I know it can be hard to demonstrate tone in text, but if you have to write "/sarcasm" or similar, perhaps you should just rethink things.
Saturday, 29 October 2011
Let me get away from my usual aggressive rhetoric for a bit to talk about the lack of accountability in contemporary political punditry.
If I didn't believe in the value and importance of political blogging I wouldn't spend any of my time on it, or on critiquing it. And if I felt that the people I write about most weren't worth critiquing I wouldn't bother. I think that political blogging, and many political bloggers, are worth investing in. But I am saddened and angered by the lack of accountability and quality control levers within the profession. Let me show you what I mean.
Here's Yglesias at his best, on education, a topic on which he and I have great disagreements:
Here's Yglesias at his worst, on education:
What I want is to get more of the former and less of the latter. I'm just one person, so my opinion individually should naturally be of little consequence. But there should be some mechanism of accountability through which the mass can influence professional bloggers. And you'd certainly like that system of accountability to privilege factual accuracy, reference to empiricism, and an appropriate acknowledgment of complexity.
The problem is that there's simply no reliable mechanism of accountability in political blogging to deal with the dross. People say that the oppositional ideologies within the blogosphere ensures pushback, but as I've been trying to document, that doesn't really happen. Social capture happens. Professional incentives distort. The think tank and media distortions in professional punditry, such as the massive over-representation of libertarianism in comparison to the number of American libertarians, upset the balance. Yglesias's commenters are often a good check on his laziness, but they are very easy to ignore, and he does. The Center for American Progress certainly doesn't seem to be imposing any accountability for him; they don't appear to ask him for accuracy or quality control. (They did, however, hijack his blog when he criticized Third Way, which should tell you something about CAP.) There are those few critics such as me, but I'm also ignorable, and there are standard measures to delegitimize people like me, such as the ubiquitous insistence on personal vendetta.
I just don't see any particular set of incentives or penalties for your average political blogger. This is exacerbated by the manic pace of blogging, which means that most posts are quickly forgotten, so there's little opportunity for public accountability. It frustrates me when professional bloggers don't evolve or improve, but I can't really blame them, as there's no concrete reasons for them to change.
I will be the first to tell you that knowledge making in the university system is imperfect. Many people can recount all the ways in which the publication/peer review/tenure process is politicized, detrimental to teaching, distorting, and inimical to certain kinds of inquiry or topics. But there is at least a clear process here. If I want to make an article and have it resonate professionally, I have to publish in a reputable journal. The editors of the journal will give my proposal an initial vetting. They reject many or most. If I get through that original vetting, my paper goes through the peer review process. The peer reviewers make comments and set standards. I have to change my article in order for it to be published. Once it's published, it's accessible to a field of experts who will evaluate it for quality and accuracy. If I'm wrong, others will publish criticizing me. Publication is rare enough that every piece really counts. If my work is consistently poor or inaccurate, it will deeply impact my ability to get hired, to gain tenure, and earn promotion and professional laurels. It's an imperfect system, but it's a system with a clear set of quality control levers that are directly tied to professional advancement. There simply is no equivalent system in political punditry. See the careers of, for example, Bill Kristol and Jeffrey Goldberg for evidence.
Oh, by the way: Yglesias's comparison is more apt than he knows in one particular way. As so often happens with policing, the inevitable result of the ed "reform" movement will be juking the stats. These educational problems are irresolvable given the realities of our system of resource distribution, inequities in quality of parenting, and the unspeakable but real fact that people are substantially unequal in intellectual aptitude. But since our society is incapable of recognizing that we don't have the tools to solve all of our problems, we instead cover those problems with pleasant lies. There is absolutely no question in my mind that the educational reform wars will cool through a consensus decision to pretend the problems away.
The question is, will we do so in a way that destroys unions, harms teachers, and hands yet more public over to private enterprise-- dare I say it, a self-evidently unprogressive outcome.
If I didn't believe in the value and importance of political blogging I wouldn't spend any of my time on it, or on critiquing it. And if I felt that the people I write about most weren't worth critiquing I wouldn't bother. I think that political blogging, and many political bloggers, are worth investing in. But I am saddened and angered by the lack of accountability and quality control levers within the profession. Let me show you what I mean.
Here's Yglesias at his best, on education, a topic on which he and I have great disagreements:
My father dropped out of high school in the middle of 10th grade. As it happens, my father went on to have a successful career as a novelist and screenwriter and is by no means poor. Still the fact of the matter is that my mother could help me with my high school math homework and my dad couldn’t, since he has very little formal math education. A person who grows up in a household headed by a single mother who didn’t complete high school is going to be at a significant educational disadvantage vis-a-vis a person who grows up in a household with two college educated parents for reasons that are not going to be solved by a transfer of financial resources to the single mother. Similarly, a person whose parents were both raised in Latin America and don’t speak English is going to be at a substantial disadvantage. Literate English-speaking parents do a lot to teach their kids to read and write, parents who don’t speak English and may have limited literacy in their native language aren’t able to do this.This is smart, and the kind of smart that reminds you why it's worth sticking with Yglesias through his less well-developed ideas, and why his prominent role in the political blogosphere is on balance a good thing. I'm not particularly pleased with the reference to common sense on what is an empirical question, but that's no big deal. I think he's making trenchant observations about how conventional wisdom can be distorted or distorting. This kind of thinking is the beginning of inquiry-- you've got to follow up with your empiricism-- but perfectly legitimate and necessary, and an example of the best kind of policy generalism, which is necessary for a functional democracy. You'll note, incidentally, that here Yglesias is moving in the direction of complexity.
Here's Yglesias at his worst, on education:
my experience is that a lot of people on the left, rather than arguing the merits of the issue, seem to take it as self-evidently un-progressive to try to improve the performance of a public agency in part by doing things that the people who work at the agency don’t like. When it comes to big city police departments, I think a much healthier attitude exists. Not one that says cops shouldn’t have rights in the workplace or that “cops are bad,” but one that recognizes a substantial tension between the liberal desire to have police departments work well and the police officers’ desire for high levels of job security and low levels of accountability.I should hardly have to tell you that this is a specious and childish comparison, one that distorts more than it clarifies. There are a vast amount of difference between education and policing. As happens so often, his commenters just absolutely school him here, so you can look to them for a comprehensive set of critiques of this post. To stake out my usual position, I would just add that Yglesias continues to ignore (despite having heard this critique many times) that there are persistent and non-trivial epistemelogical difficulties in measuring teaching quality fairly, accurately, and to our practical good, and that accordingly we have far more reliable information about best practices in policing than we do in education. Also, criticisms of policing don't actually take the form of calls for widespread privatization, nor the destruction of police unions, which are the goals of the education reform movement and are transparently conservative/libertarian. You'll note, incidentally, that here Yglesias is moving in the direction of simplicity.
What I want is to get more of the former and less of the latter. I'm just one person, so my opinion individually should naturally be of little consequence. But there should be some mechanism of accountability through which the mass can influence professional bloggers. And you'd certainly like that system of accountability to privilege factual accuracy, reference to empiricism, and an appropriate acknowledgment of complexity.
The problem is that there's simply no reliable mechanism of accountability in political blogging to deal with the dross. People say that the oppositional ideologies within the blogosphere ensures pushback, but as I've been trying to document, that doesn't really happen. Social capture happens. Professional incentives distort. The think tank and media distortions in professional punditry, such as the massive over-representation of libertarianism in comparison to the number of American libertarians, upset the balance. Yglesias's commenters are often a good check on his laziness, but they are very easy to ignore, and he does. The Center for American Progress certainly doesn't seem to be imposing any accountability for him; they don't appear to ask him for accuracy or quality control. (They did, however, hijack his blog when he criticized Third Way, which should tell you something about CAP.) There are those few critics such as me, but I'm also ignorable, and there are standard measures to delegitimize people like me, such as the ubiquitous insistence on personal vendetta.
I just don't see any particular set of incentives or penalties for your average political blogger. This is exacerbated by the manic pace of blogging, which means that most posts are quickly forgotten, so there's little opportunity for public accountability. It frustrates me when professional bloggers don't evolve or improve, but I can't really blame them, as there's no concrete reasons for them to change.
I will be the first to tell you that knowledge making in the university system is imperfect. Many people can recount all the ways in which the publication/peer review/tenure process is politicized, detrimental to teaching, distorting, and inimical to certain kinds of inquiry or topics. But there is at least a clear process here. If I want to make an article and have it resonate professionally, I have to publish in a reputable journal. The editors of the journal will give my proposal an initial vetting. They reject many or most. If I get through that original vetting, my paper goes through the peer review process. The peer reviewers make comments and set standards. I have to change my article in order for it to be published. Once it's published, it's accessible to a field of experts who will evaluate it for quality and accuracy. If I'm wrong, others will publish criticizing me. Publication is rare enough that every piece really counts. If my work is consistently poor or inaccurate, it will deeply impact my ability to get hired, to gain tenure, and earn promotion and professional laurels. It's an imperfect system, but it's a system with a clear set of quality control levers that are directly tied to professional advancement. There simply is no equivalent system in political punditry. See the careers of, for example, Bill Kristol and Jeffrey Goldberg for evidence.
Oh, by the way: Yglesias's comparison is more apt than he knows in one particular way. As so often happens with policing, the inevitable result of the ed "reform" movement will be juking the stats. These educational problems are irresolvable given the realities of our system of resource distribution, inequities in quality of parenting, and the unspeakable but real fact that people are substantially unequal in intellectual aptitude. But since our society is incapable of recognizing that we don't have the tools to solve all of our problems, we instead cover those problems with pleasant lies. There is absolutely no question in my mind that the educational reform wars will cool through a consensus decision to pretend the problems away.
The question is, will we do so in a way that destroys unions, harms teachers, and hands yet more public over to private enterprise-- dare I say it, a self-evidently unprogressive outcome.
Friday, 28 October 2011
Brad Delong was kind enough to link to my post about social and professional capture in blogging. I would just say that the point is less about who gets linked to and who doesn't and more about the pressures that professional or professionalizing bloggers feel to adopt certain mainstream positions, or to kowtow to certain prominent figures within the blogosphere. This problem is much less acute for someone like Dr. Delong, who has a day job and operates outside of the DC bubble.
On the subject of the DC bubble, and to defend myself against the typical claims that I'm just making all of this up, I would point you towards a great piece by Conor Friedersdorf called "The Tyranny of Washington DC." Friedersdorf comes from an entirely different ideological background than I do, is much more familiar with the DC bubble than I am, and comes to many of the same conclusions that I do. I'm not just making this stuff up.
In a situation where a close personal friend genuinely considered some action to be a personal betrayal, I'd try to avoid taking it even if I disagreed with his assessment. Washington, D.C. is a city where taking that approach can preclude whole classes of criticism directed at one's "own side," so stringent are the demands for a loyalty that is too broadly construed. Or else one can transgress, and be shunned by folks who were much friendlier when you agreed with them.
Read the whole thing.
Thursday, 27 October 2011
The problem isn't conservatives. That's not what I worry about, when it comes to my residual hopes for real change. The screeching of pathetic drones like Rich Lowry or Kevin Williamson is expected and immaterial. They don't change, nor are they corrigible, so they are ultimately irrelevant.
No, here's the problem.
Someone called Tom Bridge takes to the tastefully gated pages of Tumblr to express some sort of formless complaint about the Occupy protests. I've read it back three times and I'm still not sure what kind of argument is being expressed here. There appears to be an annoyance that Occupy protests are "taking up our public spaces," which is a criticism that is perhaps blunted by a familiarity with the definition of "public." He doesn't like the equation of the Occupy protests with the Arab Spring. I don't either, but then this is the kind of empty, citation-and-specific-target-free complaint that you can feel free to discard at any time without prejudice. He also is apparently under the impression that a police baton feels like the gentle caress of angel hair. Beyond that... what? What is the argument here? I haven't a clue.
What's funny is that this is a perfect inversion of the typical whinge about Occupy-- you don't stand for anything! Where's your list of demands! Who is the specific Democrat whose campaign you must be supporting!
You'll note, though, that this sentiment is popular. This Tumblr post has been reblogged and Tweeted and whatever else endlessly, despite not being insightful, fair, well articulated, specific, funny, meaningful, or intelligent. It doesn't need to be. Mr. Bridge is here operating as a cog in the resentment machine, and others celebrate his piece because they are afraid of what Occupy represents: the death of the idea that you can be protected from political impotence by apathy and your cultural convictions.
This photo is prime evidence for my conviction that anything, no matter how lame or poorly executed, can be celebrated online, as long as it speaks to some kind of base animal anxiety. For Hipster B. Cool here, the idea that politics is something that has flesh and blood consequences for humanity is a terrible affront; he and those like him have built an entire culture around self-defense mechanisms. To admit conviction is to admit the possibility of vulnerability. To admit vulnerability is to lose in the endless game of "I am on the Internet and I am better than you." So Jackof Smirnoff here doesn't have to have a point, funny jokes, meaningful criticisms or a political notion to get reblogged. He just has to reassure his "arty" koffee klatsch that they are protected and safe within the bubble of their meaningless convictions about media and culture.
I mean, really. "Call a Congressman." Yes, that's the way to create change! Remember how Congress took action after the financial crisis and all of our problems were solved? When the money stopped going to the same tiny group of rapacious financiers who drove the entire world economy to the edge of the abyss? When the unemployed got a comprehensive jobs program? When we stopped spending billions on misadventures in the Muslim world and instead stimulated the economy and rebuilt our employment base? That was sweet.
The idea that the Occupy protests have no core complaints is and has always been a pure media phenomenon. It is an invention, fobbed off on people like Tom Bridge or Beardo McNotFunny here by a media that plays them for fools. I'll say it again-- there are those who are so deeply savvy that they become immeasurably stupid. (Think almost everyone who writes for New York magazine.) Here's all you need to know. For the large majority of our country's people, the engine of economic improvement has stalled. You can look at any chart of inflation-adjusted dollars and see that for the average American worker wages have been stagnant since the early 1980s. Meanwhile, for a tiny sliver of our population, wealth has exploded beyond the dreams of avarice during the same period. And this sliver represents the same people who ruined the economy and cast millions into unemployment. What Occupy represents is the loud and angry reaction to that fact. This reaction has been deeply deserved. Meanwhile, the legislative branch which Seamus J. Ironic Mustache here supports has done nothing of substance to redress this injustice. Nothing at all.
I genuinely believe that a person like Socially Approved Facial Hair here has to look out at Occupy with a kind of existential terror. Many people out there generate their self-worth from their ability to make fun of others. And who has traditionally been an easier target than the stereotype of an Occupy protester? Hippies are the people everyone can make fun of! Unfortunately for this anonymous man with his limp satire here, Occupy is not made up of the stereotype, and it has not been met with this kind of showy superiority. Instead it has been met with cautious but genuine interest, with critical examination, and with a deep interrogation of our current way of life. This kind of genuine, unfussy, and unembarrassed consideration of values and community morals is anathema to many, but they find their influence collapsing. In the face of that, they take cheap swipes like this.
Let me say this a thousand times, let me say it a million: I will take the most horrid conservative over this, any day of the week. I will take someone who is wrong, but is wrong about something, over this desperately preening, showy nothing. I will take total commitment to incorrect values over this proud emptiness. This kind of showy cowardice, this contempt for the notion of meaning, is what it looks like when you give any control of your country or your community away, or worse, when you sell it for some cheap commodity like irony or "wit."
Put that on your Tumblr, culture bunny.
No, here's the problem.
Someone called Tom Bridge takes to the tastefully gated pages of Tumblr to express some sort of formless complaint about the Occupy protests. I've read it back three times and I'm still not sure what kind of argument is being expressed here. There appears to be an annoyance that Occupy protests are "taking up our public spaces," which is a criticism that is perhaps blunted by a familiarity with the definition of "public." He doesn't like the equation of the Occupy protests with the Arab Spring. I don't either, but then this is the kind of empty, citation-and-specific-target-free complaint that you can feel free to discard at any time without prejudice. He also is apparently under the impression that a police baton feels like the gentle caress of angel hair. Beyond that... what? What is the argument here? I haven't a clue.
What's funny is that this is a perfect inversion of the typical whinge about Occupy-- you don't stand for anything! Where's your list of demands! Who is the specific Democrat whose campaign you must be supporting!
You'll note, though, that this sentiment is popular. This Tumblr post has been reblogged and Tweeted and whatever else endlessly, despite not being insightful, fair, well articulated, specific, funny, meaningful, or intelligent. It doesn't need to be. Mr. Bridge is here operating as a cog in the resentment machine, and others celebrate his piece because they are afraid of what Occupy represents: the death of the idea that you can be protected from political impotence by apathy and your cultural convictions.
This photo is prime evidence for my conviction that anything, no matter how lame or poorly executed, can be celebrated online, as long as it speaks to some kind of base animal anxiety. For Hipster B. Cool here, the idea that politics is something that has flesh and blood consequences for humanity is a terrible affront; he and those like him have built an entire culture around self-defense mechanisms. To admit conviction is to admit the possibility of vulnerability. To admit vulnerability is to lose in the endless game of "I am on the Internet and I am better than you." So Jackof Smirnoff here doesn't have to have a point, funny jokes, meaningful criticisms or a political notion to get reblogged. He just has to reassure his "arty" koffee klatsch that they are protected and safe within the bubble of their meaningless convictions about media and culture.
I mean, really. "Call a Congressman." Yes, that's the way to create change! Remember how Congress took action after the financial crisis and all of our problems were solved? When the money stopped going to the same tiny group of rapacious financiers who drove the entire world economy to the edge of the abyss? When the unemployed got a comprehensive jobs program? When we stopped spending billions on misadventures in the Muslim world and instead stimulated the economy and rebuilt our employment base? That was sweet.
The idea that the Occupy protests have no core complaints is and has always been a pure media phenomenon. It is an invention, fobbed off on people like Tom Bridge or Beardo McNotFunny here by a media that plays them for fools. I'll say it again-- there are those who are so deeply savvy that they become immeasurably stupid. (Think almost everyone who writes for New York magazine.) Here's all you need to know. For the large majority of our country's people, the engine of economic improvement has stalled. You can look at any chart of inflation-adjusted dollars and see that for the average American worker wages have been stagnant since the early 1980s. Meanwhile, for a tiny sliver of our population, wealth has exploded beyond the dreams of avarice during the same period. And this sliver represents the same people who ruined the economy and cast millions into unemployment. What Occupy represents is the loud and angry reaction to that fact. This reaction has been deeply deserved. Meanwhile, the legislative branch which Seamus J. Ironic Mustache here supports has done nothing of substance to redress this injustice. Nothing at all.
I genuinely believe that a person like Socially Approved Facial Hair here has to look out at Occupy with a kind of existential terror. Many people out there generate their self-worth from their ability to make fun of others. And who has traditionally been an easier target than the stereotype of an Occupy protester? Hippies are the people everyone can make fun of! Unfortunately for this anonymous man with his limp satire here, Occupy is not made up of the stereotype, and it has not been met with this kind of showy superiority. Instead it has been met with cautious but genuine interest, with critical examination, and with a deep interrogation of our current way of life. This kind of genuine, unfussy, and unembarrassed consideration of values and community morals is anathema to many, but they find their influence collapsing. In the face of that, they take cheap swipes like this.
Let me say this a thousand times, let me say it a million: I will take the most horrid conservative over this, any day of the week. I will take someone who is wrong, but is wrong about something, over this desperately preening, showy nothing. I will take total commitment to incorrect values over this proud emptiness. This kind of showy cowardice, this contempt for the notion of meaning, is what it looks like when you give any control of your country or your community away, or worse, when you sell it for some cheap commodity like irony or "wit."
Put that on your Tumblr, culture bunny.
Monday, 24 October 2011
"The documentary makes it clear how repressive and brutal Gadaffi's regime is. How he has locked up and tortured thousands of his opponents. But then it takes a fascinating turn. The interviewer asks Gadaffi to explain why he has sent Libyan troops to fight with the Palestinians against Israel, and why he has sent in Libyan agents to try and overthrow President Sadat of Egypt.
In response Gadaffi launches into an explanation that countries like Libya have a duty to intervene in other nations where the ordinary people are being oppressed by autocrats or oppressive governments - and help free them. That includes helping to liberate Egypt and Tunisia....
Kouchner quickly discovered that victims could be very bad. There was an extraordinary range of ethnic groups in Kosovo.
There were:
Muslim Albanians
Orthodox Serbs
Roman Catholic Serbs
Serbian-speaking Muslim Egyptians
Albanian-speaking Muslim Gypsies - Ashkalis
Albanian-speaking Christian Gypsies - Goranis
And even - Pro-Serbian Turkish-speaking Turks
They all had vendettas with each other - which meant that they were both victims and horrible victimizers at the same time. It began to be obvious that getting rid of evil didn't always lead to the simple triumph of goodness."
-Adam Curtis, "Goodies and Baddies"
"An analysis of video obtained by GlobalPost from a rebel fighter who recorded the moment when Col. Moammar Gadhafi was first captured confirms that another rebel fighter, whose identity is unknown, sodomized the former leader as he was being dragged from the drainpipe where he had taken cover."
-Tracy Shelton, Global Post
"The Arab Spring has provided US policymakers with a set of golden opportunities to help make the Arab World a better place for its people. The time has come to think boldly of a brand new course that will help the Arab World extract itself from the malaise it has found itself in since the end of the Second World War. After the fall of Qaddafi, we should seize the momentum the West has won and help the Syrian people topple the Assad regime."
-Colonel Cedric Leyton, "Beyond Qaddafi"
There you go, Andrew. You bought your tickets. Now you know your companions. Enjoy the ride.
Update:
"In a press conference, yesterday, Libya's transitional leader Mustafa Abdul-Jalil said that Sharia law will become the 'main source' of legislation in a post-Gadhafi era."
-Eydar Peralta, NPR
In response Gadaffi launches into an explanation that countries like Libya have a duty to intervene in other nations where the ordinary people are being oppressed by autocrats or oppressive governments - and help free them. That includes helping to liberate Egypt and Tunisia....
Kouchner quickly discovered that victims could be very bad. There was an extraordinary range of ethnic groups in Kosovo.
There were:
Muslim Albanians
Orthodox Serbs
Roman Catholic Serbs
Serbian-speaking Muslim Egyptians
Albanian-speaking Muslim Gypsies - Ashkalis
Albanian-speaking Christian Gypsies - Goranis
And even - Pro-Serbian Turkish-speaking Turks
They all had vendettas with each other - which meant that they were both victims and horrible victimizers at the same time. It began to be obvious that getting rid of evil didn't always lead to the simple triumph of goodness."
-Adam Curtis, "Goodies and Baddies"
"An analysis of video obtained by GlobalPost from a rebel fighter who recorded the moment when Col. Moammar Gadhafi was first captured confirms that another rebel fighter, whose identity is unknown, sodomized the former leader as he was being dragged from the drainpipe where he had taken cover."
-Tracy Shelton, Global Post
"The Arab Spring has provided US policymakers with a set of golden opportunities to help make the Arab World a better place for its people. The time has come to think boldly of a brand new course that will help the Arab World extract itself from the malaise it has found itself in since the end of the Second World War. After the fall of Qaddafi, we should seize the momentum the West has won and help the Syrian people topple the Assad regime."
-Colonel Cedric Leyton, "Beyond Qaddafi"
There you go, Andrew. You bought your tickets. Now you know your companions. Enjoy the ride.
Update:
"In a press conference, yesterday, Libya's transitional leader Mustafa Abdul-Jalil said that Sharia law will become the 'main source' of legislation in a post-Gadhafi era."
-Eydar Peralta, NPR
Friday, 21 October 2011
When you've got something like Steven Pinker's latest book making the rounds, it's helpful and clarifying to look to the pathetic spectacle of yet more whooping and hollering and celebrating of death at this high tide of rational civilization. The absurd rationalizations for our appetite for bloodletting tells you all you need to know about the state of Western civilization: we love murder, bloodshed, and death, but we cover it by pretending to feel bad about it. (I'm sure you really struggled with the decision to show Qaddafi's corpse, MSNBC. Keep the fires burning.)
Nothing can match the farce of the showy, desperately affected celebration that attended the slaughter of Osama bin Laden and unnamed members of his family. ("No, really, we really do believe we're number one again! We so, so believe it! Look at the excited and happy expression I'm putting on my face!") But the usual suspects are doing as they do. The prominent members of the establishment's messaging machine provide the pseudo-intellectual justification; the tabloid press operates most honestly and stimulates the public lizard brain by giving them what they really want; liberal members of the media provide the moral justification, and buttressed by their Lord of the Rings worldview, smack down any criticism or questioning with far more zeal than they employ against their supposed ideological enemies. There is a machine to justify our country's killing, even the killing of innocent children, it operates with great efficiency, and the ostensibly antagonistic liberal house intellectuals are in fact paid up parts of that machine.
Here is what I know more than anything else: no one who cares for Libyans themselves could see this turn of events as an ending, a conclusion, or a victory. The future is Libya could not be more unsettled, more dangerous, more precarious. What happens next is what is important, in the next month, the next six, the next year, the next five. Will a new flowering of democracy and freedom take hold? Will a new reigning military junta take hold, as appears to have happened in Egypt? Will a newly repressive Islamist state develop? Nobody knows. Nobody will know, for a long time. Those declaring victory today are doing it because they have achieved what they wanted, which is a justification for limitless American military aggression, and support for Barack Obama, one of the most unapologetic militarists in American political history.
So we know, for example, that John Heilemann doesn't actually care about Libyans at all. For him the story has concluded.
Look to the work of Andrew Sullivan in the near future. It will tell you everything about him and his agenda. Are the Libyan people his concern, or are they the means that support his actual concerns? Does he care more about Barack Obama's electoral chances than about the blood of the people that he has so ostentatiously draped around his blog for months? I'm afraid that the situation in Libya won't comport to the 2012 election cycle. Of course, for some, the important thing is merely the appearance of victory. For the "liberal interventionists," for whom the Libyan people have never actually been fully human, the material results of this situation are immaterial. They have only ever existed to support an aggressive military posture justified with a fig leaf of "humanitarian intervention." They are means to an end. The Libyan people have been instrumentalized.
Is that the truth about Andrew's regard for them? Initial reports are not encouraging. But I have hope for Andrew. I hope he will get out of the celebration business.
If your concern is for the Libyan people, you are quiet, afraid, hopeful, and unsettled. If you are interested in vindicating a strategy, if you are interested in crass partisan political concerns, if you treat living human beings as a means to an end, then you are happy and unconcerned. And with each passing day Libya will fall farther and farther away from your mind.
Update: This was too harsh on John Heilemann, who is only a symptom of a broader disease. I reiterate that it is wrong and ugly to discuss the political fallout and other US-centric issues as if there is something resembling a conclusion here, and I do believe that this tendency reveals a deeply disturbing set of priorities when it comes to the Libyan conflict.
Also, I was far too glib and mean spirited towards Adam Serwer. He's too much of a critical thinker to be dismissed in that way. The zeal with which he prosecutes his arguments against anyone on his left who questions his stances on these issues disturbs me, and I believe his certitude regarding the moral importance of killed-before-capture/captured then killed distinctions is misplaced. I have profound differences with him, obviously. I apologize for my characterization and my tone but not for my particular convictions.
Nothing can match the farce of the showy, desperately affected celebration that attended the slaughter of Osama bin Laden and unnamed members of his family. ("No, really, we really do believe we're number one again! We so, so believe it! Look at the excited and happy expression I'm putting on my face!") But the usual suspects are doing as they do. The prominent members of the establishment's messaging machine provide the pseudo-intellectual justification; the tabloid press operates most honestly and stimulates the public lizard brain by giving them what they really want; liberal members of the media provide the moral justification, and buttressed by their Lord of the Rings worldview, smack down any criticism or questioning with far more zeal than they employ against their supposed ideological enemies. There is a machine to justify our country's killing, even the killing of innocent children, it operates with great efficiency, and the ostensibly antagonistic liberal house intellectuals are in fact paid up parts of that machine.
Here is what I know more than anything else: no one who cares for Libyans themselves could see this turn of events as an ending, a conclusion, or a victory. The future is Libya could not be more unsettled, more dangerous, more precarious. What happens next is what is important, in the next month, the next six, the next year, the next five. Will a new flowering of democracy and freedom take hold? Will a new reigning military junta take hold, as appears to have happened in Egypt? Will a newly repressive Islamist state develop? Nobody knows. Nobody will know, for a long time. Those declaring victory today are doing it because they have achieved what they wanted, which is a justification for limitless American military aggression, and support for Barack Obama, one of the most unapologetic militarists in American political history.
So we know, for example, that John Heilemann doesn't actually care about Libyans at all. For him the story has concluded.
Look to the work of Andrew Sullivan in the near future. It will tell you everything about him and his agenda. Are the Libyan people his concern, or are they the means that support his actual concerns? Does he care more about Barack Obama's electoral chances than about the blood of the people that he has so ostentatiously draped around his blog for months? I'm afraid that the situation in Libya won't comport to the 2012 election cycle. Of course, for some, the important thing is merely the appearance of victory. For the "liberal interventionists," for whom the Libyan people have never actually been fully human, the material results of this situation are immaterial. They have only ever existed to support an aggressive military posture justified with a fig leaf of "humanitarian intervention." They are means to an end. The Libyan people have been instrumentalized.
Is that the truth about Andrew's regard for them? Initial reports are not encouraging. But I have hope for Andrew. I hope he will get out of the celebration business.
If your concern is for the Libyan people, you are quiet, afraid, hopeful, and unsettled. If you are interested in vindicating a strategy, if you are interested in crass partisan political concerns, if you treat living human beings as a means to an end, then you are happy and unconcerned. And with each passing day Libya will fall farther and farther away from your mind.
Update: This was too harsh on John Heilemann, who is only a symptom of a broader disease. I reiterate that it is wrong and ugly to discuss the political fallout and other US-centric issues as if there is something resembling a conclusion here, and I do believe that this tendency reveals a deeply disturbing set of priorities when it comes to the Libyan conflict.
Also, I was far too glib and mean spirited towards Adam Serwer. He's too much of a critical thinker to be dismissed in that way. The zeal with which he prosecutes his arguments against anyone on his left who questions his stances on these issues disturbs me, and I believe his certitude regarding the moral importance of killed-before-capture/captured then killed distinctions is misplaced. I have profound differences with him, obviously. I apologize for my characterization and my tone but not for my particular convictions.
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