...now back to sandwiches.

I can't think of one. They usually wind up with drawn out guerilla warfare finally ending in full-scale revolution (Vietnam), or the colonial power is atrophied by the stretched-out conflict and eventually loses support at home, and leaves (India, Spanish and French colonies). Or, at best, the conquering power manages to assimilate the territory, leading to ethnic conflict fifty years or more later (Soviet republics).

Yet another method exists, one that has proved successful beyond historical expectation, one that we Americans basically invented. That is, of course, cultural hegemony and the thin wedge of the free market. It too, has its pitfalls, and I'm not going to defend it in full. But in contrast to a military campaign, it is less brutal, cheaper (hell, it makes money!), and, I think the record shows, more successful.

Yet here we are, in Iraq, still trying to do what's never been done.

The comparison with Vietnam is obvious, but it's worth calling it out explicitly: after our military left Vietnam in the '70s, it began the long recovery process, which finally, in the '90s, turned into a cultural victory. Today's NY Times has a travel article called "The Awakening of Hanoi", depicting the burgeoning art scene of the "stylish, European-influenced metropolis" that it has become.

The sooner we stop trying to force the Iraqi people at gunpoint to become what we want them to be, the sooner they can begin the transformation to what they want to be. Which, I think history has shown, is probably the same thing.

In fact, the vast majority of terrorists are provincial in their goals, said Robert A. Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago. His analysis of suicide attacks from 1980 to 2004 for his book, ''Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism'' found that 95 percent of attacks worldwide were motivated by resentment of the presence of foreign combat troops.

Today's New York Times has an story about Kerry finally fighting back against the Swift Boat Veterans, the propaganda machine that may have cost him the election by spreading the idea that he lied about his military heroism. He's gathering a mountain of evidence and new testimony from witnesses that should remove any doubt that the Swift Boat Veterans fabricated all their claims.

But during the election Kerry refused to release his military record, refused to air counter-attack ads, and failed to adequately rebut the charges. The article claims that a serious defense was not mounted out of fear that "directly challenging the charges would legitimize them", and also because they were "caught off guard". But now, two years too late, Kerry wants to set the record straight.

Which brings me to my point: In America today, the truth usually does come out in the end, but money can delay it, often crucially. If deceit has the force of money behind it, then truth might only flow like a glacier, inevitably but imperceptably. Eventually the fuel powering the lies dries up, and the truth is revealed.

This pattern is played out in so many of the major news stories of our age: the Enron collapse; the science of global climate change; the Valerie Plame affair; and the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In each episode, money or political power allows a lie to be sustained for a time, usually just long enough for it to serve its crucial purpose which cannot be undone: launching America into war; silencing a critic; protecting investments and making money.

In our open society, with a free press, the blogosphere, and a strong rule of law protecting whistleblowers from reprisal, "The power of truth" does indeed seem to prevail in the long run, but that's not good enough. Sometimes a few weeks of deceit is all that is needed to facilitate great injustice. We need to accelerate the cultural vetting process that rejects propaganda, but often too late.

Everyone must read or listen to this recent speech by Al Gore who unflinchingly describes the "constitutional crisis" that has developing in our country. Gore puts the dangers in perspective, claiming that our democracy is essentially decaying into "rule by a strongman regime" -- the "principal alternative to democracy throughout history", and the type of government that America was founded specifically to forever avoid.

Today we have a President who admits to authorizing thousands of wiretaps against American citizens without any court approval, who legimitized torture in American prisons, who has appropriated the power to detain American citizens indefinitely without access to a lawyer, and who is pressing for even more powers with the expanded Patriot Act. What happened to our checks and balances? How did we let this happen? Do we still have a functioning democracy, and if not how do we get it back?

www.libertyspeeches.org

A few passages deserve repeating:

"And indeed whenever power is unchecked and unaccountable it almost inevitably leads to gross mistakes and abuses. That is part of human nature. In the absence of rigorous accountability, incompetence flourishes; dishonesty is encouraged and rewarded - it is human nature, whether for Republicans or Democrats, or people with any set of views.

...

Forty years have passed since the majority of Americans adopted television as their principal source of information. Its dominance has become so extensive that virtually all significant political communication now takes place within the confines of flickering 30-second television advertisements - and these are no Federalist Papers.

And the political economy supported by these short but expensive television ads is as different from the vibrant politics of America's first century as those politics were different from the feudalism which thrived on the ignorance of the masses of people in the Dark Ages. The constricted role of ideas in the American political system today has encouraged efforts by the Executive Branch to control the flow of information as a means of controlling the outcome of important decisions that still lie in the hands of the people.

...

Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands of missiles poised to be launched against us and annihilate our country at a moment's notice? Is America in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march -- when our fathers fought and won two World Wars simultaneously?

It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it is up to us to do the same."

In other major life news, in case you haven't heard: I'm getting married!. I launched my project on Google! Anya's book Generation Debt is coming out in February!

Ok, that's enough news for one post, I think. Even if it's a year's worth of news.

CHENEY: Well, this is a great tragedy, Gwen, when you think about the enormous cost here in the United States and around the world of the AIDS epidemic—pandemic, really. Millions of lives lost, millions more infected and facing a very bleak future. In some parts of the world, we‘ve got the entire, sort of, productive generation has been eliminated as a result of AIDS, all except for old folks and kids—nobody to do the basic work that runs an economy.

This is a most incredible response to a question about AIDS. Here is a question about a health epidemic, and essentially about justice and equality in health care, and he answers in the language of money. In his mind, it's a great tragedy because of the "enormous cost". Now, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he means human cost - pain and suffering. But he continues, pointing out that the "productive generation" has been eliminated in some countries, with "nobody left to do the basic work that runs an economy." While I agree that this is a major problem, I am horrified and fascinated by the way that all problems are viewed through the green lens of economic costs.

The Bush and Kerry campaigns are embroiled in a flame war over the use of Nazi imagery in campaign ads. Since they apparently don't have anything meaningful to debate, like how to fix health care, education, Israel/Palestine, Iraq, North Korea, or social security, the obvious thing to do is to create TV ads that compare Bush to Hitler, then counter-ads that splice in above-mentioned Hitler footage with shots of Kerry, Gore, and Gephart, then emails that denounce the confusing above-mentioned spliced footage as "disgusting", then counter-emails that denounce above-mentioned email as, well, disgusting.

So now that the thread of political discourse has degenerated into a Hitler flame war, the ultimate destiny of all dessicated debate, we can finally unsubscribe and stop reading. This place was dead, anyway...

One way of looking at the Scream is that it was a litmus test; people took it as evidence to support a deep-down feeling about him that they'd already been harboring.

But it seems to me that another view is just as valid -- that the media makes opinion as much as reports it, and the commercial news sources that feed us today are more interested in a hot story than in accurate reporting -- and Howard Dean suffered for it. And since I believe Dean is an inspiring and thoughtful man who would make an excellent President, the whole country may have suffered for it.

For an interesting take on the Scream, and a rare sort of apology from the networks, take a look at this piece by Diane Sawyer: http://abclocal.go.com/wjrt/news/012904_NW_r2_group_deanscream.html]]> tag:berenzweig.com,2004:/adam//1.32 2004-01-27T20:24:16Z 2006-01-11T06:10:29Z

"The Net is the condition of society of everyone being connected to everyone else without human intermediaries."

"The politics of the 21st century is about who makes the rules in the switches." (Addressing an audience of computer scientists:) "It is no longer a non-political subject to know the stuff you know."

"Mr. Eisner needs the military occupation of the Internet"

"Guys running for president are all members of the same lobotomized tribe, who can only think about one thing: getting to be president".
Instead of figuring out which is the best candidate, to find out which one gets it, he suggests, "Instead, talk to them, make them get it". Better to influence them all, than spend your time figuring out which one is best. I like that a lot.

http://opengov.media.mit.edu/ (A lot of things are broken, but it's early.)

This is what (information age) democracy looks like!]]> tag:berenzweig.com,2003:/adam//1.29 2003-06-27T22:49:42Z 2006-01-11T06:10:29Z