28 February, 2004
The Way Outward (1)

Many people who call themselves progressives are in need of a different spatial metaphor. The direction in which they — we — really want to go isn't forward along some ideological railroad track, but outward, cross-country to an alternative path with a different destination and a very different way of traveling. As a rough outline of those differences, here are some suggestions to progressives and particularly to those active in Democratic Party politics in the United States. This is a working list. It's one note that's certain to grow and develop.

On gun control: a breakout position. Public opinion polls have long shown solid support for stricter gun control (roughly two-thirds of respondents), but people can't be mobilized by arguments about registration or corporate liability alone. Move the issue far out in front of this dust cloud at once. Open a national debate about banning private ownership of handguns, not to mention assault rifles and the like. It's not as if a home arsenal were useful for anything but terrorism anymore. Make common cause with the nation's police officers and local government officials. Let people get used to hearing and thinking about real, common-sense action on guns. Let the opposition run to catch up. Never look back, and before long others will stop looking back, too.

On the family: a new departure. Recognize the family-centered society as the one real alternative to the corporate society. This is not about re-education or mythmaking. It's about cooperation for mutual defense among people who know what's important to them. Effective cooperation starts with respect and goodwill. Don't wander off into theoretical Marxian (or Millian) objections to the family as a set of power imbalances, or intellectual contempt for the "family values" of middle-class morality. Look at real people struggling to take care of those they love. Note the family's social function as a nurturer of compassionate personalities and its political function as a subversive cell, a dissident center of loyalty and ethical grounding that tends against mass delusions. Recognize allies among families, work with them. Help them defeat the forces that would effectively dissolve them and turn their members into so many manageable worker-consumers. Never mind the composition of the family. Just swing down from the belfry of liberal thought and rescue this issue from the Right.

On homosexuality: a thoughtful attitude. Dispense with liberal creationism about the nature of homosexuality. Avoid the false dichotomy of arguing whether it's a chosen lifestyle or an inborn trait (ask a clinical psychologist, and you may hear that it's neither). Instead, emphasize the value of each human being regardless of sexual orientation. Same-sex marriage? Let the interested parties fight that battle themselves, outside the electoral arena. This issue has just recently come up and will still be in the raw-emotion stage in November. In other words, it's made to order for the Right. In the elections of 2004, Democrats will be fighting for the future of American democracy. There will be much at stake that should take precedence over this sensational issue. Democrats' stand on same-sex marriage should be that it's an inappropriate subject for a Constitutional amendment, and that they intend to listen to the American people during the long debate that's just now beginning. That's enough. If some people therefore feel that they can't turn out to help defeat the Bush Republicans in 2004, wish them a nice day.

Additions to this working list will attend to the glaring omissions of war and wealth, as well as other subjects.

Note: The second installment, on wealth, can be found here.

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15 February, 2004
The String

George W. Bush has one thing in common with a lot of us: a bad habit of learning only what he already knows. About a week ago came confirmation from an inside source that although Mr. Bush looks at several newspapers each day, he avoids those parts that disagree with his thinking. That's dangerous behavior in the President of the United States, especially when his better half does the same. As she was the inside source, speaking to The New York Times, it must be true — or if it's a canard, the Bushes are behind it themselves. So much for the hope that the President was receiving curtain lectures on the plight of the human race.

A habit that's bad in one transient politician is worse when millions of people take it up. The Internet opens a great vault of information and opinion to us. Let's not use it merely as a polemical armory to be ransacked for weapons, or a pantry where we can sit on the floor and gratify our ideological cravings. If President Bush won't pay attention to alternatives, some of the rest of us had better be in the habit of doing it for him — not only alternatives to the President's settled notions, but to our own as well. For example, if you're accustomed to the view of Henry Kissinger as a high priest of American tyranny, you can enjoy something a little different by reading "Springtime for Kissinger." There's no need to start liking the man, but you may find the contradiction refreshing in itself.

A contradiction is often a valuable discovery. People with complex tastes in knowledge are valuable people, and never more so than when single-minded fanaticism is rampant. As you must have noticed, it's rampant now. We're in the lair of the Minotaur these days. What's worse, there's something in here with us stalking both the Minotaur and ourselves: a gaping, insensate thing that would pacify the world by consuming it. We have to fight, and so we write. But like Theseus in the Labyrinth, we need more than a weapon for survival. We also need a trail of string leading back to civilization, or, shall we say, to the hope of civilization. In times past, such strings have generally consisted of three strands: knowledge, reason, and humanity. All three depend on self-doubt. We desire knowledge because we doubt the adequacy of the knowledge we possess; we submit to reason because we doubt the intuition of any human being; and we loosely bind the two with humanity because we doubt whether we could stand rigid justice.

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12 February, 2004
Springtime for Kissinger

Forgettable fact: Henry Kissinger spoke for the sane while the Bush Administration dreamed of conquering Iraq. When he and Madeleine Albright, President Clinton's Secretary of State, appeared before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on 26 September, 2002, Senator Russell Feingold asked their advice about managing the aftermath of an invasion, in which American troops might be endangered "for months on end." Dr. Albright attempted a cautiously analytical reply that deteriorated into incoherence and barely left her committed to the opinion that many factors remained unknown. Dr. Kissinger replied, in part, as follows:

I am bitterly opposed to a prolonged occupation of a Muslim country at the heart of the Muslim world by Western nations who proclaim the right to re-educate that country. That seems to me essentially a very difficult undertaking and therefore I would believe that that should be turned over to some kind of an international group that can be formed in which we would have a very major role. Therefore it's very difficult to talk about this in the abstract.

To appreciate those words fully, you need to have seen the look on the speaker's face. It was a look of appalled incredulity at the suggestion that anyone would try to do what President Bush has now been trying to do for almost a year. The latter words straggled out in that slow, circumspect way of Dr. Kissinger's when he's straining to let only his eyes speak of idiocy. He might have earned more credit if he'd simply stopped talking sooner. But in the darkness of a reputation such as his, even a little credit gleams like purest gold.

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10 February, 2004
If They Can't Do It in Israel

Can the US do in Iraq what Israel can't do in Israel?

When Saddam Hussein came out of the ground, pundits in Washington and beyond were quick to call it the beginning of the end of terrorist resistance in Iraq, with the rest of the end soon to follow. Of course they were wrong. Of course they'll go on being wrong as long as the US has a presence in Iraq, and then some. After all, the government of Israel has failed for ten years to stop suicide bombings on its home ground, a parcel of land much smaller than Iraq inhabited mainly by people who take the Intifadah personally. Russia is rocked by suicide bombings in its capital, far from any foreign terrorist base, despite a tradition of excellence in state security that goes back to the time of the Czars. That's terrorism. The whole point of it is that it magnifies the perpetrator's will by skewing the odds of having one's way with the world. If millions of normal minds crave peace on earth and a few fevered ones crave hell on earth, the few can easily have their way. A bomb here and a bomb there, and the millions will suffer the hell of lasting fear and grief. The few need never suffer lasting peace and happiness.

Those pundits have less of the sage than the mage about them. They are solemnly deluded intellectual goats whom we sheep are liable to follow merely because we see them ahead of us browsing among formulas for peace in occupied Iraq much as their medieval kin browsed among formulas for turning base metals into gold. It's a wonder that professional thinkers not in thrall to the Bush Administration will go on such a fanciful errand, unless the contemplation of reality has scared them out of their wits.

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4 February, 2004
Combat Pay for the Action-figure President

In America's recent wars there have been officers, stationed at rear bases or at the Pentagon, who would fly into the war zone just long enough to qualify for combat pay. Then they'd fly back to the security of their usual duties. Some of them probably told war stories later on. But it's unlikely that any of those brass-wearing streakers, even the most prestigious of them, received or expected praise for gracing the battlefield with their presence. One can reap a war profit or one can reap moral credit, but one doesn't expect both.

When George W. Bush dared to spend one-tenth of a day in Iraq last Thanksgiving, it was a bit more of a gamble. In his case, moral credit and war profit were one and the same thing. He could win all or he could lose all. It seems that he won, at least while the aroma of turkey hung in the air. A few Democrats saw through his self-serving political event and were not too cowed to condemn it. A few people in the mass media showed themselves unimpressed by it (none with more courage or professional integrity than the troops' own newspaper, The Stars and Stripes). But the consensus in America's opinion-making den of forgetfulness was that Mr. Bush's foray had been a brilliant success: he had done a fine thing, rendered a valuable service, proven his nerve, and made it out of Iraq before word got around that he was there. Another mission accomplished. Well, let us be glad that posterity will have those pictures of Mr. Bush as flying feast-bringer to place beside the ones of him as cock-of-the-walk on that aircraft carrier — with captions to be written later.

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3 February, 2004
The True Cassandra

Note: The Cassandra Notes was the forerunner of The Stringer.

A Cassandra, in the context of public commentary, is roughly the same as a curmudgeon or a Jeremiah. All three think they see trouble ahead or things that are lamentably wrong with the world today. A curmudgeon is churlishly overbearing. One must be fairly old to wear this gnarled-sounding name without embarrassment. A Jeremiah rants morosely about impending damnation and thinks the world would do well to pay attention. A Cassandra, while inclined to think the world won't pay attention and therefore won't do well, may still enjoy facing damnation with so many delightful people. What are the origins of the three words? Even the OED doesn't know where curmudgeon came from. Jeremiah refers to the Biblical prophet who foretold the devastation of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, which he regarded as God-willed punishment of a wayward society. Americans can often hear his namesakes talking on the radio. Cassandra refers to Cassandra of Troy, who was said to have received the gift of prophecy from the god Apollo in token of his love. When Apollo found himself rejected, he added a curse to the gift: Cassandra could make accurate prophecies, all right, but nobody would ever believe them. Now, that doesn't let you know what to expect of The Cassandra Notes; only what's expected of you.

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