In which I hope that every last shred of right-wing mudslinging at Obama turns out to be true.
Let's hope he is just as buddy buddy with Weathermen, fierce critics of Israel and outright big-C Communists as the popular right insists he is.
To the extent that the wingnuts were right, is the extent to which Obama might actually live up to the hype.
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Obama, the Weathermen, and the American Left
Once again, I'm out of the country during a Federal election. This is starting to become a habit.
Much more interesting is the current American campaign. It has become increasingly nasty these last few weeks; google around for some of the videos taken outside McCain campaign events. The American popular right is slipping into insanity, and it is a great deal of fun to watch.
However, that is not the most fascinating issue. One of the common McCain campaign attacks against Barack Obama is his association with William Ayers, a former member of the Weathermen Underground. The Weathermen, these days, are simply called "terrorists" and as such lumped in with al Queda and other such criminals. Barack served on a board together with Ayers, and so the attempt has been made to tarnish him as a friend of terrorists.
The response by the American left has been to downplay the association; they point out that the link is tenuous, and that Obama himself has condemned Ayers' old radicalism.
In terms of calculating and promoting Obama's electability, this is the politically "necessary" response. The actions of the Weathermen are simply too far outside the realm of public acceptability for any association with them to be politically viable.
Even more than this, it shows just how far behind we have left the glory days of the left. The Weathermen were certainly extremists and radicals in their day, but they were a part of the discussion. The left's strategy of defending Obama by attempting to erase the Weathermen is an indication that any concept of radical leftism is now excluded from the discussion, by both left and right. What we are left with is the fashionable liberal humanism, whose only resource is to shriek about "choice."
So who were the Weathermen? Old school revolutionary bomb throwers. They were the extreme end of the upheavels of the 1960s; dedicated to the violent overthrow of the United States Government, they bombed banks and police stations. They organized riots (in rich neighborhoods) and even a few jailbreaks. They engaged in armed robberies. They fought for civil rights, allying themselves with the Black Panthers and worked against the war in Vietnam. In short, they represented one of the few points in American political history when a handful of people stood up and refused to play by the rules.
In the early 1960s, a grouped called the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was founded, based upon the non-violent model of the civil rights movement. Near the end of the '60s, internal disputes (whose dynamics very much mirred religious schisms; every community of believers faces this pitfall) tore the group apart. The Weathermen kind of staged a coup; they took over the SDS apparatus and went national. A very messy period that produced all sorts of acrimony and resentment.
From there, they took off. They attempted to form essentially military communities, disciplined and regimented. This in itself is fairly fascinating; rarely do North Americans attempt any sort of true discipline (outside the actual military, of course).
The left was always ambivilant about them. Even the Black Panthers eventually disowned them. They found themselves alone and in crisis; after several years on the run, living in ramshackle conditions, the group fell apart.
Their main insistence was that any passivity at all was itself a violence; all the failings and violence of capitalism could only exist when the people participated in it, actively or passively.
They had all sorts of failings. Their attempts at sexual liberation seemed to mostly fail in misery and tears. They considered monogamy to a primary building block of the social order. In this, they agree with current conservatives arguing against gay marriage. Whoever is correct, the Weathermen met many problems surrounding their sexual project. Another failing is the occasional element of misplaced rhetoric; at least one member publically called the U.S. the "most violence nation in history."
So I really just want to say two things in this post: first, the left needs to remember the Weathermen. Their utter willingness to sacrifice everything for an Idea is all but absent these days. Secondly, it is an utter shame that the link between Obama and Ayers isn't stronger.
Watch the Weather Underground documentary at Google Video.
Much more interesting is the current American campaign. It has become increasingly nasty these last few weeks; google around for some of the videos taken outside McCain campaign events. The American popular right is slipping into insanity, and it is a great deal of fun to watch.
However, that is not the most fascinating issue. One of the common McCain campaign attacks against Barack Obama is his association with William Ayers, a former member of the Weathermen Underground. The Weathermen, these days, are simply called "terrorists" and as such lumped in with al Queda and other such criminals. Barack served on a board together with Ayers, and so the attempt has been made to tarnish him as a friend of terrorists.
The response by the American left has been to downplay the association; they point out that the link is tenuous, and that Obama himself has condemned Ayers' old radicalism.
In terms of calculating and promoting Obama's electability, this is the politically "necessary" response. The actions of the Weathermen are simply too far outside the realm of public acceptability for any association with them to be politically viable.
Even more than this, it shows just how far behind we have left the glory days of the left. The Weathermen were certainly extremists and radicals in their day, but they were a part of the discussion. The left's strategy of defending Obama by attempting to erase the Weathermen is an indication that any concept of radical leftism is now excluded from the discussion, by both left and right. What we are left with is the fashionable liberal humanism, whose only resource is to shriek about "choice."
So who were the Weathermen? Old school revolutionary bomb throwers. They were the extreme end of the upheavels of the 1960s; dedicated to the violent overthrow of the United States Government, they bombed banks and police stations. They organized riots (in rich neighborhoods) and even a few jailbreaks. They engaged in armed robberies. They fought for civil rights, allying themselves with the Black Panthers and worked against the war in Vietnam. In short, they represented one of the few points in American political history when a handful of people stood up and refused to play by the rules.
In the early 1960s, a grouped called the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was founded, based upon the non-violent model of the civil rights movement. Near the end of the '60s, internal disputes (whose dynamics very much mirred religious schisms; every community of believers faces this pitfall) tore the group apart. The Weathermen kind of staged a coup; they took over the SDS apparatus and went national. A very messy period that produced all sorts of acrimony and resentment.
From there, they took off. They attempted to form essentially military communities, disciplined and regimented. This in itself is fairly fascinating; rarely do North Americans attempt any sort of true discipline (outside the actual military, of course).
The left was always ambivilant about them. Even the Black Panthers eventually disowned them. They found themselves alone and in crisis; after several years on the run, living in ramshackle conditions, the group fell apart.
Their main insistence was that any passivity at all was itself a violence; all the failings and violence of capitalism could only exist when the people participated in it, actively or passively.
They had all sorts of failings. Their attempts at sexual liberation seemed to mostly fail in misery and tears. They considered monogamy to a primary building block of the social order. In this, they agree with current conservatives arguing against gay marriage. Whoever is correct, the Weathermen met many problems surrounding their sexual project. Another failing is the occasional element of misplaced rhetoric; at least one member publically called the U.S. the "most violence nation in history."
So I really just want to say two things in this post: first, the left needs to remember the Weathermen. Their utter willingness to sacrifice everything for an Idea is all but absent these days. Secondly, it is an utter shame that the link between Obama and Ayers isn't stronger.
Watch the Weather Underground documentary at Google Video.
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
I'm A Barbie Girl, In A Barbie World
"Let us note in passing that in none of these discourses we are analyzing here does the moment of death give room for one to take into account sexual difference; as if, as it would be tempting to imagine, sexual difference does not count in the face of death. Sexual difference would be a being-up-until-death."
- The Gift of Death by Jacques Derrida
This quote was brought up near the end of a recent class, and we ended up discussing what was going on here. The general consensus seemed to be that Derrida was basically saying "In all these ways of talking about death, we're not bringing up gender - but we could."
Well, ok... I guess. Once that discussion wound down, I said that every time gendered language comes up, I am hopelessly confused. I simply don't see how a concept could be gendered. As if there was a male temporality, and then a female temporality. A male finitude, and a female finitude.
My confusion basically comes down to this. I understand that various contingent factors affect the possibilities that are closest to me as a man. A women will have other possibilities lying closest to her. But this is all contingent; aside from anatomy, there is nothing about me as me that is essentially "masculine." Sure, there are situations in which I have to take up a masculine position - a certain amount of aggression and confidence is required to get a woman to look twice at you - but this is all contingent, unessential. It does not touch on my own, personal existence.
And I think most of my comrades would agree with me. I have a few friends that are very concerned with gender and whatnot; they've done Women's Studies, they march in Pride Parades, etc. They'll be the first to insist on the contingency of gender. At least, I think they would.
If gender is entirely contingent, then it seems to me that concepts - specifically structures of existence - must be gender neutral. I would insist that my own ecstatic temporalizing is no different from a woman's.
So this is what I said in class. Unfortunately, the discussion was derailed a bit. It was pointed out that that exact words I used were "How can temporality be gendered? What would a female temporality look like?" My friend then correctly pointed out that I was using "male" as a default baseline; it was the unspoken assumption. When I wanted to ask about a different temporality, I immediately jumped to the feminine.
Well, ok, but so what? That still doesn't mean that temporality is gendered. A little bit of reflexivity on my part will excise that sort of prejudice for the next time.
I just don't understand how a concept can be gendered, without relying on some sort of essential gender. As if there was an essential masculinity, and so things could be essentially masculine, rather than just being viewed as masculine by a culture. It just strikes me as a bullshit idea. Concepts are gender neutral.
I suppose this might come back to my own antipathy to gender discourses in general. First, because I think gender is so contingent that it is beneath serious thought. Secondly, I don't understand the value of a political project based around gender. Feminism, for one. Maybe I'm too much of an economic reductionist, but I see the suffering of women as almost always being based in material circumstances - circumstances that the men around them fundamentally share. And no, I'm not saying "what about the men??"
As an example of my apathy, last year the UWO student newspaper published a April 1st spoof issue that became notorious. In one article, a satire of the Vagina Monologues, a group of walking, talking vaginas were protesting something or another. A police officer, "polishing his night stick," took one into an alley to "teach her a lesson."
Ok, rape jokes suck. But this became an epic struggle on campus.
I don't know. The 20th century saw striking miners face down military units. Civil rights workers faced down Jim Crow's fire hoses and attack dogs, and cut his head off. Mid 20th feminism finally forced Liberal Democracy to honour its promises to women. Are we really so comfortable that our greatest enemy is now that trivial little rag The Gazette? It seems to me this is what gender based politics in our time and place has been reduced to.
- The Gift of Death by Jacques Derrida
This quote was brought up near the end of a recent class, and we ended up discussing what was going on here. The general consensus seemed to be that Derrida was basically saying "In all these ways of talking about death, we're not bringing up gender - but we could."
Well, ok... I guess. Once that discussion wound down, I said that every time gendered language comes up, I am hopelessly confused. I simply don't see how a concept could be gendered. As if there was a male temporality, and then a female temporality. A male finitude, and a female finitude.
My confusion basically comes down to this. I understand that various contingent factors affect the possibilities that are closest to me as a man. A women will have other possibilities lying closest to her. But this is all contingent; aside from anatomy, there is nothing about me as me that is essentially "masculine." Sure, there are situations in which I have to take up a masculine position - a certain amount of aggression and confidence is required to get a woman to look twice at you - but this is all contingent, unessential. It does not touch on my own, personal existence.
And I think most of my comrades would agree with me. I have a few friends that are very concerned with gender and whatnot; they've done Women's Studies, they march in Pride Parades, etc. They'll be the first to insist on the contingency of gender. At least, I think they would.
If gender is entirely contingent, then it seems to me that concepts - specifically structures of existence - must be gender neutral. I would insist that my own ecstatic temporalizing is no different from a woman's.
So this is what I said in class. Unfortunately, the discussion was derailed a bit. It was pointed out that that exact words I used were "How can temporality be gendered? What would a female temporality look like?" My friend then correctly pointed out that I was using "male" as a default baseline; it was the unspoken assumption. When I wanted to ask about a different temporality, I immediately jumped to the feminine.
Well, ok, but so what? That still doesn't mean that temporality is gendered. A little bit of reflexivity on my part will excise that sort of prejudice for the next time.
I just don't understand how a concept can be gendered, without relying on some sort of essential gender. As if there was an essential masculinity, and so things could be essentially masculine, rather than just being viewed as masculine by a culture. It just strikes me as a bullshit idea. Concepts are gender neutral.
I suppose this might come back to my own antipathy to gender discourses in general. First, because I think gender is so contingent that it is beneath serious thought. Secondly, I don't understand the value of a political project based around gender. Feminism, for one. Maybe I'm too much of an economic reductionist, but I see the suffering of women as almost always being based in material circumstances - circumstances that the men around them fundamentally share. And no, I'm not saying "what about the men??"
As an example of my apathy, last year the UWO student newspaper published a April 1st spoof issue that became notorious. In one article, a satire of the Vagina Monologues, a group of walking, talking vaginas were protesting something or another. A police officer, "polishing his night stick," took one into an alley to "teach her a lesson."
Ok, rape jokes suck. But this became an epic struggle on campus.
I don't know. The 20th century saw striking miners face down military units. Civil rights workers faced down Jim Crow's fire hoses and attack dogs, and cut his head off. Mid 20th feminism finally forced Liberal Democracy to honour its promises to women. Are we really so comfortable that our greatest enemy is now that trivial little rag The Gazette? It seems to me this is what gender based politics in our time and place has been reduced to.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Gayzing Into My Crystal Ball...
In this recent post, I argued that Christians were no longer capable of making direct moral judgments about homosexuals. In a follow up post, I said that the emerging orthodox position of not demanding immediate change was a concealed demand for absolute change, which would be a symptom of the inability to make direct judgments.In the comment thread from the first post, Dan presented an alternate reading of the verses that are usually used to show homosexuality is a sin. He suggests that these verses need to be read in particular cultural contexts, and shows that the condemnations contained therein are not condemnations of homosexuality as such but rather a very specific expression of homosexuality. This reading allows for practicing Christians to engage in monogamous homosexual relationships.
I find Dan's reading to be convincing, and what's more, I expect it will eventually be the standard reading through every denomination (including Pentecostals and Calvinists). Christians no longer make direct judgments about gays, and sooner or later, they will latch onto the fact that there are good, solid, scholarly, biblical reasons why they don't need to. Such a shift seems inevitable to me, even if it takes a whole generation.
It's not about losing theological ground to culture, or getting caught up in postmodern relativism. It's about recognizing that the verses about homosexuality can be read in a variety of ways, and the time for reading them in one way has past. The time for reading in a new way has come.
50 Years from now, people will look back at the fight against gay marriage with the same bemused sense of superiority that we have when we look back at every struggle of the 20th century.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
A Failure to Think Abortion
I find myself increasingly frustrating with my own opinion on abortion. I just can't seem to develop a robust, directly stated opinion on the matter. The only way I can think about the subject is basically an equivocation; both/and. I consider that a pretty major failing.
First, I guess, the pro-choice side of my both/and problem. It has become an increasingly common pro-choice argument that pro-lifers are not so much concerned with the issue of homicide and the life of the fetus as they are with controlling sexuality, specifically women's sexuality.
I find this to be a fairly compelling argument. Pro-lifers will insist they believe that the fetus is a person, and that abortion is murder. The problem is, pro-lifers simply don't act as if they live under a regime with a higher civilian body count then Stalinist Russia. Stalin was responsible for 40 million dead Russians; the U.S. alone has had 48 million abortions over a slightly longer time period. There should be constant horror and outrage; how can daily life continue as usual for someone that believes they live in the bloodiest society in history?
But there isn't. The outrage over abortion is no greater than the usual moral outrage over, say, homosexuality.
The other piece of the argument is all the empirical data that feminist blogs collect concerning the activities of pro-life groups; persistent interference with contraception, persistent moral condemnations of (usually female) sexual activity, etc. Or the constant insistence on "responsibility," which is just an extension of the double standard and whore/madonna split women have always had to deal with. If you'd like to see these discussions, visit Pandagon - there's a link on the side of the page.
So anyways, I'm convinced that concern over women's sexuality is the excessive real of the pro-life movement. By excessive real, I mean the ideas and concepts that show through the cracks in the surface (in a previous post, when I say that "hate the sin..." is really "just following orders," I'm pointing out another example of the excessive real).
Because of this, I think pro-choicers are correct when they say the pro-lifers don't so much care about the life of the fetus, but when and for whom a woman opens her legs. And so I consider the pro-life groups to be basically insidious. The forces of domination, as it were.
It needs to be stressed that that this excessive real, this obscene, disavowed underside, is built into the pro-life position. It can't be chased away by logical syllogisms and a body of correct facts. The explicit pro-life position, that of the rejection of murdering babies, is sustained by and dependant upon this underside. It is this underside that allows pro-lifers to go about their day without being overwhelmed by the horror of living in a Stalinist regime; the underside is what provides the distance from horror so one's life can function.
Of course, that isn't the end of the issue. Just because the pro-life position carries with it an obscene underside, doesn't mean pro-choicers are let off the hook when it comes to thinking the homicide issue. Just because your opponent is incapable of being completely forthright doesn't mean you can ignore his explicit position.
In our culture, in our particular place and time, any claim that abortion is murder will carry with it the obscene underside of the domination of women. I know this won't seem like a satisfying statement, but I think it is true. All the valid logic and correct facts in the world won't change it. But for the sake of completeness...
Empirical data will never be able to settle the issue of the fetus' legal status. There is no scientific test for personhood. No body of data can tell you when the fetus becomes a person, and so is entitled to protection under the law.
Any time chosen, from conception to the third trimester to birth, is going to be arbitrary. Sure, empirical data can be interpreted to support some of these positions over others, but empirical data will always leave room for dissent among reasonable people.
The cautious position, which I favor but can't argue forcefully for, would be that conception confers legal personhood. The problem is, "cautious" is not a serious endorsement of a political or ethical position. And "cautious" does not mean "less arbitrary."
None of that erases the importance of grappling with the question, "is abortion murder?" It is the great failing of the pro-choice side that they refuse to do so. They've found out the obscene underside of the pro-life movement, and they think this makes their argument for them. It doesn't.
In the end, my pro-life sympathies are based on something I find compelling, but intellectually weak. I think there could come a day in which a pro-life position can be directly articulated, without the obscene underside. If that day comes, then the primary pro-choice arguments will dissolve (not proven illogical or incorrect, but will simply dissolve into the winds of history) and the abortion issue will be settled. On that day, we'll all wake up, and our hands will be covered in blood, and that blood will never wash off.
The problem is, I refuse to submit the present to the judgment of history. The preceding paragraph, while compelling, is simply unacceptable by any rigid intellectual standard. We live and move and have our being in the present; some pseudo-messianic future cannot help us in the present.
So this is my problem. I have both pro-choice and pro-life sympathies. That isn't acceptable; sitting on the fence is a cop out. I just have no idea how to resolve this. Sometimes I think that learning to do a proper dialectical analysis would solve this problem for me, but dialectics is a game for the big boys. It is hard to do without just being facile, or just making a more sophisticated equivocation.
First, I guess, the pro-choice side of my both/and problem. It has become an increasingly common pro-choice argument that pro-lifers are not so much concerned with the issue of homicide and the life of the fetus as they are with controlling sexuality, specifically women's sexuality.
I find this to be a fairly compelling argument. Pro-lifers will insist they believe that the fetus is a person, and that abortion is murder. The problem is, pro-lifers simply don't act as if they live under a regime with a higher civilian body count then Stalinist Russia. Stalin was responsible for 40 million dead Russians; the U.S. alone has had 48 million abortions over a slightly longer time period. There should be constant horror and outrage; how can daily life continue as usual for someone that believes they live in the bloodiest society in history?
But there isn't. The outrage over abortion is no greater than the usual moral outrage over, say, homosexuality.
The other piece of the argument is all the empirical data that feminist blogs collect concerning the activities of pro-life groups; persistent interference with contraception, persistent moral condemnations of (usually female) sexual activity, etc. Or the constant insistence on "responsibility," which is just an extension of the double standard and whore/madonna split women have always had to deal with. If you'd like to see these discussions, visit Pandagon - there's a link on the side of the page.
So anyways, I'm convinced that concern over women's sexuality is the excessive real of the pro-life movement. By excessive real, I mean the ideas and concepts that show through the cracks in the surface (in a previous post, when I say that "hate the sin..." is really "just following orders," I'm pointing out another example of the excessive real).
Because of this, I think pro-choicers are correct when they say the pro-lifers don't so much care about the life of the fetus, but when and for whom a woman opens her legs. And so I consider the pro-life groups to be basically insidious. The forces of domination, as it were.
It needs to be stressed that that this excessive real, this obscene, disavowed underside, is built into the pro-life position. It can't be chased away by logical syllogisms and a body of correct facts. The explicit pro-life position, that of the rejection of murdering babies, is sustained by and dependant upon this underside. It is this underside that allows pro-lifers to go about their day without being overwhelmed by the horror of living in a Stalinist regime; the underside is what provides the distance from horror so one's life can function.
Of course, that isn't the end of the issue. Just because the pro-life position carries with it an obscene underside, doesn't mean pro-choicers are let off the hook when it comes to thinking the homicide issue. Just because your opponent is incapable of being completely forthright doesn't mean you can ignore his explicit position.
In our culture, in our particular place and time, any claim that abortion is murder will carry with it the obscene underside of the domination of women. I know this won't seem like a satisfying statement, but I think it is true. All the valid logic and correct facts in the world won't change it. But for the sake of completeness...
Empirical data will never be able to settle the issue of the fetus' legal status. There is no scientific test for personhood. No body of data can tell you when the fetus becomes a person, and so is entitled to protection under the law.
Any time chosen, from conception to the third trimester to birth, is going to be arbitrary. Sure, empirical data can be interpreted to support some of these positions over others, but empirical data will always leave room for dissent among reasonable people.
The cautious position, which I favor but can't argue forcefully for, would be that conception confers legal personhood. The problem is, "cautious" is not a serious endorsement of a political or ethical position. And "cautious" does not mean "less arbitrary."
None of that erases the importance of grappling with the question, "is abortion murder?" It is the great failing of the pro-choice side that they refuse to do so. They've found out the obscene underside of the pro-life movement, and they think this makes their argument for them. It doesn't.
In the end, my pro-life sympathies are based on something I find compelling, but intellectually weak. I think there could come a day in which a pro-life position can be directly articulated, without the obscene underside. If that day comes, then the primary pro-choice arguments will dissolve (not proven illogical or incorrect, but will simply dissolve into the winds of history) and the abortion issue will be settled. On that day, we'll all wake up, and our hands will be covered in blood, and that blood will never wash off.
The problem is, I refuse to submit the present to the judgment of history. The preceding paragraph, while compelling, is simply unacceptable by any rigid intellectual standard. We live and move and have our being in the present; some pseudo-messianic future cannot help us in the present.
So this is my problem. I have both pro-choice and pro-life sympathies. That isn't acceptable; sitting on the fence is a cop out. I just have no idea how to resolve this. Sometimes I think that learning to do a proper dialectical analysis would solve this problem for me, but dialectics is a game for the big boys. It is hard to do without just being facile, or just making a more sophisticated equivocation.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
House, MD and Risk
My favourite show on network tv is House. It’s a popular enough show that I assume anyone reading this already knows the premise: Greg House is the head of a medical team that deals with the cases that baffle everyone else. He’s a medical Sherlock Holmes – almost literally; references to the Sherlock Holmes stories abound in the series.
The series is remarkable in a particular way – it illustrates one of the big debates in social theory today. The first side of this debate is represented by the German philosopher Jurgen Habermas. His position is basically in support of the standard liberal democratic attitude: 2 opposing sides in an argument sit down and have a rational discussion. Person A presents his case, and person B presents his. Either A or B is expected to present a more rational, fact based case, and so their position is selected to act upon.
The other side of this social theory debate is represented by folks like Zizek and Alain Badiou. In a nut shell, their position is that rational, fact based thought does not always lead to a clear course of action. Whether through insufficient data or through some constitutive limitation of the situation, there must come a point at which the rational discussion ends and a decision is made. A risk must be taken, perhaps in defiance of the standard democratic expectation of majority rule or individual choice.
House consistently finds himself between these two positions. In every episode, he and his team write down a list of the patient’s symptoms. Often, the team is split as to what the diagnosis should be. The doctors on his team are obviously intelligent, and at least one of them is every bit as excellent a doctor as House himself is. That’d be Foreman, for those who watch the show. The other two members of the team are Cameron (who just happens to be played by the hottest woman on tv) and Chase.
The patient is always, of course, in imminent peril. They’ll die in 24 hours if House’s team doesn’t come up with the answer. Often the symptoms conflict with one another; symptoms 1 & 2 suggest diagnoses X, but symptom 3 seems to rule out X and suggests diagnoses Y.
House stands by and occasionally interjects while Foreman, Cameron and Chase debate the possibilities. Foreman insists the diagnosis is X, while Cameron and Chase insist on Y. Eventually House stops the discussion and orders them to treat the patient for a wholly other diagnosis, Z. What follows is a replay of a famous anecdote from one of GWF Hegel’s lectures: Foreman (standing in for one of Hegel’s students) says the facts don’t fit Z, and House basically says “So much the worse for the facts.”
So they treat for Z. Sometimes House is right, and the patient is cured. Sometimes House is wrong, and the patient develops a whole new problem.
Sometimes the doctors find themselves in a situation where diagnosis X seems correct, but the lab test to confirm it will take 48 hours, whereas the patient only has 24 hours to live. If X is the wrong diagnosis, the treatment will kill the patient almost immediately. I think part of the reason House is such an admired character (despite his abrasive personality) is that he is capable of making a firm decision to treat. He says to forget the test and just administer the treatment; how many of the rest of us would hem and haw and fritter away the patient’s life trying to discover new and more reassuring facts?
So my suggestion is that decisions always come down to something like this. Take any ethical dilemma you please; you’ll often find yourself in a situation in which the facts don’t produce a clear answer. It is the same with politics; the situation rarely tells you what must be done. Sooner or later, an authoritative decision must be made. The rational, democratic discussion must end, and action must take place.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Head Scarves: Damned if They Do, Damned if They Don't
A while back, the French government wandered into a minefield when it tried to ban Islamic headscarves. Now, a Turkish lawyer is fighting a similar ban: she wants the right to choose whether or not to wear the scarf.
I'm not really interested in writing about the awesomeness of liberal choice ideology, or multiculturalism. I insist that the Islamic head scarf is a symbol of oppression; it falls under the category of "Islamic douchebaggery." One can't "choose" to accept a symbol of oppression; in the 1960s, some southern blacks actually resisted desegregation. It would be easy to say "it's their choice!" but it isn't possible to make a "choice" to tear up one's ethical dignity.
So I disagree with the women that fight to keep wearing their headscarves. But I can't agree with the ban on them, either. When you say to someone "Do X and liberate yourself," they are perfectly justified in responding "Don't tell me what to do, you crusading liberal white male!"
These women are trapped between a rock and a hard place. If they wear the scarves, they are playing into the vile patriarchal structures of their culture. If they remove the hard scarves, then they are submitting themselves to a wholly other patriarchal structure, the one that wants to save them from themselves.
The only thing to do is to completely drop the head scarf issue. Ignore it. What needs to be attacked is the underlying problem, that of the oppression of women in Islamic countries. And on this, I am on the same page as Fatma Benli, the lawyer fighting the scarf ban. She says,
“I could tell you about domestic violence, about honor killings, about the parts of the criminal code that discriminate against women,” she said, ticking off her areas of expertise in rapid-fire sentences. “But we can’t move on to those issues.
I'm not really interested in writing about the awesomeness of liberal choice ideology, or multiculturalism. I insist that the Islamic head scarf is a symbol of oppression; it falls under the category of "Islamic douchebaggery." One can't "choose" to accept a symbol of oppression; in the 1960s, some southern blacks actually resisted desegregation. It would be easy to say "it's their choice!" but it isn't possible to make a "choice" to tear up one's ethical dignity.
So I disagree with the women that fight to keep wearing their headscarves. But I can't agree with the ban on them, either. When you say to someone "Do X and liberate yourself," they are perfectly justified in responding "Don't tell me what to do, you crusading liberal white male!"
These women are trapped between a rock and a hard place. If they wear the scarves, they are playing into the vile patriarchal structures of their culture. If they remove the hard scarves, then they are submitting themselves to a wholly other patriarchal structure, the one that wants to save them from themselves.
The only thing to do is to completely drop the head scarf issue. Ignore it. What needs to be attacked is the underlying problem, that of the oppression of women in Islamic countries. And on this, I am on the same page as Fatma Benli, the lawyer fighting the scarf ban. She says,
“I could tell you about domestic violence, about honor killings, about the parts of the criminal code that discriminate against women,” she said, ticking off her areas of expertise in rapid-fire sentences. “But we can’t move on to those issues.
“The head scarf is where we are stuck.”
So the head scarf bans need to go, but so do the repeated refrains of "choice!"
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
The Conservatives Are Right
As in correct.
So, the world is ruled by a combination of Empires and Corporations. As the world is, it is basically a Capitalist's wet dream. Why? Why do conservatives always win, aside from the initial stages of various communist revolutions?*
I've seen two examples recently that lead to me believe that conservatives are very often simply smarter than lefties.
First, 2 weeks ago I was invited by a friend to a UWO group called 'Theology on Tap." It was a short lecture held in the grad club. The speaker was talking about Neo-Con godfather Milton Friedman, leftie populist Naomi Klein, and Jesus.
He first discussed Friedman. Friedman was the ideological go-to guy for various U.S. administrations in the 20th century. Buddy buddy with Reagan and Thatcher. What he taught the cons boils down to this: "Only during a crisis can the impossible become the inevitable."
So, various crises around the world were used to shuffle in free market reforms, to crush trade unions, etc. Often violently and painfully -- see Chile and Pinochet, or Thatcher and northern England.
Naomi Klein calls this the "shock doctrine." She sees it as unforgivable manipulation, a brutal violence used against the people. Klein's solution for the world is a return to Keynesian economics, which in a nutshell means government spending in lean times, and financial reticence in times of plenty. This is meant to stave off the worst excesses of capitalism. The return to Keynesian economics, to Klein, is entirely possible and desirable.
For the Jesus bit, the speaker presented his own economics -- a return to the jubilee economics of the Old Testament, in which debts are forgiven at particular intervals. He claimed that while he was sympathetic to Klein and found Friedman reprehensible, Klein's liberal humanism was too "thin," or too insubstantial to really found any sort of serious politics. So a serious dose of Jesus is required to fix these problems.
Now, my response. I agree that Klein's ideas are entirely too thin. I saw it coming a mile off when the speaker finally said that Klein insists she is not a revolutionary. Well duh, obviously. here's the thing: any politics that is not too thin must accept that Friedman is right.
Serious change, the kind that sees the impossible become inevitable, only happens during a crisis. How often is a crisis part of a religious conversion story? What was the crucifixion but a crisis that made the twin impossibilities of the resurrection and founding of the church inevitable? And as for the speaker's jubilee economics, surely he'd be the first to admit the idea is totally impossible. But could it be made inevitable?
Klein's rejection of the impossible is exactly why leftist humanism so often ends up being so anemic, so whiny, so utterly fucking retarded. Lefties need to start thinking in terms of the impossible, just like cons.
The second anecdote is taken from here. In 2004, the New York Times Magazine quoted a conversation between the article writer and an anonymous, highly ranked member of the Bush admin:
The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernable reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you are studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’
And that's kind of it, isn't it? The cons win on a strategic level because they act and change reality, while lefties can only claim tactical victories (ie, civil rights) because they insist on spending all their time coming up with good, correct propositions about reality. The conservatives learned Marx's maxim about changing the world, not studying it; the lefties didn't.
A leftist politics that is going to be able to compete with conservatives needs to be able to embrace the crisis, and the impossible, and it needs to be able to work upon the public imagination, the fantasies that bind us together. Conservatives have done this really well, and it's time to start learning from them.
*I'm fully aware that conservatives have plenty to complain about - gay marriage, etc. But the world is basically a place in which conservatives can be basically happy about the status quo, and all problems are merely hiccups that can be ironed out with enough prayer, guns or free enterprise. Unlike lefties, who think the status quo itself is rotten.
So, the world is ruled by a combination of Empires and Corporations. As the world is, it is basically a Capitalist's wet dream. Why? Why do conservatives always win, aside from the initial stages of various communist revolutions?*
I've seen two examples recently that lead to me believe that conservatives are very often simply smarter than lefties.
First, 2 weeks ago I was invited by a friend to a UWO group called 'Theology on Tap." It was a short lecture held in the grad club. The speaker was talking about Neo-Con godfather Milton Friedman, leftie populist Naomi Klein, and Jesus.
He first discussed Friedman. Friedman was the ideological go-to guy for various U.S. administrations in the 20th century. Buddy buddy with Reagan and Thatcher. What he taught the cons boils down to this: "Only during a crisis can the impossible become the inevitable."
So, various crises around the world were used to shuffle in free market reforms, to crush trade unions, etc. Often violently and painfully -- see Chile and Pinochet, or Thatcher and northern England.
Naomi Klein calls this the "shock doctrine." She sees it as unforgivable manipulation, a brutal violence used against the people. Klein's solution for the world is a return to Keynesian economics, which in a nutshell means government spending in lean times, and financial reticence in times of plenty. This is meant to stave off the worst excesses of capitalism. The return to Keynesian economics, to Klein, is entirely possible and desirable.
For the Jesus bit, the speaker presented his own economics -- a return to the jubilee economics of the Old Testament, in which debts are forgiven at particular intervals. He claimed that while he was sympathetic to Klein and found Friedman reprehensible, Klein's liberal humanism was too "thin," or too insubstantial to really found any sort of serious politics. So a serious dose of Jesus is required to fix these problems.
Now, my response. I agree that Klein's ideas are entirely too thin. I saw it coming a mile off when the speaker finally said that Klein insists she is not a revolutionary. Well duh, obviously. here's the thing: any politics that is not too thin must accept that Friedman is right.
Serious change, the kind that sees the impossible become inevitable, only happens during a crisis. How often is a crisis part of a religious conversion story? What was the crucifixion but a crisis that made the twin impossibilities of the resurrection and founding of the church inevitable? And as for the speaker's jubilee economics, surely he'd be the first to admit the idea is totally impossible. But could it be made inevitable?
Klein's rejection of the impossible is exactly why leftist humanism so often ends up being so anemic, so whiny, so utterly fucking retarded. Lefties need to start thinking in terms of the impossible, just like cons.
The second anecdote is taken from here. In 2004, the New York Times Magazine quoted a conversation between the article writer and an anonymous, highly ranked member of the Bush admin:
The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernable reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you are studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’
And that's kind of it, isn't it? The cons win on a strategic level because they act and change reality, while lefties can only claim tactical victories (ie, civil rights) because they insist on spending all their time coming up with good, correct propositions about reality. The conservatives learned Marx's maxim about changing the world, not studying it; the lefties didn't.
A leftist politics that is going to be able to compete with conservatives needs to be able to embrace the crisis, and the impossible, and it needs to be able to work upon the public imagination, the fantasies that bind us together. Conservatives have done this really well, and it's time to start learning from them.
*I'm fully aware that conservatives have plenty to complain about - gay marriage, etc. But the world is basically a place in which conservatives can be basically happy about the status quo, and all problems are merely hiccups that can be ironed out with enough prayer, guns or free enterprise. Unlike lefties, who think the status quo itself is rotten.
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
For Whom The Bell Tolls
And so the Liberals fall, and new campaigns begin in earnest.
I guess I'll have to make a trip into Seoul to the Canadian embassy.
And now, a joke.
A man enters a bar and orders a drink. The bar has a robot bartender.
The robot serves him a perfectly prepared cocktail, and then asks him, "What's your IQ?"
The man replies "150" and the robot proceeds to make conversation about global warming factors, quantum physics and spirituallity, biomimicry, environmental interconnectedness, string theory, nano-technology, and sexual proclivities.
The customer is very impressed and thinks, "This is really cool." He decides to test the robot. He walks out of the bar, turns around, and comes back in for another drink. Again, the robot serves him the perfectlty prepared drink and asks him, "What's your IQ?"
The man responds, "about a 100."
Immediately the robot starts talking, but this time, about football, NASCAR, baseball, supermodels, favorite fast foods, guns, and women's breasts.
Really impressed, the man leaves the bar and decides to give the robot one more test. He heads out and returns, the robot serves him and asks, "What's your IQ?"
The man replies, "Er, 50, I think."
And the robot says... real slowly... "So............... ya gonna vote for the Liberals again?"
I guess I'll have to make a trip into Seoul to the Canadian embassy.
And now, a joke.
A man enters a bar and orders a drink. The bar has a robot bartender.
The robot serves him a perfectly prepared cocktail, and then asks him, "What's your IQ?"
The man replies "150" and the robot proceeds to make conversation about global warming factors, quantum physics and spirituallity, biomimicry, environmental interconnectedness, string theory, nano-technology, and sexual proclivities.
The customer is very impressed and thinks, "This is really cool." He decides to test the robot. He walks out of the bar, turns around, and comes back in for another drink. Again, the robot serves him the perfectlty prepared drink and asks him, "What's your IQ?"
The man responds, "about a 100."
Immediately the robot starts talking, but this time, about football, NASCAR, baseball, supermodels, favorite fast foods, guns, and women's breasts.
Really impressed, the man leaves the bar and decides to give the robot one more test. He heads out and returns, the robot serves him and asks, "What's your IQ?"
The man replies, "Er, 50, I think."
And the robot says... real slowly... "So............... ya gonna vote for the Liberals again?"
Thursday, October 13, 2005
This post interupted by laziness
I came home tonight in the mood to write a post about war. I've never actually explained to anyone the fundemental reasons why I think 99.9% of wars have been unjustifiable crap. I've also never actually explained why I think people who hold positive opinions of any particular wars are murderously hypocritical idiots. Strong language for a reprehensible position. There is a qualifier I should add to that sentence... but I like the way it looks, the way it is.
But now that I sit down to write about it... I realize that in order to properly explain myself, I'll have to list and talk about maybe a dozen examples of wars. Their historical contexts, methods, and related myths. Then I'd have to talk about ethics... individuals and the state... the moral responsibility of individual soldiers... and so on.
And I'm just too lazy to do all that.
But now that I sit down to write about it... I realize that in order to properly explain myself, I'll have to list and talk about maybe a dozen examples of wars. Their historical contexts, methods, and related myths. Then I'd have to talk about ethics... individuals and the state... the moral responsibility of individual soldiers... and so on.
And I'm just too lazy to do all that.
Sunday, October 02, 2005
Violence and Falsehood
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, an author I was introduced to in my Fascism course, explains my disgust with the case for the Iraq war better than I ever could. This was part of his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972.
Rest in peace, Mr. Solzhenitsyn.
Violence, less and less embarrassed by the limits imposed by centuries of lawfulness, is brazenly and victoriously striding across the whole world, unconcerned that its infertility has been demonstrated and proved many times in history. What is more, it is not simply crude power that triumphs abroad, but its exultant justification. The world is being inundated by the brazen conviction that power can do anything, justice nothing. . . .
But let us not forget that violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is necessarily interwoven with falsehood. Between them lies the most intimate, the deepest of natural bonds. Violence finds its only refuge in falsehood, falsehood its only support in violence. Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his METHOD must inexorably choose falsehood as his PRINCIPLE. At its birth violence acts openly and even with pride. But no sooner does it become strong, firmly established, than it senses the rarefaction of the air around it and it cannot continue to exist without descending into a fog of lies, clothing them in sweet talk. It does not always, not necessarily, openly throttle the throat, more often it demands from its subjects only an oath of allegiance to falsehood, only complicity in falsehood.
Rest in peace, Mr. Solzhenitsyn.
Monday, September 19, 2005
Bush Family's Spirit Guide?
This Gainsville.com article speaks for itself. "Gov. Bush & His Mystical Buddy."
fter more than an hour of solemn ceremony naming Rep. Marco Rubio, R-West Miami, as the 2007-08 House speaker, Gov. Jeb Bush stepped to the podium in the House chamber last week and told a short story about "unleashing Chang," his "mystical warrior" friend.
Here are Bush's words, spoken before hundreds of lawmakers and politicians:
''Chang is a mystical warrior. Chang is somebody who believes in conservative principles, believes in entrepreneurial capitalism, believes in moral values that underpin a free society.
''I rely on Chang with great regularity in my public life. He has been by my side and sometimes I let him down. But Chang, this mystical warrior, has never let me down.''
Bush then unsheathed a golden sword and gave it to Rubio as a gift.
''I'm going to bestow to you the sword of a great conservative warrior,'' he said, as the crowd roared.
And a little later on:
In a 1989 Washington Post article on the politics of tennis, former President George Bush was quoted as threatening to ''unleash Chang'' as a means of intimidating other players.
Let's assume the facts of this story are basically true. Both George H. Bush and his son, Jeb, claim to have a mystical spirit guide. The first question, unanswerable at this point, is whether or not GWB also makes use of Chang. Maybe we'll find out, maybe we won't. But if both his father and his brother are involved in this, I wouldn't bet money against the idea.
There are going to be three reactions to this story.
First, a lot of people will use this to call the Bush family nuts. Imaginary friends and all that. Just more grist for the mill.
Some people will dismiss this as a non-story; some politicians claim to be guided by Jesus, others by Chinese mystical beings. It's all the same, and basically harmless.
But the third response - and I think this will be the most interesting one - will come from Evangelical Christians, especially those that have supported GWB to this point.
How can an Evangelical Christian interpret "Chang" as anything other than a demonic influence? Assuming the facts of the above story are true, hasn't the Bush family just been implicated in what can only be interpreted as old-school golden calf idolotry? If not something worse, witchcraft or satanism?
If so, how can a Christian continue to support Bush?
Ah, a little bit of search turns up the same report on the Miami Herald's site. So this story is more than likely true.
The governor presented Rubio with a sword that he said came from a mystical Chinese warrior named Chang, whom the governor said helped him stay true to conservative values and warned Republicans not to be complacent in the face of stiff competition from Democrats.
So what say you?
fter more than an hour of solemn ceremony naming Rep. Marco Rubio, R-West Miami, as the 2007-08 House speaker, Gov. Jeb Bush stepped to the podium in the House chamber last week and told a short story about "unleashing Chang," his "mystical warrior" friend.Here are Bush's words, spoken before hundreds of lawmakers and politicians:
''Chang is a mystical warrior. Chang is somebody who believes in conservative principles, believes in entrepreneurial capitalism, believes in moral values that underpin a free society.
''I rely on Chang with great regularity in my public life. He has been by my side and sometimes I let him down. But Chang, this mystical warrior, has never let me down.''
Bush then unsheathed a golden sword and gave it to Rubio as a gift.
''I'm going to bestow to you the sword of a great conservative warrior,'' he said, as the crowd roared.
And a little later on:
In a 1989 Washington Post article on the politics of tennis, former President George Bush was quoted as threatening to ''unleash Chang'' as a means of intimidating other players.
Let's assume the facts of this story are basically true. Both George H. Bush and his son, Jeb, claim to have a mystical spirit guide. The first question, unanswerable at this point, is whether or not GWB also makes use of Chang. Maybe we'll find out, maybe we won't. But if both his father and his brother are involved in this, I wouldn't bet money against the idea.
There are going to be three reactions to this story.
First, a lot of people will use this to call the Bush family nuts. Imaginary friends and all that. Just more grist for the mill.
Some people will dismiss this as a non-story; some politicians claim to be guided by Jesus, others by Chinese mystical beings. It's all the same, and basically harmless.
But the third response - and I think this will be the most interesting one - will come from Evangelical Christians, especially those that have supported GWB to this point.
How can an Evangelical Christian interpret "Chang" as anything other than a demonic influence? Assuming the facts of the above story are true, hasn't the Bush family just been implicated in what can only be interpreted as old-school golden calf idolotry? If not something worse, witchcraft or satanism?
If so, how can a Christian continue to support Bush?
Ah, a little bit of search turns up the same report on the Miami Herald's site. So this story is more than likely true.
The governor presented Rubio with a sword that he said came from a mystical Chinese warrior named Chang, whom the governor said helped him stay true to conservative values and warned Republicans not to be complacent in the face of stiff competition from Democrats.
So what say you?
Thursday, August 11, 2005
Albert Camus: Resistance, Rebellion, and Death
This was written by Albert Camus in 1958. Algeria was in the process of throwing off French rule, and it was a bloody, vicious affair. I think much of what he says is relevant in our comtemporary clash with violent extremists. This article could easily be written today, substituting relevant names and events.
"When the fate of men and women of one's own blood is bound, directly or indirectly, to the articles one writes in the comfort of the study, one has a right to hesitate and to weigh the pros and cons. In my case, if I am aware that in criticizing the course of the rebellion I risk justifying the most brazen instigators of the Algerian drama, I never cease fearing that, by pointing out the long series of French mistakes, I may, without running any risk myself, provide an alibi for the insane criminal who may throw his bomb into an innocent crowd that includes my own family. I went so far as to admit this fact baldly in a recent declaration which was commented upon most strangely. But anyone who does not know the situation I am talking about can hardly judge of it. And if anyone, knowing it, still thinks heroically that one's brother must die rather than one's principles, I shall go no further than to admire him from a distance. I am not of his stamp.
This does not mean that principles have no meaning. An opposition of ideas is possible, even with weapons in hand, and it is only fair to recognize one's opponent's reasons even before defending oneself against him. But on both sides a reign of terror, as long as it lasts, changes the scale of values. When one's own family is in immediate danger of death, one may want to instill in one's family a feeling of greater generosity and fairness, as these articles clearly show; but (let there be no doubt about it!) one still feels a natural solidarity with the family in such mortal danger and hopes that it will survive at least and, by surviving, have a chance to show its fairness. If that is not honour or true justice, then I know nothing that is of any use in this world.
Only from such a position have we the right and the duty to state that military combat and repression have, on our side, taken on aspects that we cannot accept. Reprisals against civilian populations and the use of torture are crimes in which we are all involved. The fact that such things could take place among us is a humiliation we must henceforth face. Meanwhile, we must at least refuse to justify such methods, even on the score of efficacy. The moment they are justified, even indirectly, there are no more rules or values; all causes are equally good, and war without aims or laws sanctions the triumpth of nihilism. Willy-nilly, we go back in that case to the jungle where the sole principle is violence. Even those who are fed up with morality ought to realize that it is better to suffer certain injustices than to commit them even to win wars, and that such deeds do us more harm than a thousand underground forces on the enemy's side. When excuses are made, for instance, for those who do not hesitate to slaughter the innocent in Algeria or, in other places, to torture or to condone torture, are they not also incalculable errors since they may justify the very crimes we want to fight? And what is that efficacy whereby we manage to justify everything that is more injustifiable in our adversary?"
- Albert Camus, Resistance, Rebellion, and Death
"When the fate of men and women of one's own blood is bound, directly or indirectly, to the articles one writes in the comfort of the study, one has a right to hesitate and to weigh the pros and cons. In my case, if I am aware that in criticizing the course of the rebellion I risk justifying the most brazen instigators of the Algerian drama, I never cease fearing that, by pointing out the long series of French mistakes, I may, without running any risk myself, provide an alibi for the insane criminal who may throw his bomb into an innocent crowd that includes my own family. I went so far as to admit this fact baldly in a recent declaration which was commented upon most strangely. But anyone who does not know the situation I am talking about can hardly judge of it. And if anyone, knowing it, still thinks heroically that one's brother must die rather than one's principles, I shall go no further than to admire him from a distance. I am not of his stamp.
This does not mean that principles have no meaning. An opposition of ideas is possible, even with weapons in hand, and it is only fair to recognize one's opponent's reasons even before defending oneself against him. But on both sides a reign of terror, as long as it lasts, changes the scale of values. When one's own family is in immediate danger of death, one may want to instill in one's family a feeling of greater generosity and fairness, as these articles clearly show; but (let there be no doubt about it!) one still feels a natural solidarity with the family in such mortal danger and hopes that it will survive at least and, by surviving, have a chance to show its fairness. If that is not honour or true justice, then I know nothing that is of any use in this world.
Only from such a position have we the right and the duty to state that military combat and repression have, on our side, taken on aspects that we cannot accept. Reprisals against civilian populations and the use of torture are crimes in which we are all involved. The fact that such things could take place among us is a humiliation we must henceforth face. Meanwhile, we must at least refuse to justify such methods, even on the score of efficacy. The moment they are justified, even indirectly, there are no more rules or values; all causes are equally good, and war without aims or laws sanctions the triumpth of nihilism. Willy-nilly, we go back in that case to the jungle where the sole principle is violence. Even those who are fed up with morality ought to realize that it is better to suffer certain injustices than to commit them even to win wars, and that such deeds do us more harm than a thousand underground forces on the enemy's side. When excuses are made, for instance, for those who do not hesitate to slaughter the innocent in Algeria or, in other places, to torture or to condone torture, are they not also incalculable errors since they may justify the very crimes we want to fight? And what is that efficacy whereby we manage to justify everything that is more injustifiable in our adversary?"
- Albert Camus, Resistance, Rebellion, and Death
Friday, July 29, 2005
Abu Ghraib Isn't Over Yet
Eventually, I'll get around to a post wherein I'll talk about how the following is standard procedure in wars - support war, support atrocity. But for now, come with me and soak in impotent rage.
Back in May, Donald Rumsfeld testified about additional photos and video tapes from Abu Ghraib. These photos and tapes had yet to be released, and Rumsfeld was arguing that they should be kept secret because "if these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse."
How much worse? You sure you want to know?
A link from Salon:
. . .if Seymour Hersh is right, it all gets much worse.
Back in May, Donald Rumsfeld testified about additional photos and video tapes from Abu Ghraib. These photos and tapes had yet to be released, and Rumsfeld was arguing that they should be kept secret because "if these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse."
How much worse? You sure you want to know?
A link from Salon:
. . .if Seymour Hersh is right, it all gets much worse.
Hersh gave a speech last week to the ACLU making the charge that children were sodomized in front of women in the prison, and the Pentagon has tape of it. The speech was first reported in a New York Sun story last week, which was in turn posted on Jim Romenesko's media blog, and now EdCone.com and other blogs are linking to the video. We transcribed the critical section here (it starts at about 1:31:00 into the ACLU video.) At the start of the transcript here, you can see how Hersh was struggling over what he should say:
"Debating about it, ummm ... Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."
"It's impossible to say to yourself how did we get there? Who are we? Who are these people that sent us there? When I did My Lai I was very troubled like anybody in his right mind would be about what happened. I ended up in something I wrote saying in the end I said that the people who did the killing were as much victims as the people they killed because of the scars they had, I can tell you some of the personal stories by some of the people who were in these units witnessed this. I can also tell you written complaints were made to the highest officers and so we're dealing with a enormous massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there and higher, and we have to get to it and we will. We will. You know there's enough out there, they can't (Applause). .... So it's going to be an interesting election year."
Notes from a similar speech Hersh gave in Chicago in June were posted on Brad DeLong's blog. Rick Pearlstein, who watched the speech, wrote: "[Hersh] said that after he broke Abu Ghraib people are coming out of the woodwork to tell him this stuff. He said he had seen all the Abu Ghraib pictures. He said, 'You haven't begun to see evil...' then trailed off. He said, 'horrible things done to children of women prisoners, as the cameras run.' He looked frightened."
So, there are several questions here: Has Hersh actually seen the video he described to the ACLU, and why hasn't he written about it yet? Will he be forced to elaborate in more public venues now that these two speeches are getting so much attention, at least in the blogosphere? And who else has seen the video, if it exists -- will journalists see and report on it? did senators see these images when they had their closed-door sessions with the Abu Ghraib evidence? -- and what is being done about it?
(Update: A reader brought to our attention that the rape of boys at Abu Ghraib has been mentioned in some news accounts of the prisoner abuse evidence. The Telegraph and other news organizations described "a videotape, apparently made by US personnel, is said to show Iraqi guards raping young boys." The Guardian reported "formal statements by inmates published yesterday describe horrific treatment at the hands of guards, including the rape of a teenage Iraqi boy by an army translator.")
Follow the Telegraphy and Guardian links to learn more.
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
The Law: Power and Recognition
When H.L.A. Hart began developing his theory of law, he insisted on placing it in a social context. This is a useful starting point; I think it will lead us down a path that will help us deal with the various contentious issues of the day.
For the sake of brevity, when I say the Law, with a capital "L," I mean a formal legal system as a whole. Lower case "l" is just an individual law.
Since this is a philosophy of law, it needs to be rooted in a particular conception of humans. I'll only sketch this out here, and will write more fully in a later post.
There are two common ways of thinking about the Law that I'm opposed to. The first is the Social Contract Theory (SCT) as concieved by either Hobbes or Locke. Basically, we all agree to not kill each other so we can engage in economic pursuits. The second is the "harm principle" as concieved by JS Mills. The Law exists to keep us from hurting each other, and has no other purpose.
Both of these ideas have an atomistic view of humans - we're all individuals, and we develop our lives in a solitary way. We can satisfy our desires without the aid of others, though others can inhibit our satisfactions. The Law prevents this inhibition.
I think it's more accurate to speak of "intersubjectivity." There are facits of our being that we can only explore and develop when engaged with other humans, and the word in general. We aren't solitary; our skulls aren't bunkers protecting our minds as we peer out at the world from the gunports of our eyes. We interact with the world and other humans.
This interaction is governed by the desire for recognition; we want to see that others desire us, and we want to affect the world. An ideal world is one big mirror, and that's what we constantly try to do; make the world mirror ourselves back to us.
One facit (certainly not the only) of this is that we want to have power over others. This power can come in the form of influencing individual behaviour - to have another person follow your commands. This also works on a more general level; we want those around us to recognize our behaviours and ideas as worthy. On a gut level, we believe the ideal expression of this power is that others act and think increasingly like us.
So here is the birth of Law: increasing our own influence and power in the world. Engineering the world to make it one big mirror. The inevitable danger here, of course, is totalitarianism. That's power run amok - making bloody well certain everyone is just like you. This is also the power of democracy; it creates an enviroment in which people compete for recognition without coercion. Democratic societies also most effectively nurtures other forms of the desire for recognition; art and work, as two examples.
This is why one of the insights of the Critical Legal theorists is so useful: the settled law is a temporary truce in an ideological war. A law is codified because an individual or group felt it was something that needed to be imposed on the whole of society. The Law is inherently political.
As an example, when anti-SSMers complain about being forced to recognize SSM, they're right. The question is, does the SSM law contribute to an increasingly democratic society, or a totalitarian society?
The political spectrum, on an average day, looks like a straight line. On one end you have totalitarianism and mutual extermination, and on the other end you have democracy. But it's not a straight line - it's a circle. Think of it like this; standing where you are now, it's far from obvious that the Earth is a sphere. You have to travel a great distance to gain a sense of roundness. And it's the same on the political spectrum - follow any political ideology too far, and you'll come back around to totalitarianism.
So that's why the basic question of any law is "is it democratic or totalitarian?" Does this law further enable people to pursue their desires, or does it force them to come in line with your own desires? The easy impulse is towards totalitarianism - it's like junk food. Only carefully considered and responsible laws can foster democracy - a healthy diet.
For the sake of brevity, when I say the Law, with a capital "L," I mean a formal legal system as a whole. Lower case "l" is just an individual law.
Since this is a philosophy of law, it needs to be rooted in a particular conception of humans. I'll only sketch this out here, and will write more fully in a later post.
There are two common ways of thinking about the Law that I'm opposed to. The first is the Social Contract Theory (SCT) as concieved by either Hobbes or Locke. Basically, we all agree to not kill each other so we can engage in economic pursuits. The second is the "harm principle" as concieved by JS Mills. The Law exists to keep us from hurting each other, and has no other purpose.
Both of these ideas have an atomistic view of humans - we're all individuals, and we develop our lives in a solitary way. We can satisfy our desires without the aid of others, though others can inhibit our satisfactions. The Law prevents this inhibition.
I think it's more accurate to speak of "intersubjectivity." There are facits of our being that we can only explore and develop when engaged with other humans, and the word in general. We aren't solitary; our skulls aren't bunkers protecting our minds as we peer out at the world from the gunports of our eyes. We interact with the world and other humans.
This interaction is governed by the desire for recognition; we want to see that others desire us, and we want to affect the world. An ideal world is one big mirror, and that's what we constantly try to do; make the world mirror ourselves back to us.
One facit (certainly not the only) of this is that we want to have power over others. This power can come in the form of influencing individual behaviour - to have another person follow your commands. This also works on a more general level; we want those around us to recognize our behaviours and ideas as worthy. On a gut level, we believe the ideal expression of this power is that others act and think increasingly like us.
So here is the birth of Law: increasing our own influence and power in the world. Engineering the world to make it one big mirror. The inevitable danger here, of course, is totalitarianism. That's power run amok - making bloody well certain everyone is just like you. This is also the power of democracy; it creates an enviroment in which people compete for recognition without coercion. Democratic societies also most effectively nurtures other forms of the desire for recognition; art and work, as two examples.
This is why one of the insights of the Critical Legal theorists is so useful: the settled law is a temporary truce in an ideological war. A law is codified because an individual or group felt it was something that needed to be imposed on the whole of society. The Law is inherently political.
As an example, when anti-SSMers complain about being forced to recognize SSM, they're right. The question is, does the SSM law contribute to an increasingly democratic society, or a totalitarian society?
The political spectrum, on an average day, looks like a straight line. On one end you have totalitarianism and mutual extermination, and on the other end you have democracy. But it's not a straight line - it's a circle. Think of it like this; standing where you are now, it's far from obvious that the Earth is a sphere. You have to travel a great distance to gain a sense of roundness. And it's the same on the political spectrum - follow any political ideology too far, and you'll come back around to totalitarianism.
So that's why the basic question of any law is "is it democratic or totalitarian?" Does this law further enable people to pursue their desires, or does it force them to come in line with your own desires? The easy impulse is towards totalitarianism - it's like junk food. Only carefully considered and responsible laws can foster democracy - a healthy diet.
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Book Burnin'!
The good conservatives over at Human Events Online have helpfully provided us with a list of the Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries.
There's so much to comment on here, I don't know where to begin. The very idea of a dangerous books list is kind of laughable, and until I saw this video I suspected this was some kind of parody. But it's not.
So here are a few of the more amusing choices.
4. The Kinsey Report by Alfred Kinsey et al (aka Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male)
Right, all that scary sex talk. Let's all remain ignorant and scared! Sigh.
10. General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money by John Maynard Keynes
One of the dominant economic theories of the 20th century, Keynes' basic idea was that governments should spend in lean times to prop up the economy, and reign in the budget during times of plenty. Consider the site's absurd claim: "FDR adopted the idea as U.S. policy, and the U.S. government now has a $2.6-trillion annual budget and an $8-trillion dollar debt." FDR is responsible for the present deficit? Riiiight. Certainly not Reagan and Bush II's tax cut and spend ways.
Have a look at the rest of the list and chuckle. The honourable mentions are just as amusing:
On Liberty by John Stuart Mill
What on earth...? This is one of the most classic and solid discussions of rights ever, and it's dangerous? I'm baffled.
Origin of the Species by Charles Darwin
Ah yes, the book that taught us we're all just animals and have no moral constaints. I think I'll go throw a bagfull of kittens into the Thames now, just to appease my Darwinian gods...
There's so much to comment on here, I don't know where to begin. The very idea of a dangerous books list is kind of laughable, and until I saw this video I suspected this was some kind of parody. But it's not.
So here are a few of the more amusing choices.
4. The Kinsey Report by Alfred Kinsey et al (aka Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male)
Right, all that scary sex talk. Let's all remain ignorant and scared! Sigh.
10. General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money by John Maynard Keynes
One of the dominant economic theories of the 20th century, Keynes' basic idea was that governments should spend in lean times to prop up the economy, and reign in the budget during times of plenty. Consider the site's absurd claim: "FDR adopted the idea as U.S. policy, and the U.S. government now has a $2.6-trillion annual budget and an $8-trillion dollar debt." FDR is responsible for the present deficit? Riiiight. Certainly not Reagan and Bush II's tax cut and spend ways.
Have a look at the rest of the list and chuckle. The honourable mentions are just as amusing:
On Liberty by John Stuart Mill
What on earth...? This is one of the most classic and solid discussions of rights ever, and it's dangerous? I'm baffled.
Origin of the Species by Charles Darwin
Ah yes, the book that taught us we're all just animals and have no moral constaints. I think I'll go throw a bagfull of kittens into the Thames now, just to appease my Darwinian gods...
Wednesday, November 03, 2004
Watershed: 2004 U.S. Election
Well all is said and done, and I'm flabbergasted. I guess I just wasn't cynical enough, because the small mindedness, selfishness, and just plain stupidity on display in this election has totally caught me by surprise.
I'm not surprised or disgusted that Bush won. Disappointed and worried, yes, but my current ire towards the American public is based on something else.
Look at CNN's exit polls. Scroll down to "Most Important Issue".
What topped the list for Bush voters?
"moral issues"
Moral issues, apparently, exclude the anywhere from 14 000 to 100 000 dead Iraqi civilians.
That's right, folks. The most important issue in this election was whether or not fags get to marry. Totally pathetic, and excuse me while I write off social conservatives in the US as raving idiots.
I'm not surprised or disgusted that Bush won. Disappointed and worried, yes, but my current ire towards the American public is based on something else.
Look at CNN's exit polls. Scroll down to "Most Important Issue".
What topped the list for Bush voters?
"moral issues"
Moral issues, apparently, exclude the anywhere from 14 000 to 100 000 dead Iraqi civilians.
That's right, folks. The most important issue in this election was whether or not fags get to marry. Totally pathetic, and excuse me while I write off social conservatives in the US as raving idiots.
Friday, September 17, 2004
Gun Control 2
Note added August 2, 2005: The previous post had well over 50 responses attacking my position. I didn't get rid of them intentionally; switching blog templates deletes all your comments and I did not know this.
Eddddie, did you run and grab all your gun nut friends to come say hi?
Why do I feel the need to look over my shoulder?
Some of you really need to get back to sleeping with your cousins, and stop leaving posts repeating things said by other people, a million times over.
I come from a Northern Ontario hunting family. I spent my early years target shooting, shooting fowl, and hunting deer. It's not as if I've never handled a gun.
The biggest concern expressed here?
Basically, you like target shooting.
This is your concern.
Target shooting.
Sorry, but that's pathetically trivial, and should be the last priority when discussing guns.
Increase penalties for illegal gun use? Nice sounding, but deterrment really isn't that useful. Deterrment really only works if the punishment is swift, immediate and certain. Our justice system, which values due process, cannot offer these factors.
As for self defense, exactly how many rounds have any of you ever fired in self defense?
(Rabid bunnies don't count)
There's something none of you seem to be grasping about guns. Guns are very impersonal weapons. I can't believe you can't see a difference between a baseball bat and a gun; the psychology is very different. A gun is fired at a distance; the person feels removed and less responsible for the damaged inflicted. You don't have to be tough to fire a gun in anger. Melee weapons are an entirely different matter.
I can't believe all these comparisons to cars, of all things. One was developed and designed to kill, another obviously not. One is living up to it's original purpose when it kills, another kills almost entirely through accident.
Yes, guns are inanimate objects. But I think it's pretty clear that as a culture, we've proven that we can't handle the things responsible. Heck, I'd say as a species.
The Chinese had the right idea, you know. Fireworks. Much better use for gun powder.
Eddddie, did you run and grab all your gun nut friends to come say hi?
Why do I feel the need to look over my shoulder?
Some of you really need to get back to sleeping with your cousins, and stop leaving posts repeating things said by other people, a million times over.
I come from a Northern Ontario hunting family. I spent my early years target shooting, shooting fowl, and hunting deer. It's not as if I've never handled a gun.
The biggest concern expressed here?
Basically, you like target shooting.
This is your concern.
Target shooting.
Sorry, but that's pathetically trivial, and should be the last priority when discussing guns.
Increase penalties for illegal gun use? Nice sounding, but deterrment really isn't that useful. Deterrment really only works if the punishment is swift, immediate and certain. Our justice system, which values due process, cannot offer these factors.
As for self defense, exactly how many rounds have any of you ever fired in self defense?
(Rabid bunnies don't count)
There's something none of you seem to be grasping about guns. Guns are very impersonal weapons. I can't believe you can't see a difference between a baseball bat and a gun; the psychology is very different. A gun is fired at a distance; the person feels removed and less responsible for the damaged inflicted. You don't have to be tough to fire a gun in anger. Melee weapons are an entirely different matter.
I can't believe all these comparisons to cars, of all things. One was developed and designed to kill, another obviously not. One is living up to it's original purpose when it kills, another kills almost entirely through accident.
Yes, guns are inanimate objects. But I think it's pretty clear that as a culture, we've proven that we can't handle the things responsible. Heck, I'd say as a species.
The Chinese had the right idea, you know. Fireworks. Much better use for gun powder.
Wednesday, September 01, 2004
Gun Control 1
Gun Control
Chris Rock once did a comedy sketch in which he suggests we drive the price of ammunition up, making guns an impractical weapon of choice for criminals.
I'm not sure how serious he was, but it strikes me as a great idea. Here's how we do it.
Make the manufacture of handguns, automatics and certain semiautomatics and their corresponding ammunition illegal.
Just the manufacture. Sale and ownership would remain legal.
Gun companies could continue to manufacture hunting rifles. They would have to downsize and there would be some resultant unemployment, but likely no more than a stand western country's economy could absorb.
The manufacture of handguns for police officers would be restricted to government contracts.
You want to own a handgun or two for home and personal defense? Fine, go ahead. You're not going to need more than a few rounds in an entire lifetime for that purpose. And practice sparingly.
You want to own an automatic rifle? You'd be a nut and need your head checked, but go head. Just remember that while you're yee-hawing and pretending to be Rambo, you might not be able to replace that ammo. Better keep it for when King George tries to take your rights away!
As for the thing about if guns are outlawed, then only outlaws will have guns, well, they'll have to check their ammo too. Certainly a black market for guns and ammunition would spring up, but can you imagine how fantastically expensive weapons suitable for use in crime would become?
Hunting rifles and their respective ammo would remain legal to manufacture. I'd like to see a street thug try to mug somebody with a .22? Or a gang try a drive by with a bolt action?
We could even abolish the gun registery, and not have to experiment with other forms of it.
So. Nobody would have their guns taken away. Some loss of jobs. Loss of fun at the target range. Gun crime would be reduced drastically, at least in the long term. Seems to me like every concern from the anti-gun control corner is addressed with this plan, with the exception of "fun at the range", which I think we can all agree is a minor, trivial issue, in the face of the enormous amount of suffering gun crime is responsible for, no?
Chris Rock once did a comedy sketch in which he suggests we drive the price of ammunition up, making guns an impractical weapon of choice for criminals.
I'm not sure how serious he was, but it strikes me as a great idea. Here's how we do it.
Make the manufacture of handguns, automatics and certain semiautomatics and their corresponding ammunition illegal.
Just the manufacture. Sale and ownership would remain legal.
Gun companies could continue to manufacture hunting rifles. They would have to downsize and there would be some resultant unemployment, but likely no more than a stand western country's economy could absorb.
The manufacture of handguns for police officers would be restricted to government contracts.
You want to own a handgun or two for home and personal defense? Fine, go ahead. You're not going to need more than a few rounds in an entire lifetime for that purpose. And practice sparingly.
You want to own an automatic rifle? You'd be a nut and need your head checked, but go head. Just remember that while you're yee-hawing and pretending to be Rambo, you might not be able to replace that ammo. Better keep it for when King George tries to take your rights away!
As for the thing about if guns are outlawed, then only outlaws will have guns, well, they'll have to check their ammo too. Certainly a black market for guns and ammunition would spring up, but can you imagine how fantastically expensive weapons suitable for use in crime would become?
Hunting rifles and their respective ammo would remain legal to manufacture. I'd like to see a street thug try to mug somebody with a .22? Or a gang try a drive by with a bolt action?
We could even abolish the gun registery, and not have to experiment with other forms of it.
So. Nobody would have their guns taken away. Some loss of jobs. Loss of fun at the target range. Gun crime would be reduced drastically, at least in the long term. Seems to me like every concern from the anti-gun control corner is addressed with this plan, with the exception of "fun at the range", which I think we can all agree is a minor, trivial issue, in the face of the enormous amount of suffering gun crime is responsible for, no?
Wednesday, August 25, 2004
Missile Defense and Abortion
Something worth fighting over, and a touch of hypocrisy.
Well, I'm hoping the NDP sticks to their guns on the missile defense issue. The newspapers reported Jack Layton as saying it was non-neogotiable, but Joel tells me that Layton backtracked over the radio this morning. Which is a shame.
The last thing this stupid species needs is more guns, and the last thing we need to do is militarize space. Guns in space! Brilliant idea!
Come on, Layton. You know it's wrong. Stick to your principles! This is partly why I voted for you!
It's futile, I know. The Cons are eager to provide us with new ways and reasons to kill each other, and if the NDP don't support the Liberals, they will.
But this is something worth fighthing for, and it's worth losing for, too. Like the Flaming Lips song says, "To lose I could accept, but to surrender I just wept and regretted this moment."
The second issue is abortion. I've always considered myself pro-life. It seems clear to me that abortion is murder, from conception on. This seems like a settled issue, and yet there are people who ignore what seems to be a fairly simple issue.
To speak radically for a moment, doesn't it follow from this that all governments that legalize abortion - especially those that subsidize it - are responsible for more murders than all the middle eastern dictatorships combined?
And yet we point fingers at them, even to the point of invading them occasionally?
It baffles me that some pro-lifers will support various wars, most recently the war in Iraq. The popular justification for the invasion was Hussein's abuses of his people.
Well... if abortion is murder, than haven't the governments of the west vastly outpaced Hussien?
And yet he's the bad guy?
Eh. Joel clarified this issue for me last night. He said it's because none of us really care.
And he's right. I don't give a flying fuck about abortion, whatever medical facts are in my head.
So I guess that makes me pro-choice. That's what I'm going to call myself from now on.
Well, I'm hoping the NDP sticks to their guns on the missile defense issue. The newspapers reported Jack Layton as saying it was non-neogotiable, but Joel tells me that Layton backtracked over the radio this morning. Which is a shame.
The last thing this stupid species needs is more guns, and the last thing we need to do is militarize space. Guns in space! Brilliant idea!
Come on, Layton. You know it's wrong. Stick to your principles! This is partly why I voted for you!
It's futile, I know. The Cons are eager to provide us with new ways and reasons to kill each other, and if the NDP don't support the Liberals, they will.
But this is something worth fighthing for, and it's worth losing for, too. Like the Flaming Lips song says, "To lose I could accept, but to surrender I just wept and regretted this moment."
The second issue is abortion. I've always considered myself pro-life. It seems clear to me that abortion is murder, from conception on. This seems like a settled issue, and yet there are people who ignore what seems to be a fairly simple issue.
To speak radically for a moment, doesn't it follow from this that all governments that legalize abortion - especially those that subsidize it - are responsible for more murders than all the middle eastern dictatorships combined?
And yet we point fingers at them, even to the point of invading them occasionally?
It baffles me that some pro-lifers will support various wars, most recently the war in Iraq. The popular justification for the invasion was Hussein's abuses of his people.
Well... if abortion is murder, than haven't the governments of the west vastly outpaced Hussien?
And yet he's the bad guy?
Eh. Joel clarified this issue for me last night. He said it's because none of us really care.
And he's right. I don't give a flying fuck about abortion, whatever medical facts are in my head.
So I guess that makes me pro-choice. That's what I'm going to call myself from now on.
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