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Sunday, December 6, 2015
Weekend Roundup
Very busy with other stuff today, so these are abbreviated -- mostly
links to pieces I happened to have left open, and scattered comments
when I had something quick to say.
Eoin Higgins: The double standard for white and Muslim shooters:
I haven't been paying a lot of attention to the week's mass shootings,
but the San Bernadino case took a weird turn when it was discovered
that the two shooters were Muslim.
Rhania Khalek: US cops trained to use lethal Israeli tactics:
"Officers from 15 US police agencies recently traveled to the Middle
East for lessons from their Israeli counterparts." You may recall how
on 9/11 Shimon Peres and Benjamin Netanyahu were crowing about how
Israel could help the US with its newfound terrorism problem. Hell,
I'm old enough to remember when David Ben Gurion offered to help
Charles DeGaulle with its little problem in Algeria. DeGaulle
rejected that offer, fearing that Ben Gurion wanted to turn France
into another Israel. On the other hand, the neocons who dominated
the Bush administration (and who still exercise some strange magic
over Obama) envy Israel, which is one reason they organize these
junkets for American cops to learn how to use "advanced Israeli
technology" like "skunk spray" and rubber bullets. However, this
is happening at a time when Israel's own law enforcement groups
have gone on a rampage of summary executions, where they've killed
more than 100 Palestinians since October 1. Also happening at a
time when police killings of (mostly black) Americans are subject
to ever more scrutiny and outrage.
Ed Kilgore: Extremist Republican Rhetoric and the Planned Parenthood
Attack: Given the current state of rhetoric on abortion even by
such supposedly respectable as Republican presidential candidates,
it's not surprising when anti-abortion violence occurs -- if anything
the surprise is that it's as rare as it is (although living in Wichita,
where much violence and one of the most notorious murders occurred, it
pains me to write that line).
Conservative opinion-leaders should, however, be held accountable for
two persistent strains of extremist rhetoric that provide a theoretical
basis for violence against abortion providers specifically and enemies
of "traditional values" generally.
The first is the comparison of legalized abortion to the great
injustices of world history, including slavery and the Holocaust. The
first analogy helps anti-choicers think of themselves as champions of
a new civil-rights movement while facilitating a characterization of
Roe v. Wade as a temporary and disreputable constitutional precedent
like Dred Scott. The second follows from the right-to-life movement's
logic of regarding abortion as homicide and treats the millions of
legal abortions that have been performed in the U.S. since 1973 as
analogous to the Nazi extermination of Jews and other "undesirables."
[ . . . ]
And virtually every Republican presidential candidate has supported
the mendacious campaign to accuse Planned Parenthood of "barbaric"
practices involving illegal late-term abortions and "baby part sales."
But there's a second element of contemporary extremist rhetoric from
conservatives that brings them much closer to incitement of violence:
the claim that the Second Amendment encompasses a right to revolution
against "tyrannical" government.
Kilgore quotes from Messrs. Carson, Cruz, Huckabee, and Rubio, who
are merely the most egregious demagogues.
Martin Longman: What's in a Lie?:
In The New Republic, Jeet Heer says that it is much less accurate
to call Donald Trump a "liar" than it is to simply refer to him as "a
bullshit artist." [ . . . ]
A liar is fully aware of what is true and what is not true. They know
whether or not they paid the electricity bill, for example, so when they
tell you that they have no idea why the power is out, that's a lie.
A bullshitter, by contrast, doesn't even care what is true. They're
not so much lying to deceive as to create an impression. Maybe they want
you to be afraid. Maybe they want you to think that they are smarter or
more well-informed than they really are.
It's a useful distinction to make, I think, although I also think
people who engage in a lot of bullshit probably lie their heads off,
too. [ . . . ]
That's a lot of academic language that basically says that stupid
and gullible people are easy to fool. I think we knew that.
But the real key is that, although there is never any shortage of
credulous people, they need to be lied to first before they are led
astray. If you don't exploit their cognitive weaknesses and you lead
them toward the truth, they aren't so misinformed. By constantly
bullshitting them, you're making them less informed and probably
more cynical, too.
Few books have been more influential on my thinking than one I
read when it came out in 1969, Charles Weingarten and Neil Postman:
Teaching as a Subversive Activity. The main argument there
was that the main goal of teaching should be to equip students
with a finely-tuned "bullshit detector," so they would learn to
recognize whenever they were being conned with bullshit. It was
clear to me then that the actual schools I had attended were much
more preoccupied with spreading bullshit than with subverting it,
but then authorities had long viewed schools as factories for
turning out loyal citizen-followers. Didn't really work with me --
some bullshit was much too obvious to miss.
Tierney Sneed: At Jewish Summit, Trump Says He's a Good Negotiator
Like 'You Folks':
Speaking at the Republican Jewish Coalition 2016 candidate forum, GOP
frontrunner Donald Trump repeatedly returned to a riff about being a
good negotiator like "you folks." He also said the attendees wouldn't
support him because "I don't want your money."
Early in his remarks, he bragged about how little money he spent on
his campaign thus far, adding, "I think you, as business people, will
feel good about this and respect it."
I suppose you could argue that these old-fashioned Jewish caricatures
weren't anti-semitic because he was so obviously enthralled with those
traits -- maybe the awkwardness was just that he wasn't used to buttering
up an audience so obscenely? And rest assured that the ADL won't be
bothered because he reminded them that "you know I am the best thing
that could ever happen to Israel." Still, I find it all pretty
creepy. For another view, here's
Philip Weiss.
Gary Younge: Bombing Hasn't Worked. Bombing Won't Work. And Yet,
We Will Bomb: I should link to something like this every week.
This one is specifically addressed to the UK, recently deliberating
on whether to join the bombing party in Syria, perhaps out of
nostalgia for the old Triple Entente -- their alliance with France
and Russia which trapped them in the Great War of 1914, although
this time Germany will also be on their side, and they won't have
to wait for the United States to pick up the slack. Wouldn't you
think that someone would have noticed this reunion of the world's
faded imperialist powers, resolved as they are to once again attack
(or as they might prefer to put it, "rescue") an impoverished but
less than properly subservient third world country -- even to have
been a bit embarrassed by the fact? One can't help but be reminded
that Britain and France have still not come to grips with the much
deserved collapse of their worldwide empires. Actually, Younge
gets some of this:
Which brings us neatly to the second point: The West's desire to intervene
in the name of civilization and Enlightenment values betrays a stunning
lack of self-awareness. The military and philosophical force with which
it makes its case for moral superiority, and then contradicts it, is
staggering.
Unfortunately, his first point was not just that bombing never works --
he doesn't recall the Blitz, which mainly consolidated British public
opinion against the Nazis in a way that concern for the Poles never
could have -- but he questioned their seriousness, taunting them to
send ground troops instead. The problem there is that while sufficient
ground troops might be able to advance against ISIS, we know from the
failures of the French and British colonial projects in the Middle
East (and, well, everywhere) as well as the more recent US occupation
of Iraq that a renewed ground invasion will also fail. (If you think
Russia might make the difference, cf. Afghanistan.) Younge admits
that:
ISIS isn't limited to a handful of states in the Middle East, places
like Syria, Iraq, and Libya; instead, it's a multinational phenomenon.
Many of those who terrorized Paris came from Belgium and France. The
West can't bomb everywhere. And wherever it does bomb, it kills and
injures large numbers of civilians. These civilian casualties, in
their turn, stoke resentment and outrage, not least in the Muslim
communities from which jihadis draw their recruits. Since 9/11, the
West's military interventions have created far more terrorists than
they have killed, and have generally made things worse, not better.
Yet Younge adds this snark: "If ISIS represents a true threat
against humanity, as is claimed, then we should do the heavy lifting
of mobilizing humanity to fight it." I suppose he would admit that
mobilizing "the willing" (as Bush did against Iraq) doesn't quite
add up to "humanity," but why taunt people to do the impossible if
they're just going to cheap out and do the expedient anyway? All the
"humanity" that the combined forces of ISIS and the US have managed
to mobilize is a handful of sad European states nostalgic for the
golden days when they thought they ruled the world.
OK, I should find better links to make this point each week.
Also, a few links for further study (even more briefly noted):
Barbara Ehrenreich: Dead, White and Blue: "The Great Die-Off of
America's Blue Collar Whites." This story has been kicking around
for a while, and Ehrenreich covers the basics. But to me the story
has less to do with what's killing people younger than how it upsets
the customary expectations that science and the ever-more-expensive
health care industry will make everyone live longer. It turns out
that how those benefits are distributed matters, and is subject to
politics as well as economics. It also may mean that such progress
itself is tainted: that businesses searching for more profits aren't
necessarily searching for more effective health care. And by the
way, singling out whites hides (or reveals) some other truths:
notably that the things that are killing more whites now are things
that have been depressing the life expectancy of blacks for many
years. One way to put that is that we're leveling down, not up.
Paul Krugman: Challenging the Oligarchy: Review of Robert B Reich's
new book, Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few (Knopf).
He spends a lot of time talking about Reich's 1991 book The Work of
Nations, which I read at the time (well, a couple years later, in
paperback), thought insane (his thesis that we didn't need to care
about declining low-skill jobs because everyone was going to move
upscale as they learned the arts of symbol manipulation), but found
one brilliant (and scary) insight (the withdrawal of the rich from
mainstream society and into their own gated communities and clubs --
not that the real rich hadn't done that forever). Krugman takes great
pains to demolish the insane part before moving on to the new book
and the messier question of what to do about inequality.
Krugman also has a couple of brief notes about the abuse of
history:
The Farce Is Strong in This One, and
Avars, Arabs, and History. Krugman various dubious lines about the
fall of the Roman Empire and a couple books he's read on the expansion of
Arab influence after 700. I can recommend Timothy Parsons' The Rule of
Empires, which dovetails nicely with what Krugman has learned -- the
first two cases are the Romans in Britain and the Arabs in Spain, both
how they came and why they failed. Parsons piles on eight other case
studies and a postscript about the US in Iraq, showing how empires
always fail.
Michael Massing: Reimagining Journalism: The Story of the One Percent:
The first of two parts on the rich and how they are covered (or not) by
an often subservient press.
Rick Perlstein: The Secret to Trump's Ratings. Much here, but let me
single out this story about bullshit detection (some got it, most don't):
I've covered three Republican conventions. Watching The Apprentice
was by far the hardest reporting job I've ever endured. If you watched it,
you'd probably agree. But political junkies aren't the type of people who
watched it. Let me tell you a story. Once, when I was in my early 20s, my
parents dragged my entire family to a performance of Donny Osmond in
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. It was awful -- and
again, if you watched it, you'd probably agree. When the curtain fell,
every last person in the audience leaped to their feet in a standing
ovation, except me and my three siblings. We sophisticates, we looked
at each other, incredulous, glued to our seats.
Andrea Thompson/Brian Kahn: What Passing a Key CO2 Mark Means to Climate
Scientists: The mark, as measured at the top of Mauna Kea in Hawaii,
is 400 parts per million. As I recall, Bill McKibben named his organization
350 because that was the highest limit he felt the world could stand. I
think it's safe to say that global warming is no longer a treat. This is
one of those numbers we've been warned about for decades. It's here now,
a fact.
Ask a question, or send a comment.
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