In Justice

I don't know all that happened between Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Judge Brett Kavanaugh, but I know who I believe and what I hope can come from all of this.

It's uncomfortable to be part of a nation that's judging the testimonies of an alleged survivor of sexual assault and her attacker based on their presentations in a nationally televised hearing. The truth and one's belief in a survivor of sexual violence shouldn't depend on her demeanor, likability, or if she is, in the words of Senator Orrin Hatch, "attractive". That said, the difference in the two witnesses' testimony was stark, and I know which one I put more trust in.

We all experienced yesterday's hearing in different ways and to different degrees. I can't know what survivors of sexual violence went through as they listened to or watched this hearing. I've read articles describing some onlookers' reactions as the hearings unfolded, and I understand that there are some things that I won't fully appreciate or feel in the midst of events and conversations like this because I've never been hurt as deeply by the forces in question. I empathize, as much as I can, with the struggles that my friends have described in grappling with this controversy. 

I listened to all of Dr. Blasey's opening statement as I drove to work, and I heard some of her subsequent questioning. I also heard large sections of Judge Kavanaugh's opening statement and the final rounds of his questioning later in the day. I haven't watched any footage of the hearing, and I only saw images from the hearing room after the fact. I spoke to my mom during an early break in the hearing and learned that we'd listened to the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings as a family during a long road trip when I was still a toddler. 

I found Dr. Blasey's opening statement credible and compelling. Her testimony before a suspicious and hostile committee members demonstrated her courage and civic-minded fidelity to the truth. I didn't find any hint of a conspiracy and smear campaign, which Judge Kavanaugh and committee members later shouted about, while Dr. Blasey was questioned by the Republican's chosen agent, Rachel Michell. I found the fact that Dr. Blasey initially reached out to her congresswoman before Kavanaugh was selected as nominee to be a compelling reason to dismiss Republicans' uncorroborated claims of conspiracy and that Dr. Blasey was a pawn in a political hatchet job.

I heard the awkward moment when Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein pushed back against accusations that she or her staff had leaked Dr. Blasey's confidential letter—the journalist from the Intercept later denied that he'd received the letter or word of its existence from Senator Feinstein's office. There is uncertainty about how the existence of the letter and Dr. Blasey's allegations became public knowledge, and I don't think the Democrats handled this as well as they might have. I understand Dr. Blasey's desire to have been protected from the backlash and threats that have targeted her since she made her allegations on the record. I don't know how she might best have been protected and her allegations investigated. Senator Ted Cruz's argument that the Judiciary Committee has confidential processes that could have protected Dr. Blasey while allowing her allegations to be properly investigated doesn't hold water. It was during just such a confidential investigation into Professor Anita Hill's allegations against Justice Clarence Thomas that her identity and claims were leaked, which led to the now infamous televised showdown in front of an all-male, all-white committee.

I wish the truth could be more fully known, and I resent the rush to judgement without due diligence that Republican leaders, Judge Kavanaugh, and President Trump have demanded. Senator Jeff  Flake's intervention along with Senator Lisa Murkowski and other undecided senators seems to have forced Trump's hand at this point. The Republicans' general insistent haste reflects a partisan inability to accept the veracity of Dr. Blasey's allegations without tying them to larger resentment of Democrats' delay tactics in the confirmation process. That process has been rushed from the start, and I agree with Democratic committee members that their ability to review Judge Kavanaugh's record was stymied by refusal and delay in the release of his considerable White House papers. At the very least, an FBI investigation into each of the sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh is warranted. His refusal to personally request such an investigation when prompted leads me to doubt his conviction in the truth of his statements under oath. 

When I started listening to Judge Kavanaugh's opening statement, I could empathize with his protestations of innocence and his profound frustration at the impact of these allegations on his reputation, career, and family. If he was innocent, I could understand such a reaction. The manner of his opening statement as a whole, his responses to questioning that I heard, and his conduct since the allegations became public have undermined my trust in his honesty and leave me to believe that his anger and vitriol are a cover of his past rather than a consequence of his circumstances. 

I know that any delay is an inconvenience, but I refuse to accept that an innocent man would want to rush to judgement—Judge Kavanaugh repeatedly complained that he wasn't able to testify immediately to rebut the allegations—and not desire a full investigation by nonpartisan professionals in the FBI. Behavior by Republicans on Judiciary and their staff as these accusers have come forward has only deepened my suspicion that they're more worried about what might come out than they are about putting a liar and alleged sexual assaulter on the nation's highest court. At the end of the day, I view these proceedings as a job interview more than a criminal proceeding. If I had the opportunity to hire a candidate with credible allegations of sexual assault or a candidate without those allegations, I would undoubtedly choose the latter. The Republicans have decided that the political context of their nominee is more important than if he is still an appropriate—let alone their best—choice for the Supreme Court.

In the days since the hearing concluded, I've repeatedly come back to the sharp difference in tone and comportment between Dr. Blasey, the woman at the heart of this drama, and Judge Kavanaugh, the man. Numerous articles have highlighted the tightrope that women walk when speaking publicly and testifying. Judge Kavanaugh and Senator Lindsay Graham demonstrated that men still get to shout and be visibly angry without getting called hysterical or being generally dismissed as unreliable. Questions of temperament and impartiality, apart from any allegations of sexual assault, will cast a deep shadow on Judge Kavanaugh no matter what happens to his nomination. His tirade of an opening statement has no place on what the Supreme Court should be.

I don't know what will happen next, if the limited FBI investigation ordered by the White House will illuminate any more truth in the allegations against Judge Kavanaugh, and whether the Republicans will be able to push him onto the court regardless of what comes out. I do have a few hopes. I hope that evidence is found to corroborate Dr. Blasey's testimony further. I believe Dr. Blasey. I don't understand how anyone could hear her testimony and conclude in the next breath, absent preexisting political imperatives, that she was a pawn or a political weapon. That said, millions of Americans seem wedded to that uncorroborated construct. One of the best possible outcomes from this nightmare would be an environment where partisans can't acceptably point to politics as grounds to initially dismiss credible allegations of sexual assault.

I also have a hope for our political processes and governing culture. I'll admit that when Judge Kavanaugh was first nominated I felt that a powerful statement on the Democrats' part would have been to reject a stance of I'll fight this "with everything I have." That's obviously not what many Democrats, liberals, or members of the Resistance wanted or what the party chose to do. I can't blame them. It makes perfect sense in the here and now politically and it reflects the real impacts that a continued conservative majority on the Supreme Court will likely have on our country. It's hard to fire up your base in advance of a heated election by saying, "you should have turned out last time; this is what can happen when you don't." At the same time, you don't govern a country by saying I will defeat you by breaking our government.

I heard about finite games and infinite games earlier this year on The Weeds podcast from Vox. As Vox puts it, "The point of finite games is to win, while the point of infinite games is that everyone gets to keep playing." That idea has stuck with me for months now, and it colors how I look at situations like the Kavanaugh nomination. Our country loses when political parties and politicians are so focused on winning that they'll break norms, shut down our government, refuse to pay our bills, or impeach a president on unsound grounds just to beat their opponents in the here and now.

That's what happened with Judge Merrick Garland's nomination to the Supreme Court in 2016. It has happened in myriad small and large ways for decades since the good old days when white men could be liberal Republicans or conservative Democrats and there were enough racists and anti-racists in each party for things to function and bills to pass as long as there was a dam to be funded in someone's district. Elections have consequences—I sat in a conference room full of Democrats on Election night 2014 as they lost their Senate majority. Those in power can choose to be bullies and violate their oath in order to maximize their power. As much as I wish that Merrick Garland was in his rightful seat on the court today, I recognize that Donald Trump has the right to appoint and expect confirmation of his nominees to the nation's courts, including the Supreme Court.

I think that a solidly conservative Supreme Court (it's already been solidly conservative for over a decade) results in terrible blows against our country and its people. In just one example, thousands may have died because Medicaid wasn't expanded universally after Chief Justice John Roberts, and a 7-2 majority, decided to interpret the expansion as fundamentally different than traditional Medicaid and the penalties for not a state not adopting the expansion as being too coercive. I recognize that I have a privileged position that protects me from many of the impacts of a conservative Court, and that humbles me as I try to think about these issues.

In the face of unprecedented obstructionism and deplorable governance on the part of Republicans, I think that one of the most radical acts the Democrats could do would be to turn the other cheek and use love and restraint to draw the sharper contrast and give voters a choice between those who would break a government and those who would run a government. Would that have resulted in a conservative justice replacing a conservative justice on the Supreme Court in 2018? Almost certainly yes. But I ask you, are you prepared to sign on to Lindsay Graham's partisan nightmare where Democrats somehow beat the odds, win the Senate, and then hold a seat open on the Court until 2021? If you won't engage in that kind of obstruction, then you're almost certain to get a conservative justice appointed to the Supreme Court, and quite possibly one who's a more overtly anti-Roe justice than Kavanaugh might be.

This kind of never-confirm rhetoric was first deployed by John McCain (to my knowledge) in the final weeks of the 2016 campaign. It has no place in a functioning government. Its adoption in practice would be the ultimate finite solution that will all but guarantee an equal or more drastic response. If our country is to endure, we can not solely play finite games with its future. In the end, I feel that Democrats have had solid grounds to demand more information, more documents, and more investigations in the case of Judge Kavanaugh. I would not have wanted Dr. Blasey's truth to go unheard because no one gave her the opportunity to object to the public image of a would-be Supreme Court justice. Throughout the confirmation process and through Thursday's hearing, I think the Democrats could have dealt with this rushed process with fewer theatrics and more effective questions. Spartacus moments primarily serve to satiate one partisan base and rile the other. Meanwhile, in the rest of the country, the apathetic, jaded voter not wedded to one stance or the other dismisses yet another example of Washington dysfunctional hyperbole and further retreats from our democracy.

I believe in Michelle Obama's call for Democrats' motto to be, "when they go low, we go high." Those words don't just matter when we think we're going to win or when we're in power. They matter, win or lose, if Democrats are to do right by America and its people. Trust between parties and in the normal functioning of our democracy are already at terrible lows. Senator Lindsay Graham's tirade in Thursday's hearing voiced what seems to be at the root of Republicans' death grip on Kavanaugh as nominee. When Senator Graham roared, "What you want to do is destroy this guy's life, hold this seat open, and hope you win in 2020", he played to the fears that drive the worst in Republican dysfunction. If Democrats carry out just such a plan, they may carry a tactical victory that has a generational impact on the court akin to what Republicans bullied through in 2016, but they will also have a generational impact on the culture in Washington. That culture is often decried as broken and deplorable, but it needs to be fixed and improved if that ridicule is ever to change.

My hopes are twofold. I hope that our society, in and out of politics, can learn to trust women, survivors, and those without power and to be suspicious of the tirades of entitled, self-righteous men. And I hope the politics built out of our society can begin to care more about the success of our government than of one party or another. Republicans' power in the White House, on Capitol Hill, and in statehouses across the country is a nightmare for millions of Americans in real, life-or-death struggles to survive and thrive. Democrats' power in the White House, on Capitol Hill, and in statehouses across the country is a license for abortion, racial and cultural dilution, and government expansion. It is easy to hate, fear, and fight our ideological and political opponents. It's more difficult to build a more perfect union with them. We get to chose which path we want to work towards.

Silence = Death

Thirty years ago, on April 23rd, 1984, the word went forth that AIDS had a viral cause and we knew what it was. What had once been called GRID (Gay Related Immune Deficiency) had spiraled out of control in America since it first surfaced in 1981. Three years later, as Dr. James O. Mason of the C.D.C. announced the identity of the viral agent, more than 4,000 people carried it within their bodies or had already left their bodies at its direction. In those three years, over 1,800 Americans were destroyed by AIDS. Their President would publicly speak the name of their killer only in 1985 and would not hold a press conference on the issue until 1987.

Silence in the face of HIV is not a uniquely American phenomenon, but it was Americans who helped shatter that silence and inspire others to do so around the world. The excellent 2012 documentary, How to Survive a Plague, follows ACT UP and TAG as they found their voice in a world that wanted to ignore the suffering of so-called deviants--gay men and IV drug users--while the rest of America still felt safe. While not all the movement's voices rang in chorus at all times, their cry for help, for respect, for action resounded beyond protest sites and into the world's most powerful halls.

Others survived the epidemic as the world fell away around them--neighborhoods lost as neighbors collapsed into wheelchairs and caskets. We Were Here, a 2013 Emmy nominee, connects with five witnesses to the horror of the Castro's disintegration in San Francisco and shares their memories of the communities and friends that were lost in the desperate years before the miraculous triple cocktail. Nurses, flower sellers, and political organizers all shared a nightmare that most turned away from in disgust or despair.

Of course, HIV and AIDS didn't start or stop in the United States. Frontline created a record of the pandemic for the 25th anniversary of the disease that enveloped the world and traces its path from the Congo to the Castro and beyond. The Age of AIDS is no less virulent for the passing of a few years. It starkly yet sympathetically examines the responses to the crisis at home and abroad that all too often fell short but occasionally inspire tears of pride for the courage of leaders in office and out.

61,816 people reportedly died of AIDS in the year of my birth, 1988. By then, the syndrome had become the third-leading cause of death for American men between 25 and 44 years of age. Today, more than 35 million people around the world live with the virus, almost as many as the 36 million who are estimated to have died from AIDS-related causes.

On that day in 1984, H.H.S. Secretary Margaret Heckler declared that a vaccine was expected within two years. We have yet to find a cure, in spite of all the protests, the declarations, the speeches. That said, silence was worse. Far worse.

For the Fulbright, For the Future

I received a Fulbright to study public nutrition in Germany in 2011. That experience allowed me to learn another language, explore another culture, and share my slice of America with another continent. I was one of roughly 1,600 American scholars who receive funding each year.

I know several friends in other countries who hope to receive Fulbright grants to study in the US and join 4,000 students from around the world who aspire to benefit from our universities and develop skills that can support their homelands and enrich the United States as well.

Foreign aid and diplomatic outreach are among the most effective and worthy projects undertaken by our national government. It’s easy to cut a bridge that doesn’t land in a constituent’s back yard, but those bridges are what ennoble America and tie it to the aspirations of people around the world.

If we become a guns and butter country, unwilling to lift people towards their dreams because they weren’t born American, then we will have failed the vision that we hold dear. Our city on a hill will loom, not welcome; fester, not flourish.

We owe it to future generations to support a positive American presence in the world. 8,000 people each year are brighter, wiser, and stronger thanks to the support of the American government and a world’s worth of partners.

The world isn’t ready for our light to go softly behind walls of ignorance and insouciance. In this age of doubt, distrust, and despair, connections made between different peoples are among the beacons of light that keep our world aglow in possibilities for a better tomorrow.

That is something not to cut, but to celebrate.

Secrecy and Trust in Surveilled Times

In the wake of Pearl Harbor, former Secretary of State, Henry Stimson declared "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail," when asked about his decision to close the State Department's code-breaking office in 1929. The US was at peace until 1941, but active intelligence gathering before that December 7th might have thwarted Japan's infamous surprise attack.

Espionage is a preventative measure, seeking to catch those who would do us harm before triggers are pulled and civilians or their nation's interests are hurt. As such, spying should remain secret so as to make it effective. Snowden, whatever his intent, is exposing and wounding the very agencies that seek out threats from those who target our embassies overseas and our public spaces at home.

We live in a Republic governed by a constitution written to preserve essential liberties, such as freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. We are still discovering how that 18th century language applies to 21st century methods and the unprecedented surveillance made possible by modern technology. Our Republic places that exploration in the hands of our elected representatives, the courts, and the bureaucracy of the executive branch.

Abuses of power, corruption, individual or systemic abuses deserve to be exposed, but it should be done in a manner to minimize the damage to legitimate practices—approved by Congress, overseen by courts, and carefully calibrated by cadres of intelligent intelligence lawyers. I don't think Snowden’s leaks meet that standard—for all the good that some of his revelations may do.

We as citizens shouldn’t expect or hope to know all that is done in our name. Some element of trust is involved in governance, and when that trust is violated through illegal behavior it needs to be curtailed and the government must hold itself and its agents accountable. In turn, voters in a functioning republic hold their representatives accountable for impropriety or failure. The United States doesn’t use public referenda and breaking-news popular opinion to run its intelligence agencies—one hopes.

It is clear that the NSA stretched its authority, made errors, and didn’t always appropriately manage the power that it accrued. Questions must be asked: about NSA’s relationship with the FISA court, about the merits and value of metadata collection, about the security clearance system and contractors’ participation in our intelligence bureaucracy, about Director of National Intelligence  James Clapper’s congressional testimony (his general counsel’s perspective illustrates how context matters in considering allegations). The investigations to answer these questions don’t require or excuse the exposure of the methods and sources of our intelligence successes.

We don’t live in a world of gentlemen, and Snowden’s leaks don’t show America at its purest. But his disclosures haven’t revealed the kind of lawbreaking uncovered in Hoover’s FBI; they haven’t matched the illegal executive actions of Iran-Contra; they haven’t threatened President Obama with impeachment or the courts with a constitutional crisis. Unless or until abuses of that caliber emerge from Snowden’s well-stocked laptops, our government should focus on cleaning up intelligence practices to protect against breaches of conduct where they exist and begin restoring secrecy to our nation’s antennae.

The Guns Among Us

A friend of mine recently shared an opinion piece that lambasted a New York website for posting an  interactive map that plots the holders of handgun permits. I gave him a considered response and wanted to pass along the articles and studies that inform my thinking on this perilous issue. I begin by responding to his question:

"Aren't you concerned that this makes it easier for criminals who want to steal firearms to use in violent crime to know which houses to watch?"

I agree that burglars have a penchant for stealing firearms. However, they don't need a map to do so. A 2003 study from the Brookings Institution found "no support for a net deterrent effect from widespread gun ownership," and concluded that, "residential burglary rates tend to increase with community gun prevalence, while the [occupied dwelling] proportion of these burglaries is unaffected."

Does this make it easier for a criminal to find a home with a handgun permit? Yes it does. However, the map's information doesn't specify whether a gun is at the residence in question, how many weapons might be there, or what its condition is. The map is far more useful to parents who might want to understand what risks their children may face at a friend's home.

As a potential parent, I would not want my child to play in an environment where a gun is present until I was assured that the firearm was secured in a manner that prevented an accidental discharge. I don't want to claim that the map in question is a journalistic breakthrough, but I would appreciate it as a tool to understand my safety and the safety of my loved ones.

Firearms at home are more likely to wound or kill their owner (accident or suicide), the owner's family members (domestic violence, homicide  accident, suicide), or a person known to the owner (dispute, accident, homicide) than an intruder--besides, even trained professionals (like the armed police officer at Columbine High School) can make mistakes in a crisis, let alone a sleep-addled civilian without rigorous training and regular practice. Ideally, firearms at home are locked within gun safes, which would present burglars with a challenge and/or fitted with a trigger lock to reduce the risk of an accidental discharge.

Indeed, higher firearm ownership, and shall-carry laws in particular, does not reduce crime in a way that is statistically significant. To the contrary, it is more likely that increased firearms in a community will increase crime or behave heterogeneously, depending upon local and county characteristics.

I'd be interested to learn what articles have shaped your thinking on firearms, their role in our society, and how to move forward in the wake of the mass killings in Connecticut, Colorado, and Arizona of recent years.

Here's my top reading list on this issue:
1. Nick Kristof offers hard statistics and a public-health approach

2. The deleterious effect of an armed populace on civic society

3. Gail Collins examines the politics of guns with a biting sense of humor

4. Nick Kristof responds to reader comments from gun enthusiasts

5. Something way out of the mainstream--interesting but not politically practical

Who's Got the Backs and the Backing of the Bankers?

A shout out to a book I loved and was once
described by a Senate aide as, "too big to read"

It's useful to look at numbers when considering the rhetoric of political candidates. Specifically, campaign contributions give us an insight into the expectations that individuals and industries have for one party or another, one candidate vs. the alternatives. When it comes to Wall Street, Romney has frequently cast the Obama-backed Dodd-Frank financial reform as a gift to big banks. For instance, in the October 16th presidential debate, Mitt Romney stated:

Dodd-Frank was passed. And it includes within it a number of provisions that I think has some unintended consequences that are harmful to the economy. One is it designates a number of banks as too big to fail, and they're effectively guaranteed by the federal government. This is the biggest kiss that's been given to -- to New York banks I've ever seen. This is an enormous boon for them.

Debate Transcript:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/03/transcript-first-presidential-debate/#ixzz2A3aj8iLs

Now, Dodd-Frank wasn't perfect. Much of the law has yet to be implemented, and it left a lot up to the discretion of regulators who'd performed poorly in the run up to the financial crisis of 2008. That said, Wall Street institutions and their employees certainly appear reluctant to thank Obama for this "kiss". While Goldman Sachs employees were, notoriously in some circles, among Obama's top contributors in 2008, they certainly have fallen for the other guy this time around. I won't say that financier contributors detract from a politician's character; I would argue that their preference for Romney indicates whom they feel will provide the best deal for them and their industry.

Top Campaign Contributors (The organizations themselves did not donate , rather the money came from the organizations' PACs, their individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals' immediate families.)

Barack Obama
University of California $927,568
Microsoft Corp $680,769
Google Inc $661,996
Harvard University $535,405
US Government $528,603

Mitt Romney
Goldman Sachs $965,140
Bank of America $844,734
Morgan Stanley $768,216
JPMorgan Chase & Co $749,918
Credit Suisse Group $588,841

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/contriball.php?cycle=2012

For good measure, Sheila Bair, the former Chairwoman of the FDIC--you know, the regulator responsible for selling off failed banks and protecting depositors--has a decidedly different take on Dodd-Frank than Romney and its commitments to "too-big-to-fail" banks.

Dodd-Frank, the financial reform law enacted in 2010, bans future bailouts of failing financial behemoths and requires instead that they be put into either bankruptcy or a government-run liquidation process. Dodd-Frank also requires big financial institutions to demonstrate that they can fail in bankruptcy without causing widespread damage to our financial system. If they cannot make this demonstration, the law authorizes, indeed requires the regulators and Secretary of the Treasury, to restructure them or break them up. Will you appoint leaders at the Treasury Department and financial regulatory agencies who are publicly committed to ending bailouts and who are prepared to fulfill their legal mandate to break up Too Big to Fail institutions?

http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/10/16/sheila-bair-finance-reform-debate/

Poverty in Brief (with links)

Poverty goes beyond lack of resources. It extends to the trap of exploitation that plagues places synonymous
with privation. Where there are underprivileged people, there will be a web of malicious service providers eager to profit from the necessarily short-term priorities of those living paycheck to paycheck. In the end, some of the most powerful assistance that can be contributed to communities in crisis is an alternative ladder--of housing, banking, health care, child care, and more--built with love not money in mind. This can be constructed by public programs, non-profit partners, and the unflagging support of faith-based bodies, as well as the sweat equity of individual citizens. In the end, poverty anywhere limits prosperity everywhere. It's when local leaders grasp this challenge that incredible things can happen for those who may have lost hope.

Heavily Armed and Adrift

In Drift, Rachel Maddow challenges her readers to an entertaining examination of recent American defense policy. The early chapters, filled with examples of Reagan-era skullduggery and executive overreach, make for easy reading from a liberal's point of view. Tougher chapters for the left cover Clinton's and Obama's tenures in the Oval Office. For example, Maddow tracks the rise in contracted-out conflict to Clinton's engagement in the Balkans, where US military casualties were to be avoided at all costs, and a stew of think tankers, indulged by a Democratic White House, who had interests in defense companies and/or a devotion to private-sector-is-always-better dogma.

Drift leaps over many of the well-covered 2nd Bush administration's aggressive defense policies, and the book is better for it. By then, Maddow has already indicted the extreme wing of presidential-prerogative philosophy in her chapters on Reagan and the 1st Bush administration. She turns instead to the still relatively undisturbed and yet highly disturbing acceleration of unmanned war in the age of Obama. Maddow rightly questions  the scope and constitutionality of our ongoing drone strikes, carried out by secretive commands with little debate and insufficient oversight, often in territories that aren't technically at war with us.

Maddow takes particular aim at the authorities under which such strikes are executed. She doesn't particularly focus on the arguments that might be made to justify a capacity to destroy targets of opportunity (such as Osama bin Laden). Drift centers on the question of congressional responsibility for oversight, and reminds her readers, if not explicitly, that the tolerated actions of a preferred President often turn into the outrageous abuses of a chief executive from an opposing party--see conservatives' denunciation of Obama in Libya and their past support for the far-less-justified assault on Grenada under Reagan (which was denounced at the time by every other member of the UN Security Council, not just Russia and China).

Maddow's arguments don't stop at war's edge. David Petreaus's Counterinsurgency Doctrine catches flack as over-ambitious and quixotic. For all the heat that "COIN" is taking these days, it's still difficult to find an alternative short of ending an engagement as happened in Vietnam. Wisely, Maddow doesn't spend time suggesting alternative strategies, but she also doesn't confront the consequences to innocents in a world without American-led intervention--Libya doesn't make the book, possibly Drift had already gone to print.

At it's core, Drift argues that any war worth fighting should be fought with the approval of Congress, concurrent funding through bonds or taxes, and the legitimate investment of the American people--not just the one percent who have served in the armed forces in recent decades and their families. These are all worthy goals, but few Presidents will take accept their costs voluntarily if less strenuous, however dubious, alternatives are available.

Drift isn't dry, far from it. A host of compelling and often entertaining quotes and historical anecdotes carry Maddow's argument farther than a straight-up polemic ever could. A prime example is a letter from John Wayne, which accused Reagan of either “misinforming people” or being “damned obtuse when it comes to reading the English language," as Reagan harangued audiences about the betrayal entailed in returning the Panama Canal to Panama.

From citing well-founded fears of the founding fathers to a devastating critique of America's nuclear arsenal and black-box campaigns, Rachel Maddow offers every American good reasons to request a return to a reigned in armed forces and a strictly supervised Commander in Chief. “America’s structural disinclination to declare war is not a sign that something’s gone wrong,” she writes. “It’s not a bug in the system. It is the system.” It's up to us to ask how that system can be repaired and elect the men and women who are willing to do so.

The Quirks and Qualities of Modern Internet Exchange

I recently registered a copy of Die Rückkehr des Königs (The Return of the King) that I had found earlier in the year, deliberately laid in an alcove along a staircase inside a building on campus. This book, a card taped on its first page proclaimed, had not been lost or forgotten; rather, it had been "released into the wild" in conjunction with BookCrossing.com. I happily took the book, a welcome excuse to return to old favorites in learning a new language, and placed it on my shelves for eventual reading and export to the States.

Only months later did I create an account on BookCrossings and openly state who'd found the book and what I intended to do with it. I read a message from the book's previous owner and his account of releasing the book. Presumably, he would eventually read my plans for his book, as well. This vicarious relationship--two strangers brought together by appreciation of a single book--raises questions about this book and a sense of responsibility not often found in bound literature.

Would my benefactor approve of my use of his book? Would its departure from the land where he lived and its language was spoken arouse regret in him that Germans and Paderborn wouldn't benefit from his generosity? I hoped that my message would offer hope of something more than a simple read, that he could enjoy knowing that his charity would improve cultural exchange, offer Americans a look inside another language, and broaden their horizons of what a book might look like inside.

I find myself on this modern Internet of ours, in countless interactions with the familiar and the strange, wondering whether and how I should engage with someone, how I should behave in a relationship spawned online and then carried into the real world, and where and whom to avoid in the interest of saved time and sanity on all sides. With the infinite made accessible at one's keyboard, it really matters where and when one flits on the web. Over the coming month, I'd like to look at a few spaces and tubes that have connected me to people and information in a particularly heart-warming or mind-blowing manner.

I've got my own small clutch of sources and sages to whom I apply myself when in doubt about the world around me. I've found friends in many countries who've joined a community grounded in the free exchange of culture and companionship. I place my trust in the collective wisdom of complete and anonymous strangers to tell me how a particular country works, how protein is digested, and what causes diabetes. Whether I choose to cite them remains another matter.

Please post comments of your own emotional jolts as you found yourself in an unfamiliar setting thanks to online activity that either stayed on the screen or spilled into real life. With so much changing in communication, social networking, and personal identification, it's always worthwhile to leave a few pitons in the rock face as we climb towards tomorrow. For an example of online culture from years past, I heartily recommend a This American Life episode, Tales from the Net, which was originally broadcast in 1997 and now, like so much else, finds itself at home in the cloud of our human experience.

Coming Together

David Brooks’ Friday column attempts to discredit the belief that our world has grown closer thanks to technology, trade, and international institutions. He cites as evidence: the polarization of American politics, reports that 95% of Americans’ news is domestically produced, and the statistic that only 2% of Europeans have left their homelands to live in another country on the continent. In addition these numbers, Brooks offers survey data that reveals differing emphases placed upon work and family life among various EU nations. He deploys all this data to suggest that the European project is an unpopular failure.

Al Smith under the Pope's influence

Political polarization makes a worthy target, but growing divides between parties differ greatly from what has taken place between peoples. Ideas matter far more than identities in our modern political discourse. There are, to be sure, numerous news stories about political candidates’ ethnic and religious identities, but we are nowhere near the uproar that greeted the first Catholic to run for the Oval Office on a major party platform, Al Smith. Today the Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, belongs to a church that represents only .019% of Americans, but it is his ideas, not his faith that inspire most of his critics. President Obama, meanwhile, belongs to the 12.6% African American community, but his ideas and identity extend far beyond his own race. Despite the occasional shrill cry from fringe figures, the vast majority of Americans respect the humanity of minorities in ways that were foreign just half a century ago. Prejudices and biases remain, to be sure, but they have less to do with ethnic or racial origins than with the economic and cultural characteristics that sometimes accompany traits such as skin color and ethnicity, which once provided sufficient justification in themselves for exclusion.

One statistic cited by Brooks belies his claim that nationalities haven’t found greater common ground in the past half-century. Brooks calls Angela Merkel, “[t]he most popular major European politician,” and goes on, “[s]he has 80 percent approval in Germany, 66 percent approval in Britain and 76 percent approval in France.” Can anyone imagine, much less recall, a German politician who was broadly popular in Britain and France before 1945? Prior to the late 20th century, successful foreign leaders were to be feared as potential conquerors, not admired as talented statesmen. Brooks misses the forest for the trees when he cites the 25% greater preference for work amongst the French as compared to the Danes and neglects to remind readers that the countries share a currency, have no visa requirements, and lack frontier posts, let alone armies, on any of the borders between them.

Integration, peace, and cooperation do not require cultural uniformity. Diverse social preferences and national characters were never the intended victims of internationalism. Rather, political solidarity and shared prosperity helped exorcise the old European poltergeist of nationalism. Rivalries once tested in blood are now tried on the football pitch, the European Athletics  Championships, and even the Eurovision Song Contest. Despite the recent advances of far-right parties during hard economic times, national hatreds remain buried beneath half a century’s progress away from the bloodshed of centuries past. Far more important and relevant to this discussion is the reality of a Europe that stands committed to commonly held principles of human rights, shared security, open borders, and cultural exchange.

The “unification of mankind” that Brooks discounts is not equally distributed throughout the world. Many borders remain hostile, many cultures alien, many peoples jingoistic. Apart from these hotspots, though, the past sixty years are characterized by the greatest expansion of international trade and intercultural communication in human history. Although most Americans may watch the local news rather than Al Jazeera Arabic, millions of Arabs enjoy Hollywood films. Never have more works of literature, art, and music been translated, shared, and embraced by people around the world. Surely this global flowering cannot wholly be the “illusions” of liberal humanists.

Our ever-thickening web of connective technologies make communication and shared experience the norm rather than the exception. Witnessing the struggles of citizens in Cairo, Moscow, and Wukan, China, is no longer the sole preserve of foreign correspondents and international aid workers. Today, civilians around the world can tune in and reach out, through the phones and cameras of local activists, to the human rights movements of our age.

European unification has come a long way since the Third Reich.

Brooks is wrong to say that, “Europe continues to suffer from the same problem that has plagued it for the past half-millennium. There are too many nations in too small a space. There are no historical trends or technocratic schemes that are altering that basic flaw.” To be sure, Europe has problems that are complicated by its dense fabric of different nationalities, but Brooks’ problem has changed dramatically since the early 20th century. There are no dictatorships in modern Europe, no pogroms, no wars. When violence or authoritarianism most recently broke out, in Milosevic's Serbia, the rest of the continent joined to extinguish it and to preserve the peace that emerged.

The Social Animal, Brooks’ 2011 bestseller, belies his column’s narrow focus on pessimistic statistics. Before he condemns European unity to the dustbin of history, he should return to his own assessment of what he labeled, "the urge to merge." Europe faces immense challenges to its political and economic institutions in the months and years to come. But Brooks is wrong to associate these challenges with half a century’s growing “segmentation.” In doing so he ignores the immense convergence in democratic and economic institutions that took place in the past half century. Going forward, leaders would do well to scrutinize apparent similarities, but beneath these differences they can take comfort in the common foundations that have been built since the end of the last World War.

Cancelling Keystone Won't Kick Our Habit

Other developed countries use substantially less energy.

I don't like the prospect of Canadian tar sands oil, but Floyd Norris has a point in his dejected appraisal of Obama's Keystone XL decision. Tar sands oil is dirty, very dirty, but American activists aren’t likely to stop it from getting pumped out of the ground. They may have kept it from flowing directly onto our soil, but whether in China or elsewhere, that oil will still add to a world supply that Americans all to eagerly consume. As such, I fear that temporarily defeating  the Keystone XL pipeline is a largly Pyrrhic victory.

It’s useful to remember that most of a politician’s power comes before he has given the go ahead. The ability to say yes or no makes a leader valuable, sometimes indispensable, to its supporters. Could Obama have addressed environmental concerns more effectively by tying a safe pipeline to an increased gasoline tax? As I’ve written before, until America’s demand for fossil fuels is addressed, oil will be extracted with varying degrees of safety and oversight, whether in the Gulf of Mexico or the Niger Delta. A higher gasoline tax, carbon pricing, and improved fuel efficiency standards can help slake our thirst. Forcing Canadian oil to China without any reduction in American demand doesn’t solve much of anything.

This is America's problem to lead on.