Ta-Nehisi Coates : The Atlantic

The Great Fallon-Obama Potato Sack Race

2012-02-09T15:45:45-05:00

It probably is said too much now, but coming from a time when black people were almost exclusively subordinate on television, this sort of thing is amazing. The Obama Presidency is, if anything else, a really special reality show for black people, a love letter to all of us disgusted with watching black families through the lens of sociology and "problem-solving."

The Lost Battalion

2012-02-09T13:30:13-05:00

It's yours...

Thinking About The New Kennedy Revelations

2012-02-09T13:00:00-05:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

It's interesting that Janet Maslin's review of Mimi Alford's new memoir takes Alford to task more than it does the man at the center of the book--John F. Kennedy. I guess that makes some sense given that Alford is the author and it was ultimately her story. But I've found myself overcome by a kind of visceral revulsion as I watched the story of Alford's affair with Kennedy unfold on Rock Center last night.

The point is often made here that when we discuss illicit sexual affairs with young women and powerful men, there is a tendency to infantalize the women--to treat them as victims without any designs or sexual urges original to themselves. I think that line serves as an important corrective, and indeed in her interview Alford is fairly clear that she wanted it to happen. At the same time, I think there has to be a way to talk about a humanistic morality, without young women as sexless stand-ins for that morality.

Call me old-fashioned. But I think it's an abuse of power to begin a sexual relationship with an intern in his office, one which the willingness of the other party doesn't allow you to evade. In the coldest most removed--and frankly mildest--sense, it opens the door for complaints of favoritism. Monica Lewinsky was not the only intern in the White House. In more malicious hands it can escalate to threats and blackmail. In this particular case it opened the door, according to Alford, to the abuser requesting that she service one of Kennedy's aides, and, according to Alford, his brother.

These are the firm questions that arise. Tougher ones remain: When the head of the free world requests that a 20-year old perform oral sex on one of his aides, does consent still having meaning? Is there coercion beyond beyond the physical, even if we grant that it's beyond the realm of prosecutors?

Someone with more experience in this area can speak for me, but somehow "Well she was an adult and she consented" doesn't feel particularly feminist, or humanist, to me. I also don't buy the notion that this sort of behavior has no impact on one's politics. In this age, at the very least a penchant to give one's foes ammo is an actual problem

America's Best Literary Journalist

2012-02-09T08:21:39-05:00

The Times profiles the intrepid Katherine Boo:

Ms. Boo graduated from Barnard in the late '80s, still typing -- for The Columbia Daily Spectator, for which she wrote editorials -- and was hired by Jack Shafer, then the editor of the Washington City Paper. Mr. Shafer, now a columnist for Reuters, said recently that he was impressed less by her writing then by her voluminous reading and her ability to think on her feet, and was amazed by how accomplished her first article was. "She had the soul of a poet but the arm strength of an investigative reporter," he recalled.

What stands out for me is Boo's work, now almost 20 years ago, on the impact of welfare reform. It's always interesting to think back on how the literature of your youth shapes your path. At the time policy wonkery about the potential effects of welfare reform was all the rage. But Boo's work treated the wonkery as an excuse to write about what ultimately mattered to me as a reader--the people.

The mandate, at the time in my life, appeared simple--"Tell stories." The point here isn't that narrative is superior to stats but that narrative has a different power, and one--in our current age--which is hard to capture. Stats fit into six minute debate segment in a way that stories do not.

At any rate, I've always been impressed that Boo has taken her gifts and applied them to the impoverished corners of the world, given that there is always a lucrative market for talented writers interested, solely, in rich people.

If you're unfamiliar with her work, this piece on the aftershocks of Katrina is an excellent start. Here's a taste:

The recreation center looked out on the bayou, which most of the evacuees avoided--there were alligators there. So it was considered daring when Carolyn and Gus began taking their toddlers to the water's edge each afternoon, when the light made everything around them glimmer gold and red. "I want their eyes to be steady full of something beautiful," Carolyn said, "enough beautiful to push the ugly things they've seen out of their brains."

One afternoon, Jasmine went to the bayou, too. It was the most beautiful place she'd ever been. Like many neglected children, she'd grown used to her lot in life, and barely paid attention when her mother asked the volunteers, "You got kids? I been trying to get rid of mine for some time." Jasmine had an eleven-year-old brother, and neither of them expected their mother to do "regular stuff," like helping with homework. Their mother said, "My kids don't even ask me anymore--my nerves is bad, so they gets beat up after one problem. Other thing they know is when I put that forty dollars' worth of food on the counter every month and they eat it too fast, they be going hungry until next month comes around."

One kind of poverty is that of the imagination--the inability to envision a future truly different from the present. Jasmine had long judged people based on whether or not they gave her food and clothing, but, as she watched Carolyn and Gus and other families, she found herself mulling different gauges of worth. She'd been working lately on a definition of love. "Maybe it's that, like, you honor somebody and they honor you back," she said carefully. "If you do for them without being all, like, See, I did this for you, now you best do something for me--like, you just do it for the kind of your heart."

Jasmine had seen her father only once since she was five. She knew that he had been in prison for selling drugs and attempted murder, and that he now put siding on houses. He was six feet two, had a place in suburban Minneapolis, and had sponsored the three best days of her life: "It was February and he was in a car, and he came by his cousin's house. I was playing in the parking lot then, so I caught a look of him. I knew right away--I said, 'That my daddy,' but because I'd grown big he didn't know me. But then he did know, and he took me eating at Manhattan's in New Orleans and bowling and to a movie, then he took me by my other cousin's, then we ate doughnuts, then he brought me to Avondale, too." Jasmine's furious dialling now had direction: she would ask her father to take her in.

This is how you write when you take people seriously. Boo's new book Behind The Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity is now in your area.

Birth Control and the 'Obama Independents'

2012-02-08T11:50:00-05:00

Sarah Kliff parses the numbers on birth control, insurance, religion and the illusive independents:

And a lot of this likely isn't about Catholic voters at all. Rather, it may well be about the demographics that are most supportive of this particular health reform provision: young voters and women. In the PRRI poll, both groups register support above 60 percent for the provision.

Those two demographics are important here for a key reason: they were crucial to Obama's victory in 2008. Third Way crunched the numbers earlier this month and found that the "Obama Independents" -- the swing group that proved crucial to his 2008 victory -- are, as Ryan Lizza put it, "disproportionately young, female and secular..."

These voters have tended to be difficult for abortion rights supporters to engage on reproductive health issues like abortion. Research from NARAL Pro-Choice America, which I wrote about last weekend, found a significant "intensity gap" there, with abortion rights supporters much less likely to see it as a crucial voting issue than their anti-abortion counterparts.

But when the conversation moves away from abortion to contraceptives - as it has this week - the intensity gap flips: A much larger segment of voters are willing to penalize a legislator who votes to defund family planning. That became apparent in polling that Democratic firm Lake Research Partners did earlier this year, which found that 40 percent of voters would be less likely to support a member of Congress who votes to defund family-planning programs. Just 22 percent would be more likely to support such a lawmaker.

Two things:

1.) I think it really helps to separate Obama independents--disproportionately "young, female and secular"--from the broad nebulous "Independent voters" that we are all so fond of invoking. Everyone claims to appealing to "independents." I think that has more to do with connotations and branding (independent="thinks for self") than the actual make-up of a candidates support.

2.) The difference numbers for Catholics and White evangelicals are really interesting. It's almost as if the issue for Republicans, isn't so much a hard pitch to Catholics, as it is a hard pitch to white Evangelicals, with the hope of clipping off some conservative Catholics along the way.

Planned Parenthood's Deep Bench

2012-02-07T15:20:13-05:00

The backlash against Komen has claimed Karen Handel:

In an interview, Handel acknowledged she played a role in Komen's decision to defund Planned Parenthood, but also pushed back against allegations that she was the sole actor in the decision. "I clearly acknowledge [my role] in the process, but to suggest I had sole authority is just absurd," Handel told Fox News Tuesday afternoon.

"The policy was vetted at all appropriate levels." Handel reiterated that Komen had stopped funding Planned Parenthood because of new grantmaking policies, further explaining that "controversy surrounding Planned Parenthood" also played a role.

I don't think that Handel, or her allies, quite understood the nature of their adversaries. I mentioned this in comments the other day but it's interesting to look at how Plannned Parenthood has weathered under targeting from the Right, as compared with other groups. This is not like ACORN. Whatever their significant work in poor communities and black and Latino communities, Planned Parenthood has touched women across race and across class, and thus indirectly, touched men across race and class too.

Consider this testimony from one of the young ladies pictured below:

That's me and my best friend, three years after I was diagnosed with breast cancer. We were holding a fundraiser in 2008 for breast cancer research/awareness and celebrating another year of being cancer free. I am 27 years old and have been a breast cancer survivor for 7 years now. When I was originally diagnosed and treated, I was lucky to still be covered by my mother's insurance plan. The related medical costs were easier for us to handle.

Once I graduated college, I was no longer eligible for coverage under my mother's insurance. So when I took my first job, I readily opted into my employer's insurance plan. After submitting my application, I was told that the insurance company would not cover any tests/procedures/expenses related to my pre-existing condition...breast cancer. Not only did I require biannual mammograms, I frequently required breast ultrasounds whenever something seemed out of the ordinary with my breast exams. These procedures are extremely expensive out-of-pocket.

Additionally, I am limited as to what hormonal birth control I can take as a result of the cancer. I am limited to two types...and they are expensive. And naturally, my insurance company would not cover either of the two options that I am allowed to take. I've been in a relationship with my significant other for about six years. While we have regularly discussed the possibility of children, we are simply not ready.

Birth control is essential for our life plan. Luckily, not only was I able to turn to Planned Parenthood for my mammogram needs, they became my ONLY source for affordable birth control. Early detection is the key against any type of cancer. The resources provided by Planned Parenthood have been invaluable to me personally. It has given me peace of mind to know with 100% certainty that I have remained cancer free. You cannot put a price on peace of mind. Thank you Planned Parenthood.

The thing about Planned Parenthood is when you run against them you aren't just fighting welfare, or chastising lazy food stamp addicts. And you aren't simply bashing East Coast elites. You are making war against a free-floating nation with vassals, of all color and stripe, at the ready.

It's often said that the diffuseness of gender poses a problem for feminists activists. But here you see how that very diffuseness can be transformed from weakness into power.

The Lost Battalion

2012-02-07T12:00:00-05:00

It's yours...

The Atlantic's Civil War

2012-02-07T11:00:00-05:00

The Atlantic's stellar Civil War issue is online. As excited as I am about the issue, I'm much more excited about our own Yoni (Cynic) Applebaum's historical profile of the cyclorama at Gettysburg.

Because I'm a total downer, I most enjoyed the portion where the great illusion fell out of favor:

But even convincing illusions are eventually dispelled. "We once obtained permission to go behind the scenes in ... The Battle of Gettysburg," a critic later recalled. "After that the illusion was destroyed. Most of the cannon in the foreground were of galvanized iron, the thickness of a sheet of tin, and so were the soldiers and wagons. When we returned to the platform the skill of the deception seemed to us greater than ever, but we were thoroughly disillusioned." Familiarity turned the marvelous mundane, made the breathtaking banal.

The day of the cyclorama soon passed. In Sioux City, Iowa, a twister lifted the roof off the cyclorama building and destroyed the artwork. Another canvas was sliced into pieces, and sewn together into a tent for a restaurant. Most of the massive paintings, though, met more prosaic ends. They fell victim to leaky roofs and sagging supports, burned, or were left to decompose. By 1888, the proprietors of the Boston Cyclorama decided that Gettysburg had exhausted its appeal, and commissioned General Custer's Last Fight to replace it. More than a dozen workers labored for two weeks to remove the massive canvas; they spent at least a day just rolling it up. It toured for a few years before slipping from public view.

In 1901, the astonished Boston Globe discovered the painting in a crate on a vacant lot, topped by an improvised roof, "going to rack and ruin." The story of a painting that once cost $200,000 rotting in a box, entombed in "a sort of mausoleum of greatness," captured national attention but provoked no efforts at salvage. The Boston Cyclorama Company dissolved three years later. And there the orphaned painting sat.

Of course, the story doesn't end there.

The Only Super Bowl Ad We Care About

2012-02-07T10:00:00-05:00

The interesting thing about the Avengers is--from what I can see--this is all about watching some (mostly) dudes bash heads and melt faces. No high-minded meditations on minority rights. No existential ruminations on the unbridled rage-filled id. No Jungian treatises on the nature of fear.

It's just guns the size of Lil Bow Wow.

Gotta say, I miss the Wasp.

The Bizarre Republican Freakout Over the Clint Eastwood Superbowl Ad

2012-02-06T20:43:08-05:00

I watched the Super Bowl online and considered myself lucky, because I was -- for the most part -- spared the commercials. But the commercials are us, and the unfortunate part of opting out is that you often find yourself left out. So here I am, catching up with the flap over the Clint Eastwood commercial.

I just watched the ad seconds ago, after reading about the Republican freak-out, which I have to say is bizarre. This is the exact sort of gauzy nationalism (to paraphrase Jonathan Chait) that corporations have put out for years and Republicans have, themselves, often alluded to. This is the America of their imaginations and to see them lambasting it, evidently for name-checking Detroit and softly alluding to the bail-out, really displays a party that actually isn't.

When Republicans line up against Clint Eastwood and cars, one has to ask, "What could they possibly be for?" Child labor? Charters for blah people? Midnight Basketball?

Because It's Funny to Be Bigoted

2012-02-06T15:00:00-05:00

Fallows calls out Pete Hoekstra ridiculous ad in his campaign against Debbie Stabenow as a "embarrassment for America"

I kinda agree:

1) The "Chinese" woman speaks in American-accented English, and I would bet she is actually an Asian-American. But the script has her make pidgin grammar errors, "Me likee!!"-style.

2) The ad's words are about trade, budgets, and jobs, but its images are about -- 'Nam!! Of course some parts of southern China look the way this ad does, with rice paddies, palm trees, no big buildings, people wearing conical straw hats and bicycling along dike tops. But this is nothing like how the typical big-factory zone looks in China, or the huge cities that would exemplify Chinese wealth and the country's rise -- ie, the subjects of this ad. So why this rural setting? I think it's because it offers a kind of visual dog-whistle, for those Americans who, either through experience or through Apocalypse Now-style imagery, associate smiling-but-deceptive Asians in a rice-paddy setting with previous American sorrow.

Yeah, I've never set foot in Asia, but the whole thing scans as bigot's view of China. The acting choices -- an Asian-American (I'm guessing) performing an American bigot's idea of how all East Asians sound -- is like some sort of bizarre meta-commentary on the history of yellowface.

I hope old girl got some people with her. She fin to catch a drop-squad. Yeah. Like the eye of Sauren, we goin see you!

What? I'm saying, I ride for my (other) people...

Eddie Long Is Sorry

2012-02-06T15:00:00-05:00

The Georgia mega-preacher apologizes for having himself crowned a "king" by a fake rabbi:

"The ceremony was not my suggestion, nor was it my intent, to participate in any ritual that is offensive in any manner to the Jewish community, or any group. Furthermore, I sincerely denounce any action that depicts me as a King, for I am merely just a servant of the Lord," Long wrote in a letter dated Saturday.

The letter was addressed to Bill Nigut, southeast regional director of the Anti-Defamation League -- a Jewish group that fights anti-Semitism.

"While I believe that Rabbi Ralph Messer has good intentions during his message at New Birth, I understand that the ceremony he performed on Sunday, January 29th, caused harm to the Jewish community, for which I am deeply sorry," Long wrote.

One thing I missed in my initial reaction to this was how offensive the whole spectacle must have been for devout and believing Jews. I live in a world of agnostics and atheists. The few people I know who are religious (with the obvious exception of family) are not evangelical and have no interest in my soul. Thus the ceremony struck me, originally, as more ridiculous--in the most literal sense--than offensive. It was only after a few private conversations that I realized I was, like, sort of missing something among my guffaws.

The Lost Battalion

2012-02-06T12:19:13-05:00

It's yours...

When Richard Holbrooke Met Malcolm X

2012-02-06T11:00:00-05:00

Here's a good piece of lost history from All Things Considered. In 1961 Malcolm X came to Brown University at the invitation of the student newspaper, edited by a then 19-year old Richard Holbrooke, and spoke to the campus audience. Ostensibly, Malcolm was supposed to debate a representative of the NAACP, which had spent the previous year pressuring other schools into not allowing Malcolm a platform. At the last minute, the NAACP rep declined to show.

That was probably smart. By then, Malcolm had established a reputation as fierce debater. But just to be sure The Nation had stacked the deck by purchasing 250 tickets for members of the Nation of Islam. And so Malcolm held forth alone, and then afterward retired to the student lounge to field questions. Brown student Malcolm Burnley recently found a copy of the speech, which had been lost to time. while researching a project.

I think it's easy to forget how much Malcolm X actually enjoyed these campus visits, not simply as someone spreading Nation dogma, but as a person who had never enjoyed the constant mental stimulation of a college campus. There are many rewards along the autodidact's road -- but those who hail from a certain socio-economic background often find themselves without fellow travelers and respected interlocutors. My Pops often says that one of the best things about the Black Panthers was that it was the first time in his life he'd been surrounded by thinking, literate, politically-minded young people.

A History of Violence

2012-02-06T10:00:00-05:00

The Times did a good piece this weekend on the families of murderers and how they so often live in the shame of their loved ones. I thought the video, below, which looks at the family of convicted killer Ronnie Lee Gardner, was most affecting at showing how easy it is to cross the line into criminality once violence and abuse becomes part of a family's culture.

By the end of the video, you see the children grappling with their own issues around violence, and their own encounters with the police, and the haunting sense that there is, perhaps, something in their blood.

Morning Coffee

2012-02-06T09:00:00-05:00

In some of my own writing I'm always thinking about how the sound of certain words--meaning aside--leave us with feelings, impressions and evocations. That is to say how the shape of words make us feel a certain away, regardless of literal definition.

Longtime readers will recognize that this thread of the sub-literal, the sonic, is one I've been after for awhile. My most recent thoughts come from my nascent French studies. I don't want to make any broad, sweeping declarations about which is the more beautiful language. I'm not qualified, and hope never to be in that business anyway. But there is something to learning how to say the same thing in different way--sometimes softer, sometimes harsher. Et Alors feels different than "So what." It's a similar feeling, but played with a different drum.

I'd like to do some serious research on Wu-Tang Clan with this thought in mind. I've been thinking, as always, about Raekwon whose ear for the shape of words, is, to my mind, second to none:

Hit the cell phone, regulate with well known tone
A Wally kingpin, who also slam and strike edition
Whattup, Corleone, smoke the bone, Tone phone me
Whattup he tried to slang there? Address him with chrome only...
Switchin Benzes, ten carat nigga with gold lenses
Frontin like he's sittin on a lump, he sittin on junk
You wanna pull a heist, draw guns in robberies?
You wanna rock rep, step in yellow Wallabies?

Beyond research, I'd love to take 20, or so, Wu-Tang verses and break them out into poems. I actually believe--with some thought about structure--they could work on the page. They basically need to be translated, not for literal meaning, but for feeling on the page.

Literal meaning is overrated.

Komen Round-Up

2012-02-03T17:59:32-05:00

I haven't blogged about Komen this week, but colleagues have been doing work and I wanted to make sure everyone checked out.

Goldblog has done some nice reporting here, here, and here.

Megan offers here thoughts here and here.

And Nicholas Jackson chimes in here.

Finally, off-site, Think Progress finds the old Bush spin-machine behind an apolitcal mask.

The Lost Battalion

2012-02-03T12:34:30-05:00

It's yours...

Rabbi Crowns Eddie Long King: Intercontinental Champ

2012-02-03T11:00:00-05:00

The right reverend invites a rabbi of questionable merit to his church, and has himself proclaimed a King:

A rabbi and Christian scholar questioned Long and Messer, the man who led Long's crowning ceremony. Messer said during the ceremony that the Torah was a "priceless" 312-year-old scroll that had been recovered from the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. He said he wanted to honor Long "on behalf of Jewish people, and the land of Israel." Rabbi Hillel Norry of Congregation Shearith Israel in Georgia said the ceremony was "ridiculous."

There's no Jewish coronation ceremony where someone is wrapped in a Torah and made a king, he said. "We just don't do that. We treat it with deference," Norry said of the Torah. "It's a shawl, not a crown. Don't treat it that way."

Norry said Messer doesn't appear to be an ordained rabbi in the Jewish faith. He also doubts that the Torah that Long was wrapped in is actually 312 years old, and had somehow escaped detection in a concentration camp.

"The Torah is the size of a person. It's not like you can hide one," he said.

This video basically was made to offend every conceivable stratum of this country--blacks, Jews, Christians, atheists--basically everyone. It actually ends with Long lifted aloft on his "throne" by four ushers, while clutching, what appears to be, a championship belt.

As Professor Blair Kelley said last night on Twitter -- I knew it was wrong from the moment he said "foreskin."

Chris Christie and the Nation-State Project

2012-02-03T09:18:00-05:00

I'm late on this, but given this blog's focus on history, I'd like to use Chris Christie's remarks to pursue a broader question:

Christie last week vowed to veto a gay marriage bill if it came to his desk but said proponents have the option to put the matter on the ballot. He added, "People would have been happy to have a referendum on civil rights rather than fighting and dying in the streets in the South."

I think this comes from an unfortunate sense that Civil Rights movement was merely about being able to be served a cup of coffee next to white folks. I don't minimize the sit-ins. They had great power--but their power is greater still when you understand that they were a component of a broader strategy to destroy a system of white supremacy. Key to the assault, obviously, was securing the right to vote

Let me make this as visceral as possible: Many of the actual people who were beaten and killed "in the streets"--Medgar Evers, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, for instance--were attempting to secure the very right which Christie, bizarrely, believes they should have exercised. It's almost as if he doesn't know what the Civil Rights movement actually was.

On a broader level, I go back and forth on whether I should be disturbed by the ignorance so many of us display of our own history. I don't mean this in terms of mere dates and rote facts, but in terms of the texture of the thing. (See yesterday's De Tocqueville thread.) In the defense of Americans, can any nation, en masse, come to a deep understanding of itself which eschews mythology? Are the Russians any better in how they see themselves? The French? The Dutch? The Ghanaians? The Kenyans? The Japanese? The paucity of my travels are rather embarrassing, and so I am not fit to answer.

In his (excellent) book The Substance Of Hope, my friend Jelani Cobb says that "nations are narratives." The point being we tell ourselves a story to make ourselves possible. The story unites us. And I wonder if the problem of African-American History is that it so coldly and cruelly counters the American narrative. I have spent the past two decades thinking about that history and it's ultimately made me more of a believer in the American project, not less of one. But that's a relatively recent development and one at least partially tied to what happened in 2008.

But with that said, I don't think it's too much to ask those who would consider seeking national office to to be more learned. I don't think it's too much to ask our leaders to understand why Andrew Goodman was lynched.

Into the Canon: De Tocqueville

2012-02-02T15:36:58-05:00

I came across this brilliant quote while thumbing through Democracy In America:

It is a just observation, that the people commonly intend the public good. This often applies to their very errors. But their good sense would despise the adulator who should pretend that they always reason right about the means of promoting it. They know from experience that they sometimes err; and the wonder is that they so seldom err as they do, beset, as they continually are, by the wiles of parasites and sycophants; by the snares of the ambitious, the avaricious, the desperate; by the artifices of men who possess their confidence more than they deserve it, and of those who seek to possess rather than to deserve it.

When occasions present themselves in which the interests of the people are at variance with their inclinations, it is the duty of persons whom they have appointed to be the guardians of those interests to withstand the temporary delusion, in order to give them time and opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection. Instances might be cited in which a conduct of this kind has saved the people from very fatal consequences of their own mistakes, and has procured lasting monuments of their gratitude to the men who had courage and magnanimity enough to serve them at the peril of their displeasure.

But on going over it a bit more, it became clear that this was in the footnotes and the quote actually belonged to Alexander Hamilton. Nevertheless, the quote serves the point I wanted to make.

We live in a time when "democracy" has a totemic power. We take it for granted that government by the people is always best and that if you give the people the franchise good things always happen. In many ways I find that tragic because in having to actually defend your beliefs, I think you gain a deeper appreciation for them. Spending a few weeks last summer reading George Fitzhugh honestly and forthrightly argue for slavery really deepened my understanding of freedom.

De Tocqueville loves America and is very pro-democracy. But he is writing in an era that isn't and thus is forced to go through all the twists and turns of justifying America to a (I'm assuming) skeptical audience.

He is forced to do this on the most minute of levels. Here he is, for instance, tackling the question of whether the Constitution erred in allowing the re-election of a president. But to do so he has to fully air the critique, honestly and without weighting the argument:

Intrigue and corruption are the natural defects of elective government; but when the head of the State can be re-elected these evils rise to a great height, and compromise the very existence of the country. When a simple candidate seeks to rise by intrigue, his manoeuvres must necessarily be limited to a narrow sphere; but when the chief magistrate enters the lists, he borrows the strength of the government for his own purposes.

In the former case the feeble resources of an individual are in action; in the latter, the State itself, with all its immense influence, is busied in the work of corruption and cabal. The private citizen, who employs the most immoral practices to acquire power, can only act in a manner indirectly prejudicial to the public prosperity. But if the representative of the executive descends into the combat, the cares of government dwindle into second-rate importance, and the success of his election is his first concern.

All laws and all the negotiations he undertakes are to him nothing more than electioneering schemes; places become the reward of services rendered, not to the nation, but to its chief; and the influence of the government, if not injurious to the country, is at least no longer beneficial to the community for which it was created.

I keep reading this wondering where De Tocqueville was when decided to invade Iraq. The book is--at once--a strong defense of democracy and a case against "nation-building." But more than that it is the kind of civics class I wish I'd been treated to as young man. We had to memorize the branches of government, and that was fine. But the theories behind those branches, not merely checks and balances, and the history out of which they came were not touched on. I had no international context.

It would be nice to have kids understand that a functioning democracy isn't particularly "natural" or easy.

We've kinda got a theme going today...

The Invincible Nobility of the Middle Class

2012-02-02T14:00:00-05:00

I really don't want to jump on Mitt Romney every time he phrases something inartfully. Talking in front of people is hard. The chance to phrase something wrong comes with every sentence. It is, of course, a good idea when seeking public office to be better at saying what you mean than most civilians. But I'm more interested in the deeper connotations that you hear both from Romney, most Republicans and most Democrats that somehow equates virtue, and I would argue even patriotism, with being "middle class."

I enjoyed the President's google hangout, the other day, but it was striking how hard he--and his interlocutors--stressed the fact that they were "playing by the rules," "hard-working." and "middle class." As someone with a parent, and siblings, and friends, who were raised in public housing or, at different points, on some sort of other government assistance, I find this framing interesting. My grandmother raised three daughters in Gilmore Homes. You would not have found (rest her soul) a more hard-working, playing by the rules person in any class. My grandmother was the American that so many hard-working/rules-playing citizens believe themselves to be.

But the implication of a middle-class patriotism holds that the poor do not work hard, and do not play by the rules. Their poverty is a moral stain. It's rather sad to see ostensible progressives reinforcing this message. Perhaps in the case of Obama it's matter of democracy and market. Perhaps he's talking to the people who are most likely to vote.

Still, for his next google hang-out, it really would be nice if he had someone from the projects or the impoverished regions of Appalachia who "worked hard," I understand that he has to go with the market. But it'd be nice to see him influencing as well as serving the market.

I'm sorry, but I don't have such expectations for Mitt Romney.

The Lost Battalion

2012-02-02T13:50:00-05:00

It's yours...

Whither the Occupation

2012-02-02T12:43:29-05:00

In the New York Review of Books, Michael Greenberg is skeptical about the future of Occupy:

Nevertheless, as Occupy Wall Street enters its fifth month, dislodged from most of the public spaces it had staked out around the country last fall, the movement seems weakened, its future uncertain. It sometimes appears to be driven by a series of tactics designed to maintain its public presence with no discernible strategy or goal--a kind of muddled, loose-themed ubiquity. The movement has proven adept at provoking media attention, but one may wonder what it amounts to, apart from its ability to reaffirm its status as a kind of protest brand name. Some core organizers are painfully aware of the situation.

"When I step out of the Occupy bubble, I discover that people have no coherent idea of who we are. They think we're a bunch of angry kids," Katie Davison told me. Amin Husain, a graduate of Columbia Law School who worked eighteen hours a day in corporate financing and property law before quitting to devote himself to the movement full time, expressed frustration at the fact that people were having trouble "grasping what we stand for..."

Of course this takes us back to the original critique--a lack of focus and goals:

Jackie DiSalvo, Occupy Wall Street's labor expert, felt that after the encampment in Zuccotti Park was uprooted "a set of demands was needed, to define the movement to itself, to bind it together." One demand DiSalvo would like to see is for a WPA-like jobs project funded by taxes on corporations and the wealthiest. "But I know it would never pass the General Assembly," she said, referring to the informal body comprised of anyone who showed up that made decisions in Zuccotti Park. She also hoped that OWS would run candidates in 2012, as the Tea Party did in 2010. But again, she admitted, "OWS would never endorse them."

In October, a "Demands Group" did spring up among the protesters. When members of the group went public with a few suggestions, the General Assembly attempted to vote them out of existence and by some accounts succeeded. Today, a version of the group exists with 410 members who, according to the movement's website, are "developing the concept of demands" (italics mine). Instead of debating actual demands, they are asking how a group "can create a process where their wants & needs can be communicated."

Greenberg did succeed in one effort to get some an on the record goal:

When I asked Amin and Katie what Occupy Wall Street's ultimate goal was, they said, "A government accountable to the people, freed up from corporate influence." It seemed that this pointed to a simple, single demand, something that many in the movement had been seeking since September: a campaign finance law that would ban private contributions and restrict candidates to the use of public money. Several detailed proposals for such a law already existed, including one from Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig that, though imperfect, would attack, in Lessig's words, "the root, the thing that feeds the other ills, and the thing that we must kill first."

As I spoke, I could sense the impatience of my listeners. I wasn't getting the point. Any such demand would turn them into supplicants; its very utterance implied a surrender to the state that went against Occupy Wall Street's principles. Katie maintained that Occupy Wall Street didn't yet have "a broad enough base" to make such a demand with any reasonable expectation that it could be met. And Amin said, "It doesn't matter what particular laws you pass. We're not about laws."

I think that's the crux of the problem. There's an argument that the process of federal legislation, at this point, is crippled by deep systemic problems. The filibuster is an obvious example. It's also worth pointing out that there is a space for activism beyond electoral politics.

But laws exist for a very good reason. They are--roughly put--a compact between citizens and the state detailing the guidelines for governance. Laws--and their alteration or abolishment--are the means by which we change the compact. The alternative, to my mind, is revolution.

At the end of the piece Greenberg notes that the leadership is seeking to emulate the Civil Rights movement of the 60s. I hope no one told him that directly. If they did, Occupy reflects a poor understanding of that movement's lessons. The Civil Rights movement neither eschewed the hard work of mapping out concrete goals, nor shied away from changing laws.

The sit-ins were an attempt to desegregate public and private facilities. Segregation was made possible by law. The Civil Rights movement sought the overthrow of those laws and the establishment of new ones. The Voting Rights Act delivered the South out of quasi-feudalism into democracy. People who were alive then will gladly testify that this was a real and historically significant accomplishment.

To my mind, Occupy's greatest contribution was placing the wealth gap on the radar. But the Civil Rights movement didn't merely seek to put segregation "on the radar." It sought to end it. To merely highlight the problem, and then to refuse to engage would have been everything the Civil Rights movement wasn't. It would have been cynical.

Cynicism wasn't an actual option for John Lewis. I don't know if the same can be said for Occupy. But then they lost me at Trinity.

American Socialism

2012-02-01T15:00:00-05:00

Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg brings us an animated argument for football as socialism. She also links to Allen Barra's argument to the contrary, which I find unconvincing. Which isn't to say I couldn't be convinced. I don't really know a lot about baseball's economics beyond the rudiments. I have a feeling I'm about to get an education.

As an aside, I strongly urge you to visit the blog of any American with a "Von" in their name. So aristocraty...

Bill Maher - Irritable Bowl Syndrome from Fraser Davidson on Vimeo.