Author: Patrick Appel

by Patrick Appel

Ta-Nehisi reflects on learning French in Paris:

I came here everyone told me that the enemy was the French. It would be their rudeness, their retreat into English that would defeat me. But I am here now and it is clear that–as with attempting to learn anything–the only real enemy is me. My confidence comes and goes. I have no innate intelligence here–intelligence is overrated. What matters is toughness, a willingness to believe against what is apparent. Learning is invisible act. And what I see is disturbing. In class my brain scatters, just as it did when I was in second grade. I have to tell myself every five minutes to concentrate.

The hardest thing about learning a language is that, at its core, it is black magic. No one can tell you when, where or how you will crossover–some people will even tell you that no such crossover exists. The only answer is to put one foot in front of the other, to keep walking, to understand that the way is up. The only answer is a resource which many of us have long ago discarded. C’est à dire, faith.

One of TNC’s commenters adds:

Learning a second language as an adult involves an implied contract. The negative side is that you’re now, if not the village idiot, then at least the village’s linguistically-challenged person. You will struggle for words, you miss stuff, you can’t make jokes, you’re stiff and slow, you’re not eloquent. All that beautiful stuff you said about Paris in English? You have no idea how to say that in French. Your brain is rewiring itself for something unanticipated, more or less as happens with people with head traumas who must relearn their native language. You’re not the same person you are in English: if I can be blunt, you’re dumber in French. For now.

The positive side? You’re opening yourself up to another world, and the people in that world. People appreciate that, on a pretty fundamental level. You’re learning humility, and there are few more visceral ways to do it. You are taking steps toward knowing people in a way you couldn’t know them before. You’re going to learn the intricate social dance that happens when two people who know each other’s language to different degrees figure out – word by word – how they like to talk to one another

Dreher applauds TNC:

What a wise man, welcoming the humiliation of hard experience, in faith.

by Patrick Appel

Jessie Walker discusses his new book, The United States of Paranoia:

Victoria Taylor calls Walker’s book “a thoroughly researched and completely readable look at infamous and forgotten conspiracy theories and presumed cabals throughout American history”:

Walker identifies five American conspiracy archetypes: the perceived enemy within (think the Salem witch trials), the enemy outside (al-Qaeda, Indian tribes during the colonial period, religious movements), the enemy above (e.g. the government, secretive masterminding organizations out to establish a New World Order, like the Illuminati), the enemy below (slave uprisings) and the “benevolent conspiracy” (angels, the Theosophical Society). Some groups fall into more than one category, and in some cases the differentiating lines are blurred, but just about all myths can be viewed as at least one of these.

In another review, Laura Miller explains how conspiracy theories catch on:

As Walker sees it, our brains are predisposed to see patterns in random data and to apply stories to explain them, which is why conspiracy theory can be so contagious. Although conspiracies do exist, we need to be vigilant against our propensity to find them whether they are there or not. The most sensible outlook would appear to be that of Robert Anton Wilson, who concluded that “powerful people” could well be “engaged in criminal plots” but who found it unlikely that “the conspirators were capable of carrying out those plots competently.” Or, I would add, of covering them up effectively. It’s the ineptness of human beings in executing elaborate schemes and then shutting up about it afterward that makes me skeptical of almost all conspiracy theories. Besides, if the U.S. government was masterful enough to engineer the 9/11 attacks, why couldn’t it also plant some WMD in Iraq?

Salon has an excerpt from the book. It concludes:

The first decade of the twenty-first century saw three particularly notable eruptions of elite paranoia. The first came with the reactions to the 9/11 attacks. The second was the response to Katrina, when powerful people’s fears both fed and were reinforced by the centralization and militarization of disaster relief. And the third began when Barack Obama became president, as commentators treated a group of unconnected crimes as a grand, malevolent movement. As is often the case with paranoid perspectives, this connect-the-dots fantasy said more about the tellers’ anxieties than it did about any order actually emerging in the world.

by Patrick Appel

Republican Rep. Bob Goodlatte, head of the committee that has jurisdiction over immigration, has come out against a pathway to citizenship. Brian Beutler thinks immigration reform’s chances just got slimmer:

How likely is immigration reform to become law if the Republican with the most immediate power to shape the legislation opposes citizenship for current immigrants? I’d say not very likely — not without him and the contingent in the party he speaks for getting tossed under the bus.

Ezra adds:

If you’re peering into the tea leaves, here’s what that means.

First, Goodlatte thinks the trends in the House Republican Conference support flat-out opposition. As head of the relevant committee, if he thought serious immigration reform had a chance, he’d hold a bit of fire in order to ensure he kept his role in the process. That was his strategy early in the debate.

Second, he’s fairly confident that House Republican leadership won’t roll him to get a bill done. Again, if that seemed like a possibility, he might be a bit more reticent in order to preserve his seat at the table and avoid any humiliation. But this suggests he doesn’t believe Boehner et al will fight him to pass something that the Senate could stomach and the president could sign.

Josh Marshall wants supporters of immigration reform to stop “pretending that this bill is going to pass and get about the business of explaining to voters who is stopping it from passing or in fact stopping it from even getting a vote”:

 This tends to be something center-left reformers never get. The bill is dead or near dying. Letting this drag on only demoralizes people who think that government can act in the common good because it makes it seem as though the bill is dying of natural causes or some hopeless terminal illness — something tied to the nature of the Congress or the ‘process’ itself.

But that’s deeply misleading and damaging to the prospects of reform ever succeeding. The bill didn’t die. It was killed. So forget the heroic measures to revive it and get about telling the public who killed it and holding them accountable for their actions.

by Patrick Appel

Ambinder rattles off reasons to be concerned about the NSA scandal. First on his list:

The NSA is the most powerful single institution in the world. It can collect more information, more quickly, and cause action from that information, more efficiently than any company, country or intelligence entity. Even if no one accused the NSA of doing anything wrong, it is the interest of a freedom-seeking society to layer in as much transparency as possible for no other reason than that there is really no historical precedent for an organization that large with that much power not abusing it, whether incidentally or deliberately.

In a separate post, he defends the NSA on various counts:

It is eye-raising to base one’s objection to NSA’s self-reporting on the idea that there is no way to independently check what the NSA says. Well, of course. There is a logical problem here because someone or some entity will be at the bottom of the chain. It has always been difficult to establish transparent legal and formal mechanisms to make sure that agencies that secretly collect secrets don’t abuse their power. But it is easier now than it has ever been. The evidence suggests that NSA has MORE checks on its power now than ever before.