Month: June 2011

Farhad Manjoo ponders Facebook's recent traffic dip:

If it's not privacy and it's not a new rival, why is Facebook losing customers in America? Because there's no one left to go after. As Inside Facebook's Eric Eldon points out, Facebook's growth always stalls when it hits 50 percent market penetration within a country. Facebook is now experiencing something unprecedented in the short history of social networking—it has captured every plausible user in several countries, and the only people who are left are folks without Internet access, people who do have access but don't spend a lot of leisure time online, and the few lonely die-hards who swear they'll never join the site no matter how many times I exhort them to do so.

Israeli soldiers arrest a Palestinian protestor as residents from the village of Deir Qadis near Ramallah tried to prevent Israeli bulldozers from progressing towards their land during a demonstration against the expansion of nearby settlements on June 15, 2011, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. By Abbas Momani/AFP/Getty Images.

Matt Steinglass warms to Romney:

My bet is that Mitt Romney wins the nomination, and at the moment, barring a substantial economic recovery, I'd give him better than even odds of winning the election as well. I suspect that Mr Romney is an empty shell without a soul, but he's a pretty smart empty shell without a soul, and I don't really subscribe to the idea that a candidate needs a deep core of authenticity in order to be a successful political official.

Within the category "Republican politicians", the fact that Mr Romney apparently lacks any firm ideological convictions seems to me a blessing rather than a curse. A Romney presidency would be unlikely to feature the spectacle of Congress threatening to destroy America's AAA credit rating in order to score political points, and my guess is that it would make Barack Obama's health-care reforms permanent, with some sort of fig-leaf adjustments that would allow Mr Romney to claim he had undone the hated ObamaCare and replaced it with a Republican alternative that is substantially the same.

A reader adds to the thread of support:

I read the letter you posted from your near-suicidal reader with the requisite amount of horror. And quite frankly, a little bit of guilt as well. Because when he describes the inevitable withdrawal of all his friends I have to admit to and remember the occasional times when I myself have failed to return calls from my own friend who suffers from depression.

My friend's depression isn't as severe as the letter writer's (I hope! Hmmm…) but she does have a chronic and debilitating sadness, that overwhelms her and means that she sees everything in the worst possible light. People who disagree with her in a meeting aren't just engaging in a debate, in her mind they are validating her belief that she is worthless. With every decision she makes means she grieves for the lost alternative instead of seeing any value in the path she's chosen. The slightest setback will devastate her for days, and sometimes when I spend time with her I watch her visibly struggling even to lift her head up for conversation or to come up with any sort of response to my questions. When she's at her worst, just being around her is actually tortuous. I completely understand how people like the letter writer can wind up sinking out of society altogether.

But my friend has one advantage. Somehow or other, she acquired the routine of self help. She goes to therapy, but more importantly she doesn't allow herself to lose touch with her friends – she consciously seeks them out. She calls often, she issues invitations, she makes plans. And I make a conscious effort to say yes to these invites, to try draw her out, to wait for the rare moments when she becomes the wry, smart, kind-hearted woman who is my friend. It's quite painful to watch, but her effort to pull herself together – even when (as is often the case) she can't see how unreasonably bleak her view of the world is – I find to be brave and inspiring. Like watching a paraplegic determined to walk.

I can't offer any direct hope to the letter writer – it would be glib and unfair to pretend I know better than him about his suffering. But whether he decides to live or not, I want to know that some of us understand that his ability to get through every day of his life so far has been heroic, and I admire him for it. Maybe he'll never be able to believe in a future from which he can feel better. But he should know that his life today at this very moment is admirable even though, tragically, it is unendurably painful for him.

Another writes:

I feel scared after reading your reader's email. I'm 22 years old, and I have a fairly severe case of depression – I haven't been formally diagnosed, but over the last 3-4 years, the symptoms have grown increasingly obvious to my friends, family and (finally) myself. My case is also made worse by circumstance: due to a Kafkaesque bureaucratic screw-up, I was forced to suspend my college education and return home in 2009, just when the unemployment rate was spiking. As each of my job applications goes unanswered, I have spent the bulk of the last two years sitting at a desk in my childhood bedroom, forced to watch my friends graduate, get jobs, move across the country, and even get married, while I simply wait for my life to resume, and try, somehow, not to feel left behind by the people on whom it depends.

Your readers, Andrew, are a manifestly compassionate demographic compared to the average Netizen. But I'm sure there are some out there who still hear the refrains of the depression victim – "I feel worthless," "I don't belong here," "the people I love would be better off without me" – and think of them as mopey cliches, the discarded lyrics of a Trent Reznor wannabe. I hope these stories will give them an appreciation for how real, how visceral and all-consuming it is to have to hear those words, in your own mental voice, every minute of every day.

Right now, as a result of my dear friends' angelic patience and persistence, I hold out a faint hope that some combination of medication, therapy, lifestyle choices and a well-placed miracle, will get me to the other side of this thing. The idea that, like your reader, I will still be crawling at the walls of this sunless pit when I'm 35 years old is almost too much to bear. I cannot dwell on that possibility, because I know that this diseased mind, this person who I don't want to be, can't handle it. If a qualified doctor told me tomorrow that I had no chance of relief, I would be strongly inclined to end my life.

Which brings me to the topic at hand. I believe in the right to die. I don't believe the institution of government has any place telling a human being what manner of death is acceptable for him; the fact that the rest of us may be uncomfortable with someone's choice is simply a part of living in a free society. But legislation is not our only way of exercising social agency. It may not be the place of Congress to regulate death. But it's sure as hell the cultural responsibility of a place like America, a country which grounds itself in inalienable principles and cherishes the concept of a national identity, to express our commitment to the value, the joy, the sheer reverence of life. This is a liberal principle, and liberalism – contrary to the Christianist caricature of the godless, nihilistic hedonite – is not about apathy. It's about having love and respect for our neighbors' individual agency, and while it commands us to tolerate each other's foolish decisions, it also compels us to engage them, to reach out, before tragedy becomes inescapable.

We need you – your reader, myself, and millions of others. Yes, we have the sacred right to make this decision, but please, no matter what we decide, don't let us decide alone. I don't want to think that I am supposed to die, but if all I receive from my community is the cold sanction of suicide, I know that there won't be much to stop me. On behalf of everyone fighting this permanent civil war against himself, I need to know – whether you are a close friend or a complete stranger – that as my companion on this Earth, you are never out of reach.

Another:

Us depressed people need an "It Gets Better" campaign ourselves. I'm gay, too, after all, and it's easy to tell gay kids that it gets better; being gay can be incredibly hard, but it's also a beautifully inclusive community. Being depressed doesn't have those advantages; there are tens of millions like you, but there's nothing so isolating as depression. It's a secret otherness, a gross embarrassment you carry with you always.

But it really can get better, and that would be what I'd tell the e-mailer. But sometimes it never seems like it will get better. I hope your commenter can get the help he or she needs, and if there's any way to help in some small way, I'd be happy to hear it.

You probably already have.

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad raises another problem with covert drone warfare:

Because of the secrecy around the program, there is no way to confirm if there are any safeguards in place to avoid civilian casualties; or, if there are, how well they are being enforced. As a consequence, there is no oversight, accountability or redress. The drone war in Pakistan is, in this respect, very different to the drone war in Afghanistan.

The latter is under the command of the military and is therefore subject to the minimal constraints of military rules of engagement. The CIA however has none, so is entirely unaccountable. The possibility of oversight is further diminished by the fact that the CIA employs private contractors (read "mercenaries") who operate in an even murkier legal terrain. With no democratic checks or institutional barriers, the drones are, in effect, operating in a heart of darkness.

Michelle Goldberg has a must-read on the roots of Michele Bachmann’s “unrivaled extremism”:

In the statehouse, Bachmann made opposition to same-sex marriage her signature issue. Both she and her husband, by all accounts her most trusted political adviser, believe that homosexuality can be cured. Speaking to a Christian radio station about gay teenagers last year, Marcus [Bachmann], who treats gay people in his counseling practice, said, “Barbarians need to be educated. They need to be disciplined, and just because someone feels this or thinks this, doesn’t mean that we’re supposed to go down that road.”

Weigel focuses on another section of Goldberg’s article. Chait explains why Bachmann is a threat:

Twenty years ago, a figure like Bachmann would represent a sizeable but still minority constituency in the party, speaking to a cadre motivated by social issues but unable to represent the concerns of most Republican voters. (For instance, Pat Robertson, the televangelist who turned in a strong showing in the 1988 Iowa caucus but fizzled afterward.)

But Bachmann is a cutting edge religious right conservative, espousing an apocalyptic free market fundamentalism that’s become virtually indistinguishable from the apocalyptic Randian worldview of the party’s Randian wing.

Marc Ambinder explains why:

Though the less-painful penalties for being caught – shame, loss of a security clearance, suspension – might deter some would-be leakers, whistleblowers tend to get away with it. The law is not straightforward, and when you combine it with perverse incentives inside the intelligence community and with a cannon of decisions (formal and informal) that defer to the prerogatives of major news entities, it tends to provide a measure of protection. That’s not to say that the government isn’t trying. They just aren’t very good at it.

Stephen Walt claims "NATO is slowly fading into irrelevance":

Americans want Europe to spend more on defense, so that they can contribute more to our far-flung global projects. But why should they? Europe is peaceful, stable, democratic, and faces no serious external military threats. Its combined GNP exceeds ours, and the European members of NATO spend almost eight times more on defense than Russia does. So where's the threat? The plain truth is that Europe has little reason to invest a lot of money on defense these days, no matter how much Americans implore them to, and so they turn a deaf ear to American entreaties.

Joyner defends the alliance:

NATO outlasted the demise of its raison d'être, the Soviet threat, and went on to fight together –along with many of its former adversaries — in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Libya. Is there seriously any doubt that other challenges will emerge in the future in which the Americans and its European allies might benefit from working together?

"You're right in front of the quinoa!" – and other white whines:

Ezra Klein applauds Republicans for defying Grover Norquist:

[Norquist is] the guy who gets Republicans to pledge that they won't raise tax rates and won't get rid of tax breaks or close loopholes in a way that raises revenue (ending breaks or closing loopholes and using the money for tax cuts is, by contrast, fine and dandy). But yesterday, Republicans broke his pledge [by voting, unsuccessfully, to end ethanol subsides]

But Klein still thinks Norquist is winning the tax war:

Instead of revenues being an assumed part of a deficit deal, with the only question being how much of the deal they make up, the question has become whether Republicans will accept any revenues at all in the deficit deal.

Drum questions whether yesterday's vote means much:

The theory here is that having once voted to end a tax expenditure (the ethanol subsidy), Republicans will now be more willing to defy Norquist and vote to end other, bigger tax expenditures (mortgage interest, employer healthcare contributions). I have my doubts about that.

Chait counters. Howard Gleckman mostly sides with Chait.