Our Lives & Probably Our Kids’ Lives

General David Petraeus, as quoted in a book by Bob Woodward, being released in fall 2010:

Woodward quotes Petraeus as saying, “You have to recognize also that I don’t think you win this war. I think you keep fighting. It’s a little bit like Iraq, actually. . . . Yes, there has been enormous progress in Iraq. But there are still horrific attacks in Iraq, and you have to stay vigilant. You have to stay after it. This is the kind of fight we’re in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids’ lives.”

Hunter S. Thompson, September 12th, 2001:

The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now — with somebody — and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.

The continued prescience of Thompson’s quote the morning after 9/11 continues to shock and depress me.

Back to Journalism

I think Steve Benen’s take on the move by Peter Goodman from the NY Times to the Huffington Post is an interesting one. I don’t know why the standard operating procedure for the mainstream press has become one where reporters can repeat what two sides are saying in a controversy, but not say which one is right. But that’s the way it is and it’s one of the most frustrating aspects about being an informed news consumer – I know that the healthcare bill has no death panels in it, but the reporters I read won’t tell me flat out that Republicans are lying.

Benen writes:

For the public that wants to know who’s right, and not just who’s talking, it creates a vacuum filled by online outlets. For journalists who want to “tell readers directly what’s going on,” it creates an incentive to abandon news organizations that demand forced neutrality.

Hopefully the continued growth of outlets like Huffington Post and Talking Points Memo, along with the expansion of reporter-bloggers at sites like FireDogLake and Daily Kos, will provide meaningful competition and real alternatives to what we get from the traditional press. People like Ryan Grim, Brian Beutler, Marcy Wheeler, Sam Stein, and David Dayen are proof that you can tell your readers when someone is right or wrong and still be a journalist. In fact, that’s what makes for real journalism.

Kristof, Tibet, Trouble

I can’t believe I missed this, but ten days ago my favorite punching bag Nick Kristof wrote about Tibet and China. It’s the usual mixed bag, where you can see Kristof struggling with some principles of peace, social justice and democracy while maintaining his usually strong pro-Beijing compass. The central discussion of the article is whether or not the Chinese government should avoid negotiations with the Tibetan Government in Exile until the 14th Dalai Lama passes away and, the presumption is, the Tibetan movement will fracture and become less relevant. While agreeing with Lodi Gyari that the Chinese government should not play this game, Kristof quickly runs into a problem with facts:

China is waiting for the Dalai Lama to die, so that Tibetans will lose their leader and cohesion. But the result is not that Tibet will be easier to dominate; rather, it is likely to become more violent. There already are many, many young Tibetans who think the Dalai Lama has been too patient, too conciliatory, too pacifist. This is particularly true of the exiles; Tibetans actually in China tend to be more pragmatic and willing to work things out. But overall, my hunch is that we’ll see more violent resistance after the Dalai Lama goes.

First, it’s true that there are “many young Tibetans who think the Dalai Lama has been too patient,” but I don’t think any Tibetan either inside or outside of Tibet thinks His Holiness the Dalai Lama has been “too pacifist.” We’re talking about a monk who is a living god – pacifism is pretty much a given expectation here, especially within the Tibetan community.

Second, while it is true that there are many and growing voices in exile for the Dalai Lama and the TGIE to be less conciliatory, I do not know of a single Tibet Support Group that advocates anything other than non-violence. Protests for Tibet outside of Tibet and China are exclusively non-violent. Any suggestion that the exile community is advocating or supportive of violence as a means to achieve Tibetan independence is a repetition of Chinese government propaganda. In contrast, Tibetans inside of Tibet who live under the oppressive rule of the Chinese military occupation have at times in recent years responded to violent crackdowns against their peaceful protest with violence. This is to be expected and is not a reflection on anything other than when you rule by the gun (as opposed to democratic self-determination), you make it more likely that violence is seen as a remedy to political, social and economic injustice.

So my hunch is that after the Dalai Lama dies, Tibet will come to look more like Xinjiang. Human rights abuses will get less attention, because the Dalai Lama isn’t there to call attention to them. But protests will be more violent and more common, and there’ll be some genuine terrorists bringing in weapons from abroad.

I think it is irresponsible of Kristof to speculate how Tibetans inside and outside of Tibet respond to the passing of the 14th Dalai Lama, whenever that happens, especially given that there is currently no documented cases of Tibetan “terrorists bringing in weapons from abroad.” Presuming that the Chinese government has continued their decades-long efforts to stall any meaningful dialogue with the TGIE, it would not be surprising if there is anger in Tibet after the Dalai Lama passes away. But what has become clear over the last number of years is that both inside and outside of Tibet there is a growing recognition of Tibetan self-identity and undying desire for independence. These will be the determining factors for the response of Tibetans to China’s military occupation and they exist now as the 14th Dalai Lama lives and will continue whenever His Holiness passes. Obviously Tibetan self-identification and a desire for self-determination do not presume violence as an outcome to the Dalai Lama’s death.

Of course, Kristof doesn’t slow his roll after making dangerous statements about Tibetans’ magically unrealized propensity for violence. He goes on:

The other problem with the Dalai Lama dying is that any kind of a solution to the Tibetan issue is going to require painful concessions on both sides. It’s not clear that the Dalai Lama is willing to make the kind of concessions necessary, but if he is he could probably carry the Tibetan people behind him. In contrast, after he is gone, there is simply no one who could unite Tibetans and persuade them to accept the necessary concessions. The chance of a peaceful political solution will die with the Dalai Lama.

Note how it is up to the occupied people, who have spent more than a half a century under military occupation, who must be reasonable and make concessions to the Chinese Communist Party. You see, Tibetans have not been sufficiently deferential to the Chinese government, so it’s up to them to get the recipe of self-humiliation right and adequately circumscribe their human rights to please the PRC.

Things really go off the rails when Kristof starts blaming the Dalai Lama for not sufficiently seizing the opportunity in the 1980s to negotiate with the government that invaded his country:

After the Cultural Revolution, the Tibetans just didn’t trust Beijing and thought time was on their side. They made a historic miscalculation in the 1980’s, and then the window for negotiation closed with the departure of Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang.

Unmentioned: why Tibetans might have not trusted Beijing after the Cultural Revolution. For those that don’t know – presumably this includes Nick Kristof – China’s invasion and military occupation of Tibet, which began in 1949, has cost 1.2 million Tibetan lives. The bulk of these came in the initial invasion, in the outright resistance that occurred in 1959, and…wait for it…the Cultural Revolution. According to the Tibetan Government in Exile, the Cultural Revolution lead to “a further wave of death and destruction in Tibet. Han Chauvinism that manifested itself throughout China was particularly brutal in Tibet. Beyond the murder and cultural devastation, Cultural Revolution policies lead to mass starvation, as well as onslaughts of Han Chinese settlers arriving into Tibet. So no, maybe it isn’t that surprising that the Tibetan Government wasn’t trusting the Beijing government following the Cultural Revolution. Keep in mind that the TGIE adopted the Middle Path of autonomy and forswore independence in 1973. There have been ample opportunities for the Chinese government to negotiate in good faith, before, after and during the 1980s.

Kristof’s closing is an unparalleled disaster, a confluence of Western privilege, pro-Beijing arrogance, and straight-up hypocrisy that is impressive even for someone with as long and ignominious a history of writing about Tibet as Kristof.  First, he suggests the Dalai Lama should “devote himself to improving his Mandarin skills.” Because after all, it’s hard for him to be sufficiently obsequious to the Chinese Communist Party and Nick Kristof if he isn’t begging for the rights and survival of his people in the language of his oppressors. Then Kristof moves on to a more traditional plea of saving Tibet, for culture’s sake:

More Han Chinese are moving to Tibet, destroying its traditional character so that it will be gone forever. A political deal is the only way to forestall that and avoid violence, but it’s hard to see such a deal coming.

I am as strong an advocate for preserving “traditional character” in Tibet as any, though I hope it doesn’t sound so positively arrogant when I note that the best way for people like Kristof to “save” Tibet is by Tibetans having independence. Frankly, it’s not about traditional character. No one laments the loss of New England’s colonial farming lifestyle through modernization and development, as it was undertaken by a free people making conscious choice. Tibetans have a right to choose how they preserve or evolve their “traditional character.” It’s not up to people like Kristof. The problem is that now and for the last half century, the Chinese government has been deliberately destroying Tibet’s “traditional character.” Kristof does not mention this.

Kristof doesn’t do a fraction of the leg work to recognize that over the last decade, the TGIE has been ready and willing to make political deals. TGIE delegations have repeatedly gone to China to have dialogues (but not negotiations, because the Chinese government doesn’t want to negotiate). And as the Chinese government stalls negotiations towards a political solution, they use their military and paramilitary to forces inside Tibet to perpetrate violence against Tibetans, to steal Tibet’s natural resources, and destroy Tibetans’ land. This violence is going on on a daily basis and blame for it is entirely one-sided.

I do think Nick Kristof genuinely wants there to be a political solution to the Tibet question and he probably even wants one that happens in the Dalai Lama’s lifetime to forestall even the possibility of violence. But his recipe for achieving these goals is bizarrely one-sided. Demanding the victims of 60 years of occupation and brutality bend over even more to appease their occupiers into a political solution which would almost certainly not result in Tibet being a free country is not only unreasonable, it is cruel. To put expectations on Tibetans that he has never, ever attempted to put on the Chinese government is absurd. It’s not that Kristof is making a false equivalence between the two sides’ culpability for not reaching a political solution by now – it’s that he clearly seems to think the onus is on the Tibetan Government in Exile to make something happen now.

The reality is that the TGIE could do every single thing Kristof ever suggested they do to appease the Chinese Communist Party, but it would never be enough. The Chinese government policy is clear and it does not involve things like the 14th Dalai Lama returning to Tibet while he is alive nor does it involve genuine autonomy. As is always the case when Kristof writes about Tibet, it is transparently clear that he should not have done it, at least not until he finds a way to leave his pro-Beijing leanings at the door and is able to apply a reasonable lens of justice and fairness to a horrible situation that is only perpetuated by the Chinese government’s military occupation of Tibet.

Update:

Students for a Free Tibet Executive Director Tendor has a great response in the comments of Kristof’s post that is definitely worth reading.

Shrill

Dean Baker is shrill:

The first Great Depression was the result of a decade of failed policies, not a single bad mistake at its onset. There was absolutely nothing that we could have done back in September-October of 2008 that would have required that we experience a decade of double-digit unemployment. The specter of a “second great depression” is a fairy tale invented by the bank lobby to make the rest of feel good about having given them our money.

Nationalizing the Election

Greg Sargent writes:

[T]he best way for Dems to nationalize the elections right now is for Congress to hold a vote on whether to extend the middle class tax cuts. If Dems did this, it would reinforce the national strategy that Dems already have in place: Making the case that a vote for the GOP is a vote to return to the Bush policies that ran the economy into the ground.

Actually, rather than “hold a vote on whether to extend the middle class tax cuts,” Democrats should hold a vote on Obama’s middle class tax cuts. If the goal is to really draw contrast with Republicans is not to even include a hint of a frame that implies the middle class tax cuts were ever something they cared to support.

The other side of the coin is that after the free-standing vote on Obama’s middle class tax cuts package, let there be a vote on the large tax cut for the rich that the Republicans want starting 1/1/11. The contrast will be clear: Democrats support tax cuts for the middle class and oppose them for the rich, while Republicans oppose them for the middle class and support them for the rich.

Educating the Rich

Via Atrios and Paul Krugman, this piece by Brad DeLong responding to the complaints of a lawyer making $450,000 a year and considering himself woefully working class is a must-read. It’s actually a story that rings fairly true to me as someone who works in the professional political class and knows a lot of fairly young people with no families or new families who make very good money (approaching or just above $100,000). There are lots of ways to make a lot of money and not feel rich. But just because one doesn’t feel rich – or, even worse, one has found a way to live paycheck to paycheck while making a six figure salary – doesn’t mean that you aren’t actually among the richest Americans.

DeLong writes:

Today a household at the bottom of the 1% rich households in America has an income of nearly $400,000 a year–the income of that slot in the labor market has more than doubled, while the incomes of those at the slot at the bottom of the 10% wealthy has grown by only 20% in two decades. The 900 people he knows in the 90%-99% slots have incomes that start at $110,000 a year. Compared to Henderson’s $455,000, they are barely middle class–“How can they afford cell phones?” Henderson sometimes wonders.

But he wonders rarely. He doesn’t say: “Wow! My real income is more than twice the income of somebody in this slot a generation ago! Wow! A generation ago the income of my slot was only twice that of somebody at the bottom of the 10% wealthy, and now it is 3 1/2 times as much!” For he doesn’t look down at the 99% of American households who have less income than he does. And he looks up. And when he looks up today he sees as wide a gap yawning above him as the gap between Dives and Lazarus. Mr. Henderson doesn’t look down.

Instead, Mr. Henderson looks up. Of the 100 people richer than he is, fully ten have more than four times his income. And he knows of one person with 20 times his income. He knows who the really rich are, and they have ten times his income: They have not $450,000 a year. They have $4.5 million a year. And, to him, they are in a different world.

And so he is sad. He and his wife deserve to be successful. And he knows people who are successful. But he is not one of them–widening income inequality over the past generation has excluded him from the rich who truly have money.

And this makes him sad. And angry. But, curiously enough, not angry at the senior law firm partners who extract surplus value from their associates and their clients, or angry at the financiers, but angry at… Barack Obama, who dares to suggest that the U.S. government’s funding gap should be closed partly by taxing him, and angry at the great hordes of the unwashed who will receive the Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security payments that the government will make over the next several generations.

Do I wish that Professor Henderson had a little more self-knowledge? Yes. Is it pathetic that somebody with nine times the median household income thinks of himself as just another average Joe, just another “working American”? Yes. Do I find it embarrassing that somebody whose income is in the top 1% of American households thinks that he is not rich? Yes.

Do I hope to educate him so that he has a better grasp on reality and better understanding of America and of public policy? Yes.

As I said above, I’m not talking about people who make as much as this “embarrassing” lawyer. But that’s the point – even people who make 25% of what this person makes are still making twice as much money as the median income in the United States…which is a lot of money!

At the same time, DeLong’s diagnosis of Henderson is apt. He sees people above him with even more money, living even easier and as a result feels not only less rich (based on a lack of monthly disposable income above all expenditures which are discretionary for about 99% of Americans) but also less wealthy (based on the noticeable lack of personal butlers and in-house chefs, or something, which deprive him of the eudaemonia which he so thoroughly thinks he deserves). What Henderson never seems to ask (nor do many other people, wealthy or otherwise) is how they can change their lives to make themselves happier. I’ve been reading a lot lately about how different people find ways to do this – from owning fewer things to prioritizing spending on travel over spending on stuff to simplifying your wardrobe to having a smaller living space. How we live is a choice we make and continuing to live how we live is likewise a choice we make. If Henderson doesn’t like how he feels with only a few hundred dollars in his pocket for eating out and travel every month, then as DeLong suggests, he can stop putting significant chunks of money into his 401k, send his kids to public school and rent instead of own his home.

What’s particularly problematic with Henderson’s outrage at not considering himself rich is that he’s trying to legislate it. As DeLong points out, he identifies the President as the source of his problems. In so doing, he becomes an advocate for federal policies which will result in life likely becoming worse for the other 99% which he is not a part of — he feels a part of it because he denies being rich, but has no kinship with actual working class Americans. This is dangerous.  Like Atrios jokes, but no doubt there will be some insane conversation on CNBC or a Sunday talk show wherein the $250+ income earners will be defended by a pundit who, while a member of that class, doesn’t have a butler. Only, like Henderson, this won’t be a joke but a truly misguided attempt to set policy by those who wish they were Gordon Gecko, see themselves as a working class hero on The Deadliest Catch but are likely to be sharing a country club membership with John Boehner.

Hubris is a virtue, right?

I’m not sure why Digby is trying to warn the Tea Party away from the “puerile arrogance” seen in this video. Personally, I think the Republican base is right. Clearly they are going to win in 2010. It’s just a formality now. Everyone can put down their tea bags and go watch reruns of Surviving Nugent from Netflix for the next seven weeks.

Also, I think the pledge in this video that not only will there be no new taxes and no high spending under a Tea Party-driven Republican Party, but that under a Republican majority there will be “no more taxes” and “no more spending.” So if the federal government exists one day into a Republican majority, the American public was lied to. Or, more importantly, the Tea Party was lied to and their only remaining course of action will be to throw the bums out…AGAIN!

DeMint, Kingmaker

Interesting piece in The Hill about South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, the Senate’s biggest advocate of the Tea Party. Establishment Republicans are not surprisingly angry at DeMint for playing a role in Tea Party challengers knocking off more electable Republicans, notably in Delaware, Colorado, Kentucky and Florida. His actions could end up costing Republicans a chance to win the majority in the Senate.

Can you imagine the outrage if a Democratic elected – say Al Franken or Sherrod Brown – was running around the country, encouraging progressives to challenge incumbents and enact a real progressive vision?

I actually have a lot of respect for DeMint as a movement operative. What he is doing is what the Tea Party wants and what is needed for Tea Party candidates to win. That he’s doing it in the face of the insular, clubhouse rules of the Senate is even more remarkable. I just wish there were comparable progressive elected officials who dedicated their energies to not just electing Democrats, but electing movement progressives.

The Tea Party vs The Netroots

So yesterday a colleague and I were talking about how honestly envious we are of what the GOP base has been able to do this year – run dozens of candidates for statewide and federal office, rack up a decent win rate, and get real conservative movementarians to win major nominations. Contrast this what we’ve done on the netroots over the last six years, with not more than a handful of genuine movement candidates, let alone winners. Frankly it’d be fun to have the sort of wave the right is having now.But I think this is both an obvious analysis and the wrong one. The Tea Party and the Netroots are two very different creatures.First, the Netroots is a progressive, grassroots movement that does not have institutional support from the Democratic Party apparatus (neither nationally nor on the state/local level). The Netroots does not have major Democratic donors stepping towards us with millions of dollars to fund various grassroots entities – neither as astroturf outfits nor genuine movement training houses. The Netroots does not have scores of past failed nominees for Democratic offices, state level party officials, Democratic millionaires, established party activists and corporate donors providing the bulk of our candidates for office. In a word, the Netroots is a genuine grassroots movement defined by the lack of support from the various institutions and iterations of Democratic power.Second, the Tea Party is a conservative movement that includes genuine grassroots activists, alongside (or pushed by) major party leaders (Gingrich, Palin, Armey, Beck, Limbaugh), astroturf organizations (Freedom Works, Tea Party Express), and corporate donors (Koch). The Tea Party candidates have been primarily Republican office holders, party officials, major donors and operatives. It is a both real and astroturfed front for what have been traditional Republican goals (abolishing Department of Education, cutting Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment benefits, reducing taxes on the wealthy). Yes, the candidates have tended to say things bluntly, making them appear more extreme than your average Republican. But this is purely something that arises from a willingness to stop hiding behind the polished messaging of Luntz and Rove-types. It doesn’t represent a new shift of the movement (though, in fairness, the Netroots has always pushed for ideas that were also traditionally Democratic, but never forcefully argued for by elected officials). The Tea Party’s success is almost completely explainable by the degree of support they receive from traditional Republican infrastructure and power bases – solely excluding the NRSC, NRCC, and RGA in some places.Anyway I think there’s a real story to tell about how making assumptions about Tea Party success versus Netroots failure (or dramatically slower rate of success) is wrong. This is not an apples to apples comparison, yet I expect lots of Beltway media types and Republican activists will be trying to imply that it is in order to further the narrative that America is a right-leaning country.Update:In the comments, Tim Jones points out another difference between the Tea Party and Netroots that has substantially helped the Tea Party succeed is they have major support from the mainstream media, including basically  complete allegiance from Fox News and formation based around the comments of a CNBC contributor.