UP@NIGHT
UP@NIGHT
UP@NIGHT
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Early to bed, and early to rise,
Makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise
- Benjamin Franklin.
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I don’t see it.
- George Washington
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Now both of these are high authorities – very high and respectable authorities – but I am with General Washington first, last, and all the time on this proposition.
Because I don’t see it, either. . . .
Put no trust in the benefits to accrue from early rising, as set forth by the infatuated Franklin – but stake the last cent of your substance on the judgment of old George Washington, the Father of his Country, who said “he couldn’t see it.”
And you hear me endorsing that sentiment.
Mark Twain, “Early Rising, As Regards Excursions to the Cliff House,” MARK TWAIN IN THE GOLDEN ERA 1863-1866.
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Senator Elect Al Franken, A Man Who Has His Priorities Right
Nice to know that the new senator from Minnesota, Al Franken, has his priorities right.
Iran: Sites for the Most Recent Information
June, 20, 2009. “The Daily Dish” (and other sites)
The uprising in Iran is one of the most important and compelling stories of the new millennium. How events unfold in Iran will be crucial to the region, but they will also tell us something about how future resistance against authoritarian regimes can be organized.
The MSM is having difficulty keeping up with events for the some of the same reasons that the Iranian autocrats are finding it difficult to shut down the protests and close off Iran to the world, namely, new technologies. Posted below are links to sites that should be helpful in keeping up-to-date.
The Daily Dish-Andrew Sullivan (the site that is the most comprehensive)
Iran Up-Dates (Video): Live Blogging the Uprising, Huffington Post
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PM, June 20, 2009, President Obama’s statement:
The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.
As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.
Martin Luther King once said – “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.
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Obama has been criticized for not saying enough. Wrong! He has played this absolutely correctly. We don’t need to give Iranian autocrats any more “reasons” to blame foreign interference. Obama could not have prevented the violence by taking sides. He could have only weakened the oppostion’s hand. We all know where Obama, the community organizer, stands on this one. There will be time for tough talk.
Link to Pictures from Iran
The Whole World is Watching
I AM UNDER EXTREME PRESSURE TO ACCEPT THE RESULTS OF THE SHAM ELECTION. THEY HAVE CUT ME OFF FROM ANY COMMUNICATION WITH PEOPLE AND AM UNDER SURVEILLANCE. I ASK THE PEOPLE TO STAY IN THE STREETS BUT AVOID VIOLENCE
Message from Iranian opposition leader Mousavi, Sunday, June 14. (The message and the picture of a Mousavi supporter are from Andrew Sullivan’s cite, The Daily Dish.)
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Prague 1968 (Wikipedia, “Prague Spring”)
I have that sinking feeling again. The one that I first had in 1968 when the Soviet Union suppressed the hopes of the Czechoslovakian people for liberalization by invading. Not exactly the same situation as today’s Iran, but similar in the way in which an authoritarian regime can use muscle to undermine democratic reforms.
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The reactionary leadership in Iran is seeking to employ the Big Lie. In this case, if you make yourself look like a really big winner, then you will be entitled to run the opposition out of town or into the ground.
However, even if the regime in Tehran is currently managing to promote its lie by cutting internet connections, they won’t be able to continue to do so forever. In the meantime, the world can keep watching and letting the Iranian regime know that no one believes Ahmadinejad is the legitimately elected president of Iran. Bloggers should post as much information as they can. There is no telling what may or may not circulate at this point, and where.
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P.S. Our hands are certainly not clean when it comes to Iran. In 1953 the United States undermined reforms in Iran by helping to dispose of the legitimately elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq. The CIA backed coup was know as Operation Ajax. We then supported the brutal Shah for 26 years.
“Citizens of the World, Newt is not one of you”
Poor Newt Gingrich–the de facto leader, along with Sarah Palin, of the right wing of the Republican Party–can’t seem to chew gum and walk at the same time. How do I know this? Well, he seems to find it impossible to be a loyal citizen of the United States while at the same time recognizing that he is a also member of a wider human community.
Newt appears to be very confused about the idea of world citizenship. The New York Times reports the following,
Newt Gingrich might not be “a citizen of the world,” as he proudly proclaimed at the G.O.P.’s annual fundraising dinner, going so far as to offer a reverse shout-out to all of the countries he distinctly wouldn’t want to be a citizen of —“North Korea, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Cuba or Russia.” June 8, 209, “In Palin’s Shadow, Republicans Collect Cash”
The idea of being a world citizen is an old one, going back at least to the stoics of Ancient Greece and Rome. Marcus Aurelius, the emperor of Rome, and a defender of the Roman Empire, didn’t appear to have any problem asserting that one could be both a loyal citizen of a country and a citizen of the world.
“My city and country, so far as I am Antoninus, is Rome, but so far as I am a man, it is the world.” The Meditations, Book Six, 44.
Newt has a reputation for being one of the intellectuals of the Republican right. I hope that this proves false for the sake of conservatism in American, for it appears that Newt believes that being a citizen of the world requires him to be a citizen of specific countries, for example, North Korea and Zimbabwe, in addition to the United States. It’s hard to imagine how anyone with a Ph.D., and Newt has one, least of all a historian, could be so confused about an idea that has been central to Western (and world) civilization for at least two thousand years. The idea is not that one should be willing to trade one’s nationality for another, but that one should seek to look beyond the borders of one’s nation to a common humanity. (Was this not Christ’s message?) We are citizens of nations, but as human beings we share a common humanity.
And it appears that Ronald Reagan had little difficulty understanding and asserting this claim. He opened a speech to the UN on June 17, 1982, with the following words:
“I speak today as both a citizen of the United States and of the world. I come with the heartfelt wishes of my people for peace, bearing honest proposals and looking for genuine progress.” The American Presidency Project
Gingrich fallaciously paints everything in black and white terms, either it is this or that, and asserts with absolute certainty that it is one or the other, citizen of the U.S. or of the world. This is just the kind of ideological mind-set that has proved so devastating in Washington and in the country in the last few decades. It surfaced in the way in which Gingrich railed against Sotomayor and targeted Obama on the issue of empathy.
“Look, the whole concept that President Obama has talked about — that he worries about empathy. We don’t have the rule of empathy. We have the rule of law.” Media Matters
But as Media Matters points out, Gingrich’s claim is misleading, to say the least. Obama never suggested replacing law with empathy. He spoke of his desire to appoint a judge who is empathetic and dedicated to the rule of law.
During the June 4 edition of Fox News’ Hannity, Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich forwarded the false conservative talking point that President Obama said he would seek a justice who shows “empathy” rather than a commitment to follow the law. But Obama actually said his nominee will do both. Gingrich claimed, “Look, the whole concept that President Obama has talked about — that he worries about empathy. We don’t have the rule of empathy. We have the rule of law.” In fact, in Obama’s May 1 statement to which conservatives have repeatedly pointed, immediately after saying, “I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people’s hopes and struggles, as an essential ingredient for arriving as just decisions and outcomes,” Obama said he “will seek somebody who is dedicated to the rule of law, who honors our constitutional traditions, who respects the integrity of the judicial process and the appropriate limits of the judicial role.”
There is a connection between Gingrich’s attack on the idea of world citizenship and his attack on empathy that extends beyond his fallacious bifurcations. One reason that we can be world citizens is because we are capable of being empathetic toward those who may not be members of our own tribe or nation. Empathy should be understood in two ways. First, there is the sense in which one is empathetic if one can stand in the other guy’s shoes, that is, see the world from alternative perspectives. Obama often speaks about this “skill.” Second, empathy can be understood as synonym for compassion. The ability to stand in the other guy’s shoes doesn’t necessarily lead to compassion, but it does lead to a better understanding of where he or she is coming from. Our capacity to empathize in both senses of the term is an important factor in our ability to be world citizens. Gingrich doesn’t want this capacity to be a feature of our judges and, I suggest, he doesn’t want it to be a feature of the way in which we approach other peoples. If we approach other peoples with empathy, we enter the dangerous territory of world citizenship, which detracts from being an American. Empathy tears down “natural” boundaries that Newt would prefer to leave intact, and it will turn us into bleeding heart liberals who care more about other folks than members of our own nation. What nonsense. When seen in this light, Gingrich’s comments on world citizenship are not merely provincial. They are xenophobic. He is waiving the flag in a way that is dangerously close to nationalisms that plagued the twentieth century and gave us two world wars.
If I am wrong about the connection between Gingrich’s distrust of empathy in the courtroom and his anti-cosmopolitanism, then I believe it is Gingrich who must set the record straight. His words thus far make this a more than reasonable inference.
Obama and Pragmatism
There appears to be a growing cottage industry that is addressing whether Obama is merely a pragmatist, in the narrow sense of the term–that is, one who places strategic considerations first–or whether he is philosophical pragmatist. In my view, Obama is indeed a philosophical pragmatist. If you are interested in understanding what makes Obama tick and how he might maneuver politically, this question is worth your time. And for your convenience, there is now a site dedicated to discussing the issue of Obama’s pragmatism. (See “Barack Obama’s Pragmatism.”)
In several blogs on UP@NIGHT and on other sites, I have mentioned that Obama’s mother studied with the granddaughter of John Dewey, perhaps the most famous pragmatist of the twentieth century. Of course one would not want to make too much of this connection. On the other hand, it is not meaningless, especially when Alice Dewey addresses Obama’s pragmatism in the context of his idealism. The passages below are from an article in the Star Bulletin (Hawaii), “Strong Women Lead Obama.”
At his homecoming rally Friday, Barack Obama paid tribute to his late mother, a single mom who sacrificed to ensure he received the best education. His next stop was to visit his 85-year-old grandmother.
These two strong women each were pioneers in their fields and helped shape the presidential candidate’s outlook on life. “Like his mother, Barry is a pragmatic idealist,” said Alice Dewey, an emeritus professor at the University of Hawaii and family friend. “If you have ideals and want to accomplish things, you’ve got to be pragmatic about it.”
…. “Ann’s work was almost entirely in villages,” said Dewey, her friend and thesis adviser. “Barry found his feet in the streets of Chicago. It was urban, but it was the same thing, get out there to talk to people, listen to their needs and try to put together something that will work. Like Ann, he was thinking, how do you help the folks who need it?”
If these statements were coming from someone other than the granddaughter of John Dewey, and from someone who was not academically trained, I would be inclined to equate “pragmatic” with “strategic,” and to view the phrase, “try to put together something that will work,” in the same light. And surely this is part of their meaning. But given that Alice Dewey knew that she was being interviewed for a newspaper article and not an academic audience, and that she used the phrase “pragmatic idealist,” which sounds like an oxymoron to most of those unaware of the tradition of philosophical pragmatism, I suspect that this was her way of telegraphing that Obama is not merely a strategic pragmatist. He is something more. Perhaps a philosophical pragmatist. (Yes, she could have meant that he was merely a smart idealist, but the passage discussing what “works” counters this interpretation.)
Ultimately the evidence for Obama’s philosophical pragmatism will have to come from his words and deeds. For those interested in pursuing this connection, check out the web page on Obama mentioned above and click “links.”
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P.S. For those who read Spanish, you may be interested in a piece that appeared recently in the most important paper in Lima, Peru on Obama, pragmatism, and John Dewey. “Obama contextualiza decisiones” by Gregory Pappas.
A Dozen Reasons that the new Star Trek Fails, with trailers…..
Spoiler Alert. This review talks about details of the plot of the new Star Trek movie.
Part I Hope Springs Infernal for Old Star Trek Junkies
One may wonder why someone of my age and interests would be writing about Star Trek. Well, I consider it a part of the collective consciousness of my generation (baby boomers) and the one that followed. The Star Trek phenomenon is worth reflecting on for what it tells us about where we have been and where we might be going. Popular culture can sometimes do that.
I won’t go through the litany here of all that this show may have meant for those who followed it. Let me just say that it embodied an Enlightenment sensibility about the future that had been very much a part of our culture. The future could be better, not only technologically, but ethically. For those of us shaken by the Cold War and the Vietnam War, Spock’s rationality certainly appeared preferable to Dr. Strangelove. And now, of course, there is the Spock/Obama connection, which has been much talked about. A president who might be rational (and feeling, but in a deep sort of way)? Very cool. So, a new Star Trek movie seemed like just the ticket in the spring of 2009. I really wanted it to work.
Part II The Reboot
The producers and writers of the new Star Trek knew what they were doing. They wanted a reboot. They got it. They wanted to reach a larger audience. They have. People, young people, appear to love it. They are going to make some big bucks. Hats off to the big Hollywood corporate establishment.
I am not one of those old fans of Star Trek that feels that any tampering with the “brand” is necessarily a bad thing. (As a matter of fact, I like what I have seen of the upgrade of the first two seasons of the original Star Trek. The improvement in special effects is welcome.) But I do resent the attempt by Abrams, the new movie’s director, to dismiss criticism by claiming that 10% of the old fans won’t be satisfied with anything that he does. The new Star Trek movie may be a success financially, and it may provide entertainment for some, but it certainly doesn’t measure up to the old series, and not because 10% of the old fans are cranky. Deflecting criticism in this fashion won’t cut it.
Part III The Trailers
I have a list of reasons for why the new movie is problematic. But first I recommend that you take a look at a trailer for the new Star Trek and compare it to the trailer for The Wrath of Khan, a movie that many have claimed is similar to the new one. And then as a treat, check out a third trailer. It was done by a fan, Dustin, several months ago. (According to his bio, he’s 24, so clearly not a boomer.) He didn’t like the trailer for the new movie, even before he saw it. One of the things that makes his edit interesting is that it invokes a sense of wonder, as well as an anticipation of the new, that was part of the old series, and which is totally absent from Abrams’s movie.
It’s too bad Abrams didn’t make Dustin’s movie.
Notice in Abram’s trailer that there is only a short image of the latest villain, Nero, while the older villain, Khan, fills the screen with his voice and personality. (How novel is this one? A Romulan named Nero. Give me a break. Both Nero and Khan are seeking revenge, but Nero looks like a tattooed motorcycle gang member, who’s fuming about someone stealing his bike. While Khan is, well, Khan.)
Part IV The Dozen Reasons (although there could be many more)
Okay, I promised a dozen reasons for why the new movie doesn’t cut it as a satisfying member of the Star Trek universe. Not in any particular order:
1. Suspension of disbelief. There are limits. This movie requires one to believe that a frustrated Spock, instead of sending Kirk to the brig, throws him off the ship to land on an ice covered planet, where in all likelihood he would die. Low and behold, Spock prime, the real Mr. Spock, is on this very planet. After being chased by a monster, Kirk just happens to run into a cave in which Spock has been hanging out, having been marooned by Nero, the tattooed villain. Spock then takes Kirk to a Federation outpost, where, low and behold, he meets Scotty. And how did Kirk get into the Star Fleet? No exams for this young man. Just a dad who was a hero and a note about his being a genius. I won’t go on. This is not only poor science fiction; it’s poor fiction. And it doesn’t work as fantasy, because even in the latter genre there are some rules.
2. Cavalier attitude toward violence and genocide. Okay, there are times that planets have to be destroyed in science fiction, but in this movie, two of them are gone in a New York minute, each with billions of people. In one case the apparent need for this plot device is to create a madman, Nero, in another, to make Spock emotional. You don’t go killing off billions of people, even if they are Vulcans and Romulans, in order to account for the psychology of two characters.
3. Pacing. The T.V. series was paced in a way that was often hypnotic. (This is less true of the movies, but there are some exceptions.) Time slowed down. One had time to look around and see what this new world looked like. The new movie assumes that everyone in the audience suffers from ADD. Look another star ship just blew up. Look people are falling off ledges. Look at all the lights….
4. Humorlessness. The humor in the writing is contrived and characters at times appear to parodying lines from the series. I simply don’t understand those who have talked about the humor in this movie. It is weak. It is saccharine. And a Star Trek without humor is like space without time.
5. This movie could have been made with virtually no reference to the Star Trek universe. It’s bang and shot em up vision of space would have worked just about as well with another cast of characters.
6. If the villain is not a tattooed member of a motor cycle gang, then he is an escaped patient from a mental ward who is off his medication. He certainly has nothing of the Romulan in him. (He doesn’t even look like one.) Special effects can not compensate for weak villains. And weak villains undermine the character of the heroes. (The worst Star Trek films all had weak villains.)
7. The music is claustrophobic. Check out how different Dustin’s edit is of the new trailer, in part because he is using music from older movies.
8. The young Kirk is caricature of the original Kirk. Again, lack of humor is part of the problem. The character is one-dimensional. He might as well be a bad boy who turns star football captain. (And the bits with the little convertible and then the motorcycle…..This guy is not James Dean, and neither was Shatner.)
9. There wasn’t one original science fiction idea in the entire movie. Every single “idea” can be found in countless movies. (Did we really have to see the ship saved by dumping the warp core? Oh, no, not the warp core again. And then there was “the ledge.” Just how many times did the young Kirk find himself hanging off a ledge of some sort?)
10. The movie had nothing to say. This is fine if your aim is simply to entertain. But you would think that the reboot of a series that did have some ideas would have tried just one or two.
11. I prefer Apples to P.C.’s, but really, did the Bridge have to look like it was designed by the Apple folks. (There were times that I thought I might have seen an Apple logo or two.) This is a small quibble, but I believe that it reflects a lack of imagination on the part of the film’s creators.
12. This movie was not about boldly going where no one has gone before. It was about staying close to a formula that has succeeded in recent action films. It is bread and circus of a particular vintage, post 9/11 escapism.
Good or great movies (or series) leave us with scenes to remember. What will you remember about this film 10 months from now? (Young Kirk hanging on to some nondescript ledge?) Oh, I know. At least I know for boomers: Leonard Nimoy’s face as the aged Spock saying to Kirk, you have always been my friend and always will be my friend. And the only really funny line in the movie, when the older Spock tells the younger Spock that he was messing with Kirk’s head when he claimed that a terrible paradox when ensue if the two Spocks met. A terrible paradox did not ensue, unfortunately. That might have been fun. Just a weak movie.
I rest my case.
Bronx on the Court, Empathy, and Obama’s Pragmatism
In declaring his criteria for a Supreme Court nominee when Justice Souter announced his departure, Obama mentioned empathy and real world experience, in addition to a deep knowledge of the law. At the time, right wing ideologues started screeching about how the term “empathy” was merely a code word for a liberal activist judge. The fact that Obama has emphasized the importance of empathy in numerous contexts, not just with regard to the Court, was ignored. Since empathy must equal “activism,” these ever so sharp right wing talking heads were prepared to shout in unison, “gotcha.”
Sonia Sotomajor may be a left leaning centrist, but she is certainly no left wing radical. The reasons Obama gave for choosing her fall right in line with his version philosophical pragmatism, which is related to his insistence that empathy is a legitimate criterion for selecting a member of the Supreme Court. Failure to understand that Obama is a philosophical pragmatist, as opposed to simply a political one, explains much of the confusion about his approach to selecting nominees and advisers. When Obama talks about the importance of experience, when he talks about consequences (as opposed to abstract principles), when he talks about fallibilism, when he talks about consultation and cooperation, and when he talks about what works, he is using well known catch phrases of this tradition. And he knows it. Unfortunately, political commentators, left, right and center, don’t.
Obama’s commitment to philosophical pragmatism was highlighted this week when he invoked the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in announcing his selection of Sotomajor. Obama and Holmes are on the same wave length in how they understand the role of law in society (and society in law). And Holmes was deeply indebted to the pragmatist tradition and counted among his closest friends the leading pragmatists of his day. ( See, “Obama: Conservative, Liberal, or Ruthless Pragmatist?”) Holmes’s most famous statement about the law is indicative of his pragmatism, and Obama cited it in order to help explain one of the most important decisions of his presidency.
So I don’t take this decision lightly. I’ve made it only after deep reflection and careful deliberation. While there are many qualities that I admire in judges across the spectrum of judicial philosophy, and that I seek in my own nominee, there are few that stand out that I just want to mention.
First and foremost is a rigorous intellect — a mastery of the law, an ability to hone in on the key issues and provide clear answers to complex legal questions. Second is a recognition of the limits of the judicial role, an understanding that a judge’s job is to interpret, not make, law; to approach decisions without any particular ideology or agenda, but rather a commitment to impartial justice; a respect for precedent and a determination to faithfully apply the law to the facts at hand.
These two qualities are essential, I believe, for anyone who would sit on our nation’s highest court. And yet, these qualities alone are insufficient. We need something more. For as Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.” Experience being tested by obstacles and barriers, by hardship and misfortune; experience insisting, persisting, and ultimately overcoming those barriers. It is experience that can give a person a common touch and a sense of compassion; an understanding of how the world works and how ordinary people live. And that is why it is a necessary ingredient in the kind of justice we need on the Supreme Court. New York Times, May 26, 2009 (empahasis added)
“How ordinary people live,” this too has been a great concern of pragmatists, which brings us back to empathy. There is a misunderstanding about the term that stands behind many of the misguided attacks. It has two major components, and they have been conflated in the MSM. The first is the ability to, shall we say, stand in the shoes of the other guy. Obama often speaks about empathy in this way. George Herbert Mead, an important pragmatist of the early 20th Century, spoke about the importance of taking the perspective or role of the other. To function as social beings we must be able to see the world through the eyes of others. (Mead was close friends with John Dewey, perhaps the leading pragmatist of the 20th Century. Dewey’s granddaughter was Obama’s mother’s graduate school adviser.) Usually when we think of standing in the shoes of the other guy, we also think about being compassionate. This is the second component of the term. But these two aspects of empathy are not identical. We sometimes find ourselves standing in the shoes of the other guy and still not feeling very compassionate about his or her actions. But to understand this person, to make certain kinds of evaluations, which may even be negative (he’s a cold-blooded killer, and that’s what it feels like standing in his shoes), we must be able to take the perspective of this person. Yes, doing so often leads to compassion, but it doesn’t have to.
I am convinced that Obama is a sophisticated enough thinker to understand these basic features of empathy. He is not confusing justice and mercy, as several conservative pundits have claimed, when he invokes empathy as a criterion. He is not eliminating (judicious) judgment in favor of some sort of political correctness. (He specifically mentioned “impartial justice” in his remarks.) Obama has a view of the law that respects its internal “logic,” but understands that this so-called logic requires interpretive skills and a historical sensibility. It is not a transhistorical logic. In other words, there is no view from the mounatintop when dealing with human creations such as the law. Justice requires a rich understanding of legal precedent, of legal argument, but also of people and of people’s current circumstances, and for the latter, we must be able to stand in their shoes. Justice is a balancing act. It requires judgment, not simply deduction from set principles. That’s why we call those who interpret the law judges and not deducers.
For Obama, empathy and experience go hand in hand, because experience entails social interaction, and social interaction devoid of empathy is, well, inhuman, in both senses of the term (not human, not humane). The kind of justice who will best serve us on the Supreme Court is one who understands that the life of the law is not logic but experience, which in turn entails empathy.
Dick Cheney: The Terrorists Have Won
Salem Witchcraft Trials (1692)
Question: What did the terrorist say to terrify Dick Cheney?
Answer: Boo!
If one listens to the words of the former vice president, it is clear that he is telling us that terrorism has worked. We must now live in perpetual fear, which is, after all, one of the main goals of those who seek to terrorize. The danger is so great that we can no longer think about “middle ground” positions, say, those that question the need, value, or morality of torture, for “compromises” of any sort will lead to mushroom clouds in our cities. We can not defend ourselves against terrorism unless we recognize the pervasiveness and unique power of this evil. Enhanced interrogation techniques, a k a as torture, may be all that is standing between us and the abyss.
The [Obama] administration seems to pride itself on searching for some
kind of middle ground in policies addressing terrorism. . . . But in the fight
against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half-measures keep
you half exposed. You cannot keep just some nuclear-armed
terrorists out of the United States, you must keep every nuclear armed
terrorist out of the United States….When just a single clue that
goes unlearned … one lead that goes unpursued … can bring on
catastrophe – it’s no time for splitting differences. There is never a
good time to compromise when the lives and safety of the American
people are in the balance. Behind the overwrought reaction to enhanced
interrogations is a broader misconception about the threats that still face our
country. You can sense the problem in the emergence of euphemisms that
strive to put an imaginary distance between the American people and
the terrorist enemy. (Vice President Cheney
Remarks at the American Enterprise Institute
Thursday, May 21, 2009)
You know, we have seen this mentality of before in American history. It calls on us to fight the Dark Side with every means at our disposal. Two instances come immediately to mind: the Salem Witchcraft Trials and the accusations of Senator Joseph McCarthy about communists in government and industry, the Red Scare. In both cases the same sort of categorical, fear driven, mind-set possessed otherwise good people. The fact that there were no witches and that the threat from communism was external, not internal, is irrelevant to the point at hand, namely, that leaders can use fear to drive the public into unacceptable actions. Cheney has been betting on this. And it’s not a bad bet since fear helped drive us into an unnecessary war against a country that posed no threat to us.
Here’s an experiment. With Cheney’s words in mind, read those of Cotton Mather, who sought to defend the persecution of witches back in 1689. Across centuries they reveal themselves as kinsmen who own the Truth and challenge the integrity of those who dare to think differently. As you read Mather’s words, think about Cheney’s claim that we can not jail 245 prisoners from Guantánamo in the U.S. because they are far too dangerous. While no one has ever escaped from a super maximum security prison in the U.S., we must still fear these men. Perhaps they possess powers akin to those of witches, and they will be able to fly over the walls of our prisons or cast spells on the guards. [The idiosyncratic grammar is in Mather's text.]
But I am resolv’d after this [incident with a witch-M.A.], never to use but just one grain of patience with any man that shall go to impose upon me a Denial of Devils, or of Witches. I shall count that man Ignorant who shall suspect, but I shall count him down-right Impudent if he Assert the Non-Existence of things which we have had such palpable. Convictions of. I am sure he cannot be a Civil, (and some will question whether he can be an honest man) that shall go to, deride the Being of things which a whole Countrey has now beheld an house of pious people suffering not a few Vexations by. But if the Sadducee, or the Atheist, have no right Impressions by these Memorable Providences made upon his mind; yet I hope those that know what it is to be sober will not repent any pains that they may have taken in perusing what Records of these Witchcrafts and Possessions, I thus leave unto Posterity. Memorable Providences, Relating to the Witchcrafts and Possessions (1689)
Of course terrorists are real and dangerous, while “witches” are not. But if one were to believe Cheney, it appears that we are fighting a supernatural power, a fight that requires us to sacrifice the Constitution, specifically the Bill of Rights, and our morality. Witches were so dangerous and possessed such demonic powers that torture was certainly justified, and the same is true of terrorists (or alleged terrorists) for Cheney. I bet he feels just as powerful and self-righteous as those who thought that they were saving us from demons and wizards, for one must be very powerful indeed to fight such foes. But one must also be very scared, perhaps even a bit of a coward, to believe in foes of this sort.
Boo!
