ShrinkWrapped

Driving While Paranoid

Thomas Sowell is one of our National Treasures and today he addresses a popular meme, 'Driving While Black', that has done a great deal of damage to relations between Black and White in this country.  He is not convinced that we live in an irredeemably racist society and that the police are by nature and institutionally racist; at the same time he notes the prevalence of the feeling in the Black community:

Recently a well-known black journalist told me of a very different experience. He happened to be riding along in a police car driven by a white policeman. Ahead of them was a car driving at night with no headlights on and, in the dark, it was impossible to see who was driving it.

When the policeman pulled the car over, a black driver got out and, when the policeman told him that he was driving without his lights on, the driver said, "You only pulled me over because I am black!"

This was said even though he saw the black man who was with the policeman. The driver got a ticket.

Later, when the journalist asked the cop how often he got such responses from black drivers, the reply was "About 80 percent of the time."

When the same journalist asked the same question of black cops, the answer was about 30 percent of the time -- lower, but still an amazing percentage under the circumstances.

Sowell wonders whether there is a relatively prosaic explanation for the attitude:

In a world where young blacks, especially, are bombarded with claims that they are being unfairly targeted by police, and where a general attitude of belligerence is being promoted literally in word and song, it is hard not to wonder whether some people's responses to policemen do not have something to do with the policemen's responses to them.

Neither the police nor people in any other occupation always do what is right but automatic belligerence is not the answer.

The intersection of Black victimhood and Black paranoia is dangerous and crippling.

Time Pressures

Tiems pressures are worse than usual so there will be no post today.

Saying Whatever Comes to Mind XLIX

The Sanity Squad is returning in full tonight at 8:00PM on Blog Talk Radio.  You can listen live to our show at The Sanity Squad and during the broadcast you can call in at 646-716-9116.  If you miss the live broadcast, through the magic of the internet, you will be able to down load the Podcast at our site.

If I may quote Wash, "This could be interesting."

"If Wishes Were Horses..."

The last several days have treated us to a number of articles and posts that examine the tendency of so many people to blur the distinction between reality and fantasy.  On Friday, Peggy Noonan suggested that the New Republic editors could only buy Scott Thomas Beauchamp's fantasies because the closest they had ever come to the military was through the lens of anti-war movies.  During the fabled 60s and 70s, movies which depicted the military reliably took as reality the left-wing point of view that the military took ordinary young men (hereinafter referred to as "victims") and turned them into amoral killers and torturers. 

On Saturday, Mark Steyn suggested that conspiracy theorists have ongoing difficulties separating fantasy from reality:

It's the same with all those guys driving around with "9/11 Was An Inside Job" bumper stickers. That aligns reality with every conspiracy movie from the past three decades: It's always the government who did it – sometimes it's some supersecret agency working deep within the bureaucracy from behind an unassuming nameplate on a Washington street; and sometimes it's the president himself – but when poor Joe Schmoe on the lam from the Feds eventually unravels it, the cunning conspiracy is always the work of a ruthlessly efficient all-powerful state. So Iraq is Vietnam. And 9/11 is the Kennedy assassination, with ever higher percentages of the American people gathering on the melted steely knoll.

There's a kind of decadence about all this: If 9/11 was really an inside job, you wouldn't be driving around with a bumper sticker bragging that you were on to it.

There is something protective about such conspiracy theories (which I explored in Political Deification.)  The idea that the world includes truly random events and that humans are capable of truly monstrous behavior is exceedingly frightening to people who have been raised in a pampered, safe, and secure environment in which fairness has come to mean that no one gets ever hurt or feels bad.

Narcissism and "Theory of the Mind"

In my post yesterday on Canaries in the Coal Mine, I suggested some reasons for concern that a state run by those who have the enhanced Narcissism so often found in the baby boom cohort and their offspring, would be at risk from internal dissolution.  Israel is such a state and is in danger of placing themselves at great risk by their failure to recognize the disconnect between their conception of negotiations and the very different conception of the same by their "partners in Peace" among the Palestinians.  David Foster raised an excellent point in the comments:

"... Narcissists cannot conceive that other people have minds that are organized and operate differently than their own does"...this feels correct; however, how do we square it with the fact that these same Narcissists are often cultural relativists and believe that beliefs very different from their own (about the role of women, the drinking of alcohol, etc) are equally valid because they are part of a different culture?

Sarah Rolph offered a beginning of an answer:

It's the mental model of narcissism that makes cultural relativism possible. It's not that the leftists have carefully considered the cultures they defend and come to the conclusion that all of them are indeed valid. They sweep aside the particulars in a stunning display of denial and assume that the evidence before them couldn't possibly be true. Terrorists couldn't be people who have actually decided to kill innocents; they are "militants," you know, like we were in college. Working for change against those in authority. You know, The Man. Just like the brave people here who speak out against the government. You know, The System. These empty words are used for a reason: to keep the truth at bay.

I would like to amplify on this answer because there is a very good reason the Left celebrates cultural relativism, which on the surface appears to contradict the premise that they also make the Narcissistic error.

Consider a prototypical parenting scene which all of us have probably noted from time to time; it is the kind of scene that has given Dr. Spock and "permissiveness" the negative valence they have earned since the 1960s.  A young child, perhaps 4 or 5, at a supermarket check out.  The child asks for a piece of candy or a small toy.  The parent says, "No", though perhaps with less certainty than one would hope and the child escalates.  Before long, the child has begun to create a "scene."  The bewildered and annoyed parent debates within herself what to do; she knows (intellectually) that setting limits is important, yet she doesn't want to be seen to be a "bad" mother.  She probably would like to swat the child on the backside, but that risks being labeled, and treated as, a child abuser (with the "moral clarity" our now zero-tolerance culture substitutes for rationality and judement.)  After a very few moments of crying and pleading and angry demands, the Mother gives in and purchases the toy or candy for the child.  Order is restored and peace in our time is achieved.

While this story is a bit of a caricature, we have all seen it, and perhaps been guilty of it from time to time ourselves.  What does it tell us about the mother and her theory of the child's mind?

The Canaries in the Coal Mine

The Jewish people have earned their role as the "canaries in the coal mine" the hard way; whenever tyranny has reared its ugly head, scapegoating (externalization) the Jews has been a popular device whereby the tyrants solidify and legitimize their rule.  With the existence of the state of Israel, it is not even necessary for a country to actually contain Jews in order for anti-Semitism to flourish.

Along with its important role in traditional anti-Semitism, the state of Israel seems determined to blaze new trails in its role as the "canarie in the cola mine" amongst the Nations.

Michael Freund touches upon this in an article from the Jerusalem Post two days ago.  In Our slow, steady slide toward narcissism, he commented on an aspect of the historical enhancement of narcissism that has helped define the post-war baby boomer generation and their offspring and which now threatens to erode the Jewish state from within:

There is something wrong - something very, very wrong - going on here. Something has happened to Israeli society over the past few years, something that is slowly and inexorably changing the way people relate to one another.

...

How did this happen? How did we go from being a society that cared - to one that is increasingly so callous?

The answer, I think, is surprisingly simple, and it can best be summed up in one very short and simple, little word: me.

No, I don't mean "me" as in myself, Michael Freund, the author of this article, but "me" in the sense that each of us has increasingly turned inward, to some extent shutting out our responsibility to one another as Jews.

Values and ideals such as patriotism, Jewish pride and love of country are increasingly being replaced by a narrower mode of thinking, one that is focused far more selfishly on what is best for me, myself and especially - for I.

The self-absorption Freund writes about leaves its mark in the ambivalence found among so many toward fighting the war against Islamic expansionism and doing their part to defend themselves and their culture against Islamist attacks.  American and European readers, not to mention Asian and Australian, can recognize many of the same concerns becoming part of the conversation in their own societies, but nowhere is the danger quite so acute as in Israel.  As suggested, this is a derivative of the enhanced Narcissism that is endemic to developed societies and is on the increase.  Along with enhanced guilt, the combination has put Western Civilization at risk.

The Beauty of Modern Liberalism

The beauty of Modern Liberalism (as opposed to traditional liberalism) is its simplicity and clarity.  The most complex situations can be reduced to the most simple terms.  This is nowhere on display in such stark terms as in the international arena, most especially in regards to Iran.  Modern Liberalism compels one to discover a powerful man, preferably white and American, with bonus points if Jewish, and attribute all odious behaviors to him; it makes it easy to identify the good guys and bad guys and makes policy prescriptions even easier; simply rein in the bad guy(s) and Peace will come. 

Maureen Dowd does the honors today in the New York Times. 

Madness as Method

Dick Cheney’s craziness used to influence foreign policy.

Now it is foreign policy.

He may have lost his buddy in belligerence, Rummy. He may have tapped out the military in Iraq. He may not be able to persuade Congress so easily anymore — except for Hillary — to issue warlike resolutions. He can’t cow Condi into supporting his bullying as he once did, and Bob Gates is doing his best to instill some common sense.

Besides, Cheney is running out of time to wreak global havoc; he’s working for a president who is spending his waning days on the job trying to prevent children from getting health insurance.

But the vice president may have hit on a devious tactic used by his old boss Richard Nixon.

President Nixon and Henry Kissinger liked to use madness as a method. In 1969, Nixon told Kissinger to caution the Soviet ambassador that Nixon was “out of control” on Indochina, and could do something drastic.

The MSM & Superego Lacunae

One of the important components of our Superego is our conscience.  Our conscience is what evokes guilt when I we do something that does not fit into our ethical and moral code.  Signal guilt allows us to anticipate how we would feel if we followed through on an unacceptable impulse.  At the same time, we all have Superego defects, compromises whereby our Superego "looks" the other way and allows us to rationalize or ignore transgressions; such Superego defects can be thought of a Superego lacunae, literally holes in the Superego.  An everyday example can be found in those people who proclaim they are honest and would never cheat anyone yes when a clerk makes a math error in their favor, keeps the money that does not belong to them, with the rationalization that the store won't miss the money and its not so much anyway. 

If we look for a Superego analogue in our body politic, the closest thing to a conscience is a functioning MSM.  Along with functioning as our perceptual apparatus, the MSM's investigatory arm functions as our political conscience, ferreting out wrong doing and bringing it to our attention.  When the MSM functions properly in this respect, it can alert the public and politicians to problematic situations and prevent them from turning into major scandals.  This would be an analogue of signal guilt.  A politician whose hand has moved too close to the till and discovers the eye of the MSM upon him will be much more likely to behave in a virtuous manner than one whose small transgressions are overlooked out of ideological sympathy.  When the MSM fails in their Superego conscience function, it not only fails the American people but also creates a dangerous dynamic in our political process.

As all but the most liberal recognize the MSM has significant Superego lacunae when it comes to Democratic transgressions; this is not the favor to the Democrats that one might imagine.

Hillary Clinton may well be our next President, which makes the MSM dereliction of duty in regards to the Campaign Finance irregularities which appear to be endemic to her campaign, all the more problematic. 

We're Back!

The Sanity Squad has returned, now hosted at BlogTalkRadio.  Dr. Sanity and Siggy inaugurate our new home.  Neo-neocon and I were unable to join this week's discussion of Neoconservatism, but plan on resuming our participation starting next week.  Stay tuned!

Iran, Again

Fareed Zakaria is one of the better columnists writing about the Middle East and in his piece for Newsweek he raises the alarm over our escalating tension with Iran:

Stalin, Mao And … Ahmadinejad?

At a meeting with reporters last week, President Bush said that "if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon." These were not the barbs of some neoconservative crank or sidelined politician looking for publicity. This was the president of the United States, invoking the specter of World War III if Iran gained even the knowledge needed to make a nuclear weapon.

The American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality. Norman Podhoretz, the neoconservative ideologist whom Bush has consulted on this topic, has written that Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is "like Hitler … a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn the going international system and to replace it in the fullness of time with a new order dominated by Iran and ruled by the religio-political culture of Islamofascism." For this staggering proposition Podhoretz provides not a scintilla of evidence.

There is much to agree with in Zakaria's piece but I suspect he is engaging in hyperbole just as he levels the same accusation at Podhoretz.

There are two implicit assumptions that Zakaria makes about Iran, and for neither does he provide a "scintilla of evidence." 

First, Zakaria suggests that the Millennialist strain in Shia Islam that is exemplified by Ahmadinejad, should not be taken seriously; after all, the Iranians were actually helpful to us in the waning days of the Afghanistan War, and we can treat with them as rational opponents: