What do Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and U. S. president George W. Bush have in common? Thrusting ego, overwhelming confidence in their own rightness (whether they believe themselves to be anointed by God or History) and belligerent readiness to get up in their opponents’ faces and give them what for.
Last [...]
Commemorations bring out my ambivalence. In the public sphere, most holidays and anniversaries make one of two statements: “We won and we’ll never let you forget it”; or “We lost and we’ll never forgive you.” Neither message describes a state of mind that seems worth cultivating: between triumphal belligerence and wounded bellicosity, my choice is [...]
My friend was speaking of a well-known Israeli peace activist who, at the start of the bombing, had come out publicly in support of the war in Lebanon. “He has trouble maintaining a big view,” she said, “when he’s in fear of his life.”
No kidding. So do we all. In fact, it’s hard-wired into [...]
One of the most interesting things about our times is how much is being discovered about the workings of the human mind. I count myself among the many artsy and intellectual types who reject purely functional or biological explanations for feelings as too mechanistic and inhumane (or too inhospitable to my own sense of specialness). [...]
I really don’t want to write about this.
I’ve been procrastinating all week, waiting for another blog idea to pop onto my mindscreen, but the only topic that comes up is the aching, bleeding, pulsating Middle East. Or more accurately, the shadowy simulacrum of the Middle East that swirls through cyberspace, swamping everything.
My thoughts and [...]
Shame seems to be a driving force in American politics these days. The Europeans have managed to shame us into ending many of the secret deals on that continent that established sites for “extraordinary rendition,” defined as the incarceration and interrogation of unindicted, untried suspects in the “War on Terror.” (Unfortunately, CIA “black sites” and [...]
Consider the tale of DP World, Dubai’s state-owned company trying to spend almost $7 billion to buy a company that operates port terminals around the world, a few of which are in the U.S.A.
This morning’s New York Times tells us that President Bush was shocked—I say, shocked— at the breadth and intensity of objections from [...]
Our text for today is the parable of the parboiled frog. You know it: when a frog is dropped into boiling water, it immediately saves itself by jumping out. But when a frog is dropped into a lukewarm bath and the bath is gradually heated to boiling, the poor thing is lulled to death.
Is [...]
Two of my readers have given me a lot to think about. They wrote comments on my February 12th blog, “The Fashion in Outrage,” about controversies over art. It contrasted Americans’ huge response to recent domestic literary scandals with our inertia with respect to political ones.
From Israel:
The fact that “tout le monde” is more [...]
Yesterday’s New York Times carried an interesting column about citizenship tests. The most anxious nations—Britain, Germany, Canada and of course, the USA—have been revising their tests to raise the threshold for citizenship, making sure that prospective citizens get with the program before they are admitted to the club.
The new tests are a fascinating Rorschach [...]
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