The America’s Cup: Bo-ring

When I was a teenager growing up in Connecticut, some older friends invited me to watch the submarine races on the Thames River.  I thought of the famous Harvard-Yale rowing regattas on the river, and since the New London submarine shipyard was nearby, the idea of a competition seemed logical. We found our way to a deserted beach near Old Lyme, unpacked the beer and blankets, and joined the girls who had come down from Haddam.  What was I thinking? That it would be cool to watch the wake of the conning towers as the subs powered on below? Or to check tide and current tables while watching for tell-tale swirls on the river? It wasn’t about submarines at all, but about pussy, the only thing that mattered in those days.

The Yale-Harvard rowing regattas on the Thames, the inspiration for submarine races, were just about as boring. What could possibly exciting about watching rowboats race? As a camper at Camp Wanaweta I had always struggled with the oars, banging them out of the oarlocks and falling far behind the Cherokees. I even trailed Billy Barnstable who was so fat that he could hardly row a stroke without panting, but because his arms stuck out so far from his big tits and enormous stomach, his little punchy pulls never jacked the oars out of the oarlocks.

I fared no better at canoeing.  I never mastered the J-stroke and always went in circles.  Once I got caught in a wind that had kicked up on Lake Mashpee and got pushed to the far shore despite my thrashing at the chop with my paddle.  I had given up the J-stroke at the first puff from Falmouth, and had to be rescued by the camp motorboat.

So watching Yale and Harvard row up and down the Thames was boring.  I think the event must have been an excuse for a party, because most of the Yalies watching from the shore got drunk and groped their girlfriends.  It was, I was to find out later, the picnic version of Yale-Harvard tailgate parties. My father and uncle took me to a Yale football game when I was 15, and the girl behind me barfed on my new birthday sweater.  My uncle (Yale ‘32) refused to leave The Game. “It’s OK, Ronnie”, he said. “Here”, handing me his handkerchief, “Wipe it off. It’ll be fine once it dries”.  He was right that it was less wet and sticky after two hours, but the hot September sun intensified and, strangely, disaggregated the smell. It was no longer just a puke smell, but a pizza-with-pepperoni, beer, and vanilla smell.

I have always wondered why soccer is so popular in Europe.  Aficionados have tried to explain the game’s finesse, elegance, and grace; but to me it is ninety minutes of errant passes, missed shots, endless running back and forth, and sheer boredom. I was lucky that my kids were in school before the soccer craze, and I could enjoy watching them play football and baseball.

Now the most boring sport of all is sailing.  Boats tacking back and forth on the open water usually far apart, no goal in sight, no wrecks or collisions, is a painful sight. Four hours of nothing until someone is declared the winner.  Some Washingtonians are going nuts about the America’s Cup.  They are not wild about the boring race itself, but about the fact that the US has come back from an almost insurmountable deficit to challenge New Zealand for the lead.

I once watched hydroplane  races in Puget Sound.  Now that was something exciting.  I saw some spectacular crashes – not collisions, but amazing aerial disasters.  Boats going over 100 mph, catching a wake, flipping 30 feet in the air, crashing down in a shower of splinters, oil, and shards.

What links all sports is competition, and in an aggressive, competitive, take-no-prisoners society like ours, any sport can get the juices flowing. The World Cup is a good example. Few Americans actually care about the scoreless marathons themselves, but the rivalry between countries.  France has been pissy to America lately, so fuck ‘em, and root for the bloody Germans. Upstart Angola matched against powerhouse Portugal is the game to watch because it pits liberal hopes for the Dark Continent against a former colonial power.

In football, however, it is the game itself that matters.  Who cares whether Kansas City beats Jacksonville?  Only the bettors and the diehard fans from those cities.  The rest of us love the violence, the mayhem, the crushing blocks, savage tackles, and knockouts.  We love to watch acrobatic wide receivers broken in half in mid-air, quarterbacks thrown to the ground and mauled by defensive linemen.  We love to watch tackles so brutal that helmets go flying, running backs wobble off the field, and tight ends throw crushing blocks to defensive backs.  Concussion angst is for wusses.

Football is a great American game because it allows violence and brutality within a tightly organized structure.  It is not so much the meaningless marathon of soccer that Americans don’t like.  It is the the lack of discipline.  The game is too free-flowing, unpredictable, and fluid.  Football, on the other hand, is disciplined, tightly organized, and played within a understandable structure.  A 75-yard run, a 35-yard pass, first-and-ten, first-and-goal.  There are slant passes, wide-outs, posts, and hooks.  There are end-arounds, screen passes, subtle fakes, and complex defensive alignments.  All X’s and O’s, charted, practiced, and executed.  The whole game is centered around offensive complexity and defensive violence.  No wonder it has become America’s game.

Ice hockey has all the violence of football, but none of the discipline.  It is soccer on ice; and if it weren’t for the bone-shattering checks and the fights, no one would go.

Olympic hockey is not hockey at all.  It is a pansy European version of the real American game.  Aficionados say that it is the way the game should be played – like Stanford basketball – finesse, pick-and-roll, and classic shooting; but it is a pale version of the blood sport that American fans love.

There is good reason why the NBA plays above the rim – it is a brutal, violent sport where a flagrant foul is worth a suspension if it helps win the game.

The pushing, shoving, and intimidation that goes on under the basket is Thai boxing, wrestling, and football combined.

Some critics have observed that America is a hopelessly violent country; and if there weren’t carnage in the arena, there would be far more random shootings, going Post Office, and Auroras.  The Romans knew all about blood-lust and and civic order.  Better to let plebeians watch gladiators chop each other up, Emperors said, than to go after the Emperor.

So, after being puked on at the Yale Bowl when I was 15, I have never gone to another football game.  I have been tempted to go to a Big Ten game and sit in the stands with 100,000 raving, rabid Ohio State fans – there can be nothing more gladiatorial and Roman than that – but haven’t gotten up the gumption.  As for the America’s Cup Regatta? Fuggedaboutit.

We Are Not Exceptional–We Only Think We Are

America is a crazy place, unlike any other; and there is no doubt that we are unique; but all countries are unique; and all believe that they are exceptional. 

We share liberal democracy with Europe, but our more fundamental core beliefs – rugged individualism, liberty, a government of the people – are far different from a region whose optimism has been tempered by a thousand years of war, beheadings, rising and falling empires, plague, famine, and brutality.

We are a free-for-all democracy like India, but we have little if anything in common with traditional Hindu beliefs. We do not believe in karma, dharma, spiritual evolution through reincarnation, and the importance of the caste system as a means of ordering the meaningless and illusory as a way to enlightenment.  Our focus on both individualism and community is far different from Hindu society which values individual spiritual attainment, not good works; and for which community is only part of a disciplined social structure, not the crucible for collective action.

We may share many things with other cultures – French food, Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence, Chinese enterprise; but we are at heart fundamentally different. We come from different places, have our own particular history, and have moved along very distinct trajectories. And it is in this cultural difference that exceptionalism is born.

In many ways we are as crazily weird as Indians in our religious expression.  India has its festivals to honor Ganesh, Durga, Rama, Siva, and Krishna; and the Kumbh Mela held in Allahabad every eleven years is attended by tens of millions of pilgrims. In America churches of every possible denomination and stripe are filled to the gills every Sunday.  Hangar-size mega-churches are built every year by the thousands to catch those disaffected by traditional Christianity.   These new fundamentalist congregations are muscular and very American, combining ecstatic worship and political conservatism. Store-front churches are everywhere in the inner-city, preachers find their calling every day, and whooping and hollering can be heard for blocks.

Yet we are as different from India’s determinism, its views of social order and dynamics, and its positive fatalism as peanut butter is from pâté

We share little with China, with its own 5000 year history of dynasties, mandarins, authoritarian rule, and Confucianism.  While Chinese cities may now look like futuristic versions of American ones, there is something else cooking there other than home-grown, corn-fed, American enterprise.

We clearly share equally little with the Arab and Muslim worlds, and whatever similarities there may have been between monotheistic religions and the socio-philosophical belief structure which is derived from them, all bets are off.  We are at war with Islam, reject what we see as its medieval practices, and have no clue about a radical religious fundamentalism which can slaughter in the name of God.

The point is not that we are different – all nations are different, even Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan – but that we think that our culture, philosophy, and world view are better than those of other nations; and that we are exceptional in that superiority.

On closer examination, however, most countries feel the same and feel exceptional. Indians have always been anxious to have America’s wealth, cars, money, and fast women; but are dismissive of the culture which produced them.  Given the context of India’s millennia-old history, Americans are rubes, babes-in-arms, naïve about the ways of the world, immature in our philosophy, and blissfully ignorant of the more universal truths of the universe. 

The Chinese have always known that it was only a matter of time before China became once again ascendant and powerful.  They see a historical determinism in China – an unbroken socio-political and philosophical system begun in the Shang Dynasty (ca. 1675 BCE) remain today and strengthened by later thinkers like Confucius (551 BCE) who added an important social dimension.

France has always considered itself “la fille aînée de l'Eglise Catholique” – eldest daughter of the Catholic Church because of the early conversion of the Francs and because of its successful battle to keep the Muslim hordes out of Europe. In modern times it has adopted the role of protector of European civilization and felt that its intellectualism and patronage of the arts was sans pareil.

Russians are proud of their imperial history, their primus inter pares status in the Slavic world, their recent Soviet history of empire and dominance.  They, like the Chinese, know that they are exceptional and will once again rise to the ranks of the Czars.

Therefore Americans’ belief in their exceptionalism is no different from that of China, Russia, or India.  It is no surprise that our views are different from other countries. Robert Samuelson writing in the Washington Post (9.23.13) recounts results from recent surveys:

One standard question asks respondents to judge which is more important — “freedom to pursue life’s goals without state interference” or “state guarantees [that] nobody is in need.” By a 58 percent to 35 percent margin, Americans favored freedom over security, reported a 2011 Pew survey. In Europe, opinion was the opposite. Germans valued protections over freedom 62 percent to 36 percent. The results were similar for France, Britain and Spain.

Or take free will. Americans think they have it; many other nationalities dismiss it as a delusion. Another poll question asked respondents to agree or disagree that “success in life is determined by forces outside our control.” In the Pew survey, 72 percent agreed in Germany, 57 percent in France and 50 percent in Spain. By contrast, only 36 percent of Americans agreed in 2011,

I am sure that if you asked Germans about their need for order and regularity (think Angela Merkel) they would answer that it is important for social integration and strength.  If you asked the French about affirmative action, they would rail against PC assaults on French exceptionalism – one, indivisible France based on liberté, égalité, and fraternité. Or if you asked them about the role of art in public life, most would certainly be more in favor of government support of the arts than Americans.  If you asked Russians to choose between strong leadership (think Putin) and individual freedoms as elements of national progress, most would no doubt choose strength at the top.

So, what is the point? And why is it that the world criticizes us for such arrogance and naiveté and not the Chinese or Russians? As Samuelson says, “What rankles Putin (and many Americans, too) is that the United States has used this sense of moral superiority as a pretext to throw its weight around the world.”

It makes no difference that we come by our beliefs honestly. We are true to most of the precepts and principles of the Founding Fathers.  We are a nation built on 18th Century Enlightenment philosophy.  We are a nation of immigrants – risk takers par excellence in search of a better life.  We perhaps will always be more defined by the Wild West than the cultured East.  All countries come by their beliefs because of their history.

We are criticized because we blab about our exceptionalism. We simply cannot keep our mouths shut and our soldiers in their barracks because we have an almost Biblical faith in the rightness of our cause.  American-style democracy is not just a political system, but a philosophical one ordained by the God.   Democracy is not only the perfect system for making money, but, in its prizing of individual freedom, is the only one which facilitates man’s discovery of The Almighty.

Not only do we blab about it, but we use military might to promote it.  The Neo-Cons got us into the war in Iraq for many reasons, and the spreading of Democracy was certainly one.  Wolfowitz and his lackeys had an evangelical faith in spreading the Word; and felt an obligation to do so. Because the United States has gotten egg on its face for such naïve, exceptional adventurism (our history ever since Vietnam), no one takes us seriously, and likes to pick on us for our idealistic ignorance. We deserve it.  No one likes a bully, especially a sanctimonious one.

Our history of slavery and racial discrimination; our use of nuclear weapons in WWII; our carpet bombing of North Vietnam; our capital punishment; our slavish adherence to a laissez-faire capitalism which consigns millions to poverty, all should give us pause before we throw our weight around.  Because we don’t, people are pissed off.

Samuelson concludes that we have a right to be proud of a heritage which has enshrined the rights of man, embraced popular democracy, eschewed central authority, and found a place for religion in civic life; and that our exceptionalism has led to the spread of these ideas.  But all empires have spread ideas. The Romans built roads, bridges, and aqueducts; spread an education based on leadership, moral probity, and respect; and extended an administrative system which assured social order and individual expression.  The British did the same in South Asia.  Persia gave us monotheism (Mehabad, 9700 BC and Zoroaster), algebra, and trigonometry. 

At the same time, all empires have been less than saintly. Although nowhere near as brutal as Genghis Khan who spread his Mongolian empire from end to end of the known world through slaughter, all empires conquered because of self-interest – expanding the perimeter and realizing wealth from new lands.  This conquest was not always pretty.

So, all this flap about American exceptionalism is nothing more than a playground fight where the kids finally gang up on the bully.  The more important fact is that America is losing its international stature, and arrogant military exceptionalism is a big part of that decline.

Why Do We Always Choose The Wrong Leaders?

Most of us vote for leaders based on how they say they will deal with existing problems. In the Presidential election of 2008, Obama was elected for many reasons, but none of which was his ability to deal with a global financial meltdown.  George W. Bush was elected in 2000 to move the country to a more conservative position and to redress the excesses of the liberal Clinton years – not to fight two wars and a radical and Muslim insurgency.

Maybe we are voting the wrong way.  Instead of judging politicians on how they would resolve issues of health care, education, or now international terrorism, perhaps we should choose our leaders on intelligence, intellect, and above all, adaptability.  Since there is no way to predict future events – even though pundits make millions convincing us that they can; and CIA, DOD, State Department, and White House strategists spend entire days moving toy battleships, tanks and drones to anticipated positions – we might be better served by electing a President who we can count on to use and keep his head when the going gets tough.

The British Civil Service and its South Asian clone the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) provide a useful model for this approach.  Civil servants – i.e. the vast array of non-elected senior managers of government departments – are considered fungible and transferable. They have been trained in administration and management and are able to develop, oversee, manage, and evaluate the programs initiated by politicians.  A top IAS manager currently working in the Department of Agriculture may easily be shifted to Interior, if the Cabinet of Ministers feels that the agency needs shoring up.  Technical skills are irrelevant, the argument goes, for they can be contracted.  Solid management, financial, budgeting, accounting, and evaluation skills, however, are the key to economic and social development and not for sale.

Americans often deride this system and dismiss IAS officers as bureaucrats, the code word for do-nothing, paper-pushing place-holders. There is good reason for this view because the US government has become a bloated, self-serving, colony of paramecia, spreading gooey ooze into every corner of Washington. Although the British government is no stranger to bureaucratic slime, it has acknowledged the value of senior civil servants and their ability to keep government working.

The problem, of course, is that the American public is used to character and charisma and to red-meat politics. The most electable politicians know how to boil the blood of their supporters, hurling lightning bolts of family, patriotism, and life.  They know that ideas don’t count as much as passions; that most Americans wouldn’t recognize intelligence if they saw it; and that the key to electoral success is blood-letting and ‘strength’.  It is unthinkable that a candidate for high office would run on his record of running a State agricultural program, or success at reforming its budgetary reporting.

By any account Larry Summers should have been chosen as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. He is simply ‘one of the smartest people on the planet’, and regardless of his getting caught in the buzz-saw of academic and feminist politics at Harvard, his reported arrogance, and overweening self-confidence, I would rather have a brain in the chair rather than a looker..  Summers, however, would never be the ideal Adaptable Man, and at the helm of the United States his personality might get us into hot water.  The IAS bureaucrat, on the other hand, is selected not only for his intelligence and abilities, but for his unflappability.  IAS officers survive in the hurly-burly of Indian electoral politics because of their independence and ability to sail the roiled and turbulent waters of Delhi.  Our ideal Adaptable Man would be like an IAS officer with a dash of élan and a strong jaw.

Still, it is hard to imagine an electoral campaign based only on intelligence, sangfroid, and management. “Where do you stand on the issues?” is the campaign question; and if Adaptable Man said that today’s issues didn’t matter, voters would scratch their heads and leave him for the revival-tent, Bible-thumping, revelations of his opponent.

Perhaps the IAS model may not be the best one for America after all, but that of the Navy Seal.  In an article for BBC News Online (9.22.13) Sydney Finkelstein observes:

Great leaders must be adaptable. Consider the military’s special forces, those highly trained personnel assigned to the most dangerous and unconventional missions. These elite units, which date back to Roman times, select and train warriors for strength, maturity, motivation, and intelligence. Candidates who make it through to the end are incredibly capable, yet there is one characteristic that is make-or-break in the final analysis: the ability to adapt and adjust and think fresh, in real-time.

Of course this military model is loaded with flaws.  Look at General Petraeus, a brilliant, disciplined strategic thinker and battlefield genius. Smart as he was, he never understood the Internet and didn’t have the sense to keep his pants on. Eisenhower was a great military leader and a good President who understood that the American public simply needed a rest after the ravages of war, and a Chief Executive who played golf all the time was all right with them. We were lucky, however. The entire world was beaten by America, and even the most pessimistic doomsday prophets kept quiet. But if we all had been wrong, and a giant meteor came crashing down on Los Angeles with a big chunk spun off at the Kremlin, what would Ike have done?

Worst of all, even the dumbest boob in the bayous has some opinion on Iraq, abortion, and gays; but still can’t tell an intelligent, insightful, competent, and adaptable leader from an armadillo. What good are these qualifications if most people cannot even recognize those who have them?

Some of America’s greatest leaders, however, were stubborn, inflexible, and immovable.  Ronald Reagan operated on three cylinders – patriotism, small government, and private enterprise – and they were enough to revolutionize the world. No American after Reagan – except a few ‘progressives’ in academia – can ever look at government without at least a measure of circumspection; and no one can deny that his unrelenting pressure on the Soviet Union contributed to its downfall.  Reagan had vision, principle, and conviction.  Few people cared how smart he was or how flexible.

The idea of valuing adaptability is a good one; but unfortunately it is a non-starter. It is good to remember Donald Rumsfeld’s famous quote:

There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know.
There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don't know.

He was right, of course, and spot on when it came to a leader’s dilemma; but most people thought he was nuts and had no idea whatsoever what he was saying.

So much for Adaptable Man.