Booty Dance

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For some reason Ellen reminds me considerably of Teela Brown from Larry Niven's Ringworld novel. There are parallels...They're both about the same age, they both come off as naive, and they both can be rather intelligent when given a chance. They also seem to like to have sex with older men (though Ringworld's Louis Wu is...err...considerably older than QC's Steve). However, I doubt that Ellen possesses that most powerful of psychic powers, Author Control.


What is the Meaning of Human?

I very much enjoyed this article in today's New York Times on the severe faults of Intelligent Design (via Boing Boing). Intelligent Design is something that only works in your head if you don't think about it too hard. It's one of those diseases where the more you believe it, the less the likelyhood that you'll see the vast flaws in it sitting right in fornt of your face. ID is really a form of egotism..."Look at me, I'm a Picaaso! I have such a wonderful designer!"

Daniel Dennett calls evolution "Darwin's Dangerous Idea", and for good reason...It forces you too change your dialectic about viewing the Universe, and youself. If forces you to question your beliefs about fate, about meaning, and about purpose. If the fact that you're here is an accident, that you are the result of a myriad of random conditions ariving down one of a myriad of paths, than how can we say that any one of us has any special purpose or fate attached to us? How can any of us, mere pieces of matter, be any more special than any other pieces of matter? Your brain might be pretty complex, but is it any more complex than a star? Consciousness is just another process, not unlike nuclear fusion. It is not a gift. There are no gifts; only accidents.

Some people call that view depressing. They've been tought to expect gifts, to prize fate, to ponder meanings as if no other question has value. But, that's to be expected of people who have had their worldview torn asunder. Depressing? Certainly not. The correct word is liberating. We create our meanings. I mean, that's the whole point of Intelligent Design. It's a craving for meaning where some people feel meaning needs to be assigned. But that is like using a supercomputer to balance your checkbook; there are far more interesting things to ponder. For example, if we create our own meanings, what is the meaning of War? What is the meaning of Freedom? What is the meaning of Morality? What is the meaning of Imagination? What is the meaning of Knowledge? If we, human beings, are what we decide to be, what is it that we want to be? What is the meaning of Human?

Senate Bill 24

I saw this excellent editorial in the BGNews yesterday:
Senate Bill 24 doubts students, faculty By Megan Schmidt

If State Senator Mumper wasn't such an asshole, he'd make a great comedian. This is a man who told the Columbus Dispatch:

"80 percent or so of them (professors) are Democrats, liberals or socialists or card-carrying Communists."

Gee, Senator Mumper, are there 57 card-carrying Communists in the Defense Department, too? That quote just creeps me out...

In any event, this whole issue is nonexistant. Take a careful look at what Mumper (and dodos like Horowitz) are saying and you'll see what they're really after. What they claim is that professors are over politicising classrooms by presenting one-sided views, which leads to indoctrination of students.

There are really two issues at stake here. One is laughably minor and the other concerns the fate of our nation.

The indoctrination accusation is already a load of horse hockey. These are college students here, not 2nd graders. There's no indoctrination happening in college classrooms. If you're a student, you know the score...When a professor goes off about something controversial, there are two types of people in that room:

1. People who don't care.
2. People who already opposed the professors viewpoint and aren't changing their minds.
   

The issue is moot. The so-called complaints that dolts like Mumper gets are from people in option 2 there. Everyone else doesn't care, and no one got "indoctrinated". Unless a professor is running a cult, I'd have to say that claims of indoctrination are vastly exaggerated.

So, what's the real agenda here? Senate Bill 24 would require colleges to ensure that classes that cover controversial subjects present "balanced" viewpoints. This is designed to destroy departments like Women's Studies and American Culture Studies. If these departments were required to teach "balanced" courses, it would defeat the point of the exercise. These are departments that study history created by liberals of the past, read books written by liberals, and produce research on topics of interest to liberal causes. Most, if not all of the people who teach these courses and take these degrees are more liberal than the average person on the street. If you wanted to be blunt about it, you could say that these departments are taxpayer funded enclaves for people with unconventional political beliefs. That's what Horowitz and Mumper want to eliminate. It's also why they're deeply wrong.

By the same logic, you could call the Math department a taxpayer-funded enclave for people who love math. I mean, most of the population hates math and actively tries to avoid having to involve themselves in it. Should we try to target math departments for destruction? Astronomers seem to be more interested in the stars than most people, does that mean we should destroy that department too?

The fact is that colleges exist not only to educate students, but to act as incubators for research to be done in a myriad of relatively esoteric fields. The people who make up the Women Studies department, or the American Culture Studies are undoubtedly more liberal that most of the nation, but the fact is that researching the place of women in society and the effect of race on our society are just as worthy a project as supporting mathematics or psychology research. We're talking about universities here...Uni as in universal. The whole point of these institutions is to act as incubators for a diverse set of ideas in a diverse set of fields.

The society we have today is undoubtledly a knowledge based, post industrial society. We have a knowledge based economy and the Internet is a knowledge based communication system. Universities are to a knowledge based society what steel mills are to an industrial society. Without steel mills you don't have ships and trains and bridges and skyscrapers. Steel mills are the foundation that allows you to build everything else. In a knowledge based society, universities are the foundation, they allow you to build everything else. Whether or not Mumper and Horowitz like it, universities only work when they're allowed to work without restrictions, planting the seeds of the future in a diverse set of fields. In a society where change and growth come from unpredictable sources, the only way to ensure your future is to put your eggs into as many baskets as possible.

The Past Is Prologue...

I moved over all the old posts from my old blog so that all of my relatively recent Internet writings are all in one place and have the cool Blogspot.com look. You can find them using the archive links on the right.

It's interesting how much I've changed politically in the past year or so. Looking at some of those older posts, I looked fairly conservative, though if you asked me I'd try to pull off a "centrist" sort of thing, because even back then I was beginning to distrust the Bush Administration.

Those who know me know today know that I'm a pretty liberal guy. Admittedly, I used to be more libertarian, and admittedly I did listen to way, way too much right wing trash talk radio in the 90s. Since I've been at college and become aquainted with liberal philosophy and shit like Abu Ghriab and Issue 1 keep happening, I've become rather solidly liberal. So, there was a shift there where at the beginning I could still trust right-wingers and today I can't stand them. These entries from 2003 and 2004 capture that transition, and that's one of the reasons I wanted to preserve them. That entry from February 2004 was basically the last gasp of whatever remaining trust I had in the right. When Abu Ghriab happen, those last gasps left rather quickly. I guess you could say that if nothing else, the Bush Administration has been an enlightening intellectual experience for me.

In terms of most policy matters, my views on individual issues haven't actually changed (I've been solidly for seperation of church and state for as long as I can remember, etc), but I did have to break through the "liberals will ruin our country" bullshit that I picked up from the claptraps on the radio. On a few things, like Affirmative Action and things like universal healthcare and education, I've become more open minded, but most of my views haven't changed. What changed was my confidence in which side I can trust to run the country.

La Fille Aux Cheveux de Lin

Sometimes, I am astonished at how touching and emotional a work of art can be, no matter how simple it is. If you've never listened to Claude Debussy's "La Fille Aux Cheveux de Lin" (The Girl With The Flaxen Hair), do yourself a favor and let yourself get lost in it sometime. It's strikingly simple, but it tears at your heart. I've heard it perhaps dozens of times, but it never loses it's impact.

WBGU

I saw in the Blade today that WBGU FM, the FM station on campus, is holding a fundraising drive because their funding was cut...

Even as a person who loves radio, I've never found WBGU all that appealing. I've only really actively tuned into one of their shows, the 2AM techno thing they had a few years ago. Admittedly, more because it was effective at putting me to sleep with the repetative noises and things than any enjoyment I had for the music. Other than that, I've never found anything they do to be too exciting. On occasion I've tuned in to find a show where the music mostly consisted of a guy screaming into a microphone. I've also heard sports coverage so abysmal that it became transcendatly comedic.

Of course, I've got to admit that I have a major bias here because I tend to dislike listening to music on the radio. For some reason, listening to music on the radio is about as exciting to me as watching paint dry. When I think of what radio should be as a medium, I think of most of a good public radio station's weekend schedule, or the BBC World Service, or even the good old days of Art Bell's Coast To Coast show. This is not to say that I like talk radio (99% of which is total sludge), but that between the sludge of political talk and the drudgery of music, there lies a great expanse of awesome radio, and that's what I tend to like.

However, my personal biases aside, I have no doubt that part of WBGU's problem is that their goals all seem to contradict each other. They seem to want to be the "anti-Clear Channel" of pioneering anti-corporate radio, they want to be a sandbox for the dozens of volunteer hosts, they want to be very low budget, and they want to be a decent radio station. The current mishmash of talent, ideas, genres, and hosts seems to miss all of these goals, and it doesn't seem to garner a lot of listeners either. Honestly, outside of the dozens of DJs, who listens to this station?

I think that's a good question. Consider, this is a station that puts out less power than your average dorm microwave (they claim 1000W, but the FCC documents say 450W), so there's not really a huge market to work with here. Perhaps, years ago, there was a need for independent music radio, but today in the post-Shawn Fanning era, I think the audience for that has dwindled. WBGU seems to be driven by the uber-ultra-mega-indie scene (read: stuff no one has ever heard of and never will), and while there will always be a core group for that, it's never going to be too broad.

What I would like to see on WBGU is some creative talk content. As the shoestring budget WNIR in the Akron-Kent area can profess to, talk is cheap. Right now, as far as I know, the only talk content WBGU has is a half hour show hosted by...err...Daniel Boudreau. Regardless of my feelings about the man or his politics, I think that in general , rabidly political talk is not what most people want to hear. The beautiful thing about talk radio, and what most of the talk radio on commerical radio misses, is that talk radio can be about anything. You can talk about local issues (which we seem to have plenty of), you can talk about health, you can talk about music, you can talk about cars, you can talk about sports, you can talk about computers, you can talk about books, you can talk about the stars, you can talk about relationships...

Seriously, you can talk about literally anything. WNIR appeals widely to the Akron area because to the people of Akron, that is their radio. It's about their town. When Clear Channel came in and set up a station specifically to try to put WNIR out of business, it failed because what people already had was radio about themselves, and it doesn't get any better than that. In a nutshell WNIR is to the people of Akron what WBGU wants to be for the students of BGSU. There's a lesson there.

Daniel Boudreau Watch: Vol 1

The college paper here, the BGNews seems to be regularly printing columns written by my old Ethnics instructor, Daniel Boudreau. This makes sense, considering that whatever you think about the guy, it's clear he's always got an opinion, usually involving radical politics.

In class, it was rather apparent that even with a subject matter such as "Ethnics" (which roughly translates as "history as seen by the radical left"), he was constantly holding himself back from launching into full radical tirades. To be fair, the class was eminently thought provoking. I must say, I was rather pleased with myself, when discussing the impact of MLK jr. with him, I got him to say "American Imperialist Project". As nutty radical left vocab goes, that's solid gold.

Daniel Boudreau's February 9th column was "War glorification uncalled for". Now, I hate to try to say that Mr. Boudreau in some way represents a whole diverse wing of radical politics, because that's not quite fair, but all too often their writings can be identified rather quickly with two trademarks:

1. The chances that there will be a quotation or anecdote included from a member of the radical pantheon such as Howard Zinn or Noam Chomsky are about 92%. (Note that this rule also works for the radical right, though they tend to use the likes of Ayn Rand, the Bible, and Ronald Reagan)
   
2. They have so many things to complain about that the piece turns into a rambling, incoherant mess.

Here, Howard Zinn shows up in the 6th paragraph. More importantly, this piece is a hydra that goes off in so many directions that there's no focus. In one paragraph he's criticising the "deification" of the "Greatest Generation", then he's using Howard Zinn to criticise military harrowism, then he's discussing the death toll in the Second World War, and by the end he's opposing Bush's plans for Social Security.

In February 14th's piece, "Bush out of touch with citizens", Daniel Boudreau returns to discussing Social Security. This piece starts off strong, and does in fact have a pretty solid thesis. That the right is out to squeeze the life out of the middle class is not something I disagree with. However I take issue with the way this is accomplished. Take this, for example:

"Take a moment to let the implications of the president's commentary on Mary Mornin's everyday reality sink in. 'Uniquely American'? 'Fantastic?' This from a child of privilege who was raised in the pampering environs of Washington D.C. and the blue-blood communities of New England (though he does his damnedest to cultivate a good ole Texan boy persona), and who has never truly worked hard for anything in his life, seeing every opportunity come his way due to family connections."

That's pure character assassination. Look, I don't like Bush, and I don't like the right, but these people need to be attacked with the facts. Maybe I'm spoiled with the excellent factually based critiques I've been reading about the Social Security privitization plan (at Matthew Yglasias and elsewhere), and maybe I'm just totally sick of the character assassination I've seen lately (Michael Crichton, Eason Jordon, Ward Churchill, etc), but this shit has to stop.

It should be noted here, though, that as content on the BGNews opinion page goes, I've seen far, far, far worse.

More coverage of Daniel Boudreau's columns will occur as they happen...

It Just Works

Skype is one of the coolest applications I've seen in a long time. Who knew that the people who made Kazaa (which is made with the ground up remains of aborted fetuses) could create soemthign so cool?

Yes, We Have Gone Insane...

***Originally Posted to Modern Politics and You***

Yes, washingtonpost.com can now confirm that SpongeBob SquarePants Has No Gay Agenda.

Thank you James Dobson for giving the media the perfect story for exposing you for the tremendous asshole that you are.

Dr. Barnett: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace the Future

***Originally Posted to Modern Politics and You***

Over Labor Day weekend I was sitting around doing nothing and eventually decided to sit down in my broke-ass Target folding chair and watch some TV. Flipping around, I came to C-SPAN where a man was giving this fancy looking PowerPoint presentation. So I watched for a little bit, and as I did, I became entranced. Here was a man that was making sense.

When each of us opened our eyes on the morning of September 12th, 2001 and contemplated what we had all watched on the previous day, eacvh of us knew that the world had changed in some extremely important way. Moreover, we were all left with deep, stiring questions. Who were these terrorists? Why did they attack us? How could we be safe? How could we accomplish peace? Today, we still lack answers for these questions.

The tumultous days since May 2003 when President Bush declared major combat over in Iraq have been days of extreme uncertainty and soul searching for this nation. These days left us with more questions. How was a war in Iraq connected to 9/11? Was invading Iraq the right choice? Will we win in Iraq? Can we win in Iraq?

Every day, we are bombarded with so-called answers to these questions. The Moores, the Morrises, the Deans, the Limbaughs, the Coulters, the Hitchens, the Sullivans, the Chomskys, the Bushes, the Cheneys, the Powells, the Kerrys, and all the others have all tried to fill these gaps in our minds. The fact that these questions linger in our minds today is indicitive to me (at least) that none of those people have adequately answered these questions yet.

The crux of the problem is that our leaders have not adequately explained to us what the hell is going on. Bush's current explanation for us about why we are in Iraq is that we are there to "spread freedom", as if freedom comes from Smuckers or something. That's unacceptable. Our leaders have failed to establish serious goals for the future. The "global war on terror" has no defined end. Our leaders need to learn that leadership is not simply making decisions, it's guidance, it's direction, and currently it seems as if we have none. What we need is someone to explain to us what the hell is going on in the world, and where the United States, and our invasion of Iraq, fit into the big picture.

Enter Thomas Barnett, the man I saw on C-SPAN that night. A strategic planner at the Naval War College, Barnett is the kind of guy that I had always hoped existed somewhere within the government. He's does not seek to compress complex issues like 9/11 or Iraq into 30 second sound bites (crap like "they hate our freedom"). His mantra is thinking about war "in the context of everything else".

Today, Thomas Barnett is breaking into the mainstream with David Ignatius devoting a full op-ed column to his book "The Pentagon's New Map" today. The column gives a brief overview of Barnett's ideas. Various writings of Dr. Barnett's can be found on his website, a long with his excellent blog.

On the 20th, C-SPAN (having been rather impressed with his last appearence and probably having sold a ton of DVDs) is going to air a new taping of Barnett's "Brief" at 8PM EST along with a live call-in program afterwards at 9:30PM. I invite everyone to watch, because even if you don't agree with him, Dr. Barnett will get you thinking like almost no one else.

Thanksgiving and America

***Originally Posted to Modern Politics and You***

Ever noticed how the word "Thanksgiving" has the same kind of "so simple that anyone with a 2nd grade education could understand this" quality as the term "Homeland Security"? Heh, in any event...

Thanksgiving is probably the only truly American holiday. July 4th comes close, but then again, lots of nations celebrate an independence Day. We have other oddities such as Memorial Day and Labor Day, and perhaps Presidents Day, but these are more like simple excuses to have a day off rather than things we celebrate. On Thanksgiving, though, nearly everyone drops everything and spends time with family, and most likely has a meal that uses some variation on the turkey-cranberry sauce-stuffing paradigm. It's a much bigger deal than your average excuse to sleep late day.

Thanksgiving is oddly reflective of our nation's quasi-secular/quasi-religious nature. Here we have a holiday where one is presumably giving thanks to a certain "God", and yet unlike most religious holidays the traditional idea of a Thanksgiving revolves more around turkey and stuffing than spending time in a place of worship.

Thanksgiving is also representative of our nation's various obsessions with the oddest events. Here we are essentially celebrating how a bunch of nutty religious dissidents got thrown out of England, were afraid of the cultural freedom of the Dutch, and made the hilarious unwise decision to shake the bees nest of fate by setting up a colony in America without having a clue how to survive. Following the deaths of most of the colonists, the following autumn they decided to celebrate the fact that some natives had shown them how to go another winter without finishing the starving to death business. This cooperation between two cultures is supposed to be inspiring or something, even though we know the rest of the story where the successors of these religious dissidents go on to generally kill or otherwise oppress most of the natives on the continent.

It may come off like I'm somehow demeaning Thanksgiving, but I'm not. Generally, the older a holiday is, the more bat-shit insane the story behind it becomes (Random Thought: Ever notice how in a lot of Natvity scenes, the newborn baby Jesus is the size of a two year-old?). Holidays, in a sense, are not about the reason the holiday exists. The usefulness of using holidays to preserve the memory of the past probably started to dwindle when the printing press was invented in the West. Today, what holidays are really about lies in how the people of the present day celebrate that holiday. The memory of Saint Patrick is in very few people's mind on St. Patrick's Day and only the barest few people here in the U.S. know anything about Cinco de Mayo beyond the fact that the number 5 and the month of May are involved. These holidays are really socially condoned occasions to get smashed. With New Year's Eve we've taken this idea to it's logical conclusion and we celebrate the occasion of an accumulator register adding a one..."year++...Let's party!!!"

Thus, what's comforting to me about Thanksgiving and reassuring to me of the condition of our society is how it's still a holliday genuinely devoted to family and togetherness (unlike Christmas which has become genuinely devoted to getting free stuff). This is family values in it's true form, not the "people smiling too much who hate gays" form. This is a holiday that reflects the place of love in our society and also that despite some appearences, we truly appreciate what we have. We have New Year's to celebrate life. We have Independence Day to celebrate liberty. On Thanksgiving, we celebrate the pursuit of happiness.

I Don't Know Which One Scares Me The Most

***Originally Posted to Modern Politics and You***

As you probably are aware NBC News recently aquired footage of a Marine in Iraq shooting an injured insurgent who had apparently already surrendered in the head.

This, in itself is pretty disturbing.

Now, however, right-wing bloggers are circulating a petition stating:

It is my opinion that NOTHING should happen to this American Marine. He should be returned to his unit or be given an honorable discharge. We don't need our young men and women taking an extra second to decide if its right to shoot an enemy terrorist when that could mean that one of our soldiers could lose their life. The lives of our soldiers should be the single most important factor in this war against terrorism. The rights of terrorists can come second.

As of this posting, over 130,000 people have signed that petition. I'm sure this is my current lack of sleep talking, but that almost makes me want to cry.

No human being has ever died for a thing. People fight over and die for ideas. America is nothing without the ideas we claim to stand for. Freedom, justice, morality, ethics, reason, due process...They are all just words unless you make them happen. We may not always live up to these ideals, but unless we try to make them happen, our words, our worth nothing. I cannot see how someone can claim to "love America" and at the same time sign a petition urging that we look the other way at a war crime. Moreover, a war against terrorism must be a war for humanity, not against it.

A Lament For a Noble Dream

***Originally Posted to Modern Politics and You***

Web design expert/CSS guru/Cleveland resident Eric Meyer has posted a touching dirge-like short essay on his dissapointment with the passage of Ohio's Issue 1 and other anti-gay marriage laws like it...

"This isn’t an attack on America, and it isn’t a promise to leave, and it isn’t a story with any kind of decent ending. It’s a glimpse into one citizen’s inner disappointment. It’s an attempt to exorcise some of my frustration, and to plead a case, however clumsily. It’s a lament for a noble dream, one we seem to have forgotten in the heat and noise of our harried, fearful lives."

Chistopher Hitchens: Dissenter Within Dissenters

***Originally Posted to Modern Politics and You***

By now, I have come to realize that I am quite the commited liberal. If people like me (freethinking, non-religious, etc) are to exist in the future, liberalism is the only path to follow. If we have a true comittment to a more equal society, liberalism is the only path to follow. If we want a truly moral society based on rationality and individualism rather than what an old book tells us to do, then liberalism is the only path to follow.

With that said, there is a certain element of self-delusion in modern liberalism. There is that "faith" that because we're right, because we know we're right and we know why we're right, than rationally others will agree with us. Perhaps that would be true if philosophy was required in every school, but until then, you cannot beat religious zeal in the "faith" department. The recent election is a testament to that.

As a result, I think people like Christopher Hitchens, who takes the same set of assumptions and facts that most liberals work with and arrive at a different conclusion, are supremely important. Some people looke at Christopher Hitchens and see a traitor to the liberal cause. That's not really true. Rather, he is more like a dissenter within the dissenters. He does the soul-searching that perhaps we should be doing more often.

Today, Hitchens's column at Slate is entitled "Bush's Secularist Triumph", which is sure to raise some ire in the liberal community. However, as always, Hitchens weaves a fascinating argument. The enemies of secularism, he warns, are not the fundimentalists, the homophobics, and the creationists...The real enemies of secularism are the Islamicists, those who wish to create fundimentalist states, such as Osama Bin Ladin. In that sense, he argues, Bush has done more for secularism than any modern liberal.

I'm not saying I agree with this argument totally. What I like about it is that Hitchens picks up on the fundimental sort of paradox in modern liberalism. Modern liberals are very quick to define a sense of objective right and wrong in domestic affairs. The Civil Rights movement is an excellent example here. The motivation behind that movement was clearly that racism and segregation were wrong, no matter what the argument. There was a very clear moral component at work there. And yet when it comes to foreign policy, the argument is that we should not interfere in other countries, that we should let other cultures define themselves. What happened to objective right and wrong? Hitchens does a very good job highlighting the problem here:

"From the first day of the immolation of the World Trade Center, right down to the present moment, a gallery of pseudointellectuals has been willing to represent the worst face of Islam as the voice of the oppressed. How can these people bear to reread their own propaganda? Suicide murderers in Palestine—disowned and denounced by the new leader of the PLO—described as the victims of "despair." The forces of al-Qaida and the Taliban represented as misguided spokespeople for antiglobalization. The blood-maddened thugs in Iraq, who would rather bring down the roof on a suffering people than allow them to vote, pictured prettily as "insurgents" or even, by Michael Moore, as the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers."

Now, I don't for a second believe that the people that represent those views represent the core of modern liberalism. On the contrary, they are merely a very vocal minority. However, liberals have not disowned these people either, and that's Hitchens objection. If secularism really is the goal, and it is the goal because it breeds more peaceful, more open, and more free societies, why isn't just as much of a goal overseas as it is on American soil? Hitchens scolds that:

"Secularism is not just a smug attitude. It is a possible way of democratic and pluralistic life that only became thinkable after several wars and revolutions had ruthlessly smashed the hold of the clergy on the state. We are now in the middle of another such war and revolution, and the liberals have gone AWOL. I dare say that there will be a few domestic confrontations down the road, over everything from the Pledge of Allegiance to the display of Mosaic tablets in courtrooms and schools. I have spent all my life on the atheist side of this argument, and will brace for more of the same, but I somehow can't hear Ralph Ingersoll or Clarence Darrow being soft and cowardly and evasive if it came to a vicious theocratic challenge that daily threatens us from within and without."

And what we have here, is the very definition of dissent.

Friedman Gets It

***Originally Posted to Modern Politics and You***

I think it's fair to say that the NYT's Thomas Friedman gets the point...

My problem with the Christian fundamentalists supporting Mr. Bush is not their spiritual energy or the fact that I am of a different faith. It is the way in which he and they have used that religious energy to promote divisions and intolerance at home and abroad. I respect that moral energy, but wish that Democrats could find a way to tap it for different ends.

Whither Jesusland?

***Originally Posted to Modern Politics and You***

I found myself, after Tuesday night, doing some serious thinking. I suspect that many others did some serious thinking as well...

But now what we are seeing is an angry backlash, one that blames religion for Bush's victory. You may have seen the joke cartoon going around about seperating the U.S. into the "United States of Canada" and "Jesusland" to the south...

Here's a better example. This is what Jane Smiley said in a piece today on Slate:

Here is how ignorance works: First, they put the fear of God into you—if you don't believe in the literal word of the Bible, you will burn in hell. Of course, the literal word of the Bible is tremendously contradictory, and so you must abdicate all critical thinking, and accept a simple but logical system of belief that is dangerous to question. A corollary to this point is that they make sure you understand that Satan resides in the toils and snares of complex thought and so it is best not try it.

Now, as an atheist, when I read something like that, I do have a degree of sympathy for that point of view...In my own mind, I have wrestled with ideas like this, that perhaps religion truly is the "opiate of the masses". There have been times when I have gotten seriously angry thinking about religion. However, I was quick to realize that hate and intolerance are not the answer here. My anger will change nothing. I will never gaze upon a United States where a majority of people consider themselves agnostic or atheistic. That's the way it is. I have accepted that I live in a country where religion plays a serious role in everything.

Would it be better if we lived in a more secular society? Yes, in fact it would. The important word there is society. A more secular society is not one where people are forced to give up their religion, but one where the government and the structure of society is neutral to one's religion.

Jane Smiley is wrong. The ignorance we are facing today in America is not religion, but the idea that only one religion can be truly American (in my mind I imagine a man with a southern accent speaking into a poor telephone reciever about how this is a "Christian nation" on some talk radio show...). The problem with "Jesusland" is not the "Jesus", it's the "land". The problem is that religious people don't seem to understand the value of not embedding a certain brand of faith in everything.

What the religious people in this country have to understand is that Seperation of Church and State is pro-religion. It's pro every religion, including that 66% of the world that isn't Christian. That's the idea. If one stops viewing policy in a "Jesus-centric" light, one sees that we need a government that is neutral to religious matters can does not make decisions based on an intrepretation of faith.

Attacking the faith of millions of Americans will not accomplish that goal.

55 Million

***Originally Posted to Modern Politics and You***

Before everyone gets too depressed with Bush winning...Just think, 55 million Americans got the message and voted against him. 55 million.

Ohio...*sigh*

***Originally Posted to Modern Politics and You***

What I state I live in...In a single night we ban gay marriage or anything that even looks like it after 5 shots of Jager and we give the election to Bush...

The urban areas tried, hell yes they tried...Cuyahoga County, Summit County, Franklin County, Mahoning County, Montgomery County...All the urban areas but Hamilton County basically. So, if you're unhappy with the President you have for the next four years, blame Cincinatti.

...And here is Robert Novak making an ass of himself on CNN...Now we have to listen to the increasingly assinine conservatives blow afterburner-heated air...Ugh...

Election Hysteria

***Originally Posted to Modern Politics and You***

It seems to me that there is some sort of rule that everyone has to go totally batshit insane right before a major election.

I mean, look at these quotes...

First off, George Will, who I have long respected as a thinker, despite his conservatism...But then he said this yesterday:

"Which candidate can be trusted to keep faith with these people? Surely not the man whose party is increasingly influenced by its Michael Moore faction.

As opposed to the man whose party has their head so firmly shoved up the fundimentalist Christian right's ass that he backed an ammendment to put homophobia into the Constitution? Mr. Will, the student of history he is, must see the utter idiocy of ammending the Constitution to restrict people's rights rather than to expand them. Will follows that up with this beauty...

"Kerry is more than merely comfortable with liberalism's preference for achieving its aims through judicial fiats rather than political persuasion — by litigation rather than legislation. That preference for change driven by activist judges rather than elected representatives expresses liberalism's condescension about the normal American's capacity for thriving without government tutelage."

I always wondered what GOP talking points would look like if they had SAT vocabulary words thrown in. Unfortunately, it's the "activist judges" talking point that gives it away.

However, George Will's comments are peanuts compared to this...On the 27th, right-wing blogger Roger Simon informed the world that...

If the Kerry does win, the mainstream media will have gotten him elected with their biased coverage and they will pay for it more than they could imagine. And it will be the blogosphere and you, our supporters, who will make them pay. Our strength will grow incremently with a Kerry victory in terms of influence and even economic power. And both will be at the expense of the mainstream media. Yes, we too have "plans."

That's not only hillarious, it's a more than a bit disturbing. So, Mr. Simon, Abu Graib should mean nothing to the American people? 380 tons of missing world class high explosive should mean nothing to the American people? The complete lack of any weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq should mean nothing to the American people? The hillarious refusal of the Bush Administration to admit it's faults should mean nothing to the American people? Nevermind the implication of some sort of revenge for the decision of the people. He seems to be missing the point of democracy here. Any way you look at it, that quote is positively psychotic.

The news isn't all bad...Contrarian and occasional Bush supporter Christopher Hitchens had this to say today:

"Neither electoral outcome can alter that. It's absurd for liberals to talk as if Kristallnacht is impending with Bush, and it's unwise and indecent for Republicans to equate Kerry with capitulation. There's no one to whom he can surrender, is there? I think that the nature of the jihadist enemy will decide things in the end."

Someone talking sense on the eve of an election?...The explanation here is that Hitchens isn't yet a naturalized citizen and cannot vote for President yet...Thus, he must be immune to election hysteria.

Re: Documentaries

***Originally Posted to Modern Politics and You***

Hmmm...I have a class to get here, so I'll make this quick.

I think the root of my problem with F9/11 is not the politics of the movie (I mean, all Moore wants us to do is vote for Kerry, and I'm already doing that for my own reasons). My real problem is that my intellectual life has been very much shaped and molded by excellent documentaries...Cosmos, Connections, The Day The Universe Changed, Ascent of Man, and many others have all been very important influences for me. All of those series, while they merely stated a series of facts, did so with the purpose of advancing the notion of a more secular, science based society...The idea of trusting in technology and not theology. In that respect, they are all very controversial works.

The beauty of them though, is that they were, under microscopic inspection, right with the details. They create a sort of thread with fact and history and weave it into a tapestry of a worldview. You can challenge the message, but you can't challenge the facts. It works like any well reasoned argument.

There's a bond of trust there between the viewer and the filmmaker.

Morris's Fog of War does something similar in the realm of political dissent. There were very obvious parallels there between the historical view he presented of the Vietnam War, and the mistakes that were being made then, and then the mistakes that Morris saw happening with our current policy in Iraq.

Michael Moore rips all that to shreds. All he cares about is the message, and he will make any accusation, use any innuendo or mold any circumstancial evidence that he needs to produce that message. "Documentaries" like that belittle and soil the legacy of the documentary format by breaking the bond of trust with the viewer. Moore doesn't even make an attempt to establish that trust with the viewer.

Moore has defended this problem by claiming that his works are comedy, not documentary. That, in itself is bullshit. He won an Oscar for a "documentary" (somehting that confoundes me to this day). Everyone knows he makes "documentaries"...He cannot simply change that by claiming a different format. As long as he is making "documentaries", he still soiling the format, no matter what excuse he uses.

If Moore wants to make brilliant, brilliant comedy, he can go right ahead. But as of yet, he has not. He's still making these petty "documentaries".

Now, the people who have decided to counter Moore with Moore-like material, are just as much part of the problem as Moore is. They are solving nothing.