Oracular? Obscurantism! This ain't Delphi, mother fucker.

A response to an article by Slate's Dahlia Lithwick, here, essentially arguing how much journalism should penetrate the façade of the Supreme Court's inscrutable wisdomness. [bleeargh]
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The idea that we must maintain a layer of inscrutability in order to maintain the respect for the court is, in a word, anti-democratic. The Enlightenment values upon which our country is based (as much if not more so than the specifically Judeo-Christian values) emphasized comprehensibility and rationality. The fulfillment of the dream of the US' founding requires not ceremony and respect for ceremony and respect's own sake, but rather knowledge, and as a stance towards our government equal parts questioning and deferential.

It *is* important to maintain a respect for government -- something that has been undermined as much or more by the Republican's efforts to portray government as inherently incompetent, inefficient, and vaguely menacing as it has been by de-mystification -- but respect is earned, not given by virtue of an institution.

Perhaps my history is off, but my impression is that oracular prognostications were as often as not used to justify decisions of an imperial or royal ruler, rather than true statements from on high -- unless we're going to believe in Jupiter, Juno, and their lot now. The Godliness of the sovereign, and his/her right to proclaim what was right for the people was another iteration of this same theme; the idea that this kind of oracular, priestly deference is due automatically to the Supreme Court, or even desirable is a dubious one, indeed, and truly, deeply repugnant to democracy (and to me).

Watching the sausage get made can be an unsettling process, but when there's a problem, a contaminant, an error, we damn well better see how it gets made -- the world is better for Upton Sinclair, not worse. And any plain knowledge we gain of the court that detracts from their Wise and Wizened Aura is the fault of those who hold the office, and not of the knowledge itself -- are we to view them as Oracles and simply hope we're right, with continued obscurantism to preserve our cherished illusion, or should we have all the facts possible in order to know, as best as possible, if they deserve the deference we give them?

I understand the desire to maintain some things in a special place, a superior place, and ideal -- but with government as with a parent, spouse, or child, these things most coexist when looking at government with an eye to reality, lest we be a permissive parent, a battered spouse, an abused child. And above all, do not confuse respect and deference due the institution and office with what is due to to those who happen to hold said office at this point in history. Anything less is an infeebilization, an infantilization of the American people, and a betrayal of all we hold dear, if what we hold dear are the ideals of Constitutional government.

In a phrase: don't treat us like f*cking kids.

-HopefulCynic

(see also: The Case for Full Disclosure, by James Poniewozik)

No Surrender, No Retreat

I've been thinking this morning about my friends and colleagues who (correctly) point out that politics is all about compromise (this is usually when they're telling me I can't reasonably expect a President to not, apparently, compromise and at least partly support American empire, meaning partly supporting thousands of deaths of foreign nationals from US interventionism, subverting foreign democracies, abetting persecution of their own people, and to compromise, apparently, on the environment and, instead of putting us on a path to sustainability, put us on a path to a compromise on sustainability, which of course means support of unsustainability, since half a failure is still a failure when dramatic ecosocial collapse is concerned.

This is why, incidentally, I think a break with the two-party system is absolutely necessary as a prerequisite to a sustainable future, but something else occurred to me (that really could act independently of my "two party" assertion). I was thinking: what's the one thing people accept with little or no political compromise?

It is, of course, war. We're spending scads on Iraq, despite relatively equivocal support by the US public, because the Democrats, among others, are afraid of being responsible for "the next terrorist attack," or the "smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud." For reasons I can't quite consciously enunciate, somehow that overblown rhetoric gets by (with much criticism from certain sectors, to be sure) but overblown environmental rhetoric is sort of universally agreed to be dangerous (i.e. it's one of those things even environmentalists are supposed to say "Well, I agree in spirit but s/he went too far", sort of like everyone has to say, "Israel has a right to defend itself," before they can even make reasonable criticisms of Israel's treatment of Palestine). I guess it's a case of "whose ox is being gored," since there are criticisms from both sides in either case -- but because of the immediacy of war and villainous characters like Saddam Hussein, the charge of being unpatriotic or risking Americans' lives sticks much more easily when you have a practically real-life mustache-twirling villain.

But my point is, how do we make the environment and issue like the defeat of a foreign aggressor? People are very susceptible to the argument "We must stay until the job is done" (though it's also true that they get anxious for the job to GET done); can we use that same rhetoric for the environment?

Thinking about all this, I suppose probably not. That is to say, the reason the military-industrial complex gets pretty much all the money it wants is NOT because of popular support, but rather support from... the military-industrial complex. It's a back-scratching circle of government toadyism and industrial profit, while the actual public relatively consistently ranks military spending pretty far down on the spending-preference food chain (my reading of the data from a very established social polling group, having taken data since 1976, is that defense spending has never been higher than the #8 overall priority by their methodology -- which ranks priorities by subtracting the %age of people who think we're spending "too much" on a given item from the %age of people who think we spend "too little" in an area). So I guess it's not as if the problem is the public concerns per se but is indeed what Eisenhower was originally going to call the military-industrial-congressional complex in his Farewell Address to the Nation in 1961.

So that brings us back to a government that doesn't actually serve the priorities of the majority of the population (which, for example, ranks health as #1 priority in the GSS data mentioned above quite often, and consistently ranks the environment and education in the top five priorities, much above defense spending -- yet defense spending is said to be over half the annual US federal budget). And that brings me back to my theory that we simply cannot break out of this without breaking out of two parties... so I guess I still think I'm right, after all.

Ok, never mind...

B & J: Conclusion... Or IS it?

Becky commented on the most recent post in the debate.

Comments and response to follow -- but I think we've gotten to the meat of our disagreement and somewhat understand each other's points (I have to say, I don't feel like she completely got mine, but that's what this "Conclusion" is for -- and of course, if she feels like I didn't get hers, it's not really the Conclusion...)

>>I think that even though we agree on nearly every issue, the difference between us is that I believe changing in small ways for the good (e.g., cutting carbon emissions, even if we don't end up cutting enough to advert what is probably certain disaster) is worth doing, rather than doing nothing. So, I'm actually very much for incremental change that helps some people, rather than nothing or more active degradation of the world, etc.<<
I feel rather sure you're not trying to imply that I'm doing nothing, or believe in doing nothing, but that is the implication of how you phrase this. Be that as it may; incremental changes are great! Yay incremental changes! But my question is: do they work? Can they avert disaster? I view this as a scientific question, prone to analysis and evidence. I personally feel that the evidence in this case says "No." However, I don't advise doing nothing -- to the contrary! -- I advise doing more. We, all of us, should be spending more time trying to figure out what and how we can do more to change the political infrastructure around us. Dorian Warren, professor of political science at Columbia and whom I heard speak at the New Left Forum last week, assessed it thus: we spend too much time worrying about the person of the presidency/elective office and not enough on the infrastructure that constrains them. Obama, whether he wanted to or not, cannot go outside of certain constraints and still succeed (Dorian's example was the fact that to be an elected black senator in Illinois, you *have* to be a member of a black church in order to gain the aid of some institution with levers to pull within the political machine -- other ways to access the political machine are largely closed to you. And in Dorian, an African-American, and my opinion, it's simply a fact that many if not most black churches are going to have Rev. Wright-like rhetoric at some point. African American church rhetoric is simply not acceptable to mainstream America.) Anyway, Obama seems to have potentially leapt past this issue for now, but it remains to be seen what happens when he has to make his (admittedly eloquent, moving, and inspired) pitch on getting past race to loads of skeptical centrists and conservatives. ANYWAY, the same machine politics constrain Obama's choices in poverty, GCC, etc. -- so voting for him is inherently unlikely to accomplish the larger goals because it does nothing to change the political infrastructure of the United States.

I'm babbling again, but the basic point is this: a) as I've said, I don't believe the necessary changes are possible given the two-party system; b) there is, practically speaking, zero chance any national Democrat -- or Republican -- will actively help to break the two-party system (and if there were, we should vote for them) and reform into a better system; c) if a and b are true, then it is absolutely necessary that effort on incremental change go, for the large part, towards changing the two-party system!!!, which d) of necessity means *not* supporting Democrats who seem unlikely to do this, which means not supporting most of them.

I hardly think it's hopeless! I think staying within the two parties is hopeless, BUT I do believe it's possible for us, yes, incrementally to get out of this system by taking votes away from Democrats who do not go outside the normal box profoundly. The fact that *others* (including, perhaps, Becky) think that such a change is impossible, or that it would be impossible to do this through the strategy proposed, does NOT mean I advocate doing nothing or disparage incremental change. But history does show us, I believe, that the majority of important changes are drastic, not incremental, and accomplished (in democratic cases) not through presidencies, but through movements and after disasters (and as I've said, if you have a strong movement, the president seems almost irrelevant, i.e. Nixon on civil rights).

>>The only other point I must make is that we are both somewhat on the fringe of American politics and many of the policies we see as requisite are not passed by Dems or Reps because they do not reflect US public opinion.<<
That's the thing! Look at the polls! We are *not* on the fringe. Well, in the specifics perhaps we are. But broadly -- poll after poll after poll shows that people want more action on poverty, GCC, education and less spending on the defense budget. They also say they'd be willing to pay higher taxes for it -- it's the lobbyists, after all, who are most hyped on tax cuts, that's not what the average voter lists first on their list of priorities. The average person in US cares much MORE that their taxes are spent wisely (a difficult thing to do and to convince people you're doing, true) than about lessening taxes. For one example article on American priorities, see this. so I must again emphasize -- the problem is not rooted only or even primarily in the will of the American people, their priorities, or who has the presidency -- it's the system that creates a public that is commonly ignored. (Not to forget -- many, many Americans don't vote -- isn't it possible, just *possible* that a candidate who *really* seemed different would attract these predominately poor and minority voters? Isn't it likely that a politician who *would* have stood up in the scene from Fahrenheit 9/11 would do more to singly effect change in the US than several democratic presidents?)

What we are on the "fringe" of would be religious beliefs and civil rights, generally -- gays, guns and abortion as they say. Important issues, but also issues likely best addressed outside of a two party system.

>>I think you may be right about the current war funding, but when I hear people talk about it, I get the feeling that if Congress did step in and decrease funding in any way for the troops, they would lose all hope of re-election, which as politicians they certain don't want.<<
Considering that a) anecdotal evidence is unreliable and b) people quite certainly wanted more than the Democrats delivered (re-authorizing FISA for fuck's sake?), I don't find this convincing. Besides which, we can hardly admire Obama for his boldness in taking on the race discourse in a challenging way but condone him or his colleagues lacking exactly this boldness, innovation, or honesty on the war. And I really, truly don't believe that no one is clever enough to construct a way to change war funding that could be played as *directly beneficial* to the troops. The fact that the Republicans would gnash teeth and wrench hair no matter what just means that one may as well do *something real* rather than pitiful tokenism, which defintively ALSO makes people lose confidence in Congress.

>>this discussion. My basic point is that I don't see Nader as doing anything to truly help the cause of having alternatives to the two major parties, and perhaps he could do a lot more as a senator (had he been one in 2000, he could have stopped the coronation, like you said)<<
Well, for one thing, one of his points is that Congresspeople have a, what, 98% re-election rate? It's almost impossible to break in until someone dies. And even then, you need support from the Rahm Emmanuels of the Democratic elite, who, for example, seem to have encouraged supporting Dennis Kucinich's opponent in the Cleveland Democratic Primaries as punishment for Kucinich defying their desires to drop impeachment bills. This is not just notable because it was a punishment for DK; it would've been at least a mild punishment for the Dems themselves by losing the 12 years seniority DK had. 12 years is no Conyers, it's true, but if I recall the House puts some weight on seniority, and a freshman Congressperson from an incumbent district does indicate some loss of aggregate power. Nader, even if he had the temperament or charisma to run for Congress (which I will readily admit he doesn't, nor for president) would likely not make it past the gatekeepers.

>>or running for something other than President every four years.
Well, I could agree with you here, but the point of my strategy is not actually Nader, though he does make my strategy more tolerable. My historical-analysis based strategy is to avoid the "necessary" socioecological disaster that will bring about change by causing an electoral break large enough to shift the US political system. I'm fine with doing this incrementally -- and to me, part of this incremental fight is cashing out of the Democratic party (until and unless some candidate runs that I *substantively agree with at least in part on issues of empire, not just traditional issues* -- Obama's threatened bombing of Pakistan or Iran represent quite unacceptable variations from this to me, among others). I enjoy Nader because I can vote *for* him; I could take the tactic of some friends and very knowledgeable colleagues and write-in someone else, anyone else. I could take the implicit tactic of the poor here in the US and the explicit tactic of the poor and their supporters and liberals in many other countries and purposefully not vote at all, in protest. I prefer, though, to stand for something rather than just against.

I may consider voting for Obama this year, since, as I said, to my thinking failing is still failing, whether or not you tried half-assedly. I don't think presidential elections are the road to important change (for what it's worth, Dorian Warren, a bona fide political scientists, seemed to back this up in his analysis). Given that attitude, voting for O for the symbolic value of a black president and to appease my Dem friends is relatively low-cost as an individual act. But just as I have spent a *lot* of time considering Obama (if not as much as I should've I suppose), I would ask that my friends and colleagues at arms spend some time researching the history, evidence, arguments that compose my views. One quite certainly doesn't have to be a political scientist to achieve political savvy -- but one does have to study, just as one would study a science. And I guarantee you, historical analysis can be done by college-educated non-political scientists -- and even non-college-educated non-scientists! I really want to be clear that I mean this earnestly: supporters of incremental change, of ANY change, really need to make an effort to do this, BUT those of us with jobs in the "sitting-and-thinking" sector have, I think, a special obligation to do so. Avoiding this obligation to be informed and versed in history and politics is, I think, to block the very change we wish to be in the world. (I'm not accusing you of doing this, Becky -- of avoiding obligation; this is general soap-boxing writ large, especially brought out by some recent conversations I've had here at UM.) --J

Courage, Audacity -- and the vain hope that the candidates will read this Time article

This is awesome.

I'm quite sure I don't agree with Joe Klein on everything, and indeed, I don't agree with his whole Time article, but I'd so I'm on board for most of it.

Frankly, it's the most intelligent center-progressive agenda I've seen from anyone in the US that I can think of. Maybe I'm just overwhelmed by someone, somewhere, writing something sensical about the election, but there you have it.

Go, read.

...a Presidential election would seem a perfect moment for laying out an ambitious new goal or two, especially at a moment when 70% of the public thinks the country is moving in the wrong direction. The problem is, politicians hate having to talk about anything remotely adventurous in the midst of an campaign. They prefer safe recitations of conventional wisdom... The candidates owe us answers, whether they want to give them or not... you can learn a lot from the character of their evasions—how their minds work, how much they know, what their basic principles are. Occasionally, they might even say something courageous. And very occasionally, there comes an election where the ability to be courageous, to tell the public things it may not want to hear, is the most important quality we need in a leader. I suspect 2008 will be that sort of election. [Ok, good luck with that one, Joe-boy -- J] The public has come to understand what market-tested political blather sounds like, and it may be ready to reward a politician who tells some inconvenient truths, to coin a phrase, who asks for the sort of sacrifices, in pursuit of specific goals, that President Bush refused to do. But which sacrifices, which goals?

Energy independence.
Universal health insurance.
Education reform.
Mandatory national service.

Solutions are possible, but they will require drastic changes in the way we go to school, get our health care, serve our country, live our lives. No politician with any sense would attempt to join all these battles, all at once, in the midst of a presidential campaign. But in 2008 a candidate who refuses to show some courage on at least one of these issues probably lacks the character to be President.

True enough, man.

Go, please, read this.

I'm so funny!

Apropos of nothing, I had this conversation today and was dazzled by my own smrtniss, er, smartness, er CLEVERNESS:

Me: If Molly punks out, she'll be punking out on herself, and that's not cool.
Andrew: Yeah, that's true, it's not. But we've all done it.
Me (abashedly): Yeah, that's true.
Andrew: But that doesn't mean we can't still make fun of her for it. We can be hypocrites. (laughs)
Me: Yeah! Hypocrisy is AWESOME! (Pause) As long as I'm the one doing it.

Completely unrelatedly, and apropos to nothing especially that last thing, I've been meaning to write down a sort of declaration of principle that's been rattling around in my head for a while and I just wanted to "get it on paper," as it were. In this case, my paper is a self-aggrandizing blog, and I don't really want to get it down just to remember it, but also to be self-congratulatory. Disclaimers aside:

"It is not the purpose of government to require someone be extraordinary in order to survive. Rather, the true purpose of government is to help create and maintain a society where average people have what they need to live extraordinary lives."

I've been working on the exact phrasing for a while for my own edification, but I impressed myself with the sentiment. It's based largely on Nobel Laureate economist Amartya Sen and his analysis of "equalities," such as in "Inequality Reexamined." And of course, I use government here in a context of strengthened/a Strong "small-d" democracy, sensu Prugh, Constanza and Daly's "The Local Politics of Global Sustainability," the book that helped set my entire research agenda and career (such as it is right now) in place.

US' falls further behind in Gender Equality

Hello, faithful readers, and people who googled this page by mistake.

So, there are numerous ways one could imagine in which the US falls further behind in gender equality. In this case, it's in our running series, "Countries that already have had elected female heads of state." This includes places from Ireland to Liberia to Pakistan to the UK to Jamaica. It does not, sadly, include us, the US.

Today, India has joined the august body of people with female heads of state before the so-called leaders of the free world. (That's us again.)

That still doesn't mean I'm for Hillary Clinton. J-Friend APVS recently pointed out that, despite not having terribly strong identification with Hillary politically, she thought that having a woman as prez of the US (or a black man, an equality concern for a different day) behind the podium every day for 4 or 8 years, standing, sitting, signing there as the so-called leader of the blahdyblah blah would be an extremely potent visual. (I took some liberties with APVS's exact phrasing).

We here at the Continuum agree, but strongly disagreeing with Hillary on matters of policy (or, more precisely, not trusting her to do the few liberal things she's mentioned and trusting the loopholes she's left herself in the rest will get well-used) we're not ready to vote for her. On Iraq, we find her very disappointing, and on everything else, mediocre at best. We -- er, I, sorry for the affectation -- don't trust Obama, for his part, because his resolve hasn't been significantly tested, and I'm still very very disappointed/frightened by his noises during his Senate campaign about rethinking the wisdom of legalizing gay marriage and the possibility of attacking Iran. It's not just that he said these things that I disagree with, but that he said them in a race he almost couldn't possibly lose. NO ONE likes Alan Keyes. Illinois voters seemed more likely to ask Dick "Dick" Cheney out for a drink than Alan "I hate Carpetbaggers like Hillary Clinton" Keyes "Carpetbagger for Senate '04." The man was not popular, and not just because his voice sounds like Jon Stewart doing an impersonation of the doctor guy from the Simpsons after having had his nose broken. If you can't stand up for liberal positions when your insane-oh "my gay child is going to hell, ha ha" conservative opponent is so thoroughly disliked by everyone and has no chance of winning ("Hmm, we can choose a black man or a black man brought in by the Republicans for the sole reason that he's a black man to compete with the other black man"), then I have nooooo faith that you'll make the hard, correct progressive calls I'm looking for when your gonads are really on the line.

So. Yes. India: Woman President. First one. Beat us, by at least a year and a half if not more. (They did already have precisely one woman prime minister -- they're one of those countries with both a PM and a prez -- which is good and all, though Indira Gandhi was not, from all accounts, a nice person -- in the forced sterilization, authoritarian head of state meaning of the phrase "not a nice person".)

And now for a word...

We interrupt your irregularly scheduled blogging for a word from Noam Chomsky, most widely quoted author in the world and persona non grata in the US:

"...Doubtless Iran's government merits harsh condemnation, including for its recent actions that have inflamed the crisis. It is, however, useful to ask how we would act if Iran had invaded and occupied Canada and Mexico and was arresting U.S. government representatives there on the grounds that they were resisting the Iranian occupation (called "liberation," of course). Imagine as well that Iran was deploying massive naval forces in the Caribbean and issuing credible threats to launch a wave of attacks against a vast range of sites -- nuclear and otherwise -- in the United States, if the U.S. government did not immediately terminate all its nuclear energy programs (and, naturally, dismantle all its nuclear weapons). Suppose that all of this happened after Iran had overthrown the government of the U.S. and installed a vicious tyrant (as the US did to Iran in 1953), then later supported a Russian invasion of the U.S. that killed millions of people (just as the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran in 1980, killing hundreds of thousands of Iranians, a figure comparable to millions of Americans). Would we watch quietly?

It is easy to understand an observation by one of Israel's leading military historians, Martin van Creveld. After the U.S. invaded Iraq, knowing it to be defenseless, he noted, "Had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy."

Surely no sane person wants Iran (or any nation) to develop nuclear weapons. A reasonable resolution of the present crisis would permit Iran to develop nuclear energy, in accord with its rights under the Non- Proliferation Treaty, but not nuclear weapons. Is that outcome feasible? It would be, given one condition: that the U.S. and Iran were functioning democratic societies in which public opinion had a significant impact on public policy.

As it happens, this solution has overwhelming support among Iranians and Americans, who generally are in agreement on nuclear issues. The Iranian-American consensus includes the complete elimination of nuclear weapons everywhere (82% of Americans); if that cannot yet be achieved because of elite opposition, then at least a "nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East that would include both Islamic countries and Israel" (71% of Americans). Seventy-five percent of Americans prefer building better relations with Iran to threats of force. In brief, if public opinion were to have a significant influence on state policy in the U.S. and Iran, resolution of the crisis might be at hand, along with much more far-reaching solutions to the global nuclear conundrum.

...Democracy promotion at home is certainly feasible and, although we cannot carry out such a project directly in Iran, we could act to improve the prospects of the courageous reformers and oppositionists who are seeking to achieve just that. Among such figures who are, or should be, well-known, would be Saeed Hajjarian, Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, and Akbar Ganji, as well as those who, as usual, remain nameless, among them labor activists about whom we hear very little; those who publish the Iranian Workers Bulletin may be a case in point.

We can best improve the prospects for democracy promotion in Iran by sharply reversing state policy here so that it reflects popular opinion. That would entail ceasing to make the regular threats that are a gift to Iranian hardliners. These are bitterly condemned by Iranians truly concerned with democracy promotion (unlike those "supporters" who flaunt democracy slogans in the West and are lauded as grand "idealists" despite their clear record of visceral hatred for democracy).

Democracy promotion in the United States could have far broader consequences. In Iraq, for instance, a firm timetable for withdrawal would be initiated at once, or very soon, in accord with the will of the overwhelming majority of Iraqis and a significant majority of Americans. [Blogger's note: A point made here before...] Federal budget priorities would be virtually reversed. Where spending is rising, as in military supplemental bills to conduct the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it would sharply decline. Where spending is steady or declining (health, education, job training, the promotion of energy conservation and renewable energy sources, veterans benefits, funding for the UN and UN peacekeeping operations, and so on), it would sharply increase. Bush's tax cuts for people with incomes over $200,000 a year would be immediately rescinded.

...[The U.S.] would allow the UN to take the lead in international crises, including in Iraq. After all, according to opinion polls, since shortly after the 2003 invasion, a large majority of Americans have wanted the UN to take charge of political transformation, economic reconstruction, and civil order in that land.

If public opinion mattered, the U.S. would accept UN Charter restrictions on the use of force, contrary to a bipartisan consensus that this country, alone, has the right to resort to violence in response to potential threats, real or imagined, including threats to our access to markets and resources. The U.S. (along with others) would abandon the Security Council veto and accept majority opinion even when in opposition to it. The UN would be allowed to regulate arms sales; while the U.S. would cut back on such sales and urge other countries to do so, which would be a major contribution to reducing large-scale violence in the world. Terror would be dealt with through diplomatic and economic measures, not force, in accord with the judgment of most specialists on the topic but again in diametric opposition to present-day policy.

Furthermore, if public opinion influenced policy, the U.S. ...would join the broad international consensus on a two-state settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict, which (with Israel) it has blocked for 30 years -- with scattered and temporary exceptions -- and which it still blocks in word, and more importantly in deed, despite fraudulent claims of its commitment to diplomacy. The U.S. would also equalize aid to Israel and Palestine, cutting off aid to either party that rejected the international consensus.

Evidence on these matters is reviewed in my book Failed States as well as in The Foreign Policy Disconnect by Benjamin Page (with Marshall Bouton), which also provides extensive evidence that public opinion on foreign (and probably domestic) policy issues tends to be coherent and consistent over long periods. Studies of public opinion have to be regarded with caution, but they are certainly highly suggestive.

Democracy promotion at home, while no panacea, would be a useful step towards helping our own country become a "responsible stakeholder" in the international order (to adopt the term used for adversaries), instead of being an object of fear and dislike throughout much of the world."

Emphasis added. Reposted from TomDispatch.com and Portside.org.

"Noam Chomsky is the author of Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy (Metropolitan Books), just published in paperback, among many other works.
Copyright 2007 Noam Chomsky"

Ta ta for now.

Jon Stewart: Hero of Democracy?

The WaPo apparently was pulilng it out of their ass when they alleged last year that The Daily Show may be bad for democracy (by making young people cynical, and -- in WaPo's unsupported, fevered conservative imagination, less likely to vote), but you know, it helps when your proof means what you think it means.

Let me sum up: Apparently, viewers of The Daily Show tend to be cynical about candidates, the electoral process, and the media -- which MAY lead to lower voting and apathy -- but no direct evidence of this was shown. Indeed, the actual study author's the WaPo was drawing from say that it could have such negative effects, but the researchers also mention the (also untested) possibility that TDS-inspired discontent may get people more involved. And indeed, studies in 2004, as I recall, showed that TDS viewers tend to be more informed than young viewers of other news programs, so, as the study said, "Participation breeds more participation and informed participation," and TDS may help viewers become more informed as they strive to "get" Stewart's humor.

Who knows, but the conservative WaPo apparently wanted to jump to a conclusion about Jon Stewart and whether he was hurting America.

No, wait, that was CNN's Crossfire, Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala.

n.b. Do you think WaPo will decide The 1/2 Hour News Hour (T1/2HNH), the conservative "answer" to The Daily Show, is also bad for America? Or is it too wretchedly bad to matter?

US, what's that behind your back?

"Oh, it's Haiti and a number of other countries..."

Wow, even the liberal New York Times has reported about the US shenanigans in Haiti now ("Mixed US Signals Helped Tilt Haiti to Chaos"). Democracy Now carried a similar story not too long ago on how Canada and the US had no intention of helping support democracy in Haiti, and certainly not an Arisitide-headed democracy, and therefore helped push that government off the cliff.

What's shocking (in the since of moral outrage, not in the sense of surprising) about all this is not so much that US talk of fostering democracy is bunk, and doesn't even extend too far beyond our own southern shores into the Carribean, but that the continued outrages and failures of Haiti are the epitome of the fault of the colonial empires. It was the second country in the Americas to declare independence from colonial powers, after the US. Yet did we help our poorer, blacker partner in the principles of liberty? Did we support their attempts at self-rule then? No, of course not -- they remained politically isolated for decades, in an attempt to kill and quell the independence of a predominately-black nation. The first and oldest free black nation in this hemisphere, and it is also the poorest, the most downtread and mal-used.

Haiti deserves so much more from each and every one of us -- and more attention by the Black American Cogniscenti, too. It followed us in independence, and we tried to starve, drown, dominate, subjugate, ignore, and now subvert them. It's shameful if unsurprising that the US wouldn't support a free black nation in the centuries past. It is shameful and horrible and a betrayal of our supposed principles beyond belief that we do not truly do so today. It is our closest sibling in independence; we treat it like our bastard Negro step-child on a plantation of old.