Category Archives: Politics

And thus it begins

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Well, less than two days after Osama bin Laden’s execution and the LA Times already has a front-page article on the numerous allegations that bin Laden’s death was staged. Cindy Sheehan, Alex Jones and the usual scum are arguing that it was all faked to give Obama a boost.

I really don’t understand these people’s view of humanity. They seem to believe that it would be no problem getting the — at minimum — 20 or 30 people necessary to fake such an operation (some of them Pentagon types and likely political enemies Obama) to sign on to such a conspiracy and keep their mouths shut for life. It’s the 9/11 conspiracy nonsense (or birth or conspiracy for that matter) all over again. Even though it flies in the face of anything a non-retarded person knows about human behavior.

I’m reminded of an old lecture on video I once saw given by neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky. He noted a study in which the families of schizophrenics were investigated. Amongst such as families was a higher than normal percentage of, well, basically wackos. Religious nuts, Trekkies, people really into fantasy novels. They refer to these people as schizotypals. They’re not officially crazy, but they’re not normal either. Part of their deficit is their sense of certainty — their ability to believe largely kooky fantasies without an ounce of doubt. Which sounds a lot like these conspiracy nuts. It would be interesting to round these conspiracy fanatics up and perform some brain experiments on them searching for signs of schizotypal behavior. Then they could all be gassed.

Religulous is largely ridiculous

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I finally caught “Religulous,” Bill Maher’s documentary criticizing religion, a couple nights ago. I was a big fan of Maher back in the days of “Politically Incorrect” but there’s no doubt that over the past decade he’s become something of an unrepentant asshole. As a result, an idea that could have been pretty interesting — a reasoned, critical look at the world’s religions — is dumbed down to Maher mocking various religious kooks. Occasionally he gets some good laughs — when a theme park Jesus tells Bill he has a God shaped hole in his heart that can’t be filled with women or drugs, Maher asks, “can I try?” — but overall, the project falls flat.

About 70% of the film is Maher taking aim at Christianity. Towards the end he sets his sights on Islam. A small portion of the film has him mocking Scientology. Personally, I think he should have done more with the Hubbard-ites; he’s a Hollywood man and it would’ve would have been good to take on his hometown religion.

Where the film really lost me was the ending. Maher walks along a pathway in Israel Israel while arguing that humanity must give up religion or we will destroy ourselves via nuclear destruction and global warming. Scary music plays and the shots are framed to make Bill look like the religious prophets he’s just spent an hour and a half denouncing. (I can’t imagine that the irony is lost on Maher, but it seems poorly delivered.) Frankly, the argument doesn’t make much sense. A) If we’re doomed unless humanity forsakes religion, then we’re doomed. And, B) I don’t think religion has a whole lot to do with global warming, and while the case could be made that it is one cause of warfare, it’s not the only cause.

Still more Ayn Rand

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I’ve heard a lot of media hand ringing about the influence the writing of Ayn Rand has had on the tea party movement. To me, there is a bit of a disconnect there — the tea partiers seem to veer towards conservative Christianity while Rand was a pronounced atheist.

Recently, I saw this point addressed in an interesting new Esquire profile on Republican/libertarian Ron Paul (interestingly, the piece is written by a journalist I once interviewed, John Richardson.) In a section of outtakes from the interviews, Paul comments on this topic.

Paul’s sincerity leads him to complexities that most conservatives prefer to ignore. Ayn Rand, for example. Paul was championing her ideas decades before Paul Ryan started passing them out to staffers, and he actually wrestles with the troubling implications of her ideas. “She challenged me more because she was so critical of the compassion of Christianity — or any religion, for that matter,” he told me. “It just seemed to be so cold.”

Secret agent Trump?

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In all the discussion about Donald Trump and his allegations that Obama was born in Kenya I’ve yet to see exploration of what I consider to be an interesting theory. Consider that, although Trump has long been a Republican, he’s been a relatively centrist one and has argued for universal health care and been very critical of George W. Bush. We should note that the effect of Donald Trump on the political scene seems to be that “real” Republican candidates have make clear their opinions on the birther theory. If they deny it, they risk losing the substantial votes of the birther base; if they affirm it, they risk losing the centrists and independents who quite rightfully think it’s an insane theory. And let’s consider the following scenario: Republicans nominate a mainstream candidate, but Trump runs as an independent thereby siphoning off enough votes to ensure Obama’s reelection.

I propose that Trump is operating as a double agent — his goal here is actually to get Obama reelected, and he’s merely setting himself up as the “bad cop” to facilitate the process. In fact, I suspect he and Obama are in cahoots on the scheme.

Furthermore, I would argue that Obama and Donald Trump are gay lovers.

More thoughts on Ayn Rand

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As I’ve continued to consider the work of Ayn Rand and read a few more writings related to the topic, I began to notice that there are two radically divergent interpretations of her work.

One is the standard liberal criticism that Rand was advocating selfishness for its own sake, while condemning human notions of sympathy, empathy and egalitarianism. It’s hard, reading Rand’s own words, to dispute this.

But there’s another interpretation of her writing that makes her out to be the first Anthony Robbins. She’s saying, “You can do it! Everything you need to make your dreams happen exists within you!”

And, I think there’s a lot of truth to this interpretation. Rand’s work is fundamentally at the heart of the battle between collectivism (e.g. we’re all in this together) and individualism (one person can rise above the steaming, stinking mediocrities that make up most of the human population.) And I think her work does acknowledge a seldom talked about weakness in collectivism. Perhaps the best summation of collectivism is the title to the Hillary Clinton’s children’s book “it takes a village.” The idea is that “it takes a village” to raise a child, or to put it another way, a person is only as strong as their support system. The problem here is that there’s an implicit message that if you don’t have a strong support system — for whatever reason — you’re fucked. The message of collectivism is that if you can’t group together and bond with people around you, you will suffer. This might explain why Rand’s work has such appeal for gifted children who have difficulty associating with their social peers. Rand’s message to such children is, “you are special! And you can transcend the bullying and idiocy of your cohorts.”

My view is that both collectivism and individualism — at least in their pure, extreme forms — miss something. And trying to apply them as simplistic rules for government is bound to reap numerous unintended consequences.

But, there’s no denying the individualist message has a resonance for me. I do consider myself superior to most people I encounter. Most social interaction consists of me digging my nails into the palm of my hand in order to distract myself from the contemptible, middling mental impairment of the person I’m talking to, an impairment that usually blinds them to my genius and superiority. For that part of me, Rand has a certain appeal.

There’s an interesting neurological question here as well. Do Objectivists and Ayn Rand followers have smaller neuronal networks for parts of the brain dedicated to social interaction? (I’m not putting them down; I suspect that I do.)

Libya thoughts

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One current event I haven’t commented on — largely because of being immobilized by this cold — is Libya. While it’s not an issue I have fire racing through my blood over, I think the invasion is a mistake. First and foremost, it seems like there is any lesson from the Iraq war it’s don’t invade countries that haven’t directly attacked you. Secondly, I refer to a quote from one of the Libyan rebels I read a few weeks ago. It was something like, “We have no training. We have no weapons. They [Qaddafi’s forces] are slaughtering us.” I read this and thought, “maybe you shouldn’t have started a revolution then.” An essay in the current New Yorker reinforces this. The Libyan rebel forces, however noble their intent may be, seem woefully ill-prepared for acts of war. I suppose, with the might of first world countries on their side, they may win but I’m not sure they’ll fare any better at putting together a functioning government.

Percentage madness!

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No one more that I thinks these allegations that Obama was born in Kenya — the birthers conspiracy — to be total nonsense. That said, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a greater abuse of the use of percentage values than in this recent LA Times article taking the birthers on.

The real reasons for Boehner’s unseemly bobbing and weaving are clear, though they do neither him nor similarly inclined members of the GOP hierarchy credit. A national poll conducted over the weekend and released Tuesday by PPP — a firm that usually works for Democratic candidates but enjoys a nonpartisan reputation for accuracy — found that 51% of likely Republican primary voters believe that Obama was born outside the United States. More than 80% of the likely voters with a favorable impression of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin do not believe the president is a citizen.

So what the hell is a “likely Republican primary voter” and what percentage of total Republicans are they? And what percentage of the same total are likely Republican primary voters “with a favorable impression of… Palin”? (I did a little nosing around on this: around 70% of Republicans (remember, likely Republican primary voters are a subset of this larger group) give her a favorable rating, though only 52% think she’s qualified to be president.)

To further complicate things, the percentage of Americans identifying themselves as Republican is currently at 35% (and the number fluctuates over time.) “Likely Republican primary voters” would obviously be a subset of this number (though, I believe some states allow independents to vote in the Republican primary.)

My point being that percentages are pointless unless they are tied to an actual number. 20% of 100 and 20% of 1 million are two completely different things.

Frankly, any percentage of Republicans or any group believing the theory that Obama was born in Kenya is too high, but I doubt the numbers are as high as the op-ed piece seems to imply.

Contemplating conservative country

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Back in the mid-2000’s, hippies and assorted scum decried the lack of political pop music. The country was neck deep in two wars yet few rock or pop songs even acknowledged the situation. Even the Dixie Chix, who probably fired up the most acrimony, did so not with song lyrics but with essentially offhand comments made on stage.

I mentioned that I’ve been watching the country video channel lately, and I can’t help but notice the definite presence of political content in some of the songs, generally of a conservative bent. For example, there’s this Eric Church song “Smoke a Little Smoke” which contains the line, “want a little more right, and a little less left.” It’s vague enough that you can wonder whether he’s talking about political philosophies. But, later in the song, he says:

I set my sails for a new direction
But the wind got in my way
I changed my course
But my definition of change
Just ain’t the same

Hmmm, who else do we know who’s been talking about “change?”

That said, “Smoke a Little Smoke” is probably one of the better country singles I’ve heard, driven by an infectious percussive guitar part.

More overtly political is the Josh Thompson song, “Way out Here.” Check out the opening lyrics.

Our houses are protected by the good Lord and a gun
And you might meet ’em both if you show up here not welcome son

It’s the final 2 lines of this stanza that really get political.

We got a fightin’ side a mile wide but we pray for peace
‘Cause it’s mostly us that end up servin’ overseas
If it was up to me I’d love to see this country run
Like it used to be, oughta be, just like it’s done

Music wise, the song is utter pablum, indiscernible from most country power ballads (or whatever they are.)

Will this brand of political country inspire an army of shotgun toting, chaw spitting rednecks to mount up and ride into the nearest metropolis with the goal of killing the weak metrosexual man and impregnating their women? Only time will tell.

Completely apolitical, but hilarious, is this Brad Paisley song “Celebrity.”

Loughner’s wordplay

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I have to confess, as I read through some descriptions of the mental state of Arizona assassin Jared Loughner, I see some parallels between his thoughts and mine. For instance, take this passage.

“By the time he was 19 or 20, he was really fascinated with semantics and how the world is really nothing—illusion,” Tierney says.

I think everyone’s picked up that Loughner had some strange fascination with words and grammar. And I find myself contemplating certain themes when thinking about language and the mind. We tend to think of words as being absolute descriptions of something — “this is a bird!, This is a frog!, this is a shovel!” — with no gray areas. Words are markedly useful tools for describing the world around us, but they’re not absolute. When is a glass not a cup? When is a bush not a shrub? There may well be answers to these questions — that’s what the whole discipline of semantics is about — but I don’t know them.

Ludvig Wittgenstein made a similar point while trying to define what a “game” is. We call Scrabble a game, and poker, and we also have the Olympic Games. What do they have in common? You might say you play games against other people, but you can play solitaire. How can football and Scrabble fall into the same category?

A similar point has been made in regards to terms for colors. Take a look at this color range. As everyone knows, colors gradually morph into other colors, like in a rainbow. Red morphs into orange which morphs into yellow which morphs into green etc. As humans, we’ve somewhat arbitrarily drawn lines at certain points of these gradations and assigned everything within those barriers to a certain label. Everything from orange-ish yellow to greenish yellow is considered yellow. Of course, orange-ish yellow is actually closer on the color spectrum to orange than it is to greenish yellow, yet we refer to all gradations of yellow as yellow.

This might seem like pointless semantics when discussing things like cups or bushes or colors. But what about concepts like “justice” or “consciousness” or “legality?” If we’re not absolutely clear on what we’re talking about in those cases — and we seldom are — we’re in trouble.

How can this kind of deconstruction of semantics lead someone to shoot people? Well, I don’t get it either, but consider this.

Tierney, who’s also 22, recalls Loughner complaining about a Giffords event he attended during that period. He’s unsure whether it was the same one mentioned in the charges—Loughner “might have gone to some other rallies,” he says—but Tierney notes it was a significant moment for Loughner: “He told me that she opened up the floor for questions and he asked a question. The question was, ‘What is government if words have no meaning?'”

Of course, complaints about grammatical obfuscations on the part of the government are commonplace and understandable. Have you ever tried to read the tax code? What does “collateral damage” really mean? But government words are the law of the land — if you misunderstand them, you can end up in jail. Suddenly esoteric discussions about semantics take on added gravity.

You can see how, if you think this through, the only logical thing to do is shoot your congressperson.

Why so few US assassinations?

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As I think through the Giffords shooting, and the seemingly obvious conclusion that her attacker was a delusional nutball who existed in an alternate reality beyond politics, I find that an interesting question pops into my head: why aren’t there more political assassinations in the United States? There’s no doubt that political vitriol seems to be at an unusually high point (not the high point — there’s little thing called the Civil War.) I hear stories of families being torn apart by political differences. You don’t have to look far on the web to see videos of political opponents screaming at each other, or bloggers referring to politicians they don’t like as scum completely devoid of humanity. I, for the most part, used to enjoy political conversations, but now I’m loath to be part of anything even remotely resembling one.

If people are so fired up, why haven’t we seen an honest-to-goodness politically motivated assassination? To put it another way: millions of people, largely on the left, thought that President Bush planned and orchestrated the attacks of 9/11 to get us into the Iraq war. You’d think one of them would’ve decided to take a shot at Bush, if only to enact some kind of justice. These days, there seem to be millions of people on the right who think Obama is a Kenyan, Muslim socialist who’s taken the reins of the most powerful nation on earth. Shouldn’t someone be trying to take him out?

However, the Giffords attack was seemingly motivated by insanity, not political rage. The only presidential assassination attempt in my life was Hinckley’s attempt on Reagan, and Hinckley was a complete nut job. Who else comes to mind? Harvey Milk? That seems more personal than political (with some dollops of homophobia), and even that assassin got off by literally using the insanity (Twinkie) defense.

Now, there is one obvious retort to this. Maybe there are tons of people who would like to assassinate presidents and political leaders but, let’s be honest, it’s not easy.

But I suspect the main reason is this. Comfort. During my 20s in Seattle, I had innumerable wannabe Marxists tell me how the coming revolution would unseat the bourgeois and provide for the wants and needs of the lower class. And my argument against this was always that while the lower class in America may not be rich, they’re doing all right. They’re basically comfortable with their microwave foods, heating and air-conditioning and booze — they’d have a lot more to lose than to gain by joining an armed insurrection against government (one almost certainly doomed, I might add.) The same is true with political assassination. No matter how much you think a politician is a war monger or fraud, nobody wants to give up their comfortable life to assassinate them. You’d have to be crazy to do it.