Relearning How To Weather a Storm

When I lived in New Orleans my bus to the French Quarter passed right by the Red Lobster. There were always lines outside the restaurant. Many times the lines would snake around the block. Now, I don't have anything against Red Lobster. In fact I have fond memories, of when our family would splurge on a lobster. Though, my tastes turned more to crab and now I am a vegetarian, if I ever started eating meat, I certainly wouldn't turn down a free diner there. But it was frustrating to see so many tourist eating there. Red Lobster gets all of its seafood from its own fleet in Alaska. It used to proudly say so in the commercials, which means that if you eat a Red Lobster you none of your seafood will be local, unless of course you are eating in Alaska.

In many ways Ms. Applebaum reminds me of these tourist. She travels widely and has lived various places in Europe, but no matter what where she is she never seems to get out of her bubble. Wherever she is she manages to find people who are exactly like her, think exactly like her and confirm all the things she had been thinking.

Now, lots of people live like this. I would say the vast majority. But it is hardly sparkling bonus to put on your resume for working at a major newspaper, "I can report from anywhere in the world, but it will all be same because I always find a little Applebaum wherever I go.

This article about the financial crisis is a prime example of the weakness of Applebaum's writing. She writes that the coping methods, of thriftiness have been lost though decades of prosperity. But for the vast middle class and the lower classes in the United States there hasn't been decades of prosperity. Whether there has been a slow grinding decline in standard of living.

For example she mentioned recycling for money. I have been taking cans to the recycling center for years on the trolley, and many time the cans paid for a weeks food. If Ms. Applebaum has missed the realities of our generation, here in her own home country, how can she be trusted to observe what is going on in a foreign country.

Anarchy's Physical Expresion

In Anne Applebaum's Venting in Greece she shows the simple slight of hand that conservatives perform to hide their anarchism. She decries the lack of political vocabulary of the demonstrators in Greece as the product of either the naivete of youth or the shallowness of Greek political culture. She describes the problem as a lack of political vocabulary to deal with "Greek corruption and youth unemployment." But the problem is not ignorance of modern political discourse, but the impotence and vacuousness of the conservative ideology that has held sway even Europe.

Ms. Applebaum has said that she was most comfortable as a member of of Thatchers Tory party. It was Thatcher who said "There is no society, only a collection of individuals." The central element of Thatchers and Reagan's philosophy was that the sole purpose of government was to provide the few needed boundaries for capitalism to flourish. It was at its heart that belief that the markets provided the best solution to all societies problems. Even in nominally socialist European governments this central belief was at the heart of political discourse. It certainly dug itself deep into the institutions of the European Union. Applebaum alludes to this in bringing up the fact that Greece fudged its economic data to join the EU. Whilst people may think many things about the European Union it is still at its heart an economic union whose primary definition is as a market, not a people.

Many people perceive that nationalism is main restraint to a sense of shared identity amongst members of the European Union. But, this is not the case. European nationalism has started to fail even in Eastern European nations whose citizens where initially eager to stress their European credentials and equality with their Western European compatriots. The reason that nationalism fails in European Union and indeed in many European member states is that there simply isn't any there there. Guided by the conservative ideology that was ascendant as Europe grew and grew closer Europe and its member states more and more defined governments primary and even only legitimate role as to facilitate a market economy.

But what does this kind of philosophy have to say to unemployed youth and citizens of corrupt governments. The answer is nothing. If the market has selected you as loser, as it has for western young people who must pay at least ten times as much for housing as their Asian competitors and therefore can not compete with them in a world labour market there is nothing to be done. The market has spoken, and the market is by definition the good and final word. If Applebaum would give a conservative voice to these protesters what could she have them say? A Molotov cocktail may not be the most eloquent political discourse, but all Ms. Applebaum has to offer in response is a silent scream.

Re: Willing To Win in Afghanistan?

In this article Anne Applebaum describes what would be required to promote the interest of the United States in Afghanistan.  There is a surreal aspect to her discussion is that she seems to totally ignore the past seven years.  It is not as though Afghanistan was totally unknown to us.  We were after all deeply involved in Afghanistan at least since the Russian invasion.  All that Applebaum describes in this column was well known years ago not just by the American intelligence agencies but by anybody who has been following the world and American news.  

When Bush made the decision to invade Afghanistan he should have been prepared to face just the situation that Applebaum described.  Yet his plan for Afghanistan has been almost exactly the opposite of what one would expect in such a situation.

He merely destroyed the central government and replaced it with a very lose confederation of tribes and regions.  This obviously would lead to the exact results we now see.   She then says that the small islands of calm created in Afghanistan show that hasn't been neglected.   But if the intention was to end Afghanistan as a terrorist breading ground, the only possible measure of success would be the monopoly of military force held by central government.  This was never attempted and so the goal of fighting terrorism in Afghanistan has never even begun.