Reading Material – September 2, 2018

Must Read

John McCain did not plan the Vietnam War. He didn’t lie to the American people about the nature of the conflict, the atrocities it entailed, or the probability of its success. He merely trusted the civilian leadership that did. There is no reason to doubt that McCain believed he was in Vietnam to risk his life – and then, to endure a living hell – in defense of our nation’s highest ideals. His willingness to sacrifice his own well-being to what he believed to be America’s interests deserves our awe-struck admiration. (As an upper middle-class “soyboy” – whose most heroic feat of self-abnegating physical endurance probably involved a full bladder and broken-down A train – I have no doubt that I’d prove myself a lesser man than McCain, were I ever asked to accept years of torture for a cause that I believed in.) As the senator is laid to rest, one can reasonably argue that respect for his family, and legacy, compels us to isolate his act of transcendent patriotism from the indefensible war that produced it.

But there are hazards to such myopia. McCain’s loved ones deserve to take pride in the sacrifices he made at the “Hanoi Hilton.” But we, as a nation, do not.  The United States asked John McCain to risk his life – and kill other human beings – for a war built on lies. We asked him to give some of his best years on Earth – and the full use of his arms – to an illegal, unwinnable war of aggression. The story of McCain’s time as a prisoner of war should inspire national shame. It is a story about our government abusing the trust of one its most patriotic citizens. But it’s (almost) never presented as such. Instead, in stump speeches, op-eds, and obituaries, McCain’s service is typically framed as a testament to our nation’s greatness, or an affirmation of its finest values.

This distortion invites broader misconceptions. The selfless sacrifices of American soldiers are supposed to be lamentable costs of war, burdens that can only be redeemed by the justness of the cause that demanded them. And yet, the way we remember McCain’s heroism threatens to invert this principle. In celebrating his discrete act of patriotism – while ignoring the question of what cause it served – we risk treating the selfless sacrifices of American soldiers as ends in themselves…

[What] the “men and women who serve our nation in combat” truly deserve is a country that reveres their lives more than their suffering – and, therefore, that only asks them to endure the latter in wars that are just, winnable, and necessary.

If we wish to honor McCain’s wartime-sacrifice, we must remember it less as an example of the kind of heroism we wish to emulate, than of the kind of tragedy that our nation is duty-bound to avoid repeating.

Should Read

Socialism means different things to different people. For some, it conjures the Soviet Union and the gulag; for others, Scandinavia and guaranteed income. But neither is the true vision of socialism. What the socialist seeks is freedom.

Under capitalism, we’re forced to enter the market just to live. The libertarian sees the market as synonymous with freedom. But socialists hear “the market” and think of the anxious parent, desperate not to offend the insurance representative on the phone, lest he decree that the policy she paid for doesn’t cover her child’s appendectomy. Under capitalism, we’re forced to submit to the boss. Terrified of getting on his bad side, we bow and scrape, flatter and flirt, or worse — just to get that raise or make sure we don’t get fired.

The socialist argument against capitalism isn’t that it makes us poor. It’s that it makes us unfree. When my well-being depends upon your whim, when the basic needs of life compel submission to the market and subjugation at work, we live not in freedom but in domination. Socialists want to end that domination: to establish freedom from rule by the boss, from the need to smile for the sake of a sale, from the obligation to sell for the sake of survival.

CNN’s Jake Tapper released a video on Friday claiming to fact-check Bernie Sanders’s claims about the cost of Medicare for All. Tapper’s fact check follows in the tradition of the fact checks that came before him in that it is riddled with errors that the libertarian Mercatus Center fed him. At this point, I think it is safe to say that one of the main impediments to the success of Medicare for All is that liberal and centrist media is mostly too stupid or dishonest to accurately describe the proposal to their audience.

[There] are no perfect answers to the inevitable sacrifice of some freedom that comes with living in a complex society; utopia is not on the menu. But the advocates of unrestricted corporate power and minimal worker protection have been getting away for far too long with pretending that they’re the defenders of freedom – which is not, in fact, just another word for nothing left to lose.

Individually, coming to terms with luck is the secular equivalent of religious awakening, the first step in building any coherent universalist moral perspective. Socially, acknowledging the role of luck lays a moral foundation for humane economic, housing, and carceral policy.

Building a more compassionate society means reminding ourselves of luck, and of the gratitude and obligations it entails, against inevitable resistance.

Worth Reading

Ending on a Positive Note