Saturday, April 28, 2007

How Freedom Dies

Not just at the hand of despots from above, but also at the hand of sadists from below. The BBC reports that a suicide bombing at a rally in Pakistan, already a bastion of state brutality, has killed 22 people and injured many more, possibly including Musharraf’s Interior Minister.

Hannah Arendt had a cunning and invigorating definition of power: The ability of a large group of diverse people to work in common cause, held together by mutual trust and mutual respect. Power is almost synonymous with freedom, and it’s certainly not same thing as violence; indeed, they are stark opposites. From On Revolution:

…For power can of course be destroyed by violence; this is what happens in tyrannies, where the violence of one destroys the power of the many, and which, therefore, according to Montesquieu, are destroyed from within: they perish because they engender impotence instead of power.

Tyrants, suicide bombers – the effect is the same, replacing action and trust with stunned silence and fear.

Friday, April 27, 2007

It’s Official: I’m All Man

Via Andew Sullivan. According to this neat little gizmo, I blog like a Male.

I will admit, however, that the longer the post I submitted, the proportionally higher my Female score got.

One Hell of a Legislature

Here’s the kind of rare story that gets you pumped about separation of powers:

In 1543, George Ferrers, a member of the House of Commons from Plymouth, England, was arrested for debt while on his way to Parliament. Members of Parliament (and members of Congress) are protected from arrest for debt during the sitting of the legislature, so the House of Commons sent its sergeant to demand Ferrers' release. The jailers holding Ferrers impolitely declined, and a melee ensued: As one 16th-century account puts it, the sergeant's assistant was "stroken down." Outdone, the sergeant retreated to the House of Commons, which suspended all other business to tend to this challenge to parliamentary power. The lord chancellor, a Crown official, offered to provide the sergeant with a royal writ for Ferrers' release. But the House turned him down, insisting that the sergeant should act "without writ, only by shew of his mace"—that is, on the authority of the House alone. The sergeant was sent back to the jail, more heavily armed this time, and the jailers caved in and handed over Ferrers. [my emphasis]

Bush and Co. have stretched the power of the executive to an extent not seen since the Johnson/Nixon/Vietnam years. Shame on them, of course, but it wasn’t done in a vacuum. In order for the separation of powers to work correctly, each branch has to do more than just protect its own institutional power – it has to try to encroach on the other two as well. From 2002 to 2006-ish, partisan loyalty trumped institutional loyalty (the notable exception being the Republican Congressional leadership's intervention in the Bill Jefferson investigation). The Gonzalez and Rice subpoena fights aren’t really Dems vs. Pubs, they’re Congress vs. the imperial Presidency.

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Olbermann on Giuliani

As angry, abrasive, and right as ever:



Let's be clear - I only endorse this as an angry rant on the behalf of citizens, not on the behalf of Democratic politicians, who ought to be defending themselves. Via Andrew Sullivan, Kevin Drum makes an excellent point:
So I was curious: how would the Dem candidates respond? With the usual whining? Or with something smart? Greg Sargent has today's responses from Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton over at his site and the verdict is in: more whining....

Unbelievable. Neither one of them took the chance to do what Rudy did: explain in a few short sentences why the country would be safer with a Democrat in the Oval Office. Is it really that hard? Giuliani's position is clear: more war, more domestic surveillance, more torture, and fewer civil liberties. And while it's true that the liberal position on making America secure is a little more complicated than the schoolyard version of foreign affairs beloved of Bush-era Republicans, it's not that complicated. So instead of complaining about how mean Giuliani is, why can't Obama and Clinton just tell us what they'd do?
Indeed.

Bush’s Bumbling Meets Putin’s Paranoia

We’re all familiar with the counsel never to attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity. Russians have undoubtedly heard this maxim. Russians do not seem to care for it.

Or at least, the KGB-smelted brutes that have installed themselves as the country's ruling clique do not care for it. Today’s menacing illustration is Vladimir Putin’s state of the nation address, in which he denounced the Bush Administration’s plans to bring its missile defense fantasies to Poland and the Czech Republic and announced that Russia will respond in kind by putting a “moratorium” on compliance with the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty:

Mr. Putin said, the Kremlin would use its future compliance with the treaty as a bargaining point in the dispute with United States over American proposals to install missile defenses in Europe.

Mr. Putin’s announcement, made in his annual address to Parliament, underscored the Kremlin’s anger at the United States for proposing a new missile-defense system, which the Bush administration insists is meant to counter potential threats from North Korea and Iran.

The missile defense program of the 1980s was a scientific daydream that became a budgetary fiasco that a dim but lucky president warped into a useful diplomatic tool. The missile defense system of today is a scientific daydream that has remained a budgetary fiasco that a dim and jinxed president has warped into diplomatic mayhem.

It worked in the first place because the Soviets were convinced that Yanqui technology was essentially indistinguishable from magic, a deeply flawed assumption that has persisted and been mixed with the Napoleon-on-Elba complex of post-Soviet Russia. More than anything, the Kremlin is a devotee of classic realpolitik and aspires to resurrecting itself as a great power. Any ideologically-driven action in the region is interpreted as an en passant the Pentagon planned eight moves ago, an encroachment on the Kremlin’s sphere of influence and an insult to Russia – in amidst his ranting about phantom technology, Putin “also chided the West for what he called meddling in Russia’s domestic affairs in the guise of democracy-promotion efforts.” Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International being, of course, natural allies of the Bush Administration.

Worried yet? Wait till you see how Condoleezza Rice responded to Putin’s paranoia:

“The idea that somehow 10 interceptors and a few radars in Eastern Europe are going to threaten the Soviet strategic deterrent is purely ludicrous, and everybody knows it,” Ms. Rice said before a meeting of NATO foreign ministers expected to focus on the missile-defense dispute.

“The Russians have thousands of warheads,” Ms. Rice said. “The idea that you can somehow stop the Soviet strategic nuclear deterrent with a few interceptors just doesn’t make sense.” [Emphasis added, naturally.]

I would like to believe that this is some clever back-channel diplomacy, a way of subtly but forcefully telling the Russians that if they want to fume about starting a new cold war they’d better be damn serious, that the U.S. government knows what it’s doing and we’re ready to face them down old school.

But I’ve learned a few things about this Administration over the past six years. I’m not quite prepared to attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

This Could Be Fun

The Daily has started blogging. Emboldened by the fact that at least one person I've never met has visited this site, I intend to start making waves. But for now, I rather enjoyed this little introductory narrative by (soon to be ex-) law student Allison Peryea:

For those of you who are looking for a very expensive way to feel like crap about yourself, I highly recommend law school. But to really maximize self-loathing, I suggest combining law school with two years in a studio apartment featuring the square footage of a contact-lens case and a panoramic view of the southern wall of a teriyaki joint. I followed the above advice and the decision has made me the person I am today – bitter, enraged and addicted to candy.

Read more.

Tyler and Chris Argue, Finis

Tyler:

I still fail to see how you assert the US to have always been about egalitarianism. If you ignore women's rights, slavery, and gay marriage, I guess, yes, America has "always" been about egalitarianism.

And I maintain that the point is, this story is harmful. It is fuel to the ignorant American fire. Spencer, I believe the point IS that they are New Yorkers. If the hatred for the middle east doesn't have the greatest false reassurances in New York, I don't know where else.

And the reason this story is not about Patriotism is because the man is not standing up to something only people from other countries do. He is standing up to something that American people do all the time. We get back to the beginning. The man IS standing up for a woman's rights. Say some guy from a backward town in the south comes and does the same thing, is it still Patriotism?

The thing that got me going on this whole thing is the fact that this story is PRODUCTIVE as a women's rights story. (Ignoring the fact that the girl herself doesn't stand up to the prince.)

It is destructive as it is.

What burns me up is that this is the kind of story that gets tacked onto chain mails from pro-war nuts. It's the kind of MySpace bulletin post that you see from right wingers as an example of why we're in the middle east. This is the kind of story that rallies the ignorant.

That's my entire point, that's the only reason this pissed me off. This post just reminded me of that "rally around the flag of hate" bullshit that I have to face from people I consider a lot less intelligent. So, maybe Chris, this story coming from your standpoint of having read this person's blog for a long time comes off in a different light, but when you post JUST this excerpt, then I react to JUST this excerpt. And when you post JUST this fraction of the whole picture, I am telling you that it comes off with strong anti-middle eastern sentiment, STRICTLY for the reason that it becomes a story of "patriotism" in the face of a Saudi in New York of all places. Because instead of feeling like a man, standing up for a woman (if you can consider following your boss around taking action), he felt like a patriot, standing up for his country.

To the first point, I can only answer that yes, I am quite aware of the anti-egalitarian crimes of the past and present. My response is that the United States is founded upon the institutional tools needed to rectify them, which it has at a historically impressive rate. That the global cause of human and civil rights has advanced so swiftly during the past three centuries is due in large part to the ideological coherence and practical experience the United States has provided.

I should have been clearer when I first posted the story; it took place during the 1991 Gulf War, not the latest. But I still think you’re missing the crux of the story. The sexism isn’t necessarily important – it’s a stand-in for any form of encroachment on someone else’s rights. The important aspect is that the prince’s party justified the abuse by appealing to an illegitimate source of authority. Insofar as America is a standing reproach to traditional power, rejection of invocations of traditional authority is patriotic.

I’m willing to defend that view to its counterintuitive extreme. The Dixie dandy that harasses the waitress in a similar way? If he appeals to identity, and not to reason, to justify himself, then ridiculing his claims to superiority is an act of uniquely American cosmopolitan patriotism.

Your concern that the story could be exploited by bigots is well-taken. Anything, of course, can be abused by the ignorant, so I’m wary of balancing what I post and what I say against the potential for manipulation by fools. In the meantime, it’s counterproductive and somewhat vicious to try to find chauvinism lurking behind every piece of cross-cultural critique. Holding principles you believe to be universal will, sooner or later, bring you into conflict with some distant culture, and adhering to them is crucial to your integrity as a thinking human being.

Mmm-mmm-good. Debates like this are one of the reasons I started this little monument to my own ego. Let’s do it again soon.

UPDATE: The author of the original story has discovered this exchange and generously weighed in, clarifying his use of the term “patriotism”, relishing a hypothetical confrontation with British royalty, and reminding us that jingoistic nationalists rarely hold – as he does – dual citizenship in Canada.

I Thought We’d Settled This

Yet again, Victor Davis Hanson takes issue with the use of the term “civil war” to describe the, um, late unpleasantness in Iraq:

But a civil war — two clearly defined sides, each striving to seize power, with antithetical ideologies and agendas — is hardly Iraq, where Sunni tribal elders, Shiite clerics, an elected government, and coalition forces all try to stop 10,000 or so nihilists from murdering so barbarously that they incite a backlash from Shiite gangs or a general sense of hopelessness among the population at large that both loathes and is fearful of these terrorists. There is a reason that histories of the Civil War have a special chapter on Quantrill with the assorted specialized vocabulary like "raiders," "outlaw," "bushwacker," "Jayhawker." What culminated in Lawrence, Kansas — arson, shooting of civilians, settling grudges, targeted assassinations, and general mayhem — was something different from Grant, Lee, etc.

I agree - “civil war” is lacking. The reality is much, much worse. Some suggestions, free of charge: tragic bloody morass; sanguinary catastrophe; chaotic backstabbing; Lord of the Flies with homemade bombs; hellish mayhem.

Sullivan on Giuliani

24 makes for some exciting television, but it’s no way to run a real-live republic. Andrew Sullivan on why progressives - indeed, all Americans - should fear the socially liberal Republican:

I think Giuliani will run as the Jack Bauer candidate. It's in his DNA. There isn't a civil liberty he wouldn't suspend if he felt it was necessary for "security." And there isn't a dissenter he wouldn't bully or silence in the interests of national security. There is a constituency for this - a big one. It has been primed by pop-culture to embrace torture and the suspension of habeas corpus. It is a constituency with scant respect for any civil liberties when a war on terror is being waged. If that's the path Giuliani wants us to take, we have to be very clear about what it means. We have to ask ourselves: after the next terror attack, what powers would a president Giuliani assume? And what would be left of the constitution after four years of the same? Give Rudy the office that Cheney has created - and America, already deeply altered, will become a new political entity altogether.

Spencer Draws His Pen

Mr. Baldwin gets in on the action:

I'm torn between both of your associated sides to this pretty pointless story. To begin, I read this story as power posturing. The Prince comes in and attempts to assert and perpetuate the notion of his power by making inappropriate passes to this woman. His sense of power is then nullified when he is asked to leave, and transferred to Paul when he gets the guy a cab at the end. There is something so satisfying to common-folk about watching the rich and powerful fall. I read this as someone feeling satisfied that he had been a part of reducing a member of a monarch down to the same level as everyone else because now throughout their life of privilege they have no authority over a commoner.

However, Middle Easterners are often perceived (and some cases rightly so) as having diminutive attitudes with respect to women's rights. There does seem to be a little bit of anti-Middle Eastern sentiment with these people, however, many of the individuals in these societies show a complete lack of regard for females: consider if you will, the prevalence of “honor killings,” or “honor suicides.” These are both terrible with respect to both women’s rights, and human rights, and prevalent throughout the world. Not all individuals participate in such a practice, but some countries have such “rights” protected by law – and are specific to females. Consider the killing of the Saudi Arabian Princess Misha'al, ordered to death by her own grandfather. This is the sort of thing that the American people hear about Middle Easterners. What they do not hear is that those that are ignorant of Islam enact the killings.

With that being the typical (American) perception of Middle Easterners in mind, it is not surprising that they acted so negatively towards the prince. They did everything that they could to please this dick, and then he turns around and treats one of the employees like a commoner, as if she does not deserve the respect that a regular person is entitled. This almighty prince thinks that he can treat US Citizens like surfs, so they treated him like one and threw him out. There was a little hatred of the Middle East in their attitudes I believe, but I do not think that they would have treated a Prince of England much better if he had done the same thing… keep in mind that they are New Yorkers. I think that more so than race, it was a hatred of those in power.

As far as the patriotism goes, I think that that has to do with a perception of an anti-democratic type of government (monarchy), and standing up to that government. I would feel patriotic if I threw any autocrat out of my restaurant and onto his ass – even if that person is the Prince of England or a Saudi. And that is what I believe that they were rallying behind, not a hate for Middle Easterners, more a hate for those that misuse their power.

Well, kinda... but it’s not about Americans or New Yorkers versus Middle Easterners or Saudis or Brits. It’s not even about monarchy versus democracy. And it's not pointless, ya bastid.

This story is about privilege confronted by reason. There are some kinds of ressentiment that are completely justified – straightening out errant royalty isn’t just a right, it’s a duty.

Tyler and Chris Argue, Part 3

Tyler:

The point is that the story in the hands of Chris Kaasa is different than in the hands of the American people, or for that matter the teller of the story. I don't mean to imply that you saw the story as a reason for hate, but rather that I believe the story is being told from a standpoint of a person whom I believe to be establishing his patriotism based on the fact that this was a Saudi. Do you honestly believe that, given the voice of the person telling the story, that he would really have felt the "most patriotic" of his life if the guy had been a member of British parliament? Do you think that the restaurant owner would have reacted so disrespectfully to an assertion of royalty if he had been prince of England? While this story may strengthen some, it emboldens others, and I am getting fairly sick and tired of American hatred of people from the middle east.

And because the reaction of the restaurant owner would quite clearly be different in the face of a different person of status, it IS a personal attack on the Prince. And how, in the sense of equal rights, do you assess the US to be leading the way? Europe has long been the pioneer of equality, with us remaining backward far beyond a reasonable point. And really, are you REALLY going to say you believe the owner was attempting to fulfill a unique historical mission and not just sticking to national loyalty?

Well, I thank you for the benefit of the doubt. And of course I can’t know for sure whether the author of this story is a principled egalitarian or a jingoistic simpleton – having read this particular individual’s musings for a long time, my sense is that he’s probably the former. But I don’t think it’s clear at all that “the reaction of the restaurant owner would be different in the face of a different person of status”, or that the author would have felt less patriotic spiting British royalty. (I don’t know, I would expect feelings of patriotism to be enhanced by a small reenactment of 1776; we’ll leave to one side the fact that unlike the inimitably thuggish House of Saud, the House of Windsor has generally gotten over the instinct to justify its more odious vices by blurting, “Don’t you know who I am?!”) In fact, it’s sort of a nasty insinuation, one that frankly, friend, has to be justified by something more substantive than a wink and a nudge.

One deplorable aspect of the public diplomacy between the U.S. and the Middle East is the ubiquitous conflation of social structure, culture and ethnicity – a denunciation of a social structure is not a denunciation of an ethnic group. To assume that it is an ethnic attack poisons the dialogue and accentuates enmity on all sides.

In any case, there is only one good way to respond to claims of royal (or ancestral, or tribal, or religious, or racial, or blue-eyed, or left-handed) privileges: With DISRESPECT for the entire notion. I’m quite sure that you’ll agree that there is no such thing as God-given birthright to superiority – the “prince” that claims such a privilege as a cornerstone of his identity has, I’m afraid, a FLAWED IDENTITY. The burden of proof is always on the individual who makes demands for special treatment. If he can give no reason, he deserves to be rebuked when he tries to take advantage of his false superiority.

And he doesn’t just deserve to be rebuked in America, either – this just happens to be one of the relatively few places on earth where “because I am ME” is not an acceptable reason. I assess the U.S. to be leading the way in that its organizing principle is not loyalty to an ethnicity or religious creed or language group, but adherence to a set of universally applicable ideas. America has never been about occupying an ancestral motherland. It has always been about a peculiarly egalitarian - and I think peculiarly better - way to live, or at least working to make that egalitarian and cosmopolitan way of life possible.

Europe has long been the pioneer of equality? Really? Are we talking about the same kind of equality? If you’re talking about economic equality, I’m with you. But if you’re talking about inborn rights and privileges, Europe has only truly hopped on that train since the end of World War II. We’re certainly behind on gay rights, owing to the sort of religious demagoguery that tainted Europe for so long. But the Old World is slipping back into its old habits of apartheid and reactionary identity politics – Middle Easterners and their descendants, one will have to conclude, are bound to experience far less hatred and persecution across the pond.

Tyler and Chris Argue, Part 2

Tyler responded to the Rogers story with this comment on the Facebook note:

The real issue here has absolutely nothing to do with patriotism, except that the restaurant owner chose that as his method of attack. The man should not have felt patriotic, but proud that he stood up for a woman's rights. Instead, he jumped on the bandwagon and decided he was a patriot for following his restaurant owner to somebody's table while the owner did something to ACTUALLY be proud of. This guy's agenda is not defending the woman, but putting down a Saudi. And that, my friend, while being patriotic in a juvenile sense, is hurting our country. He's not standing up for our beliefs, but targeting another's. There's an important difference, and this is the kind of ignorant generic hate story that lets people go on believing that there is something fundamentally wrong with these people who live in another part of the world, and not just the individual man who "play[s] grab-ass."

I answered back:

The story isn’t about sexism. It’s about privilege. Rogers' bandwagoning aside, "putting down" the Saudi and defending the woman are inseparable acts. The prince's sexual harassment is an intrinsically illegitimate assertion of power, a false inflation of his rights such that they conflict with the rights of someone else. Bringing the Saudi down deflates the superiority he temporarily assumed and puts the waitress back on equal footing. When the owner tells the Saudi that in America he's the prince of absolutely nobody, he's not attacking the prince personally - he's attacking the legitimacy of the notion of special privileges for royalty.

Of course there's nothing inherently wrong with people on the other side of the world, but there is something wrong with the culture that celebrates inborn privileges. The Saudi is a product of that culture, which is why the prince’s lackey didn’t feel the need to justify the harassment, just point out how important his boss was. Actually, to criticize his ass-grabbing acknowledges that there’s nothing wrong with him, just with his actions - critique assumes he has the ability either to justify himself or change his ways. Standing up for “our” beliefs entails rejecting “his” because they necessarily conflict – there’s simply no way to reconcile divine rights with the right of a poor peasant to not be crudely pestered by a royal playboy.

I humbly propose that this is not an “ignorant generic hate story” (quite surprised, by the way, that you earnestly seem to think I would sink to propagating hatred instead of making a real point) that weakens us. This is a tiny example of “modernity” – the process of critique of the old social world, a process that makes the modern world so comparatively better to live in. In this sense, the U.S. has historically been the most “modern” society in the world. American patriotism, therefore, is distinctively cosmopolitan – less about national loyalty (in which case it would be appropriate to “defend” our beliefs while leaving the Saudi’s alone) than about helping to fulfill a unique historical mission. Though I’ll concede we have to be vigilant against chauvinism and hatred, incidents and stories like these strengthen us.

Tyler and Chris Argue, Part 1

It all began when I posted this excerpt of John Rogers’ Kung Fu Monkey post “Bar Notes” on Facebook:

But [Alan Dershowitz was] not the biggest asshole we ever served. No, that honor belonged to the Saudi prince who stayed at the Charles Hotel during the War. (Wouldn't want to go home and risk mussing the hair, not until the Christian Soldiers had Marched Onward and tackled the dirty work. Natch) The Prince -- I have no idea where he fell on the lineage tree, but that's what he called himself -- only visited our restaurant the once....

...Paul [the owner] pulled out all the stops. Our chef was amazing to begin with, and they put on a hell of a banquet for the event. Paul called in our best waitress, Kate, to do the dinner. If you've ever worked in the restaurant/bar business, you know that the staff is a roiling blend of high school drama class emotions and Desperate Housewives style intrigue. If you've worked the business, you also know that there is always that one person everyone actually likes. Sweet, sincere, working their way through college ... that was Kate on our staff. Even the heroin-addicted commie waitress liked her.

Near the end of the meal, I heard a buzz from the wait-station. Kate was in a corner, pretending not to be freaking out. Paul came out from the kitchen. The Prince had been playing grab-ass with Kate all night. The other servers had seen it. She'd tried not to make a big deal of it, but when it became plain that she wasn't into Captain Handsy, our visiting dignitary had launched into a particularly nasty set of comments.

A bunch of us followed Paul out as he crossed onto the patio. He nodded to the Saudi. "Yeah. I gotta ask you to leave."

Objections arose. Paul shook his head. "She works for me. I don't allow that for any guest. Now I gotta ask you a second time, please leave. Meal's on the house."

The Saudi's lackey starts to yell: "You can't talk to him like this! This man is Prince --"

Paul cuts him off with a whistle, a New York cab whistle. Sets his shoulders and says:

"This is America, which makes you the Prince of absolutely fucking nobody."

The single most patriotic moment of my life.

Monday, April 23, 2007

Wolf Baiting

Paul Wolfowitz has some funny notions about the proper use of the military and the extent of American power, but I have to take issue with my liberal friends’ dogmatic antipathy for him – he’s one of us, a bleeding heart. The World Bank is a much better fit for his principles, and he has run the institution with efficiency and vision. Marty Peretz suggests that his recent political troubles have more to do with bureaucratic infighting than with any meaningful wrongdoing:

I've had a feeling all along that Wolfowitz's new troubles were hatched by his political enemies in the World Bank because he has been trying to make it more effective, more honest, and less politicized. These are complicated matters, and he has addressed them clinically with the intention to get results and not only install new procedures.

Peretz goes on to make a less defensible characterization of Wolfowitz as a “practical person who makes practical judgments” – anyone who has seen him testifying before the Senate prior to the invasion of Iraq suspects that Woflowitz’s practicality probably takes second chair to his idealism. But he deserves his defenders, and he finds eloquent ones in Ruth Wedgwood and Christopher Hitchens.

Anti-war/anti-Gonzales/anti-Bush sentiment is strong now. We on the left ought to make sure we hang the right crooks for the right crimes, if only to ensure that we don’t exhaust ourselves in petty vindictiveness.

Boris Yeltsin, Dead at 76

Yeltsin was clearly a natural born leader of immense political skill, which he courageously used to navigate the world’s largest and most repressive empire to peaceful extinction. But in the aftermath of the dissolution, he returned to the same anti-democratic faith in technocratic rule that had characterized the Bolsheviks. Post-Soviet Russia was probably bound to be an economic maelstrom, but it didn’t have to be a political disaster, and that political disaster didn’t have to turn into the crypto-authoritarian mafia state that his country has become. The New York Times summarizes my view of Yeltsin’s short epoch:

His leadership was erratic and often crude, and the democrat often ruled in the manner of a czar. He showed no reluctance to use the power of the presidency to face down his opponents, as he did in a showdown in 1993 when he ordered tanks to fire on the parliament, dominated by openly seditious Communists, and in 1994 when he embarked upon a harsh military operation to subdue the breakaway republic of Chechnya. That costly and ruinous war almost became his undoing, and it flared ferociously back to life in 1999, continuing to rage long after his resignation.

The fall of the Soviet Union provided Yeltsin with a momentous opportunity to redefine the basis of political legitimacy in a country tainted by centuries of despotic cruelty. Instead, he squandered the opportunity by indulging the fantasy of resurrecting Russia as a great power, and wound up declaring war upon the seeds of participatory democracy just as they had made their entrance – this, I’m convinced, is the real legacy of the Yeltsin presidency.

That being said, we can celebrate his achievements. There might have been a whole hemisphere of Chechnyas. There might have been a regional war for land or oil, making those Soviet nuclear stockpiles more dangerous than they'd been since 1962. Or there might not have been a Soviet dissolution at all. And by the end of the 90s, he had set the stage for establishing what Russians appear to value most: order.

A Challenge

Spencer:

What is the relationship between partisanship and astrological sign? Also, what is the difference between a revolution and a coup? Finally, is a revolution constitutionally protected, and a politically viable tool?

I expect that in essay form by the way. If you can somehow connect all three of those questions together I will be incredibly impressed, and you will get 2 points extra.

Feminine signs (representing the water and earth elements) are theoretically deeply invested the past and the status quo, and thus are generally likely to be relatively conservative. Their masculine counterparts (air and fire signs), by contrast, prefer to engage in a constant process of critique and reform, apparently placing them on the more progressive side of the spectrum. So when a major political change occurs, feminine signs like Scorpios and Capricorns are more likely to have involved themselves in a coup, which is an extralegal seizure of state power that nonetheless keeps the basic social structure intact. Masculine signs like Aries and Aquarius, by contrast, typically spearhead revolutions, which are wholesale reorganizations not just of the institutions of state power, but of economic and cultural power as well.

Revolutions are, of course, completely outside the bounds of the law and therefore not constitutionally protected. As political tools, moreover, they are certainly NOT viable. Nearly all attempted revolutions are ignominiously crushed, either by the existing authorities or (later on) by a cabal of committed counter-revolutionaries. Not only does this usually result in the swift and brutal execution of the revolutionary leaders, but also in a wave of fanatical reactionism that has the potential to entrench the oppressive regime and obstruct social progress for a long period of time. In general, only fire signs and Aquarians are prepared to take such a huge risk.