Wednesday, June 23, 2004

Posted here Wednesday, June 23, 2004 at 3:59:03 PM       What I find myself thinking about is the relation of politics to lived lives. The relationship is tenuous. Those whom I know who do not read the papers not watch TV, nor the Internet, seem no more nor less mixed up than those who spend a good deal of their time trying to discern what is happening.   Trying to govern is difficult. The old Chinese saying -Confucius - governing like trying to cook a goldfish. From the top, looking outward and down, you see people more ore less aware, all with private agendas, all mixed in factions and lines of old friendships and collegiality. That handful of people is who one has to govern with and through. By the time one's perspective gets to the level of the senate, the varying voices in deep disagreement and speaking from such different assumptions make you realize that real collegiality cannot at the best spread very far.   Looking out further to the cities and towns one sees that each person is nearly embalmed in the amber of their relationships, regions, job, and character. they read a local paper, watch television, talk on the phone with children and parents, take an occasional trip.    If you are on a horse, a certain governance is possible. On top of a pile of sand you just have to watch your own footing because you tend to sink in each movement. Why in the midst of this does government work at all, what is the glue, the sinews, the nerves, the hormones? And given this picture, what does democracy mean? Progress? Freedom? ********

Posted here Wednesday, June 23, 2004 at 11:53:46 AM     The president is weak. Clinton is interesting but didn't cope with the upcoming future that we are now in (recession was on its way, no way out, though Bush made it worse). Iraq is a real mess Iran is a real threat (they are great chess players, as are the Chinese, and we need to know that smart people out there know how to play the game of prestige, power, and feint). Income continues to skew in the US (inflation ahead of wage increases, and those increases are average, knowing that the further down the sale the more inflation hits and wages are retarded.) The most interesting speculation in the daily press comes from the WSJ http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110005244 Saying that without US "hegemony" the world will fall apart. The question, may it not also with American dominance, as the US falls apart too? Do we have an entropic world, now being exploited by the unknowing and worse the knowing, as thy play tough stakes in musical chairs? But we need to take seriously What if the world is heading for a period when there is no hegemon? What if, instead of a balance of power, there is an absence of power? Such a situation is not unknown in history. Though the chroniclers of the past have long been preoccupied with the achievements of great powers--whether civilizations, empires or nation states--they have not wholly overlooked eras when power has receded. Unfortunately, the world's experience with power vacuums is hardly encouraging. Anyone who dislikes U.S. hegemony should bear in mind that, instead of a multipolar world of competing great powers, a world with no hegemon at all may be the real alternative to it. This could turn out to mean a new Dark Age of waning empires and religious fanaticism; of endemic rapine in the world's no-go zones; of economic stagnation and a retreat by civilization into a few fortified enclaves. We need institutions, but what kind? Democratic decentralism, fascism, how about monarchy? The good news is that more people are thinking and writing well about all this. It has never been harder to keep up. I've been reading through the English social novels, from Defoe to Austen, because they document social changes that were slow and profound. Balzac did the same in France, and the Russian novels do quite well, like Dead Souls. Marx once paid Balzac the complement, "he was so good he created characters twenty years before they actually appeared in French society." Who now understands the modern forces well enough to try? ********