Policy and Poetry

Policy makes Society, Poetry makes the Soul.

The Problem with Class (And Thinking It’s not Important)

National myths serve a purpose. They may have little basis in fact, but as the political theorist Benedict Anderson observed, all nation states are “imagined communities” conjured by people, most strangers to one another, who perceive themselves as belonging under the same sovereign umbrella. Such imagination relies on myths to ensure some measure of cohesion, however fragile, of groups of people that otherwise might not see themselves as one.

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July 3rd, 2009 Permalink No Comments »

Policy

An Approaching Storm

June 25th, 2009

Images of Iranians at the barricades give hope that the yoke of clerical authoritarianism might be dramatically tossed aside in Tehran. Iran’s influence is enormous, and just as its Islamic revolution reverberated around the region, so too could another Persian upheaval, only this time promising greater pluralism. But change in Iran may well bode far more darkly for its regional neighbors.

Yes, But is He a Loving Husband?

June 21st, 2009

We Americans don’t so much pick our leaders as pick personalities. Qualifications matter but only so much. A talented technocrat or an unabashed intellectual would stand little chance of winning high office without charm and guile to match. It wasn’t always so…

Boundless Addiction

June 16th, 2009

Bibi swallowed hard on Sunday and endorsed the principle of a Palestinian state. The Nixon-in-China moment would seem to permanently put to rest the dream of Eretz Israel, the land promised by God to the Israelites encompassing the West Bank, but some sacred cows are not easily gored. Settlement growth in Judea and Samaria, the Israeli Prime Minister assured his audience, would continue. Such are addictions: they’re hard to break.

Afghanistan is Pashto for “Quagmire”

June 12th, 2009

Why is the US in Afghanistan? President Obama explained why earlier this year when announcing his new policy for the country. “If the Afghanistan government falls to the Taliban or allows al-Qaeda to go unchallenged,” he said, “that country will again be a base for terrorists…”

General Motors’ Bankruptcy: A Personal Story

June 8th, 2009

When it came to purchasing cars my parents were very patriotic. During my youth, the emblems on our car hoods were always American. In 1980, married and with children, I read in the car magazines the rave reviews on a new Chevrolet called “Citation.” It was a five-door hatchback, front-wheel drive, compact, and with good gas mileage from an impressively named engine, “The Iron Duke…”

Broken ‘Bama

June 4th, 2009

The “Round Mound of Rebound” pulls no punches. When asked at last year’s Democratic National Convention in Denver if he was contemplating running for governor of his home state of Alabama, former NBA star Charles Barkley bluntly said yes. Uncharacteristically for an aspiring politician, he then disparaged his own state, pointing out that Alabama ranks near the bottom when comparing states’ socio-economic indicators…

Fear and Loathing at the Alter

May 28th, 2009

Bigotry defies logic. Poor whites should have found common cause with disenfranchised blacks during Jim Crow, but prejudice got in the way. So it is with intolerance towards gays. Why it should rile some that homosexuals enjoy equal protection under the law by having the right to wed makes no sense. But hate never adds up.

Culture

Forgiveness

June 2nd, 2009

Jeannette Walls knows about forgiveness. It is not the central theme of her memoir, The Glass Castle, which portrays in heartbreaking detail her penurious upbringing. Her story has drawn comparisons to Frank McCourt’s own memoir, Angela’s Ashes, which begins with the observation, “When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all.”

In Praise of Polytheism

May 26th, 2009

A few months ago I read James Carroll’s Constantine’s Sword, a book that describes the long history of European anti-Semitism, from Christianity’s break with Judaism to the present. It is a sad and painful story of the abuse and persecution of Jews at the hands of the Catholic Church as well as its Protestant offspring.

Lurid Spectacle

May 18th, 2009

The Baddest Man on the Planet is talking. Mike Tyson, the former heavyweight champ whose scowl could wilt steel and whose animalistic violence intimidated far larger opponents, has turned introspective. Perhaps such reflection comes easily when holed up in a drug treatment facility.

The Jew as Tourist Attraction

March 30th, 2009

The end of history has arrived for European Jewry and it looks like Disneyland. Not bad given the journey. For centuries, Jews on the Old Continent suffered persecution and expulsion, punctuated, to be sure, by periods of acceptance, before the Thousand-Year Reich, however truncated, nearly finished them off for good…

Alien Man

March 26th, 2009

Gregor Samsa awakens one morning to find that he has become a giant insect. The recurring themes of persecution and alienation in Franz Kafka’s work, including The Metamorphosis, are manifested corporeally. Gregor’s grotesque transformation has rendered him a dung beetle and he’s treated accordingly…

Portrait of Shakespeare

March 23rd, 2009

In the news recently was a painting from the Cobbe family collection. It is a portrait of an aristocratic Elizabethan gentlemen that some have suggested is William Shakespeare. Since there are no definitive images of the great playwright and poet that were done in his lifetime, such a portrait, if truly of the great man, would be very well received among class-conscious Brits…

The Genesis of God

March 16th, 2009

Gods are found all over the world, from tropical rainforests to dry deserts, in grand cathedrals and on late-night revival television. They speak most of the world’s languages, look like variations of their worshipers, tell us to behave, threaten pain and suffering if we are bad, and perhaps best of all, offer to those who worship them a vision of a wonderful place where we shall live forever after death.

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