When George Packer gets bored, I get scared: It means he’s in the mood for war

My significant other likes Japanese entertainment TV. It drives me nuts with its silliness. How can you watch this, I asked one day. “It means we’re in peacetime: the sillier the TV, the fewer the people that are dying.” Someone needs to tell Packer that.

I only know the US at all well, so I don’t know how universally the idea of redemptive violence saturates popular culture, or how much other countries experience the same political gridlock as the US. But I’m pretty sure the US is unique in the extent of the divided sovereignty written into its constitution.

The good news for the world is that it might not be some foreign adventure that Packer gets to satisfy his thirst for redemptive violence and political change. We have Ted Cruz now out loud and proud for the 2d Amendment guaranteeing a Right of Revolt, and calling for the return of state militias. If Ted gets his way (and really, with the militarization of state and local police forces, it’s possible for a state to pull together a respectable scratch militia just from what’s already available) and the red states start arming to protect state nullification from mere court orders, Packer will get heightened gridlock, with the redemptive violence of a civil war the actual practical only way out. Packer would then presumably find a role urging the formation of blue state militias.

For someone who arses on about Max Weber and political responsibility ad nauseam, he has no great taste for the slow boring of hard boards. Sterile excitation how are ya.

Off topic, but did Jim Henley pass away? I know that he had tongue or throat cancer, and now his blog link has broken. He was a good writer, particularly on the subject of imperial war.

This theme you keep going back to makes me think that milquetoast liberals are drastically underrated. The desire for conflict and heroism leads people into war and reactionaryism. The milquetoast liberal cuts such sentiments off at their root, and opens up the space to hand-wringingly advance society forward.

Yes, Jim Henley is still active on Twitter: https://twitter.com/UOJim/with_replies

I think there’s just a technical problem with his blog that he hasn’t been able to get fixed. It only happened a week ago or so.

Your reading helps show how apolitical, so to speak, Packer’s romanticism is. He is “enlarged,” as are some of his readers, merely by thinking about Charlie Hebdo in a certain way. Being published is all the satisfaction he needs. It’s more a literary project: the goal is not to effect any particular action, but to have been, in print, on the “right” side. But this suggests that there’s not much to fear here, except as a cautionary example of intellectual vice. I tend to doubt the war makers need him, though they probably appreciate the sentiment.

“Perhaps that’s why, after the Charlie Hebdo murders, Packer was so quick to man the ideological ramparts.”

Other people were just as quick.

https://crookedtimber.org/2015/01/07/charlie-hebdo/

The only difference I can see is that Packer correctly identifies the Islamist assasination campaign directed at blasphemers as a continuing threat – and indeed it’s continued in Verviers and Copenhagen. The ‘Islamophobic’ backlash Bertam was just as quick to step over 12 corpses to prophesy remains imaginary.

Anyway, you’ve introduced me to a very perceptive writer – so thank you at least for that.

Packer’s so-called romanticism is “apolitical” because his centrism — his first commitment is the centrist’s commitment to have no commitments — requires passion only in other people.

I think the centrist political reporter is always bored. It’s his job to be bored. To actually care about anything a scintilla beyond detached reporting is a firing offense. So, he calls piously for political reporters to drop the theatre review and to stop repeating a politician’s lies uncritically. Like that will ever happen. Probably right after Goldwater Girl Hilary Clinton gives that populist barnburner of a speech on inequality that he wishes for.

But, credit where credit is due: the 2016 Presidential campaign is shaping up to be deadly dull. The “deadly” part worries me a bit.

Cockburn was a global warming denialist, which means that he only got the most important political issue of our time wrong. Still, that’s not important in a political writer.

I have no sympathy for Packer — people who are thrilled by sacrifice should just hire a pro dom already, people who are thrilled by war should find a psychotherapist — but, in general, the temptation to see American politics primarily as a source of individual experiences is ever-present. That’s a natural consequence of outcomes being so hard to shift.

Well, I certainly didn’t agree with Alex C on everything, but I always enjoyed reading him.

Not only did he disbelieve in GW, I once read a “Beat the Devil” column in which he suggested that the Gold Hypothesis ((which suggests that petroleum is continuously being produced by bacteria deep under-ground (a kind of “steady-state” hypothesis of oil production) and will not be depleted in the foreseeable future.)) might be true.*

I am old enough to remember that he used to have a column in the WSJ Op-ed section. Token commie, I guess.

*I think that hard-core Marxians find it convenient to espouse this sort of thing (think of our own bob mcm’s sneering at feminist and LGBTQ issues) because dealing with these issues would be serious distractions from the revolutionary program.

In what reasonable sense of the word is George Packer (or The New Yorker for that mater) a part of the elite?

“The ‘Islamophobic’ backlash Bertam was just as quick to step over 12 corpses to prophesy remains imaginary.”

I don’t know how even in principle you could quantitatively weight the role of Hebdo in the Islamaphobic backlash. But not only is the war against Syria still funded, there is a whole new level of war in Yemen. It’s ostensibly aimed at Iran. This is nonsense. But the western regimes that support yet another war against bad Muslims no longer need to produce coherent arguments, much less genuine facts. Islamophobic backlash is so powerful that it barely takes more than a government denunciation to win support for massacre du jour. I think the implicit moral principle is that one of “us” is worth thousands of them. There are writers who have always been clear on who “them” is, even as they pretend to include all their readers in “us.” Is there really any doubt Packer was one of that kind?

(Charlie Hebdo of course was not just Islamophobic. The French government is now blessed with elite approval of their resumption of their imperial duties in Africa, a path never disapproved by Hebdo with the venom they disdained the Christian Way.)

I loved reading Cockburn, but never felt it necessary to agree with him all the time–he was brilliant on some things and an idiot on others (like global warming).

I have mixed feelings about this post. Most of Packer’s points were reasonable,though number 6 was stupid. I didn’t see any overt desire to have another war, except maybe for the mention of radical Islam. But Corey made a good point about Packer’s Hebdo piece, which certainly did sound like all that crap we were hearing nonstop after 9/11. So apparently Packer is one of those people who, like Hitchens, takes some boyish pleasure in imagining himself manning the gates against the onslaught of the Islamist barbarians. But you couldn’t prove that from the latest New Yorker piece.

But maybe I shouldn’t sneer.

Even if this pundit vs pundit, Packer vs Robin, competition is utterly disconnected from policy; even if what we serfs talk about has absolutely nothing to do with what the elites decide; that war, economics, surveillance, I/P MENA, energy and climate, trade…even and especially elections…are no longer matters that the “people” can effect or influence in any way whatsoever, we being finally and permanently disconnected from power…

…then who is in and who is out of our particular little social circles based on expressed opinions, ideologies, fashions and tastes are no longer a “distraction” as Wolin or Hedges might claim but the entirety of the “politics” we can have or even want.

Marshall: word.

Here’s an example to work off of, given that it’s accurate (I’ve no time to confirm its claim, but it’s probably right):

http://realitieswatch.com/finally-list-of-80-people-with-as-much-money-as-12-of-humanity/

Why people aren’t out in the streets rioting like after Ferguson when such facts are widely available is beyond me. I can only explain that by some sort of control of the personal narratives of the potential rioters. And I see the Kochs are spending a lot of money to make them seem like beneficent gods. Gives the moniker “Rove-ing mobs” a new twist.

No one here is mentioning Packer’s atrocious, misleading, war-glorifying and pretty successful book ‘The Assassin’s Gate.’ This little quirk of his may be somewhat related to the sorts of books he likes to write.

After 9/11 there was a nearly universal upwelling of enthusiastic patriotism. The son of a Welsh colleague was visiting, and I drove him through the main street of an idyllic neighborhood in the very rich and Republican city that borders mine, festooned with flags as if for a parade, though it was the middle of an average week. He thought it odd.

I found it unpleasant, but it’s not surprising that some are nostalgic.

Bruce Wilder 04.26.15 at 7:50 pm
“Packer’s so-called romanticism is “apolitical” because his centrism — his first commitment is the centrist’s commitment to have no commitments — requires passion only in other people.”

He’s not centrist, and his position is highly political. He’s watched the right lead us into a fraudulent war, and f*ck up two wars. He’s watched the right trash the country, and then quite disloyally wage a nihilistic campaign of the politics of destruction, taking it to unprecedented heights – or rather, heights not seen since just before the Civil War.

And the wh*reon’s basic thesis is still ‘Both Sides Do It’.

One of the roles of the press in our society is basically refereeing politics, letting us know who’s doing what to whom, etc. The press has forfeited that role, because being honest refs would work against the interests of the elites. Packer here is being a dishonest ref, looking at carnage on the field, and refusing to call fouls.

I think that is a fundamentally unfair characterization of his column, especially since his solutions are *against* horserace style reporting.

No doubt there will be difference of opinion. But a prima facie case for official conspiracy behind notorious crimes like the JFK, RFK and MLK murders should start with perpetrators who were associated with some sort of law enforcement/security apparatus.

James Earl Ray in the hands of police, therefore easy target for recruitment…check.

Lee Harvey Oswald had an address next to people who did and some of the people who came into contact did, but nothing confirmed of him personally…question mark, I guess.

Sirhan Sirhan, nothing known…check off.

In general the notion that the only thing wrong with bourgeois democracy is criminal conspiracy that has not yet been exposed is crankish. It seems to me the kind of thinking that leads to increasing resort to escalating violence in vain effort to force the last battle with the forces of evil.

Anarcissie wrote:

No doubt there are conspiracies, but in an actually existing democracy (if there can be such a thing) great leaders should not be so crucial.

I used to think this way, but near the end of my 6th decade, I no longer do. My views started to change in the aftermath of Harold Washington’s death. I had lived in Chicago for several years in the 70s, but left for 9 years returning only 3 months before he died, so I missed the construction of the movement that put and kept him in office, and the council wars experience. When he died, I thought it sad but had confidence that the movement would produce another leader and continue. We know how that turned out.

We have this image of humans as mature, rational beings who can (& do) analyze information and make informed, rational decisions: essentially homo economicus transferred to the political sphere. That’s not who or what we are: more like a jumped up East African Plains Ape, to cadge a phrase. Trust is important and so is ego. It turns out that individuals, especially charismatic ones (though the nature of charisma is not fixed, and can depend on institutional characteristics), matter. At times, leaders perform a similar function to conventions like driving on the right side of the road: they provide a focal point that others can organize themselves around, that allow for co-ordination. When they are absent, this co-ordination can be much more difficult to achieve.

SN @ 31

Packer, in The Assassin’s Gate, documents the incompetence and negligence of the Bush Administration’s occupation and reconstruction planning — it’s the main topic of the book. It is true that he owns his own “liberal” pro-war view — that he bought much of the Bush Administration’s ostensible case for intervention, toppling Saddam Hussein and attempting to remake Iraq. He presents that view as highly ambivalent, rather than war-glorifying, imho, but your taste may vary on that. I don’t think either the book or the columns linked in the OP provide textual support for Corey Robin’s thesis, the columns even less than the book.

I’m willing to allow that Robin’s thesis is intended to be meta to Packer’s career trajectory with regard to Iraq, an impressionistic reading from trajectory rather an exegesis of a particular text on the basis of the text alone. Speaking for myself, I am puzzled by Packer’s continued willingness to speak in favor of war and the use of military force in the Middle East, given his detailed acquaintance with the careless mendacity of the Bush Administration and the military and intelligence forces Bush helped to palsy. It seems to me that Packer’s judgement, in the book and more casually in public forums since, is not adequately informed by his own reporting. One could say much the same thing about John F Burns, the English New York Times reporter, who appeared on PBS for a time where his enthusiasm for war was evident, and the Washington Post reporters, Tom Ricks (Fiasco) and Rajiv Chandrasekaran (Imperial Life in the Emerald City), the latter of whom took on a scrupulously “neutral” voice, which was oddly discordant with the facts he was reporting. It occurs to me that we are looking at a form of unnatural selection, where it is either difficult or not possible to gain access for the kind the extensive reporting they do, without twisting one’s own moral compass into bizarre shapes. And, though it will offend some to say it, I wonder if a reporter, let alone a reporter’s career, would even survive some kinds of unvarnished truth-telling. But, it may be enough that parts of the establishment not-wielding-lethal-force simply reinforce the training in bias induced in theatre, in the process of editing, publication and the all-important-in-our-media-culture promotion. Would John F Burns have a career as a PBS talking head, if he did not have his pro-war views? Would these other reporters have their books published and promoted as best sellers?

Barry @ 35

Yep.

Probably we should call it Corrupt Centrism, because the soft corruption of a complacent establishment characterizes the attitude. Packer might not be part of a genuine governing elite, but he’s definitely part of a comfortable status elite. He routinely acknowledges the rot, at least in abstract terms, and will piously and nostalgically call for better behavior (from journalists or politicians), but not for the kind of profound structural reform, amounting to (governing) elite overthrow that would be necessary to generate and sustain better behavior. His “boredom” is a spineless resignation to the sense that no one is likely to entertain him by effective action or change.

BW @43: And, though it will offend some to say it, I wonder if a reporter, let alone a reporter’s career, would even survive some kinds of unvarnished truth-telling.

Not so much offended as shocked, utterly shocked …

I became aware of George Packer’s name when I subscribed to Dissent and he began to appear occasionally in its pages, in (I’m giving a rough guess because my memory is not sharp on the chronology) the mid-1980s. At that point in Packer’s career, his interests, if my memory serves, seemed to be more geared toward literary than political subjects, or at least a mixture of the two. In that phase he wrote a novel and a memoir, both (I think) based on time he spent in Africa as a young man; I didn’t read either book. In fact, just about the only thing of Packer’s I actually remember was his contribution to a collection of remembrances of Irving Howe that Dissent published sometime after the latter’s death in the early ’90s. It was a nice, somewhat self-deprecatory little piece, relating Packer’s couple of meetings/conversations with Howe in the mold of awed-young-writer-encounters-literary-icon-and-fumbles-around-for-suitable-topics kind of thing.

At some point I noticed that Packer had made the jump to big-time mainstream journalism (i.e., The New Yorker), but except for one or two snippets, I have not read his New Yorker stuff (or his books). Bruce Wilder is obvs. right that writing for the MSM carries certain built-in constraints on tone and substance. But again, I don’t want to comment specifically on Packer as I haven’t read him in a long time. Incidentally I saw somewhere that John Burns has just retired from NYT. I don’t remember Burns’s appearances on PBS, at least when his reporter’s hat was on, as being quite as pro-war as B. Wilder says, but maybe my memory is at fault here.

The Packer piece is an uninspired rant of reactionary centrism. What could be more boring than a political journalist complaining about being bored.

marcel proust @ 41
There are more sentences than mentions of time in your comment, something strictly forbidden with such a pseudo. So, as first item in our series “the Real Marcel comments on CT”, I submit :

“I used to think this way but, nearing the end of my 6th decade, I no longer do. My views started to change in the aftermath of Harold Washington’s death, as I returned there after 9 years, missing the construction of the movement that had put and kept him in office and thinking that the movement would produce another leader and continue, before realizing its ultimate failure. ”

Still a bit short, and the ending is Not That, but not so bad for a first.

… Working on a Proustibot, to save time.

To be less snarky and curt.
The analysis of Packer , “political romantics …. always on the lookout for a certain kind of experience in politics…They want a feeling. A feeling of exaltation and elation, unmoored from any specific idea or principle save that of sacrifice, of giving oneself over to the nation and its cause”, does exactly what the article complains about in Packer’s analysis of the Hebdo murders, ie it refuses “to consider any of the political, economic or social factors” that might mold Packer’s perspective.
Which I (personally) agree with. At the individual level (imo) people are more likely to engage in/or support violence for ‘politically romantic’ reasons; attacks on your in group, responding to perceived injustice etc At the individual level violence is generally seen as a moral necessity and virtuous.
At the group/macro level it is generally instrumental, it serves a political purpose.
So I’m not sure why the article concentrates on Packer and doesn’t extend the pyscho-analysis to the other political romantics mentioned ? (unless Im missing the point, which is possible)

stevenjohnson,

But a prima facie case for official conspiracy behind notorious crimes like the JFK, RFK and MLK murders should start with perpetrators who were associated with some sort of law enforcement/security apparatus.

Gathering good information in the face of resistance from high-level institutional players, mid-level mass media players and popular opinion which is influenced by the first two, isn’t always easy. Often it is quite difficult. If you want to get some measure of confidence in your understanding of those three cases you really have to invest some time and effort. Unfortunately, that’s just the way it is.

If you’re willing to do some research I think you’ll conclude something along the following lines:

In the JFK case, Oswald was a low level agent of military intelligence or CIA. He was not aware of the true nature of the plot, rather, he was groomed to be the patsy. In fact he said just that in police custody.

In MLK’s case, there seems to be a much more diffuse responsibility for the plot involving also FBI, organized crime and member of the Memphis police department. But here also, James Earl Ray almost certainly fired no shots and was probably not even in the area when the shooting took place. He too was groomed as a patsy.

In RFK’s case, Sirhan was almost certainly groomed as a “Manchurian Candidate” type assassin. There is strong evidence that he was under hypnosis during the event. There is strong evidence that although he discharged his weapon he didn’t hit RFK. RFK was fatally hit at point blank range from behind, where no witnesses placed Sirhan.

But as I said, you can’t get a handle on this stuff if you aren’t willing to do a little digging.

Clarification. I wrote,

Sirhan was almost certainly groomed as a “Manchurian Candidate” type assassin.

Sirhan’s role was primarily that of a patsy, a fall guy. He had a weapon and he fired it but that was a deliberate diversion to draw attention away from the true assassin who was positioned to RFK’s rear. Sirhan was in front of RFK.

marcel proust @ 56

.. by which you mean that “for a long time, you used to have that pseudo”…

I stop now – my only excuse is that I often wondered the results of Marcel Proust (ze Marcel Proust, I mean) could write today, with all the electromunications and the interwebs.

mattski@57

“In the JFK case, Oswald was a low level agent of military intelligence or CIA. He was not aware of the true nature of the plot, rather, he was groomed to be the patsy. In fact he said just that in police custody.”

I do not know convincing evidence Oswald was a plant rather than a true defector. And, like those terrorists who are “known” to the police yet completely unimpeded by their vigilance, the time Oswald spent in the USSR could have been a time when he was turned, even if he was. If you’re going to go that route, you need to rule out alternate hypotheses of Castro and Khrushchev and semi-independent figures beneath them. Question mark.

“In MLK’s case, there seems to be a much more diffuse responsibility for the plot involving also FBI, organized crime and member of the Memphis police department. But here also, James Earl Ray almost certainly fired no shots and was probably not even in the area when the shooting took place. He too was groomed as a patsy.”

I see no great need for a patsy to even be groomed. And the kinds of pressures that can be put upon a person in the grip of the police can be just as well exercised to recruit him for trigger man. You don’t even need someone “known” to be a patsy. And really, assigning the patsy role to someone already on the radar always raises questions of competence. And, since the number one excuse for doing something wrong is pretending to be stupid, even of guilt. Amongst the powerful, I suspect more temptation to boast than to hide responsibility.

“In RFK’s case, Sirhan was almost certainly groomed as a “Manchurian Candidate” type assassin. There is strong evidence that he was under hypnosis during the event. There is strong evidence that although he discharged his weapon he didn’t hit RFK. RFK was fatally hit at point blank range from behind, where no witnesses placed Sirhan.”

Loved the movie. Don’t take it seriously at all. Nor does my knowledge of hypnosis lead me to believe. Most of all, I don’t rate eyewitness testimony very highly in general. But I value late, unsworn testimony even less. This strikes me as the Oakland of assassination conspiracies.

I do rate circumstantial evidence and forensic evidence pretty highly. It is the mixed nature of the circumstantial evidence on JFK that raises flags for allegations of another conspiracy.

Historically, the powerful assassinate other powerful people by subverting their guards, in order to take power. Or their minions assassinate dissidents they can’t jail or execute by the usual methods, using police or security forces and their agents (which includes member of the population fallen into their snares and turned.) But they don’t assassinate other heads of state, they take military action. These circumstances do not apply for Oswald/JFK. (It is difficult to identify unusual circumstances that might be revelatory when we forget even to wonder what usual circumstances really are, as opposed to vague impressions.)

The forensic evidence is as frustrating as ever, improbable but not conclusively impossible.

And yes, I do think that when the notoriety of a case reaches extreme levels, eyewitness testimony and anecdotes can turn into a carnival.

No doubt it is frustrating but this is why I find the prospect of digging for the facts as appealing as diving into a septic tank.

But as I said, you can’t get a handle on this stuff if you aren’t willing to do a little digging.

Pardon my typos.

Interview with Jim DiEugenio on RFK.