Tag: Frank Foer

John Gray is always worth reading, even when his arguments take him to highly idiosyncratic conclusions. When assigning Gray a Thomas Friedman book, as the New York Review did, you know that the hatchet will emerge from the philosopher’s desk. His essay, however, isn’t just entertaining. It is powerful. The key passage:

Unfortunately the problems of globalization are more intractable than those of corporate life. States cannot be phased out like bankrupt firms, and large shifts in wealth and power tend to be fiercely contested. Globalization is a revolutionary change, but it is also a continuation of the conflicts of the past. In some important respects it is leveling the playing field, as Friedman’s Indian interlocutor noted, and to that extent it is a force for human advance. At the same time it is inflaming nationalist and religious passions and triggering a struggle for natural resources. In Friedman’s sub-Marxian, neoliberal worldview these conflicts are recognized only as forms of friction -grit in the workings of an unstoppable machine. In truth they are integral to the process itself, whose future course cannot be known. We would be better off accepting this fact, and doing what we can to cope with it.

Although I’m not sure what Isaiah Berlin would make of this passage, his influence is evident in it. I’m sympathetic to Gray. Believe me or not, this is the same point that I made in my book about soccer

posted by Frank.

You sometimes wonder if Bush really believes in religious conservatism. Then he goes out of his way to make a statement like this, and there’s suddenly no doubting where he stands.

posted by Frank.

The CIA’s reassessment of Iranian nuclear ambitions, reported in today’s Post, took me completely by surprise. When I looked into the matter late last year, there was a broad agreement about the mullah’s intentions and the speed with which they could manufacture a bomb. Everybody-from Ray Takeyh to Reuel Marc Gerecht-said that Iran would obtain nukes in five years, or perhaps sooner. Now, a forthcoming National Intelligence Estimate says that it will take Tehran ten years. Given the CIA’s understandable caution in predicting WMD, I’m not sure what to make of this revision.

I hope that this new finding doesn’t prove to be counterproductive. There’s currently a broad consensus that the mullahs must be stopped. Heck, even Chirac has talked about sending the Iranian case to the Security Council. Will John Bolton and the French ever be on the same page again? I fear not, and I fear that this finding will give the Bush administration and the Europeans a chance to revert towards their old state of willful ignorance towards Iran.

From an American policy perspective, this new timeline is a big deal. For the last five years, this administration had muddled its Iran position, refusing to chose either a course of engagement or regime change. Instead, it has sent the mullahs and the Iranian people lots of confusing, mixed messages.

For better or worse, the revised estimate gives the U.S. more time to push for regime change. The logic: If the U.S. had only a few years to prevent the nightmare scenario of a nuclear Iran, it was pointless to promote political revolution as an anti-proliferation strategy. That revolution would be highly unlikely to happen before Iran gets the bomb. But if the country has ten years until it joins the atomic club, the likelihood of nudging Iran into political uprising is much greater. It might make sense to investment more in pursuit of such a policy.

Since the administration has consistantly made a hash of Iranian policy, I’m not optimistic that this respite will improve matters.

posted by Frank.

I’ve got a massive deadline looming and a five-month old who insists on waking at 4:30 a.m., so I spent tonight doing the only conscionable thing: I watched the finale of Hell’s Kitchen. To be sure, this isn’t that unusual. Reality television, even the non-sweeps stuff, consumes an ungodly amount of my leisure time. Scotsman Gordon Ramsay, the brutal Calvinist head chef who runs Hell’s Kitchen with a studied authoritarianism, is a compelling host. Like any good Great Leader, he inspires fear and respect. (To be sure, the Fox show doesn’t really compare to Ramsey’s far rawer, far more authentic BBC show, Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares Revisited.) It goes without saying, but Hell’s Kitchen suffered from an extraordinary number of the genre’s clichés. I wasn’t surprised in the least when the vanquished contestants returned (Apprentice style) to assist the two finalists in their showdown. Nor was I left hanging on my seat when Fox cut to commercial breaks at all the tensest moments. That said, the show has a whiff of meritocracy that makes it rare in the reality genre. Ramsay, unlike, say, Donald Trump, isn’t a poseur. He wanted to reward quality and fairly searched it out. There were no unreasonably good-looking contestants who survived deep into the competition. The winner, Michael, is covered in rather unseemly tattoos. (Do you really wanted those inked up hands working their way through your foie gras?) As far as I could tell, he is an arrogant ass.

The show raises a question that you might help me answer. What is it about the nasty, priggish Brit–here I’m thinking of the Weakest Link bitch, Simon Cowell, and those omnipresent nannies–that makes them such a stock character on American television?

posted by Frank.

This Fred Barnes lede is a classic:

President Bush went to bed at the normal time, roughly 10p.m., on the night the House of Representatives voted on the Central American Free Trade Agreement. But he was awakened by White House staffers to talk to wavering Republicans on the House floor. A cell phone with the president on the line was passed by Bush’s chief congressional lobbyist, Candida Wolff, from congressman to congressman. Then Bush watched the vote count on C-SPAN before giving up. The total for CAFTA looked to be stuck at 214, not enough for passage. He went back to bed, only to be called a few moments later by Karl Rove, his political adviser and deputy chief of staff. Three Republicans–Robin Hays of North Carolina, Steve LaTourette of Ohio, Mike Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania–had simultaneously voted for the treaty and it had won. Relieved, Bush went back to bed again. It was after midnight.

With the vote on the line…Bush lunged for his pillow. Naturally, this is evidence of Bush’s continued power and vigor.

posted by Frank.

Yes, Peter Scoblic is my editor at the New Republic. But even if this were not the case, I would direct you to his important piece on the largest failing in Bush’s war against terrorism.

posted by Frank.

I once wrote an article where I intended to make an enemy of the state of Alaska. The piece argued that Alaska’s senators and congressman have amassed a dangerously large quantity of political power, which they have used to acquire laughably useless public works projects for, well, themselves. (What makes Alaska irksome is that its self-proclaimed libertarians have created a thoroughly socialistic welfare state.) Representative Don Young, who once brandished a walrus penis in a congressional hearing to berate a Clinton administration official, is the largest purveyor of this brand of vanity pork. Last week, according to this piece in the WaPost, he has just left us with a few more masterpieces-including $231 million to be spent on a bridge named Don Young’s Way. Other Alaskan roads created in this new legislation seem next to useless. Experts predict that they’ll be covered in black ice for much of the year. As far as I can remember, my piece failed miserably in my attempt to piss off Alaskans. I got not a single letter or e-mail in response, let alone an irate editorial. So, I resubmit it. Did my piece suck? Or did it just lack the marketing power of andrewsullivan.com?

posted by Frank.

Why has al-Qaeda hit the U.K. and not the U.S.? And for that matter, why do there seem to be so many more terrorist cells on the continent? Newspapers are finally getting around to pondering these obvious questions. Predictible answers abound: more effective (non-politically correct) policing, a more genuine pluralism, etc. A front page story in the Post this morning inadvertently posits another theory to explain the relative paucity of cells here. The piece is about the growth of exurban mosques in the farthest reaches of the D.C. area. Why is this significant? The articles doesn’t say. But if Karl Rove and David Brooks have described the exurbs correctly, these are places where social interaction is hard to come by. It needs to be sought out. That’s why mega-churches and their insta-communities have had such great success in these areas. For Muslims, there’s a benefit to this geographic dispersion. After all, in Britain, especially Leeds, part of the problem seems to be the classic urban tension that arises when disparate social and ethnic groups get crammed together. Thanks to familiarity, they begin to resent one another with a passion. (White Brits resent the success of Muslim Brit strivers; Muslims, in turn, resent that their hard work hasn’t won them acceptance. And so on.) In the true Fredrick Jackson Turner spirit, the American frontier, or what passes for it today, may help prevent the rise of this kind of social tension. People aren’t in each others’ faces. (While the Post cites a few instances of anti-Muslim bigotry in the D.C. exurbs, they hardly compare to the race riots and beatings in Yorkshire.) At least, the exurbs may help explain why second-generation American Muslims aren’t nearly as pissed as their European counterparts.

posted by Frank.

Like a Parisian civil servant, this website’s eponymous editor and author has vacated town for the month of August. Apparently, it took the mugginess of Dupont Circle summer to finally kick his blogging addiction. In this regard, dear reader, I can assure you that I am a better man, or at least a more hearty soul. It takes more than a little mugginess to dislodge me from my work. In fact, the Rothkoesque saddlebags of sweat on my sides only makes me stronger and more inclined to accept the challenge of temporarily filling Andrew’s chair. (To my credit, I had the guts to turn down his request to temporarily tend to the beagle, boyfriend, and dry cleaning.)

My friends will be slightly surprised at my presence here. Despite my admiration for specific sites, like this one, I’m not the biggest fan of the blogosphere-especially not it’s smugness, triumphalism, and general degradation of the life of the mind. Fortunately, Judge Posner has provided us with a jumping off point for a debate on this topic. As Josh Marshall might put it, more on this later.

posted by Frank.