Between Hope and Fear

Youth, Interrupted

2007-04-18T21:25:00.001-07:00

Somewhere I was listening to an interview with a witness of the Kent State massacre in 1970. The horror of the campus killings 37 years ago were compared to events at Virginia Tech.

Hearing about Kent State reminded me how that massacre helped to forge a generation. So too will Virginia Tech, though quite differently.

Kent State was a tragedy that was the result of two sides facing off over the war in Vietnam. One side was protesting the seemingly endless and expanding conflict in Indochina; the other side was called in to maintain civil order. Guns went off, and four people lay dead. The young generation just emerging from the 1960s rallied around this event. The antiwar cause was buttressed. Their deaths, while tragic, were at least casualties in a battle of ideas.

But what of today's young generation? The Virginia Tech massacre seems prophetic for them. Nine times the number died at Virginia Tech than did at Kent. What cause did these young people die for?

None at all. They died because a lunatic got his hands on some very effective killing technology. The press looks for meaning, and answers. They'll never be found. Because they're not there.

Today's young generation must contend with mass death at the hands of anonymous people, with anonymous causes. Certainly, murder sprees are not unique to today's young generation. But situational catastrophe seems to have taken on a life of its own in the past 10 years. In terms of age, it's possible that some of the kids who were shot at by Cho Seung-Hui might have dodged bullets of similar intent at Columbine High School in 1999. This is a generation that has become accustomed to being distracted, influenced, and sometimes killed en masse by random occurrence without a coherent purpose.

Some of these kids are in school, others among them are in Iraq and Afghanistan. There too, they must contend with anonymous, random violence. International Jihad does indeed represent a cause, albeit incoherent much of the time. But each act of violence in the name of Jihad seems arbitrary, and murderous.

What must today's young people make of the world they must engage? What are their expectations, as a generation? Media has pounded them all their lives about how the world is dangerous; it's full of child molesters, murderers, disease and vice. They're a generation raised with interior childhoods, safe from what lurks outside, but free to observe it on a screen. All their worldly needs could be met in homes and safe places. Childhood became a crafted vocation.

Virginia Tech was the slaughter of the lambs by one of their tormented own. While their lives had purpose and meaning, their deaths had none. That's the despicable truth. Where Kent defined the older generation's opposition to war, Virginia Tech defines only an rising tide of random atrocity without end.

Wish them well.

Running Interference

2007-02-01T20:22:00.000-08:00

I live in Boston's backyard. I've been hearing the buzz and fuss about the 'Aqua Teen Hunger Force' guerrilla marketing campaign snafu:

The US city of Boston was snarled in traffic jams January 31st as police investigated hoax boaxes with flashing lights placed around bridges all over the city.
Turner Broadcasting Systems had hired people to plant the strange devices around the city of Boston to market a television cartoon called "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" which has a movie coming out February 23rd.

Road and rail traffic was disrupted by the Police as they investigated the hoax and removed the boxes within emergency protocols for bomb scares. Two men alleged to have placed the boxes have been charged, and Turner Broadcast Systems apologized. Boston's mayor will pursue compensation to the city for the cost of the scare.

The media circus seems to have oscillated around this event. Most people think Bostonians have overreacted. I agree.

If this were just the work of renegade guerilla artists, it would be one thing. But this isn't quite that.

Guerrilla tactics are flourishing in the hyper-networked age. We see the guerrilla meme changing the nature of war, marketing and advertising -- even childhood. We see it in art, as a form of expression.

The magnetic lighted boards planted in Boston by Berdovsky and Stevens were a kind of guerilla art that is ultimately funded by a large entertainment conglomerate -- Turner Broadcasting. It was apparently the brainchild of Interference Marketing, Inc., engaged by Turner to promote 'Aqua Teen Hunger Force.' In the end, it was all part of a promotion created to enrich a mega-corporation that is shrewd enough to hijack the emerging guerrilla cultural meme.

A friend of mine said that this is a pathology of the wartime mentality we have assumed over five years. Indeed, these are jittery times. In some ways, there's a similarity between this event and the overreaction to Welles' War of the Worlds radio broadcast in 1938. It was the eve of another war then. People had lost their sense of humor. Who can fault them, under the circumstances?

The two men arrested for planting the devices later gave a surreal press interview for television. They made a mockery of the situation, which on some level couldn't be denied as being ridiculous. I wanted to like them and appreciate their Dada moment.

But I didn't. What troubles me is that I can't determine if Berdovsky and Stevens are renegade Dadaist artists, brilliant marketing tacticians, hapless idiots or corporate stooges.

People wag their fingers at an overreactive, jittery populace as being the villain in this situation. But really, it's hard to tell who the villain is. People living in a paranoid age acting irrationally? The pathologies created by the war on terror? Artists? Marketing? Corporate media? The guerilla mentality?

The whole bloody circus?

Hama Complex

2007-01-26T06:40:00.000-08:00

One of the arguments for pulling out of Iraq is that its citizens are not capable of establishing anything remotely like a democracy. We flatter ourselves to believe that our 230 year old democratic experiment has any chance of getting off the ground in a region defined by clan, religious edict and ethnic rivalries that reach back into antiquity.

I will confess that I myself have nursed this opinion on and off, agog at the carnage in Iraq. Whether or not our boys and girls on the ground are the stewards of a fledgling democracy or are greasing the gears of Iraq's next ethnic meat machine, it's not obvious which will prevail.

I read somewhere that the Americans are too nice to run a place like Iraq. Our introspection gets us caught up in our moral lapses in places like Abu Ghraib, much less actually rule with an iron fist. No, I don't think Abu Ghraib was a good thing, or necessary. I don't particularly want our soldiers to become common thugs. There's nothing to win when that happens.

But the point of our light-handedness -- our niceness -- remains.

Many readers here might be familiar with the massacre in Hama, Syria, in 1982. Here's the background from Wikipedia:

At the time, the Middle East was in deep turmoil and Syria had been deeply involved in Lebanon's Civil War since 1976 and the beginning of the 1982 Lebanon War. Problems also arose from Turkey, which mobilized troops on its borders with Syria primarily to deal with Kurdish rebels and accused Syria of supporting and training the PKK rebels within Turkey. The Muslim Brotherhood took advantage of this situation to start defying Hafez al-Assad's rule. It undertook guerrilla activities in multiple cities within the country targeting officers, government officials and infrastructure. The anti-regime violence included the killings of eighty-three young military cadets at an artillery school in Aleppo in June 1979, and three car bomb attacks in Damascus between August and November 1980 that killed several hundred people. In July 1980, membership in the Muslim Brotherhood was made a capital offense punishable by death, with the ratification of Law No. 49. Throughout the early 1980s the Muslim Brotherhood staged a series of bomb attacks against the government and its officials, including a nearly successful attempt to assassinate president Hafiz al-Assad on June 26, 1980, during an official state reception for the president of Mali. When a machine gun salvo missed him, al-Assad ran to kick a hand grenade aside, and his bodyguard sacrificed himself to smother the explosion of another one. Surviving with only light injuries, al-Assad's revenge was swift and merciless: only hours later many hundreds of imprisoned Islamists were murdered in a massacre carried out by his brother Rifaat al-Assad in Tadmor Prison.
Calls for vengeance grew within the brotherhood, and bomb attacks increased in frequency. Events culminated with a general insurrection in the conservative Sunni town of Hama in February 1982. Islamists and other opposition activists proclaimed Hama a "liberated city" and urged Syria to rise up against the "infidel". Brotherhood fighters swept the city of Ba'thists, breaking into the homes of government employees and suspected supporters of the regime, killing about 50. The goal of the attack on Hama was to cease the rebellious activities of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. The assault began on February 2 with extensive shelling of the town of 350 000 inhabitants. Before the attack, the Syrian government called for the city's surrender and warned that anyone remaining in the city would be considered as a rebel. Robert Fisk in his book Pity the Nation described how civilians were fleeing Hama while tanks and troops were moving towards the city's outskirts to start the siege. He cites reports from fleeing civilians and soldiers of mass death and shortages of food and water.(Pity the Nation, pages 185-86)

According to Amnesty International, the Syrian military bombed the old streets of the city from the air to facilitate the introduction of military forces and tanks through the narrow streets, where homes were crushed by tanks during the first four days of fighting. They also claim that the Syrian military pumped poison gas into buildings where insurgents were said to be hiding.

The army was mobilized, and Hafez again sent Rifaat's special forces and Mukhabarat agents to the city. After encountering fierce resistance, they used artillery to blast Hama into submission. After a two-week battle, the town was securely in government hands again. Then followed several weeks of torture and mass executions of suspected rebel sympathizers, killing many thousands, known as the Hama Massacre. Journalist Robert Fisk, who was in Hama shortly after the massacre, estimated at the time that 10,000 citizens were killed and later described the death count as as many as 20,000; (Pity the Nation, pages 186; [1]), but according to Thomas Friedman (From Beirut to Jerusalem, pages 76-105) Rifaat later boasted of killing 38,000 people. The Syrian Human Rights Committee estimates 30,000 to 40,000 were killed. Most of the old city was completely destroyed, including its palaces, mosques, ancient ruins and the famous Azzem Palace mansion. After the Hama uprising, the Islamist insurrection was broken, and the Brotherhood has since operated in exile. Government repression in Syria hardened considerably, as al-Assad had spent in Hama any goodwill he previously had left with the Sunni majority, and now was compelled to rely on pure force to stay in power.

Ever since Hama, for better and for worse, the al-Assad regime has kept Syria relatively quiet. Islamicists have been put in their place, working either underground or abroad.

I was struck by an article concerning ancient weapons found in the ruins of Hamoukar in Syria. The archeological dig is located near the Iraqi border. Clemens Reichel, the American co-director of the expedition, has seen explosions just over the border. He said:

"It's somewhat surreal. We're not living in a vacuum there. We know exactly what's happening across the border," Reichel said. "But working in Syria is like working in the eye of the storm. It's very peaceful to work there. Practically no problems."

'No problems' in Syria for the western archeologist. The spoils of Hama, perhaps?

I have wanted to believe -- and would like to believe -- that there is a 'third way' in the Arab Middle East. It's glimmers can be seen in Lebanon, though intermittently, where modernity has not translated to autocracy or theocracy. The moment seems rare though, as we now look at Lebanon's apparent slide into war. Can this region and these people secure themselves without invoking Hama?

Would the world be a better place had Hama not been obliterated? Would it have been better for the Muslim Brotherhood to get control over Syria in 1982? Or was it better that a relatively secular autocrat put down religious extremists? Which is preferable?

This question vexes me. I don't like to ask it. I don't think it gets asked enough. I think we want to believe that it's a false choice allowing only two oppressive outcomes. We want to believe that people in that region yearn for freedom, and don't want to choose between two blunt evils. It may be, however, that what we hope for is not what history delivers.

Eventually, some kind of parity and order will restore itself in Iraq. It might not happen until another Hama occurs. I doubt that we will be capable of enacting the wanton slaughter required to beat anarchy into submission. I'm sure I wouldn't want us to. Not only would we betray the core purpose of our mission in Iraq, we would wind up putting down one side of an ancient war in favor of another. There's no winning that war.

'Hama II' will likely happen in our absence. Or be perpetrated in our midst.

When we leave the region, people who have advocated that Iraq and Arabs are incapable of democracy will be vindicated. But I hope they don't run victory laps in the streets. Because there's an inevitable logic that follows. If Iraqis cannot find democracy because of their deep cultural, ethnic and religious bigotry, then there's no argument that Muslims can live in secular Europe among French or English natives. Or in America, such as Dearborn Michigan. There would be no case for Palestinians taking part in a peace process, or having the capacity to run their own state on a democratic basis. There would be no case that Egyptians and North Africans could transcend tyranny.

'Losing Iraq' -- meaning Iraq losing its chance to join the free world as a beacon to its Arab and Muslim brethren -- does not bode well for Muslims across the globe. If it is clear they cannot be civilized -- yes, civilized by our standards -- then civilization will circle its wagons and exclude them, en masse. Somewhere down that road will come another Hama. And another. And another.

The New York Times published a telling story from our Surge Troops on the ground in Baghdad:

When the Iraqi units finally did show up, it was with the air of a class outing, cheering and laughing as the Americans blew locks off doors with shotguns. As the morning wore on and the troops came under fire from all directions, another apparent flaw in this strategy became clear as empty apartments became lairs for gunmen who flitted from window to window and killed at least one American soldier, with a shot to the head.
Whether the gunfire was coming from Sunni or Shiite insurgents or militia fighters or some of the Iraqi soldiers who had disappeared into the Gotham-like cityscape, no one could say.

"Who the hell is shooting at us?" shouted Sgt. First Class Marc Biletski, whose platoon was jammed into a small room off an alley that was being swept by a sniper’s bullets. "Who's shooting at us? Do we know who they are?"

In the end, the answer to Sgt. Biletski's question might come with an exasperated, apologetic shrug. "Who's shooting at us? Do we know who they are?" Yes, we know who they are. They're Muslims. Some are Sunni. Some are Shi'ite. Some are young. Some are old. Some are Arabs. Some are Persians. Some are in America. Some are in Iraq. Some are in Europe, and Africa and the Pacific. Some are moderate. Some are radical. It's become impossible to pick out who's who. They're all shooting at us, and at each other.

Hama awaits. Who lights the fuse?

Guardedly Skeptical

2007-01-12T05:51:00.000-08:00

I've been a nay-sayer here about the war recently. I have found it increasingly difficult to have much faith in the president's competence in prosecuting the war. I still believe we are on the threshold of taking a side in an ancient religious feud. Let's hope not.

I would at least like to upgrade my negative position to 'guardedly skeptical'. I was reminded this morning that my armchair viewpoint is spun from a digital tower. There are people whose experience on the ground in Iraq trumps the prognostications I dream up on the Blogosphere.

Here's the views from some soldiers on the ground in Iraq. In this article at least, they're more optimistic that the fresh troops being deployed will be a positive development.

I hope they're right. And I hope they can do their work well and come home, in spite of the politics at home. And in spite of my skepticism. Read on:

U.S. troops: Fresh faces must be used correctly

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A few hours after President Bush announced more than 20,000 additional troops would deploy to Iraq, U.S. Army Sgt. Michael Casper was doing inventory with his soldiers.

Like most soldiers here, Casper did not catch Bush's speech, but he knew the basics: More troops are on the way.

"It's trying something new, and if it works, it works; and if not, we will have to find something else," he said.

Staff Sgt. Roy Starbeck also didn't hear Bush's remarks, but he did hear some of the dissenting reaction from politicians and others -- and it irked him to no end.

"It's just ... really just aggravating," he said, shrugging his shoulders. "People saying that they don't support the war because they don't like the president or saying they don't support the war because they are Democrats or saying they support the war because they are Republicans.

"None of them are taking the time or energy to find out what is actually going on over here."

Most of the soldiers who spoke with CNN said they believe that if the fresh troops are used in the right way, the increase could be a significant help. But these men have no say in policy.

In the words of one soldier, "I am just a little fish."

Starbeck said he believes that Bush "did a pretty good job of owning up to what is going on over here."

That sentiment -- that Americans don't fully understand what's going on in Iraq -- is one that resonates among troops.

A lot of them said they feel that those who make the decisions and the American people don't have a clue what they --- the soldiers, Marines and other forces --- are going through. And dealing with that is not easy...

Based on their experiences fighting in Baghdad, troops who talked with CNN said they feel that more troops would be best used alongside Iraqi security forces. Even in areas that already have been handed over to Iraqi control, the Americans still find themselves coaching and mentoring the Iraqis down to the last detail.

The Iraqi troops also have told CNN they want the American firepower on their side because it bolsters their confidence.

In addition, U.S. soldiers have said they have noticed that when they are present in force, the sectarian violence tends to decrease.

"We would drive right down the Sunni-Shia fault line when we heard the gunfight going on and that would calm things down," Staff Sgt. Daniel Beard told us out on patrol.

His platoon commander, Charles Moffit, said he thinks the increased troops will help.

"We can only be in so many places at one time. ... If we have more soldiers here, we can be more places at one time."

Many of the soldiers here are on their second -- if not third or fourth -- deployments and have a solid grasp on the countless challenges they face.

They know that military power alone is not going to win the fight. And they also know that while, as many of them said, the plans often sound great on paper, it translates differently on the streets of Baghdad.

"I think it's a double-edged sword," Army Sgt. Jason Dooley said, peering over the shoulder of an American sniper about halfway into Tuesday's 10-hour gunbattle for Haifa Street.

"Increasing troops could show more force, could incite the insurgents or get them to back off. You never really know. They do what they want to do -- that's what makes it so hard."

Lose, Lose, Lose

2007-01-10T20:05:00.000-08:00

Here's some snippets from President Bush's speech on a new Iraq strategy this evening:

The consequence of failure:

The consequences of failure are clear: Radical Islamic extremists would grow in strength and gain new recruits. They would be in a better position to topple moderate governments, create chaos in the region, and use oil revenues to fund their ambitions. Iran would be emboldened in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Our enemies would have a safe haven from which to plan and launch attacks on the American people...

The cause of failure:

There were not enough Iraqi and American troops to secure neighborhoods that had been cleared of terrorists and insurgents. And there were too many restrictions on the troops we did have.

The new security arrangement:

The Iraqi government will deploy Iraqi Army and National Police brigades across Baghdad’s nine districts. When these forces are fully deployed, there will be 18 Iraqi Army and National Police brigades committed to this effort – along with local police. These Iraqi forces will operate from local police stations – conducting patrols, setting up checkpoints, and going door-to-door to gain the trust of Baghdad residents.

...this will require increasing American force levels.

The intended result:

...over time, we can expect to see Iraqi troops chasing down murderers, fewer brazen acts of terror, and growing trust and cooperation from Baghdad’s residents. When this happens, daily life will improve, Iraqis will gain confidence in their leaders, and the government will have the breathing space it needs to make progress in other critical areas. Most of Iraq’s Sunni and Shia want to live together in peace – and reducing the violence in Baghdad will help make reconciliation possible.

- - -

The President's Iraq plan assumes that there is a cogent, non-sectarian, uncorrupted Iraqi national government to partner with. I propose that this is an illusion, laid bare by Saddam's mob-like execution at the hands of revenging Shi'a. There is no real national government in Iraq that represents all the factions. I don't believe it is possible at this hour.

We're pouring 20,000 more of our forces to go "door-to-door to gain the trust of Baghdad residents". Translation: We're going to unwittingly assist one side of this sectarian conflict suppress the other. We will be taking sides in a conflict that goes back more than a millennium.

It has become inordinately difficult to see how our token force of 20,000 additional troops embedded in Iraq's sectarian war will turn the tide in the Global War on Terror.

I supported this war because I felt it was a gamble worth taking, given the data we had at the time regarding Saddam's WMD programs. But through deception from many sides, error, misjudgment, incompetence, stupidity, naiveté, over-exuberance and bad luck, the gamble failed. 20,000 troops in 2007 is 20,000 troops too late.

Perhaps some will think this is an overarching strategy to beef-up forces in the region pending engaging the Iranians. If we need to do that, we need to consider how taking sides in a pointless sectarian war in Iraq now is going to strengthen our resolve in dealing with Iran later. Here's a hint: It won't. It will sap us. The pointlessness of the exercise will be self-fulfilling.

Hell, I'm no military strategist. I don't have a specific strategy in mind to secure even a limited defeat, short of withdrawal. But I think the President's calling for 20,000 troops at this stage of the conflict is not serious. You and I -- private citizens not in uniform -- are asked to do nothing but fret. The sacrifice expected of us is, once again, minimal.

Enjoy your iPhones.

Nothing

2006-12-30T07:46:00.000-08:00

On the way to his execution, Saddam Hussein said, "Iraq without me is nothing."

I am glad the Saddam era is over. But I wouldn't say I am relieved. I wonder if his last words are prescient. The nation called Iraq is slipping into civil war. Indeed, is Iraq a nation? Is its national continuity impossible without the bindings of a brutal autocrat? Much relies on the answer to this question.

Bellamy's Buzzer

2006-12-11T18:24:00.000-08:00

Our first winter here in Massachusetts is just beginning. We have house squirrels, I think. I'm told that when the wind chills, they take refuge where they can. I don't like squirrels in my house, between the ceilings and floors, banging and nibbling acorns up there, unseen. If only I could reason with them, and strike a bargain. Ah, the life of a country squire...

There's a lot of buzz about 'next moves' -- what to do in Iraq, with Iran, and North Korea. What will Hezbollah's next move be in Lebanon and Israel? What of our lame duck president, for two years coming? The Democrats have the helm now, more or less. Maybe they'll bumble onto something positive. Obama seems like a breath of fresh air.

I've been trying to draw my own personal conclusion about the war in Iraq. I was for it. At the war's outset, the cause seemed justified, a gamble I thought worth taking. It seemed positive in the face of the alternative, which was to continue fiddling in the corridors of the UN and in the salons of Arabia and Europe while Saddam would break apart the sanctions regime. Maybe it was just me, but in 2003 the option for more circular diplomacy and realpolitik seemed pessimistic and hopelessly spent in the wake of 9/11.

But I won't kid you. My optimism clouded my better judgement. I mistook a clear view for a short distance. It's not practicable to throw democracy into a region that's never known it, like a hand grenade. Once it explodes, everyone is supposed to head for the polls and be good citizens. Well alright, it was never sold as being that simple, but I admit that I had a few dreams in the fantasy lounge, inspired by Cool Aid. So be it. I'm a dreamer. There most certainly is little room left for peaceable dreams of any kind for the Middle East.

I might say that Project Iraqi Democracy could've worked out more positively under more competent leadership. I might say that it would've been useful to have a few more friends on our side in Europe and elsewhere. And that we played the war too safe, if you can believe that. We should've doubled our effort, and been more serious about nation building. But those things aren't really the whole nut. Not even the war is the whole nut.

Iraq might possibly be the last war this country will fight against another one, in the traditional sense. After this, it's more likely to be America versus various private armies. Empowered by the Internet, black market economies, ideology and fluctuating alliances, such armies will merit enough traction to burst forth in mass-murderous fury, then shrink away like black violets. Many will be Islamic; some will not. Perhaps in the process of these battles, America will also break down into a collection of little armies with global reach. It's nowhere I want to be.

Iraq is a crossover war: It started Clauswitzian, and became fourth generation. Fourth generation warfare can perpetuate anarchy, which is normally short-lived in the vacuum of power. A peculiar rough parity between violent private armies seems to have settled in on places like Iraq, and parts of Afghanistan -- not to mention the Palestinian territories, southern Lebanon and vast tracts of Africa. This may be the omen from Iraq, offering a glimpse into our not too distant future. Or the parity may be temporary, and I just can't see past it.

Under duress, we think of ourselves as a country. We rely on patriotic lore and national will to pull us through war, blight, and now terrorism. I think that most people sense that the bedrock of our national identity is at play in this era. It isn't just Iraq, or Al Qaeda. It's everything. In the 1990s we celebrated high tech companies that came out of nowhere and unseated industry gorillas. Technology is enabling. It clears the decks and capsizes ships. By that measure, it's exciting, especially if the disruption is tied to a bit of equity with your name on it. But decentralization and disruption spares nothing. It not only capsizes companies and industries, but countries too. For now, we can go on pretending that our sovereignty is assured. We gas our cars and water our lawns in the face of a mighty wind, my friends.

* * *

After we tuck our toddler daughter into bed, my wife and I enjoy our evening cocoa stirred with a Netflix show. Right now we're watching all 1,232,849 episodes of Upstairs, Downstairs. After thirty-plus years, it still captivates. It transports one to the Belle Epoch years over six seasons, then into World War I and the Roaring 20s, set in classist England.

Upstairs, Downstairs takes place in a high-class London home, whose master is a Member of Parliament, Lord Richard Bellamy and his family. The upstairs of the house is the living quarters of the elite Bellamys; the downstairs is the working quarters of the lower class servants and tradesmen, led by the head butler, Mr. Hudson. The series examines the intricate interrelationship of the two classes under one roof. Over the many episodes the class system, the fabric of British culture at the time, frays to the forces of world war, industrialism, technological modernity and socialism.

One of the first innovative uses of electricity at the Bellamy residence merely replaced the bells-and-pulley system that rang the servants from throughout the house. The bells gave way to lights and buzzers; the ropes and pulleys to wires and buttons. They imagined that electricity would simply buttress the world they preferred to know -- not destroy it.

Midway through Upstairs, Downstairs, the Bellamys' son, James, becomes a Major in the King's Army during World War I. He winds up commanding machine gunners in France. Over the course of the war, he is transformed from being a young upper-class wastrel to a disenchanted, weary and shell-shocked man. He decries the war as senseless; an appalling waste of millions of men chopped down by death machines in the service of an immoral order. "Nobody's going to win this war," he tells his father, the M.P. "There can be no disagreement so egregious to justify this carnage."

A popular sentiment among the hawks in the current war amounts to this lament: "If only we could summon the will to fight our avowed terrorist enemies in a spirit of patriotism like in World War II." I've thought that myself, more than a few times. I breezed over the inevitable screeds on Pearl Harbor Day, reminiscing when we responded patriotically, which carried us through the long haul to victory. That's the happy-ending story often told.

Patriotism was enormously important for fueling the armies of the Great War that clashed in the Somme and Verdun. Theirs was the more unquestioning variety of patriotism that is demanded today. But what a strange beast those hapless patriots were sacrificed to. Millions of farmers, bakers, and tradesmen on all sides were shoveled into the maw of an uncomprehending, self-serving beast in denial about it's own immorality. Into the Beast's jowls they marched, dispatched in part by their sense of duty to God and King. Regardless of victory, the center did not hold, no matter which sovereign's honor they defended. Larger forces were at play.

We should be careful of what we wish for. "Acting as one" is the password to the Beast's lair. We live in an era where established centers are imploding. We're all an integral part of the process. It doesn't mean we should just give up and give ourselves to despair. But neither should we fantasize about the glory of past wars that were inglorious. It was one of civilization's lowest points.

Clicking on the 'Buy Now' button for cheap Chinese-made goods at Amazon.com, we're little different than Lord Bellamy summoning servants with his new-fangled electric buzzer for afternoon tea. Like him, we want to believe that all this technology is only here to make life as we know it better, easier and more efficient. We can't imagine that the present has no future. So we tell ourselves stories, hoping they become history someday.

'Twas ever thus.

Muddle

2006-11-01T20:23:00.000-08:00

So.

I've been lying back on the couch these days. No blogging. No lots-of-things beyond work and being Papa. I am now taking daily walks after learning that my cholesterol levels read like fiction. Getting life insurance is sobering. You sit at home with an agent and talk about your life's value in mere dollars. Your blood is drawn. Then you're told by someone whose living involves making bets on people's lives that you're a risky prospect. Feh. Forty three.

So, it's fish oil pills, oat bran, beans, niacin and rabbit food. This is my new grind. The daily red wine is a bonus. Walking the New England woods does me well, though it takes a lot of time. Sorry about not finding the time to blog a little more frequently. I've just been walking in the woods, through the headlines of late.

I haven't had much to say. Sometimes the best etiquette in the salon is to politely listen, and reflect while gazing out the window. Lots of the talk in the salon sounds plausible and impossible all at once. "Intriguing idea, that man has. And yet..."

Muddle. That's the word that tumbles in front of me as I take on November, 2006. It's an odd time; the stock market is soaring, but exuberance is muted. It's as though we're donning our summer trunks, tossing the beach ball while manning the grill. The laundry's on the line, and the larder is full in the house. But the summer sky is silvery gray. The air is forty degrees. It's not summer. Not really -- and everyone knows it. But for the moment everything is okay.

I know that bravado has gotten us nowhere. I was a part of that, in some small way. I don't believe I was exactly ecstatic for war in Iraq, but I was for it. It seemed like a gamble worth taking, and I felt it possible that some good could come out of it. That was optimistic of me. Since then I've wanted to be supportive of the cause in any way possible. At this point, I see a muddle, if not in my own head then in the blank stare of our president. I voted for that fellow. I think he's trying his best. But I don't think he or his party can cut the mustard.

"Lead, damn it," I say to myself when I see the president tongue-tied for the umpteenth time. It's not going to happen. And now the other half is leaving the stage -- Tony Blair. Say what you want about him, but the man could articulate what our president could not.

I feel muddled about the upcoming election. I don't feel a passion for most of these people. I'm certainly not knee-jerking into voting Republican. My gut tells me to generally vote Democrat because the Republicans' hold on all three branches of government has become a thick layer of ice at this point. Voting Democrat means voting for the ice pick. That's the new gamble. And no, I don't think Democrats have the key out of this muddle, per se. It's as much their making as anyone else's.

So in essence, I feel to be a part of the problem right now. A part of that 'ole western malaise. I don't want to make regular installments of malaise on this blog, which is about ideas and debate. So for now I will listen until the spark returns.

John Robb of Global Guerillas is coming out with a new book soon, called Brave New War. In the book description it says:

The tragedy of 9/11 represents the pinnacle -- and finale -- of terrorism the old way.

I've been turning that coin over and over again ever since I read it. 9/11 was the end of an era, not the beginning, as we tend to see it. The next 'big attack' will be of the new variety. I think that's part of the muddle. I think somewhere in most people's minds, they know it. But there's little to be done, so let's have a barbecue under a gray sky. Why not?

Mr. Robb makes a compelling case that we're facing a fundamental shift in warfare, and that we must adjust to win. But I really don't know what winning means by his definition. He conveys the sense that we must structurally mirror our 4GW adversaries to such a degree that we won't recognize ourselves in short order.

Mr. Robb writes dispassionately, simply exposing the new rules such as they are. Take it or leave it, but ignore them at your own peril. That's his tone. It's like being told by an anonymous, brilliant physician that you have cancer, and your limbs must be amputated to give you a chance at survival. This physician may be right, but it doesn't occur to him that you might be a craftsman whose purpose for living emanates from your hands. No, those must be sacrificed to achieve clinical success, even if the cost is spiritual ruin.

Thanks, Doc.

Last night my two and a half year old daughter took to trick-or-treating as a red ladybug. She was shaped like a little barrel in her foam outfit, replete with ladybug spots and wings -- and little antennae with fuzzy balls on the end. She flew from house to house with her pumpkin pail, buzzing in character. "Bzzzzz!" People who she didn't know answered their doors, smiling and laughing, giving the little ladybug candy and winks. "Bye-bye!" she hollered, running to the next friendly house lit up with glowing pumpkins.

My daughter the ladybug must think the world is a wondrously safe and friendly place. That's an illusion that any parent wants to perpetuate, perhaps long after it is constructive. I think it is because we all want to believe it. My little ladybug girl buzzed across a kind of cultural stage on Halloween night, one that we all hold dear. The stage holds us all up, whether real or not.

How fragile has this stage become? That's the muddle.

Autumn

2006-10-02T06:14:00.000-07:00

I love forests. New England, my new home, has no end of them. This time of year the trees are beginning to quake with fall color. Red and yellow branches are beginning to lash out of the green canopies that shroud this land. Soon the leaves will briefly dominate the hills in a quiet fire, then fall to the ground like ash, waiting for the embrace of snow.

My wife and I just completed a westward journey across the state of Massachusetts. We wound up in the small town of Stockbridge, near the New York border along the road to Albany. Stockbridge, Massachusetts is considered to be an American icon. It was dubbed as such by another American icon, Norman Rockwell, who painted American icons during America's most iconographic era. He spent many years in Stockbridge. The people and settings there were the subjects of many of his canvases that celebrated the American spirit.

We visited his museum. Every single painting on its walls were the originals of reproductions I'd seen hundreds of times. One painting that had been etched in my mind, long before seeing the original, was his depiction of a snowy Main Street in Stockbridge at Christmastime.

We walked around Stockbridge and took in Mr. Rockwell's view of America. There remain the small stores and quaint colonial houses from his Christmas painting. We stood across the street from them to find the viewpoint he occupied to create his famous masterpiece. Just behind us on that corner was St. Paul's Episcopal Church. I guess it's still a church -- I don't know -- the steeple is crowned with a copper chicken, not a cross. Perhaps the congregation dwindled down too far for the building to remain a church. I couldn't bring myself to ask how the chicken made its way up there. I'm sure it found its way to the top of the pecking order well after Mr. Rockwell's time.

- - -

As Autumn breaks, the chill of winter has begun to descend from the north. With the frost I have found myself contemplating a long, cold winter.

It's been five years since 9/11. During that time I have seen my country's lights pulse brightly and then dim, its shades drawn. The political landscape is enervated. I had hoped that we might find a new voice, a new beginning, a newfound patriotism; something that a new Rockwell might anxiously render on canvas to national acclaim. It hasn't happened. On 9/12, I placed myself outside the two governing parties of our country and took stock. It's five years later, and here's where I stand.

Our president might aim for moral clarity, but he offers little else. He recites well-worn bromides, assuming that he will be vindicated in the years to come. He stays the course, because he set it. We need more in a president. For all of President Bush's bold moves, it is striking how little vision there is behind them. There's been incompetent followup to get through the details; no comprehensible articulation of this country's worth and values; and little willingness to risk alienating his base to win this fight. Now his policy on torture has derailed whatever moral authority he had. I don't see a man who is leading. I, for one, do not feel led. Instead I feel dragged around by his transparent coterie of advisors. I feel numb.

One look at the other party offers little consolation. Democrats like Gore decry the Bush administration for fear mongering, who equate fighting terror with voting Republican. But then there's Gore's movie, and his own bromides on global warming. And there's Gore to begin with, still with us after losing six years ago to Governor Bush on the heels of the golden Clinton years. Still barking away, somehow considered still relevant in this era.

My option as a voter appears to be a false choice. Either I can vote Republican, lest we ignore the war on terror, or I can vote Democrat, lest we lose the planet to the sun. Our political culture is coarse and cramped with soundbites that have overshadowed eloquent debate. There are no Daniel Websters anymore, riveting packed galleries in the Senate chamber with soaring rhetoric expounding on the great issues of the age. No Lincoln-Douglas debates. After Martin Luther King was assassinated, Robert Kennedy stood on the back of a truck in Indianapolis quoting Aeschylus on the meaning of grief to angry black Americans. No more.

There are few genuine debates taking place in congress. There is little eloquence. There is mostly position-taking and attack. We find mostly 'where's the beef' and 'gotchya' politics. We've come nowhere after five years of war. If anything, we've devolved.

Now we're looking down the barrel at a nuclear Iran -- a nuclear religious death cult. What we need to counter this threat is a fresh approach, employing all of the weapons in our arsenal: military, diplomatic, economic and moral. We need a better international diplomat and politician than the President. Successful leaders are shrewd; they shape public opinion to their own ends. At this late date President Bush needs to throw a few curveballs. It may be unconventional, but he could have answered Ahmadinejad's letter from a few months ago, much like Lincoln answered Horace Greeley and other critics. The same with Chavez's blistering speech at the U.N. The President should articulate a tighly reasoned, forthright defense of Western values. He should do something stunningly bipartisan, and ignore the political fallout -- perhaps appoint Bill Clinton to some important task in the Middle East.

Bush's one-dimensional, 'I'm-a-man-of-principle' approach is failing. We have to mix things up like Nixon going to China, or Roosevelt being a traitor to his class. The challenges of this era demand it.

If anyone harbors any doubt about what the next real war proffers, read the Rand report Considering the Effects of a Catastrophic Terrorist Attack by Charles Meade and Roger Molander. It games-out a hypothetical nuclear terrorist attack on the Port of Long Beach, California. Long Beach is the second busiest seaport in the United States. It's in the Los Angeles region, handling 30 percent of U.S. shipping imports. The attack studies the short-term and long term effects of a ten kiloton Hiroshima-sized atomic device ground-bursted from within a shipping container on a pier. It examines the policy issues that would result, identifying the high-priority concerns for different stakeholder groups.

In a nutshell, all hell will break lose. The ripple effect into the global economy borders on apocalyptic. Just from one "small" nuke in a western port.

There has been a lot of debate here on ways to deal with Iran. Many think we should preempt. I think it might work, but only if we had the right leadership. I see no such leadership in Washington -- neither from the President or from Congress. It's a fool's errand to believe that the present leadership can marshal the political, civilian, military and international resources required to prevent the Party of God from nuclearizing. In essence, I think it's too late. The necessary isotopes can be purchased as well as produced within Iran. This has been true now for years. The game of prevention is over. Proliferation is here.

At this point, because we have weak government, a tail-biting political system and hollow allies, we're not in a position to take out Iran's nuclear program, let alone its regime. I've come to believe that if we preempt, utter disaster will ensue. And if Iran promulgates nuclear terror, disaster will also ensue. Preemption is not a strategy -- it's a last ditch Hail Mary pass.

Since I believe that's the case -- that we're on the verge of a terrifyingly new world, no matter what we do -- I think we should take the moral high ground. That means letting Iran take the low ground. Europe is too weak and corrupt to block Iran's threat. We're too sapped, too bereft of creative leadership. This isn't a nihilistic suicide wish on my part. It's a reality observed as coldly as anyone who advocates preemption. Given the absolute fog that shrouds Iran's nuclear program, who's the expert? Whose data is sound enough to stand the Iraq Test? Only great leadership might overcome this problem. We don't have it.

If preempting Iran is not a viable option in this political climate, a strategy of containment, fence-mending, alliance-building, and homeland protection may be the best we can do. Sometimes you have to wait on events. Diplomacy is all about patience and maneuver, requiring the kind of leadership strengths our president and congress lack.

My conclusion is as kitsch as Rockwell's paintings: I believe our spirit as free people can overcome the odds. It's not entirely rational, but it's where I find hope. There's plenty of room for doubt. But I have more faith this country can reinvent itself in the aftermath of a catastrophic attack -- far better than it can lead the world into a series of bungled, unsupported, desperate Hail Mary passes to stave off the inevitable. After 25 years, five presidents, a dozen congresses, countless U.N. sessions and the maturation of a hollow European Union, the free world has long since dropped the ball on nuclear proliferation. Now it all leads to Rand. Frankly, I can't see past Rand. I don't think anyone can.

For our country to lead again, we will apparently need to have our genesis forced upon us. Our response to what inevitably lies ahead may turn out to be our finest hour. It will be a call for greatness -- in ourselves, and in a new generation of true leaders. In order to regain greatness, we will have to take on monumental risks and sacrifices. We will have to do more than face-down our demons; we will have to personally fight them and rebuild a nation that short-circuits them. It will be then that we might redefine the meaning of kitsch patriotism, if the 21st century has a place for it at all.

That's the only way we'll be able to chase the chicken down from Rockwell's steeple.

Harmony

2006-09-15T05:19:00.000-07:00

Those of you who have small children might be familiar with the daily grind of watching the same children's shows, over and over again. In our household there is no cable and no antenna. Instead, there's a stack of DVDs, VHS tapes from the town library and red NetFlix envelopes, along with BitTorrent, YouTube and other Internet-based media.

Some of our daughter's favorite shows are Sesame Street. At two years old, she likes the musicals more than the stories. So everyday we hear this particular Sesame Street lyric that seems to have been imbedded in nearly all of their programs:

My hair is black and red
My hair is yellow
My eyes are brown and green and blue

My name is Jack and Fred
My name's Amanda Sue
I'm called Kareem Abdul
My name is you

I live in southern France
I'm from a Texas ranch
I come from Mecca and Peru
I live across the street
In the mountains, on a beach
I come from everywhere
And my name is you

We all sing with the same voice
The same song, the same voice
We all sing with the same voice
And we sing in harmony

Along with this song, We All Sing with the Same Voice, we see children of the early 1980s playing together somewhere on a Manhattan playground, of all different races, lip-synching the lyrics. And there I am on the couch, brooding, while my daughter mouths some of the lyrics, uncomprehendingly.

The song is innocent enough but it summons conflicts within me. Sometimes it's really angered me although I believe it's intentions are benevolent.

The song is a multicultural anthem designed for children. It's not necessarily bad. It makes sense to propose to young children that on some level, all of us humans are the same. Our differences should be ironed over by concentrating on what we have in common. We all eat; we all love; we all get mad, get sick and can be happy. Children all over the planet run and play, work and sleep. All of them. So why pick on our differences? How can this world survive unless we see we're all a part of the same human tapestry?

Being born in 1963, I grew up with that message, albeit before this particular lyric hit the airwaves in 1982. A world threatened by nuclear armageddon could use a little peace, love and understanding. This song embodies that kind of logical thinking.

So why do I wince at the television screen when I hear this song in 2006? It's as though I want to like the song more than I can bring myself to do so. This ditty has put me in a sour mood some mornings, and I've had to think long and hard to understand why.

The assumption of the lyric, We All Sing with the Same Voice, is that we're really all the same, deep down. True, we are the same species, flung across the globe. We all have two eyes, hair, and a lot of the same innate behavior. The message of the song assumes that because we're all human beings, we therefore all have the same values. If anything about the past few tumultuous years has taught me anything, it's that we don't all have the same values. And while the song concentrates on bridging racial and ethnic divides, it completely overlooks the possibility that some human ideologies are not necessarily compatible with others.

Multiculturalist thinking tends to dwell on, well, culture -- as well as race and ethnicity. But these forms of human identity are often focused by ideology. Ideology is very amorphous and contemporary, changing constantly. Unlike culture, it's not necessarily rooted in antiquity, though it may appeal to history. Ideology is a collective vision -- the ideal mental image of what defines common sense to the majority of people in a culture. Since it proposes the ideal, it changes form constantly, adjusting to the challenges of the real world.

We All Sing With the Same Voice makes simple common sense that we should overlook our physical and cultural differences and just get along. It sounds nice. I'm all for it. But that message is more than wholesomely simple. It's simplistic.

Multiculturalism is often passed off as sophisticated. But it can also be unrealistically simple. It's nice, perhaps positive, to have our kids say a prayer for world unity. But as adults, we should recognize that what we idealize as common sense is not necessarily the soil that we're actually planted on. If we are inordinately certain that we have a global monopoly on common sense, we won't notice that there are competing ideologies that make common sense out of our demise.

Lamb Pullao

2006-08-24T20:53:00.000-07:00

I made a new friend today. He started his first day as a software engineer today at the office where I work. He sits next to my cubicle. We were chatting it up after he gave me a spoonful of his wife's pullao, a dish of spicy lamb and rice. Delicious!

He's from Pakistan. He's very warm and friendly. After I shared my enthusiasm for the epicurean delights from the subcontinent, he opened up and told me a bit about his background in Lahore.

I asked him if he was Muslim. "Yes," he said, "but really it doesn't mean much. I eat pork and drink beer. I never go to the mosque." He seemed anxious to let me know that he was just a normal guy.

"In the city, most the people I know are like me. We live good lives and try to stay away from politics. It's totally different out in the country. People are backwards and conservative. They're crazy."

He told me how it was embarrassing to him that most of the immigrants in high tech were Indians, not Pakistanis.

"The Indians have great technical institutes. They value education and dominate the industry. Most Pakistanis have businesses that sell food, or they drive taxis. It's disgraceful."

It was only took a few minutes of banter about food when he asked me over to meet his family and have a lamb barbecue.

I've only just met this fellow, but he impressed me for being so much like me. It's too easy to group all Muslims into a distrustful category. Yet he defies such a simplistic categorization. A poll recently taken in the UK shows the distrust rising:

Most people in the UK feel threatened by Islam, a poll has revealed, after the Government launched a bid to tackle inter-faith tensions. The YouGov survey for the Daily Telegraph found 53% were concerned about the impact of the religion -- not just fundamentalist elements -- up 21% from 2001. There had also been a near doubling of the number agreeing that "a large proportion of British Muslims feel no sense of loyalty to this country and are prepared to condone or even carry out acts of terrorism".

I suspect my new work mate also feels threatened by Islam, in his own way. We don't hear enough from people like him -- people who are just like most of us, for the most part, who want peaceful lives, who aren't fanatics. People who call themselves Muslims who are only guilty of shrugging their shoulders at the fanatics around them. They just want to get away from the backwoods simpletons and get ahead in life. That's the picture he painted.

We should hear a lot more about these hard working people caught in the middle of a maelstrom. I worry for him. If this war gets hot enough, he might find his H1B visa revoked, bundled on a plane headed back to Lahore.

I would rather have him sitting next to my cubicle, working towards the good life, and sharing his wife's spicy lamb pullao with me. I think his presence in my country makes us safer, and richer.

Caricature

2006-08-23T06:44:00.000-07:00

It has become common to think of 'The West', as depicted by Cox and Forkum, as clueless -- groping at any hope for peace with its enemies. Cox and Forkum's 'The West' character looks like a middle-aged geek with thick glasses, tie and soft belly, comfortable on his knees; he's an apparachik of the easy life, submissive before any appeasement that guarantees another meal.

Of course, this is a cartoon. A cartoon makes caricatures of people and things in simple, pointed exaggerations. But it is still instructive in terms of how we see ourselves.

It's been a while since I had a television, but I remember a phase of advertising that I called 'Dumb Guy.' It's probably still somewhat prevalent. Dumb Guy is the fortyish-year old upper-middle class American male, depicted as an amiable, soft-headed, impressionable dunce. His beautiful wife and kids are always smarter than he is. And yet, there he stands in his palatial suburban house with twin SUVs, unable to solve a simple domestic challenge. He's easily coerced and happily led to a simple answer from the sponsor.

I found the Dumb Guy ads to be particularly condescending. Impossibly, Dumb Guy is able to amass great wealth in spite of his idiocy. Apparently, an army of milquetoasts wound at the top of the global food chain -- not innovative, proud, courageous, manipulative or shrewd individualists. What does Dumb Guy do for a living? Sell balloons to puppies? How could this simpleton get this far in life and represent our culture? Is this how we see ourselves -- as a bunch of soft-hearted simpletons who inexplicably became the spineless backbone of our culture?

I worry that Dumb Guy is our self image -- being that of the West, or America. But our self image as American-consumerist-Bible-thumping Dumb Guys, or European-socialist-teat-nursing-appeaser Dumb Guys doesn't really matter. Either way, we're just dumb. Isn't Cox and Forkum's 'West' hopelessly condescending, and inaccurate?

'Dumb Guy West' also has a huge nuclear arsenal in his back pocket. He is complex, and not merely a caricature of a Pavlovian idiot who is led towards carrots, away from sticks. 'The West' is fearsome -- for its sheer power to create and destroy at huge levels of magnitude. The West is still fearsome.

Boiling 'The West' down to a single caricature is telling. When has the West ever been one? Michael Totten says that it never was on the same page. Why should we all be on the same page now? Is a common threat really a uniter? I doubt it. Common threats more often expose rifts that are normally glossed over. That seems to be the case now.

The Iranian nuclear crisis challenges the idea that 'The West' can act together as one. Political realities are what they are -- Europeans and Americans wound up where they are for different reasons. Expecting a concerted effort against Iran is a fantasy. Presuming that we should act as one in this crisis is a fantasy too. It sounds nice -- I just don't think it's ultimately workable.

Cox and Forkum's cartoon would be more accurate if 'The West' was a pack of animals that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was trying to ride atop of, all at once -- not just one Dumb Guy. Some of the animals might be bears, others sheep, monkeys and birds, running in all directions. It's silly to boil the West down into a single meek caricature while portraying Ahmadinejad as the master manipulator. In spite of Western divisions on the challenges Ahmadinejad poses, I hardly see him as being in control, riding the West like a Persian cowboy. He's on very thin ice.

These are dangerous times, for a lot of reasons. Boiling the present historical fulcrum down to caricatures is a job best left to cartoonists. Hopefully, we're not the dumb guys that just buy into it.

The Art Scene

2006-08-11T06:07:00.000-07:00

One of the reasons why I blog anonymously is so that I can listen to all kinds of unguarded opinions from people I know. I received an email yesterday from a very close friend of mine. We are both a part of the fine arts world, with art in galleries in New York City, Seattle and Milwaukee. My friend is a celebrity of sorts -- some of you would know who he is if I revealed his name. He and I have been collaborating for years on artistic endeavors. We would both lay down our lives for each other if need be. He's like a brother to me -- I love him dearly. He's kind, thoughtful, loyal and earnest.

Politically, I am the one who changed since 9/11. My art friend seems content to rely on the same leftist conspiracies that sustained his political thinking since the 1970s.

Yesterday I received an email from him regarding the day's terrorist threats in England. None of what he has said is a surprise to me, but this time I thought I would share it with you here. It reads like it's right out of Democratic Underground, Common Dreams or Daily KOS.

I am sure you've seen the news today of the "liquid threat" to planes from the UK. I sure don't trust the official story. None of the coverage mentions any real evidence whatsoever. Seen any? I haven't. Its all hearsay from the governments so far. I am sure they will trot some "evidence" out by tomorrows news cycle, but so far it all looks like it's not what it appears to be.

Like that "plot" they found down in Florida recently that was pretty much nothing, but was trumpeted in a big way to ratchet up our fear level. This one smells similar, but it's on a much HUGER scale. Calling out the National Guard, the timing of the "revelation" for maximum media coverage, the press conferences, the talk of Islamic Fascism, the posturing of Bush and pals, going to code "red" for the first time ever, dramatically amping up airport security etc.

And it's right after Lieberman goes down, public opinion on Iraq is 65% against, polls show incumbents have a lot to be afraid of, and those November elections coming right up.... of course I expected Bush and Co to pull something huge to freak everyone the f-ck out before the elections. At the very least, they are jumping all over this story for political advatage. But if they are indeed escalating things so they can keep political control and keep us afraid, how much farther will it escalate beyond todays news event?

I guess I sound like ALex Jones here, sorry, but I read enough news to be able to notice how odd the coverage is of this news event. They are suddenly making all the airports change their security as if this plot just dropped on their heads this morning, when of course they woudl have been tracking this "plot" for weeks or months and there is nothing "new" or sudden about the story at all. They've done this a few times before where it will turned out the supposed "new" threat was really old news, but they made it public at a time that was politically advantageous to them.

And how in hell is it a revelation to them that people could make a bomb from stuff hidden in a hair gel or soft drink bottle and set it offf with an iPod or cell phone? They would have to have know this all along, so why suddenly change the security rules now, as if they just figured it out? Very weird.

This whole email leaves me feeling depressed. I love this guy. His art is ingenious. We've covered so much ground together, for so long. He's one of our best and brightest. And he doesn't get it. All problems emanate from the United States. The only thing we have to fear is ourselves, apparently. His denial of any kind of existential threat from the Islamic world is complete. I have no idea how to get through to him and I have long given up trying.

I wouldn't mind so much if I didn't love him, and if I didn't think that the millions of people like him are our Achilles heal in this war. While I think it's perfectly legitimate to be against the Iraq war for sound reasons, my friend and so many like him take such a conspiratorial view of our world that they offer little that is constructive to solving the problems of our time.

Our being featured in an art show last year in New York was really eye opening. The show was a great success. The opening night was packed with people. There was wine and cheese, and lots of posing and photos. I stood in the corner with my cocktail, watching the hip crowd impress itself. I felt that the gulf between myself and these people was epic. It's odd that I should be considered an artist, plying art circles, and yet I feel completely alienated from the people who support the arts.

And so I remain anonymous.

Blair's Arc of Extremism

2006-08-04T05:41:00.000-07:00

Via Andrew Sullivan -- Tony Blair made a speech in LA the other day that deserves absorption. Mr. Sullivan compares this speech to Churchill's famous 'Iron Curtain' speech in 1946, redefining the scope of a new war.

I don't have much to add to this right now but I think it should be read widely.

Sigh... I wish this country was lead by someone like Blair. I don't agree with all his policies but he's a liberal who sees the big picture and understands the stakes for Western civilization. And the man is truly eloquent and pursuasive.

Here's the whole speech for some light weekend reading. Here's the nutshell:

We will continue to do all we can to halt the hostilities. But once that has happened, we must commit ourselves to a complete renaissance of our strategy to defeat those that threaten us. There is an arc of extremism now stretching across the Middle East and touching, with increasing definition, countries far outside that region. To defeat it will need an alliance of moderation, that paints a different future in which Muslim, Jew and Christian; Arab and Western; wealthy and developing nations can make progress in peace and harmony with each other. My argument to you today is this: we will not win the battle against this global extremism unless we win it at the level of values as much as force, unless we show we are even-handed, fair and just in our application of those values to the world...

Unless we re-appraise our strategy, unless we revitalise the broader global agenda on poverty, climate change, trade, and in respect of the Middle East, bend every sinew of our will to making peace between Israel and Palestine, we will not win. And this is a battle we must win.

What is happening today out in the Middle East, in Afghanistan and beyond is an elemental struggle about the values that will shape our future.

It is in part a struggle between what I will call Reactionary Islam and Moderate, Mainstream Islam. But its implications go far wider. We are fighting a war, but not just against terrorism but about how the world should govern itself in the early 21st century, about global values...

We only win people to [our] positions if our policy is not just about interests but about values, not just about what is necessary but about what is right.

Which brings me to my final reflection about US policy. My advice is: always be in the lead, always at the forefront, always engaged in building alliances, in reaching out, in showing that whereas unilateral action can never be ruled out, it is not the preference.

How we get a sensible, balanced but effective framework to tackle climate change after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012 should be an American priority. America wants a low-carbon economy; it is investing heavily in clean technology; it needs China and India to grow substantially. The world is ready for a new start here. Lead it. The same is true for the WTO talks, now precariously in the balance; or for Africa, whose poverty is shameful. If we are championing the cause of development in Africa, it is right in itself but it is also sending the message of moral purpose, that reinforces our value system as credible in all other aspects of policy.

It serves one other objective. There is a risk that the world, after the Cold War, goes back to a global policy based on spheres of influence. Think ahead. Think China, within 20 or 30 years, surely the world's other super-power. Think Russia and its precious energy reserves. Think India. I believe all of these great emerging powers want a benign relationship with the West. But I also believe that the stronger and more appealing our world-view is, the more it is seen as based not just on power but on justice, the easier it will be for us to shape the future in which Europe and the US will no longer, economically or politically, be transcendant. Long before then, we want Moderate, Mainstream Islam to triumph over Reactionary Islam.

That is why I say this struggle is one about values. Our values are worth struggling for. They represent humanity's progress throughout the ages and at each point we have had to fight for them and defend them. As a new age beckons, it is time to fight for them again.

War Is Peace

2006-07-19T05:55:00.000-07:00

Victor Davis Hanson makes a plea for national clarity, lamenting the Bush Administration's inability to articulate the broader context of the war. He points out that there is precedence for the wartime suspension of civil liberties to serve a greater cause:

It is worth reminding the American public that Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and shut down newspapers; that Woodrow Wilson imprisoned prominent dissenters like Eugene Debs; and that Franklin Roosevelt ordered the internment of Japanese-American citizens and secret military tribunals for German saboteurs (six of whom were executed) and allowed for the cover-up of military catastrophes (such as the hundreds killed during training exercises for the Normandy landings).

Mr. Hanson has a salient point. In wartime, special allowances must be made that impinge on our rights as free citizens, so we can defeat our enemy. In the present conflict, bending civil liberties involves wiretapping, intrusive security and Gitmo detainees imprisoned without trial.

But Mr. Hanson misses something that has no precedent in the present war. FDR, Wilson or Lincoln could essentially contend, "I authorize the suspension of some civil liberties so that we will be victorious against our declared enemy. One day, the war will be over and our rights fully restored."

Let's face it. This war will never be over. The war against terrorism is a permanent condition of modern existence. Our most organized, ideologically potent and empowered enemy today is primarily Islamic, but that needn't always be the case. The terrorist's toolbox fits with any ideology that has a significant enough beef with its enemies.

People know, deep inside, that reducing our civil liberties is a slippery slope because the war against terror will never be ended with peace treaties that are signed by adversaries who fully represent both sides. People know that in this era, war is peace. And they resist it. They want to go back to a simpler time -- back to pre-Internet, television days.

This war seeks to maintain the status quo of our society. We lose when we stop being normal. If the status quo is only maintained by a reduction of our civil liberties, the darkness of a reduced sense of normalcy becomes obvious to most people.

How can any president really sell this war? It seems as though President Bush has to sell an oxymoron: "Terrorists want to destroy our way of life. So go to Disneyland. Buy a new car. Go out to dinner and travel. But in order for you to do these things I must rescind some of your civil liberties, for security's sake. This is World War III. The enemy is faceless, and everywhere. So watch your back while you enjoy your steak at Disneyland."

The wars that Mr. Hanson refers to as examples of sensible curtailing of civil liberties began with a formality -- a declaration of war. A declaration of war suggests that there's a light at the end of the tunnel -- armistice, and treaty -- started with a signature, and ended with a signature. In the past sixty years, wars have been officially undeclared: Korea, Vietnam, the Balkans, the Gulf War, Afghanistan and Iraq. And the biggest ideological war that has the most relevant precedence to our current crisis was officially undeclared: The Cold War. All of these conflicts have no formally sanctioned beginning as enshrined in the Constitution.

Mr. Hanson relies on a wartime precedent that does not fit our novel situation in 2006. No president can sell his countrymen that war is peace. But indeed, that seems to have been the case all along, starting in 1945. Except this time the war is hot, not cold. Maintaining the duplicity of normalcy at home while war rages abroad is stretching, and thinning.

Comments Disabled

2006-07-16T09:57:00.000-07:00

Too much spam, too little time. Since the bulk of my comments appear at Winds of Change and Donkelphant, the only thing I get here is trash. Sorry for the inconvenience. If you want to comment, please visit one of those two blogs. This blog serves mainly as an archive of my work.

Limits

2006-07-14T06:50:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine said yesterday that he believes Israel and the United States have reached the limits of their power. He believes the battle is joined, is highly asymmetric, and has ground American and Israeli forces to a halt. He wasn't gloating, but was hypothesizing.

He might be wrong. Having power assumes a monopoly of violence. As we restrain our power to appeal to our allies and win friends on the ground, Islamicists do everything they can to monopolize violence through random acts of terror. They're quite unrestrained in that pursuit, and on that level, we are neck-and-neck with them for control on the ground. The battle for the monopoly of violence is symmetrical in this war because we restrain ourselves from unleashing our full fury. My friend assumes that we will restrain ourselves indefinitely, and so we have reached the limit of our power.

My friend will be right -- that the Israelis and Americans have hit their wall -- only if we continue self-restraint. We've made war with our seat belts on. There's no guarantee that things can't get to a point where further self-restraint makes no sense.

I am chastened when I consider the unlatching of our seat belts. Real war is total, not self-restrained. Real war is horrible for both sides, when everything is at stake; when everything can be lost. Real war is a desperate struggle for survival. Since 2001, we have not been fighting that kind of war, though the battles have been many, the losses tragic.

If July, 2006 marks the beginning of real war, I will have to take my friend's observation with a healthy dose of skepticism. Our force must be fully unleashed before his hypothesis can be proven. Once we get to a point to where we really believe we are fighting for our lives, the limits of our power will truly be tested.

In the years to come, we may wonder how this thing started. We may look back through a haze and wonder why 9/11 happened, and why we went into Iraq. Our moral and political calculus will have evolved after the fury is unleashed. It isn't for us to say today how our current motives will be interpreted by the survivors of this great war.

Part of me wants to see our self-restraint maintained; we have the keys to Hell's door, a Pandora's Box that is best kept shut. Another part of me wants to see our civilization's enemies mercilessly vanquished. We can't have it both ways forever.

Weird

2006-06-26T12:07:00.000-07:00

There's a story on the Jerusalem Post via Drudge reporting that the Aksa Martyrs Brigades are claiming they possess weapons of mass destruction -- Al-Aksa claims chemical capabilities:

The Aksa Martyrs Brigades announced on Sunday that its members have succeeded in manufacturing chemical and biological weapons.
In a leaflet distributed in the Gaza Strip, the group, which belongs to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah Party, said the weapons were the result of a three-year effort.

According to the statement, the first of its kind, the group has managed to manufacture and develop at least 20 different types of biological and chemical weapons.

The group said its members would not hesitate to add the new weapons to Kassam rockets that are being fired at Israeli communities almost every day. It also threatened to use the weapons against IDF soldiers if Israel carried out its threats to invade the Gaza Strip.

"We want to tell [Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert and [Defense Minister Amir] Peretz that your threats don't frighten us," the leaflet said.

"We will surprise you with our new weapons the moment the first soldier sets foot in the Gaza Strip."

This may be bluster. If it isn't -- if the Palestinians follow through on their threat to lob biological and chemical weapons into Israel -- they will experience severe retribution by the IDF. It's really doubtful that Israel will encounter much diplomatic resistance to eliminating Hamas and the Al Aksa Martyr Brigades in the wake of a WMD attack.

These people's capacity for bone-headed self destruction amazes me. What fantasy are they living under? That they'll use WMDs against Irsrael and the world will back them, with Israel backing off into the sea? Couldn't they at least exercise a little savoir-faire in their war making? As it stands, the next time a chemical or biological weapon is used in the region, they're the automatic fall guys. Do they really want to be eliminated that badly?

Weird.

X

2006-06-15T07:57:00.000-07:00

This week Abu Musab al-Zarqawi made the cover of Time Magazine. The cover's design shows al-Zarqawi's face crossed out with an x. Time has done this kind of cover only on three other occasions. When Germany surrendered in 1945, Hitler got crossed out; later that year, when Japan surrendered, the rising sun was crossed out; and in 2003, Saddam Hussein's mug got the famous X treatment when Baghdad fell. And now Abu Musab al-Zarqawi makes the fourth time.

It's a better world to have al-Zarqawi gone. Good riddance. Time's x-treatment of al-Zarqawi makes an interesting statement about what constitutes a threat in this age. Time's first two x-covers marked the end of malevolent regimes that controlled nation states. Hitler's Germany and Tojo's Japan were corrupt governments bent on empire. Their commonality was their nationalist ideologies of racial superiority and their view that all others were to be conquered, giving them license to commit great human atrocities like Nanking and Auschwitz. They were still nation states, nonetheless. They had economies, cities, borders, populations, courts, militaries and diplomats. As evil as the German and Japanese regimes were, they had a basic commonality with the world, being a part of the Westphalian order.

Time's 1945 x-covers marked the defeat of clear threats to the international order. It's interesting to note that no x-cover came out in December, 1991 when the Soviet Union was dissolved. The lack of an x-cover to mark the end of the Cold War suggests we were reluctant to declare victory since the divide within the West deepened during that long struggle. Perhaps the West's relationship with socialism is complex, making declaring victory untenable. Maybe we just didn't want to rub it in the Russian's faces that they lost the war. The absence of a Cold War x-cover is the invisible marker that christens the era we are in now, where threats are not obvious and our determination defeat them is not unanimous.

Hilterism died in May, 1945. Japanese imperialism died in September, 1945. Soviet international communism died in December, 1991, even without a Time x-cover. Ba'athism was wounded in April, 2003 -- perhaps mortally. But Syria's Ba'athists live on, and many of Saddam's lurk in Iraq. Though Ba'athism is unlikely to revitalize, it nevertheless is not dead. And Islamicism is not dead with al-Zarqawi's demise. At best, we can celebrate the destruction of a petty thug who had tacit support from al Qaeda, a man who visited great violence on the innocent. But al-Zarqawi commanded no army that we can fully oppose. He was a part of an ideology that hates infidels and dreams of a global caliphate; but he was not in control of that ideology. Al-Zarqawi was really not in control at all -- he was an acolyte in a virtual empire, far outside of the international system. He disrupted and killed on its behalf. He waged effective asymmetrical warfare through mid-scale terror. This man is now in the rarified company of Hitler, Tojo and Saddam on the cover of Time Magazine. How far we've come.

Taken in their order of appearance, the Time x-covers illustrate how the world has changed. Relatively obscure people can quickly surface and become international threats. Medieval revivalists like al-Zarqawi are strikingly modern, in spite of their dark dreams of a restored caliphate; they're amplified by technology to the degree that they really can threaten the world order. This phenomenon will increase as technology continues to empower on the individual level. Modern technology puts control in the hands of 'the user' as much as possible. If the user is a fanatic, he might get a Time X-cover with his face on it.

There is no stopping technological innovation, nor should we attempt it. But we should recognize when it changes the rules. Whether or not Time realizes it, their four x-covers tell a story, when history moved from a top-down world to a bottom-up world. We reap many benefits from this change, but take on many risks. Al-Zarqawi is one of them.

Looking at Time's four x-covers, one can see that the threshold of what constitutes an international threat is lowering to non-state actors, even below the stature of bin Laden. Small, petty men were once made large by controlling the power of the state. Now they're made large by leveraging the power of the Internet, telecommunications, modern media and weaponizing the very things we depend on for modern life.

Time's x-covers will probably become more frequent, splashed with obscure faces whose deaths mark not the end of tyranny, but its defining moment.

Baghdad

2006-06-06T08:09:00.000-07:00

From Healing Iraq:(via Andrew Sullivan)

Baghdadis are reporting that radical Islamists have taken control over the Dora, Amiriya and Ghazaliya districts of Baghdad, where they operate in broad daylight. They have near full control of Saidiya, Jihad, Jami’a, Khadhraa’ and Adil. And their area of influence has spread over the last few weeks to Mansour, Yarmouk, Harthiya, and very recently, to Adhamiya.

All of these districts, with the exception of Adhamiya, are more or less mixed or Sunni majority areas. They make up the western part of the capital, or what is known as the Karkh sector (the eastern half of Baghdad is called Rusafa). These areas also witnessed an influx of families displaced by the violence in the Anbar governorate, since many residents of the western part of Baghdad have roots in western areas of the country, such as Fallujah and Ramadi.

People who live in the mentioned districts claim that unknown groups have distributed leaflets (often handwritten), warning residents of several practices, ranging from instructions on dress codes to the prohibition of selling or dealing with certain goods.

The instructions vary between neighbourhoods. Amiriya and Ghazaliya have the full menu, while others stress only 2 or more of them. So far, enforcing the hijab for women and a ban on shorts for men are consistent in most districts of western Baghdad. In other areas, women are not allowed to drive, to go out without a chaperone, and to use cell phones in public; men are not allowed to dress in jeans, shave their beards, wear goatees, put styling hair gel, or to wear necklaces; it is forbidden to sell ice, to sell cigarettes at street stands, to sell Iranian merchandise, to sell newspapers, and to sell ring tones, CDs, and DVDs. Butchers are not allowed to slaughter during certain religious anniversaries. Municipality workers will be killed if they try to collect garbage from certain areas. Private neighbourhood generators are banned in a few areas. And the last I heard is that they are threatening Internet cafés and wireless providers.

As a result, the remaining Iraqi women who haven’t yet covered their heads are now buying veils and more moderate dress. My sister now covers her head when she goes out to college, as do most of my female relatives. Trousers and short skirts have long been abandoned. Guys are now either wearing Bermuda shorts that cover their knees or just plain trousers. Me? I have insisted so far to keep my hairy legs exposed.

Other Iraqi bloggers who have posted about this phenomenon: here, here, here, here, here, and here.

I will try to get hold of one of these fliers, but so far no one has produced any.
And while the fliers may be a rumour, the killings of those who failed to observe the guidelines are not.

The capital is rife with all kinds of morbid rumours. Some examples below:

- An armed group stopped a minibus full of high school female students. 2 girls, who had their hair exposed, had their heads shaven clean as an example for others.

- 4 young men wearing shorts near a local bakery at Mansour were all shot in the legs.

- A young high school student at Ma’moun was shot twice in the head with a notice saying that he was killed for wearing jeans.

- A lady was forced out of her car and stripped naked near the Nida’ mosque in Adhamiya.

Why don’t they just blow up the city and erect tents instead? It would make life much easier. We could go to school or work riding on camels. We could sit at the mosque all day, stroking and scratching our filthy beards and waiving flies away, while our women recline in their harems.

In short, they are trying to take us back to the 7th century, so we can experience the simple life of the prophet and his pious companions. We should abandon everything and anything that was not available at the time of the prophet in order to be true Muslims.

Yet the followers of this simplistic, backwards ideology have no problem with using hi-tech explosives, IEDs, machine guns and RPGs. According to their sick creed, it is not against Islam to detonate a car bomb at a bustling market or to shoot a kid twice in the head because he had gel on his hair. No, that is okay in Islam.

Are we winning? At this point in the war, I am not certain where to put my confidence.

Faith on Faith

2006-05-15T19:29:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday, in the baleful, relentless May rains of Massachusetts, my wife, two year old daughter and I went to the neighboring town to try out their 9:00 Catholic mass. We've been church shopping since our move from California, trying different parishes in neighboring towns.

We arrived drenched in rain, at about 8:50. The church building was small and plain. Inside, the congregation filled the pews and spilled into the aisles, where children of all ages were doing their best to behave. Near the altar were the musicians. They had guitars, a synthesized bongo drum, and voice. They were practicing their bits with the microphones turned off. There was confabulation between neighbors and parents. The priest and the altar girls were near the front entrance of the church, lighting candles and inspecting each other's vestments.

We sat in the last pew. My wife and I couldn't help but notice that the average family size in this little church must have been three children. We saw some families arrive that had five or six children. Many of the families were young. The human energy in this little refuge from the gray rain torrents outside was palpable. And loud.

- - - - - - -

We've begun looking for a Catholic church to regularly attend for many reasons. The most pressing reason is our two year old daughter, who can now speak in short sentences and recall events from a few weeks before. Her memory is astonishing. If we want our little girl to be a part of the culture from which her parents came, now is the time. Up until now, not going to church seemed logical if only to avoid the sheer hassle of her infantile months. Hardly a young lady at two, she is at least manageable, and more importantly, impressionable.

Going to church is unusual for me. I was raised Catholic, in a very conservative parish. I grew up believing, then later disbelieving. Then still later, believing alternative things, only to find them dry and unfulfilling. Religion hardly seemed like my vocation; it was more like a club where all the members would nod their heads at the same things, followed by donuts and coffee. And sometimes, not even that. Much of the time growing up in the Church, I was simply there. Nothing else was apparent, or possible.

To this day I have troubles with many facets of the Catholic faith, taken in parts. I'm just not sure what to think about the Church's absolute stand on homosexuality, celibate male priests and the role of the laity. I'm suspicious of some of the notional aspects that any religion tends to promote.

But now I am 43, and part of me thinks it'd be nice to go to a good old fashioned Latin mass, with the works: Gregorian chants; the priest standing towards the altar; the mighty pipes of the organ; frankincense wafting from the gentle chain-swinging of the priest's brass thurible. At my age, all that seems comforting in its solemnity. It respects my past, and my culture's origins. My craving for the Old Ways is like a boomerang fulfilling its 30 year trajectory, hitting me in the back of the head with a thud.

"BANG! I told you I'd be back someday."

The truth must be told, since I'm on the topic of an institution that promotes The Truth. The truth is that I'm not sure if I am looking for God, or simply taking refuge in aesthetic. It's a very old aesthetic, going back to my youngest days, and to my civilization's beginning. I now go back to tap into a deep well whose surface remains quite parched. I cannot deny my daughter these waters, though seldom do they quench my sorrows and pains. It's the sound of their trickling that suffices for now. I want her to hear the waters that I once heard so well in early morning masses. I want to give her the opportunity to drink from that well. I want to give her something richer than I alone can provide, in spite of my doubts.

"But why Catholic," one of my coworkers asked me. "You guys sound like you'd love the Unitarian Church I go to. It's so inclusive and it puts all religions on equal ground."

That does sound very egalitarian. But somehow, a smorgasbord of religions sounds too postmodern for me. It is odd, but at this point in my life I feel like a salmon who must swim back upstream to spawn -- for my daughter's sake. It may not be logical. But it is necessary. And putting all the religions on a lazy susan and spinning it in front of her is not what I want to do to her.

In these times, finding certainty can be an obsession. Religion offers the possibility of an eternal order that includes you, where you can feel protected and safe. For all the detractors calling religion irrational, looking for order and the Creator's love might be the most rational thing in the world. I take no umbrage at other people's faith, as long as it does not impinge upon my own -- or lack thereof. Unlike in my twenties, when I felt the need to shake-off a Catholicism that I felt was imposed upon me, in my forties I respect people's quest for certainty and solace.

- - - - - - -

Back to last Sunday, at the little New England church. It's 9:00. People have quieted down. The rain can be heard pounding on the roof and dripping on the outside of the stained glass windows. The building feels like a sanctuary in this weather. Then the music begins. The priest and the altar girls make their procession to the altar. Though somewhat stale, the words of the mass fall out of my mouth in familiar tones. It's all still there, deep inside of me.

In front of us is a family with a little girl, the same age as ours. They make faces at each other during the mass, fiddling with their sweater buttons and flipping the pages of the missals. I remember doing these things. I remember my father would sit in the pew, holding his missile a certain way in his hands, partially scrolled with his thumbs crossed to hold it shut. I remember doing the same thing as him, trying to be like him.

Maybe I've conflated God with religion, religion with aesthetic, with community, with culture, nostalgia and a father's need to do right by his daughter. Maybe none of those things have anything in common with each other. That is never far from my mind, and is a barrier to faith for me.

Faith is a mysterious thing. I don't know that I have much left in me. That's sad. But maybe for my daughter, I will simply have to take faith on faith.

Greater Expectations

2006-05-09T20:48:00.000-07:00

Some of you may know that my family and I recently took up residence in Massachusetts. Left far behind us are cheap burrito lunches, supermarket liquors and the occasional San Andreas tremor. Now our landscape is filled with maples and apple farms that surround our little Cape Cod style house. It's spring here in New England, bursting with blossoms and young leaves. For every large lawn, there seems to be a cardinal on its periphery who is a sentinel to the grass and sky.

Certainly, life here is different. We expected that. But not just because we're Californians transplanted in New England. We also crossed what might arguably be a more precipitous border that crisscrosses many American landscapes. Some forty miles inland from the metropolis, we have planted ourselves in a kind of 'sub-suburban' world that borders on being rural. But not quite rural, no. Among the apple farms and around the Town Forest are homes, some quite palatial. This isn't quite rural, not with tractor mowers, Trader Joe's and Talbots just a few miles away.

Not only is New England novel to us, but so is this newly-defined pastoral life that we now have here. Certainly, this kind of existence is not unique to New England. There is a kind of urge for the pastoral life that is satisfied far beyond the fringes of city life. It can be found across the country. It can be soothing, where one might fantasize about reading Byron all day in a shaded hammock and leaving the trappings of civilization behind, to fester in its own self-perpetuated demise.

On Saturdays -- now that Spring is in full throttle -- I've noted the din of the John Deeres all around me. The summer gear is making its way out of the garages. Hedges are getting trimmed, lawns groomed, flowers planted, and volleyball nets are rising. Commercial vans pull up to large lawns and 'hydroseed' them with high-pressure hoses that blast out a greenish mix of grass seed and fertilizer. Bird fountains are swept out and turned on. The energy that is put into the yards that surround these clapboard castles is astonishing. Being the new, first time home owner, I see the frenzy of yard activity around us and look at my own lawn with a sigh. "Look how brown our grass is," I tell my wife. "What a lot of work this is."

Naturally I can't help but be myself. So instead of watering and 'hydroseeding' my anemic lawn, I sit on my deck gazing out at the neighbor who is plodding along at five miles an hour, sitting resplendently on his green John Deere, coffee in hand. It's perhaps 11:00 in the morning, and I'm onto my second Bass Ale. His lawn must be about two acres. His house -- though quite nice, and very tidy -- must be about 3,500 square feet. His driveway must be a couple hundred feet long, as it winds up the slight hill his house sits upon. And I am amazed.

Amazed, and nervous. I bought the smallest house in this neighborhood -- though palatial compared to what we rented in California -- because I couldn't fathom taking care of too much property. And because I think there's some big challenges ahead for us in the not too distant future, mostly to do with energy. A career opportunity took me to New England, where energy really, really matters. In California, you can get away with not heating your house in the winter. It'd be very uncomfortable, and not much of a life without heat. But you'd survive. In New England, turning off the heat would simply kill you. Energy is imperative. And so it concerns me that I now live somewhere that is energy-intensive, in an era at the threshold of an energy crisis.

After two or three Bass Ales, I wax poetic on my deck. And I wonder: does Mr. John Deere over there with his coffee see what's coming down the pike? Is it really possible that his carefully constructed domestic universe that's buffered by tall maples is on the brink of extinction? On the surface, it's so lovely, all of this. It's so simple and fresh. Grass with romping children and lots of trees and space, with redbirds flitting across the sky. People trim-out their domestic fantasies with hedge clippers purchased from Home Depot and made in China. Every house has a wooden castle for children in the back yard with slides, swings and dealybobs they can amuse themselves with. Propane-fueled mosquito lures bracket the yards. Is all of this truly sustainable? Are we kidding ourselves that this is normal? Is this realistic?

Beer is supposed to suppress thoughts about the apocalypse and lure one into the complacency of numbness. Or some such. But not this Bass Ale. Each passing day has me more convinced that our lives are carefully constructed fantasies, scripted in the last 60 years or so. Our fantastic expectations on how to live well are built upon the assumption that energy will be abundant, and cheap. But we are fragile and exposed. Many people don't know it. They see themselves as hard workers who paid their dues, and their John Deere was fairly earned. Perhaps so, in the context of our culture's expectations. But should the basic relationship we have with energy be disrupted, much of this paradise around my house will be changed.

Today, Iran's leader sent a letter to the President, lecturing him on democracy and religion. He all but demanded that the American president convert to Islam.

It was hardly a letter that approached reconciliation, or laid a foundation for setting terms that might reduce tensions. The letter was bravado, and I believe it was the observance of an Islamic a technicality -- da’wa, a call to accept Islam offered to one's enemies before war. It's a foreboding letter that might mean many things, coming from a country that can easily destabilize the cost of energy for the world.

I really don't know how this crisis can or should play out. But however it works out, much of what we consider normal will probably not endure. It wouldn't be so tragic if all that was at stake was mowed grass and palatial living. I think we might come to be surprised to learn how many of our goals and dreams for the good life are tied into energy from places that have values that are far different than our own. We will need to adjust our values to greater expectations that might be more realistic, if not more wholesome.

Last beer. I hear it rains here a lot in the summer. That's good. That should keep my grass green. I'm looking into a push mower, but heaven help me in this era of change. The neighbors will think I'm crazy.

Morning Jolt

2006-04-25T05:52:00.000-07:00

Folks,

It's time for a break from all the serious topics on this blog. Every once in a while I go to YouTube for amusement. Well, this is most amusing:

Base Jumping

I have to hand it to these people. Either they're insane or they possess a certain verve that left my body when I turned 18. I dunno. I'm certain this beats coffee as a morning jolt.

Threshold

2006-03-26T12:24:00.000-08:00

I am quite aware of Thomas Friedman's 'Flat Earth,' and agree that globalization has done far more to spread wealth than just about any other historical economic influence. I know that telecommunications and the Internet have compressed the world economically and politically. I understand the interdependent ties between global regions and the nations within them. Look at isolated countries like North Korea or Talibanian Afghanistan, and it is obvious that in our time, countries that 'go it alone' face massive economic privations, often accompanied with the horror of internal repression.

In spite of the view that the globalized world will deliver long-term freedom and prosperity, I have begun to wonder if openness will be an option as we cross history's harsh thresholds, hidden in the tall grass. History always reaps the unexpected; its scythe is strident.

I will admit that I was duped by Mark Buehner's recent satire, How I Learned to Stop Worrying about Mullahs and Embrace The Bomb. I see that it was satire in hindsight, and I feel sheepish in admitting I was so easily deceived. But the large wave that is barreling down upon us at the moment disarmed me from parodic sensitivity. Mr. Buehner's satire was laden with factual, convincing sources. It felt like yelling 'fire' in a theater to me because the nuclear scenarios he laid out are credible in so many minds. We live in a world on edge.

I believe we are already at a historical threshold. The first indication is utter confusion. The secular world's response to Shi'a Islam's nuclear ambition is confused, on both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific. There really is no cogent consensus on what to do, because Iran's challenge is a square peg that will not fit in our round hole. Responsive, credible policy is paralyzed from transnational organizations down to national governments because no political strategy promises a clear solution.

It is clear that the crisis is upon us and all roads lead to a very different world. We may not realize it, but we are not really talking about a country that is seeking nuclear arms. We are talking about a fundamentalist, ancient Islamic cult seeking nuclear arms as its ultimate sacrament. While it is necessary for a 'country' called 'Iran' to exercise its sovereignty in order to achieve the making of nuclear weapons, once achieved those weapons will respect no borders. They are being constructed to defy and nullify sovereign borders as we know them. Shi'a's nukes will proliferate like smoke in the wind; their very being is meant to unravel our world, which we have slowly conceived over centuries, at the expense of the Mullahs' world.

The headlines in our papers betray our fundamental misunderstanding of the crisis, referring to the 'Iranian nuclear program,' presuming that this is an entirely Westphalian affair. Therein lies the guise -- the mask about to be lowered. We only see things through the prism of our own perspective, which moves the crisis into high gear. To help clarify what is happening, swap 'Iran' for 'Hezbollah' and ''President Ahmadinejad' for 'Sheik Hassan Nasrallah' in the headlines about the nuclear crisis. Here's a few examples culled from the presses, so altered:

Germany, IAEA to Discuss Hezbollah Nuclear Activities

Russia Opposes Issuing Hezbollah an "Ultimatum" on its Nuclear Program

Hezbollah to Go Nuclear This Year, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah Says

UN Inspectors to Check Up on Hezbollah Nuclear Program

Looks pretty bad, doesn't it? Cultists dedicated to our destruction, answerable to no one but their vengeful god, playing with nukes? To not consider Hezbollah and Persian Shi'a as morally and strategically interchangeable is to tragically misinterpret the hallmark of our time.

A religious suicide cult funded by billions of our petrodollars obtaining weapons of mass destruction has no historical precedent. None. The rules of engagement will be completely upended. Familiar metaphors of superpower warring will be unworkable and irrelevant. Watching sovereign entities flail and dither like paper dolls before their ultimate post-sovereign challenger indicates that the threshold is beneath our feet, if we care to look down.

This is no satire. These are the stakes in 2006.

If Shi'a's radical mullahs manage to proliferate their nukes like smoke through their post-sovereign proxies, certain as-yet-to-be-named cities will unexpectedly fall through trapdoors. No one will lay claim to the atrocities. It need only happen once. If London, or Paris, or New York, or Detroit, or even Fresno falls into oblivion, our well-oiled socioeconomic global merry-go-round stops. Indefinitely. Because of the threat of mass destruction, all borders will be shut. All ports closed. All shipping stopped. Air travel halted. Since the very infrastructure of modern commerce will be the delivery device for Shi'a's nukes, that infrastructure will be indefinitely frozen solid. It won't be an option. There won't be a debate.

If the 'West' manages enough moxy to attempt a preemption of Shi'a Persia, the result will be different than their striking first, but only by degrees. The rubicon will have been crossed. The fact is, we don't know if the mullahs have nukes at this point. It is plausible to suppose that they do. It would be reckless to presume otherwise. We can nuke their nukes with all the gusto we have and not come out of it thinking that we have fully abated the threat of rogue nuclear strikes. Striking first wounds radical Shi'a, but doesn't kill it. And like a wounded bear, it will chase off into the woods for a while, only to come back with a bloody vengeance. Striking first also puts aside the idea of sovereignty, if only for self defense. The world will take that baton and run with it.

What struck me about Mr. Buehner's piece was how his idea of the absurd came off as plausible, depending on one's view of the threat's enormity. And even then, the most aggressive preemptive strike against Persian Shi'a still leaves us stranded between the world that we know -- with largely open borders that facilitate free trade and expansive prosperity -- and the next world, where borders are defined by padlocks, moats and walls, not openness -- just like the good old days of sovereignty, when borders meant 'stop, go no further.' In a world of nuclear trapdoors, there will be a lock-down of borders to secure their inviolability. Globalism, transnationalism and our jet-setting postmodern lifestyle presume that we can have our cake and eat it too: National borders exist to contain political, social and economic zones while cultures, religions and civilizations are free to transgress sovereignty ad infinitum. That wonderfully open-minded and trusting view of the world is on the chopping block, whether we attack first or Shi'a attacks first.

As far as whether or not to strike first or wait to be struck, I guess I am in the 'Strike First' camp. Spin the bottle -- better to take the initiative than sit around and wait for the enemy's blow. But I am not deluded in thinking that our marvelously open world will survive this crisis unchanged. What we have now is historically unprecedented, and incredibly fragile. We hang by a thread.

After the 3/11 Madrid bombings, Lewis ‘Atiyyatullah, claiming to represent al-Qaeda, said:

The international system built-up by the West since the Treaty of Westphalia will collapse; and a new international system will rise under the leadership of a mighty Islamic state.

Al Qaeda is Sunni, not Shi'a, but that may be a difference that will be temporarily patched-up to achieve a common, pan-Islamist goal. Mr. ‘Atiyyatullah is right. Our open system is not impervious. It is, in fact, quite pervious. How we engage being in a closed world will be most telling to our character as free people.

I will end this dour essay on an optimistic note. If the world becomes closed in the name of self-preservation, some countries will fare better than others in isolation. Though all modern countries are thoroughly ensnared in global economics, if ripped away, some countries have enough national will, freedom, natural resources and innovative citizens to positively reinvent themselves in a closed planet. I think the United States can weather isolation better than most countries, should isolation be foisted upon us.

I am not suggesting isolation as some kind of regressive policy option that we can choose; I am suggesting that it might be the only option left, whoever pulls the nuclear trigger. It will be incredibly painful to endure, but perhaps out of the transition we will reclaim our sense of self-worth. Our history of independence is still longer than our history of dependence. Out of all the uncertainty of this time, relying on our indomitable free spirit is the one possible future I can still imagine.

Just Say It

2006-02-24T11:31:00.000-08:00

To the mainstream media:

The reason why you won't publish the Danish cartoons is because you're scared. It's because you don't want your buildings to be the next targets of jet planes. It's because you want to keep your heads on -- literally. It's because you really do believe there is a war of civilizations, though you won't say it, and any false move could ignite the seas.

If you would just say that fear motivates your censuring some cartoons, I might respect you more. Because fear is real. Sometimes it can't easily be overcome. Sometimes the price of freedom is very high, and we stumble, dither and grope before we stand.

So please just tell the truth. Don't lie and say that you won't publish the cartoons out of 'respect' for Muhammad. Western presses have long, long since let that noun go as a relic of antiquity. And that's fine -- we pay the price for free speech by enduring disrespect -- or else we become a culture mutes.

Have the presses of the free world become mutes?

I remember reading accounts of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. Young Iranian zealots ran across mine fields in order to clear them. Well, certainly some of those kids were unwilling martyrs; but many weren't. They had the same fire as Japanese kamikazes -- the same viscous fervor, inspired by divine afterlife. I remember thinking: Boy, I wonder if we can hold it together enough to fight these guys someday if they have nukes.

Are you fearful? I am. And I admit it. Very soon we will need to find the courage of our forefathers whose burdens we have inherited, not surpassed. We've had it too easy for too long, and now we're soft on fear. We call fear respect.

Fear is not respect. Fear is fear. So just say it.

Fireflies

2006-02-16T21:48:00.000-08:00

Concord, Massachusetts

I've dropped off the radar recently. I'm moving to Massachusetts to a demanding job while attending to the rigors of searching for a new home. That mission was accomplished this week -- we have a Purchase and Sale Agreement signed for a house surrounded by New England maples and apple orchards. Our Big Fat Check has been tendered. And so now there's only six weeks to go before we move East. Blogging has taken a back burner for a spell during the transition.

I've been seeing the headlines of course -- cartoon jihad and American torture. Europeans -- some seemingly in their death spiral, while others are finally turning a corner to actual indignation for being designated infidels. Maybe opening all the windows in the European house let in a lot of bees and wasps. Maybe their stings actually can't be ignored. Maybe Europe's like that man covered in bees, not flinching. Just one flinch and...

Can we win history? Can we hold the fabric of life as we've known it together? Some people want me to look at the new Abu Ghraib photos with a renewed sense of horror. I'm not proud of them -- how could I be? What can I say? War sucks. War brings out the worst in mankind, on both sides. Wars aren't fought in tuxedos. It's not an excuse, but it certainly isn't news.

The big story in all the torture images are really the motivations behind their publication. True, it's free speech, and we're free people. We ought to see what our men and women in uniform are up to. But of course, torture isn't the whole story of Iraq and the post 9/11 era, or probably anywhere near it. There are people who want me to think that Abu Ghraib defines us. There are others who want me to think that GIs handing out candy to Iraqi children defines us. Maybe, just maybe, they're both wrong if taken as absolute truths. Maybe, just maybe, there's countless layers to this story, and we need to take them all in as a whole, and keep our eye on all the balls. But nobody seems particularly interested in that. There's no way to press one's agenda with that kind of thinking, preferring to express indignation from one side of the boxing ring or the other. Perhaps I'm naive to think that we can be as broad-minded as it takes to overcome this war. Perhaps it's indignation that stiffens spines. Perhaps.

Muslims riot and break things all over the world because of some cartoons of their prophet. I'm mixed on that whole story, because on some level Piss Christ pissed me off indeed. And I'm not much of a God-fearin' teetotaler, either. At the time, I just thought Piss Christ did more harm than good -- that's all. I didn't think it bound society together -- it pulled it apart. But whatever. People are grown ups. They should be able to handle plain old unsophisticated vulgarity, which I've always thought to be a kind of inverted piety. The motivations behind extreme piety and vulgarity are very similar, and take water from the same well.

So now Mohammed gets the Christ treatment, finally dispatched by our irreverent secular culture to satire and scorn. Part of me thinks it's about time for some sense of balance from the Vulgarists, obsessed with pissing only on Christ; part of me thinks the Mo cartoons just fan the flames further, with no real gain in any useful direction; part of me thinks it's free speech and that trumps all, and how nice it is to see Europeans find their verve; part of me is just tired. Tired of the Great Unravelling, brought to us by cartoonists. How terribly fitting.

Mo-toons demonstrate that there are two civilizations in Europe now, as never before. It's hard to tell who's playing offense and who's playing defense. Good luck with that, my cousins across the sea. I hope you can manage it. You might actually have to get tough, though. Tough times are only deferred, never prevented, dear cousins. It's true you have a lot of history to overcome. But history might overcome you first.

Those of you who have bought a house for the first time might relate to how I am feeling now. It's a little bit like having your first child. It sends shivers of joy and trepidation down my spine. It's a stake in the earth, a line in the sand that says, "Here I will make my stand." There's a lot of hope in buying property, for if I was completely hopeless, owning land would make no sense. The same goes with having children. It's the endeavor of the hopeful, even if hope is a momentary impulse through all the headlines of rage.

I can't stop wondering about the history that will be made while I watch my daughter grow on my patch of New England soil. I have pleasant dreams of watching her chase fireflies with a jar while we sip ice tea on our screened summer porch, listening to crickets and the night owl. And I have unpleasant nightmares that rage will have its way, if only for a little while -- long enough to turn out current obsessions into the cold snow, to be replaced by the thud of reality. We still think we're talking absolute sense these days, like we actually know what we're doing. But I fear we'll look back on all the rage right now like men in a barrel headed for Niagara. I try to suppress that thought while I go into massive debt for my patch of maple.

I've made my bid for a slice of sanity in a land that is 3,000 miles away from my home. I am betting that the comfort of fireflies will endure for years to come. That requires faith in the future. Through all the indignation in this world, I hope you can find yours too.

Uprisings Everywhere

2006-01-16T14:57:00.000-08:00

I don't have much commentary to add to this New York Times article on the riots in Panlong village, China. The end of the article pretty much sums up China in a nutshell:

"We have many special zones in this area, and each of them attracts investment," said a villager who was interviewed by telephone and gave his name as Hou. "The economic deals set in the past were not favorable, and many zones here have had smaller protests before, but the people were not united."

"Now," he added, "there are uprisings everywhere."

Uprisings everywhere, indeed. 2006 is shaping up to be a pivotal year. The Iranian crisis might create unexpected wrinkles beyond the Gulf region. China's stance on Iran, should things come to a head, will be very revealing. China and Iran are in negotiations for a gigantic oil and gas deal. If it succeeds, it would be Iran's biggest foreign contract.

China's problems are many, but staying ahead of them seems possible only as long as their economy continues to expand. Their bid for Persian energy is part of a survival strategy for the regime. In our small world, rioting villagers in Panlong and uranium enrichment in Natanz walk the same tightrope.

In both Iran and China, the actions of the regimes seem to be increasingly at odds with the will of the citizens. There's one thing about history's poker table: it's never obvious who's going to unexpectedly fold. It could be that the biggest story to come out of these two countries will be how oppressed countrymen reclaimed their dignity and freedom from despots. Here's hoping.

Cool

2006-01-10T09:03:00.000-08:00

I am flying at 35,537 feet above Utah right now, heading for Boston. I always get a window seat so that I can press my face against the window and soak in the big, blue world from high altitude. I don't think I will ever get used to the idea that I am flinging my body at 600 miles per hour, able to see entire states at a glance outside my window. Having a giant, live map of the Earth moving directly beneath me astonishes me, and always will. The aisle seats might be more convenient for bathroom breaks, but give me the killer view that our ancestors could only dream of.

Recently, I downloaded Google Earth. I've known about it for a few months, but its description didn't excite me -- after all, I've long been using Google Maps in my browser. So Google Earth uses the same data as Google Maps -- ho-hum -- whatever. What's the big deal?

After prodding from friends, I relented and downloaded the application.

Ah. I recognize this thing. It's the view from my window seat! On steroids, with caffeine to boot.

My hometown contains a decommissioned Navy air base. On Google Earth I went to my hometown and noted that the jet runways were still intact. Since the application runs so smoothly, I could come onto the runways at the same angle and speed as a jet pilot. It's amazing -- I could see the runway markings, and the bushes on the edges. I probably made a virtual landing onto the Navy base about ten times, from different angles, onto different runways.

This morning, on a real jet plane, we took off for Boston and I immediately spotted outside my window the runway in my hometown, which we were flying over. I recognized the runway numbers, the color of the stripes -- even the bushes.

In short, I've been floored by Google Earth. I am pretty numb to new software. I'm not easily impressed, since most applications seem only to rearrange or streamline what already has existed for years now. And since I am middle aged, everytime an upgrade comes out for an application that I use a lot, I take it on like a load of logs on my back. "One more thing I have to learn about and adjust to," I lament. When I was younger, upgrades were happy things -- there was coolness in an upgrade, with enhanced features and new amazing tools. Now, I just want to use what I know. My reflex to new software is to push it back, like coming home to 30 new voicemail messages. Eventually, I relent and do the right thing. And in the end, it's good that I do.

So Google Earth really floored me because I don't think I have uttered the word 'cool' so much in five minutes since I saw the first Star Wars movie in '77.

Google Earth provides a new, networked platform for looking at our planet. It's basically a 3D model of a big ball, onto which is mapped all sorts of data. Naturally, the first layer of data is the Earth itself -- satellite images of the surface. The images vary in resolution, mainly dependent on available data. An additional component is actual topographical data, so that hills and mountains are actually three dimensional. Changing your incline on a landscape reveals the topgraphical scale of things. I flew through the Grand Canyon, and found Mt. Everest by scanning Nepal's skyline. Amazing.

In selected urban downtowns, Google has provided a layer comprised of primitive three-dimensional buildings. They're gray and not highly detailed.You can change your angle and fly through buildings, down the canyons of buildings. I'm not entirely sure what the utility of three-dimensional buildings is, but it is cool nonetheless.

See? I said 'cool' again.

The most powerful aspect of Google Earth is the millions of possible layers that can overlay the planet, showing nodes of relevant data, such as 'Lodgings' or 'Restaurants'. There's some default layers like those, but clearly the future will include more and more layers from a variety of sources. Perhaps things like a Crimes Report layer, a weather satellite layer, local headline news layer, GPS tracking layers, and a myriad of personal layers compiled by people. I downloaded one such personal layer (.KMZ file) created and posted by a guy with a rich, detailed knowledge of sites in North Korea. When I activate his North Korea layer, up come about a hundred markers showing different points of interest, including gulags, nuke plants, communist slogans on the sides of hills, etc.

I always thought that flying really made the world small. Google Earth makes the world absolutely tiny. You can zoom way out and there's Jim Lovell's view of the entire planet from Apollo 8 -- a dot in a sea of blackness, easily obscured by his thumb. Everything, boiled down to a blue marble.

Coolness aside, all this has me concerned about Google. I know I'm not alone in wondering if Google might become too powerful. It's an opaque company, with no exact parallel to be found in corporate history. When I see Jim Lovell's view of Tiny Earth, I wonder if this opening screen is also Google's corporate view of our world: Making us small, and absolute. Looked that way, Google's clever rendering of our planet -- diminutive, contained, made knowable by Google -- feels ominous.

I suppose that 'coolness' was a dominating factor leading to much folly throughout human history. We appear to be in an era of simultaneous expansion and contraction. More and more data floods our lives, expanding into torrents; and companies like Google are refining and contracting those torrents of information into becoming managable and useful.

Sure, that's cool. It's even necessary. But in the process we're leaving behind a big part of life, as we've known it. Our children will grow up with less of a sense of mystery out of all this tracking. Everything, all the time, everywhere will not be amazing to them; it will be assumed. It might be seen as a liability, not an asset. And we'll be made absolutely accountable to every micro-law that governs modern life, right down to the last legal crossed t and dotted i. I suspect that that refining the granularity of accountability will have little to do with freedom, in the end.

Google does an amazing job of combining Apple's hipness with Microsoft's global dominance. I think we have all been caught off-guard by this new company. Google seems to record everything they can, having become the world's ultimate high-res scanner. IP delivery based on geolocation is a double-edged sword; for all the data they collect, there's no established limit to what degree they retain data about you and I. Data mining and retention is serious business, once the purview of autocratic governments, spies and investigators. Now it's the oil that lubricates what might be the world's largest, most omnipotent tracking corporation.

It might be true that a networked world needs a Google in one form or another. So while I consider myself an optimist about my country's spreading democracies to the dark corners of the Earth, I am chastened by the corporate juggernauts my culture produces, that appear to be accountable to nobody.

How cool is that?

A Forest For Thee

2005-11-28T00:11:00.000-08:00

Dear readers, I need your insight.

For Thanksgiving we went to my brother's house. Our adopted daughter is now twenty months old. The next youngest person at the dinner was her cousin, 14 years old. Then another cousin, 17. Then the sparkling college freshman, now 18. And then the adults, like dominoes: 42, 43, 46, 53, 55, 70 and 77. And four more in their eighties.

I might find some luck with respect to some real income next year. It will take me to the sky, tossing between coasts. My dad is 77, and faints in church. His neurologist took away his driver's license. And my baby girl is a baby no longer. She calls her mama "Ammy." Yesterday she was walking around the house holding her baby rattle to her ear, babbling. Suddenly I realized she was miming me on the phone. Everyday her insights grow, like little blocks, high and full.

Thanksgiving dinner was good, but I caught a glimpse of my daughter's aloneness in a world of adults. It saddened me. She made the rounds in her black dress, pressing her cheek to big people's laps. I observed her in the spotlight; she's keenly aware of it.

My wife and I are heading into our middle forties now. It's coming towards decision time: Should we have another child? It would be adoption again -- not a simple procedure, believe me.

I wish you could know my wife like I do. No one knows her except for me -- no one. She's the quiet, observant one at parties. She's consumed with magic worlds. She has an imagination that many people would find off-putting, for being so vibrant. Her words on paper make me melt. For her, the inanimate is alive; it has names. There's a forest within her, with flowers, bats, and little wingless angels lost in the leaves. You can't know how much I love her forest, and its many enchanting tales.

I've noticed since being a mother that my wife's forest has become more distant. I try to encourage a path inside. She certainly takes in our child's wonderment as her own. But for now at least, at twenty months, her own forest takes second place. It must. I hope that when the early trials of mothering pass, our daughter can be a collaborator in the trees, filling the forest with her own creatures. I don't know if you understand this, but it matters. This is where our love is, like a fire.

I worry that a second child will be too much. No more forest. My wife is strong, but not in ways that people recognize. This daughter takes all she's got. Will a second one break her? Me? My wife is an only child, and experience tells her we should try again.

And then there's me. Long days in the basement office, furiously designing. Our life is good -- during the day I come up for air and tea, and daughter time. I make our lunches, and we go on walks. Our rented house is small, and our life scaled down compared to so many others. A second child would probably ensure that we'll not own a house for a long time -- something I've longed for. Does that even matter anymore?

Have we found balance, our little family of three? Or do we lack it? Cicero can be very, very depressed sometimes, dear readers. For me, the world has always been a swirl. It can be so bright, but pull me down so deeply. But for now, more than the swirl out there, this decision matters most. It figures large. It's not obvious what to do.

Bits and atoms;
Dollars and things;
They don't matter.
They never will.

When we die
All that matters is love;
How much we loved
How much we were loved
How much we are love.

All that matters is love.

Things To Take To Heaven

2005-11-27T22:16:00.000-08:00

My favorite marmalade

Her secret smile

All my wrinkles, and skin

Jars of sea air

My daughter's innocence

The poems I meant to write

My sorrows, for occasional review

My best ideas

And me.

...

Birds

2005-11-26T20:06:00.000-08:00

When the birds are gone
we will know.

We will remember
flocks like clouds;
warmth
and mother's hand;
sky
that never weeps.

We will know
in our happy days
we were fools
never to see this day
never to see this quiet
this restless pause.

We will pray
try to pray
pretend to pray
earnestly
for birds;
for their sound
their daring acrobatics
their restlessness.

Look at them, daughter---

Remember.

Cold Grass

2005-11-20T11:29:00.000-08:00

This weekend I learned that our two close friends are getting divorced. They have a young son.

For me, divorce is like a kind of death. It's the ending of two lives together, a relationship that has perhaps been long dead, now formalized. My reaction was to hold my wife tightly that night.

I feel for the boy. I remember talking to his parents recently about his future education. They're considering putting him in the French School. Perhaps in later years he would go to France for a broader eduction. I remember thinking the usual snide thoughts about the real kind of education he would receive in France. It's an expensive proposition. Perhaps a simple, solid marriage between his two parents and public school would be far more valuable than a child of divorce learning French at an expensive school somewhere. Perhaps.

But dad wants to be free -- to travel, to be unshackled and to untie the weights he feels bind him to the ground. They consider their differences irreconcilable. I hope this is for the best -- it might be if the alternative is a miserable marriage on daily display to their son. As it stands, they lead secret, separate lives around the boy.

Looking at my parent's era, marriage seemed like it was a more stable, enduring union. There was less divorce then. Marriage was ordained by God more than man in those days. But I also know a lot of people from that older generation through my friends. The marriages are largely intact, but I've detected no shortage of angst among many of them, now that they are elderly. I can see the bitterness in some of these people's eyes. Perhaps they are wondering what lives they might have had if they'd been with someone else. More of these older people maintained their vows, but in so doing they may not have been true to themselves. It's hard to say.

Among my 40ish year old friends, my wife and I have felt isolated. There are very few marriages among our friends and peers that we feel we can look up to. She and I are very happy with our daughter. We love our family life, and each other without condition. But that seems rare among our midlife friends. We feel like a little island amongst all this marital disquietude. Is this unique to my generation?

The grass is always greener somewhere else. Whether married or not, I think it's in our nature to imagine the other lives we might've had. But the grass we stand on, here and now, is what matters. Regret is inescapable sometimes, as much as we might dislike that word. These people are my friends. I love them. What a cold day this is.

Fait Accompli

2005-11-16T23:12:00.000-08:00

Western Europe is in a crisis. Fifty years of multiculturalist policies that kept Muslims segregated on social welfare roles will be the ink that writes the next chapter of European history.

On my side of the Atlantic, there's little to relish in this crisis. Losing Old Europe is tragic. Many rich continental cultures are ebbing, having lost faith in themselves. And Europe is on the vanguard in the war against terrorist fascism. Watching the fires of France, I wonder if we are seeing a tragic axiom play itself out: As Europe goes, so goes the West. Europe is our first line of defense, whether we like it or not. For now, Dominique de Villepin is the front-line general in this global war. Not encouraging. And perhaps if he fails soundly, the pounding fist of Jean-Marie Le Penn will take up the sword.

France's reaction to the unrest in its cites -- amounting to more methadone for the addicts -- has lead me to conclude that social democracy cannot fundamentally tackle militant Islamicism. It just can't. Social democracy provides too many loopholes and gotchas for the Islamicists who have no patriotic allegiance to their European hosts. Extreme Euro-egalitarianism allows the very enemies of egalitarianism to borrow time, dig trenches, tie-up courts with litigation about t-crossing and i-dotting, achieve light sentences, receive public funding and a political framework to advance fundamentalism. From my perspective, Islamic fascism and social democracy are temporarily symbiotic. But the long view of their symbiosis is that social democracy is a tool of the Islamicist's arsenal, not visa versa. The symbiosis of fundamentalism and social democracy is not mutualistic or commensalistic; instead, it's parasitic, at the expense of a deferential, accommodating host.

It's uncomfortable for me to conjure up metaphors of the European malaise that sound like cancer. The Nazis did that. Seeing a subculture as cancerous is a major step into the abyss, giving the green light for unspeakable policies that are anti-liberal in the extreme. I am very sensitive to identifying groups of people as parasitic. It scares me. And yet, is the analogy accurate on some level? I'm really asking.

Multiculturalists overlooked a major flaw in their rationalist creed: the world is not only composed of many cultures, but also a handful of civilizations, of which cultures are a subset. The strife in France's cites are less about chafing cultures than it is about the age old divide between Islamic and Christian civilizations. I really doubt that multicivilization is a remotely workable concept. Multiculturalism can only work under the roof of one civilization. This war is not between cultures; it's between civilizations. It's not about i-dotting and t-crossing in a multicultural court; it's about Sharia versus liberal democracy. There's a choice at hand, and there's really no complacent, pacifist middle ground to mix oil and water. They will not mix.

We've benefitted for years from a pacifist Europe. And now we want them to take up the sword -- or at least get some of that old time nationalism to help thwart this wave. But that comes at a price -- one that most Europeans are quite aware of, if we aren't. European wrath is legendary. It's not dead -- it's asleep. I appreciate their penchant for glossing it over. Europeans know what wrath they have wrought throughout history. They want to escape it. I can't blame them.

Is America immune from malaise? No. We have our own multicultural leanings. Our country is less integrated than it used to be. At best, multiculturalism celebrates cultural differences; at worst, it isolates cultures as a disincentive for integration. The beauty of Americanism is that cultures are melted together. Multiculturalism in America is changing the melting pot into a tossed salad.

Is America immune from strife? Certainly not. I recognize that some of the rioters of Europe are not just Muslim, but are also the dispossessed. Many appear to be the dispirited, soulless youth that Western pop-culture grooms so well. Our culture can be possessed of the same soullessness at times -- it depends on where one looks. But the malaise is here, too, although civilization's divide is not as acute in North America as it is in Europe. Things are still comparatively fresh here, but that is only a matter of degrees. Strife can leap out unexpectedly.

There are of course cell phones and anonymous websites that give the European riots the whiff of conspiracy. The technological miracles of our time bleed civilizations into each other, in more ways every day. And as such, it isn't even all about Muslims and liberals; there's an inexorable, simultaneous pulling apart and coming together created by all this technology. Some hope it will bring humankind together; others think it deepens the divide between us. In either case, it's a question of civilization, and whether or not there's room on this shrinking planet for more than one.

A couple of years ago Michael Totten recounted something a friend told him about Europe:

I have an American friend who lives in Belgium, and he recently came by for a visit. I asked him why he thinks Europe is becoming such a dark place all of a sudden, and I must admit I wasn't prepared for his answer.

He said Europe has always been a dark place and it hasn't changed at all.

I've never forgotten that view of Europe. The last 40 years or so Europeans have adeptly projected an image of a new, revitalized Europe -- a global center for true equality, fairness and prosperity. That's what the brochure says.

But Europe has always been a dark continent -- in spite of its beautiful empty cathedrals, art, food, culture and pretensions of greatness. The continent's somber history might be its fait accompli. Our fate hangs in the balance.

March, 1939

2005-11-03T09:08:00.000-08:00

This post is a question.

I realize that the present global crisis and World War II are only partially comparable. But I am wondering:

Throughout the 1930s during Hitler's rise, the West maintained the hope that appeasement would contain the Nazis in Germany. Chamberlain claimed victory for appeasement in 1938 when he and Hitler signed the Munich Agreement.

In March, 1939, Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia, in spite of the Munich Agreement. This date is largely recognized as the point at which appeasement was no longer viable -- that only force could counter fascism. And then a few months later, Hitler invaded Poland, and World War II began in earnest.

Throughout the first half of this decade, appeasment has been the weapon of choice to counter Iran's nuclear ambitions. In addition, Europe's handling of its burgeoning Islamic immigrants for the past few decades -- corralled into dreary welfare cities -- has been another kind of appeasement, meant to assuage the passions of Muslims in places like France, the Netherlands, England and Germany.

So this week I am wondering: Is November, 2005 similar to March, 1939?

This week, appeasment has delivered two unfortunate results. First, Iran has elected a new, ultra-Islamofascist president, who has now recalled what it considers to be its 'moderate' ambassadors from Europe, while stepping up uranium production. There is no longer any realistic hope that European carrots will prevent an Iranian bomb. And second, Europe itself is seeing an intifada explode on its own soil. France is burning as I write this. The Netherlands is in a state of high tension, one year after Van Gogh's murder. European immigrants are teaming with passion and fury, with a fire not unlike the ones that raged in Europe 60 years ago.

Is this the point at which Europe collectively recognizes that appeasement has hit a dead end? Misguided policies always reach a point of no return. Is it now?

Flux

2005-10-30T22:22:00.000-08:00

I've been in a funk recently -- one that is apparently shared by Peggy Noonan, who recently wrote an poignant essay entitled A Separate Peace. She sees a loss of confidence that Americans have in 'the whole ball of wax' -- their own society:

I think there is an unspoken subtext in our national political culture right now. In fact I think it's a subtext to our society. I think that a lot of people are carrying around in their heads, unarticulated and even in some cases unnoticed, a sense that the wheels are coming off the trolley and the trolley off the tracks. That in some deep and fundamental way things have broken down and can't be fixed, or won't be fixed any time soon. That our pollsters are preoccupied with "right track" and "wrong track" but missing the number of people who think the answer to "How are things going in America?" is "Off the tracks and hurtling forward, toward an unknown destination."
I believe there's a general and amorphous sense that things are broken and tough history is coming.

Ms. Noonan's essay is wistful, as though she is sensing the passing of a long era. Her finger is on the pulse of our society's elite. She accounts for their resigned attitude in the fourth year since 9/11:

Our elites, our educated and successful professionals, are the ones who are supposed to dig us out and lead us. I refer specifically to the elites of journalism and politics, the elites of the Hill and at Foggy Bottom and the agencies, the elites of our state capitals, the rich and accomplished and successful of Washington, and elsewhere. I have a nagging sense, and think I have accurately observed, that many of these people have made a separate peace. That they're living their lives and taking their pleasures and pursuing their agendas; that they're going forward each day with the knowledge, which they hold more securely and with greater reason than nonelites, that the wheels are off the trolley and the trolley's off the tracks, and with a conviction, a certainty, that there is nothing they can do about it.

...You're a lobbyist or a senator or a cabinet chief, you're an editor at a paper or a green-room schmoozer, you're a doctor or lawyer or Indian chief, and you're making your life a little fortress. That's what I think a lot of the elites are up to.

Among the elite, Ms. Noonan relays an anecdote about Senator Ted Kennedy, as told by Christopher Lawford, Senator Kennedy's nephew, in his book 'Symptoms of Withdrawal':

...Everyone was laughing. Then, writes Mr. Lawford, Teddy "took a long, slow gulp of his vodka and tonic, thought for a moment, and changed tack. 'I'm glad I'm not going to be around when you guys are my age.' I asked him why, and he said, 'Because when you guys are my age, the whole thing is going to fall apart.' "

And there we have the Old Order, nursing their drinks and watching the sunset. "Who knows about the coming sunrise," they lament, looking confused. And so it is confusing -- none of us see the sunrise to come. We only see the sunset. We remember the warmth of the long day. We knit together pleasant memories and the certainty of past convictions, admiring the clarity we once had.

I think both 'sides' within the West -- left and right, European and American -- really are after the same thing: to preserve what they have. That's fine -- but it's hard to buy into the whole multiculturalist scheme as anything other than a ploy to pacify the restless masses, caught in today's cultural crossroads, intersecting in more and more places. It's just not idealistic in the least. And similarly, the exportation of democracy into the heart of the Islamic world is ultimately a bid to save ourselves, by taming the Beast in the sands abroad. I've worried that President Bush isn't really the liberal in conservative's clothing I hoped he might be. Perhaps he knows more than we do about an intractable Arab mindset -- but I detect that his heart isn't really into nation building and spreading democracy to the dark side. That was my vote in the last election. For a while since the election, I accepted President Bush's reticence. But lately, Project Democracy seems dispirited, and thin. It seems to be under siege from all sides.

Ms. Noonan concentrates on American institutions and our waning faith in them. But disenchantment is broader than America. She spoke about the presidency -- not just the president -- as possibly being unable to live up to the complex demands that focus upon that office. That perhaps the institution of the presidency itself cannot hold the rudder. I worry as much, and more broadly so: perhaps all the institutions that humanity has hammered-out over history -- the ones still officially running things -- are teetering on irrelevance and decline in the face of historical forces. Perhaps disenchantment is a global phenomenon, fueled by many things that are unique to this emerging era.

Many global institutions face similar disarray as American ones, heaving through great change. The United Nations is not above profiteering and corruption; indeed, the UN might be the the textbook case proving that multicultural institutions are the most susceptible to corruption. The European Union makes its bid for ruling Europe as a statist socialist empire with a constitution that reads like a retirement plan -- and Europeans are distancing themselves from it. And what ever happened to NATO? Sure, it's still there, but for what, exactly? Do you thank your lucky stars every night that NATO will be there to pull your derrière out of the sling if things get thick? I didn't think so.

The Chinese Communist Party faces rising discontent; charges of corruption, graft and incompetence are a growing chorus across that huge, restless nation. The Catholic Church is humbled by an exposed history of child abuse which has dented its moral authority; the new Pope is reacting, trying to clean his house of gay priests, as if that were the same thing as child molesters. Islam, which has historical periods of tolerance, is caving into the fire breathed by its radicals, in a sign of its own internal disarray. Everywhere, once great cultures and nations are intimidated by their own coarse colonial histories, seeking penance, obsessed with recompense -- made timid when they need to be bold in the face of great challenges.

And of course, there's America's own self-doubt and confusion. Perhaps there is no such thing as homeland security, as Ms. Noonan wonders. Perhaps we're overextended. Perhaps the majority of us don't really believe that the Arab world can rise above it's hatreds. Perhaps America has too many commitments abroad and too many commitments to special interests. Too many promises to keep, and not enough money to keep them. Perhaps in our cold civil war we're outspending ourselves like we outspent the Soviets.

People perceive that the world is a caldron of misery, lapping at their front doors. Immigrants are everywhere. Many sacrificed to get this far -- only to do our laundry, build our houses, mow our lawns, walk our dogs and nurture our children. Our society would stop cold without their labor. And no doubt some of them are mad. They want theirs too. All we do is push paper around and drive SUVs, as far as they're concerned. They're not Ms. Noonan's elites, but they write history too.

Smugness abounds. I read no end of blogs whose authors exude the certainty of their political convictions. Perhaps it's called for. And yet, leadership is lacking, and tentative. Out of all the bold posturing, the righteous declarations, so few qualify or want to wear the general's stars.

The whole '2,000 Dead Americans Milestone' thing is a case and point. Out of all the positioning by Kos and LGF, and a host of similar places, I never really developed a sense of remorse for these 2,000 dead Americans -- from anyone. To me, their spat only illustrated the possibility that our soldiers' sacrifices might be in vain. Niether side persuades me that they're anything close to empathetic for the families of these dead soldiers. I only see score cards, and points to be made. Sad.

Ms. Noonan identifies our fidgeting elite -- having stockpiled their bullion, now sequestering themselves in fortresses whose ramparts must thwart the historical tides to come. She says they're resigned, many seeing no real future that they can affect. Perhaps she's right. Perhaps the old guard really is starting to sense they're out of the game. But perhaps, as well, she's fixated on the old guard, while a new guard incubates in places like the Blogosphere.

As we literally go to war to nation-build -- attempting to undo tribal cultures and endow Iraq and Afghanistan with their first constitutional governments -- our best and brightest at home (and abroad, for that matter) are laying the groundwork for new generations of social network tools that build what amounts to, well, tribes. I can tell you that the blogger Cicero has much to do with this activity, working on innovative, high-level interfaces for highly advanced social networks. While I work away on GUIs that lower barriers between people who want to socialize, I've been thinkning a lot about how technology defies the idea of borders. Barriers are lowered, whether we like it or not.

Lowering barriers can be a very good thing. Social networking is beginning to rewrite how youth culture defines itself, which has less to do with race than for older generations. Today's youth group themselves according to lifestyles, music, movies and pastimes. They call themselves Blaxican, Mexipino or Chino-latino. Our government and elite still obsess over racial identities, while technology and interracial marriage are helping erase those distinctions. How could that be a bad thing?

But while old borders are lowered, I wonder if new ones are raised. I wonder if all this social technology will just tribalize our society into a myriad of globalized subcultures. It simply might be unavoidable. In so doing, people might come to de-emphasize the validity and necessity of nationhood. It's too early to say, and there's not a thing that can be done to stop it. But I think sovereignty is on the wane in the long run -- and what's happening on the Web today is the seed. Just a hunch.

What Ms. Noonan is not seeing or understanding is that, yes, her base is shrinking before her eyes, but it will be supplanted by something else. It's going to be a difficult process, I think. I myself might be hard at work developing the tools and spaces for social networking, but I can't tell you how broad the social implications will be five, ten, or twenty years out. But I think societal transformation will be profound, and not what anyone expects.

With respect to the Peggy Noonans of this world, who I share a lot of solidarity with, I can only relay an image I have in my head. It's of a King and his son, the Prince. They go for a walk outside their castle on the hill, overlooking the vast plains of the kingdom. The sun is setting, and geese are honking overhead, flying south for the winter. It's the end of a long, resplendent day. The King puts his arms over his son's shoulders, sighs, and tells him: "Son -- someday, none of this will be yours."

I think that's where Ms. Noonan's at. She's from a generation that saw great things in itself, and in its nation. What comes next is beyond comprehension. We're in flux -- change only seems to bring about more change, over and over again. Older people want to hang on to what they have, perhaps more so than keep up with the times. I empathize -- I know that none of us on the cutting edge should be so smug as to think we're past getting cut by it ourselves. Compounding innovation exacts a heavy toll, and can leave many people behind. None of us can say what the outcome will be.

Ms. Noonan is wittnessing and lamenting the passage of an era -- one that needs to pass by. It's hard, because we are a part of that era. Looking to a waning era's elite for consolation is understandable, but it will not ease the bewilderment. New worlds are being built, while old ones fall. Somehow, we have to be brave, put away the photo albums, and engage this flux.

Freedom

2005-10-17T09:04:00.000-07:00

Ray Kurzweil and Bill Joy have co-written an op-ed in today's New York Times. They say that publishing the genome of the 1918 influenza virus is as irresponsible as publishing atomic bomb specifications. Because it is important, I will publish their full warning here: Recipe for Destruction:

After a decade of painstaking research, federal and university scientists have reconstructed the 1918 influenza virus that killed 50 million people worldwide. Like the flu viruses now raising alarm bells in Asia, the 1918 virus was a bird flu that jumped directly to humans, the scientists reported. To shed light on how the virus evolved, the United States Department of Health and Human Services published the full genome of the 1918 influenza virus on the Internet in the GenBank database.
This is extremely foolish. The genome is essentially the design of a weapon of mass destruction. No responsible scientist would advocate publishing precise designs for an atomic bomb, and in two ways revealing the sequence for the flu virus is even more dangerous.

First, it would be easier to create and release this highly destructive virus from the genetic data than it would be to build and detonate an atomic bomb given only its design, as you don't need rare raw materials like plutonium or enriched uranium. Synthesizing the virus from scratch would be difficult, but far from impossible. An easier approach would be to modify a conventional flu virus with the eight unique and now published genes of the 1918 killer virus.

Second, release of the virus would be far worse than an atomic bomb. Analyses have shown that the detonation of an atomic bomb in an American city could kill as many as one million people. Release of a highly communicable and deadly biological virus could kill tens of millions, with some estimates in the hundreds of millions.

A Science staff writer, Jocelyn Kaiser, said, "Both the authors and Science's editors acknowledge concerns that terrorists could, in theory, use the information to reconstruct the 1918 flu virus." And yet the journal required that the full genome sequence be made available on the GenBank database as a condition for publishing the paper.

Proponents of publishing this data point out that valuable insights have been gained from the virus's recreation. These insights could help scientists across the world detect and defend against future pandemics, including avian flu.

There are other approaches, however, to sharing the scientifically useful information. Specific insights - for example, that a key mutation noted in one gene may in part explain the virus's unusual virulence - could be published without disclosing the complete genetic recipe. The precise genome could potentially be shared with scientists with suitable security assurances.

We urgently need international agreements by scientific organizations to limit such publications and an international dialogue on the best approach to preventing recipes for weapons of mass destruction from falling into the wrong hands. Part of that discussion should concern the appropriate role of governments, scientists and their scientific societies, and industry.

We also need a new Manhattan Project to develop specific defenses against new biological viral threats, natural or human made. There are promising new technologies, like RNA interference, that could be harnessed. We need to put more stones on the defensive side of the scale.

We realize that calling for this genome to be "un-published" is a bit like trying to gather the horses back into the barn. Perhaps we will be lucky this time, and we will indeed succeed in developing defenses for these killer flu viruses before they are needed. We should, however, treat the genetic sequences of pathological biological viruses with no less care than designs for nuclear weapons.

I find their argument compelling. It was foolish to publish the entirety of the 1918 genome and hope for the best. Now we have yet another chunk of public data in our world that will always be hanging over us. We live in an era where the President obsesses over the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, leading to fundamental changes in foreign policy. The threat is real, and growing. I wonder: did the decision of whether or not to publish the 1918 influenza genome ever cross the President's desk? I would bet not. Why?

The Times essay being co-written by Joy and Kurzweil is interesting in and of itself, since these two futurist-scientists have often been at odds with how to manage dangerous knowledge that the modern age continually unveils. Mr. Joy's legendary warning Why The Future Doesn't Need Us and Kurzweil's tireless advocacy of the Singularity as desirable has made for an interesting public debate between these two scientists. It seems to me that the New York Times op-ed favors Mr. Joy's established cautious positions, with Mr. Kurzweil giving ground; ceaseless, unabated and exponential innovation is not always best, though it may not be easy to reign-in.

The Open Source community often champions the axiom, Information wants to be free. Indeed, open communities, open tools and open information is leading the current innovation revolution, this blog being a part of it. But information 'wanting to be free' might be a truism or merely an altruistic mantra. Clearly, this is the debate of our time -- one that has lethal consequences. The degree to which we allow information's freedom will be based on the unofficial constitution that is being written, or should be. As we reconfigure society and innovation around new paradigms, a new social writ is par for the course -- one that idealizes the human spirit, and takes it to a higher level. We should be clear that 'information wants to be free' should not devolve into the hideous, debased meaning of 'Arbeit macht frei,' where so far, mankind has dug its deepest grave.

Hubris

2005-10-10T11:32:00.000-07:00

Charles Johnson noted that while IAEA and Mohamed ElBaradei received the Nobel Peace Prize for working against nuclear proliferation, Britain's MI5 has uncovered 360 clandestine nuclear arms organizations -- MI5 Unmasks Covert Arms Programmes:

More than 360 private companies, university departments and government organisations in eight countries, including the Pakistan high commission in London, are identified as having procured goods or technology for use in weapons programmes.
The length of the list, compiled by MI5, suggests that the arms trade supermarket is bigger than has so far been publicly realised. MI5 warns against exports to organisations in Iran, Pakistan, India, Israel, Syria and Egypt and to beware of front companies in the United Arab Emirates, which appears to be a hub for the trade.

Mr. Johnson continued with a London Times piece that highlights the IAEA's failure to abate the proliferation of nuclear weapons materials:

* Before the 1991 Gulf War (before Dr ElBaradei’s appointment), the IAEA failed to detect Saddam’s nuclear programme. After the war, it was startled by the scale of his work to make fissile material.

* Under Dr ElBaradei, the IAEA missed the Libyan nuclear programme, which Libya chose to reveal after the 2003 Iraq war.

* It missed Iran’s 20-year covert nuclear research programme, exposed by Iranian dissidents three years ago.

* It failed to detect the “nuclear supermarket” run by A. Q. Khan, the Pakistani scientist who sold plans and components to Libya, North Korea and Iran.

* It was slow to sound the alarm about North Korea’s conversion of its civil nuclear power into a weapons programme. The US accused North Korea of weapons ambitions in 2002.

Striking a defiant pose in the face of history's plough may be all that's left of the progressive sphere -- or whatever it should be called at this point. I am struck at how the left is betting the farm on an ideology that insists that peacemakers only peddle carrots, having evolved past the need to use the threat of force. It's disheartening to see institutions that are meant to promote and reward progressivism implode into irrelevance, giving themselves mutual pats on the back.

One of President Bush's big mistakes was his famous appearance on an aircraft carrier with the 'Mission Accomplished' banner displayed behind him. Clearly, the mission in Iraq was only then beginning, as we have been seeing since. Much hay has been made of his blunder. Giving accolades and a medal to people like Mohamed ElBaradei in the era of nuclear hyper-proliferation smacks of the same hubris. It shows an imperious pride that presumes much but actually controls little. If it weren't so pathetic and dangerous, it would be comical.

The Three Weltanschauungs

2005-10-04T00:43:00.000-07:00

IT IS OFTEN ASSERTED that the world is under the unipolar dominance of the United States, the sole global superpower with an uncontested military and vast economic capacity. The impotence of international Communism has changed the counterbalance to America's great weight in the world. However in Communism's vacuum I would like to posit that there has arisen three competing global ideologies in this turbulent era, America's practical power aside. Taken as a whole, each ideology is a distinct Weltanschauung -- a comprehensive view of the world. Each world view competes for global dominance as a basic strategy to survive modernity.

The First Weltanschauung is liberalization. The West -- both America and Europe, despite their mutual aversion -- carry the mantle of the Enlightenment, working to maintain and promote free democratic societies. Though they vastly differ in their evolution, it's like comparing Protestants to Catholics: both fundamentally accept the same faith but differ in its practice. America and its formidable military takes an offensive approach by attempting to expand liberalizing democracy to the dark, threatening corners of the world. Europe focuses its soft power by exercising realpolitik in a more defensive posture. Within the liberal world's heart are deep, bitter divisions that threaten its cogency, as can be seen in transatlantic discord.

The Second Weltanschauung is prosperous autocracy. China actively promotes that democracy does not necessarily equate to freedom. The Middle Kingdom's economic buoyancy is the basis for the case that autocracy alone can create prosperity. Prosperity can be compellingly misconstrued as freedom; wealth certainly can be liberating. But China is loudly promoting reformed capitalist autocracy to the four corners of the Earth as an alternative to democracy while they pursue raw materials for their vast, expanding population. Indeed, the dark corners of the world might benefit at first under the steady hand of an autocratic economic boom that suppresses dissent while maximizing profits. But autocratic prosperity could be misconstrued as freedom, at the expense of human rights. Within the autocratic world's heart is an inherent distrust of similar regimes, which are often nationalist, weakening their full unified potential for global dominance.

The Third Weltanschauung is politicized religion, revitalized in the modern era. Across the world, the barrier between church and state is thinning and cracking as people chafe from the modern condition. One example is America's affinity for a Christian 'Moral Majority' and government funded faith-based social solutions, or presidential deference to 'Intelligent Design' over evolution. But the most lethal, insidious and overbearing incarnation of the Third Weltanschauung is global Islamofascism. At the root of all politicized religions are legitimate questions regarding the moral and spiritual challenges of modernity. But taken to logical extremes, blurring the distinction between faith and state promises illiberality incarnate. And as history amply shows, within politicized religion's heart are fundamental divisions of faith, preventing the global preeminence of one religion.

These three comprehensive world views are the essential ideological attractors for the millions of people who live in today's world.

Recently the journal Foreign Policy published a much-referenced series of articles entitled The Failed States Index. Included with the articles is the Failed States Index Map. On this global map countries are classified as borderline, endangered or critical failed states. It graphically depicts how nearly half of the world's nations are ebbing towards the abyss of anarchy.

In the 9/11 era, the most dangerous threats to the modern world come from failed states. Before 9/11 we viewed other industrialized nations as having the greatest capacity for harm. Some remain potentially threatening. But the era of terror, politicized religion, ubiquitous communications, cheap technology and the escaping genies of mass destruction have made failed states an incubator of global turmoil. The glaring exception is China, which does not appear threatening on the Failed States Index Map. China's astounding growth and autocratic government might evolve into a threat, or as a post-Communist failed state in its own right.

If Foreign Policy's Failed States Index is accurate, half the world is closing down and becoming the dark nether regions of chaotic despair. From the perspective of the people who live in failing states, the Three Weltanschauungs might appear to have equal merit and risk. Each offers order provided by a systemic world view, each making a moral case. Each one defines freedom in opposite terms from the other two. Freedom is defined as individual rights, or as prosperity, or as transcendence. Freedom from oppression, from poverty and from the shackles of earthly limitations are legitimate choices. It's a bazaar out there in Darkworld,. The Three Weltanschauungs are for sale, promoted by powerful, persuasive entities.

It is not my intention to suggest that Chinese autocracy or Islamic fascism are morally equivelent to American or European democracy. But if Failed States are indeed failures, they are populated by people who can lay no claim of legitimacy to any of the three Weltanschauungs that influence the world. People in a failed state, if in a position to choose or be influenced, pose the most fundamental of questions: What is freedom? Is it better to have the vote and be poor, or wealthy and have no rights? Is it better to eschew secularity and money for spiritual fulfillment? From their perspective, which Weltanschauung speaks the most earnestly and offers the best future?

All three weltanschauungs address important questions that are being asked by millions of people in failing states, much less more prosperous ones. It's good that Foreign Policy visualized a map of the world's failing states; but it is also important to identify the basic persuasions that confront these dark corners of the world.

While it is true that people in the Failing World (formerly known as the Developing World) are faced with the fundamental issues of survival, their condition also represents a moral challenge on all levels. From their perspective, each Weltanschauung's imperfections might seem equivalent, even if we think they are not. And it is the Failing World that might be where the planet's fate lies. Our fate is tied to this roiling, growing half of the planet that must find a moral center to transcend anarchy.

Each of the three Weltanschauungs has a decadent component that threatens its survival. The first Weltanschauung -- liberalization -- suffers debasement from the excesses of capitalism and socialist utopianism. Though they are at odds, the net result of each system produces a lot of narcissism, whether it is the materialist of consumerism, or the spiritlessness of the nanny state.

Chinese prosperous autocracy so far comes at the expense of a large underclass under a harsh, repressive rule. Clearly, a breaking point might be coming in China -- but even if the PRC is overthrown, what will probably supplant it might remain autocratic, and certainly free market.

Islamofascism is curiously old but new. Old, because it's Islam; the Caliphate is an old dream. New, because it is defining 21st century conflict like no other force in the world with asymmetrical warfare and the inversion of modern infrastructure to destroy it. Nowhere does there appear to be a long-lasting Islamic state that is prosperous and free, at least by Western standards. Like the secular autocrats of China, Islamic fascists repress to control. Unlike the autocrats, they have a potent, ancient ideology that appeals to those who seek relief from modernity's wages.

The one thing that history seems to reveal time again is that no one knows who's going to fold first. The West might, with its self-conscious dithering and trepidation over its own power. So much of the world's current security rests on America's ability protect it. America might become over-stretched. China's government might be broken by popular backlash from an economy that is prosperous for some but impoverishing for many. Islamofascists might only get as far as endless disruption without making any real political gains in opposing secularity; they offer no real spiritual alternative for living on this earth, only offering a glittering afterlife.

Each Weltanschauung may not be a wholly legitimate response to modernity, but all three pose legitimate questions as to how to address it. Failed states are confronted with all three ideologies. From their perspective, it isn't obvious which Weltanschauung is the best model to pursue, or be subjected to. We should know who our competitors are on the world ideology market.

Blessings

2005-09-23T20:16:00.000-07:00

A little personal note.

Today I was watering the yard, and I noticed the chalk drawings that my wife and daughter made on the patio. And it occurred to me: Life is sweet.

This blogger has a tendency to fixate on the misery of life, its trials, tribulations and testy moments. But really, at my age of 42, I should take stock of what I have, not what I haven't. I have a beautiful family who scribbles with chalk on sidewalks. There now is the banter of life on the floors of our rented house. During the day I hear my daughter running up and down the hallway above me, on fire. I play the 'huh-huh' and 'uh-uh' game with her white teddy named Snow Bear. I can puppeteer the bear into making the yes and no gesticulations to little things before his button eyes, to her total amusement.

All this stuff I jot down on this site pales to these sacred times, with my child and wife. We are still young -- not like we once were, but not old like we will become. Blessings are the things we should take notice of. I notice my station in this life, and the dance of life that surrounds me. It is good.

Touchstone

2005-09-22T23:16:00.000-07:00

I recently ran across a five year old article called The Torture Place, about Abhaseen Barikzy, an Afghan communist who was tortured at the hands of the Taliban. I recommend reading it as a reminder of what we're up against in this war. Here's a snippet of his experiences in captivity:

Then Fazal-ur Rehman said to the commander, 'I want to kill a very bad pagan among the prisoners to receive more blessing from Allah,'

Barikzy waited. His friend avoided bringing him out for any more torture, but Barikzy says he saw the Taliban's worst punishments of other prisoners: "For Uzbek people, they wanted them digging in the mountain without having any purpose. Forty people digging a big hole in the side of the mountain. Then they asked them to go inside the hole, and they exploded it, and all of them died in there.

"The Massoud followers, they told them, 'Because you live in a mountainous area, you are used to cold weather,' and then tied them upside down on trees and put lots of water on them. By the next morning they were all dead, their bodies iced.

"Then there were 50 or 60 Hazara (an ethnic minority from central Afghanistan). They tied their hands and feet and put them in line, and a man had a hammer and nails, and he was beating the nails into the heads of the people. As soon as the nails got in, the blood rushed from their mouth and nose and they died."

Last he describes a military pilot suspected of being a spy. "They put a butcher's hook in his throat and hung him, pretending that he was a sheep and calling out, 'Who wants to buy sheep meat?' and the others were mocking him, saying, 'I want 2 kilo of the leg,' and they would cut the leg and pretend to sell the meat."

I really don't have much to add to Barikzy's story. It speaks for itself. I was struck by the commander who said, 'I want to kill a very bad pagan among the prisoners to receive more blessing from Allah." I think his reasoning is emblematic of what we're up against with respect to Islamic fascism. We in the West desperately want to believe that we can find common, rational ground and negotiate with Islamic fascists. The Commander exemplifies why negotiation, in the end, is folly. For them, they merely buy time with negotiation. Their life on Earth is not important; it's what comes after that matters. We should be mindful of this while we lodge complaints to Iranian mullahs who race towards making isotopes.

While Iranian Muslims and the Taliban are opposed to each other, they share a central core belief: Allah's up there. Period. Get there, and don't worry about here. Just get through your two seconds on Earth and score points with Allah by killing his enemies. If such thinking isn't a part of historical Islam, is something new and in the minority, then so be it. Whatever it is, and wherever it came from, it's here on Earth now -- magnified by cell phones, web sites, plane tickets and easily-obtained passports to Western cities.

Through all the hurricane news, it's been frustrating to see the US, EU and UN falter at containing Iran's nuclear program. It's like reading a script right out of the League of Nations. Islamic tyrants manipulate the West into disharmonious dithering while they build Allah's Blessed Bomb.

After he got out of captivity, Barikzy was at a UN shelter:

Finally, two men came to the [UN] shelter and asked his plans for the future. "I told them to send me overseas," he says. "They asked where I wanted to go, and I said, 'To the United States, because there is good security there and I feel safe.'

Barikzy was a secularist. Given his treatment at the hands of real fascists for being one, he might just as well have been called 'The West.' His experience with fascists is a touchstone for us to compare our freedoms to. I'm sure he thinks they're worth preserving now that he is here, even if some among us carry too much angst to understand we're in the fight for our lives.

Dreams

2005-09-20T23:03:00.000-07:00

When you have a child, the future is always on your mind.

For me the future echoes in the hallway where my daughter's new hard-sole shoes clack against the wooden floor. At eighteen months her hair is full, and thick. Everyday she expresses things for the first time. Perhaps her exasperation at the depleted cookie jar or her light-footed exuberance during our evening promenade are glimpses of her future personality. I'm in awe.

Her future, her future, her future. It's always on the horizon, like a tireless, unrelenting sunrise. Childhood is dawn; its bright, enchanting mystery is coupled with a father's heft of responsibility. It's both the burden and the joy.

It is the future that obsesses this parent who is nagged by the present, since his one year old has yet to imagine a future for herself. My daughter keeps her mother and I in the here and now, through which we must parse the big questions on her behalf: Does her future glow? Does it sparkle? Might it be a black hole, a place to avoid? Is it merely a knot of trails through forests and deserts? Do we delude ourselves as parents in thinking that we have influence on that glow over the horizon?

I look at the war. I look at what's left of post-modernity, such as it is, and our culture's inability to believe in itself. I look at the promise of smart people wielding smart drugs, and smarter technology that goes far beyond human influence, to a scarier exaltation. And I wonder: does the future include us? Not so much us in terms of living beings, which I have to assume we will stick around for; but us in terms of who and what we are today. Will what we stand for, believe in, feel, celebrate and vex over survive the future? Will it earn preservation? Does our culture have the mettle to carry my daughter to what lies ahead? Will I pass down to her that which endures?

Of course, I am talking about values and their transference to my little girl. Values are the nooks and crannies that we steady and lift ourselves upon on the side of a steep, difficult climb. "There's the mountain before you, daughter. Let me show you how to climb it. See? Here. And here. And there." Those are values -- dependable, strong toeholds to keep you from falling, passed down through the generations. For her, they'll be all that's left of me someday.

I look at my daughter in the hallway, pure and unchastened. As her papa, I'm supposed to imagine her destiny while she practices walking on her tippy-toes. A child is the lens through which parents gaze into a future that we want them have. And so in turn, we imagine a future for ourselves.

So I will tell you here of my dreams for her, while she is busy sucking her toes.

I dream that my daughter will live in a world where there's a place for all us -- not just some of us. As time goes by, I hear less and less about inclusion, and more about what divides us. Walls are rising. But I have an exception to this dream: I dream that my daughter's future has no intolerant people in it -- that no culture can accommodate intolerance, or survive it.

I dream that my daughter's future will be free from manipulation by the powerful, whoever they are, whatever they want. Listening to the political discourse of our times, we seem to be splitting hairs over whether or not we're better off being ruled by government bureaucrats, branded corporate commercial interests or transnational mega-institutional apparatchiks. I dream that her future will be unimpeded by those who wield power with impunity -- free of someone else's designs on who she should be, and what she can do. Free.

I dream that my daughter's future should be free from human perfection. There is no real perfection; its pursuit is our greatest vice. Betterment is not finding perfection -- it's refining an acceptance of imperfection, and nurturing the will to overcome disadvantage. Character builds on imperfection. I dream that no government, institution or ideology idealizes the perfection of race, sex, class or creed.

I dream that my daughter's future will be a place where tradition binds, but does not blind. How many bone-headed things do people commit on behalf of their forefathers and heritage? And how many insensate things do we do in the name of cold, hard progress? Tradition connects us to our past, but it cannot be an excuse for holding my daughter back. Keeping a balance between nurturing tradition and progressive enlightenment will be a real trick in the future.

I dream that my daughter's future will allow for her happiness to come from within, not without. Nothing at the mall can compete. Or from the pharmacy. Or the Internet. No thing will fulfill her. No brand will define her. I dream that our culture evolves to accept our capacity to create from within, not consume from without. Infinity is deep within us.

I dream of a world where science and technology will pull mankind up to soaring heights, and not demand that we serve and emulate mediocrity, to be counted as mere bits. If all the innovations of the present time have value, they will evolve to a freer, unshackled humanity in my daughter's time. Technology must exalt her humanity, not reduce it.

I dream that my daughter's future will be free from the grip of cynicism. I dream that human sincerity and virtue will again nourish the soul, and keep her eyes bright, inquisitive and open. There's a growing chorus of eyes that are dulled by powerful, relentless media, mountains of things and the slow burn of narcissism. May people's eyes again grow bright and curious in the times to come. I dream that my daughter will keep her wonderment.

I dream that my daughter's future will be a time where the sacred is reaffirmed, centering around life. Today's world teeters on destruction. All political parties have a hand in promoting death. Giving and nourishing life does not add to the destruction of the world; it reaffirms the possibilities and provides hope. I know many wonderful people who have empathetic, sincere hearts; but they have intellects that cannot accept human existence as positive for the world. They are wrong. I dream that the future will disprove their intellectual despair and reward the warmth of their hearts.

I dream that my daughter should live in a future that has a culture with a soul. I think we have misplaced our soul -- to the clutches of commercial values; to politicized religions of inquest that reprimand but do not heal; to the unrealistic expectations we place on institutions that we are far too dependent upon for nourishment. Martin Luther King was a man of faith, as were the Abolitionists, Suffragettes and many of the enlightened marchers for progress and freedom. They had soul, and a divine spark. May our bereft, dispirited culture recapture its jazz. I dream that my daughter will live in a future that lets her be part of something far, far greater than herself. Her confidence in herself and her culture will inspire others to do great things.

These are my dreams. Where once we came boldly, the future now daunts. To have a child means that their dawn must be dreamed brightly, no matter the costs, no matter the odds. This is what I owe my daughter, the girl with the clacking shoes.

Us

2005-09-06T22:03:00.000-07:00

Most people I've talked to seem satisfied that what happened in New Orleans was either the fault of President Bush, or the Federal Government, or the State Government, or city and local government. Already, most of what I hear is one or the other -- New Orleans' demise was due to the failure of our institutions, by various measures. If that's the verdict -- that what happened will be pinned squarely on institutional bureaucracy of one branch or another, without looking at ourselves -- then we're in deep trouble.

David Brooks wrote an interesting commentary this week in the New York Times, regarding Americans' disenchantment with the institutions that are supposed to serve them:

...there is a loss of confidence in institutions. In case after case there has been a failure of administration, of sheer competence. Hence, polls show a widespread feeling the country is headed in the wrong direction.
Katrina means that the political culture, already sour and bloody-minded in many quarters, will shift. There will be a reaction. There will be more impatience for something new. There is going to be some sort of big bang as people respond to the cumulative blows of bad events and try to fundamentally change the way things are.

...We're not really at a tipping point as much as a bursting point. People are mad as hell, unwilling to take it anymore.

Brooks' essay infers that the institutions we have lost faith in are largely political. But he leaves out the most important institution, core to the human experience -- one that is so basic that it isn't considered an institution, per se: Community.

Communities aren't elected at the polls. They aren't created by city planners, or run by unseen bureaucrats. Communities are composed of people, each committed to each others' welfare and by extension, their own. Strong communities are comprised of people with different talents and strengths whose bonds of trust amplify their durability in a dangerous world. Communities share a common survival interest, among other things.

We moved to a small town three years ago on the outskirts of the Bay Area. I remember the day we moved in from San Francisco. Our big yellow Ryder truck was parked in front of our empty bungalow. Neighbors that we didn't know yet came over and offered to help us. At one point during the move there were kids playing in our house while my wife and I were chatting with the people next door. Having just moved from the city, I remember thinking how the neighbors' friendly helpfulness was completely foreign to me. Three years on, we are now surrounded by friends, and a strong network of trust between ourselves and our community here in the hills. Our communal bonds make us safer in the process, aside from the social niceties of wine parties and late night summer patio chats. We're here for each other -- and while our community has yet to face its Katrina, the indications are that we'll be here for each other when it matters most.

The lake formerly known as New Orleans turns out to be an equal opportunity finger pointer. As near as I can tell, New Orleans' demise represents a tragic, catastrophic failure of not only governmental institutions -- be them Federal, state or city -- but in some cases, communal failures as well. And we shouldn't be smug and think communal failure is limited to New Orleans. It could happen anywhere.

We can all be as dissatisfied as we like with the institutions that fail us. But if the buck stops at the President's desk on one end of the accountability scale, surely it must start in our own homes and communities on the other end. We're accountable too. We're in charge of our immediate safety and not leaving it entirely to institutions. All of us are responsible.

Ask yourself if you are prepared for a disaster right now. Do you have enough water or calories stored in your basement to survive a calamity? Most of us don't. We figure that we'll get rescued by one of those institutions we feel so bitter towards. I've been guilty of this, until a few weeks ago, when all the nuclear terror stories motivated me to take some basic precautions.

Both political parties have spent years and billions of dollars on institutional solutions for citizen survival in catastrophic circumstances. Surely, things can be vastly improved on that scale, and responsibility lies at the feet of our public institutions. But we should also assume some accountability, too. Our basic instinct for survival is not an institutional matter. It's personal. And it's communal. In that respect, we're in charge. It's up to us, whether we believe it or not.

I have been shaken by New Orleans and its deeper implications. It leaves me wondering if our sense of community is ebbing in the face of modernity. New Orleans is undoubtedly one of this country's richest cultural gems. Until Katrina, I assumed that culture and community were largely synonymous, and symbiotic. Surely there were strong communities within New Orleans and many stories of heroism will emerge from the receding waves. There already are great stories of heroism, like the medical clinic set up in a French Quarter bar. But the breakdown of communities was also very apparent and cannot be ignored. Along with multilevel governmental derelictions, something fundamental didn't work in New Orleans -- something that goes far beyond political institutions and our disenchantment with them.

We live in an era where networked communities are on the rise. But there are logical limits to sharing values with people who you don't rub elbows with, who are far-flung and offline in the event of catastrophe. Whether we know it or not, we're reliant on our communities who are there in a pinch, in close proximity. Sometimes it's to borrow a cup of sugar. Other times it's to have the neighbor watch your kid so you can deal with an emergency. And sometimes the community is essential for dealing with outright catastrophe.

Our modern culture rewards buying houses with tall fences that keep communities disjointed. It rewards big screen TVs and TiVo to be entertained on command. It rewards anonymous shopping at Wal-Mart, checking out foreign merchandise from an anonymous cashier. Our modern culture rewards walking around with an iPod, shutting out the people around us. It uses art, cuisine and historical cultures as backdrops for tourist brochures. Our modern culture rewards spending most of our time alone, even when we're on the phone, chatting on the Internet, or playing networked video games. It rewards a group of teenage girls I saw the other day at a restaurant booth: four girls, all of them on cell phones talking to someone else, while eating their burgers. Alone together.

Over the years I have become suspicious of what we are building in place of traditional communities. We hear the word 'community' a lot, especially in buzz-terms of social networking. But I think a simple definition of a community is that it is a collection of trusted people you can rely on in whatever life throws at you, no matter how bad. And they rely upon you too, regardless of your 'culture.' It's an old concept that is fraying in the face of modernity's demand that we socialize virtually, even though so many essential bonds are severed in the process.

I heard the phrase today, 'social fabric.' I thought about fabric, and how it is composed of weaves -- interlacing strands that create cloth that is strong, durable and flexible. By themselves, the strands are weak and nearly inconsequential. Seeing the mask fall off of one of America's great cities has me wondering if what we have now is more 'social veneer' -- a smooth, glossy, colorful cultural skin that might rest on stressed, weakening communities. Mr. Brooks pointed out that Americans are losing faith in institutions. Does that include the concept of community? Have we given up on each other too?

I watched a video of two New Orleans policemen helping themselves to shoes at a looted Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is an institution too -- a commercial one. I suppose we might assume that the looters have lost faith in that institution as well. Maybe if we were still buying all our stuff from Ike Godsey at the general store, looters would vanish out of a sense of communal responsibility. Clearly, some of the looting was a matter of survival. Much of it was not.

I've learned that no matter how rich a culture's heritage might be, it's not synonymous with a robust, responsible, interdependent community of self-reliant individuals. And I'm not making a smug observance of New Orleans' failings. Since Katrina, I now think communal failure can happen anywhere. If cultural pearls like New Orleans can break down so drastically, nowhere is immune.

Certainly, all levels and branches of government deserve scrutiny in the aftermath of Katrina. There's a war on. The disconnectedness between the instutions that we rely on for safety is deeply troubling in the context of war. Let no stone go unturned. And while we rightfully expect better from all levels of government, we should consider looking in the mirror and at our community. The government might be inept, or just slow-moving, but that doesn't take us off the hook. We should examine the communities that exist in our modern culture. We're driving.

America's greatness -- and humanity's, for that matter -- was never defined by institutions. It was defined by people -- by the bold, the creative, and the loving; by the giving, the adamant and the humorous. By us. If culture has become only a pretty thing that is stripped away from community, it doesn't earn preservation. History is full of rich cultures that didn't survive. If all we have built are museums and amusement parks where culture is just a theme and communities are lifestyle choices, we must find ourselves again. All of us.

Credibility

2005-09-02T08:59:00.000-07:00

I was a single-issue voter in the last election. I voted for President Bush because I felt he was right about Iraq, and more fundamentally, about our security. I overlooked just about everything else that I disliked about his presidency on that single issue.

Since 9/11, President Bush has made a compelling case that we need to rebuild our security mechanisms, at home and abroad. The Department of Homeland Security was formed here at home, and we were put on a war footing abroad. I believe that this is sensible given the levels of terror threats that we face. Unfortunately, I had to turn away from my own party to vote for someone who I believed took my nation's security more seriously.

I think there were a lot of Ciceros at the 2004 polls -- security-minded Democrats who voted for President Bush. As that kind of voter, I am having trouble with what I see going on in New Orleans.

After all the emphasis the Bush Administration has placed on this nation's security, exporting freedom abroad to Iraq, and the dire warnings about WMDs on our soil, my expectation in the era of terror -- the era of holding back chaos -- is that the Bush Administration can thwart chaos effectively. On the Federal level. That's what the game plan has been for the last five years: The Federal Government has stepped in with huge spending increases to prepare the United States for the chaos of terrorism. It has been a nationalized priority, costing billions.

New Orleans is devolving into anarchy, death, pillage and disease, nearly five days after Hurricane Katrina came ashore. Things appear to be improving only incrementally. Clearly, this is a crisis of unprecedented magnitude, with immense logistical challenges. It is reasonable to ask, however, if for the last five years the 'anti-chaos' mechanisms that have been put into place are as effective as advertised.

The Bush administration's credibility is on the line. There is a direct correlation between managing the chaos of natural disasters, and the chaos of terror events. So far, the Federal Government's management of Katrina's aftermath is confused, unfocused, and uninspired. Seeing President Bush call the Federal response "unacceptible" does not absolve him of responsibility. He runs the country. His job is to run the Federal government. The buck stops at his desk.

There are debates going on about responsibility for this disaster -- whether or not it lies with the Federal Government, state or local government. There's an argument that New Orleans made its own fateful choices when moneys went into expensive projects like the Superdome, that might have been better spent on securing the city for a category five hurricane. Choices were made at the local level, and the people of New Orleans bear responsibility for this crisis.

But for five years, the Federal Government has adjusted its priorities in the era of terror by taking on more responsibility for managing calamity at home. This time around, cataclysm has come from tropical waters, not from an Islamic nuke; it is not unreasonable or unfair to judge the Federal Government's management of Katrina as a test of its commitments over the last five years. There is Federal culpability that overarches state and local responsibility.

So now begins a new political era. People will reasonably ask if our commitment to Iraq comes at the expense of security at home. They will ask if the Bush Administration's efforts at protecting the homeland are credible, using Katrina as a litmus test. These questions are fair, and reasonable. President Bush's entire political strategy is being tested. Effectively, we got nuked. And now we see the response.

I am willing to see this as a dry run for a deliberate catastrophic attack. I am willing to admit that this crisis is unprecedented on our soil, and the Federal response is building. I hope that what is learned here can help buttress our long-term security against catastrophic terror. But rhetoric always has a fail safe point; it's effectiveness lasts only as long as it is untested. Ultimately, New Orleans and the Gulf Coast is a test of President Bush's credibility in the war against terror. If we lose credibility, we lose leadership in the war.

Blessed

2005-09-01T09:54:00.000-07:00

I have an involved essay in the works that I have been working on for weeks. I was going to post it today. I didn't.

Katrina is a pivotal, historic event. While its cause is natural, its reprocussions will be comparable to 9/11. No -- there is no moral equivalence between a natural disaster and the machinations of a fascist suicide cult -- but disasters require moral responses. Adversity tests the caliber of nations.

Historical tipping points are often unexpected, coming from nowhere. President Bush has been confronted now with two major jolts that test American mettle. In pre-9/11 times Hurricane Katrina would have spawned a very different political response, such as during the halcyon days of 1992 when Hurricane Andrew hit Florida. Andrew was a disaster, but the political atmosphere was very different then. The country rallied, and the damage was overcome.

Hurricane Katrina is probably more calamitous than Andrew, exacting more death and damage. An entire city appears to be submerged. A large swath of the Gulf Coast is splintered. Our nation's energy infrastructure is under duress, threatening economic fallout. There's a potential mass migration of refugees. In the current divisive political atmosphere, Katrina's aftermath will be a challenge for any president, much less the one we have.

Andrew Sullivan posted a quote yesterday from Editor and Publisher magazine, that gives a hint of the political firestorm to come:

On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

Also that June, with the 2004 hurricane season starting, the Corps' project manager Al Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay for. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:

"The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don't get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can't stay ahead of the settlement," he said. "The problem that we have isn't that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can't raise them."

Mr. Sullivan concludes: "Yes, some would even blame Bush and the war for a hurricane. But blaming Bush and the war for the poor state of New Orleans' levees is a legitimate argument. And it could be a crushing one."

Crushing, indeed. I have long wondered if this nation has the resources to combat global terrorism, extend democracy abroad, manage the disruption of a descendent Europe, and pay rising costs of buttressing our expanding infrastructure from natural disasters. People who are content to point their fingers at President Bush should reserve a few more fingers for the full gamut of challenges of maintaining a cogent, functioning society in the global age.

It was interesting to note that the Department of Homeland Security has responsibilities in managing Katrina's aftermath. Homeland Security seemed to be only about fighting terrorism. But I believe the byline to fighting terror is really just that we're beating back chaos in all forms. Katrina is certainly chaotic. Enter Secretary Michael Chertoff, showing that natural disasters are homeland security issues too.

If people only want this disaster to oscillate with their pet political beefs, then what the heck, I'll join in the charade: I blame bin Laden. I blame terrorists. I blame Palestinians who claim nationality without responsibility. I blame an intransigent, smug and weak Europe. I blame a thoroughly corrupt UN. I blame Katrina's wrath on anyone or anything that unnecessarily taxes our nation's resources, diverting our wealth away from maintaining our own infrastructure. By all means, lets all point fingers now.

Well, let's not. Let's get the Gulf Coast back on its feet. We're all being tested here, not just the storm victims down south. Give to the relief fund of your choice, and take stock in how much you have. We've been blessed.

Failure to Communicate

2005-08-17T09:05:00.000-07:00

There's been a lot of commentary about Cindy Sheehan, the grieving mother of Casey Sheehan, who died in Iraq last year. Liberals are glomming on to her high-profile protest near the President's ranch in Crawford with predictable anti-war intensity; conservatives damn her as a nut-case traitor, dishonoring her son's service to his country as a Marine.

First and foremost, I have pity for this woman and her grief. She's no traitor. And secondly, through all the polarized haze generated by both parties, what really shows up in this story is our political leaders' failure to communicate in a time of war.

This war is vital -- and it is vital that it is understood. Is that possible? A friend of mine was whining about the price of gas the other day. Her SUV costs about $50 a tank now. No talk about how the SUV doesn't fit in the era of Islamic terrorism emanating from the sands of Arabia. We have our tax breaks, but no talk about financial sacrifices for this war. The President of the United States is seen strolling on his ranch holding hands with now-King Abdulla of Saudi Arabia, home of Wahhabism. Nuclear terror threats develop here within our borders while our two main parties argue about when we should remove troops from Iraq. On and on, there's endless examples of how Washington is failing to communicate the strategy and purpose in the Third World War, where Iraq is a battleground.

Here's a dose of reality, care of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a member of the Dutch parliament for the Liberal Party, in yesterday's Opinion Journal. She doesn't spare either liberals or conservatives:

It seems strange to associate the context of Canada with that of Iraq, but a closer look at the arguments used to reassure the demonstrating women in both countries reveals the similar ordeals that Muslim women in both countries must go through to secure their rights. It shows how their legitimate and serious worries are trivialized, and how vulnerable and alone they are. It shows how the Free World led by the U.S. went to war in Iraq, allegedly to bring liberty to Iraqis, and is compromising the basic rights of women in order to meet a random date. It shows how the theory of multiculturalism in Western liberal democracies is working against women in ethnic and religious minorities with misogynist practices. It shows the tenacity of many imams, mullahs and self-made Muslim radicals to subjugate women in the name of God. Most of all, it shows how many of those who consider themselves liberal or left-wing see their energy levels rise when it comes to Bush-bashing, but lose their voice when women's rights are threatened by religious obscurantism.

Hamam Hamoudi, the head of Iraq's constitution committee, refuses to discuss the article that worries the Muslim women. He also refused to put in the draft constitution that men and women have equal rights, creating a bizarre situation whereby the women had more rights under Saddam Hussein's regime than in post-Saddam Iraq. Mr. Hamoudi insists that women will have full economic and political rights, but the overwhelming evidence shows that when Shariah--which gives a husband complete control over his wife--is in place, women have little chance to exercise any political rights.

Does Mr. Hamoudi realize that it took the removal of Saddam and the establishment of a multiparty democracy for men to vote, while if his draft constitution is ratified, women will need the permission of their husbands to step out of the house in order to mark their ballot? I thought that President Bush and all the allies who supported the Iraq war aspired to bring democracy and liberty to all Iraqis. Aren't Iraqi girls and women human enough to share in that dream?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali knows what this war is about. She understands the yoke of Islamicism -- she wears it around her neck. For speaking out on behalf of Islamic women, she has a fatwa on her head. She lives in hiding in Dutch society -- home of live-and-let-live Amsterdaam, and a dead man named Van Gogh, butchered by Islamofascism. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is clear: so-called liberals don't understand this war. The policy of multiculturalism has left a back door open for religious fascism to consume the West. And so-called neoconservatives are failing at their pretense of expanding liberal democracy abroad: the Iraq war is a sham if all it produces is a constitution based on Shari'a law.

Somewhere, somehow, both parties in our system have lost the ability to communicate -- and we've lost the ability to listen. And so we have distressed mothers of dead Marines speaking out against this war, and real liberals showing dismay over Iraq. If people are satisfied that Sheehan is simply seditious or traitorous, they're part of the problem. If people simply want to slap Sheehan's face onto anti-war bumper stickers and posters, and rally around how this war has no purpose, they're part of the problem too.

That problem is a failure to communicate what is at stake in this war. That it is indeed a war. That the cause is our freedom, our democracy, our way of life. And that to win this war, we might actually have to buy fewer things, pay more for gas, eschew wasteful energy practices, question the morality of multiculturalism, develop and share a strategy for winning, question our assumptions, and give up the notion that this is all for pretend.

Cindy Sheehan knows this war is not for pretend. But she certainly doesn't know what this war is about. I can't blame her for not knowing -- it hasn't been articulated. Personally, as every day goes by, I feel less and less lead by our President. I don't feel inspired by this administration. And I certainly see even less leadership coming from the Democrats. President Bush's way keeping the war popular is to keep it transparent. In the end, transparency may not be up to him or anyone else. Wars are opaque. They're horrible, and because of that, you get through them as boldly, quickly and decisively as possible.

It's about time we started acting like a civilization that is prepared to make broad, deep sacrifices to retain our way of life. Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Cindy Sheehan are two women who understand sacrifice. We should listen.

Sitzkrieg's End

2005-08-10T07:58:00.000-07:00

When I was a boy, I grew up next to a Navy base. It was the Cold War.

In the 1970s, I knew the stakes of the war. I understood that a massive nuclear exchange was the nature of a conflict with the Soviets. I was properly briefed in school as to its full meaning. The 1970s was the period of the Cold War when, unlike the 1950s, everyone knew that duck-and-cover was pointless. We would all die. There was no surviving a massive nuclear exchange.

I remember thinking as a boy how lucky I was to live within a mile of a Navy base. But not because I thought I would be better protected. Not at all. I felt an inner peace living near the base because I knew it was a Soviet target. At ground zero, I would go out like a light. Without realization, I would painlessly vaporize.

I think it has been vexing for generations of the nuclear age to mature with the idea of total devastation. It's a leap of faith to sidle global apocalypse up to patriotism, religiosity or morality. Such core identities seem dwarfed by giant mushroom clouds. For all their foibles, this impossible moral dilemma is what made sense about the nuclear freeze movement of my youth. Mutually Assured Destruction really was insane, if it were to be realized.

Of course, M.A.D. also made strategic sense, and quite probably prevented Hieronymus Bosch's visions of Hell from materializing on Earth. But that was not a fact in my boyhood. M.A.D. could easily have gone awry, and quite nearly did.

It is easy to be at odds with modernity's ribaldries while luxuriating in its charms. Modern life offers a knot of man-made contradictions magnified to global proportions. Modernity is not just convenient garage doors that automatically open or ten thousand copyrighted tunes shrunk into one's shirt pocket. Accelerating hyper-novelty exacts reciprocity; it takes its revenge. Modernity gave my generation a childhood that was deeply cognizant of immaculate annihilation. That was a cultural reality that represented sheer nullity, where morality peeled down only so far until it hit a blinding, apocalyptic core. 'Mutually assured immorality' might explain the West's current Achilles heel better than anything else.

Now it is thirty years hence, and the nuclear genie seems to have gotten the keys to the Lear jet.

In the past few weeks there has been a lot of buzz about an imminent nuclear attack inside of the United States. The theories range but are fairly consistent, suggesting that al Qaeda has nuclear weapons deployed within the country with sleeper operatives at the ready. Take it with a grain of salt, I suppose. Like most theories, some assembly is required.

It is true that this particular warning seems limited to the fringe press, which strains credibility. AmbivaBlog looks at the rogue nukes story with some healthy skepticism. Add to the nuclear terror story China's recent nuke rattling, Iran's obvious intent at becoming a nuclear power, North Korea's games, and Pakistan's cagey relationship with the Taliban, and clearly it appears as though we're entering a new phase in nuclear history.

The rules of M.A.D. -- all or nothing -- gave us a false sense of safety during the Cold War. In an all-or-nothing world mired in a vast global political struggle, each side could attain relative normalcy. Normal life was disproportionate to the high stakes of the nuclear standoff -- and we got used to it. All those layers of morality we built over that blinding apocalyptic core of immaculate annihilation could work a lot of miracles, providing that the promise of destruction was mutual, and total.

It turns out the Cold War amounted to an entire half century of having it all, creating nominal safety. The nothing part of M.A.D. -- Armageddon -- never came to pass. And so we did indeed create a playground of prosperity: Shopping malls, freeways, cheap global travel, and the Internet; the plethora of things, rock-n-roll, the rise of socialism and multiculturalism; baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet. We got very used to that. Three generations grew up in the soil of transparent global war.

M.A.D. conditioned us to have our cake and eat it too. But today's WMD perils are unlike the days of M.A.D. In the Cold War, we could depend on the rationality of our adversaries, the Soviets. We could mutually agree on something, heinous as it was. M.A.D. created a sense of certainty out of nucler parity. That certainty was: if it happens, everyone dies. That's it. No debate necessary. If you were alive, it meant everything was normal. If you were dead, well...

WMDs in the 9/11 era no longer represent the end of everything. The threshold to this brave new terror-nuke world is far lower than the threshold to M.A.D. Parity is no longer apparent. That makes catastrophe with a small 'c' far more likely to happen. The forces that might unleash such destructive power appear to be gathering.

Two recent stories coming out of England illustrate that conflict is brewing:

Intelligence chiefs warn Blair of home-grown ‘insurgency’

Intelligence chiefs are warning Tony Blair that Britain faces a full-blown Islamist insurgency, sustained by thousands of young Muslim men with military training now resident in this country.

As police and the security services work to prevent another cell murdering civilians, attention is focusing on the pool of migrants to this country from the Horn of Africa and central Asia. MI5 is working to an estimate that more than 10,000 young men from these regions have had at least basic training in light weapons and military explosives.

A well-connected source said there were more than 100,000 people in Britain from “completely militarised” regions, including Somalia and its neighbours in the Horn of Africa, and Afghanistan and territories bordering the country. “Every one of them knows how to use an AK-47,” said the source. “About 10 per cent can strip and reassemble such a weapon blindfolded, and probably a similar proportion have some knowledge of how to use military explosives. That adds up to tens of thousands of men."

Islamic radicals warn of city riots

A radical Islamic group declared yesterday it would resist all attempts by Tony Blair to ban the organisation. Officials of Hizb ut-Tahrir warned that the government’s proposals would be interpreted by the Muslim community as part of an ‘anti-Islamic’ agenda and could trigger civil unrest.

‘The move is a perilous route that is harming community relations and could lead to civil unrest comparable to that which affected the black community,’ said Imran Waheed, spokesman for Hizb ut-Tahrir. He also rejected calls for the Muslim community to root out extremism and dismissed claims that the organisation was harbouring terrorists as ‘ludicrous’.

However, experts believe that Hizb ut-Tahrir’s extreme views may have helped to radicalise young British Muslims. The National Union of Students banned Hizb ut-Tahrir from campuses in 1995 after its speeches, leafleting and methods in a number of universities caused worry and distress. Leaflets called for Muslims to ‘exterminate’ the Jewish authorities in Israel.

Donklephant seeks to define a new, broad centrism. If possible, the West needs to get its act together to face the onrush of noise that threatens to overtake us. I laud the effort. Centrism is based on moderate politics. To be effective it needs to be accepted by the majority.

The 'majority' is like a big spotlight. It roves a restless and dark landscape, searching for a consensus of comfort in a roiling, dangerous world. If the climate of fear and desperation is acute, the spotlight might settle on what we now see as radical. But we are still fortunate to be on the outside of that world, here in the quietude of Sitzkrieg.

There are times in history when the populist spotlight illuminates politics that were previously considered extremist. If we enter a new age of mega-terror -- with indigenous insurgencies or WMDs of some type -- people will not feel safe, to put it mildly. If people lose faith in their government's protection, demagogues might fill the power vacuum. A centrist majority relies on politics that accompany the safety of a reliable monopoly of power, and the wealth it creates. If that is threatened, damaged or eliminated, the spotlight might move away from the center to radical ground.

Terrorists disrupting entire cities might create a new reactionary populism, moving away from centrism. A coordinated, prolonged Islamic insurgency of 100,000 armed Islamofascists in England might radicalize the majority of Britishers. The Muslims would lose. In that context, the center would likely give in to war policies directed against foreigners and other perceived threats. Nuclear terrorism would challenge centrist moderation.

Since 9/11 we have enjoyed the seemingly endless dawn of Sitzkrieg -- a period of declared emergency, but undeclared war. Our malls remain open, and gasoline flows freely. The housing market is hot. Mobilization for war is something we read about. But now there are multiple indications that terrorist nukes are either here, or coming, or in the making. Perhaps this is a long way off; perhaps it's hearsay; perhaps it is close at hand. But if we want a meaningful definition of centrism, it should be something that can withstand the shocks of catastrophic terror. Discussing mega-terror should be on the table, since 9/11 changed the rules. What are 9/11's rules? That catastrophe can happen anytime, anyplace, to anyone, with no warning or apparent reason. On an unthinkable scale.

A robust political center must be a commons -- a place where we can frame a future that isn't just an amalgamation of established party lines and prejudices. It must be a place that is not simply abstracted perfection. It must work with the realities of our time, even if they're cataclysmic.

Sitzkrieg will end. When that day comes, the Donklephant mascot might not emerge in one piece. It might be that history, and not our best efforts at principled moderation decides what happens to the center. Until that time, we should consider how to forge common ground in a world that will be vastly different than the one we live in today.

Never, Never, Never

2005-07-27T18:08:00.000-07:00

Pondering how centrism can be nurtured in our culture has led me to contrasting Mohandas Gandhi and Winston Churchill. Each man stands out in history as a moral defender of his country and culture, but using opposing methods. Indeed, Churchill and Gandhi were political adversaries during the same era.

Churchill and Gandhi illustrate how being in the right can be wrong if applied inappropriately. Had Hitler's armies encountered pacifist resistance by the Allies, history would be quite different today, in Nazism's favor. As it stands, Gandhi advised European Jews to pacifism in 1938. Although it's doubtful that Jewish behavior during the Holocaust had much to do with Gandhi's nonviolent principles, their general pacifism in the face of a political cult devoted to their annihilation is tragic. European Jewry might've benefitted from having an indomitable leader in Churchill's mold, had it been possible. Their lesson from grossly misapplied pacifism became Never Again -- never again will the Jewish people leave themselves so vulnerable to evil.

Had the Indian nationalists the means to take on the British Empire in a Churchillian military fashion, Indian independence would have been a far bloodier affair for both sides. Despite hysterical claims to the contrary, it is important to recognize that the British were not in India to annihilate the Indians, harsh as their rule was. Gandhi knew that India and Britain had much in common. He wanted post-colonial India to be a partner of the United Kingdom. This, in my opinion, is what made pacifism work for the Indian nationalists, whereas in the face of Nazism, pacifism was crushed by Hitler's death machinery.

In the current war conservatives generally identify with Churchill's warring defiance, and liberals emote Gandhi's pacifism. Yet each man fought a different kind of war. Applying either leader's methods as a blanket panacea for all conflict would be wrong, and dangerous.

There's an essay by George Orwell entitled, Reflections On Gandhi, written in 1949 immediately following Gandhi's death. Mr. Orwell commented on the limits of pacifism in international conflicts, saying:

But let it be granted that non-violent resistance can be effective against one's own government, or against an occupying power: even so, how does one put it into practise internationally? Gandhi's various conflicting statements on the late war seem to show that he felt the difficulty of this. Applied to foreign politics, pacifism either stops being pacifist or becomes appeasement. Moreover the assumption, which served Gandhi so well in dealing with individuals, that all human beings are more or less approachable and will respond to a generous gesture, needs to be seriously questioned. It is not necessarily true, for example, when you are dealing with lunatics. Then the question becomes: Who is sane? Was Hitler sane? And is it not possible for one whole culture to be insane by the standards of another? And, so far as one can gauge the feelings of whole nations, is there any apparent connection between a generous deed and a friendly response? Is gratitude a factor in international politics?

Orwell's questions are prescient for pacifists who think the West or America are the primary cause of terrorism. They don't question our enemies' sanity, only our own. Indeed, Islamic fascism is considered manageable by negotiation between rational actors who are thought to be seeking reasonable goals. Islamicists seek to restore the Caliphate -- the whole world must yield to Islam's domination. Is that sane?

For all its good intentions, multiculturalism's weakness is that it doesn't question anyone's ideological sanity as it enforces separate-but-equal assimilation of disparate cultures. Today we see the backlash of this policy. Cultures can trust each other only if they adopt a common identity, to forge a shared truth. When different peoples immigrate to the United States, the requirement for citizenship is -- or should be -- to adopt the ideals and values of the Constitution; they must drop their homeland's cultural expectations and national allegiances. If all immigrant cultures are equally valid to that of the host country, there's no viable centrist position to take. Who is sane in a multiculturalist world? No one's asking, because that would be judging.

Mr Orwell continued:

"Even after [Gandhi] had completely abjured violence he was honest enough to see that in war it is usually necessary to take sides. He did not -- indeed, since his whole political life centred round a struggle for national independence, he could not -- take the sterile and dishonest line of pretending that in every war both sides are exactly the same and it makes no difference who wins. ...It is not necessary here to argue whether the other-worldly or the humanistic ideal is "higher". The point is that they are incompatible. One must choose between God and Man, and all "radicals" and "progressives," from the mildest Liberal to the most extreme Anarchist, have in effect chosen Man."

Those who invoke Gandhi's principles in defense of appeasing Islamic fascists are disingenuous. There are very few in the West who make the Gandhi Argument while living the same ascetic life that he led, which was integral to his pacifism. Gandhi largely avoided deal-making with his enemies. This can hardly be said of many "antiwar" proponents. Western European nations simultaneously invoke words of Gandhian pacifism while living enriched lives. Some of them work to facilitate arms sales to Communist China; France and Russia had lucrative deals with Saddam during the sanctions regime, while UN cronies raked in money from the Oil For Food program. Such hypocrisy goes far beyond pacifism, straight to appeasement.

If tolerating wrongness is right, then wrong will prevail. Donklephant is trying to identify and nurture centrism and find common ground. A robust center should be based on a broad consensus on what defines our society, both in terms of its health and defense. But when we forge consensus, we should be mindful of Orwell's litmus test. We should ask the question that matters: Who is sane? Answering that question requires judgement.

It's tempting to believe that we are indeed mad -- mad to have evolved to this point of technical prowess capable of killing the world many times over. Perhaps we're insane to think that the complexity and velocity of our modern life is tenable in the long term. Those doubts come easily. The question of sanity is haunting to consider given the current administration's efforts in this war. Our energy policy does nothing to reduce our dependence on theocracies; our porous borders have left us vulnerable to terrorists, and possibly nuclear attack. Our amoral commercial culture uncritically pushes us into the economic influence of the world's largest autocracy, China. Sanity does not gel with these misguided policies -- but there still is a vast difference between government incompetence and the homicidal yearnings of a religious death cult. We should easily be able to tell the difference.

Churchill's stubborn refusal to negotiate with tyrants can be misleading to conservatives too. This isn't like the last great war; the world is shrinking, which challenges established borders of all kinds. The threat to our civilization is devised around exploiting the open infrastructure of our free society. This war is not a Clauswitzian struggle in the way that World War II was, with tank versus tank. The genius of our technology is shared around the world. It has proliferated so deeply that it isn't entirely 'our technology' anymore. It can be a tremendous force for positive growth by fostering borderless collaboration. And it can also be the insidious means for those who seek our destruction.

Churchill believed that a nation must raise an army to defend justice and liberty. A country must be prepared to win its freedom, again and again. Lives are always at stake, so they should be put on the line. That is the strategy that minimizes tragedy, but never entirely prevents it. We must accept that the world is crippled by insanity, and engage it on those terms, soberly. The porous nature of today's world is quite distinct from Churchill's time. Liberty's barricades are at home and abroad, online and offline. This war is everywhere.

In spite of Churchill's and Gandhi's opposing politics, there's hope to be found in their commonality as stubborn leaders of free people. It can be best summed up by Mr. Churchill's unyielding speech to the Harrow School on October 29, 1941:

Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never -- in nothing, great or small, large or petty -- never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

As a culture we tend to be blind to the great qualities of our own civilization, obsessed with past transgressions. Confronting radical ideologies like Islamofascism requires us to believe in our own civilization, in spite of its flaws. We will need to express the power of our culture to others, and why it's something worth living and dying for. That's what should be at the center. Western culture can endure only as long as the majority of its citizens promote and have faith in its many ideals, while addressing its imperfections.

A new centrism must establish a refined understanding of our values and morality, who we are as a culture, and what we stand for. Both Churchill and Gandhi stood on solid moral ground. In pursuit of that goal, we must never surrender to the insanity of tyranny. Never, never, never, never.

Living

2005-07-20T22:48:00.000-07:00

Here's a bit of personal information about Marcus Cicero.

Today is a milestone anniversary for me. On July 21, 1992, I was gravely ill. A miracle saved my life. Please bear with me with this long explanation of my thirteenth anniversary from zero.

A few weeks before July 21st, I trotted down to San Francisco's New Chinatown to devour dim sum. My favorite establishment had a storefront window sporting mounds of pork bao and other steaming delights. I veered in, filling up on shu mai and har gow. I love those hollow sesame balls, so I had some of those. But I passed on the chicken feet.

Later in the day, my stomach bloated and ached, which was clearly more than just full. That night I had a high fever. For five days I had all the symptoms of food poisoning, with vomiting, diarrhea, fever and dehydration. Even hallucinations.

If it were just Montezuma's revenge, I might have gotten through all the misery and fully recovered. By my sixth day I was feeling somewhat better, though weak with a mild fever. I remember that day. The fog was rolling in, and it was about 4:00 in the afternoon. My temperature was 99°. Not bad, having come down from 105°. I went upstairs for an afternoon nap, to continue my recovery.

I will never forget that nap, which took me to another world. It was like passing through a gateway. In my fever dream I was on an incline covered with grass, trying to roll up hill a boulder in front of me. I remember pushing and pushing, and feeling the boulder bare down on me. I was losing the battle. In the dream I thought, "If only I had the strength. My arms are too weak!"

Then I woke up bathed in salty sweat, partially paralyzed.

My roommates were downstairs. I thought I would get out of bed, but it wasn't easy. One side of my body was paralyzed, and the other half way useless. I don't know how long it took -- it seemed like eternity -- but I slowly crawled across the floor of the bedroom, outside to the corridor. Amazingly I somehow rolled downstairs. At some point my housemates noticed me, and I said one word: "Help."

Then I collapsed.

I later learned that my complexion was gray, and I looked like the living dead. We took a cab to the hospital, by now it was 9:00 or so. I was propped-up on a chair in the waiting room, and patiently waited my turn. I was called in and looked over by the nurse. I found myself in the hospital ward surrounded by concerned faces.

I had no medical insurance. This became known at one point when the attending physician suggested that I be sent home. But I was lucky. My death sentence was rescinded with a changing of the guard at the hospital. The new physician took one look at me and had me sent to San Francisco General, the county hospital. County hospitals are where the indigent cases go -- the uninsured and the uninsurable; the hard luck cases, and the druggies. And me.

For a number of days I descended into full paralysis. Even my hearing was going. Everything sounded like I had two long cans attached to my ears. I was cross-eyed and couldn't focus. I could hardly speak. I couldn't move, and found blinking laboriously difficult. I would keep my eyes shut just to leave them that way, to avoid blinking, and the harsh brightening lights. I remember being in a receiving ward with lots of beds and having to sign something. They put a pen in my hand, with the clipboard and form held beneath, and I just looked at it like it wasn't my hand. My dad was there, and I heard him say, "He can sign that. I'll do it."

After this point, I began to slip in and out of consciousness. There's only impressions of this phase left to me. I remember two nuns from Mother Teresa's order holding my still hands and praying. I remember my friends ringing my bed, wringing their hands. I remember weak smiles on their long faces; their attempts at comfort convinced me that I was dying. I remember a spinal tap; blood tests; the IV. I recall mystified doctors, having not a clue what was wrong with me.

But the most enduring memory of my illness haunts me the most. I think about it every day, not a few times. I have kept this largely to myself, so here's the revelation: Something about my condition of paralysis -- being the floating mind -- gave me the overwhelming impression that there was someone else inside of me. Like a dark force -- a presence. I felt like I had a living, breathing visitor within me. We didn't talk to each other, but I felt his gaze. It was a feeling like this 'Visitor' was there to take me somewhere. I have since imagined that the Visitor was a gatekeeper. I have no image of this individual other than an overwhelming, powerful feeling. I'll never forget it.

Feeding tubes down my nose. That damned catheter. "Bed logs" -- those rolls of towels to reposition my motionless body. The ICU sounds, made tinny. Feeling damp, cold, and dizzy. Feeling nothing.

The county hospital was a world of the ailing down-and-out. Among the druggies and homeless of 1992 San Francisco, there were a disproportionate number of AIDS patients at the county hospital. And because of that, a disproportionate number of immunologists. I remember I had about five of them poking and prodding at my numb body. They were professionals, and as such, my case was curiouser and curiouser. What was wrong with this fellow? I was tested for AIDS, spinal meningitis, tumors, even polio. It was none of those.

The miracle? Dr. Simon.

Eventually, one enterprising immunologist, Dr. Simon -- a name I will never forget -- had an idea. He did some fact checking, and conferred with his colleagues. I was facing an iron lung.

On July 21st 1992, Dr. Simon called a meeting with my parents. I wasn't there, but it probably went something like this, as it has since been reported to me:

"I think your son has an atypical case of Guillain-Barré Syndrome. I think he's rapidly declining, and we must act fast. I've read about an experimental treatment in Japan involving massive infusions of gammoglobulin. If I was you, I would authorize trying this technique."

My dad said to proceed.

Guillain-Barré causes a patient's defense system of antibodies and white blood cells to trigger into damaging the nerve insulating covering or myelin, leading to weakness and abnormal sensation. The causes of this illness are still unknown. Intravenous immunoglobulins somehow help offset the damage in some cases, though there are risks with this therapy.

In my case, the gammoglobulin did the trick. It took time, but the first improvement was my speech coming back. And then my hearing and eyesight. The longer the nerves from my cerebral cortex, the longer the recovery. Next came my hands, and better breathing. Last to recover were my legs and feet. It was like a slow recovery from cerebral palsy. During the recovery, the Visitor faded away, like he slipped out of a back door.

My recovery was considered fast, but for me, it was a slow process. My nerves came back, bit by bit. I can tell you that nerves do not turn back on without sensation. And that sensation is burning fire. For a while, I thought it was better when I was the floating brain in a numb body. That was relatively painless. But getting your nerves back? It's searing, constant pain -- all while having to learn to walk and move again.

So, July 21st is the day I went to the bottom of the cold sea. It's the day I almost slipped away, where the Visitor would've taken my hand and led me into oblivion. It was the quietest day of my life. Quiet like the grave under a starry winter sky. July 21st was also the beginning of my recovery. I'm convinced that a normal hospital might have misdiagnosed my illness. I am blessed.

Near death experiences change people. It changed me.

The fact is, I'm not fully recovered. You wouldn't know it if you knew me, because I make do. I'm well enough. I can tire easily, and I have storms of twitches and cramps. I've never felt the same, as though I was 100 years old once, and pulled out of it. But I came out of this experience renewed, with a fresh mission. I'll call it Cicero's Imperatives:

Living matters. Life matters. Adding something positive to the world is imperative. Do not squander life.

Everyday I ask myself: Am I wasting time? Is what I'm doing making a difference? Will it matter? Will it heal? Am I building something better?

You wouldn't believe the sad cases I met at the county hospital, and then at the recovery ward. I met lifers who had the most horrible stories you could imagine. Like the guy who was in a wheelchair, a hospital resident for 22 years. His brothers beat him up for botching up a drug deal in 1970. I also remember the church services on Sundays at the hospital, being interrupted multiple times by yells and groans. For all I know, people literally died during the service. I remember thinking, "I've got to walk, and get the hell out of here."

I'm walking. I got out the hell out of there.

I think our culture's survival and evolution is imperative. Right now I believe that finding common ground is the answer. But history is harsh; it doesn't always reward the righteous and the well-intentioned. Power ploughs the fields of history, it seems to me. There are abundant historical examples of how might makes right. I wonder if now we're betting the farm that right will make might. I hope it does, but you know history. No guarantees.

One thing I want to make sure I can add to this blog are Cicero's Imperatives. We must make a difference.

Sometimes, I think I have let down my end here. I'm not a historian, or an Arabic expert, or a military genius. I can't come up with half the witticisms that effortlessly flow from Mark Steyn's pen. I'm not a quick thinker -- my reasoning is slowly crafted, but well-considered. There's always room for doubt, and additional brooding. In the end, I'm just some guy who escaped death back in 1992. Everything since has been cream.

But I am seized by these restless, spiraling times. I've seen the world slip away before, into a haze. I've felt the cold breath of Darkness deep within me. Perhaps that was a sickness-induced delusion; but its grip on me is eternal. It left me yearning for warm places.

Blogs aren't always the warm places I would like them to be. And that's fine. There's a long way to go. I will keep asking questions, and looking for answers. It's great to be here, and to have made it this far.

And yes -- I still eat dim sum. But not the chicken feet.

Driving

2005-07-12T22:43:00.000-07:00

This post is debuting on the new blog, Donklephant.

I am writing this on July 7th, 2005. The bombings today in London have colored what I wanted to say here at Donklephant, in my debut essay, which is about reclaiming 'the Center' in politics.

There is, in my opinion, a struggle to find the Center in cultures across the world. We can see this struggle within Islam, within Christianity, within the West, within China, within Europe and America. And within ourselves.

The first thing I saw online this morning was an email from a friend that said, 'London Bombed.' I knew that the G-8 conference was starting today in Scotland. For a few moments, before gathering data on the London events, I couldn't help but wonder if the blasts were possibly the work of disgruntled anti-globalists, making a perverse statement of hatred to the G-8 leaders assembled in Gleneagle. My fear was reasonable, given the levels of hatred and frustration coming from some in the anti-globalist camp.

My distress that the attacks weren't necessarily the handiwork of al Qaeda, but instead came from within Western society reveals how tenuous the Middle's hold has become. Both extreme Right and Left, if given the opportunity, show the same lack of restraint and balance that Islamic fascists exhibit. The Center is in flux.

A robust center is what makes our culture strong. It's the vast meeting ground of ideas. It's where debate takes place, because in the radical fringes, debate has been withdrawn. And so if the Center is in flux, then so too is our whole culture, which threatens to cleave. Some westerners see their culture's values as the world's greatest hope; others see the West as the crux of the world's problems, fit for destruction. Each side's willingness to accommodate the other's views appears to be thinning.

The bombings in London should close the political gap, but in all likelihood, they will drive the divisive wedge even deeper. The bombers know that their random disruption and death will drive us further into polarized left and right camps.The further out to the left or right we go, the better, from a terrorist's viewpoint -- at the radical fringes, we will only trade fire, not ideas. In the process of terror-induced political polarity, the Center depopulates, sags, and withers. Then, when we've all become radicals out of sheer terrorized fear, the West will cease to function. The Enlightenment will be dead. Terror will be the only legitimate political expression for a world solely composed of crisscrossing radical fringes.

There is, however, another phenomenon at play at this point of history that might reclaim the Center. It is the Blogosphere. As I write this, the London bombings are only a few hours old, and already there are eyewitness accounts and photos of these fresh attacks abounding the Web, rich with commentary, but without the acquiescence of corporate and government sponsors. Some of the victims and bystanders have become the reporters of this event, bypassing the mainstream media. Their audiences are involved, not just passively watching. The level of fact-finding, input and idea-building discourse taking place by regular citizens defies the notion that they -- we -- are an inert audience. All of us, as participants, actively have a hand in crafting how events are understood. Joe and Jane Citizen have increasing control over the narrative of history, perhaps for the first time.

If we participate in history, we help write it, and understand it. It is my hope that in so doing, we all become the bits and bytes that compose the solutions the world will need to get past the impasse of terror. And not only terror: the environment, disease, hunger and injustice will be readdressed in a world chocked full of involved analysts and problem solvers. If there is no audience, our political process will change as a result. Throughout this change, I hope that the Center will be revitalized -- not radicals who seek to create our cultural implosion with a few well-placed explosions.

It's too early to say what the long term results will be from the Blogosphere. So much of that depends on you and I. But if we're lucky, there's a chance that a new political awakening will take place on this new medium; one that is broad, sober, fair, and enlightened. John Kennedy's appeal that free people needed to be involved in solving the world's problems might find fertile ground here, in this medium.

My contribution to Donklephant will be along the lines of exploring both sides of the issues without succumbing to relativism. There is a need for understanding, but there is also a need to take a stand. I stand for individual freedom. I have little sympathy for either leftist nihilists or right wing religious activists who seek to control my freedom through collectivist imposition. They want to tell me who I should be.

I am often told that I am conservative by liberals; and a lot of conservatives tell me I'm liberal. The truth is, I keep company on both sides of the political divide. It's not always a comfortable place to be. And sometimes I go blue, sometimes red. Be that as it may, I have a habit of listening. I think all the rules changed on 9/11, for better and for worse. We have to engage the world on its terms, not on dated political ideologies.

I hope that this blog and your comments can help strengthen the Center. And I hope the discussions that ensue will spark new ideas, new solutions, and make the world a safer and happier place. I blog to learn -- it has served me well on Winds of Change. I hope to learn from you, here, in a respectful, idea-charged environment. This medium is two way, and we all have something positive to offer.

In this age, we all are behind history's wheel. It's time we learned to drive.

Thanks to Michael Totten for getting me on Donklephant.

This post is also on Donklephant, here.

War

2005-07-11T23:22:00.000-07:00

We have two lovely neighbors in their early 30s, both archeologists. The brother of one of them was wounded in Iraq today, somewhere north of Baghdad. He is a lieutenant in the infantry, and was wounded between his shoulder and neck. Apparently he will recover. The call came in from Iraq today to his sister, who soon after sat on our sofa looking bewildered, just home from work.

Our young neighbors were shaken at this distressing news, a hair's breath from tragic. I uncorked a bottle of champagne. We shared a toast to her brother, the lieutenant who now wears a purple heart somewhere in an Army hospital in Iraq. She recounted her years growing up with him, and a few humorous anecdotes. She then drove off to be with her parents, who were waiting for her on the other side of town.

Sometimes I forget that we're in a real war. I know it, but rarely does it come to my home, as a grim expression on my neighbor's face. Too much blogging and reading can make this conflict abstract; it promotes an academic view of war, of life, and of this struggle. But the abstraction is a lie. It's a way to push reality back to a tolerable corner, to a space where it can be observed and analyzed, but hardly felt -- no, not really felt at all. Perhaps this is how we cope. It's how I cope.

I hope my neighbor's brother will be alright. I hope he is well equipped -- both in terms of hardware, morale and leadership. I still believe that this war is pivotal for the future of freedom and democracy, the West, the Arab world, and much more. It's a very confusing, tumultuous time. I keep hoping to find unanimity on the front pages. But instead, I find more abstraction.

I have so much to be grateful for. I have a beautiful fifteen month old daughter who runs around in the summer heat barefoot, in a yellow dress. I have my health, and don't devote much of my time considering sniper's bullets and IEDs.

Abstraction was my form of self defense, until a few degrees of separation connected me to this war, on a hot summer evening.

Tea and Savages

2005-07-08T10:34:00.000-07:00

In the wake of the London attacks, I spent the day feeling numb. By now, that feeling is familiar. I don't think it is necessary to replay the London atrocities in this space, or verbosely lament how another layer in our civilization's veneer has forever been washed away. We all know it too well. There's plenty to read about how Britain's experiences with IRA bombs and the Blitz has endowed them with their trademark stiff upper lip. Britishers will manage terrorism as their cultural norms allow, unique from the Spanish and Americans.

Really, the whole 7/7 experience has left me brooding, and frankly, I am in a dark mood. So please forgive me for letting the black clouds of 7/7 shadow this little post; I can't summon the stiff upper lip on 7/8, not quite yet.

I've read about the clash of civilizations, and how our way of life is in the breach in the era of terrorism. I watched Red Ken impersonate Winnie, like he knows who his enemy is. I saw that rather strange video of Prime Minister Blair making a statement about the bombings, with the G-8 leaders standing behind him like placards. It wasn't Blair's statement that was strange -- it was the leaders arrayed behind him that were odd. They stood there in purported unity, nictating into history's television camera. For some reason, I wasn't overwhelmed with the feeling that they were unanimous in their opinions of what transpired in London that day. I detected no genuine solidarity, which one might expect from the leaders of the seven richest nations on Earth -- plus Russia, since we have to be nice to them. No, there behind Blair stood the Deer-8, blinking into terror's headlights. I half expected them to scatter in separate directions.

My wife and I are currently watching an old PBS miniseries on DVD called The Flame Trees of Thika, written by Elspeth Huxley. It's set in 1913 Kenya, where young Elspeth Grant and her parents acquired colonial land to cultivate with native labor. Throughout the series the juxtaposition of African tribal customs and English propriety contrast to absurd proportions. In one scene that we watched on the evening of 7/7, we saw the Grants on their English-like porch, surrounded by the dainty habiliments of high tea and crumpets. From their thatched balcony they looked down at the native workers' round huts, where the local chief and his entourage were witch-doctoring an ill tribesman, in a savage spectacle. And there sat the Grants, delicate teacups in hand on their English porch, gazing down at the peculiar natives, agog. Their English faces were bemusedly blank, like they were staring out from a high tower, exposed to the inexplicable.

I couldn't stop thinking about those G-8 guys standing behind Tony Blair who had the same listless glare as the Grants, in the face of the London bombing spectacle.

"What to do," Elspeth's perplexed father opined, "they have their way, and we have ours." Then he and his family resumed sipping their earl grey and politely munched on cucumber sandwiches, while the tribesman's hut went up in flames. And so too after Mr. Blair's speech about the horror of 7/7 London, the assembled world leaders momentarily dithered on their standing spots, and then shuffled back to the G-8 meeting, agendas and crumpets largely intact.

Really, I'm not suggesting here that terrorists can or should dictate the time, place and agenda of the G-8. Indeed, the world must press on. But I was struck by the dichotomy that took place yesterday. I really think that all of us in the West -- liberal, conservative, religious, sectarian, etc. -- would really rather worry about global warming, abortion, corporatism, creationism, financial matters and extending the terms of Social Security. Certainly, those issues are pressing. But even though the G-8's tone was grave, and the topic of terrorism was brutally apropos, I feel cynical the day after 7/7. Does the West really have what it takes to defeat nihilism?

I think it's debatable as to whether or not nihilism is a western disease that infected Islam, or visa versa. Europe's falling apart in the midst of trying to come together comes as no comfort when some kind of unanimity is required to defeat global terrorism. The shades and hues of nihilism has much to do with Europe's malaise, as well as the West's. Nihilism isn't just for Islamofascists.

So while I fully expect that Britain and the West will go on red alert for a while, in the larger view I sense a collective shoulder shrug. "What to do," a perplexed western world opines, and turns away to refresh a familiar teapot. Except this time, we're not in tribal Africa, with the option to go home to England, yet to be sullied by two devastating world wars and decades of indulgent socialism. This time, the savage spectacle is not easily and neatly separated from who we are, and who we might become.

Disengagement

2005-07-01T11:25:00.000-07:00

Victor Davis Hanson says we should disengage with much of the world, it appears -- at least in terms of the current arrangement. He recommends that the United States pull out of places like the DMZ, discontinue its European garrisons, and leave Europe to the Iranians. He recommends disengaging with erstwhile allies, who are conflicted by their association with America, and bolstering ties with ones that are reliable. He suggests deference to the EU and the UN for some global crises, such as Darfur.

Mr. Hanson concludes:To establish such a muscular independence and let our former dependents and erstwhile allies get a life, or at least what they wish for, the United States will have to embrace three broad goals that should be the centerpiece of our foreign policy. We need increased defense spending, especially in transport, mobile forces, missile defense, and carriers that both require as little dependence as possible on foreign basing and provide maximum protection for the U.S. mainland.
Second, we must find a middle path to energy independence that embraces conservation, nuclear power, more exploration, alternative fuels, coal — anything other than sending billions more to god-forsaken regimes abroad that will only recycle those easy dollars in ways to weaken or destroy us as they deny that’s what they’re doing.

Finally, we must seek similar financial independence, and get our annual deficits and national debts under reasonable control to ensure immunity from creditors who increasingly are turning hostile.

The American people are way ahead of our leaders. Most outside of New York and Washington shrug when they read of the latest anti-American poll or well-heeled elite condemnation, and wish only to move on.

When we do, we will be pleasantly surprised at how it enjoyable it is to be missed.
I don't know what to think of this. The tone of Mr. Hanson's essay is bitter, and resigned. He probably wouldn't deny that. Disengagement is tempting, but hardly realistic in this era. On the other hand, things have to change. We can't fight this war alone. So many of our entanglements have to do with energy, and heavy investing in energy independence would be a good thing. Not that President Bush is be the man to initiate that task. That's my biggest disappointment in his presidency.

Mr. Hanson supposes that the risks inherent with disengagement might produce some positive outcomes -- being missed as democracy's bulldozer might be psychologically satisfying, and we might be less reliant on other nations for economic security.

I doubt that disengagement will realistically work to make the world a safer place. But I sure understand the sentiment.

Tyranny

2005-06-30T10:02:00.000-07:00

The politics of our time still mirror the power centers of the last century. We debate the influence that other countries have on us, or how corporations are meddling in our affairs; but the emerging power centers of this new century are starting to polarize the world in unexpected ways. The trick will be to recognize these power centers, by identifying the shifting poles that attract and repel humanity. Often, these changes are subtle, though they wash over us.

Here's an example:

Woman doesn't clean up her dog's mess -- blog infamy ensues

In Korea, a woman's dog crapped on the train. When people on the train asked her to clean up the mess, she became belligerent. Within hours, she was labeled gae-ttong-nyue (dog-shit-girl) and her pictures and parodies were everywhere. Within days, her identity and her past were revealed. Request for information about her parents and relatives started popping up and people started to recognize her by the dog and the bag she was carrying as well as her watch, clearly visible in the original picture.

Tyrants like Saddam, Kim Jong Il and Karimov occupy the front pages, and gae-ttong-nyue is reported as a footnote, presented as an amusing cultural oddity. Yet gae-ttong-nyue defines how the next wave of tyranny is going to come from us, not necessarily future Saddams. Tyranny might actually come from you and I -- the people who laugh at Dog-Shit-Girl, who think we're above inflicting tyranny.

Did Dog-Shit-Girl merely earn her comeuppance, by letting her lapdog soil the spotless train? Because she's also been mercilessly raped by her own society, for a minor infraction. Her rapists are cowards with video cellphones, who are confrontational only with the keyboard and mouse. The real crime here is her punishment, meted-out by an unelected pious clergy representing Mob Sharia, a new code that we have no real experience with. Mobs have been the beginnings of many a tyranny -- the ochlocratic mobs of Rome demanding the praetorian prefect Cleander's head; or the Parisian mobs of the French revolution. Now it's passengers on trains, with small devices. It's us.

Mobs; swarms; social networks. These terms are the salon parlance of contemporary movers and shakers who can make game boxes, video phones and iPods do a lot more than play DRM-copyrighted corporate schlock by Sting. Yes, they're dastardly clever, and very innovative. The good might be outweighed by the bad with respect to this boring technology -- and that's bore as in 'to bore holes,' like termites in soft wood, eventually permeating it into useless sponge. But who's really to say how all this will turn out? Power is shifting and collecting in unexpected, strange places.

In tyrannies, you watch your back; you modify your behavior to suit the regime. But what regime might gae-ttong-nyue be? Does it have a center, or a head? Or is it the shifting sands -- reactive swarms that group, morph, innovate and regroup to suit momentary morality? And if nobody runs this tyranny, then it's complete, and final -- never to be undone, having become culture itself. We simply become a part of it, mirroring the endless bits that compose it.

Power is politics, and technology changes who or what has that power. We live in a culture that clings to lost political ideals while technology routes around power centers, and establishes new ones. And they might not even be influenced by people, in the end. That's an open question.

Technological innovation in our time means so much more than interesting blogs, democracy in Lebanon and chatting with people across the planet for free. It means the rules of society and culture are being rearranged, even abolished. Hopefully for the better. But nobody's writing the new rules in this revolution -- hyper-evolution has the quill and parchment. What comes out of all of it for us may not be cumulatively for the better.

Whatever we gain in life, we attain it at the cost of what we have, and what we are. Nostalgia is the recognition of what we have lost. We shouldn't avoid change, but we should see ourselves clearly. History's major fulcrums have rarely been predicted, much less preempted or navigated until they're upon us. History's newest fulcrum might begin with a feculent dog on a metro train in Seoul.

Beadledom

2005-06-21T22:00:00.000-07:00

I thought I would tell you about my day.

As most of you know, my wife and I are the proud parents of an adopted fifteen month old girl. She's doing great. She's running circles around us and starting to understand words like 'blanket' and 'cookie.' It's amazing to see the lights switch on in a human life. We're blessed to be her parents.

Our daughter's adoption was closed. Her birthparents are anonymous. This has presented us with a challenge as far as securing proper legal documentation beyond the court adoption case -- that's all settled. But a big hurdle we had to clear was getting her birth certificate, which is usually tendered at the hospital where the baby is born. In our case, that couldn't happen because her birth certificate needed to have the birthmother's name expunged and ours added to ensure anonymity. That amounted to a one year process where we finally got our daughter's birth certificate with our names shown as the parents.

My accountant filed an extension for us last April because we lacked a social security number for our daughter. And that was impossible to get without the birth certificate. I went through many hoops and hurdles to secure her an interim number called an ATIN -- Adoption Temporary Identification Number. In applying for her ATIN, her form got lost in the bureaucracy of the IRS. I spent untold hours trying to locate her lost form on the phone. I found myself pleading for help from a loop of friendly, apologetic bureaucrats who ultimately could do nothing, sending me off to the next one, who could also do nothing. It was a world where there was no hierarchy -- like an army of corporals, with no other rank. Eventually, because of a lucky fluke, I talked to a bureaucrat who located our daughter's lost ATIN application, and within a day we had her ATIN number. I needed this to do taxes, or so I believed.

I now understand from my accountant that in order to take full advantage of certain credits and deductions, I really do need that social security number anyway, not just the ATIN. The Machine won't accept a mere ATIN number. Since last April, our daughter's birth certificate had arrived, so today was the day I figured that I would trot down to the Social Security office and walk away with my daughter's new Social Security number.

Wrong.

Instead, after waiting in an enormous line, I learned that there was a difference in my wife's first name -- between the one on my daughter's birth certificate, and the name on my wife's Social Security account. So this means that we have to either file to update my wife's Social Security account with a new name, or my daughter's birth certificate needs to be changed.

Are you still with me here? Even writing this confuses the heck out of me.

So clearly, the layers of bureaucracy were upon me, and I stormed out of the Social Security office with only a blank form and black cloud over my head. I was two towns away from home, got lost in traffic, and found a circuitous route to the freeway through a suburban neighborhood. Man, I was mad. All I wanted was a stupid number for my daughter so I could pay my taxes and be a good citizen.

I think I was raving in the car, out there in suburbia. Then behind me came the siren and the flashing lights. Yep. I was being pulled over for something. My anger about the Social Security thing instantly vanished into a new crisis. The policeman had me park in the Burger King lot.

"Do you know why I pulled you over?" he asked.

"No idea," I said, looking perplexed.

"You ran three stop signs and you were speeding," he told me.

"Oh," I muttered. I was staring out of the driver's window at his shiny patrol car. I gave the officer my license and car registration, which he ran into the computer system.

"Did you know your license has expired?" he asked.

"Uh... no?" I sputtered.

I thought I was dead. So here it comes. The family car gets impounded. I go to jail. My wife and child wind up car-less and I lose what's left of my license to drive California's deep boulevards. The Social Security debacle was a million miles away now.

The polite policeman asked if I lived in a town I never been to, since it was shown as my address on my license's account profile. Now I was flummoxed. I never even heard of that town. So I have a license associated with an address I never lived at.

Well, this account of my day is getting long. It turns out that there was a clerical error at some point. The digits got switched on my zip code, putting me in another town at the same street address. That explains why my license expired -- because I never received a notice to that effect. And why I never got car registration stickers until I asked for them.

The cop said that he was obligated to impound my vehicle, but he felt that the clerical error worked in my favor. I think he saw the child seat in the back of the car, too. He still gave me a ticket for speeding through a stop sign, and told me to go straight to the DMV.

So, I spent the rest of the day at the DMV, getting my license updated. I had to pay a fee to have it fixed, even though I think it was their fault. If you want to keep moving through the lines, you just don't ask about whose fault it is. I had to take a driver's exam. I missed the question about DUI alcohol levels, erring on the side of caution at .05%. Actually, the limit is .08% in California.

Almost seven hours after I set out to get my daughter's Social Security number, I still had none. Instead of solving that problem, I wound up solving one I didn't know I had. I got home and poured myself a nice glass of Sangiovese. And another.

This isn't much of a post. I'm just sitting here, complaining. Thanks for listening. It's days like this that has me wondering about bureaucracy. On some level, it's unavoidable. But it can be such a circus at times. Standing in all those lines today, I wondered if I felt like a European, or perhaps a Soviet. It's true that everyday of my life isn't spent in lines waiting for lard rations; so what I tasted was only the blandest flavor of Soviet. But I do think such systems need temperance. Some part of our humanity gets lost in the vast beadledom of modern ministerial life. It seems to be thickening around us, no matter who's in charge.

Being penalized for running stop signs after getting bricked-in by Social Security's polite wags seems apropos. I'm sure I'll pay.

Guile

2005-06-08T23:23:00.000-07:00

I'll be honest: I expect presidents to be masters of guile.

If I were enduring a lawsuit, I would want the shrewdest lawyer in the land to represent me. And whoever represents my country must be shrewd too. Just about every president I can think of was a master at cunningness. They were artists of triple entendre; of evasion, persuasion, and the percipient shell game of power diplomacy.

One notable exception of the shrewd president is Jimmy Carter, the 'Sorrowful President,' who treated his job like he was the Psychologist-in-Chief. I joke sometimes that President Carter should've been impeached just because he was so stolidly honest. How many times did he give away our nation's hand at the poker table?

European leaders are guileful too. Are the EU and countries like France and Germany built on a foundation of truthful, soul-rending and confessional leadership? Hardly. Chirac and Schroeder's impeccable political credentials are dripping with deceit and power mongering. Those guys are even playing against each other, not just us. And really, I hardly expect less. That's The Game. Their oily credentials made them the powerhouses that they are. For better and for worse.

Nixon's executioners, Woodward and Bernstein, and Clinton's, Drudge and Isikoff, received their journalistic pedigrees by skillfully shooting off the presidential fig leaf. Since then, that seems to be the hunting sport of journalist and citizen alike. They each have gold plated fig leafs mounted on plaques in their offices. They're lucky opportunists who got the scoops of their lifetimes, at any cost. Who among us really eschews opportunism, personally? We all do it. Competing in this world has a lot to do with figuring out how to cut ahead in life's implacable lines. Journalism aside, one can only imagine the guile and wit required of Woodward and Bernstein to obtain their golden presidential fig leafs, which must've been downright presidential in intensity. Awards can be so hollow.

Applying the impeachment standards established by the Boomer generation, presidents like Franklin D. Roosevelt should've been impeached a dozen times over. Kennedy and LBJ too. Oh, and I almost forgot Reagan the warmonger, romping mindlessly in Central America on his Hollywood bronco with cakes for the ayatollahs. Yep -- haul Ronnie down, boys. Lord knows, they tried.

I suppose it would be nice if, in the serious game of global power politics -- where every entity really is out for its own interests -- that honesty, forbearance and just plain niceness was the ripest policy. A lot of people believe earnest shoulder shrugging makes the best foreign policy. Sometimes it is. But mostly, it isn't.

The real question to ask of any president's truthfulness is: Is he fighting for our country's inviolable sovereignty, or instead, some other extranational interest? Is he an American, first and foremost, with America's health and vital interests at heart? Or is he putting his religion first? Or his softness for transnationalism, corporations, or NGOs? The current and last president have me feeling itchy on those issues. I haven't been quite clear if Presidents Clinton and Bush have been batting for my country unreservedly, or instead for God or some globalized community of digital sharecroppers.

President Clinton's speeches often made me feel like he was trying to coax me into a broader vision of America, reduced -- like he was my helpful guide to America's descent into a postmodern political Pangea. And President Bush makes me suspicious in the same way, from a religious perspective. Any group that once used the monicker "Moral Majority" in politics gives me severe hives. President Bush flirts with those people, supposing that the Earth might be flat after all. If the people and ideals that motivate the president serve some higher cause other than American sovereignty and the Constitution, that's treasonous, not just impeachable. Political Christianity and One World Transnationalism has my radar blipping.

I'm sure it's way more complicated than this, but it seems to me that Nixon was disliked simply because he was Nixon -- the Red baiter who waxed Alger Hiss. He was the guy who sweated profusely on TV and had a ski-slope nose, and who made that disingenuous Checkers speech in '52. He was the little ugly man who hated the golden Kennedys. And the Commies. The fella who was scared of hippies. The guy everyone called Dick.

While Tricky Dick was busy opening talks with a reclusive Mao and trying to get us out of Southeast Asia with some modicum of international respect, he got sliced in his underbelly. Not only did Southeast Asians fill the American power vacuum with a few old fashioned, prolonged bloodbaths; America-as-global-heel lost a lot of clout on the international scene. We were damaged; unhinged. And who knows? Perhaps that was a major contributing factor to the rise of the militant, in-your-face political rat nests we're crossing swords with today, who seem to find empowerment from our weakness and lip-biting. Just maybe.

I would've much preferred it, in retrospect, if President Nixon could've stayed on and finished out his vision for a just peace in Asia, and engaging China. Instead, we got Gerald Ford, the presidential pixel. Slipping on the tarmac, Apollo-Soyuz, a girl named Squeaky, helicopters on the American embassy in Vietnam -- that's about all that sticks out in my memory of his presidential half-life. Thanks, Woodie. Thanks, Bernie.

And I would've preferred it, in retrospect, if President Clinton could've spent more time concentrating on terrorism, Saddam, WMD proliferation, the surplus and the whole advancing penumbra of millennial chaos that was descending upon us in the 90s, now having become umbra. Instead, his days were full of Monica and Ken Starr. Thanks Drudge. Thanks Isikoff.

And thanks to all of us for lapping it up. Presidents are mortals who are lead by their talents and weaknesses, like the rest of us. Personally, I think Nixon and Clinton did their best with the talents and weaknesses that life gave them, and did nothing impeachable. Since Nixon, perhaps Johnson, the presidency has become the bullseye for a national therapeutic mud slinging contest. America is the looser in the process.

For pathetic fornicators like Clinton, I wouldn't really care if part of the unofficial presidential perk package simply included ladies of the night, if that's what keeps the Commander In Chief's eyes on the road. Just don't ask or tell. And for paranoids like Nixon, extra microphones and liquor in the cabinet, and a hippy voodoo doll with lots of rusty pins for some midnight presidential therapy. But please, all you presidents -- just keep your eyes on the road, OK? If a few vices help you do that, then vices you shall have. And please, everyone else -- let them drive. Don't forget that treason and human weakness are not the same thing.

All of this points to the rise over the last 40 years of the newest and truest power center in this world: Unbounded media -- "investigative journalists" and their Internet-inspired cousins, bloggers. Controlling the media is power play number one, from time in memorial. The Whitehouse lost that control sometime in the 60s to the MSM; and now the MSM is losing it in the Millennium to the Blogosphere. We applaud that here, but it comes with a heavy burden of responsibility.

That is why, blogger that I am, I have a tremble in my typing. I know that one day, someone in this expanding sphere will be the next Woodward, Bernstein, Drudge or Isikoff. And like them, they probably won't have a crystal ball to predict how the waves they make will form history. Here's hoping it serves our country.

Am I Blue?

2005-06-08T10:42:00.000-07:00

Clearly, IBM is on to bigger things than making Apple computers blare iTunes for teenagers, which is now Intel's new job.

The Blue Brain story is a jar from the usual event corollaries we can't help but follow, day by day, like trains on a rail. The war, democracy, crazy Muslims, crazy Americans, crazy Transnationals and crazy Chinese stand more than a chance to be a blip in the future's history books. We can be so absorbed in things that don't necessarily matter.

Perhaps this is an example of life's diversions: Blue Brain: Illuminating the Mind
On July 1, the Blue Brain computer will wake up, marking "a monumental moment" in the history of brain research, says neuroscientist Henry Markram, founder of the Brain Mind Institute at Switzerland's Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). The event could usher in a new era of scientific discoveries about the workings of the human mind.

...The Blue Brain computer is the latest installation of IBM's BlueGene/L system, a radically new approach in supercomputer design. EPFL's machine has a peak speed of some 22.8 teraflops

...Markram's EPFL team, collaborating with IBM researchers and an online network of brain and computer scientists, will use Blue Brain to create a detailed computer model of the neocortex, the largest and most complex part of the human brain. "That's going to take two to three years," he says.

..."we'll be able to investigate questions about psychiatric disorders and how they arise," Markram says. Scientists believe that autism, schizophrenia, depression, and other psychological problems are caused by defective or malfunctioning circuitry in the brain.
Ah, yes. Self improvement -- always laudable. How many of history's greatest innovators were psychologically disordered, one wonders? Well, never mind. Perhaps the mission of technology is just to keep humanity happy and contained. And hopefully not enslaved in the process.

Next, that knowledge will be transferred into a torridly fast silicon simulator. Blue Brain promises a fantastic acceleration in brain research. It could be as dramatic as the leap from chiseling numbers in Sumerian clay tablets 2,500 years ago to crunching them in modern computers. And the Blue Brain Project just might culminate in a new breed of supersmart computers that will make even BlueGene/L seem like a piker.

Tom Friedman says the mission of parents today is to teach their kids to love learning. We've got to keep up with the Chinese and the Indians.

Daniel H. Pink says we have to become more right-brained as intelligent automation and Third Worlders extract number-counting technicians from their American jobs. The most creative will win in the neo-post-new-economy -- not people with photographic memories, which suited the industrial age. He's probably right -- we've got to keep up with the Blue Brains out there.

A lot of great innovation will come out of Blue Brain, to be sure. Innovation must curve ever upwards. It will be a tad interesting, though, to see how innovation starts to become the domain of our creations' minds, and not our own. Since we'll all be psychologically steadied by Blue Brain's bromides, we'll can pass the innovation torch over to HAL 9000. First the left brain jobs disappear. Next, the right brain jobs.

So while we consider Markram's bold claim that we're apparently blogging away on Sumerian clay tablets, let's be sure and have a few stiff drinks at the end of the day, and watch the kids frolic in the yard. The ultimate creative being might be one of Blue Brain's successors, down the road somewhere in the fog. That's sobering enough to justify an extra dash of gin in the 'ole tonic.

OK, back to the war.

History's Refrain

2005-06-01T12:55:00.000-07:00

I don't really have a strong opinion one way or the other about the EU constitution being voted down by the French electorate. I have seen and heard a lot of sighing, sadness, back-slapping and whoops-for-joy as a result of the vote. I can't arouse an emotional response within me.

Just beneath Europe's egalitarian, socialist surface lies the bedrock of fascism, I believe. The caricature of the white-boy-Nazi-American-cowboy pales in comparison to Europe's practical experience with real fascism, which swept across the continent unabated until those cowboys showed up. Fascism flourished in Europe with the aid of a lot of accomplices, not just victims.

Europeans know this better than anyone. That's why their culture has become so tortured: obsessed with high-minded fairness, guilt and donning the mask of multicultural deference, Europeans do not strike me as secure with their self-image. They're covering their painful history as best as they can with EU paper. Quite understandable. Even their attempt at egalitarianism takes on the trappings of a utopian scheme, flirting with fascism. I really have no idea if Transnational Socialism and National Socialism are essentially the same kind of fascism, in different clothing. For all our sake, I hope not.

Europeans' close proximity to their sordid past of grand social experiments have naturally made them a bit touchy about their own identity. And maddenly preachy, to be sure. But for all their overwrought complexity, impotence and attitude, I remind myself that if their current egalitarian incarnation fails them, they can always revert to their time-tested fascistic roots -- which is never very far to go.

As I write this, it seems unfair to talk about 'Europeans' as though they are a contiguous body of like-minded people. They most certainly are not. However, the EU is a vision for a common European identity, promoted as a counterbalance to the United States. So group them together I must.

Europe by definition is multicultural. It always has been. It's a patchwork of abutting cultures, contained within a relatively small landscape. Their history is rich and bloody. Multiculturalism evolved to its current benign pacifist state on a staple of human catastrophe, over hundreds of years. Any European over 70 can reveal that multiculturalism, if managed improperly, has a severe, tragic proportions.

The EU experiment may be a victim of utopian overreach. It needn't have been: The EU could have concentrated on economic ties within the continent, and considered a loose confederation between sovereign states. It could've emphasized a transatlantic military alliance. The 'European Man' was the religious part. That's when the sunbeams supposedly cut through the clouds from Un-Heaven and illuminate Europeans as the Most Sublime Rational Ones.

This might be the period of history where overreaching meets backlash. Europeans can't muster the votes for constructing a mercurial European man, normalizing the continent with short work weeks and peace symbols; and American Neoconservatives may have over-stretched their idealistic commitment to spread democracy abroad. Idealists always overreach.

The lesson here might be that we are seeing history be history again: Expanding ideals that overreach followed by recoil is classic historical oscillation. No one's immune.

Whether or not France's rejection of the EU constitution puts Europe closer or further away from their fascist roots is anyone's guess. We should all wish them well, and hope that what has happened in France will keep the mask on a bit longer. Let's not applaud the mess over there -- the kettle's black on both sides of the Atlantic.

Ah, history. It always has the same refrain: "Gotchya."

Tomenko Street

2005-05-27T12:55:00.000-07:00

I have friends who live in the outskirts of San Jose, California. They are from Ukraine, having come here just after the fall of the Soviet Union. I'll call them the Tomenkos. They're wonderful people -- very animated and eager to talk about the world with a crazy American like me. Our kids run all over their huge house while we grill lamb shashlik, eat buttered varenyky and debate politics.

The Tomenkos live in a McMansion. It's positively huge, with sweeping corridors and clearstory windows in the living room. They have a television on the wall that must be the size of a pool table. During our stay, the mega-television blares Ukrainian and Russian cartoons for the kids, while we swill pivo and vodka. I swear that one of the Ukrainian cartoons I saw while knocking-back some kind of insane black vodka showed a Muslim getting beaten to a pulp by an angry bear. But I couldn't understand the language, and the vodka was positively narcotic, so who knows.

The street they live on is strange. All the McMansions are pretty much identical, about two years old. The whole neighborhood was recently constructed. The buildings all have perfect lawns, with facades that are painted with three or four color variations of taupe. They go for about $1.4 million each. The trees on the street are small, being newly planted.

"Do you know your neighbors?" I asked Mr. Tomenko.

"No. The people next to us are from China. And those people over there are from Korea," he said, pointing at a huge two-toned taupe façade. "Those people in that house there are from Germany. I think that house down the street is full of Arabs -- perhaps Turks -- ne znayoo -- I dunno. No one interacts on this street because each house is a different country. There's a lot of different languages on this street. People stick with their kind, you know. It's easier that way."

San Jose is arguably a multiculturalist's dream. There are many cultures in the endless sprawl that pushes its edges toward the south. There's Indians, Chinese, Vietnamese, Russian, Ukrainian, Ethiopian, Arab, Palestinian, Israeli, and so on. There's even guys like me down there, born and raised in the Bay Area.

Mr. Tomenko is a programmer who has shrewdly and profitably extended his software business to include workers in the Ukraine, while he gets big contracts here in the States. He pays his buddies back in Ukraine about a third of what software engineers would charge locally. Businesses are looking to cut costs, which keeps him in high demand. His contribution to the American economy is in the form of US tax dollars, and buying lots of stuff from American malls.

I saw two divergent multicultural paths at the Tomenkos house, which appear to be going in opposite directions. One path flattens cultures into a uniculture, the other deepens them into ghettos.

Multiculturalism's Flattening Affect

Canadian Heritage has their definition of multiculturalism posted online:

What is Multiculturalism? Canadian multiculturalism is fundamental to our belief that all citizens are equal. Multiculturalism ensures that all citizens can keep their identities, can take pride in their ancestry and have a sense of belonging. Acceptance gives Canadians a feeling of security and self-confidence, making them more open to, and accepting of, diverse cultures. The Canadian experience has shown that multiculturalism encourages racial and ethnic harmony and cross-cultural understanding, and discourages ghettoization, hatred, discrimination and violence.

Through multiculturalism, Canada recognizes the potential of all Canadians, encouraging them to integrate into their society and take an active part in its social, cultural, economic and political affairs.

Multiculturalism, as a policy, essentially is a mandate: We should all immerse ourselves in each other's unique customs, holidays, beliefs, language and food to better understand each other and reduce aggravation across cultural divides. Children go to schools that herald cultural distinctions. Each tradition is accorded respect to foster understanding. The world is shrinking, and cultures are rubbing more than elbows in the process. Understanding each other is key.

It seems to me that there will be, over time, a flattening affect by multiculturalism as a policy. Compared to their immigrant parents, children's connection to their own culture will be diluted to some degree. And when they have kids, their culture will be even more modified for that generation -- and so on, until the colors of the multicultural rainbow blend together into gray. Perhaps this is the price of moderation and understanding.

What is integral to most cultures is not just food, dance, art, language and custom; it can also be bias, prejudice, racism, exclusivity, intolerance, and notions that can be antithetical to progressivism. The flattening of cultures down through the generations hopefully will remove much of the arcane voodoo that comes with tradition -- voodoo that could be de-emphasized to nothing, over time. And presumably, if things work out just right, all the voodoo our great grandparents practiced will morph into festive picture books and wall decorations, but little more. Much of what we like about multiculturalism is the food and art, not the religion and duty that comes with it.

We forget that cultures evolved into being because they were isolated by oceans, rivers, mountains, deserts and great distances. Pockets of humanity, remote from one another, educed separately as individual monocultures that spawned unique customs and languages. Sometimes monocultures blended, either by the sword, or by necessity such as trade. But their disparateness is what made them unique, warts and all.

Political multiculturalism's cross-pollination will probably sand down the distinctions between disparate cultures so that they all 'get along' and 'accept each other' -- so that there is essentially one global uniculture. I'm not sure that creating a global uniculture is the intention of the multiculturalists, but culture flattening might be the ultimate outcome over time. It's already apparent.

The Layered Ghetto

The practical, on-the-ground realities of today's connected world are creating a phenomenon that is arguably the opposite of culture flattening. Cheap communication and increased borderlessness are allowing for new kinds of globalized ghettos to come into being.

In a way, all that the Tomenko's neighbors appear have in common are the same breed of neatly mowed turf and terra cotta roof tiles on their McMansions -- and stores like Costco and Target that keep them well supplied. Each house on their street is actually a node in a vast global ghetto, held together by contemporary networks. Mr. Tomenko manages to live in America as a citizen, while simultaneously staying in Ukraine -- employing his friends, and being part of the culture and economy there. The Internet allows this, along with affordable jet travel and cheap telecommunications.

I imagine that each of the monocultural McMansions on that street is wired to other nodes within their culture across the city, country and globe -- never mind those strange foreign kids next door. Giant TV screens keep things familiar and safe -- even angry Muslim-eating bears speak fluent Ukrainian. Immigrants are no longer isolated from their home country like they used to be. Soon enough the Tomenko's giant TV screen will have a live, continuous, high-definition video connection to the clan in Ukraine. I have an iSight camera, and already do this with someone I know in Australia -- telepresence is cheap, ubiquitous, and a very effective way to recreate the familiarity that comes with physical close proximity.

In so many ways, technology allows people to create custom windows that open up other worlds that are live and in living color. Typically, those places are where friends and family are -- where there is comfort and familiarity. The physical neighborhood around the Tomenko's house is irrelevant; what is relevant are the connections they have. Parochialism can flourish with the help of iSights and video walls.

The Tomenko's street is actually an overlay of several globalized ghettos, no longer needing physical proximity to feel safe, in touch, or a part of something whole. The windows might as well be painted over on their street. There's no need to look outside. Tomenkos are also wealthy, so perhaps part of what I saw was driven by wealth. But I also know that the technology and attitudes behind their trans-ghetto will proliferate far beyond the rich. Technology always cheapens.

It is a peculiar aspect of this era that cultures are being sanded down by multiculturalist fiat and policy, while technology allows them to be entrenched like never before. I can't tell if these two phenomena are competing or symbiotic. I do know that the Tomenko's kids sing multicultural anthems by day at school while eating dim-sum, salsa, kimchee and varenyky lunches. And at night they watch Ukrainian bears eat Muslims.

Me? I like the conversations. And the food.

Swarms

2005-05-19T11:23:00.000-07:00

Mark Pesce, futurist creator of VRML, has recently published an essay entitled Piracy Is Good? Mr. Pesce's article points out the folly of the current media empires that are under siege by technologies that rout around their ability to control and distribute media. His article extends beyond big media's present challenges to where human evolution is headed.

Everywhere centralized, managed systems appear to be at odds with the most innovative, pervasive and viral trends of this era. As Mr. Pesce points out, news media is being supplanted by blogs; VOIP is overcoming fixed-line telephony; social networks are changing marketing and relationships. Shrink-wrapped, retail distribution of software, music, movies and everything else captured with bits is being supplanted by Gnutella, Limewire, Acquisition and BitTorrent. If an idea is loosened into this robust hive of interconnections, it can take flight if it has merit; it can be amplified, improved-upon, and refined if a swarm develops around it and makes it into a meme.

I can't quite put my finger on it, but something about patriotic Neoconservativsm seems to be at odds with swarming's cultural and political affects. Mr. Pesce made reference to Kevin Kelly's seminal work, Out of Control.

Mr. Kelly's book discusses the move away from mechanized industry to one based on organic models that mirror nature's productivity and patterns of growth. In a nutshell, Mr. Kelly says it will be better to grow things than to build them. His book concludes with The Nine Laws of God on how to make something from nothing. His First Law is intriguing:

Distribute being. The spirit of a beehive, the behavior of an economy, the thinking of a supercomputer, and the life in me are distributed over a multitude of smaller units (which themselves may be distributed). When the sum of the parts can add up to more than the parts, then that extra being (that something from nothing) is distributed among the parts. Whenever we find something from nothing, we find it arising from a field of many interacting smaller pieces. All the mysteries we find most interesting-life, intelligence, evolution-are found in the soil of large distributed systems.

The organic structuring of industry, business and society has the potential to erode the meaning and viability of the borders that define present-day cultures. I am not proposing that we can or should curtail human evolution away from mechanical societies to biological ones -- that would be impossible. But I do recognize that the idea of distributed being on a global scale will defy our notions of what binds societies in ways that are, for now, quite incomprehensible. Distributed being will challenge identies of caste, clan, class, patriotism, creed, even family.

I can't be certain, but nationhood quite possibly is in the breech, no matter how high we hoist our flags. I'm as skeptical as many of you are about EU-style transnationalism, which is largely a top-down organization that promises the dull thudding of the human spirit -- deeply centralized systems excel at that. The organicization of the human experience will make our current politics irrelevant over time, if Mr. Pesce and Mr. Kelly are correct. Transnationalism still only conceptualizes nationhood, albeit on a grand scale. Nationhood might very well be in the descendent and give way to organic, post-national social identites.

Like nationalism and transnationalism, the UN, which has a self image of global nationhood, might be made irrelevant by globalized, robust hives comprised of swarms that have so much inertia that they can affect greater change without the lumbering top-down structures of an institution invented in the 1920s, starting with the League of Nations. Any system that is centralized is facing irrelevance to the organic changes that beset them, much like the RIAA is today, or Newsweek and CBS.

Ironically, Islamofascists have grafted their religion somewhat successfully to organic swarming by extending Islam beyond nationhood to a kind of virtual ummah, utilizing the Internet:

The Internet provides confused young Muslims in Europe with a virtual community. Those who cannot adapt to their new homes discover on the Internet a responsive and compassionate forum. “The Internet stands in for the idea of the ummah, the mythologized Muslim community,” Marc Sageman, the psychiatrist and former C.I.A. officer, said. “The Internet makes this ideal community concrete, because one can interact with it.” He compares this virtual ummah to romantic conceptions of nationhood, which inspire people not only to love their country but to die for it.

The Internet is the key issue -- it erases the frontiers between the dar al-Islam and the dar al-Kufr. It allows the propagation of a universal norm, with an Internet Sharia and fatwa system, administered by the clergy. Now one doesn’t have to be in Saudi Arabia or Egypt to live under the rule of Islamic law. Anyone can seek a ruling from his favorite sheikh in Mecca. In the old days, one sought a fatwa from the sheikh who had the best knowledge. Now it is sought from the one with the best Web site.

So, in respectful deference to Mr. Pesce and Kelly, who bravely proffer a largely positive future resulting from swarming and organic evolution, we can see that there are negative alternatives as well. Radical Islam dovetails very effectively with an organic, hive-based organizational structure, in spite of it's medieval creed. Many obscure manifestos will find legs, wings and stingers when empowered as swarms. And with such sweeping change on the human landscape, the cynic in me figures that many millions will be swept aside in the process.

There are a lot of positive aspects to the topics that Mr. Pesce and Mr. Kelly touch upon; they point at how evolution can spawn a revolution that can transform humanity to a higher place. Revolutions are a part of human history. For me, they're also troubling, since I know that many of the rules that govern life as I know it will be changed. It has me wondering if I will be groping to understand the fundamentals of a world that has passed me by.

Crazy

2005-05-13T09:18:00.000-07:00

The New York Times has an article today on the odd alliance between two political foes, Senator Hillary Clinton and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich:

Mr. Gingrich, the former House speaker, has been working alongside the former first lady on a number of issues, and even appeared with her at a press conference on Wednesday to promote - of all things - health-care legislation.

But more puzzling than that, Mr. Gingrich has been talking up Mrs. Clinton's presidential prospects in 2008, to the chagrin of conservative loyalists who once regarded him as a heroic figure. Last month, he even suggested she might capture the presidency, saying "any Republican who thinks she's going to be easy to beat has a total amnesia about the history of the Clintons."

Since it's the end of the week, I'd like to throw into the ring a crazy idea.

There are things that make we wretch when I go to the polls: having to vote either Republican or Democrat. I punch the chads with one eye shut. If I vote Republican, a little voice in my head mentally slaps me around for promoting a party that has a weak spot for Pat Robertson and people like Creationists. And when I vote Democrat, the little voice's doppelganger punches my cranium for supporting the relativist, cave-in, self-defeating politics of the Left.

I can't think of two better firebrands for this country's two ideological bases -- Gingrich and Clinton. Their adversarial history is legendary. I love the idea of them swapping political spit in public.

So what's my crazy idea? That Hillary and Newt both quit their parties and start something new. By 2008, each party will have gone to such ideological extremes that perhaps they'll be liabilities, not assets for a presidential candidate. I have grave doubts that Bush's current trajectory is necessarily going to take the Republicans to still-yet higher places in the next election.

I disowned the Democratic party because all the discontent I had for liberals finally crystallized before me in the aftermath of 9/11. But I didn't join the Republican party, either. I'm registered as an independent -- I think of that as my political purgatory until something truly practicable emerges on the political landscape. Perhaps a new party is in order. Even as I write that, it sounds heretical to our binary democracy.

And yet, the first Republican president -- Lincoln -- ran and won when his party was only six years old. It's true that Republicans back in 1860 were inspired by the Whigs, but it was a new party nonetheless. Is that so unthinkable under today's circumstances?

I like the pairing of Hillary and Newt because they're each symbols of hatred by their opposition. If they could work something out between them, I might be persuaded to overlook their past ideological overindulgences and send them a chad of approval. They would, as a presidential team, be formidable to the Bush-like and Kerry-like candidates I expect to see paraded before us in 2008. Lunatic-ideological cream pies would be thrown at Hillary and Newt from the extremists on both sides of the political divide, with equal vigor. And perhaps then, finally, the extremists would be exposed and laughed out of the halls of power, where serious matters need tending.

OK, well -- it'll never happen. Go ahead and tell me why it won't. But if not Hillary and Newt, I would like to hear something that is viable for 2008. Republicans and Democrats are in the thickening mud of their own past ideologies. This fast-changing world challenges us to do more than slog through our ideological past. I'd love to hear some crazy ideas that might be saner than America's current national politics. Throw your best pies and see what happens.

100% Shareholder Owned

2005-05-10T11:57:00.000-07:00

On May 10th I published on this post how mystified I was that the town of Huaxi -- where villagers have taken control away from the government -- was given a glowing review in the Guardian. I said that I almost couldn't believe that the Guardian was talking about the same town.

Well, they weren't. Reader rc82 left a comment explaining that I had confused two different Huaxis within China. Clearly, I didn't know Jiangsu and Zhejiang each had a Huaxi.

Simon at Simon World confirmed that there are more than one Huaxi villages in China. So, my apologies to you all, and to the Guardian. I should've listened to my gut when I thought it was impossible to believe. Perhaps I am so routinely left in hysterics by the Guardian's slants that I lowered my guard. But I must take the responsibility here.

And thank you to rc82. His contribution is proof that blogs are on their way to great things. Self-correction is the key. I can only learn from this experience.

- Cicero the Humble

A few weeks ago there was a fair amount of news coming out of the village of Huaxi, China, where 60,000 villagers have protested and rioted against pollution coming from thirteen state-owned factories in the area. The last I heard, the town was run by the protestors, and the government was in exile.

I did a cursory scan around the Web to see if there was an update to the Huaxi story, which seems to have gone silent. I haven't found anything regarding the riots -- anyone with an update is invited to post here related information.

In my search for an update on the riots of Huaxi, I ran across this article in The Guardian, about the very same village and it's enchanting riches. Reading the Guardian's glib account of Huaxi would have one thinking that it is a model of blending capitalism, socialism and nationalism with a few kinks to be worked out. Given that the riots occurred nearly a month ago, the disconnect is so large between the Guardian's take on Huaxi and what I have read about the discontent that I wasn't sure I was reading about the same village. Here's a few snippets from The Guardian -- In China's richest village, peasants are all shareholders now - by order of the party

China's road to riches could not be more boldly signposted than it is in Huaxi, officially the country's wealthiest village. Take the municipal government's stretch limousine across Textile Bridge, pass the smokestacks of the steelworks, speed alongside row after row of symmetrical pale-blue houses, skirt the 15-storey pagoda hotel and then alight for a walk down the red-carpeted corridor of capital.

This concrete-covered passageway is a monument to the giddy material progress made by the commune since China's policymakers began mixing their ideological drinks 26 years ago.

...To demonstrate how good that cocktail is supposed to make the locals feel, "Huaxi Road" is decorated with smiling pictures of every family in the village.

Each household's assets are listed in detail: size of the family, value of their property, average level of education, number of members of the Communist party, as well as how many cars, mobile phones, televisions, washing machines, computers, air-conditioning units, motorbikes, cameras, fridges and stereo systems they own.

...Twenty years ago, most were farmers living in small, one-storey houses, who struggled to save the money to buy a bicycle. Now, they are shareholders with an average living space of more than 450 square metres and at least one family car.

...That is a subject of increasing concern to the world. Earlier this year, Microsoft's Bill Gates praised China for developing a "new form of capitalism". Politicians in Beijing prefer to talk about "scientific socialism" or "socialism with Chinese characteristics". Huaxi's model is by no means the only option for villages, but if it becomes a template the future might just as easily be described as shareholder feudalism.

..."People here have five aims in life: money, a car, a house, a son, and respect. We give them that. Every family here is rich. Our target now is to make all of China rich."

...Xie'en says political stability is the base for rapid growth. "I think every era has a different formula for success. The most important thing is to be flexible and open to new ways to thinking. We must do whatever works," he says. "We are not communist. We are 100% shareholder owned."

My search to find out what has happened to the rioters in Huaxi has landed me into a total disconnect, care of The Guardian. It's chilling sometimes to read how the Chinese might merely be trading Mao's totalitarianism for Shareholders' domination. Yes, it's probably more complex than that -- I don't know if the 'Five Aims' is just a microcosm of The Guardian's spotlight, or representative of China on the whole.

I do know that the waters trickling through the village are running yellow with foam, and infant mortality and birth defects have shot up dramatically, prompting riots started by old ladies in bamboo tents. The Guardian mentioned nothing about those issues. This post welcomes more information on Huaxi. I don't expect a lot of accuracy from The Guardian, but this time I was flummoxed. The editors of that publication appear to be 100% shareholder owned too.

Freedom and Control

2005-04-28T22:41:00.000-07:00

Apparently, the Chinese regime cannot allow films about homosexuality on university campuses -- Officials block gay film festival:

A gay and lesbian film festival due to be held at China's Beijing University was forced to move venues after campus officials banned the event.

The festival was billed as an Aids and sexual health event as organisers feared university officials would block the screening of gay films.

An event spokesman said: "If we had told them what it was about they would never have agreed to it."

The event, which began at the weekend, was moved to a nearby disused factory.

The spokesman said organisers believed the ban was "because of the festival's subject matter".

The festival featured four Chinese feature films, two Hong Kong movies and one from Taiwan.

Interesting. The gay and lesbian film festival might not be found on a Chinese campus, but it manages to carry on at a nearby abandoned factory. One habitually imagines that the CCP controls everything everywhere within China -- yet this story indicates otherwise. Does the regime only exert limited control in places like abandoned factories, much less rural areas like Huaxi? I'm just asking -- because I suspect that the perception that the CCP has an iron grip throughout China is fast becoming a chimera.

I would like to get a clearer picture on Western assumptions and attitudes towards the Chinese Communist Party. With respect to Islamofascism, the general trend on the left (with many exceptions) appears to placate Muslims as oppressed and downtrodden, while overlooking the misogyny and homophobia that is prevalent among many of them. Liberal values are suspended to champion a greater cause, such as a Palestinian state or fighting American corporatism in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So how about the Chinese regime? Will liberals have a soft spot for the autocrats, or take a hard line? I've seen many 'Free Tibet' bumper stickers in Berkeley disfavoring Chinese occupation. Then again, I see lots of Mao t-shirts for sale there too. Tienamen's freedom fighters appeared to be commended by conservatives and liberals alike in 1989, at Beijing's expense. Blurry lines.

I also wonder what the conservative consensus on China's regime might be. Realpolitik might plausibly dictate supporting order within such a large country, thereby backing the regime in the name of practicality. The morality of that would be debatable. Considering that the CCP is at least keeping chaos at bay for now, I find myself hoping that it just stays that way -- so am I inadvertently rooting for the regime? I don't intend to support Chinese communism; I resonate with the idea of a free Chinese democracy.

It's difficult to know what to wish for in market-communist China. My own views on China lack cogency, and are largely reactive. I suspect the same is true for the regime.

I asked Simon at Simon World that question -- he's optimistically hoping for a gradual evolution into something like present-day Russia:

...I'd say some morphing into a system similar to Russia's is the most likely. China's history is littered with strong central rulers followed by years of chaos. I think the last 60 years have been amongst China's quietest on the domestic front and people like that. There has never been a Chinese democracy outside of Taiwan -- it is an alien concept. That's not to say it's not right for China. It's just that it will take time for it to take root, and that will be a crucial time for the country, especially given its tendency to strong central rulers. So put me in the quiet optimist camp.

One hitch might be that Russia's shrinking population is around one ninth the size of China's, and spread across a much vaster expanse -- so the politics on the ground are quite different. And besides, where is Russian democracy heading these days? Is a Putinocracy the best wish for China? Perhaps China can build a better ramp from Communism than their Russian counterparts. Here's hoping.

How can freedom and control be made compatible for 1.3 billion people?

A Walk with the Leaves

2005-04-25T15:24:00.000-07:00

I have an image in my mind that I must get out. I hope it fits here.

Yesterday I went to Berkeley to meet a very old friend. I live relatively close to Berkeley -- an old haunt from my youth -- but I avoid the place now. It's just so far gone -- a cartoon of how radicalism can devolve into such ugly extremes. When I went there to escape home life in the 1970s, it was a mellower place, softened by hippy culture. But now it's militant, with lots of angry sloganeering dashed on the walls, the negativity palpable. Berkeley is not a hopeful place.

Somehow, the disheveled spirits that roam Telegraph Avenue do not seem free, although they might think otherwise. Berkeley people look bedraggled and haggard. They're aged and worn even in their twenties. I saw two people fighting over what looked like a bagel on one street corner. People's Park was having a thinly attended anniversary concert. Booksellers ringed the park selling screeds by Carl Marx and Angela Davis.

It was a beautiful spring day. I had to park several blocks away. On my way back from Telegraph I saw two women walking parallel to me across the street. They had with them a girl who must've been five or six years old, prancing along behind them in a blue dress. I could hear the women talking about Bush and Iraq, agreeing that what was happening there was an abomination. "Pure evil," said one woman to the other. One of them wore a keffiyeh, the other had on a lovely yellow summer dress with jackboots. Two Berkeley classics.

Our walk paralleled for about three blocks. At first I was intent on their speechifying and invective. But then I saw the little girl tagging behind them, oblivious to their angry words. Every tree and bush was an opportunity for her to explore. She tried to climb a small tree on someone's yard, then jumped down and dashed towards a orange cat sitting on a porch. The cat scrambled away and the little girl giggled in delight, herself becoming a cat. She slinked around meowing, threading through front yards and bushes a few yards behind her chaperones, who seemed not to notice her at all.

It was breezy that day, and a big gust of wind pushed into the street. Startled birds took flight. I saw the little girl stand still to watch the leaves flurrying around her. She just stood there and soaked it all in. Totally attuned. Wind chimes tingled somewhere, and then quieted down. The leaves and spring blossoms settled, and the birds landed. During this brief event the two women walked far ahead of the little girl. The keffiyeh woman turned around and yelled at her to catch up: "Hurry up! Let's go!"

Then we went in opposite directions.

I am so troubled by this era. I wonder about that little girl, and her generation. I think the two women represent many different people -- wrapped up in the times, thinking they're in tune when they're not. They were so far away from of their playful, inventive charge. I think I have pulled myself away from my own daughter in a similar manner, lost in life's ones and zeros rather than living.

The fascination of a parent is seeing the world renewed, through curious, young eyes. So much before us goes unseen as we parse the code of our constitutions. When we are young, we become cats on a whim; we swirl with the leaves. And then we soon forget these things. We put on uniforms and talk the talk. We spend more time hashing ideals, less time discovering what surrounds us. Some of us forget who we were, and what kept us alive. Once in a while something happens, and innocent joy returns. But it always seems to be a reprieve, not the main event -- like an unexpected, brief holiday. The world weighs so much.

I hope the little Blue Dress girl will be okay. She seemed so blissfully alone. I wonder when civilization's abstractions will force their way into her consciousness, stealing away the leaves that once walked with her.

Duell's Peak

2005-04-20T09:13:00.000-07:00

James Howard Kunstler recently wrote an essay for Rolling Stone magazine entitled The Long Emergency. He predicts dire consequences for our entire energy-dependent system, because of declining oil reserves:

...we face the end of the cheap-fossil-fuel era...we don't have to run out of oil to start having severe problems with industrial civilization and its dependent systems. We only have to slip over the all-time production peak and begin a slide down the arc of steady depletion.

The term "global oil-production peak" means that a turning point will come when the world produces the most oil it will ever produce in a given year and, after that, yearly production will inexorably decline. It is usually represented graphically in a bell curve. The peak is the top of the curve, the halfway point of the world's all-time total endowment, meaning half the world's oil will be left. That seems like a lot of oil, and it is, but there's a big catch: It's the half that is much more difficult to extract, far more costly to get, of much poorer quality and located mostly in places where the people hate us. A substantial amount of it will never be extracted.

...2005 is apt to be the year of all-time global peak production.

No combination of alternative fuels will allow us to run American life the way we have been used to running it, or even a substantial fraction of it.

Mr. Kunstler's argument that a slow, inexorable decline of global oil reserves is based on the theory known as Hubbert Peak. This theory predicts global reserves reaching an apex, followed by decline. The actual peak year will not be known until decline begins.

Some Hubbert scenarios predict a global disaster that would unfold as oil reserves start to decline, not just when they are depleted. Mr. Kunstler refers to American oil reserves hitting their peak in 1970. Since the whole Earth remained viable for additional reserves, the United States became dependent on foreign oil shortly after its own national Hubbert Peak. Once the whole planet reaches its global peak, things will go haywire.

Mr. Kunstler goes on to predict the dire situation that would fallout in a Hubbert Peak world. He points out that a hydrogen economy, while feasible, doesn't come close to generating the same energy output that oil has provided. According to Mr. Kunstler, even if we embrace every alternative energy source -- hydroelectric, nuclear, renewable, solar, etc. -- the sum total would not equal what we are currently dependent upon. The result will be a drastic downscaling of the modern world, where local living is revived due to reduced mobility. He claims that info technology and the high-tech economy of today will figure very little in a Hubbert world. He predicts that food will be grown closer to home; Wal-Mart-type mega-distribution businesses will close; and that the entire American economy will revert to an agrarian model:

We can anticipate the re-formation of a native-born American farm-laboring class. It will be composed largely of the aforementioned economic losers who had to relinquish their grip on the American dream. These masses of disentitled people may enter into quasi-feudal social relations with those who own land in exchange for food and physical security. But their sense of grievance will remain fresh, and if mistreated they may simply seize that land.

Mr. Kunstler paints a dire situation, one that should not be taken lightly. There's plenty of data that gives the Hubbert Peak theory plenty of legitimacy. While warning of a coming energy crisis, Mr. Kunstler also reveals his sociopolitical views. He predicts how regions of the United States might react to a Hubbert scenario:

I'm not optimistic about the Southeast, either, for different reasons. I think it will be subject to substantial levels of violence as the grievances of the formerly middle class boil over and collide with the delusions of Pentecostal Christian extremism. The latent encoded behavior of Southern culture includes an outsized notion of individualism and the belief that firearms ought to be used in the defense of it. This is a poor recipe for civic cohesion.

The Mountain States and Great Plains will face an array of problems, from poor farming potential to water shortages to population loss. The Pacific Northwest, New England and the Upper Midwest have somewhat better prospects. I regard them as less likely to fall into lawlessness, anarchy or despotism and more likely to salvage the bits and pieces of our best social traditions and keep them in operation at some level.

Ah, yes. Kunstler reveals how the true American soul will react to a profound energy crisis. Southern Christians will start shooting each other; Midwesterners will depopulate; the Southwest will dry up for lack of air conditioning; but New England and the Pacific Northwest will endure, no doubt since they are progressive to begin with.

I actually resonate with a lot of Kunstler's views on modern living. Suburbia is often an ugly, inefficient, energy-hogging phenomenon -- the SUV of urban planning. It is dependent on boundless energy and cars in order to basically function. It's going to be a real problem rectifying suburbia's growing demand for energy with declining supply. It will be a fundamental change in our society, to be sure.

But Mr. Kunstler leaves out human ingenuity in his dire predictions. He discounts how well Americans respond to crisis and change when confronted with it. Crises are history's great motivators, forcing humanity to adapt and leap forward. Modern technology, such as it is, has convinced me of one thing: Anything's possible. We shouldn't be so smug as to presume we can predict the future in this era.

In 1899, Charles H. Duell, the U.S. Office of Patents Commissioner made his famous prediction: "Everything that can be invented has been invented." Duell was a man who barely had a grasp on what electricity would bring the world, much less foretelling the Internet, air travel, globalism, genetic technology, nanotechnology, flash mobs, Blogs and the plethora of discoveries and inventions that built upon the ones present in 1899. He was short-sided, to state the obvious.

In 2005, James Howard Kunstler seems to be revising Charles H. Duell's claim, effectively saying that due to an energy crisis, most everything that has been invented will be useless. How does he discount so much? Perhaps an energy crisis, while painful, will be the requisite kick in the pants that ratchets us back into the high-gear of innovation. In all probability, Mr. Kunstler suffers from Duellism as far as admitting that most prognostications are usually dead wrong.

The future is what we imagine it. If we imagine it as a melee between red states and blue states, then we are merely caught in the snares of our present limited mindset. If all Mr. Kunstler can imagine from such a fundamental change is an extension of today's political dynamics, I will lay odds that someday his predictions will be regarded like Duell's are today.

What is truly worrisome is not that there will be an energy crisis in our future; it's that so many of our best and brightest can't positively imagine a future that we can all live in.

Tame

2005-04-15T08:55:00.000-07:00

Today's New York Times has an article that concerns Chinese protests against Japan:

China has tapped a deep strain of nationalism among its people, gambling, analysts say, that it can propel itself to a leadership role in Asia while cloaking its move for power in the guise of wounded pride and popular will.

But the government also seems to have taken steps to control - some say manipulate - a nascent protest movement to prevent a grass-roots challenge to the governing Communist Party.

In the last few weeks, relations between Asia's two leading powers have reached their most serious crisis since diplomatic ties were re-established in 1972. China has confronted Japan over newly revised history textbooks that gloss over wartime abuses. It stepped up its claim to disputed islands and undersea gas reserves between the countries.

China took Japan and the United States to task for declaring that they would jointly defend Taiwan in case of an attack from the mainland.

After weeks of hints, Chinese leaders said outright on Wednesday that Japan did not have the moral qualifications to become a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council...

..."Only a country that respects history, takes responsibility for history and wins over the trust of peoples in Asia and the world at large can take greater responsibilities in the international community," Mr. Wen said.

"The moral issue is China's trump card over Japan," Mr. Shi said. "China is now playing that card."

I can understand Chinese rage if Japan is in official denial over its abuse of China in the 30s and 40s. Too often, Nanking's rape is eclipsed by European atrocities of the same era.

But I can't help but wonder about China's claim of 'moral' supremacy over Japan. While they riot for accuracy in Japanese history books, their own textbooks most likely lack historical exactitude. The 40 million or so Chinese who were killed by Mao probably don't figure in most Chinese history books. And I wonder how they handle China's claim over Tibet? And Tiananmen, 1989? Or Falun Gong? How do they record Mao's disastrous Cultural Revolution now that they're unabashed capitalists?

Obsessing over Japanese history is a good way to keep Chinese citizens from engrossing in their own unfortunate history. Mao's giant portrait still dominates Tienamen Square, the last time I checked. And his successors still speak his name reverently, at least in public. Since the regime appears to be detaching from Mao's murderous legacy while simultaneously claiming legitimacy from his communist system, there's some unfinished historical business, I should think. Perhaps there's a few inaccuracies in Chinese textbooks. Just a few.

I was interested to read this:

But in one indication of how the government sought to manage the event, at least four leading organizers of previous grass-roots efforts to confront Japan were ordered to stay home, the four said in separate interviews. One organizer said the authorities had reminded him of that order by cellphone on Saturday.

Ah yes, the Other Wireless Network. It didn't really occur to me until I read how effectively an autocratic country with cell phones can leverage a system of virtual minders -- calling their minions incessantly to make sure they're towing the government's line. I suppose if my cell phone rang at all hours with a government hack telling me what I could do or not do, I might be pretty tame.

Tame. Is that what the Chinese are? For all their riots, all their rage, all their industry, all that roiling, expanding population -- are they tamed by minders with cell phones? How long can that last?

Wish You Happy

2005-04-14T09:19:00.000-07:00

The other day a friend forwarded me a spam he received, purportedly from China:

From: "The chinaese womem"
Subject: The tradition of China exercise garments

The tradition of China exercise garments This is the national traditional garments of China.

Clothing + trousers = Åê30.The cost of postal delivery from China = Åê4.If you need,please to connect with me

If you need quantity, are greater , please write a letter to us to discuss. I am a Chinese woman .I am doing business for child and survival.

I emphasize sincerity , guard well-behaved . If you like these clothings, please write a letter to us to intend.

Sorry! My English ability will not express than difference. Wish you happy!

While it's entirely possible this spam did not come from China, it plays on the country's reputation. China is perceived as teaming with poor, overlooked peasants who are willing to work for desperate wages. China's official rhetoric that trumpets their expanding economy and improving standard of living appears to be a lid clattering on a vast roiling pot of growing discontent.

And Chinese discontent is pouring over the pot's rim into the Western press. The New York Times recently published a report about a village in southeastern China where up to 60,000 villagers have protested and rioted against factory pollution:

Thousands of people rioted this week in a village in southeastern China, overturning police cars and driving away officers who had tried to stop elderly villagers protesting against pollution from nearby factories.

By this afternoon, three days after the riot, witnesses say crowds had convened in Huaxi Village in Zhejiang Province to gawk at a tableau of destroyed police cars and shattered windows. Police officers outside the village were reportedly blocking reporters from entering the scene but local people, reached by telephone, said villagers controlled the riot area.

"The villagers will not give up if there is no concrete action to move the factories away," said Mr. Lu, a villager who witnessed part of the confrontation and refused to give his full name. "The crowd is growing. There are at least 50,000 or 60,000 people."

Other villagers gave substantially smaller crowd estimates. But they agreed on the broad outlines of a violent clash on Sunday that came when local villagers acted on their frustration after, they say, trying in vain for two years to curb pollution from chemical plants in a nearby industrial park.

An account in a local state-controlled newspaper blamed the brawl on local agitators and said thousands of people had set upon government workers with rocks, clubs and sticks...

The riot occurred on the same weekend that several thousand people in Beijing and Guangzhou held protests against Japan. These demonstrations, however, were officially authorized, with youthful urbanites shouting angry slogans and, at one point, tossing bottles at the Japanese Embassy, at a time of heightened diplomatic tensions between the two countries.

But the riot described in Huaxi Village is seen as a symptom of the widening social unrest in the Chinese countryside that has become a serious concern for government leaders. Last year, tens of thousands of protesters in western Sichuan Province clashed with the police in a protest over a long-disputed dam project. Smaller rural protests are becoming commonplace and are often violent...

"The air stinks from the factories," said a villager, Wang Yuehe. She said the local river was filled with pollutants that had contaminated surrounding farmland. "We can't grow our crops. The factories had promised to do a good environmental job, but they have done almost nothing."

Several villagers said that local officials own shares in different local factories. But according to the story in the official newspaper, local officials had "paid great attention" to the environmental problems and had paid compensation for past discharges of pollutants into the river.

The government quickly labels the protesters as 'agitators.' Remember the teetering Soviet regime calling pro-Democracy protestors 'hooligans' in 1991? Perhaps China's ruling elite can take a lesson from the Soviet experience: 'Agitators' and 'hooligans' they may be; but there's a cause behind their actions, one to reckon with.

It's interesting to note that the cause of the Huaxi Village riot is essentially clean air, and a decent environment to to live in. I wonder if the pro-Kyoto people detect a slight whiff of irony in this report. Kyoto would cut China a lot of slack with environmental regulation, compared to the United States, because China is a developing nation. Do you consider yourself an environmentalist? Do you have some solidarity with Greenpeace? If you do, then the Kyoto agreement literally stinks. Huaxi's 60,000 people are genuine environmental activists, living the industrial nightmare. Kyoto is not on their side. Not at all. They probably never even heard of it.

I have another friend who went to Beijing last summer on many occasions. He said he never really saw Beijing because of the smog. He compared it to San Francisco's fog. His eyes burned and his lungs labored. Even his taste buds were dulled. "I couldn't wait to go home," he told me.

I have other acquaintances who are in some way doing business with China. They all admit that there's little choice other than to manufacture there, in order to stay competitive. And I concede that probably half the things in my tidy home came from The Polluted Continent. But perhaps we're deluding ourselves into thinking that through sheer hyper-economic transformation, China will join the world as a positive force. That's far from guaranteed. Being a global economic player for the first time in its history is allowing an isolated, communist regime to transform into a nationalist, autocratic one, with international influence. The environment loses in either case.

One thing that autocratic regimes prove beyond a doubt is that environmentalists are a secret, toothless society under their rule. Think of Soviet mega-projects, like turning the Aral Sea into a poisoned desert; or Ceausescu turning the Romanian countryside into a wasteland; or Saddam draining the southern marshes of Iraq; and China's vast worker-ant projects like Three Gorges Dam, displacing one million and flooding a whole region.

Growing unrest in China's interior, where the majority of people are not a part of the economic miracle, does not bode well. I am not one of those people who thinks China can just be a democracy and everything becomes hunky-dory. In the past couple of decades, two nations -- China and India -- have exceeded one billion citizens. That's a first for this planet. Megapopulations are a new phenomenon. The social stresses and strains that result are going to be unprecedented, with wild, unpredictable results.

China and India have recently been making friendly overtures to each other. I imagine the idea is for China to provide industry, and India brains. China is already headed to be the world's greatest consumer of oil. They're starting to jostle with western countries for energy and raw materials. Their hunger will grow, no matter who's in charge over there.

I would like to see people calling themselves environmentalists take a stand on this. Stopping seal clubbing is not going to change the world. Signing on to feel-good accords like Kyoto accelerates environmental destruction in places like China. Taking a stand with the villagers of Huaxi -- if only a symbolic gesture -- would be a step in the right direction. In the end, we should all do business for child and survival.

Combines

2005-04-05T11:36:00.000-07:00

The last time the Pope died I was fifteen. 1978 was the year before the Iranian Islamic revolution, a time when terrorism had less international cohesion than it does today. It was a time before the Reagan years of American optimism, during President Carter's tentative, brow-beating leadership.

The Soviet Union and its European vassal states were under the dominion of aging terror-wielding apparatchiks. By 1978 their onerous, lifeless empire was merely a dull ache for the Western world, made endurable by détente. Symbolic goodwill gestures like Apollo-Soyuz helped make communist tyranny vague and unimportant for the West, obsessed with exorcising Vietnam's demons in disco palaces that blasted the Bee Gees and Olivia Newton-John.

I remember reading issues of Soviet Life as a boy at the local branch library. Soviet Life' was a coffee table pictorial publication, proudly endorsing the softer side of the Soviet workers' paradise, pitched to Americans. I remember flipping through the colorful photo essays thinking, "Now that's a lot of wheat." But even my boyish naïveté saw through the obvious poses and setups purporting to be slices of happy Soviet life. Something about those depictions was off. Every other page showed even more wheat fields, traversed by giant mowing red combines manned by happy hay-stackers somewhere in the Ukraine. There was no mention in those pages of Stalin's purging those happy farmers' grandparents, whose mass graves were probably helping to fertilize those golden, wheat-filled plains.

Karol Wojtyla saw through the colorful lies of Soviet Life magazine. He experienced European tyranny that was not only wielded by communists, but also by Nazis and much later the softer socialist nihilists of present-day Europe. All of Europe's great 20th century social movements were like those giant red combines in Soviet Life magazine: they mowed down the human spirit, all to the same exact height.

The cardinals who elected Karol Wojtyla to the Papacy might only have considered liberating Polish Catholics at the time, or reengaging an ambivalent Europe to Catholicism. I don't know if their master plan was the elimination of international communism, per se. But ever since the Polish Pope helped his fellow countrymen ski down the slippery slope of communism, Polish light bulb jokes ring hollow. After being torn asunder by so many manipulating empires for so long, Poland really got the last laugh, didn't it?

There is much talk today about the 265th pope -- who he will be, where he will be from. African and South American candidates dominate speculative discussion. It appears that, among other things, Pope John Paul II established the papacy as a potent liberating force for the oppressed masses of the world. The next Pope is expected to build on John Paul II's liberating political legacy.

One thing I would like to know is if the next pope can save the West from itself and from radical Islam. Pope John Paul II helped to liberate the oppressed masses from under the yoke of communism. And now, the cradle of Western civilization itself needs to be convinced to step away from its suicide ledge of self-absorbed relativism and deference to expanding Islam.

Poland had Lech Walesa, who attributes his fortitude to his Catholic faith. Pope John Paul II personally helped to instill in Mr. Walesa the courage and support he needed to undo General Wojciech Jaruzelski's communist combine machine. But if the next pope has his eyes on restoring Europe's spirit, his potential allies aren't as obvious as Walesa was for John Paul II.

The few Europeans who speak out against misogynistic, anti-Semitic Islam rising in their midst are paying with their lives, like Theo Van Gogh; or are hiding from Islamic revenge in safe houses, such as Hirsi Ali, a Dutch Liberal Party member of parliament, a Somalian apostate, who speaks plainly about the plight of Muslim women. But unfortunately for the next pope, such potential allies within Europe aren't Catholic or particularly religious. They're people who are fed up with religious excess, where Islam tops the bill. So, for Europe's potential liberators -- its only real hope -- the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater. The Pope is not their ally.

Pope #265 will have to grapple with the rise of fundamentalist Islam, the hallmark of this era. It won't be enough to have group hugs with mullahs, and beg forgiveness for Crusader history. The human spirit languishes and is mowed flat in much of the Muslim world, particularly for women and non-Muslims. In some parts of the world, like the Philippines, Catholicism and Islam are vying for power. Their conflict literally translates into battle lines on maps.

We might be surprised to see the next pope be more of a warrior, not just a peacemaker. In Africa and Asia, Islam is on the move. In many cases, Christians stand in their way. Peace is something that happens when both sides agree to it. So far, peace seems very one-sided -- it's for Christians and Westerners to give, and Islam to take.

I admire John Paul II because he was a man of courage. He was a man who knew about combines mowing the human spirit -- and yes, sometimes Catholicism itself could also scythe the human spirit. But his message of hope and dignity is universal. As the modern world becomes more enmeshed in technological change, the rise of Islam, the rise of terror and further ambiguity towards the human experience, Karol Wojtyla's long papal reign will be a touchstone for maintaining human dignity. His message was not just for Catholics; appealing for human dignity and life are obvious universal causes that resonate with anyone.

I wonder what Karol Wojtyla would think of the world a hundred years hence. Will we know what it means to be human anymore? Will his ideas have relevance a century from now? What we think as universal can often be rendered ephemeral. I hope that respect for human life and dignity can withstand the combines of this unfolding century.

Being

2005-03-24T10:03:00.000-08:00

Today is my adopted daughter's first birthday. She was born at 7:02 in the morning. At 10:00 that fateful day, my wife and I received a call from our agency that a little girl was born three hours earlier, and if we could 'hit the ground running.'

We did.

Today, she toddles around the house, grasping her milk bottle, bonking things with it. A one year old is a marvelous human being, like no other: curious, funny, dramatic, flirtatious, self-aware -- relentless -- as relentless as the rhythms of life all around us, in the green of Spring. She will not be stopped, like the budding leaves outside her blue room on this sunny Spring day.

My wife and I adopted after many years of attempting to conceive, starting the old fashioned way, escalating to high tech. At a certain point, we were confronted with ratcheting-up the high tech conception machine, needing to be fed packs of money. We dithered at the machine's threshold, rationalizing. We decided against it, concluding that parenting was more important than casting our genes.

What followed was two and a half years of the adoption process, involving classes, forms, background checks, check-writing, and waiting in the desert. We waited a very long time; we got involved with a teenage birthmother, who eventually retracted her offer from us; we waited, and waited some more; and then, 10:00 on March 24th, 2004, the desert bloomed.

Recently, much has been written about the morality of abortion. I can tell you that in the past, I have essentially voted for abortion rights, and have yet to vote against them. But never have I done so with a clean conscience. Never with a sense of victory or righteousness. It was a rational vote, running against the grain of my soul.

Here's what I feel:

I look into the beautiful, smooth face of my budding girl, who chases dust bunnies down the hallway. I look into her eyes, and know that legally, she was an option. A choice. Her birthmother did not wish to raise her, or perhaps even love her -- but she let her live, for unknown reasons.

There is a peculiar gray zone in our culture. I have seen PBS documentaries showing the extraordinary efforts that medical science can make to save a fetus. As technology develops, the dateline of viability moves back further and further towards the point of conception. Another dateline -- the option to abort -- remains somewhere at the other end of pregnancy. Life and death decisions are made between those two rational lines. The reasons for aborting vary greatly, but the outcome is always the same: death, and tragedy.

I will have to admit that since adopting, my view on being 'pro-choice' has changed. Someone asked me about my position on abortion, and this was my post-adoption response:

"I am pro-choice. A baby can either be kept, or given to a worthy, loving family."

I will admit I am unclear on the legal aspects of abortion. Legal or illegal, abortions happen. They're tragic. They might be murder -- or at least the killing of a possibility. Secular and deist priests disagree, and cannot form consensus. And they never will. Somehow, faith trumps rationality in the abortion debate. People either have faith that a fetus is a glob of cells, no different from a cancer; or that it is a man or a woman in the rough, with sentience and a connection to the universe that is more important than our Earthly desires.

Annie Gottlieb of Ambivablog wrote in The AmbivAbortion Rant, Part II:

I would like to try an experiment. I want to try to find a way to talk about the value of a human life without automatically resorting to religious language. There are reasons to avoid abortion like the plague that neither contradict religious reasoning nor depend on it, and that may speak to people whose ears and minds close the moment they hear “God” and “child-killing,” because they fear that a much larger agenda lies in wait.

I would counter Ms. Gottlieb's fair-minded attempt to extract religion from life with this challenge: Conceiving, gestating, birthing and raising human children is nothing short of a religious experience. It's anything but a rational, reasoned, scientific endeavor, resting upon facts and figures. What bothers me about our secular dystopia is that the flower of human existence -- our wonder, awe, spirituality, mystery, entrancement with the possibilities -- is so tragically snuffed out by our rational pursuits. The very core of our being is, well, being. There is no rationality in existing, or in living. Even the most unreligious among us exude an infectious mysticism and holiness when they give birth, if only for a scant few irrational moments.

Children are immensely impractical. They disrupt, they demand, they're expensive, they're loud, insistent and can be quite selfish. Even atheists define parenting in religious terms more than practical ones, betraying an undefined faith in fate and hope. Children connect us to the past and the future, and constantly challenge us to live as fully as they do. Every moment counts. Time cannot be wasted -- there's worms to be found in the backyard, and the skittering sound that the Autumn leaves make on the street. There's the smell of Papa's coffee in the morning, and the funny braids of the rag rug by the toy chest.

As the civilized world rationalizes away its own inheritors and successors, people should have to look into the eyes of my little girl, who has managed to stay on this Earth as her birthmother's option. In a world full of so much death and tragedy, gaze into my daughter's dark brown eyes -- you will be reaching into humanity's primordial core, the deepest of wells. It's hard not to fall into the spell her eyes cast, pulled between the sparkling possibilities of her future, and our eternal human past, so vast. Try looking into her eyes, and not feel religion.

Happy birthday, sweet daughter.

Hairstyles and Autocracy

2005-03-18T08:25:00.000-08:00

There's an interesting story in the New York Times about how illicit sales of VCR players and other tech into North Korea are starting some counterrevolutionary cultural trends:

The construction of cellular relay stations last fall along the Chinese side of the border has allowed some North Koreans in border towns to use prepaid Chinese cellphones to call relatives and reporters in South Korea, defectors from North Korea say. And after DVD players swept northern China two years ago, entrepreneurs collected castoff videocassette recorders and peddled them in North Korea. Now tapes of South Korean soap operas are so popular that state television in Pyongyang, North Korea's capital, is campaigning against South Korean hairstyles, clothing and slang, visitors and defectors have said.

"In the 1960's in the Soviet Union, it was cool to wear blue jeans and listen to rock and roll," said Andrei Lankov, a Russian exchange student in the North at Kim Il Sung University in 1985, who now teaches about North Korea at Kookmin University here in the South. "Today, it is cool for North Koreans to look and behave South Korean, as they do in the television serials. That does not bode well for the long-term survival of the regime."

Perhaps North Korea's Hairstylist-in-Chief should consider adjusting his own puffy coif to match the times. When hairstyles threaten a regime, it's just a matter of time before its reign is finished.

Bitter Pill

2005-03-17T09:31:00.000-08:00

Spain's government helped to obtain the release of an Iraqi-born Spanish businessman, who was kidnapped in Baghdad a few weeks ago. Presumably, his ransom was generous, adding more millions into the coffers of civilization's deconstructionists.

What Spain and other European countries ignore at their peril is that paying ransom to their sworn enemies is a prelude to larger, more unfortunate events. The ultimate hostage will be Western civilization itself. Could there be a time when a nuclear mullah will demand the installation of an Islamic theocracy in Spain, lest European cities randomly vaporize? How many Euros will that ransom be?

Europe is a fateful place. Fifty years of an American defense umbrella and coddling has made Europeans 'aggressively docile' -- it's almost an oxymoron, but there it is. They seek post-Cold War independence from the United States at the cost of slicing open their guts to the antithesis of their very existence -- Islamic terrorists. How very strange.

Europe's suicide might be acceptable if they weren't becoming accessories to civilization's demise. Americans and Europeans have much in common; it's difficult to see the rift between them grow to such grotesque proportions. Indulging terrorists and dictators, selling arms to China, wrapping themselves in nuanced multiple layers of plausible deniability regarding deals with A. Q. Khan's nuclear black market -- Europe is no peacenik, in spite of its harmonious bromides. It's pretense that it stands for goodwill and peace is a hair's breath away from an outright lie.

What a bitter pill it is to swallow.

Sand Between Toes

2005-03-10T22:58:00.000-08:00

A Poem

this park
here I played, unobtrusive

swinging between
branches
with sand caught between my
toes
at days end.

now it is cocktails at
six
and the freeway's hard scale;

and the park is on the car
dashboard
little swings and slides

a tiny sand box;

and the trees, holding
me
in my seat, safely
as the car

twirls like a candy ribbon ---

and my mom holds me in her branches
saying
“You almost fell off the swing, silly boy!”

I will keep the sand
that sticks between my toes in a
jar
close to the ignition.

Faith

2005-03-08T19:33:00.000-08:00

I was born and raised in a Catholic family on an island containing two parishes. I attended a church that was a block away from my house, and went to school there for twelve years -- 1969 to 1981.

As a first grader, the grammar school was staffed by the black-habited nuns of the Sisters of Notre Dame. I experienced a classic Catholic education, replete with uniforms, mild corporal punishment, long sessions of cursive writing practice, religious training, Latin, and lots and lots of grammar. In order of importance, the big three subjects were religion, grammar and math. I was horrible at math.

My childhood had a God who was loving but sternly provided the structure of religious regimen -- attending mass, observing holy days, and mirroring Christ's life through faith. I felt safe with God as a grammar school child, but became disillusioned with Church bureaucracy in my late teenage years.

Beyond the shores of our conservative little island, the 60s and 70s raged like a wildfire. We all could see it. Radical secularists on the other side were burning the scriptures of my church, among other things. The heat from that fire soon melted the black habits off the backs of the sisters, where for a few years they donned laymen's polyester dresses and pants, in less and less muted colors. A few years later, the nuns themselves melted away altogether in that fire. Their convent was converted to a study hall. I always wondered where Sister Mary Wilfred and Sister Dorothy went. Mysterious, their lot.

As a generalization, secularists rely on rationality as humanity's salvation. Some just put up with people of religious faith as inherently irrational, while they see themselves progressing by adhering to an analytical and reasoned philosophy that trumps faith. Rationalism largely liberated the West from clergical tyranny, displacing dogmatic faith with empiricism. Rationalism is the soil of the Enlightenment from which sagacious men devised the individual freedoms of the Constitution. The ideal of secular rationalism is fairness, balance and clarity; impartial scientific facts liberate humanity from the oppression of regressive religious notions.

As a generalization, people of monotheistic faith profess that humanity is dependent upon God's love, in order to be whole; they seek and believe His truth. It is impossible to be absolutely rational, since we are fallible. God's perfection is love -- we are lost without it. Where the rationalists offer clarity of facts, God's love offers strength and clarity of purpose. Dr. William Sloane Coffin said that faith is being seized by love: "Faith is not belief without proof, but is trust without reservation." It may be that faith is simply unbounded optimism.

What I find interesting about this age is how the lines of rationalism and faith have crisscrossed and diverged.

This essay was sparked by a three-part piece on the 'Secular Orthodoxy' called The Enemy Within. The author, Baron Bodissey, hopes for a modern, post-scriptural syncretistic revelation that would spark a new faith to bridge today's spiritual adversaries:

But suppose, just suppose, a new revelation could somehow come into the world, the world as it exists now at the dawn of the 21st century. Imagine a revelation that could speak to the whole of interconnected humanity, one that could withstand the scrutiny of modern science. What form would this awakening take?

The idea of a post-scriptural revelation is arguably in the works, the fruit of rational science itself. Posthumanists posit that something more intelligent than man can be built out of ones and zeroes, or possibly the quaternary code of DNA's nucleotides -- A, G, C and T -- or a combination of those, plus something else yet to be explored and developed. The resulting artificial or enhanced intelligence would theoretically accelerate past human abilities of comprehension, rendering the future moot because it would be utterly unpredictable -- called the Singularity.

Transhumans are people who are augmented by technology in some way -- it could be an artificial limb, or enhanced intelligence -- the evolution of whom will lead to a post-human era. Transhumanists espouse melding technology and humans, as a ramp to a post-human future.

Transhumanists and 'Singularians' are the unexpected children of rationalism and our culture's nurturing of science and technology. Their vision of post-humanity seems startlingly possible if we extrapolate today's technological innovations into the future. The very nature of the Singularity they anticipate will effectively represent humanity's end, at least as we currently exist. Some hope that they might live forever by uploading their minds to an extracorporeal host; or perhaps become part of a greater intelligence. Some others have faith that the Singularity, though it will supplant humanity's intellectual primacy, will not be our end, but rather our salvation, and rebirth. Many others think it's all impossible futurist nonsense.

It's possible to see the defined edges of a coming Singularity, based on the obvious acceleration of technology in today's world. While we presently fend off the anti-rational orthodoxy of fascist Muslims who chafe at the Western world, our own spiritual and biological evolution might eventually put us in their shoes. It could be that in a Singularity-apparent world, we'll all become Jihadists marauding for the Orthodoxy of Self -- fighting for who we are, rather than what we might become.

A Singularity or ramp to it via transhumanism will pull generations apart, to say the least. If my daughter grafts a third arm onto her body and grows extra gray matter as a way to create music that would be beyond Mozart's comprehension -- much less my own -- then I'll know I'm a lowly, soon-to-be-extinct Orthodox Human. And just maybe I'll be mad and resentful about it, and scared -- maybe I will become one of the radicals with spears dancing around civilization's fire. Because if that happens to my daughter, civilization will most certainly have unexpectedly cleaved.

Bloggers and Open Source Creative Commonists should be modest about their achievments. Our early pottering with robust networks zipping between speedy CPUs will not merely be the harbinger of better, more accurate news blogs, interesting content, social change, or excellent software. As a phenomenon, Commonism will likely be another stepping stone that briefly carries our weight as the next stone appears out of the fog, yet to be seen. Blogging, texting, podcasting and file-sharing our way to revolutionary flash mobs is only the comprehensible fallout from our morphing technosphere, hampered by today's technological limits. There's a long way to go with this stuff. The real meat on the bone isn't even in our heads right now, and may not even be for our inferior heads to comprehend.

What Singularians and Posthumanists rarely talk about is where love fits into their view of improving man and/or intelligence. Could a spiritual singularity be in the offing? Singularity has a near infinite acceleration of capability -- but need it be limited to knowledge and technology? Might its true measure be in terms of infinite love and hate -- good and evil? And which way might that card fall? Not for us to say, if it comes to pass. We're just Cro-Magnon men. Or ants.

I admit that I'm unsure of the religion thing, the democracy thing, the statist thing, the rationalist thing, the get-rid-of-tyrants-and-the-world-will-be-free thing, and the singularian-trans-post-human thing, given evolution's curve, and where we are headed. Very bright people tell me I'm supposed to accept that rational science conceives of the Multiverse -- a universe composed of all possible universes -- and on top of that, technology could throw us towards the Singularity. I'm supposed to accept that rearranging our own genetic As, Gs, Cs and Ts with ones and zeroes is rational, unlike The Second Coming or reuniting with my deceased grandmother in Christ's Heaven. Science seems to be racing to a place where reality is highly speculative and completely irrational.

It's ironic that science -- the rational pursuit of what is knowable -- might lead to the Singularity, which is utterly unknowable, much in the same as understanding God is. What's the difference between a Christian and a Posthumanist? Maybe just that one is looking up at the heavens waiting for the Second Coming, while the other is looking at his workbench and tech blogs attempting to build it.

Posthumanism or the Singularity may yet be just another totalizing religion obsessed to improving fallible me through conversion, or by my death, with no in-between. And it has the force of commercial industry behind it. It keeps me invested in GenenTech to get me to retirement.

The harsh laser beam of improvement has long been refining our tools; now we face the prospect that, in order to progress and move forward, the error-correction beam is now focused on us. Better hands to play better Schubert on piano; Better feet for better Olympic runners; Better minds imagining better things -- presumably.

I don't know if my love could be better. As we step into the unknowable world, let's at least admit we have no idea what we're stumbling into. And that it means goodbye to all that we are now. If we're in foreign lands defending our way of life and the freedom of the human spirit, those ideals would mean more if I could tell you where we are headed on the free side of the planet. I certainly don't want to go back to Medina; but the opposite direction I hurl towards -- that takes me to where, exactly?

The early plagues brought about by the coming Singularity might be the torrents of cell phones with data-bits and voice-bytes washing over our streets and through our homes. It might be the silence of New Yorkers on the subways, uncharacteristically muted by their iPods. Or the strange, cryptic messages posing as advertising that fills my email box like foam. Though disparate, these storms will probably coalesce into one giant Red Spot that overtakes the Earth. How we will remain human, how we will keep the faith, how we will patrol our undulating borders is beyond my comprehension.

For me, the enduring faith of my Christian origins is that God is love. That's what the nuns taught me. All that we have built -- the incremental improvements, the tall buildings, Photoshop, Wal-Mart -- all of this stuff is nothing. My faith is no more strange or naïve than anyone else's; God loves me for who I am. Not for how I might be improved. Thank you, Sister Rita Margaret.

It may be my hallowed remembrances of love that sustain me the most: Those childhood days when I got up in the early morning darkness to be an altar boy at 6:30 mass -- lighting the candles in the darkened church while the pipe organist practiced Bach, and the nuns filed in; Eating kippered sardines on rye with my grandmother, teaching her to play blackjack after school; The moment I met my wife, and knowing that's who she'd be; Driving our newborn daughter home from the hospital at 35 miles an hour on the freeway, and coming home to her new grandma on our porch in a bright, white apron; The summer crickets that lull me to sleep on warm August evenings, with the fan humming low...

The fire that melted away the Sisters of Notre Dame is hotter than ever. How I miss them so. Their orthodoxy was only one link on the chain of faith; each link seems to have its melting point in the face of evolution's flames. I can only hope that my simple faith can endure the fires to come.

The Cedar Express

2005-03-04T06:39:00.000-08:00

Lebanon's growing democracy movement offers the Western left the opportunity to become relevant in the War on Terror -- a war that might be more accurately described as a War on Tyranny. Tyranny endures when free people do nothing to stop it; and it prospers when they cut deals with tyrants. Strategic collusion with autocrats had its place in the context of Cold War realpolitik -- but doing so in the Global War on Terror undermines the free world's main line of defense against terrorists, by giving oxygen to the tyrannical regimes that support them.

In Lebanon, tyranny's resilience is being tested. The Democrats' intransigence and incertitude with the War on Terror and European power plays that cynically triangulate the US against despotic regimes mar today's liberals. But there's an opportunity before them called Lebanon, where liberals can become progressives again. It's as though a ship built of cedar has arrived to the Left's dormant shore. Liberals can revitalize their progressive credentials by boarding the Cedar Express and embarking to help expel tyranny from Lebanon, and build a safer Middle East.

President Bush can take some of the credit for the Cedar Revolution, evidenced by Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt's recent statement in the LA Times: "It's strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq." Jumblatt is no Bush lover. He has a contentious history with the US and Israel -- his admission carries significant weight.

President Bush can't take all the credit for the Cedar Revolution, however. Many Lebanese are looking at Ukraine's Orange Revolution and hoping for a similar transfer of political power. Orange Ukrainians looked towards Europe and Brussels as their economic and political lodestone, rather than Moscow or Washington. The United States isn't the only haven of democracy that oppressed masses look towards; the EU has its own democratic underpinnings, though under increasing duress by a growing statist socialist polity.

Europe's soft-power could be leveraged in concert with American hard power. Lebanon might be the testing ground for a new transatlantic, bipartisan alliance against tyranny. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is standing shoulder-to-shoulder with France's Foreign Minister Michel Barnie, denouncing Syria's occupation of Lebanon, demanding a pullout. France is brandishing its own hard power by deploying its replenishment ship, the Var, to the eastern Mediterranean -- providing facilities for 200 commandoes to the Lebanese region. Where there is Western division concerning Iraq, Lebanon could be where consensus builds democracy.

Lebanon's political realities on the ground are complex. Religious strife and constitutional sectarianism will make a cogent democracy very challenging in Lebanon, perhaps more so than Iraq. If a democratic Lebanon emerges, it will have been an international effort.

If liberals reclaim progressivism by embracing democratic activism in Lebanon, the result will be a stronger front against tyranny -- because in the end, that's what we're all fighting. And liberals would have more traction when arguing their differences with the Bush administration for promoting liberty. For example, the Bush administration has gotten cozy with the dictatorship of Islom Karimov in Uzbekistan. Certainly, there's a strategic reality to the relationship required to defeat the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan; but Karimov's murderous, tyrannical regime is gaining strength from American support, at the expense of Uzbek liberty. Liberals who actively support and promote democracy in Lebanon (and hopefully, Iraq too) could claim a higher moral ground than they currently occupy as mere Bush naysayers.

Senator Hillary Clinton, ever the shrewd presidential hopeful, has been polishing her pro-democracy stand against Syria. Say what you want about Senator Clinton, but she's not stupid. Her growing hawkishness is pragmatic -- she's demonstrating that there's something liberals can learn from neoconservatives, and apply it to liberalism. She's moving on.

Beyond Senator Clinton and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, the signals coming from the left regarding Lebanon are faint, inconsistent and infrequent. In his speech demanding President Bush commit to a timetable for withdrawing US troops from Iraq, Senator Kennedy made a plea from the soapbox of fear -- fear of Vietnam, fear of quagmire, fear of casualties, fear of ruffling European feathers. His proposition that we can pull out on a set time table only puts disengagement with the Middle East on the calendar. Senator Clinton at least said that Senator Kennedy is wrong. But other democratic centers seem devoid of the subject of liberation in Lebanon, much less Iraq. Where's the lively discussion at the DNC, the Democratic Underground or the Daily Kos about fostering democracy in Lebanon, much less in the Middle East? Even Saudi Arabia is withdrawing its support for Syria in Lebanon -- but liberal voices are faint.

The fate of Lebanon's freedom should be at the top of the liberal agenda. Supporting a peaceful pullout of Syrian forces is a start -- but it needs to be more than words. Tyranny responds to the threat of force, preferring negotiation to exploit weakness; President Bush has all but proven that. Liberals need to own that fact, and move on. It's time for liberals to take their place in the sun, if they can extract themselves from self-defeat. It's time that they projected their power to the hopes and freedom of mankind. Lebanon's emerging democracy is a unique opportunity for all free people to make a difference, and make the world a safer place. The Cedar Express awaits.

Seeing Red

2005-02-24T10:28:00.001-08:00

Nick Cohen has written an interesting editorial about London's Mayor 'Red Ken' Livingstone's public embrace of Egyptian Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi. The London Sheikh has publicized his hatred for women, gays and unbelievers. 'Pseudo-leftist' Red Ken has aligned himself with him as the 'leader of a great world religion,' and a symbol of British oppression, but at the cost of eroding liberal values:

[Mayor Livingstone] doesn't seem to realise that this bland formulation is cover for a deeply reactionary manoeuvre which is being practised across the Western pseudo-left. First they define 'communities' by their religion. Then they assumed that misogynist and anti-democratic practitioners of that religion are the true leaders of their communities. The inevitable consequence is that liberals, socialists and feminists in the poor world are betrayed. They look to the Western homes of liberalism, socialism and feminism and are greeted with indifference or spite.

Last year Iraqi, Jordanian and Tunisian writers organised a petition to the United Nations by 2,500 Arab intellectuals which condemned 'individuals in the Muslim world who pose as clerics and issue death sentences against those they disagree with. These individuals give Islam a bad name and foster hatred among civilizations.' Prominent in their list of the 'sheikhs of death' was one Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Just as the British anti-war movement chose to turn its back on the eight million Iraqis who defied the murderers and voted, Livingstone has chosen to ignore the Arab left and offer comfort to its enemies.

...As inevitable as betrayal is award-winning hypocrisy. In the name of anti-racism, Livingstone perpetuates the stereotype of the Muslim as a death-obsessed, woman-hating, queer-bashing cheerleader for suicide bombers. In the name of multi-culturalism, he talks as if something in the water supply of the Islamic world, or maybe an obscure genetic mutation means that one billion people actually want to be ruled by priests.

Cohen essentially posits that leftists are undermining liberalism by ennobling any minority group claiming victimhood, including al-Qaradawi's ilk. And since 'left' and 'liberal' commingle so much, genuine progressive outrage is muted by the betrayal of enlightened principles in the face of religious fascists. Such are the times.

President Bush is an unlikely defender of liberalism. Perhaps that's part of the reason why he is so abused by progressives, who know they should be carrying the sword. It's difficult to ascertain how much 'Red Ken' there is within the liberal parties of the West. The liberal Prime Minister Tony Blair has extracted some of his party from the self-immolation of leftist realpolik. In contrast to Blair, leftists like Mayor Livingstone represent a political strain that is no less dogmatic than the Medieval ravings of the Egyptian sheik who struts among them. Dogmatism defines leftists and Jihadists equally. Indeed, Red Ken is to liberals what Osama bin Laden is to Muslims.

The 'War of Civilization' that threatens to erupt might only truly arrive when one civilization is betrayed. Leftists appear to be comfortable with forsaking progressive liberalism to wage their many causes. In an era of appeasement, self-doubting liberals are sinking the progressive ship by allowing leftist bilge to gather. There will be many things appeasers will give away to the radicals -- both leftists and Islamofascists alike -- before there's a war of civilizations.

Appeasement requires the slow, steady betrayal of core values in the face of tyranny. Israel could be the last concession to the sheiks of the New Caliphate, and the troops of the Red Ken Brigade -- the equivalent of giving Hitler the Sudetenland. The popularizing view that democratic, secular Israel is merely Zion is a moral concession that has already been given to the fascists. If the day comes that liberals promoting leftist politics can give Israel the Sudetenland treatment, the appeasement chest will at last be empty, just as it was in 1938. And then there will be war.

Decency

2005-02-14T21:12:00.000-08:00

January, 1991 was the eve of the First Gulf War. I took a train down from Boston to Washington, D.C. to observe the anti-war demonstrations taking place there. I felt a general solidarity with people of conscience who opposed violent action in the Gulf, albeit with misgivings as how best to confront Saddam in Kuwait. I attended impartially with my camera, and managed to catalogue about 500 photos.

I came away from the protests very confused. I went expecting to see speeches and rallies against the upcoming war, which were plenty. But there were also many other convocations by a disparate collection of people representing unrelated causes. There were gay rallies, pro-Sandanista rallies, pro-abortion rallies, and Earth First rallies; there were communists, socialists, anarchists and the precursors to the antiglobalists -- all of them performing acts while seemingly indifferent to opposing the war at hand.

I returned to Boston realizing that the liberal agenda was splintered into fragmented camps. Collectively, they lacked a powerful voice. Their discordant protests came off as noise -- performed on common ground but lacking a common cause. The D.C. rallies were like a morose party -- a parody of people's pet objections, acted as performance art and crafted for the network cameras that lined the streets bounding Lafayette Park.

During the remaining 1990s, while the country partied and worked overtime in search of digital gold I took a breather from the world, to recline as a political zero. I was utterly amazed and distressed at the excesses of those post-historical dotcom days. We were becoming too soft as a culture, I believed -- surrounded by too much wealth, convenience and distractive media to actually defend ourselves as free people. I felt that the West's hard-won liberal principles were melting into irony in the face of blinding overabundance and frivolous politics. But the confetti of those heady times draped over my concerns, and like many other people, I was too busy shuffling pixels to put much energy into discerning the gathering storm. But I sensed that history was near. For me, the 1990s were like a glorious sunset at the end of a long, resplendent day.

And then came nightfall.

- - -

I admit that it took 9/11 to slap me awake from complacency. It wasn't merely a shock to see the twin towers implode; I had the sick realization that the abstraction of history that so eluded me had suddenly made it's triumphant return. I felt irrelevant -- that I knew nothing when those buildings fell. Nothing. I knew that the free world had to be rewired, if only to survive the incipient era of terror that was hurtling towards us.

Yet many have dug their heels into familiar political ground. Political affiliation has become a security blanket -- a thing of comfort, worn in a tumultuous time. I can understand that. But in this era, reinvention is the key to survival, not pulling the proverbial covers over our heads.

My ironic western soul remains at odds with this changing, restless digital age of terror. We live in an era where an airline is pasting the gigantic blue mug of Elton John on the side of its planes, while Islamic fascists plot to fly them into the sides of our logo-covered skyscrapers. This is an age where our heritage is packaged in pixelated plastic, manufactured in China. Much of our history is a corporate museum staffed by underpaid posers wearing historical garb -- it doesn't take a genius to notice the charades that make up daily life. There's long been fake bricks on the quaint store fronts; 'Ye Olde Shoppe' signs on the corporate outlets; old-tyme values are spun into cheap, skin-deep amusement. Digital miracles have thrusted synthesized apparitions into our collective consciousness. When the trickery is applied to commercialism, most of us suspect that our culture is canned, and pitched. Crass commercial illusions amplified by powerful media tends to feed cynicism, not optimism. Irony hangs in our art galleries; it's the hot seller at Barnes & Noble and on the Big Screen.

This can be a strange time, where liberals -- once the bulwark of the struggling class -- drive to the supermall in SUVs just like conservatives do, with their kids zoning out on TV in the plush backseats. After parking their boats, the SUV Conservative and the SUV Liberal diverge at the mall over their choice of branded food -- one preferring Wendy's, the other Jamba Juice. Moral decisions too often boil down to merely buying brands that emit the right PC-vibes -- paper or plastic?

Perhaps the word embarrassment best describes the mood of a lot of secular, free-world westerners. I can relate. There's just so much damned stuff. I was in The Container Store with friends the other day and I realized it was a booming business because, with all our foreign-made stuff, Lord knows we need all sorts of foreign-made plastic containers to store it in. What a business! And at the checkout counter, people buying their crap containers snapped up copies of Real Simple magazine, perhaps fantasizing that the Mennonites had it right all along.

There is plenty of irony to life in our secular, anything-goes, well-supplied world. It comes with a bizarre set of postmodern values in the form of embarrassed guilt over our swelling girth. We're all super-sized. Our whole culture and self-image is super-sized. Our problems and solutions are super-sized. Our shopping centers, churches and whims are all super-sized. The weighing scale is popping its springs, and the only thing we've got in the larder is custard. No wonder wheatgrass is such a hot seller.

We suffer the complaints of kings, not oppressed masses. Look at us. We're spending billions of dollars despairing over burning excess calories and alleviating the clutter of useful junk. Our litany of complaints seem more to do with organizing our pillows than with nourishing our souls. Our royal embarrassment has lead to ironic, self-indulgent guilt.

There's no escape from the culture of guilt. None at all. You can go completely vegan, if you like -- the cows and chickens can finally retire to Happy Barn Ranch -- but you'll still be guilty when eating that nut-and-gluten soy-cheese NotDog™. You'll be guilty of supporting corporate farming and wetback labor. You might grow that stuff yourself, or join an organic farm cooperative, but you'll be guilty of using the land for agriculture when instead it should be a virgin redwood forest.

We lead conscience-stricken lives. And in our culture of psychobabble, guilt is the worst thing possible. That word has practically been banned from our secular lexicon, since it figures so prominently in the Bible. But there it is, shining its headlights onto our rotund, soft, well-fed bellies: Guilty... guilty... guilty...

So I understand the guilt. And the embarrassment. And the irony. I get it. But here's the rub: A simple solution is at hand. The guilt can be relieved. The irony silenced. Restless people in this world have a plan. The Call to Prayer beckons from a minaret near you. You could sequester your wife, perhaps add a few others to your name. You could send your kids to a madras. You could pin all the world's problems on the Jews, and onto anyone else who has a grain of progress left in their skull. You could have a whole world of convenient enemies along with those Zionist Jews -- Shi'ites, Sunnis, Sufis, Secularists, Christians, Hindus, women, homosexuals, Americans -- there's an endless supply of people who you can project your guilt onto. It can be quite refreshing. The next edition of Real Simple magazine should splash Muhammad Atta on their cover. Because it doesn't get any simpler than piloting Allah's jet into the twin towers of western guilt and embarrassment.

Muhammad Atta must have been the most guilt-free man on Earth in the seconds leading up to his plunging Flight 11 into the North Tower. His gesture was the ultimate F**k You that lurks in many an embarrassed westerner's privileged heart. Some might say that they understand Atta's feelings, but I don't -- and I don't want to try. Deep down, 9/11 forced me to cut the cord on my royal discontent before it became self-hatred, metastasizing in my soul. Any westerner's quasi-alliance with medieval Islamofascists is playing with ancient fire. Sure, it singes our excessive, bulging culture. It might even feel like it's cauterizing wounds. But fascist fire is hotter than most people imagine. My pessimism has its limits, and Shari'a law is it.

The Belmont Club quoted Nelson Archer's column, The Berlin Wall's Revenge regarding the vengeful Left:

They have only things to destroy, and all those things are personified in the US, in its very existence. They may, outwardly, fight for some positive cause: save the whales, rescue the world from global heating and so on. But let's not be deceived by this: they choose as their so-called positive causes only the ones that have both the potential of conferring some kind of innocent legitimacy on themselves and, much more important, that of doing most harm to their enemy, whether physically or to its image.

The Belmont Club chimes in:

...any honest Leftist must realize that his movement and its aspirations are rooted in the very West it seeks to destroy. Communist totalitarianism is the doppelganger of secular freedom; and the serpent in the garden must know that the desert, so hospitable to Islam, can only be a place of death for it. The Left may have embarked upon a journey of revenge. They will find suicide.

I often appreciate Wretchard's deeply considered political analyses, but I think it he might be oversimplifying things by identifying internal opposition as 'the Left,' ascribing it destructive traits like revenge. Belmont and Archer's essays make little distinction between Left and Liberal, sharing the same suspicion that I have -- that often, they're one in the same, and what distinguishes them in our satirical media is very subtle.

All this takes me back to Washington D.C. in 1991. What I saw was a large gathering of people who were marching out of conscience. They felt there was a non-violent way to achieve a resolution in the Gulf other than war. Whether or not their conscience was misguided and naïve, or enlightened and viable in the game of global power politics is certainly open for debate. But within that crowd -- the ones who were genuinely opposing violence -- there were many good, earnest people, marching with their families. They weren't there to exact their revenge. They were The Embarrassed, not The Vengeful.

But the wild, hellish malcontent party at the fringes drowned-out those good people of conscience and stole the show, and has gained a lot of momentum since 1991. There is still a difference between Liberal and Leftist, though what distinguishes the two is often incredible in the media age of Moore and Fox.

Not all conservatives are followers of Pat Robertson and send their kids to Baptist Bible colleges, demanding Creationism in their schools; not all liberals are members of the leftwing Tranzi freak show, hurling stones at banks. There still is a vast middle ground of good people in this country -- people who are reasonable and principled. But the radical fringes at the edge of their politics have the microphone.

The same is true of Muslims. People decry the silence of moderate Muslims, who quietly acquiesce to the radicals amongst them who are steering mosques into becoming anti-western strongholds. Moderate Muslims must speak out to save their religion. But it rarely happens. Their media-savvy radical fringe is setting the course for Islam like it is in conservative and liberal camps.

The media age rewards people for building cartoon effigies of their opposition and hurling stones at them for the television cameras. This indecent tableau is primarily what forms our opinions of society, turning opposition into enemy. No one loves a mic more than a totalitarian; and humanity is minting totalitarian idealism like there really is no tomorrow. In the process, liberals are blind to fascism; conservatives are blind to global cooperation; and Muslims are blind to the opportunities before them to transform their culture into a positive force that might address 21st century challenges.

Can level-headed, straight-shooting people find their voice, and take over the microphone? To paraphrase Joseph N. Welch:

"The radical fringes have done enough. Have they no sense of decency, at long last? Have they left no sense of decency?"

Pro-War Questions

2005-02-13T07:57:00.000-08:00

Conservatives are or should be aligned with politics that value certainty, caution and a rationale that is skeptical of sweeping social changes. Addressing political conservatives who embrace President Bush's War or Terror, a few questions:

* Wikipedia defines classical conservatism thusly:

Classical conservatism is skeptical of plans to re-model human society after an ideological model. While an individual classical conservative may favor left- or right-leaning government, the defining aspect of classical conservatism is a belief in the importance of continuity with tradition, and that political change should come about through legitimate governmental channels. Classical conservatives generally oppose disenfranchisement, gerrymandering, or other political chicanery; above all, they oppose revolution. So long as rule of law is upheld, and so long as change is effected gradually and constitutionally rather than revolution, the classical conservative is content.

The current administration views exporting revolutionary democracy as essential to preserving the democratic, secular world in an era of proliferating technologies that empower mass destruction by small revolutionary groups. Is classical conservatism dead? And is sovereignty dead?

* As the world has come to loudly question whether the War on Terror is itself an un-winnable fantasy, what would have been the most effective case for authorizing the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan?

* Can it be applied to terror groups like al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood and the panoply of unnamed demagogueries that comprise 'The Enemy'?

* If your answer involves renewed investment in a substantially deeper and broader U.S. military, address how as a 'whole-world' model our military will inevitably need to partner with other militaries. How will America's Armed Forces overcome current barriers to international cooperation, such as they are?

* Does the United States have an authority to assert that its view of democracy is absolute and inviolate?

* What can thwart hard power?

* Are you satisfied that the checks and balances of the American political system are sufficient to prevent our great power from falling into the wrong hands? How will you know if it has?

* Is there a relationship that can be struck with the United Nations that uses their long-honed resources of diplomatic management in such a way as to remain free from the taint of pervasive anti-Western politicism?

* How are good, strong sovereign borders maintained in an economic era that relies upon borderless global communication, travel, shipping and the exchange of ideas and virtual products over the Internet?

* If there was a political movement called 'Neoliberalism,' what would differentiate it from from Neoconservatism?

Anti-War Questions

2005-02-06T09:13:00.000-08:00

Liberals are or should be aligned with progressive politics and values. So in light of political progressives who eschew President Bush's war against Saddam, a few questions:

* What would have been the best, most legitimate way for Iraq to achieve democratic elections? Can it be applied to Burma, North Korea, Iran, and other dictatorships?

* If your answer to this question involves the UN, address the UN's corruption with the Oil-for-Food scandal, sex slaves in the Congo, and the inability to prevent the Rwandan genocide. If the top dogs of the UN are profiteers for the containment of dictators like Saddam, and their representatives trafficking sex in the countries they purport to peace-keep, how can the UN be a legitimate force for democracy?

* Are tyrants defeated with soft power, or merely contained until they fade away? Is contained fascism simply the unstated and accepted cost of soft power? If it is, should Hitler have been opposed?

* What can corrupt soft power?

* Are there any circumstances where hard power is warranted?

* If the UN is too corrupt and impotent, and the US is too sovereign to represent the world, what organization would you propose instead?

* Would a 'UN-D' -- a variation or branch of the United Nations, except the members are all democracies -- be a better legitimizing force for democracy than either the United States or the current United Nations?

* If you had to wear a uniform and be put in harm's way, but could choose the flag you fought for, which flag would it be: Your family crest; your town's flag; your state's flag; your country's flag; your religion's flag; the UN, NATO or EU flag; or an NGO flag. Why?

A House Divided

2005-02-03T08:57:00.000-08:00

There isn't much to add to the following report by Ali Akbar Dareini. It speaks for itself: Iran Says It Will Never Scrap Nuke Program:

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran will never scrap its nuclear program, and talks with Europeans are intended to protect the country's nuclear achievements, not negotiate an end to them, an Iranian official said Wednesday.

The remarks by Ali Agha Mohammadi, spokesman of Iran's powerful Supreme National Security Council, are the latest in a hardening of his country's stance amid ongoing talks with European negotiators. They also reflect Tehran's possible frustration at the lack of progress.

Europe is pressing Iran for concessions on its nuclear program, which the United States claims is aimed at producing atomic weapons. In exchange for nuclear guarantees, the Europeans are offering Iran technological and financial support and talks on a trade deal.

"We have the power to negotiate because we keep our (nuclear) achievements in our hands and we are negotiating to protect them," Mohammadi said Wednesday. "It's definite that we will protect our scientific achievements as a basic pillar, whether talks make progress or not."

...Aghazadeh, who also serves as head of Iran's atomic energy organization, suggested Iran was not happy with the progress of the talks, telling reporters: "We have to take the negotiations seriously and accelerate them."

European officials acknowledged the complexity of the negotiations, but said talks were going at a good pace and a diplomatic solution remained on track.

The talks have been carried out against a backdrop of U.S. warnings. In January, President Bush reaffirmed his support for a diplomatic settlement, but said he would not take any option off the table, including a possible military strike.

The biggest failure in the unraveling Iranian nuclear gambit is the West's inability to put transatlantic politics aside and face the Devil in the eye. In Iraq, Europe and America had a powerful opportunity to play good cop/bad cop -- with America providing the stick, and Europe the carrot. The combination of American hard power and European soft power could have been far more formidable force for democracy than Anglo-American power alone.

Instead, Europe became enmeshed in the corrupting influences of seeing America primarily as a competitor, even adversary. Imagine the Iranian problem in the context of an Iraq where the transition to Democracy was truly the fruit of a combined Western effort. Instead, that effort was handicapped, with half of the West catcalling Iraq's liberation from tyranny. The American military is mighty, but stretched. If America is 'going it alone,' then so are the Europeans. Iran knows this.

It took two parties for America to 'go it alone:' it took America to push ahead on its own; and it took Europe to not participate, remaining on the sidelines or working against the Americans. The obvious fracture within the West over world power is a leveraging point for the Mullahs. Our greatest weakness is Iran's greatest asset.

It is difficult to envisage a credible, viable plan to keep the Mullahs from getting their isotopes. And time is running short.