• Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA’s Spytechs, from Communism to al-Qaeda by Wallace, Melton and Schleshinger
  Fascinating, scary, and geeky. With great diagrams and photographs explaining how spy devices were constructed and worked, and with interesting stories about various successes and failures, all told from the perspective of the “techs” working behind the scenes to support operations. For someone interested in geopolitical history, technology, security issues and government secrecy, it was a must read and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Warning: the book minimizes any discussion of the ethical/moral/legal implications of the spycraft, and the human toll takes a backseat to the geekery.

• The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
  Important, thorough, and ineffective. Dawkins tries to cover every possible angle of every possible argument that there is no God, declaring that “we are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.” But while his rambling logic may be sound and his stance bold, it eventually comes off as obnoxious and overly hostile to be useful to anyone except another militant atheist. He also doesn’t address versions of God that still may appear supernatural, but that don’t ascribe otherness, intelligent designer status to God, e.g. animism, pantheism (though in other interviews, he says he has no problem with those versions). The question “can science give meaning to existence?” is core. I did find I tend to agree with Dawkins that the Universe doesn’t owe us meaning, and that we can give our own lives meaning through what we create, or we can let the meaning of life come from how we understand/study/interpret/live out our existence.
• Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil by Michael C. Ruppert
  Rambling, depressing, and comprehensive. Still not done with all 617 pages, but I’m pretty sure what I’ll find in the rest – more of Ruppert’s dramatic and exhaustively researched connecting of peak oil and energy issues, climate change, the CIA, the Presidency, the planning and execution of 9/11, PNAC, the drug trade, PROMIS, the Saudi Royal Family, economic policy, international politics, surveillance and civil liberties issues, government corruption, and personal failures. The book is not well organized and at times is flat out incoherent, but still has a lot of good original research in it. More important are the correlations that Ruppert makes between all of the above topics over the last few decades, and the horrifying conclusions that can be drawn if even some of them are accurate. It’s a tour de force in assessing the sad state of our civilization, but nothing will keep it from being characterized by most as a total wackjob’s self-indulgent conspiracy theories. Those seeking truth AND clarity must look elsewhere.

If you’ve read any of these and have additional thoughts, please share. Or, if you are also a consumer of the written word, let me know what’s in your reading list these days.

I’ll just say right now that this book is really going to tick off a lot of people, especially those who might trend toward an unquestioning loyalty to a certain current U.S. President and his policies. Heck, the book cover is going to tick those people off. It says some stuff that will seem pretty outrageous to many, treasonous to some, and perhaps worthy of retaliation to a few. For his sake, I hope Mr. Alten has thought that part through well enough, but I commend him for staking a successful writing career on it.

As engaging of real world issues as the book was, I fear that the weak and much too nicely wrapped up ending of The Shell Game is a sign of the extreme difficulty in actually achieving the lofty state of affairs that the world reaches in Alten’s telling. By 2012, corrupt government officials are being held accountable, the media is willing to report on meaningful issues that affect the future of our culture, Presidential campaigns are fairly funded by federal election funds, lobbyists and 527s are outlawed, rigged touch-screen voting machines are exposed, the Saudi Royal Family is exiled, Ethanol is on its way to replacing gasoline at the pump, and wind turbines are powering 50 percent of American homes. And unfortunately, quotes from John Lennon (“imagine…”) and Gandhi (“be the change…”) top it all off. It’s a great vision, it really is, but come on.

The Shell Game isn’t for everyone, and again, it’s going to tick a lot of people off. But if you like to be challenged a bit and if you’re curious about what a novel cut from the cloth of real events, real questions about 9/11, and real oil-related troubles that lie ahead might look like, it’s worth trying on.

No End In Sight is pitched as an insider’s tale of the reckless decision-making and subsequent incompetence that has propelled the invasion and occupation of Iraq forward from the planning stages to the present day, and it satisfies that characterization quite well. I was impressed with the broad scope (in rank, affiliation and political persuasion alike) of the subjects that writer/director Charles Ferguson was able to secure for the film – everyone from former State Department leader Richard Armitage to soldiers and diplomats who had been on the ground in Iraq carrying out the haphazard instructions from afar. What’s more, they seemed unusually candid and authentic, almost humbled by the chance to reflect – saying out loud how badly things were done, clearly second guessing themselves and their decision-making process they engaged in, barely containing their frustration at the conflicts and politicking within the Bush administration that prevented any real meaningful collaboration or planning to take place. It was amazing to hear from some of the people who were ostensibly planning for life in Iraq after the invasion, and all the roadblocks and impossible tasks they encountered. It reminded me somewhat of Errol Morris’s The Fog of War, with the same kinds of long, uncomfortable pauses as people who were directly responsible for life and death decisions came to grips with their place in history.

Beyond the interviews, the film is a great chronology of the invasion and occupation as a whole. With the inattentive and lopsided media coverage the many-hundred-billion dollar adventure gets, it’s all too easy to forget that it’s been going on for more than 4 years and that so many different milestones of presidential, congressional, and national identity (many of them unfortunate) have been reached along the way. But despite the moving stories of discontent from U.S. soldiers and the wrangling of egos and power agendas in the U.S., this is about huge losses of life, total destruction of communities, cities, cultures, livelihoods, and a profound sense of injustice, all sustained by the Iraqi people at the hands of our country’s military/industrial complex. The collection of footage often never shown in mainstream media for its heartbreaking implications is in itself a story of unacceptable disconnection from this tragedy.

One of the soldiers interviewed for the film, Field Artillery Gunner Hugo Gonzales, talked about how his life now was preoccupied by trying to find some meaning in the occupation there, especially given his debilitating injuries and near-constant pain. I felt such sadness for him and his fellow soldiers, knowing they have in most cases done what they believe is right and necessary, and that some of them are now feeling pangs of doubt (if not plain outrage) about the nature and origins of their mission. As I walked out of No End in Sight, it was clear to me that any universally useful meaning will probably only come years from now, when the machinations of national and cultural self-consciousness will finally lead to some wider-spread sense that the whole ordeal was a catastrophic mistake. But until then, the movie gives us as much perspective as might be possible while the battles continue and more lives are needlessly lost.

While President George W. Bush would not be interviewed for the movie, other interviewers have asked him and his advisers about the logic and decision-making process that governed the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and most often the response is to brush off the mistakes of the past, saying that dwelling on them doesn’t really serve a useful purpose, and to talk about what needs to happen to move forward (hey, that sounds familiar!). While I understand this perspective, I think it is horribly flawed.

And so I really appreciate that in The Assault on Reason, Al Gore took the time to look deeply at the thought processes, public and private conversations, and general approach to decision making that has dominated the Bush administration’s tenure, not the least outcome of which was the mess in Iraq. Gore starts with the psychology of fear and takes us on a whirlwind tour of how it is used to subvert our appreciation of reason, even to the point where the decisions we make are not in our own self-interest. He looks at the language and framing used by modern politicians (certainly with a critical focus pointed right at conservatives) and how every pressing issue of the day — from climate change to foreign policy to immigration to Katrina to the economy — are being poorly addressed or not addressed at all because of the paralysis of the nation due to these tactics. The sad part of his thesis is that, for those who are assaulting reason, it’s all about power:

Throughout history, our innate fear of others-who-are-different-from-us has combined all too frequently with some malignant dogma, masquerading as a message from God, to unleash the most horrific violence and oppression in the repertoire of hell. Moreover, this deadly form of exclusivist group passion can be virtually invulnerable to reason. So it is especially useful to demagogues who learn how to fan it and exploit it to gain and consolidate power. –p. 48

Like some interviewees in No End In Sight, Gore effectively lambastes the Bush administration for its approach to Iraq, but does so in the context of the notion that the Iraq invasion was a distraction from the search for Osama bin Laden and those who attacked the U.S. on 9-11. He returns to the amazing phenomenon where some high percentage of U.S. citizens surveyed incorrectly believed Saddam Hussein had something to do with those attacks, and the rhetoric and carefully planned talking points of the neocon planners that facilitated that trend. In other words, because of the way reason has been assaulted and the truth twisted, lots of people died.

Gore is optimistic about possibilities for improvement and solutions to the phenomenon he lays out, but I’m not sure I can agree with the specific paths he sees to resolution. His primary conclusion is that if Americans can reclaim the practice of meaningful public debate about the issues that face us, we can once again be a nation governed by reason and true democracy. Specifically, Gore sees the promise of the Internet as the key vehicle to that reclaiming, and goes on to promote some of his own efforts with Current TV to that effect.

…the Internet is perhaps the greatest source of hope for reestablishing an open communications environment in which conversation of democracy can flourish. It has extremely low entry barriers for individuals. The ideas that individuals contribute are dealt with, in the main, according to the rules of a meritocracy of ideas. It is the most interactive medium in history and the one with the greatest potential for connecting individuals to one another and to a universe of knowledge. –p. 260

It sounds really good, but as George Lakoff and others have identified, pinning our hopes for the resurrection of a nation driven by progressive values on the notion that everyone just needs to be more reasonable is NOT a strategy for success. The reality is that people will let their understanding of the world and their short-term preferences override any deep comprehension of what might be reasonable or right; even, as I mentioned above, when they are making decisions that conflict with their own self-interest. I’ve experienced that often here in my home town, where some of my attempts to engage those with opposing viewpoints using the tools of logic and reason results only in further misunderstanding, animosity, and even outright resentment at the attempt. I’ve come to understand this as something I can’t really completely blame on the people I’m engaging – if I can’t interact with them in a way that is meaningful and useful to both of us, then that’s partly my fault, too.

Still, Gore’s clarity of vision is worth hearing out, even if it isn’t a comprehensive one. As with soldier Gonzales` attempt to find meaning in the events of the past four years, Gore does manage to make a lot of sense of how we got where we are in a fear-based national identity, and I consider The Assault on Reason to be an essential contribution to the discussion about what we want for ourselves from here on out.

Oh wait, did I just say “principled and respectful”? I must have made a horrible mistake somewhere, because at tonight’s talk, about 30 minutes into Kristol’s speech, a student-looking person got up on stage and smacked Kristol square in the face with a pie.

After coating the distinguished guest’s face, the pie’s contents also proceeded past Kristol and onto the face and suit of Earlham president Doug Bennett, and then onto the stage floor and curtains. The aluminum pie tin sat squashed on the floor next to the podium, the audience yelled, the thrower ran out, and the evening deteriorated.

So much for respect.

How embarrassing! How absolutely disgusting. To his great credit, after a brief pause and apology from Bennett, Kristol wiped some of the pie off the key parts of his face, and then essentially continued his talk without missing a beat, as the audience sat stunned.

It would be too easy to claim that the actions of this one person clearly in no way represent the values or perspective of the rest of Earlham or the others in attendance that night, but I guarantee you that this argument will hold no water with those — locally and nationally — who already have a low opinion of those “crazy liberals” that inhabit places (both geographical and cultural) like Earlham. This pie-thrower has single-handedly reinforced every stereotype that small liberal arts colleges and liberals in general work to dispell about their approach to political and social debate. He embarrassed and discredited (as the public will see it) an institution that is one of the few places I know of successfully practicing appreciative inquiry and effective dialogue. He has given credence to the notion that liberals are just hate-mongering selfish people who can’t stand to hear a viewpoint they don’t like.

The politically active among us have probably all run the imagery through our minds, the metaphorical throwing of a pie in the face of the person/place/thing we don’t like. But when the metaphor is turned into action, it is exposed for the silly and childish act that it is: hurling food at someone because you can’t engage them in a real dialogue. Fortunately, this approach is not at all what Earlham is about, as I’m sure will be said about seventeen million ways via opinion articles and community meetings for the rest of the semester.

But tonight’s event will likely only be remembered in the context of the pie incident, and not for any of the potential it might have had for real debate or progress which, in what seems to be the trend with the politically active everywhere, has once again been squandered. In the end, the pie is dripping down the face of everyone except William Kristol.

I have no interest in perpetuating conspiracy theories (which is obviously why I read the Drudge Report…er…), but it sure does seem like Mr. Rumsfeld is finding quite creative ways to draw negative attention to himself these days.