The end of “The End of”

We all know that Francis Fukuyama says history has ended.  Now, to his credit, his thesis is much more subtle than his detractors allow.  As I understand it, important events did not stop occuring in 1991; they just stopped providing an alternate metanarrative.  Liberal democracy had shown its superiority by, most importantly, harnessing the innate desires of humans to express themselves by discarding their slave mentality (in the Hegelian sense).  (Or something like that, as I remember it.)  Anyrate, I do support the idea that we all seek agency over our lives (our tolerance for it resembles a natural distribution and is not a set quantity however), but that does not mean that democracies will flourish everywhere.  More importantly, the future is too difficult to predict, so the simple odds are that Fukuyama is wrong.

On September 11th, 2001, irony ended.  (I think it has ended several times before.)  Any time a cultural critic says that society is witnessing the end of a disposition – the end of humor, the end of joy, the end of melodrama, etc. – it’s okay to laugh.  I have never even understood how terrorist attacks destroy irony.  Is it that they use our technology to destroy us?  That we said we could not be attacked on our soil?  That we were over there so they wouldn’t be here (but that’s post-9/11 thinking)?  I’m pretty sure that irony is one of the most abused concepts in our society, more often a malaprop than a scathing appraisal.  I guess it is ironic that I am using my computer  to write about terrorism*

Thankfully, David Brooks finally hit the nail on the head.  Science has led to the end of philosophy, he enlightens us.  My intimate knowledge of philosophy comes from a high school class, an anthropology class, a good friend who majored in philosophy, and my brother.  (Get the irony????? ?)  Brooks’ understanding of philosophy is laughably sophistic: if it does not seek to differentiate good and evil, it is not philosophy.  Brooks’ conclusion is based on neuroscience which shows that we act and react without deeper moral analysis; according to Brooks, “This yogurt tastes funny,” has the equivalence of, “Charity is moral” because we reach these conclusions without deeper reflection.  This is because we evolved that way.  (Sociobiology has become the tool for bullshit theories when people smart enough to know what sociobiology is are not smart enough to think through a problem.)  Politics, aesthetics,  epistemology, and metaphysics do not constitute philosophy.  A question such as, “Why do we reach instinctive conclusions before rational analysis?” can be faux-answered by faux-science, therefore philosophy is dead.

After Brooks’ humorous failure, I hereby fail to envision any future where an author or pundit can proclaim the end of (noun).  I therefore proclaim the end of “the end of”!**

I was wrong three paragraphs ago.  Obama ended irony.

*It is not ironic.

**This is a phrase, not a noun.

We are run by special interests

It is mind blowing that there is still support in Congress for the F-22 program and most other large scale military procurement programs.  We already have the best fighter planes in the world not including the roughly 180 F-22s we have already bought; we simply have an incredible airplane which has run way over budget and fulfills no strategic role.  Nonetheless, there is a vocal movement led by Lockheed Martin to continue its production because it creates jobs; in effect, the company which makes the plane has abandoned arguing for it from a strategic perspective and instead is asking for the government’s benefice.

During the commodity bubble, we found ourselves desperately searching for alternative sources of energy.  Ethanol made from corn was promoted as a savior of our country, but the fact is that its production is incredibly inefficient: cars get less miles per gallon and pollute just as much.  The only difference is that we produce the corn, so we’re not dependent on Saudi Arabia.  Ethanol produced from sugar cane is much more efficient; Brazil has a highly developed sugarcane ethanol industry, and a significant amount of cars there run on sugarcane fuel.  But we do not have sugarcane because the corn lobby does not support the importation of sugarcane since doing so would undermine the dominance of high fructose corn syrup.

We have a minority party agitating for almost identical policies expressed by Herbert Hoover in the run-up to and during the Great Depression: balance government spending, keep taxes low, and let the market sort itself.  In short, we have a minority party which has never read a history book.  The minority party is backed up by an ideological apparatus masquerading as objective news reporting, with CNBC providing the most blatant example of a political agenda masquerading as (pseudo)knowledge.   “Government, do not bail out normal people who have made mistakes or been fooled by rich people,” they shout, “but please keep our financial system solvent.  Our mistakes are different you see.”

We have a very intelligent and accomplished nominee for the head of the National Intelligence Council who had to withdraw his nomination because of lobbying from groups who disagree with his views.  Feeling that the bloviating from these diehards would seriously imperil his ability to do his job, the nominee withdrew himself from consideration even though his appointment did not require Congressional approval.

We have a nation resistant to any form of universal healthcare coverage because it might threaten “liberty” and the “free market.”  (Though those who defend our shameful system are usually the same ones who can only defend those two terms with tautologies.)  Insurers want to keep the free market because it allows them to seek rents, i.e. to earn profit when they shouldn’t be.  Doctors want to keep the current system because they fear low reimbursement or being forced to prescribe certain procedures, mindless (or intentionally ignoring) the fact that Medicare is so bloated because it often overpays for procedures or that doctors are already forced into prescribing treatment by the insurance industry.  In short, we have a nation fearing a basic human right (accessible and affordable health care) because of 30-second sound bites.

We have a governing party complicit with the forces of paragraphs one through five, a party which also wants to maintain defense spending.  (Apparently jobs in the private sector funded by government largesse do not count as “inefficient” government jobs.)  This same party resists raising taxes on the wealthy even though they did the same thing, to much benefit, 16 years ago.  This same party resists meaningful and necessary education reform because powerful interests groups resist changing the flawed nature of our system.  (Obama is largely right how to tackle education reform.)  This same party refuses to face down agroindustry and the concomitant social illls they entail: obesity, poor nutrition, diabetes, and high fructose corn syrup among other.

We have a country without leaders.  We have a country run by men in Ferragamo suits eating in steakhouses and delivering ugly Powerpoints to the people who think they make decisions.  We have a nation run not by citizens but by idiot corporatists, e.g. Charles Schumer, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, et. al.  We have a nation led not by citizens looking at what benefits the national as a whole but rather looking at how the nation can benefit their district and their election.  We have a nation of leaders who see the government as a means to better themselves, not a means to better their citizens.

Either that, or we have elected officials who sincerely believe they are striving to accomplish all the goals I excoriate them for avoiding.  If that is the case, we have a nation unconcerned for the intelligence and pragmatism of its leaders.

The Abuse of Twitter

It is interesting that most of this increase in political Twitter usage comes from the right side of the isle.  This strikes me as an overreaction which only draws more attention to the Republican Party’s poor reading of the American populace.

As I understand it, the Republican Party partly interprets their failure in this cycle as a failure to effectively harness this century’s technology.  According to this narrative, Obama won because he understood how to maximize the power of Facebook, text messaging, and real-time data mining much better than the competition.  Therefore, the Republican Party can counter by embracing the next great technology.

Somehow, they decided that Twitter represents this next wave.  (I guess the idea might have been: “Well, we see communication getting quicker and simpler, so let’s embrace the most extreme version of current trends.”  And then you get senators Twittering from the Green Zone.

What the Republicans, and most people, do not realize is that Twitter sucks as a medium unless your goal is to indulge your ego.  Twitter has no avenue for self-expression except the twit, so all people know about you is what you twit and, crucially, how many other people want to read your twits.  And in 140 characters, the maximum amount Twitter uses, one cannot say anything of substance.  You cannot discuss policy, you cannot formulate complex ideas, and you cannot have a conversation; about all you can do is tell people exactly what you are doing right now.  It is the most ephemeral form of communication possible.  If your goal is to win votes and push your agenda through Congress, partial sentences abbreviations are not the way to accomplish that.

Side note: I intentionally used the word “twit” and not “tweet,” which is the common term for a message sent by Twitter.  The service is not called Tweeter, so I do not understand why one sends “tweets.”  If I drive for a living, I am a driver; if I enjoy talking, I am a talker; likewise, if I twit, I am a twitter.  By extension, there is no such thing as a twitterer.

Will-ing the decline of newspapers

Matt Yglesias and others (notable Brad DeLong) have gone to town on the Washington Post for a recent article by George Will where he painted a very false picture about the scientific community and the climate change debate in the 1970s.  Worse, the paper has stood by its columnist and refuses to acknowledge the danger of publishing blatant, intentional distortions.

I’m not going to go into the details about why Will is wrong.  Instead, I think this really shows that the Washington Post has lost its way.  Being young, I don’t have much to compare the current WaPo to the old one, but everything I’ve read makes it sound like it’s gone way downhill.  Moreover, it’s bread and butter – political reporting and analysis – is getting taken over by the Politico and sophisticated pundits like Nate Silver.  In other words, the Washington Post is losing the skill that made it stand out in the marketplace.  And when it publishes, thereby sponsoring, junk like Will’s piece, it harms its claim to be a paper of record.  Now one piece does not destroy a paper, but the WaPo has a pretty shrill opinion page and a consistent record of tolerating rather outrageous op-eds.  When you are losing the game of political reporting, one would hope you can at least produce excellent journalism.  For D.C.’s biggest paper, that is becoming less and less the case.

Of course, the WaPo does not represent the only paper with declining quality.  In fact, it is on the leading edge of a braoder trend, the dumbification of media.  This theme is one that I plan on talking about a lot in the future.