Heartache With Hard Work

2009 is already shaping up to be a pretty great year for music. I had two highly anticipated albums for the first month. One was the new Bruce Springsteen, which isn’t terrible but mostly gets a big meh (review forthcoming, but I can tell you now it’ll be summed up as “what if he re-recorded Lucky Town with the E Street Band?”). The other was the new record from Vanessa Peters, who I discovered immediately after making my top albums of 2006 list – where she would have featured quite prominently.

Reviewing the last album, I called it “the record I’ve been waiting for Aimee Mann to make for years” and that description would fit Sweetheart, Keep Your Chin Up as well. However, this time around there’s a little bit more of a deliberately folk-country feel. In that respect, it might be more accurate to call it the record that I think Gram Parsons might have made if he had gotten the chance.

It opens on a slightly tremulous note, with the warm gentle waves of “Good News.” In those first moments you hear the doubt, the fear that inevitably comes tied with every belief. But soon it becomes clear that what you mistook for timidity is in fact a dusky sadness, hurt deeply but still unbowed. By the time the final chorus rolls around it’s clear that this is not a record about fear. Instead, it’s about standing firm, singing loud and clear into the dark, cold night – singing to all those who sail on past without even a glance.

It’s one mark of a great song that it can work on a number of different levels. And almost every song here does that. They work as allegory, as symbols for some of the grand concepts: love, fear, loss, friendship, fear. They work as literal short stories. They work as snapshots, bereft of all meaning except the pure joy in a single shared moment.

Through it all, war is a constant theme, as befits a record in a time when you sometimes struggle to remember just how long this state of affairs has lasted. But while war infuses the record, this is by no means an album about war. Instead, it’s a subtle backdrop to stories that range from the truly mundane to the universal. There are lives lost in the Twin Towers – or loves broken apart inside them. There are soldiers who leave in glory and lives torn apart. The second track “The War” deals with the concept most directly (even going so far as to offer the stark opening line: “planes keep on crashing”). And yet even here, you gain far more as you peel back the layers and realize that these first two tracks are actually pair: subtitled (The Siren Song) and (Odysseus’s Song) respectively. Suddenly, the camera pulls back and the metaphors blur into mythology.

At this point you’re primed for the completion of the trilogy with “The Next Big Bang (Penelope’s Song)” – the tale of the wife at home waiting for news from her husband long gone in the war. The way it all fits together, an entire human history filled with wars, each one declared heroic in its own time – and through all of it, the ones who stay on the side, those at home just wondering when it is all going to be over.

Other songs reference St. Anthony, Pegasus, Icarus, the wicked witch and more. But the quality of the music and the subtlety of the allusions means it never feels forced or distracting. Instead, you get a sense of these myths as they were meant to be experienced: in the down-to-earth and daily mixture of dreams and the material world.

Musically, as I said at the beginning, it dwells comfortably in that comfortable terrain of folk, country, and guitar-driven songs. But within that frame, plenty of different influences are given space to shine. There’s the jangly deconstruction (literally) of a failing relationship in “The Grammar of a Sinking Ship” which features mandolins that lope along in sheer joy and violins that dart and dive like fireflies on a summer night. There’s “Good News” and “Keep Your Chin Up” which feature slide guitars that ease themselves around you like the gentle embrace of an old, comfortable love. And “A Million Little Rocks” is the sort of song you’d imagine someone playing on the beach some late summer night – all full of delicately plucked notes an a deep ineffable sadness (the first verse concludes: “It would have been better to end there, cause at least I could say that I died loving you, doing nothing wrong, no one yet betrayed).

For the most part, it’s a record that feels intimate and close. But you’re also treated tracks like “Medals” and “Coming to Meet Me” which don’t shy away from a larger-than-life buildup. And “The War” is perfect slice of good old-fashioned verse-chorus-verse guitar pop.

And finally, there’s my favorite track “Drowning in Amsterdam” which combines almost every good element on the record: a convivial sound, an easy joyfulness, a casual embrace of anything and everything that may come rushing through our lives, a sly wink at both human ingenuity as well as the coming apocalypse.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes for great art. The more I consider it, the more I’m convinced that Kurt Vonnegut got it absolutely right:

I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, “The Beatles did.”

I hope, then, it means something when I tell you that Sweetheart, Keep Your Chin Up makes me appreciate being alive.

Drowning in Amsterdam – Vanessa Peters
The War – Vanessa Peters

So it looks like Obama is going to pick Judd Gregg (R-NH) to fill the Commerce Secretary position. Part of the arrangement is that Democratic Governor John Lynch will select a Republican to fill that seat. I’ve got a few thoughts.

– I don’t love the pick. And if he was going to pick a Republican, it might have been nice to gain a Senate seat.

– That said, it’s hard to get too worked up about it. Commerce just isn’t that important, for one. And while it isn’t going to be a Republican in the seat, it’ll almost certainly be someone more moderate than Gregg.

– Speaking of which, Gregg wasn’t actually particularly moderate. He’s not John Kyl or anything, but he’s also not Olympia Snowe. Some has suggested that with a tough election coming up he might have tilted further left. That’s probably true, but I think it misses one important point…

– Gregg probably would have won in 2010. He’s pretty popular. If it were 2006 or 2008 the wave probably would have taken him with it, but while 2010 might be alright for the Blue Team it’s just not going to compare to the past two cycles. I like Paul Hodes a lot (my Congressional rep up until September), but I’m not sure he was quite ready to take on Gregg. However, if it’s a caretaker appointment, I think Hodes’ chances (or whoever else runs) go up a lot.

– But isn’t it still annoying to miss out on 60 votes? Well, yes and no. I’ve always thought that the 60 votes thing was a bit of a red herring. First, party-line votes simply aren’t that common. It happens a bit more often in the House (especially with the gerrymandering of districts producing a TON more “safe” seats that drive many House members toward the extreme edges), but trying to keep an entire Senate caucus in line is like herding cats. Because of that, I agree with those (like Nate Silver) who suggest that getting to 60 could actually be damaging in the long run – because the symbolic power of 60 far outstrips its kinetic power. That’s not to say I would prefer to have 59, but I also don’t think that getting to 60 unlocks some magical door to the land of Universal Health Care and Solar-Powered Socialism.

– Finally, I strongly disagree that it’s “pretty clear that this whole charade is really about a single vote.” That’s not to say that the upcoming stimulus-ocide wasn’t one factor in the decision – it may very well have been – but as I’ve said many times before I think people continually underestimate the degree to which Obama values the process of political engagement for its own sake.

Continuing thoughts on my post from yesterday about engaging adversaries. The liberal blogosphere has of course become enraged at Chait’s suggestion. In some sense, I’d almost say that the visceral backlash (the deliberate misreading of his point, the yelling and screaming in comment threads about how Chait is an idiot, the preface for virtually every post that the author can’t understand why people are taking this seriously or the declaration that it’s “nonsense“) kind of proves the point.

The primary reaction seems to be that “well, duh, foreign policy is different because people use guns and try to kill each other.” Which is true to a point, but is also facile. Sure, there are stark differences in some sense between domestic political debates and international conflict. Obviously. But that doesn’t mean there can’t be some fundamental unity, too.

The people going after Chait seem totally convinced by the idea that the only relevant question an actor needs to ask about political interaction is how to best manipulate other agents. It’s all tactics: if the violence has a chance of escalating into material conflict, you don’t employ aggressive techniques. In that context it’s worth remembering Focuault’s point that politics is, after all, “a continuation of war by other means.” Focusing exclusively on the possibility of escalatory violence obscures the more hidden (but no less real) violence embedded in political machinery.

For this point, it’s worth paying particular attention to Dylan Matthews’ response:

Positions on negotiation aren’t first-principles convictions rooted in political philosophy, they’re strategic arguments rooted in empirical observation. I don’t support negotiating with Iran out of a belief in the inherent goodness of man; I support negotiating with Iran because the US has pursued the opposing strategy for the past 30 years, with fairly disastrous results. Similarly, I don’t think liberals should avoid negotiating with, say, anti-abortion activists because I believe humans are nefarious creatures that can’t be trusted, but because the right-to-life movement has demonstrated that piecemeal concessions like partial-birth bans and parental notification laws won’t stop them from agitating for more far-reaching restrictions.

But that’s precisely what Chait is criticizing: the notion that choices about interactions with the outside world are wholly pragmatic, containing no general principles of purpose.

At least for me, there’s something intrinsically valuable about the general principle of openness to the world outside. Obviously, pragmatic considerations can influence the actual choices and political techniques, but all else being equal, I think it’s important to operate on principle that the world is characterized by the possibility for positive-sum negotiations rather than zero-sum power politics. In fact, I think it’s a measure of principles that you remain committed to them in difficult situations, not just when it’s convenient to do so (echoing, of course, something most of the folks in question loved from Obama’s inaugural speech).

I made this argument about Obama, discussing his insistence on not just the content of bipartisanship but its form as well. It suggests a commitment to the process of engagement as a guiding principle, not purely a technique designed to pry the maximum leverage out of those with whom you disagree. I also think it is profoundly (and inextricably) a progressive attitude toward the world:

It’s all about openness to new ideas, to new possibilities. It is the almost literal embodiment of “change” insofar as it treats all things as susceptible to improvement. And that’s where the (faint, but perhaps real) kernel of true transformation may lie. Because if it works (and that’s certainly a big if) it has the potential to be a Trojan Horse for a huge progressive change to politics. But it won’t be a change that happens because of an election, or even in a few elections. It will just be a change in how we think and talk about politics.

Chait’s point was never that liberals who argue for engagement with Iran are morally obligated to also want to compromise on abortion. Rather, it was a pithy comment to highlight that many progressive folks are operating in the purely tactical world on these questions.

Now, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that per se – which I think Chait made pretty clear by saying that it’s not incompatible to believe these things. But it is worth noting that there is a clear difference between someone who supports operating from a general principle of valuing openness and engagement and someone who supports those things only where it’s politically advantageous.

Neither person is “right” or “wrong” but in order to understand what is going on, you have to be able to recognize the different frameworks.

That’s what makes all the reactions so puzzling – they all speak with the voice of “Chait is an idiot – the situations are different.” When Chait’s point was that it may be significant to note that some folks treat engagement as intrinsically valuable while others treat it as purely tactical. In that context, responding with indignation that you think it’s purely tactical doesn’t seem all that revelatory.

I Need All the Friends I Can Get – Camera Obscura

Jonathan Chait comments:

It’s kind of funny how, when it comes to domestic politics, many liberals employ assumptions about human naturethat are wildly at odds with the assumptions they use about human nature when it comes to foreign policy. When you read the liberal blogs on domestic politics, concessions to the enemy are always counterproductive, will must be met with will, etc. When you read them on foreign policy, all those asumptions are flipped on their head. I’m not saying that these two sets of assumptions are completely impossible to reconcile, but it is pretty odd how easily they sit together

This is a phenomenon that absolutely drives me crazy. People who love that Obama is willing to to meet with “the axis of evil” (and scoff at the idea that simply talking to them will offer them credibility) simultaneously live in a state of constant freakout about the possibility that Obama might want to talk to Republicans.

That said, I don’t think the abortion example actually proves this point very well. Because the problem (as Scott Lemieux points out) with concessions there is that they fail to reconcile (and in fact ignore) the actual point of contention – which is either about the desire to regulate women’s bodies or about an absolute commitment to preventing direct assault on fetal life, depending on who you believe (you can guess my opinion). Either way, it’s not really a place where negotiated compromise works. Because that structure requires that people bargain for concessions in good faith.

If concessions on abortion could produce a social consensus for a European-style system where family planning services are widely available (including contraceptives, a social health infrastructure that makes wanted pregnancy easy and unwanted pregnancy less likely, and cheap/easy access to abortion up through 20 weeks or so) but come along with relatively strict restrictions on abortion after 20 weeks, I think a lot more liberals would be willing to get on board. However, there is no reason to think such a compromise is even on the table given the recent Republican freakout about provision of contraceptives (which, BTW reduce unwanted pregnancies – the primary cause of abortion – not to mention the spread of STDs).

Thus, bargaining on this is tantamount to engagement with Iran where they ask us to lift all sanctions, end military aid to Israel, and set up an embassy for Hezbollah in exchange for them promising to not use their nuclear weapons “unless they really want to.”

I’ve gone off on a tangent, but the point remains: it’s worthwhile for people who hate the GOP to consider every once in awhile what it would be like to imagine that your political adversaries are not hell-bent on global destruction but might actually be operating in good faith. That doesn’t mean you have to let them do whatever they want (just as engagement doesn’t mean surrendering core principles) – but it does mean placing some hope in communication.

Or, to put it another way: while not every situation is a prisoner’s dilemma, it remains true that there are often situations where getting everything you want is simply not an option and you’re left with a choice between a bad equilibrium and a good-not-great one. In such cases, it may be worth taking a moment to honestly wonder whether you’re making the best the enemy of the good. And if that requires inculcating a general habit where people start from the principle that dialogue and engagement is a general good, maybe it’s worth it.

Music To My Ears – Champagne Riot

Here’s a treat for a Friday evening: a tasty little EP of Danish indie electro-pop. There’s a ton of New Order here, but you get the sense that it’s not an homage to the 80s per se, as much as it’s a re-living of the experience in a new era.

That is to say: in the 80s synths were new, trendy, futuristic. In contrast, to listen to Champagne Riot is to hear what it sounds like on the other side of the looking glass. The world where this sort of music isn’t bursting onto the scene – all garish and in-your-face – but has simply always been around forever. It’s the stripped-down sound of a new millennium, one that grew up in a world where this sound was already passe.

The magic of 2009 is that this type of music, that was originally supposed to sound like the future, and which quickly became incredibly dated and retro, is now neither. Instead it’s just the sound of home. And it makes you wonder what it would be like to hear this if you hadn’t grown up in the midst of a synth-bubble.

The Paris and I EP is available from Shelflife – who as far as I can tell pretty much exclusively signs good bands.

I Don’t Need This Pressure Ron – Billy Bragg

I’m pretty far left on most issues. I believe in affirmative action. I think the government should actively be in the business of desegregating schools. I think the US should probably disarm its nuclear weapons. I want universal health care, a legal system that stops propping up discrimination against gays, women, minorities of all sorts. I’d support incredibly strict restrictions on carbon emissions. I’m also pretty realistic about the way that politics works, which means I don’t expect any of that is going to just happen.

But one place where I often find myself on the outskirts of progressive opinion is trade. On this one, it’s not a matter of political realism – it’s a genuine disagreement about the normative value of policy choices. I’m not a blind free-trader or anything. It’s obvious to anyone paying the least bit of attention that laissez-faire systems are a chimera – maintained and organized by particular policy choices. Truly “free” trade is impossible. But that said, I see a lot of value in markets.

So it was of great interest to me when in my political economy class this week we took on the question of “embedded liberalism.” Basically, the idea that 20th century liberalism exists in the shadow of the Great Depression: resulting in a balancing act between domestic welfare needs and the free-flow of trade. The general idea is that trade does indeed promote efficiency, but at the cost of producing social disruption. Things like the welfare state are a compromise to shield a state from the total free-flow of goods and capital.

This literature suggests an equilibrium – a set of continually renegotiated checks and balances – that allows the growth of global trade without eliminates all restrictions. It also suggests that over the long term the balance will shift from one edge to the other. Support for government intervention in the postwar world took hold based on the memory of the deflationary spirals of the previous years. Later, the Regan/Thatcher revolutions emerged in part because the long expansion of the welfare state in the Western world had started to produce diminishing returns. Combined with a set of external factors (like the oil shocks of the 70s), states were now faced with the opposite concer: rapidly expanding inflation. The result: a rollback of government intervention into the market.

It’s an interesting way to read the history. Most importantly, it suggests that the real role of government in a world of embedded liberalism changes over time. Because, at its core, the government’s job is simply to ensure that the balancing act never tips too far to either side. In the context of deflationary fears, the government ought to intervene. In the context of inflation, the government should back off.

I’m not entirely convinced by that explanation, but I do think it offers a useful perspective that allows transcending the ideological commitments of any particular side. Both free trade AND domestic protection have their place. To speak of either as an absolute good or bad may miss the point, and in so doing it begs the question of context. Both are tactics, nothing more. The underlying strategy is preservation of a functioning balance between social disruption and economic innovation.

All of which helps to explain why I’ve found myself more and more on the side of policies that would have frustrated me as pure “protectionism” only a year or two ago. None of which is to say that I’m in favor of a modern Smoot-Hawley, or that I see any value in agricultural subsidies. But while we were talking over these issues in class, I found myself pondering “Buy American” provisions.

In the past, these have always seemed to be crassly political sops to powerful industries, serving no one’s interests (particularly not those of consumers who would be asked to subsidize the inefficient purchasing of resources). I still think that’s true in a general sense. But I wondered if in the context of the stimulus bill, they might actually make a great deal of sense. The point of stimulus, after all, is to spur domestic economic activity via the liquidity of governmental investment. It doesn’t make economic “sense” per se (as demonstrated by the famous Keynes statement that it might make sense to simply pay people to dig holes and then fill them up again), but may be necessary to hold together the rough consensus in favor of embedded liberalism.

Anyways, I had all these thoughts floating around in my head, and then read this piece from John Judis on Buy American provisions, which quite effectively captured a lot of what I was thinking.

UPDATE: My ambivalence on this issue is perfectly characterized by the way that my tepid support for Buy Americanism suddenly aligns me with people like this – who epitomize everything that I find aggravating about the heroic affirmation of protectionism which masquerades as populism. Bleh.

Zero – Smashing Pumpkins

Number of Illinois Senators who voted to let Blagojevich stay in office: zero.
Number of Republican members of the House who voted for the stimulus bill: zero.

I’m just sayin’ is all.

The Furnace – Meursault

I feel like any attempt to describe what Meursault sound like is going to make them sound a lot less interesting than they actually are. Electronic folk? A backyard Arcade Fire? Folk-driven noise rock? It seems almost pointless to try and categorize. Instead just let it be whatever it needs to be. “The Furnace” fits its name perfectly: raging like a fire, but still held in check by a framework that allows all that energy to get channeled into a raucous bit of noisy pop. Elsewhere, on tracks like “A Few Kind Words” the electronic element is raised, producing an inimitable kind of pop song

The record is called Pissing On Bonfires/Kissing With Tongues, and deserves attention both for being an excellent piece of work and because it was released on a blog label: Song By Toad. Which is the sort of thing you’d like to see happen more often – for music lovers to be a driving force in getting good music out there to the world.

The Ledbetter Fair Pay Act passes. Surely our economy is now doomed. DOOOOOMED.

The vote in the Senate was 61-36. As Kevin Drum notes, all 56 Democrats (seriously, can we get this up to the actual 59 sometime soon?) voted for it. The 5 Republicans who joined them: the four women in the GOP caucus and Arlen Spector (who has to be petrified at the idea of running in Pennsylvania, or “I made my last stand here?!” as John McCain likes to call it, in 2010). Hmmmmmm.

Also, Caroline Kennedy commits an act of political self-immolation the likes of which are rarely seen. Is she running? Is she not? Wait, she is. No, she’s pulling out. No, she’s in it to win it! Oops, no, she’s definitely out.

The one conclusion that can be drawn from this is that she worried that Paterson might conceivably still pick her even though she said she didn’t want it, so she felt the need to demonstrate in full view exactly WHY she probably shouldn’t have the job. Either that, or the whole thing was some sort of bizarro performance art that will only be explained once it’s all over.

It’s weird because by all accounts she’s a totally capable, intelligent woman. Her campaign of the past month has shown little evidence of it however.

So now I guess the odds are on Andrew Cuomo – who totally resolves my complaint about political dynasties, what with him not being related to any famous New York politicans and all…

UPDATE: Whooops. Spoke too soon. Turns out he picked Kirsten Gillibrand, who I admit to never having heard of in my life. This, from the NYT article linked above, doesn’t sound particularly promising:

If Mr. Paterson was hoping to quiet the tumult over the selection process by picking Ms. Gillibrand, there were indications that he may not get his wish. Ms. Gillibrand, who has been endorsed by the National Rifle Association, is controversial among some of the party’s more liberal leaders downstate.

Representative Carolyn McCarthy, a Long Island Democrat and ardent gun control activist, said Thursday that if Ms. Gillibrand got the job, she was prepared to run against her in a primary in 2010. Ms. McCarthy was elected to Congress after her husband was killed in a gunman’s rampage on the Long Island Rail Road in 1993.

Ms. Gillibrand’s selection was a careful political calculation by the governor, who will run for his second term as governor in 2010, when Ms. Gillibrand will also be on the ballot. The choice reflects Mr. Paterson’s thinking that his selection should be someone who can help him attract key demographics — in Ms. Gillibrand’s case upstate New Yorkers and women.

The poem. It wasn’t good. It would have been nice if it was good, but it just wasn’t. Or, to be generous, the poem itself might have been okay (if a bit milquetoast) but the delivery was really poor. Listless and timid, like someone dipping their toe into the water and discovering that it’s just a little too cold. I haven’t read anything else of hers, though people I trust say it’s occasionally quite good. Still, what we heard yesterday was not.

That said, I can understand how difficult it is to try and write a poem for the inauguration. The whole idea of just knocking something like that out, that won’t come off as contrived or silly or out of line with the feeling of the moment seems difficult to fathom. All of which makes me think the very practice of having an inaugural poet is probably a mistake. Witness the garbage Robert Frost produced – and thankfully wasn’t able to read, thus resorting to reciting a much better poem from memory.

But still, if you’re going to invite someone, why limit yourself to “poetry”? I was thinking today about what might have actually captured the mood. My conclusion, this song:

Marrow – Ani DiFranco

and so one by one i am dusting off labels
i am uncorking bottles and filling up cups
so go ahead and have a taste of your own medicine
and i’ll have a taste of mine
but first let’s toast to the lists
that we hold in our fists
of the things that we promise to do
differently next time

cuz the answer came like a shot in the back
while you were running from your lesson
which might explain
why years later all you could remember
was the terror of the question
plus i’m not listening to you anymore
my head is too sore and my heart’s perforated
and i’m mired in the marrow of my (well… ain’t that) funny bone
learning how to be alone and devastated
where was my conscience?
where was my consciousness?
and what do i do with all these letters
that i wrote to myself
but cannot address?

Or, if you wanted to go a different direction, how about The Blue Scholars? You’d be guaranteed of getting something that would revel in the rhythm of life – none of this wishy-washy, tepid, blandness.

Butter&Gun$ (Loyalty 2) – Blue Scholars

Check out the section about 2:00 in. That’s some good stuff. Almost enough to make me not feel depressed that even The Blue Scholars have embraced auto-tune.