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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (262765)	12/1/2005 7:36:04 AM
From: Road Walker	Respond to of 1573988

The Age of Skepticism By DAVID BROOKS War is a cultural event. World War I destroyed the old social order in Europe and disillusioned a generation of talented young Americans. World War II bred a feeling of American unity and self-confidence. Vietnam helped trigger a counterculture. The Iraq war is not going to have that kind of pervasive cultural impact, but it has already shifted the zeitgeist. There has been a sharp drop in Americans' faith in their institutions. Trust in government has fallen back to about half of where it was in 2001. More Americans believe that government is almost always wasteful and inefficient, according to surveys by the Pew Research Center. There has been a sharp decline in support for the United Nations. There has been a sharp rise in the number of people who say the U.S. should mind its own business when it comes to world affairs. Isolationist sentiment is about where it was just after Vietnam. Americans are increasingly cynical about politics and their parties. Only 24 percent of Americans say the Republicans represent their priorities, according to an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, and only 26 percent say the Democrats do. The hammer of disapproval has fallen hardest on the Republicans, of course, but the public is just as eager to think the worst of the Democrats. Seventy percent of Americans say Democratic criticism of the war is hurting troop morale, according to a poll by RT Strategies. Most Americans cynically believe that Democrats are leveling their attacks on the war to gain partisan advantage, while only 30 percent believe that they are genuinely trying to help U.S. efforts. Finally, a brackish tide of pessimism has descended upon the country. Roughly two-thirds of Americans say the country is headed in the wrong direction. Iraq is not the only issue that is driving this sour pessimism, but it is the main issue. (Katrina has had a surprisingly modest impact.) And Americans are in this awful mood despite rising consumer confidence and strong economic growth, 4.3 percent. Americans are not pessimistic about their own individual futures, but they are pessimistic about their leadership and their country's future. In this atmosphere of general weariness, the political pendulum is no longer swinging on a left-to-right axis. As Christopher Caldwell noted recently in The Financial Times, the same phenomenon is striking country after country: the governing party is sinking, but the opposition party is not rising. Problems on the right do not lead to a resurgence on the left, or vice versa. In other words, the Democrats may win elections in 2006 or 2008, but that doesn't mean they will have the public's confidence or a mandate for change. In this atmosphere of exhaustion, the political pendulum swings from engagement to cynicism. When polarized voters lose faith in their own side, they don't switch to the other. They just withdraw. The chief cultural effect of the Iraq war is that we are now entering a period of skepticism. Many Americans are going to be skeptical that their government can know enough to accomplish large tasks or be competent enough to execute ambitious policies. More people are going to be skeptical of plans to mold reality according to our designs or to solve the deep problems that are rooted in history and culture. They are going to be skeptical of our ability to engage with or understand faraway societies in the Middle East or Africa or elsewhere. In theory, skepticism leads to prudence, not a bad trait. But when it is tinged with cynicism, as it is now, skepticism turns into passivity. In skeptical ages, people are quick to decide that longstanding problems, like poverty and despotism, are intractable and not really worth taking on. They find it easy to delay taking any action on the distant but overwhelming problems, like the deficits, that do not impose immediate pain. They find it easy to dawdle on foreign problems, like Iran's nuclear ambitions, rather than confronting them. As the Harvard economist Benjamin Friedman has observed, Americans begin social reforms when they are feeling confident, not when they are weary and insecure. Already the resolve to rebuild New Orleans and seize the post-Katrina moment has dissipated. The bipartisan desire to do something ambitious about energy policy is going nowhere. Even the problem of Darfur evokes little more than sad sighs and shrugs. What's at stake in Iraq is not only the future of that country, but the future of American self-confidence. We may have to endure a cycle of skepticism before we can enjoy another cycle of hope. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

To: combjelly who wrote (262765)	12/1/2005 2:47:50 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1573988

"Meteorologists marked the end of the busiest and most expensive Atlantic hurricane season on record on Wednesday with a warning that the next few years could prove just as stormy." Maybe. It could be worse, or it could be better. We had more than two decades of pretty calm tropical weather. Like with beaches, we don't understand the mechanics that form tropical weather. Once the pattern is established, we are pretty good at predicting the development. But the pattern gets broken every winter. Will it continue next year? Probably. But it might not. We just don't know enough. They're saying that there is every indication its going to continue next year. And remember this is the second year of bad hurricane seasons, not the first...........last year was no walk in the park for FLA. Worse.......now scientists are worried that the Gulf Stream flow that keeps Europe's climate moderated is starting to deteriorate. That scares the bejezus out of me. ted