David Foster Wallace, the novelist, essayist and humorist best known for his 1996 novel “Infinite Jest,” was found dead Friday night at his home in Claremont, according to the Claremont Police Department. He was 46.
Jackie Morales, a records clerk at the department, said Wallace’s wife called police at 9:30 p.m. Friday saying she had returned home to find that her husband had hanged himself.
Wallace, who had taught creative writing at Pomona College since 2002, was on leave this semester.
If you’d like to hear him in his own words, this interview on Charlie Rose is a good start. His segment starts at 23:17:
It’s been ages since I watched UFO, so I don’t remember its title sequence, which takes the Andersons’ storytelling-by-montage approach and bears the “future as seen from the seventies” look that is the Anderson’s stock in trade. I also don’t recall its theme music, which has to be the most jazz-a-riffic theme for a science fiction show ever. Here it is, for your enjoyment:
Yesterday, I saw a number of articles on the ‘net saying that Republican Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin seemed to have no idea what the Bush Doctrine was. I’ve been busy with work and other stuff, so I decided to bookmark them for later reading.
This morning, while thinking “It’s pretty sad that Palin, with her much-vaunted ‘foreign policy experience’ (remember: she deals with it every day — she lives close to Russia!) doesn’t know what the Bush Doctrine is” came up with a more interesting question: Do I know what the Bush Doctrine is?
So I decided to hold off until I spelled out what I thought the main points of the Bush Doctrine were before watching the Palin interview video and Googling for “Bush Doctrine”. It’s only fair, isn’t it?
If you feel like playing along, don’t scroll down until you’ve written down what you believe to be the main points of the Bush Doctrine. I’ll stick a big picture below so that you don’t peek at my answers until you’ve come up with yours…
What I Thought the Bush Doctrine Was
Here’s what I came up with:
Pre-emptive strikes are now cool. The Cold War-era doctrine of deterrence does not apply when fighting terrorism, which isn’t like fighting another country. If someone poses a clear threat to the U.S., get in the first shot; don’t give them another 9/11.
If need be, go it alone. When possible, try to get the cooperation of other nations, but it’s not absolutely necessary. You see this sentiment reflected in a lot of the right-wing blogs and books like Mark “Lotion Boy of the Neocon Bathhouse” Steyn’s America Alone.
Ensure that the U.S. remains the #1 military power. The world is a better place when the U.S. is the superpower.
Regime change. Peace will abound when unfriendly dictatorships are converted into friendly democracies.
Free Markets. Peace also comes through prosperity, which in turn is created through free markets.
Well, that sounds like the Bush Doctrine to me, or at least like what I heard in the time between 9/11, which led to the Bush Doctrine, and the Iraq War, which is its first serious exercise and test.
What Does Sarah Palin Think the Bush Doctrine Is?
Here’s the part of the video in which ABC’s Charlie Gibson asks Sarah Palin about the Bush Doctrine. It gave me a sense of deja vu: it reminded me of all those times when a classmate (or hey, sometimes it was me) who didn’t do the assigned reading got called on to answer a question in front of the class.
Here’s the transcript of the video:
Charlie Gibson: Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?
Sarah Palin: In what respect, Charlie?
Gibson: The Bush — well, what do you — what do you interpret it to be?
Palin: His world view.
Gibson: No, the Bush doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq war.
Palin: I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do is rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hell bent on destroying our nation. There have been blunders along the way, though. There have been mistakes made. And with new leadership, and that’s the beauty of American elections, of course, and democracy, is with new leadership comes opportunity to do things better.
Gibson: The Bush doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense, that we have the right to a preemptive strike against any other country that we think is going to attack us. Do you agree with that?
Palin: I agree that a president’s job, when they swear in their oath to uphold our Constitution, their top priority is to defend the United States of America.
I know that John McCain will do that and I, as his vice president, families we are blessed with that vote of the American people and are elected to serve and are sworn in on January 20, that will be our top priority is to defend the American people.
Gibson: Do we have a right to anticipatory self-defense? Do we have a right to make a preemptive strike again another country if we feel that country might strike us?
Palin: Charlie, if there is legitimate and enough intelligence that tells us that a strike is imminent against American people, we have every right to defend our country. In fact, the president has the obligation, the duty to defend.
Gibson: Do we have the right to be making cross-border attacks into Pakistan from Afghanistan, with or without the approval of the Pakistani government?
Palin: Now, as for our right to invade, we’re going to work with these countries, building new relationships, working with existing allies, but forging new, also, in order to, Charlie, get to a point in this world where war is not going to be a first option. In fact, war has got to be, a military strike, a last option.
Gibson: But, Governor, I’m asking you: We have the right, in your mind, to go across the border with or without the approval of the Pakistani government.
Palin: In order to stop Islamic extremists, those terrorists who would seek to destroy America and our allies, we must do whatever it takes and we must not blink, Charlie, in making those tough decisions of where we go and even who we target.
Gibson: And let me finish with this. I got lost in a blizzard of words there. Is that a yes? That you think we have the right to go across the border with or without the approval of the Pakistani government, to go after terrorists who are in the Waziristan area?
Palin: I believe that America has to exercise all options in order to stop the terrorists who are hell bent on destroying America and our allies. We have got to have all options out there on the table.
If you haven’t yet come up with your list of points describing what you think the Bush Doctrine is, you have one last chance to write them down! Don’t scroll down until you’ve come up with that list!
So What is the Bush Doctrine?
The National Security Strategy Report [PDF] published in September 2002 is the reference document for the Bush Doctrine. The chapter titles after the introductory chapter spell out the main points of the doctrine:
Champion Aspirations for Human Dignity
Strengthen Alliances to Defeat Global Terrorism and Work to Prevent Attacks Against Us and Our Friends
Work with others to Defuse Regional Conflicts
Prevent Our Enemies from Threatening Us, Our Allies, and Our Friends with Weapons of Mass Destruction
Ignite a New Era of Global Economic Growth through Free Markets and Free Trade
Expand the Circle of Development by Opening Societies and Building the Infrastructure of Democracy
Develop Agendas for Cooperative Action with the Other Main Centers of Global Power
Transform America’s National Security Institutions to Meet the Challenges and Opportunities of the Twenty-First Century
A shorter and oft-cited description of the Bush Doctrine is The Bush National Security Strategy, a paper by Keir A. Lieber (Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Notre Dame) and Robert J. Lieber (Professor of Government and Foreign Service, Georgetown University). It distills the Bush Doctrine to these four key points:
Free Markets. Sounds like point 5 of the National Security Strategy Report, “Ignite a New Era of Global Economic Growth through Free Markets and Free Trade”.
My points sound more like Lieber and Lieber’s summary of the NSS Report than the actual NSS report, but I think I did a decent job considering everything I know about the Doctrine comes from poking around political blogs, watching the news, reading some magazines and some casual perusing at Chapters and Barnes and Noble. I’m not so much a political junkie as I am a person who is interested in systems of all kinds and especially systems of people. It might also be the by-product of having emigrated from a country that was a kleptocracy at the time, and is now just a half-assed corrupt banana republic-style democracy.
What’s Sarah Palin’s excuse?
(If you went through the exercise of listing the points of the Bush Doctrine, feel free to let us know how you did in the comments!)
On that note, let me leave you with one more image (and yes, the second image is Photoshopped):
The first Microsoft commercial featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld established them as oddball buddies in a commercial running one minutes and thirty seconds. In the follow-up, they’re living with a suburban family as an exercise in being in touch with ordinary people and weirdness ensues. The version shown below is the long one — it runs for four minutes and thirty seconds, and features a teensy bit of technology and tech terms (for a brief moment, Gates talks about object-oriented design) and another “Bill, give me a sign!” ending.
Update: The screen capture of Jack Layton’s Twitter page shown below is a Photoshop edit — all the entries save the second, third and fourth are real, and the “hack” never happened. The graphic passed to me was a joke, and I fell for it. It happens sometimes.
(But the security tip still applies!)
Jack Layton, leader of the New Democratic Party here in Canada, has a Twitter account. He — or his personal assistant — has been posting in a style that sounds more like a real human being than a press release.
What he (or his personal assistant) has to remember is to make sure you’ve logged out of services like Twitter, GMail and so on after using a public computer. Otherwise, someone can hop on his account and post entries under his name…
Screen capture courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.
Update: Remember this about Layton’s Twitter account being used by unauthorized people:
Prime Minister Stephen Harper (or his personal assistant) also has a Twitter account, but it sounds like a series of short press releases, which is counter to his current marketing strategy, an attempt to convince the public that he can operate in more modes than “robot”, “bully” and “wanna-be Dubya”:
Young people are often exposed to temptations and pressures to experiment with things that seem popular. Here are some likely scenarios:
Someone dares you to smoke a cigarette.
A well-intentioned teacher urges you to pursue higher education at a university.
You are invited to a party where alcohol and drugs will be freely available.
“Why don’t you post your profile on the internet?” someone suggests.
A friend invites you to watch a movie that features violence or immorality.
If you are ever confronted with any of such situations, what will you do? Will you simply give in, or will you carefully consider what the “end afterward” could be? You would be wise to ask yourself: “Can a man rake together fire in his bosom and yet his very garments not be burned? Or can a man walk upon the coals and his fee themselves not be scorched?” — Proverbs 6:27, 28.
I can see arguments against smoking, parties where drugs and alcohol are freely available and even movies with violence or immorality. I arched my eyebrow at the point about posting a profile on the internet. But what really got me was the bit about the well-intentioned teacher urging you to pursue higher education at a university (which is why I emphasized it in both the picture and the text).
That book-learnin’, it’s the devil’s workshop! It’s a silly belief, but there are all sorts of people out there — and not just religious nuts — who think that higher education is a bad idea, and you see echoes of that sentiment when Republican politicos hit their opponents with the “elitist” label.
