The Cherry Orchard

I’m glad to hear I’ve got some faithful readers here at the Orchard. A few friends have asked me why I’ve posted so infrequently, and in fact there’s a good reason. I’m doing a special project on LitKicks, an inquiry into the question “Does Literary Fiction Suffer from Dysfunctional Pricing?“. It’s been a very lively debate, so lively that it’s really sapped my stamina for the kind of politically-minded or philosophical debates we often have here. I also haven’t been able to pay attention to some recent news developments and subjects I would usually cover.

For instance, I didn’t post anything about this year’s United Nations General Assembly, even though it had been one of my original intentions here to blog about the United Nations (well, hell, somebody’s got to). This doesn’t mean I have lost interest in that subject; it just means I couldn’t pay close enough attention this year to have anything useful to say.

If you’ve found the political inquiries and discussions we’ve had in the past here interesting, though, I’d suggest you pop over to LitKicks and check out the very intense discussion we’re having about book pricing, book industry habits and hardcover vs. paperback demographics. In a way, I’ve begun this project because I want to see how such an organized inquiry proceeds, and the mission of this literary project is very much aligned with the mission of the political inquiries we’ve conducted here.

Which is all meant to say: don’t worry that Levi Asher has abandoned the Cherry Orchard. I’m just busy in a different orchard for the moment, but I’ll be back soon, and there’s plenty to talk about.

Now that several leading Republican politicians (and many more smart Republican voters) have abandoned the inane Bush/Cheney position that USA troops must stay the course in Iraq, it seems likely that American forces will begin pulling out soon (how soon? I wish I knew). This is far the end of our troubles in Iraq, or Iraq’s troubles. The hard work will get harder before it gets easier, and some frightening issues loom. We must pull out without leaving causing a massive refugee crisis that could lead to further horrors, privations and invitations to genocide.

As we’ve observed elsewhere on this site, major historical acts of genocide from Turkey to the Ukraine to Nazi Germany to the Chinese heartland to Rwanda have almost always been politically motivated. The “madman” theories that blame past disasters on obsessive politicians (Hitler) or mindless marauding gangs (Rwanda) invariably miss their mark. Genocides happen, sadly enough, because they benefit the governments that support them (I don’t want to repeat my past writings on this topic here, but if you find this formulation unconvincing please visit the articles in the “genocide” category here, where I explore this in more detail).

Here’s why this is relevant now: the territorial and economic battles between Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish factions over control of Iraq (and Iraq’s oil wealth) will probably result in some type of either formal or (more likely) de facto partition. A national partition will quickly lead to a refugee crisis (as it did in, say, the creation of Pakistan from the partition of India). A refugee crisis invariably involves the type of chaos that can lead to genocide. It’s all too easy to see the worst-case scenarios that could emerge in Iraq in the next couple of years, and it is the entire world’s responsibility — not just the USA’s, and not just Iraq’s — to make sure this doesn’t happen.

What can we do to help? As I’ve said so often in these pages before, we can begin by improving the quality of our national debate on the future of Iraq. This Huffington Post article by Thomas de Zengotita helps by pointing out the flaw in the oft-spoken Bush-Cheney line that the current Iraqi government needs to “step up” to solve the country’s problems. The condescending idea that Iraq’s inability to govern itself is due to a lack of national character or organization is pure fiction. Iraq can’t govern itself because its people are allied along Shiite/Sunni/Kurdish lines rather than national lines (and have always been) and will choose to fight for the sectarian causes they have been raised to believe in rather than for a “unity government” that they do not trust.

Unfortunately, not many people will read or understand articles like Thomas de Zengotita’s, and the idea that we can allow “nature to take its course” in Iraq while they “figure out how to govern themselves” is all too widely believed.

I don’t know how we can avoid a vicious refugee crisis in a post-USA Iraq, but this is the question we all need to ask, and we need to ask it now. And let’s just skip the simplistic answers, because they are not going to help.

Probably the most dramatic moment during last night’s Fox News Republican debate: Rudy Giuliani criticizing outlier candidate Ron Paul for suggesting that the 1991 invasion of Iraq was a primary cause for the September 11 attacks. Here’s Fox’s record of the moment:

“That’s really an extraordinary statement,” Giuliani said, interrupting FOX News panelist Wendell Goler. “That’s really an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of Sept. 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don’t think I have ever heard that before and I have heard some pretty absurd explanations for Sept. 11. I would ask the congressman withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn’t really mean that.”

All the other candidates then clamored for a chance to echo Giuliani’s strong condemnation of Ron Paul. Here’s the only problem: what Paul said is a simple historical fact. It’s not even a contested fact. Every serious history of the events leading up to the September 11 attacks agrees that Saudi rich kid Osama Bin Laden formed Al Qaeda as a direct response to the arrival of USA troops in Saudi Arabia to reverse Saddam Hussein’s occupation of Kuwait in 1991. This isn’t something only lefties and Democrats say — it’s something every credible historian is in agreement on. It’s also one of the main points of Lawrence Wright’s bestselling book The Looming Tower, widely considered the most authoritative (and non-partisan) history of Al Qaeda.

So, if Giuliani is standing there with a straight face saying “I don’t think I have ever heard that before and I have heard some pretty absurd explanations for Sept. 11″ we must conclude that he has not read Lawrence Wright’s book or any other history of Al Qaeda. And yet he believes he has the ability to lead our country’s absolutely critical battle against this enemy — from a position of ignorance about the history of this enemy, one can only assume.

Fighting an enemy from a position of ignorance about that enemy: I thought that was George Bush and Dick Cheney’s unique style, and I thought our country had at least learned the lesson that we need to understand our enemies better before we engage them in battle.

I guess not. The fact that John McCain and other candidates praised Giuliani’s dramatic criticism of truth-teller Ron Paul is pretty disturbing. My respect for a few of these candidates has just dropped a couple of notches. America cannot afford any more military leadership by politicians too haughty or proud to know the basic facts of their enemy’s history.

Last week I posted three case studies for our inquiry into the meaning and purpose of argument. Today I’m going to move quickly through five more, and then on Wednesday I’m going to try to reach a conclusion about how a vehicle as flawed and malleable as “argument” can possibly have validity beyond the problems found in these case studies. I’m still not sure where this inquiry will end, but here’s a few more examples to bring us closer.

4) Two drivers in a parking lot fender-bender

They stand there yelling at each other. Cuss words are exchanged, regardless of the presence of children nearby. Both drivers look kind of stupid to passers-by, who hope they’ll either shut up quickly or do something hilarious like get into a fist fight.

What are these two angry people doing? Mainly, they are venting. Each of them has been through a frightening crash, and each feels choked up, tense, confused, violated, helpless. So they yell, because that’s what people do when they’re freaking out. They insult each other in a way that civil people normally don’t, because they feel momentarily freed from social constraints due to their panic.

Their insults do have a pragmatic purpose, though. Each is instinctively trying to implant in the other’s mind (and in the mind of any observers) that the other one is at fault. By trying to convince others of this, they are probably trying to convince themselves of it as well. This is not a calculated posture, though, because neither has the presence of mind at this moment to calculate. So, the parking lot drivers are arguing to release tension, and their instinctual impulses to blame each other serve to help each one build their “narrative” of what happened, in which (naturally) each believe the other to be at fault.

5. A bicycle messenger who gets in a taxi driver’s face after a bad cut-off

This may seem similar to the fender-bender situation above, but it’s actually quite different. Both bicycle messengers and taxi drivers earn a living on the streets, and busy traffic intersections are a hotly contested territory. Bicycle messengers naturally feel vulnerable and endangered in their ongoing battle with taxi drivers, and so they are quick to snarl and kick, showing their ferocity. In this case study, the bicyclist is arguing to defend his or her territory against a known and familiar opponent.

6. A group of marketing executives making a difficult decision

An expensive and disappointing marketing project must be either renewed or canceled, and six executives sit in a room trying to make a recommendation which way to go. Two of them feel strongly that the project can succeed with a change of management, two of them represent the current management team and deeply hate the people who want to bring in new managers, and the remaining two think all four of the others are idiots and don’t particularly care what happens (note: this describes the decision-making process at most Fortune 500 companies in the USA).

The six of them engage in a mix of structured debate and emotional reflection. They feel closest to making a logical decision when one of them steps up to the whiteboard and tries to draw a matrix of possible decisions and likely outcomes. This kind of analysis helps, but the progressions break down frequently whenever each of the executives says something that offends another, or that insinuates blame or dredges up remnants of past incidents that highlight each others’ weaknesses. In the end, they hobble together some kind of recommendation to their manager, who may or may not even listen to their advice. What on earth are these six people doing?

To some extent, they are carrying out a process of dialectic, though the quality of the dialectic in these situations can be very low. Mostly, they are trying to buck up their interoffice alliances and ensure that the decision that is finally made is one that they can stand. For a middle manager in a modern corporation, argument is a tool for establishing and maintaining power, influence and job security.

7. A film critic gives a terrible review to a much-hyped new movie

On the face of it, there seems to be something cruel about the practice of dismissing or demolishing the hard work and great expense of countless moviemaking professionals with a few vicious paragraphs in a newspaper. And yet the critic feels completely driven by a sense of purpose and self-righteousness in doing so. What is the critic doing?

Let’s not settle on a cynical answer like “earning a living”, since the average film critic earns less money than any of the marketing executives above, and is probably motivated more by aesthetic than financial concerns. Let’s also assume that the critic does not know any of the filmmakers and is not motivated to trash the film by any interpersonal considerations. Most likely, the critic who writes a slashing review does so while infused in a state of idealistic exhilaration, temporarily allowing his or her self to believe that he or she is helping to discourage future filmmakers from making similar mistakes, and hopefully encouraging viewers to withhold their support from the current failed effort so as to help market forces correct the aesthetic or moral or creative failures that caused the current film to be so bad. The critic believes that he or she is doing something useful and important for the “art”, even if past patterns prove that bad movies will continue to be made even despite the existence of bad reviews.

8. A couple on a date see the same bad movie and then discuss it in a bar

Unlike the film critic above, these two people know that the world does not care what they think, and yet they still painstakingly dissect their reactions to the film and are disappointed to discover that they both dislike the film for different or even contradictory reasons. One of them says the comic scenes were the film’s only saving grace, whereas the other says the film could have been salvaged if it had restrained its attempts at comedy and better developed its tragic storyline. Furthermore, one liked the leading actor and hated the soundtrack, and the other had the opposite reaction. They sit over drinks and float their reactions towards each other, only to sadly find themselves unable to reach any connection at all. This is a “quiet argument”, because neither has anything at stake, and each would rather agree than disagree, but they find themselves unable to do so. They go at this for at least twenty minutes. What are these two people doing?

Of all the case studies presented here — and this is the last — this couple may be having the “purest” argument of all, because they both sincerely and completely wish they could agree, and they try over and over to find a basis for agreement. What they are doing is, simply, sharing the contents of their private thoughts, attempting as a couple to “think as one”. Perhaps they’d feel better if they applauded themselves for trying so hard to agree with each other, rather than letting themselves feel shabby and isolated for their failure to achieve this agreement.

The eight case studies are now finished, and I’m still not sure where this inquiry is heading. I’ll post the final piece in this series tomorrow, and we’ll hopefully figure it out then.

I’ve recently been observing people around me who are arguing, trying to discern behavorial clues as to what motivates a person engaged in an argument. What exactly are people doing when they argue? Let’s look at some case studies and find out.

1) A married couple who fight every night after they put the kids to bed

Mr. and Mrs. X love each other, and neither want their marriage to end. However, they bicker bitterly about everything. They can barely get through a dinner in a restaurant or a movie on TV without insulting, demeaning or pointedly ignoring each other. They put on happy faces for the children and for friends, but in private they are locked in an endless cycle of blame, disappointment and anger. Why are they doing this?

In one sense, for this couple arguing is a form of communication. It makes both of them feel vulnerable to express any kind of happiness or satisfaction with their lives together, as if doing so might reveal too much to the other. The “grouchy face” has become a permanent mask for both of them, and they have settled into bickering as a form of confortable equilibrium. In this sense, their fights are not actually arguments at all.

However, at least once or twice a week they move from snide bickering into full-blown, horrifying battling. One might conclude that they are cruel and love to inflict pain on each other, but this is not true. In fact, it might be that they are engaging in a form of territorial negotiation. There are a number of ongoing unresolved issues between them (say, she feels he doesn’t help enough with the kids, he feels she is irresponsible with money, they each want to be able to go out with their friends more than with the others’ friends, both fear the other will have an affair). Each is constantly afraid of losing the advantage on any of these issues — and so they argue constantly to let the other know that they will still not yield on anything. Despite the fact that their fights are emotionally devastating to both of them, these fights have become functionally necessary to this marriage. It is with these fights that they define the rules and boundaries of their everyday lives: argument is a form of both communication and negotiation.

2) Politicians in a televised debate

Debate season has opened early for 2008 Presidential candidates in America, and if you watch one of these broadcasts you’ll see that each participant is engaged in a performance for the benefit of an audience. They are not attempting to directly persuade each other, because to do so would be pointless (after all, Barack Obama knows there’s little chance he’ll get Hillary Clinton’s vote). Instead they are competing to impress viewers, and so in this case the so-called argument is merely a framing device for a roundtable of rehearsed performances.

But there are rare moments when politicians do challenge each other directly on meaningful issues in a televised debate. In these cases, what are the individual politicians actually doing? On an intellectual level, it seems they are attempting to establish an interpretation of reality, attempting to make a case for a particular position by presenting evidence, supplying metaphors or presenting logical conclusions. It’s during these moments that the debate will seem most substantial to viewers — though, ironically, it’s almost always against the rules of a televised debate for one candidate to directly challenge another, due to the sanitized format our bloodless modern politicians always insist on.

But when they do clash on an issue, what each politician is doing is attempting to create a complete picture of a reality for the audience to accept as “the” reality. A pro-choice politician says a fetus is not a human being, a pro-life politician says it is. Both want to “establish” this point in the mind of each viewer. Furthermore, the politician is attempting to prove his or her ability to continue to create persuasive realities that others will follow, and they do this by appearing forceful, confident and assertive. They are each trying to control the discussion, and they will use rhetorical touches such as raising their voice, interrupting each other and psyching each other out with veiled insults to do this. If they succeed, viewers will intuitively notice that they are controlling the conversation, and will think of them as having strong leadership skills. This final result is probably the most critical of all. In all the above senses, though, for a politician an argument is a form of performance.

3) A bunch of baseball fans in a bar

A bunch of loudmouth Mets fans are sitting around arguing about whether or not Willie Randolph just blew it by letting reliever Aaron Heilman pitch the middle innings in a close game (note: the answer to this question is often “yes”). There are some Heilman believers in the crowd, though, and the tone of the discussion gets a bit hostile. What are these people doing? Simple: they’re having fun. They are speaking loudly, calling each other names, bringing out all the insults they can think up, and despite the displays of ferocity it really all amounts to nothing more than a verbal hacky-sack circle. They are relishing their chance to exercise their knowledge of statistics and/or their comic skills (assuming they have either, which they often don’t) and they’re enjoying each other’s bon mots. For these guys, an argument is a form of entertainment.

I think I’m going to stop this sample here, and present a few more cases in my next post (hopefully tomorrow). And yes, I am building up to a point with all of this, though I can’t describe exactly at this moment what that point is going to be. That’s what an inquiry is for — if I knew the answers now, I wouldn’t need to inquire!

Stay tuned for installment #2, coming soon.

I started this blog last July, because I was disturbed by the wars raging in the Holy Lands, frustrated with the lack of useful debate in America over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and disgusted by the news from Darfur. Despite the cozy weather, I remember last summer as a moral nadir, a season of hopelessness.

In the nine months since, I’m glad to say the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah and Hamas has mostly held up (though a cease-fire is a far cry from a peace settlement). I’m also glad that a majority of sensible politicians in both the Democratic and Republican parties have made the smart decision to stop backing the Bush/Cheney position on Iraq, and I have much more faith in our legislative branch since the November elections (though the season of hopelessness is far from over in Darfur, and we’ve got stuff like global warming and nuclear proliferation in North Korea and Iran to worry about).

I’m also glad that The Cherry Orchard is regularly finding more readers, and that I’m doing a better job of figuring out how to write about political topics (after years of writing about fiction and poetry on LitKicks I thought it’d be easy, but it’s not). A post I put up immediately after the Virginia Tech killings was cited in an article by Graeme Hamilton in Canada’s National Post, which is nice, even though it inspired an excitable fellow who writes for a blog called Weapons of Mass Discussion to call me an asshat and question my honesty when I say I would not sit quietly and pray for salvation if a crazy person entered a room I was in with guns and started shooting.

How does it feel to have somebody call you an “asshat” on their blog? Honestly, it feels just fine. I stand by my words, and I think it’s amusing that this person calls me “cowardly and idiotic”, and then goes on to say that I have a point. Yes, my name-calling friend, I certainly do.

I was also pleased to be cited in a post-Dems-debate roundup by Michael Weiss at Slate. I especially like it that Weiss refers to this site as a “nonpartisan political blog” because, despite the fact that I feel such deep rage at the Bush-Cheney administration that I sometimes want to call them “asshats”, I do tend to be a moderate on most issues, and I think the best political writing recognizes the validity of all sides of an argument. That’s why the blogroll on this site lists everything from Firedoglake to Little Green Footballs, from Sabbah’s blog to Solomania. I want all the viewpoints, because anybody who believes in a position strongly enough to argue it in public must have something valid to say.

What is an argument? Why do we argue, and more interestingly, what exactly do we do when we argue? I think I’d like to take a break from my news-oriented postings here at the Fruitstand, and begin another “inquiry” (yes, that’s right, it’s time for another multi-part series of postings on a single topic). The subject of this inquiry goes back to my days as a philosophy student studying Plato and Hume and Nietzsche and James, but I hope I’ll also show some wisdom from the years I’ve lived since then. The inquiry will begin shortly, and the topic is: “What Are People Doing When They Argue?”. Yeah, it sounds like the title of a Raymond Carver story, and maybe we can even argue about the title of the inquiry, if you want. You asshat.

First impressions of the Democratic party’s presidential candidates on parade: they’re all fine, and there is absolutely no reason to consider this a two-person or three-person race at this point.

John Edwards got the most votes in a well-attended Daily Kos poll, and I agree with this result. The blow-dried southerner appears serious, unflappable and appropriately angry about the current state of things. Another candidate who made a good impression on me is New Mexico’s Bill Richardson, more for his earnest body language and focused message than anything else.

Hillary Clinton did just fine, and I have no doubt that she’d be a hardworking, intensely practical President. I admire her very much for her courage and positive attitude. However, she has yet to prove that she can raise voters’ passions as well as she can raise funds, that she can appeal to outsiders as well as knowledgeable insiders, and it’s starting to seem clear that her stiff public persona remains a barrier to her electability.

As for Barack Obama, I’m sorry but I’m still not on this bandwagon at all. His performance last night was mechanical and safe, and I really, really, really don’t care that he has a Kennedy-esque mystique. In fact, I am more and more offended by the idea that anybody should consider this candidate a front-runner just based on his good looks and charisma. He did not particularly distinguish himself in last night’s debate, which adds to my impression that the buzz-to-substance ratio is too high here. Obama cerrtainly has a right to press his candidacy along with the rest of this pack, and there’s still plenty of time for him to win me over. But he’s not going to do it by standing there looking handsome, and I’m sorry to say that seemed to be his core strategy during the debate.

Of course I like Dennis Kucinich, and I’m glad to see him on this stage, just as I’m glad to see him working hard on various fronts in Congress. Kucinich would have been the evening’s designated oddball candidate if Alaska’s Mike Gravel were not there to play the angry clown. Gravel’s just fine, but he’s not going to be our next President.

Chris Dodd is running? I missed that press release. I don’t see him playing much of a role in this election, nor Joe Biden, but maybe I’ll turn out to be wrong.

One final thought: regardless of which of these politicians wins the nomination, they are all doing good work on behalf of significant causes. I’m glad they’re all around, from the staid Dodd to the blustering Gravel, and the only thing that would disappoint me now is if the party were to begin to converge on a front-runner too early. We’ve got a lot more debating to do.

Oh, finally: this stuff is pretty good.

So the Scooter Libby verdict is in. Like many Americans, I am happy to hear that Dick Cheney’s former Chief of Staff has been found guilty (and I’m happy to rub this in Fox News’ face by displaying their write-up of this news). But, of course, the wrong guy is going to jail.

Scooter Libby lied under oath about the justification for the Iraq War, and he’s now facing up to 25 years in jail. Libby’s boss also lied repeatedly to the American people about the justification for the Iraq War, but since he did not lie “under oath” he doesn’t face criminal charges for perjury.

It sure seems to me that anytime a United States Vice President speaks to the American people about a decision to go to war, his words are “under oath”. What oath? Gee, I don’t know … the oath of office, maybe? It’s sad to see a hapless bureaucrat like Scooter Libby face jail time for his boss’s crime, based on the technicality that he lied under oath whereas his boss simply lied.

Enough about that. I still hope — naively, perhaps — to see both Dick Cheney and George W. Bush eventually cooling their heels in minimum security prison for their dishonest and harmful leadership of our country’s foreign policy. But maybe I need to let go of my anger and think about where this country will head next. This is a subject I touched on in a brief piece I just wrote for the PBS blog, Remotely Connected.

The subject of this article is an engaging documentary about an earnest but underfinanced young politician named Jeff Smith trying to beat the odds and get nominated by his Missouri district’s Democratic party to run for U. S. Congress. Does money really count for everything in modern electoral politics? If not, why do we hear so much about certain candidates “locking up” their nominations by fund-raising? If not, why did Tom Vilsack give up? If not, why does the press coverage speak of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as the only two viable Democratic Party presidential candidates?

I don’t want the race for the 2008 Democratic Party presidential nomination to be “locked up” in fundraising bonanzas. I want at least ten candidates in this race. I want to hear debates — big, loud, angry, intellectually substantial debates. I want John Edwards to keep throwing curve balls. I want to get Al Gore back in the game (and if I could choose any favorite among them all at this point, Al’s my man). I even want to get Yellin’ Howard Dean and John “Investigate and Indict” Murtha into the mix.

It’s only March 2007, and our two front-runners for the Democratic nomination are already too bland, too careful, too poll-conscious for my tastes. Voters, let’s reject the idea of an early victor and demand a better race.

Of course, bringing this whole thing back to my earliest point of the article, I have to say that I don’t think the next American president will be a Democrat. I’m guessing the next President will be a Republican — John McCain, perhaps, or Tom Ridge, or Condoleeza Rice. That’s because I’m still guessing (and hoping) that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney will be out of Washington D. C. and safely ensconced with Scooter Libby and a bunch of other felons in a minimum security prison sometime before the next Presidential election takes place. I’m still guessing Cheney will resign and go to jail first, and whoever Bush picks to replace Cheney will be our next President, because I think Bush will resign and go to jail soon after.

So our next President will be a Republican. But the winner of the 2008 Presidential election will be a Democrat. You heard it here first.

Before I dive into the following inquiry, I’d like to clear up why I think I’m qualified to write about history even though I have no training as a historian (though I have degrees in philosophy and computer science and consider myself well-read).

The fact is, our “experts” aren’t getting the job done. History is an absolutely critical piece for anybody trying to understand modern politics, and in fact a good understanding of the past and present is probably the single most important tool in the toolbox of anybody engaged in a political field (as a journalist, a candidate, a commentator or a supporting player). When it comes to strong popular coverage of the stunningly important debates of the day, though, it seems like we’ve let the room get taken over by yammering monkeys. There’s a lot of noise, but nobody’s saying much at all.

I think we should do better. In the series of posts I’ll be writing for the next few weeks, I’m focusing on one particular question, and I hope you’ll help me figure out the answer by posting comments if you’d like.

It’s a simple question, the kind only an amateur would ask. What is genocide?

What is genocide? Well, let’s see what some of these events share in common. Thinking about, say, the Turkish murder of a million and a half Armenians during World War I, the Nazi Holocaust during World War II, and the monthlong killing spree in Rwanda in which a million Tutsis were slaughtered by Hutus, one big fact pops out right away. All three of these events occured during wartime, and the victims were ethnic minorities who were considered likely to betray their nations to invading armies.

The nation of Turkey (during the last years of the Ottoman empire) was allied with Germany and Austria-Hungary against France, Britain and Russia in the First World War. After Turkey lost critical battles to the Russians, the government resolved that the minority population of Armenian Christians were likely to welcome the coming invaders, and planned to kill them all. They carried these plans out for three years.

The Jews of the varied nations of Europe were already reeling from the incredible discrimination and dehumanization of the German Nazi regime when the death trains began rolling in 1942. The Nazi brand of anti-semitism has deep roots, but the German drive to clear Eastern Europe of Jews during its vicious war against Russia was rooted in military strategy as well.

The Rwandan million-person massacre of 1994 was, incredibly enough, a carefully plotted and insidiously executed political maneuver. Hutus form the majority population of Rwanda, but remained in many ways economically and politically subservient to the wealthier minority Tutsis. In 1994, the weak Hutu-led government seemed about to collapse to a powerful invading force of Tutsi exiles when a Hutu radio station began broadcasting instructions that all Tutsis must die (the machetes had already been distributed).

What is genocide? Well, it seems to have a hell of a lot to do with war. Ahh, those masters of war! Genocide belongs to them too (no, to us, all of us, since we are all to blame).

Here’s a slogan more people should hear: War Causes Genocide. War causes genocide like cigarettes cause lung cancer. Something to think about the next time you’re about to reach for a pack, or call up some troops.

More on this subject to follow, of course! Please feel free to comment and tell me how you think this inquiry is going so far.

Last night I met six friends for dinner and debate in the West Village. We had all agreed beforehand to spend an entire dinner discussing future Middle East policy in a structured format. This group was largely made up of software developers, and had an interesting makeup:

• three Christians and four Jews

• two born in Lebanon, one born in Israel, four born in U.S.A.

• five men, two women

This was the second time we arranged a dinner debate, a practice occasioned by the fact that our friend Fadi tends to express himself a bit loudly when possessed of an opinion (and, to tell the truth, some have said the same about me, and I have an opinion or two myself).

Previous social get-togethers had devolved into anarchic yellfests, so this time we agreed to take turns speaking, 90 seconds at a time, with interruptions forbidden. 15 second rebuttals were also available, but everybody had to wait their turn to speak, and each person was assured equal time. We appointed Yaniv as moderator and Dave as time-keeper, and managed to make this format work for an hour and a half.

We learned something amazing during this conversation: when you take the time to structure a discussion and direct it towards a single topic, highly intelligent ideas and solutions can emerge. We listened hard to each other, we tried to understand each other’s viewpoints, and by the end of the dinner we were doing nothing but laughing, high-fiving and tossing around side arguments such as which web development platform is better, PHP/Javascript or Java/Struts (the answer, of course, is PHP/Javascript) just for fun.

If you tend to have loud political arguments that lead nowhere with your family or friends, I suggest you try a structured approach. Why are unstructured arguments always so bad? Well, people like to talk more than they like to listen. Do the math — if you put five or more people who want to talk together, you get a mash of half-finished thoughts, and it doesn’t matter what you say anyway, since everybody is too busy thinking about what they want to say to listen to what you’re saying.

A structured argument can have very unexpected positive results. Now that I see that Evan, Fadi, Sabine, Dave, Amy, Yaniv, Carl and I can survive an hour and a half of this and end up smiling, I wonder how many other problems can also be solved in this way.