV qualities of perfection and importance. Her death led to a paroxysm, not just on the streets of Pakistan but on the TV, because there was just one camera, one story, and there could be just one heroine in the TV storyline. She knew this, and spent her last months manipulating it, maneuvering herself into  the role of alternative to Pervez Musharraf, whom everyone knew was hopelessly flawed. Everything was set, in a TV world, for her to assume power.

But the lesson of her death, for Pakistan and for us, should be this. Life ain't TV. We imbue a single center with all power at our peril. It's like love. She's not perfect, he's not perfect, no one is perfect. No one person can hold all power and lead righteously, unless they are themselves perfect. And no one is perfect.

The Reckoning

We are past the time of the Good German.  We're even past asking who might be a Bad German.

The Reckoning has begun.

We forget how The Reckoning can begin before the war ends. In Germany The Reckoning began long before the Soviets entered Berlin. It was in full swing at the time of the 1944 plot against Hitler (a plot in which I recently learned a distant relative (right) participated).

So it has begun here, with George W. Bush still in office. The great hope of the Administration, the fact that will keep W's butt out of jail, is to show Democrats' complicity.

Democrats were complicit. Democrats on the Intelligence Committees, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, were apparently briefed on torture and stood silent. The CIA's insistence it acted within the law, that it it was only following orders, Mein Herr, is more evidence that the search for conspirators is well under way.

Essentially our Congressional leaders are being blackmailed, in the full light of day, by the regime's leaders. Protect us and you won't be hurt, they say. And these leaders are knuckling under.

In 2006 the cry was for more Democrats. Today the cry must go out for better Democrats. Despite the risk which our major media (which is also fully complicit in torture, in war crimes, and in the theft of this nation's Constitution) will claim exists, Democrats need to wage war on their fellow Democrats, right now. Netroots Democrats must demand that those Democrats whowere complicit in these crimes be held to account, in order that those Republicans who engaged in criminal conduct be held to account.

What is at stake is our own complicity in these crimes. Your complicity. My complicity.

Belief in Evil

The nightmare I've been dealing with concerning our son reaches another climax tomorrow with an appearance at juvenile court.

After three months of this I have a pretty clear idea what happened. We're hoping for the best.

But regardless, what seems very clear is that the teacher who claims my son assaulted her believes firmly in good and evil. Especially evil.

Evil can be a noun, a verb, or a modifier. As a verb it refers to action everyone knows is wrong. As a noun it refers to the person behind that action, and may also be used to damn their character, to consign them to the netherworld of death or prison. As a modifier it's a political football as in the term evil-doer.

How many more innocents have died in Iraq these last 5 years, at our hands, wittingly or unwittingly, compared to the number who died on 9-11? Yet our leaders refer to those who planned 9-11 as evil-doers, and to our own good men and women as liberators.

It's nonsense. War is evil, no matter who does it, no matter their cause. It is all hell. It is violence, it is destruction.  It's a central lesson told by everyone who has come back from any war. The only way to justify such evil is to see the other side as more evil, so that the war becomes self-defense.

I shouldn't criticize. That's our defense as well.

This Week's Clue: The Nature of Evil

Following is the essay you can designate as Volume 10, Number 47 of This Week's Clue, based on the e-mail newsletter I have produced since March, 1997. It would be the issue of November 26.

Enjoy.

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Evil sees itself as the only good.

This is the paradoxical nature of evil, everywhere and in every time.

Evil is good which thinks too much of itself.

Didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition? Nobody does, because we are taught to see the faith of our fathers as an unalloyed good. It can be, but only if it tolerates other faiths and fathers, no matter how grudging that tolerance may be.

It was the intolerance of Communists that turned the workers' paradise into the peoples' hell in the 20th century, everywhere it was applied. It was blind, self-centered self-belief that twisted the South in the 19th century and was at the heart of Nazi Germany from its beginning, that lay in the weeds of both apartheid and the Mugabe dictatorship.

This is the essence of the evil we see in George W. Bush, in Dick Cheney, in all their followers. They see their own interests as the only possible good. They see all other interests as evil. The terrorists aren't evil-doers. They're good men who do evil because they see their own cause as the only good.

The test is as simple as that.

Islam is mere submission to God's will, an unalloyed good. Once that submission is demanded by force it does evil. Judaism is the glorious word of God, but when others are oppressed in its name it does evil. I've got nothing against Mormons, but when they see only their own humanity and not that of the girls or women around them I call the cops. It was the intolerance of Hinduism which Gandhi most feared, and it is indeed that intolerance that has caused it to do evil, tearing down mosques, banning languages, all the rest.

This paradoxical nature of evil fools everyone.
 

It's Gonna Get Dark, It's Gonna Get Cold

The title is from Billy Joel's It's All About Soul, and while it has been dark and cold since Billy stopped cranking out the hits, that's not what we're talking about. (Achtung, baby)

The subject is next year, the real crisis of our time, the true gotterdammerung for the conservative movement, the year when the dam breaks and it all goes to hell.

Liberals of a certain age (like Newsweek's Jon Meachum) well recall their own gotterdammerung. Martin died. Bobby died. Chicago. Nixon. Body bags piling up at the airport, bad trips all around.

All this is coming for the Right now. You better start swimming or you will sink like a stone.

This mess in Pakistan is just the appetizer. Afghanistan is likely to be lost, just as Iraq was. Putey-poot won't let you bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran. The crisis of global climate change will become more than obvious. There will be no immunity, no statute of limitations.

And that's not the worst of it.

What George W. Bush Has Done

George W. Bush has made me ashamed to be an American, and caused me to become enraged against millions of my fellow citizens.

This is not unusual for a crisis President. When a political thesis, a set of myths and values meant to inform power, becomes obsolete, the government is bound to ignore the reality of its time. It goes on auto-pilot, and does grave damage.

This last happened 40 years ago under Lyndon B. Johnson. World War II vets and their wives came to hate LBJ. They also became enraged against their own children, and the elites which coddled or enabled them. The kids in turn became enraged at the parents. They have lived in shame and reaction ever since.

It also happened at the bottom of the Great Depression, with people hating Hoover and the forces he represented. It happened in the 1890s, with people hating Cleveland and the Money Power he supported. It happened in the 1850s, with people hating Buchanan and the South.

Note, too, that the hate was returned in kind, in all these cases. It's hard to remember now the passion with which rich people hated Franklin D. Roosevelt, the class traitor. Or William McKinley. The hate against Lincoln we know, for history won't forget the Civil War or his assassination.

The point is it happens, it always happens. A crisis breeds hate.

So I hate Bush and all his works. I'm ashamed that my country destroyed the Fertile Crescent, the Cradle of Civilization, and I'll feel like strangling the next joker who tells me how evil Saddam Hussein was. Same with the one who claims I "hate the troops." I love the troops, it's their commanders I hate. They should suffer, all of them, eternal damnation for what they have done.

Always On in the Worst Way

Always On technologies, the use of wireless networks as an application platform linking sensors and data between you, your stuff and the Internet, can have powerful, positive impacts on our lives.

But it can also have negative implications. Always On can be misused to create a surveillance state, in which you are constantly a criminal suspect, where Big Brother is always watching, where freedom is just another word and control -- from business and government -- becomes absolute.

Unfortunately, that is the way it's being used today. AT&T, a company no one should trust with anything, let alone their security, is now selling businesses "remote monitoring" systems, from $350, which let businesses put customers and employees under constant surveillance.

While it's cool to do security monitoring using wireless networks, that's just one application space.

A Daughter's Paper Finds an Inconvenient Truth

My daughter, who is now in college, has a paper due at the end of the month. (She's shy.)

The subject is foreign policy, specifically whether we should treat Iran and North Korea as we have Iraq.

In the course of her research she came up with quotes from three important Presidents -- James Monroe, Woodrow Wilson, and Ronald Reagan. Each was highly idealistic, each spoke of America's role in the world as being different from other nations. She was trying to match these quotes to the present situation, so I sat her down to tell her the inconvenient truth.

All these statements turned out to be lies. They were cover. The Monroe Doctrine. The 14 Points. The Reagan Doctrine. Even if the speakers were completely clean of heart, even if they meant every word, each of these statements unleashed great horrors upon the world, because those who followed and interpreted the words were not so pure:

1. Under the Monroe Doctrine, which warned Europe off the Western Hemisphere, we took half of Mexico in war, Southerners invaded Nicaragua, we made Puerto Rico part of our country, and we created Panama. You keep your hands off, because we're going to rape and pillage at will. That's the lesson Latin America got from the Monroe Doctrine. It's the lesson kids there are taught. It's why we're distrusted there now, and will always be distrusted.
2. Under the 14 Points, which sought to organize the world for freedom, we fought the Cold War, not just in Korea, but in Iran, in Guatamala, in Cuba, in Vietnam, in Chile, in 10,000 places all around the world. The 'us vs. them' framing, the idea that the world should judge us by our intentions rather than our acts, has blinded us to evil done in our own name ever since. It still does.
3. The Reagan Doctrine, which was similar in intent to the 14 Points, is behind our current policy. We claim the right to do anything, to anyone, to corrupt all institutions, to torture and spy on our own citizens, to destroy any government, all in the name of what we call "freedom." And the world sings with the late Janis Joplin that it's "just another word for nothing left to lose." You can see the Reagan Doctrine in the Gulf War, fought to benefit kings, in the Iraq War, fought to secure oil, and in current Pakistani events. No one else gets anything unless we deign to allow it.

Thinking of Tariq and America

Current events in Pakistan have me thinking of Tariq Mustafa, a friend of this blog in Karachi, Pakistan.

Tariq has been visiting me, at my various blog homes, for nearly a decade now. He is not political. He is a businessperson, a technologist, an expert on Internet and wireless technologies.

He is also an optimist. When I have expressed concern to him about events in Pakistan, he has always said, in effect, stop worrying. Things are never as bad as they seem, he has said.

The most recent posts on his blog include a piece on Urdu support for a WYSIWYG editor, a piece on local tech reporting, and a piece on annoying spam phone calls, which tie up business phone traffic. No matter what government is in power, no matter what their beliefs, it is people like Tariq Mustafa who will be essential to its success. Without creative technologists and businesspeople, a society gets left behind.

The center of the current Pakistani crisis is the capital of Islamabad, which is hundreds of miles away from Karachi. But there have been upheavals in Karachi, too. The very idea of civil society seems to be under attack, and the people are being pulled in two directions, toward either a military dictatorship allied with the U.S., or an Islamic dictatorship which is opposed to the West.

Neither choice offers Pakistan much hope. A military dictatorship would have no economy, and would be an American client. An Islamic dictatorship would also have no economy, and would have to engage in nuclear blackmail and brinkmanship to survive. In neither case would the Pakistani people, or economy, exist.

This Week's Clue: Panic is Easy

Following is the essay you can designate as Volume 10, Number 43  of This Week's Clue, based on the e-mail newsletter I have produced since March, 1997. It would be the issue of October 29.

Enjoy.

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Posting has been slow here lately. This latest issue of a-clue.com is later than any I have yet published.

I remain in a panic.

Relief should come some time tomorrow. I have done everything possible to make that happen.

But you never know. And when we're talking about our own fates, or those of our family, this uncertainty is bound to cause nervousness. In the case of someone who, like me, deals with ADD plus anxiety (which is at the root of all the current problems) you may say the nervousness is squared.

I should tell you -- before you join me in panic -- that even a total failure tomorrow will not spell doom for my family. There are laws to protect people like me. We have been assured they will be deployed, and then considered, by those in authority. I have also learned, as so many do when facing great pain, that we have friends, not just inside the family but outside it, preachers and therapists and educators who have been extraordinarily patient with me.

So there is hope.