The Provinciality of the United States

Literal Magazine: Latin American Voices continues to be a provocative voice in culture, literature, and politics.  One of the best things about publishing your work in a magazine such as Literal (“How Has the Loss of Juárez Changed Border Culture?”) is to read who else is in the issue.  What fascinated me were two interviews, with the Mexican author Carlos Fuentes and philosopher Martha Nussbaum.

Two quotes in particular resonated with me:

“What’s going on is that this country, the United States, has become very provincial. When I started out, my editors, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, were publishing Francois Mauriac, Alberto Moravia, and ten or fifteen foreign novelists. Now there’s no one. Those of us who have been established for a long time, like Gabriel García Márquez, Vargas Llosa, or myself, have kept on publishing, but almost out of condescendence. There is no interest in new writers, in the vast quantity and quality of writers we have in Hispanic America. This country has become very self- absorbed and preoccupied, and it still does not understand what is going on in the world.”  –Carlos Fuentes

“I still believe that a healthy democracy needs an education that focuses on (1) Socratic self-examination and critical thinking; (2) the capacity to think as a citizen of the whole world, not just some local region or group, in a way informed by adequate historical, economic, and religious knowledge; and (3) trained imaginative capacities, so that people can put themselves in the position of others whose ways of life are very different from their own.”  –Martha Nussbaum

For many reasons, what Fuentes and Nussbaum were saying hit home.  I have seen how little U. S. readers read in translation, or how rarely they seek out foreign writers in their own language, be it Spanish, Chinese or German, and so on.  American pundits and politicos have also narrowed their agendas and appeals, to forego fact-checking, to trumpet narrow-minded biases.  What is routinely ignored is a more expansive appeal to the public to appreciate working in someone else’s shoes, for example, particularly one who is dark-skinned and has an accent.

The United States suffers from a growing deficit of imagination.  Not just for humanism.  Not for embracing a Kumbaya moment of idealism.  But for the truth.  Even my thirteen-year-old knows that to better understand your position and your argument —he learned that in mock Supreme Court cases his class studied and debated— you need to ‘see’ the other side.  The critical thinking of Socrates is based on answering questions that unmoor you, and probing your opponent with similar questions, but all of this ‘education’ is based on souls being open to such give-and-take.  What happens when we as a society become more insular?  What happens when we stop reading to challenge ourselves?  When we don’t care enough to question our own thinking?

These questions mattered in a writing group in which I recently participated.  One story I submitted was set on the Mexican-American border, and although the story received many favorable, enthusiastic comments, two or three in the group pointedly had an issue with my use of Spanish phrases and sentences intermixed with my prose in English.  Didn’t I want to expand my readership? they asked.  Wasn’t I limiting myself as a writer by excluding people like them who didn’t understand Spanish?  (We were talking about four or five sentences in a story that was 28 pages long.)

I was blunt and unapologetic.  I told them New York readers were at the end of my line, in terms of the readers I was focusing on.  I wanted to be authentic to the setting, the Mexican-American border.  I asked them how many had read Vargas Llosa, or Paz, or García Márquez in Spanish?  How many of them had stepped outside their comfortable linguistic boxes, to seek truth in other worlds and other languages?  I mentioned how I had learned German to read Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Mann in the original.  Perhaps I was too harsh on my fellow writers.  But even among the educated in cosmopolitan Manhattan, our provincialism is growing.  But at what cost, and why?

What happens when a society stops caring about the hard work of imagination, self-criticism, and education?  Will this society even realize what it has lost?  This season, give a book in translation, or prose or poetry from a university press, to someone you care about.  Point them to other indie cultural favorites, in magazines or literary reviews.  Broaden their minds, and prompt their critical thinking.  Help our citizens earn their place in this democracy.

Anger Magnus

There is so much to comment on, and so little to comment on.  I thought about Obama’s ‘slow-burn’ of political advocacy, as one friend described his style.  I had just criticized our president for not defending, more aggressively, the kind of change many of us voted for last year.  Obama, lay it on the line, and punish those who don’t support you, from the left or the right.  Be practical, be bold, but please don’t be gone.

I thought about the Senate-election debacle in Massachusetts, and how ‘democracy’ is not the great ideal it’s held up to be.  Do right-leaning Democrats truly think going back to George W. Bush’s deregulated, ‘pirate economy,’ as the New York Times’ Gretchen Morgenson aptly described it in last Sunday’s business section, will help this country create jobs, protect consumers, lower the boom on banks, big pharma, or wasteful government?  I don’t like high deficits either; what was Bush’s record on deficits, anybody remember?

It’s incredible to me the myopia, the forgetfulness, the stupidity of much of the populace, as well as the ‘news’ that isn’t news anymore, but loud and ignorant opinions.  I mean, is anybody else with me on this one?  What happened to not being a Democrat or Republican first, to not thinking about just ‘winning,’ or ‘us’ versus ‘them’?  What happened to us?  We’re on this death cruise together, and China’s eating our lunch.  They’re not the only ones.  Anyone want to stand together and fight back?  I am patriotic, and I do love this country.  But our politics are dysfunctional, Congress is a joke, and how we talk to each, the vapid ‘news’ of cable, talk radio, and the like, simply foments the same idiotic behavior that got us into this mess.

That’s right, I’m pissed.  We need practical people.  We need to stop the moronic dog-chasing-its-tale on television and radio.  In fact, if it were up to me, as a dictator, I would destroy all the television sets and radios, and force people to read.  Even the New York Post is thoughtful compared to cable.

The problems with our culture go beyond the national politics and media.  I see what's wrong on the street every day, whether it’s El Paso, New York City, Kansas City or LA.  I am often the strictest parent in their schools, my kids don’t fail to remind me.  What do I do?  I make sure my kids do their homework, every night.  I am there to help them, if they need it, every night.  I encourage my kids to read books, every week.  Friends who are wild, disrespectful, they are not welcomed in my house.  Period.  These are the values of my father and mother, Mexican immigrants.  These values work.  My kids are excellent students.  They work hard and achieve the highest grades.  They are proud of themselves, not for false accomplishments, but for true ones.  Isn’t everybody like that?  What happened to us?  Jeez.

I am angry at the Supreme Court.  What the hell is wrong with them?  The majority just made the little guy feel even smaller than before.  What happened to ‘non-activist conservative judges’?  These hypocrites just overturned decades of precedent, in favor of mega-corporations with billions of dollars.  Wave the flag for ‘free speech.’  Lower the flag for more influence for lobbyists and for rampant political corruption.  The little guy doesn’t matter to these clueless Solomons.  Sotomayor, you matter.  We just need more of you.

Work hard.  Take care of your family.  Save money.  Pay your mortgage religiously.  Love the variety of people you see on the streets of Manhattan every day.  And get kicked in the ass.  What a week.

Business News Blather

I used to watch the TV for business news. But now Kudlow’s and Cramer’s shouting leave even more ringing in my ears than the express trains zooming past the local subway stop at 86^th Street. I have read the Wall Street Journal for decades, but I have noticed that after Murdoch took over more news stories have political slants and headlines are unnecessarily more pessimistic in the age of Obama.

I don’t get the parade of blond people at Fox News. Are they really trying to be that obvious about who is in their camp and who they could care less about? The CNN anchors who read Twitter responses: are they serious about that? That isn’t democracy, but stupidity, on display for the world to see.

I have become a full-fledged media skeptic. I do think that many of the quick and easy responses encouraged by modern media are often nothing more than rants. That’s one of the reasons I have not allowed comments on Chico Lingo. I read other blogs for years, and still do, and the comments are rarely thoughtful or interesting. I figured if someone wanted to comment on what I wrote they could send me an email, and I have received dozens. Or they could start their own blog.

I know I am in the minority, in more ways than one, on turning away from the flotsam of the news cycle. My only use for democracy-as-hyper-mediocrity is that I try to take advantage of the paranoia or euphoria through my investments. I ignored the doomsday scenarios of March, and kept my investments exactly the way they were. So I have benefited from the recent run-up in stocks. New money I have added to my short-term bond portfolio, simply to have more emergency reserves in case we return to the brink of depression. I am also paying off debt in advance, even if my debt levels were relatively small compared to my net assets.

I watch the crazy flamingos of speculation, the fast money, the lightning rounds, and I am happy to be patient and contrarian and independent. Investors should do their homework, and this knowledge will allow them to ignore the garbage advice that washes up on their shores.

One of the reasons, as I pointed out to my wife Laura, that I did not panic after the recent vicious bear market was that my mutual fund and individual stock positions were still mostly in the black, or with slight losses, at the bottom of the precipitous drop. I have invested patient money, for decades in some cases, and so a downturn cuts into my gains, but isn’t deep enough to even put me in the red.

Too often I hear of friends who invest to get rich quick. To me, that’s not investing, but speculating. I even had a close friend who would invest for a major appliance, for a month or two, score a quick profit, and buy the refrigerator he needed. It was ridiculous to me then, and is ridiculous to me now. But most media outlets encourage this kind of behavior. In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, oil traders who invest in oil futures for quick bucks were labeled “investors” in paragraph after paragraph. That’s editorializing in news stories, and makes the point against Obama that he is against “investors” in this market when he or his administration considers putting limits on oil traders.

I don’t think we should expect much from CNBC, the Wall Street Journal or Fox Business News in terms of investigative journalism. They are promoters of Wall Street, and sometimes that’s good and too often it’s horrible. The best single article I have read about the current shenanigans in the finance industry came from the New York Times, about how subprime brokers have resurfaced as dubious loan fixers, by Peter Goodman.

The individual investor has to protect himself. But ‘Caveat Emptor’ only works if there is full disclosure in plain English, if abusive behavior is eliminated and illegal behavior prosecuted, if you are not lied to by whoever is selling you stock in a company, a bond, or a mortgage. That’s the proper role of government and what George W. Bush could never understand.

TV Rants as News, and Undermining the National Dialogue

Cable news has devolved to the lowest common denominator for the sake of profit and niche ratings. Instead of reporting what happened, instead of carefully researched investigative journalism, we have on Fox News, CNN, and now CNBC loud rants from anchors spouting ridiculous positions, which attract much coveted attention and keep them in business. But what has happened, and what will happen, to the important debate about how to resolve our current economic crisis? Will policymakers have the guts to ignore these rants, which stir up the public for a few moments, and instead opt for difficult, long-term solutions? I think the more we listen to the so-called debates on TV, the more trouble we will be in.

For some channels, perhaps they were always in it to serve a small cable constituency, and get their coveted ratings to promote to advertisers. Their motto was, ‘Be Extreme, be loud, be outrageous, like Limbaugh, and get attention. Make money.’ They only used the cover of ‘news’ to attract that uncritical viewer who might have been channel-flipping.

For others, the change has been nothing short of remarkable. Lou Dobbs, in another lifetime, was a respected business journalist, before he decided to pull what I call a Bill O’ Reilly. Dobbs metamorphosed into a dictator on the TV screen, who only invited guests in order to talk over them, berate them, and pontificate on his own views, while his ‘guests’ were left stammering. For years, Dobbs has shouted at the camera, red-faced, to vilify illegal immigrants, to attack Bush, the government, CEOs, now Obama, and so on. You know the story.

And his ratings have skyrocketed. Mind you, he doesn’t have a majority of the cable news audience, just an important sliver of it, but that’s all you need to thrive in this media. Limbaugh has known that for years. Balkanization works for success on TV and radio; the middle ground is not only boring, but unprofitable. These loudmouths do not offer any practical, real-world solutions. They shout, and we tune in, amazed, disgusted, in stitches or in tears, but many of us look and listen. It’s entertaining, and we can gleefully feel good about ourselves while the talking heads put someone else down. It’s a weak and petty self that enjoys such entertainment, but well, that is who we often are.

The latest flip to the dark side of ridiculous media is CNBC. I watch CNBC often, and last week was a turning point. Rick Santelli, Larry Kudlow, and Jim Cramer unleashed a series of anti-Obama rants about the war against capitalism, subsidizing losers, and unprecedented wealth destruction. Did Obama get us into this mess? Where were these TV demagogues when Bush exploded the deficit, when the SEC fell asleep at the wheel, when CNBC promoted many of the CEOs who later bankrupted their companies and then came begging for government handouts? Is there any kind of mea culpa forthcoming from CNBC about its role in not being systematically critical of Wall Street investment banks, Countrywide Financial, AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac when it mattered years ago? What happened to their skills as journalists in investigating these problems before they became the crisis du jour for talk television? David Faber is the only one who still sounds thoughtful on CNBC, and he must feel lonely there.

The problem of course is that this insidious trend to gather a small, but loyal group of eyeballs to make your channel profitable is being taken for serious national debate by those who are not the sharpest tools in the shed: our politicians. If our political leaders make important decisions based on these rants, then expect our country to suffer, expect it to be irrationally divided and bitter, expect careful thinking to go the way of analog TV, expect other countries not so hooked on the boob tube to surpass us quietly and methodically. Where is Gretchen Morgenson when you need her? Turn off the TV, and pick up a newspaper, magazine or book, and think outside the box.