The March of Progress

I’m not necessarily in favor of American cultural or political hegemony, or ideological limitations on public discourse, but I don’t really understand why the Times is running an op-ed by a venture capitalist arguing that America’s government should be more like China’s, and that it’s a good thing the Tiananmen Square protests were violently put down, because the alternative — political liberalization and increased popular participation in governance — would have been so much worse. Were Tiananmen not handled as it was, argues Mr. Li, who wrote the awful thing, then China would likely not be in the economic position it is today: coming off a long run of massive economic growth and newly installed as the second largest economy in the world.

Never mind that China still does not have an independent judiciary or due process, has the one-child policy, executes more people than the rest of the world combined (tax fraud, for example, is punishable by death), and promotes virulent racism, particularly towards Africans, Tibetans and Uyghurs. Never mind that nearly 500 million Chinese live on less than $2.00 per day, that income inequality in China is on the rise with no signs of stopping, that government officials use beatings, torture and the “black jail” system to forcibly vacate property holders from land so they can resell it to real estate prospectors, that, on average, 60% of the cost of a hospitalization will come out of the patient’s pocket, that graft, bribery and nepotism are endemic within the government, with misspending of public funds totaling at least 3% of China’s GDP annually, or that China spends more money on its police forces and internal security measures than they do on their military. One would imagine that the case of Chen Xiaofeng, for example, might be illustrative of some greater societal ills, or that of Wang Yue, or the incident in 2008 when dairy products were found to contain high levels of melamine, or the incident in 2009 when inspectors in Wuhan discovered that most blood pudding in China contains little if any actual blood, but is instead made of formaldehye, corn starch, and industrial grade salt, or the stinky tofu producers who were found to be using sewage in their production process, or the deaths of 40 people last year in a train crash which resulted from design flaws and mismanagement in China’s new bullet train infrastructure. You would think that these things might cast some doubt on the long-term viability of the current Chinese political and economic systems.

Mr. Li writes that “the modern West sees democracy and human rights as the pinnacle of human development.” The alternative, as Mr. Li puts it, is to be “prepared to allow greater popular participation in political decisions if and when it is conducive to economic development and favorable to the country’s national interests.” If the pinnacle of human development is, in fact, the continual pursuit of economic growth at the expense of all other interests for the remainder of human existence, then I propose that the definition of “development” must be seriously reconsidered. I am not of the opinion that humanity’s greatest future is as a collection of automatons on an assembly line of global scale.

People have been predicting the decline of the United States, and democracy, for quite a while. In the 1920′s and 30′s, for example, the general consensus was that democratic governance was all but done for, and that either fascism or Soviet-style communism would become the dominant system. I believe we all remember how that turned out.

“As the Nobel-winning economist A. Michael Spence has put it, America has gone from ‘one propertied man, one vote; to one man, one vote; to one person, one vote; trending to one dollar, one vote.’ By any measure, the United States is a constitutional republic in name only,” writes Mr. Li. It seems odd to consider this as a damning contrast in regards to the Chinese model, given the pay-to-play nature of politics and industry there.  But even in the wake of the Citizen United decision and the continual increase of the corporate sector and moneyed interests in American political discourse (although the real ramifications of these changes have only just begun to play out), things are not so ridiculous as Mr. Li would have it. “Elected representatives have no minds of their own and respond only to the whims of public opinion as they seek re-election,” he writes. Setting aside the strange idea that elected representatives should not pay attention to the people they’re intended to represent, the assertion is flatly false.  The desire to be re-elected plays a significant factor in congressional voting behavior, but is hardly a deciding factor in it, and, furthermore, pandering to the whims of public opinion is no guarantee of electoral success.

Let’s take the case of former Sen. Arlen Specter as an example, and bear with me because I’m about to get technical. DW-NOMINATE scores are measures of political ideology in Congress and run from -1.00 (most liberal) to 1.00 (most conservative). Over the course of the 111th Congress, the Congress in which Sen. Specter switched party affiliation from Republican to Democrat, we see that his DW-NOMINATE score as a Republican was 0.067, by a small margin the least conservative senator in the Republican party. If Sen. Specter were in fact a mindless hack, responding only to the whims of public opinion, it would stand to reason that he would not vote differently after changing parties, as he represented the same constituency, the state of Pennsylvania, for the duration. As both a Republican and a Democrat, Sen. Specter’s electoral prospects hinged on winning his party’s base, plus a very large share of independent voters in Pennsylvania. Given that base voters tend to vote for their party’s candidate in almost every case, Sen. Specter would be expected to stick with whatever he had been doing to win over independent voters in the past, as he could expect Democrats to support him in an election against a Republican, whatever his past affiliation. Sen. Specter’s DW-NOMINATE score after changing parties was -.382. Sen. Specter was more conservative in his voting record than every Democratic senator before his switch in party affiliation. Then, after he switched parties, there were 34 Democratic senators who were suddenly more conservative in their voting records than Sen. Specter. Obviously there are factors at work in determining congressional voting behavior beyond scraping and groveling to the electorate, despite what Mr. Li would have us believe. This exercise illustrates the flaw in only a small part of Mr. Li’s argument, but is indicative of a much larger part of mine — that Mr. Li fundamentally misconceives the way that the American government works.

The more general point about representative government that Mr. Li does not seem to understand (and this is particularly true of American government) is its incredible ability to learn from and react to its mistakes (a statement that has never been made about the Chinese Communist Party), and to move forward towards a more just and equitable society. It takes time, and sometimes that time is far too long, but, invariably, we progress. America is better today than is was in 2004, when the first same-sex couple married in Massachusetts, and better than it was in 2003, when Lawrence vs. Texas was decided. America is better today than it was when the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 was passed, or when the Voting Rights Act and Immigration and Nationality Act were passed in 1965, when the Civil Rights Act passed in 1964, when the Supreme Court ended prosecutions under the Smith Act in 1957, when Brown vs. Board of Education was decided in 1954, when the National Labor Relations Act passed in 1935, when Prohibition was repealed in 1933, or when the Snyder Act passed in 1924. America is better today than it was at the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920, and better than it was in 1865, when the 13th Amendment ended slavery.

Economics helped create the institution of slavery, but did not help to end it. In Mr. Li’s conception of good government, money is the ultimate reward. To diminish the role of government to that of a corporate conglomerate is a serious error in judgement. Considerations of whether or not the Chinese model is the most efficient means of producing economic growth aside, I do not consent to the idea that efficiency of economic growth and production is the greatest and best end goal of human society.  But if Mr. Li somehow proves right, and the Chinese model becomes dominant, I hope that I’ll be dead by then, because that is not a world I care to see.

(Update: This just came out today. Speak of the devil.)

It's twilight in America and it's because of this list.

In no way is this breaking news, but I just glanced at the Modern Library’s Reader’s List of 100 Best Novels, and it occurred to me that it’s indicative of many of the things that are so terribly wrong with America today (this is almost certainly not a coincidence). Let’s take a look at the top 10.

1. Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand (Ron Paul is an elected official.)

2. The Fountainhead – Ayn Rand (Rand Paul is an elected official.)

3. Battlefield Earth – L. Ron Hubbard (Scientology exists; the movie Battlefield Earth also exists.)

4. The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkein (Rampant escapism, racism, the use of weapons as a tool when shopping, Elijah Wood is creepy.) *

5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee (I’ve never not laughed at a Boo Radley-based joke.)

6. 1984 – George Orwell (Ron / Rand Paul supporters won’t stop using the phrase “Big Brother” in reference to President Obama all over the internet.)

7. Anthem – Ayn Rand (People take Ayn Rand seriously.)

8. We the Living – Ayn Rand (That this many Ayn Rand books exist is a serious problem.)

9. Mission Earth – L. Ron Hubbard (There was no movie adaptation of Mission Earth due to the critical and commercial failure of Battlefield Earth, but I wish there was a movie adaptation because I always need more Forest Whitaker in my life.)

10. Fear – L. Ron Hubbard (Scientology again.)

I don’t know why I’m getting all in a twist about this now, but seriously, who are the people who voted to make this list happen? I find it difficult to believe that anyone actually believes there are four Ayn Rand novels and two L. Ron Hubbard novels that are better than Ulysses, which comes in at number eleven. In other news, Stephen King is apparently superior to John Fowles, Vladamir Nabokov, William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Malcolm Lowry, Joseph Conrad, and Virginia Woolfe, and D.H. Lawrence, E.L. Doctorow, V.S. Naipaul, and E.M. Forster don’t even crack the top 100. What does America have against people with initials? I smell a conspiracy.

* In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve read The Lord of the Rings 10 times, give or take, so don’t think I don’t also love it. It’s just that sometimes you have to let go of the things you love for the good of the country, like how Mark Foley let go of that handsome young page’s hand, or how Barack Obama (didn’t) let go of his racist feelings towards white folks.**

** That’s intended as a joke, in case there’s any confusion. Everybody knows Mark Foley never let go of that boy’s hand.

She was some sort of monument to alert age in the neighborhood – about eighty, open mind, colorful anecdotes, crepy skin, a dress over-formal, and thick stockings.

Note the progression of details. He begins with the most vague, a “monument to alert age,” and then proceeds, in order of importance, to describe the woman’s age, mind, capacity for story-telling, body, and clothing. Now, a more extended passage:

My essence yearned and rose from the closet and my roots tore from me, standing up like a tangled tree in dark heaven. My mother gave Patricia to me before she threw herself into what she called her patriotic suicide — that is, she used Kentucky whiskey and tobacco and overate fried foods in a long faithful ritual before she joined my old man in the soil near Lexington.
I thought heavily and decided I’d go back down South.
I was tired of Washington, DC.
I was tired of my vocation.
I was tired of me.
Somewhere near the sea we’d go. Carolyn and Patricia both loved the sea. I’d find a town that would appreciate me for my little gifts and we’d move there. Have new friends, more privacy. I might turn back into a Democrat.
Changes like that never bothered my heart.

This passage, the conclusion of “Our Secret Home,” turns on one unlikely sentence: “Somewhere near the sea we’d go.” Taken singularly, the shift in the word order renders it quaint, Romantic, reminiscent of some Wordsworthian couplet. But the preceding figurative language, the “patriotic suicide,” the “tangled tree in dark heaven” preclude the possibility of genuine sentiment in accordance with popular conception of that aesthetic tradition, as such. In its context it becomes the emotional focal point of the story, encapsulating the narrator’s inability to accept the possibility of changes that may, that must, in fact, bother his heart.

And, finally, one more. A pure sentence, from “Ride Westerly for Pusalina.”

Mex Nedd went out the door in silhouette, catching them unawares, the long rifle speaking like a Kentucky senator, an old man of thunder.

Here is the essence of Hannah — a character, a physical place and description, and then the winding out to something much more nebulous and felt-in-the-bones. The man, Mex, and then the door framing his silhouette, and then the long rifle’s report, like the speech of a Kentucky senator, and then a final, exhaustive leap, the senator as an old man of thunder, bordering on the ‘Pataphysical, with the thunder, of course, hearkening all the way back to the distant physicality of the rifle, the long vowel sounds echoing the rolling of gunfire in the sparse western landscape.

Such is Hannah at his best. His ability to evoke not only the physical place, the battlefields of both the Vietnam and Civil Wars, the backwoods of his native Mississippi, the steel and asphalt of New York City, but also the great tumult of human emotion that carved out the bloody trenches and the shady creek beds and the long valleys between the office towers, and to do so successfully on the level of a sentence, that is what makes Hannah great.

-Ed Winstead

Kerri Webster’s new book, Grand & Arsenal, which won the Iowa Poetry Prize and features several poems that have appeared in Washington Square, will be released by the University of Iowa Press this Spring! Congratulations to her! I strongly suggest that you pre-order it on Amazon by clicking here. Loyal readers, and some choice disloyal readers, may recall that Kerri also won the prestigious Whiting Award back in October. Five of Kerri’s poems were featured in our Summer/Fall 2011 issue, which you can pick up by going here. In conclusion, we love Kerri Webster, and would love it if you’d join us in support of her fantastic work.

That’s right! Hundreds of you came out and voted (thank you for that), and America has spoken: Michael Gossett is the winner of the first ever Washington Square Blogtest! Michael wins a subscription to Washington Square and a free submission to the 2012 Washington Square Awards. Well done, Michael!

Speaking of the awards, our second order of business is to announce the judges for this year’s contest! So, without further ado, here they are:

Poetry  Judge: Marie Howe

Marie Howe’s most recent book, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her other collections of poetry include What the Living Do and The Good Thief, which was selected by Margaret Atwood for the 1987 National Poetry Series. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, Agni, Ploughshares, and Harvard Review. Her honors include National Endowment for the Arts and Guggenheim fellowships.

Fiction judge: Darin Strauss

Darin Strauss is the author of four novels, including the international bestseller Chang and Eng, the New York Times Notable Book The Real McCoy, More Than it Hurts You. His latest book, a memoir, Half a Life, won the National Book Critics Circle Award. His work has been translated into fourteen language, and has appeared on multiple Best Book of the Year lists. He’s also the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Flash Fiction Judge:  Jim Shepard

Jim Shepard is the author of six novels and four short story collections, including Like You’d Understand, Anyway, which won the Story Prize in 2008, and was nominated for a National Book Award in 2007. His novel Project X won the 2005 Massachusetts Book Award. Shepard’s work has been published in McSweeney’s, Granta, The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Harper’s, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Triquarterly, and Playboy.

About the 2012 Washington Square Awards

Submissions to the contest are open as of this morning, via the Washington Square online submission system, which you can access by clicking here and following the instructions. Submissions close on March 8th. The winners from all three genres will receive a $500 prize and publication in Washington Square. The submission fee is $10 — a paltry sum compared to what you stand to win (particularly for Michael Gossett)!