Decided to repost this piece from my defunct blog while putting the ads from Friday's paper in the recycling bin. It's a pretty disgusting waste of trees. And that's after the story of the sales clerk trampled to death at WalMart and the shooting in the toy store. What is so wrong is that it is a holiday alleged to celebrate the man who said you could serve either God or Mammon. Clearly America has chosen Mammon, well after it was warned.
The estimable columnist, Derrick Jackson, has a similar take on this subject.
You can find happiness in friendship, you find it in friendly encounters with strangers and in your family and friends. We need basic material security to be happy but it isn't happiness. Short of famine relief, happiness doesn't come by truck.
Useless buying and hoarding is a sign of fear, of families and communities failing. This covers everything from trying to buy respect to the exercise machine covered with clothes you can't wear. You aren't any better off than you started out but now you've got another payment to make. Enough turns to more than you want and that turns to more than you can ever use. You have to rent a storage unit to get it out of your house. If you didn't buy it to begin with you might be able to afford basic security and have time to enjoy life with other people.
The McMansion craze that is killing off what's left of the middle class and destroying open land is an attempt to escape the isolated anxiety that life has turned into. Families don't talk to each other in towns full of strangers who are suspicious of each other. And once you're locked in the big house everyone goes off to watch TV in their own rooms. That is until your mortgage rate gets adjusted and you're looking for somewhere you can afford.
Work is even worse than that. It is competitive, cynical and insecure. You are being used and used up. You might not even have the hope that your children can get an education that will give them a better life. They're doomed to even worse than you have it and they resent everything.
You won't find happiness in the package labeled American Dream and the standard alternatives are worse. Forget the myth of the rugged individualist. That is just as phony as the thing they are supposedly escaping. No one is more conformist than those often violent, insecure, tough guys. Look at what happens to one of them who practices real individualism. Their pack turns on them.
The happiness found in decent relations with other people can't be bought or sold, it can't be won by winning. You have to make friends with your family and your neighbors. You can't do that watching a giant TV or DVD. You have to abandon the debt ridden, competitive culture that those continually pitch at us. It's hard to do, especially with children, but it's a lot easier than building a sixteen room house that you'll never own. Debt is a taste of slavery.
When you get your life back you can get past pride. That's a desperate fill-in for self-respect. Self respect comes from getting outside yourself and doing something for someone else. Self-respect gives you the confidence to say no to the sales pitch. Without self-respect no one else is going to respect you, no matter how much stuff you own.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Friday, November 28, 2008
Gated communities (by Suzie)
To those who say gated communities are elitist and exclusionary, I’d counter that expensive housing keeps poor people out of those neighborhoods, whether there’s a gate or not. I understand that gated communities may function in different ways around the world. In my county, however, they don’t appear to exclude people of color, or hinder people on foot or bicycles.
In the United States, a lot of retirement centers and apartment complexes are gated, and some residents have low incomes. I live in a sprawling apartment complex separated from other sprawling apartment complexes by fences or small lakes, otherwise known as wetland areas or drainage ponds. Because my complex is near a university and three large hospitals, most of our residents are students or people who work at the university or the hospitals. I moved here because it’s close to the cancer center where I’m a patient. Because it’s a newer complex, the design was the most disability-friendly. Income varies here, and a lot of people have roommates. There are people of different ethnic backgrounds. None are rich, unless they’re anthropologists who have come to study us.
My ZIP code includes poor neighborhoods with high crime. If people get enough money, they move to an apartment like mine. If a bag of money fell out of the sky onto my lap, I’d buy a house. Few people volunteer to live in high-crime neighborhoods just so they can build community spirit.
The owners of apartment complexes may install walls, fences and gates in hopes of attracting people who fear crime. But they have many other reasons. In complexes with a lot of young people, for example, a gate can reduce the number of out-of-control parties.
At my complex, people enter the gate either with a key card, or by calling a resident to buzz them in. Like many gated complexes in my county, our gate is open half the time, and there’s no guard sizing up people to see if they belong.
Two weeks ago, our gate was broken once again, and young men with guns (such a bad combination!) accosted a woman in the parking lot, stealing her car. Some people say gates don’t provide any extra security, and that may be true. I haven’t examined the studies. Nevertheless, I'm glad the gate got fixed.
My ZIP code includes poor neighborhoods with high crime. If people get enough money, they move to an apartment like mine. If a bag of money fell out of the sky onto my lap, I’d buy a house. Few people volunteer to live in high-crime neighborhoods just so they can build community spirit.
The owners of apartment complexes may install walls, fences and gates in hopes of attracting people who fear crime. But they have many other reasons. In complexes with a lot of young people, for example, a gate can reduce the number of out-of-control parties.
At my complex, people enter the gate either with a key card, or by calling a resident to buzz them in. Like many gated complexes in my county, our gate is open half the time, and there’s no guard sizing up people to see if they belong.
Two weeks ago, our gate was broken once again, and young men with guns (such a bad combination!) accosted a woman in the parking lot, stealing her car. Some people say gates don’t provide any extra security, and that may be true. I haven’t examined the studies. Nevertheless, I'm glad the gate got fixed.
How I feel (by Suzie)
Oh, no, the compulsory Christmas season has begun, even before we can finish our Thanksgiving leftovers. Neighbors already have put up their tree.This is a photo of a crying Cassie Koehn, whose mother, Donna, blogged about how to keep Santa from terrifying your toddler. Doesn't this Santa look like Uncle Sam in the old recruitment posters?
Friday critter blogging (by Suzie)
Mark Derr says small dogs are stigmatized as women’s pets. Bigger dogs are associated with men and work, such as herding sheep or finding prey for hunters. But a Chihuahua? It's just a companion, and being a companion has little value in our society.In Barbara Walters' interview with the Obamas, Barack says he doesn't want a small "girly" lap dog. The family must have a "big, rambunctious dog." My Chihuahua and I are growling.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
More Nice Stuff
This video about snow in Helsinki brought back memories of going out late at night when I was the first creature to meet the new snow. Magical moments, those. (video link courtesy of Gilly Gonzales)
The Last Winter from Ilmari Aho on Vimeo.
And here's a fun website for cat lovers and others, too.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Opposition Research
Here's a funny wingnut article for you to read:
The four-year ascent of Barack Obama from state senator to president marks not just the triumph of a man, but the coming of age of a movement.
That movement belongs to liberal (or "progressive") Democrats, who in less than a decade have remade themselves. Once respected only in academia and the news media, they have become a fighting force. They systemically digitized the means of political organization and strategy, with the ultimate goal of dominating the political system — "Crush their spirits!" was Daily Kos blogger Markos Moulitsas Zuniga's pre-election rallying cry.
The Left's online movement is consciously modeled after the Goldwater-and-Reagan-era conservative movement. To those trying to build the Left, the vast right-wing conspiracy was an object not of scorn, but of admiration. They studied the Right's network of think tanks, issue groups, and talk-show hosts, looking for clues on how to push a message with brutal efficiency. They took these lessons to heart and shaped them to fit the web. Ironically, today's Right has much to learn from them.
The Left has created not just a collection of unshaven bloggers but a machine that beat the Right at its own game.
And so on and so on. We get to meet the big unshaven blogger boyz of the left blogosphere and we get to learn their great secret: Give people news, not opinions about the news!
And I guess, don't shave!
Thousand Leaves Torte
My bravura baking number. Don't start it now for Thanksgiving. It requires more time than you probably have.
You need:
Cinnamon Pastry (recipe to follow)
Custard Filling (recipe to follow)
6 tbsps sugar
1 cup applesauce
1 tsp lemon juice
sliced almonds or grapes or chocolate buttons for top decoration (or all)
Cinnamon pastry:
3/4 cups butter
2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
3-4 tbsps cold water
Cut butter into flour, salt and cinnamon until the batter looks like little droppings. Sprinkle in water, a little at a time, and toss with a fork (or scrunch in your clean hand) until all flour is moistened and pastry almost cleans the sides of bowl. Add more water if this doesn't happen. Gather pastry into a ball. Chill it in the fridge for half an hour or more.
Custard Filling
1/4 cup sugar
1 tbsp corn starch
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup milk
1 egg, slightly beaten to make it all gooey
1 tsp vanilla (or use vanilla sugar as part of the 1/4 cup sugar)
1/2 cup chilled whipping cream
Mix sugar, cornstarch and salt in saucepan. Stir in milk slowly. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until it thickens and boils. Keep boiling and stirring for about a minute longer.
Stir at least half of the sauce slowly into the egg. Then reverse by stirring that mixture back into the saucepan. Let come to a boil and stir for about a minute. Remove from heat and add vanilla (if you use vanilla sugar you can add it here also).
Cover and let cool. Put into the fridge to get chilled. Beat the whipping cream until stiff and fold into the custard. Do the last part (with the cream) just before you are ready to decorate. The custard you can make up to a day earlier.
Apple sauce recipe (right before the decorating moment):
Open a jar of the apple butter, add the 1 tsp of lemon juice to it. Taste-test. Adjust if needed.
Putting it all together:
Heat the oven to 425 American degrees. Divide the cinnamon pastry into six equal parts. Roll each of these out into a round circle (about seven inches in diameter). Place on cookie sheets and prick the circles all over with a fork. Sprinkle each with one tablespoon of sugar. Bake until light golden brown (watch them, they burn fast). About 12-15 minutes. Cool on wire racks (or if you don't have them you are in for a hell of a struggle and lots of broken pieces but they taste as good broken). Note: Unless your oven is vaster than mine you have to do these in relays and it takes quite a lot of time. A day before the planned eating is best.
Decorating:
Get a nice cake stand (flat-bottomed) and put the ugliest of the pastry circles on it. Spread with 1/3 applesauce mix. Add a second layer. Spread with 1/2 cup of custard-cream mix. Continue this way until you have no more pastry to add to the stack. Use the remaining custard sauce to cover the top before decorating it with almonds or such. I also cover the sides because mine are always ragged. Refrigerate before eating at least two hours. This is important.
Serve and watch it disappear in one second. Weep because of the work involved. It's very rich, by the way, so slice into very thin slices.
Whose Children Are They Anyway?
Ruth Marcus has written a column in the Washington Post about the gendered division of labor in the Obama household. It sounds like many, many similar columns and books I've read about during my feminist years: It points out the problem and then sort of hides behind the back of the idea of general confusion felt by all women (read: all upper-middle class women who have careers) about how to balance family and work and the writer's great identification with women confused in that manner:
When Michelle Obama took to describing her new role as mom in chief, my first reaction was to wince at her words. My second reaction was to identify with them.
I was okay, actually, with what Obama said. But I worried: Did she have to say it out loud, quite so explicitly? Is it really good for the team -- the team here being working women -- to have the "mommy" stamp so firmly imprinted on her identity?
And most of all: What does it say about the condition of modern women that Obama, catapulted by her husband's election into the ranks of the most prominent, sounded so strangely retro -- more Jackie Kennedy than Hillary Clinton?
...
"My first job in all honesty is going to continue to be mom in chief," Obama told Ebony magazine, "making sure that in this transition, which will be even more of a transition for the girls . . . that they are settled and that they know they will continue to be the center of our universe."
Note the very beginning of this quote: It's not really possible for a female columnist in public just to say that she winced at Michelle Obama's words, because of what they meant from the wider angle of taking women's professional achievements seriously. She also has to say that she identifies with those concerns.
And of course she does. And if she did not, her column would be interpreted as an attack against all those women who struggle with the problem and who have solved it by cutting back on their own ambitions. So then Ruth Marcus had to add a bit about how she is facing the very same problem and appears to be ready to give in on her professional ambitions. That's what good women do, you know.
I understand the difficulty women have when writing about topics like this one. I even agree that the children should come first for Michelle Obama during the transition, because Barack certainly won't spend time with them. But it's really very unfortunate that these types of columns always shift around in this way, because we as readers end up discussing the question of how ambitious women can balance work and family, and then we fight over whether they should have careers at all and so on, when really what Marcus is talking about is this:
Obama seems comfortable, now, in the back seat, but that seeming serenity did not come easy. In "The Audacity of Hope," Barack Obama offers a glimpse of an earlier, more conflicted Michelle, whose "anger toward me seemed barely contained" as she struggled with the pull between work and family while her husband launched a run for Congress.
"No matter how liberated I liked to see myself as . . . the fact was that when children showed up, it was Michelle and not I who was expected to make the necessary adjustments," Barack Obama writes. "Sure, I helped, but it was always on my terms, on my schedule. Meanwhile, she was the one who had to put her career on hold."
Expected to -- by whom? Had to -- says who? I remember reading this passage two years ago, when the book came out, and thinking: Hey, buddy, she has to scale back only because you're not willing to.
And yet, Barack Obama could have been describing so many women today when he explained that, for Michelle, "two visions of herself were at war with each other -- the desire to be the woman her mother had been, solid, dependable, making a home and always there for her kids; and the desire to excel in her profession, to make her mark on the world and realize all those plans she'd had on the very first day that we met."
Marcus gets my admiration, actually, for daring to write on this topic at all. But still. See how that "Hey, buddy, she has to scale back only because you're not willing to" leads to a sudden escape back into putting the whole problem on the laps of women. I don't like it, because there's no way in hell women alone, without any change in the society or in the role of men can solve that problem. It. Cannot. Be. Done.
To pretend that it can be done only tells us that women can be a little more than the ever-hovering but silent and undemanding female angels traditionally assumed to take care of every successful man: they can also be the junior assistant office managers in the families of famous men.
Women can balance their own work, their partners' work, the children, the parents and grandparents, the Thanksgiving turkey, the birthday cards, the care of the sick, the need to look young and sexy, the dustbunnies under the beds, the school menus, the parental chauffeuring services. They can balance all that, somehow, while walking on the tightrope of cultural femininity, the demands of a labor market which still assumes that every worker has a little lady at home to give succor and psychological counseling and cleaning services. And then the woman-haters write how women don't have the same genius as men do, how no woman has ever invented something like the automobile or designed a great church, how women therefore are obviously biologically incapable of anything but -- well --- playing the role of Girl Fridays for famous men.
So I'm angry. How very awkward for me. But really, why can't we keep the limelight on the real question Ruth Marcus asked, for longer than one fleeting second: What can be done to make the sexual division of labor within families more egalitarian? And if we don't want to make those changes, how do we provide women with equal opportunities in other spheres of life? The answer must not focus on all the ways that women alone could somehow achieve that. Days are still only twenty-four hours long, even for us of the girly persuasion.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
From The Diaries of Thad Tough. A Man About Town.
I just began my great novel. What do you think?
-----
As I exited the men's room at the night club, I enjoyed the shine of my shoes. They even reflected the diamonds in my cuff links. My eyes slid down my impeccable front: Leather, silk and linen covering a perfect body. Don't hate me just because I'm perfect, I muttered gruffly, while unbuttoning my jacket to show the admiring masses what they envied about me.
But what is that pink spot? There, further down my front?
It was the tip of my penis peeking out through the broken zipper of my pants, like a blind snake tasting the air.
------
It's a joke! Just a joke.
International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (by Suzie)
The United Nations chose today because it's the anniversary of the assassination of Patricia, Marie and Minerva Mirabal in 1960 in the Dominican Republic. (Photo taken from this site.) The sisters, known as the "Unforgettable Butterflies," became a symbol of the crisis of violence against women in Latin America. November 25th was the date chosen to commemorate their lives and promote global recognition of gender violence, and has been observed in Latin America since the 1980s.For more information, go to the UNIFEM site.
Monday, November 24, 2008
I Love This Picture
It's from Paul Krugman's blog at the New York Times, and shows the great merriment that was felt when the financial markets were finally liberated, yes, liberated from that horrible straight jacket of government regulation. To make the meaning more obvious, a chainsaw was used to cut through all that red tape.
Something for all of us to be grateful for, this Thanksgiving season, right?
Well, it gives us a few cynical lols. And a reminder that we must not lose our collective memory.
A Letter From Prison
By a woman who was initially sentenced to like four lifetimes for running errands and wiring money for her cousin's crack cocaine business:
Her cousin was dealing crack cocaine at the time. While she never sold drugs, Lomax wired money and ran errands for him. He was arrested, and Lomax was charged as a co-conspirator in the drug-selling operation. Around this time, she converted to Islam, choosing the name Hamedah ("one who praises") Hasan. Refusing an offer of a lighter sentence if she testified against her cousin, she was found guilty and given two life sentences, two 40-year sentences, two 20-year sentences, a five and a four year sentence—despite the fact that she was a first time non-violent offender. Federal Judge Richard Kopf stated publicly he would have given her a fraction of that time had he not been bound by harsh mandatory sentencing guidelines, which had been rushed through Congress in the 1980s.
Her sentence was reduced to 12 years, then increased on appeal by the government to 27 years. So that's what it is, right now. There are first-degree murderers who get away with a shorter sentence.
The lessons to learn from Hasan's story are many, of course. But note that bad laws tend to stick around for a very long time. It might be a good idea not to rush them through so very fast in the future.
Piglets At The Teats of the Government
Remember that phrase or something similar from the 1990s welfare debate? The poor were piglets sucking at the teats of the greatest mummy sow of them all: the federal government. That's how Bill Clinton ended up ending welfare for good and all that, after the Republicans took over the Congress and needed their own blood-red meal: the poor.
Except that welfare was never ended for the rich:
The U.S. government is prepared to provide more than $7.76 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers after guaranteeing $306 billion of Citigroup Inc. debt yesterday. The pledges, amounting to half the value of everything produced in the nation last year, are intended to rescue the financial system after the credit markets seized up 15 months ago.
Following the discussion about who deserves a bailout is fascinating, because Detroit and its car-makers don't deserve one, never mind that the industry is one of the largest employer in the country, but banks, those halls of marble and pillars, do deserve one, because they have us all by the short and curly. They are too big to fail! Or rather, their failures will hurt all the little gals and guys much more than it will hurt the rich, and that is how the rich got saved, once again.
I am not belittling the need to do something about the economic recession, because the financial industries do have us by the short and curly. I just want to point out that when we ended welfare for all times we added lots of stuff about the poor having to work to get welfare payments and lots of time limits on how long any one family could stay on welfare. And all this for an expense that was around one dollar out of each one hundred dollars the federal government spent then! Now we are willing to hand over brazillion dollars and ask nothing back in terms of good behavior. Indeed, we are not even demanding that those in charge would be demoted, because we want stability in the banks! Nobody worried about the stability of families on welfare in the great and roaring nineties.
If you don't think that power goes with money in this society you are probably not a member of this society. And yes, Larry Summers got a cushy job in the Obama administration. He's a good economist and perhaps the country needs him. But slurs about us wimminfolk still only cause a hickup on the career rises of our boyz.
Some Fun
This is Julia Nunes singing "Accidentally in Love". Note the use of a tissue box as a percussion instrument.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Racism, Homophobia, and Prop 8 (by Skylanda)
The dust is settling on the California proposition, and with some degree of retrospect (and distance - California will always be my home state, but hasn't been my home for a good six or eight years now), it's tempting to try to start untying the thorny knot that is diversity in America.
I am certainly not the first to give a stab at that knot, and I imagine I will be eons from the last. Nor do I possess any particular insider knowledge; I am both white and unabashedly straight, sympathetic to all comers, but also not prepossessed toward one side or the other. So, dangerous turf. Let me tread lightly, please-I-ask-of-myself.
This much is clear: Barack Obama's nomination brought out droves of voters from minority groups who have traditionally been less than entirely franchised; that force of legions brought victory for just about every progressive cause besides gay rights. The Prop 8 campaign is perhaps the most talked of but certainly not the only popular legislation that took advantage of this timing to spoil in favor of a very conservative social notion that retains a curry of favor among groups who are notably liberal on just about every other topic (even abortion: every state prop on abortion went down in resounding defeat, in states far more conservative than California). Prop 8 was largely funded by that unholy alliance of the Catholic and Mormon churches; it was duly supported by conservative black churches across the state, even as they spoke for a rather more liberal candidate in Obama. The split among black voters favored Prop 8 by some enormous margin - a forty-point tilt toward banning gay marriage, by some polling estimates.
So. Righteous anger, both sides: from gay rights community who (entirely rightly) protest that they alone have been left behind in the progressive sweep, that the party around the Obama victory reveals an even deeper homophobia - that sudden understanding that as long as a bunch of other progressive causes take home the cup, no one really cares about gay rights. Even in California. Flip side: from the African-American community that is fed up with decades of backsliding against the gains of the civil rights movement (to the place where we find increasing rates of incarceration among black men, and sky-high perinatal mortality rates among black women and infants) and which has expressed at times a whole lot of disinterest in being pinned with the responsibility for every civil liberties issue when this community is still one of the most beleaguered demographics in the United States.
**Sigh.**
Ignoring for a moment the fact that there are gay black people (which appears to have been totally lost in almost every public debate on this topic), some core issues have arisen that make the debate more bilious that it might need to be.
One is the actual effect of the African-American voting block on the outcome of Prop 8. According to the US Census Bureau, black Americans are cracking the demographic ceiling at a mere 7% of California's population. You can split that ninety-nine to one, and you still aren't going to call a majority for a proposition unless a much larger demographic is shoring up the race right behind them. That majority had to come largely from the massive demographic groups that dominate California: Caucasians at 43%, Hispanics at 36%, Asians at 12%. Homophobic African Americans did their part to pass Prop 8; but they could not have done it without the lily-white voting blocks of the inland empire. In fact, every African American could have stayed home on November 4th, and it still would have been a to-the-wire race (it passed roughly 48/52 - this is more math than I'm willing to do in my head, but even if whatever block of that 6% of African Americans that did vote that day had abstained on Prop 8 at that skewed ratio, it's a long stretch to say that would have overcome that gap between the overall yeahs and nays).
So, it's rather unlikely that African Americans alone - turning out in record proportion for their small population size - effected an enormous impact on Prop 8. Prop 8 was passed by the same demographics who always pass homophobic popular law: large blocks of conservative white voters (ya know, the ones who historically turn out to elections) with the backing of deep-pocket churches, solidified by scrapping together pieces of every other demographic they can get their hands on. (Colleen at The Swivet has done a much better job than I pulling the relevant data from the large southern counties - her post is worth a good visit.)
But still, it smarts: knowing that African American voters split so heavily toward the homophobic side. And therein lies the part of the debate that is precisely as bilious as you might expect, and rightly so.
From an outsider perspective, the crux of this hurt lies in the notion that every civil liberties movement has had to mature - usually quite painfully - to the notion the oppressions are bound up in each other. You can't have equal rights for women without having equal rights for blacks, because there are black women out there, and they count too. You can't become a shining beacon of equality for gay people without copping a nod to classism, because there's no kind of oppression like being poor, gay, and from the wrong side of town all at once. And because, from a nebulous metaphysical standpoint, you can't be free if you're still oppressing others. Legions of oppressed people might roll their eyes at the tragedy of the oppressors, but still: it's a nice sentiment, especially when it drives social movements.
Every one of these activist movements has been accused - ever so rightfully, not a doubt under the sun - of privileging their own private oppression over every other. That was the hallmark of race relations during the second wave of feminism: the demand that all women identify as women first in a movement dominated by individuals whose race and class lent lenses of invisibility to the idea that a woman can be raped, beaten, harassed, and discriminated against on the basis of her sex, and still consider race to be her primary oppression, or her primary identity above and beyond a sisterhood with women who don't face racism and classism. That was an ugly fight; it's been re-fought on the grounds of just about every one of these movements. The subsets of folks fighting these fights who haven't faced down this particular ogre yet? Ah, well then, you still have it coming. Good luck to you.
So third-wave feminism - a tenured generation very much wrapped up in this post-millennial era of gay liberation - feels like, ya know, this has been done. We got it: we get on the post for every issue on the block - race, class and gender are just the beginning. We hop to for disability rights, we marshal the battalions for gay rights. We swallowed hard when a woman president slipped from our grasp but we understood that other strides were equally important. We even get a little misty notion of species-ism and make a little noise for animal rights. I'm not making fun, I swear: this is good stuff. Even when we half-ass it, that noble notion is there: our oppressions, your oppressions, all wrapped up into one, my liberation is tied up in your liberation, fight the good fight for all, yadda yadda.
And so we are sometimes very surprised - and feel rather righteously betrayed - when it turns out that some other demographic of historically beaten-down peoples turn out to the polls to support their own causes, and none but their own. African Americans: turning out to root for a hometown hero; not so interested in giving props for gay marriage. It smarts. It really fucking does.
But that again gets to the crux of the matter: does this generation of feminists, gay rights advocates, and the like have the right to demand support from the African American community? Certainly, ya know, it would be real nice. It would be awfully reassuring to know that the years spent building bridges between civil rights advocates wouldn't evaporate the moment that particular demographic puts forth a stunning new landmark in political enfranchisement. One would really hope, for example, that a hypothetical first gay president wouldn't also turn out to be totally indifferent to racism, or worse yet, bring out legions of Aryan Nation warriors on election day to pass state-wide initiatives hostile toward minority rights; but one has no grounds to claim that for certain. We won't know that til we get there, if ever we do.
But thinking about what would be real nice and mediating the reality of what we can expect are two vastly divergent thought processes. At the moment, we are faced with the prospect of that slap-in-the-face reality that push to shove, the minority whose time it was to shine did not benevolently lend out a helping hand to others.
Here's the thing: I'm not sure this is a reasonable expectation. I'm not sure that, given the massive inequities rife on the American racial landscape today, it is ok to expect an activist commitment to equality toward people mostly not their own from a demographic still so deeply put down by the majority. Like I said: it would be nice, and hurt is justified - and not unexpected - that it did not come through. But I also think that leap between my civil rights and your civil rights - that linking of oppressions that was so hard fought and won between the waves of feminism - is a product of luxury. It's the province of those who have got theirs and willing now to part out spoonfuls to others. Do I wish we were one big happy egalitarian family fighting for the rights of all? Uh huh, yeah I do. But that isn't - and has never been - rhetoric coming from those scrapping around at the bottom. That's rhetoric coming from people like me: I got mine. I got mine enough that I can spend my weekends yammering away on this blog instead of working a second or third job. It's not really fair to ask people still suffering the unmitigated travesty of poverty and racism in America to come to the table for someone else's dinner party at which they will not be eating. (It's also not really fair - in fact, it is rather alarmingly racist - to expect some kind of solidarity from conservative of black churches, while excusing the mostly white Mormon church for being the fount of this Prop 8 nonsense because, well, Mormons always do this kind of thing. But that's another post entirely.)
None of this leaves aside an alarming truth though: homophobia is a vast, understated, and persistent problem in the African American community. Obama's campaign probably had no intention of making national news out of that factoid, but the tricks of historical timing - that Prop 8 was on the same ballot as the first African American candidate for presidency - leaves no room for doubt. And plenty of room for a good dose of shame.
Where does this leave us all now? For one, anyone with a stake in progressive politics who took home any kind of victory on November 4th: you - we, us - owe an enormous debt of honor to the gay community that fell on the sword that day in the name of every other liberal cause on the block. The gay community took it in the throat for the rest of us, and it is time to return the favor: by putting your money and your mouth where your politics are. Write letters, donate to hopeful political campaigns in the next round, make your voice heard loud and clear in favor of repealing the don't-ask-don't-tell policy and the court battle against Prop 8 - the two most visible actions on the block in the next few months. Fight for the rights of gay individuals and families in the arenas of employment equality, marriage, military discrimination, safety for gay youth in schools, the family courts. This isn't just about interlocking oppressions anymore; this is about help making right the enormous screws put into the gay community on the day that everyone else celebrated liberation and renewal.
Under this new administration, we have some opportunities that have been entirely impossible to even dream of under the Bush years. I say this not because I think Obama is a miracle worker, or even because he is on the right side of every issue (indeed, no: I'm about sixteen shades to the left of most of his campaign platform, and we'll see what comes out of his first term of the presidency). I say this because without the raining down of hatred and hawkishness so marked in the last eight years, there are a few things we don't have to worry about anymore. I'm no longer worried, for example, that we might attack Iran next week - or that the man at the helm is hell-bent on ending science as we know it. Out from under that pressure cooker - with several hellfire-crazy scenarios just off the table - now is the time to push for the issues that weren't even possible to consider just a few months back, and for the issues on which Obama still lies too far right of center. First up on my list: allowing gays to serve openly in the military; expanding health care coverage; renewing commitment to a clean environment; and ending that half-assed notion that we still need troop build-up in Afghanistan, even as we begin to envision a withdrawal from Iraq.
This is far from the time to rest on any kind of laurels; this is the opportunity of a lifetime to make this country something we can all live with. The pressure is off, and yet the pressure is on: we only have two years before interim elections may bend congress right again. Time to start striving toward our potential as a nation again, instead of merely fighting to tread water. Our liberation, all of it: yours, mine, ours. Fractured or together, it's our ride this time around - let's make it a good one.
I am certainly not the first to give a stab at that knot, and I imagine I will be eons from the last. Nor do I possess any particular insider knowledge; I am both white and unabashedly straight, sympathetic to all comers, but also not prepossessed toward one side or the other. So, dangerous turf. Let me tread lightly, please-I-ask-of-myself.
This much is clear: Barack Obama's nomination brought out droves of voters from minority groups who have traditionally been less than entirely franchised; that force of legions brought victory for just about every progressive cause besides gay rights. The Prop 8 campaign is perhaps the most talked of but certainly not the only popular legislation that took advantage of this timing to spoil in favor of a very conservative social notion that retains a curry of favor among groups who are notably liberal on just about every other topic (even abortion: every state prop on abortion went down in resounding defeat, in states far more conservative than California). Prop 8 was largely funded by that unholy alliance of the Catholic and Mormon churches; it was duly supported by conservative black churches across the state, even as they spoke for a rather more liberal candidate in Obama. The split among black voters favored Prop 8 by some enormous margin - a forty-point tilt toward banning gay marriage, by some polling estimates.
So. Righteous anger, both sides: from gay rights community who (entirely rightly) protest that they alone have been left behind in the progressive sweep, that the party around the Obama victory reveals an even deeper homophobia - that sudden understanding that as long as a bunch of other progressive causes take home the cup, no one really cares about gay rights. Even in California. Flip side: from the African-American community that is fed up with decades of backsliding against the gains of the civil rights movement (to the place where we find increasing rates of incarceration among black men, and sky-high perinatal mortality rates among black women and infants) and which has expressed at times a whole lot of disinterest in being pinned with the responsibility for every civil liberties issue when this community is still one of the most beleaguered demographics in the United States.
**Sigh.**
Ignoring for a moment the fact that there are gay black people (which appears to have been totally lost in almost every public debate on this topic), some core issues have arisen that make the debate more bilious that it might need to be.
One is the actual effect of the African-American voting block on the outcome of Prop 8. According to the US Census Bureau, black Americans are cracking the demographic ceiling at a mere 7% of California's population. You can split that ninety-nine to one, and you still aren't going to call a majority for a proposition unless a much larger demographic is shoring up the race right behind them. That majority had to come largely from the massive demographic groups that dominate California: Caucasians at 43%, Hispanics at 36%, Asians at 12%. Homophobic African Americans did their part to pass Prop 8; but they could not have done it without the lily-white voting blocks of the inland empire. In fact, every African American could have stayed home on November 4th, and it still would have been a to-the-wire race (it passed roughly 48/52 - this is more math than I'm willing to do in my head, but even if whatever block of that 6% of African Americans that did vote that day had abstained on Prop 8 at that skewed ratio, it's a long stretch to say that would have overcome that gap between the overall yeahs and nays).
So, it's rather unlikely that African Americans alone - turning out in record proportion for their small population size - effected an enormous impact on Prop 8. Prop 8 was passed by the same demographics who always pass homophobic popular law: large blocks of conservative white voters (ya know, the ones who historically turn out to elections) with the backing of deep-pocket churches, solidified by scrapping together pieces of every other demographic they can get their hands on. (Colleen at The Swivet has done a much better job than I pulling the relevant data from the large southern counties - her post is worth a good visit.)
But still, it smarts: knowing that African American voters split so heavily toward the homophobic side. And therein lies the part of the debate that is precisely as bilious as you might expect, and rightly so.
From an outsider perspective, the crux of this hurt lies in the notion that every civil liberties movement has had to mature - usually quite painfully - to the notion the oppressions are bound up in each other. You can't have equal rights for women without having equal rights for blacks, because there are black women out there, and they count too. You can't become a shining beacon of equality for gay people without copping a nod to classism, because there's no kind of oppression like being poor, gay, and from the wrong side of town all at once. And because, from a nebulous metaphysical standpoint, you can't be free if you're still oppressing others. Legions of oppressed people might roll their eyes at the tragedy of the oppressors, but still: it's a nice sentiment, especially when it drives social movements.
Every one of these activist movements has been accused - ever so rightfully, not a doubt under the sun - of privileging their own private oppression over every other. That was the hallmark of race relations during the second wave of feminism: the demand that all women identify as women first in a movement dominated by individuals whose race and class lent lenses of invisibility to the idea that a woman can be raped, beaten, harassed, and discriminated against on the basis of her sex, and still consider race to be her primary oppression, or her primary identity above and beyond a sisterhood with women who don't face racism and classism. That was an ugly fight; it's been re-fought on the grounds of just about every one of these movements. The subsets of folks fighting these fights who haven't faced down this particular ogre yet? Ah, well then, you still have it coming. Good luck to you.
So third-wave feminism - a tenured generation very much wrapped up in this post-millennial era of gay liberation - feels like, ya know, this has been done. We got it: we get on the post for every issue on the block - race, class and gender are just the beginning. We hop to for disability rights, we marshal the battalions for gay rights. We swallowed hard when a woman president slipped from our grasp but we understood that other strides were equally important. We even get a little misty notion of species-ism and make a little noise for animal rights. I'm not making fun, I swear: this is good stuff. Even when we half-ass it, that noble notion is there: our oppressions, your oppressions, all wrapped up into one, my liberation is tied up in your liberation, fight the good fight for all, yadda yadda.
And so we are sometimes very surprised - and feel rather righteously betrayed - when it turns out that some other demographic of historically beaten-down peoples turn out to the polls to support their own causes, and none but their own. African Americans: turning out to root for a hometown hero; not so interested in giving props for gay marriage. It smarts. It really fucking does.
But that again gets to the crux of the matter: does this generation of feminists, gay rights advocates, and the like have the right to demand support from the African American community? Certainly, ya know, it would be real nice. It would be awfully reassuring to know that the years spent building bridges between civil rights advocates wouldn't evaporate the moment that particular demographic puts forth a stunning new landmark in political enfranchisement. One would really hope, for example, that a hypothetical first gay president wouldn't also turn out to be totally indifferent to racism, or worse yet, bring out legions of Aryan Nation warriors on election day to pass state-wide initiatives hostile toward minority rights; but one has no grounds to claim that for certain. We won't know that til we get there, if ever we do.
But thinking about what would be real nice and mediating the reality of what we can expect are two vastly divergent thought processes. At the moment, we are faced with the prospect of that slap-in-the-face reality that push to shove, the minority whose time it was to shine did not benevolently lend out a helping hand to others.
Here's the thing: I'm not sure this is a reasonable expectation. I'm not sure that, given the massive inequities rife on the American racial landscape today, it is ok to expect an activist commitment to equality toward people mostly not their own from a demographic still so deeply put down by the majority. Like I said: it would be nice, and hurt is justified - and not unexpected - that it did not come through. But I also think that leap between my civil rights and your civil rights - that linking of oppressions that was so hard fought and won between the waves of feminism - is a product of luxury. It's the province of those who have got theirs and willing now to part out spoonfuls to others. Do I wish we were one big happy egalitarian family fighting for the rights of all? Uh huh, yeah I do. But that isn't - and has never been - rhetoric coming from those scrapping around at the bottom. That's rhetoric coming from people like me: I got mine. I got mine enough that I can spend my weekends yammering away on this blog instead of working a second or third job. It's not really fair to ask people still suffering the unmitigated travesty of poverty and racism in America to come to the table for someone else's dinner party at which they will not be eating. (It's also not really fair - in fact, it is rather alarmingly racist - to expect some kind of solidarity from conservative of black churches, while excusing the mostly white Mormon church for being the fount of this Prop 8 nonsense because, well, Mormons always do this kind of thing. But that's another post entirely.)
None of this leaves aside an alarming truth though: homophobia is a vast, understated, and persistent problem in the African American community. Obama's campaign probably had no intention of making national news out of that factoid, but the tricks of historical timing - that Prop 8 was on the same ballot as the first African American candidate for presidency - leaves no room for doubt. And plenty of room for a good dose of shame.
Where does this leave us all now? For one, anyone with a stake in progressive politics who took home any kind of victory on November 4th: you - we, us - owe an enormous debt of honor to the gay community that fell on the sword that day in the name of every other liberal cause on the block. The gay community took it in the throat for the rest of us, and it is time to return the favor: by putting your money and your mouth where your politics are. Write letters, donate to hopeful political campaigns in the next round, make your voice heard loud and clear in favor of repealing the don't-ask-don't-tell policy and the court battle against Prop 8 - the two most visible actions on the block in the next few months. Fight for the rights of gay individuals and families in the arenas of employment equality, marriage, military discrimination, safety for gay youth in schools, the family courts. This isn't just about interlocking oppressions anymore; this is about help making right the enormous screws put into the gay community on the day that everyone else celebrated liberation and renewal.
Under this new administration, we have some opportunities that have been entirely impossible to even dream of under the Bush years. I say this not because I think Obama is a miracle worker, or even because he is on the right side of every issue (indeed, no: I'm about sixteen shades to the left of most of his campaign platform, and we'll see what comes out of his first term of the presidency). I say this because without the raining down of hatred and hawkishness so marked in the last eight years, there are a few things we don't have to worry about anymore. I'm no longer worried, for example, that we might attack Iran next week - or that the man at the helm is hell-bent on ending science as we know it. Out from under that pressure cooker - with several hellfire-crazy scenarios just off the table - now is the time to push for the issues that weren't even possible to consider just a few months back, and for the issues on which Obama still lies too far right of center. First up on my list: allowing gays to serve openly in the military; expanding health care coverage; renewing commitment to a clean environment; and ending that half-assed notion that we still need troop build-up in Afghanistan, even as we begin to envision a withdrawal from Iraq.
This is far from the time to rest on any kind of laurels; this is the opportunity of a lifetime to make this country something we can all live with. The pressure is off, and yet the pressure is on: we only have two years before interim elections may bend congress right again. Time to start striving toward our potential as a nation again, instead of merely fighting to tread water. Our liberation, all of it: yours, mine, ours. Fractured or together, it's our ride this time around - let's make it a good one.
To Counter The Force of Fundamentalist “christianity” In Our Politics, We Need To Use This. by Anthony McCarthy
Today is the feast of Christ the King* in Catholic churches. While I’m not, by definition, a Christian, the gospel reading for the day has a lot to be said in its favor. It’s always puzzled me why this particular passage is passed over in addressing right-wing “christian” fundamentalists. It completely undermines their political and ethical position.
Here it is, from Matthew, 25:31-46
Jesus said, "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, `Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.' Then the righteous will answer him, `Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?' And the king will answer them, `Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.' Then he will say to those at his left hand, `You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' Then they also will answer, `Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?' Then he will answer them, `Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.' And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."
Contained in this one passage is a straight forward condemnation of both the policy and practice of conservative “christians”, the ones who you’re about to hear froth on about the war on Christmas for the next month, the only ones who the word "Christian" is used to cover in the mass media.
You can look pretty long and hard at conservatives and you won’t find much that fulfills these requirements for avoiding eternal damnation. There is virtually not a single point of these requirements which are adequately fulfilled by the conservative’s program. The hungry, the sick, the ill clothed, the alien, the prisoner. There is no way to square conservatives actions on nutrition programs, universal healthcare, immigration and certainly not on prison policy. Conservatives consistently talk about and treat “the least of these”, no less than the people who Jesus claims as “members of my family”, of being part of his very being, as if they were human dross.
These conservative ‘christians’ are constantly presented, by themselves and the media, as being the most genuine and observant followers of this man, they claim he is, literally, God. They never tire of condemning other people to eternal damnation citing “Jesus Christ” as their authority. But in this one passage we’ve got absolute proof that they are lying. Eternal damnation, you’d think that if they really believed that their policies would avoid that possibility. And notice, not a single mention of abortion, gay sex, contraception of wealth redistribution as mortal sin.
Buckminster Fuller famously advised against fighting natural forces but advised using them was more practical and effective. It’s too bad that pride and antiquated conformity keep liberals and leftists from pointing out these things. Can’t understand why we shouldn’t. Like it or not, it makes no difference, Christianity is the equivalent of a natural force in our political life. We’re not under any constitutional prohibition from citing whatever furthers our purpose. Our making reference to this or any other helpful scripture is in no way a prohibited “religious test”. And even if it was, that clause in the Constitution doesn’t bind us, it binds the government in its official actions.
Here it is, from Matthew, 25:31-46
Jesus said, "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, `Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.' Then the righteous will answer him, `Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?' And the king will answer them, `Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.' Then he will say to those at his left hand, `You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' Then they also will answer, `Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?' Then he will answer them, `Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.' And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."
Contained in this one passage is a straight forward condemnation of both the policy and practice of conservative “christians”, the ones who you’re about to hear froth on about the war on Christmas for the next month, the only ones who the word "Christian" is used to cover in the mass media.
You can look pretty long and hard at conservatives and you won’t find much that fulfills these requirements for avoiding eternal damnation. There is virtually not a single point of these requirements which are adequately fulfilled by the conservative’s program. The hungry, the sick, the ill clothed, the alien, the prisoner. There is no way to square conservatives actions on nutrition programs, universal healthcare, immigration and certainly not on prison policy. Conservatives consistently talk about and treat “the least of these”, no less than the people who Jesus claims as “members of my family”, of being part of his very being, as if they were human dross.
These conservative ‘christians’ are constantly presented, by themselves and the media, as being the most genuine and observant followers of this man, they claim he is, literally, God. They never tire of condemning other people to eternal damnation citing “Jesus Christ” as their authority. But in this one passage we’ve got absolute proof that they are lying. Eternal damnation, you’d think that if they really believed that their policies would avoid that possibility. And notice, not a single mention of abortion, gay sex, contraception of wealth redistribution as mortal sin.
Buckminster Fuller famously advised against fighting natural forces but advised using them was more practical and effective. It’s too bad that pride and antiquated conformity keep liberals and leftists from pointing out these things. Can’t understand why we shouldn’t. Like it or not, it makes no difference, Christianity is the equivalent of a natural force in our political life. We’re not under any constitutional prohibition from citing whatever furthers our purpose. Our making reference to this or any other helpful scripture is in no way a prohibited “religious test”. And even if it was, that clause in the Constitution doesn’t bind us, it binds the government in its official actions.
"Rats are more honest." by Anthony McCarthy
Here’s a wonderful story about trained rats saving lives.
In Mozambique, special squads of raccoon-size rats are sniffing out lethal explosive devices buried across the countryside, remnants of the country's anticolonial and civil wars of the last century.
In neighboring Tanzania, teams of rats use their twitchy noses to detect TB bacteria in saliva samples from four clinics serving slum neighborhoods. So far this year, the 25 rats trained for the pilot medical project have identified 300 cases of early-stage TB - infections missed by lab technicians with their microscopes. If not for the rodents, many of these victims would have died and others would have spread the disease.
"It's fair, I think, to call these animals 'hero rats,' " said Bart Weetjens, the Belgian conceiver of both programs.
The rat squads, at first derided by some international aid officials as ridiculous, have won support from the World Bank and praise from the UN and land mine eradication groups. Now there are plans to deploy the creatures to Angola, Congo, Zambia, and other land mine-infested lands.
You might suspect that this is the kind of program that would have been held up to ridicule by the corporate media here, to supply it with cheap filler between celebrity scandal. Is it fair to wonder if, perhaps, these rats haven’t done more to save innocent people from land mines than many respected diplomats?* It might. And the story could provide an explaination.
For both TB and land mines, the rats are trained to respond to the sound of a clicker; when the rat makes the scratching motion that means it has detected an explosive or the odor of disease, the handler or trainer responds by snapping the clicker, which means a nut or fruit is on the way.
So why don't the animals just scratch every few minutes to win a treat?
"That would be human behavior," said Weetjens. "Rats are more honest."
* The United States, China, India and a number of other countries have still not signed onto the landmine ban. That is something that the Obama Administration should be lobbied to do.
In Mozambique, special squads of raccoon-size rats are sniffing out lethal explosive devices buried across the countryside, remnants of the country's anticolonial and civil wars of the last century.
In neighboring Tanzania, teams of rats use their twitchy noses to detect TB bacteria in saliva samples from four clinics serving slum neighborhoods. So far this year, the 25 rats trained for the pilot medical project have identified 300 cases of early-stage TB - infections missed by lab technicians with their microscopes. If not for the rodents, many of these victims would have died and others would have spread the disease.
"It's fair, I think, to call these animals 'hero rats,' " said Bart Weetjens, the Belgian conceiver of both programs.
The rat squads, at first derided by some international aid officials as ridiculous, have won support from the World Bank and praise from the UN and land mine eradication groups. Now there are plans to deploy the creatures to Angola, Congo, Zambia, and other land mine-infested lands.
You might suspect that this is the kind of program that would have been held up to ridicule by the corporate media here, to supply it with cheap filler between celebrity scandal. Is it fair to wonder if, perhaps, these rats haven’t done more to save innocent people from land mines than many respected diplomats?* It might. And the story could provide an explaination.
For both TB and land mines, the rats are trained to respond to the sound of a clicker; when the rat makes the scratching motion that means it has detected an explosive or the odor of disease, the handler or trainer responds by snapping the clicker, which means a nut or fruit is on the way.
So why don't the animals just scratch every few minutes to win a treat?
"That would be human behavior," said Weetjens. "Rats are more honest."
* The United States, China, India and a number of other countries have still not signed onto the landmine ban. That is something that the Obama Administration should be lobbied to do.
Oh, So Now You Tell Me There Might Be No Black Holes? by Anthony McCarthy
The scare story about the new Hadron Collider generating tiny black holes that might eventually grow and swallow the earth didn’t exactly keep me up nights. But they did provide some insomniac diversions. I’m at a time of life when I’d often rather have my atoms torn apart in a black hole then get by on three hours sleep again.
Most of my ruminations took the form of whether or not scientists who believed their making Earth eating black holes were a remote possibility might not think that their curiosity, or more likely, very temporary glory, wouldn’t be worth us all taking the risk. Last I heard the guy trying to sue to stop them hadn’t done his math correctly and his claims were unfounded, not that I’d know. But maybe there’s even less to worry about, at this point, than we might imagine.
This book review by George Scialabba has some thought provoking, if not mind blowing, ideas in it. Most interesting for stove side rumination on an icy cold night might be this one:
The first problem Einstein encountered was internal to his original theory of general relativity. The theory predicted that some stars would develop infinite gravity and density, collapsing inward and becoming "black holes" from which no information could escape. The freakish character of black holes vexed Einstein, who never accepted their existence. The next obstacle was the discovery that many galaxies within galactic clusters are moving at a speed that should lead them to break away from the cluster. But they don't. The only explanation compatible with constant gravitational attraction (which Newton and Einstein assumed) was the presence of a large amount of invisible, undetectable matter: "dark matter." Finally, 10 years ago, several astronomers claimed to have discovered that the rate of expansion of the universe is increasing rather than decreasing. The only explanation seemed to be a vast quantity of invisible, "dark" energy with negative pressure, which would counter the braking force of gravity. Together, dark matter and dark energy supposedly make up 96 percent of the universe. If they exist.
Physicists have reluctantly accepted these anomalies for the sake of preserving Einstein's venerable theory of gravity, with its assumption of constant gravitational attraction. But neither black holes nor dark matter has ever been detected. Moffat cuts the Gordian knot, proposing a Modified Gravity Theory, or MOG. He postulates a new "fifth force," carried by a new particle, the "phion." MOG explains the varying strength of gravitational attraction without any need for black holes or dark stars. It also undermines string theory, most physicists' current candidate for a Theory of Everything. Finally, it suggests that the universe did not begin with a Big Bang but may be "eternal" and "dynamically evolving."
It's a bold theory, and Moffat acknowledges that most physicists are skeptical. But data from the new Large Hadron Collider and ongoing galaxy surveys may soon settle the question. Stay tuned.
In my youth it used to be annoying how cosmologists would go from the big crunch to the infinite evaporation of the universe with such ease and assurance. Then the spectacle of them doing the ultimate back and forth turned fun. My friends and family, those mostly in the biological sciences, hold a grudge against the Lords of Creation and their big budgets, they still find this aggravating. Being just a failed piano player, I can sit back and enjoy the show. I sincerely hope that the data are provocative but inconclusive well into the future. I’m with Old Sneep in Robert McClosky’s book “Lentil”. Everyone needs taking down a peg or two, those highest up in the social scale most of all.
Most of my ruminations took the form of whether or not scientists who believed their making Earth eating black holes were a remote possibility might not think that their curiosity, or more likely, very temporary glory, wouldn’t be worth us all taking the risk. Last I heard the guy trying to sue to stop them hadn’t done his math correctly and his claims were unfounded, not that I’d know. But maybe there’s even less to worry about, at this point, than we might imagine.
This book review by George Scialabba has some thought provoking, if not mind blowing, ideas in it. Most interesting for stove side rumination on an icy cold night might be this one:
The first problem Einstein encountered was internal to his original theory of general relativity. The theory predicted that some stars would develop infinite gravity and density, collapsing inward and becoming "black holes" from which no information could escape. The freakish character of black holes vexed Einstein, who never accepted their existence. The next obstacle was the discovery that many galaxies within galactic clusters are moving at a speed that should lead them to break away from the cluster. But they don't. The only explanation compatible with constant gravitational attraction (which Newton and Einstein assumed) was the presence of a large amount of invisible, undetectable matter: "dark matter." Finally, 10 years ago, several astronomers claimed to have discovered that the rate of expansion of the universe is increasing rather than decreasing. The only explanation seemed to be a vast quantity of invisible, "dark" energy with negative pressure, which would counter the braking force of gravity. Together, dark matter and dark energy supposedly make up 96 percent of the universe. If they exist.
Physicists have reluctantly accepted these anomalies for the sake of preserving Einstein's venerable theory of gravity, with its assumption of constant gravitational attraction. But neither black holes nor dark matter has ever been detected. Moffat cuts the Gordian knot, proposing a Modified Gravity Theory, or MOG. He postulates a new "fifth force," carried by a new particle, the "phion." MOG explains the varying strength of gravitational attraction without any need for black holes or dark stars. It also undermines string theory, most physicists' current candidate for a Theory of Everything. Finally, it suggests that the universe did not begin with a Big Bang but may be "eternal" and "dynamically evolving."
It's a bold theory, and Moffat acknowledges that most physicists are skeptical. But data from the new Large Hadron Collider and ongoing galaxy surveys may soon settle the question. Stay tuned.
In my youth it used to be annoying how cosmologists would go from the big crunch to the infinite evaporation of the universe with such ease and assurance. Then the spectacle of them doing the ultimate back and forth turned fun. My friends and family, those mostly in the biological sciences, hold a grudge against the Lords of Creation and their big budgets, they still find this aggravating. Being just a failed piano player, I can sit back and enjoy the show. I sincerely hope that the data are provocative but inconclusive well into the future. I’m with Old Sneep in Robert McClosky’s book “Lentil”. Everyone needs taking down a peg or two, those highest up in the social scale most of all.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
But, Dear, The Boy Sucks Blood..... by Anthony McCarthy
I know he seems very charming and you feel sorry for him because he seems so sad but I just can’t feel good about this relationship. He sucks blood, he feels an enormous urge to bite people in the neck and drink their blood while it’s still warm. Yes, yes, I know you say he’s got it under control but it’s only a matter of time before they figure out where the cities pets are going. Then what? He’ll go to court and you’ll get dragged in as a character witness. The neighbors will put two and two together then what will happen? You used to be such an animal lover. And does he really have that much will power? I know you say he’s got more will power than normal but don’t you remember that time you had him over and your little brother teased him about his crypt palor? I mean when he bared his teeth and his eyes turned red, do you want to risk that happening when it’s not just family? Now, that’s no way to talk about your brother, and considering your boyfriend people who live in glass houses.
I know you think you’re in love with him but you don’t have that much experience. What if he’s not as serious as you are? No. No. It doesn’t reassure me that he calls you “sweetheart”, I’ve seen how he looks when he says it. And you’re the one who wanted to try going vegetarian. You remember how long that lasted?
And what if he is serious? I mean when you’re older than fourteen. What if you get married? What about the children? You think your brother’s a pain in the neck but, believe me, there are worse. Yes, your cousin Howie is a good example of one but as far as I know he doesn’t suck blood. Yes, yes, I know you think I’m OC about that one but it really isn’t his most attractive feature. Come to think of it, you used to like a boy with a tan. I knew letting you stay after for that project was a mistake. You’d never have been there while night school was in session....
And what about as you get older. What about mid-life crisis. You remember your father. I mean, the boy’s got problems now that a broken collar bone and tattoo removal won’t cure. What if he goes off the deep end? You have no guarantee that he won’t have some kind of hormonal imbalance and start chasing after ..... And, come to think, how long does a vampire’s mid-life crisis last? You’re setting yourself up for an eternity of heartbreak. No, I think the best thing to do is to just cut it off. Oh, you’re just being overly dramatic, it’s not like you’re putting a knife in his heart. Besides, he’ll get over that. No, I’m putting my foot down. I don’t want you seeing him again. Bars on your window? Well, if that’s what it takes, though your father thought wire mesh would be more effective.
OK, that’s it. You’re grounded. What do you mean in more ways than I can imagine?
Update: Biting Vampires As Ideal boyfriends? Good grief.
The idea of the vampire as being sexually alluring is something that is clearly demented, no, make that perverted. It was bad enough when the colorless old man of Stoker’s Dracula turned into the young, black and white greaser of Bela Lugosi, then the technicolor dry look Frank Langella. The idea of a man slipping into a woman’s bed room at night and vampirizing her as romance might be less sick than the romanticizing rape only due to the fact that vampires don’t exist. At least I hope there aren’t kids trying out biting people in the neck as a lifestyle choice, now that Hollywood is presenting the blood sucker as a white bread teen idol. I just don’t get it. But then, I never got The Leader of the Pack either. I haven't done a study of it, but I'll bet that female vampires preying on males are not generally portrayed as sympathetic, romantic characters. They might be seductive but they the ones I recall are only the more evil for that.
The vampire as a metaphor for beleaguered minority group boyfriend is worse than inappropriate, it’s offensive. If they existed vampires would be the embodiment of all of the lies told about the dangers of the dangerous “other”*. If they existed, they would actually be cunning, dangerous, predatory killers, stealing not only the lives of their victims but their very souls, condemning to eternal damnation. The vampire isn’t just the boy from the wrong side of the tracks, though, as in the first paragraph, I’ve got a feeling a vampire would be seen as more socially acceptable, as long as they dressed well, could feign middle-class manners and practiced enhanced oral hygiene.
You would think that this style of vampire was everything a you wouldn’t want in a man. He’s undead, bites people in the neck, drinks their very life essence and enslaves them to a half-life, isn’t handy with tools and can’t be relied to come home at a reasonable hour. They aren’t good life-companion material. I know I wouldn’t put up with one.
The advent of AIDS made the issue of blood even more dangerous, a more twisted literary device. I don’t get its increased popularity in pop-fiction as it becomes a clearer danger. But, then, I’ve watched my friends die of AIDS related diseases.
You wonder how the Twilight series would do if instead of being a vampire the teenage heart throb merely picked peoples’ pockets or hacked their bank accounts instead of drank blood. I have every confidence that stealing peoples money is, actually, less socially acceptable than drinking their blood and stealing their soul. Would a teen thief be able to sustain a series of kiddies’ block busters or a movie? I mean as the main attraction instead of a cute side line.
It’s been my sad observation that there is no man so repulsive that they can’t find a woman, somewhere, who will waste her life for him. Our culture sets women up for that with the idea that they’ve got to have a man, or boy friend, that they’re nothing without one. Some women are lucky enough to have resisted that pervasive message but too many haven’t. Girls, I suspect, are more vulnerable to that pressure than adults. The anxiety of being a teenager makes every pressure explosive. I don’t think this is an innocuous trend in teen fiction, I think it’s symptomatic of the vampirism that women are subjected to in real life, and that’s no tall tale. There has to be something that explains how something so counter-intuitive is so pervasive in our far less than girl-friendly pop-culture.
* I’m not opposed to vampire stories on principle, I do actually have a favorite vampire story, “Blood Libel” by Leigh Ann Hussey about a Jewish vampire, helped by a wise Rabbi who finds a way for him to retain his humanity and his place in a community. It was a very delicate handling of a very charged libel of real anti-Semitism.
I know you think you’re in love with him but you don’t have that much experience. What if he’s not as serious as you are? No. No. It doesn’t reassure me that he calls you “sweetheart”, I’ve seen how he looks when he says it. And you’re the one who wanted to try going vegetarian. You remember how long that lasted?
And what if he is serious? I mean when you’re older than fourteen. What if you get married? What about the children? You think your brother’s a pain in the neck but, believe me, there are worse. Yes, your cousin Howie is a good example of one but as far as I know he doesn’t suck blood. Yes, yes, I know you think I’m OC about that one but it really isn’t his most attractive feature. Come to think of it, you used to like a boy with a tan. I knew letting you stay after for that project was a mistake. You’d never have been there while night school was in session....
And what about as you get older. What about mid-life crisis. You remember your father. I mean, the boy’s got problems now that a broken collar bone and tattoo removal won’t cure. What if he goes off the deep end? You have no guarantee that he won’t have some kind of hormonal imbalance and start chasing after ..... And, come to think, how long does a vampire’s mid-life crisis last? You’re setting yourself up for an eternity of heartbreak. No, I think the best thing to do is to just cut it off. Oh, you’re just being overly dramatic, it’s not like you’re putting a knife in his heart. Besides, he’ll get over that. No, I’m putting my foot down. I don’t want you seeing him again. Bars on your window? Well, if that’s what it takes, though your father thought wire mesh would be more effective.
OK, that’s it. You’re grounded. What do you mean in more ways than I can imagine?
Update: Biting Vampires As Ideal boyfriends? Good grief.
The idea of the vampire as being sexually alluring is something that is clearly demented, no, make that perverted. It was bad enough when the colorless old man of Stoker’s Dracula turned into the young, black and white greaser of Bela Lugosi, then the technicolor dry look Frank Langella. The idea of a man slipping into a woman’s bed room at night and vampirizing her as romance might be less sick than the romanticizing rape only due to the fact that vampires don’t exist. At least I hope there aren’t kids trying out biting people in the neck as a lifestyle choice, now that Hollywood is presenting the blood sucker as a white bread teen idol. I just don’t get it. But then, I never got The Leader of the Pack either. I haven't done a study of it, but I'll bet that female vampires preying on males are not generally portrayed as sympathetic, romantic characters. They might be seductive but they the ones I recall are only the more evil for that.
The vampire as a metaphor for beleaguered minority group boyfriend is worse than inappropriate, it’s offensive. If they existed vampires would be the embodiment of all of the lies told about the dangers of the dangerous “other”*. If they existed, they would actually be cunning, dangerous, predatory killers, stealing not only the lives of their victims but their very souls, condemning to eternal damnation. The vampire isn’t just the boy from the wrong side of the tracks, though, as in the first paragraph, I’ve got a feeling a vampire would be seen as more socially acceptable, as long as they dressed well, could feign middle-class manners and practiced enhanced oral hygiene.
You would think that this style of vampire was everything a you wouldn’t want in a man. He’s undead, bites people in the neck, drinks their very life essence and enslaves them to a half-life, isn’t handy with tools and can’t be relied to come home at a reasonable hour. They aren’t good life-companion material. I know I wouldn’t put up with one.
The advent of AIDS made the issue of blood even more dangerous, a more twisted literary device. I don’t get its increased popularity in pop-fiction as it becomes a clearer danger. But, then, I’ve watched my friends die of AIDS related diseases.
You wonder how the Twilight series would do if instead of being a vampire the teenage heart throb merely picked peoples’ pockets or hacked their bank accounts instead of drank blood. I have every confidence that stealing peoples money is, actually, less socially acceptable than drinking their blood and stealing their soul. Would a teen thief be able to sustain a series of kiddies’ block busters or a movie? I mean as the main attraction instead of a cute side line.
It’s been my sad observation that there is no man so repulsive that they can’t find a woman, somewhere, who will waste her life for him. Our culture sets women up for that with the idea that they’ve got to have a man, or boy friend, that they’re nothing without one. Some women are lucky enough to have resisted that pervasive message but too many haven’t. Girls, I suspect, are more vulnerable to that pressure than adults. The anxiety of being a teenager makes every pressure explosive. I don’t think this is an innocuous trend in teen fiction, I think it’s symptomatic of the vampirism that women are subjected to in real life, and that’s no tall tale. There has to be something that explains how something so counter-intuitive is so pervasive in our far less than girl-friendly pop-culture.
* I’m not opposed to vampire stories on principle, I do actually have a favorite vampire story, “Blood Libel” by Leigh Ann Hussey about a Jewish vampire, helped by a wise Rabbi who finds a way for him to retain his humanity and his place in a community. It was a very delicate handling of a very charged libel of real anti-Semitism.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Another presidential race (by Suzie)
The Unitarians and Universalists merged in 1961. The UU Association (UUA) has had seven presidents, all male, even though women make up more than half of our members and ministers. We have no formal barriers to keep women out of the presidency. In fact, UUs are notoriously liberal, and we have long supported women’s rights. Susan B. Anthony was born a Quaker, but attended a Unitarian church for most of her adult life. In 1863, Olympia Brown became a Universalist minister, the first woman to be regularly ordained by any denomination.
UUs don't always know our history. I once taught about Anthony in Sunday school (what we call “religious education”). The grade-school children knew and admired the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr, but they had learned little or nothing about any feminist leaders, including Anthony. (I've touched on this issue before, and Anna Belle has written more extensively here.)
Perhaps one reason women haven’t elected a woman is that many think it’s wrong to let gender influence them, as if living in this world didn't already influence who they consider competent and inspiring. (Can anyone think of an institution that has a majority of men but has never elected a male leader?)
In a blog this January, DianaKay compared the Dem primary to the UUA election in 2001 in which members chose a black man, the Rev. Bill Sinkford, over a white woman, the Rev. Diane Miller. Similarly, DianaKay, who supported Sinkford, was confident that “smart women” would resist “gender loyalty” and vote for Obama.
Many UUs were proud to elect their first African-American president. The United Church of Christ was the first major, predominatly white denomination to elect a black president in 1976. But some media, including this interview with Sinkford by Bill Maxwell, a well-known columnist who also is a UU, attributed that first to the UUA.
There are other reasons why our churches are predominantly white. For many years, UU fellowships and churches offered a haven of integration. In the 1930s, for example, Unitarians and Universalists opposed white supremacists in the Tampa Bay area. In 1955, the Unitarian Fellowship of Tampa evolved out of an interracial Great Books Discussion Group started that year by Unitarians. As time passed, however, other denominations welcomed people of color, giving them more choices.
Liberal whites sometimes forget that not all people of color are liberal in all of their views, as the recent votes on same-sex marriage illustrated. UU churches welcome gay people, as well as atheists, pagans and others who might trouble someone from a conservative Christian background.
UU churches are committed to social justice, but not everyone includes gender. Look at this debate between the two candidates for UUA president, the Revs. Laurel Hallman and Peter Morales, in 2009.
Sinkford: Certainly the press thought it was an important event. Papers from the New York Times right on down ran feature stories about that, and I think, pretty clearly, Unitarian Universalists thought it was important.I guarantee that electing a woman would not have gotten the same media attention. Like other institutions, UU churches seek good publicity, and we want growth. Some people think that having a black president helps attract people of color to our churches. In contrast, there is no “added value” in electing a female president because women are already in the majority. A female president might even deter some men who already think of church as female space.
Maxwell: Although the UUA had more ministers in the civil rights movement, including the march from Selma to Montgomery with Dr. Martin Luther King, why does the UUA have such a hard time attracting black members today?
Sinkford: That's probably the most commonly asked question I get as I travel extensively in the United States to our congregations. My standard response is that for a faith community that is still predominantly white, it is not spiritually grounded to go out and try to acquire a few more dark faces so that the white members of the congregation feel better about themselves.In 1968, the UUA committed a million dollars for reparations to African-Americans, but ended up paying only half of that, Sinkford said. He said he and others felt betrayed and left the church. Some churches also have a hard time recruiting black members because they moved into “lily-white suburbs,” he said. For a long time, intellect dominated UU churches, rather than the “heart,” he said, but that’s changing. I guess that presumes that whites are more likely to have higher education.
There are other reasons why our churches are predominantly white. For many years, UU fellowships and churches offered a haven of integration. In the 1930s, for example, Unitarians and Universalists opposed white supremacists in the Tampa Bay area. In 1955, the Unitarian Fellowship of Tampa evolved out of an interracial Great Books Discussion Group started that year by Unitarians. As time passed, however, other denominations welcomed people of color, giving them more choices.
Liberal whites sometimes forget that not all people of color are liberal in all of their views, as the recent votes on same-sex marriage illustrated. UU churches welcome gay people, as well as atheists, pagans and others who might trouble someone from a conservative Christian background.
UU churches are committed to social justice, but not everyone includes gender. Look at this debate between the two candidates for UUA president, the Revs. Laurel Hallman and Peter Morales, in 2009.
Question 4: On the topic of anti-racism and anti-oppression: What experiences have you had that help you deeply understand the mindset and values of another culture? Are there practical things you will do to help congregations take authentic steps of transformation?Mentioning “another culture” limits this discussion to ethnicity. Focusing on multiculturalism, with no talk of gender, tilts in favor of Morales, who said: “There is no substitute … for the experiential.” In other words, as a Latino, he has lived with oppression. Hallman, who’s a non-Hispanic white, can make no such claims as an “authentic insider.” But that doesn’t stop her from discussing efforts on her Web site on anti-racism, anti-oppression and multiculturalism, with no mention of sexism. On his Web site, Morales said:
We point with pride to our forebears who were in the vanguard in the struggle against slavery, rights for women and the civil rights movement. Today our compassion and love for justice lead us to confront the great moral issues of our time: racism, human rights, immigration, economic justice, rights for GLBTQ people, and preservation of life on our planet.”It looks like “rights for women” no longer makes the cut. Morales wants a “truth and reconciliation” process in which white congregants own up to their insensitivity. When will male congregants confess sins of sexism?
Morales wrote: “Many minority ministers have had tragic experiences in our congregations.” Yes, some congregants (of different colors) are insensitive and ignorant about other cultures. But I’d be amazed if a UU committed a hate crime based on race or religion. Yet there are liberal men who have such twisted feelings about women that they brutalize them. I’ve written before about the UU member in a neighboring congregation who killed his two children, his ex-wife and her new partner. Shouldn’t we be taking “authentic steps of transformation” to stop domestic violence and other forms of abuse and discrimination among our members?
At our General Assembly, UU Women & Religion decided to support Hallman for UUA president. The Rev. Shirley Ranck, co-convener of W&R, posted:
For me as a woman G.A. was somewhat disappointing. Although I was pleased to see that there were many presentations being made by women on all kinds of topics, I was sad to see that there was almost no mention of women's concerns or issues of particular interest to women in any presentations by women or men. One particularly grievous example was a panel on international UU theology. A man introduced the program and every one of the six presenters from countries around the world was male. Not one of them ever mentioned women at all.
I did enjoy talking with the few people who managed to find our W&R booth, but I couldn't help but wonder how the placement of particular booths is decided. I am also wondering if our work on behalf of women, like the work of the 19th century Unitarian and Universalist feminists will be forgotten until some new generation of women in the future is motivated to dig our stories out of some obscure archives. What is it that we need to do, my sisters, to keep women from once again being overlooked and undervalued?----------
Considering what I've written, why do I go to a UU church? I have great friends there, I need a community, and where I live, I haven't found any better place.
Friday critter blogging (by Suzie)
I don't know about you, but this may be the Funniest Cat Video I'll Ever See.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Nasty Post III
This is a part of a series on things that piss me off but which don't fall under any other suitable title in my internal filing systems, the kind of things which make my blood pressure rise momentarily but which are usually not worth taking a whole discussion thread into a different direction.
Right now I'm annoyed by a certain kind of quantity-and-quality blindness of so many commenters on political blogs. To give you an example (biased towards my own concerns, natch), consider this exchange that I have had many times:
First I say that many in the media treated Hillary Clinton with sexist arguments when she ran in the presidential primaries and I give examples of those arguments and their frequency. Second, I'm told that this is nothing new as conservatives used to write about John Edwards as the Breck boy and as the guy with the pricey haircuts. The conclusion to be drawn: There is no special sexism that Hillary Clinton was exposed to. All political candidates are called monsters and castrating bitches and so on, I guess.
There are two errors in that counterargument; one of quantity and one of quality. The former has to do with just the number of sexist references that female politicians (such as Hillary Clinton) are exposed to. They are many, many times more common than sexist references aimed at male politicians in the past, and to pretend that the quantitative difference doesn't exist leads to the wrong conclusion.
The latter error has to do with equating two very different types of sexist slurs. Men like John Edwards or Barack Obama (remember Obambi?) are accused of acting like girls by their opponents. Women like Hillary Clinton are also accused of acting like girls by their opponents (she cried! it worked!), but they are also accused of transcending all gender borders and of entering some sort of a world where they transform into monsters, Ice Queens and bitches from hell. The language in the latter case is much stronger, more primal and vicious and the basis for gender transgressions almost infinite. Men can be ridiculed by comparing them to women. Women can be ridiculed as women, too, but they can also be ridiculed by accusing them of being pseudo-men or of something subhuman altogether.
I recommend this little experiment: Google various combinations of 'ambition' and 'politician' and note the proportion of the hits you get which apply to female politicians. Then remember that there aren't that many female politicians to begin with. This was something I noticed said about both Hillary Clinton and to Sarah Palin: that they are driven by nothing but naked ambition. What are male politicians driven by, I wonder? Altruism and the desire to find enlightenment?
Even though my examples apply to one particular topic, the tendency to assume that an assertion about general tendencies can be defeated by one counterexample is more common than that. All such a counterexample proves (assuming it's a real one) is that the general tendency is not a total one.
The Center Right America?
You may have read this article a few weeks ago. It argues that despite the 2008 presidential election results America is at core a conservative country rather than a liberal country. Then others responded to the initial article and the game was on.
I never got to writing on the topic, what with all those other attractive topics out there, but I still have some opinions on it. These are opinions, mind you, not evidence or facts, though they don't conflict with the evidence that I have seen. In any case, to write about the evidence is kinda boring, because I'd have to start by discussing what people might mean with the words 'conservative' and 'liberal' and how we can measure something called 'center-right' and how fiscal conservatism and social conservatism are treated in those definitions and so on. Are you not glad you avoided that?
So onwards and upwards to my opinions. One of my most striking first impressions about this country (right after the size of the cars on the roads) was the very open distrust and dislike of the government. All sorts of people expressed it to me, not just fiscal conservatives.
This hatred of the government wasn't similar to the complaints and criticisms I had heard in Europe; it was a deeper reaction, perhaps something passed on by earlier generations, something which saw the government as a breathing and scheming creature, alive and desiring our hearts' blood. People gathered together in a market place were good, people gathered together to govern were bad.
I recall filing this hatred of the ruling classes under the consequences of the religious persecution many early immigrants from Europe had experienced and the way such memories are passed on through generations. But this may be only partially correct. The distrust of the government has now entered into the general American mythology, and that distrust is both stronger than in other countries I know about and slightly different in quality. Perhaps more primal.
At the same time, Americans are not especially conservative concerning government policies, rather the reverse. Or at least the majority of responses in polls about how much money to spend on public education and whether we should have a single-payer health care system can be quite leftish if the questions are framed a certain way. If the questions are framed in a different way, well, we get support for the idea that this country is at heart conservative.
Note that the discussion on this fascinating topic rarely distinguishes between social conservatism and fiscal conservatism, even though the two are not always twinned with each other. It would be quite possible for Americans to be, on average, social conservatives and fiscal liberals or vice versa. Given the religious right in this country, it's no wonder that Americans, on average, express less egalitarian gender views than people in other countries of the same economic type.
All that sounds like waffling, and it is. But the question about the inherent nature of Americans is an impossible one to answer in some quick-and-facile way. It also doesn't pay enough attention to the way public opinion is molded by the media and the propaganda people and it doesn't pay enough attention to the way the system of government in this country is an inherently foot-dragging one. It's hard to make change happen.
At the same time, the United States is really a collection of smaller countries and those countries tend to have very different levels of conservatism. Louisiana is not Massachusetts, for example.
If I had to express a decisive opinion on this overall question I'd probably start with pointing out that Obama really should have won by gigantic margins, given the actual history of George Bush's reign and the levels of damage the Republican ideology has caused this country and the world, from unnecessary wars to economic catastrophe. That the margins were not that gigantic is a little frightening. But it doesn't necessarily mean that the average American or even the average voter is conservative when it comes to the policies they'd like to see executed. I'd look for that conservative effect in the institutions of this country, in the way money plays a big role in who actually has the freedom to be heard in politics and in the way the media tends corporate in its coverage choices.
What's The Bush Administration Up To, These Final Days?
Making endangered animals more endangered:
For more than 30 years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service have reviewed any federal plans that could potentially protect endangered animals or plants. Under the administration's proposed rule, these independent scientific reviews would no longer be required if the agency in question determined that its activities would not hurt the imperiled species.
It's a twofer, angering environmentalists and also showing a nice anti-science side.
Knitting Little Booties First
Amanda (of Pandagon) quipped that might become one of the requirements for getting an abortion in the state of Texas:
The ultrasound proposal, by Sen. Dan Patrick , R-Houston and state Rep. Frank Corte Jr., R-San Antonio, would require women who seek an abortion to first have an ultrasound — although they would not be required to view the image — and to listen to the fetal heartbeat.
"Once an ultrasound is performed, and a woman sees it, she may decide to change her mind and not have the procedure," Patrick said, "and that's a wonderful thing, if that woman decides to keep that baby or put it up for adoption."
A similar proposal passed the Senate last year but stalled in the House.
With Democrats gaining more seats in the House, the ultrasound bill's chances might be even worse this time, said Sherri Greenberg , a fellow at the Center for Politics and Governance at the LBJ School of Public Affairs.
Amanda also pointed out that the ultrasound proposal assumes that most pregnant women are too stupid to realize that pregnancy means an embryo or a fetus inside that uterus thingy.
The proposal is unlikely to pass which is a good thing. Should we then ignore such proposals? I don't think so. They need to be dragged into daylight so that we are aware of all that's brewing in those wingnut political kitchens.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
The Well Is Dry
Tonight, the well being the source of my inspirations. I wanted to write about the frogs and toads and centipedes at the bottom of the well, how their silvery sharpness throws back the blind eye of the full moon, how very much I want to catch one of them and make it sing its song and how I cannot because no ladder reaches that bottom and in any case the well is dry.
The well is dry which means that my writing is parched and creaky and no topic pokes me in my tired froggy eyes and the moon isn't full or even gibbous (what an awful word, sounding like something in the slobbery mouth of a gibbon). Now write all that again without adjectives.
Can you tell that I have been reading books of advice for aspiring writers? Whatever their benefit to others, I think that I should stay the hell away from them. The ones that are most dangerous to me are those which tell us how to fish for the perfect word, the true sentence, the noblest paragraph. Those books make me despair.
File Under: Lifestyle, Women
That's where I found this little piece of news in the fairly lefty U.K. newspaper The Guardian:
A disturbing survey published by the White Ribbon Foundation in Australia shows that one third of boys believe "it's not a big deal to hit a girl", one in seven thinks "it's OK to make a girl have sex with you if she was flirting" - and one in seven girls has experienced sexual assault or rape.
This echoes a Sheffield University study of 35 teens, in which boys freely admitted trying to get girls drunk to have sex with them. The study's author concluded that sex education needs to start strengthening girls' self-esteem and encouraging male empathy. I suspect that tackling the rape culture is going to necessitate much more radical measures too, including addressing the rise of violent pornography, sexist advertising, lap dancing clubs, stag party sex tourism ...
Buckle up everyone - it's a long road ahead.
I have never quoted the whole piece from some other source before. It seems warranted in this particular case, both because of the brevity of the piece and the treatment of the topic and that last odd sentence about a long road ahead. Not to mention the fact that findings about how many boys think rape is OK are filed under lifestyle/women.
It's as if the author of the piece knew that she was fighting a losing battle over the sexual objectification of young girls and that the only safe place to insert anything about this topic was on what used to be called the women's page. After all, who else would be interested in what teenage boys think about rape? Surely not their fathers, for instance.
Angels Singing
Or 'castratos in the eunuch choir', as Chris Matthews once described the men who supported Hillary Clinton. Today's New York Post has a piece on his fear of Hillary Clinton. It's a silly piece, including some long-distance diagnosing, but almost everything Chris Matthews says about women is even sillier. So here's how one clinical psychologist diagnoses Chris Matthews:
"Matthews is extremely threatened by Hillary Clinton and powerful women in general. He is not gay, but the guy is not interested in women, they don't excite him or send tingles up his leg.
Do you know what? I'm utterly uninterested in the possible motivations of Tweety's misogyny. I just want him to stop expressing it on my television screen, all the time pretending that it's serious political analysis.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
I Wonder
What the Bush administration is doing during these last days of its life? Might be worth a glance or two, especially with regard to all those political appointees that were installed in the last eight years:
Just weeks before leaving office, the Interior Department's top lawyer has shifted half a dozen key deputies -- including two former political appointees who have been involved in controversial environmental decisions -- into senior civil service posts.
The transfer of political appointees into permanent federal positions, called "burrowing" by career officials, creates security for those employees, and at least initially will deprive the incoming Obama administration of the chance to install its preferred appointees in some key jobs.
Similar efforts are taking place at other agencies. Two political hires at the Labor Department have already secured career posts there, and one at the Department of Housing and Urban Development is trying to make the switch.
Burrowing, it's called...
This Is Most Hilarious
More on poking Joe Lieberman with a loving Q-tip as a symbol of bringing the country together:
Anger toward Lieberman seems to have softened since Election Day, and Democrats didn't want to drive him from the Democratic caucus by taking away his chairmanship and send the wrong signals as Obama takes office on a pledge to unite the country. Lieberman had indicated it would be unacceptable for him to lose his chairmanship.
Uniting the country does not mean rewarding those who have acted like vindictive children, who have stuck their tongue out while giving speeches on behalf of the Other Party. You treat childish behaviors with a time-out.
I guess that last sentence about Lieberman finding the loss of his chairmanship 'unacceptable' means that he's going to go all Republican if he is denied his throne. Sigh. So why not say that?
Elections Have Consequences
Remember how George Bush told that to us after one of his past election victories? Elections Have Consequences.
Well, elections don't have consequences for Joe Lieberman, the Senator with the letter I after his name:
Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) easily won a vote to remain chairman of a key committee today and will stay in the Democratic caucus despite his high-profile criticism of President-elect Barack Obama and his support of Sen. John McCain during the presidential campaign.
I myself think that Joe acted like a traitor to his old party, but Harry Reid disagrees:
Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said that "Joe Lieberman is a Democrat. He's part of this caucus."
If the past Republican era was one where the Democrats came to face the Republicans' guns with old and rusty swords, the new Democratic era appears to be one where the main Democratic weapons are Q-tips.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Gay And Secular Fascism!
This is quite hilarious:
So the hordes of darkness want to impose their values on all right-thinking religous people? Like the value of letting those hordes of darkness get married? How is that imposing on some totally separate people?
In Newt Gingrich's world nothing distinguishes "you telling me how I should live" from "me telling you that you shouldn't determine how I live". They are symmetrical values. And anyone telling him that he shouldn't butt into other people's private lives is a fascist.
Of course Newt Gingrich preaching people on morals is always good for laughs.
A Short Post On The Role of Government in Recessions
Short, sweet and Keynesian: Recessions are times of economic shrinkage, of drawing back, of waiting to spend money, of deciding not to spend it. The more consumers do exactly that, the more firms are going to find their sales dropping, their profits evaporating and their employees excess baggage that should be unloaded. Add to that the current financial situation of local and state governments: Their tax revenues are down and so they are cutting back on spending, laying off workers and so on.
That exacerbates the spiral of shrinkages. As John Maynard Keynes pointed out, the government could work to counteract the business cycles, not to exacerbate them. This means that recessions are not the time for government belt-tightening, but the time for governments to actually spend more by taking out loans (if possible). The time to repay the loans is during the upswings of the business cycle. That would mean taxing people more then.
Why this doesn't work in practice is because voters will vote the high-taxing politicians out of office during booms. In a sense it's our own immaturity that is the biggest problem.
Scratching the Itch
Scott reacts to E.J. Dionne's piece about how to make pro-choice policies more palatable to anti-choice people:
I certainly respect E.J. Dionne far more than I do Will Saletan. But it must be said that his new column has a pretty strong whiff of the "originating policies pro-choicers have been advocating for many decades" routine that Saletan has patented. Apparently, the solution to ending the conflict over abortion includes "contraception programs, even if these are a sticking point for some social conservatives, along with 'programs that are going to encourage women to bring their children to term.' Among them: expanded health coverage for women and children, more child care, adoption help, and income support for the working poor." Since pro-choice liberals have pretty much always supported these policies and they don't seem to stop the anti-choice minority from supporting criminalization (as well as opposing most or all of these programs, almost as if reducing abortion rates isn't a terribly important goal for American "pro-lifers"), it's not clear what's actually supposed to change about the abortion politics here.
Scott later makes an important observation:
But the real problem with Dionne's argument is his apparent belief that enacting this (as stated) worthwhile program would somehow "make cultural warfare a quaint relic of the past." This won't happen, simply because anti-abortion politics tends to be bundled up with an array of other reactionary attitudes about women and sexuality that undercut support for other policies that will reduce abortion rates
Now to the gross title of this post: "Scratching the itch" is how some people describe having sex. It also explains how I feel right now: I have an itch, caused by reading guys discuss abortion policies with great confidence (including what to offer pregnant women so that they'd give birth rather than have abortions), an itch that I need to scratch right now.
But of course guys can write about these questions, of course. And Scott, in particular, is good people. Yet I still itch. This particular topic often has that effect on me, because while abstinence policies, say, are always presented as gender-neutral, they never are so in practice. It's the Purity Balls we get, all aimed at girls, but the boys still seem to come across with the idea that a Real Man at least tries to get into her panties, just now not with condoms at hand.
Perhaps that would be something that the guys could write about a little more: How to get young men to practice conscientious contraception.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Gender & hate crimes (by Suzie)
1. When we talk about violence, we need to stop disappearing gender. Society needs to continue to question why men are more likely to use violence, whatever the issue.
2. We need to remember that violence against women because of their gender often does not get reported as a hate crime. For example, the AP story quotes an expert at the Southern Poverty Law Center, but as far as I can tell, the law center still does not track crimes based on gender. Its programs, including the Teaching Tolerance curriculum, center on race, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation.
People at the Reclusive Leftist site can wonder if anger at Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin has morphed into more violence against women, but I don't know of anyone tracking that, not the way the Southern Poverty Law Center counts other hate crimes.
Fifteen years ago, I asked Richard Cohen, then the legal director for the law center, why it didn’t track crimes committed because of gender. He told me:
“In some ways, the problem of violence against women is so pervasive that it’s in kind of a different category altogether.” He said men’s anger toward women might be a “much more deep-seated psychological thing than racism.”
You would think that pervasiveness and deep roots would be an argument for inclusion, not exclusion.
You would think that pervasiveness and deep roots would be an argument for inclusion, not exclusion.
If feminism must fight all oppressions, as third-wave feminists believe, then we need to continue to ask groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center to include gender. If it doesn't have the resources, perhaps it could partner with a feminist nonprofit. That way, we could divide up the work, instead of saying feminists must do everything or nothing.
Writing As Carpentry
I've recently read the blogs of several writers, mainly out of curiosity, to see what writers that I like might be saying when they are not writing books. On the whole the experience has been disappointing. Most of those blogs talk about the carpentry of writing: how to condense 250 000 pages into some acceptable number, how to introduce a second voice, how to figure out the best opening chapter. I call this carpentry, because a reader is as interested in that as a fan of beautiful furniture might be about the precise details of its creation.
It could be that I'm the only reader who is not into all that. Neither am I especially excited about the other topics that often appear on those blogs: marketing of the books and the sniffles and coughs and aches of everyday living and where to go to get your book signed by the author.
All this is part of the new marketing trend in books: the writers must now do almost all the PR for their books, traveling the country on book-signing tours, appearing on television and radio nonstop and so on. It could be that this has always been the case, but somehow I think not. What I do think is that this is not the way we should be going, because being a good writer is in no way correlated with being a good marketer or a good speaker or a good media person.
That may be what is behind the author blogs and author websites and the whole idea that somehow the readers are not only interested in but have the right to know about how a particular writer saws the planks and creates the joins in the book: The Author As The Publishing Firm.
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