Month: July 2010

Do Sanctions Boost Fundamentalist Thinking?

by Patrick Appel

Andrew Cockburn reviews Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions by Joy Gordon:

Denis Halliday, the UN humanitarian co-ordinator for Iraq who resigned in 1998 in protest at what he called the ‘genocidal’ sanctions regime, described at that time its more insidious effects on Iraqi society. An entire generation of young people had grown up in isolation from the outside world. He compared them, ominously, to the orphans of the Russian war in Afghanistan who later formed the Taliban. ‘What should be of concern is the possibility at least of more fundamentalist Islamic thinking developing,’ Halliday warned. ‘It is not well understood as a possible spin-off of the sanctions regime. We are pushing people to take extreme positions.’ This was the society US and British armies confronted in 2003: impoverished, extremist and angry. As they count the losses they have sustained from roadside bombs and suicide attacks, the West should think carefully before once again deploying the ‘perfect instrument’ of a blockade.

On Not Becoming Unhinged, Ctd

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

The male reader who wrote this angers me for some reason.  First of all, if he has been sleeping with his male friend for years, then he is not "straight" – he is obviously bi-sexual. 

This guy gets to have his cake and eat it, too. To the outside world he is a married heterosexual, but he is secretly engaged in an intimate relationship with his male friend, thereby never suffering the stigma of being gay/bi or whatever he calls himself.   He is basically a coward.  If he's gay/bi, he should be proud of it – don't hide behind a 'wife' who is little more than a roommate.  And the fact that his wife would condone this relationship is amazing.  I can't, for the life of me, imagine my fiance/husband telling me he sleeps with his best friend (of either sex) and my being cool and intrigued about it.  His stuff would be outside on the sidewalk so fast his head would spin.  For reasons that are her own, his wife has endured a farce of a marriage while her husband has had the best of both worlds.  "Bless her heart", indeed.

Another writes:

I have read with some interest the many letters concerning the monogamy and bisexual debate, and I am still convinced that those who claim the bisexual label do so to avoid the stigma of gay. I make this claim based on my many years behind the bar of a gay bar and talking to dozens of men – after a few Jack and cokes – about their sexual orientation.

Anyone who regularly goes to gay bars knows that many closeted married guys go there (although less and less thanks to the Internet). In the course of conversation, they inevitably reveal their marital status.  With few exceptions, most will claim to me “I’m not gay,” and offer some variation on the “I just like to hang out with men” reasoning for picking this specific bar over the 100 straight ones in the city.

Bartenders aren’t psychologists, of course, but you get a sense of people’s psyche after a while, especially when they are under the influence. Never once – nada, zip, zero – did any of these men convince me they were “bisexual.” Yes, they all loved their wives, which I believed, but that is not the same as having the physical and emotional connection that comes with having sex with a person whom you share the same orientation. The letters you printed in recent days seemed to convince me further of that.

As a person who tried the path of women, I know it from that perspective, too. I also went through the “gay” labeling fear, and would adamantly defend my heterosexuality – even though I secretly went to pickup spots to find my own place “to hang out with men.”

Yes, I know. “Bisexual” readers will write and tell me I am full of shit, and claim I can’t know how every person deals with their sexuality. Fair enough. I would be more than willing to say, however, that such playing both sides of the fence is a rare exception, and one that is often done more to convince the person making the claim than the people they are making it to.

What Does Inequality Mean?

by Patrick Appel

Claude Fischer reviews The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger:

If inequality does, to some degree, cause social problems, why? Wilkinson and Pickett emphasize that the mechanism here is social psychological: inequality creates anxiety about status and feelings of unfairness that eat at people. In the words of a chapter title, “inequality gets under the skin.” Unlike the volume of studies on the correlation between inequality and health, there is little research that directly tests this proposition. The authors collect a variety of suggestive evidence, such as laboratory studies on how people react to being put in low-status positions and primate studies on what happens when rankings among apes are messed with. But a lot of the case is built by argumentation and inferential stretch.

Over and out

by Dave Weigel

I'm signing off now and heading back into scenes like the one you see above you. It's been a fun week, and I want to thank Andrew for letting me into his habitat again. I also want to thank David Frum for joining me, and Patrick Appel and Chris Bodenner from ascending from the underblogverse to keep everything humming. That included churning out their own posts, keeping me alerted to commentary on what I'd written, and helping me put things online in those frequent moments when Haystack let Unalaska wireless customers down. (I did learn from former mayor Frank Kelty today that there's discussion of running fiberoptic cables over to the island from Kodiak, which would be nice, although it hadn't happened as of 3:06 p.m. local time.)

What did we learn this week? I don't know, but we asked plenty of questions. Will 2012 coverage be as silly as 2008 coverage, and if so, what does that mean for the Snow Empress of the Mama Grizzlies? How is Politico like a liberal blog? When did we elect President Jim Bunning? Isn't it time to stop obsessing over Trig? And isn't it time for Megyn Kelly to close down the minstrel show? Think it all over and I'll see you around.

‘Republicans underestimate him at their peril’

by Dave Weigel

Charles Krauthammer tells it like it is:

The net effect of 18 months of Obamaism will be to undo much of Reaganism. Both presidencies were highly ideological, grandly ambitious and often underappreciated by their own side. In his early years, Reagan was bitterly attacked from his right. (Typical Washington Post headline: "For Reagan and the New Right, the Honeymoon Is Over" — and that was six months into his presidency!) Obama is attacked from his left for insufficient zeal on gay rights, immigration reform, closing Guantanamo — the list is long. The critics don't understand the big picture. Obama's transformational agenda is a play in two acts.

There's a popular spin among conservatives now that portrays Obama as a new Jimmy Carter. Just as an incompetent Carter made the Reagan revolution possible, Obama will fill the next Congress with Rand Pauls and Marco Rubios and make possible the ascent of the most conservative president ever — possibly one named Sarah. But if we've learned anything in the past two years, it's that even overpowering ideological control of Congress has its limits. A GOP Senate caucus of 40 members, the lowest since the 1970s, stopped card check. How exactly does a Democratic caucus of 52 (in 2011) or 45 (in 2013) members, in the best case scenarios for Republicans, fail to block a repeal of health care reform?

‘Grand Theft Ovid’

by Dave Weigel

Seth Schiesel has my favorite review of the week, if only for the line "the actor Fred Backus deserves praise for his performance as the deliciously rapacious Pac-Man." It's for "Theater of the Arcade," which is exactly what it sounds like. Let the creators explain:

“We would have these parties in junior high school and all the guys would be playing Street Fighter and most of the girls would be off doing their own thing, but I was pretty good at Street Fighter and definitely beat a lot of the guys,” said Gyda Arber, 30, the festival’s executive producer. Ms. Arber, who also directed “Theater of the Arcade” (written by Jeff Lewonczyk), said that she was halfway through Final Fantasy XIII on the PlayStation 3 and that she and her boyfriend recently played through Sony’s noir thriller Heavy Rain not once but twice as they explored that game’s impressive narrative depth.

There's a fun field of "I weep for my culture" criticism, perfected by Steve Sailer, which asks how much talent has been squandered by smart people turning their talents to video game development instead of, let's assume, the perfection of cold fusion or sequels to "Ulysses." I don't like this criticism because it reminds me of the hours I spent beating Final Fantasies II through VII (American titling) and the relaxation hours I now devote to "Call of Duty" and "Rock Band." (Hello there, David Hajdu.) How do I know this time wouldn't have been spent, in another era, by playing poker or Monopoly? How do we know that the developers of the game would have been successful at some other, less suited arts or sciences? Screw it. Enjoy the games or enjoy being a scold out of touch with the culture.

Dissent Of The Day

by Patrick Appel A reader writes:

You write:

“Iran is a proud country with an ancient history; trying to bend it to America’s will through force alone is unlikely to succeed. It sees itself as an equal, as a superpower – or at least a regional superpower – in the making. However far-fetched that may seem to Americans, treating the nation like a donkey, to be controlled with carrots and sticks, is insulting to many Iranians and politically strengthens anti-American forces inside the Iranian government.”

Another way of looking at this statement, at least for those who think that the causes of WWII were not entirely rooted in anachronistic dynamics and issues with no relevance beyond their original applications, is that Iran has a lot in common with Japan of the 1930’s. Ancient and highly advanced (albeit barbaric in many respects) culture? Check. Justification for seeing itself as rightful leader of it’s sphere of influence? Check. Arrogance? Check. Might America have bended Imperial Japan to its will had we taken a less bellicose approach?

Perhaps had we abandoned our support for China, a nation that didn’t do anything for us anyway, we might have gotten along better. But we insisted on taking their side just as Americans still side with (relatively useless) Israel. And after it became obvious Japan had lied about not building gigantic war ships we embargoed them which is an act of war. We haven’t embargoed Iran but that’s the direction we are going.

Well, perhaps had FDR charted a wiser less bellicose course would have steered us clear of at least the Pacific part of WWII but who really imagines so? Given the nature of man and culture what you are really saying is that war is inevitable. The only question is how horrible will it be?