Cake Police: Fair and Balanced

It occurs to me that there is a fair amount of both Republican bashing and Naomi Klein citing that occurs on this blog. I personally think that this is fair. Most Republicans holding elected office or prominent positions in American media right now are awful, and Naomi Klein is an important journalist who doesn't get the coverage that she should. But perhaps our approach isn't balanced, and if there is anything that Fox News has taught us, it is that you need to be both. First off, a British journalist named David Aaronovitch recently published a book on conspiracy theories and their harmful effects on society. Salon interviewed him about the book and his topic in general, and he had some interesting things to say, one of which concerns Ms. Klein.

"Her last book, "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism," was essentially a gigantic conspiracy theory book — claiming that chaos is more or less created in order to encourage capitalism. It was a fashionable book, and I think people wanted to buy it because they felt guilty. It was bought by guilty capitalists. It's not like "The Shock Doctrine" was being sold out of baskets hand-woven by hippies.

"Naomi Klein was in Iraq at the same time as me and had this theory that the U.S. was behind an attempt to destroy the Iraqi intelligentsia, to run Iraq like America. It was a crazy theory she convinced herself of. At that point what the Americans wanted was a strong Iraqi presence for them to hand the country over to. She’s not first and foremost a conspiracy theorist, but she is in passing."

I don't know about the second claim (not to say I'm doubting it, I just don't know), but the point about capitalist guilt being an impetus to purchase "The Shock Doctrine" is a good one; similar to the way that white-guilt assuaging movies like Avatar and the egregiously, if unintentionally, racist (and recently Best Picture nominated) "The Blind Side" succeed over and over again at the American box-office. Though well intentioned (Klein I mean, not "The Blind Side"), a discussion about whether or not radical statements such as those made by Klein and other "disaster capitalist" proponents actually propel us forward towards an effort to reform our societies many injustices or are extreme and harsh enough in tone to too easily allow themselves to be caricatured is definitely warranted.

Also worth reproducing here is his answer to the closing question, regarding whether or not conspiracy theorists should just be left to drown in their craziness. This has an obvious connection to all of the political mud-slinging that Obama is finally coming out and crusading against.

"I do think it actually matters what is true. The search for the truth is an important search, and if it isn’t, we’re lost in all kinds of ways. We’re lost in the fields of Holocaust denial. We’re lost in being able to compare what is good and what is bad because we can’t agree what actually happened. We’re lost when it comes to guarding minorities against populist agitation. Nobody’s going to die from saying Shakespeare wasn’t Shakespeare, but in other areas, when the truth suffers, our decision making suffers. When there is no authority to the truth, prejudices thrive."

Secondly, a Republican Senator from South Carolina named Lindsey Graham gave a pretty good speech on Climate Change and energy independence. Some of it was not so good (off-shore drilling, etc.), but it was the strongest thing I've heard from a Republican in forever on this subject. This is an area Obama has been a major bummer on lately, with everything he says on the subject making my soul shrivel up and want to die a little. Most recently Obama said he is now thinking of pursuing an cap-and-trade bill separately from a general energy bill. Graham seems much more solid here than many Democrats, and is in the unique position of being a Republican supporting significant commitment to environmental issues. Which means that the other 40 Republicans in the Senate might actually pay attention when he talks! Probably not though, based on this statement from the South Carolina Republican leaders in which they condemned the Senator for working with Democrats on climate change:

U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham -- in the name of bipartisanship -- continues to weaken the Republican brand and tarnish the ideals of freedom, rule of law, and fiscal conservatism.

Anyways, here are some choice nugs from his speech:

"If just a fraction of what is being predicted about global warming is true, that’s enough to motivate us all. But if worse thing you did—as Tony Blair would say—is you provided a cleaner environment, I don’t think you’d go down in history in a bad way."

"The world is moving, pollution is growing, we’ve got a chance to get ahead and lead. If we wait too long and if we try to take half measures as the preferred route on all these hard problems they just get worse.

"My challenge to you and to myself is to not let this moment pass. This is the best opportunity I’ve seen in my political lifetime for a Republican and Democrat to do something bold and meaningful.

"Why did I get involved in this? I ask myself that a lot. I saw an opportunity. I’ve become convinced that carbon pollution is a bad thing, not a good thing, and it can be dealt with, and we can create jobs.

"This is the time, this is the Congress, and this is the moment. So if we retreat and try to just go to the energy-only approach—which will never yield the legislative results that I want on energy independence—then we just made the problem worse.

"What Congress is going to come up here and do all these hard things? Who are these people in the future? Because we constantly count on them. I don’t know who they are. I’ve yet to find them.

"So I guess it falls to me and you."