Iraq redux

Brother Jon writes:

Some good news would be welcome about now, so I hope you have some to pass along. Sure won't be any from the political establishment, which is as far as I can tell in full retreat mode, mired in utterly pathetic fantasies about the "realism" of "dialogue" with Amadinejahd, Syria and other enemies in order to sell ourselves and our one friend in the region right down the river. Will we soon find out why they call the pond at its end the DEAD Sea? It's going to be a long and dismal two years, I fear. And if it's Hillary we get, God help us. I may be wrong, I do not think this is 1974 again. But I just do not think the Islamofascist tide as yet lapped up anywhere near enough of us to ignite the inevitable response. Bush may one day be seen not as Truman, which I had hoped, but as a long twilight pre-1941 Roosevelt, hemmed in by appeasers, believers in Neutrality Acts, America Firsters of right and left, transnational morons enlessly seeking to outlaw war. I also accept this analysis of his own mistakes, with which you of course will agree.

Whither US Iraq Policy with Dems in Control of Congress

Holmes,

I am going to post to site9 your response to the New York Times article I sent you all, and invite my brother and his colleagues to do the dissection, since you have obviously had time to learn some political facts, which if they are "true facts" are impressive. I forget that you were once advisor to a progressive mayor of one of our great American cities, New Haven. Good luck to you all. I am going to be impressed if I see the Congress wheel all the way around from the Democrat's cut-and-run "policy" to something resembling a troop increase, which is what should have happened years ago. Interesting to see that the "ostracized" and fired Sinsekei is being rehabilitated now. Anyway, if the Democratic ship of fools can be turned by reality, great. Otherwise, we are in for another liftoff from the embassy by helicopter a la Saigon-- excuse me, Ho Chi Minh City-- and a blood bath that should compete well with the partition of India and Pakistan. Although, who knows?, perhaps with US outof the way, they wil settle their affairs peaceably. Another interesting current going -- we are living through a transition in which many ideas are flourishing-- is the idea of a strongman for Iraq. I have felt since early on when things started going badly that the best going away present we could probably give them is Saddam Hussein instead of the government now installed. What ever happened to that great American tradition of putting tinpot dictators in place all over to protect our interests and those of Dole Fruit?

Dave B.


On Nov 16, 2006, at 8:15 AM, David L. Holmes wrote:

I’m not sure I “get” why you and (coincidentally, I’m sure) the Neo-Con/Likud policy wonks (not to mention the mainstream “liberally-biased” media) are so down on Murtha as some Pinko, cut-and-run, pacifist lefty.

He’s a long standing member of the Blue Dog Democratic Caucus. He opposes freedom of choice and any form of gun control. He has never opposed a military appropriation bill and has in the past – and I believe most recently – been a parrot for the uniformed services. He is a decorated war hero and adored by the military whose bidding he is doing right now with his calls for redeployments in Iraq.

Steny Hoyer has opposed and betrayed Pelosi for years, supported Bush in his Iraq adventure, and expressed disappointment about the recent apparent democratic “mandate.” Moreover, most of the whining about Pelosi’s embrace of that leftwing, MoveOn-loving Murtha and her abandonment of her one true friend, Hoyer, has come from precisely the same Amen corner that was outraged at the Dem’s treatment of Lieberman, piled on Howard Dean when he ran in the presidential primaries – and has not let up since and is suggesting that any Democratic investigation of war profiteering or giveaways of U.S.-owned real estate to resource extraction industries would be damaging to the Dem’s long term interests. And, oh yes, if the Dem’s have any sense, they will support Obama for president. That last one has me mystified and a bit on guard.

I think Dick Morris, David Brooks, Richard Perle, Bob Novak, Charles Krauthammer and William Safire – to name a few – have always been out for the best interests of the Democratic Party. I thin Pelosi and others should listen to their every burp.


On or about November 15, 2006 David A. Burack wrote:

The Senate should become interesting over the next few months. McCain will have to hold the fort for the Republicans. Maybe it is a good thing that he is not a Democrat. They would just steam roller him into a back room, where they should have held Murtha instead.

Democrats Push for Troop Cuts Within Months
"The White House said it is open to 'fresh ideas,' but rejected setting a timeline for withdrawing troops from Iraq."

Today, Germany. Tomorrow...

by Jon B:

I may perhaps at times have mentioned my ongoing worries about transnational progressivism and its drive to undermine the nation state in the name of some global constitutional order. This is a good sign of what we can expect more of until such time as the EU and/or UN collapse, since they are the sites of a good deal of it.

Exclusive: Charges Sought Against Rumsfeld Over Prison Abuse

It is not to be taken lightly. I do not think Americans realize how thoroughly much of our legal establishment, for instance, has thrown in with this perspective. You occasionally see items about Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Steven Breyer making references to international conventions, values, judicial proceedings and cases in some of their decisions. It's worse than that. These people are the elites, not the rag-tag alienated of the Arab street.

Don't you just love the utopian hubris: German law provides for "universal jurisdiction." Seems to me, some guy over there tried that already once several decades back, but what the heck do I know.

I am sure the Germans waited to get a Democratic Congress and for Rummy to leave office to try this breathtaking invasion of US sovereignty, but believe me sovereignty itself is in their sites. In some ways, the goo-goos of the UN, EU and the NGO networks are totally in sync with the terrorists in their hostility to the nation state. All this will be with us as long as terrorism itself, and we better get ready to take it on.

--Jon

David L. Holmes reports in

Below is an exchange between Dave B. and David Holmes, with my reply first.

Holmesiana,

That your mood has palpably brightened since the election is reason enough for me to rejoice in the Democrats victory. It may surprise you that I tried to help things along by voting straight Democratic, although in the cesspool of vegetarian pro-Palestinian politics that passes for liberal democracy up here in Vermont it was like pissing into the sewage plant. Anyway, your writing is delightful enough that I am going to post it into my nearly completely unread new blog, and will send you the link once I think of it, since it has been so long that even I looked at the site I have forgotten.

Things fell apart for me, thankfully, at ARD, and I am liberated for individual consulting in water and environment internationally, or just about anywhere for that matter. I am thrilled, and the burden of not having to fight the rearguard corporate battle lifted away as I drove away last Friday, with my traditional eight boxes of effluvia.

My best regards to you, and my very best regards to your bookkeeper. You just don't understand, do you, Holmeski?

Borax

On Nov 9, 2006, at 5:45 AM, David L. Holmes wrote:

I hope things are OK with you.

Well, the elections are finally over with. And best of all, Mr. Rumsfeld is off to brighter horizons! What a pity Senators Macacawitz and Santorum lost.

Following up on my last epistle, I offer the reflections of Chris Hedges on the U.S.’s and Israel’s prospects for long term peace-creation in the Levant as an attachment. Hedges was Mid East bureau chief for the New York Times and has written several books which I own. But most interestingly, he is a fellow who had the temerity to express some doubts about the wisdom Mr. Bush’s then-brand-new Iraq adventure at a commencement address at my Alma Mater, Rockford College in IL. The outrageous behavior of the students and their parents made national news. It bordered on violent, the microphone was unplugged and he was asked to stop by the president before he finished the speech. All of this notwithstanding the fact that he’s an ordained minister, had at that time a couple of decades of first hand experience in the region under his belt, and the speech itself was pretty mild (I noticed just now that when I Googled “Chris Hedges,” that the 3rd entry -- after 2 relating to a Bill Moyers interview – is Text of the Rockford College graduation speech by Chris Hedges in the Rockford Register Star.

It was that event that made me realize that we had come to a sad and uninquiring state of affairs in the U.S. It persists to this day. I printed a copy of your hero, Tom Friedman’s, Insulting Our Troops, and Our Intelligence column from last week to share with the bookkeeper who shares space with me in this office on a part time basis. She was so outraged after the first paragraph, she refused to read further and threw the print out at me. Like the students and parents at Rockford 3 years ago, our bookkeeper has a palpable and visceral reaction to even the suggestion that our “Global War on Terror” may need some tweaking. It’s all so sad.

My best to you and your lovely bride.

Holmesini

First New Yorker Cartoon to Make Me Laugh in Quite Awhile

Ca. Sept.4, 2006

How Bad Is It?

Well, what's your take on things? I was busy this weekend with a friend from LA (Jay Holloway, accountant) and a wedding (Patrick and Joan Flynn's son. Flynn is former art director at The Progressive). So needless to say, I have been out of the loop.

My sense is, Israel blew a big chance, and the U.S. had to pick up the pieces with a deal in the UN that has as much chance of going anywhere as I do of winning the lottery. I see Iran and Hezbollah are crowing, but that would happen no matter what. So what is the meaning of it all?

I am going to read Podhoretz tonight --"Is the Bush Doctrine Dead? Epitaphs are multiplying for the President's revolutionary foreign policy; they are premature."-- because it's one of these moments when only the long-run perspective can cheer me up.

--Jon

Overall, it is as good a deal as Israel, and the US, could get, given that the IDF found its adversary to be a lot tougher sledding than it thought it was going to be. (I really don't know what effect "world opinion" regarding the slaying on so-called "innocents" had on Olmert, but the general take on that question is not encouraging. Anyway, the cease fire gives Israel a breather, which is more important than its also giving Hizbollah a chance to "re-arm," which it doesn't really need to do. And, either side can start it up again whenever it thinks the time is right, which I think means sooner rather than later, or I guess I should say I hope means sooner rather than later, because time is on the enemy's side. So far, it has come out about the way I predicted.

On July 23, 2006, David Burack wrote:
"Israel will keep pounding if not pulverizing all of Hezbollah's known missile emplacements until they are reduced to a safe level. [Well, that last phrase didn't prove out, apparently.] At the same time, they will not discourage a third party intervention, such as a NATO-manned buffer force on the border (which side or sides remains unclear), some few weeks down the line. Also, Iran is definitely behind the whole missile program, with Syria as its intermediary and Hezbollah as the operator. Finally, and perhaps one main motivator for the attack now -- not two Israeli soldiers casualties of war for gosh sakes -- Hezbollah, it is rumored, has intermediate range missiles capable of reaching Tel Aviv and Jerusalem carrying very heavy warheads."

My hope is that they took out those intermediate range missiles, and no one wants to talk about that.

The elephant in the living room is, Iran's nukes and when our government will make good on our promise to prevent them from happening. I am praying that W's atonement and legacy act will be to do what has to be done. Everything else, even Iraq, is a sideshow. Even without that scenario, the whole thing is pretty scary, but it would be a lot less scary if the mass media could somehow be taught to take a sensible line. Not much hope on that score, either.

Meanwhile, during this breather, you can study or reference the particulars of the ceasefire (UN Security Council Resolution 1701) here.

And, as if to prove the point that this truce indeed is just a breather for Israel, check out this item from The Jerusalem Post, especially:

"Annan upset officials further when he said that deploying international forces in Lebanon would take "weeks or months," and not days as expected. [Ahem. I never expected "days." --Dave] Israeli officials said the IDF would not complete its withdrawal from southern Lebanon until the international force was deployed - even if it took months - to prevent a vacuum in Lebanon that could endanger Israeli civilians."

--Dave

Well, they set out to "crush" Hezbollah, right? Perhaps they did seriously diminish its terror-making capabilities...but Hezbollah has definitely survived to fight another day (which, as you say Jon, is a
certainty).

Israelis have to be asking themselves...what was the fighting over the last month all about?

What am I missing?

--Paul S.


I don't think you are missing anything. But I also think it is important, as I said, to keep the perspective long run. Here is Powerline with Netanyahu, who I have always felt should be prime minister of Israel.

Powerline, "Half Hour with Benjamin Netanyahu"

--Jon

Whither the Economy? Reprise

This articleseems like a good place to start off the interchange again. It answers my brother's remarks, some way down, that he is sitting pretty in his house "somewhere in the mid-West" ("Diamonds and Rust," Joan Baez), so why worry? As is told here, Jon, the interactions among the slow-down factors, always imponderable to the pundit-specialists who focus on one or two segments, are what will drag us into the abyss, coupled with the fooling power that riding on the crest of a really huge wave, in this case, the $12 trillion U.S. economy, often brings. This is a great, gradual ride, with little ups and downs, but going all the way down, and below and which, by the way, has little to do with Bush's obliviousness to the whole concern; it started long before him, and will come to rest long after he and the Republicans leave the scene like Greenspan, whose many talents included getting out while the getting was good. Let me take you on a surfin' safari. --Dave



On July 17, 2006, Jon Burack wrote:

I am just back from Orlando (AP College Board conference). Á la Jed's report, I can well imagine there is consumer anemia in California. (I hope that fact is not presented as an argument against low taxation. In California?) A house like mine here in Stoughton would get me half a trailer in a trailer park out there. (But at least it would only get done in by earthquakes and not tornadoes, which out here target trailer parks with uncanny accuracy). Seriously, the Orlando airport is a bit different from the one Jed mentions. Shops, restaurants, internet cafes, Starbucks, waterfalls, stainless steel everywhere, screaming kids and Mickey Mouse. It's enough to make a Frenchman out of me. But poor it is not.

I did read the Harper's graphics, some of which impressed me more than others, though I can't recall which was which. [See link below. --Dave] I do not doubt for a minute a big welfare state entitlement crisis looms. W, a big spending Republican, is nevertheless the only president who has dared to touch that third rail. It nearly did him in. He wasted a year on it, and all he got from the Democrats was "don't you kill Social Security, you SOB." Some other president will have to take it on. No doubt in my mind that free enterprise capitalism is key to solving the problem. Still, Social Security-Medicare-Baby Boomer storm clouds approach. Okay? How's that for non-Polyanna.

So, to get back to the short run, which as a historian, I would insist is all you can have faith that anyone knows how to predict, if even that, I explicitly did not accept all of Kudlow's optimism -- as in, to quote myself, " I do not necessarily subscribe to all of the Polyanish stuff below..." I simply called attention to the prediction you all made in Nov. 2004 that the disaster was at hand because Bush was artificially proping up the economy. You guys can talk around your predictions then with all the long-term disaster-mongering now, but my focus is on your being wrong then. I don't ridicule you for it, since I am wrong about similar matters all the time, but I will ridicule you for denying it now. It was not based on all this long-term forcasting you like. It was based on a reading of George Bush as a cynical and stupid pol. I do not think he is that, except of course that he is a pol. I think it was unfair of you to see it that way and, to boot, was a sign that you mistake the way reality works.

It is clear enough to me that the tax cuts do appear to have worked as supply siders predict and generated extra investment, job creation, and revenue. I don't say they always do that, just that they do it under certain circumstance and appear to have done it here. If you disagree with that analysis, supply reasons for why you disagree that account for the same set of facts (4.6% unemployment, soaring tax revenues from the rich, growing GDP, inflation not seriously out of control despite war, the horrrors of Mideast Oil fanaticism and hurricanes in the South.)

Whether any of Bush's economic policies work over the long run is another matter. I would guess it depends on many, many other factors. The Chinese may be one. On that, however, I simply do not see them as the destabilizers you do. Yes, they are holding and investing dollars and could decide at some point to stop -- if they want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs that keep their billion-plus working. I do not doubt they are every bit as cyncial and ruthless as you all appear to see Bush, but I do not think they are stupid. They have tied their (Red) star to the global capitalist economy, and they are not going to court the billion-plus upheaval of the century at home by destroying its engine. The demographic factors here also could disrupt the long run. As I say, Bush tried and failed to move the nation on these. However, and here I am being a bit Polyanish, I do not doubt for a minute this nation can figure out how to take care of old farts without bankrupting itself. A restoration of the notion that people ought to work most of their life (i.e., until their late 70s, the equivalent of 65 when FDR was around) would be a good start, good for old people, good for the economy, good for the entitlement diseases, etc. Learning how to keep old people productive, on the right meds, out of nursing homes and off the highways. That's my "chicken in every pot" slogan. I realize I won.t get elected on it. But I do think the good old USofA is going to find a way to keep itself going for a long time to come, however it does it.

One final point. Gibbon was wrong. Christians did NOT do in the Roman Empire. Spengler and Toynbee and all the rest were also wrong. Empires do not rise and fall by proceeding from stern virtue to corrupt laziness. There are no laws of history. It's all up for grabs.

On July 12, 2006 David Burack wrote:

An additional ecological add-on to the economics, about interaction of these factors as escaping the grasp of today's "business economist" journalists: What you look for in a self-stabilizing system are positive feedback loops. I do not see any. Quite the reverse. If interest rates and mortgage paykments go up, investment and jobs dip, then you have a strong negative feedback loop, one of many others we can describe that drag the system further downwards.


On Jul 11, 2006, at 10:14 PM, Jedidiah Burack wrote:

I agree with my father since he agrees with me but seriously did you send Jon the graphics from that spread in Harper's?

jed

For reference, here is a link to the Harper's Magazine"The New Road to Serfdom,", a brief PDF download. --Dave


On Tuesday, July 11, 2006, at 07:21PM, David Burack wrote:

After a hiatus that wasn't really a hiatus because we moved the whole household down the street to our new address,
I returned to the office and got loaded up with all kinds of new work. Summers are our busiest season, it seems. Plus, were housing one of Bronwyn's grandaughters this week, so my time is not my own.

I reject your Polyanna-ish view of the economy. This is such a huge economy that the effects are going to be long time coming, long time gone. We're going down slow. I will elaborate, but I think that Dr. Jed's analysis of many months ago, the one showing how much debt the Chinese hold is still apros pos. The thing that the pundits do not take into account is the interactions. You have huge debt and deficits, and minor tick down is not going to stop the trend up, despite the nice headlines it makes for Bush for one or two months. The combination of deep debt, weak job c reation, higher interest, so much consumer credit and no money down ARMs that will be hit badly once the interest rate starts to bite, the utterly stupid tax cutting over the past decade when we should have been raising taxes, the lack of investment, the glut of housing, etc, etc.. We are in deep trouble. You will see.

Dave

On Jul 10, 2006 Jon Burack wrote:

Still waiting for the trenchant economics lesson in response to what I sent a few days ago.

On July 8, 2006, Jed Burack wrote:

David and Jed,

Okay, come on, I will give you guys a chance to give it back to me (I know you can do it). Back in November, 2004 [It seems to have been March 2004. --Ed.], I heard from you how Bush had cynically manufactured a temporary prosperity and after the election, le Deluge.

Now I do not necessarily subscribe to all of the Polyanish stuff below (one item is from The New York Times, after all), but I do think the media has outdone even its distorted Iraq chicken-littling with its horrendous anti-Bush economics reporting. (I love the NYT's absolutely predictable and precious "unexpectedly" here). So what say you all?

Item 1 (NYTs)
WASHINGTON, July 8 — An unexpectedly steep rise in tax revenues from corporations and the wealthy is driving down the projected budget deficit this year, even though spending has climbed sharply because of the war in Iraq and the cost of hurricane relief.

On Tuesday, White House officials are expected to announce that the tax receipts will be about $250 billion above last year's levels and that the deficit will be about $100 billion less than what they projected six months ago.

Item 2. Larry (the optimist) Kudlow (á la Powerline)

Did you know that just over the past 11 quarters, dating back to the June 2003 Bush tax cuts, America has increased the size of its entire economy by 20 percent? In less than three years, the U.S. economic pie has expanded by $2.2 trillion, an output add-on that is roughly the same size as the total Chinese economy, and much larger than the total economic size of nations like India, Mexico, Ireland and Belgium.

This is an extraordinary fact, although you may be reading it here first. ***

For those who bother to look, the economic power of lower-tax-rate incentives is once again working its magic. While most reporters obsess about a mild slowdown in housing, the big-bang story is a high-sizzle pick-up in private business investment, which is directly traceable to Bush's tax reform. It was private investment that was hardest hit in the early decade stock market plunge and the aftermath of the 9-11 terrorist bombings. So team Bush's wise men correctly targeted investment in order to slash the after-tax cost of capital and rejuvenate investment incentives.

Here is Dr. Jed's original, March (?) 2004 screed that Jon recalls for us:


Like much of history, economic history is a repetition of the past but with a new and unique twist each time.

At present we have the latest cycle of a Republican administration borrowing its way into a false and dangerous boomlet.

The illustration shows the crux of the matter:

The Japanese, in an effort to weaken the yen and support the only source of growth in their economy—exports, will print yen and buy US treasuries no matter what the long term consequences for them.

The Chinese, on the other hand, will not decouple the yuan from the dollar in spite of enormous pressure to do so. They will not tolerate a strengthening of the yuan which would make their ultra-cheap exports less competitive in the US and abroad. They want to maintain explosive growth, again regardless of the long-term consequences.

The US, forming the third corner of this triumvirate, also is very happy with the situation. While the Treasury Secretary gives official statements supporting a strong dollar, it’s all very tongue in cheek. He practically gives a sardonic smirk as he says the US has a strong dollar policy—We all know that everything we DO indicates that we absolutely do not support a strong dollar. Why? A weak dollar continues the pressure favoring foreign purchases of Treasuries, which is really lending to finance the Federal deficit. This allows us to keep our idiotic tax cuts in place without raising interest rates or causing inflation. The tax cuts for the wealthy, while doing nothing to redistribute money and keep consumer demand high, do have the benefit of placating Bush’s most important political constituency, the corporations and the wealthy. Further, this currency/fiscal policy keeps cheap imports flowing from China—imports that we don’t have to pay for now since the Chinese will sell goods to us in exchange for owning US treasury bonds.

So, we have the Far East—Japan doing relatively more of the lending, and the Chinese doing relatively more of the producing—maintaining cheap goods and easy credit for us. Doesn’t this give you the slightest inkling of concern? Do you think this all comes for free? Of course not; it should make you nervous.

All this talk of “deficits don’t matter”—bullshit. There is a big difference between fiscal deficits financed internally and those owed abroad. Lack of concern about deficits is somewhat true when they’re used as a way to print money to stimulate a recessionary or depressionary economy, especially when the deficit is financed internally, not when it is financed externally. That is part of what Warren Buffett was getting at in his article Write him off at your peril. Do you really believe he is an anti-Bush partisan? He’s writing in Fortune ‘cause he’s scared of this.

Here are some of the down sides:

The more we owe abroad, the more interest we will pay for decades to foreign governments. We have been a creditor nation since the nineteenth century to the rest of the world. The present level of foreign debt is unprecedented. This will provide a constant sap on our resources and a constant weakening pressure on our currency.

International political implications are daunting. If you don’t think the Chinese plan for the long run and if you don’t think that the Chinese understand the political power of being the lender, you’re a fool. They understand very well that when they hold hundreds of billions in US treasuries and other securities (The above graph shows only the government holding of US treasuries, a tip of the total investment iceberg.), and they decide it’s time for them to take over Taiwan or whatever their agenda, then being the banker to the US is a far more powerful power instrument than military might. An instructive lesson in my mind: Ayatollah Khomenei immediately after the revolution, a more bitter enemy hard to imagine, announced that Iran’s foreign debt to the US was void. David Rockefeller was interviewed on PBS a few days later and asked about this. I remember the shot of him sitting in a 1970’s Swedish type modern chair, corner office of glass windows behind him, high up in lower Manhattan, in his quiet and very understated way, fingertips delicately pressed together, slumped in his seat, saying “They may choose to do so but that will be the end of any foreign lending to the regime.” Next day, the Ayatollah reversed his position and the debt was honored.

Trapped. Just as the present situation is a sweet irresistible convergence of low inflation, cheap imports, low interest rates, rising asset prices (due to the low interest rates, not real growth of productive capital), the contrasting situation is an inescapable vicious cycle. For at some point, the above exponential curve (as you like to point out all exponential curves do) must reverse. At some point the Chinese will have to decouple the yuan from the dollar, and Japanese internal production and exports to other economies will allow them to stop printing yen to buy Treasuries. What will happen? No financing of our deficit externally. Rising interest rates at home and increased cost of our deficit. Much weaker dollar, rising prices for imports (Please don’t tell me that we’ll just start making the goods instead; we don’t make a single TV any more.), higher inflation, and drain of capital to pay the foreigners interest on all the debt we owe. Better known as stag-flation, the delightful combination of economic stagnation and inflation.

Thank God we’ve been redistributing wealth to consumers so that internal growth and demand could pull us out of this debt? The only problem is: we haven’t been doing this. Personal income for the last 20 years is flat.

Call me a hysterical democrat with a political agenda, which I may be. Unfortunately, I don’t think that changes the situation.

My notebooks

There was a long phase in the 1970s-80s of drawing, watercolors, notebooks. I want to organize and edit this material, perhaps publish it, or just blog it to the noosphere<-- that phrase actually has specific meaning. My, how language has evolved. --Dave

Who Is Happy?

I've been looking for an article like this, studying the question as much as I have, both in myself and in those around the world that I've met or seen close up, perhaps more than any other question that I have studied.











In Africa, I wondered, how can these kids, living in squalor, be so obviously happy? It can't be an act, can it? Man, I wish that I could smile like that most of the time! For the moment, it seems, it's nature not nurture. And it casts doubt on a lot of utilitarian thinking that I was embued with in college.--DAB

Reviews

Favored by the Gods
by George Johnson*
Scientific American
June 2006

Happiness, according to current scientific thinking depends less on circumstances than on our genetic endowment
Stumbling on Happiness
by Daniel Gilbert
Alfred A. Knopf, 2006 ($24.95)

The Happiness Hypothesis
by Jonathan Haidt
Basic Books, 2006 ($26)

Happiness: A History
by Darrin M. McMahon
Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006 ($27.50)

The sky was smeared with the lights from the midway, spinning, blinking, beckoning to risk takers, but I decided to go for a different kind of thrill: Ronnie and Donnie Galyon, the Siamese Twins, were at the Minnesota State Fair.

Feeling some guilt, I bought my ticket and cautiously approached the window of the trailer they called home. Thirty years old, joined at the stomach, they were sitting on a sofa, craning their necks to watch television.

Twenty-five years later I am still struck by this dizzying conjunction of the grotesque and the mundane. Trying to project myself into their situation—a man with two heads, two men with one body—I felt only sickness, horror and a certainty that I would rather be dead.

Yet there they were, traveling from town to town, leading some kind of life. When we try to envision another’s happiness, we suffer from arrogance and a poverty of imagination. In 1997, when science writer Natalie Angier interviewed Lori and Reba Schappell, connected at the back of the head and sporting different hairdos, each insisted that she was basically content.

“There are good days and bad days—so what?” Reba said. “This is what we know. We don’t hate it. We live it every day.” Lori was as emphatic: “People come up to me and say, ‘You’re such an inspiration. Now I realize how minor my own problems are compared to yours.’ But they have no idea what problems I have or don’t have, or what my life is like.’’

Three recent books—two by scientists and one by a historian—take on the quest for the good life, in which common sense and the received wisdom of the ages is increasingly confronted by findings from psychology, neuroscience and genetics. In the fight for survival, evolution has naturally molded our nervous systems to respond more quickly to the negative than to the positive. Before the late-blooming forebrain can reason that the hiss we hear is from an espresso machine, the primitive amygdala whispers “snake.” Depending on which part of the brain is paid more heed, a person will tend to be glum and anxious or cheerful and daring, but the choice may be beyond control.

Each of us, it seems, has an emotional “set point” or “cognitive style” that is genetically rooted and hard to budge. In The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan
Haidt, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, observes that lottery winners and paralysis victims quickly return to equilibrium, regaining the level of joy—or sadness—they felt before their brush with fate. How Ronnie, Donnie, Lori, Reba and the rest of us feel about life may depend less on circumstance than on natural disposition, the shape of the brain.

Knowing nothing of neurology, the ancient Greeks equated happiness with being favored by the gods, something over which they were powerless. This fatalism is frozen in our language. Happiness, happenstance, haphazard, hapless— all derive from the same root. In Happiness: A History, Darrin M. McMahon, a historian at Florida State University, charts how this germ of an idea changed over time. With Christianity, happiness became something to aspire to in the afterlife, and with the Enlightenment something to pursue on earth. From there it was a natural progression to the smiley face (invented in 1963, McMahon tells us, by one Harvey R. Ball) and the decision by the country of Bhutan to measure its economy according to “gross national happiness.” [See figure]

With evolutionary biology we have come, full circle, back to the Greeks: happiness is in the luck of the draw, how we fare in the genetic sweepstakes, the modern name for Fortuna’s wheel. Not even geography or economic position is as influential a factor. Several years ago in the journal Science & Spirit, another psychologist, Robert Biswas-Diener, wrote about the remarkably high spirits he found among people in a Calcutta slum and on the harsh northern coast of Greenland. “Research shows that we are the fortunate inheritors of a highly evolved emotional system that leads us to be, for the most part, somewhat happy,” he wrote. “We have a tendency to interpret things positively and to adjust quickly to most events.”

The downside is that this reflexive optimism can keep us from making good guesses about what will or will not bring us joy. It is not just the hard lives of others that we have trouble imagining but also our own. In Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert, a Harvard psychologist studying “affective forecasting,” shows that people have inflated expectations about the joy they will derive from a vacation, a new car or child, or a second dessert. But our failure as futurists also cuts the other way. We overestimate how bad we will feel if we get fired or lose a tooth or even a friend or mate. Rationalization, our emotional immune system, insists on putting the best face possible on even the saddest events.

“We treat our future selves as though they were our children," Gilbert writes, “spending most of the hours of most of our days constructing tomorrows that we hope will make them happy.” But the children turn out to be ingrates, complaining that we should have let them stay in the old house or study dentistry instead of law.

Taken together, all these findings may seem a little depressing. But true to our nature, we can see them in a sunnier way. A whole industry has sprung up— mass-market therapy, cosmetics, cheap luxury cruises—promoting a kind of gross national sappiness, an obligation to have fun. A little knowledge from the psych labs may take off some of the pressure, providing grist for the inverse of a self-help book—not a guide on how to achieve happiness but on understanding why, in the end, you probably won’t.

* George Johnson’s most recent book is Miss Leavitt’s Stars: The Unknown Story of the Woman Who Discovered How to Measure the Universe (W. W. Norton, 2005).

Copyright 2006 Scientific American, Inc.

Here's the Iran President's letter in full

There is part of me that says, this is nice.

There's part of me that says, whoo boy, watch out.

But the main thing that I think of is, Rodney King saying, "Why can't we all get along?"

--David A. Burack

White House Correspondents Dinner

Click here for the Colbert presentation at the White House Correspondents dinner.

With thanks to Matt Ernst and friends.

A Collaborative Weblog

OK, this is my latest attempt to create a virtual workspace for my buddies whose stuff I like to view.