The Power and the Money

Santo Domingo

This is a great city.  It’s also a horrible city.  Neither should be a surprise.

Sadly, I’ve been mostly limited to the central area this trip.  I’m here for work, not play.  The same was true of Puerto Rico, of course, but there I had more time to work in a more-organized and less-interesting archive. 

Central Santo Domingo — the Zona Colonial and Gazcué — have no areas of truly concentrated desperation that I could find tucked away within them.  Nor do they appear to have any areas of concentrated nice, the kind of wealth amid poverty that makes you want to don a Ché Guevara T-shirt and start hollering, “¡Hasta la victoria siempre!”

Traffic is chaotic, and it’s not helped by the guaguas, private minibuses that ply most of the city’s routes despite an attempt to establish a municipal bus system.  Nor is it helped by the paucity of signage — you need to navigate by vector in most parts of this town.  I do not know whether that is the cause of the effect of the fact that Dominicans appear to pay even less attention to speed limits, posted signage (when it exists), or traffic lights than Mexicans. 

Bienvenidos al extranjero vecino

I got into Santo Domingo at night, after a two-hour flight and a three-hour wait on the tarmac at Miami International.  Tornado alert.  No s**t — tornados.  In South Florida.  Not that they told us that — just anodyne “weather conditions” — but in this age of cellphones I could surreptiously call my brother and ask him what was up.  He told me “tornado alert” in about the same tone of voice that he’d use to say “alien invasion” or “Argentine hip-hop.”

The air conditioning on the plane was iffy, and the flight was packed, but otherwise it wasn’t bad as waits go.  One of the few advantages of being short is that coach seats on American Airlines aren’t as uncomfortable as they otherwise might be.  There were lots of kids (not babies, not toddler, kids) on the flight, maybe a full quarter of the coach passengers, and I found the resulting roar to be strangely soothing.  When they first announced the delay everyone stood up and started milling about, but once the slightly annoyed stewardess asked everyone to sit down I was surprised by the alacrity with which everyone took their seats and remained in them for the remaining two-a-half-hours of our wait.

The Aeropuerto Internacional de las Américas isn’t bad.  As with so many Latin American airports — albeit not Mexico’s not anymore — foreigners speed through faster than the locals.  There was a fellow at the front of the line guiding people to the immigration booths … but, strangely, he didn’t seem to speak any English.  I wound up translating for the woman ahead of me; he wound up letting us all go through without getting our ten-dollar tourist cards.  Here’s hoping I don’t regret that when I try to leave.

Customs, exit into a foyer filled with fast-food restaurants and ATM machines, and onto the taxi stands.  The fellow who drove me into town was fairly taciturn, although he did ask me if I was from Mexico. 

My accent options in Spanish are:  (1) generic unidentified foreign type, usually pegged as French for reasons I don’t pretend to understand; (2) gringo — or on a good day Costa Rican, the only Spanish-speakers that I know of who pronounce the “r” in a mushy American-English way and sometimes elid the Spanish “e” to something more like the “i”; or (3) exaggeratedly stereotypically laughably Mexican.  Which one I adopt depends upon neurological and biochemical factors beyond my control. 

The highway downtown seemed rather nice, but it was night.  We crossed over the Río Ozama and pulled off the cloverleaf onto the riverfront road, and we passed a sight that brought home that No Estamos en Puerto Rico …

Sabiduría del occidente para los griegos

Doug recently wrote in A Fistful of Euros, “The Macedonia name issue is so stupid that it’s almost physically painful to write about it.”  I have to agree.  I made the mistake of scrolling down the comments thread.  Jee-sus.

Viewed from the extranjero vecino, the whole thing is incomprehensible.  Let me recap.  A smaller weaker country on the northern border of another has the same name as a province of the latter.  The larger stronger country fears that as long as its neighbor claims that name, it might also claim the province.  How the whole smaller-weaker versus stronger-larger thing would be overcome is left unexplained.

Somebody from the Spanish-speaking part of this hemisphere needs to take a Greek minister aside at a U.N. meeting and say something like:  “Listen, buddy, I understand your problem with northern neighbors and names.  We have a larger stronger northern neighbor that claims our entire continent in its name.  And, you know, periodically invades.  Like, recently, not umpty-scrump centuries ago.  But you don’t see us making a public fuss about it, so will you get over yourself already?”

Conversely, they could just go with Alta and Baja Macedonia.  Don’t even translate “Alta” and “Baja,” just transliterate ‘em.  I’m sure they sound fine in Greek, exotic like.  Be good for tourism. 

Doug, can it really be about the name?

El estado dominicano

My muse has left me for this trip.  Literally.  Amma had to take an exam on Tuesday, and then she needed to be in Philadelphia on Thursday.  So I’m here in Santo Domingo by myself, trying to think of something to blog about when I should be getting some sleep.

The Dominican Republic and the United States have a very long and tight relationship.  The relationship is so tight, in fact, that I’m not sure that the country really fits into the typical American conception of “foreign.”  The Russians have a phrase for the former territories of the Soviet Union: the “near abroad.”  Well, America has its own extranjero vecino, and this country is part of it.  Which makes the United States, of course, the vecino extrajero of the Dominican Republic.  (Or maybe just the vecino extraño.) 

You see the relationship right at immigration, where a giant sign cajoles overseas Dominicans to register to vote.  Dominican-Americans form a key electoral bloc in this country, which is why the major Dominican political parties have offices in San Juan, Miami, and New York. 

The current president, Leonel Fernández, is running for re-election to his third (non-consecutive) term.  Below is a 1996 interview with Fernández from the Charlie Rose show, right after he won the first time.  He says interesting things, but the most interesting thing is the accent in which he says them.

I’m telling you, he could win election anywhere between New Haven and Trenton with that voice.   

The good old days really were better, except when they weren't ... or, something nice to say about Ronald Reagan

The paranoid style in American politics is always present, but it waxes and wanes.  We're currently in a waning period, but it certainly hasn't waned as much as it has in the past.

Here is a 1984 ad from the Reagan-Bush campaign.  It's about the Soviet threat, and aims to convince voters that the Reagan Administration has the correct approach.

To a modern viewer, this half-century old ad appears moderate, reasonable, and as intelligent as one would expect for a 30-second piece.  It bases its argument on prudence against a potential threat, and clearly states what the admakers believe an adequate insurance policy to be.  Contrast with this from the 2004 campaign:

A lie, an information-free bit of "contextual" information (six billion dollars!), an aversion, and a mention of an unspecified wolf-like program related activity that will presumably eat your children.  It's quite horrible, and it's quite horrifying that the Bush-Cheney campaign believed such ads would be effective.

How the Clinton ad stacks up, then, depends on your point of comparison.  As paranoid ads go, it's awful pandering compared to the artful 1984 ad that plays upon concrete fears with real prudence.  But compared to the 2004 slanderous cesspool of a piece, it's quite mild.  On the other hand, the Obama campaign's response manages to mock the whole paranoid trope while going to a whole new level of concrete in a 30-second spot.  Go below and see for yourself. 

Turnaround

I'm off to the Dominican Republic on Sunday.  Amma can't join me.  That makes me sad.

Mike asks what was controversial about the Clinton ad.  The satire tried to answer that question:  the ad first tries to scare you without telling you why you should be scared, and then insists that only one person can protect you without telling you how. 

It turns out that the Clinton campaign used stock footage in that ad, and the little girl whom Hillary is keeping safe in her bed is now a young adult.  She's also an Obama precinct captain.  And here she is:

Blair on the candidates ... no, not that Blair, the other one

What is the principle difference between the Democratic candidates on foreign policy?  Well, as with so many things, Eric Blair had something both non-obvious and non-trivial to say on the topic, although (also as with so many things) he had no idea of the specifics to which his words would apply:

Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By “patriotism” I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.

Barack Obama is a patriot.  Hillary Clinton is too, but she also has a nationalist streak.  As a former American nationalist who has had the impulse beaten out of me by a relentless onslaught of … uh … facts, I find the difference significant and mildly worrisome.  Emphasis on mildly.  Mildly.  MILDLY. 

Hillary Clinton talks as though she sees the United States as a nation with a mission, endowed by the draw of history.  (Whether she really believes this is another story.)  That last clause is important, because it’s how rational Americans convince themselves that their nationalism is not nationalism:  history really did endow the United States with an oversized importance at a lot of junctures over the 20th century.  Nationalists conflate that with a special superiority. 

Patriots, on the other hand, think that we had the great bad luck to be an oversized democracy at a lot of moments when it made sense for our elected representatives to assume the burden of providing international public goods in order to further our own short-term self-interest.  Nice and all, but a giant-sized Greenland would have done about all the same good things, and maybe even less bad ones.   

Barack Obama is a patriot.  Therefore, Barack Obama is not a nationalist.  Therefore, Barack Obama is also not an internationalist.  Oh, it will be an advantage for the United States that so many of y’all outside our borders get confused at the proposition “non-nationalist ≠ internationalist,” but the truth will be that President Obama will, at the beginning and the end of the day, be looking out for Number One, meaning the U.S. of A., whose well-being he’ll define as the well-being of the constituencies that he cares the most about.  (And who are they?  See season 2 of The Wire.)  That will be a revolutionary change from the last eight years.  Just not the one many people expect.

What the above abstractions mean in practice below the fold.

Time to grow up

For those of you who don't know, here's the infamous 3am advertisement run by the Hillary campaign in Ohio.

Please scroll down to the previous post and ignore this one

Please use your effort on the previous post.  This one is merely to show that I am a fair man.  The Obama campaign is, in fact, quite capable of astounding lapses in taste, even if they don't occur quite as often as in the other major Democratic campaign.

Below the fold, however, is something genuinely funny, and actually germane to the below post that I'd like you all to scroll down to and make me feel better about.

A serious moment, please, on an unexpected issue

I have said, here and elsewhere, that Hillary Clinton would make a fine president.  The policy distance between Obama and her are small, and while I tend to prefer Obama's political and foreign policy priors, I do not have a problem with hers.  Nor, until recently, have I had a problem with her campaign.  That, I must say, has earned me some jeremiahs from other Obama supporters, including Amma. 

I still think that Hillary Clinton would make a fine president.  But her campaign is beginning to disturb me.  It's no one thing, more of an accumulation of small cuts.

To those of you who don't know who he is (our foreign readers, I presume) Keith Olbermann hosts a nightly news broadcast that normally puts a slightly funny spin on the news.  During the Bush Administration, however, he took to occasionally supplementing his broadcasts with full ten-minute speeches on one issue or another, from an openly Democratic point of view.  I always enjoyed them.  He has, I think, captured what is going wrong in this campaign, and what is leaving an increasingly sour taste in my mouth.

Clinton's path to the nomination, as we have discussed on this blog, now involves pandering to the worst instincts of Rust Belt white ethnics.  It also involves specious attacks on competence, and stupid claims of experience.  It is increasingly making me angry.  It is also increasingly counterproductive.  Will the superdelegates support a candidate whose drive to victory involved rending the party's coalition over purely symbolic issues?  Can they? 

Not sure what this means

On the one hand, this video is a wonderful sign of how 21st-century America really has managed to create something uniquely American out of widely disparate cultural traditions.

On the other hand, it kinda sucks.  I'm trying to find something deeper to say about it that won't come back to haunt me, and I just can't.    So I'm hoping that all of you will do so in the comments.

Not-your-normal-HDTD-post annoyed-horserace-analysis-related-program-activities

I am annoyed at Bill Clinton.  Why am I annoyed at Bill Clinton?  I am annoyed at Bill Clinton because the campaign of which he is a part just tried to force Barack Obama to state that he would not accept the vice-presidency.  By having her number-one surrogate propose a Clinton-Obama ticket at this point in the campaign, Hillary wanted to regain the cloak of inevitability after her wins in Ohio and Texas.  That, of course, banked on Barack Obama placing his ambition above his patriotism, because Obama knows quite well that the Clinton campaign has boxed itself into the corner of needing him as her veep in order to win in November, should it somehow pull out the nomination. 

I find that annoying.  Not evil, not dirty politics, just annoying.  And a bit weird. 

Anyway, click the below for our man's response:

He's quite good, isn't he?  Thoughts?

Holy $#!%!

It just sunk in that the Democrats just won a special election.

In Illinois.  In Aurora, Illinois.  You know, where Wayne's World was set.  And Denny Hastert's old district.  Denny Hastert!  You know, the guy who used to have Nancy Pelosi's job.  This is cracking the safest of safe seats, my friends. 

If I weren't still in the office finishing things that need to be done an hour ago, I'd crack open a bottle of champagne. 

What’s in your pocket?

A ipod, of course, and it’s a sign of my age that I can't stop referring to it as a “walkman.”  It’s equally a sign of Apple's fine marketing that I am not representative in having this tic. 

A few months ago, the question “what’re the top ten songs on your ipod?” flew about the Internets.  Most of those who bothered to respond lied, of course.  Responders also tended to post song titles with no explanation of review, because of course those who were cool enough knew them and those who weren't should simply trust in their taste and go look them up.  Props to Randy McDonald for posting explanations with his song videos.  After all, these lists were interesting because of what they said about the person owning the ipod, not for the music itself — that’s why people lied.  But it always is possible to discover stuff that you never even knew you liked.   

So here’s my real top-ten list, with reviews and explanations and the occasional video.  Plus, a view of a typical suburban subdivision in Ponce, as mentioned in a previous post.

Orgulloso de ser argentino 2

A long time ago, Doug and I had an interesting discussion about what it meant to say that a nation was in the "First World."  The exchange seems to have been lost in the interstices of the Internets, but a lot of our conclusion boiled down to, "Appearances are deceptive."

Which makes this very interesting:

Why would people think that Cuba is doing better than northern Mexico, when the opposite is true? And more broadly, why do rich countries like Iceland and Korea feel much poorer than they are, while the opposite is true in countries like the Czech Republic?

The general rule is that countries that are historically poor, but become richer in a short span still don't have much accumulated wealth, and thus look poor to our eyes.  In contrast, previously rich places that are struggling still have the lingering wealth accumulation. Cuba fits this pattern. As does much of Europe.

I'd add that this effect has very real repercussions, well beyond touristic attitudes. My favorite example is Argentina during the 1990s, which went on a debt-fuelled spending spree. Every week one investment banker or other would fly down to Buenos Aires, put his team up at the Alvear Palace hotel, eat great food, drink great wine, enjoy a lively and vibrant culture, and pitch the finance ministry on a new bond issue. BA felt so prosperous and European (and, it must be said, white) that people ended up believing the evidence of their own eyes rather than the numbers in front of them.

In fact, large swathes of Argentina - and even of Buenos Aires, outside the parts visited by foreigners - were desperately poor all along. And eventually Argentina ended up defaulting on a hundred billion dollars or so of foreign debt. If Buenos Aires had looked more like Sao Paulo or Manila, I doubt that Wall Street would have been willing or able to finance the unsustainable boom for as long as it did.

In other words, becaues Argentina used to be incredibly wealthy, back at the turn of the century, it still felt wealthy at the end of the century. Which sowed the seeds of the disastrous crash of 2001-2.

Thoughts? 

Orgulloso de ser argentino

Porque sin duda entienden la discriminación de precios.

Hat tip:  Leticia Arroyo Abad.  She calls it the gringo tax.