Tuesday, October 23, in the middle of the fires out here in Southern California, and everyone seems to be quoting Joan Didion in “Slouching Toward Bethlehem” – the stuff about Santa Ana winds, like this –
We know it because we feel it. The baby frets. The maid sulks….The heat was surreal. The sky had a yellow cast, the kind of light sometimes called “earthquake weather.” My only neighbor would not come out of her house for days…. In Los Angeles some teachers do not attempt to conduct formal classes during a Santa Ana, because the children become unmanageable.
… It is hard for people who have not lived in Los Angeles to realize how radically the Santa Ana figures in the local imagination…. Los Angeles weather is the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse, and, just as the reliably long and bitter winters of New England determine the way life is lived there, so the violence and the unpredictability of the Santa Ana affect the entire quality of life in Los Angeles, accentuate its impermanence, its unreliability. The winds show us how close to the edge we are.
From down by the fires in Irvine, Kevin Drum –
I’ve lived in Southern California my entire life, and this just doesn’t bear any resemblance to anything I know about the place. Santa Ana winds are just… Santa Ana winds. They do whip up brush fires, as Didion says, but otherwise her description seems way, way over the top. Sure, the weather feels a little weird when Santa Ana’s kick up, but teachers don’t cancel classes, pets don’t go nuts, people don’t stay inside their houses, and Los Angeles doesn’t get gripped in crime waves. At least, not as far as I know.
So what’s the deal here, fellow Southern Californians? Is Didion being overdramatic? Or is the drama really there and I’ve just been oblivious to it?
From just across the hills in Silver Lake, Matt Welch –
This, I believe, gets close to the heart of the Joan Didion Problem. She is such a gifted descriptive writer that she often can’t resist the temptation to wrap her otherwise keen observations with some Chandleresque hyperbole, just to see how the language turns out. It’s delightful to read, and leaves lasting impressions on your brain, but many of the impressions are, regrettably, not true. Not only that, but they advertise some near-secretive knowledge - hey wait, all this time I’ve been living here and I didn’t realize that the Santa Ana’s were the primordial force unleashing the dark side of human desire? - allowing readers to congratulate themselves on being among the minority to break the SoCal code. It’s like when postgrads first stumble upon the sunshine/noir dialectic, or when yet another searing cultural critic sees a book-length metaphor in the fact that (gasp!) Brian Wilson couldn’t surf.
Yep, it’s hot as hell and the air is full of smoke, and things are awful – but there are no secrets here. Los Angeles weather may or may not be the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse, but the catastrophes are elsewhere.
Better to read the late Robert Penn Warren as the Paris Review just put one of old interviews online, and he actually was onto something –
INTERVIEWER: Do you feel that there are certain themes which are basic to the American experience, even though a body of writing in a given period might ignore or evade them?
WARREN: First thing, without being systematic, what comes to mind without running off a week and praying about it, would be that America was based on a big promise - a great big one: the Declaration of Independence. When you have to live with that in the house, that’s quite a problem - particularly when you’ve got to make money and get ahead, open world markets, do all the things you have to, raise your children, and so forth. America is stuck with its self-definition put on paper in 1776, and that was just like putting a burr under the metaphysical saddle of America - you see, that saddle’s going to jump now and then and it pricks.
We set ourselves up, you see. We would have been better off with lower expectations.
Well, perhaps Robert Penn Warren is an acquired taste – the recent movie based on his most famous novel flamed out. Sean Penn is no Broderick Crawford. But Warren’s poetry book (with Cleanth Brooks) was the standard text for the “New Criticism” back in the early sixties, and that led to the deconstructionists and the madness of Jacques Derrida. Still, Warren knows the gap between what we say and what we mean, and what we do.
Garrison Keillor goes down a lot easier on the same issues –
There is a natural division of labor in politics: The Republicans fuss about the sanctity of marriage and getting God back in the schools and the Democrats about healthcare and the $8 billion that vanished in Iraq, and so far the Republicans are doing a better job. God is in the schools, the same as He is in Nebraska or even in Dallas, and marriage looks to be doing OK, since the White House is not in charge of it. Meanwhile, the Pentagon and the Justice Department are investigating fraud in Iraq, one grain of sand at a time, and we are likely to have answers in a decade or two.
I suppose that $8 billion is not so much considering that the war will cost $200 billion this year alone, and yet one is curious to know why the G-men can’t find out where it went, at a time when the Current Occupant is so very concerned about keeping medical benefits away from undeserving children. Hundreds of millions paid to the gunslingers of Blackwater, but an American family with a seriously ill child has to tap-dance backward through a gantlet of government forms to prove they really, really, really are desperate.
So it is, and so it will always be. Keillor offers an old adage – the little thieves get hung and the big thieves get richer and richer. As he puts it, when it comes to larceny, it pays to be ambitious. But with politics, the opposite is true –
If you were looking for a political platform, God and marriage would be a good bet, sort of like promising to make the sun rise. A part-time job with time left over to supervise the moon and the stars. It is so much more satisfying than the dreary business of investigating what happened to those suitcases full of bricks of $100 bills in Iraq during the Bremer years and tracking down the good Republicans who served over there - the young folks with no prior experience in accounting or finance who were put in charge of the stock exchange and the national budget.
Just so, but that’s the way it is. He meets Warren, however, when he reflects on what he hears on the radio, someone very angry with Hillary Clinton’s healthcare plan – “This is taking away from those who have and giving to those who do not - in other words, socialism!” We’ve all heard that, but not the analysis which follows –
He sounded truly offended. And this is what the Republican Revolution has brought us to: No longer is there a consensus on taxation according to ability to pay. No longer agreement that it is in the self-interest of the well-off to promote a stable society by securing the safety net. It’s the I Got Mine You Get Your Own party, marching under a Christian banner. But Republicans are starting to realize that if you claim to govern by divine inspiration, the voters will hold you to a higher standard. You can’t throw $8 billion down a rat hole and expect us all to forget about this.
It’s that damned burr under the metaphysical saddle of America – “that saddle’s going to jump now and then and it pricks.” And as for the president himself –
He is a relaxed, easygoing, self-accepting guy whose old retainers love him for his self-effacing modesty, a wonderful trait, but when you are incompetent, it is not so wonderful as, say, a little more intelligence might be. He is heading for the short bus of history where Earl Butz and Spiro Agnew ride. Where are his parents? Why don’t they yell at him?
They tried. It didn’t work. As far as anyone can tell, his father is exasperated and his mother tight-lipped and defensive.
The fires burn on and there’s not much to do about it. You may lose your house. We all may lose our “house” – the place we knew, where we were comfortable with ourselves.
It’s the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse, and Tuesday, October 23, the president defends using torture, again –
In this new war, the enemy conspires in secret - and often the only source of information on what the terrorists are planning is the terrorists themselves. So we established a program at the Central Intelligence Agency to question key terrorist leaders and operatives captured in the war on terror. This program has produced critical intelligence that has helped us stop a number of attacks - including a plot to strike the U.S. Marine camp in Djibouti, a planned attack on the U.S. consulate in Karachi, a plot to hijack a passenger plane and fly it into Library Tower in Los Angeles, California, or a plot to fly passenger planes into Heathrow Airport and buildings into downtown London.
Despite the record of success, and despite the fact that our professionals use lawful techniques, the CIA program has come under renewed criticism in recent weeks. Those who oppose this vital tool in the war on terror need to answer a simple question: Which of the attacks I have just described would they prefer we had not stopped?
Seriously? To question whether the United States government is torturing people, outside the law and treaties to which we are a part, is necessarily to “prefer” that terrorists execute successful attacks?
Also see Dan Froomkin at the Washington Post site –
Which of those attacks was more than a fantasy? And which would not have been stopped with more humane and arguably more effective interrogation techniques?
It doesn’t matter. We don’t do more humane and arguably more effective interrogations. That house burned down long ago.
Will there be trouble? Froomkin points out that the American Civil Liberties Union announced the publication of a new book: Administration of Torture: A Documentary Record from Washington to Abu Ghraib and Beyond – “Based on thousands of government documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, the book supplies substantial evidence that the torture and abuse of prisoners was systemic and resulted from decisions made by senior US officials, both military and civilian.” And it seems that among details in the book “that warrant public attention and further inquiry” the ACLU suggests this one – “Gen. Michael Dunlavey, who asked the Pentagon to approve more aggressive interrogation methods for use at Guantanamo, claims to have received ‘marching orders’ from President Bush.”
It doesn’t matter. You cannot pretend what used to be is still there. The world may want to see Bush tried for crimes against humanity, once he leaves office. President Giuliani will give him a medal.
And as for the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse, no one seems attached to reality that much these days, as over at Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria explains –
The American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality…
Here is the reality. Iran has an economy the size of Finland’s and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?
When the relatively moderate Mohammed Khatami was elected president in Iran, American conservatives pointed out that he was just a figurehead. Real power, they said (correctly), especially control of the military and police, was wielded by the unelected “Supreme Leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Now that Ahmadinejad is president, they claim his finger is on the button. (Oh wait, Iran doesn’t have a nuclear button yet and won’t for at least three to eight years, according to the CIA, by which point Ahmadinejad may not be president anymore. But these are just facts.)
The one time we seriously negotiated with Tehran was in the closing days of the war in Afghanistan, in order to create a new political order in the country. Bush’s representative to the Bonn conference, James Dobbins, says that “the Iranians were very professional, straightforward, reliable and helpful. They were also critical to our success. They persuaded the Northern Alliance to make the final concessions that we asked for.” Dobbins says the Iranians made overtures to have better relations with the United States through him and others in 2001 and later, but got no reply. Even after the Axis of Evil speech, he recalls, they offered to cooperate in Afghanistan. Dobbins took the proposal to a principals meeting in Washington only to have it met with dead silence. The then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, he says, “looked down and rustled his papers.” No reply was ever sent back to the Iranians. Why bother? They’re mad.
What’s with the folks who have led us for the last six or more years. They want to burn down the house?
Consider what Ezra Klein points out here –
This somewhat understates the levers available to Iran, whose influence in Iraq, natural gas resources, and power in the energy-rich region can, if necessary, be used to inflict substantial pain on America.
The only reason Iran has any influence against us is because we have made a series of foolhardy, and eminently reversible, policy choices. If we didn’t have 165,000 troops stationed next door, they’d have no ability to damage us militarily. If we were actually moving to reduce our reliance on carbon fuels and increase the cost of “dirty” energy in order to encourage renewables, their economic pull would gradually weaken.
Yes, they want a nuclear weapon. No, that does not mean they will use it on us, give it to terrorists, or nuke Israel. They want a weapon because it offers them an insurance policy against American invasion and prestige and pull in the world community. If anyone tells you they want a nuclear weapon in order to attack us, arm terrorists, or blow up Israel, they are a profoundly stupid person and you should stop listening to them immediately.
Digby just gets sarcastic –
Doesn’t Zakaria realize that today’s enemies are the strongest, most evil threats the world has ever known? Stalin and Mao were a couple of girlymen compared to Ahmadinejad. And Hitler was nothing but a big baby compared to bin Laden. That’s why we need the gargantuan, turgid, throbbing rhetoric of giants like Rudy Giuliani to save us from these monsters. Doesn’t he understand that they are coming to kill us all in our beds any minute and we will have to run for our lives unless the Republicans protect us?
I actually find it rather amusing to read this. Those of us who’ve been following the scribbling of the panting, heaving 101st keyboarders from the beginning are all too familiar with these over-heated rants. (Their excited comparisons between the US and “terrorism” to the battle of Thermopylae after they saw the cartoon movie “300″ were particularly enjoyable.) But even I have found it slightly disconcerting that these sophomoric ramblings found their way onto the campaign trail. Until now, this stuff was confined to the bowels of the rightwing blogosphere and the radical back pages of Commentary and The Weekly Standard.
She sees all this as a reverse example of Dave Neiwert’s thesis – about how these guys “push their most extremist rhetoric from the bottom up into the mainstream” –
In this case the most elite, intellectual right wing thinkers hold the most extremist views and have succeeded in pouring their deeply neurotic desire for a “war of the worlds” into the polloi. Or perhaps the rightwing intelligentsia and the fundamentalists are just equally screwed up people who have a neurotic psychological need to create a heroic myth about their own lives.
Either way, it’s disturbing. These people have access to the most powerful weapons the world has ever known and they have worked themselves into a full-fledged delusion.
Well, at least the item made it into the mainstream, into Newsweek – no apocalypse just yet.
On the other hand, you carefully read the detailed analysis by Juan Cole, the famous Middle East expert from the University of Michigan – The Collapse of Bush’s Foreign Policy. His contention is that from Turkey to Iraq to Pakistan, the mounting chaos “proves the White House is just winging it.”
But skip the dense analysis. Just note the closing paragraph –
Like a drunken millionaire gambling away a fortune at a Las Vegas casino, the Bush administration squandered all the assets it began with by invading Iraq and unleashing chaos in the Gulf. The secular Baath Party in Iraq was replaced by Shiite fundamentalists, Sunni Salafi fundamentalists and Kurdish separatists. The pressure the Bush administration put on the Pakistani military government to combat Muslim militants in that country weakened the legitimacy of Musharraf, whom the Pakistani public increasingly viewed as an oppressive American puppet. Iraqi Kurdistan’s willingness to give safe haven to the PKK alienated Turkey from both the new Iraqi government and its American patrons. Search-and-destroy missions in Afghanistan have predictably turned increasing numbers of Pushtun villagers against the United States, NATO and Karzai. The thunder of the bomb in Karachi and the Turkish shells in Iraqi Kurdistan may well be the sound of Bush losing his “war on terror.”
Maybe it’s just the Santa Ana winds, screaming hot, blasting down on everything, and everything will burn down.
See Andrew Sullivan, The Conservative Soul, Chapter Four –
John Yoo works at one of the most prestigious think-tanks in the United States: the American Enterprise Institute. He is absolutely sincere in believing that the executive branch can over-ride any domestic law, any international treaty and any moral boundary if necessary to protect national security. In a war on terror that stretches decades into the future, the new conservatism allows for a president with no checks at all on his own power as commander-in-chief. What might have once been a theoretical debate became a pressing reality. And within weeks of this new legal doctrine being expressed, military detainees under the control of American forces were being tortured - consciously, with pre-meditation, with legal cover provided. America went from being a constitutional republic, under the law, to an imperium of one man, answerable only to an election every four years, empowered to break any law and violate any moral law if he believes it is necessary for national security. If conservatism had begun as a political philosophy designed to check power, to ensure individual liberty, to protect individuals from lawless government authority, it ended in a dark room, with a defenseless detainee strapped to a board, terrified beyond most of our imagining.
Gone.
