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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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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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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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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(A sincere apology to both of my readers, who have probably missed my insightful commentary deeply. I will probably change gears and stop talking about politics eventually, but I cannot not talk about Blagojevich.)

I’m not going to say the honeymoon is over for Barack Obama, but there is some talk circulating, including at least one unfortunate headline, which makes it sound like people think Obama knew about Blagojevich’s mind-numbingly stupid corruption. And people were concerned about his cabinet choices–Clinton cronies, people who have a history of sending dead fish to people they don’t like. They wonder if his politics of change was just talk, and if he will basically be the same as any other politician–or worse, because he’s from Chicago, which is comically corrupt.

I’m not sure if this qualifies as buyer’s remorse, but I haven’t lost my generic hopefulness just yet. Consider a comparison of the McCain and Obama campaigns, if you will. McCain’s campaign felt like it was being run by his advisors. McCain allowed himself to be herded and ended up appearing disingenuous. Obama never seemed to lose control. Perhaps he simply chose the right advisors, but it seems like he has the force of will to keep any of his staff picks from running amok–or at least that he can reign them in and use their powers for good.

But Blagojevich! He may sound like a badly written villain in a comic book, but is his corruption going to ruin the Obama presidency? In this particular instance, I am going to say no. The American public has the memory span of a goldfish, so even if he did something shady, he’s in the clear in four years–and he has already been elected. Right now, public opinion can’t do anything to him.

The media is a big fan of freaking out. It always ends up blowing over.

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The more reports I read from the campaign’s postmortem, the less convinced I am that John McCain really had control over his message at the end. Once he had picked Sarah Palin as his running mate and took a hard tack to the right, the campaign had entered into its final stages, with attack ads that took a turn for the nasty and a running mate who seemed to represent everything I have ever disliked about the conservative base. At that point he seemed less interested in acting like the moderate he has developed a reputation for being. It had become a campaign of gimmicks, of erratic and seemingly desperate stabs at the presidency.

Had they recognized they had lost before that point? Did they think their only chance was to hope the conservative base outnumbered Obama’s legion of supporters? Were they counting on the youth vote to be as unreliable as previously? The strategies after the conventions seemed risky. Sarah Palin seemed at once a cynical attempt to attract Hillary’s supporters, a grab to energize the Republican base, and a desperate stab at weakening Obama’s message of change by bringing someone else who can lay claim to being an agent of change.

I am not convinced that balancing act would have been possible even for a political mastermind, and I certainly don’t think Sarah Palin fits the bill. I grant her bloody, luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful, sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin that has a name; she may even be intelligent and clever. But she is not cunning. She is a creature of gimmicks. She was also almost entirely unknown, apparently even to the McCain campaign. The convention bounce came, held for a while, then faded into an Obama lead once the public got an idea of who she was–and was less than impressed.

But I’m not really here to talk about why the campaign failed. He was taking some risks and failed. I think they got away from him at some point. He lost balance, things happened too fast, and the only choice was to run with it and hope. I can’t say it was a civil campaign at the end. But I think it is important to remember at least this much: John McCain is not a monster. His supporters are not all hateful fearmongers. Perhaps it’s time to make the attempt to make some unity happen?

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Racism is not dead, it’s just taken a bizarre turn. Now you have some of the conservatives blaming the blacks for being racist. That’s right, folks: the blacks are now oppressing the white man. Those making these observations are almost invariably the wingnuttiest of the wingnuts, but the tone of the observation tends to vary from “idle sociological observation” to “THIS IS AN OUTRAGE WHY AREN’T THEY BEING ROUNDED UP.”

This is where racism has been lately. Most conservatives don’t think it exists anymore, unless it is the “blacks hating whites” variety they have no problem talking about. Now that we no longer have racist laws, racism is pretty much gone. The reason blacks are poor is because they choose to be poor! The reason you don’t see as many minorities in government as you would expect from numbers is because they just aren’t as qualified for office! We aren’t being racist, we’re just observing that in the land of opportunity, they don’t seem to be seizing the day very well.

This is the kind of racism that expresses itself by saying, “I’m not racist, I love my black friends.” It’s a sort of blindness to your own actions and a belief that what you do is perfectly normal and acceptable. “I’m more than willing to get past racism, I’m just waiting for them to go first.”

I think a really good awareness program would be just confronting some of these people with some basic sociological research on minorities in America.

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Just a quick update on an earlier post in which I said Republicans don’t threaten to move to Canada when they lose. Turns out some of them do! I think mostly younger ones. And a few are saying New Zealand or Australia or something. Apparently Obama is just that bad.

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