November 12, 2010

• Last thoughts on Stewart: The ‘War Criminal’ Debate

  The part that people found most disturbing about the Rachel Maddow interview of Jon Stewart was when Stewart seemed to be defending former President Bush. In particular it arose when Stewart argued that the Left shouldn’t be calling George W. Bush a war criminal. 

  First, let me say that I don’t think the “war criminal” part was the most important element of the interview. I certainly don’t think it was the most interesting. In a certain sense even to point it out and focus on it is to kind of detract from all of the other really important significant things Stewart and Maddow discussed. Nevertheless, the “war criminal” comments ARE being discussed everything and I think they are worth at least looking at.

  But before that, let me just say quickly that I was impressed by Stewart’s discussion of the way the Media amplifies things, his discussion of his role in the media, and his discussion of how we need a new kind of filter through which to see things rather than the Left/Right distinction, especially his suggestion of ‘corruption’ being a possibly more illuminating meter to judge by. There are others who share a similar philosophy and I think if you want to seriously engage in these views you need to read someone like media critic and journalism professor Jay Rosen or constitutional scholar and activist Larry Lessig and the works they regularly link to. I honestly think Stewart sees his role as similar to that of Jay Rosen’s as a critic and analyst of the media and the process of journalism. Even his comments at the end of the interview sounded very much to me like a plug for Rosen’s view of the problem with the “View From Nowhere”. Stewart professes the opposite, that what matters is where people are coming from.  The section on “corruption” and the need to avoid the left/right divide sounded like it could have been taken directly from one of Lessig’s speeches.

  Anyways, on o the “war criminal” stuff.  First let’s look at exactly what he said (transcribed by hand so any errors are mine):

  Maddow: But what’s the lefty way of shutting down debate?
  Stewart: Okay, you’ve said Bush is a War Criminal. Now that may be technically true. In my world, war criminal is Pol Pot or the Nuremberg trials.
  Maddow: Or Harry Truman,
  Stewart: yeah
  Maddow: but then you took that back
  Stewart: and… and I did for good reason, because I don’t think that he was.  And I think that, that, you know again we have to define our terms. But I think that’s such an incendiary charge that when you put it in a conversation as ‘well technically he is’ that may be right, but it feels like a conversation stopper, not a conversation starter. The complaint was: in the clip reel, we had a woman shouting as an example of dialogue that we were talking about not being helpful, a woman at a meeting shouting “Bush is a War Criminal”. That’s really where that came from, not from saying it in normal conversation. We were talking about tone there not content necessarily. We were talking about standing up in the middle of a meeting and just shouting that.  My problem is, it’s become tribal. And if you have 24 hour networks that focus, their job is to highlight the conflict between two sides where I don’t think that’s the main conflict in our society. That was the point of the rally. Was to deflate the idea that–that’s a real conflict red and blue, democrat and republican. But I feel like there’s a bigger difference between people with kids and people who don’t have kids than red state, blue state.
  Maddow: I follow your logic and I believe what you’re saying up unto a point, but the people interrupting meeting and interrupting rallies are direct action activists who are doing stuff to be purposefully disruptive and a pain in order to sort of throw a wrench in the works.
  Stewart: So you’re saying that it’s really nothing.
  Maddow: Well, it’s not that it’s nothing, it’s just not being done with the same level of authority as it is on the right. Like hte second amendment remedies thing, that’s people running for Senate.
  Stewart: But how did you handle townhall meetings when Tea Partiers interrupted Townhall meetings, with the same level of dismissiveness? Or did you handle it with a sense that: “what’s going on here with these angry people, who are these angry people?”

  The next part of the interview goes a bit off on a tangent of Maddow defending her work. But it bears some commentary before we get to the War Criminal stuff. I think Maddow kinda missed Stewart’s point.  Stewart is talking about tribalism. On Fox News they cover the woman shouting out that Bush is a War Criminal. On MSNBC they cover the Tea Partiers shouting out at townhalls. If Maddow’s point is that it matters when it’s people running for Senate and not when it’s regular activists, then why is there MSNBC coverage of the Tea Partiers shouting at townhalls at all? Or if there IS good reason to cover this kind of disruptive protest, why doesn’t MSNBC also cover the woman shouting out that Bush is a War Criminal with the same tone?

  And the exact same questions can be asked about Fox News.

  Maddow argues that her coverage was about the funding of the groups and that may be… but there is a sort of tribalism air to it that is hard to ignore. It certainly seems like Maddow and the rest of the people on MSNBC saw these people saying things they disagreed with strongly wanted to cover it on their programs so they could show their viewers these “Crazy tea partiers” because that’s what would sell to their liberal tribal audience. But then they felt bad about it because they know that there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with direct activism and disruption and that if there IS something wrong with it,  their own side is equally guilty of it, so they went out there and found a justification for covering it. Namely that these groups were being funded by big corporations.  Now the justification for the coverage IS real and it is a real story since it is something very new in the political history of the United States that really does need to be covered somewhere, so maybe it turns out fine. But it certainly makes one wonder how far MSNBC is away from just running the clip of the townhall protesters as if it alone were the story. Fox News certainly does. And as far as how much it feeds the tribal divisions between the two groups it’s nearly equivalent, except that the Left wing way gives the Left a way out.

  Some people on the Left did argue that the initial attacks from other people on the Left on the Right wing protesters weren’t fair. I recall defending them too early on and felt uncomfortable doing it because there were people I liked doing the criticism and mockery. But then the astroturfing stuff came to light and now people like me on the Left were full comfortable because we had a real and neutral justification that we could use as a vehicle to level our critique. But is that really right?

  It’s hard you see? I exist within this tribe of ideological similar people like me whether I want to be or not and even when you’re being as fair as you can to some extent you’re still fighting for your beliefs so you really are in the business of criticizing those you don’t agree with because you don’t agree with them. It’s not always the case that there’s some clear right or wrong. Sometimes we just fundamentally disagree. And that isn’t always fair and those arguments do shut down debate when you hit that fundamental wall of basic differences of perspective and values, and people get p their backs up.

  The simple fact is I really do think the people showing up at the Townhall meetings protesting Health Care Reform were wrong. That’s why I wanted to talk about them. It wasn’t their tone that was wrong. It wasn’t their shouting. It wasn’t even that they were being funded by massive corporations (though I think that that was also wrong). IT was what they were arguing for that I thought was wrong:  less government intervention in health care. That I thought and still think is fundamentally wrong. I probably will always think that that is fundamentally wrong. You’d have to show me a LOT of real empirical evidence of the triumph of minimal government intervention health care to get me to change my mind. That’s partly because of my fundamental values and partly because I’ve seen in my lifetime so little evidence that even hints at the idea that health care when left wholly to its own devices works out good for the masses. All the health care systems that work seem to have significant government presence and I don’t see the point in experimenting when we already know what does work..

  I also think the protesters were strategically wrong too. I think they were acting against their own best practical interests. By protesting Health Care Reform in the way that they did at the time that they did they certainly helped put political pressure that resulted in a worse health care bill getting passed rather than a better one. And that set the stage for what is likely a repeal of the health care bill eventually which will hurt them even more and make life a lot harder for them, the very thing they feared the government health care would do. And in the long run, adopting uncritically the “less government” argument ultimately will result in their losing their social security, medicare, and medicaid as well. And that I find to be horrible.

  I didn’t understand why they were doing it and once the stuff about the major companies effectively funding the campaign made it all make sense. But even if those companies hadn’t existed they still might have been doing it just because maybe they just fundamentally don’t agree with me. And they still would have been, in my opinion, wrong and I’d still think it’s right to critique their argument.

  The question is how do you critique it in such a way that they will actually HEAR it, especially when the media that they watch paints any criticism as victimization and treats every critic as an elitist snob looking down on them?

  So the question of what arguments shut down debate is really really important. Which brings us to the “war criminal” remarks.  I think Stewart is right that calling George W. Bush a War Criminal does shut down debate. But I think what he’s missing is that it’s not that saying things like George W. Bush is a War Criminal creates the tribal atmosphere that is so disruptive (though it may contribute). It’s rather that the tribal atmosphere has become so intense that even mentioning the words George W. Bush and “war criminal” in the same sentence immediately causes all the people in one of the tribes to just stop listening to you. It’s not necessarily the case that that sequence of words is used to shut down debate, but it is nevertheless the case that debate is shut down as a result of that particular choice of words.

  I recall this sequence with Noam Chomsky. 

  Here he says that he can’t level unconventional charges on national television because people would rightly demand that he given a long and detailed explanation which he can’t do within the heavily time constrained nature of television. So that’s why back then they wouldn’t air Chomsky.

  But now things have changed, now you CAN level the unconventional critique on air and nobody will complain, it’s just that the audience no longer wants an explanation. Nobody is demanding it of them. We’ve skipped right over that step. It’s like we’ve become so tribal that we’ve been conditioned to either cheer the proclamation or denounce it without ever saying: “Well WHY are you saying George W. Bush is a War Criminal? What’s your evidence? Can you explain?”  And if ever anyone ever tries to explain well it’s basically too late. The very people you most would want to convince of that have already decided you’re a member of the other tribe and tuned you out.

  If you want to read some super interesting commentary on the “war criminal” stuff I highly recommend reading Digby’s blog entry on it here.  She makes some really impressive points that are very important to keep in mind about this stuff. 

  Here’s part of what she said:

  “So, I guess my question is, how do we “learn” from his presidency if in addition to giving him a pass on his crimes, we aren’t even willing to have an honest conversation, using real words with real meaning about what happened? If we dance around these things as if it’s wrong to call white white and black black and insist that someone who ordered war crimes shouldn’t be called a war criminal then I see a very different lesson being taken from that example than the one this commenter anticipates.
  …
  history has shown that there are times when being passive and failing to sound the alarm about those bad angels is a tragic mistake.
  …
  wealthy, conservative plutocrats (who know just a little bit about PR and marketing) are spending billions to influence elections and create an alternative media to sell their ideology and discredit liberalism. Being passive in the face of that onslaught, pulling our punches, being unwilling to be unpleasant and confrontational in this environment is highly unlikely to even be noticed, much less appreciated. It certainly will not create the space for average people to consider both sides and make a thoughtful, reasonable judgment about their government and their society – the necessary information simply can’t rise above the din to make itself heard.
  …
  We are living in an era in which very powerful people are being allowed to commit crimes with impunity while millions of others are being imprisoned and worse. Regardless of how the people see that (and the plutocrats are working overtime to ensure they see it their way) it’s clear that the lesson the powerful are taking from this is not that Bush or any of them are “cautionary tales of poor leadership”. They are being perfectly insulated even from harsh words and uncomfortable references to unpleasant historical analogies, so they are being assured every day by well meaning liberals and cynical conservatives alike that they will not even suffer social disapprobation, much less be held personally accountable for what they’ve done. They have learned that they get away with anything.“

  Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been arguing that Jon Stewart makes very interesting and very important points. And I think it’s really important to talk about it and try to self-examine ourselves to try and prevent ourselves from falling into these traps. But when it boils down to it I’m still very much on Digby’s side in this.

  I very much DO believe that when we refrain from telling the truth, say hold back from calling George W. Bush a War Criminal simply because we are afraid that the other side will stop listening to us… unless we have a really good alternative strategy… we’re basically just giving in and letting the people who WANT there to be this tribal war and are fully comfortable with it go completely unopposed.

  Stewart offers great critique but he doesn’t offer a particular compelling alternative strategy. If the problem is that the truth can’t be heard over top of the incredibly loud noise of all the cable networks and the tribal war that’s going on, what the hell do you do?? It CAN’T be stop telling the truth. Obviously then nobody gets the truth. It can’t even be say “let’s all tone it down and be more civil”. That doesn’t work. It especially doesn’t work when one side doesn’t want to tone it down. And it especially doesn’t work when all of the money and popularity benefits flow toward those that explicitly choose NOT to turn it down. And it certainly doesn’t work if nobody here’s you even make the request in the first place because it gets so drowned out by everything.

  That’s what it seems like here from the view on the left anyway. But maybe I’m wrong and there are a lot of influential media people on the Right who really do want to have a more productive dialogue. But it doesn’t seem so. I don’t see it. It seems that they are benefiting greatly from the divisiveness in ways maybe they didn’t even intend but that gives them a very very strong incentive to preserve the arms race. Each time it happens, they win more power. It’s really working out incredibly well for the people on the tribe of the Right.

  And if we flipped it around it would probably be the same. If it were the Left that benefiting far more from the battle to keep the noise level over the tops I think there’d be many fewer leftists arguing to tone it down too.

  So in that environment the only conclusion I think that can be drawn is you have to make your case loudly and forcefully too. You have to try to be heard very loudly and hope that what you are saying is more compelling than the other loudly argued arguments BECAUSE it is true.

  But if you’re in a crowded loud noisy room already, you have to be pretty loud and noisy to be heard. You can’t quite people down unless you find a way to be heard above the rest of the noise.

  In a way I think Stewart actually did that with his rally. He was heard just for a quick moment telling everyone to “pipe down!” But the next day everybody started shouting again and his message was lost, as everyone who was shouting said it would be: sort of a self fulfilling prophecy.

  But maybe something can be learned from this. Maybe we can all change our tactics a bit to try and be loud in a way that makes people think a little bit more. I’m not sure how, but it’s worth thinking about. It might be as simple as the difference between shouting “Bush is a War Criminal” and shouting “Bush approved torture which is a war crime!”  But probably not. That just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

  Or maybe the real answer is to bypass the whole machine altogether. Stop fighting in this arena where noise is the only thing people hear and start having more one on one personal conversations in other arenas such as civics organizations and churches and schools and on the internet about detailed concepts. For example, maybe we have a bunch of conversations all around the country between people on the Left and people on the Right about whether or not Bush is a war criminal. Should the term be applied? If not, what term is appropriate? Maybe our standards for what constitutes a war crime are too low? Maybe we should examine that. Should he be held accountable for any of the things he did? Should we be concerned if he’s not held accountable of other Presidents abusing the authority that George W. Bush has established? These are not obvious questions that you can quickly answer in sound bites.

  Ideally there’s be some impetus from some high level to facilitate these conversations, if only like some kind of public inquiry or truth and reconciliation commission. But even if not then we can try to setup grass roots groups  around the country to try and hash these things out.

  But still, I don’t see it happening and not quickly enough to stop corporations and politicians from causing enormous harm for their own selfish interests. So right now I’m still of the opinion that we on the Left shouldn’t lay down our arms and stop making our critiques as loudly as the other side. I think to do otherwise would just be the same as letting the Left as a movement vanish from this country. I’m sure would make some people happy but I think would have disastrous consequences for our nation’s long term future.

  That doesn’t mean we have to stop trying our hardest to be as honest and fair as possible even if that means confronting our own hypocrisies and inner biases in the process whenever we can. Maybe when people see us doing that, even as we are being as loud mouthed and obnoxious as the other side, they’ll wonder why we go through so much trouble to be fair when the other guys aren’t and maybe that in turn will be the hook that enables us to begin a deeper more civil dialogue.

  • 8:29 pm
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