By Rafael Narvaez, July 11th, 2011 
Few words today are more worn out than “fascist.” As a mere term of abuse, particularly in the Obama era, it has lost all conceptual and political precision. Thus, Obama is a “fascist” as are Dick Cheney and a range of other people, from the Pope to the “Judeofascist Zionists,” to “Islamofascists,” to any third world satrap. “Tree huggers” are environmental fascists. Gay men in New York complain about “bodily fascism,” the high standards of muscularity that predominate in certain gay subcultures. “Fascist” has taken this increasingly clichéd side-road, it would seem, because actual fascist politics have virtually no relevance today, and so we have no point of reference when we say that so and so is a fascist. Of course, there is always the old Duce, Benito Mussolini and the History Channel. But the Duce has reemerged, transformed in the eyes of many consumers of the cultural industry, which often depicts him as a generic and predictably scripted evil character, a pompous lout in the business of world-domination (Charlie Chaplin’s Benzino Napaloni remains a personal favorite).
That Obama and Cheney are “fascists” is a clear indication that we no longer know who the Duce was, and what fascism meant; namely, a catastrophic collapse of modernity under its own ideological and technological weight, a breakdown of the project of the Enlightenment itself, as Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, two German philosophers concerned with fascism, may agree.
Yet, the triteness of the word aside, I have been wondering if fascist types, the personality characteristics that Adorno unsuccessfully tried to measure with the so called “F-scale” (F for fascist), are still around. I wonder if the regular guy who would have fitted well in the Duce’s ranks is with us in the subway and in the supermarket. And if so, I also wonder whether he (or she) may become politically relevant, even if by small degrees and at a local level.
 . . .
Read more: American Fascism?
By Gary Alan Fine, 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?
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, 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
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, 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
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, June 1st, 2011 
I feel as if I am following President Obama’s itinerary through Europe. For me, it started with a quick stopover in Dublin on my way to Paris. My wife and I will spend more time in Dublin next week, where she will explore her father’s hometown for the first time. Naomi is one of a rare breed, an Irish Jew. Her family spent a generation there between Latvia and Canada. We are even going to be looking for a long lost elderly cousin. Later this summer, I will be off to Poland, on my annual teaching stint in The New School’s summer Democracy and Diversity Institute. These coincidences (I was also in London a few months ago) and returns come to mind because, as with Obama, my stay in Europe this time is stimulating me to think not only about European matters, but also about North Africa and the Middle East from the point of view of European experience.
During his stay in Poland, the President met with former leaders of the democratic opposition and Solidarity movement, and noted that what Poland went through twenty-five years ago proves that the move from an authoritarian regime to a democratic one is quite possible, though also quite difficult. He spoke as a political leader wanting to position America and its allies together in support of the Arab Spring. He emphasized institution building, the rights of minorities and a free press. I don’t disagree with him, and I should add as an old Polish hand, it warms my heart to see my friends being used as an example of political success.
Yet, democratic consolidation is not completely achieved in Poland and among its neighbors, and there is always a threat, as has been observed here in Andras Bozoki’s report on the situation in Hungary, that a transition to democracy may be followed by a transition from democracy. This depends upon attitudes and shared beliefs of the citizenry.
![]( "Mourners in front of the Presidential Palace </i></strong></em></b>. . .
<p>Read more: <a href=") Letter from Paris: Thinking about the Middle East, North Africa and Central Europe
By Gary Alan Fine, May 24th, 2011 
 
I am allergic to political gatherings. You are not likely to discover me at movement rallies, rubber-chicken circuit banquets, or victory parties (more commonly weep-in-your-drink defeatathons). I treasure the quietude of the old voting booths where one could think one’s civic thoughts while surrounded by worn fabric. I enjoyed the experience so much that I annually decided to change at least one intended vote just because that choice would mean that casting a ballot was an act of deliberation.
Still, nineteen years ago on a bright September afternoon, I made my way to the train station in Norcross, Georgia, near where I resided at the time. That day Al Gore was coming to town. I no longer recall whether Gore was riding a whistle-stop train or merely using the station as a nostalgic background. Given Atlanta’s transportation mess, I imagine it was the latter. The idea of rearranging my schedule to hear Senator Gore declaim might seem an act of perversity, or at least desperation.
But it was not. It was lovely and sweet and purposive, not only because of the flags and the band and National gemeinschaft and Southern gemutlichkeit. Without yelling, Al Gore was eloquent, passionate and true. At least true enough for campaign purposes. I left persuaded that the order of the Democrats’ 1992 ticket should be reversed. I voted standing on my head.
I tell this tale because of current discussions of Indiana’s Mitch Daniels and Minnesota’s Timothy James Pawlenty, both of whom being regarded as a bit wonkish and “Gorish.” Apparently Daniels homelife was slightly Gothic, and he decided that he could miss the attentions of Perez Hilton, Gail Collins, Larry Flynt, and Matt Drudge, but T-Paw has decided to make a go of it. It is too early to trek to a local rail station, if there are any . . .
Read more: In Praise of Serious Pols
By Gershon Shafir, May 23rd, 2011 
Finally! Finally there is a row between the US and Israel over the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. President Obama found the steel in his backbone to tell off Prime Minister Netanyahu. The formula Obama used was not new, but, significantly, one put forth most recently as part of the Mahmoud Abbas-Salam Fayyad plan to request the recognition of the UN for a Palestinian state within the 1967 boundaries. Obama zeroed in like a hawk on the borders issue and, lo and behold, he ruined most of Netanyahu’s week in Washington.
It has already been pointed out that Obama himself mocked the Palestinian UN plan as leading to only symbolic results. Or that he left the issues of Jerusalem and the refugees to a later stage of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. And, finally, that the 1967 borders is a red herring, a non-issue, since Obama also recognized that the final Israeli-Palestinian border will involve territorial swaps. In fact, it has been suggested that by now even Netanyahu wishes to hang on only to “settlement blocs” and is ready to concede the rest of the West Bank.
This, then, appears to be no more than a spat between those who view the glass empty and those who see it as full. We seemed to be asked: should we focus on the land to be kept or ceded? Focusing on the words, however, would be misleading. It is the tune that makes the music.
Obama has been looking since his inauguration for a formula to jolt to life the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. His first, unsuccessful, formula was a settlement freeze. He received bad advice: experience has shown the settlements can either expand or shrink, but cannot be put in the freezer. This time, he wrapped the settlement issue within the borders controversy and created the possibility for real traction. Obama has broken the ice and herein resides the significance of his statement on . . .
Read more: Going Forward by Going Back to 1967
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, May 22nd, 2011
Because the demands of the academic cycle, because of the challenge of term papers, dissertations and dissertation proposals, I am late this week in this review. But now that I have a few moments this Sunday evening, I can make a few points, noting that all week we have been concerned about the difficult relationship between words and deeds.
If there were any deed which would be clearly and unambiguously a candidate for automatic verbal condemnation, it would seem to be slavery, but this is not the case. Narvaez shows, choosing the extreme case to make his very important point, judging the unacceptable requires a capacity for moral indignation. He worries that with the noise of infotainment, of cable television, web surfing and social networking, the capacity to express indignation is waning. On the other hand, Gary Alan Fine, in his reply to Narvaez, seems to be as concerned with the direction of such indignation as its presence or absence. Condemnations of Israel, for example, sometimes come too easily from the left and the Arab world, and they can be manufactured, as Daniel Dayan shows in his post this week.
This was an exciting and provocative exchange. I think Narvaez in his response to Fine revealed how sound public debate yields results when it is specific. Small things, details, make all the difference. Not moral indignation about Israeli atrocities, but a specific atrocity, the complicity in the massacre in Sabra and Shatila, for example. And Narvaez is surely right, democracy requires such indignation. The jaded society is a clear and present danger to democracy, explaining for example broad American acceptance of torture of political prisoners as long as it goes by the Orwellian name of “enhanced interrogation.”
And paying close attention to the relationship between words and deeds applies as well to the persistent problem of fictoids in our public life, as we discussed last year. Little tales that confirm preconceived . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review: Words and Deeds
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, May 19th, 2011 
President Barack Obama gave a powerful speech today, one of his best. The president was again eloquent, but there is concern here in the U.S. and also abroad in the Arab world, that eloquence is not enough, that it may in fact be more of the problem than the solution. The fine words don’t seem to have substance in Egypt, according to a report in The Washington Post. There appears to be a global concern that Obama’s talk is cheap. Obama’s “Cairo Speech” all over again, one Egyptian declared. Now is the time for decisive action. Now is the time for the President of the United States to put up or shut up. (Of course, what exactly is to be put up is another matter.)
This reminds me of another powerful writer-speaker, President Vaclav Havel. Havel is the other president in my lifetime that I have deeply admired. Both he and Obama are wonderful writers and principled politicians, both have been criticized for the distance between their rhetorical talents and their effectiveness in realizing their principles.
Agreeing with the criticisms of Havel, I sometimes joke about my developing assessment of him. I first knew about Vaclav Havel as a bohemian, as a very interesting absurdist playwright. I wrote my dissertation about Polish theater when this was still his primary occupation, and I avidly read his work then as I tried to understand why theater played such an important role in the opposition to Communism in Central Europe.
I then came to know him as one of the greatest political essayists and dissidents of the twentieth century. At the theoretical core of two of my books, Beyond Glasnost: The Post Totalitarian Mind and The Politics of Small Things: The Power of the Powerless in Dark Times are the ideas to be found in Havel’s greatest essay, “The Power of the Powerless.”
However, as president, Havel was not so accomplished. He presided over the breakup of Czechoslovakia, a development he opposed passionately, but ineffectually. He sometimes seemed to think that he could right a political problem by writing a telling . . .
Read more: Reflections on President Obama’s Speech on the Middle East and North Africa
By Daniel Dayan, May 10th, 2011 
Watching Others Watching
Osama bin Laden has been killed and what do we get to see? A group of distinguished spectators watching an invisible screen. Vice President Joe Biden is close to the screen. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is seen covering her mouth with her hand, perhaps in horror. President-elect Barack Obama is leaning forward. A New York City subway newspaper has speculated that this was “the moment the president watched bin Laden die.” The visibility of an event has been replaced by the image of a group of officials who are watching what is invisible to us.
Bin Laden’s death is one of this year’s major events. Transpiring less than a week after the British Royal Wedding, it reveals the futility of the London bash. It reminds us that from time to time there are events that are truly historic, events that end a period of intellectual and affective unrest. Yet, there is something puzzling about the death of bin Laden. Important events tend to be visible. Can we believe in their magnitude if visibility is missing? In fact, can we believe they truly happened? Why do we feel short-changed, almost disappointed, waiting for the rest of the event to occur? Perhaps because bin Laden’s death was a deed but not a discourse, a blow but not an expressive event. Or perhaps we are not used to events that are both blind and mute.
A Blind Event
In the absence of images, testimonies and narratives curiously vacillate. They start to stutter. During the raid, bin Laden attempted to resist and was shot in the head. Bin Laden threatened the American commandos with a gun and was shot in the head. Bin Laden hid behind a woman, using her as a human shield, and was shot in the head. Bin Laden’s wife rushed the assaulter and was shot in the leg. Bin Laden was unarmed but shot and killed.
Here is another example of an indecisive account. “Bin Laden was buried at the North Arabian Sea from the deck of a US aircraft carrier at 2 am EST after . . .
Read more: Osama and Obama: One Death, Four Invisibilities
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Letter from Paris: Thinking about the Middle East, North Africa and Central Europe