Beyond Dominoes and Billiard Balls

Josiah Narog has been known to get me thinking. He asked what I thought about the Arab Spring. Remarkably, I had an opinion.

Dear Josiah,

Forget dominoes. It stinks of international relations theory. That sort of metaphor makes you try to conceive of the political as being akin to the physical. Instead assume that you are dealing with humans.

Maintaining a relationship of abusive domination requires the dominator to cultivate intense fear in the dominated. Typically the goal of this fear is to economize on the use of violence. Anyone who really understands politics understands that balances of power are not like a lever teetering on a fulcrum. Rather, it’s a great deal more like football. No matter how good one team and how bad the other, on any given Sunday you can win or lose. The trick of the dominator is to avoid losing by minimizing the number of games he or she has to play. Each game is a playoff game. If you lose once, you’re out of the game or will at least have to renegotiate the terms of domination. To stay in the game, the dominator has to win and preferably, win big. Abused people have to believe that they have no hope of resistance if they are to willingly bear the costs of abuse. Hope is the wellspring of the will to fight. Hope must be eliminated in the dominated if the dominator plans on making the abuse a foundation of his or her rule.

Demonstration effects are possible because the experience of seeing resistance work in a context that you see as much like your own is inspiring. It restores hope. Plus, there are young people. Young people differ from old people in that they have very limited experience of how difficult it can be to bear the costs of failure. Naturally the young will seize an opportunity when they are inspired. This is the essence of the demonstration effect. Most will lag behind to “see if it works.” If it looks like resistance is possible, more will join. Dennis Chong is right--it’s basically a tipping game. It needs inspiration (charisma), however to get it started. That said, losses dampen the will to fight. Recall that every charisma lives from success to success and with each passing hour grows nearer and nearer to its own death. Seeing resistance crushed is also psychologically powerful.

Bear in mind that age plays a role also for the dominator. Most people including a good many dictators, are not what I called psychopaths and what you called sociopaths: individuals who are incapable of feeling sympathy and, as a result, can objectify others with no psychological costs. Abuse has a psychological cost for the psychologically normal dominator, as does the will to savagery and cruelty. The dominator is not able to bear these psychological costs uniformly throughout his or her life. As one ages, one loses these capacities. The Mubarak was a very old and feeble man in this round. He was leaning on JIMMY for Christ’s sake. What does that tell you about his sense of real politik?

This analysis, bear in mind, is very simplified. Recall that Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Yemen are all facing remarkably different situations of domination and remarkably different domestic problems. But they weren’t dominoes. One falling over does not guarantee the next falling over. If I have tried to teach you anything at all, it’s been to stop thinking of states as a system. There are some loose regularities that characterize the states on this planet; this is true. But you’re never going to get more than loose regularities owing to the lack of uniformity in institutions and the personalities who run them. Billiard balls and dominoes are of no practical use to us here.

Merry Christmas, brother! Commend me to your wife. Let me know if you ever get the time to grab that beer.

Cheers!

Talal

The New Food Plan

Frans wanted to know what I was doing for my food plan. There are the meals:

The Fiber One cereal is because, well, I’m descended from the goodly folks of the Mediterranean Basin and am pushing 40. A cup and a half of Fiber One and I’m perfect. Other folks may not need as much. Obviously cereal needs milk, so there’s the cup of 1%. Perhaps I should use skim, but I’m not that strong. The eggs are hard-boiled to save on frying calories (ostensibly) and to save precious morning time (really). I have a latte in the morning because I am Seattlite. I sweeten with sucralose. That took the most getting used to.

For lunch and dinner, right now I’m having 6 ounces of shish tawouk (chicken kebabs for the uninitiated) and a very large salad. My salad is a cup of a salad mixture I create at the beginning of the week (6 bell peppers of multiple colors, 3 English cucumbers, two onions—all diced—yes, I am a Levantine), half a Romaine heads, chopped finely (about 4 oz) and a diced roma tomato. Kraft fat-free Italian is only 15 calories per tablespoon and doesn’t taste bad at all. I imagine I’ll have to develop a few alternatives, as even I can’t bear this much repetition for weeks on end. I’m throwing in 6 oz of roast, which actually has fewer calories than the chicken this week. I’m also looking at a black bean and corn salsa to alternate with the salad.

Snacks are pivotal to this plan, as I eat something every two hours. This way the body is always digesting and, hence, burning more calories. Moreover, this way I avoid hunger. Weight Watchers is clever about rating hunger on a scale on 1-5, where 1 is ravenous and 5 is stuffed. You eat at 2 (hungry, but not like a wolf) until you get to 4 (approaching full, but not there yet) so that you spend most of your day at 3 (neutral—not hungry, but not full, not engaged with food). Mine are pretty plain:

The apple treat probably won’t work for most folks, but I like it. I dice an apple and crush an ounce of walnuts and throw them in a bowl. I then sprinkle with 4 packets of sucralose, liberal amounts of ground cinnamon and a light sprinkling of nutmeg. Cloves are nice if you have them, but I’m out. I have a serious sweet truth and this gets me close to desert without breaking the diet or creating refined carb cravings.

The total caloric intake is roughly 1969 calories. I often have a second latte in the afternoon, so I’m hovering below 2100. As I weigh about 210, 2100 is my goal (10 calories per pound I weigh). Maintenance is supposed to be 15 calories per pound I weigh. I’m doing my pathetic version of weight lifting, so hopefully I pack on some muscle and don’t lose much weight, but just burn some fat. I’ll keep you guys posted.

McCarthy's Big Moment

Listen to The Bears Still Suck Polka from Chicago Bears

Let's hope he doesn't blow it, eh?

For Dinur and Shawn

Mike McCarthy

This is from Coach McCarthy’s press conference on Monday:

(How can you use a win like that? The flip side, the season’s not over if you lose and fall to 3-4, but then you’ve lost four games by three points each and things are pretty tough around here. What kinds of things can you take from a win like this and build off of and try to create some momentum?)

I’m the point man of this deal. I don’t swing left to right like that. I’m out in front. I do not change. It’s not my personality. I believe it’s ineffective to swing with the emotion, the criticism, even on the other side of it. When something everybody feels extremely positive is happening, I don’t think you run around with your pom-poms this week. That’s the last thing that I’m going to do. Everybody had a chance to enjoy the win last night, and I’m sure everybody feels good today. It was easier coming to work today than it was last week. That’s our business. Winning is important. A lot of good things come off of winning. But it’s onto the next one. It’s a simple as that. I wish I had some fancy words up here to make you feel better, I could answer your question better. But that’s what you’ve got and that’s what I am.

(You are that way, but you have 25-year-old kids who are more emotional and might look at it differently. How do you make sure that they use it in a positive way?)

Well, it’s all part of how you, you have to set the tempo and the plan every week. A big part of coaching is you’re a teacher and a salesman. You have to sell that plan, sell that path every single week. You can’t just go up and give a good speech at the beginning of the year and roll the ball out there. It doesn’t work that way. Today’s athlete is different. I think they’re very educated, they’re very in tune. The social networking is unbelievable. Some things I don’t even know how to work. But I’m in tune with what’s out there. It’s important for us to stay focused on the next opponent, and that’s our approach.

McCarthy is in awe of twitter (?!). I'll let that pass. But in his own words, the man is a technocrat. He isn’t a leader. I’ll be genuinely surprised if we beat the Jets come Sunday. But Brent limped off the field last Sunday. If we can beat the Bears come Christmas, I'll say the season turned out alright. Or as well as could be, our coaching situation considered.

Favre from the Taiwanese Vantage Point

But What Is the Running Game?

On Tuesday, the media asked Mike McCarthy, “When you went back and watched the tape, how did you evaluate the run game?” This is the opening of McCarthy’s response:

The run game? Well, it’s—I think you have to, you know… look at the—what’s the definition of “run game?”

So what is this guy? A second-year grad student? What’s the definition of “run game?” This is football, not existential philosophy. Last I heard, the running game happens when (1) the quarterback hands the football to the running back, (2) the O-line punches a hole through the D-line and (3) the running back carries the ball through the hole toward the endzone.

Silly Talal. Trix are for kids! Apparently Mike McCarthy has redefined the concept of running game to mean “throwing lots of short passes” so that our offensive line will not be taxed to excess. God forbid the O-line be troubled with opening a hole for the running back to run through. Right guard Darryn Colledge recently said, “We’re an optimistic offense. We’ll take the yards any way we can get them, whether it’s run, pass or A-Rod scrambling for them himself.” Yeah, we can even have Rodgers run the ball in himself for the first down. Darryn Colledge calls that optimistic.

Personally, I call it desperate, but as Coach points out, this is apparently all a matter of definition. Apparently, Packers football is no longer played for the reality-based community.

I hate Mike McCarthy. The Packers O-Line will stink for as long as he’s here. Here watch these. I can’t write any more. This is making me sick.