Who's Looking Now: The Demonstration Effect and Pakistan

In the early eighties political science departments utilized the term “demonstration effect” to mean the effect (positive and negative) which the developing world receives from the “developed world” and the resulting values they would aspire to. We all assumed or hoped at any rate, that those things which the developing world would emulate would be respect for law, pluralism, decency regarding human rights and the indigenous development of some form of democratic capitalism. The widespread hoot we all had which bolstered our hopes that the “demonstration effect” was actually happening and working came first from learning that the television series Dallas was seen all over the globe. Then we were amused to learn that underground traffic in blue jeans in east Europe and the Soviet Union was thriving.

As the eighties progressed however, our smiles turned to cringes as we saw Blimpies and McDonalds spilling over the horizons of the developing world not to mention other commercial enterprises such as pornography, rap and then hip hop. We thought that was bad?! Well, of course bin Laden and the Muslim purists thought it was even worse. Clearly fashion statements move faster across the globe than do principles of liberalism, freedom of religion and women’s rights. With the arrival of the Bush administration however, it appears that movement toward these ends were moving too slowly for the United States and its allies and in order to “nudge” them a little further along the road, we decided to give them a not so gentle push.

In the intervening years, in the nineties and in particular the last eight years, a swift reversal of our image and message to the rest of the world has occurred. Since 9-11, the United States has increasingly traded away its own principles of the rule of law, respect for human rights with preemptive foreign policy choices. These have included extraordinary rendition, a patriot act which secretly erodes individual liberties, and the failure to signal with any degree of certitude that we do not torture in our own “war on terror.” It is questionable too the degree to which the United States adheres to international standards on human rights and the universally recognized Geneva Accords. These developments have not gone unnoticed in the rest of the world.

These policies and their demonstration effect have resulted in numerous disasters during the last few years and culminated last week in the shameful spectacle in which General Musharaff and his cohorts actually cited what they perceived as our own government’s similar activities post 9-11 in the war on terror to justify their imposition of a state of emergency and martial law within Pakistan. General Musharraf evidently gleaned from our “demonstrations” and governmental actions that he had the go ahead to dissolve a sitting supreme court, imprison judges and attorney’s fighting for a free judiciary and free press and others of the middle class who dare to keep the hope of democracy alive. We have given a petty dictator representing the interests of a small minority of generals some 10 billion dollars in order that they might function as an oligarchy and have further eroded our own credibility in the eyes of the international community. In addition, these are Generals who we label as allies, even though, by all credible accounts, they are working to destabilize our own efforts in Afghanistan. We continue to shower them with aid and verbal support in the name of the “war on terror” while looking the other way as they trample over their own middle class and declining democratic voices.

This illustrates the awkward and wrongheaded course we’ve taken in international relations since 2001 and which are so evidently completely at odds with the rhetoric used to justify the Bush administration’s foreign policy goals- those of spreading “democratic ideals and democracy abroad.” -Just connecting the dots- I hate to even venture a guess as to what today’s political science departments are saying about the “demonstration effect.”

Michael Ignatieff-Response on Iraq 8.5.2007

Response to his NYT magazine article of August 5, 2007.

While I was pleased to read that Michael Ignatieff revised his position on the war in Iraq, (Getting Iraq Wrong, August 5, NYT Magazine) I am still not clear what it is that rationally justified the initial beliefs he and so many others held to support the Administration's invasion of Iraq.

It appears that he felt the need to resist the academic opinions of his colleagues on the Middle East because "a sense of reality doesn't often flourish in elite institutions." In this case, however, it seems as if it does there more than in the halls of Congress or the White House. The Administration did not rely on the opinions of either elite or not-so elite institutions in the days leading up to its invasion. Rather, they opted to fan the flames of the academic culture wars, promote an anti-intellectual campaign and keep quite a distance from the "ivy." Ironically, it was the political actors, not the academics, who were steeped much more in the realm of ideology (the potentially dangerous world of "ideas" as Ignatieff quotes Berlin) and wishful thinking. Few academics encouraged unilateral action in Iraq before the United Nations completed its deliberations regarding Iraq's WMD or believed that it was possible to spread democracy through the barrel of a gun, let alone that it was advisable to initiate a new foreign policy of anticipatory unilateral intervention. Few academics signed on to a "war on terror" and its attendant hyperbole, and fewer still believe that any sort of a war on terror need be met with an expansion of domestic executive authority.

Michael Ignatieff does in fact acknowledge that it is an ideological based foreign policy created by imprudent leadership and poor judgment that has gotten us into the current circumstance. He seems to suggest however, that those who did not support the President and his position did not because they believed the president was only interested in oil or because they believed America is always and in every situation wrong. Those who advised against the Iraqi invasion and went on to predict failure did so not out of partisan vindictiveness, or anti- Americanism, but rather rational and logical reasoning which was willfully disregarded by policy makers in favor of romantic notions of ideological appeal to the detriment of millions in America and abroad. One might conclude that the Administration's apple picking of intelligence, military advice, and the intelligence of only a few academicians as opposed to a true search within the academe for elucidation and enlightenment, appears to have been a significant problem.

Perhaps it is convenient for Mr. Ignatieff, and the rest of us, that he has left his academic perch for the more "real" "down to earth" halls of the Canadian parliament. There, he can exercise his new "political judgment" outside of the unreal halls of the elite academic institutions which are trying so desperately to invade the halls of our leaders.

Love Sex and Rock & Roll- A Response to David Brooks

Love, Sex and Rock and Roll- A response to David Brooks 10.1.2007

After reading his column entitled, The New Lone Rangers, in Tuesday’s New York Times, I was left in the usual befuddled confused state, post a Brook’s opinion. That is, I was not completely clear as to either his point or his point of view… My antennae went up as he addressed or seemed to address uh, pop music, adolescence, extended adolescence, the horrors of individualism and American youth, or was it girls or women and their abhorrent popular music drive or its appeal and all as a result of divorce and hooking up? Hadn’t the 1950’s seen Elvis Presley and “sexualized” rhythms as a macho mask for loneliness and sexual aggression? And isn’t it in fact the Clint Eastwood vision of individualism to which Mr. Brooks refers that is the very essence of the conservative mindset which so characterizes the current values of American life in which “divorce and hooking up” continues unabated? Finally, My anxiety peaked as I sensed he blamed the victims of his piece, the young female subjects, for their own status as “foul mouthed Lone Rangers.”

It is refreshing to read that David Brooks recognizes the failures of the Eastwood rugged individualism ideal and its possible connection to the “Lone Ranger” found in American social mythology. Refreshing, because it is the political compatriots of Mr. Brooks who have done the most to advance the romantic notions of this myth as well as the Horatio Alger mythologies of early American capitalism. Neither do the “family values” nor religion, which Mr. Brooks’ wing of politics’ espouses, deter divorce or casual sex that he suggests result in the ‘hard-bitten’ character of the young female rock and rollers of his editorial.

In fact, “divorce and hooking up” are hardly the major problems of the youth today. Indeed alienation is rampant, mental illness is on the rise, and it is wholesale fear on the part of the young regarding their future that appears to be the pervasive reality amongst those 13-30. The ability to earn a living and raise a family within a stable and secure political and economic environment among other quite reasonable anxieties is rampant among today’s young and has resulted in ever-increasing social fragmentation. Unfortunately, Mr. Brooks insists on seeing the behavioral byproducts of a changing and increasingly insecure age as moral failings as opposed to a reflection of genuine social and governmental failures to effectively accept or share responsibilities.

It is not as Mr. Brooks suggests, the cell phone or facebook, which is increasing the ‘Lone Ranger’ mentality amongst young women. Rather, these are instruments of a new age and economy to which many individuals have already been sacrificed and abandoned. So as Mr. Brooks suggests, the “hard boiled, foul mouthed, emotionally self sufficient and unforgiving woman… who has had the sentimentality beaten out of her and who have no time for romance or etiquette…disgusted by male idiots …” is far from a product of cold eyed age of divorce and hookups… or “free floating anger… the climate of the decade.” Far from “knowing exactly what they want and being solely inner directed,” these women unfortunately are all about protecting themselves from the reality around them as opposed to being future oriented, concerned with productivity and creativity.

These young women are all too aware of their likely future reality. Most Americans, young and old, male and female, find themselves slogging away in daily lives, which are characterized by a lack communal values, responsibility and empathy, and in which direction and any spark of creativity is completely lacking and not encouraged. Social and worker’s movements have been systematically upbraided and shorn of legitimacy. Communal health, mental and otherwise, is almost non- existent. The lack of a citizenship ethic combined with fear has landed the “youthful” women to whom Mr. Brooks refers from the ages of 13 -30, alone and often quite desperate.

It is during these very years in which dreams are born and developed and in which the “children” and specifically women fearing failure, cling to adolescence, desperately trying to bond through music and sex –(at least according to Mr., Brooks) and it would appear unsuccessfully, before settling. Settling into another reality in which they fear they will find many of their dreams destroyed or unfulfilled as many witnessed in their parents generation. The lack of institutional support services, economically, medically and legally, made their mother’s experiences difficult and create a high degree of trepidation in younger women especially regarding marriage and motherhood. Rather than being merely ‘hard-bitten’ females incapable of intimacy, which David Brooks characterizes in his piece as angry young women; it is more realistically a thin veil of insecurity and dread which these women harbor about their future.

Women who have achieved higher and higher levels of education are looking for satisfying and paid work experiences similar to that of their male equals. They are looking for spouses with secure employment futures and ultimately will look for adequate and affordable childcare. Choices regarding work and family, free time, education, health and mental health care are challenges still harder to find as many of these “inner directed” women watch and wade into responsibilities for aging parents for whom medicine, assistance and savings are not adequate. Reasonable avenues to communicate with a government increasingly unresponsive to its citizens combine to create the prolonged adolescence, which David Brooks decries.

Finally, time and willingness for civic engagement and voluntarism and other expressions of genuine democratic give and take has diminished with the rise of the two-pay check family and a lack of government responsiveness. It appears that both the working family and the overworked family, and poor government responsiveness actually create cynical expectations and dismal prospects for an ideal adulthood.

Family and religion are changing. Questions regarding government institutions and their ability to honor core American values such as life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. need to be openly discussed. We are experiencing one of the most profound periods of communal re-adjustments, which our country has endured. Serious and sober discussions about the role and responsibilities of government to its citizens in our society are long overdue. Rather than the result of a “cold eyed age of divorce and hookups,” the “angry … self-absorbed young women and their provocative pop music” is a product of much more. And perhaps a clearer and more specific discussion of those issues ought to be the subject of more pundit columns and investigations.

As usual I found that Mr. Brooks’ missed the opportunity to reflect, ruminate and investigate more deeply on the issues that might shed some true light on the realities of America’s young women and our youth in general.