Civility, Again

Civility, Again
This blog has never served as a media review, nor will it so serve now. Read: but coming. The but: a point made almost longingly and certainly with an impatience bordering on indignance last evening on CNN’s John King USA. This writer missed part of the segment, but found the gist of it clear. A congresswoman from New York, a Democrat, has decided to found a new caucus, one based on the notion of bipartisan civility revolving around a simple social act: sitting down over a beer or whatever and talking.
They used to do that easily and regularly in Washington. As the congresswoman said, such interaction occurred after legislative hours and with no agenda other than sociability. The habit reflected a politics of constructive disagreement. We have descended into a politics of hate. As the Democratic political consultant Conrad Belcher pointed out, somebody elects these screaming memies—i.e., we live in a culture of hatred—but that seems only partly the point and merely states the obvious, however unfortunately. If Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Illinois and a Tea Party darling) could discover common personal ground with, say, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont, and an avowed socialist), perhaps he would stop whining about socialist plots to take over the government and start acting like an adult.
My first experience of Washington came as an only slightly stealthy Democrat on a Republican internship designed to introduce high school students to the workings of the Hill. True, we met with nothing but Republican Congressmen and Senators, including Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Arizona), a precursor of the Tea Party. And yet they all, Goldwater included, made it clear that they took for granted the necessity of working respectfully with the opposition. And they all had plans for a dinner party at least one evening that week at which they would have a Democrat within conversational distance. They took civility as part of the legislative landscape.
I came away from that week deeply impressed. We spent some time as a group in the office of a Rep. McCorkle (R-Nebraska), a friend of Rep. Stuart McKinney (R-Connecticut), the latter a beloved and widely respected moderate lawmaker when such a one could buck his leadership and not have to run for political cover. We then had a free afternoon, and I took up a staffer in McCorkle’s office on her invitation to come back for a while.
In the middle of my licking envelopes to send to constituents in Lincoln, the staffer interrupted me. The congressman wanted to meet me. This extremely nice man encouraged me to work as a volunteer for his Democratic colleague, Rep. William R. Cotter (D-Connecticut) who represented my district, or rather my parents’ since my first vote would not come till the following year. No irony in the suggestion, just generous collegiality. I wonder how many such interactions occur now in such a tone.
The media alternately marveled and caviled at the banality of the President’s having Skip Gates and a Cambridge policeman to the South Lawn of the White House for beers to soothe a notable case of incivility, by both Gates and the cop. The congresswoman from New York clearly sees past the banality of such gestures. Indeed. They allow us to live with each other. And that grace seems notably lacking at the moment.
Chapel Hill, NC
October 26, 2011

Patience

Moammar Gaddafi, apparently, has died. The dictator is dead; long live the National Transitional Council and whatever follows it. How this news will resonate in Damascus and Sana’a one can only guess. One suspects, at any event, that the picture of a wounded or killed Gaddafi will acquire iconic status, unless its gruesomeness reminds too many people on all sides of the gruesomeness all around them in their streets and bazaars as the Arab Spring extends past summer into fall.
Before we get too far ahead of the facts on the ground—as I write CNN continues to exhibit caution about the reports of Gaddafi’s demise—we might think about how we got here. It appears, for example, that a NATO sortie may have fired missiles that hit Gaddafi’s convoy as it escaped the impending fall of his hometown, Sirte. This raises rather poignantly a couple of questions.
I have defended President Obama’s much maligned leadership style on this blog, and the fall of Gaddafi presents more evidence in its favor. When the NATO mission took shape, with us briefly in the lead and then in support over the not very long haul, the arrangement became the target of criticism from the right in the United States. Sens. Lindsay Graham and John McCain, in particular, characterized the plan as ineffective. One will find it interesting to see how they eat this particular crow.
However Graham and McCain preserve their integrity or not, their opposition to the NATO mission issues from a number of perspectives, not least the American exceptionalist position that we lead everything. Obama, instead, believes in partnership when appropriate, a belief based on a realistic assessment of American power and responsibilities. The Graham-McCain complaints, however, also speak to another oft-observed characteristic of our society: a lack of patience. Given a chance, Obama’s NATO strategy, run by an American admiral, did precisely what he said it would do, as CNN’s reporters have noted this morning. Given a chance.
We shock easily in part because we believe in instant truths, only to see them unravel over time. Steve Jobs founded Apple, then left in a conflict with the corporate style of its one-time partner AOL. Apple tanked. When Jobs returned to a basket-case version of his company noone gave him a chance to turn it around. Noone had the patience, in other words, to give him a chance. Shortly before his death Apple had a moment as the largest corporation in the United States.
What we think we know evolves over time. The competition in the media, one of our principal sources of information, to provide information instantly, serves us in the moment but does us a disservice over time. We cannot know everything at once, not even whether a new military strategy will work, or maybe particularly a military strategy.
Obama stands for a kind of politics of patience. This drives those who live by media-time and speak in sound-bytes crazy, and engenders all sorts of phony charges of weakness and ineptitude. In fact we have a very canny leader, if only we would let ourselves see patience as a virtue in a president. After all, how many Republicans considered FDR an idiot on December 6, 1941?
Obama has brought us a vision of the president as a patient philosopher-king, his recent spate of worried campaigning notwithstanding. I almost wish he would fall back on his oft-repeated willingness to serve a single term, a declaration we have not heard from him in some time. That way, if he must leave office—and I obviously belong to the “say it ain’t so” faction on this—he can do so with the consistency of one who valued more than political success.
PS—McCain exceeded even my low opinion of him.

Chapel Hill, NC
October 2, 2011

Vulnerability

Doctors: who needs them? Duh, we all do. Even Steve Jobs did, after a futile attempt to avoid them, at least allopaths, the "conventional" ones. Like Melville's Bartleby, we "would prefer not to," in the same way we would prefer, say, never to get sick. As Jobs himself said, we "want to go to heaven without having to die," the way we try to avoid more trivial inconveniences in life. Heavy, large, slow computers, for instance.

Jobs learned; I have learned, though not through mortal combat as he did. A medication became toxic and decided to attack my brain, kidneys, major muscle groups and other innocent victims like my sense of balance and ability to speak clearly. A medication, mind you, something devised to help those of us suffering from a mental illness, manic depression. Of course, I helped by rebelling against lithium's side-effects and getting off it with inappropriate suddenness. Two weeks of hell followed, then two weeks in the hospital, and now recuperation.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in my adopted hometown, has built an enormous and interconnected complex of hospitals, in which I spent time shuttled among at least three. From one room, my favorite, I had a view that suggested a castle keep standing watch over a magnificent parade of clouds, disconnected from any terrestrial reference. I floated--when I managed not to fall off a chair and raise the ire of my nursing staff and everybody else who watched it all on a patient surveillance camera feed--in what I have heard described by New Yorkers as "the best place in America to get sick."

I cannot claim a fortune comparable to Job'; I have no money at all. UNCH's staff knew this. In fact, a financial aid officer started working with me during my stay and continues to do so. This serves their interest, of course, but it also serves mine in that she has introduced me to sources of help of which I had known nothing.

A university town such as Chapel Hill--a great university town, and I did not go to school here--attracts smart and gifted people, and more than my share of them cared and still care for me as both an in- and out-patient. What did I do to deserve this? Nothing more than something very stupid. Think if I lived in the boonies somewhere, or in an impoverished country. The next time you want to challenge traditional medicine--and I had my moments even in this hospitalization--remember the graces of my care by e.m.t's and nurses and doctors and physical therapists mostly there for the right reasons, and my outcome, walking with trekking poles, but walking, unlike when I entered in an ambulance. Steve Jobs died in the hands of Western medicine, but he lived unexpected years in that same care.

Chapel Hill
October 6, 2011

hard truths

We hear a lot about the dynamics of race in our politics, particularly presidential politics. President Obama has, of course, served as a lightning rod for the attitudes race surfaces, but to the surprise and dismay of some, he does not go out of his way to enter this domain. We so easily think of him as black, and forget that he is half-white. And we forget that which “we” regards his race profoundly colors the way “we” see him and others. A case in point: the Congressional Black Caucus, both their members and their recent conference at which Obama spoke so forcefully and, to the private consternation of some attendees, challengingly. They understandably show great pride in having as president an African-American, whom they choose to see as one of them, and therefore theirs in some unique way the rest of us do not, cannot share. To their chagrin, the President does not share their view. He has more than one foot in their end of the pool, for sure, and when he speaks to them his cadence, his diction, his rhetoric, even his pitch lilt slightly toward the speech of southern black migrants to Chicago, with echoes of Dr. King. He speaks this way to one special constituency with which he shares much, but not everything, and to whom he likewise owes much—but again, not everything. We have not ended racism in the United States, but one begins to see a shift in how it plays out in our lives. Blacks no longer form the largest minority; Latinos have surpassed them. Herman Cain speaks eloquently to the fact that the black experience has ceased its more apparent than real one-time univocality, like him or not. Candidates such as Obama or North Carolina State Senator Ty Herrell insist that they represent all their constituents equally, not just those with whom they share—or not—a sub-culture and skin tone.
The assimilationist tendency of politicians such as Obama has one interesting side-effect that particularly irks the members of the Black Caucus. They have lost some of their sense of specialness, of uniqueness and yes, of entitlement, none of which they feel prepared to relinquish, and with some very good reasons. And yet they sometimes seem blind to others and their very good reasons for attention. Some, such as Rep. Maxine Waters (D-California), seem unaware or unconcerned that they come across as spoiled children in complaining that the President pays them too little heed. They do not have a special claim on him, but the same claim we all have, however unique both his role and their vindication in history: the claim to his very divided attention as chief executive to our national and personal well-being and freedom. Have we perfected the melting-pot theory of American cultural absorption? Of course not. Have we conquered racism? Hell, no. We have, however, approached a point where a black politician can eschew political blackness. Those of another generation and more left-leaning views—a Waters or a Cornel West—find this repugnant, but perhaps it has become almost safe to name such parochialism while remaining sympathetic to the particulars of its grievances. Or if not safe, then perhaps necessary.

Chapel Hill, NC
September 25, 2001

six bleak months later

One cannot cover in one blog post everything important that happened during a six-month hiatus brought on in part by unemployment and illness, both of which redirect energies in predictable and unpredictable ways; other kinds of writing, for instance. Such an attempt at comprehensiveness would read like a premature end-of-year overview.
One can, however, do the political-energy equivalent of an MRI and ask, bluntly, what gives. Parochialism hardly counts as a neophyte in politics, foreign and domestic, but it seems to have taken anabolic steroids of late, and at overdose levels.
How else to explain the isolationism of the Tea Party and its courting nabobs of Republican intestinal bankruptcy, from Ron Paul to Mitt Romney and Rick Perry in between them? The nauseating rhetoric of American exceptionalism aside, we have behaved most exceptionally in civil rights and foreign leadership, screwups galore notwithstanding. If inevitable failure in the primaries shuts up Mr.Paul, so much the better for all of us.
The Tea Party obsession with eliminating budget deficits, in all its pathological ugliness, occupies the other side of the same coin. Whoever cares more about budgets than FEMA’s responsibilities, eliminating or radically overhauling entitlement programs—and I mean radical with a capital R for Republican right wing—more than creating jobs via infrastructure repair, and so forth, needs to have their humanity examined. That means Messrs. McConnell, Boehner, Cantor, Ryan, Walsh, and a helluva lot of company. We may say of them that some seem decent as people; as politicians, they have become something else.
The flavor of this past week, of course, went on display at the U.N. in a particularly unseemly display of chicanery. Right now I find it very difficult to sympathize with either side in the Palestine issue. Netanyahu ranks as the villain in the piece, as he should for sheer intransigence. His minions such as Mr. Ayallon match him for the credulity of their defense of indefensible Israeli positions on sttlements, and on borders always assumed but never spoken till Obama did the unthinkable and named them: 1967 or bust.
The Palestinians, however, blew another chance—one loses count of these blunders over time—to look like the adults in the room. Dr. Aswari and others on the Palestinian side do not seem to realize that their real complaints sound more like petulance the more we hear them repeated. One feels like a fan of Mohammad Ali booing his rope-a-dope tactics against Frazier et al. in the ‘70s. Arafat left them a legacy of encroaching irrelevance in his inability to understand the compromises required in diplomacy, a brown paper bag of futility out of which the Palestinians now seem frantic to punch themselves when only talking will work.
We even need to watch the Arab Spring, that it not devolve into less of a movement and more of a regionalized morass. Egypt wobbles, Libya has yet to walk, and we hear little from Tunisia, though that may betoken real progress. Syria bleeds, Yemen lines up for civil war, Bahrain suffocates, Jordan prevaricates, Turkey expectorates, and spring turns into fall and the heralds of winter. Parochialism in regional form, in other words.
A bleak assessment of our moment? Maybe. Because we have heroes, too, from the three hikers recently released by Teheran to the kids of Tahrir Square to the TNC guerillas of Libya to the martyrs of Syria to too many others to count. If governments cannot or will not do the right thing, individuals have to do it. Amazingly, they do. Witness CNN’s heroes. We abdicate, though, if we let government off the hook of responsibility, comparisons to European state paternalism (I can only wish…) be damned.

Chapel Hill, NC
September 25, 2001

the practice of blogging

The practice of blogging, cultural neo-nate or no, has already acquired a range of uses, and with each of those uses, different meanings. Blogs allow those suffering from a serious illness to keep a large circle of family and friends efficiently informed of their progress. A friend from Chapel Hill who had left for graduate school at Michigan State started a blog to take those of us who cared--a large group--through her (and her boyfriend's) successful battle with her breast cancer. She writes like the applied scientist her business card identifies her as, with an emphasis on succinctness and brevity. I would not call her blog a work of art, and I doubt she would, either, but she used the medium for her own ends very effectively, and to the lasting gratitude of her friends and family. Only certain of us could log onto the blog, so despite its exposed existence on the web, it remained a private document. We have become so accustomed to the smart but often craven use of blogs by performers and athletes to stay in touch with their fans that we forget or simply don't realize that such a private use for blogs exists.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, journalists such as Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times use their blogs for short pieces, often of either the op-ed or breaking news variety. Generally not as well-researched as pieces appearing under their print byline, these pieces tend to reach a wider or slightly different audience than their print pieces, even a narrower but valuable audience in some cases. Excepting online magazines such as Slate, The Huffington Post, The Beast and Politico, which do a number of short pieces aimed at the presumed attention span of an electronic reader, some of these journalists have found social networks useful places to alert potential readers to their blogs by way of links. Kristof, again, has made an art form of using his blog to engage readers and generate some of the best-informed discussion I see on Facebook.

I would not want to claim those examples as exhaustive extremes, but merely as the extremes that interest me for the purposes of this discussion. This blog disappeared for some months, and recently a friend reasonably asked why. The answer has to do with the different uses of the blog as a form. About the time I started writing mine, it came to my attention that a friend wrote one. A journalism graduate student, she writes strictly on deadline--as I mostly did in an attempt to follow her example--and on generally small subjects, though often with broad implications. They are jewels, but fenced in by the acceptance of the rules of a genre that requires sublimated ambition.

I have a background in the humanities where I learned to value the well-made, presumably dispassionate argument. One can indulge passion on a blog precisely because one does not have to satisfy academic standards of evidence. I do not back away from ad hominem debate as long as it has some demonstrable grounding in factual reality. Nor have I ever managed 250 words--except under duress--when a couple thousand would do so much more nicely; my dissertation stands as the glaring exception at just under 250 pages, very short by the standards of my field. Furthermore, the blog form permits argumentation on anything, as though one had carte blanche to write on the op-ed pages of The New York Times at will--an exercise in vanity restrained only by the attempt to say something important on a subject of broad interest worth engaging.

My friend and I made the mistake--I initiated it, if memory serves--of regularly commenting on each other's blogs. I say "mistake," because eventually the dissonance in our aims and styles became a source of confusion and friction. The first time a student in one of my discussion sections called me "intimidating" on an evaluation, it caught me by surprise. To hear--read--effectively the same thing from an adult graduate student in journalism took my breath away, especially in the context of suspending our practice of commenting on each other's material; though in fairness the disparity in the length and type of comment became obvious early, as did the possibility of tensions. I may have written one or two posts thereafter, but not much more. The exchange of comments had become integral to the writing process. Absent that exchange, the air had gone out of the blog.

I take two lessons from this. Vanity, ego, self-consciousness, call it what you will, express differently in different people. I have considerable vanity and ego invested in my writing; most academics do, whether currently in the academy or not. Add the ambition of commentator on the issues of the day, and one can sound like a pompous ass, particularly to those too humble to take on those issues by frontal attack. Training has something to do with all this, as well. I was trained to think large, though my blog addresses the issues of the day, not those of the sixteenth century my graduate studies addressed.

I am in a personal transition. My humility may receive a test. Writing without the consistent exchange of another blogger will take some adjusting, and my own trajectory may strain any efforts to revive this blog. We'll see. I'll take the challenge as an opportunity to write with a tighter leash on my ego. I do not speak with the authority of Nicholas Kristof and should not pretend that I do. Neither, however, do I find the observations of the small things of life my strength, and will generally leave that to my friend and others who do it well, though as Oscar Wilde said, "all generalizations are false, including this one." To paraphrase the title of one of the best books I've read on Afghanistan this year, by the British author Rory Stewart, I will try to stick to "the places in between."

L.G.B.T. vs. D.o.D.: When Subcultures Collide

The controversy over repealing the military's never-satisfactory "don't-ask-don't-tell" policy has taken yet another contentious turn. As the military conducts a painstaking process to give its personnel a chance to voice their thoughts and concerns over the repeal of the policy that has required lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered military personnel to operate below the radar, the L.G.B.T. community has grown suspicious, restless, impatient, and downright rude and disrespectful. A prominent California gay activist has now heckled President Obama twice at events on the West Coast, the most recent this week's rally for Sen. Barbara Boxer. I have avoided Rachel Maddow and MSNBC of late, but one can just imagine whose side they took. I hope I err in saying that; more's the pity if I don't.

When I speak of sub-cultures colliding, don't think two-car crash; think train-wreck on a high-speed track in France or Japan, spilling carnage everywhere. In an election year, the Democratic Congress fears looking too submissive to the cautious pace of the military. They have as a partner--perhaps "had" puts it better now--Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, who approaches this issue not from the point of view of whether to repeal "don't-ask-don't-tell," but how to do it. One of his predecessors, retired General John Shalikashvili, has supported repeal for some time, having presided over the early days of the policy and seen the error of its assumptions and the evolution of the attitudes in the military itself, at least among some personnel. With voices in the military saying in a business-like way, 'we'll work with you, just give us till December to complete our review'--as the president wisely agreed to let them do--Congress has jumped ship and begun to ram repeal legislation through both chambers.

One can distribute blame, and even praise, in various ways in this conflict. The L.G.B.T. community, in addition to exhibiting feelings of entitlement once having helped elect Obama, has no historic cultural sympathy for the military; quite the reverse in many circles. Many wonder beyond their comprehension why one of them would even want to serve in the military. Some L.G.B.T. support for repeal, particularly the activist variety, amounts to hypocrisy of a high order--repeal a bill that discriminates against their community, the institutional identity and loyalties of that segment of the community be damned.

Admittedly, some live close enough to or even within the military community that they see it very differently. They do not cringe at the sight of a young man with tattoos and short-cropped hair if he doesn't wear an earring, as well, or see lesbians as having ceded female power by submitting themselves to military command. Some actually admire them--gasp--for doing things beyond their capacities. This attitude comes without flag-waving hero-worship, and without the pretense that the military has rid itself of gay-bashing rednecks or paper-pushing homophobes. It hasn't, and probably won't for some time. L.G.B.T. soldiers, sailors, leathernecks, fliers, and support personnel do something every day that requires considerable bravery: they go to work, whether in Kandahar Province or Baghdad's Green Zone, Ramstein Air Base or the Gulf of Mexico, Fort Hood or the Pentagon. They put their uniforms on and do their best to adhere to a code that for some, though not all, has become onerous and unbearable.

Another element has to enter this conversation. The notion of repeal comes harder to an older generation of military brass and civilian administration than to that of military service age. Again, with exceptions, largely based on class, religion, and regional background. Repeal can happen now; just don't expect roses to show up on the front stoop of L.G.B.T. military personnel, most of whom would not want it any other way. It has taken Mike Mullen a while to come to his current position, and Defense Secretary Gates has had the distinct air of a man following orders and looking for a way to demonstrate their lack of wisdom. This drives the activists crazy. I have one word for them: compassion (and believe me, I started to write something else, more John Wayne or Mark Harmon than Jesus or Buddha).

Understand the scope of this change. Understand the wisdom of this president in letting the military manage the repeal their way, on their time. Call me naive, but I believe Mullen, however much he may have felt his hand forced by political considerations, as indeed they have done. Activism and Congressional poll-watching may have just made this whole process more acrimonious and awkward, which ultimately will most hurt those it most seeks to benefit. One can always understand the thrust of Rev. King's "Letter from the Birmingham Jail"--'' why we can't wait"--but please explain to me why, in the case of "don't-ask-don't-tell" we can't wait till December for the military to do an orderly review? Do we have so little respect for each other? Do we have so little interest in the sacrifices the military personnel make to defend their belief in our system of government and way of life?

If you dismiss the notion that a kid dodging i.e.d.'s (improvised explosive devices--crude mines) in Afghanistan defends what you believe in, think about what you'd say as you watched him speed around your place of business on an artificial limb, as I did the other day. And--imagine this--it never occurred to me to wonder whether he was gay or straight or bi- or transgendered. The artificial leg rendered all that irrelevant. He asked for no pity, and frankly I felt none. Only awe.