should still implies can

It's hard to imagine a better instrument for demonstrating the rapid onset amnesia of contemporary America than the Syrian civil war. Comparing the arguments and idiom of warmongering from the pre-Iraq days to those now is remarkable. The recent 10 year anniversary of the war in Iraq, and the attendant commentary, puts this phenomenon into a particularly sad relief. I was thinking yesterday that the fact that there is no proffered national security justification for intervening in Syria is not a political hindrance for hawks, but rather a boon. If a justification is vulnerable to rebuttal, hey, just drop it entirely, and make your case more unified, simpler. Even if that justification was once seen as the only important justification for war.

What depresses me most, though, is that the battle is still fought in the realm of "should" and seems so far removed from the realm of "can." I read the various arguments back and forth on Syria-- where these arguments actually happen, in blog comments and on Twitter and Facebook, not in disconnected essays by the prominent-- and the argument is still whether the United States should liberate the Syrian people, not whether the United States can. The most vital and enduring lesson of Iraq, the limitations of our competence, wisdom, and goodness, has disappeared into the ether. It's like there was never any doubt. There is no question that the United States can destroy the Assad regime. But as Iraq shows, this is a question almost entirely ancillary to whether the United States can deliver a world to the Syrian people that is better, more stable, more democratic, or more free. That's the question, and yet it goes largely ignored. Even as they argue against it, non-interventionists are forced into the position of arguing the merits of a question based on fantasy.

All of this, before we even consider deepening the precedent of the United States helping to settle civil wars, or our loose commitment to democracy, or the schizophrenia of our preferences regarding Islamist insurgency, or the near-certain persecution of Syrian Alawites and Christians, or of blowback, or the inevitable spillover of hostility, or of antagonism of Iran....

Perhaps the preoccupation with the question of the righteous over the question of the possible shouldn't surprise me. Americans desperately need to believe in our military omnipotence. Even many of my progressive friends to this day talk and act as if our military success can always be presumed. Discussion of Iraq and Afghanistan remain compartmentalized, contained. The past ten years have represented too grievous an injury to a consciousness that cries out for belief in American power, and so with a puff of smoke and an invocation of "should," so uninterested in "can," those years are gone.

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getting past forms

So really I just want to plug this TNI piece from Keguro Macharia, because it really is remarkable. I recognize many of the critiques Macharia makes of the contemporary university; some I agree with, some I don't. But the piece is moving and brilliant regardless of your take on that. I particularly am moved by his discussion of his very personal relationship to Fanon, and to how a writer, long past, can be a companion in confronting exhaustion, alienation, and surrender.

One thing I want to highlight is the recognition that people look to change forms as a way of changing what's internal to forms, and it doesn't work. I have friends who left the academy, wrote me the typical "goodbye to all that" emails, and expected to emerge into a new life. Yet they find that many or most of the things they disliked in the university remained. In part, I suppose, this is just the age old observation that people tend to believe that the next step is always the one that will put their life right, and it never is. But I more mean that a lot of times people ascribe the various pathologies of different cultures (and the academy has many) to those cultures in a deracinated way, when really the contagion springs from the same sources. You may attempt to ride out the neoliberal world in a small university town in the Midwest, or you may choose to spend it in an arty enclave in a city on the coast. But the ideology of power and reaction is totalizing and it is not susceptible to geographical self-defense.

As a grad student, I have been subject to the typical gentle ribbing from the independent thinkers and young literary set who eschew that route with a variety of critiques, some deeply theoretical and some gleefully superficial. I dig that about them. But I have noted before that many of those who are most proud in their rejection of the physical and bureaucratic structure of the academy are, in every intellectual way that matters, more thoroughly graduate students than any actual graduate students I know. Indeed: the particular nature of their rejection strikes me as an implicit acceptance of the intellectual architecture of graduate education. Which is not in any sense an argument that they are doing or saying something wrong. I merely say again: escaping the form is the easy part.

For myself, I have a perhaps irrational commitment to doing everything I am doing at the moment I am doing it. I got tattoos when I was younger. People ask me, do you regret them? I can only say, when I got them, I was the person who wanted them, which is all that matters. I am in school, and so I am committed to trying the curriculum. If I am of it, I will be in it. And I was of it before I had chance to be of something else. I never had a choice.

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teachable moments and missed opportunities

So this black Human Torch situation is the perfect example of a time when people who care about social justice and racism can either engage and explain, and in doing so maybe make things a bit better, or demonstrate their moral superiority, but probably not both.

Here is a point that I have heard expressed about resistance to casting nonwhite actors in traditionally white roles: progressives get mad when nonwhite roles are played by white actors. (See the controversy about Johnny Depp as Tonto, to name one of many.) But if fans complain that white roles are being played by nonwhite actors, progressives call them racist. That's a contradiction.

Well, look: there's a difference. It's a difference that has to do with history, and with context, and with the vastly different career prospects of actors who are people of color and of white actors. It's a difference that depends on a long, ugly tradition of white appropriation and of white mimicry. It's a difference that stretches back to the days of the minstrel show. It's a difference that's expressed in the ability of white actors to play "default" or "neutral" or "race unimportant" roles, while people of color are constantly funneled into race-specific roles. It's a difference that makes executives question whether Asian actors can play masculine heroes or black actors can play nurturing mothers. It's a difference that is expressed both in naked economic terms and in emotional and symbolic terms. There's a difference and the difference matters.

But that case has to be made, for political and rhetorical reasons if nothing else. The superficial plausibility of the hypocrisy charge-- you are against race switching when it benefits white people but for it when it benefits people of color-- means that we've got to make the case and take the time to explain. That's especially true because resistance to socially just readings of pop culture thrives on claims of persecution of white people. If we don't spell out why the distinction matters when it comes to race switching, it gives them ammo.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'll point out that I have less of a problem with white actors taking roles originally written or conceived as nonwhite that some. Context means everything. I don't have a problem with Linda Evans Hunt playing a (male) Indonesian in The Year of Living Dangerously because of how fantastically she slipped into the role and because of the political sensitivity of the movie writ large. I do have a problem with Tom Cruise being The Last Samurai, even though that wasn't technically race switching at all, as the movie was hamhanded, flagrantly Orientalist, and a profoundly obtuse example of the Mighty White trope. Meanwhile, people complaining about, say, Pre Rue from The Hunger Games being played by a dark skinned actor need to fucking get over it.

I think as this movie approaches we'll have a real opportunity for an effective conversation about this issue. I just don't trust the forces of Tumblr social justice to pull it off. Tumblr in particular is a good example of when the social currency of politics becomes oriented not towards pragmatic good but towards who can signal their disapproval more loudly and more shrilly-- and thus, less usefully. Let's avoid the temptation and show people why a black Human Torch is a natural fit.

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the contempt gap, again

This piece by Henry Farrell (not, I should note, a member of my fan club) on Clive Crook really gets at the essential bullshit of American centrism, which is that centrists aren't. As Farrell says,

I think it would be fair to say on the evidence that Clive Crook fancies himself as a centrist only interested in the pure and disinterested exercise of good policy judgment, but is in fact strongly (and even irrationally) motivated by his partisan animus against the left. I think it would also be fair to say that he’s at the ‘naked contempt towards dissenters’ end of the spectrum himself when those dissenters have the poor judgment to be leftwing.

This is certainly true of Crook, but it's worth saying that this is also true of American centrism writ large. Centrists may direct criticism in "both directions," but they inevitably treat arch-conservatism like reasonable ideas gone too far and radical leftists like lunatics who are out to destroy America. It's again indicative of a deeply skewed American political spectrum. Because genuine leftist sentiment has been effectively forbidden for so long, our whole conversation is off-balance. The extremes define the center. What's more, those on the edges draw heat and attention, making it easier for comrades to engage in their own work. When Paul Krugman is treated like a socialist and Clive Crook like a centrist, you've got a badly distorted political process at work. But in order to rebalance it, conventional progressives are going to have to stop constantly trying to achieve seriousness by renouncing those to their left. Doing so only plays into the hands of reaction.

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there's this

You should check this post out, by Tarzie.

I dunno. This reply will likely not satisfy him. All I can say is that, as we all are, I am too close to my own faults to read them accurately. I think that, as is often the case here, there's some right and some wrong in this post. All I can say is this: I recognize a host of problems with Jacobin, but I also find it an enervating  encouraging publication which puts out a ton of great stuff (and some silly stuff), and I also personally admire Bhaskar Sunkara and his project. Look, the most accurate criticism you can make about me is that I can't disentangle my personal from my political. Many people find that solipsistic and annoying. But I know of no other way to keep the fire. If liking Jacobin makes me unacceptable to Tarzie or anybody, that's how it goes. I have now had five years of people not liking me. I am used to it. Everybody works their own work.

What I will say unreservedly: Jeremy Scahill is not a dick. He's the opposite of a dick. I thank god for Jeremy Scahill, I do.

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POLITICS IS THE ART OF THE POSSIBLE ARGLE BARGLE

So in today's charming Obama news, the administration is cracking down on pot dispensaries in states that have legalized them. Because 70 year olds with pancreatic cancer have it too good.

Now, the usual suspects will likely respond that he haaaaaaaaaas to because politics politics fuzzy logic. To which I reply that Obama needs no congressional approval to tell the DEA to back the fuck off, that he has no more elections to win, and that the law and order types were never in a million years going to vote for him, anyway. (The central political miscalculation of the Obama administration has been that he ever had a chance of appearing reasonable to people who will regard him as a Islamic Marxist black atheist no matter what.) And even if I thought politics did apply in this situation, it would be moot, because a majority of the people in this country support decriminalization! It's a mess. It's an immoral, useless, unnecessary mess.

Saying "I continue to like and support Obama despite this bad mistake," I can at least understand. But if history is any judge, this pointless crackdown will be justified on its own merits. Why? I cannot fathom.

Oh, and in case anyone wants to once again claim that I'm a lefty who projected liberal fantasies onto Obama, he said he found medical marijuana appropriate and wouldn't use federal law enforcement to circumvent state law on the campaign trail in 2008.

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my probably ill-advised contribution to this condom conversation

So I want to stress that I'm only speaking from personal experience here, and that you should take this with all of the skepticism that implies. But I wanted to add a little to what Andrew Sullivan said in flagging this piece by David Masciotra about condoms. Masciotra takes what to me is the right tack, by using a scientific and social scientific approach to the issue. And the data is pretty plain: lots of people don't use condoms. The effort to address that issue should take a lot of forms, and the fact that many people don't is not at all an argument that they shouldn't. But there's no use in addressing the issue at all if the unpopularity of the method can't be discussed openly because it's one of those cultural liberal no-go zones.

Now here's what I want to add. My assumption is that I will always be using one, outside of a committed long-term relationship. What I find odd in the conversation is the typical assumption that resistance to using condoms comes only from men. Well, here's my personal experience: with many women, I've been asked not to use one. It happens all the time. I'm not suggesting at all that this is somehow an argument in and of itself about what best behavior is. Nor should you take that to assume that I acquiesced to the request and had unprotected sex. Like all aspects of healthy sexual behavior, the use of birth control depends on unanimous consent. I'm just saying that the assumption that resistance to using condoms only comes from men does not jibe with my personal experience. Whether that's indicative of broader trends, I don't know.

What I do know is that this is one of those issues where people talk in a way that is not conducive to getting to the truth. The arguments for using condoms regularly seem straightforward to me. The danger of STDs are very real. (The dangers of exclusively heterosexual people who don't use intravenous drugs being infected with HIV are non-trivial, but have often been dramatically exaggerated.) The worry of unintentional pregnancy is of course pressing. Being an adult, in many ways, means doing things that are responsible even if they aren't pleasure-maximizing in the short term. This is not an argument against condoms. I will continue to assume that I'll be using one every time, and I feel that's a responsible and sensible way to proceed.

But this conversation is so suffused with bullshit, with this kind of broad cultural signalling and assumed sanctimony, that I don't see how it can contribute to better behavior. Check the comments on that Atlantic article. Google around. Look at what standup comics say about condoms. Resistance and displeasure with condoms is widespread. Saying "get over it" does nothing to address the reality of that resistance. We have this small number of celebrities, people like Louis CK or the guys from South Park or Sarah Silverman or similar, who we allow to speak frankly about adult issues. For most of us, there are topics which are consistent exercises in unreality. This topic in particular seems to me to inspire people to talk in a way that is deeply removed from their own private behavior. And if you don't think that a residual feeling that sex is gross and naughty contributes to our lack of frankness and honesty, or that part of the impulse to judge people on this issue comes from the same judgmental territory that produces slut shaming... I think you're naive.

By the way: any comment on the character of the women I've been with, owing to what I'm talking about, will be met with immediate deletion and banning. No shaming allowed here. I mean it.

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