If You're in the Mood to Think Deeply About the Internet . . .

McKay over at State of the Line puts into words a lot of the thoughts that have been going through my own mind. Here are a few excerpts, to give you the flavor, but the whole essay is well-crafted, thoughtful, and thought-provoking.

"What we don’t often discuss is whether or not a culture of instant satisfaction is even a desirable state of living. I’ll admit I’m as guilty of this mindset as anyone else: I feel lost without my phone, become anxious when I cannot check my email for several hours, and become consumed by news and market alerts from the Times and Journal — and that’s before I even start to revel in the abundance of information in my Google Reader feeds. But why do we need this? It’s hard to imagine that just ten years ago, we often had to place a call from a land line to a land line, leave a message, and wait for a response."
. . .
"The mantra of Web 2.0 is always based around the supposed wisdom of crowds: if you let the aggregated genius of the assembled masses decide it, then you’re bound to get the best and most efficient result. Have we really taken the myth of the rational market this far?"
. . .

"But the releasing of the keys to the free-information demands of the online marketplace is not even the most troubling aspect of the internet’s total cultural penetration. That, I suggest, is the culture of hatred bred by anonymity. What’s most baffling about the trend toward online anonymity is exactly where it came from. When I watch the evening news, I’m not allowed — nor do I feel entitled — to appear in a picture-in-picture window offering sarcastic remarks, thinly veiled insults, and outright sadistic language about the anchors and the stories. So why do we feel this is a fundamental right online? Yes, the web is supposed to be a democratizing tool of great egalitarianism — I understand that. But just because one could say anything he wants doesn’t mean one should. There is something deeply troubling about citizens being able to hide behind online handles and lob verbal grenades toward anything they deem disagreeable, lame, or pointless. Aside from contributing nothing to our conversation, it weakens the intellectual capital of this allegedly revolutionary tool. Why should people bother posting information online when one commenter, emboldened by the freedom of anonymity and feeling empowered to voice his darkest thoughts because it will never be traced to him, can simply make a hateful or racist remark?"
. . .
"
On Human Connections & The Social Utility Of The Internet

January 22, 2010 by McKay

Since our denunciation of snark in late November, we’ve made an effort around here to post thoughtful, reflective pieces that take a step back from the hyperactive and hyperbolic mood of the blogosphere. I’ve been thinking quite a bit, though, about the very essence of that particular arena, and about the entire networked world that supports it. The internet (the noun seems to have reached a non-capitalization age, no?) is widely heralded by everyone from sociologists to Apple stockholders as the salvation of humanity — the thing that will bring everyone together, result in a technological Age of Aquarius, and connect open-minded people everywhere in a panoply of new ideas and information-sharing mechanisms. To see just how deeply this assumption has become ingrained in our society, just note the Luddite accusations that follow anyone who dares suggest the following: what if the internet’s deleterious effects outweigh its benefits?

The internet, I’d contend, is a technological success — nay, a marvel — but an undeniable failure as a tool of emotional connectivity. I take pains to say it’s not a failure as a tool of human connectivity; its power in allowing me to speak instantly to someone in Malaysia, or email a friend in Britain, is unsurpassed and unlike anything we’ve ever known. Its capability in the arena of communication is not here disputed. As a communication tool, it has revolutionized the way we operate — so much so that it becomes difficult for us to comprehend that letters and conversations once had to wait days while mail was delivered, or months while ships crossed the ocean. (Honestly, can we comprehend that? Or have we become so accustomed to instant responses that our brains can’t quite wrap themselves around it? Paleontologists often speak of the difficulty in communicating the sheer magnitude of time’s passage between dinosaurs and humans; our existences are so short that we truly cannot fathom a span like “millions of years” — is this sort of like that?) It has likewise reshaped the way we do business: the online market connects us to a marketplace of goods and services we never would’ve foreseen, all capable of being delivered in minimal time. All of this has created a culture of instant satisfaction, in which most of our communication and capitalist desires can be satisfied in ever-shorter durations.

What we don’t often discuss is whether or not a culture of instant satisfaction is even a desirable state of living. I’ll admit I’m as guilty of this mindset as anyone else: I feel lost without my phone, become anxious when I cannot check my email for several hours, and become consumed by news and market alerts from the Times and Journal — and that’s before I even start to revel in the abundance of information in my Google Reader feeds. But why do we need this? It’s hard to imagine that just ten years ago, we often had to place a call from a land line to a land line, leave a message, and wait for a response. Today it’s difficult to envision waiting for anything; most news and information is accessible by the click of a mouse or swipe of a touchscreen. However, this seems to have weakened our collective resolve. When everyone can access everything all of the time, the ill effects are two-pronged: first, it makes us spoiled and expectant, assuming that we can get anything as soon as we want it. Second, it weakens the inherent worth of pure waiting, which in turn depreciates the value of patience and appreciation of the final product or idea delivered. The reason patience is said to be a character-building virtue is because it helps us place more context and appreciation on the thing we finally receive; if I’ve not had to endure any kind of wait for something that’s important to me, how do I know to appreciate it? Especially when I can, presumably, receive another just like it in an equally short time span?

The problem spawned by a culture of instant satisfaction is that it somehow convinces us that we deserve things for free. Think about that for a second: the Times employs hundreds of reporters in its newsroom. Those people work to create what’s largely considered to be some of the best journalism in the country (not to mention agenda-setting; it’s often joked that if you want to know what NPR will talk about on Thursday, you should just read the Times on Wednesday). Where on earth did we get the notion that we deserve every ounce of that product completely free? The internet was supposed to connect us to the product, not deliver the product free of charge and render the cost of the effort worthless. Newspapers made a strategic blunder when they imagined they could provide free content and use advertising to support it, and now we’ve all become horribly accustomed to receiving things for free.

The mantra from the supposed gurus of the Web 2.0 revolution, of course, is that information wants to be free. This is patently absurd. The only people who want information to be free are those who can bank a profit from that information’s use: advertisers, online vendors, et al. If I’m the one paying a staff of hundreds to produce that information, what message am I sending to my employees by giving away the product of their work? It’s akin to Honda giving away cars and relying on rear-window advertising to make a profit — how would the legions of assembly line workers feel about placing a value of $0.00 on each car they produce? The mantra of Web 2.0 is always based around the supposed wisdom of crowds: if you let the aggregated genius of the assembled masses decide it, then you’re bound to get the best and most efficient result. Have we really taken the myth of the rational market this far? (There is, in the recession’s wake, a pretty serious backlash against that myth. Can we really assume that a stock’s price reflects all pieces of known information and is adjusted to meet that information? Are we really supposed to believe that human emotion, artificial inflation, and pure market chicanery never plays a role?) As web pioneer Jaron Lanier notes in his new book, crowdsourcing in pursuit of free information can be not just an ill-advised strategy, but a pernicious one; he notes that it leads content-producers “to treat the fruits of their intellects and imaginations as fragments to be given without pay to the hive mind.” While the tone is slightly alarmist, Lanier’s point is solid: when we assume we can get anything we want — news articles, images, digital music — for free online, we hurt, and perhaps destroy, the innate worth of what people are producing and sharing. Why should a musician who writes and produces a song, presumably at some expense, be expected to bestow it as a gift upon the world?

But the releasing of the keys to the free-information demands of the online marketplace is not even the most troubling aspect of the internet’s total cultural penetration. That, I suggest, is the culture of hatred bred by anonymity. What’s most baffling about the trend toward online anonymity is exactly where it came from. When I watch the evening news, I’m not allowed — nor do I feel entitled — to appear in a picture-in-picture window offering sarcastic remarks, thinly veiled insults, and outright sadistic language about the anchors and the stories. So why do we feel this is a fundamental right online? Yes, the web is supposed to be a democratizing tool of great egalitarianism — I understand that. But just because one could say anything he wants doesn’t mean one should. There is something deeply troubling about citizens being able to hide behind online handles and lob verbal grenades toward anything they deem disagreeable, lame, or pointless. Aside from contributing nothing to our conversation, it weakens the intellectual capital of this allegedly revolutionary tool. Why should people bother posting information online when one commenter, emboldened by the freedom of anonymity and feeling empowered to voice his darkest thoughts because it will never be traced to him, can simply make a hateful or racist remark?

The problem is that it doesn’t take any talent or creativity to make one of these remarks. All it takes is a detached aloofness, or a hatred of a certain political figure, and one can immediately take a reductio ad absurdum approach to online discussion. By insulting the author, or suggesting that the article or work is boring, or denigrating a particular race, one reduces the discussion to its most base and troubling elements. No talent is required to do this. And for what? So you can appear more world-weary than the next commenter? So you can hold yourself out as more sophisticated than the other readers, and thus more difficult to impress?

In case it’s not obvious by now, this post is a mea culpa of sorts. For the first nine months of this site’s existence, we committed some of the sins I’ve just listed. As anonymous writers, we felt a perverse freedom to say whatever we pleased without fear of repercussion. With no fear of exposure, we could mock, insult, and generally torment people like Mike Hendricks, Mayor Funkhouser, Jack Cashill, and various users of Ink’s web site. Why did we do this? Well, in some cases criticism was more than warranted. . . . But in most cases there was no point to this. . . . We poked fun at Star columnists — and indeed at the entire publication — because it was easy for us; we were not reporters caught up in the dwindling world of media, and so never had to worry about the actual work it took to produce a newspaper. Far easier it was for us to simply wait for them to do the work, and then sit back and comment anonymously. For a time, this worked marvelously. Our page views reached heights greater than anything we’d ever imagined, and we routinely received emails from people congratulating us on our snarky ascension. But it wasn’t right. It wasn’t the kind of thing that would make our parents beam with pride. Most importantly, it didn’t contribute anything of value to our citywide conversation. Being able to make someone laugh, or merely pointing out the absurdity of a column, doesn’t make you cultural critic. That takes analysis, reasoning, and reflection. For a distressingly long time, we lost sight of that."
. . .
"Removing ourselves from the self-absorption of Web 2.0 is paramount if we are to recapture a reality based on tangible connections to nature and to each other. This starts with several actions. First, the scourge of web anonymity must end. For whatever reason, the nature of anonymity prompts us to give voice and life to our darkest sides. Second, we must understand that just because we are enabled to say something doesn’t mean we are compelled to say something. There may very well be a rumor swirling about a City Hall politico, but to give life to that rumor is to act irresponsibly. When one writes a post insulting that person or implying untoward things about him, it’s important to remember that people will read it and be affected by it. These are not mere words leaking out into an online ether where people are unaffected by harsh statements — they are mean-spirited and unnecessarily cruel aspersions that will no doubt alter the mood and spirit of the subject."
. . .
"Jaded, world-weary affectation is a vacuous intellectual pursuit. It challenges nothing, contributes nothing, learns nothing. There is something larger, and that thing is a stroll on the lawn of the Nelson, or a sunset over a comically flat Kansas horizon, or a chat with a friend under the Plaza lights. These are not things to be blogged about or posted as status updates in 140 characters or fewer; they are things to be lived, to be experienced, and to be savored, all with an attitude of appreciation and civility toward your fellow citizen because it’s simply the right thing to do."

I apologize to McKay for copying so much of what he wrote, but, trust me, the real essay goes deeper and further.

My post about Henry Rizzo appointing James Tindall to be chair of the Jackson County Legislature's Justice and Law Committee needs to be rewritten.

Why Thomas Friedman Should be Ignored

The other night, a smart, informed, generally liberal friend of mine used a recent Thomas Friedman column to bolster a point he was making. Thomas Friedman? Why would intelligent people cite him, much less read him?

At the time, I claimed Thomas Friedman is the dumbest person to be given a prominent role in mainstream punditry, but I was wrong. His problem is not stupidity - he writes coherent sentences, and he discusses high-level topics. So I don't think he's tremendously dumb, particularly when judged against his peers in punditry. He could be in the upper quartile of national pundits.

I think his bigger problem is a complete absence of intellectual accountability, integrity, and shame. In the article my friend cited, he wrote: To me, the most important reason for the Iraq war was never W.M.D. It was to see if we could partner with Iraqis to help them build something that does not exist in the modern Arab world: a state, a context, where the constituent communities — Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds — write their own social contract for how to live together without an iron fist from above. Iraq has proved staggeringly expensive and hugely painful. The mistakes we made should humble anyone about nation-building in Afghanistan. It does me.

Really? Here's how I recall Thomas Friedman justifying the Iraq War (and, yes, this is a real quotation): What (Iraqis) needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, and basically saying, 'Which part of this sentence don't you understand? You don't think, you know, we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy, we're just gonna to let it grow? Well, Suck. On. This.

Similarly, Friedman has achieved fame for "Friedman Units" - his series of "6-month windows of opportunity" in Iraq. I don't care about him enough to keep an exhaustive mental list on his costly intellectual blunders, but here's a source with citations that ends mercifully in mid-2006. It would be a major burden to update the list with his many further false but confident prognostications.

In the column my friend cited, I am unable to figure out what point Friedman is making when he writes: "The reason India, with the world’s second-largest population of Muslims, has a thriving Muslim minority (albeit with grievances but with no prisoners in Guantánamo Bay) is because of the context of pluralism and democracy it has built at home". If he's seriously claiming that India does not suffer from Islamic extremist violence, he's seriously misinformed. But it sounds thrillingly intelligent, doesn't it? All he's really doing, though, is taking an unspeakably mundane, obvious point - people view the world from their societal context - and trying to make it into something a little shinier and insightful-seeming by dropping in a half-truth about a foreign land. That's his schtick - he does it all the time.

Yesterday, he was on TV, comparing Afghanistan to a "special needs child". No, really, he did:

Fareed, we're talking about Afghanistan. And we're talking about America in the middle of the great recession. I feel like we're like an unemployed couple who just went out and decided to adopt a special needs baby. You know, I mean, that's really kind of what we're doing. And that's like, whoa, y'know, that terrifies me.

What does it take to be shunned by smart people? How far can he push his luck in twisting obvious facts (our involvement in Afghanistan is expensive) into outrageous metaphors? If Afghanistan is a "special needs child", then it's a "special needs child" that knocked down the World Trade Center, and produces heroin for the world. It doesn't remind me of any "special needs child" I have ever known, and it's hard for me to understand how, exactly, Friedman is able to get away with such crazy talk and still be invited back on TV and offered space in major newspapers.

I don't hate Tom Friedman - I kind of admire his chutzpah. He's obviously selling something that people like to buy - and continue to buy.

If I stood before you and told you that in 6 months, all Arab-Israeli conflicts will be peacefully resolved, you would be surprised, and 6 months later, if I was right, you would think I'm somebody worth listening to. But if I were wrong, and I said, again, without apologizing or explaining my prior mistake, that all Arab-Israeli conflicts will be peacefully resolved in the next 6 months, you would again be surprised, and probably more than a little doubtful that I know what in the hell I'm talking about. Then, if I tried the same thing again in 6 months, still without results, you would stuff a sweat sock in my mouth to shut me up.

But if I were Tom Friedman, you would publish my prediction in the New York Times, and people would invite me onto talk shows to expound upon my incredible insight and wisdom.

I don't know how he does it.

Yes, I'm jealous.

I was wrong when I claimed he is "dumb". That's not true. Instead, he is gilded mediocrity, with a gigantic gap in his moral compass that allows him to endorse a war to tell people to "Suck. On. This."

Democrats are Better People than Republicans

But Max Baucus proves me wrong.

Ignoring the morality of it, how do you think that you will get away with nominating your mistress for one of the most important jobs in the United States, and one which involves investigations into the nominee's background?

Savoy TIF - A Reason to Despair

If Kansas City is ever going to do the right thing, this should have been the moment. Everything was set up absolutely perfectly for success, and we absolutely blew it.

We have some fine and intelligent people on our City Council. We have a Mayor who even his most dogged opponents acknowledge has the political courage to stand up to developers seeking to get wealthy from tax funds. We have a budget crisis raging, to keep the focus on the budget imbalances created by bad decisions made in the past. We even have a sane economic development policy that the Council has already agreed upon, to help it make rational decisions.

Surely, under these circumstances, when a wealthy developer approached our City with his hand out, our Council would have the strength and good sense to honor their commitment to the citizens of Kansas City, right? Surely, at this moment of crisis, they would not screw us one more time, for old times' sake . . .

Wrong.

Absolutely incredible. With the sole exceptions of Mayor Funkhouser and John Sharp, the City Council went ahead and showered a rich developer with undeserved tax breaks, at the urging of a well-connected development lawyer who gave them money.

For a great explanation of just how bad a deal this was, go read Mark Forsythe's excellent analysis at The Kansas City Post. Make no mistake about it, Kansas City taxpayers are helping to make the rich richer, while facing cutbacks in basic services.

And your council member is fine with that.

If they're not going to stand up for us now, when will they stand up for us? When Terry Riley chooses not to play silly games over turf? When the development lawyer appearing before them has not greased their palms with substantial campaign donations? When the contrast between having money to pay for basic services and having money to pay for a "four star" restaurant is somehow sharper?

It's moments like these that make me wonder why I care. The deck is stacked in favor of the status quo, and even good people like my city council representatives are riding with Terry Riley and Jerry Riffel instead of Kansas City taxpayers.

I can only hope that sometime today, Mayor Mark Funkhouser vetoes this disgusting display of legislative sell-out, and that a few good council people will look themselves in the mirror and think about why they got involved in the first place.

I know it's politics, but, really, how could you fall this far?

Thoughts on My Irish Heritage

I won't be at the parade this afternoon, and I'm not preparing a "traditional" dinner of corned beef, cabbage and boiled potatoes. I don't have any Guinness in the house. You probably won't hear me singing sentimental songs late in the evening, and for that you can consider yourself blessed.

When I was a kid, St. Patrick's day had its own traditions. Milk at the dinner table poured right in front of our eyes turned from white in the jug to green in our glasses, except for one misbehaving sibling who would receive the dreaded orange color. It was the work of leprechauns, we believed. We also had green snake bread at the dinner table.

Our heritage was heavily dependent on food coloring, I suppose.

As I grew older, I learned more of the history of the Irish. Racially, the Celts were a different people than the many invaders who visited the shores of Ireland, but eons of invasion and interbreeding have diminished the distinction. Those of us in America have intermarried with everyone, so, if someone more apparently African-American or Asian or Hispanic has a "kiss me, I'm Irish" pin on today, they very well may be deserving of the kiss they claim to seek.

But, for those of us with Irish last names, it's easy to feel somehow more Irish than the rest. In my own case, I'm less than half Irish, and my wife, with her German maiden name, is a good deal more Irish by bloodline than I am. But I've always identified myself as Irish, and read my history through that lens.

What does heritage really mean in the United States? I've known people who have learned in their later years that their family background was something different than they had been raised in. Someone who thought they were from a heritage of Polish Catholics finds out that he is really descended from Hungarian Jews. Ellis Island offered fresh starts and opportunities for revision of family histories. We get our heritage through stories told to us by a string of ancestor-narrators, some of whom may have had motives to lie.

It's difficult for me, as an American, to imagine true heritage, in the sense that more ancient cultures have it. My wife is from Buffalo, I'm from St. Louis, and our kids are currently in New Orleans and New York. We don't grow up and die in the same place that our ancestors did. My great-great grandfather didn't help build my church. The local cemetery does not include a section where all the stones bear my last name. My family bears no grudges against another family because of a fence line set down generations ago. A few hours on Ancestor.com can deliver only a whiff of the groundedness that growing up in a thatched cottage in Ireland might offer.

Heritage, for many of us, is so shallow that it approaches willful illusion. A suitcase full of papers found with my family's belongings could, conceivably, have completely redefined my understanding of where I come from. No such suitcase turned up, so I am sprung from Irish who came to Troy, New York, and then somehow went to South Dakota, and wound up in St. Louis - on my father's side. I was named after a man who fought in the Civil War Cavalry on the Union side, came home to drop off his sword and pistol, and headed West, never to be heard from again.

Pretty slim pickings, really.

But here's the scary thing - I can use that tiny sliver of heritage to make myself a monster. As I mentioned above, I have read history through Irish eyes. I have read accounts of boats packed with food leaving the ports of Ireland while people were starving. I have read about the suppression of religion and language committed by the English. I have read the treachery of Cromwell, and remember what happened at Wexford. I consider O'Connell's decision at Clontarf to be a vivid lesson on the limits of pacifism.

Back when I was a young man, I allowed my knowledge of history to override my sense of morality. I didn't feel bad at all when the IRA planted a bomb and blew Lord Montbatten to pieces. Terrorism, sure, but it was part of a struggle that was justified by history. A year later, I rode a bicycle around Ireland, and felt even more deeply connected to the struggles of the Irish. I could rationalize almost any atrocity they could commit, even to the extent of not resenting a bomb threat that interfered with my travel.

I'm a deeply flawed person, but I will give myself credit for trying to be a good one, and wanting to live a moral life. But, when I was 20 years old, I was sympathetic to terrorism, for a cause I had not lived and only read about. How would I have lived my life if I were closer to the conflict? What if the stories told to me included ancestors and neighbors gunned down by the "Brits"? What if I stood on that turf and really felt like my people had been subjected to hundreds of years of oppression by the Brits. What if, having been raised with REAL heritage, and being twenty years old and full of the "moral" confidence that sometimes inflicts that age, I were granted an opportunity to strike back?

Someday, I hope that Sunnis, Kurds, Jews, Palestinians, and every other historically aggrieved people has a parade that features colored beer and warm sunshine. I hope today's parade is a huge success, and I'm thrilled that the weather looks absolutely wonderful. I know that St. Patrick's day is nothing more than what it seems - a fun day to go out and party and welcome spring. Maybe next year I'll ride on a float and toss candy and laugh like a banshee.

But today I look at my Irish heritage, and I'm remembering how I once thought that my Irish heritage was enough to secretly kind of cheer on terrorism. I know I deserve the orange milk at dinner.

FBI Citizens Academy - Looking Inside the Case Files

Last night's FBI Citizens Academy meeting was another great opportunity to hear from the agents who work hard at solving and preventing horrific crimes. Last night, we heard about the work of Behavioral Psychologists - a term they much prefer to "profilers", and went through the process of trying to deduce what type of person murdered three people from the clues found in photographs of the crime scene. We also heard about the work done to find the bodies of the children murdered by Daniel Wayne Porter.

It really is fascinating stuff, on multiple levels. On a moral level, we heard a perspective on the death penalty from one who has sat in rooms and talked with the most vile criminals our society has produced. Does that experience bring a sharper perspective on the need for society to put people to death, or does the experience lead one to lose the self-doubt that should accompany moral decisions. Personally, I remain passionately opposed to the death penalty, while acknowledging that I could kill under certain circumstances. I can see how people develop personal yearnings for revenge or retribution on behalf of coldly slaughtered innocents, though morality frequently calls for us to rise above understandable yearnings.

While it was not highlighted as an issue, we also heard an anecdote about how the zeal to solve a compelling case led two great, dedicated FBI agents to violate FBI procedures to look at a crime scene. Together. While the incident was entirely understandable and did not involve anything that violated anybody's civil rights or jeopardized a case file, it certainly makes the point that a gap exists between official procedures and actual practice, and the gap is big enough that two exemplary agents can fit through it together. A rogue could fit through even smaller gaps.

The hour spent on what I will not call "profiling" was also fascinating. After hearing how a skilled agent dissects a crime scene and draws information from clues the entire class overlooks, and uses that information to narrow or expand the scope of likely suspects, I can only be impressed. It's a blend of hunch, experience, knowledge and science. In the case we examined, it could all have been a useless distraction if the murderer had been a black teenager with no criminal record, or an elderly Asian neighbor who committed the rape and triple homicide because the voices in his head told him to. But, playing the percentages and zeroing in on the clues and behavioral psychology, the FBI was able to focus its resources on white males, 30-34, with a criminal record involving assault who would have had occasion to meet the victim, and ultimately found their man. It's a little like CSI, but it doesn't get wrapped up in a tidy bundle after an hour, and I found myself staring at photos of three very real corpses - a man a little older than me with multiple stab wounds, an 11 year old boy run through with a knife, lying over a board game he had been playing, and a naked young woman, beaten, stabbed and raped.

If I met the man responsible for the death of those people, stabbing the boy so hard the knife plunged entirely through his body, through the carpet, through the sub-floor and hard enough into the concrete slab that it broke the tip off the knife, and then raping, beating and stabbing the frantic girl while her wrists were duct-taped - might I change my position on the death penalty? Does more complete information always lead to better moral decisions?

Bolivia Imperiled by Riches?

Bolivia is a beautiful country with tremendous poverty, coupled with astounding, recurring wealth. It's sad, but that wealth has brought more misery than relief to the Bolivian people throughout history. Years ago, it was silver in her mountains that drew the Spanish to enslave the people and rob the country. More recently, it was water resources and a corrupt rightwing government that drew the multi-national corporations to kill the people and rob the country.

Now, it's lithium.

Lithium is a key component in the types of batteries used in electric cars, and Bolivia may be the "Saudi Arabia of lithium." In its vast salt deserts, Bolivia holds more lithium than any other country, and powerful nations want it. Notice the lede in the New York Times article - "a country that may not be willing to surrender it so easily."

"Surrender it"?! Are they holding their own minerals hostage or something? Has Bolivia become an enemy because it has minerals we want? The subtle game of propaganda has begun.

Right now, Bolivia is blessed with a progressive leader who views himself as beholden to the people rather than the wealthy. He's no saint, and he makes mistakes, but he is a far better person and leader than W was. Is he strong enough and wise enough to survive the attempts by the truly powerful to destabilize him? Is he sophisticated enough to hold his country together while rapacious forces from within and without want to tear it apart and pluck its mineral heart out?

I fear that electric car I want may be fueled by the blood and misery of Bolivian peasants.

Consumers like me may be the modern-day equivalents of 16th Century Spanish royalty, waiting for our conquistador corporations to bring us the silver we crave.