My question is, first, what is going on in Honduras? It’s one of those small central American countries that one would expect the United States to control in some significant way. I’d imagine they would give the military there all their funding, send the officers to ‘torture’ school, and subvert elections. As an American, and one who’s grown up here, I have a good idea what we’re about. But, I could be mistaken, maybe I have a few details wrong. I have to depend on journalists, in a a big way, to look into what the facts are and give me an explanation.
There’s a problem, though, with the journalists. They have the idea that they can’t tell me what’s going on. There are many reasons why they can’t look too closely into Honduras. One reason is that there aren’t that many journalists who know much about Honduras. It’s a poor country. The United States is behind most every political event there, and given how much the U.S. puts into subverting governments, that isn’t going to change. So, in many ways the stories about this country should write themselves.
Another problem is that journalists are vulnerable. They can be killed. They can have their children killed. They can be fired. There are many ways to put pressure on these people to keep them from revealing any ‘secrets’ that might rock the boat down there.
And, third, journalists are saddled with the idea that reasoning about things, things like what’s going on in Honduras, is a matter of logical argument. It has been my contention that this is the idea at the bottom of both Descartes’ idea that his being in his study writing is his own ‘point of view,’ and the journalist’s account of the Honduran President’s story is his ‘point of view.’ Descartes’ problem was that, yes he had reasons for thinking he was in his study writing, but, he has just as many and in many ways the same reasons for thinking he was actually in bed, asleep, dreaming he was in his study writing, he was in no position to decide one way or the other. He could not know what was going on.
In the literature, this is his argument that we don’t have knowledge of the ‘external world.’ Journalists are no different than Descartes. They’d like to interview the President of Honduras and get his story. But, there is also the story they’d get from the Honduran military. There’s also the story they’d get from the rich land owners in Honduras. There’s also the story they’d get from the members of the Honduran Supreme Court. All of these stories give us the ‘point of view’ of various people there in Honduras. One might have the idea that there would be facts on the ground there, facts which, when determined, would help one decide which of these various ‘points of view’ would be true. This is one way one might think we could come to an understanding of what exactly is going on in Honduras. But, Descartes found he could not so easily solve his own problem this way. Yes, he had one story that he was in his study writing, and another story that said he was asleep in his bed dreaming he was in his study writing. He thought about this and could not find any way to distinguish for himself whether one story or the other was true. That is, he had no information about what was going on independent of one of these stories, or even some other story, that would decide the question for him. He was confronted with nothing but different ‘points of view,’ and never able to get at the facts behind these stories that would decide for him which of them were more true than the others.
This is the predicament that journalists face today. They can put together various stories, but can not get at any facts independent of some ‘point of view’ which could resolve the question.
There are those who argue that journalists who believe the truth cannot be determined are just shirking their duty. These critics argue that not being able to decide makes these journalists nothing different than ‘stenographers,’ who merely pass along reports of what the various ‘points of view’ might be.
Glenn Greenwald is one of these critics. He has made the argument that journalists should call what the Bush administration did to accused detainees in their prisons ‘torture,’ because everyone else calls it ‘torture.’ He goes on about this in blog posts like this, where he is quoting an exchange between Jon Stewart and one of his ‘reporters,’
Stewart: That's not a spin thing, that's a fact. That's established.
Corddry: Exactly, Jon, and that established, incontrovertible fact is one side of the story.
Stewart: But isn't that the end of the story? I mean, you've seen the records, haven't you? What's your opinion?
Corddry: I'm sorry, "my opinion"? I don't have opinions. I'm a reporter, Jon, and my job is to spend half the time repeating what one side says, and half the time repeating the other. Little thing called "objectivity" -- �might want to look it up some day.
Stewart: Doesn't objectivity mean objectively weighing the evidence, and calling out what's credible and what isn't?
Corddry: Whoa-ho! Sounds like someone wants the media to act as a filter! Listen, buddy: Not my job to stand between the people talking to me and the people listening to me.
Greenwald comments,
That derision is also as pure an expression of how Alicia Shepard and NPR think as one can imagine. And it's not just Shepard, but American journalists generally. From a 2006 interview Jim Lehrer gave to Columbia Journalism Review:
CJR: At CJR Daily, we spent a lot of time during the 2004 presidential campaign criticizing just the sort of story that it seems [Ben] Bradlee is describing — stories that "highlight the controversy," report this claim versus these competing claims, rather than providing facts for the reader and helping them navigate toward the truth. What are your thoughts on this? How do you approach reporting what a public official has said something that is blatantly untrue?
Lehrer: I don’t deal in terms like "blatantly untrue." That’s for other people to decide when something’s “blatantly untrue.” There’s always a germ of truth in just about everything . . . My part of journalism is to present what various people say about it the best we can find out [by] reporting and let others — meaning commentators, readers, viewers, bloggers or whatever . . .
Again, Greenwald comments,
But remember: don't ever call them "stenographers." That's insulting and offensive. Rather, what they do is called "reporting," by which they mean: "We call people in power and write down what they say really accurately and then we faithfully repeat what 'each side says' without commenting on it or judging it (except where it's our Government's claims against some foreign country, in which case we state our Government's claims as fact)."
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/07/02/npr/index.html
My comparison between journalists and Descartes’ predicament regarding what he’s doing is an attempt to explain why journalists like Lehrer and those represented by Corddry think of their job in the way they do. Why are they mere’ stenographers’? They report what each side says because that’s all they can do. According to Descartes, there are no objective independent facts which one can discover which would determine which of the many points of view about Honduras would have more credibility than another.
When journalists merely report on what the different ‘points of view’ might be, they argue that they will leave it up to their readers or listeners to decide for themselves which story they want to believe. So, this is what Lehrer says,
Lehrer: I don’t deal in terms like "blatantly untrue." That’s for other people to decide when something’s “blatantly untrue.” There’s always a germ of truth in just about everything . . . My part of journalism is to present what various people say about it the best we can find out [by] reporting and let others — meaning commentators, readers, viewers, bloggers or whatever . . .
That someone like Greenwald thinks one can get at facts that would determine which of these ‘points of view’ are true reflects the fact that there are those who believe in empiricism, the idea that there are such facts, and that they exist independently of our ‘points of view’ and that we can determine what those facts are, and thereby decide which of any particular ‘point of view’ is supported by facts, and which are not.
Greenwald argues that the idea there are only sides to any story encourages people like the Bush administration, and allows them to get away with ‘torture.’ He says,
…the central enabling deceit of the Bush administration was that there are no objective, verifiable standards for what "torture" is. Instead, it's just all in the eye of the beholder, easily re-defined to include or exclude anything we want, dependent upon who is doing it, devoid of any authoritative sources on what it means, and, ultimately, entirely subjective. It is that rotted premise -- that there is no fixed, known understanding of "torture" -- that outlets like NPR are not just accepting, but actively promoting, by refusing to use the term on the ground that "there are two sides to the question"
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/07/02/npr/index.html
I want to point out that journalists who take the position that there are only sides are not by doing this arguing there are '”no objective, verifiable standards for what “torture” is.” They may very well acknowledge that there are standards that everyone has agreed to, even the United States. One of the questions that the journalists have is whether what the Bush administration, and now the Obama administration, has done or is doing qualifies as '”torture” under those standards. According to the Bush administration, at least, they were not “torturing” anyone. The journalists see themselves as merely reporting that the Bush administration has a different view about what they were doing than their critics.
It is at this point that the issue of government secrecy and whatever documents the government has that show what was argued, and what was discussed, by government officials involved in the ‘torture’/’enhanced interrogation technique’ controversy is so important. It is that information which supposedly would show whether those officials in the Bush administration and now those who support the same things in the Obama administration acknowledged that they were torturing people but just didn’t want to admit it to anyone. Greenwald suspects that the evidence we have so far supports this claim. The reason Bush and Obama want to keep these documents from being made public, on this view, is that they would subject these officials to criminal prosecution because torturing, as everyone admits, is a crime.
The Bush administration argued that whatever you call what they did to their prisoners got results. They snatched these people off the streets and beat the crap out of them. Some of them they beat them up so badly that they died. The ones that talked, supposedly gave up information that the Bush people were able to use to “save American lives.” This seems to be the same argument that motivates the Obama administration to allow them to do the same things. There doesn’t seem to be any better way to “save American lives” in certain circumstances when we consider some of these “bad” people.
This argument undermines the separate argument that, as Greenwald put it, everything is subjective, and that the Bush people were not torturing anyone. If American spooks were beating people up to the extent that many of their prisoners died under this abuse, then whatever they called it would be considered torture. However, the second argument says that whatever you call it, even if it kills innocent people, it was and will continue to be important for America to do this because, well, it gets results that “save American lives.”
Greenwald is very much appalled by this argument, as all of us should be. It just suggests that the ends justify the means, for one thing. And, it says, if it takes the killing of a few innocent lives to save the many, then it should be alright in anyone’s book. I’m thinking here that Ivan Karamazov puts it pretty much correctly that our predicament, as we live in God’s world, is to ask ourselves whether our happiness is worth the torturing of one small defenseless child. Greenwald is arguing we all should agree with Alyosha, his brother, that the we cannot buy our own happiness, or security, by allowing the torturing of the innocent. Bush and now Obama are telling us that it only makes sense that we torture this kid, and all the other innocent people American spooks might snatch off the world’s streets, if it '”saves American lives.”
The United States has refused to ratify various international treaties banning the use of small bombs, bomblets, and landmines, that have caused the killing and maiming of children all over the world. The reason here, although it may not be acknowledged, is that the U.S. finds it useful to use these kinds of weapons and the fact that they kill kids is none of our concern. There are more important things in this world for American officials than ensuring the safety of innocent kids.
Do these arguments, about the essential ‘subjectivity’ of events, that it’s all about “point of view,” and the claim from the same people who advocate this doctrine that ‘the ends justify the means,’ present a defensible position? Are these views defensible against the kind of attack that Greenwald and others critique?
I think it is a defensible position because it depends on certain underlying assumptions about life and reason and the way we do things, that Greenwald also accepts. I have to admit that on this issue I have to speculate about what Greenwald would say. It would be the subject of questions we might pose to Greenwald. However, my argument has been that the dispute between the Bush administration and its enablers in the mainstream media on the one side, and Greenwald and others who criticize them for their being criminal and arguing various positions to enable such criminality, reflects a central argument in philosophy between people like Descartes and empiricists who respond in certain ways to Descartes epistemological skepticism.
That is, Descartes says, we all agree that reason is a matter of logical argument. It’s how we have organized our civilization. However, if we look at this claim, it leads us to certain theoretical problems. One of them is that on that view, everything is subjective and we cannot determine which of these “points of view” has the most, if any, credibility. On the other hand, there are ‘empiricists’ like Locke or Hume who argue that the commitments we have all made to the claim that reason is a matter of logical argument is just fine. There are no theoretical problems such as the one that Descartes has suggested that should make us question or reject it. In fact, there are any number of ways that we can determine which claim, or “point of view” about the world, is true. We just have to look at the world, determine the facts, and compare what the claims are with those facts, in order to determine which claim, or “point of view” has the most backing.
Greenwald is very much into the idea that these facts do, in most if not all cases, determine which “point of view” has credibility. It is the process that goes on in any criminal investigation. The cops investigate who’s telling the truth. In a court case all the evidence one way or the other comes out and the jury decides which side has presented the best evidence. If the cops were able to discover enough telling facts, then in court, this should give the jury an idea of which story has the most credibility. On Greenwald’s view, the weakness of the journalists' position is that they deny that court cases act this way. They are denying what, to Greenwald, seems an obvious truism.
Greenwald’s position supports the claim Descartes made, and that empiricists affirm, that we all agree that reason is a matter of logical reasoning. The problem for Greenwald, and the rest of us, is that his commitment to this view about reason seems to undermine Descartes’ epistemological skepticism, but does nothing to undermine the additional Bush and Obama claim that our goal here is to survive and that if that involves torturing a few innocent people, then that’s unfortunate, but the way things have to be.
The standards on torture, that Greenwald appeals to, have been created, not discovered, and created in such a way that, supposedly protects the innocent from the powerful. However, the powerful only agree to such standards, if there is thereby no restrictions on the powerful in their efforts to protect themselves. So, for example, no international agreement forces anyone to surrender to any invader or oppressor during a war. The acknowledgement that these agreements cannot make anyone give up against their aggressors is supposedly based on the understanding that people are in this to survive. The claim that Bush and Obama are making is that the power of the United States, or anyone else, does not take away from them the right to defend themselves against anyone who would harm them or the people of the United States.
In either case, whether it is a weak country defending itself against a more powerful aggressor, or a powerful country defending itself against a smaller aggressor determined to harm the powerful, there may be a few innocent lives lost or injured in the process. This suffering is unfortunate, but unavoidable.
The actions that Bush and Obama resort to, in beating people up for their information, may be one of those things we’d like to prevent by our international treaties. We don’t want to have countries involved in torture. But international treaties have not addressed the problem that there are reasons why people go to war. These problems put everyone at risk. They put the powerful as well as the weak in positions of being harmed. So, in order to deal with these situations, each and every country will reason that in order to protect themselves they will have to do whatever is necessary, even if it involves war or torture…even if it means the torturing to death of innocent little kids.
The business of war and torture is one of the implications of the position that Greenwald is defending. O.K., yes, reason is a matter of logical argument. Descartes is wrong to question it by trying to bring up his theoretical problems. But, the whole point of this claim about reason and logic is to assert that when it comes to survival, you sometimes have to kill kids to get it done. You may think that there are standards that we all would want to agree to that would prevent the suffering of the innocent. However, in a choice between the suffering of some innocent person that you don’t know or isn’t yourself, and your own suffering, it’s the others and the unknown that will lose out.
So, what is going on in Honduras? For one thing, the media is telling us that there are several “points of view” on the question. For example, there is this piece claiming that, when you go to different sources, you get different stories.
http://www.newsy.com/videos/honduras_pajamas_and_a_coup
The reporter here took the time to present a number of different “points of view.” He said the Russians had one view, At.Largely.com had a view, Hugo Chavez had another view, and so forth. But, he did not also try to determine if there were any facts that could decide which view had more credibility.
This seems to support the concerns that Greenwald expressed about the problems journalists have with investigating and reporting. Rather than investigate, they tend to be merely ‘stenographers.’ This report by Newsy seems to be an example of this kind of journalism.
But, then again, it should have been pretty easy to peruse the internet looking for different “points of view,” expressed by bloggers, and different news agencies like Russia Today. It would have involved a lot more work to have investigated in Honduras, for example, or in Washington D.C., whether any of these claims actually had that “germ of truth.”
The fact that Newsy did not try to investigate which story had that “germ” does not prove that such an effort would be impossible. It does not show that the ‘empiricists’ are wrong about there being facts independent of one’s “point of view.” What shows that the reporters could not determine which story had credibility is not whether or not they could go in to Honduras, or some archive, or talk to some authority on what American spooks have been doing. Reporters cannot come to independent facts because of how we understand whatever information we have about the world. We understand that information as itself the evidence we have to support some claim about the world. If the evidence goes to support some claim, it is thereby part of some “point of view.” If the evidence goes to support some other claim, it thereby supports some other point of view. The business about there being facts independent of one’s “point of view,” is itself a doctrine that one can question, just as Descartes questioned whether on the common sense view that reason was a matter of logical argument one could thereby come to decide whether you were awake writing or asleep dreaming you were writing.
There are some who argue that the events in Honduras constitute an illegal coup. The Real News Network put together such a story.
One could understand the actions by the political elite in Honduras as not only an attempt to preserve their economic and political positions, which would be a limited kind of rationale, but, further, an act to preserve their survival. The story is that the political elite believes that in real elections they would lose. This is why democracy has been undermined. When people are given a chance to take back their country from the rule by a small number of powerful people, the majority who do not personally have such power, vote to take such power back for themselves.
Marx argued that the best solution to the fox and chicken scenario was for the chickens to organize together and eliminate the foxes. This would be a good reason, the understanding that this is what the chickens would think to do if organized, for the foxes to undermine democracies, or to stage coups.
One of the things that we have to ask ourselves, in thinking about Honduras, is what the United States might be doing to encourage the events going on there. The U.S. has a history of encouraging the military and the political elites that have in the past subverted democracy in Latin America. In terms of my analogy, how can we think of the U.S. influence? Suppose there are more or less powerful chicken coups. The most powerful organization of foxes in one coup, may pay for the foxes of other weaker chicken coups to get training in how to keep their chickens under their boots. This is the role of our “School of the Americas.”
Here is a report from Democracy Now supporting this interpretation of events in Honduras.
The argument here is that the political elite in both the United States and Honduras find that unpleasant actions have been necessary on their part to make sure that their survival is ensured, even though innocent people may suffer. The alternative, where the chickens would get a chance to run their own countries, would put into place mechanisms that would have eliminated the foxes.
The foxes may argue that their “School of the Americas” and all the coups are actually what’s best for the chickens. As one woman said, Honduras doesn’t want to be communist. What she means is that it is better for chickens to be ruled by chicken-eating foxes than for the chickens to rule themselves.
The problem for us is that we have committed ourselves to the position that reason is a matter of logical argument, and all the implications that one can draw from this commitment. People like Greenwald may try to argue that theoretical problems with this commitment don’t really present us with any real difficulties in our lives. The suggestion that we should take philosophical skepticism seriously comes from the crazy-ass conjectures of philosophers who don’t check their thinking with what’s going on in the world. If there were any real problems with this account of reason, then powerful people who can take advantage of the judicial system, or don’t work in jobs dependent on the whims of ‘fascistic’ management, or can avoid the activities of American spooks, or don’t live in the poor barrios of Latin American countries, would themselves suffer. Since important people don’t suffer, then the intellectual foundations of their civilization must be O.K.
Greenwald makes the following claim,
Whether the U.S. should torture people is a matter of opinion about which reporters need not take a position. But that is plainly not the case for the proposition that these tactics are "torture." There are not two sides to that question, and media outlets that suggest otherwise are actively deceiving their audience.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/07/02/npr/index.html
I think Greenwald here is not acknowledging the philosophical basis for the entire dispute that he has been engaging in. He would like us to believe that these are merely political questions, or questions of how best to do journalism. One may not want to engage in deciding what the United States ought to do about “terrorism,” or about the economy, because one is at some one time interested only in reporting on a story at hand. What did the United States do and what did it think about when it made these decisions? To answer this question, one should not have to decide what you would do yourself when asked the reporter’s questions. No, the reporter doesn’t have to decide what to do about torture.
There are certain other questions that one does have to answer for oneself as a reporter. These questions are the basic ones about what we are going to call things. Here’s an object in the world. Will we all call it a cat, or a dog, or some other word. When we come to “torture,” we have to decide what thing in the world we will call “torture.” According to Greenwald, these questions have been answered and everyone has agreed that the things American spooks have been doing we call “torture.” According to Greenwald, there can be no debate about this.
I think there is a problem, however, because if we all are committed to the claim that reason is a matter of logical argument, then everything, and especially what we call things in the world, is up for grabs. Greenwald and ‘empiricists’ want us to ignore the theoretical problems with this account of reason because it leads to unacceptable consequences. For Descartes, it lead to the realization that we can not really know anything. But, we shouldn’t pay that any mind. For Wittgenstein, the problem with this claim was that if it were true, then language and all of its fruits would be impossible. On this view, the connection of words and things is just impossible. Greenwald is asking us to forget about this theoretical problem too.
The foxes have decided that sometimes “torture,” like “class” war, in general, is necessary in order to preserve their existence as foxes. The powerful are wanting to keep these self-preserving efforts a secret because they think that if the chickens found out about them, they would only be encouraged to organize themselves better to eliminate the foxes.
Greenwald is only encouraging the chickens to think that there are some ‘objective standards’ that will resolve these conflicts between the chickens and the foxes so that open warfare, torture, and widespread suffering will not break out. He thinks that the criminal justice system makes peace between chickens and foxes. As far as the foxes are concerned, this is just delusional thinking. The criminal justice system, as well as all the other institutions of the state, are tools in the hands of the foxes used for the purposes of whomever controls them. Greenwald has so far given the foxes no reason to think that “objective standards’ are possible, or would hold any advantage for the foxes. If you ask Marx, Greenwald’s arguments to promote this delusion is only hurting the chickens by impeding their efforts to organize and “throw off their chains.”
Empiricism is no safe harbor. Descartes is no pure savior. The problems of Honduras have to do with everyone accepting the Socratic account of reason as a matter of logical argument, a view that seems harmless, but leads to both theoretical and real problems.
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