update: Heather Hurlburt, who has a place in my heart for “War Torn,” the brilliant piece she wrote in the Washington Monthly in the wake of Democratic losses in November 2002, has just posted a link to bloggingheads.tv webisode in which she has a conversation with Eli Lake about the differences between “neocons” and “Kosovo Democrats.” That’s the kind of Third Way for Democrats that I call for below. Good luck to all of us!]
I’ve written many times that I am not a politico, and it’s true—I’m uninterested in party politics. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think about politics [which puts me in the minority, according to the economist Bryan Caplan]. It just means that I see an inevitable, and tragic, tension between politics and political philosophy.
The tragic component of this tension was recetly highlighted in a New York Sun review of Lesley Chamberlain’s Lenin’s Private War [which I also wrote about here]. Adam Kirsch writes:
Why focus on the deportation of a few dozen intellectuals, when the years before and after the voyage of the Philosophy Steamer witnessed so many deaths? Indeed, the men whom Lenin selected for expulsion — the expulsanty, as they were called — could even be considered lucky. If they had stayed in the Soviet Union, they would certainly have died in Stalin’s purges 15 years later. Even in 1922, Lenin’s decision to banish these potential threats to the state, rather than torture, imprison, or kill them, was unusually mild. …
What these thinkers and writers represented, [Chamberlain] argues, was a vital tradition of spiritual idealism, inherited from the 19th century, which could have sustained a moral opposition to communism. “Though they could never have identified themselves that way, the 1922 expellees were the first dissidents from Soviet totalitarianism,” Ms. Chamberlain writes.
Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with communism, by the way—it sounds lovely. Or it did to me, anyway, when I was young. (And to my father when he was young, and to my grandfather before him. But that’s a story for another day.) No. For Lenin, the threat came from those intellectuals who could—and did—poke holes in his One Explanation for Everything. So devoted was Vlad Lenin to this one explanation that the ideal of communism quickly devolved into totalitarianism ideology of Communism.
Kirsch continues:
What made the men of the Philosophy Steamer objects of suspicion to Lenin, Ms. Chamberlain argues, was that they represented a “third way” for Russia, between the obstinate old regime and the ruthless new one. She believes that religious idealists such as Berdyaev and Frank were the closest thing Russia could find to genuine liberals. The peculiarities of Russian history meant that the language of secular, rights-based liberalism could never find purchase there. The legacy of the Enlightenment was hijacked, instead, by revolutionary Marxists, whose atheism and materialism carried certain Western tendencies to a nihilistic extreme. This helps to explain why Lenin could appear, to Western sympathizers, like the heir to Voltaire and Madison: He, too, was out to emancipate his people from an obscurantist, priest-ridden, feudal regime. [e.a.]
It’s a sad story, and it keeps repeating itself. Those of us who know the story because we have participated in the play—know it in our bones, in our guts, in our hearts, in our collective memory, in our own bitter experiences—sit back and watch the train wreck. We know that the maximalist and absolutist approach in politics, whether it comes from the left or the right, is the death of the rest of us. Often enough, it’s the physical death of us. More likely, though, it’s the death of hope.
[Hitchens isn't] waging a war at all, he’s sitting at a desk writing magazine articles and Slate columns and drinking just like the rest of us.
Young Mr. Yglesias, gleefully trying to smear Hitchens, was dead wrong in this assessment. Christopher Hitchens most certainly is waging war—in the realm of ideas, in the realm of political philosophy. And so are some bloggers, such as Wretchard, of the Belmont Club, who notes today:
The biggest challenge of the campaign in Iraq is not reconciling the Sunnis with Shias; but reconciling the Blue and Red; in creating a consensus foreign policy between the Republicans and the Democrats. Iraq is like Vietnam in this. It is not about a war in a far-away country. It is also about a struggle in America.
I agree with all but one thing. There also needs to be a consensus foreign policy among the Democrats, not just between Republicans and Democrats—that’s the bleeding wound of the culture war: the intra-party way on the left.
I also note that Hill—ignoring the netroots’ continued calls for bitter partisanship—has just billed herself (get it? hardy har har) as the principled compromiser who works within the system:
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York unveiled a new stump speech on Sunday, outlining the “four big goals” she would have as president and saying she was willing to “work within the system” and make “principled compromises” to achieve them.
Praising the leadership styles of Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson, Mrs. Clinton described herself as a pragmatist and an alliance-builder. …
“I want to work within the system,” Mrs. Clinton said. “You can’t pretend the system doesn’t exist.”
Is that a Third Way? I dunno, but it looks like she wants to go there. Is anyone surprised?
update: Gawker is wondering why the dearth of Owen coverage on TMZ. Good Question! Meanwhile, Mickey Kaus is wondering why all the focus is on Kate’s tragedy. ‘Cause, Mickey, if she’s all sad about it, that makes her a good person rather than the slut she appeared to be in the rumors that were published about her at the time of Owen’s little accident.
Last week, amid the instantaneous global release of the most intimate details surrounding the presumed suicide attempt of the actor Owen Wilson, I wondered what had happened to Hollywood that there wasn’t even one layer of PR protection around this highly bankable star when the ravenous celebrity press got hold of the details.
Today, it looks like—finally—somebody is at home, even if what follows sounds like a fairy tale called “Owen Wilson’s Wonderful Recovery”:
Wes Anderson: Owen Wilson “Doing Very Well”
Actor Owen Wilson is in surprisingly good spirits after attempting to commit suicide on August 26, according to his friend, director Wes Anderson.
“Obviously he has been through a lot this week,” said Anderson, who directed the actor in his latest film The Darjeeling Limited.
“I can tell you he has been doing very well, he has been making us laugh.”
Let us agree from the outset that in the real world where we all live, Owen Wilson cannot possibly be doing “very well.” He was abusing various drugs and alcohol and was reportedly despondent or enraged shortly before he attempted to take his life a week or so ago. Only on another planet—let’s call it Bizarro Hollywood World—could this man be doing “very well.” He is human, after all. Right?
Wrong! He’s a star. Of course he’s doing well! In Bizarro Hollywood World, suicides get better overnight, with the help of their loving friends, family, and business partners.
So this news of Owen Wilson’s fabulous recovery is what I often refer to as PRopaganda TM: “dramatic realities” or “dramatic narratives” spun (by PR meisters) from a few legitimate details of a given celebrity’s autobiography and then embroidered with fan-pleasing details. The story-weavers get a peg to hang a plausible tale on (in Wilson’s case, he’s a comic actor, so when he’s being normal and not suicidal, we would expect him to be making people laugh) and run with it, till those of us who want to believe it, ’cause we loooove Owen, actually believe it.
[There's an entire academic and non-academic literature about this stuff, if you're interested. Start with Joshua Gamson's Claims to Fame---a fascinating read. But read it at your own risk: You will never love a celebrity in quite the same way again after you finish it, 'cause you'll know that you've been deliberately seduced. You've been had.]
Helpfully, in today’s WaPo, Shankar Vedantam tells us all about the stubborn human propensity to believe “myths” over reality:
The conventional response to myths and urban legends is to counter bad information with accurate information. But the new psychological studies show that denials and clarifications, for all their intuitive appeal, can paradoxically contribute to the resiliency of popular myths.
You should read the whole thing, but here’s the most fascinating bit:
[T]he mind’s bias does affect many people, especially those who want to believe the myth for their own reasons, or those who are only peripherally interested and are less likely to invest the time and effort needed to firmly grasp the facts.
Have favorite myths (e.g., good triumphs over evil)? Not likely to invest the time and effort need to grasp the facts? That would describe most of us, except when the subject matter is our passionate interest and/or hobby. We’re too busy to pay minute attention. Which is what gives marketers of all stripes—not to mention potential propagandists—their opening:
Clever manipulators can take advantage of this tendency.
Yes indeed. They most certainly can.This is where clever public relations comes in—in order to fight a damaged reputation, you’ve got to try to avoid repeating the claims made against you. Vedantam explains the paradox:
“If someone says, ‘I did not harass her,’ I associate the idea of harassment with this person,” said Mayo, explaining why people who are accused of something but are later proved innocent find their reputations remain tarnished. “Even if he is innocent, this is what is activated when I hear this person’s name again.
So how to you refute a false claim or reclaim a damaged reputation?
[R]ather than deny a false claim, it is better to make a completely new assertion that makes no reference to the original myth. Rather than say, as Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) recently did during a marathon congressional debate, that “Saddam Hussein did not attack the United States; Osama bin Laden did,” Mayo said it would be better to say something like, “Osama bin Laden was the only person responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks” — and not mention Hussein at all.
Edward Bernays, the “father of PR”, recommended this tactic. Don’t refute. Fight PR with more PR. This stuff is all around us—in every corner of public life—all the time. Observe, and you’ll see.
By the way, the New York Post has a ways to go to catch up with the rosy picture quoted above about Wilson’s recovery. According to the Post, Wilson is “on the mend.” But he looks like shit.
Now, that’s more like it—slow and easy. Extend the life of the story, give it more room for endless ups and downs (for the next ten years, if Wilson is really unlucky).
The Post, of course, is the undisputed master of PRopaganda TM.
Class dismissed.
