Category Archives: Americana

What is our goal in Afghanistan?

Americana, Current Affairs, Politics, Psychological Musings, War

I really don’t know and I don’t think anybody else does either. I guess that our goal is to beat the forces of the Taliban; to have the forces of of the old Northern Alliance – you know, the same Northern Alliance that the Russkis backed1 – be in some sort of stable control. I don’t think that anybody really thinks we are fighting for Jeffersonian democracy, in fact we may be hindering the re-establishment of the kind of ruling by consensus of elders or loya jirga that probably was closer to democracy than the rigged elections we are now backing.

Part of the problem is that we think that there is only one right answer on how to run a country and that is our way. This week has been a perfect storm of information – that is not the right word, maybe experiences? maybe events? – that has left me feeling our national hubris is staggering and we are not going to accomplish anything lasting in Afghanistan. The events revolve around, Vietnam, Iran, Afghanistan, and Korea.

Over at the Foreign Policy Magazine’s website, on Tom Rick’s Blog – The Best Defense – a former soldier has a post entitled Some reflections on the Vietnam War after visiting where my battalion was cut off and surrounded near Hue during Tet ’68 in which he says, among other things, while visiting Vietnam,  Not only are there no Americans on the roads, in the air or in the fields, doing what Americans do, the Vietnamese seem perfectly in control of their own destinies. Maybe they were then too, but we were too driven to notice. He goes on to say This makes me think about the American Way of War — maybe best expressed as “you move over, we’re taking over.” It is an interesting comment and worth reading.

Over the weekend and again this afternoon, I saw the Iranian movie A Separation. It was the best movie I have seen in a year, maybe longer. If you like movies or if you are just interested in relationships, see it. It won the Academy Award for best foreign language film but it should have won the award for best film. A warning, though, it is a devastating story about a couple getting separated. Much of the movie takes place in court or, at least, in front of a judge. As somebody who has gone through the American – really Californian – divorce legal system with lawyers making more money the longer they can string out the case and argue with each other, I was taken by how much better the Iranian system seemed to be. I am obviously not a Muslim – or a Christian for that matter – and didn’t agree with all the legal conclusions, but, it seemed more humane than our system which is built on confrontation and has pretty much left compassion at the door.

Then I read that some Staff Sergeant in Afghanistan has gone tragically amok killing, among others, sleeping children. Sleeping children!

Lastly, on the way home from the movie, we went out of our way to stop at a Korean market in Daily City to pick up some tasty Korean marinated meat and some kim chee. I spent a year in Korea, as a Sergeant in the Army on a HAWK Missile site looking down on Koreans2.  Americans felt superior and most GIs let the Koreans know it. Most GIs didn’t like their food and didn’t like their customs, we even didn’t even like their women although we were willing to pay to have sex with them. The Koreans in the unit I was in were relagated to being dog handelers and generators operators; they were not let near the radars or missiles. Strangely enough, when the Koreans helped us fight in Vietnam, they were considered superb troops. Oh! by the way, have you checked out the new Hyundai Elantra? It is awesome.

After all this rambling around, I do want to make a point. The world does not need us to be its nanny. Afghanistan does not need us to tell them how to run their country. No country does, not Vietnam, or Korea, or Iraq, or Iceland. No country! We are not doing very well with our own country and we certainly should not be trying to pull a Terri  Schiavo on other countries.  The Republicans seem to be worse in this regard than the Democrats, but both sides are culpable.

We should get out. Just get out!

 

1. This is somewhat of a simplification, but not much.

2. Something that, today, I am loath to admit.


Government spending and the economy

Americana, Current Affairs, Politics

I often wonder if the people who say that The government can’t make jobs. are just bullshitting or if they really believe it. I wonder the same thing when I hear Romney talking about President Obama – although he rarely uses President when referring to Obama – wanting to make the United States weak. My gut reaction is that they really do not believe it and they are just bullshitting but I am not so sure.

As an aside; this is one of the positions that people seem to come to from the completely opposite position without ever having stopped in the middle. When I was a young boy, Negros were Uncle Remuses that sort of sat around – rather than working hard because they didn’t have the Protestant ethic like White People – being kindly; then, with no stop in between, they became Black Panthers who were scary. In the same way, it used to be that Roosevelt – people who thought this didn’t call him President Roosevelt – didn’t end the depression, the depression only ended because we started spending lots of money – government money – on the war; now the same people say spending government money will not end a recession. End aside.

Anyway, it does seem self evident to me that the government can  make jobs. When the government hired companies to build the Golden Gate Bridge, they, in turn, hired workers. When the Obama Administration gives money to California for the Highway Department and they hire companies to rebuild the rest stop at Black Mountain Road on Highway 280, those companies hire workers. The additional work results in additional jobs.

But, somehow, by saying The government can’t make jobs. over and over again, people start to believe it. (I used to think that the left’s constant yammering about the right wanting to overturn Roe vs. Wade was similar, but, after seeing the anti-contraception – not to mention anti abortion – legislation passed in Republican majority legislative bodies, I am ready to admit I was wrong.)

Even if the meme does work, even if the people saying The government can’t make jobs. really do believe it, it is still bullshit. The Obama Administration created jobs with the Stimulus Bill and definitively made the Great Recession a little better.

Wanting to be right

Americana, Politics, Psychological Musings
In writing about Andrew Breitbart’s death and life on his blog Ta-Nehisi Coates writes

….by neglecting to research Sherrod before putting up a clip of her talking, by electing to see her as little more than a shiv against the hated liberals, he deprived himself of knowledge, of experience, of insight, of enlightenment. That he might learn something from Sherrod, that he might access some power from her life, and pass that on to loved ones and friends, never occurred to him. Publicly, he lived to make himself right–a tradition that is fully empowered in our politics. Breitbart didn’t invent the art of making yourself right. But he embraced it, and then advanced it.

That is what took me to sadness. I have experienced curiosity as a primarily selfish endeavor. It originates in the understanding of the brevity of life, and the desire to see as much of it as possible, from as many angles as possible without doing too much damage to my morality. The opposite of that – incuriosity, dishonesty, the opportunistic deployment of information – is darkness. Breitbart died, like all of us will, in darkness. But as a media persona he chose to also live there, and in the process has impelled countless others to throttle themselves into the abyss.

There is much more to the blog post titled On Making Yourself Right and I encourage you to read it, but my take away was It is so easy to hang on to being right and it is so destructive. At least it is so easy for me: maybe I should say It is so easy to make somebody, who doesn’t agree with me, wrong. Maybe a week ago, I linked to a less than flattering article on Meryl Streep and then I wrote a blog post on Viola Davis a day or two later. Karen Amy took exception – mildly and politly – on my Facebook page and I could just feel myself  wanting to argue. Wanting to be right and wanting to make Karen wrong.

Around the turn of the century, Peter Kuhlman recommended an alternate history novel 1632 by Eric Flint. As I recall, he described it as amusing, but I ended reading and interpreting it as a dream with all the characters representing different facets of myself. To me, the book was all about taking down walls, letting in the outside world, listening to the other and be willing to see their point of view. All about being willing to be influenced by the world.

One of the reason that the characters in 1632 were able to let in the outside world, is because they were confidant in who they were at their core. For a long time, I kept thinking that it would make a good movie, but – now – I don’t think so. It is too last century, when we, as a nation, felt confident is who we are. It was before Bush the Younger and the disaster of Iraq, before the Great Recession, before the our national feeling of decline.

Ironically – and counter intuitively, I guess – when I am most confidant in who I am, it is easiest to hear the other person. My strong suspicion is that Andrew Breitbart and Rush Limbaugh – for that matter – are so loud because they are afraid. And they are afraid because – as Ta-Nehisi Coates so eloquently writes – they are living in darkness.


 

 

 

 

The Jeremy Lin story hiding the bigger story

Americana

 

Richard Taylor took exception to my post on Jeremy Lin and he made a really good point in the comments.

I’m concerned at the mass fascination and the way the story is being told. Feels a lot like a classic pull yourself up by the bootstraps story of the American dream. As the world falls apart around us, he is proof that we can, by dint of hard work, make it and be the stars of our own world. Colbert must love this guy. He is proving him right in every measure! Every time a real manifestation of a dream appears, we can distract ourselves from the much messier reality and tell ourselves that with just a bit more effort we can pull ourselves up without any help from our community. Maybe I’m cynical and defeatist….I – I being Steve – do want to point out that Richard does go on to say, I do applaud and celebrate Lin for his accomplishments.

I can quibble with Richard around the edges – I think Colbert’s persona would love this, not Colbert himself – but I completely agree with his main point. We read a story about Lin, or any number of other basketballers and it hides the fact that it is almost impossible to escape poverty by getting in the NBA. Lin was great in highschool – the MVP – but, when he tried to get into Stanford or UCLA via basketball, everybody he was competing against was also a MVP. He ended up at Harvard, I suspect, mostly on his grades.

When he tried to get into the NBA from Harvard, the winnowing was exponentially tougher. NBA players are all great players from basketball schools. When we read about great players – or just mid-level NBA players, who were great in college –  and read about how hard they worked1 and how lucky they are, it hides the very real fact that they are also very, very, rare. We don’t read read about the kids who worked just as hard, were just as good, and didn’t get that one lucky break. They end working at 7-11 or in prison.

It is even tougher and the winners from poor small towns or the ghetto are even rarer in the financial arena. I am an idealist and a optimist, so I don’t think that the system is rigged against poor black kids – or poor Asian kids or poor white kids for that matter – I just think that the people who are already rich, want to stay there. The very rich want low tax rates and lots of loop holes not to keep working people out, but to keep them and their descendants in. Shutting down social and financial mobility is a byproduct of the system, not the goal.

We used to be the land of opportunity and now we are not. Sure, some people make it, but a smaller percentage than in most countries in Europe. We have ended up with a system that is not the American dream, but the British gentry dream. As Richard pointed out, the Lin story hides that fact.

 

1. Lin worked very hard, according to Inside Bay Area http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_20033515?IADID=Search-www.insidebayarea.com-www.insidebayarea.com Lin could barely squat 110 pounds last May, three months later, he was pushing up 231 pounds; improved his vertical leap by 3 inches; lowered his time in the pro agility run by 17 percent, to 4.4 seconds, which makes him comparable to an average NFL running back. The New York Times also has a great article on how hard he worked http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/25/sports/basketball/the-evolution-of-jeremy-lin-as-a-point-guard.html.

Why Romney can’t beat Obama

Americana, Politics

Everybody talks about the economy when they are discussing the election and I am sure that the economy is important, but running a good campaign is also important and the Romney campaign doesn’t seem to be able to do that. They booked Tiger stadium in Detroit and 1200 people showed up and from the seating arrangement they seemed to know that not many people would show up. Four years ago, Obama FILLED stadiums. Much smaller stadiums but they were full of energy.

Elections usually come down to GOTV – get out the vote – and that takes energy. Romney is not building it. The Romney rally must have been very depressing to anybody who did show up. Community organization – GOTV – is the Obama specialty.