The Price of Vigilance

Last night I had an interesting conversation with a man who recently moved from to New York to Chicago in search of brighter prospects. He talked about how he lost his job seven weeks after September 11 and as his options become fewer and the drumbeats for war get louder and louder, he finds himself stuck on the idea that he must get a job "before the bombs start falling."

One of things that he said that really struck me was that he hadn't wanted to care about this war but he was forced to care about it, not merely because the topic has swallowed up media discourse like a relentless anaconda, but because his sense of logic won't let him ignore the absurdity of what is being done and said. I went home with these words tumbling round my head to turn on the TV and watch that farce of a press conference.

I think about this because it has recently dawned on me that apathy is a luxury that no-one, pro-war, anti-war, conservative or liberal, employed or unemployed, can afford anymore. Contentment, completeness, pre-occupation with the self-absorbed routine of living a life, all the little selfish vices that inevitably proliferate during times of peace and prosperity no longer exist for too many of us. For those of us who are safely employed, with no loved ones in danger of being shipped overseas, who have never given much thought to foreign affairs one way or another, we find ourselves wondering why this matters all of a sudden, and what has changed to make us all so uncomfortably aware of what we think. Let's face it; it hurts to care. It hurts to have your eyes constantly open, and to be always listening, and waiting, and turning the same thoughts over in your head. If the lights are always on you never sleep.

But I don't think we can turn them off. Not for the obvious reasons, the threat of terror or whatnot. But because the connectedness of things, the economy, terrorism, the war, the state of the world in general, has become so direct, so obvious that even if you are able to shut out the world and go on with your life, pretty soon the reality of what is going on comes crashing in to destroy the remains of your illusions. When you refill your gas tank, or fly in a plane, or check out a library book, or take a phone survey, or watch TV it ways of seeping in and infecting you with an uncomfortable suspicion that, Fuck, this does matter after all.

As someone who usually decries apathy and selfishness, it feels odd to lament their loss. But those are the things that are as much apart of being human as are altruism, empathy, and compassion. They protect us from the anguish that all is not right, and comfortable, and prosperous, and that there is only so much we can do. They protect us from searing truths that, while necessary, can destroy our sense of self. They allow us darkness and silence and sleep. So I thinks it's okay for me to say being liberal, ant-war, and employed, that I miss not caring and ignoring and tuning out, because benign apathy is only possible when one is not angry or worried or afraid. And I miss being happy and confident and fearless.

If you missed the press conference, don't worry and rejoice! I did and it spoiled a rare moment of happiness and contentment that was born of talking to interesting and intelligent people. I came home, turned to CNN, and whoosh! Gooey nugat goodness all gone, replaced by sickly pre-vomit feeling.

Why do we do this to ourselves? We know anything resembling spontaneity doesn't go anywhere near Bush. We know that answering questions merely means monologuing for 45 minutes with pauses for breathe in which reporters are allowed to pour meaningless words. We know this and yet we tune in on the off-chance of an entertaining or scandalous anomaly.

What I hate more than the swaggering faux-Texas postering is the attempt at gravity and depth. For the most part, it looked as if someone made Bush take a cold shower. Still. he couldn't hide how hard up he is for war.

I really like essays that get to the heart of all of my knotty, anxious, hopefull, tearing-my-hair-out-frustrated, feelings.

I believe we have to judge every American decision in the context of every other American decision. The United States is a country that has progressed greatly since land-holding, slave-owning white males created it and excluded everybody else from enjoying their freedoms. Of course, almost every American citizen enjoys those original freedoms now, but only because of two centuries of social and legal activism. The United States should receive the Most Improved Country award! But I believe we have improved despite our limited, immoral, and inept politicians. I believe the greatness of our country is not measured by its willingness to go to war or by its ability to win wars, but by its painters, construction workers, poets, factory engineers, novelists, chefs, filmmakers, architects, musicians, social workers, actors, teachers, and other nonviolent dreamers. I believe our country is great not because we've often been fundamentalist and isolationist in our thinking, but because we've gradually and often reluctantly learned to celebrate the complex chemistry of immigration and assimilation. The average American citizen in 2003 is more educated, kinder, and more progressive than the average citizen of any other time in our country's history.

This also gets to the heart of why I am a liberal and why liberals don't--and can't--hate America. It is living here that enables us to see our both our failures and our victories and the endless possibility buried in both.

More on nerdiness .

Oh it's on now.

It's time for Bernard Goldberg and Ann Coulter to defend their books, Bias and Slander, which supposedly prove an old saw-- that liberals dominate the news media...Alterman says the charges leveled by Goldberg and Coulter are "so extreme that, well, it's amazing neither one thought to accuse 'liberals' of using the blood of conservatives' children for extra flavor in their soy-milk decaf lattes."
    Even the conservative Boston Herald admits Alterman's "extensive documentation and persuasive logic" demonstrate that "unabashed conservatives dominate the media."
    So TomPaine.com has a challenge: We're inviting the three authors to debate at the National Press Club, with a neutral moderator and a live audience. We’ll invite C-SPAN.
    Alterman has accepted. Will Coulter and Goldberg? Or will they hide behind their publicists and speaking fees?

Hee hee hee. Excellent.

How deeply in denial is Bush?

It's a question worth lingering on for a while it seems to come up over and over again. Let's take a look at this snippet of what’s going on in Dubya's head.

But he insisted that he has paid attention to the protesters.

"Of course, I care what they believe. And I've listened carefully. I've thought long and hard about what needs to be done," he said. "And obviously some people in Northern California do not see there's a true risk to the United States posed by Saddam Hussein. And we just have a difference of opinion."

Asked about protests overseas, the president initially downplayed the extent of the problems he has encountered with normally friendly nations.

"There are two nations in Europe -- France and Germany -- who do not see Saddam Hussein as a direct threat. And we just have a difference of opinion. But there are a lot of other nations who do,"he said.

Now, giving him the benefit of the doubt, downplaying opposition is something presidents do. Yes, Mister Nosy Reporter Liberal Media Scum, there is opposition out there and the fact that it is as big as it is should have me worried. In fact,,I should be mucking up my pretty executive boxer shorts right now, but you see, I can't admit that because to admit fear is to admit defeat. And I am the leader of the free world. Therefore I never admit defeat.

But look at that Northern California remark. Now, if Bush really had paid attention to the protesters I'm not sure he would have been so publicly dismissive. I say publicly because privately he probably does think that the protesters are just a bunch of Bay Area liberals en masse, but publicly he would want to display a bit more sensitivity and awareness. But this is Bush we're talking about, the same man who can look the President of Brazil in the eye--in the presence of Condoleeza Rice--and ask with a straight face,"Do you have blacks here too?" The man has all the sensitivity of an impotent porcupine. Two theories thus emerge:

1) He knows exactly how large and varied the protests were and simply doesn't care. Remember this is also the same man who stole the presidency with the minority popular vote and still had the coke-sniffing, pretzel-choking gall to say, "I know what the American people want." Therefore the millions around the world might as well be a biased few located somewhere between Berkeley and the Castro.

2) He really doesn't know. This is a man who never admits to failure and makes no apologies for his ignorance in matters of state. All his life he’s been sheltered and shuffled from one comfy position to another. Whatever mistakes he made are rarely alluded to by our SCLM. Protesters are kept away from him as though they the might contaminate them with bacterium of actual compassion and understanding.

My guess? A combination of the two. He doesn't really know, and doesn't care about what he doesn't know. Why bother with the real world when in the world of your making there is no public dissent, the war is making pretty colors on FOX News, the oil is pouring into the SUV tanks of the under-appreciated ric,, and reelection is only a few thousand disenfranchised voters away? Bush doesn't need reality. He has the power to make his own. Unfortunately, he makes it our own too.

It's amazing what four days away from the computer screen can do for your eyes and head. In fact I think my recent change of title was due to the fact that my hours staring at a computer screen had resulted in nearly unrelenting headaches and eye strain. Meanwhile I am horribly behind on current events. I make no apologies or excuses as there were pressing personal matters that preempted blogging. But I'm back now. Not that you missed me with Atrios always at the ready. Also, check out the review of Eric's book over at Salon.

Ari's Nerd Syndrome

Does Ari Fleischer remind anyone else of a snarky hall monitor revenging himself against the world for a childhood full of atomic wedgies, both real and imagined? I call people like him Unreconciled Nerds. Tucker Carlson, Adam Corolla, and David Horowitz belong to the club too.

The way I see it there are two types of former nerds; those who never got over being shunned by the cool kids and live in pertual haze of I'll-show-them rage, and those who shrugged it off and carved out their own safe places in the world thereby achieving coolness through the total rejection of the standards of others; Unreconciled Nerds and Reconciled Nerds.

Unreconciled Nerds (URNs) tend to be severely insecure which they hide with pomposity. They ping-pong between superiority and inferiority complexes which makes them by turns uptight, angry, and paranoid. All nerds suffer when they are young, so the URNs are to be pitied to a certain extent. Unfortunately, they tend to have delusions of persecution which makes them intolerable.

The good news is you will rarely find a URN in a position of real leadership. The one case of that happening was Nixon. Nixon was your classic URN. He longed for the kind of adoration enjoyed by Kennedy but was too shifty and paranoid to believe he deserved it (he was also evil but why belabor that point?) The results were of course disastrous. Normally you will find them in mid-to-upper management positions with way more leverage than they deserve. They get to issue orders, block requests, and pretty much drive people crazy with their self-important directives. But they also have to answer to someone much more powerful. This is the key to the tortured personality of the URN.

URNs, because they so long for acceptance, are never more happy than when they are carrying out the wishes of someone who matches their ideal of "cool". "Cool" usually matches, point for point, the type of person who made their lives miserable in middle school or high school. The classic URN gets a bitter satisfaction out of serving this person with unwavering loyalty. They don't necessarily like or respect this person. Most likely they hate him/her. What they can't live with out is the idea they, the reviled nerd, are indispensible to the very people that wouldn't let them sit at the cool table at lunch.

Reconciled Nerds (RNs) are a trickier bunch to pin down, though they share a common history with their URN counterparts i.e. persecution for being different at a young age. RNs however got through high school secure in the knowledge that high school is fleeting and the real fun starts at college. College is where they blossom and, in a sense, never leave. They learn not to yearn for the high school definition of coolness once they realize the stifling nature of conforming. Instead, they loosen up and enjoy their Tolkien, poetry, avante garde theater, Gilbert and Sullivan, indie rock, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with other RNs. Unlike URNs who tend to be loners, RNs travel in packs. Both URNs and RNs yearn for acceptance, but RNs are more successful in finding it and accepting others (can you guess where I stand?).

Inevitably, one tends to find more URNs in conservative circles and more RNs in liberal ones. This is because in yearning for conformity, the URN is a firm believer in heirarchy, while by rejecting conformity, the RN cannot but see how the heirarchy is damaging. It is for this reason that, despite sharing a common history, URN's and RN's can never get along.

Ari Fleischer versus the Press, is a classic case of URN versus RNs. The press, despite the conservative slant of late, is made up of relatively liberal-minded journalists. Journalism is a profession that attracts many RNs. Every time Ari spins, brushes off, or blocks a question he's playing out the battle between the URN, who's shaped up and living the dream, and the RN who refuses to play ball. Today's break down might be interpreted as a climax. When the press laughed at Ari, for a brief moment they stripped away the glory of being a White House Spokesman and reverted him back to being a hall monitor. And thus the whole concept of acceptance became a lie.

There is hope for Ari. There are cases of URNs reaching a belated reconciliation with who they are. David Brock is a classic case of an URN finding is RNness after a lot of soul searching. So perhaps we happy RNs are wrong in despising him. We should do an intervention, tell him that we understand him, and that it's time to stop hiding from himself and the rest of the world. There is no shame in nerdiness. There is only shame when you are ashamed.

Have you made your phone calls yet?

I still don't have a lot of hope that anyone will actually listen to us but they can't be allowed to think that we'll just let them go to war.

Misogyny Alert Code Orange via Jeanne.

Women seeking asylum in the United States based on gender-related violence face a new threat today – from the Justice Department.

Attorney General John Ashcroft is reportedly planning to reverse current policy on the availability of asylum for victims of domestic violence and issue new regulations which could severely limit the ability of women fleeing many forms of gender-based human rights abuses – including sex trafficking, sexual slavery, honor killing and domestic violence - from seeking asylum in the United States.

Are You An Introvert?

I'm not sure there is an easy answer to this question, thought this is a good article if it does fall short in my opinion. I was once classified as an introvert/extrovert, whatever the hell that means. I think it is a good question for bloggers in particular. The idea of writing a public diary is something of a contradiction in terms like introvert/extrovert.

Interesting discussion vis-a-vis The Bell Curve over at Atrios. I personally don't like participating in discussions like this, because I think part of the problem with the "Liberal versus Conservative" phenomenon is that when they inject subjects like the intellectual superiority of one race over the other into public conversation, they really aren't interested in winning the argument. They just want to make it part of the debate. When we retaliate we play into their hands. That was the horrifying genius of the book.

From What Liberal Media?

The book entered the public discourse, as one writer commented, "like a noseful of cocaine." It spent fifteen weeks on the New York Times bestseller list...Magazines published special issues: talk shows offered up two-part editions, and four seperate collections of essays were published , devoted entirely to arguments about the book. As Chester Finn asked in January 1995, "Is there anyone left with access to a microphobne, television camera, or printing presswho has not unburdened himself of an opinion of The Bell Curve?"

It never mattered that the book's findings were later totally discredited. The damage had been done. I'm not sure how we can avoid getting sucked into the arguments but I am sure that the louder the invective the more they win.

FYI, I'm halfway through Eric Alterman's book What Liberal Media? So far so good. I wasn't going to buy it since I didn't imagine that there was anything new he could really tell me. But it's a great read; informative and conversational like a really good lecture by a really laid-back professor.

This is one of those potentially devastating should-be-a-front page stories disguised as an op-ed piece. It’s never failed to amaze me that, election after election, the military overwhelming supports the Republicans when they continue to screw them like this.

Presidents eager for budget savings have frequently proposed cuts in Impact Aid. Congress has almost always resisted. What makes Mr. Bush's proposal so potentially devastating is that it comes when he is marshaling the nation for war, when the federal government is running up record budget deficits, when most states are struggling with huge budget deficits of their own, when school districts across the country are already suffering financially, and when both houses of Congress are controlled by the president's party.

Who could imagine that in a wartime atmosphere we would consider leaving the children of the military behind?

Honestly? A lot of us. Impact Aid is one of those pesky military programs that doesn’t line the pockets of defense contractors.

Don't panic.

St. Paul (Hewson, that is)

Say what you will about celebrities getting involved with politics, and world issues. Bono has devoted most of his career to human rights and social justice.

Bono and the band have often used their fame to draw attention to humanitarian causes around the world. In the band's early days, Bono spoke during concerts against the violence in Northern Ireland. He visited Ethiopia during the famine crisis in the 1980s. U2 drew attention to the atrocities in the Balkans by broadcasting interviews from Sarajevo during the ZooTV concert tour. More recently, Bono has been active in the Jubilee 2000 movement, which hopes to erase the debt of third-world countries.

U2 fans have known this for years. In fact there’s almost a sense that being a real U2 fan goes hand-and-hand with being a compassionate world citizen. How many celebrities have really put themselves—not to mention their money—out there for something as immense as Third World Debt or the AIDS epidemic? When Bono does a reality TV show it’s not “Cribs”. It’s visiting Africa.

Appears that he’s not the favorite.

Lundestad said fears of war in Iraq had apparently not distracted from peace efforts elsewhere in the world. "The range of nominees is very wide," he said.


Stein Toennesson, the director of the Peace Research Institute, Oslo, said chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix and Mohamed El Baradei, the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, will be favourites if they help avert war in Iraq.


"If they succeed in getting Iraq to disarm sufficiently to prevent the United States and Britain from going to war, then they deserve it," he told Reuters.

Not bloody likely.

Piety Hypocrisy Watch

During a visit to Chicago last week, Bishop Frank Griswold, spiritual leader of the Episcopal Church in the United States, was supposed to be talking
about the future of his faith tradition in an increasingly secular world.
But his mind was elsewhere.

"We are in a state of corporate desolation," Griswold told the Sun-Times in
an interview Friday at an Oak Brook hotel where he was attending an
Episcopal conference called "Will Our Faith Have Children?"

"The only sense of community we have now is shared fear or anxiety,"
Griswold said. "Instead of this experience of 9/11 making us, as it were, in
a new way citizens of the world community bound together in a common sense
of vulnerability, our reaction has been one of bald assertion of our
strength and our power. But I think underneath all of that, people still, no
matter how firmly the president of the United States speaks, are living with
a level of anxiety, a sense of insecurity, which is, of course, bolstered
now by the economic situation we're living with, the specter of war, and no
sense of what the consequences of a military invasion of Iraq might be.

The World’s Largest Focus Group

It’s a common mistake among arrogant power-mad world leaders to “mis-underestimate” the influence of public opinion on the course of history. Only Bush could shrug off the crowds of this past weekend, and compare them to “ a focus group.” Only Bush could say that he “respectfully disagrees” with the anti-war stance of so many abroad and at home, as though his opinion was merely an opinion, and not actually bound up in policy.

The “focus group” remark is even more laughable when one considers last week’s orange alert duct tape fiasco. Poor Bush. No wonder he distrusts focus groups.

Still, all kidding aside, it is indeed alarming that Bush has no concept of what it takes for people get mad, get organized, and get out there. This isn’t exactly news. The man was probably the only president in history whose inauguration attracted more protestors than attendees. My guess is that Bush’s thought process has always involved a good deal of denial. This is why, in spite of blogging myself hoarse against the war, I’m more or less sure that nothing short of divine intervention will change his mind.

Ari’s words on the subject of the protests are even more baffling.

Presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer began his daily briefing by reading newspaper clips about demonstrations against the staging of missiles in Germany in the early 1980s, and said, " "This is not the first time there have been mass protests and in a previous instance America stood on principle ... and as a result the Berlin Wall came down.”

Say what? The Berlin Wall came down because we deployed missiles? Are we sure about that? I always thought that the Berlin Wall fell because the governments collapsed and the people rose up in protest. Am I wrong? Was not the rise of democracy in Eastern Europe a triumph of the will of the people over military threat? Isn’t that why we protest now?

WARNING: Scary use of Photoshop. Sensitive readers be advised

The Left gets its act together.

The plan faces several business and content challenges, from finding a network of radio stations to buy the program to overcoming the poor track record of liberal radio shows. But it is the most ambitious undertaking yet to come from liberal Democrats who believe they are overshadowed in the political propaganda wars by conservative radio and television personalities.

The concern has been around for years: Hillary Rodham Clinton first mentioned a "vast, right-wing conspiracy" in 1998. But the sentiment has taken on new urgency with the rise to the top of the cable news ratings of the Fox News Channel, considered by many to have a conservative slant, and the Republicans' gaining control of the Senate in November. Such events have spurred many wealthy Democrats to explore investments in possible, liberal-skewing media ventures. New campaign finance rules that restrict giving opportunities also gave them further incentive.