Heartache With Hard Work

Subterranean Homesick Blues – Bob Dylan

Have you noticed that every article, blog post, or televised rant you hear on the subject of Bill Ayers is structured the following way:

Opening: Obama is tied to anti-American, bomb-throwing, radical terrorist who hates America and probably hates you personally
Middle: series of paragraphs listing “linkages” like they were on the same board, Ayers donated $200 bucks to Obama for a campaign, and they met socially a few times
Conclusion: a series of questions like “what did Ayers see in Obama?” or “what does this say about Obama’s character?” or “what other connections might there be?”

I don’t know. You’re the one freaking out about this. You’re the one who thinks that this is a Really Big Deal worth basing the entire election on. Why don’t you tell me what other connections there are?

The whole thing is preposterous on so many levels, but the absolute icing on the cake is the degree to which these people are completely unable to pose any of their serious allegations as anything other than questions.

As a postscript: get a grip. This was 40 years ago. Bill Ayers isn’t running for any office. He has no role in advising or even talking to Obama. They’re not friends. And even if they were, the guy hasn’t been a radical in any meaningful sense of the word for decades, is pretty well-respected (or was, before this idiocy) in his community, is a professor at a prominent university.

As an aside, I’ll point out that this is really representative of the larger McCain attitude toward Bad People. Namely: if I acknowledge their existence, I will suddenly become responsible for every Bad Thing they have ever done. It’s why he simply can’t wrap his mind around the idea that you can sometimes negotiate with people you don’t like, or who have done bad things, and in doing so prevent further Bad Things from happening. It’s an understanding of life based purely on posture, a ridiculous mapping of schoolyard politics onto the serious business of running a nation.

In fact, it’s even stupider in this instance because (unlike Khamenei, for example) Ayers doesn’t currently have any agenda that we ought take issue with. He’s just a dude who does work on education in Obama’s neighborhood. Shunning him would accomplish nothing, and could possibly foreclose getting something useful done.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no interest in being an apologist for violence. I’ve always found The Weatherman to be a depressing example of what happens when nonviolent radicalism starts to burn itself out. It’s the jaded, ugly underbelly of laudable things like SDS. And Ayers certainly should be more explict and apologetic about that element of his behavior. And if he were running for office, I would certainly take that intransigence as a sign that he maybe should not be trusted.

But Obama has explicitly denounced it – obviously – so what exactly is the problem here?

The real point is that this is just a really ugly example of what happens when a campaign that draws a tremendous amount of support from people with seriously troubling views on race begins to fall apart. All the worst elements burst forth in all their anger and viciousness. And there’s the McCain campaign stoking the fires.

McCain did (finally) go after some of the people unleashing their hatred at a rally – and kudos to him for that. But you can’t just pretend that you didn’t have a part in this. You’re running ads, you’re consistently make a big deal of this non-issue, and you’re doing so in a way that was CLEARLY intended to obfuscate not just the (non)relationship between the two, but also to play on all the racial connotations attached to the word “terrorist” in a post 9/11 world.

It’s like yelling “fire!” in a crowded theater and then justifying it afterwards because someone lit a cigarette.

They knew exactly what they were doing. And for their sake (and for the sake of the country, perhaps) I hope they feel sorry about it once it’s all over.

Pay Me My Money Down – Bruce Springsteen

So the stock market is collapsing, credit is virtually impossible to get, and a recession looms. And in several debates this series of facts has led the moderator to demand an answer about what spending programs will have to be cut in these hard times.

To his credit, Obama at least partially rejected the premise of this question by pivoting to talk about the importance of programs to get the economy rolling like green jobs and better health care. Unfortunately, commentators were only too happy to portray this as a refusal to answer a legitimate question. Which suggests that more work needs to be done, in a very explicit fashion, to correctly identify the nature of the problem.

This is further demonstrated by McCain’s repeated insistance on referring to the situation as a “fiscal crisis” rather than a “financial crisis.”

Ezra Klein neatly sums up the situation:

Second, the underlying presumption here is that during a recession, faced with heavy spending, the president will have to cut his investment agenda. It makes a certain amount of intuitive sense. In hard times, families cut back. But the government is not a household. In hard times, it should spend more in order to stimulate the economy. That’s part of the utility of having a government: When consumers and businesses fall on hard times, they cut spending. Which cuts demand. Which cuts economic activity. Which deepens your recession. All that is a Bad Thing. So it’s useful indeed that we have an institution able to amp up deficit spending in order to increase demand.

In short, it’s a false premise for a silly question. The problem right now is not (despite McCain’s best efforts to talk about earmarks until he’s blue in the mouth) a matter of too much federal spending. If anything it’s a situation which demands increased spending by the government in an effort to prime the pumps and get some cash flowing.

This was the stated purpose of the $600 bucks most everyone got in the mail a few months back. But the problem with that kind of stimulus is that it funnels a relatively small amount of money to a lot of individual people, but can do nothing to ensure that those people put it back into the economy. Now, it certainly was welcome for a lot of people who were having trouble making ends meet. But for the larger goal of “stimulus” it could only have a marginal effect.

That’s why the policies that Obama is supporting (and which the debate moderators keep demanding that he scale back) are precisely the kinds of programs that will do the most good.

The worst thing that can happen in the economy right now is for people to get nervous, stop spending money, and let the gears grind to a halt. But it’s risky to put your money out there right now, which creates a collective action problem where every individual makes a rational choice to hold tight but the end result is a deepening recession. That’s a perfect place for the government to step in and invest in some short-term infusions of money into green energy markets, education, etc. that will unlock the economic stasis and get some money circulating. It’s a big part of what eventually dragged us up out of the Great Depression, and it’s what should happen now, too. At that time, too, there were plenty of people insisting on governmental austerity in the face of the crisis – which would be made a disastrous situation even worse.

Which is not to say that government spending is an intrinsic good or anything. Obviously, judicious decisions must be made about what will work well, and what won’t. But we need to start from the premise that spending – correctly directed – is essential for any strategy of getting past the financial crisis. And yes, this will necessitate cutbacks in the long term. As the economy begins to recover, we have to be willing and able to put the brakes on government spending in order to make it clear to markets that deficits can be walked back. This dynamic played a huge role in the 90s economic boom, after all.

Slow Down Csilla – The Spectacles

There are a lot of audio-snobs out there, who disdain the tinny little earbud headphones and compressed MP3s everyone uses now. That’s never been me, but I can at least understand why certain kinds of music appreciation would demand high fidelity transmission.

However, what’s sometimes missed is that there is a type of music – equally valuable – which can only be truly appreciated through 10 dollar headphones while sitting on the grass in the bright afternoon sun, watching people walk by with all their smiles and fears and cares.

Part of it is the sound – the scratchiness, the bedroom resonance – there is an intense intimacy here, one that is strangely magnified by the muffled acoustics. To listen is to reach out in the fog and just brush fingertips, to feel a tremendous comfort in the presence of a friendship that defies your capacity for explanation. But there is something more than that. There is a whole attitude here: a deliberate refusal to accept the premise of perfection, an embrace of all those things that makes us so wonderfully human.

The Spectacles make that sort of music. It’s what you would get if you combined the aesthetics of a Casiotone for the Painfully Alone with a Camera Obscura.

“Slow Down Csilla” is the sort of song that makes you want to call up every old friend you ever had, that makes you wonder at the paths your life has taken, that makes you stop for just a second and take in the world. And you see yourself reflected in the little problems that we all share but seldom mention.

You can pick up their record Home for a scant nine bucks at their website, or check out a few more songs at their myspace. I found about them from The Glorious Hum, which has mirrored me in terms of spotty posting this summer, but hopefully is back on track with regular posting.

This is the best thing in the history of ever.

Ford Prefect

I haven’t been particularly enthusiastic about anything John Darnielle has done since the marvelous The Sunset Tree a few years back. Still, there’s no denying that when everything goes right he is without peer in his ability to tell the stories in a way you never knew you were missing. He does so by capturing the tiniest details, bringing to vivid life characters that we might blow off as utterly mundane.

Thank You Mario But Our Princess Is In Another Castle – The Mountain Goats and Kaki King

This song – a joint effort of The Mountain Goats and Kaki King is told from the perspective of Toad, is a perfect example. As a child of the 80s, I encountered Toad countless times but never once questioned his bizarre role in Mario’s world. I’m sure many others can relate.

Which is what makes this such a perfect platform. It taps in on two levels: first as a message that everyone -no matter how seemingly unimportant – has a story to tell, and second as a reminder of the countless ways that we share a cultural landscape with millions of people we will never meet. Because a big part of what’s so fascinating about this song is that it’s not just one person encountering Toad, filing him away in their memory but only in the most glancing fashion. It’s thousands, millions of them.

For each individual, there is no underlying significance or meaning. But in totality, there’s something peculiar that emerges in the latticework of a million fleeting remembrances.

Words Make You Tired – The Headlights

Sarah Palin’s rare attempts to speak outside of prepared speeches sound like what would happen if you ran some Republican talking points through Babelfish from English-to-Japanese-back-to-English a few times.

Individually, the words all make sense. But when you try to string them together you end up just scratching your head in bemusement.

On Russia:
“It’s very important when you consider even national-security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America. Where—where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to—to our state.”

On the bailout:
COURIC: Why isn’t it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries; allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?
PALIN: That’s why I say I, like every American I’m speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the—it’s got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.

On Blue Star moms:
Palin responded to a question about the economic recovery plan, which was hashed out overnight. She answered, but she made it clear that she was then going to concentrate on the Blue Star Moms, “Bailout? Ok? Then I’m going to talk to these gals whose sons are also in the service. But, thankful that John McCain is able to have some of those provisions implemented in that Paulson proposal to have more sound oversight,” Palin said. “Taxpayers aren’t going to be assumed to be called upon to bail out so I’m glad that John McCain’s voice is heard and his leadership too.”

SNL on this is pretty funny, too. The amazing thing is that a decent number of lines are literally just quotes from the actual interview. I mean, wow.

By the way, count me as one of those who thinks that this reflects far more badly on McCain than it does on Palin. The initial decision to pick her was bad enough – without having any knowledge about her ability to perform in a campaign (much less as VP). But the way they’ve kept her holed up has been nothing short of disastrous. They have clearly communicated to her that under no circumstances is she allowed to extemporize. And by their behavior, they are making it clear that they are absolutely petrified of her saying something stupid.

I think that atmosphere has absolutely demolished her confidence – which was the thing that was initially so appealing about her for so many people. And that’s also an absolutely crucial ingredient for a successful politican. Everybody makes mistakes, but the good ones have the looseness necessary to shake it off and move on. Palin, at this point, is walking on eggshells every second of every day. And you simply cannot speak comfortably if that’s the case. I think that’s a big reason why this Couric interview was so much more disastrous than the Gibson one was.

And it’s weird, because I really do think she is enormously talented and could have made a big splash in another context – either a few years down the road, or even in this cycle if she could’ve had some opportunities to make the rookie mistakes outside of the bright lights.

Or maybe it’s all an elaborate evil-genius ploy and she’s going to roll out in the VP debate and be totally awesome. And all of this was an attempt to drive down expectations. I can’t imagine that’s true, but…

So I’ll start by saying that my general reaction to every debate is that it’s a pretty poor way of judging whether to vote for the Blue Team or the Red Team. Their policy positions are available online, they’ve been campaigning for literally years at this point, and you’re not going to learn anything new about that stuff in this format. Beyond that, I don’t really hold that much onto the idea that which particular rep from the parties is elected matters all that much in the grand scheme of things. I like Obama, sure. And I have my misgivings (explained yesterday) about McCain’s temperament. But ultimately we’re electing a party, a platform, and a bureaucratic apparatus. And in an ideal world, we’d have a parliamentary government so that was put even more solidly into practice. But even with what we’ve got, those three things matter more to me than the individual characteristics.

But I know other people don’t feel the same way, both because they’re more conflicted about which side is right or wrong in a general sense and because they think the personality of the president has a broad and significant influence that overshadows the place that they come from.

And there’s also the spectacle, which is hard to resist. So I always watch.

This time around, I actually didn’t think either of them did all that well. No major gaffes or problems, lots of tiny mistakes and missteps, and tons of lost opportunities to really drive home a point. Clearly they were both nervous and concerned about straying too far from their preparation, which often prevented them from seizing a sudden opportunity to alter the path of the conversation.

McCain was snarky and clearly irritated. Obama definitely got under his skin, both with his mere presence (a number of folks have commented on McCain’s refusal to make eye contact and his general attitude of I can’t believe I have to debate this novice) and with a number of nice little zingers. I can’t really see that playing well, but what do i know about how swing voters are going to think?

I wish Obama had been stronger on Iraq. He was alright on the substance of that portion, but missed a lot of chances to bring Iraq into the conversation on other topics, particularly in the early economics stuff when McCain couldn’t shut up about spending. Obama eventually got in a “$10 billion a month” comment, but it was too late and not nearly forceful enough.

The only other thing on Iraq is that I wish Obama had been better on responding to McCain’s characterization of a timeline. He should have said at least once (and very firmly) that a timeline 1) allows for changes based on conditions on the ground and 2) is what the government of Iraq WANTS us to do.

What happened to global warming? One brief mention? Obama shouldn’t have given him plaudits on torture since McCain voted for a bill to legitimize it. Really would have liked to hear more on human rights, but I know that’s kind of a lost cause in this sort of context.

Obama bringing up NMD? Yuck. Same with clean coal. And can someone point out to both of these guys that solar, wind, and nuclear have nothing to do with our dependence on oil – what with them solely producing electricity and all.

Some people are irritated at Obama agreeing with McCain so much. I don’t see it as a problem. He outlined a LOT of differences, and it doesn’t hurt to admit it when their positions are similar. McCain is going to want to run with it as “Obama’s a follower” but I just don’t see people being hoodwinked by that, nor do I see it as a winning message for McCain to run on “Obama and I area pretty much the same on foreign policy.”

Obama’s closing was a little weak. Got a bit rambly with all the China stuff. And I really liked bringing up soft power for the finale, but just didn’t do the premise justice. Should have just interspersed it better throughout. A commenter at Open Left suggested something that I think would have been brilliant for a closer:

Senator McCain has repeated several times that I “just don’t understand”. Make no mistake, this isn’t just a tactic, but really how McCain thinks. Anytime anyone disagrees with him, McCain believes they just don’t understand. Does that sound familiar? Haven’t we’ve had enough of those who always believe they always know best and won’t take opposing views into account? Can America really survive eight more years of this belligerent attitude?

I know it tough to go off the beaten track of your prepared remarks, but I think that would have been a killer way to tie things up.

Final verdict: meh. All things being equal Obama probably “won” the debate in the sense that he didn’t give up ground on dangerous terrain. Not sure it’ll amount to much more than that.

UPDATE: One final thought, it’s pretty nice when you have a VP you can trust to go out on all the news shows after a debate and really skewer the other guy.

3D – Internet Forever

My theory is that for every sound there is another, equal and opposite, which lives somewhere just beyond the edge of perception. And that if you added up all those sounds that dwell just past the place where the mind can comprehend and turned them into a song, this is what you would hear.

The music doesn’t stand out in any traditional sense. There’s that intimate lo-fi feel, but they don’t quite dive into your bedroom in the way the best of the genre does. Similarly, there’s a raggedness that surrounds you, but doesn’t quite achieve the brilliant white noise effect that you might get from, say, Times New Viking.

But that is as it should be. It wouldn’t feel right if you didn’t keep sensing that the last piece was almost close enough to touch, but just around some imperceptible aural corner in your mind. Because this is the sound of a world that doesn’t quite fit. Or rather, this is what it sounds like to realize that the human mind – brilliant and astonishing though it is – only lets us tap into a vanishingly small amount of the universe around us.

We are so severely limited in the range of waves that make up visible (to us) light. What our ears can puzzle out we call sound, but in reality it’s only an incredibly tiny portion of the possible range of frequencies. We look at the stars and build telescopes that can see 14 billion years back in time and across space – and yet the universe is so much larger than this. The speed of light imposes an absolute boundary on what we can ever know. Out there could be different basic laws of physics, planets identical to our own, things that defy any hope of imagination. But they are forever and infinitely locked away from us.

And yet, still we dream and hope, and try to learn as much as we can.

To listen to Internet Forever is to remind yourself of just how much more there is out there – how much we will simply never see or understand. And it is to realize how this can be both beautiful and sad at the same time.

Some great new stuff from Ani Difranco.

Ever prolific, she’s got another release due out next week, called Red Letter Year. I still haven’t heard the whole thing, but am excited to get ahold of it. My enthusiasm is particularly magnified by her recent Daytrotter session. To my ears “Present/Infant” sounds like the best thing I’ve heard from her since Revelling/Reckoning.

I love that she is driven to experiment with her sound, but ultimately I find her at her most charming, most touching, and most devastating when it’s just her and her guitar. And it’s particularly interesting to hear an older, most wise Ani and still be able to trace out how she emerged from that precocious young girl who sang “Both Hands” so long ago.

Present/Infant (Daytrotter session) – Ani DiFranco

Scott Lemieux is normally one of my favorite writers, but on this issue I have to say that he’s not just wrong, but is dreadfully misreading a pretty reasonable (dare I say, important) point made by Jonathan Chait.

First, he quotes only the conclusion to the piece in an effort to paint Chait as a “McCain lover” – completely failing to mention that the first four pages of the article are a strident attack on McCain, his lies, and his entire campaign.

Second, and far more importantly, the section he quotes as proof that Chait is bolstering the image of McCain as honorable, in fact does precisely the opposite. Even more, it takes the whole notion of “honor” as a legitimate measure for a presidential candidate and turns it on its head:

The pattern here is perfectly clear. McCain has contempt for anybody who stands between him and the presidency. McCain views himself as the ultimate patriot. He loves his country so much that he cannot let it fall into the hands of an unworthy rival. (They all turn out to be unworthy.) Viewed in this way, doing whatever it takes to win is not an act of selfishness but an act of patriotism. McCain tells lies every day and authorizes lying on his behalf, and he probably knows it. But I would guess–and, again, guessing is all we can do–that in his mind he is acting honorably. As he might put it, there is a bigger truth out there.

Lemiuex unfairly suggests that this means the definition of honor simply means “a subjective belief that it would be really bad for the country if your opponent won” and then suggests that this “could plausibly result in Karl Rove and Lee Atwater being numbered among the most honorable men in American political history.” But this completely, and willfully, misses the point.

Chait’s argument is that the crucial difference between McCain and (say) Karl Rove is that Rove has no illusions. He believes that his side is right, but ultimately knows it’s just about power and politics. McCain, on the other hand, is a True Believer. He thinks that he is the embodiment of truth, justice, and honor. His naked pursuit of power (at least in his own mind) is completely justified because he sees himself a servant of a higher purpose. And (once again, in his own mind) that frees him from the constraints that would normally lock in an “honorable” man.

And thus the problem. Normal people have an elaborate set of checks and balances, learned over the years, about where to draw lines. The occasions when it’s okay to stretch the truth, when it’s okay to mislead, when the consequences of something as so huge that they might consider something they find immoral in principle. In short, they have developed a strong sense of the gray area implicit in all political and moral decisions. As Zygmunt Bauman observes: “One can recognize moral persons by their never quenched dissatisfaction with their moral performance.”

McCain, on the other hand, appears to live in a black and white world. So when he decides that (in the name of the country) he absolutely must win, he sets aside all constraints. No action is now outside the bounds. And this is the problem with an absolute sense of honor. As Chait says “McCain’s deep investment in his own honor can drive him to do honorable things, but it can also allow him to believe that anything he does must be honorable.” When you can convince yourself that everything you do is by definition honorable, your moral compass goes completely haywire.

And that is the most terrifying thing. All who strive for power are driven by ambition. In the face of this, perhaps the only realistic check on this being perverted is a realistic sense of self-limitation. In Chait’s conception, McCain completely lacks that safety valve.

In the end, when Chait says “All this dishonesty can be understood not as a betrayal of McCain’s sense of honor but, in an odd way, as a fulfillment of it” it does not valorize or excuse McCain. To the contrary, it reveals a fundamental and devastating criticism of his entire worldview. It debunks the entire premise of “honor first,” revealing it to be a recipe for disastrous moral crusades. When your sole motivating force becomes a belief that all actions are justified insofar as they are undertaken on behalf of a higher principle, we are in the midst of Foucault’s warning: “Wars are no longer waged in the name of a sovereign who must be defended; they are waged on behalf of the existence of everyone; entire populations are mobilized for the purpose of wholesale slaughter in the name of life necessity: massacres have become vital.”

In short, one of the best cases you can make against McCain is that he truly believes that he remains honorable in the face of all the evidence to the contrary. Because it tells us what McCain’s sense of honor will enable him to do, the catastrophes it will allow him to unleash.