Torture Us No More America

How much scarier can America get? Now there's a partisan fight breaking out between Democrats and Republicans over treatment of top Bush Administration officials who authorized 'coercive' interrogation techniques in their 'war on terror'. Many of us are worried that this political storm could engulf Obama's ambitious agenda, knocking desperately needed action on climate, healthcare and banking regulation off into a second term (aka The Wild Blue Yonder).

The torture issue could also have an impact on Obama's foreign policy if he sidesteps what many view as a clear case of illegality by some agents of the United States. Spanish prosecutors may end up doing what he will not - prosecute the decision-makers behind these misdeeds, and in the process undermine the amazing amount of goodwill he has inspired around the world.

Americans need to grapple with the political meaning of the torture allegations, just as much -- or more -- than the legal and moral implications. The deep-rooted sense of 'exceptionalism' that teaches many in the United States to see their democracy's laws as inherently superior to international law lays traps for the nation's foreign policy into which even President's of Mr Obama's intelligence can fall.

A nation that valorizes, even reifies, individual liberty to the extent that America does has to extend those liberties universally - not because it is a moral affront to say that American liberties are more valuable than those of an Egyptian, or a Canadian -- but because if America is an exception to the rule of international law, praise be the gods, so are we all. Like the legitimation of nuclear weapons because you're The Good Guys, believing it's okay to take away liberties of life and limb because you are the defenders of liberty negates the political legitimacy that is at the root of your claim. In the international sphere, political claims are increasingly founded on moral consistency, a fact that is a fact no matter how exceptional you may think you are.

It would be more valuable to Americans, and to us all, if the country spent time deliberating on the meaning of this fact as it pertains the country's foreign policy. How are one's particular interests to be advanced if one cleaves to a strong moral code of universal human rights? This is an interesting question for a superpower, an edifying question.

And a question that would, in all likelihood, be submerged and silenced if a show trial of the 'Bush Six' were to proceed. For Mr Obama - the right path is probably political and historical inquiry, not legal mumbo-jumbo.

(For a legal interpretation from the international standpoint, check out this article from The New Yorker in which the views of my old friend (and QC) Philippe Sands are featured. He is spearheading efforts to charge members of the Bush administration with war crimes under international law.)

The Coming Change in Climate

During the US election, novelist Ian McEwan mused in The Guardian that Barack Obama may be our world’s last hope for significant action to avoid catastrophic climate change. But Obama’s powers are fleeting, McEwan says, because they rest on a sort of ‘collective dreaming’ by millions of hopeful citizens in America and around the world: ‘Obama may succeed in tipping the nations [involved in climate change negotiations] toward a low-carbon future simply because people think he can... Having persuaded everybody else, he may be doubly persuaded himself. This aura will be his empowerment, as numinous as good luck, as permanent as spring snow.’

McEwan concludes that Obama must ‘move decisively’, lest our collective dream of his immense power end, and we awaken to find our civilization already pitching forward into a deep chasm.

We would go further here at NC: if Obama is to succeed there must be a determined application of practical wisdom from other governments, including Canada’s. And for that to happen there must be widespread engagement of citizens, both politically and in daily life, and a ‘revaluation’ away from consumerism and endless accumulation of material wealth towards collective fulfillment and happiness even when that means lower growth or fewer luxuries for the wealthiest among us.

Unfortunately, our recent federal election threw into high relief just how disconnected our national institutions are from the imperatives we face. Dion's 'green shift' debacle, the worst communictions effort since Joe Clark tried to sell higher gas taxes, put carbon taxes off the agenda for years to come.

Focusing the mind of our bankers, CEOs, and politicians is no small task, but it is not just a matter of reaching them with 'better information' (as our mainstream environmentalists have preached for too long). This challenge is fundamentally political: The concentration of power at the top of our social pyramid is a key reason that the ecological crisis continues to deepen. As archaeologist/novelist Ronald Wright notes of every civilization’s top dogs: ‘They continue to prosper in darkening times, long after the environment and general populace begin to suffer.’ (A Short History of Progress, House of Anansi Press)

As for our ‘creative class’, on whom so much of our practical future depends, many artists, scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, planners, and designers are fascinated by the challenge of finding a sustainable way to live. It appeals to their moral code and requires great things of them, so it naturally feels like a 'fit'. See, for example, Massive Change ("it's not about the world of design, it's about the design of the world").

But, for this all-important caste, solidarity with the powerless and with future generations vies with 'top dog-ism', the well-known tendency of people who have priveleges, but little power, to think of themselves as brethren of the really influential Masters of the Universe.

A lot will hinge on the credibility of whatever economic ideology emerges from the wreckage that Wall St. has brought upon us -- if American Republicans and their ilk succeed, we will dive deeply back into the one-dimensional 'new economy' in which winners take all and being poor is a sure sign of moral weakness. In that world, we only measure success by the size of your bank account, and ignore the clearcuts and wasted oceans like we ignore street people outside the Metro. If NC and it's ilk get their way, we will take a much richer view of what progress is, using measures such as those outlined by the Canadian Index of Wellbeing or the Happy Planet Index. In that world, equity and ecological sustainability will underpin a society bent on the welfare of its children and grandchildren.

So keep dreaming the dream of Obama's power, but look forward to big changes in your waking life too.

Thank you America, we can THINK again!

Malcolm Gladwell's book, 'blink' is "about the kind of thinking that happens in a blink of an eye" according to the author's notes on www.gladwell.com. 'blinkThink' is my term for making a fetish of the 'blink', and blinkThink took a well-deserved drubbing in Barack Obama's Inauguration Speech yesterday. Obama proposes -- and, most importantly, he symbolizes -- a spirit of deliberation, of considering different points of view and different facts, which is nothing less than a pivoting of American discourse away from the harsh moral certainties of Bush and Reagan toward the nuances of political virtue.

Gladwell himself signals the valorization of the blink, claiming on his site that "we live in a society dedicated to the idea that we're always better off gathering as much information and spending as much time as possible in deliberation." Huh? Where do you live, Malcolm? Oh right, the offices of the New Yorker mag and the international lecture circuit, I forgot. I'll tell you something, MG, where I live -- and I daresay most of us live -- we are under constant and unremitting pressure to make snap judgements, to act on impulse, and generally to equate deliberation as a sign of ineffectiveness. In the mall, and in the public discourse, we are encouraged to slam shut the gates of thought. Political mavens tout the idea that values drive voter choice; the framing of key messages supposedly explains public receptiveness to policy ideas; and marketers ramp up the emotive or sexual quotient at every so-called 'touch point' (but, actually, don't TOUCH me!)

The blink way of making judgements lends itself to moral judgements. In its rapidity, it relies on pre-established ideas and frames of reference. As Decision Research has recently shown (www.decision research.org) many of us will prefer to help one 1000 people out of 5000 escape violence in a place such as Darfur, instead of helping 1000 people out of 100,000. It seems we value the larger slice of the pie represented by 1000/5000 even though it is exactly the same number of people. This isn't reasoning - this is 'blink', and blinkThink is the tendency to value this sort of snap judgement more highly than the sort of deliberation that would reveal just how wrong-headed it is.

Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Mike Harris, Stephen Harper -- these fellows have urged us to blink about each other in a myriad of ways -- now hate public school teachers, now unionized pilots, now the artistic 'elite' -- the better to wrap themselves in a homogeneous sheet of public approval.

But Obama asks us all to be more deliberative, to think more, take more time before making judgemetns. And this may be among his greatest contributions to 'remaking' America, for it opens the way to considering every individual on their own merits, every situation for its inherent possibilities, every outcome for its actual contribution to human progress. Above all, it takes us back to the idea that politics is about public virtues -- doing the right thing at the right time -- not absolute right and wrong.

An appropriate moment to launch this blog, the day after he offered us this gift at his Inauguration. Here at northern communique we will consider just about anything that's interesting, with an inevitable political and Canadian spin -- and welcome all your feedback.

Here we go, thank you America, we can THINK again!