Author: Bryant

Wow, those are certainly some attractive jobless numbers there. In fact, they’re so good I stole the graphic so I could stick it up here.

Damn, but that’s good. So good, I decided to reformat it a bit so I could admire it again.

Oh. And I guess employment dropped by 41,000 anyhow. So, uh… what’s unemployment look like, anyhow?

As they say, all this really means is that the rate of increase has decreased.

Edit: on rereading, I’m not sure if I was sufficiently sarcastic in my cries of mock delight, above. Shorter Popone: “The Reuters graphic was manipulated to make the drop in claims look like a big deal, but it wasn’t. Also, unemployment is still rising.”

Bush’s remarks on Middle East Democracy are quite fortuitous, since I wanted to talk some more about that war of civilizations thing. Bush is about to say, or said, that the changes we want to see in the Middle East are not “synonymous with Westernization.”

But that’s really the heart of the matter. The thing we call Western culture (and if ever there was a loose definition, there it is) is immensely viral. It spreads. It is intensely aggressive. Give us a new market, and we’ll shoulder our way into it if it all possible. McDonalds on every corner, etc., etc.

Is our civilization at war with Islam? In the sense that it’s doing its damnedest to spread into the Middle East, you bet. In the sense that we’re directing military activities which include deliberate cultural propaganda, not at all. However, it is wise to remain aware that there’s something pretty threatening about Western culture from the outside.

But this aggressiveness is not characterized as war except by extremists on that side of the fence, in the same way that nobody believes we’re at war with drugs except rhetoricians. (Parenthetically, do you think Stephen King worries about the War on Terror breaking down his door? Probably not.) It’s a conflict, but it’s not a war.

It’s also not one I feel terribly bad about. Free speech is one of my most cherished values. It’s not my job, or anyone’s job, to make people stop watching crap Hollywood movies. If a culture wants to compete, it should take a page from India and Bollywood. If you don’t like what people are reading, write more relevant books.

There’s a pretty fierce argument lurking somewhere around here about the aforementioned McDonalds and Wal*Mart. This is, of course, the monopoly problem. I am going to avoid it on the grounds that “Western culture” was spreading before either behemoth strode the global stage; I am also going to cite the trend of various nations to eschew Microsoft in their governmental software purchases. It is not as easy as it should be to compete with the big American countries… but it’s not impossible, either.

Ordinarily, I’d be pretty dubious about this report, but one of the sources is Richard Perle. If it’s true, Iraq was trying pretty hard to negotiate a peace — including allowing thousands of US scientists into the country to look for WMDs and UN-sponsored free elections.

One could argue that Saddam would have gone back on his deal. But it would have been a lot easier getting international support for an invasion at that point.

Gwen tipped me to the story. Josh Marshall has more wary commentary. If Marshall is right, mind you, it says interesting things about Perle’s willingness to screw the Pentagon and CIA for political gain.

I’ve mentioned before that the key to Dean’s success is redirecting the blog energy out into the real world. Here’s an example. The Internet is just a tool for communication. Using it as such works. No mystic special nature, no slogans needed, no marketing fluff. It’s just a way for people to talk more easily.

I get value out of asking my friends about movies they’ve seen and reading newspaper reviews; thus, I get value out of using movie review aggregators. Presidential candidates get value out of recruiting get out the vote workers; thus, they get value out of doing the same damned thing online.

It’s just that communication which previously had to be local can now be global.

Your reading material for the morning: Zbigniew Brzezinski’s New American Strategies for Security and Peace speech.

The second condition, troubling condition, which contributes in my view to the crisis of credibility and to the state of isolation in which the United States finds itself today is due in part because that skewed view of the world is intensified by a fear that periodically verges on panic that is in itself blind.

I find his practicality particularly compelling. His comments on Russia make it crystal-clear that he is not a dictator-loving leftist stereotype. His comments on intelligence and the requirement for a competent intelligence service are spot on.

The significance of today’s casualties is not so much that it’s the worst attack so far, although it was a terrible thing. What worries me is that we knew it was going to be a bad weekend, and we still couldn’t stop the worst attack of the occupation.