i'm the president. i'm the decider.
Oct. 25th, 2008 12:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

President H.W. Bush: "Now Junior, I mean Dubya here, he's the real Born-Again."
W. is a movie I think every American should see. It starts off and you're so amused by the "impersonations" by the actors of Bush and his cabinet that you think it's going to be an SNL skit, but what it becomes is cathartic experience.
First off, let me just confirm that Josh Brolin is one of my new favorite actors. Yes, all I've seen is this and No Country For Old Men, but, damn. He's a talented guy.
Does Bush come off as sympathetic? Yes, in a welcome-to-the-human-race kind of way (Perp: "You don't know what it's like." Goren: "What? To work so hard, and still be a nobody?" Perp: "Yes..." Goren: "Welcome to the human race."). Would Bush, as Stone I believe said, like this depiction of him? No. It's fair, and it's sympathetic, but it's not gentle. I seriously doubt any of his supporters would like this movie. Other people who come off similarly include Colin Powell, the rest of the Bush clan, and Laura Bush. Plenty of people come off as unsympathetic - Condoleeza Rice was a particularly grating sycophant, Rumsfeld and Cheney are brutal strategists who disappear when the "WMDs" in Iraq are similarly nowhere to be found, and Karl Rove is a peculiar Gollum-like creature who skulks in the shadows of the war room with binders filled with statistics who lives so vicariously through W. that at one point he calls George H. W. Bush "Poppy". But part of W.'s problem is that he is surrounded by people trying to put words in his mouth - Rove and Cheney in particular are the most egregious of the bunch - and he must every now and then remind these underlings that he is the President, he's leading the campaign, it starts and ends with him. As it turns out this is because he suffers from a chronic fear of not being in control of his own life, not living up to the Bush name, not being Texan enough, not "earning his spurs", as his father puts it.
What this movie drives home is something I very much agree with: that politicians are just people, just normal people with the same psychoses and neuroses the rest of us have - they've just got the power to act on their insanity. W.'s problem is essentially that he lives in fear of disappointing his father, who prefers his brother Jeb - when W. becomes governor of Texas but Jeb loses the same race in Florida, Bush Sr. mopes about how hard it is for feet-on-the-ground, head-screwed-on-straight Jeb, and W. says, "Why do you always have to be feel bad for Jeb? Why can't you feel good for me?" When Bush Sr. loses the presidential race in 1992 and breaks down crying, saying he thought the war would be enough, W. is flustered and infuriated - he shouts that this would never have happened if his father had charged onto Baghdad like W. told him to. While pacing outside as his mother consoles his father, W. tells Laura that he will never let that happen to him. And indeed: during the campaign for war in Iraq, he asks Ari Fleischer if the latter told the press that "I hate assholes who try to kill my dad".

At a disastrous press conference, Bush struggles to pick his worst mistake.
We have no idea, of course, if these conversations took place, but they may very well have. The thing is, I've realized recently that part of the reason I want to work in government is because I want to be there for the wank. People in government are crazy, snarky, bitter, tired people, and this movie captured that excellently. My favorite scene in the whole movie is probably when W. is leading his cabinet - in their suits and their middle-aged bodies - on this trek through some kind of military training ground that is essentially prairie. They're constantly batting at flies and trying not to groan because W. in his safari suit is so enthusiastic about this, laying out his vision for the war in Iraq and dismissing Colin Powell as a worrywart, cracking jokes that the rest of them are obligated to chuckle at. They seem to have lost the trail, but W. assures them the vehicles are just up ahead, another half a mile, "just follow me!" and they all head off into the wilderness.
A lot of people think that politicians are a different class of people. They're either super-intelligent hyper-Americans, revered as Gods, or soulless, evil robots (or soulless, evil puppets who can't tie their own shoelaces). This girl in my thesis class said the other day, "People in the State Department are all the same. They just re-program the new people that come in." And a lot of people follow this idea that Capitol Hill is all anonymous suits and ties, "yesmen", cronies working for Big Ideas. This is just bullshit, and that goes for both parties. Believe me. People in the State Department are most certainly not "all the same". I can tell stories. This is from my research:
"The fact that the USA tried to discredit Sukarno through attempting to make a pornographic movie about his romantic proclivities indicates the climate of the times."
"While some of Sukarno’s American critics considered his recent outburst egregious but not inconsistent with previous antics, the CIA detected a deeper significance. Agency analysts began to suspect that Sukarno was becoming mentally unhinged… One of Sukarno’s wives, his fourth, seemed to be the source of most of the problems; the CIA’s contacts reported that some of Sukarno’s associates were plotting to kill her."
"The undersecretary of state [Ball] discounted what he considered wishful thinking by Jones; the ambassador, whose retirement was at hand, seemed to be showing the strain of seven years at a difficult post. An extraordinary request by Jones a few days earlier that Johnson personally assure Sukarno that the CIA was not trying to assassinate him did not improve Ball’s estimate of the ambassador’s judgment."
I'm sorry, but this is stuff I find positively hilarious. And it's all true, and it all had real consequences. Politics is about a lot of things, but politicians are not sterile 'droids. They're not all-bad or all-good, like so many people would like to believe. They don't behave in a way a realist political scientist would describe to be "rational". But then again, who does. People are not perfect calculators of gain/loss margins.

W. and his reverend pray after he announces that he has heard the call:
"God wants me to run for president."
The reverend's doubt-filled reaction: "... truly?"
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Date: 2008-10-26 12:39 am (UTC)"In general, people don't like to be turned into objects or objectified, and journalists least of all. They feel under fire, singled out. But the further you get in the analysis of a given milieu, the more likely you are to let individuals off the hook (which doesn't mean justifying everything that happens). And the more you understand how things work, the more you come to understand that the people involved are manipulated as much as they manipulate. They manipulate even more effectively the more they are themselves manipulated and the more unconscious they are of this."
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Date: 2008-10-26 01:04 am (UTC)It is in a sense something that the government wants to instill, the image of a united front, but most departments of the government don't want everyone to look the same these days. It's not good for recruiting.
I don't get how the thing about journalists relates.
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Date: 2008-10-26 01:16 am (UTC)The thing about journalists is just that they censor themselves, their individual thoughts and feelings on the matter, to be a professional news-person, to maintain a career, to keep the news being done the way it 'should' be done. I was saying that a similar thing seems true of politicians, necessarily.
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Date: 2008-10-26 01:20 am (UTC)And not just the news media, but the Hollywood media. And of course some government is responsible for this too, but it's not fair to blame government personnel.
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Date: 2008-10-26 01:23 am (UTC)it's not about blaming anyone, not even journalists.
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Date: 2008-10-26 04:01 am (UTC)I guess I think it's harmful to think of politicians as cartoonish villains/heroes, in the long run. Because it hurts the possibility of cooperation.
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Date: 2008-10-26 06:51 am (UTC)That I think is true. I think most stereotypes are harmful in the long run...
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Date: 2008-10-26 01:22 am (UTC)But feel free to ignore it.
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Date: 2008-10-26 01:40 am (UTC)the problem is that i don't think all disciplines, thoughts, opinions, or experiences are equal in any way but all belonging to individuals with equal rights to express them. it's an extremely frustrating way to think, even for myself. in other words, the problem is that i don't agree with you. however, i don't believe any of those things are "inherently flawed."
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Date: 2008-10-26 02:27 am (UTC)anyway. as for disciplines, i don't think they don't each have something to offer, i don't reject any of the outright. i just think that a good many things would benefit from a interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary perspective. like doing psychology without anthropology, when human beings are social animals, or economics without sociology, as if they weren't intrinsically related, or philosophy without political science, as if our intellectual concerns should be divorced from our political ones, or linguistics from any of them, as if language were a separate entity not bound to the social forces that shape its use. There's a Wittgenstein quote...here:
"What is the use of studying philosophy if all that it does for you is enable you to talk with some plausibility about some abstruse questions of logic, etc., and if it does not improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life?"
That's what I think academics should do, and it seems too infrequently does that actually happen, for anyone, in or outside it.
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Date: 2008-10-26 03:54 am (UTC)I'm not against taking other disciplines into account. But lately I've been feeling bludgeoned every time I say something. Note that you never manage to actually change what I think, if that's what you're trying to accomplish. I just feel beaten up. I feel like almost everything I write about ties into a fundamental belief of yours somehow, and I don't even see how most of the time. Like I'm just writing about something that I don't feel is reflective of some fundamental thing at all, and suddenly we're arguing about something that to me seems completely unrelated. The thing is I don't like arguing. At least not the way you do it. I'm fine with having a discussion. But that's not what we have, we don't have discussions.
Part of the problem is as soon as I feel assaulted I always feel like I have to defend the opposite position, even if it's not something I wholely believe. I feel like I have to rescue whatever you're attacking.
You can't talk in retrospect? No, but that doesn't mean you can't be more careful. That doesn't mean you have to try to gore every other belief in the room! It doesn't mean you can just go, "Oh, well, maybe I was wrong there, whatever" and just keep on keeping on. It's not even about tact or social grace. It's about treating other people with respect.
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Date: 2008-10-26 04:13 am (UTC)Well, how do I have a discussion, then? What do you expect from me? Tell me, and I'll tell you if I think I can do it, or try. As it is, I just try to respond to you with what I see in what you write that I care about, that I'm interested in, that I have some response to, and sometimes it becomes an argument. I don't really like arguing either, but I've grown to accept it. I prefer more collaborative discussions, but maybe that's only possible when you agree on the presuppositions to discussion... I mean, how do you express disagreement otherwise? As for changing what you think, that's not necessarily the goal. Maybe agreement is, although I think argument itself can be worthwhile sometimes even when you disagree in the end. I understand the other person's position better, and often my own, too. I'm more likely to respect their position after an argument than before it...y'know?
I don't know why you feel like you have to rescue what I'm attacking, though maybe it's good for me...?
Okay. But it doesn't mean I have to accept what you're saying, either. And being wrong isn't a "whatever," it's a genuine admission on my part.
I feel like you're telling to agree with you or shut up because I'm a disrespectful, aggressive, annoying person. I have faith, though, that you are not.
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Date: 2008-10-26 04:35 am (UTC)I think primarily the whole picking out things you disagree with and only commenting on those is what grates me. My mother does something similar: she only responds to anything with corrections. It feels like I'm just there as a critical exercise for your beliefs, instead of an actual person who gets to be genuinely excited or emotional about something, who gets to be my own person instead of a reflection of what matters to you.
I think the whole agreeing on the presuppositions to discussion is probably a large part of what's missing and what makes this not work.
I feel I have to rescue whatever you're attacking because I'm a contrarian. Because whatever you're attacking isn't there to defend itself.
I'm not saying you have to accept what I'm saying, or agree with me or shut up. I don't know what to do really, except not write about things that are likely to incite arguments.
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Date: 2008-10-26 04:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-26 03:37 am (UTC)Well, I definitely get that you don't think my discipline is as good as yours. If you don't agree with me on anything, and you're so stubborn about your own beliefs, I wonder what is really the point. There is literally nothing that you have agreed with me on lately. It actually seems like sometimes you want to find things to disagree with me on. And I don't see how you could possibly respect me if you disagree with me on everything, and I don't want to be friends with someone who does not respect me.
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Date: 2008-10-26 03:58 am (UTC)so what if we haven't agreed on things lately? good, at least we're talking about them. i hate that no one nowadays seems to want to even discuss hard issues, to risk changing their mind! or maybe it's people of all times, i don't know. not the point.
Of course i still respect you. i admit, when i argue about these things, it gets tough, and personal. jason's made me cry with things he's said about the worthlessness of anthropology. so what? i think it's important, when thinking about what you're going to do with the rest of your life, to consider what it is about it that you love, why you want to do it, what it, and you, could possibly have to contribute to society. and in a lot of ways, what you want to do is much more obviously beneficial. maybe that's why i've thought about what i'm doing so much, and hold such strong beliefs--I don't know.
And you know, I could just as easily say, "If you don't agree with me on anything, and you're so stubborn about your own beliefs, I wonder what is really the point," to you, but I don't, because I still care about you and respect what you have to say.
I find things to disagree on because I think it's interesting, because I think it's what's worth discussing. I'm sorry it offends you. That really wasn't my intention.
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Date: 2008-10-26 04:21 am (UTC)One of the conclusions I've come to in the last couple years, while I was working out the conclusion to Ilium, is that big ideas aren't worth blood. I know to you that must sound awful, and I feel like I can't put it into words articulately - all I can say is read "The Quiet American", which has the same conclusion. My mom basically gave up on living for big ideas and she's lived a relatively calm, healthy life. My dad was obsessed with big ideas and committed his whole self to them, and died from the stress and frustration. And yes, "The Quiet American" is about the Vietnam War and the blood there is real. But I think it's why I don't like getting nasty over ideas. As the asofterworld on my profile page says, "Truth and Beauty are wonderful words, but schrapnel is schrapnel, and at the end of the day I am alone with the things I have done." I don't like attacking other people's beliefs, even when I'm mad at them. And what's ironic is that this is actually good for being in the Foreign Service.
And yes, I do have opinions about things. I love my thesis. And I dislike it when poli sci majors don't have any actual opinions on realism and constructivism, but they're just doing poli sci to get into law school. But even though I hate realism I won't attack someone for believing in it. I mean, I respect Juliya even though she's a hardcore realist and thinks constructivism is just magical thinking, because she's smart, she's a good student and at least she has an opinion.
That doesn't mean I don't consider what it is about what I'm going to do with my life that I love - not that I really know what I'm going to do with my life besides the career that I want to go into, and I know exactly what it is about the Foreign Service that I love.
I feel like I'm not that stubborn about my beliefs, and it's not that I disagree with you - I feel like you do the disagreeing, and I get defensive and confused because I don't even know what happened.
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Date: 2008-10-26 04:52 am (UTC)Jason's not committed to kniving people, and I kind of resent the term being applied to me as well. Tara, however, might well be...I still haven't figured out how to argue with her. She treats it like a competition, will say whatever it takes to win, and fast. I can't keep up with her--only in writing. Jason...well, he demands that people are stubborn about their beliefs. Anyway, we are capable of having less animated discussion, though. I don't think we've argued like that in awhile. A few brief tiffs, but nothing major.
I don't like just straight up attacking people's beliefs, but I do like questioning them. Like with pro-life second Steve, about abortion. I feel like I learned something about my own beliefs from that discussion, even if i didn't convince him of anything. Maybe I (mistakenly) think that with my friends, mutual like and respect is more assumed.
Of course you have opinions about things, and I'm glad you do. Exactly, what's most important to me is that people actually care about these issues. It's what I like best in profs, in fellow students, and in my friends. Like Jon and Steve totally disagree about anthro, but they both think that it's really important and worth teaching, and I appreciate that. I think it makes them better teachers.
Didn't you just say that you were more stubborn about your beliefs than most of your friends?
I'm sorry. It's true, I think, that we don't disagree on that many things...
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