The View from Afar | Daniel Leffel

Jon Stewart vs. CNBC

2009-03-26T22:21:00.026Z

First things first: I apologize for the absurd amount of time that’s lapsed since my last post. Per usual, I have no real excuse, so I’ll resort to donning my finest shit-eating grin, shrugging my shoulders, and saying “But I’m so busy!” This may not translate too well without a picture, but I’ll spare everyone. It shan’t happen again.

Anyhow, I’ll get started.

[Note - Here's the Daily Show clip I'm referring to. I wanted to post it directly here, but can't for some reason. If you haven't seen it, drop whatever you're doing and watch it now. Now!]

I realize I’m a bit late to the party, but this whole Jon Stewart vs. CNBC/Jim Cramer feud is hilarious. I was worried that the Daily Show would drop off a bit without their favorite punching bag of the last eight years making life so damn easy for them, but they’ve really turned a corner. These basic cable alchemists and snake oil salesmen deserve the reaming they’re getting from Stewart. The messianic certainty with which these guys prognosticate is so over the top it actually almost masks the utter recklessness of their speculative get-rich-quick investment mantra. Almost. What makes it worse is that they have the stones to palm off whatever the hell it is they do as journalism, albeit sandwiched between the high-pitched whine of their hour long investment advice spectacles.

What it comes down to is that the personalities on CNBC are, like all good uber-capitalists, out for themselves. If one guy’s outlandish stock pick unexpectedly takes off, he’s an instant investment guru celebrity. There’s a huge incentive to make brash, overconfident bets against the odds. Hell, if you’re loud enough (BUY THIS NOOOOOW!) and can convince enough people, you’re gold, even if the investment itself is pure, bubbly speculation. Perception is reality, especially in the stock market. However, if you’re making the boring, safe recommendations, you’re just another voice lost in the cable TV din. How are you supposed to make an instant name for yourself like that?

Who cares, right? There are plenty of other professions where making outrageously wrong assessments 99% of the time is worth that one visionary prediction that sets you up for life. Specifically, there’s a similarly large incentive for professional music critics (who seem to have their own alchemical formula for reviewing albums that makes sense only to them). If one critic goes out on a limb and gives a gushing, starry-eyed review of an otherwise completely mediocre album on the off chance it happens to start a trend or revolutionizes some aspect of the industry, voila! Our critic has arrived. If not, so what? A dozen people read the review and forget about it an hour later. He has a lot to gain, and not much at all to lose.

The difference is that the CNBC soothsayers’ vain self-promotion is had, effectively, by betting big with someone else’s money. If not for this, watching the house of cards collapse might well be amusing, with all the morbid intrigue of watching a train wreck in slow motion. But it's not. Even in an advisory capacity, in an occupation with this much at stake – mortgages, pensions, retirement plans, college funds – there has to be some level of professional accountability. There has to be, right? I can’t, for the life of me, envision any other occupation or situation in which people would keep their jobs after being so fantastically wrong (Bear Sterns can’t fail!) on such a staggering level (Merrill Lynch is flush with cash reserves!). Even if CNBC wanted to keep pretending that their programming was worth a damn, you’d think they’d be looking for new analysts.

Granted, no one’s forcing anyone to follow this advice. It’s not like CNBC, let alone their TV personalities, is solely responsible for the current state of economic affairs. And true, this may just be another one of my rather self-indulgent rants. What CNBC and its minions are, however, is the grinning, Botoxed face of the broader and entrenched culture of unchecked corporate greed. They basked in the fuzzy glow of B-list stardom during the boom times. Now that things have, well, imploded, what’s happened to Wall Street’s cable TV public relations department? I know better than to ask for an intellectually honest reappraisal of the post-Reagan-era-deregulation financial model. Would an apology be too much? How about an admission that the gunpowder they were marketing as flour blew up in our faces? I think a lot of people at this point would settle for a simple, “Oops. My bad, guys.”

If unmitigated failure on such an epic level can’t cause a group of people to look inwards and ask just how they became so enamored of their own groupthink, what can?

John Yoo est fou

2009-01-31T20:44:00.005Z

I came across an interesting (for lack of a better word) op-ed the other day, and haven't really been able to respond properly to it.

It was written by the infamous John Yoo, author of dozens upon dozens of memos of pseudo-legal cover for the authorization of Bush's (still illegal) torture regime. My first reaction was irritation. Yoo claims that, by closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay and scaling back the CIA's interrogation authority,

"... Mr. Obama may have opened the door to further terrorist acts on U.S. soil by shattering some of the nation's most critical defenses."

He also says,

"While these actions will certainly please his base -- gone are the cries of an 'imperial presidency' -- they will also seriously handicap our intelligence agencies from preventing future terrorist attacks. In issuing these executive orders, Mr. Obama is returning America to the failed law enforcement approach to fighting terrorism that prevailed before Sept. 11, 2001."

... and so on, and so on.

I realized fairly quickly, though, that being irritated at what Yoo's saying wasn't quite appropriate. The claims he makes, which, at this point, are worn pretty thin, aren't novel or necessarily well thought-out.

The necessity of "tough interrogation" techniques? There's a reason why the overwhelming majority of military and intelligence officials are steadfastly opposed to Yoo's conception of interrogation. Confessions or intelligence coerced out of people by what amounts to torture, no matter how you define it, is untrustworthy at best. Most people will say anything to get out of hypothermic conditions, twelve hours of standing in a stressful position, or waterboarding. Still more, the spectre of torture is the biggest, most effective recruiting tool al Qaeda has. It gives jihadists something to rally around, something to really piss them off. But, for all I know, that was intentional -- didn't Bush quite famously and rashly tell the terrorists to "bring it on"(one of the most colossally stupid things ever said)?

And oh woe is Yoo -- we're now restricted to using the Army Field Manual as guidelines for interrogations. The very guidelines, in fact, that netted us Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the then-most wanted man in Iraq.

Yoo's greatest hits laundry list of pro-torture bile is capped off by suggesting, in essence, that if the president does it, it's legal by default:

"On the advice of his intelligence advisers, the president could have authorized coercive interrogation methods like those used by Israel and Great Britain in their antiterrorism campaigns. (He could even authorize waterboarding, which he did three times in the years after 9/11.)"

All admitted war crimes aside, the claim of unlimited executive power in times of war is patently false, and even Bush administration officials backed off these claims when they managed to extract themselves from the crippling groupthink that spawned this policy.

None of Yoo's points are very hard to refute. I'm as much of a legal scholar as I am a ballerina, and I could see through his diatribe quite readily. So what, then, is he trying to do with this article? As much as I disagree with him, I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt and think that he's fighting for a policy he believes in. Right?

I've since come to a different conclusion. He's covering his ass.

Some of what was done during the last administration, all moral and ethical questions aside, was illegal. And given the profound effects these actions and policies could have on not only our national security, but the security of our allies as well, there's a growing call for someone to be held accountable. Is this Yoo's almost-last-ditch effort to deflect the reckoning that may be headed his way?

Look, waterboarding is torture. Straight up. It's been considered such at least since the Enlightenment, if not earlier. It's not even really debatable, forgetting for a moment Cheney and his minions. It's forbidden by the Geneva Conventions, it's illegal under US law. Yoo's smart; he knows this. So why say explicitly that Bush authorized it on three separate occaisons following 9/11? Maybe he wants to ensure that if he gets dragged off to the Hague, someone else will go with him.

Ultimately, this article smacks of a small man too proud to admit his great mistake. Thankfully, he's no longer in a position to cause any more damage on this scale (but how he keeps his job, especially at a law school as reputable as Berkeley, remains a mystery). Will he be prosecuted, or fade into obscurity? Who knows.

But, hey -- I finally found a word to describe the article: pitiable.

And .. I'm back (again)

2009-01-30T12:19:00.002Z

So, after a great vacation stateside, some bank complications here, and a few days of general laziness, I'm back.

I spent a good three and a half weeks running around between Chicago, Columbus and Lexington around Christmas and New Year's, and I couldn't have had more fun. I was completely exhausted and drained by the end, but it was well worth it. That being said, though, I'm happy to be back in Senegal.

Due to my aforementioned bank problems, I was in Dakar on Inauguration Day. I spent most of the afternoon at the Peace Corps haunt downtown watching all of the proceedings. I've been a vocal Obama supporter for quite a long while now, so watching him take the oath of office (on his second attempt -ha) was moving. Needless to say, the other volunteers I shared the experience with were as excited as I was.

As far as my life and work in Senegal go, a friend of mine and I are putting together a short documentary about the village association and the women who produce the baskets we've been exporting. We hope to have it finished sometime next week. Once it's done, it'll be posted on the Peace Corps Senegal website.

We're also looking forward to a visit from the buyer who ordered a boatload of baskets from the association last summer. She's graciously agreed to lead a day's worth of training specifically concerning artisan work for the new volunteers who are in their second round of training now.

Last, but most certainly not least, the annual West Africa Invitational Softball Tournament is coming up on President's Day weekend (queue the halleluja chorus). Who wouldn't be excited about a weekend of softball, hot dogs and good times?

I'm lame

2008-12-09T19:41:00.002Z

I know. It's been an unforgivably long time since I last posted. In my humble defense, I've been busy. Back off.

The big event of the past few weeks was an artisan exposition we volunteers put together for our work partners in Dakar. It went really well -- our work partners sold a great deal of their wares, were able to meet each other and talk shop, and we're now well on our way to a Peace Corps/Senegal-wide artisan network that could have a tremendous impact on these entrepreneurs' careers.

Today is Tabaski, the great day of slaughter. I (well, really, my host family) helped kill, skin, butcher and grill 3 rams to honor Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac, a story common to Muslim, Jewish and Christian lore. As near as I can approximate it, it's the Senegalese equivalent to Thanksgiving. The gluttony is great -- I almost feel like I'm home.

But, of course, the biggest news is that I'll be home this time on Sunday. I leave Dakar Friday night, and after a brief layover in Brussels, I'll land in Chicago in time for lunch. Holy crap, I can't wait. I'll try to keep up with my random "insights" into whatever it is that strikes me as interesting while I'm home. I'll try.

If not -- happy Chrismahanukwanzakabaski.

Free documentary

2008-11-16T18:26:00.003Z

I can't talk up enough this documentary I was referred to the other day. It's free to watch online and doesn't take too long to load. Given the name, it's not too hard to guess the subject matter: the torture regime of Bush and company. This issue transcends politics and the global war on terror. It is an affront to every ideal Americans or any other rational people in the world hold dear. There is no excuse.

I highly encourage you to watch it, as hard as it may be to stomach at times.

http://www.torturingdemocracy.org/

"There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing; who even postpone the question of freedom to the question of free trade, and quietly read the prices-current along with the latest advices from Mexico, after dinner, and, it may be, fall asleep over them both.

What is the price-current of an honest man and patriot today? They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. At most, they give only a cheap vote, and a feeble countenance and Godspeed, to the right, as it goes past them. There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man. But it is easier to deal with the real possessor of a thing than with the temporary guardian of it," - Henry David Thoreau.

Quote via Sullivan.

Don't piss off Putin

2008-11-15T14:17:00.002Z

Here's one for the boys:

With Russian tanks only 30 miles from Tbilisi on August 12, Mr Sarkozy told Mr Putin that the world would not accept the overthrow of Georgia’s Government. According to Mr Levitte, the Russian seemed unconcerned by international reaction. “I am going to hang Saakashvili by the balls,” Mr Putin declared.

Mr Sarkozy thought he had misheard. “Hang him?” — he asked. “Why not?” Mr Putin replied. “The Americans hanged Saddam Hussein.”
Mr Sarkozy, using the familiar tu, tried to reason with him: “Yes but do you want to end up like [President] Bush?” Mr Putin was briefly lost for words, then said: “Ah — you have scored a point there.”

Followup

2008-11-14T15:57:00.019Z

It occurred to me while writing my last post that I was only in a very roundabout sense addressing Jones' initial question. I decided not to add anything more specific because I'd already droned on far long enough, and I'd wanted to articulate a lot of what I've been thinking about for some time now. However, I was promptly called out:

"... your entire post did little to answer Jones' question as to how you rationale voting for Obama, and more of how typical conservative Christians wrongly vote Republican based on a few issues that have become infused with other issue that aren't theological."

I guess that whole diatribe could be continued and boiled down to this: a vote for Obama, and specifically against the Christianist regime I berated ad nauseum, is a rebuke of that same regime. It is a disengagement from a politics of division, opportunism and naked manipulation. I wouldn't say that Christians vote Republican to their error (that would be making the same mistake I criticized), but that Christians do themselves a tremendous disservice by assuming that they must vote Republican. A group who follows blindly any person or ideal is at risk of being manipulated, and most often is.

But bucking the norm isn't reason enough, in and of itself, to vote for Obama.

To clarify my point, using what someone else has written (and written better than I'm able):

Austin Bramwell (0f The American Conservative magazine) makes the case that the Christianist (in his words, movement conservative) mindset is much more entrenched, and extends further than the Bush-Cheney-Rove axis to American conservatism as a whole:

"Again, there are crucial differences between the conservative movement and a movement like environmentalism. Environmentalists have never sought to create a counter-establishment. Rather, they try to supply establishment institutions with environmentalist ideas. Conservatives, by contrast, have sought to create a whole alternative institutional world. The movement offers entire career tracks for aspiring conservatives. Moreover, the movement preaches hostility to non-movement institutions. From the moment a movement conservative starts his career at his college conservative paper, he learns to conceive of conservative organizations as the City of God and traditional establishment institutions as the City of Man. The two Cities, he believes, are antagonists. Hence, movement conservatives have not generally succeeded in reaching sympathetic outsiders – if anything, they have actively sought to alienate them."

Italics mine. Ultimately, this is why I was compelled to vote for Obama and against the Christianist regime, and feel others should have been, as well. Not only do I believe this outlook to be seriously flawed in and of itself, it is counter-productive and self-destructive politically, socially and, most importantly, missiologically. Obama (as he reminded us so many, many times during the campaign) represents change, and not just to the other side of the same coin. I feel that Obama is the best shot at post-partisanship we're going to get for quite awhile. And given the scale and nuance of the problems facing us (most notably the incredibly complicated financial crisis), his commitment to pragmatism and demonstrated ability to judge dispassionately a situation based on its merits offers us the best chance of moving forward. Still more, as a Christian, he can provide a much needed critique of what has passed for Christian political thought most of my life.

As far as the abortion debate, which is so fundamental to Christianist (indeed, Christian) thinking, Bramwell makes another good point:

"If you want to achieve a change in public policy, it may be better to create a loose networks of like-minded elites rather than to organize a mass movement. Second, the conservative project of “stitching” together various disparate ideas may be counterproductive. Sure, it’s great that pro-lifers have an alliance with foreign-policy “Projectarians" [read: neoconservatives]. But the cost is that the enemies of the Projectarians – who are legion – become the enemies of the pro-lifers. If you’re pro-life, might it not be better to build alliances with all ideological types, whatever their views on other subjects? I would think so. But “conservatism” and the “conservative” movement prevent this from happening."

The goal of any pro-lifer is to see an and to the practice of abortion. But, for a long time now, the abortion debate has devolved past any actual debate: both sides are so entrenched that they are often antagonistic, if not outright cruel, to anyone who sees the issue differently. Bramwell's point is this: in a society where being labeled "Democrat" or "Republican" (let alone pro-life or -choice) carries so much baggage, why not distance yourself from the big political establishments and seek allies across the ideological spectrum, much like the environmental movement? Tone down your rhetoric, take a breath, and try to work with people rather than seeking (at huge cost) a top-down outlawing of the practice.

The ideological importance of standing behind a politician who flatly denounces abortion during the election cycle (and promptly forgets all about it when he gets back to Washington) would start to diminish as grass-roots activism, organizing and outreach become more vital and viewed as more effective. This is a decidedly less ideological and much more pragmatic approach to the issue, and a much better approach than the all-or-nothing mentality of both pro-life and pro-choice camps.

Let's face it -- there will never be federal mandate banning abortion. Ever. There are just too many forces against it. I know this sounds like heresy to some people, but I say, who cares? I believe a federal law/amendment/whatever would be largely symbolic and, ultimately, ineffective. All this would do is drive the practice underground and have a limited effect on the actual number of abortions in the US. The situation would still require a huge outreach push to convince mothers not to seek dangerous back-alley abortions, to help them find adoptive services, and to counsel them through an incredibly difficult and trying process.

Why not cut out the tremendously draining process of fighting tooth and nail for a federal ban on abortion that will most likely never come, and focus on the kinds of initiatives that will have a much stronger impact (indeed, any impact at all)? Everyone, both pro-lifers and pro-choicers, would like to see the number of abortions fall. Approaching the issue more pragmatically could actually see this happen in a significant way and maybe even see people from (gasp!) both sides, as well as a large coalition of people in the middle, working together to realize this goal.

Here's my disclaimer: if a woman ever solicited my advice as to whether or not she should have an abortion, I would try with everything I had to convince her to carry the child to term in almost any possible situation. However, I think mandating this from a federal (or even state) level is a very dangerous option, for the reasons I outlined above. Because of these risks, and because of the existence very plausible (if underutilized) alternative routes to reducing the number of abortions, I cannot support a flat federal ban on abortions as such. If that makes me pro-choice, so be it. But, this is a very tricky issue, and I've by no means made up my mind.

I've gone and done it again. Sorry for the obscene length of the last couple of posts. I'll keep things shorter and more Senegal-related now.

Some responses

2008-11-12T11:28:00.035Z

Jones asked about this rationale for voting for Obama, from a conservative perspective: “Faith. Obama's fusion of Christianity and reason, his non-fundamentalist faith, is a critical bridge between the new atheism and the new Christianism,” from this post.

This addresses a concern that many left-leaning Christians (like yours truly) have had for quite some time. The mindset that Sullivan (the author of the top-10 list and himself a Catholic) is talking specifically about is the super literalist-fundamentalist thinking that characterizes a large portion of the religious far-right (think James Dobson or the late Jerry Fallwell). In it’s more extreme (and, I would say, absurd) form, this line of thinking leads to a harsh denouncement of anyone who strays from the very narrow, theologically questionable dogma its leaders champion, which (again, in its most extreme forms) is characterized by an obsession with homosexuality, abortion and end-times, fire-and-brimstone fear mongering. In many cases, any dissent (be it from a religious or secular point of view) is heresy, even if it is a valid critique that could ultimately strengthen the fundamentalist cause. I personally have been subjected to this kind of treatment more times than I’d care to remember.

Thankfully, this camp is in the minority, however vocal they may be. They just happen to occupy many influential posts in the GOP and religious right establishment (for the time being, at least). The more widespread and thus more problematic issue with this line of thinking is what has turned out to be an incredible level of built-in cynicism. Some right-wing culture crusaders have used these same social concerns related to religious thinking (abortion, same-sex marriage, etc.) as nothing more than wedge issues to exploit to ensure the election of their candidate. George W. Bush, for one, campaigned on these platforms, on the advice of one of the pioneers of this tremendously manipulative and opportunistic style of thinking, Karl Rove. Upon winning office, he promptly ceased all discussion of those very issues. The same strategists have branched out from these few topics to bring more standard conservative concerns (taxes, defense spending, size of government) under the same religiously-themed umbrella, even if these concerns are of a secular nature. (This still is to say nothing of the quasi-populist, anti-intellectual, small-town-elitist bile we have heard over the last few years from many of the same people.)

This is what Sullivan would characterize as “Christianist”, as near as I can approximate: a mindset and a campaign style comprised of a laundry list of issues, both religious and secular, to be used as wedges to divide the electorate along religious and cultural lines while blurring the distinction between the two, and stoking mistrust and resentment of "outsiders" who must be fought and defeated. The only real goal is to win the election at all costs. “Christianism” is inherently political and only marginally theological. It is divisive, judgmental and completely intolerant of outside critique, let alone self-reevaluation. Anyone who sees things differently is not only wrong, but in clear opposition to divine mandate, even on issues as relatively trivial as tax or welfare policy. I realize this last statement borders on hyperbole, but the culture of blind submissiveness to established religious authority spawned by absolute certainty in the justness of the Right's stances on abortion or same-sex marriage can very easily trickle down the hierarchy of issues until the entire list becomes non-negotiable. In many cases, I would argue that this has already taken place.

The sooner this style of thinking gets pushed to the fringes, the better. Only then, I believe, can a conciliatory and inclusive theological message be advanced. This is especially key to addressing the “new atheism” Sullivan (among others) have referenced, championed by thinkers like Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens, that feeds on the excess and ignorance of this protracted and self-destructive culture war.

I don't mean to say that all politically-minded Christians fall into this camp, or even that the issues they wish to address do not warrant close attention. My critique is simply of the methods employed to gain political favor. Most people, including the majority of evangelical Christians, I firmly believe, are able to see this cynicism for what it really is. But, unfortunately, it draws enough support and enough votes to be problematic.

Marcus, to clear up something you said about the African American population in the States:

One of the biggest concerns at the beginning of Obama’s candidacy was whether or not he was electable enough in the black community -- is he "too white?" (an absurd question in and of itself). He doesn’t play into the stereotypical narrative of the black politician, a role that Jesse Jackson has been characterized to fill for years now (hence all of the concerns for Obama heading into the South Carolina primary). In this sense, the fact that he still drew a huge portion of the black vote, as well as voters from across generational, economic and cultural lines speaks to his overall electability and the draw of his “change” mantra. I believe, like many others, that the election of Obama is a huge step forward, but by no means an end to the question of race in America.

One more thing (to be anal about some statistics): African Americans make up only about 12% of the population, not 20%.

Regarding the Phelps Troupe at my old high school: I hope someone ran them off the campus the minute they showed up. Their venomous, hateful and bigoted message has no business in any school, in any town, at any time. But, Bubba said it better:

"Don't worry too much, there is already a special place in Hell awaiting Fred Phelps."

Keep the comments coming, I enjoy thinking about them and, eventually, responding to them.

Best photo ever

2008-11-11T14:05:00.002Z

Via Coates:

Teh winnar!

Disgusting

2008-11-11T10:54:00.002Z

As if picketing (or, more appropriately, disrupting and disrespecting) the funerals of fallen soldiers wasn't enough, Fred Phelps and his inbred band of hate mongering theofacists have announced their intention to do the same at the funeral of Madelyn Dunham, Barack Obama's recently passed grandmother. Disgusting.

Quick thoughts

2008-11-10T13:08:00.003Z

A couple quick thoughts regarding the election.

I spent election night in Dakar at a bar we volunteers, I'm pretty sure, keep in business. They were gracious enough to keep the place open until nearly 6 am to see all of the coverage, from the first precinct results to Obama's acceptance speech. About 3 am or so, I was delirious with fatigue, and almost called it a night, but I'm glad I didn't. The excitement, especially during the rally at Grant Park, was palpable even across an ocean. The Senegalese people watching the returns with us, even though their English wasn't good enough to keep up with exactly what was going on, were nearly as excited as we were. I want to return later to what an Obama presidency means, both to me personally and from a nerdier policy perspective, but I will say now that witnessing Obama's victory was emotional. Not a single person I was with was unaffected by it, even those present whose absentee ballots were marked for McCain. Regardless of one's political affiliation, we can agree that, in electing Obama, we've accomplished something special as Americans.

As I've mentioned before, people here in Senegal, as is the case with many across Africa, are quite pleased to see Obama headed for the White House. The day after the election, when I got back home, I got a half dozen calls of congratulations, all from Senegalese friends. People have takent to calling me Atoumane (the Senegalse name I've adopted) Obama. Six baby boys born last Wednesday in my town are named Barack, and I'm sure more are coming.

People see me walking around town and yell, "Oui, nous pouvons!" Yes, we can!

Conservatives for Obama

2008-10-27T19:45:00.001Z

One conservative's top 10 for voting for Obama. Definitely worth reading.

"10. A body blow to racial identity politics. An end to the era of Jesse Jackson in black America.

9. Less debt. Yes, Obama will raise taxes on those earning over a quarter of a million. And he will spend on healthcare, Iraq, Afghanistan and the environment. But so will McCain. He plans more spending on health, the environment and won't touch defense of entitlements. And his refusal to touch taxes means an extra $4 trillion in debt over the massive increase presided over by Bush. And the CBO estimates that McCain's plans will add more to the debt over four years than Obama's. Fiscal conservatives have a clear choice.

8. A return to realism and prudence in foreign policy. Obama has consistently cited the foreign policy of George H. W. Bush as his inspiration. McCain's knee-jerk reaction to the Georgian conflict, his commitment to stay in Iraq indefinitely, and his brinksmanship over Iran's nuclear ambitions make him a far riskier choice for conservatives. The choice between Obama and McCain is like the choice between George H.W. Bush's first term and George W.'s.

7. An ability to understand the difference between listening to generals and delegating foreign policy to them.

6. Temperament. Obama has the coolest, calmest demeanor of any president since Eisenhower. Conservatism values that kind of constancy, especially cmopared with the hot-headed, irrational impulsiveness of McCain.

5. Faith. Obama's fusion of Christianity and reason, his non-fundamentalist faith, is a critical bridge between the new atheism and the new Christianism.

4. A truce in the culture war. Obama takes us past the debilitating boomer warfare that has raged since the 1960s. Nothing has distorted our politics so gravely; nothing has made a rational politics more elusive.

3. Two words: President Palin.

2. Conservative reform. Until conservatism can get a distance from the big-spending, privacy-busting, debt-ridden, crony-laden, fundamentalist, intolerant, incompetent and arrogant faux conservatism of the Bush-Cheney years, it will never regain a coherent message to actually govern this country again. The survival of conservatism requires a temporary eclipse of today's Republicanism. Losing would be the best thing to happen to conservatism since 1964. Back then, conservatives lost in a landslide for the right reasons. Now, Republicans are losing in a landslide for the wrong reasons.

1. The War Against Islamist terror. The strategy deployed by Bush and Cheney has failed. It has failed to destroy al Qaeda, except in a country, Iraq, where their presence was minimal before the US invasion. It has failed to bring any of the terrorists to justice, instead creating the excresence of Gitmo, torture, secret sites, and the collapse of America's reputation abroad. It has empowered Iran, allowed al Qaeda to regroup in Pakistan, made the next vast generation of Muslims loathe America, and imperiled our alliances. We need smarter leadership of the war: balancing force with diplomacy, hard power with better p.r., deploying strategy rather than mere tactics, and self-confidence rather than a bunker mentality.

Those conservatives who remain convinced, as I do, that Islamist terror remains the greatest threat to the West cannot risk a perpetuation of the failed Manichean worldview of the past eight years, and cannot risk the possibility of McCain making rash decisions in the middle of a potentially catastrophic global conflict. If you are serious about the war on terror and believe it is a war we have to win, the only serious candidate is Barack Obama."

Endorsements

2008-10-25T13:29:00.003Z

Not surprisingly, the NY Times has endorsed Obama. The last bit of their endorsement, I think, is worth reading, regardless of their fairly predictable ideological leanings.

"Mr. Obama has withstood some of the toughest campaign attacks ever mounted against a candidate. He’s been called un-American and accused of hiding a secret Islamic faith. The Republicans have linked him to domestic terrorists and questioned his wife’s love of her country. Ms. Palin has also questioned millions of Americans’ patriotism, calling Republican-leaning states “pro-America.”
This politics of fear, division and character assassination helped Mr. Bush drive Mr. McCain from the 2000 Republican primaries and defeat Senator John Kerry in 2004. It has been the dominant theme of his failed presidency.
The nation’s problems are simply too grave to be reduced to slashing “robo-calls” and negative ads. This country needs sensible leadership, compassionate leadership, honest leadership and strong leadership. Barack Obama has shown that he has all of those qualities."

This sums up pretty accurately how I've felt about the last couple months of this campaign, and about much of Bush's presidency as a whole.

McConnell's in trouble

2008-10-25T12:27:00.004Z

Its looking like he and Lunsford are in a statistical tie. I didn't think it possible that McConnell would be in such jeopardy of losing his seat as the highest ranking Republican in the Senate. Maybe my absentee ballot will get counted after all.

Edit: On second thought, it may not be as close as some people are saying. The point still stands, though, that the Senate's top Republican is getting much more of a fight than he probably should, given his status. However, if Lunsford manages to pull this one out, Chandler takes over Bunning's seat in 2010 (which is quite likely), and Dems pick up a couple House seats in or around the Lexington/Louisville areas, Kentucky could see a majority Democrat delegation. Who'da thunk it?

Conservatives and socialists

2008-10-23T16:35:00.002Z

An interesting thought on wealth redistribution from a conservative perspective:

"Another thing on this subject - is opposition to wealth-spreading in principle really now a litmus test for being a conservative? I thought that being on the right meant that you wanted a welfare state that's small in size and limited in scope - that's what I signed up for, at least - and the most just and reasonable way to shrink and/or restrain the American welfare state that I can see is to make it more redistributive, rather than less so. To quote William Voegeli quoting Paul Pierson in a fine essay on the dilemmas of small government conservatism: "If conservatives could design their ideal welfare state, it would consist of nothing but means-tested programs." In other words, a conservative welfare state would eliminate our current network of universal entitlement programs, and replace them with cheaper, means-tested programs that, well, spread the wealth - that spend your tax dollars to provide temporary assistance to the unemployed, underwrite health care costs for the aged and very poor, set an income floor underneath American seniors, and so forth, rather than taking money from the middle class with one hand and giving it back to them with the other.

Whereas if conservatives back themselves into a corner where they're denouncing any kind of redistributionism as pure socialism, they're undercutting their ability to push for this vision of a more means-tested welfare state - because that push, if it ever has any chance of succeeding politically, will have to rely on explicitly redistributionist arguments to succeed. For instance, when John McCain proposed - correctly, in my view - that we should consider means-testing the Medicare prescription drug benefit, he justified the proposal on the grounds that "people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett don't need their prescriptions underwritten by taxpayers." In other words, McCain was proposing a leaner Medicare that spreads the wealth to seniors who can't afford their prescription, and uses Warren Buffett's tax dollars to do it - rather than a more bloated, inefficient Medicare that makes less of a distinction between rich and poor in how it spends taxpayer dollars. I thought that was a conservative proposal. But maybe it's just creeping socialism."

Matt says ...

2008-10-23T16:19:00.004Z

From Jump:

"I just got my absentee ballot (aren't you proud?) and I think you owe it to me, as somebody that follows it way more closely than I possibly could, to give me a rundown of why I should vote Obama and not McCain (though any bit of non-bias would be nice). ..."

At this point, I'm not sure I could keep any bias out of my pro-Obama anti-McCain pitch if I wanted to. I'm so fed up with McCain (a Republican for whom I used to have a tremendous amount of respect) that anything I would begin writing, even with the best of intentions, would probably devolve into the kind of marginally productive rant that annoys even me.

For someone coming from a more conservative point of view who is still undecided, I can't think of a better person to listen to than Colin Powell. Coincidentally, I've just linked a video of him on Meet the Press officially endorsing Obama. He gives a very careful, intelligent analysis of the two candidates, highlighting the reasons why he, as a lifelong conservative and Republican, has chosen to vote for Obama. As I mentioned below the video, I have a great deal of respect for Powell both as a leader and a man, and take what he has to say seriously even though I don't necessarily agree with him all the time. Take a look at that, Jump. He makes the case better than I could.

And I can't help posting this:

"You can leave the VPs out, I can see Palin's a joke."

Zing!

Another for Obama

2008-10-22T23:07:00.002Z

This only deepens my respect for Powell as a man. I'd give a lot to be able to pick his brain for an hour or so.

Late night reflections

2008-10-22T21:42:00.005Z

Sorry about the absence as of late. I've been in Dakar for the past week seeing friends off who have finished their services in Senegal, taking care of some Peace Corps stuff, playing softball (undefeated, yo) and showing the new trainees around the city (le tour guide, quoi). The only downer was diving into the pool with my phone in my pocket like the dunce I am, but it seems to be on the mend now. The best part of it all is hanging out with other volunteers late into the night, talking about everything from politics to economics to music to the epic levels of romantic frustration one can only experience as a volunteer, all over the cheapest, nastiest beer you ever thought you'd willingly drink. One conversation in particular has given me pause.

One of the reasons why the Peace Corps program in Senegal is so large is that, unlike so many other countries in west Africa, Senegal has never ripped itself apart with civil war or even general political unrest. We, as volunteers, are safe here. Whether its to do with Islam, Senegalese society and culture or whatever, people here are committed to jamm (peace). Given the stagnant economy, absurd levels of unemployment, rampant hunger in the hinterlands, corruption at every level of government, and the food scarcity and increasing cost that have come to typify this region, I find it inspiring that Senegalese people haven't succumed to widespread violence and revolt at some point in their history. Even their independence was gained through a peaceful negotiation with France.

Its not that Senegalese people are ignorant of their plight. People are actutely aware of just how hard life can suck here. And yet they choose to live their lives in such a way as to minimize conflict on a large scale. To be sure, there are levels of petty theft and burglary that you'd expect in poor countries, but given the terrifying levels of absolute poverty (as opposed to relative poverty) that refuse to go away, it could be far, far worse.

And yet, it seems, it all hangs on a thread.

When you're mired in a poverty that has gone past stagnation and seems to be getting worse by the year, when there isn't a job to be had in the one place everyone goes to find one, when you can't send money home to the village even though the year's corn harvest is nearly depleted, when food prices are skyrocketing, when you're bombarded with advertisements reminding you how much better and easier and simpler life is in America, you attach yourself to something bigger. When a president promises you almost everything and delivers nearly nothing, when the electricity for one of the largest cities in west Africa can't be kept on for lack of someone paying attention to what the fuck is going on, you invest your relative happiness in something not connected to everyday life. In Senegal, as in many other places, rich and poor alike, the object of so many people's hope and expectation is the national soccer team.

Last Saturday (the 11th), Senegal faced the Gambia in Dakar in match that promised the winner a berth in the World Cup. The Senegalese team, its roster full of European club players, outmatched the Gambian team much like Senegal's physical size dwarfs that of the Gambia. Senegal needed a win to advance; the Gambia a tie or better. When Senegal went up 1-0 early in the second half, you could barely hear the announcers on TV over the noise of the crowd. People were jubliant, and you could feel it even through a television. Whatever was going on in Senegal, we were going to the first World Cup held in Africa. But, after the Gambia tied the game in the 85th minute and the match ended in a draw five minutes later, the entire stadium, and later that entire section of Dakar, went to hell.

Ultimately unsuccessful, the crowd on hand tried its damnedest to raze the stadium to the ground. Anything not bolted to the ground, and some things that originally were, were torn up and used to break every window in sight. It didn't take long for the melee to spill into the surrounding neighborhoods where it devolved beyond simple hooliganism. The anger and frustration of the past couple months came to a head and Dakar lost its fucking mind. Windows were smashed out. Cars were burned. Foreigners in attendence were robbed of anything not attached to them. Some had rocks thrown at their heads. (My friends in attendence managed to escape, some with minor wounds, all having had something taken from them.) Tear gas and thick, black smoke from burning cars and car tires made the city look like a carpet-bombed Berlin.

If all it takes is a little soccer game to push a large group of people over the edge, what would it take to do it on the national level? More power outages? Higher food prices? A public political scandal? Drought? Famine? Whatever it may be, I was reminded of what can happen when the fervor of mob mentality meets the perfect storm of anger and desperation.

With all of this in mind, I've been trying to figure out why so many people here are so interested in the American presidential race. I've come to the conclusion that while there may be some degree of casual curiosity and genuine intellectual interest, a great many people, from Senegal to Kenya to Mozambique, have put their hope and faith in Obama, as little as they may actually know about him or American politics. Seeing a black man, and one so relatively unremoved from his African heritage, on the cusp of rising to the most powerful office in the world is inspiring. It reminds people that while life is hard right now - and there's no guarantee that its going to get better soon - that we can still hope. We can hope that we'll land a visa to the states or Europe, maybe; or that in the long run, Africa's not hopelessly screwed. That our best days are still ahead. That Africa won't always be a charity case. That we can make life better.

Obama may be an American. He may have only visited Kenya a couple of times, and even that is on the other side of this immense landmass. We may not know much at all about his take on the financial crisis or domestic policy, or even know what that all means. But he's one of us. And that's exciting. That's inspiring.

Senegal may not be playing a competitive match for the next three years, but people have found something to believe in. I have to confess, the excitement is contagious.

My surreal life

2008-10-09T22:12:00.001Z

My host mom just asked me for my hair. She wasn't kidding.

"Give Pop-Pop your hair!"

For good measure

2008-10-08T00:30:00.002Z

Amadou says hello (lighting's not so great, sorry).

For Kristin

2008-10-08T00:20:00.007Z

For my sister who refuses to stop her incessant whining (and who I love with all my heart): more pictures of Amadou from Korite.

In his new boubou (stylish get-up):

With Seydina, his older brother, and my mom (Khady) and cousin (Cheikh) in the background.

And Seydina taking control of things at my uncle's wedding earlier this summer.

I'll add more pictures when its not so late (hopefully this will keep Kristin off my back for at least awhile).

Colonial legacy

2008-10-05T23:45:00.001Z

An interesting BBC article about the legacy of colonialism in Senegal. From my perspective, its every bit as lasting as the article makes it out to be.

Newbies

2008-10-03T19:17:00.004Z

I'm going to be spending the next few days showing a couple of new volunteers around Tivaouane and the surrounding areas. I doubt I'll be posting much, but I'll post what I can when I can, and resume "normal" posting after their visit.

Cool as the other side of the pillow

2008-10-02T17:33:00.002Z

More so than any one specific idea or policy proposal that Obama has advanced, his calm demeanor has been the single most impressive quality that I've noticed. Lately, this has come in stark contrast to McCain's rather impulsive, shoot-from-the-hip way of making decisions. For awhile, many have been saying that Obama's more nuanced or brainy (read: nerdy) approach to things is a turn-off to voters. Again, by contrast, the aloofness of Obama is increasingly appealing. But don't just take my word for it. Joe Klein:

"Part of Obama's steadiness is born of necessity: An angry, or flashy, black man isn't going to be elected President. But I've also gotten the sense, in the times I've interviewed and chatted with him, that calm is Obama's natural default position. He is friendly, informal, accessible...and a mystery, hard to get to know. He doesn't give away much, doesn't — unlike Bill Clinton — have that desperate need to make you like him. His brilliant, at times excessive, oratory is an outlier — the only over-the-top, Technicolor quality he has. There has been no grand cathartic moment for him in this campaign, but rather a steady accretion of trust, a growing public sense that he knows what he's talking about and isn't going to get crazy on us. His demeanor has rendered foolish all the rumors about his alleged radicalism."

No more fasting

2008-10-02T16:53:00.002Z

With the celebration of Korite yesterday, Ramadan is officially over. I just had lunch (!) with my host family for the first time in a month. Rice and fish during daylight hours never tasted so good. The festivities yesterday consisted, like most Senegalese holidays, of sitting around, talking with people who dropped by, drinking tea, and eating. The main meal yesterday (lunch) was a load of barbequed sheep, french fries, and an onion and mayo sauce. I think I consumed more protein yesterday than I did the entirety of Ramadan.

So, Ramadan is over. Alhamdulilah!

Dark humor

2008-09-30T21:24:00.000Z

Making light of serious situations.

Almost done

2008-09-30T16:30:00.002Z

I have roughly 2 and a half hours left of Ramadan, and I have to confess I'll be glad when its over. I say this right now, at 4:30pm, because I'm hungry and cranky. I'll hold off on an overall appraisal of my fasting experience until tomorrow when I have some food in me. Otherwise, I think I'd just bitch about being hungry.

Make music, not bailouts

2008-09-29T22:19:00.016Z

To say that I'm picky about the music I listen to is a bit of an understatement. I know what I like and, some would say even more importantly, I know what I don't like. I like rock 'n roll. I like the blues. I like guitars riffs a lot, and screaming solos even more. Zeppelin is my standard bearer. Dylan is my prophet and Cobain my poet. Arcade Fire transcends all other music around it while TV on the Radio redefines the very concept. Radiohead can do no wrong. Linkin Park can do no right. And all the while, I take it in. I absorb it, let it move through me. I am the hippie who missed his generation by 40 years. I am the hipster that ended up in Kentucky rather than Greenwhich Village. I'm chest-deep in music it will take me the next three years to digest. The room keeps filling and I refuse to turn off the tap.

And its all so ... predictable.

I'm no stranger to not being able to put down an album I had previously thought I wouldn't like. But, you'll imagine my surprise when I found myself not too long ago completely unable to stop listening to an album comprised of two genres I had all but written off: club music and hip-hop. The two combined forces to knock me on my humbled ass in the form of the still sort-of-underground British music scene iTunes has conveniently titled, for the sake of the late-to-the-party crowd, "grime/dubstep". I can only describe it as such: dirty (hence the name) yet amazingly creative breakbeats and synth production combined with (moreso on grime mixes) some of the most talented, thoughtful MCs I've heard in my (albeit, incredibly brief) foray into hip-hop, rounded out with enough bass to make your kidneys hurt.

It all started when I managed to get ahold of an album called "London Zoo" by a DJ/producer who calls himself The Bug. I still can't avoid listening to it at least once a day. I've since expanded to discover a few more artists (generally leaning towards the more "instrumental" dubstep end of things): Burial, Kode 9, and Vex'd to name a few. From here I've even branched out to older cut-and-paste legends like DJ Shadow and RJD2 (who, conincidentally, is from Columbus).

Only lately have I been able to start to articulate what exactly draws me to this music. I have a vividly image-oriented mind. When I hear music, I see what I'm listening to. Colors, lights maybe, move and morph together in an ever changing approximation of the myriad emotions and feelings brought on by a brilliantly crafted piece of music. It is at once vivid enough to dominate my mind's eye but transcendent enough to prevent me from ever reproducing it. Even sitting here trying to type out a rough description of what I see, I can't transform the abstract images conjured up by my video game and Lord of the Rings addled brain into something fitting of even a lowly blog. It is nothing less when I work my way through "London Zoo." The barrage of sound spanning all ranges of pitch, volume, beat and lyric explodes in my mind in a rapidly shifting series of muted colors pulsating with the bass and brilliant and blinding flashes of light detonating in time with the almost out of control drumkit, and when it's all over I feel like I should be left breathless - but nothing has happened outside of my own head. And I've never even done acid. All I know is that I keep coming back to this stuff - it's different, wholly different than most anything I've listened to before, and it reels me back in, without fail, every time. To add that its mostly dance music, having emerged from the London-area club scene, only confuses me more.

Everyone back home knows I don't dance. Ever.

Everyone here knows I do dance. Sometimes, and I don't look nearly as moronic as I did only a few months ago (shameless own-horn tooting, I know).

It has been quite a ride so far, this year in Senegal, and I still have one more to go.

Holy crap

2008-09-29T21:43:00.001Z

The failure of the bailout bill to pass has hit hard.

Dow Jones: -7%
Nasdaq: -9%
S&P: -8.8%

Shit + fan = ?

Good timing?

2008-09-29T18:54:00.002Z

Maybe it's good I'm an ocean away from the mess unfolding in the States right now. The House voted down the massive bailout package, and I'm not too sure where that leaves us. Something needs to be done, obviously, and the sooner the better. This is proving quite the complicated mess, but, luckily, there are people around who can make sense of it for us.

When you can't say it yourself (part 2)

2008-09-27T19:53:00.003Z

Coates is brilliant.

I've been thinking a lot about this nomination and rewatching the videos of Palin's interview. Honestly, it's all made me tremendously sad. There are lot of us lefties who are guffawing right now and are happy to see Palin seemingly stumbling drunkenly from occasional interview to occasional interview. I may have been one of them. But I'm out of that group now.

The Palin pick was the most crassest [sic?], most bigoted decision that I've seen in national electoral politics, in my--admittedly short--lifetime. There can be no doubt that they picked Palin strictly as a stick to drum up the victimhood narrative--small town, hunters, big families and most importantly, women. Had Barack Obama picked Hillary Clinton, there simply is no way they would have picked Sarah Palin. To the McCain camp, Palin isn't important as a politician, or even as a person. Her moose-hunting, her sprawling fam, her hockey momdom, her impending grandmother status are a symbol of some vague, possibly endangered American thing, one last chance to yell from the rafters "We wuz robbed." Lineup all your instances of national politicians using white victimhood to get into offices--Willie Horton, White Hands, Sista Souljah, Reagan in Philadelphia etc.--they were all awful no doubt. But I have never seen a politician subject an alleged ally to something like this.

...

My point is that, Sarah Palin never struck me as stupid. When she talked about not backpacking across Europe and working her whole life, beneath the dumb anti-intellectual dig, I saw a gem of truth. I wish she had have mined it, instead of trying to score a cheap point. Rambling aside, she simply isn't ready. Maybe she would be eight years from now, but she isn't ready now, any campaign worth its salt would have known this.

...

In election season, there is a price for being turned into a symbol. [...] Which brings me to the sexism of John McCain. He knew full well what Sarah Palin was going to face if he nominated her. He knew that reporters would go through her past, that they'd quizz her on the present, that she would need to be ready, and he shunted concern aside, and tossed her to the wolves. Think on that for a moment. For one last run at the White House, he risked a future star of the party he claims to call home. How do you do that? I don't meant to rob Palin of agency, certainly she is also a victim of her own calculations and ambitions. But where I am from the elders protect you, and pull you back when you've gone too far, when your head has gotten too big.

...

This isn't Alabama, and it ain't 1968. There is a whole class of educated, working women, themselves, the children of educated working women. And this is what McCain has to say to them, "I don't care if you know a thing about foreign policy. I don't care if you know a damn thing about the economy. Here is what you are to me--breasts, hair and a lovely smile."

When you can't say it yourself ...

2008-09-27T18:00:00.003Z

... find someone else who can. I've been having a bit of trouble lately articulating what bothers me so much about a large portion of what passes for political discourse these days. I felt a distinct sense of it last night watching the debate, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Then, I got a bit of help describing what I could sense but not say.

Having said that, what I saw on stage was a rigid ideologue. I think Eugene Robinson nailed this--McCain (like all ideologues) has to believe that those who oppose him represent some sort of treason, evil, or moral failing. I think this is why conservatives never liked him much. I just saw it as a basic lack of respect for your opponent.

This was in reference to McCain avoiding eye contact with Obama for the duration of the debate, and whether or not this is a debatable issue is a wholly separate question. However, I think the point is applicable across a broad spectrum of issues and people. This mindset has dominated the current administration's approach to a host of policies, and, I would argue, has a lot to do with these policies' disastrous outcomes. Seeing how firmly rooted this same thinking is in McCain is troubling, especially when there's a good chance he will be the next president.

Why I love the internet

2008-09-27T12:44:00.002Z

I got a bit of a late start today due to staying up way too late last night to watch the debate. Considering this debate was mostly about foreign policy and national security, I enjoyed myself quite a bit. The fact that I was able to watch it, let alone able to connect to a good quality video feed, is so much more than I ever expected when I signed up for the Peace Corps.

Life in Senegal is good.

What a day

2008-09-26T16:44:00.004Z

Yesterday was quite a day for McCain and company. I've been trying to figure out just how I can succinctly (or even coherently) begin to make sense of it all. Per usual, someone else has done what I was beginning to think was nigh impossible, or -- at the very least -- really damn hard. From Clive Crook (the highlights):

Everything that could go wrong did go wrong for McCain on Thursday. He stands implicated in the stalling of the financial rescue plan. His proposal to postpone Friday's planned television debate ended up looking like a cheap political ploy, intended either to break Obama's renewed momentum, push back the Palin-Biden debate, or even let McCain hide from his opponent. And that second theory, strained as it may seem, was made to look plausible by Palin's truly dismal performance in part two of her television interview with Katie Couric.

Was this the same Palin who gave the convention speech--or even the less-than-stunning Palin of the Charles Gibson interview? She was simply awful. In response to straightforward questions, she was scared, rambling, incoherent, and at times completely unintelligible. She looked stupid. She gave her critics everything they could have wished.

This is how bad it looks from my vantage point. Am I missing something? How has the McCain crew responded to this? It certainly does appear, from the video clips I've managed to dig up, that Palin has commenced a rather spectacular starry-eyed implosion that seemed so far off after her speech at the RNC. McCain himself doesn't seem to be faring any better with the bail-out legislation stalled and reeling backwards into tonight's foreign policy debate. All his strategists can hope for at this point is that he doesn't break a hip when he hits the floor. And that, of course, depends on how much further he has yet to fall.

Sick!

2008-09-26T16:14:00.001Z

Pissing off Pakistan

2008-09-26T15:41:00.002Z

We're sure trying.

The United States military says US and Afghan forces have exchanged gunfire with Pakistani troops across the border with Afghanistan.
A senior US military official says a five-minute skirmish broke out after Pakistani soldiers fired warning shots near two US helicopters.

This doesn't bode well for future US-Pakistan relations, let alone fostering the kind of partnership needed to track down bin Laden. Although this is the first time shots have been fired (to my knowledge), it isn't the first time such actions have been threatened. Have we been taking Pakistani acquiescence for granted? Here's hoping we can befriend Pakistan's new government sooner rather than later.

Huh?

2008-09-26T13:38:00.002Z

What do you say when ... well, you have nothing to say?

I'm kind of sad I missed all of this the first time around while I was in Dakar over the past couple days. This is the person the GOP has decided should sit a heartbeat away from the presidency?

Frightening.

Fond farewells

2008-09-26T13:30:00.002Z

I've been out of town again, but this time I didn't slaughter anything (although I did grill some burgers). Monday night I said goodbye to a friend of mine, another volunteer, who has finished her two years of service here. It's a strange dynamic in the Peace Corps, saying goodbye to a group of people every six month while welcoming their replacements. But, it's all a part of the experience, I guess. To all the kids heading out over the next few weeks, I say good luck and congratulations for making it through.

Where's Osama?

2008-09-17T18:01:00.010Z

Criticizing what we do

2008-09-17T18:01:00.009Z

Its often in one's best interest to try to take a step back and evaluate what they're doing with their life, to see if one's actions have any impact. This is especially important, I believe, in areas regarded as "noble" or, maybe more accurately, areas inhabited by do-gooders. There is a tendency not to view such areas with the critical eye needed because to do so may be misconstrued as criticizing the do-gooders' intentions or the value of their enterprise as a whole. Nowhere is this more relevant than in the international aid industry.

So when aid agencies themselves warn that billions of dollars are being wasted by the current aid system, its a bit disheartening.

"The number of people living 'on the edge of emergency' has nearly doubled to 220 million in two years, [Care International] says. [...]

Care says a failure to resolve the underlying issues trapping people in extreme poverty has left millions now unable to cope with surging food prices. In countless previous emergencies, aid has often arrived too late, was short-term, and policies were targeted too heavily on saving lives rather than building resilience in the population, the report says."

Hopefully we can get a handle on what's going wrong and minimize wasteful spending. Then maybe, ndank ndank, petit a petit, little by little, progress can be made.

Perspective

2008-09-17T18:01:00.007Z

Part of the experience of living abroad is gaining a new perspective on the country you left. Having been in Senegal for a little bit over a year, I feel I can justifiably claim that I've lived abroad. During this time, I've become pretty certain of some things, with regards to the country I left.

As cynical, sarcastic and at times antagonistic as I've been towards American society and particularly politics, I've come to realize that I am indeed a patriot. When people here ask me if I'm French, Italian, Spanish or any other European nationality, I enjoy telling them that no, in fact, I'm American. This isn't to say that I've developed any dislike or resentment of other foreigners here, but I am much more proud to say I'm American now than I was when I arrived here, all boneheaded political gaffes aside.

Because of the mind-job that is the culture shock and adjustment process of settling into life in another country (especially one as different as Senegal), its easy to romanticize the country you left. I'm as guilty as the next ex-pat.

However, reading stories like this knocks the rose colored lenses out of my eyes. There are still some aspects of life in the US that I do not miss whatsoever. The highlights:

"[A] 17-year-old spent a night in jail after police arrested him for exposing 4in (10cm) of boxer shorts in Riviera Beach, south-east Florida.
Town voters backed the law in March after supporters raised a petition."

Not surprisingly, a Florida judge ruled the law unconstitutional. However, the law was popularly supported and passed. Other major cities (Dallas and Atlanta) may enact similar laws.

Granted, absurdity extends well beyond US borders, but we sure seem to have the market cornered on trivial bullshit. Of all the myriad problems that exist in the US and abroad, of the increasingly acute issues affecting huge portions of the population that could be addressed, this is what we're going to put our energy into? This?! I really shouldn't get on a soapbox and start ranting, but - screw it.

The self-indulgence, small-mindedness and general narcissism driving the thinking behind this law is astounding and, I fear, indicative of large parts of American society as a whole. I lied earlier. There are times when I am embarrassed to say that I'm an American, and this would be one of them. When I'm in more remote parts of Senegal, whether working or passing through, I'm invariably asked what Americans are doing to help people in this part of the world (as Uncle Ben said, "with great power comes great responsibility"). And when this kind of crap pops up in my head while I'm searching for an answer, when I want to tell these women that their kids won't be severely malnourished much longer, that their husbands won't need to remain among the ranks of the unemployed in Dakar, that they will soon have potable water, that they have a shot at living better than they did 100 years ago, I get frustrated. I want to fly immediately to Florida, grab everyone responsible for this law by the ears and scream,

"Wake the fuck up! This is not important!" and then flick them in the forehead for good measure.

I should get my blood pressure checked.

Killing and grilling

2008-09-17T18:01:00.003Z

I've spent the better part of the past few days killing small animals and grilling them in the northern part of Senegal. Its hot up there, and standing around a load of burning charcoal doesn't help a whole lot either.

Until this weekend, I've never really slaughtered anything before, let alone seeing through the process from live chicken and/or duck (we did both) to steaming plate of food in front of me.

The verdict: homemade (by us) Senegalese honey barbeque sauce is tasty; duck is a lot better than I was expecting; next time we're killing and grilling a pig. Mmm ... bacon.

I'm back (again)

2008-09-16T22:07:00.002Z

I've been in the north part of the country for a bit longer than I expected, so I haven't been able to write anything for a few days. Seeing as I'm too damn tired to think right now, I'm going to go to bed and leave my inane rants for tomorrow.

Vive les chèvres!

2008-09-10T12:26:00.002Z

DR Congo frees goats from prison.

And, thank God, not a moment too soon because,

"It is not known what the goats' punishment might have been."

Equal justice under the law.

Whatever he's having ... (take 2)

2008-09-10T11:21:00.002Z

This is the kind of thing that, even if you actually believe it, you don't say aloud, let alone to a Western press corps that has a lot of dead air to fill anyway.

An Israeli cabinet minister has suggested Israel could kidnap Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over threats he has made against the state.

[...]

The former Mossad agent said the Iranian leader had threatened genocide and should therefore be brought for trial to The Hague, seat of the international war crimes tribunal.
"And all options are open in terms of how he should be brought," he was quoted as saying on Tuesday by the Associated Press news agency.
Asked if kidnapping was acceptable, Mr Eitan replied: "Yes. Any way to bring him for trial in The Hague is a possibility."

Well, as they say, it's best to fight crazy with crazy. Right?

One year

2008-09-10T11:01:00.003Z

One year ago today I left Lexington for Atlanta en route to Senegal. What a strange, fun trip it's been. Many memories and experiences I won't forget till I'm old and senile.

And there's still one more to go.

A Response: Neoconservatism (long)

2008-09-08T15:47:00.011Z

From my “more conservative friend” (here):

“Right or wrong...how is Neo-Conservatism (as regards to the issues at hand in this post) idealistic? Maybe I don't quite get it here. But it seems to me just the opposite. […]”

I couldn’t fit all I wanted to say into another comment, so I’m going to indulge myself with a full post. Brevity has long been my goal but never my forte, so bear with me.

American neoconservatism, as we recognize it today, got its start (more or less) in the 1960’s as disaffected “left-liberal” thinkers became disenchanted with the Democratic Party. They generally viewed the New Left movement (as is relevant here) as soft on Communist expansion and wrong, even anti-American, for not supporting the Vietnam War. Neoconservatives embraced a very militant, often unilateral anticommunist approach.

After the USSR collapsed, neoconservatives began arguing that the US must “export democracy” to both ensure a pro-American international community to further US interests abroad and, more importantly, to spread freedom and liberty. This was to be done primarily militarily (regime change) as an extension of the underlying assumption of neoconservatives (among others) that, like human nature, the international system is inherently anarchical and responds only to the strength of force. Once democracy was installed, fledgling regimes would flourish because of the unquestioned superiority, necessity and inevitability of democracy as a social system, and a new world peace would reign. Hence, “We will be greeted as liberators in Iraq”. A unilateral approach to this goal was argued as acceptable if the international community was not amenable, and often argued to be preferable to lengthy international negotiation.

The unquestioned faith in democracy (read: freedom, liberty, etc.) to promote US interests and usher in global peace is nothing if not highly idealistic.

Joe Klein in TIME sums it up better than I can:

“Neoconservatism in foreign policy is best described as unilateral bellicosity cloaked in the utopian rhetoric of freedom and democracy.”

My friend continues:

“[…] It seems that the "let's just talk to them and they will behave" is nice and absolutely ideal, but completely unrealistic.”

Traditional diplomacy and negotiation is hardly just “talking”. This is the exact framing of the argument that the neoconservative tradition would substitute for any other discourse. The choices aren’t solely between hot air and war.

Indeed, reactive and preventative diplomacy, in stark contrast to the unilateral "export" of democracy, is the more pragmatic method. Decision makers approach different problems on more of an ad-hoc basis, forgoing a one-size-fits-all solution (like American-style democracy superimposed on a foreign country) for a this-size-fits-now resolution. The best recent example I can give, as I mentioned in a previous post, is the success of diplomatic pressure on and multilateral negotiations with North Korea. Contrary to what we’ve heard over the past eight years, diplomacy does work.

This is not to day, however, that democracy is an unrealistic development goal. I believe democratic governance to be the best system of government we've been able to devise over the long course of human history (I'm American, right?). But creating a brand new democracy isn't as easy as saying, "Congratulations, guys, you have a democratic government. Now go!" A democratic government is a fragile organic entity that grows and evolves over time in response to various issues as they present themselves (theoretically, at least).

Like most things, a one-or-the-other debate of idealism versus pragmatism is not constructive. In the case of North Korea, pragmatic solutions for problems specific to that country and region were applied with the ideal of nuclear non-proliferation as the guiding principle. As recent events have shown, unchecked and unquestioned idealism can easily go awry because of lack of attention to on-the-ground realities. However, short-sighted pragmatism can just as easily devolve into an us-versus-them, Machiavellian struggle of arbitrary self-preservation.

A balance, then, must be struck between the short and the long-term. There is no silver bullet for international conflict. Human beings, flawed as we are, cannot account for any and every possible issue or problem that may arise given the myriad variables in the equation of human nature. This, ultimately, is the critical problem of absolutism in any form, of which neoconservative foreign policy most certainly is one. Indeed, world peace is a noble goal, a worthy ideal, but it cannot be realized without navigating the thicket of complicated, nuanced issues unique to every country and culture on earth.

Amadou (by popular demand)

2008-09-07T23:30:00.003Z

My little host brother, Amadou (donning the obligatory late-afternoon baby powder and cookie crumbs), who singlehandedly determines my sleep schedule 24 hours per day. When he's happy, he's screaming. When he's mad, he's screaming. When he wants something, he's screaming. When he's not screaming, he's inhaling because he just got done screaming.

He's a cute kid, but man - he's got some pipes. But, all that said, I wouldn't trade him for any other kid in Senegal.

That's more like it. Screaming because he thought my taking a picture of him was hilarious. Classic.

Anti-intellectualism

2008-09-07T12:06:00.002Z

I normally don't see eye-to-eye with Sam Harris on, well, much of anything, but he makes a couple good points in a recent editorial. Money quote:

Americans have an unhealthy desire to see average people promoted to positions of great authority. No one wants an average neurosurgeon or even an average carpenter, but when it comes time to vest a man or woman with more power and responsibility than any person has held in human history, Americans say they want a regular guy, someone just like themselves. President Bush kept his edge on the "Who would you like to have a beer with?" poll question in 2004, and won reelection.

Why is "average" something to look for in a president? I'd rather someone extraordinary, capable of making judgments of situations that would make the average person cringe. But, that's just one kid's opinion.

Whew

2008-09-06T23:32:00.001Z

It wasn't pretty, but the Buckeyes pulled it out. If they play like that in Pasadena, it could get really ugly, really quickly.

Oh, crap (continued)

2008-09-06T18:10:00.002Z

As I write this, my beloved Buckeyes are trailing Ohio 14-6 in the third quarter. USC is still a week away, guys.

Whoa, Biden

2008-09-06T18:07:00.001Z

I'm officially intrigued by what could happen in the VP candidate debates.

Call all procrastinators

2008-09-06T00:58:00.001Z

I should have found this years ago. More efficient procrastinating = my lifelong dream.

Sanity

2008-09-06T00:25:00.004Z

Sometimes I get worried that one of these days I'm going to straight up overdose on current affairs, that the absurdity of what passes for legitimate debate will finally catch up to me and - wham, I'm on the floor foaming at the mouth, racing towards cardiac arrest.

But then, like an adrenaline shot to the heart (quick, what movie did I just watch?), I'm saved by intellectual honesty and decency:

You can beat the opposition with a club all day long, if you have no regard for the people on the side getting sprayed with blood. That's a kind of writing that pleases me and people who agree with me, but shows absolutely no regard to people who either don't agree, or aren't decided. I have no idea why anyone would want to write in such a fashion. It's arrogant, self-absorbed, and better suited to one's diary, or their inane, half-drunk, happy-hour ramblings.

I shall live to see another day.

Pwned

2008-09-05T23:08:00.001Z

And pwned hard.

Change of Heart

2008-09-05T13:50:00.003Z

It wasn't too long ago that I'd have sworn up and down that the day Bush and company would engage the so-called "axis of evil" diplomatically was no more than a fantasy. How wrong I am. The past couple years' change in the administration's rhetoric and policy has proven quite interesting - shorter on the fire-breathing and longer on constructive engagement of the diplomatic community. Between Bush's original 2002 "axis of evil" and Bolton's "Beyond the Axis of Evil" additions, nearly all have been engaged diplomatically over the past couple years. The checklist:

Iraq - The poster child for what went wrong with Bush's foreign policy, although Gen. Petraeus' tactical genius seems increasingly effective - five years later.
Iran - Still the largest target of hawkish rhetoric, but at least one lower-level State Department envoy has been sent to Iran, a huge step forward from Bush's 2002 "axis of evil" speech.
North Korea - The other poster child for what could-have-been. Probably the best example of prudent diplomacy in Bush's eight years.
Cuba - Not much going on here outside of Guantanamo Bay, but with Raul Castro taking power, it seems like the decades-old embargo may be headed for the history books.
Libya - Rice's upcoming diplomatic visit is huge - the first by an American Secretary of State since 1953.
Syria - An important part of Rice's most recent push for Israeli-Palestinian peace, specifically Syria's history of meddling in Lebanon. This situation looks to be improving (and here), although I'm not sure how much credit Rice and company can take for it.

Why the relatively sudden change of heart? Has Bush finally seen the folly of unchecked neoconservative idealism? Has Rice the Realist won out? Who knows. What seems likely, though, is that the last two years of Bush's presidency are going to be viewed quite differently than the first six. The brash, sometimes arrogant, certainty of his post-9/11 foreign policy is gone.

It begins

2008-09-05T12:14:00.002Z

The SEC circular firing squad has commenced its season. Its possible that the eventual SEC champ will emerge from the championship game with 2 losses but still contend with any unbeaten team in the country.

Here's an idea. Shorten the season to 10 games at the most (removing a couple cash-grab games that mark this time of year) and institute an 8-team playoff (use the BCS formula, if its so important) so the best teams from the best conference in the country aren't penalized for the stiff competition they face all season long.

Unfortunately, because of the huge sums of money wrapped up in multi-season game contracts, the big bowls and whatever else people these days are squeezing money out of, I highly doubt we'll see any substantial change to the status quo for a long time. Remember when that undefeated Auburn team got squeezed out of the national championship picture a few years ago? If that doesn't spur some change, I don't know what will.

Brilliant

2008-09-04T23:45:00.001Z

Lookie here, actual analysis. Pretty spot-on, too.

I'll lay off the politics for awhile now, I promise.

Yikes

2008-09-04T19:48:00.000Z

The French public care for the Iraq War even less than most Americans, and with stories like this coming out, it's hard to blame them.

Staring out from a glossy eight-page spread in the latest edition of the magazine Paris Match, several Taleban fighters show off their trophies of war.
Guns, walkie-talkies and even a wrist-watch are photographed - all spoils taken from the 10 French soldiers they killed in an ambush last month.
Accompanying the pictures is a long interview with the Taleban leader who calls himself Commander Farouki.
He claims they were tipped off about the French mission in their area and were able to prepare an ambush with 140 highly trained insurgents.
"If night hadn't fallen we'd have killed every one of the soldiers," he boasts.

I have to agree with the critics. Why run this story which serves essentially as insurgent propaganda?

Whatever he's having ...

2008-09-04T17:25:00.000Z

I don't want to harp too much on politics, but I need to get one more bit out of my system before my head pops. I have just one question:

What the hell is going on inside Mitt Romney's head? His RNC address is one of the more ridiculous diatribes I've come across lately.

A few points. In the middle of an anti-anything-remotely-resembling-liberal laundry list of tired talking points, Romney said the following.

"Is government spending, putting aside inflation, liberal or conservative if it doubles since 1980? It's liberal." Aside from Reagan's two terms, GHW Bush's one, and GW Bush's two and a Republican-controlled Congress from 1994 to 2006? Not to mention the record surplus turned what-the-hell-just-happened deficit over which the junior Bush has governed. How can such a blind re-creation of the last 25-plus years make it into a speech at the highest levels of our government?

He also made a snide comment about protecting Guantanamo inmates' rights (championed by both our Constitution and the Geneva Conventions) being a "liberal" Supreme Court decision. So we're not supposed to uphold one of the most basic tenets of the very same democracy we're preaching in the Middle East, that one is innocent until proven guilty, that one has a right to a trial? The moment we sacrifice any semblance of moral legitimacy in this "war on terror" (read: abandoning democratic principles, allowing torture, etc) is the moment we reduce ourselves to the level of the people we claim to be fighting, at which point all of this devolves into a petty battle of self-preservation. Us versus them, with no higher, transcendental legitimacy or authority.

What the hell has become of American political discourse?

In other news ...

2008-09-04T16:22:00.000Z

Oh, crap.

Here's hoping Beanie gets on the mend between now and kickoff in Pasadena.

Also, is the Pac-10 a better college football conference than the SEC, like some might say? I'm inclined to disagree, but the Pac-10 is 10-6 against the SEC in the BCS-era. I imagine that has more to do with more mid-level SEC teams getting matched up against the Pac-10's better programs, but I can't say for sure. I do know, however, that the SEC is still really damn good.

McCain, Bush and the T-word

2008-09-04T15:40:00.002Z

Was McCain tortured? It certainly seems so - the accounts of what he had to endure (for years, even) to the endless "McCain was a POW!" refrain from his partisans would have us believe he was indeed tortured. But, according to some, he was not tortured at all. The same barbaric techniques used on McCain (stress positions, sleep deprivation, etc) have been approved for use by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al. So was McCain tortured or not?

I certainly believe so, and his experience should be characterized as such. However, you can't have it both ways. If McCain's partisans want to talk about McCain being tortured, those same partisans (those who haven't already) need to admit that what has been perpetrated in the "war on terror" qualifies as torture. If they're not willing to admit that, then they must drop the "McCain was tortured in Vietnam" rhetoric to avoid contradicting themselves flat-out.

Bush, it seems, has decided which position he's taking. In his address to the RNC, Bush speaks of McCain's experience in the Hanoi Hilton but never once uses the t-word. For good reason, too, because if he admits those "enhanced interrogation" techniques are in fact torture, then he's implicated himself as a war criminal. Bush would have us believe that McCain was not, in fact, tortured. He was merely "interrogated."

Ultimately, this whole debate does an incredible disservice to McCain. I'm not voting for the guy, but I certainly don't want to cheapen an experience he so admirably pulled through, an experience I doubt I could handle. The man was indeed tortured.

EDIT - As much as I'd like to take credit for this line of thinking, it's not exactly original. I've seen it in various forms but most vocally from the Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan. Still, I feel it's worth considering.

At Least Someone is Thinking

2008-09-04T15:20:00.000Z

An interesting observation from Evangelical PR guru Mark DeMoss (who worked at one point for Jerry Falwell) from Steven Waldman's blog, relayed by Andrew Sullivan:

Too many evangelicals and religious conservative are too preoccupied with values and faith and pay no attention to competence. We don't apply this approach to anything else in life, including choosing a pastor." Imagine, he said, if a church was searching for a pastor and the leadership was brought a candidate with great values but little experience. "They've been a pastor for two years at a church with 150 people but he shares our values, so we hired him to be pastor of our 5,000 person church? It wouldn't happen! We don't say, 'He shares our values, so let's hire him.' That's absurd. Yet we apply that to choosing presidents. It blows my mind.

...

To be clear, DeMoss isn't saying Palin is unqualified. "The reality is, we don't know - and neither does McCain if he only met her once." The other Christian leaders who rallied around her didn't know much either. "I'm not hinting something's amiss but we don't know her and the people who gave her glowing response Friday didn't know. The euphoric rush to anoint without knowing -- it's a dangerous thing.

It'd be nice if more critical thought like this was a part of "normal" political discourse - on both sides of the aisle. But ... I'm not going to get my hopes up.

Recap

2008-09-04T14:47:00.000Z

It's been quite awhile since I last wrote about what, exactly, I'm doing in Senegal. So I guess I'm due for a slapdash recap of the last six months of my life.

Baskets of assorted shapes, sizes and colors have commanded most of my attention over the summer (summer back home, end of the dry/beginning of the rainy seasons here). At the end of July, I was happy to load up an order of roughly 1,500 baskets into a cargo container bound for the US. This represented the culmination of just about everything work-related I've been doing since my last round of training in February. The volunteer 20-some kilometers to my north, our exemplary work partner in the villages where the baskets are made and I worked hard over the last few months, coordinating the logistics of this 6-village operation, inspecting each basket, and finally loading the whole mess into a large cargo container.

It has been an fascinating venture. Getting to know the village women who make the baskets and seeing what this new income means to them has been educational and informative, but above all, humbling. The added liquidity at these women's hands has had a tremendous impact, as rising food costs begin to hit hardest here. At this time of year, food stores from the previous harvest begin to run low (or even run out, as has happened in many other, more remote places where my fellow volunteers live and work) and the new harvest is still months premature. The village woman also have a tremendous amount of ownership of their new income, having put in days and even weeks of labor making each basket by hand to earn their income. The pride they take in their work and what it means to them to be able to support their families is inspiring.

On the personal side, the adjustment process, through its many ups and downs, has been going well. I'm getting more and more comfortable stumbling through conversations in Wolof and French as each day passes. The culture, cuisine and daily interactions no longer seem so foreign. I've made progress, but I'm sure there's still much more to go between now and when I finish my service. I imagine I'll still be cultivating my limited understanding of Senegal until the day I leave.

As I write this, I'm starting to get pretty hungry. We're a few days into the holy month of Ramadan, the month of fasting. During daylight hours, Muslims are not permitted to eat, drink, smoke or anything like that. The fast is out of solidarity with those who don't have a choice, and must go hungry - a very interesting tradition in a country so stricken by poverty. I've decided to fast with my host family while I'm at site. After just a few days, its already been an interesting experience. Life slows to almost a halt during the day as people lay around sleeping, listening to the radio or even watching TV (those who own one). Then, when the imam's call to prayer sounds at dusk, we break the fast with dates, bread and coffee and Senegal comes alive again. After a late dinner (or two), most people take to the street to hang out with neighborhood friends now that they've eaten and it's not so hot out. After sitting around all day hungry and tired, processed machine bread and Nescafe never tasted so good.

So, that brings us up to date as far as the highlights go. As I remember things I've neglected to mention (of which I'm sure there are many) I'll add them. Also, if you have any questions about what it is I'm doing here, please feel free to leave a comment or email me.

I'm back!

2008-09-04T14:32:00.000Z

My old blog had collected so much dust I figured it was time for a new attempt. So, here it is. I fully intend to update this one quite frequently (which should be a major improvement over the last incarnation) with random musings on my life in Senegal and the goings-on in the land I left just about one year ago. I can't promise that my posts will be very enlightening, entertaining or even make much sense, but I hope someone somewhere will glean a bit of - well, anything from them.

I'm back!