In an essay disguised as a long-form book review, writer Mark Schmitt delivers a decidedly progressive but even-handed evaluation of the current administration that culminates with a refreshingly pragmatic take on President Obama’s pragmatic political philosophy.

Published in the July-August issue of Boston Review, “All About Obama: A President Without an Ideology” should be required reading for progressives who, in the midst of an intensely polarized period of American history, initially mischaracterized the Democratic nominee as a rabble-rousing leftist, and have since compounded the mistake by labeling him as a weak-kneed sellout. Schmitt’s analysis should also be assigned to the president’s apologists, who too quickly dismiss or ignore his failings—the most egregious and disappointing being the continuation of the Bush administration’s abuse of civil liberties, foreign and domestic.

Schmitt first establishes that, thanks to a series of bureaucratic reforms, such as the strengthening of the Environmental Protection Agency, and social progress, including the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Obama will doubtless receive a kinder historical treatment than either Clinton or Carter. But his lasting legacy will be no more transformational, especially if health care reform fails to survive the shifting political winds, which is not just possible, but increasingly probable. After all, Obama is ultimately a mainstream politician, or, as pseudo-revolutionaries like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann like to say, a Washington insider.

While this analysis is beautifully written and expertly argued, it is not unfamiliar. What’s refreshing is that Schmitt doesn’t single out the administration for scorn. In fact, in many ways, despite the somewhat misleading tone of the headline, the essay comes to the president’s defense, in no small part because of the political, economic, and legislative barriers he inherited—including a friendly Congress that became decidedly uncooperative and impotent in a matter of months. Without letting Obama off the hook, the author holds a number of actors accountable, including the right-wing and mainstream media (often one and the same), and those citizens who voted for the Illinois senator and then assumed their work here was done.

As Schmitt reminds us, and as Utne Reader discussed prior to the 2008 elections, the president is not a superhero. He cannot single-handedly break the chains of reality or behave radically without expecting a radical response from an enemy. He must have a fan base capable of delivering tough criticism, but willing to do a lot of legwork and heavy lifting long after the polls have closed and the nasty, grinding task of governing in a representative democracy begins.

“Obama, therefore, has the challenge of building a more coherent ideological vision (as he did in his April 13 speech on the budget), or resorting to small-p pragmatism, just trying to get reelected and get some things done,” Schmitt concludes. “If he is to take the first path, though, it falls on liberals to help build the pyramid of ideas and organizations on which he and future presidents can stand. It can’t be all about him.”

Source: Boston Review 

In an essay disguised as a long-form book review, writer Mark Schmitt delivers a decidedly progressive but even-handed evaluation of the current administration that culminates with a refreshingly pragmatic take on President Obama’s pragmatic political philosophy.

Published in the July-August issue of Boston Review, “All About Obama: A President Without an Ideology” should be required reading for progressives who, in the midst of an intensely polarized period of American history, initially mischaracterized the Democratic nominee as a rabble-rousing leftist, and have since compounded the mistake by labeling him as a weak-kneed sellout. Schmitt’s analysis should also be assigned to the president’s apologists, who too quickly dismiss or ignore his failings—the most egregious and disappointing being the continuation of the Bush administration’s abuse of civil liberties, foreign and domestic.

Schmitt first establishes that, thanks to a series of bureaucratic reforms, such as the strengthening of the Environmental Protection Agency, and social progress, including the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Obama will doubtless receive a kinder historical treatment than either Clinton or Carter. But his lasting legacy will be no more transformational, especially if health care reform fails to survive the shifting political winds, which is not just possible, but increasingly probable. After all, Obama is ultimately a mainstream politician, or, as pseudo-revolutionaries like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann like to say, a Washington insider.

While this analysis is beautifully written and expertly argued, it is not unfamiliar. What’s refreshing is that Schmitt doesn’t single out the administration for scorn. In fact, in many ways, despite the somewhat misleading tone of the headline, the essay comes to the president’s defense, in no small part because of the political, economic, and legislative barriers he inherited—including a friendly Congress that became decidedly uncooperative and impotent in a matter of months. Without letting Obama off the hook, the author holds a number of actors accountable, including the right-wing and mainstream media (often one and the same), and those citizens who voted for the Illinois senator and then assumed their work here was done.

As Schmitt reminds us, and as Utne Reader discussed prior to the 2008 elections, the president is not a superhero. He cannot single-handedly break the chains of reality or behave radically without expecting a radical response from an enemy. He must have a fan base capable of delivering tough criticism, but willing to do a lot of legwork and heavy lifting long after the polls have closed and the nasty, grinding task of governing in a representative democracy begins.

“Obama, therefore, has the challenge of building a more coherent ideological vision (as he did in his April 13 speech on the budget), or resorting to small-p pragmatism, just trying to get reelected and get some things done,” Schmitt concludes. “If he is to take the first path, though, it falls on liberals to help build the pyramid of ideas and organizations on which he and future presidents can stand. It can’t be all about him.”

Source: Boston Review 

On the heels of Utne’s Work Package in our latest issue, Boston Review has a forum on the possibilities for full employment in today’s economy.

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Who says that wind power needs to come from turbines? Introducing: fibro-wind arrays.

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In what may be the most important piece of news this week, Paul the Psychic Octopus’ soccer-predicting legacy will not be forgotten.

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From Guernica: Detroitism: What does “ruin porn” tell us about the motor city?

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A visual number crunching of the state of modern-day marriage. There’s nothing like graphs and pretty pictures to get the point across.

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The New Republic’s art critic on the state of photojournalism. 

Evgeny Morozov, writing for Boston Review (and responding to the new book Delete), on whether or not digital storage enhances memory:

Suppose we transfer photos from an iPhone to a hard drive: who is remembering? And is this an act of remembrance at all?

If the transfer succeeds, we may have a faint memory of saving the photos in some generically named folder on our hard drives, but to find those exact files we’ll also need to know how to look for them (e.g., by name, date, approximate contents).

Yes, these days we produce, consume, and save more data—a study by researchers at the University of California at San Diego found that in 2008 the average American consumed 34 gigabytes of information per day, an increase of about 350 percent since 1980—but it does not follow that we remember more.

Perfect digital memory is useless without perfect digital cataloging. . . . A 2008 study conducted by researchers at the University of Sheffield in Britain found that 39 percent of surveyed participants failed to retrieve digital photos of important events that took place only a year before; they couldn’t find them on their hard drives and had no idea how to search for them, as they had not organized and annotated them properly.

Source: Boston Review

Image by Björn Söderqvist , licensed under Creative Commons . 

Our library contains 1,300 publications—a feast of magazines, journals, alt-weeklies, newsletters, and zines—and every year, we honor the stars in our Utne Independent Press Awards. We’ll announce this year’s winners on Sunday, April 25 at the MPA’s Independent Magazine Group conference in Washington, D.C. and post them online the following Monday. We’re crazy about these publications, and we’d love it for all of our readers to get to know them better, too. So, every weekday until the conference, we’ll be posting mini-introductions to our complete list of 2010 nominees.

The following eight magazines are our 2010 nominees in the category of best writing.

Bookforum is the bibliophile’s banquet, a must-read for the culturally curious. In engaging with the world’s finest writers and their work, Bookforum transcends the predictable and delivers fascinating ideas and provocative conversations. If you call it literary, then call it political, philosophical, and artistic, too. http://www.bookforum.com/

Since 1975, Boston Review has been a harbor for the rigorous examination of culture and politics, as well as a haven for literature and poetry. Now in its 35th year, the publication has added another welcome element to its formidable repertoire: outstanding long-form investigative journalism. http://bostonreview.net/

Where would we be without Columbia Journalism Review? The bimonthly publication of the Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism is a dynamic chronicler of the ever-expanding media landscape. And in providing analysis, criticism, commentary, and reportage, CJR also manages to tell captivating, expertly crafted stories. http://www.cjr.org/

Geist is a literary delight: a smart mélange of the quirky and the serious, a richly varied feast of fiction and nonfiction, poetry and photography, comics and cartography. With a kick-ass redesign in 2009, the Vancouver-based bimonthly seems imbued with an even more vigorous curiosity. http://www.geist.com/

Hip Mama is alive with passion for progressive parenting, for radical kids, for the many meanings of family—and in doing so, it builds deep compassion. It is an intimate forum, showcasing the voices of diverse parents, talking about their challenges, struggles, successes, and joys. http://www.hipmamazine.com/

A dozen years ago, the founders of Tin House set out to create a journal “tantamount to being guest of honor at the greatest literary house party ever.” Such success! In its 10th year, Tin House has been wild and delightful, a true feast for its lucky readers. http://www.tinhouse.com/

Published once each year, Witness manages to capture us completely, presenting works that “promote the modern writer as witness to his or her times.” Published since 2007 by the Black Mountain Institute (dedicated to literary and cross-cultural dialogue), Witness illuminates the American experience with a global lens. http://witness.blackmountaininstitute.org/

The Texas Observer’s Melissa del Bosque has been doing some excellent reporting on the many broken pieces of our immigration system, and she has another must-read report in the current issue of the Austin-based biweekly. In “Point of No Return,” del Bosque investigates the astounding lack of legal representation among immigrants in detention: More than 80 percent of immigrant detainees do not have a lawyer.

This is due, in many cases, to poverty, but also to the transfer-happy officers of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), who frequently shuffle detainees to rural facilities far from their homes and families. “On average, 52 percent of ICE detainees—whether legal residents or illegal immigrants—are transferred at least once before they are released or deported,” del Bosque writes. She interviews one man, Rama Carty, who spent time in seven detention facilities over the course of 21 months.

Like Carty, many detainees in Texas have been relocated from urban areas in the Northeast, where detention beds are scarcer. This brings them under the sway of the 5th U.S. circuit court of Appeals, which has earned a reputation as the most conservative in the nation regarding immigration rulings—a conveyor-belt to deportation. (See “Pleading With the Fifth.”) Since most detention facilities are in Southern states like Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, ICE is sending an increasing number of detainees to the 5th circuit. When they arrive at these largely rural facilities, far from home, they find few immigration lawyers available or willing to help.

For more on the subject, read “Jailing the American Dream,” Tom Barry’s in-depth investigation into the private-prison companies profiting from immigrant detention centers. Originally published in Boston Review, the piece ran in our March-April issue.

Congratulations to The Texas Observer, which is nominated for a 2010 Utne Independent Press Award for political coverage.

Source: The Texas Observer

In Nigeria, where 85 percent of the population lives on less than $2 per day, more than half of the country has mobile phone service. Cell phones are being used for health care, business, and to promote adult literacy. In Kenya, where the cheapest mobile phone costs about half the average monthly income, one cell phone service has more than 13 million subscribers.

Throughout Africa, Jenny C. Aker and Isaac M. Mbiti report for the Boston Review that “mobile phone use is booming despite high costs.” The phones are also making measurable improvements in people’s lives in the process. The authors make sure to provide plenty of fascinating examples, including these:

Health practitioners have been at the forefront of using mobile phones as a development tool in Africa. Mobile phone services monitor measles outbreaks in Zambia; support diagnosis and treatment by health workers in Mozambique; and disseminate health-education messages in Benin, Malawi, and Uganda. In Malawi mobile phones not only remind HIV-positive patients to take their anti-retroviral drugs, but also allow community health workers to share information on their patients status, saving considerable time and money.

Source: Boston Review (Article not yet available online.)

Image by  David.Dennis.Photos.com , licensed under  Creative Commons . 

Under the Bush administration, opponents of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan tended to front-load their critique with a line about the administration's betrayal of returning veterans suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. That betrayal pre-dated George W. Bush by two decades. In a chilling new piece for Boston Review, Tara McKelvey reports that "The decline in resources for veterans’ mental health services started in the 1980s, as part of a nationwide effort to move psychiatric patients into outpatient treatment. The number of inpatient psychiatric beds fell from 9,000 in the late ’80s to 3,000 by 2008." By that time, according to a Rand Corporation report, close to 20 percent of service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan—300,000 in all—were reporting symptoms of PTSD or acute depression.

The defunding of veterans' mental health services may have predated the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that is not to say the Bush administration didn't betray veterans. McKelvey explains: "The great difficulty veterans experienced in getting psychiatric care—greater than before—was not a product of cost-cutting, but of conviction: many Bush administration officials believed that soldiers who supported the war would not face psychological problems, and if they did, they would find comfort in faith. In a resigned tone, one prominent researcher who worked for the VA, and asked that he not be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the press, explained that high-ranking officials believed that 'Jesus fixes everything.'"

The bit about Jesus fixing everything is a bit of an oversimplification. Political ideology was certainly as much of a factor and McKelvey acknowledges as much, if only in passing:

"...high-level officials at the VA shared political convictions that, along with doubts about the science of PTSD, made them less likely to push for additional psychiatric services for veterans. They believed in streamlined government and free markets, and they supported a prominent role for faith-based organizations."

For all the talk of religious obstacles to mental health treatment, the Boston Review piece is also a gift to anybody trying to understand the history PTSD diagnosis and treatment. That history, of course, is still being written. In the latest chapter, Barack Obama has proposed the largest infusion of funding for veterans in three decades. Mental health services are not ignored. "Unfortunately," writes McKelvey, " bureaucracies are slow to respond. After years of neglect during the Bush administration, veterans now have nearly one million claims pending, a record high for the agency."

About the Author: Before turning to journalism, Utne Reader senior editor Jeff Severns Guntzel spent years doing humanitarian work in pre-war Iraq. Since that time, he has reported from the Middle East and points all over the United States as a staff writer for National Catholic Reporter and as a contributing editor at the now defunct (and greatly missed) Punk Planet magazine. Electronic Iraq, a website he co-founded in 2003 to document the Iraqi experience of war, is archived in the Library of Congress and the British Library. Jeff has appeared as a guest on a number of national news programs, including NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and Democracy Now!

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Source: Boston Review

Image courtesy of the Department of Defense.

The Chavez government uses anti-Semitism to tamp down on political opposition, Claudio Lomnitz and Rafael Sánchez write for the Boston Review. “Over the past four years,” Lomnitz and Sánchez report, “ Venezuela has witnessed alarming signs of state-directed anti-Semitism.” That may be the reason why some 20 percent of the Jews in Venezuela have left the country in recent years.

In January 2009, masked gunmen raided and vandalized the Teferet Israel synagogue in Caracas. In late 2004, Venezuelan police stormed a Jewish community center allegedly in search of weapons that were never found. In 2005, Chavez himself said publicly, “The world has enough for everybody, but some minorities, the descendants of the same people that crucified Christ, and of those that expelled Bolívar from here and in their own way crucified him. . . . have taken control of the riches of the world.”

Jews may be the victim of the anti-Semitism, but the real targets are political dissidents, according to Lomnitz and Sánchez. Chavez seeks to paint all political opposition as anti-national, and blaming Jews as infiltrators into society, a traditional anti-Semitic trope, serves that purpose. In that sense, Lomnitz and Sánchez write that “Chavista anti-Semitism is a symptom of the weakness of the regime itself” and its struggles to control opposition.

Using Jews is, in fact, entirely consistent with Chavez’s politics, Enrique Krauze writes for the New Republic. In an exhaustive critique of Chavista political philosophy, Krauze concludes that Chavez subscribes to neither socialism nor communism, but fascism. According to Krauze, targeting Jews as scapegoats is “another element of classical fascism that Hugo Chavez has not hesitated to exploit.” 

Sources:  Boston Review , New Republic

A full quarter of Americans are blaming "the Jews" for the financial crisis. That's according to a recent Stanford University study where researchers were explicit in their questioning: “How much to blame were the Jews for the financial crisis?” Possible answers: a great deal, a lot, a moderate amount, a little, not at all.

Neil Malhotra and Yotam Margalit, who conducted the study, wrote about their findings in the Boston Review and placed them in the appropriate (and ominous) historical context:

The findings presented here are troubling. This is not the first instance of an economic downturn sparking anti-Semitic sentiments. Financial scandals are widely regarded as contributors to the rise of anti-Semitism in European history. Famously, the Panama Scandal—often described as the biggest case of monetary corruption of the nineteenth century—led to the downfall of Clemenceau’s government in France and involved bribes to many cabinet members and hundreds of parliament members. Nonetheless, the public’s fury centered on two Jewish men who were in charge of distributing corporate bribe money to the politicians. In her classic The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt described the Panama Scandal as a key event in the development of French anti-Semitism. The Stavisky Affair, in which the Jewish financier Alexandre Stavisky embezzled millions of francs through fraudulent municipal bonds, broke out 40 years later and had a similar effect of nourishing the accusation that the Jews were behind the corruption in financial dealings.

Source: Boston Review 

Image by purpleslog. Licensed under  Creative Commons. 

Far from the mall-pocked, highway-scarred backwaters they’re made out to be, small cities should be a cornerstone of America’s sustainable future. Renewable energy sources like geothermal and solar often require abundant, cheap land, making small towns ideally situated to take advantage of a green revolution.

Urban planners and policy makers are making a mistake by neglecting small towns, Catherine Tumber writes for the Boston Review. Many people suffer from a kind of “metropolitan bias,” giving disproportionate funds and attention to big cities. “Smaller cities located in the heartland could one day anchor a regional agricultural shift from industrial monoculture to more localized biodiversity,” Tumber writes, and could show the way toward a more sustainable future.

Gainsville, Florida, (population 120,000) for example, is “gearing up for a solar power boom,” Mariah Blake writes for the Washington Monthly, “fueled by homegrown businesses and scrappy investors who have descended on the community and are hiring local contractors to install photovoltaic panels on rooftops around town.”

The key to Gainsville’s success is a “feed-in-tariff” policy that requires local power companies to buy renewable energy from independent producers. The policy, pioneered in Germany, is fueling investment in green technology at a time when much of the corporate investment for renewable energy has dried up.

Image by  Kate Mereand , licensed under  Creative Commons .

Sources: Boston Review, Washington Monthly

The internet spreads information around the world, but freedom is more difficult. Believers in a coming tech-utopia have plenty of evidence to show the web’s democratizing force: The Orange Revolution in Ukraine was facilitated in part by new-media technologies, and blogging platforms have given a voice to dissenters in Burma, Iran, China, and many other places. The problem is, Evgeny Morozov writes for the Boston Review, “no dictators have been toppled via Second Life, and no real elections have been won there either; otherwise, Ron Paul would be President.”

Reports of China’s growing internet dissent can make for compelling reads in mainstream media outlets, but Morozov writes that they’re often overblown. YouTube users recently tweaked censors with videos about a “grass-mud horse,” the name of which, in Chinese, sounds a lot like a dirty sex pun. The New York Times said the videos “raised real questions about China’s ability to stanch the flow of information over the Internet.”

More recently, when China blocked access to YouTube, allegedly over videos showing Chinese police beating Tibetan protestors, many assumed this would backfire on the government. Writing for Time, Austin Ramzy said that blocking YouTube gives the impression that the Chinese government is afraid of the internet and that a “ shift in how people cover the Internet in China may be lost on the government.”

In fact, draconian blocking of websites is just one part of a two-pronged strategy for Chinese information control. The Chinese government is also trying to use the internet as a tool to forward their agenda. The government has trained an estimated 280,000 people to “neutralize undesirable public opinion by pushing pro-Party views” David Bandurski reports for the Far Eastern Economic Review. This group—known as the 50 Cent Party, because of the money they are rumored to be paid for each pro-government message—posts to chat rooms and web forums, and also reports dissident content.

“The goal of the government is to crank up the ‘noise’ and drown out progressive and diverse voices on China’s internet,” Chinese web entrepreneur Isaac Mao told Bandurski.

Even if political information is allowed to flow, assuming that information will lead to democracy and freedom is not necessarily true. Western journalists often focus on the blogs written in English, which tend to be more progressive and pro-Western. In other languages, the political landscape is much different. Morozov writes that “investing in new media infrastructure might also embolden the conservatives, nationalists, and extremists, posing an even greater challenge to democratization.”

Another threat may lie in the structure of the internet itself. The web may actually serve in polarizing political atmospheres, according to Cass Sunstein, both in the United States and abroad. A recent article for Harvard Magazine explores Sunstein’s idea that personalized news services like Google News, and Time Magazine’s new “Mine” service are blocking out ideas diverse opinions, allowing people to read about what they want and filter out the rest. Without an “architecture of serendipity,” where people can happen upon diverse opinions and news, the internet could lead to extremism.

None of this disregards the web’s potential for good. Sunstein calls new technologies “more opportunity than threat,” but serious work will need to be done to promote progressive voices and politics. It also means acknowledging that the techno-utopia envisioned in a free internet may not be worth the paper its printed on.

Image adapted from photo by  Nic McPhee , licensed under  Creative Commons .

Sources: Boston Review, Time, New York Times, Far Eastern Economic Review, Harvard Magazine

Finally, voters can put the media’s constant barrage of election conjecture to good use. Boston Review is offering a $500 prize to anyone who can best their experts at predicting the outcomes in seven key swing states in the presidential election.

Contestants must also guess the presidential race results by total electoral votes and the popular vote, and include an estimate of how the new Congress will split between Democrats and Republicans.

The magazine shows the educated guesses of four political scientists (Stephen Ansolabehere of Harvard; Robert Erikson of Columbia; Gary Jacobson of UC, San Diego; and David Mayhew of Yale) alongside each category. Can you, Joe the Voter, outdo them? If you need a little help, take a look at prediction sites like Intrade.com, which offers a real-time forecast of electoral votes state by state.

Entries are due by November 1, so start crunching those numbers!