| Number 148 | March 8, 2002 |
|
This Week:
|
|
Greetings, Thank you to all who contributed to the just-completed Nygaard Notes Pledge Drive. I really appreciate the support. Contributions are still coming in, and don't feel like you have to wait for a pledge drive to send your check. They are always welcome! I just have to pass on a creative idea sent along by new reader Patty, in Nebraska. Patty received her renewal notice from TIME Magazine, and instead of renewing her subscription to that august newsweekly, instead sent along a contribution to Nygaard Notes in exchange for a one-year subscription to THIS august newsweekly. Now, there's an example of a re-allocation of your news-and-information budget that really makes sense, don't you think? Maybe she'll start a trend... Thanks, Patty. Welcome to the new readers this week, and especially to a couple who had let their subscriptions lapse and are now back in the fold. It's good to have you back! As always, I look forward to hearing your comments, whatever they may be. Happy International Women's Day to you all. Nygaard |
|
|
Since 2002 is an election year, many of you may be preparing to protect yourself from the barrage of manipulative political ads and the yammer of whichever Tweedledum or Tweedledee your local "major" political parties may be shoving in your face this year. Take heart! You could, instead, tune into the myriad activities around the country aimed at bringing about some important structural changes to our democratic system. One of the most practical and well-developed ideas on the agenda is the idea of Proportional Representation. PR is basically a challenge to the "winner-take-all" election system, in which a candidate needs only 50.1 percent of the vote in order to "represent" everyone. Although it takes various forms, PR in essence proposes that people should be represented in the political system in proportion to their numbers in the population. I've talked a lot about Proportional Representation over the years, starting ‘way back in Nygaard Notes #7. It's not the final answer, but it is a common-sense idea that would make our democracy better than it is now. Lots of other countries already use it, so it's not some wacky leftist plot (Don't get me wrong; there's nothing wrong with a good old wacky leftist plot now and then!) The idea in all its forms is explained in detail on the website of the Center for Voting and Democracy at http://www.fairvote.org/. If you live in Minnesota, you're really in luck. You have a great opportunity to learn about the idea this very month. The local organization called FairVote Minnesota will be holding one of its regular 4-consecutive-Tuesday study circles on the issue starting on March 19th. I went to one of these, years ago, and haven't been the same since! Learn more about the upcoming circle (and about FairVote Minnesota) by visiting their new and improved website at http://www.fairvotemn.org/. Or you can just call organizer Ken Bearman at (612) 827-5131 or by email at info@FairVoteMN.org. |
|
The most recent military escalation in Afghanistan started last weekend, and the local paper, the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) didn't even bother to place the news on the front page, relegating the largest deployment of American ground forces in years to a short article on page 7. The front page that day was reserved for more important headlines, including "Are Minnesota's Big, Bad Winters Losing Their Bite?" Apparently we have become so inured to war that it isn't even front-page news any more. The New York Times ("All the News That's Fit to Print") of Monday, March 4th, in contrast, had not only a "news" report on its front page, but also an "analysis." After reading them, it occurs to me that it might have been better to leave this propaganda off the front page, after all. The "analysis"—headlined "New Plan: Join the Fray"—explained the latest U.S. offensive by claiming that "the American military seems to have learned the bitter lessons of Tora Bora." Recall that in December it was reported that Osama et al were holed up in the region of Afghanistan called Tora Bora, and a major military operation was launched to bring them back "dead or alive." That mission failed, and apparently officials still have no idea where the top al-Qaeda leadership may be. Nonetheless, the Pentagon is "basking in the glow of a largely successful war," according to reporter Michael Gordon. So the anomaly of Tora Bora, the results of which "were clearly not what the Pentagon intended," must be explained. As Gordon puts it, "In retrospect, it is clear that an over-reliance on Afghan proxy forces contributed to the muddled ending there." (Doesn't "muddled ending" sound a lot better than "failure?") Gordon states that "When the Bush administration planned its strategy for Afghanistan it decided that the bulk of the ground fighting would be done by its new found Afghan allies." (Doesn't "allies" sound a lot better than "mercenaries?") It's in the next paragraph that we get to the hard-core propaganda. Gordon explains that "The theory was that avoiding the deployment of large numbers of American ground troops would avoid a backlash by Afghans who have long resented foreign invaders." This is ridiculous on two levels. First of all, are we really expected to believe that the average Afghan doesn't resent the "foreign invader" that has been dropping megatons of antipersonnel and other bombs on them, killing thousands and displacing hundreds of times that many? More importantly, Gordon fails to point out the real "theory" behind the U.S. decision to use these proxy forces. Far from learning the "bitter lessons of Tora Bora," the Pentagon has well learned the bitter lessons of Vietnam, where domestic opposition to that immoral war was directly related to the number of American soldiers sent home in body bags. Such Pentagon-friendly "spin" might be expected when you note that Gordon's "analysis" includes only two direct quotations, one from "a senior Bush administration official" and the other from "a senior military official" (both anonymous, as usual). A true "analysis" of the current war might be expected to call on at least one of the numerous scholars or non-governmental organizations who might be able to help us learn some different "bitter lessons" than those approved by the Pentagon. |
|
When I complain, as I have for the past couple of weeks, that American Ideology makes a fetish of Freedom, my point is not to argue against Freedom (Good heavens!), but rather to argue that it is not desirable to totally and uncritically accept ANY value as an unqualified good (or bad). There's more than one value in the world, after all. I've been arguing that Freedom without responsibility is nothing more than self-centered License. It's hard for most Americans to imagine, but in some cultures the difference between Freedom and responsibility is not all that clear, to the point where it could almost be said that Freedom is responsibility. That requires a little explaining. The Human Dilemma I think that the basic human dilemma, with which all human beings must somehow come to terms, is the paradox between being an individual and being a part of the community, between being separate and being connected, between the "self" and the "other." In reality, we are simultaneously individuals and also pieces of a larger social fabric. How could it be otherwise? Even a hermit is not simply an individual, but rather is defined by his or her willful disconnection from society. No one is an island, blah, blah, blah. But so what? The setting of a boundary between the individual "self" and the infinite "other" is a fluid and dynamic task. The degree of success of this project is important enough that some psychologists and family systems therapists have come up with a somewhat awkward term—"differentiation"—to describe it. Not only is the differentiation dilemma resolved in different ways and to different degrees within each individual person, but the method and relative success of this struggle varies from culture to culture. In a previous era of my life I worked, briefly, as a family therapist. During that time I came to believe that the mainstream culture of the United States has tilted quite far in its emphasis toward the individualist conception of identity, at the expense of a broader social or public conception. Therapeutic "success" in the United States, therefore, often comes to be defined as the individual's adaptation to, rather than their engagement with, whatever social fabric happens to surround them. (Even the method of doing "therapy," at least in the institutions where I worked, seemed to me heavily biased toward individualism, which is largely why I made a quick exit from the profession.) Had I not made modest efforts prior to my "therapy period" to learn about cultures other than my own, I doubt that I would have even noticed, let alone had a problem with, the fact that the "self" was at the center of the mainstream therapeutic process. But notice it I did, and this awareness has served me well in subsequent years as I have continued to reconcile not only my personal identity issues but also as I have worked to understand the contradictions in our political culture. In my own life I have found that my sense of identity has to do with more than my individual gifts and deficits, such as those bestowed by genes and fate. In addition to being a male of European descent, for example, I also understand myself to be a citizen, a member of the working class, a seeker of justice, a fighter, a rabble-rouser, and a basketball player, among other things. All of these things are socially defined. My own belief is that everything I am—that is, my identity—is connected to what I am to others. In fact, my own conception of my identity is that I AM what I am to and with others. In this sense, I can't understand the idea of Freedom without connecting it to my idea of responsibility to my community, my society, even to the earth. What Liberation Might Mean What, then, does it mean to a person like me to be "Free?" It's not so simple. Since the Freedom that we have come to know in the United States is so often confused with License, I prefer to think in terms of Liberation. Liberation assumes a release from arbitrary or unjust restrictions or bondage, and thus assumes a goal of equality (in the sense that no one should be arbitrarily or unjustly restricted by another). American Freedom, in contrast, implies an endless addition to whatever degree of freedom an individual possesses. I want to be liberated from unjust restrictions, but I don't want to be free to dominate others who may be weaker than I. That wouldn't even be "Freedom" to me. Last week I talked about the three big targets of the individualist Freedom-fetishizers: Welfare, Social Security, and the Income Tax. All three of these programs have serious problems. Social Security is inadequately funded, the progressive income tax gets less progressive every year, and welfare has long been more about punishment than about compassion. Still, all three make a positive difference in the lives of real people, and thus must be defended. But we can't limit ourselves to defending things. We have to tap into and articulate the positive alternative ideology which I believe is hidden beneath the dominant American Free Market ideology. The new institutions that we can imagine and begin to build—and such a creative and positive building is beginning to supplant the narrow "protest" mentality that so many of us have embraced over the past couple of decades—must be based on a new Liberation Ideology. Complex, dynamic, and fundamentally rooted in a democratic process, such an ideology would refuse to elevate any value to the status of fetish. Short-term, then, we must defend the popular social programs that are currently under attack. Long-term, we need to create better ones, or move beyond them entirely. For example, first we defend Social Security, then we come up with proposals to strengthen the program and make it more like it should be. But, beyond that, we need to articulate a vision that is beyond capitalism, a vision of a society in which human needs come before the needs of the Market. In such a society, we won't even need a program called "Social Security," because there will be no mechanical marketplace making us insecure in the first place. A true Liberation Ideology would use a radically democratic process to uncover, develop, and balance all of the values that are important to us as human beings. Rather than striving for unlimited Freedom for a few, the society that we have it within our ability to create must instead be based on the idea that Jim Hightower puts so simply and eloquently: Everyone is better off when everyone is better off. In the individualist world, America is great because, as Ronald Reagan said, "Anyone can become a millionaire." An alternative vision would say that America would be great if no one wanted to become one. |