“klaatu” commented on my post below about doom & gloom. As his comment was a thoughtful representation of a position with which I respectfully disagree, it’s worth further comment. This isn’t a ‘Fisking,’ as I don’t think that his points are self-evidently stupid; but I think there’s a critical place where his point of view is fundamentally flawed.
Klaatu’s point of view was as follows:
Doomster and proud of it.
From a fellow “doomster,” the columnist Pete Hamill:
“Over the past six months, in conversations with old friends or with strangers, I keep picking up a new kind of bleakness.
‘I can’t even watch the TV news anymore,’ one friend said. ‘Three dead in Gaza gets one minute, followed by another American shot in Iraq, a minute and a half – and then they cut to Scott Peterson and I turn the thing off. Even in 1968, in the worst of everything that year, there was some hope. Not now. It’s gone, and I don’t think it’s coming back.’
The bleakness index contains many items: the mediocrity and cynicism of politicians in both parties; the merging of religion with politics, from Peshawar to the Potomac; the growing power of true believers in our government; the wretched runup to the Iraq war, the war itself and the bloody aftermath. We’ve known since 9/11 there are lunatics out there, some so crazed with religious visions that they’d try to knock down the Brooklyn Bridge, one of the world’s glories. Reason has fled. Vandals haunt our nights.
Welcome to the real world, Pete. The forces that exploded into your attention on 9/11 have been building for decades, and other people – pretty much anyone who read the local news in places like Great Britain, India, Sri Lanka, or Spain – not to mention the entirety of the Middle East and Africa – has been living with them at least since the 60’s.
Meanwhile, the American government says it feels free to launch preventive wars, the way the Japanese did at Pearl Harbor. Vice President Cheney’s old firm, Halliburton, is building a prison camp in Guantánamo, complete with execution chamber. And the bloody quarrel between Israelis and Palestinians goes on and on.
It’s hard to find consolation, for popular culture is also a wreck. Most prime-time TV is insulting to human intelligence. Movies are comic books. Popular music is calculated junk. Exuberance is gone, along with joy or even the artistic defiance of the ’60s.
In public life, facts don’t seem to matter much. Through sustained propaganda and ingenious presidential photo ops, illusion dominates the political debate. In Iraq, nobody’s found weapons of mass destruction or a factual link to Al Qaeda. Yet the polls show that as many as 65% of Americans are in favor of their own deception.”
The full column is here.
I think that if you’re cheerful these days, you’re either stupid, insane, a chaos-and-war- lover, a “true believer” seeing the apocalypse coming or so because of medication.
Well, I’m certainly bummed that Pete and klaatu are so depressed about things. Somehow my core response is to envision Woody Allen, standing next to the pale woman in the art museum, listening to her bleak description of the painting they are both examining, finally works up the nerve to ask if she has any plans for Saturday night.
“I’m killing myself,” she replies.
“How about Friday night?” Woody asks.
Folks, the world isn’t a sitcom in which a hapless but inherently sage parent can resolve matters in twenty-two minutes or an action-adventure movie, where the hero defuses the bomb and winds up two hours later on a beach in Bali with the scantily-clad secret double agent/temptress.
We humans are a problem-solving species. But most people know that it is inevitably part of the solution to any problem that it creates new problems. Before the automobile, the streets of New York City were awash in horse dung. After the invention of antibiotics, the population began to rise. We step down the stream from rock to rock, each step risky itself, and each destination rock slippery and itself no safe harbor.
In the specific case, we’re riding in a canoe down a stream; up until now, we didn’t realize that there were rapids. But the rapids have always been there and now it’s our turn to have to navigate them.
It is a challenge, and it will be risky. There’s no guarantee that there won’t be rapids below these. It certainly is the case that choices we made over the last years put us here. But it’s also true that, had we made different choices, we might have faced other, more dangerous waters.
But I’m not interested in being led by people who look upstream and talk about how much worse things will be in the future, and how we should have taken that branch twenty years ago. The future we face is coming regardless of our desires.
The future belongs to those who would paddle into the rapids, committed to seeing the other side. Too often, the left side of the boat – the side that in my lifetime used to propel the boat forward, embracing the future – is checking its oars.
It would matter less if it was just a matter of arguing about steering the boat, if the issue was between two different paths into the future.
But somehow klaatu and Pete Hamill have come to stand at the depressed, helpless center of things that would as soon capsize now and avoid all the future pain they see coming. And the inarticulate rebels – the anti-Modern, anti-Western rage that sits at the heart of what I call “Bad Philosophy” doesn’t only put them at risk, but all of us.
Societies proceed on faith. It is the accumulation of faith – in society, in laws, in our fellows – that compels civilized behavior, and allows the complexity that delivers the computers and electricity that allow you to read this today. That faith depends in large part on our belief in the future.
I’ve got a very different faith than Trent does. But I believe in the future, and I’m happy to sit here, helping paddle the boat down toward the sound of the oncoming rapids.
I don’t do it for fun, this isn’t some kind of recreation to me. I do it so that my sons can live on the other side of the rapids, and in turn face rapids of their own.
Anyone who believes they can live in another way – who expects their life to be led entirely in calm waters – is spending entirely too much time in front of the TV.
What A.L. said. I can’t add anything to this.
The reason Pete Hamill and klaatu feel so depressed is that they’ve forsworn all necessary means to do what has to be done to navigate these rough waters successfully. Unfortunately neither personal nor societal moral purity (the Social Justice mirage) will suffice to prevent us crashing upon the rocks.
To wage war is unthinkable, even when barbarians are at the gate, because we would have to compromise our moral superiority to win. And really, without moral superiority, what else matters? Besides, fighting only makes people more mad at you. Nirvana can only be attained if no one is made at you–at least no one on the side that’s trying to kill you.
Faith in democracy has been shattered because our deities, The People (in whose blessed name we would cast out demons), have proven to be, well, just too stupid to vote the way our organs of civilizational advancement (schools, NGOs, public broadcasting, social welfare bureaucracies) all suggest they should. And the things our fickle deities waste their disposable time and money on! How discouraging.
So we spend all our energy shouting at those benighted fools in our own boat for occasionally whacking our elbows and ears with their paddles as they frantically try to steer a tortuous course to keep our whole boat from overturning. So we duck down and shake our heads in despair at the wild actions of our mates inside the boat, while imagining that the river would be flowing serenely were it not for our furious paddles.
It’s not the 9-11 attacks; few Americans would ever think that al-Qaeda could bring us doom: it’s the reaction to 9-11, or rather the use of 9-11.
Not to speak for Pete Hamill, who’s been through a few storms in his life himself, or for Andy Rooney, who made that commentary on 60 Minutes about these times being the grimmest he had lived through, including WWII, or for Norman Mailer, but there is a common thread in all these doomsters: a disappointment in the recent conduct of the USA.
The disappointment takes different forms:
not quite a loss of faith, but a common realization that maybe the old USA of freedom, justice and a rough equality is melting away.
For me, it’s the concentration of economic and media power, the vapidity of broadcast journalism, Michael Savage and his idiotic rants.
The huge deficits we’re racking up because of these tax cuts.
A coarseness and lack of compassion in public discourse.
“Total Information Awareness” being publicized, then renamed “Terrorist Information Awareness”, as an example of what’s being planned for us.
The casual destruction of old alliances through heedless confrontationalism.
Really having to wonder whether we’re going to attack Syria, Iran or North Korea next. And how that will be sold to us.
The bait and switch we did on Afghanistan, not following through there.
Trying to do Iraq “on the cheap” as Tom Friedman said, while soldiers die. See tax cuts, above.
Knowing that every day, in every way, the administration is trying to screw over the working man in favor of the corporation.
klaatu – I agree with most of your recital. But the forces behind those have also been brewing for some time.
And yes, these aren’t fun times.
But I intend to do something about it.
In my case, it’s by being a small part of a process whereby the left in this country will reinvent itself and be able to take stands on the issues you mention.
As noted, it’s a matter of perspective. In my old post on the Central Park ‘wilders’, I said:
A.L.
Optimism in the face of adversity is qunitessentially American. Think of the 1939 World’s Fair – ten years of crushing depression, the world literally going up in flames, and those silly people go to New York to take a look at Futurama.
I am optimistic in the face of this adversity because the United States, the vast majority of people here, have chosen to defend our country and our culture from those who would destroy it.
We chose to defend it, so we must think it worth defending.
Who couldn’t take heart in that?
Another good question for klaatu is that he says that post-war Iraq is not as sold to the American public. How exactly was post-war Iraq sold to the American public? Was someone saying it would turn into Switzerland or something?
As I recall, the President said we would stay as long as it takes – no longer than that, but not less than that either.
Oh, and what is with the canard that we have abandoned Afghanistan?
Is that really so? Don’t we still have troops there? Aren’t we building schools and hospitals and roads there? Aren’t we putting hundreds of millions of dollars in aid in there?
I think one of the key things here is “television”. I don’t find the world depressing, but watching and listening to today’s broadcast/cable political media is on the whole a depressing, infuriating, soul-deadening experience. The more of it you watch or listen to, the worse you will feel about the state of your country and your fellow citizens.
Just a couple of centuries ago, which is the recent past for humankind, childhood mortality rates in the West were above 75%, 1 in 5 women died during childbirth, and life expectancy was around 25 years of age. My cynical optimism keeps me from romanticizing the past, demonizing the present or expecting too little (or too much) from the future. I’ll stick with the comic books and popular culture.
roublen –
Could the fact that we have no T.V in our house be the difference??
It’s something that I suggest pretty strongly, particularly for families with kids…
A.L.
A.L. – Not the TV thing again! Cable TV, that great (post)modern opium of the masses. Actually, I think there is such a thing as intelligent viewing. (http://www.plasmavision.com/)
“The Story of the Two Frogs”
Two frogs are hopping along, and happen to both jump into a large vat of milk. One frog, seeing the futility of ever getting out, gives up and drowns. The other frog continues splashing around until he has churned up an island of butter. He climbs onto the island, until the milkmaid comes along and chucks him out.
-Unknown, but adapted from the writings of Robert A. Heinlein
If you want to give up, go ahead, but get the f**k out of the canoe so your dead weight doesn’t drag the rest of us down.
klaatu:
Please excuse me for disagreeing with you, but tax cuts do not cause deficits. Tax collections doubled during Reagan’s time in office, due to his tax cuts. Unfortunately, spending increased 3X, which is the true cause of the so-called Reagan Deficit”
The tax cuts you mention have just barely started to have an impact on government revenues. They are, for the most part, scheduled to go into effect in later years. Probably the main cause of our currect deficits are the bursting of the dot.com bubble, two wars and the effects of the September 11 attacks.
My guess is that we won;t have to attack Syria, Iran or North Korea- they will collapse on their own, worrying about when the US will attack.
Heck, I can’t even take Klaatu’s lament seriously.
Quote:
“Knowing that every day, in every way, the administration is trying to screw over the working man in favor of the corporation.”
Sheesh. That’s right. People your thoughts with cant. Say it over and over until you BELIEVE.
Barata Nictu >this<, K.
Gabriel Gonzalez,
Opium decreases pain. TV increases it. TV is bad. Opium is good.
We would be better off with opium over the counter than TVs at appliance stores.
Opium addicts are wise: too much pain in their lives and they try to relieve it.
TV addicts are unwise: too little pain in their lives and they try to increase it.
Fear will keep the masses in line. That is why we have TV. In addition it is not imposed but desired.
Go figure. This guy has:
http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/nikolas.lloyd/evolve/evolmenu.html
Simon
Here’s a reason to be gloomy: “Bring them on,” Bush says to Iraqi attacks.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63296-2003Jul2.html
Excuse me, what good is that kind of talk going to do???
I doubt the Fallujah diehards firing RPGs will be intimidated by macho posturing.
I can only imagine the sardonic and obscene responses this will bring from the members of the 3rd and 4th ID, 1st AD, 1st Marine Div, 101 Abn and miscellaneous National Guard and Reserve units.
Speak for yourself, CINC, being the mildest of them.
It’s either he really is a shithead, or Rove thinks that this kind of talk will play well to some shithead part of the electorate.
Either way, cause for gloom.
Would FDR have said the same thing during Guadalcanal? Truman when the Chinese crossed the Yalu? Johnson during Tet?
As for TV, I don’t really spend much time watching it, although with a kid in Baghdad I flip through the cable news channels frequently, usually finding nothing of value (my son called two weeks ago and said he and some others in his unit were interviewed on Fox (!!), we missed it or it wasn’t shown). I spend more time reading the NYT, the NYRB and other lily-livered pubs. I watch the talk shows on Sunday morning. Other than that it’s movies on TCM, IFC, the subtitled ones on French TV5, and “King of the Hill” after Nightline.
Blaster, as to Afghanistan, see:
http://www.iht.com/articles/101369.html
klaatu –
Actually, as I recall form some of the Turman biographies I’ve read, he did say some things like that.
And we’re certainly better off fighting enemy forces now than waiting for them to organize and fight on their own schedule and terms.
klaatu, let me raise a challenge to you – and we’ve cross-commented before over at my old bog.
What would you have done on September 12, 2002?
What is your projected policy for the Middle East, as it exists today?
Most of what I read from you is critical of Bush’s policy – which certainly presents legitimate targets for criticism. What’s your alternative path?
A.L.
A.L. –
On Sept 12 I would have done the same things Bush did, minus maybe some of the “with us or against us” rhetoric in public.
If anything I would have deployed more forces more rapidly, just to put bodies on the ground to get more of al-Qaeda, but I won’t dispute that the Afghanistan campaign was a good idea.
I expected an airborne forces/Spec Ops raid on Afghanistan in 1998 after the embassy bombings. Shoulda been done then.
Bush did a great job in 2001. It was the runup to the Iraq war where things started to go wrong.
I admit I’m ambivalent about the Iraq war, not just because my kid was always on the list of those going to go at some point. I always agreed with Hitchens’ view that Saddam was very evil to his own people. I would also grant that he was a potential threat to the USA, although not near as much as he was made out to be. I am intrigued by the idea of remaking Iraq – which has all the human and material resources required – into a democracy to revolutionize the Arab world. This is what I believe was the true reason for the war. Really, though, a risky experiment. The Iraq war might focus more enmity against the USA, recruit more al-Qaeda types.
Iraq was talked about on September 12, 2001, and if the war was decided on then or soon after, then the public and private diplomacy should have started then, not a year later. After all Seymour Hersh wrote in March or April 2002 that the war was coming, and his script played out almost exactly, as far as the timeline went. We had this campaign in fall and winter 2002 that seemed more designed to accomplish the objective of splitting Europe than gaining support for war with Iraq.
Yes, I know the French are playing their own game. You deal with that in private, or moderately in public. The French had announced and allocated substantial forces for Iraq before the end of 2002.
The Germans are helping us in Afghanistan, big time. Why do they have to have their noses rubbed in it?
We need mend our old friendships (yes, even with France) and put a lot more $$ into Afghanistan and Iraq than we have been doing.
There has to be a solution to the West Bank situation, and not one involving expulsion of the Arabs out of the West Bank or tank battles on the plains of Megiddo leading to the second coming.
It’s insane that a few thousand settlers can stymie ending the occupation. It’s time for the Israelis to pull out, build a wall if they have to, but pretty close to the 1967 borders. The demography demands it. Otherwise in 20 years Israel is a state with more Arabs than Jews within, except that the Arabs can’t vote and have no rights.
The stuff about secure borders is a bunch of B.S. The Israelis have air and sea launched nukes, an unmatchable army and they have the USA backing them up. We just removed one of their major threats. What’s the threat of invasion now? Make them cut a deal on this “roadmap.”
As far as other stuff goes, I’m in favor of protections for labor and the environment, fair trials, decent wages and fiscal responsibility.
I was wrong. Actually we need stress and relief from stress. Instead of complaining we should be enjoying the alternations of light and dark. It is inherent in us.
Vying for power and wealth is inherent. Man’s seeminly fallen nature is part of man. As a Darwinist I don’t see man as fallen but as adapted. The end result is the same. It is a good idea to either have a common bond or keep an eye on the guy over there.
There will be opposition to every policy and plan. To expect otherwise is to expect a human not yet widely available.
The objections will keep coming whether they are smart or stupid. The outs will always contest the ins. Money, sex, power. Children.
America because of it’s wealth and power is fashionable. Act like the wealthy and powerful. It gives you a leg up with the women. Human nature.
Which is why America is opposed yet imitated.
Peoples is strange.
The bit about secure borders klatuu is about ending the Palestinian National Suicide Bombers etc. Of course if you think the nuclear option is the answer to those problems I won’t disagree with you.
I however would be kinder and gentler. One ton of high explosives delivered every minute for a day might reduce the problem to manageable proportions. Followed by tanks and infantry. To reduce the problem further.
klaatu – the article you link does not represent abandonment.
Is Afghanistan a rough place? Sure it is. But we ARE there, and we ARE building roads and hospitals and schools.
Try here and here.
As for the “bring it on” statement, get the whole thing in context:
Q Mr. President, a posse of small nations — like the Ukraine and Poland — are materializing to help keep the peace in Iraq. But with the attacks on U.S. forces and the casualty rates rising, what is the administration doing to get larger powers, like France and Germany and Russia, to join the American occupation there?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, we’ll put together a force structure who meets the threats on the ground. And we’ve got a lot of forces there, ourselves. And as I said yesterday, anybody who wants to harm American troops will be found and brought to justice. There are some who feel like that if they attack us that we may decide to leave prematurely. They don’t understand what they’re talking about, if that’s the case.
Let me finish. There are some who feel like — that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring them on. We’ve got the force necessary to deal with the security situation. Of course we want other countries to help us — Great Britain is there, Poland is there, Ukraine is there, you mentioned. Anybody who wants to help, we’ll welcome the help. But we’ve got plenty tough force there right now to make sure the situation is secure. We always welcome help. We’re always glad to include others in. But make no mistake about it — and the enemy shouldn’t make any mistake about it — we will deal with them harshly if they continue to try to bring harm to the Iraqi people.
I also said yesterday an important point, that those who blow up the electricity lines really aren’t hurting America, they’re hurting the Iraq citizens; their own fellow citizens are being hurt. But we will deal with them harshly, as well.
What good does that kind of talk do? A hell of a lot more than hemming and hawing and letting some street toughs scare us away from doing what has to be done by killing a few of our guys.
I’m not dismissing the deaths as trivial. Every single loss of life is a personal tragedy. Every loss is terrible.
But in the grander scheme of things, it isn’t that bad, and the President is right – those who think they can chase us off are wrong – we DO have the force to deal with them.
blaster: I’m not saying we’re doing nothing in Afghanistan, I’m just saying we’re doing it half-assed.
M. Simon: Right: the so-called “secure borders” have not stopped suicide bombers. I believe the “secure borders” are the main cause of the suicide bombers.
Look at it this way: who has the choice here, Israel or the Palestinians? The Palestinians can keep doing the suicide bombings. On the other hand, if Israel does not pull out of the West Bank, or creates phony “bantustans” for the sake of a few thousand settlers, the suicide bombings will surely continue, no matter how many Palestinian houses are destroyed, how many raids are conducted, etc. As the demographic weight of the Arabs west of the Jordan increases, Israel either becomes an extremly oppressive apartheid state, or ceases being a Jewish state.
As for social Darwinism, this is just another robber-baron era doctrine being revived, like imperialism. Is this 1903 or 2003?
People that post on the internet tend to be of above-average intelligence. I’ve noticed that many of them subscribe to these harsh social Darwinist policies.
I happen to belive that mentally retarded people, for example, have a place in socety, deserve to earn a living and be treated with dignity. Not only is it the right thing to do, but I know from experience in the criminal courts that ignoring and degrading the less-favored results in violence and social disorder for the more-favored.
M. Simon –
Oh, I missed that point that you made about just killing the Arabs with “one ton of high explosives delivered every minute for a day” (would those be precision-guided?) or nukes.
Um, that’s not the solution either.
‘I can’t even watch the TV news anymore,’ one friend said. ‘Three dead in Gaza gets one minute, followed by another American shot in Iraq, a minute and a half – and then they cut to Scott Peterson and I turn the thing off. Even in 1968, in the worst of everything that year, there was some hope. Not now. It’s gone, and I don’t think it’s coming back.’
This is a very strange comment. Haven’t these people paid any attention whatsoever to the homicide rate in the US? It must hurt to pull your head out of the sand for the first time in 30+ years. Or do the deaths in America not count?
Also, I consider myself a social Darwinist, but I also believe that society/the government have a duty to care for those Americans who cannot care for themselves. How strange the enmity the left and the right have for Darwin.
The wall built around (is it) the Gaza Strip (? I forget which) has stopped the suicide bombers. I’d say that was a “secure border”. Although it won’t prevent them from chucking things over the wall… Ever wonder if Israel would have to pull out into the ocean to get the suicide bombers to stop?