American Conservatism Lacks Political Imagination

(((Irving Kristol dies; who is left on the American right? cons and neo-cons; who's left on the American left?)))

Hey, it isn't me. I'm just quoting Irving Kristol:

Kristol adds, "American conservatism lacks for political imagination. It's so influenced by business culture and by business modes of thinking that it lacks any political imagination, which has always been, I have to say, a property of the left." He goes on, "If you read Marx, you'd learn what a political imagination could do."

As I noted in a comment on FB, it's not like there's a lot of imagination in the American left these days, which I am tempted to say (à la Badiou) is too dominated by party culture and party modes of thinking, when it's not dominated by the false hope of achieving its goals through the Dem party. But I'll admit I'm not prepared to elaborate on that stuff yet. That's coming when I get around to posting on The Meaning of Sarkozy.

Thanks to Doug for remembering this quote from this old but still very interesting essay of Corey Robin's.

Aliens Are Not Running the NHS

(((Health care; UK's "orwellian" National Health Service, which is pretty good and which people generally like pretty well; Obama's plan not really comparable to the NHS, in the first place; the debate is not a rational one, anyway; the paranoid style in American politics.)))

Maybe this is why I've tuned out of politics for so long, now. Because it's just so inane. When Sarah Palin can get away with calling the NHS "evil," as if people in the UK wouldn't raise their hands and say, "hey, we can hear you over here." What was she thinking, that the oppressed sick of the UK would rise up and overthrow their Orwellian NHS overlords? "Mr. Brown, tear down these hospitals!" Now we know that everyone in the UK has been to Room 101, because it's clear that they have been brainwashed to think the NHS is good for them.

Unless they're actually right, of course.

But there is a nice collection of articles and op-eds in the Financial Times (that liberal rag) about the current debate in the US and in particular about the comparison of Obamacare (TM) to the NHS. In the latter, they note right off the bat that, on the one hand, Obama's plan is less "socialized" than the NHS (the government insurer won't run the hospitals), and on the other, that US health care is already more "socialized" than people seem to notice (Medicare and Medicaid). It's a very reasonable article.

Alas, as Edward Luce notes in his op-ed, "reasonable people might as well be living on Venus." Noting the conspiracy-prone nature of American politics, on vivid display at the town hall meetings and related protests, Luce concludes:

Their issues are diverse. But their sentiment is common: America’s constitution is being trashed by un-American values. Which brings us to another important strain in US politics that Mr Obama, along with other educated liberals, shares with the Clintons: the belief that the fight is won or lost over the quality of reason.

No amount of contrary evidence will puncture the view that Mr Obama plans to establish “death panels” that will decide which grannies get to live or die. Nor will reason counter the view that countries such as Canada and the UK push their weakest to the back of the queue. “Who will suffer the most when they ration care?” asked Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska on Thursday. “The sick, the elderly and the disabled, of course.”

Mr Obama’s proposals have many flaws. Reasonable people can disagree on whether the reforms would bring down the cost of healthcare, an overriding priority, or sufficiently expand coverage to include the uninsured, a twin, but not always compatible, goal. For all their impact, reasonable people may as well be living on Venus.

The multi-generation battle to reform healthcare will be won or lost over faith rather than reason. The more nuanced Mr Obama appears, the more frenzy it will provoke in his critics. The more he mentions his mother, denied healthcare by the insurance companies when she was dying of cancer, the more progress he will make. What happened to her was un-American, Mr Obama should say. Forget the details of healthcare reform. The side that identifies with American values will get the upper hand.

We can wish as much as we like that reason would win out in such things, but we ignore the fact that it won't at great peril. There is a price to pay for such naiveté, which is naive with respect to both the nature and the efficacy of rationality. Myself, I have not decided whether or not I am willing to pay it, or even whether it is my decision to make. But let's at least be honest about it (which may or may not be the "rational" thing to do).

The Red(coat)s are Coming!

(((More accusations of "socialism;" if you don't actually say who you mean, you don't have to explain why your use of the term is accurate or appropriate, or maybe not even what you mean by it.)))

Politico.com has a note on Spencer Bachus' ominous hinting that the Soviet Union left behind plants in the US Congress to turn us commie long after the Old Girl bit the dust. They were so clever that way.

Unfortunately, Politico actually takes this somewhat seriously.

“Socialism” is one of the more elastic nouns in the political lexicon. In the broadest sense, it defines a system that provides for state ownership of some private industries and governmental commitments to providing direct housing, health care, education and income supports.

To many on the left, it’s a relatively benign — if outdated — term, representing an activist, interventionist government that prioritizes economic security over the unfettered freedom of the marketplace.

To many on the right, it’s practically an epithet — suggesting a return to Soviet-style Communism or a leap toward a hyper-regulated European brand of capitalism that stifles innovation and hikes taxes.

But this is already to cede too much ground to Bachus's rationality and integrity. It's not "practically an epithet;" it is an epithet. Calling someone a socialist in the US is roughly equivalent to standing up in church and saying that some people sitting in nearby pews worship the devil; or in this case, like someone in the choir saying there are some unnamed choir members who worship the devil. Everyone agrees devil worship is bad, or at least no one is going to go standing up for the devil, so instead of defending devil worship, everyone trips over themselves to prove they don't worship the devil. The accusation is already the damning evidence, so the burden of proof is on the accused.

Enter the godless [sic] commie.

But socialism is not devil worship. Unless maybe poverty, unemployment, illness, and the desire for a meaningful life outside of wage slavery are sins. In that case, sign me up with whoever calls bullshit.

Anyway, I don't think Bachus pulled that number out of his behind. I expect him to name his names. That's why he came out with a number. He knows who he's prepared to make some kind of case about. So let's have 'em.

Bridge Metaphor to Nowhere

((("Bridge to nowhere;" auto industry bail-out; Washington "pork" spending; tiresome spin masquerading as cleverness.)))

Am I really the only one who is sick to death of hearing spin-meisters on TV calling the auto industry loan the "bridge loan to nowhere"? How about "bridge loan to stabilized unemployment"? Or "bridge loan to an economy not in the tank"?

Never mind whether the loan is a good idea. Never mind if it's throwing good money after bad. Can someone please just stop the insanity of the metaphor slicer-dicer to nowhere (with Scandinavian snowball earrings yours to keep if you can stop it right now)? Or clean up this metaphorical spill with the sham-wow of political discourse?

Please?

Credit Democracy

(((Not universal healthcare, but universal credit; except when you marry your dream girl and you didn't know her credit was bad; relationship between credit, democracy, and housing, especially housing bubbles; credit is not the way to provide housing.)))

Ross McKibbin in the LRB. Aspects are quite specific to Britain, but some fundamental observations are not.

The second inescapable obligation is the return of housing to its proper function: as providing places to live in rather than to speculate on. The relationship of housing to politics in both Britain and the United States is not fully understood even by those who transformed it. They don’t understand it because that would require confronting awkward facts about Anglo-American democracy. Fundamentally, private housing has become a compensation for the increasingly gross maldistribution of income. Inadequate incomes mean that large numbers of people don’t have access to the style of life that has always been the ultimate justification of neoliberalism and to which, reasonably enough, they now believe they have a right. What does give them access to it (in the short term) is credit. But credit has to be secured, and that’s what housing does. However, it works only if house prices keep rising and people have enough income to repay debt. When prices stop going up and people can no longer repay what they owe, the financial system begins to disintegrate. This is what has happened; and it has happened because we have replaced something like social democracy with credit democracy, or universal access to credit, and credit is a thoroughly inadequate substitute because sooner or later it has to be repaid. Which means that people’s incomes have to be sufficient to repay it, and in many cases they aren’t. What we have put in place is a dynamically destructive cycle. The number of houses is rationed in order to force up prices [this ir related to a specific Tory policy]; people buy houses in order to secure credit on the strength of those prices; this encourages a heady belief in perpetual profit and thus both risky lending and risky borrowing; this renders the banking system unstable; and lending both to individuals and among banks then collapses. Such a cycle involves a paradox. Since these credit democracies still hold elections, governments are forced to underwrite savers at the expense of creditors and stockholders. And if savers are also small shareholders, as many are, the price they pay for protecting their deposits is the devaluation of their shares. This is absolutely not what was originally intended. The rationing of house building has one other consequence: it means that many cannot acquire somewhere adequate to live.

QOTD: Talk About Arrogance . . .

(((John McCain, conservative? Tom DeLay, when did he get out of prison? Climate change is a political position.)))

Watching Tom DeLay talk to Chris Matthews, right now, about McCain's address to CPAC, and DeLay says,

It is arrogant to presume that man can effect [did he say affect? lol. benefit of the doubt.--jf] climate change.

This came out of DeLay's observation that McCain today did not apply conservative principles to, among other things, the issue of climate change. So Matthews couldn't resist asking, "[w]hat is the conservative position on climate change?" To which DeLay responded, "Man is not responsible for climate change," going on to say that "no science suggests" that man [sic] causes climate change, which he later adjusted to say science hasn't "proven" it.

But this is just the point. The arrogance is presuming that one can have a political position on climate change. It's like saying, the conservative position is that gravity does not exist, or that the earth is flat, or the round earth sits unmoving at the center of the universe. The mere fact that you've got some industry and ideological hacks out there obfuscating the truth about climate change, much like they do with evolution, does not make acknowledging reality arrogant. Elevating your ideological biases above sound science might be the definition of arrogance.

Being a whacko postmodernist, I'm the last person to say that science is ever free of ideology or that it is ever "pure." But there's reasonable and there's stupid. Tom DeLay is either stupid or the apotheosis of cynicism.

The upside is that he's made John McCain sound almost bearable: supports the ICC, believes we need to do something about global warming (as DeLay put it, introduce staggering regulation using global warming as an excuse), wants to shut down gun shows, etc.

And if I heard him right, he said at the end of this interview that McCain might be worse than Obama or Clinton in office. I need to check the transcript when it's out.

What a fruitcake, that guy. Jesus. And here's Chris Matthews giving him airtime. Might as well talk to Ralph Reed.

QOTD: No Joe-mentum for McCain

(((John McCain; Joe Lieberman; how they won't be running mates; whether Joe has learned that losing doesn't mean you keep going.)))

Answering questions about whether or not he would be interested in running as the number two on a GOP ticket headlined by John McCain, Joe Lieberman said:

No, I'd tell him, "Thanks, John, I've been there, I've done that. You can find much better."

Truer words may never have been spoken. On the other hand . . . who will McCain find to run with him?

I do find it amusing, though, that McCain was being asked this question about running with Kerry, who is way to the left of him, although Lieberman is at least in McCain's ballpark, maybe even to the right of him. But these kinds of cross-party-line ticket stories seem to keep happening around McCain, no one else.

QOTD: Some of My Best Friends Are Godless

(((Mike Huckabee talking to Tim Russert; religion, atheism, and public life; being human "deeper" than being Christian? rights and the distinction between animals and humans.)))

Mike Huckabee, responding to questions from Tim Russert about where his understanding of faith leaves American atheists:

No, I wouldn't have any problem at all appointing atheists. I probably had some working for me as governor.

Probably? Hey, I don't know, but I'm betting there were some atheists somewhere in my administration. I mean, if there are any in Arkansas. On the other hand, to be fair, this might be a reasonable indication that the guy applied no litmus test. That is, it at least looks like he at least didn't make an effort to exclude non-religious people from positions. Which would, of course, be discrimination.

But still, you know he was just one second thought away from claiming to have atheist best friends as evidence that he's not bigoted. I suppose we can say for him that he stopped short of that.

More interestingly, though, there's something else to be said for him. Maybe. When Russert in the same interview corners him on abortion and claims that Huckabee's position stems entirely from his Christian faith, here's how Huck replies:

But, no. It's not a faith belief. It's deeper than that. It's a human belief. It goes to the heart of who we are as a civilization. If I believe that your intrinsic worth is not changed by your ancestry, your last name, by your IQ, by your abilities or disabilities, if I value your life and respect it with dignity and worth because it is human, then that's what draws me to the inescapable conclusion that I should be for the sanctity of every and each human life.

Two things. First, it's very interesting that he makes the claim that his belief is "a human belief" that is "deeper than" his "faith belief," on two counts. Not only does it imply that if you're human, you ought to believe it, and one wonders what could count as the content of any such "belief," it also positions "human" as more central than "Christian." Mixed, but on balance this is positive. It's a ground for tolerance of other religious beliefs, including atheism, even if it's not at all clear what "human belief" could really mean.

But this leads to the second point, which is that "human belief" seems to mean something like a belief that human life as such is especially special, even unique. So, as is often the case with frameworks for fairly progressive human rights positions, at bottom his case is about the privilege of being human. You can't miss the irony in his argument, though, if you look closely. He says that when you're human, your ancestry doesn't matter. But of course, being human is precisely an ancestry. And if you're a Christian like Mike Huckabee, your understanding of human ancestry is that it goes back to Adam, who was created by God.

So, when you run it through the wash, Huck's pseudo- (or maybe quasi- is better)humanist position turns out to be thoroughly religious after all. And speciesist (which is not the same thing, but which follows in Huck's case).

There's a reason, after all, that he uses that word, "sanctity."

Quote of the Day: Subtracting (from) the State

(((Alain Badiou; Karl Marx; dictatorship of the proletariat; the withering away of the state; negation and "subtraction")))

In an effort to explain the concept of subtraction, and to distinguish it from negation simply understood, or understood as primarily or only destruction, Badiou provides an example:

Marx insists on saying that the destruction of the bourgeois State is not in itself an achievement. The goal is communism, that is the end of the State as such, and the end of social classes, in favour of a purely egalitarian organization of the civil society. But to come to this, we must first substitute to the bourgeois State a new State, which is not the immediate result of the destruction of the first. In fact, it is a State as different of the bourgeois State as experimental music of today can be of an academic tonal piece of the 19th century, or a contemporary performance can be of an academic representation of Olympic Gods. For the new State - that Marx names "dictatorship of the proletariat" - is a State which organizes its own vanishing, a State which is in its very essence the process of the non-State. [ . . . ] So we can say that in the original thought of Marx, "dictatorship of the proletariat" was a name for a State which is subtracted from all classical laws of a "normal" State. For a classical State is a form of power; but the State named "dictatorship of proletariat" is the power of un-power, the power of the disappearance of the question of power. In any case we name subtraction this part of negation which is oriented by the possibility of something which exists absolutely apart from what exists under the laws of what negation negates.

There are a number of interesting things about this passage, several of which may not be terribly accessible unless one is familiar with Badiou and perhaps Deleuze. I suppose what it amounts to is this, that the dictatorship of the proletariat—whatever it would actually look like, and a dictatorship of one is not a dictatorship of the proletariat, which is already a reworking of the very concept of dictatorship—the dictatorship of the proletariat is the form of the destruction of the bourgeois state, but it is also, at the same time and in the same way, the form of the creation of the non-state, of some radically new kind of state, such that even applying the name "state" is already deceptive, even more deceptive than the term "dictatorship" in the phrase, "dictatorship of the proletariat." It is not yet the non-state. It is perhaps the anti-state, the destructive part of the negation that operates together in tension with the affirmative or creative part of negation that results in something we probably are incapable of actually conceptualizing from within the context of the bourgeois state.

I don't yet think I have fully grasped the operation of subtraction in Badiou's thinking, but its application here may be very helpful in freeing Marx's thinking on the post-revolutionary "state" from the clutches both of liberals (who like to repudiate Marx and so mark themselves as "reasonable") and of "Marxists" (say, Stalin or even Lenin, and dare I say Mao? who seem content to dismember the liberal state, but then continue on with a mutilated form of it: the state is dead! Long live the state!). I am not even thinking of reactionaries and neolibs, who cannot help but think of Marx in cartoon form.

Badiou's talk is available with reasonable sound on YouTube, with the passage I quote beginning at about 8:40 of Part 1, and continuing at the very beginning of Part 2. There is a decent transcript available, which you might want to have available to refer to in tandem with the videos (the transcript seems to have been hastily done, and contains minor errors that do occasionally confuse).

It's not Torture if You're not at Guantanamo

(((Those destroyed CIA videotapes of waterboarding; how they're not covered by the judge's order not to destroy evidence because the victims--yeah, I said it--weren't at Guantanamo Bay)))

According to CNN:

The Bush administration argued Friday that the CIA's destruction of videotapes that showed the interrogations of two al Qaeda suspects did not violate a court order because the suspects were not at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. [ . . . ]

Joseph Hunt, an administration attorney, said the men in the videos were held at secret locations and did not fall under the category of those who were "now at" Guantanamo in Cuba.

"It is inconceivable that the destruction of the tapes could have violated the order," Hunt told the judge.

Okay, it's the judge's bad. They like to blame everything on those activist judges, don't they?

And yet . . . it is also a clear demonstration of bad faith on the part of the administration to even make this argument, never mind to have destroyed the evidence in the first place. Could it be any clearer that they will do precisely everything they think they can get away with?

Quote of the Day: The Rational Credentials of Western Civilization

(((Terry Eagleton's rediscovered Christianity/Catholicism; you can take the communist out of Catholic Ireland, but you can't take the Catholic Ireland out of the commie; the rational credentials of western liberals established in the blood of innocent Iraqis -- talk about someone else dying for your redemption . . .)))

In an interview with the Times about his recent Verso essay on the Gospels, noted Marxist literary-cultural critic Terry Eagleton is kind of forced to say something about his thinking about religion in general, and Jesus in particular. But I'm not going to quote that stuff. I'm more interested in a distinct, albeit closely related, set of comments on Amis and Hitchens, but in a way about Dawkins, as well.

There is an element of panic and even hysteria in the way that people are waving their rational credentials. What Amis is really talking about is a war between barbarism and civilisation. This is an old theme. It takes different forms, and now it's taking this one. If by civilisation you mean a West that's at present killing hundreds and thousands of innocent people in Iraq, then the smugness of that is extraordinary.

I wanted to stop with just that first sentence, in part because it speaks so clearly to the anti-religious attitude of so much secular progressivism, these days, but the importance of it isn't really evident until you get to the rest of the quote. "Smugness" isn't really what he wants, there, I think; maybe, "hypocrisy," or just "inconsistency." Do you have to be barbaric to protect civilization? The same people who I suspect would assent to this would have none of Lenin. Which seems odd to me. Lenin's bad because he was a communist. But, you know, it's ok for us because we're for democracy? Extremism in the defense of liberty is, as they say, no vice.

For myself, if we're going to claim we're civilized, that means being civilized regardless of whom we're dealing with. Otherwise, get off it and admit you're essentially being clannish and xenophobic.

Quote of the Day: Mao Inspired W?

(((Sardonic Economist article on management lessons to take from Mao; helping bad managers stay at the top; getting away with having no idea what you're doing and driving a company/organization/country into the ground)))

Yeah, the article has its irritating aspects, but there is this sort of bizarre but interesting tone of genuine admiration that doesn't quite seem reducible to grudging respect for a ruthlessly efficient dictator, which is about all one would expect from the Economist. Curious. But maybe I'm misreading it. In any case, there's this gem, which remains a gem whether one likes talking about Mao this way or not . . .

Perhaps for the struggling executive, this is the single most important lesson: if you can't do anything right, do a lot. The more you have going on, the longer it will take for its disastrous consequences to become clear. And think very big: for all his flaws, Mao was inspiring.

Mission accomplished!

I loved the punchline to the first part of the same paragraph even better, but I can't be the least bit ironic about it:

Under Mao, China didn't drift, it careened. The propellant came from the top. Policies were poor, execution dreadful and leadership misdirected, but each initiative seemed to create a centripetal force, as everyone looked toward Beijing to see how to march forward (or avoid being trampled). The business equivalent of this is restructuring, the broader the better.

Yep.

Quote of the Day: Mr. Sodomsky [sic] Knowingly Exposed Himself

(((child pornography; expectations of privacy when you hand over your computer to a third party for maintenance, repair, or hardware installation: specifically, you have none; is the name "Sodomsky" a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy?)))

The Pennsylvania Superior Court states, in overturning a ruling on the admissibility of files discovered by a Circuit City tech in the process of installing a DVD burner in the defendant's PC:

Our result in this case is consistent with the weight of authority in this area. If a person is aware of, or freely grants to a third party, potential access to his computer contents, he has knowingly exposed the contents of his computer to the public and has lost any reasonable expectation of privacy in those contents...

This is plainly bullshit. As Ars Technica notes:

When you drop your PC off at Circuit City for a hardware upgrade (and you do use Circuit City for all your hardware upgrades, don't you?), you probably don't expect the techs to rummage around your hard drive, dredging up "questionable" files and showing them to law enforcement.

Okay, back up. What happened? In short, Sodomsky (o, to change that name!) left his PC at Circuit City for installation of a burner. The tech installed the hardware, then searched Sodomsky's computer for video files to use for testing the burner. He saw video file names that indicated pornography, and then, as AT puts it, "Richert clicked on one that had listed a male name and an age of 13 or 14 and found a video he believed to contain child pornography." He then called the police, who seized the computer and arrested Sodomsky when he came to pick up the laptop.

In the use of what seems to me an important (and telling) phrase, the Court observes that the tech was testing in a "commercially accepted manner," insisting further that "The employee testing the burner was free to select any video for testing purposes, as appellee had not restricted access to any files. Therefore, Mr. Richert did not engage in a fishing expedition in this case..." (emphasis added).

It could be added that you can burn any file to a DVD, not just movies, so using this logic, the tech was precisely free to search for any file, not just a video file, so he had in effect the run of the customer's computer. So, wait, is it possible that the court's decision is vitiated by its ignorance of basic technological aspects of the case? Declan McCullagh, in the C|Net article linked above, notes that the Court's decision refers to "codecs" as "Code X." Clearly, the court knows next to nothing about either burning DVDs or playing or encoding videos. The end result is a decision that says that computer store installation or repair techs have unfettered access to your computer, and whatever they find is admissible in court against you.

Unless . . . you tell them not to run around your computer for files? Even if this is commercially accepted practice, that by no means makes it either legally acceptable, or widely understood, and it strikes me as very odd for the Court to engage in this kind of reasoning. Why isn't the store required instead to tell you that that's what they'll do and give you an opportunity to establish limits within which they are allowed to work? Or, better still, why don't they have, using this case as an example, a standard process that includes a file on a flash drive, which they can insert in the USB [drive] port and burn straight from that drive to test the burner. No use or viewing of the customer's files is required, nor is any copying of files (beyond necessary drivers, user manuals, help files, etc.).

Finally, it's not at all clear what the rationale is for the tech's selection of a video to use for testing. I would argue that his selection of the particular video was itself a fishing expedition. Why does his spotting a file name that seems to indicate pornography give him the right to open that file? Well, it doesn't, unless you say there is no reasonable expectation of privacy, which position I think I have already established is based on specious, indeed pernicious, reasoning.

Let's think analogically: if I spot what appears to be meth lab equipment through the window of a neighbor's house, do I then have the right to sneak into their house to examine the equipment, then grab it to hand it to the cops if I think (rightly or wrongly) that it actually constitutes meth-manufacturing equipment? Surely not (although I might in that case call the cops and tell them I think my neighbors are making meth, but then we would need more evidence for a warrant than my thinking I saw equipment through the window). Let's go a step further and suppose that my neighbors have given me the key to their house so that I can let them in if they lock themselves out. Have they then given me the right to use those keys if I spot through the window what appears to me (ignorant bugger that I am, never having made meth) to be meth equipment? I don't think so.

The long and the short of it is this. First, there are holes everywhere in the Court's logic. Second, I can't believe I'm only seeing coverage of this right now in C|Net and Ars Technica. Third, um, don't be a stupid lUser when you take your computer to Circuit City: set up passwords and guest access and protect your files, since, let's face facts, it's a little bit like trusting the parking garage attendant with your keys. I mean, do we really think this is the first time this tech or some other has accidentally discovered porn on a customer's computer?

tags technorati : Privacy, Sodomsky, Civil Liberties

Quote of the Day: Wash That Mitt Right out of Your Hair

(((neuroscience; marketing; politics; mind-reading; electorate of one; appealing to emotion at its most basic, anti-democratic level; the truth about modern political campaigns: they're marketing campaigns, duh)))

"I'm looking at a package of shampoo the same way I'm looking at my next leader."

Turns out some former MIT students have developed some cool stuff that lets them essentially read your mind while you're playing a video game, watching tv ads, or, say, listening to politicians. So the same tricks they use to make a bottle of shampoo appeal to you at a pre-rational, sub-conscious level, they will be using to "help" you "decide" who to vote for.

"Political marketing is a fairly pure analog to commercial marketing," says David Remer, chairman of Lucid Systems. "I'm looking at a package of shampoo the same way I'm looking at my next leader."

Well, I guess that's one way of conceptualizing democratic political processes. Habermas is rolling in his grave, of course, but he's old-fashioned, anyway, and believes a public sphere is something more than the neocapitalist market applied to voting for candidates.

This isn't any better:

Mr. Westen, a clinical psychologist who specializes in personality disorders, is author of a 2007 book "The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation." In his studies, which have involved placing partisan voters in brain scanners, he found that when voters look at pictures of candidates or listen to their statements, the regions of the brain associated with emotion are more engaged than the regions governing thought. Instead of detailing a ten-point health-care plan, he says, politicians would be better off talking about health care in moral terms.

Right, because morality should have nothing to do with thought, and neither should voting or the processes of public engagement that lead up to it. It's about truthiness, not truth. Your gut—which is actually located in your brain—already knows the answers; you're just waiting for a politician to say what you already believe.

politics science neuroscience democracy capitalism EmSense

Religion is Back! Of Course, It was Never Gone

Surprisingly good piece in the Economist, bringing together several of my own concerns: recognition that religion, as quintessentially human as anything else we do, is not going to go away ever; recognition that religion is a matter of conscience, and that the very idea that religion is a matter of conscience is a hard-won modern idea; that the best way to achieve peace in religionized conflicts is to involve religious leaders rather than to try to make them stop being religious. And so on. And of course a recognition that many "religious" conflicts are not at bottom, or certainly not entirely, "religious."

Many of those struggles, notably the Middle East, began as secular tribal disputes. Now that they have a religious component they are much harder to solve: if God granted you the West Bank, you are less likely to trade it. “Inter-faith dialogue” may sound a wishy-washy concept; but it is a more realistic idea than presenting a secular peace to competing faiths without the backing of religious leaders. Priests and pastors condemned violence from both sides in Northern Ireland; that has not really happened in the Holy Land.

tags technorati : religion, politics, inter-faith dialogue, middle east

CNN: Rudy Hearts Hillary-Haters

(((Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, Socialists, Fascists, Red-baiting, Political Discourse, Construction of the Political Enemy as That Which We Most Despise)))

If American liberals and leftists often play fast and loose with "nazi" and "fascist," they are in that respect, as in so many others, only pale images of their right-wing antagonists in their use of "socialist."

Case in point—John Kerry and John Edwards were easily the furthest left of the Dems in the 04 primary, but you'd have thought that Howard Dean, a moderate at best, was the second coming of Lenin. Until, of course, they had run him out of the race for a spasm of enthusiasm in which the candidate seemed to forget that he would be on national TV.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/pragmatic_gop

A conservative voter visiting Georgia from Minnesota, Murphy said Clinton is his main motivation for voting. "She is a socialist," he said. "She is a dirty, rotten scoundrel."

Because, you know, socialists are, in fact, by definition, dirty rotten scoundrels, full of hatred and despicable disdain for The American Way of Life™.

How Not to Get It

This would make me think they'd been taking lessons from the Bush administration, if it weren't so characteristic of them, already. Indeed, so much so that the Iraq War looks like it models itself on an Israeli policy. Anyway, looks like the Gaza rockets have finally crossed a line. Or something.

Israeli cabinet ministers on Wednesday voted unanimously to declare the Gaza Strip an “enemy entity” in order to shut off fuel and power to the 1.4m Palestinians in the impoverished enclave if rocket attacks continue.

Since June the territory where 40 per cent of Palestinians live has been ruled exclusively by Hamas and its borders have been open only for humanitarian aid.

So we thought it would be a good idea to make sure the humanitarian workers had more to do, which is sure to stop those rockets, since we're seeing that choking harder has slowed them down so much. Oh, wait,

Timed with the arrival in Israel of Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, the move by Ehud Olmert’s administration shows exasperation with continued Palestinian militant rocket fire against the Negev.

Yep, clamping down is clearly working for Israel in the Occupied Territories, just like it always has. Not.

Three dozen young soldiers were wounded last week when rockets struck their base, sparking a public outcry for retaliatory action.

Oh, no! Not soldiers! Only terrorists would fire at soldiers!

Gradual sanctions, imposed by Israel in stages if the rockets do not stop, would allow in only enough fuel to power electrical generators at Gaza hospitals. The borders would be opened only for essential food and medical supplies. Water supplies would continue flowing at present levels, however.

Lawyers also advised the cabinet that any disruption in electricity should be restricted, to avoid violating international law by inflicting collective punishment on the civilian population. More than half the Gazan population is under 15 years old.

Ahhhh, I knew I saw the hand of Alberto Gonzales; at least he's found new work! If less than half the Gazan population were under 15, it would be acceptable to starve them. As it is, it is only possible legally to make them really, really hungry. Even if they did vote for terrorists.

Despite Israeli air strikes and Israeli Defence Forces forays to root out the rocket launchers, which have killed a dozen people in seven years and terrified thousands of citizens in Sderot, in northern Israel, homemade rockets rain down almost daily on Israeli soil.

Almost daily attacks that kill an average of two people a year? Hasn't anyone in Hamas figured out that those are pretty inefficient numbers? Maybe the strategy is to keep the pressure on without, in fact, killing lots of people, but I don't know that you can target those rockets accurately enough to reliably aim not to kill or hurt people.

Tzahi Hanegbi, defence committee chairman, told Israel’s Army Radio there was no need to “pamper” Gazans with fuel and electricity, and that a new incursion into the strip was inevitable.

Yes, fuel and electricity are examples of those modern American luxuries, like private jets. I mean, it's not like they won't have water.

What? You got a problem?

tags technorati : Israel, Palestine, Terrorism, Hamas, Gaza, Politics

That's a "Fresh" Rating on RottenTomatoes

From Meteor Blades's DailyKos Diary:

Data from the respected British marketing research firm Opinion Research Business, indicate that as many as 1,220,580 Iraqis have died as a result of the war and occupation of Iraq since March 2003.

A representative sample of 1,461 adults 18 or older answered this question:

"Q: How many members of your household, if any, have died as a result of the conflict in Iraq since 2003 (i.e, as a result of violence rather than a natural death such as old age)? Please note that I mean those who were actually living under your roof."

Results:

None - 78%
One - 16%
Two - 5%
Three - 1%
Four or more - 0.002%

As a friend notes, "But every last corpse was at least free from Saddam's tyranny."

tags technorati : Iraq, Iraq Deaths

The Moral Equivalent of [Religion]

Just reading a very interesting interview with Stephen Duncombe posted by Bruces to nettime.

His comments (quoting William James) reminded me of my efforts (documented on this site) to argue with programmatic/dogmatic atheists that you don't bring people over by telling them they're stupid or even simply by telling them they're wrong (and even "proving" it). Duncombe sez:

There is an essay that has stuck with me. I remember reading it when I was 18 and I went to a War Resisters meeting in San Franciso, we had herb tea and sat on the floor. It was William James’ “A Moral Equivalent to War.” James’s point was simple. Speaking to a group of pacifists, he said, “If we keep addressing pacifism by saying ‘war is bad, peace is good,’ we’re not going to get anyplace with any people except for people who already agree with us. What we have to figure out it is why people go to war.” And he says “look, whether we like it or not, war serves the purposes of honor, sacrifice. Of patriotism, and so on and these things are good qualities; what we have to do is figure out a pacifist equivalent that can actually allow people to feel honor, allow people to feel sacrifice about giving for the all, allow people to feel patriotism, but not in a way that kills other
people or gets people killed.” And then says “Once you acknowledge that, then you can move the point towards your own politics.” And that stuck with me.

Could say much the same thing to Thomas Frank and like-minded progressives re: Kansas . . .

tags technorati : religion atheism duncombe

The Ministry of Truthiness

Wikipedia, that is. And who is the Minister of Truthiness? Why, you are.

It is a sort of dictum of the postmodern left that power is everywhere and everywhere contested. It is tempting at times to emphasize the latter and play down the former. But the recent news about—or, more importantly, from—WikiScanner reminds us that when everyone is anonymous, so are corporate and government agents. At its best (which is to say, when contributors edit entries both honestly and knowledgeably), Wikipedia is an interesting and even important experiment in open source content.

Unfortunately, the reality is much more problematic, in two ways. First, there is the opportunity for governments and corporations (and, frankly, any other organization with a vested interest in an entry, including non-profits organizations and institutions, other political entities, etc. etc.) to manipulate ostensibly "grassroots" information source in a very astroturf-y kind of way.

So, that's the Orwellian part.

But then there's the Tocquevillian part, the part where the truth is what most people believe the truth is. Stephen Colbert, whom we know and love, hits both of these elements in a recent segment: video, transcript.

I don't contribute code to, say, the Linux or BSD codebases. Better programmers than I do that, and I let them do it. Because it makes better code.

*Hint*

tags technorati : wikipedia wikiscanner truthiness politics