Useful Idiots

Another Democratic loyalist has gone on Twitter to rant about the evil "friends" who, "bragging about how at least they were smart enough not to vote for Hillary, voted for Jill Stein or Gary Johnston."  She's the "Mayor of Zero F**Ksville" (asterisks sic) and a "2-Time NYT Bestselling Author," so you know she's not only really cool, she's really smart.  I did a little ranting myself in reply, and remembered something I left out out of my most recent post about such people.

During the twenty-five years I ran the GLB Speakers Bureau in Bloomington, people often failed to show up for panels they'd signed on to do.  I found that it helped if I sent out email at the beginning of each week to remind them: not individually, but a list of the week's panels with the names of those who were scheduled to speak.  This helped, though it didn't solve the problem entirely.  I'm not sure what would have, short of breaking down their doors and carrying them bodily to the location.  Speakers Bureau is an all-volunteer organization, including me as the coordinator, so the most I could do was remove from the mailing list those people who failed to show up too often.

But one of our volunteers, a woman about my age, objected even to the reminder messages.  Adults should honor their commitments, she declared, without having to be coddled or cajoled.  I'm not sure what she had in mind -- kick them off the mailing list the first time they didn't show?  To some extent I agreed with her, but as I saw it my first priority was not to try to force the volunteers to grow up, it was to do what I could to ensure that speakers showed up where and when we'd promised they would.  Since we didn't pay the volunteers, and were asking them to give their time (admittedly for a pleasant task, that of speaking about their lives in public), I believed a certain amount of coddling, even indulgence, wasn't out of line.  It's worth noting that this woman had some Native American ancestry, and was proud of what she saw as Indians' cultural superiority over deracinated whites; yet her position on this matter seemed to be rooted in Western Enlightenment individualism, with some Puritan punitiveness laid on for spice.

The analogy I'm drawing here will be evident, I hope.  As I wrote before, I agree that voting is a citizen's duty, one I carry out myself; but there are no direct consequences for not voting, and I'm not sure there ought to be.  But we also need a "None of the Above" option on the ballots, with consequences for the candidates if they can't beat NOTA at the polls.  In the meantime, it's reasonable to remember that voters are volunteers, even if that means voluntarily carrying out a duty.  And none of these frothers have shown me any reason to believe that berating the voters will win them over.  Just on general principles, I would expect it to have the opposite effect.  If you're not feeling particularly motivated to go to the polls, and some crank is calling you names for not loving their crummy candidate, why not just stay home?

For that matter, I thought the parties recognized this.  A lot of their volunteer work is aimed at making it easier to vote, recognizing that there are barriers.  This is not the airy-fairy fantasy of an aging hippie, it's what the parties actually do.   Do they still offer voters rides to the polls, or is that coddling and spoiling them, when they should act like adults and crawl on their hands and knees to the polling place, grateful to cast their vote for whatever corrupt hack the party leadership has in its wisdom placed on the ballot?

So I wonder who appointed people like Kathy Griffin and Stonekettle the Tough Love enforcers of the Democratic Party.  Are they useful idiots for Trump?  Or are they secretly, as I suggested sarcastically in a reply to Griffin this morning, being paid by Putin to depress Democratic turnout?  It's one thing to be uninspiring, and quite another to actively drive people away from the party.

Six of One, Half a Dozen of the Other

I doubt it myself: More likely Americans will just hope for a new president they can deify, while demonizing the one currently in office.  Republican loyalists always found it easy to remember that Obama was human, and Democratic loyalists can see Trump's feet of clay without corrective lenses.  The hard part is not to deify the president you support, and most people seem to find it not just hard but impossible.

This meme, whose creator apparently removed it from Twitter after it was criticized, fits in nicely here:

The most obvious point the meme's maker overlooked was that he or she was describing Donald Trump.

I have to wonder whom it's addressed to.  Many liberals and progressives took exactly these points into consideration when they voted for Clinton.  Clinton won the popular vote; she only lost in the Electoral College.  Those who voted for Trump and tilted the Electoral College in his favor were mostly not, as far as I know, liberals or progressives.  So this appears to be just one more party-loyalist attack on the thought criminals who Let Hillary Down, though it's not clear just how they (we) did so. Things have come to such a turn that a loyalist like this could admit, if only rhetorically, that Clinton was not a very inspiring candidate, and so on.  That's of no importance.  More important is that whoever made this still has no idea what went wrong.

Some responses on Twitter indicated that the mememaker, faced with these and other criticisms, has deleted the tweet in which it appeared, saying that all they meant was that we should be good to each other, or some such vacuous prattle.  But this sort of barely passive-aggressive attack on the voters he or she pretends to be appealing to is the exact opposite of being good to each other.

... Posting has, I confess with tears and in sackcloth and ashes, been sparse around here lately, and I'm afraid it's not going to improve much very soon.  I may be moving to a new residence, and while everything is up in the air I'll be even less likely to write.  But I'm still alive and functional, at least in principle.

P.S.  Seth MacFarlane reposted the "Dear Liberals and Independents" meme on Twitter.  Someone replied with a corrected version:

Of course, that won a scolding from a Clintonbot.  Maybe a meaner version of the meme is called for.  I'll give it some thought.

Public and Privates

I'm not surprised by this material, since it's about what I expected from Clinton as the corporatist Reagan Democrat she is. But you can see why she didn't want it made public -- I mean, "There is such a bias against people who have led successful and/or complicated lives"! I feel their pain.

At the Goldman Sachs Builders and Innovators Summit, Clinton responded to a question from chief executive Lloyd Blankfein, who quipped that you “go to Washington” to “make a small fortune.” Clinton agreed with the comment, and complained about ethics rules that require officials to divest from certain assets before entering government. “There is such a bias against people who have led successful and/or complicated lives,” Clinton said.

At a 2013 speech for Morgan Stanley on April 18, Clinton praised the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan — which would reduce corporate tax rates while raising the Social Security age. “But Simpson-Bowles — and I know you heard from Erskine earlier today — put forth the right framework. Namely, we have to restrain spending, we have to have adequate revenues, and we have to incentivize growth. It’s a three-part formula,” she said ...

But there are signs in the emails released by Wikileaks that she also took a fairly progressive stance on certain topics, including health reform ...

But during the campaign this year, she again reversed her position, declaring that single payer will “never, ever” happen in the U.S. Audio obtained by The Intercept last week showed Clinton dismissing the idea of free healthcare during another private event with donors.

I've already seen Clintonistas dismissing the new Wikileaks material as no big deal, underwhelming, a letdown. And maybe it is, if you expected/ hoped it would include celebrations of eating aborted babies. And as I say, there are not really any surprises to her critics; just what we expected.

The thing to remember is that partisans will dismiss any criticism of their candidate. Trump fans aren't going to be bothered by the latest video showing Trump to be a vilely sexist scumbag -- Oh please, is that news? Tell us something we didn't already know -- because they know what he's like and that's why they like him. So do his critics, but they enjoy clucking over his awfulness.  The same is true of Clinton, as it was of Obama.  Oh, she's a devout corporatist and warmonger?  Tell us something we didn't already know!  What did you expect, Che Guevara?

You Cannot Hope to Bribe or Twist

Avedon Carol's Sideshow continues to be a very useful source of links, but there's less discussion in the comments than there used to be.  I remember having some spirited debates there in 2008, especially.  Her blog is still prominent enough to draw fire from Democratic loyalists, however, and under the latest post is a fine example of the syndrome.  I'm going to quote the whole thing, because comments have a tendency to disappear over time as one commenting platform is replaced by another, and it might be handy to be able to quote this in the future as an example of a well-trained Clintonbot.

Every time the "lesser evil" debate comes up, it bears repeating that we could solve this once and for all with approval voting. And repeating, and repeating. The two-party monopoly is a function of the voting system, and that can be fixed.

Lots of luck fixing that; I can't see Clinton taking any interest in the project, or the party elites on either side.  How would you change the voting system, by the way?  By voting?

In this particular case, I have to say the "lesser evil" question looks pretty easy to me. Clinton has the most progressive Democratic platform ever*, and while she's more hawkish than Obama and that sucks, that would still makes her the second least hawkish president in over 100 years. Her opponent is a narcissist with ADD who's riding a wave of hate and wants to know why we don't just nuke more countries. I voted Nader because I didn't see the difference between Gore and Bush, and I think history has proven that there was one. But there is no doubt at all that, as inadequate to the deeper challenges as Clinton is, she's a damn sight better than Trump.

Nice footwork.  As far as I can tell, there's no need to prove that Clinton is the lesser evil to anyone but a Trump supporter.  If you're addressing a frustrated progressive or liberal who says that everybody must vote for Clinton because otherwise Trump will win, that Clinton is the lesser evil is already given.  The Sanders supporters who don't want to vote for Clinton aren't really interested in the question; they recognize that even if Clinton is the lesser evil, she's still very evil; even if she's not as dangerous as Trump, she's still very dangerous.  So this commenter, whether intentionally or out of standard partisan cluelessness, misses the point completely.

The commenter's defenses are of course debatable.  It's certainly open to question whether Clinton would be "the second least hawkish president in 100 years", especially if (as it appears) the least hawkish president is supposed to be Obama.  I'm not really interested in how progressive the current Democratic platform is, and I see no reason to suppose that this commenter is any better informed on that topic than on Clinton's hawkishness.

On the fabled difference between Gore and Bush, much beloved of Democratic loyalists, no one has any idea what Gore would have done if he'd become president.  I suppose that the commenter has in mind Gore's environmental campaigning after he became a more or less private citizen, but private citizens are much less constrained that elected officials, including American presidents.  (Again, it's funny how partisans oscillate between touting the great power of presidents on one hand, and denying that they can do anything on the other.)   Gore didn't distinguish himself as a progressive while he was vice-president, and I see no reason to suppose that he'd have changed if he'd gained the White House.  It might be pertinent to recall the difference between Jimmy Carter's inspiring behavior and pronouncements since he became a private citizen, and his squalid record while he was in the Oval Office.  For what little it's worth, I voted for Nader not because I thought there was no difference between Gore and Bush, but because the differences were too small to suit me.  Anyone who wants to argue this line should have to address the many continuities between Bush and Obama, in terms of hawkishnness and hostility to civil liberties at home.

"Her opponent is a narcissist with ADD who's riding a wave of hate and wants to know why we don't just nuke more countries."  I've become increasingly intolerant of Democrats who use mental illness as an accusation against Trump and his followers.  As far as I know, no mental health professional is in a position to diagnose Trump with any condition, so neither this commenter nor I know whether Trump has ADD for example.  Even if he did, mental illness (like mental retardation) is not a moral failing, yet it's clear that these Dems assume that it is.  If Clinton or Obama were known to have ADD or some other condition, their fans and their organizations would be spinning it in terms of a heroic individual's struggle with a cripping disease, and they would assure the nation that the illness would not hinder the candidate's performance in office.  It's especially ironic since a favorite anti-Trump talking point is his mockery of a disabled journalist a few months ago.  The wave of hate that has been directed by Democrats at Trump all along means that they're in no position to cast the first stone.

*Some would say "who cares about the platform, it's all lies." But history shows that, whether they truly believe it or not, presidents try to keep the majority of their promises. Go ahead and discount the Democratic platform by 1/3; it's still light years from Trump.

Would "some" say that?  Maybe.  "Some" will probably say anything you like; it's a big world.  Just how far apart Clinton and Trump really are is hard to say, and I don't see that it matters, certainly not enough to spend much time debating it.  For all that Trump has taken many vile positions, his lack of any real political experience means that he has no record to judge what kind of a president he'd make.  Not that I have any wish to find out, and his record as a businessman inspires no optimism anyway.  But "light years"?  I don't think so.  I guess that if you're one of the Good Guys, as the commenter evidently assumes him or herself to be, that kind of childish exaggeration ("thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis big!") is supposed to pass for rational discourse.  Once again, we see that Democratic apologists won't be satisfied if you recognize Clinton as the lesser evil; you must convince yourself that she's a positive good.

Trump Delenda Est?

Remember: the Democratic Party bosses were (and are) more concerned with stopping Bernie Sanders than with stopping Donald Trump.

Kshama Sawant, the Socialist city council member from Seattle, was on Democracy Now this morning.  She made the above point in a fine debate with Rebecca Traister of New York magazine, and I think it will be a useful riposte, not only to Democratic loyalists who cling to Clinton as "all that stands between us and Il Douche," but to self-styled "pragmaticists."  I've said before that many Democrats would rather lose to a Republican than break with their corporate cronies, and if nothing else, the past year has confirmed that abundantly.

I want to give Rebecca Traister credit; though I disagree with much of what she said, she was careful to stay on the issues instead of descending into panicky hyperbole and abuse as most Democratic loyalists and Clinton supporters do when they must confront Clinton's critics.  Kshama Sawant impressed me especially because she didn't let Traister set the terms of the debate, didn't let herself be diverted from her points.  The whole segment is worth reading (or listening to, if you prefer), just as an example of responsible debate.

Here are the remarks by Kshama Sawant that I referred to above:

But here’s the question I would like to ask: If the Democratic Party establishment, the Democratic National Committee, was—had as its first priority to defeat Trump—I have no doubt that they want to defeat Trump, but if that was their topmost priority, then why did they not do everything in their power to promote the one candidate who, through many, many polls, was indicated to have been a really prominent, a very powerful voice against Trump and having the real possibility of winning against Trump?

I think this is an eminently fair question, and I intend to put it to every Clinton supporter I talk to.  Polls have their limitations, of course, but as I've also pointed out before, the Democratic bosses know what the polls show, and must be aware how unpopular most of their policies are.  Perhaps the polls were wrong, but then so were the bosses: they were taken completely by surprise when Clinton's road to the nomination turned out not to be a cakewalk as everyone had expected to be.  Bernie Sanders not only didn't fall out of the race early on, as all the Sensible People knew he would, he defeated Clinton repeatedly, often resoundingly, in numerous states.  I think it's also reasonable to believe that if not for DNC malfeasance and corporate media irresponsibility, he could have won the nomination in the primaries.

But the key point is that polls showed consistently that Sanders could have beaten Trump more certainly and securely than Clinton could.  That might not be true now, since Sanders went over to the Dark Side, and of course it's entirely possible that what the polls showed earlier this summer would not have stayed true after the convention.  As Sawant asks, if defeating Trump was the vital thing, then why did the party bosses support a candidate who very likely couldn't do it?

This counters most, maybe all of the arguments made by Clinton's supporters.  Yes, it would be nice to have a woman president; but we have to be realists, and in this campaign we have to put such considerations aside for the greater and indeed necessary good of defeating Trump.  That's the argument made against Sanders breaking with the Democrats and (say) joining Jill Stein and the Greens, isn't it?  It's a nice pipe dream, but all that matters is defeating Trump.  (My only reservation about Sawant's performance this morning is that she was a bit evasive about the consequences of supporting Jill Stein, whose positions are good but doesn't have any realistic chance of defeating Trump in a three-way race, not even if Sanders joined her.)

Which indicates that for the party bosses, defeating Trump is not all that essential.  They will suffer less than most Americans, or most people in the world, if Trump is elected -- aside from the First World Problem of having lost the election, to be sure, which is traumatic but they'll get over it.  If Clinton is defeated, the Democrats will blame everyone but themselves.  But they must be held responsible for ignoring hard political realities and pushing a candidate who's almost as unpopular as Trump himself, in order to maintain their control over the party.  If Clinton does win, it won't be because she's the best, most qualified candidate, but because the alternative was so much worse.

Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Brain

One benefit, if that's the right word, of using social media is that they bring me into fairly direct interaction with people who are ignorant, misinformed, and don't think very well.  Over the years I've been rather spoiled by reading the work of people who work hard to inform themselves, do their best to think critically, and do a pretty good job of it, at least within the pages of their published writing.  I've also exposed myself to media from a variety of positions, so while I'd hardly claim to be the most informed person on the planet, I'm better informed than most people I talk to.

So it's not surprising that when I've had a discussion with people who not only haven't read much or thought much or ranged beyond the corporate media for news, but who have actively sought to shut out of their awareness anything but Fox News or Breitbart.com or WorldNewsDaily (or Occupy Democrats or Daily Kos), I've been baffled.  I've been asking myself just how much thinking it's fair to demand from people.  As much as I demand of myself, I suppose, but that seems to set the bar much higher than I realized for a long time.

I remind myself that I've arranged my life so as to leave plenty of room for reading and thinking and learning.  People who chose to raise families, who've had demanding jobs that took time away even from spending time with their families, have a legitimate excuse for not pasturing their souls.  Still, I don't think I (or anyone else) is obligated to respect or take seriously the opinions of people who haven't bothered to inform themselves or consider alternatives.

It's a popular notion that people aren't equally gifted intellectually, and I try to bear that in mind.  The doctrine "All men are created equal" is dismissed lightly, mostly it seems by people who assume themselves to be in the superior ranks; again, they don't seem to have reached that conclusion by examining evidence, they just take it for granted.  Yet I find that if I dismiss such people's misinformed, irrational opinions, they indignantly appeal to egalitarianism: Everybody's entitled to their opinion!  My opinion is as good as yours! You're just a smart-aleck know-it-all, you think you're better than everybody else!  It's not really elitism. however, to say that some opinions are worth less than others, and indeed many aren't worth a damn.  (This is where I part company with someone like Noam Chomsky when he says "It is not possible to respond to opinions," especially when he then proceeds to discuss how you can respond to opinions.  Yes, debating opinions is messy and difficult, but so is debating arguments, which Chomsky thinks is possible.)  I think it's significant that people who insist that every opinion is as good or another don't extend that dogma to other people's opinions (mine, for example). 

Politics and religion are probably the most vexed areas for this.  I've come to realize that partisans, whether of Obama or Clinton or Trump, don't care about reasons or factual accuracy where their heroes are concerned.  It's probably not a complete waste of time to show why Donald Trump is a liar, a racist, or a corrupt thug, but it won't have much effect on his supporters, who mostly like his lies, racism, and corruption.  The same is true of Hillary Clinton's supporters.  (And of Obama, but he's old news now.)  On one hand they prefer to be uninformed about her record, but when it gets right down to it they mostly agree with her destructive, warmongering foreign policy history, her corporatist economic policy, and her support for structural racism in the drug war and the private prison system.  Dishonesty and irrationality go with electoral politics like a horse and carriage.  Besides, half of the population is below average, so we must have a meritocracy: our elites have never led us wrong before.

There are other takes on the problem, and all this is preamble to one of them.  Someone I know shared this meme on Facebook yesterday.

He remarked, "... sorry about my many deeply bigoted friends. i suppose they're doing the best they can to get by in a deeply crazy time and place."

I commented, "I can love my neighbor while disapproving strongly of her religion or other beliefs. I disapprove of all religions. This meme reeks of 'Some of my best friends are,' which is one of the Seven Warning Signals of Bigotry."

He responded, "on disapproving of religions. i hate their hierarchies... not their believers (the sin, not the sinner, as one tires of hearing). the believers generally seem to be honestly trying to tell me something about their lives with what they think will be the most effective tools-at-hand. when all they have to say is some stuff i've known about since grade-school, it can... it does... become tiresome very quickly. but, with some good faith on both sides, sometimes i can get something out of such a discussion (namely, a chance to tell them something about my life; nothing in social life with one's clothes on can match the feeling of being listened to with attention)."

I replied:

"Hierarchies" are only part of religion, and they are not limited to religion anyway. My objection to religions is that they are false, hierarchies or no. And I didn't say anything about "hate," which is a meaningless buzzword and a sign of bad faith.

"the believers generally seem to be honestly trying to tell me something about their lives with what they think will be the most effective tools-at-hand." Sometimes yes, sometimes no, but once it becomes clear that they are not interested in discussing in good faith, I tune them out. There's nothing wrong with that; life is short. Bad faith and dishonesty are part of human nature, but I'm not obligated to pretend that they're anything but spinach, and I say the hell with it.

The same is true of science cultists and conspiracy theory mongers. They too are trying to tell me something about their lives with what they think will be the most effective tools-at-hand, but I'm not obligated to pretend that they're either right or honest. We're not children anymore, and there's no obligation to pretend that the crayon scrawl that's supposed to be a superhero looks like anything but random lines. For a five year old, of course; for a thirty-year-old and up, no.

I hadn't really thought about the condescension in his remarks about his "deeply bigoted friends," but it's definitely there.  For whatever reasons, he sees them with a patronizing contempt.  I added that he should extend the same indulgence to the shadowy overlords who control our thoughts with their media machine (my allusion to "conspiracy theory mongers" was directed at him).  Of course the same accusation might be directed at my analogy to children's drawings, but I don't think it's just.  It's my friend who was infantilizing his "deeply bigoted friends."  I -- we all -- expect adults to do better than random crayon scrawls.  There's certainly no reason I can see to pretend that their misinformed, wildly irrational opinions are as good as anyone else's.

One point that I consider revealing is his bit about "their hierarchies... not their believers (the sin, not the sinner, as one tires of hearing)".  The believers are beside the point for me: it's their beliefs.  In practice it's not so easy to distinguish between them, since people are apt to identify themselves with their beliefs, and contrary to "generally seem to be honestly trying to tell me something about their lives with what they think will be the most effective tools-at-hand," many believers revel in their bad faith.  I'm not talking only about your schlub in the street, but about educated and sophisticated thinkers.

I can see that my acquaintances, both far-right wing and center-right plus not a few of the lefties, have no idea how to proceed when someone disagrees with them.  From both positions I've been attacked for criticizing what they post.  For them to post something racist, inflammatory, or generally dishonest is exercising their sacred First Amendment rights; for me to disagree with them is to violate their freedom.  I've also been accused semi-teasingly (presumably a "microaggression"), usually by liberals, of "stirring the pot," of just saying what I say to "stir things up."  This is flagrantly patronizing, and I've slapped those people down without compunction.

Are my acquaintances, most of whom are in their fifties at least, too old and set in their ways to learn to think critically?  I don't know how to answer that question.  I don't believe one is ever too old to learn; age is not an excuse.  Be that as it may, I'm old and set in my ways too.  But at least aged bigots, having apparently led sheltered lives, need to be confronted with opposition when they blurt out their bigotry.  Their families may have to let their poisonous views pass, but I don't have to.

I've long suspected that many people love social media because they can jeer at people they think they hate from a safe distance; that their targets might talk back is unthinkable to them.  (Has anyone else noticed how many people will respond to material about a celebrity by stating their love and devotion to the celebrity directly in comments, though the material wasn't posted by the celebrity or her spokespeople?  It's like yelling at your TV in the belief that Dumpf or Hitlery will hear you.)  When one of their targets does talk back, they're flummoxed.  Like most people, they have no idea how to proceed from the point of disagreement.  Come to think of it, since they're not interested in questioning their loyalties and beliefs anyway, I guess there is no way to proceed.  And where would they have learned to think critically in the first place?  The Right has always treated the teaching of critical thinking in school as a threat to civilization, along with the Jews and gay marriage.

The question of 'media brainwashing' is important too.  The media would like to think they can affect opinion, even to manufacture and control it, but this is false advertising much of the time.  Sometimes they pander to opinions already held (jingoism, religion, partisanship, racism) and can intensify them somewhat, but rarely for long; giving them credit for the opinions seems like giving them credit for the rising of the sun because they printed the time of sunrise in advance.  It's a less persuasive claim now of all times, when Trump and Sanders have confounded our wise rulers in politics and the media.  Despite a relentless flood of apocalyptic propaganda, it appears that English voters mostly favor leaving the European Economic Community.  And so on.  Nothing inspires panic in an elite like the realization that the proles are disobeying orders, and they often do, for better and worse.  I often ask those who talk about media brainwashing how they managed to resist it; I've yet to get an answer.

In the end, shadowy overlords or no shadowy overlords (I don't think they're shadowy at all, if you bother to pay attention, but it's comforting to think of yourself as one of the few who can see what the Sheeple can't), we are responsible for what we take from the media, the pronouncements of our politicians.  No one can know everything, of course, but it's possible to apply the basics of critical thinking (summaries by Deborah Meier and Walter Kaufmann quoted in this post) and start asking sensible, relevant questions.  Then it's necessary to recognize that one might be wrong, and to pay attention to differing views until you've evaluated them.  (Whining that someone is making a career out of picking on your beliefs, that they're just a smart-aleck trying to stir things up, is not an acceptable substitute.  I don't believe I've ever done that myself, at least not since the age of six; when someone corrects me, I check the correction, and admit my error if I have made one.  Most of my friends do not.)  What to do from there is another problem, harder to answer, but the same critical tools can help.

When You Get Caught, Lie: It Worked for President Eisenhower

Lady Bracknell.  Oh, they count as Tories.  They dine with us.  Or come in the evening, at any rate.

It's a sign of how far out of touch with the general public Hillary Clinton is that she thought she could discredit Bernie Sanders by having one of her advisers complain that Sanders called for the abolition of the CIA forty-two years ago.

Jeremy Bash, a former CIA chief of staff who is now an adviser to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, told reporter Michael Crowley that Sanders’ comment “reinforces the conclusion that he’s not qualified to be commander in chief.” Bash explained: “Abolishing the CIA in the 1970s would have unilaterally disarmed America during the height of the Cold War and at a time when terrorist networks across the Middle East were gaining strength.” Bash was chief of staff for Leon Panetta at both the CIA and Defense Department, and now runs a consulting firm called Beacon Global Strategies.

As Jon Schwarz showed in the article I just quoted, Sanders's position (which he no longer holds anyway) was not really that far-out.  A former CIA agent and now writer of best-selling thrillers acknowledged as much on Democracy Now! this morning.  The Clinton campaign's move was reminiscent of Clinton's defense of her relationship with War Criminal Emeritus Henry Kissinger.  As Alex Pareene wrote, Clinton's remark

was just a little brag that would have played well in a different room.

The sort of room it would have played well in, really, is the sort of room in which the worst people in the country congregate. The fact that Clinton lapsed into speaking as if she were in that room is more or less why she’s having trouble, once again, convincing the Democratic electorate to nominate her for the presidency.

I suppose that Clinton and her advisors and supporters don't realize this.  They don't understand that for many people in both parties the word "CIA," like the name "Henry Kissinger," is a red flag.  The same goes for Bash's criticism of Sanders: Very Serious People, those who really matter, those who really run this country, know that the CIA is a good thing, a necessary bulwark protecting America from its many enemies -- like George W. Bush, it keeps us safe.  Only a loony extremist like Harry S. Truman or John F. Kennedy would think otherwise. 

I doubt, myself, that the CIA can be abolished; even imposing more oversight would be extremely difficult to achieve -- and even if it were, it would quickly be replaced by new intelligence-gathering and covert-operations agencies.  Gathering information is not in itself an illegitimate government program, nor is "intervention" of various kinds aimed at influencing the affairs of other countries; even when the specific program is illegitimate, its lack of legitimacy is not a concern of our rulers. Where to draw the line between legitimate and illegitimate intervention is a matter of judgment, so oversight and debate are vital.  The trouble is that we don't have enough of either.

As it happens, I had just finished reading a fascinating book, Subversion as Foreign Policy: The Secret Eisenhower and Dulles Debacle in Indonesia by Audrey R. and George McT. Kahin, published by The New Press in 1995, which was relevant to this question.  The book is about US meddling in Indonesian politics in the 1950s that basically blew up in the Eisenhower administration's face.  Instead of weakening then-President Sukarno, it strengthened him.  Instead of bringing about a "stable" (like "free world," a Newspeak euphemism for murderous right-wing dicatorships) government in Indonesia, it set off a civil war.  Instead of suppressing the Indonesian Communist party, it increased its prestige and influence.  Instead of pushing Indonesia away from its neutralist policy (which the US typically interpreted as pro-Soviet), it pushed it closer to the USSR until the US backed down.  Ultimately it led to the horrific massacres of 1965, in which at least half a million Indonesians (some Communist, others not) were butchered by the Indonesian army and paramilitary groups, to the delight of the US government and media.

I'll probably post more quotations from Subversion as Foreign Policy, but today I'll just include this bit.  The US had been covertly supporting mostly Islamist rebels in Sumatra against the central government in Java.  This support took the form of money, airdrops of arms, and training.  (Many higher military figures in Indonesia had been trained in the US; fancy that!)  Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Chinese in Taiwan collaborated, as did Britain, Australia, the Philippines, Singapore, and South Korea.  This sort of thing is hard to keep totally quiet, of course; as the Kahins point out, secret US operations are generally secret from most Americans, but not from their targets.  But it was all going pretty well, despite successive defeats suffered by the rebels, until:

On May 18 [1958] a rebel B-26 bomber carried out apparently indiscriminate raids against the city of Ambon, a port on the eastern Indonesian island of Amboina.  After sinking an Indonesian naval vessel at its pier the plane bombed a church and the central market, resulting in heavy civilian casualties.  Before the plane left, however, antiaircraft fire brought it down, and its American pilot, Allen L. Pope, and his Indonesian radio operator were captured.

Pope's capture provided Jakarta with incontrovertible evidence of direct American involvement in support of the rebels.  The administration persisted in its contention that he was an independent "soldier of fortune" for whom the United States was not responsible.  But the fact that he carried not merely a diary containing detailed accounts of recent bombing missions but also U.S. military identification papers, a copy of recently dated orders from a U.S. army base, and a current post exchange card for Clark Air Force Base made it difficult for this argument to be given much credence ...

[U.S.] Ambassador Jones credited the Jakarta government with "great maturity" in its efforts to avoid "making use of the bombings of the church and market place for purposes of propaganda -- domestic or international."  When discussing the matter with one of the authors only seven months after the bombing, this normally calm and composed ambassador was still seething with anger over what his sources had indicated to have been "several hundred civilians killed."  (In the book he wrote twelve years after the bombing, he stated that the civilian casualties were reported to be "in the vicinity of 700," but while pursuing his official duties he abided by the Jakarta government's "official" casualty figures of six civilians and seventeen members of the armed forces) [179-80].

Allen W. Pope was tried in Indonesia, "convicted and sentenced to death on April 29, 1960 -- nearly two years after his capture and well after public interest in his actions had died down ... The sentence was never carried out and he continued to live in comfort until quietly freed after U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy spoke with Sukarno in Jakarta during a 'good will visit' to Indonesia in February 1962..." (181-2).  The Kahins note "how gently Pope was treated and how many obvious questions were not pursued" (ibid.) at his trial, whose record

provides a sketchy account of his twelve bombing and strafing missions against against government naval and merchant shipping, airfields, and port cities -- with accounts of ships sunk and airplanes destroyed at airports.  This record shows that the attack on Ambon in which he was shot down was the fifth he had made on this city and its environs.  But potentially most embarassing to the United States was not only that Pope's immediate employer was the CIA -- through its wholly owned subsidiary CAT (Civil Air Transport, based on Taiwan) -- but also that he had been released to CAT on April 21 on 120 days temporary duty while assigned to the headquarters of the U.S. Army command at Camp Brucknerin the Ryukyu Islands [181].

The Eisenhower administration lied reflexively and professionally when Pope was shot down: he was a "soldier of fortune," not a US agent.  They had already begun to withdraw support from the Indonesian rebels, though aid continued to come in for awhile through Taiwan and the Philippines.  Luckily for them, the Indonesian government didn't make as much fuss as they could have over US support of terrorist attacks (what else can you call it, honestly?) on their people.  The entire project went down the Memory Hole for many years, and in 1995, when Subversion as Foreign Policy was published, many documents were still classified.

But hey, this is all ancient history, isn't it?  We should look to the future, not dwell on the dead past, etc.  What first led me to read Subversion of Foreign Policy, aside from the authors' name -- George Kahin had co-written an important 1967 book on the US invasion of Vietnam that taught me a lot, not only about Vietnam but about the larger geopolitics of the period -- was annoyance at the beatification of Dwight Eisenhower by many liberals today.  Supposedly Eisenhower was different from today's Republicans in his foreign policy; but he mainly took intervention and subversion of regimes he disliked under cover. The important thing to most Americans today is that no Americans were killed by his activities; that many thousands of dusky foreigners suffered and died is of no great interest to either liberals or conservatives.  The Kahins cite Iran and Guatemala among Eisenhower's "successes," but that's only by contrast with the debacle in Indonesia.

But much that I read in Subversion as Foreign Policy impressed me by how timely it still is, from the US support of Islamists to undermine governments our rulers disliked to the cover stories when our agents got caught.  Even at the time, the capture of Allen Pope echoed the capture by the Soviets of US spy-plane pilot Gary Powers.  Later, in 1986, a CIA agent named Eugene Hasenfus was shot down over Nicaragua while bringing weapons to President Reagan's terrorist Contras.  "President Reagan and other U.S. officials have denied that the plane or its crew had ties to the U.S. government. In Washington, Assistant Secretary of State Elliot Abrams said Hasenfus was not telling the truth because of Sandinista threats and intimidation," as the Chicago Tribune reported at the time.  As with the capture of Pope, the capture of Hasenfus was not merely embarrassing, it was inconveniently timed: "For the last two years, the CIA has been prohibited by law from helping provide the rebels with military supplies. If the CIA was involved in the operation despite denials from the Reagan administration, it could renew the debate over aid to the contra rebels just as Congress was about to release $100 million for them."

Another familiar theme was the 'fixing' of intelligence to justify Eisenhower's Cold War paranoia about Communist influence in Indonesia.  American officials and agents who didn't tell the President and his fanatical CIA chief Allen Dulles what they wanted to hear were ignored at best, replaced and transferred out at worst.  Those who want to contrast Eisenhower with George W. Bush will find no comfort here.  That's not necessarily to single out Eisenhower; the desire not to hear what one doesn't want to hear is a normal human impulse (you could call it human nature).  All the more reason for people in high places, who are especially susceptible to the tendency, to be aware of it, and make efforts to overcome it.  If they can't, the rest of us must do it.

Beat Me, Whip Me, Make Me Feel the Bern!

I first read John Howard Griffin's Black Like Me in seventh grade.  I found a paperback copy in a classroom at my junior high school, picked it up and began reading, and couldn't put it down.  I have a vivid memory of sitting there reading it in the failing light of late afternoon.  I believe it belonged to a teacher, who let me borrow it.  Which, now that I think of it, took some courage on his part, in Indiana in 1963.  What if my parents had objected?  The book's radical (for the period) racial politics were only one reason to worry about parental backlash in those days and that place; it also contained many sexual references, most of which I didn't understand very well at the age of twelve.

Since then I've read Black Like Me at least four more times.  Until recently the only book that equaled its impact on my understanding of American racism was Jonathan Kozol's first book, Death at an Early Age, which I read soon after it was published in 1967.  But perhaps "understanding" is the wrong word, though both books have a lot of intellectual content: they affected me on a gut level, ensuring that I would never tolerate white racism or give any credence to the excuses and rationalizations white racists make for their bigotry.  Death at an Early Age brought home for me what it would mean to children to lose the opportunity for education because racism gave them destructive schooling: even if the Boston schools Kozol described had been repaired and improved immediately, it would do no good for the children who'd passed through them.  Meanwhile whites dragged their feet to ensure that the destruction of children's hearts and minds would continue.  The issue of reparations is relevant here; reparations are needed not just for slavery, but for racist oppression that continues right down to the present.  

Black Like Me showed me what it was like to be on the receiving end of what Griffin called the "hate stare," to have to waste hours searching for a public restroom, a restaurant that would serve you, a bank that would cash your traveler's checks; to know that any white person could view you as their servant, and demand not only obedience but subservience, always with the threat of lethal violence if you didn't comply.  (It occurs to me now that any kid, of any color, knows what this is like.)

I was bothered, though, by a theme Griffin took up a couple of times in the book.  First the white doctor who helped him darken his skin, and later Griffin himself in conversation with an older black man, lament the bad behavior of many blacks that prevents them from getting equal rights.  The older man sums up the situation:

"... So a lot of them, without even understanding the cause, just give up.  They take what they can -- mostly in pleasure, and they make the grand gesture, the wild gesture, because what else have they got to lose if they do die in a car wreck or a knife fight or something else equally stupid?"

"Yes [replies Griffin], and then it's these things that cause the whites to say we're not worthy of first-class citizenship."

It seems to me that Griffin had it backwards here. "These things" don't "cause" white racists to conclude that blacks are inferior -- they're invoked to rationalize the conviction that racists already hold.  (Karen Fields and Barbara Fields hammered this point home repeatedly in their brilliant Racecraft.)  What occurred to me when I read these exchanges was that white men, and not only poor ones, also "make the grand gesture, the wild gesture" and die in car wrecks or knife fights or something else equally stupid.  Better-off white men like George W. Bush will simply be bailed out of the trouble they get into; white trash may not, but no one will argue that whites are obviously inferior because of their propensity for violence and self-degradation.  The misbehaving, self-destructive whites are pathological individuals, a few bad apples, not representatives of their race.  Since whites are unmarked racially, nothing they do can give them a bad name as white people, in mainstream (i.e., white) discourse anyway.  Later still in the book, Griffin points out to a white interlocutor that certain social problems cited against blacks also occur among whites, but neither goes near the implications this fact has for white supremacy.

After Griffin published his experiences, the backlash, while predictable (and he'd predicted it), was still chilling.  He was hung in effigy in his Texas hometown, and the standard threats of death and mutilation were phoned in by cowards.  Judging from later statements, some of which are included in the Griffin Estate edition I read this time, Griffin became much more radical about American racism than he was in the 1950s, and was harshly critical of white media that tried to use him to speak for African-Americans, while refusing to turn to African-Americans themselves.  Of course it's doctrine that blacks can't be trusted to talk about American racism -- as the white racist philosopher Antony Flew put it, they're "prominently positioned to discover racism," because they're "generously paid" to do so. 

Damn, there I go again, pissing myself off; but it's not over nothing.  I've been reading a number of things lately that both informed and infuriated me: not just Black Like Me and Racecraft, but Ira Katznelson's When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America (Norton, 2005).  Katznelson details how white racists were able to hijack social programs, from veterans' benefits to the New Deal and the G.I. Bill, so that American blacks would be excluded from coverage.  In general, liberals gave in quite easily to their efforts.  So, for example,

The South's representatives [in Congress] built ramparts within the policy initiatives of the New Deal and the Fair Deal to safeguard their region's social organization.  They accomplished this aim by making the most of their disproportionate numbers on committees, by their close acquaintance with legislative rules and procedures, and by exploiting the gap between the intensity of their feeling and the relative indifference of their fellow members of Congress [22].

It didn't help my mood when, a few weeks ago, some (white male) Bernie Sanders boosters erupted angrily over Black Lives Matters' decision not to endorse a presidential candidate: "Cutting off the nose to spite the face, by not supporting Sanders at this important time ..." wrote one.  Another wrote, "This group seems to be wearing blinders, only focusing on what they want to see. It is a great big world out there and economics is always the key no matter what race or ethnicity you may happen to be part of. Senator Sanders appears to be focusing on income inequality which certainly affects at least 99 percent of ALL people. We can all work together or we can all go down the toilet together."

They were sure that a Republican would become President because of BLM's treachery.  So, I asked them, no one will vote if BLM doesn't endorse a candidate? Or everyone will decide to vote Republican if BLM doesn't endorse a candidate? No one is capable of making up their own minds?  I didn't get a satisfactory answer, just more fulminating about how these blindered traitors were giving aid and comfort to the Rethugs.

I can think of numerous reasons why BLM might choose not to endorse a candidate.  It might be, for example, that the organization was too divided within itself to select one.  Partisans love to claim that they are political realists unlike their airy-fairy idealistic critics and opponents, but this simple political reality escaped these guys' notice entirely.  Maybe neither Clinton nor Sanders, in their belated and rather resentful attempts to 'reach out' to communities of color, persuaded BLM that they really deserved to be endorsed.  Sanders has talked about "making massive investments in rebuilding our cities, in creating millions of decent paying jobs, in making public colleges and universities tuition-free, basically targeting our federal resources to the areas where it is needed the most and where it is needed the most is in impoverished communities, often African American and Latino."  This sounds very nice, and might have impressed me more before my recent reading, which taught me that white supremacists are very effective at making sure that such "massive investments" are structured so as to exclude black people, and that white liberals and progressives are not very effective at preventing these exclusions.  Sanders no doubt means well, but it seems that he doesn't realize just how "divisive" (the word he used to dismiss reparations) it will be to invest in communities and people of color as well as white ones.

This wasn't the first time I've encountered such authoritarian behavior among Democratic partisans during this cycle (leaving aside past ones), and once again I'm amazed by their evident belief that they can win votes for their candidate by insulting and abusing the voters they're ostensibly trying to win over.  Put simply: you want my vote, so you must give me a good reason why I should comply.  Attacking me, whether honestly or dishonestly, doesn't seem like a good way to persuade me.  Castigating BLM as ungrateful darkies doesn't seem like a promising tactic for persuading them to reconsider their decision.

Now, like Ta-Nehisi Coates, I intend to vote for Sanders in the primary and will surely vote Democratic in November.  Doing so doesn't mean I can't criticize Sanders, Clinton, or any other candidate or politician; and criticizing them doesn't mean I hate them or will vote Republican.  I'm not going to change my vote because some of a candidate's supporters are assholes.  But if I were Sanders (I'm not sure about Clinton), I would not be pleased to know that my supporters are behaving like assholes on my behalf.  It's curious, really: liberals and progressives like to fantasize that they are well-informed and rational as opposed to the idiot Rethuglicans, but they also believe that the electorate (everyone except them, I guess) are stupid and can only be won over by appeals to emotion.  Even if they're right about that, you win more flies with honey than with vitriol.

The Results Will Count for Fifty Percent of Your Final Grade

Someone posted this on Facebook today, and I thought it mildly amusing.  It's marginally wittier than most of the political invective that floods the Internet.

But then someone posted this as a comment, remarking "what's sauce for the goose..."

A bit sloppy (there were two Clintons in White House in those days, for example), but I think it's as fair (or "fair") as the Trump meme.  Some of the replies were revealing, though, I thought.

See, the problem is that it implies that Mrs. Clinton's reason for being was to have sex with President Clinton. Now, even if you accept that's true, and I surely hope you don't, Bill Clinton had something to do with it; Mrs. Clinton did not delegate the blow jobs to Monica. And it completely negates Mrs. Clinton's actual responsibilities as first lady, and her rather significant contributions to public life since. So no, not "sauce for the goose." Logically void, misogynistic.

I don't think this works at all.  I don't think the HRC meme does imply that her "reason for being was to have sex with President Clinton."  True, as the commenter says, Mrs. Clinton did have other jobs -- she particularly infuriated Republicans for not being a mere Lady Bountiful as a First Lady should be -- but maybe the commenter meant "her reason for being in the White House" or something like that.  As for "Bill Clinton had something to do with it," that would seem to be true of Donald Trump and his immigrant wives as well.  (We needn't dally with "her rather significant contributions to public life since," which have mainly been corporate toadying and war crimes.)  "Logically void," maybe, but this is a joke, after all.  "Misogynistic"?  Also arguably true, but no more so than the Trump meme, which doesn't appear to have bothered this person.

The next comment:

Seriously, F-- T--?! Have some class. And, btw, there's a difference between a joke at one specific person's expense and a joke that's basis is misogyny.

I can't see that the Trump meme has any more "class" than this one, and again, it evidently didn't bother this commenter.  Appeals to "class," especially with respect to satire, are almost always a sign of intellectual and moral bankruptcy.  The joke in the Trump meme was not only "at one specific person's expense" but also at the expense of his immigrant wives, who seem not to have been the empty-headed trophies the meme assumes -- they got out of their marriages to him, after all. Like Mrs. Clinton, they rebelled against being relegated merely to providing service to their husband.  The Clinton meme is certainly at Bill Clinton's expense no less than Hillary's.  Neither one is sublime satire, but they seem to be about on a par with each other.

So once again, I find that Ellen Willis's law of humor applies: “Humorless is what you are if you do not find the following subjects funny: rape, big breasts, sex with little girls. It carries no imputation of humorlessness if you do not find the following subjects funny: castration, impotence, vaginas with teeth.”  Satire is funny if it's directed at someone you hate; tasteless and unfunny if it's directed at someone you like.  I personally think that if satire doesn't make you wince at the same time it makes you laugh, if it doesn't make you recognize yourself in the target, it's not very good satire.  Once again, liberals show they're not all that different from their conservative opposite numbers.

Single Standard Dept.

Roy Edroso's latest post at alicublog:

Thursday, May 15, 2014

THIS IS ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW.

The guys who continue to worship the most senile President in history want you to think Hillary Clinton is too old and feeble to serve. 

Haw haw haw, those stoopid Rethuglicans!  It occurred to me that this cuts both ways.  The guys (and gals) who made much of Reagan's age back in the day aren't at all concerned about Clinton's age as it might affect her fitness to be President.  She'll be almost exactly the same age in 2016 as Reagan was in 1980.  He was born in 1911, so he was 69 in 1980; she was born in 1947, so she'll be 69 in 2016.  So if Reagan was too old to run, isn't she?  (I noticed during the 2008 campaign that Ralph Nader was older [seventy-four!] than both of them, but no one else, not even those who demonized Nader, seemed to notice or care.)

Reagan was always a flake, so his endless flubs, gaffes, and lies weren't necessarily early warning signals of what turned out to be Alzheimers.  Clinton seems to be more lucid than Reagan was, most of the time, but she's just about as dishonest and evil.  The difference between Reagan's fans and Clinton's fans once again comes down to which party they favor.

All the News That Fits

Don't you love the way the corporate media concentrate on the issues, instead of trivia?

I approve of Clinton's look, and it occurred to me again today while listening to her on the radio that the way she speaks is refreshing too: she keeps her voice in a relatively low register, without sounding insecure about exercising authority.  But that doesn't change the fact that she's a warmongering liar.  The other day she told an audience in India:

That's a very good question, and let me give you a little context for that question. When President Obama took over in 2009, we knew Iran's continuing development of a nuclear weapons program would be very destabilizing in the region, because there would be an arms race with the nations in the region who have pre-existing enmity between themselves and Iran. And it would also cause a great threat to Israel.

As Peter Hart of FAIR pointed out, there's no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program.  But you know how it is: the GOP only has emotion, the Democrats have facts.  (I forgot to include the Iran canard when I was writing about Obama's lies in that one, but it shouldn't be forgotten.)

In a related vein, I'm beginning to suspect that some fans of the "Texts from Hillary" tumblr believe that the images are authentic -- actual examples of wit and wisdom from the smartphone of the Secretary of State herself, instead of a gag by a couple of geeks.  (Yes, she submitted one herself.)  Has anyone noticed this?  Even if these people know better, some of the gushing I've seen ("I luv Hillary's texts LOL!") seems excessive; I don't think they're that funny.  But then, I liked the Downfall video.

Come Over and Help Us

I imagine there must be one or two people out there wondering why I haven't been posting about Korean politics this time around, especially with the growing tensions over the sinking of a South Korean ship, blamed by South Korea and the US on North Korea. I haven't been following events closely enough, to tell you the truth.

I have seen a lot of clips of Secretary of State Clinton grandstanding on Korean TV in the past few days, announcing that an independent inquiry had established North Korean guilt, which to me is as good as a confirmation of the North's innocence. Korean friends and some articles I've looked at in the Hankyoreh inform me that there is room for doubt. One friend told me today that it's normal around election time for the ruling party to stir up anxiety about North Korean aggression. Similar incidents have been happening ever since the Korean War ended in truce in 1953, but more people died (about 46) when the Cheonan sank, and it providentially occurred close to the elections, which made it useful for exploitation. On the other hand, the Lee administration's shutdown of economic activity with the North is hurting businesses in the South:

Businesses commissioned for inter-Korean processing and trade were up in arms Tuesday following President Lee Myung-bak’s announcement of plans to halt inter-Korean trade in response to the sinking of the Cheonan. The companies charged that the government’s measures “are killing South Korean businesses, not North Korea.” With the government’s focus lying solely on punishing North Korea, the abrupt announcement gave no time for small and mid-sized companies to prepare a retreat, and despite what is effectively a compulsory measure, almost no government compensation plan has been put in place. ...

For the most part, the companies commissioned to do processing plan their production six to seven months in advance, so a lot of the raw materials are already in North Korea," said an official who attended the Unification Ministry’s talk Tuesday. "If the goods that are currently being produced, or even those that are already finished, cannot go in, then it tarnishes the image not only of the businesses, but also of the company, since they are unable to deliver to the foreign contracting company, and of the state."

I suspect that measures like this may hurt the ruling party at the polls next week.

I've also learned from the Hankyoreh that President Lee Myung-bak and "a number of cabinet members" did not complete their compulsory military service. That surprised me, because not completing one's service is supposed to be a serious disability for men in South Korea. But evidently it hasn't stood in Lee's way. On the other hand, his record may partially explain his desire to appear tough toward Japan and North Korea; we have such men in US public life too, known as "war wimps" and "chicken hawks."

I was sitting on a bench in COEX Mall yesterday, writing in my notebook, when a Korean man about my age, dressed in suit and tie, noticed me and stopped to chat. "Is that English?" he asked about my writing. I admitted that it was.

After asking me the usual biographical questions -- where was I from, what brought me to Korea, what did I do back home in America -- he asked what I thought about the sinking of the Cheonan. Didn't I think that America would help Korea, as Mrs. Clinton had promised? I made a face, and told him I wouldn't rely too much on American promises. What, he asked, is she a liar? She is, I told him, and so is Obama: think of what they have said about Iran and numerous other countries. Besides, didn't he remember that in the Korean Civil War, the US had promised to help the South if the North attacked -- yet when that attack happened, there was no help until the South was almost entirely conquered?

He conceded that unhappily, but then he brightened and declared that there was nothing to worry about, because the North is very weak. There is no danger that they could do much damage to the South. I thought about that for a moment, then asked him why, if the North is so harmless, President Lee and the Americans are saying that the North is a deadly threat? That took him aback too. We chatted for a few moments more, and then we shook hands and he went on his way.

Myself, I don't believe that North Korea is as weak as this man claimed; that was just normal nationalistic boasting on his part. I believe that they could do a lot of damage in the South before they were stopped. It chills me to think of what war would do to the beautiful country I'm visiting, and to its people. Interestingly, it's China that is pressing for caution and patience now -- they don't want war on the Korean peninsula either, so close to their own borders. It's easy for the Americans to say "Let's you and him fight" -- the fight would take place far away from us.

P.S. From the Hankyoreh:

In a survey conducted Saturday by Research Plus at the behest of the Hankyoreh, 59.9 percent of those surveyed say they do not trust the military’s statements issued on the findings of its investigation into the sinking of the Cheonan. Only 34.9 percent say that they trust the military officials. Some 57.9 percent also said that the ruling government has not responded effectively to the stinking of the Cheonan, while only 34.3 percent said they think the government has carried out an effective response.

I'd call that a healthy attitude. We could do with more of it in the US.