Juan Cole responds to George Will's complaints about the lack of political conservatives in humanities and social science departments. The main problem with the post is that Cole misrepresents why conservatives like Bill Bennett make so much money. One shouldn't conflate being a political conservative with being a political hack--that is, just being a political conservative doesn't necessarily produce opportunity. Rather, it is opportunism and willingness to write popular ideology that gets you in the door. There are plenty of conservatives languishing in impoverished places like classics departments who have neither the desire nor the social abilities to get onto the think-tank/conservative pundit gravy train.
Beyond that, Cole's argument seems mostly correct. From my limited experience, if a political conservative applied for a position and showed as much likability, discipline, lucidity, and smarts as the next guy, I think the conservative would be favored, mostly because solid conservative work is likely to bring attention to the university. I imagine there are some departments where people just can't stand the idea of having a conservative at departmental meetings or where the departmental committee cannot overcome their biases, but those seem not only few and far between, but contrary to the sort of attitude likely to make a department a good one. Good departments are tolerant of egotistical personalities who carry ideological polemics into interpersonal relations because they recognize that university life is far more about excellence in teaching and scholarship than good feelings at departmental colloquiums.
Any way you look at it, I would like to see evidence of suitably qualified conservatives getting the shaft at academia. Barring that, then I think the solution to Will's problem is encouraging more conservatives to go to grad school rather than instituting some kind of affirmative action. The real problem is that a solid proportion of conservatives (barring the classics/history/geek types mentioned above, who are obviously a minority) feel comfortable in other, more lucrative career contexts. Corporate life is glorified in much of mainstream conservative ideology. On the other hand, the liberal intellectual has few alternatives to academia that are consistent with their attitude and principles outside of public service and journalism.
It sounds like the window of opportunity for using this plant to murder someone is fairly low, but as the article states:
Digoxin kills by blocking calcium ion channels in heart muscles, which disrupts the heartbeat. But while foxglove poisoning is well known to western toxicologists, Gaillard says pathologists would not be able to identify Cerbera poisoning unless there is evidence the victim had eaten the plant. “It is the perfect murder,” he says.
Of course, the many forensics shows on tv now (not CSI, but the real ones on Discovery and TLC) teach us that if you're going to murder someone how it's done is often less important than how you dispose of the body. I suppose using this would only be extra insurance.
This leads me to a fun question. Have you ever considered murding someone (not necessarily anyone in particular)? If so, how would you go about it? Ah... the morbid thoughts of the holidays.
That have absolutely nothing to do with Thanksgiving.
First up, a movie trailer for Dubya, The Movie starring Don Knotts.
Next, a beach party for crabs.
Also, some NSFW but not explicit photos of porn stars preparing for shoots. They're nice pictures.
For your daily dose of outrage, read this transcript in which Rush Limbaugh equates hip-hop culture to gang culture while discussing the recent NBA brawl. The best part is when he says "what I just said is going to be tagged as racist." Hmm.. I wonder why. Of course, I have difficulty getting upset over anything that hypocrital fool has to say anymore.
Slashdot has a a post about Guildhall, SMU's new computer game design program. It sounds brutal. 80-100 hour weeks. And I thought their English department had me doing a lot of work.
Speaking of which, this post is my way of taking a break from a paper I've been working on all day, so I'd better get back to it. If I come across more interesting links during the day, I'll post them. If not, have a happy Thanksgiving tomorrow and consider not eating the turkey or ham. After all, the sides are the best part.
The most frustrating Flash game ever.
Take a science test. I scored 100%, but it's also a very easy test.
Check out the video of Bush pulling his lead secret service man through the crowd in Chile. It's must less impressive than the news reports would have you believe.
The always excellent Pharyngula now offers a science only link that filters out all that awful anti-creationism and liberalism Prof Myers likes to spew. Personally, I think it's ridiculous that he would do this. If anyone's interested enough in science to actually read his highly detailed science posts, they should be intelligent enough to accept evolution and at least open-minded enough to not feel threatened by posts containing liberal politics. That said, I see his point in separating the content. It's nice for those who can't stomach anything that might contradict their opinions. And as a bonus, check this out. It's a nice quantification of American ignorance.
Now there's a roll-on tattoo remover for women with lower back tattoos. What will science give us next?
Well, I just finished grading a batch of final papers for this 1000-level course. I've got to get faster at this before I start teaching. Otherwise I'm going to be spending all my time grading rather than doing my own work. It took me something like 5 hours to grade 40 papers. At around 4 pages each, that's almost two minutes per page which is unacceptable. I need to get it down to about 2-3 minutes per essay. I guess I just need to learn how to speed read.
Xrays of things people have put up their bum.
(via 2blowhards).
Ever on the look-out for nutjobs, PZ Myers finds a real doozy this time. In a nutshell, a guy who believes himself to be a shapeshifter capable of turning into a dragon is proselytizing for Christianity. In fact, he claims that his powers derive directly from his religion. Naturally, he also thinks evolution is false and is celibate. Ah, Internet—what would we do without you?
The American Family Association ("We've got a Jesus Fish in our banner!") has a few things to say about the DreamWorks film Shark Tale - specifically, that it condones homosexuality. I haven't seen the movie, but some of the quotes and synopses they deploy show that the film is pretty straightforward in hitting the "coming out" chord - specifically, one of the titular (hee hee!) sharks is a 'closet vegetarian', who enjoys dressing up as a dolphin. His father is embarrassed by his behaviour, puzzled, even ashamed - but eventually, he comes to accept and love his son as he is.
According to AFA, this is the wrong message to be sending to kids.
They offer the caveat that "naturally, children should be taught to be accepting of others." We can all guess who AFA thinks that acceptance should exclude. But I've got news for them - it doesn't work like that. Even if you're blinkered enough to accept their premise that things like race and gender are "immutable characteristics" while sexuality is a "choice," you'd have to work hard to ignore the difficulty children (the subject at hand) are going to have in making the distinction. Their little alert on Shark Tale is meant to warn parents against taking their kids to see the movie, and perhaps also to encourage them to have a family-values oriented discussion of homosexuality. The content of which would be . . . what, exactly? "Don't talk to those sorts of people, Timmy, they are in defiance of God's laws." Each person or group you cast out of the circle of humanity makes it easier to do the same again and again. There's a poem about it that I tend to quote too much, so I won't.
Now as to their specific argument about the movie, their belief in a 'Hollywood Agenda' needs to be addressed. I think that Hollywood absolutely does promote progressive values - that is, when it's not promoting guns and patriarchy. But the place of the 'coming out' thread in the movie isn't just as a framework for the 'accept people who are different' message - kids can absorb something like that in a far less complex, referential form. The thing is, the 'coming out' aspect is pretty clearly a joke for adults. These sorts of things are a growing part of the way children's movies get made, and they may or may not be a problem (if you've ever seen a Bugs Bunny cartoon in which he tricks Elmer Fudd into shooting himself in the face, you'll probably be less concerned about the sexual overtones of Shrek). The 'coming out' subtext is there to provoke the pleasure of recognition in adult audiences that will doubtless think themselves quite savvy for catching the reference. Its presence does reflect Hollywood's leftism, but it's decidedly not there as part of a Leftist plot to turn your kids "swishy" (a term which I would remind the AFA is offensive and antiquated, if I thought they cared at all about offending gays). More accurately, it's a reflection of the casual acceptance that the wider culture feels towards homosexuality, and yet another indication that your antiquated beliefs leave you further and further out of step with the mainstream. In other words, it is actually a sinister conspiracy - perpetrated against you by the majority of your fellow Americans. Boo!
While I'm at it, allow me to offer another reading of Shark Tale, less progressive than AFA's - why is it that vegetarianism and homosexuality are equated in the movie? Now, I'm not a vegetarian (not that there's anything wrong with that), but I know plenty of non-meat eaters who could kick Ralph Reed's scrawny ass from here to Tuesday, then fuck his wife 'til Thursday. More generally, the movie (and again I'm going from AFA's quotes here) equates vegetarianism and, by extension, homosexuality with weakness and reticence. This is the real ideological crime - the reinforcement of the idea that all beefy jocks are meat-eating ladykillers, and that all skinny, wilting wallflowers are tree-huggers with light loafers. For all the rhetoric in favor of acceptance, we're not making much progress if all we have to choose from in constructing our identities are combo meals numbers 1-8.
Your reward for reading this rant will be the dulcet tones of John Ashcroft on tha M-I-C.
As anyone in the academy knows, google searches can be worthless when doing research online. Far better are resources like the MLA Bibliography, JStor, Project Muse, etc. Now, however, there's Google Scholar, a beta project from google that only gives you books and articles on your search. No personal websites, no blogs, no crackpot conspiracy theories (unless in book form).
Finally, flexible displays are on the way. Like the article's author, I've been dreaming of these for over ten years now when the first mentions of such technology were being made.
I think the only way I'm going to get through the next few years, or perhaps my entire life, is to just stop watching TV. This morning I woke up to a depressing CSPAN debate on raising the federal debt limit for the 3rd time in the past 4 years. The irresponsibility and sheer incompetence is staggering. Yet our "liberal media" and apathetic population still seem to believe the GOP is the party of balanced budgets, despite 25 years of evidence to the contrary. Apparently the only way US citizens recognize the importance of balancing the budget is when a deranged Texan buys a bunch of airtime and lectures them.
But this is all nothing compared to the horror show going down in Iraq. If you think you can stomach even more evidence on the desensitization and demoralisation of American culture, than check this out.
I just came across this quote from Edmund Burke, who (ironically), was a rabid anti-democracy crusader in the 18th century:
Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to names; to the causes of evil which are permanent, not to the occasional organs by which they act, and the transitory modes in which they appear.
I've been keeping an eye out for something that crystallizes at least some of my motivations as an academic, and this does a good job.
In so many words, Burke is touting the importance of fighting for concepts of what mankind should be - a fight that takes place glacially relative to others, and in which scholars and philosophers are on closer to equal footing with artists, politicians, and orators. I think it would be overstating my case to say that politically engaged scholarship is the best kind, though it certainly is for me. Maybe it's more accurate to say that any quality, humanist scholarship is doomed by its nature to be politically engaged. And that's what attracts me to my field - the question of determining how people's information environments shape their perceptions of the world is obviously pretty political.
It's hard to say to what extent this is part of an ongoing process of self-justification in the face of a decision that I'm still not entirely reconciled with, but if this is what I end up doing with the rest of my life, at least it's not just because I've got nothing better to do.
Even the delusional Jeffrey St. Clair over at Counterpunch recognizes that the Greens have been beaten badly, if not finished off for good. Yet St. Clair remains defiant about the need for a 3rd party, utterly disregarding the monumental psychological effect the Bush v. Gore debacle had and will continue to have on 3rd party activism for decades.
Yet the end of the Greens is in some ways a disappointing development, since it would be interesting to see a genuine Green movement in America, modeled after the Europeans (rather than the American model, which under Nader is simply a far left-libertarian position that has no appeal to conservatives) and centered on peace and ecology (which many conservatives support). For genuine effectiveness, it would have to operate both within and outside the Democratic Party. Yet a sensible strategy seems far-fetched considering the apparent lack of strategic sense in their camp.
Surfing through Taibbi's Alternet archives, I find there is one I missed at the time on the protest techniques at the GOP convention.
The article is worth reading in its entirety. Basically, Taibbi argues that the antiwar movement will only create a spectacle capable of generating fear and worry in the hearts of politicians if they develop stricter forms of organization. This is a feeling many of us on the Left have, but few are willing to express because of moral objections having to do with the primacy of creative autonomy and individual expression. Uniforms are associated with discredited communist tactics or extremist anarchist groups. This is all true enough, but unpragmatic in today's world. We definitely do need disciplined groups on the Left who will submit to intelligent direction for the greater good. In other democracies, it seems that the more organized the Left is, the more equal a society they are able to construct. The decline of unions and other organized groups goes hand in hand with the rise of neoconservatism.
Realistically, the things that impress average Americans are demonstrations of discipline and will to power--things the antiwar groups consistently fail to accomplish. 300,000 people showing up uniformed and operating in an organized manner suggests that forces capable of challenging the established order are arising and cannot simply be dismissed as resentful youth.
As many of you already know, Matt Taibbi is one of my favorites. Besides being the one of the most hilarious writers on the Left, he also offers a full-blooded Dostoyevskian style (at least partially cultivated while working for The Exile in Moscow) that is refreshing in a culture oversaturated with servility and reification. Taibbi's writing ranges from bold hatchet jobs to ferocious satire to taking down hack journalists to defending those without the means of defending themselves, like the case of Dennis Kucinich.
All in all, article after article in Alternet or the NY Press offers insight, and more importantly, some serious balls.
Obviously, I don't always agree with him. You're not supposed to. However, I do like what he has to say about the Left's "spiritual" problem....
.......we don't know. When we look to the future, we don't know what we hope to see. The other side is energized because its vision of the future is clear; it wants a return to the days when the one organizing concept of sexual relations was marriage for life, when patriotism was putting on a uniform and fighting for freedom, when the goal of life was a good job, hard work, kids, the church, a house and a well-attended funeral.These are all reasonable goals to have when you know heaven is at the end of it all. That's what it comes down to. They're fighting for a simple path to heaven, while the rest of us are fighting for something a little less exciting: the desire to have a more rational and inoffensive political atmosphere within which to wrestle with the underlying problem of existential despair in a confusing secular world whose only offered paradises are affluence, sexual freedom and consumer choice.
What's ironic is that a lot of what motivated the progressive sector within and even outside the Democratic party this time around was a rebellion against this very set of circumstances. Certainly there was an intellectual basis for a lot of the anti-corporate anger that goaded people onto the streets in the past years — legitimate disgust over the idea that the honest jobs that used to be held by Americans had been exported abroad, where Asian children working for pennies an hour stitched together the sneakers we all bring to the gym — but it went deeper than that. There was a lot of anger out there at the underlying concept that the ultimate purpose of life was to acquire things, that the answer society provides us to each of our personal problems was a product.
Most of us are aware and despairing on some level that our lives have become de-eroticized, that love and romance are not all around us but have to be hunted for with the kind of desperation that people used to bring when they went west looking for gold. But the answers that society gives us for this sexual desert are Viagra and Cialis and Levitra, products that allow us to stay hard for hours as we hump the indifferent mannequins we run into in bars. The country is lonely, self-obsessed and the individual members of the population are offered a thousand ways to improve their individual appearance and vigor. But there seems to be no solution on the horizon that anyone is offering to bring us more together, to give us the things we really need — love and acceptance and community.
We blame corporate America for this state of affairs because this ideology of individual acquisitiveness is the religion it naturally preaches. But it's our failure to come up with a competing ideology of getting along that's the real problem. Down south, in those "backward" red states, they vote the way they do because they see this individualistic religion as a creature of the cold, greedy, north, which has chosen to attack the idiocy of the right wing church rather than admit to its own spiritual unhappiness.
Bush is our fault. He's our fault because too many of us found it easier to hate him than find a way to love each other. If we work on the second thing a little harder, we won't need to rely on the cynics in the DLC to come up with the right "formula" the next time around. Because happiness and hope have a way of selling themselves.
All this chimes in pretty consistently with what Taibbi said last Spring about his support for Dennis Kucinich, a message that resonates now more than ever....
There are a lot of people out there who are inclined to laugh at this candidate. A few do so because they genuinely find him laughable, but most do it because they see him being laughed at in the news media. In this country we generally take our cues about whom we can safely laugh at from the mainstream press, and for the most part we laugh at the weak, the earnest, the sincere, the emotionally vulnerable. We laugh at people who are fat and ugly or who work as temps or at McDonald’s because none of us want to admit that we’re not the ripped six-pack guy on the cover of Men’s Health, or a member of the Sharper Image target market. We’re cowards, afraid of admitting to being who we are, and we laugh at people on the margins to avoid being identified as outsiders by the remorseless center.It’s the same with politics. Over and over again we have been told, in a million different ways, that a certain kind of idealism is actually childish weakness, and that the only pragmatic way of approaching life upholds force and commerce as the chief engines of social organization. That is why we laugh at people who use words like peace and community but praise as tough, responsible leaders anyone who’s willing to drop the most mother-of-all bombs on defenseless foreign populations. We laugh at a person who uses the word peace for the same reason that we laugh at the person who works as a temp or at McDonald’s: because we’re afraid of being lumped together with him. We’re afraid of being the proverbial punchline to the proverbial Dennis Miller joke about John Lennon and Joanie Baez and that goddamn Cat Stevens song, "Peace Train."
I will never forgive America for what Dennis Kucinich went through this year. Because he has had the audacity to call for an end to all wars, to announce plans for the creation of a Department of Peace, to question the very culture of viciousness and intolerance and crass commercialism that rules our public discourse, he has been labeled a lunatic by nearly every "responsible" press organ in this country and cruelly mocked to a degree that no civil society should allow an honorable man to endure. The New Yorker, that revolting beacon of glib, self-satisfied affluence, runs a cartoon showing Kucinich sweeping to victory in a primary held on Mars. The New York Times first angrily demands that he not waste any more of our time, then actually physically disposes of him after the passing of some self-imposed fictional electoral deadline. Even the more genuinely funny and more intelligent people in American public life–I’m thinking particularly of Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon–can’t resist savaging Kucinich whenever they get a chance. All because he’s funny-looking, and because he uses the word peace without kidding.
I am a Dennis Kucinich supporter because I believe America’s greatest problem is its incivility, its intolerance to new ideas, its remorseless hatred of weakness and failure, the willingness of its individual citizens to submerge their individual cowardice within the vicious commerce-driven standards of our national self-image. George Bush is a terrible president, but he is merely a by-product of these wider national tendencies, which exist outside of him and independently of him. And these tendencies are symbolized exactly in the laughter directed at Dennis Kucinich. To vote for Dennis Kucinich, I believe, is to vote for man’s right to publicly be who he is and not be ridiculed for it. If we are peaceful people, it is a vote for our right to merely be who we are.
This is just too cool. It's a series of pictures of graffiti from all over a town that, when played in sequence, becomes animated. As the background shifts, only the image remains continuous, a declaration that the only stable thing in this mutable world is art.
(via BoingBoing)
Slate has an article mocking hip-hop entourages that provides advice such as this:
If you want to predict when your entourage will start a fight, you have to keep an eye on your surroundings. Natural light tends to have a calming effect on the entourage, which can become agitated and restless at night. After the lights go out, it's best to keep your posse away from concerts, nightclubs, recording studios, and award shows—especially award shows—if you want to have a quiet evening. Angry entourages are frequently spotted near limousines and SUVs, but it is unclear whether the vehicles themselves are responsible for entourage rage, since entourages are rarely found in other automotive habitats.
Is this phenomenon strictly part of hip-hop culture? I've never heard of a rock star with a posse, but perhaps they're just called roadies in that case. Of course, roadies are something different—simple worker bees who set up equipment and fetch booze. The entourage reminds me of a monarch's chamber servants. I picture Jay-Z sitting on the edge of his bed, waiting for a lackey to bring him his shoes. Oh, wait. He's "retired."
I couldn't tell whether it would be better to treat this respectfully or not. On the one hand, I'm genuinely devastated by the fact that Old Dirty Bastard is dead at 35. On the other hand, he was genuinely crazier than a shithouse rat, and perhaps it would be best to memorialize him appropriately.
The thing is, and this may sound like hyperbole to those whose dedication to the Wu is less than laser-focused, Dirt was a f'in genius, and one of a kind. There were a few crazy fucks in rap, but none quite like Russell. And the really amazing thing is that his greatness wasn't because of his instability - there was a great rapper in there, under the borderline dementia, and when the two coincided, it was a beautiful thing - and then he'd go back to singing the theme from "Taxi" or something.
I'm sure more obscure stuff will be popping up in the next couple of days (and incidentally, the one upside to this is that, finally, the new album will get released), but I thought I'd "hit you off" with some "classic raw ish." This one's a bit more on the demented end of the spectrum: "I came out of my momma's pussy, I'm on welfare/ 26 years old, still on welfare."
For anyone who cares, I'm deeply offended that they're quoting Damon Dash in the article. What, like RZA's got something better to do?
UPDATE: Cocaine Blunts keeps it real with a rarity.
Y Mas: Check out my Roundup of Crazy Rappers.
In a Prospect interview, the British Labour party's Neal Lawson laments New Labour's slide to the right and the idea that he and his allies can't do anything about it. I suppose these guys have been with Labour all their lives and don't want to disrespect the hand that feeds them. But speaking as an outsider, the rational course of action is obvious.
The Liberal Democrats offer the most sensible political program of any national party I'm aware of. If old-school Labour operatives are sick of Blair, why don't they ally themselves with the Lib Dems and their better proposals? Speaking realistically, there aren't many issues where Labour is still to the left of the Lib Dems, which says a lot about how far they've triangulated.
Obviously this is something of a dream scenario, but perhaps the Lib Dems can become the 2nd party in Britian in next year's elections. If they can break Labour's absolute majority, then that should be enough to bring down Blair. The election is still a long way off, though.
Once I had a mild obsession with tiny plastic ninjas. Now I've been ripped off by Tiny Ninja Theater. They perform Shakespeare's plays using only my beloved pieces of deadly plastic. Tickets are $15.
(via BoingBoing)
Marty Peretz has a personal beef with John Kerry. Given the treatment of Kerry during the lead-up and prosecution of the primary campaign, I figured as much. It was the only way to explain why they didn't get behind a man so ideologically similar to them even though Dean was close to a primary victory. Anyway, I think this should have been out on the table earlier.
I'm not saying Marty Peretz's opinions determine everything TNR writes. But it is deluded to act as if they don't have a decisive influence. Editorially, TNR's ideological slant is molded by Peretz's whims. If the editors come to disagree with him, all he has to do is fire them.
Via Salon, we witness the words of the man Michael Ledeen wants as Secretary of State one of those "New York hussies". Please, Mr. President, follow Michael's advice!
``Instead of being lionized, Kinsey's proper place is with Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele or your average Hollywood horror flick mad scientist,'' said Robert Knight, director of Concerned Women of America's Culture & Family Institute. . . . Focus on the Family and its allies blame Kinsey for a host of ills - including clearing a path for candid, comprehensive sex education programs espoused by organizations like the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States.From CNN.
A social scientists' research on the way people behave is blamed for sparking a social change which religious conservatives condemn. What's the meaning of this, then?
As far as I can tell, groups like Focus on the Family think that the best way for their goals to be achieved is to keep information about reality away from the masses. Knowledge of new ways of behaving, in their thought, gives people the freedom to make their own choices about right and wrong, and these spokesmen are operating on the assumption that, in a free marketplace of lifestyles, religion cannot compete with free love.
I agree with conservatives insofar as I think that, by and large, free love and wholesale sexual license aren't viable lifestyles for the vast majority of people - living like that and not wrecking lives requires a great deal of maturity and wisdom not just in an individual, but in a whole community, something that's hard to come by. But is ignorance really the best policy? Obviously, there's been sexual deviance at all levels of society throughout history, and if anything its expression and place in society under repressive Christian regimes has ended up being more systemically damaging than under more accepting moral codes. Why, then, does the contemporary Christian mindset prefer brushing all that is unpleasant under the rug?
This is a way of thinking that goes beyond just moral issues. One obvious connection can be made to one of Bush's comment in the debates, which basically boiled down to him saying that the only mistake he'd made in his administration was hiring Paul O'Neil - that is, the only mistake he was willing to acknowledge was hiring the guy who was impolite enough to point out all of those other, real mistakes. Another similar case is the continuing crusade to undermine the teaching of evolution in secular schools. These are not stances for particular viewpoints, in which arguments are presented and facts or philosophy arrayed on the field of battle. These are stances in opposition to knowledge and debate themselves.
This is by no means a feature inherent to religion (I would point to Jews and, to a lesser degree, Jesuits as having strong traditions of free inquiry), it is an overpoweringly strong feature of the born-again Christian movement. It is not an attitude that will ever ultimately allow people of even the greatest level of faith to be truly coherent selves. Only through genuine reflection and self-criticism can each person reach their own individual peace with existence. When your entire critical perspective is that you will see no evil, there is very little room for open reflection.
Postscript: I just noticed that the director of Concerned Women of America's Culture and Family Institute is a man. Not that that's anything to worry about - if white men can speak so forcefully on behalf of the Negroes, of course they can do the same for women.
The double dactyl is a limerick-like form of poetry created by Anthony Hecht and John Hollander back in the 60s. For fun, I've written one. Enjoy:
Diddeley, Iddeley
George "the Shrub" W
Won re-election in
Two thousand four.
Librul conspiracists
Hypersuspiciously
Cried that e-voting fraud
Crowned him once more.
Here's a qualified defense of Ashcroft that is well worth reading. I, for one, didn't know that Ashcroft thinks calico cats are the tools of Satan. Even so, it makes me think that perhaps I've been a bit harder on him than justified, a fact that I'm sure keeps him awake a night crying into his pillow. When there's so much incompetence and venality in an administration, it gets difficult to keep the outrage from washing over all its members.
What do you do about unrepentantly noisy neighbors? The house I live in is divided into four units; someone recently moved in downstairs directly below me and enjoys playing her stereo rather loudly, day and night. While I don't mind, particularly in the day, I also don't want to be distracted when I'm trying to write or study by a continual, low rumble of bass. I have yet to meet my new neighbor even though I've knocked on her door several times. She never answers, either because she can't hear me or doesn't want to open the door. I would prefer to have a friendly relationship where I can just ask her to turn it down a notch so it isn't drilling into my skull, but it doesn't look like that will happen. I've talked to the landlord already, but right now she's playing her stereo too loudly again and again won't answer the door. What to do? Call the landlord again? Call the police? I don't want to be a jerk, but I also have work to do that requires concentration. Grrr... inconsiderate people....
I'm tempted to exult about this, but I doubt he'll be replaced by anyone better. The funny thing, though, is this:
"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved. The rule of law has been strengthened and upheld in the courts. Yet, I believe that the Department of Justice would be well served by new leadership and fresh inspiration," Ashcroft wrote in the letter he scripted himself, aides say, to prevent any leaks.. . .
Ashcroft, 62, has signaled for months his desire to leave, aides say. His aides say that he feels like he accomplished everything he set out to do. They add that Ashcroft recognized that if he is going to leave, it's best to leave while on top, and the attorney general feels like he made positive changes to the Justice Department and the country.
Two things. It must be nice to live in such a delusional world that you can think "crime and terror" have been defeated. That leads to my second point... he achieved all he wanted to? Does that mean his big goal was not just to damage civil liberties, but to jail pot-smokers and shut down head shops? I know I feel safer thanks to Ashcroft. Here's hoping he doesn't let the door hit him on his way out.
Lawrence Kaplan joins the legions of right-wingers chiding the Left for their "hate speech" and "hissy-fits" in the aftermath of the election. Of course, the Dems are hardly the first to resort to name-calling. In Jonah Goldberg's column on "sore losers", he offers us the following conciliatory language that befits him as a benevolent victor...
There are other complaints as well. Take the two leading liberal columnists at the New York Times, Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman. As we all know, one's a whining self-parody of a hysterical liberal who lets feminine emotion and fear defeat reason and fact in almost every column. The other used to date Michael Douglas.
What Goldberg, and the rest of the Washington and NY right-wing journalistic crew don't seem to understand, is that George Bush and the GOP really did exploit dangerous and hateful popular tendencies to achieve victory. As much as I'd like to believe that conservatives were motivated by humane religious arguments or rational objections to Kerry's foreign policy, there really were plenty of voters that voted Bush because he's the more aggressive and "masculine" candidate. Either consciously or unconsciously, a great number of people really do enjoy the spectacle of revenge and destruction and want to see more of it. They really do hate gays and want to see them humiliated. These destructive tendencies are deep-seated in human nature--only civilization and humanization can tame them.
And it seems a great part of America is simply not civilized in this regard. This is why the European media rightly savages us.
The NR, and especially the Weekly Standard types, have little understanding of the monster they've helped create. No one seems the least bit worried that these tendencies might one day come back to bite them in the ass, probably in the form of the anti-Semitism that is still out there.
If it is fair to criticize Democrats for exploiting the inner-city minority vote, it is certainly fair to criticize Bush for exploiting religious fundamentalism and previously latent aggressive/sadistic/macho feelings. Both of these GOTV methods are populist. Both are aimed at politicizing relatively ignorant and frustrated voting blocs. If red-staters resent our criticisms of their stupidity, then fuck them. These people are ignorant and ought to be pitied. And quite frankly, many of them will only respond to the sort of bullying they're used to dishing out. My apologies for offending anyone--but these people are, to a large extent, sad, unhappy, and unenlightened folks.
If all this sounds hateful, then I'm sorry. But it's the truth. Saying otherwise is analogous to Social Democrats looking at the rising conservative/fascist tide in Weimar politics and concluding "we really have to do a better job winning over those voters whose main priority is institutionalizing their hatred of gays and Jews and restoring an aggressive foreign policy". And no, these historical phenomenon are not equal. But the Weimar analogy underlines the fact that democracy does not always create good things, especially in a context where right-wingers control the popular discourse.
I respect the GOP for their victory. But I don't respect their arguments--they were, for the most part, wrong. And by extension, America was wrong. That's right, America has been wrong before and it will be wrong again. Red-state ignorance has led America down the wrong path before and it will yet again.
With the exception of the hard-core pro-lifers, there was no rationale to vote Bush that stood up to serious scrutiny. This is why the media was perceived as so pro-Kerry, 2 years after cheerleading for the Iraqi invasion. In a rational, Downsian democracy, Bush would have been held accountable for the Iraq debacle. Nothing Kaplan and Goldberg say leads one to believe otherwise. In the end, this result had nothing to do with reason--it had everything to do with passions that ought to be controlled.
Red-state hatred may be overstated and counterproductive, but it is also an expression of what we liberals ought to keep in mind. That is, our values are better than theirs. Our communities are better and more productive than theirs. The only way to convince these people is to stand up and loudly assert what is wrong with their communities--to tap the dissatisfaction that brings out their aggression.
Ouch. That's a bad title. Even so, The Incredibles (of which here's one review) is great. At times you forget it's even animated. I think it's probably the best Pixar movie yet and they've set it up nicely for sequel. This is a not a review, but just a quick note to tell you to go see the film if you're even the least bit inclined to. Even the moral of the film ("it's ok to be special!") is done with a light touch, so it never gets in the way. Minor spoiler below the fold...
UPDATE: The Onion has an interview with Brad Bird, the movie's creator. He was also responsible for the excellent Iron Giant.
My favorite character comes at the very end when we find out that the baby actually does have super powers, too (not a surprise). He can turn his whole body into flames and transform into a demon. Coolest. Baby. Ever.
Yglesias gets it right. Obviously some exceptional cases will arise where a coalition of moderate GOPers will work with Democrats on some legislation or agree to oppose this or that appointment or lame initiative. But the Dems should not be supporting things like unfunded education bills. They certainly should not be meeting Bush halfway on tax bills. They should simply offer an alternative and stick to their guns. Tar Bush as hopelessly partisan and hope the people change their minds in 2006.
Picking a decisive and telegenic leader will be key. Apparently Harry Reid is the likely leader--I haven't yet seen him on TV.
Update: Elizabeth Mitchell makes the case for Kerry as minority leader. I'm inclined to agree, because Kerry is perfect for this job. Even when I was a Dean supporter, I thought Kerry would make a good minority leader. He's telegenic, well known, sounds moderate while appealing to the base, and he's got gravitas.
John Belisarius gives the historical view of Kerry's success:
Sometimes you have to lose an election to build the foundation for later victory.Just ask the Conservative Republicans. They can recite you this lesson by heart. In every glowing account they write of their gradual rise to power they always point to Barry Goldwater’s unsuccessful 1964 campaign and Ronald Reagan’s 1976 bid for the Presidency (which did not get beyond the Republican primaries) as the pivotal campaigns that laid the foundations for all their subsequent victories.
And when you look at it from this point of view, the true scope, the genuinely impressive magnitude of the Democrats’ success this year can be expressed in a single sentence: In 2004 the Dems accomplished in 8 months what it took the Goldwater-Reagan conservative movement over a decade to achieve.
It's a compelling argument that I hope is correct, but I don't know enough about political history to judge. It could simply be wishful thinking, too. However, this last year did seem to redefine and restructure the Democratic party. A lot of that credit goes to Howard Dean who, though he would have been a disastrous general election candidate, did build an incredible grass-roots organization, fire up the left side of the party, and demonstrate how to raise money effectively via the Internet. I guess we'll find out in 2008 how deep and long-lasting any of the changes the 2004 campaign has made.
I was actually at Ken Salazar's "Victory Party" last night. It was a bizarre evening--the scene of the one of the only big Democratic successes of the night the party went down in flames. The crowd was overflow. We snuck past some security guys to get in, hoping for free food. But the food was lousy and quickly consumed by throbbing crowds, while the beer was 4$ apiece.....
Salazar was ahead all night. Those in his personal circle were in high spirits. The rest of us campaign workers sullenly watched the results coming in everywhere else, including a clear defeat for Kerry in Colorado. The chairman of the state party frequently interrupted the networks to pump us up, even though most of our candidates were going down.
The evening became increasingly unbearable for me as we cheered every little Democratic success, despite the gradual loss of hope for Florida and finally Ohio. We were happy to see Salazar win and it obviously validated our efforts. But the enthusiasm displayed when he first came out to speak was a tad forced to say the least.... In the end I headed home, just in time to see Salazar's victory speech on TV, replete with his staples on family, faith, and hard work--a language he'll surely need 6 years down the line as well. By then, hopefully, more alcohol had been consumed, and the cheers were more genuine.
Pejman has an excellent post up about the election:
Because of all of the vitriol accompanying the last four years, and this Presidential campaign, one is tempted to gloat and take delight in what must be the suffering of those who hated this President with a passion. One must, however, resist the temptation. Those who marginalize themselves from American politics because of their bitterness (and whether they are politicians, or citizens, or citizen-bloggers, it is not necessary to mention their names--we all know of whom we speak, after all), will not need our help to be further marginalized. Those who retain the true spirit of the American democratic republic--who realize that in this system of ours, we win some, we lose some, and in the end, we gather together to unite our country--will naturally evince their maturity and their patriotism, stand fast to their principles, but tip their hats to the President and to those who in this election, had their views prevail. We are all Americans in the end. We need not abandon our principles, but we will recognize the valor of respectable and respected members of the other side, and we will honor the results of our national decision. If some refuse to engage in this time-honored tradition, then they make their own beds, and mark their own characters for others to judge. Seeking them out and laughing at them is superfluous.
Obviously, it's a bit easier to be serene and benevolent when your side wins, but that doesn't detract from the ideas and sentiments expressed in the post in the least. For my part, I hope that Bush will take the power this mandate provides him and use it for the good of Americans as a whole. He no longer needs to consider the political implications of any of his policies (which really shouldn't be done in the first place) and now can act solely to repair the problems we now have. Although I doubt he will suddenly reverse course on the environment, social issues, his disdain for science, his tax policies, or foreign policy—all areas where I feel he has made numerous large mistakes—I do hope that he manages to recognize at least some of his errors and adjust accordingly. It is not a sign of weakness to admit mistakes. However, if he continues along the path we've seen for the past four years, I hope that my own judgment of those policies has been radically mistaken. Naturally I don't think it has, but I hope so for everyone's sake.
If the evidence remains as it seems (and believe me, I wish it were a dream), the Democratic Party has been routed. A collective delusion overtook liberal America--we honestly thought we were going to win.
Congratulations to the GOP and their supporters. This is perhaps their greatest victory in modern history and they deserve to enjoy it. As much as I disagree with them, their victories over the years have everything to do with superior tenacity, spirit, and faith in their cause. In Plato's Republic, the crucial class between the commoners and the philosophers are the warriors—the people of spirit, honor, and courage who are the raw material for leadership. It is, indeed, fatal to forget just how important this spirit is. Regardless of whether GOP ideas are better, the vitality and ferocity behind their leadership and activism are infectious to the populace. Especially in America today, the people sense that their best interest lies in siding with the strong. If the Dems are to fight back, then they must work on their fighting "spirit" in order to win over the demos and take back America. As it is, too much of Dem activism is caught up in a bottleneck of negation and skepticism. Too many Dems lack the faith and conviction that wins over the mushy middle without the need for rationales.
In the Prospect, Harold Meyerson identifies the cultural war as the root of defeat. As William Saletan and others have noted, the GOP seems to be winning this war on most fronts. I actually hope Meyerson is right, since I’d rather believe people prefer Bush primarily because of his religion rather than because his “toughness”. In any case, we'll have to look over the data. The statistics that stand out seem to be the number of people who voted based on "values" and the number of Hispanics that voted Bush (something like 40%?). I suspect these factors are related.
Relative to 2000, Bush seems to have made gains everywhere except Ohio. He gained some 4 points in California and New York plus 2 in Texas, which help account for his healthy popular margin. But it looks like the biggest gains were in places like Louisiana, Tennessee and of course Florida--all of which were called relatively early for Bush.
Questions will inevitably be asked--would the Dems have done better with a Southerner at the top of the ticket? I think Clark would have reduced the "security gap", but clearly he has liabilities. With their more culturally conservative appeal, Edwards or Gephardt might have done better as well. Could Dean have won people over with his conviction and fighting spirit, or would he have fared even worse? The Dems will have plenty of time for second-guessing and soul searching, because the country is in the GOP's hands now.
Hmm.. maybe. I dunno. I doubt anyone's obsessively reloading this site, so I may just use to jot down my thoughts as it goes or not. I dunno. All times Central.
8:13pm:
So far, though, with almost 50% reporting in Florida, Bush has the lead. Only 5% in Ohio and Bush has a smaller lead there. If both states go to Bush, I'm going to sleep. If Bush and Kerry split them, it's gonna be a loooong night. I just hope these early Florida numbers are going to change, but it's starting to look like that's not going to happen.
8:23pm:
Oh, this is too nerve-wracking. I'm gonna go eat dinner for now.
8:53pm:
Dinner was good, now I'm about to eat some Nega Maluca, a Brazilian chocolate cake. It's good stuff. Also, it's odd that all three entries have been at something-something three.
9:16pm:
Kerry's closing the gap in Florida... a little. But with 80% of the precincts reporting will it be enough in the end?
9:41pm:
This just in. There will be a civil war that starts next year. I'm not sure what that says about the outcome of this election though.
10:04pm:
Well, I don't see any reason to expect Florida or Ohio to change hands at this point, so it looks like another four miserable years of Bush. Why anyone would vote for that man is beyond me. Is it ignorance? Stupidity? Gullibility? Whatever it is, I have little respect for their reasoning. Sorry. I try to be open-minded and fair, but the fact that Bush has been an awful president is simply a fact. Anyone who thinks otherwise is deluded. Kerry shows (showed?) all the signs of the ability to be, at the very least, a competent president—a substantial improvement over Bush. Does the American populace really have so little respect for honesty, intelligence, and basic competency?
Ah well... here's hoping that whoever is in office for the next four years can actually start to clean up the problems created in the last four. Many of the effects of bad decisions will begin to appear and it's going to be difficult to fix them at that point. I hope I'm wrong, but I fear I'm not.
10:18pm:
And yes, I realize it's not over and that this post is a bit more inflammatory than typical for me, but sometimes you just have to vent. Sane mallarme will return soon, I'm sure.
10:42pm:
Another thought—if it the race does go to Kerry all you Bush supporters feel free to vent on me.
11:00pm:
It started raining a few minutes ago while I was playing a game of chess (which I won). My eyes are tired. They're not used to staring at a computer screen for long time periods any more. I'm going to have a glass of wine and get ready for bed, hoping to have a pleasant surprise in the morning. It seems unlikely. Tomorrow I'm back to reading Chaucer, John Ashbery, Adrienne Rich, and cultural studies criticism. Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde," by the way, is wonderful. That in itself is unsurprising considering how rich all his work is, but this is the first long piece that we're reading this semester. Each book (of which there are five) is about the same length as any of his shorter poems like "House of Fame" or "Book of the Duchess." Ah poetry...
9:45am:
What? It's still not decided? It seems unlikely that the absentee and provisional ballots will come through for Kerry in Ohio. I've found that in most cases in life, regardless of the manifestation, when you're clinging to a slim hope it's only an illusion. Naturally we should wait until all the votes are counted yada-yada, but I'm just as convinced now as I was last night that Bush has won... legitimately this time. Now I may return to largely ignoring politics in favor of studying.
I'm usually loathe to link to such big names as Josh Marshall, but this post is worth it. It's actually a discussion of this ABC News article wherein journalists don the opposing side's shirts at campaign rallies to see what happens. Guess which side turns out to be more tolerant.
Well I've been working hard the past few days for the Colorado GOTV effort. Saturday, I canvassed the Bush-friendly suburb of Longmont and yesterday I was in the rural and mountainous Idaho Springs area, which is also heavily Republican (mostly "cultural conservatives" here). We were at 8000 ft+ elevation and we had plenty of snow--an unforgettable Haloween-night experience. Colorado is a difficult state for Dems. The only way we'll have a chance is if our newly registered voters show up and some of the Bush supporters stay home. And we can only hope the GOTV in Denver and Pueblo is as passionate as it is in Boulder. Anything less than a win for Ken Salazar and a close race for Kerry will be a real disappointment.
As for election prognastications, I think Kerry should win Florida if the election is free of fraud--everything I've read suggests Democratic turnout will be heavy and the countervailing GOP effort is probably not enough. Ohio is a tougher nut to crack--they have an incumbent GOP Senator and a GOP governer fighting alongside Bush. Anyway, I think Kerry is the overall favorite right now, but the chance that he could lose both of those states (and thus the election) remains pretty good.