Miyamoto Musashi, The Shrike

Politics.

Since ideologies amount to differing ways of defining the world – different accounts of what counts as a fact, as evidence, and as a sufficient definition — ideologies necessarily come into conflict not only in principle but especially in human behavior and interaction. Where ideologies are in accord, disagreement may be worked out in terms of commonly accepted and acknowledged principles of conflict resolution.

Two people committed, for example, to the guidance of formal logic, to empirical data (confirmed to a high degree of probability), and to a foundational set of axiomatic principles have a prospect of settling any disagreements that may arise between them. All such disagreements would be, by definition, a consequence of the incorrect application of logic, incorrect evaluation of data, or misapprehension of axioms. Likewise, two adherents to a particular subset of a particular religion would have greater chances of successful conflict resolution than members of two mutually exclusive faiths would have.

People whose most fundamental interpretive commitments are defined by conflicting assumptions about the nature of experience cannot, in principle, resolve the differences in a way that comports with the conflicting worldviews in question. Thus, pragmatism inclines people to deviate from consistency with their assumptions at least insofar as doing so makes coexistence and a degree of toleration possible. The negotiation of this compromise we call "politics".

Note that while practical matters force a negotiation of conflicting perspectives in terms of compromise, practical matters are not the only cause of compromise. Thus political compromise is interwoven with compromise that occurs for other reasons. For this reason, political thought and action are not reducible to an algorithm.

Politics always involves not merely negotiation but also discord. The discord provides impetus to the protection of ideological and presuppositional interests so that compromise does not lead to self-obliteration. The self-protective impetus of ideological aggression is captured well in remarks made by the seventeenth-century kensei Miyamoto Musashi:

When we are fighting with the enemy, even when it can be seen that we can win on the surface with the benefit of the Way, if his spirit is not extinguished, he may be beaten superficially yet undefeated in spirit deep inside. With this principle of 'penetrating the depths' we can destroy the enemy's spirit in its depths, demoralising him by quickly changing our spirit. This often occurs.

~ Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings, trans. Victor Harris, (Woodstock: The Overlook Press, 1974), p. 81. (at Amazon)

Musashi here calls attention to the notion that winning the battle and winning the war are two different and not necessarily concomitant things. Redrawing the geographic and political boundaries which define the dominion of ideologically opposed bodies of people is a compromise which is provisional at best. The impetus for self-definition provides also for other-negation, not necessarily in a violent mode, but always in a mode that removes the threat of self-negation. Miyamoto Musashi's comment is directed toward this idea. If one protagonist in a conflict successfully eradicates the ideological underpinnings of the opponent, the impetus for self-definition is sated, and the threat to self is abated.

It is perhaps most characteristic of politics that, although the goal of self-preservation motivates every negotiation, the rhetoric and intercourse of political participants is not necessarily a rhetoric of violence or conflict. Approchement, appeasement, aggiornamento, détente, sympathy, aggression — all of these terms can characterize political interactions which at their core have the goal not of compromise but of dominion. Says Musashi,

When you decide to attack, keep calm and dash in quickly, forestalling the enemy. Or you can advance seemingly strongly but with a reserved spirit, forestalling him with the reserve. Alternatively, advance with as strong a spirit as possible, and when you reach the enemy move with your feet a little quicker than normal, unsettling him and overwhelming him sharply. Or, with your spirit calm, attach with a feeling of constantly crushing the enemy, from first to last. The spirit is to win in the depths of the enemy. These are all ken no sen (to set him up).

~ same, p. 71.

For good or ill, commitment to a perception of truth always entails hegemony, and denial of truth is itself a commitment that entails hegemony. So, politics is always Kendo, the way of the sword, and ideology determines whether and in what way that sword is metaphorical.

(Note: this piece is from spring of 1994, when the intarwebs consisted of Usenet and Scott Yanoff's list, which was incredibly useful in tandem with Lynx in a world of gophers and Archie.)

Politics are like real-time strategy games. They involve a careful gathering of resources and split-second decisions of their use. Ideally, the combination of tactical strategy and a more urgent pace than turn based would produce a typical match like speed chess; exhibiting fast pace, intense thinking, and tactical strategy. In reality though, the games comprise of memorized build orders and a game pace so fast nearly all strategy is thrown out the window. The only people who triumph are those losers who play for hours and hours on end; memorizing hotkeys while their vocabulary atrophies into Three Letter Acronyms. Does that sound familiar?

We've just had a historic primary season, or so I'm told. And you, dear reader, are probably sitting there in front of your computer, empty beer bottles strewn about, thinking, 'Now what the hell just happened? And where are my pants?'

Well hang on, I'm about to explain it to you, using the hyper-violent RTS Dawn of War, by Relic entertainment. By the way, your pants are behind the toilet. Go put them on before reading this; no one should have to see that shit.

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Declan McCullagh has the story of the surprising entry of Big Corn and the corn farmers' lobby into the Google – Yahoo – Microsoft merger brouhaha.  Why would Big Corn care about such a thing?  Why would a business which receives so much anticompetitive largesse from the government want to spoil the anticompetitive party for other industries?

The answer, sadly, will not surprise you.  McCullagh provides a good investigation and overview of the way many supposed "grassroots" groups are formed and operate, and a look at the industry which has become known as the "astroturf" movement.

Probably because It would be a royal pain to determine whether Exxon, Mobil, Duke Energy and other subsidized oil and power companies deserve precedence over the institutionalized duopoly on power held by the Democratic and Republican parties.

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Former United States Congressman Bob Barr (R-Mars, L-Ceres) is about to bigfoot his way into Presidential politics, courtesy of the Libertarian Party. I'm not sure what Barr is best known for in party circles, but in the world at large he's known for his role as "House manager" in the Clinton impeachment effort, a deep fear of witches, a very mixed though ultimately favorable record on civil liberties, and his smokin' hot mustache.

There's even talk of a Bob Barr-Mike Gravel (or depending on your preference) a Mike Gravel-Bob Barr dream ticket. All of this leads libertarians, anarchists, goldbugs, and Bilderberg agonists to the question: What is to be done about Ron Paul?

Hillary vows to fight "like Rocky."

"When it comes to finishing a fight, Rocky and I have a lot in common. I never quit."

Tortured metaphors aside, any Philadelphian could tell Senator Clinton that Rocky Balboa had the living snot knocked out of him by an urbane black man, only to lose the bout.

My hometown paper took a bit of a credibility hit in March, what with reporting that the artist formerly known as Puff Daddy was behind the 1994 shooting of Tupac Shakur. That would be the non-fatal shooting, by the way:

NEW YORK — Cameras flashed as paramedics carried the victim into the glare of Times Square on a stretcher. Blood seeped through bandages from five gunshot wounds.

Tupac Shakur had been beaten, shot and left for dead at the Quad Recording Studios on New York's 7th Avenue. As he was borne to a waiting ambulance through a swarm of paparazzi on Nov. 30, 1994, the rap star thrust his middle finger into the air.

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K.C. Johnson's blog Durham in Wonderland was an invaluable resource throughout the disgraceful Duke lacrosse case, and his writing had a substantial impact on how that grim matter eventually played out. Though the heart of the case is over — the players exonerated, the dishonest prosecutor disgraced — Johnson still updates the blog periodically. Two recent entries are worth a look — this entry noting the Presidential candidates' positions on the Duke lacrosse case, and more importantly this impressive and useful glossary of many different aspects of the case, with links to Johnson's coverage. It's a must-read for anyone interested in the case.

Via the (in this case entirely justifiably) Angry Asian Man, I see this gem from Planet Texas.

There's a dispute because Texas' new proposed reading curriculum from K-12 only has 4 books concerning Hispanic culture out of 150. Hispanics make up about 25% of Texans. Dig the response of the chairman of the Texas Board of Education:

Don McLeroy, board chairman, said Friday he couldn't comment about the list because he hadn't reviewed which books made it into the document.

However, McLeroy said he directed a group of experts to add examples of "good literature" to the list. He said students should spend their time in English class learning English and reading literature that will help prepare them for college.

"What good does it do to put a Chinese story in an English book?" he said. "You learn all these Chinese words, OK. That's not going to help you master … English. So you really don't want Chinese books with a bunch of crazy Chinese words in them. Why should you take a child's time trying to learn a word that they'll never ever use again?"

He added that some words — such as chow mein — might be useful.

Wow, Don, you really took the hat trick of cowardly, stupid, and obnoxious there. Cowardly because it's perfectly obvious that you are actually talking about Spanish, not Chinese — you just don't have the stones to address the dispute directly. Stupid because if you don't recognize how knowing a few words of Spanish in Texas could come in useful, you're a dim-bulb. And obnoxious because — well, I'll let you puzzle that out, I don't want to tire you.

Today Eugene Volokh has an update about the New Jersey Attorney General's investigation of the vile site JuicyCampus.com and its contemptible founder Matt Ivester, about whom I previously blogged. Matt Ivester, you might recall, founded JuicyCampus as an anonymous site for college kids to gossip about each other, and now professes to be shocked, shocked, that his site is a sewer of racist and misogynist drivel and libel.

Anyway, the New Jersey Attorney General is investigating Juicy Campus on a consumer fraud theory.  Volokh cites an article strongly suggesting that the investigation is a publicity-hound measure and not based on any rational theory, as the site does not seem to contain any guarantees that are being violated and no applicable law seems to require JuicyCampus to take down the nasty stuff that is its lifeblood.

As I said before, I strongly disapprove of government enforcement measures to address this sort of stuff. I'm still hoping that inventive college students with lots of time on their hands — is there any other kind? — will use inventive internet triangulation techniques to identify the nastier posters and reveal their identity and what they posted to their classmates. If we ask Patrick nicely, maybe he'll tell you about how he identified an "anonymous" internet poster by tracing his username to an Amazon wish list, or how we traced a poster here by linking his username to a restaurant review and a society page party description.

Also, I'd still be interested to see whether some of these schools have internet use policies that explicitly disavow any expectation of privacy. If that's the case, I have no problem with schools identifying threatening, libelous, or generally obnoxious posts, tracing them to their on-campus authors, and releasing that information to the student body.

I share Patrick's fondness for Wikipedia on matters of geekery, and think there's a quite wide range of topics on which it is an excellent resource. That range is mostly made up of technical stuff, non-controversial history, cultural minutiae, and the like.

However, for modern politics, it's completely unreliable.

Now, a large number of you are going "Well, DUH!" right now. But increasingly I see Wikipedia cited as a reliable source in political discussions. My friends who are high school and college instructors tell me that students increasingly rely on it. It has a veneer of respectability and pretenses to both neutrality and rigor. It's poised to accepted more widely.

So allow me to discuss a case study of why it is not.

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I liked Obama's race speech and regard roughly 75% of the criticisms of it as bullshit. Nevertheless, Iowahawk's parody is sublime.

Via Reason's blog, great moments in the War On Drugs: an Oregon city argues that public library pages have "safety-sensitive" jobs creating the "special need" justifying pre-employment drug testing. The Ninth Circuit brings the well-deserved snark.

Man, I hate the very ideas of these things. The concept that there are designated areas for people to say what they think (always away from the actual protest area, for the "protesters safety" of course) is silly at best. The name is Thought Speak at it's finest.

The latest incursion of free speech zones? The ever liberal city of San Francisco. It seems that when the Olympic torch makes it's only US appearance in the City, protesters will be kept far, far away. In fact, the exact route of the torch and the starting time of the ceremony won't even be announced. This is the first time in San Francisco's long and colorful history of protests that free speech zones have told us where we can exercise the first amendment.

The ever weasel Mayor Gavin Newsom is shocked that someone would try to politicize the Olympics. Saying that the City is "privileged" to be the torch's only stop in North America and that the event should rise above political concerns. Should it rise above the concern that China is successfully using it's influence with the City to suppress any dissent or acknowledgement of it's human rights atrocities? (China has an impressive track record of getting the City to back down, on things as mundane as the Falun Gong marching in the Chinese New Year Parade.)

Are the Olympics political? Let's ask Jesse Owens.

Still laboring over that 9th Circuit brief, but wanted to bring your attention to an example of college student douchebaggery.

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