I cant really comment on this with any depth, because I'm working from a book review, but it seems to be another case of the woefully ignorant building castles of smoke and mirrors.
Gregory Clark is an economic historian who has written a book explaining the distribution of rich and poor in terms -- yep, you guessed it -- of Darwinism. (snicker). To wit:
n “A Farewell to Alms,” Gregory Clark, an economic historian at the University of California, Davis, suggests an intriguing, even startling answer: natural selection. Focusing on England, where the Industrial Revolution began, Clark argues that persistently different rates of childbearing and survival, across differently situated families, changed human nature in ways that finally allowed human beings to escape from the Malthusian trap in which they had been locked since the dawn of settled agriculture, 10,000 years before. Specifically, the families that propagated themselves were the rich, while those that died out were the poor. Over time, the “survival of the richest” propagated within the population the traits that had allowed these people to be more economically successful in the first place: rational thought, frugality, a capacity for hard work — in short the familiar list of Calvinist, bourgeois virtues. The greater prevalence of those traits in turn made possible the Industrial Revolution and all that it has brought. (A lacuna in the argument is that Clark never says just how prevalent this Darwinian process made the traits he has in mind. Would an increase from, say 0.05 percent of the population to 0.50 percent have mattered much?)
Of course, he doesn't seem to mention that it is the poor who have more children, both within a society and across societies -- birthrates in Africa and South America are astronomical compared to Europe and the US, while within the US, the birthrate among the wealthy is paltry compared to that among the poor.
I have serious reservations toward looking at culture and societies in evolutionary terms -- "survival of the fittest" simply doesn't apply, and it annoys the hell out of me when people who obviously do not understand the mechanisms of evolution try to apply them inappropriately.
The heart of Clark’s analysis consists of a detailed examination of births, deaths, income and wealth in England between 1250 and 1800, as evidenced primarily by wills. Although the records are scant, he finds that on average richer people were more likely to marry than poorer people, they married at earlier ages, they lived longer once they were married, they bore more children per year of marriage, and their children were more likely to survive and to bear children themselves. The result was centuries of downward mobility, in which the offspring of richer families continually moved into the lower rungs of society. Along the way, their behavioral traits and attitudes became ever more dominant.
Point: until the nineteenth century, poor people mostly didn't bother with formal marriage -- they simply moved in together, announced that they were married, and all the neighbors said "Fine." Poor people seldom left wills -- they generally did not own much in the way of property, were more likely to be tenants than freeholders, and thus they had little to leave their children. Depending on circumstances, there might be baptismal records -- and there might not be, particularly in rural areas, which was where the poor were concentrated. The whole data base is suspect, simply because formal marriage was essentially a contract dealing with the disposition of property. Those who didn't have any property didn't bother.
To cast an argument like this in evolutionary terms really misses the point. Evolution operates through a combination of chance and necessity: the creation of offspring is, initially, a matter of the random combination of the two genetic heritages of the parents (and within the set of available genetic material, it is really random). Survival is a matter of the viability of that combination against the necessities of environmental demands. Cultures tend to follow a pattern of growth and decay, but there's no evidence that any sort of "evolutionary" mechanism is at work there, except in a metaphorical sense, and using "evolution" as a metaphor is dangerous, at the very least. In this case, it seems to misrepresent both evolution and the development of culture. (If you want to go whole-hog Richard Dawkins sociobiologist on the issue, I suppose there might be the possibility that evolution is a valid paradigm to describe cultural development. I can deal with the idea that Beethoven's Ninth is the product of biochemistry, but what operates on an individual level doesn't necessarily operate on a larger level and vice-versa -- Beethoven does not equal nineteenth-century Vienna. I think the random factors become too overwhelming to accept that idea without severe scrutiny. This, however, seems much more to be "Oh, look! Development equals evolution!" Not.)
One thing that seems to be missing here is the idea that the transmission of culture, one of humanity's strong points, assumes, given the fact that people have brains and some of us even tend to use them, that we build on what we inherit. That's not the same as evolving, which is the replacement of not-quite-optimum organisms by those that are closer to optimum for a given environment. We simply took Euclid and came up with engineering.
Frankly, from the review the book sounds like the kind of thing I don't even want to review myself any more because I hate wasting my time on garbage, and this looks to be one step short of Holy Blood, Holy Grail. This sort of nails it down:
One frustrating aspect of Clark’s argument is that while he insists on the “biological basis” of the mechanism by which the survival of the richest fostered new human attributes and insists on the Darwinian nature of this process, he repeatedly shies away from saying whether the changes he has in mind are actually genetic. “Just as people were shaping economies,” he writes in a typical formulation, “the economy of the preindustrial era was shaping people, at least culturally and perhaps also genetically” (emphasis added). Nor does he introduce any evidence, of the kind that normally lies at the core of such debates, that traits like the capacity for hard work are heritable in the sense in which biologists use the term.
Q.E.D.
Brought to us by the staggeringly uncritical Andrew Sullivan.
By the way, if you want a very clear if slightly technical exposition of what evolutionary theory says and how it works, I recommend Ernst Mayr's What Evolution Is. Probably the best one-volume description available.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Profiles in Cowardice
Another faith-based candidate for president. From WaPo:
Mike Huckabee once advocated isolating AIDS patients from the general public, opposed increased federal funding in the search for a cure and said homosexuality could "pose a dangerous public health risk."
As a candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in 1992, Huckabee answered 229 questions submitted to him by The Associated Press. Besides a quarantine, Huckabee suggested that Hollywood celebrities fund AIDS research from their own pockets, rather than federal health agencies. . . .
At a news conference in Asheville, N.C., on Saturday, Huckabee said he wanted at the time to follow traditional medical practices used for dealing with tuberculosis and other infectious diseases.
"Medical protocol typically says that if you have a disease for which there is no cure, and you are uncertain about the transmission of it, then the first thing you do is that you quarantine or isolate carriers," Huckabee said.
When Huckabee wrote his answers in 1992, it was common knowledge that AIDS could not be spread by casual contact. In late 1991, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said there were 195,718 AIDS patients in the country and that 126,159 people had died from the syndrome.
Contrast this passage on the reaction of Fr. Mychal Judge. Andrew Sullivan, quoting himself:
We forget how terrifying HIV was in the early and mid 1980s, how patients would be quarantined in dark rooms, abandoned by their families, with their meals rolled into their rooms on trolleys. From the beginning, Mychal did as Jesus did and walked right in and kissed these frightened souls on the lips. If they recoiled from the sight of a priest - gay men at that time saw the church as an alien, hostile entity - he would persist in silence. He would simply bring holy oils, take a chair to the bottom of their hospital beds, and massage their bony, cold, pain-racked feet. He seemed to express no anger, just a kind of suspended joy in the moment, a joy he found resuscitated by the fact of the resurrection and the intercession of Our Lady.
Let's consider that the stance of someone like Huckabee -- and those to whom he is trying desperately to appeal -- embodies not only ignorance but a deep-seated cowardice. To proclaim oneself a "Christian" and react to the needy by demanding that they be shut away sort of misses the point, doesn't it? This of course applies not only to Huckabee, but to the entire complex of those who have fastened on a grotesque mockery of the lessons of a teacher whose compassion, love, and courage was far beyond what we can really understand to push a mean-spirited agenda that reveals only the smallness of their souls.
And on that score, read Sullivan's whole piece on Judge. It reminds me of something the patriarchal monotheisms have forgotten -- or suppressed: throughout history, and probably before: those with "aberrant" sexual orientations have been seen almost universally as persons of great spiritual power, a bridge between male and female and between the spirit world and the mundane -- conduits, if you will, for the grace of god. We see it again in people like Mychal Judge. I think that's why we scare the right so much.
Mike Huckabee once advocated isolating AIDS patients from the general public, opposed increased federal funding in the search for a cure and said homosexuality could "pose a dangerous public health risk."
As a candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in 1992, Huckabee answered 229 questions submitted to him by The Associated Press. Besides a quarantine, Huckabee suggested that Hollywood celebrities fund AIDS research from their own pockets, rather than federal health agencies. . . .
At a news conference in Asheville, N.C., on Saturday, Huckabee said he wanted at the time to follow traditional medical practices used for dealing with tuberculosis and other infectious diseases.
"Medical protocol typically says that if you have a disease for which there is no cure, and you are uncertain about the transmission of it, then the first thing you do is that you quarantine or isolate carriers," Huckabee said.
When Huckabee wrote his answers in 1992, it was common knowledge that AIDS could not be spread by casual contact. In late 1991, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said there were 195,718 AIDS patients in the country and that 126,159 people had died from the syndrome.
Contrast this passage on the reaction of Fr. Mychal Judge. Andrew Sullivan, quoting himself:
We forget how terrifying HIV was in the early and mid 1980s, how patients would be quarantined in dark rooms, abandoned by their families, with their meals rolled into their rooms on trolleys. From the beginning, Mychal did as Jesus did and walked right in and kissed these frightened souls on the lips. If they recoiled from the sight of a priest - gay men at that time saw the church as an alien, hostile entity - he would persist in silence. He would simply bring holy oils, take a chair to the bottom of their hospital beds, and massage their bony, cold, pain-racked feet. He seemed to express no anger, just a kind of suspended joy in the moment, a joy he found resuscitated by the fact of the resurrection and the intercession of Our Lady.
Let's consider that the stance of someone like Huckabee -- and those to whom he is trying desperately to appeal -- embodies not only ignorance but a deep-seated cowardice. To proclaim oneself a "Christian" and react to the needy by demanding that they be shut away sort of misses the point, doesn't it? This of course applies not only to Huckabee, but to the entire complex of those who have fastened on a grotesque mockery of the lessons of a teacher whose compassion, love, and courage was far beyond what we can really understand to push a mean-spirited agenda that reveals only the smallness of their souls.
And on that score, read Sullivan's whole piece on Judge. It reminds me of something the patriarchal monotheisms have forgotten -- or suppressed: throughout history, and probably before: those with "aberrant" sexual orientations have been seen almost universally as persons of great spiritual power, a bridge between male and female and between the spirit world and the mundane -- conduits, if you will, for the grace of god. We see it again in people like Mychal Judge. I think that's why we scare the right so much.
Hate Crimes
Catching up on this one. Dave Neiwert has a couple of posts (here and here). He summarizes it better than I can:
There's a pattern here: Democrats -- either through spinelessness or surreptitious mendacity -- have a history of refusing to take the fight over hate crimes to the carpets. Every time they have the votes to pass one, they attach it to another piece of legislation, which renders it vulnerable to the seemingly inevitable euthanasia in committee. This either reflects an unexpressed wish to kill a hate-crimes bill, or a failure to recognize bias crimes as an essential matter, and write it off as a fight they can't win.
Indeed, it's mind-boggling that congressional Democrats seem incapable of connecting the big bright fluorescent dots in front of them when it comes to bias crimes -- that they lie, in fact, at the heart of the national cultural divide. This bill isn't just about gay rights. It's about the Jena 6 and noose incidents. It's about the tide of anti-immigrant hate crimes being committed against Latinos.
Bias crimes lie at the black beating heart of everything progressives have historically fought: injustice, bigotry, exclusion, and violence. These things are the enemies of democracy itself, and that is why we fight them. Effectively confronting and addressing them is an imperative: politically, ethically, morally.
So the sad if utterly predictable fate of the latest federal bias-crimes law really represents an act of cowardice. I suppose we can look forward, fifty years from now, to seeing subsequent generations of politicians finally step forward and recognize that this abysmal failure to adequately confront bias crimes was a gross historical mistake for which many thousands of Americans paid the price. After all, it's what the Senate did not long ago in confronting the legacy of a previous generation's purposeful failure to act against its version of hate crimes, lynching.
Read both posts -- as always, excellent analysis, although the conclusions are pretty depressing.
Update:
If anyone has any doubts that hate crimes legislation is necessary, read this post by Pam Spaulding.
There's a pattern here: Democrats -- either through spinelessness or surreptitious mendacity -- have a history of refusing to take the fight over hate crimes to the carpets. Every time they have the votes to pass one, they attach it to another piece of legislation, which renders it vulnerable to the seemingly inevitable euthanasia in committee. This either reflects an unexpressed wish to kill a hate-crimes bill, or a failure to recognize bias crimes as an essential matter, and write it off as a fight they can't win.
Indeed, it's mind-boggling that congressional Democrats seem incapable of connecting the big bright fluorescent dots in front of them when it comes to bias crimes -- that they lie, in fact, at the heart of the national cultural divide. This bill isn't just about gay rights. It's about the Jena 6 and noose incidents. It's about the tide of anti-immigrant hate crimes being committed against Latinos.
Bias crimes lie at the black beating heart of everything progressives have historically fought: injustice, bigotry, exclusion, and violence. These things are the enemies of democracy itself, and that is why we fight them. Effectively confronting and addressing them is an imperative: politically, ethically, morally.
So the sad if utterly predictable fate of the latest federal bias-crimes law really represents an act of cowardice. I suppose we can look forward, fifty years from now, to seeing subsequent generations of politicians finally step forward and recognize that this abysmal failure to adequately confront bias crimes was a gross historical mistake for which many thousands of Americans paid the price. After all, it's what the Senate did not long ago in confronting the legacy of a previous generation's purposeful failure to act against its version of hate crimes, lynching.
Read both posts -- as always, excellent analysis, although the conclusions are pretty depressing.
Update:
If anyone has any doubts that hate crimes legislation is necessary, read this post by Pam Spaulding.
Saturday, December 08, 2007
The Criminal Government
From NYT:
The Central Intelligence Agency in 2005 destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the interrogation of two Al Qaeda operatives in the agency’s custody, a step it took in the midst of Congressional and legal scrutiny about the C.I.A’s secret detention program, according to current and former government officials.
The videotapes showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terror suspects — including Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in C.I.A. custody — to severe interrogation techniques. They were destroyed in part because officers were concerned that tapes documenting controversial interrogation methods could expose agency officials to greater risk of legal jeopardy, several officials said.
What amazes me is the blatant admission of lawlessness here. I guess the assumption is that the American people have become so blase about criminal acitivity in the administration that it's OK to admit it -- no one will do anything about it, and if they do, the president will pardon the wrongdoers.
This is a scary article. A really scary article.
And of course, the apologists for immorality in government are out in full force, and just as arrogant as we might assume. Here's Andrew Sullivan on Charles Krauthammer's appearance on Fox News:
I just listened to Charles say that the torture of terror suspects in 2002 was justified because the United States was flying blind and had no knowledge of what al Qaeda was planning. He won't say "torture", of course, although the law is clear that it is torture. (He and Fox News keep referring to the notion of "harsh interrogation techniques". I think they realized that the "enhanced interrogation techniques" was a little too close to the Gestapo's euphemism for comfort.) And he then Gitmomarkwilsongetty said that destroying the tapes was justified because you don't want them coming up on YouTube, do you? So there you have it: the government has a right to torture when it feels like it and the right to destroy the evidence because it would incriminate them and hurt the image of the United States. Again, I keep pinching myself that I am actually hearing these things on the television.
Hot Air blames John McCain:
This, essentially, is the result of Sen. John McCain’s announced policy of keeping interrogation techniques like waterboarding illegal, but knowing full well that it will be used in extreme circumstances, and that when it is used the agents who used it will find themselves in legal jeopardy no matter what the outcome of the interrogation was. It’s the politics of passing the buck.
This post is staggering, and probably does as much as anything else to reveal the complete lack of moral grounding on the right. (I had to think about linking to it, but decided that you deserve easy access just to see the kind of gutter these people live in.) Andrew Sullivan, in his post on the Hot Air piece opines that the president will have some explaining to do. No -- no one will put his feet to the fire on this. Congress doesn't have the balls, and he owns the Supreme Court.
And keep in mind that destruction of evidence is a consistent pattern in this administration. Scott Horton pulls some threads together:
The CIA leadership and other senior administration officials are fully cognizant of the fact that the use of a number of specific practices which these tapes almost certainly document, to-wit: waterboarding, long-time standing, hypothermia, psychotropic drugs and sleep deprivation in excess of two days, are serious crimes under American law and the law of almost all nations. Consequently, those who have used them and those who have authorized their use will almost certainly ultimately face criminal prosecution at some point in the future. The Administration’s attempts to immunize the perpetrators have failed. Any purported grant of a pardon by President Bush will be legally ineffective, because Bush himself is a collaborator in the scheme. And there is no statute of limitations. Therefore the prospect of prosecution is hardly far-fetched. It is a virtual certainty. So the evidence is being destroyed precisely because it would be used as evidence of criminal acts in a prosecution of administration figures and those acting under their direction. Therefore, this is a conscious, calculated obstruction of justice.
The role of Congress in this is appalling, including those Democrats who had knowledge of the existence of these tapes and the intention to destroy them. Jay Rockefeller knew that they had been destroyed in 2006 and kept his mouth shut. Jane Harman urged the CIA not to destroy the tapes -- and otherwise kept her mouth shut. Why should we place any trust in these people?
And here's Marty Lederman's commentary, including the letter from Mike Hayden to CIA personnel on taping interrogations. The whole thing rings hollow, and even if his concerns are justified, the real damage is that he has absolutely no credibility. In the context of this administration's history and its politicization of every deparment of the government, the whole thing reads as a smokescreen.
I suppose we're lucky we have a government left at all..
The Central Intelligence Agency in 2005 destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the interrogation of two Al Qaeda operatives in the agency’s custody, a step it took in the midst of Congressional and legal scrutiny about the C.I.A’s secret detention program, according to current and former government officials.
The videotapes showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terror suspects — including Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in C.I.A. custody — to severe interrogation techniques. They were destroyed in part because officers were concerned that tapes documenting controversial interrogation methods could expose agency officials to greater risk of legal jeopardy, several officials said.
What amazes me is the blatant admission of lawlessness here. I guess the assumption is that the American people have become so blase about criminal acitivity in the administration that it's OK to admit it -- no one will do anything about it, and if they do, the president will pardon the wrongdoers.
This is a scary article. A really scary article.
And of course, the apologists for immorality in government are out in full force, and just as arrogant as we might assume. Here's Andrew Sullivan on Charles Krauthammer's appearance on Fox News:
I just listened to Charles say that the torture of terror suspects in 2002 was justified because the United States was flying blind and had no knowledge of what al Qaeda was planning. He won't say "torture", of course, although the law is clear that it is torture. (He and Fox News keep referring to the notion of "harsh interrogation techniques". I think they realized that the "enhanced interrogation techniques" was a little too close to the Gestapo's euphemism for comfort.) And he then Gitmomarkwilsongetty said that destroying the tapes was justified because you don't want them coming up on YouTube, do you? So there you have it: the government has a right to torture when it feels like it and the right to destroy the evidence because it would incriminate them and hurt the image of the United States. Again, I keep pinching myself that I am actually hearing these things on the television.
Hot Air blames John McCain:
This, essentially, is the result of Sen. John McCain’s announced policy of keeping interrogation techniques like waterboarding illegal, but knowing full well that it will be used in extreme circumstances, and that when it is used the agents who used it will find themselves in legal jeopardy no matter what the outcome of the interrogation was. It’s the politics of passing the buck.
This post is staggering, and probably does as much as anything else to reveal the complete lack of moral grounding on the right. (I had to think about linking to it, but decided that you deserve easy access just to see the kind of gutter these people live in.) Andrew Sullivan, in his post on the Hot Air piece opines that the president will have some explaining to do. No -- no one will put his feet to the fire on this. Congress doesn't have the balls, and he owns the Supreme Court.
And keep in mind that destruction of evidence is a consistent pattern in this administration. Scott Horton pulls some threads together:
The CIA leadership and other senior administration officials are fully cognizant of the fact that the use of a number of specific practices which these tapes almost certainly document, to-wit: waterboarding, long-time standing, hypothermia, psychotropic drugs and sleep deprivation in excess of two days, are serious crimes under American law and the law of almost all nations. Consequently, those who have used them and those who have authorized their use will almost certainly ultimately face criminal prosecution at some point in the future. The Administration’s attempts to immunize the perpetrators have failed. Any purported grant of a pardon by President Bush will be legally ineffective, because Bush himself is a collaborator in the scheme. And there is no statute of limitations. Therefore the prospect of prosecution is hardly far-fetched. It is a virtual certainty. So the evidence is being destroyed precisely because it would be used as evidence of criminal acts in a prosecution of administration figures and those acting under their direction. Therefore, this is a conscious, calculated obstruction of justice.
The role of Congress in this is appalling, including those Democrats who had knowledge of the existence of these tapes and the intention to destroy them. Jay Rockefeller knew that they had been destroyed in 2006 and kept his mouth shut. Jane Harman urged the CIA not to destroy the tapes -- and otherwise kept her mouth shut. Why should we place any trust in these people?
And here's Marty Lederman's commentary, including the letter from Mike Hayden to CIA personnel on taping interrogations. The whole thing rings hollow, and even if his concerns are justified, the real damage is that he has absolutely no credibility. In the context of this administration's history and its politicization of every deparment of the government, the whole thing reads as a smokescreen.
I suppose we're lucky we have a government left at all..
Friday, December 07, 2007
The Election
I still haven't made a decision on who I'm going to vote for. The Republicans, of course, are beyond the pale -- anyone who spends his campaign slobbering over the least American members of his own party is not on my ticket.
I'm still leaning toward Edwards. So far, he's actually coming up with policy proposals that make at least a modicum of sense, he is not going after Bush's base (an exercise in futility), and he has great hair.
I have to admit, though, that every time I see a new smear on Clinton, I waver. I figure if the fringe right hates her that much, she's probably just what we need.
I'm still leaning toward Edwards. So far, he's actually coming up with policy proposals that make at least a modicum of sense, he is not going after Bush's base (an exercise in futility), and he has great hair.
I have to admit, though, that every time I see a new smear on Clinton, I waver. I figure if the fringe right hates her that much, she's probably just what we need.
The Keystone Kops Go To Congress
We really should have expected this.
Via AmericaBlog.
Dave Neiwert lays out some history.
I don't have anything to add.
Via AmericaBlog.
Dave Neiwert lays out some history.
I don't have anything to add.
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Snow
We finally got some. Not anything like your legendary Chicago snows, but enough. More coming, we're told.I guess winter's here.
The Boys in the Bubble
This is sort of unbelievable. It turns out, according to Eric Boehlert at Media Matters, that not only to right-wing bloggers object to Democrats asking questions at Republican debates, they object to Democrats asking questions at Democratic debates.
Open discussion is obviously a terrorist plot.
And, in a related story (it is related, truly, if you think like I do), this choice quote from Dan Bartlett, via TPM.
I mean, talk about a direct IV into the vein of your support. It’s a very efficient way to communicate. They regurgitate exactly and put up on their blogs what you said to them. It is something that we’ve cultivated and have really tried to put quite a bit of focus on.
What's astonishing is not the strategy, but that someone actually admitted it. (Read the second half of the interview -- it's really illuminating. The first half is drivel.)
Open discussion is obviously a terrorist plot.
And, in a related story (it is related, truly, if you think like I do), this choice quote from Dan Bartlett, via TPM.
I mean, talk about a direct IV into the vein of your support. It’s a very efficient way to communicate. They regurgitate exactly and put up on their blogs what you said to them. It is something that we’ve cultivated and have really tried to put quite a bit of focus on.
What's astonishing is not the strategy, but that someone actually admitted it. (Read the second half of the interview -- it's really illuminating. The first half is drivel.)
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Pontificating from Complete Ignorance
I sort of missed this story -- chalk it up to tandem viruses. (Actually, I didn't really miss it -- I just came at it from a different direction.) It's a prime example of the tendency of certain pundits to pontificate on the basis of complete ignorance.
Here's a lengthy rebuttal of the William Saletan/J. Phillippe Rushton "blacks are dumb" arguments by Daniel Koffler at Jewcy. Saletan's essays at Slate are ludicrous. (Andrew Sullian gives the whole thing way too much credibility, but then he's no rocket scientist, either.) Stephen Metcalf took Saletan's remarks apart quite nicely.
Long story short, Saletan based his entire arguments on the work of J. Phillipe Rushton, who has strong ties to white supremacists. Rushton's paper is based on studies of skull size as it reflects brain size. I really thought that was totally debunked about 1904. There's no scientific support for that at all.
Any first-year neurophysiology student will tell you that brain size is no indicator of intelligence. It's all about structure and organization. Any developmental psychologist will tell you that standardized tests only reliably measure cultural adaptation. Any any human geneticist will tell you that genetic racial differences are too small to measure.
It's actually been sort of entertaining watching the outraged reactions from the left, and Saletan's defensiveness when his essential -- and completely thoughtless -- bigotry is revealed, but mostly it's a minor tempest of the sort that occupies people who can't deal with real issues. Actually, the entertainment value wore thin pretty quickly.
Next teapot.
Here's a lengthy rebuttal of the William Saletan/J. Phillippe Rushton "blacks are dumb" arguments by Daniel Koffler at Jewcy. Saletan's essays at Slate are ludicrous. (Andrew Sullian gives the whole thing way too much credibility, but then he's no rocket scientist, either.) Stephen Metcalf took Saletan's remarks apart quite nicely.
Long story short, Saletan based his entire arguments on the work of J. Phillipe Rushton, who has strong ties to white supremacists. Rushton's paper is based on studies of skull size as it reflects brain size. I really thought that was totally debunked about 1904. There's no scientific support for that at all.
Any first-year neurophysiology student will tell you that brain size is no indicator of intelligence. It's all about structure and organization. Any developmental psychologist will tell you that standardized tests only reliably measure cultural adaptation. Any any human geneticist will tell you that genetic racial differences are too small to measure.
It's actually been sort of entertaining watching the outraged reactions from the left, and Saletan's defensiveness when his essential -- and completely thoughtless -- bigotry is revealed, but mostly it's a minor tempest of the sort that occupies people who can't deal with real issues. Actually, the entertainment value wore thin pretty quickly.
Next teapot.
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Winter Cheer
I am going to have flowers soon. Colmanara Wildcat, known as "Old Reliable," is putting up two new spikes. I'm not sure when they'll flower -- probably toward the end of the month -- but it looks at though I'll have orchids through January.
Check out this site for some wonderful orchid photos. Makes me wish I had some place to grow them again.
Dictators, English Usage, and Our Own MSM
Atrios, in his own inimitable way, spotlights the MSM's reaction to Hugo Chavez. Quoting NYT:
After Chavez was elected in 1996 and re-elected in 2000, the New York Times cheers on a military coup which installed "a respected business leader" and hails it as a move signaling "democracy is no longer threatened."
In a later post, he comes up this quote from CNBC:
A major setback for Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. Venezuelans narrowly rejected his bid to run for re-election and to accelerate his socialist revolution.
Trivia question: Who's the last dictator you know of to lose an election?
After Chavez was elected in 1996 and re-elected in 2000, the New York Times cheers on a military coup which installed "a respected business leader" and hails it as a move signaling "democracy is no longer threatened."
In a later post, he comes up this quote from CNBC:
A major setback for Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. Venezuelans narrowly rejected his bid to run for re-election and to accelerate his socialist revolution.
Trivia question: Who's the last dictator you know of to lose an election?
Free Trade and Poison Pills
Granted that the various free trade agreements as they've manifested are in general bad news for the US, this report from Digby sort of puts the cherry on top:
I'm not sure most people realized that these deals could actually adversely affect well ... us, in any other way than perhaps job loss (which we are told is a perfectly reasonable trade-offs for the privilege of buying cheap goods.) As bad as that is, it's not the whole story. These trade deals basically make it possible for global corporate interests to circumvent our laws right here in the good old USA in a number of different ways.
One wonders where people like Grover Norquist -- free trade and untrammeled national sovereignty -- are hiding.
And how does it feel to know that all your local environmental laws and product safety laws aren't worth the paper they're printed on?
The whole Word Bank/WTO/Free Trade cabal really needs to be cut down to size. They're nothing more than economic terrorists as far as I can see. We should just pull out.
As an indicator of just how blindly pernicious the IMF/World Bank/WTO cabal is, see this post by PhoenixWoman at FDL.
If you haven't picked up a copy of Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine yet, please do so. It not only explains what the Chicago-School-educated dictators and their US backers have been doing around the world to destroy government programs that actually help the poor and working classes -- it also shows how the people, especially in Latin America, have been fighting back and winning, blowing off the free-marketeers of the IMF and World Bank and other like-minded entities. To the growing list of nations that are fighting back and winning, we can add one more: Malawi.
As recently as 2005, Malawi's leaders had obediently followed the dictates of the free-market gospel spreaders. They cut back their government subsidies, especially for seeds and fertilizer, and watched as harvest after harvest failed. Yet the free marketeers kept giving Malawi prescriptions for more of the same: No government interference. Besides, why should your silly people bother with being able to feed themselves, when they could be growing cash crops for export!
One begins to wonder just what the agenda is here? Nothing rational, apparently. Fortunately, Malawi told the IMF to go blow itself. Result? Huge increases in harvests.
A thought: "imperialism" itself is value-neutral. Too much depends on who's running the empire. The IMF/World Bank/WTO kind is the worst -- purely exploitive, anti-humanitarian, and authoritarian.
Throw the bums out.
I'm not sure most people realized that these deals could actually adversely affect well ... us, in any other way than perhaps job loss (which we are told is a perfectly reasonable trade-offs for the privilege of buying cheap goods.) As bad as that is, it's not the whole story. These trade deals basically make it possible for global corporate interests to circumvent our laws right here in the good old USA in a number of different ways.
One wonders where people like Grover Norquist -- free trade and untrammeled national sovereignty -- are hiding.
And how does it feel to know that all your local environmental laws and product safety laws aren't worth the paper they're printed on?
The whole Word Bank/WTO/Free Trade cabal really needs to be cut down to size. They're nothing more than economic terrorists as far as I can see. We should just pull out.
As an indicator of just how blindly pernicious the IMF/World Bank/WTO cabal is, see this post by PhoenixWoman at FDL.
If you haven't picked up a copy of Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine yet, please do so. It not only explains what the Chicago-School-educated dictators and their US backers have been doing around the world to destroy government programs that actually help the poor and working classes -- it also shows how the people, especially in Latin America, have been fighting back and winning, blowing off the free-marketeers of the IMF and World Bank and other like-minded entities. To the growing list of nations that are fighting back and winning, we can add one more: Malawi.
As recently as 2005, Malawi's leaders had obediently followed the dictates of the free-market gospel spreaders. They cut back their government subsidies, especially for seeds and fertilizer, and watched as harvest after harvest failed. Yet the free marketeers kept giving Malawi prescriptions for more of the same: No government interference. Besides, why should your silly people bother with being able to feed themselves, when they could be growing cash crops for export!
One begins to wonder just what the agenda is here? Nothing rational, apparently. Fortunately, Malawi told the IMF to go blow itself. Result? Huge increases in harvests.
A thought: "imperialism" itself is value-neutral. Too much depends on who's running the empire. The IMF/World Bank/WTO kind is the worst -- purely exploitive, anti-humanitarian, and authoritarian.
Throw the bums out.
Faith and Politics
From Jonah Goldberg, this amazing piece on the evangelical reaction to Romney's Mormonism.
This seems to be the majority view:
Speaking for myself, there is no policy that I think a Mormon would pursue that I find objectionable. I will not vote for a Mormon because they claim to be Christian, when they are not Christians. Electing, or even nominating, a Mormon continues to send the message to Americans that Mormons are fine and dandy, Christians like everyone else. Thousands of Christians are converted to Mormonism each year, and it is done under false pretenses. From what I have read, Mormons are very good at appearing to be orthodox Christians with new recruits. It's only later that the blatantly non-orthodox views come out. So, I rule out voting for a Mormon not because of actual policies they might pursue, but because of the message their election would send to Americans.
Let me make a couple more quick comments. I would vote for a Jew. I would vote for a Hindu, an atheist, etc. Also, I do not support a "religious test" for people running for office. I can decide my vote anyway I wish (short of selling it I believe). So I am getting tired of people claiming that I cannot take Romney's membership in a cult masquerading as a Christian church into account when I vote. I'll take the candidates eye colors into consideration if I feel like it. I don't think I'm a bigot. . . .
Who has ever thought they were a bigot? (Except Jesse Helms.) The logical disjunction is unbelievable.
And does it ever occur to these people to wonder what happens when someone who doesn't subscribe to their beliefs comes into power?
This seems to be the majority view:
Speaking for myself, there is no policy that I think a Mormon would pursue that I find objectionable. I will not vote for a Mormon because they claim to be Christian, when they are not Christians. Electing, or even nominating, a Mormon continues to send the message to Americans that Mormons are fine and dandy, Christians like everyone else. Thousands of Christians are converted to Mormonism each year, and it is done under false pretenses. From what I have read, Mormons are very good at appearing to be orthodox Christians with new recruits. It's only later that the blatantly non-orthodox views come out. So, I rule out voting for a Mormon not because of actual policies they might pursue, but because of the message their election would send to Americans.
Let me make a couple more quick comments. I would vote for a Jew. I would vote for a Hindu, an atheist, etc. Also, I do not support a "religious test" for people running for office. I can decide my vote anyway I wish (short of selling it I believe). So I am getting tired of people claiming that I cannot take Romney's membership in a cult masquerading as a Christian church into account when I vote. I'll take the candidates eye colors into consideration if I feel like it. I don't think I'm a bigot. . . .
Who has ever thought they were a bigot? (Except Jesse Helms.) The logical disjunction is unbelievable.
And does it ever occur to these people to wonder what happens when someone who doesn't subscribe to their beliefs comes into power?
Monday, December 03, 2007
"I Saw the Devil!"
At this point, does anyone really think I care how many men had sex with Larry Craig?
Pornography, Masculinity, Men, and a Big Dose of Feminist Cant
There is the most amazingly bass ackwards discussion going on over at Pandagon on pornography, masculinity, and what's wrong with men. I'm still not quite up to snuff as far as constructing lucid arguments (as witness the growing pile of book reviews waiting to be written), but I'll try to hit at least some of the high (low?) points. The biggest problem is that there are a lot of people arguing from fairly obvious agendas here, and I'm not sure they're even aware of it.
To start, there's a couple of missing elements (and this is based on a first reading of Marcotte's post, without any real study of the materials she's referencing). Let's just point out that pornography is about fantasy of a particular kind. Since it deals with sex in a no-holds-barred context -- i.e., minus all the social constraints -- and since sex is a basic matrix for a lot of psychological shit, given the way we deal with it -- or refuse to -- in this society, it's only to be expected that these fantasies are going to include elements of power, control, cruelty, superiority, emotional distance, and a lot of other things that we're not allowed to express otherwise.
Yeah, I readily admit that heterosexual porn is pretty much foreign territory for me -- not interested. However, gay porn, although it sidesteps the misogynist issue completely, does contain a lot of the same fantasy elements -- and also allows the audience to play either role, which is not something that Marcotte and her commenters seems to touch on at all vis-a-vis straight porn. In fact, the arguments are so heavily weighted against the construct of masculinity -- and there seesm to be a strong bias against any construction of masculinity -- that there doesn't seem to be any admission of the possibility.
It's the construct of masculinity that is they core of Marcotte's post:
When he talks about eradicating “masculinity”, he’s talking about eradicating the social construct of masculinity, especially as it’s defined in America. Think about how masculinity is constructed in America: violent, hateful, out of touch with “softer” emotions like love, irresponsible, stupid, willfully ignorant, and of course with a sexuality based around violence and conquest, not around pleasure and the sharing of it. (Today’s example—how anal sex is only “fun” if it’s a coercive process—is just one of many to add to the mind-numbing amounts of misogynist porn out there.)
Her description of how masculinity is contructed in America is grossly one-sided -- I'm not sure if it's her definition or if she's paraphrasing Jensen, but the result in either case goes way beyond the bounds of credibility. Commenter Steve points out some of the flaws:
These are parts of the construct of masculinity, but it also includes things like self reliance, self-sacrifice, and innovation. Certainly one can argue that these qualities are expressed in anti-social ways when combined the other, or that these qualities are not emphasized in culture as whole enough. However, the notion that masculinity — as a cultural construct — is responsible for violent porn seems a bit of an over-reach, as violent porn has continued to exist across multiple cultures for several thousand years. The nature and extent of violent porn tends to ebb and flow with upheavals in societies - often as a reaction to particular moral movements. For instance, one can see the increase in child and rape oriented porn as the Victorian era reached its peak. These images wained, though did not disappear completely, after WWI. Porn tends to be a hyper-reaction to social fores - at least that’s my opinion.
He's absolutely correct in fleshing out the definition of "masculinity," and his picture is much more balanced than that provided by Marcotte. (He's also pretty much on point in his comments about "fashions" in porn. It's an almost one-for-one correspondence with fashions in body imagery related to periods of social repression, particularly in the preponderance/scarcity of open renderings of the male nude.) The response to his comments by SarahMC are indicative to me to the degree to which the agenda permeates the discussion:
But Steve, self reliance, self-sacrifice, and innovation are not qualities exhibited only by men. And it’s because of that that the concept of “masculinity” is harmful; it’s essentialism. While both “femininity” and “masculinity” include positive characteristics, the binary model means that those characteristics are assigned to either men or women, not both. Both men and women are capable of self-sacrifice (”masculine”) and sensitivity (”feminine”).
I.e., the positive qualities of masculinity are universal, with the implication being that the negative qualities are not? It's instructive that she starts with some amelioration of this black/white dichotomy, and then immediately drops it in favor of broad generalities about the "harmfulness" of the concept of masculinity -- and again, does this mean that the definitions of "femininity" are not harmful? And why isn't that addressed, if not solely to preserve the moral high ground?
And, in case there was any doubt about the agenda here, Marcotte's own comment (#51) lays that misapprehension to rest: pure, textbook "men are the oppressors and are big babies to boot" feminist cant.
It's really a shame. There is the potential in these questions for an interesting examination of how something like pornography reflects social stresses and the role of sexual fantasies in defusing otherwise touchy social conflicts, not to mention the social construction of gender and sex roles, but it seems all to have gotten lost in the sloganeering.
(The irony here is that Marcotte uses an image from Homobilila.com, a site devoted to vintage homoerotic images, to head her post. So how seriously should I take this whole thing?)
To start, there's a couple of missing elements (and this is based on a first reading of Marcotte's post, without any real study of the materials she's referencing). Let's just point out that pornography is about fantasy of a particular kind. Since it deals with sex in a no-holds-barred context -- i.e., minus all the social constraints -- and since sex is a basic matrix for a lot of psychological shit, given the way we deal with it -- or refuse to -- in this society, it's only to be expected that these fantasies are going to include elements of power, control, cruelty, superiority, emotional distance, and a lot of other things that we're not allowed to express otherwise.
Yeah, I readily admit that heterosexual porn is pretty much foreign territory for me -- not interested. However, gay porn, although it sidesteps the misogynist issue completely, does contain a lot of the same fantasy elements -- and also allows the audience to play either role, which is not something that Marcotte and her commenters seems to touch on at all vis-a-vis straight porn. In fact, the arguments are so heavily weighted against the construct of masculinity -- and there seesm to be a strong bias against any construction of masculinity -- that there doesn't seem to be any admission of the possibility.
It's the construct of masculinity that is they core of Marcotte's post:
When he talks about eradicating “masculinity”, he’s talking about eradicating the social construct of masculinity, especially as it’s defined in America. Think about how masculinity is constructed in America: violent, hateful, out of touch with “softer” emotions like love, irresponsible, stupid, willfully ignorant, and of course with a sexuality based around violence and conquest, not around pleasure and the sharing of it. (Today’s example—how anal sex is only “fun” if it’s a coercive process—is just one of many to add to the mind-numbing amounts of misogynist porn out there.)
Her description of how masculinity is contructed in America is grossly one-sided -- I'm not sure if it's her definition or if she's paraphrasing Jensen, but the result in either case goes way beyond the bounds of credibility. Commenter Steve points out some of the flaws:
These are parts of the construct of masculinity, but it also includes things like self reliance, self-sacrifice, and innovation. Certainly one can argue that these qualities are expressed in anti-social ways when combined the other, or that these qualities are not emphasized in culture as whole enough. However, the notion that masculinity — as a cultural construct — is responsible for violent porn seems a bit of an over-reach, as violent porn has continued to exist across multiple cultures for several thousand years. The nature and extent of violent porn tends to ebb and flow with upheavals in societies - often as a reaction to particular moral movements. For instance, one can see the increase in child and rape oriented porn as the Victorian era reached its peak. These images wained, though did not disappear completely, after WWI. Porn tends to be a hyper-reaction to social fores - at least that’s my opinion.
He's absolutely correct in fleshing out the definition of "masculinity," and his picture is much more balanced than that provided by Marcotte. (He's also pretty much on point in his comments about "fashions" in porn. It's an almost one-for-one correspondence with fashions in body imagery related to periods of social repression, particularly in the preponderance/scarcity of open renderings of the male nude.) The response to his comments by SarahMC are indicative to me to the degree to which the agenda permeates the discussion:
But Steve, self reliance, self-sacrifice, and innovation are not qualities exhibited only by men. And it’s because of that that the concept of “masculinity” is harmful; it’s essentialism. While both “femininity” and “masculinity” include positive characteristics, the binary model means that those characteristics are assigned to either men or women, not both. Both men and women are capable of self-sacrifice (”masculine”) and sensitivity (”feminine”).
I.e., the positive qualities of masculinity are universal, with the implication being that the negative qualities are not? It's instructive that she starts with some amelioration of this black/white dichotomy, and then immediately drops it in favor of broad generalities about the "harmfulness" of the concept of masculinity -- and again, does this mean that the definitions of "femininity" are not harmful? And why isn't that addressed, if not solely to preserve the moral high ground?
And, in case there was any doubt about the agenda here, Marcotte's own comment (#51) lays that misapprehension to rest: pure, textbook "men are the oppressors and are big babies to boot" feminist cant.
It's really a shame. There is the potential in these questions for an interesting examination of how something like pornography reflects social stresses and the role of sexual fantasies in defusing otherwise touchy social conflicts, not to mention the social construction of gender and sex roles, but it seems all to have gotten lost in the sloganeering.
(The irony here is that Marcotte uses an image from Homobilila.com, a site devoted to vintage homoerotic images, to head her post. So how seriously should I take this whole thing?)
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Sidebar
Via AmericaBlog, this comment from HuffPo:
There is a growing dispute over the veracity of reporting from Lebanon by former Marine W. Thomas Smith, Jr. who is posting reports on his blog, The Tank, published by the conservative website, National Review Online (NRO). Smith is a supporter of the war in Iraq, and is affiliated with two politically conservative organizations, the Counterterrorism Research Center and the Family Security Foundation. He is the executive editor of World Defense Review, and the co-author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Intelligent Design. (Emphasis added.)
There's a story there, I'm sure of it.
There is a growing dispute over the veracity of reporting from Lebanon by former Marine W. Thomas Smith, Jr. who is posting reports on his blog, The Tank, published by the conservative website, National Review Online (NRO). Smith is a supporter of the war in Iraq, and is affiliated with two politically conservative organizations, the Counterterrorism Research Center and the Family Security Foundation. He is the executive editor of World Defense Review, and the co-author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Intelligent Design. (Emphasis added.)
There's a story there, I'm sure of it.
Saturday, December 01, 2007
Local Races: IL-14
Denny Hastert's seat, now up for grabs. Rahm Emanuel, of the DCCC, seems to want to keep it in the Republican camp by running another DINO. Check out this information on John Laesch, a grassroots progressive and someone that Emanual seems to wish would disappear. Aside from the endorsements, which at the local level I think are even more important than otherwise, look at Laesch's responses to questions about the issues. Close to perfect as you're going to get in this world.
The Great Race
With cameos by all your favorite has-beens.
OK -- The election is eleven months away, and I am already sick of the campaign. And I've been ignoring it as much as possible.
I think what finally did it was the sight of those several states scrambling to see who could have the earliest primary, i.e., who could retain their disproportionate influence on the party selection process.
A big part of it is things like this:
I don't get this. According to Media Matters, CNN apologized for allowing General Kerr to ask that question at the Republican debates about "Don't Ask Don't Tell" and expunged it from their re-broadcasts because he is a Clinton supporter.
I could see it if the question itself was rude or shockingly partisan, but there is a GOP "special interest group" called the Log Cabin Republicans who actually sued the government over the same issue. One of them could have asked it just as easily. It's obviously a salient political issue in America and I don't see why any news organization should apologize and expunge the record just because of the political leanings of a citizen who asked a question. Apparently, after all these years of Bush's canned Townhall meetings with sweet softball questions, the media has decided that's the only form of legitimate debate.
The pearl-clutching over this is simply astonishing. I really can't understand where the idea that only party members were allowed to submit questions at a public debate by presidential candidates came from, unless, as Digby points out, it's a legacy of Bush's hand-laundered "Town Hall" meetings.
Dave Neiwert, in an unusually sharp post, makes the point:
Republican presidential candidates have, for the past six years, been operating almost completely inside a bubble -- creating campaign appearances that have been almost completely insulated from anything resembling the real world. It's helped, of course, that during that time the GOP has had only a single candidate -- George W. Bush -- which has made the job that much simpler.
Essentially, it's been a simple process: Shut out anyone who might raise any "controversial" (i.e., "dissenting") voices, pack the audience with True Believers, and foster the illusion of broad and fervent support.
If you start opening up these things, you might get some real questions. Maybe that's the problem. Musn't let the news get out of control. (Although as Sadly, No! points out, the Democrats managed to cope just fine.)
Or, as Digby puts it, "What a big bunch of babies."
Update on the Lizard Brain
Digby has further information on that focus group nastiness from the debate. Seems that it might have been somewhat of a fluke (and keep in mind that Joe Klein was telling the story, so the source is not unimpeachable).
There are Americans in the Republican party -- still.
Now, why is everyone trying to court the lizard vote?
OK -- The election is eleven months away, and I am already sick of the campaign. And I've been ignoring it as much as possible.
I think what finally did it was the sight of those several states scrambling to see who could have the earliest primary, i.e., who could retain their disproportionate influence on the party selection process.
A big part of it is things like this:
I don't get this. According to Media Matters, CNN apologized for allowing General Kerr to ask that question at the Republican debates about "Don't Ask Don't Tell" and expunged it from their re-broadcasts because he is a Clinton supporter.
I could see it if the question itself was rude or shockingly partisan, but there is a GOP "special interest group" called the Log Cabin Republicans who actually sued the government over the same issue. One of them could have asked it just as easily. It's obviously a salient political issue in America and I don't see why any news organization should apologize and expunge the record just because of the political leanings of a citizen who asked a question. Apparently, after all these years of Bush's canned Townhall meetings with sweet softball questions, the media has decided that's the only form of legitimate debate.
The pearl-clutching over this is simply astonishing. I really can't understand where the idea that only party members were allowed to submit questions at a public debate by presidential candidates came from, unless, as Digby points out, it's a legacy of Bush's hand-laundered "Town Hall" meetings.
Dave Neiwert, in an unusually sharp post, makes the point:
Republican presidential candidates have, for the past six years, been operating almost completely inside a bubble -- creating campaign appearances that have been almost completely insulated from anything resembling the real world. It's helped, of course, that during that time the GOP has had only a single candidate -- George W. Bush -- which has made the job that much simpler.
Essentially, it's been a simple process: Shut out anyone who might raise any "controversial" (i.e., "dissenting") voices, pack the audience with True Believers, and foster the illusion of broad and fervent support.
If you start opening up these things, you might get some real questions. Maybe that's the problem. Musn't let the news get out of control. (Although as Sadly, No! points out, the Democrats managed to cope just fine.)
Or, as Digby puts it, "What a big bunch of babies."
Update on the Lizard Brain
Digby has further information on that focus group nastiness from the debate. Seems that it might have been somewhat of a fluke (and keep in mind that Joe Klein was telling the story, so the source is not unimpeachable).
There are Americans in the Republican party -- still.
Now, why is everyone trying to court the lizard vote?
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