Today in Argentina is celebrated as the 200th anniversary of ... what? It's not quite the declaration of independence, that was on July 9, 1816, but certainly the beginning of Argentina's self-rule and, to be completely accurate, fairly consistent misrule.
A group of the educated elite in Buenos Aires deposed the Spanish viceroy, arguing that Napoleon's invasion of Spain and imprisonment of King Ferdinand VII meant that the government of Spain was illegitimate. It was a thinly veiled ruse.
Upper crust young, idealistic republican egalitarians, who looked with hope to the pre-Napoleonic events of France since 1789, allied with somewhat more cynical merchants tired of the cat-and-mouse smuggling game around the Spanish colonial trade monopoly.
To what end? A minimal consensus was not reached until 1852, when at least a majority of Argentinians -- or at least those who counted for decisions of this sort -- could at last agree on what they did not want.
That consensus broke down in 1930, when demands by a new, emerging class of non-Spanish immigrants and first-generation citizens was met with the hard hand of the military, martial law and a decade of extremely public electoral fraud. This led to decades of struggle, involving the emergence of a charismatic leader named Juan Perón and the recurrent counterattacks from the gendarmes serving the heirs to the mantle of landowning oligarchs, namely the new commercial and industrial elite allied with the United States.
In 1983, once again, Argentinians were in unison about what they did not want, and since then they have experienced a series of largely corrupt, ineffective governments run by politicians elected on the shoulders of a fading memory of Perón.
Only a hundred years ago one of the top ten economies of the world, Argentina today sinks ever lower toward 100th place. A nation of 40 million that produces enough food for 300 million now has millions of hungry people.
What exactly are we celebrating again?
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Saturday, May 22, 2010
From Facts to Truth
The Zeitgeist is changing! the Zeitgeist is changing! You heard of its first glimmer here.
For more than 200 years North American culture (you too, Canadians, thanks to David Hume) was a beacon of ... (wait for it) ... facts. We've loved empirically quantifiable and observable reality, from RBIs to GDPs, from the census to tallies of the most Valentine cards received.
Our policymakers talk about facts that can be pressed to serve any party, any master, any point of view. None care that the unemployment rate is a ratio so approximate that it misses changes involving as many as 260,000 U.S. workers.
Taught that foundational philosophy is the mother of all scientia (Latin for knowledge), I've run for decades against the stubbornly empiricist Zeitgeist (German Zeit, time, and Geist, spirit, meaning "the spirit of the age"), even though my occupation worships it.
Truth came in observable and measurable bites; reason was king. Gods, witches, intuitions and feelings were for hippies, existentialists and (of course!) women. Damn the yang, up with the ying!
That's all about to change.
A growing panel of hostile inquisitors is asking why we can invent the Internet but still can't get Johnny to read, Janey out of the slum, let alone protect either from the bad guys? Something is wrong with the tyranny of facts.
We forgot about truth, the elusive heart's desire of Aristotle, Spinoza, Maritain and others. The bureaucrats and policymakers may not realize it, the better newspapers are just beginning to sniff it, but I've known it was coming (now you do); indeed, it's long overdue.
For more than 200 years North American culture (you too, Canadians, thanks to David Hume) was a beacon of ... (wait for it) ... facts. We've loved empirically quantifiable and observable reality, from RBIs to GDPs, from the census to tallies of the most Valentine cards received.
Our policymakers talk about facts that can be pressed to serve any party, any master, any point of view. None care that the unemployment rate is a ratio so approximate that it misses changes involving as many as 260,000 U.S. workers.
Taught that foundational philosophy is the mother of all scientia (Latin for knowledge), I've run for decades against the stubbornly empiricist Zeitgeist (German Zeit, time, and Geist, spirit, meaning "the spirit of the age"), even though my occupation worships it.
Truth came in observable and measurable bites; reason was king. Gods, witches, intuitions and feelings were for hippies, existentialists and (of course!) women. Damn the yang, up with the ying!
That's all about to change.
A growing panel of hostile inquisitors is asking why we can invent the Internet but still can't get Johnny to read, Janey out of the slum, let alone protect either from the bad guys? Something is wrong with the tyranny of facts.
We forgot about truth, the elusive heart's desire of Aristotle, Spinoza, Maritain and others. The bureaucrats and policymakers may not realize it, the better newspapers are just beginning to sniff it, but I've known it was coming (now you do); indeed, it's long overdue.
Monday, May 17, 2010
The Color of Color
I never cease to be amazed at what's in the recesses of people walking and talking our streets attired as if they were civilized, until they let slip the sheer, blind tribalism they've brought with them from their caves.
Saturday I attended a party in honor of a friend of a friend at which there were many former Americans abroad, specifically, folks whose aging parents had toiled defending the indefensible in Latin America, in this particular case, Ecuador. Suddenly a woman who became aware of the predominant group in attendance chimed, "I didn't realize there were that many white people in Ecuador."
There was no mistaking the meaning. She meant "white" as in White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant, among whose trash she had obviously been reared. Her defense was that her surname, obviously through marriage, was "Ruhmeerezz."
White? "European," one peace-at-any-pricer offered.
Last I checked, however, Spain was in the European Union. Indeed, they went to Ecuador 500 years ago from Europe, long before the Puritans landed at Plymouth Rock. Indeed, many descendants of Spaniards in the U.S. West and Southwest think, with some historical evidence on their side, that it's really the Anglos who are the illegal immigrants there.
Part of the problem is a subtle change in the way even the most educated and liberal people speak of ethnicity in this allegedly "post-racial" era. I keep hearing at seminars and symposia the phrase "of color," applied to African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, etc. It's the new easy shorthand.
But, folks, white is a color. It's not a color of skin, however. Ever tried to draw white people with crayons as a kid? There used to be a color specifically for that (don't know if there still is) and it was not white.
That's because the people called "white" aren't really white. They come in skins that range from a sickly to mottled pink, to a tan that can be indistinguishable from some of the lighter folks of other "races," to a quite brownish brown.
Indeed, the people who think they are "white" today, weren't always considered "white," as one of my favorite and scholarly blogs notes in the recent post Before I Was White.
Saturday I attended a party in honor of a friend of a friend at which there were many former Americans abroad, specifically, folks whose aging parents had toiled defending the indefensible in Latin America, in this particular case, Ecuador. Suddenly a woman who became aware of the predominant group in attendance chimed, "I didn't realize there were that many white people in Ecuador."
There was no mistaking the meaning. She meant "white" as in White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant, among whose trash she had obviously been reared. Her defense was that her surname, obviously through marriage, was "Ruhmeerezz."
White? "European," one peace-at-any-pricer offered.
Last I checked, however, Spain was in the European Union. Indeed, they went to Ecuador 500 years ago from Europe, long before the Puritans landed at Plymouth Rock. Indeed, many descendants of Spaniards in the U.S. West and Southwest think, with some historical evidence on their side, that it's really the Anglos who are the illegal immigrants there.
Part of the problem is a subtle change in the way even the most educated and liberal people speak of ethnicity in this allegedly "post-racial" era. I keep hearing at seminars and symposia the phrase "of color," applied to African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, etc. It's the new easy shorthand.
But, folks, white is a color. It's not a color of skin, however. Ever tried to draw white people with crayons as a kid? There used to be a color specifically for that (don't know if there still is) and it was not white.
That's because the people called "white" aren't really white. They come in skins that range from a sickly to mottled pink, to a tan that can be indistinguishable from some of the lighter folks of other "races," to a quite brownish brown.
Indeed, the people who think they are "white" today, weren't always considered "white," as one of my favorite and scholarly blogs notes in the recent post Before I Was White.
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