Critics of the Occupy Wall Street movement, and even many sympathizers, have complained since the beginning that the protesters are only shouting about what they are against, rather than making any coherent, positive proposals. Unfortunately, they have a point.
In response, I propose a plan for the democratic regulation of capital, consisting of the following policies:
Raise the capital gains tax. – This will not only provide more revenues for social spending, it will redirect capital from destabilizing short-term speculation and into productivity-enhancing, long-term fixed capital investment. Also, investors should be audited more frequently and rigorously.
Raise upper-income taxes. – The millionaires benefit more from the services government provides, so they should pay more.
Better regulation. – Expand government regulation of speculative finance, and enforce existing laws more strictly. Direct the regulation through the Justice Department, which is directly accountable to the President and Congress, rather than through independent and quasi-independent commissions like the SEC and the FTC.
More stimulus spending. – President Obama's original stimulus plan, which has since been pared down under Republican broadsides, was woefully inadequate. We need to put more of our people to work, preferably on socially constructive projects like building schools and clinics, rather than on military spending and business-friendly public works projects.
Bail out the little people. – We need a nationalization policy, like Japan and Sweden. Create a formal procedure whereby broke, too-big-to-fail banks and businesses will be placed completely under government control as a condition of aid. The government will replace corrupt and incompetent executives and determine whether the bankrupt company should be rescued or gradually dissolved. Another condition of assistance will be to prioritize the welfare of employees, homeowners, and small investors. Profits will be automatically reinvested, and executive bonuses and severance packages strictly forbidden.
Capital controls. – Currency speculation should be heavily taxed and regulated. The government should regulate the value of the dollar through diplomatic negotiations with other major economic powers.
These demands could be slapped together under a pithy slogan that might fit on a placard. I suggest something like “Capital for the people!”
Of course, there would have been political limitations on all these measures even in much more progressive eras. The rightward tilt in political sentiment – which may have recently bottomed out, but has not completely dissipated – as well as the inevitable lobbying power of big business, unfortunately make full enactment of this program impossible. Such is the Laodicean temper of our times.
Nonetheless, as Teddy Roosevelt said, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
Friday, December 9, 2011
Book Review: Rise of the Vulcans
James Mann’s Rise of the Vulcans, a journalistic history of the careers of the major players in George W. Bush’s wartime cabinet, is an indispensable resource for anyone concerned with understanding recent US foreign policy. Most of the big names are covered, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powel, Richard Armitage, Condoleeza Rice, and others.
Mann’s account is terse, evenhanded, and nuanced. It portrays its subjects with unerring insight and balance. Donald Rumsfeld is shown as having evolved from a Vietnam dove into a fairly consistent hawk; Richard Armitage is described as a relatively nonideological moderate; Colin Powell, while moderate on social issues, is seen to have been quite conservative and aggressive on foreign policy issues.
Along the way, Mann reveals a variety of personal and ideological alliances and schisms within the inner sanctum of the Bush Administration. There was, as has often been the case in conservative administrations, a gap between realists and neoconservatives.
Just as pertinent, however, are the personal characteristics and relationships of the Bush advisers. For example, the alliance between major Republican insider Rumsfeld and long-time lieutenant Cheney is shown to have been a decisive factor in drawing together, over the course of several administrations since that of Richard Nixon, the bellicose elements that would to a great extent define the Bush Presidency.
Rumsfeld is portrayed as a combative personality not afraid, even as a relatively young man, to butt heads with eminences such as Kissenger, while Cheney is depicted as a discreet and effective bureaucratic manipulator. Arrayed, one could say, against the Cheney / Rumsfeld axis was that of Powell / Armitage, both career soldiers with very narrow conceptions of the proper use and deployment of American military power.
Powell was clipped and professional in most of his dealings, politely voicing disagreements with his colleagues while ultimately remaining loyal to whichever president he served under. Armitage was something of a romantic, willing to take risks for his cause. Condoleeza Rice was a cool and professional presence, positioning herself carefully between warring factions.
Thus, some of the major divisions within the Bush Administration are interpreted as personal differences and bureaucratic power struggles as much as differences of opinion. Mann’s depiction of the intersection of the personal and the political, of the influence of daily human interaction on bureaucratic wrangling and policy formation, is perhaps one of his most important contributions. His account shows just how deeply political viewpoints are bound up with character and perception, and how personality conflicts can shape weighty affairs of state.
There are only two minor criticisms that might be lodged against Mann’s history. One is that, while the cabinet members are treated with great detail, the man they serve is all but absent. We get at most a few glimpses of George W. Bush, and what we do see lacks some of the work's characteristic nuance.
Most of this limited portrayal seems to lend credence to popular stereotypes of Bush as an intellectual lightweight and spoiled socialite ruled by powerful personalities, particularly eminence grise Richard Cheney. Perhaps such a portrayal is perfectly accurate, but we simply do not see enough of the President to be able to tell.
Moreover, the reader is missing information about someone who must, even if the worst rumors about the President are true, play some sort of crucial role in the political and personal differences within his Cabinet. Is it appropriate to discuss Cabinet members without discussing the President they serve?
The second issue is somewhat larger in import. From time to time a curious tension seems to arise among Bush's Vulcans, or even within individual personalities, between, on the one hand, an evangelical endorsement of democracy that employs naked force as its means, and on the other, a willingness to support dictatorships whenever expedient. One might also meaningfully speak of a tension between the desire to spread democracy and the nakedly geopolitical goal of permanently maintaining American military hegemony, two ends that may not be compatible.
The tension between these policies is often addressed, but never satisfactorily explained. It seems a crucial point for understanding the motivations behind the Bush Administration’s foreign policy.
The original justification for the war in Iraq was, of course, to prevent Saddam Hussein from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. When it became evident that Hussein lacked any such weapons, the chief rationale was changed to the desirability of creating a democracy in Iraq.
Which of these goals is more important to neoconservatives? Were they always both equally important? Was there a genuine shift in rationale within the Administration, or merely an expedient one?
One final issue might be raised. Though the rise and influence of neo-conservatism is a constant theme throughout this book, we never really get a full grasp of the intellectual debate between neoconservatism and other conservative philosophies.
We get some idea of the experiences that lead its advocates down the neoconservative path, but not on the nature or evolution of the ideas themselves or the debates they spawned. This, however, is likely a task better suited to intellectual history.
Mann’s account is terse, evenhanded, and nuanced. It portrays its subjects with unerring insight and balance. Donald Rumsfeld is shown as having evolved from a Vietnam dove into a fairly consistent hawk; Richard Armitage is described as a relatively nonideological moderate; Colin Powell, while moderate on social issues, is seen to have been quite conservative and aggressive on foreign policy issues.
Along the way, Mann reveals a variety of personal and ideological alliances and schisms within the inner sanctum of the Bush Administration. There was, as has often been the case in conservative administrations, a gap between realists and neoconservatives.
Just as pertinent, however, are the personal characteristics and relationships of the Bush advisers. For example, the alliance between major Republican insider Rumsfeld and long-time lieutenant Cheney is shown to have been a decisive factor in drawing together, over the course of several administrations since that of Richard Nixon, the bellicose elements that would to a great extent define the Bush Presidency.
Rumsfeld is portrayed as a combative personality not afraid, even as a relatively young man, to butt heads with eminences such as Kissenger, while Cheney is depicted as a discreet and effective bureaucratic manipulator. Arrayed, one could say, against the Cheney / Rumsfeld axis was that of Powell / Armitage, both career soldiers with very narrow conceptions of the proper use and deployment of American military power.
Powell was clipped and professional in most of his dealings, politely voicing disagreements with his colleagues while ultimately remaining loyal to whichever president he served under. Armitage was something of a romantic, willing to take risks for his cause. Condoleeza Rice was a cool and professional presence, positioning herself carefully between warring factions.
Thus, some of the major divisions within the Bush Administration are interpreted as personal differences and bureaucratic power struggles as much as differences of opinion. Mann’s depiction of the intersection of the personal and the political, of the influence of daily human interaction on bureaucratic wrangling and policy formation, is perhaps one of his most important contributions. His account shows just how deeply political viewpoints are bound up with character and perception, and how personality conflicts can shape weighty affairs of state.
There are only two minor criticisms that might be lodged against Mann’s history. One is that, while the cabinet members are treated with great detail, the man they serve is all but absent. We get at most a few glimpses of George W. Bush, and what we do see lacks some of the work's characteristic nuance.
Most of this limited portrayal seems to lend credence to popular stereotypes of Bush as an intellectual lightweight and spoiled socialite ruled by powerful personalities, particularly eminence grise Richard Cheney. Perhaps such a portrayal is perfectly accurate, but we simply do not see enough of the President to be able to tell.
Moreover, the reader is missing information about someone who must, even if the worst rumors about the President are true, play some sort of crucial role in the political and personal differences within his Cabinet. Is it appropriate to discuss Cabinet members without discussing the President they serve?
The second issue is somewhat larger in import. From time to time a curious tension seems to arise among Bush's Vulcans, or even within individual personalities, between, on the one hand, an evangelical endorsement of democracy that employs naked force as its means, and on the other, a willingness to support dictatorships whenever expedient. One might also meaningfully speak of a tension between the desire to spread democracy and the nakedly geopolitical goal of permanently maintaining American military hegemony, two ends that may not be compatible.
The tension between these policies is often addressed, but never satisfactorily explained. It seems a crucial point for understanding the motivations behind the Bush Administration’s foreign policy.
The original justification for the war in Iraq was, of course, to prevent Saddam Hussein from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. When it became evident that Hussein lacked any such weapons, the chief rationale was changed to the desirability of creating a democracy in Iraq.
Which of these goals is more important to neoconservatives? Were they always both equally important? Was there a genuine shift in rationale within the Administration, or merely an expedient one?
One final issue might be raised. Though the rise and influence of neo-conservatism is a constant theme throughout this book, we never really get a full grasp of the intellectual debate between neoconservatism and other conservative philosophies.
We get some idea of the experiences that lead its advocates down the neoconservative path, but not on the nature or evolution of the ideas themselves or the debates they spawned. This, however, is likely a task better suited to intellectual history.
Gay Life In Seoul
Originally Published in the Korea Times, October 23, 2009.
On Fridays and Saturdays after the sun goes down, gay residents begin to trickle into Itaewon from all over Seoul and parts beyond. They are Korean and foreign, businessmen and university students, English teachers and soldiers, mostly but not exclusively young men.
They come to socialize, open about their sexuality in the only place that allows it in a still highly conservative, Confucian society. Social space has classified them as outsiders, along with foreigners of whatever sexuality and the sometimes disreputable businesses that cater to them.
It has cordoned them into grimy alleys that worm behind the flickering neon and the newly refurbished facades of Itaewon's main drag, into clubs that seem to have been carved out of worn brick and cinderblock structures eerily redolent of 20th-century Seoul's poverty and war.
``Some people protect gay people and love them,'' said a 23-year-old bartender who asked to be identified by his English name, Nathaniel. Nathaniel, with artfully coiffed hair and posh attire, works at Queen, one of the most prominent and enduring of Itaewon's gay bars.
Queen is large, bright, well-maintained and tastefully decorated. Its core clientele is comprised of gay men and their straight female friends, though others are welcome as well. ``Especially straight girls... Some straight women in Korea like gay men, but no straight men. It is sad,'' he said.
Despite the hopes expressed by many young Korean gay people, there has been little direct change in public discourse on the issue of sexual minorities, only gathering momentum on the fringes of society.
Membership in gay student unions, for example, has steadily increased since the early 1990s, and the legal system has become steadily more supportive of sexual minorities, as with the Korean Supreme Court's 2006 decision allowing post-operative transgendered people to legally change their sex.
Gays are receiving more attention from the entertainment industry, as well. For instance, movies with same-sex content, such as ``Wang Ui-namja,'' ``Brokeback Mountain,'' or recently, ``Hello My Love,'' all gathered significant controversy as they ran their course.
The off-screen attention, however, has sometimes been negative, as with the coverage of gay television actor Kim Ji-Hoo's suicide in 2008. Gays in Korea also face potential ostracism at work and in most venues of public life, outside of a few cosmopolitan industries such as fashion, the arts, and cosmetics.
In yet another sign of Korea's well-known generation gap, there has been a growing consciousness of, and less frequently, acceptance of, homosexuality among Korea's tech-savvy youth. Many young gays are impatient for the increased freedom they know exists in the West and even Japan, and express a desire to travel and even live abroad.
``Tokyo is famous. Kyoto is too,'' Nathaniel reported. ``Many Korean people live in Hokkaido.''
Japan, close to home, with a large Korean population already, is a popular destination among Korean gays.
``Why would you go to Korea and not Japan?'' was a question that puzzled You-jeong about his Western customers. The 20 year-old, whose bold demeanor is belied by his slender build and tastefully colorful attire, tends bar at SoHo, down the road from Queen.
``Korea is a very conservative society. I would like to live in Tokyo,'' he said. The cosmopolitan outlook of many younger, urban Koreans is voiced even more strongly by young gays like You-jeong. ``I like Korean men, Japanese men, Western, all kinds. I just care about the person.''
You-jeong came out with his sexuality in high school, to his family, fellow students and everyone else in his life. He reported some confusion but little serious harassment.
Older Koreans are far more reticent to come out, or even to speak on the record, with a few notable exceptions. One of the most notable, of course, is Hong Seok-chun, the actor who lost his career when he came out in 2000. He started a business in Itaewon, the now-famous restaurant Our Place.
It became successful, and Hong opened several more Asian and Western restaurants in the district. He has since reappeared on television as a gay hairdresser on a popular soap opera and is now opening a club called My Bad.
Hong is as impressed with the pace of change in Korea as younger gays are impatient with it. ``Yes, of course, it's changed a lot,'' he said. ``These days you can meet a lot of gay people in the street and they are not shy anymore.'' Still, he admits, many stay in the closet. ``As a gay in Korea, they feel ashamed, and try to hide it from their family and things like that. They feel insecure.''
It was Hong's former boyfriend, a Dutch national, who helped him overcome his own sense of shame. ``He said, `You should know that you are a beautiful person... You have a good heart.' He changed my character.''
Moreover, parents of gay children in Korea often respond with denial and anxiety. ``I think all the parents of gay kids are worried about their kids' careers. They worry about how they will survive in this conservative society.'' Hong's own parents simply refused to accept that he was gay at first, and asked him when he would marry a woman for years after he told them.
``I think the gay issue is not that big of an issue because of what happened with me,'' among other things, Hong said. ``Still, we have to keep fighting. It takes time. But I am willing to do that, I will fight.''
Gay Koreans describe their lives less as sad than confined and secretive. The string of bars and nightclubs known to habitués as 'homo hill' and its outliers are the hub of gay life in Korea. There is also a smaller circle of bars in the Gwanghwamun area, quieter and more private, open mainly to Korean regulars and their guests. Outside of Seoul, with the exception of a handful of bars in Busan and some sites on the Internet, there is nothing.
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/10/117_54131.html
On Fridays and Saturdays after the sun goes down, gay residents begin to trickle into Itaewon from all over Seoul and parts beyond. They are Korean and foreign, businessmen and university students, English teachers and soldiers, mostly but not exclusively young men.
They come to socialize, open about their sexuality in the only place that allows it in a still highly conservative, Confucian society. Social space has classified them as outsiders, along with foreigners of whatever sexuality and the sometimes disreputable businesses that cater to them.
It has cordoned them into grimy alleys that worm behind the flickering neon and the newly refurbished facades of Itaewon's main drag, into clubs that seem to have been carved out of worn brick and cinderblock structures eerily redolent of 20th-century Seoul's poverty and war.
``Some people protect gay people and love them,'' said a 23-year-old bartender who asked to be identified by his English name, Nathaniel. Nathaniel, with artfully coiffed hair and posh attire, works at Queen, one of the most prominent and enduring of Itaewon's gay bars.
Queen is large, bright, well-maintained and tastefully decorated. Its core clientele is comprised of gay men and their straight female friends, though others are welcome as well. ``Especially straight girls... Some straight women in Korea like gay men, but no straight men. It is sad,'' he said.
Despite the hopes expressed by many young Korean gay people, there has been little direct change in public discourse on the issue of sexual minorities, only gathering momentum on the fringes of society.
Membership in gay student unions, for example, has steadily increased since the early 1990s, and the legal system has become steadily more supportive of sexual minorities, as with the Korean Supreme Court's 2006 decision allowing post-operative transgendered people to legally change their sex.
Gays are receiving more attention from the entertainment industry, as well. For instance, movies with same-sex content, such as ``Wang Ui-namja,'' ``Brokeback Mountain,'' or recently, ``Hello My Love,'' all gathered significant controversy as they ran their course.
The off-screen attention, however, has sometimes been negative, as with the coverage of gay television actor Kim Ji-Hoo's suicide in 2008. Gays in Korea also face potential ostracism at work and in most venues of public life, outside of a few cosmopolitan industries such as fashion, the arts, and cosmetics.
In yet another sign of Korea's well-known generation gap, there has been a growing consciousness of, and less frequently, acceptance of, homosexuality among Korea's tech-savvy youth. Many young gays are impatient for the increased freedom they know exists in the West and even Japan, and express a desire to travel and even live abroad.
``Tokyo is famous. Kyoto is too,'' Nathaniel reported. ``Many Korean people live in Hokkaido.''
Japan, close to home, with a large Korean population already, is a popular destination among Korean gays.
``Why would you go to Korea and not Japan?'' was a question that puzzled You-jeong about his Western customers. The 20 year-old, whose bold demeanor is belied by his slender build and tastefully colorful attire, tends bar at SoHo, down the road from Queen.
``Korea is a very conservative society. I would like to live in Tokyo,'' he said. The cosmopolitan outlook of many younger, urban Koreans is voiced even more strongly by young gays like You-jeong. ``I like Korean men, Japanese men, Western, all kinds. I just care about the person.''
You-jeong came out with his sexuality in high school, to his family, fellow students and everyone else in his life. He reported some confusion but little serious harassment.
Older Koreans are far more reticent to come out, or even to speak on the record, with a few notable exceptions. One of the most notable, of course, is Hong Seok-chun, the actor who lost his career when he came out in 2000. He started a business in Itaewon, the now-famous restaurant Our Place.
It became successful, and Hong opened several more Asian and Western restaurants in the district. He has since reappeared on television as a gay hairdresser on a popular soap opera and is now opening a club called My Bad.
Hong is as impressed with the pace of change in Korea as younger gays are impatient with it. ``Yes, of course, it's changed a lot,'' he said. ``These days you can meet a lot of gay people in the street and they are not shy anymore.'' Still, he admits, many stay in the closet. ``As a gay in Korea, they feel ashamed, and try to hide it from their family and things like that. They feel insecure.''
It was Hong's former boyfriend, a Dutch national, who helped him overcome his own sense of shame. ``He said, `You should know that you are a beautiful person... You have a good heart.' He changed my character.''
Moreover, parents of gay children in Korea often respond with denial and anxiety. ``I think all the parents of gay kids are worried about their kids' careers. They worry about how they will survive in this conservative society.'' Hong's own parents simply refused to accept that he was gay at first, and asked him when he would marry a woman for years after he told them.
``I think the gay issue is not that big of an issue because of what happened with me,'' among other things, Hong said. ``Still, we have to keep fighting. It takes time. But I am willing to do that, I will fight.''
Gay Koreans describe their lives less as sad than confined and secretive. The string of bars and nightclubs known to habitués as 'homo hill' and its outliers are the hub of gay life in Korea. There is also a smaller circle of bars in the Gwanghwamun area, quieter and more private, open mainly to Korean regulars and their guests. Outside of Seoul, with the exception of a handful of bars in Busan and some sites on the Internet, there is nothing.
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/10/117_54131.html
The Korean Peace
Originally published Korea Times Nov. 15, 2009.
The recent rumors of a 'grand bargain' between Pyongyang and its adversaries over the North's nuclear program can only be an encouraging sign. Any step away from nuclear holocaust is a step in the right direction. However, even if such a deal wins approval from all three capitals, there is still no way to be sure that it will really stick. Most past agreements with the North have encountered a rocky, "two steps forward and one step back" implementation process. What will make this one any different?
The reason that so many agreements with the North have foundered is because there has been a state of war on the Korean peninsula since 1950. Seoul and Washington cannot provide food aid to a country with which they are technically at war. They cannot build nuclear reactors for a nation with which they are at war. In short, they cannot accomplish any substantive, enforceable agreement with North Korea because the only agreement possible among warring powers is a peace treaty. Normalization is the condition of the possibility for peace.
Talk of normalization is, of course, enormously controversial among South Koreans, particularly among the older generation, and for good reason. The price to be paid for a peace treaty is the ratification of Korea's division, an official recognition of the fact that a single people has been made two through the interference of outside powers. The closest analogy for an American, perhaps, would be to imagine California sundered from the body of his republic by China or Russia. It would be a tragedy.
Yet surely the greater tragedy would be to continue a war that no longer serves any purpose, a war that once claimed tens of thousands of Korean and American casualties, and could easily do so again. Much of the blame for the situation naturally lies with the North, the ruthless totalitarian dictatorship that insists on maintaining a clearly moribund system at the cost of thousands of its citizens' lives. However, the US has had diplomatic relations with worse regimes, and has supported worse.
If communism is obsolete, it necessarily follows that anticommunism is also obsolete. Pyongyang must realize that surrender is an option, and that this surrender need not be unconditional so long as the 1953 armistice holds, but at the same time Washington must make defeat worth its enemy's while. We have used the stick for sixty years. It hasn't worked. Let's try the carrot.
Now is the perfect time. Whereas before about 1980, the primary obstacle to normalization was opposition from the right-wing regime in Seoul, after Reagan's election Washington became the roadblock. While newly democratic South Korea reached out to the North under Kim Dae-Jung's sophisticated Sunshine Policy, batting down its provocations while offering face-saving compromises, America's rightward lurch made any dramatic moves toward peace unimaginable even during the pragmatic Clinton years. Now that the American public has returned to sanity after eight years of cowboy diplomacy, President Obama must seize this opportunity to permanently foreclose the possibility of a civilizational crisis on the Korean peninsula.
The democratic allies have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Would Seoul and Washington be giving the North exactly what it wants by extending recognition? Certainly. What we would insist on in return would be the immediate dismantling of North Korea's nuclear program, as well as its chemical and biological stockpiles, and a bilateral drawdown of conventional forces. Trade and assistance to the North could thereafter be progressively broadened as Pyongyang curtails its human rights abuses.
No thought is more delightful, to Koreans and Americans both, than that of one Korean nation from the Yalu River to Jeju Island, peacefully reunified under a democratic government. I hope to witness that day in my lifetime. For the time being, however, we must play the hand that history has dealt us. This is perhaps the crowning irony for a country whose modern history is replete with the bitterest of ironies -- Korea cannot hope to one day make itself whole without first recognizing its division.
The recent rumors of a 'grand bargain' between Pyongyang and its adversaries over the North's nuclear program can only be an encouraging sign. Any step away from nuclear holocaust is a step in the right direction. However, even if such a deal wins approval from all three capitals, there is still no way to be sure that it will really stick. Most past agreements with the North have encountered a rocky, "two steps forward and one step back" implementation process. What will make this one any different?
The reason that so many agreements with the North have foundered is because there has been a state of war on the Korean peninsula since 1950. Seoul and Washington cannot provide food aid to a country with which they are technically at war. They cannot build nuclear reactors for a nation with which they are at war. In short, they cannot accomplish any substantive, enforceable agreement with North Korea because the only agreement possible among warring powers is a peace treaty. Normalization is the condition of the possibility for peace.
Talk of normalization is, of course, enormously controversial among South Koreans, particularly among the older generation, and for good reason. The price to be paid for a peace treaty is the ratification of Korea's division, an official recognition of the fact that a single people has been made two through the interference of outside powers. The closest analogy for an American, perhaps, would be to imagine California sundered from the body of his republic by China or Russia. It would be a tragedy.
Yet surely the greater tragedy would be to continue a war that no longer serves any purpose, a war that once claimed tens of thousands of Korean and American casualties, and could easily do so again. Much of the blame for the situation naturally lies with the North, the ruthless totalitarian dictatorship that insists on maintaining a clearly moribund system at the cost of thousands of its citizens' lives. However, the US has had diplomatic relations with worse regimes, and has supported worse.
If communism is obsolete, it necessarily follows that anticommunism is also obsolete. Pyongyang must realize that surrender is an option, and that this surrender need not be unconditional so long as the 1953 armistice holds, but at the same time Washington must make defeat worth its enemy's while. We have used the stick for sixty years. It hasn't worked. Let's try the carrot.
Now is the perfect time. Whereas before about 1980, the primary obstacle to normalization was opposition from the right-wing regime in Seoul, after Reagan's election Washington became the roadblock. While newly democratic South Korea reached out to the North under Kim Dae-Jung's sophisticated Sunshine Policy, batting down its provocations while offering face-saving compromises, America's rightward lurch made any dramatic moves toward peace unimaginable even during the pragmatic Clinton years. Now that the American public has returned to sanity after eight years of cowboy diplomacy, President Obama must seize this opportunity to permanently foreclose the possibility of a civilizational crisis on the Korean peninsula.
The democratic allies have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Would Seoul and Washington be giving the North exactly what it wants by extending recognition? Certainly. What we would insist on in return would be the immediate dismantling of North Korea's nuclear program, as well as its chemical and biological stockpiles, and a bilateral drawdown of conventional forces. Trade and assistance to the North could thereafter be progressively broadened as Pyongyang curtails its human rights abuses.
No thought is more delightful, to Koreans and Americans both, than that of one Korean nation from the Yalu River to Jeju Island, peacefully reunified under a democratic government. I hope to witness that day in my lifetime. For the time being, however, we must play the hand that history has dealt us. This is perhaps the crowning irony for a country whose modern history is replete with the bitterest of ironies -- Korea cannot hope to one day make itself whole without first recognizing its division.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
The Specter
After twenty years, a familiar specter is once again haunting the developing world. A wave of audacious left-leaning politicians has been swept to power in Latin America, and a few months ago Thailand's Red Shirts staged a mass protest against the military government that brought Bangkok to a standstill. Maoist groups are rising throughout the Indian subcontinent, through election as well as armed uprising. The Left has returned.
While the American mainstream doubtless looks upon these events with horror, for progressives the reemergence of the Left from the shadow of 1989 is rightly viewed with ambivalence and uncertainty. While these movements have enormous potential to alleviate human suffering and raise the living standards of the poorest of the world's poor, they also carry the potential for a reprise of all the bloody, despotic excesses of 20th century Communism.
What are the possibilities and limitations of this recrudescence? What is the appropriate attitude of American liberals and Leftists toward it? In the 20th century, rivers of blood were shed by Communist governments, as well as by their enemies. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, most of that suffering and sacrifice appears to have been for nothing. Answering these questions is of burning importance to anyone concerned with avoiding pointless horror.
● ● ●
The problem with the Communist states of yesteryear was not really that they contravened human nature, as fashionable as it is nowadays to insist otherwise. Nor was it because of the inherent inefficiency of central planning, though the command economy did suffer a great deal of that. It was not even the economically undeveloped conditions in which the Left was forced to take power, as many Marxists have alleged - though the initial poverty was doubtless, at least, a major permissive cause.
No, the real problem was the total lack of freedom. This means not only the absence of political democracy, but also the bureaucratic stultification of economic life. The only conceivable justification for a new round of social revolutions, in light of the horror and failure of past experiments, is a self-conscious effort to avoid authoritarianism and bureaucracy, to the extent that conditions allow.
Freedom is thus the primary standard by which the new wave should be evaluated. So far, most of the Latin American governments have, for the most part, respected democratic norms. In some cases, such as Brazil and Chile, deference to parliamentary principles has been accompanied by a move toward the center on the part of former Left parties. This has produced both good and ill effects for their respective nations. Although the Chavez administration in Venezuela has some worrisome autocratic tendencies, its own base and the other Left parties have mostly kept it in line.
In Thailand, the Red Shirts have been consistent critics of the monarchy and the military, and advocates for parliamentary democracy - even though it earned them a brutal crackdown by the military dictatorship. Likewise Nepal's Maoist party, which participates in routine elections, and has thus far used violence only to prevent a military takeover.
One of India's Maoist factions, however, has used guerrilla tactics against India's elected government to take over sections of the countryside. Admittedly this was probably the result of decades of neglect of India's rural poor by its government, elections notwithstanding. In any of these cases, it is not necessarily the willingness to use force, which unfortunately is unavoidable in some circumstances (just ask George Washington), but rather the end for which force is used, that is essential.
One unfortunate quality that most of these groups share is an unwillingness to rethink statist and bureaucratic alternatives to private enterprise. Although not all experiments with nationalization of industry have been failures – one has only to think of the TVA or South Korea's Pohang Steel – history seems to teach that adopting state ownership as a general rule tends toward bureaucratic sclerosis and undemocratic concentrations of power.
Thus far, no current movement has yet attempted a thorough collectivization of the economy, doubtless due, in part, to the memory of the Eastern European experience. However, in cases where alternatives to private ownership have been sought, as with energy resources in Venezuela and Bolivia, these have usually taken the form of old-fashioned nationalization, rather than, for example, experiments in ownership diversification. Although cooperatives have played a relatively large role in Venezuela and Bolivia, and to some extent in Argentina, in no case have they received primary emphasis.
It is clear that any attempt to supplant capitalism, particularly in the developing nations where such projects are likely to be instituted, will face enormous difficulties. If the new revolutionaries are wise, they will build on the experience of such moderate Communisms as those of Cuba or Mozambique, while experimenting with democratic institutions, ownership diversification, and individual proprietorship in land and small business. Of course, nothing perfect can reasonably be expected from any form of government under developing-nation conditions, but perhaps the partisans of the new wave can at least make life more bearable for their countrymen.
● ● ●
The principle that should guide the attitude of American progressives toward the new wave is restraint. The reemergence of the Cold War liberal who gleefully jumped aboard the Right's anti-Communist bandwagon is probably the worst possible outcome.
If a half-century of Cold War taught us anything, it is that the developed nations' militant reaction against Communism made the Communist states worse than they otherwise would have been. Whether intervening in the Russian Civil War, appeasing Hitler, or making the provocative moves that helped touch off the Cold War, the unrelenting hostility of the capitalist powers doubtless contributed to a hardening of attitudes among Communism's leaders, and the rigidification of its bureaucratic police states.
American radicals, on the other hand, eventually discovered that they did little service to their cause or to any attempt at expanding their relatively small numbers by an all-too-frequent naiveté – even, in some cases, willful denial – regarding the true nature of the Communist nations. This was not universally true, of course; the Bolsheviks had many critics on the Left, such as Emma Goldman, from the very beginning. Nonetheless, whether Stalin's Russia, Mao's China, or even, initially, the ghastly Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, many radicals found a train of disappointments in too much of the Really Existing Socialism.
The notion of restraint signifies dedication to realistic foreign policy. Neither the Cold War zealotry of Lyndon Johnson nor the misguided affection of Henry Wallace are appropriate. Rather, what is needed is the hard-minded realpolitik of then-prominent journalist Walter Lippmann. Unlike most liberals, Lippmann criticized the Cold War policy of containment at the outset. Instead, he proposed to build on the Yalta agreement, having the superpowers divide the world up into formal spheres of influence. This was, to some extent, done eventually anyway.
In our contemporary situation, progressive realism mostly means extricating America from the new wave's path, to whatever extent the line-up of domestic forces within the United States allows. We could, perhaps, blockade the flow of military merchandise into conflict zones, and supply aid to civilians. We can seek agreements with other powers to adopt similar policies. In brief, we should help people, or get out.
Something like the existence of Maoists in Nepal only becomes of concern to us if, for some reason, it has implications for the global balance of forces. Then our government might have to consider a range of responses. Since these movements are simply too small to have more than regional significance at most, the point would seem to be moot.
● ● ●
In Marx's theory, the economic principles that guide human history will eventually bring about the realization of the good society everywhere on earth. The particular is ultimately resolved into the universal by capitalist laws of development which are themselves universal. Since the difficulties of this tantalizing vision became manifest during the 20th century, invocation of universal principles has gone out of fashion entirely.
The Marxist vision indeed needs to be rethought, even by those movements which claim inspiration from it. Nevertheless, the positivist and postmodern approaches that have gained cachet among much of today's intelligentsia, which often deny universality altogether, are deeply unsatisfying. This is all the more so because they have so little to offer the impoverished masses of the developing world.
Let there be a virtuous mean between these vicious extremes. I propose that progressives take a letter from Aristotle, and seek the universal-in-the-particular. What this means, in concrete terms, is that the possibilities and limitations for social change and international peace should be expected to vary with situation, and the response from progressives should likewise vary.
As in Aristotle's Politics, the world will likely consist of various forms of state, from Persian Gulf monarchies to European social democracies to Latin American developing capitalism, for a long time. Likewise, there will be a welter of competing political factions and social groups in any given nation. There will be international conflict, and even war, just as there will be counter-movements for peace.
What distinguishes this view from mere relativism, however, is that it posits the existence of better and worse forms of each polity, and of objective principles that regulate their development. It offers a conception of the good life, certain elements of which are common to all people, and which may serve as the objective standard by which the values of all societies, and the policies of all governments, can be judged.
The specter of Marx is once again haunting the slums and peasant villages of the developing nations. We shall see whether history repeats itself and how, as tragedy or as farce. For now, revolutionaries in the Third World, and reformers in the First, have an opportunity to create something new.
While the American mainstream doubtless looks upon these events with horror, for progressives the reemergence of the Left from the shadow of 1989 is rightly viewed with ambivalence and uncertainty. While these movements have enormous potential to alleviate human suffering and raise the living standards of the poorest of the world's poor, they also carry the potential for a reprise of all the bloody, despotic excesses of 20th century Communism.
What are the possibilities and limitations of this recrudescence? What is the appropriate attitude of American liberals and Leftists toward it? In the 20th century, rivers of blood were shed by Communist governments, as well as by their enemies. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, most of that suffering and sacrifice appears to have been for nothing. Answering these questions is of burning importance to anyone concerned with avoiding pointless horror.
● ● ●
The problem with the Communist states of yesteryear was not really that they contravened human nature, as fashionable as it is nowadays to insist otherwise. Nor was it because of the inherent inefficiency of central planning, though the command economy did suffer a great deal of that. It was not even the economically undeveloped conditions in which the Left was forced to take power, as many Marxists have alleged - though the initial poverty was doubtless, at least, a major permissive cause.
No, the real problem was the total lack of freedom. This means not only the absence of political democracy, but also the bureaucratic stultification of economic life. The only conceivable justification for a new round of social revolutions, in light of the horror and failure of past experiments, is a self-conscious effort to avoid authoritarianism and bureaucracy, to the extent that conditions allow.
Freedom is thus the primary standard by which the new wave should be evaluated. So far, most of the Latin American governments have, for the most part, respected democratic norms. In some cases, such as Brazil and Chile, deference to parliamentary principles has been accompanied by a move toward the center on the part of former Left parties. This has produced both good and ill effects for their respective nations. Although the Chavez administration in Venezuela has some worrisome autocratic tendencies, its own base and the other Left parties have mostly kept it in line.
In Thailand, the Red Shirts have been consistent critics of the monarchy and the military, and advocates for parliamentary democracy - even though it earned them a brutal crackdown by the military dictatorship. Likewise Nepal's Maoist party, which participates in routine elections, and has thus far used violence only to prevent a military takeover.
One of India's Maoist factions, however, has used guerrilla tactics against India's elected government to take over sections of the countryside. Admittedly this was probably the result of decades of neglect of India's rural poor by its government, elections notwithstanding. In any of these cases, it is not necessarily the willingness to use force, which unfortunately is unavoidable in some circumstances (just ask George Washington), but rather the end for which force is used, that is essential.
One unfortunate quality that most of these groups share is an unwillingness to rethink statist and bureaucratic alternatives to private enterprise. Although not all experiments with nationalization of industry have been failures – one has only to think of the TVA or South Korea's Pohang Steel – history seems to teach that adopting state ownership as a general rule tends toward bureaucratic sclerosis and undemocratic concentrations of power.
Thus far, no current movement has yet attempted a thorough collectivization of the economy, doubtless due, in part, to the memory of the Eastern European experience. However, in cases where alternatives to private ownership have been sought, as with energy resources in Venezuela and Bolivia, these have usually taken the form of old-fashioned nationalization, rather than, for example, experiments in ownership diversification. Although cooperatives have played a relatively large role in Venezuela and Bolivia, and to some extent in Argentina, in no case have they received primary emphasis.
It is clear that any attempt to supplant capitalism, particularly in the developing nations where such projects are likely to be instituted, will face enormous difficulties. If the new revolutionaries are wise, they will build on the experience of such moderate Communisms as those of Cuba or Mozambique, while experimenting with democratic institutions, ownership diversification, and individual proprietorship in land and small business. Of course, nothing perfect can reasonably be expected from any form of government under developing-nation conditions, but perhaps the partisans of the new wave can at least make life more bearable for their countrymen.
● ● ●
The principle that should guide the attitude of American progressives toward the new wave is restraint. The reemergence of the Cold War liberal who gleefully jumped aboard the Right's anti-Communist bandwagon is probably the worst possible outcome.
If a half-century of Cold War taught us anything, it is that the developed nations' militant reaction against Communism made the Communist states worse than they otherwise would have been. Whether intervening in the Russian Civil War, appeasing Hitler, or making the provocative moves that helped touch off the Cold War, the unrelenting hostility of the capitalist powers doubtless contributed to a hardening of attitudes among Communism's leaders, and the rigidification of its bureaucratic police states.
American radicals, on the other hand, eventually discovered that they did little service to their cause or to any attempt at expanding their relatively small numbers by an all-too-frequent naiveté – even, in some cases, willful denial – regarding the true nature of the Communist nations. This was not universally true, of course; the Bolsheviks had many critics on the Left, such as Emma Goldman, from the very beginning. Nonetheless, whether Stalin's Russia, Mao's China, or even, initially, the ghastly Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, many radicals found a train of disappointments in too much of the Really Existing Socialism.
The notion of restraint signifies dedication to realistic foreign policy. Neither the Cold War zealotry of Lyndon Johnson nor the misguided affection of Henry Wallace are appropriate. Rather, what is needed is the hard-minded realpolitik of then-prominent journalist Walter Lippmann. Unlike most liberals, Lippmann criticized the Cold War policy of containment at the outset. Instead, he proposed to build on the Yalta agreement, having the superpowers divide the world up into formal spheres of influence. This was, to some extent, done eventually anyway.
In our contemporary situation, progressive realism mostly means extricating America from the new wave's path, to whatever extent the line-up of domestic forces within the United States allows. We could, perhaps, blockade the flow of military merchandise into conflict zones, and supply aid to civilians. We can seek agreements with other powers to adopt similar policies. In brief, we should help people, or get out.
Something like the existence of Maoists in Nepal only becomes of concern to us if, for some reason, it has implications for the global balance of forces. Then our government might have to consider a range of responses. Since these movements are simply too small to have more than regional significance at most, the point would seem to be moot.
● ● ●
In Marx's theory, the economic principles that guide human history will eventually bring about the realization of the good society everywhere on earth. The particular is ultimately resolved into the universal by capitalist laws of development which are themselves universal. Since the difficulties of this tantalizing vision became manifest during the 20th century, invocation of universal principles has gone out of fashion entirely.
The Marxist vision indeed needs to be rethought, even by those movements which claim inspiration from it. Nevertheless, the positivist and postmodern approaches that have gained cachet among much of today's intelligentsia, which often deny universality altogether, are deeply unsatisfying. This is all the more so because they have so little to offer the impoverished masses of the developing world.
Let there be a virtuous mean between these vicious extremes. I propose that progressives take a letter from Aristotle, and seek the universal-in-the-particular. What this means, in concrete terms, is that the possibilities and limitations for social change and international peace should be expected to vary with situation, and the response from progressives should likewise vary.
As in Aristotle's Politics, the world will likely consist of various forms of state, from Persian Gulf monarchies to European social democracies to Latin American developing capitalism, for a long time. Likewise, there will be a welter of competing political factions and social groups in any given nation. There will be international conflict, and even war, just as there will be counter-movements for peace.
What distinguishes this view from mere relativism, however, is that it posits the existence of better and worse forms of each polity, and of objective principles that regulate their development. It offers a conception of the good life, certain elements of which are common to all people, and which may serve as the objective standard by which the values of all societies, and the policies of all governments, can be judged.
The specter of Marx is once again haunting the slums and peasant villages of the developing nations. We shall see whether history repeats itself and how, as tragedy or as farce. For now, revolutionaries in the Third World, and reformers in the First, have an opportunity to create something new.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Falling Towers
What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal
- T.S. Eliot, "The Waste Land"
Perhaps the infamous dictum about ends justifying means that appears to undergird so much of America's foreign policy might just as easily apply to certain non-state actors. One of the most startling moments of my undergraduate education was hearing one of Sarah Lawrence's professors, a leftist a outrance, compare the fanatical right-wing theocrat Osama bin Laden to our nation's first President.
"After all," the argument went, "Washington was a wealthy landowner, a slave-owner even, and a conservative nationalist." Yet Washington's struggle against imperialism is today remembered a great deal more fondly by Americans.
In accordance with the principle of charitable interpretation, I swallowed my distaste and went with the assumption that the comparison was meant sincerely, and not intended to shock and provoke as many leftist screeds of this sort appear to be. After mulling it over for a bit, I came to the conclusion that our professor indeed had a point.
The United States not only established its independence through violent means - including the use of vigilante terror against unarmed citizens who too openly professed support for the British king - but has, within living memory, used its unmatchable war machine in attacks throughout the globe that have killed and injured civilians by the tens of thousands.
During the Vietnam War, for instance, we killed about 2 million noncombatants in Southeast Asia through bombing alone. Most of this unlimited use of air power had political and psychological, rather than tactical objectives.
None of this, of course, should be taken to explain or justify the September 11 attacks, merely to keep a sense of perspective about them. To condemn Al Qaeda when our body count is so much higher would be the grossest hypocrisy.
No, if that professor's remarks still sit uneasily with me, it has more to do with Al Qaeda's ends than its means. This is not to say that the use of terror against civilian targets is any more defensible when terrorists do it than when imperialists do it. In both cases, it is at best unclear whether the means employed do actually achieve the desired ends; whether, if the desired ends are in fact achieved, the violence used to achieve them does not create other ends equally pernicious; and most importantly of all, whether the means defeat and destroy the ends.
These are questions to trouble leftists, not medieval barbarians. Osama bin Laden is not George Washington, not because his methods are cleaner, but because his objectives are utterly reprehensible. Washington and his comrades were fairly progressive for their time, bourgeois nationalists steeped in the rationalist ideals of the European Enlightenment.
Al Qaeda and the Taliban, on the other hand, are regressive outriders of what the Slovenian Marxist thinker Slavoj Zizek calls "the New Barbarism." They would replace American imperialism with a second Dark Ages, capitalism with Asiatic despotism. If they could achieve these ends with deep-tissue massage and poetry recital they would scarcely be less appalling.
There are two bottom lines to all this. One is that those on the left who characterize the barbarians at the gate as heroic anti-imperialist freedom fighters are doing no favors to their cause, and setting themselves up for a terrible disappointment. Similarly, the right needs to stop its self-righteous chest-pounding jingoism. America is hardly an aggrieved innocent in world affairs.
The other, more concretely, is that we must come to a resolution with regard to Afghanistan. As the Obama Administration struggles and fumbles with the sticky tactical situation in that unfortunate land, it has become obvious that our halfhearted, slapdash approach is not working.
We ought to either redouble our efforts and deploy all available troops and resources against the villains of 9/11 - which would quite likely endanger our empire in the Fertile Crescent - or simply declare victory and leave.
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal
- T.S. Eliot, "The Waste Land"
Perhaps the infamous dictum about ends justifying means that appears to undergird so much of America's foreign policy might just as easily apply to certain non-state actors. One of the most startling moments of my undergraduate education was hearing one of Sarah Lawrence's professors, a leftist a outrance, compare the fanatical right-wing theocrat Osama bin Laden to our nation's first President.
"After all," the argument went, "Washington was a wealthy landowner, a slave-owner even, and a conservative nationalist." Yet Washington's struggle against imperialism is today remembered a great deal more fondly by Americans.
In accordance with the principle of charitable interpretation, I swallowed my distaste and went with the assumption that the comparison was meant sincerely, and not intended to shock and provoke as many leftist screeds of this sort appear to be. After mulling it over for a bit, I came to the conclusion that our professor indeed had a point.
The United States not only established its independence through violent means - including the use of vigilante terror against unarmed citizens who too openly professed support for the British king - but has, within living memory, used its unmatchable war machine in attacks throughout the globe that have killed and injured civilians by the tens of thousands.
During the Vietnam War, for instance, we killed about 2 million noncombatants in Southeast Asia through bombing alone. Most of this unlimited use of air power had political and psychological, rather than tactical objectives.
None of this, of course, should be taken to explain or justify the September 11 attacks, merely to keep a sense of perspective about them. To condemn Al Qaeda when our body count is so much higher would be the grossest hypocrisy.
No, if that professor's remarks still sit uneasily with me, it has more to do with Al Qaeda's ends than its means. This is not to say that the use of terror against civilian targets is any more defensible when terrorists do it than when imperialists do it. In both cases, it is at best unclear whether the means employed do actually achieve the desired ends; whether, if the desired ends are in fact achieved, the violence used to achieve them does not create other ends equally pernicious; and most importantly of all, whether the means defeat and destroy the ends.
These are questions to trouble leftists, not medieval barbarians. Osama bin Laden is not George Washington, not because his methods are cleaner, but because his objectives are utterly reprehensible. Washington and his comrades were fairly progressive for their time, bourgeois nationalists steeped in the rationalist ideals of the European Enlightenment.
Al Qaeda and the Taliban, on the other hand, are regressive outriders of what the Slovenian Marxist thinker Slavoj Zizek calls "the New Barbarism." They would replace American imperialism with a second Dark Ages, capitalism with Asiatic despotism. If they could achieve these ends with deep-tissue massage and poetry recital they would scarcely be less appalling.
There are two bottom lines to all this. One is that those on the left who characterize the barbarians at the gate as heroic anti-imperialist freedom fighters are doing no favors to their cause, and setting themselves up for a terrible disappointment. Similarly, the right needs to stop its self-righteous chest-pounding jingoism. America is hardly an aggrieved innocent in world affairs.
The other, more concretely, is that we must come to a resolution with regard to Afghanistan. As the Obama Administration struggles and fumbles with the sticky tactical situation in that unfortunate land, it has become obvious that our halfhearted, slapdash approach is not working.
We ought to either redouble our efforts and deploy all available troops and resources against the villains of 9/11 - which would quite likely endanger our empire in the Fertile Crescent - or simply declare victory and leave.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
What Kind of Person Thinks About This S***?
I came to my gestational ideas out of an engagement with Marxism which began in my undergraduate days. I found many aspects of Marxism quite compelling, others lacking. I began thinking about alternate approaches that could either replace or be combined with Marxism to compensate for its deficiencies, including Critical Theory, poststructuralism, and analytic thought of various kinds.
It was to learn about these sorts of ideas that I committed to a graduate program in philosophy in the Fall of 2008. Unfortunately, I found the small taste I got of these alternative approaches not entirely satisfying. Even more unfortunately, partly because of the stress of a collapsing relationship, I became extremely nervous and overly defensive of Marxism.
Being excessively argumentative in my first semester of graduate school did not endear me to certain faculty members, who not-so-politely suggested I explore other career paths. (I am, as a matter of fact, contemplating Law, Journalism, and civil service, among other things.) I still want to finish the degree, in part because I feel it will help open doors in these other fields, in part because I simply want it. For all the hardships I experienced in grad school, I'm still interested in ideas. Silly me.
It wasn't all hardship, I suppose. I toned it down a bit my second semester, and developed a new interest in some old ideas. I took a class on Aristotle, and loved it so much I made the classics professor my advisor. Aristotelian realism, I now believe, is a perfect complement and corrective to Marxist materialism.
I took the next year off, decided to return to Korea. I had taught English there in 2005, and decided it might be nice to see some old friends again. Unfortunately, I found the country as corrupt, conservative, and chauvinistic as I had left it. No, not fair. There had actually been a significant amount of progress in some ways, more development, slightly softening attitudes on women and gays and foreigners.
Unfortunately, the English academy (hagwon) system is still a frightful mess, only in the earliest stages of being cleaned up. Basically, these McSchools charge wayyyy too much money to parents frightened for their children's future in a society competitive enough to rival the ecosystem of the Amazon basin for Darwinian savagery. They skimp on essential costs, use substandard texts and supplies, overwork students, rearrange classes every time a parent or adult student complains, and oh yes, horribly mistreat their workers (Korean and foreign both). In general, the academies are the worst possible way to do education.
Koreans know this. They've actually known it for a while, but a newly developed country with a democracy less than 20 years old, locked in a perpetual state of war with its collectivist northern alter-ego, and bitch-slapped by the most recent economic crisis just as it was finally recovering from the one in 1998 can only do so much.
Long story short, I got monumentally screwed over -- again. Fool me twice, shame on me, I suppose. I figured, this time around, I know the ins and outs. I'll work for a reputable company, YBM, and teach grown-ups. Sounded good on paper, but YBM, while not especially corrupt, by Korean standards, proved to be extremely disorganized and poorly managed, at least by typical American standards.
After three months of doing my best to follow my boss' instructions, I got tired of getting blamed for managerial snafus, as well as of consistently negative feedback from students that often went suspiciously unsubstantiated. For instance, I requested several times to see student evaluations. Even if they had been in Korean, I could easily have had a friend translate them. The evaluations were never produced. My manager refused to provide any details, and actually identified as a source of criticism a class that I hadn't even taught!
I believe that my articles for the Korea Times, mentioned in my first post (http://smugpansy-cynicscorner.blogspot.com/2010/04/smug-pansy.html), may have played a role in souring my relationship with my employer, but I can't be sure. Me and my big, fat, um, word processor?
I tried to move on to another job, but Immigration (which is as full of racist a******* in Korea as it is in America) put the kibosh on it. So I returned to America, penniless. A warning for anyone thinking about teaching English abroad.
Again, I suppose it wasn't all hardship. I got to see some old friends and make some new ones. Koreans, even middle-class Koreans, are used to a somewhat greater level of hardship than are Americans. My friend kadual (handle, not real name, of course), for example, ended up homeless and sleeping on the street for a while when he toured Australia. Didn't even complain about it, said the weather was nice. Yeesh.
So, now I am thinking about completing my degree, applying for jobs, and of course, blogging. I'd say the 21st century's off to a roaring start.
It was to learn about these sorts of ideas that I committed to a graduate program in philosophy in the Fall of 2008. Unfortunately, I found the small taste I got of these alternative approaches not entirely satisfying. Even more unfortunately, partly because of the stress of a collapsing relationship, I became extremely nervous and overly defensive of Marxism.
Being excessively argumentative in my first semester of graduate school did not endear me to certain faculty members, who not-so-politely suggested I explore other career paths. (I am, as a matter of fact, contemplating Law, Journalism, and civil service, among other things.) I still want to finish the degree, in part because I feel it will help open doors in these other fields, in part because I simply want it. For all the hardships I experienced in grad school, I'm still interested in ideas. Silly me.
It wasn't all hardship, I suppose. I toned it down a bit my second semester, and developed a new interest in some old ideas. I took a class on Aristotle, and loved it so much I made the classics professor my advisor. Aristotelian realism, I now believe, is a perfect complement and corrective to Marxist materialism.
I took the next year off, decided to return to Korea. I had taught English there in 2005, and decided it might be nice to see some old friends again. Unfortunately, I found the country as corrupt, conservative, and chauvinistic as I had left it. No, not fair. There had actually been a significant amount of progress in some ways, more development, slightly softening attitudes on women and gays and foreigners.
Unfortunately, the English academy (hagwon) system is still a frightful mess, only in the earliest stages of being cleaned up. Basically, these McSchools charge wayyyy too much money to parents frightened for their children's future in a society competitive enough to rival the ecosystem of the Amazon basin for Darwinian savagery. They skimp on essential costs, use substandard texts and supplies, overwork students, rearrange classes every time a parent or adult student complains, and oh yes, horribly mistreat their workers (Korean and foreign both). In general, the academies are the worst possible way to do education.
Koreans know this. They've actually known it for a while, but a newly developed country with a democracy less than 20 years old, locked in a perpetual state of war with its collectivist northern alter-ego, and bitch-slapped by the most recent economic crisis just as it was finally recovering from the one in 1998 can only do so much.
Long story short, I got monumentally screwed over -- again. Fool me twice, shame on me, I suppose. I figured, this time around, I know the ins and outs. I'll work for a reputable company, YBM, and teach grown-ups. Sounded good on paper, but YBM, while not especially corrupt, by Korean standards, proved to be extremely disorganized and poorly managed, at least by typical American standards.
After three months of doing my best to follow my boss' instructions, I got tired of getting blamed for managerial snafus, as well as of consistently negative feedback from students that often went suspiciously unsubstantiated. For instance, I requested several times to see student evaluations. Even if they had been in Korean, I could easily have had a friend translate them. The evaluations were never produced. My manager refused to provide any details, and actually identified as a source of criticism a class that I hadn't even taught!
I believe that my articles for the Korea Times, mentioned in my first post (http://smugpansy-cynicscorner.blogspot.com/2010/04/smug-pansy.html), may have played a role in souring my relationship with my employer, but I can't be sure. Me and my big, fat, um, word processor?
I tried to move on to another job, but Immigration (which is as full of racist a******* in Korea as it is in America) put the kibosh on it. So I returned to America, penniless. A warning for anyone thinking about teaching English abroad.
Again, I suppose it wasn't all hardship. I got to see some old friends and make some new ones. Koreans, even middle-class Koreans, are used to a somewhat greater level of hardship than are Americans. My friend kadual (handle, not real name, of course), for example, ended up homeless and sleeping on the street for a while when he toured Australia. Didn't even complain about it, said the weather was nice. Yeesh.
So, now I am thinking about completing my degree, applying for jobs, and of course, blogging. I'd say the 21st century's off to a roaring start.
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