Month: August 2011

Today on the Dish, Perry stuck with vague prognostications on foreign policy, we weighed whether he could repeal healthcare reform, and Chait wondered what would take him down. We assessed Perry's instinctive populism, Palin waffled on her appearance at a Tea Party rally this weekend, while some proposed she could be frenemies with Romney. Allan Lichtman predicted Obama won't lose 2012, Tom Jensen disagreed among others, but Steve Kornacki held out hope for the "adult in the room." Jonathan Last reminded us Romney isn't very good at winning elections and Maisie wondered if any candidate would seek the Hispanic vote.

Americans grew less partisan about healthcare reform, we expressed concern for factory jobs lost by technology, and even with the super-committee, the long term deficit didn't look good. The jury was still out on whether the stimulus worked and Ackerman assessed Petraeus' smart counterinsurgency strategy. SCOTUSBlog wrapped up its symposium on the constitutionality of marriage equality, and gay marriage supporters grew, but not in conjunction with pro-choice supporters. Hospitals sometimes make us sick, Wilkinson panned the new MLK memorial, and readers let us know that immigrant visas already cost a good amount.

The NTC opted not to have peacekeepers in Libya, and we feared that the Libyan rebels may be targeting blacks. Streetwalkers in Germany had to buy a sex permit and Alejandro Sueldo analyzed our relations with Russia and China. A Confederacy reenactor shared his sweet, non-violent memories, we burrowed deeper into the infinity hole, and we debated the very serious merits of guilty pleasures.

Cool ad watch here and here, VFYW here, MHB here, and FOTD here.

–Z.P.

(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

by Chris Bodenner

The latest entry in the never-ending thread:

My son is autistic, high-functioning – but not high IQ – with OCD and ADHD on top of it.  When he grabs onto an idea, he really grabs on and will ask me (over and over and over again) questions that, in many cases, I had not considered before.  One of those areas that enthralls him is the universe and alien cultures (thanks to Star Trek).  I have tried explaining the Big Bang theory and how the universe is still expanding.  I do okay on the specifics and ideas that relate to everything between the Big Bang and the edge of the universe.  But I totally shut down beyond those edges.  How can there have been nothing before the Big Bang and then something?  What is beyond the universe – nothing?  How can there be nothing?

I really think that this type of head-banging is why people and cultures always end up believing, for the most part, in some kind of god.  It is the easiest answer to unanswerable questions.  In many ways, it is my cop out. When all else fails, I just answer, "God did it" or "Only God knows."

Another:

I had a similar reaction to infinity.  It was truly frightening to me at an early age.  Raised a Catholic, I imagined myself in heaven, waking up day after day, forever.  No end in sight.  There is something truly exhausting about this thought, as if infinity is, in and of itself, a Sisyphean struggle. 

Later, while attending an all-boys high school in New Orleans, I casually discussed my childhood fear with a well-regarded Jesuit, letting him know that it still troubled me, although it lacked the panicked urgency of my youth.  He gave me an insight that has helped me deal with the concept, and might be helpful to others.  Instead of imagining infinity as a linear concept, picture a wholly formed pyramid.  Now, begin breaking it into pieces, smaller and smaller.  He said that this is the way he envisioned it – that God’s creation is but one whole, that can be broken down forever and ever.  He also said that we are only human and need to accept the limitations of our understanding.  With that said, I have found this to be of some solace.

Another:

I just want you to know how comforting this thread has been to me.  I've suffered panic attacks since I was a small child over the concept of infinity.  At the time, I thought I was simply afraid of dying, but over time I realized that the concept of an eternal heaven scared me just as badly.  The verse from "Amazing Grace" that reads, "When we've been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing God's praise than when we first begun" really freaked me out. Over time, the attacks have come less often but I still endure them as an adult. So to read that others have suffered from a similar inability to grasp infinity and the terror it can produce has actually been comforting to me. As the old cliche goes, I may not have an answer but at least I'm not alone.

Since childhood, I've had occassional and totally random moments of crippling consciousness, which thankfully subsided with age. The best way to describe them are as flashes of hyper-awareness, an intense focus on the tiny slice of "now" immediately in front of me, and how that sliver contrasts with the vastness of my life and then outwards to the infinite expanse of everything else.  I can't tap into that feeling if I try; it only happens out of the blue. One time it popped up when I was 16 and really drunk at a party, and the booze intensified the feeling to near torture. And I was having a blast before then. Anyway, another reader:

There is an excellent French documentary, "To Be And To Have", which follows an elementary school teacher and his students throughout the school year. A remarkable scene shows the French teacher asking a student, Jo Jo, to keep counting as high as he can go. (Watch on YouTube here, but unfortunately it does not have English subtitles. The film is also available on Netflix streaming with English subtitles, and the scene occurs at "1:13:16".) Jo Jo starts to realize the numbers keep going up and never stop. It's a moment we have all had as children – when we discover mathematical infinity. The documentary captures this moment as it happens to Jo Jo for the first time, and also shows his freaked-out realization that there is no end to the counting. He promptly changes the subject with his teacher and refuses to keep counting. He does not want to deal with infinity. It's just too overwhelming. 

Another:

You seem to be hearing from readers who are freaked out by infinity.  I would like to hear from your readers who are NOT freaked out by infinity.  I'm not freaked out by it.  Frankly, I feel as if my *brain* is expanding when I think about infinity.  I am awed by the expanse of the universe, but I try to view that sense of wonder as a good thing and a healthy thing.  (I'm freaked out by other things – for example, sitting in the third tier at the New York City Ballet (gulp!), or the continuing popularity of reality television and the Black-Eyed Peas.)

Another reader not freaked out:

Even as a child, before I studied mathematics, infinity was something to play with.  Standing between two mirrors at the age of 6 or 7 is perhaps my earliest memory of it.  What fun!  

I wonder whether the fear of the infinite is connected to the fear of death.  I have always found the contemplation of death to be comforting.  I was very surprised to learn, as an adult, that many people are terrified of death, and that this fear is one of the strongest driving forces in their lives.  (It is so strong that it makes otherwise reasonable people commit themselves to absurdities like resurrection and reincarnation.)  I don't know whether psychologists have studied this, but history, literature, and philosophy teach me that this is one of the most basic and essential dividing lines of human personality: there are those who experience awe as terror, and those who experience it as joy.  I consider myself lucky to be one of the latter.

Another:

Maybe I'm naive, but I can't help but think that the existential angst from so many of your readers is a case of misapprehension. After all, in the realm of real numbers, fractions can be infinitely small as well as infinitely large, and a human being who is a speck in relation to the size of the universe is a gargantuan in relation to, for example, an atom. For me, the message inherent in "infinity" isn't that I am tiny and insignificant, but that size itself is largely irrelevant.

I just assume that Infinity is so daunting because, as four-dimensional finite beings, we are not equipped to cope with or comprehend it in any meaningful way. I think of my childhood friend who was born colorblind. No matter how succinct the description that I come up with, he is never ever ever going to know what it is like to experience "Red". Even when we think we are understanding the concept of infinity, we really aren't.

Another:

I submit to you that this "fear of infinity" is reducible to something else. Something underneath "infinity." We're not born with a fear of infinity.  When we encounter infinity it triggers a fear that goes below awareness: perhaps a fear of being alone or in a situation where there is no support or total darkness, or something akin to this.  In short, when we encounter "infinity" we encounter a memory of a time or cluster of times when we felt an existential insecurity of some sort. And I suspect that it's a very early memory, and one connected with some really scary incident. In some circles, this is called "restimulation. Infinity reminds us of this time.

Sorry to get psychological about this, but I think that this is what's going on. And it's probably less "interesting" than a "fear of infinity." The latter is more, well, literary or something.

One more:

There is only a problem with infinity if one identifies oneself as the mind. The mind is finite and can therefore not encompass infinity. If one identifies "self" as the mind, then infinity is threatening because it represents the eventual annihilation of the severely limited mind. The mind is afraid of death because it knows that it is finite and the existence of infinity is the evidence. The mind attempts to shut out the evidence that it is insignificant. It uses fear to accomplish this and will even go as far as psychosis if necessary. 

Once one has an experience of existence beyond the mind, through meditation, revelation, or drugs, then the mind quiets and takes its place as merely a tool to be used in facilitating physical existence and not the true identity. People who really know who they are do not fear infinity. They welcome it as the embodiment of what we all truly are.

by Zack Beauchamp

In his requiem for Petraeus' military career, Spencer Ackerman makes a good point about the Surge debate:

Yes, Petraeus is not solely responsible for the decline in violence. He capitalized on a historic blunder by al-Qaida, who grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory by violently alienating the very Iraqi Sunnis it needed for support. But Petraeus’ critics who make that point aren’t diminishing the general’s achievements as much as they might think. Unlike his predecessors in command — or at the Pentagon — Petraeus had the foresight to embrace the Sunni Awakening, even though it contained ex-insurgents with American blood on their hands.

Remember that the Bush administration’s strategy for Iraq (.PDF) didn’t ever envision aligning with Sunni insurgents against al-Qaida. In the absence of strategic guidance from his civilian commander, Petraeus improvised, relying on his understanding of counterinsurgency that he pushed on the Army during his 2005-6 interregnum running the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth. It yielded the best outcome that the United States could have experienced in Iraq.

The debate over counterinsurgency often treats the idea like something that can be discussed absent context: "COIN works! No, it's a stupid theory!" In reality, whether or not COIN can work in a given context is highly dependent on locally specific factors, including how the insurgent thinks about the conflict. Petraeus succeeded here because he picked a strategy that was comparatively better than AQI's given the state of Iraq at that time. The debate over "counterinsurgency" writ large isn't all that helpful compared to examining the contours of whatever conflict someone advocates applying the doctrine to. Four other interesting takes on Petraeus here.

by Patrick Appel

Nate Silver counters Lichtman:

[O]nly 2 of Mr. Lichtman’s 13 keys pertain to the economy, or 15 percent. … But chances are the economy is going to be much more important than that: my research suggests that it accounts for about half of a voter’s decision. If the economic factors are bad for Mr. Obama, and noneconomic factors are basically good for him, that’s why the election figures to be on the razor’s edge.

Earlier pushback here.

by Zoë Pollock

Dahlia Lithwick makes a superb case for why we need to try Dick Cheney for torture:

Cheney is trying, in short, to draw us back into the same tiresome debate over the efficacy of torture, which is about as compelling as a debate about the efficacy of slavery or Jim Crow laws. Only fools debate whether patently illegal programs "work"—only fools or those who have been legally implicated in designing the programs in the first place. … Cheney gets away with saying torture is "legal" even though it isn't because if it were truly illegal, he and those who devised the torture regime would have faced legal consequences—somewhere, somehow. That's the meaning of the "rule of law."

A crowd throws tomatoes at each other during the annual Tomatina festival on August 31, 2011 in Bunol, Spain. An estimated 35,000 people threw 120 tons of ripe tomatoes in the world's biggest tomato fight held annually in this Spanish Mediterranean town. By Denis Doyle/Getty Images.

— C.B.

by Patrick Appel

Jon Lee Anderson reports from Tripoli:

Prisoners, including some hapless looking African “mercenaries,” are languishing in a welter of backroom jails around the city. In one such place this week I found a couple dozen men from countries like Chad and Niger ranging in age from sixteen to sixty, some of them with battered faces and bandaged wounds. It was difficult to know whether they were professional fighters, or merely migrant workers who had been press-ganged by the old regime’s forces—both circumstances have applied in the Libyan conflict. Their jailers—the rebels—aware of media allegations of past prisoner abuse by their forces, took pains to proclaim that they were treating them well. It was impossible, however, to really know.

More worrisome reporting on violence against dark-skinned Libyans and Africans here.

by Maisie Allison

Responding to a 1993 letter Perry wrote to Hillary Clinton praising her efforts to reform health care, Jennifer Rubin seconds Joe Scarborough, and explains why the Tea Party should be wary:

[One explanation is that he] is a classic Southern Democrat from the 1980s. His social views are conservative, but he thrives on pork. He’s neither in favor of free markets, nor is he anti-business; in fact, he’s very cozy with big-money donors. There is a philosophy of sorts here, an instinctive populism. But it’s not one that would, as the Tea Partyers demand, go after special interests with abandon, get cronyism out of government or insist politicians adhere to strict ethical standards on conflicts of interest.

David Brooks called it “Tom DeLay Republicanism.” Mark Hemingway is dismissive of the letter, adding: “[I]t certainly paints Perry as a guy willing to reach across the aisle.”

(Photo: Texas governor Rick Perry stands with Texas delegates as they cast their votes for U.S. President George W. Bush during the Republican National Convention in New York City in 2004. Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

by Zack Beauchamp

The National Transitional Council (NTC) rejected the U.N. offer to place peacekeepers in Libya. Juan Cole nods:

It is not clear that Libya will need any outside troops or police. One doesn’t remember outsiders supplying such personnel in the US in 1783 or France in 1789. But it is likely that the real help Libya needs is aid and the return to it of its own money. The UNSC has just authorized Britain to transfer $1.5 bn. to the new Libyan state from Qaddafi assets earlier frozen. Russia is for reasons known best to itself holding up similar transfers from France and Germany.

David Bosco worries about what happens if different factions inside the NTC have a divergence of opinions on UN peacekeepers. Reider Vissar looks at how the NTC's ideas about the new Libyan state are developing:

[T]he new transitional charter of the Libyan opposition does not tinker with the existing state structure in Libya in any way. The charter basically confirms the existing unitary arrangements including Tripoli’s status as the capital. True, there is reference to the flag of the monarchy area – which with its tripartite structure at least does have a federalist origin – but it is fair to say that during the past tumultuous months the old flag has come to signify general anti-Gadhafi sentiment rather than a specific pro-federal stance. Neither “federalism” nor “decentralisation” occurs in the text of the charter at all.

Democracy Digest rounds up views on whether these sorts of steps are moving Libya towards a durable democracy. Daniel Halper updates us on the latest vis-a-vis the fighting with Qaddafi forces and the search for the man himself.