Buyer's Remorse

I'm beginning to have it. I wasn't expecting it to come at all, really, but that it comes this quickly surprises me all the more.

What is it exactly?

Well it's the pitfall into which so many great intellectuals stumble- it is the lack of appreciation for the temporal aspect of reality. They believe that a great idea is a great idea and thus stands outside the bounds of time and history as a universal truism. This is lofty stuff. And it works in doctoral theses. But in life - and in politics - it is just plain wrong.

Obama's nice-nice, his bipartisanship, his reaching out to other nations we've "dictated" to in the past. This would all be great stuff- if this were 2001.

September 12th 2001 was the day to rally good will, common purpose, and universal brotherhood.

But we didn't.

The result was that we pissed a lot of people off - both inside the country and out. And one of those "temporal" facts is that once you piss somebody off, it's not so easy to un-piss them off. They just stay pissed.

The emotion is a logical one. They are owed. They offered good will, were shunned, and now expect to be paid twofold. And what's more, rebuilding the trust that was shattered is something that may not happen at all.

George Bush's love affair with Eastern Europe at the expense of relationships with our more traditional allies- well this is like cheating on your wife with your secretary. Loyalty repaid with profligacy - this is grounds for divorce.

And just changing your tune is not enough. After all, 4 or 8 years hence, how do we know Don Rumsfeld won't emerge from the depths to lead the free world? I'm sure the world enjoys our current humility, but they've been waiting for six years, and it's going to take more than flowers and a nice card.

No, the rift between the US and the rest of the world, the exploitation of 9/11 for partisan gain, the revolting visuals of torture and humiliation, the senseless invasion, the bungled occupation, the financial meltdown- and all the rest -no amount of, "sorry honey, I screwed up" is going to balance it out.

Nor should it.

There are moments in history- 9/11 was one of them. These are opportunities to chart a new course for a nation - they are moments of "imprint vulnerability" in Lorenz's terminology. The course we set at that time was an errant one, but it is one we set nonetheless - and stubbornly followed for a long time. There's no going back. As momentous as Obama's election was, it was not such a moment in our history. We are at a nadir of our own making, hated by friend and foe a like. This is not a time to chart a new course but a time to reap what we have sowed - and what a poisonous crop it is.

On the foreign stage, the resentments and the hostilities have not been forgotten. And the "tests" predicted by Vice President Biden are coming to pass. They would have been there in any event, but tests are there to test strength and cojones. They are not the MCAT. They are not an abstraction. They are tests of emotional strength and emotional will. It is fully possible that Barack Obama doesn't get this.

My buyer's remorse - or let's just call it my almost-buyer's remorse - is that we have elected a community organizer while we are still bearing the momentum of a vicious partisan.

Politics is hardball. It's the real game, and the stakes are not theoretical. Emotional fortitude does count, and the ability to fight back when fighting is called for is essential. Obama has made humane gestures to express apologies for the sins of the past, but he has to know that those apologies will never be enough. Like it or not, he is George Bush's successor, and he will not be able to 'calm' his way out of that legacy.

Partisanship at home is of equal import to struggles abroad. In politics one has to fight. It is visceral, not intellectual. That Obama was made to look weak all this week, especially on the heels of his depressing and condescending inaugural address, does not bode well for his presidency. Where is he to tap his reserves of strength and popularity? He has no more fights to win to rally the troops, only muddy slogs ahead.

He squandered his triumphal moment in January, and he has not yet proven that he is up to the rough and tumble of US and world politicking. I hope I am wrong about this. Right now, there is no serious opposition to his leadership, because no professional politician is dumb enough to want to take over a sinking ship. The smart ones will give him whatever he wants and when things appear to be turning up, they will strike back. That's the game, and it never ends.

If Obama were smart, then, he would take this moment of non-opposition and pass his dream agenda. Decriminalizing Marijuana, Gay Marriage, and a whole bugger of pie-in-the-sky liberal fodder, just because he can.

It is hard to say it, but he needs to be more George Bush. Once Karl Rove rang that bell, it can not be un-rung. The genie of eviscerative partisanship is out of the bottle. You can't get the toothpaste of mean spirited undermining back in the tube.

At least not yet.

I think there is a lot to be said for restoring civility (if there ever was such a thing) to our political system. But at the very least, recognize that there is a continuity here, that the leftover grievances are not appeased by appearing weak. Act the part a little while longer. Be tough, bring the swagger for a little while. Then you can ramp it down. Obama didn't decisively turn the page on January 20th. That was his last best chance to turn over the system by an act of will. Now, by ceding and conceding, he has only raw effort to go on, and nobody's going to be excited about that.

Alt opinion on the education thing

Interesting.

Intelligence

This is truly staggering.

You'd think, after reading it, that it was nothing short of a miracle that we have not been invaded by 16 different lands- friend and foe alike - and inundated with next gen Chinese nuclear missiles. Or at least that some such might occur in the future.

Well it hasn't, and I doubt it will.

Here's why:

Nobody wants the responsibility. Why be number 1 when you can be number 2 and have it better? The world is a mess, and no one looks to China to fix it. No one looks to Indonesia, and no one looks to Britain. They couldn't do it, and everybody knows it.

What's more, they're not even interested. Why all the headache of running the world when you can live off the fat (and oh how much fat!) of those who are doing it already.

America has provided, virtually free of cost, global threat protection, global disaster relief, global free trade, and an endless stream of technological improvements to the lives of ordinary people. No one has to kiss our ring. No one has to worship our God. They can do whatever they like, get paid for it, and get out of jail free whenever they seriously screw up. Not bad work, if you can get it. And everyone can.

The American ingenuity juggernaut is providing opium to the masses of every country in the world - through cell phones, PCs, video games, and Everybody Loves Raymond. Why would you want to destroy something that sedates and distracts your own people while asking nothing in return other than they pay you to make them?

And undermining America. . .what would that accomplish? The world is, by and large, united. It is a living organism that is absolutely required to make the cell phones that Putin and Medvedev conspire on. Russia can't rule the world on its own, and if the world united against Russia, there would not be enough local industry to sustain itself. So let the Americans do it.

We see something of the situation now- with the current flocking to the dollar. In the fat times, folks muttered about switching to the Euro, or that the dollar was in inexorable decline. But when the going got tough, everybody fled to big daddy greenbacks to protect them. Of course. Nobody else is a serious contender. Nobody wants the responsibility of shouldering the world economy in times of trouble.

Why would they when we can do it for them. We'll happy go upside down on our mortgages. We'll happily send our kids to lousy public schools so both parents can work crap jobs to barely scrape by. And we'll happily register appallingly low marks in personal happiness for a country awash in dough. No problem.

My question is- why the hell should we keep going?

Well, the answer, of course, is freedom. We cherish ours. Dearly. We would rather be free to fail than be shackled to succeed. That's the American dream. It's our core pique.

Most others on earth do not feel this way- George Bush's proclamations aside. They are happy to live in their parents' house for generations. They are happy not to move 40 times in a lifespan. They are happy to raise their children themselves. They are satisfied with tradition.

But we in this country are like madmen. Endlessly striving for something - what? You know what it is. I know what it is. It's in our blood. Or maybe it's just in the water (along with God knows what else). But it's what we do; it's who we are. We are history's winners- or more accurately, as rejects from all those other satisfied nations, its vindicated losers.

But we don't realize that the by-product of our endless striving generates enough energy (and wealth) to supply the whole rest of the world. Nobody wants as much as we do, and nobody sacrifices so much as we do to get it. We're sicker, fatter, and unhappier than any of our "number 2" nations. Why would they want to be us? Why *be* the cow when you can get the milk for a pretty decent price? (go dairy subsidies!)

If I had all those intelligence secrets, I would leave them in a drawer. Put them away. The only reason I wouldn't just burn them would be for that one day when the US might actually become sane. Otherwise, I'd let them have at. Keep on doin' what you're doin'. You're saving us the hassle, and we still get to get rich anyway. What? Not asking for anything in return? What's that you say? Brotherhood of mankind? I'll take two. Just as long as you're buying. . .

Introduction

So.

Home for Now has been getting a little turgid of late- brimming at the gills.

The original road journal implied by the title has long ago mushroomed into a hydra-like monster with disparate topic-heads waving about in a fearsome display of linguistic bravura and run-on sentences.

Well have no fear, gentle reader, for Heracles has arrived. Starting today Home for Now will officially splinter.

The road blog will continue, perhaps to be expanded into a flying blog as well. The first spin-off will be this one- the political and policy blog. Then there will be a Science & Culture blog (which will hopefully behave itself). The Religion blog is well under way, but will actually soon be hidden if I can only figure out how to do that. Access will be by individual request or invitation.

That's that.

Please enjoy the pared down blog-istans that follow.

As always, looking forward to comments, queries, and complaints.

Stay in touch and keep reading. . .

D-Blog


NB: I have discovered that I can retain the original time stamp from the first posting on Home for Now, so I will include them- primarily to distance myself from any idiotic ideas I had years ago, but also for posterity.

Bailout - in brief

I'll admit, that one about the bailout with the ostrich burgers and such, it was a bit of a doozie, so I'll forgive you, gentle reader, for not getting all the way through.

A summary of one of the points comes here - and since the link button isn't working, we'll just use the cut and paste technology.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/02/subsidized-root.html

D

Israel

There is something deeply humiliating about Israel- its very existence as such. It is this humiliation, I believe, that is at the root of the state's hyper-militarism which is unabated after nearly 60 years of statehood.

To draw a parallel as to why the Israeli consciousness is anchored in humiliation, let us turn today to Iraq. Thomas Friedman, myself, and others have argues that part of the motivation for the civil strife and anti-Americanism in Iraq is simply a response to the humiliation the Iraqis feel at the fact of being liberated at all. What an embarrassment. To live in fear for 30 years and then to have some external power walk in and in a couple of weeks have plucked out the great terror of your lives? What were you so afraid of if the US can just roll in and do what you, thew Iraqi people, wish you could have done for so long. It is a concrete symbol of your impotence.

So. To combat that feeling within, one must turn on the liberators to make them feel your pain, to show them that you are a force to be reckoned with and not some weak, backwards nation. So you fight and lash out against the very people who "saved" you for the very reason that your needing to be "saved" was so insulting.

To feel one's power as a nation one wants to *earn* nationhood. Through warfare, through exploration, through revolution- whatever. It is not something to be bestowed if it is to have its grounding in virility. The Iraqis are now - and have been for 5 years - earning their country by driving out the tyrant-savior. The war will go on until the humiliation is expunged.

Israel, then. Israel was formed by a charter, not by war. It was granted. In the Jewish religion it is Yahweh who will grant us our nation- not the British. This arbitrary land grant, in response to collective European embarrassment at the holocaust (which could have happened in any European country experiencing the kind of recession Germany experienced in the 30's), feels sketchy under the feet. After all, if land can be granted it can be ungranted too, right? No one would think of revoking the British Charter. They earned it through settlement and warfare over centuries. The American charter was won largely through measles and smallpox but it was won nonetheless. Greece, China, Japan, Mexico- these countries all have proud traditions f manly conquest to settle their territories. But Israel was a gift out of the goodness of the world's heart. Not convincing,

In fact it would appear to be another plank in the long line of Jewish complicity with the going master-power. Jews made deals with the Romans for political protection in exchange for subservience and compliance. Similar deals were made throughout history as an exchange for being guests in others' lands. The feeling is not so dissimilar today, at heart. It is a permeating humiliation.

That Israel continues to rely today on support from the US and England, the current global master and its lapdog, reeks of history. And Israel will never feel like a true homes so long as Jew are still entangled in this traditional role as serf.

So how to overcome this feeling of emasculation? Well obviously through warfare. And like the Iraqis, it is not a matter of winning, but of venting, of raging until the manhood is restored, until one effectively can tell oneself, "If I had fought this hard, I would have won the land for myself in the first place." That is what Jews, Iraqis, and all "liberated" people (including, I would say blacks and women in the US) are fighting for- to feel as if they have the power to do for themselves what others have patronizingly done for them.

This can last a lifetime. It can last forever. Ultimately, history can not be unwritten in this way, and so the wound of liberation is ongoing. Perhaps over time the memory will diminish, or perhaps, as in Iraq, the continuing pressure of Israel on the US will turn US opinion against the tiny nation. Perhaps this is what Israel really wants after all, a confrontation with the master. And the pushing, like a spoiled child, for every allowance and concession is unconsciously designed to push away the smothering parent. Would Israel want war with the US? Absurd. But to be freed from US protection, it would be free to test its own strength in the world as a truly independent nation, no longer a feudal serf of the going king-state.

The Iraqis are ahead on this one. Jews haven't resorted to terrorism since the Maccabees in Greece, but perhaps they can learn something from their Arab cousins about how to stick up for yourself.