Defining "Literacy"

I'm taking a bit of a detour from grand strategy for the moment. The next post will be on a current view of grand strategy to complement my last post, but this item caught my eye and I think it worthy of extended comment.

Venkatesh Rao is the author of a great book on timing and tactics titled Tempo. I don't include "strategy" in this particular mix since from a Clausewitzian strategic theory perspective what Venkat is dealing with is primarily tactics and even operations, not really strategy, which is about collectives, although it could be seen as strategy if we limited it more to narrative or grand narrative. I'm planning to use some of his concepts in a social action/strategic theory approach to English Language Teaching that I have been working on for the last ten years, so count me as a fan.

That's not however what I wish to talk about here. Rather it's his article linked above titled Rediscovering Literacy, which brings up many interesting questions. This is an excellent article which led me to question my assumptions on literacy, but only to reinforce them after reflection. He starts off by expanding what we think of as "literacy":

Literacy used to be a very subtle concept that meant linguistic sophistication. It used to denote a skill that could be developed to arbitrary levels of refinement through practice. Literacy meant using mastery over language — both form and content — to sustain a relentless and increasingly sophisticated pursuit of greater meaning. It was about an appreciative, rather than instrumental use of language. Language as a means of seeing rather than as a means of doing.

Reading and writing — the ability to translate language back and forth between oral and written forms — was a secondary matter. It was a vocational pursuit of limited depth.

The written form itself was merely a convenience for transmitting language across space and time, and a mechanism by which to extend the limits of working memory. It had little to do with language skills per se.

Scribes, people who could read and write were simply tradesmen who took notes of what the actual literary people had to say, who may not have been able to read or write themselves. Venkat uses the example of musical ability and the ability to read and write musical notation, the former has no direct link with the latter, only to provide a written record of the artist's work. He then goes on to describe how he actually defines "literacy":

Before Gutenberg, you demonstrated true literacy not by reading a text out aloud and taking down dictation accurately, but through exposition and condensation.

You were considered literate if you could take a classic verse and expound upon it at length (exposition) and take an ambiguous idea and distill its essence into a terse verbal composition (condensation).

Exposition was more than meaning-extraction. It was a demonstration of contextualized understanding of the text, skill with both form and content, and an ability to separate both from meaning in the sense of reference to non-linguistic realities.

Condensation was the art of packing meaning into the fewest possible words. It was a higher order skill than exposition. All literate people could do some exposition, but only masters could condense well enough to produce new texts considered worthy of being added to the literary tradition.

Exposition and condensation are in fact the fundamental learned behaviors that constitute literacy, not reading and writing. One behavior dissolves densely packed words using the solvent that is the extant oral culture, enriching it, while the other distills the essence into a form that can be transmitted across cultures.

So, according to Venkat, reading and writing rank low on the totem pole of literacy when compared with "exposition and condensation". He goes on to dispel the notion that oral cultures are simply about memorization. There were in fact a whole series of different types of recitation (11 different types of "combinational recitation") used in India to orally communicate texts.

What is actually going on is not simply memorization, but what Venkat describes as "microcosmic creative destruction":

You’re taking a permutations-and-combinations blender to the words, juxtaposing them in new ways, and actively performing combinatorial processing. You are rigorously testing the strength of every single word choice and ordering decision. You are isolating and foregrounding different elements of the logical content, such as implication, subject-verb and verb-object agreement, and so forth. There is an functional-aesthetic element too. Terseness does not preclude poetry (and therefore, redundancy). In fact it requires it. Despite the compactness of a text, room must be made for various useful symmetries.

If the original has any structural or semantic weaknesses at all, this torture will reveal it. If the original lacks the robustness that poetry brings, it will be added.

Not only does all this not help plain memorization, I claim that it makes it harder. You destabilize the original line in your head and turn it into a word soup. If the original is any way confused or poorly ordered, you will soon end up in a state of doubt about which sequence of words is the correct one.

For many students, practicing recitation must have been mindless tedium, but for a few, it would have catalyzed active consideration and reworking of the underlying ideas, in search of new wisdom. These students must have evolved into new masters, the source of beneficial mutations and crossovers in the cultural memeplexes they were charged with preserving.

Being forced to juggle words like this must have helped cultivate a clear awareness of the distinction between form and content. It must have helped cultivate an appreciation of language as a medium for performance rather than a medium for transmission or preservation. It must have forced students to pay careful attention to precision of word choice in their own compositions. It must have sustained a very mindful linguistic culture.

Venkat mades some interesting claims here. I think he has a point as to our Western dismissal of oral cultures being simply about memorization, there is more to it than that, but is there not more to the Western concept of literacy as well? Here's where his analysis falls short imo. Also his example of Indian oral culture is not meant to appeal to most students, but to "a few" who don't see it as "mindless tedium". The recitation he uses as an example are religious texts, hardly ones to promote critical thinking which is another drawback.

I think the main problem is that he is conflating "orality" with "literacy" which are in fact two different things. This distinction is important because the cultural implications are profound. Following Walter Ong's distinctions, we have this:

Orality. In oral societies, all knowledge is personal knowledge; every utterance is subjective and egocentric. Because speech is always connected with specific persons, the idea of objective knowledge apart from an ego remains unknown. Because the ego-element dominates, dialogue in an oral context tends to be aggressive and emotive, “agonistic,” as Ong says, and testy. In oral societies, thinking must be formulaic; the formulas must be “coded” in simple, easily remembered verbal images—of the “stitch in time saves nine” variety. Questioning the coded veracities is rare, because interrogation might destabilize them, and because they are a matter of social survival; the ethos often forbids questioning. An oral context knows no such thing as “critical thinking.” Indeed, confronted with analytic statements or logical summaries, oral people suspect and reject them, as Ong showed by drawing on anthropological fieldwork.

Literacy. The written word, as Ong remarks, “separates the knower from the known” and in so doing opens up the space of non-ego-centered objective knowledge. Because writing overcomes the ephemeral quality of spoken language and frees the mind from the task of having to remember things through the medium of simple, “coded” images, it also opens up possibilities of reflection, which, with alphabetic literacy in particular, gives rise to the critical discourses, from physics through moral philosophy to history and law. With the aide of a text, the literate subject can “backtrack,” examining the sequence and relatedness of propositions or the logic of a story. Literacy in this way provides the basis of systematic knowledge in all the higher civilizations. Of course, in introducing the phrase “higher civilizations,” I have made explicit the implication that Ong, for argumentative reasons, de-emphasizes: that the orality-literacy opposition entails a hierarchy.

As mentioned in the article, Ong makes no judgement as to which is superior, he simply describes the characteristics of both. In response to Venkat's specific points, I would add that both exposition (essay writing) and condensation (or summary writing) were tested in the Liberal Arts and in teaching English as a Foreign Language prior to the age of mass standardized testing. What has taken us away from this has little to do with orality, let alone literacy, and far more to do with the supposed necessity of mass standardized testing. For instance in the current Cambridge exam of Proficiency in English (CPE), both skills are tested - an essay question on a set book and summary writing of a longer text. The latter is expected to be removed from the next version of CPE, since it requires a human examiner to grade, unlike the rest of the Use of English paper of the exam which is multiple choice/fill in the blank, that is can be graded by computer.

This development in turn is linked to the notion that teaching is at most a semi-skilled trade, not a skilled trade, not a profession let along a vocation, which can be preformed by moderately educated and trained people who essentially "teach to test." What I would also describe as the factory paradigm of education run amok.

Here it appears I've gone far beyond Venkat's original argument, but this is not really the case, as the next quote will indicate. He provides a specific point in time when exposition and condensation gave way to reading and writing:

Oral cultures are not just, or even primarily, about quality assurance in transmission. They are primarily about quality assurance in composition, and training in the basic moves of exposition and condensation.

When you think about it this way, there is no mystery. Oral culture persisted long after the development of writing because it was not about accurate preservation. It was about performance and cultural enactment through exposition and condensation.

The Costs of Gutenberg

And then Gutenberg happened.

The results were not immediately apparent. The old culture of literacy persisted for several centuries. The tipping point came in the 1890s, when printing technology became sufficiently cheap to support mass media (there is a world of difference between ubiquity of bibles and a culture of daily newspapers).

So sometime in the twentieth century, we lost all the subtlety of oral culture, turned our attention to the secondary vocational skills of reading and writing, and turned literacy into a set of mechanical tests.

It is not that this view is wrong so much as it is misleadingly incomplete. Also this is an old argument which was explained in clear text by Neil Postman in his book, Amusing Ourselves To Death over 20 years ago. Postman also saw the tipping point in the 1890s, but it was not in cheap newspapers, but in their use of photographs and illustrations in them. Prior to that newspaper stories, even advertisements, had to be structured logical arguments, not simply a picture with a slogan, the decline of what Postman calls "Typographic culture" is the rise of the Image. Technology's influence on communication unleashed a storm with the printing press, but this development continued with the invention of telegraphy and the de-contextualization of information, as well as radio, TV and the internet.

Still, Postman has some interesting things to say about the character of a text-based culture as opposed to what came before and what followed:

From Erasmus in the sixteenth century to Elizabeth Eisenstein in the twentieth, almost every scholar who has grappled with the question of what reading does to one's habits of mind has concluded that the process encourages rationality; that the sequential, propositional character of the written word fosters what Walter Ong calls the "analytic management of knowledge." To engage the written word means to follow a line of thought, which requires considerable powers of classifying, inference-making and reasoning. It means to uncover lies, confusions, and overgeneralizations, to detect abuses of logic and common sense. It also means to weigh ideas, to compare and contrast assertions, to connect one generalization to another. To accomplish this, one must achieve a certain distance from the words themselves, which is, in fact, encouraged by the isolated and impersonal text. That is why a good reader does not cheer an apt sentence or pause to applaud even an inspired paragraph. Analytic thought is too busy for that, and too detached. I do not mean to imply that prior to the written word analytic thought was not possible. I am referring here not to the potentialities of the individual mind but to the predispositions of a cultural mind-set. In a culture dominated by print, public discourse tends to be characterized by a coherent, orderly arrangement of facts and ideas. The public for whom it is intended is generally competent to manage such discourse. In a print culture, writers make mistakes when they lie, contradict themselves, fail to support their generalizations, try to enforce illogical connections. In a print culture, readers make mistakes when they don't notice, or even worse, don't care.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, print put forward a definition of intelligence that gave priority to the objective, rational use of the mind and at the same time encouraged forms of public discourse with serious, logically ordered content. It is no accident that the Age of Reason was coexistent with the growth of a print culture, first in Europe and then in America. The spread of typography kindled the hope that the world and its manifold mysteries could at least be comprehended, predicted, controlled. It is in the eighteenth century that the scientific method preeminent example of the analytic management of knowledge--begins its refashioning of the world. It is in the eighteenth century that capitalism is demonstrated to be a rational and liberal system of economic life, that religious superstition comes under furious attack, that the divine right of kings is shown to be a mere prejudice, that the idea of continuous progress takes hold, and that the necessity of universal literacy through education becomes apparent. Amusing Ourselves to Death, pp 51-52

Notice that what Postman is talking about is more than just "reading and writing" but an interactive process between writer and reader whereby the reader performs a critical analysis of the text, what Jacques Ellul refers to as the "second stage of education" beyond the first of basic literacy. It is precisely this "rational" culture, this typographic or print-based culture which has been in decline in the US since at least World War II and the cause of that is definitely not reading and writing.

Postscript

There seems to be a bit of confusion as to what Postman's talking about. He's not talking about different "technologies", but rather different "mediums". I think this also applicable to my critique of Venkat's article since it is his assumptions as to what the "medium of orality" can carry that I disagree with. So to Postman:

Such a hope represents exactly what Marshall McLuhan used to call "rear-view mirror" thinking: the assumption that a new medium is merely an extension or amplification of an older one; that an automobile, for example, is only a fast horse, or an electric light a powerful candle. To make such a mistake in the matter at hand is to misconstrue entirely how television redefines the meaning of public discourse. Television does not extend or amplify literate culture. It attacks it. If television is a continuation of anything, it is of a tradition begun by the telegraph and photograph in the mid-nineteenth century, not by the printing press in the fifteenth.

What is television? What kinds of conversations does it permit? What are the intellectual tendencies it encourages? What sort of culture does it produce? These are the questions to be addressed in the rest of this book, and to approach them with a minimum of confusion, I must begin by making a distinction between a technology and a medium. We might say that a technology is to a medium as the brain is to the mind. Like the brain, a technology is a physical apparatus. Like the mind, a medium is a use to which a physical apparatus is put. A technology becomes a medium as it employs a particular symbolic code, as it finds its place in a particular social setting, as it insinuates itself into economic and political contexts. A technology, in other words, is merely a machine. A medium is the social and intellectual environment a machine creates.

Of course, like the brain itself, every technology has an inherent b ias. It has within its physical form a predisposition toward being used in certain ways and not others. Only those who know nothing of the history of technology believe that a technology is entirely neutral. There is an old joke that mocks that naive belief. Thomas Edison, it goes, would have revealed his discovery of the electric light much sooner than he did except for the fact that every time he turned it on, he held it to his mouth and said, "Hello? Hello?"

Not very likely. Each technology has an agenda of its own. It is, as I have suggested, a metaphor waiting to unfold. the printing press, for example, had a clear bias toward being used as a the Ae of Show Business linguistic medium. It is conceivable to use it exclusively for the reproduction of pictures. And, one imagines, the Roman Catholic Church would not have objected to its being so used in the sixteenth century. Had that been the case, the Protestant Reformation might not have occurred, for as Luther contended, with the word of God on every family's kitchen table, Christians do not require the Papacy to interpret it for them. But in fact there never was much chance that the press would be used solely, or even very much, for the duplication of icons. From its beginning in the fifteenth century, the press was perceived as an extraordinary opportunity for the display and mass distribution of written language. Everything about its technical possibilities led in that direction. One might even say it was invented for that purpose. the technology of television has a bias, as well. It is conceivable to use television as a lamp, a surface for texts, a bookcase, even as radio. But it has not been so used and will not be so used, at least in America. Thus, in answering the question, What is television?, we must understand as a first point that we are not talking about television as a technology but television as a medium. There are many places in the world where television, though the same technology as it is in America, is an entirely different medium from that which we know. I refer to places where the majority of people do not have television sets, and those who do have only one; where only one station is available; where television does not operate around the clock; where most programs have as their purpose the direct furtherance of government ideology and policy; where commercials are unknown, and "talking heads" are the principal image; where television is mostly used as if it were radio. For these reasons and more television will not have the same meaning or power as it does in America, which is to say, it is possible for a technology to be so used that its potentialities are prevented from developing and its social consequences kept to a minimum.

But in America, this has not been the case. Television has found in liberal democracy and a relatively free market economy a nurturing climate in which its full potentialities as a technology of images could be exploited. Amusing Ourselves to Death, pp 83-86

This is what I think Venkat did in his article. He conflated the two technologies - printing press and telegraph & TV - as well as the two mediums, print and TV, and saw the decline in literacy as being due to the first set when in reality it was due to the second.

End of the American Century

Professor Andrew Bacevich has a new book out, a collection of essays entitled The Short American Century. Bacevich is well known by the barkeeps here and to our readers as well I assume. His is one of the few voices of reason heard in contemporary America today, which says a lot.

On this post I would like to introduce Bacevich's new book as well as point out two other articles one from November 2011 and the other published this month. The book provides necessary context while the two articles provide an analysis of our current situation. I'll start with the older article, then proceed to the newer article and finish with an extract from the book which ties the two together.

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The first article, from 2011, entitled Big Change Whether We Like It or Not provides a thoughtful analysis of America going into the current year. Perhaps the worst aspect of the situation is not the overwhelming change we are facing, but the attitude of the current political/economic elite:

In Washington, meanwhile, a hidebound governing class pretends that none of this is happening, stubbornly insisting that it’s still 1945 with the so-called American Century destined to continue for several centuries more (reflecting, of course, God’s express intentions).

Here lies the most disturbing aspect of contemporary American politics, worse even than rampant dysfunction borne of petty partisanship or corruption expressed in the buying and selling of influence. Confronted with evidence of a radically changing environment, those holding (or aspiring to) positions of influence simply turn a blind eye, refusing even to begin to adjust to a new reality.

With the onrush of political, economic, environmental, even military changes happening now, our national leadership prefers to pass off bromides, sound bits of past glories and worn-out boilerplate from chicken dinner speeches to the people as if they offered some sort of proper response.

Bacevich lists "four converging vectors involved" although he admits there may be more. They are:

First the Collapse of the Freedom Agenda which was Washington's response to 9/11 in the form of Bush's invasion of Iraq:

Intent on accomplishing across the Islamic world what he believed the United States had accomplished in Europe and the Pacific between 1941 and 1945, Bush sought to erect a new order conducive to U.S. interests -- one that would permit unhindered access to oil and other resources, dry up the sources of violent Islamic radicalism, and (not incidentally) allow Israel a free hand in the region. Key to the success of this effort would be the U.S. military, which President Bush (and many ordinary Americans) believed to be unstoppable and invincible -- able to beat anyone anywhere under any conditions.

Alas, once implemented, the Freedom Agenda almost immediately foundered in Iraq. The Bush administration had expected Operation Iraqi Freedom to be a short, tidy war with a decisively triumphant outcome. In the event, it turned out to be a long, dirty (and very costly) war yielding, at best, exceedingly ambiguous results.

In retrospect it seems amazing that there was so little resistance to this "policy" which was more the nature of corruption mixed with systemic failure at a whole variety of levels. None of the elite come out looking even halfway competent or even trustworthy here which is why they would just a soon sweep it all under the rug. "Next war please!" As it is "history's actors" got bitch slapped by reality, as if it could have turned out any other way . . .

Second, the Great Recession:

Instead of being a transitory phenomenon, it seemingly signifies something transformational. The Great Recession may well have inaugurated a new era -- its length indeterminate but likely to stretch for many years -- of low growth, high unemployment, and shrinking opportunity. As incomes stagnate and more and more youngsters complete their education only to find no jobs waiting, members of the middle class are beginning to realize that the myth of America as a classless society is just that. In truth, the game is rigged to benefit the few at the expense of the many -- and in recent years, the fixing has become ever more shamelessly blatant.

This realization is rattling American politics. In just a handful of years, confidence in the Washington establishment has declined precipitously. Congress has become a laughingstock. The high hopes raised by President Obama’s election have long since dissipated, leaving disappointment and cynicism in their wake.

This vector is probably the most difficult to deal with since it affects our every day existence. An economic system and money itself rests on trust, trust that bills will be paid and that the money used as payment will be accepted as payment. So if more and more people think they are being scammed and that there are powerful interests who are making fortunes off this crisis/their misfortune, then what do you do?

The American view of history up to now (with a short hiatus during the Great Depression) was that if you work hard you can get ahead and that if you provide for your family, getting them for instance a good education, they will be better off economically than you were. That used to work in enough cases where it was believable, but now? Tell a young family that now and see their reaction. This type of social economy has been on the way out for a long time, but the current crisis has lifted the veil for a lot of people which explains the current Populist response. Today we have the economy as casino and our political "representatives" have stood back or actively supported this change before our very eyes. To get an idea of the change I'm talking about we have to think of the economy not as money but as a value system. Consider the closing scene from Executive Suite of 1954 which adequately describes the clash between two perspectives. I would add to this the thought of the novelist Ayn Rand who remains widely (or "wildly") popular today.

In effect a new faith has taken over, "the Market" (portrayed as a synthesis of accounting principles/financial management and Ayn Rand), but that faith is breaking apart against the rocks of an ever more brutal reality. While those in power profit from the current situation, how much longer will it be taken as fact by the American public?

Third is the Arab Spring:

Although Washington abjured the overt colonialism once practiced in London, its policies did not differ materially from those that Europeans had pursued. The idea was to keep a lid on, exclude mischief-makers, and at the same time extract from the Middle East whatever it had on offer. The preferred American MO was to align with authoritarian regimes, offering arms, security guarantees, and other blandishments in return for promises of behavior consistent with Washington’s preferences. Concern for the wellbeing of peoples living in the region (Israelis excepted) never figured as more than an afterthought.

What events of the past year have made evident is this: that lid is now off and there is little the United States (or anyone else) can do to reinstall it. A great exercise in Arab self-determination has begun. Arabs (and, arguably, non-Arabs in the broader Muslim world as well) will decide their own future in their own way. What they decide may be wise or foolish. Regardless, the United States and other Western nations will have little alternative but to accept the outcome and deal with the consequences, whatever they happen to be.

This is only the most recent manifestation of what Zbigniew Brzezinski calls the Global Political Awakening. This is a "worldwide yearning for human dignity" that has been ongoing since at least the French Revolution. What it triggers is populist activism which can be channeled in different ways to quite different effects. Dictators can rise by popular acclaim, even be voted into office . . . What we have here is not the decline of the state, but the overthrow of the last vestiges of Western imperialism in the Arab world, which will usher in new political forms and thus new state apparatuses. The state is simply the apparatus of political control, how the leadership in fact rules, is not something that can simply disappear. Our influence in regards the Arab Spring is limited, even negligible, or counter-productive to our interests, and for that reason our responses have to be considered in that light.

But then what are the chances of that? We see that our attitudes in regards to the first two vectors actually preclude it, and along with our still intact assumptions as to the infinite application of military force actually determine our seemingly self-defeating response.

The Fourth and last Vector that Bacevich lists is Europe:

Today, Europe has once again screwed up, although fortunately this time there is no need for foreign armies to sort out the mess. The crisis of the moment is an economic one, due entirely to European recklessness and irresponsibility (not qualitatively different from the behavior underlying the American economic crisis).

Will Uncle Sam once again ride to the rescue? Not a chance. Beset with the problems that come with old age, Uncle Sam can’t even mount up. To whom, then, can Europe turn for assistance? Recent headlines tell the story:

“Cash-Strapped Europe Looks to China For Help”
“Europe Begs China for Bailout”
“EU takes begging bowl to Beijing”
“Is China the Bailout Saviour in the European Debt Crisis?”

The crucial issue here isn’t whether Beijing will actually pull Europe’s bacon out of the fire. Rather it’s the shifting expectations underlying the moment. After all, hasn’t the role of European savior already been assigned? Isn’t it supposed to be Washington’s in perpetuity? Apparently not.

Shifting expectations is again the point here. Since all these assumptions are based on US dominance, we see that this dominance in fact no longer exists, as if we needed yet another example to prove that.

I think Bacevich overstates the case and misses the real turnaround. How much of the current crisis was the result of Europe "screwing up" and how much was a direct result of the economic "heresy"/scams coming out of the US? Would this current crisis have happened at this time without the Wall Street implosion? The view I see as gaining ground in Portugal is that the Wall Street "vandals" sucked what they could out of the US and then came to Europe to do the same . . . this accepting that plenty of mistakes had been made on this side of the Atlantic. It was the gaming of the crisis which has destroyed a lot of European faith in US business methods and economics. Add to this, the profound disappointment in Barack Obama and how he utterly failed to deal with the financial crisis, essentially co-opting to the banks. The "US", although few will say this openly, is now seen by many Europeans as akin to a highway robber, operating outside the "rule of law".

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The second and more recent article, From Liberation to Assassination, Scoring the Global War on Terror describes how the Global War on Terror has evolved. From the Shock and Awe of the Rumsfeld Era we proceeded to the COIN of the Petraeus Era and are now in what Bacevich calls the turn to assassination by RPA/Special Operations Forces. Instead of a high-profile official like Rumsfeld or Petraeus, the "emblematic figure of the war formerly known as the Global War on Terror (WFKATGWOT)" is a relatively unknown figure by the name of Michael Vickers.

Bacevich concludes this article:

How round three will end is difficult to forecast. The best we can say is that it’s unlikely to end anytime soon or particularly well. As Israel has discovered, once targeted assassination becomes your policy, the list of targets has a way of growing ever longer.

So what tentative judgments can we offer regarding the ongoing WFKATGWOT? Operationally, a war launched by the conventionally minded has progressively fallen under the purview of those who inhabit what Dick Cheney once called “the dark side,” with implications that few seem willing to explore. Strategically, a war informed at the outset by utopian expectations continues today with no concretely stated expectations whatsoever, the forward momentum of events displacing serious consideration of purpose. Politically, a war that once occupied center stage in national politics has now slipped to the periphery, the American people moving on to other concerns and entertainments, with legal and moral questions raised by the war left dangling in midair.

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In other words chronic strategic confusion as a result of possibly terminal political dysfunction. At least that is how I would read it.

The glowing Washington Post piece I linked above had this to say:

Today, as the top Pentagon adviser on counterterrorism strategy, Vickers exudes the same assurance about defeating terrorist groups as he did as a 31-year-old CIA paramilitary officer assigned to Afghanistan, where he convinced superiors that with the right strategy and weapons, the ragtag Afghan insurgents could win. "I am just as confident or more confident we can prevail in the war on terror," Vickers, 54, said in a recent interview, looking cerebral behind thick glasses but with an energy and build reminiscent of the high school quarterback he once was. "Not a lot of people thought we could drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan."

Vickers joined the Pentagon in July to oversee the 54,000-strong Special Operations Command (Socom), based in Tampa, which is growing faster than any other part of the U.S. military. Socom's budget has doubled in recent years, to $6 billion for 2008, and the command is to add 13,000 troops to its ranks by 2011.

Senior Pentagon and military officials regard Vickers as a rarity -- a skilled strategist who is both creative and pragmatic. "He tends to think like a gangster," said Jim Thomas, a former senior defense planner who worked with Vickers. "He can understand trends then change the rules of the game so they are advantageous for your side."

Emphasis mine. The first highlighted item could as well be said of us, but I doubt if the irony was as potentially obvious in 2007 when the article was written. Also notice the term "strategist" linked with "gangster".

Have we ever really had a coherent strategy at all? That is if we consider strategy as using military means to achieve a military aim in support of a political purpose. Our goal all along has seemingly been simply to impose and maintain dominance. The secondary goal of achieving permanent and complete security (essentially the 1% Doctrine) is not really an achievable goal since total security is never possible.

So why does the GWOT go on? Is it because it has gained a constituency with a personal interest in its further continuance no matter how much it costs or how many foreigners it kills or lives it destroys? Especially under the new version it could go on for some time irregardless of the backlash it is building against us . . . Perhaps the answer is in the four vectors discussed in the first article.

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The last Bacevich piece I will include here is a short essay from the new book, The American Century Is Over - Good Riddance. In it besides proclaiming the obvious end of American dominance we also see the end of the American claim to global leadership, what Henry Luce referred to in 1941 as the great mission of the US. That mission has now come to an end.

For me the money paragraphs were these two:

But I suspect that's not going to happen. The would-be masters of the universe orbiting around the likes of Romney and Obama won't be content to play such a modest role. With the likes of Robert Kagan as their guide—"It's a wonderful world order," he writes in his new book, The World America Made (Knopf)—they will continue to peddle the fiction that with the right cast of characters running Washington, history will once again march to America's drumbeat. Evidence to support such expectations is exceedingly scarce—taken a look at Iraq lately?—but no matter. Insiders and would-be insiders will insist that, right in their hip pocket, they've got the necessary strategy.

Strategy is a quintessential American Century word, ostensibly connoting knowingness and sophistication. Whether working in the White House, the State Department, or the Pentagon, strategists promote the notion that they can anticipate the future and manage its course. Yet the actual events of the American Century belie any such claim. Remember when Afghanistan signified victory over the Soviet empire? Today, the genius of empowering the mujahedin seems less than self-evident.

Strategy is actually a fraud perpetrated by those who covet power and are intent on concealing from the plain folk the fact that the people in charge are flying blind. With only occasional exceptions, the craft of strategy was a blight on the American Century.

So "strategy" as scam, con game for the suckers who are only expected to foot the bill.

Strategy as marketing. But the marketing of dominance through domestic propaganda. Next new product out . . . war with Iran . . .

Postscript-

"Gloomy". That's what this perspective is called: not by those here, us barkeeps or the readers, not imo. The ones who refer to us as "gloomy" post on their own Neocon or Robbish doctrinal speculation blogs. They then comfort themselves with the self-serving notion that we don't really understand how tough it could get . . . the "warriors" know far better than we lesser mortals could ever . . .

The "warriors" don't listen to Bacevich either, which puts us in good company. It also indicates what we all have in common . . . the simple understanding that any reform/change will require acknowledgment of the problems and suitable solutions. Avoiding the painfully obvious with faith in "balance" or Randian "objectivity" is a decedent even nihilistic response.

We, the opposition to the "warriors", simply keep chipping away, like Andrew Bacevich does . . .

Like Publius does, like Al does, like FDChief does, like jim does, and everyone else reading who understands and agrees with my words.

What is an Economy?

Taking another look at fDChief's thread Arc of a Diver, I think that something basic is missing that has come up at the end of that thread, especially in comments by Publius, jim and Al.

Exactly what the economy is hasn't been defined. Chief talks about "securing needs" at the beginning of his post, but that's more human focus and motivation than economy. If I'm dying of thirst, I'm not going to be looking for entertainment, but water, which doesn't necessarily require an economy at all, let alone $$$.

So how do we define "economy"? The distribution of goods and services within and between communities? But it's more than that imo, it also involves providing "gainful" and "meaningful" employment/activity for the members of said community. This would not require commerce at all, could be based instead on reciprocity, which would also not require money. These of course would be relatively limited and not very complex communities, but the basic tie in with economy still holds imo since we still have the same basic requirements which the economy is expected to meet.

Where does "money" come in? Notice I say money and not property which are two different things, although today we see them as one in the same. Money is an abstract concept based on shared assumptions and trust. I assume that my $100 note will be accepted by the check-out counter attendant because it is "legal tender". The attendant assumes that my note is genuine, but the note has no actual value in and of itself, unlike property. Money acts as more the lubricant for the economy, the easing of commercial transaction than as the focus and/or purpose of the economy. The more lubricant the better the system functions, but also the lubricant acts as a measure as to how successful certain parts of the apparatus are operating. Still, the purpose of the overall system is actually much broader and all encompassing than what the money would indicate, and in order to be adequate requires a certain amount of social/communal stability.

Now what happens when we radically redefine "economy" to "making a profit" or more simply as "cashing in"? Instead of a market/sharing of trade and reciprocal/meaningful action we have a gambling table where only the richest can play. The majority are simply pawns in the much larger game of high stakes bets, wagers, and swindles, in fact deception is considered a necessary and highly-valued skill. There is no thought of meaning or distribution, rather of "winner take all" and the loser gets perhaps another chance as long as his money holds up.

But even this doesn't quite capture the reality of the great transformation we have experienced imo. Soooo consider this fable:

There were once two river steamboats. One was new and gleaming, state of the art for the time, well-managed and prosperous. Being steamboats, we of course have riverboat gambling. The other was old and dilapidated, patched up with old worn-out parts and wired together with baling wire, but still functioning more or less. The two steamboat captains decided to have a race. As long as there was no race the inherent weaknesses/strengths of both boats were not apparent.

So on the first boat we have the machinery working well, the crew operating as expected, the gaming tables operating in the best interests of the boat, raking in big profits from the gamblers on board.

On the second we have the machinery barely holding together, the crew semi-mutinous or drunk and disinterested. The gamblers have bought off all the dealers who allow them to win big at the cost of the house, while the uninitiated are fleeced mercilessly. The captain (not the president) is drunk on the bridge but with great delusions of grandeur and considers his boat simply "too big to fail" and orders yet more steam as the first boat is lengthening its lead. The smokestacks are glowing redhot by this point and everyone paying any attention to the reality of the situation knows the boiler is about to go which will blow the whole thing sky high, but the gamblers at the tables are totally focused on their crooked game and ignore the rumbling until it is too late . . .

Comments?

Postscript:

One of the constitutive components of the modern capitalist spirit and, moreover, generally of modern capitalism, was the rational organization of the life on the basis of the idea of a calling. It was born out of the spirit of Christian asceticism. Our analysis should have demonstrated this point. If we read again the passage from Benjamin Franklin cited at the beginning of this essay, we will see that the essential elements of the frame of mind he described as the "spirit of capitalism" are just that we have conveyed above as the content of Puritan vocational asceticism. In Franklin, however, this 'spirit' exists without the religious foundation, which had already died out.

The idea that modern work in a vocational calling supposedly carries with it an ascetic imprint is, of course, also not new. The limitation of the Faustian multi-dimensionality of the human species, is in our world today the precondition for doing anything of value at all. This is a lesson that already Goethe, at the peak of his wisdom in his Wilhelm Meister's Years of Travel [1829] and in his depiction of the final stage of life thought his most famous character Faust [1808], wished to teach us. He instructs us tht this basic component of asceticism in the middle-class style of life - if it wishes to be a style at all - involves today an inescapable interaction in which the conduct of 'specialized activity', on the one hand, and 'renunciation', on the other, mutually condition each other. For Goethe this acknowledgment implied a farewell to an era of full and beautiful humanity - and a renunciation of it. For such an era will repeat itself, in the course of our civilizational development, with as little likelihood as a reappearance of the epoch in which Athens bloomed.

The Puritan wanted to be a person with a vocational calling; today we are forced to be. For to the extend that asceticism moved out of the monastic cell, was transferred to the life of work in a vocational calling, and then commenced to rule over this - worldly morality, it helped to construct the powerful cosmos of the modern economic order. Tied to the technical and economic conditions at the foundation of mechanical and machine production, this cosmos today determines the style of life of all individuals born into it, not only those directly engaged in earning a living. This pulsating mechanism does so with overwhelming force. Perhaps it will continue to do so until the last ton of fossil fuel has burnt to ashes. According to Baxter, the concern for material goods should lie upon the shoulders of this saints like "a lightweight cloak that could be thrown away at any time". Yet fate allowed a steel-hard casing (stahlhartes Gehäüse) to be forged from this cloak. To the extent that asceticism attempted to transform and influence the world, the world's material goods acquired an increasing and, in the end, inescapable power over people - as never before in history.

Today the spirit of asceticism has fled from this casing, whether with finality, who knows? Victorious capitalism, in any case, ever since it came to rest on a mechanical foundation, no longer needs asceticism as a supporting pillar. Even the rosy temperament of asceticism's joyful heir, the Enlightenment, appears finally to be fading. And the idea of an 'obligation to search for and then accept a vocational calling' now wanders around in our lives as the ghost of beliefs no longer anchored in the substance of religion. Whenever the conduct of a vocation cannot be explicitly connected to the highest cultural values of a spiritual nature, or wherever conversely, individuals are not forced to experience it simply as economic coercion - in both situations persons today usually abandon any attempt to make sense of the notion of a vocational calling altogether. The pursuit of gain, in the region where it has become most completely unchained and stripped of its religous-ethical meaning, the United States, tends to be associated with purely competitive passions. Not infrequently, these passions directly imprint this pursuit with the character of a sporting contest.

No one any longer knows who will live in this steel-hard casing and whether entirely new prophets or a mighty rebirth of ancient ideas and ideals will stand at the end of this prodigious development. Or, however, if neither, whether a mechanized ossification, embellished with a sort of rigidly compelled sense of self-importance, will arise. Then, indeed, if ossification appears, the say might be true for the 'last humans' in this long civilizational development:

-Narrow specialists without mind, pleasure-seekers without heart; in its conceit, this nothingness imagines it has climbed to a level of humanity never before attained.-

Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 1920

The Legacy of Ronald Reagan?

Ronald Reagan in Berlin, June 1987

Seems that the coming 6th of February is the Centennial of Ronald Reagan's birth. I've been invited to participate in a roundtable discussion of the 40th US President over at Chicagoboyz. I've been thinking about what to post, and haven't come up with much so I thought I would run if by my fellow barkeeps and our loyal clientèle and see what ya'll got to say about the subject.

I was in the audience during that particular Berlin speech, maybe five rows back and was very impressed at the time. He was of course addressing not only Berlin, but the whole world. I had voted for Reagan both in 1980 and 1984, but the gross illegalities of Iran Contra with commissioned officers destroying documents and refusing to answer questions or outright lying before Congress, not to mention the actions of Congressional Republicans in their lock-step support of these crimes, was too much for me and I left the Republican Party in 1986. I thought Ollie North should have been busted to private.

So Reagan's legacy? I'm thinking in terms of four main areas:

*The ending of the Cold War, but the continuance of Bacevich's "Washington Rules", which is a bit outside of Reagan's time, but his influence is still important.

*Ronald Reagan as the first real TV-age president. How image triumphed over substance? Some say that JFK was, but I think Reagan beats him.

*The redefinition of "conservative" as in what has become the Radical Right of today. "Government is the problem", but "government" redefined and limited to social programs. Massive defense and security spending is OK, but "government" seemingly does not include these aspects which form a sort of state socialism, that is seen as a normal and unquestioned "duty" or "obligation" of the state for unlimited intervention.

*Finally, and this is linked especially to the third point above, the hollowing out of government control over military/intelligence activities. Since William Casey, Reagan's DCI, we have seen a growing tendency to "outsource" certain questionable activities to preclude public scrutiny. This was a hallmark of Iran-Contra and it did not end there. The rise of Private Military Companies (PMC's) goes with this. From a Clausewitzian perspective this indicates a loss of material cohesion for the political authority, as well as numerous unintended consequences should the mercenaries gain too much influence. I see this as an element of the consolidating police state I have warned of.

All thoughtful comments are welcome. I'm looking for inspiration and I think I've come to the right place . . .

Winter Dawn, 2011: Rauschning's View - An Up Date

Niedersachsen in Winter

I was going to post this as a postscript to my last post, but considering the events of the past few days I think it better posted this way. "Up Date" fits the current politics much better.

America is attempting a rare period of introspection, but it isn't coming easy, nor with much chance of success. Already the local sheriff has been labeled "Leftist". The guy's over 70 and has been sheriff of this particular county since 1980, and he's a "Leftist"? If you are so "friendly", then why do you react this way?

Whatever "noise" there is on the "Left" is only a reaction, and basically only noise.

First lesson for all Americans should be: Basic definitions. "Conservative", "Radical" and whatever else including "Liberal", "Socialist" . . .

Imo the Radicals are winning and the Conservatives (as in "conserving and operating according to our oath to the Constitution and the values behind it") are in total retreat and confusion. What else exactly would "conservative" mean? The other labels aren't even in the game.

You really have to shake your head, how it's played out and displayed in the media. They're "fighting" so fierce since that is after all what they are about, what drew them together in the first place. No one expected a rational argument, but at least coherence. But not even that, I'm afraid.

Rather it was about power, and the moneybags and their lackeys were running scared a couple of years back, not that they couldn't have made a deal. Would it have really been so difficult, with this administration?

Truth is the elites now in the driver's seat gave up on democracy long ago. It wasn't really even much of a decision on their part. Rather instead, they'll now spin it was all the pitchfork talk and all. So they started themselves a "movement" and now we all see what sort of "movement" it is, and also for whom, in whose interest . . . by what means.

Agitation. Focus. Confrontation. Raw anger, "firing people up" . . . their dirty little "secret". Funny that, as well since it's been hanging out for all to see for sooooo long.

Angry? You bet, and I know I'm not the only one. This is what has become of the country we served? This is what has become of our shared legacy? Of what we were entrusted to pass on? What follows us?

Rauschning writes:

Direct action is defined as "direct integration by means of corporativism, militarism, and myth"; this is to replace democracy and parliamentarism. But the true significance of direct action lies in its assignment of the central place in its policy to violence, which it then surrounds with a special philosophical interpretation of reality. Briefly this philosophical system amounts to the belief that the use of violence in a supreme effort liberates creative moral forces in human society which lead to social and national renewal.

The Revolution of Nihilism, pp 27-28

Postscript:

What conclusions can we draw from Rauschning's work? How does he rate as a theorist?

First, these conclusions refer to Rauschning's work and to a lesser extent that of Hannah Arendt, who produced about the best book on Fascism/Totalitarianism imo.

Second, these refer to Rauschning's subject which was Nazi Germany around 1939. I leave it to the reader to draw any similarities between Rauschning's subject and what we are/have been experiencing in the US.

Conclusions:

1. What Rauschning describes is a radical right-wing movement which exhibits elements of left-wing attitudes as well. There is a significant "socialist" element to Nazi policy, such as government support for families, public housing, jobs on public works projects, etc. Mobilization of active public support for the goals of the movement is extensive.

2. There is a strong distinction between the movement and the state. The state, and even the nation, are seen as "instruments" for attaining the goals of the movement, or rather for the goals of the leadership of the movement. The movement/party works behind the facade of the state, and attempts over time to supplant it.

3. The movement/party's goals are irrational, based on a shared myth or notions which are not supported by reality. "Faith" in the movement/leadership is absolutely necessary and is consistently reinforced and promoted. Rhetoric appeals to instincts and myths, not to rational thought which is considered as "cowardice" and a lack of resolve.

4. What allows for the success of the radical right is conservative confusion, indecisiveness, lack of understanding of the nature of right extremism and cynical opportunism. Apolitical economic interests share certain attributes with the conservatives, but are not to be trusted to act in conservative interests, rather in their own which might be diametrically opposed. It does not seem that difficult to win over corporate/plutocratic interests over to this type of political system (as long as property is more or less guaranteed).

5. The radical right is the greatest enemy to conservativism. They use conservative symbols and rhetoric, but consistently undermine conservative values and ideals. They are radicals and destroying what is in place is necessary for the achievement of their radical goals.

6. Politicizing the military is one of the first goals of the radical right.

7. What made the Nazis a global threat was their radical goal of re-ordering the world along their notions of race. It did not matter that there was no scientific evidence supporting their views, rather what was decisive was holding and expanding power, the ability to organize a nation state along these lines. This achievement made it possible to do it elsewhere, in other words "Greater Germany" was not the goal, but the means.

8. There is a hierarchy of membership groups within the movement, with the fellow travelers at the bottom, followed by the rank and file members, elite organizations and finally the leadership cadre at the top. A high level of true belief is prevalent at the bottom levels, but becomes less and less as one rises, with cynicism replacing faith. At the top, the leadership has little respect for the masses, sees them as "herd animals" and expendable. This hierarchy of faith being replaced with cynicism explains the success of their irrational propaganda and "big lies".

9. The leadership have an unfailing belief in the power of human organization, anything is in fact "possible" no matter how fantastic in their eyes.

10. Violence is not only a means of achieving goals, but the primary means, the means of choice. Brutality is rewarded and the most brutal and ruthless rise quickly in the movement.

Which is More Obscene, "Fuck" or "Lying to a Dead Soldier's Family"?

Despite protests by its producer, director and distributor that "The Tillman Story" is an important documentary that should be available to young people, it has lost an appeal to have the Motion Picture Association of America change its R rating to PG-13.

Producer John Battsek and director Amir Bar Lev made a personal appeal Thursday in Los Angeles before the appeals board, which is composed of studio distribution and major exhibition executives, but could not convince them to change the rating. That makes it unlikely that the picture will be made available to young people in schools and through libraries in years to come.
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By Alex Ben Block