I wanted to bring your attention to an article by Joseph Leiberman in the Wall Street Journal. It is illuminating because it gives an historical context by which to view the modern democrat party and explains why this change has occurred.

This was the Democratic Party of Harry Truman, who pledged that “it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.“

And this was the Democratic Party of John F. Kennedy, who promised in his inaugural address that the United States would “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of freedom.“

This belief in the American cause and its people has slowly been replaced, on the left, with a hatred for these very principles. The Left did not see the Soviets were not evil… they were victims of American provocation…

Rather than seeing the Cold War as an ideological contest between the free nations of the West and the repressive regimes of the communist world, this rival political philosophy saw America as the aggressor – a morally bankrupt, imperialist power whose militarism and “inordinate fear of communism” represented the real threat to world peace.

It argued that the Soviets and their allies were our enemies not because they were inspired by a totalitarian ideology fundamentally hostile to our way of life, or because they nursed ambitions of global conquest. Rather, the Soviets were our enemy because we had provoked them, because we threatened them, and because we failed to sit down and accord them the respect they deserved. In other words, the Cold War was mostly America’s fault.

But before I reprint the article in its entirety, head over to WSJ.com and read it for yourself.

I must admit; it feels a bit odd to find myself finding such common ground with former Democratic presidents. Does this make me some kind of Neo-Democrat… or does this say more about the lengths the Democratic party has moved left?… I would tend to think it’s the latter.

… the Wall Street Journal Editoral Board echos the sentiments you have been blogging about for weeks.  This just in from Dorothy Rabinowitz:

Michelle Obama has left little doubt about her views on American society, and its people… the wife of the candidate told crowds that she was, for the first time in her life, “proud” of her country… It was obvious, nontheless, that this was no blip, no failure to express her real thought.  She said exactly what she’d wanted to say… The comment reflected her deeply held, grim view of American society, one she was accustomed to sharing with others who thought likewise.

She recently waxed irate over the American attention to security interests, arguing that we should be “changing the conversation” and building diplomatic relations “instead of protecting ourselves against terrorists“.  

A New Yorker profile published last week quotes numerous stump speech pronouncements, among them Mrs. Obama’s assertion that most Americans’ lives have gotten worse since she was a girl.  ”So if you want to pretend like there was some point in the last couple decades when your life was easy, I want to meet you.“

In short, not only is existence in America a deserate proposition for most citizens –anyone claiming to have led a satisfactory one not sunk in the hell that is American life is, quite simply, lying.  America is, she has elsewhere informed audiences, a nation whose “souls are broken“.

Whatever America’s faults, we are certainly not a nation of “broken souls”, a nation where every day is some impassable hurdle, a nation needing the generous hand of some benevolent Democrat dictator.  It is almost beyond explanation how someone who has done so well in this country can still have such a pessimistic attitude toward it’s people and government.  

And what are we supposed to make of her “I want to meet you” quote?  Does she really WANT to meet someone who has had easy times in their lives?  She might want to spit in their face to spite them; no other reason seems that plausible. But this really begs the question: why is a hard life so unbearable for her?  Playrights have been exploring the tragedy of the human condition for Centuries… wouldn’t an educated woman such as Ms. Obama would have been sensible enough to grasp this fundamental truth instead of ‘hoping’ that her husband can change the human condition?  

Is a Government pouring money on our problems (which is all it can do for people)… going to make us Happier?  Is our life now really comparable to the lives our grandparents experienced during World War II?  Is it really of such a nature to complain about? 

Well, Michelle, Feel free to come and meet me anytime. If you Vant… I am here*.  I have had a few easy times over the past couple decades and would be more then happy to tell you what a great country I live in.

*[wait for it... it's worth it] 

I’m too busy to add much of my own commentary.  This is my last installment.

What develops around the video or stereo culture is not a narcissistic imagry, but an effect of frantic self-referentiality, a short-circuit which immediately hooks up like with like, and, in doind, emphasizes their surface intensity and deeper meaninglessness.  This is the special effect of our times.  The ecstasy of the polaroid is of the same order:  to hold the object and its image almost simultaneously as if the conception of light of ancient physics or metaphysics, in which each object was thought to secrete doubles or negatives of itself that we pick up with our eyes, has become reality.  It is a dream.  It is the optical materilization of a magical process.  The polariod photo is a sort of ecstatic membrane that has come away from the real object.

No: this is not some ‘vote or die’ political post but is, in fact, the third installment of my series on Baudrillard’s “AMERICA”.  One thing in particular I like about Baudrillard is his ability to interject deep meaning into the mundane.  For example, merely glancing at a piece of graffiti can prompt this response…

‘LIVE OR DIE’: the graffiti message on the pier at Santa Monica is mysterious, because we really have no choice between life and death.  If you live, you live, if you die, you die.  It is like saying ‘be yourself, or don’t be!’  It is stupid, and yet it is enigmatic.  You could read it to mean that you should live intensely or else disappear, but that is banal.  Following the model of ‘pay or die!’, ‘your money or your life!’, it would become ‘your life or your life!”.  Stupid again, since you cannot exchange life for itself.  And yet there is poetic force in this implaceable tautollogy, as there always is when there is nothing to be understood.  In the end, the lesson of this graffiti is perhaps: ‘ if you get more stupid than me, you die!’

I like how he doesn’t see a need for some ultimate conclusion on the meaning of the statement… nothing irks me more then philosophers who get caught up in the meaningless questions.  Even so, it seems he contemplates the statement long enough to expose it for what it is–and in doing so causes his reader to view the common and banal with a fresh perspective.  And you wondered why I like this guy so much… 

AMERICA  ~ part 2 

Here is part 2 of my installment on Jean Baudrillard’s book, “America“.  In this portion, Baudrillard really starts ‘drawing the boundaries’, if you will; clearly defining the fundamental elements of society - elements by which we distinguish ourselves from Europe and the rest of the world.   I find great importance in his explanation;  primarily because it reaffirms the fact that we are unique… it carries with it a certain form of identity–an identity we so easily miss without the perspective of a foreigner.  

The confrontation between America and Europe reveals not so much a rapprochment as a distortion, an unbridgeable rift.  There isn’t just a gap between us, but a whole chasm of modernity.  You are born modern, you do not become so.  And we have never become so…

Every country bears a sort of historical predestination, which almost definitively determines its characteristics.  For us, it is the bourgeois model of 1789 - and the interminable decadence of that model - that shapes our landscape.  There is nothing we can do about it:  everything here revolves around the nineteenth-century bourgeois dream.

As an initial matter, I find Baudrillard’s fatalistic point of view fascinating; the differences we have with Europe are not simply skin deep but amount to an insurmountable hurdle.   His phrase, ”a chasm of modernity”, is particularily important in this regard; it implies an inescapable difference in values — values that appear impossible to change.   When he writes, It is almost as if he wishes he could have been born modern; but realizes it would be an futile attempt to become so.  

Read the rest of this entry »

AMERICA  ~ part 1

Being this is my first post in the `America` series, I must say I’m somewhat without a clear format to follow.  I must say, Baudrillard’s words speak for themselves… what little I may add is certainly secondary… so I suppose the best approach is to let Baudrillard speak first and then I’ll comment below.

At issue in this particular post is Baudrillard’s more general insight on America’s financial system… it’s capitalist system… its insistence on complete fluidity of capital, it’s dependence on credit, investment, and security.  I particularly like his “parishioner/priest” analogy.

It is true that ownership of money burns your fingers, like power.  We need people to take this risk for us and we should be eternally grateful to them.  This is why I hesitate to deposit money in a bank.  I am afraid I shall never dare to take it out again.  

When you go to confession and entrust your sins to the safe-keeping of the priest, do you ever come back for them?  And the yet the atmosphere in a bank is that of the confessional (there is no more kafkaesque situation):  admit that you have money , confess that this is not normal.  And it is true:  having money is an awkward situation, from which the bank is only too happy to deliver you:  ’Your money interests us‘ == the bank holds you to ransom, its greed knows no bounds.  Its immodest gase reveals your private parts to you, and you are forced to hand your money over to appease it.  

One day I tried to close my account, taking all the money out in cash.  The teller would not let me go with such a sum on me:  it was obscene, dangerous, immoral.  Would I not at least take travelers’ cheques?  ’No, the whole lot in case’.  I was mad.  In America, you are stark raving mad if, instead of believing in money an its marvelous fluidity, you want to carry it round on you in banknotes.  Money is dirty;  that you must admit.

Its interesting that he parallels ownership of money with a sin we must be absolved of — rather successfully using the priest and confessional example.  What is more interesting is that this feeling is a universal one as near as I can tell.  I wouldn’t dare think of carrying over $100 cash on me at a given time–never mind the fact that I’ve never had my wallet stolen nor have any fears that it might soon be lost.  I have been conditioned to believe that the bank is the only reasonable place wherein my cash belongs - conditioned into believing that missing out on that 3% interest rate on a grand is the first mis-step in a life doomed to poverty.  After all, if I don’t put that next check right into the bank… I might (gasp!) SPEND it!  Save, Save, Save!  and by no means, don’t trust yourself with that responsibility!  The temptation will be too great to bear if you can feel those bills with your own two fingers; you MUST banish it from your presence… only by forgetting it exists can you be responsible with it.  (but such is the way I was raised).

In some ways it is truly a backwards culture we live in; only by forgetting and removing something from our top-of-mind awareness can we effectively ‘use’ it.

How much more bizarre is it then, that Americans live off credit cards… charging this and that… and frequently incurring debt greater then their cash savings (and paying 20%+ in interest).

What is even more interesting to me — and not directly addressed by Baudrillard — is the systematic devaluation of cash as a means of exchange.  As technology makes things more convenient, we are always turning to non-cash alternatives to procure goods and services (and pay them off for that matter).  If I had my way, I wouldn’t pay with cash at all;  the magical numbers residing on some bank server somewhere gratiously allowing me a modest balance seems more preferable to me –even in its abstractness — then a wadfull of cash ever would.

Is this some universal preference?  or am I just the one crazy person!

I spent most of last weekend reading a book titled “America” by the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard.  Baudrillard, who recently passed away, was perhaps France’s most influental “modern” philosopher (in terms of his writing, he would be classified as a ‘post-modern’ philosopher.)  In some ways, I am on a Baudrillard `kick`… America is the third book of his I have read, all have been excellent.

Although not a particularly recent book, “America” it is still a very insightful look into American culture and opinion as a general matter.  Baudrillard’s genius is the ability to ascertain causes–to determine why things exist in their current form.  Much of the book spends time exploring the reasons WHY the US is different then Europe –Culturally and Politically — often with a surprisingly positive conclusions.

Over the next month, I will be exploring a number of different topics addressed by Baudrillard–sparing you the time required to read the book in its entirety, but allowing you to think about the important issues he raises. 

If you are looking for stimulating reading without weeks of commitment, I highly suggest picking this book up at your local amazon.com retailer.