Air Travel III - Thin Atmosphere Reading

People will sometimes ask me how long it takes to fly between Tokyo and New Jersey. My answer usually elicits a contorted expression and a syllable or two of pained commiseration, reactions I personally would reserve for someone in truly insufferable straits. A diehard Glee fan, for example. Or someone with a full-time job. 

I don’t know why people consider thirteen hours in the air something akin to torture. In my case at least, I’m flying because I want to, unlike the poor saps up in the front of the plane who have no choice but to fly off to another meeting somewhere. And what’s so bad about being able to sit around and watch movies while people bring you food? If you’re flying with an Asian airline there’s the added bonus of free beer and wine. Plus the flight attendants are still selected in step with the time-honored tradition of chauvinistic arousal. Are you kidding me? If demurely beautiful women in flattering silky garb are bringing me free beer I’ll fly for weeks on end.

Continental offers neither free beer nor chauvinistic arousal. They compensate, however, with an almost comical overload of movie selections and an in-flight magazine that is worth its weight in glossy paper – though probably not in a way Editor in Chief Mike Guy and his team intend. I’ve long had an unabashed affinity for in-flight magazines – the travel articles, even the boring ones, in their own way, are good fodder for future adventures; the crossword puzzles make me feel smart (unlike the sudoku); and the fiction pieces inevitably reassure me that I really can be a writer someday.

The magazine on my most recent flight, however, was an altogether new experience. There was no fiction (unless you count the open letter to Continental-United's customers by CEO Jeff Smisel on page 11). I didn't even get to the crossword (I was mentally trashed after the sudoku and didn't want to risk what little self-esteem I had left). And my appetite for travel didn't have the opportunity to be whetted what with the comical (in a sort of Michele Bachman way) distractions on almost every page.

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Why Are Liberals So Pissed?

Nader Voter - By David ShankboneI am really mystified about the left's level of anger at Obama over this debt deal. Not only do liberals believe the debt deal was an unmitigated disaster (Why? What are the concrete consequences of this deal? I haven't seen anyone explain what specific program, policy, or vulnerable community has been harmed by this deal), but they believe that Obama is actually a closet Conservative!  A sampling of the vitriol from Corey Robin's facebook chat with notable liberals (in all cases they are referring to the President):

Rick Perlstein‎: ”The fellow’s not quite well."

Jay Driskell: "I’d like to think he’s in the thrall of capital, but more and more of me think that he is naive and clueless and out of his depth. That is, if he were in the thrall of capital, that would at least be comprehensible (and reprehensible) to me."

Doug Henwood: "Plus, he needs Wall Street money for a billion-dollar re-election campaign. ... Jay, “If he were in the thrall of capital”? In who else’s thrall is he?"

Jodi Dean: "I’m not sure moderate right fits someone to the right of Nixon and Reagan."

Katha Pollitt: "IMO, he’s weak. I don’t exactly disagree with Doug — clearly, he is Wall St’s man –but I think a more skillful politician, one less in love with being above the fray, could have handled this a lot better and gotten more on the other side."

Adolph Reed: "He’s a one-trick pony, always has been, and that trick is performing judiciousness, reasonableness, performing the guy who shows his seriousness by being able to agree with those with whom he supposedly disagrees and to disagree with those with whom he supposedly agrees. He has never — not at any moment in his political career — stood for anything more concrete than a platitude."

Corey Robin: "I tend to think people like Obama really don’t believe the bullshit they preach; what they do believe is that moderation is the mark of maturity and that Wall Street types are smarter than the rest of us."

Doug: "Corey, the personal angle with O, I think, is the fact that he was nurtured from an early age by elites – fancy universities and foundations and then the Dem leadership. He’s in awe of them, and grateful for all they did. Cf. FDR, who emerged from the elite and had the confidence to challenge them. ... I also wouldn’t go too far with the contentlessness of his reasonableness: it’s always about loyal service to power. Not to belabor the obvious, but it’s extremely useful to the bourgeoisie to have a mixed race, cerebral Democrat imposing the austerity program. I’m reminded of Dinkins telling Wall Street skeptics, who thought he didn’t have the balls to impose austerity after the 80s went poof, back during his first campaign: “They’ll take it from me.”"

On and on, further down the rabbit hole. Beyond confusion that anyone could think these are the simpliest explanations for Obama's performance as President (here's my simple version of Obama: he wants to get liberal stuff done but he's very risk adverse about his election prospects), I just think this is an incredibly disproportionate response. 

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9-11 Nine Years Later: America Finds Itself

photo from Reuters

"It wants to occupy our countries, steal our resources, impose agents on us to rule us and then wants us to agree to all this.  If we refuse to do so, it says we are terrorists. When Palestinian children throw stones against the Israeli occupation, the U.S. says they are terrorists.  Whereas when Israel bombed the United Nations building in Lebanon while it was full of children and women, the U.S. stopped any plan to condemn Israel.  At the same time that they condemn any Muslim who calls for his rights, they receive the top official of the Irish Republican Army at the White House as a political leader.  Wherever we look, we find the U.S. as the leader of terrorism and crime in the world." - Osama bin Laden

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"Patriotism, That Least Discerning of Virtues"

How many American flags are there in this picture? Closest without going over gets a free Inductive coffee mug.I thought of titling this one "Conservatism Eats Itself". but we've already got one of those, so I'll attribute the title of this post to Borges without providing a link. (press me on it and I will.)  What does it mean?  It skips over the incoherent question of whether or not patriotism qualifies as a virtue and goes straight to saying that patriotism is the easiest virtue to attain.  To be only patriotic is to settle for the lowest common denominator of goodness and to do so without thinking, without considering that there may be conflicts between patriotism and more sublime virtues.  To be patriotic is to acquiesce to groupthink for its own sake.  I'll leave it at that, because I don't want to violate Godwin's Law.

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ESL American Politics

Bush and Perot engage in preoccupied banter during Clinton's soliloquy.A student today was telling me about the recent awarding of the 2010 Nobel Prize for Chemistry to Japanese scientists and a scientist from Purdue, and it led into a discussion of Indiana and how that state fits into American electoral politics.  This in turn devolved into a gross oversimplification of the whole American scene.

We discussed the geopolitical history of the United States from roughly the time of the French and Indian War up until the U.S. Civil War as defined roughly by maintaining the balance of power between northern states with interests in manufacturing and industry and southern states interested in agriculture.  When we discussed the westward expansion, I maintained that this distinction between southern "slave states" and northern "free states" was very much preserved, and forms the basis from which much of modern American geopolitics has come.

We skipped over the Gilded Age and mentioned the New Deal only in passing as primarily concerned with the size, scope, and responsibility of the government before moving on to the Reagan and post-Reagan years as primarily defined by incoherence (although future political historians may be able to overgeneralize about the present as I have here done about the past) since Reagan's Big Tent.  I made her look up the word "incoherent" in her electronic dictionary.

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A Response to Jane Mayer

typical libertariansI read all of Jane Mayer's New Yorker epic takedown of the American libertarian movement.  "Covert Operations: the Billionaire Brothers Who Are Waging a War Against Obama" is about the Brothers Koch a.k.a. "The Kochtopus", two - or four, depending on which brothers one considers part of the Koch inner-circle - shady oil billionaires behind the curtain of the libertarian movement from the Cato Institute to the Tea Party.  It's creepy to think there's one devious, eight-armed creature pulling all those levers of influence, like "The Company" from Prison Break.  But Mayer's propagandistic assessment is underhanded, full of political bias, and based on fallacious logic.  And before you suspect me also of being on the Koch's payroll (I live below the poverty line.), I go on the record as saying that I think we should use as little fossil fuels as possible, that big business is obstructionist and has unduly influenced policy-making in Washington, and that oil is the devil.

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July 2010 News Time Capsule

This is from the EconomistI decided to celebrate the birth of my second daughter with a rehashing of news stories from the last time I really kept a continuous link with civilization via the mass media: here is July 2010 as a time capsule of our civilization's most idiotic component.

In the Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb discusses the famous fire hydrant experiment in which subjects were shown increasingly less blurry pictures of a fire hydrant until they were capable of identifying the object.  The experiment concluded that subjects were more likely to correctly identify the object sooner if they were shown fewer pictures.  Taleb interprets these counterintuitive results as proof that if we have discontinuous, intermittent exposure to something, we are more likely to understand that something.  He particularly discusses how intermittent exposure to news stories makes one more likely to know what's truly going on in the world than those who voraciously follow the news.

As an American living in Japan and returning to the U.S. twice a year on average, I sympathize with Taleb's premise (another post), but I think this particular overgeneralization is one of very few glaring faults in his book.  Either way, I'd like to present a news roundup of sorts.  I receive "the Slatest" everyday from Slate Magazine, which basically offers snapshots of news stories, and so I'd like to present some selected Slatest stories, and offer my visceral two cents.  Here it is:

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And You, Sir, Are Worse Than Hitler

"To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded." - Ralph Waldo EmersonHitler is not the most popular historical figure. Despite his best efforts and a clear love for children, nothing could prevent the ultimate Carrie-style humiliation that led to der Fuhrer's death and subsequent vilification.  

Nowadays, Hitler serves as a sort of secular Devil; in a world in which very few people actually believe in the Devil, there must be something to quelch dangerous ideas like healthcare reform and to warn people about the dastardly plans of a sitting President and his evil disciples.  

Enter Godwin's Law, the idea that, as a discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison to Hitler approaches one.  Given the longevity of the healthcare debate, and assuming Godwin's Law is correct, it is not surprising that the nuts eventually came out of the woodwork to compare a democratically elected President advocating his agenda via established legislative processes to a murderous dictator.

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Be Human: Don't Let the Politicians Win

Democrat Congressmen who voted for heath care reform have been getting death threats and the natural reaction has been to blame the heated rhetoric of the right in stoking up tea party outrage.  Let's start with the obvious: Congressmen who supported health care reform did it out of a genuine interest in bettering the country, even if you disagree with them threatening violence, or worse doing violence, is deplorable.  The debate got ugly, but all sides should immediately condemn the violence in the strongest terms possible.  That out of the way, I find myself in the uncomfortable position of agreeing with The Corner.  Victor Davis Hanson:

This week’s talking point is the sudden danger of new right-wing violence, and the inflammatory push-back against health care.  I’m sorry, but all this concern is a day late and a dollar short. The subtext is really one of class — right-wing radio talk-show hosts, Glenn Beck idiots, and crass tea-party yokels are foaming at the mouth and dangerous to progressives. In contrast, write a book in which you muse about killing George Bush, and its Knopf imprint proves it is merely sophisticated literary speculation; do a docudrama about killing George Bush, and it will win a Toronto film prize for its artistic value rather than shock from the liberal community about over-the-top discourse.

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Brookings: How We're Doing in the World

Brookings recently released its annual survey of how the U.S. is doing in the world, a series of indices for the last four years concerning foreign policy and diplomacy as well as global economics and development.  According to the survey, the United States has made considerable diplomatic progress under the Obama Administration in nearly all spheres, while global economic indicators have gotten decidedly worse across the board.  And while this shouldn't surprise anyone, the progress made over the last two years goes to show the enduring power of a cooperative and cordial international stance and good PR, and the statistics highlight several neglected issues.

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David Brooks Gets Obama, America Right

Kudos to New York Times columnist David Brooks for helping to further catalyze the post-partisanship which the election of Barack Obama represents for some.  Brooks, a moderate conservative, recently wrote a column called, "Getting Obama Right" where he even-handedly castigates partisan portrayals of the President from both sides.  From the right:

Obama is a skilled politician who campaigned as a centrist but is governing as a big-government liberal. He plays by ruthless, Chicago politics rules. He is arrogant toward foes, condescending toward allies and runs a partisan political machine.

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Why Youth Leads the Recovery

source: Justice DepartmentThis week's Featured Find, an excellent Atlantic article by Dan Peck examining the long-run social costs of persistent unemployment, contains an embedded series of glourified vlogs blasting the youth of the nation for being "Followers, Not Leaders" and entitled basterds.  Au contraire, stuffy old people, WE, the youth, will lead the economic recovery, for several reasons:

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China Diplomacy: Dalai Lama, Google, Taiwan, Trade

Everywhere you turn, the media is pouncing on the President's apparent rough start with China Diplomacy.  Having today met with the Dalai Lama fresh on the heels of a widely publicized Taiwan weapons deal, a feud over Google censorship, and an escalating trade war, President Obama has done nothing radical or out of the ordinary as far as U.S.-China diplomacy goes.  Rather, the current political and economic climates are stacked against the administration, and much of the rhetoric amounts to nothing more than muscle-flexing.  The Administration's dealings with China have been rooted in measured, compromised positions

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Stick the Landing: the State of the Union

With the left disheartened by the Mass-acre last week and health care reform's freshly dismal prospects, the right energized by the apparent success of their intransigence and the need to rally the country amidst difficult circumstance, President Obama was like a gymnast needing to perfectly execute a maneuver of highest degree of difficulty at last night's State of the Union.  No one's surprise, he nailed it.  He rallied weak kneed Democrats with a reminder that they were elected to get things done, not "run for the hills."  He leaned into the Republicans by staking out a variety of center-right positions including nuclear power, off-shore drilling, deficit reduction and small-business tax breaks while chiding them for privledging politics over leadership.  Most importantly, he reminded Americans again and again of the mess he inherited and the steps he had done to fix things.

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The Language of Politics: Nuance versus Moral Certainty

Along with a change in legislative direction, President Obama has ushered in a new era of political language.  In stark contrast to President Bush's use of moral language and dichotomies, Obama expresses inclusive nuance, even frequently including a mention of the sincerity of those who disagree with him.  While generally this is an improvement, there are important lessons Obama could learn from his Republican counterpart in framing an issue.

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