Culturally Unconscious

David Brooks may be able describe how not to lose in Afganistan, but he can’t say what a win would even look like. Also, while the leadership of Al Qaeda was based in Afganistan prior to 9/11,  zero of the 9/11 hijackers trained in Afganistan. I think there are good arguments that real work in stopping terrorists isn’t done in the middle east, but within the US. There is also the fact that there are real costs to the US that are much easier to measure for staying in Afganistan, the cost to the US for leaving Afganistan are all hypothetical.

The American Prospect has a good article summarizing different attempts to fight poverty through education. There are only two critiques I would make of it.

First, although KIPP does serve a subset of children in poverty who have dedicated and striving parents, I think the claim can be made that this is a large subset rather than a small one.  Also, this subset of children will be the easiest to get out of poverty and from a public policy stand point there is no reason to hold these children back while we wait for the (still non-existant) program that will end poverty for all children.

Secondly, forced busing in the 70s didn’t fuel white flight. It merely perpetuated a decades long trend that had started with the post WWII economic boom and had a number of underlying causes such as government subsidized mortgages and the creation of the interstate highway system.

Charles Blow’s most recent op-ed in the NYT does a good job of questioning the talking points coming from both the left and right about the extent race places in critiques of President Obama. There are two things about many of Blow’s pieces that I really appreciate and are often lacking from other commentators: recognition of complexity and nuance, as well as the willingness to avoid answering the questions he asks. Blow seems to realize that there isn’t enough room in an 800 word article to reach conclusions about most important issues. Unfortunately most pundits don’t seem to get that.

I just watched Thursday’s Daily Show online and it has a clip that captures difficulties of “winning” in Afganistan. Simply put I don’t know anyone who can describe what winning in Afganistan is or how to achieve that undefinable win. There are Neoconservatives that have Utopian visions of a stable and democratic Afganistan, but even most of them will admit that it will take hundreds of billions of dollars, an unknown number of years and lives sacrificed.  However difficult it is for people to argue for staying in Afganistan, I haven’t heard any advocates for scaling the war in Afganistan down, who can offer a vision for Afganistan without the US that clearly describes the effects both for Afganistan, and US national security interests. I think this lack of a vision is a major hindrance to developing a policy and gaining political support for getting the US military out of Afganistan. If the Iraq war has shown us anything, it is that no matter how inconceivable “victory” is, the situation has to become very unstomachable before there are major reductions in the US military presence in foreign country.

No matter how health reform happened, a bill was going to have to emerge from the Senate Finance committee. However, there was no reason for the Obama administration to put so much emphasis on what that committee was producing. Three committees in the House of Representatives have each voted in favor of their own differing health care bills, as has the Senate Health Education and Welfare Committee. Many observes noted that all of the committee bills would differ from whatever final bill emerged from the House – Senate conference committee. So has so much weight gone to what the finance committee would produce? Couldn’t they have passed a bill much earlier, (before the August recess mud slinging) and just acknowledged that the final bill would materialize later, much closer to the end of the legislative process?

Max Baucus not only wasted valuable time and political capital with his gang of six meetings, but also emulated one of the most criticized elements of Bill Clinton’s 94′ health care failure. By limiting who participated in the negotiations over the health care bill he guaranteed that when people did see what was in the Bill, many of them would be unhappy.

David Brooks is a smart guy. Unfortunately, in his most recent op-ed, he’s not smart enough to figure out that tea-party supports may have a wide number of grievances for not supporting President Obama and his policies. I’m sure that many of them aren’t racist. …At the same time I know that many of them are racist. A couple days ago while running some errands I was in an establishment in Clarksdale, Mississippi and overheard some say: “That damn black Obama. All those lazy n****** just want to sit around and be given things without working for them, and he’s going to give it to them.” I don’t know how many tea-party people shared that woman’s feelings but the fact that she felt comfortable saying what she did only leads me to believe that there are many other people who share her opinions. I only wish that the many conservatives who aren’t racist, such as David Brooks, were willing to confront those within their own ranks who let racial animosity prevent worthwhile discussions of the strengths and weakness of President Obama’s policies.

I’ve thought about how the left of the Democratic Party (represented by the Progressive Caucus) has threatened to withhold support for health care reform if it lacks a public option. It seems to me that many people on the left in making demands of their way or no way, forget that politics is compromise. If they knew they had the votes for a public option, I imagine that they would be pushing for single payer health insurance, which is what many of them admittedly want. When someone is so overwhelmingly strong that they never have to engage their opponent in anyway, they aren’t really engaging in politics, or reality.

This isn’t to say that progressives shouldn’t push as hard as they can to get what they want. But when it becomes clear that they won’t be able to achieve their goal in perfection, they should be willing to accept something that would be a great improvement over the status quo.