“Hip-hop conservatism” finds its NWA

That all being said, Robert Graves makes an important point in his historical semi-fictions about Claudius (a good summer read, by the way) – you can’t return power to the Senate when there’s no Senate to return it to. And so, as much as one might hate the Cult of the Presidency, they should have serious qualms about giving power back to an organization with esteemed leaders such as Chuck Grassley:

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, was not pleased with Barack Obama this weekend. But he didn’t issue a press release, or blast him on the Sunday shows. Instead, he hit him where it would hurt: Over Twitter.

Perhaps unaware that the White House’s computers are blocked from receiving Twitter, Grassley began tweeting around 7 a.m. (Twitter isn’t terribly exact about these things), on Sunday morning. His first missive read:

Pres Obama you got nerve while u sightseeing in Paris to tell us”time to deliver” on health care. We still on skedul/even workinWKEND.

Oh, snap! You got some nerve, Barack, coming all up n my biznazz on some shopping trip for yo’ wifey. Sheee-it. This, in so many words, is insane. Remember, this is an elected Senator of the United States of America, one of the hundred representatives of the Senate, the “saucer that cools” the legislation of the House. Well. The old dons of two-day workweeks and three-martini lunches have morphed into Twitterbots with busy skeduls/even workinWKEND. (Capitalized, you see, to highlight the abject unfairness of having to stay in the infernal Babylon for an extra few days. It’s hard out here for a agricultural pimp.)

As if this weren’t enough to keep us proles amused, Grassley shortly followed up his Wildean wit with another tweet:

Pres Obama while u sightseeing in Paris u said ‘time to delivr on healthcare’ When you are a “hammer” u think evrything is NAIL I’m no NAIL

You herd, Barack? I AIN’T NO NAIL. (Please Hammer, don’t hurt.) This is almost as inspiring as “Drill, baby, drill,” although it lacks the sexual undertones to make the Politico beat. The whole “tweeting politicians” meme is odd, but makes sense – it provides all of the benefits of social networking, without requiring the iota of thought that goes into even the most depraved of posts (cf. the last three-hundred words). It all started out so nice – remember, Michael Steele emphasized “The Message.” Now, we got Senataz Wit Attitude running the show.

Listen, I didn’t waste that much time making the image. Besides, it’ll all be worth it when Chairman Steele decides to finance the EP release.

UPDATE: Yeah, this too:

Augustus came to Aegyptus, and the rebels in the eastern provinces were quelled

The ever-staid and reflective Huffington Post, considering Middle Eastern geopolitics (HT: Foreign Policy):

The Obama Effect? Pro-Western Majority Declares Victory Over Hezbollah In Lebanon

Early Test Of President’s Efforts To Forge Middle East Peace

How long ago was it that Pontifex Maximus Bush was criticized for applying cookie-cutter principles in his foreign escapades? A scant 139 days in (“The Next 100 Days,” according to CNN), and already Caesar Reigns Supreme. His every gesture, every word, the citizens hang onto like beggars waiting for the latest shipment of grain. Humbling himself before the barbarian king – how unbefitting of a Roman an American! Caesar, the people are starving – we need more bread, more circuses!

Such adulation is nothing new, even in this republic. In fact, there is still hero-worship of Bush II to be found, a cult as elusive as the Eleusinian Mysteries (although the military cult of Mithras might be a more appropriate comparison).  Yet from 229 ab republica condita onwards, this has always been a fringe movement, a sort-of political Scientology.  Its insular nature makes it less reactive to reality, less acceptable in public, and more fervent in its beliefs. To its credit, the Obamalove generally eschews this in favor of “reality-based” appreciation – yet while less fervent, it is more widely accepted, a sort of evangelism-lite. His starbursts of non-garbled speech – yes, Andrew, “starbursts” – have the miraculous effect of making the polity forget about things like preventive detention. After all, it’s all just preliminary rope-a-dope for . . .  well, what? I suppose the liberty of seventeen Uighurs isn’t too high a price to pay for universal health care. This might be a corollary to Jane’s Law: the party in power accepts and praises the use of politics; the party out of power decries such unprincipled maneuvering. Another: the President is the best or worst aspect of government. The age of the average President and Article I are long past us.  Gene Healy, a lonely imperium turns its eyes to you. . .

Remembering Tiananmen

“We were dealing not only with people who merely could not distinguish between right and wrong, but also with a number of rebels and many persons who were the dregs of society.

They tried to subvert our state and our Party. This is the crux of the matter.

If we don’t understand this fundamental question, we shall not be clear about the nature of the incident.

I believe that if we work at it, we can win the support of the overwhelming majority of Party comrades for our assessment of the nature of the incident and for the measures we have taken to cope with it.

The handful of bad people had two basic slogans: overthrow the Communist Party and demolish the socialist system.

Their goal was to establish a bourgeois republic, an out-and-out vassal of the West.

Naturally, we accepted the people’s demand for a fight against corruption.

We even had to accept as well-intentioned the so-called anti-corruption slogans of the bad individuals.

Of course, these slogans were simply pretexts, and their ultimate aim was to overthrow the Communist Party and demolish the socialist system.

Handling this incident was a very rigorous political test for our army.

Facts have shown that the PLA [People's Liberation Army] men passed the test.”

-Deng Xiaoping, justifying the massacre at Tiananmen square

“Oh, you’ve got some bling-bling here.”

And the Wall Street Journal said bling was dead. Bitch, please. Market just got nationalized – ain’t no thang. At least the President has the good sense to rock the Run-DMC gold, rather than the latest zirconia set. What’s next – “Walk Like an Egyptian“?

Meanwhile, this is still my favorite moment from the 2008 election.

Sgt. Pepper’s Day Mojo-Blogging

Rivera, Diego. "The Flower Carrier." 1935. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

(One part Dr. Thompson, one part Reihan Salam – fill to brim with summer turpitude, and mix with ice and mint. Hopefully, this format means more content down the road. – EML)

. . . Vishal wonders in the comments of this post if I haven’t already linked to Slate’s discussion of Shop Class as Soul Craft. Here it is. I also recommend the defense from James Poulos (hooray, steampunk!), as well as Ezra Klein’s light criticism (as in not-harsh, rather than content-free). Such reaction to higher-education has been a long-time coming, but noticeably absent in this conversation on education in America are community colleges. Yet these institutions steer away from the more dubious political agendas of the Ivies and Public Ivies, keep tuition very low, and are far more focused on providing post-secondary education and vocational training to local residents than providing “the college experience.” Might states not be better off redirecting focus towards these schools, rather than their bloated university counterparts?

Also, a perfectly hedging quote from Atlantic correspondent Lane Wallace:

In the end, we’re probably all at risk of distortion when we idealize anything. Real life is rarely, if ever, that unidimensional or simple. As for the type of work that’s most “noble,” I think I side with William Allan Neilson, the president of Smith College from 1917 – 1939. I don’t even know for sure that he’s the one who said this particular line. But my grandmother, who went to Smith but then became crippled and a single mother in the Depression and ended up doing a lot of different jobs to keep food on the table, used to quote him as saying, “It is the worker who ennobles the job, not the job that ennobles the worker.” Soulcraft, in other words, is not just the province of shop class. It is found anywhere we choose to practice it.

The problem is that is probably true. So what is necessary to become an ennobling figure? There’s the rub. . . .

. . . We shouldn’t tax Starbucks, but we should definitely tax American Apparel – this catastrophe is out of control, and needs to be stopped, now. (Hooray, sumptuary laws!). . .

. . . First, it was policy ignorance; now, moral evasion:

By 40%-18%, [respondents] said the prison had strengthened national security rather than weakened it.

Those who want the prison to remain open feel more strongly on the subject tha[n] those who want to close it. A 54% majority of those polled say the prison shouldn’t be closed, and that they’ll be upset if the administration moves forward to close it.”

We have a few fans of rule by plebescite out there, and Justyn has admirably remained consistent in defending Proposition 8 against his personal morality. But at what point must one damn the mob, and take the morally superior approach? Or is this the majority’s approach always the moral approach? . . .

. . . Matt‘s got a graph:

Matt uses this to note that, “it’s not a coincidence that senior citizens are almost never uninsured. There’s a government program which does that.” He doesn’t note that the programs for this subset are already fantastically expensive, and constantly increasing in cost. . .

. . . Forty two years have gone by since the UK release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. For those keeping score at home, that’s 15,431 days in the life.

Colonials Amongst Us

“My own view, however, is that the American public doesn’t really understand the full implications of “small government” ideology. Simply put, they like it only because they’ve never had to endure it.

. . .

It would be nice, though, if more southern electorates realized how dramatically federal intervention has improved their lives – and sustained their economies. But I won’t be holding my breath.”

-Publius

“Oh massah massah, thank ye kindly! Massah, we nevah know how much we owe ye!”

The paternal undertones of this piece can hardly be overstated. In essence, this argument differs little from the pathologizing Kansas argument of Thomas Frank, that Kansans and other “Middle Americans” only vote for free-market parties because they’ve been duped. In a tip to my good friend Matt, I suspect there are some interesting Foucaultian dynamics in simply writing off your political opponents as delusional buffoons, rather than actually considering the points that they raise.

In fact, it’s easy to turn this argument on its head – American liberalism has only been supported by the free-wheeling capitalist system that underpins it, and without the gains accrued over the years from the morally-based liberty found in the Constitution, we simply couldn’t afford single-payer schemes and other social safety nets.

It’s even more fun to apply this argument to foreign relations. Iraq will never know how much we’ve done to liberalize their economies! Those piss-ant states in Africa, South America, Asia, and elsewhere should more grateful for the improvement we have brought to their lives.

The essential characteristic of totalitarian thought is justifying the ends with means, which is why one condemns “making the world safe for democracy.” Yet while the Left is candid in its skepticism of intervention abroad (and for goodness sake, read Trahern’s piece on Sri Lanka already), this cocked eye is replaced with wide-eyed embraces when it comes to intervention at home.

Is soccer loyalty manufactured?

I’m only partly kidding:

While Italian authorities managed to avert any large-scale soccer violence in Rome, where thousands of supporters of Barcelona and Manchester United converged to watch the champions of Spain defeat the champions of England on Wednesday, a fan of the losing side in Nigeria apparently took out his frustrations by plowing his minibus into a crowd celebrating Barcelona’s victory.

Reuters reports that the disappointed Manchester United fan was arrested after he killed four people and injured 10 in the town of Ogbo. A police spokeswoman told the news agency: “The driver had passed the crowd then made a U-turn and ran into them.”

Reuters notes that both teams “have large fan bases in Nigeria.”

I may be a globalist cosmopolitan in spirit, but my rabid sports allegiances are based solely on the basis of land and upbringing – call it Blut und Bloden, if you’re cynical. Certainly, I’ll pull for the Nuggets over the Lakers, but it’s hardly fandom and always fleeting. Even something like Cleveland-Orlando comes back to these original allegiances – as a maize-bleeding Wolverine, the state of Ohio is morally indefensible (unless it’s bowl season, and the Team Down South is playing a non-Big Ten team . . . trust me, there are very explicit rules here, with internal debates akin to Goldwater v. Rockefeller.)

So reading something like these first few paragraphs boggles the mind. An attack on ethnic Spaniards by British hooligans might make sense; the destruction (never mind that Tata owns it – the Commonwealth stands tall!) of Jaguars in Barcelona similarly registers. But Nigerians, attacking Nigerians? Never mind Italy, whom I would suspect to not celebrate, but be despondent over the fact that Juventus wasn’t playing. Here in the States, similar fandom was exhibited in my Facebook feed – as good a way to sense the zeitgeist as any. There were enough shout-outs to “Barca” and “GO MAN-U” that one friend wrote, “Insert soccer related status here.” Yet even when the Celtics beat the Lakers, it wasn’t like Seattle or Chicago broke out in spontaneous riots.

Having no connection to these teams, I’m baffled by the loyalty that is expressed – loyalty that surpasses that for many local squads. How does one in America (or Nigeria, or Italy) start cheering for a soccer team like Barca? And why? Does it start with love of a player, and extend to the team? Is it simply done by random selection? Do certain people root for certain teams (see: the pop sociology of the Red Sox and Yankees)?

Unlike many Americans, I have no especial opprobrium towards the game. But I am baffled by the loyalty these teams draw from around the world, without any apparent connection. Help me out, yanquis.

The Uncanny Valley of Female Intelligence

So, per usual, I’m late to the party on intelligence and looks over at Vishal’s place (be sure to read the two posts and the comments). The only thing I would like to note is a curious trend when perceived female beauty is graphed against IQ scores:

There’s a similar shift on the “attractive” end of the male spectrum, but the difference is slight (100.84 v. 100.56) compared to the drop here. While I’d defer to Dr. Kanazawa for a more definitive answer, more than anything else I was reminded of the “uncanny valley” in humanoid perception. A brief primer on the concept:

The uncanny valley hypothesis holds that when robots and other facsimiles of humans look and act almost like actual humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers. The “valley” in question is a dip in a proposed graph of the positivity of human reaction as a function of a robot’s lifelikeness.

This isn’t quite “revulsion,” but it does demonstrate at least a partly negative side to only partly increased attractiveness.

Vishal is sly, though, seeing how these posts provide backdoor ammunition for his previous brouhaha over the importance of objective values. If no standard values of beauty exist, then how could this study possibly have been conducted? (Speaking of being late to parties, I’m way late in commenting on this post regarding the art world – which is a shame, because it’s one of my favorite subjects. I blame this on the fact that my Ray-Ban Wayfarers haven’t arrived yet.)

NB: I didn’t get around to this half-formed thought, but could the fact that attractiveness (presumably) is based on headshots play a role in this? Suppose this study were replicated with the same individuals, but instead of showing the face showed everything but the face. Would the correlation hold?

Forget Sotomayor; the Court needs a precog

“But even when this process is complete, there may be a number of people who cannot be prosecuted for past crimes, in some cases because evidence may be tainted, but who nonetheless pose a threat to the security of the United States. . . . . If and when we determine that the United States must hold individuals to keep them from carrying out an act of war, we will do so within a system that involves judicial and congressional oversight.” – President Obama, 21 May 2009

“Mr. Marks, by mandate of the District of Columbia Precrime Division, I’m placing you under arrest for the future murder of Sarah Marks and Donald Dubin that was to take place today, April 22 at 0800 hours and four minutes.” – John Anderton, Minority Report

The literature of empire

The National Review has a nice interview with Sarah Ruden, the latest translator to grapple with Virgil’s Aeneid. For the classics geeks out there (barbarians, skip to the bottom graf), here is her translation of the those famous first lines, along with several other translations by way of comparison:

Original Latin

Sarah Ruden's translation (2009)

John Dryden Translation (17th Century)

Allen Mandelbaum's translation (1964)

Robert Fitzgerald's translation (1990)

Robert Fagles' translation (2006)

I’m partial to Mandelbaum’s version, but it is the only translation that I’ve managed to work through (although I’m bullish on Fagles, after reading his versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey). It is interesting to note the evolution of translation, from the loose and rhyming Dryden through the more prosaic Mandelbaum and Fitzgerald, to the more modern and literal Fagles and Ruden. Faithfulness to the text is a limited virtue – a straight literal translation is jarring to the English ear (trust me as a voice of experience here). Linguistics certainly influence thought, and it’s simply impossible to read to Latin as the Romans did. Yet in spite of their relative literalism, there’s a lot of merit in Ruden and Fagles work, which have a lot in common (one nitpick for Ruden: “harassed” is quite a gentle take on “iactatus,” which usually translates to “thrown”) – the loss in English prosaic beauty is made up by the rhythm of their works, both of which keep pace with the dactylic hexameter of the original.

Anyways, there are politics here, and there’s one answer of Druden’s that bothers me in particular:

At nineteen I had seized on Virgil’s Eclogues with a loopy teenage love. But I had a variety of distastes for the Aeneid. It’s a war poem, and I’m a Quaker pacifist. And a lot of the story is just hokey, and a lot of the tone bombastic or hysterical. These rhetorical faults, and killing as something well-intentioned people can do, only slowly came into perspective through a deeper experience of the exquisite language and the author’s superb balance of engagement and irony.

Working with the Aeneid did me a lot of good. I used to bear a cheap pacifist witness that is fairly typical — though not, I hasten to add, as typical among the Quakers and Mennonites with whom I hang out, and who should have been able to teach me better. But it took Virgil to persuade me that everything costs. If I want to be against war, I can’t just shoot off my mouth about it. I have to pay, as I do now: live in a small furnished apartment with a roommate, not own an appliance bigger than a humidifier that fits on a bookshelf, not even try to get a driver’s license but let roller-blades be my only thrill from wheels, not get married except to someone who’ll let me continue this sort of testimony.

What does getting a driver’s license have to go with going to war? Certainly, a doctrine of non-aggression is a tough principle to maintain – just ask your local “Bushitler” opponent how many protests s/he staged against the Bosnian War – but it doesn’t mean withdrawing from civil society. If anything, opposing war implies a re-engagement in civil society, through trade and other forms of free association.

Although the Aeneid is a war poem, it isn’t necessarily as full-throated a defense of the Roman imperium as many write it off to be. In Book VI (852-853), the dead Anchises describes the ethos of the future Roman Empire:

“hae tibi erunt artes; pacisque imponere morem,

parcere subiectis, et debellare superbos.”

“These arts are to you; to establish the law of peace

To spare the defeated, and to subdue the proud.”

A lofty vision, no doubt. So what does our hero Aeneas do the moment he finds himself establishing an empire on Italian soil (Book XII: translation courtesy A.S. Kline, emphasis added)?

Great Turnus sank, his knee bent beneath him, under the blow.

The Rutulians rose up, and groaned, and all the hills around

re-echoed, and, far and wide, the woods returned the sound.

He lowered his eyes in submission and stretched out his right hand:

‘I have earned this, I ask no mercy’ he said,

‘seize your chance. If any concern for a parent’s grief

can touch you (you too had such a father, in Anchises)

I beg you to pity Daunus’s old age and return me,

or if you prefer it my body robbed of life, to my people.

You are the victor, and the Ausonians have seen me

stretch out my hands in defeat: Lavinia is your wife,

don’t extend your hatred further.’ Aeneas stood, fierce

in his armour, his eyes flickered, and he held back his hand:

and even now, as he paused, the words began to move him

more deeply, when high on Turnus’s shoulder young Pallas’s

luckless sword-belt met his gaze, the strap glinting with its familiar

decorations, he whom Turnus, now wearing his enemy’s emblems

on his shoulder, had wounded and thrown, defeated, to the earth.

As soon as his eyes took in the trophy, a memory of cruel grief,

Aeneas, blazing with fury, and terrible in his anger, cried:

‘Shall you be snatched from my grasp, wearing the spoils

of one who was my own? Pallas it is, Pallas, who sacrifices you

with this stroke, and exacts retribution from your guilty blood.’

So saying, burning with rage, he buried his sword deep

in Turnus’s breast: and then Turnus’s limbs grew slack

with death, and his life fled, with a moan, angrily, to the Shades.

So much for sparing the defeated. This would become the defining characteristic of the Roman Empire, be it in the politically fueled conquest of Gaul, the salting of the earth at Carthage, or the quelling of Judea. Such is the way of empire, and thus it is fitting that this country – Pax Americana - has seen two separate translations of Virgil’s masterpiece in the last three years. We would be wise to listen to old Anchises, pious as Aeneas pretends to be.