The Average Eccentric

Milošević

2006-03-12T22:54:00.000-08:00

I wasn't aware that my blog hiatus had gone on for so long. I've been busy lately, though, and as a result I haven't really had the time to think up such long, involved things to say.

Everywhere there seems to be commentary about Milošević's death. I don't feel I have anything to add to the discussion per se, but, as usual, I've been reading all the commentaries on BBC and B92 and have been very struck by certain things.

Particularly when it comes to the BBC commentors, a lot of the reactions seem to be either along the lines of (a) Slobo was a hero and the ICTY poisoned him because they couldn't make their case and (b) Slobo = Hitler. (I think, though, my favorite comment is from B92 - that in a couple days we'll start seeing refugees escaping from Hell.)

I think there are a couple points that are not being made enough. First, I think that in the ultimate analysis, Slobodan Milošević's ideology was not Serbian nationalism as much as it was Slobodan Milošević, plain and simple. The man was interested primarily in his own power, and no one - not Stambolić, not Izetbegović, and certainly not the interest of the Serbian people as a whole - was going to get in his way. Remember how he came to power, and how late his "conversion" to nationalism was - the man did not pop out from nowhere, fully formed like Athena, on the day he gave his speech at Kosovo Polje. Second, Slobodan Milošević did not himself cause the fall of Yugoslavia. He certainly made it worse, but if you look at what the situation was as early as 1985 - or, really, earlier - it's hard to see that there would be any good solutions. This is not to defend him. Just saying that life is more complicated than the Lord of the Rings analogies that have been floating around the BBC.

*sigh* I don't know. There's something, though, that feels so wrong about all of this, and I can't place my finger on it. Умер он в недобрый час - he died in the unlucky hour (although "unlucky" doesn't really do it justice).

Kosovo

2006-02-10T14:45:00.000-08:00

"Srbiju braniti svim sredstvima" ("To defend Serbia with all possible means")

Belgrade - Tomislav Nikolić announced that he and Koštunica have agreed that the eventual declaration of an independent Kosovo would mean an "occupation" for Serbia.

The Prime Minister of Serbia, Vojislav Koštunica, and the vice president of the Serbian Radical Party, Tomislav Nikolić, spoke with each other today about Kosovo and Metohija, after which Nikolić announced that they had both agreed that if anyone proclaims the independence of Kosovo, the parliament of Serbia will proclaim a state of occupation.

"Provoked by this whole story about the independence of Kosovo and Metohija that the English diplomat has been telling, we agreed that, in case the situation eventually leads to an outcome such that someone proclaims the independence of Kosovo and Metohija, the parliament of the Republic of Serbia will introduce a resolution which would immediately proclaim that independence to be an occupation of a part of the territory of Serbia, and obligate everyone in Serbia who has the legal duty to defend the territorial integrity of Serbia to defend Serbia with all possible means," says Tomislav Nikolić for B92.

[etc]

New president elected in Kosovo "Kosovo's independence is non-negotiable," Mr Sejdiu told the Associated Press.

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Interesting times await the Balkans. As well as Kosovo, I think it's worth paying attention to the following issues: the upcoming Montenegro independence referendum, the whole process with Mladić and Karadžić, and the stability of Republika Srpska as a part of Bosnia.

However, I think with these comments from the Serbian government, we can see a new first for Europe. Serbia is officially attempting to establish closer ties with the EU with an eventual goal of EU membership, yet senior government members have apparently just threatened to declare war on NATO / the EU / the UN / the rest of the world.

Not that I think war is inevitable. But from my point of view, the most Serbia can hope for in these negotiations is a partition of Kosovo largely favorable to the Kosovar Albanians, but allowing for either autonomy for Kosovo Serbs or incorporation of these areas into Serbia itself. I think there's an open question of whether all of Kosovo will be independent, or only most of it. Whether or not anyone likes this, as near as I can tell, this is political reality, and neither ignoring political reality or acting out of inat is going to bring anything good whatsoever to Serbia.

What would I do if I was the government of Serbia? I would attempt to secure as many of the following provisions as possible: annexation of contiguous Serb-majority areas and the strongest possible protection of Serbian enclaves and of Serbian cultural and artistic monuments. My sense of things is that these are fairly realistic goals, although it remains to be seen what degree of protection can ultimately be offered to Serbian enclaves and cultural monuments. However, I think the fact that the Serbian government is primarily focusing on unrealistic demands means that some significant opportunities are being missed. And anyway, how exactly does Koštunica think Serbia will defeat the West? I mean, I realize that America is very tied down now in Iraq, but I would still count on military intervention in that situation...

What would I do if I was the Kosovar Albanian government? Sit back, keep quiet, and wait. Make continuous assurances about how minorities will be protected in an independent Kosovo. Every statement like that made today by Koštunica helps the Kosovar Albanian cause. Worst case? If Serbia does declare war, Kosovar Albanians will suffer, but Serbia will inevitably lose, and after that war, the independence of Kosovo will be guaranteed. Let's face it: the Kosovar Albanians have the stronger position now. Although I understand that that's an uncomfortable fact for the Serbian government, that doesn't change the situation...

Freedom of speech

2006-02-07T22:05:00.000-08:00

Everyone and his brother seems to be getting into the debate about the Danish cartoons and the reaction thereto. While reading a lot of the comments on newspapers such as the BBC and the Chicago Tribune, I've noticed that many of the comments seem to be focused on the issue of free speech, and it seems to me that a lot of the comments display some pretty confused thinking about this issue. In some ways it seems that a good understanding of free speech is key to the issue, so I think the following points would be worth making (and I would love to hear people making more of them).

Freedom of speech does mean freedom to insult. It also means the freedom to stupid and ill-considered speech. This point, thankfully, has been made by people, but I really do think it can't be made enough. A freedom of speech limited to speech that everyone finds uncontroversial would be a meaningless "freedom."
One of the major misconceptions I've seen multiple times is the idea that if people are free to speak, they must take the consequences for what they say. Well, this isn't a misconception in and of itself - the major misconception here is not making distinctions between "consequences." If you say something that really offends someone else, they are free to choose between multiple ways to respond - either speaking up against ideas that they find offensive, or even embarking on a boycott (however misguided it might be). Violence, however, is not protected speech. If I use my right to free speech to call someone an idiot, and they get so offended by this that they break my legs, they still broke the law. Saying that there's really no problem because the Danish newspaper in question should face the consequences of their free speech, even if these consequences include getting their embassies burned and threatened with terrorist attacks, etc, is no different than saying that, well, if a woman wears a short skirt she is fair game to be raped. There is no difference. The point is that we distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable responses to "provocation," however that may be understood. (Another important point here is that provocation is an essentially subjective concept. What provokes me might not provoke you and vice versa. Therefore it is inconceivable that we could build a sane system based on letting people respond disproportionately to whatever they consider "provocation.")
The issue of protected versus non-protected speech has also been hugely confused. It is true that free speech is not a totally absolute thing in any country. So let's look at some of the issues at hand here. First, we need to distinguish between verbal speech and non-verbal acts of expression. There's been a lot of discussion about which non-verbal acts of expression count as protected acts of speech, and I don't honestly have the knowledge to discuss the subtleties of this. However, it becomes clear nevertheless that things otherwise considered as crimes (burning embassies, etc.) do not count as protected acts of speech - and failing to distinguish between physical violence and actual speech is a major fallacy. Within the category of verbal speech, the point has been made that no countries to my knowledge actually permit all speech. However, we need to look at what kind of restrictions are generally made. Speech that directly incites violence or disorder is banned. This is where the often-used example of yelling "FIRE" in a theater that is not on fire comes in. As well, national security issues are used to restrict speech on logically linked grounds. Libel and slander are also generally not permitted. However, not all uncomplimentary speech counts as libel or slander (ie., it is not libel or slander to publish one's opinion that a political figure is an idiot). This distinction is absolutely critical. In connection with this, it is often mentioned that W. European countries generally have laws against the denial of the Holocaust, and that this constitutes, in some ways, a double standard. I'm not really familiar with the European laws, so I'll limit myself to a few points: (1) I'd imagine that the issue at hand is one of inciting violence against Jews, ultimately, and (2) even conceding that there is a double standard does not, a priori, indicate how you think the double standard should be fixed. In all honesty, I think the American system is better in this regard. In any case, the crucial point here is that respect is never, in and of itself, a criterion for determining whether speech is protected.

A few other general comments. One thing I find very interesting in all of this is actually looking at the timeline involved. According to the BBC, the cartoons were first published in September of 2005, then subsequently reprinted in Norway on January 10, 2006 - a full sixteen days before Saudi Arabia recalled its ambassador. I can only wonder about what lies behind this delay and the eventual timing of all the publicity.

To the Iranian newspaper that has announced a contest for cartoons about the Holocaust, I say: fine. Go ahead. Every move like that needlessly harms the image of Iran in the world and, unfortunately, the image of Muslims in general. We don't need to loot embassies to express the disgust that any civilized and humane person feels about this, and embassies don't have to be looted for Iran to experience consequences from this.

It has been mentioned that it might be difficult for people in the Middle East to fully appreciate the full distinction we make between a nation's government and its press. Although this may be the case, I do not think it is plausible that the leadership of countries such as Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are unable to make this distinction - to assume that "they don't know better" is dangerous and in some ways insulting. However, it would be nice for us to think that, because then, on some level, we could absolve these leaders from the same degree of responsibility. However, I think the most likely assumption is that these leaders do understand beautifully the distinction between the press and the government in Western countries, and I can only interpret these actions as an attempt to force these distinctions to be progressively erased.

Unfortunately, I think these protests have already served their purpose in that people will be censoring themselves out of fear. Don't get me wrong - I've seen the cartoons in question and they are undoubtedly stupid, offensive, and in unimaginably bad taste. But people should refrain from publishing these things out of respect and not out of fear of reprisal. A civil society cannot run on that basis, and the second that we accept fear of reprisal as a morally justified reason for self-censorship is the second that we lose a major chunk of the soul of our society.

Racism and objectivity

2006-02-05T21:50:00.000-08:00

Lately, due to a combination of factors, including some race relations issues at my university and the general issue of nationalist attitudes in scholarship (I study an unstable region of the world - this is relevant, at least within said narrow circle of people), I've been led to think about these issues in general.

I'm always struck by one thing: we do a good job at teaching people that certain things are unfashionable or inappropriate, but we don't do a very good job at teaching people why.

For lack of a better phrase, kids who want to be part of the cool/educated/intellectual/enlightened circles of society have done an excellent job learning that any display of racist attitudes will not be accepted by the groups of people to whom they want to belong, but the problem is that this constraint is essentially behavioralistic, and doesn't do a very good job discriminating between thought and action. Note - I'm not saying that the solution should be to introduce a "thought police" type approach, but rather just trying to say that a conception of things based on action alone is shallow and leads to a deep confusion between thought and action.

There are extreme examples. I've known a surprising amount of people for whom racist jokes are almost chic - but only among close friends, where telling racist jokes can signify that they feel sufficiently close to these people to not have to worry about general societal norms. Also, there's the whole fetishization of being a bad person thing going on. In general it's an interesting dynamic, and one that I wouldn't mind thinking about in more detail, but I don't think now is the time for me to work out my thoughts on the issue. I've also seen people get into nationalistic debates pertaining to countries they have no tie to, often with a surprising degree of viciousness.

But I think this general confusion manifests itself in more subtle ways, also, such as the reaction to an incident this fall at my university involving, should I say, a party that was both in poor taste and also in deep resonance with many racial/cultural stereotypes that are prevalent in the media. I do ultimately think that a lot of this controversy stemmed from people not being able to figure out what was acceptable and what wasn't, rather than from out and out racism itself. That said, the debate tends to involve mostly the following themes:

The question of what the university should do to combat racism.
The question of what the university should do to promote the status of minorities in general (close to the above point but not quite the same).
The question of "raising awareness" about what is and is not appropriate.
The question of "raising awareness" about race issues in general.

A lot could be said about all of these points, and to be honest I personally just tend to see all the ambiguities here, which makes it tough for me to have any one clear-cut opinion. However, a few unifying traits in this discussion come to mind. For one, there's the general assumption that the solution to racism is education. I'm skeptical of this. The reason why racism is wrong is because it's wrong to reduce people to the sum of their origins. To do so dehumanizes people, makes them into objects. Plain and simple. However, I don't see how it is that any degree of learning about "structural racism" or American history or whatever else you want to introduce actually ameliorates this problem - the way I see it, it's a problem of the heart and not the intellect. But we confuse thought and action. It is probably true, for a variety of reasons, that increased education on these issues leads to a greatly decreased incidence of racially insensitive remarks and actions. Therefore, we think, if there are fewer racially insensitive acts, there's less racism. I'm not convinced that it works.

Sometimes the most natural inferences to draw are wrong, and I think that's the case here. Mostly because of the huge amount of people I've seen in my generation who understand perfectly that racist attitudes are not acceptable in public, but feel free to have conversations consisting mostly of ethnic slurs among themselves. Sure, sometimes a joke can be a joke, but I think it fairly often goes beyond that. Plus, certain habits of thought can be addictive for people.

One might object: well, sure, racism isn't necessarily about specific acts as much as it is about the thoughts and assumptions underlying those acts, but we, as a society, can do something about actions whereas we can't do much directly about what people think (and nor should we). So, basically, we have to do what we can.

In a way, I agree with this, but I think it misses out on some important issues. First, obviously, we cannot control people's thoughts and shouldn't even if we could. Nonetheless, public discourse does help shape people's thoughts, and I don't see any reason a priori why it wouldn't be possible to place more of an emphasis on these questions of right and wrong. Second, the ultimate point I'm trying to make is that only focusing on whether or not certain actions are socially acceptable is dangerous. It is dangerous to replace the dichotomy between right and wrong with a dichotomy between appropriate and inappropriate, because fashions change. What I mentioned before about how, for many kids my age, racist jokes and ethnic slurs are chic is a good example of that. (I think this happens because these jokes and slurs are identified as politically incorrect which is identified with some idea of authenticity). If people are unable to reason about right and wrong, then all we have left is essentially fashion. I don't think that this is something that we, as a society, should want. The dangers should be clear to anyone who knows a little bit of history.

General thoughts on American politics

2006-02-02T22:50:00.000-08:00

I thought this would be a decent introductory post.

When thinking about various developments in recent American politics, I'm strongly struck by a few points that don't seem to get much discussion.

It has been mentioned a few times that a characteristic trait of our contemporary politics is that politicians tend to be more radical than the people they represent. I think this point does not get nearly enough attention. If you look at what people do, rather than what politicians say, the disconnect between the reality of American life and our political discourse becomes rather jarring. To go into this in full depth would lead to a long entry in and of itself, but just take one example: the public's reaction to homosexuality in "Ellen" compared to the reaction to "Will and Grace." Why is this? Again, a full discussion of this would take a long time, but I think there are basically two places to look: first, the dynamics of how politicians attempt to win re-election in a two-party system and second, the phenomenon of redistricting, with a particular emphasis on how computers have affected the process.
Politicians, like all other human beings, respond to incentives and act in their self-interest, however that may be conceived. (Yes, point taken, the Adam Smith-type model is not so realistic. However, most of the objections I've come across to this model don't ultimately contradict the idea that people act based on their own self-interest as much as they point out that (a) people act in their perceived self-interest and (b) the ways in which people perceive their self-interest are complicated -- it eventually becomes a question of applied psychology). From what I understand of the Federalist Papers, their great strength is the attempt to structure a system in which the system itself compensates and channels the natural desire of people to act in their own self-interest. This is not an insight that has dulled over time, but, well...to say the least, I don't think the system is working like that anymore. In a democratic system, the goal of a politician is to win election / re-election. Due to various reasons - and I think this ties in with some of the points above - it is not at all necessary for politicians to consider the long-term well-being of the country to win re-election. This is dangerous, and this is a serious crisis facing our country. Although I do believe, for instance, that gay marriage is not as serious a threat to the U.S. as, say, declining infrastructure and capacity for education, this is not fundamentally a Republican/Democrat issue. Both parties display this tendency - it's just that the Republicans are in power now so it's more obvious. (In connection with this, a prediction: I would be willing to bet a sizable chunk of money that we will either never hear much more about Bush's new plans vis-a-vis health care or, more likely, that these plans will disintegrate into a "reform" so tiny as to be meaningless. There's no actual incentive for him to try to accomplish anything, and even less of one for legislators to follow him.)
Although this has been mentioned before, I think the role of semantics in modern politics doesn't attract as much attention as it should. From the point of view of the Democrats, it is simply political suicide to let Republicans control the terms of discourse. George Lakoff has been working on this problem to some extent...and although I don't have very many good things to say about him in terms of his philosophy and general political acumen, he does at least pick up on this. However, I think he might be paying too much attention to how things are "framed" - from what little I've picked up from his work, he seems to be focusing a little bit too much on the forest and missing out on some very important trees. One of my favorite examples here is the idea of religiously-based morality. If you take a step back and think about it, it's somewhat strange that religious morality has become a code word for opposition to abortion and gay marriage. My personal feeling about this is, well - okay, if you want to have an emphasis on Christian values, how about on values such as forgiveness, love for one's neighbor, and humility before God? But my personal thoughts aside, I think this is a good example of how semantics can play such a large role in politics that it's hard for us to even see it. Another one is the concept of "integrity." To steal a point from Dan Savage, when Bush ran on the promise to restore integrity to the Oval Office, "integrity" in this context meant "no extramarital oral sex." To say the least, this is an awfully particular definition. The point, though, is the fact that more or less, the American public accepted this usage of the word. It is very difficult for a politician to come across as being against integrity.
James Frey's memoir and the Colbert Report have led to a lot of talk about "truthiness" lately. I don't see much of a need to repeat what other people have said about it, but I think a couple related points are worth thinking about. Lexical development often has at least some tie with cultural developments, taken broadly - and for this reason, I think that the fact that "truthiness" has struck such a chord with people says something very important about our society. Another worthwhile question, I think, is why. Not why has "truthiness," as a word, caught on so quickly, but why truthiness itself is so prevalent. I don't have any one, nice answer to this, but I think it's deeply intertwined with the phenomena above. Besides that, one thing I'd like to say on that score is that appearances are priviliged over reality primarily when people can successfully bet that no one will investigate the difference -- or, somewhat more frighteningly, when people can successfully bet that no one will really care anyway. And, for that matter, I don't think the controversy about "A Million Little Pieces" was really about that one book. Instead, I think James Frey acted as a lightning rod for frustration directed towards the general prevalence of truthiness in our public discourse now. It's a lot easier to get mad about one book, to get mad at one author, than it is to get mad at an abstract concept like public discourse. Just a thought.

So I think that's it for now.