The Death of an Enemy

The gestation period for revenge is 9 years, 7 months, 20 days. Or for justice. Or for closure. However you read the death of Osama bin Laden, it took about twice as long as the Manhattan project to go from notion to completion. We messed it up once before - in November 2001, just two months after the attacks of September 11th, we failed to capture him in a battle at Tora Bora. We have kept a military presence in Afghanistan since then, with it escalating over the past several years into counterinsurgency against a resurgent foe. We went chasing other demons abroad, declared that we had found one in Iraq and embroiled ourselves in a regime change there as well. For just shy of a decade, the man who twice bombed the World Trade Center evaded capture, to the point that seven years after 9/11, prioritizing his capture became a presidential campaign promise. It became the stuff of far-ranging speculation (not to discredit these guys - their approach to the problem was both novel and damn close to accurate). And yet, here it is, the death of America's Most Wanted.

Other people have more interesting and informed accounts of what his death mean. Here's my favorite of the facty ones, in ten bullet points. Here's my favorite emotional reaction read, in lots of words. And here's my least favorite spot-on response, in 140 characters: "Recall, this is a huge operation, a huge cost (over $1 trillion since 9/11/01) to get an elderly man on dialysis in a small town in Pakistan"

The 9/11 attacks cost $500,000. That's chump change to pay if the goal, as it was stated in later years, was US bankruptcy. What bin Laden did was unquestionably an act of evil. But it was one that provoked something very much like an allergic reaction - in responding to one threat, the US spent over a trillion. We as a nation failed to adequately respond to the threat. Not that we didn't respond - we did, with excess and paranoia and jingoism and two wars, one relatively justified and one entirely superfluous. We surrendered civil liberties, made air travel a farcical exercise in security theater, and justified torture and indefinite detention of people who we maybe had evidence on. We ignored large swaths of the constitution and made ourselves less safe. The way we responded to 9/11 was all out of proportion. Hunting down the criminal took a year of intelligence work, the cooperation of Pakistan's government, and a strike team consisting of exceptional skilled men in boots on the ground.

What this means going forward comes from the writer at Transitionland with, I think, the best short statement of the impact this will have:

To be clear on Osama bin Laden's death: 1) I wish he had been captured alive. 2) His death isn't a blow to the Taliban, because his life was pretty irrelevant to the post-2001 Taliban. 3) For better or worse, bin Laden's death will be used to cement US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

This isn't really a moment about that future, though. This is a reconciliation with a long overdue past. In late September 2001, my uncle wondered "why are we focusing on getting the messenger, instead of getting the message?" I was 12 when this happened, and never particularly clear on the message we were supposed to get (was it that America must acknowledge bin Laden's demands? was it that we were responsible for generic capitalist unpleasant byproducts in the world at large that turn people against us?).

I like to think it was "maybe the US should stop explicitly supporting autocrats so that radicals direct their frustration with domestic politics outwards at us," which I like to think it was, and we did. It is still supremely satisfying to know that, at the very least, we have reached a moment of closure, if not exactly a moment of justice.

Amidst the immediately jubilant atmosphere of last night, a couple of friends, posting in various places, quoted the same line of scripture, which is especially fitting for the moment. "Rejoice not when your enemy falls, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles. Proverbs 24:17"

This is a time of closure, a awareness that this worst moment of the last decade is, finally, over.

Why I'm still for Team Obama

As someone who plays with nuance all the time, the actual effect of rhetoric on politics means a lot to me. Specifically, though, it isn't just the content of a speech but the tone that is important; very rarely in US politics will I support a statement that draws its inspiration from anger or an US vs. Them mentality. That was awful during the Bush years and the Clinton years, and does not seem terribly worthwhile now.

Of course, I'm still playing for a team here. Broadly, it's the left, and more specifically it is the policy of a sane left. Not a compromising, mid-90s centrist left, but a left that is both self-assured in the correctness of its view while not being overbearing about it. It is nice to see these sentiments echoed in an analysis of Obama:

Democratic partisans think the enemy is vicious and must be met with uncompromising force. That's exactly how conservative foreign policy hawks feel about the world. Unsurprisingly, the right-wing foreign policy critique of Obama today sounds eerily like the partisan Democratic critique of Obama during the primary...

This is a perfect summation of Obama's strategy. It does not presuppose that his adversaries are people of goodwill who can be reasoned with. Rather, it assumes that, by demonstrating his own goodwill and interest in accord, Obama can win over a portion of his adversaries' constituents as well as third parties. Obama thinks he can move moderate Muslim opinion, pressure bad actors like Iran to negotiate, and, if Iran fails to comply, encourage other countries to isolate it. The strategy works whether or not Iran makes a reasonable agreement.

The full article is here, and is about 10 paragraphs. Well worth reading, and a welcome break from the angry echo chamber that is most politics on the internet.

Iranian Presidential Election Quickie

Iran's political system fascinates me; besides actually having a constitutionally enshrined "Supreme Leader", it combines democratic organs with tight controls in the hands of many unelected bodies. It appears to be an almost perfect dystopian entity, with competing policies, shadowy bodies, a "council of Guardians", and a separate military that is the personal arm of the Supreme Leader in the form of the Revolutionary Guards. A great setting for fiction, if ever there was one.

But Iran is also far more realistic and livable than that description gives it credit for. And despite the willingness of people to dismiss Iran as just another dictatorship, it is really too elaborate for that. Iran, though not a democracy, has profound democratic organs, and though those organs are constrained, they perform a valid function in society, and are not controlled so tightly as to make the future the direction of the country inevitable.

This is an elaborate introduction to a post on fivethirtyeight about the Iranian Presidential Election. The whole post is rather short and a good read. The best line is here:

In summary, the Iranian system is slowly maturing, with more a more competitive and multi-candidate system. The candidates are still restricted to the mainstream approved by the Guardian Council, but this is certainly no one-party system.

We are Halfway to the Future (a mediation on SB 12)

(Note - this was originally posted to my page on the Duke City Fix, but I think here may be more appropriate. Also, I owe you all some good blogginess).

Today in my dorm room in New Orleans I watched the live feed of the senate debate on SB 12 (the domestic partnership one). Being a bit of a political junkie, I found the whole thing inherently fascinating, and was especially appreciative of the New Mexico Independent's live feed, and careful moderation of their own chat box (the entirety of which can be found here). That's the future-y part.

I left the chat for class before the actual vote, but what little of the debate I saw was really, really interesting. Cisco McSorely, the sponsor of the bill, explained the mock-up of it that was sitting on everyone's desk. In light of attention to the bill and strong criticism of it as "secretly gay marriage", the bill had been revised to have complete neutral terms, describing only civil law. Words like "widow/widower", which have social role connotations, and "spouse", which has both social role and religious connotations, had been struck from the bill. It was, in my mind, a masterful use of language itself to forge a new contract - "marriage" is an established entity, with a wealth of meaning behind it in religion, family life, tax code, and civil rights. That's part of why it's so hard to legislate around - people have a very fixed schema of marriage, and while some things may be part of it (divorce is incorporated into that schema, I think), it is an existent entity. So trying to create domestic partnerships was ambitious - the language of it was government and civil, and the religious and wider social connotations of marriage were not only untouched, but were protected as separate. It was, in my mind, a very clever compromise. That's future-ish, but more a product of modern pragmatism.

The debate then began, where it was attacked for being gay marriage. The entirety of built up nuance was thrown to the wayside, and lines pulled from Prop 8 support came to the fore. I noticed a reference made earlier in a Scarantino column happen on the senate floor. Disappointing to myself, but interesting, because I tend to underestimate the influence of commentators on political process. Scarantino's article was argued against in many places, but it was the one in the paper, and the one that got used on the floor. It was an interesting play in a democratic legislature, and it allowed people to protect the practice of religion, rather than protect people from religion. I missed the rest of the debate, so I can't offer wonky commentary on that, but this part at least seems classic, normal, business as usual weighing of freedoms against freedoms.

Then there's the voting. The bill failed, with 17 votes for and 25 votes against. If you want to see the list of who voted how, I recommend here. For me at least, it's a disappointing result, but not an insurmountable setback for the future.

For others, it's huge, and to be fair, people there have far more invested in this than I do. Not that I don't sympathize, and not that I'm not upset, but I'm not surprised to find party unity faltering. In theory, with both state houses controlled by democrats, and with a democratic governor, bills labeled progressive should fly through the government and become law/policy/mandate more or less immediately. At least, that's how it works in countries with way, way fewer veto points. To even get this far, the bill had to make it through votes in two separate committees. To get further, it would have had to make it through at least two more stops. Anywhere in this process, a significant blockage can kill the bill. If we had just one choke point, party unity would be essential - with many, it's easy to trade acquiescence in a few spots for forgiven deviations elsewhere. This holds true no matter the composition of the legislative body - if the parties are close to even, unity is stressed, but hard to enforce when cross-aisle votes are sought after. If one party predominates (as was the case here), the party dynamic changes a little, but the calculus is similar. Party unity is the only thing the minority party can really trade on, so it's essential. Within the dominating party, then, you get a split like the one today, where 10 democrats sided with the minority party, and where 17 sided with the main party ideology. Groups split like this all the time. Democrats are pretty uniform in outlook when they are the opposition; is it any wonder that when they are the majority conservative and liberal divisions surface within the party? Being in the majority allows those things to happen, and it allows bills like SB 12 to even be considered. It's also what allows the bill to be destroyed by the party that sponsored it, and that's a rather bitter irony.

Still, I'm optimistic. I was able to pay close attention to the hearing on a senate bill when I'm 1,100+ miles away. There was direct video feed of the senate floor, and the viewing/blogging public was able to see the arguments brought forth on the bill, and call them out on respective flimsiness. This isn't yet the golden age of internet-aware moves by lawmakers, but the tools to change the status quo are more readily available than ever before. (And that's good, because the status is most definitely not quo.) But I'm confident it will be in the future. Alas, the future isn't tonight, but hey, at least we're halfway there.

Gaza Redux

(Thanks to Christine at iMinister for the link recommendation)

Last week, I wrote a post on Gaza. In my post, I attempted to do two things - paint the Gazans as innocents, and point to the breakup of negotiation as the key failing, not the Israeli invasion or the firing of rockets. I succeeded in part, but by defending the Gazans so vehemently, I ended up demonizing the Israelis. Part of this is fatigue from a long discussion with an ardent supporter of Israel - heated discussion polarizes, and I as I was unclear of my orignal stance, I ended up playing the opposition to his point. Another part of this is my natural sympathies towards the historic underdog, engendered in part by my identification with the left and in part by my identification with browncoats (no joke). But arguing on behalf of one side is folly - innocent Israelis suffer too, and playing an umbers game doesn't work here. My post fell short of its aspirations.

Fortunately, the infinite typewriters of the blogosphere have come up with a far, far better post and position to take. This position was hinted at by the above-mentioned Christine's post on the inhumanity of it all, but it's true genesis is found elsewhere. That elsewhere happens to be Doug Muders' Weekly Sift blog post. What I like about Doug's post is that he firstly hits upon my main point - if Israel wanted to solve with entirely with violence, they'd act differently and be committing genocide. But he expands from that to the greater political reason behind all of this:

Many of the things done by terrorists (and corresponding anti-terrorist extremists) may look crazy, but they are actually part of a coherent strategy. To understand that strategy you need to grasp one key idea: If you're an extremist, your first enemy isn't the extremist of the opposite side, it's the moderate of your own side. Opposing extremists are actually allies in a battle against the center.

Let me repeat that, because it takes a while to sink in: Opposing extremists are actually allies in a battle against the center. They'll fight each other in the second round, after the center is eliminated.

Now, I'm not saying that opposing extremists actually conspire. They don't need to. But those cycles of attack-and-reprisal that look insane and counterproductive are in fact very productive, if the purpose is to derail any possible compromise and make the center untenable.

(bold italics his; bold on its own emphasis mine).

That, right there, is the heart of the matter. Doug makes the point I couldn't, and does it concisely. I couldn't be happier.

Watch This

I'm not one to post briefly, but I'm in the library, trying to write an essay about Iran, I can't really think of anything clever and witty to elaborate upon this with.

The video can be found here.

It's good, it's really, really good, and I kind of just want it spread everywhere. Iran is the nation to watch this coming decade, and this video gives me hope. That's about all it needs to do.

Darren White and the Local Press

Note: This is nothing more than a copy-paste job of two comments I left in this comment thread on the Duke City Fix. The comments are long enough to count as their own posts, so I am putting them up here for safekeeping.

Darren White:

Darren White himself has shown that he's a take charge guy in executive situations. I don't agree with his decisions in many of them, but I can't deny that he made decisions and acted quickly. That's a great trait for an executive. However, he's running for a legislative seat. The duties and roles of that office are very different, and while his hands-on experience is certainly something rather novel in that body, it may be because it's largely irrelevant.

Being on a legislature requires compromising one's singular vision to work with others, even within one's own party, and having to make that compromise is a bare minimum. McCain is an unusual candidate in this election precisely because he's made a record of compromises that aren't strict party, that aren't the ideal version of what he wants, but are in the best interest of the nation, and are better than no solution. That's part of the wealth of experience that legislative experience adds to an individual, and it's helped McCain dodge a good chunk of the harm against the Republican brand. Martin Heinrich, though young, has a wealth of relevant legislative experience. Albuquerque as a city contains more people than many house districts, and governing that populace as part of a legislative body means Heinrich has experience in creating workable solutions, as opposed to pursuing his solitary vision. The streetcar proposal, arguably Heinrich's biggest mistake, was scrapped and abandoned when it was clear that it wasn't in the interest of the electorate, or the city itself, and that's something that had to hurt - as a tech-aware environmentalist from Nob Hill, street cars are all kinds of appealing. But as much as he personally may have wanted it, he knew when to quit, and when to work in the best interest of the entire city. Likewise, the minimum wage increase was first shot down as an overly-ambitious bill, but was re-introduced in such a way as to remove volatile ingredients and replace them with a form that both serves our city and doesn't alienate voters. This is the reputation of a man with ideals, but who understands that ideals have to be tempered with reality and practicality. That's more or less exactly the kind of legislative experience we need in CD3.

But this post isn't about Heinrich; it's about White. White, when working for the governor of New Mexico as head of the department of Public Safety, felt compelled to quit over an ideological opposition to Governor Johnson's support for medical marijuana. Rather than using his position to influence the implementation of any law Johnson signed, White quit over an ideological disagreement. Had he remained in that position (and had the Governor's support turned into a passable bill), White could easily have been in the best position to ensure that the drug is strictly controlled as a medical product, and could have maintained the sharp distinction between medicinal use and illegal personal indulgence. But he didn't, and instead left an office where he could have done much good because he didn't want to be seen as compromising his ideals over an initiative that never came to pass, and was ultimately not a crime issue but a health issue. Much as White touts that experience, it's terrible background for someone we want to reach across the isle, and represent all of us instead of just part of us.

(for more on Darren White, see my Fix post here)

The Local Press

I understand some frustration at the Journal's editorial board for it's endorsement. Always frustrating when those influential disagree with us. Still, this is no need to call for the paper's demise. The Journal, as an organ of the free press, is free to say what it wants until it can't afford to print, and then it can say things it wants online at an absolute minimum of cost. Living away at college and without a regular newspaper, there are some things I miss out on. Yes, I get news, and yes, the blogosphere does a fair bit with news. But what the blogosphere lacks (and the Journal has) is the economic necessity of objective reporting.

Blogs run at the absolute minimum of cost and don't have to appeal to anyone. Newspapers, at the least, have to sell to a large percentage of the city. Now editorial decisions can influence some of that appeal, but that's more background than reality - it's the printed blog entry in print every morning, and it's like eights inches at most. If that is offensive enough to not buy a newspaper, than don't buy the newspaper. It is, however, balanced out by the actual content of the paper, which cannot show bias and which has to care about Albuquerque. Those are both good things, both needed things, and both constraints that new media doesn't have to abide by. For me, that balances out disagreeable editorials (and the god awful content vomit that is the Tuesday editorial page).

Speaking in Dystopias

Science Fiction blog io9 has an interesting post up about the two competing narratives of dystopia in this year's presidential election campaign. The post is a good start, but as we near the very end of a two-year-long campaign about the future of this nation, it's a good idea to take a closer look at our competing worst fears.

The dystopia that is easier for me to imagine is the dystopia of the McCain/Palin administration. Greatly to the disservice of McCain's record in the senate, people fear his government not on his own merits or policies, but on those they see him as a surrogate for. The fears about McCain being the next bush are what inspire the trite labeling of him as "McSame", and again, that's a fear that has everything to do with Bush and nothing to do with McCain. It's a repeat of the dystopia of the first 6 years of this millenium, where a Republican president and a Republican congress waged war, inspired fear, let competitive industries consolidate, undermined freedoms, and challenged the social norms of what was approaching an open and progressive society. The fear with McCain, as is the fear with all conservatives (which is is a stand-in for), is the fear of a regression back into a previous and oppressive state of existence. Reckless wars, failing education systems, and the transition of social norms to the rigidly-clamped down society that spawned first the beat poets and then the hippies are all valid fears, but the big one is not so much a fear of actively going backward as it is a fear of stagnation. Palin especially, with here "drill baby drill", epitomizes the failings of the status quo - not that we can't drill, but we can't do it for much longer, and to continue to rely on solutions which we know will stop working soon seems to be folly. It's another four/eight/sixteen years of watching the United States not so much collapse as go down with the ship. Dystopia here is letting ourselves be blinded by unfailing devotion to a system that worked once when it is obvious that times have changed, reality has changed, and that we need intelligence, innovation, and sacrifice to make the whole thing work. And it's a fear that we'll be blinded by infighting and hobbled by tradition in such a way that we fall behind as a nation, and are unable to maintain our position as the world leader in anything excpet debt.

Contrasted with this is the dystopia envisioned by the Nobama crowd. Obama's promise of government working for people again is views quite skeptically; government by its vary nature is harmful to individuals, and any expansion of government power or responsibility will mean, more or less, the end times. It's wars ended in ignominous retreat and a national debt accumlated by spending tax dollars on the lazy, the illegal, and the undeserviving. It's the loss of freedom to universal programs, and it's being expected to say "thank you" for the infringement on your rights. It's being told that your values are not only not unviersal values, but they are criminal values. It's the fear inherent in every American since we first got self-determination, and it's a fear that focuses on very specific definitions of the self, and of determination. It's knowign that tax dollars will be spent on an act you view as murder. It's a real, genuine, fear for our economic security which sees taxes as the final straw that will break the back of American industry. And it's a genuine fear for America's safety, that we'll be left vulnerable and that our president will not have the strength of resolve to punish those who've attacked us. It's a combination of both the oppressive nanny state at home and embarassing appeasement abroad.

Of course, both fears of dystopia are overblown - if they weren't, they wouldn't be fears about dystopia. The way to get around these statements? Read what the candidates say, about themselves, in positive terms - listen to what they say they are going to do, and ignore all the "gotcha!" moments, as well as the divise and petty partisan jokes. Because no matter what happens on Nov. 4th, change is more or less a given, and it's incredibly hard to imagine that change as anything less than positive.

(To be fair, degree of positive matters a lot. Also, this is assuming Obama, McCain, or even Biden administrations. A Palin administration is closer to the dystopic fears about McCain, and tobe fair she inspires many of them. Even under that worst-case of worst-case scenarios, thoguh, the progress will be measured at zero, and not in negative numbers.)

Voting in the Age of the Internet

From both BoingBoing and Nora comes this great post: How to Get the Nerd Vote.

My favorite part?

2. Universal Healthcare. Everyone I know that freelances or works a day job and wishes they could quit and follow their dreams of launching a company complains about the lack of healthcare. Whenever I used to talk about freelancing at tech conferences, the first question was always about healthcare coverage. I've heard that in places like Berlin where you don't have to worry about where your healthcare is coming from or how much it costs, up to 35% of working age adults are freelancers. It may sound crazy and anti-capitalist to consider healthcare for all, but if we flipped a switch tomorrow and everyone had health coverage I swear a million small businesses would launch overnight. I know lots of people that keep a job just to get healthcare that are wasting their creative talents because they had a cancer scare or were born with a defect or otherwise are deemed uninsurable on their own.

It's nice to see an argument for universal healthcare that isn't "moral obligation" but is instead "economic boon".

Firefly Post Exchange - Kittens for Jesus

Today, Evan of Kittens for Jesus and I are doing a blog-exchange with posts on Firefly. If you like what he says here, I strongly encourage you to check out his blog, and the underground newspaper he edits. Also, if you like the Firefly post, go ahead and check out my post at his blog, here.

Part I: Firefly and history

I discovered Firefly less than a month ago. It is such a compelling series, however, that I'm already hooked and I am planning on buying the Blu-ray edition of Firefly when it comes out in November, despite my qualms with the BD format.

Firefly, for those unaware of it, is a television show that aired on FOX a few years back, and really didn't do very well. It was canceled after only one season (probably because FOX didn't air the first episode, which established the entire premise), but the response from fans was so great that Universal Studios bought the movie rights and in 2005, a film extending the story, Serenity, came out.

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Firefly for me is the deep connection that the show has to history. Although it is set more than 500 years in the future, in a galaxy where humans have spread out from "Earth-that-was" to many terraformed planets, Firefly has a profound feeling of familiarity about it. Many have described the show as a "sci-fi western." I believe that that description of it is quite apt.

The first episode of Firefly begins with the Battle of Serenity and Malcolm Reynolds, a Sergent in the army of the Independent Faction, or the browncoats, fighting against a consortium of "core worlds" (rich, industrialized planets in the center of the galaxy) called the Union of Allied Planets or the Alliance. Joss Wheedon, the show's creator, drew upon the history of the American Civil War for the backstory of Firefly. A group of rural rebels, wishing to maintain their independence, are crushed by a technically superior industrialized force. Sound familiar?

This basis in history fascinates me, and I think that the show is an excellent lens through which we can view the struggles of those defeated and forced to live under a government that they fought against. It doesn't legitimize the confederate cause during the Civil War in my eyes, but it certainly humanizes it.

The way Firefly describes the border planets, the outer limits of the Alliance, is also reminiscent of the American West during the territorial years. Laws exist as only vague guidelines, and those whose job it is to enforce the laws are few and far between. The Alliance, of course, is tyrannical and corrupt on the border planets, just as the North was seen by the Southerners in the conquered South after the Civil War. The Northern authorities, or rather, the Eastern authorities, were seen as similarly corrupt in the American West during the settlement of that area in the 19th century.

I'm a history fan, so I just drink this stuff up, but Firefly is an amazing show even without considering all the history in it. The character development is some of the best I have ever seen in a television show, and the writing is very good, with an excellent blend of humor, action, and drama.

Part II: The Sino-American Alliance

The Union of Allied Planets in Firefly was formed out of an earlier alliance, one that emerged through the merger of the last two superpowers on Earth when humans left the planet: China and the United States. This kind of alliance may not seem plausible given the average American's thoughts on the Chinese, as exemplified by my English teacher's husband's cry during the recent Beijing Olympics: "you rat-assed commie bastards!"

A lot can change in 500 years, though. Currently, the US and China are the major spacefaring nations (excepting, of course, Russia, which in 500 years could be a province of China, just like we could be a province of Canada) and English and Chinese are two of the most popular languages in the world. Everything points to an alliance between the two if the world suddenly got its act together and created a unified world government. However, how effective would such a unified Sino-American government be? Are the cultural gaps just too wide, the mountainous language barrier too high?

More plausible than an alliance, I think, is a war and then a mass exodus of the losing side (or the winning side, depending on the condition of Earth after the war) into space. I think that, rather than rallying around political similarities or geographical proximity, the two sides would be formed by confederacies of states based upon language. Tone language versus tone-neutral language. English versus Chinese. I am probably over-simplifying the situation, but one cannot underestimate the effects of globalization over 500 years.

Once this war had been won by one side or another, the loser or the winner, depending on whether or not Earth had been destroyed by the war, would travel into space and establish colonies, space stations, new Earths. Thus, the process of colonization and expansion, complete, probably, with the concept of manifest destiny, would begin anew. New factions and subgroups would emerge and the endless recursiveness of life would extend into the limitless void. It almost sounds like a premise for a sci-fi show.

9/11/2008 - Political Elasticity

As is habit, here's an obligatory 9/11 blog post.

John Fleck has been blogging lately about elasticity, about how people are changing behaviors responding to the high price of gas. What's interesting is the range of successful options - biking is easy for short commutes (high elasticity). Public transportation is becoming more popular, meaning that the buses in Albuquerque are carrying more riders than ever, and that the demand is great than can currently be met (fairly high elasticity). People are looking at trains instead of flying for travel, and the rail system in this nation cannot possibly keep up for at least a year or two (low elasticity). Other people are looking at natural gas, given how cheap it is, and wondering why we don't have cars than can use it as fuel; others are just wondering why people aren't, all of a sudden, driving more fuel efficient cars. Specialized car production to meet this crisis is slow, lagging behind demand. For cars to adapt will take several years, and new fuels will take longer (low, very low elasticity). That's elasticity as it concerns travel and fuel costs among consumers in the US.

The elasticity that concerns 9/11 is with policy advisors. Condoleeza Rice is the latest in a long line of presidential cabinet members who grew up and academically came of age as Russia experts - the Cold War has produced professionals who are longer lived than their knowledge set. The best minds in US foreign policy for decades have been specialists on Russia.

Seven years after 9/11, I'm taking Arabic, History of Islam, and a class called "War on Terror". Those classes are bursting - they had to offer a new section of Arabic, and in a school that prides itself on small class size they cannot trim the numbers in these classrooms down below 25. Two years ago, when I took "Middle Eastern Culture and Civilization" at community college in New Mexico, the class was small, maybe 15 students. This sudden rush, this explosion of interest, is the political elasticity. Seven years after the fact we have responded to the crisis, and the crises that have emerged since then.

Here's hoping our knowledge is needed before this is all over.

Edit 9/11/2008: I've a more personal post about the day, and my reaction to it, up on livejournal.

A Gentle Way Down

(This post is in part inspired by an interview with David Simon on Charlie Rose. The interview isn't available on the site, but it should be.)

The theory goes like this: America (as the United States, not as the continent) has peaked. We've exhausted our better instincts, and are losing our imperial hubris. The end of Pax Americana is upon us, and this is an end brought about by an inability or an unwillingness on behalf of the United States to be competent. This explains the long-lasting dead-end wars, the bold statements about power that are only followed by fails to properly use that power (see: the War on Drugs, or either of the major wars that have been going on for over 5 years now). The US of today may care about clinging to power, but that's a holding action; we are in decline and the best we can do is put off that decline or go out in a blaze of glory. (No one really considers the blaze of glory a real option, but that is what a war with Iran would be.) The gradual decline is more like what we see happening to New Orleans: a lack of interest, and a feeble attempt to restore horrible prior conditions. Either way, the US is through.

This isn't a line of reasoning I agree with, but I'll run with it. If we take the US's decline as a given, we have a short list of facts to work with:

• The United States is still the most powerful nation on earth at the moment
• That power is not going to dry up for at least a decade or two
• There are several nations who could make a stab at being successors to the US, but none of them are a given
• Given that several nations are capable of succeeding the US, odds are that none of them will make it entirely, leaving several competing major powers but no single dominant power
• Unlike the collapse of every prior hegemonic imperial period (Rome, The Hapsburgs in the 16th century, Imperial Japan, the Tang Dynasty, Great Britain), significant international organizations founded on the rule of law exist

I'll get to what the list means in a second, but first some background: I wrote, during my senior year of high school, a short essay on "Roosevelt's China". The phrase refers to an expressed sentiment on behalf of FDR for China to become a bastion of democracy. At the time he expressed this hope, Nationalist China was the favored side in the Chinese civil war, and had been fighting nominally on the side of the Allies in WWII. This is how China was granted a permanent seat on the UN security council, and it later lead to difficulty when Taiwan represented China, and the People's Republic had been excluded (a situation which was later rectififed). But I digress - in that short essay, I argued that instead of China, the US should look to India as a bastion of democracy. India had ties to the West that China lacked (by virtue of not having been a formal colony, and of then being decidedly anti-western for a while), India was already a democracy, and India has a large segment of the population that speaks English. It looked to me to be the logical power for the US to set up as a successor, much as the British handed over the reins of hegemony to the United States.

That was a gentle way down for the US. It was a potential hegemon, a nation on the rise, and a nation that could remain a strong ally of the US. But the transferral of hegemonic status is a game that never ends well.

The better way down, the easier option to prevent another nation reaching hegemonic heights, is to make the UN supreme. Not supreme as in a "world government" sort of a way, but supreme as in the ultimate legitimizer and protector of national sovereignty. In a world where every nation fears being powerless to act against a single superpower, the answer is to collectively enable an international democratic body to prevent such a status. The gentle way down is a UN in charge of the global commons.

This position is hindered by the past 4 US presidencies. International law needs to be accepted as ultimately more important than national self interest, and international law cannot be so willfully and fragrantly violated as it has been under the later Clinton administration and under the second and third Bush administrations. The US acting as it did was incredibly short-sighted, and it ruined the chances the US would have at a peak transfer of status. But the potential for such a move still exists, and with luck the next US president will see the unsustainability of current US postions and vouch for a greater empowerment of the UN. It's not the only way down, and it's not the most glorious end to an era of power and prestige, but it is the gentle way down. That, above all else, should be a good thing.

Blurring the Spectrum

Every so often, I ask myself why I identify as far left. After all, I'm all for efficient government, I value personal freedom, and I have a weird fascination/relationship with the United States and nuclear power. These are points commonly espoused by the Libertarian Right, but I've changed the phrasing (efficient versus small government, personal versus total freedom) so that I don't appear as in their camp. With this background, it should come as no surprise that I agreed with everything Jim Scarantino said in his column about reforming the Republican Party.

To be fair, Jim Scarantino isn't the average republican, and that's the point of his column. He subscribes to an older, different notion of that party, and his credentials align him more with Eisenhower than Reagan. This a a perspective on a Republican Party with a clearly demonstrated right to rule; a right earned through competent governance and not dependent on moral or divine authority. And this party, this return to form that he argues for, is a party I can agree with in many ways. Step 9 of his plan is especially appealing:

Make direct amends to such people wherever possible. Give Iraq back to Iraqis, move all Katrina victims out of formaldehyde-poisoned trailers and rebuild their homes, improve veterans services, and repeal some tax breaks to pay for the nation’s needs.

This is something a responsible party would do. Combined with advocating for freedom from control and low-cost government, it would be the beginnings of a conversion. But there is a divergence here - I think those policies are good, but I think they are good policies for a party of rule, and for the nation. They are not partisan positions. Lawrence Lessig, who is as close to a political guidepost as I currently have, "thinks there are allies to be found among the "intellectually honest" right." But Lessig is speaking from a position on the left, but he is speaking towards a consensus position; "He points out that the need to raise money from industry provides an incentive to grow government and maintain regulation as a kind of leverage to extract donations from industry. He's made battling earmarks, a conservative cause célèbre, a Change Congress core mission".

Lessig and Scarantino overlap here on what should be the center, and it should be a center made up of the "intellectually honest" on both sides of the aisle, or even among those who don't fit nicely on the conservative/liberal political spectrum. And so I can support Scarantino's desire to reform his party into one that protects freedom (our venn diagrams of beliefs overlap here), and I can be happy about a Republican Party that takes that form. It would be a much more pleasant opposition party.

But I will have to diverge from that perspective, because I think that government can do more than just guarantee freedoms. I think that government can work towards social justice, and I think that it serves an important role in the mediation between business and individuals, and I think that the protections government can offer, which come at the expense of both personal and business freedoms, are fundamental points essential to living in society with other humans. I'll end with a Lessig quote that contains a Reagan quote:

"There's a speech that Reagan gives in 1965," Lessig says, "where he talks about how democracy always fails because once the people recognize they can vote themselves largess, they just vote themselves largess and the fiscal policy is destroyed. Well, Reagan had it half-right. It's not as if it's the poor out there who have figured out how to suck the money out of the rich. It's exactly the other way around."

I can agree with anyone that there are problems in government. But, as is always the case, the trick is figuring out where the problems fall, and here is where Scarantino and I begin to disagree.

Another Lessig Bit

A great overview of Lawrence Lessig can be found here. The page setup is a bit irritating (hint to The Nation - use margins!), but the article is great. Here's my favorite bits:

"There have been all sorts of DC-based organizations that have tried to crack this nut, and I think they've hit the limit of what the 'Let's send out an e-mail to our 100,000 members and tell them to write their Congressmen' model can do," he says. "We have an opportunity--and it won't last long--to take advantage of the uncertainty that Congress has about how the Net actually works. They don't get it right now. And while they've learned how to ignore 1,000 e-mails, they haven't quite figured out what to do about fifty blogs talking about various legislation or meet-up events. So there's an opportunity to leverage the technology and the irrational insecurity of members of Congress, who look at any objectively insignificant resistance as something to be dealt with immediately."

and

This information will be displayed in a map, which Lessig believes will show in stark terms just how "broad and deep" the consensus for reform is. Take, for instance, the ultimate prize for Lessig and reform allies: public financing of Congressional campaigns. A 2006 poll showed overwhelming support among voters (75 percent) for such a system. The Fair Elections Now Act, introduced by Senators Dick Durbin and Arlen Specter, has attracted eight co-sponsors (including Barack Obama), and Hillary Clinton is on record as supporting public financing in principle if not the Durbin bill specifically. While McCain supported full public financing as recently as 2002, he retracted that position last year. This is not to say we're anywhere close to having public financing enacted--the interests opposed to it are substantial--but it is by no means a fringe idea.

and

"When I was thinking of running," Lessig says, "the biggest pushback I got was from all these senior politico types who are like, Look, you can never sell process reform; nobody will ever buy it; if that's your message, you cannot win. And my response is, Well, we've got to figure out how to sell it, for Chrissake! It's not like we have a choice."

Soundbite quickie

Much has been made of Barack Obama's statement that he would talk with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The spin varies, saying that this proves antisemitism, that this is a sign of weakness, that this is part of some weird conspiracy. All the spin ignores the single most important part of this issue - As President of the United States, Obama would talk to Ahmadinejad because Obama would be a world leader, and his job description requires interacting with other internationally significant figures.

I'm waiting for someone to say this publicly and bluntly.

Deliberate Community and Social Contracts

Obnoxious as it may sound, I want to spend a good part of this summer analyzing social contract theory. Step one in doing that involves strange travel advice as a dancing lesson from God.

Two weeks ago, I was standing outside Z'ots, a sort-of 245 hour coffee shop within walking distance of Tulane. While standing with my drink, a man in his young 30s came up and started a conversation. He was all about Burning Man, with a sort of evangelical fervor. He runs a bar in Black Rock City, and upon finding out I was studying political science, he tailored he summation of the experience towards the ear of a political observer.

His important points:

• Burning Man, as a money-less society, runs on an
• "economy of personality", where interactions with other people overshadow the movement of goods and services
• The city is a spontaneous creation
  
• Black Rock City is an autonomous community of roughly 30,000 people that exists for one week out of every year...The city is constructed anew at the beginning of the week by the returning residents, and torn down entirely, leaving not a single trace that human beings were ever there, at the end of the week
• The city, as an independent organic entity, self-corrects
• BURNING MAN CHANGES FROM YEAR TO YEAR. Here are some of the changes that have warranted complaints from the folks who attended Burning Man when it was 100 people on a beach in the Bay Area: You can no longer bring guns and fire them off into the sky. You can no longer detonate explosives without warning to your neighbors. You can no longer drive your car at high speeds through the city. The city now has roads allowing citizens and Emergency Services to find things.

That's the gist of what made Black Rock City a politically fascinating entity for him to observe, but it wasn't the main point of politics in his conversation. The politics he talked about and felt a part of were the politics of running his camp/bar.

The camp is nominally run by an oligarchic council, of which Ari is the head. This is a position similar to whatever name Russia's autocrat* holds, where the other organ of power offers suggestions and gives consent to policy, but really has no say in ultimately deciding how things are run. He described a power struggle with other oligarchs; two of them wanted to change the system into a formal and not de facto monarchy, and another wanted Ari to allocate funding differently and would gladly change governments to do this. The nature of the power struggle was complaints through a free and open listserv that the camp using to communicate when not in Nevada, and the nature of the struggle was one where the people at the top battled, with the revolting leaders claiming a mandate from the disaffected masses while Ari knew that the disaffected masses didn't care so long as there was a government. Ari, in describing this, said he felt like Stalin as he gave those revolting the choice of leaving his camp or falling in line. Ari elaborated, claiming that had the scale been a nation of millions instead of a camp of 60, the result would have been to order executions. (It is worth noting tat someone who knew Ari was skeptical of this fact as he related it). The end result of the struggle was those revolting quit the camp, rather than go along with Ari.

The point is not the details of this internal struggle - what matters is that in a deliberate community (the camp), which has established its own governing board (Ari and the oligarchy), a struggle over resources (the funds people contribute to be part of the camp) was resolved by having people simply leave the community. This is the first time in recent memory I've heard of a situation where "love it or leave it" actually counts as a valid choice.

Ari went on to say that he is avowedly anti-democracy, that his anarcho-libertarian philosophies don't allow him to trust the masses to think for him, and that democracy is an organ (especially in Louisiana, he made sure to point out) for collective disenfranchisement. His camp, temporary as it is and dependent upon outside factors for its existence, functions as a voluntarily entered into governed body, where people can opt out or make a stab (through the economy of personality) of influencing the autocrat. This was a social contract consented to, not by necessity, but because that is how people would prefer things. Ari's cynicism attributes his perpetual rule to the fact that people don't really care about whose governing them, but I think it has more to do with the fact the people would rather care about other things. For many, politics are something they only think about when terrible things are happening or when they are upset. It's not quiet cynicism, but I think that people don't care about how government functions when they are content with it. One of the tricks with democracy is that it makes people have to think about government fairly regularly, and not everyone wants that.

That's a side note - what matters is that there are situations where people can willingly enter into governance, establish and codify social contracts, and then chose to leave society when the feel the social contract isn't to their benefit. I've written about deliberate communities before, often UU affiliated - YRUU, Church Camp, and in general UU congregations all function as groups people willing enter, and leave or work to change when discontent.

Nations, however, are different. This is a bigger issue, and this is why Social Contract theories exist. People are born into social contracts with their nations of residence, and people have an elaborate series of obstacles in their place when they want to change the relationship between themselves and their government. Emigration is perhaps the simplest, but it requires another nation consent to housing the emigrant, and that can be quite tricky, as US/Mexico relations show. The more challenging but still civil procedure is to run for government offices, to support candidates and to actually try to enter into and change a political system. Reform has, at its heart, the idea of renegotiating the social contract. Lastly, there is open revolt, in the form of either succession or revolution, and that is contentious and violent and has the most uncertain results of all.

Just leaving, finding a new place, and starting a new thing, as valid an option as it is for small deliberate communities, stopped being a valid technique for nations over a century ago, when the Boers went into the African interior, trying to displace the Africans and be free of the British. Now, the nationless spots on earth are international waters and the Western Sahara. It's fitting that Black Rock City, too, finds itself existing in inhospitable conditions. This winds itself back to Frontier theory, where in the US the option was tolerate the rules of the cities or go off into the hinterland. A dual social contract existed then within the same nation, and the choice was available. Today, the option is gone, more or less.

The only exception I can see is the internet.**


*Tsar and easily-dismissed Duma, Lenin and the Bolshevik Party, Stalin and the Communist Party Congress, Putin and modern Russia's Duma. The mold is the same, and Ari presented his camp oligarchy using specifically the Stalin metaphor.
** Expect a post on that soon, inspired in part by this.

Lessig Roundup

I rarely do short posts full of links, but with this being a blog it seems a shame to not take advantage of the medium. So, here we will have a few links to the best of Lawrence Lessig that I have so far found on the internet.

This was my introduction to Lessig, and clocks in at under eight minutes, so I'd go here first.

In this video, he explains remixing video and music as youth culture, and as the modern way in which youth interact with the media around them. It's good, and is the one I'd recommend to people uncertain about where to stand in the piracy debate.

In this hour-long lecture, Lawrence Lessig discusses his new focus on corruption, as he starts out on day one, and manages to do a fantastic job of examining a fundamental flaw in the current American political system. This is what won me over to his ideas, and I found it to be the most inspiring political statement I heard all of last year.

Lawrence Lessig has shown up in at least two of my posts about Barack Obama, so his endorsement speech makes sense here. It's a very compelling argument for using personal character as a standard, when the candidates positions are very similar, and so it hits upon points that I was unable to make in my analysis of positions.

Lastly, what makes all this relevant, and relevant now, is that Lessig is considering a run for representative from California, and even if that doesn't happen, he's started a movement to change congress.

Lessig is the inspiring academic of the now, and should he decide to run, he will fast become my favorite politician (sorry Heinrich). This is an exciting era, and the chance for a progressive to step out of the ivory tower and into the fray is especially exciting.

Technocracy Now!

Technocracy has come up a lot in my classes this semester, and it has a hell of an appeal to it. There are many definitions I could provide, but I'll go with the simplest:

Technocracy = Government of the Competent

Which, you know, just sounds like the exact best kind of government possible. How's the saying go? "... If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary..." (more of that wisdom here). Technocracy aims at creating such rulers, and any such government worth the name will have leaders who are all trained in the art of ruling, have been trained in such an art since childhood, and belong to a group that is destined to rule. This is, in part, the justification for royal lineages and the power of monarchs - they are trained for this their whole life, so of course they should be competent. Usually the training fell through, or the monarchs assumed innate ability, so it's a poor example.

A better example would be France, where one school has graduated all but three prime ministers since 1948, and where a political elite not only exists (as they kind of exist everywhere), but where the political elite derives a large share of their power from technical skill. For someone who places a high value on civil service, this is exciting, and it helps that in such a country the public sector attracts the best and the brightest. Prestige and skill associated with civic duty is something almost alien in the United States, and the idea of guaranteed competent bureaucrats and leaders is enticing.

Certainly, the program has success, and with political elite having all the technical knowledge they could need, their plans will be well-informed and effective. Technical skill, that fundamental guiding force behind Technocracy, is something everyone would want available to their leaders (if not an innate trait of the leaders themselves). The justification, however, that technical skill is all it takes is folly.

Technocrats, especially hereditary or entrenched or class-based, will still be human and hold human values. People without values are nothing we would want, but in the rulers-as-angels scenario we would hope that they would have our values, and be the shining pillars of what we hold dear. The same skill that can beautifully execute every program we can possibly imagine, creating that approaching-utopic vision of society, can just as easily lead to someone else's paradise, and the paradise of entrenched elites tends to be a far different world than that of any regular citizens. It may overlap in areas, but on the whole it is likely to be a vision detached from the populace. If angels ruled men, would they care for what men thought?

Certainly, we like to think they would, and we know that as angels they are our angels, the angels that agree with us on all the finer points. But that's an impossibility in society, and we cannot hope (nor should we) for a world where all values conform to one glorious vision. It is diversity of opinion that makes the world rich, and it is diversity of opinion that allows for compromise at the same time that it threatens stability.

Democracy, or stable democracy at the least, is a forum for compromise, for dissent, and for acceptance that though we do not hold all same values, what we do share can be acted upon. Technocracy involves a detached judgment of the "General Will" of the populace, without asking the populace what their general will is. It is a detached government for the betterment of all society made by those who are, primarily, outside of society, and it is inevitable that the technocrats will disagree with the populace at some point to completely void the consent of the governed.

Technocracy is not an ideal system, for the very reason that no system can ever be ideal. A dystopias have a tendency to be well executed, administered by those who know exactly how to use government, and engineered around some purpose that is forwarded as in the interest of the populace. Dystopias are scary stuff. The whole premise that those governed are not responsible enough to have a say in how they are governed assumes tremendous competence on the part of the governing and tremendous incompetence on the part of the governed, and so while it is a common belief among intelligentsias, I cannot help but feel it voids fundamental notions of human dignity.

This is not to say that there is nothing to learn from technocracy, or that leadership by the skilled is a terrible thing. Certainly, skilled leaders are ideal, and technical skill for the running of government is something to be sought out. That doesn't mean that training is the only requirement, and it doesn't mean that we should just trust the opinions of the trained. People change, values change, and without a system to reevaluate consent and remove or restore legitimacy skill becomes meaningless. A perfectly skilled administrator acting against the will of the entire populace should not be left in place just because they are skilled.

The first time that was tried the results were, well, hellish.

Lights Out All Over

[Disclaimer - this is a bleak one, and is best thought of as a companion piece to this article. If you've read that, and still feel like delving into revisionist pre-apocalypse nuclear policy, read on. If not, it's perfectly understandable, and one day I'll blog about kittens and how awesome sunsets are.]

I don't know how quickly the connection was made between September 11th, 2001 and a new era in nuclear policy, but we're sitting six years after the fact, and sixty two years after nuclear weapons came into existence. Increasingly, the end of the Cold War seems to be an interlude and a reorganizing, and less of an end to nuclear fear. Surely, the fears are different, but we've moved from mutually assured destruction to random acts of extremists. If one fears things on a personal level (and most people tend to), the fact that one random nuclear strike would not be nearly as devastating as a full launch of a nuclear arsenal is not a comfort. Extremists are random if weak; nations can be strong but are usually more predictable. And, as fear works, the one random strike is just as likely to kill kid A on the street as the full launch would be. If any statement better epitomized the disconnect between rational brain and the fearful brain, it was when John Kerry said that someday terrorism will only be a nuisance. No one thinks in terms of nuisance's - they will see themselves as victims, and random crime will inevitably hit home.

I don't see nuclear war in the future; the remote possibilities of Pakistan/India or Israel/Iran are still present, but will be as localized as nuclear war can be, and will only devastate earth in bits and pieces. The more likely scenario, the new scenario, is that some nukes will be used. A few, here and there, with devastation that nations can survive. The perpetrators will not long survive these things, but that won't matter - given the current population, people are incredibly cheap and delivery systems are expensive. Weapons themselves are expensive, but a whole cadre of nations will exist that can look favorably at a world where they lose nuclear weapons and their enemies suffer terrorist attacks. These won't, almost as a rule, be democratic or wealthy countries. They will be run by elites, those who see power as a game and apply Machiavellian insight to the usage of the most powerful weapon ever created.

Realpolitik hasn't been practiced lately because it's a zero sum game, and everyone is afraid of upsetting the balance and getting less. At some point, people without anything are going to be willing to go to lengths to increase their worth. A stable dictatorship, if oppressive, will look much better than an impotent republic or a formerly opulent empire. This changes the zero sum game, where no new values are put in, but some are lessened. Nothing looks a lot better when everyone else is sitting on negative values.

This isn't the way it has to go, and it's far too abstracted to have much relevance on how things will be. It's a possibility, though, and its one that lines up more with a Bush Doctrine view of the world. This view holds that terrorists act, if not at the behest, than with the explicit consent of sponsor states. These people are opposed to the United States, it's wealth and values, and the whole of the Western world. For the United States to do nothing, in this world view, is folly, and as a corollary, diplomacy is inaction. This doctrine holds that it is not safe to refrain from using power, and that any state capable and willing to sponsor terrorism must be forcibly prevented from doing so. This is why weapons of mass destruction were the reason given for invading Iraq, and why the invasion has failed by its own tenets.

Pakistan, as the article discussed, is a state much more likely to provide weapons of mass destruction to terrorists, and so Pakistan was either to be courted or attacked. The United States, being sensible, decided that bringing Pakistan into line ('courting' is too weak a phrase for the policy) made more sense than invading the foremost nuclear Muslim state. In this process, the Bush Doctrine admitted a fatal error: it allowed Pakistan to come on board and keep it's nukes. Alliance through disarmament may have been too much to ask for, but it was essential for this policy to work. Losing the alliance with Pakistan, after having helped them disarm, would have been disappointing but not globally destabilizing. Losing a nuclear Pakistan is terrifying. Expediency, as in most military affairs, was a flaw, and a consequence is the current political situation in Pakistan. The pro-US dictator is holding onto power, and more or less has to if Pakistan's nuclear capability is not to be let loose piecemeal. Piecemeal nukes are terrifying.

This isn't a good thing, and I can't ignore the decent person voice that says that the democracy protesters are right, that this dictator is bad, and that the general will of the people comes before preserving unfair power structures. This isn't good, and the whole affair is too rough a thing, too unjust a thing to let slow change fix. But this is what it demands. Ideology inevitably gives way to realpolitik, and to justify it I'd have to extend this social contract to the whole human community.

I'm not doing that. I'm not forgiving oppression. But it's a bleak day, a bleak era, and while it isn't 1939 all over again, it feels a good deal like January 1936.

United Nations Quickie

A longer post was planned, but I've learned to censor myself when it comes to meandering semi-autobiographical prose (thank you masters of western thought), and so here is the barest idea of what had been written.

The United Nations Paradox

1. The United Nations is weak and ineffective, because it has very little power and authority.

2. If the United Nations had more power, that power would come at the expense of national sovereignty, and this will lead to an oppressive world government that no one wants and many already fear.

This perspective baffles me, but if it is indeed the view held by many, it makes sense for why everyone thinks the United Nations is a joke. Doesn't make sense for why people still let the UN exist, and doesn't leave much more than simple idealism as the possible reason for the United Nations creation.

This can't be right. I'll have to look more into this, which means a follow up post to this one in December. Until then, I'll wear my peacekeeper beret, display my UN flag, and proudly support what most people consider a laughingstock.

Sounds good