Letters to the Editor
Amity
Published Letters: 1110 Editor's Choice: 106
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What's the hurry?
[Read the article: How will it all end?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The best point Walter Shapiro made in his (unfortunately hurried and under-edited) summary of possible Democratic primary endgames is that there's no hurry. The "Clinton versus Obama" story is like catnip to the American press. Every day that it dominates political headlines is a day that increases the eventual winner's chances in November. Mitt Romney understood this when he made his decision to withdraw — the Republicans need a simplified, one-on-one, us-versus-them narrative that they can manipulate in the usual fashion. And they can't have it so long as the Democratic race is still competitive.
So take a deep breath. Or take a few. All will be revealed in good time. Don't sweat the historical analogies — nothing like this has ever happened before, so we're in the supremely enviable position of being able to decide for ourselves how we want history to be written without any burden of comparison to times past.
If the Democratic convention were the last Tuesday in October, and the final delegate count were split 50/50 it probably wouldn't be too late or too close a call. The more drama the better.
Above all else, stop paying attention to the right-wing trolls. You can tell them because they say things like, "If X Democrat wins America will fall into the sea." America falling into the sea (or, you know, whatever it happens to be) is a right-wing trope. No actual liberal — or even a decent conservative — would use it in an argument.
Anyone who can't stop worrying and wants to do something useful could do worse than to donate to or volunteer for their local party and help get an early start on the general election. No matter who wins the nomination, they're going to need all the help they can get against the GOP.
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Let's not get too carried away
[Read the article: In the military we trust]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]William Astore's article is an insightful examination of prejudices against the military among American liberals and in particular regarding the nature of masculine identity (about which it would have been interesting to read more). Before we get too carried away in beating ourselves up over the question of diversity and patriotic volunteerism, though, it's worth taking a step back and re-examining some of the unexplored terrain of Astore's argument.
Above all else, the US military is all-volunteer because the US military wants it that way, not because of some aversion to national service within the lily-livered pauncy academic class. The modern American military doesn't want intellectuals, and it definitely doesn't want draftees.
And with good reason. The last time the armed services were plagued with an actual representational population (minus the Cheneys and Kristols and other draft-dodgers who now largely reside within the warmongering wing of American political life) , the process led to greater public accountability, lese majeste toward the glorious tradition of American arms, and persistent intra-service activism — none of which the military establishment likes one bit and for which they would sacrifice much to avoid ever seeing again.
For one thing, it turns out that a truly democratic military doesn't like getting shipped off to the middle of nowhere to bleed and die for an old man's pride, and the last time we as a nation tried it there arose a hearty "Hell no" from among the rank and file. Democracy indeed!
So no way will the armed services ever want to touch the general population, at least while the generation that still remembers Vietnam are among the top brass. Carefully targetted recruiting, yes. Raise the bonuses if honorable obedience to the latest dishonorable fuckwit is proving unappealing, absolutely. But never, ever, resort to actually bringing in an undifferentiated swath of Americans.
Is that diversity?
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Lost? Or never found?
[Read the article: The blind giant of the Middle East]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This is an excellent article and greatly to Salon's credit to have run it. However, one part of David Grossman's analysis rubbed me the wrong way.
But Israel, like America, has lost its way. The dream has melted in the crucible of our fear. ... Like Pharaoh, we have hardened our hearts so we do not consider either the suffering of our enemies, nor the suffering of our own children.
This did not "happen" sometime along the way. Fear was the crucible of Israel's beginning, and its way was from the beginning inexorably along the path to the existential crisis into which Grossman describes Israel falling.
There were voices even at the start that warned that lack of care at the beginning would haunt the new nation — that there was such a thing as an overeagerness to sweep everything aside in the establishment of a new order. But they were silenced, sometimes violently, or they were ignored (even by Meir, no matter what she might have said).
And why not? Zionism always had one foot in terror — and fear learned not unreasonably from millennia of persecution is still poisonous.
Ironically, perhaps the cloud over Israeli identity that Grossman sees isn't the harbinger of doom that he believes it to be. Maybe what it represents is an end of that old fear, and the automatic support for Israel right or wrong that it once engendered. Yes, it's a crisis when a nation needs to find a new way forward out of a destructive pattern generations long. But it may be that feeling the pain is the best sign that Israel today is actually becoming able to contemplate another path.