Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Interesting premise. Of course right-wing demagogues use "rednecks."
Left-wing ones use radical college students. Ethnic demagogues use the
more marginalized and radicalized members of their communities. The
idea of marginal people manipulated for political ends could be
explored in fiction of course. Maybe it has. Anyone know? It could
provide some insight into the dynamics of extremist or terrorist
groups.
Alas I've never written fiction and the few times I tried it in
school weren't very promising. I think it takes a different set
of muscles.
  

    

I like that reading a fiction writer and a nonfiction writer in proximity
inspires visions of hybrid art, even though the artists who inspired the
idea are not likely to write the imaginary book.  It's one of the ways the
WELL tends to boost synchronicity and creativity.

Harry, what do you make of the vague information of heightened threat?  Can
this help a civilian population, or is it mainly so we know the government 
does have intelligence sources?  Is it standard practice in countries with
endemic terrorism?

 http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2001/10/29/warning/index.html
  

    
I don't know if it's "standard practice." I suppose it heightens
generalized awareness in the short term. However if you do it 
more than a few times you get the "cry wolf" effect, plus
you wear down the public safety forces since a condition of
heightened alert and increased adrenaline can only be maintained
for so long.

Since we have no way to know how they judge a threat to be
"credible" we don't know whether they simply have the gain
on the "detector" turned up too high. Certainly plenty of warnings
or alerts of all kinds were coming in before 9/11 and have continued
to come in. The difference seems to be that the threshold for
acting on them is now much lower.

There's also the old military maxim that "he who defends everything
defends nothing." This means that if you try to guard against all
threats, you spread you resources so thinly that an enemy can
easily overwhelm a particular target.

Naturally the cynical take is that bureaucrats and politicians
would rather risk a mild reproof for "crying wolf" than face
charges that they hadn't warned about what turned out to be
a successful attack.

I guess my bottom line take is I don't think these content-
free warnings are very useful, and they may be counterproductive.
  

    
>>The idea of marginal people manipulated for political ends could be
>>explored in fiction of course. Maybe it has. Anyone know? It could
>>provide some insight into the dynamics of extremist or terrorist
>>groups.

     It's been done.  Richard Condon's THE WHISPER OF THE AXE comes to
mind.  Not first-rate Condon (as, say, THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE), but
an interesting book.
  

    
> marginal people manipulated for political ends

this was the whole of Clinton's second term; I can't imagine we would have
called Monica Lewinsky or Linda Tripp central to anything, before all that
mess began to bubble out of the politcal pot...
  

    
I was a little unclear in my last question.  I tend to think of CNN as
an amplifier for all kinds of interests.  Normally, it amplifies those
of its own kind, namely large multinational corporations.  It's the
news we expect because it's the news we get because it's the news we
expect, and so on.  (I have noticed a curious increase in the number
of Oxbridgian accents since Sept. 11 on CNN, by the way.)

But it also functions to amplify other agendas, including those of
terrorists.  In that sense, I'm wondering whether the truly horrific
attack of Sept. 11 won't have a series of echoing repercussions,
starting probably with the anthrax letters, which have the earmarks of
domestic hate groups.  There are a lot of people out there who have
their little plans, and the attention of the world offers an unparalleled
opportunity to try things out.

Perhaps, again, even at this startling moment, the wonder is not that
the anthrax letters happened but that so little else seems to be happening.
  

    
Yeah.  All news amplifies crisis.  Feeds on crisis.
  

    
I agree with phred that it seems strange. Given how high the
gain on the media microphone is turned, any nut or marginal
ideologue or grudge case might be tempted to do something -
on the other hand, maybe the heightened security is intimidating
some of them.


 
  

    

Harry, over the last few days I've seen multiple references to the idea that
terrorism is communication, but the US has not realized it is in a
comunications battle, a global conversation to win and keep the hearts of 
allies, resitance on the streets of the Islamic world, and the support of 
its own citizens.

A few days ago there was an excellent Salon piece on this,
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2001/10/31/civilian_casualties/index.html
The article shows some of the ways in which the US is working to not hurt
civilians, and how that is not seen because the US has failed to mount a
serious propaganda war.   

This morning the San Francisco Chronicle and CBS radio both covered the
need for better information in this effort.  
 
Of course, crude lies are not going to be as effective as they were in
centuries past, since fact-checking is different now.   And many who
support the idea of defeating the Taliban have strong reservations about 
some of the actions taken.  For example, the use of cluster bombs, the 
same color as the food packets we drop, looking like a soda can, 5% 
unexploded and lying in wait like a little bright yellow mine.  Just to 
name one military approach with very bad "information" components, 
whether or not it can take out a convoy of trucks. 

I believe that in the age of terror, it is not just what the US military
says which is "propaganda" -- it is also the actions taken, especially
the ones which are etched into the memories of those who are not sworn
enemies, but are on the fence, disliking some of America's past actions, 
and watching to see who the good guy is in this.  We have to figure out
how a self-proclaimed super-power can take effective action without having 
each move send the "bully" or "just-as-murderous" message unintentionally.  
Of course we are not going to win everyone over, but we need a general 
consensus if we are to actually defeat or greatly dampen global terrorism, 
and our actions are information, as theirs are.

Could we be less sophisticated than Bin Laden in this arena?  
I wonder, Harry, what is the expert thought on ALL military action as 
having a communication component?  Is this something strategists
understand?  
  

    
I think you've raised a very important consideration, Gail. Part
of the problem is that while there are academic experts on culture
and religion there isn't enough connection between those people
and the people who formulate and carry out military programs.

A classic example of this domestically was Waco. The FBI 
completely ignored the religious ideology and motivations of
David Koresh and his followers. They simply assumed he was
crazy, period but at the same time tried to treat it like
an ordinary "holed-up bank robber" hostage situation. The
people with the guns even ignored their own hostage negotiators
so the negotiators couldn't keep any agreement they made
with the Davidians. Yet there actually were experts who 
understood the religious tradition involved and how someone
commited to that tradition would think and react to outside
pressures.

So I think we've been rather fumbling in our attempt to 
make our own responses "communicative." Yes, there's the "it's
not a war against Islam" meme, but there could have been 
greater efforts to get respected clerics to condemn Bin Laden
and his group. And, for that matter, before the bombing started,
there could have been an effort to address what I understand 
is a key idea in Afghani culture, the responsibility to a guest.
Couldn't we have made the point that Bin Laden had violated 
the hospitality of the Taliban and the Afghani people by using
his guest status to carry out attacks that threaten Afghanistan
itself with destruction? Could we have quietly worked out something
where the Taliban expelled in Laden and al-Quaeda with the face-
saving pretext that they had violated hospitality? Could someone
more sensitive to such issues have communicated this to them? I
don't know, of course, but it brings up a lot of other possible
missed opportunities.
  

    
Two weeks went by really quickly, didn't they? Your official two-week tour
of Inkwell.vue is done now, Harry, but you're welcome to continue this
discussion if you like. We appreciate you sharing your expertise. This has
been such an informative session. Thank you, Harry.
  

    
You're welcome, Cynthia. I enjoyed it. I'll leave inkwell.vue on my
.cflist at least for awhile and will be happy to respond to anything
that comes up.
I'll also keep you posted about upcoming titles that I'll be 
writing on this and other subjects.
  

    
Thanks for that - there's plenty more to discuss!
  

    <scribbled by cdb Thu 17 Jun 04 12:57>
  

    
(scribbled because it was posted in the wrong thread)