A Nation on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

First, many thanks to everyone who responded to my bleg about Tatort. I really appreciate all the helpful links and insights.

There'll be light blogging for the next few days, since I'll be visiting one of my favorite countries,  Belgium, to see a wedding. This will be a welcome relief from the news, which I've been following with morbid fascination. The U.S. seems to be matching Belgium crisis for crisis these days.

I'd prefer to draw a veil of discretion before the unseemly events taking place across the Atlantic, but civic duty and manly, nettle-grasping forthrightness compel me to provide you with the following links:

1.  Apparently, the Secretary of the Treasury actually went on bended knee inside the White House yesterday:

In the Roosevelt Room...the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., literally bent down on one knee as he pleaded with Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, not to “blow it up” by withdrawing her party’s support for [a bipartisan legislative] package [to address the fiscal crisis] over what Ms. Pelosi derided as a Republican betrayal.

“I didn’t know you were Catholic,” Ms. Pelosi said, a wry reference to Mr. Paulson’s kneeling, according to someone who observed the exchange.

2. Meanwhile, the stupefying Sarah Palin, who really is the Vice-Presidential nominee of the Republican Party, seems none the wiser after weeks of careful coaching (including from Germany's favorite Realpolitiker, Henry Kissinger).

Here's Palin responding to a question about her experience dealing with The Foreign Countries:

3. New York Times columnist Roger Cohen lays into the kind of American exceptionalism that Palin stands for: 

But exceptionalism has taken an ugly twist of late. It’s become the angry refuge of the America that wants to deny the real state of the world.

From an inspirational notion, however flawed in execution, that has buttressed the global spread of liberty, American exceptionalism has morphed into the fortress of those who see themselves threatened by “one-worlders” (read Barack Obama) and who believe it’s more important to know how to dress moose than find Mumbai.

That’s Palinism, a philosophy delivered without a passport and with a view (on a clear day) of Russia. Behind Palinism lies anger. It’s been growing as America’s relative decline has become more manifest in falling incomes, imploding markets, massive debt and rising new centers of wealth and power from Shanghai to Dubai.

4. And finally, Sam Harris on the American brand of anti-elitism that made Palin possible: 

Ask yourself: how has "elitism" become a bad word in American politics? There is simply no other walk of life in which extraordinary talent and rigorous training are denigrated. We want elite pilots to fly our planes, elite troops to undertake our most critical missions, elite athletes to represent us in competition and elite scientists to devote the most productive years of their lives to curing our diseases. And yet, when it comes time to vest people with even greater responsibilities, we consider it a virtue to shun any and all standards of excellence. When it comes to choosing the people whose thoughts and actions will decide the fates of millions, then we suddenly want someone just like us, someone fit to have a beer with, someone down-to-earth—in fact, almost anyone, provided that he or she doesn't seem too intelligent or well educated.

I believe that with the nomination of Sarah Palin for the vice presidency, the silliness of our politics has finally put our nation at risk. The world is growing more complex—and dangerous—with each passing hour, and our position within it growing more precarious. Should she become president, Palin seems capable of enacting policies so detached from the common interests of humanity, and from empirical reality, as to unite the entire world against us.

Comments

[Don]

Doesn't wear a flag pin?!!! Shocking.

Sebastian, the first thing I noticed when when I visited Europe is that the people don't wear the US flag. Not even the Germans.

Is that because you're all a bunch of Bolsheviks?

[Sebastian Koppehel]

Who are you, Andrew? American, German, Belgian, citizen of the world? Just where do you stand?

I think Andrew Hammel is a secret Muslim who doesn't even wear a flag pin.

Speaking of which, the thing that Eva Herman Sarah Palin is often sporting (such as in this video) is a wearable version of the service flag, which is totes obvi super-duper patriotic because it has to do with shooting people dead from planes and helicopters. Still not satisfied? Well, suck on this huge-ass star spangled lapel banner, you traitorous German-Belgian waffle!

[Paul]

"I'd prefer to draw a veil of discretion before the unseemly events taking place across the Atlantic, but civic duty and manly, nettle-grasping forthrightness compel me to provide you with the following links:"

The "unseemly events" shock and confound me; as an American, I find it painful to witness the destruction of my country.

But you, of course, never had any intention of drawing any "veil of discretion." To the contrary. This is all grist for your "German Joys, American Miseries" mill.

"Civic duty" to whom, I wonder.

"Nettle-grasping" in Germany? Who are you kidding? You are riding a tide of overwhelming assent.

"Irony": the word comes from the Greek. One theory has it that it derives from the masks worn in Greek theater.

You like wearing the mask of irony on this as well as on other occasions.

I wonder who the man is behind the mask--yet another man, wearing another mask?

Who are you, Andrew? American, German, Belgian, citizen of the world? Just where do you stand?

[Kuang]

@Don: Thanks for the clarification. At first it looked like an "democrats also want to be stoopid" rant. Now reread, your 5th and 6th paragraph don´t sound that cynical anymore.

[Don]

One more thing to Andrew. Marvin - Deleuze spectrum or no Marvin - Deleuze spectrum. Look at the polls and he election markets, then tell me again: McCain is going to win this election?

And if we elect Obama: this was 'anti-elite'? Well, maybe. In a way. But the elite I have in mind just laid the biggest financial egg of the past 80 years or so....

[Don]

Kuang, my point was twofold: First, the US tends to get as good a level of tlent in the White House as any country, better than most. Despite the 'anti-elitist' trope.

Second, the very most-talented US politicians avoid appearing elitist like the plague (or banking meltdowns). Mediocre politicians (like Kerry) either embrace it or don't run far enough away - so it sticks.

[Kuang]

@ Don: In what sentence did Sam Harris mention that the Democrats don´t use the same strategy on occasion? He mentioned american politics in general. Palin is just an very "good" example on that matter.

[Ligia]

OMG! The first time I saw the video I thought that it was Tina Fey playing Sarah Palin at some SNL sketch. But unfortunately it´s not! The candidates are getting so ridiculous that we don´pt need comedians to make fun of them. They are (people like Ms. Palin) self-made clowns.

Some years ago, dumb and clueless candidates have had people to write what they (are supposed to) say. So the, people like Sarah Palin would study some briefings about main issues they would be asked about (e.g. Bush doutrine). Do the politicians not have it anymore?

[psychopompous]

"I believe that with the nomination of Sarah Palin for the vice presidency, the silliness of our politics has finally put our nation at risk."

"Finally"??

What does he mean, finally?! Has Harris noticed who has been president these last seven and a half years? And what has happened to the country and the world in that time?

No, I'm afraid that boat has sailed, the horse has bolted, and we are well on our way in this handbasket...

[rob owen]

Re: the ongoing political/economic circus here in the U.S., I recommend the following incisive comment from Christopher Hayes of The Nation magazine:

"So in light of the news of House Republicans loudly and suddenly bailing out on the bailout, a few things to keep in mind to make sense of the political terrain.

1) The bailout is unpopular: The polling on this is muddled, but the polling is completely dependent on the wording. Every single lawmaker is getting barraged with hundreds of calls a day from constituents, and no one is saying: "Please give lots of money to Wall Street!"

2) The crisis is terrifying to lawmakers: They're getting insanely heavy pressure from the vulturous Wall St lobbyists buzzing around the Hill ("there's a gazillion of 'em!" a staffer told me earlier in the week) and also, dire and sober warnings from Bernanke and Paulson behind closed doors. Basically, if you don't pass this, they're being told, you'll have the blood of another Great Depression on your hands.

3) Ergo: The optimal outcome for all lawmkers is to vote against the bill and still have it pass. That way you get to have your cake and eat it, too. But what we're dealing with is something akin to a massive prisoner's dilemma. Everyone wants to get into the decision quadrant of voting against the bill and having it pass, but of course if everyone rushes for that quadrant, then the bill doesn't pass and therefore, no one ends up in that quadrant. If you're Pelosi and the Democrats you can't allow the Republican wingnuts off the hook by creating the space for them to crowd into the sweet spot, and then use the bill to run against you. That's why things are so tenuous and difficult to game out.

Everybody's gotta jump together."

My prediction, Andrew, is that the Dems -- a majority of whom are as predictably slavish in their devotion to the financial industry as their Wall Street Republican counterparts -- will end up passing a bill (and a relatively bad one, by which I mean little assurance of the taxpayer getting an equity stake in the firms that are "bailed out") probably sometime early next week, and that they'll do it with almost no support from Republicans in the House. As soon as that happens, John McCain will try (perhaps successfully) to make some populist-partisan hay out of it. We'll see.

[Don]

"There is simply no other walk of life in which extraordinary talent and rigorous training are denigrated"

Ahem. Senator Jawn Kerry was apparently 'extraordinarily talented'? How so? He was a product of the Ivy League, but so was his opponent. And (ahem) guess which man had the higher grades?

Perhaps Kerry was an unusually distinguished Senator? Well, no. He wasn't. The Democrats did have a chance to nominate a couple candidates with more distinguished records than Senator Kerry (Howard Dean and Wes Clark) but turned them down.

In 2000 The Democrats nominated a somewhat more distinguished candidate than Kerry was, Al Gore. But they turned down Senator Bill Bradley, who was a couple thousand miles ahead of Gore in the head-wattage department.

Before that we have Clinton, who was genuinely brainy. In fact Clinton was SO smart that he refused to play the aesthete in public. Clinton's 'good old boy' act was pretty impeccable.

Obama reminds me of Clinton in this respect. He's more of the public aesthete than Bill was, but does show signs of being able to get down with the people. And unlike mediocre Al and mediocre Jawn, he's going to win. That tell you something about the utility of being a self-styled pompous twit of an 'elite' in American politics?