Zombies vs. the UN
It's fair to say that certain of the current administration's positions are inexplicable, at least insofar as its proponents have refused to explain them. There are many explanations as to why they can do certain things like break international law (along with all the other stuff you can no doubt rattle off as well as I can)--parse the language in their own unique way so they can do what they want. But just because I can explain how to cause a chicken to crossbreed with a tomato doesn't mean I've explained why that's something you would want to do.[1] Most people would agree that some things the administration has done seem to violate common sense, and while you can certainly give justifications for this, you're eventually going to have to explain exactly why your idea will lead to a better outcome than the common sense option would. We can be told that doing things a certain way will protect the country or fight terrorism or make government better, but why, exactly, would it be more effective at doing these things (since no one's policies are really aimed at making the country weaker or the government worse[2]) than, say, doing what your critics think you should do.Now that some administration cheerleaders are being cut loose, they have the leisure time to give fuller explanations of their counterintuitive acts, and last week, former "definition of a bad idea" ambassador to the UN John Bolton[3] appeared on the Daily Show and did an interview with John Stewart. Bolton, as you may recall, was a controversial choice for the position due to the fact that he once suggested the UN would be no worse off if a certain percentage of its building was blown up. Unusually, he did not try and convince us that he did actually like the UN, and that this was just constructive criticism, etc. etc. Instead he said that this was not the first time he had been in such a position--he had served as an arms control administrator and he didn't particularly believe in that, either.
Why, then, was it OK for positions to be filled with people who would seem to have fundamental differences with what the position was created to accomplish? Bolton's explanation went something like this: the purpose of the bureaucracy of the executive branch, which all these positions fell under, is to carry out the policy goals of the President. That's it. The President's policy goals involve kicking puppies, so everyone should be working toward that goal, and if you're not, the President is well within his right to replace you.
The implications of this are, ah, interesting. In Bolton's view, it would seem:
1) Ideology trumps truth. The bureaucracy doesn't implement the right or best policy, it implements the one the President tells them to. And:
2) The efforts to expand executive power at all cost are good, because this will just make the process of implementing the President's policies more efficient. There shouldn't be restraints on the President's power because the President should be able to do whatever he wants in pursuit of his policy goals.
Now, obviously this is wrong. Constitutionally, the purpose of the executive branch isn't to make policy but to implement the laws as the legislative branch has passed them, so if the bureaucracy should be working toward anyone's policy goals, it should be Congress'. And all policies aren't created equal. Sure, you're in your dorm room at 3 am, you can claim that there is no truth and all viewpoints are equally valid so whoever has the strongest ideology should just win, but there is, in fact, a way of telling what policy will be best, and it's called cost-benefit analysis. It's not the best tool for every job, but it does provide a reasonably objective view on which policy would be the best one to pursue. No ideology is always right. Even mine! As for #2, no one in their right mind thinks the executive branch has been losing power lately, shit.
Why, then, would he give us such a wrong explanation? It doesn't make sense in the context of reality, so from what point of view does it make sense? The grumpier among us would say, perhaps, postmodernism is to blame for this sort of thing--that it's the damn Frenchies' endorsement of relativism and rejection of absolute truth that has allowed people of any political persuasion to claim that facts no longer matter. But Bolton doesn't believe that there is no truth[4]--he just believes that only he, and people he agrees with, have the truth. Another way of saying this is that he's a neoconservative, and that's the context in which his claims actually line up to anything.[5]
Neoconservatism is a school of political philosophy founded by Leo Strauss, a professor at the University of Chicago. One of its primary aspects was that the classic philosophical texts, especially actual classical texts, did not actually mean what everyone thought they meant. Instead, a certain elect group of great men could see the hidden meanings behind these texts, and these hidden meanings were the real truth of the world, and, moreover, the truths by which men should govern. To put it in even less positive terms, only Leo Strauss and his acolytes knew the real truth about things, and you can't ever even hope to understand it, so you should just do what they say. Sound familiar?
Yep, that's right: they're just high-falutin' nerds! But they're nerds with power, and so it makes sense for them to believe that ideology is truth, because it's their ideology, and it flows from the hidden truths only they know, so it is really truth, we just can't understand it, so there's no point in even explaining it to us, god. And of course the President should be unfettered, because he's just implementing truth, so his path should be cleared. And despite all the rhetoric at America's inception and for the full century afterwards about not having kings and very consciously avoiding monarchical trappings, things are just more efficient when you have one, powerful elect(ed) man driving things forward. It all makes sense! It's also remarkably reminiscent of the rhetoric of prog rock fans. Politically, though, it represents an utter inability to recognize other people as independent actors with their own thoughts, which may have some value. It also gives power a bad name, as something absolute that is used always as a stick, no matter how many carrots you have lying around, or how much evidence there is that it's actually fluid and letting it work as such is far more effective. Of course, from the right's perspective, this is great--the left's distaste for power is one of the right's great advantages.
I've been making a few music jokes, but the neocon attitude is distressingly widespread in art. Everywhere are genre and style partisans who feel validated by their own marginalization, thinking it makes them brave outsiders, and vigilantly defending the borders of their own absolute truth from the corruption of outside influences, no matter how valid those influences may be. But art also shows us the way in which this sort of thing can be put to use, most recently in the case of Oprah picking Cormac McCarthy's The Road as her next book club selection.
McCarthy seems to almost entirely embody the image of neocon artist.[6] He has an incredibly dark worldview that he expresses with blunt prose in books about men doing violent things, drawing stark lines between himself and his peers, who are generally known for close observations of everyday life that veer towards the banal, or metanarrative trickery that feels untethered compared to McCarthy's earthy realism. He does not give interviews. The Road is about a man and his son traveling through a sparsely-populated postapocolyptic world, scavenging for food, carrying their possessions in a shopping cart, wrapping themselves in blankets against the cold, wearing masks to keep out the ash, building fires every night and covering themselves with a tarp when it rains. Life is reduced to a struggle to survive, the days grow darker, and the man keeps coughing up blood. It's a little dark.
Now, though, he's been selected by Oprah, whose most recent efforts involved opening a girls' school in South Africa and promoting The Secret, a DVD that rehashes the theory of "the power of positive thinking," which is almost diametrically opposed to McCarthy's book, it would seem. In other words, Oprah draws clear lines, too, and keeps herself and her audience within those. But in picking The Road, she's brought it inside those lines, and given it a new context, thus blurring all those bright divisions that McCarthy would seem to embody. In doing so, she's pointing out that this dark, dudeish novel is also very much an Oprah book. And it is: it's essentially a melodrama, albeit one that takes itself very seriously, and like the stereotypical Oprah book, it's consists mostly of suffering with a little bit of hope and redemption at the end. It's The Color Purple for men!
Here is soft power, and here is what can get done when you're able to open yourself up. I'm no Oprah-lover, but I greatly admire her as a craftsperson. She does what she does better than anyone else, to the degree that she's actually expanded her mandate. She's not just a talk show host anymore, she's like a mass-market life coach. And she's used her power to expand what being Oprahesque is, while also benefiting McCarthy and, if you're a believer in great literature being good, the new readers he'll gain. Everyone wins. Power can do this, if it wants; power can step outside of its careful lines and redefine itself to include more, and more, and more. By being open to what she believes in, she can bring more things into her purview. She got Cormac McCarthy to come on a daytime talk show and give an interview. And he will come on, and people will read The Road, and I'll tell you this: I bet it'll work out better than a lot of the things the administration's been doing.
[1] Perhaps to simplify making spicy chicken sandwiches?
[2] Well...
[3] This is probably just me, but seeing Bolton is always vaguely disorienting, because he looks remarkably like Harlan Wilson, a former professor of mine who teaches political theory and is maybe as far away belief-wise from John Bolton as it's possible to be. But then Bolton starts talking and he has nowhere near as mellifluous a voice as Harlan does.
[4] If you want to blame the pomos for something, you could try the whole "intelligent design" thing, especially the "teaching the controversy" thing. There's a great essay about this somewhere, but damned if I remember where it is.
[5] There's another thing he said that doesn't make sense in any context, but it doesn't really fit in with the themes of this post, so I'll stick it here: later, Bolton says that putting impediments (or, as the Constitution quaintly calls 'em, "checks") in the bureaucracy is anti-democratic, because it prevents the President from doing what the people elected him to do. This is only true if the President was the head of a parliamentary system, where he's presumed to be the representative of just some of the population. But he's everyone's President, and his job is to reflect everyone's interests, not just those of the people who elected him. This is to say nothing of the fact that the American people, as it's been exhaustively proven, don't vote for a set of policies when they're voting for President, they're voting for someone who'll be a good leader, someone who will take the future events we cannot forsee and make the best decision. The President doing whatever he wants regardless of what the populace thinks is a bit republican, to be sure, but certainly not democratic.
[6] Metaphorically speaking; I have no idea what McCarthy's political beliefs are. He seems like a good guy, but, like Phish and Tori Amos, his fans are a little offputting.
Labels: books, Cormac McCarthy, neoconservative, Oprah, political theory, politics, pop
posted by Mike B. @ 7:01 PM
50 Comments:
"Neoconservatism is a school of political philosophy founded by Leo Strauss, a professor at the University of Chicago."
Sorry, but this statement, though widely held by many people, is false. The label, "neoconservative," was used as an epithet by leftists like Michael Harrington against others who had, in his view, strayed too far from leftist orthodoxy. Such people included, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Daniel Bell, James Q Wilson and Henry "Scoop" Jackson. None of these people had any connection to Leo Strauss. Of those originally dubbed "neoconservative" only Irving Kristol ever claimed to have been influenced by Strauss on the basis of having read one of his books. Kristol never studied with Strauss and probably never met the man. That's the extent of it. Whatever people mean today by "neoconservative" (other than 'someone whose opinions I don't like) has no connection to Leo Strauss.
Did you ever wonder why people who say what Strauss supposedly said, never actually quote Strauss? The reason, of course, is that Strauss simply didn't say what people like you say he said.
Yeah, or because Strauss is a horrible writer.
Fair enough, I should have said "neoconservativism is a school of foreign policy that's an outgrowth of Straussianism" or something along those lines. But you don't have to study with a philosopher to be a believer in their philosophy.
It's also an outgrowth of Trotskyism, and you can read "vanguard party" for every time I say "elect" if you'd rather.
if you're a believer in great literature being good
Hmm?
Ah yes, the end of the post, where I am ready to be done writing. "a believer in great literature being an enriching experience for the reader" or something like that. You know, good-for-you.
Jesus, Bolton does look like Harlan Wilson. That's why his face has freaked me out for so long. There are plenty of other reasons Bolton freaked me out, so I never made the connection.
"Neocon artist" is a great pun.
I really like this:
"Everywhere are genre and style partisans who feel validated by their own marginalization, thinking it makes them brave outsiders, and vigilantly defending the borders of their own absolute truth from the corruption of outside influences, no matter how valid those influences may be."
I believe that Oprah chooses the worst books by the best authors.
Does she ever say she has read the book; or is it that Oprah, Inc. recommends?
According to Oprah herself, she reads the books and then selects them for her book club.
That interview of Stewart's with John Bolton was insane to watch. I think by the end, even Jon was incredulous at just how many times Bolton had said he was wrong, even in the face of, well, reality. It had been awhile since I'd seen such a hard-line Bushie (I hate that word) spout off, and it was jarring to see the disconnect between my reality and that of the administration.
Also, years later I still boggle at the complete lack of sense in sending a man who actively dislikes the UN to serve for the UN. Illogic is an understatement.
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