Promiscuous Hugging

Juliet Lapidos strikes a blow for a return to more formality. She’s a woman after my mind, if not my heart. When people try to hug her, even when they succeed, she is thinking to herself: get your hands off me.

In a world where everyone is on a first name basis—see Sunday’s post—one’s physical space, if we may call it that, is routinely violated by people we barely know. Worse yet, it is also violated by people who we know as friends but to whom we are not quite that close.

And it is very difficult to turn away from someone who is opening his or her arms offering you a hug. If you should want to do so, preempt the process by extending a stiff arm toward your friend or acquaintance. At once you will be offering a handshake and will be making it impossible for the friend to abuse you by grabbing you.

Lipidos explains:

Granted, with the right person, I enjoy a well-placed hug. The right persons include: blood relations, my boyfriend, and close friends. By "well-placed" I mean before or after a lengthy separation, as a form of congratulation (you're getting married!), as a means of consolation (you're getting divorced?), or to ward off hypothermia. That's about it (though I should specify that I waive the category requirements for my boyfriend).

So why is it that when I go over to your house for dinner, you wrap your arms around me, even though I saw you last Friday at the movies? And why do you come at me again after the meal is over, even though we hugged not three hours ago and I'll probably see you next week at that party? It's not that I don't like you—I do—but it's such an awkward interaction. One arm or two? Should there be space between us? How much? Should I brush my cheek against yours? Maybe even kiss your cheek? And for how long, exactly, should we be touching? I think you just nuzzled my ear with your nose, should I ignore that? OK, it's one thing for you to hug me, since we're old pals, but your girlfriend too? I hardly know her, you'll probably break up soon, and I've never liked the sensation of breast-on-breast contact.

The excessive familiarity of promiscuous hugging, she continues, makes a mockery of true intimacy. Treating everyone like an intimate means that no one is really an intimate.

In her words:

Like form letters that mimic the conventions of personal notes, obligatory hugs mock true intimacy. "Dear Janet," aspiring-City Councilman Brad Lander e-mailed me after he won his Democratic primary, "Well, we did it. After two years of incredibly hard work, we won a great victory." Oh, did we? My name's not Janet, but even if it were, I'd prefer madam. Dear Madam is prim, but honest. A real hug—the hug of consolation, let's say—soothes its target; it says you can count on me, because we're close. See how close we are? We're actually touching! The doorway hug impersonates that message, and corrupts it through casual repetition.

Lapidos did some research on this intrusive habit, one that did not exist in the bad old days when people respected themselves and each other.

One expert saw it as akin to our overly informal use of first names:

Next I e-mailed NPR's resident etiquette expert, Karen Grigsby Bates. She suggested that "the hug is the American answer to the European double-cheek kiss" and that it's "descended from the American ethos of hyper-friendliness. You know, the same impulse that has us calling people we hardly know by their first names."

What can you do? Lapidos offers some alternatives:

There are several hug alternatives, among them: the handshake, the cheek kiss, the wave, the arm squeeze, and the nod. Handshakes seem formal, cheek kisses un-American, waves rather odd. Arm squeezing (warm, but not falsely so) would be a good solution if it weren't for the danger of getting pulled into something more full-bodied. The nod, though, can be very effective when combined with a smile, especially when executed with confidence and with one hand already grasping the door handle.

But, what about the bow, the way people in Japan do it.

Why do they do it? Because the Japanese live in very close quarters in a populous country. They understand that handshakes and hugs communicate germs. So they bow politely while placing their palms together, the better to make it clear that an open gesture is not forthcoming.

It’s the hygiene, stupid.

Male Vanity

It has come to this.  

The war against men, the pervasive contempt for men, the constant attacks on male predators and abusers, bullies and brutes has gotten us to the point where Andrew O’Hagan rises to say: enough.

In the New York Times, no less, O’Hagan writes:

Men have always had secret regimes, always had worries about their hair and had midlife dalliances with youthful treatments, but there is now an explicit pressure on men to impersonate the women in their lives, and that is arguably becoming true of straight men in a way that it formerly wasn’t. Over-grooming is now a mode of hysteria common to every other man I know, and it isn’t attractive. I believe it feeds off a larger anxiety in the culture, the obligation to self-invent, the demand for constant increase, and it has made the men of my generation into emotional shadows of their former selves. I repeat: I love fashion and I’ve always denied the expectation that men should be sweaty, Neanderthal pigs, but I would be failing my obligation to honest perception if I denied that the rise of over-grooming may have slightly neutered my generation of men and turned us into petted creatures, somehow alienated from ourselves, and stranded at some point distant from our instincts. Tradition, especially when it comes to sexual stereotypes, is often worth obliterating, of course. But is it possible that our generation is busy throwing out the boyfriend with the aromatherapeutic bathwater?

O’Hagan is dismayed to see his male friends impersonate women. He believes that his generation of men has been, as he charmingly puts it, “slightly neutered.”

If you are asking, I believe that slightly neutered is roughly akin to slightly pregnant.

Interestingly O’Hagan calls it narcissism, the contemporary term for what used to be called vanity.

And, he makes a good point.

We see narcissists as having fallen love with their mirror image. Such was the fate of Ovid’s Narcissus.

And yet, narcissism was originally defined as loving one’s own body, in the sense of taking it to be a sexual object. Thus, the term describes O’Hagan’s male friends perfectly. You know who they are. The ones who primp and preen in front of their mirrors, the ones who luxuriate in body wash and exfoliating scrub, the ones who wax themselves into hairless perfection ... What are they doing if not bringing us back to the true meaning of narcissism.

Obama, Netanyahu and the Jews

As Congress prepares to hear Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu next week, the Democratic Party has suddenly developed a Jewish problem.

The party standard bearer, President Barack Obama, maintains his visceral dislike of Israel and of Netanyahu. He rationalizes his pique at the invitation offered by House Speaker Boehner by declaring that he should have been consulted.

Of course, had he been consulted he would have strongly disapproved of the gesture. Believing that his crowning foreign policy achievement will be a deal that opens a pathway to Iranian nuclear weapons, he will allow nothing, certainly not an Israeli Jew, stand in his way.

And then, there’s the political side of Boehner’s masterstroke. The Netanyahu invitation has exposed divisions in the Jewish community. Some blindly follow their Pied Piper, Obama. Others have courageously declared their support for Israel.

Those who oppose the speech are worried that it has damaged bipartisan Congressional support for Israel. Had they been paying any attention, they would have seen that President Obama, by himself, has done considerable harm to the relationship with Israel.

Considering the pressure on him to cancel the speech, Netanyahu has clearly shown considerable political courage. Why should he be responsible for saving what is left of Obama’s face?

The Obama administration has launched a campaign to discredit and demean the Natanyahu speech.

The Israeli intelligence service, Debkafile reports on the latest from Susan Rice and John Kerry:

National Security Adviser Susan Rice, the latest US administration official to attack Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, sharply called his forthcoming speech on Iran to Congress “destructive to the relationship between the two countries." In an interview with Charlie Rose Tuesday night, she said: "What has happened over the last several weeks by virtue of the invitation that was issued by the speaker and the acceptance of it by Prime Minister Netanyahu two weeks before his elections is that on both sides there have been injected some degree of partisanship.

"It is not only unfortunate but it is also destructive of the fabric of the relationship. It has always been bipartisan and we want to keep it that way. When it becomes injected with politics, that's a problem.”

Earlier, Secretary of State John Kerry said in reference to the prime minister: “…anybody running around right now jumping in to say, ‘Well we don’t like the deal,’ or this, or that, doesn’t know what the deal is.”

Such is Obama’s contempt for Israel that he cannot let up his criticism of Netanyahu. Either he believes that American Jews will follow him blindly wherever he leads them—for fear of being accused of racism—or he does not care what they think.

Happily, Netanyahu has been receiving strong support from certain segments of the American Jewish community.

Among them, Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel.

Obama will not attend the speech. Joe Biden will not attend. John Kerry will be lost somewhere. Some Democratic members of Congress will boycott it. But, Elie Wiesel will be there.

In a newspaper advertisement, Wiesel wrote:

Will you join me in hearing the case for keeping weapons from those who preach death to Israel and America?

Upping the ante liberal Democrat Alan Dershowitz yesterday denounced those who would boycott Netanyahu.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, he said:

As a liberal Democrat who twice campaigned for President Barack Obama , I am appalled that some Democratic members of Congress are planning to boycott the speech of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on March 3 to a joint session of Congress.

Dershowitz challenged those who suggested that Congress does not have the power to issue the invitation:

Congress has every right to invite, even over the president’s strong objection, any world leader or international expert who can assist its members in formulating appropriate responses to the current deal being considered with Iran regarding its nuclear-weapons program. Indeed, it is the responsibility of every member of Congress to listen to Prime Minister Netanyahu, who probably knows more about this issue than any world leader, because it threatens the very existence of the nation state of the Jewish people.

Congress has the right to disagree with the prime minister, but the idea that some members of Congress will not give him the courtesy of listening violates protocol and basic decency to a far greater extent than anything Mr. Netanyahu is accused of doing for having accepted an invitation from Congress.

Effectively, the president and his minions have made Israel a partisan issue. Dershowitz turned their own rhetoric against them:

Another reason members of Congress should not boycott Mr. Netanyahu’s speech is that support for Israel has always been a bipartisan issue. The decision by some members to boycott Israel’s prime minister endangers this bipartisan support. This will not only hurt Israel but will also endanger support for Democrats among pro-Israel voters. I certainly would never vote for or support a member of Congress who walked out on Israel’s prime minister.

Surely, Dershowitz is somewhat late to the party. And yet, he understands that the long standing relationship between the Democratic Party and Jewish voters is being seriously imperiled… by Barack Obama.

Yesterday, Sens. Richard Durbin and Dianne Feinstein, speaking for Democratic senators invited Prime Minister Netanyahu to a closed-door meeting with them and their colleagues.

Happily, Netanyahu declined. He said he did not want to politicize the issue.

One does not know what it will take for Jewish voters to wake up to the threat imposed by Obama, but, perhaps the controversy over the Netanyahu speech this will be a wake-up call.

The only question now is: how will the media cover the speech? Will they place it at the top of the news and on the front page above the fold, or will they try to bury it?

How You Feel About Yourself or How You Look to Others

What matters more: how you feel about yourself or how you look to others?

Our culture, such as it is, says that what really matters is how you feel about yourself. To be a member in good standing of the culture you must value your self-esteem, such as it is. And you must overcome, even to reject the tendency to care about how others see you.

One might even look at the larger philosophical issue: what matters more, the state of your soul or your face? Is it better to expel the contents of your soul or to keep up appearances?

You think that you are strong and assertive; your friend or lover thinks you are a boor. You think that you are compassionate and sensitive; your friend or lover thinks you are a wimp. You think that you have given the best lecture ever; your audience has either fallen asleep or walked out.

You might ask which is the real You: your feelings or the perception of other people.

Not to belabor the point needlessly, but, your truth lies in the eyes of the other. It’s really all about your face, the one that you never see directly.

And yet, our therapy culture has made a fetish out of your feelings. Why do so many therapists keep asking their patients how this or that makes them feel. Therapists want us to get in touch with our feelings. They want us to explore our emotions. And they advise us to express those emotions, openly, honestly and shamelessly.

In truth, such therapists are systematically blinding their patients to what really matters: how they look to other people.

If you think the world of yourself and other people think you are a jerk, the dissonance will bear down on you, will wear you down. At best, it will inspire you to change the way you behave. At worst, it will throw you into a quasi-delusional state where you believe that you are too good for other people.

Therapists used to advise their patients to express their anger. Your anger, they believed, was an emotional toxin that you needed to eliminate from your psychic system.

And many patients noted that when they expressed anger, regardless of how, when, where and to whom, they felt an initial feeling of relief.

But, the relief did not last. When they had the time to think about what they had done, and especially how they looked when fulminating with rage, they suffered a shock. They recognized that, rather than expressing a feeling, they had made themselves look like fools.

And then there is the problem of expressing your insecurities. Don’t most therapists believe that you will benefit by expressing your insecurities? Don’t they believe that such an expression will heal your soul and provide just the right amount of balm for your relationship?

It turns out that this is not the case. Samatha Joel reports on the relevant research:

For example, say I’m worried that I gave a boring lecture for my relationships class, and so I decide to disclose this to my good friend and fellow relationships researcherBonnie Le. Being the responsive friend she is, Bonnie would of course respond by saying reassuring things. But after doing this a few times, I might start to think, Wow, I’ve been acting pretty insecure around Bonnie lately. She probably thinks I’m an emotionally fragile individual who desperately needs approval and can’t handle criticism or rejection. Unfortunately, those concerns are going to make me doubt every nice thing Bonnie says to me from then on. I’ll think that she’s just walking on eggshells around me, trying to spare my ego, and not telling me what she really feels. Her encouraging words will be less likely to make me feel good about myself because I’ll dismiss them as being insincere. So, paradoxically, showing my friend that I feel insecure has just made the problem worse.

Showing a friend that you lack confidence will cause your friend to treat you as someone who lacks confidence. If the friend tries try to reassure you, thus to buck up your confidence, she will not be recognizing you as a confident person, but will be saying that you need help.

But if, perchance you improve your performance and go on to give a sterling lecture, your friend’s  praise will feel slightly condescending, as though designed to bolster your flagging spirit.

Joel explains:

… if I express my insecurities to Bonnie, I am likely to subsequently believe that Bonnie perceives me to be insecure regardless of her actual perceptions of me. Similarly, my belief that Bonnie perceives me as insecure will lead me to doubt Bonnie’s authenticity regardless of how authentic she actually is. And, in all of the studies, these effects emerged above and beyond self-esteem, suggesting that all of this occurs relatively independently from chronic insecurities.

The more you express your insecurities, the more insecure you feel. Doesn’t this suggest that you do well to keep certain feelings to yourself?

When you spill the contents of your soul, you are not merely expressing a feeling. You are portraying yourself in a certain way to another person. It’s hard enough to overcome your feelings of insecurity. Imagine how difficult it is to erase the impression from someone else’s mind.

Does this mean that you should never express insecurity to anyone? Not at all. It means that you should be extremely careful about the way you present yourself. Some people know you well enough to know that a feeling of insecurity is not who you are. Others do not know you well enough to dismiss a sign of weakness.

Ultimately, if you very often express insecurity, you will persuade more people that you are insecure. The more people see you that way, the more difficult it will be to build confidence or character.

People might talk a good game about feeling their feelings. But, note this. If they want to get ahead in the world they dress the part. They understand that one’s appearance says a great deal more about one’s character than a soulful expression of deep feelings.

The principle applies in the corporate world, in the way executives present themselves. 

Daniel R. Ames and Abbie S. Wazlawek explain in the Wall Street Journal:

Not realizing how others see you leads to bad decisions and spoiled relationships. And when others sense that you’re clueless about your personality, it can undermine your general stature and credibility. Unfunny people who know they aren’t funny are one thing; unfunny people who think they’re hilarious are another entirely.

The authors recognize that our high self-esteem, fed by unearned praise, is our enemy:

We often make self-flattering assumptions, and we expect others will agree with us: “I think I’m a good, effective, talented person…and so others must see me that way, too.” Repeat something like that enough times and it can become a force field, deflecting the occasional true signal that does head your way.

In the end it’s all about finding the mean between the extremes. The notion should be familiar to those who have studied ethics. The problem is: how do you know when you are being too assertive and when you are not being assertive enough:

Our research suggests that people often fail to appreciate that others see them as pushing too hard or not pushing hard enough. We’ve also found that people who are overassertive are especially unlikely to hear direct feedback from colleagues—after all, who wants to tell a jerk that they’re a jerk?

How do you learn when and how you should express which feelings?

I believe that you can only learn it by paying attention to the kinds of reactions you are receiving. The more experience you have, the more you can read the responses of other people, the better you will get at calibrating your assertiveness.

Clearly, advice to the effect that you need to “lean in” tells you nothing about how to regulate your assertiveness.

The authors write:

Low receptivity can mean failing to seek others’ points of view, crowding others out of a conversation or giving nonverbal reactions that convey a sense of closed-mindedness or hostility. Almost every executive coach we’ve spoken with has told us a story about someone who could be characterized as “blind to their hearing impairment.”

They offer an excellent example, to the effect that what is in your heart or mind is not necessarily what your appearance, your facial expressions and body language is communicating:

Recently, one CEO confessed a critical blind spot to us. When confronted by colleagues with a contrary idea or a critical reaction, he would push back in his chair, cross his arms and roll his eyes. Over time, subordinates started censoring their challenging questions. Criticisms and new ideas circulated around the leader rather than to him. The reality was that he welcomed tough responses—but he had no clue about the chilling effect of his body language. His behavior, and his lack of awareness about it, were choking off important information, undermining his leadership and, as he said, “putting my credibility at risk.”

Funny thing, when there’s real money on the line, people are much more amenable to taking advice.

Sympathy for Marie Harf

A little sympathy for Marie Harf, please.

Last week deputy state department spokesperson Harf was sent out into the media jungle to articulate and defend Obama administration policy on Islamic terrorism.

By all reports she was auditioning for the role of chief state department spokesperson. The same reports say that she failed at the task. As of now she is apparently not going to take over from Jen Psaki.

One might say that Harf was sacrificed to an absurd policy. She could not turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse. Perhaps this means that she lacked a few deception genes. Or it might meant that she possesses too much integrity to continue mouthing nonsense.

One Harfism  received the most attention. She asserted that disaffected young Muslims were attracted to ISIS and other Islamist terrorist organizations—of course, she could not have called them such—because they don’t have jobs. They are suffering from a lack of economic opportunity.

She seemed to be saying that Islamist terrorism could be defeated with a strong jobs program.

It makes some sense to say that Middle Eastern Muslims are drawn to terrorism because it offers employment opportunity. But what about Muslims who inhabit the West and who have been loath to assimilate.

Obviously, there are fewer job opportunities if you refuse to play by the local rules. And there are fewer job opportunities if the reputation of your group is being systematically destroyed by the actions of your co-religionists.

Be that as it may, Harf’s point is not quite as crazy as it sounds. Even if many terrorist leaders came from wealth or belonged to the upper middle class, still and all, their nations, by and large have failed to keep up with the rest of the world… in economic competition.

As of now, Islam has all the hallmarks of a failed civilization. Were it not for terrorism committed in the name of Islam, how many people would be talking about the religion?

Better to be feared than forgotten.

So, Muslim nations definitely need more economic growth and opportunity. And yet, even when given the opportunity they refuse to compete.

After all, massive amounts of foreign aid have been flowing to Hamas-controlled Gaza. Keep in mind that the people of Gaza elected Hamas.

What did Hamas do with the money it had collected? It bought rockets and built terror tunnels, the better to destroy Israel.

Given a choice between building its own economy and destroying Israel, Hamas preferred to destroy, or better to deconstruct the Israeli economy and nation. By the by, it also wants to kill all Jews.

Effectively, Hamas and other Islamist terrorists are refusing to compete in a game they did not invent. Perhaps they all believe that the Industrial Revolution and free market capitalism were invented by the Judeo-Christian west and thus are alien to their faith.

Of course, the Confucian East seems to be fairly adept at the capitalism thing, so perhaps we should qualify the statement.

Be that as it may, Islamist terrorism is obviously reactionary and seems to be inspired by deconstruction. If you can’t construct, you deconstruct what others have built.

If you want to make it sound less nihilistic, you can say that they know that they cannot construct what is needed themselves, so they feel constrained to take what others have built.

But, what does it all mean.

Perhaps, Islamists are competing against the West, not in the marketplace but on the battlefield. But, they are not competing according to the rules of traditional warfare. They are conducting a massive psychological insurgency, using a different strategy to bring down a stronger enemy.

Or better, Islamists are trying to convince the West to self-deconstruct. The only way you can defeat a stronger enemy is to convince the enemy to defeat himself.

Islamists believe that theirs is the psychologically stronger culture. They believe that the West is weak and decadent, that it does not have the stomach for the fight and that it will, for all its missiles and bombs, cut and run when the price in human life becomes too high.

Wherever do you think that they got that idea?

Americans and other Westerners luxuriate in the benefits the Industrial Revolution has provided. Islamists believe that the too-comfortable Westerners have gone soft.

We revel in our multicultural diversity. Islamists see a house divided against itself.

We torment ourselves for sins real and imagined. Islamists see a weak and guilt-ridden civilization in its death throes.

We worship celebrity and demean achievement. Islamists see a civilization that has lost its compass.

Following a venerable Hegelian principle they believe that they will prevail because they are less afraid of death.

Muslim extremists are trying to restore pride. For that reason they are respected in many Muslim communities.

The terrorists believe that competition in the marketplace is beneath them. They prefer to repair to the greatest competitive arena, the battlefield and induce the West to defeat itself.

"The Tyranny of Informality"

I was delighted to read Michael Strain’s article about “the tyranny of informality.” Not only did Strain articulate the question with great intelligence and verve, but now I know that I am not alone in being appalled by this cultural habit.

You might know that certain people—like George Clooney—become seriously torqued when anyone refers to President Obama as just plain Obama. Surely, Clooney would fly into high dudgeon if he heard someone refer to our dear president as Barack.

For his part Strain was shocked to see President Barack Obama violating protocol by referring to the Chancellor of Germany as: Angela. You heard that right, Obama went before the cameras, standing next to Chancellor Merkel and kept calling her Angela… as though they were buddies, and as though they did not bear august titles and serious responsibilities.

Truth be told, he was insulting her to her face.

And you were wondering why our relations with other countries are not so good.

One is not surprised that Obama would descend to this level. After all, Obama has long trafficked in down home idioms, the better to make it appear that he is one of the people. Of course, he isn't just plain folks. He's the president. Thus, his locutions signal his arrogance.

Strain described the scene at the news conference:

[Obama’s] opening paragraph alone is littered with informality. “Angela, of course, has been here many times.” “Well into her third term, Angela is now one of Germany’s longest-serving chancellors.” “As we all saw in Rio, Angela is one of her team’s biggest fans.” (After a barrage of unseemly familiarity, the chancellor’s first sentence was “Thank you, President, dear Barack.” I would like to think that she decided it polite to respond in kind, but couldn’t stop herself from including two terms of respect before uttering the president’s first name. The name “Barack” never returns in the transcript. Even still, she erred.)

“Angela” is one of the most powerful and important heads of government in the world today. And she was a guest, not only of the president but of the United States. Even if the president and the chancellor are on a first-name basis in private, she ought to be given respect by being accorded some distance through formality. Using her first name in public is beneath her station — and yes, station is the right word.

Ah yes, there’s that word: RESPECT. The chancellor of Germany deserves respect. And that means, using the proper terms of respect. If you feel it but don’t say it, you are not showing it. And if you don’t show it, your feelings are a sham.

Unfortunately, Barack Obama has made a habit of disrespect. He seems to be opposed to the rules of propriety and decorum.

If the culture has coarsened during the past six years, one reason might be that our president disdains good manners. 

It didn’t start with Obama. It has culminated in Obama. In today’s America, fewer and fewer people respect authority. They do not respect the authority of teachers. They do not respect the authority of law enforcement officers. They do not respect the authority of those who are older and wiser than they are.

Of course, it is also fair to say that some of those who hold positions of high authority, beginning with the president, do not seem comfortable exercising it. Their demeanor does not command respect.

They, as most of us, live in a youth cult.We worship youth and disdain the wisdom that comes with age and experience.

This implies that after we inevitably outgrow our youth, it’s all downhill from there. The young cult is a prescription for depression.

It also means that many people don’t know how to take advice. They would rather make their own mistakes than to accept the guidance of someone who is older and wiser.

“The tyranny of informality,” Strain argues, is rude. It is fake; it invites us all to live in an “egalitarian fiction.” It causes us to take leave of reality.

In his words;

Our society is suffering from a tyranny of informality. It is rude. It is false intimacy. It is a product of the utopian, egalitarian fiction that society is one big happy village. A friendship circle, where we’re all holding hands. Station and hierarchy should be leveled because they are so nineteenth-century. In the modern world, we are all equal — so we are all pals.

Titles, he continues, confer authority. They are granted by institutions and thus designate the individual as having been elevated to his position by something other than his own will. Thus titles inspire respect.

Individuals who bear titles will be respected, until proven wrong. Individuals who do not bear titles will be doubted until they prove their worth.

Surely, it is not always the case, but we do better when we have guidelines, especially those that have been established by tradition.

Authors whose works have become part of the canon of the great books of our civilization deserve and should be treated with respect.

Strain explains that respect resides in titles:

It’s easier to take moral instruction from “Father Suwalsky” than it is from “Dave.” “Father Suwalsky” has institutional authority reflected in an institutional title. It’s easier to accept knowledge from “Dr. Bean” than it is from “Jessica” — “Dr. Bean” has authority over knowledge. I’d find it a lot easier to undergo cancer treatment from “Dr. Hymes” than from “Ken.” It’s much easier to interact with people decades older than you if you address them in a way that recognizes their lived experience and wisdom.

The “tyranny of informality” also fouls personal relationships. If everyone is on a first-name basis, Strain notes, your language no longer defines your intimacy.

If every relationship begins on a first-name basis, then I am robbed of the ability to signal to someone that he has become a friend or close colleague by inviting him to address me by my first name. If the guy who comes to fix my cable calls me “Michael,” then what is left for my friends to call me? And isn’t it a little easier for the cable guy to give substandard service to “Tom” than to “Mr. Creal?”

Friendship is earned. Trust is earned. Even intimacy is earned.

When you treat all people the same way, you are conferring friendship to those who have not earned it. You are conferring trust to those who have not earned it.

This means that you are devaluing friendship. In some way it means that you are treating all people as equals, that is, as having the same relationship with you. This is consonant with the current mania about seeing all people primarily as human beings, as members of the species, as possessing a type of group membership that does not require good behavior and that does not punish bad behavior.

You belong to the human species no matter what you do.

The upshot is simple: defining human beings outside of all group membership makes of them an amoral species, people you would not want to hang around with.

Obama in Libya: He Meant Well

The epitaph on Barack Obama’s Libya policy will read: He Meant Well.

So explains Alan Kuperman in Foreign Affairs, the most respected foreign policy journal in America highly respected journal. The article is well-researched and very serious.

Kuperman teaches at the University of Texas at Austin. He is an expert on the “blowback” from what are called humanitarian interventions in foreign policy. One might say that he is the inverse of Samantha Power.

You recall that Samantha Power was one of the presiding “geniuses” who formulated the Obama administration Libya policy. Currently, she is our ambassador to the United Nations.

One is amazed to recognize that the American media has mostly ignored such a colossal foreign policy failure. Could it be because it wants, above all else, to put one of the architect of this policy, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the White House. It does not need mentioning, but such a policy failure had been crafted by a Republican administration you would be hearing about it all day, every day.

Kuperman writes:

In the immediate wake of the military victory, U.S. officials were triumphant. Writing in these pages in 2012, Ivo Daalder, then the U.S. permanent representative to NATO, and James Stavridis, then supreme allied commander of Europe, declared, “NATO’s operation in Libya has rightly been hailed as a model intervention.” In the Rose Garden after Qaddafi’s death, Obama himself crowed, “Without putting a single U.S. service member on the ground, we achieved our objectives.” Indeed, the United States seemed to have scored a hat trick: nurturing the Arab Spring, averting a Rwanda-like genocide, and eliminating Libya as a potential source of terrorism. 


That verdict, however, turns out to have been premature. In retrospect, Obama’s intervention in Libya was an abject failure, judged even by its own standards. Libya has not only failed to evolve into a democracy; it has devolved into a failed state. Violent deaths and other human rights abuses have increased severalfold. Rather than helping the United States combat terrorism, as Qaddafi did during his last decade in power, Libya now serves as a safe haven for militias affiliated with both al Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). The Libya intervention has harmed other U.S. interests as well: undermining nuclear nonproliferation, chilling Russian cooperation at the UN, and fueling Syria’s civil war.


Despite what defenders of the mission claim, there was a better policy available—not intervening at all, because peaceful Libyan civilians were not actually being targeted. Had the United States and its allies followed that course, they could have spared Libya from the resulting chaos and given it a chance of progress under Qaddafi’s chosen successor: his relatively liberal, Western-educated son Saif al-Islam. Instead, Libya today is riddled with vicious militias and anti-American terrorists—and thus serves as a cautionary tale of how humanitarian intervention can backfire for both the intervener and those it is intended to help.


As I say, Kuperman has written a long and detailed analysis of what went wrong in Libya. It is well worth a read.