William Yale

Published in the Trinity Tripod.

Martin Peretz, of Harvard University and editor of the magazine The New Republic, recently wrote, “Frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims.” He added, “I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment, which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.”

A month ago protests sparked over the construction of a Muslim community center, the Cordoba House, several blocks away from the site of the World Trade Center. For two years, a vocal minority of Americans have posted on internet forums and passed on viral emails written loudly in all caps: “BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA IS A MUSLIM!”

Each of these controversies stem from a stereotypical representation of Islam and its adherents – stereotypes that are bigoted because they aren’t true. From my travels in Xinjiang, China and living amongst Uyghur and Kazakh Muslims, I’ve found that bigoted beliefs can only arise out of a profound “poverty of experience.”

Last week I stayed for a few days in Hemu, a tiny village on the Kazakh, Russian, and Mongol borders. The natural scenery was beautiful, but more important to me were opportunities to speak with local Tuvans (a Mongolian tribe), Uyghurs, and Kazakhs. After spending an afternoon at a school cultural exchange, I learned that Kazakh teenagers are surprisingly good basketball players and admire Kobe Bryant. It’s probably because the basketball courts are the only fun thing in town.

After dinner with the family of the head schoolteacher, they taught us how to dance to the ethno-pop of Shahrizoda (three Uyghur girls who are all the rage in Xinjiang – their music is incessant). The dance was a traditional Kazakh line dance, and very similar to line dances in Texas. We were also served horse milk wine – think sake with a tinge of milk flavor.

The next night, we got to practice our newly-learned line-dancing skills at a dance party. In Hemu. Population: less than 2000.

After all that, how can I ever stereotype a population of one billion people – it’s futile!

I am an avid reader of James Fallows, correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly, who in response to Mr. Peretz wrote, “The real secret of American inclusion through the generations is that when you grow up with, work with, live next to, intermarry with, and in all other ways get to know people from different categories, you have less patience for generalizations about ‘the blacks’ or ‘the Irish’ or ‘the Jews’ or ‘the gays’ or ‘trailer trash’ etc.”

When you come into contact with those unlike yourself and expose yourself to the alien, “poverty of experience” is erased; you cannot be bigoted, because what was once alien you now recognize as familiar.

Not everyone can make the trek to one of the most remote places on earth to learn this lesson – but Americans need not to. My “wealth of experience” includes not just getting to know Kazakh teenagers in Xinjiang, but also growing up and going to school in a racially and socio-economically diverse community. I am sure the Tuvans, Kazakhs, and Uyghurs I’ve met are well-represented by others in the states (not to mention Muslim and Arab cultural groups on this campus). If you have the opportunity to study abroad, it is the best choice you can make, but it is certainly not the only path out of bigotry in this country.

One of Ezra Klein’s blog posts today reminded me to write a little note clarifying an earlier post – “Rebuilding America”. That post was more of a broad overview on the inability of the federal government to enact any further fiscal or monetary stimulus. I argued that President Obama needs to make an unequivocal case for ‘rebuilding America’ with the type of “Grand American projects” associated with the strategic visions proposed by Steve Clemons and James Fallows.

What I was unclear about was what the term “Grand American projects” meant. My working definition now is long-term fiscal policy designed to quantitatively improve the working class’ quality of life and productivity, and to reduce the income gap. In short order, to revitalize the social mobility that was characterized by the 90′s. This is a broad definition – it includes investments in renewable energy, transportation networks, urban renewal and planning, other infrastructure, and education (this list is by no means exhaustive). These policies need to be passed now and take effect over the next several decades, rather than serve as a reactionary measure a la the 2009 stimulus.

What about what has already been signed into law? I view financial reform as a necessity, but not a Grand American project; it’s mainly a reactive measure. Part of health-care reform would qualify – R & D, IT investment. The rest of the bill is absolutely vital in improving quality of life and productivity, but is not intended to radically improve social mobility. Finally, tax-code reform (this calculator from CEPR is useful – I would add more income levels in the tax code and tax the top marginal rate higher) is necessary to fund these investments and reduce our debt obligations.

The US has been wracked for the past decade with what Ed Luce calls “the Great Stagnation”. Real income has decreased, and we’ve let our regulatory system grow dysfunctional from disuse and our infrastructure system decrepit from under-investment. We’re also competing with foreign industries to accomplish the same goals. I don’t believe foreign growth is bad – on the contrary, Chinese growth opens up Chinese markets to our goods and services. But I do think that US stagnation is bad. We vitally need a positive vision of a more equitable America. I don’t use the word ‘vision’ lightly. It can’t be anything less than a ‘vision’. Anything less would be disastrous.

By now, White House and DoD criticism of the release of the Wikileaks archive has shifted from ‘it harms American soldiers and US military operations’ to ‘it doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know’ to ‘Wikileaks released the names, hometowns, and families of Afghani informants, which will result in their deaths’. The possibility that Afghans could be assassinated as a result of this leak is reprehensible and probably the worst result of the leak. But is retribution likely?

In an interview with the Daily Beast, Sirajuddin Haqqani, son of the leader of the Haqqani Network, pointedly omitted any reference to retribution, but does talk about the ‘atrocities’ of US and NATO forces, as well as the ‘loss of innocent lives in bombings’. Both the Taliban and ISAF are waging two parallel wars: the physical war with each other, and the psychological war to gain the trust of the Afghani people (this is what the DoD calls psy-ops, or psychological operations). Both are an integral part of the Taliban’s mission, just as much as it is a part of COIN strategy. Retribution is therefore rather unlikely – not simply because the Taliban talks about ‘innocent lives’ (that would be naive), but because it would set them back in the more important psy-ops war.

The lede from a WSJ article yesterday made me laugh – conservatives continually harp that Ben Bernanke and the Fed must do all in their power to curb the inflationary tendencies associated with the coming economic recovery. Of course, no inflation has arrived, and neither has economic recovery – the US is in a deflationary period. But this doesn’t stop the WSJ now complaining of the Fed’s inaction in dealing with unemployment. The paper finally takes the Fed’s inflation targets at face value – a rare occurrence.

But this raises the question – what can the Fed actually do to combat the recession now? Monetary policy is a blunt hatchet – lowering interest rates makes borrowing easier across all sectors of the economy, but isn’t guaranteed to work. In this analogy, fiscal policy is a scalpel. Congress can target individual economic sectors – construction, for example, can be boosted through infrastructure expenditures. Unfortunately for us, neither looks likely to happen any time soon. Interest rates are now at their lowest, and a second stimulus (despite statements to the contrary) is dead in the water. And even if the Fed or Congress did manage to take action of some sort, it would be far too late now to affect the economy before the the end of the year.

What else is left when policy fails? Politics. In a utopia, the benefits of a particular policy would be obvious to completely rational, politically-engaged citizens. But that’s not how it works. The only way for the Obama administration to inspire confidence in the public is to act confidently. Those who are actually committed to sane economic policy (i.e., not deficit hypocrites who would vote for the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts) need to think big – rebuilding America big – because politics, unfortunately, comes before policy.

As an addendum to last night’s post on David Brooks misguided op-ed, Ezra Klein and Ryan Avent point out that contrary to this sentiment:

Now, it may be that the deficit itself scares people even as the deficit-driven economic recovery is making them confident. But that just goes to the question of whether you’d prefer to have people worried about a deficit that’s actually not a major problem or an unnecessarily deep recession that actually is a major problem.

David Brooks’ latest op-ed claims that Keynesian counter-cyclical stimulus proponents have it all wrong – fiscal policy resulting in government debt doesn’t boost aggregate demand, it frightens the business community with visions of debt armageddon:

Per Politico this morning, Senate Republicans are planning to obstruct the nomination of Donald Berwick to be Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services over Berwick’s previous statements in favor of Britain’s National Health Service (NHS).

“He is, as far as I am concerned, bad news,” said Texas Sen. John Cornyn, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “If he wants to turn America into the National Health Service in England — he thinks that is the model — he is going to find a lot of pushback.”

But what exactly are they opposing him for? What policies does he intend to pursue that the Republican caucus can’t support? The Politico article never makes it clear what Senate Republicans are actually against, beyond the amorphous bogeyman of the NHS. Berwick is clear, however, what he supports: “universal coverage, ‘centralized stewardship’ and guaranteed care regardless of income.” All of these things are goals of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. I can’t tell whether the Politico article is not accurately representing Senate Republicans or whether Senate Republicans are simply making up excuses to obstruct. My guess is the latter.

“No, I don’t,” said Greer. “But I would anticipate, based on this President being so vocal and so aggressive about his vision of America, where government is in every aspect of our lives, I believe that the speech that he was gonna give, based on the lesson plans, is different.”

That was Jim Greer in response to a question asking for proof of his claims by CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux. Greer, the Florida GOP Chair, last week lambasted Pres. Obama’s upcoming address to schoolchildren as socialist indoctrination. He recently became more receptive to the speech when the full text was released.

I would have liked Malveaux to then respond, “Yes Jim, a belief that is completely divorced from reality befitting your absurd point of view.”

Actually, it’s real.

I am really getting tired of all the obstructionism on Capitol Hill as related to the stimulus bill, et al. Why are there so many agnotological politicians? Don’t they have anything better to do, like run the country? Oh, and the media isn’t helping.