Mark Bowden writes about the chaos that is Somalia in the Washington Post today...three online pages decrying Islamicists and warlords and poverty...and I'm not posting a a word of it. Because every time someone writes about it, they disguise or simply neglect the Bush Administration's role in recreating the chaos that the Somalis had almost banished.
In The Endorsement From Hell, Mr. Kristoff points out what, in my opinion, was the single most abominable act of the Bush regime executed...the destruction of Somalia's best hope for peace and prosperity for ideological reasons. I wrote about that for quite a while. I really had hoped the Somalis would order themselves and stop dieing unnecessarily. Foolish, foolish me, to hope they would be left alone to resolve their problems.
Ideology.
It's at the root of our social problems, our economic problems, even much of our health care problems are ideological at root. I don't have to discuss how ideology has confounded our political discussions, do I?
So when does the B.S. stop?
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Just because they say it's ideology...
I'm not sure you really mean that. Just because politicians (or pundits) use ideological arguments to push policies, doesn't mean that it's ideology that's motivating the policies. Though there was an ideological argument for deregulation of the financial markets, would markets have been so brainlessly deregulated if somebody wasn't making a lot of money from it? Ditto for the Iraq war. And the opposition to a first-world health care system -- is it fueled mostly by an ideological opposition to state health care, or by money from the insurance industry?
Politicians who claim the "end of ideology" or the similar "end of partisanship" are more likely trying to sneak in policies that are against your ideology, but couched in some new rhetoric. CF new labour, "New Democrats", "third way", etc. So it makes me nervous to hear you rallying against ideology as a force onto itself -- it makes me nervous. Ideology has a place, if primarily to help us find our bearings in the sea of BS arguments where corporate interest is couched in feel-good neoliberal "theories".
(If you've ever read Dean Baker's blog, you've seen him point this out many times, and with very clear examples.)
Though there was an
I understand what motivates. Still, how would they pull it off if so many people weren't convinced ideology is crucial?
What I want is for people to deal in physical fact, reality, first. I want people to pay attention and notice when the result of pursuing their ideology is destructive, and to recognize that makes their ideology wrong. Objectively incorrect. And that therefore that ideology cannot actually justify anything.
I will confess a long-standing aversion to The American Prospect.
American Prospect
Ok, I'm starting to get what you're saying... you want to judge political & economic decisions by their effects, not by whatever mumbo-jumbo people have cooked up, rehashed, etc, to support their actions? I can get behind that.
Seconded, certainly! :) But Dean provides the best antidote to the sorry state of economics "reporting" in other media, and unfortunately he's at the Prospect. He provides the actual physical facts, as you say. And in my feed reader it looks just like prometheus, so I can't complain.
you want to judge political
That's it.
I can't claim to be without an ideology, of course. But mine is simply to choose what makes us stronger, or at least minimizes damage as its primary effect.
Well, that's one way to get me to check him out for a week or so.