Category: Rants

Although the clamoring has died down, we all will mentally associate Chik-fil-A with either "Hates the gays" or "Good, God-fearing Christian business to support" (depending on our perspective) for a long time. Those of us who are conscientious about such things now know better than to give Chik-fil-A our money.

I struggle with the logic behind that. Stick with me for a second.

The only difference between Chik-fil-A and any other fast food chain – or any other large corporation for that matter – is that we know exactly what objectionable cause our money is being put toward. The CEO has chosen to be explicit about the ways in which he is using his obscene wealth to advance a specific right wing jihad. "Unfair" is the wrong term because it's entirely fair to criticize him for whatever opinion he chooses to express if you find it offensive. But why single them out just because you know while continuing to spend money that ends up funding equally objectionable causes without your specific knowledge?

In our plutocracy corporate-dominated economy we dump our money into black boxes all day, every day without any knowledge of what happens to it down the line. Can you even imagine what the money ends up doing when you buy gas? Coke? Anything from Wal-Mart? A car? Clothing? You're funding everything from gay-bashing to Koch Bros. style Teabagging to environmental degradation here and abroad to ethnic conflicts in underdeveloped countries to child slavery. The CEO of Chik-fil-A is either brave or dumb enough to have told you the specific ways in which he is a loathsome person. But you're not naive enough to think that the others about whom you know nothing (Quick! Name Target's CEO. You can't. His name is Gregg Steinhafel and he hates the gays too) are using your money to plant flowers, feed the poor, and teach blind children how to read.

I question the logic or effectiveness of targeting a specific fast food chain with a loose boycott (which is unlikely to accomplish much) when it is merely a symptom of an entire system that is rotten to the core. Unless you're living the college activist completely-off-the-grid lifestyle you are going to continue to funnel money to awful, awful people. Most of us deal with that through willful ignorance. Can you even imagine what oil companies and their executives are doing with the billions they've made? I don't want to know, and if it's anything less than murdering endangered seals with weapons fashioned from the bones of slightly less endangered seals I would be stunned. I don't say that to guilt anyone into feeling bad about their buying habits; it is only to emphasize that cutting one head off of the hydra isn't going to kill it.

Ultimately we all do what our conscience permits in these matters and social consciousness not high on the priority list of many Americans when they spend their money. If people could learn one thing from the Chik-fil-A ordeal, "Don't eat there because they hate the gays" isn't bad, but "Oh my god, our society concentrates wealth into the hands of an implausibly small number of completely amoral people who have no sense of social responsibility, place no value on human lives other than their own, and use the money they siphon from us to make our lives more miserable" would be superior.

Bill Burr is a very funny man and he has a great bit about white sportscasters who try to comment on the disproportional racial composition of most of the popular American team sports (football, baseball, basketball, etc). Every single person who does so ends up getting fired – something of an exaggeration, but within comedic license – despite having good intentions and attempting to talk about the subject matter-of-factly.
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They bring up things like the higher density of quick-twitch muscle fiber in the average African-American, then something about slavery, then something about selective reproduction…and all the while the other announcers are slowly inching away from their self-immolating colleague. Quick cut to the next scene, a tearful white guy behind a podium apologizing and collecting his final paycheck.

The underlying truth that makes it funny is the compulsion some of these broadcasters feel to editorialize on a subject about which their knowledge is limited to bits and pieces of pseudoscience. Hell, it would take the collective knowledge of five or six different fields – sociology, biology, economics, etc. – to come close to a half-decent answer to a question like this.
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What you are going to get from a football announcer is the kind of appeal to common sense analysis that you'd find in a 200-word magazine sidebar on the topic. The bottom line, of course, is that if these guys were smart they would just keep their mouths shut. They don't know anything about the subject, their statements are likely to offend someone, and we don't tune in to a basketball game to hear a lively discussion of racial eugenics anyway.

As hard as it is to believe of a group of people who are supposed to be among the nation's elite leaders, I'm starting to think that Republican elected officials should adopt the same "Better silent than sorry" policy about anything having to do with reproduction, or perhaps the whole human body in general. For a group of highly educated people who in many cases are also quite wealthy and successful in non-political endeavors, I am not entirely confident that they'd do well as a group on a high school standardized test in science.

By now we've all heard Rep. Akin's explanation of how women cannot get pregnant if they are "legitimately" raped (The body determines whether it is being raped by looking at your clothing; if you are dressed like a whore you obviously had it coming and kinda wanted it) and my mind cannot shake the experience of listening to Rush Limbaugh explain how birth control pills work (apparently you have to take one every time you have sex).

This is about more than social conservatism, pro-life rhetoric, social stigmatizing, or misogyny – the more basic issue is that I really don't think that these two people understand how the female body works.
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I think people like Akin and Limbaugh lack the kind of 6th Grade Health Class understanding of the female reproductive system that no one should be able to leave adolescence without. I fear that for many of the ancient white guys attempting to legislate about abortion, birth control, and other similar topics, their explanations of the reproductive process would contain one or more major factual errors. Do we have any way to prove that?
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Of course not. But look at Newt Gingrich and tell me that you see a man who honestly knows what happens after he gets too drunk to pull out.

My guess is that any test of knowledge about reproduction in Congress, irrespective of party and possibly even of gender, would produce a series of responses ranging from "Hey, that's actually pretty good" to some downright medieval medical science. The most likely source of an answer including humours, bile, leeches, and a map of the human brain would be 89 year old Texas Republican Ralph Hall, although I'd pay just about any amount for the privilege of hearing John McCain's response.

The point is that an alarming percentage of these people appear to lack a junior high understanding of science or human physiology once we exclude Bible-based theories. So, you know, maybe shut the fuck up about it.

What those of us in the logic-based community have known for years is finally common knowledge if not exactly front page news: in-person voter fraud is not a thing that exists. It is a boogeyman made up by Republicans as a Trojan Horse for voter ID laws intended to suppress turnout among the demographics least likely to have a state-issued photo ID. Pennsylvania, one of several states embroiled in VID-related legal battles at present, has admitted that the sole type of voter fraud preventable by VID laws – voter impersonation, etc. – is nonexistent not only in PA but in any other state as well. This meshes with a more recent, comprehensive national study that uncovered all of ten verified instances of in-person voter fraud. Certainly voter fraud exists (particularly with absentee ballots, which can be filled out by god-knows-who) but none of the laws passed in recent years will do anything to stop it.

So we can officially put to rest the whole "millions of illegal voters" myth. Now that the evidence is incontrovertible, I'm curious to hear how our friends on the right will address the fact that these laws they've supported, sometimes vociferously, are really laws to stop blacks and Latinos from voting. Even in conservative circles I doubt many people would stand behind that idea with pride, so some mental gymnastics are necessary in order to keep consciences clear. There are only a few options at this point for the Big Fan of Voter ID Laws:

1. Ignore the data. This might be easy given how little coverage is devoted to this issue.
2. The always popular "I don't have to believe your facts because they're from the liberal (academia, media, etc.) and therefore 'biased' and worthless."
3. Moving goalposts; "Well, voter impersonation might not be a real thing, but Voter ID laws were necessary and positive for several other reasons….
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"
4. Concede past results but point to a dangerous future, i.e. the "millions of amnestied immigrants are coming to vote for Obama" argument.
5. Admit that you were wrong.

It's likely that as more VID laws end up in court and more states debate similar legislation we are about to see a lot of moving goalposts. It will turn out that VID was never about fraud at all, but actually about some deeply principled affirmation of the responsibility of all citizens to bargle bargle blah blah etc. We're likely to see the high profile Republican candidates do their best to avoid the issue altogether or continue to speak about fraud in the hypothetical, with no concessions to reality.

Having created a voter registration and turnout machine in 2008 unlike anything seen before in American politics, I see no reason why the Obama campaign can't devote similar resources to acquiring valid ID for voters who currently lack it. It's legal to drive a voter to the polls; surely it is also legal to drive someone to the courthouse to get an ID. That seems like a relatively obvious way to address this problem, albeit not one that will have a 100% success rate. The perfect is the enemy of the good in politics, and what might be a good way to minimize the effects of newly-legislated voter suppression should not be cast aside because it won't help everyone.

A lot of relatively sane people with functional moral compasses continue to vote Republican for some reason, and it will be interesting to see how they come to grips with the fact that, oh, I guess these laws Our Guys have pushed for the last four years really are about keeping Undesirables away from the polls. That doesn't seem to be in line with freedom, justice, and the American Way.

Then again if they are students of history they no doubt realize that engaging in legal chicanery to prevent black people from voting is very much the American Way.

This is one instance in which an appeal to the words and thoughts of the Founders will actually support the Republican position on an issue.

In 2002 I spent New Years Eve in New York City with a bunch of friends. We were wise enough to avoid the silliness of Lower Manhattan and Times Square on the big night, but we spent plenty of time on the island in the preceding days. With 9/11 still a fresh wound, the city was more worried than usual about the possibility of a terrorist attack during such a highly visible and crowded event. Accordingly, every cop in New York City was on the streets of Manhattan between Christmas and January 1. Some of them looked like they were pushing Social Security age. Some were obviously desk cops who hadn't worked the street in years, or maybe decades. Nearly all were heavily armed, with AR-15 type rifles slung over shoulders a common sight in on Wall Street and in Midtown.

Such shows of force are intended to make the public feel safer. Yet the more of this I saw, the less safe I felt. Some of that feeling was practical – The idea of old, rusty cops with itchy trigger fingers armed with military rifles they probably have no idea how to use is not a reassuring one under any circumstances – but some of it was purely emotional. Seeing armed cops every five feet didn't make anything seem safer; it merely reminded me that there are cops everywhere because they expect something really bad to happen. And the more cops and more guns there are in one place, the more likely that "Something bad will happen" becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I couldn't wait to get out of there.

I am an ocean away, but what little I've seen of the Olympics (and the media coverage thereof) bears a striking resemblance to what I felt a decade ago in New York.
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It has all the trappings of complete security overkill.
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Granted, UK politicians cannot be blamed for treating terrorism as a serious threat; the Olympics are and have been a target and the UK has suffered terrorist attacks on its own soil in recent memory. Nonetheless, the security measures in place seem to have created an event that potential fans would rather avoid than enjoy. Nothing says "Welcome to London, enjoy the games!
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" quite like anti-aircraft missiles on apartment rooftops, a ten-foot tall, eleven-mile long (!) electrified (!!!) fence surrounding the main stadium and facilities, a city-wide network of CCTV surveillance and aerial drones, and more British Armed Forces personnel on the ground (including 7,500 elite Royal Marines) than have been on British soil since the Second World War.

Is that making you feel safe? Maybe I'm a wimp, but that looks like the kind of event I prefer to avoid. To the extent possible, I try to stay away from enclosed areas teeming with armed cops, soldiers, and other people expecting the worst and possessing the right to shoot at me. Maybe this merely reflects Americans' increasing tendency to see the police as a menace to be avoided at all costs, or perhaps it speaks to the larger problem of trying to confront our fears as a society with bigger guns and more of them. It's easy to look at the security preparations and say, "It's sad that we live in a world in which all of this is necessary" and much harder to take the time to question whether it really is.
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Americans have the unique ability to think about mass murder and spree killing the same way they conceptualize natural disasters like hurricanes or tornadoes; it's just a thing that happens and can't be stopped. When it strikes there's nothing we can do except hold a vigil, say "Oh, how awful", donate something to the survivors, and go about our day. Usually within about a week we manage to forget it ever happened, and then a few months later the cycle repeats itself.

There is no sense in the wake of these tragedies that it is possible to do anything to prevent them from recurring because, like many other issues in our political process, one half of the potential means to address the problem are completely off the table. The only acceptable solution is more guns, more bullets, more firepower, more high-capacity magazines, and endless complaining about the meager, ineffectual regulations in place (background checks, etc.) that stop only the dumbest and least creative criminals.
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The media and political process inevitably conclude that, gee, if only more people in the theater had been armed they could have shot back…and, uh, hit the attacker in the dark, smoke-filled theater amidst all the panic and confusion.

Oh, he was covered in body armor? Hmm. I guess it's time to legalize more firepower. Concealed carry permits and armor-piercing ammunition for all!

Despite the fact that the "Armed citizens are the best first responders!" argument fails in a half-dozen different ways in this instance – the attack was over in the blink of an eye, the film goers were taken completely by surprise, they were likely unable to see the gunman let alone shoot him, and he would be unharmed by handgun ammunition anyway – it is still all we will hear in response. Like the only solution to economic questions is lower taxes, the only answer to crime, especially gun crime, is more guns. More, more, more. Someday we'll have enough to be safe. But not yet.

The most baffling part about the logic of the NRA-led response is that it is based on a premise that is ignored as soon as it is established. The argument is that guns don't kill people – unhinged or evil people do. OK. Let's accept that premise in full. Why, then, does the NRA fight so hard to make it easier for evil or unhinged people to have access to things like high powered ammunition and large magazines? If the world is full of the scary people they blame for gun crime, these things only serve to make them more efficient killers. We are told that people like the Columbine killers were so full of hatred and violence that if they had no guns they would have used other weapons…and then we are not allowed to point out that they wouldn't have managed to kill a dozen people with a knife. The AR-15 with a 30-round clip didn't make the guy in Aurora, Colorado a killer. It just ensured that he would be really good at it. Change the elements in the equation – weaker ammunition, smaller magazines, a less powerful rifle – and there are fewer casualties. Period.

Second, if the world is full of loons who want to kill their fellow man and we are not allowed to take away their guns (indeed, we are required to give them every possible tool for upping the body count) then I have an alternative. Congress should pass a law that anyone in the U.S., resident or otherwise, can present himself at any hospital, religious institution, or police/fire department and request immediate inpatient psychiatric care at no cost and with legal protection against job loss for missed time. People don't snap and become killers overnight; it is usually a long process of isolation, depression, plotting, and desensitization to violence. Why not attempt to intervene when they first have the thought, "Maybe I should kill a bunch of people in a theater" rather than letting it progress to the point that the idea is palatable, even normal?

Of course this wouldn't help everyone. There are those who would not accept mental health treatment even at no cost.

However, it would stop a few people who might otherwise become violent. Seems like it might be worth the cost, no?

Oh, right. That would be socialized medicine, and the AM airwaves and internet comment sections would fill to bursting with warnings about freeloaders faking it to get a free vacation on the taxpayers' dime. I guess we'll stick with the status quo, and our defense against heavily armed mass murderers will be the vigilante fantasies of adult children who feel powerful when armed and thus foster the illusion that guns are making them safe.

By August 1 the three year experiment of combining Ed and the Deep South will come to an end. I will move back to the flatlands of the Midwest from whence I came. Right off the bat, let us note that I am not leaving because I hate it, but rather out of professional necessity. I no longer have a job here and a school in Illinois was willing to hire me. If it was up to me, I would stay, all kidding and "Ha ha the South blows" jokes aside.

I did not expect to like living here; as many people from Up North do, I moved here with many preconceptions of what life in the South would be like. For the most part, these assumptions proved…remarkably accurate. People assume that the South is barely survivable in the summer (Check. I don't know how anyone lived here before air conditioning. Oh, wait: not many people did, and they were really emphatic about buying other people to do manual labor for them.) It is mild and pleasant during the winter (Check). Many of the rural areas are incredibly depressing (Check). People are really conservative (check) and into the Jesus (check). And then there's the big one that people assume: that everyone is racist. Eh…

My experience has been that race is indeed the 900-pound elephant in the room in the Deep South. People remain very sensitive about the topic, and many people, especially older ones who retain pre-1960 memories, still have a muted sense of "knowing one's place", if you follow me. Overall, however, I have not come away convinced that race is a much bigger issue/problem here than anywhere else. It is probably closer to the forefront of social and political issues here – i.

e., more issues end up being "about" race to some extent – but not by as large a margin as one might expect. Hell, there's probably more racial tension in LA, Cincinnati, or Chicago than in Atlanta.

One thing about the race issue did, in my experience, stand out like a sore thumb, though. Living around the Midwest, overt racism – the "I hate this group of people and have actual malice toward them" kind – always seemed to be a lower class phenomenon. The people in Chicago, for example, who are most likely to sit around a bar bitching about Darkies or whatever are knuckleheads from the bottom of our high school classes who regularly get fired from their job delivering pizzas. This has very much not been my experience in the South; the "Bubba" types – lower class, thick drawls, driving red pickup trucks – are not the people from whom I have heard terrible, racist things. Down here the racism seems to be, or at least feels like, a suburban, private school kid phenomenon. That's just my impression. I have no data here. It's merely an observation.

Look, I am not saying that no one who lives in the suburbs and has a lot of money in the North is racist. My point is that I was expecting the South to be populated with racist hillbillies when for the most part the hillbillies are pleasant people (although not free of unpleasant ideas, thanks to their involvement in the more lunatic branches of Protestantism).
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On the occasions on which I did hear really racist stuff, it was inevitably coming from the mouth of someone who did not fit the Redneck stereotype at all. I heard people say some horrible shit – eugenics appears to have a strong underground following among well-off suburban white kids – and not appear to have the slightest idea that they were saying something racist.

Although this surprised me, it makes sense. Lower class people, black and white, probably have some un-PC ideas about one another but regularly have to interact (going to the same dilapidated public schools, working the same shitty jobs, etc). For the people with money down here, the segregation is complete and the white kids of Marietta are raised on an unbroken diet of Boortz/Beck/Limbaugh, Falwell-type religion, and private laments about how much better things were before…You Know. Before the "social order" was changed by meddling outsiders.

In other words, the people who should know better – the ones with high incomes and access to education, culture, and so on – seem to be more likely to hold and express racist beliefs than the ones who wear the stereotype of being racists. Part of this reflects sample bias; I live in a college town (obviously) and college kids are notoriously parochial, sheltered, insensitive, and at times arrogant. Sometimes younger people say racist things because they are repeating things from people who raised them. Regardless, although it pains parts of my brain to admit it, I do believe that the Redneck Southerner might get more crap than he deserves. Conservative as hell? Religious in the extreme? Culturally unrefined? Sure. But they're hardly roaming the streets complaining about The Negroes or refusing to work next to a black person. The only Southerners I've encountered who appear to have attitudes of that kind are named things like Mason and Ashley and went to ,000/yr high schools.

And that, in short, is the exact opposite of what I expected based on 30 years of South stereotypes from my Yankee upbringing.

On Monday we talked about how the political process is turning the Supreme Court into a kind of super-legislature to resolve the contentious issues that elected officials lack the will to resolve themselves. That's bad enough on its own but the political process follows it up by using the Court as a punching bag, undermining public confidence in institutions that are supposed to be symbols of trust, consistency, and fairness.

One thing that differentiates the American right from conservatives in other similar nations is its willingness to throw the institutions of the state under the bus for short-term political gain. The heart of conservatism, at least historically, is the defense of institutions: the family, the state, religion, and so on. While the liberals are running around promoting a libertine "Do as thou wilt" philosophy, conservatives traditionally grab the moral high ground by defending culture, traditions, and social institutions. That happens today in some instances (the defense of "traditional marriage", for example) but for the most part, the American right's ability to defend the institutions of the state (i.
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e., the government) has been crippled by decades of ideological litmus-testing that have promoted free market worship above, quite literally, god and country. In other words, Americans rarely defend their institutions when they make unpopular decisions. If the Supreme Court makes a decision that the right doesn't like, no one says "We don't like this outcome but we accept it as legitimate, and we will work within the process to change it." Instead, the message is, "If the Supreme Court does something we don't like, then fuck the Supreme Court. It's corrupt, undemocratic, and untrustworthy."

When teaching the presidency, I always assign Al Gore's concession speech after the debacle of the 2000 election. The quote that stands out to me:

Now the U.S. Supreme Court has spoken. Let there be no doubt, while I strongly disagree with the court's decision, I accept it. I accept the finality of this outcome which will be ratified next Monday in the Electoral College.

This is in line with the spirit in which the Constitution was written and those so-often-exalted "Founders" hoped the system they created would function. You will not like every decision the government makes, and the fact that you do not like it does not mean that the government is not functioning. By the time they reach seven or eight years old most small children have grasped the fact that one does not always get everything one wants in life. I think that the authors of the Constitution expected nothing more than that we would apply that life lesson to the democratic process.

The problem is that it's just too tempting and there's too much cheap political gain to be had from feeding the anti-government paranoia that fills the heads of so many Americans.
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They rail against "activist judges" and promote the idea that if the legal system produces an outcome with which you disagree, you should be able to ignore it. If the Court does something you do not like, it is evidence that the Court is controlled by dark forces and cannot be trusted. The end result, of course, is that what is supposed to be the least political (although certainly not apolitical, as we discussed earlier this week) is held in the same regard as the rest of our political institutions. Opinion polling shows that the Court's approval rating among the public isn't much higher than the President's mediocre rating, although both certainly dwarf Congress's miserable performance.

You may be thinking that the reason Americans believe, as the polls show, that the Court makes decisions based on personal political ideology is because the Court does exactly that.
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Given our embarrassingly low levels of information, though, that assumption is tenuous. It is more likely that we assume this about the Court because we don't know anything about it except that we don't trust it and it makes decisions that we dislike.
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The more highly visible the Court becomes, the more it is undermined. The more it is undermined, the more we believe that the entire government is worthless. The more we believe that, the more "small government" rhetoric and the people spouting it seem appealing.