Author: Aaron Weber

Liberal is a Dirty Word

My grandfather, Adm. Parks, thought the NYT was too liberal and too influential. The only person brave or foolish enough to disagree with him was my father, who said, “The New York Times is the most influential paper in the country because it’s the best paper in the country, and you should read it.” I think about that whenever I read a well-reasoned editorial on religion and politics and wish it were published somewhere it’d do some good, like maybe the Washington Times. On the radio in Orlando I heard a talk show go on at length about the credentials of a guest author, which included his long-running gig at the Washington Times– not exactly a respected paper, given that it’s run by the Moonies, loses millions every year, and exists solely to push a dramatically slanted view of the world.

But really it’s all about the hypocrisy of moralists like Bill O’Reilly and its absurd mandates for a world which no longer comes close to fitting its rules. I’ve hoped for some time that the Republican party would have some sort of nervous breakdown, and Frank Rich seems to predict a similar outcome:

Mrs. Cheney and her surrogates are in effect doing exactly what Elizabeth Edwards had the guts to say they were doing: they are sending the message to Mr. Rove’s four million that they are ashamed of Mary Cheney. They are disowning her under the guise of “defending” her. They are exploiting her for the sake of political expediency even as they level that charge at Democrats.
…
Sooner or later this untenable level of hypocrisy is going to lead to a civil war within the Republican party. But this hypocrisy is not just about homosexuality – it’s about all sexuality, as befits a party that calls for the elimination of Roe v. Wade and the suppression of candid sex education that might prevent teenage pregnancy and AIDS alike.

Doublethink

Apparently, people’s heads don’t explode when they believe two contradictory things.

Actually I’ve often regarded it as an important ability– if you can’t believe things you know to be false, or believe two mutually exclusive things, you can’t really function properly in society. I mean– you’d never sleep at night. Lies are bad, but I am a liar. Gasoline is wasteful, but I own a gas-powered vehicle. Investors should be socially responsible, but I hold shares in Child Labor International. Now, I try to keep my contradictions to a minimum, but I know they exist. I believe in moral consistency, yet I am morally inconsistent.

I try especially to avoid counter-factual beliefs. Merely failing to meet my own ideals is forgivable, easy to rationalize. Rejecting the “reality-based community” in favor of ideology, or worse, insisting that black is in fact white (or that grey is in fact dark white, or maybe light black)… do I hold similarly untenable beliefs in my political fantasyland?

Yes, I know it’s a fantasyland. I drink at the People’s Republik. I don’t know anyone who actually favors the president. I am surprised when I see pro-Bush ads, when I hear the word “liberal” used as an insult (we say “progressive” nowadays, which reminds me of the disappearance of the words “negro” and “Afro-American,”) And yet I consider myself more reality-based than the crowds out in Ohio baying for the drawing and quartering of their gay neighbors because don’t you know what they’re doing to the soil?.

Well, someone doesn’t care about common sense

Last time I visited Ohio, it seemed like a perfectly nice place. But apparently anyone with half a brain is ready to leave.
This is part of the knowledge economy, I think, part of a significant shift in the productive centers of the world. Many jobs can be done from anywhere, so they migrate to hot spots like Atlanta, San Francisco, Austin, Boston, Bangalore, Tokyo, Seoul. People with the skills to fill those jobs move with them. People without skills are abandoned in ghost towns like they were during the Dust Bowl days. They grow xenophobic, regressive, strange. Their customs are alien to us.

P&G is a major source of jobs and a community anchor in Ohio, but the AFA and other groups are attacking it. They’re attacking their best and brightest, driving out the diversity that makes an economy thrive, eliminating the kinds of things that could make cities like Dayton an attractive place for new jobs and new talent. Bite the hand that feeds you, and eventually, you’ll starve.

Hey, where are we going, and what’s with this handbasket?

IN some ways, speculating on a merger for Merrill or Morgan is like forecasting a World Series championship for the Red Sox: every year, the possibility emerges, gaining some momentum and passionate supporters, only to crumble at the last moment as the stakes and pressures build. All the same, many people continue to believe that some kind of deal is inevitable.

Yeah, they’re screwing it up. All I can watch these days is Futurama and Family Guy– the Sox are of course doing what they do every year. The politicians are doing their thing. Realtors and lenders are duping their customers. Nor do our current soldiers have much hope for respect as vets,

Well, I’m going to start writing more poetry.

Everyone Needs to Read Suskind’s Article

Everyone needs to read Ron Suskind’s latest article on Bush. I quote:

[While discussing who would act as a nonpartisan peacekeeper in Gaza, it was mentioned that] Scandinavian countries were viewed more positively. [Senator Tom] Lantos went on to describe for the president how the Swedish Army might be an ideal candidate to anchor a small peacekeeping force on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Sweden has a well-trained force of about 25,000. The president looked at him appraisingly, several people in the room recall.

”I don’t know why you’re talking about Sweden,” Bush said. ”They’re the neutral one. They don’t have an army.”

Lantos paused, a little shocked, and offered a gentlemanly reply: ”Mr. President, you may have thought that I said Switzerland. They’re the ones that are historically neutral, without an army.” Then Lantos mentioned, in a gracious aside, that the Swiss do have a tough national guard to protect the country in the event of invasion.

Bush held to his view. ”No, no, it’s Sweden that has no army.”

The room went silent, until someone changed the subject.

Or, later, Suskind’s meeting with a senior official:

The aide said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.

Now, I prefer fact-based leadership to blind guessing, but hey, take your pick. You are, after all, as certain as I. The difference is that I am right, because I have relied on facts, and you are wrong, because you have gone with a hunch. But hey, certainty is what matters, right?