@politico: #Obama: Such a senseless and terrible act of violence has no place in a free society http://politi.co/fQmggR

What does that mean? Assuming even the best of intentions, does that sentiment mean much in the context of remarks from a contemporary President of the United States?

In trying to give those words meaning, these questions come to mind:

What does that imply about society? I don’t take it for granted that we live in a free one, if that was an implied premise.

Do I even agree with the statement? What does a free society need to endure, lest it stop being free?

I think we must consider the idea that a free society is going to have to accept some level of tragedy. We also need to consider how much tragedy is a function of an unfree society. I’m not sure the most vocal people who seize podiums and microphones want a free society or even understand what they want.

It seems necessary to consider the real causes of this particular incident. That will not come to light quickly and will involve both culpability through individual actions, for which people must be personally held responsible for, as well as broader contexts that our society has affected and we will desire to affect further in our response. The facts of this case are hardly clear enough now, yet many seem already dug into their positions.

When we aren’t engaged in demagogy, we are too prone to platitudes and political correctness in language. I think the latter is sometimes considered a positive trend that we think softens the former. I tend to think platitudes enable demagogy. It is this worry that was awakened by the quote from Obama’s statement.

I make a leap here: I would bet that demagogy played into the motivations of this attack (again, as subtext or on top of personal choices and circumstances for which there very well should be a very personal sort of culpability). That has a serious societal component. Are we going to be able to consciously engage it in our form of society and adequately represent real solutions in law, as we are said to be a nation of them?^† I doubt it; it is hard enough for me to here — but my ignorance is not reason enough for pessimism.

I am concerned that a national response will consist of varied reactionary positions to symptoms, both observed and supposed, individual and societal, rather than causes. The general trend of reactions I’ve seen so far (on Facebook, Twitter and in comments to news articles) do not seem to provide agency for the kind of mass politics I think required for the kind of change that will delegitimize violence and proactively encourage genuine social justice^‡: circumstances that I believe would engender a level of personal and community responsibility to greatly reduce this kind of violence without trading away personal freedom in law.

It is far too early to fully understand the full depth of this event, except that it is a tragedy, and that there seems to be incontrovertible evidence that there was at least one principle actor.

Real freedom incorporates justice which should dilute the causes of violence. Reactionary politics prevents freedom, encourages false dichotomies and engenders stronger reactions. Which way do you want the cycle to go?

One might assume this is all an oblique reference to “gun control.” While issue will almost certainly have renewed political focus, I am purposefully speaking more broadly because I think this tragedy will fuel reactionary crackdowns on seemingly less controversial rights and liberties too. With respect to gun control, I find both sides to fall into fallacies I’ve illustrated here and I can’t support the politics that seems to necessitate picking amongst the positions they put forth.

One might be sick of the nearly instantaneous politicization of this apparent assassination attempt. But as such it was politicized from the start. Those who do not acknowledge everything is politics and seize their civic responsibility are part of the problem that motivates us to pretend politics isn’t involved in some things or to turn our heads entirely. When we do this we leave a vacuum for those who make power and the allocation of resources toxic, ripe for abuse, creating the disparities that play into tragedies.

• ^† However flawed our concept of justice under the law might be…
• ^‡ Rather than reactively; as due process in the conviction of a someone found to be criminal perpetrating injustice is — which seems essential, with or without a state and its laws.

One was a report by David Kestenbaum about the tricky politics of inviting the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to perform a “check-up” on U.S. government economic policies and practices.

The ostensible rationale behind such an inspection seemed sensible to me, a layperson. There is merit in the idea of collaboration to facilitate the implied goal of transparency for stability and accountability. But that would be granting too much on the face of things, and there is cause for skepticism (though likely not the same flavor of skepticism and resistance that might come from Bush’s economic advisers).

The IMF is not known for being at the vanguard of sustainable development. The report cites Argentina as an example where the IMF has come to “help,” and, well — that appears to have been a complete failure until Argentina rejected IMF policies.

The IMF’s most influential practices are not that far away from those that helped cause the housing bubble and the credit crunch in the U.S. to begin with. In fact, there seems to be significant overlap in the global private institutions that have exploited the domestic situation and who also invest in IMF-led “development.” Additionally, the U.S. is a major influence on the governance of the Bretton Woods institutions (it gets more explicit control over the IMF’s sister institution, the World Bank).

If your general understanding doesn’t extend that far, then you might not have laughed until you heard the end of the report. Someone is quoted, summing up how simple it would be for someone to spot the impending housing crisis, as saying my 6 year old daughter knows you don’t lend money to people who can’t pay you back.

This is exactly what the World Bank and the IMF are infamous for: lending money to dictators of poor nations, or muscling its way into vulnerable economies, and then as some see it, extorting payback at the expense of sovereignty and development of resources essential to human rights in favor of projects that involved multinational corporations cosy to the largest investors in the WB/IMF regime. Not too much unlike a family feeling forced to pay back a loan shark at the expense of medicine or food.

The funny thing is, this is all tacitly acknowledged earlier in the piece when Kestenbaum refers to the IMF as a global loan shark.

Again, this is not to disparage the entire rank and file of these organizations, of which I know little about, and among which — I presume — there are those who are passionate about solving real problems. But these are for-profit institutions, and the associations of their power brokers along with the general record of these organizations are so conflicted as to not warrant placing faith in them, and to highlight the irony when it is suggested they advise the U.S.

They plan another lap to disrupt rush hour later, I’m told.

Meanwhile, BoingBoing has a post citing the New York Sun’s reporting on some speculation that American gas prices will have to be more in line with Europe’s (approaching $10 a gallon) sooner rather than later.

It seems to me that the federal government has a motley and incoherent collection of economic policies given it’s so-called “free” trade stance: Inefficient and exploited subsidies, hypocritical tariffs, and taxes or tax policies that don’t make sense. The US is hardly the only country guilty of this, but it does seem to have the most significant amplitude of noise compared to the signal of its ostensible free trade goals.

The trucker’s seemed to mainly be campaigning for expanded exploration and exploitation of domestic fossil fuels, rather than increased fuel efficiency. At the same time, it seems like we’ll need to internalize more costs, that are currently ignored (although more and more acknowledged, most prominently, the ecological cost that also affects our productivity). Insofar as the state exists, surely it has some role in at least defining that.

It seems that in spite of the protest, all will have to get used to the idea of European-sized gas prices and the affect that will have on the price of other goods. Whatever’s left of the free market will answer with efficient vehicles and more coherent transportation planning, as well more tempered consumption in general.

Many things are intertwined with this issue and changing just one facet, whether you take it in a more free-market or in a more socialized direction, will not fix things with out other components changing in concert. The more unilaterally factors are changed, without conscious education about the ripple effect, the greater the disconnect and the greater the hurt for those of us who can’t afford the consequences in the short term.

I got a little abstract there, but I’m no economist so I can’t quickly dig into the specifics and it seems at a high level this is common sense, whichever ideological line you toe.