“No one could have predicted”

In which I extend a comment made to Alec82

which goes like this:

We have a major cultural difference with the people our military and culture otherwise interacts with in the Middle East.  This is not sufficiently acknowledged or looked at.  In many cases, the way we “interact” with people overseas, borne out of hubris and arrogance, has no chance whatsoever of solving the problems that are described as needing to be solved.

For one thing, from what I understand, killing people at a distance and with no exposure to one’s own danger, as is done with Predator drone strikes, is deemed cowardice, not cleverness.  It doesn’t matter who it’s done to or for what reason.  It might kill people “we” want killed, but will probably exacerbate, long term, the very problem our military is ostensibly there to “solve”, which is global terrorism.  For every terrorist we kill, are we not possibly creating ten more?

So, too, our military is seen as a universal hammer with which to solve all of our problems with foreign countries.  We try to use them to solve problems that simply cannot be so solved .. but one argument can be made that we simply have no choice.  So much of our national resources have been put into our military that one has to ask what is left to apply a more rational sensible solution to our national security and interest issues.

And, see, this is what bothers me about what I call “do-nothing faux-pragmatists”.  These are people who propose to keep us away from the very bad as opposed to exploring any greater good.  It’s all about what we must do to prevent Very Bad Political Outcomes, but almost nothing about how to create truly sensible and truly pragmatic change that directly addresses our most pressing problems.

That the political reality is as apposite and opposite world from real world reality — where such reality is threatening to our continued existence as a country is something I cannot and will not accept.  To the extent there is a collision then we have to make the argument that these “political realities” have to be subordinate.

This is the quintessential argument that the go-along, self described “politically pragmatic” left tries to win through cynicism, extortion and dripping disdain, but ultimately will and can do nothing but lose in the long run.

Reality is reality.  And true reality does not respect or dip its head to political artifice, no matter how hallowed, entrenched or deemed inviolable.  Nothing is inviolable once the rubber meets the road and starts smashing the country.  It might be wise to change course to meet these real realities before the smashing begins.

Without a political pragmatism that nods its head to true reality based pragmatism, the Very Bad Outcome cannot be avoided, only delayed.

(Please forgive me for the self quoting, but I am more interactive than in-a-vacuum a-priori creative, and want to use this as a launching point)

For me, this point weaves together a tapestry that I have been informed with and has been growing in my psyche for a while now.  Various threads of it are found lying all over Docudharma in various forms.

One thing that struck me in my conversations with people today is what Edger brought up, which is the quote from Ron Suskind:

The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.

Going back to that quote, what instantly flashed for me is the connection.  Take the above quote and before the word “reality” insert the word “political”.

And this is what we have been talking about on Docudharma and will continue to talk about ever anon.

We talk about, and despair about, those who have in our view political control over our situation.  And again and again, I find myself interacting with and agreeing with in some measure and resisting in some other measure, those who talk about political solutions to the political vice in which we in America in general, and the left specifically find ourselves.

But what I find myself going back to with regard to that over and over again is the “no one could have predicted” paradigm.

You see, the other subtext is that our thoughts are shut out.  Shut out of the media, disdained by the blogosphere.  When the person who predicted is actually silenced, or as good as silenced, the “no one could have predicted” bullshit apologia can be made to fly, like a pig with wings.

Krugman and the lefty bloggers are talking about, right now, the reality that no one will have predicted until it’s too late .. that we are in the middle of an economic double-yew.

The GLBT community is talking about, and has talked about, the reality that no one else (or few others) predicted .. that our so called political saviors prefer to treat us like toilet paper rather than as constituents and citizens.  That we knew and were reacting to this long before others were giving that knowledge the time of day — whether out of bigotry, simple majoritarian disdain, I don’t know and I don’t care.

We were among the first.  I knew, at the time, we would be far from the last, but somehow I could not communicate this effectively.

What it occurs to me we need to do is begin drawing a distinction between what the political class discerns as pragmatism in the political world and what is the real world.  And to begin to draw a historical supporting narrative for this.

Because, really, in the last 15 or 20 years, it has happened to us again and again and again.

Remember, for example, the Authorization to Use Military Force in Iraq. We have liberal apologists for this, who went along at the time.  Because of the mushroom cloud rhetoric.  Chemical weapons.  No one could have predicted that it would just be so much bullshit floated by assholes pulling big scary out of their collective butts.

They were wrong.  They admitted to being wrong after the fact.  But it changed nothing.  You see, the cake was, by then, baked.

It occurs to me that one thing we have to do among others (I don’t pretend to have many or most of the answers) when we talk about what to do, is go after this silencing revision of history effect.

An ideal political position to be in is one in which you hope to your core you are wrong.  That, to be politically rendered nonsense, and neutered, corresponds to your fondest reality based wish.  This is where we are different on Docudharma, or that I would hope we would position ourselves to be.  I speak only for that which I know, and what I know of the contributors here, so correct me if I’m wrong.  None of us have anything to gain here, except a better world for ourselves and our progeny.  (Aside, ok I am a gay man with no interest in progeny — don’t I deserve some credit for that?  But I do care about your progeny.  My lack of caring about personal genetic survival has been substituted with a general interest in humanity’s survival, so sue me, beyotch).  

Anyway, I know I will certainly never run nor accept high political office.  I don’t care about that.  I don’t care about the lower, PTA style forms either.  I am no vicious, petty Sarah Palin, to establish a PTA-like fiefdom either.

I hope to gods I am wrong.  I hope that somehow, somewhere, political pragmatism, as it is talked about and practiced by the cynical know it all left, can be made to somehow coincide with the real exigent realities of people’s lives.  Barring that, one can always hope for a relative return of the politically pragmatic to an understanding of their relationship to the real reality pragmatic.