Hey Frank, What do you think the thesis statement is for LoP? Good to have you back. L

America's seeming dominance leading up to the invasion of Iraq has been crudely mirrored by a recent host of shortcomings both home and abroad. The times when Americans could dream of watching over their centrist notions of right and wrong are coming to a screeching halt. Bad military strategy, foreign relations blunders, unwise commitments, and misguided direction have thrown America so far "outside the box" and off track that it is going to require a rethinking of what it means to work "within the box" of a shared global reality.

Just got my copy of the book today, so I should be able to start reading sometime tomorrow. I have a few finals this week and the next so time may be tight for alternative reading and thinking, but I'll try to fit this in as best I can.

I think Grim is on the right track and has captured a number of the symptoms of a fundamental problem in American politics and society. Bacevich, as I see it, identifies the root of our ailments in something that has plagued this Nation from its inception: an obsession for more. This insatiable appetite to increase, expand, consume and conquer...from our delusionary notions of Manifest Destiny to our contrived mission for Iraqi Freedom...our domestic existence and foreign policies have been placed in perilous straits due to this drive for land and power.

And Bacevich doesn't reduce his thesis to America's militarist drive for global hegemony...he is careful to challenge the behaviors of individual Americans and our irresponsible and immoral throw away lifestyles and consumption habits.

Way to go DH. My book hasn't arrived yet. This should be a good one. Takes your mind off the election and stock market. L

Andrew J. Bacevich says in Limits of Power:


Seems fairly self explanatory. The introduction for this book develops its thoughts quite well, and sets the tone for what should be an interesting read.

Would a book making this statement have received similar attention 4 or 5 years ago?

I think so, but with more reservation as to the true nature of American ability to fulfill commitments. Now with the overshadowing credit crisis and highly potential economic downturn this book should achieve maximal effect in the nation's conscience.

A book of this type from someone of the author's experience should install great change in options and direction of American international affairs, I hope.

I can already see where I am probably going to take issue with Bacevich. Like many people in the U.S., Bacevich in the above passage seems to confuse freedom with consumerism or democracy with capitalism. Freedom, democracy, civil rights have not caused us to dominate the globe. What has caused us to dominate the globe is a self-indulgent refusal to look at the greed for power, control and wealth driving our leaders and those with economic power in our country, but instead allowing ourselves to be bought off with their dreams and a small amount of comfort and entertainment.

What we need to do is exercise and protect our freedom, democracy and civil rights from the same people who have been destroying freedom around the globe in our name. They will do it here, too, make no mistake.

I feel I should admit that I was aware when reading his contention that the rights of women and "minorities" were only funded as a result of our global militarism that my father (an Indian immigrant) worked for a defense contractor for thirty years and put me through good schools with some of that money. I would not for the world lie about this. All I have to offer to pay it back to the American people is my informed and honest perspective. I'm not going to take it to some other place to enjoy myself in safety, pretending lack of responsibility. I'm going to stay here, where I am planted and tell all the truth I can no matter what it costs me because it's the most valuable thing I have and it belongs to you. It was not a mistake to give me my rights or educate me. I am not why we are fighting wars around the world. If I have gotten benefit I want to reinvest it, to pay it back. Our freedom belongs to us. The people who want to take it from us are not in the Middle East or even Russia; they are Americans, too. We don't owe it to them! The material things, we never needed. Our addictions to stuff and entertainment, we can do without. But let's not get confused about the difference between personal liberty and material self-indulgence as the above-quoted passage seems to me to do.

Somewhere along the line, Americans have become inured with a sense of entitlement which has manifested itself with rampant consumerism. Our way of life is unsustainable, but as Bacevich points out, we are unwilling to face that. Unfortunately, our political leaders aren't willing to face it either and, worse, they'll do anything to pander to the voters in an effort not to face it. We have pretty good evidence of this with the economic stimulus package passed earlier this year, which gives taxpayers cash back with the idea that all that cash will get put back into the economy and keep the machine well-oiled. The kicker, which should raise the hairs on the backs of our necks, is that this "cash" is all borrowed money. McCain and Clinton were in support of a gas tax holiday this summer, which would also have been financed, and by China.

Another aspect of this entitlement which Bacevich discusses is an apparent unwillingness to sacrifice. After the 9/11 attacks, George Bush told Americans to go out and shop to keep the economy going, which I think shows how far out of whack things are. If we're going to wage a global war on terrorism, you would think the people would be willing to sacrifice, make do with less. Maybe a gasoline tax would have been more appropriate or government-issued war bonds as was done during WWII. But since any kind of new tax would be very unpopular, Bush and co. try to instill the idea that we can wage a global war on terror without any sacrifice at all and all we have to do to show solidarity with the war effort is go out and do a little shopping. Above all and at all costs, keep the economic engine going. By sending us this message, Bush only leads us further down this path of cognitive dissonance, a myth that we can wage a global war on terror without having to make any sacrifice at all.

And why are we so frightened of recessions in the first place? Recessions are a necessary part of the economic cycle which help to purge market inefficiencies and provide us with periodic wakeup calls. By trying to stave off recession, we are only making matters worse for the recession will eventually come around anyway and be much worse. Granted, the Bush Administration was dealt a cruel blow by the terrorist attacks which followed the dot.com boom/bust, but I would argue that the situation has been made much, much worse by this pandering to voters and refusal to face reality. The current bailout of Wall Street, which will also be financed, might be the straw that breaks the camel's back. What is completely missing from the current dialogue is doing something to address the growing deficit. I would argue we can't have a healthy economy until something is done on that front.

GentleReader9 when you say that "I can already see where I am probably going to take issue with Bacevich. Like many people in the U.S., Bacevich in the above passage seems to confuse freedom with consumerism or democracy with capitalism." do you really know what you are saying? Do you really understand what the author is saying? What exactly do you think this book is about except American consumption?

He never proposes to say what freedom or democracy is in a practical or definite sense he merely brings about the question "does freedom mean having more things to buy?" (Hint: the answer is yes.) He is not saying that this is what freedom essentially means.

When you think about this, to what extent is the American more "free" when compared to others? Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness i.e human rights, democracy, and private property. When you think that freedom does not mean consumerism you forget that freedom means the ability to act on a notion of "free will". If I want to be a consumerist whore I have the freedom to do so. If I want to forgo material pleasures and use my voice to look down on people who use to goods in ways I am unable, I have the freedom to do so. Whether either use of the same inherent freedom is a good thing or not is irrelevant to what the author is saying.

"As portrayed by Carter, the mistaken idea of freedom was quantitative: It centered on the never-ending quest for more while exalting narrow self-interests." (p34)

You seem to think that the idea of freedom has come to mean: "instead allowing ourselves to be bought off with their dreams and a small amount of comfort and entertainment." What the book has been saying that "their dreams" represents the peoples dreams (of freedom) and as such is a much bigger problem considering that they have become "exalting" and "narrow".

To say that American consumerist hungry is not free you would have to argue that the contract between the buyer and seller is unfair and prevents one party from engaging in the sale contract as him/her so wishes, or binds the buyer in ways that prevent the buyer from exercising his/her own will.

It is a joke to even begin trying to unwind capitalism from democracy so I won't even try.

The majority of the particular quote is specific to economic and financial considerations past and present of the state and its people.

We must be careful not to judge to harshly or jump to pointed self-gratifying conclusions that matter little, like the terrorists that caused 9/11. It is this kind of pseudo-scholarship you seem often fond of that leads to fascism, distraction and ignorance. (More payback for that time before)

"Hear, hear" to that and the rest of your post. Bacevich doesn't leave room for amy of us to wiggle out: not liberals, not conservatives, and not the "American people" the politicians like to extoll when they need votes.

I really don't know if you understood what I said, either. I was probably unclear because I found this upsetting. The idea that we need to give up our pattern of overconsumption and that it is this false "liberty" to choose as a consumer which causes our economic problems is one I have been raised hearing all my life. Like civil rights, it was a fond notion of the "pinks, lefties, liberals and bleeding-heart fellow-travelers" among whom I was raised many decades before Bacevich decided to write about it. Quakers have spoken of looking for "the seeds of war in these our possessions" for a long time. I'm very familiar with the understanding geo lays out in the post above and I don't disagree with that. I have never owned a car. I am a vegetarian and have been since I was 14 (I'm 47). I live on much less money and get paid much less than I could if I did not make my life choices based on my awareness of these issues. I prefer not to make enough to pay taxes because I don't like how much of it is spent on war.

What I don't like in Bacevich is the careless conflation of a shallow "freedom to consume" (a capitalist value) with actual civil and political liberties (the value of a democracy). Here and around the globe these liberties have been eroded by the more conservative wing of the business party in cooperation with its left (as Noam Chomsky would characterize the Republican end of that spectrum versus the Democratic end) so that we actually are close to a state of emergency, not due to terrorists, but due to a systematic weakening of the enfranchisement and rights of regular working people here and in countries we influence -- everywhere.

I know it isn't popular to do analysis informed by a Marxist outlook anymore, but that doesn't mean it's without value to remember certain facts revealed by this perspective. The interests of democracy and the interests of capitalism are two entirely different things, often at odds with one another. The quality and freedom of the airwaves and the press when funded by the public (as with PBS) is not driven by the same interests as corporately funded tv controlled by advertisers with lots of money, to borrow a Chomskian example, which he elaborates in Maufacturing Consent. As was discussed in the last Presidential debate, Mc Cain sees Obama's unwillingness to enter into a free trade agreement with Colombia as a failure to do profitable business, where Obama, seeing the repression of labor organizers, among other glaring violations of civil liberties in that country, to be a barrier and to set the groundwork for the stripping away of rights and protections for workers here. This is a true concern, and the idea that exploitation of others around the globe benefits workers here is superficial, short-sighted and wrong. As in factually incorrect in the long run, not just morally wrong because I'm a weenie.

In the opening chapter of the Bacevich book, in which I admit I need to read further to be sure of the extent of this concern, Bacevich makes several statements that seem to conflate issues that need to be considered in their articulated parts in order for their relationships to be understood. The contention that caused me dismay in particular was on pages 26-27. First he (rightly)credits the left with "the impetus for providing civil rights" to every American who would have been left behind by the William F. Buckleys. Then he makes the statement

How did it stem from this? Really, how? His next paragraph begins:

Again, how? Greater ability to consume is not greater freedom. A drug addict, a "couch potato" watching tv, a compulsive consumer of clothes and shoes, an overeater -- these people are indentured servants, ready to believe anything the dealer tells them and not to care if no one consults them about real political decisions, in terms of their actual liberty. I differ strongly with this equation of consumption with freedom and I think many other educated (not pseudo-scholarly) people would also.

His contention further down the page that "The creation, by the 1950's, of an informal American Empire of global proportions was not the result of a conspiracy designed to benefit the few" really belies the fact that that is the agenda of big business, whether or not it's a conspiracy; this what the effect is if we look at global wealth. The sad thing is it doesn't have to be a conspiracy for people to allow it because they don't understand what's at stake. The relatively small amount consumed by the middle class is not what directs the army around the globe, although that impression is used to buy them off cheaply.

Next begins a list of loosely stated associations of militarism with feminism for which there is no precisely articulated explanation and no clear logical connection. You explain to me exactly what this is supposed to mean and how and why this is true:



Since it's not capitalized I must assume he is speaking of theoppressed condition and its romanticization which Friedan calls "the feminine mystique" rather than the book by that title, and yes, of course militarism as a part of patriarchy in general helps to create the conditions for the objectification and disenfranchisement of women meant by the term "feminine mystique," but that is a far cry from creating the feminist movement. It's like saying, "without repression you would never have been able to critique and dismantle it." No kidding. But what he seems to be trying to claim, by not stating things in a fully articulated way, but relying on your agreement with a lot of common myth-appealing half-truths, is that without prosperity, created by world domination, Americans could not enjoy the civil liberties they have and this is wrong. It's wrong to imply that our liberty, rather than our greed and unbalanced sense of entitlement, is what we have to give up to take an appropriate place in the world.

Or you will explain to me why it's right.

Gentle Reader: The interests of democracy and the interests of capitalism are two entirely different things, often at odds with one another.

Capitalism enjoys democracy except where it involves workers actually participating in the decisions that impact the workplace; or where communities in which industries reside actually participate in the decisions of industry; or where consumers actually participate in deciding what and how goods and services are sold...in essence, Capitalism enjoys democracy except where it is actually democratic.

Some believe in the deeply obscene perversion of "one dollar, one vote"...which means no dollars, no votes...or the ones with the most dollars get the most votes...which really reflects actual American democracy...which is simply the golden rule: he with the most gold makes the rules.

Decision making is left to our betters: those who understand how to make money. Bankers, market analysts, financiers and exalted economists understand this stuff: those who don't, listen to those who do and make believe they get it. The vast many are left in the dark and told to trust those who own the machines and invest the money and capture the greatest profits...the rest must toil...do the onerous tasks that make the machines run...but, fundamentally, keep silent about it all...believe the stories of American exceptionalism, moral excellence, and get onboard the inescapable trajectory of history that has ended at capitalism's doorstep.

Where more is better, actually, the only needful, important and valued thing.

Freedom is a concept, consumer morality is an ethic or possibly an emotion, corporate and consumer consumption is a pattern and a need, democracy is a concept and a system.

He is not saying that freedom=morals period like you suggest, or that freedom=consumption like you want him to say. Rather he is saying that freedom has effected our morals. Democracy is not even mentioned. You are arguing against freedom saying that freedom+democracy=poor consumer morality+consumption because you don't see them as separate. Freedom allows consumption, and poor moral judgment, and democracy but it doesn't equate to these ideas.

To say that all this time those hardworking Americans, the innovators, the thinkers the blue collar "middle class," all this time this past 40 years, of hard work and consumption, well they weren't really free. It makes for an awkward argument, go ahead say it out loud to yourself, "Americans aren't free." Sounds silly doesn't it, sounds like a lot of alarmist misinformation, sounds like Bush after 9/11 all you would have to include then is the moral lesson of "go travel, visit Disney land, consume".

Saying what something is not is more descriptive than trying to describe what it is. Which has its place, just not when that place is disagreeing with educated people who seem know what they mean and have reason to mean it. You could talk about information exchange and the internet, I could disagree and say that the internet only exchanges porn and racist opinions, but why would I want to?

I would argue against consumer freedom as well, and to say that the current system is set up in such a way as to limit the freedoms of the lower educated, enabling the educated to live free from the discomforts of real work. This fact of systemic bias deserves attention now more than ever. It is well known that the way the capitalist system which provides great freedom from want, in turn traps those required to serve up this freedom to the wealthy and is morally wrong on many levels. It is not necessary for freedom to include everyone to still be considered freedom.

To rabble on about confusing ""freedom to consume" (a capitalist value) with actual civil and political liberties (the value of a democracy)," is ignoring the purpose of the thesis statement. When you say you disagree with his thesis you are really saying that you disagree with modern American history. This disregard for the actual state of affairs becomes apparent when you say "The interests of democracy and the interests of capitalism are two entirely different things, often at odds with one another." You mean like that highly relevant time where corporate interests weren't served by the American military contracts (not), or that election when politicians didn't accept their corporate sponsorships(not). Come to think of it what you really should have disagreed with is how the author confuses freedom with democracy and the corporation with consumption, because that would make sense.

Freedom is democracy which is what we need now more than ever, and the corporation is consumption in its most natural role as consumer of raw goods and provider of finished products; however, the corporation has failed or consumption limits by not properly protecting its collective interests. And so the whole system is failed.

The moral argument against the history and consequences of American consumer freedom is fundamentally different than opinions as to what consumer freedom should mean morally, and pragmatically. The author is right in his views and explains himself clearly enough that his meaning can easily be understood.

No more personal jabs I promise.

Grim,

I'm following you as carefully and respectfully and open-mindedly as I can. I appreciate your reading my long post, answering it thoughtfully and promising not to do personal attacks. Now if you will also agree not to make up for any disagreements we may have by using the little "humping" icon the way you did last time, ever again, I will be one happy old lady, old enough to be your mother, you fresh kid you.

That said, I was following you pretty well right up to:


No. I would love to have freedom and democracy added together; they go and don't clash at all. I believe I enjoy them together to a certain degree already and I wish everyone did, even more than I do now. They certainly do not equal poor consumer morality plus consumption. But maybe I'm not getting your notation; I was always worse at math than language arts. What I speculate as I sit with this equation you attribute to me, is that this is the misunderstanding between us. What I meant to say was that... freedom + democracy --oh hell, my keyboard doesn't have the "is not equal to sign," where the slash goes through the equals but I would put it here if it did--poor consumer morality (based on manipulation and exploitation by power from birth to grave) as expressed by consumption in capitalism, because I do see them as separate, even mutually exclusive. God, you need a machete to get through that sentence, don't you? In other words, while democracy and consumer capitalism have to do with kinds of freedom, they are not the same kind of freedom, nor are they the same phenomenon and the causes that produce them are not the same, as Bacevich seems to say.

I think Bacevich is throwing them in together under the term "freedom" and I don't like that. Does that make more sense?

I see. I'm looking at a bumpersticker on my bulletin board. It says, "No one is free when others are oppressed." I believe this is true. This is how I perceive the situation. I'm going to take a wild guess and I may well be wrong; go ahead and correct me if I am: I guess you are a white male. I guess that you think it does not necessarily diminish your freedom if, say, women are exploited. Suppose we adopted the strictest, most repressive "boxes" we could think of for women to have to inhabit in order to stay feminine and we put men in tne contrasting box for men to be masculine and we took that to the place where the stereotypes were in the 1950's. This is where you really see the relationship between Betty Freidan and Curtis LeMay. If I'm in the Betty Crocker box fixing you cookies in my soft, clean mommy apron, rocking you and telling you stories, and letting you have more fun than your sister, what you may not realize is that you are about to be drafted to Viet Nam where you will be dragged through hell and you will come back unable even to tell Mommy about it because it will mess up her nice clean box. You are so not free if I am oppressed. This is a silly example, but it's true.

...whoa; hold it right there. I didn't patronize anyone by even mentioning what I think his thesis is, nor am I necessarily in complete disagreement with it. As the book goes on, I may very well find I agree with his most important points. But I care about the way people spin things, what agenda they are planning to use their ideas to further on the sly. I peek down the alleys and scream and point, but I'm not claiming it's the whole street, just the part we may need to watch.



People do disagree about history, by the way. It's a perfectly respectable subject to disagree about. And although I am not sure who exactly you mean when you speak of educated people with whom one shouldn't disagree, if you mean me, sarcastically, then I don't mind who disagrees with me. I think ideas and not degrees should speak for a person's argument. If you mean I shouldn't disagree with Bacevich because he has an education and you think I don't, well... sorry, buddy, but I'm educated enough to have a right to disagree with almost anybody on the planet, much good it does anyone, but what I said for others who argue with me I also say for myself: either what I say has merit or it doesn't. A cat can look at a king and argue with him about history, too. And the cat might just win.



No, I mean like when George W. Bush was last democratically elected (not). Corporate interests are not democratic. Elections are not even inherently democratic depending on how they are conducted. You defined democracy as a system, but it is based on a principle of participation in decision-making by the governed. I hope you read Dissident Heart's post, just above my latest cluster of rabblings on. He understood what I said. Maybe what he says will be clearer to you than what I said.



(Sigh. Why did I even cut and paste this?) You know, you're right. I should have said that. I'm so tired, it looks like it might have something to do with what I was thinking of, afterall, although I could have sworn it was unintelligible the first time I looked at it. You are brainwashing me, Grim. Good night. I'll talk to you later.