Here's a useful reminder that Christians don't have the monopoly on insipid, reactionary politics in this country.




http://www.jpfo.org/

How much is $500 at the End of Days?

Columnist Nicholas Kristoff is without question the weakest player on the Times' Op-Ed team. He regularly dishes up some of the most pedestrian - and often just wrong - observations on what a dwindling number consider the nation's most respectable opinion page. Today he offered yet another piece of idiocy when he bet two Biblical literalists $500 that the Apocalypse wouldn't unfold within the next ten years. Setting aside the issue of whether or not the bet could even be adjudicated fairly (after all, lots of messianic Christians see the prophecies of the Bible being fulfilled in current events), why does Kristoff think that if the End of Days does arrive within the decade, anyone is going to give a shit about his money? Now, perhaps if he had offered to nail himself to a crucifix .....

Tolerating intolerance

Another day, another step towards the social unraveling of the Netherlands. By far the world's most tolerant, socially liberal country, Holland has been rocked since the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh by Islamic radicals. Now the Dutch government is going underground from fear of Muslim extremists, with one prominent legislator moving from safe house to safe house while his tormenters freely walk the streets.

In France, young Muslims take out their rage on the Jews. In Holland, there are no Jews (30,000 compared to France's 600,000) and, more to the point, no cause for rage. The Dutch don't have the French arrogance that confines immigrants to the periphery of social life. Immigrants do better economically in Holland than in most European countries. Rather than banning headscarves, the Dutch commitment to multiculturalism has led to the public financing of more than 30 Muslim primary schools.

All of this creates fertile ground for right-wing reactionaries who have already taken to the streets. No doubt, there will be a push in Holland to respond the way other countries have, by retreating from some of the qualities that made them so uniquely open in the first place.

Anyone who has ridden the NYC Subway recently has probably seen the ad for CUNY's new journalism program featuring former Newsday editor Paul Moses imparting his wisdom to one Jego Armstrong, a not-so-fresh-faced aspirant. I can never help smirking when I read that Armstrong's goal is to 'edit his own newspaper', with the obvious implication that with a mentor like Moses and a degree from CUNY, you too can be a succeesful journalist. Clearly, it's the cynicism borne of my growing collection of rejections, and my even larger collection of pitches that didn't even merit a rejection, and my diplomas from universities that scoff at schools like CUNY, and no doubt tempered by unhealthy doses of arrogance and entitlement. But each time my eyes meet Armstrong's slightly glazed expression staring back at me from the wall of the subway car, I find myself eager to sit this naive young thing down, look him hard in the eye, and tell him, 'Son, you aint gonna be no newspaper editor.'

staying entertained in Ramallah

Apologies for my morbid fascination with all the shadiness surrounding the late Mr. Arafat ... rumors are circulating that Arafat died of AIDS, a tasty morsel if ever there was one. Far more likely (and less glamorous) is liver cirrhosis. So Arafat was either gay or an alcoholic. At least that explains what he was up to for the past three years.

The Times seems to think that the recent deal on Iran's nuclear program signals that Iranian hard-liners are susceptible to economic inducements. A far more likely explanation, in the same day's edition no less, is that Iran's leadership believes it can close a deal to placate the Europeans and Americans and continue to develop weapons in secret (Hullo? North Korea anyone?) Do they not even read their own coverage?

for the love of blogs

A piece in this weekend's Times drove home a few essential truths: a) there is life in the blogosphere, b) many New Yorkers are having far more sex than I, and c) this blog is insufficently confessional. Granted, I feel far safer rendering summary judgments on the politics du jour than posting scandalous tidbits of my adventures in New York, but I feel I owe all two of my readers something a touch more salacious than my pseudo-academic take on the state of the nation. I shall try and do better.

Bush the Modernist

As liberals clamor to find explanations for last week’s defeat by George W. Bush, many have consoled themselves with the thought that Bush is an anachronism that will ultimately run its course. The president and his evangelical base want to take us back to a pre-modern world in which basic declarations of faith and traditional values have replaced the hedonism and self-indulgence of the modern world.

There is enough truth in that view to make any liberal shudder. Articles published during the campaign season detailed the president’s strong religious faith and his myopic decision-making style. He was portrayed as a man disinterested in details, preferring to govern ‘from the gut’ rather than carefully considering the facts. Keeping faith with the principles of the Inquisition, Bush silenced dissent within his own cabinet, and relied to a frightening degree on a small inner circle valued more for their loyalty than the salience of their ideas. Bush preferred to evaluate his dealings with foreign leaders by looking into their souls rather than at their policies.

Such an approach to governance, we are told, amounts to the wholesale rejection of the Enlightenment, a reversion to a thinking based on superstition and faith instead of cold empiricism. But Bush’s victory represents not a rejection of modernity, but of postmodernity, and more plainly of the view, held to be self-evident by the liberal establishment, that no one has a monopoly on truth. Bush hasn’t rejected Enlightenment principles so much as he has reasserted them in a world that seems less susceptible to their power.

The Enlightenment was that period in Western thought that began in the 17^th century in Europe and brought the scientific and social developments that gave us the industrial age, the liberal democratic state, and the vast improvements in economic well-being, public health and the common welfare. The Enlightenment entailed a rejection of dogma and high-handed faith in favor of the scientific method and the powers of human reason. One of its principal features was the dialectic, the notion that a particular contention (thesis) engenders its opposite (antithesis), and the two then duel it out until a new truth emerges (synthesis). This in turn brings a new antithesis and the process continues in a linear evolution that we have come to think of as progress.

The notion of dialectic is inherently opposed to the possibility that there may be two right answers. In the political sphere, this was apparent in the conflict between democracy and monarchy, between capitalism and communism, between equality and privilege. In each case, we are taught that one side won because it was inherently superior. Liberal democracies triumphed over their communist and fascist enemies because they are just better. Now a new contender is on the horizon in the form of Islamic fundamentalism, and once again, the better ideology will emerge victorious.

Postmodernity rejects this dichotomization of the world (“You’re either with us or with the terrorists”). Truth resides in many domains and it would be catastrophic to insist on reducing complex thinking to a series of yes/no statements. The contemporary world bears countless examples of the limits of dialectic. America’s vigorous confronting of terrorists abroad eliminates potential enemies, but it also creates new ones. Exporting manufacturing jobs to low-wage countries reduces prices at home, but creates a band of unemployed workers whose pressure for welfare benefits offset increases in economic efficiency. Implementing universal healthcare is a clear moral imperative, but it is almost certain to reduce the overall quality of care.

John Kerry’s singular failure during the campaign was his inability to buttress his critique of the Bush administration with a compelling alternative. Kerry was frequently criticized for his vagueness, for his lack of an overarching vision to unify many disparate policies. Much ink has been spilled suggesting that the Democrats failed to tell the public a story to counteract the one that Rove and Limbaugh were peddling, of a peaceful nation and its gentle leader forced to abandon its mercantile habits in order to repel the barbarians at the gates.

To the electorate, Kerry appeared irresolute, or in Bush’s favored term, a ‘flip-flopper’. In contrast, Bush’s unwavering fidelity to first principles appeared firm and reassuring. In a world offering up so many complicated alternatives, a man who speaks simple words is irresistibly seductive.

But the world is not as Manichean as Bush would like it to be. And Kerry’s failure to tell an all-encompassing story, while a political liability, is also a practical impossibility. Ours is a world in which overarching visions are increasingly hard to articulate. Take the war on terrorism. We want to cut off funding to terrorist groups, but in the short term we need the help of the Saudis and the Pakistanis, both countries that continue to funnel money to questionable enterprises around the Arab world. We claim to believe the spread of democratic values is inherent to the fight against Islamic radicalism, and yet we are compelled to make deals with unsavory regimes to advance more immediate interests. We need to more fully inspect shipments at our ports, but to do so would be expensive and hinder the economic growth that is vital to supporting military operations abroad. The more the media seek to probe the failures of the administration, the more they appear like mouthpieces for the spinmeisters.

The examples are manifold, and come from virtually every field of human endeavor. No matter how clear, unambiguous and unimpeachable the principle, its implementation seems to entail consequences that are the very opposite of what was intended. The lesson is not that we need to abandon our principles, but only that their advance depends on making thousands of complicated decisions, on judging each case on its own merits, and above all, on placing pragmatism above ideology.

How the countless failures of Bush’s dialectical style failed to bring him down is the big story of this campaign. To all informed observers, Iraq is a mess and getting worse. Bush’s vaunted promise to bring democracy to the Middle East has made little headway. The president has presided over a net loss of jobs, a degradation of environmental protection legislation, and a huge transfer of the tax burden downwards. The way Bush’s handlers glossed over these failures while presenting their leader as a capable defender of America will be studied by aspiring propagandists for generations.

But at some point, one must believe, reality will reassert itself, and with a vengeance. If anti-Americanism is truly on the rise, it will eventually manifest itself. If Bush’s tax cuts are so disastrous for the economy, there will be a financial meltdown. If Bush’s policies on abortion and gay marriage are so reprehensible, there should be a fundamental unraveling of the tolerant social fabric from which America has traditionally drawn its strength.

The real fear is, of course, that further catastrophes on the scale of (or greater than) September 11^th will make the masses more hungry for simple solutions, not less. It is entirely understandable for people confronted by the prospect of a dangerous, uncertain future to long for a more certain, more secure past. Should any of the nightmare scenarios now being conjured up by the left come to pass, there is every reason to believe that the American heartland will, in the face of all contrary evidence, be even more supportive of a president of the Bush archetype.

When Yasir Arafat ultimately kicks the bucket, I'm not going to be shedding many tears. The commentariat (Friedman, Hoagland, New York Times) has already rushed to proclaim him a failure of historic proportions. But how bout that Suha Arafat? This is a woman who's made headlines exactly twice in the past 5 years: the first was for declaring, in the presence of Hillary Clinton, that Israelis were poisoning Palestinian air and water to cause cancer. The second time was for reports that French authorities were investigating several suspicious multi-million dollar transfers to her account; this, while she was reputedly living the high life in Paris thanks to her husband's skimming of international donations to suffering Palestinians. In what seems like a pathological need to redefine chutzpah, she is now apparently demanding an even more substantial payoff for turning off Arafat's life support (which his minions insist he is not even on). Suha allegedly controls the purse strings on billions of dollars that Arafat is believed to have stashed away over the years. This is a rather inauspicious beginning to a post-Arafat era many hoped would see the rise of responsible government in the territories, paving the way for the peace settlement Arafat methodically scuttled.

the greater of two evils

My pre-election nightmare scenario went something like this: Vote tallies in key states are neck-in-neck amidst reports of shady practices by republicans and their proxies; suits and counter-suits are filed across the country while disenfranchised minorities take to the streets in righteous fury. Ultimately, the case comes before the supreme court where the ailing chief justice Renquist, in a heroic feat, marshals his last reserves of energy to cast the decisive vote and break a party-line split, annointing Bush the winner. Renquist then pens the opinion for the majority before dropping dead on live television, leaving the rest of us to cope with the consequences.

Today's nightmare scenario goes something like this: the fundamentalists take over the country.

I made the stupid mistake of tuning into that big fat idiot on the radio yesterday and was treated to his ravings about how the democratic party is in disarray. Scuse me? The dems took on an incumbent president during wartime, won nearly half the vote, and bush squeaks by with a margin of 4 electoral votes. If this is disarray, watch out when they finally get their house in order.

Goodbye day one

Remember the good ol' days when elections brought clear resolutions by night's end? It's nearing midnight on the East Coast and, as promised, the election comes down to a few key states that broadcasters, chastened by the 2000 contest, insist are 'too close to call'. That doesn't absolve them of having to fill hour upon hour of live coverage with the most inane drivel. Larry King killed countless minutes with his insipid storytelling while that awful woman at FOX sounds like she swallowed a turtle. And was it just me or did anyone else spot someone cuddling with Jenna on the couch at the White House?

D-Day

Election Day is barely upon us and already reports of voting booth shenanigans are streaming across the Internet. That erstwhile defender of democracy Matt Drudge reports that 2,000 votes were found already planted on machines in the Philadelphia area before voting had even begun. In Ohio, the Supreme Court has ruled that the Republican Party can go ahead with plans to place 3,500 people inside polling locations to challenge the eligibility of votes. Apparently some rarely invoked state law permits such challengers to help prevent voter fraud not spotted by keen-eyed election workers. Isn't that a little like asking Norm Peterson to guard the liquor cabinet?

The possibility that, after all the legal wrangling, George Bush emerges victorious is only the second greatest danger facing the republic. The first is that the 2000 election debacle becomes more than a blip on the radar. With armies of lawyers on stand-by in battleground states, the litigious culture that the Administration blames for the the health care crisis and the flu shot shortage poses a far greater threat to the basic foundation of American democracy. Watch out if the will of the judges comes to replace the will of the people.

In the beginning ...

I've finally done it. After many months of dithering, I decided to bite the bullet and join the swelling ranks of frustrated writers venting their ire online. Or as it's better known, blogging. Tired of waiting for some faceless corporate behemoth to recognize the bottomless wisdom of my prose, I have decided to go straight to the people. Well people, here I am. In this space expect to find regular dispatches from the cultural frontier, penetrating analysis of our descent into political oblivion, chronicles of my daily flirtation with financial and creative ruin, and other heartwarming snippets, all packaged in bite-sized, easy to digest phrases and flecked with a biting wit and a penchant for the pithy. And since I probably know all two of you who are currently reading this, I should add that I love you mom and dad. Tell your friends.