Is it me, or is the whippersnapper Ezra Klein sounding prematurely world-weary (at age 23 or 24; I’ve lost count)?

There’s a difference between being pro-war, anti-war, anti-this particular war, and anti-this kind of preventive war. Opposing our continued presence in a hellish quagmire, in other words, is different than actually articulating your philosophy on the use of force and the point of foreign policy. Which is why Matthew Yglesias’ new book Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats is actually that rarest of election-year tomes: A useful intervention into the debate. (Full disclosure: Yglesias is a contributor to this site and a friend of mine.) Rather than simply re-litigating the argument over the Iraq War, Yglesias situates the war, and the debate that led to the invasion, in the context of longer-running arguments about the proper direction of U.S. foreign policy. In particular, he laments the relative abandonment of the vision liberals have held dear since World War II — that of a rules-based international order in which America sacrifices a certain amount of autonomy in order to gain a greater measure of legitimacy, and works mightily to create, preserve, and strengthen international institutions that let other countries do the same. Those who would promote liberal values, in other words, need also submit to them.

The lamentably pompous Klein then goes on to elaborate Yglesias’s thesis [e.a.]:

The rhetoric of international affairs has long had a militaristic and even self-consciously heroic character. The “Greatest Generation,” after all, is remembered for bravely saving the world from the menace of Hitler, not for the U.N. and Bretton Woods and the Marshall Plan, initiatives that ushered in an era of international cooperation and created structures that largely headed off further violent conflict between great powers. The moment was popularly defined by its heroism, even if its lasting legacy would be the work that went into preventing the necessity of such dramatic interventions in the future.

It’s a neat trick to simply skip over the inconvenient parts of history—like the fact that it was necessary to utterly destroy the enemy on several continents in order to lay the foundation for the rosy post-war “consensus“— in order to make your “argument.”

Klein then goes on to explain history by tracing the arc of comic book heroes:

This came out in the cultural products of the moment. Superman, created in 1938, appeared on the cover of his comic book shaking Hitler and Tojo by the scruff of their necks. Similarly, his patriotic contemporary, Captain America, was originally portrayed clocking Hitler in the jaw. Neither one received cover art that depicted diplomacy. [really? how odd that a diplomat wouldn't get the cover treatment! ---ed.]

Yet the internationalist vision was more deeply interwoven into our cultural fabric than we often realize. Superman and Captain America were superheroes of an odd sort: tremendously powerful beings whose primary struggle was often to follow the self-imposed rules and strictures that lent their power a moral legitimacy. Neither allowed themselves to kill, and both sought to work within the law. Given their strength, either could have sought world domination, and even if they didn’t, they could have been viewed with deep suspicion and even hatred by those who were convinced that they one day would seek world domination. It was only by following ostentatiously strict moral codes that they could legitimize their power and thus exist cooperatively with a world that had every right to fear them.

I don’t read comics, but I suspect that this last bit was a post-1980 ethos for the superheroes—it sounds kinda politically correct to me. But never mind. What’s really funny is that Klein levels the playing field between fictional protagonists in pop culture and people in real life with actual power:

This, fundamentally, is the foreign-policy debate in our country. Liberals see America possessing tremendous power that must be tempered and legitimized by the rules we choose to follow and the restraint we choose to apply. Conservatives see great vulnerabilities that can only be assuaged through sufficient application of violence and will. And that’s the choice: Do we want the foreign policy of Jack Bauer and John Yoo, or of Clark Kent and George Marshall? It’s a question that Gen. Petraeus, sadly, has no answer for.

And what’s even funnier is that Klein, perhaps the silliest member of the new circle-jerk brigade, regularly appears on “cable news” as some kind of “expert”!

Now, that’s infotainment!

Hey! Somebody noticed that Huckabee, great performer that he is, doesn’t know anything about anything. So his team has just hired some help:

Huckabee has risen to become one of the GOP’s top presidential contenders almost completely by virtue of his own rhetorical talents and retail political skills. But he has written most all of his speeches, and his bare-bones campaign has been woefully lacking in terms of policy ideas.

Pinkerton will help fill that void.

A Newsday columnist and Fox News contributor, Pinkerton worked in both the Reagan and Bush 41 White Houses as well as the presidential campaigns of each. As a respected voice among right-leaning pundits, he’ll bring instant credibility to a campaign that has drawn scorn from the conservative establishment.

And he’ll ensure that Huckabee suffers through no more moments like last month when he hadn’t heard about the NIE report on Iran a day-and-a-half after it was made public.

Well, if Brad Pitt can bone up on his “knowledge” of the world so that he can be a more credible and effective celebrity, then the least one of the guys running for president can do is figure out which end is up after you turn right at the Atlantic Ocean.

Though John Podhoretz loved what Huck had to say about Israel the other day …

We’ve got one true ally in the Middle East, and that’s Israel. It’s a tiny nation. I’ve been there nine time. I’ve literally traveled from Dan to Beersheba, and I understand something of that nation and the vulnerability of it.

And for us to give the world the impression that we would stand by if it were under attack and simply say, “It’s not our problem,” would be recklessly irresponsible on our part.

And if I were president, you can rest assured that we would not let an ally be annihilated by those enemies which is surround it, who have openly stated it is their direct intention to destroy that nation. It would not happen under my presidency.

Take that, Jimmy Carter! (Apparently, the two fellas have differences about how to be a good Baptist, too.)

Huckabee routinely puts his foot in it. That’s because he doesn’t know jack-shit, according to one of his advisers [e.a.]!

A senior aide to Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee admitted Friday that the former Arkansas governor had “no foreign policy credentials” after his comments reacting to the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto raised questions.

During an event Friday in Pella, Iowa, Huckabee said the crisis sparked by Bhutto’s death should lead to a crackdown on illegal immigrants from Pakistan.

Huh?

Huckabee also claimed that (precisely) 660 Pakistanis had entered this country illegally last year. CNN seems to suggest that, on foreign policy at least, Huckabee is toast:

Huckabee’s Friday comments on immigration came after he appeared to make another gaffe Thursday, when he seemed to suggest incorrectly that Pakistan was under martial law.

But Huckabee would only be toast on foreign if most Americans knew more about the world than he does. And that, sadly, is not the case.

As the National Geographic noted in November 2002, a full year after 9/11:

Survey Reveals Geographic Illiteracy

In a nation called the world’s superpower, only 17 percent of young adults in the United States could find Afghanistan on a map, according to a new worldwide survey released today. …

About 11 percent of young citizens of the U.S. couldn’t even locate the U.S. on a map. The Pacific Ocean’s location was a mystery to 29 percent; Japan, to 58 percent; France, to 65 percent; and the United Kingdom, to 69 percent.

Apparently without irony, a subsection headline of the article asked:

Are Young U.S. Citizens Americentric?

Ya think?

In May 2006, National Geographic released the sobering results of another survey [e.a.]:

Young Americans Geographically Illiterate, Survey Suggests

Young adults in the United States fail to understand the world and their place in it, according to a survey-based report on geographic literacy released today. Take Iraq, for example. Despite nearly constant news coverage since the war there began in 2003, 63 percent of Americans aged 18 to 24 failed to correctly locate the country on a map of the Middle East. Seventy percent could not find Iran or Israel. …

“Young Americans just don’t seem to have much interest in the world outside of the U.S.,” said David Rutherford, a specialist in geography education at the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C.

Ya think?

Ignorance is mankind’s worst enemy.

I don’t know if there are any more ignorant people today than there were in the past. I do know that, with information technology being what it is—and with information being widely available and mostly free in the United States—there is absolutely no excuse for ignorance except the personal failure of human beings to be curious about the world beyond their immediate vicinity.

And I don’t know what can be done about that—how to make people care. It’s a problem.

Andrew Sullivan links to a tragic comment, left somewhere on the Web by a teacher:

I have now received three (3) student papers that discuss Iraq’s attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11. All three papers mention it as an aside to another point. I’ve had two papers on the virtue of forgiveness that argue that if we had just forgiven Iraq for the 9/11 attacks, we wouldn’t be at war right now. I just read a paper on the problem of evil which asked why God allowed “the Iraq’s” to attack us on 9/11. The thing that upsets me most here is that the the students don’t just believe that that Iraq was behind 9/11. This is a big fact in their minds, that leaps out at them, whenever they think about the state of the world.

I blame the writers’ strike: with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert not around to tell everyone what’s going on, people don’t get their news.

Better infotainment, please—and more of it!

Rasmussen just polled “likely primary voters” and found them—wait for it … uninformed. (If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you should of course not be at all surprised. My most recent thoughts on the subject are here.)

News from outside the blogospheric cocoon:

Separate survey data shows that political pundits and junkies are likely to overestimate the immediate impact of Clinton’s debate performance. Much of the nation was simply not paying attention. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of 800 Likely Voters nationwide found that just 56% knew that the Democrats were the party with a Presidential debate this week. Thirteen percent (13%) thought it was the GOP’s turn while 31% are not sure.

Just 38% could pick immigration from a list of four issues as the topic that caused Clinton to stumble near the end of the debate. Eleven percent (11%) picked the Iraq war, 5% health care, 4% the economy, 6% “some other topic”, and 36% admitted they didn’t know.

Overall, just 28% of Likely Voters correctly identified the Democrats as the party having a debate and immigration as the issue.

A gentle reminder: these are likely primary voters. It kinda makes you wonder why they bother, doesn’t it?

And I am writing about this because…?

Well, because it underscores my thesis: if infotainment rules, which it does (there is nothing serious about the presentation of “news” on television anymore) it rules precisely because it is effective even with an inattentive audience. It delivers messages in such a bold and loud way—sensationally—that it gets through even to the brain-dead.

Those of us who care about the issues can bemoan this state of affairs all we want, but we are powerless to change it. People don’t mind being informed, I suppose, but they are addicted to being entertained. That is why I’m always calling for better infotainment.

Keith Olbermann’s pompous, childish, outrage-filled “special comments” over on Countdown seem to have made him more popular, if you believe this incredible puff piece:

A little over a year ago, as the White House fumbled and botched the Hurricane Katrina recovery, Olbermann finally blew up.

He concluded a broadcast of his MSNBC cable news show, “Countdown,” with an indignant rant in the rat-a-tat-tat cadence of his idol, Edward R. Murrow. He called it a “Special Comment.”

And just like that, Olbermann found his voice — the angry everyman. He became a liberal counterpoint to conservative media ranters like O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, and an Internet star, too.

The result has been a cultural earthquake.

According to Olbermann, it’s because after 9/11, he was one of the few brave Americans who was willing to criticize the administration:

“Here’s what happened,” Olbermann said in a phone interview this week. “Five years ago (on Sept. 11), 50 percent of the country went quiet. There was this self-imposed censorship. Suddenly it became unimaginable to criticize the administration. And no one else was brave or stupid enough to say, ‘I don’t remember signing that document.’ ”

I don’t know whom to loathe more—Olbermann or the “journalist” who is the author of this celebrity profile. He is oh-so-impressed that Olbermann throws around some WWII buzzwords:

Conservatives may hate his attacks, but no one doubts that he comes across as one of the smarter guys in the room. When he laid into then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on Aug. 30, he threw in references to Neville Chamberlain and the policy of appeasement. Let’s see NBC network anchor Brian Williams pull that off.

A long time ago, I wrote on this blog that you’ll never hear me complaining about the dumbing-down of the culture:

You will rarely hear me complain about the dumbing-down of culture. All that worried talk about the sorry state of TV, the movies, music videos, video games, hip-hop, whatever. My position on this is: that’s not culture–that’s pop culture. And it’s supposed to be dumb, or dumb enough for a mass audience to get it

In principle, someone who calls her blog Infotainment Rules shouldn’t complain about the dumbing-down of the news, either. Yeah? You think? Well, I’m complaining. But it’s not the infotainment format and packaging that’s the problem. It’s the fucking ignorance of our “journalists”—from Olbermann, who seems to be riding high (I’m doubtful) to the sycophants who profile him—that’s got me down.

Meanwhile, it appears I was wrong. I predicted it would be curtains at MSNBC for Olbermann, who was so grotesquely partisan for the Democrats. Instead, the cable network rewarded him with a seat at the anchor desk on election night. That counts as a trend I’ll have to watch.