Things Americans Believe About Themselves

More tomorrow, but this essay from a lit professor at Yale is just weird:

We have begun to talk casually about our wars; and this should be surprising for several reasons. To begin with, in the history of the United States war has never been considered the normal state of things. For two centuries, Americans were taught to think war itself an aberration, and "wars" in the plural could only have seemed doubly aberrant. Younger generations of Americans, however, are now being taught to expect no end of war -- and no end of wars.

Later, he talks about how much James Madison and Alexander Hamilton hated war and didn't want the country to fight any.

It's not even April 1st, is the thing.

but they let that other guy have the great line about osama looking like a dirty wizard

Man, that's it. Human existence is officially a mere spectacle.

("I'm Diana Christensen, a racist lackey of the imperialist ruling circles.")

military industrial duplex quarterly

1.) Nice discussion (third item) from Patrick Lang about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the significance of rented violence in those places. In Iraq, Lang writes, "our rentals know that we are leaving."

2.) "False positives": Apparently the Colombian government pays cash bonuses to its soldiers for the dead bodies of FARC members, leading some troops to kill random people and dress up the corpses as rebels so they can claim bonus cash. In effect, the government is renting violence from its own soldiers.

3.) Retired Air Force Col.Chet Richards notes a long [old] post from "Fabius Maximus" about the death of the Constitution. Richards frames the discussion in terms of the oath that military officers take: "As officers, we are sworn to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. But what if the Constitution is already dead?" The debate that follows, in the comment threads at both of the linked websites, is not uninteresting, but the post from Fabius Maximus is good stuff, even though I don't agree with all of it. Beyond that, it's interesting to consider the implications: If military officers take an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and a significant number come to believe that the Constitution has been (or is being) destroyed by domestic enemies, what should they do about it? What can they do -- that is, what cure could they apply that wouldn't be worse than the disease?

old business

Clearing the open windows:

1.) Crazy person: "Rumsfeld wanted to be sure I saw the many letters of praise and kind words he had received following the announcement of his resignation. He had sorted the letters according to source — members of Congress, foreign dignitaries, U.S. military personnel, former associates, friends — and filed them in large, three-ring binders."

(He is big -- it's the movies that got small.)

2.) A city government used its eminent domain power to take property for a commercial development, never notifying the owner personally -- they ran a little "legal notice" in a newspaper, then pounced. Ten years later, after a decade of torture in the courts, he's vindicated and made whole. The comments following the story -- he was a land speculator who deserved to lose his property! -- are just...it...I don't....

3.) Previously noted.

elsewhere

New post at Cliopatria.

needs more cowbell

Read this fierce call to American ACTION w/r/t Iran...

"Sometimes - most of the time - a calm, measured approach is the right one, but there are times when we need bold acts that emanate from our core, thunderous words to condemn evil and injustice, steely-eyed confidence that doing the right thing is better than doing the pleasing thing. We are living in those times."

...and win a shiny notional silver dollar if you can figure out what ACTION it calls for.

Whooooooooooole lot of that going on. Obama better DO SOMETHING HUGE!!*!*!*!*!*!!!!!^^^!^^!^!!!!!!! BAM!!!!!!!!!!!! He has to make there be FREEDOM like in Braveheart BAM!!!!@!@!#!!!!!!!

In whales, this is called "clearing the blowhole." In humans? Media prominence.

in just three words

Good headline.

case closed

Satan!

a lot of promise in these moments

You would think that people in positions of great power would recognize the kinds of things that can go wrong once they decide to repress the uprising with violence.

Our authority is challenged -- quickly, flood the streets with guns! Ramp up the chaos! We must secure order!

Yeah, what could possibly go wrong with that?

...that we've been funding for decades

"While the Legislature has agreed to enact many of the cuts sought by the governor, we are unwilling to completely eviscerate programs for the poor and middle class, or to raid the already bare cupboards of cities and counties. One of our proposals is to eliminate the agency level of state government, which is an unneeded layer of bureaucracy."

State Senator Fran Pavley, having an amazing breakthrough

huh?

What the fuck?

Sadly, no.

elsewhere

New post at Cliopatria.

future nco

A certain tiny lady at Team Cherkis-Bray World Headquarters has a kind of jack-in-the-box thing with a sock monkey inside. Twist the crank, play the song, trigger the spring-loaded trap door, and the sock monkey pops out. The dad has been trying to show Our Tiny Lady how to play the song, trigger the spring, and release the sock monkey, yadda yadda, see how there's this whole process to it?

So, okay: she watches intently, a dozen times, then reaches down, grabs the trap door, rips it open with her fingernails, grunting audibly, and drags the fucking sock monkey out by his hair.

Greatest thing I've ever seen in my entire life.

there's this one dude at the office who might know

In the last few months of 1814, Congress debated a proposal from Secretary of War James Monroe to use state militia rolls as the basis for regular army conscription, cutting out the states and requiring local militia officers to report the names on their rolls directly to federal officials. Many details follow, but the part I enjoy is this: Anticipating debate on constitutional terms, Monroe's proposal includes language that tries to guess at the intent of the framers ("The fair inference seems to be..."), talking about the framing of the Constitution as an event in the obscure historical distance.

Monroe was James Madison's war secretary.

Funny for other reasons, but that's the really good one.

a perfect storm

Sam Mendes...has directed an adaptation of a book co-written by Dave Eggers...co-starring Maggie Gyllenhall...in which a character "stops running from the pain of her parents’ deaths," and the protagonists learn "that we should listen to our kids instead of projecting things onto them."

You may attend, but only if you are Devendra Banhart. No fake beards -- they'll be checking ID at the door.

things that make me want to move to a cabin in the woods

Read the comment thread on my latest book review, and see if you can resist the instinct to sigh heavily.

or not

So apparently the murder of a soldier outside an Arkansas recruiting center "may signal an ominous new wave of violent homegrown jihadists, counterterror officials say."

One incident is a trend.

America has a long history of extremely serious political, economic, and racial violence. It wouldn't surprise me to see a "new wave" of violence. But one shithead is still just one shithead, and the hyperventilation about ominous new waves of swarthy REDRUM is a budget maneuver.

doubtful

The "operations director" of Minutemen American Defense has apparently been arrested on murder charges. Whatever, but here's what the MAD website has to say about him:

"We are honored to have Gunny aboard. He served 6 tours over seas, where he has several medals. He received a Purple heart, Silver and Bronze star, Combat Infantry Badge and a Presidential citation for his actions in the Special Forces...At this time, we cant release a picture of Gunny due to Operational Security."

A statement from "Gunny" (same website) says this: "For now I am being referred to as 'Gunny.' My personal information is being withheld for security reasons...I am about to have a big bullseye on me and i don't want retaliation to reach my family."

Gunny = gunnery sergeant = Marine Corps. Special Forces = Army = "not the Marine Corps."

My favorite phenomenon, the neighborhood dipshit who was in "Special Forces." ("I won, like, four or five Medal of Honors. And a bunch of Purple Stars.")

policed

Via Radley Balko, this is fascinating, as are the comments.

jellied flesh rubies

New book review, with about 1/3 the pre-edit snark.

border patrol

From the Louisville (Ga.) Gazette, July 30 1799, pg. 2:

On Wednesday last, lieut. Howard, of the United States troops in consequence of some offensive words which appeared in the Reading Eagle, printed by Mr. Schneider, determined to take satisfaction by an appeal to the cowskin. By some mistake or disappointment, lieut. Howard instead of meeting with Mr. Schneider, met with his journey man whom he immediately began to whip, before the door of Judge Rush. A crowd instantly collected and young Mr. Heister and others interfered. In this situation the officer drew his sword on the most active, which was Mr. Heister. The latter retired a few paces and seized a garden hoe, with which he struck the arm of the officer in so violent a manner as to break and lacerate it to a dangerous degree. Judge Rush then interfered and lieut. Howard was bound in heavy recognizance.

The next article in the same column is about a minister who was attacked by soldiers who called him a "damned democrat." They started to carry him away for "punishment," but were forced to give up the effort when a "number of respectable gentlemen" arrived on horseback.

Picture something like that happening in response to this, for example. Seems pretty impossible.

wtf?

The Washington Times reports that the House in effect voted to support the Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act yesterday, with substantial agreement from Democrats. Then CNN says that, hold on a minute, moot point: the detainee photographs provision has been dropped in conference, because Obama promises not to release the photos anyway.

So now I'm just confused.

somebody missed a few signals

I could go on about this approximately forever, but let's do it with just one example from here:

During the early 1930s, an extraordinary wave of farmer bankruptcies devastated Iowa and its neighboring states, and farmers were horrified to see their friends and neighbors losing their farms in circumstances that were often beyond their full control. At the same time, a state inspection program intended to control livestock disease began to take cattle without compensation. Farmers began to resist. They convened on condemned farms to delay foreclosure auctions and to chase off state inspectors, for example, and closed roads in protest to keep milk from reaching city markets. The resulting conflict between farmers and government officials was violent, and the violence persisted.

But here's the part that really fascinates me: IIRC, no one died, or came close. And no one died because every party to the violence tacitly agreed to a set of rules. At a massive fistfight on a farm, a sheriff's deputy drew his gun; the farmers disarmed him and shamed him, and the other government officials at the farm watched them do it. Everyone involved understood that there would be violence, and everyone involved -- except for Barney Fife -- knew where it would end and how far it could be allowed to go. There are many examples of that exchange in American history, and there are also many examples of violence that didn't follow those rules.

This latest round of morally insane violence -- the pointless murder of a soldier in Arkansas, the pointless murder of a physician in his church, the pointless murder of a security guard at a museum -- is something else altogether. James von Brunn was merely a dumb and evil piece of shit, and his example has to be placed in its proper category.

(See also.)

because apparently the jews cut his allowance

James von Brunn went on a shooting rampage in the District of Columbia because he hated the fucking Jews and their puppets in the Zionist Occupied Government who hand out welfare to the blacks and all the other lazy minorities and take away our freedom in the process. And also because his Social Security benefits were cut. I assume I'm not the only person who spent twenty minutes this morning googling up funny-lunatic "going Galt" posts from right-wing blogs, like the we're quitting our jobs and taking Medicare benefits early to protest government intrusion into our lives comment that was briefly famous over the winter.

Cf. Patricia Nelson Limerick's magnificent The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West, esp. Chapter Three, "Denial and Dependence," which very astutely observes that the American West was founded on 1.) a powerful and loudly proclaimed ethic of independence, and 2.) federal subsidies.

In any event, what better way to strike at the heart of the beast than to shoot a security guard at a museum. Take that, Illuminati!

paying attention

Yep.

(See especially the third paragraph from the bottom, the one that begins, "The Old Grey Lady explains why...")

"the more extreme the government's abuses are, the more compelling is the need for suppression"

See also: "the opposite of a coincidence."

sadly correct

The "so what if the photos are released?" argument, with plausible conclusions.

joe lieberman...

...is the biggest choad in the history of earth.

why shit never changes

When our guy does it, it's for good reasons.

we'll see

The Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act may be dead in the House.

you can almost hear the howling wind

Historians will marvel over this shit.

very trying

Fucking hilarious.

A prediction: If they go through with it, the core of Obama's self-consciously "progressive" support will hold. Hope and change! (But he's leveraging confessions obtained under torture to execute detainees without a trial!?!?) Ooooohhhhh, he's a dreamboat, and his wife looks so elegant in sleeveless -- wait, did you say something?

Cult of personality.

mancrush, cont.

Name some Democratic members of Congress who are speaking this plainly and clearly. (Other Republicans are too far gone to bother asking about.)

btw

New post yesterday at Cliopatria, complete with batshit-crazy comments from William Hopwood.

awesome

Great website, fascinating provenance.

world leaders giggle and titter

Big Headline at the Huffington Post, as the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre approaches:

Clinton Pressures China To Provide Public Accounting Of Those Killed Or Detained

Yes, yes! We demand a public accounting of

Sec. 1305. (a) Short Title- This section may be cited as the ‘Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009’.
(b) Definitions- In this section:
(1) COVERED RECORD- The term ‘covered record’ means any record--
4(A) that is a photograph that was taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 relating to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained after September 11, 2001, by the Armed Forces of the United States in operations outside of the United States; and
(B) for which a certification by the Secretary of Defense under subsection (c) is in effect.
(2) PHOTOGRAPH- The term ‘photograph’ encompasses all photographic images, whether originals or copies, including still photographs, negatives, digital images, films, video tapes, and motion pictures.
(c) Certification-
2(1) IN GENERAL- For any photograph described under subsection (b)(1)(A), the Secretary of Defense shall certify, if the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, determines that the disclosure of that photograph would endanger--
(A) citizens of the United States; or
(B) members of the Armed Forces or employees of the United States Government deployed outside the United States.
(2) CERTIFICATION EXPIRATION- A certification submitted under paragraph (1) and a renewal of a certification submitted under paragraph (3) shall expire 3 years after the date on which the certification or renewal, as the case may be, is submitted to the President.
(3) CERTIFICATION RENEWAL- The Secretary of Defense may submit to the President--
(A) a renewal of a certification in accordance with paragraph (1) at any time; and
2(B) more than 1 renewal of a certification.
(4) CERTIFICATION RENEWAL- A timely notice of the Secretary’s certification shall be provided to Congress.
(d) Nondisclosure of Detainee Records- A covered record shall not be subject to--
(1) disclosure undersection 552 of title 5, United States Code (commonly referred to as the Freedom of Information Act); or
(2) disclosure under any proceeding under that section.
2(e) Nothing in this section shall be construed to preclude the voluntary disclosure of a covered record.
(f) Effective Date- This section shall take effect on the date of enactment of this Act and apply to any photograph created before, on, or after that date that is a covered record.

Wait, how'd that get in there?

ADDED LATER:

Clinton's statement, from the State Department website, with emphasis added:

"A China that has made enormous progress economically, and that is emerging to take its rightful place in global leadership, should examine openly the darker events of its past and provide a public accounting of those killed, detained or missing, both to learn and to heal."

Send her over to talk to the Senate.

but it isn't raining

DO NOT QUESTION THE RAINMAKER HE IS MAKING RAIN IF YOU DO NOT SEE THE RAIN IT IS THE FAILURE OF YOUR EYES

First message from an exchange in the comments section at the Huffington Post:

JFC, what the hell? I am so angry about this bill and the fact that Obama supports it. We've been bamboozled, haven't we? Let's face it, Obama is protecting people who broke the law. I mean, we know what a creep Lieberman is, but now Obama's playing right along with the Bush admin's warhawk ways.

He escalated the war into Pakistan--I don't recall Congress having a vote on this, right or wrong--it needs to be pursued lawfully and with debate...

Guantamo closing is a bust, the Patriot Act, FISA, DADT and indefinite imprisonment of detainees is still in effect. He's more eloquent than Bush and less bellicose than Cheney, but what real difference is he making? Where's the transparency?

And the first message in response:

I want you to tell me exactly how is Obama protecting anyone except our troops? Come on facts now! Obama has always said the front on this was AFghan he always said that - I guess you were not listening. He truly is far more transparent than ANYONE that has EVER been in his office.

If Barack Obama got caught fucking a puppy on the White House lawn, the commenters at the Huffington Post would be all, like, who paid that dog to attack Great Leader's magnificently unflawed cock?!

starfuckers

The Bury the Evidence of War Crimes Act passed the Senate this week with the strong support of Democrats and only three votes in opposition: the reliable Russ Feingold, the insert adjective here Bernie Sanders, and Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn, whose vote probably had to do with objections to the underlying appropriations bill. Progressive websites that led the charge against Bush-era warlordism are leading the charge against the law to ensure that President Obama vetoes it when it reaches his de- Well, okay, so no they aren't. Curiously, they don't seem to be mentioning it at all. Cheneyism minus Cheney, wrapped in a hopey-changey package, turn out to be just fine. The Huffington Post, Talking Points Memo, Eschaton... You can feel the palpable not care wafting through the room.

If I didn't know better, I would almost think that politics is mostly a form of public theater that has to do with personality branding and communities of identity, and has no underlying substance. The national security state governs without regard to the face on the wall.

ADDED LATER:

On the other hand, there's this important report.

"when the king would come to the show"

Please, please, please, please, please, please, please make it stop:

But as the Obamas departed, the respectful diners, who had been screened by Secret Service personnel before they could enter the eatery, erupted into a round of applause.

Then it was up to Broadway, where they had tickets at the Belasco Theatre for "Joe Turner's Come and Gone," a play by August Wilson about a man coming to terms with the history of slavery.

"I'm nervous, excited, honored," said Andre Holland, who plays character Jeremy Furlow, before the show. "It's like in Shakespearean times, when the king would come to the show."

What kind of idiot dimwit do you have to be to burst into applause because you witness a fucking politician eating dinner?

Andre Holland we forgive, because he's an actor and let's go ahead and not expect that much from him.

If the imperial presidency gets any more out of hand, it'll become possible for, I don't know, pick something outrageous -- for officers of the imperial court to shoot people in the face and not have to worry about inquiries from local authorities. We should just stop pretending, and actually fall to our knees in the presence of Great Leader.

By his dining selection, He has sanctified us. Ate He the scallops, and ate I the scallops also! Holy, then, the contents of my bowel! Oh, veritably, and my shit shall be as His! Witness this well, and attend thee to my wiping!

Eleven more apostles at the table, and you've got a painting.

worth a quick look

Thoughts?

oh. my. god.

The Huffington Post does American history.

ADDED LATER:

A shiny notional silver dollar to the reader who spots the sentence that literally, physically made me laugh so hard I fell over into the wall a little bit and hit my head.

when the apocalypse comes, tickets for police department musical theater productions will all be for standing room only, with no free refreshments

California is in CRISIS (whoop! whoop! whoop!) and omfg, we're not gonna have any more government at all, forever, and there won't even be any more fire departmentsssssss!!!!! It's doomsday!!!!!! (I carefully counted the number of exclamation points in those sentences, to ensure that I had used the correct number.)

So let's have a look at Senator Fran Pavley's May newsletter, sent to constituents before the doomsday election that ruined everything. Do click on that link and take a look at the thing yourself, because it's funnier that way. Pavley, who represents Team Cherkis-Bray World Headquarters in the state legislature, starts off with a bunch of amazing true facts about state finances, detailing the government's somber burdens and responsibilities. Money is tight, you see, and it's all spent very carefully and responsibly.

And then comes the rest of the newsletter: Senator Pavley was personally responsible for winning $350,000 in state funding to help restore a beachside "marble-tiled pool where the Hollywood glitterati once frolicked." You can buy special lawn mowers from a government agency "at a deep discount," to save the earth. Caltrans "held an official groundbreaking May 8 for a $1 billion project to add a northbound carpool lane on a 10-mile stretch of 405 between the Santa Monica Freeway (I-10) and the Ventura Freeway (U.S. 101)." (Ten miles, one lane: one billion dollars.) And Pavley herself "joined a group of my fellow lawmakers for a helicopter tour of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta." Woo hoo, free helicopter rides!

We're so desperately poor and broke and there won't even be any more firefighters 'cause we have to lay them all off -- wanna ride my helicopter to the marble-tiled pool? If California government gets hit any harder, you'll have to buy your own lawnmower. For full price! At a, like, lawnmower store!

So then tonight I'm looking through the City of West Hollywood's Recreation Services Brochure, twenty-eight pages of government-sponsored recreation events, and I learn that the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department will be staging a teen production of, I am not making this up, "A Tribute to Grease." Contact Deputy Sean Ruiz at the West Hollywood station for details. ("Watch commander, how may I help you? [short pause] Negative, ma'am, the part of Sally Bowles has already been cast. Would you be interested in our spring production of Equus? We're using all kindergartners for the horse roles.")

Without a permanent sales tax increase, ladies and gentlemen, Deputy Sean Ruiz will be forced to shop the sheriff's script revisions to non-union talent. The major narcotics teams will have to mount Jesus Christ Superstar without glitter and glow sticks. And the K-9 deputies will just totally not even be reimagining Brigadoon, which, okay, they had this whole amazing thing worked out with dry ice and a bunch of mountain goats, your mouth would have just been, like, hanging open, and then bam: first dance number!

We'll survive.

must read

Click through the annoying ads for details on the, quote, "Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009," which has been approved by a unanimous Senate.

If you still wish to argue that the Democratic Party represents anything significantly different from the other party of unrestrained empire and state power, I'd love to hear that argument.

ADDED LATER:

Spot the darkly hilarious part of this story:

Amidst Questions About Detainee Abuse Photos, Gibbs Assails the British Press
June 01, 2009 8:22 AM

Last week, the White House was asked about a report in the British press that Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba (Ret.), the lead investigator into the abuse at Abu Ghraib, said he'd seen the detainee abuse photographs that President Obama is fighting to keep from being released. Thursday's Daily Telegraph reported that Taguba said that the "pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency."

Taguba told Salon's Mark Benjamin that the newspaper applied his quote to the wrong photographs. The ones he'd seen showing abuse and rape were not the same ones in the ACLU lawsuit that President Obama is fighting to keep from being released. He had been referring to other ones he'd seen.

"The photographs in that lawsuit, I have not seen," Taguba said.

But before Taguba clarified why there was confusion, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs took the opportunity to go after the entire British press.

The story is totally and irresponsibly false, ladies and gentlemen, and the British media -- those fools! -- are beneath contempt. It is not X set of photographs that shows us raping children and torturing detainees -- it's Y set of photographs that show us raping children and otherwise torturing detainees. Much ado about nothing! Anyway, it's all the fault of the British press.

Robert Gibbs makes Scott McClellan look dignified.

quality education

Undergrad on a cellphone, Kerckhoff coffeehouse, UCLA:

"Is Obama more like Clinton, or is Obama more like Reagan -- what do you think?"

(Pause)

"The problem is we have to stay within the theory, sort of."

too silent

Dude, somebody say something.

adding

Having just posted a two-parter on how much I enjoyed being in a town with a significant military presence, the "of course" addition has to be that I think our use of our military is politically and often morally insane, and that military personnel -- including me, pretty recently -- serve an empire that needs to learn a hard lesson regarding restraint and the rights of other people to live their lives without our violent interference. If you'd like to believe that it's contradictory or hypocritical or otherwise ridiculous to personally enjoy the company of people in the military while thinking they engage in behavior with which I sharply disagree, you're probably right to think I'm taking contradictory positions, and so be it. But there are also a good number of people in the military who are having this discussion about empire in some form or another, and who joined the military with the honorable intention of genuinely defending their country and their community. I'd like to bring them home, keep them home, and buy them a beer or ten.

I understand there are people who don't agree, but my personal experience is that the military is full of smart and morally sophisticated people, along with some people who are neither.

ADDED LATER:

For example....

sorry 'bout that

My bad, dude. We cool now?

balance (part two)

So now I live in West Hollywood, in a neighborhood I generally like. However. We celebrate our diversity -- omfg, do we celebrate our diversity -- and there's real diversity to celebrate. But it's not entirely a, um, diverse diversity. The city government's strategic plan pledges to "VALUE AND ENCOURAGE OUR BROAD DIVERSITY OF CULTURES" in an environment that "nurtures the variety of ethnicity, age and sexual orientation that uniquely defines the West Hollywood community." Maybe you can find some things missing from that list.

In practice, I sometimes think that West Hollywood's celebrated cultural diversity means that you get to sit and drink your coffee next to, on one side, a skinny hipster boy in an ironic t-shirt and whatever passes for the current version of an ironic trucker cap -- and, to your other side, a skinny hipster boy in an ironic t-shirt and whatever passes for the current version of an ironic trucker cap. But hold on, because one of the skinny hipster boys will be gay, and one will be straight, and they might even be of different ethnicities. And one will work in the television business, see, but one will work in movies.

So here we have 1.) Columbus, Georgia, where it feels like every two-legged organism is a soldier or a retired soldier or a stripper with extra coins available if you need them, and 2.) West Hollywood, where cultural diversity is permitted to spread itself across three whole categories of identity. In different ways, at different times, for different reasons, I got/get tired of both places.

And then there's Monterey. It's an isolated community, out on a piece of coastline that you can only get to on small highways. The city has a population of about 26,000 people; throw in the neighbors in Pacific Grove, and it's about 40,000 altogether. (I decline to include Carmel, where we inquired after a downtown playground and were informed that people here would never need or use such a thing, thank you very much. And in fact, the couple of parks we found had some plants and a few benches, and not a fucking thing else. One never really wishes to hear the loud noises of children, does one?)

Spread among those 40,000 people are a dozen institutions that employ researchers and academics. There's a state university, a community college, a mag-fucking-nificent aquarium with a significant commitment to research, and quite a few other research institutes and agencies. That's a lot of latte-sipping elitists for a small town, and I assume that ardent culture warriors get contact migraines just from crossing over the city limits.

There's also a sizable military presence, and a military presence that blends into the category of "institutions that employ researchers and academics." The Naval Postgraduate School and the Defense Language Institute sit on different ends of the town, spreading the camouflaged wealth. (Also in the area: Fort Ord, which used to host an entire infantry division, IIRC. It's now the site of the state college, although there's still a small military presence there.) There's also a biggish Coast Guard facility, but fuck those guys for having such an obviously great job and hanging out at the beach for a living.

So Monterey is an isolated mixture of military personnel and highly educated researchers -- those are circles with some significant local overlap -- in a setting that couldn't be any more beautiful and historically interesting, supported by a very large tourist industry that brings shitloads of cash into town.

For the several days that we were there last week, I kept thinking that Monterey has managed something close to a perfect social balance. At our hotel, shouting distance from the Naval Postgraduate School, we heard at least a half-dozen languages, and a pair of very polite Germans who were totally trying to not seem like military officers thanked our daughter with great solemnity when she offered them a damp fistful of expectorated Cheerios ("Cat!"). At the terrific Dennis the Menace Playground, dudes with very short hair quietly made sure their lunatic five-year-old boys didn't push their way into the line for the big slide in front of my much-smaller daughter. We walked into a sushi restaurant for dinner one night, and there was an Air Force NCO sitting at a table in uniform, and it made me instantly and curiously happy: Look, look, military personnel! (Well, not really military personnel, but the Air Force is close enough.)

Away from Fort Benning and Columbus (and away from the shit-dull sand prison of Camp Buehring, Kuwait), I remembered how much I enjoyed being around people in the military, a certain tiny Louisiana first sergeant excepted. Walking along the waterfront in Pacific Grove -- at some point in your life, do walk along the waterfront in Pacific Grove -- we passed a pair of trucks with DOD facility access stickers on the windshield for NAS Meridian; the drivers were ten feet away in the water, suited up for a dive. (Note to commander, NAS Meridian: It was a weekday -- when you get them back from the NPS, they will not have learned anything.) It was somehow just great to see them, and I wanted to buy them a case of beer or something. (And then drink most of it myself, but still.)

There's a substantial military presence that doesn't overwhelm the town, and a substantial academic presence that doesn't overwhelm the town. There's just enough of everyone that it's always good to see them all.

Of course, I was mostly drunk, so this all may just be in my head.

other people can hear you when you talk on your cell phone

"The, uh, Internal Revenue is overviewing some things about my credit and my, my money, about the small business loan."

and then some asshole said some stuff

The really hella enjoyable thing about the early records of congressional debate is that some of it is recorded with great care and detail, and some of it is recorded with -- actual examples from this morning's reading -- "Mr. Ingersoll made a speech of some length," or "this remark of Mr. Jackson's was debated at great length." So that the record reads, Mr. Smith made the argument that X, Y, and Z, supported by facts A, B, C, D, and E, with further reference to Premises M, N, and O, after which Mr. Jones spoke for three hours, disagreeing.

My own theory is that even the clerks got tired of listening to these assholes, again proving the fact that nothing ever really changes.

Exeunt.

balance (part one)

What follows is the first part of a discussion about Monterey, California. This will not be immediately apparent. So here we go:

I spent two and a half years at Fort Benning, Georgia, a fact that probably merits some very mild pity, which I totally invite and encourage. Benning is the U.S. Army Infantry Center, home to infinity-billion training units and courses -- including the Infantry Training Brigade on Sand Hill, about which I would just like to say fuck you, Sand Hill. There's also a Ranger battalion and a mechanized infantry brigade (or more, post-BRAC) just to fuck up the gender balance a little more and inflict a slightly higher level of sexual frustration on the infinity-trillion infantrymen who call Benning their home.

Because Fort Benning has uncountable numbers of nineteen-year-old riflemen, and because they serve alongside the twelve female soldiers who work there as personnel clerks and dental technicians, the neighboring town has certain distinctive features. Victory Drive, right outside the gates, has strip bars, strip bars, strip bars, and a couple of pawn shops. And some strip bars. They are, words fail me, dismal. At the end of the work week, the newest company of infantry soldiers is released from the fourteen weeks they spend restricted to the post; by Saturday evening, the strippers have all the cash those kids have accumulated in unused paychecks during those fourteen weeks. And yes, she promised to marry you, but no, she didn't mean it, and dude, tell me you didn't give her all your fucking money, because we still have to pay twenty-six dollars for this motel room.

Just to throw this in, here, my team leader greeted me at my first post-training unit by taking me to the Lucky Seven, a place that still makes me instinctively pat myself down for crabs when I think about it. While we were there, one of the strippers walked over and asked if Corporal [Name Deleted] wanted to shoot some pool with her. She was mostly naked. He did want to shoot some pool with her, yes. So he started pulling quarters out of his pocket to feed the pool table, but he came up one short. And then the stripper said, very slyly, that she would take care of it. And she reached into her...

(Skip this next paragraph, if you'd like.)

...vagina, with two fingers, and pulled out a quarter of her own, and dropped it onto the pool table. And as she sashayed away to get a cue, Corporal [Name Deleted] leaned over, shaking with excitement, and said something like, "Did you see that shit? That's so fucking hot." (And I said something like, "Yeah, there's nothing hotter than a woman who stores spare change in her vagina." But Corporal [Name Deleted] was beyond noticing Private Bray's deadpan routine.)

(Despite a solid effort, Corporal [Name Deleted] did not end up having sex with the stripper. And our next team building exercise was that he took me to his house to introduce me to his wife.)

The bars in Columbus are so depressing they actually begin to cause physical exhaustion: Heeeey look, it's three hundred dudes with army haircuts gathered around four women who don't want to talk to them because they're tired of sexually desperate soldiers.

Benning is home to the School of the Americas; they call it something else now, but it's still the School of the Americas, and School of the Americas Watch still wants to close it. One year while I was there, I joined a group that went into downtown Columbus to drink beer. When we realized that the place we went to was crammed full of anti-School of the Americas protestors -- they travel in by the thousands every year, I think in November -- there was a long pause. The group of protestors had a gender imbalance issue that was just like ours, except backwards, and we were all taking a few moments to notice it. And then one of the dudes in the group said, "These chicks hate us. And holy fucking shit, they're so fucking hot."

We went back the next night, too.

And that was Columbus, Georgia: I'm gonna try to fuck that chi-- hold on, I gotta fucking puke, blaaaarrrrrggggghhhh, and anyway, let's kick somebody's ass, you want another beer?

It was sometimes kind of entertaining, but mostly sooooooooo dull and predictable, and my first sergeant once explained to me that he drove home to Atlanta every day -- three total hours of driving, five days a week -- because "I can sit in my motherfucking backyard and not see one motherfucker with no goddamn army haircut." His neighbor was a doctor, civilian issue (one each); they sat in the yard and exchanged bullshit over beer and cigars, talking about "anything but the fucking army." Me, I spent every long weekend in Athens or Savannah, except when we piled a group into a car and headed for the beach in Florida or the mountains in South Carolina.

And thus endeth part one. Part two tomorrow.

we're home!

Monterey, California: It was cold(*):

But our young lady managed to locate a seafood buffet of some kind:


And then it all just kind of slid downhill:



Full trip report, with exciting military references, to follow.

(*) It was California cold -- the temperatures plunged all the way into the low 60s, many exclamation points. We're lucky to have survived.

traveling

Posting will be light. If you can imagine such a thing happening here.

great moments in history

In the 1730s, a recent Harvard graduate named David Parsons moved to Amherst, Massachusetts, and took up the pulpit at the town's First Congregational Church. The historian Leonard L. Richards reports that Parsons "drove a hard bargain, getting the town to grant him two lots of land, ₤175 toward building a parsonage, ₤100 salary soon to be raised to ₤160, and sixty wagon loads of wood per year."

Parsons stayed on for forty-five years, but some in his congregation eventually began to resent him. "The wood allowance, especially, struck many as excessive. For most farmers, it meant a lot of additional work." But Parsons steadily negotiated for an ever-greater quantity of wood: "His wood allowance was increased to 80 loads in 1744, to 90 loads in 1749, to 100 in 1751, and 120 in 1763."

Richards quotes an observation from a local: "I never found in any records, a minister who consumed as much wood as Mr. Parsons."

(Insert all your own jokes anywhere you want, in here.)

Anyway, and then came the American Revolution. David Parsons remained in the pulpit, but quickly turned out to be the town's most ardent Tory, preaching to a congregation that included the most prominent local opponents of the king. Once, called upon to read a proclamation calling on God to protect the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Parsons editorialized and called out, "But I say, God save the king." Scandalously, someone in the congregation shouted back that he was a "rogue." (And there were children present, ladies and gentlemen.)

And so erupted a great and mighty struggle between the forces of monarchical tyranny and republican liberty, yadda yadda, and the congregation found the perfect weapon to take to the battle: They "shorted him on his wood supply."

SNAP!

(Long pause.)

When his monarch-loving son took over the pulpit in 1781, the congregation hit the kid where he lived: 25 annual wagon loads of wood.

Armed revolution, people. That shit ain't pretty.

trouble in mind

All of the stories I'm reading about the soldier in Iraq who just killed five other servicemembers focus on the question of combat trauma, suggesting that his multiple deployments may have driven him crazy. But here's the part they don't look at very closely, and (it seems to me) the probable key to the thing: "Sgt. John M. Russell, 44, first joined the Army National Guard in 1988; he went into the active Army in 1994."

Twenty-one years in the military, fifteen of them on active duty, and he's an E-5. (I did four years of spectacularly undistinguished active duty in the same army, and was promoted three times; I finished as an E-5.)

Doesn't it seem likely that this guy was a chronic shitbag?

sigh

A former New Yorker staff writer tells stories about the magazine:

As any writer knows, editors almost never suggest stories. Generating story ideas is the real work; researching and writing them is the easy part. In one of our conversations, though, John let drop a real jewel: “We have this sense that we should be paying more attention to the military,” he said. (This was now early 2003, as the country was getting ready for war in Iraq.) “Thing is, nobody here cares about the military, and nobody here knows anything about the military.” Well, I certainly didn’t know anything about the military but I did find it interesting, so I piped up, “I can do that!” I wasn’t worried about my lack of experience or knowledge in the field of arms.

The mighty watchdog of the republic, grr.

ornaments

"The Duchy of Württemberg was a further example of an army which was not large enough to defend the state. Duke Eberhard Ludwig was entitled to retain 2,000 soldiers after the Peace of Rijswijk in 1697, whom he dressed in pretty yellow uniforms."

-- John Childs, The Army and the State in Britain and Germany during the Eighteenth Century, here.

in other news

I changed the template. Because white text on a black background gave me brain bleed. It looked totally cool, right up until the moment that I tried to, you know, read the thing.

all our base are belong to us

An early nineteenth century conception of federal power that just made me throw up in my mouth a little, with emphasis added:

The idea that the United States cannot raise a regular army in any other mode than by accepting the voluntary service of individuals, is believed to be repugnant to the uniform construction of all grants of power, and equally so to the first principles and leading objects of the Federal compact. An unqualified grant of power gives the means necessary to carry it into effect. This is an universal maxim, which admits of no exception. Equally true it is, that the conservation of the State is a duty paramount to all others. The commonwealth has a right to the service of all its citizens; or, rather, the citizens composing the commonwealth have a right, collectively and individually, to the service of each other, to repel any danger which may be menaced. The manner in which the service is to be apportioned among the citizens, and rendered by them, are objects of legislation...

In support of this right in Congress, the militia service affords a conclusive proof and striking example. The organization of the militia is an act of public authority, not a voluntary association.

-- James Monroe (Acting Secretary of War), Message to the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, October 17, 1814.

Monroe goes on to add that, hey, no worries, the government mostly means to take the "unmarried and youthful, who can best defend it, and best be spared." The whole message is a fabulous muddle, puddled with curious reasoning and contradictory arguments about power and compulsion: We're all in it together, and responsible to one another as equal participants in a social contract, so we totally own your ass and you better knuckle the fuck under.

My favorite part is the great "or, rather..." We own your ass, or, rather, you own your ass, so we own your ass, because we're you. Monroe's vision of the militia went over poorly, and was a distinctly minority view, but it was nevertheless what an important policymaker thought of the militia in the early republic: He thought it wasn't a voluntary public institution, but rather a way for the state to capture the service of its citizens for the purpose of its own preservation -- not theirs, but its. It seems to me that we don't hear that part of the story very often in our histories of the early republic.

I also thought that Monroe's claim about ends and means -- "An unqualified grant of power gives the means necessary to carry it into effect. This is an universal maxim, which admits of no exception." -- sounded a lot like, say for example, David Addington. Recent theories of power seem to me to not be all that recent.

housekeeping and random stuff

1.) Reader contest! Win a prize!* Come up with a name for this blog that doesn't make me wince every time I see it! The winning name will cleverly refer to state and paramilitary violence, suggesting the slippery boundaries between the two, while suggesting that the blog is meant to blend history and current affairs. If I ever become less lazy, this blog may actually even do some of that.

2.) If you make pancakes for your wife, keep an eye on the fucking things until she eats them. Otherwise, your elderly cat will lick off the butter and syrup. And then, because he's licked off the butter and syrup, he'll vomit. He'll vomit directly onto the pancakes. He'll do this precisely as your wife rounds the corner and comes into visual contact with the said pancakes.

And then? Cereal for breakfast.

3.) Jeff Huber is a retired U.S. Navy type, and says that the Navy offers precisely the thing to solve the Somalian pirate problem.

(*Prize is an authentic, fully certified "nothing." Win yours today!)

convicted, condemned, commanding

John Fries, a Pennsylvania militia captain sentenced to death as a traitor after freeing tax resisters from federal captivity in 1799, survived his death sentence when President John Adams decided to pardon him. But his treason conviction did have a serious consequence: Fries lost his position as a militia captain. Removing him from that office, the militiamen of Montgomery County instead elected him [added later: in 1800] to the rank of lieutenant colonel. So, you know, militia officers had to be very careful not to commit any capital crimes in the early republic, because it might get them promoted.

Also elected to field grade in Pennsylvania that year: Thomas Cooper, a republican newspaper editor convicted under the sedition act. He became the colonel of the Northampton County militia while still confined in a Philadelphia jail.

The standard history of military force in the early republic has Americans opposed to a professional army and preferring to rely on the militia. But it's difficult to overstate how little the people in political power believed they could rely on the militia -- and not just because they regarded the militia as an ineffective military force. Presidents and governors didn't trust the militia because they couldn't trust the militia. My sentiments are entirely with Fries and Cooper, who were on the right side against a gang of High Federalist assholes, but the point is that government officials preferred professional forces precisely because they could separated from the people at large. They could be held to the political will of their leaders in a way that the ordinary men of the militia could not.

See also the January, 1799 address of Georgia Governor James Jackson to the state legislature: "And here I have to remark that lieut. col. Watkins, of the Richmond county regiment, has also made declarations in the public prints, that he will never consider himself bound by certain parts of the constitution. This, as a public officer, is going to great lengths indeed. Will never feel himself bound by certain parts of the constitution, and those parts not specified!"

Despite their many flowery speeches about the glorious militia of the republic, early American political leaders never much wanted to turn their backs on the thing. It was a problem that they never solved, but also a problem they never stopped trying to solve. They did not prefer the militia to professional military forces.

what the fuck?

Comments?

that's, like, real mature

Third paragraph of an AP story on an attack that killed 45 people at an engagement party in Turkey:

"Citing Ozen, NTV said the motive could be an old feud between rival groups of pro-government village guards who fight alongside Turkish troops against Kurdish rebels in the region. If that is the case, the government would come under renewed pressure to rein in the militiamen, some of whom have been linked to drug smuggling and other crimes."

The usual argument about state violence is that new, still-developing states try to leverage private violence for state purposes, then cement a true monopoly on violence over time. But here's a well-established state that uses "village guards" to fight against Kurdish nationalists. States are usually happy to find a little extra violence that they can put to use. And the "drug smuggling and other crimes" usually come with it.

"basketball was batch"

This is really a great pleasure to read. Keep reading -- it's about war, too.

Famous Oxymorons

In September of 2006, while I was parked in the headquarters of an infantry battalion in Kuwait,  the U.S. embassy in Damascus was attacked. Purely for the sake of curiosity, we spent our excruciatingly dull shift in the TOC trying to figure out who did it, why they did it, how they did it, and how successful they were. The guy sitting next to me that night worked in the S-2 shop, so he fired up the super secret squirrel computer and started reading through the classified intel reporting.

We also turned on the radio and listened to the BBC World Service. Throughout the night, we compared what we were getting from classified sources to the information we were getting from radio and cable TV. The "secret" stuff -- I didn't have a "top secret" clearance, 'cause I was just an E-5 and nobody loved me -- was well behind the open sources; we'd learn X fact from the radio, then get X fact an hour later on the magic secret box. (The running joke: "But don't tell anyone that, because it's classified." While the dude on the TV was saying it for the the fifth time.)

So this new column from William Lind made immediate sense to me.  

"Another Proof of the Expediency of Arming"

The Louisville Gazette (Georgia), Feb. 5, 1799, pg. 4:

Boston, December 28
American Naval Success

A letter has been received from capt. Seward, of the armed ship Camillus, of this port, belonging to Mr. Eben Parson, informing, that on his outward passage he was attacked by two French privateers, which, after an action he beat off -- and rescued from them a Portuguese vessel, which they had taken. His men stood to their guns with perfect resolution, and exercised them in the most active manner. This is another proof of the expediency of arming. Several benefits result from the issue of this engagement, which all honest Americans must exult in. A valuable ship, cargo, and a number of brave fellows are preserved to their country -- and piracy disappointed of its prey.

Not a government officer in sight

next thing you know, hezbollah will be attacking israeli warships

The Tamil Tigers have submarines.

welcome

Comments now enabled! New posts to actually, you know, happen. Meanwhile, I have a bunch of new posts up at Cliopatria.

fish legs

Via Defense Tech: The AP captions a photo of a Chinese sailor on a frigate with, "A Chinese navy soldier guards on a battleship..."

[Sic], yeah.

Cash and Carry

Or, "The Willful Ignorance of Educated People"

A recurring complaint from the American political right is that academic historians are "liberal." I agree with the term, but not at all with the substance of it. Many of the liberal historians trained in American universities have an instinctive faith in state institutions. That faith leads them to adopt a triumphalist view of American history as a march of progress: Americans have done bad stuff, but the government usually gets in right in the end. Liberal historians are "liberal" in the sense that they aren't radical -- they basically buy the product, and they think it works just fine.

If you want to watch this worldview in action, you can't do any better than to read Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo, an ongoing advertisement for a whiggish narrative of American history. Marshall provides a wonderful example this week with his post on Ron Paul's suggestion that the United States fight pirates by issuing letters of marque and reprisal. Marshall finds this suggestion almost too silly to contemplate.

Letters of marque and reprisal are used in "a classic stage of under-developed state power," Marshall writes, "in which we may not have the capacity to have a fully built out Navy but we can subcontract the harassment and capture of enemy shipping and commerce by setting up privateers to do the job for them."

There are a number of remarkable assumptions casually built into this statement: States develop through stages, like they're sequentially climbing stairs toward their perfect end state; there's a stage at which a navy is "fully built out," perfected and complete. (And then the admirals sprout stigmata and ascend to the right hand of the Lord.) Marshall later throws in the observation that Paul proposes to use private violence "rather than having a powerful Navy, which keeps the oceans safe and provides a vast support to global commerce," appearing not to notice that the world's most powerful navy took five hours to get a single warship to the site of an actual recent pirate takeover -- in some of the most aggressively patrolled waters on the planet. Oceans: still big.

But as a statement from a historian -- and he has a PhD in American history from Brown University -- Marshall's post is just baffling. States rent violence. Routinely, persistently, unremarkably. You could notice that reality just by reading the newspaper. The United States military recently created the (now unravelling) "Anbar Awakening" with cash payments to Sunni paramilitaries, buying peace with paychecks -- while simultaneously renting violence from contractors like Blackwater and Triple Canopy to protect its facilities and personnel.

And nothing about the American leveraging of paramilitary and corporate violence is in any way historically remarkable or new. A nation initially settled by armed representatives of mercantilist corporations went on to routinely acquire violent power through proxies and auxiliaries who took their rewards in cash, guns, and land. With nearly a full century of lightly restrained filibuster armies behind us -- and Sunni gunfighters buying lunch in Ramadi with wads of U.S. dollars -- Marshall finds the idea of state-sanctioned private violence somehow antique, a relic from the days of powdered wigs.

There is no final moment of attainment at which states divorce themselves from the economic leveraging of private violence. The United States has used pirates and privateers to fight its battles, and will do so again.