Category: Politics

Coke vs. Pepsi

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Several years ago I watched an episode of Real Time with Bill Maher which featured among its guests Michael Moore, Ralph Nader and former Canadian prime minister Kim Campbell. In that episode Maher and Moore pleaded (literally) with Nader to not run in 2004 and dilute the Democratic vote, as he had in 2000.

I don’t know if it was intentional that they had Campbell on, or if she just happened to be hanging around the studio that day, but she brought some Canadian perspective to the discussion, specifically the benefits of having more than two parties.

American politics are so radically polarized that nuance and reasonable compromise seem hopelessly outdated concepts. There are two parties: Democrats and Republicans. You vote for one or the other. You believe one or the other, regardless of what they’re saying or doing. Many times even your preferred news network favours one or the other.

Based on my observations, rational political discourse in the US is all but vanished. Sound argument is a waste of time. Neither party spends time saying what they think is right; what’s important is contradicting the other guy. Politician A can spend his whole career saying the sky is blue; if their opponent politician B suddenly says the sky is blue (no doubt claiming some sort of unique insight for being able to make such a determination), politician A will surely claim the sky is red.

To wit: Cash for Clunkers. In case you don’t know, Cash for Clunkers is an American program offering consumers rebates on new cars when they trade in a much older model. Essentially it’s an economic stimulus program which benefits troubled American car manufacturers and helps the environment (to a limited degree, anyway) by taking inefficient cars off the road. Now have a look at my last sentence, and the three key points therein: 1) economic stimulus; 2) supports big American business; and 3) benefits environment. Now, while this is a Democratic initiative, 2 of those 3 key points are the bread and butter of Republicans and fiscal conservatives everywhere. For the most part they don’t care about reducing carbon — or, at least, their talking points tell them not to care — but that form of economic stimulus is essentially a tax break for consumers and a free revenue boost to automakers, and Republicans love them some tax breaks. Unless it’s Democrats who suggest them.

To wit: this clip from The Daily Show. Watch from about 1:10, where news networks explain how well the Cash for Clunkers program has worked to date. Note the reaction from Fox News and house Republicans. All of a sudden the idea of tax breaks seem like anathema.

Rather than go on with more examples I’ll just quote a comment left on this Economist graphic:

The commenter’s name, by the way, is “The Other Guy” so five’ll get you ten this guy keeps a copy of Unsafe At Any Speed on his bedside table.

“American politics of Coke-vs.-Pepsi has been throwing off the stale stench of disfunction [sic] for quite some time. Dem-Rep bifurcation is slow, superficial, and has been predictably producing less than adequate results, and that’s a charitable phrasing.

A third party, even or perhaps preferably a small yet significant one, needs to step forward to inject a degree of instability.”

Now, I’m not suggesting the Canadian political system is perfect by any means, and certainly having too many political parties can have some frustrating side effects (constant minority governments, the Bloc Quebecois, etc.) but I’d have to think it’s healthier than the slapfight happening south of the border. Politics is a huge, hairy topic, far too complex to boil down to a binary choice between 0 and 1, let alone to declare that 0 or 1 is the only answer you will give for the rest of your life.

In closing, let me just say: Coke sucks, and you should never ever drink it.

"Recruited for moral judgments"

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Earlier this week in the Toronto Star John Sakamoto (who I thought wrote music…but whatever) did a brief story about Cornell research entitled “Morality rooted in disgust“:

Researchers at Cornell University tested a group of people from politically mixed swing states for both their political ideology and their “disgust sensitivity.”

“Participants who rated higher in disgust sensitivity were more likely to oppose gay marriage and abortion, issues that are related to notions of morality or purity,” a Cornell news release concluded.

“People have pointed out for a long time that a lot of our moral values seem driven by emotion, and in particular, disgust appears to be one of those emotions that seems to be recruited for moral judgments,” said study leader David Pizarro, an assistant professor of psychology at Cornell.

I’d never thought of it this way, or rather never would have guessed that such a correlation existed, but it makes sense. I think this is a big reason why liberals get so frustrated when arguing with conservatives, and vice versa. If one side is arguing based primarily on emotional response, and the other primarily on logic (or, at the very least, less emotion; I took the inverse reaction to mean logic, but may have overstepped…in any case I consider logic by no means guaranteed to be any more “correct” than emotion, misused as it often is) then the two are not only unlikely to agree, but may have trouble even understanding where the other is coming from.

The lead researcher does, however, caution against using disgust as a core influence of morality:

“Disgust really is about protecting yourself from disease. It didn’t really evolve for the purpose of human morality.

“It clearly has become central to morality, but because of its origins in contamination and avoidance, we should be wary about its influences,” Pizarro said.

The authors explain a bit further:

As Martha Nussbaum has pointed out in her treatment of the topic, “… throughout history, certain disgust properties — sliminess, bad smell, stickiness, decay, foulness — have repeatedly and monotonously been associated with… Jews, women, homosexuals, untouchables, lower-class people — all of those are imagined as tainted by the dirt of the body.” (Nussbaum, 2001, pg. 347)…Whether or not moral disgust can be of value in keeping people from committing unethical deeds remains an open question, but given the amount of damage disgust is capable of inflicting on innocent people, at the very least it seems as if we should be careful to monitor its influence in the courtroom, in public policy decisions, and in our everyday interactions with others.

This makes the thought of conservative (socially conservative, not fiscally conservative) lawmakers and so-called “moral” leaders very worrying. Disgust is a very subjective concept, and says as much or more about the judges as about those who would be judged. I fear the consequences of laws and moral judgments with such dubious, irrational origins.

Only through the exercise of candor

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Salon published an interesting piece today from Boston University professor of history and international relations Andrew Bacevich called Farewell to the American Century. Bacevich goes further than the WaPo’s Richard Coen — who declared the American Century ended — and suggests it could scarcely end…it was all an illusion in the first place.

In its classic formulation, the central theme of the American Century has been one of righteousness overcoming evil. The United States (above all the U.S. military) made that triumph possible. When, having been given a final nudge on Dec. 7, 1941, Americans finally accepted their duty to lead, they saved the world from successive diabolical totalitarianisms. In doing so, the U.S. not only preserved the possibility of human freedom but modeled what freedom ought to look like.

So goes the preferred narrative of the American Century, as recounted by its celebrants.

The problems with this account are twofold. First, it claims for the United States excessive credit. Second, it excludes, ignores or trivializes matters at odds with the triumphal story line.

The net effect is to perpetuate an array of illusions that, whatever their value in prior decades, have long since outlived their usefulness. In short, the persistence of this self-congratulatory account deprives Americans of self-awareness, hindering our efforts to navigate the treacherous waters in which the country finds itself at present. Bluntly, we are perpetuating a mythic version of the past that never even approximated reality and today has become downright malignant. Although Richard Cohen may be right in declaring the American Century over, the American people — and especially the American political class — still remain in its thrall.

While I agree with Bacevich that the myths of 20th-century America were well and truly exaggerated, I’m not sure his list of American shortcomings would remove from them the title of 20th century powerhouse. Even acknowledging the overblown role in WWII and the failures of Cuba, Iran and Afghanistan, I’m not sure another country could stake a claim to being the preeminent nation of those hundred years. Was it as glorious as Americans seemed to believe? No. But it may have been glorious enough.

Still, Bacevich’s contemplative advice is good medicine for any country who starts to fawningly buy their own patriotic press:

What are we to make of these blunders? The temptation may be to avert our gaze, thereby preserving the reassuring tale of the American Century. We should avoid that temptation and take the opposite course, acknowledging openly, freely and unabashedly where we have gone wrong. We should carve such acknowledgments into the face of a new monument smack in the middle of the Mall in Washington: We blew it. We screwed the pooch. We caught a case of the stupids. We got it ass-backwards.

Only through the exercise of candor might we avoid replicating such mistakes.

Strike my last; this is good advice for us all, countries or no.

How does a homeless junkie get a broadcast license anyway?

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By now you’ve likely heard about the episode of the Fox News show Red Eye (if you haven’t seen it already, download the WMV) wherein late night panel show host Greg Gutfeld mocked the Canadian military. Predictably, this got the Canadian public, pundits and politicians all in a palaver. Today Gutfeld apologized…kind of. It was one of those “I’m sorry you got so offended by what I said” apologies. So Canadians are a little less pissed, but pissed still.

I’m not. Make no mistake, I would take great umbrage with anyone who questioned the dedication or sacrifice of our military, if I were inclined to respect their opinion in the first place. But this was five minutes on a 3AM panel show. On Fox News, which is a laughable network to begin with. Featuring four people no one’s ever heard of and a host who used to run Maxim magazine. Oh…my wounded pride.

Look, when the crazy guy on the sidewalk starts yelling at you as you pass him, do you get offended? No. He’s shown no signs of ever having been insightful, so you chalk it up to the fact that he’s batshit insane and you ignore him. Giving him attention will just make him act crazier.

So now a lot of people who were entirely unaware of either Greg Gutfeld or Red Eye before the weekend have heard of them, and know the time and channel they’re on TV. How sorry do you think Gutfeld and Fox News really are?

Let's get ready to rumble!

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Welcome to this bout for the superheavyweight ridiculousness championship of the world.

In this corner we have the Canadian minister of state for science & technology, Gary Goodyear (who obviously missed his true calling: cartoon race car driver), who refuses to say whether he believes in evolution:

Jim Turk, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, said he was flabbergasted that the minister would invoke his religion when asked about evolution.

“The traditions of science and the reliance on testable and provable knowledge has served us well for several hundred years and have been the basis for most of our advancement. It is inconceivable that a government would have a minister of science that rejects the basis of scientific discovery and traditions,” he said.

Mr. Goodyear’s evasive answers on evolution are unlikely to reassure the scientists who are skeptical about him, and they bolster the notion that there is a divide between the minister and the research community.

And in this corner, with a reach much greater than Mr. Goodyear’s, is Pope Benedict, who yesterday said that condoms won’t stop the spread of AIDS in Africa.

“You can’t resolve it with the distribution of condoms,” the Pope told reporters aboard his plane to Yaounde, Cameroon. “On the contrary, it increases the problem.”

While health workers — including some priests and nuns working with people with AIDS — advocate the use of condoms to curb the spread of disease during sex, the Catholic church promotes fidelity within marriage, chastity and abstinence.

More than 22 million people in sub-Saharan Africa have HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, according to estimates from the United Nations. Since the 1980s, roughly 25 million people have died from AIDS.

Come out, touch gloves. Let’s have a clean fight. Against reality.

"Is he giving squinting lessons?"

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Activists in Calgary plan to protest the arrival in their city of George Bush. Oh, kids. Bad move. Don’t give him attention in any form. The opposite of love isn’t hate, you ninnies, it’s indifference.

George W. Bush can expect a cordial welcome tomorrow inside a Calgary convention hall as the wildly unpopular former U.S. president gives his first public address since leaving office, but outside, a gauntlet of protesters don’t plan to be the least bit polite.

Local activists have been ramping up their anti-Bush efforts in advance of the $4,000 per table invite-only event titled a “Conservation [sic] with George W. Bush.” The media is banned from hearing Mr. Bush talk about “eight momentous years in the Oval Office” and “the challenges facing the world in the 21st century.”

Politics aside, this strikes me as odd. A former president he may be, and an interesting public figure to be sure, but how can anyone possibly consider it a worthwhile use of $4,000 to listen to George Bush talk? You’re better off paying for Lindsay Lohan to speak: she’s about as insightful, her entourage takes up a few less hotel rooms and she brings her own DJ.

"A revolution of destruction"

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After three months (!) I have finally finished reading The Coming Of The Third Reich by Richard Evans (amazon). A highly worthwhile and ultimately troubling book about how the Nazis came to rule Germany in the early 1930s.

To those of us too young to remember WWII, Hitler and Nazism seem like bogeymen, monsters sprung wholly-formed from Hell, aberrations so monstrous we can’t conceive of such a thing being repeated. That’s simply not the case. The Nazis weren’t exceptional. They weren’t even original: as Evans points out in the book, most revolutionaries seek to do away with the old in favour of the new, but the Nazis did away with the relatively new — democracy and the Weimar republic — in order to return to the very old: declaring themselves the third Reich reestablished the line of nationalist dictatorships.

Neither was there anything extraordinary about how they rose to power. The political violence dealt out in the streets by the brownshirts wasn’t that different than what happened in Italy, Spain or other nearby countries around the same time. But Germany had two key ingredients that added fuel to the murderous fire: first was that Germany was still — and many people don’t really realize this, myself included — the most powerful country in Europe. Second was the national sense of racial purity which, when combined with an antisemitism strong even for Europe at that time, led down a path that ended, almost inconceivably, at extermination camps.

This, though, was the part of the book that surprised me the most. I’ve always tacitly assumed that the Nazis came to power, in part, by riding a wave of antisemitism that swept through Germany. How else to explain why they would so quickly turn to imprisoning and slaughtering Jews? What Evans explains so well is that the Nazis believed in an Aryan ideal, not an antisemitic one. I’d always thought of those two words as rough synonyms, but racial purity — the nation of pure German culture — went far beyond that. The Nazis didn’t even enter the national stage through violence against Jews; they concentrated on Communists. By the time they terrorized the Communists out of the German political arena, they turned their attention to Social Democrats and any other party of the left until they too were intimidated into political irrelevance. Add one twist of fate (the Reichstag fire), some political opportunism and back-room intrigue, and suddenly Adolf Hitler has been appointed chancellor. Yes, appointed. Something else I’d never realized: Hitler was never elected to office. He was given it by those seeking to rein him in, the farmer inviting the wolf into the sheep’s pen. At any rate, now that the brownshirts had run out of political victims, in their anger they let their idea of racial purity be their guide, and turned to the business of ridding Germany of what they saw as poisonous elements. What started with organized boycotts of Jewish shops escalated to murder, and finally genocide, with remarkable speed.

Ultimately, Evans points to two less-often mentioned reasons why the Nazis were able to seize power. The first: the great depression. Economic crises and massive unemployment make for palpable fear, and propagandists such as Goebbels made fine hay of this one in particular. The poor and desperate can be driven to great lengths, and will lash out given half a chance. Evans makes the case that the Nazis game them just such a conduit: they famously stopped campaigning for anything well before coming to power, and instead campaigned against: against the Weimar republic, against those they professed stabbed the true Germany in the back in November of 1918, against Communism, against racial impurity, against democracy…they simply dealt anger and revenge, playing on the emotions instead of the intellect. Theirs was, as the saying later went, a revolution of destruction. The second reason was the near-inexplicable absence of revolt against Nazi ideals. Put another way: much of Germany agreed with, and approved of, the Nazis. Not all, certainly, and even those agreed or consented may have done so out of fear, but the lack of will on the part of the citizenry to reject Nazism and their violent methods suggests assent. Perhaps their defeat after WWI convinced the German people a return to military imperialism was necessary. Perhaps the desire for racial purity among Germans transcended the Nazi party. Perhaps both.

This, then, is what I found so troubling. Disasters — economic, natural, man-made — happen from time to time. Those discussing the current economic crisis often refer to the “panic” we’re seeing, but what we’re seeing now isn’t panic, it’s concern. If we see massive unemployment, hyperinflation, crumbling institutions…then we’ll see panic. And then we’ll see true desperation, and we’ll see political advantage taken of that rampant fear. Add one ill-timed act of violence to the mix — say, a large-scale Al Qaeda attack on a western country — and it isn’t hard to imagine the effects. Curtailing of rights under the guise of patriotic security. Nationalism. Xenophobia along racial or religious lines. It’s an unlikely series of events, but but no less likely than what happened in Germany not eight decades ago. The rise of Hitler and the Nazi party wasn’t an act of pure evil, as we seem inclined to believe. It was a confluence of violent intent, political will and tragic fate, and to think that it could not happen again is beyond short-sighted. It is dangerous.

Risen, like a turkey from the ashes

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A final thought on yesterday’s topic, Bush’s legacy: as the clarity of distance seeps into the memory of the Bush43 years, it will be curious to observe the phases through which his reputation will pass. My prediction is as follows:

He’ll fade from the limelight by the spring, and generally avoid interviews from all but the most sympathetic questioners. After about a year information will begin appearing in books and magazine articles about how one or two high-ranking members of Bush’s administration — my money’s on Rumsfeld or Ashcroft, unless Cheney dies, making him the prime candidate — were pure evil, bent on starting wars, desecrating the constitution, etc. After these stories have had time to make the talk show and book trip rounds, opinions will begin to appear portraying Bush as a well-intentioned everyman fighting valiantly to keep the country intact in the face of these unreasonable forces, but powerless to stop them and, thus, to prevent the various disasters we today attribute to him and his administration…Iraq, the economy, the Katrina debacle, and so on.

The American public will be asked to forgive him, to label him some sort of put-upon Johnny Lunchpail hero who fought the good fight, a Willy Loman of the White House, truly a guy you’d want to have a beer with. The Republican party will need their everyman hero back in time to help campaign in 2012, so after a year of laying low while his reputation is healed through gentle reverse-swiftboating, he’ll make a triumphant appearance on the 2012 campaign trail and his resurrection will be complete.

That, or he’ll clear brush in Texas for the next twenty-five years like a good little cowpoke. Whichever.

"Both the country and, ultimately, the Republican Party are left the worse for it."

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With America’s eyes (and the eyes of others here in Canada and around the world) focused squarely on Washington for Barack Obama’s inauguration, some have taken a break to wonder about outgoing President Bush’s legacy. By the way, I hereby declare “outgoing President Bush” to be the finest three-word combination in the English language.

Ahem.

Anyway, The Economist‘s take on the Bush years — entitled The Frat Boy Ships Out — is probably the best and most comprehensive yet.

Other facets of Mr Bush’s personality mixed with his vaulting ambition to undermine his presidency. Mr Bush is what the British call an inverted snob. A scion of one of America’s most powerful families, he is a devotee of sunbelt populism; a product of Yale and Harvard Business School, he is a scourge of eggheads. Mr Bush is a convert to an evangelical Christianity that emphasises emotion—particularly the intensely emotional experience of being born again—over ratiocination. He also styled himself, much like Reagan, as a decider rather than a details man; many people who met him were astonished by what they described as his “lack of inquisitiveness” and his general “passivity”.

This take in the Globe and Mail is hard to take seriously, as it asks the question ‘Has Bush been judged too soon?’ and turns for an answer to David Frum, Bush’s former speech writer, who may be just the tiniest bit biased — though no more so than the two quoted counterpoints: an historian at the James Baker Institute for Public Policy, and Jimmy Carter.

A failed presidency, two unfinished wars, an economic mess unmatched in decades, America’s reputation sullied and most of his party, the nation and the world glad to see the back of him. When George W. Bush boards the big blue-and-white Boeing 747 that will fly him back to Texas tomorrow, the conventional wisdom will deem him among the worst of presidents.

…

Yet history tends to soften the harshest of early judgments. Even Richard Nixon, who after the Watergate scandal became the only president ever to resign in disgrace, has been partially rehabilitated by the passage of time and sober second thought.

Could it happen to Mr. Bush?

His admirers think so. Former Bush speechwriter David Frum expects the “assessment of history will be surprisingly positive.”

It all turns on Iraq, which far more than the economy, hurricane Katrina or anything else defines the Bush presidency.

I think that to hang Bush’s legacy solely on Iraq is wishful thinking, a hope I’ve heard repeated elsewhere among Republicans and conservative commentators. This seems less about logic than it does about pinning all hope for Bush’s reputation on his one endeavour that may have a fighting chance at turning out well. I actually think that, over time, Bush’s handling of Katrina will become even more damaging to his legacy…that he ineptly presided over the worst natural disaster in his country’s history will haunt him for decades.

However, what Bush may eventually be best known for bungling is the economy, and the infallible reputation of capitalism he inherited from past presidents like his father and, most especially, his hero Ronald Reagan. As The Economist puts it:

Finally, Mr Bush also demonstrated the limits of capitalist triumphalism. The Bush administration was as business-friendly as any in American history: Mr Bush was the first president with an MBA (from Harvard) and he appointed four CEOs to his cabinet, more than any previous president. The administration was also wedded to the fundamental tenets of Reaganomics: cut taxes and free the supply side and everything else will take care of itself. Mr Cheney even argued explicitly that “Reagan taught us that deficits don’t matter.”

Mr Bush now leaves behind a tax system in some ways less efficient than the one he inherited, in need of annual patches, and unable to fund the government even in good times. He also leaves behind a broken budget process. Any economic triumphalism is long gone. Many of the CEOs, most notably Donald Rumsfeld and Paul O’Neill, proved to be dismal administrators. Reaganomics helped to produce a giant deficit. The financial crisis has made re-regulation rather than deregulation the mantra in Washington, while government has acquired a much bigger role in the economy through its backing of banks and car companies.

“I inherited a recession, I’m ending on a recession,” he noted at his press conference on January 12th. He wasn’t asking for pity, only to be judged on what happened in between. Unfortunately, that economic legacy is littered with wasted opportunity, bad judgments and politicised policy. The budget surplus he inherited is now a deficit, the fiscal hole in America’s retiree programmes is bigger than ever, the tax system is an unstable, patched-up mess.

All that to say, he was a rubbish president. Good riddance. To put a soundtrack on this trip down memory lane, here’s my favourite story so far about Bush’s legacy: Eight Years Gone, in which blogger (and rock god) Carrie Brownstein lists

the music that arose during the last eight years — the bands and songs that wrestled with the fear, uncertainty, disenchantment and frustration that for many people defined the Bush era and the events that unfolded during his tenure.

My favourite song from her list was Bright Eyes‘ performance of “When The President Talks To God” on the Tonight Show, a sharp and caustic swing at the man Conor Oberst could scarely believe was leading his country, in the Dylan-est moment of his somewhat Dylan-ish career. If you haven’t heard it, you can hear it over at YouTube. Listen to it. Listen, and heave a sigh of relief.

"We believed, after being told that if we didn't, we would die."

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I don’t think Esquire gets enough respect. For a magazine that too often gets lumped in to the “Men’s Interest” section of the magazine rack with Details and GQ, it strikes a good mix of fun, hotness and (relative) intellectual stimulation. For examples of the first look no further than {dreamy sigh} their most recent winner of the Hottest Woman Alive award. For examples of the last, I submit the following:

1. A Little Counterintuitive Thinking on Gays, Guns, and Dead Babies, in which John H. Richardson turns the dogma of three standard conservative planks on their ears.

In this country, ten states supply fifty-seven percent of the guns that police recover from criminals in all other states. When compared to the ten states that supplied the fewest firearms, a recent nationwide analysis found that those ten gun-toting states also had nearly sixty-percent more homicides and three times as many cops dead from gunfire.

…

The difference between the states with all those cops shot dead and the others boils down to two obvious realities: gun-show regulations and gun-permit requirements. (I’ll leave you to decide which states have strict rules and which don’t). It’s another symbol with a body count, another political football with terrible consequences in the world as it actually exists. In the name of absolute firearm freedom without any restrictions — which will never be anything but a symbol until private citizens can buy working tanks and fighter planes — all those real cops are really dead.

2. What the Hell Just Happened? A Look Back at the Last Eight Years, a remarkable short piece of work by Tom Junod which carries more heft than the title suggests.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The irony of 9/11 and the wars that followed was that they were supposed to disestablish irony as a reigning sensibility; instead, they wound up exposing us to ironies of the bitterest and darkest and cruelest kind. That is, not McSweeney’s — style irony, the irony of bright minds roaming free in increasingly confined spaces; but ironies contrived by the brutal hand of history itself. The ironies of the Bush Years were ironies that exposed the consequences of our assent, guided — missile ironies that were unerringly aimed at point after point of the American creed, which began 2001 as the foundation of our belief and ended 2008 as the scaffolding of our credulity. America does not attack countries that have not attacked us. America does not torture. America takes care of its own. America follows the rule of law. America’s laws are built upon the principle of habeas corpus. America’s distinction is its system of checks and balances. American democracy is the inspiration of the world, and American capitalism the envy. America is better than that, no matter what “that” might be. These are not political statements; these are articles of faith, and yet in the Bush Years they suffered a political fate, as they became yoked to an administration that endured the irony of being the most image-conscious in American history at the precise historical moment when any control over how images were either promulgated or consumed was completely lost.

I encourage you to read both; the former is very short; the latter is worth every word of its three pages. And the next time you’re in a store, think about picking up an issue of Esquire.