Boycott the Olympics? But What About My Dreams?

It is important to note right off the bat that Clinton did not call for a boycott of the Olympics. Much of the boohooing and jeering from the headline-only-reading blogizens is that Clinton is demanding that Bush take the drastic-yet-worthless move of pulling our athletes from the competition ruining their lives for nothing more than a stern fingerpointing at Hu Jintao. Unless I failed to read the story properly (check for yourself here, but when you check please read more than the misleading headline and read [for godssake] the opening sentence) she has merely stated that she thinks the president should boycott the opening ceremonies.

Many would claim that that this is just a symbolic gesture that doesn’t mean anything and will lead nowhere but to offending our growing trade partner, China..and of course ruining the Olympics (woe upon woe!). Sure, a handshake, a cold shoulder, raising your voice when angry, being late to a meeting discussing irrelevant topics are all symbolic gestures but they do indicate a certain amount of satisfaction or dissatisfaction both to the recipient of that symbol and to those who witness it. That is the stuff of diplomacy. Much of diplomacy has always been about showing up to the right parties, having your name next to the right people at the right time, shunning those that attempt to act outside the system. Diplomacy…as a distinct way of convincing people to do what you want them to do without forcing them to through brute force…is an art that pulls its power from psychology and sociology, as well as rational and intellectual appeals. Furthermore this sort of symbolic communication can be timed for the utmost efficacy.

There’s a lot of money in the Olympics. Perhaps more importantly there is a lot of prestige that comes with being granted the Olympics–prestige that is, in part, related to the Olympics mission: promoting transnational brotherhood through the power of sport. And roll your eyes if you must, but the Olympics have repeatedly proven themselves to be an important venue for stating things of importance. And country’s will go extremely far to protect the glittering image that got them awarded the Olympics to start with.

China, for example has spent billions (billions) preparing for the coming tide of visitors from all all over the world. They have tightened several laws and loosened some others.

For another example, look to Mexico in 1968. Not the black-fisted salute, although that image is important not because it happened, or because it happened at a sporting event, but because it happened at the Olympics. I’m talking about the student protests a few months before the summer Olympics games that were thought to be so embarrassing for the Mexican government that the government arranged to have the protesters massacred. A move that, while horrible and dramatic, did significantly quiet the amount of domestic protest in Mexico during the games. I’m not condoning the massacre of dissidents (what a grandly self-destructive move that would be). I’m citing it as an example of the extremes that governments will go through in an attempt to not sully their reputations at Olympic time. Turns out that student massacres are bad way to not have your reputation sullied but that is neither here nor there at the moment.

After admitting that I’m a reader of Daniel Drezner’s blog, it would probably be wrong of me to not credit him for saying first what I’m about to say. Basically Clinton’s proposal is limited in scope, designed to draw attention to China’s extreme violations of human rights (and its clear vision that there are no such things as human rights) without entering into an all-or-nothing pact that would hurt American businesses, American athletes, or our burgeoning relationship with a major world power that over the last 20 years or so has made significant improvements in the human rights area, to say nothing of their increasing importance in American foreign policy interests like the six-party talks with North Korea.

It is possible, even, as Drezner points out, to make this statement even more important by acting in conjunction with the leader’s of Germany, France, and ideally some developing nations as well. Furthermore, it is possible that Bush could use the threat of a boycott to illicit some immediate concessions from China, specifically on the Darfur front, if Bush can convince France and Germany not to go through with their possible and planned boycotts respectively.

The alternative is to do nothing and that seems to be the consensus of many. That, since we won’t change China overnight with a symbolic boycott of the opening ceremonies we might as well do nothing at all, after all, why risk offending a country that holds so much of our debt and has such strategic value as an ally and trading partner? Well, that recommendation denies how much has diplomacy goes on with China every day. China did not wake up one morning and decide to be America’s trading partner. Nor did America simply wake up one morning and decide to be China’s. That series of agreements was the result of a series of diplomatic tits for tats–China agreeing to certain policy constraints to gain access to America’s markets and America promising to, among other things, cool the hot rhetoric we have historically aimed at China. Basically, the threat of an Olympic boycott is exactly the kind of thing we have done with every reluctant ally-in-waiting. Only the effect of such a move today is amplified because of our trade relations and because of the Olympics.

To do nothing with Hu Jintao still listed as one of the top 20 human rights violators is really to condone that activity. There is no two ways about it. That is not to say that a boycott of the opening ceremonies is the only way to make a statement, there are plenty of things that can be done, and likely will be, but an opening ceremony boycott would not be the knife in China’s the back as many would like to paint it…nor would it destroy the dreams of our hard-working athletes or ruin the Olympics. As a matter of fact, I would think that a lot of the athletes participating in this year’s games are just as distraught as some of those recommending a boycott–although conflicting personal and professional interests will keep them from saying so for the moment. An acknowledgment from the president that America will participate in the games in a spirit of brotherhood through sportsmanship but does not condone the ruthlessness of the PRC might help alleviate some of the guilt that they are feeling for participating in such a grand money-making event for the Chinese dictatorship.

“Normal intellectual adults”: 2008 Edition

I haven’t really posted anything of substance in a while and my last post was only barely political in nature and quite frankly, I’m just going to keep it that way for a bit. It turns out that, if you stop reading the minutiae of politics, it looks pretty the same three weeks later (counting roughly from the beginning of the St. Louis trip). Everyday McCain continues to prove that he simply lacks the intellectual nuance to grasp presidential politics up to and including strategic concerns in Iraq (although he has proven himself more than capable of staying the course on Bush’s stay the course plan–He’s even perfected the act of calling such spectacular failures like the recent one in Basra as signs of success.) Obama is still kicking Clinton’s ass in the “looking like a president” category while she, for her part, continues to cut into his insurmountable lead (much to the dismay of Democratic hardliners who want more than anything for one of them to sit the fuck down already.) Oh! and of course blood-thirsty dictatorship partially funded by misguided American foreign policy continue to brutally quell uprisings, rig elections, and murder dissidents in broad daylight while America looks on says” silly brown people, why can’ they get it right? And Mark Penn reminds us of a quaint old axiom probably brought to us by way of Ben Franklin:

Better to keep your mouth shut and have people suspect you’re a mumbling ignoramus than to attend a Colombian free market meeting and prove it.

His ridiculousness cost his company the Colombian deal and it cost him his job on Clinton’s campaign staff. But, in all honesty, even casual race observers have begun noting that Penn is clearly a retard so even this shenanigan hardly hits the radar as “something new.”

So instead, I bring you this:

Long before there was a science of psychology, thinkers remarked on the unalterable quality of human nature. Part of their analysis depended on the recurring patterns of man’s activities. When psychological pioneers like Freud began systematically recording these patterns, naming them, and using them to construct cohesive theories it seemed we were just around the corner from accepting psychological motivations to be just as compelling (if not as tangible) as physical ones. But over a hundred years later we extend a great deal of forgiveness to, and/or unacceptance of, the psychological origins of action.

Men are still reluctant to admit that they are seeking therapy for “stress,” penal hardliners roll their eyes and sigh in disgust at the defense of crimes committed under conditions of insanity temporary or otherwise. What are clearly sexual proclivities rooted in low self-esteem, peer rejection, or more severe childhood mental injuries are defended as evidence of our “free will.”

It may be true that Jenny* viewed her long-absent father first as a man and only later as her biological father. But it is almost certainly true (if I can say so from my armchair) that she longs for the support, acceptance, and love of the man who abandoned her as an infant and–like so many other confused people–mistakes the passion and energy of physical contact with the psychological and emotional love she requires.

And, even if I’m wrong–it is certainly possible after all that Jenny at 39 years old has decided to enter into a physical relationship with her 61 year old father unencumbered by the psychological chains that bind so many of us that psychologist once thought we were born with them like birds are born to fly south in winter–my superficial analysis is so plausible that we have developed laws to protect those that are not as psychologically stable and mentally independent as she is.

The physically strong can take advantage of the weak. When it happens on the schoolyard we call it bullying. When it happens in the adult world we call it extortion, strong-arming, or racketeering. When the physically strong take advantage of the weak we seem to recognize in it a certain kind of evil. Our laws recognize that physical strength is no way to build a proper civil society and bar the unseemingness of brute force as a path to legal righteousness.

Certain professional codes bar using the strength of their knowledge to unjustly take advantage of the ignorant. Lawyers, for example, have a command over esoteric and intimidating legal procedures. One of our key constitutional provisions is the right to a lawyer when accused of a crime. It is recognized by law (and has been for centuries) that the lawyer’s knowledge is a weapon that can unfairly subject a person without that knowledge to extreme harm. However, the law is so intimidating that hiring a lawyer itself is a fear-riddled prospect. As a consequence lawyers are prevented by professional code from taking advantage their own clients’ ignorance. It says something that such a thing had to be written down, too. But the point remains, despite being far less tangible than physical strength, knowledge is a tool that can be unfairly wielded.

For millenia philosophers have noted the power of emotional strength. A rhetorician adequately enough in touch with his audience’s fears and desires is fully capable of controlling them to great (or dire) effect.

How then to protect children from those to whom they are most vulnerable–physically, intellectually, and emotionally? There is, of course, an assumption that we don’t have to. Parents are supposed to only want is best for their children and children need no additional protection than what their parents can provide–with occasional help from school principals and Officer Friendly. But it is a reality that children are often physically, emotionally, and sexually abused by their parents.

But certainly adult children too can be victims of the emotional and naturally hierarchic bonds between them and their parents.

We probably shouldn’t need additional laws aside from the natural laws that for the thousands of years before the first written codes persuaded adult humans to avoid sexual contact with their offspring–it is a sad fact that we do as Mr. and Ms. Deaves have most recently reminded us. I’m not even commenting (aside from this unnecessary swipe) on the fact that they’ve already had a child that died of congenital heart failure.

Perhaps Ms. Deaves really loves her father as any woman loves any man. But perhaps she is being unduly taken advantage of by a depraved man with no love of family who has desperate and dark psychological needs of his own and the power and lack of moral constraint to take advantage of the weaknesses in people that he himself effected. We can’t know for sure because we can never truly know the secrets that are harbored in the minds of others. What we can know that such victimization is both possible and likely and hence we have laws to prevent it because exploitation of this nature, regardless of its motivation, is tantamount to a kind of slavery–or prostitution if the first word offends too greatly. If a handful of Jenny Deaveses of the world are prevented from honestly loving their fathers as they would a husband so that we can protect the thousands of women who might be forced to love their fathers as a hooker would a pimp, then I say that’s just the way it has to be.

It could be argued that I have no right to comment, seeing as how I am no one’s daughter and I simply am not at risk of being forced into relationship with my mother so I can, without fear of repercussion,recommend the curbing of the individual liberties of the Jenny Deaveses of the world. But, if the whole disgusting truth must come out, I could conceivably become a father to a future Jenny Deaves, whom I might love as a man loves a wife and I would be denying myself the right to legally pursue that love. So be it, because even if I entered such a future relationship with an open and pure heart, I understand that I have to sacrifice that relationship for the sake of protecting the fragile underpinnings of our civil society. People have sacrificed more honorable unions for less high-minded ideals; I would demand nothing less of my future self.

*If you’re wondering, “Who the hell is ‘Jenny,’ you should scroll back up and click on the link. That’s why it’s there. If you don’t want to, just keep reading, her role in this rant will be unfolded as I go.

Bush’s Dictator Dance Card is Full to Bursting

Last Thursday I ranted against President Bush’s admonishment of Barack Obama over whether the latter, as president, should have sit-down talks with North Korea, Cuba, or Iran. What I said specifically was that Bush was a pandering, hypocritical ass, or words to that effect. Without getting into the rightness or wrongness of sitting down with the world’s dictators I offer this.

Each year various publications rank the world’s worst dictators and with little variation those lists match up one to the other. About 70 countries are ruled by dictators. The day before I posted about Bush lecturing Obama on proper US foreign policy standards, I showed a picture of George Bush playing dress-up with number 20 on the 2007 list, Vladimir Putin, the rabidly anti-deomcratic president of Russia (soon to be anti-democratic prime minister after his self-appointed successor is “elected.”)

Following is George Bush standing next to, smiling, and–in one instance–apparently frolicking with various members of other leaders from the top 20 of 2007’s worst dictators list. Numbered for your convenience.

For the record Castro doesn’t even make the top 20.

With so many dance partners our lame duck leader is sure to get a little tired…but don’t worry, he has C. Rice to dance when he don’t want to.

President Pot, There’s a Mr. Kettle on the Phone for You

In a press conference this morning Bush had this to say to Obama who has had the gall to mention he might have sit-downs with Cuba and Iran.

“I have these wives of these dissidents come and see me,” he said. “And their stories are just unbelievably sad. It just goes to show how, you know, how repressive China has the Castro brothers have been when you listen to the truth about what they say. And the idea of embracing a leader who has done this without any attempt on his part to, you know, release prisoners and free their society, would be counterproductive and send the wrong signal.”

I struck through China, but I could just as easily have listed most of the leaders that Bush recently met with in the Middle East and anybody he’s ever talked to in Africa. Seriously, Bush (BUSH!?) is going to lecture Obama on how best to export human rights?–The guy that had his Justice Department release a memo stating that, despite norms of international law, the United States government did not have to obey the Geneva Conventions or the International Agreement on Human Rights? The guy that issued a signing statement maintaining that the executive branch retains the power to torture prisoners in contravention of US law? The guy that illegally wiretapped its own citizens? The guy that had (at least) two US citizens imprisoned without knowing why and denied them access to legal counsel for years? That President Bush is going to go in front of people and lecture on human rights?

For his own immorality and that of his friends, Bush should probably just keep his mouth shut on this issue for the next eleven months; he hanged the only person he had the moral authority to lecture on this topic.

Military and Militarism

William J. Astore’s piece in yesterday’s Salon is nothing more than a full frontal assault on American’s proper moral growth away from militarism veiled as an attack on the intelligentsia’s undemocratic elitism. It is not that everything that Astore says is wrong but his failure to understand the attacks on the institution of militarism causes him to comically defend that which is not attacked, to promote that which no decent person would promote, and to ignore the obvious on multiple occasions. The essay is either a poorly constructed piece of propaganda specifically but ineffectively designed to twist progressives’ ideas in on themselves, or Astore is a kneejerk reactionary bent on defending the institution through which he developed his own identity and in which he is therefore emotionally and psychologically invested. In either case, charges of injudicious elitism should be ignored by those who rightfully wish to eradicate the 19th Century twin specters of militarism and imperialism.

Astore most prominent and basic failure is confusing attacks on militarism with attacks on the military. He says that progressives attack militarism but then in order to defend why they shouldn’t do that or how they might better develop their arguments he defends the military. While the two are often found together they are not identical. The belief that force is the answer to America’s problems, that unilateral military intervention can substitute for diplomacy, and that America’s military supremacy grants the American government a moral obligation or universal right to enforce our will on others are all concepts that are worth fighting against. These concepts form the foundation of militarism and–when exercised–imperialism. In terms of policy, militarism has led the American government to spend more money on its military than any other industrialized nation and, while America’s extreme wealth has allowed for our military costs to remain low as a percentage of GDP, that is quickly changing both from an increase in military spending and a decrease in the nation’s raw output. That money could be better spent and any thinking person knows it. Progressives would like to see that money spent on any number of good causes whose benefits would extend from the very poorest to the very richest. Traditional conservatives would like to see that money returned to private citizens in the form of smaller government and lower taxes.

But attacks on the military are not the same as attacks on militarism and for the most part progressives attack the latter rather than the former. In the cases where there are attacks on the military directly, either from the right or the left, the attacks are not directed at the concept of a military but rather on the unfair, undemocratic, and exploitive way it is run. That is to say that attacks on the military are isolated to the military leadership and not to the enlisted men and women that fight the wars.

Most Americans, even those who were not alive during World Wars I and II look back fondly to a time when our default military position was one of non-intervention, to an era when military force was reserved for those moments when military force improved our nation’s strategic standing and fought against legitimate enemies. I have heard no arguments for dismantling or even substantially decreasing the size of the American armed forces. All reasonable parties understand the necessity of a military.

Astore pretends that progressives do not understand or do not appreciate the wide diversity of people represented in the armed forces when it is quite clear, if his argument is to be believed as representing his actual thoughts, that it is he does not understand the nature of that diversity. It is true, as he states that ethnic and racial minorities seem overrepresented in the enlisted ranks. It is also true, although he fails to mention it, that the group of commissioned officers not only do not reflect this over-representation but reverses it. Commissioned officers are disproportionately white and college educated. He also fails to mention the high degree of nepotism that, despite other reforms, the military has failed to abolish. Critics from within the ranks of the armed forces still talk about not knowing the right people and not having the right parents when it comes to trying to make higher ranks. Even the non-elitist military that Astore champions is still famously elitist when it come to the ones who don’t see the front lines of battle. When you combine the top brass elitism with the overrepresented ethnic and racial minorities on the front lines, you’d have to be an idiot or villain to think that progressive attacks on that system are ill placed. A handful of minority generals and colonels do not remove the stink of the racism and classism that permeates the armed forces. Of the 39 active duty four-ranked officers in the United States armed forces, one of them is black (General William Ward) and all of them are male.

But a charge of systemic disproportion, if it happened naturally, is not a condemnatory charge. The fact of the matter, and we all know it, is that within the system individuals make the choices. College-educated people largely do not sign up for the military. This isn’t because we think it’s inherently stupid. It’s not because we’re effeminate. (Although there are educated people who do think it’s stupid and some that are effeminate.) But, college educated people can choose jobs that pay more and risk less. And the reverse is true too. The military isn’t just recruiting from America’s ghettos and farms because those people are any more willing to die. America’s urban and rural uneducated and poor are willing to work for less and often don’t see any other options for themselves.

It is true, as Astore says, that many people long for the challenge and hardships of military life, even of war–war is, after all, a force that gives us meaning. It is true that many young men and women seek a career, or even a short term job in the military in order to help shape their identities. But it also true that many, the majority of soldiers, do not do this. Astore is an idiot if he thinks we haven’t noticed that, with one exception in the last 60 years, enlistment goes down as the risk of dying goes up. He is an idiot if he thinks we haven’t noticed that the military is lowering its educational standards in order to meet its enlistment needs. Education does not equal intelligence but a lack of education does limit career options. Education does not equal intelligence but a lack of education does limit the ability to think critically. Education does not equal intelligence but a lack of education impairs the ability to engage equally with the multi-billion dollar ad campaign that powers the enlistment machine. The military is not just targeting the poor and uneducated because they are more nationalistic; they target them because they are more helpless, both in the larger world, and against the military’s propaganda machine. That is, the poor and uneducated are more vulnerable to exploitation. Astore may accuse rightly accuse liberals of a naturally paternalistic instinct, but it is fair to note, that paternalism in the political sense developed as a reaction to obvious exploitation not the other way around. If people had not be taken advantage of there would not have been a need to protect them.

The military’s ad campaign is buttressed by our entertainment industry. There is no lacking for books, magazine articles, television shows, or movies that glamorize the soldier’s life. Even movies like Full Metal Jacket and Jarhead that offer scathing reproachment of military culture are sufficiently full of depictions of the honor of combat, the meaningfulness of life exposed by proximity to death, and the natural camaraderie of small bands of soldiers to sufficiently inspire people to sign up. But then there are movies like Band of Brothers, the 10-episode mini-series on HBO that are essentially nothing more than advertisements for America’s elite 101st Airborne Division. Astore facetiously claims to be “struck” by how many men he talks to in rural Pennsylvania are moved to enlist after watching all 10 episodes. Despite all the barbarism of war laid out in those specials, Band of Brothers is essentially hour upon hour of stacked indoctrination, teaching the young men that watch it that it is a sweet and fitting thing to die for one’s country. Maybe it is, but Astore can hardly be “struck” that young men are inspired to enlist after being having been told that they will be revered and remembered if they sacrifice themselves to patriotic causes. Again, I am not critiquing the claim that it is good to dedicate oneself to a higher cause and to die for it if called upon. I am merely noting Astore’s facetious claim that he was “struck” by it. And I am critiquing Astore’s implication that America’s rural and urban poor are somehow more patriotic simply by virtue of their economic condition and not because of a companion dearth of other opportunities.

It is not that the intelligentsia looks down on the soldiers for being less educated. It is not that the intelligentsia doesn’t appreciate the individuals that enlist with both eyes open. They are criticizing, not the men and women signing on the dotted line, but the manipulative hand that guides their hand. Progressives are out to change the system, to eradicate the militarist regime that needs to find new ways to recruit more vulnerable people to fight and die for illegal and imperialistic wars. A new outlook on how to conduct world affairs means, less wars; less wars means less soldiers; less soldiers means less exploited people.

The lauded “all-volunteer” nature of our army is put into question by the necessities of militarism. Militarism as an institution is cyclical beast. Militarism requires wars and in a world thankfully free of a global government war is not only always possible, but always just a decision away. Societies will never lack for enemies. Someone else is always competing for a valuable but limited commodity; someone else is always strategically where they need to be. So militarism will seek wars where wars are unnecessary. When successful, the military engaged in war has reason to request an increase in its size, its budget, its executive power. When the war is over it can attempt to maintain the size it obtained because it obtained only what was necessary to win the last war; future wars are bound to be harder, fought against bigger enemies with more improved technologies, perhaps even further away.

As if that wasn’t bad enough [and it is] militarism must find troops to fight and die. It is possible that those in power, if they are sufficiently militarist, will find ways to manipulate the governmental and economic systems to create uneducated poor people to fill that requirement. That sentence is not a charge that anybody has ever done that. It is a charge that under a militaristic leadership, someone might. We never know who we might accidentally elect into power. Hitler was elected, you know. Therefore, in order to protect democracy, in order to ensure that justice is provided to all equally, it is necessary to eradicate militaristic tendencies.

Astore’s misplacement of the attack from militarism to the military is, as I said, a shameful rhetorical trick or it is based on his misunderstanding of the nature of those attacks. In either case, that is the larger failure of his article which is peppered with smaller mistakes.

For example, he at one point says that “America tends to trust its military” and he finds the roots of this trust in our knowledge that the “‘have nots’ have access to it.” I doubt that this is the source of this trust. Americans, perhaps shamefully, find little trustworthy in the “have not” culture. What is trustworthy about the military is that they aren’t businessmen or politicians. It is assumed that the leaders of the military are sufficiently aware of the nature of their business that they are restrained in their decision to go to war. Our generals tend to ask for more troops than the politicians provide. The generals tend to ask for strategic considerations that will aid in eventual victory. The generals, it seems, are more inclined to not go to war than the politicians who sit in Washington. And, when generals decide that war is the right decision, it is assumed they make that decision with heavier hearts than a politician coming to the same decision. There are rights and wrongs involved in this decision, but generally we feel that the military is to be trusted in times of war because….that’s what they do and the consequences of failure are far greater for them that might die or be taken prisoner. It has nothing to do with the democratic nature of America’s most undemocratic institution. Or, to put it far more simply, it is not that Americans trust the military, it is that they trust the military more than they trust politicians. That may or may not be the right thing to do or believe, the citizens of Argentina in the 70s and 80s may make a good case for why that’s wrong, but at the very least the military qua military is neither good nor bad but rather is a force without direction. Politicians are good or bad depending on one’s point of view and are therefore inherently untrusted by some section of the population.

Astore also, wrongfully and shamefully says that “For academia and progressives, war is today what sex was to society in the Victorian age, involving as it does emotions nice people don’t feel and acts nice people don’t opt to commit.” This “argument” is embarrassingly superficial and shamefully wrong. If Astore actually believes this I am left with no recourse but to consider him an anti-social madman, probably psychopathic. In case Astore is unaware, there is a substantial difference in the nature, cause, and effects of sex and war, but for purposes of exposing how disgusting this comparison is I will appeal only to the effects of both. Sex, when committed by normal, rational people, no matter immoral and sloppy the act is, results in two very tired bodies and one or two guilty conciousness. Sometimes it results in neither. In very extreme cases sex may result in an injury, and, rarer still, a death. Even rape, which I think is beyond consideration here, while awful results in possibly dozens of indignities, and, if accompanied by murder, a dozen murders.

War, on the other hand–no matter how restrained its execution, no matter how rational the soldiers or generals–results in the deaths of thousands. It results in rape. It results in theft. It result in indignities of every stripe. In extreme cases it results in Hiroshima and Nagasaki; it results in Nanking and Dresden. It results in genocide. It results in the annihilation of cities and cultures.

To say that disparaging war is a relativist cultural artifact of the 20th/21st centuries that will fade away in time is tantamount to wishing for a return to the endless war that epitomized human civilization during the Middle Ages. To simply equate young men’s desire for “taboo breaking” by violating sexual norms and their “taboo breaking” through institutionalized murder is immorally simple as to defy one’s ability to articulate it.

Astore accuses progressives of misunderstanding the fundmental makeup of the military. He talks about the diverse political views (conservative, but not necessarily Republican, he says), the racial and ethnic diversity, the modest gender diversity, and the diversity of motivations for joining. He mentions the educational diversity and the social class diversity. But it becomes increasingly evident that the only “progressives” in his worldvieware also “academics.” He even provides a pathway for his readers to include that all academics are also liberals (and therefore progressives) by stating that of 42 professors at Brown University all of them registered as Democrats (as if Democrats themselves were liberal or progressive, but I suppose I can let that pass.) It would seem that no progressives have made their way out of or exist within the military. It would seem that even he, who is so enlightened to find a place for militarism in the modern world is not a progressive.

He then challenges these academics to force themselves to understand the diverse nature of the enlisted men and women that make up the military because if they fail to do so they will also fail in eradicating militarism.

I guess the first thing that needs to be brought up is that university professors are not the only progressives. For that matter, progressives are not only made up of people with college educations. Astore forgets the populist nature of most progressive policy recommendation. The majority of Americans have at least one “progressive” platform that helps form their overall political ideology. Perhaps they are anti-war, perhaps they are merely anti-Iraq (which is the majority of the population right now–a majority made up of almost every Democrat and over half of all Republicans). Maybe they are pro-union. Most tradesman are pro-union even though they vote Republican. Maybe they’re concerned with global warming or economic sustainability. Whatever it is, progressives are not just a cadre of elite stuffed shirts in universities. The anti-globalization demonstrations in Seattle were demanding a progressive global agenda and I doubt that the college professors even made up a sizable percentage of those present.

Also, once again, militarism isn’t found in the enlisted men. Miltiarism is found in the untrusted politicians that make decisions for the military. The upstanding men like Cheney and Rumsfeld that blazed a legal and moral path for contemporary imperialism. Those men (and women) came up through America’s middle and upper classes, largely from white, Protestant families. In the one extremely notable example of a black, female militarist, she rose up through the academic system that is under attack in this paper. I don’t think that, in order to eradicate militarism, it is at all necessary to understand that 20% of today’s enlisted men and women are there wholly by choice–because the more important factor at work in militarism are the desires of a hungry political elite.

In one final flub, Astore claims that women find their gender identity only in biological rites of passage: menstruation, pregnancy, and menopause. Men, have no biological rites of passage, there gender identity is “arguably less secure” he says. Male gender identity is found in “the gaze of other men” and therefore men seek out military life in order to fulfill biosocial destinies. This is such a clear example of a person overreaching his discipline that I probably need to do no more than mention this argument, as I did above, to reveal it for its impropriety. Even if he is broadly correct and I don’t have the expertise to know, I think it is safe to point out a few things. First of all, even if broadly correct it is more precisely wrong. Women find their gender identity in the gaze of other women. And men, surprising, go through puberty–an event …or series of events…that provides a variety of biological milestones celebrated as elements of manhood. If Astore does not know that from his own experiences, I pity him.

More importantly the implication of the argument is two-fold, that man must appeal to his animalistic nature or deny himself. In response to these bio-social demands men join the military to prove their manhood to other men. I suppose there is no denying that this is the case. Not only do armed services commercials make it clear that the military will form boys into men other men seem to abide by, support and reinforce that claim through their actions. However, the extreme argument here is that men must be allowed to kill other men in order to fulfill his destiny, a claim that is patently absurd.

He then says, “The challenge for progressives is to recognize this and then work to create viable alternatives to military service in which masculinity and patriotism can be demonstrated in non-lethal settings.” First of all, I would bet if any group of people in the world recognize the deep normative structures of cultural and biological rites of passage and the roles of identity formation and gender it would be the “academics” that Astore thinks are all “progressive.” Second, how the heck is it the job of progressives, or any other single group to provide alternative rites of passage. Third, where did that “patriotism” bit come from? If we agree that the military does provide such an outlet where both patriotism and masculinity can be expressed at once, on what level is that necessary? Do !kung bushman express patriotism along with their rites of passage? Are men who are clearly masculine, like masons, unproved in their masculinity unless they build walls and houses “for America.” Fourth, what is the female equivalent? Must women menstruate American flags? Do they not require the interplay of femininity and patriotism? Fifth, who says that this whole gender-typing thing is desirable? I’m not saying it is or it isn’t but I don’t think that “butch” women are any less human than girly ones and I certainly don’t favor macho guys to effeminate ones. Sixth, why can’t there be separate activities that allow one to express masculinity on the one hand and patriotism with the other? Seventh, there is a de facto elimination of femininity from the military here isn’t there? Why is that? The clear reasoning here is that militaries are by definition masculine. Women joining the military makes the women masculine and not the military feminine. Which is a clearly circular argument and supports a sexual discrimination currently illegal under American law.

I think I could list problems with this all day and never explore all of them. So I’ll let the first answer to Astore’s challenge be Astore’s own words. What is the non-lethal rite of passage that can simultaneously allow a boy to express his masculinity and his patriotism? Recreate New Deal-esque organizations like the Civilian Conservation Corp. I’m fine with that, but I’m a tax and spend liberal. Of course, if its between paying guys to play chess outside their barracks in South Korea or paying guys to plant trees in recently strip-mined West Virginia, I suppose I’d like the latter. But more importantly, the best alternative to men joining the military, is… men joining the military. Astore has wrongfully assumed, again, that because progressives are against militarism they are against having a military. Maybe it’s not manly to join the Army and not kill anyone but I think that might be the price worth paying. I mean, nobody kills anybody (on purpose) planting trees either and that seems to be OK by Astore’s standards. I’d be perfectly happy with a large and well-armed military that never has to be used.

It is one thing to defend the military, but since the military is not under attack such a paper would be totally unwarranted. It is quite another to defend militarism. In reality progressives are justly attacking militarism and Astore defends the military. The effect of his confusion is that he wrote a paper that reads as a defense of the indefensible and it causes him to make embarrassing analogies and make unjust charges. Progressives do not have to rethink their stance against militarism just because a racially, economically, and politically mixed group of boys and girls sign up to join it. Disliking militarism does not expose progressives and intellectual elites who are denying the democratic nature of the army. Not only is the military itself as undemocratic an institution as can be imagined, the target of progressive attacks is not the military or its constituent parts. It is the philosophy of militarism–which is also different that a basic realist recognition of the necessity of the armed forces–that is under attack.

Those Oh so Moral Republicans!

One of the most fascinating topics in political philosophy that I’ve run across is the concept of “dirty hands.” While the basic scenario is important, it is off topic for me today. What is important to me is the fundamental issue at work: politics is dirty and there is absolutely no way to perform well in politics and remain clean. Not every action in politics is dirty and that which is dirty is not always equally dirty. And by dirty I don’t necessarily mean illegal.

At the very least there is, as Machiavelli pointed out, a fundamental separation between values within the world of politics and values within the realm of traditional ethics (I’m being general but I am speaking specifically of Christian values, although any teleological normative system is fine, even non-religious ones…although, in my opinion they are easier to work around.).

The Christian God is pretty straightforward on 1) not killing, 2) not lying, 3) not working on some official holy day of rest and a few other things. The Jesus version of the Christian God is pretty straightforward on being peaceful, forgiving another’s trespasses, picking out the plank in our own eye before noting the splinter in our brothers eye, rich people not being able to get into heaven, being humble in all things, and forgoing personal excesses of wealth.

However, a president (and for that matter congresspeople) have to be ready to send troops into battle. A flick of the pen and self-serving theologians can say that God meant “no killing of innocents” although that is not what the law says and, in this instance, I’m a strict constructivist. But even that rewriting of God’s law doesn’t quite work. “Collateral damage” is factored in to every bomb drop and house raid. The president not only knows that ordering an attack will cause civilian (innocent) death, but approximately how many will die. He knows that many of them are children who have not yet been corrupted by the ideologies of their parents (if we assume that the others are somehow “guilty”of something because of their beliefs.)

The same self-serving theologian could argue that the Old Testament God, the one from which the commandment against killing arrived was pro-war and therefore only meant something like “no killing of one of your own” (since the Old Testament wars were almost only wars against opposing religious groups). But that doesn’t explain our firebombing of Dresden, the Revolutionary War against Britain, the Civil War against the South, and all the “small wars” that took place throughout the very Catholic Latin America (keeping in mind I’m not including the “clearly guilty” and atheist communists we fought against, but rather all the “collateral damage” including the CIA-admitted genocide in Nicaragua.) Even locally, how far removed from the commandment against murder is he when the president allows Americans to die if by “one of your own” God meant to define the restriction in terms of citizenship? Certainly God recognized that there were both sins of commission, like putting a Titan missile into a madrassa, and sins of omission, like failing to properly repair the levees outside New Orleans and failing to put a person in charge of FEMA with some emergency management experience.

God does not let you into heaven based on a balance of good and bad acts. It’s not God’s up there with a spreadsheet tallying lives saved against lives wasted. “You killed or were responsible for the deaths of 3 million Mr. Bush, but, thankfully, but since you upheld 10% of your promise for African aid, you saved maybe, 100,000. But you didn’t go into Darfur like you should have which caused the death of 300,000, but you did…” Even a good president who actually used the power of his office to save lives around the world would have a hard time accounting for the millions of deaths from all the unstopped (or actively supported) dictators of the world. And clearly a president can’t be judged on counterfactuals like, “You didn’t bomb Beijing” which would be as good as saying “You didn’t blow up the planet.” I mean, neither did I, and I didn’t cause the deaths of a 1.5 million Iraqi children through ten years of international sanctions.

So presidents murder and they spend a great deal of time not preventing murders that they have the power to stop. There are political reasons of course. We have this thing called “sovereignty”and this related things called “self-determination.” These things are two political concepts, the belief in which prevents presidents from sending in the Army and Marines to stop every genocide it hears about. But, my understanding is God doesn’t care about our made up laws. There is only God’s law, and a good Christian president would have to disobey international law to follow God’s law.

So just in terms of this one commandment, we have to assume that presidents don’t make good Christians and vice versa. And that leads us to two related points. 1) Any president that claims they can balance being a good Christian and being a good president is a liar or they are stupid. In either case, I don’t want them to be my leader. and 2) Since all presidents are going to have to murder people, I feel like I should elect the guy (or gal) who is going to murder the least people…and stop the most worldwide atrocities.

So how does one make that determination? First I think we have to determine at least some of the important ways that people die as a result of the political decisions of our elected leaders.

Right off the bat (and probably because I’m thinking religiously for the moment), there is the death penalty and abortion. There’s also the deaths related to poverty–preventable illnesses like malnutrition, diarrhea, dehdryation. There is, of course, cancer, heart disease, and automobile accidents which, in no particular order, are the top three killers in the country. There is also murder. And suicide.

Internationally the big killers are the poverty diseases: malnutrition, dehydration, diarrhea–like those that afflict the American poor–but also measles, mumps, malaria, tuberculosis, and a handful of others, nearly all of which we have treatments for. There is of course HIV/AIDS. There are the big-name genocides like those in Darfur and there are big-name human rights abuses like the dowry deaths in India, public decapitations in Saudi Arabia, and the constant disappearances of dissidents in China and Russia. The biggest worldwide killer right now after the poverty-related diseases are the peripheral deaths related to civil wars like the one in the Congo.

Oh! And there is the small matter of those two wars we are fighting which is not only causing the deaths of hundreds of thousand of civilians, it is also killing thousands of Americans to boot. In addition to those Americans killed directly in the war (about 3500) the NY Times has found 121 homicides committed by soldiers that have returned from one of the two conflicts and (probably) 102 Afghanistan/Iraq-related suicides which, as far as I’m concerned are casualties of war as well.

And, while there is no commandment against torture, I have to say that, at the very least, those people who are tortured to death should count as murdered–as should those three “detainees” in Guantanamo who finally succeeded in killing themselves last June.

So, if I have to choose my future president based purely off a standard of not increasing the tally of murdered innocents and with the possibility that he or she might actually try to do something to save those already condemned to death by the current state of the world, am I going to vote for a Republican or a Democrat? Well, those Republican are against abortion, and that sounds pretty Christian…

It sure is hard. Which guy was it that said we should “double the size of Guantanamo?” was that Obama? No. Which candidates are running in support of the war? Which candidates are preventing stem cell research to help cure cancer? Which side, Republicans or Democrats have had more effect fighting crime by reducing poverty? Which candidates are talking about extending health coverage to the uninsured so that people can stop dying of malnutrition in the richest country in the world?

Oh yeah, the atheist, secular demons in the DNC. But don’t forget, they are pro-choice and in the grand scheme of things…ach…you get it by now.

There’s lots of ways to murder in the world, how is that Republicans have gotten the stranglehold on morality by fighting against just one of them?

Economic Stimulus

I’m commenting because I have a blog and I can. I am no economist.

The first thing that strikes me as odd about an “economic stimulus package” is where the money comes from. The government only has the money it collects in taxes, or in this case, the money it will collect in taxes. That is, it’s our money, that the government is going to give back…to us. Except that, it costs money to collect the money and it costs money to redistribute it back to us, which means, that the government is losing money overall. It would have been a lot cheaper to just let us keep it to start with.

Except, it’s not like they’re giving me back exactly the money I paid or anything. Almost all of us, so I’m told, are going to get between $300 and $600. But I, for example, paid more than $600 in taxes last year. The people getting $300 didn’t pay any taxes last year. People like Bill Gates, that theoretically paid substantially more in taxes last year than I paid, will still get about $600 or whatever. Of course this $600 won’t effect Bill Gates at all, and won’t stimulate the package…er economy. The $600 to me, yeah, that’s going to help me pay some bills and pay down some debt. Not exactly stimulating but moreso than what Bill and Melinda are going to do with it (unless they end up giving it to some inner city school, and bully for them if they do!). But that $300 to the people who make the least, yeah, that’s going to get used right up.

So what we have here, essentially, if I’m hearing it right, and if we stop right here in our “money cycle” is government-sponsored wealth redistribution: Taking money, in the form of income (and other) taxes, and giving it to people (unprogressively, I might add) that don’t pay taxes. Which is a blatant admission, if ever there was one, that trickle down economics doesn’t work, and that if you want to have a healthy economy you need to get more money into the hands of the people that will spend it.

But, I want to restate something I just said. The government will be passing this package of forced wealth redistribution so that less well-to-do people will spend it. Presumably on things they need like milk and AAA batteries, but with a $300 lump sum, it could just as likely end up as an ill-afforded down payment on a Rent-to-Own plasma screen TV. Whatever. The point is that it’s a government-sponsored wealth redistribution plan, redistributing wealth from the public coffers and to private enterprise.

Yikes.

Like I said, I’m no economist but I’m seeing a lot of things I don’t like here. I’m seeing the government praying to High Heaven that we don’t ask the tough questions about why a plan that’s good for “stimulating” the economy isn’t also good for long-term economic stability. I see them avoiding the issue of how a stronger corporate “tax” in the form of an increase in the minimum wage wouldn’t take more money from the very richest, and put it in the hands of the people who need it the most and thereby create a sustainable, strong economy. I’m seeing them avoid the issue of the failure of capitalist hierarchies. I’m seeing them shy away from an admission of the social failures of corporate greed.

Unfortunately I’m also seeing them feed government money, public money, tax money, back into the hands of the very people that caused the problem to start with. Every gallon of milk, every loaf of bread, every credit card payment, every iPod bought with that tax rebate was bought with money that could have paid for sewage infrastructure, highway repair, more teachers, better schools, lower insurance premiums, lower energy prices, advances in reusable energy and other social causes the increased price of which have caused our average cost of living to go up while wages have stagnated.

Furthermore, it’s an admitted band-aid. It doesn’t fix the issue that caused the problem. It doesn’t punish the guilty. It doesn’t stop a mortgage from defaulting. It doesn’t salvage the loan industry. It won’t stop the bankruptcies that will prevent millions from owning a home for the next seven to ten years. For that matter, the amount that is likely to be distributed is a spit in the ocean in terms of the amount that was “lost” in the housing crisis.

Should I, while I’m ranting, also mention that that money was not lost. It’s comfortably sitting in the bank accounts of billionaire executives at Citicorp and Merril Lynch and others. The money went up but it didn’t come back down. Those banks have been reporting “losses” lately, but those aren’t actual losses. Those are losses compared to last year’s ill-gotten gains. And it doesn’t matter, the guys and gals (but mostly guys) that raised expectations by arranging for multiple mortgage-sized thefts have filled their private coffers with annual and per-project bonuses, with 7- and 8-figure salaries, and with exit packages large enough to buy a third world nation.

And…

They’ll be getting a tax rebate.

If there was any justice, the ones that caused the problems by talking out of both sides of their mouths will be stripped of million-dollar legal aid and forced to defend their duplicitous business dealings with the aid of C-average public defenders. And, when they inevitably lose because of their inability to semantically twist the laws’ intents, they will have to buy the houses they stole and give them to the people that bought them.

That would be justice, that would be an economic stimulus package, and that would be a warning to all the other dollarmongers out there in the world looking for the next big loophole.

Of course, that would never happen, that would never work, and that would shut down the spirit of “entrepreneurship” that “makes this country great.” So, y’know, there’s that.