Joining TMV

After many years of reading TMV I finally took the plunge and asked to join as a writer, and I’d like to thank Joe for accepting it. I’m sure greasing his palms through the years didn’t hurt and now that he’s successful enough to hang out with celebrities I thought I’d call in the favor. My focus is going to be a little bit different and I want to spend this first post talking about it a bit.

I’ve seen many incarnations of TMV, both in web layout and author makeup. The only person I’m sure has been writing for TMV longer than I’ve read (besides Joe of course) is Holly. My apologies to anyone I’ve forgotten. I’m also one of less than a handful of commenters that still frequents the site from those glory days gone by. I think this is because I approach blog interaction as a sniper: constantly monitoring but having very focused engagements. While snipers have the shortest life on the battlefield, they seem to have the longest in the blogosphere…well and those that have no shortage of fire to breathe. It’s a testament to Joe that he has lasted this long while being both broad and tempered.

So why did I ask to join now? It’s simple, change is in the air! Obama has created a new dawn.

Well no not really, and yet kind of so. It’s not that the Man is so important; I wouldn’t be surprised if he is unable to do much of anything, and what he does do might be all wrong. No instead it is the transformational aspect that he will bring one way or another. The way I see it, certain Presidents — nay, certain times – are transitional points that determine the outlook of the US (and increasingly the world) over the following decades. Lincoln, Teddy, Wilson, FDR, JFK, Reagan. Slavery, Labor, Idealism (turned to Isolationism), Welfare/International Power Shift, Civil Rights, Innovation/Consumerism. Their administrations were born of strife, and their temperaments and skills were such that their legacies dominated political discourse in the periods between them; their fingerprints still leave indelible marks today. They didn’t just set agendas, they helped define ideological camps themselves.

Those presidents were full of pragmatic righteousness, creating tidal waves that swept across the country. Yet over time, the righteousness turned to rigidness and what seemed like Universal Truth was eventually found lacking. Part of the reason is because no ideology can be perfectly implemented and part of it is that even perfect implementations will have completely unforeseeable consequences. And of course, times just change.

So the tidal waves turn to ripples while society aches and fights break out about whether to redouble ideological efforts that seemingly worked so well for so long or to “moderate.” And forget about fighting the last war, some people fight the war twice gone by. That’s why a large component of political change is to just wait until time buries the combatants.

So this is how I am going to be a bit different of a voice on the site. I’m not interested in being a “moderate” or even a “centrist” as those imply a balance on an axis quickly rusting. In fact, I’ve long found the handwringing over those terms to be the most annoying parts of sites I otherwise like the most, as I find a lot of the focus leads to false equivalencies and valuing civility over decency at all costs. Stealing from Blumenthal and Orwell through this:

Blumenthal:

He uses “civility” to mean manners masquerading as morals, a category of form referring less to the rule of law than to the rule of etiquette; it is more an unspoken social, rather than ethical, code. Correct behavior may make the good possible, it is not goodness itself.

Orwell wrote:

The central problem — how to prevent power from being abused — remains unsolved…’If men would behave decently the world would be decent’ is not such a platitude as it sounds.

Civility is highly important, as I don’t think you can convince anyone of your position otherwise. But the key is that civility must be used to communicate ideals and morals, not in substitution of them. It is disgusting that a lot of the conservative movement has embraced highly indecent positions on torture, immigration and wealth, and save for TMV’s guidelines I wouldn’t refrain from describing them uncivilly.

Historically I think that the liberal movement has been indecent when it comes to corruption, blindness to failed policy and ironically, shotgun accusations of indecency. The reason why civility has become so wildly embraced as part of “serious discourse” is that so few people take into account the intent and reasonableness of their adversaries. There is a big difference between opposing affirmative action because you are sincerely concerned about racial equality but think the policy doesn’t help (or even hurts) and opposing it because blacks just aren’t good enough and are taking jobs from deserving white folks. Ditto welfare.

While I tend to “liberal” in my priorities, I have discovered that a lot of honest and good conservatives have very good points about unintended consequences and the like that it would do good to embrace. But likewise, I’ve often been frustrated when they clinged to a movement that had started to become downright indecent and justified it by pointing out the incivility on the other side, as if that were evidence that the world would end if “their side” lost. Part of the problem for Liberals is that a lot of indecent conservative positions have been draped in civility, and, since the Conservatives weren’t policing themselves by getting to the root of the problem, all ideological differences were assumed to be in bad faith. Liberalism would be a heck of a lot better if it were more humble and Conservatism if it kept its focus on results and even intents…yes Conservatism is a temperament I know, but still.

So I asked to join because I’m noticing a hunger and the time is officially upon us to start moving. A lot of die hard Liberals I know have become humbled as they realized that perhaps man is actually fragile and imperfect when given so much power. And a lot of Conservatives are waking up to the fact that sometimes standing on a mountaintop yelling “Stop” isn’t appropriate just when moving too fast, but stagnating as well. And quite frankly, most people in my generation have no idea what you old fogies are fighting about because our lines are drawn completely differently and our greatest problem isn’t ideological divides but naivety; at least until this transformational period is complete and we are entrenched as well. We mostly agree what to do and, in the narcissism of youth, think it looks easy. Meanwhile the older generations are too busy moving pieces on a now illusionary chessboard to give much guidance.

Now I suppose if you believe that our challenges are run of the mill, my blathering seems like the unwisdom of youth (I’m only 25). However, I think that we have two problems that are gigantic: our population pyramid is now more of a rectangle, and we must transition from a petroleum based lifestyle. The latter challenge means reevaluating our infrastructure and habits in a way that hasn’t been done in about 100 years, and the former challenge…well to be blunt I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of a society that has successfully navigated that problem. Nearly all the other problems we have except for the social value war are mere manifestations of those two challenges, and that fight will be resolved not through policy but through natural demographic changes.

I should note that I’m pessimistic that we will be able to resolve the energy problem without severe changes in lifestyle. At this point it will be tough to implement even good ideas on a large enough scale to avoid massive cutbacks (and will politics involved we know how hard it is to focus on good ideas) and even worse, a lot of advanced technology relies on extremely scarce earth metals. These are at best highly expensive and at worst unavailable in the quantities we will need. Any plan that has a shot at working long term will require a complete overhaul in how we utilize and recycle our natural resources, as well as design buildings and communities. Couple that problem with the quickly aging populace and it will be difficult to maintain standard of living. [And I consider myself a technological optimist!]

My greatest fear is that our challenges are socially larger than any since the resolution of slavery (Note: I’m referring to the scope that society must make in regards to permanent lifestyle and infrastructural changes, not social values.) and our scientific challenges greater still – and yet our language and thought processes haven’t changed to reflect this. We can’t win by being contra-Bush/Reagan/LBJ, nor contra-Anything; we must lay a new framework without precedent and use the lessons of the past to help guide us.

I ran across this Lincoln quote that sums it up:

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country,” – Abraham Lincoln, Second Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862.

In order to prosper we are going to have to be willing to reevaluate everything on a foundational level from economics to political leadership. This is where the promise of “moderation” lies. It is NOT simply making a gumbo from the two sides, it is honestly reflecting on the strengths/weaknesses of our current ideologies and constantly monitoring/guiding the creation of a new one.

Embracing one ideology or another will lead to failure, but just as importantly, the inability to provide new guidance will doom us as well. We must take into account the knowledge we have gained in the last 30-150 years and the challenges of the next 30 to create something truly post-partisan, at least until the new lines are drawn. Heck there is growing evidence that ideological predispositions may be biological, and holding that against someone is as inane as holding sexual orientation against them. They have a “choice” yes, but it’s just who they are.

In contrast to rousing calls to action, I must confess I think we are 15 years late in starting. It’s been that long since the challenges have been clear and the consequences from the status quo started manifesting, but still we did nothing. At this point it’s going to take everything we have to succeed and avoid another major world war or worse…and so far the results aren’t promising. Ironically the main problem for Obama may not be that he is too radical, but that he is not radical enough: time will tell. I’ve often wished I could have two hours alone with him to get his thoughts, as he clearly understands the problems but seems to be grasping for tired solutions on the “big stuff.” His call to change is not necessarily about providing a new framework, but merely fusioning the existing ones and somewhat ad hoc. Even if that is the case, his legacy won’t necessarily be in implementing the new direction, but merely in aligning the course. There is a good chance that with only two terms he’ll be like FDR – who wouldn’t have actually accomplished much in his term in office but would have nonetheless provided the framework that would have led to just about the same place.

I decided to write for TMV because it would have taken so long to get any interest in my own blog and I honestly feel that the temperament it attracts is conducive for talking about these sorts of issues. I’m going to mostly refrain from talking about the political racehorse because I’m just a kid in his parent’s basement compared to a lot of writers on this site, and I don’t want to have Governor Palin blame me for it. Instead I’m going to focus more on economic/scientific topics (which I believe will dominate political direction anyhow) and in that will do something slightly different.

My M.O. will be to write long posts such as this one that describe some basic principle and hopefully will teach my audience a bit about it – and through their feedback teach myself too. See my series on the roots of the current crisis for an example. I find a lot of people have the intelligence and personality to have great discussions, but have poor math/scientific foundations or outdated mindsets (even a lot of scientists suffer even though they are good otherwise, so don’t take offense) so I’m going to try to teach/indoctrinate at a level that people can understand. This is basically my day job so I have a lot of practice.

Then I will talk about some political topics and tie them in to the foundational articles; I’ll always link the foundational articles as prerequisites to understanding my current point. My short linked posts will be when I notice an article that points out a “real time” example of something I talked about.

I’m going to focus a lot on examples of things that happen when the consensus didn’t expect it and we’ll talk about possibilities why and also examples of things where I was wrong about what would happen based on my understanding…because a lot of my interests haven’t been well applied yet so that is perhaps even more interesting.

The overall goal is to have lots of interaction with you people to make sure we’re all on the same page and then at some point maybe even start proposing solutions and refining them through argument and feedback.

Thanks.