My Theory of the Brontosaurus

Is the strength of fundamentalist movements about women? Tariq Ali makes this point in regard to the Islamist; there is a kinder version in the argument that a traditional Muslim just can't get married because the women available aren't proper enough, and that produces sexual frustration and violence. Not sure. It does seem plausible that the west pushes, however inadvertantly, its culture, which includes secular individuality and gender equality, into areas that are not economically developed to the point where gender roles are in play. Al Q has up to date communications technology, but who is pulling the plow?

Our conservatives will run on war because it is all they have. They wish above all to vitiate the federal government and restore sovereignty. A war state requires sovereignty: if you push democracy out of the federal level it can dedicate itself to war. The state than can punish unto death is the state that can conscript for war. Agency is relegated to the executive, and the ends of government are not up for discussion. (I am thinking of Karp's description of the end of the American republic and rise of the imperial power; also Hobbes, creating a theory of the state, vs. king and warrior class rule, and hence of conscription). For the conservative there is no law without sovereignty: you can just choose to leave, or break our law and then leave. We have to be able to punish to have law; and there is a corollary that no one will obey law without the threat of punishment. We all know from the death of Socrates that civil disobedience cannot reject the power of the state to punish without sacrificing the possibility of law. I think we can justify imprisonment as a sort of internal banishment, without granting the state the power of death. Sovereignty, the power of death which forces me to acknowledge the lawfulness of the law, is the opposite of consent. I can't consent to my death, which means I can't consent to the law (otherwise, the law doesn't need my consent--it wouldn't be the law if it did).

recent reading

Remnick's comment on Russert makes the point without realizing it: his shtick was holding politicians accountable to what they had said. Which is indeed an improvement over much of what passes for interviewing. But it presumes the hermetically sealed nature of our politics. There is only the said, there is no doing; and no independent challenge to the said: no journalist can say something is not true, he can only oppose what another politician said. My fear is that the "personal" stuff, the Buffal, Big Russ stuff, was all that guaranteed Russert’s legitimacy as a journalist. Ie, journalism itself has no legitimacy anymore. Thus the personal nature of the memorialization, which in its endlessness bespeaks narcissism. But without legitimacy journalism is just narcissism.

 

The article in the Times on Monday about Algerian kids was interesting because the religious ones argued that the truth of their religion was guaranteed by the effort of the west to suppress it. The article appeared just when I was thinking about Algeria, as a failed Turkey. If the military in Turkey ceases to tolerate democracy, out of fear of the Islamists, it will force the Islamist to give up on democracy too, leaving two armed camps and no political solution. Attaturk pulled Turkey toward the west, as Peter had Russia. But both were on the margins of Europe; They did not fear falling out of Europe, as Romania did (per Judt). Does that explain the avidity for fascism in Romania? Or was that more fear of Russia? Or just Catholicism? Cf. Hungary too.

 
The article in the NYT about McCain’s thesis is important, because the liberal fascination with McCain depends on that moment in the prison camp when he refused to obey his captors. David Foster Wallace has the best exposition of this fascination I know of, but it underlies my respect for the man. But it was not, per McCain himself, ie in his own understanding, a Brazil like moment of the individual defying the authority of the other, not a More like choice for martyrdom over compliance, but a case of good "brain-washing," the utter absence of doubt over his mission or the mission of the country in the war. The lesson he takes from it is the need for censorship.