With Zizek, We're All Just Left Joking Around

by Andrew Bast

Originally published in the May issue of The Advocate at the CUNY Graduate Center.

In Defense of Lost Causes by Slavoj Žižek (Verso Books, 2008, 208 pgs.)

Jennifer Anniston is a terrorist. This is how low leftist intellectuals have sunk. Set aside for a moment what a downright silly moniker a leftist intellectual has become and instead consider this: theory-hungry thinkers are now spending $34.95 on a hulking hardcover book — In Defense of Lost Causes — by the rambling, more-intellectual-than-thou Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Žižek. What to expect? Riffing on Hollywood’s The Break-Up, Žižek argues that when Anniston screams at co-star Vince Vaughan, “I don’t want you to wash the dishes — I want you to want to wash the dishes!” this silver-screen trope is more than a spoof on the tedious bickering natural to cohabitation. Žižek writes that it is, “the minimal reflexivity of desire, its ‘terrorist’ demand.” Come again? This is bunk by the bulk, and amid the dissonant yammering that accompanies so much of politics today, the absurdity of In Defense of Lost Causes offers an opportune moment to state outright that, in this ripe political moment, the intellectual culture of the left is lost as a comical farce, and what is most devastating? Everyone just seems to be laughing along.

Where to begin with Žižek? The 59-year-old philosopher lectures and publishes widely. Wearing a furry gray beard and an achingly anguished visage, in conversation he hustles as if unable to get to the next point quickly enough. His books such as Enjoy Your Symptom!, The Sublime Object of Ideology, and The Ticklish Subject, while difficult to categorize, might be deemed postmodern: Lacanian in approach, expansive in scope, and often about film. In a profile, the New Yorker asked, seemingly without a hint of irony, “He may appear to be a serious leftist intellectual, but is it not the case that he is in fact a comedian?” The ostensible topic of In Defense of Lost Causes, however, isn’t so funny: revolutionary terror. At times he cherishes it, at times he dissects it, but all in all, Žižek loses focus, and with it, his case. The book is neither leftist, nor comedy, nor brilliant, but instead a pioneering work in a newfound genre: that of overlearned, underdisciplined, philosophical blogger.

Earlier this semester, Žižek spoke to a sold-out audience at the Graduate Center. Billed as the world’s “most controversial public intellectual,” he packs lecture halls full of graduate students across the country. It would be a dirty fallacy to take Žižek as the intellectual barometer of today’s wider academic scene, but on several levels, his popularity points to symptoms with which few would disagree: the academy’s insularity, reliance on regimented and specialized fields of study, and perversely maniacal obsession with an exclusive, intellectual lexicon. (Do not be fooled, the lot of such pedantic prose makes trade book and newspaper editors cringe.) Put simply: not much of the public is very interested in faddish tropes about Lacan, determinate negation, and the former actress from Friends. The leftist public intellectual, here, has become a joke.

Obama's Obligatory Speech on Iraq

There's been so much talk lately about substance. Barack Obama's rousing and inspiring oratories about change, change, change, make people ask, change to what? Take Iraq. When pressed recently on 60 Minutes about withdrawing troops by 2009, Obama didn't flinch. "Absolutely," he said, "I think now is precisely the time."

The decision is weighted with more dire facts than any single man or woman can comprehend, yet it is the single most important question facing the country.

Should he keep his word, what follows would be his 7 p.m. television address, the first Monday evening after he takes office.

"My fellow Americans, I talk to you this January evening with both serious concern as well as great hope. Early in my campaign for the presidency, I often said that I would tell you not what you want to hear, but what you need to hear. Now that moment has come.

"I promised you that I would begin withdrawing our troops from Iraq, and I will keep that promise. This decision weighs heavily on me, as it does on you, because once we leave, there will be more violence. There is a chance that the entire region, as it is said, could fall into war. Yet, staying any longer, remaining party to the anguished and centuries-old conflicts that ignite such hatreds is no longer our place.

"The state of our finances at home, in Washington, in your state capital, likely even in your local government, is in disarray. As uncertainty in Iraq and the Middle East escalates with our withdrawal, the price of oil will likely rise, only complicating matters further. What I propose might at first sound counterintuitive. I want to keep budgeting for about 70% of the $160 billion we're spending in Iraq each year. Undoubtedly, this will hurt financially. But where that money goes will put this country on track for another century.

"When John F. Kennedy made his bold declaration in 1961, he said, ‘We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.’ And tonight, I declare that in the next decade we will reduce our consumption of oil—across the board—by one half, with a goal of being free from dependence on any kind of oil by the year 2050.

"This is the only way to extricate ourselves from the fiasco of our own creation, and we will do so with apologies and hope for the Iraqi people. Change is a challenging calling. And one from which we no longer have the option of looking away."

Heavy enough?

If this is what it means, and watching John McCain tour Iraq this week, Obama has decisions to make sooner rather than later, for should his position evolve, the progressives, democrats, the left, whatever this discombobulated party calls itself these days, could again cower and end up facing a convention of Republicans waving footwear in the air.

['Obama and the Citizen Press' from flickr.]

Free Markets? Sure, Because Bernanke and the Federal Reserve Can Afford One

Who ever said there's no such thing as a free market? Or, wait. Who ever said there's such a thing as a free market?

The rhetorical play is supposed to be confusing because the economic havoc unfolding these days unearths the conventional wisdom -- a phrase made popular by John Kenneth Galbraith, a Harvard economist who made a career of elucidating the realities underpinning such myths -- that the domestic economy in the US and the ever-emerging markets of the developing world are, to employ that big idea, free.

A brilliant essay in the business section of Sunday's paper by Gretchen Morgenson zeros in on the consequences of regulators gone wild. At the heart of 'free market' thinking is the understanding that economic actors -- buyers, sellers, institutions -- will undoubtedly make bad choices, but bad choices garner no profit, or penalize with a loss, so actors rationally learn from their mistakes, adjust for the next go around, and in a broader sense the market leans toward efficiency and growth.

As much as is free today, as much seems to be rational.

Morgenson aptly points out that the Fed's bailout of investment bank Bear Stearns had to be reluctant; Bear has played the role of renegade shop for a long time. Yet, it seems that the Fed didn't have much choice. It was either bailout the bad guy, or worse.

“As we got through the day, we recognized that at the pace things were going, there could be continued liquidity demands that would outstrip our resources,” Bear chief Alan Schwartz said in a conference call before the weekend. The bank was going to fold.

From Morgenson's reporting, "The Fed has now crossed the line in a very clear way on 'moral hazard,' because they have opened the door to the view that they are required to save almost any institution through non-recourse loans -- except the government doesn't have the money and it destroys the US's reputation as the broadest, deepest, most transparent and properly regulated capital market in the world," so says analyst Josh Rosner of Graham Fisher & Company.

Why is the Fed so reluctantly eager, then? (Reluctant because they know all too well that they are crossing a line, yet eager because they're getting in this dirty game regardless.) All signs point to a precipice toward which nobody wants to take even a single step closer. Practical principles of the free market? Let a bank fall and the rest of Wall Street (and the rest of us, too) will learn our lesson? Anything but.

The bailout reveals that the financial scheme in which so many are mired on the Street can't survive the market realities they have created. Were the Fed not frightened, it would let the system work out the kinks. But these aren't kinks, this is a crisis of confidence, what seems to be the only valuable asset on Wall Street anymore.

Long ago, Karl Polanyi, in his lasting book, "The Great Transformation," crushed the myth that the free-market economy somehow naturally emerged over time. To the contrary, industrialization in Great Britian gave way to a government that very calculatingly created the liberal market. From the beginning, it's never been free.

The rearview mirror is full of the guilty: predatory lenders, overzealous banks, and lest they be forgotten, American citizens who, in a lulled sense of false hope, continued to live beyond their means. The question is: will taxpayers bail out the economy? Likely. In the future, will anything change?

What would a more centrally-planned economy look like in the US, one in which short-term profit motives aren't the central driving force? With so much of the country's future uncertain, it's a discussion worth having.

This market isn't free. Let's start by conceding that. And as long as it's not, perhaps more controls and planning are reforms worth considering. The only problem is that change requires catastrophe.

Rub Yourself the Right Way (c/o Nicholas Sarkozy, Carla Bruni, Clinton, Obama, et al.)

Cada uno juzga por su propia condición . . .

What if we set aside for a moment the disillusioned thought that any man or woman campaigning for political office does so with the sole motivation to better the world, and maybe consider, for the same moment, that individuals who endure the grueling and near-lethal process of running for national office commence such farcical journeys for reasons having to do more with themselves than anything else?

And here we have new French president Nicholas Sarkozy.

Nary a year in office, the high-coiffed premier has divorced his second wife, a model and public relations executive, and less than four months later married Carla Bruni, the ravishing pop singer (and former model, what an infatuation!).  In Hollywood, the immense amounts of publicity surrounding such an affair would fly as an obvious stunt to hype an upcoming movie. Surely, in France, this is all about love, even despite the fact that Bruni has a new album due out this fall.

The French are unamused. When Sarkozy joked to a crowd of steel workers in Gandrange about not taking a honeymoon, they booed him. The BBC reports that his popular support is plummeting.

The seemingly selfless candidates running for the presidency of the US also create, among other things, a spectacle. When they cough too much, it makes news. When they look tired, it makes news, in Australia, no less! When they lose control of the tone of their voice, it makes news. When they ... do anything, it makes, well, you get the point.

All for the good of the people? Oops. All for the good of the people.

Speaking of it's all about me, Angelina Jolie was visited Baghdad today, on a mission to draw attention to the Iraqi refugee problem, which the Inquirer reported on yesterday. Should the Inquirer be on the six o'clock news? Well, of course. Barring that chance reality, let it be said that her beautiful, double-baby-bearing belly fixing the war is any day than the celebrities the country spends so much time killing.

Do Sarkozy, H.Rodham, B.Hussein and Angelina all tie up in a single, shiny, bow-ribboned package? In a way, they do. Each is self-indulged beyond comparison. They could talk about themselves over and over and over until you are blue in the face, and then they will go on to the next crowd. What, even so salient being is capable?

The elite goes down better than an elixir, one that few ever have the chance to taste. After all, one cannot practice before an audience of tens, of hundreds, of thousands, of millions, even if you had the audacity to ask. Sarkozy may have stock his big posts with the descendants of 1968 Paris radicals (more power to him), but the reason that the steelworkers booed him is because, and this is not an issue of propriety, responsibility rightfully runs roughshod over leaders. Should self-love trump deep-gut obligation, you'll be made a fool.

(Atop, Bruni.)

NEWS BREAK: Super Tuesday, 2008

This is Andrew Bast, reporting for the New York Inquirer ... At eleven o'clock on this mild, dark (unsurprisingly) Tuesday night, of the twenty-four states voting today, few can be decided for either Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Hussein Obama. Neither of the Democratic candidates' middle names are regularly mentioned. Coincidentally, that of the former is hardly (if at all?) mentioned on her website, and of the latter, Hussein pales to hope in Barack's speeches.

Ms. Clinton, in her home (?!) state of New York says on a stage that, All colors, all faiths, and all walks of life ... who aren't in the headlines but are part of America's story ... [waiting] ... tonight in record numbers ... [mention of tornadoes in voting states] ... but tonight is your night, America's night .. and California in a few more minutes ...

Live, the speech sounds conciliatory, yet the woman, as usual, displays her brilliance, politically calculated as it is.

Courtesy of veteran Tom Brokaw, it ought to be mentioned that the stock market dove today as low as it has in a single day in two years [note: fact-check that, because the AP says, it was the Dow's biggest percentage drop in almost a year]. This will be hardly mentioned in tomorrow's news.

To play fair game, the Republican race seems to be just as much up in arms, but any sensible voter today, including many Republicans, as the so-registered boutique firm patent lawyer I met tonight told me, is looking at Obama. The rest won't bother with venturing to the polls. Republican races that deserve attention are not presidential, they're at the state level. (Don't worry, I won't watch, either.) McCain.

Speaking of Barack Hussein Obama ... [10:30 ...]

[Apologies, caught watching Law & Order on channel nine.]

Rumors are aflutter as we approach midnight. The Democratic party allocates delegates according to the percentage of the popular vote, so despite the fact that Idaho was just this minute called for Barack Hussein Obama, even if I kept myself up past midnight and waited for the paper in the morning and then listened to the official accounts tomorrow, I still could very well possibly have no idea whose name will be on the ballot. So it goes.

After some broadcaster-negotiating, Obama goes on at 11:44 and soon riles his Chicago audience into raucous chants of, "USA! USA! USA," and, "Yes we can! Yes we can!" He talks of climate change and genocide. Of his former life as an organizer on the south side of Chicago. Somehow, he looks untired; his voice curls velvetly, in the way of Reagan's best. "We," teleologically as he goes, "are the ones we're waiting for."

Republican candidate Mitt Romney tonight described America's long slide down. A hell of a rhetorically powerful phrase, and frightening, if you read the papers. It sounds like Britain, and, on reflection, like much of the former colonial powers of Europe.

SUPERDELEGATES is the word, or phrase, or constituency that will now echo as an ominous echo in Plato's cave. Unfortunately, the rest of us live in a reflected reality. Electoral politics in the US, for some historical reason that strangely can't be eradicated, plays on elusive pockets of power. The electoral system, in the national election, would be a perfect example; the popular vote does not elect the president. Tonight, should Rodham and Hussein split the vote across the country, ultimately the decision for the Democratic nominee could end up with superdelegates, a group of political party insiders. Thus, the decision is taken away, once again. So it goes.

Oh, and I don't have cable.

[Photo, courtesies made, from TeeRish on flickr. Utility for political reporting? More than the ubiquitous images lately of either candidate.]

New Budget, New Payouts, Same Profiteers, Same War

[At right: five-year charts, tracking roughly since the launch of the Iraq War, stock prices of major Pentagon contractors; from top to bottom: Boeing Co., Lockheed Martin Corporation, Raytheon Co., and Northrop Grumman Corp. Charts from Yahoo! Finance.]

Economists discuss the difference between markets and nonmarkets, the latter being a stand-in term for 'government.' Interestingly, both are prone to failure, albeit in different ways.

Markets fail all the time, hence government regulation. The current subprime mortgage crisis and the ensuing radical steps by the Federal Reserve. Governments also fail, but in entirely different ways. One of the main differences is that governments find ways to use up all their money and then justify a budget increase. Case in point: in 2000, George II ran on a conservative platform of smaller government; however, bureaucracy and the billions that fund it have since skyrocketed.

The Pentagon's $515.4 billion request, part of Bush II's $3+ trillion budget for 2009, marks a 30 percent increase in spending for the military since he took office.

This includes neither the $600 billion already spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, nor the spending for those wars over the projected budget year.

The Times claims, "If [the Pentagon's budget] is approved in full, annual military spending, when adjusted for inflation, will have reached its highest level since World War II." Taking the paper at its word, for perspective, it is worth it to mention that military spending in the US, while still an inordinate amount of money that dwarfs combined military budgets of developed nations around the world many times over, is still less than five percent of the country's gross domestic product, one of the lower points since WWII. Compiling the costs of the Iraq war would bump this up, but not to a point, as a share of the country's economy, to rival past highs.

Perhaps, with a glance at the stock prices to the right, this is good for the economy. After all, government spending pumps in money, and high school economics teaches you that the step in an economic cycle that bridges recession with recovery is war.

Barring the claims of varying candidates for whom you voted today, considering that the Iraq War has drawn on almost six years and currently faces no serious chance of ending, how salient is the suggestion that the postmodern, globalized, [insert your own adjective here], transnational form of capitalism governing the planet makes possible the permanent (for the time being, at least) occupation of a dusty country atop massive amounts of oil reserves. The NewsHour continues with its honor roll of US personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan almost every night, yet as a campaign issue, the war has been bumped almost entirely off the stage.

Is the war, then, the cost of doing business?

Exxon Records Biggest Profit in US History, on Eve of Possible Recession

The Olympics are coming up, and excepting the host country—China—for risking the reputation of hosting the 2008 Genocide Olympics, all kinds of records will be set. Today, other accomplishments are gaining headlines. ExxonMobil, the world's largest corporation reported the biggest profit in the history of the United States: $11.06 billion.

That is tough to top, in any regard. The first, and obvious question: why, then, are gas prices still high? Click the image to the right to watch Jim Lehrer ask Chevron Corporation's Peter Robertson exactly that question. Chevron, while it fell short of ExxonMobil's record this quarter, itself set a company profit record.

"Over the last five years, we've earned $53 billion. And we've invested $53 billion," Robertson said. "Now, the precise number is a coincidence, but it's a fact. So, we invest. And, prices are going up. That tells us the market is saying we need more investment. We need more supply. Prices go up, we have more money to invest, we invest it, and hopefully that will bring on the supply over time."

Often, the word used to describe you or I at the short end of the pump, conveniently left out of Robertson's explanation here, is gouged. In general, the only people making more money in the United States than the oilmen are big-time bankers. Energy and money are the ones across the country making the windfall.

Only, this simple picture may soon grow far more complicated when you look at them both at the same time. As it turns out, Wall Street bankers have stuck a whole lot of wrenches in the country's economic gears. Subprime mortgages could be dragging the country into a recession. Say, for a moment, that the developing world doesn't keep US growth afloat. Americans lose houses, savings, and the extra wallet cash that makes $3.05 a gallon doable.

Oil companies do as they may—government doesn't regulate gas prices, after all, it taxes them, yes? At the same time, then, let the tens of billions go into, as Mr. Robertson explains it, reinvestment into the oil industry. Because, looking further down the line into the latter half of the 21st century, surely there's a future in driving around gas-guzzling vehicles with the passenger and back two seats empty, right?

"Supply over time," as Robertson says, may be a goal, but he knows, as we do too, at least according to the federal Government Accountability Office, that time is running out.

The last five years of ExxonMobil's stock price, roughly the time of the Iraq war:

(Chart from Yahoo!.)

Fat Americans, Starving Africans, and the Farm Subsidies That Love Them

US farm subsidies may win the award for the kind of story that, on face, is immensely boring, yet it is a story with severely devastating impacts across the globe. We're in the middle of a ten-year stretch, during which time the US government will hand out at least $171 billion, subsidizing big American farmers and spurring the overproduction of wheat, corn and the like.

From the Heritage Foundation, "Most of their enormous $171 billion cost would subsidize highly profitable Fortune 500 companies, agribusinesses, and celebrity 'hobby farmers' and help fund their purchases of small family farms, and the average American family would be left paying $4,400 in taxes and inflated food prices to benefit millionaires--unless Congress or President George W. Bush finally puts an end to this counterproductive waste of taxpayer dollars."

And then there are the Africans.

So not only are Americans paying out of their own pocket twice, first as taxpayers and then second as consumers at the grocery store, but then the US turns around to do its good deeds around the world, of which it does quite a bit with international aid, and the farm subsidies bear their bushels of rotten fruit once again. Inflated prices from American farmers hurt the world economy; farmers in the developing world can't sell their crops at market prices because market prices have been manipulated (remember the infusion of $171 billion?).

On top of messing with the market, the US regularly delivers giant sacks of grains to areas of the world like Darfur and the Congo, only, the wheat it delivers was grown in the US with the subsidies, so it's a trifecta: the delivery of aid itself is further depressing the local economies of developing countries.

So it was shocking to see CARE, a major humanitarian organization fighting global poverty, boycott the aid of the US. CARE turned down $45 million worth of wheat, arguing that its distribution harms local farmers. The Independent even wrote that the aid was "wrecking" Africa.

Lastly, the 2007 US Farm Bill, which is currently being debated in Congress and will be in effect for five years, looks like it will pass, with little change in policy.

Too Soon For Campaign Coverage; Tell Barack, Hillary, Mitt, Rudy and Them to Get Back to Work

The most asinine news story — and it will run sometime early next year in the major papers, on CNN and on MSNBC — will be the trend piece about “voter fatigue.” Actually, maybe editors will run the story sooner, maybe even more than a year before the election. Asinine is a strong word, yes. But how else to describe the duplicitous logic of the news media? Especially today, in this paralyzed, war-torn age desperate for hard-won and ingenuous ideas?

Therefore, I hereby pose a challenge to editors and reporters across the country: Slash reporting on presidential candidates. Debates are not news. Ban all stories about $400 haircuts, boyhood basketballing and Mitt Romney’s personal fortune. YouTube — and gaffes caught there — is off limits. There will be plenty of time for all that petty politicking later.

If a Golden Age were upon us, we would have that luxury. Instead, we are spending billions of dollars a day on a war with no plan and no path to victory. It almost feels like we have tossed up our hands. Soldiers patrol the crumbled streets of Iraq while we wait to cast ballots — not this fall, but the next. The candidates may squabble from their debate podiums on Fox News about votes they cast long ago, but they should actually be on C-SPAN legislating in the halls of Congress. The country needs hearings on war spending, veterans’ mental health and foreign policy. It’s hardly as sexy as getting dolled up for the cameras and rattling off co-opted one-liners, but if someone doesn’t get to it, we will continue to flounder.

As for all the resulting empty hours of airtime and blank inches of column space, news editors can shift the national agenda. There’s a green storm brewing in the country, and with it could come much-needed explanatory reporting on the renewable energy industry. Never have we needed more analysis about our country’s place in the world. Genocide in Darfur; the 10,000 who will die of poverty today; nuclear proliferation; al-Qaida in Lebanon, East Africa, Iraq and Afghanistan; escalating violent crime in U.S.; the cooling American economy; forgotten 9/11 Commission recommendations; Iraqi refugees; China.

Nothing Rudy, Hillary, Barack or Tommy says matters right now. This, unfortunately, is no time for fodder. So let us stick them on the shelf. There’s one thing I can guarantee: They’ll be there when we’re ready to hear from them. Later. Much later.

(Also published in Metro.)

An Interview with n+1’s Keith Gessen

In New York’s feisty literary milieu, there are a lot of haters out there. Keith Gessen should know something about that. If you live in the city and keep up with literature, then you’ve undoubtedly heard of his literary journal, n+1, and the wrath that he and his fellow editors have incurred for their anti-McSweeney’s, unabashedly-highbrow take on literature.

Putting out a couple thick volumes a year, n+1 has become one of the most talked about literary magazines in recent memory. (Along with Gessen, Benjamin Kunkel, author of the bestselling Indecision, is a founding editor.)

Socially relevant and almost comically ambitious, n+1 also has, along with its fair share of haters, many admirers, including Jonathan Franzen, the late Barbara Epstein, and this online magazine. Recently, The Inquirer's Mik Awake caught up with Gessen for his take on why we need a relevant literary journal, why writing on the Internet isn’t enough, and why his rag is nothing like McSweeney’s.

Haters beware.