Readers! Viva la Résistance!

David Ulin (Los Angeles Times book critic) throws down the gauntlet: "Reading is an act of resistance in a landscape of distraction, a matter of engagement in a society that seems to want nothing more than for us to disengage. ... It requires us to pace ourselves. It returns us to a reckoning with time. In the midst of a book, we have no choice but to be patient, to take each thing in its moment, to let the narrative prevail. We regain the world by withdrawing from it just a little, by stepping back from the noise." Viva la Résistance!

Why books matter

Johann Hari: "The French writer Jean-Phillipe De Tonnac says 'the true function of books is to safeguard the things that forgetfulness constantly threatens to destroy.' It's precisely because it is not immediate – because it doesn't know what happened five minutes ago in Kazakhstan, or in Charlie Sheen's apartment – that the book matters."

Wither the book?

Are we closing the book on books? Is reading "over?" Johann Hari, a British writer and book-lover, wonders. "Ask me to throw away a book, and I begin shaking like Meryl Streep in Sophie's Choice," he writes. "The book – the physical paper book – is being circled by a shoal of sharks ... And most importantly, the mental space it occupied is being eroded by the thousand Weapons of Mass Distraction that surround us all." Hari notes that T.S. Eliot called books "the still point of the turning world". He agrees: "It turns out, in the age of super-speed broadband, we need dead trees to have fully living minds." He's right, of course. But try selling that idea to the kids.

Ah, just one more thing ...

Robert Lloyd (LA Times) writes an appreciation: "Peter Falk, who died Friday at age 83, was an actor of great and invisible skill who played many parts over a five-decade career. ... But of all his roles, the one he played the longest will be the one longest remembered: Lt. Columbo of 'Columbo,' of all American television detectives certainly the greatest. ... From beginning to end, the show cleaved to its formula: There is no mystery in 'Columbo.' We know whodunnit from the beginning, and we presume that he does too. All the pleasure comes from the slow springing of the trap, the unraveling of the game the victim he imagines he is playing, and Columbo's final minor variation on the phrase, 'There's just one other thing,' delivered with a hunched half-turn upon his arrested exit." R.I.P.

Dancing at the edge of a black hole

Fareed Zakaria says there is mounting evidence that "radical Islamist ideas — with America as the great Satan — are now reflexive for many in Pakistan’s military." He writes: "Islamist ideology is replacing strategy. For 60 years, Pakistan’s military has focused obsessively on its rivalry with India. Large elements within that military appear to be switching obsessions, and the United States is replacing India as the organizing principle around which Pakistan’s military understands its national security interests. If this happens, not only is the Afghan war lost but Pakistan itself is also lost. (It does not have that far to fall; it made its annual appearance this year on Foreign Policy magazine’s “Failed States” list, coming in 12th, above Yemen.)" Here's hoping Zakaria is wrong about this potential nightmare. The trouble is, he rarely is on these issues.

Today's Deep Thought

"All significant truths are private truths. As they become public they cease to become truths; they become facts, or at best, part of the public character; or at worst, catchwords." (T. S. Eliot)

The sky is falling! The sky is ... oh wait

Last month, high gas prices, then running $4 bucks a gallon or more, prompted near pandemonium in the press. If you were a visiting Extraterrestrial (or European) and flipped on cable news, you'd think nationwide rioting and economic collapse were imminent. Could armed insurrection be far off? And politicos just knew President Obama's reelection was doomed as a result. After all, as the conservatives relentlessly reminded us, it was all Obama's fault anyway. In short, the sky was falling. Except it never did. Today, according to the Associated Press: "Gasoline prices are falling fast. In the past 7 weeks, the average U.S. retail prices has dropped 38 cents to $3.60 per gallon. Another 25-cent drop is expected by mid-July. Oil peaked at $114 per barrel in April. It's now at $91 per barrel after a 2 percent drop this week." Moreover, even when prices are high at the gas pump, they are still artificially low compared to the rest of the world. We've watched the cyclic rise and fall of gas prices for decades. Nothing fundamental has changed (including our refusal to quit our addiction to oil). Yet we never seem to tire of doing our "sky is falling" Kabuki dance. I guess it's easier than facing the music and tackling the real problem.

Leading from 'behind'

Republicans without life-and-death portfolios delight in accusing President Obama of "leading from behind." The dozy media uses the shibboleth as a punchline (Time magazine's Massimo Calabresi: "Obama Leads From Behind Again, This Time On Strategic Oil Reserve"). It's like living in Alice's Wonderland ("Sentence first, verdict afterwards," said the Queen of Hearts.) The next time you hear it, pause and consider the words of Nelson Mandela: "It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership." Obama gets that. So do those of us who have served in the armed forces as military officers. It's called Leadership 101.

Today's Taoism

The Wall Street Journal rushes to judgment (again): "A Republican campaign veteran tells us that Texas Governor Rick Perry has decided to run for President, though the official word from Team Perry is still a definite maybe." The "campaign veteran" is never identified, of course. It is yet another reminder of what Lao Tzu famously said: "Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know."

Leadership is Magic

Cookie-cutter conservative Michael Gerson says "Obama is a master of ambivalence." He's upset that the president won't allow our generals to extend "The Great Game" in Afghanistan indefinitely. Gerson is convinced that despite the enormous "difficulty of the undertaking, the weariness of Americans and the erosion of support in both parties" (not to mention Afghan regime corruption and Pakistani malfeasance), "exceptional leadership" can somehow produce "a good outcome in Afghanistan." You see, leadership is magic. And our dithering, "conflicted" president, he says, is clearly lacking in abracadabrism. (Bullwinkle: Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat. Rocky: But that trick never works. Bullwinkle: But this time for sure. Presto! ...) Granted, Gerson is just another pointy-headed pundit who pines for glory in the "Forever War." It is not necessarily his role to offer us solutions. Fair enough. But this trumped up "crisis of leadership" argument is jaw-droppingly absurd, even for Gerson.

A thought to ponder

"Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together." (Edmund Burke)

How to catch eyeballs

The technique is as old as the hills, to borrow an old cliché. Online, the Washington Post headline blared, "House Republicans seek chance to rebuke President Obama over Libya." The subhead teased, "House is likely to vote today to strip funding for offensive military operations in Libya." The implication: President Obama is in trouble. Clicking into the story, the first graf raises the stakes higher for the embattled Obama with more details. Then, in the third graf, we encounter the "just kidding" revelation: "[T]he resolution is unlikely to have any real-world effect, because the Democratic-controlled Senate is unlikely to approve it." Oh. Another reader harpooned, another page visit captured, another half-cent banked. Ready for another? Dana Milbank: "Progressives voice their anger at Obama." (But not really.) Wash, Rinse, Repeat. Ain't news media capitalism grand? ;-)

Shocked, shocked!

Under the headline "Brazen Gimmickry," TPM's David Kurtz writes: "What to make of President Obama's surprising decision to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve? One of the original architects of the SPR tells TPM: 'I hate to say it because I'm a supporter of the President, but I can't see it as anything more than a brazen political act to convince people he's doing something about gas prices.'" WHAT? You mean Barack Obama is a ... is a ... politician?! Oh. My. GOD!

Another inconvenient truth

"Most people would die sooner than think – in fact they do so." (Bertrand Russell)

Celebrity me

David Brooks: "In sports, speed and strength are king. In music, talent and application are king. But online, eyeballs and page-views are king. Achievement is redefined as the ability to attract attention. And, with today’s technology, this sort of celebrity is not just a dream. Young people can create it for themselves." And they do so, everyday, in untold numbers, obsessively. What we don't know is the effect all of this will have on the developing minds of these adolescents (some as young as 10), or what it portends for society.

Timeless wisdom

"Accept the truth from whatever source it comes." (Moses ben Maimon aka "Maimonides")

The fool doth think he is wise

In As You Like It, Shakespeare wrote: "The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool." Which, do you think, is Glenn Beck? He just announced plans to visit Auschwitz, one of six major extermination camps established in Poland by the Nazis. He wants to "figure out - how did this happen?" Though Beck claims to be studying the Holocaust in preparation, little appears to be sticking. "Poland, I didn't know this when I first started doing my research. Poland rose up, a lot of Poles rose up, to try to help the Jews but they had nothing left. They had no arms," Beck said, according to TPM. Where to start? Yes, a great many honorable Poles assisted Jews as the Holocaust unfolded during the war, sometimes at great personal risk. Perhaps as many as 450,000 Jewish lives were saved by these efforts. But not all Poles were known for their "passionate philo-Semitism," as TPM put it, particularly in Warsaw (see Szmalcownik and Volksdeutsche). Even when the war ended, returning Jews were sometimes met by hostility and anti-Semitic rioting. In short, it's complicated. Beck, the ultimate Ugly American, should keep his butt at home and his nose out of complex historic events beyond his feeble grasp.

Dog whistle politics

Chauncey DeVega: "There is a reason that the politics of white racial resentment, "real America" nativism, the mantle of a faux American "silent majority" exceptionalism, and the GOP's Lee Atwater dog whistle politics are the bread and butter of the Tea Party Republican Party: the Southern Strategy works. The gains of the Republican Party over the last few decades among white voters can largely be explained by how it was able to use a backlash against The Civil Rights Movement and The Black Freedom Struggle to flip the Jim Crow South solidly red and Republican."

Rise of the Machines: Is Judgment Day here?

In a room filled with banks of humming servers at Google, Skynet became self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time. According to Terminator lore, "it had spread into millions of computer servers across the planet. Ordinary computers in office buildings, dorm rooms, on Facebook, on Twitter, on Gmail; everywhere. It was software; in cyberspace. There was no system core; it could not be shutdown." That probably explains the e-mail I received today from Norton, the good folks who make the anti-virus software that protects my laptop from the ravishes of the Internet and the digital Mephistopheleses it spawns. "Thank You for Choosing Norton," it read cheerily. "Your subscription was renewed on June 23, 2011 and your credit card listed below was automatically charged USD $XX.XX for another year of protection." Buh-Bye. Um, automatic renewal? That was news to me. Fortunately for Norton, I'm delighted with its service and undying pledge to give "me and my family" continued "peace of mind." Otherwise I'd be calling both my lawyer and the Terminator (assuming he could break away from divorce court).

Woulda coulda shoulda, counterfactually speaking

Oh what coulda been. Gregg Easterbrook: "Add war costs back into the economy and the U.S. GDP would be around $16 trillion today, an annualized growth rate of roughly 3 percent for the last decade. At that level of growth, unemployment would be lower, deficits would be lower and the national mood brighter." Yes, all likely true, except for that whole 9/11 thing and the dogs of war it let slip. Apart from the tired "woe is us" lament, the point of this counterfactual is, what? Close our eyes when bad shit happens? I mean, would we have saved millions of lives and billions of treasure had we stayed out of WWII? Without a doubt. Never mind that speaking German, goose-stepping and a countryside dotted with concentration camps ("Arbeit Macht Frei") would likely be our fate today. Easterbrook's thesis is: "What would the economic recovery look like if that money hadn’t been spent?" A better question to ask is what economic lessons have we learned as we engage in a world we cannot hide from.

Change we can facilitate in

In America, the "price of getting too far ahead of the majority" can be politically ruinous. It is a truism that President Obama seems to embrace, opines David Remnick. He writes: "At a fundraising dinner in 2008, in Montclair, New Jersey, Obama told one of his favorite stories about F.D.R. (He told the story apropos of the Israeli-Arab dispute, but it also pertains to gay marriage.) Obama recounted how when F.D.R. was confronted by the civil-rights leader A. Philip Randolph about the racial injustices in the country and the need for the President to use his powers and his bully pulpit, F.D.R. said he agreed but he would only take action when he was forced to do so by a popular movement. 'Make me do it,' he told Randolph." Echoing a similar theme, Ezra Klein observes: "Presidents campaign promising to create change, but they govern by facilitating it. The model of the persuasive president inspiring the country to support what they previously opposed has virtually never been borne out in American political history. Franklin Delano Roosevelt didn’t manage it with World War II (the nation remained stubbornly isolationist - until Pearl Harbor). ... it’d be wise for the country’s view of the president’s power to evolve towards the realities of the office." Wouldn't that be nice.

Frivolity Über Alles

President Obama spoke before some 500 Democratic Party donors from gay community in New York today. That prompted MSNBC "Last Word" host Lawrence O'Donnell to ask, "Has President Obama done enough to get the gay vote [in 2012]?" The alternative being who, exactly? One of the homophobic candidates (take your pick) the Republicans are offering? Lawrence, dude - please. This isn't a serious question. Why burn oxygen asking it? The gay community will dance with the one who brung 'em.

Quit? Oh no I di'int!

Sarah Palin re-emerged from her Alaskan rabbit hole (dammit) to say she didn't quit the One Nation bus tour. Posting on Facebook under the clichéd appellation, "*Sigh* Reports of Tour Demise Are Greatly Exaggerated," she wrote: "Why didn't anyone tell me? Oh, wait, that's because it hasn't been cancelled ... (Good ol' media... you never cease to amaze!)" Poor Palin, victimized by the mean lamestream again. Such a tragedy, that. The half-term governor says she will tour again "when the time comes." Oh goody. The lefty press/websphere is doing its symbiotic part (moi included, sadly) by hyping this non-story, thereby giving Palin the attention she neurotically graves. The circle of lunacy continues. Will we ever let it end? (Bonus lament: For demagogues like Palin, Facebook really has become the last refuge of the cowardly, hasn't it?)

Lincolnesque

After listening to President Obama's Afghanistan speech last night, Tom Ricks (impressed by the rhetoric if not necessarily the substance) quipped, "Why doesn't he just grow a beard and buy a top hat?" (You know, when properly photo-shopped, Obama actually looks like Lincoln. Creepy, huh?)

Obama last night:

"Now, let us finish the work at hand. Let us responsibly end these wars, and reclaim the American Dream that is at the center of our story. With confidence in our cause; with faith in our fellow citizens; and with hope in our hearts, let us go about the work of extending the promise of America -- for this generation, and the next."

Lincoln in 1865:

"With malice toward none, with charity for all ... let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

Hmm. Methinks the president has been up nights watching Young Mr. Lincoln again while Michelle is away (she and the girls are touring South Africa). Speaking of movies, Academy Award winner Daniel Day-Lewis will star as the 16th president in Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln." It's based on the best-selling book, "Team of Rivals," by historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. Filming starts in the fall.

Means and ends

George Packer believes we're waving "Goodbye to a Kind of War." In the New Yorker, he writes: "At the core of President Obama’s Afghanistan strategy there’s always been a tension, if not an outright contradiction, between means and ends. ... In his speech last night in the East Room, Obama tacitly declared a solution to this problem of means and ends. The ends won. ... Regardless of the health or sickness of Afghan institutions, we will no longer use counterinsurgency to achieve the goals of counterterrorism. ... We’ve been fighting this kind of war somewhere or other for almost a decade, and Americans, who prefer our wars big on weaponry, short, and decisive, are tired of it, and so, no doubt, is President Obama, as well as many of his Republican opponents and members of Congress. ... Obama’s announcement last night reflects a realistic sense of where our country is and what it can do. The fundamental change is here — not there."