Trying to understand the foolishness- Part 1. The reading list.

”I don’t remember ever seeing grown-ups behave less seriously.”

There was no need for this offense to come, but woe all the same to those by whom it came, and woe above all to those who whitewashed and rationalized it.-Christopher Hitchens.

Its been a weird week. I’ve been wanting to get around to posting this series of posts-but between conducting I-tunes and You Tube University 101 courses for the S.O. ( I think she can now be officially classified as untrainable when it comes to doing anything but posting to Facebook), and succumbing to early evening assaults from the rack monster-I’ve gotten zero writing done.

One other factor is at play. I have been reading, trying to make some sense of the bout of lunacy that seems to have infected the American political discourse of the past few years, and as Hitchens notes, is poisoning our collective national blood stream. For the last 2 and 1/2 weeks, I have been immersed in reading six books more or less in tandem. I’ve been using them for a springboard for examining what I believe are two facts that go hand in hand in explaining tea party foolishness: 1) The world is fundamentally changing in such a way that the US is becoming just one of the dogs-not the top dog.  Which leads to 2)that the tea party and for that matter,  a good number of Americans,  can’t accept that fact.

I started with this book to gain some perspective on what actually happened on that day in 1773 and contrasting it to what the Tea Partiers say happened. The book is called The Whites of Their Eyes , The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle over American History.

Its a pretty good rundown of fact vs fiction-and more importantly it helps debunk some of the idol worship when it comes to the Founding Fathers. I was particularly happy to see her examine Thomas Paine in totality.

Another book-that makes for a natural follow on is The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters, and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama by William Bunch. Now the title may turn off some tea party fans-but he is actually pretty fair to both sides and his narrative is very factual. He treats his subjects with fairness-even when the logic of their ideas is totally lost to him and to any reasonable reader. Truth in advertising- he has written for Media Matters and is a Philadelphia journalist, but you should not let that stop you, the facts are still the facts and are easily verifiable through his notes. One theme that emerges-and will run through some of the other books is how the ideas might never have taken hold-but for the deliberate nurturing of some very skilled manipulators; the worst of which seems to be Glenn Beck.

Speaking of Glenn Beck, I took the time to read Dana Milbank’s book: Glenn Beck and the Tea-bagging of America. Milbank, as many of you know,  writes for the Washington Post and comments for MSNBC- so its pretty obvious he is not a Beck fan.Nonetheless it is a pretty good itemizing of Becks history, especially his back ground in morning radio and his voyage into the world of recovering and mentally corrupting ideas of AA. I’m of the personal opinion that people don’t understand well enough how total acceptance of Mr. Wilson’s philosophy can lead you down a really screwed up path-and it certainly has in Beck’s case.

Shifting gears-I have three books that are about the future and document the changes coming to the world stage. These changes are culmination of some key decisions and events that began in the 15 years after World War II, and are bearing both good and bad fruit. Much as we would like to change the direction of these changes-they are going to happen. Whether we want them or not.

So I started with this book: Why the West Rules … for Now by Ian Morris. Looking at the past, Morris argues that the presence of abundant coal (i.e. cheap energy) and high wages in Britain provided an incentive to innovate, develop, and adopt labor-saving, high energy devices that were the driving forces of expansion of the British Empire and subsequently the American one. He also examines the key role advantages of geography played and how those advantages may be diminished in the current and future world we live in.

It is an interesting idea-and debunks some of the ideas about the idea of British or American exceptionalism. Given similar advantages perhaps another civilization might have beat the world to the punch. Its food for thought-and better reading than you will see most neoconservatives recommend.

The next book comes back to the present and is the chronicle of how we lost our way and became enamored with  more or less permanent war in the current “War on Terror” . Washington Rules, by Andrew Bacevich is the book. The book is a provocative challenge that he,  and I,  and a whole host of others who came into the military in the late 70’s were taught throughout our careers.

Bacevich argues rather persuasively that repeated acceptance of the idea that the US had a “moral responsibility” to intervene in the affairs of other sovereign nations has lead the US to a path of “insolvency and perpetual war.” Furthermore Bacevich points out that blind acceptance of these bad ideas is not limited to one party-both political parties have rogered up to them with disastrous results. Essentially this book is the outgrowth of Bacevich’s military career and the self-education that led him to doubt the “facts” that he had been taught over time. That point rings a bell with me-because my own journey of 29 years in the Navy led me to reject most of the “conservative” tenets that I thought were cast in stone. Like Bacevich I was fortunate enough to have been allowed considerable time out of this country and could learn that there are other ways to do business.  Bacevich writes in a readable style-and his points jump from the page. Number one of which is that, for whatever good we are doing in hell holes like Afghanistan and Iraq, the opportunity cost to our own status and economy is simply not worth it. As a result, the attitude of American superiority has led us to pass on opportunities for periods of unprecedented peace, instead of getting into conflicts again and again.  I think it is important because all those folks whining about the debt-need to remember how we got that debt. As I have said before-the effects of the war(s) are a lot more than we realize.

Finally, I am just beginning to examine this book: The World in 2050-Four Forces Shaping Civilizations Northern Future, by Laurence C. Smith.  I’m not far into it-but it seems to have an interesting premise: What will a world look like where population is nine billion, sea level  has risen by a foot and atmospheric temperature is up by several degrees, and globalization continues apace?  If current political rhetoric -is any indicator, we are not ready to hear the answer. Two of his principal tenets-climate change and insufficient natural resources to meet demand-are firmly rejected by a lot of tri corner hat wearing citizenry.

The point of this effort is not to say that all six of these authors are presenting the definitive truth or have all the answers. However without at least some exploration and accumulation of facts, one is left to cede the field to the overwrought emotionalism of Sarah Palin and her Facebook freaks.  I rather not stoop to that level thank you very much-so I think it’s time to stick my head back into the books to finish them. Unlike Saint Sarah-I firmly reject the proposition of American exceptionalism and think that it has done more harm than good.  This homework assignment is reinforcing for me why I am right.