Rant: Weddings

There was a report on NPR last week about people scaling back on lavish weddings due to the implosion of the economy. "Hallelujah," I exclaimed to myself and felt instantly better even though I was slogging North along congested Rt. 295 in pouring rain on the way to the Baltimore Airport. "If there is anything positive for our culture that will come out of the recession, this must surely be it." They were interviewing a woman who was shopping for a wedding dress at a thrift store. She really wanted a fairy-tale wedding, she said, but was worried that she would lose her job later this year, so she was sticking to a strict budget. "Attagirl," I thought. "Let's hope that this is the beginning of a major trend in our society." Then she dropped the bomb -- that budget was $15,000. 15K on a wedding when you're about to lose your job?! What would she have spent if we weren't in a recession? THAT number, it turned out, was more like $35,000. What the hell are these people thinking? And where do they get that kind of money? They blow everything they've got, or borrow it, apparently, and then can't afford a normal down payment for that McMansion they so want, so they take out an ARM with no money down, and we all know where that got us. Thirty five thousand? Even here in DC, one of the most expensive areas for real estate in the country, where house prices in desirable neighborhoods are off no more than 2-3%, $35K is 10% on a very livable condo. And they blow it on a single day of frilly tackiness, bad food, worse music, and drunken revelry they won't even remember the following day. Any wonder we're in such a mess?

AIG

The fact that AIG decided to use $165M of government bailout money to pay bonuses is infuriating. Now, those who know me might be surprised to hear me say this. But there are a couple of things at play. There should not have been a government bailout in the first place. We would not even be dealing with this question. But given that there was a bailout, and that we did pay for it, a properly managed company should have stopped paying bonuses long before it needed a government bailout. AIG says that they are contractually obligated to pay these bonuses. Well, someone didn't do their job and wrote a lousy contract. Any contract worth the paper it's written on ought to have a clause that says if business is in the toilet, bonuses go out the window, end of story. I guess it's the whole bubble thing -- if they tried to write it into the contract, the people getting the bonuses would have hightailed down the road to BJH or some such. And who is paying for this nonsense now? We are. Which brings me back to my first point -- there shouldn't have been a bailout in the first place.

Iceland

This is the scary part of the economic crisis. When Eastern Europeans demonstrate and topple their governments, no one bats an eyelash. When our own unemployment rate edges towards ten percent, that's hardly unprecedented. But police in Iceland -- ICELAND, for crying out loud -- tear-gassing protesters?

Gaza, Slight Return

A reader has recently left an extensive comment on my recent post on the situation in Gaza (as it was at the time of the post). While much of what he said really went well beyond the very limited scope of the original post, I only have myself to blame for having opened that can of worms in the first place, so I feel obligated to respond. Since a proper response would have been too long and unwieldy to leave as another comment, I am doing it in this post instead.

Before I get to the individual points, however, I think it would be useful to remind ourselves of two facts. One is simply that Israel exists. The other is that although Gaza and the West Bank were acquired by force, Israel itself was not. Its founding was certainly enabled by the European colonial powers, but in physical terms, it was largely bought, one plot of land at a time, from local Arabs. With those facts as a backdrop, I will consider my commentator's points one by one.

Saying the goal is to "stop the rocket fire" is a very one sided way to look at it. One side fires rockets, and that upsets the other side. The other side, meanwhile, practices its own brand of genocide and terrorism, and that upsets uh... I lost track. There aren't any good guys here.

While I could (and should) challenge some of the terminology, that is not my intent, neither here nor in the original post. Fact is, I agree with this... mostly. If there are any good guys here, it is the ordinary Palestinians trying to live some semblance of a normal life under adverse conditions. Given that Hamas's embrace of reason and reality is not forthcoming, it is they, and only they, who have any chance of changing the situation by taking matters into their own hands. That is really all that I was trying to argue in the original post. Nothing more. I certainly did not set out to propose a comprehensive Middle East policy.

Israel tried this: unilateral withdrawl, but hey we'll keep up the siege, not allow you to leave, and make sure you can't feed or medicate your kids. Hamas responded with what, 98% less rocket fire? Who is being unreasonable here?

It's simple, really – Israel's tactical aim is to stop the rocket fire, but the strategic one is to topple Hamas. I think we all know this. I personally think that aim is reasonable as long as Hamas refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist. Changing that is fundamental, and a prerequisite to anything else. I know many will disagree, and that's their right, but I really do believe that with respect to Gaza specifically (not the entire Palestinian problem), Hamas must either recognize Israel's right to exist or be eliminated. Both Israel and the West have failed to achieve the former either by negotiation or by isolation; the next step is war. This really opens up a huge topic that I am not prepared to get into here. Suffice it to say that if Hamas provided de facto recognition by stopping 100% of the rocket fire, stopping 100% of the weapons smuggling from Egypt, etc., Israeli tanks would not be rolling into Gaza. Yes, I know that had Israel not conquered Gaza and the West Bank in 1967 in the first place, we would not be where we are right now, but like I said – a whole separate discussion. The facts on the ground are what they are, and both sides need to deal with them as they are.

What if Israel offered a real peace solution, like: we'll make you a proper country; you have the right of return; you can leave; you can import food and medicine and we won't even look at it; you can have a real government and we will stop pretending that you aren't legit even if you were democratically elected? Then if Gaza still started firing rockets, I might join in with our friends at the New Republic and say kill 'em all. (disclaimer: I haven't read the trash at the new republic since Michael Kinsley left so maybe its all peace and love over there now...)

The Palestinians' decision to elect Hamas, however democratically, was, in my opinion, a grave mistake. I understand why they did so, and can sympathize. But short term gains in basic necessities have carried with them the cost of a long-term threat to their lives. Note that I am not exonerating Israel of anything by making that statement – I am merely pointing out the predicament in which the Palestinians placed themselves. I suppose I am expecting an unreasonable level of political sophistication from an ordinary Palestinian by expecting him to reason as I do. Perhaps.

Yes, of course it would be better if Israel offered all of these things. But the fact is, that is not about to happen, and hoping for it to happen in the short term is naïve in the extreme.

As to the New Republic, I have never read it, so cannot comment.

What you are saying to Hamas is this: give up, its hopeless, the Israels are much more powerful than you, don't worry so much, and just keep moving west. The problem is that eventually there's an ocean out there, and the Israelis will be perfect happy to drive the Palestinians into it.

This seems to equate “Hamas” with “Palestinians” -- an equivalence I am not willing to endorse. I am, in fact, saying to Hamas, give up and recognize Israel, or be eliminated. There is no third permanent solution. What I am saying to the ordinary Palestinian, however, is exactly the opposite – you need to worry more, because no one else will do it for you, not the people you elected, nor their adversaries.

Its very much like if we took all of the native americans and pushed them into tiny reservations, and then surrounded those reservations and said: you can't leave here, and btw you can't import enough food or medicine either. "Suck. On. That." Or "Don't Fuck With the Jews", or whatever is fashionable in the "mainstream" Amero-Israeli press world these days.

The American Indian analogy still does not make sense to me. As to the last sentence – I am not going to take that bait. Sorry.

Gaza

I am surprised that the vast majority of writers and commentators, when talking about the current Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, use the word civilian without even pausing to consider that in the context of the Israeli-Hamas war, it has become meaningless. After September 11th, many pointed out that the nature of war has fundamentally changed. Wars had once been fought between two or more identifiable political entities such as nation-states and their governments. Even civil wars more or less fit that definition – the fighting was between a government holding power and another believing that it should be holding it instead. Wars against terrorists do not fit that definition, as just about everyone who had anything to say about the topic has been pointing out for the past seven years. What most of them failed to recognize, or at least state, was that this change of the nature of war has an inescapable corollary. If you cannot identify a political entity capable of raising and maintaining an army, you can no longer distinguish between soldiers and civilians.

This is exactly the case in the Gaza Strip today. The Qassam rockets that Hamas is firing at Israel are launched from people's yards, as the rocket man's family cowers in fear inside the house, or, more chillingly, goes about their business. The rockets are built in the basements of shops even as regular Gazans are buying groceries or clothes upstairs. How do you distinguish between civilians and fighters in cases like this? How do you target the rocket launching operations without killing “civilians?” You don't.

So what is the solution? Absent Hamas's abandonment of the core principle on which it was founded – the refusal to recognize Israel's right to exist, the abandonment that is obviously not forthcoming – I see two possibilities. One is a scorched earth policy on the part of Israel. Simply razing Gaza to the ground and killing all of its inhabitants will stop the rocket launches. For obvious reasons, Israel will not do this. This leaves only one other – Gazans themselves overthrowing Hamas. Hamas gained public support and eventually power by addressing people's basic needs – medical care, rule of law, a modicum of economic opportunity -- better than anyone else at the time could. However, they need not, and should not, continue to receive this support now that their mere existence has made Gaza a magnet for Israeli bombs and missiles. If enough houses are destroyed and enough people killed by the Israeli offensive, Gazans whose neighbor has a Qassam launcher in his yard need to walk over there and tell him stop immediately, or stop it for him. For their own good, they need to do this now, and in large numbers. It's not Tony Blair's babbling that will stop the war. It is only a grass-roots anti-Hamas revolution in Gaza that has even a remote chance of doing so.

Rick Warren

I have never had anything original to say about mainstream politics, and I don't see that changing any time soon, but this touched a nerve too much to keep quiet. Maybe I'm just in a cranky mood this morning. Needless to say, I hang my head in despair on a regular basis over the mere fact that there needs to be a religious figure at the inauguration of the US President at all. He delivers what, exactly? A blessing of some kind, in most people's understanding? Proof positive that the Constitution's non-establishment clause is not at all the same as a true separation of church and state, which we do not have. But Obama's choice of Rick Warren is deeply distasteful in a specific, as well as a general, sense. Details here and here. Yes, these details come from Christopher Hitchens, whose style is not exactly conciliatory, but for my money, he is almost always on point, and I am incredulous at the fact that now that Obama has been anointed the next god of the United States, his choice of Warren is not receiving any mass coverage, unlike his association with that other bigoted crack-pot pastor, whose name I've blocked out of my mind. Status quo we can believe in. Oh well, we slither on through the sewers of political pandering.

Financial crisis

Until I find time and inclination to write something else about books, music, or the dinner at Vidalia J. and I had recently, here is something that I found more readable than most of the stuff on the financial crisis and the government bailout.

Obama

I know I keep promising to keep politics out of here and fail, but this is an election year after all, and for the first time in my life I live in a state that's expected to be competitive in the general election, I need to start worrying about this stuff.

In his speech accepting the Democratic nomination, Obama has said (as quoted by the WaPo):

America, we cannot turn back, not with so much work to be done, not with so many children to educate and so many veterans to care for, not with an economy to fix and cities to rebuild and farms to save, not with so many families to protect and so many lives to mend

Where oh where did he find that it is the government's job to do any of these things?!?!

Update

Quick update, before J. and I hit the road.

Dostoyevsky
Finished Notes from the Underground, in the original, some two weeks ago. I can't really write anything meaningful about it. Suffice it to say, it was phenomenally powerful, even though it was my third time reading it. It has been many years. As despicable as the main character is, I saw myself in him more than once. I suspect this is true of more people than would be willing to admit it.

Georgia vs. Russia
Sad. Minds, and pens, far greater than mine have provided plenty of commentary. I have nothing to add. This seems to me to be on the money. It actually proposes a well-defined course of action, and a good one at that. Too bad we will never come anywhere close to doing this.

Translation
Finally started my long-delayed translation of St. Exupéry's Courrier Sud. Unbelievably difficult. When reading a novel in a foreign language for the story -- granted, the most superficial way to read it, but also the most common I suspect -- we don't realize just how much we get from context and how many subtleties we lose. When translating, every last bit of minutiae is indispensable, and then you have render it into something resembling decent prose. It took me an hour to get through two paragraphs of the opening chapter. This is going to be a long project. I will buy a beer -- nay, a single-malt scotch -- to anyone who comes up with an acceptable translation of this sentence, especially the second clause:

Sur nos fronts cette lumière de lampe qui ne livre pas les objets mais les compose, nourrit de matière tendre chaque chose.

Back on the 26th.

Solzhenitsyn

Solzhenitsyn died the other day. I'm not going to re-tell his story here, of course. Commentary is plentiful, much of it quite good. Here is one of the more balanced opinions I've come across. I do want to point out, though, that I can think of no better illustration of the depressing and dangerous idea that opposing a specific repressive, tyrannical regime is no guarantee that you will embrace the principles of liberty and openness, even if you oppose that regime with your entire being, like Solzhenitsyn did. Opposition to a regime, unfortunately, is not the same as opposition to the principles on which it is founded, and rejecting the manifestation of something without simultaneously rejecting its underlying moral foundation opens the door to a host of equally sinister alternatives.

Gas prices

Charles Krauthammer's column in today's WaPo is worth reading, I think, primarily because in the first half he offers an exceptionally simple explanation and justification for an already simple concept that governments, and even individuals, refuse to accept year after year and decade after decade, namely that the most effective way to accomplish something is to hit people on the wallet. He then describes an apparently long standing proposal of his that I was not familiar with until now but, upon reflection, one I agree with. In general, it is highly unusual for me to support any proposal that advocates a new tax, but his actually makes logical and economic sense and, due to the fact that it includes a tax reduction elsewhere in the system, would do more good than harm.

V-Day, Russian style

No need to be fluent in French to get the gist of this photo gallery (the WaPo has the info, too, but without the photos). The important thing is that this is the first time the Russians have done this since 1991, and it is not in the least surprising that they are doing it now and, in all likelihood, will continue. What I -- even I -- was surprised to see, was Photo #5. Could it be that Le Monde's editors let their vigilance down long enough to let a vintage photo through? Or did the Russians just need some extra banners at the last minute, so they got some out of storage? I wish...

Abkhazia

Anne Appelbaum's latest is both worrisome and sad. And to think that I've been to most of those places as a child...

John McCain

I do not normally comment on domestic politics here, especially if it has to do with a presidential candidate in an election year. I will reluctantly violate my own policy, however, to point out this commentary on John McCain. It is well worth reading carefully, especially for those who reject the intellectual underpinnings of conventional liberalism but want to remain within mainstream politics as voters, and who are therefore inclined to support McCain as the least of all evils. I admit that the Milton Friedman quote at the end is a bit uncompromising for most tastes, but do cut the author some slack and consider it in the context of the piece as a whole.

Olympics

Anne Appelbaum gets it right once again. Of the many points she makes in her piece, I was particularly glad to see the statement that the modern Olympics were set up with an explicit political purpose in mind. All this stuff about Olympics being somehow above politics is bogus.

Russian "elections"

Excellent op-ed from Anne Appelbaum in today's Washington Post. She confirms my long-held view that the Russian government is reflexively anti-Western, and, since time immemorial, has been mounting a concerted effort to make the public feel the same way. I'm not trying to gloat -- she offer far more insight in the limited amount of space that a newspaper column allows than I ever could.

As we all know, Russia held "elections" last weekend. The basic question Appelbaum tries to answer is, "why bother?" The answer, she thinks, is the fundamental insecurity of the Kremlin regime. They know, deep inside, that their system is worse than a Western democracy both on a moral and philosophical level as well as a pragmatic one, but they have no effective way of dealing with the fallout should the public realize this. Therefore, an appearance of democracy is maintained, accompanied by doing everything possible to convince the populace that not only is there democracy in Russia, but that it is actually of higher quality than in the West.

Appelbaum's only point that made me raise my eyebrows a bit is her claim that this approach at least gives the Kremlin a fighting chance to stave off the massive civic unrest that would be almost guaranteed to happen once the oil runs out and the economy plummets again. Once that happens, the Russians will see that the emperor has no clothes (or too much expensive clothes as the case may be, and, more to the point, that it is an emperor in the first place), and would demand genuine, Western-style accountability. Oh how I wish she were right. But I have grave doubts. With no history of democracy and accountability in the entire society ever, what are the chances? Ukraine is small, and, as an identifiable geopolitical entity, relatively young, and therefore capable, socially, of an attempt at a Western-style system. Russia, of which neither is true -- I am not so sure.

Anyway, I heartily recommend her entire article.

NY Phil. in North Korea

The New York Philharmonic is in Pyongyang, North Korea right now, to play a concert, apparently at the invitation of the North Korean dictatorship. What could they possibly hope to accomplish by this? Evidently, the project was hatched last year, when there was a “thaw” between the US and North Korea. A handful of multi-party talks chaperoned by supposedly non-aligned governments at least one of which (China) is friendly to North Korea and is widely believed to be the only reason the Kim Jong Il dictatorship hasn't collapsed yet, taking half of Asia down with it, qualifies as a thaw? A little flexible with our definitions are we? But never mind that.

Cultural ambassadorship has a long history, some of it distinguished, or at least innocent. Exposing a foreign society, particularly a non-Western one, to Western artistic achievements is considered to be the most direct, and the least political, method of appealing directly to the general population of the target country. Classical music seems to fit the bill especially well – it is supposed to be the art form that captures humanity's highest hopes and ideals, and it does not depend on written or spoken language to deliver its message. In practice, however, these same qualities are the art form's greatest liabilities, and in the case of North Korea at least, the project will backfire.

There is a reason why Kim invited a symphony orchestra – classical music is an art form that most people in any society don't understand. It is safe, precisely because it does not depend on conventional language while wearing very convincingly the cloak of great culture. If there is anything a Stalinist dictatorship knows how to do, it is how to create an illusion of benevolence without actually granting its people anything meaningful, and the NY Phil. and its music director Lorin Maazel have played into Kim's hands by agreeing to go.

“It would have been a great mistake not to accept this invitation,” Maazel was quoted as saying. And why is that, may I ask? You can't seriously believe, Maestro, that you are actually contributing to the well-being of an average North Korean in any meaningful way, do you? I am willing to bet significant amounts of money that every single attendee at your supposedly historic concert is going to be a carefully screened party apparatchik. Yeah, they're going to show it on state television. Big deal – how much can you really communicate to a group of half-starved North Koreans, indoctrinated to automaton level, gathered around a grainy black and white set in someone's communal kitchen? It makes no difference that you're playing Gershwin's “An American in Paris.” Actually, it does make a difference – a negative one. A rousing Beethoven symphony at least has a chance of coming across on a purely emotional level – its essence of human struggle and drama is universal and timeless. Gershwin, on the other hand, will be completely lost on your North Korean audience. Heck, it's lost on most Americans.

In the meantime, you, and your entire orchestra are made to surrender your cell phones and “publishing of all kinds” at the airport. Is this the kind of government for which you want to show respect? For that is precisely what you're doing. Accepting any invitation is a show of mutual respect by both parties. Someone invites you to dinner at their house. They do this because they like you and want to do something nice for you. You accept for the same reasons. That is a show of respect. Or they do it because they want to get something out of you for their own benefit. In that case, you do not accept, unless you're too naïve or too full of yourself to recognize it. Guess which category Kim falls into, making you fall into the coresponding one? Thankfully, a Western artist cannot be compelled to do something he does not wish to do. So the responsibility for legitimizing, however apolitically, the North Korean regime, falls squarely on your shoulders, Maestro Maazel.

What do I expect you to have done instead, you ask? I expect you to have stood up and declined the invitation outright, saying that your moral standards do not allow you to accept an invitation from a government that is directly responsible for starving two million of its citizens to death.

What is equally worrisome is that apparently not a single orchestra member declined to go, citing North Korean human rights abuses as the basis for their decision. I attribute this to the tyrannical powers conductors sometimes have over their orchestras, and the musicians' pathological fear of losing their jobs. Still, this is very sad. Great artists, great conductors in particular, are known for allowing their outsize egos to disconnect them from reality. An average musician has no such excuse. Sheepishly surrendering your cell phone at customs, and allowing oneself to be bussed around for two days to performances of folk dances by girls with pasted-on plastic smiles, by a government that would not hesitate to lob a nuclear missile at Japan just because it has nothing to lose, is cowardice at best, moral decrepitude at worst.

P.S.: Evidently, even after the US-North Korea talks collapsed, Maazel was told by the Bush administration he could proceed with the visit. I suppose it is possible that he wanted to cancel, but for mysterious reasons of its own, the administration, ahem, encoraged him not to. But I am not enough of a conspiracy theorist to believe that seriously. Politicians are even worse than great conductors when it comes to disconnecting themselves from reality.

State-controlled bullies masquerading as big business, Round II

I am not usually in the habit of just posting a link without making at least some comment about what it links to -- those who are interested can perfectly well find the information themselves. This, however, is such a succinct yet comprehensive summary of what will happen after Russia's upcoming "elections" in March that I have nothing to add.

More of the same

Yesterday, Putin's government barred Mikhail Kasyanov, one of the opposition candidates, from the upcoming Russian presidential election on the pretext that some of the signatures he had to gather to get on the ballot were forged. What's new, right? But a couple of things struck me.

First of all, I would not be at all surprised if the signatures were forged – a megalomaniac tyrant without a democratic bone in his body like Putin no doubt inspires opposition that is worthy of him. But let's be charitable and assume they were all genuine. The polls show that even if the opposition candidate was allowed to run and the election was held fairly (which it won't be), he would stand no chance of winning or even making a credible threat to Putin's anointed successor. The national television, to whose coverage he would be entitled if he ran, already excoriates him at every opportunity. Wouldn't allowing him to run provide Putin with a perfect opportunity to use him as “evidence” that Russia does in fact have a democratic process in place?

It is true that there is already a candidate in place that is serving this function – his signatures (also suspected by some of having been forged, by the way) have recently been certified as legit. You would think the more the better – if neither one is a realistic threat, why admit one and exclude the other? There is only one obvious difference – Kasyanov is perceived as being influenced by the West. So we're back to the irrational, xenophobic, jingoistic fear of the West simply because it is the West. More specifically, in classic Orwellian fashion, what Putin is afraid of is the flow of information in from the West, and anything or anyone that is perceived to be facilitating this flow will be creatively eliminated. As I said, what's new, right?

Told you so

A little over a month ago, when Russia accused the British Council, a UK cultural and educational organization, of operating illegally in Russia as retaliation for expelling Russian diplomats, I predicted how the dispute would unfold. I am sad to report that I was absolutely correct.