Month: September 2014

Should we be worried about the
decline of cults in American life? In The New York
Times, Ross Douthat
notes that both the media and the public have moved on,
and now “the cult phenomenon feels increasingly
antique, like lava lamps and bell bottoms.“ But
the loss of cult fervor has come at a cost, he
suggests: “The decline of cults, while good news
for anxious parents of potential devotees, might actually be a
worrying sign for Western culture, an indicator not only of
religious stagnation but of declining creativity writ
large.“

It’s a provocative case, drawing from essays by Philip Jenkin
and Peter Thiel. Jenkins is focused on cults as a religious
indicator: “A wild fringe, he suggests, is often a sign of a
healthy, vital center, and a religious culture that lacks for
charismatic weirdos may lack ‘a solid core of spiritual activism
and inquiry’ as well.” Thiel, not surprisingly, is more focused on
productivity and invention: “Not only religious vitality but the
entirety of human innovation, he argues, depends on the belief that
there are major secrets left to be uncovered, insights that
existing institutions have failed to unlock (or perhaps forgotten),
better ways of living that a small group might successfully
embrace.”

There’s something to this, I think, but it also understates the
ways in which semi-cult-like behavior has come to infuse daily life
and mainstream culture: Yes, there are probably fewer cults in the
aliens-and-messiahs sense, but there are more subcultures, in a
wider variety, than ever before, more regimented lifestyle trends
and minority beliefs about how to improve personal productivity or
fitness, about how to become a better person and live a purer, more
interesting, more connected and compelling life.

Some of these subcultures remain distinctly fringe
(dumpster-diving freegans, gently
quirky
bronies, furry fans), while
others are embraced, to varying degrees, by the mainstream: At its
height, Occupy Wall Street was as much an alternative lifestyle and
belief community as a political movement. What is Crossfit if not a
ritualized system that offers its highly dedicated, tightly-knit
cells of followers a better and more meaningful existence? None of
these are cults in the specific sense that Douthat describes, with
gated compounds and secret songs, but they are all experiments in
behavior, taste, and belief intended to help adherents find meaning
and connection in their lives.

So while we don’t, and generally shouldn’t, think of these sorts
of affinity groups and social movements and lifestyle choices as
cults, they can and do play a similar role in culture, allowing for
small-scale experiments in quasi-radicalism.

But the profusion of subcultures, and the way they have emerged
as everyday parts of so many lives, makes it easy to forget that
they have taken on this role. Part of the reason we don’t think of
subcultures like cults is because even though some of them still
have what might be described as mythologies, they lack the same
sort of mystical allure and apocalyptic tendencies.

But another part of the reason is that over the past two
decades, participation in niche culture has become ordinary and
even mainstream. Almost everyone—from Burning
Man-attendees to the steampunk hackers to the
scrapbooking-convention obsessives to the home brewing aficionados
and the toe-shoe-wearing obstacle-race junkies, many of whom also
maintain lives as lawyers and engineers and elementary school
administrators—is part of some subculture now, and it’s not
questioned or noticed because it’s not unusual.

Indeed, whether they know it or not, most people take part
in multiple subcultures, or portions of them,
mixing and matching and discarding parts and pieces as they please.
The Internet, which, with its fragmented and unlimited information
flows, has hastened the transformation of all of culture into
subculture, has helped make this possible, by making niche
interests and identities both accessible and malleable to the
masses.

Which is probably another reason we take less notice of
subcultures than of cults: Many have communal aspects, but they are
individualized and custom-tailored, and while many have founders
who design and sometimes help maintain the systems, they lack the
sort of domineering cult-leader figures of decades past.
Subcultures now are atomized and personalized, crossbred and
constantly evolving.

Worries about the decline of cults are in some sense a form of
nostalgia for an older order, with more clearly delineated lines
between the mainstream and the fringe, with radicalism easy to
recognize and define and, if necessary, shun. That those days are
largely over (at least in the U.S.) isn’t a sign that our culture
has lost its capacity for lifestyle creativity, its desire for
secret knowledge and methods. It’s a sign that the creativity is
happening elsewhere now, in the blur between the boundaries, in the
scrambling of the systems, in the subculture collage.

You know who really doesn’t want troops
on the ground in America’s new war? Troops.

The Military Times yesterday
released a poll of about 2,200 active-duty troops, just over 70
percent of whom don’t want the Obama administration to put American
soldiers in Iraq to fight the Islamic State (a.k.a. ISIS). Syria
wasn’t included, since the survey was conducted before military
action began there.

The Times suggests:

Opponents of an expanded mission fall into two camps. Some
troops think the U.S. should simply stay out of the conflagration
engulfing the Middle East. But others take a more nuanced view.

One Air Force lieutenant colonel said he supports taking the
fight to the Islamic State militants, even if that involves a large
number of U.S. combat troops. But he worries that the country’s
leadership will not completely see the mission through.

“If we do it halfheartedly, we shouldn’t do it at all,” he said,
adding that America should expand its military mission in Iraq
“only if we’re committed to complete victory.”

“I’m not hearing that now,” he said. “There’s political fear of
blowback for making such a declaration. War, as ugly as it is,
should be done in a very overwhelming and clear fashion.”

Wariness and weariness about war in the sandbox doesn’t seem to
be partisan. The survey also highlights the fact that “over the
past four years of the annual poll, the percentage of active-duty
troops who believe the first U.S. war in Iraq was a success has
declined significantly.” The number of those who believe it was
successful have more than halved to 25.5 percent. Meanwhile,
soldiers who say it “wasn’t successful at all” have more than
doubled to 31.2 percent. Another 28 percent say it “wasn’t very
successful.”

Although President Barack Obama has
assured he “will not involve American combat troops fighting on
foreign soil,” he’s also
pumped up his war rhetoric to Bush levels, saying that there’s
no room to “negotiate with this brand of evil.” That leaves few
options on how to deal with them.

Retired Gen. David Petraeus
stated last week that troops would be necessary. He said they
could be Iraqi troops, but acknowledged it would take “months and
years” for them to “deal with” ISIS. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman
Gen. Martin Dempsey has
hinted that American troops might be the only thing that’ll do
the trick. One veteran of the last Iraq war writes in
Politico that “boots on the ground” rhetoric is
deliberately fuzzy, but for all intents and purposes they’re

already there.

It’s little wonder why, in spite of Obama’s promises, the
majority of America’s civilian population suspect
this will become a ground war. 

You know who really doesn’t want troops
on the ground in America’s new war? Troops.

The Military Times yesterday
released a poll of about 2,200 active-duty troops, just over 70
percent of whom don’t want the Obama administration to put American
soldiers in Iraq to fight the Islamic State (a.k.a. ISIS). Syria
wasn’t included, since the survey was conducted before military
action began there.

The Times suggests:

Opponents of an expanded mission fall into two camps. Some
troops think the U.S. should simply stay out of the conflagration
engulfing the Middle East. But others take a more nuanced view.

One Air Force lieutenant colonel said he supports taking the
fight to the Islamic State militants, even if that involves a large
number of U.S. combat troops. But he worries that the country’s
leadership will not completely see the mission through.

“If we do it halfheartedly, we shouldn’t do it at all,” he said,
adding that America should expand its military mission in Iraq
“only if we’re committed to complete victory.”

“I’m not hearing that now,” he said. “There’s political fear of
blowback for making such a declaration. War, as ugly as it is,
should be done in a very overwhelming and clear fashion.”

Wariness and weariness about war in the sandbox doesn’t seem to
be partisan. The survey also highlights the fact that “over the
past four years of the annual poll, the percentage of active-duty
troops who believe the first U.S. war in Iraq was a success has
declined significantly.” The number of those who believe it was
successful have more than halved to 25.5 percent. Meanwhile,
soldiers who say it “wasn’t successful at all” have more than
doubled to 31.2 percent. Another 28 percent say it “wasn’t very
successful.”

Although President Barack Obama has
assured he “will not involve American combat troops fighting on
foreign soil,” he’s also
pumped up his war rhetoric to Bush levels, saying that there’s
no room to “negotiate with this brand of evil.” That leaves few
options on how to deal with them.

Retired Gen. David Petraeus
stated last week that troops would be necessary. He said they
could be Iraqi troops, but acknowledged it would take “months and
years” for them to “deal with” ISIS. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman
Gen. Martin Dempsey has
hinted that American troops might be the only thing that’ll do
the trick. One veteran of the last Iraq war writes in
Politico that “boots on the ground” rhetoric is
deliberately fuzzy, but for all intents and purposes they’re

already there.

It’s little wonder why, in spite of Obama’s promises, the
majority of America’s civilian population suspect
this will become a ground war. 

What the international community can do about the plight of
pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong is an open question. China
is a sovereign country and even Hong Kong’s special and relatively
free status within the authoritarian state doesn’t fully shield its
people from the wrath of the authorities or invite outside
intervention. If the Chinese government insists on holding bogus
elections in the region, then it’s up to locals to give them good
reason to change their minds (Anthony Fisher
described the players in the protests last week). But it’s
difficult to avoid being moved by this Hong Kong student’s
description of protests and the police response, and her plea for
support.

Jim Webb, an eccentric, anti-war, Ronald
Reagan–quoting ex-senator from Virginia, is garnering attention as
a possible
presidential contender on the Democrat side. Because I’m still
desperatley/delusionally clinging to the hope that someone less
contemptible than Hillary Clinton could earn the Democratic
nomination, I enjoyed The Washington Post‘s profile of
Webb, who is seriously considering a
2016 White House bid despite the fact that most experts don’t
think he has a chance. 

Webb’s experience in the Senate is sparse—he served one term
after defeating Republican George Allen in 2006—but he’s also a
Vietnam War vet who served as assistant secretary of defense and
Navy secretary during the Reagan administration and was tossed
about as a vice-presidential pick in 2008. “We want to see if
there’s a support base from people who would support the programs
that we’re interested in pursuing,”
said Webb, 68, announcing potential presidential aspirations at
a National Press Club speech last week.

And what programs would those be? One of the things Webb is most
well-known for is
his anti-war stance, and this may be where he’s “uniquely
positioned as a disruptive force on issues where many Democrats
consider Clinton compromised,” the Post notes. 

“Remember, one of the reasons Obama did so well in Iowa was
because he said he would end the wars,” said Marcos Rubinstein, who
directed antiwar Democrat Dennis Kucinich’s 2008 presidential
campaign in Iowa. “That is why he was able to beat Clinton, and
Iowa remains full of Democrats who are looking for a peaceful
message.”

In his speech last week, Webb attacked the Obama
administration’s Middle East policy, citing it as one of the main
reasons for his return to political life:

“If you go back and look at the remarks I was making from the
time this administration got involved in the Arab Spring, I said it
was an unprecedented use of presidential power—no treaties, no
Americans attacked, no imminent threat of attack, no Americans to
be rescued,” Webb said. “Secretary Clinton and I have worked well
together, but the Arab Spring is a different question. . . . This
administration, collectively, made some very bad decisions, and
they now have to climb out of a deep hole.”

Critiques of presidential power from a Democrat? Be still my
heart! This “redneck
regal” liberal is also an advocate of gun rights and a
supporter of criminal justice reform. In the Senate in 2009, he
introduced
a bill calling for a serious re-evaluation of our nation’s drug
and criminal justice policies. (Irrelevant but interesting: He’s
also a fiction author
and wrote the story for the 2000 film Rules of
Engagement.) 

Webb is still a Democrat, of course—”economic fairness” is among
his causes—but he seems to
actually have principles, too, which is so much more than we
can say for Clinton and, at least anymore, President Obama. If
nothing else, it would be nice to see Webb widening the scope of
primary-season discourse and taking Clinton to task for her
war-hawk ways.