In his new book, Beyond a House Divided: The Moral Consensus Ignored by Washington, Wall Street, and the Media, Carl Anderson examines a mountain of polling statistics and has some surprising news. Anderson writes, “In dealing with many high profile issues, we have found consensus where conventional wisdom would have us believe it is most unlikely: on the issues of religion in public life, abortion, marriage, and the role of government, among others.”
Anderson writes that Americans, by a margin of nearly two to one, share a common moral compass and are, as a result, at odds not with each other, but rather with governmental, media, and financial institutions. We care much more about right and wrong than we do about right and left.
. . . . . . .
While documents like the Manhattan Declaration are regularly smeared as the work of partisans and extremists, quite the opposite is true. Carl Anderson’s book makes the clear case that if you believe in restricting abortion, in traditional marriage, and in other traditional values you are, whether Republican, Democrat or Independent, part of the great American consensus.
It reminds me of what Sociologist Peter Berger used to say: If India is the most religious nation in the world, and Sweden the most irreligious, America is a nation of Indians governed by Swedes. We, in fact, are in the mainstream. It's the elite who are out of step. So if we focus our energies on working together, we can bring about the great civic and national renewal so many of us seek.
Phi Beta Iota: Emphasis added. This is not news to the informed public. It has long been known that the 80-20 rule applies–that most agree on 80% and disagree on 20%. Focusing the public “debate” on the 20% is a common means of creating wedge issues that portray a difference between Republicans and Democrats that is cosmetic at best. 2012 is a potential time of Awakening and Emergence.
NIGHTWATCH EXTRACT Tunisia: Update. The Tunisian army fired into the air to disperse protesters from the headquarters of former President Ben Ali's Constitutional Democratic Rally (CDR) in Tunis. The CDR has been disbanded but some demonstrators want the building razed. The state of emergency remains in effect.
The interim government met for the first time today. The session concluded with a number of decrees.
The government ordered a general amnesty for all political prisoners, reduction of the curfew everywhere except Tunis, and the reopening of schools and universities next Monday. It also agreed to recognize all previously banned political parties and declared three days of mourning for the 78 people killed during the recent uprising.
In his address, the interim president and former Speaker of the Parliament stressed the temporary character of this government, and determined its tasks to be:
– to make sure that all enterprises get back to normal business;
– to prepare for the forthcoming presidential elections.
NIGHTWATCH Comment: The interim president and the prime minister both resigned from the RCD, in which both had been longstanding members. They directed other hold-over cabinet members to resign in today's cabinet session.
The political activities are almost surreal. The holdover political leaders apparently think a “do-over” will be sufficient to correct the authoritarian excesses of the past 23 years. Thus far Tunisians are acquiescing in this bizarre exercise. Meanwhile, the economic grievances that gave rise to street demonstrations remain unaddressed.
Phi Beta Iota: The well-mannered unethical among us will be quick to scorn the above headline, but the comment says it all. Buckminster Fuller was among the first in modern history to point out that the White House was theater, and many others have addressed the huge gap between reality and the images that Wall Street and Washington seek to communicate. Advanced cyber-information operations have been perfected by the financial crime network within which the two political parties are fully complicit co-conspirators. There are 63 other parties in America that have been disenfranchised, and the electoral system is as corrupt as any abroad including that of Tunisia. The current financial and political leadership of the USA really thinks that a “do-over” (the other term is “make-over”) will quiet things down. This isn't just moving deck chairs on the sinking Titanic; this is re-arranging deck chairs floating in the icy waters of the North and pretending the ship of state is still there.
The Clear-Hold-Build (C-H-B) strategy was first enunciated enthusiastically during the Bush Administration as the new counterinsurgency strategy to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. Actually, this strategy was merely an unimaginative regurgitation of Marshall Lautey's “tache d'huile” (oil spot) strategy used to quell native uprisings during France colonial wars at the end of the 19th Century and the first decade of the 20th Century.
The recent escalation in Afghanistan may be taking the unimaginative C-H-B soundbyte to the extremities of its logical absurdity, if the attached report by Spencer Ackerman is correct: Apparently, our forces applied the C-H-B strategy literally to a small Afghan village in Kandahar's Arghandab River Valley of Taliban by using 25 tons of air delivered explosives to CLEAR it off the map (see photo). Ackerman goes to suggest HOLDING will be accomplished because we will spend one million dollars to (re) BUILD it. As part of our cultural sensitivity strategy to HOLD onto the Afghan's hearts and minds during the BUILD leg of the strategy, our troops are holding “construction shuras” with the villagers to compensate them for their loses.
Think of the C-H-B strategy as the Petraeus equivalent of destroying a village to save it — sound familiar?
An American-led military unit pulverized an Afghan village in Kandahar's Arghandab River Valley in October, after it became overrun with Taliban insurgents. It's hard to understand how turning an entire village into dust fits into America's counterinsurgency strategy – which supposedly prizes the local people's loyalty above all else.
An American-led military unit pulverized an Afghan village in Kandahar's Arghandab River Valley in October, after it became overrun with Taliban insurgents. It's hard to understand how turning an entire village into dust fits into America's counterinsurgency strategy – which supposedly prizes the local people's loyalty above all else.
But it's the latest indication that Gen. David Petraeus, the counterinsurgency icon, is prosecuting a frustrating war with surprising levels of violence. Some observers already fear a backlash brewing in the area.
Paula Broadwell, a West Point graduate and Petraeus biographer, described the destruction of Tarok Kolache in a guest post for Tom Ricks' Foreign Policy blog. Or, at least, she described its aftermath: Nothing remains of Tarok Kolache after Lt. Col. David Flynn, commander of Combined Joint Task Force 1-320th, made a fateful decision in October.
Egypt: A spokesman for Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood announced that the group is making five urgent demands which the Egyptian government should comply with in order to avert several crises, according to a 19 January posting on the Muslim Brotherhood website.
Muhammad Mursi said the group wants Cairo to revoke the state of emergency, dissolve the People's Assembly and hold free and fair elections, amend the constitutional articles that led to vote rigging in Egypt's last elections, hold presidential elections according to those amendments, and fire the current government and form a national unity government responsive to the Egyptian people's demands.
Comment: The Brothers are belatedly trying to take advantage of the Tunisian uprising. Mubarak could die at any time, but as long as he possesses his faculties he will not fall for lies by his personal security chief, as did Tunisia's Ben Ali, and will not be intimidated by the Brotherhood.
Phi Beta Iota: Dictators will fall before faux democracies because they are on the thinnest ice in the face of angry connected young people with legitimate grievances. The PowerShift that Alvin and Heidi Toffler anticipated in the 19990's has begun to occur. The other threat to civilization can be found in fundamentalists and relativists–those who treat faith as a cult or faith as a convenience. It is a mistake to regard the Muslim Brotherhood as threatening–they are more of an indications & warning. When the right precipitant comes along, Egypt will fall, and the other 43 dictators will follow in relatively quick (ten years) time. Now is when US covert action could shine, but first the White House and Congress and the military-industrial complex must be weaned of their love of dictators. This is also a time when holistic all-source analysis could shine, helping guide a 180 degree turn away from dictators and toward democracy in time for the 2012 “Awakening.”
America is divided by two very different views of government
Saturday, January 15, 2011
— as usual for him, is a clear and articulate presentation of the Order Left position. Like his counterparts on the Order Right, it is long on proscription and short on empathy—lots of shoulds, theys, and inevitables, some but few mights, wes, and possibilities. In this particular instance Order Left Krugman attacks his equally narrow Order Right adversaries over taxes and health as examples of a general indictment of political failure and takes no notice of the free right or the free left.
I admire Krugman as an exponent of his confined view and, when I accept his premises, often agree with him. Nonetheless, he leaves out or minimizes, in this and other columns the fact that one of the biggest divides we face as a nation is the divide between a relatively united country and a significantly unrepresentative politics.
When I originally read this Column I picked out three points I thought were key to Krugman’s inability to successfully address the situation facing all Americans which he seems to want to do.
North Korea-China: North Korea will develop the islet of Hwanggumpyong on the Yalu River Delta linking Sinuiju with the Chinese city of Dandong as a special economic zone in cooperation with Chinese businessmen, Chosun Ilbo reported 18 January. North Korean Cabinet already approved a law on the development that will be announced in March or April.
Comment: This is another example of Chinese business tutelage for North Korea. All other special economic zones have either failed for lack of investors or been troubled by North Korean government meddling. In the last category are the Mount Kumgang resort on the east coast and the Kaesong joint industrial park, north of Panmunjom.
One would surmise that a joint venture with the Chinese would be relieved of the unpredictability of North Korean leadership whims, which have undermined the profitability of the joint ventures with the South Koreans. More importantly, every Chinese economic lifeline tossed into the North Korean economic morass is a burden on China and a restraint on North Korea.
The Chinese are moving slowly, but steadily based on their understanding of the magnitude of North Korean economic mismanagement. Thus far, they appear to be helping North Korean enterprises that have prospects of profitability, such as textiles, and Chinese enterprises that benefit from North Korean geography, such as ports and infrastructure on the Sea of Japan.
North Korea never has been self-reliant and its condition of dependency on the global economy has steadily deepened under Kim Chong-il. The Chinese appear determined to salvage what they can and rebuild the rest of North Korea in a different, more sustainable direction, slowly, by converting some North Korean activities into extensions of China's economy.
Phi Beta Iota: The Chinese are out-thinking and out-maneuvering the USA on all fronts, and in a fascinating twist, may be egging the USA on to the same military-industrial death march that led to the end of the Soviet Union. The above development should be studied in relation to WASHINGTON RULES: US-Korea-China-NK NAFTA. In both instances, leaders are making strategic moves for reasons they consider valid, but that have nothing to do with the well-being of their respective publics.
