Julian Assange - Follow-up Assessment

Julian Assange has been arrested in London on Swedish warrants accusing him of rape or sexual misconduct.  This is beside the point.  If he is a scumbag, so be it.  Let him get the appropriate punishment.  Nothing in this case will halt his patently anti-American activities via the internet.

In a recent piece in Slate, Christopher Hitchens agrees that this arrest has the wiff of being trumped up.  But, at the same time he urges Mr. Assange to turn himself in to face whatever the consequences of his publication of confidential documents will be.  As Hitch points out, Assange's entire enterprise is a massive act of sabotage and civil disobediance, done in furtherance of his stated opposition to U.S. actions in the middle east and elsewhere.  A brave man with his convictions would want to have the opportunity to publicly hold the U.S. accountable in a court of law.  Mr. Assange shows no signs of such fortitude.

Hitchens also links to a NY Times piece by the inestimable John Burns which shows Assange to be more megalomaniac than freedom's patriot.  As to his motives, Burns reports the following, 

Mr. Assange’s detractors also accuse him of pursuing a vendetta against the United States. In London, Mr. Assange said America was an increasingly militarized society and a threat to democracy. Moreover, he said, “we have been attacked by the United States, so we are forced into a position where we must defend ourselves.” 

Ironically, as Hitchens further notes, sides appear to have switched on both the left and the right regarding exposure of secrets.  Those who supported the leak of Valerie Plame's involvement in her husband's selection to look for Iraqi attempts to secure uranium are now, by and large, wishing for Assange's head.  A similar flip is clearly visible on the left.  As Hitchens aptly puts it:

As for the public's right to know and the accountability of our covert or confidential agencies, it is only a short time since the entire American liberal consensus was witlessly applauding a clumsy and fruitless prosecution, directed entirely at the hopelessly overdramatized exposure of a relatively minor CIA official, married to a monster of conceit who makes Assange look bashful. It then turned out that Valerie Plame's job description had been made public by Robert Novak and Richard Armitage, who also had in common with Assange a rooted opposition to the administration's Iraq policy. Elements of the left and the right appear to have switched positions on full disclosure since then.

Hitch, Writer With No Topic Out of Bounds

Photo by John Huba for Vanity Fair

Christopher Hitchens has re-emerged after the announcement of his cancer.  He as given us a detailed and very personal report on the progress of the various heinous treatments necessary for a metastasized cancer.

As is his wont, he writes with skill, passion, and bravery.

Best wishes in your unsought journey.

(By the way, any who hate Hitch and his politics or person and are so venal as to wish him ill at this point are swine. Full stop.)

The Iowa Caucuses - The Most Un-Democratic Process

Tonight the talking heads and fingers of cable news and the blogosphere would have us believe that an event of great significance, the Iowa Caucuses, will display to the world the greatness of the American Democracy. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Tonight a few of the citizens of the 30th most populous state in the nation, with just under 3 million residents, will come together in groups, abandon the central notion of the free ballot and openly declare their preference for a Presidential candidate in their respective political parties.

Ann Althouse would have us believe that there is nothing sacred about the secret ballot. Perhaps she is blinded by her own need to expound her opinions. Like all of us in the blogging biz, Ann is almost compulsive about stating who and what we stand for. And we don't care who knows. What we bloggers have in common is a position in life that insulates us from any of the possible consequences of our bloviating. No one can reach out an sanction us for what we think. "Sticks and stones...etc." Those of us who are concerned about such sanctions take the precaution of hiding behind what we hope is true anonymity.

Christopher Hitchens, on the other hand, bemoans (correctly in my opinion) the Tammany-like nature of the Iowa process.

Think about the process of the caucus. Although slightly different in each Party, the process at its essence is that each attending citizen must declare, in front of his neighbors and the world, who he or she prefers as their party's nominee for President of the United States. No sacred adherence to the privacy of the secret ballot for these hearty Iowans. No, each person must acknowledge in front of his friends, neighbors, employers, relatives, local government officials, law enforcement officers, clergyman, potential business associates and ex-girl friends, who they prefer.

How much passion for one's candidate it must require to risk offending someone on whom you depend, but who doesn't share your passion for Candidate A. Conversely, what a delicious way to stick it to a politically passionate adversary. In all probability, the truth is that the low turnout at these events is due in large measure to the complexities of risk and reward that factor in to a public pledge of allegiance. It is more than disinterest and cold, snowy weather that keep most Iowa voters home.

Thus those who vote in Iowa's Caucuses are different from most of their fellow Iowans. They are immune or inured to the effect that their political views will have on their lives. So in a state that is as non-typical of the bulk of the American population as you can get, we anoint a unique, and somewhat bizarre subset of that population, to speak for America. The victors in this process win as the result of a twisted mix of people's assessment of them and their positions and the byzantine calculus of the interpersonal interplay in the caucus rooms.

If you have been paying attention to the internet, the print media and the TV newscasts, you would begin to think that this process is somehow sacred and beautifully and uniquely American. It is unique, but it is hardly beautiful, anymore than the perversion of big city political machines or elections held under the sway of near-dictators seeking the cover of an electoral victory. It is, in fact an ugly thing. Its celebration by the media, and the constant flow of political operatives, is a function of politeness, for the best of them, and the blindness by the fans of political gamesmanship for others. For the worst of them it is simply an excuse to pad their expense accounts, have a few weeks away from the dull run of family life and continue to be able to pay their bills.

And what are we delivered as a result? We in the lowly states that must follow the charade in Iowa and the more proper primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina are left only with the survivors of that process. Regardless of who you like among the starting batch of candidates, the one thing you can count on is that you will not get to cast a meaningful vote for the likes of Tancredo, Dodd, Hunter, Kucinich, Paul, Biden and others. All of these will have been washed out of the process by residents of some of our most rural states. Who will have pulled out of the race by February 5th, when the big states get to vote? Suppose for a moment that Clinton or Obama, or McCain or Giuliani are forced out of the race by then? How will the millions of voters in NY, California, New Jersey, Massachusetts and other large states feel? Will they not have truly been deprived of the exercise of the fullness of their right to vote by the historic vagaries and injustices of the process itself? I think that they will.

I for one will find nothing to celebrate in tonight's process, regardless of the outcomes.

A Soldier's Death

Christopher Hitchens, whose writings about the efficacy of attacking Saddam Husein influenced many, including myself, writes with extreme beauty of the death of Mark Daily, a young man who signed up to fight in part because of Hitch's writings. Learning of the young man's death and his involvement in influencing him, it is fair to say, gobsmacked Hitch. He tells the story with great eloquence. Here is a key quote:

As one who used to advocate strongly for the liberation of Iraq (perhaps more strongly than I knew), I have grown coarsened and sickened by the degeneration of the struggle: by the sordid news of corruption and brutality (Mark Daily told his father how dismayed he was by the failure of leadership at Abu Ghraib) and by the paltry politicians in Washington and Baghdad who squabble for precedence while lifeblood is spent and spilled by young people whose boots they are not fit to clean. It upsets and angers me more than I can safely say, when I reread Mark's letters and poems and see that—as of course he would—he was magically able to find the noble element in all this, and take more comfort and inspiration from a few plain sentences uttered by a Kurdish man than from all the vapid speeches ever given. Orwell had the same experience when encountering a young volunteer in Barcelona, and realizing with a mixture of sadness and shock that for this kid all the tired old slogans about liberty and justice were actually real. He cursed his own cynicism and disillusionment when he wrote:

For the fly-blown words that make me spew
Still in his ears were holy,
And he was born knowing what I had learned
Out of books and slowly.

However, after a few more verses about the lying and cruelty and stupidity that accompany war, he was still able to do justice to the young man:

But the thing I saw in your face
No power can disinherit:
No bomb that ever burst
Shatters the crystal spirit.

May it be so, then, and may death be not proud to have taken Mark Daily, whom I never knew but whom you now know, and—I hope—miss.

Update: For a sense of who Mark Daily was, check out his MySpace page.

Hillary's Problem With Renouncing Her Support For Attacking Saddam

Christopher Hitchens in Slate lays out chapter and verse of Hillary's problem and her refusal to declare her vote authorizing our attack on Iraq. The core of the problem for her is that in 1998, hubby Bill advocated and signed the "Iraq Liberation Act". She also spoke forcefully of the danger she believed Saddam posed for the West in October 2002:

In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al-Qaida members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001.

This also raises the question that will not be asked of Barack Obama in the run up to the Democratic nomination, why did he believe invading Iraq was wrong in 2002 - 2003? Is there a record of his opposition and rationale? Did he alone among our political leaders see through the faulty intelligence and into the impossibility of the post war internecine warfare? If so, he should be bragging about it. He may indeed possess the stuff of greatness.

Why Women Aren't Funny

In a welcome break from our common obsession with things political, our transatlantic agent provocateur, Christopher Hitchens, has spun off a piece in Vanity Fair that pokes a stick at the notion that there is in fact humor inequality between the sexes. In his usual thoughtful, well written manner, Hitchens enlists the aid of a Stanford study, interviews with Fran Leibowitz and Nora Ephron and chapter and verse from Mr. Kipling, to support his analysis.

His central point is:

Be your gender what it may, you will certainly have heard the following from a female friend who is enumerating the charms of a new (male) squeeze: "He's really quite cute, and he's kind to my friends, and he knows all kinds of stuff, and he's so funny … " (If you yourself are a guy, and you know the man in question, you will often have said to yourself, "Funny? He wouldn't know a joke if it came served on a bed of lettuce with sauce béarnaise.") However, there is something that you absolutely never hear from a male friend who is hymning his latest (female) love interest: "She's a real honey, has a life of her own … [interlude for attributes that are none of your business] … and, man, does she ever make 'em laugh."

Now, why is this? Why is it the case?, I mean. Why are women, who have the whole male world at their mercy, not funny? Please do not pretend not to know what I am talking about.

If that truism has peaked your interest, Hitchens posits that the core of the humor difference between genders lies in the fact that:

Men are overawed, not to say terrified, by the ability of women to produce babies...It gives women an unchallengeable authority. And one of the earliest origins of humor that we know about is its role in the mockery of authority. Irony itself has been called "the glory of slaves." So you could argue that when men get together to be funny and do not expect women to be there, or in on the joke, they are really playing truant and implicitly conceding who is really the boss. The ancient annual festivities of Saturnalia, where the slaves would play master, were a temporary release from bossdom. A whole tranche of subversive male humor likewise depends on the notion that women are not really the boss, but are mere objects and victims...

In other words, for women the question of funniness is essentially a secondary one. They are innately aware of a higher calling that is no laughing matter. Whereas with a man you may freely say of him that he is lousy in the sack, or a bad driver, or an inefficient worker, and still wound him less deeply than you would if you accused him of being deficient in the humor department.

If I am correct about this, which I am, then the explanation for the superior funniness of men is much the same as for the inferior funniness of women. Men have to pretend, to themselves as well as to women, that they are not the servants and supplicants. Women, cunning minxes that they are, have to affect not to be the potentates.

I am struck by the fact that in my personal life I have known only one truly funny woman, my late and much beloved aunt. It is an interesting coda to Hitchens piece that Auntie was unable to bear children. I always took her ability to rise above that tragedy and her life long battle with the pain of arthritis to achieve marvelous flights of humor as a mark of personal greatness.