The Ruse of Privatization

I've read a number of articles in recent days about how a philosophy of "small government" - allegedly the property of either the federal government or that of the Gulf Coast states - is to blame for the disastrous aftermath of the hurricane. Although there may be some truth to this response, overall I believe that it distorts the facts and the real reasons for the tragedy. First, there is no way to reconcile the philosophy of small government with that of the Bush administration. Under President Bush, federal spending has increased to record levels; Bush has never in his Presidency vetoed a single bill, signing some of the most egregious pork barrel bills to ever pass through Congress; Bush has aggressively promoted expansions of federal programs, most notably the Medicare prescription drug benefit; in January of 2004, in the middle of the Iraq war, Bush threw his support behind a multi-billion dollar plan to launch a manned mission to Mars. Whatever else government has been under George W. Bush, it hasn't been small. From what little I know of the government of Louisiana, it isn't particularly small either, and it wasn't smallness alone which led to the failure to adequately secure the city. Rather, it was a complete lack of efficiency, transparency, and accountability. Money was spent in the wrong places, at the wrong times, for the wrong reasons. Priorities were out of order. Special interests were served first. Calling this debacle small government is a misnomer. It is bad government.
The entire phenomenon of so-called "privatization" which has become the familiar hallmark of the Bush era needs to be re-examined. It's been commonly assumed that privatization means what fiscal conservatives say it means: a reduction in the size of federal budgets, overall decreases in federal spending, the populist empowering of the private sector ("it's your money.") As far as I can tell, there is no evidence that this is actually the case. Under conservative rule, government has continued to grow at a more than healthy rate. What's changed is how government operates and who it serves. Under the Bush administration, government has become steadily less transparent, less accountable, and alarmingly inefficient. Cronyism and loyalty has replaced competence as the guiding principle of job appointments; the burden of social welfare has been drastically shifted onto the middle and lower classes; the refusal of the federal government to pay its share has placed an unprecedented burden on state and local governments. The overall result is the precise opposite of what the traditional conservatives claimed would happen under privatization: the federal government is hemorraging cash at an unsustainable rate. How is this possible? The answer is that privatization is something completely different than what it has claimed to be. Far from a reduction in the power and scope of government, privatization is actually a radical expansion of it. Imagine, for a moment, what a future might look like under the successful prosecution of Bush's conservative revolution. The liberal-democratic model of government would be entirely subsumed by the rise of the new capitalist super-state. This state would write and enforce its own laws, dictate public policy, control the flow of information, and allocate natural resources on a global scale. Its authority would be practically synonymous with the global economy itself. Survival outside of its orbit would be practically impossible. This exercise in science-fiction reveals that George W. Bush is presiding over not a reduction in the size or capacity of a traditional democratic government but rather the renovation and expansion of a vast politico-corporate bureaucracy, a new social class. While the outward form of the liberal state may remain intact, the public functions it has traditionally served are being actively transferred to these new authorities. Again, I cannot emphasize strongly enough that the power of government in this country is not on the wane. Rather, the power of democratic government is on the wane. Its usurper threatens to establish a hegemony not seen in North America since the forces of King George III were evicted - indeed, of much the same bearing and disposition.

Hurricane Katrina: 9/11's Delayed Reaction

The catastrophe of 9/11 was recognized immediately as a wake-up call to America: an opportunity to repent of a national frivolousness which had been steadily eroding democratic values for a very long time (I remember reading woeful mea culpas about how the summer of 2001 had been dominated by the media obsession with Gary Condit and Chandra Levy.) Unfortunately, George W. Bush was the President on September 11th, 2001, and he masterfully subverted this mood into a militant nostalgia reminiscent of fascism, declared himself the reincarnation of Winston Churchill, and identified liberalism (and its supposed corollary, homosexuality) as the enemy in our midst which needed to be expunged. In fact the real culprit was the malignant capitalist state of which he was the hierarch (and liberal America's passive accommodation of it - the combination of which might be labeled "post-modernism,") but that was soon lost in debates over fictionalized weapons of mass destruction and imaginary Saddamist plots against America. (My favorite of these will always be the killer robots Saddam was said to be preparing to attack us. A perfect touch!) Now, four years later, the democratic revolution staved off by the Bush administration four years ago may actually take place, courtesy of the latest disaster to befall these United States. It appears that in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Americans are waking up. Reality, the declared enemy of the Bush administration, is setting in. Worried about fraying race relations? The rising cost of energy? Unmanageable health care costs? Frightening budget deficits? Caring for an aging population? The disintegrating state of government services for the poor, elderly, and infirm? Manufacturing and service jobs heading overseas? Global warming, ocean and river pollution, shrinking wetlands, toxic waste dumps? The endangered American town? Terrorism? American GI's getting blown to smithereens by an invisible enemy in Iraq? More unfunded wars and natural disasters on the horizon? Where $200 billion is going to come from to rebuild three states from scratch? Pick your poison. The feeling is that of waking up and realizing that there is nobody behind the wheel, and that soothing voice you've been hearing from the front seat is a recording. I started off this post a little more optimistically than what I ended up writing - the hope that in the wake of the hurricane, the lessons of 9/11 might finally be learned - and there is hope, but it's hope shrouded in darkness. Most Americans long ago accepted the Reaganesque notion that government should be left to manage its own affairs, but that's the truth that's now crashing down around us. The long-awaited revival of democracy is no longer a luxury, but an imperative. It's the only way forward to forgiveness and renewal on the other side.

Good News From the Culture Wars

Some great news today courtesy of the Bible Literacy Project of Fairfax, Virginia, which has spent the past five years developing an Interfaith, non-partisan, well-researched textbook for teaching biblical literacy to high school students. The project was the result of cooperation from across denominational and religious boundaries, including "prominent evangelical, mainline Protestant, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Jewish and secular experts" (AP.) I for one can't praise such an achievement highly enough. The lack of a standarized curriculum for religious education in high schools has seriously contributed to the decline of civic values. Please do not mistake me and think that for a moment I'm arguing in favor of right-wing populist shibboleths such as the Pledge of Allegiance or prayer in schools. Such rites are merely codes for discrimination. They do nothing to enlarge student's cultural or intellectual or spiritual horizons, they communicate nothing but partisanship and jingoism. I despise the modern conservative goal of replacing public education with religiously-inspired superstition. What I'm arguing for is simply the civic corollary to my conviction that religion and science must ultimately inspire each other. It is a fact that the twin tasks of civic (cultural, practical) and religious education have historically belonged together, and with good reason. To receive from respected authorities the most precious wisdom which any civilization has to offer is, without remainder, to experience the broadening of one's spiritual horizons, which is to say that education is a deeply spiritual process, and its outcome is strikingly similar to what St. Paul calls the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Without this foundation, education can only justify itself through the contradictory logic of instrumentalism, an argument which renders the liberal arts and especially the spiritual arts a backwater. If education exists only as a subsidiary of the market-state, then literacy itself is dispensable, an archaism in the greater cosmos of the profit motive. Thus, while it may seem counter-intuitive, instrumentalization is eroding the very notion of a public space which is the essence of democracy. The willingness to act for purposes greater than oneself can only result from a knowledge of what I might call "sacred truth," and many of those truths are vested in religious traditions.
It's in this context that the achievement of the Bible Literacy Project deserves to be celebrated. In an era in which popular culture has nearly prevailed over cultural literacy; in which demagoguery has outflanked democracy; and in which political horizons have shrunk to such an alarming degree that violent radicalism seems like a rational choice to many, this is a triumph of moderation, respect, and mutual collaboration. This is the hard work of cultural renewal which will yield fruit for future generations. When education truly models the values that it professes, then we can all breathe the air of a better world: less jaded, less cynical, less crude; more open, more hopeful, more just. As American Jewish Congress attorney Marc Stern, an adviser on the effort, said "this book is proof that the despair is premature, that it is possible to acknowledge and respect deep religious differences and yet still find common ground." That's good news for us all.

Even an Act of God Isn't Going to Change George W. Bush

A humble, devout man might interpret certain events - such as 9/11, or Hurricane Katrina - as warnings from God to get his act together. Since time immemorial, that's how religious people have interpreted disasters, with mixed results. President Bush, on the other hand, is a classic narcissist who always interprets disaster as confirming all of his prejudices. It is always disaster for someone else, because they deserved it, and vindication for him - further affirmation of the infallibility of his calling. (This is why the logic of Dr. Strangelove fits Bush so perfectly: if the nukes were to start falling, he would be on the phone with Karl Rove working damage control and trying to find a way to give the rich a tax break.) So it should come as no surprise that Bush is trying to use the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to push his kooky agenda - the same agenda which landed the Gulf Coast in its current predicament, only worse. I believe the definition of insanity is when no argument and no evidence could possibly convince a person otherwise. After three of the worst disasters in this nation's history (9/11, Iraq, Katrina) I think it's safe to say that nothing in heaven or on earth could get Bush to change his mind about anything.

My Friend Katrina Evacuates Her Name

My friend Katrina has reluctantly decided to abandon her name, she told me the other day. "For a long time I held out hope that my name was salvageable," she said. "After all, no name has ever been completely destroyed by a storm before. I thought I could wait it out, but eventually it just got to be too much." Since the storm struck, my friend Katrina has been pounded by relentless media references to her name and a torrent of disapproval from strangers. "Everything I've put into my name has simply been washed away," Katrina stated. "There's nothing left to come back to." Katrina isn't looking forward to the post-Katrina era. "I never liked any of the nicknames for my name: Kat, Kit, Kitty," she reported. "I guess I'm going to have to pick one of them. Eventually I'll rebuild somewhere, but Katrina as I knew her is gone forever."

Operation "Able Danger"

I've just read the disturbing news that a Pentagon employee is claiming to have destroyed key documents pertaining to the identification of Mohammed Atta as a terrorist back in 1999 at the orders of his supervisor. Apparently the documents were the result of a secret Clinton-era intelligence operation known as "Able Danger" - whose existence was so secret that 9/11 Commissioner Slade Gordon has stated "It just didn't happen." Does anyone know anything more about this operation or the circumstances under which the employee was ordered to destroy the documents? I won't prejudge the facts, but on the surface this seems like fuel for the fire for those who have claimed that the federal government had detailed knowledge of the movements of the hijackers. Recall, for instance, 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser's account of the exchange between herself and senior FBI agents, in which she questioned how the FBI managed to identify the very flight school in Florida at which some of the hijackers had trained within hours of the attack, and received the sarcastic retort, "We got lucky." I will keep a close eye on this story as it develops and welcome any new information anyone can provide.

Negotiating with al-Qaeda?

In an Op-Ed in today's Boston Globe, Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou, associate director of the Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research at Harvard, puts forth the notion that the United States should supplement its military campaign against al-Qaeda with a complementary strategy of direct negotiations and if necessary, concessions. I believe that there's a lot of merit to this idea, especially the paradigm shift that the U.S. should treat al-Qaeda as an organized militia with a specific political and military agenda rather than as a gang of blood-thirsty apocalyptic fanatics. Certainly this would help most Americans to come to a better understanding of the otherwise baffling war on terror (perhaps one of the main reasons why the Bush administration hasn't tried it.) However, I'm not as optimistic as Mohamedou that such negotiations would actually lead to a cease-fire with al-Qaeda, at least not in any initial phase. I take from Juan Cole, Professor of History at the University of Michigan (and one of the best informed and most insightful commentators on the war on terror) that al-Qaeda's goal is to overthrow all of what it considers the pro-Western puppet regimes in the Middle East. What bin Laden hopes will emerge, according to Cole, is some kind of Islamist super-state, preferably nuclear armed, with the capability of launching direct strikes against Israel and western targets, radically reducing the regional accommodation of the state of Israel and forcing western governments to withdraw their forces. Al-Qaeda thus envisions a reversal of what it perceives as a century of Muslim accommodation and humiliation at the hands of the imperialist west, and a renaissance of Islamic power.

Clearly, these goals cannot be reconciled with those of the United States. There is no possibility of a U.S. withdrawal from Muslim lands, nor will the U.S. withdraw its support for Israel. If negotations ever become possible, it will be as a result of U.S. victories in the war on terror forcing al-Qaeda to scale back its plans. The way things stand now, however, it doesn't seem as if al-Qaeda has any reason to negotiate. Bin Laden's grand vision of an Islamist neo-caliphate is halfway to realization, thanks to the folly of U.S. policy in Iraq, which could very well result in a new regional politics dominated by Iran.

In the long run Mohamedou may prove to be right. But real negotiations between al-Qaeda and the United States are at the moment so implausible, it's almost not worth talking about.

Joker Escapes Again

The Joker has escaped again, CIA director Porter Goss announced at a press conference on Tuesday. "We had him totally cornered on a catwalk in the Axis Chemical Factory, when all of a sudden he disappeared in a cloud of laughing gas," Goss reported. "By the time we came to our senses, he was long gone." Goss denied that any lapses in judgment had led to the failed operation. "You guys in the media don't know what we're going through up here. I've been on the phone 24/7 with Police Commissioner Gordon trying to solve this case. Rest assured, the government is doing everything it can to capture this killer," he stated. Earlier, President Bush defended his administration's actions. "No one in my government will rest until the Joker has been safely returned to Arkham Asylum where he belongs," he promised. "Then we will all sleep safely knowing that a sworn enemy of America has been brought to justice." The Joker is the prime suspect in a string of slayings, robberies, and public mayhem which has terrorized Gotham City for more than fifty years.

The Question of Evil

One of the questions people inevitably ask in the wake of a horrendous natural disaster such as Hurricane Katrina is how a good God could allow such things to happen. The genre of theological reasoning which attempts to answer such questions is called theodicy. In recent years theologians have had great success in attacking the classical form of the "argument from evil," which states that the existence of evil is incompatible with the existence of an all-powerful, good God. Theologians have successfully demonstrated that much of the evil in the world is the result of free will, and established the possibility that free will may ultimately be a greater good than all of the evil it causes. As the debate stands today, the question is not so much whether a good God might permit some evil, but rather why does God permit so much of it? And why does it always seem to happen to the wrong people? Further, what about natural disasters, which are beyond the control of human beings? Why doesn't God, for instance, whisk everyone out of the way when a hurricane is about to strike? Or why don't angels sound audible alarms from heaven? The argument from anti-theists is that the amounts and kinds of evil we actually find in the world make the existence of an all-powerful, good God seem implausible.
I believe that a successful response to this argument must hinge on a defense of the kind of world God created. We might start with G.K. Chesterton's rejoinder, what about the problem of pleasure? Why, the corpulent man of letters wondered, is life so enjoyable? If the non-theist can imagine a world which is far better than this one, the theist can easily imagine one which is much worse! If we begin to examine the world to learn what about it is so enjoyable, we will find there is a paradox to pleasure: it is often dangerous. If we take God to have "made" waterfalls, then God is also responsible for the possibility of being crushed by them. The same goes for the beauty of mountains, which are beautiful in part because they are high enough to fall to your death from. Lions and tigers would not be as glorious if they lacked the spirit and capability of devouring their prey (a lion fed manna by angels would be a disappointment.) What is this sense of intrigue and delight which is both thrilling and dangerous? I believe that it is close to the spirit of science itself. Adventure, discovery, and transformation, require a universe with enough heft, enough density and complexity, to make the journey worthwhile. Not only that but in that process there is always a sense of risk - a self-giving, self-sacrificing willingness to take chances in order to take that next step. For every "something more," there's a "something less," or at least the possibility of it, a natural ebb and flow which is close to the flesh and bone of science itself.
Would we give up the awesome power of hurricanes if we could know for sure that no one would ever be killed or injured by one? What else would we be prepared to give up - how child-proofed would we want God to make the universe - if it meant guaranteeing everyone's safety and security? Or isn't it the case that there's something to love in this creation, some gut response to the sheer power and beauty and even love we find in nature, even when it kills us?

More Responses to the Worst of the Worst

ts said...
extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
don't you think jacoby has a point about neutral organizations such as the red cross?
2:41 PM

weazoe said...
Did you actually read the articles? The Herald's investigation was based on an internal Unicef report, from which it quotes at length. In addition, the investigation cites first-hand reports from German and Iraqi journalists, and quotes human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and the Red Cross as saying that they are aware of and extremely concerned about the problem of child detainees. This is what the report says about the Red Cross:
Between January and May this year the Red Cross registered a total of 107 juveniles in detention during 19 visits to six coalition prisons. The aid organisation’s Rana Sidani said they had no complete information about the ages of those detained, or how they had been treated. The deteriorating security situation has prevented the Red Cross visiting all detention centres.
By the way at least one fact in this story has been widely reported on in the blogosphere and the mainstream media: the rape of a sixteen year old boy. You can read about it at cbsnews here and the washington post here.

New Show About Black President Marketed Like Science Fiction

The new television drama, "He's the Chief," is a wild-eyed, fantastical journey through a dream-like, futuristic landscape, according to press releases. The premise of the show? A black man becomes President. "This show will boggle your mind," said studio executive Walt Evans. "It's going to be like the X-Files, only even more unbelievable. When you first get a glimpse of the President sitting in the Oval Office - and he's black! - you're going to know you're in an alternative universe." Some critics have questioned whether the show's premise is just too fantastical for audiences to accept. "It reminds me of that Max Headroom show back in the '80's," said Variety reviewer Bernie Wallace. "Critics loved it because it was so challenging and innovative, but audiences couldn't get their heads around the concept. Science fiction doesn't usually reach a wide audience." Some viewers were already looking forward to the premier, however. "I think it's going to be one of those cult things, like Twin Peaks," said Melodie Fairchild of Seattle. "I mean, it might be a little weird, but you have to hand it to these guys. A black President? Sometimes the craziest ideas make the best shows."

We'll Meet Again Someday

The news that the Pentagon is revising the Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations to openly declare the possibility of launching a first strike against terrorists or states suspected of harboring them doesn't exactly come as a surprise, since the Bush Administration has been seeking funding for bunker busting nuclear warheads for three years now and had already hinted that it has a pre-emptive nuclear policy in place. And also since the character played by Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove, who rides a warhead bareback to its destination, is a perfectly eerie prophecy of George W. himself. So, the Bush administration has one last gift it wants to give to the world before 2008: a nuclear holocaust. We sort of knew that already. Nevertheless, it's not good news for those of us who plan to be inhabiting the planet for any of the next several decades. How exactly does one launch a pinpoint strike against a terrorist hideout? We can't capture bin Laden because supposedly we don't know where he is. Then what good are nuclear weapons against them? And does it really make sense to think that this policy would actually deter al-Qaeda from launching a WMD attack? I would think, if anything, it would encourage them to do so. The Bush administration has the worst record of any Presidency since the end of World War II on containing nuclear weapons in part because it has repudiated the successful containment strategies of its predecessors, including international non-proliferation and test ban agreements. What the Bush administration doesn't understand is that by rejecting the non-proliferation framework of the Cold War it has effectively promoted nuclear lawlessness, leaving states such as North Korea and Iran with no reasonable choice but to pursue nuclear weapons. These states, whose interests inevitably conflict with ours, have no other deterrent in light of the Bush administration's stated intention to topple their governments through any available means, including nuclear weapons. The Bush administration's nuclear policy is as unwise as it is immoral. It's a foolish government that gives its enemies no choice but to prepare to meet force with force.

Statisticians Inversely Correlate Lindsay Lohan, Houston

Statisticians have discovered a remarkable inverse correlation between the collective weight of the city of Houston and that of Lindsay Lohan, researchers announced yesterday. "It's amazing," stated population analyst and celebrity guru Richard Sanchez. "Over the past two years, the ratio has never varied. As Houston has gotten fatter, Lohan has gotten skinnier. According to our latest calculations, Lohan now weighs about as much as an average Houstonian's butt-cheek." Concerned mathematicians were quick to draw the obvious conclusion. "If the city of Houston can't get its weight down, Lindsay is doomed," announced demographer Barbara Ellsworth. "She's already on the brink. A few more pounds on the part of the average Houstonian and Lindsay is just going to disappear." As of Friday researchers were desperately trying to get the word out on the street. "Please, Houstonians," Ellsworth pleaded. "The next time you go to grab that double-cheeseburger, think twice. Do you really want to be the fat-ass who killed Lindsay Lohan?"

What Happens Now? The End of an Ideology

After 9/11, I woke up in a Bizarro-world where George W. Bush was the most powerful man on earth and whatever he happened to think on that day passed for absolute truth. Ever since, I've had the nagging feeling of having stumbled into the wrong reality - that somewhere in another dimension, Al Gore is President and everything is just the way it used to be. Well, history carries with it its own ironies, reversals, and concealed symmetries. It appears now that as the winds of Hurricane Katrina bore down on New Orleans, we may have been blown back into the "regular" world, the very one we departed from when the planes struck the World Trade Center.

What I mean is that although the catastrophe of 9/11 impacted America in ways that we still don't fully understand, one of the most significant and unexpected consequences was a sudden shift in the national and global balance of power, a dangerous and unfortunate accident which just happened to benefit an extraordinarily fanatical and corrupt regime. In effect the hijacked airliners struck a bulls-eye in the heart of the American democratic tradition, catalyzing an authoritarianism which might otherwise have simply lain dormant. 9/11 created a different America that had always been a possibility but had never yet become actualized. That was 9/11. That was one catastrophe, and its consequences.

Now almost exactly four years later, Hurricane Katrina has struck the United States with equal force, and its repercussions may be exactly the opposite of the previous disaster. In a "post-Katrina" America, it's the Bush administration which looks and sounds hollow and out of touch, with none of its ploys and feints working anymore. The hurricane and its aftermath has galvanized the very populace which has been most complacent in the gradual erosion of freedom and rationality from the character of American public life. The obligation of citizenship, so basic to any civilization, has resurfaced as a legitimate moral concern. The dry bones of democracy are threatening resurrection.

All of this comes at an enormous cost. The suffering of the hurricane and flood victims is just the beginning of the staggering debt we have accumulated through our moral complacency. It includes the suffering of tens of thousands of Iraqis sent to their deaths by American tax-payers, environmental destruction on a global scale, cultural annihilation from Baghdad to Darfur to New Orleans, and everywhere the burden of poverty: violence, crime, neglect, discrimination. This debt is simply the price of admission to our new sobriety, which must become a genuine accounting for our myriad failures as stewards of this time and place, and a realistic assessment of what is now possible and necessary given the damage that's been done.

What I'm saying is that our work is just getting started. We all bear our part in the catastrophe which has been this American way of life, of which the Bush administration has simply been the worst excess, and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina its most visible consequence. Cleaning up after that disaster - that's the task that lies ahead.

Responses to The Worst of the Worst

Isabella di Pesto wrote:

James Carroll had a wonderful column in the Globe the other day. He's my favorite writer there.
I used to write to Jacoby regularly to point out his inaccuracies and contradictions. I don't anymore.
I'm sending this post around in an email to everyone in my address book.
But I'm not sure Americans can cope with this disaster as well as the one in the Gulf Coast.
Words fail me.

I responded:

I agree with you that James Carroll is a wonderful writer. I didn't mean to impugn him in my post because out of the entire media he has probably been the most reliable, insightful, and sanest throughout the Bush years. When I spoke to him, it was after a talk he had given in Cambridge, and I told him about the Mackay article. I think that he didn't take me seriously because he thought I was some kind of conspiracy theorist, some crazy guy who had shown up at this talk, which is funny because that's what I felt like. What had happened to me was that in finally losing all faith in the media, I had turned myself into an outsider. I was by definition discredited by the circular logic so perfectly stated by Jacoby in his email to me: what I was saying must not be true because the media had not reported it, and the media would not listen to me because I was discredited. Being trapped by this argument made me feel more and more like a conspiracy theorist, but it was the feeling that society was going insane and not me. This must be what it feels like, I concluded, to try and retain one's bearings in a society which is lurching towards tyranny - almost impossible.

Bush In Plain Sight

On Friday the Washington Times voiced a complaint against the President for his many failures in light of the disaster in the Gulf Coast, stating, "We expected to see, many hours ago, the President we saw standing atop the ruins of the World Trade Center, rallying a dazed country to action." The recollection of the President's visit to Ground Zero on September 14th, 2001, strikes me as a little off. Bush basically shouted some inarticulate words about revenge, and that was that. This was not exactly the Gettysburg Address. To conservatives who may finally be opening their eyes to the general lack of character and basic adequacy of this most powerful politician in recent history, I welcome you to reality the way the rest of us have been experiencing it lo these past five years. To me, the Bush whose lack of foresight, disconnectedness, excruciating insensitivity, unserious intellect, and inability to grasp the real nature of a crisis and respond to it, is the same Bush who spent 9/11 fleeing in Air Force One and taking orders from Dick Cheney, who ginned up a phony war based on conned intelligence, who has failed to lead the nation or even offer comfort during that war and the hardships it has imposed on all of us. It's the same guy. I don't know what Bush was thinking by joking to flood victims about his misspent youth in New Orleans, any more than I know what he was thinking when he said that Saddam Hussein was planning to attack America with unmanned aerial drones. For that matter, I don't know what he was thinking back in 1972 when he got drunk, urinated on a parked car, and yelled obscenities at police officers. What can I say? I've never voted for him, for just that reason. To those who did, I can only say that George W. Bush, as far as I can tell, has never changed. He's the same guy you voted for last November. The exact same guy. I promise.

The War Against, You Name It

Regular readers of this blog are familiar with my low opinion of the right-to-life movement, due especially to its disgusting habit of enforcing its anti-woman ideology rather than even attempting to reduce the number of abortions which take place annually. Apparently nothing is going to change anytime soon. Last week the FDA announced that it is indefinitely delaying the decision over whether the morning-after pill can be sold over the counter, offering up the flimsy excuse that the pill would fall into the hands of horny 16 year olds who would use it for the nefarious purpose of screwing in the restrooms [pardon the paraphrase.] This excuse makes no sense because for one thing, pharmacies can solve the problem with a simple ID check and for another, everybody knows that teenagers never use contraception anyway. (Who would have thought that getting teens to take responsibility for their sexual lives could even be possible, let alone undesirable?) The means by which the FDA arrived at its decision is even weirder: it came as a fiat from the commissioner, apparently without the consensus or approval of the rest of the agency. Now FDA Assistant Commissioner Susan Wood has resigned in protest, and with good reason. This is a piece of such rank hypocrisy that it could only be the work of the religious right. There's not space here to wonder again why the Bush administration continues to wage its war on science. I had hoped, however, that a supposedly "pro-life" administration (whatever that means) might at least show a grain of interest in a tool which could cut the estimated 3 million unintended pregnancies which occur every year in half. No such luck. Given a choice between making real progress on abortion, and controlling female bodies like chattle, well there's no choice at all.

Black People Coming Out of Woodwork

Black people are coming out of the woodwork, local and national media reported this week in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. "What the - black people? Living in America?" stated Utah resident and white person Shane McConnell when confronted with the unexpected news. "Didn't they all leave this country - like after the Civil War or something? I had no idea there were any of them still hanging around." Other residents of all-white communities recalled seeing black people in movies and on stage, but never in real life. "I knew that Bill Cosby, Eddie Murphy, all of those guys were black and living somewhere in America," said life-long Kansas resident Janet Murphy. "But I was damn surprised to turn on my tv and see that all the people they kept saying were drowning and all that were black. I just thought to myself, where on earth did you people come from?" Media personalities were quick to capitalize on the new phenomena. "I need you to get me a black person for tomorrow's broadcast, pronto," Katie Couric was heard ordering to her staff. "I'll be damned if Diane Sawyer is going to be the first journalist to interview a black person live on national tv."

Massive Terror Attack on New Orleans Postponed Indefinitely

Would-be suicide bombers, explosives operatives, and other terrorist foot-soldiers were disappointed this week to learn that the planned attack on New Orleans has been postponed indefinitely. "I couldn't believe it when I got the news," said a bitterly disappointed Yusuf Al-Hassad, a Yemeni radical who had been training with al-Qaeda in eastern Afghanistan. "This mission has been in the works for a year now. We had our gear ready to go and everything. I even made a suicide video," he said with obvious frustration. "Yes, now we are all out of work," his colleague and artillery expert Mohammed Al-Sadr agreed. "What am I supposed to tell my wife? Sorry, New Orleans has already been destroyed? I'm going to be hanging around the house for the next six months now." Long lines could be seen outside of Osama bin Laden's headquarters as terrorists received the news and started looking for work. "It's getting so that a suicide bomber can't even find decent work anymore," al-Hassad said as he leafed through an unemployment brochure. "George Bush has done more damage to America than we ever could."

The Worst of the Worst

I first read this story on child torture by American forces, and this one, last year when it was published in the free daily paper the Boston Metro. It was never reprinted or mentioned in any other American paper. Last summer I started to believe that I was going crazy because I could not believe that such a shocking and profoundly significant story could simply be ignored by the entire American media. I spoke in person about the story to Boston Globe columnist James Carroll, and never heard or read anything more from him. In fact, my confusion led to the following bizarre interchange between myself and Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby:

Dear Mr. Jacoby,
 
You have frequently written about how Saddam Hussein's infamous atrocities justified the U.S. invasion of Iraq, citing as most egregious the imprisonment and torture of children as an interrogation technique.  This is certainly the sickest thing I can think of in the modern world.  Now it appears it is being practiced by the United States, as reported in this Scottish newspaper http://www.sundayherald.com/43773 and oddly, nowhere else.  You have consistently denounced any comparisons between the actions of the U.S. in Iraq and what Saddam did there.  Is this still a defensible position?  Surely there is no way to spin, no way to rationalize, this kind of atrocity.  If it's true, it's on par with the My Lai massacre and the imprisonment of Japanese-Americans in WWII as examples of Americans acting no differently than the dictators we opposed.  Those who have sanctioned it should be removed from power as soon as possible, prosecuted, and sentenced to prison.  It is not a matter of partisanship but a matter of conscience for every American whose political will goes to support this war.

jacoby@globe.com wrote:

I'd like to know if the Red Cross or any other neutral organization has confirmed this
report. The media would certainly be all over it if it were deemed
credible.

Jeff Jacoby
Op-Ed columnist
The Boston Globe

Finally, in an attempt to save my sanity, I contacted the reporter Neil Mackay myself, and asked him if he would try to "prove" that he existed, a la Snuffalapagus. He told me that was well aware that the American media had frozen out anything it didn't want to hear, and that he had long since given up trying to "prove" anything. So there the story rested, until now. Recently I've read the rumors about the as yet unseen photos from Abu Ghraib, and apparently they will finally confirm the story that Neil Mackay broke over a year ago. And the media will pretend like this was the first time anyone ever heard of it.

I Liked this Movie the First Time I Saw It...

Remember that movie The Day After Tomorrow? The disaster flick about global warming? A lot of conservatives pooh-poohed its pop-environmentalist message, using the film's Hollywood effects and cheesy storyline to pour scorn on the science of global warming. Well, Jake Gyllenhaal aside, that movie looks pretty prophetic now. From frightening weather conditions, to massive flooding, to enormous refugee camps, this may be the new face of global warming. In fact, the whole post-Katrina situation has that eerie feeling of science fiction suddenly becoming reality. Isn't this exactly the scenario that global warming Cassandras have been warning about for years? Which begs the question, will New Orleans be the last American city to end up under water? Or is this a sign of things to come?


Jake Gyllenhaal: Laughing Prophet of Doom?

Katrina Reveals The Ugly Truth About the Bush Era

If the rest of the world didn't know already that the United States in the Bush era is a land of shocking economic disparities, inflamed racial tensions, and increasing poverty for a neglected minority of its citizens, it does now. The sight of masses of black refugees, many of them children and elders, dying while the Bush administration twiddled its thumbs can now be added to the canon of heart-rending and deeply disturbing images produced during the Bush Era, including Ground Zero, the invasion of Baghdad, the assassination of Saddam Hussein's sons, and the iconic torture photos of Abu Ghraib. What Hurricane Katrina has laid bare is the soul of a nation in a deep spiritual crisis, foundering for lack of any kind of leadership. It's a feeling which has become sadly familiar and promises only to become more so as the nation's problems worsen. The looting which occurred in the wake of Katrina is only a symptom of these problems. It is the sign of a people who have become totally disenfranchised from the political process. The distance between their lives and those who ostensibly govern them is immeasurable. They have no recourse, no voice, in Bush's America. That's what Bush has been working assiduously to take away for these past five years - from the gutting of the nation's social infrastructure through war and tax cuts, to vindictive federal "reforms" such as the bankruptcy and litigation acts. Over and over, Bush has proved that he does not even begin to understand such people. His government simply does not represent them. His mindset is entirely shaped by privilege, which produces his characteristic insecurity and defensiveness. America is rotting under Bush's leadership. The voices from across the social spectrum are growing more angry, more frustrated, and more demanding. If nothing changes - if the media refuses to hold the government accountable, if Congress refuses to regulate business and represent the people, if the government refuses to begin addressing the most grievous of its abuses - then there's more where that came from. This has been Bush's summer of discontent, but the worst is yet to come.

Life in New Orleans Pretty Much Like It Always Is

This past week in New Orleans, many hundreds, mostly minorities, died or suffered due to inadequate health care, lack of shelter, malnutrition, dehydration, and gross neglect. This came amidst reports that well-off police officers and restauranteurs were waiting out the chaos in luxury hotels. "Actually, that's pretty much how things work here," said one of the cops as he relaxed in a four star hotel lobby sipping champagne. "It's good to know that even with the hurricane and all, some things about New Orleans never change."

Looting in Washington Continues Unabated

The federal government continued to be ransacked by looters Friday night as authorities were unable to restore control. "The situation is worsening," said a desperate populace over-run by the violent thugs. "Remember that nine billion dollars stolen in Iraq? That's nothing compared to what's going on now." Some of the looters could be seen exiting the Capitol building, where they had grabbed valuable public assets such as pension funds, slush funds, transportation, defense, and health care dollars, and the United States Social Security system. The filthy savages could also be seen plundering the financial district, leaving with fistfuls of money stolen from gas, oil, and electricity-buying taxpayers.


One of the violent looters

Bush Assures Public New Orleans Safe to Swim In

George W. Bush assured a public grown increasingly anxious over the recent flooding in New Orleans that the city is safe to swim in. "Now I know there's a lot of people saying that they don't feel safe swimming in New Orleans. They say they've seen sharks and alligators in that water, and they're afraid to go near it. They say there's decaying corpses floating around. I want them to know they have nothing to be afraid of. New Orleans is a safe, enjoyable place to take your family swimming." To back his words up, Bush took a brief swim down 17th Street, proclaiming the water "refreshing."

Is Nothing Sacred? The Right Tackles ID

One of the reasons why I despise conservatives is that they take good ideas and mercilessly destroy them. This is the case, as I have argued, with sensible restrictions on abortion rights, and it's recently become the case with the theory of "intelligent design." It pains me that the way that most Americans have come to be acquainted with this theory is through the work of that great scientist, President Bush. Like an icepick it pains me. Before the Bush administration ruined it for everyone, Intelligent Design was a theory advanced by scientists (not Christians!) such as Paul Davies and Roger Penrose, as a deep reflection on the nature of the universe and the purpose and possibility of scientific inquiry. The science of intelligent design, which I cannot emphasize strongly enough is real science, focuses on questions such as the probability of this exact universe coming into existence among all possible universes, the origin and meaning of the laws of physics, the nature of time and eternity, and whether the universe was meant to create and sustain life. Such science is simply the rebirth of classical metaphysics, rejuvenated by the 20th century discoveries of relativity and quantum mechanics and the concomitant displacement of the Newtonian universe. As Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle before him argued, the science of metaphysics is by no means the crass "God in the gaps" trick which Bush and his fellow morons have made it out to be. The created goodness of the world as Aquinas would have it, or its purposiveness according to Aristotle, is not a "first order" phenomenon, i.e., not an explanation for how rocks fall from bridges or how species adapt to fit their environments. Those phenomena can only be explained through observation which leads to an understanding of causes. Rather, metaphysics is a "big picture" science, the science of first (and last) things, which throws everything into the light in which science may discover it. It is trust in the coherence and reliability and essential goodness of things - the trust that the universe was in some sense "expecting us" and that we should feel at home here - that makes science possible, because it keeps questions open. The sense of wonder at the beauty of things is what shapes the scientists' mind, informs his or her methods, enriches that thinker's soul. So that primal awe is the fuel of scientific inquiry - it is the flame which must be kept burning. Intelligent Design theory represents the very best hope for the nascent dialogue between science and religion - which I believe must urgently take place if the western tradition is going to survive. Yet just when this olive branch between science and religion has been extended, along comes the ghoulish specter of the religious right, attempting to prove that everything bad ever said about religion is really true. Now President Bush, with his inimicable style, has probably ruined the science and religion moment for a long, long time. He has at least done incalculable damage to it with his disgusting, reactionary politics and bastard prejudices. Where science and religion are concerned, the right can only gaze on stupidly, not comprehending either one.

Totally Confused About Iraq

I'm reiterating my thesis that Iraq is the new War of 1812. Nothing about it makes sense to me. It doesn't remind me of any other war. I can't figure out who is fighting and why. Somebody remind me again why are we fighting on the side of the radical Islamists? At least in the Cold War we knew enough to fight the communists. Whereas in Iraq we invaded a country that had nothing to do with "the terrorists" and then went ahead and joined forces with the only group that had any sympathy for them. Similarly, nothing about the political process has made any sense either, starting with the first of the arbitrary deadlines, the phony "transfer of sovereignty." The Bush administration just does not even seem to understand the concept of a political process. It seems to believe that the mere formality of a political process will suffice to create stability, even if that process is imposed from without by an occupying power and enforced through arbitrary deadlines. This makes no sense. No meaningful political process can take place without first negotiating a cease-fire. Then a framework for resolution can be agreed upon, and eventually a power-sharing arrangement can be negotiated. Only then, when trust has been reasonably established between the parties, can a permanent constitution be written and democratically ratified. Of course the Bush administration sees everything through the lens of its own blinkered ideology. It is characteristic of the administration to think in terms of incompatible idealisms - for instance, to insist that the "terrorists" are masters of evil who can only be dealt with by brute force, and at the same time to impose a chimerical psuedo-democratic process, apropos of nothing. It is surely a contradiction to wage a brutal, nihlistic war in a foreign country while at the same time wax utopian about the perfect democratic state which is supposed to descend from whole cloth as if from the clouds. It's this type of thinking which has prevented the Bush administration from actually understanding the conflict in Iraq, let alone telling the truth about it to the American people.

America Under Siege: The Gay Terrorist Threat

Last year Rick Santorum implored Congress to pass a Constitutional amendment prohibiting gay marriage on the grounds that only a fully heterosexualized country will be fully equipped to defend itself from terrorists. "Isn’t that the ultimate homeland security, standing up and defending marriage?" he stated at the time. Now a shocking new CIA report reveals the rationale behind his words: cells of gay terrorists, poised to strike at the heart of straight America. It has long been suspected that Osama bin Laden, who spends an inordinate amount of time hanging around with other men in the desert and has always come across as kind of effeminate on video, is a closeted homosexual. Yet what the CIA report reveals for the first time is the existence of a virtual army of gay terrorists waiting at bin Laden's command. Nor were these killers foreigners recruited and trained elsewhere. Rather, many of them are American citizens - young men who became disillusioned with straight society and then were radicalized at gay nightclubs and gyms in San Francisco and other hotbeds of radical homosexuality. The gay terrorist menace is an urgent threat to the safety and security of the straight country we all know and love. No straight American, in these perilous times, can afford to ignore the gay neighbor who is quite likely a suicide bomber and at the very least drives a Prius and always smells like patchouli. With your help and under the manful guidance of Overlord Bush we can defeat these suspiciously happy-clappy assasins and take back this country for straight folk everywhere.

Liberal Media At It Again

Won't the liberal media ever leave President Bush alone? Yesterday it was the Salt Lake City Tribune's turn to pile on, calling the mission to bring democracy to Iraq a "fool's errand." What's next? The Denver Post?

George W. Bush, America's Greatest Cycling President

Following the conclusion of his recent bicycle ride with Lance Armstrong, President Bush finally confirmed the rumors which had been swirling for months: he will compete in the 2006 Tour de France. "This is it," the President announced to an eager crowd of reporters. "This is why I became President: to lead the Discovery Channel team to sweet victory next year in Paris." While some in the media questioned the propriety of a sitting president chewing up the Grosse Pierre astride the eye-catching Superfahrrad, the President defended his decision. "Even though I'm President, I have the right to a balanced life," he stated. "And that means riding my bike wherever and whenever the hell I feel like it." Presidential scholars debated what the President's ultimate cycling legacy would be. "There's no question in my mind that Bush is the greatest cycling President in history," said historian Douglas Thornton. "I mean, Harding competed in a few minor events but nothing compared to what Bush has done." Other scholars weren't so sure. "Back in 1895 Grover Cleveland completed a six week circuit of the Chesapeake Bay - and that was back before bicycles even had seats. To beat that, Bush will have to at least place in the Tour de France," said Karen Roberts of Harvard. "That's simply not true," Thornton protested. "Bush has logged more miles on that bike than he has on the First Lady. To faithfully ride your bike while scores of American service men and women are being killed and wounded every day in a losing war - well, that takes real dedication."

Name Change

I will heretofore be referring to the Bush administration policy in Iraq as the Coulter Doctrine after its founder, the great political thinker, mover, shaker, and wit - the Hannah Arendt of our time! - Ann Coulter herself.

Pat Robertson: Vigilante, Dick-Head

I received a request for a comment on the recent fatwa against Hugh Chavez. My response is that no comment is necessary. Leftist leaders take note: Pat Robertson is out to kill you.

Fetal Pain Study

Interesting study in the news today about fetal pain. The study concluded that fetuses probably don't feel pain until the seventh month. If the results of this study prove to be accurate (according to the article some researchers are disputing them) then this is ammunition for defenders of the objective arguments for abortion rights.

Republican Wrecking Ball

The future of globalization on its present course doesn't favor the United States. That's a fact. Yet the outcome of globalization is by no means determined and there are specific actions which the government could be taking to give our children and grand-children a fighting chance. A reasonable government, even a reasonably conservative one, could have taken a multi-pronged approach to globalization of investing in education (especially science,) increasing conservation and energy independence, reducing the deficit, and shoring up Medicare and Social Security. Even partially meeting these goals would have given Americans a buffer during the difficult period of adjusting to new global realities which lies ahead. Unfortunately for future generations, the President during the crucial years of 2000-2008 was George W. Bush, a man so blindingly incompetent, so numbingly corrupt, and so unimaginably powerful that he single-handedly brought America from prosperity to the brink of economic and fiscal disaster within the span of eight years. Historians will find it difficult to exaggerate the depth of the damage inflicted by the Bush administration. This government has effectively taken a wrecking ball to the political and economic infrastructure of this country, no surprise since it was only the traditions of American democracy and prosperity which stood in the way of the right-wing takeover they craved.

Instead of acting to solve America's problems, the Bush administration and its allies saw those problems as an opportunity to effectively plunder the nation's resources. It hasn't been a government so much as a looting spree. Everyone has gotten a share at the trough - politicians, journalists, lobbyists, corporate executives, defense contractors. No one low enough to betray their country has been left out. In the last five years they have cleanly stolen a good chunk of America's future - the one that our grandparents, parents, and ourselves worked quite hard to secure. Which one hurts the most? The wholesale liquidation of natural resources such as the nation's air, water, and forests? The tax cuts which have imposed serfdom on the next generation? The boondoggle of a trillion dollar missile defense system which is not even claimed to actually work? Or could it be the utterly pointless war which has now killed and maimed tens of thousands in Iraq and elsewhere? From my very rudimentary knowledge of history, let me offer a word of advice to George W. Bush: every empire in history has sunk under the weight of pointless, unpopular, bankrupting wars. It's the worst thing a nation can possibly do to itself. It is suicide. The nine billion dollars which disappeared in Iraq could just as effectively have been burned to keep the homeless warm. That's my hard work, and everyone else's, and it's never coming back. That's my future that's just been stolen by the most craven, morally bankrupt, utterly godless gang of thieves this continent has ever seen in power.

Descartes' Error

If philosophy has often been a history of brilliant misunderstandings, Descartes' contribution is one of the most impressive in western thought. On the one hand, Descartes' emphasis on cognition (i.e. computation) as a kind of universal authority led to a revolution in applied science; on the other hand, his formulation of reason as unbounded thought fractured the human person into the competing modes of mind and body, the legacy of which still weighs heavily on western philosophy to this day.

The mind/body problem as Descartes framed it is a defensive maneuver made necessary by his radical break with the medieval Aristotelian tradition. That tradition as interpreted through the lens of scholasticism had paid a great deal of respect to the innate qualities of objects through which they are made available to be known and loved by rational minds. From Descartes’ skeptical vantage point, however, he regarded the presence of such qualities within the objective world as highly doubtful. In contrast, he proposed a sharp distinction between appearance and reality. Reality apparently consists of an “every-day” world of objects, each containing certain properties, yet in truth these appearances are mere phenomenal projections resulting, almost by accident, from interactions taking place at an invisible level. No essential properties reside in objects themselves, because objects themselves do not actually exist in the way that we commonly assume them to do. The difference between Descartes’ position and that of his forebears is similar to the difference between a camera and a painter. A camera “captures” the phenomenal world, but it is a mere imprint, and not an actual representation of the objects which appear in the photograph. Descartes believed (and to a certain extent was proved right) that dissolving the theoretical properties which were believed to give objects their true identity would open the floodgates of science, in the sense that a material world consisting of purely commensurable energies would be infinitely open to manipulation and exploration. Yet, this enticing candidate for the emerging discipline of materialist science created an obvious problem. If matter is indeed reducible to a barely factual existence, then what becomes of mind – the cornerstone of the western tradition? Taken to its logical conclusion, Descartes’ argument appears to undermine everything keeping western philosophers off the ledge: the faculty of reason, supposedly the foundation of morality and just government, the uniqueness of the human species, and most importantly, the only good argument for free will. It appears that Descartes has gained science only at the cost of the freedom and rationality of humanity – which is to say, he has found and lost science in the same breath. This conclusion was intolerable for Descartes, and so he theorized an escape. The Aristotelian tradition which Descartes rejected had regarded reason as the perfected relation between human beings and the natural world which results from experience. Descartes, in contrast, located the principle of rationality entirely outside of the material world, i.e. within the theoretical entity of pure mind. This move enabled Descartes to preserve a canon of traditional beliefs which would have been otherwise threatened by the punishing logic of materalism. The entity of pure mind by means of which human beings are able to reason is everything the material world is not: infinite, eternal, immutable, authoritative, impartial, beyond dispute. By virtue of this faculty, human minds are free though bodies are not.

Of the many difficulties encountered by this theory, the most significant (and most interesting) is the mind/body problem. Is it not the case that all supposedly lofty, infinite thoughts are in fact generated by humble, material brains? Where is the consistency in skeptically disposing of individual essences only to relocate them in the mind? The fact that Descartes' arguments for the existence of God, which are the foundation of his philosophy, are generally regarded as reactionary defense mechanisms points to the possibility that Descartes did not wish to accept the reductio ad absurdum of his own conclusions. Descartes never was able to explain the way in which immaterial mind interacted with the material brain. Unwilling to abandon the material world to its own devices, he attempted to save it by splitting reality into dueling essences dominated by the wholly abstract, isolated and bizarrely self-sufficient faculty of pure mind. In fact, Descartes' formulation of the mind/body problem is one of the great errors in western philosophy.

To solve the problem takes a leap of two kinds of faith. The first is faith in the integrity of the natural world as an interlocking, multi-level system which makes sense at each stage in the process, yet progressively makes more and more sense as the process unfolds (spatially and temporally.) This means that the "every-day" world of human experience is a legitimate, though by no means exhaustive, sample of reality. This is not a blind leap, but more like an education. The second leap is simply the inverse of the first. If the natural world is taken as intrinsically coherent, then there is no need to "save" reason by inventing a theoretical entity called mind. Rather, rationality can be seen as simply the culmination of material processes, the transcendent point at which such natural principles as survival, organization, adaptability, and reaction become the uniquely human faculties of wonder, delight, empathy, and creativity. Aristotle's comparison between the web-spinning capacity of a spider and that of a weaver demonstrates the way in which awareness and understanding deepen purposes already found in nature. Civilization is not an ideal, abstract essence held apart from nature but is rather always grounded in natural processes moving towards fulfillment. Mind and body are interpenetrating modes of being, always in process, each in some sense the ideal form of the other. Contra Descartes, there is no shame in this. Nor is there shame in accepting the imperfections which permeate both mind and body. The philosophic life is a pathway through the world, not out of it. That should be good enough for anyone.

The Constitution Breached by False Religion

I find a lot of affinities between the Constitution and the Bible, both of which express great suspicion for concentrated power and warn stridently against authoritarian governments founded on abusive religious practices. In fact, if there is one message which could be distilled from the entire Bible, it would probably be that most religion, most of the time, is a mortal threat to the freedom and welfare of humanity. So grave is this threat that the Bible declares it intolerable, and emphatically states that there can be no justice and no peace as long as false religion is allowed to take root. Now, the history of monotheism follows from that partially conflicted message, and no one can defend it in its entirety. But the gist of it is quite clear and is strongly echoed (with serious and consequential distortions) by the liberal movements of the 18th century, including the cause of American independence and the adoption of the Constitution. The founders saw no greater threat than that posed by the abuse of power under the cover of religious authority. The Constitution is simply a bulwark against such a government ever coming to power in the United States, which would potentially spell disaster for American freedom, pluralism, and independence. It had never happened here until the disputed election of 2000. The situation we are faced with today, courtesy of the Bush administration, is everything that the Constitution was designed to prevent. It is a government dominated by partisan issues of loyalty and ideology, with a ruling ethos of fundamentalist beliefs, market-driven economics, and militant adventurism abroad. It is soaked in an acid bath of corruption which has eroded all semblance of checks and balances. The judiciary and small pockets of Congress barely retain their independence but they are virtually ignored by the decision-makers in anything that counts. The economy is built on a breathlessly unsustainable model of foreign borrowing, national deficits, and consumer debt. And at every level, every abuse is justified with reference to the religiousness of the ruling party, which is considered to be beyond dispute. Just as the Bible condemns and just as the framers forewarned, state religion and political corruption have merged into a single amorphous entity whose claim to power is its own infallibility. It is a monstrous state of affairs which, if left unchecked, will be the beginning of a painful, permanent change in the American character and way of life.

The Moral Majority

It is one of the conveniences of being a Republican that whatever you do is by definition considered moral. After all, everyone knows that the Republican party is the moral majority, so this makes living life as a Republican pretty sweet. You can do whatever you want, and that's just ok. If Tom DeLay wants to jet all over the world on all-expense paid trips by lobbyists, that is a moral thing to do. If Rush Limbaugh wants to snort OxyContin to deal with the excruciating pain of his third divorce, that too is very moral. Sometimes moral people have to do what might seem like immoral things, like revealing the identity of CIA agents to punish political enemies, as Karl Rove has recently done. But in the big picture, that's really moral. So is consorting with Islamist terrorists, as Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform has been known to do on occasion. For that matter, if the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal is to be believed, one of the more moral things you can do for your country is to torture and sexually abuse prisoners of war in Iraq and elsewhere. And of course, as Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe has stated, the most moral action of all is to invade another country under false pretenses, causing tens of thousands of civilian deaths. That is just the kind of thing that a highly moral person - if they're a Republican! - is likely to do. So, there is a fair amount of lee-way in what can be considered moral when it is the Grand Old Party doing the talking. The important thing to remember is that Republicans are always moral because it is the Republicans who get to say what morality is. And that right comes to them from their close personal relationship with God. As the President recently said, God told him to strike back at al-Qaeda, and so he did, and God told him to invade Iraq, so he did. That's getting it straight from the horse's mouth, that is. That's where morality comes from, when you're a Republican.

Stupidity Redefined in Iraq

The Iraq war has to be one of the most pointless wars in recent history. Perhaps the closest parallel in American history is the war of 1812, in which the United States declared war on Britain over a blockade controversy which had already been resolved. The nations fought pointlessly for two years, including such lowlights of U.S. history as a failed attempt to invade Canada and the humiliating sack of Washington D.C. by the British. Similarly, the Iraq war has been waged over a non-existent threat (when we found out there were no WMD, shouldn't we have just declared victory and gone home?) and against a Sunni insurgency which on the surface would seem to be of no relevance to any U.S. strategic or political goals whatsoever. Why are we fighting this random Iraqi tribe? Two reasons are given, neither of which makes sense. The first is that we must defeat the insurgents before we can leave Iraq. Wait a second. The insurgents claim that their only goal is to get us to leave Iraq. Why don't we just end the war by leaving now? Why is it important that we "defeat" the insurgents before we do what they want us to do? The second reason is that the Sunni insurgents are fighting to maintain political and economic control of Iraq against their more numerous Shiite and Kurdish rivals. But why should we side with the Shiites? It is a purely arbitrary fact that the majoritarian government we're trying to establish in Iraq would favor the Shiites - hence, their relative cooperation with the American-sponsored political process, and the Sunni's militant rejection of it. But America has nothing to gain by aiding the Sunnis, which would only increase Iranian influence in Iraq. If anything, from a purely strategic perspective we should have backed the secular Baath party against its more radically Islamist opponents. There simply aren't any compelling political or military reasons for us to be fighting this war, any more then there would be if we had decided to invade Kyrgzstan, inflame political and ethnic tensions, and then pick a random side to fight on. The positive side of this is that there is no real reason why we cannot begin withdrawing from Iraq today. The conflicts now existing would be far better addressed by a United Nations peacekeeping force, or even by Iraqis themselves who would be free to have an honest war for their country's future untainted by charges of imperialism. Since there was never a real mission for the U.S. in Iraq, nothing will be compromised by our departure.

Where is the Anti-War Movement Anyway?

Is there something missing from the liberal agenda this year, or is it just me? Now I remember - it's the anti-war movement. Unless I'm missing something, there hasn't been a single national protest, not in New York, D.C., San Francisco, anywhere. Are liberals still in hiding after last year's defeat? The fact that it's taken an aggrieved mother with no political expertise just to get liberals even talking about an anti-war movement says a great deal about how far we have to go. Why hadn't anyone thought about staking out Bush's ranch before? The fact is that over 60% of Americans are now on record as opposing the war. A true anti-war movement, like the one that briefly blossomed before this disaster began back in '03, would draw from a profoundly diverse cross-current of Americans, impossible to marginalize (not that the Bush administration wouldn't try.) There may be no better time for liberals to mobilize, and this may be our last opportunity before a draft goes into effect and the war escalates next year.

Stopping Baby Terrorists

I've just learned that there are a number of babies on the government's no-fly list due to suspected terrorist connections. Intelligence experts have long suspected that the terrorist threat from babies has been understated, yet it's only now that the government is finally getting serious about the problem. Now we all need to do our part to prevent radical jihadist babies from opening up a can of terrorist whoop-ass on our beloved America.

Along the same lines, there are a number of Democratic members of Congress who are also on this list. Apparently Ted Kennedy was recently kept off of a plane because he has the same name as a suspected terrorist. Pardon my skepticism, but really? There's a terrorist out there named TED KENNEDY?

Cindy Sheehan and the Logic of Capitalism

Does Cindy Sheehan have the right to a private audience with the President? I'll venture yes and no, and I'll explain both. On the one hand I don't think that Sheehan is technically within her rights to make such a demand of the President. After all, in a Republic we aren't governed directly by the sovereign head of state. If Cindy Sheehan really has a problem with the Iraq war then she can write to her congressional representatives about it like everyone else. She can vote for the presidential nominee of a different party next time. If she wants to speak up about her differences, she has that right as well. Taking her demand literally, I don't think that a government could function effectively if every citizen had the right to expect redress from the head of state in the same way that they could expect it from their next door neighbor (does Sheehan have the right to sue the President for her son's death?)

Yet, that rather wooden analysis completely ignores what makes her protest so powerful. What Sheehan is really getting at is something a lot deeper, a kind of deep injustice at the heart of capitalism. It's the same truth that Michael Moore latched onto in Roger and Me and Bowling for Columbine. It is a kind of quixotic quest to locate the agent responsible for an injustice in a system whose very design is to endlessly defer responsibility. George W. Bush was raised in this system, it is his very life-blood. He understands its nuances, its hidden egresses, its subtleties. He is a master sophist of the first rank. The fact that he has become a two-term President without ever having to accept responsibility for a single fault in either his private or public life is an extraordinary achievement, unrivalled by any politician of his generation. He has never met his equal. Cindy Sheehan knows this, and she knows that the closer she is to Bush, the closer she is to the cause of her son's death. She can't prove that, but it is paradoxically her very powerlessness - the irony she is generating by her act of protest, which gives her a fighting chance. For once nobody can claim that Bush is the underdog. He's not the loveable sad sack being unfairly pummelled by Al Gore or John Kerry. Rather, he looks like what he is: the most powerful man in the world ignoring the righteous anger of an aggrieved mother. Bush can shovel brush, ride his bike, and fish for bass furiously, trying every trick in the book to regain his image as the loveable bumpkin who's just too humble and naive to criticize. And he can do it all while hiding behind his professional army of right-wing smear artists. But Cindy Sheehan thinks she has the man in charge right in her sights, and she wants an answer.

Which brings me to this past week's gospel reading. Yes, it's true that the Canaanite woman really doesn't have a right to demand from Jesus what she wants. Jesus is technically correct that his mission was the renewal of religious life in the occupied villages of Palestine. Yet, the Canaanite woman saw something deeper than that, and recognized that in her powerlessness and her desperation that she had become powerful: she had a claim on Jesus that not even he knew he had. And when she pointed that out to him, he admitted it. Bush once said that Jesus is his favorite philosopher. If that's true, he has an obligation and an opportunity to do the same.

Best In Show

Matthew 15:21-28

I had never found much to like in this text before – why would Jesus first refuse to help, then insult, this Canaanite woman? – but I think I started to see something in it today. What’s important is the relationship, unique in the Gospels, between this Gentile woman and Jesus at his most Jewish. Because when he dismisses her, she challenges him, and he responds. This is the only time in the Gospels that a dialogue opponent of Jesus’ gets the last word, gets him to change his mind. So there is a powerful opposition taking place between as it were the orthodox synagogue and the Gentiles who demand a place at God’s table. Note the Old Testament and Epistle parallels: Isaiah prophecies of a time when foreigners will worship alongside Israelites in the temple, and St. Paul describes God’s mysterious plan in first electing Israel to be the chosen people and then imprisoning them in temporary disobedience to give the Gentiles an opportunity to enter into the covenant. It’s clear from these texts that the relationship between Jew and Gentile in God’s plan of salvation is from a human perspective uncertain. Did God choose to establish the covenant with Israel only as a preparatory measure? From a Christian perspective, what does it mean for God’s covenant with Israel to remain unbroken? In the exchange between Jesus and the Canaanite woman, whose perspective has priority? The woman doesn’t correct Jesus’ harsh insult, rather, she finds a deeper meaning in it (no easy task when one is being insulted!) If the Gentiles are dogs rather than children, our place at the table must rely on grace rather than birth-right, humility rather than privilege. On the one hand, Jesus’ rebuke stings as it must to all who by birth fall outside of the community of God’s chosen people. Yet in his finally comforting words – "Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish," all of those born outside of the covenant, strangers and aliens to God by birth, may take heart.

A Pre-9/11 Mindset?

Whenever anyone threatens to break the spell of Bush-ism, as John Edwards and Michael Moore did in 2004, the Bush administration accuses that person of possessing a "pre-9/11 mindset." This is supposed to mean that the individual in question is still foolishly living in the democratic past, before the apocalypse of 9/11 eclipsed the quaint notion of a limited government, accountable to the people, and transformed the United States into the perfectly authoritarian state towards which it had always been striving. In this way the slogan implies the historical inevitability of the new authoritarian regime, and the rise of a new America founded on the principle of unalloyed militarism.

As I argued in my last post, however, the vast majority of the American people and the Bush administration have long differed over the true meaning of 9/11, which brought out the best instincts in most Americans and the absolute worst in the President. Then what might be the true meaning of a "pre-9/11 mindset" if we stick to the mainstream interpretation of 9/11? Consider the following alternative vision of the year 2005:

A pre-9/11 mindset is one which fails to recognize the great call to civic duty which 9/11 issued. In the pre-9/11 world, Americans were foolishly divided over insignificant controversies, distracted by the trashy ephemera of popular culture, insufficiently attentive to world affairs, and alienated from their own political institutions by apathy and ignorance. But 9/11, as they say, changed everything. No longer could Americans afford to allow our most cherished institutions to decay from neglect and misuse. 9/11 demanded the revival of democratic participation in this country. For politicians, 9/11 was a wake-up call to put aside partisan politics and join in the great task of protecting and revitalizing the nation. The corporate agenda which had dominated Washington since time out of mind was put aside in favor of a sincere focus on the public good. The government put aside its focus on regressive tax cuts and instead focused on fiscal discipline. Public works projects sprang up, donations of time and money increased, and the nation was suffused with a spirit of bi-partisan cooperation and self-sacrifice which no one had even thought possible just a few short years before. Of course, there were a few who maintained a "pre-9/11 mindset," lobbying against the regulation of businesses vital to national security, pushing for continued spending on obsolete big-ticket weapons systems rather than improved intelligence and border security, and defiantly continuing to drive the gas-guzzling SUV's which 9/11 had rendered archaic, but these were few and far between. Overwhelmingly, most Americans accepted the lessons of 9/11 and the ways in which that day awoke America from its slumber and changed this nation for the good.

9/11: The American Dream Deferred

The subject of the evils of the Bush administration will occupy historians for generations to come. How a criminal racket came to occupy the White House and project its power over the nation and the world in precisely the ways that the Constitution was designed to prevent is indeed an intriguing tale. Is there a crux to this story, one which gets at the essence of the Bush administration's ruthless subversion of democracy, its astonishing abuses of power, its frightening control over the corporate media-state? Let me suggest that if there is one, it centers on 9/11. Because 9/11 is really at the heart of the American experience of the past four years. I believe that the recession ("recovery") which has now lengthened into a period of prolonged economic stagnation is the direct result of post-traumatic stress syndrome. Of course, as I argued earlier on this site, so is the popularity of Paris Hilton, as is every other sign of cultural and spiritual decay which now forms our common lot in life. Everyone who lived through 9/11 knows how traumatic it was. I for one regularly had feelings of dread, terror, and impending doom for a full year after the attacks, when the next attack seemed imminent. And while those feelings have mostly faded for me personally, I believe that as a nation we have yet to come to grips with 9/11 and its implications for the future of our national life - that confused, post-9/11 slogan "everything has changed." We have yet to define as a nation what has changed, what hasn't, and how we can best live with the changes. The significance of 9/11 is felt as some kind of epochal trauma ("Ground Zero,") some generational event, but what is it? Instead of comprehending and then rationally and humanely responding to that trauma, we have sunk into a post 9/11 malaise, now dragging out over four years, in which the cultural and spiritual foundations of the country have sagged beneath the weight of displaced grief and anxiety. As anyone who reads the tea-leaves of popular culture knows, America is just not itself these days. This is where the Bush administration comes in. It has been the central task of the Bush administration ever since the President addressed Congress in the days afterwards to interpret America's experience of 9/11 back to us. This is what the Bush administration has said: "You feel a sense of unimaginable grief and rage. You feel helpless, confused, and lost. You want revenge, but you are unable to attain it. Only an absolute authority can conquer absolute evil. You must surrender your freedom in order to be protected by this authority. If you refuse to surrender, you'll be destroyed." If this message in any way reflected the actual American experience of 9/11, then one would have to accept the Bush administration's narrative that the nation as a whole has given its blessing to the new imperial government, and that any resistance to that government must acknowledge its marginality. But it doesn't. In fact the Bush administration's interpretation of 9/11 is its greatest achievement and its biggest lie - a lie which is at the heart of all of its other lies, including the rationale for invading Iraq. I believe that the general confusion with which the average American now regards the post-democratic political process - for instance, the confusion about gay marriage during the 2004 elections - is the distance between the Bush administration's interpretation of 9/11 and our own experience of it. What most Americans actually felt was a sense of communal rebirth never before experienced in many of our lifetimes. The overwhelming instinct was to regard the attacks as an opportunity and indeed a calling to revive the spirit of democracy in this country - a call to a renewed sense of citizenship and public responsibility. Most Americans wanted more than anything to respond to the attacks with charity, self-sacrifice, and national purpose - the spirit which animated the nation during WWII. That desire certainly had a component of assertiveness to it - almost all Americans supported the initial operations in Afghanistan, recognizing the need to find the terrorists and bring them to justice. But it wasn't a blind lust for revenge. It was surprisingly sober - it was a genuinely realistic acknowledgment of the reality and temporal power of evil and the response which a moral and convicted people must make to it. In other words, most Americans felt in the wake of 9/11 the advent of a truly righteous struggle which would unite the country and heal its damaged democratic institutions. In that spirit, America looked to the President for leadership. And Bush told Americans to go shopping. That disappointment has been as damaging and lasting for Americans as the attacks were. Americans from all walks of life showed up with a willingness and desire to serve that had not been seen in this country in fifty years and were told that our efforts were unwanted and unneeded. George W. Bush's utter failure to understand the significance of 9/11 was an obscenity. His instinctive retreat to militarism and consumerism so completely missed the point - this had nothing to do with materialism! This had nothing to do with war! This had to do with community! - missed everything good that America was trying to tell Bush about itself and instead landed on everything bad, that it constitutes a failure of historic proportions. Bush is a simple-minded man, a virtually undeveloped ego-state, with a bastardized understanding of the value of human life and the meaning of this country. Faced with America at its most heroic and most generous, Bush simply could not understand what was happening. A revival of democracy happening at his doorstep was the last thing in the world he wanted to deal with. He and his co-conspirators have spent the last four years shoving it under the rug, skillfully manipulating every seam in the national fabric to prolong a culture war which desperately wanted to die on 9/11. Thus it is not so much American grief that has gone unmourned (we've done plenty of that) as it is a genuinely selfless love of country, a desire for service, a willingness to sacrifice, which has been turned away and turned against ourselves.

Food For Thought for the Homophobes

It occurred to me the other day that if it's true that 10% of the world's population is gay, and that's a uniform statistic, then the following is true:

There have been approximately four gay American Presidents.
There are about 25 gay members of the baseball Hall of Fame.
There were about ten gay Pilgrims on the Mayflower.
There was at least one gay signer of the Constitution.
There were about 4,500 gay soldiers killed at Gettysburg.
About 40,000 gay Americans lost their lives in World War II.
Gay Americans contributed about a trillion dollars to the American economy in 2004.
About 300 gay people were killed in New York on September 11, 2001.

Got the point? Gay history is 10% of American history. 10% of all the apples in a slice of pie, 10% of the stars in the flag, 10% of U.S. GDP, 10% of the poets, writers, singers, athletes, scientists, scholars, politicians, nobodies, celebrities, bums, tycoons, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Mormons in America, all gay. Get rid of that 10%, and this country becomes 10% less interesting, less wealthy, less powerful, less colorful, less itself.

The Constructive Role of Homosexuality in Society

There's an important balance in any healthy society between innovation and stability. For instance, it's long been noted that respectable social institutions usually derive from cultural movements once considered radical. I'm interested in the mechanism by which this takes place, particularly because it illuminates the critical role played in society by race, gender, and sexuality. One theory I find plausible is that cultural innovation tends to happen on the margins, indeed as a creative response to marginalization. This theory makes a lot of sense out of black history, for instance (take the classic example of jazz.) Does it apply to gay history as well? Consider the tendency of gay communities in contemporary society to gather in urban neighborhoods long abandoned by middle class whites. The gay community almost seems to be functioning in this capacity as a "middle term," mediating between the otherwise mutally hostile camps of marginalized, yet creatively potent ethnic enclaves and the culturally stagnant consuming classes of the suburbs. If this is at all accurate (and I recognize that it's a simplification at best - the suburbs aren't uniformly white, for instance) then it might speak to the constructive role played by gender and racial "overlap" in a healthy society. Another way to phrase the question might be, is homosexuality a driving force of "trendiness," urban renewal, and other forms of cultural creativity, and if so, what is behind this? It could be that insofar as gay culture is an eclectic borrowing of identities (some traditional, some radical) that gender difference is a key mechanism by which society staves off cultural stagnation, integrating sub-cultures otherwise separated by class and race and recovering artifacts from the past as resources for the present.

On Race Relations in Boston

I’ve heard that Boston is still one of the most segregated cities in the country, and I can believe it. I notice all the time on the T there are these miniature ghettos that just spring up spontaneously on the back of the train, where a bunch of black kids get on and suddenly all the white people flee to the front, like blackness might be contagious. Sometimes all it takes is one black kid to set this in motion. The other day there was one black teenager sitting on the back of the T, positively exuding a very pure kind of retro 1970’s style blackness as he sat there sprawled over about four seats, even bouncing a basketball to drive the point home, and just his presence alone was enough to create the ghetto effect. There wasn’t a white person within twenty feet of him – they were standing up at the front of the T rather than sit down anywhere near this kid. In fact it finally took one Rosa Parks-like white person sitting herself down somewhere in the vicinity to re-gentrify the back of the T. You could see this critical mass of whiteness building up and finally overpowering the blackness of the ghetto kid, making the back of the T safe for whites again.

What's the Problem with Michael Jackson?

This just proves once and for all that a white man can get away with anything in this country. Seriously, don’t you think the verdict would have been different if Jackson was still black?

Remember that famous photograph taken back when the O.J. verdict was announced, and all of the black people in the picture looked happy and the white people looked pissed off? Well, there was a similar photograph taken after the Jackson verdict, only everyone in the picture just looked confused. The blacks didn’t know if they should stand up and cheer or start shooting, and the whites didn’t know who to blame, the white trash mom or the creepy ex-black. So Jackson has done his part to improve race relations in this country, or at least confuse the hell out of racists everywhere.

Which reminds me, it’s a good thing that Jackson finally sought treatment for his blackness. I know that his family and friends had been saying it for years – Michael, something’s not right, you have to get help, etc. etc. And thank God that he finally listened and he’s now a recovering black. He’s been non-black now for ten years running. Congratulations, Michael.

Spirituality in the Workplace, Part I

Is northwest Arkansas the new hub of business and global commerce, as a recent MSNBC article reports? And if so, what’s going on? Welcome to the 21st century, in which the weird convergence of religious fundamentalism and globalization has become the most important socio-cultural event of our lifetimes. The article is about the “faith and work” movement, which is basically a mushrooming reciprocity between the American sub-cultures of church and business. Churches have adopted the corporate model of targeted marketing and strategic growth, while businesses have openly proclaimed themselves as Christian-friendly, or Christ-centered, etc., both to their customers and to their employees. The theological rationale is, depending on how you look at it, either a hymn to post-modern pluralism or a parody of it (which in the age of Bush are virtually indistinguishable anyway,) focusing on the need for spiritual authenticity in all aspects of life and on the right of self-expression and solidarity which Christians share on an equal basis with every other cultural and religious sub-group in the global (post-democratic) market-place. For my money, a close look at this reasoning reveals both an indispensable insight into the spiritual dimensions of globalization, and an oversight based on a misunderstanding of the relationship between science (broadly construed) and religion. Both are highly significant. The insight ought to be shared with all Christians as a calling and an opportunity. The oversight should lead to a focused debate between the new breed of market-based, non-denominational evangelicals on the one hand and the traditional mainline and Catholic polities on the other.

Progressive=Pro-Life?

It strikes me that some potential readers may feel dismayed at my advocacy of a recognizably pro-life position on abortion rights when they have been promised progressive politics. If I have a base among my two readers yet I can throw some red meat at it later but for now I don't see any contradiction between the two positions. I identify myself as progressive in the same spirit (with due respect) that Chesterton called himself a liberal. He also named St. Thomas (and Jesus, and Dickens) among history's greatest liberals. I think that Chesterton and I both mean that to be progressive, or liberal, is to be dedicated to the goodness and potential of the human species - that the created order is really good, and human beings are really good with the potential to get even better. This stands in distinct opposition to the false liberalism of Hobbes, for instance, for whom no real progress is possible. I believe that true rationality, i.e. the love of the true, the good, and the beautiful is the transcendent goal of human history (albeit always only partial and known as fully through its absence as its presence.)

It is this perspective which prevents me from accepting the reductionist and nihilistic logic of "choice" as it is applied to abortion rights. I have never understood how the phrase "a woman's right to choose..." can be abbreviated. To choose what? Fries with that? Choice is not an intrinsic good, and freedom doesn't occur in a vacuum. It may be the case that fetuses never feel or experience anything, but if so, I believe that is strongly relevant to the matter of abortion. This puts me on the wrong side of abortion rights advocates, who believe that it makes no difference one way or another.

What this shows is that on the position of abortion, science and Christian ethics converge. Both compel me to recognize the potential claim that another (even a theoretical other, such as a member of a future generation) makes on my freedom. I can't dispose of this obligation, and I can't ignore it - I'm already bound by it as soon as I recognize it. Science makes that other present to me and won't let me go until I acknowlege its legitimate authority. There's no freedom without relation, and no such thing as progress for one individual alone.

Ultrasound and the Scourge of Objectivity

I found this article to be quite fascinating and instructive for all of the ways in which it tries to avoid the critical challenges that the issue of abortion might be seen to present. I take Carr's jargon-burdened point to be something like, the pregnant body is inherently destabilized (and destabilizing, she would surely add,) therefore no one can reliably assign categories to it like public or private, subjective vs. objective. She's saying something like "a fetus can be both wave and particle," if you get what I mean. I agree with her to a large extent which is the problem I have been trying to work through with my analysis of the dual subjectivity of the pregnant woman and her fetus and the critical process of discerning whether bearing that subjectivity is something that a woman can possibly bring herself to do without doing violence to herself. That's the role that a pregnant woman plays in determining the course of her pregnancy, and there is no substitute for it, and no one can do it for her. Pregnancy really is that personal, and that profound.

But then we get to the whole business about the ultrasound, and that's where Carr's argument goes into screaming reactionary mode. Carr makes clear that she feels her rights being threatened by the very concept of the ultrasound, but none of her reasons stand up. She accuses the ultrasound of being a patriarchal plot, a surveillance tool of the modern state, a bourgeois invention hearkening back to Freud and the days of hysterics - she basically throws the post-modern book at the ultrasound, hoping something will stick. But nothing does. I would wager that almost all ultrasound technicians are women and that most pregnant women enjoy the experience. There's no patriarchal plot taking place. Nobody has ever been forced to take an ultrasound, and the results aren't public. There's no surveillance either. And there's nothing condescending about it towards women's emotional states either. The Freud thing doesn't make sense.

In fact it's obvious that the whole reason why Carr doesn't like the ultrasound is because of the notion of scientific objectivity which it introduces into pregnancy. To avoid the very possibility that science, rather than a pregnant woman's subjective choice, might have something to say about the morality of terminating a pregnancy, Carr has to rehearse a reactionary post-modern screed against science itself - now it's science that's the bourgeois, patriarchal plot. There's nowhere to go in this argument but backwards, as reactionary reasoning always must go. Carr throws around post-modern phraseology like an English professor on speed in order to get out of the argument alive but in the end she just tails off, exhausted. She's left staring at that screen, and Foucault can't do a damn thing to help her.

Where does that leave the discussion of abortion rights? Carr's argument proves, through its ineffectiveness, that there is an objective component to the debate which science is coming perilously closer to proving. The construction of personhood is partly subjective, but not entirely so. A newborn infant doesn't come from nowhere (like the stork) and a pregnant woman doesn't will its body into being. In the near future when fetal surgery, or genetic therapy, becomes common-place, it will be harder and harder to deny that there is a threshold to the origins of personhood which begins at some point during those now-mysterious nine months. As Carr rightly recognizes, the ultrasound is the beginning of the end of the purely subjective argument for abortion rights.