JOLLY DAYS, an artist's journal

It was immensely fascinating listening to David Brooks on Charlie Rose the other night. Brooks instantiates the standards he espouses. You don’t feel he is thrusting his ego at you when he talks about ideas. He isn’t trying to prove he is smart and has all the answers. He sorts things out and provides some nuance. “Nuance,” there’s a quality that long ago evaporated into the ether.

It was a wide ranging discussion that seemed to be generated by a roundtable Obama has yearly as Obama sorts out what direction he wants to take. Brooks gave his own take, presumably what he told Obama:

He feels that Obama sees himself as an FDR progressive; that the Democrats tend toward parsing policy to install that agenda. Brooks feels the times are too different to apply the FDR model. The vaunted “vision thing,” as they used to say about Bush, or Bush said about himself, is not Obama’s strength. Brooks felt it should be.

Brooks feels that the country needs to feel hope which comes from a clearly defined destination for the society. He feels the sense of motivation has been lost as the sense of unfairness has grown. Whether on the Right, who despise entitlements as vitiating motivation, or the Left, who despise Wall Street, it amounts to the same thing finally. The country is enraged. It’s a Howard Beale world these days. People are mad as hell and they won’t take it anymore. More plainly: people who play by the rules don’t see the results of their hard work pay off fairly; or see others get the same or better without effort, or with unfair connections to power.

Along the way he touched on the toxic effect of the popular culture (although he didn’t feel it had any decisive effect — I disagree — it is primary). He mentioned an idea Mickey Kaus had some time ago, — that the status, or respectability as Brooks calls it, of middle class attainment is the real goal for many rather than great wealth, as junk culture would suggest.

Brooks also engaged in some goofy theorizing: he felt “creativity comes from networks”— his examples were Steve Jobs and Picasso. I won’t go into the Steve Jobs reference, but as to art: Brooks thinks Picasso brought the defaults of African Art into the mainstream of western art. By this estimate Picasso networked African Art. Hmmm.

Cultural issues are more complex than politics. Picasso’s work could as easily, in its cubist manifestation, be thought of as an absorption of scientific ideas of the time, as a Newtonian, logical universe, became the probabilistic chaos of quantum physics. Such scientific and philosophical ideas do enter art, even if artists don’t realize it themselves. The surface absorption of African Art, and it was a shallow, undigested inclusion, is a surface manifestation of the groundbreaking work of Picasso. But even with the drifting analysis of creativity, Brooks said many insightful things.

The takeaway: Brooks feels that entitlements, tax reform, and the culture of the family (family values — Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s emphasis) are the principal issues in reviving America. He didn’t say it with any cogency, but he clearly doesn’t think Obama has the chops to deliver on either a vision for the future of America, or an insight into the essential issues facing the country. In other words, Obama would be a disaster if re-elected. This has been plain for a long time.

Brooks never did address his complete failure to see Obama as the media construction he is; Brooks’ failure to identify early on Obama’s dissociated self-absorption, his dubious affiliations, and cynical center, are discrediting for a commentator. Brooks said Obama is more liberal than he understood. But what he still doesn’t understand is that Obama is just going with the flow —just another cynical politician who wants to be elected but has no idea what he wants to do, and is liberal when he wants hoots of approval from the crowd. No core values, just career. This is probably just as true of Romney.

Brooks’ ideas could be summarized as a renewal of Isaiah Berlin, where the emphasis is on having many ideas, with flexibility being the primary value, rather than a single “feel-good” delusion that will inevitably fall apart or turn dangerously sour. And has.

At 62, Hitchens died far too young. His curmudgeonly, or “contrarian”, as he would have it, angle on the politics of our time, was a blessed commodity in a consensus society like America. Toward the end he rejected the contrarian label, wanting to be thought more substantial than that. But well-articulated contrarian notions are invaluable to a society in correcting course; one of the great strengths of freedom is that allowance for difference.

The current sheep on the left and right, which is what they are, conformists all, repeating slogans without nuance, trivializing and attacking ad hominem, seem nearly a different species from Hitchens, who was polite, but never seemed to ingratiate or seek the kindness of friends. He believed in reason, an odd preference in the political realm, but quite effective in debate.

Remarkably, Hitchens had a surprising array of friends – differing in any and all ways from his own ways of thinking. This most likely came about because of his mother, who, arguing with his father, a father who disdained both working class and upper class, said that, if there was to be an upper class, then Christopher should be part of it. Hitchens managed conviviality to those with whom he disagreed.

He gave a wonderful voice to those who agreed with him. He said things well, with intelligence, crafted almost as though written. It is no surprise he could write fast and on a moment’s notice. Writing for Hitchens must have been like taking dictation. It was an admirable facility which he possessed.

I’m sad to hear of his passing.

Some snippets from around the web:

Michael Totten:

He was the greatest writer of our time who could talk off the top of his head better than most of his colleagues can write.

Ron Radosh, an admirer:

Christopher was a bundle of contradictions, a “contrarian” for life as he put it himself, a man who was charming, witty, a wonderful guest and raconteur, and a man who simply could not put up with hypocrisy and tyranny. I miss him greatly, and like so many others who knew him only from his writing, mourn his loss. R.I.P. And if you meet St. Peter and he asks you why you were not a believer, like the late Sidney Hook, you can tell him: “You didn’t give me enough evidence.”

David Frum about Hitchens’ wit:

He especially liked gallows humor. When the nurses asked him, in that insinuatingly cheerful way they have, how he was feeling that day, he’d answer, “I seem to have a little touch of cancer.” If he was late to emerge from his living room to see you because of the exhaustion and nausea of chemotherapy, he’d excuse himself with, “I’m sorry to keep you waiting. I was brushing my hair”–of which of course there were only a few wisps left.

Perhaps most resonantly, remembered by his brother , Peter Hitchens (a traditionalist/conservative Brit most distinct from Hitchens’ fiercely independent mind):

We got on surprisingly well in the past few months, better than for about 50 years as it happens. At such times one tends to remember childhood more clearly than at others, though I have always had a remarkably clear memory of much of mine. I am still baffled by how far we both came, in our different ways, from the small, quiet, shabby world of chilly, sombre rented houses and austere boarding schools, of battered and declining naval seaports, not specially cultured, not book-lined or literary or showy but plain, dutiful and unassuming, we took the courses we did.

Articles at the Atlantic

We will miss you Chris, even though we didn’t know you; you raised the level of the debate and reminded us, in more than a few ways, of what it means to be civilized.

Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength, an organization which advocates more taxes on those earning a million bucks or more, had its advocate on the Newshour today. It is a fascinating subject. I’ll meander a bit…

The individual doing the advocacy on the Newshour had started many businesses in California. He seemed an admirable man. Not like that ingratiating rich guy who in a public meeting with Obama said, “Please raise my taxes.” Obama himself seemed slightly disgusted by this deferential showboating.

But the Newshour millionaire had more substance. It’s difficult to disagree. Since at least Clinton, America has been drifting into a banana republic. It is hard to have a political democracy and such a level of economic inequality. (But to be clear, the tax raise on the rich is purely symbolic, a cup of money in an ocean of debt. Symbolism though, has its value here.)

This is pretty much what the Tea Party and the Occupy movements are protesting. Lawrence Lessig said that the mistake these movements made was letting themselves be co-opted by the political parties, because those parties are both vitiated with advocacy for privilege. At the beginning, the Tea Party said it was not allied with any party, but the media made sure that was suppressed until partisanship tainted the point the Tea Party was making: we are spending more than we have.

And then there is the exacerbation of the current system: the rich can afford advocates, and those advocates install themselves as counselors and advisors and politicians. And politics is money. So the balance gets further tilted to the advantage of the rich, and of large corporate entities. (Obama’s principal issue in Congress was campaign finance law, which he eschewed as he went off to raise close to a billion bucks. He is doing it again right now. So much for principle.)

The media is all for the tax the millionaire slogans. And, of course, Brian Williams and crew, as a particularly annoying example, are enormously wealthy. But it makes them look good…until you look at their own behavior:

Chelsea Clinton is now at NBC News, playing journalist. NBC is giving her a feel-good role; so it doesn’t seem they have hired someone on the basis of wealth and fame and connections. That’s democracy at NBC, with Brian Williams, Rockstar NewsReader @Rock Center.

Noblesse oblige — the responsibilities of inherited privilege — does not exist as a value for the wealthy anymore. Anonymously given good works have morphed into high visibility public work for charities and photo-ops — more publicity than substance. That is, the very same advantages given to the very very wealthy in the tax codes, is also installed in the popular culture.

Walter Russell Mead:

… the increasing sense that this country is run by a hereditary celebrity class is one of the most corrosive and dangerous forces eating away at our common life.

It is a sorry picture: self-anointed journalist mandarins, bringing us self-replicating privilege rather than rewarding ability or having any discernible set of objective standards; in some cases, joining the very movement they are charged with covering.

My own take: tax the millionaires. Japan, at least at one time, was at a salary comparative of about a 3X ratio of CEO to factory worker. America needs to move toward a psychologically balanced approach to wealth, without destroying incentive. The millionaire on Newshour seemed to indicate such balance would cause no decline in motivation.

But there should be more: inherited wealth should be taxed substantially. Obama, and this organization of rich “folk,” should say, most honorably, my money does not go to my children. My money goes to an organization helping children. Isn’t that what Warren Buffet is doing in his stated intention about the dispensation of his wealth? Wouldn’t that get Americans out of the starting gate at least on the same racetrack? Didn’t Bill Gates state such an intention himself?

…and don’t forget campaign finance laws to keep the system about more than money.

In government Our Leader and a Republican party held hostage by ideologues have gone together from pathetic to disturbing.

Jon Stewart about President Obama’s…

…plea for Americans to make the case for compromise directly to their members of Congress.

“That’s your idea, call your congressman?” Stewart chortled. “Did the president just quit?”

Irresponsibly diddling with the fate of an already weakened economy, the pols appear to have lost their minds. Obama declared himself the “only adult in the room”; the self-sanctification characteristic of this paper thin narcissist. Boehner, not able to wrangle the extreme right wing in his own party eructed a proposal that said, “I give up”; the extreme right does not care if pedal-to-the-floor might not be wise as we approach the cliff. They have their principles. Obama is more worried about re-election (his own extreme left) than developing skills as a president. Obama has two birthday parties (for himself) scheduled for Wednesday — you can tell where his mind is…on Obama.

Sometimes you feel there is a built in craving for conflict, like a craving for sweets. The audience for public debates and WrestleMania crowds aren’t that different in their emotional needs. If boredom or depression loom, those internecine venues can issue a siren call. No one is immune to the occasional shot of adrenaline.

The value of public political debates has devolved to vitriol. The left loves bigotry accusations, the right loves socialist accusations. Tough dads become the focus, saying respectively, you have to have compassion or be practical.This article says there actually is some grudging respect for each other in the political activism sphere. The article indicates it is more the mechanics of activism that is admired in their adversary, rather than a respect for commitment:

“We’re trying to compete with ActBlue but they’re way, way ahead of us. We’re playing catch-up,” said John Hawkins of Right Wing News. “Their panels are for advanced activism. This is basic, for getting into activism.” A sign in the hallway of RightOnline advertised “proven technology used by millions of Democrats.”

Speaking of this, David Carr’s NYT media blog did an excellent job nailing the Keith Olbermann phenomenon.

Olbermann is the left’s answer to Glenn Beck. I haven’t listened to Beck, but my guess is that Olbermann is funnier, more clever, but more deeply neurotic. Some of his former colleagues say the estimate of Olbermann’s difficult personality is overstated, but they miss the point; it is not as colleague, but as demagogue that Olbermann vitiates the debate.

Olbermann, like many fanatics, projects his own problems onto his opponents. He politicizes his emotional problems, and luckily, at least for the deplorable Charlie-Sheen-break-down-in-public MSM spectacle machine, Olbermann has no self-correcting mechanism. The frontal lobe has stopped filtering, if it ever did. That is key to Olbermann’s success in the mob culture.

“Each time [Olbermann] came into conflict at a job, he managed, through skill and a bottomless appetite for payback, to advance his career,” says David Carr @WaPo.

With MSNBC…

[Olbermann]…left [MSNBC] with no fanfare and no notice to his staff — he spent months nursing grudges on Twitter and plotting his return. …[Olbermann's] knack for forming toxic workplace relationships has followed him wherever he goes…Charley Steiner, who worked at ESPN with Olbermann, is quoted as saying that he might have been a genius, but “socially, he was, well, a special-needs student.”

Carr says that Olbermann is, “The one who likes the camera,” — more than the audience. Carr gets it. He understands that it is not about ideas with Olbermann types, but rather an infantile need for attention. Olbermann has contempt for the audience, as do all narcissists, except as the audience willingly plays the role of anonymous sycophants. The conventions of celebrity culture have troubling consequences when political activists form around narcissists but significant issues are being discussed. When politics adopts those pop culture defaults of hagiographic cults, values are traded-in for ego.

[via Instapundit]
Christopher Hitchens says about Pakistan,

There’s absolutely no mystery to the “Why do they hate us?” question, at least as it arises in Pakistan. They hate us because they owe us, and are dependent upon us. The two main symbols of Pakistan’s pride—its army and its nuclear program—are wholly parasitic on American indulgence and patronage.

This reminds me of Saul Bellow’s description of the attitude of the French in 1948 towards the Americans and Brits who had just liberated them,

…The city lay under a black depression…The gloom everywhere was heavy and vile. The Seine looked and smelled like some medical mixture. Bread and coal were still being rationed. The French hated [the Americans and the English]. I had a Jewish explanation for this: bad conscience. Not only had they been overrun by the Germans in three weeks, but they had collaborated. Vichy had made them cynical. They pretended that there was a vast underground throughout the war, but the fact seemed to be that they had spent the war years scrounging for food in the countryside. And these fuckers were also patriots. La France had been humiliated and it was all the fault of their liberators, the Brits and the G.I.s.

The MSM has labeled and endlessly repeated their own coinage: Arab Spring. The phenomenon, of repressed Arab populations attempting to overthrow dictators, is indeed in process and one can hope for the best; but Arab Spring implies an outcome — a treacly Disneyland of freedom and democracy. This is far from certain and probably unlikely. There is no supporting example.

Obama was feeling pressure from advisors: you have to say something about the Arab Spring or you will continue to “lead from behind”. (“Leading from behind” is an Orwellian construction — pure self-satire.) So Obama, obeying interior dictates only he can understand, marches to the microphone and makes a speech, prior to Netanyahu’s visit, declaring longstanding American policy. This is then enabled using just that argument: longstanding policy. But why stir the pot with a pro forma speech just before the visit of one of the parties in an upcoming negotiation if nothing new is being said? The MSM asked this question and…wait, no, they never did…

What the MSM does not suggest is what is left out — the elisions; such an Israeli / Palestinian agreement must be in accordance with “conditions on the ground,” which is also longstanding US policy. Obama has estranged our ally and not won any friends in his ingratiations. This is characteristic of his leadership chops; no sense of the actual issues or judgment about focus. A president who squanders opportunities and credibility.

Soon the Iranian client state in Gaza will be merging with the kleptocracy in the West Bank. What possible hope for peace can there be in that? No matter the public declarations, it is transparent what the nature of Palestinian governance is all about.

For there to be peace Palestinians will have to renounce a culture of hatred and murder. Obama could not bring himself to say that because he knew he could only pressure Israel. Abbas had made plain in a recent op-ed and his enthusiasm for a UN declaration preemptively establishing a state (which Obama begged to be rescinded) that Abbas could care less what Obama wants. Thus dissed, Obama turns to our ally to pressure so he seems to be doing something.

Although Obama could not say it, or probably conceive the idea, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor could:

Stop naming public squares and athletic teams after suicide bombers. And come to the negotiating table when you have prepared your people to forego hatred and renounce terrorism — and Israel will embrace you. Until that day, there can be no peace with Hamas. Peace at any price isn’t peace; it’s surrender.

UPDATE

Obama saying today (5/25/2011) in the UK what he should have said originally:

“Hamas… has not renounced violence and has not recognized the state of Israel,” he told reporters this morning at a joint-press conference with the U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron. ”Until they do, it is very difficult to expect the Israelis to have a serious conversation, because ultimately they have to have confidence that the Palestinian state is going to stick to whatever bargain is struck,” he said.
…
“…I don’t want the Palestinians to forget that they have obligations as well…That is, I think, going to be a critical aspect of us being able to jump-start this process once again.”

A re-focus that was necessary for Obama to have any credibility as leader, peacemaker, or thinker.

Obama’s order to go ahead with an on-the-ground mission to get the figurehead psychopath bin Laden deserves applause. The policy, and structure that finally got bin Laden, was put in place by Bush and to Obama’s credit, remained unchanged — as far as the public can know such things; the SEAL team dealt a blow to the loose association of thugs — that is called an organization in the media — which has been taunting, bullying and terrorizing.

Good riddance to the murderer.

Christopher Hitchens points to Pakistan as a petri dish of terrorism… bin Laden was enthroned by a state which is receiving billions from America. Pakistan has an interest in keeping the Taliban alive and has no doubt been sheltering more than bin Laden, all resulting from a cancer Pakistan created for internal political reasons and can’t eradicate now even if they tried.

Hitchens notes that bin Laden had long been as irrelevant as he was contemptible,

… in the past few years, their main military triumphs have been against such targets as Afghan schoolgirls, Shiite Muslim civilians, and defenseless synagogues in Tunisia and Turkey. Has there ever been a more contemptible leader from behind, or a commander who authorized more blanket death sentences on bystanders?

Not only does this elimination of a madman free the world of a toxin, it also puts on notice those next in line in bin Laden’s crew.

Whether Obama sees the foolishness of engagement with Pakistan, as Hitchens urges, is an open question. There were claims, made by Clinton, that Pakistanis sacrificed their lives to eliminate bin Laden’s allies in Pakistan. But, whether true or not, the broken state of Pakistan appears to be of little help even if it so wished, as it can’t help itself.

Foreign policy expert Walter Russell Mead, a frequent guest on PBS NewsHour, and left-leaning scholar, has written the most devastating piece about Obama since his election.

This is all familiar territory, obfuscated currently by ridiculous press about outlier birthers and tea party spectacle and publicity hounds like Trump and royal weddings — the press never wanted to cover Obama as an individual — they hated the bumbling Republicans too much:

The President looks like a man who is ridden by events; at just the moment when the nation craves a strong leader, the President looks weak, dodgy, uncertain.  The contrast with the inflated hopes that an untested and inexperienced Senator Obama did so much to build up is crippling.  Obama has fallen so far precisely because he and his supporters so hugely oversold him.…

We are starting to get to know this President a little better…He is a man of half measures, a man who spends so much money hedging his bets that he loses even when he wins.

Obama’s lack of leadership skills …

Here is the paradox we face:  The President is a consensus-seeker whose decision making style rewards polarization and a conciliator who loses friends without winning over enemies.

The President’s problem is not, I think, that he seeks compromise.  It is that the type of compromise he chooses is so ineffective.  Splitting the difference is not leadership; leadership is looking at the positions of two sides and finding creative new directions that give something to all sides — but move the ball down the field.

Obama’s lack of experience…

Another problem is experience, or rather the lack of it.  …he came to the White House with next to no experience at running bureaucracies or leading legislative coalitions.  He lacks Lyndon Johnson’s sure sense of what Congress will or won’t do (not to mention Johnson’s legendary ability to build support for his agenda), and he lacks the international seasoning of a George H. W. Bush or Richard Nixon. This kind of experience is what is necessary both at home and abroad to understand the agendas and instincts of various parties and to figure out innovative, forward-looking ideas that can work around entrenched positions and make genuine progress. 

Now this would be surprising if it were surprising. But it was all laid out, from the outset. All doubts were subsumed under charges of racism. Obama thinks he is a glorious amalgam of Lincoln and FDR; when he speaks he leans his head back and jabs his finger, a simulacrum of JFK. A synthesized, synthetic president.

And the media will act as though it is purely Obama’s fault…hey, Obama just went with the flow.

This fascinating dialog between a psychologist, Carlo Strenger, and Robert Wright, has a stimulating and familiar ring. It is a discussion, like many, both intelligent and ultimately unsatisfying. Maybe all discourse threatens to fall off the cliff as logical discussion can easily become display behavior… but they deserve credit for giving it an honorable try.

Strenger wrote a book called The Fear of Insignificance. He feels the prevalence of ranking and the worldwide media, which he calls the “global entertainment system,” make us acutely aware of our smallness in the scheme of things. We don’t have status and it is shoved in our face. He points out that popularity is valued over achievement. That being known is a value in itself. Not achievement, but simply awareness of self by others.

He expands this to the tribal groups that make up the world, from nations to religious affinity groups, and feels this applies here as well. He feels ultimately it is a fear of death that drives all this. Something of a let down in analysis begins with that obvious predicate of all philosophy.

He feels, and this is where the falloff occurs abruptly, that the answer is a global sense of tribe and a universalist philosophy.

I hope all that is fair to Strenger’s well meaning ideas. But they simply don’t resonate. We will always be tribal creatures, are so genetically predisposed, and the issue is really not individual universalist affinity, but rather that each tribe be open and compassionate to other tribes. You really would not want to live in a world that had a mumbling generalist culture. The heritage of people matters. But that does not have to be exclusive. So this issue is not in individual transformation, but in group self-concept — allowing for an inquisitive inclusiveness rather than defensive isolation. So the focus should be on education of the insulated tribes— many societies just don’t tell the truth to their people.

Wright has an Israel problem that always obtrudes. He identifies with “demands” made by the enemies of Israel, thinking it is logic driving their behavior. And Wright thinks there is some logical solution: do what they want. He feels their arguments are the sole arguments to be acted upon. This is reminiscent of celebrities lolling in Beverly Hills proffering advice to the unwashed; the privileged of course don’t have to deal with the consequences of their advice — they are well away from jeopardy or daily contact with the issues.

The Huffington Post is being sued by bloggers,

bloggers have essentially been turned into modern-day slaves on Arianna Huffington’s plantation…

The dramatic rhetoric aside, this is an interesting issue. Like Juan Williams who learned what liberal now means as taught him by NPR: join the Borg collective or be expelled from the collective with malice.

These bloggers have learned that the egalitarian affectations of folks like Huffington is really a cover story: Huffington is simply an oligarch. She sees others as useful, as a narcissist sees others as tools to their purpose. Those like her want to tell the unwashed, clinging to their guns and religion, what is right and then impose it through shame (you are a bigot if you do not agree) or ostracism via cackling snarkiness.

So Huffington, who did not deign to pay for content as she raked in money, and did not share the $315 million profit (except with her business partners) when she sold to AOL, who exploited celebrity dim wittedness to her benefit, is now making it clear to 9000 bloggers that she disdains her own work gang — as she always had. Privately she thought, “I wouldn’t work for nothing.”

There are so few moderates, so few independents it seems; maybe they just aren’t focused on by the media because there is less heat to attract an audience, and the media knows, you make more money with heat than light.