What I’ve been reading
1 day ago
10 February 2011
Random amusement
I think it would be awfully interesting if, after this Egypt rebellion is settled, and it appears now with the military involved to be settling into an effective rebellion, we'll have to see how it goes in terms of any reforms,
one starts in...
Iraq. Which now has larger domestic protests concerning economic hardships. And an autocratic unresponsive and corrupt regime.
one starts in...
Iraq. Which now has larger domestic protests concerning economic hardships. And an autocratic unresponsive and corrupt regime.
09 February 2011
NCAA early version
1) OSU
2) Kansas
3) Duke
4) Texas
5) Pitt
Pretty crowded up top. If I had to choose, I'd take Kansas, but OSU and Duke also look promising.
6) BYU
7) Wisconsin
8) Kentucky
9) Purdue
10) SDSU
11) Villanova
12) Washington
12) Syracuse
12) North Carolina
15) Georgetown
16) Illinois
17) Connecticut
18) Arizona
19) West Virginia
20) Louisville
21) Notre Dame
22) Missouri
23) Vanderbilt
24) Marquette
25) Utah St
Random team for upset watch in first round: Belmont (28). George Mason is at 29 also, and neither is likely to get a respectable seeding but should be high enough to knock off somebody else who's right around them in actual ability.
Texas AM appears to be the most overrated team in the country. They're ranked right now, but I have them as barely in the field (44).
I don't have Gonzaga in for the first time in years, but they're in a crowded bunch of middling teams (Michigan St, Butler, St Johns, Baylor, Northwestern, UCLA, Xavier and so on). So they can play their way in.
2) Kansas
3) Duke
4) Texas
5) Pitt
Pretty crowded up top. If I had to choose, I'd take Kansas, but OSU and Duke also look promising.
6) BYU
7) Wisconsin
8) Kentucky
9) Purdue
10) SDSU
11) Villanova
12) Washington
12) Syracuse
12) North Carolina
15) Georgetown
16) Illinois
17) Connecticut
18) Arizona
19) West Virginia
20) Louisville
21) Notre Dame
22) Missouri
23) Vanderbilt
24) Marquette
25) Utah St
Random team for upset watch in first round: Belmont (28). George Mason is at 29 also, and neither is likely to get a respectable seeding but should be high enough to knock off somebody else who's right around them in actual ability.
Texas AM appears to be the most overrated team in the country. They're ranked right now, but I have them as barely in the field (44).
I don't have Gonzaga in for the first time in years, but they're in a crowded bunch of middling teams (Michigan St, Butler, St Johns, Baylor, Northwestern, UCLA, Xavier and so on). So they can play their way in.
PATRIOT act
I was heartened to see a few Tea Party types (though other than Ron Paul, and presumably Rand Paul in the Senate, none of the major well-known names from this movement's base of support) actually lived up to their billing and helped to vote down a quick-step renewal.
I was not heartened to see that the renewal bill will still pass easily, it will just take a couple more weeks now.
None of the provisions up for a vote are necessary on some cost-benefit analysis in terms of the actual security they may provide and all are prone to substantial levels of abuse by government authorities (regardless of which party administration controls these levers of power).
In the UK provisions like these are indeed likely to be repealed and rolled back as the invasive and unnecessary "security" measures that they are. Here in the US, despite years of bitching by left-leaning Democrats during the Bush years about these tyrannical or fascist looking laws and efforts for government power, we now get much silence and a few consistent figures (one of whom, Feingold, was just voted out in the last election) trying fruitlessly to fight back against a naked authoritarian power grab that resulted in the wake of a deliberate attack on American soil. In our haste for security, we may have immeasurably damaged it in another way by making violable our inherent rights as citizens and decent human beings.
I was not heartened to see that the renewal bill will still pass easily, it will just take a couple more weeks now.
None of the provisions up for a vote are necessary on some cost-benefit analysis in terms of the actual security they may provide and all are prone to substantial levels of abuse by government authorities (regardless of which party administration controls these levers of power).
In the UK provisions like these are indeed likely to be repealed and rolled back as the invasive and unnecessary "security" measures that they are. Here in the US, despite years of bitching by left-leaning Democrats during the Bush years about these tyrannical or fascist looking laws and efforts for government power, we now get much silence and a few consistent figures (one of whom, Feingold, was just voted out in the last election) trying fruitlessly to fight back against a naked authoritarian power grab that resulted in the wake of a deliberate attack on American soil. In our haste for security, we may have immeasurably damaged it in another way by making violable our inherent rights as citizens and decent human beings.
Games, evil and heartless version
ideological communicators?. I'm kind of amused that Assassin's Creed decided that the worst thing in the world was some evil corporation and the Citizen's United decision, but the sort of "evil libertarian" theme from things like Bioshock and some others was also getting a little tedious. So far as I know, we're not all heartless immoral beings and most libertarian philosophy draws from things like Hayek or Adam Smith's theories on the underlying moral order and fabric of a society and that tampering with it too much through government heavy-handedness doesn't quite produce ideal results.
More interesting is this question
I've definitely found that the most interesting games, the ones that I will tend to replay often, will use aspects of presenting you with real game choices with real consequences in the game. Dragon Age and Mass Effect, and to some extent the Fallout series, all allowed you to make decisions between helping or ignoring, or even actively harming, characters in the game. Generally the game gave you greater rewards, along with long-term advantages, if you helped, cooperated, and aided where you could, and often made the game more challenging if you took the "dark side" path of indiscriminate slaughter and mayhem. Few games do this well. The Civilization series tends to do this pretty well, offering different avenues to victory, and complex choices over what sort of government policies to use to pursue that victory. With advantages and disadvantages to each, sometimes merely being that you locked out other choices, as with actual life, there's a scarcity problem (in terms of time) that locks out the use of resources for all possible avenues of advancement and gain.
Maybe this appeals to me because it very much mirrors a sort of utilitarian calculus, with choices having tangible, often measured and weighted benefits and costs, and that sort of economic brain is what I've already been using to examine social policies in the real world, and often seeing substantial costs that are ignored because they exist only in unfavored political minorities (the drug war or campaigns against access to birth control are among these), or are so widely distributed in cost that they become virtually invisible costs offering substantial benefits only to small subgroups (farm subsidies are the most classic of these, but there are many such interest politics chasing economic rents in the same way).
One of the appeals of a game like Fallout was that being "good" often meant being tolerant, and indeed, engaging willingly and freely with ugly and despised in game groups. The game is partly designed to give the player an us-vs-them feel, and to thus easily side against ghouls and mutants and other hideous post-apocalyptic beings. But they're also recognizably human in their wants, and their objectives, and the advantages in game of cooperation with these hideous deformed beings are realized in trade, in experience, and so on. Mass Effect has the same elements with various aliens.
In real life, sympathizing with out-group peoples, and tolerating their experiences and choices, provided they present you and others with no real harm, leads to a more interesting and diverse set of experiences for yourself. The food is better, the music, the art, and the conversations often richer. Indeed, one of the reasons I occasionally engage with social conservatives on their often odious political views is to try to understand the underpinnings and motivations. The people involved made these active choices. I am curious to understand why. It is of course rare that such people can speak to some factual basis for their fears of homosexuals, of Muslims or immigrants generally, and so on, but it is at least diverting to have to engage the arguments that are raised and slap them aside with doses of reality rather than to exist solely in the echo chamber (as they often have). Perhaps the play style of such people in games like these would be very different. Or perhaps they would not find such diversions of complex game mechanics very interesting in the first place. But it's an interesting question why many games are designed with heartless and evil actions bearing no game consequences.
For instance... I find it odd that Left 4 Dead makes it so that killing the weak members of the squad allows them to come back to the game with more health. It's an odd game mechanic that gets exploited all the time on the highest difficulty settings. It probably wouldn't be very much fun to be dragging around a near corpse in game of course either, but it's still an odd counter-morality that gets spawned. Since I usually find it hard to be heartless and cruel for malicious and useless purposes in these games, or to do things which have a distinct evil feel or at least don't present as cost-effective benefits (drug use in Fallout usually comes down this way), I kind of wonder why people are worried so much about morality being warped by children playing GTA or WoW or some other immersive game, or just plain shooting people in Doom. (I really wonder that when looking at charts of violent crime since the 80s, and seeing a huge drop off since GTA came out).
More interesting is this question
I've definitely found that the most interesting games, the ones that I will tend to replay often, will use aspects of presenting you with real game choices with real consequences in the game. Dragon Age and Mass Effect, and to some extent the Fallout series, all allowed you to make decisions between helping or ignoring, or even actively harming, characters in the game. Generally the game gave you greater rewards, along with long-term advantages, if you helped, cooperated, and aided where you could, and often made the game more challenging if you took the "dark side" path of indiscriminate slaughter and mayhem. Few games do this well. The Civilization series tends to do this pretty well, offering different avenues to victory, and complex choices over what sort of government policies to use to pursue that victory. With advantages and disadvantages to each, sometimes merely being that you locked out other choices, as with actual life, there's a scarcity problem (in terms of time) that locks out the use of resources for all possible avenues of advancement and gain.
Maybe this appeals to me because it very much mirrors a sort of utilitarian calculus, with choices having tangible, often measured and weighted benefits and costs, and that sort of economic brain is what I've already been using to examine social policies in the real world, and often seeing substantial costs that are ignored because they exist only in unfavored political minorities (the drug war or campaigns against access to birth control are among these), or are so widely distributed in cost that they become virtually invisible costs offering substantial benefits only to small subgroups (farm subsidies are the most classic of these, but there are many such interest politics chasing economic rents in the same way).
One of the appeals of a game like Fallout was that being "good" often meant being tolerant, and indeed, engaging willingly and freely with ugly and despised in game groups. The game is partly designed to give the player an us-vs-them feel, and to thus easily side against ghouls and mutants and other hideous post-apocalyptic beings. But they're also recognizably human in their wants, and their objectives, and the advantages in game of cooperation with these hideous deformed beings are realized in trade, in experience, and so on. Mass Effect has the same elements with various aliens.
In real life, sympathizing with out-group peoples, and tolerating their experiences and choices, provided they present you and others with no real harm, leads to a more interesting and diverse set of experiences for yourself. The food is better, the music, the art, and the conversations often richer. Indeed, one of the reasons I occasionally engage with social conservatives on their often odious political views is to try to understand the underpinnings and motivations. The people involved made these active choices. I am curious to understand why. It is of course rare that such people can speak to some factual basis for their fears of homosexuals, of Muslims or immigrants generally, and so on, but it is at least diverting to have to engage the arguments that are raised and slap them aside with doses of reality rather than to exist solely in the echo chamber (as they often have). Perhaps the play style of such people in games like these would be very different. Or perhaps they would not find such diversions of complex game mechanics very interesting in the first place. But it's an interesting question why many games are designed with heartless and evil actions bearing no game consequences.
For instance... I find it odd that Left 4 Dead makes it so that killing the weak members of the squad allows them to come back to the game with more health. It's an odd game mechanic that gets exploited all the time on the highest difficulty settings. It probably wouldn't be very much fun to be dragging around a near corpse in game of course either, but it's still an odd counter-morality that gets spawned. Since I usually find it hard to be heartless and cruel for malicious and useless purposes in these games, or to do things which have a distinct evil feel or at least don't present as cost-effective benefits (drug use in Fallout usually comes down this way), I kind of wonder why people are worried so much about morality being warped by children playing GTA or WoW or some other immersive game, or just plain shooting people in Doom. (I really wonder that when looking at charts of violent crime since the 80s, and seeing a huge drop off since GTA came out).
Other random thoughts of the day, or other things that should not be said aloud by other people
Random thoughts
1) Dane Cook and Daniel Tosh, not funny. Don't get it.
2) John Mayer and Coldplay, not good. Don't get it.
3) Thai food, good. Need to get some of it.
Things that should not be said that I see said all the time.
1) Global warming, not happening (what to do about it is a legitimate debate concerning foreign policy and international economics, whether it's going on, not so much)
2) Evolution, not happening
3) Muslims, all of them, evil. (Same applies to atheists, all of them, immoral).
4) History channel, has actual history on it.
5) Cable news stings of child predators prove this is a serious and wide spread problem and that your children may be in danger
6) Vaccines, not good.
1) Dane Cook and Daniel Tosh, not funny. Don't get it.
2) John Mayer and Coldplay, not good. Don't get it.
3) Thai food, good. Need to get some of it.
Things that should not be said that I see said all the time.
1) Global warming, not happening (what to do about it is a legitimate debate concerning foreign policy and international economics, whether it's going on, not so much)
2) Evolution, not happening
3) Muslims, all of them, evil. (Same applies to atheists, all of them, immoral).
4) History channel, has actual history on it.
5) Cable news stings of child predators prove this is a serious and wide spread problem and that your children may be in danger
6) Vaccines, not good.
Bloodlands
In between regaling its readers with the story of dreadful intra-familial cannibalism resulting from Stalin's deliberate policies in the Soviet Ukraine (millions perished from famine), I noticed something about the mindsets involved in the leaders who conquered, carved up, and virtually destroyed Eastern Europe and its peoples.
I see often a question posed by right-leaning, and especially conservative writers and people about the rhetorical hatred directed at Palin. There are several caveats. I do not think she was responsible for Jared Loughner. I do not think she (or most other right-wing nutjobs) has got some master plan for desiring to kill millions of people, because of their religion, nationality, or socio-economic status (though I am somewhat annoyed that she conflates economic necessities that she defends in stark terms as though liberals did have some master plan for desiring to kill millions of people, which I regard as equally ridiculous). While there are many who would compare the neo-conservative values of the Bush-Palin mindset to fascism and the statist police powers to those of Stalin, there's still a pretty big gap in the amount of statist controls they would use, and both the Nazi and certainly the Stalinist are much further to the left economically for state powers than most American liberals, much less American leftist politicians (such as Obama) and certainly most conservative right-wing politicians (even as non-free market as I see them at many occasions, tax breaks for oil companies and food subsidies in Iowa for example...). These comparisons are useless rhetorical demagoguery, of the sort that Palin herself engages in and I do not mean to make them as assertions that she would outlaw her political opponents or their views, or would undertake campaigns to eliminate them. I feel she, or rather the existence of her popularity among a subset of Americans, is quite scary enough without these underpinnings and I think it necessary to understand and attempt to explain why that is.
What I'm actually trying to address is not a comparison and equation between the political views and ideology, such as she has. But it is the mindset that interests me, and tends to annoy and frighten liberals, and that mindset seems remarkably similar.
1) A tendency to see very stark black and white terms on all fronts. Attempting to point out inconsistency of her very general rhetoric and factual errors within the talking points themselves tends to result in paranoid accusations of persecution. This is not on the order of pretending that Ukrainians were starving themselves because they hated world socialism and Stalinism and responding with brutal malicious state policies, but it's the same sort of reasoning. One could be forgiven for worrying what the execution of state powers would look like under a Palin government.
2) A tendency to shift those fronts in malleable contortions of unreason, which are followed faithfully by her supporters, but which are objectionable by anyone else, in part because the word salads that Palin has organised into speeches to defend herself and her positions are pretty badly in need of an editor and baldly in evidence as talking point vomit (must say something about "troops", and "socialism", and so on), but also because they are shifts in positions that do not present some ideological consistency or present some basis for the shift. Some actual reason for shifting other than that she now feels persecuted by this group or this person instead of that. So far as I can tell Palin's entire ideological belief structure seems to be her extreme religious views, an idolatry of "Real America" (a shapeless definition that means whatever she wants it to mean at a given point), and a hatred of media (and we can see this reflected by some of her choice of political allies during the last election, such as Joe Miller's detention and assault of journalists covering his campaign in Alaska). These reflect very few meaningful policy choices as a result and none of them particularly well regarded by liberals (free speech restraints on the press as well as citizenry, restrictions on homosexual rights and abortion, and targeting of immigrants and other "suspicious" bodies of people)
3) A tendency to demagogue her enemies, or the perceived enemies of "Real America". Us vs them thinking is very effective at gathering and maintaining a base of support, and for acting very quickly if that base is sufficient to take and assume power within a country. It is however very dangerous at gathering and maintaining political coalitions because it provides for no middle ground. In a diverse society like America, I think we have some fortune to see that it's likely not to work.
These are pretty much the mindsets that liberals, and not a few moderates, rightly are afraid of when they appear. I put this out there mostly to help conservatives who see her as persecuted victim understand why she's reviled by her political opponents. In large measure, because I don't see her backers and her populist rhetoric going anywhere and disappearing, I'd want them to understand that a) her two major speeches (resignation from governor of Alaska, and the defence she gave post-Tuscon) pretty much killed her political chances anyway with the mainstream of the country and even among many conservatives so you may as well have it catalogued and b) that the core of people who like her BECAUSE she annoys liberals and is so hated by them may understand what it is about her that they do not in fact like. There are specific political positions she has that are disgusting and insulting to liberals, and that's certainly at issue too. And to a libertarian, not only her positions on social matters, but her woeful understanding of basic economics (for instance her tweets about QEII and inflation) are very much insulting and hard to listen to (especially that she has been described as one of us for instance).
But it ultimately comes down to her mindset and activity since becoming a national political figure with a loyal and dogmatic following. There are political figures and pundits who I disagree with on some matters whom I can respect in their attempts to explain their views (Gingrich used to be one of these, not so much any more because he's gotten to having views which are blatantly bigoted or insipidly stupid and for which he should know better). And then there's the Palin-ites, practicing something else entirely as politics (Bachmann's another one, Angle, Miller, and a few others) and who seem utterly ready to divide the country into an us-them entanglement with right and wrong defined not as empirical or objective considerations, but as who's on my side and who is not. That bothers me a lot more than her actual political views.
I mention it because seeing the behaviors of Stalin and Hitler leading up to some of the worst atrocities in human history, the mental contortions that they and their cronies undertook, and the mindsets combined with a will to destroy their enemies, real or imagined, utterly and completely, immediately drew me to think of her methods as a politician and celebrity, or those of Beck and others like him. Perhaps it's because they themselves so commonly and recklessly draw on the imagery of Nazis and Stalinists (or Maoists for that matter) and the comparisons come easily to mind because they make them so readily already in talking about their own enemies. But it's also the same methodology, the same mindset, applied to much smaller goals than mass exterminations of people.
I note this also because I've seen that many of the people who agree, or who actively subscribe to her political views, do seem to have taken on eliminationist rhetoric, describing all Muslims as secret spies and terrorists and calling for the abandonment of rights and constitutional protections for Islamic peoples of any derivation, regardless of real or imagined threats they may pose individually in our communities, and seeing other active plots and conspiracies everywhere aiming to bring down America (Soros, Tides, etc), and describing liberals and indeed sometimes libertarians as enemies of the good, as unpatriotic and hateful of America and its values. This too should worry reasonable people. So far as I can tell, Palin's viability as a candidate for high office does indeed seem to be rejected as unreasonable. Perhaps on this basis, or perhaps on others. But if people really need to know why she's presented so poorly, and resented so widely, this is perhaps a hint of why. If in reading about some of the highest and widest crimes against humanity I should recognize even a glimmer of her behavior, her mindset, and her rhetorical tricks, I think that's a problem worthy of bringing up. She has none of the state infrastructure, the charismatic following of awe, or the ideological makeup to start and lead a grand crusade with designs of abolishing entire peoples, certainly, but she has the same sort of mental design and behavior as the people who did.
She sees and portrays herself as the persecuted victim rather than the aggressor representing some threat. The amount of contortions that many Americans go through to see themselves as imposed upon to tolerate gays being married, or narcotics (some of them) legalised seems overdone. And she's the singular figure into which these fears and underpinnings are represented through. The reason she gets picked on is that she's popular within that community in a way that other political figures are not and thus she represents an actual threat of unreasonable fears made manifest and into official state policy by a not-insignificant minority of the population. The real issue to me is that significant minority of the population, not her.
That there should be a body politic willing to support her strikes me as scarier. That I have occasion to defend her silliness out of necessity of free speech and other items of moral and legal consequence which she (and other political figures akin to her) seems strikingly ignorant of, also annoys me. I grow tired of it.
I see often a question posed by right-leaning, and especially conservative writers and people about the rhetorical hatred directed at Palin. There are several caveats. I do not think she was responsible for Jared Loughner. I do not think she (or most other right-wing nutjobs) has got some master plan for desiring to kill millions of people, because of their religion, nationality, or socio-economic status (though I am somewhat annoyed that she conflates economic necessities that she defends in stark terms as though liberals did have some master plan for desiring to kill millions of people, which I regard as equally ridiculous). While there are many who would compare the neo-conservative values of the Bush-Palin mindset to fascism and the statist police powers to those of Stalin, there's still a pretty big gap in the amount of statist controls they would use, and both the Nazi and certainly the Stalinist are much further to the left economically for state powers than most American liberals, much less American leftist politicians (such as Obama) and certainly most conservative right-wing politicians (even as non-free market as I see them at many occasions, tax breaks for oil companies and food subsidies in Iowa for example...). These comparisons are useless rhetorical demagoguery, of the sort that Palin herself engages in and I do not mean to make them as assertions that she would outlaw her political opponents or their views, or would undertake campaigns to eliminate them. I feel she, or rather the existence of her popularity among a subset of Americans, is quite scary enough without these underpinnings and I think it necessary to understand and attempt to explain why that is.
What I'm actually trying to address is not a comparison and equation between the political views and ideology, such as she has. But it is the mindset that interests me, and tends to annoy and frighten liberals, and that mindset seems remarkably similar.
1) A tendency to see very stark black and white terms on all fronts. Attempting to point out inconsistency of her very general rhetoric and factual errors within the talking points themselves tends to result in paranoid accusations of persecution. This is not on the order of pretending that Ukrainians were starving themselves because they hated world socialism and Stalinism and responding with brutal malicious state policies, but it's the same sort of reasoning. One could be forgiven for worrying what the execution of state powers would look like under a Palin government.
2) A tendency to shift those fronts in malleable contortions of unreason, which are followed faithfully by her supporters, but which are objectionable by anyone else, in part because the word salads that Palin has organised into speeches to defend herself and her positions are pretty badly in need of an editor and baldly in evidence as talking point vomit (must say something about "troops", and "socialism", and so on), but also because they are shifts in positions that do not present some ideological consistency or present some basis for the shift. Some actual reason for shifting other than that she now feels persecuted by this group or this person instead of that. So far as I can tell Palin's entire ideological belief structure seems to be her extreme religious views, an idolatry of "Real America" (a shapeless definition that means whatever she wants it to mean at a given point), and a hatred of media (and we can see this reflected by some of her choice of political allies during the last election, such as Joe Miller's detention and assault of journalists covering his campaign in Alaska). These reflect very few meaningful policy choices as a result and none of them particularly well regarded by liberals (free speech restraints on the press as well as citizenry, restrictions on homosexual rights and abortion, and targeting of immigrants and other "suspicious" bodies of people)
3) A tendency to demagogue her enemies, or the perceived enemies of "Real America". Us vs them thinking is very effective at gathering and maintaining a base of support, and for acting very quickly if that base is sufficient to take and assume power within a country. It is however very dangerous at gathering and maintaining political coalitions because it provides for no middle ground. In a diverse society like America, I think we have some fortune to see that it's likely not to work.
These are pretty much the mindsets that liberals, and not a few moderates, rightly are afraid of when they appear. I put this out there mostly to help conservatives who see her as persecuted victim understand why she's reviled by her political opponents. In large measure, because I don't see her backers and her populist rhetoric going anywhere and disappearing, I'd want them to understand that a) her two major speeches (resignation from governor of Alaska, and the defence she gave post-Tuscon) pretty much killed her political chances anyway with the mainstream of the country and even among many conservatives so you may as well have it catalogued and b) that the core of people who like her BECAUSE she annoys liberals and is so hated by them may understand what it is about her that they do not in fact like. There are specific political positions she has that are disgusting and insulting to liberals, and that's certainly at issue too. And to a libertarian, not only her positions on social matters, but her woeful understanding of basic economics (for instance her tweets about QEII and inflation) are very much insulting and hard to listen to (especially that she has been described as one of us for instance).
But it ultimately comes down to her mindset and activity since becoming a national political figure with a loyal and dogmatic following. There are political figures and pundits who I disagree with on some matters whom I can respect in their attempts to explain their views (Gingrich used to be one of these, not so much any more because he's gotten to having views which are blatantly bigoted or insipidly stupid and for which he should know better). And then there's the Palin-ites, practicing something else entirely as politics (Bachmann's another one, Angle, Miller, and a few others) and who seem utterly ready to divide the country into an us-them entanglement with right and wrong defined not as empirical or objective considerations, but as who's on my side and who is not. That bothers me a lot more than her actual political views.
I mention it because seeing the behaviors of Stalin and Hitler leading up to some of the worst atrocities in human history, the mental contortions that they and their cronies undertook, and the mindsets combined with a will to destroy their enemies, real or imagined, utterly and completely, immediately drew me to think of her methods as a politician and celebrity, or those of Beck and others like him. Perhaps it's because they themselves so commonly and recklessly draw on the imagery of Nazis and Stalinists (or Maoists for that matter) and the comparisons come easily to mind because they make them so readily already in talking about their own enemies. But it's also the same methodology, the same mindset, applied to much smaller goals than mass exterminations of people.
I note this also because I've seen that many of the people who agree, or who actively subscribe to her political views, do seem to have taken on eliminationist rhetoric, describing all Muslims as secret spies and terrorists and calling for the abandonment of rights and constitutional protections for Islamic peoples of any derivation, regardless of real or imagined threats they may pose individually in our communities, and seeing other active plots and conspiracies everywhere aiming to bring down America (Soros, Tides, etc), and describing liberals and indeed sometimes libertarians as enemies of the good, as unpatriotic and hateful of America and its values. This too should worry reasonable people. So far as I can tell, Palin's viability as a candidate for high office does indeed seem to be rejected as unreasonable. Perhaps on this basis, or perhaps on others. But if people really need to know why she's presented so poorly, and resented so widely, this is perhaps a hint of why. If in reading about some of the highest and widest crimes against humanity I should recognize even a glimmer of her behavior, her mindset, and her rhetorical tricks, I think that's a problem worthy of bringing up. She has none of the state infrastructure, the charismatic following of awe, or the ideological makeup to start and lead a grand crusade with designs of abolishing entire peoples, certainly, but she has the same sort of mental design and behavior as the people who did.
She sees and portrays herself as the persecuted victim rather than the aggressor representing some threat. The amount of contortions that many Americans go through to see themselves as imposed upon to tolerate gays being married, or narcotics (some of them) legalised seems overdone. And she's the singular figure into which these fears and underpinnings are represented through. The reason she gets picked on is that she's popular within that community in a way that other political figures are not and thus she represents an actual threat of unreasonable fears made manifest and into official state policy by a not-insignificant minority of the population. The real issue to me is that significant minority of the population, not her.
That there should be a body politic willing to support her strikes me as scarier. That I have occasion to defend her silliness out of necessity of free speech and other items of moral and legal consequence which she (and other political figures akin to her) seems strikingly ignorant of, also annoys me. I grow tired of it.
03 February 2011
So about that anchor
Hope this helps
make your case that somehow immigrants pose a vast threat to society... let me know how that one goes over. And in the meantime, please leave the 14th Amendment alone.
In fact, I'd prefer it if you enforced it more often and left large numbers of activities partaken in consensually and privately by American citizens, much less these hapless and unpopular immigrants, alone too.
make your case that somehow immigrants pose a vast threat to society... let me know how that one goes over. And in the meantime, please leave the 14th Amendment alone.
In fact, I'd prefer it if you enforced it more often and left large numbers of activities partaken in consensually and privately by American citizens, much less these hapless and unpopular immigrants, alone too.
Further comments
1) If Obama comes out soon with a more clear support of the demonstrators, Mubarak will probably fall. If not, I'm fairly sure he can wait it out, though it will be a weakened regime with democratic reforms taking place.
This is not an endorsement of dictatorial rule by a one-party client state.
2) Upon further reflection and study of its role in Egypt, it is really foolish to see the Muslim Brotherhood as a threat. So far as I can tell, they function sort of like the religious right (or maybe more like the Catholics or Mormons), operating charities, hospitals, and other social services in a nation-state that doesn't offer these with sufficient access to its public. They do not engage in or support terrorism, and they are basically a social-political movement with a religious overtone. As annoying as such people are in their worldviews at times, they do tend to try to do good things in a society (though they will be a little more prone to go astray on the whole "other" aspects of a society). It's possible they will take a harder pro-Palestinian stance and do things like send aid through to Gaza officially rather than simply wink at the blockade. But I very much doubt this silly notion that if they were to be the sole power broker in a post-Mubarak age that they would risk billions of dollars of American foreign aid by adopting explicitly anti-American stances, offering state support for terrorism, or even seriously be interested in attacking Israel directly (or even indirectly, such as by ignoring the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel). That question doesn't seem to be as pressing as strengthening the nation-state of Egypt and the plight of its people economically and socially.
What actually seems to distress some Americans is that they are not Christians and thus (somehow) constitute some sort of threat. If this is your problem with the situation in Egypt, I'm not sure how this threat exists in reality, even to the Egyptian Coptic church, much less to Americans. I don't see the Muslim Brotherhood as adopting some sort of hard line fanatical stance that precludes the existence of other faiths or even other interpretations of Islam, and certainly not as the second coming of an Islamic caliphate. I see them more as those annoying people who knock on doors to get people to come to their church, or who run soup kitchens.
They look a lot more like the AKP in Turkey, or even the GOP here, than al Qaeda or the Iranian mullahs in Khameini's pocket or Hamas or Hezbollah.
This is not an endorsement of dictatorial rule by a one-party client state.
2) Upon further reflection and study of its role in Egypt, it is really foolish to see the Muslim Brotherhood as a threat. So far as I can tell, they function sort of like the religious right (or maybe more like the Catholics or Mormons), operating charities, hospitals, and other social services in a nation-state that doesn't offer these with sufficient access to its public. They do not engage in or support terrorism, and they are basically a social-political movement with a religious overtone. As annoying as such people are in their worldviews at times, they do tend to try to do good things in a society (though they will be a little more prone to go astray on the whole "other" aspects of a society). It's possible they will take a harder pro-Palestinian stance and do things like send aid through to Gaza officially rather than simply wink at the blockade. But I very much doubt this silly notion that if they were to be the sole power broker in a post-Mubarak age that they would risk billions of dollars of American foreign aid by adopting explicitly anti-American stances, offering state support for terrorism, or even seriously be interested in attacking Israel directly (or even indirectly, such as by ignoring the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel). That question doesn't seem to be as pressing as strengthening the nation-state of Egypt and the plight of its people economically and socially.
What actually seems to distress some Americans is that they are not Christians and thus (somehow) constitute some sort of threat. If this is your problem with the situation in Egypt, I'm not sure how this threat exists in reality, even to the Egyptian Coptic church, much less to Americans. I don't see the Muslim Brotherhood as adopting some sort of hard line fanatical stance that precludes the existence of other faiths or even other interpretations of Islam, and certainly not as the second coming of an Islamic caliphate. I see them more as those annoying people who knock on doors to get people to come to their church, or who run soup kitchens.
They look a lot more like the AKP in Turkey, or even the GOP here, than al Qaeda or the Iranian mullahs in Khameini's pocket or Hamas or Hezbollah.
02 February 2011
Egypt
By now pretty much everyone with a microphone in front of them has weighed in on the ongoing situation in Egypt. I have some reactions of my own.
1) This is not Iran either from 2009, or 1979.
2) This is probably not Tunisia either. Egypt has a much stronger nation-state, partially because we've propped it up with very large sums of military aid.
3) Some concessions will be made by the Mubarak government, temporarily at least.
4) Large numbers of media people (particularly of the Faux persuasion) are really, really, really afraid that this is Iran circa 1979. I've seen little evidence that the protests are a) specifically anti-American/anti-Western, as the Iranian protests often were, or b) are more about politics than economics. Pretty much what brought down Tunisia and is agitating Egyptians is a corrupt government presiding over a very rough economy.
5) These same people speculating about the possibility of large populist uprisings in the US are idiots. Much as people are pissed about things, and there is corruption or abuse of power by government, we actually have it pretty good relative to about 85-90% of the planet (basically parts of Western Europe, Scandinavia, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada are about the only real contenders). Most people do not protest en masse when things are "good". That includes Americans. We also have a much stronger and resilient state with a process of regular democratic uprisings built into our system already (free and fair elections). Egypt does not. Tunisia did not.
Basically the net result is uncertain, and not being a certified expert on Egypt, I prefer to wait and see what kind of government emerges, or if the same one stays in power, before I start condemning popular uprisings to the possibility that they are, lets say, fundamentalist in nature. Or somehow at all threatening to the US and its immediate interests.
It's very possible that this makes the Israeli situation vis a vis Gaza/Palestine less secure, but Egypt's already relaxed the blockade on the land side from Israel's raid last year. And I don't see how that's our problem. Israel can handle itself on these matters, or should be able to conduct its own affairs for its own security without us orchestrating the governments of nation-states surrounding it into a certain more pliable sensibility on this one issue.
1) This is not Iran either from 2009, or 1979.
2) This is probably not Tunisia either. Egypt has a much stronger nation-state, partially because we've propped it up with very large sums of military aid.
3) Some concessions will be made by the Mubarak government, temporarily at least.
4) Large numbers of media people (particularly of the Faux persuasion) are really, really, really afraid that this is Iran circa 1979. I've seen little evidence that the protests are a) specifically anti-American/anti-Western, as the Iranian protests often were, or b) are more about politics than economics. Pretty much what brought down Tunisia and is agitating Egyptians is a corrupt government presiding over a very rough economy.
5) These same people speculating about the possibility of large populist uprisings in the US are idiots. Much as people are pissed about things, and there is corruption or abuse of power by government, we actually have it pretty good relative to about 85-90% of the planet (basically parts of Western Europe, Scandinavia, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada are about the only real contenders). Most people do not protest en masse when things are "good". That includes Americans. We also have a much stronger and resilient state with a process of regular democratic uprisings built into our system already (free and fair elections). Egypt does not. Tunisia did not.
Basically the net result is uncertain, and not being a certified expert on Egypt, I prefer to wait and see what kind of government emerges, or if the same one stays in power, before I start condemning popular uprisings to the possibility that they are, lets say, fundamentalist in nature. Or somehow at all threatening to the US and its immediate interests.
It's very possible that this makes the Israeli situation vis a vis Gaza/Palestine less secure, but Egypt's already relaxed the blockade on the land side from Israel's raid last year. And I don't see how that's our problem. Israel can handle itself on these matters, or should be able to conduct its own affairs for its own security without us orchestrating the governments of nation-states surrounding it into a certain more pliable sensibility on this one issue.
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