Some perspective on and from Sotomayor

According to today's New York Times coverage, upon joining the Federal District Court in Manhattan in 1992, the newly nominated Supreme Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor reportedly told journalists, "The cases that shake the world don’t come along every day. But the world of the litigants is shaken by the existence of their case, and I don’t lose sight of that, either."

This sound byte comforts me, as it indicates Sotomayer's capacity for constructive empathy. Psychologist Carl Rogers defines empathy as "To perceive the internal frame of reference of another with accuracy and with the emotional components and meanings which pertain thereto as if one were the person, but without ever losing the 'as if' condition." [source]

Taking the idea of empathy - and its importance as a quality in a good, constructive judge - one step further is anthropologist Edward Twitchell Hall Jr. who explains that there is a individual perception that colors every experience: "experience as it is perceived through one set of culturally patterned sensory screens is quite different from experience perceived through another." [source] Therefore suggesting that only one that is empathetic enough to consider the perspective of the litigants will be capable of understanding the experiences, choices and decisions of the parties as well. I look forward to seeing Sotomayer put this sense into practice in the country's highest court.

Civic action - now available online?

Eat your vegetables, save the environment, help your neighbor -- 'tis the season for setting lofty goals to improve self and society. 

But lately, the line between action and advocacy has been blurred by the ease in which one can avow contribution online - forward to a friend, join a Facebook cause or digitally sign a petition. These actions provide an instant gratification of aligning oneself with a trendy cause, say community gardening, without all the hassle of actually getting your hands muddy. So does the all the blogging and online network action actually translate offline? 

One group of online advocates that appears determined to continue its record-level engagement online is Obama supporters. A recent study from Pew Internet and American Life Project found that 62% of Obama voters plan to be online advocates for his administrative policies once he takes office. For this support, they are expecting continued communication from Obama in return. Will our next president maintain this unique online fan club? Or will all this Obamania result in a civic engagement beyond mere words? Time will tell...

Is Barack Obama a Fascist Communist?

A few weeks ago, I listened with quiet bemusement to an interview with Patri Friedman. Friedman is the main proponent of "Seasteading":

"Seasteading means to create permanent dwellings on the ocean - homesteading the high seas. A seastead, like in the picture above, is a structure meant for permanent occupation on the ocean...

...the world needs a new frontier, a place where those who are dissatisfied with our current civilization can go to build a different (and hopefully better) one.

Currently, it is very difficult to experiment with alternative social systems on a small scale. Countries are so enormous that it is hard for an individual to make much difference. Seasteaders believe that government shouldn't be like the cellphone or operating system industries, with few choices and high customer-lock-in. Instead, they envision something more like web 2.0, where many small governments serve many niche markets, a dynamic system where small groups experiment, and everyone copies what works, discards what doesn't, and remixes the remainder to try again."

It's crazy. I mean, I'm a frequent skeptic of government, but have things really gotten so bad that we need to create new, floating societies? If we keep electing people like Congressman Paul Broun, I might just grab a life-preserver:

A Republican congressman from Georgia said Monday he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist dictatorship.

"It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he's the one who proposed this national security force," Rep. Paul Broun said of Obama in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. "I'm just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may — may not, I hope not — but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism."

Read the whole article to see what Broun was talking about. I like his mixing of metaphors. Somehow Obama can be both a Marxist and a Fascist at the same time. He truly is a post-partisan president.

The Daily Show's John Oliver explains the many interesting parallels between Obama and Hitler:

Is this the End of Anti-Intellectualism in American Politics?

Since Hofstadter's 1963 book Anti-Intellectualism in America came out, there has been at least an awareness of a trend in the United States that could be thought of a Counter-Enlightenment.

The election of Obama may finally be the end of this counter-Enlightenment. Nick Kristof describes Obama as "an open, out-of-the-closet,practicing intellectual" in contrast to the folksy rhetoric of President Clinton and the current regime which has rejected science when dealing with issues such as abortion and global warming.

This is the first time in recent history that a candidate has tried to campaign fervently on ideas rather than personality.

Kristof continues:

At least since Adlai Stevenson’s campaigns for the presidency in the 1950s, it’s been a disadvantage in American politics to seem too learned. Thoughtfulness is portrayed as wimpishness, and careful deliberation is for sissies. The social critic William Burroughs once bluntly declared that “intellectuals are deviants in the U.S.”

We can finally be proud to have a president who has, as Christopher Lydon notes in this conversation, "a favorite poet and philosopher" and is not afraid to admit it.

Is this the end of anti-intellectualism in the United States? Will the geek inherit the earth?

Let your big brains show and let us know if you think it's cool to be smart.

If it scares it leads?

A recent CNN piece on gun sales rising since Obama's presidency sent a chill down my peace-loving spine. It also left me wondering where journalistic responsibility lies. It takes CNN 5 paragraphs of this article to get to the point that it is legislation fears that are motivating the surge --- due to the campy anecdotal lede assassination violence is all but directly alluded to. A slow story like that draws away from any substantive trend data (one case study does not a trend make). One has to question the motives of any copy editor that gave the piece a headline that doesn't mention policy.

In fact, many news outlets have chosen to cover assassination possibilities long before inauguration day, one of the more outrageous examples being the Metro this week. Following an election with the highest voter turnout and healthiest margin of support for the victor in the last 8 years, the most appropriate lede is the possibility of assassination. Can it be that the US is so focused on the racial issue that this is the only angle editors can assign? Bush's approval ratings are at an all-time low but the subject of riot or violence against him rarely came up during the past eight years.

Sadly, I believe speculative articles that prey on fear for readership detract from any real value-add potential that coverage of historic events have. The fourth estate often comes under criticism for being insensitive and manipulative of emotion and events. As subscription rates drop, print circulation is cut, editorial layoffs ensue and the cost of online advertising remains low --- it's a good time for the industry to look at it's coverage philosophy.

Yes, journalism needs to ask the difficult questions. But those difficult questions aren't always the most shocking or driven at sparking controversy. Now that we have a biracial president it would be nice if for once everything wasn't a black and white issue in print. In fact often the tough questions are the thoughtful, well-researched ones, that are unique to a particular outlet and not strewn across the top hits on Yahoo or Google news. I challenge 2009 journalists to take the unique position of not mongering only fear and doubt in these challenging times but instead providing relevant news and information.

The Great Schlep

Does your grandma think Obama is a Muslim intent on destroying Israel? Sarah Silverman has some advice:


The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.

This is paid for by the Jewish Council for Education and Research.

With Friends Like These...

People have called Barack Obama a lot of strange things in the last six months: closet Muslim, not-so closet racist, "terrorist fist-bumper". But now Naomi Klein is calling him a market fundamentalist. Klein, the award-winning journalist and author most recently of The Shock Doctrine, has the strong aversion to the term "markets" common on the far left. So when Barack Obama declared last week on CNBC, "Look. I am a pro-growth, free-market guy. I love the market..." it was bound to ruffle some anti-capitalist feathers.

So how free market is Obama? Klein notes that his new head of economic policy, Jason Furman, has said positive things about Walmart, and that his chief advisor, Austan Goolsbee, teaches at the University of Chicago, the high temple of free-market economics. However she conveniently glosses over the important additions of left-leaning economists Jared Berstein and James Galbraith to the Obama team. And she completely fails to mention Obama's voting record on economic issues, most notably that Obama: voted against the Central American Free Trade Agreement; advocated raising the minimum wage; attacked Hillary Clinton for supporting NAFTA; voted for, and attacked Bush and McCain for opposing, the recent farm bill, which would increase subsidies by $20bn, make the government buy sugar at twice the world price, and give subsidies to farmers with incomes of up to $1.5 million per year; proposed raising the capital gains tax; advocates fair, not free trade with developing nations (information from www.adamsmith.org).

As far as policy goes, Obama is not exactly right-wing. But he isn't a socialist either, and he is not going to usher in a progressive revolution. What Obama is dealing with here is similar to John McCain's problem with the far right, (most notably Rush Limbaugh) who views his support for tax cuts as soft and feel betrayed by his occasional forays into bi-partisanship.

Is there a logic to eating one's own? A cynic might accuse Klein and Limbaugh of riling up their fan-base in order to sell more books and generate more listenership. But there may be something more strategic going on here. People on the far ends of the political spectrum tend to see change only in terms of revolution, not evolution. As a result, compromise is not a realistic option. A center-left Obama administration may push through some progressive goals, but would be inclined to compromise in order to get there. Thus some change will happen, but it will likely end there. Rather, real zealots will wait till the public is really clamoring for change so that a fringe candidate can sweep their agenda through.

Will it work? Probably not. Obama is likely to be the most progressive candidate we'll see for a while. Cutting into his support among progressives will only lead to real "free market" policies.