Emphasis Added

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Strong Executives, Bad Decisions

So I finally made my way to the end of The Power Broker, Robert Caro�s cinderblock-sized biography of New York�s master builder Robert Moses. Over a 40 year career, Moses built most of the parks, freeways, public works and housing projects in New York City and Long Island. He did all this from a series of innocuous-sounding, unelected positions (Parks Commissioner, chairman of the Triborough Bridge Authority, etc.) that, by clever design, put him beyond the reach of politics while giving him unquestioned control over huge piles of public money. Possessed of undeniable genius and drive, Moses was apparently also an arrogant, power-hungry bastard who stopped at nothing to get his way and destroyed the careers of anyone who opposed him. And this raises interesting questions about the relationship of power and temperament. Is great power always prone to abuse?

Caro�s book, written in the early 1970s right after Moses was finally driven from office and his reputation was at its nadir, positively drips with outrage. This takes two forms: first, lamenting the squandered potential of many Moses projects, which turned out to do almost irreparable harm to New York�s physical and social fabric (exhibit A: the Cross-Bronx Expressway), and second, decrying Moses�s abuse of the democratic system that allowed him to exercise power without accountability.

With Nixon in the White House, Vietnam still raging, and the damage wrought by Moses on New York at its most egregious, Caro certainly had good reasons to fear the power of an unaccountable executive. To me, however, the tragedy of Moses was not his lust for power, but the flawed ends to which that power was put. It seemed to me that much of the damage done to New York by various Moses projects was the result of capricious decisions regarding implementation, not the abuse of power per se.

It seems to me, for example, that if you could get the Gowanus Expressway built in the first place, you could just as easily have ran it down Second avenue as Third and preserved important parts of Brooklyn as a result. Moses already did the hard part � finding the money, doing the engineering, obtaining the property for the project and displacing the homes and businesses along its route. But again and again, when faced with questions about specific execution, Moses made decisions that resulted in gratuitous harm for the smallest of reasons. As Caro makes clear, Moses by his nature did not consider the social costs of any of his projects. Still, all other things being equal, there were literally dozens of cases where the social and logistical objectives of the projects were not necessarily in conflict; indeed, the desired engineering effect might have been better achieved with fuller consideration of the total environmental impact.

Obviously, a great deal of the wanton destruction caused by Moses was the result of simple venality. Caro convincingly suggests that Moses ran a stretch of the Cross-Bronx Expressway through the heart of the East Tremont neighborhood, displacing thousands of long-time residents and effectively rendering the entire area a bombed-out slum, because some of his political backers had a financial interest in a bus terminal sited along an alternate route. Since Moses relied on these kinds of situations to maintain his own power (as any public official does), a certain amount of decisions were clearly taken on the basis of special interest influence rather than public good.

But not all of them, and that�s the frustrating part. Caro paints a picture of Moses as a man of nearly inhuman talent and drive, who, while indifferent to aspects of public welfare, was not maliciously hostile to it. He wanted to build grand projects that solved public problems � recreation, transportation, housing � and he was surpassingly good at it. He was perhaps unfortunately susceptible to influence and vain and arrogant to a fault, but he had propelled himself to a position of power unprecedented in a democracy from which he could realize his vision. He just made mistakes, of a sort that a man of his intelligence should have known better than to make.

I�m left wondering at the end of The Power Broker if there is a necessary connection between a strong-willed executive and bad decisions. Caro clearly seems to think there is. His explanation for the flaws of Moses�s approach is that Moses himself was rigid in his intellectual views and insulated from day-to-day reality by the trappings of power, to the extent that his grand plans eventually had no relationship to the problems they were purporting to solve. But a lot of that had to do with Moses�s own temperament rather than his position and power. He was impatient with discussions, hated to be questioned, and believed he had all the answers. Consequently, he took every opportunity to avoid inquiry into his activities, meaning he never heard (or never listened to) arguments that would have allowed him to address problems in his designs that later played out as disastrous unintended consequences for New York.

Compare this with his contemporary and one-time boss, Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt had a transformative vision and activist agenda at least as ambitious as that of Moses, and certainly delighted in the exercise of power. Both men were iron-willed, impatient, impulsive and arose from a background of privilege and entitlement (which is possibly why they hated each other so much). True, Roosevelt was elected and accountable to the public, but he governed with such huge majorities in the 1930s and with war powers in the 1940s, that, for all intents and purposes, he had nearly as much freedom of action as Moses did in his shadowy chairmanships.

And yet, Roosevelt didn�t encounter the same kinds of problems as Moses. His record of success was just as mixed, but his mistakes were not as profound or permanent. It seems to me that a lot of that had to do with the way Roosevelt approached problems. He deliberately staffed his cabinet with people of different viewpoints and gave them overlapping responsibilities. He encouraged debate, weighed arguments, and allowed himself to be convinced by facts and logic rather than presuming to know the answers in advance. The early days of the New Deal were famously chaotic and improvisatory, but the advantage was that the unsuccessful programs were quickly rooted out or changed. At the same time, no one accused Roosevelt of being wishy-washy. Because of his personality, he was able to view his decisions and their effects with detachment, with a commitment to producing the best results, not just being right. Several of our other great presidents � Lincoln and Washington come to mind � were both successful and decisive using this same style of leadership.

So to me, it�s not inevitable that powerful executives have to be closed-minded control freaks. There�s no causal connection between the will necessary to obtain and exercise power and the kind of vain, brittle arrogance that brings well-intentioned plans to defeat. It�s just a matter of luck and circumstance. Sometimes we get the right kind of people in charge at the right time and they use the unusual power vested in them by circumstances to do great things. Other times, power falls into the hands of flawed, damaged creatures and, in exercising it for great ends, do great harm.

10:22:36 AM

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Friday, March 25, 2005

An Inevitable Surprise

One of my primary frustrations with the Bush foreign policy is that, almost from the very beginning, their true motives and objectives were buried under a thick coat of deception and double-talk. It was impossible to discuss something like the invasion of Iraq on the merits because all we got from the Administration was a drumbeat of lies about WMDs and transparently-false allegations of terrorist connections to Al Qaeda, sprinkled with some highly-selective outrage over Saddam�s bestial regime. In posts leading up to the war in 2002 and 2003, I struggled with this problem of trying to suss out the underlying rationale: was it economic, geopolitical, oil-related? It was, and remains, inconceivable to me that America would pursue the course that it has since 9/11 without at least some kind of a guiding framework with some connection to reality, even if that framework were rooted in principles that were too venal and self-interested to discuss publicly.

To the extent that neo-cons have articulated their aims clearly, in things like the PNAC manifesto, it is possible to gain some insights into the ideology that many see as motivating our actions since 2001. However, what troubles me about neo-con ideology in foreign affairs isn�t necessarily their objectives so much as their shockingly naïve and unrealistic view of the world. If they really believe in empire and the imposition of democracy by force � an arguable policy at best � they will never get there based on the poor grasp of basic international relations and faulty reasoning displayed in their writings and candid public utterances. Foreign policy experts left, right and center, from Madeline Albright and Zbigniew Brzezinski to Brent Scowcroft and James Baker, have strongly challenged the neo-con model not out of disagreement with its ultimate goals of American aggrandizement (which all but the Chomsky-Left and Buchanan-Right share), but on the basis of its erroneous assumptions and proven inability to deliver on its promises.

In short, the lack of coherence and policy rigor inherent in the neo-con worldview seemed destined to doom it to failure, or at least make it considerably more difficult to execute than any of its proponents believed. Events have shown this to be largely true. At the same time, though they are wrong abut a lot, they are not wrong about everything, and there is virtue in their objective of promoting stability in the most chaotic regions of the world through democratization. That said, it remains baffling why, if Bush sincerely believes in the principles of neo-conservatism, he has not executed the vision with more competence, or made more than the weakest efforts to extend American leadership in dimensions other than pure military force.

Like most who disagree with the Bush Administration on these matters, I attribute these failings to Bush�s basic weakness as a man and a leader. He is simply too narrow-minded, stubborn and insecure to venture far from the certainties of his ideology and temperament, even if a show of diplomacy will help him achieve his long-term objectives more readily than petulance and swagger. He�s also too much in the grip of short-term political thinking, and the need to satisfy the unsophisticated extremist base of the GOP, to venture too far afield even as a tactical matter.

Because this simple explanation fits the facts and is supported by ample evidence, I am inclined to agree with it, but I remain willing to consider other arguments if they are convincing. And as it happens, in the course of doing some research for a work-related project, I stumbled across what must be the most coherent, reasonable and persuasive rationale for both neo-conservative goals and Bush�s heavy-handed tactics that I have heard from any quarter.

The source is a book called Inevitable Surprises: Thinking Ahead in a Time of Turbulance, by Peter Schwartz. Schwartz is a renowned futurist: founder of the consulting firm Global Business Network, author of The Art of the Long View (which expounds on GBN�s methodology of scenario-planning), advisor to the Hart-Rudman Terrorism Panel which, in the spring of 2001, released a report that described the possibility of terrorists flying hijacked commercial airliners into the World Trade Center, and all-around smart guy. I heard him present last fall at the GBN Summit, where he articulately defended his optimistic view of the future against a very skeptical and well-informed audience.

Anyway, in Inevitable Surprises, which was published in 2003 around the time of the Iraq invasion, Schwartz places Bush�s unwillingness to engage with international institutions in the context of political, economic, historical and demographic trends in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. He points out that the Clinton administration was making similar efforts to unwind from Cold War multilateralism � efforts that were much more sub-rosa because Clinton talked the talk and appeared slightly less venal in his pursuit of American interests, but nonetheless shared many of the same assumptions and objectives of the neo-cons. He strikingly suggests that a President Gore may have been put in the same situation with respect to Iraq, and been forced to pursue much the same course as Bush, right down to the failure to be candid with the American people and the international community as to the true objectives. Schwartz is even able to convincingly explain Star Wars (SDI) and how what seems to be an antedated relic of the Cold War era actually fits into a 21^st century defense doctrine that is in fact shared by a broad consensus of Congressional Democrats as well as Republicans.

His points about the economic, political and demographic fate of Europe are especially interesting to those of us on the moderate Left who view the EU as having gotten it right in terms of diplomatic, economic, environmental and lifestyle issues. While not disagreeing with that, Schwartz points out what it means to have, for the first time in recorded history, an entire European continent that is irrelevant militarily.

Schwartz does not seem to be a partisan, and his analysis is almost entirely free of contentious, politically-provocative language. It�s written in the reasoned style of a Bay Area cosmopolitan (which he is), without the PC biases and annoying finger-wagging of many liberals on this subject.

Agree with his conclusions or not, Schwartz and his perspective are worth considering. And it would be nice if he were right, because the picture he paints is a long-ways more hopeful than anything I would bet on.

(Note: There should really be more links in this post, but I don�t have time. Google the items that interest you, as there is plenty more on this subject on the Web)

8:50:30 AM

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Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Book �Em

Rayne was kind enough to provide a topic for today�s post, passed to her from Neva. It�s a questionnaire having to do with books and reading, something I�m doing a lot of lately. So, for anyone interested, here are the questions and my answers.

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. I�m gonna get burned anyway. Why settle for the lesser evil?

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Caddie Compson, the doomed sister in Faulkner�s Sound and the Fury, always intrigued me, although we only dimly perceive her through the ravings of the four (male) narrators (plus, I was 16 at the time, at an all-boys school. A mysterious Southern belle sounded kinda sexy). Also, Case Pollard from William Gibson�s recent Pattern Recognition. Nothing like a no-nonsense chick with a cool job.

The last book you bought was?

A stack of them just today, actually, although they�re for business. Richard Florida�s Rise of the Creative Class and No Collar: The Humane Workplace and Its Hidden Costs by Andrew Ross appear to be the more interesting ones.

The last book you read was?

The last book I read for pleasure was The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, an extremely enjoyable account of the Chicago World�s Fair of 1893 and the serial killer who operated in Chicago at the same time. Reads like fiction, but it really happened. Since I finished this last week, I�ve seen no less than five random people reading it in airports, coffee shops, busses, etc. Also, Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the American Comic Book by Gerald Jones, which is one of the 10 best books I�ve ever read.

What are you currently reading?

Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences, by Edward Tenner. It�s for work, but it�s so contrarian to the particular project and approach that I should be taking that it seems like pleasure.

Five books you'd take to a deserted island?

Rayne rather practically chose some survival-oriented books. Me, I�m just looking to pass the time until I�m rescued or eaten by wild boars. So, I lounge in my hammock with:

The Outsider and Others, by H.P. Lovecraft. The finest tales from the gaudy and gothic master of pulp horror. My perennial favorite, here chosen in the very rare 1939 first edition from Arkham House, since it includes all my favorites (�The Dunwitch Horror,� �The Call of C�thulhu,� �The Shadow Over Innsmouth,� etc.).
A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, (usually translated �Remembrance of Things Past.�) Marcel Proust. Perhaps, if forced by boredom and necessity, I will finally crack the cover. This is one classic I have long resisted, but I know a lot of people who think it�s really great. From the little bit that I�ve read, it will take an extended stay on a desert island for me to find out for sure.
The Illuminatus Trilogy, by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. A comprehensive satire of the DaVinci Code, 30 years before it was written? If that�s not evidence of a conspiracy, I don�t know what is. Hilarious, multi-layered and eminently re-readable, just in case the rescue boat gets stuck in traffic.
Underground by Don DeLillo. I love DeLillo (especially Ratner�s Star) and never got around to this one. It�s the one with the World Trade Center on the cover.
The History of the Crusades (3 volumes), Steven Runciman. Yes, I read this kind of stuff for pleasure, and Runciman is supposed to be the classic.

Who will you pass this stick (3 persons) on to, and why?

This is in many ways the toughest question, since I know a lot of very good readers. I will limit my choices to those I can safely assume are reading this post and may possibly respond (in the comments): Guy, Ivan and Mepriser. Raven, Mark and others, jump on in as well! Toast and Tobor93, if you want to blog it, be my guest.

7:10:01 AM

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Sunday, November 28, 2004

Going for Baroque

Several weeks ago, I finally concluded my Ambitious Literary Activity of the summer, reading Neal Stephenson�s �Baroque Trilogy� (Quicksilver, The Confusion, and System of the World) complete, back-to-back. For those who haven�t been in a bookstore lately, trust me: it�s an armload. About 2700 pages altogether. Never mind beach reading � this is a set to take along if you plan to get shipwrecked.

Stephenson, perhaps best known for his cyberpunk science fiction novel Snow Crash and the Byzantine spy thriller Cryptonomicon, here assays historical fiction with a trilogy set in Restoration England (c.1670-1715), featuring the ancestors of the Cryptonomicon cast (the scientific Waterhouse family and the martially-inclined Shaftoes). All three books feature a virtuoso combination of action and detail, structural and narrative tricks, humor, and ingenuity to rival Pynchon or DeLillo. Stephenson seems unseemly eager and ambitious to transcend the limitations of genre, and he�s nearly good enough to pull it off.

That said, the trilogy is awash in superfluity. I mean, 2700 pages? Somebody get this man an editor! While I grant any author latitude to tell his story at sufficient length and leisure, there are far too many stretches of self-indulgent dialogue, scenes that go on too long or shouldn�t be there in the first place, unnecessary swaths of dry detail designed, it seems, to show off Stephenson�s prodigious understanding of the workings of antique machinery, and other indulgences that betray either an indifference to writerly craft or a sense of entitlement to the reader�s attention that borders on contempt.

The final insult is the matter of the gaping hole in Stephenson�s storytelling skill set, evident in all of his past works: his inability to write a decent ending. Like a massive old ENIAC computer clanking and churning through data for what seems like an interminable period, with transistors firing, diodes flashing and reel-to-reel tape drives spooling and spinning, he finally produces as output a single thin tape, marked with barely intelligible symbols. Even if it answers the question, the meagerness of the result compared with the complexity of the process tends to leave one a tad deflated.

The frustrating problem is, Stephenson packs each volume with so much interest and intrigue that you can�t put it down. There are several strands to the plot that are woven with sufficient skill to keep readers waiting for good moments � when characters discover the consequences of their actions, or encounter each other again after long absences. There�s an almost Dickensian quality to such moments, along with a Dickensian reliance on preposterous coincidences and too-tight-by-half plotting to arrive at them.

But what really kept me turning the pages was the timeliness of the subject matter. True, the trilogy is set 300 years in the past. However, these books are really about the painstaking construction of the modern world, and how the nexus of science, technology, economics, politics, architecture and international relations that we take for granted today emerged from the final collapse of feudalism and the triumph and systematization of Renaissance humanism. Stephenson has clearly done his homework: the books are littered with knowing references and anecdotes about the origins of current-day manners, words, devices and institutions that were all invented or just coming into wider use during that era.

It is always instructive to see how new ideas triumph over old ones, and how more useful ways of thinking about problems supplant outmoded superstitions and the lazy habits of tradition. Often, this is presented as a march of progress, where people simply recognize a better mousetrap and embrace it. Good ideas drive out the bad, which become the quaint stuff of history. Stephenson�s overarching achievement in the Baroque trilogy is to show the very real and fierce power struggles that midwifed the modern era.

It�s important to remember that very bad ideas like theocracy, absolute monarchy, alchemy and the obscurantist pseudoscience of the Middle Ages, and the backward attitudes of the aristocracy toward the value of commerce and non-agricultural labor, all had very serious and very powerful proponents. People were not simply convinced to open their minds: it often took wars and revolutions. Liberalism in its infancy fought an armed insurgency against a formidable array of entrenched interests.

The dominant ideologies of the Middle Ages represented an integrated social order whose purpose was to ensure predictable outcomes and division of spoils for a particular set of classes. It was, in a very real sense, totalitarian, which is why it was dangerous and unthinkable that someone besides the King or the Church could, say, establish an independent value for goods and services (as in a market economy) or present evidence that the Earth orbited the sun rather than vice versa. Control over ideas conferred control over resources. To question any assumptions from outside the closed system, as modern science, economics and politics threatened to do, was to pull on a single thread that would unwind the entire tapestry. The rulers weren�t stupid. It wasn�t merely out of ignorance and superstition that they fought against modernity � it was out of a very canny understanding of the threat these ideas represented to their material interests.

Over the course of the half-century depicted in Stephenson�s trilogy, the modern genie escaped the bottle. Technology, transparent banking and accounting practices, trade and exploration proved impossible to control through the existing order. Freedom and prosperity � previously the exclusive province of the nobility � crept down through the class system, creating rising political expectations. Open minds and open markets led inevitably to open politics. The promise of liberalism materialized and the old order, encircled and outgunned, was eventually driven to ground. It was not, however, driven out of existence, and the final book of the trilogy, The System of the World, describes in some detail how the ancien regime morphed into the modern conservative movement.

Historical fiction � especially works where the focus is on wars, pirates and conspiracies � is often considered a less-than-literary genre, notwithstanding the impressive contributions of Gore Vidal, Robert Graves and George MacDonald Frasier. But the best of it can remind us of the importance of turning points too often taken for granted and nearly forgotten, with a vividness and drama absent from simple historical accounts.

In the Baroque Trilogy, Stephenson constructs a monument to the integral quality of modern ideology at a time when there is a systematic rear guard action by the forces of feudalism around the world. As such, it�s not only a work of great learning and entertainment, but also an important contribution to the current social and political dialogue. I just wish he could have made it in about a thousand less pages.

12:33:42 PM

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Tuesday, August 10, 2004

Orcinus Sighting

Last night, two dozen-odd souls braved the summer heat to hear mighty Dave Neiwert read from his new book, Death on the Fourth of July, at the Elliot Bay Bookstore in Seattle. Dave, known to the blogosphere as Orcinus, has been documenting hate groups and hate crimes in the Northwest for many years.

Death on the Fourth is an account of an incident that took place several years ago at Ocean Shores, WA, where a group of Vietnamese-Americans were harassed, fought back, and ended up killing one of their assailants. Neiwert uses this incident as a springboard to discuss the broader subject of hate crimes laws and the actions that communities � especially rural communities � need to take to prevent the low-level terror and intimidation caused by violent racist thugs. I picked up a copy of the book and will have a more detailed review at some point. At the moment, I am entombed in Neal Stephenson�s cinderblock-scale opus, Quicksilver, and it may be a while before I see daylight.

Following the reading, I joined Dave and a few friends for drinks and conversation at a local watering hole. Kicked around several subjects, from the possibility of a Bush defeat to the recent nomination of a genuine racist ideologue, James Hart (R-Tenn) to run for Congress. We also discussed the newest hunk of literary sewage to make ripples in the cultural pond, Michelle Malkin�s In Defense of Internment, which speaks in glowing terms about one of 20^th century America�s darkest moments for civil liberties, the imprisonment of thousands of innocent Japanese Americans during World War II. As it happens, Dave has already been researching this subject for another project and is spoiling to tear Malkin a new one (in an intellectual matchup that would make �Bambi vs. Godzilla� look like an even-money bout). However, on receiving his review copy, he is somewhat concerned about treating an obvious act of political exhibitionism with more scholarly seriousness than it deserves. For a taste of what the odious Ms. M is in for should Dave decide to let loose, check this.

9:43:42 AM

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Saturday, October 25, 2003

Like Hidden Fire

Just finished Like Hidden Fire: The Secret Plot to Bring Down the British Empire, by Peter Hopkirk. Hopkirk specializes in the history and politics of Central Asia during the 19th and early 20th centuries and practically everything he's written is worth a look. Like Hidden Fire takes place during World War I and describes the efforts of German and Turkish agents to foment a jihad against the British and threaten their prized imperial possession, India (which at that time also included the heavily-Muslim territory that is now Pakistan and Bangladesh). The plots and counterplots take place from Constantinople to Baku in Azerbaijan to the royal courts of Persia and Afghanistan. The incidents are fascinating and the characters come right out of Indiana Jones.

The 1910-1925 era in Middle Eastern politics, also covered in David Fromkin�s outstanding and essential history, A Peace to End All Peace, laid the groundwork for most of the problems that still plague the region today. History shows that double-dealing and imperial designs over the oil fields of Mosul and Basra are nothing new, and that the consequences of Western tampering in that part of the world are always more troublesome and more expensive than anyone could predict.

In lieu of campaign contributions, perhaps some good soul could send copies of these books to the bright bulbs in the Bush administration who came up with the idea of inviting Turkish troops into Northern Iraq. We should have send flowers and candy to Ankara when the Turkish parliament voted down the request in April. But instead, we kept the pressure on until they announced their intentions to �help� last month, to the unanimous horror of all interested parties with the slightest knowledge of history and geography. Fortunately, it seems they are about to reconsider.

The point here is that we are sure to make our share of mistakes in Iraq, but there is no need to make obvious and unnecessary ones. Good information about the region and the public record of prior Western experience there is readily available. Considering the lives, money and future that�s at stake, is it possible to at least hope for a policy that is informed by the most basic facts?

12:38:57 PM

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Wednesday, September 10, 2003

The Hitman's Stylish Suit

Byron York over at National Review Online takes on Al Franken this week, and I have to tip my hat to the style, restraint and even fairness with which he performs his hatchet job. In particular, he presents quotes from Franken's book without a lot of editorializing, believing that his audience does not need much more than the raw meat to work themselves up into a lather of indignation. There is a lot to be said for allowing the author to speak in his own words, and I respect that as a critical technique even if, as in this case, I strongly disagree with the criticism. He even makes a few good points, although he skirts around almost all of the troubling substantial issues Franken raises.

10:30:27 AM

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Saturday, August 23, 2003

Franken Buries

Well, that didn�t take long. Al Franken�s latest, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, went down like the last slice of strawberry cheese cake, and now I�m a little buzzed and also have a bit of a headache. But it was worth it.

First the bad news. Not every word of this tome is classic, even for true believers. A lot of the debunking that Franken does may already be familiar to readers of Conason, Alterman, or sites like the Daily Howler, and not even Franken�s wit is enough to breathe new life into those well-flogged horses. In two protracted episodes � the visit to Bob Jones University and a reprise of the �chickenhawk� schtick that proved so popular in its original incarnation in Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot � we see that Franken has not completely outgrown the tendency of Saturday Night Live writers to produce the occasional unfunny skit that goes on way too long. There�s something forced and perfunctory � not to mention obvious � about these routines, as Franken all but acknowledges. Fortunately, this is entirely offset by the good stuff.

Lying Liars has a few simple objectives.

Set the record straight about many egregious and uncorrected distortions of the truth propagated by the Right and its accomplices/stooges in the media.
Expose the vilest and most hypocritical exponents of know-nothing conservatism as ignorant bullies who play fast and loose with the truth by deconstructing their rhetoric and methods with surgical precision.
Show that many of the �lying liars� are not simply ideologues expounding a political perspective that Franken disagrees with or (in all cases) idiots, but dishonest, shameless, lazy and dishonorable people who, for their own reasons, are deliberately spreading deception and confusion.

It�s this last point where Lying Liars consistently hits the bullseye. The most satisfying moments of the book are those where Franken relates stories of confronting specific malefactors with the clear evidence of their deception, as when he calls both Peggy Noonan and Tucker Carlson on having (mis)-reported on the Paul Wellstone memorial service without having actually seen it. To his credit, Franken does not suggest some kind of monolithic conspiracy as the best or only explanation behind the methods and tactics of the right wing media. Often, all it takes is a well-placed lie or spin at the center of a story, and wishful thinking, poor journalistic skills and sloppy ethics take care of the rest.

Lying Liars will draw inevitable comparisons to partisan political screeds on the other end of the spectrum, such as recent books by Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity and the ubiquitous Bill O�Reilly. While Franken shares with these authors a certain lack of charity toward his opponents, the similarities end there. First and foremost, Franken is funny. He�s clever, he�s self-deprecating, he has a certain way with words, and he has a fine sense of the absurd. If only as a matter of style, Franken�s nimble prose goes down much easier than Hannity�s platitudinous bluster or Coulter�s drunken elephant walk through a field of straw men.

The second major point of difference is substance. The aforementioned volumes from the right � and their true lefty analogue, the work of Michael Moore � are famously riddled with errors of fact. As Franken points out in generous and specific detail, each of those authors makes systematic use of misleading, meaningless or outright false information to support their views (thus the title, Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them). By going back to the original sources � when the author bothers to cite a source � he shows how information was taken not just out of context, but in ways that utterly distort and falsify the point the original writer was trying to make. Occasionally and hilariously, a close look at the data shows that the correct conclusion to be drawn is precisely the opposite of what the author had in mind (as with the Wall Street Journal�s manipulation of crime statistics in a February, 2003 article). Every so often, he is able to follow up and confront the fabricator with his interpretation � efforts Franken reports are almost unanimously met with evasion and silence.

When undertaking this kind of debunking exercise, it�s a good idea to cover your own ass. For this reason, Franken�s book is fairly well sourced and annotated, and the specifics he cites are usually full excerpts and probably so readily verifiable that any attempt at spin or falsification on his own part would be rather stupid. I am curious to see if any conservative sites attempt to �truth squad� Franken�s work. I think they will have to, for to leave his arguments intact means copping to a staggering amount of intellectual dishonesty, idiocy, and pure meanness.

Franken does more than a little preaching to the choir, and his book is likely to meet with the most enthusiastic response from people who already agree with what he has to say. He also delights in being a gratuitously obnoxious twit often enough to test the patience of even those who fervently share his views. For this reason, Lying Liars will probably be dismissed as partisan propaganda by the very people who should, at the very least, understand the kind of fundamental objections that exist toward a certain type of toxic, fact-free style of argument popular and increasingly pervasive on the Right.

11:02:59 AM

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Friday, August 08, 2003

Livy it Up

Every once in a while, I am seized with a perverse desire to pick up a really musty old book and plow through it. Funny about those classics � some of �em are pretty good. Right now, I�m reading Rome and the Mediterranean, covering the history of pre-Imperial Rome from 201-167 BC, as related by first-century Roman historian Titus Livius (known as Livy). This is the era when the Roman republic fought a series of wars with neighboring empires in Carthage, Macedonia and Persia � wars characterized by Livy as efforts to extend the benefits of freedom to peoples living under oppressive and unjust regimes.

What�s amazing about Livy�s accounts is how cogently the policies and arguments are presented. Unlike the Bible, whose characters seem remote and whose motivations often seem opaque to contemporary readers, the cast in Livy seem drawn from the ranks of present-day politicians. Indeed, some of the situations and debates seem eerily familiar, and way people lined up on the issues more than 2200 years ago bears little distinction from the principles and politics of the current day.

The volume opens with a debate in the Senate over the wisdom of launching a pre-emptive war to rid Greece of the odious rule of King Philip of Macedonia. The Roman army had only just survived a bloody conflict with Hannibal, the fanatically anti-Roman leader of Carthage, and there seemed little appetite for another battle in another place. The argument that carried the day is that Rome could not sit back and wait to be attacked on its own soil, but must carry the battle to the enemies' country and thus deal with the root of the problem. Only when democracy be restored to the Greek cities could Rome rest easy within its sovereign borders. Never mind that the enemy in Greece was somehow confused and muddied up with the real enemy Hannibal (still at large, despite the rout of his forces) � the principle was the same.

So the Roman legions sail to Greece � a land divided by all kinds of factional in-fighting. For the most part, they are well-received, although their motives are questioned and some accuse them of harboring imperial ambitions. By the end of the war, they defeat Philip and restore the freedom of most of the Greek cities, but, exhausted by battle, they don�t take the final step of deposing Nabis, the tyrant of Sparta, who has extended his brutal regime over the important city of Argos, claiming that it was part of the ancestral domain of Sparta and that his forces had been welcomed into the city by the public authorities.

Now Nabis was a bad guy. He seized power from the lawful kings of Sparta by claiming to be a populist. He freed some slaves, and elevated lower classes such as his own tribesman to ruling positions in the city and countryside. But he also imprisoned and executed his critics, terrorized the population through all kinds of evil tricks and cunning, and constantly threatened his neighbors. His son-in-law Pythagoras was as bloodthirsty as his patron, and reportedly, for his own amusement, tortured athletes who did not compete well at the Olympic games and conducted other fiendish policies against the hapless population of Argos. The rest of Greece, as well as a sizeable community of Spartan expatriots, were dying to get rid of these folks and urged the Romans to finish the job they had started.

The problem is, Nabis had been a useful ally of the Romans in the recent war against Philip, and the Romans had turned a blind eye to his abuses when the alliance served their purpose. Called before the Roman general at a peace negotiation, Nabus reportedly said the following:

�If I had been able to think of any reason why you should have declared war, I should have awaited my fate in silence, but if I am to perish, I cannot restrain my desire to know why I am to perish� Like all citizens of Sparta, I am linked to Rome by a most ancient and sacred treaty, and, as a personal matter, have renewed this friendship and alliance during the war against Philip.

�...But what tells against me is the title of tyrant, and also my action of summoning slaves to liberty and bringing indigent lower classes into the countryside. As for the title, I can reply that, whatever kind of man I am, I am no different when you yourself made alliance with me. At that time, as I remember, you addressed me as �king.� Now, I observe that I am called �tyrant��

To this, the Roman replies:

��Could anything be less consistent than for the people waging war against Philip for the liberation of Greece to establish a treaty of friendship with a tyrant? And with a tyrant unmatched in savagery and violence towards his own people? Even if you had not taken Argos by fraud, even if you were not now in fraudulent possession of that city, it would be incumbent on us, engaged as we are in the liberation of the whole of Greece, to restore Sparta to her ancient liberty and laws�

�You speak of your invitation to slaves to enjoy freedom and your distribution of land to the needy� But what are they in comparison with the misdeeds daily committed, one after the other, by you and your supporters? Put on a free assembly in either Argos or Sparta if you would like to hear genuine accusations against an unbridled despotism. To pass over all other crimes of remoter times, what a hideous massacre was committed at Argos, almost under my very eyes, by that son-in-law of yours, Pythagoras!�

And so, the Romans, clearly on the side of right and justice in this case, liberate Argos, besiege Sparta, depose Nabis and his rotten clan, and restore freedom to Greece using their vast military superiority. Unfortunately, while they are at it, Hannibal has been plotting with the Persian king in Asia to embroil the over-extended Romans in more difficulties at home and abroad.

The Romans, now pre-occupied on other fronts, evacuate Greece with a warning to preserve the peace among themselves. But old rivalries soon come to the fore and it�s not long before the whole place dissolves into chaos again. Eventually, to preserve order, Rome must station permanent garrisons overseas and interfere more and more in the internal affairs of its allies and neighbors. As this condition becomes permanent, the democratic institutions of the Roman republic give was to the increasing militarization of society. Julius Caesar�s military coup is averted by his assassination, but civil war results in the end of the Republic and the installation of the first emperor, Augustus.

The rest, as they say, is history.

9:52:02 AM

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Sunday, May 04, 2003

The Doctor is In

For my birthday this year, a friend with excellent literary taste gave me Hunter S. Thompson�s latest, Kingdom of Fear. The self-styled doctor of gonzo is worth reading even in his most demented moments � which is to say, most of the time. In this book, amid the occasionally meandering and pointless reminiscences, we come upon terse little gems like this, from the chapter entitled �Jesus Hates Bald Pussy.� After comparing G.W. Bush unfavorably to Richard Nixon (a feat which anyone who knows Thompson�s views of Nixon would find hard to imagine), Doc works himself up into this fine fit of pique. It is worth quoting at length:

We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world � a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us� no redeeming social value. Just whores. Get out of our way or we�ll kill you.

�Who [votes] for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid rich kids like George Bush?

They are the same one who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character� I piss down the throats of these Nazis.

To which I�m sure Dubya and his minions are saying, �sticks and stones� buy that SOB a one-way ticket to Guantanamo.� And that�s the whole problem, isn�t it?

10:19:30 PM

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