Radiation Casualties From Japanese Nuclear Plant: An Update

Nearly four and a half months after an earthquake and a big tsunami damaged  a nuclear power plant in Japan,  I am waiting for new information about much feared radiation emissions. Of course, I would like to know how many people died from exposure to such radiation or, failing this,  how many people took sick as a result of the accidental emission of radiation at the Fukushima plant.

If you scour the internet north to south, right to left, and every which way, you will not find answers to these serious questions. At least, you will not find answers from a respectable, believable source.

What does this absence of information tell you about the media? About the credulousness of people in general? About your own credulousness?

If I am wrong and you do find believable info, please, help me correct myself by writing the reference in a comment to this column. Thank you in advance.

Tea Party Extremists’ Fiscal Obduracy

Many Republicans now reject the debt ceiling-raising plan concocted recently by their House leaders. The Republican leadership senses this. There are two struggles going on in American regarding our federal spending habits. One is between Republicans and Democrats and the other is between Republicans who can’t quite wean themselves from the infinite credit card vision of government and the forces embodied by the Tea Party (not a party, of course but an unorganized grass-root movement). I belong to the latter, I want to clarify our already clear position.

I don’t want to rein in federal spending, I want to shrink it. What this means is that where the federal government spent $10 last year, I want it to spend $9.5 next year and $9, the year after. That’s in real dollars. I want a set up that insures that this will happen with a high degree of certainty. I don’t know how to achieve this high level of certainty. Somebody in Congress, does, I am sure. That’s why they get the big bucks. House Majority Leader Boehner’s proposal of around July 25^th 2011 does not do this.

The kind to shrinkage I describe above is not much to ask for. I do it all the time. Most American households have done it. It’s just a matter of willpower. Now, when we are back to, say, 1995 levels of federal spending I may be ready to talk again about raising spending.

What underlies the difference between the House Majority Leader and many traditional Republican Reps on the one hand, and me on the other, what explains my obduracy is this: They think that spending too much is only a bad habit economically. I think the same but it’s the smaller part of the issue. I am also convinced that the federal government is too large relative to American civil society. If you showed me a level of federal spending that I thought was economically sustainable, if I agreed, I might still want to reduce federal spending. That’s because I want to shrink the federal government, not simply improve its functioning. How more clear can we get?

Incidentally, there has been a lot of dispirited comment on the Left about the irrationality of Teas Party types’, many of them far from rich, refusal to consider tax increases on the very rich. It’s true that there are two ways to reduce the federal debt, one of which is to obtain more federal revenue. Personally, I am not against raising all taxes. I am just against increasing the burden on those who are most likely to create jobs. Instead, I propose we create a modest tax burden on the 46%+ of Americans who now pay no federal income tax at all. The current situation is politically unhealthy. It creates a caste that will never contribute anything to the federal government throughout its lifetime. It creates the impression that government is free, that it costs nothing. This has got to be unhealthy. Incidentally, and surprisingly, that’s where the money is, not with the few rich but with the many that earn modest incomes.

The Space Shuttle, the Space Cadet and the Debt Ceiling

I feel less isolated, suddenly. Here is what Prof. L. Krauss, a physicist, says about the end of the shuttle program in the WSJ of July 23-24 2011:

“The lion’s share of costs associated with humans into space is devoted, as it should be, to making sure they survive the voyage. No other significant science has emerged from a generation’s worth of round trips in near-earth orbits.”

I couldn’t have said it better. I did not say it better because I was not sufficiently well informed. My instincts were right on the mark, however. I have grown tired of my intelligent radio programs being interrupted by an announcement that the shuttle launch had been postponed, one more time, because of weather.

I was always open to the idea that the space program had produced tangentially a lot of useful discoveries. But, when challenged, supporters mainly named Tang, the syrupy, disgusting, artificially colored orange juice substitute. Moreover, I never heard anyone in the program’s thirty years address the opportunity cost of public spending on the shuttle. If the federal government had spread the $50 billion it cost in the past ten year among one hundred research universities, would the scientific harvest have been superior or inferior? Even better: If the federal government had organized a scientific grant lottery of $5 billion each year open to anyone with modest scientific credentials, how would the results have compared? Don’t be quick to chuckle; don’t assume the answer is obvious.

Once, just once in my life, I got a glimpse of NASA’s work. (NASA’s main facility is practically in the backyard of the university where I taught.) One day, I made an un-reflexive disparaging comment in class about NASA. An MBA student, a man in his early thirties, a NASA researcher tried to lash out at me. Well I told him, perhaps I am prejudiced; take a few minutes to enlighten me, and probably some of your fellow-students as well, on scientific and other advances we owe to NASA. (Just because I am the instructor does not guarantee I am also the most ignorant person in the classroom, after all.) The student proceeded to describe the robot on which his team and he had been working for several years. It sounded very interesting. I would have like to see a documentary on the near-creature. Apparently, no one had thought of documenting this exciting project for the general public of unwashed taxpayers.

The shuttle program and, probably, all of NASA should have been cut off public funds long ago for its public relations failure alone. I am glad it’s over. The termination of this government endeavor may yet make room for leaner, more efficient, commercial ventures. Those will be ventures that will have to convince me that I should give them my money. Meanwhile any closing of a large federal program is a step in the direction of solving the underlying problem of the federal d.

The debt ceiling melodrama continues. It’s too complicated for normal people with a job and/or children to follow every melodramatic development. Newsbabes of all sexes are increasingly confused. Some speak of “saving the economy.” Wait a minute, it’s the federal government ‘s debt we are talking about. Some of us cherish the thought that if the federal government tanked durably, the national economy would improve!

In the meantime, many Americans are not getting excited because they are just as smart as I am. They are guessing that the last chance is not really the last chance. Suppose the Democrats and the Republicans don’t agree to a tangible deal that raises the debt ceiling enough to satisfy the ones while cutting federal expenses enough -and with enough certainty – to satisfy the others. The rating agencies will probably respond by downgrading US federal debt. If such a measure held, it would mean that the federal government would have to pay more interest on the next dollar it borrows. That might not be a bad thing in itself. It would provide another reason for exercising borrowing restraint.

In fact, however, this is not a likely scenario. Instead, having bluffed each other to the edge and beyond, the two parties can change their minds the next day. From no agreement on August 2^nd to a short-term agreement on August 10 is eight days. If the parties agreed to a new debt ceiling on August 10^th with a large and well guaranteed cut in federal spending, the rating agencies would turn on a dime. The US federal government would have existed for eight days with something less than its traditional triple A rating. No big deal, I think. In fact, I doubt that the rating agencies or any of the big banks have contingency plans to print anything reflecting such a lowered rating on August 3^rd. In fact, I would bet good money no one does.

The least useful actor in this melodrama has been the President. His grandiloquent manner with respect to things over which he has little influence is beginning to get to some on the left of the center. I think he does not understand the issues at all. I think he does not understand much of what’s in his bailiwick. His best credentialed advisers are gone. There is hardly anyone left around him to guide him. It’s kind of pathetic, really. Don’t say I didn’t tell you. I have been telling you all along, even since the campaign: He is not Hitler; he is not Stalin; he is not even Mussolini; he is not even Peron. He is just not competent enough for the position and not flexible enough to get help.

I read Peggy Noonan faithfully although some of her analyses befuddle me. The thing, is, you can always count on Peggy for good formulas. She is a mistress of the “two for one” bitchiness. She did it again in the WSJ (July 23-34 2011). Describing President Obama’s oral performance regarding the debt ceiling negotiations, she says:

“He’s like a walking headache. He’s probably triggering Michele Bachmann’s migraines.”

I wish I had thought about it. It’s good at my advanced age to still feel intellectual envy.

Visit  the “Generation Y”  blog by activating the link on my homepage. You will be astounded and impressed by a display of raw intellectual courage. The author is a young woman writing from Havana, Cuba. The Communist authorities in Cuba don’t dare close her down because tens of thousands worldwide are watching.

If you read Spanish, you can accede her blog in the original by activating the “Generacion Y” link on my front page. (I don’t know how to from accents on this blog support; sorry,)

Small Update on French Banker. (Follow Me Into the Gutter.)

This is one of those times where I wish you read French. The Strauss Khan story is far from over in France. People from his political party, the Socialist Party, are talking. Here is a good one I got from Le Figaro, a serious centrist newspaper:

As you may remember, there s a young woman who has filed charges in France against Strauss Khan for an attempted rape that took place several years ago, she says, while she was interviewing him  in his apartment. At the time, her mother advised the young woman not to file charges against SK. The mother was and is an elected Socialist politician. The mother added recently that she knew for a fact that SK was sexually brutal.

How did Mom know? Mom admits to having had sex with SK. She says it was consensual but brutal. Think that one through. The love affair between SK and Mom took place after hours in the offices of the Organization for Economic  Cooperation and Development.

The French are different in some respects. Don’t presume to judge them by you sedate standards.

French Philosopher on French Banker Accused of Sexual Assault (or Maybe Not)

Lessons of the DSK Affair

French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy drew furious feedback for his immediate support of Dominique Strauss-Kahn in a column published on The Daily Beast in May. Now vindicated, he writes on the lessons of the case.

by Bernard-Henri Levy | July 2, 2011 12:39 PM EDT

Related Stories

• Read Lévy’s defense of Strauss-Kahn from May

The Strauss-Kahn affair is not over.

For it to be over, the American system of justice must pursue its investigation and work to the very end.

If it’s truly to be over, Dominique Strauss-Kahn must be granted not only his freedom, but—even more importantly—restoration of his honor.

In other words, “the Strauss-Kahn affair” will continue to be regarded as such as long as it hasn’t been clearly established that there never was any affair at all—and that the plaintiff, not content to have lied about this or that aspect of her past, also lied in accusing the former head of the IMF of having raped her.

And yet, given recent revelations, we can already draw a few lessons from what will ultimately—no doubt very soon—be known as the Strauss-Kahn non-affair.

1. The cannibalisation of Justice by the Sideshow.

This cannibalisation is not exclusively an American phenomenon, of course, and we have witnessed myriad examples of it in Europe and France. But it must be said that, with this affair, it has reached the heights of obscenity. The improvised press conference by the woman’s lawyer on the steps of a courthouse normally dedicated to the sober discernment of the truth was obscene. The “shame on you’s” that greeted Dominique Strauss-Kahn as he arrived for the hearing on June 6th, shouted by battalions of hotel chambermaids who knew nothing of the actual case and whose protest had been orchestrated and scripted, were obscene. And so, too, though in another manner, was the famous “perp walk” which, I’m aware, is the lot of all those charged with a crime, but which, given the identity of the accused in question, could only degenerate into globally observed torture—high punishment for a crime, which no one, at that point, knew whether or not he had committed.

This vision of Dominique Strauss-Kahn humiliated in chains, dragged lower than the gutter—this degradation of a man whose silent dignity couldn’t be touched, was not just cruel, it was pornographic. And it was at least as pornographic (because, I repeat, it’s the same thing) as attorney Kenneth Thompson’s visible glee in expounding on the state of his client’s “vagina” [sic] before the entire world.

2. The Robespierrism of this judicial sideshow.

What is Robespierrism?  It’s a word taken from the French Revolution, of course, one that describes the way those behind the terror at the time took hold of a man of flesh and blood and dehumanized him by transforming him into an abstract symbol, and, as the literal incarnation of that symbol, tailored his person to fit the skin of all they had decided to purge from society of the Ancien Régime.

Well, we are compelled to observe that, regarding the Strauss-Kahn affair, America the pragmatic, that rebels against ideologies, this country of habeas corpus that de Tocqueville claimed possessed the most democratic system of justice in the world, has pushed this French Robespierrism, unfortunately, to the extremes of its craziness.

In this case, Dominique Strauss-Kahn was no longer Dominique Strauss-Kahn.  He was no longer a singular man gifted with a singular word, one whose version of the facts should have been carefully heard in order to compare it with that of his accuser. No. He was the symbol of arrogant France. He was the emblem of the world of the privileged, odiously sure of their own impunity. He was the mirror of this world of white global bankers that constitutes Wall Street—one that the other America, the Main Street of every city in the country, sees as the quintessential enemy.

And, similarly, this woman was the allegory of all women who are not only battered and humiliated but also poor and immigrant—their words, silenced too long, finally expressed through hers.

The sad thing is, that’s not what justice is. Justice doesn’t oppose symbols, but human beings. Unless we succumb once more to what Condorcet—one among many of Robespierre’s victims—called the “sympathetic zeal of the supposed friends of mankind,” and what I would call the “lynching, in sympathy with minorities, by their supposed friends.”

3. For in France, again, Robespierrism has always gotten on well with another -ism, apparently its opposite but in reality its twin, which is called Barrèsism. What is Barrèsism? It is a worldview that takes its name from the French nationalist writer, contemporary of the Dreyfus Affair, Maurice Barrès. And it is particularly and precisely in reference to Captain Alfred Dreyfus that he uttered the famous phrase, “That Dreyfus is guilty, I deduce not from the facts themselves, but from his race.”  The Strauss-Kahn affair is obviously unrelated to the Dreyfus affair.

“This vision of Dominique Strauss-Kahn humiliated in chains, dragged lower than the gutter—this degradation of a man whose silent dignity couldn’t be touched, was not just cruel, it was pornographic.

”

I must state, to be clear, that I don’t think it has much to do with this worldwide religion and delirium that is anti-Semitism.  But what I do believe is that this is the appearance of a new variation on Maurice Barrès’s phrase that has become, “That X—in this case Dominique Strauss-Kahn—is guilty, I deduce not from his race, but from his class.”

And what I believe is that this utterance, along with the transformation (compliments of the Terror) of the “individual” Strauss-Kahn into “the suspect” delivered to the media guillotine, has been enough to fuel the fatal mechanism and make it run full throttle.

In a letter by Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, that I received May 20 and that I have no scruples about making public since publication was its purpose (it appeared in his commentary in The New York Times Magazine), he said he was “struck” and “puzzled” by the fact that “57 percent of the French public” and, in particular, “70 percent of the Socialists” seemed to embrace the cause of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, whereas “one might expect” them “to be ideologically empathetic to an African hotel maid.”

I’m not saying that Keller was among those who found the powerful and white banker antipathetic. And I would say so even less since the Times ultimately provided the first elements of truth leading to the spectacular turnaround we are witnessing.

But I maintain that formulating the problem in these terms—bringing up political categories in a debate in which they are not relevant, in a word, introducing ideological considerations in an area with which they have nothing to do—is, in itself, very disturbing.

And I maintain—as I have said and repeated here and elsewhere—that the very fact of admitting that empathies of this sort can enter into the realm of justice amounts to inventing a class justice in reverse, no less problematic nor, ultimately, less criminal than the former.

It’s no longer, as it once was, “bastard poor, the rich are always right,” but rather, “rich bastards, it’s the poor and the injured who are always, and inevitably, right.”

4. Another temptation typical of our era is the sacralisation of the victim’s word.

Let me make it clear. If there is a lifelong combat I have led of which I am proud, it is that which consists of giving voice to the humble and to those who have no voice. It is a combat I have fought in Bosnia, in the confines of Asia, in the forgotten wars of Africa but also, and as much or nearly so, in our officially democratic world where it took decades of struggle so that “equality of rights” wouldn’t be empty words, and so that rape, for example, would be recognized as a crime.

But giving voice to the lowly is one thing. Considering this voice as Gospel is quite another—which can be the source of new and dreadful injustices.  Yet this is exactly what has happened with his accuser’s charges.

And I am still asking myself how so many editorialists, so many great consciences and, by the way, so many feminists could take it as a given that the word of this woman—of whom we knew only what filtered through the incomplete language of justice—was necessarily infallible.

The truth is that we have passed from one extreme to the other. The era when the word of the System’s victims was, on principle, discredited has given way to one in which it is—also on principle—attributed all prestige.

Yet I repeat: To be a victim of society is one thing, and no one doubts that the alleged victim of the supposed rape is at least the victim of a social order that pays its hotel maids peanuts and treats them like livestock.

But to be the victim of aggression is another thing entirely and of an entirely different nature. It must be established methodically, scrupulously, and with discretion, by comparing evidence, viewpoints and witness accounts and by avoiding the interference of emotion, even when justified, that may motivate one and another. This is a question of principle.

5. Finally, as I immediately emphasized, there is already a victim in this case and that is the very principle, in the United States, of the presumption of innocence.  Soon there will be another, I mean another victim, should it be verified that the accuser also lied about what actually happened in this now-legendary suite at the Sofitel, and that will be Dominique Strauss-Kahn himself. But from now on, there is an established disaster, that being the destruction, in a country of which it was one of the pillars, of the sacrosanct principle that, even in an accusatory system, a man has the right to the respect of his honor and his integrity as long as his guilt has not been established.

In the case of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, this principle was flouted by the tabloids (The New York Post, The Daily News, etc.) whose competitions in humiliation transformed him, from the first moment, into a monster. He was trampled on by that part of the “serious” press, which, like Time magazine, with its astounding cover illustrating the “lies” and “arrogances” of the “powerful” with a photo of a pig, committed what the worst of the tabloids did not dare to.

And he was crushed, then, by that fraction of the American judicial apparatus that, by putting Dominique Strauss-Kahn in stocks, by humiliating him before the entire world, by ruthlessly pursuing him, has probably ruined his life.  That is what I wished to say when I wrote that, after George W. Bush’s invention of the concept of “pre-emptive war,” America, under Cyrus Vance, Jr., has perhaps begun to invent the idea, scarcely less horrifying, of “pre-emptive penalty.”

And please allow a friend of this country to repeat, here, what he has said in his own country, when media-judicial tornadoes of the same kind have swept the land: that all this calls, at the least, for serious, honest, and substantial soul-searching.

July 2, 2011 12:39pm          Reproduced exactly from The Daily Beast

My comment:

Bernard Henri Levy has found again the good form that was his at the beginning of his career, when he said aloud that JP Sartre was a moral fraud. Yet, he is French and he can’t stop himself from doing a little demagoguery to prove that he is as left-wing as the left-wingers: He declares that hotel chambermaids are paid peanuts and treated like cattle.  One, I am completely sure he is talking off the top of his head, has not even made one phone call about  pay or treatment.  Two, I am willing to bet that neither assumption is true. For a semi-literate immigrant, a job at Sofitel New York must be extremely attractive. I am certain that even before the current economic crisis, there were one hundred applicants for each opening. Similarly, I doubt that Sofitel or any other luxury hotel chains treats its chambermaids badly. The reason is simple: hotel chambermaids have numerous opportunities for silent, anonymous sabotage.

You can take the French intellectual out of France, it’s difficult (but not impossible; look at me) to take France out of the French intellectual.

The Strange Tour de France.

The Tour de France is going on again. It’s the biggest bicycle race in the world and undoubtedly the most popular ,as well as the most followed. Lasting around three week-long, it’s also the longest, or one of the longest bike races. And, it’s the oldest big race, run for the first time in 1905. I watch it some of the time because it comes on my French-language television channel, TV5, right before my favorite French soap.

I am one of those rare seniors who wonder why things remain the same as much as they do. It irritates me. I want to see some interesting change before I check out. And, I would like some indication that someone is learning from experience, some time, somewhere. In the case of the Tour, I am perplexed because the media commentary of the race is practically indistinguishable from what I remember from 50 years ago. It’s puzzling but not for the reasons you might think.

In 1962, the organizers decided that the competing teams would not be identified by nationality any more but according to their corporate sponsors. So, the French Post Office team might, in principle, include a Portuguese, two Italians, a Belgian, three Brits, and no Frenchman. That’s not the way it worked out and especially from a perceptual standpoint however. The media never fail to mention the nationality of winners, of racers who fall behind, or of racers who fall down (a distressingly frequent event). The fact that many additional national groups joined the race after 1990 may have heightened again the national focus of the race. First came those who had been imprisoned behind the Iron Curtain: Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, Bulgarians, even the occasional Kazakh. Most interesting among the new joiners are those who did not exist officially, by Tour de France criteria, until recently. I mean exotics, such as Slovenes, Croatians, and Slovaks. And then. finally, thanks to cheap international travel, there are now competitors from the other side of the globe such as South Korea, and even Australia, sometimes New Zealand.

Yet, by and large, it’s the same Tour de France: Three hundred odd cars, vans and motorcycles framing and pushing around one hundred-odd young men in tights and helmets putting out nearly super-human efforts over 20 daily races of more then one hundred miles each. No question that all the participants without exception are top athletes by any world standards. However, there is not much reason to believe that #1 at any stage is a better athlete than #20, or even better than # 30, or better than anybody in the race. At least, he is probably not stronger or endowed with greater endurance. Instead, consistent winners within one tour probably have better pharmacologists than others. Racers at that high level are all doped up, it seems, and I am told by people who ought to know. The evidence is incontrovertible, they say, and there can be no exception. Yes, I would like to believe that an American cancer survivor, a one-ball maverick in the best American tradition, won the Tour six times without any chemical aid. I love fairy tales as much as the next guy and as much as the next child, really. The facts don’t look good, however.

No matter, media commentators continue to do their job with a straight face. They provide contemporaneous running commentaries of the race, as it takes place. They do it as if this were 1953 and no one suspected a racer of anything worse than having had strong coffee for breakfast. Everyone remains imperturbable.

This sort of determined collective make-believe always surprises me. I don’t know why the Tour has not been changed into a pharmacological/cycling contest. There would be some scientific merit to it. We could all learn useful things about performance-enhancing drugs, their side-effects, their dangers. It would also be more fair, in the best of sports traditions: Why would those who provide an important ingredient of victory be kept away from the celebration? I can easily see a purple jersey for best chemist to complement the yellow jersey for best cyclist.

Here is another intriguing aspect of the race that may suggest an explanation for the race’s fixed format and narrative. This year, the first two days were run entirely within the area of Brittany. Spectators along the race waved the expected national flags to encourage their favorites. Of course, there were many French flags. It’s my impression however, that there were many more black and white flags of the Duchy of Brittany than there were tricolors of the French Republic. Yet, the last year there was an independent Duchy of Brittany was 1531.Go figure!

Well, maybe the main point of the race is to showcase the attractive French countryside in all its interesting cultural and historical diversity. With this perspective, indifference to the not-so-genuine character of the athleticism of the race would make sense. So would the frozen nature of the narrative commentary. After all, how many low-brow different comments can you make about the Pyrenees mountains, about the Bordeaux vineyard country?

And then, of course, there is always the possibility that few really care about the athletics of the Tour. Masses of strong men in tights with really good legs will always inspire all kinds of fantasies. At least, after more then one hundred years, it’s surely considered a winning formula. As in connection with other sports events, not enough attention is paid to the influence of women.

The Debt Ceiling: Relax!

The President stomped out of a bi-partisan meeting on the debt ceiling yesterday. Another demonstration of maturity. The man appears to be discovering the practice of democracy. It’s dawning on him that he was not elected King or Chairman of the Supreme Soviet. Yet, there is still no sign of Obama Derangement Syndrome among conservatives. I think I know why; I have said it before: He looks like a little boy caught trying to drive his daddy’s car. You can’t hate this!

Somehow, I am not worried about a financial Armageddon. Both sides are bluffing. That’s what we are paying them for. There will be a last-minute compromise. The debt ceiling will be lifted some. There will be illusory, fake tax raises to satisfy the President’s Progressives (who rarely read in depth anyway). Some serious reform will begin to reduce our collective propensity to overspend on government. I don’t know what form it will take. Yet, for the first time in my life, I am optimistic that the federal spending beast will be durably restrained.

In the meantime, according to Michael McConnel in 7/14/11 WSJ,  President Obama and the Democratic Senate have been violating the 1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Act for several months now. In my view, that’s more of an impeachable offense than whatever Bill Clinton did in the Oval Office with “that woman” (whatever her name is. I wonder what she is doing now.)

Our War on Mexico

Continuing very bad news from Mexico. I imagine we are all more or less tuning out. The massacre continues. It’s possible that we are seeing our neighbor’s transformation from a reasonable approximation of a representative polity to a pure gangster state. It’s mostly our fault, I think. I don’t mean because we use drugs. I refer to our collective stubborneness regarding cause and effect and the illegal status of most drugs. If it were legal, cannabis would probably cost less than tobacco, cocaine only a little more. Mexicans would have no motivation to gun one another down in the streets for the profits such prices would entail. Nor would Americans. Opponents of legalization are always talking as if there were two well established sides to the issue of legalization. I don’t know what the other side is. I have not seen it. I mean, that I have not seen serious empirical arguments, just blind prejudice spoken with hot passion and a superb disrespect for simple logic. The so-called “war on drugs” is, in my opinion, the most disastrous war this country has been running or close to it. This assessment takes into account the fact that the war cannot be won.

PS   My current intake of intoxicating substances amounts to one glass of wine with each dinner, of two on special occasions. I sip expensive 80-proof booze with friends four or five times per year. I have consumed practically no cannabis for many years. I might if it were cheaper. The strongest argument against it is that it contributes indirectly to obesity.

Sasquatch and Liberal Academe

I have spent thirty years in academia as a teacher and as a scholar. If you count the embarrassingly long periods I was a student, it adds up to much more time. After retiring, I am full of thoughts and ideas about academia. I feel almost no remorse at all but there is a lot of regret in my heart. It’s regret about what I did not do, mostly. Much of it is regret about the times I kept my mouth shut. I also feel retrospective curiosity. Strangely, the curiosity is growing with the years from my last day in academia. Much of the curiosity is about the following issue:

Why do very intelligent, cultured, well-informed people do and say strikingly stupid things?

Before I spout off anymore about academia, I must make clear my position about Sasquatch, the elusive, giant northern American forest ape. It’s sometimes quite unscientifically referred to as “Bigfoot,” or “Big Foot.” Worry not, the two lines of pondering in this essay will soon merge, I can assure you. At any rate, I think there is no Sasquatch. I am sorry that is what I think. I hope I am wrong. I would be glad to turn on a dime on that one, as soon as the evidence warrants.

I have a former colleague, a man younger than I who is a full professor in the best school of one of the best universities in the world. The man is pretty much an academic star. By the way, I am well-placed to know that his stardom is well deserved. It’s not always true of academic stardom. Some academic stars have skillfully manipulated themselves into their reknown on the basis of absurdly inflated modest intellectual achievements. Often, it’s absurdly inflated, thin achievements associated with a super-normal capacity for being seen at academic conferences. (I could name names but this time around, I won’t.) I can’t resist a digression here: It used to be said that Stalin became dictator of the Soviet Union because he would stay after the meetings to sweep the room when the Bolsheviks were illegal. The very fact that it’s possible to fake scholarly star quality at all is a potent sociological commentary on academia in itself.

In any case, I am well able to judge my former colleague’s real capacity, the soundness of his stardom, because he is also a former co-author. He and I produced something fairly difficult together which was published in a fairly good journal. Now the relationship between co-authors is one of the most intimate that there is. It reveals the other guy’s personality faster than does the married state, for example. When you collaborate with another scholar, you witness his hesitations, the unsuspected gaps in his knowledge, his lack of culture, his hesitancy, his inability to make decisions, sometimes his intellectual cowardice, often his private frivolousness. It’s a lot like seeing someone at 7 am after a night of drinking and smoking strange substances. Fortunately, co-authorship is also a front row from which to observe intellectual creativity unfolding.

So, I know for a fact my former colleague and former co-author. Prof. X, is an exceptionally bright person. His mind is full of surprises; his resources are bright and varied. He possesses research imagination, not a trait to be taken for granted, by the way. Unlike most academics in the disciplines with which I am familiar, he is also a man of broad culture. (This may come as a surprise but academics don’t seem to be willing to read except for a specific, instrumental purpose. Few of the academics I have known read novels, for instance. Even fewer read history.) Since he is an immigrant like me, his awareness of the wider world is much above the academic average. In his home country, he is a kind of aristocrat. Naturally, Prof. X is bilingual. (I keep insisting it’s like having two brains; that’s an exaggeration, perhaps but there is a kernel of truth to it.) Judged by normal academic standards, my former colleague’s record of scholarly productivity probably puts him in the top 5% worldwide. He is a predictable liberal like, I would guess, at least 95% of his colleagues at the university where he exercises his talents, also like 90% or more of American academics.

On that day, a common friend, another academic, has invited us to dinner, possibly driven by unhealthy curiosity. My former colleague, whom I had not seen for more than a year, greets me with taunts about Sarah Palin, the conservative ex-governor of Alaska and about Glenn Beck, for more than a year a political commentary star on the cable network Fox News.

This is a strange beginning for several reasons. First, Prof. X has no reason to believe that I am a devotee of either of these two tribunes of the plebe. He knows me well enough, and he knows my scholarly work well enough, to be able to guess that I am conversant with the more sophisticated exponents of conservatism and of libertarian ideas. He must know that I am in contact with high-brow conservative think tanks like the Cato Institute and the Heritage Institute. I am pretty sure he is at least peripherally aware that my stories and essays have been published several times in the libertarian periodical “Liberty.” A single random dip into Liberty would show him that that publication is not itself short on intellectual sophistication.

What I am witnessing here is a mild form of instantaneous insanity: A man who knows me very well addresses me as if he were talking to someone else, perhaps to high-school student (and failing) Jacques Delacroix. He has not made the effort of imagination to consider the possibility that someone may be intelligent, well-informed, even fairly sophisticated, and yet subscribe to conservative ideas, libertarian wing. He could have entertained the thought during the drive over to the dinner party. I hope I may just be seeing simple laziness. I am not sure.

The second reason Prof. X ‘s greeting is disconcerting, you might have guessed: You could safely bet that he has heard very few words from Sarah Palin’s mouth, if any. You can be even more certain that he has read no words she has written. All the information he has about the sometimes-shrill, often aggravating ex-governor is second-hand or worse. The likelihood that he has any direct experience of Glenn Beck’s hectoring lecturing is even slimmer. Refined Prof. X simply does not have the patience to spend even one minute listening to the bombastic, grand-standing, usually exaggerating, chronically over-reaching, self-taught man so beloved of the great unwashed conservative masses with high-school diplomas (and shotguns hanging across the rear-windows of their pick-up trucks!)

Prof. X is made so irrational by the very idea of meeting conservatism in the flesh that he runs the serious risk of getting caught red-handed by someone whose esteem he probably values (me). After all, I might have asked him to repeat any statement, any statement at all ,Governor Palin has ever made, to replicate any of Glenn Beck’s key didactic affirmations. He would have failed both tests. Why take the risk to get busted, I wonder?

Later, at dinner, I ask Prof. X a few pointed questions about the economic achievements of Pres. Obama’s administration. I expect responses of the following form:

“OK, it does not look good but you must consider…..”

Instead, every loaded but simple question I advance triggers a longish and mostly irrelevant speech encompassing much more than one could reasonably consider relevant to the question. Prof. X wants to change the subject every time. He acts as if he believed that I could be distracted, like a child, from my own questions.

Overall, Prof. X, who has confronted many daunting intellectual challenges in his career, is not acting like a resourceful, intelligent man ready to face another intelligent, resourceful man of contrary political disposition. Instead, he behaves like a small child with a trembling lower-lip observing a bully in the school yard. The panic accounts for the inadequacy of his actions, an instance of the mystery I am trying to explain to myself: Intelligent people acting and talking stupidly.

The best explanation for this grotesque behavior I have right now comes straight from the conservative grab-bag: Competition works and pretty much nothing else works. This principle also applies to the full array of individual competences. Prof . X spends all his time ensconced among liberal and progressive academics. Probably he does not take the trouble to expose himself to material that would disrupt in the least his perspective. I am not thinking of the newsletter of “Almighty God Northwest White Militia” but of the Wall Street Journal, for example, that he could receive free of charge every day for the price of a phone call. Nothing ever challenges his liberal world-view. That leaves him incompetent before a challenge and, since he is intelligent enough to perceive this incompetence, it leaves him discombobulated, even fearful.

Even what I am tempted to call Prof. X’s “natural rationality” does not survive the anxiety of being challenged on unfamiliar ground. It runs out, it falls apart; so, it turns out it’s not that natural, in the sense of innate. Rationality too may depend on the presence of frequent contextual challenges. One may be rational in areas that are subject to periodic mental challenges and not be rational anywhere else at all. This, by the way, would explain the survival of ridiculous and childish beliefs in astrology among otherwise hard-as-nail Indian businessmen.

One week before this encounter with Prof. X, out of idle curiosity and immature hopefulness, I had driven twenty minutes to visit the Bigfoot Discovery Museum. It’s located among the redwoods, in Felton, California. It’s contained in a tiny house filled with exhibits. The owner, his wife and possibly, a part-time worker staff its map-covered tiny counter.

The owner-founder greets me. I don’t know what his educational background is. He expresses himself simply but clearly. He makes no mystery of the fact that he believes the Sasquatch tribe, the Bigfoot family itself, roams the Santa Cruz Mountains in fair numbers. For years, he has been collecting what he takes to be supportive evidence. More interestingly, he has taken the trouble to rate the evidence for credibility. I ask him several unavoidably skeptical questions. The man keeps his cool perfectly. He gives sensate answers to all my questions. He anticipates several of my objections and provides me with thoughtful counter-objections. I do not come out a convert but believing that there are some unanswered questions about Sasquatch worthy of more study. I would gladly contribute a small amount of money to such study. Mostly, I leave feeling that I have had a conversation with a knowledgeable adult who happens to have a disposition different from mine but who cares about facts as much as I do. I think of the Bigfoot museum director as a man who respects our common human rationality.

The American Parade

In the United States, a strong indigenous form of theater has not developed (middle-brow and high-brow forms were both imported from Europe when already mature). Had a specifically American variety of theater arisen, it would probably not have become tied to locality because of the high geographic mobility of the population. So, instead of theater, Americans have invented their own, strikingly direct kind of identity-enhancing performance: the parade.

In lesser American towns, parades are often a disorderly or downright messy mixture of military spit-and-polish, of crass commercial advertising, of ideological propaganda, of politicking, and of public declarations of self-satisfaction with one’s hobbies. In one very small, prosperous town on the West Coast, the last 4th of July parade included, among other attractions, the Kazoo Club, the Folding Lawn Chairs Marching and Drill Team, Zero Population Growth, the local Democratic Club, a grassroots group intent on gaining school district autonomy, and two old car buff clubs. These were followed by a lone couple (a pair) of tap dancers. There was also a moms’ club, whose sole purpose appeared to be Momaffirmation. (They did not seem to be bragging either about themselves or about their kids, who incidentally, were not even dressed up for the occasion.) Of course, there were several musical marching bands – at various levels of proficiency, from the superb to the pathetic – all much and equitably applauded.

After 90 minutes-plus of exposure to this particular spectacle, it was difficult to think of anything performed by two-or-more people that was not represented or, at least, alluded to, in this annual July 4th event, except for sex and, curiously, surfing. (There are two reasonable explanations for the notable absence of surfers: first, surfing is not really done collectively, just side-by-side; and second, surfers couldn’t be bothered to show up that day because the surf was up. Surfers are known for their uncooperative individualism.)

The striking difference between the American parade and its superficially analogous European counterparts is that many parade marchers in America are not “parading” in any meaningful sense of the word. They often wear neither costume nor other distinctive mark signaling their group membership; they may be sloppily dressed and groomed. Sometimes, they do nothing more interesting than walk down the middle of the street carrying a vague identifying sign and waving cordially to the spectators, their fellow-citizens lining the parade route. In a really small town, the line between paraders and spectators may become completely blurred: A large proportion of the population physically present in town will march in the parade, and then, stand to the side to watch others, or vice-versa.

Since many American parades take place during the sunny season, when people could be disporting themselves at the beach or on the golf course, the question arises forcefully: “What is being achieved here?”

One reasonable answer is that the parade is a wonderfully, efficiently and distinctively American way to formulate, assert and discover collective identity. The local community figures out what it is, in its various forms, simply by periodically taking a good look at itself. It does this in a nearly spontaneous manner, demanding almost no preparation nor much discipline, and with little regard for coherence or consistency. So, in the next town’s version of the parade, a large fake “Mexican” marching band, with an all-Anglo membership sporting 50’s Hollywood-inspired garish TexMex garb precedes several smaller, disciplined, all-Hispanic Mariachi bands in authentic, black and silver “charro” outfit. (The charro- or Mexican cowboy- costume is itself a fairly recent micro-showbiz invention brought from Northern Mexico by several waves of immigrants and perfected here.)

The fact that the parade rests largely on improvisation, its minimal organization, both exclude the emergence of bureaucratic authority or of any other undemocratic feature. In its good-natured near-anarchy, the parade can thus be thought of as fundamentally American in its form as well as in its contents. At the same time, shorn of the confusing aesthetic pretensions, free from heavy connotations, and cut from the symbolic baggage associated with the theatrical and religious performances of other cultures, it is one of the purest forms of collective identity enhancement. Here, folks just look at folks to figure out who and what folks are, kind of.

 

 

 

 Jacques Delacroix 1997