The Atlantic, June 2008

Originally posted on Los Thunderlads, 13 May 2008:

A lively, pleasant read this month.

Some articles about Barack Obama. Joshua Green’s “The Amazing Money Machine” leads to the idea that no two successful presidential candidates use the same fundraising model. Marc Ambinder’s “HisSPACE”, about Obama’s ideas on using the Internet to make government operations more visible, contains this sentence:

Communication and transparency are virtues only up to a point; as students of bureaucracy know, both eventually become an enemy to efficiency.

But of course it is precisely at the point where transparency becomes an enemy to efficiency that it becomes a virtue. The last thing we want is a really efficient bureaucracy. An inefficient bureaucracy is a nuisance, a waste, a headache. A truly efficient bureaucracy can make life so easy for its clients that it leaves them no opportunity to achieve or create anything.

Transparency is like all other institutions of democracy: worth everything in the fighting for, worth nothing once achieved. Even a moderately efficient bureaucratic system can absorb the formalities of democracy and domesticate them thoroughly. Nietzsche wrote about this several times. In Twilight of the Idols, he issues his customary harsh dismissal of the institutions of liberalism (“reduction to the herd animal!”,) but does then qualify his contempt:

As long as they are still being fought for, these same institutions produce quite different effects; they then in fact promote freedom mightily. Viewed more closely, it is war which produces these effects, war for liberal institutions which as war permits the illiberal instincts to endure. And war is a training in freedom. For what is freedom? That one has the will to self-responsibility. That one preserves the distance which divides us. That one has become more indifferent to hardship, toil, privation, even to life. That one is ready to sacrifice men to one’s cause, oneself not excepted. Freedom means that the manly instincts that delight in war and victory have gained mastery over the other instincts- for example, over the instinct for “happiness”… How is freedom measured, in individuals as in nations? By the resistance which has to be overcome, by the effort it costs to stay aloft. (from section 38, as translated by R. J. Hollingdale in the Penguin Classics version)

Needless to say I would not endorse any of this without reservation. But I do believe that the proper growth of the human person requires freedom; that “the will to self-responsibility” is a major part of freedom; that freedom can exist only where all power has definite limits; and that the only thing capable of limiting power is conflict with an opposing power. Conflict itself, not documents or other formalized procedures resulting from conflict, is what ensures freedom.

Gregg Easterbrook’s “The Sky is Falling” looks at the possibility of a disastrous meteor strike, analyzing as an example of inefficient bureaucracy NASA’s failure to live up to Congress’ mandates to map the inner solar system. Locked into a metric which calculates success as a function of the number of astronauts deployed, the space agency wastes billions pointlessly repeating its Nixon-era triumphs, leaving undone work that might, quite literally, save the world.

“In the Basement of the Ivory Tower” gives “Professor X” the opportunity to speak the unspeakable- some of the students he teaches in two-year colleges are wasting their time taking classes when they would be better off working. Not that it’s their fault; jobs which never involve a bit of research or sustained sequential reasoning now routinely require four-year degrees.

www.theatlantic.com

Highlights from the 31 March 2008 issue of The Nation

Originally posted on Los Thunderlads, 19 March 2008:

Alex Cockburn’s column treats the NY Governor prostitution scandal, characterizing Spitzer’s behavior as “various rendezvous with consenting adults.” I suppose I should familiarize myself with scholarship like that of somebody’s mother, but it strikes me that this phrase doesn’t capture what goes on with prostitution- mutual consent means that both parties consent to the same thing. When men like Spitzer consent to a sex act, women like “Kristen” consent to sleeping indoors, having enough to eat, and not being so badly beaten by their pimps that they need reconstructive surgery to breathe.

An editorial points out that it used to be routine in the USA for botched elections to be redone. Several articles document the economic cost of the Iraq war, both in terms of lost wealth and of increased income inequality. Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky collect statements powerful Washington types made in 2002-2004 predicting that the Iraq War would pay for itself.

Three reviews treat the work of Chilean writer Roberto Bolano. Carmen Bullosa analyzes the assemblage of pseudo-biographical vignettes known as Nazi Literature in the Americas; Marcela Valdes surveys Bolano’s life and work; and Forrest Gander tries to decide which of Bolano’s works is best. Catching my attention, Valdes quotes Nicanor Parra’s remark:

The four great poets of Chile

Are three

Alonso de Ercilla and Ruben Dario.

While Gander mentions that “Bolano considered Tres (Three), a book of poems published in 2000, to be ‘one of my two best works.’” So the two best works of Bolano/ Are one/ Three.

Criminal Thinking and Disordered Nationalism

A note about an issue of The American Conservative, originally published on Los Thunderlads 17 October 2007:

The highlight of the issue is a piece by psychotherapist Jim Pittaway analyzing American nationalism in terms of the therapeutic model of "Criminal Thinking." Pittaway explains that "the unholy triad at the core of antisocial thinking is narcissism, impatience, and need for control." "The narcissistic predator carries senses of special entitlement and deep grievance." Because his view of himself is so exalted, he cannot recognize that his behavior has brought unjust suffering upon anyone else. As an example of this kind of pathology, Pittaway quotes United States Senator Jon Tester. "Refereeing a civil war in Iraq has distracted us from fighting a war in Afghanistan." As if our troops were just minding their own business, quietly making their way to the home of Taliban/ al Qaeda, when they took a wrong turn and wound up in the middle of this mysterious conflict in Iraq.

In the context of a disordered nationalism, impatience and the need to control others combine to create a sense that one's leaders are in fact omnipotent, and that if there is evil in the world it can only be because those leaders have defaulted in their duties. "In this construct, any failure to control must necessarily be failure on the part of whoever was supposed to do the controlling; the core idea of America's potential to control everything can never be questioned. This logically absurd notion is an irreducible component of both the criminal personality and our New Nationalism. So, like the habituated criminal, nationalist America does not have to accomodate society around us and instead must pursue ever more desperate measures to control things that cannot, and ought not, be controlled." These "ever more desperate measures" form a "kind of progression of increasingly less desirable outcomes experienced by the Criminal-Thinking offender when he tries to take control of the situation, loses it, escalates, and winds up dead or in prison for crimes he never intended to commit when he started out. As long as he cannot self-regulate, and the criminal thinker cannot, he is doomed to play out to the end."

Pittaway gives two ways out of nationalistic Criminal Thinking. As you would expect in a magazine called The American Conservative, one way out is an appeal to such American exemplars of the republican tradition as Lincoln and Jefferson, claiming that they both preached and exhibited self-restraint. "Self-control -- not controlling others -- is at the heart of American patriotic tradition." The grimmer way out is the path Germany traveled after the Third Reich. "When you're living in the rubble you've created, narcissism is difficult to sustain. When you have to engage in a daily struggle to survive, impatience is useless if not deadly. When you have been defeated so thoroughly that you lack both capability and will to resist those who beat you, you don't control anything. By 1950, those same German people and their leadership reverted to pro-social thinking in government."

http://www.amconmag.com/2007/2007_10_22/article1.html

In the same issue Dave Lindorff reports on a bizarre incident that occurred this August 29, when without authorization a crew loaded a B-52 with six cruise missiles armed with live nuclear warheads and flew across the country. Even more bizarre, six airmen connected with the incident have died in the weeks since. Most bizarre of all, the story has barely received notice in the mainstream press.

The cover story argues that conservatives will need to share more than hatred of Hillary Clinton if they are to win the 2008 elections. An article about Graham Greene expresses amazement that G. W. Bush recently mentioned The Quiet American when he himself so obviously embodies the worst traits of that novel's two protagonists. Uri Avnery reviews Mearsheimer and Walt's The Lobby, Neil Clark decries the British Conservative Party's leftward drift, and Pat Buchanan expresses nostalgia for Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy.

Superman vs the... Fashion Designers?

Originally posted on Los Thunderlads, 19 September 2007:

2010 Roundup

Last year, we published 195 posts on our parent site, Los Thunderlads. Among the most popular were "Words that can be spelled using chemical symbols," "Sex, perhaps; sexiness, no," "Georgia O'Keeffe Paintings," "Pictograms taking care of business," "The strong do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must," "More veiled women," "Conway's game of life," "The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain rereleases two early albums," "The labors of Hercules," and "Discover Magazine, June 2010." I can explain the popularity of some of these posts, but not of all. Maggie Jochild linked to "The labors of Hercules" on GroupNewsBlog. Al Wood gave "The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain rereleases two early albums very high praise on Ukulele Hunt. And "Sex, perhaps; sexiness, no" links to this picture. Also, a post that mentioned Susie Bright attracted Susie Bright's own attention; a Tweet from her drove a lot of traffic to the site, not so much to that post.

2010 was also the year Los Thunderlads joined Twitter; we don't do much there, and have attracted only a few dozen followers. We might start taking more seriously in 2011. Also drifting about in cyberspace is a side project I started in February and haven't touched since March, Classical Ukulele. Compared with the fate of that site, I've almost done a good job keeping up with another satellite, our Tumblr site.

Early in the year, Believer1, aka Mrs Acilius, posted several very interesting things at her site, One Believer. She hasn't posted there since April, when she discussed differing attitudes towards the proper relationship between religion and politics as found in the "World Values Survey." I can recommend that post, and also those titled "Wheelchair Basketball," "Birthdays are for Everyone," and "Fun with Stats."

I haven't stirred up any great controversies in comment threads at other sites. The only place where I've been commenting regularly is Alison Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For blog; to the extent that I have role there, it is most definitely not that of provocateur. In fact, on one occasion I was part of a successful effort to soothe an irritable discussion draw people out of the woodwork. At Language Log, by contrast, I've apparently acquired such a reputation as a troublemaker that all I have to do is use the word "'Tis" and parties form for and against "Acilius' argument." A couple of months ago I left a comment on Steve Sailer's blog in which I explained why I no longer leave comments on Steve Sailer's blog.

New post on Los Thunderlads from Mrs Acilius

Mrs Acilius, aka Believer1, has posted something funny on our parent site.

The last three months on Los Thunderlads

Since I last posted here in October, about 100 posts have gone up on our parent site, Los Thunderlads. Particularly busy categories include Periodicals Notes, Ukulele, and Current Events.

I've also created a number of pages of links, as a way of keeping the blogroll manageable. So we have pages devoted to Comic Strips, Ukulele sites, News and Periodicals, Filters, General Interest Blogs, Language and Linguistics sites, Pictures, Artists, and Art Blogs, Political Blogs, and Reference resources.

The blog has been getting a record number of hits, about half of them from a weird Google images result that ranked us as the top result for "burqa" because of a June post by Cymast that included a picture of some veiled women and a chunk of the rest coming from other equally weird sources. But we appreciate the traffic. For a while I felt people looking for images of burqas might be disappointed finding a site with only that one picture, so I added a post that linked to lots of pictures of veiled Muslim women. That one sank like a stone, but the post from June is still pulling them in. That's show business, I suppose.