Hubristic Centrism, Humbug right-wingery, and absent Liberalism: today's politics

Apostate conservative Ross Douthat is one of today's most interesting political writers. Here's his take on todays' problematic US political dynamics:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/23/opinion/sunday/douthat-bloomberg-lapierre-and-the-void.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0

I don't agree with everything he says (the bit about the rights of religious institutions being 'negotiable at best,' I find inaccurate. There's tremendous freedom of religion in the US--more than almost anywhere else. I assume Douthat is referring, however, to the fact that healthcare law forces some non-church but religiously affiliated employers (like Catholic hospitals) to cover birth control, which is against there religious principals. Here, Douthat fails to note that religious freedom applies to everybody,  not just socially conservative Christians; it's an accident of history that employers sponsor healthcare coverage in the United States. I'm fine with that, but your employer has no business involving itself in whether birth control is covered by standard insurance policies. I'd also point out that birth control pills are one of the most effective ways of reducing abortions, so most of us ought to be able to come together on that one, even if we don't agree that individual rights should trump the rights of institutions. Still, I respect that this is a problematic issue), but his overall I find his analysis incisive and accurate. It's worth your time.

Endings: 'Lord of Light' and 'Empire of the East'

'Death and Light are everywhere, always, and they begin, end, strive, attend, into and upon the Dream of the Nameless that is the world, burning words within Samsara, perhaps to create a thing of beauty.'
-Zelazny (p296, common trade paperback edition)

On endings:

Diapadion asked me, a few weeks ago, if I knew of any endings that compared to Lloyd Alexander's famous wrapping up of theme and plot points in his children's fantasy 'The High King.' It occurred to me that two other speculative fiction novels were worth mention in this regard.

Lord of Light

They're both flawed works, but Roger Zelazny's great work of science fantasy about the evolution of religion, his heroic parable of Buddhism and accelerationism in space, in addition to being 'brilliant and tricky and heartfelt and dangerous,' in the words of Neil Gaiman, is also so built up by the end that it divides into four legendary endings. Lord of Light ends (slight spoilers):

'These are the four versions of Sam and the Red Bird which Signalled his Departure, as variously told by the moralists, the mystics, the social reformers and the romantics. One may, I dare say, select whichever version suits his fancy.'

The ending isn't perfect--rather, the book has become so epic that its conclusion must be splintered in order to prevent the book from sinking under its own weight. The only alternative would be to remain vague, which would be even less satisfying. It's an interesting solution.

Changeling Earth / Empire of the East

Fred Saberhagen was a genius, less recognized than he should be for his accomplishments in humanizing vampires ('The Dracula Tape', written before any of Anne Rice's stuff) and bringing philosophy and doomsday machines into intelligent science fiction ('Berserker'). One of his earlier and more uneven works was the trilogy of three small novels now known as Empire of the East, a work loosely related to his later Swords fantasy novels. While Saberhagen occasionally loses track of characters and doesn't develop all his threads, the second and third novels are both masterpieces of a sort, and the climax of the trilogy, with its newly generated god (with roots in the technology of a dead civilization) making a decision amid his life and death battle with an ancient demon, a decision that changes the dynamics of the entire world going forward, is a culmination of themes, plot-points and premises, and drama to match Luke's climactic fight with Vader and the Emperor in Return of the Jedi. I can't say more, or I'll spoil it. But where Zelazny's ending is a great denoument, Empire of the East's greatness is anchored by the its climax.
Buy 'Empire of the East' from the world's largest physical book store--they deserve your support

and here's 'Lord of Light'

What do folks like about Jackson's 'Lord of the Rings'?

...and third, having spoken somewhat at length about the series' flaws, I would very much like to know what it is people appreciate about the film versions of Tolkien's big old book. I have heard appreciation of Jackson for pulling such a big project together, but little else, specifically. For films so financially successful and with such an enthusiastic following...well, tell me, folks, what do you like about them? The world created? The characters, despite their angsty, vulnerable modernness? The visual effects? Sets? Costumes? Plot? Humor? What is it about these films (besides the Balrog scene, which almost everyone likes, I think), which deviate so markedly from their source material in both necessary (Tom Bombadil) and unnecessary (the strange dumbing down of characters and the changing of the dramatic end to the battle around Minas Tirith) ways, that makes everyone my age own the extended versions on DvD? I would love to hear your thoughts.

Update: a few more thoughts about the 'Lord of the Rings' films

So, as 'The Hobbit' part 1 comes out, in going over my post trashing Jackson's movie versions of The Lord of the Rings, a few things became clear (several pointed out by commenters):

First, I was a bit overharsh in my critique at times. 'Garbage-quality film-making' is a strong way to describe a few examples of things that didn't work, amid ten hours of film narrative. Every film has its flaws.

While I was hyperbolic, though, my problem with Jackson's treatment of his characters seems to stand up to closer scrutiny pretty well: they seem generally Hollywoodized and simplified, even when these things are not necessary (ten hours is plenty of time to develop this cast; Jackson and his screenwriters simply do not seem interested in doing so). When Jackson's cast are not overly modern, they seem dumbed down and oversentimentalized, in a way that contrasts markedly both with Tolkien's vision (the sense of medieval heroism and dignity the author seemed to want to portray, in varying forms, in his elves, dwarfs and high men, even in more morally problematic characters like Boromir, who had a Davidian ethos of responsibility and protecting the weak, even if he lacked the wisdom of a true king) and the needs of nuanced storytelling. I am talking, here, of simplification and changes such as in the following characters:

Sam: in the book he's young and lacks of knowledge of the world, but is nevertheless a pretty tough, loyal, and practical working class fellow, and, storywise, probably the strongest of the hobbit charactercs, aside from Bilbo in 'The Hobbit.' In the film, though, Sam is strangely fat, whiny, emotionally vulnerable, and sentimental, as well as a little stupid.

Eowyn: in the book, a lady made of ice, fire, high station, and a sword-arm. In the film, she's less wooden (and this is probably a good thing), but in becoming more human seems to default toward sentimentality and vulnerability just like Samwise, above. Just as he loses his place as a respectable, salt-of-the-earth, working-class hobbit, she's much less of a strong woman in the film. The writing cuts against her independent, defiant heroism--in her climactic scene, she's just lucky, in the film, that a midget snuck up behind the zombie who rides pterodactyl and stabbed the guy.

Re: Galadriel, I think my commentor Buzz/Doom may have overstated things by accusing Jackson of failing 'basic reading comprehension.' Rather, Jackson made a deliberate choice to sacrifice consistency of character and a chance for development, for the sake of visual drama. Nevertheless, he and Diapadion are correct that her major scene is substantively altered and possibly dumbed down; in The Two Towers (the book), when Galadriel is tempted by the ring, it's fairly clear that she's ready for this test, and gives a speech about her temptation and its consequences in order to educate Frodo about the risk he's carrying with him. There are fewer fireworks, but Galadriel's cold wisdom and psychological preparation are palpable, and fairly good storytelling, even if one realizes afterward there was almost no chance she was on the point of giving in to The Ring.

In the film, on the other hand, the test is a major point of drama, something she almost fails. By making the change, Jackson gives his viewers another miniclimax to keep the tension up in a long movie, and spruces it up with some somewhat memorable visuals (Cate Blanchett color-shifted and blowing in the wind of the ring's power), though the lack of effective backing on the soundtrack somewhat dampens the scene's effect. It also loses the nuances surrounding the elf-queen's wisdom--which is a problem since she's a major character, and this is really her only scene. In the film, we are told, not shown, that she's wise--and the story is weaker because of it.

Other, more minor characters are Hollywoodised: the Mouth of Sauron, who in the book seems to be a corrupted member of a proud, ancient race of high men (i.e. the same folk as Aragorn, though of older and purer blood), whereas in the film he's a generic half-monster in black armor who's there to get his head chopped off, in the film. There's also the matter of Gimli and Merry and Pippin, who, while not fully developed in the book, are  more than the slapstick comic relief they tend toward being in the film--especially the Dwarf, which is unfortunate since he's the only member of his race in the principal cast, giving the impression that the dwarves' champion is more Buster Keaton than Thorin Oakenshield.

Oh, and why did Treebeard have the same voice as the dwarf, Gimli, causing a subconscious association between the two (very different) characters?

(continued above)

Egil's Saga, Medieval lit, fantasy, Galadriel

On set today, I began rereading Egil's Saga, probably the greatest of the Old Norse sagas, except maybe the immense Sagas of Norwegian Kings (possibly by the same author, Snorri Sturluson) and, I guess, Volsunga Saga, which is much more fantastic and really comparable. Eat your heart out, Laxdaela Saga and Njal's Saga--neither of you can match Egil's mix of nihilism, commentary on human society and psyche, divided against themselves; hints of pagan history and legend, sense of character, storytelling verve, and more. None of you have genuine cave bears, though, so that's a ding for every one of you. Volsunga Saga gets close.

Anyway, Egil is interesting for, among other things, the sense it gives of the lives of society in ninth century Scandinavia: the grain barn repurposed into a feasting hall, the taxes laid on salt, the tribute extracted from the Sami, the dynamics of kingship and distribution of power and wealth from the king to his retainers, the interior 'wildernesses' which were settled by important men fleeing King Harald Shaggy, who were unwilling to pay his rents on land, fishing, salt, and even a hunter's quarry. And, of course, there's plenty of war and an alliance with Aethelstan the Glorious to come if I keep reading.

I think I will probably stop commenting on politics in this space. First of all, there's plenty of good political commentary already out there. Some might say too much. Second, we're mostly sick of it, right now. Third, the mythic and medieval is much more interesting to talk about for me: even thinking about Lloyd Alexander's work again has me excited, though I haven't touched the stuff in more than fifteen years. Aside from that, I'm sure I'm missing a forum somewhere, but I haven't much seen this stuff discussed seriously anywhere on the web, so I may as well do so here--especially as it's something I'm producing right now.

Fourth (or is it seventh? I haven't slept much, lately): Doom, don't think I've forgotten your thoughts on Galadriel, who I freely admit to having been too bored with to examine very closely (that sort of thing is why I like 'The Hobbit' better than 'The Lord of the Rings'), and so demand you explain for us, here, what she was about and what Jackson and his minions are missing about her. Or you can do it at your place, and I will link. Whatever. Put it on (figurative) paper before the new movie comes out, with her added in, and we can see if your perception of misperception holds up.

Definitely crashing now.

America's Sixth Party System

So far as I can tell, most internet sources explain America's Sixth Party System with a link to something describing the Fifth Party System (which I'll do here), and then saying the Sixth Party System is whatever came after that we're not exactly sure but Republicans tend to win more now. I'll try to do a little more, because if you don't understand the Sixth Party System (and many of you probably do, just not under that name), you may not understand the fundamentals of US politics now, and for the last forty-four years or so.

(UPDATE: This blog post from three years ago, despite a few minor errors and mistypes, gets at some of the details I didn't: The Uniqueness of the Sixth Party System [I'w afraid I have a few mistypes of my own, but I'll have to clean them up later)

Some political scientists and historians still claim we're in the Fifth Party System, but as a practical matter, it's probably important to make a distinction between the New Deal Coalition's era and what we have now, which began around 1968 and gradually shifted, from there to the year 2000, but especially in 1972 (politics-wise), and 1980 (policy-wise) into something different. You miss a lot, if you pretend what we have now is the same thing Franklin Roosevelt created; the consequences of the shift have been huge.

The 5th Party System was inaugurated in 1932, amid the chaos of the depression, with the election of the Roosevelt and more than a hundred new Democrats to the House of Representatives (and many more in the senate). They took office in 1933 amid 25% unemployment, and proceeded through 'bold sustained experimentation' (FDR's words) to use the power of government to stabilize the economy, provide unemployed workers with work on government projects like dams, bridges, roads, and parks and irrigation, and generally be very active in trying to lower unemployment, fix the economy, and provide some minimal benefit to the American people, particularly economically, through a sensible and lively government. Their success was incomplete until The World War (of 1939) put an end to unemplopment and helped America transition from an Agrarian economy into an industrial one. And they made mistakes (the experimentation part, and something known as NIRA, which I won't get into but which everyone agrees was bad), but by 1936 , despite substantial (but much lower, more like 10%) continued unemployment, the political landscape had been transformed. In contrast to before, business was again (as it had been under the first President Roosevelt) checked by the power of government, small old-age pensions had been started for the elderly, and an era had begun in which Liberals and moderates worked together to govern our polity effectively, by regulating the financial lthat'd helped cause the collapse, intervening in the economy when it faltered, promoting union rights to bargain for reasonable pay for their workers, and generally facilitating economic security for everyone within a regulated capitalist society. And these Liberals and moderates were reelected accordingly (with some ebb-and-flow; the Conservative Coalition took power in the elections of 1946, only to receive a thrashing by the New Dealers, led by fighting Harry Truman, in 1948). These champions of the common man and government for the common interest were united across both parties in something called The New Deal Coalition, whose governing philosophy was an economics-focused form of Social Liberalism (you should consider following that link and reading the header). They often shared power with their opponents, The Conservative Coalition, who also had seats in both parties, but never were completely (or mostly) out until 1980.

This began to change in the 1960s, when the challenges of race (which the New Dealers had usually tried to keep off the table--with notable exceptions such as Harry Truman's desegregation of the armed forces in 1948-- in order to keep the votes of white southerners who were willing to tolerate populist governmental intervention, but wanted blacks to remain second-class citizens with few to no rights) forced civil rights to the forefront of American society. A new generation of left-wing activists appeared, too: raised in relative middle-class affluence, they were more concerned with social justice and rights for all* than with a social safety net they took for granted. In 1964 and 1965, the Southern president Lyndon Johnson abandoned the socially conservative wing of the Democratic Party and used JFK's martyrdom to push through the most important civil and voting rights legislation since just after the civil war. In that year (1964), the country chose liberal Democrats in massive numbers to lead us through a crisis in which reactionary southern states were perceived as being in rebellion against decency and order, but in doing so, the New Deal sewn the seeds of its own destruction: Johnson turned to his aid, Bill Moyers (if memory serves) when he signed the Civil Rights Act and stated, roughly: 'We have now lost the South for a generation.' It turned out not to be quite that simple, but nevertheless, from 1966 through 2008, Liberals were never again able to put together a definitive winning coalition (centrist Democrats did win the presidency in 1976, after a historic scandal, and in 1992, but were unable or unwilling (in Carter's case) to govern from the center-left. More on that, later).

From 1968, America's centre-left political coalition, which had been based on economic justice, fairness, and effective governance, was gradually replaced (in the common mind and in the mouths of their opponents more than in reality, but, as it happens, perception is all that counts at the polls) by one in which more emphasis was placed on what might be termed social justice, or social issues: issues often of race, gender, sexuality (as well as a more just and dovish foreign policy) that poor white men and older folk have always had a hard time supporting (America's social change in the 20th century was quite rapid, by historical standards). This, along with the foreign policy switch of the Democrats who formed the majority of the New Dealers--from the moderately hawkish assertiveness of John F. Kennedy and Harry Truman  to something somewhat more dovish at the presidential level, especially in 1968 and 1972--alienated many traditional New Deal voters, particularly ethnic whites (who were then less assimilated than they are now), the South (which had previously voted solidly Democratic, if not always for liberals, than at least for people who'd often go along on a lot of stuff [not race or Feminism, obviously]), and working class voters all over the country who'd formed their traditional base. And that shift, basically, is how we ended up in Nixonland: the gradually shifting political alignment, born partly of political resentments and demonization of minorities (all effectively exploited by 'conservatives' which increasingly meant the GOP), that we call the Sixth Party System of contemporary politics.

On policy grounds, the actual change in the left-wing coalition, was more one of emphasis (the heart of the New Dealer activists of the 30s had always believed in racial justice, and often acted--very quietly before 1960--to do what they could within the political constraints of the time) than actual content, but the change in emphasis was key, and was exploited deftly by Republican opponents in the realignment of 1968-1972 (both important GOP presidential victories) that occurred because of it.**

That's the political world we've been living in all my life, one in which the white working class and southerners increasingly didn't/don't trust Democrats or Liberals. And that's only beginning to change now, in 2012 (which, in contrast to 2008, 1992/6, and 1976, was a clear (if somewhat narrow) victory for the centre-left coalition on its own terms and in comparison to its opponents' vision, and not (in part) because of disillusionment with an unpopular incumbent, as in 2008, or by running and governing partly against the left wing of their party, as presidents Clinton and Carter had to do (and which brought only very partial victory to both: a limited mandate in 1992 for Clinton, and then six years of cohabitation with a Republican Congress, and only a single term for the [admittedly fairly incompetent] Carter).

I realize that in explaining all this I've shorted the evolution of the Republican Party (which was not always synonymous with 'Conservatism'), but for that we'll have to wait for another time (in short, from 1964 to 2010, Republicans moved from a moderate, ideologically diverse party based in largely in the Northeast, tolerant of moderate change on social issues, moderately supportive of racial equality [and less divided than Democrats on that issue] and supportive of business interests, yet with an acceptance of a role for government in things like public safety and public investment, especially--and accepting of the level of taxation necessary to fund that government--to what it is now, which is...well, still changing, but much farther to the right, based more in the South, exploitive of religious, racial, and economic paranoia, and fairly Libertarian on issues of economics and governance [and with increasing Libertarian influence in other areas, at least for the moment, though Right-Libertarians are still a fairly small part of the coalition, except with voters under thirty) .

**Not at all fun fact: Nixon's subtly racist 'law and order' campaign of 1968 (which also ran against Federally forced black-white integration of local school systems in the South and elsewhere) was based on Ronald Reagan's successful 1966 campaign for the governorship of California, which occurred after riots had broken out in black neighborhoods in L.A., particularly Watts, where 34 people died and a black rioter took the stage at a public meeting and, on national TV, threatened armed insurrection and violence against the women and children of the white community of L.A. and the broader US. This was the sort of thing that so quickly soured white portions of the 1960s US electorate, who'd been promised progress and a more perfect union if LBJ's civil rights bills passed, and had voted for him in huge numbers (61.1% of the popular vote, the greatest victory for any US President since records have been kept) to vote for him less than a year before. See also the 1969 armed takeover by black students of a building at Cornell--and that university administration's timid response to the incident [which, among other things, turned the donor who the hall had been named for from a civil-society, PBS and Sesame Street supporting moderate into a right-wing nutball for the rest of his life, and sent huge sums of (seed) money into far-right organizations from 1970); things seemed to be getting out of hand, not going forward. Depressing, I know).

*The New Left also wanted (and wants, to the extent they still exist, now assimilated into the larger Progressive movement) a more dovish foreign policy, i.e. not spending the lives of young American men to support an authoritarian, capitalist and very corrupt regime in a strategically weak location--Vietnam--against that region's nationalist movement, which identified with communism but received easy aid (both effective weapons and training) from the Great Powers of communism, China and Russia, over a shared border.
--It's worth mentioning that, as a member of and occasional activist within the Democratic Party, while social issues have a powerful hold over the party at most levels (there are still a number of [sometimes potential] Democratic voters, often older, whiter ones, I believe, who care much more about economic issues than social ones), the McGovern doves have very little sway over Liberal elected officials in government; i.e. while most activists and many Democratic voters in the Sixth Party System are doves on foreign policy, their representatives in the US Congress and Presidency (with the partial, much-exaggerated exception of Jimmy Carter [who ordered the disastrous Operation Eagle Claw and started the US intervention in Afghanistan], in addition to being a decorated ex-Naval Officer, in contrast to his opponent, Reagan) very rarely are. There's a large coalition of moderates on national security issues, but even 'doves' like Socialist Bernie Sanders support the military industrial complex very substantially, and generally support military action as long as it seems to be prudent and not guided by a crony defense-industrialist chicken-hawk who never served like Dick Cheney (which latter skepticism I believe to be ultimately both wise and principled, if also motivated by peak).

To expand on that a little, while I think it's appropriate to vote against sixth party system Democrats Liberals on the grounds of social issues, if you disagree with their stance there, on national security there's really very little to worry about from the right. The doves (who in my view hold somewhat naive (though sometimes correct; see Iraq, 2002-3) world-views that don't hold up very well once one gets into office and actually has to deal with security issues) just don't have much power in the party, and there's little reason to believe this will ever change, President Obama very much included in this analysis (his foreign policy, while not my favorite, is not really problematic for being too dovish--rather, I find it too Kissengerian in its amoral and somewhat short-sighted Realpolitik [the so-called Idealists have their problems too] ). But enough digressions. I'm done.

Tea Party Democrats of 1890

In searching for a good link to embed in my previous post to explain the Sixth Party System of US Politics to any curious readers whoed seen it referenced there, I ran across this brief, interesting article about the Classical Liberal wing of the Democratic Party, which elected one of their own to the White House in 1884 and 1892.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourbon_Democrats

Though Democrats, their political views are very similar to orthodox Tea Partiers in many respects--notably the insistence on Laissez Faire capitalism (i.e. near-religious support of free markets), opposition to subsidies, and adherence to an outdated and damaging gold standard for money. The Bourbons were criticized as old and outdated even at the time, and hadn't the populist tone of the Tea Party (the Populists were their enemies, actually), but the policy ideas were much the same (and the failure of those ideas to address a major economic crisis, the Panic of 1893, led to a huge electoral repudiation in 1894, and their loss of control over the Democratic Party in 1896 to their populist rivals, who proceeded to eke out a narrow loss to the more moderate 'pro-business' Republicans in that year's election, the first funded (on the Republican side, at least) and organized in the 21st century manner, i.e. primarily by rich industrial interests (in a reaction to this, most parts and periods of the 20th century included substantial campaign finance limits that checked that influence, checks which have now been removed by a Conservative US Supreme Court on flimsy constitutional grounds in 'Citizens United,' already much to the detriment of our national governance)

But, yeah, the Bourbon Democrats are worth four minutes of your time, particularly the header section. They didn't last long in power, as the nation was not amused when President Cleveland refused on principle to use the Federal Government to help the nation through national disasters (i.e. vetoing a bill to fund the purchase of new seed corn for next year's crop, the previous year's corn having been almost completely destroyed).

American Political coalitions, forward from 2012

Douthat vs Krugman on our two major political coalitions

Ross Douthat is a terribly interesting writer--highly intelligent, intellectually honest, willing to be an outcast from his beloved Conservative movement for the sake of speaking what he believes to be the truth about reality and government policy.

A bit of an old school (and religious) traditionalist, when asking himself how the party needs to change, he tends to suggest that the right's economic ideology needs to move back toward the center and come up with new ideas to provide solutions for regular people, for the challenges of the present day, which he does not believe the movement has really quite done since the Reagan-era.***  Douthat also has many interesting, reality-based things to say about Liberalism, sometimes insights into its flaws that modern white sixth-party coalition Obama liberals may be unlikely to see after their historic electoral victory in 2012 (which was, as some have noted, in part an affirmation of the Democratic vision as opposed to the GOP's, rather than just a rejection of and gesture of dissatisfaction at the latter, as one could interpret 2008 as having been, if you were so inclined).

Here are some links to some cogent and important articles of his since the election, including one interlocution their intersections with Paul Krugman's blog, which adds to Douthat's insights and notes its deficiencies, as well:

Douthat's column from November 17th, around the height of American Liberal self-satisfaction:
The Liberal Gloat
"Maybe it’s too soon to pierce this cloud of postelection smugness. But in the spirit of friendly correction — or, O.K., maybe curmudgeonly annoyance — let me point out some slightly more unpleasant truths about the future that liberalism seems to be winning.

Liberals look at the Obama majority and see a coalition bound together by enlightened values — reason rather than superstition, tolerance rather than bigotry, equality rather than hierarchy. But it’s just as easy to see a coalition created by social disintegration and unified by economic fear."

Krugman's response, which says, in part, that the Obama coalition is indeed motivated by economic insecurity, but that this is a feature of our post-post-war age, and they are right to vote on those grounds to preserve a welfare state they need more than ever. Where he differs from Douthat is in (not) seeing in 21st century social changes a sort of social disintegration that must be fought to preserve a traditional America.
The insecurity election
"Ross Douthat’s column today...makes a very good point...that the winning Obama coalition did not...consist of forward-looking, NPR-listening, culturally adventurous liberals; ...the big numbers came from groups “unified by economic fear”. Indeed: single women, Hispanics, and, as always, African-Americans are for a stronger welfare state because people like them need the security such a welfare state can provide.

Where I would part ways with Ross is in his suggestions that (a) rising insecurity reflects “social disintegration” and that (b) turning to the welfare state is a dead end.

The truth is that while single women and members of minority groups are more insecure at any given point of time than married whites, insecurity is on the rise for everyone, driven by changes in the economy. Our industrial structure is probably less stable than it was — you can’t count on today’s big corporations to survive...over the course of a working lifetime. And the traditional accoutrements of a good job — a defined-benefit pension plan, a good health-care plan — have been going away across the board.

...Your church and your traditional marriage won’t guarantee the value of your 401(k), or make insurance affordable on the individual market.
...Now, none of this will bring back traditional mores — but that’s really a different issue."

Douthat also has this rather optimistic (all things considered) take on the future 'retrenchment' that may remake the GOP into something more useful to society than it presently is. He argues, basically, that Jim DeMint's exit from the senate may mark a shift in the GOP from the radical ideological retrenchment DeMint represented (and which Douthat argues was necessary to purge the contradictions, cynicism and overspending of Bush II / Delay-era Conservativism {both of which states of being actually extends, in important respects, at least back to the GOP's ideological rebellion against the Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1990 and its horrible 3% increase in taxes on the uppermost income of the rich and near-rich during a time of budgetary crisis and cuts--the same bill, a deficit reduction package, was composed of 61% in spending cuts--history he doesn't quite acknowledge} ), toward a new era in which GOP ideology will be less rigid and will conform to meet the challenges of the times. Douthat does more or less admits that in the prime example he gives to show the coming changes--Marco Rubio's post-election speech--all that changed was the tone, and not the content of policies, but for the moment I'd like to hope with him for a future party that's a useful and reasonably honest partner in governance.
The Years of DeMint (and the Tea Party)

I think some skepticism is in order, considering the more or less continuous rightward movement of the GOP since 1978, but perhaps if Douthat is wrong about now, another defeat in 2016* will finally push them toward genuine reform.

*Not that I'm assuming this will be the way of things.

Update:

Krugman's blog of November 20th is too good a response not to post as a response to Douthat's column on DeMint and the party's future:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/20/the-new-republicans/
"Second, today’s Republican party is an alliance between the plutocrats and the preachers, plus some opportunists along for the ride — full stop. The whole party is about low taxes at the top (and low benefits for the rest), plus conservative social values and putting religion in the schools; it has no other reason for being. Someday there may emerge another party with the same name standing for a quite different agenda; after all, the Republicans were once defined by opposition to slavery.... But that will take a long time, and it won’t really be the same party."

Read the rest: the 'first' point is at least as important as the 'Second' I quoted above, and in this brief post he makes very incisive observations about contemporary punditry on the 'moderate' right.
____________


(***For what it's worth, economic data suggests Douthat gives Reagan far too much credit for success on economic data in the '80s--those were solved for him by Paul Volcker's short-term cruelty and the disappearance of oil shocks, and there's little evidence to show that conservative economic policies did a damned thing to help (though it did help create our looming debt and deficit today, limiting our options for dealing with this liquidity crisis-induced recession--but really that's mostly Bush II and the modern congressional GOP's fault); the first thing that happened after Reagan's signature policy achievement, the 1981 tax cut, was the biggest recession for twenty-five years or more on either side, which only went away after Reagan agreed to claw back a third of the revenue the next year--though both those policy changes and their economic results are examples of correlation without causation. My point is, the tax cuts and deregulation didn't help, either (unless you count large deficits at the peak of the budget cycle and a 400 billion dollar Savings and Loan bailout to be 'helping'). Like I said before, the reason for those economic instabilities was mostly oil shocks and high interest rates. Reagan suffered politically for them in 82, which wasn't really fair, but also gained immensely when the oil shocks and 13% interest rates finally went away in the second half of 1983 (and for the next twenty or so thereafter, though we've had some high oil prices again recently) ), and some measure of stability returned)

The Brooch of Adaean

Those who know me lately are aware (and possibly slightly annoyed) that for the last month or so I've spent a lot of time thinking of the fantasy end of the speculative fiction genre (which is actually two genres, or three if you separate horror out from science fiction and fantasy), at least since the election meant I wasn't on edge for weeks thinking about politics. Anyway:


The Brooch of Adaean, a magic talisman from Alexander's 'The Black Cauldron,' that

Why Jackson's 'Lord of the Rings' sucks. Hard. A partial installment

On this subject I am filled with a depthless, inhuman hatred of the type I normally reserve for Republican tax policy and Sanchos. But let's face it: the 'Lord of the Rings' films are so grossly overrated it's ridiculous. Their better parts are crude caricature of good fantasy and good character writing, and their worse parts transpose the modern world and poor visual effects onto one of the more prototypical stories of modern fantasy literature.

Perhaps the simplest (if possibly somewhat pretentious) explanation is that as someone who grew up reading truly vast amounts of (often fairly nuanced and intelligent) high fantasy (also actual medieval) literature, of which Tolkien is only one example, not the progenitor, what seemed sort of new and exciting to others in those movies felt pretty half-assed and crudely stereotyped to me. When not deviating entirely from both the medieval idealizing and mythic fantasy of the source material in order to add staples of entertainment film like comic relief, vulgarity and the cheap horror which is actually Jackson's wheelhouse, the films seem to me to drop the more nuanced or distinctive parts of the genre and characters, and replace them with market-tested stuff someone thought would make the film accessible to a broad audience (the films are distinct in the way they drop a lot of Tolkien's characters for more modern film types; Tolkien's Aragorn, who, while admittedly not my favorite in the books, (he's honestly kind of boring, though less so than Jackson's)-- is very much the uncorrupted, idealized medieval lord of an old bloodline, a sleeper king in ranger's cloth, very wise and self-aware, is replaced in the films by some very modern, angsty dude with the same name but no family resemblance, a guy who makes fun of his war comrade behind that man's back, (while flirting), has a generic anti-establishment sarcastic attitude, and, in a rather tired character arc, has to be convinced by Elrond to take his place as a leader of men--basically a modern type dropped into Middle Earth in a tunic and boots and a sword in a back-sling).

I don't actually care, on principle, that they changed Tolkien's shit--just when they replace his better material with the stuff of low comedy, schlocky horror and shallow characterization, all of which cut against the almost impossibly epic storyline and the nature of the genre. I also care, to a lesser extent, when the filmmakers don't follow the obvious cues about the differences between the medievalized world and our own, which are part of the point of following the story, and part of what makes interesting the worlds of Tolkien and his ilk (i.e. medieval armies, especially orc ones, do not wear uniforms or assemble in highly organized battle formations--that stuff is exclusive to modern warfare and (and, to a limited extent, a few ancient states such as Rome). I generally find it hypocritical that, despite all the hype they generated about their attentiveness to hand-made detail and the creation of a different world, they didn't bother to do even very limited research into, say, medieval war or ways of life, of the sort that would have prevented exactly this transposition of modernity onto the medievalization of the 'imagined reality' which is half of the very heart of the modern fantasy genre. I may be putting words into someone's mouth, but I wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Van Dyke was in part irritated by this sort of thing also.

Besides that, all sorts of things about the film-making are surprisingly shoddy: the editing (the shield Legolas throws in front of himself, then jumps on as it slides up from behind him), the props (the orcish bow at the CLIMAX of 'Fellowship' which quite obviously has absolutely no tension on the string being pulled by the monstrous Urukhai as he prepares to kill our hero(es)), the costumes (many of which were carbon copies of another, as though middle earth took place during the age of mechanical reproduction and interchangable parts) and the effects (Christopher Lee watching in horror as his empire in Isengard is destroyed by a three-foot high waterfall sweeping away some four-inch high models; 'Superman' is the only other major film with a comparably bad water sequence, and it actually takes a lot of shit for it, despite being made on much more limited resources. And, you know, in 1978. But for some reason it's okay in 'TTT'). I have no idea why Jackson got a free pass on all that garbage-quality film-making. The acting and characterization also generally lacked much nuance (though the fault here is clearly more in the screenwriting than in the actors, who honestly didn't have much to work with and have done good work in other places, Elijah Wood possibly excepted). ...So far as I'm aware, there are relatively few comparable flaws in pieces like 'Avatar' or the original 'Star Wars' films--especially 'Star Wars', even though those were much more limited, budget and effects-wise. ...Admittedly, Cameron was basically allowed to swim in a sea of money for his latest creation, which cost about as much as all three Jackson films combined, and that fact has certain salutary effects (though I'd note that 'The Terminator,' shot on a 6.4 million dollar budget, holds up a lot better in terms of film-making craft, once money is taken into account, than anything Jackson's ever done, so...fuck all.

Also, none of Cameron's films have five different endings in a single edit, none of which even fulfill their avowed aim (i.e. the excuse for their redundance) of giving the audience some sense of resolution regarding the films' characters.

I'm just going to stop talking, now. But Jackson can make me revise my opinion by producing a version of 'The Hobbit' (which, let's be honest, is a better work than 'The Lord of the Rings' anyway) that's better than its live-action predecessor. It shouldn't be hard. The cheap, animated Bass-Rankin version of the book got most of the important points despite being pasted together from children's drawings animated at about four frames per second.

Lloyd Alexander's The High King: The Return of the Magical?

A thought, and a challenge to 'The Doom that Came,' the avuncular and popular blog that focuses on speculative fiction literature:

In a recent (cough: October 2011) entry, Doom extolled the virtues of Lloyd Alexander's beloved fantasy quintology (if that is the word, or at least a word) for children 'The Chronicles of Prydain,' a fantasy series second only to 'The Chronicles of Narnia' in prestige among the genre, and probably first in quality (much love to CS Lewis for being a pathbreaker in children's fantasy, but he had some substantial limitations as a writer which Alexander did not share), in particular its first volume: The Book of Three. Among other things, Doom noted the exceptional magical content of this first volume was not shared by its successors:

"One major reason that my opinion of The Book of Three varies so much, from one reading to the next, is that the book is quite different from the others.  There’s much more magic about, and this makes the whole atmosphere of Prydain feel different.  Both Gwydion and Eilonwy cast magical spells in the first book, something the prince of Don never does again and the princess of Llyr never again of her own volition.  When Gwydion later resists the tortures of an evil enchantress, he gains the power to smash aside the walls of his prison and then to speak with animals.  Another mighty castle, once the seat of Prydain’s kings, is thrown down into flinders by a massive explosion when the holy sword that lay immured beneath it is stolen.  In fact, much of the book reads like a (rather action-packed) travelogue, as the main characters visit the evil queen’s doomed castle, the valley where Medwyn lives and which only animals may ordinarily enter, the underground realm of the Fair Folk, and finally the golden castle of the Sons of Don.  In a way, the reader is introduced to all the wonders of the land, side by side with the protagonists.  But when they revisit that same land in their later adventures, it often seems much less magical, and the magic they do encounter is less awesome, sometimes even tawdry."

The whole thing can be read here:
http://doomthatcame.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/the-book-of-three/

My question is simple (HUGE SPOILER ALERT). I haven't read one of these books in at least fifteen years, though often enough before that. But doesn't 'The High King,' the pentology's (maybe that's the word) last volume mark a partial return to the more overtly magical nature of the first volume? Partly this is to be expected: four books of development pay dividends in the final volume, and these returns are in part magical and metaphysical. Nevertheless, don't we see Dyrnwyn, perhaps modern fantasy's prototypical flaming magic sword, do wonders once again? Don't the animals who led our protagonists to Medwyn's hidden valley in the first book return to 'take vengeance' against the evil Huntsmen of Annwvin' (spelling) when the latter are pushed into a tough spot? Doesn't dark turn to day (through magic means), and the iron crown of Annwvin burn through the skull of a pretender king? Don't the immortal fates show their true form, doesn't a book strike down a man with fire, and a deathless race meet their match?

All this must be measured against the nature of the book's conclusion (side-note, Alexander writes better endings than anyone), which cuts against magic continuing, and involves the Fair(y) Folk closing their doors forever. But I'd be interested to see any response Doom That Came has on these or other scores.

A great reason to be less disappointed in Obama's first term

If you think Obama hasn't done much to invest in our economy and our infrastructure, you should spend ninety seconds reading Amazon's sales blurb for this book on the Recovery Act's passage and effects:

http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Deal-Hidden-Change/dp/1451642326

It's heartening:

From amazon:
"As ambitious and far-reaching as FDR’s New Deal, the Recovery Act is a down payment on the nation’s economic and environmental future, the purest distillation of change in the Obama era.
The stimulus has launched a transition to a clean-energy economy, doubled our renewable power, and financed unprecedented investments in energy efficiency, a smarter grid, electric cars, advanced biofuels, and green manufacturing. It is computerizing America’s pen-and-paper medical system. Its Race to the Top is the boldest education reform in U.S. history. It has put in place the biggest middle-class tax cuts in a generation, the largest research investments ever, and the most extensive infrastructure investments since Eisenhower’s interstate highway system. It includes the largest expansion of antipoverty programs since the Great Society, lifting millions of Americans above the poverty line, reducing homelessness, and modernizing unemployment insurance. Like the first New Deal, Obama’s stimulus has created legacies that last: the world’s largest wind and solar projects, a new battery industry, a fledgling high-speed rail network, and the world’s highest-speed Internet network."

Cutting Federal Spending right now is a horrible, horrible idea

To understand why cutting Federal spending now is a truly horrible idea that will cause mass suffering in the US, i.e. beyond the quite slow recovery from a deep recession we're currently experiencing, please take a look at this article, and the link it references:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/24/the-economic-consequences-of-mr-osborne/

The chart shows how Great Britain, having been in a similar economic situation to the US in 2009, managed to INCREASE the size of their depression through budget cuts--rather than experiencing the weak recovery we've had. It makes use of data on consumer and financial industry debt to predict the course of the recession with no fiscal changes either way. The result? The US is doing moderately better than, according to the data, we had any right to expect, and the UK, starting in 2010, has been doing worse than us, falling below predicted levels of GDP growth in 2012 as the cuts bite harder.

 So what do we do about the current runaway deficits that feel so dangerous? Good question, and here's your answer: leave them alone for now. Wait until we're out of our current unemployment and growth crisis and the economy is booming again (or something close to it) before gradually withdrawing gov't support. There's not much disadvantage to doing this, because right now the government can borrow at about 0 percent interest on a ten year bond (not including inflation--and, yes, when the world economy picks up again, it'll become much more expensive to borrow. That's fine, because that's exactly when we should stop borrowing :) ).

WHY would we want to keep US troops in Iraq?

I largely agree with the main points made in Paul Berman's article in The New Republic yesterday regarding Obama's debate performance, including that he seemed, on a gut level, serious about not allowing Iran a nuclear weapon, even if that meant very grim consequences that more cowboy-type presidents (and candidates) tend to gloss over (i.e. full-scale war is the only way to stop the program, in sanctions don't work; bombing won't work and will strengthen the Iranian regime's hand at home by providing them with an external enemy).

http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/109018/obama-two-most-revealing-moments-in-last-nights-debate

However, I strongly disagree with Berman's implication that Obama is glossing over a failure when he boasts of removing troops from Iraq, because certain unspecified 'people in our military'--which body of people includes hundreds of thousands of officers, not a few of which (though certainly not the majority, who tend to be sensible and competent people) have a bit of wingnuttery in them--believe the US could have done better by leaving a few troops in Iraq for 'post-bellum policing.'

Berman:
"It annoys me that Obama keeps boasting about having ended the war in Iraq, when all he means is that he failed to push hard enough to secure a "status of forces" agreement with the Iraqi government. And then he pulled out the American military—though if he had, in fact, secured an agreement, the American military people could have retained a base or two in Iraq and, if the bases were big enough, might have lent a helping hand to the Iraqis. Not war, but post-bellum policing. There are people in our own military who seem to think so, anyway."


As someone who served in Iraq in 2005, I fail to see how keeping 10-30,000 troops in Iraq, at this point to some indefinite one in the future, would serve American interests, especially since Iraq has a quasi-functional government and police-force, and since getting further involved in their sectarian mess could be a nightmare. I can also testify first-hand to the resentment regular Kuwaitis harbor toward the Americans based there, despite our obvious role in providing them security and stability since 1990 against larger, sometimes dangerous neighbors. My perception of our relationship with the Arab world includes the insight that the thing Arabs hate most about the US is when we have troops stationed in their sovereign nations on a long-term basis. It tends to build resentment, as well as suspicion that their governments are our puppets, as well as generally giving them an excuse to blame bad things on the US--which sometimes is true (hey, we kind of screwed things up in Iraq from 2003-2006, I think it's fair to say), but which is also often simple conspiracy theory. It's also worth noting that the main casus belli (as it were) for Al Qaeda pre 9-11-2001 was the presence of US troops in bases in Saudi Arabia.

The only plausible justification I can come up with for advocating such a continuing troop presence (in Iraq) is the idea that the US could be trusted with non-sectarian policing in sensitive areas, where the Shia and Sunni powers don't trust each other to command security efforts. However, I have not seen anyone, neither Berman nor less nuanced thinkers like, say, Governor Romney, who supports a continued troop presence, as did his former rival Texas governor Rick Perry in an exaggerated manner, making this argument in any coherent form. Is it too much to ask HOW a continued US troop presence in Iraq would serve our interests in that region and the world, or to note a conspicuous absence of actual argumentation to the effect it would do this.

Really, what we should be looking for is a balanced cost-benefit analysis of the situation, but clearly that's WAY too much to ask for.

Public investment

During the era of greatest peacetime public investment in US society (partly in technologies as part of an explicit effort to compete with Communist economies), the US economy grew at an average rate of around 4% per annum between 1947 and 1973. Everyone benefited. Who's more likely to give us policies like that in the future? --That thought's a challenge both to Romney and the GOP, whose cuts (20% cap on federal spending, 4% reserved for Defense, much more reserved for social insurance programs...any actual cuts remaining blissfully unspecified) would seem to necessarily slash existing public industrial/scientific investment, and to Obama, under whose leadership new technologies and industries necessary to grow our economy in the long term have received inadequate support--the obvious and important exceptions to this being the rescue of an existing industry, the auto industry, as well as the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act in 2009, which provided substantial funding for a few efforts like solar power (still...not enough in the medium term).

Without continued strong economic growth, broadly shared across the economy through high-level (i.e. high-tech?) jobs, the entire social compact comes under stress. Who's going to step up and fight?

Romney's moderation: Specifics! Policies!

Commentor Pfeng writes:

"Romney was able to win (and actually do a relatively ok job) in Massachusetts by being very moderate. Frankly, he doesn't need to be hard-core conservative to get the vote of ultra right-wingers, since they will vote for Anybody Who Isn't Obama, so moderate and reasonable-sounding is his best strategy.

Although I could just be missing something, it's hard to see out of this binder."


Interesting question! Why aren't the right-wingers pissed off? Romney was clearly scared of them for months. There was no convention pivot. The conventional wisdom for a while, or the big question, was whether conservatives would allow Romney to pivot to the center enough to appeal to moderates and other swing voters and have a better chance to win. He seemed terrified to do so for a long time.

I guess he changed his mind--likely after the two conventions showed him he couldn't win in his current stance. So far, though, his moderation has come with a remarkable lack of specifics, in contrast to a rather large number of promises he's made to the right on policy. The right seems to be willing to tolerate this because the month of sitting 3-7 points down in the polls scared them, too, and now the moderate switch seems to be working for everyone on the right (though it must give at least some thinking people on the right pause that this is the only way they can win...). But if Mitt's really going to govern as a moderate, I demand specifics: on the economy (his 'five point plan' seems nothing more than a dishonest collection of bullet points focusing on goals to be reached by magic, not policies), on regulation of Wall Street (which he seemed, in the second debate, to be in favor of), and on the necessary public investment in our economy's future, i.e. on technology, on high-tech manufacturing (something Obama actually mentioned at the last debate, much to his credit, but which he has not pursued nearly vigorously enough in his first term, much to his discredit), and in education: the next generation of engineers, designers, scientists and business operations managers (as opposed to business finance specialists like...uh...Romney). How are we going to do these things?

No Obama debate win, or the triumph of a moderate Romney?

Gallup's 7 day tracker still has Romney up by 6 points. There may well be a bit of statistical noise, here, but this would seem to indicate the Prez didn't do so decently in the 2nd debate as people have assumed.

Or does this just mean that the suddenly moderate image Mitt Romney has presented in the first two debates has continued to pay off, despite somewhat more vigorous opposition from the president in the second debate? The policy image Romney has created over the last few weeks, often by innuendo rather than concrete promise, has been much farther to the left than anything previous. Thoughts?

Insights from the past (mine and the US's) on economics

I found the following note-cards, containing thoughts written down in 2005 after conversations with one Major Lamoreaux, a psychologist who was also helping me through some of the difficulties of doing medicine in a theatre of war (Iraq). They include a few thoughts on the development of ideas about government in which income is taxed and then used for the benefit of society as a whole (i.e. to create public goods like roads, bridges, and a stable health-care system):

'Before 1933, government was largely a tool of business and the wealthy, and the structure of society allowed for the suppression and neglect of the working class.

Early liberals moved government toward being an arbiter between business/industry and labor [i.e. working people, those who sweat away supporting industrial society directly, rather than managing or coming up with entrepreneurial ideas]. Government moved away from encouraging the distribution of wealth (and [perhaps] even redistribution by excessive taxation of the lower classes?) in favor of the wealthy, toward redistribution in favor of those in need, to a limited extent, and toward more balanced distribution overall.

...[An idea that also greatly expanded its hold during the period was] distribution of resources/income toward services on behalf of the whole of society, which services benefit that society as a whole (and as a collection of individuals) far more than any individual expenditures can. This last [change in the nature of government involvement in income and spending] is the basis of social democracy.'

The sections in brackets are words I've added to clarify the original writing, which occupied two sides of a three-by-five note card. This was when I was first thinking systematically about political philosophy and policy of this sort*. Thoughts? Is there something to be objected to, hear? Is this really Social Democracy, which is (or was, in those days) farther to the left, or just American Liberalism?

*I wouldn't get scared by the term 'redistribution,' which in this context is used to mean any policy that encourages wealth to accumulate toward one end of society or another--it starts out referring to a government gamed by the Gilded Age rich to grab most of the riches themselves, then seems to move toward describing the modest to marked progressive taxation (i.e. the rich pay a somewhat higher percentage of their income), as well as even-handed economic regulation, that characterized the mid-twentieth century, and which played a role in encouraging good incomes with significant but not excessive taxation for the middle class, and enough cash to government to take care of the elderly to some extent, pay for our military and security (9-10% of the economy in peace time at certain points, in those days), and do things like regulating food safety and clean air.

Burton's Batman: Nolan, Alan Moore, and Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman

Drank and watched Tim Burton's 'Batman Returns' with room-mate (Rich) a few nights ago--it was stranger than I remembered (the Penguin is played as a nasty caricature that's the opposite of subtlety--a viscerally nasty, nightmare cartoon, Danny DeVito in very heavy makeup)--the plot points are often crude, but Michelle Pfeiffer's sensual, physical, destructive, half-insane, psychologically fractured Catwoman was alone worth the ticket price (15$ for a DvD ten years ago).***  The movie has its flaws, but her portrayal of a psychologically disturbed woman broken under a mix of poor social confidence and nasty establishment/masculine oppression is as close as you're going to get to the final word on the Catwoman character. It's the darkest, the creepiest and most compelling, and has the most interesting romantic arc.

The 1992 movie was also shocking in how much more successful it was, artistically (for me, at least), than Nolan's last--despite all the cartoonishness and flaws. How much more resonant and relevant the characters and themes seemed (there may be something to the assertion in the article linked below: that Burton in 1989 made a quintessentially Burtonesque film that nevertheless had its finger on the character's pulse more than Nolan ever did. I think this is arguable--thoughts? Certainly, say, Anne Hathaway's Selena Kyle, while competently rendered, is less resonant and striking than Pfeiffer's, I'd say

But the other issue is this: Burton's second Batman film (which I almost made it through without pause, until the beginning of Act V, when the Penguin launched into a Shakespearian/Greek pre-battle oration addressed to...an army of penguins with rockets on their backs colored like barbershop poles. Which penguins were somehow radio-controlled and about to set off on a military strike against Gotham's population centers...fucking weird), which is not his most celebrated but which was nevertheless striking, also reminded me that Burton was once 'a gifted visual director' who 'coupled a cartoonist's expressiveness with a deeply humane empathy for the socially dispossessed,' in the words of the article linked to below, which rightly calls out Burton (and Depp) for his/their oddly lightweight fare since the mid-nineties or so, something fans have been rather slow to admit.

How did it come to this? How did Burton's dark cartoon aesthetic, full of storytelling verve and grounded in sympathy for the underdog and the dispossessed, go so hollow? Read the article--it's mostly dead on, with the exception that I'm not on board with the author's interpretation of the Keaton Batman being an 'overgrown boy crouched in a cave' (or words to that effect), or the idea that is a basic part of the Batman myth. But the rest is worth your time if you're interested in his ouvre.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8462672/what-happened-tim-burton-career-how-did-all-go-wrong-fast

Thoughts? How does Burton's vision compare to Nolan's, with the less successful last installment under the latter's belt? What happened to Burton? And the following:

***Selena Kyle's character raises one final question: Alan Moore's 'The Killing Joke,' with its portrayal of a likewise psychologically fractured Joker, is known to have influenced Burton's Batman material. But is that influence actually stronger in the second film than the first--where it's usually assumed to connect because that's the one about the Joker? Nicholson's hammy take on The Joker is pretty may share a plot point or two with The Killing Joke, but his character is pretty much uniformly malevolent.

Classical Liberalism and Liberalism

I've been lying awake, and letting ideas float across my head, and now I'm going to try and put a specific historical/philosophical idea out there, maybe the boldest one I've even put in print and in a public place.

Libertarians (and certain types of Conservatives) think they're direct descendants of Classical Liberals--maintaining the views of Thomas Jefferson as everyone else mucks around with that legacy.

They're not.

Sean Wilentz and/or E.J. Dionne, I believe, has said that 'Liberalism is an impulse, an attitude'--that innervates modern society on the Left and that does not equate to the philosophy of Classical Liberalism. But what does he mean by this 'attitude'? What are the specifics in terms of ideas and policies?

Well, let us see: Liberalism, the word, originates from Liberty, yes, but it identifies, even in the 'Classical' period a body of (somewhat varying) ideas and attitudes developing in the western intellectual classes and elsewhere throughout society, especially the middle classes. The French were more Laisseiz Faire (spelling?) (some of the Scots, too), but also included in most of Liberalism, aside from individual rights, and a Liberal Democracy founded on protection of those rights--was a sense of noblesse oblige and common purpose as a society: Civic Republicanism--the other half of Liberalism, even the Classical kind.

 That's why, though the states wrote semi-rigid rules for the Federal Government (they were operating under recent trauma and a fear of a central authority), they retained to themselves the instruments of law and government. That's why, though Liberals of the eighteenth century were often concerned with preventing economic meddling that would distort markets and make people less free (because this, in part, is what the Imperialist/Mercantilist nations were doing), this tells us more about the way that impulse led to policy outcomes to serve the greater good IN THOSE CIRCUMSTANCES. It does not tell us that the overall philosophy was a libertarian one.

I could cite numerous eighteenth century laws passed just after the constitution to make this point, and links later, but for the moment I will just note that a reading of the letters of Thomas Jefferson shows many passages indicating his belief that society and government must come together at times for the common good. His own presidency accepted most of the practical innovations the Federalists had created to run government and expand it to the point it functioned, and it closed with a huge interference (blockage of US participation) in international trade. Neither Jefferson, nor his cohorts, were libertarians. Oh, Jefferson was a bit on the Libertarianish side of the things compared to your average founding  father, maybe, but he was still part of the larger tradition we simply, and correctly, call: Liberalism--who wrote the US government's capacity 'to protect the common welfare' into the Constitution's preamble.

Classical Liberalism is not equal to Liberalism? False choice. Classical Liberalism was a manifestation of Liberal attitudes and ideas about the decency of all human life in the eighteenth century. Social Liberalism (or Modern American Liberalism) is the manifestation in our own. Conservativism draws on aspects of it, but ignores what it doesn't like and makes changes material to suit its own purposes.

Values, policies, and politics (link)

Great article by Nathaniel Frank about the need, in politics, to convince voters that you will fight for them on behalf of a recognizable set of values, something Democrats too often forget (The Roosevelts understood it, and the Kennedys and Johnson, and Truman, and with the 2012 convention, the modern party seemed to be remembering it--but Obama fell woefully short of communicating any core of values or vision for governing):

http://prospect.org/article/were-all-values-voters

" But policies mean little if they’re not communicated as part of a larger narrative that speaks to voters’ values. I don’t mean gay marriage and abortion, per se, but the belated understanding by Dems (decades after the GOP) that voters make choices based on whether a candidate shares their values more than whether she promises the best policies. Policies matter, but primarily insomuch as they express what a candidate values and telegraph that she can be trusted to represent values that voters hold dear.

That lesson went unapplied in the first presidential debate this week. Viewers were bombarded with wonkish talk, he-said-he-said assertions, and half-truths or outright falsehoods. In particular, President Obama seemed to get caught up in policy details without framing his positions as part of a digestible and resonant story about how he’d lead America.

To get their narrative back, Democrats should be making three main points over the next month..."
The details on this are worth it. Furthermore, he notes (with backing evidence!):

"Widespread economic insecurity has made Americans more open to government intervention. A trend has accelerated: Despite the general success of conservative think tanks in eroding trust in government through their “starve the beast” strategy, Americans are more—not less—supportive of government intervention in their lives today than they were in past years."

The whole article is worth checking out.

UPDATE:
Michael Tomasky in the 'Prospect' a few years back puts together some thoughts on the same subject, framing it around coming together around a common political philosophy that the average person can accept:
http://prospect.org/article/party-search-notion-0

The article (from a little before the 2006 recapture of Congress), is prescient in its observation of the difficulties Democrats have (and would have in the years since) making a case for who they are, and why you should vote for them (a gap the right-wing propaganda machine has been perfectly willing to fill with lies and hyperbole).

"For many years -- during their years of dominance and success, the period of the New Deal up through the first part of the Great Society -- the Democrats practiced a brand of liberalism quite different from today's. Yes, it certainly sought to expand both rights and prosperity. But it did something more: That liberalism was built around the idea -- the philosophical principle -- that citizens should be called upon to look beyond their own self-interest and work for a greater common interest.

This, historically, is the moral basis of liberal governance -- not justice, not equality, not rights, not diversity, not government, and not even prosperity or opportunity."

The Democratic mandate, or the philosophical good?

Republican leaders, or philosopher kings? In response to noted philosopher
Clancy 'Lord of Pierce and Other Vermin' Smith's
broaching of the question: did Chris 'the Corpulent' Christie do his job in abrogating the Democratic mandate according to the higher principle of protecting the traditional nature of marriage:

Clancy, I have no easy answer to the question of democratic politicians' dual mandate (the good or the will of the people). I would say, in part, that a good politician does his job by providing leadership which shows the people how they can act, or not act, to better their own society, and that this brings the two mandates closer together, reducing, if not eliminating, the discord.

Re: Christie, I think there is another point to be made: there is an assumption among politicos is that the dominant force in his decision to veto gay marriage was the desire to please national GOP primary voters and institutions for the 2016 presidential election. This attention to a narrow sliver of the populace seems a distortion of the democratic process, and it also assumes a crass attention to a mandate from a minority (i.e. not a mandate), rather than a principled stand. Admittedly, we have no direct evidence that this is the case; it's just an assumption. But it does complicate the situation your question addresses, methinks. Politics is a messy way of making sausages, whether made of human or tastier meats.

Motives and realities of US foreign policy

Some have claimed that US wars are fought to profit US Business interests. I would argue that, while not completely inaccurate, this is an oversimplification that is fundamentally at odds with the broader picture of US policy.

As I wrote to a friend on the subject:
I think you're conflating a couple of largely separate issues when you talk about serving US business's profit motive and executive security powers; while it's true that the areas can overlap (it's at least arguable that politicians' connections to the energy industry [Cheney, but not just him] encouraged, but did not determine, the Iraq war {though, afterward, it's a Sovereign though not democratic Iraq that controls the energy resources, not us, and they contract with whoever they want}. There's also telecom retroactive immunity, I suppose), I'd say that private business's (partial) control of regulation and government policy is 75-95% a separate concern from the modern expansion of executive power used for defense and policing purposes. The extent to which the former premised situation is a reality is also not completely clear (business appears to be only one, non-monolithic, influence among many on government policy, though there's a common belief which I endorse, that the scales have tipped too far in favor of the power of that broad and diverse faction (industry, i.e. the US Chamber of Commerce, Business Roundtable, the financial industry lobbyists, etc).

Ryan, I guess I'm disturbed by your comment that seems to acknowledge the institutional difficulties and limitations constricting the presidency. Would it not, then, be better to help re-elect a cautious reformist like Obama who, granted, has large weaknesses and is not oppositional enough to some of the nastier powers out there and has failed on some measures of leadership, than to allow the selection of an opponent who's both ideologically and fund-raising-wise and primary-voter-wise in the pockets of the powers that you loath (on both of the issues above: economics and security policy)?

Thoughts on the Obama administration's decision not to prosecute former officials for 'enhanced interrogation' under the previous administration (made in response to others):

See original thread here:
http://www.facebook.com/ryan.doxtader/posts/10151259999197228?comment_id=26395925&notif_t=like

Me:
Obama's not 'okay with torture.' Prosecuting US intelligence agents for past actions authorized from above would lose him the national security vote, guaranteed. But he did put in place sensible legal procedures at least aimed at striking a balance between the rights of (quasi)war detainees and national security. He also no longer claims that the executive can do basically anything in war-time because of vast security powers, no matter what Congress and the courts say about it, which is a pretty important philosophical/policy difference.
Obama has disappointed on many fronts, but the alternative is so insanely bad (Romney's foreign policy advisers seem to be all junior Neocon ass-hats, people like Dan Senor, who served with W) that you should vote for him anyway.
Remember how many people in 2000 claimed that there was no real difference between Gore and Bush, and so therefore one shouldn't vote, or should vote for Nader? How'd that work out for them?

K the destroyer:"and i think we can all agree that there is no ethical responsibility to punish government-approved torture, especially if it will lose you the national security vote:"

(Cave Bear's response):

Politics is a field full of conflicting ethical responsibilities--as well as being the art of the possible. You have to weigh the benefits of such a move against the fact that such a move would almost certainly lose the President the 2012 election(polls and elections show that middle Americans tend to care more about security than civil liberties, and have been particularly skeptical of Democrats in this regard since 1972), which would bring on a GOP presidency whose national security policy would (as asserted above) most likely resemble W's much more closely, and explicitly include further 'enhanced interrogation.' Has Obama no responsibility to prevent such a thing, if we can?

All that's not to mention all the unrelated ethical and policy issues at stake on the domestic front that Obama would sacrifice, over which Obama would be ceding control to an out-of-touch plutocrat terrified of his own right flank, as well as probability such action would indirectly cause permanent change to the US social contract, shifting it to the right and causing more of America's least powerful and most in need to be abandoned to the chaos of nature without material support from their fellow citizens for the forseeable future, a future which would also include a more unequal (and unjust) distribution of wealth and a banking system more likely to destroy the entire world's economy. Preventing all this is far, far more important than prosecuting 23 CIA agents from a previous administration. One must weigh one consequence and policy against another, but here the choice is very clear.

(For what it's worth, I think there are areas in which Obama could probably move left on civil liberties, if he wanted to, without losing substantial political capital. This isn't one of them.)
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It's worth reading the original thread in its entirety, but I shall attempt to excerpt portions of it in a coherent manner over the next few days, for the immense benefit of the larger public.

Thoughts from beyond humanity

As a newcomer to humanity's social problems (trust me, they're both the same and different than those facing us during prehistoric or medieval periods), I've ended up commenting extensively on US affairs in social media. This blog aims to give me and mine a place to speak at length about important subjects such as macroeconomics, government policy, the media, the progression of human culture and evolution, alchemical philosophy, and various bear-specific concerns which you may or may not be interested in.

You can learn more about myself, a surviving European Cave Bear unfrozen for the second time (the first being during the 'medieval warm period,' of roughly 1000 - 1400 CE, during which I was worshiped by Berserks and others) and now dedicating to observing human society, in my profile. Meanwhile, I shall cross-post a few of my thoughts from previous writings for inaugural posts.