ShrinkWrapped

Shame on Them

It is bad enough that President Obama is planning to visit Germany and make an implicit moral equivalence between German extermination camps and the bombing of Dresden, but to deny a heroine of WWII her rightful place of honor on June 6, 2009 is more than dishonorable.  I'm with Lexington Green on this:

Queen Elizabeth II is the last living head of state who served in uniform in World War II.

Obama, Sarkozy and Brown do not want her in Normandy on June 6, 2009. It is unlikely she will be alive or fit to travel in 2014.

They are correctly afraid that they would shown up as the petty, trivial men they are if they had to stand next to her.

These three detestable men just became even more loathsome in my eyes.

The three of them are not worthy to change the bedpans of our World War II veterans.

Playing With Fire

It is a convention of play writing that the appearance of a gun in Act I implies its use in Act II.  Human beings, having once developed a weapon, have always found rationales for their use.  Thus far there has never been a weapon devised by man that has not been used.  Nuclear weapons, once demonstrated, have long been considered of such magnitude as to be impossible to use in a world in which more than one nation has the capacity.  Mutual Assured Destruction worked, though there were several very close calls. 

Now that North Korea has tested a second, apparently more successful, bomb, much of the World's attention is turning to the question of how to restrain rogue nations from proliferating and eventually using their weapons.  Tom Barnett, who has been rather sanguine about an Iranian nuclear weapon and the prospects of proliferation leading to use, in the process of making one point, makes a quite different point:

Recklessly rising India?

ARTICLE: Nuclear Aims By Pakistan, India Prompt U.S. Concern, By R. Jeffrey Smith and Joby Warrick, Washington Post, May 28, 2009

A disturbing pair of reports on Pakistan and India. Why India needs nuclear-tipped cruise missiles is beyond me, but most of their ongoing military modernization betrays a profoundly immature view of the possibilities of great-power war. On this score, they disappoint immensely. Because if they're that stupid on their force structure, how out of control might they be on the actual employment?

As for Pakistan, here it's just dumber following dumb--with our money no less.

Here Tom's focus is on India's foolishness.  It is remarkable to me that someone as insightful as Tom Barnett should focus on India's behavior as if it is the trigger for Pakistan's past, present, and future proliferation.  India and Pakistan have been doing a pas de deux of hatred since partition in 1947.  Indian and  Pakistan have fought 3 (or is it now 4?) wars over Kashmir, the last coming perilously close to "going nuclear."  The Pakistani ISI has been implicated in the ongoing terror war against its neighbor, culminating most recently in the attacks on Mumbai.  Pakistan, along with North Korea, has been the primary agent of proliferation for at least the last 20 years (during which the AQ Khan network was active.)  And it is India that is behaving irresponsibly?

[Here's a conundrum.  Why is it that Indian has been repeatedly attacked by its Muslim neighbor that believes that Kashmir should be part of the Ummah?  Note the parallel to the Arab world's attacks on Israel, which they believe should be part of the Ummah.  I am sure it is merely a coincidence that the Muslim world has bloody borders with these two, democratic neighbors.]

Tom Barnett's question - "if (India is) that stupid on their force structure, how out of control might they be on the actual employment?" - should apply with even more force to Pakistan, a nation that has thoroughly neglected the development of its human potential in favor of creating human (Deobandi Jihadis) and nuclear weapons.  Further, he fails to follow the logic of his own concerns.  If India is now considered at risk of recklessness, what evidence do we have that North Korea, Iran, or Pakistan would be more cautious in the use of their nuclear assets?

I am curious to know how Tom Barnett, who is one of our smartest strategic thinkers extant, thinks about this dilemma.  Of course, I am even more curious to know how Barack Obama, who makes up in influence what he lacks in experience or strategic vision, thinks about the problem.

Running on Empty

Too much work and too little time equals no blogging today.

Foreign Policy Realism: Iran and North Korea

President Obama famously suggested that engagement with our enemies would be his primary approach to dealing with North Korea, Iran, and the usual gang of suspects.  The subtext of the new "Realism" in Washington, DC seems to be that since deterrence worked during the cold war with equally implacable, committed, and far more dangerous enemies, deterrence can be a workable doctrine upon which to base American security.  There are many eloquent and persuasive voices being raised in favor of accepting the inevitable and establishing a deterrence doctrine in the face of, especially, Iranian nuclear, genocidal ambitions.  Tom Barnett has repeatedly suggested that the idea that Iran s run by irrational twelvers welcoming of martyrdom is a fiction designed to scare people and shore up support for hte regime at home.  In his view, Iran is behaving as a cautious, aging revolutionary regime aiming to carefully extend its reach without risking the health or wealth of the Mullahcracy.  Since there has never been a society that had both a suicidal philosophical core and the capacity to conduct mass murder, we do not have any historical precedents for the Iranian behavior.

My focus is on Iran for two reasons.  First, North Korea fits quite well into Tom Barnett's model.  It appears that as irrational as Kim can behave at times, his primary interest is safeguarding his regime and his succession.  We have seen this before and have managed to deal with the threat.  As long as Kim does not believe he or his regime can survive an overt confrontation with the United States (or even with South Korea) he will continue to behave in a bellicose manner while constantly testing where the American threshold lies.  President Obama's diffidence toward North Korea suggest that line will be perilously close to an impossible to ignore tripwire, but since we still do not know where Obama draws the line, any conclusions can only be considered premature at this point.  In summary I do not see North Korea behaving suicidally under any circumstances.  If the regime were to begin to totter, one or another of the Generals would certainly arrange for aid form the Chinese to stabilize the ocutnry and control the threatened chaos.  The greatest risk is that North Korea wold sell their technology and weapons to anyone willing to pay for it, as they have done in the past.  The threat that the United States, et al, will begin to interdict North Korean ships in order to prevent such spread of dangerous weapons is perceived, correctly by the North, as an act of war, but in reality, there is little that the North can do about it as long as they wish to survive.

On the other hand, Iran presents a different and unique set of problems.  Iranian religious beliefs, inseparable from their political ideology, demands that Allah, and their form of Islam, reign supreme.  Certainly there have been other supremacist ideologies and few have been initially suicidal (a good case can be made that Nazi Germany, starting from a vantage point of much greater comparative power and wealth than Iran, was driven to commit suicide by their ideology, including their core anti-Semitism.)  The problem for the Iranians is that their ideology is integral to their existence. 

In my just completed series on The Modern Left: A Marriage of Post-Modernism and Narcissism, Part III I pointed out that when ideas are deeply held by the Narcissist, admission of error becomes impossible.  Being in error is the equivalent of being personally repudiated; self-esteem collapses, shame, despair and rage ensue.  This is especially true of ideological and religious ideas, which is why so many wars have been motivated by such.  The Iranians adhere to an apocalyptic religious structure that rewards and celebrates martyrdom in all its forms.  As long as the possibility of victory for the Islamic revolution exists they will behave like a rational actor on the world stage.  The great risk is that we do not know how they will behave once they have begun to fail.  MAD worked (just barely) because the Russians were convinced they would win and when their defeat became inevitable, their leadership preferred a life of material comfort to death.   Their ideology ultimately was trumped by their personal comforts. There is good reason to question whether the same calculation would render the same answer concerning the Iranians.

Jeffrey Goldberg, who opposes military action against Iran, has written a post disputing the reasoning behind the relatively sanguine approach toward Iran and its intentions championed by Fareed Zakaria.  Jeffrey Goldberg cites the story of the 500,000 plastic keys to heaven given to children to hold as they marched through minefields; his conclusion is apt:

Does Zakaria Misinterpret Iranian Intentions?

Zakaria writes that "over the last five years, senior Iranian officials at every level have repeatedly asserted that they do not intend to build nuclear weapons. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has quoted the regime's founding father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who asserted that such weapons were 'un-Islamic.' The country's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a fatwa in 2004 describing the use of nuclear weapons as immoral."

When ayatollahs start talking about Islamic morality, I run for the exits. Their ideas about what constitute moral acts are not, generally speaking, ours. Here's one obvious example, from the Iran-Iraq war, courtesy of the German writer Matthias Kuntzel:

During the Iran-Iraq War, the Ayatollah Khomeini imported 500,000 small plastic keys from Taiwan. The trinkets were meant to be inspirational. After Iraq invaded in September 1980, it had quickly become clear that Iran's forces were no match for Saddam Hussein's professional, well-armed military. To compensate for their disadvantage, Khomeini sent Iranian children, some as young as twelve years old, to the front lines. There, they marched in formation across minefields toward the enemy, clearing a path with their bodies. Before every mission, one of the Taiwanese keys would be hung around each child's neck. It was supposed to open the gates to paradise for them.

At one point, however, the earthly gore became a matter of concern. "In the past," wrote the semi-official Iranian daily Ettelaat as the war raged on, "we had child-volunteers: 14-, 15-, and 16-year-olds. They went into the minefields. Their eyes saw nothing. Their ears heard nothing. And then, a few moments later, one saw clouds of dust. When the dust had settled again, there was nothing more to be seen of them. Somewhere, widely scattered in the landscape, there lay scraps of burnt flesh and pieces of bone." Such scenes would henceforth be avoided, Ettelaat assured its readers. "Before entering the minefields, the children [now] wrap themselves in blankets and they roll on the ground, so that their body parts stay together after the explosion of the mines and one can carry them to the graves."

These children who rolled to their deaths were part of the Basiji, a mass movement created by Khomeini in 1979 and militarized after the war started in order to supplement his beleaguered army.The Basij Mostazafan - or "mobilization of the oppressed" - was essentially a volunteer militia, most of whose members were not yet 18. They went enthusiastically, and by the thousands, to their own destruction. "The young men cleared the mines with their own bodies," one veteran of the Iran-Iraq War recalled in 2002 to the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine. "It was sometimes like a race. Even without the commander's orders, everyone wanted to be first."

How do I say this as bluntly as possible? A leadership that could murder its own children in such a horrible way is capable of absolutely anything. Including lying about its nuclear intentions.

Radical Islam as practiced by the Iranians, Palestinians, various Sunni groups including al Qaeda, et al, is a suicidal death cult.  Their ideology/religion is inseparable from their self-representations (ie, their self images.)  In order for them to survive and thrive, their version of Islam must survive and thrive.  If their vision for Islam fails, their lives have no meaning; death is preferable.  Should Iran falter and the Mullahs hold on their rule become in doubt, a policy based on their continued rational pursuit of what Westerners believe to be the Iranian national self interest, is a policy that will be ill-equipped to deal with the consequences of an Iran that sees their national interest in an Apocalyptic cataclysm, a final battle between Islam and the infidels. In a world in which there is a non-zero possibility of a decapitating strike (an EMP attack) against the West succeeding, the pressure on the Iranians to strike while they still can will be quite powerful.

The Modern Left: A Marriage of Post-Modernism and Narcissism, Part III

[The Modern Left: A Marriage of Post-Modernism and Narcissism, Part II
The Modern Left: A Marriage of Post-Modernism and Narcissism, Part I]

In Part I of this series I discussed an interview with Stephen Hicks to illustrate how the Post-Modernist Left has mis-used and aggrandized Post-Modernism as an assault upon Reason.  Post-Modernism is a useful, though ultimately minor, philosophical idea (it falls far short of being a theory) that helps offer an understanding of subjectivity and the problem of objectivity; when the Post-Modern idea was abrogated by the Left for their ideological purposes it abandoned reality and reason and became merely a tool of intimidation and power.

In Part II I considered Richard Landes's discussion of PoMo as a tool used for its utility in disguising the failures of Leftist ideology, akin to (failed) Millenialists' denials.  In Richard's words:

In millennial studies jargon that’s cogntive dissonance at recognizing (and denying) the failure of one’s outrageously hopeful expectations, at the horror of witnessing the God that failed.

Here, rather than acknowledge that the failure of expectations was due to a misreading of human nature, we have people throwing out the very effort to accurately read the world of humans.

The third leg of the stool supporting the PoMo narrative is the Psychological.  Post-Modernism, an idea that facilitates intellectualization, is the perfect defensive structure for the Narcissist, fulfilling many unconscious needs.  The core of the Narcissist's relationship to his own outputs was eloquently captured in a quote that Stephen Hicks offered in his interview with David Thompson (and that Richard used in his post, PoMo Unpeeled: David Thompson talks with Stephen Hicks, as well):

SH: Pomo is rhetoric-heavy, yes. But rhetoric is a tool, so one can ask how it’s being used and why it’s being used that way. The postmodernists have rejected reason, and along with it concern for evidence and consistency. What then is the purpose of rhetoric? In pomo practice, there are a couple of possibilities.

One is that rhetoric becomes a kind of subjectivist expressionism - you play around with language and hope that something interesting pops out. Derrida is often like this - I think of him as a performance artist of postmodernism. In its darker moods, this approach recalls a line from Kate Ellis, a sympathetic-to-postmodernism commentator, who noted “the characteristically apolitical pessimism of most postmodernism, by which creation is simply a form of defecation." [Emphasis mine-SW] Whatever’s been processing and churning up inside you - you just let ‘er rip.

Leonard Shengold, in his essential book on child abuse, Soul Murder: The Effects of Childhood Abuse and Deprivation, described Defensive Anality, in which all distinctions are reduced to an homogenized inchoate mass, feces.  The abused child does this (unconsciously) in order to make sense of the impossible, to allow himself to believe that the parent who hurts him also loves him, to square the circle of bringing his perceptions into accord with his abuser's prescriptions.  It is an impossible psychological task and the abused child's mind surrenders by turning it all into shit.  Love, sex, hate are all then made equivalents.  This defensive style is common to Narcissistic defenses and to Leftist Post-Modernism.  Why and how does the Narcissist resort to such a primitive defense?

For the Narcissist, any failure is a narcissistic injury, threatening to cause intolerable shame and a catastrophic collapse of his self-esteem.

[One response to this conflict is commonly seen in the college student who has difficulty studying for a test: to not study and do less well than hoped is a minor disaster; what else could you expect? (while secretly hoping to do well and show your brilliance.)  Alternatively, to study and then fall short is a catastrophe; your feared stupidity is confirmed!  The defense was poorly adaptive at one time, when grades actually reflected accomplishments.  In our PC college culture, one has to put in great effort to do poorly in terms of grades and the defense works tolerably well for our increasingly narcissistically damaged youngsters.]

If failure can never be tolerated or admitted ways must be found to hide evidence of failure and deny failure.  Post-Modernism is the perfect tool for the job and has shown itself to be up to the task.  Since there can be no objective standards for anything, no one can ever conclude that a liberal theory or policy has failed.  The Emperor may be stark naked but in the world of the Post-Modernist, imagined clothing can be as beautiful as the finest couture; in fact, since to the Post-Modernist it is the language that describes the clothing that lends it beauty, the naked Emperor is actually considered to be better clothed than the conventional Emperor of dead white male infamy!  This is the power of Post-Modernism; all nonsense is accorded the same, or higher, degree of authority than the most painstakingly, experimentally confirmed scientific theory.

Only Post-Modernists could fail to understand the brilliance of Alan Sokal's Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity.  The Post-Modernists can mouth the words of science but understand nothing of the concepts and think they have received wisdom.  Because Sokal can use their language, which they idealize above the reality that language at its best approximates, they elevate feces to an ideal.

Narcissism stems from an early age and receives a tremendous surge of psychic investment during the anal period when the child is becoming civilized and learning to control its bodily urges.  When a child is first being toilet trained it is common for the parents to treat its outputs, the feces, as a treasure.  As the child develops they soon learn that feces is not a treasure but if offered in the wrong place and time a source of shame.  The Narcissist defensively regresses to a state in which undifferentiated, meaningless verbiage (feces) are no longer considered to be distinct from more sophisticated verbal outputs.  To the Narcissist any theory they adopt or invest in is important because it comes from within them.  Proof or evidence is unnecessary because its provenance supplies all the justification it needs.  Since it is their "crap", it must be important!  The Narcissist is like the little child, desperate to please its mother, struggling to push out a treasure for her.  The fact that their undifferentiated mass has no intrinsic value is of no consequence.

Post-Modernism, Left wing ideology, and Narcissism are thus a menage a trois of mutual dependency.  The Narcissist who needs to see himself as more caring, smarter, and more moral than the crypto-fascists on the right, can never admit that a liberal policy has failed because the failure of an idea he holds is an injury to his self-esteem.  An attack on his belief is thus an attack on him; the two cannot be separated.  This is also why so much discussion from the Left contains so much invective and so few attempts at reason or marshaling of evidence; since they are so emotionally invested in their beliefs, they must defend them as if they are defending themselves.  It is no wonder that our political discourse has been so coarse.

Off LIne

I will be completely off-line, with minimal access to a computer and the internet, until Tuesday morning.  It will be an interesting naturalistic experiment to see if the relief at not being constantly inundated with news outweighs the anxiety of missing something important.

In the meantime enjoy the Memorial Day weekend and pause a moment on Monday to think of those who gave so much so that we could have so much.

The Ineffable Stupidity of Henry Waxman

One of the more unfortunate side effects of our system of government relates to the use of seniority to determine power in the House of Representatives.  This tends to favor more ideological tendencies since Representatives from safe, reliably ultra-liberal or ultra-conservative (aka partisan) seats are usually re-elected repeatedly without much opposition and over time make their way into positions of power.  Their power is divorced from any particular skill set (beyond that needed to run and get elected in their district) or intellectual acumen they may have.  This leads to distortions of the public interest.

The Psychiatric Times reports on a long awaited clarification from the FDA:

Promoting Off-Label Uses of Approved Drugs: Green Light—or First Amendment Violation?

The FDA recently released its long-awaited but highly controversial final guidance permitting drug and device manufacturers to distribute medical journal articles and medical or scientific texts that discuss off-label uses of approved products.

The guidance, “Good Reprint Practice for the Distribution of Medical Journal Articles and Medical or Scientific Reference Publications on Unapproved New Uses of Approved Drug and Approved or Cleared Medi­cal Devices,” is available on the FDA’s Web site: http://www.fda.gov/oc/op/ goodreprint.html.

Off-label uses of approved medications is a thorny issue for Medicine.  Our Biochemistry and Physiology is so complex that it is a fantasy to believe that Medications only have simple isolated effects.  What are referred to as side effects are typically negative expressions of the drug's effects that are experienced by a minority of patients.  Some side effects are later determined to be of such benefit that the drug eventually gains its place as part of the standard armamentarium for particular illnesses.  For example, Benedryl is an anti-histamine available over the counter for allergic reactions.  One of its side effects is that it is very sedating for many people.  As a benefit of this side effect, it is also one of the safest and most effective sleeping pills available for insomnia (though it is rarely driectly marketed as such because it is now off patent.  Check your OTC sleeping pills and mixtures; most have an anti-histamine in them.).

As the cost of bringing new drugs to market has escalated (it is now estimated to cost $1.4 Billion to gain FDA approval) off-label use has become much more important to he drug companies.  They have relatively little in the way of marginal expenses to increase their sales.  If an approved drug gains a new use, a whole new market opens up.  This encourages drug companies to interpret their research data in the most favorable light and there are few sources of independent research.  Typically off-label uses are discovered serendipitously,are modeled on responses to similar drugs, or are an outgrowth of increasing understanding of how a particular drug works.  For example, when anti-seizure medications were given to people with seizure disorders who also suffered form mood disorders, a serendipitous finding was that the drugs seemed to decrease the frequency and intensity of affective episodes along with their effectiveness in decreasing seizure frequency.  The theory that "kindling" played a role in both disorders led to research which has enlarged our understanding of the physiology of both disorders and a better understanding of the overlaps between them.  Anti-seizure medications such as Depokote are now first line treatments for Bipolar Disorder. 

Out of the complex interplay between basic and applied research, Physician anecdotes, third -person reviews, and drug company interests, we often end up doing what is effectively extended, real world research.  Because we remain far from an understanding of individual biochemistry and physiology, many emergent effects of medications, good and bad, will only be recognized and either guarded against or exploited, after many thousands, even millions of people have taken the drugs.  Into this complex mix, Representative Henry Waxman felt the need to offer his exceptionally simple-minded insights:

A major critic of the guidance, Rep Henry Waxman (D-Calif), chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, urged the Obama administration “to carefully reexamine” the policy. Waxman accused Bush’s political appointees of giving drug companies “a long-coveted parting gift.”

“Despite revelations that drug companies manipulate medical journal articles to exaggerate the benefits and downplay the risks of their drugs, the guidance gives companies a green light to promote unapproved uses of their products by handing out these journal articles,” he said. “This fun­da­mentally undermines the requirement that companies prove to the FDA that each new use is safe and effective.”

If I may enlighten Mr. Waxman: When the FDA approves a drug they have already determined, within rather narrow though not infallible limits, that the drug is safe and effective; off-label use is an attempt to leverage that approval to treat additional ailments that are currently inadequately treated by approved medications.  Waxman seems to operate under a sophisticated moral guidance system: Drug companies bad, FDA good.  The pace of innovation in Medicine is already much slower than our technological progress would suggest it should be because of our regulatory environment.  If drug companies are going to be required to spend billions to justify off-label uses of their products, even greater stagnation will ensue.

There are reasons to be concerned about any new drug when it first comes to market.  Treatment emergent side effects (and treatment emergent beneficial effects) are inevitable.  Preferable to treating drug companies like criminal enterprises and requiring them to risk financial ruin (adding insult to injury, gaining FDA approval at the cost of Billions does not protect against the potential of legally prescribed liability which can cost Billions more) along with exponentially mounting expenses to bring drugs to market would be treating patients like grown-ups, supplying them with the knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns about the drugs we prescribe, and then allowing the patient to determine the level of risk they can tolerate.  Of course, treating people like adults has never been a vote getter for Henry Waxman and his ilk.

The Modern Left: A Marriage of Post-Modernism and Narcissism, Part II

[The Modern Left: A Marriage of Post-Modernism and Narcissism, Part I]

Communism, and its more liberal offspring, Socialism, appeal to the young because it is superficially more fair than Capitalism.  The Utopianism inherent in Socialism appeals to those who feel that life is unfair and that it should be more fair.  What child hasn't, at one time or another, uttered that immortal phrase that so many parents have so much troubling resisting, "Its not fair!"  By the time the youngster begins to support him or herself, in modern Western cultures usually by the age of 30 or 40 (pardon the mild hyperbole, though there are efforts afoot to increase that age to never) they begin to recognize that the world is, in fact, not fair.  The Universe does not care if you are a good person or a bad person (leaving religion out of the mix) but only whether or not you can support yourself and those who depend upon you.  Modern liberal capitalist states have become so incredibly wealthy over the last century that we can now afford to support a growing dependency cohort which naturally evokes the infantile wish among the dependent to be treated more fairly, ie, that to each according to his needs should be the rule.  The upshot is that there is an inherent tension in our society between those who pay and those who are dependent.  This can and does create cognitive dissonance among those who have incorporated the ethos of Socialist compassion without spending time and energy understanding the far greater moral imperative of personal responsibility and freedom (two inextricable values.)

The last century's grand experiments in Communism and Socialism led to the impoverishment of millions, authoritarian and totalitarian rule and the deaths of millions.  History has rendered its verdict and Communism and Socialism have failed.  This has led to a crisis for the Left.

Richard Landes discussed David Thompson's interview with Stephen Hicks at the Augean Stables and his comments are illuminating.  He first points out some of the value of PoMo and then follows with some of the contradictions at its core: [All emphasis mine- SW]

PoMo Unpeeled: David Thompson talks with Stephen Hicks

The rejection of the “objective” is a reasonable linguistic move: language cannot possibly be transparent on reality, especially the reality of human experiences. Even if something “really did happen,” there’s no way to reduce it to verbal formulae, no way for verbal formulae to somehow lock on to the objective reality at which it points. Epistemologically, it’s possible to push it all the way to radical doubt — we can’t know what we can’t know.

One of the more interesting directions pomo thought takes this axiomatic relativism, is the rejection of the “Grand” or “Meta-Narrative,” the all-encompassing, totalistic narrative that includes, gives order and priority in meaning to the multiplicity of “little narratives” that emerge from any event. Pomos have declared the “death” of the Meta-narrative, apparently feeling that having slain the reigning Meta-Narrative (modern, scientific objectivity), they would not allow a new one to gain hegemony.

All of these ideas are interesting and potentially enormously fruitful. The danger I find most pervasive though, is in the lack of understanding and appreciation that post-modernists have for their exegetical freedom. Not realizing that in most societies in most parts of the world for most of history no one, not even the most privileged figures had anything remotely resembling their freedom to interpret and criticize and even reinvent the meaning of the culture’s major texts. As a result, they tend to abuse their freedom, decoupling the key pair of freedom and discipline for an extraordinarily self-indulgent display of solepsistic “creations.”

Indeed, in their eagerness to flaunt their freedom, the unconsciously replicate the ancestors they thought they had slain, those Meta-Narrative driven figures like Hegel and Vico, who saw in history the inexorable march of freedom. And yet, unlike earlier heroes in the heroic narrative — Washington’s refusal to become king comes to mind — they fail to appreciate either the gift they’ve inherited, or the audience to which they, as the culture’s interpreters, are responsible. Alas for us.

After that introduction Richard addresses the interview and remarks upon the use of PoMo to obfuscate the failure of the Left's ideology:

In millennial studies jargon that’s cogntive dissonance at recognizing (and denying) the failure of one’s outrageously hopeful expectations, at the horror of witnessing the God that failed.

Here, rather than acknowledge that the failure of expectations was due to a misreading of human nature, we have people throwing out the very effort to accurately read the world of humans.

Please read the whole thing; it helps clarify how the Left's alliance with Islamism is rationalized and the ways in which our public intellectuals entertain the most convoluted mental gymnastics in order to justify their support of the insupportable.  I highlighted certain passages to underscore the point that the failures of Communism stem from the shortcomings (and glories) of human nature.  It is the human Psyche, including the Psyche of those on the Left, that dooms Communism.  The theory is perfect; the fault lies within our all too human desire for more than just fairness.  We also desire freedom and we desire more.  Capitalism, by harnessing human nature, makes a virtue of necessity; Communism pretends that if only enough force is used and enough counter-revolutionaries are destroyed, that Utopia will prevail.  It cannot work because even the "vanguard of the revolution" is composed of fallible human beings.  (This is, of course, the same reason a Caliphate will never be reinstituted by the Islamists; they are human and contain more than their share of fallibility.)

The failure of Communism has Millennial implications for the Left.  There can be no Left if they admit or accept that their ideology has failed.  The adoption of the PoMo narrative represents a desperate attempt to retain their theory in the face of reality.  Professor Landes, as noted, is an expert on Millennial movements and he makes an extremely strong case that the Left is reacting as if their grand edifice has failed and they need to deny that intolerable reality.

In a key point in Richard's post, he first offers this quote from the Stephen Hicks interview:

SH: Pomo is rhetoric-heavy, yes. But rhetoric is a tool, so one can ask how it’s being used and why it’s being used that way. The postmodernists have rejected reason, and along with it concern for evidence and consistency. What then is the purpose of rhetoric? In pomo practice, there are a couple of possibilities.

One is that rhetoric becomes a kind of subjectivist expressionism - you play around with language and hope that something interesting pops out. Derrida is often like this - I think of him as a performance artist of postmodernism. In its darker moods, this approach recalls a line from Kate Ellis, a sympathetic-to-postmodernism commentator, who noted “the characteristically apolitical pessimism of most postmodernism, by which creation is simply a form of defecation.” Whatever’s been processing and churning up inside you - you just let ‘er rip.

And concludes:

And yet, and yet, pomo is not a-political, it just disguises its refusal to face the failure of the revolution in a pseudo-a-politicism. Terry Eagelton is a good example. He wants revolution at any cost — even the cost of reintroducing religion, as described by Stanley Fish in an essay I hope to feature here. [What’s a Straw Man of a Straw Man? Fish features Eagelton’s rediscovery of religion]

Eagleton acknowledges that the links forged are not always benign — many terrible things have been done in religion’s name — but at least religion is trying for something more than local satisfactions, for its “subject is nothing less than the nature and destiny of humanity itself, in relation to what it takes to be its transcendent source of life.” And it is only that great subject, and the aspirations it generates, that can lead, Eagleton insists, to “a radical transformation of what we say and do.”

I like the image of creation as defecation. It’s as if, somehow, the process of digesting meaning went from chewing one’s cud and producing life-giving milk, to sucking the nutrients out of the text and crapping all over your readers.

"Creation as defecation" is a quintessential Narcissistic defensive maneuver; it is a core concept of pathological Narcissism.  It is the human psyche that defeats Utopian movements and the intersection of PoMo, the Left and Pathological Narcissism is an organic development which I will further explore in my next post in this series.

The Modern Left: A Marriage of Post-Modernism and Narcissism, Part I

You cannot understand modern politics, especially the role and behavior of the left understanding the basics of Post-Modernism.  Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, by Stephen Hicks is a must read which can help clarify such superficially puzzling questions as the conceptual basis for the alliance between radical Islam and the Left. 

The Left has an outsized influence in the West via their control of much of the Academy and much of the MSM, which allows them to establish the acceptable bounds of discourse (Political Correctness, Hate Crimes, etc.)  Further, the Left's Post-Modern narrative is now the baseline for Europe and threatens to become the accepted framework for discourse in America.  Their ideas reside at the core of the Democratic Party and and exert tremendous influence upon our ruling elites in both parties.

Recently David Thompson posted an interview with Stephen Hicks discussing his work.  The interview is well worth your time.  It establishes some of the fundamentals of the current iteration of Post-Modernism in the Academia and its spill-over effects in politics.  Here is an excerpt from David's interview (all highlighting and emphases are his):

Postmodernism Unpeeled

DT: You say, “The postmodernists have rejected reason, and along with it concern for evidence and consistency,” and I suspect some readers will find this hard to accept. It sounds outlandish. But, as you point out in the book, Lyotard explicitly rejected notions of truth and clarity as being synonymous with “prisons and prohibitions.” Foucault shared these sentiments, claiming “reason is the ultimate language of madness,” suggesting that nothing should constrain our beliefs and political preferences, not even logic or evidence. Frank Lentricchia, another left-wing theorist, said the postmodern movement “seeks not to find the foundation and conditions of truth, but to exercise power for the purpose of social change.” And Stanley Fish, who rushed to defend Social Text after the Sokal hoax, had previously argued that theorising and deconstruction “relieves me of the obligation to be right … and demands only that I be interesting.” There is a pattern here.

SH: It is hard to accept the rejection of reason, especially if you’re outside of academic circles, but it’s no secret inside. You nicely quote some representative statements - it’s also worth noting that the leading pomo thinkers cite Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the Existentialists as their forerunners, and the rejection of reason runs deep in those lines of thought too. 

DT: A while ago, I quoted a chunk of Derrida prose that’s hilarious nonsense. I’ve defied several Derrida enthusiasts to explain what this particular passage means, or might mean if you squint and tilt your head, but so far no-one has managed to tell me. And the essayfrom which the quote is taken has numerous, equally baffling, paragraphs which could be arranged in almost any order with no perceptible difference. Much of the essay is wilfully incomprehensible, like some Dadaist prank that no-one dares to mention. And there seems to be a taboo against even entertaining the possibility that such a thing could happen, and happen quite often, with little if any protest from colleagues and students. It’s unthinkable that such a con could be perpetrated, and maybe that’s why it goes on happening.

More recently, in a piece about the art world’s reliance on postmodernist rhetoric – what’s often called “art bollocks” - I pointed out that the artist Aliza Shvarts was mouthing opaque gibberish while pretending to be profound. The text she’d written and presented as a key part of her art was clumsy, incoherent and often simply meaningless. It was a kind of verbal flailing and rhetorical camouflage. (It’s difficult to determine exactly how wrong an unintelligible analysis is.) One postmodernist commenter took exception to my criticism - first by accusing me of arguing things I clearly wasn’t arguing, then by saying I was holding “entrenched positions” in which “aesthetic values” (in scare quotes), “scientific reality/clarity” (again, in scare quotes) and my own “reliance on logical consistency” (ditto) were obstaclesto comprehension. Specifically, they were obstacles to comprehending Shvarts’ alleged (but oddly unspecified) “arguments of power, control [and] dominance.” The tone was, of course, condescending and self-satisfied. I’m guessing the commenter in question didn’t pause to consider the possibility that one might find pomo bafflegab objectionable precisely because it represents the “power, control [and] dominance” of what amounts to a priestly caste.

SH: A lot of what you’re getting from your various commentators seems like third-raters playing the game, so it’s probably not worth focusing on them - instead of attending to the lessons they’re learning from the leading pomo strategists.

Another clue is that some postmodernists prefer “neo-pragmatist.” Rorty, Fish, and many of the legal postmodernists sometimes use that label. Pragmatism as a school of thought thinks of knowledge, truth, and certainty as chimerical quests and suggests that we focus our efforts on what works.  In politicized forms, then, postmodernists will behave like the stereotypical unscrupulous lawyer trying to win the case: truth and justice aren’t the point; instead using any rhetorical tool or trick that works is the point. Sometimes contradictory lines of argument work. Sometimes your audience’s desire to belong to the in-group can be played upon. Sometimes appearing absolutely authoritative works to camouflage a weak case. Sometimes condescension works. And so on.

[It is important to note that early, more diffident Post-Modernism presented a very useful integration of ideas about subjectivism and reality; that is, we must necessarily filter reality through our individual perceptual apparatus which creates a model for reality and therefore should remain skeptical of assertions of "Truth."  The later Post-Modernists, in the service of their political ideologies, extended the concept to devalue the concept of reality itself.  In their conception, arising out of the crisis of the failure of Marxism, reality is dictated by the powerful for their own benefits at the expense of the victimized.]

Stephen Hicks and David Thompson are interested in describing how the Post-Modernists distort and corrupt our discourse.  If reality is only what the powerful construct then it follows that the powerful, in the service of a "greater good", by virtue of their nobility of mien and elevated moral standing as champions of the oppressed, have the right and obligation to create a more congenial reality.  The multiple attacks on "white male privilege" follow from just such a political philosophy (which, as noted, is a corruption of what was valuable in Post-Modernism when it was a limited theory, rather than the all encompassing theoretical structure it has degenerated into.)

Richard Landes has added depth and complexity to the David Thompson-Stephen Hicks interview in his post, PoMo Unpeeled: David Thompson talks with Stephen Hicks.  Professor Landes's area of expertise is on Millennial movements and he adroitly places Post-Modernism into context of the failure (denied) of Marxism.  I will return to this topic shortly and will attempt to add another layer of explanation to the mix. 

The New, Evolving Realpolitik

In a post two weeks ago I wondered if President Obama's strategic vision was based on a brutally realistic assessment of our weakness and concluded:

Although it is too early to tell, and we will only really know how Obama will respond when he is actually tested, the early indications are that Obama does not particularly value the military option, does not believe that our military can positively impact events, and is making a virtue out of necessity by extolling dialog with our enemies.  He may well be correct in his assessment of our paucity of options, but his sympathetic, willing, and apparently eager embrace of our weakness is troubling.  As usual, events will be determinative.

Two weeks later, events are beginning to fill in a mixed picture in which Obama's apparent reluctance to exercise power in the international arena is producing a vacuum that others are willing to fill.

The first event of note concerns a 30 year war that finally ended this weekend.  Richard Fernandez offers some perspective:

Gotterdammerung

“Prabhakaran shot dead,” reports the Times Online.

...

The victorious Sri Lankans were said to have received large scale financial and technical assistance for their campaign against the Tigers from China. That assistance enabled them to thumb their noses at the Western capitals, which they must now be congratulating themselves for doing.

...

One wonders whether there isn’t some sudden realization that there’s no contest between brute power and the so-called protections of Western legitimacy. All the international tribunals which were supposed to bring justice to Lebanon, the sanctions which were to defang North Korea; the moral superiority which was to shame the Burmese Junta; all the pieces of paper which emanate from the United Nations are in danger of being regarded as Paper Tigers; which perhaps they now are. To see the utter pregnability of the walls of taboos and garlands of diplomatic wolfsbane with which the West has engirdled things laid bare may have sent the wrong message from Damascus to Teheran; from Gaza to Southern Lebanon; from the Northwest Frontier to the Black Sea. An international regime can survive many things; even defeat. What it cannot survive is a sudden realization that it is ridiculous. Legitimacy depends on prestige and upon respect. How much of that does the West have left?

America was once called a "Paper Tiger" because we were thought to be too soft to respond to provocations.  The eventual legacy of our defeat in Vietnam, and our enabling of the defeat of our erstwhile allies in that benighted country, included 9/11.  (Osama bin Laden explicitly mentioned our defeat in Vietnam as part of his evidence that a severe blow would cause us to fold.)

One unfortunate response to the war in Iraq has been the elevation of lawfare to a superordinate position.  It is a tribute to our sensibilities that we make every attempt to minimize suffering and collateral damage in warfare but once the lawyers and the media have become the front line of defense for our enemies, our ability to make the single most moral choice in war, the choice to win, has been dangerously compromised.  The effects of the changing rules for warfare, and the uncertainty under which our military must now operate, is leading to a relative abandonment of our traditional military and strategic interests.  Galrahn posted a remarkable bit of news on the weekend that will be hard to find in the MSM.  Did you know that America is abandoning a 200 year old policy with almost no comment?  Apparently, it is now policy that Merchant ships sailing anywhere near the Somali coast should find their own ways to secure their passage; the United States will no longer police the sea-lanes.  Note Galrahn's question:

Protecting Freedom of Navigation: No Longer a Naval Role

What is the US Navy's role in defending freedom of navigation anyway, and can anyone wearing a Navy uniform say with a straight face it is to protect the sea lines of communication or freedom of navigation when our governments own policy suggests they are willing to give up that freedom so easily?

Sound maritime strategy during a period of peaceful globalization must be built on a fundamental necessity to insure freedom of navigation for trade, particularly in the parts of the world that are disconnected, like Africa. Piracy is compounding the global economic slide for countries like Egypt, that rely heavily on income from the use of the Suez Canal. Kenya is also suffering, as ships instead take a longer route around Africa and many smaller ships are avoiding port in Kenya where normally they would take on fuel or provisions. These carry economic consequences in a part of the world where economy is the strategy to bring peace and stabilization to a very poor region of the world.

Economics is driving global peace between major powers today, and disruptions to the economic system, particularly at sea in places where globalization does not connect is a problem that should be addressed by all countries, and not just a single country. The very idea of flags of convenience is coming full circle to bite the maritime industry, and I for one have no problem with that. However, I believe Gene Taylor (D-MISS) is asking the right question and is on the right road here, the United States should take a more proactive role in the protection of US flagged ships, sending a clear message that we will at minimum protect our own even if we won't assume the full responsibility of protecting the global system. There is an old catch phrase in consulting, if you aren't willing to be part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem. I am not suggesting the US Navy or Marines are the optimal rent-a-cop for commercial ships, but we do collect taxes on the goods shipped on US flagged ships and with a well armed US military security team and with the US government providing the coverage of risk insurance through the transit zone for ships with an armed US guard, commercial ships can cut down on massive fuel, insurance, and private security costs while still paying large sums of taxes to the US. I have seen several models of such a system, and it can be done if the US can encourage participation.

The greatest triumph of the Anglosphere control of the seas has been the incredible growth of globalization, an economic engine that has lifted billions out of poverty and done more to increase peace than any treaty or UN proclamation.  It is extraordinarily short sighted and will be incredibly damaging in the long run, to focus on, for example, a trillion dollar plus re-engineering of Healthcare while negelecting the foundation of our prosperity.  [See especially, God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World]

If we do not act as guarantors of the international rules, no one will.  The Chinese, acting in their national interest and without the legal qualms that are chaining us, will behave in their traditional amoral fashion.  They will supply weapons to anyone who can pay whose interests align with theirs with no concern for human rights or dignity.

During the Bush administration it was commonplace for the left to complain, vituperatively at times, that the Bush foreign policy, based as it was in their fevered imagination on torture and abuse, was immoral and illegal.  (It is absolutely true that Bush's America fought for what it identified as our national interest; it is also true that we fought in a much more moral fashion than any big power has before now.)  Barack Obama emerged from that milieu, though, again, it remains to be seen if his beliefs are anything more than skin deep.  If he is indeed committed to decreasing America's international footprint, the left will have their opportunity to see how a world governed by true Realpolitik, ie "Might Makes Right" will look.  It will not be a pretty sight. 

Worse, if Obama truly believes that weakness will beget accomodation from our enemeis, he is living in a fanatsy world as noted by Tom Barnett, a supporter of Barack Obama, who points out that Obama's apparent belief in nuclear disarmament will likely have the opposite response to what he intends:

Seven Reasons Why Obama's Nuke-Free Utopia Won't Work

The Obama administration wants to separate itself from the Bush-Cheney legacy of rejecting nuclear arms control while, at the same time, obsessing over the dangers of nuclear terrorism. I understand this. But there are better ways to bridge those two dangers than seeking to turn back the clock on nuclear weapons, which — counter-intuitive as it may seem — have actually kept us free of great-power war for well over six decades and counting.

Don't underestimate the power of America's large nuclear arsenal; it constitutes a very big stick that allows our leadership to speak softly as the world's sole military superpower. For a president of Obama's temperament and ambition, this is a match made in heaven. Now all he has to do is appreciate it, because with enough on his plate to consume five or six terms, Obama needs to husband his political capital at home and his diplomatic capital abroad to focus more on pressing matters and immediate threats.

Read the whole thing.  I suspect that Obama's Utopian fantasies are the result of a relative lack of depth on the issues.  These were not issues that engaged him or interested him in any way.  Now that he is actually responsible for our security and for managing multiple conflicts and potential conflicts, he has to get up to speed with alacrity.  Our President is a bright man; let's hope he is a quick study as well.  Even more importantly, let's hope that his judgment will improve as his knowledge base expands.

Additional data points will emerge from this week's meetings between Benjamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama.  Those expecting fireworks are likely to end up disappointed.