Category Archives: Self-promotion

07.13.16
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Karen’s Greenberg’s “Rogue Justice” Review

The fine folks at Just Security were kind enough to ask me to review Karen Greenberg’s excellent Rogue Justice, about how we transformed into a security state following 9/11. It’s a great read, and persuasively argued (the book, not my review). One of her key insights, beside the great reporting, is that the decisions made after the attacks fundmentally changed our relationship with the government, in ways we didn’t realize, and that I think will affect the national character for decades.

I’ll have more on the book later on, a few longer essays on some of the themes. In the meantime, here’s the review. Thanks to Just Security, especially for keeping the Huck Finn theme throughout.

 

This complicity came from careerists worried about rocking the boat, politicians in both parties worried about being painted as weak on terror (with notable and noble exceptions), and to an uncomfortable extent, the general public. The terrorist attacks in 2001 made everyone realize that anyone could be a target, but we didn’t see — or didn’t want to see — that in a very real way, we also became a target of the government. Many of the policies enacted in the wake of 9/11 made everyone a suspect as much as a target. Through official secrecy aided by general indifference, we allowed ourselves to be passively dragooned into being on both sides of a war.

06.17.16
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Waukesha and Borges

I want to apologize to the literally somes of you who have been reading the Waukesha/Borges pieces. It’s been a far busier week at work than I thought, and I haven’t been able to devote the time I wanted to them over the last couple of days. The quicker political pieces are easier to do before work*. I hope to finish up the both of the series this weekend. In the meantime, if you are interested, please feel free to read the first entries in each.

The Borges Retrospective:

Waukesha Diversion Week!

 

*If there happens to be an idle billionaire who wants to subsidize this blog, and my lavish lifestyle, we can maybe work something out…

05.05.16
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Programming Note

Moving forward, I promise to spend less time on Trump, and more time on geopolitics, international relations, and, hopefully, literature and science and Great Lake diversions and cool stuff like that. Maybe more time spent making fun of Thomas Friedman, which is the lifeblood of any blogger. This blog wasn’t supposed to just be about the dirt of the campaign, but there’s something about the single-worst nomination in the history of this nation that’s just, well, gripping I guess, in the way that the mountain speeding toward the window of your cockpit has a certain fascination.

06.11.13
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Don’t worry, Rand- the ACLU’s got this

Friend of the blog and my good buddy Brett Max Kaufman of the ACLU’s National Security Project has an excellent summation of what the ACLU is doing about the NSA, Prism, etc (they are also doing a lot of work on drones and extra-judicial killings).   The ACLU has a personal stake in this too, as Brett explains

The ACLU’s complaint filed today explains that the dragnet surveillance the government is carrying out under Section 215 infringes upon the ACLU’s First Amendment rights, including the twin liberties of free expression and free association. The nature of the ACLU’s work—in areas like access to reproductive services, racial discrimination, the rights of immigrants, national security, and more—means that many of the people who call the ACLU wish to keep their contact with the organization confidential. Yet if the government is collecting a vast trove of ACLU phone records—and it has reportedly been doing so for as long as seven years—many people may reasonably think twice before communicating with us.

One thing I really like is the right of free association.  Obviously- who doesn’t like that right?  But I think it is very clever of the ACLU to be using it.   We live in an age where so many meetings of any type are no longer done face-to-face.  Thinking that there could be a mole in every conversation dampens our ability to speak as political animals.  The argument that it doesn’t matter if you aren’t doing anything wrong doesn’t hold water.  For one thing, we don’t always know who decides what is right.  But on a more basic level, conversation shouldn’t be hampered by the fear of speaking correctly or the terror or being misinterpreted.

I also want to take a moment here to praise the ACLU.  For decades they’ve been a punching bag on the right, despite their firm commitment to Constitutional principles.  There are few bigger applause lines for a Republican politician than to sneer “ACLU” to a crowd.   So it must be somewhat gratifying for them to see that, suddenly, with Obama in charge, Republicans are concerned about the national security state.  The ACLU has been on this for a long time.  They filed lawsuits against George Bush, and were pilloried for it, held up (again) as traitors, commies, terrorist-lovers, un-American, etc.  Now the right has found some common cause, albeit in a cynical matter.  But I would ask them this: just remember you are late to the party.  You are welcome, but be decent enough to find a quiet corner and don’t pretend that you invited everyone, and for god’s sake, don’t insult your hosts.   They’ve been here the whole time.

05.16.13
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…and the living’s easy

This blog is debuting as summer seems poised to break over the land, erasing in its weighty humidity a cold and pointless spring.    And this particular summer, which is being met this week by a trio of scandals looking to linger over the season like a dumb and rumbling and lightning-scarred thundercloud, is a particularly fortunate time to debut.    What’s happening this fitfully stupid week fits in with a lot of what this blog is going to do.

If you are reading this initial post any time within the first week or so of its appearance, there is an exactly zero percent chance that you don’t know at least one of the authors, so I am not going to go long on introduction.   Some of you may know that Greg Johnsen and I used to blog together at Waq al-Waq, and so this is kind of like getting the band back together, with some new members who I think you’ll enjoy getting to know through their writing.

The point of this is to have a blend of different voices and opinions that cuts through the daily riptide of pointless nonsense and ceaseless counter-pointing.   Which is why this week is a good example.   If you want to read this blog to get an up-to-the-second dissection of why what Louis Gohmert said proves him once again to be the single-dumbest member of the US Congress, you might not get that.  You might, because Gohmert delights me, but there won’t be constant update.    There might be days at a time when politics isn’t mentioned, or you might get three straight days of debates over drones.  We think that there is a wide enough range of opinions on the site, and among our readers, as entirely theoretical as they are right now, to sustain a discussion on wiretapping, the latest Pynchon novel, how the Hawks are going to win the Stanley Cup, fracking, Yemen, or deep sea life on impossibly poisonous vents.

So we hope you’ll enjoy it.  It will take a while to find our feet, I’m sure, but stick around.   I would love for you to like us on Facebook or to follow us @irrelevanceshot.