Zillionaires Running for Office

I struggle to understand why people are alarmed by zillionaires funding their own political campaigns. We're supposed to hate - merely on the face of it - the notion that rich dudes might buy themselves a public office. It seems undemocratic.

But wait. First of all, no one can actually buy an elected office. A huge war chest is, indeed, a huge advantage, but, still, we vote. And consider that Michael Bloomberg, a very well-liked mayor, only barely squeaked through the last election despite out-spending his opponent by a hundred million dollars.

And even his harshest critics would never accuse Bloomberg of crony capitalism. He hasn't shown partiality to business colleagues, or steered city contracts in self-serving directions, etc. If he had, he'd have sunk like a stone, because everyone's been watching for that. Even a trillion dollar campaign fund couldn't protect a mogul-turned-politician who uses his position to siphon public money to cronies (exception: Dick Cheney re: Halliburton). Bigwigs don't go into politics to enrich themselves and their friends because their political careers would be cut very short and their images forever tarnished. And, anyway, much more money could made by remaining in the business world. No mogul goes into politics to expand wealth.

So why do it? Ego plus a genuine pull toward public service. The ego part's a given for anyone in politics. But a heartfelt public service urge is a good thing, no? Even better is the freedom to defy special interests (since their money's not accepted). Finally, a leader who isn't relentlessly fundraising can apply more time and energy to actually leading.

Of course, well-intentioned politicians can be just as incompetent as corrupt ones. But while private sector success is no guarantee of governing skill, it requires intelligence, savvy and determination, so serious incompetence is less likely.

We get more competence, better motives, less special interest pressure, and greater attention to governing (indeed, Bloomberg has done a great, high-minded job; he's been New York's best mayor in decades). And none of us is thrilled with conventionally-funded politicians. So why, exactly, are we supposed to be so upset about self-financed ones?

Conciliation Via Amnesia

There's a fascinating article in this weeks Economist on the Pope's recent visit to England, and how easings in the old Catholic/Anglican rivalries made it a surprisingly non-controversial event. This isn't the product of rapprochement, peace treaty, or interfaith dialog. It's a much more mundane matter of amnesia - the British "national genius for forgetting rather than forgiving."

"...the tradition of sectarian enmity was not so much purged from the body politic as mislaid. Anti-Catholic prejudice was rife in polite English society until surprisingly recently: countless families can tell tales of scandals or feuds triggered by a mixed Anglican-Catholic marriage, up to the 1960s or 1970s. Sectarianism lingers on in Northern Ireland, bits of Scotland and some English cities like Liverpool. Yet in much of England, people under 40 cannot remember why Catholicism caused their grandparents such alarm."

This small glimmer of hope deserves to be analyzed and applied elsewhere.

"An optimist might see a chance there for Islam, another conservative religion currently causing alarm. A bit of affluence here, a bit less defensiveness there, and before you know it, the English cannot remember why a minority worried them so much. It is a muddled, imperfect solution (just ask Catholics offended by this week’s pope-bashing). But with the English, muddle is often as good as it gets."

If it's true that forgetting's as good as forgiving, one can't help but contemplate the Palestinian/Israeli mess. If a Palestinian state were established, and a thriving Palestinian middle class fostered, might a few generations of muddle dampen the vindictiveness?

Well, Bloody Mary reigned back in the 16th Century, so that one took a while, but a mere two generations after the holocaust it's hard to imagine Jews socially rebuffing Germans, much less dreaming of returning to Austria to retake the family land. As with England, this may well be attributable to a secular, thriving middle class with more to do than lick old wounds (it's fortunate that the Jewish "Never forget!" slogan has remained a call to beware man's inherent dark potential, rather than a call for Germans to be despised for all eternity).

But cultural factors seem to make different people forgive - or at least forget - at different rates. Few of my secular, middle class, thriving Armenian friends or acquaintances can make it through a half hour conversation without making reference to the 1915 Armenian Genocide.

The Monks and the Coffee

It's long bugged me that as a restaurant critic I seemed to have fallen into the most spiritually self-destructive of careers. Most traditions make a similar point, but the Hsin Hsin Ming, from Zen, states it most pointedly:

"If you wish to see the truth then hold no opinions for or against anything. To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind."

The metaphysics make sense. But as a critic, I spend my life making opinions, feeding the dualism by rendering thumbs up and thumbs down judgments. Am I fostering a mind that's rife with disease? Are chowhounds (and others with keen appreciation for quality) cosmically damned? Must we hanker for Wendy's if we're ever to enter the kingdom of heaven?

But a while back I found the key in a story written by a woman who'd worked as a driver for some Buddhist monks traveling around California for a series of meditation programs. The monks had fallen crazily in love with a certain brand of coffee they'd discovered during the trip. But while they practically jumped for joy whenever they came upon some, she found it interesting that they never showed the slightest trace of disappointment if they failed to find any. Even when days went by without finding their coffee, they were no less happy. It began to dawn on her that if they never drank that coffee again, it wouldn't bother them in the least. Yet each time they found it they positively basked in the delight.

MideastYouth

I live for those rare bursts of inspiration where someone, in a blast of brilliance, puts things together in a unique and jarring way to great effect. Such creative moments make me proud to be a human.

Have a look at these awesome short videos:
Iran's New Voice
Safeguard the Innocent

These were produced by the kids at mideastyouth.com, who I first wrote about here, and who were profiled by CNN here. If you like the spirit of what they're doing (even if you may not agree with all their platforms), I hope you'll join me in donating.

Iran Attack Imminent?

Reza Aslan is, as many of you know, a soft-spoken, highly intelligent guy, and one of the country's leading experts on Iran (he was born there, but is fully Americanized). He explains Iranian issues - and issues in Moslem world in general - with a refreshingly non-strident tone. Rational. Reasonable. Good-humored (listen to this superbly insightful radio interview to get the idea).

That's why I'm unnerved that he sounds so alarmed about the possibility of an impending attack on Iran. In that link, he urges, with uncommon intensity, immediate contribution to a group called the NIAC, which is pushing for this attack not to happen. Aslan says, convincingly, "we must act now and not wait for war to start to then try and stop it. We must prevent it."

Aslan is a grounded pragmatist, and I trust his assessment that the NIAC are the right guys (they've been working for Democracy and human rights in Iran, and with Jewish-American and peace groups to avoid US-Iran war). Read their blog to see where they're coming from. And please consider donating, and upping your donation amount to the pain point. As with the Iraq invasion, we've been prepared for this scenario so thoroughly that it's easy to assume it won't actually happen. But elsewhere in the world, people share Aslan's fevered fear of the horrendous mistake that may be about to be made. A Bahranian friend just told me the following:

If the US or Israel bombs Iran, we (Bahrain) are going to be the 2nd to suffer (after Iran, obviously.) First thing Iran will do is bomb the U.S base here, to make sure the U.S doesn't use it to attack (which is basically why they're here in the first place.) We are so small as a country that one bomb will make us sink, literally. Anyways - we are freaking out, in a few years you can bet that we'll be as bad as present-day Iraq. On one hand Iran is funding terrorist attacks in this country, and militant organizations. On the other hand we have the USA who, also, couldn't care less about our lives and is just using this place as a strategic location. We don't trust anyone and are just kind of waiting to see what happens.

God forbid, if anything does in fact happen - this will involve way more than just the USA, Israel and Iran - there's also Syria, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, other than Bahrain. I imagine Turkey will act upon its threats to Israel too and do something. We're basically fucked.

Text Adventure Game Nostalgia

I've never seen a computer game that came close to the Infocom adventure games of the 1980's (played by typing instructions into a bleak scrolling window of text). Perhaps I feel this way because these are the games I played when I was young. Or perhaps it's true. You decide...by playing Zork, or, even wittier, but requiring slight familiarity with the original book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Here are other versions of those games, plus a bunch of others, all playable online.

You can also play these games on your iPhone/iPad/iTouch, via a free app called Frotz (link opens iTunes).

The grandaddy of the genre was the original "Adventure" (aka Colossal Cave), now available as a 64-bit(!) application for Mac OS.

If you're not sure what to do, simply type something and hit a return ("help", without the quotation marks, is a good way to start).

Warning: this stuff is really, really, seriously old school...

Explaining the Tea Party

Let me try to offer the pithiest possible explanation of the Tea Party:


Conservatives: "We want small government!"

Liberals: "Hypocrites! The Republicans have always grown government tremendously!"

Conservatives: "Right; that's why we're so pissed!"

Much as Ralph Nader was disgusted with both parties, considering them both too conservative, and hoped to either start a third one or pressure the Democrats leftward, the Tea Party folks consider both too financially liberal, and hope to either start a third one or else pressure the Republicans rightward (at least fiscally). Because, as liberals often remind us all, Republicans have wildly expanded government, too.

The Republicans are trying desperately to subvert the movement by merging the populist fiscal conservatism with social conservatism to yield, paradoxically, blandly mainstream Republicans. Results thus far, per the entry below, have been messy.

Tea Party Candidates Win, Republicans Fret

The US revived the notion of "jihad" in the Muslim world - to energize the Mujahideen against the Russians.

The US supported the rise of Saddam Hussein - to serve as a bulwark against communism.

And, most recently, the right wing power players fanned the flames of the tea party movement - to energize the base. Once again: woops!

Modesty, Arrogance, and Political Correctness

I have a friend who attended Harvard, and whenever someone asks him where he went to school, he hems and haws. If eventually forced to give an answer, he'll meekly fess up, looking horribly uncomfortable. At some point, I felt compelled to point out to him that, really, Harvard's not that big a deal, and that the pains he takes to soft-pedal it transparently reveal how earth-shakingly impressive he actually deems it.

I happen not to be intimidated by Ivy League degrees. But if I were, I'd take umbrage if an acquaintance felt compelled to keep his under wraps in my presence. After all, what does this say about his attitude toward me?

The irony is that my friend thinks he's being modest while he transparently signals the very opposite.

On a similar note, I agree with the Right's notion that political correctness is arrogant condescension at best, and crypto-racism at worst. As I wrote in my entry about the film Winter's Bone (which some critics lambasted for the negativeness of its portrayal of Ozark culture, despite its being based on a novel by an Ozark native):

As a member of five or six minority groups, myself, I find myself cringing whenever I see groups to which I belong depicted or discussed with anxious care and glossy patina. What awful thing, after all, are they so carefully dancing around?!?"

Strange Press Blackout on Israel/Russia

On Monday, Isarel and Russian signed a historic military cooperation agreement, with serious ramifications re: Iran, the American/Israeli alliance, etc..

Amazingly, the only reports so far have appeared in the foreign press. I've been waiting for the NY Times, Washington Post, etc., to cover it and offer analysis, but, three days later, there's still been zero coverage.

I'm not big on media conspiracy theories, but this is awfully strange, no?