Tuesday, June 28th, 2011 
This week I am proud to be a New Yorker. Our governor and our state legislature, which have not been a source of pride in recent years, distinguished themselves in noteworthy ways.
There was the normal stuff. A timely budget and new ethics law passed without much drama. And there was the extraordinary, a fundamental human rights advance. Marriage is no longer a heterosexual privilege in my home state.
I should add that there are many problems with Governors Cuomo’s approach to our economic problems, in my opinion: too easy on the wealthy, too hard on the poor and public employees. I hope that now that he has established himself as fiscally responsible, he will turn next year to more directly addressing the suffering of working people and the poor. I am not a fan of the economically conservative, socially liberal blend.
In fact, the establishment of the new marriage contract right has both advantages and disadvantages for specific gay couples, as was observed by Katherine M. Franke in a New York Times op. ed. piece. There is less openness about the inclusion of partners in insurance coverage, more restrictions. The marriage option should not become a marriage compulsion. And I am also not sure how progressive this development is. It is noteworthy that the advance of gay marriage ties people to a traditional state sanctioned relationship, something which wise conservatives have noted (including Gary Alan Fine in a private exchange we had). Gays in the military and gay marriage, seen in this light, are important conservative advances. No wonder former Vice President Cheney is a supporter of gay marriage.
Yet, marriage equality is something that is truly significant, going well beyond the details of the marriage contract and political ideology. It formalizes a fundamental advance in human rights and dignity. Another opinion piece in the Times gets at the true significance of the moment, Frank Bruni’s “To Know Us Is to Let Us Love.” He underscores how spectacular the advance is in comparison to what he had hoped for . . .
Read more: Marriage, Equality, and Dignity
Monday, June 27th, 2011 
Like many, I have been moved by the touching concern of Republican leaders for preserving Medicare. They fret that unless we do something, Medicare will vanish, and when that happens, it will be a very, very bad day. Such heart-felt sentiment always brings to mind Ronald Reagan’s maxim, “Trust but verify.”
Medicare was signed into law on July 30, 1965 by President Lyndon Johnson at a ceremony in Independence, Missouri. He was in the Show-Me State to give President Harry Truman the first Medicare card.
How had we gotten to that point? Howard Dean was incorrect when he suggested that Medicare was passed without the help of Republicans. In fact, of the 32 Republicans in the Senate 13 voted “aye” and 17 “nay.” While Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen did not vote, he went on record in saying that he would have voted in favor. In the House, the Republicans were almost precisely split. Medicare demonstrated the division in the party prior to the Southern realignment. (In the Congress Democrats were more united, but seven Senators and 48 Representatives voted no).
But what was striking was the fact that the arguments against the creation of Medicare by its opponents were similar to those aimed at what some have termed “Obamacare” (I know it has a less snippy label – the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act – but recognize its maker). I acknowledge Ira Rosofsky’s 2009 essay, “Medicare is Socialism” on his blog “Adventures in Old Age,” for capturing some pithy examples, which I have supplemented.
The leading opponent of Medicare as it passed was the American Medical Association, a professional association that, generally speaking, supports our recently enacted health care law. Had they been opposed, the outcome might have been very different. (Whether they were bought off or whether the . . .
Read more: Medicare: Redux or Redo?
Friday, June 24th, 2011 
I am not completely satisfied with my last post. I’m afraid I wasn’t clear enough. I wanted to express my appreciation of Obama’s speech on Afghanistan, while highlighting what I see to be the limitations of his foreign policy. I wanted to show how, judged realistically, Obama’s speech on the Afghanistan drawdown was a significant advance, but also wanted to show why I think he did not go far enough. It’s about principles, not numbers.
Obama presented a vision of change in the direction of American foreign policy, although he didn’t fundamentally question the premise of America as a superpower with global responsibilities. I appreciate and support the vision, but question the premise. I also worry about the identification of defense of country and national security with military capability and response. But, I don’t expect the President of the United States to publicly challenge this identification. He is commander-in-chief and a politician who must ultimately make sense to the majority of the American people, while I can happily call myself a pragmatic pacifist, with all the contradictions that involves. The speech struck me as being successful because Obama linked short terms goals with long term ends, i.e. withdrawing from an unpopular war while diminishing the power of Al Qaeda and giving Afghans a decent chance at determining their own just future, with changing the direction of American foreign policy.
I want a change of direction more radical than the President, but I still can’t be against all wars. Although I realize that non-violent action often gets  things done more effectively and decisively than violent action, I believe that sometimes violence, including military force, is necessary. I understand, even support, the military action in Libya, but I also realize that the use of force in such situations is an indication of weakness. . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review: War and Peace
Thursday, June 23rd, 2011 
In his remarks to the nation last night on the way forward in Afghanistan, the leadership style of President Obama was on full view. He presented a clear rational position, addressing immediate concerns with precision and subtlety, placing a simple decision about the pace of troop withdrawals in a larger historical context. It was rhetorically elegant. It was, from a strictly formal point of view, a satisfying speech. It was substantively, though, challenging, concerning immediate military, political and economic calculations.
I watched the address having earlier in the week attended a local organizing meeting of “Organizing for America” (which will soon again become “Obama for America”). The attendees included those who are realistically pleased with Obama’s Presidency, and those who were once enthusiastic, but are now skeptical. I thought about both the skeptics and the realists watching the speech.
An anti-war activist was particularly concerned about Obama’s war policies. To his mind, Obama has continued Bush’s approach, with variations on a deeply problematic theme. While he had listened carefully during the campaign to Barack Obama, as the candidate promised to withdraw from the bad war in Iraq so that we could fight the good fight in Afghanistan, he has still been disappointed by that war’s escalation. He predicted that Obama would announce a minuscule reduction of forces. I recall: 5,000 this summer and 10,000 in a year. He didn’t believe that a real change in direction of an overly militarized foreign policy would be forthcoming.
The announced troop reductions more than double my neighbor’s expectation. But I suspect that he is not satisfied. After all, the announced withdrawal of 33,000 troops by the end of next summer will still leave twice as many troops in Afghanistan than at the beginning of the Obama administration. The Congressional Democrats who are criticizing Obama’s decision are representing broad public judgment that enough is enough in Afghanistan. I should add that I share this judgment.
There were of course no strong opponents of the President at our meeting. Although it is noteworthy that the first meeting I . . .
Read more: Obama on Afghanistan Troop Withdrawal
Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011 
I’ve been trying to figure out Christopher Hitchens for some ten years now. My first encounter with “Hitch” was in the fall of 2000 when he gave an impromptu talk on the writer’s life in the Mechanics Conference Room at the New School for Social Research in New York City. I had recently quit my longtime corporate-suit job in the Midwest and moved to Manhattan to go to grad school, and he was just coming onto the faculty as a visiting professor in my MA program in liberal studies. Hitchens spoke extemporaneously on a dizzying array of topics, from the evils of religion to the necessity of reading George Orwell to the benefits of grain spirits, punctuating important points with blasts of exhaled cigarette smoke. I was often reminded of that experience, minus the noxious tobacco fumes, while reading his memoir, Hitch-22, now out in paperback.
Indeed, Hitchens’ style in person and in print is tailor-made for the memoir form. Anyone familiar with his much-published writing, his frequent media appearances, and lectures will recognize the facility, abundant throughout the book, with which Hitchens moves from personal experience to grandiloquent pronouncement, tying things together with erudite disquisitions on literature, history, and the darker art of muckraking. A familiar tic is the construction “my dear friend [INSERT FAMOUS PERSON’S NAME]….” In that regard, most of the dramatis personae are familiar to regular Hitchens readers so there isn’t a whole lot that’s revelatory in these particular pages, except for the details, which admittedly tend to be more than interesting enough.
A couple of times in the book, Hitchens remarks on his being a late bloomer. And so it is that some have seen the core of Hitch-22 as the story of the author’s inner journey in adulthood from firebrand 1960s campus radical to geezery Tory. It’s a familiar Baby Boomer trope, of course (The Big Chill, anyone?), but one whose narrative trajectory has a longer history within modern liberal thought. (As nineteenth-century historian and statesman Francois Guizot said: “Not to be a republican [in the 1789 French Revolutionary . . .
Read more: Christopher Hitchens’s Hitch-22: Confessions of a Political Romantic
Tuesday, June 21st, 2011 
Remember Iman al-Obeidi? March 26th was a routine day in the Libyan War. NATO was bombing Libyan military installations and, for its part, the Libyan military was attacking rebel fighters. Most of the world understood that Muammar Qaddafi was no democrat nor was he a threat to global peace. Once again, as in Iraq, the West was attacking a secular Arab dictator in the name of preventing the spread of world jihad. But by late March, the thrill was gone. The allied attacks had become, frankly, mundane. Another day, another ton of ordinance.
And then rushing in from the Arab streets, Iman al-Obeidi appeared. Al-Obeidi appeared at Tripoli’s Rixos Hotel, a gathering place for foreign journalists, and began screaming that she had been raped and tortured by Libyan soldiers. She grabbed the attention of the world, and became something of a cover girl for CNN.
I emphasize that I lack independent knowledge of whether her story, horrific as it is, is true or false. If I were a real commentator – rather than one who plays one on the Internet – my lack of knowledge could be a hurdle. But, then, as I think of it, none of the foreign journalists, even those who sponsored her story, has much more knowledge than I. How would one know? The correspondents at the Rixos have the drama of her presence, but others are as blind as I am.
The history of war is a history both of atrocity and of atrocity stories. The latter, all too common, are used to gin up public support for battle, creating an intense and potent hatred for a demonic foe. They create an enemy so vile that the deaths of our own soldiers are justified. The separation of true and false proves difficult to ascertain, even when the atrocity stories falsely accuse actual bad guys. It wasn’t so long ago – the first Gulf War actually – that Americans were told the grisly and chilling account of Saddam’s troops unplugging the . . .
Read more: Atrocity and Epistemology: Cruel Claims in Troubled Times
Monday, June 20th, 2011 
Memories are not simply about the past. They define the present and shape the future: collective memory making, as Maurice Halbwachs’ influential work demonstrates, personal memories, and iterative interchanges between and among personal, interpersonal, and collected memories. I have been thinking about this on the occasion of the anniversary of a parade in Chicago.
I recently received from someone on a Vietnam War listserv comments and links to Chicago Tribune articles discussing the “Chicago 25th Anniversary Welcome Home Parade” for Vietnam War veterans. Held originally on June 13th, 1986 over a decade after the last Americans had left South Vietnam, the Chicago Welcome Home Parade provided for Vietnam Vets the recognition they felt they were denied upon their return from an unpopular war. The 25th anniversary of the parade was held last weekend, on June 17, 18 and 19, as its original participants are fading away, many no longer able to march.
It is estimated that about 200,000 veterans marched and another 300,000 spectators cheered them on in 1986, a surprisingly large number. In 1985, New York City had a ticker-tape parade in which about 25,000 Vietnam veterans participated. Prior to 1982, when the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated, Vietnam Veterans received very little recognition and many rarely talked about the war. The memorials and parades changed attitudes towards Vietnam Veterans and how they felt about themselves.
The Chicago Tribune’s multimedia links capture objectified personal and collected memories, providing insights into interpersonal and collective memories. This year’s anniversary celebration afforded numerous associational opportunities for the participants including a banquet, the display of the Moving Wall, a half-sized replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, a ceremony which honored soldiers who have returned from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and an interfaith service held at Chicago’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The organizers believe that no soldier should have to wait . . .
Read more: Memory Making: The 25th Anniversary of Chicago’s Welcoming Home Parade
Friday, June 17th, 2011 
As a social critic, I am ambivalent about the power of imaginative action in politics. On the one hand, I think that the power of the definition of the situation is a key resource of power for the powerless, the cultural grounding of “the politics of small things.” On the other hand, I worry about myth-making that is independent of factual truth.
On the positive side, there is the definition of the situation: “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.” This relatively simple assertion, the so called Thomas theorem, was first presented in a study of child psychology and behavioral problems by W.I. Thomas and his wife, Dorothy Swain Thomas. Yet, the theorem has very important political implications, going well beyond the area of the Thomases initial concern, moving in a very different direction than the one taken by the field of ethnomethodology, which can be understood as the systematic scholarly discipline of the definition of the situation.
While researching cultural and political alternatives in Poland and beyond in the 1980s and 90s I observed first hand how the theorem, in effect, became the foundational idea of the democratic opposition to the Communist system in Central Europe. The dissident activists acted as if they lived in a free society and created freedom as a result. A decision was made in Poland, in the 70s, by a group of independent intellectuals and activists to secede from the official order and create an alternative public life. People ignored the commands of the Communist Party and associated apart from Party State control, openly publicizing their association. They created alternative publications. They opened the underground by publicizing their names, addresses and phone numbers. They acted freely. They developed ties with workers and others beyond their immediate social circles. And when the regime for its own reasons didn’t arrest them, an alternative public life and an oppositional political force flourished, which ultimately prevailed over the regime.
The powerless can develop power that . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review: Political Imagination, the Definition of the Situation and Fictoids
Thursday, June 16th, 2011 
After a couple of centuries of errors, today we know that there is greater genetic variation within races than across them. Racial groups differ in more or less 6 percent of their genes, which means that ninety four percent of variation occurs within conventional racial categories. Race is thus a construct without genetic basis. To be sure, it is not a biological fact, the American Anthropological Association says, but “a social mechanism invented during the 18th century” in part to justify the European colonial expansion. The notion that there are human subspecies stems primarily from colonial ideologies, particularly from the idea that nature, and thus God, ordained a hierarchy of races, a belief that justified slavery and underpinned the laws and the logic that governed colonial economies.
Consider the notion that there is a “white race,” which is generally defined in the U.S. as “descent from any of the original peoples of Europe,” as census folk say. The idea that a white race naturally stems from any European roots is very recent. Bear in mind that the Romans, the Greeks, the Gauls, the Franks, etc., never thought of themselves as “white,” as sharing the same racial boat by virtue of being “Europeans.” Julius Caesar could never think of himself as white. A direct descendant from Aphrodite, he was, instead, of the race of the gods. To find folks who believe that European ancestry, broadly conceived, endows them with a race, we have to go all the way to the 20th century. We have to picture a time when the children and grandchildren of European immigrants to the U.S. melted into a common culture and eventually into a common “white race.”
This happened by the middle of the 20th century. In 1922, Jim Rollings, a black man from Alabama, was dragged to a court accused of the crime of miscegenation, of having had very consensual sex with a white woman, one Edith Labue. Luckily for the defendant, the woman in question was Italian. As soon as the judge discovered that important piece of . . .
Read more: The Fictoid of Race
Wednesday, June 15th, 2011 
A while ago, I read a frightening piece in The New York Times, on looted weapons in Libya. The hopeful side of the report is that the opposition to the brutal dictator (who has systematically attacked unarmed citizens) is militarily empowered, using the weapons of the dictatorial regime against the dictatorship. But the Times report emphasized the dangers. With arms now circulating outside the formal control of the state, there is a high likelihood that some of them will reach the black market and get into the hands of terrorists outside this zone of conflict. C.J. Chives, the Times reporter examines particularly this dangerous side of recent events there.
Indeed it’s scary. Nihilists of various sorts might obtain missiles that are capable of attacking commercial airliners. As someone who often flies abroad for professional and family purposes, I am particularly concerned. This security threat is very real, Chives reports, because in relatively recent past examples of state arsenals being looted by civilians, Uganda in 1979, Albania in 1997 and Iraq in 2003, the fear has been confirmed.
When I was reading this article, I thought about another circumstance when such fear in the end seems to have proven unfounded, and in which I was peripherally involved. The collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1989 led many to worry that terrorists, who had been armed and supported by the Soviet bloc, would become rogue and free floating. Further, there was the fear that their preferred weapons, sophisticated plastic explosives, specifically semtex, might be used in new ways, not disciplined by the logic of the cold war. It was in this context that I became a suspected terrorist.
I was coming home from a two month trip around the old Soviet bloc in the late winter of 1990. This visit would later become the basis of my theoretical travelogue, After the Fall: The Pursuit of Democracy in Central Europe. I . . .
Read more: Reflections of a Terrorist Suspect
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