i still exist!

an unexpected hiatus due to an unexpectedly busy week -- but rest assured, i've been yapping my head off all week about lots of interesting stuff, some of which i expect to post...some day soon. the moral of the story is, if you are a political science major interested in on-the-ground activism, avoid any and all conversations with philosophers unless you're looking for a serious run for your money.

that said, i still think i have the upper hand when it comes to the actual lives and histories of actual people in the actual world, logically inconsistent as that upper hand may sometimes be. sometimes we have to work with what we've got. so now all i have to do is figure out how to 'work with what we've got' and still respect the idealistic future world inhabited by those crazy philosophy folks. easy, right?

frank rich is a smart man. here's a column from sunday's times that really caught my eye: george bush as a billy-flynn-and-roxie-hart act; the white house press corps, and the mainstream media more generally, as the marionette-like reporter chorus in "they both reached for the gun" -- one of my favorite songs from chicago. if you've seen the show or the movie, or even heard the CD, you'll agree that the circumstances are eerily familiar, right down to the ridiculous moralizing softballs thrown at every white house press conference in the past month.

i read a poll last week that reported that nearly half of americans believe the patently ridiculous assertion that saddam hussein was "personally responsible" (yes, those were the words of the question) for the september 11 attacks. i noted, speaking to my very smart little brother, who hears truth from my parents on the matter, that despite his intelligence and the suspicions of my parents, he also believes this new-minted "fact." how did this happen, and who is responsible? it's difficult to say.

we might blame the white house propaganda machine (at least, i'd really really like to) and its disingenuous manipulation of the stories supporting this war. but the mainstream media are awfully complicit...but then again, you have rich's very critical piece published in the new york times. op-eds oppose the war every day. opposition letters to the editor get printed.

but.

but, these are opinion pieces. i think the (mainstream) media have destroyed their own ability to criticize meaningfully by attempting to divide forever "news" and "opinion." this is almost certainly not a conscious decision. i bet the editors at the times and the post who fail to cover huge anti-war demonstrations -- and the cnn producers who show us diagrams of "smart bombs" and strategic maneuvers instead of the human toll of the war -- are not hanging out in a smoke-filled room someplace, taking bribes from ari fleischer. however: conscious decision or not, the assumptions of the american press about what constitutes an appropriate neutrality make for newspapers (and television reports, and radio broadcasts) that put their opinions in the opinion box and get their "facts" straight from tommy franks and the bush warmachine. this uncritical worship of neutrality and "appropriateness" or "respect" leads to a decidedly non-neutral "neutrality." this neutrality allows the great mass of the american public, who may not have access to critical news sources, to accept the assertions of the administration as truth and to ignore the op-eds that do not agree. after all, that's just somebody's opinion, right? the front page is where you find out what's actually going on.

and also, i talked to my eight-year-old brother about the war for fifteen minutes tonight. here is a nearly-verbatim string of quotations:

"i don't know about it, but even if they did send planes into the twin towers that's no reason for us to go and kill lots of them. they're kids like me...and when we kill their president that's not good for us to do, even if he was bad, because then who will be in charge of the country? how will kids get to school?...i know this war isn't good like the war Grandpa Hoover fought in, because they didn't hurt us first. the president then was very smart and good, but i don't like our president now..."

yep.

also, he reports that he was very good at school every day this week and made a peace sign for his window. and that he was glad to hear that i wasn't in jail, but proud of me for "doing politics at that protest."

hurray for grapevine; tonight's CD pre-order extravaganza was a wonderful beginning to this weekend. i love my purple girls. (also i love the 27 generous souls who forked over $10 apiece for a CD that hasn't been made yet, so that it can *get* made.)

if you're a swattie, or my friend, and you haven't pre-ordered yet, i demand that you do so immediately. contact jenny, jblumbe1@swarthmore.edu. or i will hurt you.

i was there this morning...despite all my musing about what's appropriate to do, and despite the awful, nasty, cold drenching rain, it felt great to be in a group of like-minded people again. it felt great to hold a banner and watch the rush hour drivers react -- though it was early; mostly the reaction was fairly nonexistent.

laurel and andrew nearly got themselves arrested chalking "peace is patriotic" and "no war," respectively, on the federal building. the moment attracted quite a bit of attention from press people -- i'll be interested to see what comes of it. a hundred other people actually did get arrested, after blocking access to the federal building for a couple of hours. it did not seem futile, ridiculous or narcissistic...i admired the gesture.

so it was visible, and heartening. unfortunately, the content of the rally was not especially smart. lots of slogans that apparently didn't recognize the fact that the war had begun, and lots of fairly silly chanting. i would have felt better just standing there in the middle of arch street, silently holding my sign.

NB: in case anyone's interested, none of this means i've decided anything about what i'm actually going to do...hmmm....

actually, i never got my puppet out.

professor burke has quite insightful things to say about the need for "prudence, patience and planning" from the opposition. [and isn't it funny, and sad, how i'm now part of this amorphous "opposition" rather than an anti-war movement?] obviously, there is to be no turning back now, and thus there's no sense in belaboring anti-war tactics and arguments that no longer apply, or in continuing to do things the same way. but but but but...i can't accept that this means that people who honestly voice their opposition are narcissists looking for a way to demonstrate their own virtue.

we should all be aware that humans are neither perfectly individual nor perfectly rational beings. they are social, and they are endlessly affected by what those around them are saying and doing. to downplay or remove vocal opposition to the war now is to create in our neighbors a belief that the opposition, which was gaining strength only days ago, has evaporated under the force of this defeat. if people are affected by their social situations (and i think they are), the appearance of retreat will soon lead to actual ignorance of the issues -- i.e., an actual retreat. people are remarkably adept at forgetting issues that aren't daily placed before them, and remarkably poor at maintaining independent critical thought in the face of a propaganda war. this is one reason that now is the time to do something -- NOT anything, but something -- to maintain the visibility of the opposition.

of course (and this is what professor burke seems most concerned about) it's obvious (or should be) that we should also not allow the opposition to be vilified ("NOT anything"). we must choose the actions we take with great care. but, and i think this is vital, we should also remember that while these actions, whatever they are, comprise just part of a larger goal, it's worthwhile to remember that real people are going to suffer, right now, at the hands of a government that supposedly represents us. while it is true that this has happened before (and met with very little public outrage), that fact alone cannot possibly justify our failure to display moral outrage this time around. moral outrage isn't narcissistic. it's justified, and necessary. think of how morally vacant the left would look (indeed, think of how morally vacant the left would be) if it took time off from protesting a current and concrete injustice in order to gain votes next fall.

it is true that votes are vital in our majoritarian system. if we want to change united states policy, we have to change the regime. but bringing george bush and his administration to account for this war, and the policies surrounding it, in 2004 requires that opposition to the administration's policies, especially those we find ethically (rather than just politically) abhorrent, sustain itself through whatever comes (unless, of course, what comes is a major triumph for peace and substantive democracy, which i somehow doubt). if paper-mache puppets, rallies and nonviolent resistance are that sustenance -- even if, God forbid, these are actions that also feel good and right to the people taking them -- then i find it shortsighted to condemn them, even if they are ineffectual in the short run.

there is a beautiful full moon over our little campus tonight. it was wonderfully warm today, and it still feels like spring now, at half past midnight. somehow the beauty of this march day makes today's news even more alien and unbelievable. we live in such a pretty little slice of the world that it's exceedingly difficult to contemplate all the twisty complexities of badness going on out there, under that same moon. though, come to think of it, maybe it would be difficult for me to contemplate from any vantage point. certainly i didn't gain any traction staring up at the sky this evening. is this really going to happen?

the answer is yes, it really is, and the question now is what i should do in response. today was a day for trying to figure out the correct perspective to take. if i were a total cynic, maybe i'd laugh: this is just another stupid move in a long, unbroken chain of stupid moves by the united states government; this sort of thing happens all the time; life has always gone on and it will continue to proceed apace. on the opposite end of the spectrum resides the near-hysterical feeling that the world is being brought to an end through the hubris of this administration. as it turns out, though i have at various moments throughout the past couple of days experienced both perspectives, neither is particularly helpful. each is a recipe for paralysis, since each implies that there's no way for an individual in my position to make a difference.

so i'm not paralyzed. but still: what do i do? emails are flying tonight, telling me to meet on parrish steps the night the war breaks out; meet at the train station the following morning; go block traffic in philly, they're not arresting; descend on curt weldon's office; plan a 'nonviolent direct action;' come to a rally on saturday in new york. all of these things seem reasonable--at the very least, reasonable in the same sort of frame in which [making war on a desperate and unstable and weak little nation in order to satisfy some bizarre recurrence of manifest destiny] seems reasonable. my only question is, will i actually be *doing* anything? changing anyone's mind?

at the anti-war reading group today we had a grim little discussion of how the advent of this war will affect the opposition. will there be a bubble of support for bush's insanity? will it be long? will we look bad when the military-sponsored news shows cheering iraqis welcoming the troops? will the opposition recover in time to help save iraq from whatever it is that george bush decides constitutes "nation-building?" the only conclusion we could come to was that we must all continue to act. the administration is gambling on the fact that opposition to the war will die with the hope of preventing it, and it seems imperative that we show that this is not--and will never be--the case. the more difficult question is whether our continuing action can have any positive effect...and i suppose that the answer here is that the only positive effect we can look for here is visibility. maintaining visibility is key to the next effort: holding bush and his cronies accountable for the damage they are about to inflict upon masses of innocents.

so: no business as usual, friendly readers. go out and do something, whatever it might be in your neighborhood. and no fair worrying, on a personal level, about the possibility that we might appear foolish or heretical. i am more than proud to seem foolish and heretical in the eyes of this particular status quo.

man, oh, man. so does this mean we're going to war now? how can we "declare the diplomatic window closed?"

fuckers.

a choice quote from the times article, comparing abortion legislation to environmental regulation (!?!?):

"I don't understand," said Senator Peter G. Fitzgerald, Republican of Illinois, "how those who can hear the howl of a wolf or the squeal of a dolphin can be deaf to the cry of an unborn child."

boy, does that ever muddle the debate in an infinitude of ways. i'm disgusted that fitzgerald, deaf to the howls of wolves, the squeals of dolphins, and the cries of born children living in poverty, not to mention every woman on earth (whom he and his ilk seem to regard, rather premodernly, as empty vessels), can work himself up to the impressive level of cynicism necessary to make such an argument.

let's be clear: "partial-birth" is a term invented by opponents of choice in order to demonize a procedure that no one really "chooses" to undergo. that is to say, the fetuses aborted in late-term abortions are generally inviable in any case, and often a serious threat to the life or health of the mother, as well. late-term abortions are incredibly difficult; they are not, as many an anti would have it, infanticides committed by the criminally lazy or the morally vacant. it seems to me an impossibly cruel act to mock the suffering of women who, for one reason or another, needed to have this procedure, by labelling it what it is not and casting the decisions surrounding it as simpler than they inevitably are.

...but i suppose lots of issues seem simple when fetuses are people, women are things, and you're thoroughly convinced of your own Godlike righteousness.

[on reading about the troubles of tony blair]

i think i should count myself ideologically lucky that this war is being pushed and will be prosecuted by a republican regime. i'm not *incredibly* naive--democrats are not forthrightly saints where republicans are sinners--but i have at least marginally better reasons to trust the intentions of democratic administrations, and it has occurred to me in the past few days that perhaps my conclusions about opposing the war would have been much more difficult to arrive at, had the administration not been so eminently untrustworthy to start with.

the question really is...is that ok? my current thought is yes, that's fine, for many of the moral/motivational reasons i've been harping on lately. democratic regimes have a(n at least marginally) better track record with respect to humanitarian interventions...that is to say, some of their interventions have actually been humanitarian, rather than blatantly self-serving or emptily ideological.

the hypothetical i've been considering goes something like this: what if some democrat were in the white house? what if al gore were in the white house? what if...um...bill bradley were in the white house? and what if he supported a war on iraq? what would i do then?

try as i might, i can't make the situation analogous to what's going on today. i cannot help but think that, despite their cowardly assent in congress, few democrats would actually have *proposed* war in iraq, that neither would a democratic president have contemplated an attack upon a nation that has neither attacked the united states nor prosecuted an ongoing genocide against its own people. further, i cannot envision gore or bradley or whomever stubbornly refusing all possible attempts at avoiding war. if for whatever reason a democratic president proposed a war and subsequent nationbuilding effort in iraq, i can't escape the conclusion that i would probably give it more consideration than i have given the bush propaganda...the point is that, considering the history and ideologies at play here, and what they mean for the actual outcome of this action, my conclusion is, i think, rational rather than mindlessly partisan.

...or maybe i'm just trying to make myself feel better. you be the judge.

ok, fine. here's the link to the poll. check out especially the last couple of paragraphs, which find--apparently--that 45% of americans think saddam was "personally involved" in the attacks on the world trade center.

WHATWHAT? i'm having a difficult time believing that the public could be quite this gullible, but i guess anything's possible. it's just depressing that so many of us have already been able to forget who osama bin laden and al qaeda are, what their history with regard to iraq is (difficult, would be the one-word answer), and when, exactly, iraq emerged as a "suspect" (just after bush decided he wanted to invade, if memory serves).

on a slightly (very slightly) more positive note, the lead story in the times at the moment notes that the US and britain, facing almost certain defeat in the UN, will probably have to extend the deadline in order to buy time.

the lead story in the times right now is headlined "growing number in US support war." i was too demoralized by that prospect to actually read said story, and i'm certainly not going to take the trouble of linking to it. for my part, i finished a paper today that says in a variety of fancy aristotelian ways exactly what i said last thursday in my post about wednesday night's "great debate"--essentially that the "moral argument" for war, whichever way you formulate it, doesn't actually hold up.

luckily for the bush administration, though, apparently not overwhelmingly many americans appear to be engaging in deep moral calculation right now, if the poll numbers are any indication.

had a spectacularly interesting conversation with branen today about...oooh, we're going meta...blogging. among other things, he noted that he'd like for sccs to develop a blogger-like form for its users. that *would* be cool, even though i'm fairly happy with my current web-home.

we chatted for a while about the influence of swat alum justin hall, who was called a "visionary" or some such claptrap when he started blogging here in the late-mid-'90's. hall's page, which i'm not linking to because i'm just too lazy, is this amazing absurdist compilation of scenes from his life that is, secondarily, blisteringly accurate and, primarily, immensely self-absorbed. other people are less than plotlines--more often, they're just names for him to drop as people who helped screw up *his* childhood or people with whom *he* had sex and/or did drugs while at college. (to be fair, this is no longer my dominant impression of the site, which has grown up and gotten sponsored and such....but all those pages are definitely still there.) the point of all of this, i suppose, is that it's very interesting how having a personal web presence changes -- and doesn't change--one's actual life. there are bloggers out there who share all the details and bloggers who stick to politics and/or poetics and bloggers (like me?) who share the innocuous stuff and leave the real news for people with whom they can have eye contact [or at least a phone conversation]. to be sure, blogging as a subculture is something well worth a bit of time and study...for someone else. i'll stick to political rants, at least for the immediate future.

speaking of which, please read jimmy carter's op-ed in the new york times today. i respect carter very much, and appreciate the fact that he's willing to stick his neck out as a liberal christian in response to dubya's habit of brandishing his religious identity like a weapon or a suit of armor. the bush administration's policy in iraq seems uncomfortably like some sort of latter-day neoliberal Crusade, and it's important to remember that, rather like those first Crusades, it doesn't exactly adhere to the christian ideals of justice and humility (just to name a couple of the virtues it so effectively stomps on).

meanwhile, back in the increasingly handbasketed real world...

the times story begins,

"President Bush prepared the country tonight for possibly imminent military action against Iraq, declaring that Saddam Hussein posed a direct threat to the security of the United States and insisting "we don't need anybody's permission" to defend the country."

and goes on from there. why is he so arrogant? what's wrong with him? what's wrong with _us_?

"the great debate"

last night mark danner and leon wieseltier debated the question of war in iraq here at swarthmore. it was not exactly the discussion i wanted most to hear, but it was perhaps the best discussion i've heard so far from people of national repute. this being a smart debate by people of good faith, i'd say that no one really won it...i agreed with danner's arguments almost entirely and thought wieseltier an astoundingly good extemp speaker.

a few quibbles: danner didn't clarify the importance of his concern with the bush administration's motives enough. after all, as wieseltier pointed out, it would be stupid to argue that a nation, seeing that its policy (in this case arming and supporting iraq in the '80's) is dangerous and stupid, should refuse to change course because that would be hypocritical. danner needed to, but didn't really, hammer home the point that motivations matter. they matter because [the ends justify the means] or in this case, [achieving regime change in iraq under any rationale, even if not the avowed one, is good] is untrue, immoral and dangerous. wieseltier holds what is often described as the "moral" liberal hawk position -- his claim is that democracy is a universal good and that it is our moral responsibility to bring democracy to iraq.

i agree with that. so does danner. what wieseltier is missing, and what he attempted last night to obscure with rhetoric about "fears of hypocrisy" and "international popularity contests," is that the moral claim about the goodness of democracy is worthless unless that is the true motivation of this administration. why? because installing a substantively democratic regime in iraq will take years, if not decades, and if the motivation of our administration is not what that administration claims, then it will abandon the project as soon as its real end has been achieved. not only will we have devastated the country and changed the character of our own nation irrevocably; we will not have done what we supposedly set out to do in the first place.

the hypocrisy of the bush administration on this point is too clear for doubt. i think it undoubted that the administration is exclusively serving what it sees as the interests of america. and while this is bad enough -- surprisingly (!), what's best, or rather, easiest and most pleasurable, for us and our gas-guzzling, consumerist society is not necessarily what's best for everyone else -- i am also deeply suspicious of the administration's take on the interests of america. [that, however, is an argument for another day. or perhaps an argument for every day.] in the eighties we (well, the reagan administration -- somehow they never got around to informing the public) armed saddam for his war with iran, provided him with targeting information and calmly watched as he massacred thousands of kurds. he was a threat *because of* us. now the same cast of characters seeks a war because (a) he's supposedly a threat *to* us and (b) it's the Right Thing To Do. bullshit. sad, depressing, morally bankrupt bullshit.

anyway: wieseltier's position rests on the optimistic notion that we'll actually achieve something better if and when we topple saddam. i doubt it. because you know, believe it or not, it's not as if saddam is as bad as it gets and anything's better. there are worse things than saddam. there's north korea and its nuclear power; there's the actual, active genocide in rwanda that we didn't care to stop. there are lovely cases like the sad story of chile--you know, the cases wherein america topples a regime it doesn't like and then allows an actively evil, and constantly and mercilessly violent, dictator to take its place. or how about the possible future of our own country: isolated by world hatred and under constant terrorist threat because of our imperial stance, a country founded on civil liberties becomes a repressive security state where torture is acceptable and dissent is not. how's that? is that "worse enough" for you?

and also! hey cool! even the awfully mainstream philadelphia inquirer has a story about today's philly-area protests, including a *picture* of swatties standing for peace.

ash wednesday today. it's such a necessary moment for episcopalians...we are a rich, staid denomination, and it's easy to forget that our places in the world are given, not earned.

at trinity church today's homily derided the narcissism and hypocrisy that pervades american culture and causes us to see our own lives as more important than the lives of other people. randy (the priest) emphasized that the lenten practice of fasting should be seen as a moment of consideration for the people and lands that produce food and for all the people who do not have enough food. at the peace, most of the tiny congregation congratulated me on my "stand for peace" flag (which is pinned to my sweatshirt today), and at the end of the service the second priest, joyce, said she would see me at the debate tonight. i love this parish.

and during the imposition of ashes all i could think of was the president. george bush, remember that you are but dust, and to dust you shall return. but i suppose it's not likely that he will, is it?

reports like this one break my heart. in an effort to arrest a hamas founder, an israeli incursion killed eight other palestinians, including a pregnant woman, a thirteen-year-old boy and two police officers. they also demolished several homes. the end result? a huge funeral procession chanting "bombing is the only answer."

it's been said before, but one more time: so much for the violence-leads-to-peace argument. i'm not out to cast israelis as the bad guy here, because the aggression quite obviously runs both ways. but i think it's astounding that the american media pays so much more attention to suicide bombings whose victims are israelis than to incursions like today's. the count at the end of the article says "at least" 1,888 palestinians and 706 israelis killed in the last 20 months, yet many people continue to see the palestinians -- underresourced, living in refugee camps and under near constant siege -- as the sole aggressors here. i wish the united states could support a just peace rather than remaining mindlessly partial to israel in this conflict.

go turkey. the speaker of parliament today nullified the vote that would have allowed deployment of US troops from turkey, which is a Good Thing...the only surprise being that the vote was as close as it was. with 94% of turkish people opposing the war (by a recent poll), any parliamentary vote should have ended in a much wider margin than the five-votes-short-of-majority that was actually achieved.