David Brooks

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/opinion/30brooks.html

This op-ed piece offends me. First, I think it's kind of silly to assume that encouraging a wider distribution of information makes Assange an anarchist. Somehow, I can't quite make the leap from transparency to anarchy, but maybe that's just me.

Second, Brooks' point that governments lying is healthy and natural (well, it might be natural, but probably not healthy) is good provided it maintains some form of order. This idea begs a few questions in my mind: what's the value of a world order that is predicated on lies and a lack of openness? Who really benefits from this world order Brooks would encourage us to maintain? I think the global south would have a different take than someone writing from inside the Beltway...

Procrastinating

"Capable psychonauts who think about thinking, about states of mind, about set and setting, can get things done not because they have more will power, more drive, but because they know productivity is a game of cat and mouse versus a childish primal human predilection for pleasure and novelty which can never be excised from the soul. Your effort is better spent outsmarting yourself than making empty promises through plugging dates into a calendar or setting deadlines for push ups."

http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/10/27/procrastination/#more-922

Homeless Evac

There was a homeless encampment on a piece of land near my apartment in DC. Today, they were evicted. There were about 5 police, 6 workers, and a number of administrators present.

Court of Neptune

Badass.

Dear Glenn

Earlier today, I was minding my own business in a B&N in downtown DC when I noticed that the lady next to me was, by most reasonable standards, a complete wingnut. She was reading a pamphlet titled "10 reasons to oppose socialism," she had a copy of "Pocket Pistol" magazine on the table in front of her, and there was a "don't tread on me" flag sticking out of her purse. At first, this surprised me because ladies like this one are usually pretty scarce in downtown Washington. As I looked around, I noticed there were many people who I would readily describe as "her type." It then dawned on me that today was the day of Glenn Beck's speech at the Lincoln Memorial.

As someone who went to a very crunchy high school and a left leaning liberal arts college, people like this are wholly foreign to me. I realize that they must exist somewhere because elections are usually pretty close and someone must keep Fox's advertising rates up. Until this point, however, the arch-conservative, gun-enthused, god bless america gear wearing Americans had always seemed very distant; like an imaginary monster that Keith Olbermann and Jon Stewart use to frighten progressive citizens into voting. Similarly, it's very easy to imagine that no one actually adheres to that type of jingoism because, to someone like me, it's completely nuts.

Their reason for being there was not lost on me: one of their most important seers was making a grand speech intended to somehow reclaim America's honor in an afternoon (commemorative T-shirts are $25. No refunds in the event of an unsatisfactory reclamation of honor). The bigger question in my mind is why people take someone like Glenn Beck so seriously. It seems to me that most reasonable people dismiss 99% of what he has to say as absolutely preposterous. An example is the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) or "the bailout." Glenn Beck would have his viewers believe that this is entirely President Obama's doing, which is completely ridiculous. The bill was signed by President George W. Bush on October 3, 2008, months before Obama took office or had even been elected.

Or the steadfast claims that the Cordoba House is funded by a terrorist organization. Anyone with even a modicum of critical thinking in their body would need no more than 5 minutes to discover that the financing group behind the Cordoba House, the Kingdom Foundation, is owned by Al-Waleed bin Talal, largest owner of Newscorp stock outside the Murdoch family. If we assume that the Cordoba House is in fact a training ground for terrorists, as countless talking heads on Fox have speculated and then "follow the money" as Mr. Beck loves to say, we can reach only one conclusion: Fox News funds terrorism.

Fox News -> Newscorp -> Bin Talal -> Kingdom Foundation -> Cordoba House -> Terrorism

The most troubling part of this is that, despite both being matters of public record and also indisputable fact, it seems that a very small portion of Glenn Beck's audience takes the time to look this up. If they did, surely there would be no room for debate. You can't disagree with when a bill was signed or who signed it because their signature is on it. Nor can you dispute the fact that the Al-Waleed bin Talal owns a large share in Newscorp. Both are empirical facts and not up for debate, which can only mean that a large portion of America is either unwilling to ask questions or engaging in willful ignorance. Neither bodes well.

Wedeen Review

I found Lisa Wedeen's book to be very interesting for a few reasons. First, it's interesting to read an account of how a government might saturate as many different spheres of public life as possible. Her descriptions of the prevalence of Asad's portrait and other cult icons in shop windows and taxi cabs despite the lack of official requirements to display them was particularly interesting because it shows how a self regulating system of cult-like behavior can be constructed. Although I'm sure many Syrians are resentful of their government to at least a certain degree, seeing Asad's portrait must discourage any would be dissidents because how do you separate people who are playing along from true believers without putting yourself at risk?

I also found her book interesting because it focuses on areas that we have not previously explored and that are conceptually more challenging. The rentier state, for example, is much easier for me to decipher. Bribing people is, at its core, a fairly simple process: you figure out who might cause you trouble and give them some cash. Although the process of deciding who needs how much money and when might be an intricate and delicate process, conceptually it is not all that complex. How one might go about creating a "fearless leader" seems to be much more challenging in my mind, mostly because of the risk of overdoing it.

My third point of interest is exactly that, and perhaps better described as a point of amusement than anything else. The anecdote about soldiers claiming to have had dreams about climbing ladders of fire to kiss the face of the leader, for example, made me chuckle; everyone in the room must have known that they were all lying through their teeth. What are the odds that everyone just happened to dream of Asad? But the amazing thing is that everyone still participated, which begs a big question in my mind: when do people throw up their hands and say to one another "this is such nonsense...when can we stop playing along with this charade of a government?"

One party systems etc.

It seems to me that paries play a significant role in non-democratic states in MENA. Although they bear the same name as political parties in Western democracies, and are superficially similar in that they sometimes participate in elections, parties in authoritarian states play a very different role. To borrow some terminology from IR theory, they are primarily interested in maintaining power, rather than serving the best interest of their constituent (if you can call it that, since their electoral decisions apparently have very little impact on the party) populations.

King describes a number of ways in which ruling parties have redirected economic reform to suit their own interests, and there is a plethora of examples of the powers that be using elections as a way of legitimizing their power. In the context of political systems, this tendency is logical because, once again, a ruling elite is ostensibly interested in maintaining their status by denying other people the opportunity to run the country. Moreover, their desire to stay in power is also reinforced by their ability to do so; it seems to me that the chances of lower class citizens manipulating economic reform to their own benefit is rather slim.

The sum of it all is that political parties play an important role in the persistence of authoritarianism in MENA. They have the means and the motive to reconstruct legal systems and manipulate affairs in their respective countries such that they maintain their grasp on power. It is also important to note that parties have played an increasing role in authoritarianism since the outside world began putting greater pressure on non-democratic states to liberalize; in many cases, the ruling class has been quite content to put on a good show and appear democratic by forming parties rather than cabals of military leaders in order to please the West.