Limbic or Cortical?

As someone who never succumbed to the audacity of hope, I have a hard time deciding how to respond to the anti-Obama alarmism of the post-stimulus week. Since Obama caved on FISA back in July, I was not that surprised to see his administration similarly cave on the secrecy issues raised by the British High Court a week ago, and I am glad to see The New York Times waste no words to tell him this was not acceptable. Similarly, I thought Tim Geithner's bailout plan was almost as lame as Paulson's. Sources inside the White House say he didn't want to over-upset the banking executives, yet as Congress learned Feb. 11, there's simply no nice way to tell someone they need to have their asshole reamed. Punishment implies cruelty.

And yet, it's hard to start taking apart the stimulus package without running into the tin-foil types who seriously believe that Obama is ushering in a socialist dynasty of scary proportions. I consistently set up a rule for those with whom I would engage on debating points: use your cortex, not your limbic system. Apparently, for many people this is hard. Hard for arch-conservatives, of course, but hard for some Obamaniacs as well. Most people do not respond to facts assembled in a linear and logical way, but to emotional appeals to myth. Often, this myth is supporting and covering up a set of deeply racist fears. But even among those who have no subconscious racial blocks in dealing with the new president, there is this narrative from the Hannity-O'Reilly-Limbaugh camp that assumes all financial planning is socialism. At least Mitch McConnell was intelligent enough to say that Obama's stimulus plan could take us further toward a European Union-style economy. Flash news for frantic anti-Obama-ites: There are no socialist nations in Western Europe. McConnell may be right or wrong, but at least he doesn't uphold myths.

There are dangerous potholes ahead as we talk about financial recovery, the U.S. place in a new multipolar world, and even simple things like the 200th anniversary of Darwin. We can't remove the influence of our limbic system, but we can choose to relegate our emotions to a second order, beneath the cortex. The more the emotions or the hormones speak first regarding complex topics like economics, the more we sound like primates - and ones not very highly evolved.

FARC Follies and Ergenekon Eruptions

Forget Seymour Hersh's obsessions with a U.S. invasion of Iran, the real action is going in the peripheries, places like Colombia and Turkey. In Colombia, we can all give loud "huzzahs" that the FARC hostages are free, while realizing the political benefits John McCain will just happen to realize by just happening to be there when a Colombian military commando operation freed 15 hostages held for up to six years by the FARC. Let me say up front that I may not like Alvaro Uribe and I smell the hand of Bush everywhere, but I consider the FARC an illegitimate gang of thugs with no claim to a coherent political agenda. Hell, even Hugo Chavez says he doesn't like them any more. But before we say, "Job well done!" to the Colombian military, we have to ask how this all just happened to coincide with the McCain visit. Uh huh. Right. (Meanwhile, Obama visits Colorado Springs and waxes poetic about faith-based initiatives, even as his supporters chide him for caving in on the NSA-telephone-company-immunity issue. Politics as usual.)

The current Turkish comedy of terrors is harder to decipher. Over the past few days, 21 nationalist militants have been arrested for being members of Ergenekon, yet another secret Turkish fascist society dedicated to preserving secularism and eradicating Muslims. Now, in past coups -- 1960, 1980, 1997 quasi-coup, take your pick -- the CIA has clearly been involved in funding groups like Gray Wolves. Hell, in 1980, even mild-mannered Jimmy Carter was directly involved in supporting the Turkish military in crushing citizen democracy movements.

The AK Party of Recep Erdogan represents a different beast. Many players in the Bush administration, particularly in State and Treasury, see the Muslim party ruling Turkey as one that aids the economy and respects democracy. In fact, the European Union has warned Turkish judicial sources that any attempt to remove AKP will virtually end Turkey's chances of joining the EU. And yet, there seem to be members of the U.S. defense and intelligence community who have secret admiration for the attempts by the Turkish chief prosecutor to bring the AKP before the constitutional court as an illegitimate government. Certainly, US Vice President Dick Cheney does not tolerate the concept of Muslims running democratic governments, and probably admires the Ergenekon efforts to prod the constitutional court with a little organized violence. Where does the CIA stand? The Pentagon? The EU? US Congress? These seem far more interesting questions than ponderings on Iran.

[JULY 6 UPDATE: Two more key generals were arrested over the weekend for Ergenekon involvement. The leader of the Republican People's Party says that those in favor of Kemalist secularism are under attack. Try "those that are opposed to democracy by supporting secularism through fascist systems."]

FISA: Trust but Verify

I had the distinct honor this past week of participating in a Colorado ACLU Fall Forum panel on electronic surveillance and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The panel featured such luninaries as Jean Dubofsky, the first woman justice on the Colorado Supreme Court (pictured), talking about the Denver Police Intelligence files; Bill Hochman, Colorado College history professor and FISA legislation expert; and Pat Huhn, Pikes Peak Community College English professor who keeps tabs on data mining.

One thing we all agreed on is that civil libertarians could reach reasonable compromises with the National Security Agency as to how domestically-located switches and routers could be used for monitoring legitimate terror networks -- provided a revamped version of the Protect America Act provided specificity. That same specificity should be applied to telecom carriers seeking indemnity from helping government agencies without obtaining warrants -- in fact, Sen. Patrick Leahy said this week he'd look at indemnity, provided no blank checks were offered. The people fighting such explicit and formal legislation are not necessarily the intelligence agencies. Instead, there is a clear majority among Republicans in Congress, a significant minority among Democrats, and far too many media pundits, who do not want the topic of signals intelligence discussed under any venue. They want us to simply trust leaders like Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, former head of NSA. Hats off to Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com, who blasted the entire editorial-page staff of The Washington Post, as well as Joe Klein from Time, for saying that we should simply amend FISA in open-ended ways and hope our leaders are honest. As Greenwald said, this kind of thinking is dangerous for democracy. As my old pal Ronald Reagan said about Soviet arms-control treaties, "Trust, but verify."

NEWS FLASH: In the October 20 edition of The New York Times, the editors gave us a long and very hard-hitting editorial blasting the Oct. 18 Senate compromise on FISA. The editorial was titled "With Democrats Like These..." and concluded by saying that the only thing worse than having a single party rule Washington prior to late 2006, was having the Democrats win both houses and still have a single party ruling Washington. You can say that again!