The Doc Searls Weblog : Wednesday, March 19, 2003

Wednesday, March 19, 2003

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Wednesday, March 19, 2003
started 3/19/2003; 12:16:40 PM - last post 3/19/2003; 11:32:22 PM

Doc Searls - Wednesday, March 19, 2003

3/19/2003; 4:16:40 PM (reads: 6367, responses: 15)

Sixth Column

In today's LA Times (read it before it scrolls to oblivion): Tim Rutten's Online commentators are siezing the moment. Starring Andrew Sullivan, Mickey Kaus, Josh Marshall and Glenn Reynolds. Sez Tim:

...the uncertain character of these past few months has seemed tailor-made for a medium that puts a premium on opinion, debate and the digestion of provocative information from more sources than anyone with a day job has waking moments to handle.

Wagging the Tale of War

President Bush talks about going to war against "evil" and "evildoers."

I've said it before:

At its best, war is a lesser evil. That's it. If you have to crush a regime and its armies to end the far worse things they've been doing — as we did to Japan and Germany in World War II, and to the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan — your actions are entirely justifiable in the death-for-death and misery-for-misery moral economics of war. Inflict a lesser misery to end a greater one. End of story.

And that, exactly, is the story George W. Bush is trying to tell, apparently with insufficient success. But bless him for trying to do the right thing for the all the people involved, including the citizens of Iraq.

Those of us on the Left — a group among which, with (mostly economic) qulaification, I include myself — need to give some credit to the Bush administration, and to civilization in general, for waging war in which massive civilian deaths are not a strategic goal. No more Hiroshimas. No more London Blitzes. No more Dresdens. No more St. Petersbergs. This, as much as anything else, makes this war vastly different in kind from the war already being waged by Al Qaeda.

Yet war is still a lesser evil. Many innocents will die. That's why I can almost hear George W. Bush silently uttering the words David Mamet gave to Elliot Ness in "The Untouchables", summarizing the wrong Ness had done in the service of a right cause: " I have become what I beheld, and I am content that I have done right."

I don't believe President Bush is a bad man. I also don't believe his election lacks constitutional legitimacy (although I'm appalled that the goofy chain of events that resulted in his election didn't immediately prompt a movement to correct what is plainly a flaw in the constitution). I do, however, believe that he carries his nation and the world to war as the hero of a story that has told itself over and over again throughout the history of civilization. George Lakoff calls that story The Fairy Tale of the Just War. I wrote about it once already, two days after 911. It's worth repeating today, hours before we enter the war Bush the Elder left unfinished more than a decade ago:

Cast of characters: A villain, a victim, and a hero. The victim and the hero may be the same person.

The scenario: A crime is committed by the villain against an innocent victim (typically an assault, theft, or kidnapping). The offense occurs due to an imbalance of power and creates a moral imbalance. The hero either gathers helpers or decides to go it alone. The hero makes sacrifices; he undergoes difficulties, typically making an arduous heroic journey, sometimes across the sea to a treacherous terrain. The villain is inherently evil, perhaps even a monster, and thus reasoning with him is out of the question. The hero is left with no choice but to engage the villain in battle. The hero defeats the villain and rescues the victim. The moral balance is restored. Victory is achieved. The hero, who always acts honorably, has proved his manhood and achieved glory. The sacrifice was worthwhile. The hero receives acclaim, along with the gratitude of the victim and the community.

The fairy tale has an asymmetry built into it. The hero is moral and courageous, while the villain is amoral and vicious. The hero is rational, but though the villain may be cunning and calculating, he cannot be reasoned with. Heroes thus cannot negotiate with villains; they must defeat them. The enemy-as-demon metaphor arises as a consequence of the fact that we understand what a just war is in terms of this fairy tale.

George Lakoff wrote that on the eve of the first Gulf War. It is exactly the tale we told about Bush vs. Bin Laden starting on 911, which is also unfinished.

Stories persist only so long as there remains a reason to stay interested in them. Perhaps that's why Osama has dropped out of the very story in which he had cast himself, allowing his enemy to re-cast Sadam Hussein in the leading role as our hero's antagonist. I don't know.

I do know that this war's justification fits a mythical pattern. And that many people will die in service to that pattern.

Look back at that pattern, that scenario, described above, and you will see no room for the United Nations. That, I believe, is why we go forward into this war supported only by a handful of allies willing to line up behind our hero, our Caesar.

Some day our civilization will mature to the degree that we'll see the evil in that pattern — and therefore in ourselves — and not just in our enemies.

Meanwhile, other stories will be told, of other heroes, going to battle against the world's most powerful overdog.

[Later...] One reader: "Get it straight. This is Bush's war. And we are rendering unto Bush."

Rome didn't fall in a day. The American Empire (a term I hate to use, but see little choice, given the balance of power in the world, and the most powerful nation's willingness to use it) won't, either. But for now it's clear that pax amercana ended on a day chosen by Al Qaeda.

On the other head (of state), here's Tony's speech laying out the war rationale to a nation far more unquiet and divided about its course than our own. Bonus link: an amen for Tony from his old buddy Bill.

RSS for Webcasts?

Two nights ago we were driving back from a St. Patty's Day celebration downtown, hitting SCAN on the radio in faint hope of finding music as Irish as what we'd been hearing the past several hours. The radio stopped at KFAC, the local repeater station for KUSC, the classical music station from the University of Southern California. The music was something of an orchestral jig, but the overall sound brought Gustav Holst to mind.

When we got home I went to the KUSC On Air page for 3/17 and found that the music in question was Suite No. 2 in F Op. 28.

Then I thought... What would happen if every selection KUSC played carried an RSS notification? How about if it had a tie-in as well to the CDDB? How about if there were automated aggregation services that did nothing but construct ad hoc radio dials bases on what stations are actually doing right now? How about if talk stations and programs kept blogs? (Do any? I wonder.)

Anyway, it made me think about all the businesses that might suddenly be possible if broadcasters began putting Net- and Web-bases standards to use.

For example, I'd love a wi-fi radio like Kerbango tried to make before 3Com bought and killed them. Maybe it could be a TiVo-like "RiVo," like David Sifry describes here.

I'd love to see products like Apple's iTunes put this kind of stuff to use too.

But I think the key is what RSS stands for: Really Simple Syndication. Because syndication itself is an extremely powerful idea — potentially one of the most far-reaching infrastructural add-ons the Net has seen.

[Later...] Here's a nice follow-up note from Dave.

Book support

I've been doing WYSIWYG html editing in Adobe GoLive (versions 4-6) for some time.

So I just ordered a copy of of Real World Adobe GoLive, by Glenn Fleishman and Jeff Carlson. Turns out I did this on the very day after Glenn posted notice of difficulties selling the book, along with a free .pdf version of the book on its Web site.

Gave me an idea.

Since books on software have such a short shelf life, how about if publishers (or manufacturers like Adobe) pay guys like Glenn and Jeff to maintain blogs on the subject?

In fact, how about blog-enabling tech support in general? Seems to me that's a better way to leverage the writing knowhow and passions of textbook authors, and to improve other aspects of the whole tech support process at the same time.

In one more way we need to rethink the software business.