Shorthand for Nothing

I’ve been reading various authors talking about the theory that democratic states never or almost never make war on each other. The theory goes that they will still make war on non-democratic states (perhaps because those states are non-democratic), and that non-democratic states will make war on anything, but that democratic states never attack democratic states. I’d heard this theory before, of course, but this time, reading through it, something struck me about it.

These authors are describing democracy as a plague of zombies.

My thought process here went through two steps, actually. First, I was struck by how like a game of zombies this might be. One of those games where one (or more) person(s) starts as the democratic state zombie, and the democratic states zombies then go around trying to convert infect non-democratic states zombies, and some of the more enterprising non-democratic states zombies might try to throw their comrades under the bus in the hopes of surviving for longer. Some might willingly join the democratic zombie team, because of their love of peace brains.

Of course, I quickly realized that it was like a game of zombies because this also more or less adequately describes an actual zombie plague. The zombies, whatever their starting numbers, have an all-consuming hatred of everything that is not a zombie, and desire to either convert it to their number or destroy it. But zombies, in my mind somewhat confusingly, never fight among themselves. Perhaps undead flesh is not as delicious, or is not nutritious in the least. Perhaps there is an alliance there. Who can say?

In the meanwhile, the survivors cannot be relied upon to band together against the outbreak. Some small bands of survivors might, but by and large it is every man for himself. Some will fight one another. Sometimes this is for survival, sometimes for resources, sometimes because they just don’t like each other. Sometimes they hope that, by appeasing the zombies with a sacrifice of flesh, they will be left alone.

But as modern American thought would be quick to remind you, you cannot avoid the plague forever. Eventually the zombies will win.

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So, as those of you who follow my Google Reader feed (which, why are you doing that to yourself?) are no doubt aware, I follow Jezebel, which is Gawker’s feminist blog. Or something like that; I suspect they would take issue with that as a label, but that’s the one I’m sticking with.

They have this recurring feature which they call “Crap Email From A Dude.” In it, they reproduce an email from a dude to a girl, where the guy is doing or saying something they feel is sexist. Sometimes, maybe even frequently, the ones they post are legitimately crap emails. I think I’ve even shared one or two on Google Reader before, because I like to chronicle humanity at its lowest, though I try (probably unsuccessfully) to do so without malice. But this latest one… this latest one really bothered me, and it wasn’t because I sympathized with the writer of the email. (more…)

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Recently, Mancow Muller agreed to be waterboarded, hoping to prove that it wasn’t torture. A Gawker tipster writes that it may have been staged as a cheap publicity stunt. (Full text, and relevant videos, which you should read, are through the link.) In this case, I’m inclined to believe the radio host when he says it was torture.

It’s entirely possible that he went into it hoping for a half-hearted attempt, sitting through it for thirty seconds, and then saying “It’s not that bad.” That would be better publicity for a right wing radio host. He’d have the support of all the right-wing pundits, mocking the liberals. The liberals would be calling it a fraud. And it’s very possible he was hoping to make it deceptive in appearance. But now that I’ve watched him on Olberman, and another instance of waterboarding, I think his response is legit, whatever else happened before.

The biggest reason is this: if it is entirely fake and he wasn’t under any displeasure, or that displeasure wasn’t that bad, he has no reason to say that it’s torture. He would try to downplay it. I don’t think anyone was questioning its efficacy, so he doesn’t stand to gain from going on and proving “yeah, it’s bad and will make people talk.” No, a victory for him would be to go on the air, get waterboarded, and then be able to say “eh, it’s not that bad.” He didn’t. And I really appreciate that.

My biggest question, really, is how is it people can simultaneously believe that something is “not torture” and that it is an effective interrogation technique that involves subjecting someone to an unpleasant experience they want to avoid so much that they confess to whatever they know. That’s what torture is, isn’t it? Torture is subjecting someone to something that will make their will break. There isn’t a way to make it mild. It has to be unbearable. It can be psychological, it can be physical, it can be social, but in the end it’s all torture.

And you know what? If you think it’s okay to torture terror suspects, that’s really your right. Just stop pretending that it isn’t torture. It is. What they do to the students of SERE is torture. My father, a naval aviator who completed SERE training, once told me he would have turned in his wings rather than go through it again. If you want to talk about the effectiveness of these interrogation techniques, if you want to defend them, do so with the full understanding of what they are doing. If you really want to say that we need to torture these people, or that they are bad people who deserve it, do so with the full understanding of what we are doing to them. Watch the damn videos of people getting waterboarded. Listen to them talk about it. Read about it.

Because when the Bush administration authorized it, they knew. This wasn’t a decision they made lightly. It was a deliberate authorization. They weighed the options. They considered the morality. And they decided that their objectives were more important than that, that it was worth becoming monsters to pursue our goal.

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This is why I ultimately care about politics and social work: socioeconomic justice. I want a strong economy, of course, because a strong economy is good for all of us–but what I really want to see is a society which is truly blind to class.

I’m not saying classism is rampant or even necessarily the cause of most of the problems the poor experience, though it is part of it. No, I want to see a society where the poor are not kept poor, where they are given the same opportunities and education as the wealthy. Where a poor student doesn’t have to work his way through high school while the wealthy student has nothing but leisure time. Where the poor don’t feel that college is impossible for them without an utterly insurmountable debt–where college debt isn’t insurmountable for anyone, but is affordable. Where students are taught about grants and scholarships and other programs that many are simply not made aware of.

I want to give those less privileged the tools they need to rise above where they are–not just the homeless, but the poor, those who have enough to get by but only just, who can’t provide their children with the educational opportunities they so richly deserve. Not just by providing them work or job security, but giving them the tools and the path to move on to something better.

America calls itself the land of opportunity, and I care about politics because I believe we can be that. Maybe we really can shelter the poor, the sick, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

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Variously, discussing the recent news concerning Bristol Palin has been described as cynical, an invasion of privacy, or otherwise something that should be avoided. While there are definitely snarky, cynical posts out there, I feel that it’s a legitimate conversation–and yes, even the snarkiness of Gawker is not going to kill anyone. (more…)

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On Saturday I attended a screening of Secrecy. I was late arriving due to a long lunch and intriguing conversation, but I caught most of the film and all of the conversation after. As the various interviewees discussed their thoughts on government secrecy, providing views both for and against, I found myself wondering about this vast world–what would I do in these situations, how could I make an impact in this world, and so on, and so on. It felt somehow pressing. It’s a world of contrasts, of treading careful lines, the sort of nuanced intricate discussion that holds my attention.

It was snowing when I left, and I exchanged a brief “see you this weekend, maybe” style of conversation with Tim Hwang for a few moments before heading off to the T. When I reached the station there was a fairly large group of kids being accompanied by a much smaller group of adults–I’m assuming it was a school trip of some sorts. They were new to the area, or at least to Cambridge. They were excited to be here and generally enjoying themselves, as if there wasn’t this vast world of government secrets out there, archives full of forbidden information waiting for someone to discover them.

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Yesterday, the House unanimously voted to reject the ~$800 billion economic stimulus package. Liberal commentators have been saying, essentially, that if the Republicans don’t want to play ball, the Democrats can, and should, pretty much play without them. And as Nate Silver pointed out, quoting the AP article, this doesn’t look good on their parts. And the fact that it’s unanimous makes it look like it was scripted, even if it wasn’t.

Assuming it was scripted, I imagine they were hoping for the reaction to go something like “Barack Obama couldn’t get a single Republican to vote for his stimulus package–what a failure on bipartisanship on his count!” I also imagine they were banking on the idea that, if it fails, suddenly they look prescient.

They did not take into account two things. First, Obama is very popular right now–given. So nobody is likely to spin this into an anti-Obama story unless they already dislike him. And the media doesn’t dislike him. Second, and this is probably the important part: a unanimous vote looks like posturing. I’m not convinced it will look good for them if the package fails. If anything, they might be blamed for it somehow. That’s obstructionism at its finest.

Maybe it wasn’t intentional. Maybe just none of them liked it. But I know what the narrative’s going to be from here.

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Things like this annoy me a great deal.

Let me start by saying that I believe everyone deserves fair treatment, that I acknowledge that sexism/racism/etc are still a huge problem and are sticky issues we need to address. That said, I detest how most such movements handle things–namely by complaining loudly and at length about it, and accusing people of being actively, deliberately sexist. (The speaker in question acknowledged that this was not the case–but seriously, don’t cause a scene about it. YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG.)

The blog to which I just linked, though–oh, the whinging sense of entitlement going on there. The self-righteous “you didn’t have any women on any panels and this is because of Sexism” tone. There is nothing about this sort of thing I approve of.

If you’re going to advocate civil rights, which you should, could you be kind enough not to act all petulant about it? Patience and understanding go a long way towards making people approve of your cause rather than doing what I’m doing right now, which is casually dismissing you as a waste of my time. When you take up a cause you become its ambassador. There are lots of people working towards feminism etc. who are perfectly decent individuals and are doing a lot of good things–but it’s much easier to remember someone who is whiny and demanding about it. That sticks with you.

As an aside: in the little microcosm of internet culture I live in here in Boston, the male-female ratio is kind of ridiculous. Sure, there are girls, and many of them are just as geeky as the rest of us, but there’s just not as many of them. Sometimes instead of insisting that it is Simply Wrong, perhaps it’s worth pausing to consider why, exactly, this might be the case in the first place. If nothing else, maybe once you’ve done this you will stop acting as if it’s the worst crime against humanity ever committed.

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Via Slog:

I, like many people, have been guilty of thinking that there is nothing that’s going to keep track of a candidate’s campaign promises. A candidate can say anything to get himself elected, then just renege on all of them, because who’s going to remember? He must make hundreds of them over the course of his campaign, right?

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: the Obameter, a compilation of about 500 campaign promises. The St. Petersburg Times is tracking their progress–whether the promise is kept or broken, whether he compromised, whether it’s stalled, or whether no action has been taken as of yet.

I keep forgetting that we live in an age of the internet. As John Allison once put it, “Google is giving people the facts, and we want them back.” Maybe this won’t be used in a terribly widespread fashion. A lot of political afficionadoes will have lost their interest in politics. But now there is accountability. Someone is watching, and it’s easy to access. People can get information more readily now. Is it possible we’re finally entering an age of government transparency?

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I really should have written this when it was still relevant, but here it goes.

A number of conservatives make no secret about blaming Barack Obama’s victory in the election on media bias. John McCain’s campaign got only negative coverage, where Obama only got positive coverage. I’m not going to dispute their claim, though I disagree with it. Let’s assume it’s true: the press was exceptionally positive towards Obama and exceptionally negative towards McCain. What could this mean/why could this be? The way I see it, there are four options:

• Barack Obama is legitimately better candidate than John McCain, and the media is merely reflecting the realities of the situation.
• Barack Obama is roughly on par with John McCain in terms of his ability to lead the country or win votes, but he ran a better, cleaner campaign.
• Barack Obama is roughly on par with John McCain in terms of his ability to lead the country or win votes, but the media liked him better so he was given a free pass and remained positive in the public perception.
• Barack Obama is a worse candidate than John McCain, but a vast media conspiracy concealed these obvious truths, and tricked the American public into voting for him.

I tend to favor one of the first two options. Though I will acknowledge that Obama was something of a media darling during the summer months, he had already weathered some pretty unpleasant media scandals during the primaries. And let’s face it: he has a compelling narrative.

Obama had people fired up about him irrespective of the media. He had massive support on the internet, and a terrifyingly efficient grassroots political machine.

Those who are inclined to favor the latter two options, I have two words for you: John Kerry. There is no way the media gave Bush more favorable attention than McCain in this election. He was pretty universally reviled at the time.

But even besides that, look at the record turnouts among young voters. If the media is biased, it has always been biased. Something about Barack Obama’s campaign made him popular among a generation of people that is largely disaffected with politics.

And he definitely ran a better campaign to reach these people. He brought technology into politics, in a prominent way. There were internet-based campaigns, and stories written about how internet-based politics were the way of the future. People received updates on text messages. His transition website uses some very web 2.0 technologies. John McCain was not a bad candidate, but his campaign, especially in comparison to that of Barack Obama, made him unelectable. It ruined his brand. It made him look like a bad candidate. He did it to himself, and the electorate responded.

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