I can understand why Lions for Lambs, Robert Redford’s recent movie, received mixed reviews; in fact, I can completely understand why many people would hate it. It is incredibly preachy. Around one-third of the film shows a Republican senator (Tom Cruise’s character) preaching at a veteran reporter (Meryl Streep’s character) in backing the administration’s war on terror, while, at the same time, the reporter in turn preaches to the senator about the misguided war in Iraq. As the film progresses, Cruise’s character and Streep’s character lecture each other about their complicity in America’s misfortunes.
That’s already a lot of preaching.
But here lies the genius within the movie: it questions whether the political debates in government and academia have any meaning at all. The sympathetic heroes of the movie are two young men who tire of the arguments and choose action, to wit, going to Afghanistan to fight for their country. They end up in mortal danger as a result of political decisions that are being debated in offices and hallways a long way away.
The film itself has four primary locations. The first venue is the office of the senator. In the second, a university professor’s office, Robert Redford’s character debates a promising but disengaged student about his role in life. In the third venue, the reporter is quarrelling in her editor’s office about the responsibility of the press. The fourth is a wintry mountain ridge in Afghanistan.
The senator and reporter have the first Great Debate. Both are skilled insiders. The senator is a major player in the latest aggressive military plan in Afghanistan, with possible consequences for Iraq, Iran, and the entire Near East. The reporter’s initial job in her profession concerned Vietnam, and her left-wing sensibilities — anti-war and anti-Republican sentiments come through loud and clear. After running through the well-worn arguments for and against military action in Asia, the two end up challenging each other over who is using who in the relationship between media and government. The reporter takes the argument back to her editor and it takes on a different slant: what is the relationship between the corporate world and ‘real’ news?
The more accessible argument is between the professor and the student. The professor is a Vietnam vet turned protester, who became a professor. He thought that he could utilize his intelligence, his words, and his professorial credentials to alter the world. He failed. He reconciled himself to a different mission: to single out a few extraordinary students and push them toward greatness.
At the moment, those who teach the social sciences can be forgiven, I think, for bearing in mind that the professor might be something other than a failure. We teach students about history, geography, and politics, but these are things that do not necessarily reach most students, but for good reason. They do not have a frame of reference for understanding the vital importance of these subjects. But as the kids develop, they will utilize what we teach — though most likely without awareness —- as they connect the mental dots and make sense of the world.
The student opposite Redford’s professor became a cynic, figuring at a young age that certain elites make the decisions, and that even entering those elites is corrupting. So earn some money, live a charmed life, and don’t take any responsibility for any of the decisions made in the halls of power.
This brings me to Afghanistan. The professor’s class had two of the soldiers. They elected action, they elected to do something. They believed that serving their country gave them credibility as agents of change that academia did not. The professor tried to dissuade them, but they joined the Army, as special forces soldiers. This put them in grave danger, and this tied them to the other debates.
The following question is raised: should the student should live the good life, or risk being pinned down by the Taliban in an icy gorge in the Hindu Kush? To what degree does it make a difference if the senator’s military plan is the right one? Does it lessen the soldiers’ dignity and exonerate the student and professor who choose a battlefield of words in a cushy college setting? If the soldiers die, is the reporter to blame for playing the insiders’ games instead of sounding the alarm? Does the path of action turn the soldiers into pathetic pawns in a game played for the benefit of distant powers? Or are they the lone bona fide players, and the pitiful ones are the suits who send our hopes into the snowy skies over a shadowy and barren country?
Maybe the world is just too complicated for regular folks, and the noble life of action is the morally correct one. Maybe the debates of wonks in Washington or New York no longer connect to the real world.
Could 2009 be the beginning of the post-democracy era because of the current financial crisis?
Francis Fukayama once declared the ‘end of history,’ to wit, that the Great Questions of History have been answered, and that the consensus was that the best course for mankind was economic capitalism combined with a democratic government. There would be no more need for conflict; the case was closed in favor of modern Western values. The successful model included human rights, free and fair elections, and free markets.
Then came 9-11, which left no doubt that conflict remains, and that the consensus was not so consensual. There are people who object to modern notions of economics and government, and some become violent.
Asia would appear to be a case study demonstrating that democracy and capitalism do not need each other. Post-World War II Japan was democratic on paper, but a one-party state in actuality. South Korea and Singapore followed suit. All three grew to be wealthy countries. President Lee, the former leader of Singapore said that personal freedoms, which we value as key to our democracy, will lead to the downfall of the US. Such liberty unleashes individualism, which leads to decadence and instability. In the meantime ‘soft authoritarian’ countries on the Pacific Rim are showing off growing economies; their cost is personal freedom, which Confucian societies value less than conformity and stability. China is following the same lead as the other ‘tiger economies,’ and this formerly-communist economy is increasing its GDP faster than any other nation, while its currently communist government swats away the flies of dissent. This example says that government will offer a steady environment for business; people are free to do as they yearn for, within the restrictions of this structured society, and everyone benefits. Except perhaps artists, oddballs, wierdos, innovators, non-conformists, rebelling teenagers, and anyone else not in line with the grand scheme of things. And why stand up for them, at the cost of a increasing prosperity?
So perhaps we are too free, and our decadent existence will cost us our position atop the hierarchy of nations. But the financial predicament of 2008-2009 begot another possibility: that the sheer complexity of economic life in the modern world is in the process of making democracy as we know it obsolete.
When the effects of the largest financial crisis in ¾ of a century were becoming felt, who took the lead in addressing the issue? Selected, not elected bureaucrats. The Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, and the Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke, explained the national response, leading our representatives in Congress to at first interfere with and then approve President Bush’s economic team’s proposal. In the meantime, we ordinary citizens tried to take hold of both the causes and the sheer size of the situation. Seven-hundred billion tax dollars to start to fix this? Conceivably a trillion-and-a-half when all is said and done? To paraphrase the late Senator Dirksen, a trillion here and a trillion there and now we’re talking real money.
The general public in China understand a system run by unelected bureaucrats. Expectations of government are different in America. But we have to deal with the complexities of re-regulating investment banks, controlling complex investment instruments, manipulating our $13 trillion economy, not to mention coordinating with central banks around the globe. It is plausible that the local politician we elected (anywhere in the US we may dwell) as our congressperson because he, or she, did such a great job on the school board is not up to this?
In actuality, the elected commander and chief of the executive branch was little visible at the forefront of the crisis, which added to the inclination of the nation to elect the opposition political party to the presidency. What daring actions are in store from our newly elected officials? Well, the new president brought in experienced bureaucrats to fill his economic team. Other basic changes? No. They created a bigger stimulus plan much like the one pushed by President Bush.
Is this abrogation of the policy limelight by elected officials in favor of insiders a good thing or a bad thing? If the central bankers believe it necessary to rescue big corporations, raise unemployment benefits, and create jobs, why should we raise any objections? If the interests of big business means the welfare of most of us, what is the dilemma? If we need fast action, why put our faith in the slow, political process of democracy?
Maybe we shouldn’t worry about the rights of those on the political and social fringe, because our idea of the fringe has changed over time. In his book Supercapitalism, Robert Reich, who is more optimistic than I am about the state of democracy today, looked back at the ‘50s as the Golden Years, saying that America offered high-paying blue collar jobs, corporate statesmanship, and a government-industry-labor partnership that maintained stability and prosperity; he noted that the cost was a rigid and stifling conformity. Peter Beinart recently wrote in Time that “The public mood on economics today is a lot like the public mood on culture 40 years ago: Americans want government to impose law and order — to keep their 401(k)s from going down, to keep their health-care premiums from going up, to keep their jobs from going overseas…”
Maybe people need only the appearance of control over their own lives. We can debate personal rights, protest over the internet a military action we disagree with, and decide local issues. Are we equipped to leave the substance of national/global policy-making, the part that controls how people earn a living, to the professionals? That is how China does it and they are growing at 8% a year.
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