Follow the Leader

I know I can always count on Andrew J. Bacevich, ever the fearless b.s.-detector, to make me question whatever foreign misadventure the US government—no matter who the Comandante en Jefe—is trying to sell the American people:

What is it about Afghanistan, possessing next to nothing that the United States requires, that justifies such lavish attention? Among Democrats and Republicans alike, with few exceptions, Afghanistan’s importance is simply assumed—much the way fifty years ago otherwise intelligent people simply assumed that the United States had a vital interest in ensuring the survival of South Vietnam…. Fixing Afghanistan is not only unnecessary, it’s also likely to prove impossible. Not for nothing has the place acquired the nickname Graveyard of Empires. Americans, insistent that the dominion over which they preside does not meet the definition of empire, evince little interest in how the British, Russians, or others have fared in attempting to impose their will on the Afghans. As General David McKiernan, until recently the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, put it, “There’s always an inclination to relate what we’re doing now with previous nations,” adding, “I think that’s a very unhealthy comparison.” McKiernan was expressing a view common among the ranks of the political and military elite: We’re Americans. We’re different. Therefore, the experience of others does not apply.

(from Commonweal, via Harper’s Magazine)

Southern Hospitality: Chopped & Screwed

The future will inevitably—and unfortunately—make many an addendum upon this post, but I wanted to round up a few related items for those of you who may have skimped a little on yr newspaper reading lately.

I want to talk about South Carolina—the state in which I spent my formative years, and one that I have a very high regard for and miss very much. Too frequently overshadowed by its less reactionary and more carpetbaggin’ northern neighbor, South Carolina holds a distinct place in my heart for its heart & belly-warming cuisine, uniquely serene natural landscapes, and genuine qualities of its inhabitants. I understand it is a particularly Southern—and with regard to race, particularly problematic—tendency to be paternalistic, but along with some of the sharpest minds, South Carolina boasts some of the most base. I’d actually be remiss if I didn’t confess that I didn’t cherish them all. In other words, they may be idiots, but they’re our idiots.

Now, I grew up in Charleston, often regarded as a sort of New Orleans of the southeastern seaboard—romantic, cosmopolitan, home to dandies and quaintrelles of loose morals, and, with regard to its neighbors, racially relatively easy-going—admittedly, a city not terribly representative of the state in which it resides. (Many folks “upstate” speak of the port as one they simply tolerate, and hope their sons and daughters don’t desire to go to college there.) Still, Charleston is undoubtedly Southern, where one can partake of all that implies (food, architecture, weather), while remaining a city that breathes a more worldly air which provides it with a concrete otherness from the rest of the state and its people.

And it is this dichotomy between Charleston and the rest of South Carolina which, more or less, brings us to the brunt of this lil’ essay: namely, the agonizing fact that the vast majority of South Carolinians, as sweet as they often are, continue to persist in electing the most willfully ignorant, two-faced, coarse, racist, and corrupt Politicians-With-a-Capital-P to their state and national governments. And if that weren’t bad enough, the Daily Show is there to remind us that we bang horses.

The facts speak for themselves, and the stories are all too true. So, as a Charlestonian, I increasingly ask myself Why? Or rather, how? And the answer, more often then not—and not terribly secret—boils down to ignorance. It is a trait that is unfortunately self-perpetuating in a state consistently ranked near the bottom of national public education rankings, and near the top in unemployment. Southern politicians (nearly always Republican) self-servingly harness the uncertainty that such ignorance and poverty breeds, and channel it directly into fear—of bogeymen. Big government. Illegal immigration. Socialism. Fugitive slaves. And no matter what the actual political/economic priorities of the Republican party are (chiefly, promoting the interests of the wealthy), they are able to manipulate poor, naive Southerners into voting them into office. Every single time.

Will this change? Unfortunately, I doubt it. The recent electoral inroads made by Barack Obama in Virginia and North Carolina have more to do with the migration of liberal-leaning Northerners to Southern cities, not a paradigm shift in the thinking of Republican Southerners. And as a previous post attempted to explain, the Internet will only facilitate the entrenchment of those beliefs, rather that expose them to a world without bogeymen.

But still I’ll go on loving South Carolina and Southerners in general. I could love the region and despise its people (an opinion I’ve heard bandied around quite a bit outside the South), but as far as I’m concerned, you can’t separate one from the other. They are part of each other’s landscape—Columbia’s mouthwatering barbeque as no distinct from the unreformed yokel who makes it. Sometimes this dichotomy is funny; other times, only laughingly sad. There is an obvious existential tension to this quality of Southerness, but like the day-to-day tensions of city living, it is an anxiety which ultimately makes you understand and appreciate all the more where you grew up.

“Time waits for no man, certainly not during a real estate downturn in Brooklyn…” (via NYT)

Do You Want New Wave or Do You Want the Truth?

Life is about finding the right balance, no? Efficiency versus beauty. Freedom versus security. Vice versus virtue. Most Americans shoot straight for the middle, which aside from some boring artistic preferences and questionable policy positions, seems to work fairly well. We are a generally private people (an inheritance from the English), sometimes stupidly rational (thank our German forbearers), and forever proud and usually suspect of authority (all rise: Geronimo, Crazy Horse, Sequoyah, etc.)

As of late, however, you may have noticed a few of your fellow citizens in danger of falling, nay, regressing into more reactionary, and decidedly far (…)-wing sectors of thought. Back in the nineteenth century, they used to call this phenomenon “know-nothingism,” and while it proved to be a successful political tactic, the trick was short-lived, and is today generally shorthand for being willfully ignorant—a short leap from just being a crazy old coot.

This has manifested itself most recently, and most virulently, in the town hall meetings cum shouting matches called up by your local senator (or President) explaining how a public option of health care might help you and your family receive quality medical care. Those more historically inclined might have confused the fiasco for a thirteenth-century waltz of Guelphs and Ghibellines (minus any tangential literary bequests).

Another inferno that has been a-ragin’ is that between the defenders of the agri-biz food industry and the many-monikered green/sustainable/organic/local movement (a subtlety hydra-headed group of interests, but more or less speaking to the same thing, and everyone knows who they are) that ironically finds most of its adherents in the places furthest from the farm and food chain.

More below the radar, but particularly interesting, is the small, but fervent group of parents who choose not to vaccinate their children for fear of unintended, and so far unfounded, side-effects like life-long allergies and autism. That the other side of this argument is nearly a half century of successful (some would say miracle-working) public health policy is no matter.

Is the private and old-fashioned rational mind fast becoming a thing of the past? Or has the Internet and social media allowed for like-minded individuals to cohere, trade ideas, and organize movements much more successfully than ever before? The latter more than the former, surely; but it’s the particular virulence of social media that is actually making the decline of the rational mind a certainty, rather than just upstaging it as a new value in American politics.

(via StrangeMaps)

Known to Americans as a greater metropolitan “bypass,” most of us who have driven/been a passenger in a car are familiar with the six-to-eight-lane monsters. I specifically remember the Amazonian reach of the I-435 from my early days in Overland Park (a suburb of Kansas City); and later, visiting friends in Atlanta, I would try to avoid (unsuccessfully) the 235.

Designed by the Rice School of Architecture in Houston, “Ring Roads of the World” lays out in a weird beauty greater than it’s subject matter ever could, the twenty seven largest urban bypasses from around the world. Color-coded according to city, and ascendingly stacked to scale from grossest to most humble of highway designs, the map is a bit unwieldy. Still, it’s fun to look at. Vienna possesses the smallest ring road, while that black hole which looms behind the rest like a gaping maw, no surprise, represents Houston (home of the Rice School).

StrangeMaps:

The city at the centre of the US’s sixth-largest metropolitan area (with 5.7 million inhabitants) has three ring roads: Interstate 610 [circling downtown in a 38-mile (61-km) loop], Beltway 8 [about 83 miles, or 137 km] and the as yet unfinished Grand Parkway [State Highway 99].

Clearly, for Houston to have the world’s longest loop, the big black blob on this map could only be the latter. But a few problems arise. Four, to be exact.

One: the Grand Parkway is far from finished. Only two of 11 segments are completed. However tempting it may be, it is hardly fair to tout something as “the world’s largest” before it’s been completed. Especially since, as any large-scale project, the Grand Parkway has its share of detractors. So it might never get done.

Two: even if it is to be completed, plans may change and length might vary. The website for the Grand Parkway Association doesn’t specify beyond the “circumferential scenic highway” going to be “180+ miles” (app. 290 km) long.

Three: the Houston orbital outsizes all others on this map to such an extent that it’s difficult to imagine its circumference to be no larger than London’s by a factor of 180 to 117.

And finally, four: now that I’m mentioning London’s orbital road again — the website for the UK’s Highway Agency states that the M25 is… the longest ring road in the world.

Don’t mess with Texas?