I’ve got this article up today at Pajamas Media, on Obama and Iran. Of course, it was written before the Nobel Peace Prize news trumped just about everything else. But in the end, Iran will matter a great deal more, I’m afraid.
April Fools Day comes early: Obama gets the noblest Nobel of them all
My first reaction was to check my calendar when I heard the news that President Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize. But since it stubbornly remained October 9 rather than April 1, and the TV I turned on insisted on treating the event as reality, I came to realize that it’s actually rather appropriate, because of the direction in which the Prizes have been trending in recent years.
But even as debased and nakedly political as the Peace Prize had previously become, this award still surprised me, despite my attempts to look at it from the proper Leftist point of view. For example, I almost immediately thought: boy, must Jimmy Carter be pissed! After all, he had to actually broker a peace agreement between Egypt’s Sadat and Israel’s Begin in the late 70s, and then suck up to the dictators of the world for decades, before he finally got his. And Gore had to produce a movie.
So what has Obama done? I was puzzled at first because I figured that, even on the Nobel’s own bizarre terms (for example, need I say more than Yassar Arafat, Nobel Laureate for Peace?) Obama has actually done nothing.
But after some reflection, I realized it makes sense to award the Peace Prize to Obama for a few months of lofty rhetoric. That’s because the Left and the world of the Peace Prize has become all about good intentions and blah-blah-blah, and it feels so good to hear Obate orate about exactly the things they so want to hear. That’s accomplishment enough, isn’t it, to put him in the ranks of illustrious predecessors Carter, Gore, and Arafat?
One can look at the Peace Prize to Obama as a kind of “A” for effort, akin to the Miss America (actually, Miss World) Congeniality Award. It’s also in line with the trajectory of Obama’s previous political career, in which all he’s usually had to do is show up, say a few things that sound good, and stand back to receive the accolades.
I joked only a few weeks ago that Obama’s next role should be as UN Secretary-General. US President just didn’t seem to be enough for him and doesn’t quite suit his real skill set, which is to mouth platitudes that appeal to the internationals. So in retrospect I should have seen this coming.
But I didn’t. I guess I retained a smidgeon of unjustified respect for the Nobel committee—I thought they’d at least wait a few years. As some have pointed out (take a look at this; funny stuff), Nobel nominations must be in by February 1, and so at that point Obama would have been in office for twelve days. No matter.
But no wonder Obama said he was “humbled” (one of his favorite words) by the decision, and that he sees it as not having been given in recognition for his accomplishments. In this case I think he actually may be sincere. Even egotist Obama may have been surprised by the sheer audacity of this award, as are almost all of us.
But in retrospect I wonder why. In retrospect, it seems inevitable.
[ADDENDUM: Mickey Kaus thinks Obama should turn it down. Fat chance. And even Glenn Greenwald thought the news was an Onion gag.]
[ADDENDUM II: And this is worth reading, for a more serious take on the subject.]
[ADDENDUM III: Here’s another point that had occurred to me as I wondered why give the Prize now: since the Committee wanted so badly for Obama to get the Prize, they had to award it to him before he had a chance to act in some way that might make it more difficult for them later. I’m not at all sure they had anything to worry about on that score, but why not make sure by a preemptive Prize?]
Unintended consequences of the Pill
Perhaps this phenomenon explains this phenomenon.
Reagan and Obama: shining America, sinning America
By hook or by crook: the public option edges closer
Whoever said our legislators (approval rating: 21%) weren’t creative?
They sure are working hard to figure out a way to get enough votes to slide some sort of public option by, whether Americans like it or not—although if certain recent polls are any indication, Americans actually like it quite a bit.
Let’s see: first there was the trigger. Then, the opportunity for states without affordable insurance to opt-in to a public option if they choose to do so. A new twist on the latter theme is a for a state opt-out clause, whereby:
…[I]nstead of starting with no national public option and giving state governments the right to develop their own, the newest compromise approaches the issue from the opposite direction: beginning with a national public option and giving state governments the right not to have one”¦
Allahpundit sees a state opt-out clause as just another ploy to hide the fact that the slide to a public option will be well-nigh inevitable:
When, not if, some sort of federal tax hike is passed to help pay for this boondoggle ”” maybe it’ll be a VAT, maybe just an increase in the marginal income tax rates ”” would residents of states without a public option get some sort of deduction or credit? If not, there’s going to be intense pressure on the state legislature to approve a public option if only to ensure that the locals get something for the tax dollars being siphoned from them.
And then of course reconciliation’s always available to pass the public option. Its use, however, would be unprecedented for a non-budget bill that promises to make sweeping changes in a matter so vital.
Does America care about the methods used to pass the bill? It would seem so, if this poll is any indication. Not surprisingly, Democrats polled wouldn’t mind if a health care reform bill has no Republican support (63% in favor), while Republicans protest (88% against). The more interesting finding is that Independents are against it too (62% say no). So using reconciliation to pass transformative legislation that Republicans fail to support and some Democrats oppose also would seem to be a highly unpopular move.
Obama’s health care reform plan (whatever that is) gets low marks in general, 47% against to 40% in favor, with Independents again making the difference by coming down against it. One would think that would mean opposition to the public option, but that doesn’t seem to be the case—although the way the poll question on that subject is worded, “Do you support or oppose giving people the option of being covered by a government health insurance plan that would compete with private plans?” may skew the response (for example, some people might not mind a public option that would fairly compete with private plans rather than drive them out of business, but don’t think the bill will provide one). At any rate, according to the poll, Americans say “yes” to this question about the private option by a wide margin, 61% to 34%.
Why then do so many people remain against Obamacare? Perhaps it’s because some of them, like me, don’t believe that private insurance will be able to compete with the public option as proposed, and that their health care choices will be more highly restricted; the poll is mum on that score since it doesn’t ask that question. But we do know that there’s a great deal of skepticism about Obama’s promise that the plan will be deficit-neutral. Even Democrats have their doubts (only 50% think it will be, versus 32% who don’t), whereas Republicans have powerful suspicions about Obama’s claim (93% to 5%), and Independents feel likewise, although not quite as strongly (75% to 18%). That’s not exactly a vote in confidence in the bill as a whole. It’s likely that what has been percevied as Obama’s broken promises on the stimulus have added to the public’s distrust, and rightly so.
As for the CBO, someone may have done a bit of arm-twisting there to get them on board. Megan McCardle finds their new figures “deeply puzzling” (and remember, she used to be an Obama supporter):
So most of the major components of the program are scheduled to either cost more, or raise less revenue . . . but overall, it’s generating a bigger surplus. It’s the healthcare economist’s version of “We’re losing money on every unit, but we’ll make it up in volume!”
Follow the link to see her efforts to figure it out, as well as some interesting attempts in the comments section.
I don’t usually make predictions, but I’ll make a tentative one right now: some form of health care reform will be passed, and it will include at least some type of public option. The method will be controversial, and the results will not be deficit-neutral.
New York finds out that (gasp!) taxing the rich more doesn’t pay
Why do we have to keep rediscovering—as the state of New York recently has—that raising taxes on the rich is so often of illusory benefit?
Probably because it’s such a tempting thing to do. After all, there the rich are, with their perks, their conspicuous consumption, and their excess money (“excess” may be defined as “making more money than I think they should”) just ripe for the plucking. So why not take it? Heaven knows the states could use the money; many are in dire straits. And they’ve got the power to tax, so why not use it?
Well, aside from any other issues, there’s one simple and practical reason: raising taxes on the rich often results in a drop in tax dollars collected. This simple but counter-intuitive economic truth is something many liberal legislators continue to ignore, as New York has just demonstrated:
Paterson [New York’s governor, who to his credit had opposed the tax hike, to no avail] noted that revenue from tax increases was running 20 percent below projections and that, in particular, the wealthy were not paying up. So far, the state had only collected about half of an expected $1 billion in income tax revenues from the state’s wealthiest residents. “You heard the mantra, ‘Tax the rich, tax the rich,”‘ Paterson said. “We’ve done that. We’ve probably lost jobs and driven people out of the state.”
Well, it’s not as though they weren’t warned; but I guess they don’t read neo-neocon (see this article I wrote on the subject back in May, and also this one). And I guess they don’t read the Wall Street Journal either, because the mechanism by which it all happens was explained there as follows:
We [Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore] believe there are three unintended consequences from states raising tax rates on the rich. First, some rich residents sell their homes and leave the state; second, those who stay in the state report less taxable income on their tax returns; and third, some rich people choose not to locate in a high-tax state. Since many rich people also tend to be successful business owners, jobs leave with them or they never arrive in the first place. This is why high income-tax states have such a tough time creating net new jobs for low-income residents and college graduates.
Whatever his flaws may be (and Obama seems to think he has a good many), New York Governor David Paterson seems to have been paying attention. Perhaps this is because he has had personal experience on the matter; here’s how it went down [emphasis mine]:
When David Paterson became governor of New York…the former state senator from Harlem shocked New Yorkers by declaring that taxes were too high and that he had many friends who had left the state because there were better opportunities elsewhere. New York had to grab control of its spending rather than continue raising taxes, said the former state senator with a long tax-and-spend track record, in what amounted to the equivalent of ideological heresy.
Still, as a political lightweight and accidental governor, Paterson quickly got rolled by the big-government wing of his own party, who passed a budget for this year with $6.1 billion in projected new taxes and fees, led by sharply higher rates starting for those earning more than $200,000 a year. Asked if the budget made sense in the recession an outgunned Paterson said, “None of this makes sense.”
The irony is that it’s Paterson who will be the one more likely to suffer the political fallout, rather than that big-government wing of his party. My guess is that most of those representatives are from districts where the people like what they did, and even demand it; the desire to give the at least the appearance of soaking the rich is so very strong.
If these state legislators face re-election, I doubt that their voters will connect the dots and realize that higher taxes are driving money away from the state rather than towards it. After all, as the article said, this is political heresy—and we can’t have any steenking facts get in the way of our cherished beliefs, can we?
Obama and the Generals: decison-making on military matters
Presidents are civilians, but they are also Commanders-in-Chief. Generals advise them in times of war, but there is an inherent conflict present in the relationship.
The buck stops on the president’s desk. But especially when he has no military experience or knowledge (and President Obama has neither, although he is not alone among past presidents in having little or none of both) it can be difficult to for a president to weigh how much to rely on his generals and how much to rely on himself.
LBJ famously faced this conundrum, and he solved it rather poorly. Sometimes he relied too much on his civilian “best and brightest” such as McNamara, and sometimes he believed the generals. But he was aware of his own limitations, as suggested by this excerpt from a April 1964 phone call with McNamara:
LBJ: Have we got anybody that’s got a military mind that can give us some military plans for winning that war?
RM: Well, Buzz Wheeler is going out with me.
LBJ: I know but he went out last time and he just came back with, with planes, that’s all he had in mind, wasn’t it?
RM: Well we, uh, yes, well he had more than that but he emphasized the planes. And the planes, Max Taylor agrees, are not the answer to the problem. Whether we should have more planes or not is another question, but it’s not going to make any difference in the short run, that’s certain.
LBJ: Let’s get some more of something, my friend, because I’m gonna have a heart attack if you don’t get me something. I’m just sitting here every day and uh, this war that I’m winning and I’m not doing much about fightin’ it, and uh I’m not doing much about winnin’ it, and I just read about it and uh. Let’s get somebody that wants to do something besides drop a bomb, but uh, that can go in and take in after these damn fellas and run them back where they belong. It looks like-…
We need somebody over there that can give us better plans than we’ve got, because what we’ve got is what we’ve had since ’54. We’re not getting it done, we’re, we’re losing so we need something new. It’s uh, if you pitch this ol’ southpaw every day and you wind up as the Washington Senators and you lose, well uh we’d better go us get us a new pitcher.
RM: I know it-
LBJ: Let’s find one. And tell those damn old generals over there to find one for ya, or you gonna go out there yourself…
Johnson struggled for his entire administration with this dilemma and never found a satisfactory answer, and it wound up ending his presidency prematurely. Now Obama faces a different version of the same conundrum. And I’m not at all sure that he’s aware of his own limitations in the area.
Let’s just assume, however, that Obama’s heart is at least in the right place, and that he wants the US to succeed in Afghanistan (if only to shore up his own reputation as a tough guy, or for other, less narcissitic, reasons). Even so, it’s not at all clear what’s to be done, just as it wasn’t clear for LBJ in Vietnam or for President Bush in Iraq. The surge was Bush’s answer during his administration, and it turned out to be a good one. But the decision wasn’t arrived at until a great deal of time had passed, and valuable blood and treasure wasted.
Obama is not short on advice, but of course it’s contradictory. There’s been a great deal of discussion about whether McChrystal was right in publicly discussing what he thinks ought to be done, or whether he should have kept quiet and taken it up with Obama only (of course, if Obama had previously consulted McChrystal—his own hand-picked commander in Afghanistan—more often, it might have been easier for the general to go the private route). But I’m more interested in the question of how a civilian president makes military decisions, including how he much he decides to follow the advice of his military advisers.
There is little question that Obama’s approach to Afghanistan was never well thought out, and is still very confused. We don’t need to see the inner working of the Obama circle to conclude that; as Christi Parsons reports in the LA Times:
The exchanges suggested some disarray in the Obama administration’s attempts to forge a new policy on Afghanistan and underscored wide differences among top officials over the correct approach.
Ah, but things were so much clearer to candidate Obama! Back in March of 2008, he had no problem seeing what Bush was doing wrong, and talking about it:
Obama said that while President Bush has said that he follows the advice of his generals regarding Iraq, when they give the president advice he doesn’t like — cautioning against the War in Iraq, for example — Bush doesn’t listen to them.
“There were generals at the beginning of the conflict that said this is going to require many more troops, will cost us much more … those generals were pushed aside,” Obama said.
Hindsight is wonderful, but the shoe is on the other foot now. And it’s not so easy after all, is it, President Obama?
A day late and a dollar short
Althouse and Moore; Jews and Polanski and bankers
I noticed an interesting and controversial discussion at Ann Althouse’s blog in response to a post involving the abominable Michael Moore’s latest movie, the anti-capitalism screed about which Ann writes:
in attacking the banking system, Moore presented quite a parade of Jewish names and faces. He never says the word “Jewish,” but I think the anti-Semitic theme is there. We receive long lectures about how capitalism is inconsistent with Christianity, followed a heavy-handed array of ”” it’s up to you to see that they are ”” Jewish villains.
Am I wrong to see Moore as an anti-Semite? I don’t know, but the movie worked as anti-Semitic propaganda. I had to struggle to fight off the idea the movie seemed to want to plant in my head.
In response, a commenter named “Florida” wrote the following [I’ve corrected spelling errors in the quote to make for ease of reading]:
“Am I wrong to see Moore as an anti-Semite?”
Is mere criticism of Jews anti-Semitic?
Let me ask the question this way: Is your criticism of Barack Obama racist?
Just a few days ago, a parade of Jews came out in force behind the proposition that the rapist of a 13-year-old girl should be let free. Led by Harvey Weinstein, hundreds of Jews signed a petition demanding that Polanski be set free.
Some of these Jews argued that the rape wasn’t really rape because it wasn’t “rape rape” whatever the fuck that meant. [sic: Whoopi Goldberg might have a Jewish last name, but she sure isn’t Jewish]
I noticed a lot of Goldbergs, Applebaums, Cohens and Weinsteins leading the parade of support for Roman Polanski. Lots of Jews … certainly not all of his supporters are Jews, but they are certainly prominent. Should they not be named?
Should we not take note that they are Jews?
Deserved criticism, or anti-Semitism?…
But I will say this, Ann: Criticizing Jews is not anti-Semitic any more than you criticizing black people is racist.
You can’t have it both ways, Ann.
It is apparent that criticizing a Jewish person or criticizing a black person is not anti-Semitic or racist on the face of it, unless of course the criticism is couched in racist terms. But criticizing Jews as a group or black people as a group is a bit more suspect, although certainly not automatically evidence of any bias. But it can be, depending on what form the criticism takes and whether it is based on valid points.
For example—although I’ve not read the entire petition in Polanski’s defense—let’s say for the sake of argument that “Florida” is indeed correct, and that a lot of Jewish names are featured on it. But remember that Jews are way overrepresented in many professions, and one of them happens to be acting and production in Hollywood. Since it is logical to imagine that Polanki’s most vehement defenders would be drawn mostly from those professions, the real question would be: are there more Jews on the petition than their percentage in the fields in question?
I haven’t a clue what the answer is, but that would be the only relevant statistic. And if the answer is “no,” then pointing out that there are a lot of Jews there without questioning whether they are overrepresented or even perhaps underrepresented could (and probably would) be racism, either intended or merely apparent.
The same is true of the original impetus for Althouse’s post about Moore and those nasty capitalists: is Moore singling out Jews for more than their fair share of criticism in light of their actual percentage of representation in his dread enemy capitalism, or not?
Jews happen to be prominent far beyond their actual numbers in the world (which are miniscule) in a number of ways. For example, there are more Jews in medicine than should be the case if you look at their percentage of the population—way more. This observation would only be seen as possibly anti-Semitic if it were part of a screed against medicine itself; otherwise it’s either neutral or even laudatory, depending on what you think of the medical profession. Likewise, if a person noticed that there were a great number of Jews on a list of doctors convicted of malpractice (surely a negative thing), it would mean nothing unless the percentage of Jews on that list was significantly greater than their representation in the profession as a whole.
What is true of Jews is true of any group that is overrepresented in any endeavor compared to their percentage in the general population. For example, let’s take the issue of using steroids in a sport such as baseball. There might be a great many blacks accused or convicted of doing this (I don’t know whether there are, but let’s just say for the sake of argument that there are). But in order to know whether blacks are more likely to use steroids, you’d have to know what the percentage of blacks in the field was, because there could appear to be a great many blacks on the list of those abusing the drugs and yet black people could actually be underrepresented in comparison to their rather large presence in the sport.
Likewise, most (actually, all) of the Catholic priests who abused children were Catholic. That may seem like an obvious and even absurd statement to make—of course they were. And the Catholic Church was derelict in its duty to protect the victimized children as it bent over backwards for many years to protect the priests at their expense. But if a person were to use this example to say something special about Catholicism vs. other religions, or Catholic priests vs. other clergy in terms of abuse, the correct statistic to note would be the percentage of Catholic priests abusing children vs. the total number of Catholic priests, to compare this to the same statistic for clergy of other denominations, and then to compare and contrast how those religions dealt with the problem during the same era.
Conor Cruise O’Brien: prescient on terrorism
I came across the name of Conor Cruise O’Brien the other day, and as Google led to Google, I found a strangely prescient article of his from the Atlantic of 1986 on the subject of terrorism .
Take a look. Not everything in it has turned out to be correct, but much of it is spot on. It’s rare to go back that far in time and see such clear-sightedness on the subject.
O’Brien died less than a year ago. He was a fascinating amalgam, a man who defied easy Left vs. Right categorizations. I’ve not done a definitive study of his work, but from what little I’ve read of it (and from what I’ve read about him) he strikes me as having been an original thinker and iconoclast:
[O’Brien] retained a radical outlook, yet his career took a left to right wing path; he was strongly interested in the progress of South Africa, and in later years took a pro-Israel stance. He summarised his position as “I intend to administer a shock to the Irish psyche”.
O’Brien’s initial interest in, and understanding of, terrorism was in the context of the “troubles” and the IRA. But unlike some who were experts in that field, he didn’t imagine that all terrorists operated exactly in the same way. Here, for example, is O’Brien on the Palestine question, writing in 1986:
The clear implication [of a WaPo article O’Brien just quoted] is that negotiation between Israel and Jordan can dry up “a principal source of terrorism.” Now, nobody who has studied that political context at all, and is not blinded by wishful thinking, could possibly believe that. For the Arab terrorists””and most other Arabs”””the unresolved Palestinian question” and the existence of the State of Israel are one and the same thing. The terrorists could not possibly be appeased, or made to desist, by Jordan’s King Hussein’s getting back a slice of the West Bank, which is the very most that could come out of a negotiation between Jordan and Israel. The terrorists and their backers would denounce such a deal as treachery and seek to step up their attacks, directing these against Jordan as well as Israel.
What follows in O’Brien’s article is one of the best discussions of terrorists and their motives I’ve ever seen; I will present an excerpt in a moment. Note that what he observes about them is completely in line with Arafat’s much later behavior at Camp David in 2000.
But also keep in mind that O’Brien wrote this before the suicide bomber became commonplace; the terrorists O’Brien is describing here are the old-fashioned kind who lived to fight another day. In today’s world of the suicide bomber, his arguments about the power and prestige terrorists gain would refer mainly to the higher-ups, the ones who train and orchestrate the whole thing but never willingly die themselves—although it is also true that suicide bombers gain some power and prestige posthumously, and their families are often rewarded by their governments as well:
Terrorists have a grievance, which they share with members of a wider community: the division of Ireland, the division of Palestine, the inroads of secularism into Islam, or whatever. But they also have, from the moment they become terrorists, significant amounts of power, prestige, and access to wealth, and these constitute vested interests in the present, irrespective of the attainment or non-attainment of their declared long-term political objectives.
The sentimentalist thinks of the terrorist as driven to violence by grievance or oppression. It would be more realistic to think of the terrorist as hauling himself up, by means of the grievance or oppression and the violence it legitimizes, to relative power, prestige, and privilege in the community to which he belongs…
I don’t mean that the terrorist is necessarily, or even probably, insincere about the national (or religious or other collective) grievance or in his hatred toward those seen as responsible for the grievance. On the contrary, hatred is one of the things that keep him going, and the gratification of hatred is among the rewards of the terrorist. The terrorist is not just a goon, out for the loot. His political motivation is genuine. But there are other rewards in his way of life as well as the hazy reward of progress toward the political objective. The possession of a known capacity and willingness to kill confers authority and glamour in the here and now, even on rank-and-file members in the urban ghetto or in the village. On the leaders it confers national and even international authority and glamour, and independence from financial worries.
If we accept that the terrorist’s way of life procures him immediate rewards of that nature, and that he is probably not insensible to at least some of the rewards in question, it seems to follow that he will probably be reluctant to relinquish those rewards by voluntarily putting himself out of business.
The situation thus outlined has a bearing of a negative nature on the notion that there are “negotiated solutions” to the “problems” that “cause” terrorism.
First of all, a negotiated solution””being by definition an outcome that offers some satisfaction to both parties””will be inherently distasteful to terrorists and their admirers, accustomed as these are to regarding one of the parties (Britain, Israel, or another) as evil incarnate.
Second, to exploit that genuine distaste will be in the interests of the terrorists, in relation to the reward system discussed above. So pride and profit converge into a violent rejection of the “negotiated solution”””which therefore is not a solution to terrorism.
As I noted earlier, I don’t agree with everything O’Brien says in the article. For instance, he goes on to state that military action against terrorism only backfires, leading to more recruitment. I happen to think that is sometimes true and sometimes false; in the case of Iraq, for example, it was true for a while and then ultimately sparked an escalation in terrorism by Arabs (al Qaeda) against Arabs (much of the population of Iraq) that appears to have had a negative effect on recruitment.
Here’s one of O’Brien’s predictions that has certainly come to pass:
The numbers of the frustrated are constantly on the increase, and so is their awareness of the life-style of the better-off and the vulnerability of the better-off. Among the better-off themselves are bored young people looking for the kicks that violence can provide, and thus for causes that legitimize violence, of which there are no shortage. A wide variety of people feel starved for attention, and one surefire way of attracting instantaneous worldwide attention through television is to slaughter a considerable number of human beings, in a spectacular fashion, in the name of a cause.
Although the causes themselves hardly constitute the sole motivation of the terrorists””as terrorists claim they do””they are not irrelevant, either. The cause legitimizes the act of terror in the terrorist’s own eyes and in those of others belonging to his nation, faith, or culture. Certain cultures and subcultures, homes of frustrated causes, are destined breeding grounds for terrorism. The Islamic culture is the most notable example. That culture’s view of its own rightful position in the world is profoundly at variance with the actual order of the contemporary world. It Is God’s will that the House of Islam should triumph over the House of War (the non-Moslem world), and not just by spiritual means. “Islam Means Victory” is a slogan of the Iranian fundamentalists in the Gulf War. To strike a blow against the House of War is meritorious; consequently, there is widespread support for activities condemned in the West as terrorist. Israel is one main target for these activities, but the activities would not be likely to cease even if Israel came to an end. The Great Satan in the eyes of Ayatollah Khomeini””and of the millions for whom he speaks””is not Israel but the United States. The defeat of Israel would, in those eyes, be no more than a portent of the impending defeat of the Great Satan…
The wellsprings of terrorism are widespread and deep. The interaction between modern communications systems and archaic fanaticism (and other sources of resentment and ambition) is likely to continue to stimulate terrorist activity.
After describing the problem so well, what is O’Brien’s solution? He suggests that something must happen to cause those countries who oppose terrorism—and particular its Islamicist supremacist form—to coordinate their efforts against it. He knows this will be difficult, but he foresees it as a possibility in the following circumstances:
Can limited superpower consensus be attained for coordinated action against terrorism? I think it can, especially if international terrorist activity grows to the degree that it begins to pose a clear threat to international peace and stability””not just as these are perceived by one superpower but as perceived by both. There is a historical precedent, flawed””like all such precedents””but suggestive. This is the case of the Barbary pirates…
That’s a good description of what began to happen in the immediate post-9/11 period. Of course, we who have the hindsight of history know that such coordination, cooperation, and resolve was only a pale shadow of what it needed to be to get the job done, and that in any event it did not last. The future does not look any brighter in that respect. One hopes that it will not take another huge terrorist attack to change that picture.
Prize jello
It’s high time for another jello interlude, is it not?
A reader’s tip led me to this fabulous site. There are so many wonders there it behooves you to go visit. I’ll just reproduce a tempting few here.
Jello Saran wrap:
Jello Carmen Miranda hats:
[ADDENDUM: The kind reader who sent me the link to the jello photos is the author of this blog.]
The willingness to believe that two plus two makes five
I read Orwell’s masterful dystopic political vision 1984 when I was about twelve years old, old enough to get what it was aiming at but young enough to be especially frightened by some of its most memorable images, which have stuck with me ever since.
Of course, there was Room 101 with the rats—who could forget that? But another image that made a deep impression, but that described a concept I didn’t quite understand at the time, was that of Winston Smith’s manipulative and brilliant interrogator O’Brien torturing Winston in order to force him to say—and what’s more to believe—that two plus two makes five if the Party willed it.
Here’s the relevant passage:
“Do you remember,” [O’Brien] went on, “writing in your diary, ‘Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four’?”
“Yes,” said Winston.
O’Brien held up his left hand, its back toward Winston, with the thumb hidden and the four fingers extended.
“How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?”
“Four.”
“And if the Party says that it is not four but five — then how many?”
“Four.”
The word ended in a gasp of pain. The needle of the dial had shot up to fifty-five. The sweat had sprung out all over Winston’s body. The air tore into his lungs and issued again in deep groans which even by clenching his teeth he could not stop. O’Brien watched him, the four fingers still extended. He drew back the lever. This time the pain was only slightly eased.
“How many fingers, Winston?”
“Four.”
The needle went up to sixty.
“How many fingers, Winston?”
“Four! Four! What else can I say? Four!”
The needle must have risen again, but he did not look at it. The heavy, stern face and the four fingers filled his vision. The fingers stood up before his eyes like pillars, enormous, blurry, and seeming to vibrate, but unmistakably four.
“How many fingers, Winston?”
“Four! Stop it, stop it! How can you go on? Four! Four!”
“How many fingers, Winston?”
“Five! Five! Five!”
“No, Winston, that is no use. You are lying. You still think there are four. How many fingers, please?”
“Four! Five! Four! Anything you like. Only stop it, stop the pain!”
Abruptly he was sitting up with O’Brien’s arm round his shoulders. He had perhaps lost consciousness for a few seconds. The bonds that had held his body down were loosened. He felt very cold, he was shaking uncontrollably, his teeth were chattering, the tears were rolling down his cheeks. For a moment he clung to O’Brien like a baby, curiously comforted by the heavy arm round his shoulders. He had the feeling that O’Brien was his protector, that the pain was something that came from outside, from some other source, and that it was O’Brien who would save him from it.
“You are a slow learner, Winston,” said O’Brien gently.
“How can I help it?” he blubbered. “How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.”
“Sometimes, Winston, sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.”
If that doesn’t send a chill down your spine, you haven’t got one.
At this point in my life, I think I understand the passage all too well. It ties directly into observations such as the following one by Hilton Kramer (he is referring to Stalinism, but he could just as well be talking about the most rabid adherents of any sort of Leftism):
It is in the nature of Stalinism for its adherents to make a certain kind of lying—and not only to others, but first of all to themselves—a fundamental part of their lives. It is always a mistake to assume that Stalinists do not know the truth about the political reality they espouse. If they don’t know the truth (or all of it) one day, they know it the next, and it makes absolutely no difference to them politically For their loyalty is to something other than the truth. And no historical enormity is so great, no personal humiliation or betrayal so extreme, no crime so heinous that it cannot be assimilated into the ‘ideals’ that govern the true Stalinist mind which is impervious alike to documentary evidence and moral discrimination.
I saw this propensity first-hand myself as a child, in an uncle of mine who was a pro-Communist and whom I’ve described in this essay. My uncle had no problem integrating any new fact about Communism into his pro-Soviet world view.
At the time, my uncle’s behavior was a puzzlement to me. But now I know that he was a true believer, and the goal was the most important thing. If the ideals of Communism (or progressivism, or socialism, or whatever far-Left movement one is considering) are considered the greatest good—equality, “fairness,” help for the poor—then one never has to notice all the evils that are knowingly committed in its name, or all its dreadful although unintended (and yet inevitable) consequences, even for the poor people it is supposedly designed to help. In fact, one is obliged to deny them, no matter how strong the evidence.
To keep one’s eyes on the prize, whether that prize be the idealistic goals cited above or the simple drive for absolute power voiced by the fictional O’Brien when he tells Winston “The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power”—it is necessary for the follower to filter out reality and to believe whatever is seen as bringing the world closer to the goal.
The mental gymnastics involved are described very well in another literary work, this time one of nonfiction, the autobiography of Communist-turned-government-informant Whittaker Chambers, entitled Witness [emphasis mine]:
When I first knew him, Harry Freeman [who later become the assistant US chief of Tass, the Soviet news service] was just out of Cornell University, where he had brilliantly majored in history…the best mind that I was to meet among the American Communist intellectuals. It was an entirely new type of mind to me. No matter how favorable his opinion had been to an individual or his political role, if that person fell from grace in the Communist Party, Harry Freeman changed his opinion about him instantly. That was not strange, that was a commonplace of Communist behavior. What was strange was that Harry seemed to change without any effort or embarrasment. There seemed to vanish from his mind any recollection that he had ever held any opinion other than the approved one. If you taxed him with his former views, he would show surprise, and that surprise would be authentic. He would then demonstrate to you, in a series of mental acrobatics so flexible that the shifts were all but untraceable, that he had never thought anything else.
O’Brien would be proud—now that’s the sort of mental flexibility that the Party needs and desires.
Of course, rationalization and denial of facts that don’t fit a person’s previously held beliefs is not just a province of the Left. It’s a general human trait, and that is why a mind is a difficult thing to change. But the Left carefully nurtures, fosters, advocates, and even requires this sort of denial, whereas it is my observation that the Right (and this was something that was formative in my own change experience), while hardly immune, is much less demanding that its adherents dismiss and deny logic and inconvenient facts.
[ADDENDUM: You might find this video to be of related interest (hat tip: commenter “gcotharn”).]