Nimh,
A very thoughtful post.
nimh wrote:
Not for the very first time, you appear to be responding in a rather knee-jerk manner to what you expect the other side to be saying - to the caricature you've drawn of the other side rather than to what is actually up there.
True enough, although I believe I was addressing some essential features of the "other side" rather than a just caricature of it - both involve some similar abstractions, but there is a difference.
Quote: It leads to a certain contamination of the debate. Kind of like when George Bush brushes aside all details that were just presented about Kerry's health care plan and asserts: he wants to turn our health care into a government-run program, "because that's what liberals do". Eh, no. Perhaps "liberals" do, those mythical liberals that have become etched, like an iconic image of sorts, into your perception of the never-changing enemy, back in the sixties. But that's about as far as that goes.
Kerry presented lamentably few details of his "plan" to be brushed aside. He was specific only about the great things it would achieve, and in view of the likely cost, and the equally unlikely prospect that it would improve anything, it did deserve the brush-off Bush gave it.
One of the satisfactions of these threads for me is the occasional encounter with a really well expressed thought or argument (even if I don't agree with it). Your , "
those mythical liberals that have become etched
", was such an encounter. Well done! There is an element of truth in this. However I see the thing more as an underlying element in a continuing political struggle, characteristic of the age, than I do as an iconic relic of the past.
Quote: To the matter at hand. You follow up the above opening paragraph with what I dare say is the usual rant about the arrogance of Europeans - how they always claim to know better but really are no better than the Americans, etc etc - followed up by a stern rebuke that, really, we dont have "any rights in the process" (not quite sure what rights I would be claiming here exactly, except for the right to comment - just like you do not hesitate to comment upon European politics in the "Following the EU" thread, in at least as broad a sort of generalisations).
Quote: I asked "the maddening question why American viewers and voters let themselves get all riled up and absorbed by any trivial sideshow, even after three debates just outlined any number of fundamental, far-reaching stakes in this race in the starkest terms." A fair enough question, considering the topic of this thread - just like I would have asked it about Dutch viewers and voters if the topic had been the renewed interest in Princess Margarita's private life. "Poll respondents make snap decisions on the basis of whether one guy, that one day out in Vietnam thirty years ago, happened to rescue a man's live more or less by happenstance or through an act of heroism", I observed, and asked, "Why?"
This is how I attempted an answer: "When feeling intimidated and overwhelmed by too big, too serious a set of choices, the first thing people naturally lose is their ability to prioritise, to distinguish the main things from the lesser things", adding: "Works that way for me, anyway." Continuing on how it works for me, anyway, I could add from personal experience: "You get a sense of escapism, a desire to flee into dealing with something overseeable, something that's not larger than life - something petty, even."
You have raised questions with fundamental implications about the democratic process, contemporary sociology, and human nature itself. My answer addressed only the implications for the democratic process. On the human level, I believe the questions about priorities you raise do have meaning. However, even there the processes by which we reach our conclusions often involve complexities of thought that go beyond what we do (and, in some cases, can) express. Some of the "lesser things" to which you refer are symbols or indicators of deeper elements of character - matters far more important in the selection of political leaders than the alleged details of "the plan" they have for this or that, and which (here at least) only rarely materialize. This is how we judge the characters of those we meet and deal with in the course of daily life. The process is flawed and capable of error, but it is the best we have. As for interpreting actions in Vietnam years ago - it wasn't the events of one day at all. It was the central focus of the whole experience and its aftermath. Such things are very revealing of character. A wonderful, very European writer, Joseph Conrad has given us several penetrating illustrations of this.
Quote:I know this all too well. I am now at a point in life where I have to reconsider basic choices in work, love and personal future. In the short-term, I really ought to be preparing a rather intimidating presentation for next Tuesday. Yet here I am, distracting myself into an issue of easily overviewable proportions: was Father Cheney right or just cynical for blasting Kerry about a remark on Mary Cheney?
Perhaps true, but I'll bet that while you indulge in these trivialities, the larger things are indeed sorting themselves out on the trapeze of your mind.
Quote: Again, the blast of anti-European sentiment suggests some personal issues more than any correlation to what was posted here. But concerning the topic at hand, of course the fate of the world hinges on the American elections. You are, by now, by far the most powerful country in the world. Your economy is of a size and dynamics that makes ours directly respond to anything that happens over there. Sure, we can adapt some things here and there and add a layer of our self-created problems over it all, but if the US goes into crisis, we do too, and if it does exceedingly well, we get a boost too - and Europe ain't the only continent for which this holds true.
You have here characterized an argument that we hear quite often. I believe it is both false and a frequent excuse for inaction and irresponsibility on the part of our European critics. The EU now embraces a population and an economy larger than that of the United States. Europe is far from the passive victim of the thoughtless actions of the elephant of North America. Indeed, in several areas Europe is actively and effectively opposing the United States on important matters. OK by me if you do, but please stop the hand wringing about your relative victim status.
Quote: Not to mention some topics that lie close to my heart. IMHO, a lot of progress was made in creating a semblance of institutional arrangements on global security in the 90s. Baby steps, but with a clear direction. To my mind, global security per se has now come to be at stake with the disastrous notion of "preemptive attack". There is also the future of international justice, with the ICC lamed by American opposition. The US, due to its economic size, also has enormous effect on global warming, even if all of the rest of us would sign Kyoto. All these issues are, to you, anathema. But you cannot deny that America has a decisive effect on them.
Under President Gore, I don't believe the US would have gone to war in Iraq. That means OUR SOLDIERS would not now be in Iraq. It also means - again, IMO - that anti-Western sentiments would not have run as dangerously high as they have in the Arab world and, to some extent, in the immigrant communities in our own countries.
Here we simply disagree in very fundamental areas. The dye was cast for Arab hostility toward the West at Versailles in 1919 (and before) at the hands of the European colonial powers who also brought down the Ottoman Empire and the Caliphate. You would be faced with this problem even with a (shudder) Gore presidency.
There is nothing new about the notion of preemptive attack - indeed it is a time-honored European tradition. In the cases at hand our critics appear to approve of it in Afghanistan, but disapprove of it in Iraq. This suggests that the real issues lie elsewhere.
I believe we have very different ideas about the state of the world and the prospects for a system that may guarantee, or at least enhance, global security. The ICC creates the illusion of a system of international justice, but in both operation and concept, it is hardly that. We simply do not choose to surrender our sovereignty to judges who are not accountable to us. We note that the mostly European protagonists of such systems have a decidedly poor track record of dealing effectively with serious security issues, even within Europe, by that or any means. Kyoto was a similar illusion. Take a close look at the details of the treaty and the obligations (or lack of them) assumed by the various signatories. It would have required nothing of the developing world, little of Europe and much of the United States. Congratulations to your negotiators, who decidedly outsmarted Al Gore, but you shouldn't be surprised that we rejected it. The underlying dispute here appears to me to be that Europeans believe that new formal structures will (or can) be the solution to the historical pattern of disputes and struggles that form human history, while Americans believe that the future is more likely to be more or less like the past. Who is right?
