The Big Lie

Let's get something straight right here and now: Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution reads, in part, as follows: "The Congress shall have Power ... To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water." This authority does not reside in the Executive (the President, Vice President, Secretary of Defense, etc.) or the Judicial branches of the government. The Legislative and only the Legislative branch of our government has the power to declare war.

The leaders of the Republican Party—Sarah Palin and Dick Cheney—do not seem able or willing to grasp this basic fact, but persist in the lie that it is the President who declares war.



Palin suggests that a declaration of war by President Obama would be a political maneuver, designed to achieve re-election. Some of us felt that G.W. Bush used the Iraq invasion for that very purpose, having seen how his father's failure to keep his own Gulf invasion going through the 1992 elections brought about his electoral defeat. Make no mistake about it, Palin is signaling her minions that if she is elected she will not hesitate to play the 'war card' to retain her (and by inference their) grip on power. This is the way she thinks. She is dangerous. This, of course, is one of the reasons why the founders of this country vested power to declare war in the legislature, and not the presidency.

Cheney's lie is even more insidious if only because it attempts to re-write history using the sloppy argot of conventional wisdom. On ABC News's This Week of Feb. 14, he made the following remarks:

CHENEY: Well, my reference to the notion that the president was trying to avoid treating this as a war was in relation to his initial response when we heard about the Christmas underwear bomber...

KARL: Right.

CHENEY: ... up in Detroit, when he went out and said this was the act of an isolated extremist. No, it wasn't. And we found out over time, obviously -- and he eventually changed his -- his assessment -- but that, in fact, this was an individual who'd been trained by Al Qaida, who'd been part of a larger conspiracy, and it was closer to being an act of war than it was the act of an isolated extremist.

It's the mindset that concerns me, John. I think it's -- it's very important to go back and keep in mind the distinction between handling these events as criminal acts, which was the way we did before 9/11, and then looking at 9/11 and saying, "This is not a criminal act," not when you destroy 16 acres of Manhattan, kill 3,000 Americans, blow a big hole in the Pentagon. That's an act of war.

KARL: Well -- well...

CHENEY: And what the administration was slow to do was to come to that -- that recognition that we are at war, not dealing with criminal acts. And as I say, my response there dealt specifically to the fact the president called it an isolated extremist. It was not.

He is claiming that the U.S. is at war. That is a lie. No WAR has been declared by the U.S. Congress since 1942. Cheney and Bush never sought a declaration of war against anyone. They sought an authorization to use force, against Iraq and Afghanistan. And they talked about a 'war on terror'—a virtually meaningless phrase which they used to authorize, as Cheney says in his interview, tactics recognized historically and world-wide as torture and to engage in illegal domestic surveillance, among other things. Many feel they used the rhetoric of war to frighten the populace and justify the consolidation and expansion of Executive powers, not vice versa.

This opinion is bolstered by their fiscal sleight-of-hand in keeping their military adventures 'off the books.' They didn't include the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan military actions in their official budgets, nor did they make any effort to finance those actions. That's just an old accounting trick (they called themselves the 'CEO administration') concocted by business bosses to make their company's finances look better to shareholders/owners than they really are—in the case of politics, to get re-elected. The consequences of such chicanery usually don't come due until after the boss has collected his/her bonus and moved on, leaving the next administration to clean up their mess and attempt to right the ship.

The problem they faced was that there was no one to declare war on. The perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001 atrocities were, as far as anyone can tell, a stateless group of operatives. It was not the act of an enemy state. If it had been, I have no doubt we would have declared war on that state. And, quite frankly, I feel it would have been justified. Bush/Cheney, however, made the ill-conceived, ill-advised, ill-justified decision to invade Iraq. It solved certain problems for them (which Cheney proceeds to enumerate in his This Week interview) and gave Bush the gravitas of being a 'War President' when it came time to stand for re-election, but it was never war.

The Tea Party protesters and Republican fundamentalists rail against Democrats for straying from the Constitution and claim that all they want is a limited government which hews closely to the original Constitution. But it was Bush/Cheney, more than any administration in my lifetime, which abused the Constitution in general and the War Powers Clause in specific, inter alia, for their own political ends. They continue to insist that their actions were wholly constitutional and that they successfully prosecuted war. And they persist in calling President Obama weak because he does not recognize a war that they themselves refused to recognize officially and constitutionally by seeking a declaration of war from Congress (which they might not have been able to obtain) and including these war-like activities in their financial statements (which would show the electorate just how they were bankrupting the country).

Moreover, the Tea Partiers brought in Sarah Palin to give the keynote address at their convention a week or so ago, yet her lack of grasp of the Constitution is so breathtaking that even Cheney slapped her down on this point in his interview on This Week. Yet—and here is where the danger to the country lies—the issue has been joined: arguably the two top Republicans in the country are debating whether the President should use war as a political tool. Palin says yes. Cheney says Palin should be careful what she says; presidents should never think this way—out loud. (Though many believe that is precisely the sort of political calculation Cheney and Karl Rove used in "persuading" Bush to make the decision to invade Iraq. For Cheney to admit such a thing would be for him to admit to an even worse war crime than he admits to in this interview w/r/t torture.) Nevertheless, the issue is out there in plain sight. Clearly, they think about these things. And that should give us all pause.

Happy [?] Valentines Day: Danish Modern Power Pop

Oh to be young and in love!

Miscellany

I post this image in response to a comment by Frances Madeson on this previous post. This haunting image of a manacled person with schizophrenia in Beni, Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) entered into this story.

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If you don't read BDR's blog, BLCKDGRD, every day, you're missing something, whether it's politics, local news and sports, literature, music, poetry, or out-and-out or merely-tongue-in-cheek curmudgeonry. He misses little. For example, in this post, he refers to my previous post about Congo and Nicholas Kristof's important op-ed piece in Sunday's New York Times in the same sentence. The more attention brought to this seeming intractable humanitarian crisis the better.

BDR's clearly paying attention and has proven himself a true blegfriend over and over again. Frankly, I don't see how he finds the time to do what he does without getting paid.

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Over the weekend, there was a little get-together of about 600 people in Nashville, Tenn. You may have heard about it; they called themselves a tea party. Personally, I'm not sure why such a minuscule gathering garnered so much press and publicity and commentary in the media and around the blogosphere. You'd've thought it was a million-man march or a multi-city, multi-million person protest against the plan to invade Iraq (which didn't get anywhere near as much press). Even though I watched it on C-Span, I was planning to ignore Sarah Palin's closing keynote address. It was shallow. It lacked any sort of logic or reasoning. It was all ATTITUDE. But here's the thing: Andrew Sullivan, a former conservative Republican, heard the same speech and, as his ear is experientially attuned to the dog-whistles of the right wing, came away with a very different appreciation here and here. As he says, it was pure sophistry (something I wrote about recently here in my two "Feck" posts). Yet:

It was the most electrifying speech I have heard from a leader of the GOP since Reagan.

She can electrify a crowd. She has the kind of charisma that appeals to the sub-rational. and she has crafted a Peronist identity - utterly fraudulent, of course - that is political dynamite in a recession with populism roiling everyone and everything. She is Coughlin with boobs - except with a foreign policy agenda to expand Israel and unite with it in a war against Islam.

Do not under-estimate the appeal of a beautiful, big breasted, divinely chosen warrior-mother as a military leader in a global religious war.

I cannot vouch for his conclusion, but it does give me pause.

Family of Values: Humanity, Pt. 2

Even if you've been paying attention, you might not be aware that there's a humanitarian crisis going on in Central Africa. According to this article from the BBC, "The number of people killed in a decade of war in the Democratic Republic of Congo may be half of the accepted toll of 5.4 million, a study has suggested." Still, that means that close to 3 million people have been killed in DRC in the last ten years. Did you know that?

What is the civil war about? Poverty? No doubt. Ethnic hostilities? Sure, but these have been manipulated by outside interests seeking access to the region's most important resource: minerals. Sound familiar? No, I'm not talking about 'unobtainium', but close. According to this article by the Corporate Social Responsibility Newswire, "The DRC is one of the most mineral-rich countries in the world, with sizeable deposits of gold, tantalum, tin and tungsten. The majority of the minerals are smuggled to neighboring countries where they are sold to smelters, and ultimately find their way into products such as cell phones, laptops, and video games, as well as components for automobiles, airplane engines, and medical devices." Ever hear of 'coltan'—no, I hadn't either. Yet, apparently it's a crucial element in such conveniences as cell phones, computer chips, and nuclear reactors.

There are also diamonds. Did you know that Pat Robertson, the television huckster who claimed on his religion-themed informercial, the 700 Club, that the Haitian people deserved the devastation of the recent earthquake because they had made a "pact to the devil," owned a private diamond mine in Eastern Congo? According to investigative reporter Greg Palast:

"Through an emotional fundraising drive on his TV station, Robertson raised several million dollars for the tax-free charitable trust. Operation Blessing bought planes to shuttle medical supplies in and out of the refugee camp in Goma, Congo (then Zaire).

But investigative reporter Bill Sizemore of the Virginian Pilot discovered that over a six-month period - except for one medical flight - the planes were used to haul equipment for something called African Development Corporation, a diamond mining operation a long way from Goma. African Development is owned by Pat Robertson."

And that's to say nothing of the potential devastation to the habitat of the endangered mountain gorillas, of which there may be only some 700 individuals in the wild.

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Sometimes fiction can illuminate situations. Here's a story from the current Journal of War, Literature & the Arts about the region, its beauty and its brutality, its gorillas and its guerillas. [Full disclosure: I have what you might call an intimate knowledge of the author (as well as that grinning jackass in the photo above from 1988).]

Feck! Mo' Better Feck!

Just a quick follow up to my "Feck! Feck! Feck!" post of yesterday.

If you want to see other related posts about similar topics, click here, and scroll down.

On Sunday, Roger Ailes, the founder and CEO of FoxNews appeared on ABC's This Week talking head gabfest, along with mainstay George Will, Arianna Huffington, and Paul Krugman. He was practically incoherent—except for his truculence. His statements were simply a memorized set of talking points which primarily plugged his network's slogans. Here's the transcript. The one bit of candor that slipped out was really quite revelatory: Barbara Walters asked Ailes if his latest commentator, Sarah Palin, was qualified to be President. Here's his response:

WALTERS: ...Do you think she has the qualifications to be president?

AILES: FOX News is fair and balanced. We had Geraldine Ferraro on for 10 years as the only woman the Democrats ever nominated. Now we have the only woman that the Republicans nominated. I'm not in politics, I'm in ratings. We're willing. [I think he actually said 'winning'.]

HUFFINGTON: Roger, you clearly are in ratings, but if you are in ratings, can you explain to me why FOX went away from the meeting the president was having in -- why did you go away, 20 minutes before the end?

AILES: Because we're the most trusted name in news.

There. "I'm in ratings." But when contradicted—Obama's Q & A with the Republicans was the most highly-rated political news of the day—he resorted to a slogan. "Trust us." The two—ratings and trustworthiness—are fundamentally incompatible. Ratings is about 'entertainment'; trustworthiness is something else altogether having to do with such things as truth, accuracy, and fact-based premises.

Another telling moment came in a give and take with Krugman in which Krugman accused Ailes's network of deliberately misleading its viewers in an effort to keep them uninformed about the health care reform issue. Ailes responded that the American people were not stupid, a non sequitur, then, after some cross-talk, accused the President of trying to take $500 billion away from old people—a thoroughly discredited canard.

I think this highlights some of what I was saying yesterday about enthymemes: the right tends to demagogue the issues, often using false or discredited assertions as the unspoken premise of their argument. Yet, to the extent the propaganda is "catapulted" and reinforced by misleading/slanted/biased reporting, these assertions become commonplaces. FoxNews watchers will get what Ailes is saying because they believe its unspoken premise to be true. As Aristotle taught, it is extremely difficult to dispute an engrained, unspoken premise.

The problem lies in the failure of the right-wing to engage not only the left-wing but the mainstream in dialogue. President G.W. Bush pre-screened audiences and questions every time he engaged in dialogue, even, it was suspected, press conferences; it was clear that the press was intimidated by Bush because he froze out any news organizations who challenged his assertions. So-called political debates have become primarily chances for the candidates to spout their talking points from their campaigns; they talk past each other, and the questioners never get a chance for follow-through. Congressional representatives stand up and speak to empty chambers; they don't respond to valid points from the other side; they merely posit their focus-group tested talking points. Rush Limbaugh and other right-wing radio talk show hosts pre-screen the few callers they take, refusing to take criticism unless they have specifically planned a response to a specific point. Similarly, Limbaugh and Palin and others refuse to appear on non-sympathetic news shows which might challenge them to articulate their views and unspoken premises. Cable news commentators tend to be bomb-throwers: they make outrageous claims (usually to self-selected, sympathetic audiences), guaranteed (on the Ailes model) to generate controversy, with little or no regard for the truth; and often they are in the direct employ of political organizations or their PR flacks, though this is never disclosed. Mainly, they attack anyone who would challenge their views—whether it is the 'mainstream' media ('liberal' media in their minds) or other commentators. A challenge to their point of view is personally threatening to them and they often resort to vile ad hominem attacks to defend their positions.

Radical views fester in the hot-houses of cloistered communities. Today, a new poll came out showing that sizable percentages of avowed Republicans either believe or don't know whether Obama should be impeached (for no apparent reason), that he was not born in America, that he is a socialist, that he wants the terrorists to win, that ACORN stole ten million votes in the last election, that Sarah Palin is more qualified than Obama to be president, that he is a racist who hates white people, that gays should not be allowed to serve in the military or teach in schools, that gay couples deserve no state or federal benefits, that sex education should not be taught in schools, that the Genesis version of creation in the Bible should be taught in public schools, that contraceptives should be outlawed, that the birth control pill is abortion, and that abortion is murder, and, lastly, that their state should secede from the Union.

This refusal to engage is the state of our public discourse at the present time. President Obama made what I take to be a serious attempt to get past this situation with his televised, un-prescreened Q & A with Republican members of Congress. Anyone who saw it would conclude that he has a firm grasp not only on all the issues, but on the pros and cons of both sides of the issues. Yet, FoxNews cut away once it became clear that he was able to actually answer and engage with the questioners, even challenging the unspoken premises behind many of their questions.

As the old saw has it, sunshine is the best disinfectant. Enlightenment comes from education, to which many on the right are just plain averse; they want their views to be reinforced, not challenged. The question is how to engage the hermetic recesses in which these sorts of radical views prevail in a way which is neither preachy and arrogant nor militant and threatening. Obama, in Jedi-master mode once again, may have shown us the way. Will he be able to follow through? Will we?

Feck! Feck! Feck!

My online dictionary defines 'feckless' as lacking in effectiveness or vitality. This pretty much describes the public image of Congressional Democrats.

From its inception, WoW has urged them to use effective rhetorical framing of the sort advocated by George Lakoff and Drew Westen (full disclosure: a personal acquaintance and professional colleague of Wisdoc). Many felt it was precisely the Obama campaign's and Howard Dean's Democratic Party's campaigns' uses of positive framing that produced their stunning electoral victories in November, 2008.

Now we read that Rahm Emanuel, President Obama's Chief of Staff, who has written an entire chapter of a book criticizing Lakoff, is urging Obama and the Dems to ignore framing issues and concentrate on making Harry Reid-type legislative deals a la Sens. Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu. This, of course, is the same

Rahm Emmanuel, the man who tried to kill the 50 state strategy before it started, the man who insisted with the DLC that we should ignore the progressive base to try and win moderates, the man who is probably the reason Dean got fired from the DNC.

If the Democrats again choose to make their case like John Kerrys and Harry Reids, they are going to suffer a similar setback as Kerry did in a very winnable 2004 election.

And, guess what? The opposition hasn't stopped trying to frame their way back into power.

Nine months after he penned a memo laying out the arguments for health care legislation's destruction, Republican message guru Frank Luntz has put together a playbook to help derail financial regulatory reform.

Here were Luntz's ten frame points for defeating healthcare:

THE 10 RULES FOR STOPPING THE “WASHINGTON TAKEOVER” OF HEALTHCARE

(1) Humanize your approach.

(2) Acknowledge the “crisis” or suffer the consequences.

(3) “Time” is the government healthcare killer.

(4) The arguments against the Democrats’ healthcare plan must center around “politicians,” “bureaucrats,” and “Washington” … not the free market, tax incentives, or competition.

(5) The healthcare denial horror stories from Canada & Co. do resonate, but you have to humanize them.

(6) Healthcare quality = “getting the treatment you need, when you need it.”

7) “One-size-does-NOT-fit-all.”

(8) WASTE, FRAUD, and ABUSE are your best targets for how to bring down costs.

(9) Americans will expect the government to look out for those who truly can’t afford healthcare.

(10) It’s not enough to just say what you’re against. You have to tell them what you’re for.

Sound familiar?

Now here's Luntz's latest position paper on killing financial reform, along with comprehensive energy reform the next big Democratic legislative push. The idea is to frame the legislation as a big government program, excessive bureaucracy, a give away to special interests, potentially corrupt, full of earmarks and backroom dealing, anti-freedom, anti-populist, anti-small business owner, tax and spend, another big bank bailout, etc., etc. We've seen this approach time and time again by the right. Demagogue the debate. These are emotional issues with many voters. Defending the move with talking points about what it does and doesn't do, what it does and doesn't contain will not work. And that approach very well may have lost health care reform.

Democrats do not seem to have learned: there is a real marketing angle to getting significant legislation passed. Everyone must be on board. Essentially, it takes a movement. Lakoff argues this point here:

the movement must already have:

* A popular base;

* organizing tools;

* an overall narrative, with heroes, victims and villains;

* a generally accepted, morally-based conceptual framing;

* a readily recognizable, well-understood language;

* funding sources;

* and a national communication system set up for both leaders and ordinary citizens to use.

The base is there, waiting for something worth getting behind. The organizing tools are there. The rest is not there.

This is basic Communication 101. To be effective, there must be a moral component: reform is fundamentally right because [...] and its opponents are fundamentally wrong because [...]. And, connected to this, there must be an emotional component; the arguments must touch people where they live; bread-and-butter, kitchen-table, passion-arousing issues. Having logic and facts and good policy on your side is a plus, but it is not sufficient to win the day. You must be persuasive.

Classical, Greek rhetoricians understood this and had a word for it: enthymeme. In the parlance of our times, looking simply at the English cognates, we could translate this as using "memes" which enthuse our audience. Here is an excerpt from my draft, unpublished non-fiction treatise: The Burden of Persuasion.

"According to Aristotle, the basic unit of factual argument is the "enthymeme". Etymology: Gk: en- in, thymos mind. Thus, "to establish in the mind." An enthymeme is an informally-stated syllogism which omits either one of the premises or the conclusion from a standard syllogism. The omitted part must be clearly understood, felt, or believed by the audience. Whenever a premise is omitted in an enthymeme, it is must be either a truism or an acceptable and non-controversial generalization. By making the audience supply the missing premise or conclusion, i.e., work out the syllogism for themselves, you impress the conclusion upon them, yet in a way gentler than if you spelled it out in so many words. The audience must supply the missing term for itself.

Of course, this is the ultimate aim of argument: persuading the audience not only to agree with what you are saying (the point of rational, logical, syllogistic-type arguments), but to actually believe that what you are arguing is what they have been feeling and thinking all along. Not just saying what you feel you need to say (and saying it well)—which often comes across as lecturing or arrogance or talking-down-to-them—but persuading your audience by arguing from a common set of assumptions. When you argue from common ground, you identify with the audience, its passions and beliefs, and they instinctively feel you are one of them and will more easily be led to agree with you."

The Democrats seem not to have learned this lesson in basic communication. They come across as feckless. And so long as they rely solely on Kerry/Reid-esque wonkishness, they will continue to argue amongst themselves about minute and ultimately negligible policy differences, meanwhile losing the larger battle for the hearts and minds of the very electorate they want to rehire them later this year and, again, two years hence, an electorate that is beginning to demonstrate a fair amount of discontent. This article from the BBC, "Why do people often vote against their own interests?" makes this very point: the people do not like being lectured to by people who feel like they know more than them. My response is that 'what we have here is a failure to communicate'—a failure Obama seems to have tackled head on by meeting with the Republican congressional delegation at their annual retreat in Baltimore on Friday.

Here then is a big 'feck you' for the Congressional Democrats: listen to the electorate; identify morally and emotionally with their fears and concerns; don't get defensive, but share their outrage; you don't have to demagogue the issues, but don't lecture them or preach to them or try to tell them what you think is best for them; establish common ground; frame your policies and programs in the terms of what they already feel, believe, and think (in that order!)—because this is what you, too, truly feel, believe, and think; be real: go with what you feel and believe, not with figures and charts (that stuff is back-up support for when you're challenged by knowledgeable opponents; you must have it and you must know it and be able to deploy it appropriately, otherwise you're just demagoging); show how the opposition's policies and programs (to the extent they actually have them) are simply not consonant with what the majority of the electorate truly feel, believe, and think; and, most importantly, don't use Capitol Hill jargon and double-speak and policy-lingo—not only use arguments from common ground, but also use language that shows you share their concerns—that is, be relevant!

Thyraphobia, or Purity of Heart is to Fear One Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Not Do Again: A Brief Coda

Last year I indulged in a longish (15-part serial post), sustained personal essay about confronting my fear of heights by attempting to skydive with my daughter on her 18th birthday: Thyraphobia, or Purity of Heart is to Fear One Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Not Do Again. It was a self-discovery piece that ranged widely over a number of concerns, chiefly the power of the emotion of fear. Upon rereading it, it seemed to hang together fairly well, so I had been considering shortening/editing it and submitting it for publication. But there was a missing piece. Maybe this is the answer I was looking for all along: "How to Fall 35,000 Feet and Survive" in the current issue of Popular Mechanics.

"You're six miles up, alone and falling without a parachute. Though the odds are long, a small number of people have found themselves in similar situations—and lived to tell the tale. Here's PM's 120-mph, 35,000-ft, 3-minutes-to-impact survival guide."

It has happened—I had read about such things—but it's not something one can count on. Still, there's always hope. It's a human thing, don'tcha'know.

"'To be born again,' sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, 'first you have to die. Ho ji! Ho ji! To land upon the bosomy earth, first one needs to fly. Tat-taa! Taka-thun! How to ever smile again, if first you won't cry? How to win the darling's love, mister, without a sigh? Baba, if you want to get born again...' Just before dawn one winter's morning, New Year's Day or thereabouts, two real, full-grown, living men fell from a great height, twenty-nine thousand and two feet, towards the English Channel, without benefit of parachutes or wings, out of a clear sky.

'I tell you, you must die, I tell you, I tell you,' and thusly and so beneath a moon of alabaster until a loud cry crossed the night, 'To the devil with your tunes,' the words hanging crystalline in the iced white night, 'in the movies you only mimed to playback singers, so spare me these infernal noises now.'

Gibreel, the tuneless soloist, had been cavorting in moonlight as he sang his impromptu gazal, swimming in air, butterfly-stroke, breast-stroke, bunching himself into a ball, spreadeagling himself against the almost-infinity of the almost-dawn, adopting heraldic postures, rampant, couchant, pitting levity against gravity. Now he rolled happily towards the sardonic voice. 'Ohe, Salad baba, it's you, too good. What-ho, old Chumch.' At which the other, a fastidious shadow falling headfirst in a grey suit with all the jacket buttons done up, arms by his sides, taking for granted the improbability of the bowler hat on his head, pulled a nickname-hater's face. 'Hey, Spoono,' Gibreel yelled, eliciting a second inverted wince, 'Proper London, bhai! Here we come! Those bastards down there won't know what hit them. Meteor or lightning or vengeance of God. Out of thin air, baby. Dharrraaammm! Wham, na? What an entrance, yaar. I swear: splat." S. Rushdie, The Satanic Verses p.1

Two Deaths

In the wake of the ongoing humanitarian disaster in Haiti, where people are still dying and the devastation and disease persist, pausing to note the deaths of two individual Americans—celebrities of a sort—might seem callous, especially to them.

Howard Zinn, aged 87, died yesterday. He is widely known for his alternative history text: A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present (1980). You can preview it here. His website is here and has information about him, his work and his life.

“There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people for a purpose which is unobtainable.”

The second? J.D. Salinger who, at age 91, also died yesterday. The New York Times obituary can be found here (if it hasn't been sequestered yet behind a pay wall). Salinger, of course, is most famous as the reclusive author of the coming-of-age novel The Catcher in the Rye (1951).

“Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behaviour. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them—if you want to. Just as some day, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry.”

Both books, each in its own way, managed to crack the veneer of the status quo: Zinn's the prevailing myth of America's manifest destiny and innocence in world affairs, and Salinger's the unquestioned authority of the adult world. Both railed against pervasive hypocrisy and lies and inhumanity. Each is a classic in its own right.

Family of Values: Humanity

Sometimes it seems there is nothing one can do but weep. Or hope

One of the most brilliant men who ever lived, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), once wrote (in Latin, of course):

"Now this supreme wisdom, united to a goodness that is no less infinite, cannot but have chosen the best. For as a lesser evil is a kind of good, even so a lesser good is a kind of evil if it stands in the way of a greater good; and there would be something to correct in the actions of God if it were possible to do better. As in mathematics, when there is no maximum nor minimum, in short nothing distinguished, everything is done equally, or when that is not possible nothing at all is done: so it may be said likewise in respect of perfect wisdom, which is no less orderly than mathematics, that if there were not the best (optimum) among all possible worlds, God would not have produced any. I call 'World' the whole succession and the whole agglomeration of all existent things, lest it be said that several worlds could have existed in different times and different places. For they must needs be reckoned all together as one world or, if you will, as one Universe. And even though one should fill all times and all places, it still remains true that one might have filled them in innumerable ways, and that there is an infinitude of possible worlds among which God must needs have chosen the best, since he does nothing without acting in accordance with supreme reason." Theodicy

A 'theodicy' is a treatise on the goodness of god (or providence or fate) in the face of evil in the world. Leibniz believed that three spatial dimensions plus one of space/time made for the best of possible worlds for the flourishing of human life and moral goodness.

Some years later, another brilliant man, Voltaire, upon witnessing the utter destruction of Lisbon, Portugal by an earthquake and tsunami on November 1, 1755 (All Saints' Day), wrote a deeply humane poem and a satiric novel about the impact of the disaster on the Panglossian optimism expressed in the works of philosophers and theologians of the time such as Leibniz.

In the latter work, Candide, Dr. Pangloss the philosopher says of the earthquake's devastation: "'For all this,' said he, 'is a manifestation of the rightness of things, since if there is a volcano at Lisbon it could not be anywhere else. For it is impossible for things not to be where they are, because everything is for the best.'"

In the poem, Voltaire says:

"Will you say, "It is the effect of everlasting laws
Which necessitates this choice by a free and good God"?
Will you say, seeing this heap of victims:
"God is avenged, their death is the payment of their crimes"?
What crimes, what bad things have been committed by these
children,
Lying on the breasts of their mothers, flattened and bloody?
Lisbon, which is a city no longer, had it more vices
Than London, than Paris, given to doubtful delights?
...
If the eternal law which moves elemental things
Makes rocks fall, by the efforts of great winds,
If thickly growing oaks are burned by lightning—
They do not feel the blows which bring them down,
But I live; but I feel; but my heart, deeply hurt,
Asks for help from the God who made it exist.
...
What eye may see into his deep designs?
From a Being all perfect, evil cannot come to be.
It does not come from another, since God alone is master.
Yet, evil exists. O sad truths!
O astonishing mingling of contrarieties!
A God came to console our afflicted race;
He visited the earth, and has not changed it.
...
Whatever opinion one has, one should shudder, no doubt.
There is nothing one knows, and nothing one does not question.
Nature is mute, she is questioned in vain.
There is need of a God who talks to humanity.
It is for him only to explain his work,
To console the weak, make the wise person clear.
...
What can then do, the mind of largest range?
Nothing. The book of fate closes itself before our eyes.
Man, a stranger to himself, by man is not known.
What am I, where am I, where do I go, and from what do I come?
Atoms tormented on this mass of mud,
Whom death engulfs and with whom fate plays—
But thinking atoms, atoms whose eyes,
Guided by thought, have measured the skies.
From the very midst of the infinite, our lives go forth,
Without our being able, one moment, to see ourselves or know
ourselves.
...
A caliph once, at his last hour,
To the God whom he adored, said, for all prayer:
"I carry to you, O Only King, Only Unlimited Being,
All that which you don't have in your immensity—
Deficiencies, regrets, evils and ignorance."
But he might, also, have added: Hope.
...
What is needed, O mortals? Mortals, it is needed that we suffer,
Submit ourselves silently, adore, and die.
...
O God, give us a Revelation that we should be humane and
tolerant.

From Hail, American Development (Definition Press)
© 1968 by Eli Siegel

As Theodor Adorno wrote, "[t]he earthquake of Lisbon sufficed to cure Voltaire of the theodicy of Leibniz" (Negative Dialectics 361).

Scholars debate whether Voltaire deliberately misinterpreted Leibniz's metaphysical point to make a humanitarian case. Notwithstanding, the Leibnizian view, at base, counsels passivity and optimism in the face of an ultimately benign reality (call it Fate, Providence, God—whatever) in which everything that happens is for the best ("God's will"); and even though this is a fallen world, it will be followed on by a better one in the hereafter.

-------------

January 12, 2010, saw an equally destructive earthquake strike Port-au-Prince, Haiti. As of this writing, the extent of the destruction is unknown. What is known is that it was devastating in the extreme: untold thousands have died and even more are injured; entire sections of the city are in rubble; hospitals have been flattened; there is no food, water, or electricity; sanitary conditions are only going to worsen.

It only makes sense at times like these to ask: why? The reality is that Port-au-Prince, a poor, populous city, sits right on top of an active fault line where the Caribbean plate and the North American plate collide. The underground friction as these two tectonic plates shift has been building up for nearly two centuries, and the unleashing of this pent-up force caused the ground under the city to shake. Population growth and unregulated or even absent building codes and urban planning has resulted in overcrowding. Extreme poverty has resulted in poor or even non-existent infrastructure. Accordingly, the city collapsed. Such things happen in this world. The causes are evident.

Is this evil?

No. The Leibnizian/Voltairean debate over whether such could have been the will of some distant creator god or tolerated by some god-who-is-with-us-in-spirit-only or the punitive action of a retributive deity or the work of some evil demon is arcane. Passe. It explains nothing, salves no wounds. However, it excuses heedlessness and cruelty—inhumanity: Why help them since God has seen fit to punish them, or because this was their fate?

[I will not link to the "utterly stupid" remarks of certain public figures—a rancid television preacher and a belching, radio fat-cat gas bag who have been America's first responders in this vein. If you read this blog, you know who they are.]

Natural events are not, in themselves, evil. They are a condition of the planet upon which we live. A fact of life on planet Earth. Inhumanity, insensitivity, cruelty, on the other hand: these are true evils.

No one deserves such a disastrous fate—not poor people, nor black people, nor former slaves, nor French-speaking people; not people whose homes happen to sit on a fault line, nor even folk who have been victimized and impoverished by a corrupt oligarchy and colonial/neo-colonial exploitation. No one. Not even folks whose ancestors might have made a "pact to the devil" (to quote the aforementioned American religionist whose views are truly evil).

Real human beings in Haiti are in desperate need of medical assistance and basic food and water and shelter and sanitation. And here's where we see the true good in humanity. Here is where there is hope for us all. Individuals, non-governmental organizations, churches, nations, even international bodies have mobilized unbelievably quickly to do what they can to help with the almost unimaginable suffering in Haiti. Bless them all. Thank them all. Contribute, if you can. Here. Or here. Or participate however and wherever your conscience leads. But contribute. It is a way we all can participate in this great work of true humanity, this moment of true goodness.

When one person suffers, we all suffer. Now, millions (literally millions) are suffering. It is going to take a massive, long-term humanitarian effort to make even a dent in it. Yet, it is happening before our eyes. Humanity, for a moment, is uniting to come to the aid of suffering humanity. Those who would exploit this calamity for their own profit or political or personal gain are the ones who bring evil into this world.

The real question is: why does it take an event of such enormity to bring out the good in us all (minus, of course, a few ignorant and insensitive, dare I say evil, louts)? Why isn't alleviating poverty and human suffering our abiding task?

O God, give us a Revelation that we should be humane and
tolerant.

State of the Blog 2

This is my first post of 2010 and my first post of WoW's third year.

Lots of holidays this time of year: Solstice, Advent, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year (here in the West), Tet (later on in the East), chief among them—not to slight Festivus or Zappadan. That means celebrations, disruptions, obligations, joy, surprises, disappointment, family, friends, seasonal affective disorder, loneliness, cold weather and decreased daylight (in the northern hemisphere), reminiscence, hope, despair—lots of things to lots of people.

WoW is also celebrating its two year anniversary (12/22). Wow! Just Wow! Who knew I could sustain this thing this long? I certainly didn't anticipate it.

A few quick facts: my first year I put up about 220 blog posts and had around 25,000 hits. This past year I posted only half as much (~107) but received approximately 38,000 hits. One of my posts was nominated for and selected as a finalist for 3QuarksDaily's Best Political Post of 2009, a true honor. I made a number of on-line blogfriends and commenters, too, which, to me, has been one of the unexpected boons of blogging (thanks, all). I'll go on.

WoW refuses to narrow its scope. It will not limit itself to being strictly a literary or critical blog, or a political blog, or a philosophy or theology blog, or even a personal blog, or, for that matter, an aggregating blog or a humor blog; but at the same time it is all of these—and more. In this, it resembles its author—who, too, refuses to be put into a box. And so, expect WoW to continue to range wide and far: not all things to all people, but not nothing either.

Wishing you the best of whatever holiday (if any) you choose to acknowledge!

Jim H.

--------------
And here's a few links to keep you busy until I come up with something original:

NatGeo's best pics of the year (btw: that cute little old lady pic was taken just down the road from my son's high school!)

Discover Magazine's [developing] top 100 stories of 2009.

Wired Magazine's top scientific breakthroughs of 2009 and its top mobile gadgets of the decade. (WoW is, as usual, agnostic as to whether this is truly the end of the decade.)

Project Censored's Top 25 Censored Stories for 2010.

Media Matters for America has published its Most Outrageous Comments of 2009.

Talking Points Memo has announced its 2009 Golden Dukes Winners given "in recognition of great accomplishments in muckiness including acts of venal corruption, outstanding self-inflicted losses of dignity, crimes against the republic, bribery, exposed hypocrisy and generally malevolent governance." Also, you can find TPM's Top 10 Cable News Moments here.

Michael Orthofer at the Literary Saloon at the complete review was very busy this year, managing "365 uninterrupted days of posts at this Literary Saloon -- as I apparently did in 2009 (there were 1347 posts for the year, an average of some 3.7 per day).) Only 172 books were reviewed at the complete review in 2009." Whew!

Rotten Tomatoes' Best of the Decade movies list. And here's Metacritic's Best (and Worst) Movies of the Decade. (WoW is absolutely thrilled to see Spirited Away so high on that list.)

Take The Pills compiles a 'mixtape' of best songs of the year that you can download. ...Noviembre thinks this is the record of the decade. I've heard it and it's pretty good. (For entertainment and discussion purposes only).

So, was this indeed the worst decade ever? It was certainly the decade of Bush. 'Nuff sed.