National Review misses good ol' civilian-slaughtering imperialism

The ransacking of the British Embassy in Teheran is a very serious, ugly affair. At National Review, it makes Charles C.W. Cooke wistful for the good ol' days—with the Empire would've responded by killing a lot of innocent people. He fondly remembers one Lord Palmerston:

With the British embassy in Tehran under Iranian control, the Foreign Office issued a statement expressing “outrage” and confirming that the move “is utterly unacceptable. The Iranian government [has] a clear duty to protect diplomats and embassies in their country and we expect them to act urgently to bring the situation under control and ensure the safety of our staff and security of our property.” This, to put it mildly, would not have been Palmerston’s response. Having fumed for a while that Tehran was not close enough to water for a quick naval bombardment, Henry John Temple would have sent a blockade to the Caspian Sea and knocked out coastal towns one by one until an apology was forthcoming and a restoration assured. And then he would have taken to Parliament to defend his decision. Moreover, those who would take over the embassy of another nation while their elected representatives shouted “Death to Britain” would be made aware of the consequences of their actions. Were Palmerston around today, his response would ensure that nobody touched a British embassy for 100 years.

Cooke, apparently, is also nostalgic for the days when the British Empire would slaughter civilians in the name of ... trade policy:

When the Chinese had the temerity to restrict trade with the West — in particular by blocking opium exports from British India — Palmerston sent gunboats up the Yangtze River, indiscriminately destroying the small towns along the banks with such confidence that the Chinese quickly changed their minds. The result was the Treaty of Nanking, by the terms of which various trading posts were ceded to the British, and restrictions on imperial trade were summarily lifted.

Good times!

I don't know. Seems to me we can make a vigorous show of expecting Iran's government to honor international norms, with regards to embassies, without pining for the days when Western governments would impose their will on different continents through indiscriminate slaughter. Cooke's nostalgia is morally contemptible.

Glenn Greenwald: You can dissent without being a dick

Forgive the crudeness of the headline. But that's the thought I had while reading Glenn Greenwald this morning, as he weighed in on l'affaire Sam Brownback. If you've missed the controversy, here's the skinny: A Kansas teen-ager who was part of a group visiting the Kansas governor sent out a tweet suggesting she had criticized him to his face; the tweet contained a crude hashtag. The governor's communications staff saw the tweet, and told the teen's principal. It's all been resolved, now, and nobody has come out of it looking all that great.

But the Washington Post's Ruth Marcus wrote a column this morning castigating the teen for her incivility. And Greenwald has piped up criticizing Marcus for showing undue deference to elected officials:

Behold the mind of the American journalist: Marcus — last seen in this space three years ago demanding that Bush officials be fully shielded from all accountability for their crimes (the ultimate expression of “respect for authority”) — wants everyone to learn and be guided by extreme deference to political officials and to humbly apologize when they offend those officials with harsh criticism. In other words, Marcus wants all young citizens to be trained to be employees of The Washington Post. In a just world, Marcus’ column would be written instead by Sullivan’s mother, who exudes what the journalistic ethos should be — “I raised my kids to be independent, to be strong, to be free thinkers. If she wants to tweet her opinion about Governor Brownback, I say for her to go for it” — but people who think that way only rarely receive establishment media platforms. Instead, we’re plagued with the Ruth Marcuses of the world — “inculcate values of respect for authority”!!! — and that explains a lot.

Only it doesn't. Greenwald's criticism of Marcus presumes that dissenting from and criticizing elected authorities goes hand-in-hand with uncivil rudeness. It doesn't.

Gandhi managed to end British rule in India without saying of Churchill that "he blows a lot." Martin Luther King Jr. challenged entrenched racism in the the American south without saying that George Wallace "blows a lot." And I'm pretty sure that Rosa Parks kept her seat at the front of the bus without saying the bus driver "blows a lot."

Civility doesn't equal deference, nor does it equal silence. In the case of King and Parks, in particular, civility was a key component to making a forceful, sustained, morally unimpeachable challenge to the systems that oppressed them. That doesn't always work: Sometimes a little jerkiness does help.  But not always. Again: It's a huge mistake to assume that civility is surrender.

Brownback's staff overreacted. (I once covered a murder trial with his spokeswoman, back when she was a Topeka TV reporter; let's just say I'm not surprised.) And I don't really disagree with the assessment made by Emma Sullivan, the teen tweeter. To the extent that it revealed a paranoid strain in Brownback's governance, maybe she was even inadvertently successful. But thousands upon thousands of Kansans work against the governor's agenda every day—through donations, communication, and lobbying—without resorting to barnyard language. They aren't showing undue deference; they're just behaving like adults.

Dirty hippies and the First Amendment

Regarding this: I’ve had to make this point a couple of times in the past few days, so I might as well make it here: You don’t have to *like* the Occupy folks to think that abusive policing is bad.

There’s an old saying that—in my view at least—once represented the American ideal: “I don’t like what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.” That ideal has been replaced, it seems, with the idea that dirty hippies deserve whatever they get.

I like the old way better. It does require that I hold myself to the same ideal—that I allow room for people to be (say) bigoted or homophobic or, maybe, just a little too solicitous of the rich and powerful. I should defend their right to speak their minds, and get angry if a cop pepper sprays them for doing so. It’s easy to be gleeful when our opponents are silenced, but it isn't actually right.

Those darned cops

In the aftermath of the much-publicized pepperspray incident at UC-Davis, Ben and I use our Scripps column this week to debate the role of police officers in our communities. My take:

Abusive cops are nothing new: Ask your black and Latino friends about their experiences driving around in white neighborhoods, and you're likely to get an earful. What's remarkable about the recent examples of brutality -- why they have our attention -- is the victims in these cases: White, middle-class kids.

And that's fine, because it lets us finally have a big conversation about the role of police in our communities -- a role that has shifted since the events of 9/11. Departments across the country have become increasingly militarized over the last decade, preparing for a terrorist attack that most will never face. They've purchased tanks and drones, and have generally armed themselves for war.

In the absence of an actual external threat, though, those war-making capabilities have been focused on the communities that police officers are supposed to protect and serve. The result is a deepening alienation that serves neither the police nor their communities very well.

While there are many, many good cops serving our communities, there are also a great many bullies -- men whose proclivities probably would've landed them in jail if they hadn't earned a badge and a gun. It has always been thus.

This is where conservatives can serve their communities. Many are willing to cry "tyranny!" in the face of new environmental regulations but happy to support cops, no matter how egregious their abuses. (Fox News has been a shining example of the phenomenon this week.) That must change.

Let's sell the tanks and drones. Let's put the riot gear in mothballs.

Police must be allowed to keep order in their communities -- but they usually need not resort to such extremes to do so. Otherwise, if cops keep treating citizens as the enemy, they might one day find out they're right.

Ben's impulses generally run towards civil-libertarianism, but in this week's column his response is: "Yeah, but: Hippies!"

What good is college football?

Ben and I wrestle with the Penn State scandal in this week's Scripps column. My take:

College football is a blot upon the landscape.

The sport distorts the educational mission of participating schools, draws disproportionately from their financial resources and institutional energy, and badly exploits the young men who play the game.

All this, so we fans can have our Saturday tailgates. 

The scandal at Penn State isn't uncommon. As a young reporter in the early 2000s, I wrote about how Terry Allen, then-football coach at the University of Kansas, was presented with accusations that two of his players sexually assaulted a woman. He didn't go to police; Allen punished the players by making them run extra laps after practice. 

After the story broke, he stuck around another year before losing his job over a poor record. Anybody who has spent time around a top-level college program can probably tell you a similar story -- usually off-the-record. 

KU's current coach, Turner Gill, is by all accounts a decent man -- devoted to molding decent men. But he has a lousy record, and so at the end of this season will probably be given $6 million to walk away. That's $6 million at an institution that, like other public universities, is fighting for an ever-diminishing pool of resources to educate students and pursue vital research. 

The Atlantic's October cover story, "The Shame of College Sports," demonstrates further inequities. The players are young men who often sacrifice their health and well-being in hope of earning an unlikely berth in the NFL -- and who receive little compensation for their efforts, even while universities reap billions of dollars from the sport. 

Burn down the system. Let alumni pay to field their own football clubs, if they want, but let's get colleges out of the game. Penn State is one example of the corrupting effects of college football; it is far from the only one.

On hospitalization: Advocate for yourself

Over the course of three surgeries starting in May, I've had the honor of spending 17 days in the hospital in recent months. Before this, I'd not spent a night in the hospital since I was five years old, so I had to learn a thing or two about how best to take care of myself.

What I learned is this: I had to be an advocate for myself.

My second visit to the hospital, in July, was the worst. Part of that was a function of the surgery itself--I was opened up along the entire length of my belly, and surgeons had a difficult time once they got inside. The result was more pain--and more pain medication--than I have ever experienced in my life.

An additional problem, for me, is that I am what's known in the medical industry as a "bad stick." Hospitalization is an unending series of 1 a.m. blood draws--the better to deprive you of needed rest--and what became clear during that second visit is that it was hard for medical personnel to find a decent vein to tap. On one particularly unpleasant evening, the phlebotomist stuck me five times, fruitlessly, leaving an ugly and long-lasting bruise. I warned subsequent needle-bearers they would get two opportunities, tops.

I was ready for the problem this time. Every time somebody new approached me to draw blood, I told them: "I'm a bad stick. It's hard for people to find the right veins. I know you're trying to help me, but I'm not inclined to sit still for repeated stickings." And the results were good: One young lady stuck me three times--once in the hand! digging around!--but everybody else seemed to take extra time and care to finding and preparing the right vein. For the most part, the blood draws were a smooth process this time around.

My other problem during the second visit was room-sharing. I'm not above the company, but I realized--thanks to a nasty panic attack on my last day--that I needed better air and light than I was generally getting. So I told the people in charge of my care that if I shared a room, I needed to be next to the window--which, in addition to providing natural light, also happened to be closer to the air-moving unit in the room. With light and moving air, I could survive better. It's probably not a coincidence that I was moved to a private room after one night during this last visit.

I'm sure I seemed snotty and a little precious in laying down the ground rules to the (really!) great team of medical professionals who were helping me recover from a devastating illness. But the truth is that this hospitalization was the easiest of the three. That's partly because the surgery was less invasive and painful, but also--I think--because I knew how hospital conditions affect me, and what conditions provided the best level of comfort (and thus the least stress) in that setting.

I'm grateful for every single person who attended me during my hospitalizations. I hope I never offended them, though I'm sure I did from time to time. But there's no point in becoming a passive slab of meat once you enter the hospital. Once I figured out what I needed, I asked for it. And generally got it. That made the process much, much easier to endure.

On pooping

A couple of months ago, I took my son to the French cafe down the street, a lovely place full of coffee, brie, and accordion music. He had his usual croissant, I ordered a sandwich and soup, and we were well on our way to enjoying an atypically mild Philadelphia day.

Under my shirt, though, activity was brewing. The seal on my colostomy bag had come loose--and when the poop started flowing again, there was little resistance between it and the outside world. I heard a farting sound and looked down in horror as a dark brown stain spread across the front, the smell of shit muscling aside the aroma of green lentil  soup that had made the cafe so inviting.

I quickly paid my bill, hustled Tobias home, and cursed furiously as I cleaned myself up. And I spent the rest of the day feeling sorry for myself.

Last week, my colostomy was reversed. Early Monday morning, I pooped in the regular fashion for the first time in roughly seven months. For me, 2011 has been the Year of Poop--with much thought given to how it's done, what it's made of, and what it means. I never really made my peace with the colostomy bag, but I'm far more conscious of my poop now, and I doubt that will ever really go away.

Let's back up to where it started. In mid-April, I started feeling lethargic--energy-less, and no appetite to boot. I started to neglect work. I thought I was merely depressed, but soon realized I hadn't pooped in days. Noticing made no difference--additional bran, coffee, water, and other natural aids did nothing to get the flow started. I made a doctor's appointment, even had an X-Ray done: Nothing was found. I was sent home with some home enemas and a particularly powerful laxative.

Instead of pooping, though, I began to vomit--a development that prompted a rush to the emergency room. I sat mostly unattended for a few hours, interrupted only now and again by doctors trying to ascertain my problem. After I was sent for a CT scan, though, I was suddenly surrounded by doctors prodding my midsection: My intestinal tract was swollen and almost entirely closed off; I was in danger of perforating. I needed emergency surgery, a colostomy, to relieve the pressure--and only after the inflammation subsided would doctors be able to search for the underlying cause.

I've already written about the colostomy bag, how it frightened and offended me. But I haven't really talked about the poop. Because the colostomy--situated right under my sternum--transformed my relationship with the stuff.

As a society, we're actually pretty good about making it easy not to think about poop. The process generally takes place behind you, after all, and if you're generous in your use of toilet paper, it's possible to take a good dump, cover it with the TP, and flush it down the tubes without ever really seeing it. Those tubes are something to think  about, though: To a large extent, cities are built around the complex process of moving your poop somewhere else--countless tax dollars are spent on sewer systems, after all, and the intricacy of some urban systems must count among the greatest works of man. If we had to handle our own shit all the time, society would be a much different place than our flush-it-down-the-drain culture.

Well, I did handle my shit. Every day. I'd wake up every morning; soon--often after coffee--the bag would begin to fill. There was nothing subtle about the process: It became a nasty brown balloon that billowed under your shirt, creating social anxiety if you were stuck out in the city without a public bathroom nearby. Two or three more visits to the bathroom would follow during the morning, then usually pipe down in the afternoon and into the evening.

A couple of things to note. First: The placement of the colostomy had the effect of parking an anus directly under my nose. I could smell shit all the time, no matter how much time I spent clearing and cleaning the bag--a considerable amount of time, by the way--and even my wife became hesitant to be affectionate the way we usually were, with her parking herself in the crook of my arm and burrowing her face into my chest. The odor never went away.

Second: I became familiar with how much stuff there actually is in poop. This is partly the result of the colostomy--it expelled food that, under usual circumstances, might've been more digested. But lots of unexpectedly identifiable stuff came through: I learned that some foods were probably easier for my digestive system to process--and thus, probably better for my health. And plant evolution began to make sense to me, as well; seeds that survive digestion often carry their genes to new and unexpected places.

I did develop a gross, nervous habit during this time: I became fascinated with the transparent plastic colostomy bag. It let me touch the poop without getting messy. And so I began to thoughtlessly sift my shit with my fingers, feeling around the bag--the way one might with bubble wrap--in search of a seed, or a grain of rice, or a pea or a peace of corn, to hold between my fingers and crush. It was satisfying. It was awful.

The bag is gone now. There is a zippered line of staples holding my torso together. For the last two days, I have been pooping roughly once every waking hour. My anus, so silent for so long, has been experiencing a sort of fecal firework as the ship relaunches.

Already, I don't see the poop as much. But I can't stop thinking about it; I'm afraid that I'll fail to notice my health failing again. It's ok--good, even--that I won't be experiencing quite so directly anymore. Now, I know, though: Shit is real. And it really stinks.