Wed 19 Jul 2006
Journalist: “I’ve never seen a political race end like this, but it has just happened.”
Z: “I’ve seen a lot of elections, Gaius, most honest, a few fakes, and you can always tell the fixed ones, because they don’t make sense. And this doesn’t make sense.”
– Ron Moore script (aired 3/10/06 in UK)
What a wonderful and prescient explanation, of the experiences of July 3rd, 2006. Would that I had viewed Ron’s work, prior to its later distribution in the United States.
James K. Galbraith saved me a great deal of effort and anxiety earlier today, by publishing, in clear words, Doing Maths in Mexico, a far better explication of events than I had come to. (To be fair to myself, I had only begun to assemble datasets from election results, have many more internal documents confusing my perspective, and spent much of last night writing about the significance of Mexico’s teetering democratic experiment to our own).
Galbraith begins:
The election was stolen. It’s not in doubt. Colin Powell admits it. The National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute both admit it. Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana – a Republican – was emphatic: there had been “a concerted and forceful program of election-day fraud and abuse”; he “had heard” of employers telling their workers how to vote; yet he had also seen the fire of the resisting young, “not prepared to be intimidated”.
In Washington, Zbigniew Brzezinski has demanded that the results be set aside and a new vote taken, under the eye – no less – of the United Nations. In The New York Times, Steven Lee Myers decried “the use of government resources on behalf of loyal candidates and the state’s control over the media” – factors, he said, were akin to practices in “Putin’s Russia”.
and Galbraith ends with words almost as strong as my own:
[F]or those of us outside Mexico, we must decide where we stand: with democracy … or quietly on the sidelines?
I, of course, do not stand outside of Mexico, nor on the “sidelines,” but with those who march to defend democracy’s name, and its meaning, in the streets of Mexico. As an American, with the people of Mexico, I also consider Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador “my President,” and the hope and symbol of our common future.
Galbraith continues by outlining the problems of the July 2nd election:
[in progress, assuming I can catch an InmarSat window in the next hour, else in the morning]
[There are...] at least four significant anomalities in the count:
1. Calderón’s percentage lead in the count started at around seven percentage points, and diminished steadily in percentage terms through the first part of the count. … Is this normal?
2. The PREP results went on view only after the first 10,000 boxes had been processed[...] If those first 10,000 boxes resembled what came later, then [...] each candidate should have started with zero votes. For Calderón this is the case, but for AMLO it is not [..] the first 10,000 boxes were markedly different from those that followed. How?
3. There are gross anomalies in the number of votes counted per five-minute interval as the count finishes[...] As the last boxes came in, however, it was radically violated,[...] toward the very end, PREP reset the box count [and] records for 223 boxes disappeared. 33 minutes… passed with no updates. [Then...] there were updates with absurd results: more than 6000 votes per box at 13:57… then updates with large negative votes per box at 13:57 and 14:03.
4. [S]tatistical[ly, ...] the distribution across boxes of votes earned by each candidate should be smooth. For Madrazo it is. But for Calderón and AMLO it isn’t. [...] A graph of the differences in Calderón and AMLO’s votes per box, which ought to follow a normal curve, does not. Over a certain range, Calderón’s margins appear abnormally large.
Galbraith then reaches to conclusions:
1. [...]Felipe Calderón started the night with an advantage in total votes, a gift from the authorities.
2. [A]s the count progressed this advantage was maintained by misreporting of the actual results. [...]
3. [T]oward the end of the count, further adjustments were made to support the appearance of a victory by Calderón.
Add these elements together, and there is no reason to accept the almost universal view that the election was close. AMLO might have won by a mile.
As with Vanessa’s call to me in early morning of September 11th, the evening of July 1st will never escape my memory. As my friends celebrated the victory that every measure of “sense” indicated– the 5% to 8% advantage that independent pollsters told then they had– I paced in nervousness. I recited the Kaddish prayer, striving for the focus Noah Feldman gave me years before, and was surprised by those who came to joint me.
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44 Responses to “Voting? Yes. Democracy? Not at All.”
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frank uible says:
Be careful. Don’t want to speak of you and Ambrose Bierce in the same breath.
July 19th, 2006 at 12:55 amLoweeel says:
Ken, way to quote the best show on television! The only reason I’m still up is to catch the replay of the extended season 3 trailer.
I have quite a few responses, but I’ll post those tomorrow.
July 19th, 2006 at 1:04 amKen Thomas '93 says:
LOL again, Frank. I’m only in the midst of composing the above– and seeing how the HTML appears on ephBlog– and in a single sentence (if not breath), I’ve been compared to a gentleman whose
We who are Kentuckians also note:
While Bierce was an Ohioian by birth– I am a son of Illinois by birth, Kentucky by raising, and now I am thinking of another of our Presidents– and while James Galbraith has reminded me today of his father’s principle that “modesty is a vastly overrated virtue”– I feel flattered beyond my worth. (I am also still getting over last weeks’ suggestion, and request, that I might, and that I have a limited authority to, represent the nation of Mexico to the United States’ Senate, which I will simply take as a call to responsibility).
Though I might hope for ridicule in return.
Looks like Lowell has responded as well as I compose this. Ron Moore is indeed doing an incredible job of remaking the Odyssey for our times; happy to say I send copies to the Belgian Ministry of Culture.
Still owe Lowell a renewal of our earlier thread– might I mention that Obrador plans to play Reagan vs. Pemex’s unions? (A plan that many of his “liberal” supporters might be shocked by…?)
Looking forward to your responses, and please do not mistake any lack of immediate response on my part for inattention.
July 19th, 2006 at 1:28 amBill '04 says:
Your selective choices of Galbraith already biased comments show a bias in your account which hurts your own cridibility. I do not know if this was in error or on purpose, but the first quote that you take from his starting “The election was stolen …” is taken completely out of context. That quote is him describing the Ukrainian election in 2004 not this years Mexican election. Neither Colin Powell or Senator Luger has ever spoken on the Mexican election. By not mentioning this you are doing a disservice to both the reader and yourself.
Secondly, this is an article from the Guardian which is widely known as one of if not the most biased, liberal and anti-American papers in the world. You can’t possibly believe anything written in it is fact.
Third, this sounds a lot like Robert Kennedy Jr.’s much debunked Rolling Stone article that alleges fraud in Ohio in the 2004 election. Polling and statistics do not replace actual vote counting.
Maybe there was fraud, I do not have sufficent evidence to make a decision either way, but nothing in that article gives any actual evidence of fraud.
July 19th, 2006 at 10:24 amLoweeel says:
Ken, your post is a HUGE bait and switch. It’s incredibly misleading, and I have to call you out on that.
Clicking on Galbraith’s article makes it clear that the first two paragraphs you quote refer to the UKRAINE elections of two years ago. To somebody who doesn’t click through to the Galbraith article, your post makes it appear that Brzezinski, Myers, Lugar, and Powell are saying that the Mexican election was fraudlent and stolen.
Galbraith’s article contains nothing from them on the Mexican election. Why? Well, the most charitable interpretation of their silence is that they cannot conclusively say that the Mexican election was stolen, so they do not want to comment.
July 19th, 2006 at 10:29 amLoweeel says:
Also, let’s go through Galbraith’s statistical… um… well, “arguments” is too strong of a word, let’s just call them aspersions:
This “argument” rests on the unproven (and probably incorrect) assertion that the arrival of the boxes WAS random; Further, even if the arrival of the boxes WERE random, it is still possible that this could have happened.
The other problem with this “argument” ignores the nature of mexican politics and how voters choose — with the PRI being in power for so long, there are essentially two levels of choices (which you can rearrange to order them however you want, but given the PRI’s long reign in power, I think it makes most sense this way).
First, there’s a choice between the PRI and a non-PRI party; then if the choice was non-PRI, there’s a second choice between PAN and PRC PRD. Nation-wide, PRI’s going to have a fixed vote, so while the PAN/PRI ratio will be roughly constant, the PAN/PRD won’t be. This isn’t bad statistics, just incredibly shoddy thinking.
July 19th, 2006 at 10:50 amLoweeel says:
(continued)
This is more shoddy logic, so poor I’m surprised it even made it into print. This is also explained by my earlier analysis, but there’s another really fun and obvious way to look at it that just highlights how incredibly stupid this argument is.
I don’t know how many boxes there were, but I’m making the reasonable assumption from the article that the first 10,000 are a small portion of the total number of boxes, somewhat less than 10%.
Since we’re playing a statistical game, I’ll make that same argument and apply it to something much more familiar. It will make sense to anybody with even a rudimentary understanding of statistics:
I flip a coin 100 times. The first 5 times I flip it, I get heads each time. At the end, I have 49 heads and 51 tails. Clearly, somebody had been messing with the coin, or altering his flip so as to choose tails.
This argument also applies with a “three-sided coin, with heads, tails, and “torso”. I flip THIS coin 100 times, and the first 10 times I flip it, I get 6 tails. After flipping 100 times, you get 36 tails, 34 heads, and 30 torsos. Clearly, somebody MUST be tampering, because those first 10 RANDOM flips don’t carry over to the larger set.
This is what statisticians call “small sample-size bias” or what baseball fans and sabermetricians call “the Shane Spencer effect”, after his unreal September ‘98 when he batted better than Barry Bonds for the month before being at best a bench player for the rest of his career.
Looking at small certain portions of the overall sample will almost always be much choppier than the overall sample. It’s not just rudimentary statistics, it’s common sense.
July 19th, 2006 at 11:01 amLoweeel says:
#3 requires no extensive explanation — tiredness from counting, people hurrying to finish, minute tabulation errors. Statistical noise over a small portion doesn’t mean that sample’s invalid — a coin that gets heads 5 times in a row is still valid.
#4, on the other hand, is complete bullshit. All it says is that Calderon did better in the last 30% of the boxes than the first 70%. *YAWN* See previous arguments. Again, this assumes RANDOM order — if the Calderon-favoring areas were counted later (or, the AMLO-areas, such as the very heavy AMLO mexico city and DF, were counted first), then it’s quite obvious. Both the US and Mexico have a large trend of urban areas favoring leftists and non-urban areas disfavoring them. It’s completely illogical that the outlying areas would come in at the end rather than the beginning and the urban areas would come in at the beginning rather than the end.
If these are the only arguments in favor of this election being “rigged”, then Obra-Gore’s even more desperate than I thought.
July 19th, 2006 at 11:11 amLoweeel says:
Even democrats are disputing this shoddy statistical “analysis:
http://www.awesclarkdemocrat.com/2006/07/doing_maths_and_doing_maths.htm
Politics Professor from Bard on the far-left Democratic Underground — http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=440950&mesg_id=440977
[Active links added. --Ed.]
July 19th, 2006 at 11:24 amLoweeel says:
Also, your BSG quote is incorrect:
The speaker you refer to as “B” is actually Tom Zarek;
Corrected. –Ed.
July 19th, 2006 at 11:30 amKen Thomas '93 says:
Lowell,
Indeed. But Galbraith employs the same device (and surely both paragraphs are filled with details that make them clearly, “literally speaking,” “not the same event.”) And I begin with a seemingly “purely fictional” reference, written “before the fact” of the Mexican elections. (Frank’s perhaps unintended reference to Bierce predicting McKinley, and his likely intended reference to the fate of Gringos standing in Mexico, as means of historical understanding, all aside).
But how many times have you flipped a coin heads five times in row, a one-in-thirty-two probability event? I hope you will not begrude Galbraith for using an oversimplification; but 10,000 boxes is larger size, and the question is, what sort of deviations should we expect in a “normal” election?
There were approximately 175,000 ballot boxes. Galbraith does not begin to address the issue of nullified ballots, of which we now have thousands of pages, themselves a small portion.
While random selection cannot be assumed throughout the night, one problem with the end-of-election results is that they display a strong (ever increasing) Obrador-to-Calderon drop, and, evidently, no variation whatsoever in the percentage votes of the other three candidates. This is “odd,” “does not make sense,” and begs further explanation.
While the remarkable end-of-counting Obrador-to-Calderon shift might be explained away by non-random events– particularly by those “final” boxes being highly disputed in the course of the night– perhaps by those boxes being from the north– one would expect some random variance in the percentages of the three other candidates, where, suddenly, there appears to be none. What is to be made of this?
The Galbraith/Moore metaphor seems to me entirely appropriate as a method of historical understanding. The AMLO campaign expected to win. With a smaller tendency, US News offices expected AMLO to win, themselves relying on something between gut, and the information they had from multiple sources, including diplomatic offices… the event “did not make sense.” Where do we go from there?
There is nothing entirely coherent in the Obrador response to these events; they (we) were shocked and stunned by the reported results, and most of all, unprepared. Good portions of Obrador’s regime have ignored the patterns of global politics– in hope of “avoiding entanglements,” but a sort of “head in sand” approach. On the day of July 3rd, and into the 4th, at the Cabinet level and above…
to be continued…
July 19th, 2006 at 12:05 pmRichard Dunn says:
Since we are having fun with statistics, I want to critique Lowell’s argument.
Really, the best explanation is non-random arrival of votes. Yes, 5 flips of a coin is small sample. 10% of all votes in Mexico is not. Even with 10% of the vote, if the sample is random, the margin of error is incredibly small.
There is a parellel for this in the United States. In the 2000 election, Florida was initially called for Gore, sometime around 7:30 Eastern. Although the voting sample was large, it was decidedly non-random. These votes were mostly from Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, Broward, Volusia, and Orange counties. They had yet to get a substantial number of ballots from Northern and Western Florida, counties more likely to vote for Bush. At the same time, they omitted any votes from counties in the western part of the pan-handle.
July 19th, 2006 at 12:25 pmI distinctly remember shouting in the common room of Morgan, “But they haven’t even stopped voting in Bay or Escambia counties.” (aside, I am a political dork so this comment isn’t all that surprising).
It is thus obvious what happens with non-random samples, even if the sample is large. In conclusion, the small-sample argument is 99.9% bogus if you really believe the early sample was random. If you believe the sample may be non-random, and I certainly believe that is the case, Lowell’s statistical argument is dead-on.
And unfortunately, interpolating a trend line back to find the intercept is ridiculous. Constants like that don’t really have a meaning in econometrics, and forecasting, both forward and back requires a lot more work that, at least if you want a good one.
Derek says:
I want to address this comment from Bill ‘04:
“Secondly, this is an article from the Guardian which is widely known as one of if not the most biased, liberal and anti-American papers in the world. You can’t possibly believe anything written in it is fact.”
It is tempting to nominate as the stupidest comment in the history of Ephblog, but its competition is pretty stiff.
Bill — point blank question: How often do you read the Guardian? How many times in the last, say, year, have you had a copy of the print edition in your hands? How many times have you gone on your own to the Guardian website?
I have my issues with the Guardian, especially with some of its interpretations on particular foreign policy issues. But to say that we can believe nothing that is in it as fact, to proclaim that it is simply anti-American and leave it at that, to maintain that it is one of the most “biased” newspapers without bothering to provide evidence? What a simplistic way of not bothering to engage evidence and arguments.
Whenever I am in England, which is often enough to have an informed opinion on such matters, I try to split my time between the Times, Guardian, and Independent. They are all good but flawed newspapers that give enough range and breadth to give me the perspectives I need and want. To dismiss one of them out of hand (especially just because it is known to be — gasp — liberal) reveals a willful ignorance that is laughable.
dcat
July 19th, 2006 at 12:27 pmMax Factor says:
Ken,
Interesting post. I’m still waiting to hear what substantive proof or rationale there is for declaring Obrador a likely winner in a recount.
And actually, I think Obrador is seriously misleading people:
Watching Mexican TV a couple of days ago, I noted that in an interview with Obrador that when he was asked to provide exactly this type of information, or to discuss what would ultimately vindicate him, he noted ‘countless inconsistencies’ in voting. He then asked to show a film clip of a man putting 5 or so ballots into an election box. He said, “look! This man is voting more than once… and he is but one case.”
However, news sources were able to find the film he excerpted — in its entirety. It turns out, the man filmed was an election official, who explained what he was doing on camera in the seconds before he insterted the additional ballots into the voting box. The box he was putting the votes into were not presidential ballots — they were ballots for SENATORS, that had been put into the wrong box intially. (Mexican voters also elect senators at the same time they elect the president. At this polling station, at least 5 people had put senate votes into the wong box.) As an election official, it was his job to move them (On camera) to the right box.
2) But this is something that Obrador’s party already knew. Because for ANYTHING to be approved, any action at polling stations such as the one I just described that was filmed, ALL POLITICAL PARTIES have to sign off on the action about to take place and agree that it is correct. So, NOTE: Obrador’s people approved the same action he later called ‘fraudulent’ on national TV.
Misleading? I think so.
Why would he use such tactics? What is admirable about him as he tries to argue his case? Very little…
July 19th, 2006 at 1:46 pmLoweeel says:
Richard — I agree. I didn’t mean to suggest that the causes were each sufficient, but I think that in toto they certainly sum up to create plausible explanation for why each sample didn’t look like the overall trend.
July 19th, 2006 at 1:52 pmLoweeel says:
Richard, I also believe that 5.71% (10K boxes out of 175K) is small enough to qualify as small sample-size bias, especially if it is not random.
Then again, maybe I’m over analogizing to sports — 5.71% is like saying that a baseball player is having a bad season based on the first 11-12 days (~9.25 games) in April.
July 19th, 2006 at 2:02 pmLoweeel says:
Also, I do have to say that AMLO blaming his loss on soap operas, fast food, fruit juice, and potato chips would be so much more entertaining if it weren’t almost beyond parody. He may be joining Al Gore on South Park in the hunt for ManBearPig.
July 19th, 2006 at 2:10 pmAlexander Woo says:
I’d much rather have a newspaper where it’s clear how I have to read between the lines than one where it isn’t.
And the more of these contested elections I see, the more I realize that giving the person with 41% support much more power than the person with 40% support is not good government, whether the votes are counted accurately or not, and whether we call it democracy or not.
When in Mexican (or American) politics are we going to get an exercise in peace-making, rather than war by other means?
July 19th, 2006 at 2:25 pmLoweeel says:
Alexander — When the government stops having so much power over the economy and people’s lives. It’s war by other means because of the stakes that the parties are fighting over — essentially, substantial control over the country. Without these stakes, it wouldn’t be worth this much energy or money to fight over the comparatively small potatos of a minarchy.
July 19th, 2006 at 2:31 pmRichard Dunn says:
To qualify the idea of “small-sample”
Small sample is not determined as a percentage. 5% of a baseball season is small because you are talking about 40 at bats. 5% in the Mexican election is probably over 1,000,000 votes. Even if the population of votes is 20 million, given a random sample, this is large sample.
What makes a sample large or small is the following: if you took the same sample size and repeated the experiment, would different results be statistically meaningful. This depends upon the error of your estimation since it was based on a random sample. A bigger sample means a lower error and thus more confidence that your estimate is close to the real value. As a rule of thumb, to half the error you need to quadruple the sample size. By the time you get to a million votes, if the sample is truly random, the error is so small to begin with, halving or quartering it doesn’t matter. That is why even with just 5% of the votes, the sample is not small in a statistical sense.
When you have a biased sample, you have a biased sample and that creates problems regardless of sample size. I would avoid any talk of small samples and stick with the real possibility that the early votes came from places significantly different from those areas sending in later votes.
July 19th, 2006 at 2:52 pmKen Thomas '93 says:
Max,
The video incident you refer to was broadcast on CNN. Internally, it has been referred to as a “PR gaffe.” I might as well fault Obrador for this lack of caution, as everyone else is, while I am also embarrassed by the disarray, and lack of process, it reveals publically.
More generously, we might note that it also reveals that Obrador is neither comfortable, nor conversant, with the mass media[1]. One might say Obrador simply ignored them during the campaign, and that this is the administration’s first serious grappling with their power.
But the incident, and the “numerous inconsistencies” comment you refer to above, are reflections of what I might call “the real state of affairs” of a campaign responding to unexpected events. Is there a clear conclusion to be drawn from the IFE results (note that we’ve skipped over a few points, such as resets of the tally, inconsistent counts, and odd cyclical repetitions (which Galbraith does not touch).
The media, of course, “deal in facts, not speculation,” to quote a Mexico City bureau chief, speaking harshly to a field reporter, about two weeks ago. Well they should; but the absence of a smoking gun does not mean a murder has not taken place. The Obrador administration cannot (yet) produce a coherent and clear picture of events– even for itself. Given the unfolding nature of events, and the complex series of players, this does not seem to me at all odd.
On that note, an interesting footnote in the game is the presentation of recorded audio between campaign officials and election personnel. Obrador has no capacity to engage in massive surveillance of his opponents. Where did these recordings come from?
At this point, the documenation assembled numbers close to ten thousand pages; I’ve seen perhaps a thousand of those, most of them from the preliminary stages, and have reviewed them with far less care than I was able to give a similar volume of material in Napster. From that perspective, I believe what they do represent is “massive inconsistency” and chaos.
(I am at this moment waiting patiently for the administration’s packet for the international press, and wondering how it will reframe the issues.)
UNDP’s Ray Kennedy gave a fairly simple explanation on the 4th or 5th– that the IFE process was in the hands of inexperienced people in their forties, and that these people simply did not know enough to know they didn’t know how to run an election. This is also a result of an election law that forced IFE to turnover all its key personnel, a fact I suspect Ray is unaware of, and likely a key error in all these events.
The July 2nd election was simply not run well. Balloting spaces were in some places cramped, in others open air; there were insufficient workers, no checks and balances, no way to insure that a single worker did not discard, or simply miscount, or intentionally invalidate, ballots. Ray– who has seen more elections than anyone I know– made his comment before much of what we know now is available. But the bottom line is, if reliable and secure voting is a fundament of democratic process, the July 2nd election was a failure of democracy.
Co-ordinated? Certainly calling all the major hotels in Mexico City and asking for the names of Bush campaign advisors produces an interesting result. There is a pattern here– as there is in any campaign struggle– and Fox and Calderon (who are not on the same side) certainly learned from the 2000 election. What to make of it is another story…
also to be continued; have to run…
NOTE 1: (ditto a certain US President, whose electoral demographics oddly match Obrador’s)
July 19th, 2006 at 2:52 pmAidan says:
Note:
although highly amusing, Obra-Gore is really not fair to Al Gore. Al didn’t call for violent revolution after losing the 2000 Presidental Election, nor did he incite his followers to protest. He followed legal recourse to the Supreme Court, and accepted the court’s ruling.
that all being said, Obra-Gore is rather hysterical…
July 19th, 2006 at 3:40 pmBill '04 says:
Derek,
I don’t really want to get into a media bias discussion, but I didn’t think that I needed proof that the Guardian was biased. Just as I thought that it was well known that the Telegraph has a conservative bias. They market themselves as such. Here are 2 quick articles i googled that talk about this.
http://www.hillnews.com/living/010704_british.aspx
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2240
They don’t go into specific facts but it seems as these authors also seem to think that it is common knowledge the Guardian has a liberal spin. I know there was a recent UCLA study on media bias in the US, but I don’t know of any overseas so I can’t give you data.
As to your question, I have never read the print edition and usually read a few articles a month when I get linked there online. I really don’t have any reason to read British local news, so most articles that I see in it are foriegn policy related.
As to saying that you can’t believe anything, I might have gone too far. I’m sure that they get the date right but everything else is debatable.
July 19th, 2006 at 4:20 pmKen Thomas '93 says:
Aidan,
Obrador has not called for violent revolution. We are a non-violent movement. In each of the gatherings in the Zocalo, Obrador has reminded in no uncertain terms, that he does not believe in the use of violence, and that we should accept no provocation.
That said, this is not the United States. Today’s electoral tribunal– in contrast to the independent one in 2000– is filled with PRI and PAN members. It cannot be simply trusted to render an independent and fair judgement, without the message that there will be consequences if democracy fails; and members of the Congress are certainly considering dissolving it to appoint a politically independent panel.
As Frank reminded me above, the threat of violence here is very real. I will repeat that Castaneda– who now hopes for a Cabinet position– has called for Obrador’s assassination. Vanessa joked to me some days ago that I might be mistaken for her bodyguard– it’s an interesting experience to be in a crowd of 1.2 million and see no one as tall as you– but the reality behind the joke is that I am always intensely aware of her personal security, and that I have been for four years, as well as in admiration of the risk she has taken to be here.
I cannot speak for Obrador, but my view of events is that he will not surrender. If he is not elected through formal process, he will continue to act, and lead, as our President, and seek to guide Mexico to democracy. Frank reminded me of the examples of Ghandi and Martin Luther King, a reminder I well needed, but Lopez Obrador likely did not. Ours is a nation teetering …
The sides, the choices, and the meaning of freedom and democracy here does not seem clouded to me. Four million Mexicans flee the consequences of dictatorship, and the failure of democracy, each year. One in six Mexican workers resides on the soil of the United States. Yearly, in recorded health care costs alone, the United States spends ten billion dollars on undocumented immigrants– more than our aid to Israel. In Rogelio’s analysis, excluding oil and payments from abroad– the two largest inputs to the Mexican economy– Mexico’s other sectors are in deep recession.
Rogelio is a pessimist, and believes only that immediate and prudent action might bail the ship. I believe, and hope, that unprecidented international co-operation, and courage, can not only right the ship, but guide the path of globalization.
This is not the United States, but we have every material and moral interest here. Calderon, much less a puppet appointed by Vincente Fox, would be a continuing social and economic disaster. The most immediate price we will pay for allowing such a dictatorship, will be the continued flow of millions of poor, hungry, desperate and broken-hearted masses, yearning, onto our shores.
As Galbraith– Galbraith!– reminds us, it is now time to renew or reneg upon our committments as a nation, and as a people, to again choose our historical identity. This is not a far-away people, this is not East Germany or the Ukraine, this our southern border, and our closest and oldest neighbor. If we continue to stand on the sidelines as democracy falls, if we, as Neville Chamberlain, declare that the fate of an unknown and foreign people is nothing to us, we shall find that the price of indifference is as great as it always has been.
And let us not forget that we have the same committment and mission in Iraq, and we are, today, failing there. Will our nation prove itself equal to these challenges? Certainly not with the type of leadership currently in the White House.
July 19th, 2006 at 5:17 pmfrank uible says:
Should the U.S. (or for that matter U.S. citizens) have an active commitment with respect to or a right to interfere otherwise in the outcome of internally conducted elections of other sovereign nations? I doubt that we would like it if and when other nations or citizens would be so committed or so interfered concerning our elections.
July 19th, 2006 at 6:32 pmKen Thomas '93 says:
Tomorrow’s press packet seems to be mine to comment on until 8am, with the wonderful instruction not to make “stylistic changes,” but to focus on reason, understanding, and “content.” Ten thousand pages of …, and I’m supposed to focus on “content” at this point? (I’m smiling as I write this, of course).
The official language for the “statistical” concerns above is currently:
Which I think is fairly accurately understated (for point 10 of 10, in rough order of diminishing importance).
Among its supporting points:
Which is to say, a “Florida” type explanation does not seem to hold here (Calderon districts in the north were actually reported early, in a different anomaly…); the 1% lead holds steady despite reporting from varied districts, whereas it should vary. On this, we simply do not have an explanation.
Far more substantive is the claim that, in looking at the 2,700 ballot boxes that local electoral councils allowed to be recounted– by a vote of representatives from the three parties and the IFE–, such manual recount resulted in 102,000 additional votes for AMLO. The PRD requested that 50,000 boxes be opened; in the remaining 47,300 cases, local electoral councils simply refused to allow a recount; one PRI leader in my earshot simply declaring “well, that will be material for your legal challenge!” It is important to remember that no recount in any American sense of the term has occurred: there has only been a comparison of, roughly speaking, the vote tallies reported on the outside of precinct doors, on the tops of ballot boxes, and inside (otherwise still sealed) boxes. Amazingly, these records, which should have absolute consistency, simply did not match in a large number of cases.
Next in substance is probably that, looking closely at electoral stations, there is reasonable evidence of shaving at particular stations (which have not been recounted)… and we see multiple “substations” of specific major stations which report exact the same vote count as each other, which is certainly odd, shall we say.
… down to random, if not large, evidence of discarded (disguarded) ballots (boxes), and the fact that the IFE opened ballot boxes without legal authorization on the 10th and 11th, (pray without discarding anything). Going to be a fun night; I’ve just skimmed the surface, without touching the appendices.
I’d like to emphasize again, this stuff is just being put together, and there are processes that occur, before the news is made– by human beings sitting in rooms, writing news releases and clipping together video. (Footnote: I spent much of 2-7 July in a cramped office with the primary print reporter of the Gore incident…; his views are very different that what we see here (or saw in print); and a much more important history of such events would be not “what role the media played,” but how the representations of the event were made.)
(Alex– many thoughts in response, of course, as always.)
(And Frank– wonderful question, stated with an eloquence and precision that makes me much more sympathetic (and thoughtful), than I was in response to the way a certain Texas Senator put it on June 30th. More answers in my head than I need at this point, each contradicting the other…
But wasn’t it Milosevic who suggested that he could send the US some election observers?)
July 19th, 2006 at 8:17 pmfrank uible says:
In matters such as these do we consistently apply over-arching principles of conduct or alternatively engage in the practice of real politik?
July 19th, 2006 at 9:50 pmM. Esa Seegulam '06 says:
Wow, I haven’t been to Ephblog in a while, but all I have to say is, my head hurts.
July 20th, 2006 at 12:05 amKen Thomas '93 says:
Dear Esa,
Very good to hear your voice here. I just sent my “contributions” to the Obrador campaign on their (our) 100-page international press release; three pages entirely different from what I was asked, which I hope may have some value.
I hope I might say, yours is not the only head that hurts (and perhaps strains), to comprehend these events. If may also say so– I have five hours until I must be available again– your perspective, as that of all who write here– is as valued, as it is important to the course of these events.
I believe I recall you once commenting in this forum, that you did not recognize our dialogue as “your own.” (Please forgive my poor memory, and attempt at restatement). If so, I also hope I may go so far as to say, that I, personally, insomuch as I might, (in my limited capacity), earnestly wish and hope, that I– we– might change and correct such a situation.
With apologizes for my poor wording, and the personnal vanities of all the above; and the hope you will contribute your talents and perspective to this “Great Discussion”;
yours,
July 20th, 2006 at 4:54 amM. Esa Seegulam '06 says:
Wow, well that was one helluva welcome! I’m not sure when (or if) I may have stated that I didn’t recognize a dialog as “my own” but I very well may have. I’ll probably opt out of this one for now, having joined a bit late, but I’ll holler in the next time I get a chance.
July 20th, 2006 at 8:55 amDerek says:
Bill –
Well that’s rather different, now isn’t it? There is not a newspaper on the planet that does not have some sort of perspective, which is what I assume you mean by “bias.” So what? That has nothing to do with what you originally wrote, Which was that it was not at all reliable, that it is anti-American, etc. Nice bait and switch. No one here denied that the Guardian is liberal. That, however, has nothing to do with your accusations against a newspaper that I am assuming you acknowledge that you never read.
dcat
July 20th, 2006 at 3:43 pmBill '04 says:
Derek,
I can’t possibly imagine how I bait and switched. The first acusations that I made were that the Guardian was biased and liberal. You admit these charges in your second comment. I went further to say it was one of the most biased and liberal papers. I do not have evidence for this, but I am relativly confident in that assesment. I don’t know how my second post can have nothing to do with the first when they are largely similar. As to Anti-Americanism, I do not have any evidence of this however I beleive that with the proper research this could be supported, at least in the recent timeframe say 2003 on. You also fail to mention that my last line directly talks about reliabilty. News that is biased is inherantly unreliable as you cannot believe that you are getting the whole story.
An while we are nitpicking I clearly state that I read a few articles a month and while I did not major in math, I am confident that would qualify as more then never. However a study might also be needed for this.
This now has nothing to do with the original post so I will not be following up on it, but good discussion.
July 20th, 2006 at 4:47 pmDesiree says:
“As to Anti-Americanism, I do not have any evidence of this however I beleive that with the proper research this could be supported, at least in the recent timeframe say 2003 on.”
I’m so sick of nationalism.
This really has nothing to do with Bill ‘04 or Derek’s comments. It just saddens me that people feel compelled to defend what is, truly, a maniacal creation — this idea of “Americanism,” either in the negative or positive sense. So many people aspire to uphold good things like democracy, free will, or capitalism — (Yes, I like capitalism, sorry) — and as they channel their feelings to the support of the Nation, many end up as cannon fodder. Sure we must sign the social contract. But we don’t have to allow ourselves to be spit upon because of who happens to be our head of state, and jsut because he or she happens to be in the same Nation as we are. Do we share a collective identity? We share certain tenets and we have all (perhaps passively) agreed to a set of laws. But we should still be individuals.
Every day, we buy into a system that allows us to be stamped as being the same, and perhaps even superhuman. (Communism depended upon this imagined community, too.) When we support nationalism, we decry the plight of Americans trapped in Lebanon, where apparently it is so terrible that they must be evacuated immediately by air and sea. But our interest does nto extend to “the Lebanese,” who are being bombed beside them. Rather, it is the choice of the Nation to let those other people be bombed for one more week (the current UN delayed cease-fire plan that the US supports).
July 20th, 2006 at 6:13 pmKen Thomas '93 says:
Frank: Many thoughts, especially given Desiree’s comments on Nationalismus, and only once sentence that might even match the clarity of the question. Later…
Esa,
“You are welcome,” in all senses that phrase may have. Many thoughts as well, given a path that leads from (naively, as white farm boy from rural Kentucky) trying to understand the perspective of others, while sitting in the MCC, to the difficultly of coming to understand something of Vanessa (and all of her national perspectives). Later as well on this, and how I come to the position above.
As I feel oddly the least “American” of voices here, (and perhaps also the most), I hope you will joint the next round of discussion. You are more than welcome; you are needed.
“Desiree,”
Greetings, welcome, and felicitations of your voice, as well. (I wonder if “Desiree” is an actual name, or a nom de plume? Translations: “Errata,” “Desires,” “Wishes,” “Desired…”)
Equally many thoughts and responses. Your contribution led me to spend an hour or two reviewing coverage of the situation in Lebanon: and to Der Spiegel’s Photography of the crisis. (I drop you at the image that brought me the most thoughts and tears.)
If I might encapsulate my responses in a poor recital of John Donne, if “our” “interest” does not extend to the Lebanese, who are “we?”
I’ll also go so far as to mention that I use “my Nation” with at least double reference in all the above, initiating a slope that continues “our nations,” “and our world;” and to quote Donne in full:
(I am amazed to discover the epistemological position, the earlier echo of Arendt and Freud, es gibt keine schaerfe Grentzen dazwichen [alle Dinge], “there are no fixed borders between things.”
Frank:
Looks like you have added some Hemmingway to my reading list.
Lowell: Have you caught “all this has happened before, all this will happen again”? Wonderful repetition of one of Neitzsche’s lessons.
All: My thanks for your thoughts, contributions, perspective, and community. It is a wonder of our time, that you are now here, whereever I am in the world.
July 21st, 2006 at 4:14 amRory says:
Bill: here’s your quote:
“Secondly, this is an article from the Guardian which is widely known as one of if not the most biased, liberal and anti-American papers in the world. You can’t possibly believe anything written in it is fact.”
The last sentence is the troubling one. It is very easy to dismiss things based on bias of the publisher, it is much harder to go through an article and actually point out its flaws. This is why, instead of saying anything on Fox News is immediately crap, I rather look at what is being said and find where the logical flaw is. It is perfectly reasonable for me to say “it’s on Fox, I’m more doubtful of it” and for you to say “it’s in the Guardian, I’m more doubtful of it”, but to go beyond with reputable sources (and it pains me to admit that Fox is, in general “reputable”, if often wrong or flawed) is to, in learning and debating and discussing the world, fail to actually engage the other side.
Call something anti-american. fine. call it biased or liberal, fine. But the Guardian is not a source to just flippantly dismiss as nuts. And that’s where you’ve alienated, I think, myself, Derek, and Desiree in your ostentatious claims.
To continue to argue, as you did in your next post with ” I’m sure that they get the date right but everything else is debatable.” is to continue to be flippant, though much closer to the point I’m trying to make. debate with all sources, struggle with the discourse, fine. but i pray you do the same with every other source–CNN and the NY Times and Fox and the NY Post screw up with facts roughly as often as the Guardian, i’d bet.
the ideal of “objective news” is perhaps the most absurd concept ever. every edit, every stylistic decision injects some level of subjectivity. the guardian may embrace subjectivity more, but american media just cloaks it in the false mantle of “objectivity”, unlike the European model. I prefer the American model in general for a smart, engaged reader. but the european model of embracing instead of cloaking bias does not make it entirely unreliable by any stretch of the imagination.
Ken, i have little to add except it has been fascinating to try to folloow this story through your words. my head hurts (not because you’re a bad narrator, but because it is hard to follow so many nuances), but i thoroughly appreciate it. thank you.
July 21st, 2006 at 4:25 pmAlexander Woo says:
Rory – clarification requested as regards to your last post: is this really a European model, and not just a British one?
With regards to my last post, politics as peacemaking means a definition of politics as the process of coming to agreement about issues of common interest (see Arendt in this previous thread), in contrast to its perhaps more usual definition as the acquisition and exercise of power. This is sorely lacking today. How do we fix it?
July 22nd, 2006 at 6:45 pmAlexander Woo says:
This comment really belongs in this thread, but my brain has been so slow that it won’t let me post there anymore. [Alex and all-- I have 'approved' that version of the comment; ... -Ed.]
My brain has dredged up the idea of looking up what Thomas Merton has to say; my source is _The Nonviolent Alternative_ (Farrar, Straus, Giroux – NY, 1980), which is a posthumous collection. Page numbers are from that collection; titles are the original titles.
(Peace and Revolution: A footnote from Ulysses, p. 75)
Now remember that Merton was a Catholic monk, and his thoughts on nonviolence came out of his faith. He would argue, I think, that nonviolence is not really possible without some kind of Christian underpinning, while also arguing that this Christian underpinning is available to those who are not professed Christians, or even those who have never heard of the Bible.
Recall that, in the Civil Rights movement, protest actions generally began with prayer, were planned in a spirit of prayer, was supported by people praying elsewhere while the action took place, and ended with prayer if possible. This strikes me as an important factor in what happened, though somehow we have largely forgotten it.
There should be some secular substitute for prayer in this situation, but I don’t know what it is. Perhaps Mexico is still Catholic enough that this question isn’t so relevant.
On to a slightly more practical realm:
(“Faith and Violence”, p. 192)
or put partially but directly:
(“Blessed are the Meek: the Christian roots of nonviolence”, p. 214.)
Some forty years after Merton, we have had many examples of groups using nonviolent tactics without having the kind of fundamental commitment to nonviolence exhibited by Ghandi or King and expressed here, and so naturally we are more suspicious. The burden of proof has changed from Merton’s day; it now falls, fairly or not, on the practicioner of nonviolence to prove that he or she is capable of listening with an open mind, rather than the other way as Merton seems to suggest.
Almost from another world now seems the following quote, but I think it is still valid:
(“Note on Civil Disobedience and Nonviolent Revolution”, p. 226-7)
I’m sure that a poll of people who blocked traffic in San Francisco at the start of the Iraq war asking “Should you have been arrested for what you did?” would have resulted in a depressing number of people answering “Yes”.
But I digress. Certainly demonstration of willingness on the part of Obrador supporters to accept punishment for anything illegal they do might dispel some concerns people have. It might seem ridiculous for Mexico City police controlled by Obrador to arrest people demonstrating for Obrador, but I look at it as a kind of ritual. They can then have a party in jail, of course strictly complying with all the regulations.
July 22nd, 2006 at 7:13 pmRory says:
It is true in Spain and France as well. Beyond those countries, I have no direct knowledge of the newspaper situation. perhaps calling it “European” was a little overly broad, but it is not only Britain that has the newspapers that embrace subjectivity (I always enjoyed opening my copy of El Pais in Barcelona and reading the news article that wrapped around the left-ish analysis unabashedly put in the middle of the page)
July 23rd, 2006 at 1:34 pmKen Thomas '93 says:
Rory,
Thanks for all your comments.
On the morning of June 29th, Mark Taylor wrote, telling me that I was now beginning one of the greatest adventures of my life. Little did I know.
Many years ago now– before I met Vanessa Caskey ‘00 on the steps of International House (we’d been flirting, but the purple and yellow Williams T-shirt as she parked her bike did it… and that was how I would meet and bond with the other Vanessa, as well…)–
Aaron Mendellson, by then an old friend (both of us had dated Nancy… when she didn’t call for a few days, I called her mother, who had no idea who I was, to find that she was in a coma…)…
Suddenly I am remembering the most amuzing of Nancy and my lost moments, exchanging a frozen cow’s tongue in the crosswalk of Bancroft as it meets Telegraph, laughing as I took the package from her, wordlessly. We couldn’t stop giggling about that…
I can’t remember for the life of me who I was supposed to take the tongue to, whether in Boston or San Diego. Her aunt? A cousin? It’s not every day that you’re called upon to take a cow’s tongue across borders, Lord Jeff willing. One should remember.
And how long, until…? Such short weeks. I changed my flight out of San Diego the Sunday after Thanksgiving, or we would have sat together, (and that would have been the last time I saw her), (something I haven’t remembered for many years).
Aaron. Perhaps it was– it would have been– also the time I told Aaron about Nancy. I assumed he knew. It was Aaron’s second month at HAAS; keeping his job at Schwab, he had begun the night/weekend MBA program at Berkeley, and, as I told him about my first start-up, he told me about his strategy for survival while at HAAS, and of continually asking himself the question, “what is the absolute best use of my time, at this point?”
Aaron’s methods for increasing client portfolios and keeping sleep down to four hours to cram accounting practices struck me at the time as rather instrumental; I have no comments, in these days, as to which of us had thicker blinders on at the time. His lecture, and its question, “what do I need to be doing, now, to make best use of this moment?”, will always be with me.
It is hard not to become some sort of deep historical structuralist in the midst of events– or merely again a disciple (Zuhoerer, listerer) of Nietzsche’s phrase, Alle Zeichen sprechen zu uns, “all Symbols speak to us.” We slip immediately to The Interpretation of Dreams, which even in its title has new and heavy meaning to me, tonight.
Should I take the discussions of Garfield’s fate, which occured here tonight, seemingly randomly, as merely random– or as symbols, as what, half our lifetimes ago, Ethan Zuckerman described to my deaf ears as “signposts along the way?”
Vanessa spoke to me, after surgery on Friday, before she fell back out of consciousness, about events being just an accident, and of making plans to travel in France next year. How like her– to make plans at such at time!– after (somewhat) snapping at my comment, on the 3rd, to soyez brave, with the response that she “couldn’t.”
The lack of hidden theoretical perspectives in reporting in Germany and the Czech Republic has also long heartened me in its rejection of “the objectivity myth” (as we called it in Chris Water’s seminar for junior history majors). I prefer their contextualization of perspective, Le Monde’s blatant socialism over morning breakfast, to the Economist’s odd, and uninformed, declaration of Obrador as “the loser.” I may not agree (and usually don’t)– but at least I know why Le Monde’s writers support labour regulations, because they openly declare their reasoning and their theoretical underpinnings.
The Economist’s writers do not– neither their own identities. They know nothing of the man, his financial policies, neither his hopes for Mexico, nor his concrete resolve. (The same of his opponent). What lenses do they see through, as they pass their judgement on these events, as they (with little authority, but in the voice of every authority) declare Calderon a ‘winner?’ What is their process of judgement?
What is the best way to use these moments? In evaluating the electoral data, and surrounding claims, as Alex points out so well, one faces the lack of a theoretical perspective, and underpinning, which might guide understanding.
In the news office where I sat on the 2nd and afterwards, the initial assumption– “confirmed” by poll reports which I now have a table of, despite Mitofsky and his peers public declaration that “they did not release data”– was that AMLO would win by 2 to 5 percentage points (the bureau chief would, even amid the district-by-district “recount,” expect 8 points). Such was also the expectation of the AMLO campaign. Where do such judgements arise?
In the wake of that not being true, the first instinct was to try to interpret these events in light of the 2000 US elections. (The office was highly influenced by the presence of a reporter key to the interpretation of those events). Such a theory may have a great deal of validity– especially insomuch as lessons learned about manipulating a close vote count were used here– and the equally quick conclusion was that this was a repeat of 2000, and that the reporters should pack up and leave.
Such a preliminary interpretation then proved wrong, and the journalists in question are still camped in thier office in Mexico City, seeking a new interpretation of events, “the Story,” — despite one of them promising to his young daughter that he had to stay “until he saw that Mexico has a new President,” and that would be “not long.”
What is interesting to me in Bill and others’ comments above– and in the statements of the various media and many others– is how we form interpretations and judgements during such events, from the perspective of individuals, and as members of “communities of knowledge and interpretation?” When and how do we participate in, or give our allegiance to, such communities?
How do we decide that an article in the Guardian may be dismissed, without further consideration, or that the Economist, the Financial Times, or the New York Times, represents a worthy perspective to listen to? That their lens in correct?
I am extremely distrustful of the representations of such media, and of the blogging phenomena, as well. On the Washington Post’s blog, I find:
The statement above is patently ridiculous to me. I have been in rooms with many of the people it references, and their intimate friends, in the last weeks, and have seen no indication of such dynamics. I have heard, on the one hand, the oft-repeated belief that AMLO will not run again in 2012; and on the other, observed the strong personal and political relationship between Ebrard and Lopez Obrador, both face-to-face and in Ebrard’s public and televized remarks.
The suggestion that the manipulation of “personal secrets” is behind events seems to me absurd, — as well as what we more commonly call a “dirty rumour.” Yet a cloud of such suggestions hovers above the AMLO campaign, impugning its methods and intentions.
Little I have seen in blogs has been anything but the same, and this is an area where Ethan and I have had strong disagreements over the years– which I do not wish to emphasize or deepen, rather to simply mention as a signpost. When Page Baty died, I heard of the event from another Williams grad– there is every reason not to mention the name– in the form of a rumor which said that another Williams grad and friend had died in the same moments, in what I will only describe as illegal acts.
There is again every reason to leave the description at that– which may be too much– because the story was entirely untrue, and, after a few more phone calls and questions, evidently the fabrication of another Williams professor long hostile to Page. (I will not name and indict him or her, though perhaps I should). My approximate point is that, as such a rumour spread– amid people I otherwise respected– damage was done, and a negative image of Page, wholly unfair to her, solidified.
I’m doing my best not to touch on any elements of that image– but however we look at it, there are individuals in the Williams community who still look at Paige in the light of such rumours. There is some large number of individuals who have heard them, and nothing to suggest that they are not true. There is undoubtedly some noticable (hopefully small) number of individuals, who believe that a Williams student– friend or acquaintance– is dead, when she is not.
The emergence of the connected Internet (not just “blogging”,) and the speed of possible communications it has enabled, has the potential to transparently distrubte important information and ideas at an unparralled pace. But it of course has just the opposite “promise:” to distribute and reinforce dissimulations, false information, and prejudice with a speed which forstalls judgememt.
Momentary titilation, the belief in “gossip” and the yielding to pre-formed shemas of prejudiced interpretation which it requires, seem as likely to me to prevail as reasoned inquiry– and the difficulty of interpreting new events, of writing history as it unfolds, of coming to understand the surprise of new events, and to respond, appropriately.
How shall I (we) understand a leader such as Calderon (or Obrador)? In terms such as those of “conservatives” such as George Bush– or Kentucky’s Ernie Fletcher– or Ghandi, or Martin Luther King? So far, I have simply tried to chronicle my experience here, wie es eigentlich gewesen war, to choose an old illusion– often surprised, for instance, that I would write of Albert Gore’s path, a week before Obrador faced similar events.
Such a narrative is far from coherent or clear. Whatever happened to Vanessa on Thursday– though a matter of life and death– will likely never be clear.
Perhaps this is the “best use of my time–”, as I, in the back of my mind, consider Hannah Arendt’s published chronicle of Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem as a model for the presentation of far more nuanced events, and the possibility of reworking these nuanced and unclear events, into such a clear and moral account of their significance, and wonder, where such an account might be published. In our days?
I struggle to begin with an account of the evening of July 1st, now so far away in my memory and the course of events, and with the contrast of my friends’ confidence, to my own misgivings, as an overiding narrative thread that might hold the ‘key’ to explicating events — with Rogelio’s meeting with European ambassadors, still a secret between nations, and a prelude to dramatic change in our relations– and imagine the coherence that might unfold, the braid of logic.
As I wait for better news of Vanessa’s fate. How long did it take to produce Eichmann in Jerusalem? How much time do we have?
Profs. Wootter and Staight once taught me an interesting techique — “draw the curve,” they said, “then plot the points.”
The upside of such an approach is clear– see through the chaotic data, the chaff of variance and error, to a possible solution of the problem, to a coherence which explains the phenomenon. If the exact measurements do not fit– ignore the contradiction. Good advice, for calming headaches. At the same time, in the Freshman Residential Seminars, they fed me The Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay Gould’s assessment of how such techniques may lead us to false certainly and error, and how beautiful and self-deluded narratives may be entirely compelling and entirely false.
A year later, I would be a part of the committee that hired Stephen Jay Gould at Deep Springs– and hear Stephen repeat such “core concerns” about self-deception, while asking a group of nineteen- and twenty-year-olds, to choose him as their future teacher and mentor. (Having Stephen talk to Deep Springers is filling the murky tinderbox of doubt, with the dark power of disillusionment).
Thus I will end with Martin Jay– a marginalized figure from the Department of Rhetoric at Berkeley– as it sought “new” interpretations– and his penultimate question– what are the criteria for historical judgment?
July 24th, 2006 at 3:36 amfrank uible says:
Of course the criterion is “find as many historical events as possible, the not completely unreasonable interpretations of which support one’s predetermined conclusions, and then find not unpersuasive reasons to reject summarily the others”.
July 24th, 2006 at 5:28 amKen Thomas '93 says:
Good morning again, Frank. Strunk and White would no doubt shake a finger at your double negatives, while Churchill might approve; and I’m beginning to wonder if you don’t share Lopez Obrador’s technique, of scheduling the press conference early enough in the morning, to set everyone’s agenda…
July 24th, 2006 at 9:13 amfrank uible says:
Anyone who would follow my agenda, irrespective of the hour, is probably at least a little foolish if not half asleep.
July 24th, 2006 at 1:48 pmKen Thomas '93 says:
I’ll take a pound of both, please, and substitute “influence” for “set” in my sentence above.
Vanessa is relatively OK, if still under the influence of painkillers, and determinedly planning both how to get to work tomorrow, and how to travel in the Middle East next month with a brace holding her fractured pelvic bone. (I’m still waiting for the full story).
July 24th, 2006 at 3:31 pmAlexander Woo says:
Ken’s comments sent me to my bookshelf for Walker Percy’s novel _The Last Gentleman_, a novel all about the ambiguity of signs.
Unfortunately, there are piles of work (not to mention laundry) I have to get done before leaving for Toronto in 38 hours or so.
July 25th, 2006 at 1:47 am