Mubarak's fumbling incompetence has really shined through for the past three weeks, in that he had shut down the Internet and had every single one of his efforts backfire. NO! Here is what you do! Learn from the best in the business, the United States of America.
First, you need a little democracy. Not a lot, but a little. This allows you to artificially inseminate your population with something called controversy. There doesn't really have to be any actual controversy at all, you only need to make your population think there is. Look at how the United States reacted to global warming, or the connection between vaccinations and autism. Look at how well George W Bush was defended for so long.
In order to do this, you need your own state-run media conglomerate. In this enterprise, don't be so obvious, and always deny any connection between your media empire and the political party it serves. Also, it helps if you claim that everyone else is biased against you. Vary your commentators in levels of their support for the incumbent government (yours), and allow them to state the truth once in a while. In fact, if you do this correctly, the people themselves will campaign against your moderates. Shepherd Smith himself was attacked by conservatives1!
Always, always take control of the debate, and let your news outlet manufacture your talking points. "Obama's trip to India will cost $200 mil/day!" "Obama is taking over healthcare!" It always helps your cause to delegitimize your opponents, and call them scary names: Communists; Socialists; Trotskyists; Stalinists; Nazis; Radicals; Hippies, even. You don't even have to know what these words mean. It really doesn't matter what you do at this point, as the US rode 9/11 all the way to 2010 until the Republicans denied health care to WTC first responders. Hell, in that time we've managed to grant power to our government to see us naked as we travel and flag library books for the NSA. It always helps to bring up the Security vs Liberty debate, and then claim that the democrats are going to get everyone killed. Fear definitely works.
Don't use blatant violence, and take your time. So you have a growing faction of people who see you for the depraved despot you really are. Don't stop them! Bring their leader onto your news network to be interviewed by a "moderate" commentator, and then put words in their mouth. It worked for Bill O'Reilly yesterday2 (Super Bowl 2011). During WW1, the British would declare critics of the war, such as poet Siegfried Sassoon, "unfit for duty" and send them off to sanitariums3. One by one, as your opponents criticize you, declare them clinically insane. Also, Scientologists engage in this practice by declaring people they disagree with "Suppressive Persons"4. This in turn disavows them from any connection with the "Suppressive Person" and alienates them completely. This may definitely work if you abuse the term.
One of the things that the United States does so well is to manipulate the lower classes into believing that big business has their best interests in mind. This does WONDERS if you can coax investors to your cause, and hire people to manufacture a faux-populist movement.
The problem with the strategy of many other leaders in a similar capacity as you find yourself is that they don't give good bullshit answers to questions of economics. When pitching policies to the public, tell them you're creating jobs even as you further disenfranchise them. The Republican Party in the United States Congress wants to repeal healthcare reform because it's a job-killing bill. It doesn't matter that it won't actually kill jobs, nor does it matter that doing so will add $230 billion to the deficit, because they can turn around and attack the non-partisan and rigorous organization that said so. The people, then, will be none the wiser.
But what about when you're still in power? Bush got two terms thanks to Fox News! Tax cuts for the top 2% of the country, and reduced job growth right until the end when people finally woke up. But not really, because while we elected Obama, we also had this thing called a Tea Party, and it thinks that economic deregulation is a good idea, even when it isn't. It took two years (which is about 10 years anywhere else in terms of political time) for Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck to start hurting, so I think you'll be pretty well-off.
That brings me to another point: Conspiracy theories and political celebrity. If you equalize treatment between the sexes, you can take some backwoods tart who knows absolutely nothing about politics, coax her to support you, and turn her into a celebrity. Don't let her talk too much, though, as over-saturation will be grating on your target audience. Just enough to preserve her celebrity status and your power. Conspiracy theories is a subject matter in which you might want to be careful. There could be people out there who are crazier than you, and you don't want to empower them. Crazy people are as dangerous to your power as people who know the truth.
I know it's a little scary to let people talk freely, but they're kind of stupid. If you play your cards right by engaging in fear tactics, ad hominem attacks, and political posturing, you could be on the road to a glorious life-long reign.
One....final note, if you squander your power. When it's over, its over. Once people know how bad you are, and begin to riot in the streets, you should leave the country with all your riches and live somewhere quiet. You've earned it.
1) http://mediamatters.org/research/200906110030
2) http://www.businessinsider.com/super-bowl-bill-oreilly-interview-obama-video-2011-2
3) http://sites.scran.ac.uk/Warp/siegfried_sassoon.htm
Monday, February 7, 2011
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Philosophy in America, or, The Lack Thereof
This is kind of a follow-up to my previous essay, because the theme is basically the same, but it has more to do with why we behave in ways that do not warrant respect.
The opening line of volume II of Democracy in America states, "I think that in the civilized world there is no country less interested in philosophy than the United States1" But the reasons he gives for this are at best inadequate, and at worst flatly wrong. He claims that Americans aren't interested in philosophy because they are more concerned with private matters, but this fails to explain the kind of disrespect vomited out by our political commentators every single day. If it were merely the kind of apathy de Tocqueville described, Americans would at least be tolerant of others' views, and they clearly are not.
Americans engage not in debate, but rather in personal attack. Glenn Beck personally attacked a sociology professor, and he personally attacked George Soros for stating their opinions. Many people, some I've even heard myself, have personally attacked everyone from Nancy Pelosi to President Obama, and, when pressed, cannot give sufficient justification for their attitudes.
I have personally accused Sarah Palin and most of the GOP/Tea Party establishment of being stupid, so I'm not blameless either, but I can cite numerous specific examples to justify why I believe most of the prominent figures in the opposing party to be intellectually impaired (Michele Bachmann's 'rebuttal' to the SotU is a good start).
When we aren't talking about beliefs or facts; when someone's beliefs are nebulous at best, and their knowledge of the facts is grossly lacking, we may not have a choice but to point this out to them. I realize here that I am defending what I have set out to stop.
But back to the issue at hand: Why is there 'anti-intellectualism' in America, and why is it so pervasive? Even in matters of religion, people who have studied it most--atheists--are accused consistently of being bitter and angry, even when they are not, and even if their justifications for abandoning religion are quite good. Ironically, most of this comes from people who have not once opened a Bible or a Koran in their entire lives.
Continuing with this religious theme, there exists a paradox: People want to believe whatever makes them feel good, regardless whether or not that what they believe is actually true, but they get offended if their beliefs are proved untrue. Beliefs that have nothing to do with being true or false and have no relation to actual reality, it would follow, have no place in directing the real world.
But is that where we are as a country? For if the condition exists in our political system that we care not whether our attitudes are true or false, how could we function? How could we possibly make decisions that impact not only our society generally, but also our lives individually if we didn't rely on standards of truth and falsehood? Or, perhaps we didn't so much as completely eliminate these standards, but expanded the criteria much too far as to cease to be useful.
Let us once again take the Tea Party and the deficit. If the Tea Party truly wanted to reduce the deficit, they would not have argued with the Congressional Budget Office about its estimation that repealing health care reform would add $230 billion to the deficit. Or, in another example, if the Christian conservative demographic truly wanted to reduce the number of abortions in the country, they would have to concede that abstinence-only sexual education was ineffective and join the rest of the world in advocating for contraception. But I'm talking about a utopia (the Greek meaning; "nowhere") in which political and everyday decisions are made based on fact.
The point is that these circumstances render philosophy absolutely impossible by virtue of the simple fact that we as a society no longer care about what is factually true. If we lose the ability to distinguish between truth and falsehood, we cannot make rational decisions that get us where we want to go. The Catholic Church is probably dumbfounded as to why people in Africa are still dying of AIDS.
Philosophy is "the love of wisdom," and wisdom is the ability to admit what one does not know, and to make sound judgments. These judgments, are again, based upon standards of truth and falsehood that we in America no longer respect.
The stakes of our political success or failure are high, and there is cause for us to get excited. But if we delegate authority to angry demagogues, we will have forfeited any chance of success. A professor of Russian history appeared on CNN's AC360 (substituted by Soledad O'Brien) who made this one quick and important point before he was cut off: In America, we have confused celebrity with political leadership2. This is an enormous detriment in itself to our political landscape, because we actually give people who know absolutely nothing about politics or history a venue in which to speak and be heard, and cloud out what really matters. Ed Rollins in the clip I cited complained that the panel should be concerned with Paul Ryan, who gave the Republican rebuttal to the SotU, but instead they were talking about Sarah Palin's idiocy.
But worse than Sarah Palin, of course, is Glenn Beck, who, as Joe Scarborough said, was a "nobody" before being put on Fox News3. Scarborough beautifully illustrates the problem of Glenn Beck in the video clip by stating that people who watch him will start to believe what he says and he will have a "corrosive impact on our politics." Of course, this is unequivocally true, evidenced by the pervasiveness of conspiracy theories--once found only in the dark recesses of the Internet--in our mainstream political landscape. Furthermore, I would venture to say that before Beck mentioned her on his program, no one had any idea who Frances Fox Piven was. This could only mean that Beck is directly responsible for the threats she has received since his program aired.
What is the "mainstream" anyway? How do we define what is "normal" in our political discourse? Is it a numbers game? How does something like the Tea Party go from a fringe element to a mainstream phenomenon? Of course, the Tea Party was manufactured in such a way as to be made to look like a grassroots movement, when in fact it was first organized by Sal Russo and Dick Armey and their PACs.
A parallel example where the point may be made more clear is in religion. No "mainstream" religious leader or person wants to admit that the fundamentalist element has any power. Theologically, fundamentalism is certainly indefensible, but fundamentalists have gone on to:
1) Campaign massively and effectively against gay rights
2) Build a Creation Museum
3) Take out two of the tallest buildings in the United States
4) Affect public policy to an astounding degree in areas where religion does not belong (sexual education, high school English classes, science curriculums, stem cell research, etc)
5) Dominate policy in the Middle East, even as the people ruled under them understand how dangerous they are.
6) Wage a very effective campaign of guerrilla warfare against the United States and its allies in Iraq and Afghanistan
My point here is not to give credit or legitimize fundamentalism, but to merely ask at what point does a movement or demographic once relegated to "the fringe" become mainstream, regardless of whether we agree with them or not? What would it take, for example, for the KKK to become mainstream?
1) de Tocqueville, Alexis Democracy in America Penguin Classics ed. p. 493
2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-FJ2jnj7No
3) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/12/joe-scarborough-glenn-beck-feud_n_807892.html
The opening line of volume II of Democracy in America states, "I think that in the civilized world there is no country less interested in philosophy than the United States1" But the reasons he gives for this are at best inadequate, and at worst flatly wrong. He claims that Americans aren't interested in philosophy because they are more concerned with private matters, but this fails to explain the kind of disrespect vomited out by our political commentators every single day. If it were merely the kind of apathy de Tocqueville described, Americans would at least be tolerant of others' views, and they clearly are not.
Americans engage not in debate, but rather in personal attack. Glenn Beck personally attacked a sociology professor, and he personally attacked George Soros for stating their opinions. Many people, some I've even heard myself, have personally attacked everyone from Nancy Pelosi to President Obama, and, when pressed, cannot give sufficient justification for their attitudes.
I have personally accused Sarah Palin and most of the GOP/Tea Party establishment of being stupid, so I'm not blameless either, but I can cite numerous specific examples to justify why I believe most of the prominent figures in the opposing party to be intellectually impaired (Michele Bachmann's 'rebuttal' to the SotU is a good start).
When we aren't talking about beliefs or facts; when someone's beliefs are nebulous at best, and their knowledge of the facts is grossly lacking, we may not have a choice but to point this out to them. I realize here that I am defending what I have set out to stop.
But back to the issue at hand: Why is there 'anti-intellectualism' in America, and why is it so pervasive? Even in matters of religion, people who have studied it most--atheists--are accused consistently of being bitter and angry, even when they are not, and even if their justifications for abandoning religion are quite good. Ironically, most of this comes from people who have not once opened a Bible or a Koran in their entire lives.
Continuing with this religious theme, there exists a paradox: People want to believe whatever makes them feel good, regardless whether or not that what they believe is actually true, but they get offended if their beliefs are proved untrue. Beliefs that have nothing to do with being true or false and have no relation to actual reality, it would follow, have no place in directing the real world.
But is that where we are as a country? For if the condition exists in our political system that we care not whether our attitudes are true or false, how could we function? How could we possibly make decisions that impact not only our society generally, but also our lives individually if we didn't rely on standards of truth and falsehood? Or, perhaps we didn't so much as completely eliminate these standards, but expanded the criteria much too far as to cease to be useful.
Let us once again take the Tea Party and the deficit. If the Tea Party truly wanted to reduce the deficit, they would not have argued with the Congressional Budget Office about its estimation that repealing health care reform would add $230 billion to the deficit. Or, in another example, if the Christian conservative demographic truly wanted to reduce the number of abortions in the country, they would have to concede that abstinence-only sexual education was ineffective and join the rest of the world in advocating for contraception. But I'm talking about a utopia (the Greek meaning; "nowhere") in which political and everyday decisions are made based on fact.
The point is that these circumstances render philosophy absolutely impossible by virtue of the simple fact that we as a society no longer care about what is factually true. If we lose the ability to distinguish between truth and falsehood, we cannot make rational decisions that get us where we want to go. The Catholic Church is probably dumbfounded as to why people in Africa are still dying of AIDS.
Philosophy is "the love of wisdom," and wisdom is the ability to admit what one does not know, and to make sound judgments. These judgments, are again, based upon standards of truth and falsehood that we in America no longer respect.
The stakes of our political success or failure are high, and there is cause for us to get excited. But if we delegate authority to angry demagogues, we will have forfeited any chance of success. A professor of Russian history appeared on CNN's AC360 (substituted by Soledad O'Brien) who made this one quick and important point before he was cut off: In America, we have confused celebrity with political leadership2. This is an enormous detriment in itself to our political landscape, because we actually give people who know absolutely nothing about politics or history a venue in which to speak and be heard, and cloud out what really matters. Ed Rollins in the clip I cited complained that the panel should be concerned with Paul Ryan, who gave the Republican rebuttal to the SotU, but instead they were talking about Sarah Palin's idiocy.
But worse than Sarah Palin, of course, is Glenn Beck, who, as Joe Scarborough said, was a "nobody" before being put on Fox News3. Scarborough beautifully illustrates the problem of Glenn Beck in the video clip by stating that people who watch him will start to believe what he says and he will have a "corrosive impact on our politics." Of course, this is unequivocally true, evidenced by the pervasiveness of conspiracy theories--once found only in the dark recesses of the Internet--in our mainstream political landscape. Furthermore, I would venture to say that before Beck mentioned her on his program, no one had any idea who Frances Fox Piven was. This could only mean that Beck is directly responsible for the threats she has received since his program aired.
What is the "mainstream" anyway? How do we define what is "normal" in our political discourse? Is it a numbers game? How does something like the Tea Party go from a fringe element to a mainstream phenomenon? Of course, the Tea Party was manufactured in such a way as to be made to look like a grassroots movement, when in fact it was first organized by Sal Russo and Dick Armey and their PACs.
A parallel example where the point may be made more clear is in religion. No "mainstream" religious leader or person wants to admit that the fundamentalist element has any power. Theologically, fundamentalism is certainly indefensible, but fundamentalists have gone on to:
1) Campaign massively and effectively against gay rights
2) Build a Creation Museum
3) Take out two of the tallest buildings in the United States
4) Affect public policy to an astounding degree in areas where religion does not belong (sexual education, high school English classes, science curriculums, stem cell research, etc)
5) Dominate policy in the Middle East, even as the people ruled under them understand how dangerous they are.
6) Wage a very effective campaign of guerrilla warfare against the United States and its allies in Iraq and Afghanistan
My point here is not to give credit or legitimize fundamentalism, but to merely ask at what point does a movement or demographic once relegated to "the fringe" become mainstream, regardless of whether we agree with them or not? What would it take, for example, for the KKK to become mainstream?
1) de Tocqueville, Alexis Democracy in America Penguin Classics ed. p. 493
2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-FJ2jnj7No
3) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/12/joe-scarborough-glenn-beck-feud_n_807892.html
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Why Can't We Be Friends?
On January 8th, a tragedy occurred that sparked a debate regarding civility in our political discourse. We promised to be more respectful of one another, and that we don't condone political violence.
But the truth is, vowing to kiss and make up lest someone gets hurt isn't truly enough. Something needs to fundamentally change within our political dynamic in order for us to get anywhere near something resembling respect and civility.
In order for there to be grounds for mutual respect, our politics must be based upon reason, and I don't see this happening. The healthcare debate this month in the House was a catastrophe, with Republicans claiming that it was a "job-killing bill," a point upon which FactCheck.org presented their evidence to the contrary, only for Eric Cantor's office to repeat its claim, stating that, "Anyone who argues otherwise is ignoring the construct of the health care law and the widely accepted facts1."
"Widely-accepted facts?" Widely-accepted by who? Manufactured by whom?
Furthermore, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that repealing healthcare reform would add $130-230 billion to the deficit2. So what did the Republican establishment do? They went after the CBO itself3. This kind of self-deception is not enabling of civil discourse. How can we treat someone with respect when they are operating on deliberate lies? It is quite interesting to watch the Republican House of Representatives at once lament the expanding deficit and at the same time add to it, only to attempt to discredit those who point out this tragic discrepancy.
Is it considered civil discourse to insinuate that the President of the United States is illegitimate, or even an enemy of the country which he was elected to represent? Is terrifying your audience and manipulating them into betraying their own economic interests fostering of civil discourse?
Last week, Glenn Beck launched a campaign against a 78-year-old sociology professor at CUNY for an article she wrote in 1966 for The Nation, in which which she suggested that in order to enact real change, the unemployed should overwhelm the welfare system4. According to the NYTimes, the Center for Constitutional Rights claims that Glenn Beck's tirade has resulted in his followers sending Prof Piven death threats: "Somebody tell Frances I have 5000 rounds ready and I’ll give My life to take Our freedom back."
It would be perfectly reasonable to say that you disagree with her, but to suggest that a sociology professor wants to cause the country to collapse is nothing short of utter nonsense, and betrays a complete lack of understanding of academia. Not only that, but one is actually trampling on the Constitution itself by indirectly attempting to suppress freedom of speech by way of attacking her for expressing herself. The goal often of academics and philosophers is simply to present a different perspective of society in a way that forces one to consider how it operates and how it can be improved for the greatest number of people.
"COMMUNISM!!!!" No, it's not Communism. We're talking ideally about about a democracy, in which the majority governs (with certain exception, often to counteract the effects of mob rule. Minority rights, for example), so it would follow that as a democracy, we should be interested in helping the maximum number of people possible so that our democracy is preserved, otherwise we disenfranchise what is essentially our government (the people) by withholding opportunity and it collapses into an oligarchy or dictatorship because the number of people who are able to participate as educated citizens diminishes. Thus, as a democratic society, we have an interest in preserving opportunity and passing along our knowledge in order for others to succeed.
The task of academics such as Prof Piven is to point out where our society fails to meet this obligation, why it fails, and what can be done to correct it. Often these inequalities are so deeply rooted in our institutions that the only way to rectify them is through monumental action such as the solution Beck is currently having a conniption over. I am not going to debate the possible impact Prof Piven's proposition, but I am going to say that she absolutely has a right to present her ideas, and I am going to venture to suggest that we are better for it.
The irony of Beck and the Tea Party is that while they so worship the Constitution, they are swift to attack anyone they disagree with on a personal level with the goal of shutting them up. A few months ago, Glenn Beck attacked George Soros because Soros had suggested that gold was liable to collapse. Glenn Beck, as a "conservative libertarian" (who, ironically, knows absolutely nothing about liberty and thinks Thomas Paine was a conservative...), wishes to return to the Gold Standard because of some strange insecurity inherent in paper currency. But the truth is that Beck attacked Soros because he was a spokesperson for GoldLine, and had an immediate vested interest in people being scared of an impending apocalypse and buying gold(5&6).
Representative Gregg Harper of Mississippi stated in an interview with Politico that he "hunt[s] liberal, tree-hugging Democrats, although it does seem like a waste of good ammunition7." Rush Limbaugh's latest feat was to mock Chinese President Hu Jintao by pretending to speak Chinese8.
To be at least partially fair, Eric Fuller, one of the survivors of the Tuscon Tragedy two weeks ago, attended a town hall meeting and made threatening remarks toward a Republican representative and a Tea Party activist: "Fuller then swiveled in his chair, raised his camera and took a photo of the pro-gun speaker, muttering, 'You're dead,' according to Joel Tranter, who was sitting behind him9." However, this man is understood to be traumatized after the shooting, and in my opinion should not have placed himself in such a position in which he would knowingly get so agitated. Fuller is now under psychiatric care10.
The irony is that while Fuller did make this threat and was probably serious, the Tea Party's gun fetish remains the larger problem. For Humphries himself to be worried by Mr Fuller is rather silly, given the frightening rhetoric employed by the GOP/Tea Party establishment on a regular basis. No Democratic commentator had put Fuller up to this or suggested to Fuller that he should threaten Mr Humphries, while such suggestions remain a systemic problem in the Tea Party and GOP at large.
Let's talk about the Second Amendment, from which much of the rhetoric employed by those on the right stems. The Second Amendment stems from the needs of a fledgling society seeking to break away from foreign control. As such, it was enacted because of the cruel nature of the time and a guard against a repeat of history (much like the Establishment Clause, which guarded against theocratic tyranny). But the problem now is that the government created and legitimized by the Constitution itself cannot be justly overthrown because its legitimacy is inextricably tied to the Constitution. If you lose the government, you lose the Constitution. It is the duty of the judiciary to keep the government in line with the Constitution.
The open-carry policies enacted by several states do not make us any safer. We do not live in the 19th century Midwest, and the people arguing for open-carry do not appear to be of rational disposition and cannot be guaranteed to use it responsibly. It only takes one bullet to ruin everything. We have a military and police force, which are both sufficient to maintain order, and have in place procedures by which they can lawfully operate, and many protections for when they do not. I would not begin to argue that these protections are always guaranteed in a court of law, but the kind of protections most of us require are present on a sufficient basis at least enough for a reasonable person to not feel immediately oppressed.
The gun rhetoric has thus been used to incite paranoia and hark back to the Old West or even the War for Independence, ages which passed and are vastly different from today, in which the United States was a fledgling nation and could not support the massive expansion across the continent by way of a police force or military. The rhetoric draws on a theme of oppression, which seems strange given the relative health of our society, in which law and order are respected enough so that we are not rioting or abusing one another at a terrifying rate, nor has this present government sought to oppress those who currently feel oppressed. There are no FEMA concentration camps, no one is taking away citizens' guns, no one is trying to destroy society economically (at least not the people whom the Tea Party accuses of trying to destroy society), and Obama is not a Muslim Communist.
All of these ideas aim chiefly to scare people, and that is the problem. The people employing this revolutionary rhetoric are doing it in order to terrify people, and a terrified citizenry does not understand civil discourse. When people are scared, the ability to reason is eradicated, and democracy cannot happen. Fear and the loss of rational faculties always leads to violence.
The political environment in which one entire party finds itself is not only toxic, it is downright delusional and therefore far more dangerous than professional commentators are willing to state. Attacking the CBO for its estimations because they hinder the GOP's talking points warrants disgust, not respect. We will never have anything resembling civil discourse, nor will the option even be open to us, so long as the GOP/Tea Party continues to operate under delusion and vitriol.
1) http://factcheck.org/2011/01/a-job-killing-law/
2 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/06/AR2011010606159.html
3) http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2011/01/column_the_republican_war_on_t.html
4) http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/22/business/media/22beck.html
5) http://articles.cnn.com/2010-11-13/opinion/wolraich.beck.soros_1_george-soros-billionaire-drug-cartel?_s=PM:OPINION
6) http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/glenn-beck-fox-hosts-golden-advertiser-goldline-investigation/story?id=11197000
7) http://www.politico.com/click/stories/0910/get_to_know_a_congressman4.html
8) http://gawker.com/5738044/rush-limbaugh-shows-off-his-chinese-voice (with audio)
9) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/15/eric-fuller-arrested-tea-party-arizona-shooting_n_809584.html
10) http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20028762-504083.html
But the truth is, vowing to kiss and make up lest someone gets hurt isn't truly enough. Something needs to fundamentally change within our political dynamic in order for us to get anywhere near something resembling respect and civility.
In order for there to be grounds for mutual respect, our politics must be based upon reason, and I don't see this happening. The healthcare debate this month in the House was a catastrophe, with Republicans claiming that it was a "job-killing bill," a point upon which FactCheck.org presented their evidence to the contrary, only for Eric Cantor's office to repeat its claim, stating that, "Anyone who argues otherwise is ignoring the construct of the health care law and the widely accepted facts1."
"Widely-accepted facts?" Widely-accepted by who? Manufactured by whom?
Furthermore, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that repealing healthcare reform would add $130-230 billion to the deficit2. So what did the Republican establishment do? They went after the CBO itself3. This kind of self-deception is not enabling of civil discourse. How can we treat someone with respect when they are operating on deliberate lies? It is quite interesting to watch the Republican House of Representatives at once lament the expanding deficit and at the same time add to it, only to attempt to discredit those who point out this tragic discrepancy.
Is it considered civil discourse to insinuate that the President of the United States is illegitimate, or even an enemy of the country which he was elected to represent? Is terrifying your audience and manipulating them into betraying their own economic interests fostering of civil discourse?
Last week, Glenn Beck launched a campaign against a 78-year-old sociology professor at CUNY for an article she wrote in 1966 for The Nation, in which which she suggested that in order to enact real change, the unemployed should overwhelm the welfare system4. According to the NYTimes, the Center for Constitutional Rights claims that Glenn Beck's tirade has resulted in his followers sending Prof Piven death threats: "Somebody tell Frances I have 5000 rounds ready and I’ll give My life to take Our freedom back."
It would be perfectly reasonable to say that you disagree with her, but to suggest that a sociology professor wants to cause the country to collapse is nothing short of utter nonsense, and betrays a complete lack of understanding of academia. Not only that, but one is actually trampling on the Constitution itself by indirectly attempting to suppress freedom of speech by way of attacking her for expressing herself. The goal often of academics and philosophers is simply to present a different perspective of society in a way that forces one to consider how it operates and how it can be improved for the greatest number of people.
"COMMUNISM!!!!" No, it's not Communism. We're talking ideally about about a democracy, in which the majority governs (with certain exception, often to counteract the effects of mob rule. Minority rights, for example), so it would follow that as a democracy, we should be interested in helping the maximum number of people possible so that our democracy is preserved, otherwise we disenfranchise what is essentially our government (the people) by withholding opportunity and it collapses into an oligarchy or dictatorship because the number of people who are able to participate as educated citizens diminishes. Thus, as a democratic society, we have an interest in preserving opportunity and passing along our knowledge in order for others to succeed.
The task of academics such as Prof Piven is to point out where our society fails to meet this obligation, why it fails, and what can be done to correct it. Often these inequalities are so deeply rooted in our institutions that the only way to rectify them is through monumental action such as the solution Beck is currently having a conniption over. I am not going to debate the possible impact Prof Piven's proposition, but I am going to say that she absolutely has a right to present her ideas, and I am going to venture to suggest that we are better for it.
The irony of Beck and the Tea Party is that while they so worship the Constitution, they are swift to attack anyone they disagree with on a personal level with the goal of shutting them up. A few months ago, Glenn Beck attacked George Soros because Soros had suggested that gold was liable to collapse. Glenn Beck, as a "conservative libertarian" (who, ironically, knows absolutely nothing about liberty and thinks Thomas Paine was a conservative...), wishes to return to the Gold Standard because of some strange insecurity inherent in paper currency. But the truth is that Beck attacked Soros because he was a spokesperson for GoldLine, and had an immediate vested interest in people being scared of an impending apocalypse and buying gold(5&6).
Representative Gregg Harper of Mississippi stated in an interview with Politico that he "hunt[s] liberal, tree-hugging Democrats, although it does seem like a waste of good ammunition7." Rush Limbaugh's latest feat was to mock Chinese President Hu Jintao by pretending to speak Chinese8.
To be at least partially fair, Eric Fuller, one of the survivors of the Tuscon Tragedy two weeks ago, attended a town hall meeting and made threatening remarks toward a Republican representative and a Tea Party activist: "Fuller then swiveled in his chair, raised his camera and took a photo of the pro-gun speaker, muttering, 'You're dead,' according to Joel Tranter, who was sitting behind him9." However, this man is understood to be traumatized after the shooting, and in my opinion should not have placed himself in such a position in which he would knowingly get so agitated. Fuller is now under psychiatric care10.
The irony is that while Fuller did make this threat and was probably serious, the Tea Party's gun fetish remains the larger problem. For Humphries himself to be worried by Mr Fuller is rather silly, given the frightening rhetoric employed by the GOP/Tea Party establishment on a regular basis. No Democratic commentator had put Fuller up to this or suggested to Fuller that he should threaten Mr Humphries, while such suggestions remain a systemic problem in the Tea Party and GOP at large.
Let's talk about the Second Amendment, from which much of the rhetoric employed by those on the right stems. The Second Amendment stems from the needs of a fledgling society seeking to break away from foreign control. As such, it was enacted because of the cruel nature of the time and a guard against a repeat of history (much like the Establishment Clause, which guarded against theocratic tyranny). But the problem now is that the government created and legitimized by the Constitution itself cannot be justly overthrown because its legitimacy is inextricably tied to the Constitution. If you lose the government, you lose the Constitution. It is the duty of the judiciary to keep the government in line with the Constitution.
The open-carry policies enacted by several states do not make us any safer. We do not live in the 19th century Midwest, and the people arguing for open-carry do not appear to be of rational disposition and cannot be guaranteed to use it responsibly. It only takes one bullet to ruin everything. We have a military and police force, which are both sufficient to maintain order, and have in place procedures by which they can lawfully operate, and many protections for when they do not. I would not begin to argue that these protections are always guaranteed in a court of law, but the kind of protections most of us require are present on a sufficient basis at least enough for a reasonable person to not feel immediately oppressed.
The gun rhetoric has thus been used to incite paranoia and hark back to the Old West or even the War for Independence, ages which passed and are vastly different from today, in which the United States was a fledgling nation and could not support the massive expansion across the continent by way of a police force or military. The rhetoric draws on a theme of oppression, which seems strange given the relative health of our society, in which law and order are respected enough so that we are not rioting or abusing one another at a terrifying rate, nor has this present government sought to oppress those who currently feel oppressed. There are no FEMA concentration camps, no one is taking away citizens' guns, no one is trying to destroy society economically (at least not the people whom the Tea Party accuses of trying to destroy society), and Obama is not a Muslim Communist.
All of these ideas aim chiefly to scare people, and that is the problem. The people employing this revolutionary rhetoric are doing it in order to terrify people, and a terrified citizenry does not understand civil discourse. When people are scared, the ability to reason is eradicated, and democracy cannot happen. Fear and the loss of rational faculties always leads to violence.
The political environment in which one entire party finds itself is not only toxic, it is downright delusional and therefore far more dangerous than professional commentators are willing to state. Attacking the CBO for its estimations because they hinder the GOP's talking points warrants disgust, not respect. We will never have anything resembling civil discourse, nor will the option even be open to us, so long as the GOP/Tea Party continues to operate under delusion and vitriol.
1) http://factcheck.org/2011/01/a-job-killing-law/
2 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/06/AR2011010606159.html
3) http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2011/01/column_the_republican_war_on_t.html
4) http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/22/business/media/22beck.html
5) http://articles.cnn.com/2010-11-13/opinion/wolraich.beck.soros_1_george-soros-billionaire-drug-cartel?_s=PM:OPINION
6) http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/glenn-beck-fox-hosts-golden-advertiser-goldline-investigation/story?id=11197000
7) http://www.politico.com/click/stories/0910/get_to_know_a_congressman4.html
8) http://gawker.com/5738044/rush-limbaugh-shows-off-his-chinese-voice (with audio)
9) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/15/eric-fuller-arrested-tea-party-arizona-shooting_n_809584.html
10) http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20028762-504083.html
Monday, January 10, 2011
Tuscon Tragedy
On Saturday, Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords, Judge John Roll, and a 9 year old girl, among at least 15 others, were shot by 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner1. Roll and the 9-year-old girl were killed, and Giffords herself had sustained significant brain injuries.
A firestorm ensued on both sides: Rightnetwork.com had tried to pin the shooter as a liberal by using his favorite books as evidence. There is a signoficant problem with this strategy, however:
"Books:
I had favorite books: Animal Farm, Brave New World, The Wizard Of OZ, Aesop Fables, The Odyssey, Alice Adventures Into Wonderland, Fahrenheit 451, Peter Pan, To Kill A Mockingbird, We The Living, Phantom Toll Booth, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Pulp,Through The Looking Glass, The Communist Manifesto, Siddhartha, The Old Man And The Sea, Gulliver’s Travels, Mein Kampf, The Republic, and Meno"2.
We the Living, The Communist Manifesto, and Mein Kampf; Rand, Marx, and Hitler. It would truly be impossible to try to pigeonhole the rest of these works as Liberal or Conservative, and get any kind of reliable motive from them. I have read most of these books (save for Mein Kampf, Aesop, Wizard of Oz, The Phantom Tollbooth, Peter Pan, Pulp, Gulliver's Travels, or the Communist Manifesto), and I have a far greater respect for human life than Mr Loughner.
Furthermore, it would make absolutely no sense, if it were true that Loughner was a Liberal, for him to target Mrs Giffords because she is a Democrat.
On the other hand, a Facebook page called Americans Against the Tea Party, of which I am a part, has been chomping at the bit to place the blame on Fox News and Sarah Palin. AATP has a point that Sarah Palin's rhetoric has been grossly irresponsible, but there is a major problem in constructing a convincing case that Mr Loughner is connected to the Tea Party.
Here is where I personally stand; I will be upfront about this: I am as excited as the rest of my fellow Democrats to crash the Tea Party. I have previously explained what a threat it presents to our society. HOWEVER, I (we) do not have the compelling evidence required to make any accusations. The only evidence we have of any kind of motive rests on his Youtube account, in which Mr Loughner discusses "Conscience Dreaming" and a "currency" that seems to only have a passing connection to actual money3.
"Conscience Dreaming" only leads to a man named Robert Moss, and is commonly understood as lucid dreaming, which means to simply be aware that one is dreaming.
Now we're getting somewhere. A reader wrote to columnist Andrew Sullivan of the Atlantic that his writings indicate that Mr Loughner is severely emotionally disturbed, and suggested evidence of paranoid schizophrenia4.
With at least a rudimentary knowledge of psychology (having taken classes both in high school and college, and have expressed much interest in it during my depressive phase), I would have to concur with that assumption.
Loughner expresses a fear that we are being controlled by grammar, something that, as an English major, appears to me as absolutely absurd--as language is designed to expand means of expression, not contract them (place counterargument from Orwell's Ingsoc here)--and he spoke incoherently of some issue of currency, which some supposed to be libertarian, but it was too inconsistent and not worth using.
Mr Loughner appeared in court today (1/9), and allegedly he was coherent and was able to answer the questions he was asked. Also according to CNN, "...court documents released Sunday show that investigators found a letter from the congresswoman in a safe at the house where Loughner lived with his parents, thanking him for attending a similar 2007 event"5.
Psychologically, the case is starting to make sense from the point of view that Loughner suffers from paranoid schizophrenia as substantiated by some bizarre personal obsession with the target. Also of note is that the family had been uncooperative with the FBI6. I would surmise from Bloomburg News that authorities had made it into his home and have found his writings that describe Saturday's attack. Also according to that same article, Loughner does have some history of psychological problems and strange behavior7.
These are the major points of the case at the time of this writing, and in my personal opinion, the political angle of the case can be ruled out.
1) http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/us/politics/09giffords.html
2) http://gatewaypundit.rightnetwork.com/2011/01/shooter-jarod-laughner/
3) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHoaZaLbqB4&feature=share
4) http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2011/01/murder-in-arizona-live-blogging.html
5) http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/01/10/arizona.shooting.investigation/index.html
6) http://www.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archives/2011/01/10/arizona-republic-the-loughner-family-is-barricading-themselves-in
7) http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-10/loughner-s-writings-actions-analyzed-for-clues-in-arizona-shooting-case.html
A firestorm ensued on both sides: Rightnetwork.com had tried to pin the shooter as a liberal by using his favorite books as evidence. There is a signoficant problem with this strategy, however:
"Books:
I had favorite books: Animal Farm, Brave New World, The Wizard Of OZ, Aesop Fables, The Odyssey, Alice Adventures Into Wonderland, Fahrenheit 451, Peter Pan, To Kill A Mockingbird, We The Living, Phantom Toll Booth, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Pulp,Through The Looking Glass, The Communist Manifesto, Siddhartha, The Old Man And The Sea, Gulliver’s Travels, Mein Kampf, The Republic, and Meno"2.
We the Living, The Communist Manifesto, and Mein Kampf; Rand, Marx, and Hitler. It would truly be impossible to try to pigeonhole the rest of these works as Liberal or Conservative, and get any kind of reliable motive from them. I have read most of these books (save for Mein Kampf, Aesop, Wizard of Oz, The Phantom Tollbooth, Peter Pan, Pulp, Gulliver's Travels, or the Communist Manifesto), and I have a far greater respect for human life than Mr Loughner.
Furthermore, it would make absolutely no sense, if it were true that Loughner was a Liberal, for him to target Mrs Giffords because she is a Democrat.
On the other hand, a Facebook page called Americans Against the Tea Party, of which I am a part, has been chomping at the bit to place the blame on Fox News and Sarah Palin. AATP has a point that Sarah Palin's rhetoric has been grossly irresponsible, but there is a major problem in constructing a convincing case that Mr Loughner is connected to the Tea Party.
Here is where I personally stand; I will be upfront about this: I am as excited as the rest of my fellow Democrats to crash the Tea Party. I have previously explained what a threat it presents to our society. HOWEVER, I (we) do not have the compelling evidence required to make any accusations. The only evidence we have of any kind of motive rests on his Youtube account, in which Mr Loughner discusses "Conscience Dreaming" and a "currency" that seems to only have a passing connection to actual money3.
"Conscience Dreaming" only leads to a man named Robert Moss, and is commonly understood as lucid dreaming, which means to simply be aware that one is dreaming.
Now we're getting somewhere. A reader wrote to columnist Andrew Sullivan of the Atlantic that his writings indicate that Mr Loughner is severely emotionally disturbed, and suggested evidence of paranoid schizophrenia4.
With at least a rudimentary knowledge of psychology (having taken classes both in high school and college, and have expressed much interest in it during my depressive phase), I would have to concur with that assumption.
Loughner expresses a fear that we are being controlled by grammar, something that, as an English major, appears to me as absolutely absurd--as language is designed to expand means of expression, not contract them (place counterargument from Orwell's Ingsoc here)--and he spoke incoherently of some issue of currency, which some supposed to be libertarian, but it was too inconsistent and not worth using.
Mr Loughner appeared in court today (1/9), and allegedly he was coherent and was able to answer the questions he was asked. Also according to CNN, "...court documents released Sunday show that investigators found a letter from the congresswoman in a safe at the house where Loughner lived with his parents, thanking him for attending a similar 2007 event"5.
Psychologically, the case is starting to make sense from the point of view that Loughner suffers from paranoid schizophrenia as substantiated by some bizarre personal obsession with the target. Also of note is that the family had been uncooperative with the FBI6. I would surmise from Bloomburg News that authorities had made it into his home and have found his writings that describe Saturday's attack. Also according to that same article, Loughner does have some history of psychological problems and strange behavior7.
These are the major points of the case at the time of this writing, and in my personal opinion, the political angle of the case can be ruled out.
1) http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/us/politics/09giffords.html
2) http://gatewaypundit.rightnetwork.com/2011/01/shooter-jarod-laughner/
3) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHoaZaLbqB4&feature=share
4) http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2011/01/murder-in-arizona-live-blogging.html
5) http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/01/10/arizona.shooting.investigation/index.html
6) http://www.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archives/2011/01/10/arizona-republic-the-loughner-family-is-barricading-themselves-in
7) http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-10/loughner-s-writings-actions-analyzed-for-clues-in-arizona-shooting-case.html
Friday, January 7, 2011
Jan Brewer's Death Panel
I only heard about this story an hour ago, and quite honestly it is the most abhorrent piece of news I've heard in a long time.
According to ABC News and CNN, two people have died as a result of state Medicaid budget cuts, specifically those allocated to transplants. ABC says that,
"They [Brewer's administration and the GOP-controlled legislature] eliminated heart transplants for non-ischemic cardiomyopathy, lung transplants, pancreatic transplants, some bone marrow transplants, and liver transplants for patients infected with hepatitis C. Arizona also restricted coverage of prosthetics, eliminated podiatric services, preventive dental services, and wellness and physical exams for adult Medicaid enrollees1."
The article also mentions a man named Mark Price, 37 years of age, who died waiting for a bone marrow transplant that an anonymous person offered to pay for.
It turns out--and I would imagine that it is obvious to everyone--that Jan Brewer and the GOP legislature are doing exactly what Sarah Palin had warned Obama's health care would do. But they are doing it backwards: They are cutting the programs most necessary to keep people alive: Heart transplants, lung transplants, pancreatic transplants and liver transplants. The human body has only one heart, one pancreas, and one liver, all of which it needs to function properly. Bone marrow is responsible for the creation of white blood cells, which fight infection. I would conclude that the programs cut are the most necessary, and Brewer's government would be hard-pressed to do any worse.
But while the complete disregard for human life is abhorrent enough, the blatant hypocrisy only serves as icing on the cake: Sarah Palin's comment about Death Panels spread like wildfire throughout the ranks of the Tea Party and the GOP at large, and people probably still think that Healthcare Reform is inherently evil (hell, they still believe that Obama was not born in the United States--because Hawaii is not a state--and they still think he's a Muslim. Why, they still think people rode dinosaurs to church!), but that what they hate Obama for doing is entirely permissible in their own camp. Obama can't kill grandma, but we sure can!
There are several options here. Was Alan Grayson right when he eloquently described the Republican Health Care Plan ("If you do get sick, die quickly!")? Does it make more sense to deny people healthcare that will save their lives than to pay for them to lie around waiting to die? Doesn't the public foot that bill if they are uninsured anyway?
I see a pattern here, a very sick and very twisted pattern. I am looking at this in the same way as I look at the fight we had over the Zadroga Act.
There are things that government needs to do, and one of those things is to help provide for people who cannot provide for themselves, especially when the matter is of such paramount importance as life and death.
To be at least partially fair to Ms Brewer and her colleagues, it is true that healthcare spending is exorbitantly high and that it contributes greatly to the national deficit. But there are very important things that the GOP at large fails to consider: Namely, the social impact of their cuts.
Would it have been possible, for example, to try to cut less-necessary procedures or exams before considering cutting things like organ transplants, which are normally considered last-resort procedures? Cutting preventive care, however, strikes me as odd: While preventive care may at first seem extraneous, or an area where charlatans reside, the long-term cost of healthcare may be decreased because of the reduced occurrence of larger and more expensive problems. Allowing people to afford to go to the doctor more often may result in people getting better and more effective treatment earlier, and greatly reducing the cost burden on society. Refusing to pay for preventative care will result in a population that is sick more often and less productive.
Granted, it is possible for people to see the doctor too often, but if someone is complaining of abdominal pain or feels short of breath for a week without an apparent cause, they should go to the doctor.
It seems that they are cutting whatever is convenient, whatever conflicts with their ideology without regard to consequence. The GOP at large has expressed a desire to repeal healthcare reform, even though the Congressional Budget Office stated that the action would add upwards of $200 billion to the deficit2. The GOP is also unwilling to touch the Bush tax cuts, even though they contributed heavily to our problem, and most commentators I've heard state that it would be impossible to fix the deficit without raising taxes, a belief I also happen to share.
Here's what I would want to know: Who, exactly, is making these policy recommendations in Arizona? I could only imagine that the Medicaid insurance structure operates much like any corporate entity: Immediate cost first, quality of life--or life at all--second. In other words, are there any doctors on these Death Panels, or are they all just goons?
If we are going to have a serious discussion about saving money on healthcare, we need to assess the pragmatic and long-term value of preventative care. What can we do to mitigate the long-term cost burden on the state and prevent as best we can the need for such expensive procedures without deciding who lives and who dies? No system is going to be perfect, but budget cuts to programs people actually need with a complete lack of foresight will only kill people. There has to be a way to do this without a cost of human life.
1) http://abcnews.go.com/Health/News/arizona-transplant-deaths/story?id=12559369&page=1
2) http://articles.cnn.com/2011-01-06/politics/health.care_1_health-care-repeal-overhaul?_s=PM:POLITICS
According to ABC News and CNN, two people have died as a result of state Medicaid budget cuts, specifically those allocated to transplants. ABC says that,
"They [Brewer's administration and the GOP-controlled legislature] eliminated heart transplants for non-ischemic cardiomyopathy, lung transplants, pancreatic transplants, some bone marrow transplants, and liver transplants for patients infected with hepatitis C. Arizona also restricted coverage of prosthetics, eliminated podiatric services, preventive dental services, and wellness and physical exams for adult Medicaid enrollees1."
The article also mentions a man named Mark Price, 37 years of age, who died waiting for a bone marrow transplant that an anonymous person offered to pay for.
It turns out--and I would imagine that it is obvious to everyone--that Jan Brewer and the GOP legislature are doing exactly what Sarah Palin had warned Obama's health care would do. But they are doing it backwards: They are cutting the programs most necessary to keep people alive: Heart transplants, lung transplants, pancreatic transplants and liver transplants. The human body has only one heart, one pancreas, and one liver, all of which it needs to function properly. Bone marrow is responsible for the creation of white blood cells, which fight infection. I would conclude that the programs cut are the most necessary, and Brewer's government would be hard-pressed to do any worse.
But while the complete disregard for human life is abhorrent enough, the blatant hypocrisy only serves as icing on the cake: Sarah Palin's comment about Death Panels spread like wildfire throughout the ranks of the Tea Party and the GOP at large, and people probably still think that Healthcare Reform is inherently evil (hell, they still believe that Obama was not born in the United States--because Hawaii is not a state--and they still think he's a Muslim. Why, they still think people rode dinosaurs to church!), but that what they hate Obama for doing is entirely permissible in their own camp. Obama can't kill grandma, but we sure can!
There are several options here. Was Alan Grayson right when he eloquently described the Republican Health Care Plan ("If you do get sick, die quickly!")? Does it make more sense to deny people healthcare that will save their lives than to pay for them to lie around waiting to die? Doesn't the public foot that bill if they are uninsured anyway?
I see a pattern here, a very sick and very twisted pattern. I am looking at this in the same way as I look at the fight we had over the Zadroga Act.
There are things that government needs to do, and one of those things is to help provide for people who cannot provide for themselves, especially when the matter is of such paramount importance as life and death.
To be at least partially fair to Ms Brewer and her colleagues, it is true that healthcare spending is exorbitantly high and that it contributes greatly to the national deficit. But there are very important things that the GOP at large fails to consider: Namely, the social impact of their cuts.
Would it have been possible, for example, to try to cut less-necessary procedures or exams before considering cutting things like organ transplants, which are normally considered last-resort procedures? Cutting preventive care, however, strikes me as odd: While preventive care may at first seem extraneous, or an area where charlatans reside, the long-term cost of healthcare may be decreased because of the reduced occurrence of larger and more expensive problems. Allowing people to afford to go to the doctor more often may result in people getting better and more effective treatment earlier, and greatly reducing the cost burden on society. Refusing to pay for preventative care will result in a population that is sick more often and less productive.
Granted, it is possible for people to see the doctor too often, but if someone is complaining of abdominal pain or feels short of breath for a week without an apparent cause, they should go to the doctor.
It seems that they are cutting whatever is convenient, whatever conflicts with their ideology without regard to consequence. The GOP at large has expressed a desire to repeal healthcare reform, even though the Congressional Budget Office stated that the action would add upwards of $200 billion to the deficit2. The GOP is also unwilling to touch the Bush tax cuts, even though they contributed heavily to our problem, and most commentators I've heard state that it would be impossible to fix the deficit without raising taxes, a belief I also happen to share.
Here's what I would want to know: Who, exactly, is making these policy recommendations in Arizona? I could only imagine that the Medicaid insurance structure operates much like any corporate entity: Immediate cost first, quality of life--or life at all--second. In other words, are there any doctors on these Death Panels, or are they all just goons?
If we are going to have a serious discussion about saving money on healthcare, we need to assess the pragmatic and long-term value of preventative care. What can we do to mitigate the long-term cost burden on the state and prevent as best we can the need for such expensive procedures without deciding who lives and who dies? No system is going to be perfect, but budget cuts to programs people actually need with a complete lack of foresight will only kill people. There has to be a way to do this without a cost of human life.
1) http://abcnews.go.com/Health/News/arizona-transplant-deaths/story?id=12559369&page=1
2) http://articles.cnn.com/2011-01-06/politics/health.care_1_health-care-repeal-overhaul?_s=PM:POLITICS
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Personal Goals for the New Year
This week, I cut through the enormous pile of books I plan to read: I put the books of lesser priority on a shelf of back burners, and I now have a list of books I want to read this year (not in any order):
1) When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
2) The Laws by Plato
3) The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut - the last of his novels I aim to read
4) The Koran
5) The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet Nest by Stieg Larsson
6) A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
7) Room by Emma Donague
8) Being & Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre
9) V by Thomas Pynchon
10) The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Thomas Wolfe
11) A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving
12) The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
13) Beloved by Toni Morrison
14) Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns
15) Necessary Illusions by Noam Chomsky
16) November 1916 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn -- I doubt I'll get to it, but here's hoping!
17) The Gates of Hell by Harrison E Salisbury
18) Life of Pi by Yann Martel
19) Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen
19) The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
There are two books I've started and put down, which I would like to pick back up again. They are:
1) A Dead Man's Memoir by Mikahail Bulgakov
2) Coraline by Neil Gaiman
These books are incredibly short and it's an embarrassment that I haven't finished them yet. And I LOVE Bulgakov!
Last year, I read an extreme amount of philosophy, from Kierkegaard to Heidegger, de Tocqueville, and Sun Tzu. I also read Dave Cullen's account of Columbine (which was EXCELLENT) and Krakauer's exposition on Mormonism. I've even read a little theology! But this year, I want to return to something equally important to me, and cut back on the non-fiction and philosophy. I want to return to the novel.
But there's something else I want to do as an extension of my intent of returning to the novel. I want to try to read at least three really good mystery/suspense novels this year. I'm about halfway through Tana French's Faithful Place, and while it is fairly good, none of her characters move beyond the lower-class Irish stereotype set forth in Angela's Ashes. It feels sort of like I'm reading Angela's Ashes all over again, except someone got murdered.
There is one other goal I can now complete: I can watch the rest of Six Feet Under. It is kind of a relic of my depressive phase, but I still love it as a work of art. No TV series has so captivated me as SFU has.
What about getting a job and moving out? I hear you ask. Those don't need to be stated; they are a given. I'm quite sure getting a job accounts for the New Years resolution of roughly 10% of the country, and I'm one of them.
2010 ended with a crash. I had a car accident on the day after Christmas. Thankfully, the car was a $2,000 sedan, about 8 years old. It was my workhorse: only problem is that I needed it for delivery driving. I'm otherwise fine--I can even drive without having a panic attack!--but I'm still a bit shaken up by it. Despite my initial travels in that direction, the fact of a near-death experience has not made me a religious man. I cannot put enough of the pieces together to build a compelling case of divine conspiracy: There is no apparent motive, and the set pieces are natural enough on their own: I am solely responsible for what I went through, and I am comfortable understanding the random movement of my car on black ice as parallel to a roll of the dice. Occam's Razor must prevail.
But doesn't mean that the experience hasn't an affect on me. I still can't yet figure out if I have PTSD, as I still think about the event, and driving makes me a little unduly nervous, even if I'm only going into town. I'm doing deliveries tomorrow. In the Honda. That should be fun...
1) When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
2) The Laws by Plato
3) The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut - the last of his novels I aim to read
4) The Koran
5) The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet Nest by Stieg Larsson
6) A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
7) Room by Emma Donague
8) Being & Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre
9) V by Thomas Pynchon
10) The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Thomas Wolfe
11) A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving
12) The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
13) Beloved by Toni Morrison
14) Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns
15) Necessary Illusions by Noam Chomsky
16) November 1916 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn -- I doubt I'll get to it, but here's hoping!
17) The Gates of Hell by Harrison E Salisbury
18) Life of Pi by Yann Martel
19) Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen
19) The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
There are two books I've started and put down, which I would like to pick back up again. They are:
1) A Dead Man's Memoir by Mikahail Bulgakov
2) Coraline by Neil Gaiman
These books are incredibly short and it's an embarrassment that I haven't finished them yet. And I LOVE Bulgakov!
Last year, I read an extreme amount of philosophy, from Kierkegaard to Heidegger, de Tocqueville, and Sun Tzu. I also read Dave Cullen's account of Columbine (which was EXCELLENT) and Krakauer's exposition on Mormonism. I've even read a little theology! But this year, I want to return to something equally important to me, and cut back on the non-fiction and philosophy. I want to return to the novel.
But there's something else I want to do as an extension of my intent of returning to the novel. I want to try to read at least three really good mystery/suspense novels this year. I'm about halfway through Tana French's Faithful Place, and while it is fairly good, none of her characters move beyond the lower-class Irish stereotype set forth in Angela's Ashes. It feels sort of like I'm reading Angela's Ashes all over again, except someone got murdered.
There is one other goal I can now complete: I can watch the rest of Six Feet Under. It is kind of a relic of my depressive phase, but I still love it as a work of art. No TV series has so captivated me as SFU has.
What about getting a job and moving out? I hear you ask. Those don't need to be stated; they are a given. I'm quite sure getting a job accounts for the New Years resolution of roughly 10% of the country, and I'm one of them.
2010 ended with a crash. I had a car accident on the day after Christmas. Thankfully, the car was a $2,000 sedan, about 8 years old. It was my workhorse: only problem is that I needed it for delivery driving. I'm otherwise fine--I can even drive without having a panic attack!--but I'm still a bit shaken up by it. Despite my initial travels in that direction, the fact of a near-death experience has not made me a religious man. I cannot put enough of the pieces together to build a compelling case of divine conspiracy: There is no apparent motive, and the set pieces are natural enough on their own: I am solely responsible for what I went through, and I am comfortable understanding the random movement of my car on black ice as parallel to a roll of the dice. Occam's Razor must prevail.
But doesn't mean that the experience hasn't an affect on me. I still can't yet figure out if I have PTSD, as I still think about the event, and driving makes me a little unduly nervous, even if I'm only going into town. I'm doing deliveries tomorrow. In the Honda. That should be fun...
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Could I Ever Be Brief?
Brevity and I, for better or worse, are not on friendly terms, as many of my posts clearly indicate. But word has finally gotten around to me that my beloved audience feels that my essays are far too long. My essay on the deficit spanned 4 pages on paper single-spaced, which, in college, would be 8 pages double-spaced.
I realize that hardly anyone has time to sit and read War & Peace on a computer screen. I can't even get through Call of Cthulhu on a computer (I also do not own an e-reader). But the dilemma is this:
I like to write
I try to be complex
I equate "longer" with "better", not for simply writing more (someone could write 1069 pages of nonsense and it would still be garbage1), but because I want to be thorough, and I have a lot to say.
I feel that if I were to shorten it, the quality of this blog would suffer because I would be writing less per post, and you would get Misanthrope: The Abridged Version with some glaring omissions. On top of that, an author naturally views all of his work as equally important, and I don't have an objective editor on hand. It should be noted that the UK Cards Association tried to get the University of Cambridge to take down a student paper that exposed loopholes in the security systems of ATMs (the university's response made me grin ear-to-ear)2. It would be worth mentioning Upton Sinclair in this case, or, in a parallel example, Galileo Galilee, Copernicus, and Charles Darwin. None of my potential editors have the kind of fearless belligerence required.
So editing is out. But the dilemma remains (and, ironically, the length of this essay will probably add to the evidence that I have Diarrhea of the Keyboard). Another problem is that it takes a few paragraphs for me really get rolling. I noticed in my "Response to Henry Giroux..." that it was fairly weak in the beginning. My Christmas essay two weeks ago had the same problem.
Often I write on impulse; I feel as though if I leave it in my head for too long, the ideas get diluted. The writing itself serves as both fuel and the engine by which I continue, and everything starts to flow.
Writing is not so cut-and-and dry. "BE BRIEF!" For some, like my favorite Russians, this is virtually impossible. Twitter gives me only 160 characters, and I can barely fit my title in a post. As a side note, we tell people to compress, and then we lament that they can't write. That's kind of funny to me...Oh wait. I'm only saying that because I love to write. Most people really don't care at all. People normally communicate at the 7th grade level. The last book (chronologically) to impress me in terms of style was The Grapes of Wrath, which was written in 1939. The inadequacies of our educational system are really beginning to show, not just in business communications (see any job advertisement), but even where writing is paramount: In literature. The last place to find decent prose, unfortunately, is in scientific papers, but those are too disinterested and boring for most people.
What I can do is try to outline my posts, but again, it is the writing itself that gets me thinking, much like a snowball.
I also don't believe that it would be wise for me to do this kind of thing for pay. This blog itself is entirely personal, and as much as being paid to write is attractive, creative control would be sacrificed to please a Mr Moneybags who may not have the best intentions in mind, and the quality of this blog--or any other I would maintain--would suffer still.
This blog depends entirely upon me saying what I believe to be true, and pointing it out in a way as to draw the most attention to it as possible. If my ability to speak freely here were ever compromised, I would cease to be interesting, or even become a hypocrite, which is worse.
The only demographic I could ever bend to is my readership, and only in terms of making my posts faster to read or easier on the eyes.
As a solution (I hate that word), I'm going to create two polls and leave each up for one month. First, I want to know if this new color palette is easier for you to read than the old black and white one. The next poll will focus on the length of my posts, because I will only change my writing as a last resort.
1) Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand Signet Classics Edition
I realize that hardly anyone has time to sit and read War & Peace on a computer screen. I can't even get through Call of Cthulhu on a computer (I also do not own an e-reader). But the dilemma is this:
I like to write
I try to be complex
I equate "longer" with "better", not for simply writing more (someone could write 1069 pages of nonsense and it would still be garbage1), but because I want to be thorough, and I have a lot to say.
I feel that if I were to shorten it, the quality of this blog would suffer because I would be writing less per post, and you would get Misanthrope: The Abridged Version with some glaring omissions. On top of that, an author naturally views all of his work as equally important, and I don't have an objective editor on hand. It should be noted that the UK Cards Association tried to get the University of Cambridge to take down a student paper that exposed loopholes in the security systems of ATMs (the university's response made me grin ear-to-ear)2. It would be worth mentioning Upton Sinclair in this case, or, in a parallel example, Galileo Galilee, Copernicus, and Charles Darwin. None of my potential editors have the kind of fearless belligerence required.
So editing is out. But the dilemma remains (and, ironically, the length of this essay will probably add to the evidence that I have Diarrhea of the Keyboard). Another problem is that it takes a few paragraphs for me really get rolling. I noticed in my "Response to Henry Giroux..." that it was fairly weak in the beginning. My Christmas essay two weeks ago had the same problem.
Often I write on impulse; I feel as though if I leave it in my head for too long, the ideas get diluted. The writing itself serves as both fuel and the engine by which I continue, and everything starts to flow.
Writing is not so cut-and-and dry. "BE BRIEF!" For some, like my favorite Russians, this is virtually impossible. Twitter gives me only 160 characters, and I can barely fit my title in a post. As a side note, we tell people to compress, and then we lament that they can't write. That's kind of funny to me...Oh wait. I'm only saying that because I love to write. Most people really don't care at all. People normally communicate at the 7th grade level. The last book (chronologically) to impress me in terms of style was The Grapes of Wrath, which was written in 1939. The inadequacies of our educational system are really beginning to show, not just in business communications (see any job advertisement), but even where writing is paramount: In literature. The last place to find decent prose, unfortunately, is in scientific papers, but those are too disinterested and boring for most people.
What I can do is try to outline my posts, but again, it is the writing itself that gets me thinking, much like a snowball.
I also don't believe that it would be wise for me to do this kind of thing for pay. This blog itself is entirely personal, and as much as being paid to write is attractive, creative control would be sacrificed to please a Mr Moneybags who may not have the best intentions in mind, and the quality of this blog--or any other I would maintain--would suffer still.
This blog depends entirely upon me saying what I believe to be true, and pointing it out in a way as to draw the most attention to it as possible. If my ability to speak freely here were ever compromised, I would cease to be interesting, or even become a hypocrite, which is worse.
The only demographic I could ever bend to is my readership, and only in terms of making my posts faster to read or easier on the eyes.
As a solution (I hate that word), I'm going to create two polls and leave each up for one month. First, I want to know if this new color palette is easier for you to read than the old black and white one. The next poll will focus on the length of my posts, because I will only change my writing as a last resort.
1) Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand Signet Classics Edition
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