“I know it when I see it,” is Potter Stewart’s famous definition of hard-core pornography, the only kind of obscenity that he felt was unprotected by the First Amendment.
The reaction to Apple’s iPad seems to be taking something of a converse form. We’ve been waiting for months for Apple to produce something, and the general reaction seems to be one of mild to sharp disappointment. It’s ‘a giant iPhone’ is the most common complaint – revealing how much we now take that marvelous piece of technology, only a few years old, for granted. What’s amusing is that in the discussions leading up to the product’s announcement, there wasn’t really very of a consensus about what the product should be able to do, much less how costly it should be on the wallet. We don’t know what we want in an Apple tablet, “but we know we haven’t seen it.”
Though I don’t always follow Marginal Revolution on everything, I think Tyler Cowen’s running discussion on Haiti has been pretty much on the mark. Even after last night’s setback in Massachusetts and the dimming prospects for real health care reform, I do think that Haiti as much as anything else will become a defining moment in the historical legacy of the Obama Presidency, a focal point – along with the war – against which the promise of the Peace Prize will be assessed.
In any event: what interests me is that even when confronted with this massive humanitarian disaster, many observers, sitting in the comfortable positions afforded by their ideological perches, still feel more passionate about issuing the usual jeremiads against ‘foreign aid’ than truly engaging with the scope of what has happened. As Cowen points out, the issue here isn’t whether foreign aid spurs economic growth but can serve a means for alleviating misery. There are legitimate debates to be held about the former, but suggesting that the fortunes of a literally wrecked country, situated on our doorstep, can be ignored on pragmatic, political, and even moral grounds because “foreign aid doesn’t work” seems obscene; at the very least, allowing the country to fester and descend even further into anarchy does little to bolster American claims to moral authority, unless one’s idea of moral authority is to sit back and watch the world with a sense of superiority. But even holding to the goal of ‘just’ alleviating misery means more than dropping off some ‘gently worn’ clothes at the local collection, setting up a soup line, or texting $10 to the American Red Cross, however noble and necessary these efforts may be. The task of dealing with misery seriously is betrayed by the heartwarming but simplistic conception of ‘charity’ that such efforts presuppose. Rather, alleviating misery means creating the organizations and institutions that allow for even very basic needs and securities to be provided, and that’s no small task – even before a disaster of this proportion; given these new circumstances, it requires sustained coordination of international relief supported by military personnel and equipment as well.
From my own perspective, a situation such as Haiti where a kind of liberal internationalism is likely to be the most successful, even though among the more politically difficult, positions to adopt, and therefore not entirely satisfying either. It offers no guarantees of success, and requires considerable expenditure of political and economic capital, all in a direction that will undermine Haitian autonomy though in the longer-term interest of restoring it. We saw a mock form of liberal internationalism at work in the Iraq War, and a not very effective one at work in the Afghan War; here, however, there are more legitimate foundations for international intervention and the more or less officious forms of paternalism that comes with it. The chief source of optimism is that the Haitian people themselves seem to have some fair measure of social capital – networks of trust and cooperation – that if engaged with carefully and properly might lead to heightened probability for eventual success.
Not much posting here of late; I’ve been immersed in the gruesome process of trying to crank out my dissertation proposal. I’m always insisting that all I want to do is a nice, efficient, compact framing…why then, am I constantly finding Frankenstein on my desktop? Niklas Luhmann is to blame, obviously.
In the meantime, since ‘Broken Social Scene‘ seems as apt a description as any for my present situation, here’s a video from their truly superb album, You Forgot It In People.
1. Neoliberalism prevails through the end. Africa is the only continent to survive the great deluge, and what do the rich and politically connected do? Head straight there to set up camp! “That’s why they call it the Cape of Good Hope” Really? Really?
2. Speaking neoliberalism, the s*** (this is still a family blog) hits the fan, and the G20 is now back to being the G8. Ugh. Assholes.
3. Speaking of Africa, how come our brilliant but loopy chief scientist tells us that the only way humanity is going to survive the Apolcalypse is to head to the Himalayan hills, when we could have just could have a built a few big tents in the Sahara? It seems to have come out of the whole thing reasonably intact.
4. “‘Those Chinese are amazing. I never thought it would have been possible in this little time.” This after hinting that essentially the future of humanity, such as it is, was saved on the back of Tibetan labor. I bet those monks never got a ticket on the life raft.
5. The U.S. just gets out of from under a thick layer of ice, and it has to suffer the same special effects all over again. Crap.
6. Actually, worse special effects, since the USS John F. Kennedy has apparently grown to three times the size of the Washington Mall.
7. And the Poseidon has to get flipped over again, too. Ugh. Seasick.
8. ‘Old Faithful,’ supervolcano. Take that, turistas!
9. Woody Harrelson has stopped acting and become the prophet we knew him to be.
10. Gordon, the plastic surgeon, deserved better.
Short review: Don’t get me wrong. I love disaster movies. But this was three hours of dreck. I thought it would be perfect relief after a busy week. It wasn’t. The end.
Nothing pleasing or pleasant (or really unexpected) to report from yesterday’s election news, but most unsettling was the decision by Maine voters to repeal gay marriage. James Kwak at The Baseline Scenario, however, posts on some reasons for cautious optimism, nevertheless.
For someone who takes the 1970s and the 1980s as the frame of reference, the shift in opinion vis-a-vis gay marriage over the past ten years has indeed been surprising and welcome. With progress, however, comes disappointment; but then again, I’ve come to think of disappointment as a part of the genetic code of our federal system of governance. In any event, I’d also be interested in knowing not only the source of shifts in public opinion, but within the gay community itself – if I’m not mistaken, commitment among gays and lesbians to such a ‘bourgeois’ ideal as marriage was hardly uncontroversial or widespread, even as recently as twenty years ago. I should read Tina Fetner’s book, which may have some answers.
