Month: August 2008

“Or Did You Report?”

A 20 year-old reader writes:

I’ve just finished "The Dark Side" – the second half of it more or less since 12 pm this afternoon. Last night, sitting in one of those cafes they stick on the sides of Barnes and Nobles, I almost broke down crying. Instead, I went to the poetry section and quietly read aloud a couple of Hektor’s speeches in the Iliad — something oddly reassuring about them to me. Scattered throughout my copy of the book are prayers for forgiveness. That was all I kept thinking as I read. Normally, I’m angry about this. With this account, I only felt a deep, tremendous sadness.

I finished it a few hours ago, sitting on the rocks in front of Lake Michigan – it’s the most peaceful place I know of in the Chicago area. Afterward, I watched the beginnings of tonight’s moonrise and listened to Leonard Cohen sing "Democracy." By those final defiant stanzas I had this inexplicable feeling that we’re going to muddle through this. And I remembered he’d written a song about 9/11 for his album Dear Heather — a short, raspy, muzaked thing, like most of the album, but it closes by posing what was, I feel, the most prescient thing asked in any of the post-9/11 music or literature I’ve read/listened to: 

"Did you go crazy,
or did you report,
on that day
they wounded New York?"

If there’s any comfort to be found in Mayer’s account, or in any of the stories coming out about this administration’s overreach, it’s in the stories of those who didn’t go crazy.

Who reported — in both senses that Cohen made a point of sticking in the liner notes: for duty, and to others. They fought against it, and it was a constant reminder that while my faith in government has been shaken and damaged – George Bush has transformed me from a liberal/progressive into a Burkean – none of us should lose faith in the ability of good people to check that government. Sometimes, as we’ve seen over the last few years, they lose.  But even when they lose, that they chose to fail rather than surrender or not even try at all, to echo Eliot, keeps it alive.

Perhaps like what Hektor tried to tell Andromache in the Iliad, when he acknowledges the impermanence of all human things but says he still must fight and likely die for Troy.

We’re lucky we had men like that in the Justice Department and military during these last seven years; we ought to pray that they will always be there.  And, I think, it’s the struggle of sustaining a free state as a free state to recognize that we all, in some way, may be called to such a duty in our lives, and strive, should that time come, to at least do no dishonor to those who stood at the pass, and all the passes since.

Eisenhower Was Onto Something

Looking at the impulse to intervene in Georgia …  and Iraq … and Iran … and Afghanistan … and Burma … and Darfur, and … well, you get the idea. The Cold War may be over, but the forces propelling constant war and perpetual conflict are still in place. My attempt to look at the context for our current moment – and an account of my own shifts over the past few years toward non-interventionism – is here.

Liberals And The Empire

A reader writes:

I think you downplay the important role that liberal interventionists have played in fostering an imperial America. Remember that the prudence demonstrated by Bush 41, who refused to dance on the Berlin Wall, was repudiated by Clinton, who pushed NATO expansion down Russia’s throat even though the entire rationale for NATO had vanished. It was Clinton that established the self-evidently hypocritical precedent that America has the right to define its interests in Russia’s near-abroad (i.e. Kosovo) but that Russia had no similar entitlement if it contradicted America’s wishes.

In other words, liberals got the ball rolling here. I’d also note that Obama has not only NOT repudiated this, he has echoed McCain’s call for Georgia in NATO. He is in no way offering a rebuke of the imperial status quo. He is affirming it.

Yes, he is.

Obama’s Latest

I fear his campaign is adrift, having lost the fire of his insurgency against the Bush years. But I agree with Rich Lowry that this ad is an effective and clear appeal to the middle class. He needs to emphasize more that his tax hikes will only hurt those at the upper end of the income scale and that his tax cuts are for the middle class. This is a Clintonian pitch (Bill, that is). It isn’t enough, but it can’t hurt:

Whither The Harrumph?

A new book by Raymond Tallis analyzes the deeper meaning behind our most basic gestures, expressions and tics:

Oxford defines a harrumph as an ostentatious clearing of the throat, expressing disapproval. Tallis says it’s close to a suppressed bark, typically triggered by a newspaper item about a fashion or trend the harrumpher deplores. "Harrumphs are particularly associated with the idea of a member of the Establishment, whose overweight body provides the perfect instrument for manufacturing it," complete with jowls that shake while the sound emerges…The harrumph probably deserves more space than Tallis gives it. Is it dying out? Does it express social attitudes only of the old and cranky?

And hasn’t the blogosphere given it a whole new lease on life?