James Fallows

I mentioned last week that I was going to do a Q-and-A in Seattle with Sidney Rittenberg, whose first-hand exposure to US-Chinese relations probably exceeds that of any other living person. In the 1940s he was a U.S. Army translator in China; then he was an associate of Mao's and Zhou Enlai's; then he spent two different terms, totaling 16 years, in solitary confinement in Chinese prisons. Now he still travels between the countries.

A video of the discussion has gone online from TVW at the University of Washington. (C-SPAN also filmed the event.) I thought it was truly interesting. For an example of what's unique in Sidney Rittenberg's perspective: starting at around time 15:10, he talks about his close friendship not with the new president of China, Xi Jinping, but with Xi's father. "A fine man.." 


FYI the person in the static screen shot above is not Rittenberg but Dennis Bracy of Seattle, a mutual friend and an organizer of this event.

This speech was very long -- nearly 7000 words, even longer than my profile of Jerry Brown! And I didn't expect anyone to listen to me read my article aloud. Also, I am not going to deal with the part of the speech that has been most thoroughly discussed: changes, or not, in the administration's drone policy.

Instead I'll focus on a part of the speech that I think matters even more: his argument that the time has come to end the "war on terror." And, even more important, to bring an end to the "Authorization for Use of Military Force," which the Congress passed while the rubble of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was still smoking and which has been the basis for the wars, detention, killings, and torture carried out in the 11+ years since then.

I am long on record in arguing that, even though America will continue to face threats and endure attacks including from Islamic-motivated extremists, it needs to move off the open-ended, permanent-war footing that was used to justify invasions and constraints on civil liberties. Yes, there will still be attacks, perhaps (I hope not) even as horrific as the recent one in London. But we do not let the tens of thousands of annual highways deaths justify banning cars; nor the toll of alcohol justify a new Prohibition; nor take an absolutist approach to a range of other risks, starting with guns. So too with "terror" risks. We cannot end them, but we don't have to be driven mad by them.

I thought that was a case Obama was building toward today. Parts of the speech I noted, with occasional commentary in brackets [like this]:

1) How we got here, and at what cost:

And so [after 9/11] our nation went to war. We have now been at war for well over a decade....

Meanwhile, we strengthened our defenses - hardening targets, tightening transportation security, and giving law enforcement new tools to prevent terror. Most of these changes were sound. Some caused inconvenience. [TSA} But some, like expanded surveillance, raised difficult questions about the balance we strike between our interests in security and our values of privacy [good to have a president noting this tension]. And in some cases, I believe we compromised our basic values - by using torture to interrogate our enemies, and detaining individuals in a way that ran counter to the rule of law. [Even better to have this noted.]

2) It's not just about "keeping America safe":

From our use of drones to the detention of terrorist suspects, the decisions we are making will define the type of nation - and world - that we leave to our children.

So America is at a crossroads. We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us [the post-9/11 era crystallized] mindful of James Madison's warning that "No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." [Wish I had remembered this quote in some of my previous articles.]

3) Thank you: talking to us as if we were grown-ups.

Neither I, nor any president, can promise the total defeat of terror.

4) Putting today's threats in perspective:

While we are vigilant for signs that these groups may pose a transnational threat, most are focused on operating in the countries and regions where they are based. That means we will face more localized threats like those we saw in Benghazi.

5) A very important sentence, helpfully highlighted by me:

Lethal yet less capable al Qaeda affiliates. Threats to diplomatic facilities and businesses abroad. Homegrown extremists. This is the future of terrorism. We must take these threats seriously, and do all that we can to confront them. But as we shape our response, we have to recognize that the scale of this threat closely resembles the types of attacks we faced before 9/11.

This is part of the long sweep of American history.

6) Again, let's match the problems of the moment to the tradition of the centuries:

Beyond Afghanistan, we must define our effort not as a boundless 'global war on terror' - but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America

7) There is more to what is going on than the effectiveness of drone strikes:

To say a military tactic is legal, or even effective, is not to say it is wise or moral in every instance.

8) I cannot overemphasize how important this passage  is:

All these issues remind us that the choices we make about war can impact - in sometimes unintended ways - the openness and freedom on which our way of life depends. And that is why I intend to engage Congress about the existing Authorization to Use Military Force, or AUMF, to determine how we can continue to fight terrorists without keeping America on a perpetual war-time footing...

So I look forward to engaging Congress and the American people in efforts to refine, and ultimately repeal, the AUMF's mandate. And I will not sign laws designed to expand this mandate further. Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue. But this war, like all wars, must end. [See also this.]

I won't go into Gitmo, nor Obama's (correct) argument that this facility must be closed down.  But I will mention (9) his peroration:

America, we have faced down dangers far greater than al Qaeda. By staying true to the values of our founding, and by using our constitutional compass, we have overcome slavery and Civil War; fascism and communism.... But because of the resilience of the American people, these events could not come close to breaking us.

What I hate, hated, about the "post-9/11" era was the idea that this threat eclipsed all others America had faced, and justified the abrogation of liberties and principles we had defended through the centuries. These are complex trade-offs. Think of having a president who recognizes their complexity -- and comes down on the side of liberties.

Thank you. God Bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.

Sigh. But again, this was a speech for grown-ups.

As I mentioned a few minutes ago, our new issue (subscribe!) includes a Q-and-A I did with Linda Stone, coiner of the term "continuous partial attention," on how to maintain sanity and focus in an insane and unfocused world.

Here is the promised extended-play bonus version, beyond what we could work into two pages of the magazine:
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JAMES FALLOWS: You're well known for the idea of continuous partial attention. Why is this a bad thing?

LINDA STONE: Continuous partial attention is neither good nor bad. We need different attention strategies in different contexts. The way you use your attention when you're writing a story may vary from the way you use your attention when you're driving a car, serving a meal to dinner guests, making love, or riding a bicycle. The important thing for us as humans is to have the capacity to tap the attention strategy that will best serve us in any given moment.

JF: What do you mean by "attention strategy"?

LS: From the time we're born, we're learning and modeling a variety of attention and communication strategies. For example, one parent might put one toy after another in front of the baby until the baby stops crying. Another parent might work with the baby to demonstrate a new way to play with the same toy. These are very different strategies, and they set up a very different way of relating to the world for those children. Adults model attention and communication strategies, and children imitate. In some cases, through sports or crafts or performing arts, children are taught attention strategies. Some of the training might involve managing the breath and emotions---bringing one's body and mind to the same place at the same time.

Self-directed play allows both children and adults to develop a powerful attention strategy, a strategy that I call "relaxed presence." How did you play as a child?

JF: I have two younger siblings very close in age, so I spent time with them. I also just did things on my own, reading and building things and throwing balls and so on.

LS: Let's talk about reading or building things. When you did those things, nobody was giving you an assignment, nobody was telling you what to do--there wasn't any stress around it. You did these things for your own pleasure and joy. As you played, you developed a capacity for attention and for a type of curiosity and experimentation that can happen when you play. You were in the moment, and the moment was unfolding in a natural way.

You were in a state of relaxed presence as you explored your world. At one point, I interviewed a handful of Nobel laureates about their childhood play patterns. They talked about how they expressed their curiosity through experimentation. They enthusiastically described things they built, and how one play experience naturally led into another. In most cases, by the end of the interview, the scientist would say, "This is exactly what I do in my lab today! I'm still playing!"

An unintended and tragic consequence of our metrics for schools is that what we measure causes us to remove self-directed play from the school day. Children's lives are completely programmed, filled with homework, lessons, and other activities.. There is less and less space for the kind of self-directed play that can be a fantastically fertile way for us to develop resilience and a broad set of attention strategies, not to mention a sense of who we are, and what questions captivate us. We have narrowed ourselves in service to the gods of productivity, a type of productivity that is about output and not about results.

JF: When people talk about attention problems in modern society, they usually mean the distractive potential of smartphones and so on. Is that connected to what you're talking about in early-childhood development?

LS: We learn by imitation, from the very start. That's how we're wired. Andrew Meltzoff and Patricia Kuhl, professors at the University of Washington I-LABS, show videos of babies at 42 minutes old, imitating adults. The adult sticks his tongue out. The baby sticks his tongue out, mirroring the adult's behavior. Children are also cued by where a parent focuses attention. The child's gaze follows the mother's gaze. Not long ago, I had brunch with friends who are doctors, and both of them were on call. They were constantly pulling out their smartphones. The focus of their 1-year-old turned to the smartphone: Mommy's got it, Daddy's got it. I want it.

We may think that kids have a natural fascination with phones. Really, children have a fascination with what-ever Mom and Dad find fascinating. If they are fascinated by the flowers coming up in the yard, that's what the children are going to find fascinating. And if Mom and Dad can't put down the device with the screen, the child is going to think, That's where it's all at, that's where I need to be! I interviewed kids between the ages of 7 and 12 about this. They said things like "My mom should make eye contact with me when she talks to me" and "I used to watch TV with my dad, but now he has his iPad, and I watch by myself."

Kids learn empathy in part through eye contact and gaze. If kids are learning empathy through eye contact, and our eye contact is with devices, they will miss out on empathy.

JF: What you're describing sounds like a society-wide autism.

LS: In my opinion, it's more serious than autism. Many autistic kids are profoundly sensitive, and look away [from people] because full stimulation overwhelms them. What we're doing now is modeling a primary relationship with screens, and a lack of eye contact with people. It ultimately can feed the development of a kind of sociopathy and psychopathy.

JF: I'm afraid to ask, but is this just going to get worse?

LS: I don't think so. You and I, as we grew up, experienced our parents operating in certain ways, and may have created a mental checklist: Okay, my mom and dad do that, and that's cool. I'll do that with my kids, too. Or: My mom and dad do this, and it's less cool, so I'm not going to do that when I'm a grown-up.

The generation that has been tethered to devices serves as a cautionary example to the next generation, which may decide this is not a satisfying way to live. A couple years ago, after a fire in my house, I had a couple students coming to help me. One of them was Gen X and one was a Millennial. If the Gen Xer's phone rang or if she got a text, she would say "I'm going to take this, I'll be back in a minute." With the Millennial, she would just text back "L8r." When I talked to the Millennial about it, she said, "When I'm with someone, I want to be with that person." I am reminded of this new thing they're doing in Silicon Valley where every-one sticks their phone in the middle of the table, and whoever grabs their phone first has to treat to the meal.

JF: So people may yet find ways to "disconnect"?

LS: There is an increasingly heated conversation around "disconnecting."  I'm not sure this is a helpful conversation . When we discuss disconnecting, it puts the machines at the center of everything.  What if, instead, we put humans at the center of the conversation, and talk about with what or whom we want to connect?

Talking about what we want to connect with gives us a direction and something positive to do.  Talking about disconnecting leaves us feeling shamed and stressed. Instead of going toward something, the language is all about going away from something that we feel we don't adequately control.  It's like a dieter constantly saying to him or herself, "I can't eat the cookie.  I can't eat the cookie," instead of saying, "That apple looks delicious."

JF: You say that people can create a sense of relaxed presence for themselves. How?

LS: When we learn how to play a sport or an instrument; how to dance or sing; or even how to fly a plane, we learn how to breathe and how to sit or stand in a way that supports a state of relaxed presence. My hunch is that when you're flying, you're aware of everything around you, and yet you're also relaxed. When you're water-skiing, you're paying attention, and if you're too tense, you'll fall. All of these activities help us cultivate our capacity for relaxed presence. Mind and body in the same place at the same time.

People have become increasingly drawn to meditation and yoga as a way to cultivate relaxed presence.   Any of these activities, from self-directed play to sports and performing arts, to meditation and yoga, can contribute cultivating relaxed presence.

In this state of relaxed presence, our minds and bodies are in the same place at the same time and we have a more open relationship with the world around us.

Another bonus comes with this state of relaxed presence.  It's where we rendezvous with luck.  A U.K. psychologist ran experiments in which he divided self-described lucky and unlucky people into different groups and had each group execute the same task.   In one experiment, subjects were told to go to a café, order coffee, return and report on their experience. 

The self-described lucky person found money on the ground on the way into the café, had a pleasant conversation with the person they sat next to at the counter, and left with a connection and potential business deal.  The self-described unlucky person missed the money - it was left in the same place for all experimental subjects to find, ordered coffee, didn't speak to a soul, and left the café.  One of these subjects was focused in a more stressed way on the task at hand.  The other was in a state of relaxed presence, executing the assignment. 

We all have a capacity for relaxed presence, empathy, and luck.   We stress about being distracted, needing to focus, and needing to disconnect.  What if, instead, we cultivated our capacity for relaxed presence and actually, really connected, to each moment and to each other?

The June issue of The Atlantic has arrived. Say it with me: Subscribe! I read the "actual" (printed) magazine cover-to-cover last night, on the DC-NY train and then after arrival; it's full of good stuff. In my hypothesized "spare time" some day I will intend to do a story-by-story gloss. For the moment I'll just touch on a few in-house features:

• Ta-Nehisi Coates, on the encounter-with-French-language-and-the-French-people-eux-mêmes he has previewed on his site;
• Benjamin Schwarz, on the disappearance of "charming" men, an essay I loved despite specific disagreement with one sentence;
• Carl Zimmer with a fascinating extension of a grisly-fascinating discovery (people ossifying) reported 15 years ago in our pages;
• and a lot more.

This is by way of segue to two extra in-house aspects of the issue that involve me. One is a long story by me about the past-present-and-future governor of my original home state, Jerry Brown. I'll do a follow up item here soon, but the two points I tried to convey in the story are what is unusual (and impressive) about Brown as a person, and what is unusual (and instructive) about the predicament of California as a state. For now I'll say that I really enjoyed doing this story, except the always-tedious "writing" part; and it helped me come to terms with the changes for good and bad in California between my time growing up there and my sons' time there now.

Oh, yes, the story also involves my (and the governor's) discovery of what a certain literary term means.

The other is a Q-and-A with Linda Stone, known inside the tech world for her work at Apple and Microsoft and known to the world at large for coining the term "continuous partial attention" to define our modern mental state. The print version of the interview, with tips on maintaining your own focus despite the blur, is here; the next post in this space will be a "director's cut" extended version of the interview, with more tips. I will try to maintain focus long enough to get it posted.

The tech-industry veteran Linda Stone on how to pay attention

In his reprise as governor, he's been as ruthlessly practical as he's been reflective, embracing his inner politician to restore the California dream.

1) Amtrak suddenly has much better Wi-Fi service on some routes -- starting with the Acela I am taking right now from DC to NY. Of course I admit that griping about the speed and reliability of a (free) Wi-Fi service, on a moving train, epitomizes having too few real problems to gripe about. But until recently the service really had been so slow and unreliable that I wished Amtrak would not even advertise it. That way, people who got any connection at all would feel lucky, rather than people expecting connections staring in frustration at their screens.

The whole episode lasted about 2 hours.  While the officers who questioned me were not overtly or personally threatening, the situation was intimidating and threatening.  I was never told details of the "profile", so I don't know how to prevent this from happening again, aside from talking to federal employees at all times while flying.  I am concerned that DEA and DHS now have files on me.  This distresses me GREATLY.  I am equally concerned that my plane's tail number is now suspicious in the eyes of law enforcement....

[He adds this caveat in a follow up note:] Although my adrenaline gets going when I think about this whole mess, and I can read the US Constitution, I have ENORMOUS respect for the rule of law and for the men and women who put their asses in harm's way to help assure my safety.  That includes local, state, & federal law enforcement agents, as well as our military.  The people who should answer for this crap are the cowardly bureaucrats who sent all those men, vehicles, airplanes, dogs, and guns out there - not the men dispatched to the scene.

His full account after the jump. After that is the second case, from Clay Phillips, a retired Navy officer who had a similar experience.

To say it again: I am not contending that the aviation world is being inordinately picked-upon. Overall it is a privileged part of society -- and demographically it skews toward older white males who are politically conservative, have money, and often have military experience. Ie, these are people who are not generally the object of police profiling for terrorist or other criminal tendencies. So if the security state is leaning heavily on them, you can extrapolate to other groups. The stories begin below.

More »

I half-heard the President's commencement address at Morehouse when coming back to DC this weekend. I saw a clip of it again late last night and thought: this is another sample and reminder of Barack Obama's reserves of rhetorical strength. Like his other big, punctuating speeches (as I have discussed previously here, here, here and elsewhere), this one appealed to both the mind and the heart; it built an argument over a span of paragraphs rather than in isolated phrases; and it grew from Obama's position as a man part of, but also apart from, America's normal racial classifications.

Before I had a chance to write anything about the speech, I read two other reactions. One was from my former colleague Andrew Sullivan, who was defending the speech against idiotic accusations that it was "race-baiting" and too black. The other was from my current Atlantic colleague Ta-Nehisi Coates, who criticized the speech for being too hectoring of Obama's Morehouse audience in a way he wouldn't have been at Dartmouth or Stanford:

Barack Obama is, indeed, the president of "all America," but he also is singularly the scold of "black America."

As I told Ta-Nehisi by phone this evening, I naturally cut Obama more slack on this point than he does. (And of course I hear the speech differently too.) We all take a different tone in setting expectations for "our own." I can hold Americans overseas to a different standard than I would Russians or Japanese; I can harangue (and have!) my colleagues in the press about why we should do better; I expect something from myself and my kids I wouldn't expect from you and your kids, and so on. The challenge for Obama, exactly as Ta-Nehisi pointed out, is that he is simultaneously addressing all Americans as his own (apart from those who consider him alien) while also in this speech addressing as his own the most historically distinct subset of our population.

So, I was glad to see Andrew Sullivan's defense; and I understood the logic of Ta-Nehisi Coates's frustrated criticism. Which led me to the main conclusion: about the near-impossibility of the tightrope act Barack Obama is attempting as America's first non-white president, and the unusual combination of virtuosity (as with this speech) and unflappability (as with criticism of the speech) with which he has mainly carried it off.

I increasingly think of Obama as walking a tiny, little rope suspended across a Grand Canyon. Through four and a half years he has mainly kept his footing, in a way that becomes cumulatively surprising -- and I say that even while disagreeing with many of his policies, notably including the recent security-state extensions.  Every now and then, as with this speech, we see how hard what he is doing is.

2) For reasons that will be evident if you see Side Effects, I found myself thinking about The Usual Suspects; which of course led to thoughts of Kevin Spacey; which in turn led to thoughts of Netflix's House of Cards, in which he stars with Rooney Mara's (less elegantly alarming) sister Kate Mara.

Here's one thought about Kevin Spacey: I contend that for many American men he holds a place similar to Jack Nicholson's a generation ago, and maybe Humphrey Bogart's before that. He comes across on screen the way you imagine the idealized tough-guy version of yourself coming across, in some fancified other existence in which you were an idealized tough guy. But I digress. Anyone who eats up the serialized dramas of today's golden era of Dickensian/Tolstoyan TV -- from The Sopranos and The Wire (still the best) to Mad Men and Breaking Bad and the rest -- has to consider this a worthy new entry.

 Silverstein, the pilot in command, raised objections and was given three options: wait inside the FBO [the "Fixed Base Operator," the little office that exists at most small airports] or  wait quietly outside, or be detained in handcuffs. An instrument-rated private pilot and AOPA member, Silverstein is also an active real estate investment banker who has never committed a crime, he said.