Somebody Hold My Coat

I caught C-Span’s presentation of a Cato Institute talk by Glenn Greenwald on wireless wiretaps, etc., with commentary by Lee Casey (link). For those who aren’t acquainted with Greenwald, this is a fine introduction to a guy who I think is a national treasure—one of the most intelligent and effective critics of the Bush administration’s near-unprecedented abuses of power. Casey, is worth your time also; he offers about as effective a rebuttal as you are likely to get (Casey begins at about 42:00, declaring that he has “no desire to crush the testicles of children”).

I won’t trouble myself to undertake a comprehensive postmortem but I do want to zero in on a curious aspect of Casey’s response. Per Casey, Greenwald charges the Bush with “Manichaeanism”—defined by Casey as

the proposition that the world cannot be understood as black or white or good or evil but only in comforting shades of grey…

Casey adds that this cleavage

has been one of the left’s fundamental articles of faith throughout much of the postwar period and arguably, before--one can I think failrly characterize many if not most of the right-left disputes of the last half century as a battle over this very proposition’s validity.

Casey doesn’t seem to deny that Bush is a Manichaean; indeed, Casey’s only caution seems to be that Bush isn’t Manichaean enough. Of course I agree; I also think his charge is on the whole a fair cop against Greenwald, and I think he is more right than wrong in his characterization of modern political conflict.

But focus on “comforting,” as in “comforting shades of grey.” I suspect that right here we have a key to some of the fundamental discontinuities in world-view that make these debates so aggravating.

I’m a shades-of-grey guy myself—yes sir, mighty proud to say it; you can almost put that down in black and white. But “comforting”? Well, I suppose it is “comforting” in a sense to tell yourself that you’re trying to get things right, that you’re struggling for intellectual honesty, that you’re trying to be fair to all points of view. And I admit that thinking about shades of grey can put me to sleep at night—but I suspect this has less to do with “comfort” than with sheer exhaustion.

But in a more general sense, the point about “shades of grey” is precisely that they are not comforting. Wasn’t it Voltaire who said (and wasn’t it about Frederick the Great) that “I wish I was as certain of anything as he is of everything”--? I know about waffling liberals; I know the only things in the middle of the road are yellow lines and dead possums. I know there is nothing more exasperating than on-the-one-hand/on-the-other-hand. I dream of being a Manichaean; I’m no closer fulfilling that wish than I am to a Parisian vacation with Glen Close. Say that I find grey “comforting” and I say – Oh, I wish.

There’s a murky underside to this shades-of-grey disposition, of course. That is: I want to be recognized for my heroic sense of doubt—no, not recognized saluted and honored and cherished by a beleagured multitude. To have my world-view dismissed as `comforting—argh, somebody hold my coat!

The whole program is available at the Cato link above. It is due to be rebroadcast on C-Span Monday, August 26, 6:30 a.m. and next Saturday, September 1, at 4:30 p.m. (both est).