TOTALITARIANISM TODAY
Friday, December 13, 2002
Women who only know what they want sometimes.
Canadian Rebecca Eckler confessed her surprise upon being introduced to the New York institution of the "sometimes-boyfriend". So what exactly is a "sometimes-boyfriend"? Eckler defines him as follows:
A sometimes-boyfriend is not a one-night stand. A sometimes-boyfriend acts like a boyfriend for reoccurring but brief periods of time, but it doesn't count as a relationship.The sometimes-boyfriend flies in, stays with the woman, they eat at romantic restaurants together, see plays they would never see on their own and walk around Central Park holding hands.Then, after a few days, the sometimes-boyfriend flies away, and the woman is left to do her own thing, which includes dating.
Confused by this somewhat-status, Eckler asks her female friends to explain, which they do, much to the reader's amusement.
Friday, December 13, 2002
Cool new questions in citizenship law.
Are bones entitled to repatriation? Exactly what is your citizenship status after death? Let's say your grandfather was exiled from a communist country for dissenting during the Cold War-- do you have a right to petition for him to be buried in the country of his birth? This issue captivates me precisely because, like most politics, it is personal.
Friday, December 13, 2002
Ethics and competition.
Good article on whether or not Harvard Business School will be able to teach its students business ethics. With corporate ethics ratings charts, like those in the recent Economist, the focus on business ethics is intended to reassure wary investors. But would investors prefer a businessman be ethical or cut-throat-- the two aren't necessarily complementary, especially if you believe (as I do) that many of the laws regulating business actually harm businesses and markets.
Friday, December 13, 2002
Shopping for Jesus.
The What Would Jesus Do thong is actually kind of tongue-in-cheekish, so I'll add it to my wish list. As for the postcards, well, I'll get them for friends who are into self-mutilation and torture-- all that modern sex stuff I can't seem to muster the taste for. Oy vey, what's a poor half-Hebrew, half-Orthodox girl to do in this day and age?
Friday, December 13, 2002
All I want for Christmas is the Holy Grail.
When I was 13, I played Mary in our church's Christmas pageant. This is about when I stopped believing in Santa Claus. This discovery crushed me, so I resolved that my little sister would never find out that Christmas was really nothing more than a commercial holiday to lure parents into spending money they don't have for presents. I concocted this far-fetched bender about seeing Santa and the message he gave me for my little sister. Poor thing-- she believed until friends at school teased her out of it.
Perhaps I should be comforted by the fact that Christmas nowadays at least has the tremendous, buregeoning Jesus market. But the commercialization of Jesus is more funny than apt. It scares me that
this seems probable, and that fundamentalist Christians now watch Disney movies in search of the sexual subtitles.
Christianty and Islam are competing in the marketplace of ideas, and Christianity has a better PR firm and commercial strategy-- that much is clear.
Yet the holdidays feel empty as David Brody shows how Israel's chief backers are evangelical Christians with wet dreams of holy war.
Does President Bush understand the irony of supporting faith-based charities, community ties, and family life while preaching war against evil? Did he get the "axis of evil" phrase from an Austin Powers movie? I shudder to think that US foreign policy has fallen so far. How far are we from the establishment of a Department of Faith?
Friday, December 13, 2002
A reply to Packer.
Jordy Cummings responds to Packer's analysis of the left with this spicy little piece, "Screw the Liberal Bombers", for Counterpunch.
Friday, December 13, 2002
I'm with the cunning linguist.
The latest from Noam Chomsky, as he attempts to analyze the "Bushies". Meanwhile, Bruce Conover explains why he thinks Bush is a sociopath. I am more inclined to agree with Chomsky.
Friday, December 13, 2002
The cracked opposition.
It is natural that Democrats feel slightly underwhelmed by the range of options open to them in the electoral arena, especially when the party in opposition has proven to be anything but. The lack of opposition from mainstream political parties is disheartening, as it tends to buttress skeptical claims about politicians, powerlust, and Randolph Bourne's warnings. One of the reasons Democrats are unable to unite against the war in Iraq is that many are of two minds on the issue. For example, a poll released the first week of December showed 40% of Democrats oppose a war in Iraq.
In "The Liberal Quandary over Iraq", George Packer speaks to leftist public intellectuals in the hopes of piecing together some makeshift consensus on the issue. Packer thinks the Left's problems with taking an anti-war position began with the recent humanitarianization of war under the Clinton administration.
The history goes back 10
years, when a war broke out in the middle of Europe. This
war changed the way many American liberals, particularly
liberal intellectuals, saw their country. Bosnia turned
these liberals into hawks. People who from Vietnam on had
never met an American military involvement they liked were
now calling for U.S. air strikes to defend a multiethnic
democracy against Serbian ethnic aggression. Suddenly the
model was no longer Vietnam, it was World War II -- armed
American power was all that stood in the way of genocide.
Without the cold war to distort the debate, and with the
inspiring example of the East bloc revolutions of 1989
still fresh, a number of liberal intellectuals in this
country had a new idea. These writers and academics wanted
to use American military power to serve goals like human
rights and democracy -- especially when it was clear that
nobody else would do it.
The argument that has broken out among these liberal hawks over Iraq is as fierce in its way as anything since Vietnam. This time the argument is taking place not just between people but within them.... What makes the agony over Iraq particularly intense is the new role of conservatives. Members of the Bush administration who had nothing but contempt for human rights talk until the day before yesterday have grabbed the banner of democracy and are waving it on behalf of the long-suffering Iraqi people. For liberal hawks, this is painful to watch.
Mark Leonard makes a similar argument for the European Left in the UK Observer.
In this strange interlude, with everyone waiting for war,
I've had extended conversations with a number of these
Bosnian-generation liberal intellectuals -- the ones who
have done the most thinking and writing about how American
power can be turned to good ends as well as bad, who don't
see human rights and democracy as idealistic delusions, and
who are struggling to figure out Iraq..... This Bosnian generation of liberal hawks is a minority within a minority... Oddly enough, President Bush needs them, too. The one level on which he hasn't even tried to make a case is the level of ideas. These liberal hawks could give a voice to his war aims, which he has largely kept to himself. They could make the case for war to suspicious Europeans and to wavering fellow Americans. They might even be able to explain the connection between Iraq and the war on terrorism. But first they would need to resolve their arguments with one another and themselves.
Human-rights author Michael Ignatieff told Packer that "this one" would be "really difficult". To hear this from one of the decade's most consistent and staunch supporters of humanitarian intervetion is daunting. On Igantieff's view, however, Iraq falls under a different rubric. "I am having real trouble with this because it's not clear to me that containment has failed," Ignatieff told Packer.
Ignatieff is not alone in his belief that containment still works in Iraq. Among other scholars, analysts, and citizens who support a continued containment strategy in Iraq: Mike Hersh, US Air Force Brigadier Gen. Bob DuLaney, Marty Jezer, Polly Toynbee, Charles Davis of the National Catholic Reporter, and many other foreign policy specialists, whom I will not embarass by linking.
As it is, the policy of containment in Iraq must be re-evaluated. Well-written and knowledgeable debates like this one ought to be encouraged by Congressman, who should admit they know more about cell phone laws than the political history and manuveurings of the Iraqi government. Rather than embarass itself by supporting an arguably fallacious war, the Left should look to its first principles for guidance. Then again, I suppose the Right would interject, "Principles? But they never had any of those." Shrug.
