Category: Current Affairs

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What Kind of Democracy?

On NPR this morning, a brief feature on the family of Andrew Bacevich, a young Boston University graduate and U.S. Army lieutenant killed last week in Iraq. His death drew special attention because his father, also Andrew Bacevich, a former Army officer and military and diplomatic historian at Boston University, is both conservative and a penetrating critic of the Iraq war.

The elder Bacevich published a book a couple years ago called “The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War.” Among other things, it’s a critique of the rise of an “imperial” military culture in the wake of Vietnam, the military’s elevation to a superior moral status, especially in the wake of 9/11, and the current Bush’s attempt to adopt the military as a special constituency. (Here’s an excerpt.)

In the NPR story, Bacevich reflected briefly on his son and his own role as a citizen:

” ‘One of the things that I’ve been really struggling with over the last several days is to understand my own responsibility for my son’s death,” Bacevich said.

“Bacevich says he thought his responsibility as a citizen was to give voice to his concerns about the war. His loss, he says, has made him question the lasting value of his criticism.

” ‘What kind of democracy is this when the people do speak, and the people’s voice is unambiguous, but nothing happens?’ ”

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Baghdad Traffic and Weather on the 8s

Salon has a sort of interesting piece today on documents from the Coalition Provisional Authority (our original occupation government in Iraq, starring L. Paul “Jerry, here’s your Medal of Freedom” Bremer). A Case Western Reserve political scientist discovered some weekly reports from 2004 that still contain all the official edits and deletions. The Salon story cites one remarkable passage: in retrospect, an extended piece of wishful thinking about the insurgency cooling off in al Anbar Province. The CPA appears to have deleted the rosy speculation immediately after insurgents, mobs, or whoever it was killed four U.S. paramilitary contractors in Fallujah, an event that signaled the fact the province was entirely out of government control.

Reading about Iraq in the good old days made me curious about what the current voice of the United States in Baghdad — our embassy — has to say about the state of the nation. Its site includes a link for U.S. Citizen Services, which in turn contains a link labeled Iraq Travel Warning. There’s been a lot of talk coming out of the president’s bunker lately about how the media is exaggerating how bad things are in Iraq and that the good news stories aren’t adequately told. Interesting to read what his people on the ground, the people who actually have to wear flak jackets when they’re in the “Green Zone” and deal with fellow citizens who might wander into trouble, have to say about the situation:

“The Department of State continues to strongly warn U.S. citizens against travel to Iraq, which remains very dangerous. Remnants of the former Ba’ath regime, transnational terrorists, criminal elements and numerous insurgent groups remain active. Attacks against military and civilian targets throughout Iraq continue, including in the International (or “Green”) Zone. Targets include convoys en-route to venues, hotels, restaurants, police stations, checkpoints, foreign diplomatic missions, international organizations and other locations with expatriate personnel. These attacks have resulted in deaths and injuries of American citizens, including those doing humanitarian work. In addition, there have been planned and random killings, as well as extortions and kidnappings. U.S. citizens have been kidnapped and several were subsequently murdered by terrorists in Iraq. U.S. citizens and other foreigners continue to be targeted by insurgent groups and opportunistic criminals for kidnapping and murder. Military operations continue. There are daily attacks against Multinational Forces – Iraq (MNF-I), Iraqi Security Forces and Iraqi Police throughout the country.The Department of State continues to strongly warn U.S. citizens against travel to Iraq, which remains very dangerous. Remnants of the former Ba’ath regime, transnational terrorists, criminal elements and numerous insurgent groups remain active. Attacks against military and civilian targets throughout Iraq continue, including in the International (or “Green”) Zone. Targets include convoys en-route to venues, hotels, restaurants, police stations, checkpoints, foreign diplomatic missions, international organizations and other locations with expatriate personnel. These attacks have resulted in deaths and injuries of American citizens, including those doing humanitarian work. In addition, there have been planned and random killings, as well as extortions and kidnappings. U.S. citizens have been kidnapped and several were subsequently murdered by terrorists in Iraq. U.S. citizens and other foreigners continue to be targeted by insurgent groups and opportunistic criminals for kidnapping and murder. Military operations continue. There are daily attacks against Multinational Forces – Iraq (MNF-I), Iraqi Security Forces and Iraqi Police throughout the country.”

Of course, the embassy might be ignoring all the good news, too.

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Integrity: Our Most Important Product

Here’s an item I like: Three teachers in Oakland have been forced to resign over “clarifying” a question for a student taking California’s high school exit exam. For now, let’s not get into the subject of the testing mania that has taken root in public education as a method of leaving no child behind and holding teachers and schools accountable for making sure kids are learning what they need to learn. Instead, just consider the nature of the incident: A school administrator witnessed the “clarification” and ratted the three teachers out. No details are forthcoming yet about what the student asked that prompted the “clarification” or what help the teachers offered in response; all that’s known is that the teachers will lose their jobs and the test results for the students involved may be invalidated.

Crikey. We’ve got an attorney general who won’t accept responsibility for anything happening on his watch and who would probably tell you he can’t remember if you ask whether he’s wearing underwear or not. He’s just the latest line in a long series of lying, bumbling Bush higher-ups who have disgraced their offices, screwed up the jobs they were given, and won the undying gratitude of their boss. On occasion, they have blundered so badly that the president has had to send them out the door with a handshake and a Medal of Freedom. Not to worry — they all come back with books telling us what great jobs they did, what a refined sense of duty they share, how clear their consciences are, and how everyone else let them and us down.

Somehow that’s all tolerable, judging by the fact the rascals are conducting business pretty much as usual and the torch-carrying mobs you’d expect on the streets have yet to appear.

But teachers who might have helped out a kid on a state test? They’ve got to go. We can’t let anything interfere with the integrity of a system set up to provide a fig leaf for the criminal lack of concern for what happens to kids in the worst schools or for why those schools are so bad in the first place.

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Falwell in Limbo

Falwell Says ‘Misunderstanding’ Keeping Him out of Heaven — For Now

Conservative Christian leader still confident about receiving eternal reward

ALMOST HEAVEN, W. Va. (AP) — The Rev. Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority and a scourge to liberals, sodomites, unbelievers and the damned of all stripes, said Tuesday his death came quickly and without suffering but expressed impatience with a “misunderstanding” he said was delaying his expected speedy admission into the eternal company of the Lord.

“Jesus gathered me to his bosom, from right there in my office,” a still ashen-faced Falwell said in a hastily called press conference after his lifeless but still bulky form was discovered at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va.. “It was painless, really, and as usual I felt well prepared to meet my Maker — in fact, I popped a Tic-Tac as soon as I started to feel my end was near.”

But Falwell said despite his fresh breath and a lifetime of chastising the ungodly, his expected quick admission to Paradise had met with an unanticipated, and unwelcome, delay.

“I can’t think of anyone more qualified to bask in the eternal light, the everlasting warmth of Our Lord Jesus Christ,” Falwell said. “I can’t think of anyone who was a more humble servant in the cause of the Almighty. Why God himself wasn’t at the front door to welcome me I can’t say.”

Instead, Falwell said, he was forced to stand in line “for an indeterminate time” with others among the recently dead also seeking admission to Heaven. The crowd included “obvious gays and lesbians” as well as “miscellaneous famine, flood and war victims” and many who appeared poor and homeless, Falwell said.

“Jesus talked about doing right by ‘the least of these,’ but a lot of those people are fit for nothing else than slow roasting in the unquenchable fires of Hell — for the lice if for no other reason,” he added. He said he intended to approach God or lesser Heaven officials to discuss expedited entry for well-qualified applicants such as himself.

The minister, whose sonorous sermonizing and fiery fulminations will no longer thunder through Lynchburg’s massive Thomas Road Baptist Church except on tape and DVD, said he was particularly incensed to find himself queued up behind “hip-hop fans, humanists, atheist lawyers, liberals, agnostics and ACLU riff-raff.” He said many of “questionable beliefs” were admitted into the Lord’s presence even after acknowledging in entry interviews that they enjoyed sex on television or in person and had worked to keep Christian prayer out of U.S. public schools.

“I don’t get it,” Falwell said. “Perhaps this is a celestial prank, a misunderstanding or a test of some kind. More likely, the hand of Satan is at work, right here at the very threshold of my eternal reward.” If Satan is not involved, Falwell said, “this is not making a lot of sense to me.”

The late minister reported he ultimately grew tired of waiting for an expeditious entry to Heaven and is now seeking temporary lodging elsewhere until the admissions backlog clears up. One result, Falwell said, is that a planned “Rev. Jerry Falwell: In Heaven and Loving It” day scheduled to be celebrated both in Heaven and on Earth has been postponed.

“We’ll reschedule,” Falwell said. “Sooner rather than later — as soon as the Lord gives me what’s coming to me.”

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Friday Notes

Honor America, damn it: The New York Times had a story yesterday on the measures the Yankees take to get ballpark patrons to pay attention to the playing of the national anthem and “God Bless America.” It’s simple, actually: The team has ushers block the aisles with chains during the ritual musical moments. That prevents people from proceeding to their seats (during the anthem) or getting up to buy a hot dog or beer or to take a leak (during “GBA”), until the last strains of the patriotic airs have wafted out over the Bronx. I like the Yankees’ explanation: It’s not that the team wants to force its customers attention to the business of honoring America; it’s just that the team is responding to complaints from fans who were scandalized that other fans weren’t showing proper deference during this quasi-religious exercise. (Personally, I admire my fellow citizens who take time out from honoring America to make sure the rest of us are, too. I also believe the seventh inning of major league games and half-time of pro football and basketball games should be suspended forthwith for the mandatory playing of, and listening to, patriotic songs and speeches. Medals to be awarded to those who spot and report those whose attention wanders.)

Today’s jay report: Two scrub jays — not knowing any different and influenced by my straight upbringing I assume a male and female pair as opposed to a same-sex couple — are still attending their little nest in our back-porch trellis. The number and condition of the nest’s occupants are mysteries; they seem to be completely silent till the adults show up, then they give out with enthusiastic though wheezy chirping. The only drama to date of which nearby humans are aware: the appearance of a black cat prowling the backyard in the early morning. The apparent parent jays get pretty excited about the cat, which is wearing a bell. This morning, we let out Scout, resident dog, to try to send a message to the jaguarine visitor; but Scout’s not given to chasing cats — digging up pigs’ ears he has buried around the yard is more his speed — and I’m not sure our intent was clear.

‘Death Ray’ inventor dies: Really.

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Seventy-Buck Seats

Kate’s former boss, who has done very well over the years in the antiquarian book trade, is a long-time San Francisco Giants season-ticket holder. I think Peter first got his seats in the late ’70s, and he’s kept them ever since. When he bought them, the Giants were not a hot ticket. I remember going to games in the mid-80s where attendance was less than 2,000. The team was bad. Its stadium was worse, unless you liked sitting in an extremely well air-conditioned wind tunnel. Then the team got better and eventually managed to figure out how to build a new ballpark on the waterfront just south of downtown. Not just a ballpark: a gem, which I say despite a strong distaste for the home nine. At the same time, everyone who watches baseball knows about baseball salaries. As Ralph Kramden said in an entirely different context, with an entirely different intent, “to the moon.”

One of the perks of working for Peter was that he would occasionally give away game tickets. It’s a privilege that might appear at any time, with no notice. Sunday night, he called and asked whether we wanted his tickets for all three Mets games this week. Kate grew up in New Jersey, and the Mets were the first team of her heart (I think the A’s give them a run for their money now). I went over to the store to pick up the “boards,” as an informant tells me their sometimes called. Peter and I chatted a little about the Monday game, when Barry Zito, the highest-paid pitcher in baseball (I think) would be on the mound for the Giants.

“I think the price tag was a little high,” I ventured — “ventured” because Peter has both sound and strong opinions. “The team’s taking care of that,” Peter said, “Take a look at the price on the tickets. They’re seventy dollars. Last year they were forty.”

These are great seats. The italics are deserved: they’re 10 or 12 rows up, just to the first base side of home plate. You can hear the visiting players break wind in the on-deck circle, you’re so close.

But $70? I mean, really. Who’s the sport for when the cheapest seat in the house is running at twenty bucks a pop? (And the most expensive seats — you can bet they’re much, much more than seventy bucks.) Thank the sports gods for commercial television — though when you see the lengths professional sports will go to to milk the audience of every last penny, you have to wonder how long you’ll really get to watch games for free.

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Can You Hear It?

“He emerged from the Metro at the L’Enfant Plaza Station and positioned himself against a wall beside a trash basket. By most measures, he was nondescript: a youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his feet, he shrewdly threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed money, swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play.”

That’s the opening paragraph of an April 8 piece in the Washington Post Magazine that explores how disconnected modern urban American humans are from each other and the world around them. At least that’s my take on what the story’s about. In brief: Joshua Bell, a renowned violinist, went with his Stradivarius to a subway station in downtown D.C. There, he set up as a street musician and over an hour played some of the most celebrated and difficult pieces ever written for the violin. Bottom line: hardly anyone in the 1,100 people who passed Bell as he played seemed to register what was happening. The consistent exception: young children, who when they appeared seemed drawn to Bell and the music. Unfortunately, they were in the company of adults who hustled them on their way — to day care or other appointments.

Great idea for an article, even if the conclusion one is led to is somewhat disheartening:

“In his 2003 book, Timeless Beauty: In the Arts and Everyday Life, British author John Lane writes about the loss of the appreciation for beauty in the modern world. The experiment at L’Enfant Plaza may be symptomatic of that, he said — not because people didn’t have the capacity to understand beauty, but because it was irrelevant to them.

” ‘This is about having the wrong priorities,’ Lane said.

“If we can’t take the time out of our lives to stay a moment and listen to one of the best musicians on Earth play some of the best music ever written; if the surge of modern life so overpowers us that we are deaf and blind to something like that — then what else are we missing?”

The Post followed up with a couple more pieces: An online discussion of the experiment and the article and a more optimistic take on what it all means from poet laureate emeritus Robert Pinsky.

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Local Infrastructure Drama

Macarthur042907

A gasoline tanker crashed on the biggest interchange in the Bay Area, the place where traffic exiting the Bay Bridge from San Francisco gets sent north, east and south to magical spots like Vallejo, Stockton, Hayward, and Fremont (and yes: Berkeley, too). The tanker caught fire after the crash, and the blaze’s intensity caused a section of aerial freeway to collapse onto the roadway where the truck was incinerated. Since the crash occurred at 4 a.m. on a Sunday morning, traffic was light and the only injury was to the truck driver, who suffered serious but not life threatening burns.

The predictable result of the crash: Gawkers, including your faithful correspondent (FC) and close collaborator (CC), were out in force. At the point of the collapse, the freeway maze flies over a collection of railroad and heavy equipment yards, vacant lots, and a sewage plant. It’s not easy to find your way around down there, and the few places that might have given a decent vantage point of the carnage — a couple “Mad Max”-type surface streets and the parking lot for a big home improvement store — were blocked off to prevent the idle legions from satisfying their curiosity. We could see the collapsed section from 200 or 300 yards away from nearby streets, but couldn’t get any closer. The best view turned out to be from the skyway that carries I-80 from West Oakland into Emeryville. The collapse was plainly visible from up there, though I tried to keep my attention on the road while CC snapped some shots.

It’s not the first time something catastrophic has happened at or near this spot. The interchange was reworked after the collapse of an adjacent double-deck freeway in the 1989 earthquake (42 people died there). The new ramp configuration has always seemed a little more challenging than an urban freeway ought to be: three lanes split into two directions — you can use the center lane to either go south on Interstate 880 toward San Jose or east on I-580 toward Stockton. With normal daytime traffic, the ramp is a bottleneck that backs up traffic as much as a mile, into Berkeley. Late at night or early in the morning, when you can go normal California freeway speeds — 70 or 75 mph — the ramp is trouble. You hit it fast, and if you don’t know exactly where you’re going, the sharpness of the turns can throw you. The cops are saying the truck driver involved in this morning’s crash was going too fast and hit a guard rail and support column.

Macarthur042907A

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Life and Lies

From The New York Times: “Dean at M.I.T. Resigns, Ending a 28-Year Lie.” It’s the story of Marilee Jones, the university’s highly respected and successful admissions director, who over the decades falsely claimed to have received several college degrees. It turns out that she never graduated from college at all. Somehow M.I.T. only recently got around to looking into her resume, long after she had been elevated to senior administration.

I suppose the absolutist side of me feels like she ought to suffer the severest consequences for her dishonesty. There’s the ethical question, of course, the need to be straight with others about who you are and what you’ve done. There’s another issue, too: being honest with yourself about your life. On one level, the sort of biography you present in a resume is the most superficial kind there is: just dates, places, duties, and positions; your resume doesn’t touch on the stuff that’s really hard to face, like all your personal crises and how you’ve dealt with them, the traumas you’ve suffered or dealt out, the messy details of how you deal with people and problems every day. So being candid about those surface details — “I graduated with honors” or “I made it to community college, but liked beer better; I still hope to go back some day” — seems like it should be the easy part about representing yourself. Unless you lie about it. Then you’ve created a secret that you must sense will emerge some day to show the world what a fraud you are.

Ethical absolutism aside, I sympathize with Ms. Jones. Perhaps partly because I’m a fellow non-college graduate (my resume says where I went to school and notes “no degree taken” — though hope springs eternal). But more because it’s hard not to admire her when you read what she was able to do with her talents and ability — qualities that didn’t happen to come certified from an institution of higher education. At some juncture, or maybe many, she had to consider whether to come clean about her untruths. It must have been hard; I expect she sensed that advancement depended on having a degree, that she wouldn’t get a chance to show what she could do unless she had some credentials, whether they were truly relevant or not. She was probably right, and that’s a shame, because her work was brilliant. Not brilliant enough to offset her lies, though, or escape the trap she set for herself.

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Cultural History of The Loner

Partyofone

Once upon a time, the idea of “the loner” extended beyond the way the term is nearly universally used in media today: for destructive psychopaths, after they’ve unleashed some horror or other. I carried on a little bit earlier about the Virginia Tech official who first uttered the term in connection to Cho Seung-Hui. It was true as far as it went — and that wasn’t far at all, as Cho demonstrated both in action and in his special delivery to NBC the other day.

Anyway. Didn’t the idea of the loner once carry an aura of austere self-sufficiency, hardy individuality or at least admirable anti-heroism? In recent decades in pop culture, Clint Eastwood’s the type, especially in the Sergio Leone remakes of the Kurosawa epics. Further back, Humphrey Bogart owned the image in his Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade roles. Film noir is the loner’s genre. I could take a leap backward from there to the James Fenimore Cooper novels and his Hawkeye character. Same thing, though incredibly trying in book form. [Belatedly, I note that all the example characters above carry guns.]

But those are sort of limited, shot-in-the-dark examples and ones that rely on the distortion and romance of fiction. I went looking for a little more evidence and context, and came upon the noble example of “The Loner,” a one-season, mid-’60s western series starring Lloyd Bridges (and created by Rod Serling). Then there’s Neil Young’s “The Loner,” which focuses on the menacing stranger. Still a long way off from real life.

Finally, I hit on this, through Google Books: “Party of One: The Loners’ Manifesto.” It’s by Anneli S. Rufus, a Berkeley writer Kate and I know from our time, during the relatively enlightened and carefree days of the Reagan era, at The Daily Californian. It’s a serious consideration of the idea of the loner in history, in culture, in society. An excerpt from the introduction:

“Loners, by virtue of being loners, of celebrating the state of standing alone, have an innate advantage when it comes to being brave — like pioneers, like mountain men, iconoclasts, rebels and sole survivors. Loners have an advantage when faced with the unknown, the never-done-before and the unprecedented. An advantage when it comes to being mindful like the Buddhists, spontaneous like the Taoists, crucibles of concentrated prayer like the desert saints, esoteric like the Kabbalists. Loners, by virtue of being loners, have at their fingertips the undiscovered, the unique, the rarefied. Innate advantages when it comes to imagination, concentration, inner discipline. A knack for invention, originality, for finding resources in what others would call vacuums. A knack for visions. A talent for seldom being bored. Desert islands are fine but not required.”

The Anneli lives less than two miles from us as the crow flies. I haven’t seen her in 25 years, since before she was Anneli. Now I know one reason why. But just one.

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