It may be time for us to talk once again about strategy. We think we know what that word--strategy--means; and, in a sense, we do: we progressives employ political strategy to achieve our ends, no less than do those who seek to thwart our goals and roll back progressive gains. We devise campaigns and the ways in which to advance them--through the media and amongst our fellow citizens and our elected representatives--all in what must be considered a rational and necessary harnessing of all the political tools available to us.

But our understanding of the word "strategy" is incomplete because it does not truly encompass all tools available to us. This fact is, in a sense, a moral choice. But it can be more accurately described as a predictable byproduct of a political viewpoint rooted in morality. And this fact, a reflection of the reality that there are some strategic ploys to which we will not stoop, is, likely, a good thing--whatever its cost in short-term gains.

Progressives' larger failure to grasp the full implications of our opponents' use of political strategy, to make the necessary adjustments and take the necessary countermeasures is not, however, a good thing. We, too, must master the art of political jiu-jitsu, even if we choose to use it purely in self defense.

Glenn Beck's direct audience, like the political faction they represent, is a relatively small one, certainly in relation to the attention it and the object of its attention garner in the national media. Beck, his audience, and the Tea Party movement do not, in and of themselves, have the power to make their (incoherent and often self-contradictory) agenda a practical political reality. But this is not necessarily something they--or those more enfranchised members of the right who find them useful--expect or seek, however earnestly felt and expressed Tea Partiers' individual cries on their agenda's behalf.

The larger purposes and uses of Beck, his audience, the Tea Partiers and groups like them are manifold, with a few salients: to foster unity of purpose among a motivated core constituency of a larger political operation; to provide a conduit through which the larger political entity can channel messages that are politically useful (for achieving the previous tactical and larger strategic goals) but which it must be able to disavow; and, closely related to this, for using these messages to provoke a reaction in the political opposition that will reinforce and amplify the initial message.

The ways in which Beck's Lincoln Memorial rally satisfies the first salient are obvious. Less so, perhaps, are the ways in which it satisfies the other two, by complementing the Republican Party's chosen wedge issue for this election season, the not-at-Ground Zero, not-a-Mosque.

It was predictable that President Obama, or at least some of his party (to whom he could then be tied, in the manner of the "Obama-Pelosi" meme we see in so many political advertisements), would publicly take the self-evident high ground in the Mosque debate--thus, its perceived value, upon launch, as a wedge issue.

So the Republican Party anticipated that a black president and/or his allies would come to the defense of cool Constitutional principle while their core constituency and other Americans seethed in the heat of an especially potent (particularly at this time of year) hot-button issue.

This black president, who the party and their proxies have also managed to trick a troubling percentage of Americans into thinking is either a Muslim or, at the very least, some mystifying sort of non-Christian. Point scored, then (from the GOP point of view), when Obama weighed in on the controversy as predicted and provoked.

But what if it could be shown that the Constitutional principles of this black, "Muslin" [sic] president were mere principles of convenience, which he would abandon if the offending group in question were not "his kind"--putatively, Muslims--but rather a group of white Christians? If you're a Republican operative, that would be game, set, and match.

Enter the Beck rally at the Lincoln Memorial, to be held on the same day that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered "I Have a Dream."

Beck and his followers sought to advance (their version of) Christian ideals on "hallowed ground," and you can bet they were hoping that the president and/or his allies would say that they shouldn't do it--Constitutional guarantees of freedom of assembly notwithstanding. Don't quite believe that this was sprung as a trap? Does this seem a conspiratorial bridge too far? Consider, then, the seemingly bizarre pains Beck took to point out that he would be speaking not on the same spot where Dr. King stood, but rather "two steps below" that hallowed step. Not exactly on hallowed ground, then, but "two blocks" of stone away. It seems to me much more likely that this represents an attempt by Beck and his handlers to achieve perfect rhetorical and symbolic parity with one of the progressive lines of reasoning in the "Ground Zero Mosque" debate than it does the fruits of meticulous research into the historical and photographic record of Dr. King's speech.

And one can hear the 30-second ad that the GOP pined for: "When Muslims wanted to build a Mosque at Ground Zero, Obama stood with the terrorists. But when Christian-Americans wanted to rally at the Lincoln Memorial, he stood against them. Mr. President, whose side are you on?"

Obama wisely refused to take the bait on this one, as did most of his political allies. But I'm not convinced that their canny understanding that the GOP was baiting a trap was the reason why. My guess is that Beck's travesty of the March on Washington did not, in their eyes, rise to the level of a "profile in courage" moment--that is to say that, unlike the Mosque controversy, where one might reasonably imagine that the time had indeed come to stand up and be counted as being on the side of religious freedom in general and of blameless Muslims and the future of America as a free country in specific...progressives mostly failed to see any real threat to black civil rights or MLK's legacy in the Beck farce.

As, indeed, there was none--at least from the event in isolation. Not only because anyone with even a nodding familiarity with history can perceive the yawning gulf between a figure like Beck, even at the height of his influence, and a figure like King, even 40 years after his death...but also because black civil rights have, however imperfectly, been given sustained rhetorical and political support by progressives for those same 40 years.

My point here is this: If standing up for the (self-evident, and bound to be enforced--if need be--by Constitutional law, if not in the court of public opinion) rights of Muslims to build a community center near Ground Zero was (and is), in fact, a defining moment for the progressive conscience--not to mention our nation and the rights and safety of Muslims--then we progressives have only ourselves to blame. If we do not stand up for our principles in a sustained way, at the times and places of our own choosing, then we are bound to encounter situations where we feel we must stand up for them at the times and places of our opposition's choosing. We will expose ourselves to the traps of our political opposition and, in doing so, will unwittingly reinforce their messages and advance their ends while doing harm to our own.

So we need to be very aware of the strategies of "the lie"--not only in the sense of falsehoods (we are sufficiently aware of those, and our awareness of those are often used to spring the traps of which I speak) but also, and perhaps more importantly, in the sense that billiards players use the term: being mindful not only of the shots available to you at the moment, but also of where a given shot will leave the cue ball for your next shot or that of your opponent. The lie.

Our opposition is adept at considering the lie, generally in conjunction with any number of lies--they'll prevaricate over which balls are theirs, which ball is the cue ball, and whose turn it is...all in the service of better setting up the lie.

With truth and progressive principles on our side, we don't need to resort to falsehoods and obfuscations. But we do need to remain aware of--and utilize for ourselves--the strategy of the lie. We need to see where we are being set up. And we should, in our relentless and sustained efforts to stand up for and advance our principles and our politics, seek ways we can put our opponents in difficult positions where they will have little choice but to expose themselves for what they are.

By doing so and by standing up for what we believe in relentlessly and at the times and places of our choosing, we can avoid the traps of standing up for what we believe only at the times and places of their choosing. We might even succeed in rendering their wedge issues moot and impotent before they are even launched.

--Eric Wybenga as the Minister of Distant Information

Hmmm...Could it Be, I Don't Know, al Qaeda?

Consider this a placeholder. Even Ministers of Distant Information take some time out for the holidays, but this Bhutto stuff positively demands comment. Just not now. But know--know--that it's coming, along with some thoughts on snapshots.

And happy holidays, happy new year to alla y'all!

Brooks's Brother

Confronted with today's David Brooks column in the New York Times, in which he touts the presidential character of Barack Obama over that of Hillary Clinton, without so much as mentioning a single Republican candidate, one doesn't quite now how to react. There's the:

-Literalist View: Is this the unofficial concession of (at least) the G.O.P.'s all-but-extinct Rockefeller wing?

-Conspiracy Theory #1: Is Brooks pumping up Obama in order to avert a Clinton candidacy that he thinks will present a more formidable challenge to the eventual Republican nominee in the general election?

-Or, Conspiracy Theory #2: Is this a subtle way for Brooks to burnish his non-racist bona fides in the wake of his apropos-of-nothing column defending Ronald Reagan's infamous campaign-kickoff at the Neshoba County Fair, which unleashed a wave of recrimination from fellow Times columnists Paul Krugman and Bob Herbert?

Brooks, the Conservative Liberals Like™, long ago broke with the Bush administration--and therefore the core of his own Republican party, but this column is remarkable nonetheless for its apparent endorsement of a Democratic candidate without caveat or qualification. What gives? If the column's status among the Times's Democratic-skewing on-line readership as today's most emailed article is any indication, I'm likely not the only one with this question. (Too bad the editors seem to have disabled "public comments" on their Op-Ed columnists, a development I like to attribute to one particularly sharp rebuke I delivered to Thomas Friedman which would have claimed one of the top spots in the "comments" owing to my having posted mere minute after his column appeared one night--had it ever appeared; shortly thereafter, the comments section disappeared. Hey, a man can dream.).

If there is any good faith to be found in Brooks's column today, it is tempting to see it as another measure of the opportunity awaiting the Democratic party, if not the remnants of the American left. If Republicans--even "moderate" ones--are writing off the next presidential election nearly a year before the fact, one might imagine that 2008 contains the promise of political transformation on a par with, say, 1932.

Such thinking is premature and, from my point of view, much too optimistic. First, one should not mistake the relative disaffection of Republican primary voters with their presidential field for any accurate representation of a given candidates' prospects in the general election. Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani, and even Mitt Romney would all present a formidable challenge to any of the potential Democratic nominees (which, at this point, political experts seem to agree, consist of Clinton and Obama, not necessarily in that order--a mere binary that invites suppositions of bad faith, such as my own, when Republicans deign to anoint either of the two), especially if paired with John McCain, as seems eminently possible, especially if Giuliani wins the nomination.

Further, one should not underestimate the structural obstacles that now stand between the electorate's vaunted (and much poll-tested) desire for change and the translation of that mandate into political reality. I'm referring here not to the various vote-suppression tactics employed by the G.O.P. (though these should not be discounted) so much as the media-enabled and currently predominant politics of personality (for some dismaying evidence--if any is required--and an interesting reaction to same, check out Stanley Fish's recent NYT blog).

This focus on "character" and other such intangible--and eminently malleable--attributes all comes at the expense of attention paid to policy, and it will make it possible for any of the Republican candidates to run in the general election as an agent of "change," no matter how slavish his adherence to the conservative orthodoxies that currently have a suzerain hold on this country. All that will be required is rhetorical readjustment and an affable demeanor, which an amnesiac populace will forget are precisely the horses that the present regime rode to power.

But let's, for the sake of argument, concede that the Democrats are exceptionally well positioned for 2008, to the point where they could attain not only the White House but also the kind of Congressional majorities required to enact meaningful legislative and regulatory change. The question then becomes: What will they do with this moment?

Given the evidence from the Democrats' tenure as majority party in the House and the Senate, coupled with the statements emanating from the presidential campaigns (excepting Dennis Kucinich), the answer has got to be: precious little. Some observers on the left ascribe the Democrats' incrementalism and readiness to compromise to timidity. Others of a more pragmatic and parlaimentarian bent cite the difficulty of achieving veto-proof supermajorities in the Senate. But while each of these explanations have something to offer, they miss the larger point that the Democratic party as a national entity amounts to far less, for the political aims of its base, than the sum of its constituent parts.

This is due in part to the diverse nature of that constituency relative to that of its Republican counterpart; the Democratic base rarely speaks with a unified voice, even for the sake of appearances in the way that, for example, tax-policy Republicans are content to mumble Christian platitudes. It's also has a great deal to do with who those constituents are: the poor, the otherwise disfranchised, and those in natural opposition to a dedicated Republican constituent (as is the case with labor vis-a-vis business owners). They have, as has been said, nowhere else to go, at least not in the present two-party framework.

And yet the Republican alternatives have remained reliably and sufficiently repugnant, over the years, to hold these constituents within the Democratic party. Democratic candidates are happy to have their votes but most who end up serving at the national level have little intention of enacting their various agenda. What they offer, instead, is a tray of slightly different shape than that carried by the Republicans for the offering up of an ever-greater share of power, wealth, and resources to those interests which already possess these things in abundance.

If you find this too facile, too cynical, or just too uncomfortably Naderite, then consider Hillary's health-care plan, which Republican candidates deride as "socialized medicine" for the sake of stirring up their base, but which contains huge giveaways to the insurance industry. And to many Americans--including, sadly, many self-described but under-informed "liberals--Hillary appears the very embodiment of progressivism.

So it will be interesting, should a Democratic landslide actually materialize next Election Day, to note what the Democrats on either end of Pennsylvania Avenue actually do with the mandate. Perhaps the real watershed will arrive when it becomes plain that, even when voters supply Democrats with the political means to effect change, things stay the same.

In the meantime, we might keep our skepticism intact when the likes of Brooks praises any candidate for pursuing "liberal ends in gradualist, temperamentally conservative ways."

Found Sound

Went to the opening last Tuesday of Found Sound, an exhibit of work by GAINES (my buddy Shelby and his brother Latham) at Think Tank 3 until January 22nd. The show features found objects converted into playable, amplified musical instruments. My favorite was the doctor's bag theremin (I'll try to discover the actual title and, hopefully, an image), among a number of works that were both visually and aurally evocative. With quite a few musicians in attendance, including the artists themselves, periodic outbursts of ethereal noise, delayed mbira-esque tones, and more than one searing Bic-lighter-slide blues lick (the stringed instruments, formerly a broom and a barn door, were evidently tuned to an open chord) punctuated the standard New York conversational din--along with, for a few sublime minutes, a guest wringing a pitch-perfect "Over the Rainbow" from the doctor's bag, tastefully-applied vibrato and all.

It is the visual strength of the works, though, that ultimately makes this show succeed. Given that all the pieces produce sound largely by means of amplification (and therefore depend very little on body shape for resonance), the original, pre-transformed objects could have easily taken on a purely decorative feel or come across as an afterthought, mere surfaces on which to mount strings on one side and electronics on the other. But the iconic weight with which GAINES have imbued that broom, that barn door, and that doctor's bag enables a true dialogue between the seen and the heard.

This is the case with what I think of as the readymades-plus-sound in the show. Two more elaborate pieces, which could be called constructions-plus-sound, don't supply the same frisson of cognitive and sensory dissonance. Alexander the Great and Hands on Her (pictured above) are intriguing objects but ones in which sight and sound, rather than set in opposition to one another, coexist in a unified and apparently predetermined narrative.

"Found sound" is a term generally used to refer to sound itself--that arrived at by chance, as in the compositions of John Cage or the ambient noise and decontextualized music and vocal recordings used in sample-heavy genres such as industrial and hip hop. By taking this phrase as the title of their show, GAINES suggest another way of seeing their art--as visual manifestations of those waves of sound floating through the gallery space, the unexpected projections of one sensory realm upon the screen of another.

1968: State-Sanctioned History

As a student of American history, I had absolutely no intention of tuning in to see Tom Brokaw's latest rehash of 1968. And as one who once performed manuscript-doctoring on a mass media company's book about 1968 I felt I knew what to expect: the usual nostalgia-tinged, history-as-headlines gloss, replete with groovy soundtrack.

But flipping through the channels last night, I alit on Brokaw's 1968 for a moment of exemplary illustration--not of the '60s, but of one of the mechanisms by which Americans are kept ignorant of history and current affairs alike:

VO/BROKAW: "But America wasn't the only country in turmoil. While there was rioting in Chicago [shots of Mayor Daley's police beating protestors at the '68 DNC in Chicago]...Communist tanks crushed a democratic uprising in Prague"

Those who have read Manufacturing Consent will know what to look for in the excerpt above: The use of the passive voice to describe the actions of the state (or, as is often the case, a state friendly to the interests of the U.S. government), and the use of the active voice to describe the actions of an enemy of state interests.

Who were the unidentified rioters in Chicago? One might fairly assume from this "documentary" that it was those dirty hippies; or those with a touch more cultural memory might answer that it was Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman's Yippies. Alas, no: according to Rights in Conflict, the report of the incident submitted to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, what happened in Chicago in 1968 was a "police riot." Did some of the protestors act as provocateurs? Yes. But the rioting was done by the police, who (according to the report) engaged in "unrestrained and indiscriminate police violence on many occasions, particularly at night," violence made "all the more shocking by the fact that it was often inflicted upon persons who had broken no law, disobeyed no order, made no threat."

Do not think that I imagine some grand conspiracy to distort history; none, in fact, is needed. I write for television, so I know how these things work: the much more likely scenario is that a writer with (at best) a passing familiarity with the subject at hand was called upon to write the script for Brokaw. He knows--or discovers that--"there was rioting" at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. From there, he either parrots a source that cast the rioting in the passive voice or, if he has discovered that an official report blamed the rioting on the police, feels that, even with official sanction, such an allegation seems a touch, well, radical to put in Tom Brokaw's mouth in 2007--and so he pasteurizes the potentially infectious truth.

This is how we manage to get news--and history--that appears to report events but which, demonstrably, divorces facts from context and strips events of significance. And this is another example of why, as we prepare for another year of political conventions, elections, and other catastrophes--while looking back on Chicago '68 and New York '04--we need take care not to rely on the state-rationalizing narratives provided by corporate media.

P.S. Of course, those who bother to view the trailer on the History Channel's website are given fair warning that Tom Brokaw knows fuck all about the 1960s, subject of his no doubt ghost-written book Boom! (which is, frighteningly, Amazon.com's #1-ranked book in the "history" category), as in the promotional interview he helpfully informs us that "the '60s weren't just Paul Simon [solo career began in 1970], James Taylor [a virtual unknown until the 1970 release of his second-album, Sweet Baby James], and the Beatles [even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then].

Shine On You Crazy Diamond

The Madcap has had his last laugh...Syd Barrett shuffles off this mortal coil at age 60. Here's a look back at Syd in happier times.

Laying the Groundwork on Iran?

By now, regular readers of the Drudge Report have become accustomed to his out-of-context headlines. But even good ol' Matt didn't have to expend much yellow-journalistic effort on his " Iran president warns of 'explosion' " link.

Read the story, though, and it becomes pretty clear the "explosion" in question is a metaphorical one. Reminds me of the oft'-published and repeated "quote" from President Ahmedinejad that Israel should be "wiped off the map." But did he really say that? Obviously he didn't say it in English, and a strong case has been made that this is an inaccurate translation of what he actually said in Farsi--a language in which this idiomatic expression does not seem to exist.

Regardless of the translation, though, Ahmadinejad's statement clearly was an expression of hostility towards Israel. So what does it matter what he actually said?

Well, "wiped off the map" dovetails with the "Iranian nuclear crisis" in a way that "eliminated from the page of history" (which he seems to have actually said, in a reference to time rather than place) does not.

Which, in turn, reminds me of the "story" originally reported in Canada's National Post that the Iranian parliament had passed a law requiring Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians to wear identifying labels on their clothing. The only problem with this story is that it turned out not to be true--the link is to the Free Republic blog because the National Post has retracted the story and removed it from their website.

A lot of people heard denunciations of this new "law" from public figures; how many of these same people have heard that it was not true? Interesting, isn't it, how it fits into the White House view of Ahmadinejad as the new Adolph Hitler? Interesting, too, how "information" about the alleged law came from Iranian exiles. Hmmm...misinformation supplied by exiles from a country whose first three letters are "I-R-A"...where have I heard that one before?

Which, in turn, reminds me of the "story" (sorry--no link...this was from the pre-dawn of the Internet) from the Persian Gulf War (aka, Iraq War I) about premature Kuwaiti babies in a maternity ward being torn from their incubators by Iraqi soldiers, another story that turned out not to be true.

Ahmadinejad is clearly a bad guy, who seems to want nuclear weapons, and who clearly does not wish either the U.S. or Israel well. His Holocaust denial is repugnant. So why would anyone gild the lily by trying to make him seem worse than he is? Presumably for the same reason that the Kuwaiti government, after Iraq invaded in 1990, hired the PR firm Hill and Knowlton (and if you follow this link, you gotta read the last paragraph) to help drum up American support for war with Iraq: You can be a bad guy, and you can wish the U.S. and its allies harm, but that alone doesn't necessarily mean that the U.S. public will support a war against you.

Which, in turn, reminds me of Colin Powell's presentation before the U.N....but that's another subject for another day.

Update: ...so further reseach indicates that I am not the first to make these connections. Hats off to The X Spot for this excellent piece on selling the Iranian/Iraqi threats...and then there was also this in-depth piece in the Nation.

Must Be an Election Year

New Yorkers can thank their lucky stars for WNYC's Brian Lehrer, a man who knows the right questions to ask...like the ones he asked in today's interview with James Gordon Meek, the Daily News reporter who broke the story of the Holland Tunnel bomb plot. Questions such as: Was this story sourced to the White House? Was it given to you so as to snub the New York Times? Was the timing meant to coincide with a) Bush's Chicago Presser or b) the anniversary of the Madrid train bombings?

We New Yorkers remember all the Orange Alerts from the 2004 election season. Now it's midterm time...and we can be glad that Lehrer apparently does, too.