I suspect the organizers of the event meant this as a not-so-subtle play on one of Barack Obama’s campaign slogans, as well as symbolically linking Barack Obama’s achievement with the broader civil rights struggle. Martin Luther King Jr., of course, gave his famous speech from the very same steps where the musicians were performing. For me, though, there was another more personal relationship with the song, perhaps less important than the implications for African-Americans but for me more resonant. The first song at my wife and I’s wedding was another cover of the same song, by Otis Redding. We picked the song because for us we knew personal change was coming- marriage and adulthood and perhaps children. But there also was apolitical meaning, for we met at a protest against the Iraq War, and we hoped change would come politically to America as well.
And so there was something personally fulfilling about hearing that song played. We are older now, and were at the concert with our son. We have recently moved to DC, and suddenly the political tone of the place has changed. And possibly the Iraq War, which has hovered over our relationship since its inception, will begin to draw to a close. Hearing the song made me realize how interesting it is to be alive right now. It’s been a long time coming.
One of the best essays is called “The wolf and the lamb: The rhetoric of oppression.” The centerpiece of the essay is the fable of the wolf and the lamb who happened to approach a river at the same time, looking for a drink. The wolf accuses the lamb of various offences, including muddying the water of the stream, all of which the lamb rhetorically refutes (the lamb is actually downstream of the wolf, for example). Having lost the rhetorical battle, the wolf goes ahead and devours the lamb anyway. Eco then goes on to discuss the various types of political discourse that is the political equivalent, including the United States’ series of arguments justifying an Iraq war that had already been decided on.
I thought about this as I read Dana Milbank’s excellent piece in the Washington Post this AM. Milbank describes the absurd series of arguments used by a set of Republicans to argue that: 1.) Barack Obama is not born in the United States (there’s a claim his Hawaiian birth certificate is fake, which pisses me off as it looks just as real as my Hawaiian birth certificate!), 2.) if he were born in the United States he still isn’t eligible for presidency (a murky vague claim that because he could have technically claimed dual US-Kenyan citizenship, that invalidates his citizen rights as a natural born US citizens), and 3.) if he were eligible he’s too morally corrupt for the job. This seems to me the same rhetorical trick of the wolf, or at least a similar one: the outcome (vehement opposition to Obama) is determined prior to the rhetorical argument. Maybe lawyers and PR men are comfortable with this state of affairs, but scientists are not- if debate is not between two sides who are willing to honestly consider that they are wrong, it’s not scientific, and it’s not much of a debate.
I’m not so much interested in why a good idea dies (partisan gridlock, etc.), nor what separates a good idea from the bad, but simply how one intellectually works in such an environment of uncertainty. The battle of ideas in all domains is uncertain- that’s why it’s a battle rather than a charade. It’s just that in academia it is fairly certain that if one works hard in a narrow, somewhat pedantic domain, one will be remembered as the best in the world at that little thing. There are indeed gradients in fame and status, but there is something reassuringly permanent about an academic paper with your name on top.
Politics in contrast is a game where most contestants’ ideas are losers, never to be enacted. Most of the idealists in DC (and I count myself in their number) will do nothing, simply because so many ideas (good and bad) die. To survive intellectually thus seems to require an intense attachment to a core set of ideas as morally right, a great dose of pragmatism to seize any opportunities that may arise to advance your idea, and a faith that somehow your actions will help your idea survive after you, whether commemorated by history or not.
I have begun to ask myself every day if my actions will help make my son’s world more verdant and peaceful and beautiful, with patches of wild nature left. Any day I can say yes is a good day, for I’ve helped the idea of conservation propagate a bit more.
I had some writing to do for work this morning, so I stopped midway through my subway commute and came to Lafayette Park, with a view from a bench out on to the White House. It is quiet here, and the view is obscured chain link fences and construction materials, as the city prepares for the inauguration. A massive flock of starlings swirl around my feet, begging for food.
I know enough of politics to know that now comes the hard part for Mr. Obama, for the realities of governing often shatter the best-intentioned rhetoric. I know I will probably disagree about lots of issues with Mr. Obama over the next 4 years. And yet, from my perspective from this bench, as a new father myself, and as a citizen with a new president, Washington looks a bit different.
The first flaw of Frum’s analysis is simply that the relationship between wealth and party affiliation is rather weak. Frum mentioned wealthy zip codes as being “a roll call of Democratic strongholds.” I couldn’t find data on voting patterns by zip code, so instead I analyzed data at the county-level. Out of the twenty richest counties in the US, the majority (13) voted for Bush more than Kerry. This is another kind of roll call Douglas County (CO), Loudon County (VA), and Hunterdon County (NJ) all were very wealthy and solidly Republican. It is true, on average that wealthier countries vote more Democratic, but just barely: each $10000 increase in median family income increased the vote to Kerry by 0.8%. What’s more, this relationship only explains 0.3% of the total variation in voting pattern, making it essentially worthless for prediction.
The situation is similar for Frum’s assertion that places with great income inequality tend to vote Democratic. Out of the 20 countries with the greatest income inequality, Bush won 7, places like Greene County (GA), Summit County (UT), and Lake County (IL). For each 10% increase in the share of income controlled by the rich, the vote for Kerry increased on average by the 5%. While I recognize that in politics this is perhaps a significant trend, more than 90% of the total variation in voting patterns remains unexplained.
Most grave is Frum’s assertion that inequality somehow causes people to vote Democratic, making Republican policies that tend to increase income inequality rather damaging to Republican Party interests. There simply is little support for this assertion. Correlation is not causation. Bigger cities have both more churches and more bars than small cities, but that does not mean churches drive people to drink! Similarly, cities may on average have greater income inequality than rural areas, simply because the very rich and the very poor move there in search of opportunity, and cities may vote Democratic more, but that does not necessarily mean the two are related. By the same logic, one could argue that since less education is correlated with voting Republican, a lack of schooling causes people to vote Republican, an argument I’m sure Mr. Frum finds repugnant.
As a blogger, I’m having trouble describing my new fatherhood in words. How does one capture the joy of your baby’s crooked smile, which may or may not just be from gas? How does one describe the nice (rather rate) moments when he actually looks at me and connects? I don’t have the skill as a writer to put these powerful emotions into words.
What’s worse, everything I can think of to say is a recycled version of a trite phrase. “Your whole life will change.” Well, that piece of advice was true, but doesn’t come close to describing how my life changed, the fabric of my life weaving into a different pattern. “You will see life differently.” That’s true as well, but how could I communicate it in a way that is not deathly boring? Even if every single cliché told about parenthood contains a germ of truth, writers are loathe to use them.
Beyond a writer’s drive for originality, there’s another reason clichés are problematic. They have lost, through their repetition, any emotional force. They can’t communicate the real power of the experience. By chance, most of my friends haven’t yet had kids, so throwing these clicks at them fails to transmit the passion of the experience.
This has led to greater disillusionment in the power of language. Maybe no writer could describe making love adequately enough to convey the essence of it to a virgin. Maybe the heart of religious experience cannot be put into words that make any sense to those without faith. I feel like the intense personal experience of fatherhood is its own domain, not visible from outside.
Maybe Washington’s political obsession is also fatally flawed because of the limits of language. No matter how thorough the political reporting, the public only gets a set of words, not necessarily a clear and true picture of a candidate’s character. For all I have read about McCain (the maverick) or Obama (the young idealistic reformer), I know very little about the soul of either man.
So far, I myself am falling back on a cliché: “Words cannot describe.” For now, the experience of fatherhood is too tender and new to put into prose.
The mosquitoes buzz lazily around my arms, as if they have trouble moving in the warm, moist air. I suppose just as DC waits to feel the hurricane’s winds, just as the political class in this city awaits the elections with all the patience of a payday lender just before payday, so I write. I don’t really know what to expect from fatherhood. All I can do is hope that we are blessed with a healthy baby, and that I do an okay job.
Several parents have told me that I cannot imagine what fatherhood is like. That may be true, but my first reaction is to try to imagine it. Nothing is so foreign to human nature that at its mention we do not try to imagine it.
These stories give me such joy, and I hope I remember a few of them well enough to retell to my children. I have a great deal of trouble, however, imagining how it must have been to truly believe in these stories, rather than just finding them quaint and beautiful. How would it have felt to walk through a forest and feel that certain trees were dryads and hence had a soul? How would the Greeks have treated a spring of water, given that they assumed a spirit inhabited it? Such ideas seem absurd to modern minds, and certainly they aren’t true in a scientific sense, but they must have at least made the world a personal place, one where personalities determine your fate rather than impersonal chance.