It might seem a bit unfair to beat up on the underdog, as he rolls into Super-Duper Tuesday, especially as I might be mistaken for a Hilary supporter. So let me make this clear: I dislike Hilary just as much, I simply have less to say about her. Also, most of my friends are Obama supporters, and so I know the various arguments made for him better. Moreover, he gets invested with high hopes in a way, for better or for worse, Hilary does not. I think those high hopes are misplaced.
One common theme in left-liberal support, especially amongst my friends, for Obama is that he would be the first (truly) Black president. In a recent panel discussion, Cornel West fairly and clearly explained why this is just not so. The whole commentary is worth watching, but it boiled down to the argument that the criteria for assessing a president, or anyone else, has to be political, not symbolic: "What kind of courage have you manifested in the stances that you have?." The truth of Toni Morrison's otherwise irritating and endlessly reprduced proclamation that Bill Clinton was the first Black President is that being a 'Black politician' is not something one can be born into, and depends upon one's social position and political stances, rather than mere skin color. In fact, Obama has taken no risks for Blacks as a candidate, and indeed the offending incident that spurred West's criticism was Obama's decision not to participate the "State of Black America" forum.
The point is not just that Obama counts on Black support while never making any distinctive, risky appeals to them. It is that he seems to behave as if there simply is no serious, fundamental problem worthy of conflict and chance-taking in the first place. A comparison with Martin Luther King Jr. clarifies the point. Both Obama and King are seen as Black political figures who nonetheless managed to appeal to segments of white public opinion. They are therefore sometimes seens as 'unifiers' in the horrible lingo of American punditry. However, the difference(s) are more important than the similarities. Obama's message of unity is one totally opposed to the idea of fundamental or serious conflict. This has played well to those who quite fairly feel that much of the partisanship on Capitol Hill is empty and meaninglessly spiteful. However, he has taken his message of pragmatic unity, of let's all just get along and work things out, and turned it into an approach to all political problems. King, on the other hand, saw no problem with combining the idea of unity with a politics of conflict. To somewhat crudely summarize the relevant part of his politics, he recognized that society was already divided, and that his antagonists were the source of this division. It was only through his movement, which stood in conflict with the source of division, that some kind of unity could be achieved - that blacks and whites could live in harmony. His politics and rhetoric was at times militant, and became increasingly so as he realized just how deep the inequalities in American society were, and how intransigent certain elements - at the top no less than the bottom - were. If a kind of social harmony was the aim of politics, it was not the means. And he recognized the necessity of polarization and ideological confrontation. Obama admits of no such divisions, and rejects the necessity of serious disagreement, even militant conflict, in politics.
One might say the race issue no longer requires the kinds of militancy it did in the past. That might be true. Or at least, it might be true that the race issue can't be resolved as purely a race issue. Regardless, these are the kinds of issues that at the very least should be raised, and on which a Black president would at least be willing to take a stand, rather than gloss over and keep at a distance. Any group can tell when they are being used yet kept at an arms length. Obama is a Black presidential candidate in precisely that sense - only insofar as it helps him win votes, but never to the extent that it might be dangerous.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Monday, January 28, 2008
Our Model Dictator
John Pilger has written a superb obituary on General Suharto, dictator of Indonesia for thirty years ago. As a whole, Pilger's piece reminds us that, for sheer callousness, the neo-cons have nothing on the political class during the Cold War.
Shortly before the death of Alan Clark, who under Thatcher was the minister responsible for supplying Suharto with most of his weapons, I interviewed him, and asked: "Did it bother you personally that you were causing such mayhem and human suffering?"
"No, not in the slightest," he replied. "It never entered my head."
"I ask the question because I read you are a vegetarian and are seriously concerned with the way animals are killed."
"Yeah?"
"Doesn't that concern extend to humans?"
"Curiously not."
There's No Such Thing As a Natural Disaster (I): Heat Waves
There is no such thing as a Natural Disaster. This seems like a strange thing to say. After all, from Hurricane Katrina to the European heat wave, haven't we seen nature's terror? In a series of posts, beginning today, I want to suggest something else: that in our technological age, there are no pure natural disasters. In fact, all natural events are socially mediated, and increasingly so. The impact of nature on human life is now more and more amenable to political and technological control.
To a degree, we already think this way, but in a distorted way. The theory of man-made global warming locates a human agency behind ostensible natural disasters. But the problem here is twofold. First, it often exaggerates the human impact. Hurricane Katrina, for instance, just was not caused by global warming, even if some hurricanes, or their increased intensity, might in the future be attributable to the human contribution to climate change. Second, more importantly, the impact of human activity is, on this narrative, largely considered to be negative. It is our effort to control nature, and bend it to our purposes, that has led to these unintended, devastating effects.
What really goes wrong here, is to overlook where individual and collective decisions (and non-decisions) have a far greater impact on the human outcomes of natural events. I'd like to use heat waves as my first illustration of the general point that there is no such thing as a natural disaster.
Heat waves are the most immediate way in which global warming is represented to us. From the European heat wave to the Greek forest fires to the San Diego wildfires, many take increasing temperatures to mean more heat waves. More heat waves, more death and destruction to human life. This is not necessarily so for a number of reasons.
The most immediate, and cheapest point, is 'hotter weather, fewer deaths' because cold is a greater killer than heat. For example, "Up to 50,000 more people die in the UK during the winter months than in the summer," and these numbers are as true in balmy Athens as wintry Siberia. Numerous scientific studies have demonstrated this, and, especially given that most climate change models show warming happening mostly during winter months, there is some reason not to be all that worried, at least in terms of the direct effects of changing temperatures. (I leave indirect impacts, like drought, flooding, etc... for other posts).
However, on its own, this is not decisive, because it still suggests that on the high heat end, things will be getting worse. What is interesting, however, is that this is not true either. Over the course of the twentieth century, despite the fact that temperatures in the United States have risen with each decade, morbidity and mortality from heat waves have not gotten worse by any measure. Indeed, scientific studies (and here) that asked the question “Have mortality rates changed on a decadal basis in conjunction with heat waves?” have found a resounding Yes. But the change has been a marked decline in mortality rates. From the 1960s to the 1990s, when the most rapid warming has occurred, mean mortality has dropped almost 50%. Indeed, according to one of these studies, in some Southern cities, like Charlotte and Miami, there “the populace
exhibits no elevated mortality on days with high [average temperatures]
for any decade in our record.”
The reason for this decline is social and technological. The main technological reasons have to do with improved medical facilities, forecasting techniques, and the availability of air-conditioning in homes, cars and public places. The main social reasons have to do with declining costs of air-conditioning, the creation of cooling centers for those without access to air-conditioning, especially the elderly, and city-wide heat wave management plans.
There is every reason to believe the declining mortality from heat waves will continue, as cities improve their heat-wave management plans, as air-conditioners become cheaper – and so long as energy remains cheap. Indeed, here is a very immediate and good reason for making cheap energy, rather than lower emissions, the top priority – so people can stay cool in hot temperatures, regardless of who caused them. In a later post I will discuss one final, all-important social factor in the impact of heat waves on human beings: inequality. The point here was just to show how significant the social factors, in terms of available technology and political planning, are in determining the impact of nature on mankind. Despite the dramatic rise in temperatures over the past forty years, heat waves have been having an ever dwindling effect. This is true even including such dramatic events as the Chicago heat wave of 1995, which I shall discuss in a later post.
There is no such thing as a natural disaster, and that’s a good thing.
To a degree, we already think this way, but in a distorted way. The theory of man-made global warming locates a human agency behind ostensible natural disasters. But the problem here is twofold. First, it often exaggerates the human impact. Hurricane Katrina, for instance, just was not caused by global warming, even if some hurricanes, or their increased intensity, might in the future be attributable to the human contribution to climate change. Second, more importantly, the impact of human activity is, on this narrative, largely considered to be negative. It is our effort to control nature, and bend it to our purposes, that has led to these unintended, devastating effects.
What really goes wrong here, is to overlook where individual and collective decisions (and non-decisions) have a far greater impact on the human outcomes of natural events. I'd like to use heat waves as my first illustration of the general point that there is no such thing as a natural disaster.
Heat waves are the most immediate way in which global warming is represented to us. From the European heat wave to the Greek forest fires to the San Diego wildfires, many take increasing temperatures to mean more heat waves. More heat waves, more death and destruction to human life. This is not necessarily so for a number of reasons.
The most immediate, and cheapest point, is 'hotter weather, fewer deaths' because cold is a greater killer than heat. For example, "Up to 50,000 more people die in the UK during the winter months than in the summer," and these numbers are as true in balmy Athens as wintry Siberia. Numerous scientific studies have demonstrated this, and, especially given that most climate change models show warming happening mostly during winter months, there is some reason not to be all that worried, at least in terms of the direct effects of changing temperatures. (I leave indirect impacts, like drought, flooding, etc... for other posts).
However, on its own, this is not decisive, because it still suggests that on the high heat end, things will be getting worse. What is interesting, however, is that this is not true either. Over the course of the twentieth century, despite the fact that temperatures in the United States have risen with each decade, morbidity and mortality from heat waves have not gotten worse by any measure. Indeed, scientific studies (and here) that asked the question “Have mortality rates changed on a decadal basis in conjunction with heat waves?” have found a resounding Yes. But the change has been a marked decline in mortality rates. From the 1960s to the 1990s, when the most rapid warming has occurred, mean mortality has dropped almost 50%. Indeed, according to one of these studies, in some Southern cities, like Charlotte and Miami, there “the populace
exhibits no elevated mortality on days with high [average temperatures]
for any decade in our record.”
The reason for this decline is social and technological. The main technological reasons have to do with improved medical facilities, forecasting techniques, and the availability of air-conditioning in homes, cars and public places. The main social reasons have to do with declining costs of air-conditioning, the creation of cooling centers for those without access to air-conditioning, especially the elderly, and city-wide heat wave management plans.
There is every reason to believe the declining mortality from heat waves will continue, as cities improve their heat-wave management plans, as air-conditioners become cheaper – and so long as energy remains cheap. Indeed, here is a very immediate and good reason for making cheap energy, rather than lower emissions, the top priority – so people can stay cool in hot temperatures, regardless of who caused them. In a later post I will discuss one final, all-important social factor in the impact of heat waves on human beings: inequality. The point here was just to show how significant the social factors, in terms of available technology and political planning, are in determining the impact of nature on mankind. Despite the dramatic rise in temperatures over the past forty years, heat waves have been having an ever dwindling effect. This is true even including such dramatic events as the Chicago heat wave of 1995, which I shall discuss in a later post.
There is no such thing as a natural disaster, and that’s a good thing.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Goodbye US Hegemony?
Up-comer Parag Khana, a fellow at the New America Foundation, has a large piece on the decline of US Hegemony in the NYTimes Magazine today. It's a piece more interesting in its description than prescription. What it describes is a 21st century dominated by a 'Big Three' - Europe, United States, and China - each vying for enlarged spheres of influence, and competing for the favor of a swath of 'second-world' countries like Brazil, India, Iran, and Turkey. At one point, Khana admits, "The new multicolor map of influence — a Venn diagram of overlapping American, Chinese and European influence — is a very fuzzy read. No more “They’re with us” or “He’s our S.O.B.” Mubarak, Musharraf, Malaysia’s Mahathir and a host of other second-world leaders have set a new standard for manipulative prowess: all tell the U.S. they are its friend while busily courting all sides." This is not a failure of Khana's analysis, I think it captures the fluidity of contemporary international relations very well. Even the idea of a 'Big Three' over-states the the case, as Europe is not obviously unified as a state-like power, and because depending on the issue area, such as trade policy, other large, conglomerate powers might be relevant (like the India-Brazil-China spoilers at the international trade negotiations).
Khana suggests a few initiatives for the US, in this new fluid, tripolar world, but they seem oddly out of step with the structural transformations he describes: 'channel your inner J.F.K.' 'talk about global interests' 'Pentagonize the State Department.' Much of this is Washingtonese, where buzzwords no longer summarize a policy so much as substitute for it. After all, if American hegemony is in decline because its economic influence is in decline, nothing less than revamping its industrial base is adequate. It is only at his fourth point that Khana starts to come face-to-face with the issues never quite addressed in the piece: "make the global economy work for us." Khana is never quite clear whether he believes a) international competition is necessary or the product of bad diplomacy and b) whether American hegemony would be a good thing or whether a trilateral world order is better. I suspect that is because Khana, like many foreign policy experts in Washington, does not want to ask the deeper question about whether there really is enough to go around, or whether the structure of world affairs forces nations into conflict with each other. Read between the lines and the essay speaks for itself. Ultimately, a redesigned hegemonic structure, in which the Big Three cooperate to carve up the world, while engaging in friendly competition within the structure of a global triumvirate, is more or less the best choice in the face of an inevitably unequal global distribution of power. All the hard questions wash away in a paragraph of feel good common-sense. But why exactly should there be Big Three in the first place? What about other principles, like equality and self-determination? Real reflection on international affairs seems to me to require more than just an examination of the available hard and soft power opportunities, even if they are a starting point. Surely researching and writing about foreign policy can be done independent of the advice one wants to give to the next president.
Khana suggests a few initiatives for the US, in this new fluid, tripolar world, but they seem oddly out of step with the structural transformations he describes: 'channel your inner J.F.K.' 'talk about global interests' 'Pentagonize the State Department.' Much of this is Washingtonese, where buzzwords no longer summarize a policy so much as substitute for it. After all, if American hegemony is in decline because its economic influence is in decline, nothing less than revamping its industrial base is adequate. It is only at his fourth point that Khana starts to come face-to-face with the issues never quite addressed in the piece: "make the global economy work for us." Khana is never quite clear whether he believes a) international competition is necessary or the product of bad diplomacy and b) whether American hegemony would be a good thing or whether a trilateral world order is better. I suspect that is because Khana, like many foreign policy experts in Washington, does not want to ask the deeper question about whether there really is enough to go around, or whether the structure of world affairs forces nations into conflict with each other. Read between the lines and the essay speaks for itself. Ultimately, a redesigned hegemonic structure, in which the Big Three cooperate to carve up the world, while engaging in friendly competition within the structure of a global triumvirate, is more or less the best choice in the face of an inevitably unequal global distribution of power. All the hard questions wash away in a paragraph of feel good common-sense. But why exactly should there be Big Three in the first place? What about other principles, like equality and self-determination? Real reflection on international affairs seems to me to require more than just an examination of the available hard and soft power opportunities, even if they are a starting point. Surely researching and writing about foreign policy can be done independent of the advice one wants to give to the next president.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Obama the Conservative
More on Obama the conservative, this time from the British magazine Prospect. This is one of the most concise versions of the argument I've seen. Don't get me wrong, I don't think Hillary is the spitting-image of progress, and I am sick of the Clinton-dynasty. There are, however, fewer illusions surrounding her candidacy. (With the glaring exception of her 'experience' - as far as I can tell, she has far less than she claims, and many of her actual decisions, like voting for the war, have been wrong. What good is that kind of experience?) Obama seems to be attracting starry-eyed visions of change, transformation, new beginnings. He does that because he is an empty vessel, most of whose actual political statements are as pragmatic and boring as any other mainstream candidate.
The Endless Fear of Terrorism
Over at the NYTimes, John Tierney says we should expect an Endless Fear of Terrorism despite the fact that, as any sober-headed analysis suggests, the risk from terrorists is extremely small, and no greater than it has been in decades. A fair point, but by now pretty well-established. The more mysterious and difficult thing is why the culture of fear lingers, and what it is about in the first place. I think there are a number of dimensions to this, but over time, I've come to think the problem isn't with how we think about security but how we think about liberty. It is not so much a failure rationally to assess different threats - which is nonetheless a necessary step. It is more that we have a narrow conception of liberty, and a conception of liberty to which we are not all that strongly committed. That is probably one reason why it always seems like our freedom is under attack. It doesn't help that our political system reproduces the narrow horizons of the present (and here), and continues to define our liberties in terms of a base understanding of security. Lest we think that I'm speaking only of the right-wing in America, here is an article I wrote trying to demonstrate the politics of fear under-pinning the most popular left-wing ideology of the moment: environmentalism.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Climate Believers and Abolitionists
The New Scientist's Environment Blog linked today to a paper comparing the rhetoric of climate and slavery. The paper's claims are that climate skeptics occupy the same moral and intellectual space today that defenders of slavery did in the 1800s. The superficiality of the argument is barely worth mention, but the lack of self-consciousness is. As I've mentioned before, the language of 'climate-denier' is a much more suggestive and potent rhetoric than the weak attempt to win the argument against skeptics by association. If anything, the attempt to link climate skeptics to every moral hot-button moral atrocity, from slavery to the Holocaust, reveals just how (non)-science based the arguments about climate change have become. Scientific argument narrowly is about natural science, but more broadly is about the appeal to reason and human intelligence. While there is of course a place for stirring moral appeals in rational public debate, what the climate/slavery paper is an example of is something altogether different. Frustrated at their failure to convince a wider swath of humanity of their views than they would like, environmentalists have decided to engage in the rhetorical equivalent of bullying. The climate issue becomes one not just of right and wrong, but us and them, savior and killer. This makes even somewhat less heated discussions of political morality, let alone calm consideration of social and natural science, next to impossible. Any departure from the orthodoxy is associated with slave-ownership and nazism, rather than with the actual problems of climate change.
Padilla Update
A friendly reader reminded me that the current Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, was unfavorably involved in the Padilla case, back when Mukasey was a district court judge. He ruled that a U.S. citizen, arrested within the United States, could be imprisoned without trial. Yep, that's our Attorney General. A pillar upholding the great house of liberty.
Padilla Again
Yesterday, the major dailies reported a story on how Jose Padilla, the American citizen detained as an "enemy combatant, received 17 Years for "terrorism-related charges." The Washington Post called this "a major setback in a terrorism prosecution for the Justice Department." It is a major setback because prosecutors had been forced to drop the real terrorism charges - dirty bomb allegations, especially - and go for lower-level category of 'terrorism-related' criminal activities. It also mean the Justice Department had to drop its demand for life imprisonment. This is, in fact, a pattern in terrorism prosecutions, which I and others have documented (I did it here and on my formerly co-edited blog here; as have others here and here, and which an internal GAO audit even admitted.) The pattern is not limited to inflated statistics, but rather to a whole host of government actions. First, the DOJ makes a high profile arrest, holds a very public news conference, and perhaps links the arrest and pending prosecution to other 'terrorist cells' like those in 'Detroit, Seattle, and Buffalo' (all of which turned out to be far less than claimed.) Then the prosecution gets under way, and, because there is still due process for most alleged terrorists,* the government actually has to start proving its allegations. Once the truth comes out, and these alleged terrorists turn out to be a mix of cranks, isolated actors with half-baked plans, or just plain victims of entrapment, the government is forced to drop the most serious charges and prosecute, or strike deals, on lesser charges. It is only because of the radical expansion of those crimes considered 'terrorism-related' (such as visa fraud or other immigration and work violations, or fencing of stolen goods to foreign buyers), and in some cases the very low burden of proof and overbroad definition of terrorism activities - especially in the case of providing 'material-support for terrorism' - that so many of these cases still fall under 'terrorism-related convictions.' In many cases the government goes for a plea bargain because it knows it can't win its case. This, for instance, is what happened with Padilla's original case, in which he got 3 1/2 years. At this point, there is just no credibility to any of the government's terrorism-related prosecutions or broader claims. Every report on one of these cases should be read with a pound of salt.
*The Padilla case is more complicated because originally he was denied nearly every possible civi**l right as an 'enemy combatant.' It was only under threat of Supreme Court review that the administration started playing games and moved Padilla to civilian court - and had actually to start making a case against him.
*The Padilla case is more complicated because originally he was denied nearly every possible civi**l right as an 'enemy combatant.' It was only under threat of Supreme Court review that the administration started playing games and moved Padilla to civilian court - and had actually to start making a case against him.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
NATO's Humanitarian Hegemony
Key NATO leaders released a manifesto yesterday claiming, among other things, that the West should reserve a pre-emptive nuclear strike option in the current security environment. What is this security environment? The main security threats are "political fanaticism and religious fundamentalism, the 'dark side' of globalization, meaning international terrorism, organized crime and the spread of weapons of mass destruction, climate change, the weakening of nation states as well as of organizations such as the UN, NATO and the EU." What is the connection between pre-emptive nuclear strike and these threats? It can't be the threats they pose. After all, threats one and two are more or less the same thing, and neither can be nuked. What good is the phenomenally blunt weapon of a nuclear weapon against small networks of frankly not very dangerous criminals and terrorists? As for climate change, does NATO propose to induce a nuclear winter to counteract the fossil fuel summer? The strangest, but most indicative, is the weakening of NATO itself. In a wondrously self-evident line of argument, it appears that the solution to the weakening of institutions like NATO is to...strengthen them. Here, oddly enough, is where the link with pre-emptive nuclear strike, not as an actual military option, but as a political posture, makes 'sense.'
Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has struggled to justify its existence, let alone define its mission. As a Western military alliance in which the US was first among equals, only the threat of communism gave credence to the idea that NATO really was a collective security umbrella. In the early 1990s, it just looked like one amongst many international institutions that had outlived its usefulness. The only thing it could think to do was expand, replacing any long-term purpose with the short term goal of extending its reach. The first time it appeared to possess any virtues relevant to post Cold War international affairs was with the illegal bombing of ex-Yugoslavia in 1998-9. Unable to get UN authorization for the intervention, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair looked to an institution easier to control, yet possessing a modicum of international legitimacy. After the bombing, the UN extended ex-post legitimacy to the illegal intervention; the might makes right lesson was not lost on the world, especially NATO. The sudden uptick of American self-assertion under Bush appeared to eclipse even NATO, as Bush received neither UN authorization nor NATO approval for the invasion of Iraq. However, the lack of legitimacy for the Iraq War has made it clear that some degree of multilateral cooperation is even in the US' interest. In the 1990s the moral imperatives of 'humanitarianism' and other seemingly pressing crises made the creaky instruments of international law and UN procedures seem worse than useless, and in the 2000s, it became clear to world leaders that some degree of cooperation was in a common interest, if for no other reason than to remind any future great power aspirants who currently ruled the globe. Enter NATO: cooperative, yet firmly in control of the great powers, and not so bound by arduous UN procedures.
In the power vacuum that only grows with the delegitimation of American power under Bush, NATO sees an opportunity. What unites humanitarian crises, terrorism, global warming, and failed states is that they all seem like problems that can't be resolved within the existing architecture of international law and institutions. An institution that projects power, emotes pure strength, gives the impression it can bring order to the political chaos. Enter the nuclear posture - strategically useless, politically useful. In fact, NATO is no more able to bring order than the US or UN because the disorder is more the product of international political confusion than serious threats. Major wars are down, so is the violence from civil wars, and terrorism just does not kill very many people. What threats that do exist are more appropriately handled by low-level police efforts and reasonable international laws than NATO nukes. A sheer show of strength is no substitute for political purpose, nor does it even bring minimal security. To justify its posture, NATO will no doubt wish to prove its strength - which means an inappropriate show of force somewhere, an intervention that will increase the very chaos it wishes to suppress.
Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has struggled to justify its existence, let alone define its mission. As a Western military alliance in which the US was first among equals, only the threat of communism gave credence to the idea that NATO really was a collective security umbrella. In the early 1990s, it just looked like one amongst many international institutions that had outlived its usefulness. The only thing it could think to do was expand, replacing any long-term purpose with the short term goal of extending its reach. The first time it appeared to possess any virtues relevant to post Cold War international affairs was with the illegal bombing of ex-Yugoslavia in 1998-9. Unable to get UN authorization for the intervention, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair looked to an institution easier to control, yet possessing a modicum of international legitimacy. After the bombing, the UN extended ex-post legitimacy to the illegal intervention; the might makes right lesson was not lost on the world, especially NATO. The sudden uptick of American self-assertion under Bush appeared to eclipse even NATO, as Bush received neither UN authorization nor NATO approval for the invasion of Iraq. However, the lack of legitimacy for the Iraq War has made it clear that some degree of multilateral cooperation is even in the US' interest. In the 1990s the moral imperatives of 'humanitarianism' and other seemingly pressing crises made the creaky instruments of international law and UN procedures seem worse than useless, and in the 2000s, it became clear to world leaders that some degree of cooperation was in a common interest, if for no other reason than to remind any future great power aspirants who currently ruled the globe. Enter NATO: cooperative, yet firmly in control of the great powers, and not so bound by arduous UN procedures.
In the power vacuum that only grows with the delegitimation of American power under Bush, NATO sees an opportunity. What unites humanitarian crises, terrorism, global warming, and failed states is that they all seem like problems that can't be resolved within the existing architecture of international law and institutions. An institution that projects power, emotes pure strength, gives the impression it can bring order to the political chaos. Enter the nuclear posture - strategically useless, politically useful. In fact, NATO is no more able to bring order than the US or UN because the disorder is more the product of international political confusion than serious threats. Major wars are down, so is the violence from civil wars, and terrorism just does not kill very many people. What threats that do exist are more appropriately handled by low-level police efforts and reasonable international laws than NATO nukes. A sheer show of strength is no substitute for political purpose, nor does it even bring minimal security. To justify its posture, NATO will no doubt wish to prove its strength - which means an inappropriate show of force somewhere, an intervention that will increase the very chaos it wishes to suppress.
Monday, January 21, 2008
What Does Climate Skeptic Mean?
Climate-Resistance has a post this week on the problem with separating the climate change debate into skeptic and believers, and why this leads to problems with the website I recommended called Climate Debate Daily. While I think CDD is still a very useful website, C-R makes a good point: "One of our main quibbles with the way the climate change debate is presented is precisely that the IPCC "consensus" belies a broad range of nuanced positions and arguments - both scientific and political - as does the so-called sceptic camp." A comment to the C-R post illustrates the problem. Roger Pielke Sr., who has done very important work on the social impact of natural disasters, among other things, and who runs an important blog is classified on CDD as a 'skeptic.' What makes him a skeptic? He believes that some warming is due to human emission of greenhouse gases and supports the development of alternative energy. He just doesn't believe that global warming deserves to be treated as an imminent crisis, and doesn't support an emphasis on greenhouse gas reductions. In other words, it is his political position, not his scientific beliefs, that make him a 'skeptic.' That he doesn't toe-the-line with climate ideology, rather than climate science, is what makes him a skeptic. When a political debate is divides into religious categories - 'skeptic' and 'believer' - we already know there will be more heat than light. But in this case, what makes the issue even worse, is that the line between science and politics is blurred by this religious language. The political position is seen to derive directly from the science, when it shouldn't, and disputing either the science *or* the politics is seen as a violating the same general orthodoxy.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
What do we remember about Katrina?
Immediately after Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi, devastating New Orleans, there was a sudden uptick of interest in the relationship between race and urban poverty. An all too brief, but worthy, debate over whether at heart, the loss of thousands of homes, failed evacuation, and governmental unresponsiveness was a race issue or a class issue. Adolph Reed's excellent piece in The Nation, soon after Katrina, made some of the best points during the immediate, post-disaster reaction:
"Class will almost certainly turn out to be a better predictor than race of who was able to evacuate, who drowned, who was left to fester in the Superdome or on overpasses, who is stuck in shelters in Houston or Baton Rouge, or who is randomly dispersed to the four winds. I'm certain that class is also a better predictor than race of whose emotional attachments to place will be factored into plans for reconstructing the city."
More telling, however, than the struggle to determine the relationship between race and class in the whole affair, is how rapidly this political debate was eclipsed by an altogether different debate. Within a few weeks, once the immediate images of poor blacks struggling to find shelter faded off the front pages, and once the main papers had pushed inside the stories about how those who had evacuated could not return, or did not want to because there were no jobs or money for reconstruction, and because the city government was organizing reconstruction in a way that kept the poor and jobless out. Once these stories disappeared, it became socially acceptable to replace these issues, which raised awkward questions that most in the mainstream just didn't want to face, with a more familiar hobbyhorse: global warming.
Katrina factored heavily in Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth, in which he claimed we would see more Katrina's in the future. In fact, even before his movie hit the theaters, and only a few weeks after the hurricane had hit New Orleans, Gore was already giving speeches about how the real lesson of Katrina is that we should "deal with the underlying causes of global warming." The lesson, then, was not underdevelopment and poverty in the most developed country on earth, it was not about social inequality and the long slow decline of so many American cities after the fiscal crisis of state and city governments in the 1970s - a decline that halted so many kinds of public investment. The lesson wasn't even really that a bit better investment in reinforcing the levees would have done the trick. No, that would have been too specific and appropriate to the tragedy. Instead, the most lasting interpretation of Katrina has been that it's a lesson in the perils of industrial development, and the rapidity with which we must move away from universalizing that goal to all areas and people - within and across nations.
This despite the fact that even Gore admitted that Katrina itself could not be blamed on global warming, as the effects of actually man-made warming are still too faint to be detected in extreme weather events like hurricanes. In fact, the science is even more ambiguous than that. Over at a new blog I discovered, there is a discussion of a recent scientific paper in the Journal of Climate, which warns against concluding that just because there have been a few stronger, landfalling hurricanes in the 1990s, that this will increase with global warming: "Although it would be inappropriate for us to suggest that there is no linkage between global warming and hurricanes, it’s similar inappropriate to summarily dismiss the role of natural cycles in hurricane behavior."
Really, I don't want to quibble over the science at that level, because it's not the most crucial point. What bothers me more is the way in which the global warming argument replaced the inequality discussion, and was used to draw exactly the opposite conclusions one might if one's major concern were poverty and underdevelopment. It would be better to remember what happened after Katrina as a social disaster, rather than a natural disaster. Social disasters demand political responses, rather than produce "moral imperatives." These are political responses that require us to think about the kinds of conflicts of interest, long-standing problems of social organization and inequality, which tend to get washed away in the blind panic about "moral imperatives to face global warming." Moreover, it is just more accurate to understand Katrina as a social disaster. Had New Orleans been richer, with a larger budget, and more politically engaged public, much of what happened could have been avoided, both because long-term problems (like strengthening levees) would not have been as severe, and short-term response would have been more effective. Indeed, asking so many cities in the third world not partake of the industrialization process that allows them to build dams and levees in the first place, only leaves them as or more vulnerable to hurricanes, no matter what their natural cause. If anything, concluding that Katrina teaches us the dangers of industrialization only threatens to repeat the tragedy, rather than help us go beyond it.
"Class will almost certainly turn out to be a better predictor than race of who was able to evacuate, who drowned, who was left to fester in the Superdome or on overpasses, who is stuck in shelters in Houston or Baton Rouge, or who is randomly dispersed to the four winds. I'm certain that class is also a better predictor than race of whose emotional attachments to place will be factored into plans for reconstructing the city."
More telling, however, than the struggle to determine the relationship between race and class in the whole affair, is how rapidly this political debate was eclipsed by an altogether different debate. Within a few weeks, once the immediate images of poor blacks struggling to find shelter faded off the front pages, and once the main papers had pushed inside the stories about how those who had evacuated could not return, or did not want to because there were no jobs or money for reconstruction, and because the city government was organizing reconstruction in a way that kept the poor and jobless out. Once these stories disappeared, it became socially acceptable to replace these issues, which raised awkward questions that most in the mainstream just didn't want to face, with a more familiar hobbyhorse: global warming.
Katrina factored heavily in Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth, in which he claimed we would see more Katrina's in the future. In fact, even before his movie hit the theaters, and only a few weeks after the hurricane had hit New Orleans, Gore was already giving speeches about how the real lesson of Katrina is that we should "deal with the underlying causes of global warming." The lesson, then, was not underdevelopment and poverty in the most developed country on earth, it was not about social inequality and the long slow decline of so many American cities after the fiscal crisis of state and city governments in the 1970s - a decline that halted so many kinds of public investment. The lesson wasn't even really that a bit better investment in reinforcing the levees would have done the trick. No, that would have been too specific and appropriate to the tragedy. Instead, the most lasting interpretation of Katrina has been that it's a lesson in the perils of industrial development, and the rapidity with which we must move away from universalizing that goal to all areas and people - within and across nations.
This despite the fact that even Gore admitted that Katrina itself could not be blamed on global warming, as the effects of actually man-made warming are still too faint to be detected in extreme weather events like hurricanes. In fact, the science is even more ambiguous than that. Over at a new blog I discovered, there is a discussion of a recent scientific paper in the Journal of Climate, which warns against concluding that just because there have been a few stronger, landfalling hurricanes in the 1990s, that this will increase with global warming: "Although it would be inappropriate for us to suggest that there is no linkage between global warming and hurricanes, it’s similar inappropriate to summarily dismiss the role of natural cycles in hurricane behavior."
Really, I don't want to quibble over the science at that level, because it's not the most crucial point. What bothers me more is the way in which the global warming argument replaced the inequality discussion, and was used to draw exactly the opposite conclusions one might if one's major concern were poverty and underdevelopment. It would be better to remember what happened after Katrina as a social disaster, rather than a natural disaster. Social disasters demand political responses, rather than produce "moral imperatives." These are political responses that require us to think about the kinds of conflicts of interest, long-standing problems of social organization and inequality, which tend to get washed away in the blind panic about "moral imperatives to face global warming." Moreover, it is just more accurate to understand Katrina as a social disaster. Had New Orleans been richer, with a larger budget, and more politically engaged public, much of what happened could have been avoided, both because long-term problems (like strengthening levees) would not have been as severe, and short-term response would have been more effective. Indeed, asking so many cities in the third world not partake of the industrialization process that allows them to build dams and levees in the first place, only leaves them as or more vulnerable to hurricanes, no matter what their natural cause. If anything, concluding that Katrina teaches us the dangers of industrialization only threatens to repeat the tragedy, rather than help us go beyond it.
Friday, January 18, 2008
The Visionary Minimalist?
Over at TNR, Cass Sunstein has a very good article about Obama. I say very good because it helps prove a point I have been making to my pro-Obama friends that Obama is actually pretty conservative. Sunstein’s general argument is that Obama is a minimalist when it comes to thinking about constitutional issues, or really issues of fundamental importance to us all. Minimalists “gravitate toward the least controversial grounds” for deciding cases and reject “sweeping theories about equality and the Constitution's commander-in-chief clause.” Whatever the merits or demerits this attitude has as a theory of how to be a Supreme Court Justice, when translated into the attitudes of a political leader, it’s a recipe for middle-of-the-road pragmatism that is the opposite of real change. I think phrases like the following are perfect examples:
“Like all minimalists, Obama believes that real change usually requires consensus, learning, and accommodation--a belief directly reflected in many of his policies.”
This is a true statement only if real change means not very much change at all. Obama is doing to the word change what advertising does to the word revolution. Ride on the back of his radical connotation, while giving it a conservative denotation. The stuff on Obama’s economics is another good example. The EITC is a canard, the minimum wage actually useful to labor.
Of course, this makes no sense. If your first step is to reject big transformative ideas, the idea of conflict in politics, and taking a side; in other words, if what makes you a minimalist is first affirming the fundamental soundness of the status quo; then what kind of change is really possible within those boundaries? This is barely even reformism.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
The 'Facts' of Climate Change?
Andrew Revkin, the NYTimes' major climate reporter, has a post on "basic facets" of the climate debate that "are not in reasonable dispute." He sees this as a "foundation for weighing policies" and for shifting "this discussion away from unresolvable whipsaw debates." It's a good post, and it reveals a number of things that are wrong with the climate change debate - though in ways I don't think Revkin intended.
First, nothing is gained by calling something indisputable. If it's indisputable, then nobody will dispute it. If someone disputes it, then it is disputable, and calling indisputable is a debater's trick, aimed at making the disputer look crazy, irrelevant or immoral. Phrases like "the science is over" are not only not true - climate science at all levels is still underdeveloped and evolving - but are generally pitched to favor a political position ('the globe is in crisis!'), rather than scientific conclusion. It is in that category of rhetorical devices that include calling someone a 'climate-denier,' as if to disagree with environmentalists were the moral equivalent of holocaust denial. To his credit, Revkin is trying to avoid the worst of this, but his list reproduces it nonetheless.
Second, though the list initially presents itself as ten scientific conclusions, it fast bleeds into social and moral arguments that are even more disputable than scientific facts. The first facet, it is true, is scientific - "carbon dioxide is a heat-trapping gas." But by point 4 we start to see a blurring of the lines:
"Coal is still abundant, has helped today’s industrial powers become rich, and is helping poorer countries grow their economies. But it comes with significant environmental and social costs (scoured landscapes, carbon dioxide, around 4,000 deaths a year in Chinese mines, tens of thousands of premature deaths from respiratory ailments linked to sooty pollution)."
Point five is similar:
"Oil is still reasonably abundant and fairly cheap, but comes with a large external price tag including international conflict, pollution, and (of course) carbon dioxide."
To take just one way in which these are not mere (and indisputable) scientific facts, there is no reason why the very existence of coal mining causes mining deaths. That is dependent not upon the properties of coal, but upon the way the Chinese organize coal mining. If workers were better represented politically, and had more control over the mining process, and had safer mining technology, I'm sure 4000 wouldn't die a year. Moreover, there are indeed negative externalities to fossil fuel production and use. However, there are also numerous positive externalities. Cheap energy allows people greater mobility, more leisure time at night, and to be emancipated from various kinds of toil and drudgery because automated tools can take their place. It allows people to cool their homes during the summer, and warm their homes during the winter, both of which contribute substantially to reducing temperature related morbidity. Indeed, the most significant relationship between industrialization (on the back of fossil fuel) and health is the radical improvement in life expectancy. Just this century, worldwide life expectancy has more than doubled, an unprecedented improvement in human history. So too have other health factors like height and weight.* It is simply a prejudice common to environmentalist arguments about pollution and fossil fuels that most of the intended effects of using coal and oil are positive but most of the unintended effects are negative. It is also an unfounded assumption, and unworthy moral judgment, that somehow the benefits are mainly wasteful luxuries (driving big cars around, jet-setting across the globe, keeping the houselights on, having plenty of consumer products) while the negative externalities are mainly bad for sheer survival (war, cancer, respiratory disease.) It's much more complex than that. Moreover, all this can't be appreciated unless we acknowledge that a number of social issues and moral ideas are being smuggled in here as 'indisputable facts.'
Finally, there is nothing wrong with talking about the science of climate change. That is one area where there should be vigorous discussion, because the facts are one dimension of the debate. But as I intend to demonstrate in future posts, I don't think the facts, even if we agreed on them, would settle very much at all about what we should do. That is to say, for the sake of argument, let's say the conclusions of the IPCC about the science of climate change really were the indisputable truth. This science would be unable to tell us what our political response should be. That is because the science is only one dimension of the argument. There are serious differences over matters of moral principle and social organization that are also at stake. Whether we should invest time, money and energy into mitigation vs. adaptation strategies - reducing greenhouse gas emissions or developing technologies to adapt to climate change - raises social and political questions that simply are not the domain of natural science. I think that thinking through all the dimensions of climate change suggest we should not invest in mitigation strategies, but rather in technologies that help us adapt to climate change, in and political reforms that make society more equal. In this post, I can't substantiate that claim. But what is clear enough is that the science, even when distinguished from other matters, doesn't actually take us as far as people would like it to.
I will get the exact, page number reference for these figures in the next week - I left the book at the office!
First, nothing is gained by calling something indisputable. If it's indisputable, then nobody will dispute it. If someone disputes it, then it is disputable, and calling indisputable is a debater's trick, aimed at making the disputer look crazy, irrelevant or immoral. Phrases like "the science is over" are not only not true - climate science at all levels is still underdeveloped and evolving - but are generally pitched to favor a political position ('the globe is in crisis!'), rather than scientific conclusion. It is in that category of rhetorical devices that include calling someone a 'climate-denier,' as if to disagree with environmentalists were the moral equivalent of holocaust denial. To his credit, Revkin is trying to avoid the worst of this, but his list reproduces it nonetheless.
Second, though the list initially presents itself as ten scientific conclusions, it fast bleeds into social and moral arguments that are even more disputable than scientific facts. The first facet, it is true, is scientific - "carbon dioxide is a heat-trapping gas." But by point 4 we start to see a blurring of the lines:
"Coal is still abundant, has helped today’s industrial powers become rich, and is helping poorer countries grow their economies. But it comes with significant environmental and social costs (scoured landscapes, carbon dioxide, around 4,000 deaths a year in Chinese mines, tens of thousands of premature deaths from respiratory ailments linked to sooty pollution)."
Point five is similar:
"Oil is still reasonably abundant and fairly cheap, but comes with a large external price tag including international conflict, pollution, and (of course) carbon dioxide."
To take just one way in which these are not mere (and indisputable) scientific facts, there is no reason why the very existence of coal mining causes mining deaths. That is dependent not upon the properties of coal, but upon the way the Chinese organize coal mining. If workers were better represented politically, and had more control over the mining process, and had safer mining technology, I'm sure 4000 wouldn't die a year. Moreover, there are indeed negative externalities to fossil fuel production and use. However, there are also numerous positive externalities. Cheap energy allows people greater mobility, more leisure time at night, and to be emancipated from various kinds of toil and drudgery because automated tools can take their place. It allows people to cool their homes during the summer, and warm their homes during the winter, both of which contribute substantially to reducing temperature related morbidity. Indeed, the most significant relationship between industrialization (on the back of fossil fuel) and health is the radical improvement in life expectancy. Just this century, worldwide life expectancy has more than doubled, an unprecedented improvement in human history. So too have other health factors like height and weight.* It is simply a prejudice common to environmentalist arguments about pollution and fossil fuels that most of the intended effects of using coal and oil are positive but most of the unintended effects are negative. It is also an unfounded assumption, and unworthy moral judgment, that somehow the benefits are mainly wasteful luxuries (driving big cars around, jet-setting across the globe, keeping the houselights on, having plenty of consumer products) while the negative externalities are mainly bad for sheer survival (war, cancer, respiratory disease.) It's much more complex than that. Moreover, all this can't be appreciated unless we acknowledge that a number of social issues and moral ideas are being smuggled in here as 'indisputable facts.'
Finally, there is nothing wrong with talking about the science of climate change. That is one area where there should be vigorous discussion, because the facts are one dimension of the debate. But as I intend to demonstrate in future posts, I don't think the facts, even if we agreed on them, would settle very much at all about what we should do. That is to say, for the sake of argument, let's say the conclusions of the IPCC about the science of climate change really were the indisputable truth. This science would be unable to tell us what our political response should be. That is because the science is only one dimension of the argument. There are serious differences over matters of moral principle and social organization that are also at stake. Whether we should invest time, money and energy into mitigation vs. adaptation strategies - reducing greenhouse gas emissions or developing technologies to adapt to climate change - raises social and political questions that simply are not the domain of natural science. I think that thinking through all the dimensions of climate change suggest we should not invest in mitigation strategies, but rather in technologies that help us adapt to climate change, in and political reforms that make society more equal. In this post, I can't substantiate that claim. But what is clear enough is that the science, even when distinguished from other matters, doesn't actually take us as far as people would like it to.
I will get the exact, page number reference for these figures in the next week - I left the book at the office!
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
What Climate Science?
A number of useful links and sites. First, an interesting review of Bjorn Lomborg's Cool it!, which is basically his corrective to exaggerated claims often made about the consequences of climate change. One interesting factoid from the review: "to achieve the scale or sea level rise discussed by Gore [in Inconvenient Truth] would require figures ‘40 times higher than the absolutely highest model estimate and an astounding 174 times higher that [sic] the average’." Second, Arts and Letters Daily has set up a great new website called Climate Debate Daily, which posts links to all sides of the climate change debate. Third, my favorite website on the climate change debate is Climate-Resistance, and not just because they have come up with the best title in a cliche heavy debate. (exhibit A: 'Cool It').
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Too Damn Many of US!
If we were to rank the most common arguments environmentalists use to prove that our civilization has fallen into a decadent, self-destructive haze of over-consumption, global warming would have to rank first. But running a close second, and deeply intertwined with the first, is the 'limited resources argument.' Consider this rather depressing and mopish roundtable on the population and the "consequences of overconsumption." The general argument is that there are not enough natural resources to sustain so many of us consuming at such a high level. Some environmentalists make this argument, but see in renewable energy and other technologies the potential for resolving this problem. However, if the natural limits to growth argument is taken seriously, one must reach more drastic conclusions. This, for instance, is what two of the panelists conclude:
"It'll be impossible for renewables to satisfy the energy needs of high- or even medium-income countries after fossil fuel and uranium resources have been depleted. Even if self-sustaining nuclear power becomes viable, a world without artificial fertilizers, air transport, and other essential petroleum products will be incapable of sustaining even today's population. It follows that a sustainable future is only possible through a combination of reducing consumer numbers and per-capita consumption. Indeed, the situation is now so serious that it makes little sense to talk about slowing population growth unless in the context of taking the first step toward reversing it."
Good thing we don't have to take this argument seriously! I don't mean we don't have to take it seriously because these guys represent an irrelevant lunatic fringe. Quite the opposite. They are just willing to carry to its logical conclusion an argument that is shared by many: the idea that there are natural limits to growth, which mankind has exceeded. This is an old idea. The British conservative, Thomas Malthus, believed there was not enough land upon which to grow the food needed to sustain a rapidly growing population. He though agricultural productivity grew only arithmetically, while population grew geometrically. In fact, technological advances have led to exponential improvements in agricultural productivity - so much so that many industrial countries have been taking land out of cultivation because it's simply no longer needed. Since Malthus, there have been repeated attempts to prove that there are natural limits to growth. The peak oil thesis, first proposed in the 1960s, held that there would be a peak amount of oil, after which oil supplies would rapidly start to dry up. Soon there wouldn't be adequate sources of energy to sustain the current industrial societies, let alone the industrialization of undeveloped countries. Yet there is more oil available now than there was in the 1960s, mainly because new prospecting, drilling and extraction technologies have increased discovery and the ability to extract oil where it wasn't possible before. And there are numerous other ways of producing energy, with nuclear the most obvious candidate for powering an industrial society. There have been similar scares about metal supplies, but here too the possibility for innovation is expansive. Indeed, it is quite possible some day we will get our metals from the more or less infinite supply floating around in the universe.
From each of the examples emerges a general point. When it comes to natural limits, there has always been a technological, or really a cluster of technological, solutions. We have always "been getting more from the earth than it gives up." That's why, each time nature presents an apparent limit - be it gravity or drought - we have been able to push past it. To say there are 'too many of us' is not just to adopt a misanthropic attitude, but simply to get history wrong. Or really, it's just dressing misanthropy up in bad economics and worse science.
"It'll be impossible for renewables to satisfy the energy needs of high- or even medium-income countries after fossil fuel and uranium resources have been depleted. Even if self-sustaining nuclear power becomes viable, a world without artificial fertilizers, air transport, and other essential petroleum products will be incapable of sustaining even today's population. It follows that a sustainable future is only possible through a combination of reducing consumer numbers and per-capita consumption. Indeed, the situation is now so serious that it makes little sense to talk about slowing population growth unless in the context of taking the first step toward reversing it."
Good thing we don't have to take this argument seriously! I don't mean we don't have to take it seriously because these guys represent an irrelevant lunatic fringe. Quite the opposite. They are just willing to carry to its logical conclusion an argument that is shared by many: the idea that there are natural limits to growth, which mankind has exceeded. This is an old idea. The British conservative, Thomas Malthus, believed there was not enough land upon which to grow the food needed to sustain a rapidly growing population. He though agricultural productivity grew only arithmetically, while population grew geometrically. In fact, technological advances have led to exponential improvements in agricultural productivity - so much so that many industrial countries have been taking land out of cultivation because it's simply no longer needed. Since Malthus, there have been repeated attempts to prove that there are natural limits to growth. The peak oil thesis, first proposed in the 1960s, held that there would be a peak amount of oil, after which oil supplies would rapidly start to dry up. Soon there wouldn't be adequate sources of energy to sustain the current industrial societies, let alone the industrialization of undeveloped countries. Yet there is more oil available now than there was in the 1960s, mainly because new prospecting, drilling and extraction technologies have increased discovery and the ability to extract oil where it wasn't possible before. And there are numerous other ways of producing energy, with nuclear the most obvious candidate for powering an industrial society. There have been similar scares about metal supplies, but here too the possibility for innovation is expansive. Indeed, it is quite possible some day we will get our metals from the more or less infinite supply floating around in the universe.
From each of the examples emerges a general point. When it comes to natural limits, there has always been a technological, or really a cluster of technological, solutions. We have always "been getting more from the earth than it gives up." That's why, each time nature presents an apparent limit - be it gravity or drought - we have been able to push past it. To say there are 'too many of us' is not just to adopt a misanthropic attitude, but simply to get history wrong. Or really, it's just dressing misanthropy up in bad economics and worse science.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Obama, Hillary, Civil Rights
I hope to stay away from too much of the electoral nattering, as I find most of it frustratingly narrow and gossipy. My main interest is in pushing political discussion beyond the narrow parameters of electoral promises and compromises. But it would be perverse to ignore electoral politics in an election year. So let me just say something about the idiotic media game around Hillary's comments and Obama's response to her comments on Martin Luther King Jr. Much like Hillary's much-hyped emotional moment just before the New Hampshire primaries, this another superficial non-issue that nonetheless might have some impact on the elections. Whether Hillary mischaracterized the civil rights movement, and LBJ's role in it, is somewhat besides the point. No doubt she did do so, and to further her own campaign image by trying to reflect the positive glow of civil rights off the dull metal of 'experience' and 'competence.'
But that Obama should gain by this is what rankles. Obama looks good only in the negative, as somewhat who didn't make quite such a crude attempt to connect his candidacy to remembrance of things past. Yet his coy game of denying any attempt to exploit Hillary's minor gaffe while aggressively commenting all the while on how he's not commenting, is just as opportunistic. Obama is trying to play to an image, of the authentic bearer of progress, including a real inheritor of the civil rights legacy, without any of the substance. There is absolutely no reason to believe Obama will make a serious attempt to deal with the most serious issues facing Blacks in America. Despite his community-organizing past, Obama has never done much beyond defend some kind of affirmative action. We have never seen him take any meaningful legislative initiative on the truly messed up criminal justice system, poverty, the decline of well-paying industrial jobs, crappy school systems, which is to say, any of the structural problems that face most African-Americans. In fact, whenever I raise this issue with pro-Obama friends, they have to point to his past as a community-organizer and a as a constitutional law professor, but can't identify anything meaningful in his legislative record - which is surely what should matter. In fact his voting record in the Senate is truly unremarkable. Obama is happy to catch the benefit of an impolitic remark by Hillary, but he's all image.
My point is that a superficial debate over a campaign comment, and symbolic positions between the two comments, gets all kinds of play, but their actual positions do not. It would behoove us not to fall prey to the narrow way in which the candidates, and the media bloodhounds, present the issue. When one gets down to the nitty-gritties, the fact of the matter is neither candidate will do much of anything when it comes to the problems of today that are analogous to the issues faced during the civil rights movement.
But that Obama should gain by this is what rankles. Obama looks good only in the negative, as somewhat who didn't make quite such a crude attempt to connect his candidacy to remembrance of things past. Yet his coy game of denying any attempt to exploit Hillary's minor gaffe while aggressively commenting all the while on how he's not commenting, is just as opportunistic. Obama is trying to play to an image, of the authentic bearer of progress, including a real inheritor of the civil rights legacy, without any of the substance. There is absolutely no reason to believe Obama will make a serious attempt to deal with the most serious issues facing Blacks in America. Despite his community-organizing past, Obama has never done much beyond defend some kind of affirmative action. We have never seen him take any meaningful legislative initiative on the truly messed up criminal justice system, poverty, the decline of well-paying industrial jobs, crappy school systems, which is to say, any of the structural problems that face most African-Americans. In fact, whenever I raise this issue with pro-Obama friends, they have to point to his past as a community-organizer and a as a constitutional law professor, but can't identify anything meaningful in his legislative record - which is surely what should matter. In fact his voting record in the Senate is truly unremarkable. Obama is happy to catch the benefit of an impolitic remark by Hillary, but he's all image.
My point is that a superficial debate over a campaign comment, and symbolic positions between the two comments, gets all kinds of play, but their actual positions do not. It would behoove us not to fall prey to the narrow way in which the candidates, and the media bloodhounds, present the issue. When one gets down to the nitty-gritties, the fact of the matter is neither candidate will do much of anything when it comes to the problems of today that are analogous to the issues faced during the civil rights movement.
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