CAIRO: You seem to forget that you are not in a position at all to insist upon anything!

GUTMAN: Now, come, gentlemen, let's keep our discussion on a friendly basis; but there certainly is something in what Mr. Cairo says.

SPADE: If you kill me, how are you going to get the bird? And if I know you can't afford to kill me, how are you going to scare me into giving it to you?

GUTMAN: Well, sir, there are other means of persuasion besides killing and threatening to kill.

SPADE: Yes, that's true, but... they're none of them any good unless the threat of death is behind them. You see what I mean? If you start something I'll make it a matter of your having to kill me, or call it off.

GUTMAN: That's an attitude, sir, that calls for the most delicate judgment on both sides, because, as you know, sir, in the heat of action, men are likely to forget where their best interests lie and let their emotions carry them away.

SPADE: Then the trick from my angle is to make my play strong enough to tie you up, but not make you mad enough to bump me off against your better judgment.

GUTMAN: By Gad, sir, you are a character!

Much has been made of Spade's supposed amorality, which allows him to make love to Brigid and still "send her over" for killing his partner, but he clearly has his own moral code (which he later attempts to explain to her when, as they wait for the police to arrive, they carry on an extraordinary debate about what should be her fate). More importantly, he also is, as Gutman says later, a man of "nice judgment", meaning that he's got a clear and accurate take on reality, on what is possible and what is necessary, what will go over and what will sink of its own weight. (In the theatre, we might say that he knows what will play.)

It may be obvious, given our current circumstances, why this section of the book has been rattling around in my brain: it's because what we're so desperately missing in the people in charge of our governance at the moment is just that sense of what's possible, what's necessary, what's realistic, what will fly and what won't. It's not that they lack for certainty about what to do, but their absence of doubt is unfortunately based on faulty premises, inaccurate data, and facts forced into an unrealistic framework warped by ideological requirements. Thus, even if their desired outcomes were good ones (which is not usually the case with this lot), they lack the ability to get the job done because their judgment is as far from "nice" as it can be (in all senses of the word).

(Please note that I'm primarily referring here to the Bush/neoconservative foreign policy, exemplified by the failed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, where it seems to me that they really did want to achieve many of the things they publicly announced as their goals. In domestic issues, where the announced intention is more often simply a sham, their antagonism toward the legitmate functions of government leads me to believe that they really don't care if their policies "fail", because they serve to help achieve their larger, overriding goals, i.e. channeling money and influence to their client class and, ultimately, breaking the ability of the Federal government to function in anything but a rudimentary fashion.)

I would feel so much better if I were able to say to myself about the people in charge of our destiny, as Gutman says of Spade, "You're a man of my liking, a man of many resources and nice judgment." I don't know if Kerry would have been that man, we would have had to find out, but it's a certainty that Bush is not and never will be, nor are his advisors, especially now.

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -- Philip K. Dick

So what I'm saying is that the divide is between people who are essentially rational and those that are irrational, communities that are faith-based and those that are reality-based, outlooks that are ideologically dogmatic and those based on some version of the scientific method -- in other words, between believers and skeptics, zealots and realists.

Unfortunately, as much as those of us on the left side of center enjoyed dancing with pleasure when Ron Suskind's article in the New York Times Magazine pegged Bush as a disdainer of reality-based thinking, the terrible truth is that there are just as many true believers on the left as there are on the right, and they're just as apt to believe what they want to believe, because they just know it's right, regardless of whether there's any real evidence to support their contentions. First, they choose what they want to be true, then they go out looking for evidence to support it, and, just like Bush's people cherry-picking data to back-up their all-too-obvious desire to invade Iraq, they eventually find something that seems to back them up.

Distilled to its essence, liberalism is the scientific method turned to the social and political realm. We do not have dogmas to guide us, we have REASON, and that is our greatest strength. -- Roger Keeling

What these folks almost never do is to first examine the available evidence, and then draw a conclusion based on it, and when more and better evidence becomes available, change their stance to bring it into line with the newer and better understanding of reality. That's a model of rational, realistic, skeptical thinking that ideologues (of all stripes, left and right) are patently uncomfortable with, and the preference is, I think, so basic that it may well be impossible for an adult to change their way of dealing with the world.

What this suggests is that if we're really interested in getting rid of the faith-based ideologues who now rule us, we had best make common cause with the realists across the aisle, our mirror-images, because, regardless of the differences in our interpretations of reality, there is still the possibility of broad agreement in principle about what reality is, a possibility which just doesn't exist when dealing with dogmatists of either side.

We'd be better off, I'm beginning to think, reshaping the Democratic party not as a centrist one (which has been the basic urge of the DLC and their allies), nor as a more forcefully liberal party (which is what most of my friends want), but instead to remake it as the party of realism, able to cogently evaluate problems, shape viable solutions for them, and forcefully implement those solutions, then assess the efficacy of the solutions and adjust them accordingly. As long as these activities are all underpinned by humanistic values, the net result is bound to be broadly liberal and basically progressive, which really should be enough to fulfill the party's status as the country's center/left option.

Clowns to the left of me / Jokers to the right / Here I am / Stuck in the middle with you. -- Joe Egan & Gerry Rafferty ("Stealer's Wheel")

The alternative, I fear, is to continue to suffer under the thumb of our faith-based oppressors. Yes, it's certainly true that we came this close to getting rid of a sitting President in wartime, but four more years of their having total control over all branches of the Federal government is certainly going to make it that much harder to get even that close next time around, unless we drastically change something. I'm not willling to jettison basic liberal principles, but I am willing to see them modified in ways that make them more palatable to more people, as long as they retain their essence.

Rationalists of the world unite, together we can rein in the ideologues! (Or something like that.)

Troops in Iraq Killed at Rates Approaching Vietnam War-Era Levels
by Drew Brown

April 19, 2004 | With fighting in Iraq now at its worst, the number of U.S. troops killed by enemy fire has reached the highest level since the Vietnam War.

The first part of April has been the bloodiest period so far for U.S. troops in Iraq. There have been 98 deaths by hostile fire so far this month, more than in the opening two weeks of the invasion, when 82 Americans were killed in action.

"This has been some pretty intense fighting," said David Segal, director of the University of Maryland's Center for Research on Military Organization. "We're looking at what happened during the major battles of Vietnam."

The last time U.S. troops experienced a two-week loss such as this one in Iraq was October 1971, two years before U.S. ground involvement ended in Vietnam.

There are 135,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. Nearly 700 American troops have died since the beginning of the war. As of Sunday, 503 had been reported killed in action. At least 3,630 more have been wounded.

The Vietnam War started with a slower death rate. The United States had been involved in Vietnam for six years before total fatalities surpassed 500 in 1965, the year President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered a massive buildup of forces. There were 20,000 troops in Vietnam by the end of 1964. There were more than 200,000 a year later.

By the end of 1966, U.S. combat deaths in Vietnam had reached 3,910. By 1968, the peak of U.S. involvement, there were more than 500,000 troops in the country. During the same two-week period of April that year, 752 U.S. soldiers died, according to National Archives records.

U.S. officials say that comparisons with Vietnam are invalid and reject the idea that Iraq has become a quagmire.

Update (12/8):







[Graphs from Lies.com]


I've been looking for data on how support for (or opposition to) the Vietnam War progressed as the war dragged on, but I'm having some trouble finding it. Here's the closest I've found so far, which breaks support down into three age categories, based on Gallup polling data:

Support for War in Vietnam, by Age

                 Under 30   30-49    Over 49

May 1965            61        59        43 

August 1965         76        64        51 

November 1965       75        68        57 

March 1966          71        63        48 

May 1966            62        54        39 

September 1966      53        56        39 

November 1966       66        55        41 

May 1967            60        53        42 

July 1967           62        52        37 

October 1967        50        50        35 

Early February 1968 51        44        36 

March 1968          50        46        35 

April 1968          54        44        31 

August 1968         45        39        27 

Early October 1968  52        41        26 

February 1969       47        43        31 

September 1969      36        37        25 

January 1970        41        37        25 

March 1970          48        41        26 

April 1970          43        40        25 

January 1971        41        38        20 

May 1971            34        30        23

My point, which would be better supported if I had the right data, is that it took a while for public opinion to turn off the war, and that we've reached the current level of disapproval with the Iraq war much more quickly than the equivalent level was reached during Vietnam.

That, at least, gives me some hope.

Update (12/28): More on this from Kevin Drum, referencing an article in Slate.

Threatening letters critical of the interracial marriage between a Tony Award-winning white actress in the Broadway smash "Wicked" and Taye Diggs, a popular black film and TV actor, have sparked a NYPD probe and an increase in security at the famed Gershwin Theatre, sources said.

One of the letters "threatens bodily harm to Taye Diggs," according to a police source. That letter was received Wednesday by Jed Bernstein, president of the League of American Theaters and Producers, the industry's major trade group, with offices on West 47th Street.

Sources said that before Wednesday, two other handwritten letters were sent to the Gershwin Theatre, on West 51st Street, addressed to Diggs' wife, Idina Menzel, who stars there in "Wicked," a revisionist look at the "Wizard of Oz."

"The letters go on and on about their marriage," a second source says. "They say they're each a sellout to their race."

The case is being investigated by the NYPD's Hate Crimes Unit. As of last night, police said it was not clear who sent the letters.

One letter is postmarked Ohio, another Philadelphia and the third New York. Police do not believe the same person sent all three letters.

Bernstein did not respond to a request for a comment yesterday. Bob Fennell, a spokesman for the production, would not talk about the letters, but did say security is a top priority.

"We take the security of everyone connected to the production very, very seriously," he said.

Menzel, who won a Tony this year for her role in "Wicked" as Elphaba the witch, married Diggs Jan. 11, 2003. Diggs stars in UPN's "Kevin Hill," in which he plays the title character, a lawyer. The couple met in 1996 when they appeared in the Broadway musical "Rent."

Neither Diggs nor Menzel could be reached for comment.

[From Newsday]

A piece in the Post had more details:

A letter-writing racist mailed a hate-filled death threat to actor Taye Diggs, threatening "burn" and "castrate" the African-American actor because of his interracial marriage to Broadway star Idina Menzel, police sources said.

In addition to the malicious missive sent to Diggs, the writer has also penned at least two noxious notes making "negative remarks" about Menzel and her marriage — and threatening to burn down the Gershwin Theatre, where she stars in the musical "Wicked."

The details of the Diggs threat, which was sent to Broadway honcho Jed Bernstein, were not released.

But a police source said the letter threatened the "How Stella Got Her Grove Back" star with "bodily harm," called him a "sellout," and, most disturbingly, declared that the sick sender "wanted to burn him and castrate him."

Some years ago, I did a show (Manhattan Theatre Club's production of Andrew Lippa's The Wild Party) which featured both Taye and Idina, and I found them both to be very talented and very good people to work with. (In fact, the entire cast of that show, which also starred Julie Murney and Brian d'Arcy James, was one of the nicest groups of people I've ever worked with). For them to be threatened in this way is sick, and absolutely counter to everything this country stands for.

I certainly hope that the results of the recent election haven't emboldened the bigots and racists of this country into thinking that they can do this kind of thing with impunity.

Taye and Idina, I'm sending you all my good thoughts.