Philosophy or Ethno-philosophy? Why and How We Think

Before I dive into more gun control topics, a little change of pace.  Check out the article below from Al Jazeera regarding the Eurocentric mindset when it comes to who's-who in philosophy and intellectualism:  Can non-Europeans think?

It's certainly a topic that has been debated for ages on college campuses and in many different fields of study, from literature to science and technology to intellectual history and philosophy.  Who determines the pantheon of influential thinkers of the past and the intellectual titans of our time?

Living in the United States we are beholden to and naturally influenced by the Western and European traditions.  That in itself is not what the author is questioning or asking to defend, rather he is asking, "What makes a person a 'philosopher', a 'Public Intellectual', a 'thinker', who is outside of the normally accepted think-brand in the European tradition?"

It is a worthy exercise to question whether we are unconsciously caught in the intellectual and cultural imperialism, a remnant of the European colonialism and superiority of the past, or we are truly liberated and open-minded to consider all philosophies and schools of thought, regardless of the place of origin, the ethnicity or nationality.  Honestly, it goes without saying that I do not know most of the thinkers, European or non-European, mentioned in the article by Professor Dabashi.  But I will do my best to get familiar with their writings.

And it is more crucial to note that what and how we think about our beliefs, values, politics and philosophies definitely "color" how and what we express or write in our daily existence.  We are certainly products of our environment, experiences and education, but we can also teach ourselves to think more freely and outside of the box of our cultural norms and assumptions.  We shouldn't just take for granted what is universal and what is cultural, what is absolute and what is relative.

Taking a different angle, this quote from the article encapsulates for me what it means to proclaim oneself as a "thinker":

Therefore the agent is the bearer of the "similar conditions" and indeed their creator. That is, he "must" act according to a "model" which he would like to see diffused among all mankind, according to a type of civilisation for whose coming he is working-or for whose preservation he is "resisting" the forces that threaten its disintegration.

It is precisely that self-confidence, that self-consciousness, that audacity to think yourself the agent of history that enables a thinker to think his particular thinking is "Thinking" in universal terms, and his philosophy "Philosophy" and his city square "The Public Space", and thus he a globally recognised Public Intellectual.

I came across this Al Jazeera article a couple of days ago.  Serendipity, coincidence or synchronicity or whatever you want to call it, earlier today I came across an article about a book called "Why We Write: 20 Acclaimed Writers on How and Why They Do What They Do" which started this way:

Joan Didion had it right. In her 1976 essay “Why I Write,” originally published in the New York Times Book Review, she lays out the template in no uncertain terms: “In many ways writing is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind. It’s an aggressive, even a hostile act. You can disguise its qualifiers and tentative subjunctives, with ellipses and evasions — with the whole manner of intimating rather than claiming, of alluding rather than stating — but there’s no getting around the fact that setting words on paper is the tactic of a secret bully, an invasion, an imposition of the writer’s sensibility on the reader’s most private space.”

It occurred to me as I started writing this post that the Didion quote sounds very similar to the first quote.  To me, both quotes echo the same themes of why we think and why we write.  Let's exalt and celebrate our collective humanity!  And I have to dig up and finally finish reading Didion's "Slouching Towards Bethlehem"...

Fwd: The False Hope of Bipartisanship - BRM

Apologies to BRM as the article below (and others which I will post here shortly) had been stuck in our Google Groups site since Feb. Doh! And for some reason, I did not have email forwarded from that site, so I never received it. Since we don't really check that site, please post to our blog, not that we're "crazy go nuts" blogging all the time. ;-) Appreciate your support.

Thanks, BRM, for the article. I think this is quite telling and topical even months later, given the current health care debate, distortion and disinformation. More comments to come after reading the article more thoroughly.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Brian Menard" <brian_men...@hotmail.com>
Date: Feb 16, 11:05 am
Subject: The False Hope of Bipartisanship
To: AMoMaI Group

Friends:

Great piece by political scientiest Alan Abramowitz, from Larry
Sabato's Crystal Ball (see Sabato's Crystal Ball - Vol. VII, Iss. 6 -
SENATE 2010 UPDATE - @ Larry J. Sabato
<goodpolit...@virginia.edu<mailto:goodpolit...@virginia.edu>>).

In it, a not-by-any-measure-conservative academic argues effectively the point that is the source of great frustration with President Obama for conservatives like me. I disagree soundly - though not surprisingly - with Abramowitz's suggestion that we stop pretending to be bipartisan and just push the socialist agenda. I agree soundly, though, that President Obama is trying to push two incompatible rhetorical lines. To put my own priority in place of Abramowitz's preference for the abandonment of bipartisanship, I echo his essential point that you can't claim you want bipartisanship without being willing to make concessions to bipartisanship. I wrote an unpublished op-ed (after Senator Obama announced formally his candidacy on the steps of the Springfield Capitol two years ago) that argued his bipartisan/postpartisan appeal essentially said, "Hey, all you Republicans, if you would just join our left-wing socialist agenda and get out of the way, we could work together to do great things for the country." While I had the audacity to hope the new administration would prioritize its rhetoric pushing bipartisanship over its rhetoric pushing leftist policies, President Obama seems to dismiss the moderates who helped elect him and conservatives like me who didn't but nonetheless want to work with him on a truly bipartisan basis. As Newt Gingrich stated a couple weeks ago on ABC's "This Week", you can't bake the cake yourself and then write the other side's name in the frosting on top to call it a bipartisan effort. "We won" keeps getting shoved in the face of such folks like a scoop of misplaced doggie-doo to remind people that - contrary to claims of messianic Barack disciples - we should not repeat the mistake they made in electing someone who promised to change the tone of Washington. I argued during the campaing that McCain was the real candidate for changing how things are done in Washington. Obama made a much better case, though, disingenuous as it was. After the election I argued that President-Elect Obama had a special opportunity to make real change, not just partisan policy change, and that doing so would elevate him from being another partisan President to being a real statesman and leader. He has gone the wrong direction in this regard, and he is killing fast the good will that people like me have maintained. I will hold on to hope. Increasingly, though, whether because the President is too naïve/weak/insecure to lead the left-wing leadership of Congress or because his rhetoric of bipartisanship/postpartisanship is truly meaningless, what I see is just audacity without much cause for hope in the long run.

-BRM
---------------------------------------------------------------------------­------------------------
The False Hope of Bipartisanship
[from Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball: see Sabato's Crystal Ball - Vol.
VII, Iss. 6 - SENATE 2010 UPDATE - @ Larry J. Sabato
<goodpolit...@virginia.edu<mailto:goodpolit...@virginia.edu>>]

Alan Abramowitz

It's not a matter of "if." It's a matter of "when." As in, when will all of the feel-good rhetoric about Democrats and Republicans joining hands to solve the nation's problems come to an end and open partisan warfare resume in Washington? In fact, that time may already be here. Despite Barack Obama's efforts to reach out to Republican leaders and conservative intellectuals since his election and his willingness to modify his economic stimulus package to accommodate Republicans' desire for smaller spending increases and larger tax cuts, the President isn't getting much love from the other side of the aisle.

One day after Mr. Obama ventured to Capitol Hill to urge Republican lawmakers to support his $819 billion stimulus package, House Republicans voted 177-0 against the bill. And despite intense efforts to reach an agreement acceptable to moderates in both parties, only three Republicans ended up supporting the bill in the Senate--just one more than the bare minimum needed to avert a filibuster. Meanwhile, conservative pundits and talk-show hosts have been hammering the President's plan as old-fashioned pork-barrel politics or socialism in disguise, and some former Bush Administration officials, including Dick Cheney, have been suggesting that his orders to close the Guantanamo Bay prison and ban the use of waterboarding and other
"enhanced interrogation techniques" are jeopardizing the safety of the American people.

The new president is still enjoying a honeymoon with the public. According to the Gallup Poll, almost two-thirds of Americans approve of the job that he is doing so far. That's quite a change from his predecessor who left office with an approval rating of about 30 percent. Even among Republicans, Mr. Obama started his term with a 43 percent approval rating and only a 30 percent disapproval rating--which is why most Republican leaders and conservative commentators, with the notable exception of Rush Limbaugh, have been reluctant to criticize the new president too harshly, claiming that they wish him well despite their disagreements.

Don't expect the honeymoon to last very long, though. The more decisions the president makes, the more he is going to offend the Republican base and the more free Republican leaders and conservative pundits are going to feel to attack him. That's because many of the policies that Mr. Obama supports, from withdrawing American troops from Iraq and lifting the ban on American aid, to international organizations that provide abortion counseling, to expanding government-sponsored health insurance and making it easier for unions to organize workers, are anathema to the large majority of Republican voters as well as the large majority of Republican office-holders.

One of the most important characteristics of public opinion in the United States today is polarization. Americans agree that the country has serious problems but they disagree sharply about what needs to be done about the economy, health care, climate change, the war in Iraq, gay rights, abortion, and a host of other issues. Democrats generally line up on one side of these issues while Republicans generally line up on the opposing side. And the biggest differences are found among the most interested, informed, and active members of the public--the people whose opinions matter the most to political leaders.

Journalists and editorial writers tend to see partisan conflict as a product of petty rivalries and personality clashes. They assume that Democratic and Republican leaders could settle their differences if they really wanted to, and that policies with broad bipartisan support would be better for the country than policies supported by only one party. But the major reason why partisan conflict has been so intense in the United States in recent years is not that Democratic and Republican office-holders don't like each other, but that they have fundamental disagreements on the major issues facing the country.

Since the 1970s the Democratic Party has been moving to the left, the
Republican Party has been moving to the right, and the center has been disappearing. The conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans who once exercised considerable influence in Washington are almost extinct. There are so few remaining moderates, and the ideological gulf separating the parties is so wide, that bipartisan compromise on most issues is almost impossible. And rank-and-file Democrats and Republicans, especially those who pay attention to politics, have been moving apart as well. As a result, politicians who try to compromise with the other side risk antagonizing their own base.

Contrary to the claims of some pundits and editorial writers, there is no clear relationship between bipartisanship and good public policy. The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 had broad bipartisan support. Twenty-nine Senate Democrats and 82 House Democrats voted for the resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq; almost all of them ended up regretting it. And some very successful policies have been produced by highly partisan decision-making processes. In 1993, President Clinton's first budget passed Congress without a single Republican vote. Despite claims by Newt Gingrich and other GOP leaders that the tax increases included in that budget would throw the economy into a tailspin, the result was eight years of economic growth and shrinking deficits.

To win Republican support for his budget, President Clinton would have had to give up the tax increases on upper income Americans that were a critical component of his economic plan. Similarly, to win more than token Republican support for his economic stimulus package, President Obama will almost certainly have to agree to much larger tax cuts and much smaller increases in public expenditures than his economic policy advisors believe are desirable.

Barack Obama was elected on a promise of bringing change to Washington. But during the campaign he talked about two kinds of change: change in the content of public policy and change in the way Washington works and especially in what he described as the excessive partisanship of the Bush era. The problem is that these two kinds of change may be incompatible. Appointing a few Republicans to the cabinet and inviting some Republican members of Congress over to the White House to watch the Super Bowl may win Mr. Obama some compliments, but it's unlikely to win him any votes on legislation. That would require making significant concessions on the content of that legislation.

The last two elections have drastically reduced the number of moderate Republicans in the House and Senate, leaving the party more dominated than ever by hard-line conservatives who represent safe Republican districts and states. In order to win more than token support from congressional Republicans, therefore, President Obama would have to make major policy concessions to these hard-line conservatives--concessions that would almost certainly be unacceptable not only to the vast majority of congressional Democrats, but also to the vast majority of politically engaged Democrats in the country. Such concessions would require him to abandon commitments that he made to key Democratic constituencies during the 2008 campaign on issues such as health care, education, climate change, reproductive rights, and labor law reform.

Despite the President's rhetoric about the need for both parties to work together to solve the country's problems and his efforts to reach out to Republicans and conservatives, there is no indication that he is willing to make such concessions and he would be foolish to do so. It would only be seen as a sign of weakness and would lead to demands for even bigger concessions in the future.

Like it or not, in order to produce the kinds of policy changes for which he campaigned, Mr. Obama is going to have to depend overwhelmingly on the support of his fellow Democrats in the Congress and in the country. So expect more party-line votes in the House and Senate, more complaints from Republican leaders about being ignored, and more strident attacks on the president by conservative pundits and talk-show hosts. As a wise man once said, "politics ain't beanbag."

Fwd: "happening world of Politics"

From BRM via googlegroups... I think we received this one before but posting to our blog anyway.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Brian Menard" <brian_men...@hotmail.com>
Date: Jul 6 2009, 1:50 pm
Subject:
To: AMoMaI Group

Read the attached from one of my UVA friends who is an assistant
professor political science at Bentley University. No surprise to any
of us, but good to confirm academically that we are in the happening
world of politics.

http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=120429506564&h=Be5Pl&u=AHVm...<http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=120429506564&h=Be5Pl&u=AHVm...>

Petraeus Tests Obama

Joe Biden got a talking to when he said that world leaders will test the "young president" Obama. It appears that most of the tests in his first 3-4 weeks have been coming from leaders within our own country, first the Republicans in Congress and now General David Petraeus, who apparently has some political aspirations of his own. But doing an end-around the president is not too smart, is it? Yet another sideshow to distract him from the economic troubles at home? Thanks, but no thanks, General.
Petraeus Leaked Misleading Story on Pullout Plans

WASHINGTON, Feb 9 (IPS) - The political maneuvering between President Barack Obama and his top field commanders over withdrawal from Iraq has taken a sudden new turn with the leak by CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus - and a firm denial by a White House official - of an account of the Jan. 21 White House meeting suggesting that Obama had requested three different combat troop withdrawal plans with their respective associated risks, including one of 23 months.

The Petraeus account, reported by McClatchy newspapers Feb. 5 and then by the Associated Press the following day, appears to indicate that Obama is moving away from the 16-month plan he had vowed during the campaign to implement if elected. But on closer examination, it doesn't necessarily refer to any action by Obama or to anything that happened at the Jan. 21 meeting.

The real story of the leak by Petraeus is that the most powerful figure in the U.S. military has tried to shape the media coverage of Obama and combat troop withdrawal from Iraq to advance his policy agenda - and, very likely, his personal political interests as well.

Rumors vs. Facts

Nice article from Politico summing up all of the rumors and innuendo surrounding both Obama and McCain. Some I had never even heard of until now. Guess I haven't been scouring through the blogs enough. One telling figure: 20-to-1 Obama rumor email to McCain rumor email, according to what Politico alone has received. Gives some perspective on the assumption that "both sides do it." Or just that the right wingnuts are more active and eager, I suppose. Enjoy.

Cover this! Inside the nastiest ’08 rumors

SAT Question - Politicians:Voters::

Full of shit:Getting shit on
Courtesy of BRM. Where do PACs fit in this picture? ;-)

Laughing at America - - A European Perspective

Hi, All--

This is perhaps the last thing that needs to be said about the Biden/Palin debate. I think the British Press has nailed it!

Flirting her way to victory Sarah Palin's farcical debate performance lowered the standards for both female candidates and US political discourse
Friday October 3 2008, The Guardian

At least three times last night, Sarah Palin, the adorable, preposterous vice-presidential candidate, winked at the audience. Had a male candidate with a similar reputation for attractive vapidity made such a brazen attempt to flirt his way into the good graces of the voting public, it would have universally noted, discussed and mocked. Palin, however, has single-handedly so lowered the standards both for female candidates and American political discourse that, with her newfound ability to speak in more-or-less full sentences, she is now deemed to have performed acceptably last night.

By any normal standard, including the ones applied to male presidential candidates of either party, she did not. Early on, she made the astonishing announcement that she had no intentions of actually answering the queries put to her. "I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also," she said.

And so she preceded, with an almost surreal disregard for the subjects she was supposed to be discussing, to unleash fusillades of scripted attack lines, platitudes, lies, gibberish and grating references to her own pseudo-folksy authenticity.

It was an appalling display. The only reason it was not widely described as such is that too many American pundits don't even try to judge the truth, wisdom or reasonableness of the political rhetoric they are paid to pronounce upon. Instead, they imagine themselves as interpreters of a mythical mass of "average Americans" who they both venerate and despise.

In pronouncing upon a debate, they don't try and determine whether a candidate's responses correspond to existing reality, or whether he or she is capable of talking about subjects such as the deregulation of the financial markets or the devolution of the war in Afghanistan . The criteria are far more vaporous. In this case, it was whether Palin could avoid utterly humiliating herself for 90 minutes, and whether urbane commentators would believe that she had connected to a public that they see as ignorant and sentimental. For the Alaska governor, mission accomplished.

There is indeed something mesmerising about Palin, with her manic beaming and fulsome confidence in her own charm. The force of her personality managed to slightly obscure the insulting emptiness of her answers last night. It's worth reading the transcript of the encounter, where it becomes clearer how bizarre much of what she said was. Here, for example, is how she responded to Biden's comments about how the middle class has been short-changed during the Bush administration, and how McCain will continue Bush's policies:

Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced [sic] your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education, and I'm glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right? ... My brother, who I think is the best schoolteacher in the year, and here's a shout-out to all those third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary Schoo l , you get extra credit for watching the debate.

Evidently, Palin's pre-debate handlers judged her incapable of speaking on a fairly wide range of subjects, and so instructed to her to simply disregard questions that did not invite memorised talking points or cutesy filibustering. They probably told her to play up her spunky average-ness, which she did to the point of shtick - and dishonesty. Asked what her achilles heel is - a question she either didn't understand or chose to ignore - she started in on how McCain chose her because of her "connection to the heartland of America . Being a mom, one very concerned about a son in the war, about a special needs child, about kids heading off to college, how
are we going to pay those tuition bills?"

None of Palin's children, it should be noted, are heading off to college. Her son is on the way to Iraq , and her pregnant 17-year-old daughter is engaged to be married to a high-school dropout and self-described "fuckin' redneck". Palin is a woman who can't even tell the truth about the most quotidian and public details of her own life, never mind about matters of major public import. In her only vice-presidential debate, she was shallow, mendacious and phoney. What kind of maverick, after all, keeps harping on what a maverick she is? That her performance was considered anything but afarce doesn't show how high Palin has risen, but how low we all have sunk.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited 2008

If you have any questions about this email, please contact the guardian.co.uk user help desk: userhelp@guardian.co.uk.

-------------
Also, in this months Reader's Digest, there is an article on if the world could vote. To list a few for Obama: Netherlands 92%, Germany 85%, Taiwan 81%, Brazil 78%, Australia 76%, Spain 76%, France 75%, Finland 71%, Mexico 70%, Poland 65%, Canada 64%, etc.

Whither Tolerance

Don't know if you guys recall my anecdote about sending office email about the 2000 election, but maybe I was just ahead of my time. ;-) An interesting NYT article given our past discussions on tolerance, etc.

Talking Politics in the Office

Brief Reflection on 9/11, Then and Now

Never forget the fallen of September Eleven
Seven years ago our nation was hijacked
Never again a day like any other day
Not since the Day of Infamy 60 years before.

Unreal images of fireball and smoke
Attack on plutocratic twin monoliths
Attack on a wall of the Pentagon defense
Tearing down our pride, might and arrogance.

Crashed remains strewn on a green field
To save the hallowed institutions of DC
Heroes of United 93 immortalized.
Could I have been as brave in their place?

Necessitating a swift and firm response
Chased the evil-doers to Tora Bora caves
As near to the gates of hell but
Mission remains unaccomplished.

Bearing false witness and
Distracted by uncertain intelligence
We moved lockstep toward Babylon
Marveling the shock and awe
Ignoring the innocent lives lost and fleeing
Proclaiming mission accomplished
As the death toll rises while
The nation turns to issues domestic.

Now at the precipice of a historic election
Looking for solutions at home and abroad
Same old politics reign again
Accusations of dishonesty and distortion.
One promising change for our future
Other now re-branding maverick change.
Follow the aging senator with POW past?
Or believe in the new face of audacious hope?

Who will honor the fallen of 9/11 and hence
Without mendacity, demagoguery and hypocrisy?
Without reckless zero-sum-game machinations?
Americans and the world watch and wonder
As we remember the eleventh of September.

How the Republicans Win

A quite thorough article about the roots and schemes of the Reps to win the presidency over the last 40 years, by Robert Parry of Consortium News: How the Republicans Win.

I found it educational and accurate. I blame the Reps, but I also blame the Dems for their choosing indirectly complicit silence over cries of outrage. I also blame all of us for blindly accepting the state of the nation as it was and is. This is how long the country has been on the wrong track. Wake up, America! The Revolution WILL BE TELEVISED!

Eliot Spitzer

I'm not at all interested in the actual scandal or its details, but here's how I see this story. It says a lot about politics and power in this country:

1) Don't piss off and send to jail a bunch of Wall Street bankers and investors. They will come after you. It seems he made too many enemies in high places.
2) When do we start separating the public life from the private life of powerful and influential politicians? Will there be anyone left to lead or to govern? Seriously, who's gonna tell me that those with power and influence don't screw around? Should someone like FDR have resigned as well for infidelity? Did that make him unfit to be president?
3) Resign over violations or corruption that directly relate to the job, not over some sordid, salacious and very expensive trysts, unless the person somehow embezzled public funds to satisfy his urges, granted technically he did break some federal laws. See: http://www.slate.com/id/2186345/
4) Don't know all the details but seems like even Democrats hated Spitzer and probably triggered his downfall. All the more evidence that most, if not all, politicians have something to hide, instead of supporting a self-proclaimed crusader like Spitzer, and that has nothing to do with partisanship.
5) Such petty politics and powerplay in NY? What was Spitzer even thinking? Probably nothing since he certainly is not the only one paying for escorts.
6) Spitzer was foolishly hypocritical. Apparently, he took down the Wall Street bankers for practices that most in Wall Street knew well and generally accepted. See Slate article: http://www.slate.com/id/2186249/

Surely, Spitzer sealed his own fate over lustful temptations, but I don't believe that automatically disqualifies him to be governor. It's just a given in the American psyche that any sex that is not with your own wife should disqualify you for public office. Much harder to impeach a president for it, though, we've discovered...O that Slick Willie...

The Calm Before the Email Storm

Here's the email that got me thinking about starting a discussion on the 2008 presidential elections. Thanks, BRM.
-------------------

From: "Brian Menard"
Subject: Choose Your Candidate (washingtonpost.com)
Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2007 09:25:30 -0500

This is a great tool in today's Washingtonpost.com either to search for a candidate to support, or to confirm whether or not your support is directed to the right candidate (based on the correlation of your views). I'm pleased that my residence in the Fred Thompson camp was confirmed solidly, with the BRM/FDT correlation being 2 1/2 times as high as the next closest in my results. I haven't done the Dems yet; it will be interesting to see how I come out there. How do they rank (D's and R's) in your results?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/interactives/candidatequiz/?hpid=topnews