i'm the president. i'm the decider.

[intertribal]

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?" 

Comments

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

well, people 'seeming the same' isn't just stereotypes, either, in the case of people involved in careers like politics (or journalism, or...)--it's part image, which is to say that it's part censorship.

"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."

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Well, the thing is I don't get how even the "image" makes government people look the same. Like, what, they all wear suits? They don't even always wear suits. It can't possibly be in personality, because they are not the same in personality at all - so the only thing I can think of is suits.

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.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I meant the image that government people work to present to people, like on television. Not their private lives (usually), not their family issues, but the rhetoric and parties and the framing of authority and importance...the suits are just one small part of all that. Admittedly, they don't all work individually to present that image--things like 'framing' are partly the responsibility of news media, and various other societal things that relate to how the average American views political figures, but still. But any time people get lumped into a group, they tend to be homogenized, stereotyped. It's the nature of the thing. What's impt. for political figures I think is how they're framed, the image they present and are expected to present.

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.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I think the news media are a huge, huge part of that. And textbooks. And press conferences, which is like joint government-news media. Government people actually present themselves very little, and in my internship the overwhelming emphasis was on the difference between the Americans who were presenting themselves.

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.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

true, outside of political campaigns.

it's not about blaming anyone, not even journalists.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Well yeah, political campaigns, but civil servants don't put those on. And anyway I guess I feel like so many people pay so much attention to the projected image that it's forgotten that at the root - actually making the decision - are actual people. And I guess I'm more interested in the drive behind the actual decision. The image and the frame isn't making the decision. At least in this movie, it wasn't, although I could imagine situations where politicians made decisions based on trying to maintain a certain image. I tend to find that a more boring and superficial explanation for political decisions, but there are boring and superficial politicians.

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.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Well, they're making some of the decision, and the voters are putting them in office...no, you're right, the voters don't decide shit. The frame is part of society, for me, it's part of what people care about, what they think, and the politicians aren't just motivated by trying to maintain a certain image but are themselves a part of that same society, with those same thoughts. It's complex and intertwined.

That I think is true. I think most stereotypes are harmful in the long run...

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

also: you have thesis class?

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Yes, 2 hours a week, but we don't meet every week. Sometimes it's just optional individual office hours.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

crazy! we have 'class' that we get credit for, but not an actual group of students who meet. it's just optional individual office hours, like you say.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

well, you know, political science is pretty incomprehensible and stupid and wrong.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

what? i wasn't trying to insult you in the slightest. i think it'd be kinda cool to have a thesis class...although the ling theses are pretty vastly different, interdisciplinary and fragmented as the discipline is.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I didn't think you were here either.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

mmkay...then i'm gonna ignore it.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I was expressing frustration with all the rest of your comments and how I feel they attack what I've learned, what I think, what I've experienced as inherently flawed in some way.

But feel free to ignore it.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

well, then you should say so instead of making passive-aggressive remarks, but now you have.

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."

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

if i did think what you think is inherently flawed, i might think, rather, that you yourself are stupid, which i do not, which is why i bother arguing with you. i know i'm ridiculously stubborn, and i take my beliefs really seriously, and i have very little tact or social grace...I'm not sorry for those things, but i am sorry for some of their consequences, which is contradictory, i suppose. sometimes i give up a sense of humility to force a point...this almost never means that i genuinely think i'm better than anyone. sometimes it's a challenge, and sometimes it's defensive, but regardless, i'm wrong a lot, i'm human. but we've been arguing about some pretty fundamental beliefs, things i base how to live my life around. doesn't mean i can't still be wrong, but maybe i'm more stubborn than usual. i don't know. i probably would take back some of the comments i made as unnecessary or wrong in retrospect, but i can't talk in retrospect.

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.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

There is a way to disagree with someone without making the other person feel like total shit, which is what you do with me. I hate how you belittle me. I hate how you dismiss my opinions.

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.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Well, I really don't mean or try to make you feel like total shit, and I'm very sorry that's the case. Please, if I do that, stop me before I keep going. I'm much worse in written discussion, I think, of judging how a conversation is progressing; much more confident, too...

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.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

The way I usually discuss things is by responding to everything I can. Even if it's just that I agree. I do this especially if there's something I disagree on, and when I got to the part I disagree on, I'm not blunt. This is just window dressing. But often it makes the other person more likely to listen to what I'm saying. Not always, but often. I very rarely genuinely cannot see the other person's perspective, however, so it's easier for me to say things like, "I see what you're saying, but..." I feel like this would just seem like bullshit coming from you, so I'm not sure how to tell you to have a discussion instead of an argument except maybe that driving the discussion in a certain direction by only talking about something you personally take issue with, and not acknowledging any points the other person makes, is sort of going to invite an argument.

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.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

also, in all honesty, i feel like i end up defending positions i don't wholely believe as well. sometimes i just want to go further with it, to see where that position would go, if it's wrong, why it's wrong. other times, i dunno. i'm slowly getting better at putting this sort of feeling explicitly as a question, instead of the thought that just occurred to me as if i fully believe it. obviously not better enough. i mean, i don't think you should take everything i say seriously in that way...it's a serious question, usually, but not a always a firm belief...or a firm belief misapplied to the situation at hand. which i think a lot of our recent arguing was, on my part, and why i said that some things i said were wrong.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I try to be tolerant and when my patience runs out it comes out as passive-aggressive. I shouldn't have been that way but it's always what happens when I get angry.

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.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I don't think your discipline is worse than mine. that doesn't mean i think it's good. i think they're probably both shitty in a lot of ways, but that doesn't mean they have nothing to offer, either. if i believed in disciplines, i'd believe in making a career out of academia, and i think that's contrary to the goals of enlightenment.

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.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I feel like if you want to have knock-down drag-out fights, it needs to be with someone who's equally as committed to kniving other people as you are, like Jason. I'm just not. I don't think it's worth it.

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.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Um...I'm basically a pacifist. But I believe in the value of discussion and argument, conflicting beliefs, exchange of ideas. I don't think they're contradictory. Arguing doesn't make me want to hurt anyone. I think if I saw that I did that in actual, real-time, physically-present argument, I would immediately stop. But...it goes for both sides, sometimes. I feel like some people (not you) get upset just by the fact that someone else thinks they're wrong, can't have someone stand up for an opposing viewpoint or else they just cower and sulk. And I think that's mostly their fault, even though they're only hurting themselves.

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...