In any public communication system where access is generally open, noise tends to expand at an exponential rate while the expansion of signal is merely additive.

Of course, it’s hard to imagine why this would occur to me…

“You’ve got to grab it at the base and deep-throat, it, Johnny,” Ms. Dennis authoritatively croaked, demonstrating with the hand holding her cigarette. The cherry singed her eyebrow a slight bit as she made the universal movements to indicate the act she wanted me to perform.

On life, that is.

“You’ve got to lick it, swallow it, regurgitate it and flicker the tip ever so seductively with your tongue until it’s choked you and filled your starving gut with its juices, Johnny.”

I smiled, nodded and jotted “Fellate life” on my canary legal pad.

“Johnny. Listen to me, Johnny. You’ve got to tug on the tippety-tip of that skin flap until life breaks into convulsions, screams back at you and begs you to finish it off, Johnny.”

“My name is not Johnny,” I scrawl one line down, still attentive and nodding.

“That bit I had about life being the buffet and most suckers starving to death, and so forth? I was a bit off,” she said as the last drag from her Virginia Slim came out in larynx-punctuated puffs. “They’re all eating. Literally and figuratively. Every last one of them. They’re fucking eating themselves to death. They’re filling their sad, greedy guts with empty calories and grease. Soon there will be a machine to do that for you too. Six months after that, they’ll be installing them in motorcars!”

She paused to take a drag.

“Eeeempty caaloriieeesss aaand greeeeeease,” she droned, her eyelids narrowing and the smoke filtering through her eerily white, clenched teeth. “Bleached wheat flour, margarine, and skin-free potato strips deep-fried in week-old vegetable shortening. High fructose corn syrup, artificial cheese, air-filled, pastel-colored corn puffs in miniature vats saturated with growth hormone-contaminated cow extracts, Johnny. Expeller-pressed, carbonated ham juice with monosodium glutamate and brominated vegetable oil mixed in, Johnny.”

Her hands began to tremble and her eyes moved towards the back of her head a slight bit on that last one. I think part of her was fighting the urge to say it, but she and I both knew that it could one day be a reality.

“Fried dough coated in semi-congealed grease-sugar, Johnny. Air-puffed corn logs coated with semi-dairy salt powder.”

I nodded politely and waited for her to continue, my voice recorder still running.

“Damn right we shit on society,” she snapped out of nowhere. “We deep-throat, eat, swallow and shit out life at such a rapid pace most of you sad sacks can’t keep up. You’re stuck shovelin’ the shit because we’re too busy fellatin’ and shittin’ rainbows… and shit… to bother with the garden tools of those who have let themselves be so encumbered! We eat like kings and queens and other assorted members of royalty and/or heirs to fortunes built on your misery and shortcomings from the Garden of Eden, chugging life’s thirty-ingredient, psyllium husk-enriched daiquiris directly from the blenders inside God Almighty’s blue, bulging, turbo-charged testes, Johnny!”

Then, for effect (and/or because she couldn’t think of anything better to say or do at that precise moment) she extended her leg (one that indeed refused to quit) across the coffee table and used her stiletto heel to kick the legal pad out of my hand. Then she reached into a nearby candy dish and tossed a handful of Andes mints at my face. Conveniently, one came out of the wrapper and landed in my black coffee.

“I’m stuck watching rows of sad faces shovel my rainbow shit and eat themselves to death on diets of artificially pigmented grape colas and ham-pressed high fructose expeller dough,” she went on, “because they’re so deliriously stupid from acute constipation that they don’t notice God’s own sixteen-inch love missile slapping their droopy cheeks with such force that the capillaries burst and their retinas explode in kaleidoscopes desperate to be seen, Johnny.”

Speechless, I simply swiveled my head down to watch the little red light on the voice recorder blink, not only to assure me that it was recording this, but to let me know that I wasn’t completely alone.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“Johnny,” she barked at me. “Johnny. Look at me, Johnny. Empty, sad hearts and impacted bowels, Johnny. Rows and rows of them, everywhere you turn. Cheeks aplenty, struck with little purple lightning bolts, Johnny.”

“Little purple lightning bolts,” I nervously and illegibly scribbled on the palm of my left hand, trying in vain to protect myself from the words I was hearing.

Without warning, she broke into tears and grabbed a large tasseled pillow.

“Oh, Johnny,” her billowing sobs echoing through her cavernous living room. “I’m tired of fucking trying, Johnny.”

She squeezed and kneaded the pillow as if trying desperately to extract something out of it.

“I’m so alone, Johnny. I’m so tired of–”

–She buried her face in the now hourglass-shaped pillow, overtaken by uncontrollable sobs and screaming incomprehensible speech into the fibers.

I wanted to console her. I wanted to rub her hand, to give her a hug, to do anything… but I feared that without reinforcements I’d be engulfed and absorbed completely.

According to Canada.com, a proton moving at 99.9999991% of the speed of light has the energy of seven mosquitoes.

Also according to that site, three-hundred trillion protons moving at that speed has the energy of a 200 tonne train running at 200 kph.

Using this information, how many mosquitoes would it take to push a one kilogram ball to a speed of one kilometer per hour?

Science reporters for news outlets have an interesting job; some of the smartest people in the world have dedicated a lifetime of work to the most complex phenomena this universe has to offer and these reporters have to distill it down to a few hundred words at an 8th grade reading level. Many of us gripe at the quality of reporting with these restrictions, but it is not an easy thing to do.

One of the tricks of the trade is to convert some of these mind-boggling concepts into things you deal with every day. How many microscopic objects are compared to the width of a human hair? A common analogy has the Earth as the size of a basketball with the moon the size of a tennis ball 24 feet away. Or if you scoop up a teaspoon-worth of a neutron star, it would weigh the same as all the people on earth put together. Everyone can picture mosquitoes buzzing around our heads. But who would have thought of it as a unit of energy?

That’s where some of these crazy conversion rates can get these writers can get into trouble. Take the problem above. If my math is correct, it should take the energy of over 52 million mosquitoes to move a couple of pounds to less than walking speed. That’s over a hundred pounds worth of mosquitoes. With all of these big numbers there are a lot of zeros flying around and its easy for both sides of the equation to not balance out at the end.

So, I guess the moral of the story is to take these scientific analogies with a grain of salt – which, by the way, is the same size as the space those 300 trillion protons would fit into if it were a gas.

God as an atheist is like a novelist who doesn’t believe in novels.

So perhaps it’s fitting that N. Nosirrah’s highly amusing and deeply thoughtful God is an Atheist is a novella. Specifically, it’s “a novella for those who have run out of time.”

“This is a story without plot, characters, structure, or obvious purpose,” Nosirrah writes. “If a thousand monkeys typing endlessly would eventually produce all the great works of literature, then this is their first draft.”

Nosirrah isn’t kidding when he says there’s no plot. At the start of the book, he nearly runs God over as He is crossing the street. As way of apology, Nosirrah takes God to a coffeeshop and they talk, although it’s as much of a transcendental encounter as a conversation. Nosirrah calls it “magical existentialism.”

In the exchange, God admits He is an atheist.

The novella is Nosirrah’s account of the encounter, which is really just a flimsy—but very cleverly executed—excuse for the author to talk about big-picture concepts like belief and being. He does it with a court jester’s demeanor, though. The result is a text that reads like the caffeinated love-child of flip stream-of-consciousness and thoughtful wit, raised by lonely mountaintop guru starved for human contact.

Nosirrah babbles along merrily, with almost incessant, indomitable charm. Hints of cynicism creep in, but Nosirrah always pulls back from the brink with a good-natured shoulder shrug or, better yet, a smart-ass remark.

For example, he writes: “We decided that our job is to live in the material world, but ultimately to transcend it and realize our connection to God. Once we got that all set up and agreed that the world was like that, then we got down to the real business of fighting each other over our control of resources in the material world and our beliefs about God.”

The book is not intended as a religious or an anti-religious diatribe. There’s plenty to offend believers and nonbelievers alike. But there’s also plenty of thoughtful fodder about the nature of belief itself. There’s also, running as an undercurrent, a sincere appeal to readers to think about what God means to them.

“God speaks in the softest of tones and the harshest of manners. As the all and everything of the universe, He speaks in every form. That’s the rub,” Nosirrah says. “If He would just show up Hollywood style, speak in a Charlton Heston voice, we would find it easy to listen. But He shows up as the constant flow of life itself, in every piece, every quality, in the whole range from ecstasy to calamity. We generally only listen to the part we like, and don’t want to hear the part we don’t like.”

The book never gets much heavier than that. It’s too hipster, too manic, and too self-aware to get too deep—but the book also gives off enough vibes to suggest that this is, indeed, deep stuff if the reader slows down long enough to really dive in for him or herself.

In the meantime, Nosirrah barrels along, pummeling the reader with witty banter, pop culture references, and classical philosophy gussied up as slapstick (picture an apoplectic Immanuel Kant getting red-faced and bug-eyed). God never takes Himself too seriously—and far from being all-knowing and all-powerful, He can’t even place Mother Theresa, although He says He’ll try and Google the name when He gets home.

God is an Atheist is a quick yet provocative read—although whether it provokes thought, anger, or mere annoyance will depend on the reader. Nosirrah is either irresistibly engaging or in dire need of Ritalin. But his whirling dervish style is distinctive and smart. He offers much to think about and much to laugh about, too.

In the absence of a grand technological theory that can explain the Universe, such as a Unified Field Theory (nerds can hope), or resolution of the questions raised by more dialectical interpretations of history, many scholars opt for media theory because the items such theory discusses are more accessible in our day-to-day lives. The science-fictional proliferation of portable gizmos and the ubiquity of the silicon chip can give the ordinary citizen pause, and books about media theory are frequently written to answer the somewhat vexing questions that arise.

Media professor and popular blogger Siva Vaidhyanathan investigates with 2004’s The Anarchist in the Library. Mr. Vaidhyanathan, hereafter referred to as V, notes in the inlet of the book that “battle lines are being drawn,” between Freedom and Control, and that the real world has begun to resemble the virtual world. (Or is it, the other way around?) On the one side, he writes, are corporations, judges, the military etc, and on the other are “liberators”, hackers, libertarians, artists and dissidents.

At first glance, it appears that V has not transcended a dialectical interpretation of history, but has merely changed the names of the cast of characters. When reading one notices he arrives firmly on the side of the “proletariat” of artists and freedom-lovers, even though he declares neutrality through much of the book.
V himself is a copyright expert in media theory, and the book is chock-full of examples of interesting copyright issues. His starting point, theoretically, is the Napster case of 2001 and the legal fallout resulting from that case. Many can recall from those days an icon floating around the web (sometimes it was called the web back then) of a guy with a baseball cap on backwards, listening to music through headphones. This image can be held in mind as the icon of the anarchist in the way that V describes an anarchist in this book, as primarily a music-lover looking for free music.

The claim V sets up in the early chapters is this: that the Internet is “like” Diogenes, the cynic philosopher of 370 B.C. Who was this character? Although records are scarce, since he left no writing, Diogenes of Sinope was supposedly a homeless man who wandered the streets of the city, engaging learned people in debate and flouting convention, kind of an Axial rock star. He would not give authority to money or the laws, but claimed to harm no one, and engaged in what would today be described as acts of radical individual freedom. The philosophical thread begun by Diogenes continued on with such groups as the Stoics, the Christian monastics, and Friedrich Nietzsche.

What makes the Internet “cynical” according to the book is that it allows people to act like Diogenes, and any attempts to regulate content or reign it in will fail. It simply can’t be done. A fair theory. But in reading through the rest of the book, one wonders if V provides this theory because he really believes it’s true, or because he’d rather take a negative aesthetic and be wrong than a positive, pro-active one and possibly shown to be foolish. For example, he often suggests that what is needed is “dialogue”, “discussion”, and “debate” about what all this technology means – well, debate about what? Eventually, someone has to throw a value out there.

Do it Yourself Media Theory construction: declare the Internet to be “like” a certain historical figure, build evidence to support the theory, i.e. people behaving “cynically,” frame the opposition as behind the times and also unattractive, then lazily re-narrate current events in light of your theory.

Can’t anyone do this? For example, let’s say the Internet is “like” King Tut of Egypt. Yes, the Internet is a man-child given vast and unprecedented power over a disorganized and mostly-unconscious domain. Seem plausible? To further enhance this theory now let’s suppose each of us is here to build the pyramids by stacking enormous rhetorical blocks on top of each other until it is no longer gravitationally possible to do so, leaving these constructions behind so as to entomb the latest “king.” As of this week, that would be George Carlin. May the king rest in peace.

V uses the example of George Costanza from Seinfeld to make a point… Costanzan cynicism differs from Diogenic cynicism, according to V, in that it is, like George, self-absorbed, pessimistic and fails to be civically-engaged. According to V, one would be a “Costanzan” cynic by criticizing the book’s point of view or suggesting that what we often think of as freedom in terms of uses for new media, is not really. However, V gives us the historical example of the civically-engaged Diogenes as a man mostly thumbing his nose at authority figures and rich people. If that is civic engagement, you might as well watch Jackass, the Movie. V creates a tautologous argument here, meaning there’s no possible evidence which could be introduced into the theory to demonstrate the lack of Costanzan values in any position more cynical than V’s own, as if by participating in the debate you have already cast yourself as the loser before it even begins.

To the author’s credit, he offers the intriguing tale of the RAND Corporation post-2001, and a brief biography of Tim Berners-Lee, who could probably be credited with “inventing” the internet more than anyone else. MP3s and the Recording Industry Association of America are given mentions, the first as the vehicle for anarchy and the latter as an oligarchy that means to “control” the fun of freedom-loving people.

International file piracy is described as a “genuine threat to the industry.” V offers detailed examples of the distinctions between theft in Mexico, Nigeria, and India, the plethora of reasons why this theft occurs, and how petty the chasing down of a guy with a backwards baseball cap seems in comparison. One could easily agree that yes, it does seem petty to wonder whether Lawrence Lessig or Lars Ulrich is correct when millions upon millions of dollars is lost each year to illegal Chinese duplicates. But then, V is now telling us that the anarchist is no longer a guy with a baseball cap on backwards, but now the entire rest of the planet which is not America. Hence, oligarchical controls must walk the entire planet as well, to police these people, a task that V finds so unsavory, as well as impractical in terms of regulating remote places such as Nigeria, that it’s better to just make everything as free as possible rather than risk “making winners into bigger winners and thus rigging the cultural market.”

In short, he means to discourage both anarchist and oligarchic behavior, while somehow romantically siding with anarchists through most of the book. Seems a bit contradictory, which is incidentally, occasionally the criticism leveled against Nietzsche and other cynical philosophers.

A distinction: the definition of anarchist throughout this book is incomplete, because some people have understood that an anarchist is not a guy sitting in front of a monitor with his baseball cap on backwards. That’s a hobbyist. An anarchist is also someone like this:

And there are not too many of those hanging out in the library looking for MP3s. The oligarchical entity of most concern to anarchists of this stripe is the local police department. There are anarchist groups and activists in this country who are not as “direct action” as the perpetually-mobile gentleman just mentioned. These anarchists do read Proudhon and Kropotkin, Bookchin and others, and occasionally do something interesting and beneficial like form a food co-op or put up a mayoral candidate. But, the concern of anarchists such as these, even those who managed to protest WTO meetings, has very little to do with the file-sharing and media-piracy issues mostly covered in this book. This book might then be better titled The Hobbyist in the Library. What V blows up to be some kind of equivalent force to such entities as the Rand Corporation or the RIAA does indeed often amount to mere isolated incidents of youthful people merely seeking to do special favors for friends, the kind of low-level piracy that, while still illegal, has always gone on.

Here are some claims in the book which are vague, or simply false:

The Internet was built according to cynical principles: borderlessness, unregulatability, etc
No, the internet was built to protect scientific information from a possible nuclear strike by the Soviet Union. The principle in action was self-defense.

Hollywood is holding its prime content hostage until we give it what it wants – control over which machines we record on in the privacy of our own homes.
Nothing is being held hostage. The language is too war-like. Like the Muslims of the world, “Hollywood” is not a monolith of interest and studios spend as much time sparring with each other as they do the legal system.

The fundamental purpose of intellectual property law is to create artificial scarcity.
No, laws are written not just to hammer the guys with backwards baseball caps, but also to counter the directives of aggressive business interests.

We should not let the market guide our minds, lest we come up with a genetic treatment for baldness before breast cancer.
Too late…Viagra. And biomedical ethics in relation to capitalism opens up a whole new Pandora’s Box.

Also, p.186: The role of the nation-state is in flux, and its future is up for grabs contradicts what’s on p. 152: Now we see that the nation-state is not going anywhere.

What succeeds in this book is V’s identification of the persistent ethical problem of copyright theft, and his heartfelt concern that something should be done about it. In the conclusion V tells us that he has “avoided making predictions”, “declared no wars” and “refrained from declaring a new historical epoch.” Yet he tells us in the inlet that battle lines have been drawn (except that through the act of declaring a battle, he’s not involved in it, we must presume) and in chapter 1 he declares that activity on the Internet is wholly cynical and Diogenic, thus heralding a “Diogenic” Age?

V uses a rather contrived media theory to discuss intellectual property rights and the Internet. The author’s premise is that the Internet is inherently anarchistic and that ultimately any attempt to regulate it will fail. This argument, while possibly still correct, is poorly constructed, based upon flawed reasoning and erroneous interpretation of Cynical and Anarchist philosophy. Many of the summarizing statements are vague. V claims to be impartial but is, in fact, firmly on the “side” of who he perceives to be anarchists. We can credit the book for achieving one of its original goals, that is, of fomenting discussion about media theory, but in the final analysis, his particular theory holds little water and has poor philosophical foundations. One should strive to either be an anarchist, or go to the library. But to do both creates a problem where none before existed.

D.J.B. is a free-lance writer based in San Diego.

photo credit: Bikernet.com

One Life, by Johnny Clegg, first released 2006, 16 tracks, ASIN B000I5YROM

We’re on our way home to find our freedom
and I’m on my way home to find you my friend
where we can stand in the light of the people
and breathe life into the land again.

“When the System Has Fallen,” Johnny Clegg

“If you have a patch of ground the size of a door, you can feed a family of four,” rhymes my friend, John Broom. John is well over 80 and has been involved in teaching gardening and feeding schemes in Africa for the Quaker Peace Foundation for decades. I believe him.

Africa itself is a vast and fertile land. The small state of Zimbabwe used to be the breadbasket of the Sub-Saharan region, able to supply wheat and maize to tens of millions of people. South Africa still exports some 3 million tons of cereals a year, 33% of production, while feeding a population of 45 million.

Ethiopia continues to be the poster child for starvation. Five million children a year die in Africa from malnutrition. A third of Africa’s population is malnourished. Yet this continent of 30 million square kilometres produces only 143 million tons of food cereals, less than 10% of the world total of over 2 billion tons. The US, by comparison, produces 450 million tons on less than 10 million square kilometers of land.

Clearly, there is a problem.

Pop stars of the world claim to have a solution.

The Solutions of the Stars

Bono, front-man of Irish super-group, U2, tells African countries that all they need to do is learn from Ireland. “Twenty years ago our economy was down the toilet, the IMF were telling us what to do and the World Bank were down our pants.”

Well, yes, Bono, so what African countries need to do is join the EU, collect hefty subsidies on infrastructure and agriculture, and have tariff-free access to the European market? And on which planet is this going to happen?

In other words, what we learn from an aging, fading pop star is that Africa’s future success depends entirely on what the rest of the world chooses to do. That Africa is an innocent victim of the choices of other countries.

Bono is a twit. As a friend said, “I think the only fair thing, now that Bono has become an economist, is for him to allow all of us economists to join his band.”

To which I respond, “I’m really clear on opportunity cost, comparative advantage, moral hazard and I once saw a guitar … I think I can take over from the Edge.”

Even more foolish is the pie-eyed response from Bob Geldof. Live Aid, in 1984, raised $300 million that allowed Ethiopia’s blood-drenched dictator, Mengistu Haile Mariam, and his Derg army, to butcher and destroy more people before being overthrown. Ethiopia’s new government has, 24 years later, banned journalists from visiting the worst-affected areas of renewed conflict and famine in order to avoid embarrassment. The UN’s World Food Programme estimates that 9.5 million people – 12% of Ethiopia’s population – need emergency food aid in 2008.

So humming along to, “We are the world. We are the children,” made a really big difference. I think Geldof should let me in his band too.

The world of Juluka

In 1993, Johnny Clegg released a deeply moving album, Heat and Dust and Dreams. His first album, Universal Men, was released in 1979. There are few musicians that endure for such a long period of time, and fewer still who reinvent their musical style to continue to say something both original and relevant over that period.

Heat and Dust and Dreams has the energy and originality of a first album; of a new band. Yet it has the depth of meaning and clarity of understanding that is achieved at great personal cost.

South Africa, in 1993, was a dark and terrifying place. The glacial progress towards liberation was giving way to a chaotic stampede: bomb-blasts going off all over the show; horrific violence as “liberators” wrapped “conspirators” in car tyres, covered them with petrol and set them on fire; riots and damage. No one knew if we would come out of this alive as politicians played brinkmanship.

Heat and Dust and Dreams challenged us to remember why we came here and what we were doing it for. It was an homage to those of us active in the “struggle” to keep going. And a remembrance of those who fell along the way.

In 1990, Clegg’s lead dancer – and anyone who has seen a live show will know that the Zulu war dancing is the focal-point of the music’s energy – Dudu Zulu was shot and killed while attempting to mediate in a violent dispute.

Johnny Clegg’s story is a testament to the astonishing charisma and determination of the man. Born of middle-class Jewish parents, he was captivated by the sound of township music; music produced by migrant Zulu workers drawn to Johannesburg to earn a living and work deep underground in the mines. Clegg used to sneak into the townships – where it was illegal for white people to visit – and beg to be allowed to learn how to play. Then he learned Zulu war dancing.

He took Zulu traditional themes and added a rock score and released an album. The “White Zulu” was born.

I was at a concert of Clegg’s in 1994 with kids – most of us who hadn’t even been born when he released his first album – when he lead into a song with this intro: “You know, it’s quite something when you write a song and, 21 years later, people still want to hear it.”

Then he played “Impi” and the kids tried to jump out of their skins with a roar of delight.

And here’s the thing, “Impi” isn’t a ballad or some power rock song about being a teenager. It’s a history lesson.

In 1879 Mageba, General to King Ceteswayo, led his Zulu impi to slaughter the central column of Lord Chelmsford’s army at the Battle of Isandhlwana. The British had deliberately incited the war by setting the Zulus the ultimatum of submitting to the crown and disbanding their army. Five columns of troops were sent, inappropriately dressed in their red coats and black pants, to engage Ceteswayo.

Lord Chelmsford was another of the spectacularly incompetent generals that the British enjoyed appointing to their colonial armies. He couldn’t be bothered to spy out the land, considering the Zulu to be cowardly. Far from it, the Zulu lay in wait and attacked mercilessly and without warning.

After the battle they ritually washed their spears in the blood of the fallen. The blood ran; a river into a river.

“Impi” – so joyously danced to by the descendents of British settlers – is the rebel yell of Zulus defeating a British colonial army. You can’t beat that sort of irony.

The poet within: Heat and Dust and Dreams

If that was the end of Johnny Clegg’s story that would already be the basis of an astonishing Hollywood move, but it isn’t. Clegg went on to get an Honours in Social Anthropology and went on to lecture at the Universities of the Witwatersrand and Natal. In 2007 he even received an honorary doctorate from Wits.

Go through the lyrics of his songs and you are struck by the complexity, depth of feeling and beauty of the words. Clegg’s music is so joyous, so transcendent, so musically astute and so downright danceable, that the lyrics – a mix of Zulu and English – can get overlooked. Sometimes even by the descendants of British colonists.

The opening lines of the opening song, “These Days,” on Heat and Dust and Dreams:

Yashimbawula!
(the watchman’s fire is burning)
What happened to the diamonds in your eyes,
What happened to the hunger for the day’s chase?
What happened to the electric smile
That danced your life across your face
We used to talk about changing the world
Now all you want to do is change your name
Come on baby don’t surrender now
to the empty heart of these days.
We used to talk so deep into the night
You had the heart of a wild horse running
You bared your soul to me
and we both knew these days were coming

“These Days”

A song of the determination need to achieve liberty and resonated particularly during the terrifying days before South Africa’s 1994 universal sufferance. Or how about “The Crossing,” Clegg’s tribute to Dudu and all struggle victims:

Through all the days that eat away
at every breath that I take
through all the nights I’ve lain alone
in someone else’s dream, awake
all the words in truth we have spoken
that the wind has blown away
it’s only you that remains with me
clear as the light of day
Chorus:
O Siyeza, o siyeza , sizofika webaba noma
(we are coming, we are coming, we will arrive soon)
O siyeza, o siyeza, siyagudle lomhlaba
(we are coming, we are coming, we are moving across this earth)
Siyawela lapheshaya lulezontaba ezimnyama
(we are crossing over those dark mountains)
Lapha sobheka phansi konke ukhulupheka
(where we will lay down our troubles)

“The Crossing“

I still weep when I listen to this. And there are others. My anthem in the ’90s was “Tough Enough”:

Picture the end of a cycle
here’s the fire from heaven
There’s a tired planet closing down
no more news at eleven
somewhere the last of a species has died
somewhere a child is born
when I hold you, I tremble inside
can we ride out the storm?
Are you tough enough – can you take the strain?
Are you tough enough – to walk in the burning rain
Are you tough enough – can you take the change?
Are you tough enough – baby just say!
Chorus:
Into the heart of the human dream
into a strange new world
remember me under the Tree of Man
where I first heard your words
gonna make it through, I can feel it

“Tough Enough”

Heat and Dust and Dreams was a political anthem. A declaration of what the world will be and what will be required to get there. In 2008, Clegg released One Life, looking at what all that energy has released and created. And looking forward at hope.

Johnny Clegg and the Tyrants: One Life

Anyone who has seen a Johnny Clegg performance knows that they are high-energy.

Click here to view the embedded video.

When Clegg rejoined his original partner, Sipho Mchunu, for a concert in Grahamstown in 1994 at a school hall in the middle of the local township, they danced on an old carpet.

The dust from that carpet was stomped out into the air causing Clegg to go into a coughing fit. “Haai,” said Mchunu, “the old man is tired.” A typically laconic statement from the man who left Juluka, Clegg’s original band, at the height of its success – when world popularity awaited him – to go back to rural Zululand so that he could raise a big family and watch his cows grow fat.

The concert I saw in 1995 was a one-off, and unique. Could you imagine Bono, or any of the rock legends holding an impromptu concert in a large theatre, sitting on his own with nothing but a guitar and speaking about the stories behind the songs?

Clegg sat and gave us a miraculous, beautiful insight into his life, and the history of the music. He played little musical snatches, showing how the music evolved, where it came from. He talked about Zulu dancing, Zulu music, how to rewire an accordion or a guitar to play Zulu music. Hours hurtled past as he sang and he played and he talked.

I love music. I have a lot of favourite musicians. Many of them are top European or American acts. Sting, U2, Evanescence, Nickelback, Eric Clapton, Peter Grabriel. I’m not especially interested in any of them as people. Bono and Geldof prove to me the vacuousness of most of what they have to say.

Clegg is different. He is genuinely smart, sticks entirely to what he knows and doesn’t claim to have the answers. What he does is humanise, contextualise and emotionalise the questions.

And so, via a lengthy introduction, we come to One Life.

It’s 2008. Johnny Clegg is 55 and has been performing for 29 years. He is not as popular in South Africa as he used to be. People aren’t interested in asking the hard questions anymore. He is still extremely popular in France, where the French have an oddly soft-spot for all things African. I think that Clegg has done well out of his music, but he is never going to be a super-star. That he continues to perform and write is because he loves what he does, and he still has something to say.

This album is a great album. Not just great in comparison to his own work, but a great album. And it just works so well. It has the energy and originality of a first album; of a new band. Yet it has the depth of meaning and clarity of understanding that is achieved at great personal cost. And, yes, I said that before.

This isn’t the first album that Clegg has released since Heat and Dust and Dreams, he stepped into purely traditional sounds in between with albums that weren’t especially memorable. We were all, South Africans, lulled into a pleasurable daze following the success of the 1994 democratic transition. No more.

I am a boy soldier
See my eyes’ empty stare
Each day explodes with pain
And it’s more than I can bare
The ghosts of the slain
Are the shadows in my eyes
And I dream tomorrow will come
And carry me away
Every second in No Man’s Land
I hold my life in these small hands
Every day in a world gone mad
Hard to face who I am
Chorus:
Once we were children
Once we played in the morning light
Once we were dreamers
One morning they came, the soldiers took us away

“Boy Soldier”

“Boy Soldier” opens with a hauntingly beautiful base melody. The lyrics and music evocative of lost childhood, of innocence looking out of a tortured soul. There is no anguish, just sorrow.

Clegg nods to two new languages, apart from his typical English and Zulu, and recognises two audiences that have supported him through the years: Afrikaans and French. I don’t think that Afrikaans works as a musical language. You can swear in it, but you can’t sing in it. Clegg does his best, but he really shines with French which has always blended beautifully into African music.

Can Clegg only talk about politics? No, of course not. Many of his songs are about love and the fragile strength and beauty of human relationships. Writing about one of his ballads, Clegg says, “The sun evaporates water but the sea is not scared of the sun’s flames because it’s infinite. In the same way that the sea is tested everyday by the sun, love is tested by human folly and difficult circumstances. Migrant work separates lovers far from each other over long periods of time and distance. This is the perennial problem of the life of a touring musician. Real love is like the ocean which cannot be evaporated by the burning sun.”

He can even be gently humorous:

I would like to be the sky
You could be my blue
You could be a dancing foot
And I could be your shoe
Oh, it’s hot in here and I need some air
I’ll wait outside for you
Come what may, there will be a day
I will wake up next to you…

“Bull Heart”

Lines I sent to my love, so far away from me across the sea. But Clegg is best when he is roaring defiance:

He’s a leader, talks of freedom
He knows the power of the Big Idea
He’s a dealer, he’s a seeker
Of the power that comes from fear
He gave his life to the party machine
Holding onto a secret dream
He knows better than anyone
Power comes from the barrel of a gun…
And he’s rising up against them now
And he’s rising up in country and town
Rising up against them now, rising up
Chorus:
The revolution has eaten its children
I see the river of dreams run dry
I’m so thankful I got to love you
You are the reason I survive

“The Revolution Will Eat Its Children“

The defining song of the album speaks truth to power. Don’t trust your leaders, they are human, and their motives may be entirely selfish.

“The dry old grass is made young, green and new again only by fire. This means that often hard and difficult experiences in your life make you confront and reinvent yourself giving you a new perspective. We learn some of our deepest lessons through pain,” says Clegg.

Don’t think that this album is only about struggle and survival. It isn’t. It is musically complex, while being a tremendous dance album. The instrumentation is wonderful and you’ll enjoy listening to it repeatedly as the various layers of music and lyric unfold around you.

This is an album that speaks to youth and beginning a life, with all its challenges; those of love and relationships, of loss and horror, but also of dreams and the ambition of changing the world and making it new again.

Oh! this is your time
This is your life
This is your day
Oh! look at the night
These are your stars
They show the way
I feel your heart beat
This is your time
This is your life
This is your day

“Day in the Life”

For Sam, for whom I bought this album and still haven’t actually gotten round to sending it to him. I promise it will be in the mail. Soon.

I’ve always tried to do the right and moral thing, of course, but when push comes to shove I’ve been an unapologetic utilitarian. I might, in my brasher moments, have put it this way: what matters is the outcome, the result, and doing the noble thing when it leads to a tragic result isn’t ethical, it’s both immoral and stupid. In a sense, this might be seen as privileging pragmatism over idealism, although those things have long been at war in my soul and I can’t say which will eventually win. (I’ll go ahead and apologize now to any real philosophers reading this for the hash I’m probably making of their field’s great minds.)

Last night I had a thought that may change all this. It occurred to me that both Chaos and Complexity Theories may have implications for the centuries-old debate between the ethics of duty and the ethics of utility.

Let’s start with the principle of sensitive dependence on initial conditions, better known as the “Butterfly Effect.” In the 1960s, meteorologist Edward Lorenz, in his attempts to model weather, discovered that minuscule changes in the inputs to an equation resulted not in equally minuscule changes in output, but in changes so vast and dramatic as to be unpredictable. The popular explanation says that a butterfly flapping its wings in America today can cause a hurricane in China next year – hence “the Butterfly Effect.” Of course, Chaos Theory is intensely mathematical and difficult, and our layman’s discussions are relegated to the simple and metaphorical applications, but the theory clearly suggests something important to our ethics discussion.

Utilitarian ethics make a lot of assumptions about the knowability of an outcome. That is, it presupposes that I can know what result is desirable and am therefore better able to work toward it. It assumes the ability to predict and dictate the ends.

Sensitivity to initial conditions, however, dismisses the possibility that I can reliably predict the results of my actions. Even in highly controlled mathematical contexts, where inputs can be controlled to as many decimal places as you have computing power to manage, a .00000001% alteration can change the end result massively. Human activity – especially in a dynamic system with multiple interacting agents – is hardly that precise, so the difference between keeping the extra 50 cents the cashier accidentally gave me and returning it, the difference between telling a white lie and ‘fessing up, the difference between stopping to help a stranded motorist and speeding past is guaranteed to set in motion a series of events that will lead me to a more or less unknowable end.

All of which points to the futility of a utilitarian approach. If I can’t accurately predict the results of my actions, then how can I possibly act in accordance with an ethical code that assumes the output? Sure, we can make educated general guesses and perhaps we’ll be generally correct, but as I ponder the ethics of the Butterfly Effect I realize there’s substantially less certainty in the system that I had previously imagined.

Kant’s ethics of duty, on the other hand, are completely unconcerned with the unpredictable ends, and instead focus on that which is knowable and controllable – the initial action, the input. If I’m faced with an ethical dilemma and I accept that I can’t act in accordance with practical results, the only thing left is to act in accordance with moral rules; as Kant put it, “I am never to act otherwise than to will that my maxim should become universal law.” Or, as they say on television and in the movies, “do the right thing.” Act morally and trust the universe, I guess.

It also occurs to me that Complexity Theory has something to say on the subject, too, and that the implications are consistent with Kant. Artificial Life researchers have conclusively demonstrated, in their attempts to model living systems, that rule-heavy, top-down systems that attempt to define too many pieces of the system are destined to fail. In the end, truly dynamic lifelike activity is too complex to micromanage.

What does work are systems where the activity of individual agents are guided by two or three simple rules. Take Craig Reynolds’ famous “Boids” model, for instance:

In 1986 I made a computer model of coordinated animal motion such as bird flocks and fish schools. It was based on three dimensional computational geometry of the sort normally used in computer animation or computer aided design. I called the generic simulated flocking creatures boids. The basic flocking model consists of three simple steering behaviors which describe how an individual boid maneuvers based on the positions and velocities its nearby flockmates…

The behavior of the boids in Reynolds’ simulation wasn’t over-determined. Instead, each individual boid was programmed to follow three basic rules.

• Separation: steer to avoid crowding local flockmates
• Alignment: steer towards the average heading of local flockmates
• Cohesion: steer to move toward the average position of local flockmates

The result was startlingly lifelike behavior on the part of the A-Life agents, and the validity of Reynolds’ findings have been borne out by substantial research since.

So how does this bear on our ethics question? Well, it seems that a utilitarian model, by assuming the knowability of outcomes and focusing on strategies to force the ends, are very much over-determined, like the top-down A-Life models that consistently fail to generate lifelike behavior. Those models decide at the outset what the result will look like and set out to try and sheepdog all the agents of action toward a predetermined conclusion.

The Kantian model, on the other hand, makes no assumptions about outcomes at all. It merely acts in accordance with basic moral rules that are structurally similar to the operational rules of a working A-Life system.

I’m neither a trained philosopher nor a scientist, but it seems to me that two schools of scientific thought nonetheless have something to say here about an important ethical conversation. For me, at least, my epiphany about the implications of Chaos and Complexity pose challenges to the code I have lived by for my entire adult life. If Chaos and Complexity (and my interpretations of them) are correct, it’s all of a sudden more difficult to be a Utilitarian.

Even more critically, it means I need to focus more attention on my own core first principles. If I can make no assumptions about the outcomes of my actions, then it seems all I have left is the moral value of the actions in and of themselves.

Hmmm….

Additional Reading

Chaos: Making a New Science, by James Gleick

Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos, by M. Mitchell Waldrop

NOTE: I am unaware of any research that broaches the questions raised here. I have not had time to conduct a formal search, however, and if others have addressed the relationship between Kant, Mill, Chaos and Complexity I would appreciate being pointed toward that research.

As I suggested in Part One, the messianic/utopian view of science and technology attributed to LIFE Magazine is consistent with an ideological bent that traces its lineage to the dawn of the Enlightenment in Europe.

Francis Bacon’s highly influential New Atlantis, first published in 1626, recounts the narrator’s fictional shipwreck on the shores of Bensalem, a lost utopia, and offers one of the earliest testaments to the potential of applied science (Outhwaite & Bottomore 1994). In an extended ceremony, Bacon is given to know the seemingly limitless bounty of Bensalem’s scientific expertise. Bensalem is well versed in all manner of advanced technology: refrigeration and preservation, mining, agriculture, astronomy, meteorology, genetics, animal husbandry, desalination, medicine, musicology, mechanics, air flight, and mathematics are literally only a few of the society’s advanced technological arts.

Together these technologies provide the citizenry with a quality of life unimaginable to the denizens of the more scientifically primitive Europe. “The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes,” the narrator is told, “and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible” (Bacon 1626/1942, 288).

This is the utopian promise of science, seen from an idyllic Enlightenment perspective. In the last line — “the effecting of all things possible” — Bacon offers a concise statement of the Enlightenment’s ideology of scientism, as the secrets of motion and even creation are apprehended and drawn under the umbrella of humanity’s intellectual dominion.

This scientistic tendency has proven especially well adapted to the inherently utilitarian character of the United States.

A practical, applied science implied progress through invention and more sophisticated technology. Moreover, rising in the service of a free enterprise, commercial order, that science and its products were imbued with aspects of private property requiring both protection and promotion. Identified with a new style of intellectual inquiry, American science became as well a commodity and a form of industrial and political organization (Rowland 1983, 35).

In “The Mythos of the Electronic Revolution,” Carey and Quirk (1989) explain that this utilitarianism was innately utopian in character.

A vital and relevant tradition in American studies . . . has traced the recurrent theme of “the machine in the garden.” This was a unique American idea of a new dimension in social existence through which people might return to an Edenic estate through a harmonious blending of nature and manufactures . . . . America was, in short, exempt from history: from mechanics and industrialization we would derive wealth, power, and productivity. . . . (Carey and Quirk 1989, 118-119).

The Electrical Sublime

Particularly instructive in the case of LIFE Magazine is Carey’s extended analysis of the rhetoric surrounding the electronic revolution.(1) Writing with Quirk (1989), he characterizes as utopian the rhetoric of a diverse collection of contemporary thinkers and artists. McLuhan, Brzezinski, Teilhard de Chardin, Fuller, Cage, Toffler and Feigenbaum

all convey an impression that electrical technology is the great benefactor of mankind. Simultaneously, they hail electrical techniques as the motive force of desired change, the key to the re-creation of a humane community, the means for returning to a cherished naturalistic bliss. Their shared belief is that electricity will overcome historical forces and political obstacles that prevented previous utopias (115).

Simply put, Carey argues that the messianic rhetoric attending the latest technological revolution is nothing new, and as such there is no reason to expect any significant improvement in the human condition resulting from one technology or another. To illustrate his point, he backtracks several decades and analyzes the public pronouncements that accompanied the development of electrical power — the same enriching, liberating, and democratizing “Power” LIFE describes in its October 11, 1937 issue. This view of Power Carey and Quirk call “the electrical sublime,” and in it they see the reformulation and reapplication of an Edenic impulse previously associated with the Industrial Revolution.

“Electricity promised, so it seemed, the same freedom, decentralization, ecological harmony, and democratic community that had hitherto been guaranteed but left undelivered by mechanization” (123).

The only ones who really benefited, though, were the power and light companies, argues Carey, and when utopia failed to emerge, it was the corporatizing influences and not electricity, per se, that got the blame.

The Depression saw a resurgence of the electrical sublime, and the Roosevelt New Deal “seized upon the motif of a ‘New Power Age’” to justify its creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Rural Electrification Administration. In a 1936 address to the World Power Conference,(2) Roosevelt asserted that electrical energy could lead to an industrial and social revolution that “may already be under way without our perceiving it.” He once went so far as to call the TVA a “social experiment” (Carey and Quirk 1989, 130-131).

Finally, we must understand that the centuries-old project of scientism is still alive and well, informing and misinforming current debates over new technologies.

…while the symbols of technological progress have changed, — satellites, spaceships, computers, and information utilities, having replaced steam engines and dynamos — the same style of exhortation to a better future through technology dominates contemporary life. This exhortation to discount the present for the future has therefore been a particular, though not peculiar, aspect of American popular culture (Carey and Quirk 1989b, 177).

As if intent on illustrating Carey and Quirk’s point, Vice President Al Gore in 1994 presented to the International Telecommunications Union this vision of the future of a new electronic technology, the Internet:

These highways – or, more accurately, networks of distributed intelligence – will allow us to share information, to connect, and to communicate as a global community. From these connections we will derive robust and sustainable economic progress, strong democracies, better solutions to global and local environmental challenges, improved health care — and, ultimately — a greater sense of shared stewardship of our small planet.

The Global Information Infrastructure will help educate our children and allow us to exchange ideas within a community and among nations. It will be a means by which families and friends will transcend the barriers of time and distance. It will make possible a global information marketplace, where consumers can buy or sell products.

And the distributed intelligence of the G.I.I. will spread participatory democracy . . . I see a new Athenian Age of democracy forged in the fora the G.I.I. will create (2).

Side by side, the technotopian rhetoric of Bacon’s New Atlantis and Gore’s Global Information Infrastructure illustrate how startlingly little changed in the 368 years that separate them, and situated somewhere between the two LIFE’s coverage of Roosevelt’s Power-driven social revolution makes perfect intuitive sense.

_______________

LIFE and Technology series

• Part one: “…to see and be amazed…”
• Part two: ideologies of science and technology since the Enlightenment
• Part three: war and postwar
• Part four: the bomb as spectator sport
• Part five: the space race
• Part six: Final issue

NOTES

1: In this essay, Carey and Quirk use the term “electric” very broadly, signifying by it not just electrical machinery, but also technologies more commonly referred to as electronic.

2: It is worth noting here that while F.D.R.’s remarks at the Conference were substantively consistent with LIFE’s characterization of his vision in the Grand Coulee photo-essay, his actual words were decidedly more reserved than the starry-eyed rhetoric employed by the magazine’s editorial staff.

SOURCES

Bacon, F. (1626/1942). Essays and new Atlantis. New York: Walter J. Black.

Carey, J., and Quirk, J. (1989). The mythos of the electronic revolution. In Carey, J. (Ed.), Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Science. (pp. 113-141.) Boston: Unwin Hyman.

Carey, J., and Quirk, J. (1989b). The history of the future. In Carey, J. (Ed.), Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Science. (pp. 173-200.) Boston: Unwin Hyman.

Gore, A. (1994). The global information infrastructure – forging a new Athenian age of democracy. Speech before the International Telecommunications Union, Buenos Aires, March 21, 1994.

Outhwaite, W., Bottomore, T., et al (Eds.) (1994). The Blackwell dictionary of twentieth-century social thought. Oxford, England & Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Reference.

Rowland, W. (1983). The politics of TV violence: policy uses of communication research. Beverly Hills: Sage.

Let me begin by emphasizing how much I admire Nader and all he has done. As a consumer advocate myself, I probably would not have the career I do if it wasn’t for him. His work on everything from auto safety to the corporate takeover of modern politics should be an inspiration to anyone who wants to stand up for the little guy. I read his book, supported his presidency, and when compared to the stiff mannequin that was Al Gore in 2000 and the incipient stupidity of Dubya, I pulled the lever for him.

But this isn’t 2000. It’s a very different world, and Nader simply refuses to recognize that.

First there’s his age. At 73 (soon to be 74), Nader is even older than John McCain, a man for whom his age has become a vital consideration as to whether or not you can expect him to go the full eight years. If Nader were elected and served two terms, he’d be 81 by the time he left office. Given that the youthfulness of Barack Obama and the vitality he brings with him has so successfully captured the ever-elusive youth vote, what can Nader really bring to the table to appeal to them by comparison?

Second, there’s accomplishment. What has Nader really done in the intervening eight years since his first run, and the four years since his second run, which was even more of a blip on the radar screen? Robert Scheer asked these questions in 2004, after Nader’s abortive second run:

Nader is not responding to a grass-roots demand that he run but rather is stoking his celebrity as a media curiosity. He has no mandate from those who care deeply about the causes he has championed. His sudden cameo appearance over the objections of many who have followed him, bypassing existing Green Party organizations, smacks of overwhelming elitism. Nader has done nothing of significance since the last election to organize popular opposition to the disasters of the Bush government, yet he now deigns to assert that he alone can save us.

That’s truer now than it was then, and it leads into my third point–timing. Why has Nader waited until now, when we’ve pretty much nailed down who the nominees will be for both parties? Why didn’t he start his run last year, building a grassroots initiative to get on the ballot on all 50 states? Why not appeal to second-tier candidates like Kucinich, Gravel, or even Ron Paul, to work with him and get behind him–and bring their disaffected constituencies with him?

The answer is Nader isn’t running to win. He’s running to be a spoiler, to draw attention–and possibly votes–away from the Democrat and Republican alike. Unfortunately, Mike Huckabee was very right when he said that Nader “usually pulls votes from the Democratic nominee. “So naturally, Republicans would welcome his entry into the race,” Huckabee said–and if he’s saying that, it’s something for us to worry about.

Mike says in his post that if Clinton gets the nomination, he’ll vote for Nader. I’ve had similar statements levied to me by friends of mine who are so far left they make me look like Mark Penn–the idea that anything to the right of, say, Dennis Kucinich, is a corporate tool and not worth voting for. Maybe that’s true.

But what will this concretely accomplish, besides giving votes to McCain, whose supporters will probably not be voting for the Nader/McKinney ticket? Nothing. It will enable people who pat themselves on the back for being principled to absolve themselves of any responsibility for what will happen with what is, essentially, a third term of Bush. It’s the same kind of solipsistic self-aggrandizement that Nader himself is tremendously guilty of. It’s a very cynical, passive-aggressive, mealy-mouthed sort of stance-”I don’t care if the country is going to hell in a handbasket as long as I stay true to my principles.” Nader exemplified this back in 2000 when he flat-out said that he’d rather have Bush win:

When asked if someone put a gun to his head and told him to vote for either Gore or Bush, which he would choose, Nader answered without hesitation: “Bush.” Not that he actually thinks the man he calls “Bush Inc.” deserves to be elected: “He’ll do whatever industry wants done.” The rumpled crusader clearly prefers to sink his righteous teeth into Al Gore, however: “He’s totally betrayed his 1992 book,” Nader says. “It’s all rhetoric.” Gore “groveled openly” to automakers, charges Nader, who concludes with the sotto voce realpolitik of a ward heeler: “If you want the parties to diverge from one another, have Bush win.”

Well, thanks, Ralph. You got what you wanted. So why, then, are you running again? What can you possibly hope to accomplish this time that you didn’t before?

Matt Stoller is absolutely right when he says that Nader has a lot of things to say that need saying, but that he himself is part of the problem. It’s the same type of phenomenon as Edwards’ populist message pushing Clinton and Obama further left, even though he himself didn’t benefit from it. Hell, you can say it’s the same as bloggers on Daily Kos being more left-tilted than Markos himself. The simple truth is that the movement is bigger than the man–than any man–and those who would try to make it all about them are doomed to failure.

Just as the Obama movement evolved and took form beyond the influence of the movers and shakers in the blogosphere, so too has the populist movement grown and eclipsed many of its standard-bearers. Nader should realize this and have the dignity to step aside quietly, so as not to sully his many considerable accomplishments any further. We need victories, not ideological martyrs. We need Presidents, not kings. And we need someone who is truly out for the welfare of the country, rather than for themselves.

I used to think Nader was that man, but not any more. It saddens me tremendously, but there it is. He needs to go, and he needs to take the army of disaffected whiners who would assure four more years of Republican domination through their vote for him along as well.

Lost in the justified hand-wringing over the loss of newspaper jobs, and the inevitable reduction in the number of important stories journalists can uncover, is the issue of “quality.” I mourn the loss of quantity in the journalistic ranks as much as anyone, and I’m betting more than some, but I am more concerned with quality these days.

I happened to run across these two articles, here and here, by Alva James-Johnson, a columnist for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Perhaps things have changed, but in my brief brush with newspapers many years ago, one did not become a columnist until one had demonstrated a depth of knowledge, insight, erudition, and quality of thought that qualified one for something near the top of one’s profession. Columnists were the cream of the crop. I hope, based on this example, that this is not the case these days.

Take this statement, for example.

Proponents of evolution have to realize that not everyone is convinced the theory is true. And those who don’t are also taxpayers who should have a say in the curriculum.

Using James-Johnson’s logic, any taxpayer should be able to change curriculum if, in his/her opinion, something in that curriculum is “not true.” For instance, if I believe that the world’s financial system is controlled by the international Jewish conspiracy, I should be allowed to demand that “truth” in the curriculum. If I believe that African-Americans are genetically inferior to whites and Asians, I don’t need proof. I can have that placed in the curriculum, at the very least, as an “alternate theory.”

Or what about this statement?

But it’s sort of like the tree-falling-in-the-forest conundrum. If you’ve proven evolution and most people aren’t convinced, is it really proven?

Galileo Galilei proved quite convincingly that the sun is the center of the solar system using the observations of the phases of Venus. Added to other observations that made heavenly phenomena completely fit into a Sol-centric system, the conclusion was obvious. Yet, had one taken a poll of humans in the 17th century, surely 99.9999% of them would have avowed vehemently that the heavens (including the sun) revolve around the Earth.

James-Johnson would have public opinion trump the evidence. Had there been 17th century public schools in Europe, they should have taught the earth-centric system of the universe as an alternate theory. To her, it is not “proved” until those who have no idea what they’re talking about agree that it’s proved. Opinion is all, even the most uninformed … even the most ignorant … of opinions.

If the quality of her thought is suspect, what about the quality of her education?

The age of the Earth can neither be proved nor disproved by science,” wrote Dr. Jeremy I. Walter, head of the Engineering Analysis and Design Department at Pennsylvania State University. “Scientific evidence can be compiled to support one model of Earth history as compared to another, but such work amounts to a feasibility study, not proof.

Strictly speaking, science can never prove anything for certain. James-Johnson could step out of a 15th story window tomorrow and fall up. It could happen. No one has ever seen this happen before (without mechanical help) but, if it did, it would require revisiting the Theory of Gravity to modify it or throw it out based on observation of a phenomenon that doesn’t fit the theory.

This is middle school science, folks. I know this because my middle-schooler learned it last year in the 6th grade!

What James-Johnson ignores is that science treats some things as if they were facts because the probability that they are facts is so high that any other treatment would be perverse. If I am sending a space probe to Neptune, I treat gravitational forces as if they were fact and, wonder of wonders, that probe, after slingshotting off the gravitational fields of other planets, gets exactly where I wanted it to go, more than two billion miles away, just as the Theory predicted it would.

But science would never say it couldn’t happen differently next time. It would just give very, very long odds against it, based on all the data available.

In this way, the odds against the young-earth crowd are very long. There are scores of observable phenomena pointing to an old earth. Each of these phenomena has to be rebutted in a way that makes sense. Currently, many of the arguments against these phenomena (such as the assertion that rubidium-strontium decay in rocks must have been at a different rate “once upon a time”) are unsupported by anything but wishful thinking.

And what about the quality of her education combined with her work ethic?

As for the theory of evolution: a member of the national board of directors of the Health Physics Society Andrew McIntosh, a combustion theory expert at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, bases his argument on the second law of thermodynamics, which establishes that a spontaneous, natural process could only lead to increased chaos and less complexity over time. The theory seems to contradict evolution, which asserts that the universe has become more orderly and complex.

This little chestnut has been so thoroughly debunked by physicists, and for so long, that it’s hard to believe that anyone is still making this argument, let alone an “expert in combustion theory.” I googled “second law thermodynamics evolution” and turned up pages of rebuttals.

Here’s the short version. The second law of thermodynamics applies to the universe as a whole. It does not preclude increasing complexity in one part of the universe. And it certainly doesn’t preclude increasing complexity in open systems that respond to energy. We have number of examples of increasing complexity happening naturally, from snowflakes to sand dunes.

I learned this in 9th grade science. James-Johnson should have learned it too but, barring that, she should at least have taken five minutes to find out how wrong her combustion theory expert is.

Says James-Johnson, about the second law argument:

I’m not a scientist, but such arguments raise enough questions to at least warrant a debate.

No, you are not a scientist, Ms. James-Johnson, nor do you have even the most rudimentary understanding of science, and the argument you quote has never raised a debate because it’s so fundamentally wrong, having been debunked thousands of times (I’m sure).

Scholars & Rogues has seen a number of discussions here go south over the issue of whether all “fact” is really just opinion. Ms. James-Johnson appears to believe that this is so. After all, to paraphrase her, if you prove something to be so likely that it is perverse to believe otherwise, but many people, who have no specific knowledge of the topic at hand, still disagree with you, have you proven it? In other words, to Ms. James-Johnson, the opinion of the ignorant is every bit as valid as the opinion of the learned in determining what we generally call “fact.”

It appears that the only qualification Ms. James-Johnson has to be a journalist, and a columnist, is having an “opinion.” Any opinion. It is not necessary to be well-enough educated to quickly identify specious arguments. It is not necessary to do research, no matter how little time it takes. And it appears that the only qualification for hiring her, and perhaps every other journalist at the Sun-Sentinel, is the same.

Having an opinion.

This is the sort of quality we find in newspaper journalism these days.

You cannot really understand America without Walt Whitman – Mary Smith Whitall Costelloe, friend of the poet.He is America’s poet….

He IS America – Ezra Pound

The greatest American poet is Walt Whitman. He is often referred to as the “poet of democracy” and as “the chronicler of the American character.” No other American poet matches him for breadth of vision about our country, nor for exploration of the political and social divisions of the United States. One may not always agree with his vision, but one never doubts the open mindedness and basic truth in it.

As we fumble our way toward the election of a new President who must lead our country through what may well be one of its most trying periods, it would do us well to ponder some of that Whitmanesque insight. First, for those who, like Romney, Edwards, Thompson, and Kucinich have fallen by the way;

Have you heard that it was good to gain the day? I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.

The Republicans, McCain and Huckabee, the poet might admonish to remember that they are Americans as well as members of their party or its more strident elements. To John McCain he might say:

Have you learned the lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you, and disputed passage with you? Judging from the main portions of the history of the world, so far, justice is always in jeopardy. All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor.

To Mike Huckabee, he might suggest this:

Be not curious about God. For I, who am curious about each, am not curious about God – I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least. I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences. Be curious, not judgmental.

He might speak to the Democrats equally frankly. Hillary Clinton might hear this:

The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people. Wisdom is not finally tested in the schools, Wisdom cannot be pass’d from one having it to another not having it, Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof.

Barack Obama would certainly be told this:

There is no week nor day nor hour when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their roughness and spirit of defiance. And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero.

To us, the American people, Whitman could been especially direct:

Other lands have their vitality in a few, a class, but we have it in the bulk of our people. Produce great men (and women), the rest follows. Re-examine all that you have been told… dismiss that which insults your soul.

In these days of consideration and decision that lie before us, we would do well to remember this poem:

A Noiseless Patient Spider

A NOISELESS, patient spider,
I mark’d, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;
Mark’d how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them—ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,—seeking the spheres, to connect them;
Till the bridge you will need, be form’d—till the ductile anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.

Let us fling our gossamer threads so that they help knit our country’s tattered soul….

The inestimable Pam Spaulding has a roundup of Michele Cottle (from The New Republican) and Josh Greene (from The Atlantic) looking into the resignation of Patti Solis Doyle, the role she played as power broker and manager, and how Clinton, like Bush, seems to prize loyalty and discipline over competence and effectiveness.

Last week, Obsidian Wings’ Hilzoy looked at coverage of the campaign and Clinton’s failures (including the Doyle resignation), and asked why the heck could Clinton have not foreseen this.

Finally, Matthew Yglesias looks at the Clinton campaign continuing to employ the utterly odious Mark Penn (who spent the night of Clinton’s sound defeat on Tuesday in the Potomac Primaries at a signing for his book in New York), and concludes that Hillary may really just like his work, for which he’s been paid over $5 million so far.

So, let’s see…Loyalty over competence. An inability to foresee changes in plans and an even greater inability to adapt to changing circumstances. Most of all, the inability to recognize that the people you hire may not be up to the job, and may, in fact, be doing more harm to you than good.

Remind you of anyone?

Anyway, quoth my friend Mike (a huge Obama supporter), “Meanwhile, Hillary has let her husband make classic blunders, and she’s made poor decisions about her staff that she’s trying to correct now, at the eleventh hour. Don’t you want a President who’s going to be ready on Day 1, instead of one who will make novice mistakes while she “learns on the job”?

Indeed we do.

The worst that a prince may expect from a hostile people is to be abandoned by them; but from hostile nobles he has not only to fear abandonment, but also that they will rise against him;

In 1513, early into the Great Wars of Italy, an Italian politician, ambassador, soldier, and political philosopher was on the losing end of one of the many internal conflicts that followed the Reniassance. After being tortured and eventually released, he moved to his beloved Florence and settled down on a farm to write what is probably one of the most important treatises on politics written – Il Principe, The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli.

In The Prince, Machiavelli lays out different kinds of principalities that exist, their various strengths and weaknesses, how to become a prince, and how to most effectively rule a principality. In so doing, Machiavelli gives us an eminently practical and pragmatic book about political leadership as well as a detailed look at the political and military history of his precious Italy.

[T]his country was under the dominion of the Pope, the Venetians, the King of Naples, the Duke of Milan, and the Florentines. These potentates had two principal anxieties: the one, that no foreigner should enter Italy under arms; the other, that none of themselves should seize more territory. Those about whom there was the most anxiety were the Pope and the Venetians.

However, the modern reader shouldn’t just read The Prince for its historical insights, fascinating as they are. Instead, the examples that Machiavelli scatters throughout the book are highly valuable for their parallels to modern politics, especially politics in parliamentary and federal systems a la the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, Japan, etc. Given that the governance of republics is specifically not addressed in The Prince, that Machiavelli’s insights nonetheless apply should give all of us pause.

If we look at the United States, we find that the country has a long history of political dynasties – the Bushes, the Udalls, the Rockefellers, the Kennedys, the Roosevelts, just to name a few. In many respects (although certainly not all), these families qualify as “hereditary principalities” according to Machiavelli’s definition. And as such, it’s easy to understand how they maintain their influence over a political system that is supposedly a republic.

I say at once there are fewer difficulties in holding hereditary states, and those long accustomed to the family of their prince, than new ones; for it is sufficient only not to transgress the customs of his ancestors, and to deal prudently with circumstances as they arise, for a prince of average powers to maintain himself in his state, unless he be deprived of it by some extraordinary and excessive force; and if he should be so deprived of it, whenever anything sinister happens to the usurper, he will regain it.

In other words, once you’re in with the help of Mommy or Daddy’s money and contacts, unless you suck badly, you’re in for good.

Our system approximates a “civic principality” as Machiavelli defines it, especially the Presidency. Given what Machiavelli says about civic principalities, and civic princes, it’s hardly a surprise that Presidents have sought to expand their power, generally successfully:

He who obtains sovereignty by the assistance of the nobles maintains himself with more difficulty than he who comes to it by the aid of the people, because the former finds himself with many around him who consider themselves his equals, and because of this he can neither rule nor manage them to his liking. But he who reaches sovereignty by popular favour finds himself alone, and has none around him, or few, who are not prepared to obey him.

As the quote that opened this post illustrates, Presidents civic princes who are installed via a public vote are largely insulated against the power of Congress their fellow nobles because the nobles cannot effectively resist the mass of the public. The only problems come when the prince visits upon his subjects (both the people and the nobles) sufficient indignities that he becomes hated and despised.

…I consider that a prince ought to reckon conspiracies of little account when his people hold him in esteem; but when it is hostile to him, and bears hatred towards him, he ought to fear everything and everybody. And well-ordered states and wise princes have taken every care not to drive the nobles to desperation, and to keep the people satisfied and contented, for this is one of the most important objects a prince can have.

Unfortunately for this excellent little book, The Prince has too often been considered a template for personal power. While there is certainly truth to that opinion, there’s a great deal more going on in The Prince than the quest for, and the maintenance of, personal power. In many respects, Machiavelli holds flexibility in the face of setbacks and various forms of opposition to be the single greatest asset any leader could have, and he points out that truly effective leadership essentially boils down to knowing the best approach to dealing with a problem and then implementing that approach. And Machiavelli clearly implies that only a truly effective prince can keep his principality safe from invasion, civil war, and even self-destruction.

Machiavelli has been badly misunderstood to be justifying any actions so long as those actions are effective at keeping the prince in power, when in fact he’s an agitator for princes to temper their basest tendencies in favor of the health of their very subjects and nations.

This is not to say that Machiavelli doesn’t justify cruelty, or lying, or the invasion of other nations – he does. But he points out that princes must limit their cruelty to situations where it’s absolutely necessary, and even then to quick cruelties that affect the fewest people, lest the princes be at risk losing their positions. He points out that lying and going back on your promises is sometimes necessary, but that doing so all the time gives the nobility and public reason to hate and oppose you. He points out that, if invasion is either necessary or desired, then there are ways to do it that will not destroy your own nation via overextension in the process.

The ends may justify the means, but for Machiavelli, the ends being justified are at least as much the security and prosperity of the nation as a whole as they are the personal power of the nation’s prince or princes. The Prince is a book of sufficient subtlety that the differences between personal power and national authority are not necessarily obvious, something that too many readers and reviewers over the centuries have failed to grasp.

Our leaders would do well to study again their Machiavelli and to re-learn what they believe they understand so well.

To read The Prince in its entirety on-line, please visit Project Gutenberg.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues decided to try the new process because their efforts to inject funds into the banking system through the Fed’s discount window, which makes direct loans to banks, had proven less successful than Fed officials had hoped. Many banks had avoided using the Fed’s discount window out of concern that investors would see the move as an indication of underlying problems at their financial institutions. The auction process was developed as a second way to get money into the banking system with the hopes that it would not carry the stigma of the discount window. (Emphasis added.)

In other words, “This isn’t a bailout. Nothing to see here. Move along. Don’t mind the dead bull in the middle of the street.”

Merrill Lynch, meanwhile, is predicting that we won’t see the end of the bubble until at least 2012:

But with the sales backdrop still softening, they may have to slice their construction plans by another 30% before we hit bottom on a cyclical basis. And, that bottom could be as long as a year away. Beyond that, weak demographic fundamentals point to years of sluggish real estate activity, particularly in terms of the “price”. The looming dominance of the “move down” buyer suggests that home values will continue to soften long after the building industry mops up the current excess supply. In fact, real estate pricing in general can be expected to be in the doldrums through 2012.

The report (which I found thanks to Kevin Drum) notes in the next paragraph that this may induce more after-tax saving and investing from consumers as a way of replacing the idea of the home as the primary retirement vehicle. I’m a big fan of that idea, but if consumer spending continues to spike, the chances of greater saving will drop drastically. Given how much of our economy is based on spending, every dollar spent on building better financial futures for oneself and one’s family is a dollar not spent on shiny toys and consumer goods, after all.

Meanwhile, the heat generated by Bush and Paulson’s false mortgage rescue plan continues to burn the wrong people, as spittle-flecked invective from the likes of Michelle Malkin and her commenters indicates:

This is so unfair. My partner and I have been wanting to buy a home (or apartment) in NYC for the last few years instead of paying massive rental, but have held off for the reason that we wanted to save more in order to allow for any additional unforeseen expenses and interest rate increases. For using what we thought was wise judgment, we are being punished two-fold – once for the loss of equity we could have gained in the interim by paying off a heavy mortgage rather than rent, and secondly having to pay for those who were too greedy and self-involved to stop and realize they were over-extending themselves and take responsibility for their lack of foresight. I am soooooo tempted to run out and buy a house waaaay beyond our means now, being secure in the knowledge that others can pay for my error. Maybe I’ll add $100k onto it and take a world trip while I’m at it – no problem, someone else will pay for it later, right?

Comments like this are typical of the reaction to any of the housing bubble bailout plans floating about the Hill these days, which is the preferred reaction, actually. By focusing the ire of angry homeowners, renters, and savers at those “irresponsible people” who “lived way beyond their means,” it deflects attention from the fact that plans such as the Federal Reserve’s new guidance for lenders are pretty much worthless–like Barney Frank says, if you believe the Fed is looking out for you, you believe in Santa Claus.

But this is the aim, you see–direct the ire of angry consumers at other individual consumers, using coded language that camouflages barely veiled racist sentiments that the bubble was predicated by black and Hispanic borrowing, rather than flippers and specuvestors looking to make a quick buck. Above all else, make sure the “individual responsibility” rhetoric isn’t targeted at the larger failures of a system that flooded the market with cheap dollars, used deceptive lending tactics to fool people into expensive loans, and funnels billions to banks that took big risks while foreclosures continue to soar.

Like I said in the title, there is a housing bailout going on, but the bailing out isn’t being done for consumers–it’s being done by them, at their expense.

The headline says it all…threatened with a filibuster and after eight hours of angry, eloquent debate on the vileness of supporting warrantless wiretapping and amnesty for lawbreaking telecom companies, Harry Reid has pulled the FISA reauthorization from the calendar for this Congressional session.

Make no mistake–this bill will be back next year. Protection for AT&T and Verizon is too high a priority for Bush, Mike McConnell, and the other enablers like Harry Reid. But the battlefield will be very different next time around. Next time the momentum will be on the side of Chris Dodd, Russ Feingold, the ten Democratic Senators who voted against cloture, the many committed bloggers and activists who rallied the forces, and the thousands of committed Americans who wrote, sent e-mails, signed petitions, and made phone calls to stop this travesty of justice from becoming law.

Plus, Clinton, Obama, and Biden–all of whom pledged to support Dodd–will have seen how much of a bounce this gave him, and will want a piece of that action. If even one of them joins the next filibuster, that will mess up the Senatorial calendar something fierce and screw Reid’s day. Imagine how much fun it’ll be to have a superhuman orator like Barack Obama up there railing against telecom immunity, then imagine being Harry Reid at that moment. Wouldn’t want to be that guy.

Chris Dodd pledged to give his last breath–to speak until he could speak no longer–to remind a corrupt, complacent Congress that America believes in the rule of law, in due process, in accountability for crimes committed, and in the idea that we do not adopt the tactics of our foes to beat them. We believe in the Constitution. We believe that our country has to stand for something better. And he came through.

It’s not just him, though. It’s Matt Browner-Hamlin and Tim Tagaris from Dodd’s team. It’s the peerless Glenn Greenwald and Christy Hardin Smith, who were on this train from the beginning. It’s the literally tens–hundreds of thousands of people who wrote, sent e-mails, called, faxed, and made their voices heard. It’s the 23-year-old new voter who raged eloquently and fiercely against an indolent, failing, crippled government that abets elite privilege and tries to squash dissent. In other words, it’s you and I.

The “300″ motif I keep using is cliche, yes, but accurate. Just like the Spartans (and a few thousand Greeks) holding the line against the hordes of Darius because of a carefully chosen battleground, we held back a vastly superior force, emboldened by a worthless media and millions of lobby dollars. There will most certainly be a next round, and we may not win.

But each and every time they bring this back, we’ll be there to fight. And we’ll make sure they know how we feel, again and again.

Today Chris Dodd is going to take the floor of the Senate chamber and not let go of it in order to prevent the passage of legislation that would not only reauthorize and extend the NSA surveillance program on millions of Americans, but would grant retroactive immunity from prosecution to the telecom companies that participated in this illegal program.

Thank You, Chris Dodd has more details about what this means and what you can do to help. I also recommend Scarecrow’s post at Firedoglake for some eloquent thoughts on why our system of government must be preserved. Russ Feingold has also pledged to stand with Dodd.

Here’s what Dodd himself has to say about the legislation and his opposition:

“Providing retroactive immunity to companies that may have violated the law will set a dangerous precedent,” said Dodd. “Companies who violated the trust of thousands of their customers will be immune to prosecution and the details of their actions will stay hidden. The President, and his Administration, has consistently used scare tactics in an attempt to force Congress to pass FISA legislation that provides retroactive immunity. I urge my colleagues to stand up to this administration and this President and say enough is enough.”

I do not exaggerate when I say that this is not only an important day in modern politics, but an important day in our country’s history. Here’s where we will find out if the Senate has the guts and heart to stand behind one of their most principled members and support the Constitution. Here is where the Senators running for President–Biden, Clinton, and Obama–have a perfect chance to demonstrate real leadership and stand in unity with their colleague. Here is where we, as a country, must stand at the crossroads and ask ourselves what path we will take.

Do we continue to follow the path of fear, of a climate of paranoia and suspicion that justifies egregious acts in the name of a war we don’t actually seem to be winning? Do we support a vast governmental intrusion into our private lives to build databases on our activity, which are then sold to the highest corporate bidder?

Or do we stand up and say “No. No more. No more spying. No more lying. No more lawbreaking. No more fear. No more disrespect for the values that made our country great?”

A lot of people talk a lot about patriotism and supporting your country. But what does that mean? Is it patriotic to turn a blind eye to something you know–you know–is wrong out of fear? Is it patriotic to refuse to dissent as our president willingly admits to illegally invading the lives of his own citizens–the people that pay his salary and put him in office?

That’s not patriotism. That’s moral cowardice. And Chris Dodd’s stand is a way of saying that we’ve had enough of that.

If you’ve had enough…if you want to stand with Dodd…if you want to stand up and say “No more,” then show your support. As a favorite fictional hero of mine once said, it’s time to stand and be true.

Dodd is going to stand for us. Will you stand with him?

Thx to Jim Gwyn for passing this on.

But yesterday Obama sharpened his attempt to secure support in the geek tech crowd with an ambitious proposal outlining his presidential technology policy.

The proposal begins by reaffirming Obama’s support for net neutrality, using some particularly strong language that condemns the telecom duopoly and our overall sad state of American broadband development:

Because most Americans only have a choice of only one or two broadband carriers, carriers are tempted to impose a toll charge on content and services, discriminating against websites that are unwilling to pay for equal treatment. This could create a two-tier Internet in which websites with the best relationships with network providers can get the fastest access to consumers, while all competing websites remain in a slower lane. Such a result would threaten innovation, the open tradition and architecture of the Internet, and competition among content and backbone providers. It would also threaten the equality of speech through which the Internet has begun to transform American political and cultural discourse.

Nice stuff–the kind of thing you’d expect myself or Matt Stoller to say. Of particular interest to me as well was the section discussing how technology can endanger privacy and what Obama plans to do to address that:

• To ensure that powerful databases containing information on Americans that are necessary tools in the fight against terrorism are not misused for other purposes, Barack Obama supports restrictions on how information may be used and technology safeguards to verify how the information has actually been used.

• Obama supports updating surveillance laws and ensuring that law enforcement investigations andintelligence-gathering relating to U.S. citizens are done only under the rule of law.
• Obama will also work to provide robust protection against misuses of particularly sensitive kinds of information, such as e-health records and location data that do not fit comfortably within sector-specific privacy laws.
• Obama will increase the Federal Trade Commission’s enforcement budget and will step up international cooperation to track down cyber-criminals so that U.S. law enforcement can better prevent and punish spam, spyware, telemarketing and phishing intrusions into the privacy of American homes and computers.

I’d like to see the Obama campaign directly address the fact that government agencies are turning to corporate partners to act as proxies in developing “data shadows” that contain comprehensive profiles on people. While safeguards and restrictions are nice, Obama should be confronting the question of why these vast treasure troves exist in the first place–and why big business is so keen to turn it over to big government at the first opportunity. Still, it’s a good start.

Probably the most ambitious part of the proposal is Obama’s push for a much more transparent government, where the public would not only have the opportunity to view rulemaking and legislation, but actively participate in the process through usage of the Internet to foster communication and “knowledge transfer.” Obama also puts forth the idea to appoint a nationwide Chief Technology Officer, which makes sense to me–too much of our technological development, particularly in the area of Internet and broadband creation, is spread out among too many agencies, with too many conflicting rules and jurisdictional struggles.

There’s a lot more in the proposal, and I urge you to give it a read. Ars Technica’s Jon Stokes’ review notes that much of the open government policy may not make it past the realities of backroom-deal politicking, and that anti-government libertarians may have a collective shit fit at the amount of government interest-and involvement-this sort of policy plan will require, as well as many areas in which Obama’s lofty rhetoric may not be supported by serious substance. On the other hand, Matt Stoller, who has been harshly critical of Obama in the past, is now much closer to becoming a believer thanks to this document.

As a tech geek myself, detailed policy positions on things like broadband development and the Internet future are to me what spinach is to Popeye, and it delights me to see one of the Big 3 Democrats addressing these issues so openly. At a time when the political discourse sinks ever lower and is dominated by hot-button issues like immigration, the need to discuss technology issues and advance new ideas has never been more important.

Not only that, advancing America’s technology can open up new cultural, social, and economic vistas for everyone–but only if they have the access. As I said in my broadband for America manifesto, the digital divide needs to be bridged if everyone is to take advantage of the potential the Internet offers. Obama has come through on challenging FCC chair Kevin Martin on his plans to relax rules against media consolidation, and has supported legislation demanding better data on broadband adoption, so he’s got some cred to back up the hype.

Obama isn’t breaking tremendous new ground here–as was noted during his press-the-flesh session at Google, much of what he proposes is already being done on the state level, and has been advanced by others before. But he’s actually developing a coherent framework for tech issues, building many good ideas into a cohesive whole–something he has NOT done until now. If he can meld the coherency of this idea with his overall manifesto of change–and back it up with strong answers to the tough questions, not to mention applying that coherency to other areas–he might make a believer out of me too.

Consider the following:

While ramping up his efforts to attack Hillary Clinton as a typical DC insider and friend to corporate interests, Obama actually beat Clinton to the punch in expressing his support for the expansion of NAFTA into Peru, guaranteeing that workers’ interests would be shafted in favor of the same corporate interests that would benefit from so-called “free” trade–and assuring them that he can be their friend even better than Hillary.

Then you have his idea of tolerance apparently exemplified as an anti-gay pastor speaking at his rallies, then adding a gay white pastor to speak to largely black crowds–barely.

And Obama seems to have completely swallowed the Kool-Aid that Social Security is a looming crisis that must be immediately “dealt with” in some vague fashion, even though this is an issue that has (at least for me) been thoroughly debunked. How odd is it for a candidate that so strongly espouses change and new solutions as Obama to wholeheartedly embrace a topic that puts him squarely at odds with one of the first big progressive victories of the new millenium?

Not to mention that Obama (along with Biden, Dodd, and Clinton) missed the late-night vote to confirm Michael “Waterboarding’s not really torture” Mukasey as Attorney General.

And yet, Obama has come out in favor of net neutrality more strongly than any other candidate to date. He has joined sponsorship of legislation to prevent media consolidation that would hurt minority media ownership. Despite what people may tell you, he voted against the odious 2005 bankruptcy bill. And he’s been against the Iraq (and Iran) wars from the get-go.

Even as Obama’s rhetoric sharpens against his competitors for the Presidential nomination, he continues to portray himself as the candidate of change, of building bridges, of inclusiveness and bipartisanship. I don’t expect candidates to follow a check-box litmus test of issues I agree with–that’s ludicrous. What I do want is for their stances to make sense, to flow from a coherent framework of an ideal of governance. Obama is trying so hard to be inclusive that his policy positions are all over the place, but he’s not coherently explaining how these differing stances work together.

To paraphrase an old saying, if you try to stand for everything, how can you really stand for anything? Can Obama’s wide stance really hold him aloft, or is he in danger of losing his balance?