Month: January 2006

IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD

Or maybe it isn’t. There’s plenty of good stuff in the latest Atlantic, for those wise enough to subscribe – Paul Elie on the papal election, Caitlin Flanagan on oral sex – but perhaps the most fascinating piece is from Ben Schwarz, writing on the potential demise of mutually assured destruction. We’ve known for a while that our nuclear supremacy has been increasing since the end of the Cold War, as our arsenal improves, Russia’s military decays, and China’s remains static. But now there’s evidence that our supremacy is so great that we could, for the first time, actually win a nuclear war outright by destroying the enemy’s entire arsenal in a first strike. Or at least that’s the conclusion of a forthcoming RAND study, cited by Schwarz. Here’s what it found:

In a feat of technical sophistication and strategic insight, [the authors] have modeled a U.S. first strike against Russia. (Although China is Washington’s most probable great-power rival, the authors argue, Russia presents a “hard case” for their contention that America has achieved nuclear ascendancy.) That model, which they presented at the Council on Foreign Relations in October, has been vetted by most of the top civilian defense analysts. To be conservative, it assumes that U.S. nuclear weapons will perform with much less accuracy and reliability than should be expected. Even so, the authors conclude, a U.S. attack today would destroy the entire Russian nuclear arsenal. To grossly oversimplify: the erosion of Russian capabilities, combined with new, overwhelming warhead yields and the “accuracy revolution” in U.S. nuclear forces, has largely obviated the problems of “fratricide” (the prospect that U.S. missiles on the attack would destroy each other, leaving their targets safe) that once helped make a disarming strike impossible to achieve.

Schwarz’s piece is primarily about the dangers associated with this imbalance. Since “Moscow and Beijing will surely buy deterrence by spreading out their nuclear forces, decentralizing their command-and-control systems, and implementing ‘launch on warning’ policies,” he argues, there’s a greater chance that a future crisis will spiral out of control, leading to “the unauthorized or accidental use of nuclear weapons.”

This is a serious concern, and I hope that I don’t minimize it when I say that my initial, gut-level, Cold-War-geek reaction to this news can be summed up in just one word: cool.

– posted by Ross

FROM THE HEARTLAND

A bumper crop of emails recently, weighing in on fundamentalism, the heartland and “Brokeback Mountain”. Here are three with good points:

Thanks to ‘Variety’ for perpetuating the fly-over/red-state stereotypes. I have to say, for those of us in Des Moines, Brokeback’s strong opening here is not a surprise. I imagine it will do well and continue to do well because it’s a beautifully powerful film, well-reviewed, and hyped as controversial. The movie release has been managed well and the expectations set, masterfully drawing people into theaters. My opening night experience in Des Moines was in a suburban theater and the audience was primarily middle-age couples, young women and a large (but not-the-majority) gay contingent.

As far as the opposition goes, it’s just not there or just not organized. And call me bitter blue in a red state, but the political/cultural context of Iowa (and Des Moines in particular) is nowhere comparable to Texas or Oklahoma. The strength and emotional force of the Christian Coalition (and the anti-gay forces) in the state is nowhere near that of OK or TX. Largely, Iowans keep to themselves as a whole and can’t be bothered. It’s the educated, quietly patriotic, thoughtful side of our agricultural past coming through.

Point taken. There’s a huge difference between the culture of the Mid-West and the South. But even many Texans seem open-minded about “Brokeback.” Another reader sets me, er, straight on that one:

I was born and raised in Texas, not far from where Jack “lived” in Texas. In my twenties, I lived all over the state: San Angelo, Odessa, Lubbock, Dallas, Houston, and Austin.
I spent nearly 5 years in Lubbock where I met my best friend and his wife, both ardent Republicans. I shared a house with him and his cousin who was a cowboy and a bouncer at a local honky tonk. Both knew I was gay and couldn’t have cared less. I have always said that the libertarian streak in west Texans outweighs any social conservatism and I stand by that assertion to this day. I never recall hearing of any fag bashings while I lived in that part of the state. They occurred often in Dallas while I lived there and I was the victim of two of them.
Lubbock is the only place in Texas where I never experienced any, and I mean, any homophobia. That the movie is a success there doesn’t surprise me at all.

That just goes to show that generalizations even about one state are fraught with peril.

FUNDAMENTALISM DEFINED: My depiction of fundamentalist millenarianism also comes in for criticism from this reader:

So “most members” of the “religious right” believe that the world is on the brink of the rapture and coming to and end, and exactly how do you know this to be true? I can garauntee you that if you knew me, you would list me too as a member of your so-called “religious right”, and yet I think Pat Robertson’s eschatalogical views are absurd and I deplore his recent comments regarding Sharon. Pat Robertson and his like on evangelical TV would do themselves, and me personally, a HUGE favor if they would stick to their (and mine) Christ-sponsored mission of spreading the good news of Christ’s love, forgiveness and ultimate sacrifice, rather than indulging in every political foray of the day. And you, my dear blogger, would do yourself a favor to either get to personally know a few more conservative-evangelical Christians (like me).

I’m sure there are many Christians who share the reader’s view of the priority of love and forgiveness – rather than vengeance and violence – at the center of the Christian Gospel. And many vote Republican. But my point about Robertson was a narrower one. It is that he believes that there is a looming End-Time in which judgment will be passed on non-believers, and also that God intervenes directly in the lives of people right now to punish and warn. How do I know this? Because there’s plenty of explicit evidence proving it. For the book, I’ve been steeping myself in Protestant fundamentalist texts, and the prevalence of these themes is overwhelming. In the past few years, many leaders of the religious right have reiterated those views, whether it’s James Dobson’s warning about the imminent “destruction of the earth” caused by gay couples getting married, or Jerry Falwell blaming feminists for 9/11, or Franklin Graham blaming New Orleanians for Hurricane Katrina. If a reader can show me a leader of the religious right who does not believe in millenarianism or a God who directly intervenes to punish sinners, and can prove it, I will gladly post their evidence. Please prove me wrong. To discuss these theological views, by the way, is not to be a “hater” or “demonizer,” as Jonah Goldberg claims. It is simply to reveal what religious right leaders clearly and unapologetically believe.

– posted by Andrew.

RAMBO AND RELIGION

At the end of a TPMCafe post bemoaning the failure of Dems to adequately take advantage of the Abramoff scandal, we get this revealing reflection:

When we get tarred with the same brush every time the Republicans screw up, we can never separate ourselves from them in the voter’s minds. That leaves the voters deciding their votes only on quasi-religious, and Rambo grounds, and we will never win on those grounds.

I’m not sure, at least in my more cynical moods, that this is necessarily an inaccurate portrait of the modal American voter—responsive only to scandal and tribal instincts—but telegraphing that attitude may have something to do with why “we will never win on those grounds.”

—posted by Julian

QUOTE FOR THE DAY

“Until the Bush administration, with its incontinent spending, unleashed an especially conscienceless Republican control of both political branches, conservatives pretended to believe in limited government. The last five years, during which the number of registered lobbyists more than doubled, have proved that, for some Republicans, conservative virtue was merely the absence of opportunity for vice.” – George Will, on great form today. Thank God he and David Brooks are still around, and still calling it like it is.

– posted by Andrew.

SCHMALITO

I guess I should say something. I’ve long been a believer in deference to presidential court appointees (check TNR archives and way back in the 80s, I wrote one of the first pieces outraged by the Borking of Bork). I have a marginally less expansive view of executive power in wartime than Alito, and probably despise Roe vs Wade more than he does, but these are quibbles. He seems perfectly fine to me: the kind of uber-nerd you want on SCOTUS. He reminds me of Milhous on the Simpsons, all growed up. He spent one vacation learning how to juggle. The hearings are a great opportunity to explore the meaning and role of constitutional executive power. But the blather yesterday – and the fact that I don’t think either Roberts or Alito are going to satisfy the fire-breathers – reminds me why I’m not glued to the TV screen. That, and a book deadline.

RIGHT-BLOGGERS AND MEHLMAN: Hugh Hewitt has an interesting account of conservative bloggers grilling Ken Mehlman. At times, it’s an impressive display of journalistic independence and skepticism on the rightwing blogosphere about the administration. More, please.

FOLGER ON ROBERTSON: Here’s a fascinating exchange from Fox News. It concerns Pat Robertson’s orthodox fundamentalist view that Ariel Sharon may have been targeted by God for death because of his decision to divide the land of Israel as forbidden by the Bible:

John Kasich: Now, Janet, what I need to know from you is, when Pat does things like this or says things like this — and I think you would agree, it wasn’t the appropriate time. Agree with that? It was just not the right time to be talking about this.

Janet Folger: Look, the time you make statements like that is when you can do something about it — don’t divide the land.

John Kasich: So, inappropriate time. The question is, does Pat sort of undermine the movement when he makes a statement like this — that he might — which he says was taken out of context or whatever — does it undermine the movement, the Christian movement? People say, I’m not gonna listen to that.

Janet Folger: You know — again, I’m not gonna be another voice to bully up or beat up on PR. He’s free to defend himself and he’s very capable of it —

John Kasich: Yeah, but I want to know what you think.

Janet Folger: — but I don’t think we should blame him for reading from the bible. And I’ll be honest with you — the way I read the Bible, it talks about — nations that bless Israel are gonna be blessed, nations that curse Israel are gonna be cursed — and I’ll be honest with you, where I worry about the judgment being cast is that I think we need to look in the mirror — because we’re one of the groups, the nations that actually strong-armed the prime minister into giving up land, making Israel less secure. And —

Good for Folger for sticking to her beliefs. Just like Falwell after 9/11, she also fears that it’s America that will actually experience the wrath of Jesus if we don’t get our Israel policy right. Kasich’s main worry, of course, is not that what Robertson said is obscene or lunatic, but that it might cause trouble for what he calls the “Christian movement.” Kasich apparently believes it’s important that most Americans are kept in the dark about the actual tenets of the core activists who now control the Republican party. More about Folger here.

– posted by Andrew.

PICKING UP THE PIECES

I’m of two minds about the apparent unraveling of James Frey, the Oprah-canonized memoirist whose tales of drugs, crime, and personal tragedy have turned out to be more than a little embellished. On the one hand, Frey has always come across as a poseur – a wannabe tough-guy, a dime-store Mailer – and it’s nice when poseurs turn out to be frauds as well. Also, I didn’t much care for his first book – and of course, I share in the pathetic-yet-delightful schaudenfreude that any would-be writer feels while watching an overpraised (and overpaid) author go down in flames.

But then again, there was something occasionally bracing about the Frey pose, even when you could see right through it – the hard-case persona, the “F.T.B.S.I.T.T.T.D.” tattooed on his arm (for “fuck the bullshit it’s time to throw down,” which was my motto for a while too), the boasts about becoming the greatest writer of his generation, the profanity-laced attacks on other writers’ mediocrity. Sure, it was fake – but it was a relief to encounter Frey’s brand of fakeness in a literary world where too many writers seem to follow the Dave Eggers/Jonathan Safran Foer “let’s-all-be-nice” approach to the writing life. I’ll take a phony tough guy any day, for instance, over this kind of pious crap (from Eggers):

It was our hope . . . that the literary world could be one of community, of mutual support, of spirited but nonviolent discourse-all in the interest of building and maintaining a literate society. It’s what we teach . . . that books are good, that reading is good, that everyone can and should write in some capacity, and that anyone pissing in the very small and fragile ecosystem that is the literary world is mucking it up for everyone-and sending a very poor message to the next generation.

The gang at N+1 – who are neither as great as they’ve been made out to be, nor as bad as Stefan Beck suggests in this month’s New Criterion – offered an excellent response to this theory of literature in their latest issue:

The final, insidious manifestation of the reading crisis is the way it gives cover to the hostility to criticism. One’s critics “piss in the fragile ecosystem that is the literary world” (Eggers); or they are merely “resentniks” (Foer). The real trouble of course is that if “books” are “good,” as the mantra goes, you don’t have to face how good or bad your book actually is. The criterion is only to “make readers.” I make readers, the writer deludes himself, waving his sales reports-surely these millions came into existence only for him? It no longer matters what he wrote. In this way the novelist becomes as protected as the poet is today, a member merely of an endangered species (in the “fragile ecosystem”), or say of an identity group, who cannot be disagreed with, to whom certain months of the year will be dedicated, who is not only tolerated but encouraged and petted by the powers that be, not because of the content of what he writes (there is no content), but because, well, what sort of powers would they be, to discourage the flowering of such an art?

Social work is important, and so is novel-writing (at least if your novel is any good). But the two really aren’t the same thing. James Frey is a poseur and apparently a liar, but at least, I think, he understands that much.

– posted by Ross

BROKEBACK IN LUBBOCK

Variety has an update:

“Brokeback” came out ahead of several new pics on twice or four times as many playdates, including “Casanova,” “Bloodrayne” and “Grandma’s Boy.” Among the new markets where the critically acclaimed pic opened strong were Tulsa, El Paso, Des Moines and Lubbock, Tex.

Lubbock, Texas, is the place the president often refers to when he talks about the heartland of America, and it’s where his library will be sited. The Mickster hasn’t mentioned the movie he hasn’t seen in quite a while. He predicted it would bomb in the heartland. Does Lubbock count? As for the mainstream, on “Desperate Housewives” last night, there were three separate graphic scenes of two late-teenage boys french-kissing, waking up naked in the same bed together, and mauling each other’s necks. Brokeback is tame in comparison.

(CORRECTIONS: Although Lubbock is favored to house Bush’s library, the decision has not yet apparently been taken. And, although he hasn’t mentioned it on his blog, the Mickster has indeed seen Brokeback Mountain. And says he wasn’t grossed out.)

– posted by Andrew.