A Cogent Comment On War

One of Andrew Sullivan's many surprisingly astute readers responds to the Gaza War with an interesting philosophical discussion:

The problem with the doctrine of Just War, I would submit, is that it can only be applied in retrospect. In prospect, it is at once too restrictive and overly permissive. It requires an unachievable degree of certainty. But when leaders or their population nevertheless convince themselves that a conflict meets its standards, even though it cannot, it tends to grant them a sense of moral absolution that leads to callous indifference to the loss of human life.

No, the Israeli assault on Gaza cannot be said to be Just. Declaring it to be so is a manifestation of moral cowardice, of an unwillingness to face up to its awful price. It is merely a war: a messy, dirty conflict that injures all who are involved. It will exact a terrible toll on soldiers, militants and civilians, and there is no possible set of justifications which should blind us to that fact.

But that does not necessarily mean it merits moral condemnation. It does not mean that Israel was necessarily wrong to launch it, nor wrong to finish it. Those judgments tend to become clear only with the virtue of hindsight.

Take Israel's 2006 invasion of Lebanon. In its first week, many saw that invasion as justified. By the time it ended, it was widely viewed as a catastrophic, destructive, and unnecessary fight. Now, after two years utterly devoid of violence along the northern border, some are more ambivalent. If the conflict resumes where it left off, it will reconfirm its futility. But if Hezbollah and Israel arrive at a modus vivendi, it will be seen as having been the necessary precursor to peace. How are you supposed to know such a thing before you commit to fight, when years after the last shot, the consequences of the conflict remain unclear? Think of it, if you will, as a morality of doubt.

I am equally suspicious of the rectitude of those who unequivocally support this conflict as I am of those who sweepingly condemn it. The future is uncertain. The four conditions of the Catechism each point us in the right direction, and correctly suggest that the burden of proof must always rest with those who would resort to force. But three of the four demand absolute certitude: that the damage be "certain"; that "all means" be shown to be ineffective; and that it "must not" produce greater evils. Anyone who pretends to be able to answer these questions in the affirmative in advance of conflict is either a liar or a fool. No damage is ever certain, all means are never exhausted, and we never know in advance what toll a conflict will exact.

You have eloquently expressed your skepticism that the Israeli assault on Hamas will be seen, in retrospect, to have crossed these thresholds. I continue to believe that, if it meets its objective of clearing the way for a renewed ceasefire that is viable over the long term, it may well prove to have been justified. But I would be the first to admit that I am uncertain. I simply do not know what will happen.

The rhetoric that you and I find most abhorrent is spouted by those who experience no doubt, who see no uncertainty. It is dangerous. It lowers the threshold to initiate conflict, and leads to brutality after its onset. But the answer is not to identify a standard that would endow us with certainty; it is to recognize that certainty is always elusive, and to humble ourselves before that conclusion.

This post has calmed me down in a strange way. The certitude beforehand, the knowledge of right and wrong, is what is objectionable.

My own moral guidance has come from a passage of Albert Camus' The Plague:

The narrator is inclined to think that by attributing overimportance to the praiseworthy actions one may, by implication, be paying indirect but potent homage to the worse side of human nature. For this attitude implies that such actions shine out as rare exceptions, while callousness and apathy and the general rule. The narrator does not share this view. The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clearsightedness.

The IDF fancies it knows everything, and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. Hamas fancies it knows everything, and therefore claims for itself the right to kill.



The reason I bring this up is not so much to comment on Israel-Gaza, but rather to comment on how Bush's legacy may one day be restored by what happens in Iraq.

The way this standard examines responsibility for war (namely: its effects) may be kind to Bush. After all, now that we have this war, everyone is working their asses off to figure out how to salvage it. If, twenty years down the line, a mixture of our policy, international aid, and the hardwork of Iraqis manages to salvage the current levels of insanity, then President Bush will have been judged of having the foresight.

To a certain extent, you can argue that this is true. At the same time, you do need to judge the quality of the choice at the time. But I suppose President Bush is different than this, because even knowing what we knew at the time, we didn't have even a reasonable amount of evidence to go into war. And yet it was put forward with that same damaging certainty that the reader talks about.

It reminds me of why I told my suitemate I don't carry a gun for self-defense: because carrying a gun means you're going to make a choice at some point whether another person lives or dies. And I don't think I'll ever be that certain.

I've talked previously about the standards for war. The Powell Doctrine's strength, I believe, is that it gives an excellent benchmark to remain certain about war. After all, Clinton's interventions in Somalia and in Kosovo had roughly the same rationale--a few important practical elements were different, though, and that proved to be the difference between failure and success.

The Question Of American Guilt

I was watching Charlie Rose's conversation with Frank Langella and Ron Howard about the upcoming Frost/Nixon. The general flow of the conversation seemed to be about remembering Richard Nixon the human being, the almost Grecian-tragedy figure, steeped in hubris and ambition, who catastrophically fell from grace. And multiple times, Frank Langella (who has the fascinating task of becoming Richard Nixon) says that while he cannot pardon what Nixon did, it is helpful to remind ourselves that we are quick to judge and harsh; that we forget the living flesh human being behind the crimes.

Now, I agree with that. But that does not mean we should let our anger and condemnation of public officials go. Public officials should be treated with little tolerance for their crimes.

I saw a quotation in Time Magazine today that was attributed to Eliot Spitzer. A reporter asked him how he was liking being a contributing writer for Slate.com, and he responded:

"It sucks. I was Governor of New York."

There's a world of pain, and a world of arrogance, contained in those two sentences. But at the same time, what he did is unpardonable. He cannot be rehabilitated into our public office. He broke a public trust, and for that, he suffers the consequence. But we should do well to notice the human being behind the mask.


The question is, what's the point? What's the point in Stone's W. or Frost/Nixon or a billion soul-searching journalist pieces about the life and times of Spitzer, Edwards, Blagojevich, Stevens, Foley, Craig, Abramoff, DeLay, Gonzalez, Cheney, Yoo, Rumsfeld, Kissinger, McNamara, etc. etc. etc.?

If one looks at it once, the message might be, as Frank Langella says, to remember that we judge too harshly. But I disagree with that message. In truth, the message is that we should not forget that people become guilty without looking or acting like the criminals we are used to: the caricaturish images of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, or Idi Amin is not the only face of criminality.

People who commit crimes always believe that what they were doing is right. And some people manage to convince others that what they are doing is right. They slide by on the subjectivity of less clear crimes--crimes of a smaller scale, crimes in the pursuit of good.

And they involve themselves less directly in crime: they fail to speak out; they defend the crimes using statements which, if not untrue, may be dishonest.


At the end of World War Two, Karl Jaspers gave a lecture which came to be published as The Question Of Guilt. In English, you will find this book titled The Question Of German Guilt, but in truth, it is not that. Although in his context (in 1945, addressing a class of Heidelberg students who all served, in various capacities, in the Nazi Military) it bore specific resonance to the fabric of German society, it is true for every society at every moment in history.

For me, I would merely quibble a little with Jaspers on one point: he uses the word "guilt." I would use the word "responsibility." To say that each of us is guilty, to lesser and greater extents, for the war crimes, the corruption, the poverty, etc. is true, but it plays into a tendency to over-criminalize. Guilt is about condemnation; about destruction of character. The guilty are to be cast out.

Some of the people involved in each of these moments of history are guilty. But everyone is responsible. Once you are responsible beyond a certain degree, you are guilty.


Colin Powell is not guilty of war crimes. He did not order nor carry out war crimes. But as an influential and respected member of the Bush Administration, his failure to discover or intervene or warn about war crimes (as well as his complicity in creating an atmosphere where it was possible, inasmuch as he touted the Iraq War) means that he is responsible. He is not as responsible as Donald Rumsfeld, whose signature on the memo detailing what methods of torture are acceptable shows he bears not only responsibility, but guilt.

As the years pass forward from the Bush Administration, we will need to investigate who is responsible, and who is guilty. We will need to look every public figure in the eye and say, "Where were you, and what were you doing? What could you have done?" But in order to do that properly, we need to understand. We need to investigate what the context was, both human and political. They will not absolve of guilt (as Frost/Nixon clearly does not absolve Nixon of Guilt) or of responsibility (which nothing can absolve one of). But they will allow us to judge what we could have done.


I disagree with Karl Jaspers' selection of the word "Guilt" for the title of the lecture, and I disagree with the translator's insistence on the word "German" as a terrible addition. But there is one word in the title which fits like a glove: "Question." Because the point is that this is not an answer: we will not know for certain exactly to what degree President Bush was evil, misled, or apathetic; to what degree it was Cheney or Rumsfeld or whomever that originally conceived of the idea of torture. Responsibility (and guilt) lies both at the top and the bottom of the food chain; it lies both in the Executive and Legislative branches; it lies in the American People who, in 2004, re-elected the President who made it all possible.

It's a question we're going to have to have a mature dialogue about. But that mature dialogue requires the facts, and those facts require the justice system. And those, I believe, require Patrick Fitzgerald appointed to Special Prosecutor.

War Crimes! War Crimes! Read All About It

Nine days ago (apologies for the late post--finished my semester and came back to the United States), the Senate released a bipartisan report from the Judicial Committee (the Levin-McCain Report) alleging that President Bush opened the door to torture and abuse by signing a memorandum that said that the Geneva Conventions did not apply in the fight against al Qaeda. The military, under direction of Donald Rumsfeld, put men unqualified in interrogations in charge of training new interrogators. Rumsfeld then signed a list of torture methods (including waterboarding, which was an executable offense in World War Two). White House Counsel John Yoo wrote a memo creating the legal grounds for ignoring the Geneva Conventions, as did White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales (who called the Geneva Conventions "quaint").

Now what.

It's been eight days since the report. I've heard the blogosphere chattering, but a disgraceful lack of anything official on the subject. After all, the consensus is that the incoming Congress and the incoming Senate are going to have to deal with this subject. I have no clue on how Barack Obama is going to stand. On the one hand, he believes that returning the image of America as a just society, ending America's role in torture and indefinite detention (for instance, his determination to have Guantanamo Bay's prison camp closed within two years--a timeline that I wish was quicker, but I'll survive with). On the other hand, when it comes to political figures, he has shown a taste for reconciliation rather than recrimination (Lieberman comes to mind). Of course, when he has been reconciling, it has been over politics rather than war crimes.

I want to believe that Barack Obama will do the right thing. And the right thing for him to do is this: he should direct AG Holder, upon assuming office, to appoint Patrick Fitzgerald (who has taken down a high profile Republican and a high profile Democrat) Special Prosecutor to investigate war crimes.

I mean, it's pretty straightforward. It's on everyone's mind.

The only thing I'm worried about is the President's absolute power of pardon. I did my bit, and sent some letters to try and convince my Senators to back up Congressman Nadler's bill that would suggest that the President not use his pardon to pardon members of his own administration, and I got the following response from Senator Feinstein:

Thank you for your letter concerning President Bush's executive authority to issue pardons. I appreciate hearing from you.

On November 20, 2008 Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) introduced H. Res.1531, which expressed the sense of the House of Representatives that the President of the United States should not issue pardons to senior members of his Administration during his final 90 days in office. H.Res.1531 has been referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary.

Please know that I have read and understand your concern about the potential abuse of presidential pardons by President Bush. Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution gives the President "power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment." A reprieve reduces the severity of a punishment without removing the guilt of the person reprieved. A pardon removes both punishment and guilt.

Most judicial scholars interpret the President's power to grant reprieves and pardons as absolute. Individual reprieves and pardons cannot be blocked by Congress or the courts. The Framers of the Constitution envisioned the pardon power as having a narrow purpose. It is my hope that President Bush will use his Constitutional authority wisely.

Once again, thank you for taking the time to write me. I hope you will continue to keep in touch with me on issues of importance to you. If you have any questions or comments, please call my Washington, D.C. office at (202) 224-3841. Best regards.

I do have to say, one of the biggest reasons that Congress is not a sufficient counter-weight against the President is simply their refusal to fight the President in the court system sometimes. Executive Privilege and the pardon powers have grown too much, and the idea that Senator Feinstein is willing to bet the concept of Justice in America on President Bush using his Constitutional authority wisely... it is absurd.

A Note About Gates

Robert Gates says he's going to focus on closing Git-mo and accelerating our withdrawal from Iraq.

You know what's an odd upshot of naming Gates as the new SecDef? He gets to say what he wants now, even though he still works for Bush. It's as though Obama freed Gates to start pushing for Obama's defense policy under President Bush. Maybe that's part of the SOFA breakthrough? I hesitate to speculate, because I've never been in a Defense Department or a State Department, or in Iraq. But there's something about Gates' new dual role of being both Bush's Sec Def and Obama's Sec Def that gives Bush more leeway than, for instance, General Shinsekei.

The Different Doctrines Of War

Required reading from Ezra Klein.

The question:

David Brooks is right to understand Barack Obama's national security team as the maturation of thinking that began in Iraq and Afghanistan and focuses more on building civic capacity than destroying military capabilities. This is the post-Iraq consensus between liberals and realists, and it will hold as long as the question is Iraq. But what if the topic changes? If China triggers a confrontation over Taiwan or a threatening genocide cries out for a swift intervention? Where does Gates, or Jones, stand then?

There are many different standards by which America goes to war.

Self-DefenseThere's clearly a united consensus that if the United States suffers a direct attack, we will respond in some fashion.

Powell Doctrine:

1. Is a vital national security interest threatened?
2. Do we have a clear attainable objective?
3. Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?
4. Have all other non-violent policy means been fully exhausted?
5. Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?
6. Have the consequences of our action been fully considered?
7. Is the action supported by the American people?
8. Do we have genuine broad international support?

Unfortunately, Powell did not stand up for the Powell doctrine on Iraq (all of them except possibly 7 turned out to be wrong; 4 + 8 we knew wasn't there at the time without UN support; the intelligence community disputes most of the rest). But it is still a solid standard of going in to war, even if its architect let it fall apart.

Where do the members of the incoming Administration stand? This is a question that I would ask them if I got them in a serious interview. I think this is a standard that most of the Administration can agree upon, except with regards to the next standard.

Clinton Doctrine

"Genocide is in and of itself a national interest where we should act" and "we can say to the people of the world, whether you live in Africa, or Central Europe, or any other place, if somebody comes after innocent civilians and tries to kill them en masse because of their race, their ethnic background or their religion, and it's within our power to stop it, we will stop it."

Although I think in President Clinton's mind, this is part of the Powell Doctrine (an extension of the term "national interest"), that's a fairly controversial stance--it is difficult, but not impossible, to allege that mass genocide in Sudan will lead to American deaths, or even American national interests being defeated.

Of course, I happen to agree with President Clinton about genocide being "just cause", but I don't think that's what the Powell Doctrine means. My personal belief is that the "national interest" in point one of the Powell Doctrine should be replaced, or abutted, with "Are many innocent lives at stake?" I think that should apply equally to US Citizens, French or Indian citizens, or Sudanese.

But, of course, we have to remember the rest of the Powell Doctrine. Somalia was a failure because we didn't understand what was going on; we didn't have the plans, the necessary force, etc.

The Clinton Doctrine, I think, will be most strongly represented by Susan Rice, and possibly by Hillary Clinton. No idea about anyone else.

Bush Doctrine: according to wikipedia:

1) Unilateral action, if required
2) Terrorist-sponsor nations
3) Preventative strikes
4) Democratic regime change

The foremost, I think, is not supported by almost any of Obama's incoming Administration, nor the second one. The third has been explicitly endorsed by Barack Obama (cross-border raids into Pakistan count). I think where Obama parts ways with Bush is whether full scale war is appropriate for the preventative strike, or whether surgical strike action is better. That one may become contentious in a future situation.

The last, I think, will only gain currency if it's attached to something else; humanitarian + regime change, or imminent threat + regime change.

"An Historic Night"

Last week's election was truly historic. Not because of race.

Yes, I mean, it was historic because of race, but something which I find to be equally important is another reason: class.

There were four candidates running head to head. One came from a reasonably successful family (a distinguished military, the McCains) and had married into even more wealth.

The other three came from truly working-class backgrounds.

P-E Barack Obama grew up in the tough parts of Chicago. His father left him when he was young, he went to live with his grandparents, he got involved with drugs.

I'm not saying P-E Obama was poor when he got elected. I'm just saying that he started out poor.

VP-E started on the streets of Scranton. He also is not poor nowadays, but even with the setback of losing a wife and child in a car accident, he managed to keep struggling forward until his success today.

Sarah Palin, say what you will about her, was born to two teachers in a rural community. With not the most prestigious of degrees (sports journalism) she too worked her way up to something you will call a reasonable amount of success.


What history showed is that you don't have to have a name from a well-known family (the Clintons actually go back to the founding of the country; George W. Bush is at the end of a dynasty, the Kennedys became a dynasty) and he didn't grow up in a rich white background. They're not the first in this respect, but to have so many--and for them to be so successful, it still something very important to note.

2008 + Government Reform: Justice

It is clear that in the last eight years, our country has gone on the wrong track. One of the ways in which it has worst offended is in our system of Justice. After all, Justice is one of the things we hold dearest to our hearts: The Statue of Liberty, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence; if you can tie all of these (and other) American governmental bedrocks together, it's under the banner of justice.

War crimes have happened. A close examination of the facts leading up to the Abu Ghirab scandal, the extraordinary rendition scandal, the CIA "black sites" scandal, and other scandals besides--as well as the official line (now abandoned) within the White House that we operate outside of the Geneva Conventions all culminate to make that point.

How do we address justice? That debate is raging right now.

Andrew Sullivan is correct when he says that any attempt to prosecute former members of the Bush Administration will have severe blowback. It's as though Newt Gingrich, by pressing for impeachment of Clinton, bought President Bush all the amnesty he needs. Almost every single member of the Bush Administration has been liked to one crime or another, and as President Bush likes to say: the members of his Administration are ultimately his responsibility. They serve at the pleasure of the President. So why the blank check?

The answer is that our own political system is too tied up in itself to effectively prosecute itself. If Barack Obama sets up a satisfactory Special Prosecutor, like Prosecuter Fitzgerald who handled the Scooter Libby trial, then perhaps some sort of justice can be approximated. But it is highly unlikely that this will really get to the roots of the problem: as in the Scooter Libby trial, the ax-men may get caught, but the people who enabled them will go scot free.

But it cannot be acceptible that the people who authorized torture are allowed to go free. It cannot be acceptible that the callous dismissal of human lives be allowed to go unpunished. It cannot be acceptible that the trammeling over the US Constitution be ignored. Because if we don't address these ills, it will be worse than a lost opportunity of justice: we will forever communicate that these things are acceptible. Suppose the next President authorizes torture for foreign civillians on our custody, or secretly sets up renditions within the United States. Will they be able to argue that they are merely following a precedent set by President George W. Bush? One of the arguments I have heard in Bush's defense is to cite the losses of civil liberties in previous administrations--as though whatever we have done now pales in comparison to those heady days. But it does not.

The challenge for the incoming president will be to restore the image of Justice in the United States, and in the world.

Conversationlism + Pragmatic Theater + 2008: Sarah Palin And Tina Fey

I don't think I have to make a very long post here. Tina Fey's satire of Sarah Palin is a revitalizing moment for Saturday Night Live. I hope they can keep the satire up this sharp and fresh. It might strike you that Tina Fey's satire of Sarah Palin is fairly straightforward and basic. I just want to highlight the reason it's working so well.

Required Viewing

What can you notice about this side-by-side comparison? Tina Fey has discovered something about satire. Sometimes, all you have to do is present the truth in a frame of satire, and the laughs will come in themselves. It takes me back to an old South Park episode which mocked Scientology. All they had to do was tell the tale at the basis of Scientology, with a disclaimer at the bottom: This is what scientologists actually believe.

I sometimes see or hear the same thing out of Jon Stewart: "I'm not making this up!" All the satirist has to do sometimes is present the absurdity of the moment, shrug, and say, "That's reality."

To see members of the press--serious members of the press--still arguing on behalf of Sarah Palin as a serious candidate is ludicrous. And all you have to do is introduce perspective. Sometimes that's all that comedy has to be: perspective.

One Example 1

Example 2

Those two examples, I think, exemplify Jon Stewart's role as the satirist providing perspective.

Identity Politics

Today, in my Culture of Dissent class (taught by the inimitable Jan Urban, a Czech dissident from the Velvet Revolution and an excellent journalist in Bosnia, and Kosovo), we discussed the rather difficult question of why Communism proved to be popular.

The answer, from my point of view, is one having to do with the nature of identity in the 20th Century. There are many people who don't believe themselves to be very philosophical in their everyday life (philosophy being a very 'elite' passtime), but in point of fact, everyone has philosophical ideas and worldviews. And one of the big philosophical questions is, "Who am I? What is my identity?"

People base a surprising amount of their political convictions and idealisms based on who they think they are. For instance, one of the reasons that Americans have consistently voted for tax cuts for the wealthy is an array of polls which show that Americans consistently think that they are wealthier than they actually are (which corresponds to the way that they think they're thinner than they actually are).

We talked about the appeal of communism in the Industrial Revolution era. In order to understand it, you need to take a village-eye view of the change. The poor serfs, living in small rural communities, lived in an era with very little mobility. They were engaged in occupations passed down to them from generations, among a small community of people they knew. As the industrial revolution came to pass, serfdom was abolished: they were not necessary anymore. A vacuum formed, which sucked these serfs into the city. Suddenly they were in a huge community, much larger than themselves. Whatever they had previously been known for, through their family, was no longer a mark of identity. They passed by nameless and faceless masses everyday; they worked alongside nameless and faceless masses that did exactly what they did. There was no honor in their new work: they were (proverbially) just another cog in the machine; just another brick in the wall. They had been robbed of their identity, their purpose, and their security.

It was rather like going to a large college after being in a small high school.

At any rate, they needed a new identity. Communism provided that. It gave them a name for themselves: proletariat. It gave them a cause for their misery: bourgoisie. It told them that not only were the proletariat powerful, they were the single most powerful force of history: and that it was historically determined that they must succeed.

So, to turn to contemporary politics: during the Cold War, these identity politics broke apart into large dualisms: Communists and Capitalists on the world stage, and Democrats and Republicans on the American stage (note that third parties were still a noticeable force until World War Two). Ideology became, for one of the few times in American history, a primary source of identification: Democrats, Reds, Anti-Communists, Republicans, Socialists, Peaceniks, Hippies. All of these tags were ideological in nature. They gave people a sense of identity.

Today, these two grand coalitions seem more fractured. At least, the Republican camp seems to have split decisively into moderates, libertarians, neoconservatives, and social conservatives. A messy primary season filled with candidates who did not fully appeal to any of these groups (with the exception of Mike Huckabee for social conservatives and the Ron Paul movement for Libertarians) left people on the right with a lack of a sense of direction. Many of these people identified themselves as Republican strongly, without being on board with many of the actions or beliefs of other Republicans.

A big tip-off to me that this identity politics is coming apart? Obama has a large following of so-called Obamicans (Republicans for Obama). Notice, of course, that they are still calling themselves Republicans despite voting for Obama. I'm not necessarily saying that they aren't actually Republicans, but I'm noticing that their insistence is on defining themselves by a party affiliation which, in this election, may not be entirely accurate.

One of my favorite sayings to hear is "I've been a life-long Republican, but I'm considering voting Democrat." Notice the phrase "life-long." This is put forward as a positive, even though being a life-long Republican might imply that you've supported characters like George W. Bush, Nixon, or Reagan (in the same way that a life-long Democrat must have supported Carter, Dukakis, McGovern).

But this is the way people have previously identified themselves.

But with a hyper-specification of polls, there is a new level of identification going on. We hear it today on the news all the time. Demographics. Very small clusters of identity. How are middle-aged women going to vote? What about older men? Young black men in rural towns? These statistics can all be coallated. And apparently, they matter. And although women's groups have been condemning Palin since she was first put on the ticket, the latest poll shows that McCain has indeed spiked among women.

The question, I suppose, is whether we can move past identity politics. Barack Obama (in my opinion) has a way of addressing that. He appeals to people to vote not as Democrats, or Republicans, or as black and whites, but as Americans. This isn't just a trite slogan of identification: he's asking us to identify ourselves as America, and vote in such a way that doesn't just benefit my group or your group or any group, but benefits all of America.

And the question is: will it work.

Words, Words, Words, Words, Words

Language is very important to me. I'm a deep believer in the idea that language itself is the way that our brain is tied together; its the rules and the logic which gives it form. Nietzche once said "I fear we still believe in God because we still believe in Grammar." It seems to me to be strangely apt, despite the fact that I can't unravel the relationship. If I were any sort of a religion, it would be the blind-watchmaker vision of God (perhaps--it's hard to talk about a hypothetical version of me). The formulae and the logic that exists is existence, is the reason and the end, and therefore, would havve to be God.

There's a Czech saying:"Kolik řečí znáš, tolikrát jsi člověkem" which translates into "You are as many times a human as languages you know." I agree. Today, I was walking to my apartment through Prague, and I heard a German, an Englishman, and an American outside of a bar, talking in English. And I heard a Frenchman and a Czech person also debating in English. How much more they must learn about each other and the world, being able to communicate like that?

I've had a very positive experience with language in Prague. People have told me that they find Czechs rude. I've heard the same about the French. I found neither to be the case, either here or in Provence. The reason is because I always try very gamely and very positively to speak their language. My French is passable if fairly vocabulary-dry, but my Czech is only marginally better than a phrase book.

Don't ask them, "Do you speak English?" Ask them, "Parlez-vous francais" or "hablas ingles?" or "mluvim anglicky." It puts it on their turf, and it allows them choice. Several times now, I've had conversations with Czech people who don't know English. I barely know Czech. But using the few words I know, and the few words they know, and tracking intonation and gestures, I've managed to get by. And just the effort of communication has been greeted with smiles and indulgence for me.

Perhaps this is not everyone's experience. I tend to smile a lot and say "prosim" and "dekuju" a lot, just to make sure I'm in people's good graces.

Also: translation is an exceptionally fun way of learning meaning. I'm right now translating Artaud's journals when he was in a mental asylum in 1948. It's very, very simple French (which is good because I'm fairly lame at it), but it's fascinating. The tiniest of adjustments creates a totally different sense of what's going on. George Carlin once said that thoughts are airy and undefined, and then it gets attached to a word, and then you're stuck with that word for that thought. Translation defies that. You really have to know the person's mind to know what they were saying, and you have to know what they were saying to know their mind. It's rather like sculpting away at rock until you see the statue that was hidden beneath.

This is why I have a great respect for Eric Bentley, who most theater people in America do not pay proper homage to. Bertold Brecht is considered one of the top ten theater aestheticians of all time. He is often put in opposition to Aristotle in the very most basic theater classes, as a way of framing all of theater. Alienation, and empathy. But Brecht wouldn't have that privileged place in society if it wasn't for the tireless translation and promotion of Eric Bentley. Brecht would still be a small event in German history (and a freak Broadway success) if Bentley hadn't really placed Brecht on the map.

Words. They're the most important thing we have. I get very distressed when we damage words' meanings. The Bush administration has signalled the most vicious attack on the concept of language since Ernest Hemingway made the American dialect so word-impovershed. I can't list it all now, but concepts like "torture" or "time table" or "victory" have been so damaged, so needlessly... it signals terrible times for us. When your language unlinks from reality, you have lost your way: Vaclav Havel has written impressive things on that score.

This thought is short, because I'm still pretty chill from the Jazz Club I went to (music being the language we all speak and most of us can't read), and I have a less defined point than usual.

Culture Future II: Absolutism versus Reducible Complexity

It is easy to believe that we cannot change culture, because it is so large. So we throw our hands up and accept it as fate. But it doesn't have to be.

When I wrote this in the first post, I was speaking mainly of our contemporary American culture. In a way, Americans are still caught in the ancient debate of free will versus predestination. Although for some it is still in the old frame of God versus human free will, there are other outlets for that way of thinking. One place where I see this schism developing, which is a very difficult place to disentangle it, is in the realm of health (mental and physical). Am I the way I am because I made certain choices? Were those choices pre-determined by a combination of my genetic code and my upbringing?

This debate is crucial today because the two different views have two different solutions. If our depression (as a for instance) is caused by a plethora of causes beyond our control--our family, our genetic predisposition--then the best solutions will be medical ones (Prozac or Zoloft or some new experimental treatment). But if it is our choices which cause our depression, then it is our choices which will liberate us from it.

Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man’s reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable – and we believe they can do it again.

John F. Kennedy said that. He was not speaking in the realm of health, but in the realm of culture. He was speaking of American politics, of the direction which America wanted to take, of its growing fear in the face of the Soviet Union.

Our culture is man-made, therefore it can be shaped by man. Although, as I said before, we think we cannot change culture because it is so large, Man can be as big as he wants. There is both good and bad in that.

The discovery that man can be scientifically manipulated, and that governments can turn large masses this way or that as they choose, is one of the causes of our misfortunes.

That statement was written twenty years before Kennedy's speech; it was Bertrand Russell in an essay about religion entitled An Outline Of Intellectual Rubbish. 'Our misfortunes,' which he refers to, is the scourge of Nazism, which at the time was even more dangerous than the Soviet Union of Kennedy's day, purely by virtue of the fact that the Soviet Union was as wary of the United States as we were of them.

Russell is correct that scientific manipulation of societies was the well-spring of Nazism, and of the Soviet Union. It is, of course, also the well-spring of American democracy; but Russell is right to highlight the dangers of mass manipulation. Sociology and communication, for instance, are combined to create propaganda. What went wrong for Nazis and for the Soviets was not that culture cannot be controlled--it is that culture cannot be rigidly controlled.

The current model I enjoy for examining culture is that of the conversation. A good conversation requires two people who are interested in the exchange of thoughts and/or feelings. "Interested" means that they are ready to listen; "the exchange" means that they are ready to speak.

The Nazi Party and the Bolsheviks had something to say, clearly--this is clear by how much they wrote at the time. It was very fashionable for them to write tracts and to make speeches. But they were not willing to respond, not willing to interact with the rest of culture as a whole. They wished to substitute Nazi culture for German culture, to substitute Bolshevik culture for Russian culture, and thus, were not ready to listen. If writing tracts and making speeches shows how willing to speak, then the brutal censorship of tracts and speeches (and those who made them) shows how unwilling to speak they are.

In point of fact, this shows that they had failed the 'scientific approach' to culture that many have ascribed to them. They started with the hypothesis of culture, and they performed the experiment. But by refusing to acknowledge the data which returned, and by refusing to engage in active conversation with other cultures, they were stifling that very same intellectual approach to changing society that first led them to embark. After all, Karl Marx was able to write his tracts on the economy because he was a professor at an English university, able to write what he pleased without fear.

Why were they unable to be in conversation? Because they were absolutists. They dreamed of a utopia, but it was an absolutist utopia. There was no room for non-communism in the Communist ideal; the bourgeois had to be brutally crushed. There was no room for the "impure" in the eugenics of Nazis; the impure had to be brutally crushed. It is specifically in the utopian, absolutist execution of these ideals that they were unable to be in conversation with other cultures. Nothing in the universe is perfect, so an ethos which calls for the destruction of the imperfect is by definition destructive; in fact, it targets everything in the universe. In fact, if these absolutist movements could look at themselves with objective eyes, they'd be forced to destroy themselves. How many of the leading Nazis were genetically pure? How many of the Communist leaders were truly equals to the rest of their society?

In The Rest Is Noise, Alex Ross wonders why intellectuals who formed the artistic elite in Vienna found themselves supporting Nazism during its rise. As an answer, he says,

The cultish fanaticism of modern art turns out to be unrelated to the politics of fascism: both attempt to remake the world in utopian forms.

In fact, it is the cultish absolutism of certain modern artists; many of these same artists purported to hate the support of the people because the people were inferior. Take, for instance, Schoenberg:

If it is Art, it is not for all, and if it is for all, it is not art.

This sort of bloody-minded absolute extremism is underpinned on a hatred of the imperfect. It is unfortunate, for instance, that this absolutism can sometimes arise from religion. I do not believe, like many of the New Athiests and their intellectual forebears, that everything religion touches is evil. But I do agree that absolutism is in religion is perverse and destructive. If, as some purport, we are all touched by sin and born in sin, and God hates sin, then how can God not hate everything?

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.

Jonathan Edwards, one of the earlier evangelicals in this country, spoke that in his sermon "Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God." Through the hyperbole of the text, it is clear to see that once you accept the philosophy of absolutism, everything which is not absolute is absolutely wrong; the world is black and white--and in fact, mostly black.

It has often been said of Islam that it is actually one of the most respectful religions, and that today's fundamentalists are perverting the Koran. But the Koran does have passages within it which support today's fundamentalists, just as the Bible supports today's fundamentalist Christians and fundamentalist Marxists can use the Manifesto to slaughter Capitalists if they so choose. Each of these ideas, when taken absolutely, are incompatible with other cultures--obviously, because absolute cultures refuse to be in conversation with other cultures.

But the hope for the world is not, as Richard Dawkins or George W. Bush might think, to set up an opposite absolutism and let them battle to the death ("Democracy" versus totalitarianism; Hitchens' anti-theism versus theism, etc.), but rather to create the forum for conversation which refuses to tolerate violence and moderates the conversation as it precedes.

The clear example for this is in the creation of the US Constitution. Reading the Federalist papers by Madison and Hamilton reveal something clear about the Constitution: although the Constitution was founded on certain ideals, the machinery of the Constitution was built not for a utopian, ideal community, but rather for the everyday. Rather than hoping that America would never elect a cruel dictator or greedy, self-serving beaurocrats, the machinery was put into place to keep such people in check. This is the center of the concepts of checks and balances. The machinery continues to need tinkering, especially considering the abuses which the Constitution has weathered over the past eight years, but the concept is still sound.

We still have a culture which allows for conversation, although the state of our conversation is still poor. We have a culture which allows for change. Even cultures which attempt to stifle change and innovation find themselves prey to the human spirit. Consider Vaclav Havel, writing in the frozen Czechoslovakia during the oppression of the Cold War.

I am unwilling to believe that this whole civilization is no moer than a blind alley of history and a fatal error of the "human spirit."

But he did not sit and wait for things to happen; nor did he preach some extremist anti-Communist revolution. Rather, he preached the idea of "living in truth," describing in his seminal essay "Power of the Powerless" of a green-grocer who does simply nothing more than stop following the ridiculous laws of the Communist regime. He is not attacking the problem at the center, not trying to topple a powerful and huge regime alone, but rather: he is eroding the ideological and absolutist foundation of the regime. The more people simply stop cooperating, the weaker the regime was. And in fact, that is how the Soviet Union collapsed: not with a bang, but with a whimper.

The problem of "solving" culture is a problem of reducible complexity. It is impossible to change all of culture overnight; that path leads to absolutism. The Soviet Union tried, in one act of revolution, to cure every problem of the Industrial Revolution which had been brewing for a full century, and further to cure every problem of the feudal, monarchal Russia which had been brewing for centuries before that.

At the same time, the Western world was addressing the problems one by one. Today, we have ensured a far higher quality of life than the Soviet Union had, and far higher than the time of the Industrial Revolution. We solved each problem slowly, over the course of the 20th Century. There was a brief period, at the beginning of the Soviet Experiment and during the Great Depression, when actually there was a higher quality of life in the Soviet Union. But because of the absolute and rigid ideology that had created it, the Soviet Union never advanced; in fact, it regressed.

Take for instance, Richard Foreman:

If you’re a big person, carrying your big, heavy, important projects and concerns with you into the theater, when you confront my play it will appear to be an amorphous cloud of molecular particles, circulating in a seemingly random pattern, like Brownian motion. Perceiving it like that, the big person that you are measures the play against the heavy projects you carry around in your head, and you think: ... I want help in resolving such weighty problems, and all this play proposes is an amorphous cloud of circulating molecules, incapable of budging those big solid shapes that fill my life. What I need from a play is a shape bigger and heavier than my own in order to reorganize my own massive shapes.

My art proposes, however, that by shifting your attention to the scale on which atomic events occur...you discover that your own solid shapes are themselves but clouds of molecules in circulation.

Richard Foreman is talking about tackling personal problems on a quantum scale; the model which he's using (metaphorical) is of reducible complexity.

Our society is having trouble doing this. We expect our President to "fix" the education system. But the problems in the education system today are myriad; problems of race, economics, educational theory, and cultural value of education are among many problems which face the education system. Others, seeing the complexity in their face, would prefer to withdraw; give everyone who can the opportunity to flee to private education.

Foreign policy is the same; on the one side, President Bush wishes to attack every problem with an Insta-Solution: democracy. Iran, Russia, North Korea, Iraq, Palestine--all of these problems could theoretically be solved by sweeping aside their leadership, and instituting 'democracy.' This ignores their complex histories, the billions of individual forces which are the swirling and pushing in every different directions. Others, currently led by Ron Paul, have a different approach: withdrawing from the foreign policy sphere. While a movement toward disengagement might be appropriate at the moment, isolationism is not how America can use its considerable position in the world to make it better--for itself as well as for everyone else.

What American politicians lack is the care, attention, and complex conversation with the rest of the world which leads to smart foreign policy. When we discuss foreign policy, we don't reduce the problem; we reduce our approach to it. We approach it in reductive terms; that is to say, reductionist. And reductionist thinking is absolute thinking because what reductionism and absolutism share is an inability to deal with complexity. Complexity is caused by different forces in different directions. Iraq is not just Sunni versus Shiite.

If we attempt to solve the problems facing our culture by reducing complexity into simplicity, and attempting to solve those 'simple' problems with absolute principles, we will fail. If we lump problems together into massive, fear-inducing entities (the War on Terror; the War on Poverty; the War on Drugs), then we will fail. But if we, as a community, break apart these problems into small, workable chunks, then each of us can play a part in solving these problems. We can only solve these many particles of problems if we're in conversation about these problems, but it will no longer be like climbing Darwin's Mount improbable.