L!ve From > DC

Political segregation creates unique opportunity for viable thirdy party

David Brooks shines a light on a troubling trend--the more educated you are, the more likely you are to be ideological in your politics.

In theory, of course, education is supposed to help us think independently, to weigh evidence and make up our own minds. But that's not how it works in the real world. Highly educated people may call themselves independents, but when it comes to voting they tend to pick a partisan side and stick with it. College-educated voters are more likely than high-school-educated voters to vote for candidates from the same party again and again.

That's because college-educated voters are more ideological. As the Emory political scientist Alan Abramowitz has shown, a college-educated Democrat is likely to be more liberal than a high-school-educated Democrat, and a college-educated Republican is likely to be more conservative than a high-school-educated Republican. The more you crack the books, the more likely it is you'll shoot off to the right or the left. Once you've joined a side, the information age makes it easier for you to surround yourself with people like yourself. And if there is one thing we have learned over the past generation, it's that we are really into self-validation...We don't only want radio programs and Web sites from members of our side — we want to live near people like ourselves...When we find ourselves in such communities, our views shift even further in the dominant direction. You get this self-reinforcement cycle going, which social scientists call "group polarization."

As a result, "Republican places become more Republican and Democratic places become more Democratic," argues Brooks.

But while Brooks rightly notes that the information age has aided political segregation, he fails to acknowledge the deeper, structural causes for polarization: the influence a party's politics wields among its own constituents. This is no more evident than in the case of a Presidential race where rivals in the Primaries will often cast aside bitter differences and personal animosities and trundle over to support the party nominee while brutally assailing the nominee from the other side.

Why do the likes of Howard Dean and Wesley Clark cheese out and support John Kerry but refuse to vouchsafe for Bush? On many issues, most voters consider--as Kerry's former Primary rivals did--Bush and Kerry to be much more closer than advertised by respective parties--hence the head-to-head polling numbers for both candidates.

In theory, as long as key Democratic and Republican leaders continue to hold cross-party solidarity as taboo and exploit the "information age" to propagandize and polarize rather than inform, Americans will continue to cleave to this destructive trail of divisiveness and partisanship.

But in practice, the combination of an educated voter and the "information age" could eventually lead to a time when the voter finds neither major party candidate to be particularly attractive--creating a surreal opportunity for a viable third-party.

I think that time had arrived in 2000--only there was--and there still is--no viable third-party option.

Which is what keeps American politics so viciously conformist and depressingly lame-brained.

Tuition burden falls by a third

As reported in the USA Today:

What students pay on average for tuition at public universities has fallen by nearly one-third since 1998, thanks to new federal tax breaks and a massive increase in state and federal grants to most students and their families.

Contrary to the widespread perception that tuition is soaring out of control, a USA TODAY analysis found that what students actually pay in tuition and fees — rather than the published tuition price — has declined for a vast majority of students attending four-year public universities. In fact, today's students have enjoyed the greatest improvement in college affordability since the GI bill provided benefits for returning World War II veterans.

What made the difference: a $22 billion annual increase in grants and tax breaks since 1998.

That 80% jump in financial aid — targeting middle-class families earning $40,000 to $100,000 a year — has more than offset dramatic increases in tuition prices.

See also.

Iraqi sovereignty

What a day! Highlights:

* The quiet, poignant and short (five minutes) ceremony was so apt--a dignified Paul Bremer hands Iraqi Interim Prime Minister Allawi the letter; Allawi peers at it appreciatively through his glasses. Most Iraqis are dressed in suits. Interim Iraqi President Sheikh Yawar, in grand tribal gear, makes a speech of hope that was broadcast around the Arab world--the Arab street is undoubtedly stunned to see a traditional tribal leader spearheading Iraq's flight toward democracy. Then, within minutes of the ceremony, Bremer gets on a military plane and departs Iraq. I have come to admire the way Bremer has handled his role in Iraq. This guy wore the title of Administrator well.

* Allawi puts terrorists on notice: "I warn the forces of terror once again,” he said. “We will not forget who stood with us and against us in this crisis.”

* A gleeful handshake between President Bush and Tony Blair at the NATO summit marks the moment the Coalition has been accused of opposing. Blair nodded his head in triumph several times. Rumsfeld, seated a row behind Bush and Blair, beams.

* NATO pledges to help train Iraqi troops--16 NATO members are already in Iraq.

* The Left's reaction to the news was largely sullen.

* The disgusting, off-hand reaction of the insufferable French: "We have taken note of this step, naturally. The transfer of sovereignty is an event which was expected and is significant. It is a stage in the political process which will continue until 2005... Further stages will follow, in which France wishes success to the interim government and the people of Iraq."

* The equally despicable statement from the new Spanish Prime Minister, Zapatero: "The Spanish government does not plan any participation in the process under way in Iraq."

* There were no terrorist attacks in Iraq today.

Falsely advertised as a documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11 strikes box-office gold

"'Fahrenheit 9/11' torches box office records" screams a headline in the USA today.

"First documentary to take top spot" took "an astounding $21.8 million this weekend," notes the story.

Documentary? Fahrenheit 9/11 is not a documentary--it is an op-ed put to film and marketed as a documentary--which is what Michael Moore excels at.

As the numbers for Fahrenheit 9/11 and his previous efforts Bowling for Columbine and Roger & Me prove, no one does profiting from tragedy better than Michael Moore.

The secret to his success lies in a clever bit of repackaging which fools even people who normally shun his conspirational op-eds and books into paying to see those clueless rants transformed to the big screen.

Who pays $10 to hear Moore insist that the military operation in Afghanistan was really about an oil pipeline, a claim already fisked by experts?

Moore's twisted insights have always appealed to a certain kind--people who distrust the mainstream media, big corporations and the US government. No, not radical conservatives, but the conspiracy-minded, ignorant, latte liberals—self-declared intellectuals who struggle to tell fact from fiction. And with Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore broadens his reach--Islamists wouldn't be ashamed to order this flick for their dens.

Moore first revealed himself as a fact-contorter nonpareil in the 1989 "documentary", Roger & Me, in which he tried to establish himself as a standup little guy trying to stick up for the other little guys. R&M, he claims, was about exposing the impact of GM's CEO Roger Smith's downsizing efforts on the common folk in his hometown Flint, Michigan.

Moore blames Smith for causing an impoverished, jobless citizen to be evicted from her apartment on Christmas Eve. He doesn’t mention, of course, that the person evicted was not a GM employee nor does he credit the vehicle maker for employing thousands in that town who were (and still are) well-served by it. He doesn’t say that many unskilled factory workers—“shop rats” were better paid than the college-educated in Flint. He deliberately ignores the fact that it was the Unions that had tried to strangle GM forcing it to look elsewhere.

The moral of R&M--your employer owes you a lifetime of employment and that it is okay to blame others for your own failures. It was an anti-capitalist message masquerading as an anti-establishment tirade.

Roger & Me went on to become one of the highest grossing "documentaries" of all time. It also belonged to--one could argue it spawned--a unique genre--dark docucomedies that writhe with anti-Americanism--to which Moore later added The Big One and Bowling For Columbine. Through seductive narratives he convinced many common, decent Americans that layoffs, globalization, and the gun culture are essentially the outcome of an evil American society.

A society that deserved 9/11.

The day after the September 2001 attacks, Moore wrote an open letter on his web site (which was soon picked up and distributed by Marxists, Communists and Socialists) and charged that “A-rabs” were being unfairly blamed for the attacks.

The tragedy, he declared, was the Bush administration's “race-card” conspiracy to get Americans “whipped into a frenzy against a new enemy”.

“If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him! Boston, New York, DC, and the planes’ destination of California – these were places that voted AGAINST Bush!” Moore thundered adding, “In just 8 months, Bush gets the whole world back to hating us again.”

And so Fahrenheit 9/11 was born. This time the anti-globalization crusader who has already made millions from global distribution of his work--fine-tunes his formulaic jaundiced view of America for maximal international appeal. This time, George W. Bush is Roger Smith, America is GM, and the terrorists represent the common man fighting back at the source of injustice.

As always, Moore, CEO Hate America, speaks from the heart. And as David Brooks notes Moore, has been alternately sourcing inspiration for and laying the groundwork for F9/11’s international success from his many lucrative ($30,000 per appearance) speaking engagements abroad.

Like Hemingway, Moore does his boldest thinking while abroad. For example, it was during an interview with the British paper The Mirror that Moore unfurled what is perhaps the central insight of his oeuvre, that Americans are kind of crappy.

"They are possibly the dumbest people on the planet . . . in thrall to conniving, thieving smug [pieces of the human anatomy]," Moore intoned. "We Americans suffer from an enforced ignorance. We don't know about anything that's happening outside our country. Our stupidity is embarrassing."

It transpires that Europeans are quite excited to hear this supple description of the American mind. And Moore has been kind enough to crisscross the continent, speaking to packed lecture halls, explicating the general vapidity and crassness of his countrymen. "That's why we're smiling all the time," he told a rapturous throng in Munich. "You can see us coming down the street. You know, `Hey! Hi! How's it going?' We've got that big [expletive] grin on our face all the time because our brains aren't loaded down."

Naturally, the people from the continent that brought us Descartes, Kant and Goethe are fascinated by these insights. Moore's books have sold faster there than at home. No American intellectual is taken so seriously in Europe, save perhaps the great Chomsky.

Before a delighted Cambridge crowd, Moore reflected on the tragedy of human existence: "You're stuck with being connected to this country of mine, which is known for bringing sadness and misery to places around the globe." In Liverpool, he paused to contemplate the epicenters of evil in the modern world: "It's all part of the same ball of wax, right? The oil companies, Israel, Halliburton."

In the days after Sept. 11, while others were disoriented, Moore was able to see clearly: "We, the United States of America, are culpable in committing so many acts of terror and bloodshed that we had better get a clue about the culture of violence in which we have been active participants."

This leads to Michael Moore's global plan of action. "Don't be like us," he told a crowd in Berlin. "You've got to stand up, right? You've got to be brave."

In an open letter to the German people in Die Zeit, Moore asked, "Should such an ignorant people lead the world?" Then he began to reflect on things economic. His central insight here is that the American economy, like its people, is pretty crappy, too: "Don't go the American way when it comes to economics, jobs and services for the poor and immigrants. It is the wrong way."

In an interview with a Japanese newspaper, Moore helped citizens of that country understand why the United States went to war in Iraq: "The motivation for war is simple. The U.S. government started the war with Iraq in order to make it easy for U.S. corporations to do business in other countries. They intend to use cheap labor in those countries, which will make Americans rich."

But venality doesn't come up when he writes about those who are killing Americans in Iraq: "The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not `insurgents' or `terrorists' or `The Enemy.' They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow — and they will win."

Until then, few social observers had made the connection between Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Paul Revere.

Moore doesn't hide from the obvious electoral implications of Fahrenheit 9/11--he says he wants Kerry (who voted to send troops into combat but then voted against a bill to provide them with critical equipment) to replace Bush.

Are Americans smart enough to understand that beyond an anti-American screed F 9/11 is also one long negative campaign ad for Kerry?

Fahrenheit 9/11: The Missing Scene

Dear Michael Moore,

Congratulations! Your latest flick is already a big hit in America loathing circles, and here in the nation’s capital, it is not uncommon to find whole groups of people, many of them foreigners who lined up for hours at an American embassy for a visa, lining up to see you bash those same American troops that are fighting and dying around the world for your freedom.

A friend—he’s French and a Kerry supporter—and another acquaintance, this one working for John Kerry for President, tried to get me to go see Fahrenheit 9/11—they are upset that I am bashing it without even having viewed it.

I correct them—I am not against F9/11—I am anti-Michael Moore.

But it wasn’t always this way. For a while after I stumbled across “Rivethead”, that amazing book by Ben Hamper (where is he?) for which you wrote the foreword and which became the inspiration for your equally amazing Roger & Me, I followed your work with great interest.

You are at your best when you go to extremes to get face time with avaricious, dodgy CEOs, but you crossed the line when you decided to frame the liberation of Iraq as the brainchild of crooked, greedy former oil company executives, Messrs. Bush and Cheney.

An “Oil War”, Michael Moore? What the hell happened to you?

But I am nothing if not fair-minded. So here’s my proposition—you insert one scene into F 9/11, and not only will I go see it, but I will also ask everyone I know to do the same.

The scene? Bill Clinton being serviced by Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office while Bin Laden trains the 9/11 hijackers from his (now former) base in Afghanistan. The money shot? Bill stares into the camera and says, "I let Bin Laden get away and then I launched Operation Desert Fox against Saddam. I got confused--see, when Monica was working on my WMD, it suddenly occured to me that Hussein, too, was perhaps working on WMDs. Ooops."

Animation may be necessary to get this across, but seeing how successful you were in depicting President Bush as a clueless, negligent hack who loitered on golf courses while Al Qaeda schemed, I am confident you can pull off the “Blowjob that cost 3000 lives” scene quite well.

Cheers!

"W Ketchup is America's ketchup"

American creativity at its ingenious best.

Be sure to check out the "About W Ketchup" section.

Independent Talk Radio in Iraq

Yet another manifestation of Iraq's newfound freedom aka George Bush's Vietnam.

"Radio Dijla has also become required listening for the country's new authorities," the paper said. Our opinion does not count, but what always counts is your opinion Radio Dijla

The station reportedly receives up to 18,000 calls a day, although it can only answer a fraction of that number.

"This is a new concept for Iraq, and the Arab world, and fills a yawning gap... We've quickly become a part of people's lives," Dr Rikabi told The Guardian.

"It shows the desperate need of ordinary Iraqis to share and communicate their pains and joys. I thought I had a good idea, but I never expected this amount of interest so soon. We are already number one in Baghdad," he said.

Callers to the programme, entitled "A Poll", are allowed to express their opinions freely without further comment by the presenter.

"Our opinion does not count, but what always counts is your opinion," the radio tells listeners repeatedly.

Putin: Saddam planned terrorist attacks on US territory

Expect this story to get no more space than what it has received below:

(Update: The story has gone missing from Reuters site; BBC link to it here)

MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Russia had several times in the past warned the United States that Saddam Hussein planned "terrorist attacks" on U.S. territory, Russian news agencies reported.

"After the events of September 11, 2001, and before the start of the military operation in Iraq, Russian special services several times received such information and passed it on to their American colleagues," Interfax quoted Putin as saying.

None of the so-called liberal, intellectual blogs are touching this either. It is no exaggeration that this development is a rude shock to those who had returned to bash Bush over the 9/11 commission's claim that there was no Saddam-Al Qaeda collaboration over the attacks: despite the fact that the Bush administration never made such a claim, although, if we weren't so focused on a criminal justice standard of evidence, we might have allowed ourselves to wonder what came from all those meetings between Saddam and Al Qaeda.

This is how it works: first, you indoctrinate people with stuff the administration never said. Next you get the administration to deny they ever said it; and last, you triumphantly publicize the denial as yet another lie.

An important component of this lifecycle--bury, quietly, important stories that bolster the administration's position.

MoveOn selling Fahrenheit 9/11

MoveOn.org, which supported Howard Dean and is now John Kerry's propaganda arm is plugging Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 . A recent MoveOn newsletter links to this peurile review of the movieby a Roger Friedman.

No Ebert, Friedman can barely write, and the review is crammed with silly, biased observations:

* "a tribute to patriotism"
* "indictment of [the American soldier's] stupidity and [the Bush administration's] avarice"
* "not seeing "F9/11" would be like allowing your First Amendment rights to be abrogated"
* " mother who sends her kids into the Army for the opportunities it can provide — just like the commercials say — and lives to regret it."
* "Bush sits, with no access to his advisers, while New York is being viciously attacked. I guarantee you that no one who sees this film forgets this episode."
* "simply cannot be missed, and I predict it will be a huge moneymaker."

A high-school writer could do better, but the strategic value of this review's appearance on Fox News was simply too good to leave unexploited, and MoveOn gleefully picked it for its email newsletter, urging members to go see the movie on "the opening night -- Friday, June 25th. (If you can't make it on Friday, pledging to go on Saturday or Sunday is fine, too). It'll be fun, of course -- you'll be watching the movie with lots of other MoveOn members."

Michael Moore fans are juvenile, conspiracy-minded, America-loathing buffoons who are too dumb to realize that his conspiracy theories are not a "tribute to patriotism": they endanger the lives of American soldiers. Iraqis are likely to kill, not embrace, American troops when they see a documentary that insists that the soldiers are there not to liberate, but to steal their oil and install a puppet government.

Moore fans need to question his judgement and motives--a gifted director, he could have explored the culture of hate that gave birth to 9/11 and which is behind the current spate of deadly attacks in Iraq, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia.

Instead, by choosing to portray American soldiers as incompetent, culturally insensitive goons, Moore deliberately crafted his film to titillate propagandists--this work was designed to make a splash in Europe and on the Arab street.

That 20-minute ovation at Cannes last month wasn't so much about critical acclaim for F9-11 as about disdain and envy for the determination and ability of George W. Bush's America to mobilize and fight back after 9-11. (At the height of the Abu Ghraib crisis, Moore's film helped the French to forget the torture and murder of thousands of Algerians during that colony's war of independence.)

A democratic Middle East is the ultimate solution to the problem of Islamist terrorism and Moore knows this. He also knows that the world is better off without the Taliban and Saddam and sons, removed by the same crass American soldiers shamelessly criticized for the applause of the snooty French who, even today, balk at the prospect of shedding European blood to help Arabs.

Guilty of the very avarice he chastizes the Bush administration for, Moore fans cognitive dissonance about the mission in Iraq and profits from it.

Likewise, John Kerry's refusal to get MoveOn to stop the spread of malicious propaganda that puts the lives of his fellow citizens at risk indicates that the Presidential candidate still thinks the worst about America.

Liberals Furious with David Brooks

The liberal rage against David Brooks, a staunch supporter of the liberation of Iraq, redoubled in intensity shortly after he took up writing for the New York Times last September.

David PLOTZ over at Slate recently took the attacks to a whole new level.

He starts off attempting to create a sense of verisimilitude by quoting liberal commentators--former Brooks fans--who now find the conservative to be "annoying" and lacking "ideas—or anger—to sustain a twice-a-week column".

Then, in the blink of an eye, Plotz holds Brooks responsible for sending America to war...a bit like the Michael Berg holding Bush responsible for his son's beheading in Iraq.

Brooksianism helped set the table for the wars on terror and Iraq but ducks from their consequences. In 1997, Brooks wrote an influential manifesto for the Weekly Standard, "A Return to National Greatness." Brooks claimed the United States was losing the sense of grand national mission that built the Panama Canal, conquered the West, won the Cold War, built the interstates, and walked on the moon. America needed to reanimate itself with a cause, and the federal government needed to "convey a spirit of confidence and vigor that can then spill across the life of the nation."

In other words, were it not for folks like Brooks, Americans would not die in unjust wars that are undertaken or sustained for "national psyche"--as Plotz views Vietnam and Iraq.

In this worldview the liberation of Iraq is routinely characterized as an imperial war on Iraqis.

Soon, Michael Moore's Farenheit 9/11 will hit theaters at home and attempt to seduce potential voters into dumping Bush for stealing Iraqi oil

This isn't about two competing visions for America--it is about people who are determined to prove--whether they themselves believe this is open to debate--that George W. Bush's sunny, simple-minded optimism about freedom in the Middle East is actually a facade and that he is more dangerous than the collective ambitions of Bin Laden and Saddam.

This is about convincing Americans that America is the ultimate force of evil on the planet and that the Bush administration represents a microcosm of all that is wrong with this country today.

Last week, I ran into a young Kerry aide at a party and before long this individual was claiming that Bush had a hand in 9/11--the attacks served as an excuse to launch the administration's "endless wars".

This is not too far removed from Plotz's own assessment:

[Brooks'] National Greatness became a powerful idea in the Republican Party's Teddy Roosevelt wing, and when Sept. 11 occurred, National Greatness found its cause: rooting out terror, bringing democracy to the Middle East. Brooks and his Weekly Standard colleagues called for war in Iraq, and Brooks preached about the noble benefits of democratizing the Arab world.