Freedom Tickler

Putting the Red in Red States

2006-08-22T11:24:00.000-03:00

Yglesias notes the right's recent infatuation with "____-o-fascism" labels, and finds it strange that they would appropriate what was once a common rhetorical tactic of the left: call anyone you disagree with a fascist.

That the right would take a page from the old communist playbook isn't really surprising, though, when you consider that Conservatism's whole grand stratgey over the past 20 years comes right out of Gramsci -- a war of position, a long-term struggle to alter the ideological terrain to the point where actual victory is a, um, cakewalk.

It's all there in Gramsci: the goal is not a quick political victory but to shift the dominant ideology to your own. To do this, build alliances with target groups and classes; devote resources to "education" i.e. convincing groups that their real interests are best represented by your ideology; create or co-opt civil society institutions that will reinforce your ideology; above all, bill your ideology as "anti-hegemonic", i.e. a brave casting off of a dominant, dishonest, and disastrous world-view in favor of a bright, true future.

The American right has done all of this, and well. In fact, it may be one of the most successful communist revolutions in history. By the 80s, deregulation was seen as vanguard thinking. By 1992, "liberal" and "welfare" were dirty words, and all non-military spending could be summed up by the pejorative "big spending". By 1996 Heritage Foundation and the like were being treated as real research institutions. And, lo and behold, by 2000 the right had captured all branches of government.

Too bad for them they handed that victory over to a Stalinist administration hell-bent on seizing absolute power for the thrill of it, and about as committed to the founding ideology as ol' Uncle himself.

All the King's Ghurkas

2005-02-12T16:53:00.000-02:00

More on the situation in Nepal in this good Times op-ed.

Fat Tuesday

2005-02-08T14:03:00.000-02:00

'Coincidence is not germane to a work of art', authoritatively declares my Taschen coffeetable book, but timing is the heart of comedy. Thus it was with great pleasure that after 18 hours of drunken, costumed cavorting through the streets of Rio de Janeiro (I wore a Pakistani kurta, mirrored John Lennon sunglasses, and a giant headpiece crowned with a big plastic ruby -- when people asked me what I was, I simply replied, "A Potentate"), I arrived home, turned on the TV to watch the big Samba School parades at the Sambadrome, and realized that it was Super Bowl Sunday.

So, while Americans were busy not being traumatized by any number of securely clothed breasts, Brazilians were enjoying live-from-the-Sambadrome interviews with the madrinhas de bateria -- the gorgeous women who dance just in front of the schools' drum troupes, enticingly out of reach, 'heating up the drums' as they say. This is a prized position in the school, some of Brazil's most beautiful women are chosen as madrinhas. But it is not just any type of beauty. No milk-pale waifs here: madrinhas are usually brown-skinned, big, buxom, and with plenty of bunda. They wear elaborate feathered head- and tail-pieces, and little else. Usually just a tapa-sexo, a little triangle of plastic or cardboard wedgied up in there to cover the pubes, sometimes painted and glittered over so you can't even see it. Less chance of a wardrobe malfunction...

And there they are, gyrating, glittering, glistening, being interviewed on national TV in all their monumental glory. The interviewers seem a little sheepish, giving a peck on the cheek to these towering amazons, but they keep their cool and don't oggle. Unlike me: I know I sound like a slavering adolescent here, but these women are truly awe-inspiring. This is my 5th carnaval here, I know the ropes, but moments of pure cultural expression like this, I just find so moving.

Seriously, though. Here you have one extreme of feminine beauty, exalted for all to see, with nobody offended or grossed out, an integral part of a major national celebration that is mostly about singing, dancing, and being happy. Meanwhile, in Jacksonville...

Each country gets the entertainment it deserves, I suppose, so Up With People it is, until 2008 at least. It will be dull, but I am sure we'll reap the benefits in ten or fifteen years or so when we have a brood of hale healthy adolescents with no idea what a human breast looks like, while Brazil's youth descend into a sea of titty-crazed depravity.

And what about the event itself? I could not care less about the Super Bowl, but I do find it interesting the degree to which it penetrates the general consciousness. Not even the World Series (when the yanks were in it) gets so much play in the Times. With the Super Bowl, it's not just the game. There are stories about the advertisers, the half time show, the locale... what gives?

I don't know, but it does strike me that if sports, and football in particular, are metaphors for war (to borrow a bit from M*A*S*H* and Rollerball) then the Super Bowl is something like WWII, the kind of war we can all agree on, the kind of war they used to have. The long, drawn-out 7-game series of baseball and basketball are too eerily like our protracted engagements in places like Vietnam and Iraq (where we came on strong, taking the first two games, but seem to be set to lose the series now that the insurgents have the home court advantage). Worse still are those infuriating Europeans with their interminable, uneventful soccer matches that end in ties (like, say, WWI). I mean, hello? The score is 0-0 when the buzzer sounds, so you just go home and call it a day?! Fucking communists.

No, for us what could be better than 22 men grounding each other into the dirt for one hour of regulation time, with salesmen and pretty girls to fill in every last gap, and at the end the victor is declared, the trophy carried off, mission accomplished, and no pesky congressional committee or video replay to come along and tell you you didn't win after all.

And no titties either, thank the Lord. Now if you'll excuse me, it is Fat Tuesday and I have some more drunken cavorting to do...

K-K-K-K-Katmandu, where democracy is through...

2005-02-01T13:29:00.000-02:00

A sad piece of news that few will notice today and perhpas even fewer will care about, that nonetheless means months and maybe years of conflict in an otherwise beautiful and peaceful country. The King of Nepal has sacked the government and assumed power. From the Times:

For the second time in three years, Nepal's king has dismissed the government and declared a state of emergency, plunging the conflict-plagued Himalayan nation into further crisis.

[...] The Associated Press reported that soldiers had surrounded the houses of the prime minister, Sher Bahadur Deuba, and other government leaders, and that armored military vehicles were patrolling the streets of Katmandu, the capital. [...] Land and mobile phones in the capital were not working, and officials with Jet Airways and Indian Airlines in New Delhi said flights were not being allowed into or out of the city. A Thai Airways flight, unable to land, returned to Bangkok.

The city, once a famed tourist destination, was essentially cut off from the outside world, much as it has been under recent blockades mounted by Maoist rebels the government is fighting.

Two of my strongest memories of Kathmandu: flower-strewn Ganeshes, Vishnus, and Hanumans (Hindu gods) decorating the courtyard of Buddhist temples, and a squatting monkey, stroking the fur of a happy dog in the failing evening light. An outsider's idealiztion of anecdotal evidence? Surely. But examples of real tolerance and peaceful cohabitation are few enough; we must save them where we can, and remember them where we cannot.

The more things change...

2005-01-31T21:12:00.000-02:00

I'm as happy about the elections in Iraq as the next guy. But let's not lose our sense of historical perspective. From the Times, dateline September 3, 1967 (courtesy of Kevin Drum):

U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror
by Peter Grose, Special to the New York Times

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3-- United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.

According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong.

Of course, we all know that times have changed. (For one thing, torture is now legal.) But even our gaily optimistic president says the fighting will continue. And when he says fighting will continue, you better believe him.

Dick Cheney: Dick

2005-01-28T17:12:00.000-02:00

OK, so maybe deep down nobody likes to go to concentration camp liberation memorials. And maybe it is hard to know what to wear. But what, for the love of God, is up with this this?

You can't quite make it out in the photo, but according to the Washington Post, the Veep's oversize parka was embroidered with his name. And his nice ski cap had the words "Staff 2001" written on it, as in, "Check out this cool hat I got for free!"

Quid cogitas, Dick? We all knew about your quadruple bypass, but until now you've kept the Alzheimer's pretty well under wraps...

I mean, what other explanation is there? Cheney's a hard-liner on Israel, and no enemy to the Jews. He wouldn't purposefully offend them. So what gives? I can only think of a few possibilities:

1. Likes Jews well enough, but couldn't resist temptation to offend gays, who were also killed at Auschwitz.
2. Had date with Justice Scalia to go duck hunting afterwards in the Oswieçem woods out back behind Birkenau, didn't feel like going all the way back to hotel.

or, what seems most likely,

3. is total dick.

Come to think of it, an embroidered parka pretty much makes you a dick whatever the reason.

The Divka z Ipanema

2005-01-28T15:21:00.000-02:00

That's czech for 'girl from', folks. Turns out the fat Brazilian women pictured in Larry Rohter's recent article about fat Brazilians (notice no more photos) were not, in fact, Brazilians. They were Czech. According to O Globo, the women in the photo will sue the Times. Perhaps that contributed to the Times' decision to run this editor's note today...

In all fairness, this wasn't Rohter's fault: he had no control over the picture, and probably none over the piece's title or even its emphasis on the Girl From Ipanema angle. It was, however, the fault of the photographer, John Meier. I'm not totally unbiased on the subject of John (less than full disclosure here: let's just say we have friends in common), so I won't delve into the ethics of getting paid a bundle for snapping an unauthorized picture of somebody on the beach which you intend to caption "a fat Brazilian". Suffice it to say that I got a good deal of pleasure from the following description of him from Milena Suchopárková, one of the women in the photos:

"um homem que lá pelas tantas se aproximou de nós trazendo vários cachorros, na verdade, estava disfarçando, que o que ele queria mesmo era fazer umas fotos nossas."

("this guy slowly came up on us, bringing some dogs, but he was really dissembling; he was really trying to take a picture of us.")

A ridiculous end to a ridiculous story. Here, of course, it was front page news. Imagine people's relief: NYT proved wrong: Brazilian women hot after all!

Carioca's Revenge

2005-01-21T11:31:00.000-02:00

My girlfriend called it: As soon as that Times piece about fat Brazilians came out, she said "somebody is going to sacanear (take the piss out of) that guy during Carnaval." Lo and behold, this year's samba for the bloco (neighborhood samba band) Imprensa que Eu Gamo: "Larry Rohter, será que ele é?":

Não gosta de cachaça
Não entende de mulher
O Larry Rohter, será que ele é?

Rough Translation: He don't like booze, he don't understand women, that Larry Rohter, you think he might be, you know, funny?

(Cultural disclaimer for non-Brazilians/connoisseurs: Actually, "funny" doesn't appear in the original, but is implicit. For better or worse, the P.inC.ness of the lyrics draws on a long tradition of gay jokes associated with Carnaval songs, in particular the old favorite "Olha a cabeleira do Zezé, será que ela é? será que ela é?" -- "look at Zezé's haircut, you think he might be...etc" Is this homophobic / morally wrong? Please. It's Carnaval. I've seen huge crowds of gay men at the infamous Banda de Ipanema sing 'Zezé', some even shouting 'bi-cha!' to complete the question. If bloco lyrics had to be PC, the whole holiday would grind to a screeching halt. And we would never have gems like this, from the great bloco Que Merda é Essa? (What is this Shit?) in 2002, on the brink of the Iraq invasion:

Que merda é essa, seu Bush?
Você só quer saber de brigar.
Arranje um estagiára,
Não vem aqui perturbar.

What is this shit, mistah Bush?
You're just spoiling for a fight.
Go find yourself a nice intern,
and stop making trouble.

Besides, in all fairness to Larry, he was given partial songwriting credits. Along with Harry Potter.)

NY Times vs Social Security

2005-01-15T21:43:00.000-02:00

Not to beat up exclusively on the Times -- I'm sure that the scene on cable news is considerably worse -- but today's lead article offers a textbook example of how to skew reporting toward not so much the Bush agenda of private accounts as the Bush agenda of falsehood and generalized obfuscation.

Now, the article is ostensibly about the use of taxpayer money to promote Bush's political agenda. I would argue that this point gets slightly underplayed, not coming up until the 5th paragraph. But let that slide.

What is really unconscionable is giving free air time to Bush's personal campaign ("The system is broken, and promises are being made that Social Security cannot keep," in the 2nd graf, for example), presenting his cronies' slanted statistics ("A policy brief prepared by the agency says those benefit cuts "would double the poverty rate of Social Security beneficiaries aged 64 to 78," increasing the number of indigent people in that age bracket to 1.8 million, from 875,000") and even throwing in some weird innuendo ("Social Security employees denied that their concerns were motivated by a bureaucratic mentality, a fear of change or a desire to protect their jobs") all before getting to this, like, utterly decisive fact buried at the end of the article:

Other analysts, including the Congressional Budget Office, have reached a different conclusion. They say the combination of benefits from the trust fund and individual accounts is likely to be less than actual benefits under the current system.

Oh. So you mean the premier bipartisan overseer of our nation's economy has analyzed the problem and thinks privatization is a bad idea? And all this 'balance' over the Social Security "crisis" is actually concealing the fact that serious analysts don't think there is a crisis and even if there were, privatization isn't the answer? Alright, then. Good to know. But, why didn't you tell me that above the fold? In fact, come to think of it, why wasn't that the headline?

Why indeed.

Rohter Update

2005-01-14T22:22:00.000-02:00

Whoa, stop the presses... and here I thought Larry Rohter -- who the local political satire show Casseta e Planeta refers to as "Harry Potter" -- was just a bon-vivant colonial scalawag. Turns out he's a CIA shill.

Just out of curiosity I did a little googling and discovered a whole world of anti-Rohter conspiracy theory out there. One anonysmous e-mail (in Portuguese) that made the rounds in the wake of the Drunken Lula article has Rohter making 5 visits to the US State Department in the last few years, as well as bragging about his exploits among Amazonian pre-teens, among other heinous crimes. And apparently he's been on the rabid anti-drug war set's radar for years now.

Fun for the whole family, this kind of thing. But I did come across one item that seems at least minimally credible: an essay by ex-DEA agent and "expert witness" Mike Levine. I don't know the story on Levine, never heard of him before, and he's got some pretty crazy stories to tell about CIA drug running, but if what he says is true, it's pretty clear that Rohter really does have some connection with the US government.

Levine claims that while he was undercover for the DEA in South America, he read an article by Rohter and Steve Strasser's on Bolivian drug lords in Newsweek. Something snapped in him and he decided to blow the whistle on CIA involvement in drug running in South America. He writes:

I sat down at my desk in the American embassy and wrote the kind of letter that I never in life imagined myself writing. After fully identifying myself I detailed, in three type-written pages written on official US embassy stationary, enough evidence of my charges to feed a wolf pack of investigative journalists along with my willingness to be a quotable source. I addressed it directly to Strasser and Rohter care of Newsweek. And sent it registered mail return receipt requested. Within a couple of weeks I received the receipt (which I still have) and waited anxiously to hear from them. Two sleepless weeks later I was still sitting in my embassy office staring at the phone. Three weeks later, it rang.

It was DEA’s Internal Security. They were calling me to notify me that I was under investigation. I had been falsely accused of everything from black-marketing and having sex with a married. female DEA agent during an undercover assignment to “playing loud rock music on my radio and disturbing other embassy personnel,” an investigation that would wreak havoc with my entire life for the next four years.

Obviously, if Rohter were just a journalist, he would have no reason to notify the DEA. In fact, he'd have every reason to run with the career-making story.

Well, I'm out of my depth here, I have no idea if this kind of thing is at all credible. But some kind of connection with Intelligence, State, or even Justice would explain Rohter's consistent efforts to deflate threatening figures like Chavez and Lula, as well as his consistent derogatory use of terminology like "leftist" and "union leader". Of course it may just be personal.

The bigger question is why the Times would -- year after year, editor after editor -- keep a guy like this on, whatever his political connections. Could Mike Levine be right?

Gotta love that old-time conspiracy theory...

Ah, to be a Foreign Correspondent...

2005-01-14T16:24:00.000-02:00

More hardnosed Brazil reporting from Larry Rohter. Today's burning topic: Brazilians are fat.

I guess the occasional feature story, written in that classic Rohter/Times "aren't' the locals so darned funny?" style, would be acceptable as far as it went. (And hey, give the guy a break, he almost lost his visa.) But is this kind of thing destined to be the sum total of the Times' Latin America coverage? Is there really nothing more interesting to talk about?

How about Rio's increasingly absurd drug war? How about the continuing success of Brazil's AIDS policy (which included breaking the patent on American drug firms' absurdly expensive cocktails)? How about American biotech giant Monsanto's massive and ultimately successful lobbying effort to open up Brazil to Genetically Modified Organisms?

But hey, why break a sweat when you can just make up absurd historical revisionist arguments like this one from the now-infamous "Brazil's highest elected official is a drunk" article:

Historically, Brazilians have reason to be concerned at any sign of heavy drinking by their presidents. Jânio Quadros, elected in 1960, was a notorious tippler who once boasted, "I drink because it's liquid"; his unexpected resignation, after less than a year in office during what was reported to be a marathon binge, initiated a period of political instability that led to a coup in 1964 and 20 years of a harsh military dictatorship.

Forget the little I'm-a-carrer-foreign-correspondent-and-can-get-away-with-this-crap lapses like "what was reported to be a marathon binge" and just consider the broader implication: give a president the key to the liquor cabinet, and you're bound to have a 20-year dictatorship.

What went underreported in the hullaballoo over the Lula article and Lula's really stupid reaction (For those who missed it, here is a recap) was the derisive and insulting tone with which Rohter had consistently treated Lula from the getgo, in particular his background, and Rohter's addiction to really inappropriate innuendo (that would be hard to imagine in a Times article on domestic politics). From the drinking article, we have a really abject example:

Mr. da Silva was born into a poor family in one of the country's poorest states and spent years leading labor unions, a famously hard-drinking environment.

What about the Foreign Press Club, eh, Larry?

Natch, the new article on obesity moves quickly from the beaches of Rio to -- surprise -- Lula's past and his personal problems:

Some commentators here have suggested that Mr. da Silva's unwillingness to accept the study [on obesity] may stem in part from his personal history. As he never tires of reminding Brazilians and the foreign leaders he meets, he experienced hunger himself as a poor peasant child and can vividly recall the sensation of going to bed on an empty stomach.

Today, though, Mr. da Silva is one of those Brazilians who struggles to keep his weight under control. With a mixture of sympathy and amusement, the national press has chronicled his efforts to limit his consumption of barbecue, beer and buchada, a fatty tripe dish native to his home region that is the bane of nutritionists.

I mean, is it just me, or is Rohter being a real dick?

Whither the Tickler? To the Battle Stations!

2005-01-13T20:04:00.000-02:00

So I was thinking about maybe changing the focus of FT a bit for 2005, maybe mix it up a bit. In fact, I was just about to throw in the political commentary towel for good and turn this site into a one-stop pat-reflections-on-swarthy-natives web portal, when it suddenly occurred to me how great Bush's social security initiative is. Its great because, while it does involve the same dastardly tactics as the Iraq freak-out did -- scare the bejesus out of the population by just making shit up -- it is clearly different in two crucial respects:

1. Unlike national security and intelligence matters, where Bush & Co. could say 'it's confidential, but trust us, we know Saddam has anthrax, nukes, unpiloted drones capable of reaching the Jersey shore, and a tractor beam / death ray combo weapon', Social Security is a matter of public record. We know beyond a shadow of a doubt -- because Bush's own GAO says so -- that Bush is misleading us when he says, "The system will go bust, flat broke if we don't do something now." Sure, the fact that our national media outlets are cowering pissants before the White House (when not actual employees) does mitigate this to some extent. But blurring the facts is much harder when you can't control the public's access to them.

2. The dems are in the polar opposite position than they were on the war. National security was uncertain territory for the dems. They didn't want to appear weak. But Social Security is their bread and butter. Defending it is what being a dem is all about. It brings them together and gives them a sense of purpose. Bush's proposal, if the dems play it right, will be as beneficial to them as the gay marriage decisions in Massachussettes were to the radical right.

In fact, if you want my early and far-away prediction, I bet the whole debate will sow discord among congressional republicans and end up hamstringing Bush for the next four years, at least on domestic policy. Republican legislators know they are getting the shaft -- Bush doesn't care about getting reelected any more, so he's suddenly shooting for the moon, while they will all have to face democratic contenders running ads about how they gutted Social Security.

Anyway, I just talked to a friend of mine, a young guy, who I was surprised to hear saying things like "yeah, but isn't it true that the system is going bankrupt?" and "I heard that the government doesn't really have to pay back the trust fund - its just bookkeeping". OK, the guy is from Texas, but he lives in Austin... The point you or someone you know may be actually buying into the 'crisis is now' claptrap. Bush and Co. are targetting the young, so it is up to us young people to convince our fellow young people to just take a look at the facts:

1. According to the Social Security Administration, if no changes at all are made, the program will have enough money to pay full benefits through 2041. According to the Congressional Budget Office, full benefits can be paid until 2052. After that, the system will not be broke. It will simply have to reduce benefits by a small amount.

2. Yes, the government (general fund) does have to pay the Social Security fund. SS owns government Treasury bills, the same ones many of us private citizens own, the same ones that the Chinese own several trillion of. If the government defaults on SS's T-bills, no T-bills anywhere are safe, the world economy collapses, and it's Thunderdome time.

3. (and this is something that even Krugman the great fails to mention in his excellent essay here) Social Security is insurance -- its function is to stabilize the economy in times of recession, to guarantee a minimum to retirees no matter how long they live. Privatization means you have however much you won on the stock market, to last you for as long as you live. Even if privatization delivers higher rates of return than traditional SS, which it very well may not, if you live longer than average (as the lucky half does, by definition) you will still have less than you would have than under SS. The unlucky half, of course, has more benefits per month, theoretically. But how do they know they are going to die early?

But getting back to my original point: I am not at a comparative advantage here. There is plenty of good running commentary from the regular suspects and Kevin Drum has put together an excellent and concise primer here. The more under 40 year olds out there forcefully asserting the lack of crisis, the sooner we get to hear Bush's hand-flesh sizzle.

And now how about some swarthy natives!

Tickler 2005

2005-01-06T22:22:00.000-02:00

Let the word go henceforth out -- the Tickler is back.

If it has been a long cold winter for you, dear readers, (and only about to get colder and darker with the inauguration and the opening of Congress) for me it has been a hot muggy swelter of work, grad school apps, and lingering depression over Nov. 2.

But the apps are in, its a new year, and if all goes well Bush will burn the shit out of his hand on the old Social Security third rail (kind of like Frog grasping the medallion in Raiders of the Lost Ark, howling and wincing at the sickly sweet smell of his own charred flesh, to the mildly guilty satisfaction of millions of viewers), leading to a spectacular 4 years of lame-duck ineffectualness.

As for me, I'm feeling good about 2005. Hope to get this armed violence thing under control in Brazil, maybe legalize drugs, and get the whole income inequality problem wrapped up before starting school in August. Oh, and I want to learn how to surf.

And to you, the Tickler diehards who still check in every once and again, let me say that when you look back along the trail you have walked, and see the long lonely stretches where no Tickler comforted you, and feel kind of sad about that, and then all of a sudden you hear a deep, manly, semitic voice break through the sunlit clouds saying "My son (or daughter), I, the Freedom Tickler, didn't abandon you in your time of need. I carried you," yes dear reader, when you hear that voice, cast your eyes up to the heavens, look deep within your soul, and you will know: the Tickler is full of shit. It didn't carry you. It abandoned you.

The Tickler is nothing if not cunning.

Patience, Ticklerites!

2004-11-28T05:49:00.000-02:00

I know I have been a terrible blogger lately -- profoundly do I repent. Aside from the post-election-debacle blues, I have been utterly swamped with work and grad school applications, two things I used to boast about never having to do. (Oh how we grow old and jaded)

Please, I beg you, don't give up on the Tickler.

Soon I will be in sunny San Juan, gearing up for the New Humanity Forum, (some crunchy event I have been invited to present at, set up by the Alliance for a New Humanity, which, their homepage informs us, is "not an 'organization'" but rather a "substratum". Now let's see if we can use that in a sentence: "Hey pal, I tink you got a little hermeneutical hanging outta your substratum...")

So yeah, Tuesday there I'll be working up my presentation, having a drink by the pool, conjuring brilliant and confounding new bloggets of wisdom, and firin' em off with some wicked broadband poolside connection. But right now, as dawn breaks and I still have to cut my Statement of Purpose down by 1,300 characters to fit on Berkeley's infernal online application page, I will be brief.

Happy Thanksgiving, turkeys.

Mall of America, or The Glutting Unto Death

2004-11-14T13:25:00.000-02:00

As I feared, it has been hard to get back into the swing of things since the election fracasso. I feel like I’ve gone through all the stages of loss: denial (the provisional ballots will save Kerry), rage (fuck the south), grief (it really is the end of the world), and then acceptance (we were close, and hey, we won some state legislatures...). Of course the only thing to do now is focus on the future, build off of what we accomplished, etc. and if we go belly-up or flee to Canada (or, say, Brazil) then the right will have already won. So to everybody out there crunching exit polls, strategizing, finding the openings in the new swing states, looking out for 2008, I doff my hat.

But I have to say that beyond acceptance, there is another phase, and it ain’t pretty: a deep and unremitting remorse for America.

One man is responsible for that remorse, and his name is David Brooks.

It wasn’t his hack jobs during the election, though they riled me up enough (calling Kerry “Castroite” because he gives long speeches is pretty despicable. So I guess it’s o.k. to call Grover Norquist “Marxist” because he wears a beard?). It was last week’s article on the ex-urbs. And it wasn’t any of his typical obfuscation or dishonesty that got to me; it’s that I think he is right.

America’s rural population may have actually swung a bit to Kerry, but it is shrinking; the cities are reliably Democrat, but on the whole they are yesterday’s story -- a demographic wash. The ex-urbs are growing: they are the future. I have no more hard data to support this than Brooks, but it fits with my own experience of America: once a land of big cities and small towns, now a place where a franchised, consumerist monoculture grows in clumps along interstates, overtaking everything in its path. The strip malls are meeting up in the Great Plains – just as the Eastern and Pacific railways once did – bumping up against each other and fusing into one giant, endless strip, a highway to nowhere and everywhere.

Full disclosure: deeply do I loath the culture of suburban sprawl. Perhaps it is impossible to objectively establish that its lifestyle is sick (or at least more sick than urban life). But it seems uncontroversial that sprawl, exurbia, etc, is a new kind of “living technology”, a set of best practices for organizing habitation, work, leisure; in a word, life. And this new technology, spreading fast as all new gadgets do, is based on a single, guiding principle: everyone will drive everywhere. This axiom would be utterly insane and patently unviable were it not for a fact that goes criminally unreported: the price of gasoline in the U.S. is one third of the average world price. Here in Brazil, a major oil producer and a country with a per capita GDP of $7,600 (about 1/5 of that of the U.S.), people pay almost $4 a gallon.

(I’m not taking aim here at SUV moms. I’m taking aim at a system that makes it logical and appealing to purchase an SUV and drive it down the block to rent a movie.)

I’ve always thought that suburban, exurban culture was based on a false premise: move away from the problems of the polis, instead of solving them. Shut your eyes and ears to unpleasant social realities and flood yourself with the endorphin rush of mass consumption. Perhaps in the past a smidgen of guilt weighed on the old conscience, and you’d vote to fund inner city schools or day-care programs. But now a political force has come along that has you entirely pegged; it tells you not to feel guilty, but proud: you are the heartland, the real America. You have the inviolable right to buy gas cheaper than the Nigerians or Venezuelans who produce it. Your strip malls and factory outlets are the envy of the towel-heads, so be a beacon of freedom and shop away! You shouldn’t feel bad if you don’t know where Sudan is on a map: the president doesn’t either. You shouldn’t feel bad if you haven’t ventured into the city for 5 years: neither has the president. You shouldn’t worry if you’ve taken out massive loans to pay for your TV, your appliances, your car, your children’s education on credit: after all, that’s how the president does it.

Hence my remorse: a sick and untenable way of life is quickly becoming the dominant culture of our country, and a political machine hell-bent on destroying the pillars of our polity as we know it has learned to reward that way of life, to gratify it, to nurture it. A vicious feedback loop driven by the world’s biggest internal combustion engine.

Alas, whither my country? In the Roman orgy of consumption, arrogance, corruption, and dissipation of our nation’s financial, diplomatic, and moral wealth that is Bush’s presidency, the election – which held out the hope of a call to sensibility, an end to the gluttony, a sobering up and returning to the duties of leadership – turned out to be nothing more than a trip to the vomitorium. Now, feeling perhaps not exactly refreshed, but at least hungry, unnaturally and unhealthily hungry for more of what has already made our nation sick, bloated, and weak, the citizens of Rome, inspired by the example of their inbred emperor, return to the feast.

War au Jus

2004-11-04T18:58:00.000-02:00

Interesting reading from the NY Review of Books. Garry Wills reviews Michael Walzer's new book on just war. A strange topic, but one dealt with in an interesting way. Being a 24/7 pacifist isn't really tenable morally, not with the "Wouldn't you have gone to war against Hitler" ringer out there, so you are left with having to come up with some measure of what justifies a military action.

Like many moral issues, I think we all have an unarticulated individual sense of what those measures might be, but it is always edifying to see the clear-minded grapple with the issues out loud.

Not to give away the ending or anything, but I found the ending particularly good:

Since democracy is impossible without accountability, and accountability is impossible if secrecy hides the acts to be held accountable, making a just war may become impossible for lack of a competent democratic authority to declare it. A president who can make a war of choice, not of necessity, at his pleasure, on the basis of privileged information, treating his critics as enemies of the state, is no longer a surreal fantasy. Walzer has moved the concerns over just war from the periphery of political theory to the very center of our democratic dilemma.

But maybe I'm just moody today.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

2004-11-04T11:25:00.000-02:00

Yesterday I received at least 4 e-mails, depending on how you count, from friends or family wondering out loud if they should leave the U.S. ("Any room down there?" read one).

First off, yes, there is room down here, and the weather is lovely.

And I would be lying if I said that I have never thanked my stars for being light-years away from whatever shitstorm happened to be brewing on the home-front. I remember hearing about the whole Monica Levinsky thing from some Brits at a cafe in Prague, and then promptly and blissfully forgetting about it for the next several months.

But this only goes so far. With democracy on the march and all, it's hard to truly tune out. And you wouldn't really want to. Me and my gringo friends here all experienced a desire to be in the US yesterday, just because nobody here could relate to what we were feeling (the exact same thing happened on 9/11).

I've been an ex-pat for 8 out of the past 9 years. I've never felt more American than I do now. Since Iraq, there is sort of nowhere to hide from it all.

And yet, and yet... I had been planning for a year to begin a doctorate next year in the states. Now I am looking at European universities too. If I look at the States objectively, not as my home but as a country like any other I might choose to live in, to learn about, to be influenced by, I gotta say it doesn't look so good.

Then again, there is the horrible irony of it all: if all the good liberals and progressives leave, the right really will have won.

On a deeper level, there is a related question which all of us, ex-pats and pats alike, must ask ourselves: Will we stay engaged, keep fighting, take to the streets, the internet, whatever, or will we hole ourselves up and wait for the storm to pass?

There is the wonderful story of George Orwell, stopping in Paris on his way to fight the fascists in the Spanish Civil War, and looking up Henry Miller. Two of the most different writers imaginable, but Orwell quite respected Miller. Miller thought Orwell was crazy for going to Barcelona: "You're going to get yourself killed, man." Miller's idea of liberty was entirely personal, and he had a Buddha-like lack of desire to change the world around him. Orwell of course saw the fight against fascism as the fight of a lifetime. Miller gave Orwell a corduroy jacket to keep him warm on the front, and the two parted friends. In 1940, Orwell, already quite disillusioned with his efforts in Spain, wrote Inside the Whale, whose title refers to what he saw as Miller's strategy: ride out the tempests of human idiocy and hatred by insulating oneself, keeping your humanity alive, hoping that one day you will be able to emerge.

I don't think there is a right answer to this. I think each of us, over the next 4, 8, 24 years will have to do a little bit of Orwell and a little bit of Miller. I think even Orwell saw this.

To my friends on the front: I offer you a corduroy jacket of words to keep you warm. And when you've had enough of the trenches, come visit me in Vichy, or Big Sur, or wherever I am hiding out these days.

Day of the Dead

2004-11-04T01:44:00.000-02:00

November 2, in Brazil, is Dia dos Mortos, day of the dead. Some had been whispering that it also meant a day of transformation, of going over threshholds. But no, it was really about the dead, the dead walking the earth, taking away from the living.

I have no doubt that each of us felt inside a pure pit of blackness and despair. The sickness unto death. Nowhere to go from here. A friend writes:

I have always considered myself a small "d" democrat, one small soul who was naive enough to dedicate himself tostudying and thinking about and teaching about andtalking about and being a part of the many strugglesfor justice in this country, one who saw himself asprofoundly AMERICAN and in a progressive, moraltradition that strove to push our nation to live up toits best, most lofty ideals, a person with the sillyidea that my efforts might make some small difference,that it might contribute - with others - to somethinggood and decent and humane... but who now findshimself increasingly, utterly and harshly out of stepwith an imperial rightward march of inequality,intolerance, arrogance, selfishness, greed, andpower... a conservative movement dedicated to destroying everything I feel most deeply about...

I am embarrassed for my country... I am wondering how I get back up again from this, and even if I rise, I have no idea where I fit any more. I am lost and irrelevant in my own country.

That sounds about right. For me, well, you know when Bill tells the bride that he's not being sadistic, he's actually at his most masochistic, then shoots her? That's sort of how I felt, as I pumped a shotgun shell into the head of some dreamy, flashbacky notion of America that I had been, up till that moment, carrying around inside. I really thought that when the chips were down she would see what a terrible mistake she was making, she would look into herself and know, with crystal clarity, that the path she was aiming herself down was a dead-end, that the man she was about to get hitched to was worse than a mullet-wearing know-nothing hic: that he was a drunk and a wife-beater who would lock her up and cut her down and violate her when the mood struck him and after a few short years she would be no more the beautiful bride she'd been but a tattered, scarred, broken, bitter old woman. I thought she'd see through him. But the dumb bitch just went ahead and tied and the knot.

But for me, the darkness spread beyond America, to the very heart of democracy and society. The task before us just seems so Sisyphean, man by his very nature so base. Not so much individually, but collectively. Left to their own devices, these corrupt, scheming, hate-mongering elements inevitably take over, and things sink to such a disgustinly brutish level that mankind might as well not even exist. So you fight and you organize and you debate and you convince until little by little you restrain man's darker urges and build a society with some little bit of fairness and equality. You establish, after centuries, the idea of democracy, of universal sufferage, of constitutional law, of civil rights, only to find that the powers of greed and hypocrisy have managed to game the system entirely. Then the tide comes in and sweeps away your baluartes, and forcefully tugs you and the whole nation back to the primieval sea of the rabid right.

(It's not only in the States: look at Italy, or Spain under the PP: the far right, the right that offers itself as a protection against some imagined leftist threat, the right that once relied on brownshirts and cinematic rallies, has discovered that it doesn't need the trappings of fascism, it just needs to control the media.)

So great, we take solace in the fact that this kind of thing has happened before: there was McCarthy and McKinley, and if we built social security from scratch in the 30s we can rebuild it again in the 10s. Things got pretty dark in the world in the 30s and 40s, but we all pulled through. We'll get through this, I suppose. But why must it be like this? What is wrong with us humans, with us citizens of democracy, with us human beings, that we cannot take two steps forward without a devastating, terrifying step and half back into the muck?

The Long Goodbye

2004-11-02T09:59:00.000-02:00

In the past few days I've seen some interesting pieces on how Bush controls his public events: in addition to written oaths, some crowds have been made to recite a "Bush Pledge": "I care about freedom and liberty. I care about my family. I care about my country. Because I care, I promise to work hard to re-elect, re-elect George W. Bush as president of the United States."

Meanwhile ABC reporters were churlishly thrown out of an event for simply sporting Kerry t-shirts, told "this is a private event" and threatened with police action.

Now, if you are Bush, and your re-election campaign is based on a mix of falsehoods about how your opponent is unfit for the presidency and falsehoods about how the war in Iraq is going and what the justification for it was, it makes sense to preach to the converted.

But what is it like for the converted? Something that has fascinated me this campaign season is how so many people can support Bush so avidly. That avidity, it turns out, is not accidental. It is part of the picture.

Think what today's GOP asks of its supporters: you must set aside objective reality both as it is presented by the vast majority of reliable media outlets and as you yourself experience it (the economy, health care, friends or family lost in Iraq, etc.) and instead trust in an alternate reality expounded by party loyalists. You must be resolute in not questioning what you have been told by these loyalists about the president, because if you start to question, all his supposed strengths begin to unravel. You must, in short, have an unshakeable faith, not only in his goodness, but in his inevitable victory. Otherwise you will end up peeking behind the curtain and see the feeble man behind the powerful wizard.

And as shamans, priests and prelates have known from time immemorial, the best way to keep people from peeking behind the curtain is with massive public displays of faith.

Just as the conservative press needs the liberal media myth (to explain why Fox's version of reality is so different from everyone else's), Bush hardcore supporters need this cocoon of zeal. It's not just wanting to jump on a bandwagon; it's a feeling -- deeply gratifying -- of letting go, of putting your faith in someone and trusting that they have your deepest interests at heart, of shutting down your own critical faculties when they tell you that this man is a faker, of no longer worrying about all the troubling news about Falujah or Abu Ghraib or the economy or anything else because it's all liberal bias and the truth, Bush's truth, your truth, will win out.

So, what happens when that truth doesn't win out? What happens when your savior takes a pounding on election day?

Take a long last look at Bush and his messianic antics, my friends. Savor these last moments of solipsism and doublethink. Because this may be their swan song.

Of course, in all probability Rush and Drudge and Fox and everyone else will go right on, attacking Kerry at every turn and trying to get him impeached for jacking off into the White House toilet. Bush's hard core won't disappear.

But I truly believe that there is a huge bubble, a sense that this race is closer than it really is, that Bush's support is all as strong and committed as the hard core that pledge allegiance at his rallies. When that bubble pops, and Bush goes down by 100 electoral votes (you heard it here first), the scales will fall from people's eyes. Who was this moron they were following all this time? Why did they ever believe a single word out of his mouth?

This is crucial for Kerry, if he wins. He cannot be conciliatory, cannot try to be a unifier by catering to the rabid. He must tear down the curtain entirely, show just how disastrous Bush's presidency really was, and make his brand of conservatism a no-go for the GOP for years to come.

Because along with the zealots, there are the millions of moderate Republicans, the Clinton Republicans, who hate what Bush has done to their party. They will be Kerry's allies in this, because they want their party back. They, and they alone, can marginalize the voice of the radical right.

The time has come to shift the pendulum back.

Heart of Darkness Roundup

2004-11-02T09:16:00.000-02:00

The last few days have been a real grind, for me personally, because of work, but for most Americans too, I'm betting. In the free moments when we weren't presenting a year's worth of research to our Swiss funders, I'd sneak away to check the latest news from the campaign trail, only to be surprised at each new low reached.

There was the absurdity of the Al Qaqaa mess, with the GOP howling that 1) it didn't happen on their clock, 2) if it did, it was the troops fault, and 3) that anyway it was unfair for the press to bring this up during the election. There was the Osama tape, with the GOP saying 1) it wasn't fair for Kerry to politicize it and 2) it was really an endorsement for Kerry. (A Fox news anchor said he thought he saw Osama wearing a "Vote for Kerry" button.)

The truly craven gay-baiting push polls going in my own home state, where voters received automatic phone calls that said, “When you vote this Tuesday, remember to legalize gay marriage by supporting John Kerry. It’s what we all want. It’s a basic Democratic principle.”

And of course the ingenious, Orwellian tactic of accusing the dems of exactly what the GOP is doing (from a automatic phone call going out in Pennsylvania): "John Kerry's trial lawyer allies have a scheme to keep you away from the polls tomorrow as part of their hardball strategy. Democrats are trying to intimidate Republican election workers. They're hoping to win through fraud, harassment and law suits what they know that can't win at the ballot box. Don't let them get away with it... Only you can make sure that the American People—not trial lawyers, not foreign leaders—decide our next president."

And, though its desperateness was encouraging, the outlines of a pathological blame-the-liberal-media narrative for explaining a Bush defeat were appearing: "Rep. Peter King, one of our "moderate" Republicans, just said on Crossfire that there's a 'new axis of evil' composed of 'UN 'bureaucrats, The New York Times, and Dan Rather.'"

But then there were the moving images of people lining up to vote, the thousands of volunteers going out to act as observers, the sense of solidarity that I can feel even from the other half of the globe. Not to mention the upticks for Kerry in the polls.

All this tells me that a great battle is taking place, not only in the swing states and the polling booths but, if I may use tired but necessary language, within America's soul. It's not that half of us are evil and half are good, it's that our political process, our public debate, our discourse, our press, and our sense of ourselves, have been under siege. A minority group with a radical agenda and a ends-justify-the-means vanguardism have pulled out all the stops to try and retain power. Their supporters are not (necessarily) bad people, they are simply misled. (58% of Bush supporters said they wouldn't support the war in Iraq if Iraq didn't have WMDs or links to Al Qaeda. But 75% think Iraq supported Al Qaeda!). The question is not, in the end, Kerry or Bush, not Democrat or Republican, but simply whether our democracy, our nation, is strong enough to push back against all this manipulation and vote out an administration that has crossed the line.

I am confident that it is.

Bush, Robot

2004-10-29T19:07:00.000-03:00

I know the whole Bush-wired-for-sound story is already passé, but look at these images at Salon. Apparently some guy who analyzes photos of Mars for NASA did a little job on the captures from the first debate, and really, there is no doubt about it: Bush was wired -- for something.

Prigs for Kerry!

2004-10-29T18:30:00.000-03:00

Who'd of thunk it? The Economist endorses John Kerry for President. Their "confidence in Bush is shattered".
This is Bush's fatal weakness: his 'deny reality' tactics only work with the faithful; capitalists like results.

Quickie from the BBC

2004-10-29T14:52:00.000-03:00

I'm in the middle of a presentation to some folks from the Small Arms Survey, an outfit out of Geneva that funds a lot of our research on disarmament. And they are all smiles today because a study they funded in Iraq just got published in the British medical journal Lancet. The conclusion of this study, which seems methodologically sound, is that 100,000 excess Iraqi deaths have occurred since the invasion.

It also shows that violence is now the #1 cause of death. Before the war it was heart disease.

The risk of death by violence has risen 58%.

Supposedly the article got play on ABC, CBS, CNN and NY Times, but I checked their websites and couldn't find it. I suspect that these findings will scare a lot fo US editors.

The UK on the other hand will likely be greatly troubled. Jack Straw has already said the government will investigate. (Can you imagine anyone from the Bush administration saying that?). Take a look at the article. It's pretty chilling. Will we ever pay for what we have done there?

Washington Post endorses Kerry

2004-10-24T09:40:00.000-03:00

Learning with Freedom Tickler

2004-10-24T08:51:00.000-03:00

One comment I've gotten about this site from a number of people is that they have heard about things that haven't appeared in the mainstream press.

You shouldn't reveal your sources and all, but I feel I should level with my public and point out that most of the news items that go up here are culled from other political blogs much more well-connected than mine. (Particularly good is Talking Points Memo, from whom I am pinching material for this post.) It's not that these guys are uber-journalists or anything, it's just that they are in front of their computer all day, reading e-mail and comments from their readers, who send in local stories or tips because they know that the blog will have a rapid response. The Sinclair boycott was a perfect example (Sinclair backed down, in the end).

The other side of the coin, and the point of this post really, is that the mainstraim press, including the big papers and more thoughtful outlets like the New Yorker, are simply not covering some of the most important issues during this campaign. Like, say, massive voter disenfranchisement. And when I say "cover", I don't mean getting opposing quotes from GOP and DNC officials, throwing your hands up in the air, and reiterating that it's a tight race. I mean investigating, evaluating claims, and drawing conclusions.

I won't repeat previous posts here. But Talking Points has a good piece up today on the Bush team's efforts to neutralize Kerry's "You let Bin Laden get away at Tora Bora" argument. You may have seen Gen. Tommy Frank's op-ed in the Times dismissing the notions that we knew Bin Laden was there and that we outsourced the job to local warlords. It certain feels like a definitive refutation. Until you go back to what the administration said at the time:

The Bush administration has concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the battle for Tora Bora late last year and that failure to commit U.S. ground troops to hunt him was its gravest error in the war against al Qaeda, according to civilian and military officials with first-hand knowledge. -- Washington Post, April 17, 2002

This was not contested in any way by Franks or the administration at the time. Indeed, Kerry's charge is really not controversial at all: it's based entirely on the accepted, conventional wisdom view of what happened. And the major news agencies could prove that by simply going back to their own coverage of the event. But they have done no such thing. This is really kind of stunning. The president is having another one of those "I never said I'm not concerned about Bin Laden" moments, but where is the split-screen with the original footage? I suspect the difference is he's got Gen. Franks and Dick Cheney doing the lying, so the press can't just pretend it's a short memory or verbal slip.

Yes! Michigan!

2004-10-23T10:42:00.000-03:00

I've known that Senator Carl Levin is a national treasure ever since he sent me a personalized letter congratulating me on winning a Fulbright. But if that doesn't convince you, check this out: Levin, head of the Armed Services Committee, just filed a report specifically accusing Douglas Feith, #3 guy at the Dept. of Defense, of having misled Congress on the issue of Iraqi ties to terrorism.

(Feith, you will remember, is second only to Wolfowitz in pure hawkish neoconism, and is also the man that Gen. Tommy Franks, now a hired gun for the Bush-Cheney election campaign, called "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth.")

According to the article, this was something Levin and other dems wanted included in the Senate Intelligence Report, but were blocked by Republicans who bargained to postpone issues of political misinterpretation of intelligence until after the elections (wonder why). So Levin just went and issued his own report.

It's pretty damning. There is the whole bit about the Prague meeting of Mohammad Atta and an Iraqi intelligence official, which the CIA already knew was bogus while Feith (and the rest of the Bush crew) were still hawking it. It also -- Kerry operatives take note -- destroys the president's argument that "Kerry saw the same intelligence I saw." The juiciest bit, I think, is this communication from Feith to Congress:

A classified annex sent by Feith to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Oct. 27, 2003... asserted in part that "Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003," and concluded that "there can be no longer any serious argument about whether Saddam Hussein's Iraq worked with Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda to plot against Americans."

But Levin discovered that

...the CIA, in December 2003, had sent Feith a letter pointing out corrections he should make to the document before providing it to Levin, who had requested the document as part of the investigation.

If this all seems like minutiae, it bears remembering that Bush and co. spun the intelligence community and Congress the way they are currently spinning the media -- by fabricating counterclaims (Prague, the Niger forgeries, Zarquawi-had-an-operation-in-Baghdad, etc.), relativising questions of objective fact (we must take all claims equally seriuosly regardless of the evidence because the threat is grave), and then insisting that preferring one version of reality (Iraq had operational ties to Al-Qaeda) to another (an on-going relationship since the 1990s) is simply a matter of partisan bias.

Levin, to his inestimable credit, seems to recognize the gravity of what has happened, and has taken it upon himself to try, in a not particularly vicious or partisan way, to stop this perilous landslide into insanity. And don't doubt that it is insanity: there really are terrorists out there and the only way we will ever be able to avert or minimize that threat is by having first-rate intelligence gathering and by listening to what that intelligence says, whether we like it or not.

Freedom from Tickler

2004-10-23T10:18:00.000-03:00

I know it's dangerous to go taking a hiatus at this embryonic stage in FT's development -- the blogosphere is so unforgiving -- but I in a phase of unprecedented activity at work.

FYI, I am preparing two major presentations, one on economic aspects of the Brazilian small-arms industry, one on factors that determine demand for firearms in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, both for the directors of the Small Arms Survey, a Geneva outfit that is the world standard on small arms issues, who are arriving in Rio next Thursday.

At the same time, I am preparing a proposal for a Tides Foundation grant on Drug Policy Reform, which has to go out by November 1.

Not to mention planning for my birthday (I'll still be with the Small Arms Survey guys, ooh what fun). And trying to scrounge up enough heavy pharmaceuticals to keep me fully anaesthetized on Nov. 2 (ironically, a national holiday in Brazil).

So, dear readers (all 6 of you), I'll probably post more today and tomorrow, then be out until Halloween. Please be patient, and come back and see me on election day. With luck, I'll pass out on the keyboard and post something like this:

"This is bullshit... Kerry totally won Pennsyllllllbababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk"

Which, if Bush wins, will be about as meaningful a commentary as any.

Publicado!

2004-10-20T00:54:00.000-03:00

If you can't get your articles about Brazil published anywhere in the states because of Iraq and the goddamned election (believe me, it's been impossible for like 6 months now), then what other course but to publish an article in Brazil about the goddamned elections?

Read it and weep, my first clip in a foreign language (and hey, I wrote in Portuguese. Not bad.)

For those who read Portuguese, let me say that the original was funnier and sharper, that this all happened very quickly with zero time to review the editor's cuts. But whatever, it's newspaper.

For those of you who don't read Portuguese, suffice it to say that the article is brilliantly argued, beautifully constructed, and possessed of an eloquence heretofore unseen in gringo prose.

The article basically pats the Brazilians on the back for having such clean elections and such great electronic ballot boxes (gotta work the crowd, after all), and rails us yankees for what is looking like it will be one of the sleaziest elections of all time. I point out something I'd like to write about in English as well: that in Brazil, where the vote is obligatory, a national strategy that relies on systematic disenfranchisement ("suppress the Detroit vote") would simply be unthinkable. Since many here want to make the vote optional, I thought they should at least know about the good work of Nathan Sproul.

The irony here is that readers of Jornal do Brasil now know as much or more about Voter Outreach of America than readers of the NY Times. Go Team USA!

The Relativism of the Right

2004-10-17T02:34:00.000-03:00

For a real surreal experience, take a look at the NY Times' endorsement of Kerry. It's actually pretty righteous, systematically taking the Bush presidency apart, blow by blow, error by error:

The hard right agenda: "Mr. Bush came into office amid popular expectation that he would acknowledge his lack of a mandate by sticking close to the center. Instead, he turned the government over to the radical right. "
The inept war on terror: "The Justice Department cannot claim one major successful terrorism prosecution, and has squandered much of the trust and patience the American people freely gave in 2001."
The Saddam-has-nukes language, even after officials learned the evidence was bogus: "Top members of the administration knew this, but the selling went on anyway. None of the president's chief advisers have ever been held accountable for their misrepresentations to the American people or for their mismanagement of the war that followed."
The utter failure of our foreign policy: "The international outrage over the American invasion is now joined by a sense of disdain for the incompetence of the effort. Moderate Arab leaders who have attempted to introduce a modicum of democracy are tainted by their connection to an administration that is now radioactive in the Muslim world. Heads of rogue states, including Iran and North Korea, have been taught decisively that the best protection against a pre-emptive American strike is to acquire nuclear weapons themselves."
Radical judge appointments: "Thanks to Mr. Bush, Jay Bybee, the author of an infamous Justice Department memo justifying the use of torture as an interrogation technique, is now a federal appeals court judge. Another Bush selection, J. Leon Holmes, a federal judge in Arkansas, has written that wives must be subordinate to their husbands and compared abortion rights activists to Nazis."
Fiscal irresponsibility and incompetence: "The Bush White House has always given us the worst aspects of the American right without any of the advantages. We get the radical goals but not the efficient management. "
And the uppercut: "We look back on the past four years with hearts nearly breaking, both for the lives unnecessarily lost and for the opportunities so casually wasted. Time and again, history invited George W. Bush to play a heroic role, and time and again he chose the wrong course. "

All in all, quite gratifying reading. And most surprisingly, clearly focussed -- for the most part -- on the kind of hard reality issues that the newspaper of record should truly be focussing on: the real failure of Homeland Security and Justice departments to make the country safer; the real deception that took place in the runup to the Iraq war; the real idiocy of bogging our troops down in Iraq while Iran and North Korea go nuclear.

So why surreal? First, because the actual news part of the paper is so afraid to talk about any of these points. The editors seem to believe that any facet of reality that reflects badly on Bush is, by nature, a partisan attack, and must either be countered by some kind of stab at Kerry, or relegated to the opinion page. Under a normal presidency you might not even notice, but with so much going wrong for Bush, this policy has created a situation where a great deal of reality simply cannot be thoroughly discussed.

Where did the Times get the crazy idea that reporting fact is somehow an act of liberal bias?

Could it be, say, from the rabid, venomous right?

"To readers [of the Times], it means that President Bush is wrong, not only because the editorial page of The Times says he's wrong, but because the president's views fly in the face of what are being presented as objective facts. No technique of bias is more powerful - more useful as a means of influence - than presenting a candidate's unadulterated views through a prism of advocacy passed off as hard news."

That would be Bob Kohn, charming author of Journalistic Fraud: How The New York Times Distorts the News and Why It Can No Longer Be Trusted, writing in -- guess where -- the Times! Please sir, may I have another?

The piece, pit against an uninspiring Todd Gitlin effort arguing that the Times lets Bush off too easy, is a fascinating study in how the right works. Worth a full read. It takes advantage of a lamentable column Okrent wrote in July declaring that yes, the Times is a liberal paper, because more people write telling him that the paper is too liberal than too conservative. He also points out that there are stories about cross-dressers in the metro section, and that creationists are not represented in the Science Times. (Once again, the right stakes out a position out beyond the ether, tells the left that they are out of the mainstream, then waits for the center to shift over to them.)

So, back to Kohn. He can't come up with any actual evidence that the Times was biased in its campaign coverage, but he latches onto this admission of social bias, saying that social issues are part of the campaign, ergo the paper is inherently biased against Bush. That is, reporting that gay couples who have married are happy, or that minorities have been helped by affirmative action, is in and of itself an attack on Bush.

Then he argues that the paper does the same on hard news. For example, by simply stating that the Dalfour report shows that Saddam didn't have WMDs, as opposed to accepting the administration's "See!-Saddam-was-this-close-to-using-oil-for-food-to-rebuild-his-WMD-program-so-we-HAD-to-invade" spin hook line and sinker, the Times was being biased.

I'm going to lengths here because this really captures how the right works. The key is conflating real issues of objective fact with murky social issues. Social issues are good for conservatives, because they come down to values and liberals' instinct is to respect everyone's values, be equanimous, etc. Then, once the pick is set, you switch to matters like the economy or Iraq, but you maintain the assumption that there is no objective truth. You make up your own version of reality, insist vehemently on it, and argue that the other side is making stuff up. You present the choice between real objective reality and your fantasy version as just another undecidable clash of values, like abortion or prayer in school. You reduce everything to a question of ideology. And often enough, the press buys it, running your spin alongside the cold hard facts and "letting the reader decide".

Epistemologically, we are in Stalin and Lenin country here, where there is no truth, only party lines.

Letter to NY Times, LA Times, Washington Post

2004-10-15T10:59:00.000-03:00

Dear Sirs,

On Tuesday, October 12th, the CBS news affiliate in Las Vegas reported that the firm Voter Outreach of America, a voter registration outfit which is partially if not entirely funded by the Republic National Committee, had allegedly destroyed the registration forms it had collected from Democratic voters, registering only Republican voters. The station obtained actual shredded registration forms of Democratic voters, brought them to state officials, and confirmed that they had indeed not been registered. As if that were not serious enough, the firm has represented itself as America Votes, a liberal Get Out the Vote outfit; has pulled up stakes and fled Las Vegas; and is apparently now operating in Oregon.

No mention of this story has appeared on your pages. This is perplexing, to say the least. I find it hard to understand an editorial mindset that devotes space to Lynn Cheney’s feelings about her daughter or the Bush’s crooked smirk during the debates but passes over a breaking story about systematic attempts to disenfranchise voters.

Perhaps the explanation lies in your well-meaning efforts to remain objective during these elections. A story linking the RNC to massive voter fraud could be seen (and will certainly be characterized) as a partisan smear dreamt up by the “liberal media”. And it is true that Get Out the Vote campaigns are often partisan in intention, targeting areas thought to contain more Democrats or Republicans as the case may be. But when an operation goes from registering voters for its side to actively destroying the registration forms of its opponents (or in any other way disenfranchising voters) it has crossed a stark moral line, and becomes guilty of an affront to what may be our nation’s single most important institution, the right of all citizens to vote. This is surely something all reasonable Americans can agree on, Republican or Democrat. If we as a nation cannot respect one another’s right to vote, then how can we expect to be a beacon of democracy to the world?

Given the numerous warning signs that the election will be fraught with problems and the apparent unlikelihood that state and federal authorities will deal with these problems in a timely, fair, and non-partisan way, the press must take it upon itself to keep America informed. Issues of balloting, computer malfunctions, excessive police presence at polling stations, and voter harassment must be addressed before, not after, November 2. Above all, the press cannot be silent, apathetic, or timid about reporting – and more importantly, investigating -- voter fraud. Defending the integrity of the upcoming election -- by helping to ensure every eligible American’s right to vote and have that vote counted -- is a higher mission, above and beyond partisan politics, and the press must avidly denounce all arguments to the contrary. As the CBS affiliate in Las Vegas put it:

"As with everything else in this election year, [the Voter Outreach of America case has] now become a political football being tossed between the two parties, with charges and countercharges, but at its core, there still remains the matter of registration forms that were ripped up and tossed in the trash."

Behind each of those ripped-up forms is a citizen whose most basic democratic right is in jeopardy. Tomorrow it could be you or me. Please give this issue the attention it deserves.

Benjamin Lessing
979 Clark St
Birmingham, MI 48009
(248) 642 4160

Feckless Conservative Cabal

2004-10-14T16:04:00.000-03:00

or FCC for short. Confirming my prediction, the FCC announced today that it would not interfere with Sinclair Broadcasting Group's plan to force its affiliates to air a 1-hour anti-Kerry propaganda piece.

But what did you expect from Colin Powel's brother Michael? As he so eloquently put it: "Don't look to us to block the airing of a program."

I suppose we also shouldn't look to the FCC to prevent media concentration, to guarantee public interest programming, to investigate conflicts of interest, and to prevent illegal campaign advertising. But when it comes to handing out fines for attempts "to titilate", well, Michael is our boy.

As I said before, the only way to beat Sinclair is for individuals to call local advertisers of Sinclair stations. This seems to be working already: here is one success story. Once again, if you want to get involved, go to this database and contact local advertisers, politely informing them that you will boycott their products unless they pull their ads from the Sinclair affiliate.

Beating Bush the Freedom Tickler Way

2004-10-13T15:53:00.000-03:00

So far, it looks like the grand strategy of the Kerry campaign is to try and hang on to its post-debate bump and weather Bush's attacks, without falling into any traps and avoiding any risky moves that could scare off swing voters. This is sound enough, as far as it goes. Incumbents below the 50% approval line usually lose, and whatnot.

But I am not convinced that this approach will be enough to win on November 2. Between now and then there are three crucial, no-debate weeks, with Bush in control of the terror alert apparatus and the U.S. forces' actions in Iraq (both of which he is clearly willing to manipulate in the interests of his campaign). This plus the numeros dirty tricks up Karl Rove's sleeve mean, at a minimum, an attrition of a few percentage points, in a race that currently has Bush in front in terms of electoral votes.

Kerry needs, in other words, something up his sleeve.

I suggest taking a page from Rove's book and attack Bush where his is strong. His character.

Three memes, three lines of attack: 1. Bush cannot be trusted. 2. Bush is incapable of admitting a mistake. 3. Bush is out of touch with reality. I would add a 4th, Bush is in the pocket of the big corporations. But I'm too far from the US to gauge if this would fly with swing voters.

I think that Kerry needs, and I mean needs, to hammer on at least two of these in the next three weeks. Get these ideas out there, so that Bush's reactions will be interpreted in terms of them. Repeat and repeat lines like "You are going to believe him? This is the president who told you Iraq had nukes!" Or, "You think the president understands the economy? this is the guy who says everything in Iraq is going well!" or, "You trust this guy to win back our allies? He's the one who said he hasn't made a single mistake in 4 years!", or "You think Bush will create responsible energy policy? This is the guy who let Enron get away with murder!"

The non-trustworthy meme is crucially important for the debate tonight. On domestic policy, Bush's arguments are almost entirely based on outright distortion. If Kerry doesn't address this, it will just come down to he-said-she-said. The only way Kerry can decisively win this debate is to bring the issue of Bush's distortions to the fore, to convey that Bush is simply lying much more and more seriously than Kerry is. That said, the "unable to accept reality" meme is equally valid: Kerry should repeatedly link Bush's rosy vision of the economy to his rosy vision of Iraq.

After the debate, Kerry needs to hit Bush in unexpected ways. Get headlines with unforeseen attacks, and be thinking one step ahead about how to frame Bush's (predictable) responses.

Here are two ideas:

1. Take back the Dalfuer report. This report is not ambiguous: Bush was wrong about WMD. Way wrong. End of story. Kerry (or his surrogates) should repeatedly call on Bush to make a public apology. "He owes it to the American people to acknowledge his error and the degree to which he exagerrated the nuclear threat." As the Times noted, Condi Rice knew the threat was exagerrated, so either Bush is responsible because he knew as well or he is responsible for not holding Condi responsible. Either way, he should apologize.

Of course, Bush will refuse to apologize. But in the process he will confirm all three memes mentioned above.

2. Frame any possible terrorist threat to come as evidence of Bush's failure to make us safer. There is a 99% of terror warnings, whether real or imaginary, so frame the issue now. Talk about the latest school warning, which turned out to be unwarranted, and talk in plain language about how irresponsible fearmongering makes us less safe.

And while Kerry is at it, why not throw in some coded barbs about being a cokehead?

How to Make Another Florida

2004-10-13T14:20:00.000-03:00

You know, the most Orwellian name going around isn't Clean Skies, No Child Left Behind, or even Operation Iraqi Freedom. It's the Republican Party. A republic, you will remember, bases its legitimacy on the concept of regular, free, honest elections, making leaders accountable to the populace as a whole. Not happy with the foiled attempt to once again purge Florida's voter roles, the GOP is now resorting to outright voter fraud, via wildcat front companies.

From KLAS TV in Las Vegas (as in Nevada, 5 electoral-vote swing state):

(Oct. 12) -- Employees of a private voter registration company allege that hundreds, perhaps thousands of voters who may think they are registered will be rudely surprised on election day. The company claims hundreds of registration forms were thrown in the trash.
Anyone who has recently registered or re-registered to vote outside a mall or grocery store or even government building may be affected.
The I-Team has obtained information about an alleged widespread pattern of potential registration fraud aimed at democrats. Thee focus of the story is a private registration company called Voters Outreach of America, AKA America Votes.
The out-of-state firm has been in Las Vegas for the past few months, registering voters. It employed up to 300 part-time workers and collected hundreds of registrations per day, but former employees of the company say that Voters Outreach of America only wanted Republican registrations.
Two former workers say they personally witnessed company supervisors rip up and trash registration forms signed by Democrats.
"We caught her taking Democrats out of my pile, handed them to her assistant and he ripped them up right in front of us. I grabbed some of them out of the garbage and she tells her assisatnt to get those from me," said Eric Russell, former Voters Outreach employee.
Eric Russell managed to retrieve a pile of shredded paperwork including signed voter registration forms, all from Democrats. We took them to the Clark County Election Department and confirmed that they had not, in fact, been filed with the county as required by law.
So the people on those forms who think they will be able to vote on Election Day are sadly mistaken. We attempted to speak to Voters Outreach but found that its office has been rented out to someone else.
The landlord says Voters Outreach was evicted for non-payment of rent. Another source said the company has now moved on to Oregon where it is once again registering voters. It's unknown how many registrations may have been tossed out, but another ex-employee told Eyewitness News she had the same suspicions when she worked there.
[...]
The company has been largely, if not entirely funded, by the Republican National Committee. Similar complaints have been received in Reno where the registrar has asked the FBI to investigate. [Emphasis added]

There is no mystery. The voter list hijinks, openly advocating a policy of "suppress the Detroit vote", now this. The GOP has made vote suppression a pillar of its campaign strategy, and it is clearly willing to break the law and betray the very spirit of democracy if it will deliver even a slight advantage. None of us here like Bush, but I don't believe anybody would tear up Republican votes and throw them in the trash. That is not what this election is about.

In any case, this is one of the most important issues for the next three weeks. We cannot wait for the FBI or anyone else to investigate. The media should be talking about this, raising the alarms (how about a color-coded voter fraud system?), and -- I know this may shock them -- investigate. I mean, what happened in Las Vegas (and maybe Reno too) is a major crime, and the criminal has now moved on to the next town. This is national news. If enough of us talk about it, maybe it will be.

Sinclair Update

2004-10-12T19:24:00.000-03:00

As Josh Marshall points out, talking to the Sales Manager may be more trouble than it is worth. The key here is talking (or writing) to the advertisers, who will end up talking to the Sales Manager and pulling a lot more weight. He also points out that if you live in a Sinclair market can just watch the news and identify the advertisers yourself.

How to Stop Sinclair

2004-10-12T18:18:00.000-03:00

By now, you've probably heard of Sinclair Broadcasting Group's plan to force its affiliates to air a 1-hour smear piece on Kerry in its primetime news slot. I've been following it all weekend, and just heard it on NPR, so word must be getting out.

And today, the Anti-Defamation League condemned a Sinclair executive for comparing his critics to Holocaust deniars.

What you may not know about Sinclair's dastardly scheme: you can do something about it. There is a kind of virtual flash mob happening right now, with people around the country calling local Sinclair affiliates and their advertisers, pressuring the stations not to run the anti-Kerry piece. It's pretty cool to see, and even cooler to participate in. And it's especially important for anybody living in Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan (Yes! Michigan!) and other swing states.

Here is what you can do:
1. Go to this list of Sinclair owned stations, and locate a station near you to target.
2. Check this database of Sinclair advertisers, organized by city.
3. Call your station and speak with the Sales Manager. Explain (politely) that you find Sinclair's decision to air "Stolen Honor" and that you will be calling the station's advertisers (mention them by name). They may pass the buck, or ask you to contact the Corporate Office first, but insist that you will be calling local advertisers.
4. Call the local advertisers, and explain your objection to Sinclair's behavior, then tell them that unless they pull their advertising from the Sinclair station, you will be boycotting their product/store.

There are also some on-line petitions to sign, and the dems are calling for investigations, which maybe just maybe will chastise Sinclair in time for Bush's 2006 State of the Union.

The only way to actually keep this program from airing is the direct approach. Which, by the looks of things, the campaign has already scored some victories. For updates, I'd stick with Talking Points Memo.

Dismal Scientists for Kerry

2004-10-08T15:52:00.000-03:00

I don't always think much of the political opinions of my fellow economists. Too much time shut in an office with Malthus, indifference curves and rational self interest and a guy starts to think of his own moral conscience as nothing more than a sunk cost. But I see that even the solidly right-wing opinions of American Economic Review referees are no match for the Bush adminsitration's utter incompetence.

Of 56 economic professors surveyed by The Economist 70% rated Bush's policies "bad" or "very bad". 20% consider health care costs and the budget deficit to be in "crisis". Kerry was ranked higher on every question except foreign trade. (Summary and graphic here, full results here)

Doesn't that tell you something?

These guys aren't pussy leftists or tax and spend liberals. These guys are hard nosed, free market, free trade, anti-regulation gurus. It's not about politics; Bush's economic program is simply insane.

But then, this isn't the only area where respected conservative experts have balked at Bush's irresponsible actions. Brent Scrowcroft and Henry Kissenger warned against the preemptive war. Nowadays even the National Review is getting skittish. And then there was that letter from the Nobel laureates censuring Bush's science policy.

Bush's appeal to the radically religious and his attendant preacherman antics ("We have climbed the mighty mountain") are no accident: these days one cannot support Bush without a faith capable of withstanding any incursion by reality and rationality. Watch his diehard backers on TV, especially Karen Hughes -- they look possessed, like members of a cult. And there's Bush, leading them off to some utopian Bushtown where they'll drink the national Kool-aid of endless war, infinite deficits, the end of social security and medicare, no taxes on wealth, the final dismantling of all government regulation, and the long-awaited reunion of church and state. Too bad for us, it won't be in Guyana.

The Eerily Prescient Peggy Noonan

2004-10-07T17:28:00.000-03:00

In doing a bit of google research for my last post, I dug through some old Peggy Noonan columns and came up with some real gems. I'm sure this stuff has been posted somewhere by others, but I can't resist:

"I have been wondering which candidate would be most likely to lie to me. My impression of Mr. Bush is that he doesn't lie because if he did he'd feel so guilty and so insecure in his ability to pull it off that his face would redden and his eyes shift and he'd break out in sweat. But Mr. Gore seems to me capable of telling a lie, of spinning just about any fiction, and with utmost conviction, too."
September 1, 2000

"[Gore's] lying looks at this point not like a foible but a compulsion, a tendency that is ungovernable, like a tic... If Mr. Gore cannot help but lie about lullabies and grandma's medicine, will he lie about troop movements, and espionage, and what our intelligence is telling us about what Saddam is up to?" [emphasis added]
September 22, 2000

"This is Mr. Gore's problem: Lies are so built into everything he stands for, everything he says, everything he campaigns on--lies are so built into him, that he can barely tell the difference between the truth and a lie anymore. The difference doesn't even seem important. Winning the presidency is all that matters." [emphasis added]
October 27, 2000

You know, if you just switch the names, she's pretty spot on.

Getting All Veepy

2004-10-07T15:40:00.000-03:00

I've been given the Tickler a rest for a few days -- something about the VP debate left me cold and depressed. I agree with most of what's been said: Edwards held his own, maybe even won, certainly is light years ahead of Cheney in terms of popularity. But just seeing Cheney up there, hard and stubborn as a gall stone, spewing lies and distortion with what for him passes as a straight face, it made me feel that all the commentary and debunking in the world just won't make the slightest difference.

I mean, here you have it: seven outright, easily verifiable, subtantive lies spoken on national TV by the VP. Not quotes out of context or truth-stretching. And not petty, insignificant misstatements. Lies. Little or no media coverage of this. Certainly nobody pointing out that Cheney has been doing this for almost 4 years now, certainly nobody suggesting that he might be "a verbal kleptomaniac, grabbing untruths from the rack, shoving them in his pocket and hoping to make it past the metal detectors". And the next day, Cheney is out there saying that the Duelfer report actually confirms their case for war (!) and they call it "positive spin".

Bush gets the cable news networks to cover a "major policy address" and proceeds to make what the Times freely describes as a "scathing stump speech", containing no new policy whatsoever. The Times duly reports every scathing line out of Bush's mouth, but makes no mention of the fact that the media had just been duped into giving Bush massive free publicity.

The press is getting played again and again, just as it got played in the run-up to war, and they don't even seem to care.

Of course, at this point, Cheney / Bush have no choice but call up down and the Sunni triangle "a valley of peace". Reality, from Samarra to Scranton, is contriving against them. They need to publicly deny that reality, not only to retain Bush's aura of strong and determined leader, but to empower their supporters to likewise deny the reality they see around them. They are locked in now, all they can do is stick to their guns.

But the chocie of denial as a campaign strategy should in no way compel the press to treat administration rhetoric as above dispute or just one side of the story. Things have long since gone beyond two differing interpretations of events, and I think the media, at least the print media, has an obligation to assert the truth of objective facts, even if they contradict Bush or Cheney's public statements. Moreover, the press has a responsibility to draw the obvious conclusion: Bush and Cheney are deliberately misleading the public. And further still: the press has a responsibility to draw a distinction between minor errors or distortions (e.g. $200 million spent as opposed to $120 million spent and $80 million earmarked through 11/05) and substantive misleading (links between Hussein and Al Qaeda).

Bottom line: this week's news should have been a disaster for Bush. The press would have you think he's bounced back.

Part of the reason this gets me so down is it makes Kerry's efforts seem sisyphean.

But let's stay positive: Kerry has some real advantages. For one, reality is on his side. Bush can't stop the bad news from rolling in, nor his own appointees from telling the truth. Second, and maybe more importantly, Bush has no credibility as a centrist, and Kerry does. And I'll go three: Bush took the last swing, yesterday. It's pretty clear what his strategy will be on Friday. That means Kerry can block and counterpunch at the debate, when Bush is at arm's length, and has nobody to help him defend himself.

But really, shouldn't Kerry demand a free nationally publicized speech? And if the press is so damned worried about bias, shouldn't they grant it to him?

Sedition on 42nd Street

2004-10-05T13:24:00.000-03:00

Is the New York Times calling for the president's resignation?

The Times editorial page today does a good job of taking the Bush adminsitration to task for misleading the nation about Iraq's nuclear capabilities and ambitions. Particularly reassuring is their dismantling of a number of Bush's defenses, such as "Kerry saw the same intelligence I saw":

The foundation for the administration's claim that it acted on an honest assessment of intelligence analysis - and the president's frequent claim that Congress had the same information he had - has been steadily eroded by the reports from the Senate Intelligence Committee and the 9/11 commission. A lengthy report in The Times on Sunday removed any lingering doubts.

Or the aluminum tube hokum:

...the president and his closest advisers told the American people that the overwhelming consensus of government experts was that these new tubes were to be used to make nuclear bomb fuel. Now we know there was no such consensus.

The conclusion is stern and well argued, but it stops a frustrating single step short of stating the obvious:

If Ms. Rice did her job and told Mr. Bush how ludicrous the case was for an Iraqi nuclear program, then Mr. Bush terribly misled the public. If not, she should have resigned for allowing her boss to start a war on the basis of bad information and an incompetent analysis.

Now let's think this through: If Rice didn't inform the president, it means she misled him, she's responsible for the war, and so she should resign. If Rice informed president, it means the president misled the people, he's responsible for the war, and so he should...??

Anybody??

Mango and milk

2004-10-05T13:02:00.000-03:00

Today I ordered a mango milkshake at one of Rio's million and one juice bars. As I knew would happen, the guy behind the counter was like, "Mango with milk? Really?" Yes, I said. All the employees and customers watched me drink it like I was crazy. Some made comments. "Don't you feel sick?" someone asked when I finished.

Any Brazilian worthy of the name will tell you that you can't mix mango and milk. You'll get a stomach ache. You'll throw up. You could get food poisoning.

The folk legend behind this folk legend is that the plantation owners made it right up and told it to the slaves, who apparently were just constantly eating mangos, to keep them from demanding milk. Plausible, though it doesn't explain the other common Brazilian fruit-beverage mixture warning, "Never mix watermelon and wine".

Anyway, I know you can mix mango and milk -- I drank mango lassis every day for two months in India. Is there anything more delicious in this world? Some Brazilians recognize this truth, but still prefer not to partake of the mango milkshake, just like you probably don't walk under a ladder even if you are a rationalist. And to be honest, I couldn't fully enjoy my milkshake; all those people watching me made me think, "Hey, maybe I do have a stomach ache."

So 180 million people cheated out of the pleasures of mango lassis because of some stingy slave owner 200 years ago. Meanwhile nearly a billion Indians spalsh in redolent pools of mango and milk, without a stomach-ache-related care in the world.

On the other hand, Brazilians are pretty open about anal sex, so maybe it all evens out.

Hot Gossip: Bush Wired for Sound

2004-10-04T16:16:00.000-03:00

This one is too good to pass up. Wondering why Bush suddenly and for no reason said, "Let me finish," in the middle of his rebuttal, when nobody had interrupted him and he still had plenty of time?

Maybe you figured it was just force of shut-down-the-opposition habit? Nope. A synaptic misfire due to pre-1973 coke use? Good guess, but no. Talking to the voices in head? In a manner of speaking. An invisible friend? Getting warmer...

You see, it turns out that George may have been using an earpiece. That would explain the outburst, plus the many long pauses where he seemed to be lost, then suddenly got back to his message. Not buying it? Check out the photo.

Turns out it wasn't the first time, either.

C'mon dems, this is your chance. Get Al Gore to come up with some kind of gizmo that will intercept the transmission, run a mike line to the dem war room, then just whisper in Bush's ear, "I'm a stupid moron with an ugly face and big butt and my butt smells and I like to kiss my own butt", sit back, and watch the votes roll in.

Now that would be cunning.

Of Basques and Moors

2004-10-04T03:24:00.000-03:00

The Rio Film Festival is still on here, and I just got back from a rather bizarre double feature: the very appropriately named The House of Flying Daggers (highlights: wicked kung-fu-in-the-bamboo fight scene even better than Crouching Tiger; heroine accurately described as “beautiful, but cunning”) and The Basque Game, a documentary on the Basque conflict and the ETA by Julio Medem. Medem directed Lovers of the Arctic Circle and Sex and Lucia, both great films, but I have a special soft spot for The Red Squirrel ever since seeing it, strangely enough, in Bangkok.

The Basque Game, made up almost entirely of interviews with something like 70 people, isn’t exactly as alluring as his narrative work, and at 115 minutes it might be a little bit more about the Basque issue than you really wanted to know (the film was a phenomenon in Spain, the most widely seen documentary in that country's history). But it’s well shot and cut, and it’s sincere in its efforts to make some sense of the situation. It certainly cleared up some of my doubts about what exactly was and is the deal with ETA, as well as the 2003 elections, the fall of Aznar, the pulling of Spanish troops from Iraq, etc..

I can’t sum up 200 years of history or even two hours of testimony (if you're interested and understand Spanish, you can watch hours of footage from the film at the official site), but the basic picture I got goes something like this: ETA has its roots in resistance to Franco, who had it out for the Basques. After Franco fell and there was a transition to democracy in the late 70s early 80s, the Basques thought their demands for autonomy would be met, but the transition was slow and partial. ETA had its heyday then, killing up to 100 people a month, mostly generals and police chiefs, occasionally politicians. They enjoyed moderate support from other sectors of society hoping for strong social change post-Franco.

By the late 90s ETA had brought so much anger and repression down on the Basques that many of them had repudiated it. In response, ETA began to threaten and assassinate Basques who spoke out against it. They no longer enjoyed public support, and the scale and number of their attacks was diminishing. In 1998, ETA offered an open-ended truce to lay the foundations for negotiations with the government. However, government made no gestures or efforts to further those talks, leading to a resumption of hostility in 1999.

It turns out that the Jose Maria Aznar’s conservative Popular Party (PP), which had been in power since 1991, had for some time been running on a platform of fear and outrage at ETA’s terror attacks, promising and delivering hard-line tactics while refusing to negotiate with even moderate Basques until all violence had ceased. Furthermore, it made a practice of vilifying any party or person who did not follow its policy of publicly denouncing ETA and refusing to negotiate, accusing them of aiding and abetting the terrorists. This recipe stymied the Basque's own peace initiatives and virtually guaranteed that there would be no end to violence, since the radical Basque separatists could use the government’s intransigence as an argument for militant action.

And yet, for what were probably their own calculating reasons, ETA offered a truce in 1988. The PP government could have made any number of peace offerings, such as the return of jailed ETA members to prisons in Basque territory (whose family have to travel across Spain and to the Canary Islands to make visits), and cashed in on a peace settlement. Bizarrely, it antagonized the Basques further, essentially scuttling the negotiation process and all but asking ETA to end the truce.

Since then, the PP has continued made a campaign issue of – guess what – the war on terror, more specifically, the war on ETA. It has made public heroes out of those threatened by ETA, and made great political use of the suffering of victims of ETA’s attacks. It has also come to control a great deal of the Spanish media (this was said in the film, I don’t know what the media situation in Spain is), and has played up the risk of impending attack. It passed legislation banning one popular Basque party from the March elections (forcing out a number of incumbent mayors and representatives), and tried to have The Basque Game itself banned.

Hmm, let’s see here: fearmongering, manipulation of the media, no interest in negotiations or peaceful solutions, a preference for violent action, impugning the patriotism of your critics, anti-democratic tendencies... any of this starting to ring some bells?

Is it any wonder these guys were willing to go along with Bush?

The film was made before the March 11 Madrid bombings and the election that brought down Aznar, which is a shame. But it is clear that the PP’s support had been eroded by growing dissatisfaction with a government “crackdown” on terrorism that seemed interminable. In the run-up to the election, the PP, with its conservative base, was just barely able to maintain an edge over the socialists by constantly accusing them of weakness towards ETA (read: sending the wrong message).

Then came March 11.

In the David Brooks / William Safire version, the bombings turned the Spanish overnight from brave, willing allies to sniveling yellow appeasement monkeys. Leveler heads pointed out that the population had largely opposed the war, and that this had already eroded Aznar’s support. But judging from the film, what probably happened, and I think Krugman may have pointed this out at the time, is that much of the PP’s majority was based on its perceived strength in the fight against ETA. (Spaniards too are more worried about their own safety than Iraq). When the government was caught lying about the bombing, blaming it on ETA when evidence pointed to Al Qaeda, they instantly lost their credibility with their “swing” supporters on what was their key issue. The socialists were already on the PP’s heels; the scandal over the bombing investigation tipped the scales.

The parallels are many and unpleasant. For one, it sounds like the PP has essentially been relying on the same technique of scaring the crap out of people and cracking down on civil liberties in order to act on an unpopular conservative agenda that the Bush administration is. Moreover, the PP, like Bush, seems to have an aversion to diplomacy, and has actually effectively torpedoed negotiations before they could off the ground. Instead, they advocate violent confrontation, and make heavy use of coercive, you’re-either-with-us-or-against-us rhetoric.

It starts to seem like a number of governments in a number of countries are all using the same plays out of the same playbook. Certainly Sharon has appropriated Bush’s preemption and no-negotiating-with-terrorists talk to accomplish his own ends. Berlusconi, I wouldn't know, but he certainly controls the media. Maybe what we have here is a kind of technology, a set of best practices, transferable across national borders, for disarming political opposition and implementing a radical conservative agenda against the will of the people.

But then, this technology really isn’t really so new. It goes back at least to 1933.

The other parallel, also unpleasant, is with the Iraqi militants, and really all terrorist groups. ETA has learned to propagate itself, indoctrinating youth, funneling adolescent rage and discontent into violence, using each new government attack or crackdown to recruit new members and sympathizers. It’s almost 30 years since ETA was born, most Basques are opposed, but it has yet to be stamped out. Force alone will simply not work, ever. It only perpetuates the cycle. Unfortunately, that makes force a perfect policy for those who benefit politically from the conflict. And there will always be those who benefit from conflict. (If you are Allawi, unpopular among Iraqis and digging the powers you granted yourself under martial law, do you really want peaceful, legitimate, all-inclusive elections?)

In any case, the fact that the Spanish ended up throwing out the PP does offer some hope. A democracy can get fed up of being manipulated. It could happen here: imagine if on October 30, somebody blows up Grand Central or Union Station. Bush says “We know its Al Qaeda,” insists it was Bin Laden, but the next day we find out that it was some kind of Timothy McVeigh and that Bush knew it. What would be the effect? Bush would lose all but his most ardent supporters, just like the PP.

But would that ever happen? Is the American media at this point capable of calling a lie a lie?

I think we already know the answer to that one. We don’t have to wait for Bush to lie about another attack: he already blamed Saddam for 9/11. That’s no worse (nor less ridiculous) than blaming ETA for March 11. The difference is, the press let him get away with it. It's two years and 1,000 U.S. deaths later, and they still can't bring themselves to say it.

Peter Davis Blames it on Rio

2004-10-04T01:55:00.000-03:00

Last Friday we saw another Peter Davis film, The Selling of the Pentagon. Not a film actually; an hour-long CBS News special investigative report, tearing the Pentagon a new one, that apparently aired during primetime.

Imagine that!

Of course, it then led to a major furor that went all the way to Congress and didn't subside for several months.

The point is that this kind of stuff just doesn’t get made these days: a full-hour exposé of the Pentagon’s public relations department and how it wastes taxpayer money promoting a vision of the cold war (active confrontation) that was no longer in harmony with current U.S. policy (which by 1971 was known as Peaceful Coexistence). The narrator (Roger Mudd) actually argues that foreign policy is the domain of the State Department, and that therefore the Pentagon’s actions violated democratic principles. Can you imagine? Today's news would never air such a thing, and if it did, it would feel the need to add that Kerry missed a senate vote, however, which also violates democratic principles.

But then, wasn’t Vietnam the living room war? And who was responsible for that? The network news crews. They were in there, back before imbedding, showing all the gory reality that the Pentagon didn’t want shown. So I guess it shouldn’t have come as such a shock that things were so different back then. After all, the boys in the war room didn’t learn nothing in Vietnam.

Anyway, Peter Davis was there again (the guy is loving life here in Rio, getting the warmest reception I think he’s ever had), and during the Q and A someone asked him why the news has became less critical of the war, had the Pentagon gotten smarter. He said he doubted it, but they don't need to be smart now because all the TV news agencies are owned by a handful of companies, none of who would bankroll a serious critique of the military industry complex.

Which got me thinking: maybe the whole liberal media / conservative media thing is a red herring. The more important shift isn't left/right but the shift from a posture of resourceful investigation to supine passivity, from hell-raising and nosy to utterly innocuous. Is there any way back?

Another great moment: someone asked where his films could be purchased, and Davis responded that he just didn’t know, that most of them belonged to CBS, which was no longer distributing them. Then he turned to the organizer of the Festival who had introduced him and said, “Alright, let’s do it like this. You’re the director of the festival. The films are all here. Please, before you send the films back, make pirated copies of all of them. A lot of pirated copies.” Totally righteous.

Games without fronteirs

2004-10-03T17:30:00.000-03:00

O.K., enough debate analysis for now. I'll leave it to the pros.

Comparative advantage and all.

Which, of course, dictates that I should serve up the blog equivalent of low-cost raw materials or textiles, perhaps to later be repackeged and distributed with a great deal of value added.

But my real comparative advantage here is that I haven't watched American TV for like three or four years. Seriously. I followed the entire primary season via the web (never saw the Dean scream) and I haven't seen a single TV appearance by any of the major Bush team players (not Cheney, not Rumsfeld, not Powell or Rice, not McLellan or Fleisher, nobody). I've never heard Edwards speak. In fact, before the debate, I'd only heard Bush and Kerry speak once each: Kerry at the convention, and Bush a few hours after the 9/11 attacks (dubbed into Spanish, watched over the heads of a barful of Argentines, in Buenos Aires). My entire sense of the candidates, of the campaign, of the Bush presidency, comes entirely from print. Believe it or not.

So tuning into the debate was a real shocker. To my untrained ears and eyes, the whole spectacle was just bizarre. On the one side, a clearly intelligent and thoughtful man trying very hard not to sound nerdy or know-it-all (like Gore did) and surpress or severely muffle deeply held convictions (that internationalism makes the U.S. safer, say, and even still he probably said too much). On the other, a man willfully misrepresenting a muddled chaos of his own design as a simple, uplifting, and essentially biblical narrative, also of his own design, and utterly unhinged from reality. Both sides ran through a series of what appear to be de rigueur set pieces designed to prove that they possess certain character traits (personable, human, sympathetic, family man, regular guy, understands sacrifice, etc.) that are themselves de rigueur for eligibility to public office. Both men went through more or less subtle but complete transformations when given the chance to speak into the camera (with teleprompter) for the last two minutes. But throughout an undergirding fear seemed to inform every instant of bothe men's performances: everything you say, everything you profess to stand for, every gesture, every intonation, in sum your entire person will be cut up into little bits, quoted out of context, misrepresented, used against you, and it will be the result of that process that will decide who won.

Kerry said later that it felt great to break out of the 30-second sound-bite box and be able to lay his ideas out, and it showed. But he still seemed like a man boxed in. I mean, were the debates really anybody's idea of rhetorical freedom? Just ask yourself this: did either of these two men sound anything at all like two normal human beings discussing ideas, policies, history, etc.? Is this the way that any American who is not running for president talks? Maybe I am out of touch, but what struck me was the complete artificiality of the dialogue. And of course it is artificial: the Republicans mastered a way of framing issues and encapsulating them in five to fifteen word chunks, repeating them ad nauseum, and then sending out armies of shills to talk about these chunks as though they were obvious and indubitable aspects of reality (e.g. Gore has a lying problem, Kerry has a "medals" problem).

Now the Democrats are beginning to catch up, which is great to see (though Kerry has a congenital disadvantage in that he sincerely is interested in policy issues, and so must find a way to pack actual, complex ideas into a nice easy to swallow capsule, where for Bush, the packaging either is the policy (Stay the Course), or else bears no substantive relation whatsoever to the actual agenda (Clean Skies, No Child Left Behind), allowing for total creative freedom.) Again, it's an enormous relief to see the dems finally learning how to play the game, but what kind of game is it? Is being the better player of this ugly contest of marketing, of constructing and defending a simplistic and ultimately dishonest image, of manipulating the press, of appealing to the worst in the electorate, and above all, of shouting loudest, is this even remotely acceptable as the test for who will run the country? Worse, now that the dems are learning to play, will anybody ever take action to change the rules? Is this really the final destiny of modern democracy?

Recommended viewing

2004-10-01T17:21:00.000-03:00

If you haven't seen it yet, the "Faces of Frustration" video from the Dems is deeply gratifying. Nice job on the soundtrack too.

Limeys for Kerry

2004-10-01T16:54:00.000-03:00

You know, Bush’s spiel about “You can’t denigrate our coalition allies and then expect others to join us,” has a rough-and-ready logic that may win over the suggestible and the unreflective, and I bet it will serve him well in the next few weeks. If Americans can be stirred to care at all about the “feelings” of any foreign country, the U.K. and Australia are probably strong candidates.

But one important point -- that I doubt Kerry or anyone in the media will make -- is that the majority of the citizens of these countries are strongly opposed to the war, and always were. (Why do you think their governments sent so few troops?)

I watched the debates with an English friend of mine, and it didn’t even occur to him to be offended by the whole “coalition of the bribed” thing. He liked Kerry. He said, “He’s the first presidential candidate I can remember who actually seems to truly think and care about what other countries think of the U.S.” That’s true, and Kerry not only conveyed it with no apologies, but made Bush’s unilateralism seem retrograde. Bush’s only argument is that things have gotten so bad now that nobody could possibly get an estranged ally to get on board.

That’s not a bad argument, actually – I too found myself doubting whether Kerry could really convince anybody to help foot the bill for our fuck-up. But my friend’s reaction makes me think differently. People haven’t given up entirely on America, and neither have their leaders. In any case, they know they have to deal with us. They’ve learned to live with Bush, but they’re thirsty for a little reasonableness, non-arrogance, competence, and honesty. Kerry, if elected, could use that to win a great deal of sympathy and cooperation (What you might call the Viola Swamp principle in action.)

Sure, a single Brit isn’t exactly a meaningful sample size, but if this is how your average European sees Kerry (“sincere”, “intelligent”, “probably make a good president”), then it’s just possible that Kerry really could restore our alliances and our credibility.

Poland to the rescue

2004-10-01T16:39:00.000-03:00

Check out this nice catch on Bush's lame "You forgot about Poland" gotcha... This is why they invented blogs.

The day after

2004-10-01T03:27:00.000-03:00

After a good night's sleep, I can admit that the debate wasn't exactly a knock-down drag-out affair. Kerry missed some opportunities (he forgot to hammer home the "Bush is out of touch with reality" meme). And he still has a go-on-the-defensive tic he should have more thoroghly suppressed.

Bush had a few delightful deer-in-the-headlights moments, but he usually managed to swerve back on to message before disaster struck.

Most of all, Kerry failed to land a knockout punch when he had Bush on the ropes. He didn't go in for the kill. He didn't seize on Bush's weak moments to rub his beady-eyed face in the mud. (Didn't he learn anything at Yale?)

How could he have done this? How about saying "How can you have a serious debate with a guy who just keeps repeating the same two sentences?" Taking it to the next level. Stating plainly that the emperor has no clothes.

Would it have worked? Maybe, maybe not. I think it would have been worth the risk. Bush was so unconfortable with even minor criticism, imagine full-on mockery.

Moreover, Bush's onlly high marks so far have been in "relentlessly hammering home his message" (i.e. however bad he is, Kerry changed his position and doesn't agree with the war so can't be voted for). But with a single sarcastic phrase, Kerry could have transformed "hammering" into "mindlessly repeating the same phrase", and its consequent "has nothing else to say for himself". This would utterly disarm Bush, who relies on his two or three stock phrases to get himself back on track when his mind goes blank.

Anyway, back in the real world, Bush has to hope that his endless repetition of the “inconsistent" and “sending bad messages” trope will win the day, but my feeling is that it has already run its course, and may backfire now. Whereas the press bought his “Gore is a liar” epithet, it is beginning to question the flip-flop assertion and is defending Kerry's right to criticize the war. More importnatly, where Gore essentially ceded the point, Kerry is flatly, succintly denying it. As a result, I can’t see anyone who isn’t already convinced getting convinced by it in the next six weeks.

I can, on the other hand, see people being convinced by Kerry, especially if he keeps up the attack.

In fact, I'd say the same applies to the race as a whole: the only kind of person who could watch last night's debate and conclude from it that Bush is somehow "stronger" or "firmer" is one who already holds that to be an a priori truth. Bush's performance was good enough for those who are already in his camp, but I cannot honestly imagine a truly undecided voter (as opposed to Republican stooges posing as undecideds) being won over by what was on display.

Go Freedom Tickler, Go!

2004-10-01T01:53:00.000-03:00

I'll try to make a more sober assessment of the debate tomorrow. But before I go to sleep, I can't resist mentioning a great FT moment: when Kerry attacked Bush's absurd mini-nuke Bunker Buster development program, a point which went totally unrefuted.

Unless you count a $53 billion non-functional missile defense system as a refutation.

Anyway, a big Freedom Tickler salute to Kerry for bringing up a very real and important issue, and for turning it to good rhetorical use. Not to mention giving me my first blog victory: I wrote about the mini-nukes just yesterday, in my 2nd ever post. Cyberscore, dude!

Don't believe the hype...

2004-10-01T01:35:00.000-03:00

Kerry rocked tonight.

Whatever the pollsters and pundits and other assorted shills are saying on the cable networks, whatever faux-even-handed compromise solution the big papers come to tomorrow, whatever cock and bull story they try to sell about it being a draw or Kerry having been on the defensive, about Bush having shown his strength to the American people, man, don't even waste your time.

These guys have been instructed and paid to say that. They would be saying exactly the same thing no matter what had happened in the debate. Now that Bush took such a beating, they have to say it, to pretend they are winning, just like Bush has to keep pretending that we are winning in Iraq.

Don't listen to the hype. Just believe what you saw with your own eyes:

Kerry kicked Bush's lilly-white ass.

Bush is going to lose this election.

Know it. Believe it. Say it.

Toy nukes for a toy president...

2004-09-30T13:31:00.000-03:00

Nothing like picking up a month-old copy of NY Review of Books, getting to the end of a thoughtful Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. review of some anti-neocon tomes, only to find out that your government has decided to repeal the ban on nuclear testing.

In 1994 Congress passed the Spratt-Purse amendment stipulating that "it shall be the policy of the United States not to conduct research and development which could lead to the production by the United States of a new low-yield nuclear weapon." Low-yield nuclear weapons, fondly known as mini-nukes, are defined as under five kilotons.
The Bush administration, fearful that evil states might hide WMDs in hardened bunkers buried deep in the ground, called for a low-yield nuclear weapon known in the patois of the Pentagon as a Robust Nuclear Earth penetrator, a description often abbreviated into Bunker Buster. Mini-nukes of course can be used additionally as tactical weapons for the battlefield. In May 2003, the Senate Armed Services Committee voted for repeal of the prohibition on mini-nuke research. Senators Dianne Feinstein of California and Ted Kennedy then submitted an amendment restoring the original language of the Spratt-Purse amendment.
Supporters of the Feinstein-Kennedy amendment pointed out that mini-nukes were not toys, that five kilotons represented one third of the explosive power of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, that the activation of mini-nuke research would run counter to US anti-proliferation policy and would "release a chain of reactions across the world in nuclear testing" (Kennedy), and that there was "no such thing as a
'usable nuclear weapon'" (Feinstein). Nevertheless the Senate tabled the Feinstein-Kennedy amendment. The fight was resumed on June 3 and 15, 2004. Kennedy made a powerful statement:
America should not launch a new nuclear arms race.... Even as we try to persuade North Korea to pull back from the brink—even as we try to persuade Iran to end its nuclear weapons program, even as we urge the nations of the former Soviet Union to secure their nuclear materials and arsenals from terrorists—the Bush administration now wants to escalate the nuclear threat.

The Senate defeated the Feinstein-Kennedy initiative by a vote of fifty-five to forty.

Did you know about this shit? I didn't, and I read the Times on the web every morning. Worse, I'm a pretty avid follower of the main Washington blogs, and though I may have just been snoozing, I don't remember hearing a peep about this. Google news brought up just two real hits, one of them a profile on Schlesinger.

As for the issue itself, it's a real no-brainer. Tactical nukes have been on the table since Eisenhower's day and they are just as problematic as ever. The costs, in terms of escalation, in terms of world opinion, and most importantly, in terms of anti-proliferation efforts, are astronomical; the benefits are scant and, if you stop to think about it for a minute, likely to be chimerical. Tactical nukes are often touted as cheap firepower, "more bang for the buck" in Ike's words. But given the Bush administration's love of expensive, low-result military research (read: missile defense), it's not hard to imagine nuclear bunker busters turning out to be an interminable boondoggle with a poor operational record.

More importantly, would we really be able to use these things? Read over their own justification again: WMDs hidden deep in caves. So we're just going to go tossing "mini"-nukes down rabbit holes, based on our proven, uncanny ability to locate WMDs? That ought to play well on the Arab street. What we need is better intelligence (and an administration that doesn't second guess our professionals), not bigger bombs.

I'm trying to be equanimous here, but the whole debate is just absurd: nuclear proliferation is the threat, the one contingency that Americans (and everybody else) really need to worry about. That's why Bush chose it as his first justification for invading Iraq. And right now, it's a battle we're losing. Anti-proliferation is a kind of prisoner's dilemma, a game where each party has an incentive to cheat. The only way to win is through cooperation, which rests on trust, and commitment among nations and peoples. The surest way to scuttle such efforts is to brazenly declare yourself exempt from the rules you ask others to govern themselves by. But then, that's Bush's strong suit, isn't it?

Still, how could Congress blithely pass somthing like this? (What's up, Senator Levin?) More importantly, how could there have been no public debate? Where was the press? I'll let Schlesinger do the honors:

How many readers of The New York Review of Books recall editorials condemning
the Senate's action or news stories about the vote? Yet reopening the nuclear door at a time when preventive war became part of US doctrine may have the gravest possible consequences for the human race.

Amen.

Hearts and Minds

2004-09-29T11:15:00.000-03:00

So the Rio Film Festival started last Friday (with a sold out midnight showing of 2001: A Space Odyssey, I’m proud to say), and so far it’s been all golden oldies for me: Barbarella, Festival Express, Blood Simple (Director’s Cut). Bucking no trends, tonight some friends and I went to see “Hearts and Minds”, Peter Davis’ 1974 masterful attempt to make some sense of the Vietnam war only a few years after it had ended.

First off, how had I – or anyone else with us tonight -- never heard of this film? The cinema was literally packed, mostly young, fashionable Cariocas, and the film was introduced by one of the directors of the Festival, who told us how she and her cinema-of-resistance diehard friends had religiously watched washed-out copies of it in improvised screening rooms back when it came out, when Brazil was still under military rule; how she never dreamed she would be showing a restored print in the restored Odeon theater (one of the oldest and most elegant cinemas remaining in Rio and now the jewel in the crown of the Festival); and how she really never expected the film to be introduced by Peter Davis himself, who proceeded to stand up and attempt to introduce the film in the face of a standing ovation.

And I had never even heard of this guy?

O.K., I never took a History of Film course in college, I’m no Vietnam buff, and documentaries in general don’t have the staying power of narrative fiction (like, say, Barbarella) but surely this film is bigger than a couple of niche markets. The real crime here is that over the summer I must have read ten full reviews, two dozen op-eds and who knows how many hundreds of posts on Fahrenheit 9/11, and not one mention of this obvious and absolutely essential predecessor.

(“Predecessor” isn’t really fair to Davis. It is obvious that Moore cribs from Davis’ bag of tricks (who for all I know cribbed from someone else -- I’m not trying to write definitive film criticism here) – intercutting devastating war footage with self-exculpatory prattle from pro-war officials, allowing the eloquence of disillusioned soldiers and the pain of the mothers of war dead to speak for themselves, and perhaps most profoundly, the assemblage of both present-day and archival Americana to try and point at something deep and unhealthy in our collective psyche. But Davis’ film strikes me as somehow much more: more profound, more sincere, more of an accomplishment, both artistically (more moments of poetry) and, if I may use the word, spiritually. You can’t really fault Moore for that, though. The raison d'etre of his film is different: he wants to beat Bush, and end the war. For Davis, the war is over; he is trying to come to terms with what happened, as he said in his introduction, not only to the Vietnamese, but to us. One task calls for cunning (are you listening, Google?), the other sincerity.)

As with Gimmie Shelter and Woodstock, the film transports you back to another era through sheer accumulation of accessories: eyeglasses, shirts, hairstyles, cars, the look of stock footage. But what shocks above all in the film is how little the important rhetoric has changed. There is the buildup of the threat: in this case, the snarling tentacles of Communism and the inexorable logic of the domino theory, but most chillingly, the idea that we have to take the fight to them, before they bring it to us. There is the horrifyingly similar nature of the enemy: the VC, like the terrorists and “rebels” in Iraq (I’ll explain in a later post why the quote marks), seamlessly woven into (and fed by) the local population. There is, as a result, the same vicious circle: distrust by Americans of any and all Vietnamese (slash Iraqis), leading to interrogation, illegal imprisonment, and atrocity, fueling hatred of Americans and swelling the ranks of the opposition, leading to more American casualties, leading to more distrust, etc. There is the startling certainty on the part of government ideologues (in particular, the chillingly unrepentant Walter Rostow) that we were in the right, and the blind conviction of the military leaders (a ghost-like General Westmoreland) that only a few more troop shipments could/would have turned the tide. There is the abject absurdity of our hand-picked “democratic” puppet government, propped up entirely by our military and economic aid, clearly lacking the will and means to fight the war for itself (just watch the “Vietnamization” sequence and then read this), and worse, our government’s poker-faced assertion that we are on the side of right (and winning!) and that those fighting us are ipso facto on the side of evil.

Indeed, everything that comes out of the mouth of the 5 presidents shown in the film seems not only poker-faced, but eerily familiar: the Gulf of Tonkin nonsense, the endless guarantees of victory, even Nixon’s clever packaging of our defeat as a kind of victory (c.f. Rumsfeld’s newest bar-lowering efforts). Most disturbing of all, there is the sometimes willful ignorance of the American people, the lack of any human interest in a far-away and dark-skinned people (in one brilliant scene, a native American Vietnam vet reflects on how strange it is that he was able to call the Vietnamese “gooks” and dehumanize them in his mind when he himself had been the subject of racial epithets all his life, and even in his own platoon), the almost pathological desire to believe that our leaders are wise and honest and to just leave the thinking up to them, and the unquestioning manipulation of that desire by leaders sold on a set of ideological bullet points. As Daniel Ellsberg – one of the film’s heroes -- so pricelessly puts it, “It is a testament to the American people that the government felt the need to deceive them. It is not a testament that they could be deceived so easily.”

Comparing that noble if square sentiment with a fashionably cynical trope I've been seeing around lately -- that we'd better hope that the president is consciously lying, because the notion that he actually believes what he is saying is even scarier -- points up what to me is the only real difference between now and then: a sense of gravity that was not merely a pose. Presidents Truman through Kennedy (at least, and maybe Johnson too) really believed in the domino theory, that Communism was a serious and impending threat, and that action had to be taken. I'm just going on my own sense of things here, it was before my time, but I'd bet that in their heart of hearts, when they lied to the American public, they probably believed that in some way they had to, that it was for the ultimate good of the nation, like Roosevelt and Pearl Harbor. Each leader’s tragic inability to get out of Vietnam was not admirable – nobody wanted to be the first President to lose a war – but it was not a purely electoral consideration either. It was, at least, sincere: Johnson, after all, was so distraught at the prospect of presiding over defeat and withdrawal that he chose to end his political life.

What has changed in 30 years is precisely that: Bush’s war may have, in the last year, configured itself along shockingly similar lines to the conflict in Indochina, but his attitude is and has always been different. Manipulation of the public has never been seen as a necessary evil but a birthright, not a grave decision but a kind of natural reflex. The threat at hand (Al-Qaeda, remember?) seems never to have been taken that seriously -- did anybody at the White House really believe that terrorists could somehow conquer the US or render us powerless? -- and was soon essentially archived to focus on a personal agenda. Above all, the outcome of the war itself, in the minds of those fighting it, has been entirely secondary to the outcome of the upcoming election.

Johnson’s fears seem lost on Bush: he doesn’t seem to care whether his war is called a failure by some, or even by a majority. He doesn't even seem to care if it is a failure. Maybe he rests easy in the knowledge that his think tanks and intellectual shills will be there, proclaiming his greatness and calling any doubters friends of Al-Qaeda. Maybe he just figures that at worst, we walk away from a shitstorm of our own devising, blame it on evil, and he’s made a ton of money for his friends at the taxpayer’s expense (who knew? his domestic and foreign policies make a coherent whole after all). Whatever the case, the only thing that really matters is the election. The rest is theater.

As the man said, first time around, tragedy, second time around, farce.

Inaugural Redux

2004-09-29T02:11:00.000-03:00

So welcome to Freedom Tickler. It’s my hope that you (and who knows, your loved ones?) will come, in time, to waste many otherwise potentially fruitful minutes here at least once a week. I would also like it if in the future, searching google for the word “cunning” would bring up nothing but references to this site. If somebody knows how to do this, please drop me an e-mail.

I see this site as a rich, nougaty blend of nitty-gritty and highfalutin. Some dirty jokes here, a couple of insights into the unforeseen appeal of fascism in the post WWI world there, maybe a hot stock tip now and then. Like a conversation with your Uncle Stevie. Of course, current events being what they are, what with the war and the election and the generalized attack on our republic, I would guess that there’ll be a fair amount of spleen vented. But I do hope to keep things entertaining. One thing I can promise you right now: I will never, ever use the word “tony” as an adjective.

You have my word on that.

2004-09-29T02:09:00.000-03:00

Check One. Check. Yo. Check One. Alright, seems like we’re rolling.

In fact, this is not really a post. If this had been an actual post, there would have been some sort of content. Stay tuned for inaugural post Mark II -- the real deal.