Moving the Black Stone

This week’s revelations that President Donald J. Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vermont, got intelligence briefings telling them Russia was interfering in the U.S. presidential election on their behalf reminded me of a story from Islamic history.

In Makka, before the revelation, Muhammad was a well-respected man. A fire had damaged the Ka’aba, the cube shaped house purported to have been built by Abraham and his son Ishmael to worship the One true God, and it was being rebuilt. The Black Stone, a meteorite claimed by legend to have been given to the first man Adam and made black through all the times it had been touched and venerated, had been moved, and as the Ka’aba work was finished, the stone was going to be moved back.

But carrying the stone was such an honor! Who then, among all the ruling clans of Makka, would carry the stone? They argued and argued, and clan leaders eventually decided to ask Muhammad what to do.

The Praised One’s (the literal meaning of Muhammad) solution was simple — he grabbed a blanket or a cloth of some kind, told the leaders of the clans to grab corners or sides, and then he took the stone in his hands and placed it on the cloth. That way, he said, all of the clans of Makka got the honor of carrying the stone to the Ka’aba, and none of them were honored more than the others.

Of course, left unstated, was that it was Muhammad himself, and only Muhammad, who got to touch the stone in this story.

Yes, the intel community has apparently warned an election-seeking president and the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination to oppose him in November that Russia is seeking (yet again) to tip the scales in favor of chaos and disruption.

But as Glen Greenwald pointed out, what the two revelations also make clear is that the intel community itself is busy intervening in this year’s presidential election. And has done so by giving briefings and leaking about those briefings in ways that are non-specific and reveal nothing about the actual nature of the intervention.

These are not Adlai Stevenson’s thorough UN briefing on missiles in Cuba, or Jeanne Kirkpatrick’s lengthy presentation on the downing of KAL–007 by Soviet fighter jets. This isn’t even Colin Powell’s highly detailed but largely fictional presentation on Iraqi chemical and biological weapons production. Russian meddling has always been a mere assertion, with little substance and even less evidence. You’d think if there was real substance to any of it, real evidence of actual interference, someone could leak something substantial.

The leaks are, I suspect, the latest in a tawdry game employees of the so-called intel and federal law enforcement agencies are playing. Bernie and Trump are supported by the dreaded Vladimir Putin, they are the anti-American candidates who sow and profit from division, so no good American can support them. I suspect under better circumstances, these folks would stage a coup against President Trump. That is, after all, the sort of thing they are allegedly skilled at. At least some of them.

But we don’t live in an age of successful coups. Any attempt to depose Trump would end as badly as the 1991 coup against Mikhail Gorbachev or the attempt to depose Turkey’s leader in 2016. The intel community folks simply don’t control enough of the government to pull such a thing off, as much as they might want to. At least not against Trump. Should Sanders win in November, and eventually take the oath of office, it might be easier to mobilize disaffected national security liberals as well as the more centrist elements of the Democratic coalition — the upper middle class denizens of Wokeistan who seem to be most bitterly opposed to Sanders’ candidacy — along with frightened Chamber of Commerce Republicans to easily oust Sanders. In much the same way Muhammad al Morsi was ousted by a combination of liberal street revolt and military action. 

This is not a prediction. It is merely musing. But I don’t expect The Resistance™ to stop resisting simply because Trump is sent packing. Especially if the attempt to restore the neoliberalism of the Bush/Clinton/Obama era is unsuccessful. 

Nor do I expect much self-reflection on failure from our elites. I’ve noticed some carping among centrist Democrats that the incumbent and his primary opponent both seem to be drawing the most foreign support, and tut-tutting that too many Americans are apparently okay with that. I have not seen anyone ask what this might mean for the alleged centrism that is supposedly a superior governing idea, and why it is so many Americans no longer want it.

Homage to Palestine

The Trump Administration has announced its “Peace to Prosperity” deal between Israel and Palestine, and it is awful as was to be expected.

The Palestinian polity it creates can best be described as Palesthatswana, a series of disconnected and largely powerless splotches of territory scattered across the West Bank, Gaza, and south from Gaza in the Negev. There is also the possibility in the future of “transferring” Arab citizens of Israel to the new entity, a clear echo of Apartheid’s intent of creating Black homelands (bantustans, a name originally used by the Afrikaners who concocted the plan but later formally dropped by the South African government) and transferring the nationality of black citizens to those “nations” in order to create a whites-only South Africa.

I make no bones about the fact that I am and always have been pro-Palestinian as an adult. I have known too many Palestinians (and yes, I have known a few Israelis too) and heard too many stories of what life under the occupation — which has gone on for more than 50 years now — has been like. No one would want to live that way.

But there is also a sad fact that Palestinians — and those who support them — will have to face. They are a conquered people. This deal is as good as they can expect. Eventually, Israel will annex land and unilaterally “create” Palestine, if only because the Israelis have always wanted control over the land without any responsibility for the people (they occupy) who live in it. And only by creating some form of bantustan for Palestinians will they get that. (To be fair, they have it now, but as the occupation nears its 60th anniversary, it is becoming less and less tenable, and needs some kid of resolution.)

It’s hard for us to think of people being conquered in this age of liberation. Since V-E and V-J days, no nation has been conquered. Wars are now waged for liberation, not to acquire territory or property.

(We may speak of Germany and Japan being “liberated” from their governments, but that is a long-after-the-fact retelling of what happened. In September 1945, Germany and Japan were both ruined, conquered, and occupied nations, their citizens understood this, and they had little idea what kind of mercy — if any — they would face from the United Nations.)

By contrast, virtually every war since 1945 could conceivably be described as liberation. I can think of few actual wars of conquest since 1945 in which territory was taken in where the results were allowed to stand. Indonesia’s occupation and annexation of Portuguese Timor, Argentina’s invasion of the Falklands Islands, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, all were reversed by military action. India’s invasion and annexation of Goa (and the other Portuguese exclaves) in 1961 was an anti-colonial taking of territory that easily passes as liberation. Despite being a NATO member, Portugal wasn’t getting any help from its Western allies to fight India.

(Yes, Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus remains, and so does Russia’s occupation and annexation of Crimea. That latter, however, reminds me more of Goa than Poland.)

Other major wars that involved the invasion and occupation of one nation state by another — India’s invasion of Bangladesh to secure that country’s independence in 1971, North Vietnam’s toppling of the South Vietnamese government in 1975 and then its subsequent invasion of occupation of Cambodia in 1979, Tanzania’s invasion of Uganda to topple dictator Idi Amin in 1979 — were all temporary measures, and did not involve the taking or seizing of territory (or significant acreage). China invaded India in 1962, taking a fair amount of territory in the country’s northeast, declaring a cease-fire, and then quickly withdrawing, a process Beijing would repeat with Vietnam in 1979 after much rougher fighting. The invaders could all claim — and with some very real justification — that they were liberating the people whose countries they were invading. Or that they weren't seeking a permanent change in borders.

Even the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq was called a “liberation,” though the occupation that followed clearly meant it was something else. That’s what happens when you spend too much reading your own propaganda.

(There are wars of conquest in our age, but they are what happens when civil wars fail. Nigeria slowly, methodically, and brutally reconquered Biafra, Sri Lanka laid waste to Tamil Elam, and the Syrian state is slowly and certainly reconquering the remnants of rebel held territory.)

But no one liberated the poor Palestinians. Who were the Israelis “liberating” them from, what were they “liberating” them for, in 1967? Yes, Israelis promises the occupation that would come would be different from any other in history — it would be humane. But it was an occupation, a rule of a people by force against their will. Whatever the legality of the settlements (I do believe they are illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention, but that view has never really mattered, because law without power is meaningless), the fact that Israel was willing to take land and plant communities in the midst of the Palestinians without any consideration for them and did so almost from the beginning meant the occupation wouldn’t be humane for very long.

And it wasn’t.

The Palestinians long lived with the example and inspiration of the Algerian Revolution. France had occupied and settled Algeria for more than a century when the French surrendered and up and left. Israel is a settlement colony, but like the English settlement colonies, those who settled are numerous enough and rooted enough that they aren’t going anywhere. There’s no amount of violence the Palestinians can employ (no matter how just it is) that will do anything but harden Israeli will and intensify desire and ability to respond.

Given how disproportionate Israeli power is, that suffering generally only flows one way. I’m certain it feels good to lob rockets fueled by sugar-water from Gaza at Ashkelon, but the Israeli Air Force can level Gaza at will in response while spectators watch and cheer.

The Palestinians are a conquered people. A dispossessed people. They have lost. And no one is coming to save them. There is no getting around that.

A Better Understanding of Identity Politics

I just finished listening to this episode of The Ezra Klein Show, a chapter from his new book, Why We’re Polarized, and it’s really good, and worth listening to. So take the hour, and listen.

It's That Way Because You *Made* It That Way

Here’s something odd — I like The Lawfare Podcast.

I shouldn’t. It is a clear representation of kind of elite, national security establishment consensus and worldview that I not distrust, but believe has done tremendous harm to the country. And is part of the reason Trump was elected in the first place.

I do not necessarily doubt their knowledge — I think the folks who work for Brookings and outfits like Brookings are reasonably skilled and knowledgable. they know their fields and are fairly expert in them.

What I do not trust are the worldview most of them hold and I am not inclined to agree with their interpretations of the facts, knowledge and experience. I start from a different place — that American power is not an unalloyed virtue, and that as a class, the people who use that power are not as good, wise, or disinterested as they claim. I don’t pretend to be able to muster lots of facts in response to claims made by policy makers, but I can and do questions the presumptions they make when it comes to the application of national wealth and power.

And, to be honest, as a citizen and voter, I’m allowed to. I keep being told having an input in how the state is governed is one of the advantages of democracy. So, the fact that the concerns of citizens like myself who are much less credulous of claims about the virtue and use of American state power are so often ignored or dismissed (as “isolationism,” for example) is another reason for my deep and abiding suspicion. Too many policy elites come off as people who don’t like being questioned and don’t believe they should.

At any rate, not long ago, Brookings sponsored a panel (chaired by the execrable Fred Hiatt) on Susan Hennessey’s and Lawfare host Benjamin Wittes newest book, Unmaking the Presidency: Donald Trump’s War on the World’s Most Powerful Office, and it is a fascinating discussion. Listen to it here. It is well worth the 88 minutes you will need to listen.

It’s a smart and insightful panel, and it’s full of some amazing observations. Mostly, they conclude that Trump is a kind of perfect storm of abuse of power, doing all sorts of things simultaneously and publicly the way no other president ever has. (Wittes, I believe, notes that Lyndon Johnson claimed to have divested himself of his family businesses but never actually did, and continued to run his business empire as vice-president and president.) That the oath of office doesn’t and can’t be made to actually mean very much, and certainly not when taken by someone who doesn’t mean to keep it. And it sees some solid failure in the Founders for failing to foresee the rise of partisanship and for investing so much power in a combined head of government and head of state.

And yet, missing from their examination of the presidency is any self-examination. The folks at Brookings have been in the forefront for at least a generation of creating a sprawling and expansive presidency and then vesting it with ever-increasing power because they believe in both the presidency and what that power can accomplish. (Trying to preserve the presidency is one reason I believe the Democrats have engaged in the futility of impeachment over the nonsense that is Ukraine.) In the hope that the sheer sprawl of Executive will somehow restrain executive action, though both Wittes and Hennessey acknowledge that somehow having junior managers and civil servants have to sneak around the president to ignore or countermand orders isn’t a particular happy place to be either. 

If the presidency is so carefully curated that it cannot bear the rough and tumble cruelty and incompetence of Donald Trump, then we no longer live in a democratic society where “anyone can grow up to be president.” Rather, we live in a kind-of aristocracy, where presidents are carefully bred and raised to the office. I don’t care if that’s true, I just would like someone to be honest about it. Stop lying to me that “every vote and every view counts” when clearly it doesn’t.

But also missing from this is, of course, any sense that the people at places like Brookings have failed in governing the country and administered the world. That contrary to their gold plated credentials, they aren’t wise enough to order the planet. I know, I know, that kind of humility and self-examination is beyond these people — they may not be born for the task, but they clearly are bred for it, and the sense of self-righteous injury that the task of making the world legible has been (likely only temporarily) stripped from them is quite palpable.

This, however, is yet one more reason Trump was elected. Yes, by the thinnest of margins — enough people to fill the L.A. Coliseum for the USC Trojans game — but it was a victory nonetheless.

Wittes wondered whether after Trump would come a Restoration or if trump marked a permanent break, a new “expressive presidency” in which Trump’s use of language and social media are a harbinger of things to come. I think, sadly, Wittes is right when he speculates that more like Trump — and worse, and a great deal more competent — are coming. 

I suspect any restoration will be short-lived.

New Blog, Same Old Issues

Greetings. It has been a while since I have posted anything. I know I had something of a small following at my previous blog, but I have been dedicating myself to life a devotion — a messy combination of Orthodox and Anglican daily prayers, focusing on personal repentance and penance (because that’s what Orthodoxy does best). It has taken me some time to accept the humility that has accompanied the failure of all my public efforts. It still bothers me, but I am slowly living into it.

Next up will be to take my last book, Kesslyn Runs, off Amazon and unpublish it. Two weeks ago, it came to me full-blown one morning at work how to rewrite it. Plus, I have a whole other novel, the first volume of a sci-fi epic I intend to call Song of the Salt Miner’s Daughter, set in a Hindu-dominated space empire some 3,000 years in the future, bubbling in my head, that is begging to be rewritten. Unlike with Kesslyn, there will be no depth here (or pretense at depth). It will just be a nifty little story about some characters and how they get swept up in cosmos-changing events.

Would that I could quit my job and devote my life to writing. And praying. 

I am also slowly pulling myself off social media. I don’t intend to market or promote this blog, or my books, any, though I will try and find a publisher for them before I self publish. I would suspend my Facebook account if I could, but I need it for work. I have logged off Twitter but have not yet had the courage to delete my account. I may, at some point, delete my Tumblr blog and repost here some of that stuff I found in library books while working at my seminary library. I do like posting the occasional photos on Instagram.

But generally, I do not like what social media does to me. It makes me angry and unkind. I suspect it does that to a lot of people. So, I need to step back, withdraw from the world of false urgency that we live in — everything is an imminent crisis demanding an immediate emotional response and urgent action or else all is lost! — to remember that the Internet is not reality (not even me) and that there are permanent things.

I will occasionally comment about things — stuff I read, stuff I listen to, stuff I’m focusing on in my devotional life. But I’m not committing to any posting timeline. I tried to blog daily for a while to build an audience, but that mostly didn’t work. I’ve had to realize that whatever I want to say, I don’t have anything very many people want to hear, much less pay for. I’m just not all that interesting.

And that’s what I’m trying to be okay with.