ZYGMUNT BAUMAN: LIVING WITH UNCERTAINITY, LIVING IN FEAR

Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty (Cambridge, England, & Malden, MA: Polity, 2007) ("At least in the 'developed' part of the planet, a few seminal and closely interconnected departures have happened, or are happening currently, that create a new and indeed unprecedented setting for individual life pursuits, raising a series of challenges never before encountered. [] Second, the separation and pending divorce of power and politics, the couple that since the emergence of the modern state and until quite recently was expected to share their joint nation-state household 'till death did them part'. Much of the power to act effectively that was previously available to the modern state is now moving away to the politically uncontrolled global (and in many ways extraterritorial) space; while politics, the ability to decide the direction and purpose of action, is unable to operate effectively at the planetary level since it remains, as before, local. The absence of political control makes the newly emancipated powers into a source of profound and in principle untameable uncertainty, while the dearth of power makes the extant political institutions, their initiatives and undertakings, less and less relevant to the life problems of the nation-state's citizens and for that reason they draw less and less of their attention. Between them, the two interrelated outcomes of the divorce enforce or encourage state organs to drop, transfer way, or (to use the recently fashionable terms of political jargon) to 'subsidize' and 'contract out' a growing volume of the functions they previously performed. Abandoned by the state, those functions become a playground for the notoriously capricious an inherently unpredictable market forces and/or are left to the private initiative and care of individuals." Id. at 1-2. [COMMENT: I have notice the increasing reference (often bordering on self-reference) to the presidency of the United States as "Commander-in-Chief"--which is true by defining in the Constitution--and "the most powerful person in the world--which is not defined by the Constitution and, thus, is more of an empirical question. Let me suggest, that if one has to keep reminding people that the president is the commander-in-chief and the most powerful person in the world, then perhaps he or she is not really such or, at least, that there may exist a crisis of confidence. Let me suggest that the American presidency is not the most powerful position in the world, assuming such a concept even make sense. Moreover, to borrow from Chuck Berry, "Rollover Henry Luce and give the president the news. The American century is over. Its ending began in the early 1970s, it ended in 1989 with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and was buried on September 11, 2001. Ever since that latter day, America has been living on fumes trying to propped itself with memories of, and attempts to revive old glories. Is not that what the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have really been about? Let us call these wars by their true names: THE VIAGRA WARS. Trying to prove we still can.]).