I did not take a class from Jacques Barzun, nor have I ever met him. However, I have studied his works and the works that he wrote about, and both have affected my work as a teacher, occasional essayist, and citizen.
I first encountered Barzun almost thirty years ago as I prowled through the open stacks at the Brooklyn Public Library in search of some diverting, but substantive, summer reading. My eyes fell on The Energies of Art . That title intrigued me, so I flipped through a few pages to sample the writing of this (to me) unknown writer. In his introductory essay, "The Critic’s Task Today," he wrote: "Chaos in the world and art is in truth Criticism’s opportunity to shine. For chaos has causes; confusion has clues; history is not an impenetrable riddle, and if one can for a moment rise above the anxious fret of the personal, one will discover at least some namable sources of public dismay."
Then: "Who are we in the stream of time and Western thought? Supplying an answer to this question is the critic’s task today, and the best excuse for his existence. For my part, I am willing to be judged by this test for venturing to use up paper and print on ‘mere’ criticism."
I was surprised by the clarity of Barzun’s writing—surprised because the last few critical works I had read were jumbled mixtures of puns and quotations pompously declaring themselves deconstructions of texts. So I flipped to the last essay of the book, "William James and the Clue to Art," and found this:
A … way … of showing the relevance of James’s psychology to art is to sample its abundant evidence for the view that the mind is the original artist, who hardens into a geometrician only by special effort or dull routine. James’s radical new view itself resembles an artistic revolution in that, displacing from the foreground as ready-made all ideas and objects, it restores primacy to sensation and will. Objects are always clear, hard, unyielding things that remain ever themselves as they recur, whereas will and sensation fluctuate. The Jamesian mind is thus the innovator’s—bathed in sensation, individual, free, and confident of its power to shape the congenial material of its own perceptions.
In The Book of J, Harold Bloom wrote, "As we read any literary work, we necessarily create a fiction or metaphor of its author." In my fiction Jacques Barzun is my teacher, with whom I stroll through the Grove of Academe. He points out fads posing as breakthroughs and clichés disguised as tenets; he teaches me that the giving and the taking of meaning is not automatic; and he professes the virtue of clarity. Then he ushers me to the gate between the grove and agora and pushes me into the marketplace where, jostled by rivals and torn by critics I empirically test what I have learned.
Winded and sweaty, I return to the grove with the test results, and Barzun reminds me that the grove is as arduous as the agora, and that enlivened minds keep the gate between them open. He also introduces me to other teachers who can cool me off. Teachers such as Walter Bagehot, Samuel Butler, and William James, who all remind me of Bunyan’s great warning against "Knowledge not attended with doing.". And Lionel Trilling, with whom Barzun taught a colloquium of great books of the modern period at Columbia University. Their method—what Barzun calls a "methodless method"—defied classification. Trilling and Barzun dubbed it "cultural criticism," which Barzun describes in his essay, "The Imagination of the Real" (Art, Politics and Will: Essays in Honor of Lionel Trilling, Basic Books, 1977).
[The method] arose from a lively sense of the force of circumstances, balanced by an equally strong sense of the free life that ideas lead when hatched. It seemed clear to us that in order to know what books and works of art, philosophies and movements of opinion intend, one must learn their antecedents and concomitants of whatever kind; and to know how ideas thrive and change, one must trace their consequences. …The effort was a work of the sturdiest imagination—the imagination which springs from fact and is hedged in by possibility, the literal imagination, the imagination of the real.
Those last five words hang over the gate as I return to the agora again, ready to converse with my fellow citizens.
About conversation and its concomitant, meditation, Barzun writes in "Culture High and Dry" (The Culture We Deserve, Weslayan University Press, 1989):
Culture in whatever form—art, thought, history, religion—is for meditation and conversation. Both are necessary sequels to the experience. Cultivation does not come automatically after exposure to the good things as health follows a dose of the right drug. If it did, orchestra players would be the most cultured people musically and copy editors the finest judges of literature. Nor does ‘reading up’ on art suffice unless it spurs meditation and conversation. Both are actions of the mind along the path of finesse. No one can imagine a systematic conversation. As for true meditation, it excludes nothing; its virtue is to comprehend—in both senses: to understand and to take in the fullest view. Both are actions of the mind-and-heart, and therefore charged with the strongest feelings. Indeed both interior monologue and spoken dialogue aim at discerning which feelings and to what degree of each belong to an idea or an image. That is how culture reshapes the personality: it develops the self by offering the vicarious experience and thought; it puts experience in order.
Culture is not a diversion for the idle or the passive, though many believe it to be. William James alerts us to this tendency in his essay, "The Social Value of the College Bred (1908):"
We of colleges must eradicate a curious notion which numbers of good people have about such ancient seats of learning as Harvard. To many ignorant outsiders, that name suggests little more than a kind of sterilized conceit and incapacity for being pleased. … In Edith Wyatt’s exquisite book of Chicago sketches called "Every One his Own Way" there is a couple who stand for culture in the sense of exclusiveness, Richard Elliot and his feminine counterpart—feeble caricatures of mankind, unable to know any good thing when they see it, incapable of enjoyment unless a printed label gives them leave. … Real culture lives by sympathies and admirations [and] it pounces unerringly on the human core.
We get the words culture and cultivated from Latin: to till, to plow a field. Preparing a plot of land for a crop is no more sweaty an activity than cultivating one’s mind. As tools for cultivation, James’s "sympathies and admirations" go well with Barzun’s "meditation and conversation," and together they open the gate of our imagination of the real, so we can put our experience in order.
My experience has shown that the grove, the agora, and the gate are real. Even in my retired state, my stroll with Barzun and his colleagues continues. Daily, I work to keep my experience in order by reading, meditation and conversation. As I seek the antecedents, concomitants and consequences in the apparent chaos of the world and art, I sometimes find a namable source of public dismay.
For example, I am dismayed by the current Republican Party leadership’s lack of any imagination of the real. They encounter no cultures different from their own. They embody my definition of a Conservative: a person who takes action on the belief that if something has not happened to him, it is not important or it hasn’t happened at all.
I doubt that many Congressional Conservatives have stood in unemployment lines because their factory has closed. Their educations and life-experiences have kept them in the grove of clubs and board rooms and away from the agora swarming with their fellow-citizens, many of them currently unemployed. Their culture—history, religion, art, thought—is one of exclusiveness and has made them, in James’s words, "feeble caricatures of mankind, unable to know any good thing when they see it, incapable of enjoyment unless a printed label gives them leave." That label tells them two things: First, money is the final value of all things. Second, those who disagree are evil.
This is why Conservatives who preach bipartisan effort in governance practice narrow, one-sided politics. Their legislative behavior, meditations in caucus rooms, and conversations on the floors of the House and Senate all reveal their beliefs: Unemployed people should stop complaining and get a job. Banks, securities traders, and real estate brokers should be allowed to do anything to make a profit. So should food and drug processors and manufacturers. The rule of law applies only to political opponents.
Recently the Republican National Committee elected a new Chairman, Michael Steele, who declared in his victory speech, "We're going to say to friend and foe alike, we want you to be a part of us. And to those of you who will obstruct, get ready to get knocked over."
These words are not destined to be engraved in the tablets of our republic alongside those of Lincoln, or even Theodore Roosevelt. This new leader of conservative America offers an iron hand in an iron glove to his political opponents. So Congressional Republicans are continuing their culture-war by obstructing the progress of the badly needed legislation to stimulate the US economy.
As for the Republicans’ foes, we will not join in the conservative march toward the deterioration of our economy. Nor the destruction of the culture we deserve.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Friday, February 6, 2009
Open Letter to all Republican Officeholders
In the past few weeks I have heard too many of you Republican politicians refer to your party as the Party of Abraham Lincoln. Well, Abraham Lincoln is spinning in his tomb in Springfield, Illinois. Lincoln hated cant, obfuscation, and obstructionism, which is all you Republicans have offered American citizens since the last election.
Your effort to turn voters against the stimulus package, President Obama, and the Democrats isn’t working.. We voters remember that you Republicans destroyed the budget surplus accumulated by the last Democratic administration, and you increased the national debt. You also deregulated industries or chose to ignore your responsibilities as overseers of the national interest. In short, you created the mess we are in.
So you will soon learn that, on the floor of the Senate, your waving about the six-hundred page bill won’t work, nor will your shrill declarations against deficit spending and the burden of debt our grandchildren will have to shoulder. Despite your outdated arguments and posturing, it is clear that you are trying to block government action to put people back to work, prevent the needed re-organization and regulation of the banking and investment services industry, and inject capital into state and local governments so that they can begin desperately needed repairs of the infrastructure.
By the way, we also know your policies were responsible for the nearly trillion dollars (not yet accounted for in the National Debt) wasted on a war in Iraq, for al-Qaeda’s success, for torturing prisoners, and for the outing of CIA agents. But those are the subject of another letter.
In the next election, you who currently hold office may be re-elected, but only if you stop practicing the politics of the Bush administration and start working to solve the problems that you and your fellow members of the Republican Party created. Stop inflating small programs in the stimulus package into gigantic boondoggles. Stop referring to the stimulus program as just another spending program. Stop the tired rhetoric of right-wing, neo-Conservative obstructionism.
Start working to get us out of the mess that you put us into.
Your effort to turn voters against the stimulus package, President Obama, and the Democrats isn’t working.. We voters remember that you Republicans destroyed the budget surplus accumulated by the last Democratic administration, and you increased the national debt. You also deregulated industries or chose to ignore your responsibilities as overseers of the national interest. In short, you created the mess we are in.
So you will soon learn that, on the floor of the Senate, your waving about the six-hundred page bill won’t work, nor will your shrill declarations against deficit spending and the burden of debt our grandchildren will have to shoulder. Despite your outdated arguments and posturing, it is clear that you are trying to block government action to put people back to work, prevent the needed re-organization and regulation of the banking and investment services industry, and inject capital into state and local governments so that they can begin desperately needed repairs of the infrastructure.
By the way, we also know your policies were responsible for the nearly trillion dollars (not yet accounted for in the National Debt) wasted on a war in Iraq, for al-Qaeda’s success, for torturing prisoners, and for the outing of CIA agents. But those are the subject of another letter.
In the next election, you who currently hold office may be re-elected, but only if you stop practicing the politics of the Bush administration and start working to solve the problems that you and your fellow members of the Republican Party created. Stop inflating small programs in the stimulus package into gigantic boondoggles. Stop referring to the stimulus program as just another spending program. Stop the tired rhetoric of right-wing, neo-Conservative obstructionism.
Start working to get us out of the mess that you put us into.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
The Nation of Abraham
Begin here: What do Israelis and Palestinians have in common? They both want to exist in peace as a sovereign nation. Easy to say, difficult to accomplish, but absolutely necessary for world-wide economic, religious, and political stability
It is far easier to describe how they are different and why they are antagonists. Palestine was once part of the British Mandate, instituted in 1916 as part of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Sykes-Picot was a secret understanding between Great Britain and France, with consultations with Russia, for the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. That empire, now known as the Middle East from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, was carved up by the British and the French to gain control of ports and trading rights. They also held power over the settling of boundaries of new Arab states. Although some Arab leaders became rulers of what were to become Iraq, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, others in the region found this agreement an arrogant abrogation of their rights. They resented European hegemony in their own countries.
In 1922 the British split its mandate into two parts. Everything west of the Jordan River was Palestine; to the east was TransJordan.
Then came November 29, 1947, when United Nation Resolution 181 called for the division of Palestine into a Jewish State and an Arab State. At that time, Palestine, which was controlled by the British, had a population of about 1, 237,000 Arabs and about 608,000 Jews. Resolution 181 mandated that the Jewish State would cover 56.47% of Palestine; and the Arab State, 43.53%. Jerusalem would become an international trusteeship.
The UN also proposed a five-country commission which comprised Bolivia, Denmark, Panama, the Philippines, and Czechoslovakia. The commission was in charge of the administration of the regions evacuated by the British. It was also charged with establishing the borders of the two states and with setting up a provisional council of government in each country.
David Ben Gurion, the first Israeli Prime Minister, opposed the plan, because Israel wanted the Jewish state to take over the entire territory of the British mandate in Palestine. The Palestinians claimed that the plan was yet another European affront to their rights, because they were the majority population in the region. The claim was not unjustified, for the UN at that time was Euro-centric; two of the five commission members were European, as were four out of the five UN Security Council’s permanent members. Three of those, Great Britain, France, and USSR had started all this with their Sykes-Picot Agreement.
The Resolution was carried out in 1948. The borders of Israel were established, but the partition left Palestinians without a country, and inter-tribal hatreds kept them from getting one. (In his history, Revolt in the Desert, T. E. Lawrence mentions 20 clans and 16 tribes in the region.) King Hussein barred from Jordan all Palestinians who were not Hashemite. Israel could have allowed Palestinians to become citizens, but they kept them out, even those who had lived in those areas before Israel was established.
To send the Jews back to Europe, Palestinians raised volunteer armies to destroy Israel, and failed. The UAR, under Gamel Nasser, attacked Israel and was soundly defeated. Jordan attacked and was defeated. Meanwhile, Israel’s population grew from large scale immigrations of not only European refugees whose homes had been destroyed by World War II, but others who wished to live in a Jewish homeland. Israeli settlements began to spring up in territories recognized as Palestinian land but occupied by Israeli soldiers. More bloodshed on both sides.
Intelligent and well-informed friends of mine maintain that anti-Semitism is at the heart of the attacks on Israel. Certainly, when Israel was created, Europe was anti-Semitic, and large numbers of Europeans and Americans still are. There were anti-Jewish feelings in many parts of the Middle East before World War II, but Jews had always been an important part of the populations of Jerusalem, Baghdad, Damascus, and other important Arab cities. They had lived in these cities for centuries, and they had thrived.
Nevertheless, Palestinians attacked Israelis, and Israelis retaliated against Palestinians who, in turn, retaliated against Israelis. Innocent Israelis and innocent Palestinians have been killed since the founding of Israel, and they will continue to do so as long they believe that retaliation solves all international problems. Retaliation comes from a self-righteous, they-hit-us-first politics, which began in this region with the founding of Israel in 1948, not in the Middle Ages.
Adding to the conflict are American Christian evangelicals and fundamentalists who support Israel financially and politically. They also pray and preach that Israel will win and destroy Palestinian Muslims. These Christians believe that 14,000 days after Jerusalem returns to the total control of the Jews, Jesus will return to Earth. Then all born-again Christians will ascend to Paradise, and Jesus will judge—harshly judge—all those people who are not born-again. Ironically, this includes the Jews and the Muslims who are doing the fighting and dying. In blunter, but no less accurate, language, these Christians hope that Israelis wipe out all Palestinians so that righteous born-again Evangelicals can go to Heaven.
Both Palestinians and Israelis believe that God is on their side, which is why both sides refuse to compromise. And both sides use God as the instrument of recruitment for their armies and militias. But I believe that behind the religious fanaticism and prejudice is a strong nationalism that use religion as a propaganda tool. Hamas, which was founded in 1987, and Hezbollah, a Lebanese organization founded in 1985, are not copying Nazis; they are trying to destroy the nation of Israel so they can take the land and start their own country.
Recently, Jeffrey Goldberg reported in an op-ed piece for The New York Times (January 14, 2009), "Hamas and Hezbollah also share the view that the solution for Palestine lies in Europe. A spokesman for Hezbollah, Hassan Izzedine, once told me that the Jews who survive the Muslim 'liberation' of Palestine "can go back to Germany, or wherever they came from.' "
Israelis, quite rightfully, are not going to return to Germany, Russia, or any other place in Europe, America, Africa, and Asia. Palestinians, quite rightfully, want a homeland. Both believe that they will achieve success by continuing the very actions that have proven, time and again, to be futile. How do they stop killing each other and get what they want?
As I see it, Palestinians and Israelis have so much in common that they should join together in a new nation called The Nation of Abraham. Both Jews and Muslims are descended from the same prophet. Both Jews and Muslims have suffered from the arrogance of prejudiced occupiers, and both have shown strength and determination in the face of their enemies. Both have shown a love of family. Israelis and Palestinians have too. Their shared values and experiences could provide the glue that would bind them together into a peaceful and prosperous country.
The constitution of The Nation of Abraham would recognize its citizens’ right to their own religious practices, as long as they did not interfere with the rights of other citizens. It would recognize all citizens’ rights to own property, live where they want, run for political office, vote for the candidates of their choice, attend schools, and practice all the other freedoms that democracies have to offer.
Together they would form a new national assembly, representing the populations of the various regions. Together, they would learn the art of negotiation and compromise for their mutual benefit. Together they would pass laws that benefit all citizens, not just one religious group or political interest. Together, they would do business with one another, and their goods and services would compete in the world market place. Together they would create a tax base to build schools and hospitals, which are far cheaper to maintain than armies and militias. Together, to protect themselves from their enemies, they would form a military service of formidable skill and courage. Together, they would form a reconciliation commission to air grievances and begin the healing process. Together, they would show the world a practical way out of the morass that their current antagonism has created.
Did I say practical? Yes. Despite the emotional satisfactions it affords, hatred is most un-practical. Which would Israelis and Palestinians actually prefer? Implacable enemies or a stable market for their goods and services? Bomb shelters and burning tires in disease-ridden slums or peaceful streets in prosperous neighborhoods? Children being trained for suicide-bomb attacks or schoolkids playing soccer?
There will always be different religions and religious differences, but they do not have to cause wars. Jews will never be able to become Muslims. Muslims will never be able to become Jews. However, in The Nation of Abraham they can become countrymen and, hopefully, friends.
It is far easier to describe how they are different and why they are antagonists. Palestine was once part of the British Mandate, instituted in 1916 as part of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Sykes-Picot was a secret understanding between Great Britain and France, with consultations with Russia, for the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. That empire, now known as the Middle East from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, was carved up by the British and the French to gain control of ports and trading rights. They also held power over the settling of boundaries of new Arab states. Although some Arab leaders became rulers of what were to become Iraq, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, others in the region found this agreement an arrogant abrogation of their rights. They resented European hegemony in their own countries.
In 1922 the British split its mandate into two parts. Everything west of the Jordan River was Palestine; to the east was TransJordan.
Then came November 29, 1947, when United Nation Resolution 181 called for the division of Palestine into a Jewish State and an Arab State. At that time, Palestine, which was controlled by the British, had a population of about 1, 237,000 Arabs and about 608,000 Jews. Resolution 181 mandated that the Jewish State would cover 56.47% of Palestine; and the Arab State, 43.53%. Jerusalem would become an international trusteeship.
The UN also proposed a five-country commission which comprised Bolivia, Denmark, Panama, the Philippines, and Czechoslovakia. The commission was in charge of the administration of the regions evacuated by the British. It was also charged with establishing the borders of the two states and with setting up a provisional council of government in each country.
David Ben Gurion, the first Israeli Prime Minister, opposed the plan, because Israel wanted the Jewish state to take over the entire territory of the British mandate in Palestine. The Palestinians claimed that the plan was yet another European affront to their rights, because they were the majority population in the region. The claim was not unjustified, for the UN at that time was Euro-centric; two of the five commission members were European, as were four out of the five UN Security Council’s permanent members. Three of those, Great Britain, France, and USSR had started all this with their Sykes-Picot Agreement.
The Resolution was carried out in 1948. The borders of Israel were established, but the partition left Palestinians without a country, and inter-tribal hatreds kept them from getting one. (In his history, Revolt in the Desert, T. E. Lawrence mentions 20 clans and 16 tribes in the region.) King Hussein barred from Jordan all Palestinians who were not Hashemite. Israel could have allowed Palestinians to become citizens, but they kept them out, even those who had lived in those areas before Israel was established.
To send the Jews back to Europe, Palestinians raised volunteer armies to destroy Israel, and failed. The UAR, under Gamel Nasser, attacked Israel and was soundly defeated. Jordan attacked and was defeated. Meanwhile, Israel’s population grew from large scale immigrations of not only European refugees whose homes had been destroyed by World War II, but others who wished to live in a Jewish homeland. Israeli settlements began to spring up in territories recognized as Palestinian land but occupied by Israeli soldiers. More bloodshed on both sides.
Intelligent and well-informed friends of mine maintain that anti-Semitism is at the heart of the attacks on Israel. Certainly, when Israel was created, Europe was anti-Semitic, and large numbers of Europeans and Americans still are. There were anti-Jewish feelings in many parts of the Middle East before World War II, but Jews had always been an important part of the populations of Jerusalem, Baghdad, Damascus, and other important Arab cities. They had lived in these cities for centuries, and they had thrived.
Nevertheless, Palestinians attacked Israelis, and Israelis retaliated against Palestinians who, in turn, retaliated against Israelis. Innocent Israelis and innocent Palestinians have been killed since the founding of Israel, and they will continue to do so as long they believe that retaliation solves all international problems. Retaliation comes from a self-righteous, they-hit-us-first politics, which began in this region with the founding of Israel in 1948, not in the Middle Ages.
Adding to the conflict are American Christian evangelicals and fundamentalists who support Israel financially and politically. They also pray and preach that Israel will win and destroy Palestinian Muslims. These Christians believe that 14,000 days after Jerusalem returns to the total control of the Jews, Jesus will return to Earth. Then all born-again Christians will ascend to Paradise, and Jesus will judge—harshly judge—all those people who are not born-again. Ironically, this includes the Jews and the Muslims who are doing the fighting and dying. In blunter, but no less accurate, language, these Christians hope that Israelis wipe out all Palestinians so that righteous born-again Evangelicals can go to Heaven.
Both Palestinians and Israelis believe that God is on their side, which is why both sides refuse to compromise. And both sides use God as the instrument of recruitment for their armies and militias. But I believe that behind the religious fanaticism and prejudice is a strong nationalism that use religion as a propaganda tool. Hamas, which was founded in 1987, and Hezbollah, a Lebanese organization founded in 1985, are not copying Nazis; they are trying to destroy the nation of Israel so they can take the land and start their own country.
Recently, Jeffrey Goldberg reported in an op-ed piece for The New York Times (January 14, 2009), "Hamas and Hezbollah also share the view that the solution for Palestine lies in Europe. A spokesman for Hezbollah, Hassan Izzedine, once told me that the Jews who survive the Muslim 'liberation' of Palestine "can go back to Germany, or wherever they came from.' "
Israelis, quite rightfully, are not going to return to Germany, Russia, or any other place in Europe, America, Africa, and Asia. Palestinians, quite rightfully, want a homeland. Both believe that they will achieve success by continuing the very actions that have proven, time and again, to be futile. How do they stop killing each other and get what they want?
As I see it, Palestinians and Israelis have so much in common that they should join together in a new nation called The Nation of Abraham. Both Jews and Muslims are descended from the same prophet. Both Jews and Muslims have suffered from the arrogance of prejudiced occupiers, and both have shown strength and determination in the face of their enemies. Both have shown a love of family. Israelis and Palestinians have too. Their shared values and experiences could provide the glue that would bind them together into a peaceful and prosperous country.
The constitution of The Nation of Abraham would recognize its citizens’ right to their own religious practices, as long as they did not interfere with the rights of other citizens. It would recognize all citizens’ rights to own property, live where they want, run for political office, vote for the candidates of their choice, attend schools, and practice all the other freedoms that democracies have to offer.
Together they would form a new national assembly, representing the populations of the various regions. Together, they would learn the art of negotiation and compromise for their mutual benefit. Together they would pass laws that benefit all citizens, not just one religious group or political interest. Together, they would do business with one another, and their goods and services would compete in the world market place. Together they would create a tax base to build schools and hospitals, which are far cheaper to maintain than armies and militias. Together, to protect themselves from their enemies, they would form a military service of formidable skill and courage. Together, they would form a reconciliation commission to air grievances and begin the healing process. Together, they would show the world a practical way out of the morass that their current antagonism has created.
Did I say practical? Yes. Despite the emotional satisfactions it affords, hatred is most un-practical. Which would Israelis and Palestinians actually prefer? Implacable enemies or a stable market for their goods and services? Bomb shelters and burning tires in disease-ridden slums or peaceful streets in prosperous neighborhoods? Children being trained for suicide-bomb attacks or schoolkids playing soccer?
There will always be different religions and religious differences, but they do not have to cause wars. Jews will never be able to become Muslims. Muslims will never be able to become Jews. However, in The Nation of Abraham they can become countrymen and, hopefully, friends.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Eyeless in Gaza: The March of Folly II
Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him
Eyeless in Gaza at the mill
with slaves ……
O impotence of mind in body strong!
But what is strength
without a double share
Of wisdom…
John Milton, Samson Agonistes, 1671
Like Samson, deliverers in Gaza have little wisdom and no vision. Both Israel and Hamas knew that they would retaliate against one another if attacked or limited in any way. Thus, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert knew that when he stopped all shipments of food and medical supplies into Gaza, Hamas would react violently. Khaled Meshal, leader of Hamas, knew that when he ordered rockets fired into Israel, Gaza would be invaded. Both knew that civilians would be killed.
They also knew that the news media would be flooded with images of bloody corpses and overworked paramedics in underequipped hospitals. Which would be followed by pictures of wailing mourners at funerals and protests outside embassies. Then Israelis shouting "This is total war!" followed by videos of masked militiamen and women shouting "We welcome Jew-invaders to Gaza with death!" Then a UN statement, acknowledging a nation’s right to defend itself, yet condemning both sides for their reckless attacks.
This is followed by Israelis condemning Hamas for its smuggling arms and rockets into Gaza though tunnels whose southern terminus is in Egypt. Which is followed by Palestinians slapping their chests and waving infants’ corpses above their heads like battle flags. Then interviews with Israeli and Arab moderates calling for a cease fire. Then more Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza, then Israeli airstrikes, and finally an Israeli invasion of Gaza.
Followed by other spokespersons for various groups restating the accusations which simply restate the banal words, "They started it." Political leaders acting like kids who tell their parents, "Well he hit me first!"
By now adults would have asked Hamas, "Instead of arms and rockets, why didn’t you smuggle food and medical supplies into Gaza through those tunnels?" They would have asked Israel, "Why didn’t you call on Egypt to block the smuggling of arms from Sinai, which is the southern terminus of the tunnels?"
Adults would have also asked the Bush administration, "If Israel is our major ally in the Middle East, why don’t you obtain permission to send troops into Sinai to close down the tunnel?" They also would have asked, "Why don’t Israel and the US ship food and medicine into Gaza?"
No one, particularly the leaders of Hamas, Israel, and the US, asked these questions because they are politicians who seek power, not the resolution of conflict. The energizer of power is hate, which is easier to achieve than respect. The leaders tell us to hate the enemy, the enemy’s religion and culture. They want us to ignore the enemy’s needs, and ignore the enemy’s accomplishments. We can shoot, stab or bomb our enemy easily, if we know nothing except that the enemy is the enemy. As Orwell put it, "Ignorance is strength."
As a result, Hamas, Israel and the US do not care about food and medicine, because they do not care about the health and welfare of the people in Gaza. They seek control over the land that is a vital strategic interest in the international game of hegemony. Israel and Hamas each want the other to yield to their demands, and the US wants to control the winner of the conflict. Do the Israeli leaders believe that by killing members of Hamas, they will attract the love of the Palestinian people? Do Hamas leaders believe that rocket attacks will force Israel to relent and give Palestinians everything they want? Do Americans believe that they can gain control the Middle East? Yes, they do. And they are all wrong.
Time for more adult questions: Why doesn’t the government of Israel grant all Palestinians full citizenship of Israel with all rights and privileges of other Israelis? The reasons for not doing so are founded on the childish principle: "They hit us first."
Why don’t Israeli and Palestinian businessmen form partnerships and build factories to make products that will bring economic well-being to the region. They won’t because, "They (the other) hit us first."
Will it eliminate the hatred between Jewish and Islamic citizens and turn them into peace-loving citizens ready to live in harmony with their fellow Israelis? Not immediately. But eventually, businessmen learn they need each other to make profits and compete in the world market. Parents learn that watching their children play on the same soccer team is better than training them to be suicide bombers.
We know that Samson did not regain his sight, but we can hope that wisdom among Israelis and Palestinians grows before their blindness pulls down the pillars of life.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
E-mail Propaganda
You may have received the following e-mail in recent days. I have received it twice. I have reproduced it in full below. If you have already read it, skip to the end of the italicized text.
How Long Do We Have?
About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh , had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:
'A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government.' A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.'
'From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.'
'The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years.' 'During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:
1. from bondage to spiritual faith;
2. from spiritual faith to great courage;
3. from courage to liberty;
4. from liberty to abundance;
5. from abundance to complacency;
6. from complacency to apathy;
7. from apathy to dependence;
8. from dependence back into bondage'
Professor Joseph Olson of Hemline University School of Law, St. Paul , Minnesota , points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000 Presidential election:
Number of States won by: Democrats: 19; Republicans: 29
Square miles of land won by: Democrats: 580,000 Republicans: 2,427,000
Population of counties won by: Democrats: 127 million Republicans: 143 million
Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Democrats: 13.2 Republicans: 2.1
Professor Olson adds: 'In aggregate, the map of the territory Republican won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of this great country. Democrat territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government welfare...' Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the 'complacency and apathy' phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation's population already having reached the 'governmental dependency' phase.
If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal invaders called illegal's and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years.
If you are in favor of this, then by all means, delete this message. If you are not, then pass this along to help everyone realize just how much is at stake, knowing that apathy is the greatest danger to our freedom.
This message was debunked in 2006 by several people, and you can check their research about Alexander Tyler and Edinburgh University by using your own internet search tools. On Google, the entry "alexander tyler 8 steps" has 652,000 results. There are almost a million other results.
If you check out Alexander Tyler, you will find that he did not write anything resembling the words attributed to him. If you check out Hemline University, you will find that it is really Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. Professor Joseph Olson is a member of the Hamline’s Law School faculty, but he denies ever having said the words in the e-mail: He wrote:
DISCLAIMER: There is an e-mail floating around the internet dealing with the 2008 Obama/McCain election and the 2000 Bush/Gore election, remarks of a Scottish philosopher named Alexander Tyler, etc. Part of it is attributed to me. It is entirely BOGUS as to my authorship. I've been trying to kill it since December 2000. For details see: http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/tyler.asp.
This message and its continued voyage through our internet points toward the problem that I discussed in my blog posting, The March of Folly. The writer is a clever propagandist, who knows that many of us accept what we read without question. Particularly anything reputedly written by a professor or philosopher. He, or she, adds a few statistics to look scientific and academically sound and catches those who will repeat them to their like-minded friends.
However, if readers had been careful, they would not have had to double-check the assertions on the internet. There were pleanty of mistakes in the text to make it questionable:
"About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787…"
The thirteen states did not adopt the Constitution in 1787. The Constitutional Convention approved the document to be submitted to the various states’ legislatures for ratification. According to Article Seven of the US Constitution, it would be established and take effect when nine of the thirteen states ratified it. Virginia became the ninth state to approve ratification on June 25, 1788. George Washington was inaugurated President in 1789.
"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years."
The civilizations of China, Greece, the Inca, the Ottomans, and Rome each lasted far longer than 200 years. We may not admire many aspects of their culture, but they were civilizations that added to the pool of technology, art, science and philosophy that we find ourselves immersed in.
Square miles of land won by: Democrats: 580,000 Republicans: 2,427,000
This may be true, but is an inert fact. Neither party won "square miles of land." The parties won votes. Wyoming (3 electoral votes) is bigger in size than New York, but the population of New York is much greater (33 electoral votes). And does it have to be pointed out that many of the states that voted for Bush comprised the former Confederate States of America?
If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal invaders called illegal's and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years.
The author’s choice of words reminds me of the character Bill Cutting who railed against the Irish immigrants in Martin Scorcese’s’ film, The Gangs of New York. And all the righteous Americans like Father Coughlin who railed against Italians. Poles, and Jews in the twenties and thirties. And in the seventies all the righteous who railed against all the Vietnamese immigrants who were taking all the jobs and all the college scholarships from real Americans. The illegals are not criminal invaders like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice, and by now, most of them have already returned to their home countries, because a depression has established itself in the USA. Also, a writer, whose background includes teaching grammar and composition, would have circled in red pencil the author’s use of the possessive case in the word illegal’s, instead of the plural illegals.
Some facts required a quick check at the national archives website:
Number of States won by: Democrats: 19; Republicans: 29
That count is missing 2 states. My count resulted in the following: George Bush and Richard Cheney won 271 electoral votes in 28 states. Albert Gore, Jr. and Joseph Lieberman won 266 electoral votes in 22 states and the District of Columbia. Bush and Cheney won 25 votes in Florida because the Supreme Court of the United States stopped the state’s vote recount, which was indicating that Gore would win. If Gore had received the Florida electoral vote, the count would have been Bush, 246 and Gore, 291.
A notable feature of this e-mail is the lack of authorship. Who wrote this mess?
At the bottom of the e-mail is the following:
To send e-mail faster without improving your typing skills . Get your Hotmail® account.
The writer uses Hotmail.
This communication is for use by the intended recipient and contains information that may be Privileged, confidential or copyrighted under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby formally notified that any use, copying or distribution of this e-mail, in whole or in part, is strictly prohibited. Please notify the sender by return e-mail and delete this e-mail from your system. Unless explicitly and conspicuously designated as "E-Contract Intended", this e-mail does not constitute a contract offer, a contract amendment, or an acceptance of a contract offer. This e-mail does not constitute a consent to the use of sender's contact information for direct marketing purposes or for transfers of data to third parties.
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http://www.DuPont.com/corp/email_disclaimer.html
The writer may work for DuPont, but nothing in this e-mail is privileged and it is designed to be sent to everyone who will read it and pass it on.
We can’t keep people from sending out this kind of e-mail; nor do we want to. But if the e-mail contains another e-mail that is unsigned, then we should delete it after reading it, and not send it on.
The internet is there for everyone’s views. The next time we receive something like this, I hope we will read it to keep informed of others’ views. But let’s analyze it and add our agreements and disagreements to it before sending it on. Let’s stop circulating this kind of writing, unchallenged.
How Long Do We Have?
About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh , had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:
'A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government.' A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.'
'From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.'
'The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years.' 'During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:
1. from bondage to spiritual faith;
2. from spiritual faith to great courage;
3. from courage to liberty;
4. from liberty to abundance;
5. from abundance to complacency;
6. from complacency to apathy;
7. from apathy to dependence;
8. from dependence back into bondage'
Professor Joseph Olson of Hemline University School of Law, St. Paul , Minnesota , points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000 Presidential election:
Number of States won by: Democrats: 19; Republicans: 29
Square miles of land won by: Democrats: 580,000 Republicans: 2,427,000
Population of counties won by: Democrats: 127 million Republicans: 143 million
Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Democrats: 13.2 Republicans: 2.1
Professor Olson adds: 'In aggregate, the map of the territory Republican won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of this great country. Democrat territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government welfare...' Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the 'complacency and apathy' phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation's population already having reached the 'governmental dependency' phase.
If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal invaders called illegal's and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years.
If you are in favor of this, then by all means, delete this message. If you are not, then pass this along to help everyone realize just how much is at stake, knowing that apathy is the greatest danger to our freedom.
This message was debunked in 2006 by several people, and you can check their research about Alexander Tyler and Edinburgh University by using your own internet search tools. On Google, the entry "alexander tyler 8 steps" has 652,000 results. There are almost a million other results.
If you check out Alexander Tyler, you will find that he did not write anything resembling the words attributed to him. If you check out Hemline University, you will find that it is really Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. Professor Joseph Olson is a member of the Hamline’s Law School faculty, but he denies ever having said the words in the e-mail: He wrote:
DISCLAIMER: There is an e-mail floating around the internet dealing with the 2008 Obama/McCain election and the 2000 Bush/Gore election, remarks of a Scottish philosopher named Alexander Tyler, etc. Part of it is attributed to me. It is entirely BOGUS as to my authorship. I've been trying to kill it since December 2000. For details see: http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/tyler.asp.
This message and its continued voyage through our internet points toward the problem that I discussed in my blog posting, The March of Folly. The writer is a clever propagandist, who knows that many of us accept what we read without question. Particularly anything reputedly written by a professor or philosopher. He, or she, adds a few statistics to look scientific and academically sound and catches those who will repeat them to their like-minded friends.
However, if readers had been careful, they would not have had to double-check the assertions on the internet. There were pleanty of mistakes in the text to make it questionable:
"About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787…"
The thirteen states did not adopt the Constitution in 1787. The Constitutional Convention approved the document to be submitted to the various states’ legislatures for ratification. According to Article Seven of the US Constitution, it would be established and take effect when nine of the thirteen states ratified it. Virginia became the ninth state to approve ratification on June 25, 1788. George Washington was inaugurated President in 1789.
"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years."
The civilizations of China, Greece, the Inca, the Ottomans, and Rome each lasted far longer than 200 years. We may not admire many aspects of their culture, but they were civilizations that added to the pool of technology, art, science and philosophy that we find ourselves immersed in.
Square miles of land won by: Democrats: 580,000 Republicans: 2,427,000
This may be true, but is an inert fact. Neither party won "square miles of land." The parties won votes. Wyoming (3 electoral votes) is bigger in size than New York, but the population of New York is much greater (33 electoral votes). And does it have to be pointed out that many of the states that voted for Bush comprised the former Confederate States of America?
If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal invaders called illegal's and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years.
The author’s choice of words reminds me of the character Bill Cutting who railed against the Irish immigrants in Martin Scorcese’s’ film, The Gangs of New York. And all the righteous Americans like Father Coughlin who railed against Italians. Poles, and Jews in the twenties and thirties. And in the seventies all the righteous who railed against all the Vietnamese immigrants who were taking all the jobs and all the college scholarships from real Americans. The illegals are not criminal invaders like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice, and by now, most of them have already returned to their home countries, because a depression has established itself in the USA. Also, a writer, whose background includes teaching grammar and composition, would have circled in red pencil the author’s use of the possessive case in the word illegal’s, instead of the plural illegals.
Some facts required a quick check at the national archives website:
Number of States won by: Democrats: 19; Republicans: 29
That count is missing 2 states. My count resulted in the following: George Bush and Richard Cheney won 271 electoral votes in 28 states. Albert Gore, Jr. and Joseph Lieberman won 266 electoral votes in 22 states and the District of Columbia. Bush and Cheney won 25 votes in Florida because the Supreme Court of the United States stopped the state’s vote recount, which was indicating that Gore would win. If Gore had received the Florida electoral vote, the count would have been Bush, 246 and Gore, 291.
A notable feature of this e-mail is the lack of authorship. Who wrote this mess?
At the bottom of the e-mail is the following:
To send e-mail faster without improving your typing skills . Get your Hotmail® account.
The writer uses Hotmail.
This communication is for use by the intended recipient and contains information that may be Privileged, confidential or copyrighted under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby formally notified that any use, copying or distribution of this e-mail, in whole or in part, is strictly prohibited. Please notify the sender by return e-mail and delete this e-mail from your system. Unless explicitly and conspicuously designated as "E-Contract Intended", this e-mail does not constitute a contract offer, a contract amendment, or an acceptance of a contract offer. This e-mail does not constitute a consent to the use of sender's contact information for direct marketing purposes or for transfers of data to third parties.
Francais Deutsch Italiano Espanol Portugues Japanese Chinese Korean
http://www.DuPont.com/corp/email_disclaimer.html
The writer may work for DuPont, but nothing in this e-mail is privileged and it is designed to be sent to everyone who will read it and pass it on.
We can’t keep people from sending out this kind of e-mail; nor do we want to. But if the e-mail contains another e-mail that is unsigned, then we should delete it after reading it, and not send it on.
The internet is there for everyone’s views. The next time we receive something like this, I hope we will read it to keep informed of others’ views. But let’s analyze it and add our agreements and disagreements to it before sending it on. Let’s stop circulating this kind of writing, unchallenged.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
The March of Folly
Our culture is filled with stupid people, both fictional and actual. In fact, we have made a cult of The Stupid. They are cool because they are stupid and happy that they are. They are even sometimes funny. Homer Simpson is funny, for two reasons. One, we don’t have to live with the consequences of his stupidity. Two, we can empathize with many of the stupid things he has done.
Stupid people doing stupid things is the theme of films by the Coen brothers. Their characters amuse us because we don’t have to live with them, even though we know people just like them. They delude themselves that they will live happily ever after, if they obtain a lot of money by a single illegal act. Unfortunately for them, the single illegal act always turns into three or four. A car dealer steals a tan Sierra from his own dealership to pay kidnappers to snatch his own wife so he can extort a big ransom from his rich father-in-law. A hunter takes a suitcase of money from a dead drug dealer and tries to keep it from a professional killer. A fitness instructor tries to raise money for a fanny implant by extorting money from a former CIA analyst, whose physician wife is having lawyers follow him to get evidence for her secret divorce action. All these people believe in "one crime, just this once, and I’ll be okay." They are never okay, and their choices create disasters for themselves and others around them.
If the Coens hold a mirror up to the stupidity in our culture, television advertisements are its echo chamber. To promote its TV-internet services, AT&T repeatedly shows a stupid man running an abnormally long cable through his apartment window across the street to a sidewalk café. All this, so he can play with his lap top computer and drink coffee at the same time. In another repeated advertisement, the same stupid—now tiresome—man attempts to increase the speed of his internet connection by plugging his computer into a jerry-rigged generator, which burns his hair and drains the electricity from the rest of his apartment building. The man is clearly too dumb to understand the advantages of AT&T’s cable service.
Other companies sell their products by showing stupid people using them. Sonic sandwiches are the favorite of mentally challenged customers whose jokes would not amuse a third-grader. GEICO stupidly repeats commercials featuring the most irrelevant characters in all of American advertising: the cavemen who are tired of being called stupid. Of course no one wants to be considered stupid, even consumers. I wish GEICO would tell simply tell us why we should buy its services. (Full disclosure: My wife and I have automobile insurance with GEICO and are happy with them.)
However, stupidity is not limited to our entertainment; it is a large and dangerous part of our political culture. Political leaders are dangerous, because we choose them and have to live with the consequences of their stupidity. Historian Barbara Tuchman, her book The March of Folly: From Troy to Viet Nam (1984) wrote:
Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts.
The following American political leaders showed their particular wooden-headedness and thereby revealed the wooden-headedness of American voters.
Bill Clinton got a blow job in the oval office and then lied about it. Kenneth Starr spent millions of dollars investigating it. Henry Hyde, who had fathered an illegitimate child, led the House of Representatives in a moral crusade to oust the sinner occupying the sacred White House. Trent Lott and his conservative supporters spent millions more trying William Jefferson Clinton. We Americans turned the solemn impeachment process into a silly sex comedy. The prosecutors thought it would help convince Senators to convict Clinton with evidence such as a semen-stained dress. Indeed, Americans slavered over every lurid detail of the sex scandal. So much so, that we ignored the reality behind the charges: William Jefferson Clinton had lied under oath.
He was acquitted, but politically damaged. During the impeachment, the Republican leadership in Congress refused to approve a finding by Clinton’s national security team. The finding revealed the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, but the Republicans claimed that Clinton was trying to distract the country away from the blow-job.. We were stupid because we believed the Republicans. The Republicans were stupid, because their obsession with the blow-job allowed Osama bin Laden to escape and plan the 9/11 attack. In sum, Americans are stupid about sex and politics.
In 2000, the Supreme Court—once the repository of wisdom of law, right and wrong—stupidly ruled that the United States of America would suffer harm if the recount of votes continued in Florida. This meant that George Walker Bush became President as the result of an incomplete count of votes. Immediately after he was inaugurated, the Republican-controlled Congress passed an enormous tax cut which reduced federal revenues and caused the depletion of a surplus that had accumulated during the previous administration.
In 2004, after learning that the Bush administration had lied about weapons of mass destruction, American voters re-elected the man responsible for the war and the increasing federal debt. They stupidly believed the lie that John Kerry had not deserved the Silver Star and Purple Heart awarded by President Richard M. Nixon, another American who stupidly believed that whatever he did as President was legal.
Voters loved President Bush. They didn’t care that he had graduated from Yale and Harvard, and was a member of the most exclusive college fraternity in America. He wore cowboy boots and drove a pickup around his ranch. He was a guy they could have a beer with. He talked regular, and they loved him for his inability to pronounce "nuclear." They loved his swagger on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln.
Americans also believed that Saddam Hussein had helped Al Qaeda attack the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. They ignored Hussein’s highly publicized whiskey swilling, cigar smoking and womanizing, and they forgot all the reports that Al Qaeda, which hated Hussein almost as much as it did America, was an organization that forbade its members to drink alcohol, to smoke, and to be sexually promiscuous. Above all else, they brushed aside the information that Al Qaeda and the 9/11 attackers were Saudi Arabian, not Iraqi.
It is unfortunate, but true, that Americans’ greatest stupidity is their readiness to accept guilt by ethnic group. Americans cannot—or refuse to—differentiate individuals from groups. They should have known that ethnic Arabs were not just Islamic, but were also Christian and Jewish. That Islam was not a monolithic religion, but, like Christianity and Judaism, a conglomeration of denominations, practices, and beliefs. Their culture has been riddled with religious wars, just as ours has. But our stupidity, born from a willful ignorance, made us ready to accept the lies and distortions of the Bush administration.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told us that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and that he knew where they were. He told us that our army would be welcomed as liberators. He ignored advice from his Chief of Staff, General Eric Shinseki, about how many soldiers would be needed to invade and occupy Iraq. He fired Secretary of the Army Thomas White because White refused to reprimand or muzzle the Shinseki. His stupidity brought about over 4,200 American deaths (and still counting), not to mention the waste of over $615 billion (and still counting).
Americans will have to pay for that stupidity. Our national debt, which will have to be paid by our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, continues to grow. And the expense of the Iraqi war has not yet been accounted for, because it has yet to be made a part of the national budget.
Some of us are paying for it now. Unemployment is rising, and economists, no longer afraid of the word recession, are even facing the possibility of dusting off depression. We can find plenty of stupid people to blame. Some say that OPEC’s stupidity raised oil prices so high that manufacturers could no longer afford to buy fuel. Which led to lay-offs and high unemployment, which led to the decline in consumer spending, which led to more unemployment, etc.
Then Americans stopped driving their cars to the drugstore two blocks from their home, and put their SUVs in mothballs. As the price of oil and gasoline dropped, OPEC ministers planned to cut oil production. They hold the stupid belief that the price of oil will rise when the supply declines. However, reducing the supply of petroleum will not put the end-user, also known as the American driver, back to work very soon. The end-user will remain unemployed for the foreseeable future, and inventories of oil and gas will likely continue to accumulate.
We can only hope that our pundits are correct in their assessment of President-elect Barak Obama. They tell us he is intelligent, and that his policies will be implemented by intelligent appointees. For myself, I am skeptical. I voted for Obama, but I will wait and see if he changes anything for the better. I hope that he and his appointees read Barbara Tuchman’s book. I hope that they do not join the march of folly. I also hope that we voters don't either.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Job Performance Review of George Walker Bush, President of the United States
When Charles Gibson of ABC News interviewed President George Bush, he said that he would leave office with his head held high. Let us compare his actual job performance with his neoconservative self image.
In 2000, Presidential-candidate George W. Bush paradoxically sought our votes so that he could become a part of the very problem that he ran against. Many of us remember his smirk as he assured us that government was not the solution. "Government," he said, "is the problem."
After his inauguration, he approved a tax cut that benefited the upper one-percent of American income earners. About the tax cut, Vice President Cheney said, "It is our due." The tax cut also reduced government revenues. Since he had to be careful about government expenditures, President Bush virtually eliminated such problems as regulating the stock market, the real estate industry, and American banks. He saw to it that food producers and drug manufacturers were no longer burdened by questions about sanitation and safety.
President Bush thought all government regulation obstructed the free market. So, for the next six years a hands-off government was in partnership with business, and the free market became a profitable bazaar of E-coli-ridden vegetables, ineffective and harmful drugs and vaccines, as well as poisonous baby bottles and tainted baby food. Hucksters in the free market bundled mortgages together and peddled them as securities based on formulae so complex that few mathematicians could decipher them. Free enterprise flourished, and the stock market averages soared to record highs. Corporate executives made huge bonuses. The neoconservative ideology appeared to be working.
But reality kept infringing on his neoconservative ideology. Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans while President Bush was chopping cedar on his ranch. His choice for FEMA director, Michael Brown, had been a lawyer with little or no experience handling emergencies. In spite of three days’ notice about Hurricane Katrina’s severity, Brown ordered no staging areas for relief supplies and manpower, contacted no state or local officials from the endangered area. The total lack of coordination among government agencies led to chaos. City, state and federal officials worked against each other’s best interests. Food and medical supplies were delivered to the wrong locations, if delivered at all. In fact, some supplies were not allowed to enter the disaster zone. Corpses floated in flooded streets or were wrapped in plastic garbage bags with notes pleading the finder to dispose of the remains with tenderness and efficiency. The survivors got neither. The final tally of the dead and missing was over 2,500.
Another reality that infringed on President Bush’s ideology is the Iraq war. Bush, who called himself "The Decider," created his own solution to the attack on the World Trade Center. He decided to make war on Saddam Hussein, a ruthless dictator who had helped the Al Qaeda terrorists who had attacked us on September 11, 2001. He also decided to destroy Iraqi chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and free oppressed Iraqis who would welcome Americans as liberators.
However, while President Bush, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and National Security Advisor Rice were planning the invasion, US government intelligence contradicted not only Hussein’s complicity in 9/11, but also the presence of any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But that information wasn’t what President Bush wanted. He wanted an enemy, and the government intelligence services could not show that Hussein was part of the axis of evil.
So, once again, President Bush decided that government was the problem and rejected the intelligence. He then told pliant and dependable political appointees what he needed to make a case for an invasion. They fabricated evidence to support Bush’s desire for war. Secretary of State Powell characterized that evidence as "bullshit," but National Security Advisor Rice told her fellow Americans that she did not want the smoking gun of Hussein’s guilt to be a mushroom-shaped cloud.
To protect themselves from more problems, Bush and his subordinates fired intelligence agents and generals who did not agree with them. Vice President Cheney told his countrymen that if we did not agree with the Bush administration, we did not love our country. So, we invaded with an army lacking body armor, adequate water supplies, and transportation equipment that was vulnerable to improvised explosive devices.
Since then, over 4,200 American troops have died, and almost 31,000 have been wounded. These patriots have been poorly cared for in understaffed, poorly equipped hospitals. Despite their sacrifices, the armed forces have found no weapons of mass destruction. They found no welcoming Iraqis. Despite our capture of Saddam Hussein and his execution by Iraqis, Americans have alienated not only most of the population of Iraq but also most of our allies.
President Bush and Vice President Cheney believe government is the problem, and the law of the land doesn’t apply to neoconservatives.. So they ignored the Geneva Convention, a treaty approved by Congress, which states, "No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind." So they approved the torture of many prisoners of war and innocent civilians. Although President Bush and Vice President claim that they have gained valuable information from tortured prisoners, they are no closer to finding Osama bin Laden than we were in 2001 when his operatives successfully leveled the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
Our troops’ presence in Iraq will end in 2010. By that time we will have spent almost a trillion un-budgeted dollars on the conflict, which was supposed to be paid for by the sale of Iraqi oil, much of which went up in smoke as the result of the war and sabotage. Another large part of it disappeared into the thriving black market. We also lost shrink-wrapped bundles of 100-dollar bills worth $12 billion which were shipped to Iraq in C-130 transports. That cash simply vanished with no record of who got it or what it was spent on.
None of the above speaks well for the Harvard Business School that granted President Bush an MBA in 1975. Five years before that, graduates of HBS were taken to task by Robert Townsend in his best-selling book Up the Organization.
Don’t hire Harvard Business School graduates. This worthy enterprise confesses that it trains its students for only three positions—executive vice president, president, and board chairman. The faculty does not blush when HBS is called the West Point of capitalism.
By design, the "B-School" trains a senior officer class, the non-playing Captains of Industry. People, who, upon graduation, are given a whirlwind tour of their chosen company and then an office and a secretary and some work to do while they wait for one of the top three slots to open up.
This elite, in my opinion, is missing some pretty fundamental requirements for success: humility, respect for people on the firing line; deep understanding of the business and the kind of people who can enjoy themselves making it prosper; respect from way down the line; a demonstrated record of guts, industry, loyalty, judgement, fairness, and honesty under pressure.
Townsend’s ideas apply equally to George W. Bush and the citizens of the United States that hired him. To Bush who misses the very requirements for success listed in the last paragraph. To us, his employers who did not look for those requirements in George W. Bush. As a result, Bush may leave office with his head held high, but we will have the task of healing the wounded, sheltering the homeless, feeding the poor, and clothing the naked that his neoconservative delusions left behind.
In 2000, Presidential-candidate George W. Bush paradoxically sought our votes so that he could become a part of the very problem that he ran against. Many of us remember his smirk as he assured us that government was not the solution. "Government," he said, "is the problem."
After his inauguration, he approved a tax cut that benefited the upper one-percent of American income earners. About the tax cut, Vice President Cheney said, "It is our due." The tax cut also reduced government revenues. Since he had to be careful about government expenditures, President Bush virtually eliminated such problems as regulating the stock market, the real estate industry, and American banks. He saw to it that food producers and drug manufacturers were no longer burdened by questions about sanitation and safety.
President Bush thought all government regulation obstructed the free market. So, for the next six years a hands-off government was in partnership with business, and the free market became a profitable bazaar of E-coli-ridden vegetables, ineffective and harmful drugs and vaccines, as well as poisonous baby bottles and tainted baby food. Hucksters in the free market bundled mortgages together and peddled them as securities based on formulae so complex that few mathematicians could decipher them. Free enterprise flourished, and the stock market averages soared to record highs. Corporate executives made huge bonuses. The neoconservative ideology appeared to be working.
But reality kept infringing on his neoconservative ideology. Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans while President Bush was chopping cedar on his ranch. His choice for FEMA director, Michael Brown, had been a lawyer with little or no experience handling emergencies. In spite of three days’ notice about Hurricane Katrina’s severity, Brown ordered no staging areas for relief supplies and manpower, contacted no state or local officials from the endangered area. The total lack of coordination among government agencies led to chaos. City, state and federal officials worked against each other’s best interests. Food and medical supplies were delivered to the wrong locations, if delivered at all. In fact, some supplies were not allowed to enter the disaster zone. Corpses floated in flooded streets or were wrapped in plastic garbage bags with notes pleading the finder to dispose of the remains with tenderness and efficiency. The survivors got neither. The final tally of the dead and missing was over 2,500.
Another reality that infringed on President Bush’s ideology is the Iraq war. Bush, who called himself "The Decider," created his own solution to the attack on the World Trade Center. He decided to make war on Saddam Hussein, a ruthless dictator who had helped the Al Qaeda terrorists who had attacked us on September 11, 2001. He also decided to destroy Iraqi chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and free oppressed Iraqis who would welcome Americans as liberators.
However, while President Bush, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and National Security Advisor Rice were planning the invasion, US government intelligence contradicted not only Hussein’s complicity in 9/11, but also the presence of any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But that information wasn’t what President Bush wanted. He wanted an enemy, and the government intelligence services could not show that Hussein was part of the axis of evil.
So, once again, President Bush decided that government was the problem and rejected the intelligence. He then told pliant and dependable political appointees what he needed to make a case for an invasion. They fabricated evidence to support Bush’s desire for war. Secretary of State Powell characterized that evidence as "bullshit," but National Security Advisor Rice told her fellow Americans that she did not want the smoking gun of Hussein’s guilt to be a mushroom-shaped cloud.
To protect themselves from more problems, Bush and his subordinates fired intelligence agents and generals who did not agree with them. Vice President Cheney told his countrymen that if we did not agree with the Bush administration, we did not love our country. So, we invaded with an army lacking body armor, adequate water supplies, and transportation equipment that was vulnerable to improvised explosive devices.
Since then, over 4,200 American troops have died, and almost 31,000 have been wounded. These patriots have been poorly cared for in understaffed, poorly equipped hospitals. Despite their sacrifices, the armed forces have found no weapons of mass destruction. They found no welcoming Iraqis. Despite our capture of Saddam Hussein and his execution by Iraqis, Americans have alienated not only most of the population of Iraq but also most of our allies.
President Bush and Vice President Cheney believe government is the problem, and the law of the land doesn’t apply to neoconservatives.. So they ignored the Geneva Convention, a treaty approved by Congress, which states, "No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind." So they approved the torture of many prisoners of war and innocent civilians. Although President Bush and Vice President claim that they have gained valuable information from tortured prisoners, they are no closer to finding Osama bin Laden than we were in 2001 when his operatives successfully leveled the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
Our troops’ presence in Iraq will end in 2010. By that time we will have spent almost a trillion un-budgeted dollars on the conflict, which was supposed to be paid for by the sale of Iraqi oil, much of which went up in smoke as the result of the war and sabotage. Another large part of it disappeared into the thriving black market. We also lost shrink-wrapped bundles of 100-dollar bills worth $12 billion which were shipped to Iraq in C-130 transports. That cash simply vanished with no record of who got it or what it was spent on.
None of the above speaks well for the Harvard Business School that granted President Bush an MBA in 1975. Five years before that, graduates of HBS were taken to task by Robert Townsend in his best-selling book Up the Organization.
Don’t hire Harvard Business School graduates. This worthy enterprise confesses that it trains its students for only three positions—executive vice president, president, and board chairman. The faculty does not blush when HBS is called the West Point of capitalism.
By design, the "B-School" trains a senior officer class, the non-playing Captains of Industry. People, who, upon graduation, are given a whirlwind tour of their chosen company and then an office and a secretary and some work to do while they wait for one of the top three slots to open up.
This elite, in my opinion, is missing some pretty fundamental requirements for success: humility, respect for people on the firing line; deep understanding of the business and the kind of people who can enjoy themselves making it prosper; respect from way down the line; a demonstrated record of guts, industry, loyalty, judgement, fairness, and honesty under pressure.
Townsend’s ideas apply equally to George W. Bush and the citizens of the United States that hired him. To Bush who misses the very requirements for success listed in the last paragraph. To us, his employers who did not look for those requirements in George W. Bush. As a result, Bush may leave office with his head held high, but we will have the task of healing the wounded, sheltering the homeless, feeding the poor, and clothing the naked that his neoconservative delusions left behind.
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