ShrinkWrapped

Good News and Bad News About the News

Occasionally, a national news organization will take a step away from advocacy and attempt to present useful news.  Brian Lehrer who hosts his eponymous show on NPR and WNYC, in conjunction with Bobby Ghosh, the Baghdad bureau chief for Time magazine, deserve credit for attempting to shed light on the current status of the troop surge in Baghdad.  Ghosh is in Baghdad and made his first report last Thursday; today was Part II, with two more to follow.  Brian Lehrer asked about the comments made by several of the Democratic candidates to the effect that we need to withdraw most of our troops and confine our efforts to fighting al Qaeda.  Ghosh's response was surprising and should receive wide dissemination.

Ghosh started by describing how the Sunni tribes have been breaking their ties with al Qaeda and forging alliances with the Americans in Iraq.  He offers several reasons for this and does not hesitate to describe the current alliances as based more on bottom line utility than any profound philosophical awakening to the value of Democracy.  He also points out that the recent statements repudiating al Qaeda by the leader of the Sunni scholars and Imams in Iraq is extremely significant.  His conclusions are striking.  He makes it quite clear that any efforts to withdraw would endanger all of these advances.  The tribes, for purposes of self preservation, would not only immediately drop out of the fight against al Qaeda, but the Sunni provinces would in short order become al Qaeda mini-states, offering a source of manpower, training, funding, and support that they currently do not have anywhere in the developed world.

Anyone want to give odds that we will actually see these conclusions addressed to the Democratic candidates at their next debate?  Or that such facts on the ground will actually be part of the debate over the war sure to follow General Petreaus's report on our progress due in September?

The bad news comes courtesy of Associated Press President and CEO Tom Curley.  You might think the headline offers more good news, but you would be mistaken:

AP's Curley says Internet hasn't changed news gathering fundamentals

Overvalued Selves and Overvalued Ideas

We live in a very dangerous world, a world in which empowered individuals and small groups can cause great damage.  In such a world, attention to one's environment, which can at times border on paranoia, can be seen as a trait enhancing survival.  In such a world, those who overvalue their own self and their own ideas place themselves and others at risk. 

When I describe an idea as overvalued, I mean that an idea has acquired significant affective importance and meaning for a person.  The person loses the ability to adequately "reality test" the idea and the  idea escapes the usual moment to moment comparison with the state of reality that allows us to discard ideas when they fail the test.

When I describe the self as overvalued I am describing a person who places his immediate need for gratification of his own wishes in a position superior to the needs of others.

Current news offers multiple examples of just such overvaluation of the self and ideas. 

By now you have probably seen or heard the news that the CDC has, for the first time in many years, imposed a quarantine on a patient infected with a multi-drug resistant form of TB, one of the great killers of the 19th and 20th century:

Federal Quarantine for TB Traveler

The infected man flew from Atlanta to Paris on May 12 aboard Air France Flight 385. He returned to North America on May 24 aboard Czech Air Flight 0104 from Prague to Montreal. The man then drove into the United States at the Champlain, N.Y., border crossing.

...

The man had been told by health officials in early May that he had a form of TB that was resistant to first-line antibiotics and was advised not to travel to Europe. "He was told traveling is against medical advice," said Dr. Steven Katkowsky, director of the Fulton County Department of Health & Wellness. [Emphasis mine-SW]

This thus far unidentified man's excuse reportedly was that he did not want to disrupt his wedding, which had been in the works for a long time.  The story continues:

Single Anxious Females

Apparently, according to Geoffrey Gray in New York Magazine, a leading purveyor of liberal superficiality, the key interest group of ’08 is Single Anxious Females:

In the Clinton years, the target was soccer moms. In the Bush era, it switched to NASCAR dads. Now, say several senior campaign strategists, the magic pop demographic that could affect the ’08 election, and especially the Democratic primaries, is unmarried women. She’s youngish (for the most part, between 18 and 44), white (64 percent), unanchored (36 percent move every two years), unaffluent (earning $30,000 or less a year), relatively uneducated (only 14 percent are college grads), and thoroughly pissed off about the direction of America (Iraq, health care, equal pay, and education are top issues). But she isn’t exactly politically engaged. “I think the better way to define them is SAFs,” says Ann Lewis, a longtime senior adviser to Hillary Clinton. “Single anxious females.”

...

Who are these SAFs? According to a new study by the nonprofit Women’s Voices: Women Vote, that will be released next month, unmarried women watch 4.22 hours of TV every day (TNT and Discovery are favorites), rarely listen to talk radio (they prefer country music), and they tend to vote for change. “The word is, this is the fastest-growing population for these campaigns to grab,” says Betsy Myers, who launched the White House Office for Women’s Initiatives and Outreach during Bill Clinton’s presidency and is now the COO of Barack Obama’s campaign. “This is kind of a new concept,” she says, of the SAFs. “I lived through the whole soccer-mom thing. It’s an interesting demographic people are starting to talk about.” So far, Obama has yet to micro-target them. “We haven’t peeled that onion yet,” says Myers. Hillary, meanwhile, has held press events for “women on their own” in New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina, and Nevada.

Why SAFs, I wondered.  I admit, I was initially somewhat puzzled why Single Anxious Men, SAMs, weren't considered an important demographic.  Then I realized that Hillary is counting on identity politics to put her over the top; obviously SAFs will recognize that Hillary is just like them and that their concerns and Hilary's are nearly identical. 

Hillary's plan, brilliantly conceived as it is, would naturally, in time, be extended to all Single Anxious People, men and women who are "youngish ..., white ..., unanchored ..., unaffluent ...,  relatively uneducated ..., and thoroughly pissed off about the direction of America."  How appropriate that Hillary would then ride to electoral victory in 2008 on the backs of a large cohort of SAPs.

How Not to Report "Some of the News That's Fit to Print"

The MSM are remarkable in the bias that they hide from themselves.  If the New York Times were an honest newspaper, they would be clear about their biases and their news stories would be more believable for just that reason.  Instead, through commission and more often, through omission, they tell stories that present their views while labeling them news.

On the front page of the New York Times today is a typically slanted story which contains all the elements of the Times programmatic approach to the news.  The story is about the tragedy of the American occupation, the ongoing violence, and the displacement that has befallen the hapless victims in Iraq.  Many of the refugees from the violence have fled the country and gone to Syria.  There are few jobs available and out of desperation, some young women are turning to prostitution.

Desperate Iraqi Refugees Turn to Sex Trade in Syria

MARABA, Syria — Back home in Iraq, Umm Hiba’s daughter was a devout schoolgirl, modest in her dress and serious about her studies. Hiba, who is now 16, wore the hijab, or Islamic head scarf, and rose early each day to say the dawn prayer before classes.

But that was before militias began threatening their Baghdad neighborhood and Umm Hiba and her daughter fled to Syria last spring. There were no jobs, and Umm Hiba’s elderly father developed complications related to his diabetes.

Desperate, Umm Hiba followed the advice of an Iraqi acquaintance and took her daughter to work at a nightclub along a highway known for prostitution. “We Iraqis used to be a proud people,” she said over the frantic blare of the club’s speakers. She pointed out her daughter, dancing among about two dozen other girls on the stage, wearing a pink silk dress with spaghetti straps, her frail shoulders bathed in colored light.

As Umm Hiba watched, a middle-aged man climbed onto the platform and began to dance jerkily, arms flailing, among the girls.

“During the war we lost everything,” she said. “We even lost our honor.” She insisted on being identified by only part of her name — Umm Hiba means mother of Hiba.

This story is categorized as part of The Reach of War.  A reader would have to have a heart of stone not to empathize with the desperation and tragedy of Hiba's life.  Yet, wouldn't the story be more illuminating and perhaps even more tragic, if the purported news story provided some context?

Memorial Day

America offers her citizens such bounteous blessings that in our ease and satiety, it is all too easy to forget the sacrifices of those who have made our way of life possible.  We forget their sacrifices at our peril.

Major Rob Thornton: Memorializing Our Fallen

Peter Collier: America's Honor

Villagers with Torches on James Michener's question: Where Do We Find Such Men?

With thanks to Dr. Sanity:

“The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.”
- John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th President of the United States

With thanks to Drs. Fernette and Brock Eide:

"The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it."
- Thucydides

In Search of a Narrative

The New Republic is not usually a place where conservatives can expect to find articles about the Republican party that illuminate rather than disparage.  Thomas B. Edsall, in the current issue, has written a highly insightful piece on Rudy Giuliani, which is worth understanding.  Edsall makes some interesting points in Why the GOP's Future Belongs to Rudy:

Many observers believe Giuliani's early success is the result of his calculated move rightward--a savvy effort to trick conservative voters into believing he is really one of them. But there is another possibility, one that assumes a bit more intelligence on the part of conservative voters like DePass: What if we are witnessing not Rudy moving toward the rest of the Republican Party, but rather the Republican Party moving toward Rudy? What if the salience of a certain kind of social conservatism is now in decline among GOP voters and a new set of conservative principles are emerging to take its place? What if Giuilianism represents the future of the Republican Party.

Giuliani is the beneficiary of an upheaval within the Republican electorate--an upheaval that was catalyzed by September 11 but is becoming apparent only now, as the GOP hosts its first primary battle since the terrorist attacks. In brief, among Republican voters, the litmus test issues of abortion and gay marriage have been losing traction, subordinated to the Iraq war and terrorism. According to the Pew Research Center, 31 percent of GOP voters name Iraq as their top priority, and 17 percent choose terrorism and security. Just 7 percent name abortion and 1 percent name gay marriage.

There is a superficial plausibility to Edsall's thesis that the Republican base, which has always been more conservative than the country as a whole, is less concerned with abortion and gay marriage than with the war and terrorism.  I suspect that this is what is driving much of the criticism of Giuliani from the left; the idea that he will appeal to those who are socially liberal but more hawkish on the war and terrorism, but I think there is a deeper level at which Giuliani resonates.  Further I think that Fred Thompson, much more conservative than Giuliani and not yet in the race, resonates on the same level and that Mitt Romney, who has a naturally cool style, is attempting to find a way to match the same tone. 

The Vietnam Syndrome Revisited

The New York Sun reminds us today that when the anti-war Democrats, riding into power on the back of Watergate, finally cut off funding for the South Vietnamese, there were no American combat troops remaining in South Vietnam.  Nixon's Vietnamization had been successful and the South Vietnamese, allies of the United States, and an imperfect capitalist democracy, were holding their own against the North Vietnamese communists.  The Sun editorial lays out the Timeline of Defeat and asks crucial questions:

In January 1974, according to a timeline at PBS.org, the North Vietnamese were then "still too weak to launch a full-scale offensive," but had "rebuilt their divisions in the South" and "captured key areas." Watergate was gathering, and on August 9, 1974, President Nixon resigned. At this point, there was only a doughty little government in South Vietnam that was standing alone against the combined might of the Soviet Union and the Communist Chinese. And it was prepared to fight on for another generation.

The Congress, however, wasn't prepared to stake them, despite the fact that South Vietnam was our ally in the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization. In October 1974, the 93rd Congress voted to end foreign aid to Vietnam. President Ford vetoed the measure. Congress, after an election that expanded the Democratic majority by 48 seats in the House and five in the Senate, overrode the veto. In the Spring, the 94th Congress blocked military appropriations for the South Vietnamese. It was not about our GIs. They had long since gone. A country of 50 million individuals who had sided with America and yearned for freedom was cast into the dark night of communist tyranny. [Emphasis mine-SW]

***

So what are the Democrats thinking today? Is this the direction in which they want to go? President Bush's threat of a veto appears to have forced them to abandon a timeline for defeat in Iraq. But Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi have made it clear they are going to keep trying. What was it about the Communists that the Democrats wanted to give them Indochina, a region with as many persons as Eastern Europe? And what is it about our Islamist enemies that makes the Democrats so determined to abandon a free Iraq? The tragedy of Vietnam taught that this is the question that needs to be asked and answered and that a default will haunt the politicians now in power for generations, as their own children and the children of our GIs demand to know their motives.

It is impossible to answer the Sun's questions without a consideration of the psychological defenses mobilized by those who executed the first betrayal of our Vietnamese allies and are now contemplating the next betrayal, of our Iraqi friends and allies.

Saying Whatever Comes to Mind XL

This week the Sanity Squad addresses what it means for someone to be a leader.  As described by Pajamas Media:

Leaders Great and Otherwise

The public figure that is simultaneously a leader is a dying breed. With elected officials who display a spine being so few and far between, the Squad talks about the nature of good leadership, taking responsibility for one’s actions in the era of the rote public apology, and whether or not leadership itself has gotten a bad rap.

Join Neo-neocon, Dr. Sanity, Siggy, and me as we attempt to shed some light on the question.

The Residue of Meaning

So much of what is written about modern psychology and politics neglects an exploration of the human need for meaning in our lives.  This is part and parcel of the neo-Marxist mechanistic world view which attributes agency to impersonal structures (capitalism, workers, oppressors, identity groups, etc) and severs the link between human beings and any concept of a Deity (beyond their own ideas, of course, which are treated as received truth, as in the Marxist derivative and still unproven theory of "anthropogenic global warming.") 

On this Blog I write from a rational, scientific, and confirmed agnostic point of view; faith is independent of science and is not required for science to continue to make progress in understanding our world. 

(At the same time, it is necessary to recognize that it was a change brought about by faith, ie that there exists a rational, rule-based, approachable, God established universe that man could attempt to understand, that led the way to the development of the scientific method upon which our current prosperity and comfort rests.)

While I will continue to write from an agnostic position, I do believe there are excellent, highly rational reasons to support the notion that a belief in God offers a significant survival advantage to those who have such faith.  Since evolution is yet another concept that is deified by the left this leads to a delightful irony which perhaps finds its clearest expression in "the Roe effect."

As I have written elsewhere, human beings need to believe that their lives have meaning.  Without meaning, there is very little margin of error to protect such vulnerable and frail creatures from falling into despair and depression. 

Resolving the issue of meaning is a common aspect of the developmental progression from adolescence to adulthood.  This offers a way to view the results of the Pew Survey of attitudes of Muslim Americans that has been recently reported; Yahoo news off3ers a lead that soft pedals the results:

Decline: Change, Anxiety, & 4GW

Rapid change is destabilizing.  When people experience rapid change, they tend to have anxiety.  When the anxiety is powerful enough, it increases the sense of dislocation and impairs the person's ability to cope adequately with the changes in his environment.  If the anxiety enters into a positive feedback with the change, the anxiety becomes traumatic; at that point the individual shuts down (dissociates) and loses their ability to effect the situation.  Traumatic anxiety is paralyzing.  This is as true on large scales as it is true on the level of the individual.  We can see how this plays out in our own politics and policies.

[To differentiate adaptive "signal anxiety" from maladaptive anxiety and "traumatic anxiety" consider typical test anxiety.  A person with signal anxiety uses their anxiety about doing well to study, perhaps more than is necessary to master the material; generally this leads to a good result on the test.  The person with maladaptive anxiety does not use the anxiety to motivate their studying; instead their anxiety, because it reaches the threshold to trigger the "fight or flight" response,  makes their studying less efficient; when the test arrives, the first difficult question may increase their anxiety, which makes it more difficult to retrieve the information necessary for the next question.  This can increase their anxiety further, and in short order, the person performs much worse than would be expected.  In the worst case scenario, the escalating anxiety becomes traumatic and th person freezes, unable to think or retrieve information; failure ensues.  Mild "signal anxiety" is adaptive and beneficial; it is not clear that our society has been able to mobilize the necessary anxiety to deal with current problems which leaves us prone to maladaptive and traumatic anxiety when our defenses are breached.]

In the face of the rapidly changing international landscape, there are many, more on the left than the right, who want nothing more than to retreat from the world into neo-isolationism (flight).  Others propose we fight more vigorously and expand the war, even when it is unclear that such a response would be helpful and possibly threaten our longer term goals.  A third group, comprised of people who understand the need to remain engaged in the world, seem stuck in debilitating passivity.  It is left to a small band of intrepid people, especially in the US military, to attempt to bring order out of chaotic change in Iraq and th greater Middle East.  The outcome is very much in doubt and depends in no small measure on circumstances beyond our control, a prescription for yet further increases in anxiety.