In defense of Paul Rosenberg's amateur psychology

by: Jacob Freeze

Sun Mar 29, 2009 at 10:05

In Mr. Rosenberg's defense, I have to say that psychiatry and psychology have been useless in the public arena for the last eight years, at least, and although Mr. Rosenberg's awkward essays in diagnosis probably annoy me even more than they annoy those critical commenters, because I'm occasionally on the receiving end of his tendency to demonize the opposite side of any given issue, Mr. Rosenberg's psychological essays nevertheless represent a continuing project to transform political discussion on the internet into something a little deeper than "gotcha" sensationalism.

It's almost a given that political discussion on the internet is shallow. A blogger who mentions Aristotle, Thucydides, Tacitus, Machiavelli, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Robert Putnam, John Rawls, Raymond Aron, Hannah Arendt, Paulo Freire, Jürgen Habermas, Slavoj Žižek, Thorstein Veblen, Benedetto Croce, or Max Weber is merely displaying idiosyncratic intellectual baggage, which most readers will comprehend not at all, no matter how many links are supplied.

We have nothing in common, except the news of the day.

In this condition of mindless dependence on whatever curiosity may have temporarily amazed the deculturated multitude of internet news-consumers, Mr. Rosenberg's amateur psychological analysis may be wrong, but it isn't misguided, and the triviality of almost all other political discussion on the internet can't be justified by claiming that anything deeper would trespass on the turf of academic or psychological professionalism.

Psychology, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, political science, and even history have been neutered in the realm of American political discourse, and if Mr. Rosenberg has the balls to resist our ongoing intellectual impoverishment, he deserves more praise than blame.

Did McNulty and Freamon do the right thing?

by: Descrates

Sat May 03, 2008 at 21:36

For those of you who watched the last and final season of The Wire, you know that detectives McNulty and Freamon basically staged a fake serial killer scare in Baltimore in order to turn back on some much needed funding for their investigation of the Stanfield organization. You also know that Kima--after McNulty confessing the caper to her--tells the bosses in the department of their gambit. Who is right?

I've lately been reading through The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt. Her analysis of political evil suggested the question to me: in particular, not just the corrupt or fanatical leaders at the top who set the sinister objectives of a criminal state, but more specifically their bureaucratic enablers who pretend they have no moral responsibility for carrying out these orders.

Something New in the Huge Arsenal of Human Follies

by: Dave Meyer

Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 09:00

In the last year of her life, Hannah Arendt offered a retrospective on Vietnam; Home to Roost is printed in the Responsibility and Judgment collection published back in 2003.  Her prescient insight was that the entire "not very honorable and not very rational enterprise was exclusively guided by the needs of a superpower to create for itself an image which would convince the world that it was indeed 'the mightiest power on earth.'" Eventually, the war was maintained solely "to avoid admitting defeat and to keep the image...intact."

The official obsession with image developed over time in the Vietnam era. With Iraq, it was central from the beginning.  Before the war, Andy Card told Elisabeth Bumiller that "from a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August." Tom Friedman thought invading Iraq would communicate a useful "Suck. On. This." Jonah Goldberg glowingly attributed to Michael Ledeen the idea that "every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business." There are countless examples, from high government officials to low pundits, of endorsements of Iraq for the message it would send, as an easy way to dispel the myth of American weakness. The Iraq war is a multi-trillion dollar public relations campaign, aimed at persuading hostile forces of our "strength."