I can understand why Lions for Lambs, Robert Redford’s recent movie, received mixed reviews; in fact, I can completely understand why many people would hate it. It is preachy, very preachy. About a third of the movie shows Tom Cruise’s character (a Republican senator) preaching at Meryl Streep’s character (a veteran reporter) in support of the administration’s war on terror, while the reporter in turn preaches to the senator about the mistaken war in Iraq. In the process, they preach at each other about their complicity in America’s failures.
That’s already a lot of preaching.
But here is the genius of the movie: it questions whether the political debates in government and academia have any meaning at all. The sympathetic heroes of the movie are two young men who tire of the arguments and choose action, to wit, going to Afghanistan to fight for their country. They end up in mortal danger as a result of political decisions that are being debated in offices and hallways a long way away.
The movie itself has four main settings. The first is the office of the senator. In the second, a university professor’s office, Robert Redford’s character debates a promising but disengaged student about his role in life. In the third setting, the reporter is arguing in her editor’s office about the role of the press. The fourth is a snowy mountain ridge in Afghanistan.
The first Great Debate is between the senator and reporter. Both are consummate insiders. The senator is a key player in a new aggressive military strategy in Afghanistan, with implications for Iraq, Iran, and the entire Near East. The reporter’s first reporting job concerned Vietnam, and her liberal sensibilities -- anti-Republican and anti-war -- come through loud and clear. After running through the well-worn arguments for and against military action in Asia, the two end up challenging each other over who is using who in the relationship between media and government. The reporter takes the argument back to her editor and it takes on a different slant: what is the relationship between the corporate world and "real" news?
The more accessible argument is between the professor and the student. The professor is a Vietnam vet turned protester, who became a professor. He thought that he could use his mind, his words, and his professorial credentials to change the world. He failed. He resigned himself to a different mission: to single out a few exceptional students and push them toward greatness.
Now, those of us who teach the social sciences can be forgiven, I think, for considering the professor something other than a failure. We teach about history and geography and politics, but these are things that don’t necessarily reach most kids, but for good reason. They do not have a frame of reference for understanding the vital importance of these subjects. But as they grow up, they will use what we teach -- though probably without awareness -- as they connect the mental dots and make sense of the world.
The student opposite Redford’s professor became a cynic, figuring at a young age that certain elites make the decisions, and that even entering those elites is corrupting. So make some money, live the good life, and wash your hands of the decisions made in the halls of power.
This brings me to Afghanistan. Two soldiers were in the professor’s class. They chose action, they chose to do something. They believed that serving their country gave them credibility as agents of change that academia did not. The professor tried to dissuade them, but they joined the Army, as Special Forces soldiers. This put them in grave danger, and this tied them to the other debates.
Should the student live the good life or should they risk being pinned down by the Taliban in an icy gorge in the Hindu Kush? How much does it matter if the senator’s military plan is the right one? Does it diminish the soldiers’ nobility and exonerate the professor and student who choose a battlefield of words in a cushy college setting? If the soldiers die, is the reporter to blame for playing the insiders’ games instead of sounding the alarm? Does the path of action turn the soldiers into pathetic pawns in a game played for the benefit of distant powers? Or are they the only real players and the pathetic ones are the suits who send our hopes into the snowy skies over a shadowy and barren country?
Maybe the world is just too complicated for regular folks, and the noble life of action is the morally correct one. Maybe the debates of wonks in Washington or New York no longer connect to the real world.
Showing posts with label civil argument. Show all posts
Showing posts with label civil argument. Show all posts
Sunday, September 13, 2009
What if the world is too complicated for democracy?
Could 2009 be the beginning of the post-democracy era, complements of the current financial crisis?
Francis Fukayama once declared the "end of history," to wit, that the Great Questions of History have been answered, and that the consensus was that the best course for mankind was economic capitalism combined with a democratic government. There would be no more need for conflict; the case was closed in favor of modern Western values. The winning model included human rights, free and fair elections, and free markets.
Then came 9-11, which left no doubt that conflict remains, and that the consensus was not so consensual. There are people who object to modern notions of economics and government, and some become violent.
Asia would seem to be a case study proving that capitalism and democracy don’t need each other. Post-World War II Japan was democratic on paper, but a one-party state in reality. South Korea and Singapore followed suit. All three became wealthy. President Lee, the former leader of Singapore said that personal freedoms, which we value as key to our democracy, will lead to the downfall of the US. Such freedom unleashes individualism, which leads to decadence and instability. Meanwhile "soft authoritarian" countries on the Pacific Rim are sporting growing economies; their price is personal freedom, which Confucian societies value less than conformity and stability. China is following the same lead as the other "tiger economies," and this formerly-communist economy is increasing its GDP faster than any other nation, while its currently communist government swats away the flies of dissent. This model says that government will offer a stable environment for business; people are free to do as they will, within the confines of this ordered society, and everyone benefits. Except perhaps artists, oddballs, weirdoes, innovators, non-conformists, rebelling teenagers, and anyone else not in line with the grand scheme of things. And why defend them, at the expense of a rising prosperity?
So maybe we are too free, and our decadent lifestyles will cost us our position atop the hierarchy of nations. But the financial crisis of 2008-2009 brought another possibility: that the sheer complexity of economic life in the modern world is in the process of making democracy as we know it obsolete.
When the effects of the largest financial crisis in 3/4 of a century were becoming felt, who took the lead in addressing the issue? Appointed, not elected, bureaucrats. The Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, and the Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke, laid out the national response, leading our representatives in Congress to at first interfere with and then rubberstamp President Bush’s economic team’s plan. Meanwhile, we regular citizens tried to grasp both the causes and the enormity of the situation. Seven-hundred billion tax dollars to begin to fix this? Maybe a trillion-and-a-half when all is said and done? To paraphrase the late Senator Dirksen, a trillion here and a trillion there and now we’re talking real money.
The Chinese understand a system run by unelected bureaucrats. That is not what Americans expect out of government. But we have to deal with the complexities of re-regulating investment banks, controlling complex investment instruments, manipulating our $13 trillion economy, not to mention coordinating with central banks around the globe. It is possible, just possible, that the local politician we elected (wherever in the U.S. we live) as our congressperson because she/he did such a great job on the school board is not up to this?
In fact, the elected head of the executive branch was little visible at the forefront of the crisis, which added to the inclination of the nation to elect the opposition political party to the presidency. What bold actions are in store from our new elected officials? Well, the new president brought in experienced bureaucrats to fill his economic team. Other fundamental changes? No. There is a stimulus plan, pretty much like the one pushed by President Bush, only bigger.
Is this abrogation of the policy limelight by elected officials in favor of insiders a good thing or a bad thing? If the central bankers deem it necessary to bail out big corporations, increase unemployment benefits, and create jobs, why should we object? If the welfare of big business means the welfare of most of us, what is the problem? If we need fast action, why put our faith in the slow, political process of democracy?
Maybe we shouldn’t worry about the rights of those on the political and social fringe, because our idea of the fringe has changed over time. In his book Supercapitalism, Robert Reich, who is more optimistic than I am about the state of democracy today, looked back at the ‘50s as the Golden Years, saying that America offered high-paying blue collar jobs, corporate statesmanship, and a government-industry-labor partnership that maintained stability and prosperity; he noted that the cost was a rigid and stifling conformity. Peter Beinart recently wrote in Time that "The public mood on economics today is a lot like the public mood on culture 40 years ago: Americans want government to impose law and order -- to keep their 401(k)s from going down, to keep their health-care premiums from going up, to keep their jobs from going overseas..."
Maybe people need only the appearance of control over their own lives. We can debate personal rights, protest over the internet a military action we disagree with, and decide local issues. Are we ready to leave the meat of national/global policy-making, the part that controls how people make a living, to the experts? That is how China does it and they are expanding at 8% a year.
Francis Fukayama once declared the "end of history," to wit, that the Great Questions of History have been answered, and that the consensus was that the best course for mankind was economic capitalism combined with a democratic government. There would be no more need for conflict; the case was closed in favor of modern Western values. The winning model included human rights, free and fair elections, and free markets.
Then came 9-11, which left no doubt that conflict remains, and that the consensus was not so consensual. There are people who object to modern notions of economics and government, and some become violent.
Asia would seem to be a case study proving that capitalism and democracy don’t need each other. Post-World War II Japan was democratic on paper, but a one-party state in reality. South Korea and Singapore followed suit. All three became wealthy. President Lee, the former leader of Singapore said that personal freedoms, which we value as key to our democracy, will lead to the downfall of the US. Such freedom unleashes individualism, which leads to decadence and instability. Meanwhile "soft authoritarian" countries on the Pacific Rim are sporting growing economies; their price is personal freedom, which Confucian societies value less than conformity and stability. China is following the same lead as the other "tiger economies," and this formerly-communist economy is increasing its GDP faster than any other nation, while its currently communist government swats away the flies of dissent. This model says that government will offer a stable environment for business; people are free to do as they will, within the confines of this ordered society, and everyone benefits. Except perhaps artists, oddballs, weirdoes, innovators, non-conformists, rebelling teenagers, and anyone else not in line with the grand scheme of things. And why defend them, at the expense of a rising prosperity?
So maybe we are too free, and our decadent lifestyles will cost us our position atop the hierarchy of nations. But the financial crisis of 2008-2009 brought another possibility: that the sheer complexity of economic life in the modern world is in the process of making democracy as we know it obsolete.
When the effects of the largest financial crisis in 3/4 of a century were becoming felt, who took the lead in addressing the issue? Appointed, not elected, bureaucrats. The Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, and the Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke, laid out the national response, leading our representatives in Congress to at first interfere with and then rubberstamp President Bush’s economic team’s plan. Meanwhile, we regular citizens tried to grasp both the causes and the enormity of the situation. Seven-hundred billion tax dollars to begin to fix this? Maybe a trillion-and-a-half when all is said and done? To paraphrase the late Senator Dirksen, a trillion here and a trillion there and now we’re talking real money.
The Chinese understand a system run by unelected bureaucrats. That is not what Americans expect out of government. But we have to deal with the complexities of re-regulating investment banks, controlling complex investment instruments, manipulating our $13 trillion economy, not to mention coordinating with central banks around the globe. It is possible, just possible, that the local politician we elected (wherever in the U.S. we live) as our congressperson because she/he did such a great job on the school board is not up to this?
In fact, the elected head of the executive branch was little visible at the forefront of the crisis, which added to the inclination of the nation to elect the opposition political party to the presidency. What bold actions are in store from our new elected officials? Well, the new president brought in experienced bureaucrats to fill his economic team. Other fundamental changes? No. There is a stimulus plan, pretty much like the one pushed by President Bush, only bigger.
Is this abrogation of the policy limelight by elected officials in favor of insiders a good thing or a bad thing? If the central bankers deem it necessary to bail out big corporations, increase unemployment benefits, and create jobs, why should we object? If the welfare of big business means the welfare of most of us, what is the problem? If we need fast action, why put our faith in the slow, political process of democracy?
Maybe we shouldn’t worry about the rights of those on the political and social fringe, because our idea of the fringe has changed over time. In his book Supercapitalism, Robert Reich, who is more optimistic than I am about the state of democracy today, looked back at the ‘50s as the Golden Years, saying that America offered high-paying blue collar jobs, corporate statesmanship, and a government-industry-labor partnership that maintained stability and prosperity; he noted that the cost was a rigid and stifling conformity. Peter Beinart recently wrote in Time that "The public mood on economics today is a lot like the public mood on culture 40 years ago: Americans want government to impose law and order -- to keep their 401(k)s from going down, to keep their health-care premiums from going up, to keep their jobs from going overseas..."
Maybe people need only the appearance of control over their own lives. We can debate personal rights, protest over the internet a military action we disagree with, and decide local issues. Are we ready to leave the meat of national/global policy-making, the part that controls how people make a living, to the experts? That is how China does it and they are expanding at 8% a year.
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