From FORA.tv: Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris talk about the less-known backstory of the Abu Ghraib scandal. You need to watch this.
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An interview with the satirist and former Republican speech writer Christopher Buckley, (author of the delightful Thank You For Smoking):
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Richard Rigby explains what’s happening in China:
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Robert Reich talks about the financial crisis:
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Weekend music selection: Yin; yang; hippies; commies.
Nettdebatter er ofte skuffende, fordi folk gir seg i det man har fått gravd seg ned til kjernen av saken, men her er to jeg nylig har hatt glede av:
Kort oppsummert: For det første, mot det andre.
In Nixonland, Rick Perlstein tells the story of why American conservatives and liberals hate each other. Europeans who sympathize with Democrats see only half the story: American politics is divided into two mutually antagonistic worldviews. And the form this split takes today was born in the 1960’s, when what seemed like a consensus on mainstream liberalism was fractured over race, war, and the counterculture. When this cultural civil war began, Democrats ruled the South and stood firmly behind the war in Vietnam. When the dust had settled, the Democratic party had torn itself apart, and conservative Republicans had risen up on the anger of the white middle class – people who didn’t want to be lectured to by establishment elites, and thought of war protesters as spoiled and cowardly traitors. The anger on display here, the hatred between young and old, is shocking. It’s not just the big acts of violence, it’s the everyday meanness, the sense of desperation, the sense that the other side will destroy the nation. Perlstein is a liberal and it shows, but he’s too young to have a personal stake in the 60’s, and too honest to make this a morality play. All sides are portrayed in ugly detail, and in some amoral sense Richard Nixon himself comes out of it the most sympathetic. He’s a dangerous crook, but he understands the voters, and boldly surfs their new anxieties to the White House. Like Nixon, Nixonland is mean and ugly and sadly relevant, (yes even to Norwegian politics).
“I still think we ought to take the dikes out now,” Nixon offered. “I think – will that drown people?”
“Zhat will drown about two hundred thousand people.”
“Oh, well, no, no. I’d rather use a nuclear bomb. Have you got that ready?”
“Zhat, I think, would be too much. Too much.”
“The nuclear bomb. Does that bother you? I just want you to think big, Henry, for Christ’s sakes!”
Kissinger paused, taken aback. He collected himself, eventually responding with the one thing he knew would talk the president down from his flight of fantasy: “I think we’re going to make it.” Until Election Day, he probably meant; Saigon would hold on at least until then.
- Rick Perlstein, Nixonland
Steven LeVine talks about the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist.
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Philip Pan talks about freedom and repression in China.
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Frank Wilczek explains the Large Hadron Collider. And there’s a silly LHC rap. Physics nerds are so awesome.
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“Anyone who appears on the streets of a city like Kent with long hair, dirty clothes, or barefooted deserves to be shot,” a Kent resident told a researcher.
“Do I have your permission to quote that?”
“You sure do. It would have been better if the Guard had shot the whole lot of them that morning.”
“But you had three sons there.”
“If they didn’t do what the Guards told them, they should have been mowed down.”
A letter to Life later that summer read, “It was a valuable object lesson to homegrown advocates of anarchy and revolution, regardless of age.”
Time had called the Silent Majority “not so much shrill as perplexed,” possessed of “a civics-book sense of decency.” Pity poor Time, whose America was but a memory.
- Rick Perlstein, Nixonland
At Northwestern, students carried a flag upside down, the symbol for distress. “A hefty man in work clothes,” according to Time, tried to grab it, saying, “That’s my flag! I fought for it! You have no right to it!” The kids started arguing. “There are millions of people like me,” he responded. “We’re fed up with your movement. You’re forcing us into it. We’ll have to kill you. All I can see is a lot of kids blowing a chance I never had.”
- Rick Perlstein, Nixonland
Jesse Venbrux makes strange little computer games and gives them away for free. Go have fun:
And much more.
“The president dictated eight memos outlining a public relations push-back. It was part of the foreign policy game. De-escalation was contingent on [North Vietnam] believing Nixon would escalate; which was contingent upon keeping presidential approval ratings high; which was contingent on the appearance of de-escalation. As one of the big syndicated columnists, Roscoe Drummond, observed, only grasping one-tenth of the complexity, unless Vietnam looked to be winding down, ‘popular opinion will roll over him as it did LBJ.’ At which Nixon thundered upon his printed news summary, ‘E&K – Tell him that RN is less affected by press criticism and opinion than any Pres in recent memory.’ Because he was the president most affected by press criticism and opinion of any president in recent memory. Which if known would make him look weak. And any escalatory bluff would be impossible. Which would keep him from credibility as a de-escalator; which would block his credibility as an escalator; which would stymie his ability to de-escalate; and then he couldn’t ‘win’ Vietnam – which in his heart he didn’t believe was possible anyway.
Through the looking glass with Richard Nixon: this stuff was better than LSD.”
- Rick Perlstein, Nixonland
“[NBC producer Lew Koch] was inordinately proud of what they’d produced – 1968’s version of Bull Connor’s fire hoses: glorious moral theater, naked evil being visited upon innocents. He repaired to NBC headquarters at the Merchandise Mart after that first broadcast filled with self-satisfaction. A sympathizer with the antiwar movement, he thought he had advanced their cause considerably. The assignment editor asked him to help with the phones; the switchboard was overwhelmed.
The first call: ‘I saw those cops beating the kids – right on for the cops!’
Another: ‘You fucking commies!’ He was referring to NBC – as if they had instigated the riots.
The calls kept coming, dozens. They came to all the networks, for days upon days. Some people saw noble cops innocently defending themselves. Others accused the networks of hiring cops to beat up kids to spice up the show. Lew Koch was so shaken by the experience, he left for a soul-searching six-month leave of absence.”
- Rick Perlstein, Nixonland
“Godfrey Hodgson wrote of the media about-face: ‘They had been united, as rarely before, by their anger at Mayor Daley. Now they learned that the great majority of Americans sided with Daley, and against them. It was not only the humiliation of discovering that they had been wrong; there was also alarm at the discovery of their new unpopularity. Bosses and cops, everyone knew, were hated; it seemed that newspapers and television were hated even more.'”
- Rick Perlstein, Nixonland