On W the Movie

On Oliver Stone's movie on George Bush, "W", to bre released October 17th, the responses are mixed, according to this link.

Bush biographers mixed on script for Oliver Stone's 'W'

April 07, 2008

President George W. Bush is a foul-mouthed, reformed drunk obsessed with baseball, Saddam Hussein and a conflicted relationship with his dad. Naturally, what a director does with a script is how a movie is ultimately judged, but because this screenplay depicts a sitting president and the run-up to the war in Iraq, its authenticity is becoming a hotly debated subject -- not to mention the fact that any historical material Stone has touched has become controversial. Everybody calling everybody else nicknames and chatting about whether to go to war as if they were chatting about how to bet on a football game really misses the mark of how many White Houses, including this one, are run.

In fairness though, if this movie were released after the elections were over, then it would not find an audience. This is the only time, if any at all. But of course, the timing is no accident. It is meant to be political and a sharp arrow in Mr. Obama's quiver. Even if I find the description of this movie as an unserious look at the presidency of Mr. Bush, I will see it, if only to understand the new lows of American political discourse, this time paraded on the big screen instead of the small. Who can deny that the media, conservative and liberal alike, are clanging cymbals, full of strife, clamour and confusion, especially at a time when intelligent discourse would have changed the face of the election?

Thoughts on Order and Space

A country's physical infrastruture tells us a few things about the country. One, of course, is if the country was relatively wealthy. Although this is generally true, it may not remain true for much longer. Large nations like China (and probably India though the desire to do the same is not in evidence) can build shining cities with the collective wealth of a large population while the per capita income remains small compared to that of an advanced nation. The other piece of information we get is if the culture is used to thinking about space and architecture in way to benefit the daily demands of the society. Eastern nations have built great temples, as have Western nations built imposing cathedrals, but the architecture of the past 100 years- call it modern, postmodern, prairie-style, whatever- has by and large sought to understand how humanity could live, work and play optimally within the walls of a building- and hence we have skyscrapers, Ikea furniture, wall-beds, studio apartments, and so on.

Besides, the layout of the physical infrastructure tells us how a society can harness its leadership, creativity and resources to create a sense of order. Asian countries like Singapore have created order that is clinical and driven from the top down, no questions asked by anyone below the food chain. As film-maker Ang Lee once said about his experience in making Sense and Sensibility, in Taiwan the director is king- the underlings learn from him without a word, but in the West, the actors want to discuss things, give suggestions; and this made him feel he came across as a bad director. China is a recent example of building great order out of pre-'80s chaos.

In India the chaos is pervasive, the only places where this doesn't exist are the homes where concepts like Vaastu have taken hold. Private space is most respected, and public space is not. Therefore you have high sidewalks which are difficult to mount, full of trees that obstruct your path, billboards, hawkers and what have you. Homes in contrast are clean. Last year I was on the campus of a large IT service provider where the lawns were beautifully manicured and buildings wonderful. Just outside the gate, in Electronic City, Bangalore, was a potholed road, in disrepair for several years. That gives one the idea.

By and large in Western societies the sense of order is not drive top down, but understood by the society as a whole to be the norm. But the kind of order than you have in Chicago can be understood to be less orderly than that you find in Shanghai. O'Hare airport is the busiest airport in the US, but also a very crowded one, the highways connecting it clogged during peak hours, and longstanding demands for upgrade have been so far unfulfilled. However this is not unfulfilled in the sense that one gets in India. This is not as much to do with inertia or corruption (although they exist) as with egalitarian priorities.

Virtual infrastructure though is becoming a panacea for many of India's headaches. A colleague who has been in IT services sales for many years recently described to me the horrors of getting an RFP from a government institution in India. This was many years ago. The announcement that an RFP was to be released would hit the news. On the morning of the day of release the sales managers would crowd outside the door or window where RFP hard copies would be handed out. There are always limited copies, so the most burly or aggressive of the lot would fight and get their copies, and those who couldn't get in first would go home emptyhanded. Today though, RFPs are released electronically, and the number of recipients has increased. This is not to say that all problems in India have been similarly solved. Standardized tests and group discussions for B-school admissions are still chaos.

One would imagine that the Internet and electronic sourcing, commerce and other tools have made order out of chaos. The fact is that these tools have simply achieved what the police or infrastructure could not achieve - to keep the people disciplined and orderly. The concept of standing in a line is today made irrelevant, and hence the clutter is cut down. But the rules of web applications and the protocols of the Internet, email and other electronic tools are defined by people who sought to create order from chaos.

Could an Asian country have defined these rules originally? Perhaps an Indian pioneer who was disgruntled with the state of things could have brought this about. Or a Chinese government employee, wanting to be conscientious or earn brownie points or earn a higher rank, could have done it. I think these highly improbable situations. I do not imply that Indians or Chinese lack creativity or motivation. For nothing good comes without these. India has seen volunteer projects like Exnora. China has seen cracked the rice genome.

I just mean that a society that can conceive of physical infrastructure in ways to benefit humanity is the society that can define rules for virtual infrastructure as well. Creativity in orderliness is the same underpinning for both these infrastructures. The mechanics of these may be replicated in other societies- some more successfully than others. But order is something felt internally, and the more it is true of the people, the more we see it outside of them.

Is it the Economy, Stupid?

This article in British paper 'The Independent' spins on so many levels. First it says Obama and McCain have differing stances on the economy and their approaches to solve the current crisis. Then it says nothing that a president does actually affects the economy- it says President Bush's policies had little to do with the current crisis and that President Clinton's deficit reduction had less to do with the boom than the dot com euphoria did. It then goes on to say that the suprising 3.3 percent second quarter GDP growth (which is good by US standards) was the result of the $140 billion economic stimulus package that President Bush initiated.

Clearly what a President does has an effect on the economy. President Bush made serious mistakes in his deep tax cuts although these took time to show up in the stagnant growth we are seeing today. After all, spending, individual debt, public debt, unrealistic and unsustainable housing prices were all clearly brewing all this while, coming now to a head where the prices crashed, the bad debts swelled, bankruptcies and bailouts hiked, investors are poorer, jobs got (and are getting) axed and industrial spending low.

Mr. McCain's continuation of the tax cuts of President Bush's administration compared with Mr. Obama's focus on taxing the wealthy do stand out in stark contrast. Under both systems tax revenue will increase, and under the circumstances the ones that drive the economy are people who will go out and spend money- viz. the less wealthy, not the ones who will invest the money in China (where they actually produce something and thereby provide returns that are not based on speculation but hard goods or services) or in their retirement plans; but the people who need the money to spend on things they need to have- clothes, food, cars, gas, education, mortgages and so on. This article blames Mr. Greenspan for the ills we now face, but taking the blame of the Republican administration is clearly not cricket. The later tax cuts have stimulated the economy, but the earlier tax cuts simply made it grow faster than it should have. There is a time for deficit spending and a time for deficit reduction. This is not the time to continue deficit spending. This is also not the time to seek to continue a war indefinitely. Despite the fact that the US must do right by our knell in Iraq, it is important to have a plan to exit. Mr. McCain's plan to bomb, bomb, bomb Iraq is troublesome.

So how will the presidential policies not make an impact? The article ends by saying that the economic positions of the candidates will make an impact on the electoral results, that it's back to "It's the economy, stupid". What is scary is that the economy should matter in this election, but it may not matter enough to the voters. Some effects of recession such as job losses in predominantly blue collar states are only beginning to take place. The closure of banks and government bailouts of many financial institutions may not make sense until it hits one's own pocketbook.

Fear and Loathing in India

As once again Indians are trying to comprehend the sadness and shock from yesterday's multiple blasts in New Delhi, it is important to remember that out of the nine bombs that the terrorists had emailed the police about, only 5 actually exploded. They found 3 and defused them, and one remains undetected.

Here is the story from Sify of how the three unexploded bombs were found in 5 minutes and defused. It is a story of courage that gives hope to Indians who are currently grieving and also clueless about the perpetrators. The command and control structure of the group called Indian Mujahideen is yet unknown, which makes it dangerous and unpredictable.

On Hindu nationalist blogs and forums on the internet, the usual questions are being asked. One of them was 'why aren't the imams issuing a fatwa against these killers?' The answer to that is simple: people who can issue fatwas against innocent people are the same ones who will issue any fatwas at all. A fatwa is taking the law into your own hands. This makes one little different from a terrorist. In any case the equivalent of a fatwa is informally understood by extremists of every stripe when it comes to taking revenge.

It is best to trust the courage of our people and pray that we would ourselves would not stay our hand if we were to face a situation like the police faced in the above link.

Palin, Obama, Divisive Issues and Christian Challenges- Random Thoughts

There are so many articles on Sarah Palin now, almost all having to do with lipstick (pigs, pitbull and other animals associates with it), hockey, moose, bridge to nowhere, private jet, pro-life, 5 kids, Sarah Barracuda, guns and to a small extend some ripping comments she has made about Obama. Her coming into national spotlight has also given John Mccain a lead over Obama that had been eluding him for ages. Reaction to this has been mostly knee-jerk, nervous, condemning and shifty. Theories abound in the Democratic and liberal circles which recall to mind the worst strategies of John Kerry's ill-fated run last election. The latest in the barrage of such responses is in Time magazine, titled Sarah Palin's Myth of America. This article tries to explain away this phenomenon by blaming the American public for swallowing a mixture of nostalgia for the better days and the myth of an American valhalla where racial heterogeneity, abortion, single parent families, same-sex partners and so on were not imaginable. The article says Sarah Palin is an iteration of this myth which is apparently what the Republican party has been feeding the people from Reagan on. In contrast, the writer says, Obama is the candidate people can most identify with because they agree with his stance on most issues. The writer lays out these issues:

The Bush Administration has been a disaster on many fronts. The McCain campaign has provided only the sketchiest policy proposals; it has spent most of its time trying to divert the national conversation away from matters of substance. But Americans like stories more than issues. Policy proposals are useful in the theater of presidential politics only inasmuch as they illuminate character: far more people are aware of the fact that Palin put the state jet on eBay than know that she imposed a windfall-profits tax on oil companies as governor and was a porkaholic as mayor of Wasilla.

Does it strike you odd that Americans who are by far one of the most advanced civilizations on earth are falling, if this article is to be believed, for a vision of the past, while there are serious problems to be fixed? It hurts their wallets that the gas prices are high. They know they will be taxed more, whichever candidate wins, the catch being that Mccain will let the rich be taxed less and Obama the other way around. Middle class America stands to pay more if Mccain were to come to power. Obama envisions a healthcare system which by 2012 will be so robust that it will guarantee universal coverage. We do not yet know the efficacy of his methods and he has not given us a guarantee of this timeframe, but the vision and the desire are there.

I do not think the Huck Finn fantasia that Palin apparently conjures up for some people is what is doing the trick. Clearly she is a divisive factor in US politics, because unlike Mccain she has a record that does not allow her to oscillate in some critical issues such as taxes, guns, abortion, education and so on. There is clearly a vote bank for that. Second, she has at least some of what Hillary had- a figure that working middle class women can identify with. Before we begin trashing this by comparing Hillary's 'fabulous' record with Sarah's miniscule one, let us remember that there was a lot of talk of many women being more willing to vote for Mccain than Obama when Hillary lost the Democratic nomination. Rightly or wrongly this crowd is one that can be swayed much more by identification with their gender than the issues. The liberal press is full of dismay that women could conceive voting for someone who "is against their interests", meaning her pro-life stance. Perhaps this is where they need to understand that not all women understand pro-choice as a good thing for women. Many vote for Democrats because of other issues as well. Noone is fooled that Palin is pro-choice. Americn women are overwhelmingly literate and they have read ad nauseam that Palin is pro-life and has demonstrated this in her own life by having a baby with Downs syndrome.

The writer goes on to lament that Obama cannot tell a story like Palin can. It says:

He has no personal anecdotes to match Palin's mooseburgers. His story of a boy whose father came from Kenya and mother from Kansas takes place in an America not yet mythologized, a country that is struggling to be born — a multiracial country whose greatest cultural and economic strength is its diversity. It is the country where our children already live and that our parents will never really know, a country with a much greater potential for justice and creativity — and perhaps even prosperity — than the sepia-tinted version of Main Street America. But that vision is not sellable right now to a critical mass of Americans. They live in a place, not unlike C. Vann Woodward's South, where myths are more potent than the hope of getting past the dour realities they face each day.

How poignant, but how ridiculous. Obama does have stories that will resonate with people despite his Kenyan half-ancestry. We heard some of these when he gave his speech after Jeremiah Wright's first round of divisive statements from the pulpit. We heard of how Obama could no more think of Wright as a racist as he could of his white grandmother as one, despite her many characterizations of blacks in everyday life that may be perceievd by outsiders as such. Obama did something we are not used to seeing politicians do- he made us think and he did this by giving us a glimpse into his life. Perhaps he simply isn't telling us more stories because he is all about issues. He is sincere in his intent to change American politics, society, economy and foreign policy. Americans like him, but they want to relate to him as well.

Besides all this, this article makes some disingenuous statements. These are nothing new, of course. Racial heterogeneity, abortion, divorce, same-sex couples. These are what the writer says make up the present and the revolutions that spawned them was what brought forth Obama. Christians like me like Obama for some things: his apparent sincerity, his desire to understand evangelicals (although it falls short), his inclusion of healthcare as a cause for our compassion to be engaged in, his sheer merit in propelling himself from a disadvantaged racial position and working class background to centerstage in American politics and his career, his ability to engage us in meaningful and thoughtful dialogue, his economic vision that is a change from President Bush's policies that have at best been shortsighted and at worst disastrous. They do not include his pro-gay marriage, pro-choice and a patronizing attitude towards evangelicals that has been a hallmark of the American left. I'm yet to see a presidential candidate on the Right or Left that has truly engaged conservatives intellectually, to explore issues they care about with the best of their scientific, theological and political minds. Instead, all we see are debates which engage in the cheap characterization of American evangelicals as loud, uneducated and bigoted people who need to be mollified with sops for the purpose of electioneering.

It is tough to disengage the touchy issues when campaigning to the evangelicals, but Obama doesn't gloss over them. He reaches out to us on other issues. By painting them all the same colour as the other issues, this writer shows us his own prejudices. He also belittles the concerns of the social conservatives that Obama has been working hard to reach through his debate in Rick Warren's church and other venues. His America, the one that is divided along a few issues, is what the present generation should avoid.

After all, issues like abortion and gay marriages which tilted the previous elections in President Bush's favour are simply leverages for political grandstanding. Has any pro-life administration seriously challenged Roe v Wade? At best the Republican stance has been to make abortion a state decision. On the gay marriage, we see the Democratic flip-flop. They want to make this a state decision. What makes these issues a Federal or State legislation? I can understand speed limits, agricultural subsidies, school curricula, local government initiatives like pollution control, preservation of parks and so on being state legislation. But issues like these? On what basis do administrators believe they could be best left to states? If convervative politicians had the guts to take on Roe v Wade systematically and with a plan, I would support the politician whole-heartedly in that endeavour. If they can stand against gay marriage nationally, I would support them in that endeavour. Statewide legislations simply make it easier for people to achieve in one state what has been denied in another, besides helping the political parties to divide states into red and blue.

In any case, since California legalized gay marriages, it is safe to say that the rest of the nation is headed in the same direction. These are issues that have lost support nationally. Obama voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment which would have defined marriage as between one man and one woman, but has said he personally believes that marriage is defined as a religious bond between a man and a woman. This to me is a ridiculous stance, in that he voted against his own beliefs about a social system that is now facing a challenge.

Christians must understand that their society has changed. Whether the 'Christian' America of the past was true or not, it must be acknowledged that unlike in the past, Christians are now at odds with the trend of culture, which is the way it has always been in most other countries and in the best times of the Christian faith. Christians in that sense are truly counter cultural. Some time ago, in Michael Card's podcast, he mentioned that Chinese Christians who meet in housegroups are persecuted, but they respond to their persecutors with a grace that we in America do not fully understand. While there is no comparison between the treatment they get and what we are used to, we in America lack the grace and forgiving spirit that makes the Chinese Christians a shining example of the light we acknowledge is that which the darkness cannot comprehend. We cannot fundamentally change a society by legislation. In tough times, God is asking us to be examples of Christian morality. It is a challenge but as it has always happened in Christian history, the worst times bring out the best and remove the dross from the church.

It would be foolishness not to take apart the conservative press for its own hyperbole about the Palin phenomenon. Here is Wall Street Journal's embarrasing pronouncements about the liberal dislike for Palin. Quote:

Her rising popularity across America has rudely confirmed that not all Americans care about the preferred presidential pick of the international left-liberal community. Barack Obama is their anti-American dream candidate, a man who is part of their project to bring America, the great Satan, to heel. After all, he never spoke about the possibility of victory in Iraq. Only American withdrawal and defeat. And thus America's humiliation........

All along, this international strain of anti-Americanism evident in Australia and beyond has been driven by a determined refusal to comprehend that peculiarly American curiosity: those who wear their God-fearing, love-of-America conservative values on their sleeves. In other words, people such as Sarah Palin who mean it when they say "God Bless America."

Does US withdrawal or even defeat in a war mean defeat for US values? Or is a withdrawal from Iraq actually a defeat? Will America collapse in such an eventuality? The last time around- in Vietnam- we saw nothing of the sort, and this is nothing close. The war effected a regime change in the country and they are doing well economically with a trade surplus of over $60 billion, while we are hemorrhaging tax funds to prop up this country. Second, while Palin may well mean it when she says 'God Bless America', it does not necessarily mean that all conservatives love America in the way the writer portrays. Questions about pork barrel, wasteful wars, healthcare, tax credits for oil companies and policies benefitting the wealthy will still remain to be answered by people who represent us, whose faith declares that the poor in spirit are indeed blessed. A little humility would go a long way.