25 May 2009
Destabilize Iran or Build Relationships?
A fundamental contradiction in the Leverett’s analysis of the Obama Administration’s Iran policy in their OpEd article in the May 24, 2009 New York Times is their calling it destabilization when referring to Bush’s program of support for opposition to the Islamic regime while they call for acceptance of Iran’s relationships with Hamas and Hezbollah. The U.S. ought to be building supportive relationships with elements of Iranian society who will displace the religious autocracy and establish a secular participatory form of government. If the success of our policy in Iran depends on our accepting the mullahs’ right to support those who terrorize their neighboring state, and our ally, Israel, how can the U.S. be denigrated for helping to strengthen the influence of members of Iranian society who stand for improving the population’s material welfare?
A fundamental contradiction in the Leverett’s analysis of the Obama Administration’s Iran policy in their OpEd article in the May 24, 2009 New York Times is their calling it destabilization when referring to Bush’s program of support for opposition to the Islamic regime while they call for acceptance of Iran’s relationships with Hamas and Hezbollah. The U.S. ought to be building supportive relationships with elements of Iranian society who will displace the religious autocracy and establish a secular participatory form of government. If the success of our policy in Iran depends on our accepting the mullahs’ right to support those who terrorize their neighboring state, and our ally, Israel, how can the U.S. be denigrated for helping to strengthen the influence of members of Iranian society who stand for improving the population’s material welfare?
20 May 2009
Overblowing the Flu
The news media continually overblow the latest crisis or distort events in order to gin up public attention to their message. This strategy is central to the media’s business model—Build up concern in peoples’ mind’s eye in order to maintain their allegiance to channels of communication that can generate revenue from selling consumer products through advertising.
Swine Flu is the latest example. This epidemic is turning out to be mild, at least for now; yet schools are closing and the media devote a large percentage of broadcast time to minute-by-minute coverage. The annual seasonal flu affliction doesn’t result in such attention and panic, even though it causes wider illness and many more deaths.
Is it the media’s responsibility to air out all the extreme interpretations of current events, leaving it up to the public to draw its own conclusions? Should the media be held to the more conscientious role of calmly arbitrating conflicting views or is that the job of the leaders who are elected to govern society?
Eventually, wisdom prevailed in our understanding of what happened at the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City and at the Columbine School. The lesson is that we must always be conscious that the U.S. system of information dissemination depends on private enterprise. The media cannot be blamed for distorting the news in order to make a buck. Political leadership, however, should be held to account when it does not recognize that media hype is not the god’s honest truth. Taking steps like closing schools, at the cost of interrupted education and added administrative expense, is a failure of our leadership to perform in the best interest of tax-paying citizens whose children will have to meet globalized competition.
The news media continually overblow the latest crisis or distort events in order to gin up public attention to their message. This strategy is central to the media’s business model—Build up concern in peoples’ mind’s eye in order to maintain their allegiance to channels of communication that can generate revenue from selling consumer products through advertising.
Swine Flu is the latest example. This epidemic is turning out to be mild, at least for now; yet schools are closing and the media devote a large percentage of broadcast time to minute-by-minute coverage. The annual seasonal flu affliction doesn’t result in such attention and panic, even though it causes wider illness and many more deaths.
Is it the media’s responsibility to air out all the extreme interpretations of current events, leaving it up to the public to draw its own conclusions? Should the media be held to the more conscientious role of calmly arbitrating conflicting views or is that the job of the leaders who are elected to govern society?
Eventually, wisdom prevailed in our understanding of what happened at the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City and at the Columbine School. The lesson is that we must always be conscious that the U.S. system of information dissemination depends on private enterprise. The media cannot be blamed for distorting the news in order to make a buck. Political leadership, however, should be held to account when it does not recognize that media hype is not the god’s honest truth. Taking steps like closing schools, at the cost of interrupted education and added administrative expense, is a failure of our leadership to perform in the best interest of tax-paying citizens whose children will have to meet globalized competition.
11 May 2009
Persuasion Science
It is really dishonest for the media to decry the expense of political campaigning. In fact, that expense mainly consists of media buys. What the pundits should point out is the sorry state of our politics, which have become overly dependent on the media for opinion leadership.
Opinion leaders have been an important part of our body politic since the beginning of the republic. Thomas Payne, Benjamin Franklin, Sam Adams and many others helped bind the nation together in rebellion against the British crown through their printed words. Today the wide exchange of political opinion is facilitated by the IT revolution, which has made the Internet a broad network of communication independent of printed media and publishers.
Nevertheless, our body politic, the democratic majority, has relinquished its freedom of thought, even in this age of weblogs, to those who are expert not in analyzing and resolving political problems, but in manipulating the means of communication in order to influence public opinion. They are engineers of the science of persuasion, combating the intellectual autonomy made possible by modern technology. The goal of their sponsors and patrons is to preserve commercial advantage and civic authority by pandering to a public that has become too apathetic to think for itself.
The media are just as guilty of this distortion of democratic ideals. Their goal is not to help their readers and viewers to draw well-considered conclusions; it is to fill the vacuum of intellectual activity with ideas that lead to their dominance of the channels of information distribution. These channels have value because they can be used to sell consumer goods and to convince voters to keep politicians in office.
It is really dishonest for the media to decry the expense of political campaigning. In fact, that expense mainly consists of media buys. What the pundits should point out is the sorry state of our politics, which have become overly dependent on the media for opinion leadership.
Opinion leaders have been an important part of our body politic since the beginning of the republic. Thomas Payne, Benjamin Franklin, Sam Adams and many others helped bind the nation together in rebellion against the British crown through their printed words. Today the wide exchange of political opinion is facilitated by the IT revolution, which has made the Internet a broad network of communication independent of printed media and publishers.
Nevertheless, our body politic, the democratic majority, has relinquished its freedom of thought, even in this age of weblogs, to those who are expert not in analyzing and resolving political problems, but in manipulating the means of communication in order to influence public opinion. They are engineers of the science of persuasion, combating the intellectual autonomy made possible by modern technology. The goal of their sponsors and patrons is to preserve commercial advantage and civic authority by pandering to a public that has become too apathetic to think for itself.
The media are just as guilty of this distortion of democratic ideals. Their goal is not to help their readers and viewers to draw well-considered conclusions; it is to fill the vacuum of intellectual activity with ideas that lead to their dominance of the channels of information distribution. These channels have value because they can be used to sell consumer goods and to convince voters to keep politicians in office.
05 May 2009
The Jilted Wife Syndrome
Let him or her who has never bought consumer goods or a home on credit cast the first stone. Last year, Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke and the rest of the Bush Administration suddenly realized that the piper was demanding payment—that the buyers of credit derivatives who had enabled the incredible expansion of the U.S. economy were now conserving their cash. The Bushies had mistakenly concluded that all that was needed to avoid a devastating financial contraction was to put the full faith and credit of the U.S. Government behind the country’s principal issuers of consumer credit—the banks. And so, they compelled the banks to accept federal TARP funds.
By the time a new Administration succeeded in power, it was clear that the TARP funds could not alone restore the glory days of old. More direct measures would be required--a program of spending stimulus designed to create the economic activity that would demand the creditworthy business and consumer loans that banks make money on providing. But the Obana team were embarrassed by the terms on which the TARP funds had been crammed down on the banks.
Of course, the banks, even if reluctantly, accepted the TARP funds but refused to put them to uses that would have a high likelihood of default—like more sub-prime loans. They preferred to devote them to assuring future growth—preserving monetary capital through the payment of dividends and preserving human capital through the payment of “bonuses.” But the politicians and the media commentators now had a convenient scapegoat for the public’s economic discomfort—the banks who had jilted them. As Arianna Huffington characterized Goldman Sachs on May 5, 2009, “the banking giant is acting like a man who wants all the benefits of being married while still being able to slip off his ring and have an affair anytime he feels the urge.”
Fidelity is not the only responsibility of marriage. Retaining the capability to sustain the relationship over time is another one, at least as important. The banks’ shareholders, many of them employees and executives, have suffered great loss of wealth along with the rest of the economy. Let them play their role in the recovery by not depriving them of the capital, both monetary and human, that they will need to respond to increasing loan demand.
Let him or her who has never bought consumer goods or a home on credit cast the first stone. Last year, Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke and the rest of the Bush Administration suddenly realized that the piper was demanding payment—that the buyers of credit derivatives who had enabled the incredible expansion of the U.S. economy were now conserving their cash. The Bushies had mistakenly concluded that all that was needed to avoid a devastating financial contraction was to put the full faith and credit of the U.S. Government behind the country’s principal issuers of consumer credit—the banks. And so, they compelled the banks to accept federal TARP funds.
By the time a new Administration succeeded in power, it was clear that the TARP funds could not alone restore the glory days of old. More direct measures would be required--a program of spending stimulus designed to create the economic activity that would demand the creditworthy business and consumer loans that banks make money on providing. But the Obana team were embarrassed by the terms on which the TARP funds had been crammed down on the banks.
Of course, the banks, even if reluctantly, accepted the TARP funds but refused to put them to uses that would have a high likelihood of default—like more sub-prime loans. They preferred to devote them to assuring future growth—preserving monetary capital through the payment of dividends and preserving human capital through the payment of “bonuses.” But the politicians and the media commentators now had a convenient scapegoat for the public’s economic discomfort—the banks who had jilted them. As Arianna Huffington characterized Goldman Sachs on May 5, 2009, “the banking giant is acting like a man who wants all the benefits of being married while still being able to slip off his ring and have an affair anytime he feels the urge.”
Fidelity is not the only responsibility of marriage. Retaining the capability to sustain the relationship over time is another one, at least as important. The banks’ shareholders, many of them employees and executives, have suffered great loss of wealth along with the rest of the economy. Let them play their role in the recovery by not depriving them of the capital, both monetary and human, that they will need to respond to increasing loan demand.
Is Power Politics Good for Iran?
Despite its sloppily edited text, Amir Taheri’s OpEd article in the May 4, 2009 Wall Street Journal, “As the U.S. Retreats, Iran Fills the Void,” clearly observes a transformation in the behavior of Iran’s Islamic Revolution. In the end, the Khomeinist regime is enjoying the exercise of the political power that flows from exogenous endowments (traditionally, birthrights; in Iran’s post-Shah existence, oil resources and religious fundamentalism).
The Great Satan and the rest of the secular West should be glad that Iran’s government may become a more conventional rival for strategic influence in the Middle East. We are more expert and historically more often successful, not to mention less drained, in that competition than in battles for spiritual allegiance.
And yet, the West’s concern for the future of Iran will ultimately have to be, What’s in it for the people of Iran? Will its middle class always concede political power to unmeritorious elites? For how long will Iran be a potentially unstable society waiting to establish an order that benefits the material welfare of its population? Until then, religious fundamentalism and, now, regional power politics, divert resources from Persians’ general well-being.
Despite its sloppily edited text, Amir Taheri’s OpEd article in the May 4, 2009 Wall Street Journal, “As the U.S. Retreats, Iran Fills the Void,” clearly observes a transformation in the behavior of Iran’s Islamic Revolution. In the end, the Khomeinist regime is enjoying the exercise of the political power that flows from exogenous endowments (traditionally, birthrights; in Iran’s post-Shah existence, oil resources and religious fundamentalism).
The Great Satan and the rest of the secular West should be glad that Iran’s government may become a more conventional rival for strategic influence in the Middle East. We are more expert and historically more often successful, not to mention less drained, in that competition than in battles for spiritual allegiance.
And yet, the West’s concern for the future of Iran will ultimately have to be, What’s in it for the people of Iran? Will its middle class always concede political power to unmeritorious elites? For how long will Iran be a potentially unstable society waiting to establish an order that benefits the material welfare of its population? Until then, religious fundamentalism and, now, regional power politics, divert resources from Persians’ general well-being.
