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

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

We do care about similar things if you frame it that way. I would never, ever, ever describe any of our conversations as "what would best make a democratic society" because what you talk about sounds much more overarching than that. When I think of what would best make a democratic society I don't think of what you think of. I think of pluralism and freedom of press and fair elections and civil society and rule of law. And I know, believe me, that a lot more ties in - but if I try to think about what you think about, it would break my head, because I already think in too much detail about things like civil society and because my brain is always half-taken up by stories I'm trying to write and characters in my head.

I think that I tend to think horizontally instead of vertically. So say I'm talking about, I don't know, masculinity in the military. What I like to do is make that discussion richer rather than immediately jumping up a level to the frames our society uses and ceasing to talk about concrete things. And I think that is because I write, so I think in terms of details and images and emotion and texture - instead of, say, truth, or philosophy, which I would call more vertical.

And when I'm forced to think vertically I can't even form a cogent argument, because it's too vague for me. That's why it becomes bullshit. But this ties back into the pursuit of truth and relativism. And then I start feeling like my own interests are getting pushed aside. A better way of putting it is that the argument is never defined the way I would define it. It's always on a different, bigger scale, where I can't make sense of things, because it seems like the factors are mind-bogglingly infinite. And that's fine if you think that way. But you can't expect me to. We're not the same person.

I mean, all I wanted to say in this post is that I find the quirks of politicians interesting, and I find their neurosis interesting. I've always liked the idea of a link between insanity and politics. I have nothing really to back me up on that but I like thinking about it. And I don't want to just immediately step into frames and society and how it's all part of a big system. And I'm a constructivist, you know, I like systems, but part of the reason I'm a constructivist is actually because it's the only perspective that allows for things like irrationality. And I wanted to dwell on that level. I'm sure that if I wrote about insanity and politics you would be able to dismiss it as something very insignificant in the large scheme of things (or that it has nothing to do with insanity because it's all been carefully sculpted by the system, or something else that completely dismisses it as unimportant to talk about) and maybe it is insignificant in the history of humankind. But see, in my lifetime, in my career, I'm likely to encounter insane people in politics. And it doesn't matter a whole lot to future-me how society in the long-run shaped them to be that way, and why no one likes to be objectified, and how we're all part of a group that's been stereotyped - I just need to be able to deal with them in the immediate timeframe, and quite frankly, to be amused about it. And I'm sure that sounds like a very small life to you but I'm okay with it. Honest.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I don't think 'it's too complicated' is really a valid excuse for not thinking about something. But I think things are more complicated than I understand, too. I haven't thought about as many of the things that you think about as a poli sci major, or that you mention here. I wish I understood those things better. I feel like saying that thinking about something "would break your head" is more condescending to yourself than anything I would say.

But thinking only about concrete things means you end up reaching wrong conclusions. You have to use 'horizontal' and 'vertical' thinking together to reach anything more true...

I don't expect you to do anything, and I know we're not the same person, but I guess I didn't realize that you thought you "can't make sense" of things on the "bigger scale". I mean, by all means, define the argument on your own terms, but they sound like terms that I think are unproductive, because my interest is in reaching something more true, and so I can't participate other than to disagree, and then I piss you off. And so I don't know what else to say. I can't argue on your terms. I could try, and it's not even that I think I'm incapable of thinking that way, or that it's somehow ingrained in my personality not to, although it would be difficult because I'm not in the habit of doing it, but I simply have no desire to, because I have yet to see the value in not talking about the "big ideas", if that's what you're suggesting.

Oh, I think politicians are probably a bit crazy too, but then, I think insanity is culturally defined as what's "abnormal" or "deviant" in mental behavior. And then I'd want to find the pattern that would drive people of certain mental persuasions to politics. Habits are irrational, and it's a large part of how people function...even habits of thought. I'm not saying I see insanity as insignificant. But my drive would be to explain it. Which doesn't mean I can't also find it amusing.

Anyway, it's your life, do what you will.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I'm not as smart as you think I am. I also devote, as I've said, a lot of my energy to writing, and that's actually where a lot of my opinion on "big ideas" comes out. In my schoolwork and stuff, ideas tend to be of a smaller scale. And the only way that I feel "big ideas" work is when you balance it out with fiction. Otherwise, like in a paper or something, it is bullshit to me. I would just not be able to take myself seriously. But see, I really can't take any philosophy seriously.

I really don't understand why only looking at concrete things leads you to the wrong conclusions. I mean, the whole world is concrete things. Maybe we're defining concrete and abstract in different ways.

But see, with your style of argument you see how I can't argue either. So I don't know what to do in all honesty. Probably just the same as always, except with more consideration towards the other side? But the thing is I feel like I can give you consideration whereas you can't give me consideration because you are much more stubborn than I am.

I totally agree that you need to be horizontal and vertical to achieve something more true. But I guess I'm more vertical in my fiction, because it feels more holistic there, and not in daily conversation. And as you know I'm not seeking truth. I think there's definitely value in not talking about the "big ideas", but partly because I like to think in microcosms and metaphors, because I think without doing things horizontally you're not going to reach the right conclusions either - there's too much variance in the world. And I mean, yeah - insanity is culturally defined, but this is a very vague statement, and vagueness does nothing to me. That's why I like to think more in metaphors and microcosms, because it keeps me interested in the conversation. I think it's useful to think of various instances of political insanity across various cultures. It's just more interesting to me. I think you can reach more vertical conclusions that way, when you see similarities. But I mean, I'm also into looking at the individual (probably more so than you are). As someone who's not looking for truth it doesn't seem pointless to me, because I just like sort of relishing the richness of the world.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I don't mean that I think people ought to live in a bubble and just think a lot and that this will get them any closer to 'truth'. I mean, of course it won't. I don't know if fiction balances it out, but then, I can't write fiction.

It's been said that there are three logical ways of drawing conclusions--induction, deduction, and abduction. As far as I understand them (again, not a philosopher), induction is when you have a lot of 'concrete' things, you have instances as your logical premises, and you conclude from those instances some general regularity. It requires perception to be true. Deduction is when you have some general law/regularity as part of your premises, and you can derive from it something that must be true if the premises are true, possibly about individual instances. Deduction depends on true premises and the validity of the logical form, rather than perception. Anyway, abduction is the 'logic of hypothesis'. It comes from seeing similarities in things and concluding that it's possible that they might have some other relation. That's sorta vague, you ought to get it from someone other than me if you actually care, but yeah.

The point is that all three are necessary for good scientific process, and abduction is the most similar of all of them to the way art works. It has the greatest potential for error, yet it's the only way of reaching something better than generalizations about the data, of getting at explanatory principles. It's still subject to test, to falsification, but it's the most capable of getting beyond the data, which are interpretable in oh-so-many ways. Peirce and Bateson both demand this sort of thinking of science, which is why I really admire them.

"I am quite sure that a young man who spends his time exclusively in the laboratory of physics or chemistry or biology, is in danger of profiting but little more from his work than if he were an apprentice in a machine shop."
-Peirce

Bateson has explicitly said that inductive thinking and the value placed on prediction has hindered the social sciences in figuring out any fundamental principles. And so that's all I mean about thinking only about concrete things. They're there, they need to be accounted for, theory is bullshit if it isn't tied to them, but scientific investigation needs more than that to progress.

I wasn't trying to explain insanity in politicians. I was just saying how I would define insanity, which is something like, 'that which doesn't follow cultural logic/knowledge/habit and offers no other explanation for itself but mental defect.' Of course to look at its actual relevance to politics, you'd have to look across cultures or whatever else might be helpful. I was trying to avoid actually making a hypothesis.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

well, I don't disagree with any of that.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

well, that's why i wrote, "I don't think we disagree as much about "certain terms" as you think we do...and I was excited about that and going to respond to your other comments."