Wrestling with Reality: The Ultimate Warrior and the Transcendence of Narrative

         

         The Ultimate Warrior died yesterday, which must come as a shock to those who believed he had died – or, at the very least, should have died – years ago. Born James Hellwig, the Warrior was for several years one of the most popular professional wrestlers in the world. A  heavily muscled, paint-faced, tassel-wearing dynamo, he stood out as a cartoon superhero even among the legions of over-the-top characters that populated the late 80s/early 90s WWF. And while his ring work as sloppy and predictable and his shouty, rage-filled promos never made a lick of sense, he had an aura that attracted young wrestling fans the world over. When his catchy theme music hit and he ran full speed toward the ring to grab and shake the ropes like a lunatic, we knew that, despite the size (think Andre the Giant), strength (Andre again), or technical superiority (just about everybody else) of the opponent, we were in an awesome display of sheer willpower. But the most remarkable thing about the Warrior was not that brief-but-memorable time in the spotlight; it was the direction his life took in the years thereafter.

            Owing to its carnival roots, professional wrestling has long been about working the crowd. While there have been plenty of actual wrestlers, athletes, and legitimate tough guys (the late All American, “Dr. Death” Steve Williams embodied all three) in the business, it remains a scripted production, a performance piece. There are good guys and bad guys and storylines designed to elicit pathos, sympathy, anger, and inspiration. The primary difference between the WWE and any other show is the physicality and the potential for harm, both real and imagined. The agonizing blows we saw on screen were faked for our entertainment while the actual damage (drug abuse, alcoholism, legitimate injury) occurred, pre-Internet uprising, out of the public eye.

            The Ultimate Warrior both exemplified and subverted this reality. On the one hand, the Warrior began as a picture-perfect example of professional wrestling’s fraudulence. Though an accomplished bodybuilder, Hellwig’s actual wrestling skills were poor - try watching his matches at a remove from childhood admiration, and his inability to do more than warm up the crowd and clothesline the competition becomes painfully obvious. But give him some facepaint, that entrance music, and an opponent who is willing to make him look good, and his lack of grappling ability becomes a non-issue. Suddenly, as the Ultimate Warrior, he is eminently credible as a charismatic hero in a pseudo-sport where the chief requirements for heroism are looking like you can beat someone up and not antagonizing the audience. To put it bluntly, this was a man who looked like he could kick some ass, and he did, and people cheered him for it.

            At the same time, however, the Ultimate Warrior’s ascendance turned the professional wrestling script on its head. Even in an era of big egos and rampant substance abuse, Warrior’s unreliability, unprofessionalism, and steroid use were so blatant that WWF owner Vince McMahon fired (and re-hired) him on several occasions. In addition to sparking countless death rumors (Hellwig appeared smaller post-steroids, leading fans to speculate the character had been given to another performer), this brought a dose of external reality to an industry that thrived on creating its own. The Warrior’s departures showed that what happened outside the ring – pay disputes, McMahon’s ongoing steroid trial, etc. – had the ability to completely discredit what went on inside it, and no amount of narrative gloss (i.e. a worked “injury” or a fake burial a la The Undertaker) could reset the pulled-back curtain.

            This pattern of defying expectations would extend to Hellwig’s post-ring career as well. One of the many reasons for his rocky relationship with McMahon was that Hellwig sought to profit from the character he embodied and helped to create while the WWF saw the Ultimate Warrior as company property. This prompted Hellwig to legally change his name to Warrior in 1993 and later sue the WWF for rights to the character, sparking rumors that he had lost his mind and cementing his reputation as an egomaniac. Yet while Hellwig was demonized for chasing a paycheck, comic book artists Jack Kirby and Joe Simon are often celebrated as tragic figures who fought – unsuccessfully – for the ability to profit from iconic characters they helped create. One man’s martyr is another man’s leech, and visa versa.

            As the 90s faded and the new millennium dawned, Warrior’s reputation as a megalomaniacal has-been continued to grow. He appeared in WCW to work a brief, disastrous program against old WWF frenemy Hulk Hogan, for which he collected a hefty sum before retiring. He published a comic book starring (surprise!) himself. He became a prolific blogger and a conservative pundit, responding, sometimes abrasively to fan inquiries, and using YouTube videos to attack nemesis in the industry. In short, the man who had once been one of wrestling’s biggest faces (good guys) became for many a consummate Internet heel: caustic, incomprehensible, self-absorbed, and more than a little petty.

            This was the narrative that defined The Ultimate Warrior for the last years of his life. It was one that was soundly reinforced by his corporate nemesis: the WWE. McMahon’s company rounded up several of Hellwig’s former coworkers for a “documentary” that makes Michael Moore’s agitprop look subtle and balanced. Like many narratives, however, the Warrior story plays loose with facts to tell a tale, and like many narratives, it is subject to revision.

            For starters, take the notion that Warrior bought into his own hype. When he wasn’t hurling put-downs, Hellwig made it clear in his writings and videos that the Ultimate Warrior was a character he played and wrestling was a proud chapter in his life but definitely not the entirety of it. This awareness of the limitations of one’s celebrity separated Hellwig not only from the quintessential has-beens (such as perpetual spotlight-seeker Hulk Hogan) of any field but from many poor, deluded still-ares (I’m looking at you, James Franco).

            If the Warrior’s egoism was at least partially a narrative embellishment, so too were other aspects of his supposed lunacy. To be certain, Hellwig’s writings, like his wrestling promos, sometimes came across garbled: standard capitalization and punctuation were not part of his regular moveset. And yes, he made more than his share of inane, ignorant, or idiotic remarks. Incorporating “Queering doesn’t make the world work” into a speech for college students, for example, paints him as a second-rate Ted Nugent. But for a supposed rightwing caricature, Warrior had no problem deviating from the script, such as when he excoriated Republicans for their heavy-handed intervention during the Teri Schiavo fiasco. Though abrasive and politically incorrect to a fault, Warrior was guided more by conservative philosophy (the Western canon and Greek mythology in particular) than by irrational hatred.

            One salient aspect of Warrior’s creed that shined past the murk of his ranting delivery was a belief in the power of the individual to shape his or her own destiny. This belief explains how a still-fit competitor walked away from a well-paying career to pursue personal interests rather than acquiesce to its demands. It also explains how a man years removed from the spotlight and seemingly universally loathed in the business that made him famous could achieve reconciliation with a company he quit – and sued – on numerous occasions. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

            A few days before his untimely demise at the age of 54, the Warrior was inducted into the WWE’s Hall of Fame. In a class containing other once-formidable names (Mr. T and Jake “the Snake” Roberts chief among them), he stood out as the headliner. His hair was short and gray, and he limped when trying to replicate his signature energy, but his message, delivered sans quixotic shouting this time, is the same as it’s always been. To paraphrase, he said every man, by his actions, can make his own legend, and he thanked his fans for keeping his legend alive.

            In retrospect, the speech turned out to be an early eulogy. Three days later, while walking to his car with his wife, the Warrior collapsed, was rushed to a hospital, and pronounced dead. In the wake of his demise, legions of former colleagues – including past nemeses Hogan and McMahon – have taken to Twitter to pay respects.

            By conventional wisdom, none of this should have happened. The late 80s/early 90s Warrior was popularly imagined as roided-up rockstar and seemed doomed to burn out rather than fade away. Conversely, the post-wrestling Warrior was taken for a washed-up, selfish provocateur, poised to fade into obscurity and pass bitter and alone. Instead, neither happened. The Warrior died a husband and a father, at peace with his legacy and reconnected to an industry that gave him his start. In death and in life, the Warrior, like any good practitioner of individualism, did not allow the narratives thrust upon him to define him. He wrote his own.

Acceptable Targets

Bigotry is an overtly ugly word, but should it be? After all, it is something many of us are guilty of, and in today’s social, political, and cultural climate, sensitivity to it is often a matter of whose ox is gored. Those who seek dignity for the poor have been known to categorically vilify and dehumanize the rich. The quest for racial equality has deteriorated into racial gamesmanship. Christians who decry prejudicial media treatment and undue restrictions upon their faith are at the forefront of anti-Muslim propaganda and mosque-blocking efforts. It is, in short, a world in which there is plenty of vitriol to be dished out, but none, it appears, to be taken. In light of that, why still cling to the hypocritical notion that bigotry can – or should – be extinguished? Why not dispense with the mock-offense, sit back, and let the hatred flow?


There is, of course, an alternative, but for some, it may be too tough a pill to swallow. Any sincere effort to combat bigotry must begin by acknowledging the truth that there are no acceptable targets. This is something that bears repeating, so here it is again, with emphasis:

THERE ARE NO ACCEPTABLE TARGETS!

In essence, this establishes bigotry itself – as opposed to its victims or its perpetrators – as the problem. It cements the notion that the hatred of one’s race, creed, sex, ethnicity, and so on is unconscionable, regardless of what that race, creed, sex, or ethnicity happens to be. By committing to this idea, you elevate an opposition to bigotry above the factionalism and “get-mine”-ism that is all too tempting a lure. You may even have a shot at that rhetorical unicorn: the moral high ground.

Whether this seems like a no-brainer to you or whether you believe that it overlooks some underlying complexity, congratulations, you’re both right! For better or for worse, history weighs heavily on human relations. If one group of people regards another as inferior and perpetuates that myth across the generations, it isn’t easily unlearned or undone. Similarly, if one group comes to identify another as an oppressor, the distrust, suspicion, and malice engendered by such a view can be difficult to root out. However, the past’s ability to explain and inform the present and future does not extend to a mandate to govern them absolutely. The prejudices of our forefathers, no matter how seemingly “justified” in their day, needn’t be our legacy to bear.

Another stumbling block to the adoption of No Acceptable Targets is the difficulty posed by the concept of degree. Life is seldom an either/or proposition; there exists a plethora of silvers, grays, and greys. Those who dwell in off-white may understandably find those who occupy the deep charcoal difficult to fathom, let alone identify with. However, the distance between A1 and A100 doesn’t transform either of them into B.

To put that in more concrete terms, those who have faced high-stakes bigotry may find it difficult to have any empathy for those who endure its lower-stakes form. Whites and heterosexuals who bemoan the lack of a pride/power movement to call their own will inspire eye-rolling in those who have faced legal discrimination (i.e. job loss) due to orientation and skin color. Feminists who protest male hegemony in this country will seem like baseless whiners to women who have endured the oppression of life in rural Afghanistan.

Nevertheless, experiencing a milder form of prejudice doesn’t immunize one from its bite. Nor, it should be noted, does experiencing a harsher form empower anyone to bite back. Remember, when it comes to bigotry, the enemy is the idea, not those who wield it.

A coda: I do not envision a world in which we will all hold hands in harmony, and if one were to miraculously come to pass, I would want no part of it. I dislike a wide variety of people for a wide variety of reasons. Ignorance inflames me. A lack of forethought causes face to meet palm (And God help you if you’re a Red Sox fan). No one, lest of all me, is asking anyone to abandon the good ship animosity. What I do ask, however, is that you allow it to be steered by reason. Let your hostility and your sharp words fall on those who have wrought it through their actions and not through something as shallow, superficial, and silly as a group to which they happen to belong.

The Age of the Nontroversy

“Americans are tired of partisan politics” is not only an empty (and hypocritical, when spouted by political partisans) platitude but an ignorant one. From the early days of the Federalist/Anti-Federalist divide, partisanship has been an American institution. We would not be who we are without debates and disagreements over the size, scope, character and authority of government. As such, the idea that we should come together “for the good of the country” is facile. However, this partisanship of ideas is quite a bit different from partisanship as it is often decried today. A more accurate description of what Americans are really tired of is point-jockeying: the concerted effort by Team Red and Team Blue to see which side can appear better – and make the opposition appear worse – in the eyes of the electorate. This mindless competition is a testament to the triumph of political ambition over political principle, and nothing seems to encapsulate it better than the nontroversy.


The nontroversy (as in “non-controversy”) occurs when a statement or action that shouldn’t be particularly controversial is granted controversial status by either ignoring context and past precedent or presuming malicious intent for nakedly political purpose. To a certain extent, the nontroversy is a product of public officials facing intense exposure and media scrutiny. When you live under a microscope, your sins are amplified for all to see. With this comes a certain loss of proportionality.


However, blaming the nontroversy on the media (who are supposed to hold the powerful accountable, after all) ignores the inherently manipulative – and inherently political – nature of the phenomena. After all, a nontroversy would not be a nontroversy were it not for a talking head or political hack raising a big stink to help spur coverage. Unsurprisingly, those who decry a “biased” or “sensational” media are often among the first to try to use it to their advantage.


The ascendancy of the nontroversy can be traced to two factors: time and speed. We are, as of this writing, fewer than two months away from a presidential election. With the stakes high, the pressure for candidates to eke out an advantage is immense. But we are also living in an increasingly interconnected, fast-paced world. Audio and video can be recorded, often sans context, and shared with lots and lots of people in a matter of seconds. When this happens, it is no surprise that deep understanding never develops: there isn’t time for it.


To see the nontroversy in full bloom, one needn’t look further than a pair of statements made within the past year by the two leading presidential candidates. On July 13, President Obama gave his now-notorious “You didn’t build that” speech in which he expressed the view that social institutions, not individual effort, were responsible for one’s successes. This, predictably, generated a firestorm of criticism from Obama’s opponents, with most common charge being that it revealed Obama’s hatred of capitalism and individualism. And while the president’s remarks do smack of a certain amount of annoying contempt for the idea of self-sufficiency, they qualify as a nontroversy for several reasons. First, Obama did not say anything particularly surprising. A belief in and preference for public institutions is keeping with his views and those of his party. To treat this outburst as sudden blasphemy is disingenuous. Second, many of the condemnations were issued by those whose views differed little from those of the president. Substitute “God” or “family” for “a teacher” in Obama’s remarks, and you have the conservative (though not the libertarian) creed in a nutshell. And yet, despite the exaggerated and largely meritless controversy, “You didn’t build that” continues to linger in the public imagination as all that is wrong with Obamaism.


Another example of a nontroversy can be found in Mitt Romney’s September 17 comments that the “47 percent” of Americans that support Obama are “dependent upon government” and “believe they are victims” who deserve entitlements. Just as predictably, this drew loud criticisms from Romney’s opponents, who were quick to brand him heartless and attempt to tie his remarks to voter suppression. And while Romney’s words were both poorly chosen and inaccurate, this too is a classic nontroversy. Prior to seeking office, Romney established himself as a businessman. As such, his denunciation of those who do not generate income and depend on government assistance for survival is in keeping with his perspective and that of his compatriots. Further, contempt for people who don’t support you is hardly native to Romney. The very same people who have criticized him for expressing such sentiments would do well to remember another nontroversy: Obama’s denunciation of “bitter” small-town voters who “cling to guns or religion…as a way to explain their frustrations.”


Of course, in heaping scorn on the nontroversy, one should also be wary of the opposite: the tendency to downplay something controversial for partisan reasons. Because the political environment is so toxic, charges of “They do it to!” will often stick. But when this approach is employed to mitigate something as inherently noxious as calling for the internment of Muslim-Americans during the War on Terror (ala Michelle Malkin), it is every bit as pernicious as blowing something out of proportion. (In other words, the fact that a Democratic administration oversaw mass internment during wartime doesn’t make it OK for a Republican to suggest that we do likewise).


Being that any emanation from betwixt a public figure’s lips will attract attention and invite interpretation, it is likely that the nontroversy is here to stay, a permanent reminder that politicians and their surrogates view us as simpletons with political amnesia who will be swayed by their phony outrage. But just because a stink is raised doesn’t mean that we must open our nostrils to it and breathe it in. In the words of the immortal Chuck D, don’t believe the hype.

The Disappointment Presidency

The Disappointment Presidency

            History does not unfold in a vacuum, and neither do presidential terms. Nearly four years have passed since Barack Obama was elected, and in order to evaluate his tenure in the Oval Office, one must examine the circumstances that led to that election. Unfortunately, this means revisiting the unhappy presidency of George W. Bush.

The Fail Guy

            The Bush years can best be described as the Failure Presidency. Though not the bumbling hayseed satirists made him out to be, the ineloquent, reductionist Bush was overmatched from the start. In all fairness, the September 11 attacks would have posed a huge challenge to any leader, and Bush did acquit himself quite well in the immediate aftermath. However, things were mostly downhill from there. A self-styled “compassionate conservative,” Bush oversaw huge increases in spending and government regulation. Under the aegis of spreading democracy and fighting terrorism, his foreign policy propelled America into two wars, alienated allies, and, paradoxically, incited Jihadists across the globe. From warrantless surveillance of American citizens to the botched federal response to Hurricane Katrina to outright kidnapping and torture, the Bush administration became synonymous with corruption, cronyism, abuse of power, and incompetence. By the time Bush left office, he had a 19% approval rating, and the country’s economic downturn was well underway.

            These are the circumstances upon which Obama capitalized to assume the presidency. At first glance, it would appear that he wouldn’t have had to do much to triumph over a Republican brand that was badly tarnished. But as John Kerry’s woeful 2004 campaign taught us, merely being the other guy is not enough. Fortunately for Obama, he was able to offer something new, even if that something was more stylistic than substantive.

Hope and Change

            “Hope and Change” were the buzzwords that steered the Obama 08 campaign, and while one would have to be naïve to have seen him as a transformational figure, there was certainly a kernel of truth to those words. Yes, Obama was inexperienced, but along with that inexperience came a (relative, and certainly by Chicago standards) lack of corruption. Moreover, Obama seemed to offer a conciliatory style and a broad-minded approach to governance. Whereas Bush filled cabinet positions by rewarding those who had served him well, Obama favored a “best and brightest” strategy, mixing Democratic stalwarts with recruits from the ranks of academia and Republican appointees. And as a multiracial man (then) under the age of 50, Obama revitalized the idea of America as a land of opportunity.

            From a policy perspective, the hope Obama represented was considerably more feint, albeit still present. On the negative side, his foreign policy inexperience and affinity for large public spending boondoggles (high-speed rail, anybody?) were apparent from the start. However, based on both his campaign and his Senate career, it was reasonable to expect that his presidency would offer a greater respect for civil liberties and a less trigger-happy approach to diplomacy. Furthermore, when was the last time a Democrat of his stature had good things to say about charter schools and merit pay for teachers?

            Both because he was not Bush and because he offered something more than not being Bush, Obama created a significant number of expectations, expectations which he abetted by vowing swift action within the first 100 days of his presidency. But after more than three years in office, he has fallen well short of achieving those goals. If the Bush administration represents the Failure Presidency, then the Obama administration, with its broken promises and inadequate governance, represents the Disappointment Presidency.

The Economy, Stupid!

            If polls are any indication, no issue was more influential in determining the outcome of the 2008 presidential election than the economy. By the time of the election, the 2008 financial crisis was already underway. The causes of this crisis were many, but for sake of argument, let us accept the Democratic line that Republican mismanagement precipitated economic decline. Was that the case, then surely some time under Democratic governance would right America’s economic fortunes.

            The actual results of that governance, however, paint quite a different picture.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the national unemployment rate for January 2009 – the month Obama took office – was 7.8%. Throughout Obama’s term, that rate escalated as high as 10%. The most recent data puts it at 8.1% for August 2012. While the unemployment rate is not the sole indicator of economic health, these numbers nevertheless point to a failure to right the ship.

            It is a failure that is inexcusable for several reasons. First, Democrats, including Obama, have turned job creation and protecting the middle class into their mantra. For them to fail at this task is both bitterly ironic and a damning indictment of their competence. Second, this lackluster “recovery” follows a very costly stimulus package, strongly supported by Obama, that was pushed as being necessary to avoid precisely this outcome. Third, blame cannot be placed elsewhere. Democrats controlled both houses of Congress during Obama’s first two years in office, thereby ensuring passage of his favored programs. The idea that this can somehow be attributed to the Bush administration is laughable. After all, there came a point during the Bush years when neither the September 11 attacks nor Clinton-era policies could excuse the current administration’s failures. We have since reached a similar point under Obama.

The Song Remains the Same

            To his supporters, the image Obama projects as a statesman is one of cool-headed rationality. To his detractors, it’s one of kowtowing weakness. Unsurprisingly, his predecessor elicited a similarly divisive response. Depending on whom you asked, Bush was either a resolute leader with strong moral vision or a belligerent, myopic blowhard. What is surprising is that despite the differences in perception of the two leaders’ styles, their policy remains substantively unchanged in several areas.

            Like Obama’s domestic policy, the Bush Doctrine is best characterized by a drive toward massive action. Cloaked in the rhetoric of peace, freedom, and democracy, Bush and a complicit (lest anyone forget) Congress immersed America in two costly, bloody wars and raised the possibility of several others. Moreover, the Bush administration asserted, rather chillingly, that it had the right to detain American citizens indefinitely without charge vis-à-vis the troublingly broad “enemy combatant” designation. To be certain, this approach to foreign policy was not without positives: it contributed to the downfall of Saddam Hussein and the toppling of a theocratic Afghan regime. However, it also saddled the nation with political, moral, and economic costs that we are still paying for today.

            For critics of this doctrine, Obama was supposed to have represented the antidote. Unlike many wavering Democrats, Obama was never tainted by a senatorial vote in favor of authorizing a war. He explicitly campaigned on bringing an end to the War in Iraq and promised to close down the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Within months of his inauguration, Obama was in Egypt promising “A New Beginning” in American-Middle Eastern relations.

            A few short years later, and the new beginning looks suspiciously like the old way of doing things. Guantanamo Bay remains open, a sad testament to Obama’s lack of political willpower. Troops have been withdrawn from Iraq, but they remain entangled in Afghanistan, and skirmishes in Pakistan have threatened to cause even more regional instability. Whereas the Bush administration was content to detain and possibly torture American citizens that had been dubbed enemy combatants, the Obama administration has outright targeted them for killing. Just as with the Bush Doctrine, there has been an upside to such an aggressive foreign policy approach. Osama bin Laden has finally been rooted out and exterminated, and, the troubling circumstances of his and his son’s deaths aside, Anwar al-Alwaki is presumably preaching his murderously anti-American vitriol in hell. The larger concern, however, remains the present and future costs of a course of action that Bush began and Obama betrayed supporters by enthusiastically co-opting.

The Worst in All of Us

            At the dawn of Obama’s election, many of those who feared what Obama represented politically nevertheless had praise for him personally. His willingness to confront the complexities of race drew plaudits from Republicans from Peggy Noonan to Mike Huckabee, and his smooth rhetorical style offered an appealing contrast for conservatives to the increasingly-embarrassing outbursts of Bush and Sarah Palin. Obama’s character, temperament, and eloquence thus inspired some hope that the debates regarding his governance could, at least for a while, be limited to the policies rather than the man behind him.

            Of course, this was not meant to be. Like many presidents of recent vintage (Bush and Clinton in particular come to mind), Obama came to inspire unshakable gut-level antipathy among his detractors. Though perhaps at its fiercest among the “Birthers,” this sort of irrational distaste has not been limited to the lunatic fringe. Newt Gingrich, a man Republicans have considered presidential material from time to time, condemned Obama for failing to bomb and then for bombing Libya within a span of a few short weeks. Obama opponents have variously tried to depict him as a godless secularist, a secret Muslim, and a disciple of Jeremiah Wright. The glaring lack of logical coherency common to these criticisms suggests that if the president switched wholesale to the Ronald Reagan playbook, Obamaphobes would lambast him for being unoriginal.

            But if a sizeable swath of Obama opponents are divorced from reality, so too are a number of Obama supporters. Witness the spectacle of those who elected an anti-war president defending that president’s war-mongering as evidence that he isn’t spineless. Grimace as every critical observation is, conspiratorially, tagged with racist intent. Or, simply laugh as Obama sycophants like Tim Kaine praise him for “putting results ahead of ideology” while simultaneously ignoring a good many of those results.

            To be fair, blame for the rabid rhetoric (pro and con) that Obama has inspired cannot be laid solely at his feet. While a more partisan, gloves-off Obama has emerged over the last few years, he has yet to fan the flames to as great an extent as his predecessors. From a rhetorical standpoint, the disappointment of the Obama presidency isn’t sinking down into the muck as much as it is no longer giving us reason to believe we can do better.

            In a mere matter of weeks, the Disappointment Presidency will either receive a second chance or meet its fateful end. Undoubtedly, what one thinks of the alternatives to another Obama term will influence one’s decision to support or reject it. But an examination of broken promises, changing positions, and a failure to deliver should make one thing clear: in 2012, the answer to “Yes We Can” is “No, You Probably Won’t.”

Harold Ballard and the Lessons of the Market

For better or for worse, we have a predisposition toward action. We perceive doing something as better than doing nothing at all, even if that “something” may be detrimental in the long run. Unfortunately, this bias contributes to a distrust of the free market and allowing things to simply run their course. It is as if we would rather crash the plane into the side of the mountain ourselves than trust the autopilot.


Of course, this distrust of the market is also fueled by some negative misconceptions of capitalism. In the minds of many, the very word raises the specter of greed and oppression. This stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of capitalism’s aims. The profit motive is inherently amoral, which means that it can (though not by design) be a force for good. However, too many are willing to conflate amoral and immoral (that is, inherently wicked), and in an effort to right capitalism’s perceived wrongs, leave us with something far worse: the tyranny of good intentions. Why tyranny, you ask? The market, left to its own devices, generates winners and losers. While it would be naïve to deny the existence of dishonest competitive practices, a free market at least maintains some semblance of a correlation between effort (a quality product, an unbeatable price, an innovation not found among the competition) and outcome. When the state intervenes, winners and losers are declared by fiat, often with disastrous results.

One great illustrator of this concept is the mismanaged sports franchise. There are plenty of failing (or should-be-failing) businesses out there, but due to their high media visibility, when a sports franchise is run into the ground, people tend to actually notice. And while sports franchises can fail for a variety of reasons (wrong market for the sport, for instance), the blame can sometimes be placed squarely at the top with the owner.

Of all the terrible sports owners (I’m looking at you, Ted Stepien), perhaps none combined incompetence and sheer malevolence more potently than the late Harold Ballard, owner of the NHL’s Toronto Maple Leafs for three decades. Though he had charitable moments, Ballard was, by many accounts, a miserable human being. Bigoted and misogynistic even by the standards of his day, Ballard regularly denigrated European players and once told a female journalist, “Women are best in one position – on their backs.” He served a prison sentence (which, fortuitously, allowed the team to sign Swedish star Borje Salming) for siphoning funds from the Leafs’ ownership group for personal use and proved himself to be a notorious skinflint. His other exploits, as per Wikipedia, include:

- Intentionally delaying a Beatles concert, turning up the heat in Maple Leaf Gardens, and selling soft drinks at an outrageous markup.

- Telling longtime Leaf and team captain Dave Keon that he had no place on the team, then demanding high compensation from any team who tried to sign him, effectively blacklisting Keon from the league.

- Continuously undermining Keon’s successor as captain, Darryl Sittler. This culminated in trading Sittler’s close friend Lanny McDonald to last-place Colorado out of spite.

- Hiring back aging Punch Imlach, a man noted for his autocratic style, as general manager in order to soften his own image. When Imlach suffered a heart attack, Ballard forced him from his job.

In short, Ballard embodied the characteristics – greed, ruthlessness, etc. – that capitalism’s critics say are endemic to a market system. If ever there seemed a likely candidate for intervention into how a franchise was run, Ballard’s Leafs were it. And while the league stepping in might have benefited the Leafs in the short-term, the long-term, unintended consequences would have been a net negative for the NHL. Consider the following:

- Though Toronto was talented in the late 70s and early 80s, it is unlikely that the Leafs would have overcome the dominant Montreal Canadiens and New York Islanders even if Ballard and Imlach hadn’t stripped the roster.

- Had the league vetoed Ballard’s trades or even tried to force him to sell, other owners would likely have taken umbrage to the intrusion. The NHL could have risked turning its most loathsome owner into a martyr.

- Had the league attempted to buy the team outright (and later sell to a willing buyer a la the NBA’s New Orleans Hornets), this would have directly lined Ballard’s pockets, literally at the expense of the other teams.

- In many cases, the players that Ballard underpaid or spitefully sent away flourished elsewhere. Both McDonald and Bernie Parent went on to win the Stanley Cup with other franchises and were elected to the Hall of Fame.

- In other cases, when the WHA scooped up Ballard’s former players, small-market franchises were given their first taste of star power.

Had the NHL intervened during Ballard’s reign, the unforeseen benefits of his calamity would have been forsaken and several negative consequences would have come to bear in their stead. Though a “Save the Leafs” campaign would have been well-intentioned, its authors likely would have done more harm than good.

Now, compare Ballard’s Leafs to another failing company, such as an auto manufacturer. Their antipathy for executive compensation aside, critics of capitalism would likely regard a car company as something worth saving due to all the blue-collar jobs on the line if the company goes under. Thus, the intention may be noble, but here again, refusing to let the market run its course has unintended results. Bailouts insulate automotive executives from the consequences of their mismanagement. Competitive pressure, on the other hand, forces them to change their losing ways. Furthermore, the money intended to bolster the workers who are at risk for losing their jobs may be absorbed by the corporate bureaucracy and find its way into the pockets of those very same overpaid, underperforming executives. Lastly, since bailouts are taxpayer funded, a rift is created between those whose jobs are deemed worth bailing out and those who received no such assistance. Thus, while unpleasant to countenance, the outcomes made possible by “heartless” capitalism can easily be far more benign than those created by “compassionate” intervention.

In the end, the rationality of the free market is undermined by our desire to do good and our belief that we know what is best for others. A little humility would allow us to see that we can’t reliably predict what are good intentions will eventually amount to, but this is something we seem loath to accept, especially when the Harold Ballards of the world make for such inviting targets. Still, history has taught us that when a man seems intent on burning down his house, sometimes the best thing to do is not to hand him a house but to embrace what arises from the ashes.

The Case For Free Trade in Five Paragraphs

I wrote this as a sample argumentative essay for my students, but I felt it was worth sharing here as well:

Self-sufficiency is often taken for a virtue, but as national economic policy, it falls squarely in the vice column. Taxing imports to increase domestic product consumption will lead to higher prices and promote strife between nations. Though “Buy American” has a nice ring to it, in today’s interconnected world, it is simply untenable. Thus, policymakers should continue to support free trade and oppose protective tariffs.

First and foremost, tariffs make everyday goods more expensive for the average consumer. Whether due to lower labor costs or more efficient production methods, products from clothing to electronics can often be manufactured more inexpensively abroad. By applying tariffs to these imports to keep pricing in line with American-made goods, we impose an unnecessary financial burden on American consumers, especially the poor. If you have a limited income, your primary concern is being able to afford the shirt on your back, not worrying where it came from.

Tariffs can also cause relations between would-be trading partners to sour. If two countries are engaged in trade, the fear of lost revenue is usually enough to keep relations peaceful (note the lack of war between the United States and China). But if one trading partner imposes tariffs on the imports of the other, the other partner has every reason to impose tariffs of their own in retaliation. This can easily lead to an escalation of tensions. Though the American Civil War was fought for many reasons, the imposition of tariffs to protect Northern industry was certainly a factor. Not only were imported British consumer goods made more expensive for Southerners, but the British market for Southern-grown cotton shrank accordingly.

Some would argue that protective tariffs are needed to keep American companies in business and save jobs. However, by propping up these companies, we take away their motivation to remain innovative and competitive. The success of Japanese midsize cars like the Honda Accord and the Toyota Camry prompted Ford to replace the Taurus with the Fusion, which went on to win several automotive awards. With high protective tariffs in place, we would continually overpay for mediocre domestic products.

From keeping money in our pockets to keeping the peace, free trade has proven to be beneficial. “Buy American” rhetoric and the protectionist policies that accompany it might appeal to our patriotism, but you can’t pay your bills with the American flag.

Columbine: A Retrospective

Today marks the 10-year anniversary of the Columbine shooting. In terms of dollar-value damages and lives lost, it’s hardly the biggest national tragedy of my lifetime. But it’s done more to shape my consciousness than any war or explosion or plane crash.

Like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, Columbine’s two perpetrators, I was an angry and miserable teenager. That I was angry and miserable did not cause me to empathize with them, as some deluded souls certainly did, nor did it burden me with any more antipathy than I felt for mass murderers who weren’t close to my age (and, to a far lesser extent, my then-mindset). What their shooting spree did do was illuminate for me where being angry and miserable could take me. I saw their culminating acts of rage and rejection and I saw that I wanted absolutely no part of it whatsoever. It wasn’t enough to make me stop being angry and miserable – that would come later, when graduating high school was within reach – but it was enough for me to stop becoming more angry and more miserable. When tensions got to a certain point, the senselessness and barbarism of that Colorado bloodbath acted, consciously or not, as a powerful check.

I read a column recently which pointed to Columbine as kind of a cultural Rorschach test. Those who don’t like guns will blame guns for the tragedy; those who don’t like violent video games will identify them as the culprit and so on. There are, of course, varying degrees of truth and distortion inherent to all this-finger pointing as well as plenty of blame to go around. What interests me most presently, however, is the need to issue this much blame at all.

There is, I think, a tendency toward disassociation concerning the Harrises and Klebolds of the world. No one wants to see themselves as linked, even on a biological level, to people they despise, so they simply stop seeing them as people at all. Epithets like “animal” and “monster” are applied freely despite the reality that Harris and Klebold (like Hitler and Stalin before them) could not have been anything but human.

The next step in this dissociative process is to look for the breaks – in what way were these freaks’ lives unlike mine? Herein the blamers have a field day. What were the parents like? What kind of media (music, movies, games, etc.) were the perpetrators exposed to? Did they say their prayers and eat their damn vegetables? In other words, what were the exact circumstances that led to this tragic undertaking so that we can isolate them and prevent it from happening again?

This, of course, is an exercise in futility. Just as there is no such thing as a school shooter gene, there is no such thing as a mold from which all school shooters are sprung. There are similarities between shooters to be certain, as well as certain behaviors which may be legitimately construed as warning signs. But consider also the vast differences between the perpetrators. Andrew Kehoe was a school board member enraged by property taxes. Patrick Purdy and Jeff Weise were adherents to extremist political ideologies. Brenda Ann Spencer was female and claimed to have no good reason at all.

It is unlikely that any policy prescription will ever be a curative. Crack down on guns and they’ll build bombs. Cast pre-emptive suspicion on kids who wear black trench coats and you may succeed in allowing jeans-n-T-shirt wearing perpetrators to fly under the radar (to say nothing of unfairly hassling trench coat-wearers who lack any nefarious intent). Ban bullying and hurtful speech and your future terrorists will learn to smile politely.

Though Columbine has gathered a sort of cachet as the definitive school shooting, it is hardly the first incident of its kind. And while it is contextualized as a tragedy from which we all can/should/must learn, many other shootings have followed in its wake. I have every reason to believe more school shootings will happen, as they have been happening. I also have every reason to believe a number of people will scratch their heads and ask “how could this have happened?” and begin the cause-seeking anew. The real lesson of Columbine or any Columbine-like occurrence is that there is no neatly laid-out moralistic conclusion that we all are supposed to arrive at (especially if arriving at said conclusion ignores other conclusions that may happen to be right or useful). If people still feel so helplessly compelled to “do something!” in the aftermath of tragedy, I would say a good dose of common sense and historical perspective never hurt anyone.

Stimulus: The New Patriot Act

In politics, all that’s bad is good again. History repeats itself not because we’re stuck on an unbreakable cycle, but because we fail to recognize (or misdiagnose) patterns. If, for example, we are wronged, we will likely see that wrong quite clearly. But when we wrong others, we may not see it simply because it is by our own hand and targets not our own body. In this way, we risk authorship of our own demise.

For the most recent example of this phenomena, look no further than the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 (and similar post-9/11 legislation). On the surface, the similarities are few – one addresses national security, the other economic stimulus. And I suspect some will take umbrage on equating the curtailment of civil liberties with increases in spending. But for those who can look pass partisan framing, the commonalities are abundant.

Both the PATRIOT Act and the stimulus package predicate their success, to some extent, on fear-mongering. The terrorist attacks of 9/11, while both horrible and horrifying, did not put us on the brink of Armageddon. The lives lost totaled less than two percent of the U.S. population and that is the worst our enemies have been able to muster. Likewise, while our economic picture is bleak, it is not an unprecedented disaster. The Great Depression and the oil crises of the 1970s were more malignant by several measures.

Amid this heightened sense of doom, supporters of both the PATRIOT Act and the stimulus package demanded that immediate action be taken. As Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Washington, noted in Michael Moore’s controversial “Fahrenheit 9/11,” many members of Congress did not have the time to give the PATRIOT Act legislation a thorough reading. Similarly, it would be safe to say that sufficient time has not been allotted for members of Congress to thoroughly digest the 600-plus page stimulus legislation.

Another similarity can be found in the willingness of both PATRIOT backers and stimulus backers to vilify their opponents. Those who questioned or opposed the PATRIOT Act were demagogically denounced as radical or anti-American. In a similar fashion, stimulus backers such as Paul Krugman (who should know better) have referred to stimulus critics and foes as partisan hacks who can be safely ignored. The view that PATRIOT foes recklessly ignored America’s safety has evolved into the view that stimulus foes are recklessly ignoring America’s economic well-being. In both instances, it has proven simpler to smear the critics rather than address or rebut their criticisms.

Interestingly enough for both PATRIOT and stimulus foes, neither piece of legislation is as bad as it could have been. The PATRIOT Act included provisions which sunset, or expire after a certain period of time unless legislation is enacted to extend them. Author James Bovard also states that Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wisconsin, who introduced the bill, worked to eliminate even more intrusive provisions. Similarly, the stimulus package includes tax cuts (which have been known to actually stimulate the economy from time to time) and not nearly enough spending for the likes of Krugman and fellow economist Joseph Stiglitz.

In the years since the PATRIOT Act’s passage, its overreach and invitation for abuse is apparent. In a 2007 audit, the Justice Department found that the FBI used the tools provided by the PATRIOT Act to illegally spy on American citizens. The ostensibly national security-minded PATRIOT Act was also used for purposes decidedly unrelated to national security, such as enforcing copyright infringement and investigating drug traffickers.

Since the stimulus package has yet to be passed by the Senate as of this writing, there can be no ill effects to measure. The legislation does, however, contain a number of components unrelated to stimulating the economy, such as funds for family planning. Given the sheer scope of the money involved (over $800 billion) and the size of the bureaucracies it will be filtered through, misuse and malfeasance seems more a question of “when" and "how" rather than "if."

Of course, there is a learning opportunity here and an easy one at that. The chance to avoid repeating a mistake requires only that we not develop amnesia. But when spend-happy big-government Republicans are suddenly unified in their stimulus opposition on the grounds of fiscal discipline (suppressed titter) and once-skeptical Democrats take up the mantle of heavy-handed toadying yes-men, that may be too much to ask.

The Merits of McCain and Obama and Why I'm Not Voting For Either of Them

Whether intended or not, presidential elections are, increasingly, exercises in aggrandizement. Every challenge we face is supposedly unique, every set of circumstances supposedly unprecedented and America’s future is always on the line. Or, barring that, we’re perpetually reenacting the definitive moments of our past: Sept. 11 becomes the new Pearl Harbor, the recent economic downturn is suddenly Great Depression 2.0 and so on.
Amid all this (often groundless) puffery, it’s all too easy to lose sight of the fact that our job as voters is to express our preference for the next president of the United States; nothing more and nothing less. We are not electing a king or a savior or a surrogate father or a drinking buddy. It is highly unlikely any choice we make will spell our ruin or bring about a golden age. The ebullient rhetoric of a bright new tomorrow will fade far more quickly than the gloss on many of the campaign signs.
Within those parameters, however, the choice we make can make a difference. The status quo can still be tilted and nudged if not truly shaken. And just as sickness exists between death and health, there is a whole spectrum of national well-being for our next president to intrepidly traverse. The objective for any voter, be it largely guesswork, is not to go with which candidate you “like” the most, but which candidate will screw things up the least.
This is a question I find myself continually straining to answer. After all, Candidate A might screw us up one way and Candidate B might screw us up another. How do you rate, for instance, paying more in taxes against paying more for health care? Is an expensive and unpopular war we’re now fighting “better” than an expensive and unpopular war we may fight somewhere else in the future? Do one party’s sex scandals merit more scorn than another party’s funding scandals?
The dilemma reached a rather maddening crescendo in 2004. Running on a record of abject failure, George W. Bush benefitted greatly from the Lincolnian adage about changing horses at midstream (the stream, in this case, being filled with casualties and tape recorded threats by bearded men). John Kerry, on the other hand, benefitted greatly by not being George W. Bush, but didn’t really bring anything else to the table save for uncertainty, a lack of charisma and a fondness for windsurfing. Not having the slightest shred of confidence in either of them, I gave my vote in protest to a third-party candidate who, in retrospect, was a few bricks short of a wall.
But – and in direct contradiction of my earlier point – this election is different. I can trust John McCain to do certain things and I can trust Barack Obama to do certain things. There are, for once, good reasons to vote for either the Republican or Democratic candidate, as opposed to voting against them.
Some of these reasons, it should be noted, really have nothing to do with the candidates themselves, but simply the positions they occupy. History has shown us, for instance, that federal spending is often held in check by divided government. Thus, a vote for a Republican presidential candidate facing a Democratic Congress is usually a vote for fiscal restraint because the veto pen is more likely to be put to use than if president and congress shared the same party. It has little to do with how fiscally conservative or profligate the individual candidate is or is not.
Further, as both Obama and McCain are sitting Senators, a win for either of them creates a vacancy. In McCain’s case, winning the election frees up his seat for Jeff Flake; aside from Ron Paul, the most libertarian member of the House (and, I can only hope, a future presidential candidate). In Obama’s case, you’re looking at possibly Jesse Jackson Jr. or another Chicago politician. If you’ve been keeping score, you’ll see that McCain is gaining some points by default. Whatever hits he takes running as the successor to an unpopular Republican president is more than offset by Obama running as a member of an even more unpopular Democratic Congress.
Another factor to be considered is each candidate’s choice of a running mate. For better or for worse, we’ve come a long way from the days of John Nance “not worth a bucket of warm piss” Garner. Lyndon B. Johnson and Gerald Ford have shown us that a vice president must be ready to occupy the top slot and Dick Cheney has shown us that vice presidential power isn’t limited to occasions when the president is incapacitated.
By the simplest measure possible, Obama succeeded in picking someone who is up to the job while McCain did not. Make no mistake about it: Joe Biden is a traditional Washington politician who undercuts Obama’s message of change. He also has an odious judicial philosophy and is ordinarily a walking gaffe machine (though, it must be said, he has done a better than expected job of keeping himself in check). However, Biden has the requisite experience and temperament, particularly in foreign affairs. It’s unlikely he would be a good president, but he could be president just the same.
GILF-itude aside, Sarah Palin picks up points for charisma and running the crooked Frank Murkowski out of office. That alone, however, is not nearly enough to offset her negatives. Not only does her inexperience render Obama’s inexperience moot, but she’s proven herself to be mendacious (see “Bridge to Nowhere stance”), condescendingly elitist (see “real Americans”) and abusive of the power vested in her (see “Troopergate”). Whining about media treatment – a curious stance given her open hostility to the very same media – negates none of this. Quite simply, she does not have what it takes to be president at this point in time.
Associations beyond the choice of veep tend to be a more tenuous matter. “Knowing” people and putting the people you know in power are two different things and only the latter possibility is really worth our consideration. Contrary to all the mudslinging, Obama probably has closer ties to Chicago School economists than he does to William Ayers and you aren’t any more likely to see the ex-terrorist in a cabinet post than you are McCain buddy/convicted felon G. Gordon Liddy occupying a spot in a Republican administration. Likewise, while the lobbyist/shady fundraiser connections native to both candidates undermine their images as agents of change, there’s little reason to worry unless those same connections are likely candidates for positions of power.
Another consideration often given too much weight is that of character. As stated, you are electing a president, not a best friend. Decent people don’t always make for decent presidents (see Carter, Jimmy and Bush, George W.), while untrustworthy or morally suspect people (see Clinton, Bill and Kennedy, John F.) sometimes make for decent presidents. The only time “character” should be a prime consideration is when it casts suspicion on a candidate’s ability to do the job (see Nixon, Richard).
Temperament, on the other hand, does matter. How a candidate responds to the demands of being president has big implications for his effectiveness. A president must be able to work with Congress, with subordinates, with world leaders, with the media, etc. The real “change” that Obama brings to this campaign is not in his politics (more on that below), but how he approaches being a politician. As he showed during the debates, he is able to make himself appear conciliatory even when he is on the offensive, a quality that appeals to those who may not share his views. McCain’s hard-charging style, on the other hand, makes him seem angry; a turn-off to voters who aren’t already in his corner.
Take the same characteristics to the foreign policy arena, however, and the dynamic changes. Even after eight years of “The Decider,” it’s worth betting that Americans want their president to appear strong and decisive when dealing with other nations (particularly the “bad” ones). McCain oozes leadership, while Obama’s more laid-back approach comes across as a liability (worse yet would be the ill-fated aggressiveness you can expect him to display to overcompensate for this).
Both candidates, it should be noted, have shown they are capable of working with the other side. Bipartisanship is not always a positive. It gave us campaign finance reform (McCain-Feingold), the PATRIOT Act and No Child Left Behind. However, it also gave us increased transparency in federal funding (Obama-Coburn-McCain) among other things. In general, it’s desirable to have a president who will sign or veto legislation based on something more substantive than party control of Congress.
The final pratfall to avoid is that of narrative. Come election time, candidates look to define both themselves and their opponents in terms they hope will resonate with the electorate. Obama wants us to believe he’s an agent of change and McCain is a Bush clone with the wrong economic priorities; McCain wants us to accept him as a maverick and Obama as an inexperienced liberal with terrorist connections. And while there may be a kernel of truth to all of these characterizations, you can count on more than a kernel of self-interested exaggeration. Fortunately, however, politics is not an art which rewards creativity. The farther you stray from that which is so, the easier it becomes to hammer you with it.
All that really remains at this point are the issues: where do candidates stand, what ideas do they propose, what will they do as president. In a perfect world, issues would dominate both the discourse and each voter’s decision-making process. As it now stands, however, issues play second fiddle to narrative, to perceptions of character, to countless other less impactful factors when we talk about elections. How much they actually weigh on each individual voter as the lever is pulled is anyone’s guess.
It is through this lens of issues that Obama loses much of his gloss. For all the rhetoric of change, his positions are indistinguishable from those of many other Democratic politicians. He is pro-choice, committed to multilateral interventionism, in favor of universal health-care and a “green.” While he does offer a few points of departure – he’s voiced support for merit pay for teachers and talked up personal and parental responsibility – he is, for the most part, a breath of stale air.
Obama’s Democratic orthodoxy is most troubling in the economic sphere. It should be said beforehand that Obama is not a socialist: not while he is running on tax cuts, not while he has so many associates in the business world. He is, however, a neo-Keynsian interventionist, which can spell disaster in its own right. By falsely framing the economic downturn as a product of unfettered capitalism, he seems intent on drumming up support for increased economic regulation. Considering that the regulatory excesses of the New Deal helped prolong the Great Depression, this is reason for concern.
McCain, on the other hand, is a bit more difficult to pin down. To quote one characterization, he is, “conservative, but not a Conservative.” Ideology, in other words, takes a back seat to ambition and McCain’s stances on taxes, on the role of religion and politics, on repealing Roe v. Wade, have varied over the years.
Despite his capacity for periodically reinventing himself, McCain has shown a few constants. He has proven to be a consistent unilateral hawk; a firm believer in American military might to solve global problems. He has also been a consistent foe of pork barrel spending and government waste and a proponent of free trade.
McCain’s social policy has generally been conservative, tempered by varying degrees of federalism. His economic views are generally market-oriented, though he did support the recent bank bailout.
Given everything, each candidate brings enough to the table for me to at least give him the time of day. I like Obama’s temperament, for instance, and find myself in agreement with him on certain social issues. But his economic stance and the fact that he is a Democrat facing a Democratic Congress render him unpalatable.
McCain, on the other hand, botched the Palin pick, is running a generally inept campaign, and has disagreeable stances on some foreign policy and social issues. He is, however, closer to being right on the economic side of things than Obama, is a Republican facing a Democratic Congress and would be getting my vote…if there weren’t better choices available.
I am, much to my surprise, supporting Bob Barr this go-around. The same Bob Barr who made waves as a gun-toting, impeachment-craving right-wing partisan during the Clinton years. The same Bob Barr who tried to ban the practice of Wicca in the military. The same Bob Barr who has the affability of a Brillo pad.
And yet, unlike the 2004 vote for Badnarik, this is not a protest vote. I honestly believe Barr has what it takes to be president. He spent parts of his childhood in various parts of the world and has a ton of experience in international affairs. He’s been a congressman, a CIA analyst, a prosecutor and a member of the NRA board of directors and an ACLU consultant. With a résumé like that and all the right notes he’s hitting issue-wise (anti-bailout, strongly federalist, etc.) who cares if he isn’t Mr. Warmth?
Of course, being a former Republican congressman, Barr has some history to answer for. The once-proud drug warrior authored the Defense of Marriage Act and voted for the PATRIOT Act (albeit after adding sunset provisions). That, coupled with my skepticism toward political apostasy, should be enough for me to remove him from consideration. However, I am convinced that Barr’s move toward libertarianism is sincere. He has been a de facto libertarian since leaving office in 2003, several years before he emerged as a presidential candidate. Contrast this to Alan Keyes and Ralph Nader leaching onto third parties at the 11th hour for vanity campaigns.
Barr also benefits from having probably the best running mate of the bunch in Wayne Allyn Root. Root, who graduated Columbia in the same class as Barack Obama, has had success as a businessman/author/media type and brings a ton of charisma. Also, as a Las Vegas sports handicapper, he’s about as far removed from Washington politics as you can get.
Naturally, I don’t expect Barr to win. But if he can make enough of a difference in the final tally, he’ll force Democrats and Republicans to take more notice of libertarian ideas. That kind of nudge will ultimately do more good for the country than either a McCain or an Obama presidency ever could.

White America, We Hardly Knew Ye

An article in The New York Times points to Census Bureau projections which have Hispanics, blacks, Asians, American Indians, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders outnumbering non-Hispanic whites by 2042.

It’s pretty easy to imagine the rednecks and xenophobes sounding the alarm bell over this and it seems almost a matter of time before someone starts whining about “endangered” white Americans. Maybe John Gibson will even renew his call for us to make more babies.

Personally, I can’t help but see this as a big fat “so what?” Look around the world and you’ll find many places where the demographics have changed over time. Further, while there was an Anglo majority during colonial times, America was not founded on explicitly racial/cultural grounds. Lastly, if preserving the whiteness of America was ever a priority, then why have our policymakers repeatedly added areas which would inevitably bring “foreigners” into the fold?

What’s more interesting to ponder is what this demographic shift says about the evolution of whiteness and non-whiteness. There was a time when “white” was synonymous with Anglo and Jews, Italians, et al. were not considered “white” in a cultural sense. Nowadays, “white” has evolved into a blanket term for Americans of European descent and hyphenated subcategories are used to fill the void. Bill O’Reilly, George W. Bush and myself may all be a couple of white guys, but Bill and I (should we choose to) get to affix the appropriate modifier (Irish, Jewish/Russian) to our –American while George does not.

But as Jacob Sullum notes at Hit & Run, this categorization is often arbitrary:

Is there a single objective criterion that unites these particular ethnic and racial minorities while distinguishing them from all the excluded groups? Is there any rational reason why a descendant of Spaniards, say, should count as a real minority, whether or not his ancestors spent time in Latin America, while a descendant of Italians does not?

I say no, not really, but it makes us feel better to be part of a smaller, more exclusive club.

Making a Mockery of the End Times: Foibles of the Apocalypsy

Making a Mockery of the End Times: Foibles of the Apocalypsy

I often proudly refer to myself as a cynic, which connotes a lack of faith in humanity and its collective abilities. I should note that this lack of faith extends to humanity’s ability to destroy itself. Thus, while some people may foresee a great unraveling or the beginning of the end looming on the horizon, I’ll merely think, “nah…we’ll find some way to screw it up.”

As a matter of perception, this perspective has come in handy as of late. The post-9/11, post-nuclear world of the 21^st century is inundated with fear. We are literally drowning in deep-felt concern that our natural resources are about to expire, that we will blow each other off the face of the Earth, that our souls are in danger of damnation. The litany of worries never seems to end. Fortunately, there’s a very simple solution: doubt and ye shall be set free.

The ‘new apocalypsy,’ as I like to call it, spans several branches and disciplines, from foreign relations to ecology to theology, but is marked by a set of common characteristics. First and foremost is the identification of a recent phenomena and its subsequent presentation (accurately or not) as part of a trend. Next is the argument that the trend is escalating and the problem is in fact direr than it had been before. Then, once a general pattern has been established, the dots are connected: this can only lead to one thing – the End. Lastly, a ray of hope is offered in the form of an ‘unless,’ as in ‘unless this course of action is pursued…’

Apocalypsy as a propaganda technique is neither new nor subtle, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t effective. By hyperinflating the urgency of an issue, it draws the public’s focus onto it and away from other issues that may be of concern. Further, playing upon fear of mass extinction greatly increases the chance your proposed solution (your ‘unless…’) will be taken seriously where it might not have been otherwise. All anyone has to risk in the process is their credibility. But, as we shall see, this is less of a hindrance than one may think.

Debunking the apocalypsy can be done one of two ways. The lazy way would be to simply shrug off any catastrophic claim as baseless and inaccurate. In my view, this is not the way to go. Improbable does not translate to impossible and those who walk around with their head perpetually nestled in the clouds are likely to miss whatever is right in front of them. Doubt, not dismissal will set you free.

The second method is as simple as bothering to ask a few questions. Fallacious claims tend not to hold up well when exposed to rigorous inquiry and doomsayers are easily peeved by even the most innocuous of interrogatories. These questions can roughly be divided into several categories: credibility, historicity, probability and accuracy.

Credibility pertains not only to the person offering the theory, but to the theory itself. The extent to which defeated ideas are repackaged can be surprising. To give one example, unfounded concerns about overpopulation and mortality keep popping up every now and then. When Thomas Malthus raised them in the 19^th century, he was shouted down by a coterie of economists, socialists and Catholic intellectuals (!). When Paul Ehrlich made a slew of erroneous predictions in “The Population Bomb” (life expectancy of 42 by 1980, anyone?), Julian Simon famously and rightfully took him to task. Just recently, University of Texas biologist Eric Pianka has forecast a 90% mortality rate is imminent. You’d figure after awhile, disproved theories would simply stay disproved, but that appears to be too much to ask.

Historical accuracy is another thorn in the side of the doomsayers. They are mindful of the fact that we tend to have short attention spans and forget things quickly. Energy activists, for instance, have been hammering home the idea that we have to break our dependence on foreign oil ASAP or we’re screwed (underlying implication: go green). They point to climbing gas prices and the “all-time high” price of crude, but there’s plenty that they don’t tell you. Namely, oil prices now are well below their all-time high in inflation adjusted dollars. Factor in the big I and the price of crude peaked during the Carter administration. And that was before we entered an era of sports cars and SUVs which, gasp, didn’t drive us to extinction.

Statistical accuracy can also be used to puncture phony claims of pending demise. One recurring theme among commentators and critics is America’s “culture of violence.” In the media-blaming frenzy that erupted after the Columbine shootings, much was said about the level of savagery in American society. But if anyone bothered to examine statistical trends in national crime data over the past 10-20 years – particularly homicide rates – they might find something surprising. Turns out we are getting LESS violent.

The final criteria, probability, is often the most difficult to work with. After all, nobody can predict the future. But with common sense and a little look at the numbers, anyone can avoid being suckered by a failed prophet. One point that’s been hammered countless times by politicians of all stripes is America’s vulnerability to terrorism and the urgent need to do something about it. And while it may be callous and shortsighted to dismiss that concern, neither do we need to be buying rolls of duct tape in bulk. Consider that, at their worst, terrorists were able to kill 3,000 Americans in a single day of carnage. That may seem like a lot until you realize our population at the time was more than 281 BILLION. Look at those numbers then ask yourself what the odds are of you or someone you know being destroyed by an act of terrorism, much less America as a whole.

Despite the ease with which it is debunked, apocalysm is very much in vogue. It transcends partisanship, crosses party lined and gives any nut with an agenda a platform on which to stand. Of course, that platform is held up only by the collective fear of the audience (that means you guys). Thus, in order to nullify the rhetoric, all one need do is not give into its lures and approach all claims with a skeptical mind.

Apocalysm needn’t be as onerous and blatant as a Bible-thumping preacher shouting about the end of days. Respected environmentalists, policy experts and commentators have all been known to go off the deep end, whether the topic is sustainable growth, the ‘New World Order’ or “moral decay.” If you’re like me, you’ve learned to laugh it off. But if you haven’t reached that point, take your time. It’s not like the end of the world is coming…is it?

Marx's Last Laugh and the Limits of Nationalism

Marx’s Last Laugh and the Limits of Nationalism

Let it not be said that history doesn’t have a sense of humor. Years after his demise, some of Karl Marx’s deepest held desires have been fulfilled – thanks largely to those who regard themselves as stalwart anti-Marxists. I refer to Marx’s contempt for civil society: the cultural, religious and social institutions that exist apart of the state. In Marx’s view of utopia (and, to a lesser extent, the ‘totalitarian democracy’ of Jean-Jacques Rosseau and the French Revolution), civil society is transformed into political society. There is little-to-no room for institutions to exist apart from the state. Likewise, the same is true of people: the state and the masses are identified as one.

Not surprisingly, this contemptuous attitude toward civil society has had more than its share of detractors. And yet, it continues to find its takers. The fascist and hardline nationalist movements that have arisen over the years seem to be quite taken with it, despite their ostensibly anti-Marxist, pro-tradition orientations. In Hitler’s Third Reich, to use an extreme example, civil society as it existed was essentially abolished and reconstructed to suit the Nazi regime. You could not simply be a person living and working in Germany, you were (often via coercion) linked with the state. If you weren’t pro-Nazi you weren’t, for intents and purposes of the ruling elite, German…even if you could trace your lineage to Otto the Great.

Softer forms of this kind of mentality have persisted to the present day. It is not without its advantages, either as a political maneuver or an earnest societal goal. In the former, linking the identity of the people with the government that rules over them places critics of that government in a precarious “us versus them” predicament. In the latter, attempting to link people via a common denominator (race, religion, cultural heritage, etc.) seems the perfect pathway to peace. In theory at least, a homogeneous society will be subject to less civil strife, the enormous cost of making that society homogenous notwithstanding.

Whatever the motivations of these ‘transformationists,’ they have proven miraculously inept in keeping civil society down. Civil society, after all, is more a force of human nature than a simple switch that can be flipped. It grows, changes, adapts and evolves. Thus, attempts to exercise excessive control over it will almost always backfire. You can use force to compel human action, but no government can expect to permanently change the thoughts and attitudes of its subjects en masse.

As evident as this lesson seems, it has yet to be taken to heart by the leaders of this nation, both past and present. Consider the current warping of the term ‘anti-Americanism.’ In the truest sense, this should refer to unfettered hatred of the American people and their institutions. Instead, it’s been cheapened to equate to criticism of the government and its policies. Playing directly into Marx’s hands, administration apologists have steadfastly decimated the once-important distinction between political and civil society.

Why is this distinction important, you ask? Well, in the run up to the War in Iraq and at numerous times thereafter, a great amount of hostility was shown by Americans to Saddam Hussein and his Baathist regime. Does this make us guilty of flagrant ‘anti-Iraqism’? Not hardly. After all, our mission over there was undertaken, at least in part, to benefit the Iraqi people by ridding them of a genocidal tyrant. Our contempt was for the political, rather than the civil, infrastructure that existed at the time.

Similarly, while we may denounce the stifling, belligerent theocracy in Iran, we are quick to come to the aid of the Persian people when a massive earthquake strikes. Being that we are capable of drawing the distinction between civil and political society abroad, we should be equally capable of drawing it at home.

That capability begins with admitting that even the most caustic critics of the current administration are NOT, prima facie, America-haters. Bush critics, war critics, political dissidents et al tend to be aware of the fact they are living in a country that affords them the ability to express and advance their views and are often grateful for it. Rejecting Bushism doesn’t equate to rejecting America as a whole, just as spewing venom at Bill Clinton a decade earlier did not make one the embodiment of all things un-American.

So then the question remains: who DOES hate America? The true culprits come in several flavors. There are those, such as Fred Phelps, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who legitimately hate American civil society, deeming it hedonistic, sinful and overindulgent, if not downright Satanic. Ironically, these types tend to enjoy a certain degree of coziness with political society as it exists today.

There are also those, exemplified by Ward Churchill and ignorant foreign critics, who not only conflate civil and political society, but insist on castigating the former for the latter’s transgressions. To attempt to hold individual Americans responsible for action undertaken by the CIA 30 years ago is to cruelly deny those Americans their right to an identity apart from that of their government.

Reclaiming civil society also realizes accepting that there are, will be, and should be things that are beyond the state and its control. You have the right to find your neighbor’s purple house tacky. You don’t have the right to make the city repaint it for him. The day that the tolerances, preferences and prejudices of civil and political society are made to be one and the same is the day Marx’s cold dead hand can raise its fist in victory.

Diversixploitation: Manipulating Multiculturalism Ruins Movies

Diversixploitation

Manipulating Multiculturalism Ruins Movies

The world recently mourned the loss of Gordon Parks, a multitalented artist/musician/author who rose to prominence composing powerful photo essays for Life magazine. Among Parks’ other achievements was the original film version of Shaft, an adaptation of Ernest Tidyman’s novel about a heterodox black detective. Parks’ film was, at the time, somewhat groundbreaking in that its protagonist managed to be awash in a sea of clichés both black (Panthers-style radicals and old-school Harlem gangsters) and white (Mafiosos and police bureaucrats) without being defined by either of them. John Shaft, as portrayed by Richard Roundtree, was a three-dimensional character: a wisecracking, tough-talking solo operator in the mold of Philip Marlowe, only hip and socially conscious as well. Ironically, despite the perception of increased tolerance over the past 30 years, there is little room for a character such as Shaft (complex black male lead) in today’s Hollywood.

With some notable exceptions, the status quo of today’s film industry is one of subtle racism fueled by the desire to conform to politically correct archetypes. Consider, for instance, the recent trend of racial diversification/racial inversion in film remakes. On the surface, this seems like an unmitigated positive. After all, the film industry in the first half of the 20^th century was notoriously whitewashed and full of one-dimensional stereotypes. Why, therefore, would remaking a film with a more diverse cast be a bad thing?

To answer this, I direct your attention to a pair of pitiful examples from last year: the Cedric the Entertainer/Mike Epps version of The Honeymooners and the Bernie Mac/Ashton Kutcher version of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (shortened to Guess Who).

The original Honeymooners was a popular television series in the mid-1950s that eventually became the basis for The Flintstones. The show featured scheming bus driver Ralph Kramden, his wife, Alice, and their neighbors/friends, Ed and Trixie Norton.

On the surface, little changed in the remake save for the skin color of the principals. Cedric plays scheming Ralph to Epps’ Ed Norton. The characters names and occupations are roughly the same, as is the setting (New York City). Despite this, the movie was a colossal failure.

This really should come as no surprise, if for no other reason than Cedric and Epps are not Jackie Gleason and Art Carney. They aren’t even close. This isn’t a knock on Cedric’s talent – his “Eddie” character in Barbershop was hysterical, but there he was paired with a competent director and allowed to improvise. In The Honeymooners, he was limited to reinterpreting a character more or less perfected by Gleason over the course of a television run. Given those expectations, it was almost inevitable that he (and the surrounding production) fall significantly short.

Why, therefore, was this monstrosity made? The answer, in my opinion, lies in diversixploitation: the phenomenon of making/remaking lousy films with racially/ethnically/sexually diverse casts for the purpose of drawing in diverse or diversity-receptive viewers. In other words, if a slick producer makes the lead a black guy, maybe some blacks and white urban teens will be more likely to see movie (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). Beneath the politically correct veneer of multiculturalism lays a very bigoted profit motive which, ironically, often fails to turn a profit.

Diversixploitation is both an updated version of and antidote to blaxploitation, a controversial 70s film trend. Blaxploitation films, though often made by white filmmakers, were often specifically designed to lure black audiences into theaters. They were also crude, poorly made and laden with offensive race and gender stereotypes. Eventually they generated so much backlash that the NAACP came a’gunning and the genre died off by the end of the decade. But what those critics failed to realize at the time was that the genre, though rooted in clichés, gave black actors both a chance to work and a chance to show off their abilities. Richard Roundtree made Shaft an icon, Ron O’Neal turned Superfly into more than a common drug dealer and Pam Grier’s Foxy Brown was actually, in some ways, a positive female role model. Thus, these actors and characters managed to survive the blaxploitation moment and live on in the cultural imagination.

Diversixploitation, like its 70s counterpart, aims for targeted audiences, revels in clichés and is notably cheap on the quality end. However, whereas blaxploitation actually provided opportunities for black actors and filmmakers, diversixploitation seems content to confine them for petty amusement.

That brings us to the second example, Guess Who. The original film had what was at the time an edgy theme: white college girl brings home somewhat older black fiancée to wealthy, supposedly open-minded parents expecting their approval. It had a top-flight cast (Sydney Poitier, Kate Hepburn and the final appearance of Spencer Tracy) and, despite the social issues raised, didn’t drown in preachy self-seriousness.

The remake, on the other hand, eschewed social significance in favor of cheap laughs. Bernie Mac and Ashton Kutcher, stepping in for Tracy and Potier, bring nothing to the roles save for the ability and willingness to make jackasses out of themselves. Sadly, this is one of the few cases where a remake would have had something to offer. Guess Who could have given us a look at how older blacks, having lived through anti-miscegenation laws, view interracial romances among their children. Instead, the film doesn’t seem to want to say anything more than “OMFG! He’s a white boy! Let’s crack some jokes, y’all.” If that isn’t exploitation, I don’t know what is.

None of this is to say, of course, that including more diverse casts in remakes is a bad thing. Indeed, quite the opposite can be true – provided the actors involved are allowed to actually do some acting and aren’t merely token representations of a society hung up on the need for diversity.

A good example is the 1997 version of 12 Angry Men. Directed by William Friedkin, it hewed closely to the stellar original of 40 years prior, albeit in a way that seems notably less dated. The jury, for instance, isn’t all white. However, instead of simply changing races arbitrarily for the sake of diversity appeal, the afro-American actors involved are given an opportunity to do something with their characters. Case in point: Mykelti Williamson stepped into the racist juror role initially inhabited by Ed Begley Sr. But since casual overt racism is thankfully out of fashion these days (covert is another matter), Williamson had to improvise. He ended up playing the bigoted juror as a quasi-Nation of Islam type and did so effectively. In the wrong hands, a more diversified remake could have been ’12 Angry Black Men and the Token White Defendant.’ But because the film included a stronger selling point than ‘look, there’s black people!,’ what we are left with is a quality film that rivals the original.

Likewise, Four Brothers – John Singleton’s loose reworking of The Sons of Katie Elder – succeeded because it played to the strengths of its participants rather than exploiting their racial differences to fill seats. Singleton didn’t try to turn Mark Wahlberg into John Wayne (he was instead allowed to stay loose and crack jokes), nor did he attempt to have Andre Benjamin try become “Dean Martin, only black” Instead, he left the characters free to do their own thing while focusing on the themes of a classic western: brotherhood and frontier justice (or, in this case, street justice).

Diversixploitation and its associated maladies – tokenism and stereotyping (including, and, perhaps especially, the ‘positive’ variety) have, fortunately, met with significant backlash. The Wayans Brothers and the South Park guys (Trey Parker and Matt Stone) regularly make a mockery of the politically correct need for token characters. Minority filmmakers have refused to play into the expectations that they make minority-centric films for targeted, minority-centric audiences. Taiwanese-born Ang Lee, in case you missed it, has been knee-deep in superheroes (Hulk) and gay cowboys (Brokeback Mountain) these past few years. Even Crash, with its heavy-handedness and somewhat confused message, managed to throw a monkey wrench into the diversixploitation cookie-cutter.

Suffice it to say, some will deny that diversixploitation exists or insist that it is a necessary remedy to years of minority under/misrepresentation in film. But if that’s the case and there is nothing wrong with arbitrary and shallow diversification efforts, then why not make the next Shaft a Jewish white guy?