Outis

sf city hall

At yesterday’s mayoral debate in San Francisco City Hall, not one, not two, but three of the assembled nine candidates reiterated the truism that “Business is not the enemy.”

Well, duh. But that doesn’t make them friends either.

Politicians are entrusted with representing people, the flesh and bone kind, first and foremost. Government passes and enforces laws because laws protect the rights of people.

Of secondary importance are the needs of the legal entities known as corporations — and then, only insofar as these mechanisms for producing wealth will increase the commonwealth.

To date, the best way to increase the commonwealth has been to protect the rights of individual entities — be they businesses or consumers. But the purpose is still believed to be a common good; literally “a more perfect union.”

If you take a long-view of human relations, the only definition of politics that stands the test of time is adversarial. Leaders are chosen to mediate conflict, not to lord over a peaceful concensus. They are necessary because justice is a process, not a goal or a virtue.

So what’s with this friend or foe talk?

Implicit in much recent political rhetoric is the fantasy that government exists only to provide infrastructure and enforce corporate and criminal law. A fantasy that dovetails nicely with the quickly fading memory of the Great Depression, World War II and the Civil Rights movement.

From this worldview, tax revenues are intended not for people but for corporations, who will receive these gifts from the state in the form of good roads, a trained workforce, a stable supply of water and energy, etc.

Why? According to the logic above, since government cannot create jobs, government owes the private sector for the very taxes it collects and appropriates. Naturally, the private sector could not operate without (nor can it replace) the government. But that detail is overlooked in times of relative peace and prosperity.

Hence, tax-funded programs that aim solely to improve the quality of life of people are derided as “the immoral redistribution of wealth” but tax-funded programs that aim to improve a corporation’s bottom-line (i.e., make it more profitable) are considered to be “the way it once was and should again be.”

This anarchic greed, draped as it often is in the Stars and Stripes, is no less than a perversion of government, degenerating an instrument for the public good into an instrument for what public good may come of private gain.

“No taxation without representation” alluded to this very disconnect between the responsibility of citizens to government (taxes, obeying laws) and the reciprocal debt that government has towards the welfare of its people (services, fair laws).

Of course, today, that phrase has been truncated to “No taxation.” But, in doing so, we’ve also given up the “pot” — i.e., the understanding that those taxes are to be spent on lifting the whole boat, rather than just the keel.

More importantly, we’ve whittled down the meaning of “representation” to a pathetic skeleton of what is, in essence, a powerful, dyanamic creature. Today, politics is believed to be (and waged as) a form of war. For the record, the two are not the same.

In war, force is used to vanquish one’s enemy. In politics, reason is used to vanquish force. According to this simple distinction, there can be no enemies in the political realm — and where there are enemies, all sides have lost.

Rather, politics requires opposing forces to partipate as adversaries.

Hence, to return to just one of inaccuracies presented as fact at yesterday’s mayoral debate: Yes, business is not the enemy. However, in some cases, it may very well be the people’s adversary.

Justice thrives in the valley

“The background for Rockridge is that conservatives, especially conservative think tanks, have framed virtually every issue from their perspective. They have put a huge amount of money into creating the language for their worldview and getting it out there. Progressives have done virtually nothing.” — George Lakoff, Prof. of Linguistics, UC Berkeley

Much has been made of the superior propaganda infrastructure constructed by the right wing in the wake of the Vietnam War.

From think tanks to subsidized newspapers and journals, from direct mail companies to push-polling operations, theirs is a vast, apparently disciplined and reasonably integrated community of opinion-shapers and distributors.

Perhaps, a countervailing force is under development. Such a response is necessary — if only as a means to an end. As described above, justice as a process requires a struggle between adversaries. Even consensus is born of compromise — not by silencing the opposition.

However, whereas the political process demands that adversaries match each other’s arguments, it suffers if those arguments are matched at the expense of honesty and reason.

If it is the case that one’s adversary is advocating for the end of politics, the best response is not to promote, say, government as a good (of course it is) but to dissect and discount claims to the contrary.

To lay bare an adversary’s claims is more difficult than proposing one’s own. Likewise, it is easier to paint an adversary’s claims in children’s colors of doom and idiocy. However, in the long run, the best response is to treat them with care and exhaustively refute them as illogical — not just unappetizing.

For example, last Friday on Fox News, I heard one of their agitators make the claim that liberals are always imposing their morality on taxpayers by supporting welfare programs.

The response from his guest — a liberal, I suppose — was to agree with the agitators concern that the taxpayer be treated fairly; a horrendously stupid mistake. The correct answer should have been to discount this claim about “liberal morality” as patently absurd: all laws are based on morality, from the regulation of abortion to the liberation/invasion of Iraq.

Granted, it was easier for this guest on Fox News to support welfare by putting a human face on the benefits of social welfare (after all, these are human beneficiaries, rather than, say, corporations) but if you don’t take out, once and for all, the high ground currently held by half-cocked agitators and jingoists, you’re going to be facing the same uphill struggle, over and over again.

Trying to find your own hill from which to lob similarly irrational, emotional propaganda forces you to cede the middle ground.

Justice thrives in the valley — where the overwhelming majority of our nation’s voters also reside. We need to move, and quickly, to “the in between.”

Rhetorical disarmament is the strategy. Disenfranchise the fanatics with reason, assist the rationalists among your adversaries.

United States: Mentally Ill Mistreated in Prison, Human Rights Watch, 10/22/03

Surprising no one who knows anyone currently or formerly in prison, an estimated 20% of the incarcerated population lacks psychological care.

The Human Rights Watch study finds agreement among jailers, prosecutors and police officers that the closure of mental health facilities throughout the United States has dovetailed with an increase in prisoners who need psychological treatment.

The roots of our current unease over General Boykin’s innappropriately “transparent” comments are apparently as wide as they are deep. A lasting, unquestioned cultural belief that posits wealth as virtuous, poverty as vice and all manner of crime as a question of “weakness” or “evil” is at the heart of not only the epidemic of mental illness in our prisons but a myriad of other critical threats to the enlightenment and the American Constitution.

Over the weekend I had an interesting discussion with a friend of mine, a documentary filmmaker, who lives and works in New York City.

I was recommending that he read the lengthier reports on Prime Minister Mahathir’s inflammatory comments about the fate of the world’s muslims and the example set by the jews.

Writing in the New York Times, economist Paul Krugman cites Malaysia’s domestic political scene as Mahathir’s motivation for inappropriately conflating everyone from Israeli governmnent officials to those who have uncritically pro-Israeli political views as “the jews.”

In this way, Mahathir committed the very offense he then correctly ascribed to some of his critics: equating terrorist with muslim or muslim with arab.

In fact, Mahathir’s most scathing comments were for muslims — his target audience (he was speaking at the Organization of the Islamic Conference). The context for his well-publicized unfortunate phrase was, literally, a challenge to the poorly educated and politically frustrated muslims to… be more like “the jews.”

And I quote: “[the jews] survived 2,000 years of pogroms not by hitting back but by thinking. They invented Socialism, Communism, human rights and democracy … so that they can enjoy equal rights with others.” As well as “For well over half a century, we have fought over Palestine…What have we achieved? Nothing. We are worse off than before.”

Mahathir is holding up “the jews” as exemplars of enlightened, peaceful progress at the same time that he is rejecting a half-century of military and terrorist campaigns against the occupation of Palestine (i.e., against Israel).

Could it be, then, that this gesture of hateful political demagoguery has been blown out of proportion because of a cultural misunderstanding?

Beyond the need to castigate this official for his unjustifiably loose use of the term “jew” — just as U.S. liberals often slur “christians” when they mean “evangelical zealots” — is the resulting finger-pointing due to an unquestioned assumption that muslims are not our peers?

If at all true, this would be a cultural and not a political problem. It would also line up neatly with the U.S.’ painfully inadequate number of arabic-speaking diplomats, soldiers and spies.

Around the world and at home in the U.S., thousands have died because U.S. agencies have not invested nearly enough to develop agents, envoys and representatives who are fluent in the language and customs of the very people we claim to want to liberate.

Good fucking luck.

Today’s round-up of stories on the war that could be lost in translation:

• Report says U.S. is cavalier about toll on Iraqi civilians (SFGATE, 10/21/03)
• War On Terror: FBI In The Dark (MSN, 10/22/03)
• Baffled Occupiers, or the Missed Understandings (NYT, 10/22/03)

Lastly, could it be that the late Edward Said’s biggest contribution to our shared if war-torn human civilization is his book on translation and cultural misunderstandings? “Orientalism.”

postscript [11/2/2003]

“In Iraq, when guerrillas place an IED (improvised explosive device) by the side of the road, they sometimes write a warning on the street — in Arabic. The locals understand to steer clear; the Americans drive right into the trap.” MSNBC, “A War in the Dark“

postscript [11/5/2003]

C.I.A. Needs to Learn Arabic, House Committee Leader Say, The New York Times

postscript [11/12/2003]

“Several times, he returned to what has become a central tenet of American commanders here: that their problems are not a result of inadequate force levels but of sketchy intelligence that leaves them unsure whom they are fighting, the extent to which the attacks are coordinated at a national level, and, if so, by whom.” The New York Times, “General Vows to Intensify U.S. Response to Attackers

postscript [4/28/2004]

“In any case, the notion that so-called Arabists - expert in the language, culture and politics of Arab countries - should be excluded from policy because of their alleged predilection to ‘go native’ should be discredited by the way the Pentagon, which shut out anyone with actual knowledge of Iraq, has serially bungled the occupation.” The Financial Times, editorial, “LEADER: Blair should listen to the experts“

postscript [7/11/2004]

‘’I'm sorry, I didn’t mean to offend him,'’ Wali replied anxiously. ‘’It’s very hard for me. I can’t understand anything he’s saying. He was staring at me, and I didn’t know what to do. What should I do?'’ he asked me.

“Interrogation Unbound,” The New York Times

Like many of you, I sometimes dream in movies.

By movies I mean dreams with enough plot points and characters to qualify as a complete story. I also mean the kind of dreams in which I am seldom a direct participant and never myself.

Given that I’ve never met the director of these “movie dreams,” I have a feeling that their contents are not so much about me as they are about the world I live in — the place we call society.

It doesn’t take a fancy degree or an ideological leap of faith to recognize that society is both a snapshot of the world as well as its blueprint. We make up society but society is also what makes us.

That there is an element of make-believe in society is also not surprising. Consider the canny gubernatorial campaign of candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose last two official interviews before Election Day were given to the entertainment television tabloids “Entertainment Tonight” and “Access Hollywood.”

Schwarzenegger, as we all know, is a star and movie stars, as we have been told, rise and fall, shine brightly and fade away. That we refer to film and television actors as stars (and not, say, diamonds) is no accident. Like the far-away suns that are visible only at night, movie actors shine brightest in the darkened halls of movie theaters. And, like the stars in the sky, the Hollywood variety are forever out-of-reach; distant, enigmatic and alluring.

From time immemorial, celestial stars have brightened our stories and, literally, illuminated our darkest hours. We cherish stars, not only because they help us navigate on earth, but also because they help us get through the night.

As visual creatures, we have good reason to dread (or welcome) the cover of night. As the sun sets, our world is gradually engulfed by shadows until, in darkness, the familiar object or sound becomes suddenly unfamiliar and menacing. Yet, curiously, we do not flee from this darkness but, rather, embrace it — by sleeping.

At night, we “fall” asleep and in doing so cast our minds into the void of unconsciousness. It is during this rehearsal of death, this eight-hour sojourn through the valley of the shadow, that we are guided (or led astray) by our own inner light: the dream.

In my case, one of the most memorable movie dreams I have had recently featured none other than Arnold Schwarzennegger.

In my dream, I was on the set of the movie “Apocalypse Now,” on a patrol boat in the Philippines. The production crew was rehearsing scenes with Mr. Schwarzennegger as a candidate for the role of Captain Willard.

Standing on the deck of the ship, an aptly costumed Mr. Schwarzenegger addressed the camera off-screen, while just behind him stood Martin Sheen, the actor originally cast to play the role of Captain Willard. As Mr. Schwarzenegger said his lines, I could tell Sheen was keenly if politely observant of his would-be replacement.

That’s where the dream — or my recollection of it — ends. Weak as the plot may be, it had a stark, understated realism. Schwarzenegger, looking sweaty, dirty and tired, looked right for the part. This was ragged rather than rugged determination.

Unlike his role in “Predator,” where Schwarzenegger plays an unarmed soldier who is hunted down by a high-tech and savage alien in the jungles of Latin America, in this apocryphal scene from “Apocalypse Now” the actor’s bulk hung on his frame like a heavy conscience.

But there’s a chance I was deceived by only witnessing such a short scene. Perhaps, once cast as Captain Willard, Schwarzenegger would have relied on his physique to efficiently and quietly “terminate with extreme prejudice” the errant Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando). Perhaps, his Captain Willard would execute the mission without pangs of guilt, avoiding any second thoughts about the larger conflict with the same ease with which he would undoubtedly dodge enemy fire.

As I write this, the candidate Schwarzenegger is still a few hours from learning whether or not he will get to play the role of California’s governor for the next three years.

Although my dream of his audition for the role of Captain Willard took place just a few weeks ago, it may have been inspired by a news report I’d read three months ago.

On July 4, 2003, the Washington Post described the actor Schwarzenegger’s visit to U.S. troops stationed in Iraq. Here is an excerpt from that story:

A few were invited to join Arnold Schwarzenegger for a screening at Baghdad International Airport of the muscle-bound actor’s latest movie, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.

Schwarzenegger addressed a rambunctious crowd of soldiers in one of Hussein’s former presidential palaces located inside the airport compound.

“It is really wild driving around here, I mean the poverty, and you see there is no money, it is disastrous financially and there is the leadership vacuum, pretty much like in California right now,” he said.

One month later, on August 6, 2003, Schwarzenegger declared his candidacy for governor of California on the late-night television program the “Tonight Show” with Jay Leno.

I’ll never know just how the alternate version of “Apocalypse Now” I glimpsed in my dreams would have played itself out. Nor do I think I will ever get to see Schwarzenegger, as actor or governor, in a scene where his will to power, his need to complete the mission, is put to a moral rather than a physical test.

And while Americans in 2003 may enjoy seeing actor Martin Sheen as the fantasy President of the United States on the television program “The West Wing,” they would likely reject a reprisal of Sheen’s Captain Willard, wending his way into the heart of darkness on the Tigris river.

postscript
What of Mr. Bush’s own mission? “There is no doubt in my mind we’re doing the right thing. Not one doubt.” Eyeless in Iraq, The New York Review of Books.

What of the real soldiers fighting in the real war in Iraq? Their belief in Bush’s confidence may be waning. [10/30/2003]

Today, as a citizen and Californian, I was delighted to receive, fill out and send in my absentee ballot — all within a span of minutes and on my lunch break.

For a moment, I was even tempted to use Google, even, to research the meat and bones of Proposition 53 — such is the luxury of the “take-home” or “open-book” test that is voting-by-mail.

The transparency of our political system is protected, interestingly, by the secret or so-called “Australian” ballot, but I’ll divulge that I voted against the recall.

I would not vote to impeach President George W. Bush, a divisive and destructive president, unless it could be proven that he had committed a crime. The same holds for Governor Gray Davis, a somewhat divisive and arguably slothful leader.

The irony is that my vote took place on the same day that Arnold Schwarzenegger was revealed to have abused his position of power, albeit as a movie star, to tease, coerce and/or harass women and men in his professional millieu.

Having just read a few conservative blogs, from Andrew Sullivan to Roger Simon, the response from those who wish desperately to replace the hated Democratic Gov. Davis is a simple “whatever.” The same is now being said about Rush Limbaugh, another conservative entrusted with saying that which “needs to be said,” and his apparent drug abuse.

In both cases, the apologists betray a relativism that speaks tomes not just of the standards we apply to men — boys will be boys, movie stars will be movie stars — or, even, famous and rich white men. It appears Mr. Limbaugh will not be brought to trial in the state of Florida, a state famous for its draconian drug policy.

Rather, the apologists for these besmirched Republicans, just as apologists for besmirched Democrats, reveal one of the fundamental weaknesses of our current representative government: the need to put all of one’s eggs in the frail basket that is a single man.

In previous days, I have argued with an allegedly fictional friend about the saving graces of “direct democracy” — namely, that it affirms that the general populace can be trusted with important decisions and that the fourth estate, the press, must be made responsible for assisting in this decision-making process.

Now, I believe, I have stumbled upon another arrow for my quiver: if the only salvation for the opponents of Gray Davis is to back an asshole or an ideologue and the only hope for the opponents of the recall is to support an apparently ill-trained demogogue, the system is, indeed, badly broken.

Moreover, it is not the recall which presented us with such slim choices. After all, it was Governor Davis who precluded the competition of ideas supposedly brought about by general elections in 2002 when he interfered with the Republican primary: running attack ads to disparage Richard Riordan (Republican) for being too liberal.

In fact, the recall cleared the way for Green Party candidate Peter Camejo and writer Arianna Huffington to participate in two televised debates. While it would be unproductive to systematically analyze the range of comments these two candidates have elicited from conservatives and liberals alike, it is necessary to defend the obvious yet unpopular assertion that more candidates and more perspectives are necessarily, by rule, better for a democracy than less candidates and less perspectives.

What is true for the free market is much more so true for its sole protector: freedom. Without the free exchange of ideas — by which we must also mean access to same, rather than access to propaganda and sloganeering — there is no freedom of choice.

By placing as much emphasis as our current system and culture does on “leadership” — the quality that Gov. Davis is said to lack and Schwarzenegger has in excess — and on cults of personality (along with personal attacks) we skirt the difficult task of evaluating the merits of plans and policies, of facts and philosophies.

This afternoon, I voted for Peter Camejo, a lackluster candidate with seriously flawed ideas about the origins of and solutions to California’s fiscal problems. Moreover, Camejo was, twenty years ago, a Socialist Workers Party candidate for office. Awful. Tragic. Unfortunate.

So, why did I “throw away” my vote by affirming ideas that I find less than savory? Because as a representative of the Green Party, Mr. Camejo represents an alternative to a two-party system that has failed to deliver more than soundbites, vain panderers or — the lesser evil? — Democratic and Republican ideologues whose ideologies have, by now, been given more than their fair share in our political discourse.

I know fully well that the Green Party’s chances for winning are non-existent. But I voted my conscience: “No on the recall” and “Yes on proportional representation.”

Let me restate the above in different terms: proportional representation decreases the arbitrary advantage currently given to those Democratic and Republican candidates who toe their party’s line, regardless of their personal views, beliefs or ideas.

While I understand the necessity for coalitions in politics and I accept that party allegiance or partisan voting may lead to limited alliances that do advance the common good, what is lacking today is the possibility of coalitions across party lines, coalitions based on the merits of an idea — not a tit for tat.

Moreover, this endorsement of ideas over ideology or “charisma” does not mean that I reject the importance of of representation. Rather, it places renewed emphasis on a professional legislature — one that is defined by bright minds no less experienced in affairs of state as are our armed forces skilled in warfare or our medical researchers in biology and chemistry.

Finally, about direct democracy as it is… in great need of repair and reform.

The tools of direct democracy, primarily, the referendum and the initiative, were adopted in California in 1911 in order to permit voters to directly engage with policy and ideas, precisely when their leaders had failed them.

However, like any other system, direct democracy requires its own “checks and balances” in order to assure that it does not fall prey to distortions. Those restraints are not, currently, in place.

As a result, the ballot measure can be used by wealthy individuals and well-heeled coalitions of citizens and corporations to pass laws — and constitutional amendments — without submitting these laws to careful and professional scrutiny before or after they are implemented.

The equivalent to this system would be a world in which a sick person can obtain unlicensed medical care but is prohibited from talking to a trained doctor, either before or after pursuing the “alternative” route; i.e., a world where quacks are free but health insurance is non-existent.

If and when some of the reforms to the initiative proces suggested by the
Speaker’s Commission on the California Initiative Process or the California Constitution Revision Commision are placed on the ballot, I’ll vote for them, too… without the pangs of guilt I will feel for months when I think about the vote I cast today.

But, if you believe the system is broken, the answer is not a rejection of democracy, it’s not a charismatic autocrat like Francisco Franco or Fidel Castro, it’s a painful step in the direction of a more diverse and direct democracy — of multiple parties and deliberative elections.

Peter Camejo is wrong to think that “taxing the rich” will deal with the state’s fiscal problems (due, in large part, to an unhealthy reliance on an already progressive personal income tax and its vicissitudes during the boom of the last few years) but he is right to suggest that many of the programs Californians do not want to see cut should continue to be funded by the commonwealth — however that latter term is defined through informed debate.

There is no hope for an informed debate as long as we cling to the notion that our current mix of leaders will rescue us from the work of having to be informed about the world we live in, pragmatic about the choices we make and open-minded about the contemporary meaning of the time-honored values we cherish in the name of life, libery and the pursuit of happiness.