Last night John McCain was on the Daily Show, and, I have to say, this is likely the best episode of the DS that I have seen in a long time.
Stewart started out with some unusually direct takes on the Iraq War, pitting first-term Bush Jr. against second-term Bush Jr. I usually don't like this kind of "interview the videotape" gag, but the content of this was so good that it was worth it.
Stewart had McCain on as the guest. My biggest complaint about Stewart is that he has a regrettable tendency to be overly deferential to right-wingers when they are actually on his show. His interview with the criminal Henry Kissinger a few years ago made me stop watching for a few months. Why on Earth would someone like Stewart kiss the ass of a megalomaniac like Kissinger, a man directly responsible for the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and -- something that affects me personally -- the toppling of the democratic government of Chile in 1973?
Last night, though, Stewart was completely on his game. He came across as no-bullshit, ceded no points to McCain out of deference, and really exposed McCain for the pathetic party hack that he has unfortunately become.
For the video, check out Crooks & Liars as usual.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Right-wing talking points in a single sentence
Read this , and you will never have to watch O'Reilly again.
Crystal clear. Now you can retire, Falafel-man.
Decades ago, little George Soros decided to take over the world so he got rich through the capitalist system which he wished to destroy by paying John Kerry to fake his wounds and forge his service records in Vietnam so Kerry could run for president one day while leaving lots of people POW-MIA in Vietnam so that we'd all stop being afraid of Marxism so that literary critics from France could infect the minds of the young with Cultural Marxism and pornography via tenured radicals in English Departments and organizations like MoveOn.org and Media Matters and the Em Ess Em so that the Great International Communist Islamofascist Conspiracy to Dominate the World could move ahead by means of feminists evolutionary biologists atheists and liberal Christians who want to ban Christmas so that everyone will be gay and that way they'll all be feminized and passive and won't be able to do anything but stand around when the Islamic Bomb is built which it will be any moment because Saddam really did have WMDs in fact the only supply of WMDs in the entire world that the terrorists could possibly get their hands on and the Islamic Bomb is being built right now by Syria Russia North Korea and China most of which are not Islamic countries but it's all the same thing anyway and everyone in the government from the Bush Administration to the Congress and all the way down the bureaucracy and the Em Ess Em knows this but isn't saying anything because they're too embarrassed and when the Islamic Bomb is developed it will be dropped on American cities and soon all those atheist liberal Christians will see oh yeah they'll see all right when they all have to wear hijabs and then George Soros will have won.
Crystal clear. Now you can retire, Falafel-man.
Sunday, April 01, 2007
My Favorite Trane
Amazing how it seems that there is an instant connection between Trane's mind, his fingers and his horn. Pure volition, intentionality, without premeditation.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Andrew Sullivan and environmentalism
I confess to regularly reading Andrew Sullivan's blog over at the Atlantic. Clearly a smart man, and one of the extremely small number of "conservatives" that strike me as actually being intellectually honest (a sad statement in itself).
Occasionally, though, Sullivan writes something that I think is just silly. His long-running blogalogue with Sam Harris is full of contradictions -- to the point where Sullivan sounds half-Catholic, half-New Age.
One of today's posts -- on environmentalism -- is one of these silly days for Andrew. There is much that is commendable, here -- even elegant. His subsequent quote of the aptly-named Saint Basil is even better.
But alas there is also much, much silliness.
This is just strange, and actually it is a bit odd to follow the logic here. If I understand correctly, Andrew is saying that some environmentalists have beliefs that are similar to religious beliefs. And this is bad, one can only guess, because having religious beliefs is bad. In fact, Andrew then immediately makes the slide from saying that they have a "form of religion," to saying that there is "something fundamentalist" about their beliefs. He even stoops so low as to say that this is all somehow related to the ultimate manifestation of earthly evil: Nazism.
Interestingly, the Nazis also embraced industrialism. So, by this logic, if Andrew supported industry -- in the sense that he consumes manufactured goods like, say, the computer he writes on -- then he has the same "roots" as the Nazis.
But let's take Andrew's claim about just what this "fundamentalism" is about. What happens if we reword his sentence a little better, to make it reflect an actual religion, rather than something that he claims is like a religion? How does this sound:
"There is something fundamentalist about those who think of God as somehow an entity to be obeyed rather than a character in a book of Hebrew folk tales."
Just so that we are clear: having a belief in a supreme being who is to be obeyed is having religion, which is good; unless that supreme being is different from Andrew's, in which case you are a fundamentalist. OK?
I have no idea of what "extreme fringe" Andrew is writing about; but there is absolutely "conservative" about recognizing that we are part of a broader ecological system. In fact, I really don't see how Andrew could possibly reconcile his belief in free-market capitalism -- in which everything is appropriated, individualized, objectified, and transformed into an exchangeable commodity -- with environmentalism. If my land is my property, and my relationship to it is mediated simply by the market, why should I feel any obligation toward it? It is an inanimate commodity, to be exchanged through the forces of the market. Andrew tries to sidestep this by appealing to patriotism as a motivating factor for this "conservative" environmentalism. There are two big problems with that. First, patriotism ends at your national border. So, a "patriotic conservative environmentalism" would simply allow us to preserve our ground water by, say, shipping our toxic wastes off to Canada, or Brazil, or Haiti. That way we can preserve Yosemite! This is hardly an ethically clear solution, but at least it is one that could be regulated by the market.
Second, it actually cannot be regulated by the market. What about those "unpatriotic" citizens who might bid to have that toxic sludge dumped in their backyard -- for a fee. What about those who put profits before patriotism (ever hear of that happening?)? In other words, any environmentally sound policy that operates within a capitalist economy is one that uses state regulation. And, in a world that is producing ever-increasing amounts of waste and using ever-increasing amounts of raw materials, -- yes, you guessed it -- this would require ever-increasing degrees of state regulation. Now, I personally do not think that state regulation of capitalism is the best solution; but the fact that Andrew makes no mention of how he might reconcile his environmentalism with his free-marketism is revealing. It makes the post borderline feel-good-fluff -- a secular New Age.
The problem, quite obviously, is that Andrew seems to have confused "conservative" and "conservation" simply because they have the same linguistic root.
Again, this is incredibly problematic. First, Andrew somehow thinks that Christians believing that they have dominion over the earth means that they actually do have dominion over the earth. That is an obvious leap of faith, since the only justification for this belief is that it is written down in a book of Hebrew folk tales. This might be sufficient evidence for Andrew, but excuse me if it is not for me.
Which brings me to the second point. Why do Christians -- who are, after all, a minority of the earth's population -- get to determine for the rest of us what the proper relationship with the environment should be? At the end of the day, how is Andrew's explicitly religious justification for a form of environmentalism (regardless of its obvious contradiction with his economic principles) any different from the "fundamentalism" that he derides? My guess is that it is simply more "reasonable" because it is accepted by more people -- nothing more.
This also raises a question that I think that Christians have yet to really grapple with: the nature of our relationship with other sentient beings. Andrew, like so many other Christians, uses the Biblical language of "dominion" and the secular language of "control." But what is the justification? What are the limits? Bottom line: why do Christians get to ignore the vast majority of sentient beings in the commandment "Thou shalt not kill"? Does the commandment really read: "Thou shalt not kill, except for: mice; mosquitoes and other annoying insects; deer; pigs; sheep; cows; fish; octopus; or any other being that you happen to find convenient to kill as long as it is not a human or will become a human in this lifetime"? Now, I am not making an argument for the kind of craziness of, say, Operation Rescue, but directed against the killing of other beings; I am simply pointing out that there is a real tendency among many Christians to be extremely selective in the way that they treat the basics of their faith.
At a minimum, there should be some sort of explanation as to why humans are distinct and thus are the only ones who should receive the benefit of the "Thou shall not kill" commandment. Is it because of the "soul"? If so, then our laws are quite obviously based on religious notions that are dubious at best, and would constitute an unconstitutional enshrining of religious doctrine into secular law. Is it because humans are intelligent? But then what about dolphins? What about pigs? What is the feature that is the dividing line between us and other sentient beings, and can it be drawn in a way that doesn't have its basis in a religion adhered to by a minority of the earth's population?
Here, I think that it is absolutely no "mystery" as to how the "conservative and Christian" impulse for environmental preservation was "lost." I think that it never existed, and it never existed for very good reasons. Even here, Andrew has fallen into a trap that is objectively false: he places the environment as an external, inanimate object, one to be "preserved" and "passed on" as if it were collective property. This is a benevolent reading of Christian doctrine (see Leonardo Boff's work for a more coherent and convincing Christian perspective).
The mere fact that humans do not exist except within the context of the earth's environment, however, should be evidence enough that the relationship is a bit different from the subject/object split that Andrew clings to here. Put another way, if my body is 98% water, it doesn't mean that I am not different from water; but it sure means that my relationship to water is an incredibly complex one. I cannot be entirely separate from water; I cannot be entirely separate from air; I cannot be entirely separate from food, sunlight, and minerals. I am not identical or simply reducible to them, but to posit them as completely distinct from me would be to fly in the face of the most obvious facts of human existence.
And, of course, to do that, you need the folk tales.
Occasionally, though, Sullivan writes something that I think is just silly. His long-running blogalogue with Sam Harris is full of contradictions -- to the point where Sullivan sounds half-Catholic, half-New Age.
One of today's posts -- on environmentalism -- is one of these silly days for Andrew. There is much that is commendable, here -- even elegant. His subsequent quote of the aptly-named Saint Basil is even better.
But alas there is also much, much silliness.
Is environmentalism becoming a form of religion? This is a meme sometimes found on the anti-enviro right, and in some extreme cases, they have a point. There is something fundamentalist about those who think of the earth as somehow an entity to be obeyed rather than a place to be simply lived in. The totalism of some animal rights activists has the smack of rigid orthodoxy. We all know how green the roots of the Nazi party were.
This is just strange, and actually it is a bit odd to follow the logic here. If I understand correctly, Andrew is saying that some environmentalists have beliefs that are similar to religious beliefs. And this is bad, one can only guess, because having religious beliefs is bad. In fact, Andrew then immediately makes the slide from saying that they have a "form of religion," to saying that there is "something fundamentalist" about their beliefs. He even stoops so low as to say that this is all somehow related to the ultimate manifestation of earthly evil: Nazism.
Interestingly, the Nazis also embraced industrialism. So, by this logic, if Andrew supported industry -- in the sense that he consumes manufactured goods like, say, the computer he writes on -- then he has the same "roots" as the Nazis.
But let's take Andrew's claim about just what this "fundamentalism" is about. What happens if we reword his sentence a little better, to make it reflect an actual religion, rather than something that he claims is like a religion? How does this sound:
"There is something fundamentalist about those who think of God as somehow an entity to be obeyed rather than a character in a book of Hebrew folk tales."
Just so that we are clear: having a belief in a supreme being who is to be obeyed is having religion, which is good; unless that supreme being is different from Andrew's, in which case you are a fundamentalist. OK?
But this is an extreme fringe. For the vast majority of people who care about the environment, the impulse is usually to preserve something we love. At its root, this is a conservative impulse. In America, in particular, love of the land has long been a part of patriotism. And where religious faith appears, it isn't necessarily a paean to Gaia. "America, The Beautiful" is an environmentalist hymn. America's greatest poets, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, are intoxicated with the natural beauty of this continent. Part of their intoxication is their sense of the divine saturating the natural. Read Thoreau or Emerson and the same American interaction with nature is palpable. Americans, after all, forged a relationship with wilderness more recently than any Europeans. And there is, therefore, a deeply patriotic form of green thought in America that has been overly neglected by environmentalists and that can and should be reclaimed by political leaders, especially on the right.
I have no idea of what "extreme fringe" Andrew is writing about; but there is absolutely "conservative" about recognizing that we are part of a broader ecological system. In fact, I really don't see how Andrew could possibly reconcile his belief in free-market capitalism -- in which everything is appropriated, individualized, objectified, and transformed into an exchangeable commodity -- with environmentalism. If my land is my property, and my relationship to it is mediated simply by the market, why should I feel any obligation toward it? It is an inanimate commodity, to be exchanged through the forces of the market. Andrew tries to sidestep this by appealing to patriotism as a motivating factor for this "conservative" environmentalism. There are two big problems with that. First, patriotism ends at your national border. So, a "patriotic conservative environmentalism" would simply allow us to preserve our ground water by, say, shipping our toxic wastes off to Canada, or Brazil, or Haiti. That way we can preserve Yosemite! This is hardly an ethically clear solution, but at least it is one that could be regulated by the market.
Second, it actually cannot be regulated by the market. What about those "unpatriotic" citizens who might bid to have that toxic sludge dumped in their backyard -- for a fee. What about those who put profits before patriotism (ever hear of that happening?)? In other words, any environmentally sound policy that operates within a capitalist economy is one that uses state regulation. And, in a world that is producing ever-increasing amounts of waste and using ever-increasing amounts of raw materials, -- yes, you guessed it -- this would require ever-increasing degrees of state regulation. Now, I personally do not think that state regulation of capitalism is the best solution; but the fact that Andrew makes no mention of how he might reconcile his environmentalism with his free-marketism is revealing. It makes the post borderline feel-good-fluff -- a secular New Age.
The problem, quite obviously, is that Andrew seems to have confused "conservative" and "conservation" simply because they have the same linguistic root.
There is also, it seems to me, an authentically religious approach to the environment that is completely orthodox and defensible. Christians believe that we have dominion over the earth, and that dominion carries with it a responsibility not just to the creatures we control but to the earth and sea and sky we inhabit. This has been on my mind this week watching the ravishing new series, Planet Earth on Discovery HD Theater. It's a collaboration with the BBC and took five years to make. They use innovative camera techniques - floating a self-stabilizing camera from a balloon to glide across the tree-tops of rain forests or diving equipment to capture the diversity and beauty of the ocean depths. And they photograph everything in high definition. It's lung-filling in its capacity to provoke wonder. If you want to know why this planet is worth conserving, watch it.
Again, this is incredibly problematic. First, Andrew somehow thinks that Christians believing that they have dominion over the earth means that they actually do have dominion over the earth. That is an obvious leap of faith, since the only justification for this belief is that it is written down in a book of Hebrew folk tales. This might be sufficient evidence for Andrew, but excuse me if it is not for me.
Which brings me to the second point. Why do Christians -- who are, after all, a minority of the earth's population -- get to determine for the rest of us what the proper relationship with the environment should be? At the end of the day, how is Andrew's explicitly religious justification for a form of environmentalism (regardless of its obvious contradiction with his economic principles) any different from the "fundamentalism" that he derides? My guess is that it is simply more "reasonable" because it is accepted by more people -- nothing more.
This also raises a question that I think that Christians have yet to really grapple with: the nature of our relationship with other sentient beings. Andrew, like so many other Christians, uses the Biblical language of "dominion" and the secular language of "control." But what is the justification? What are the limits? Bottom line: why do Christians get to ignore the vast majority of sentient beings in the commandment "Thou shalt not kill"? Does the commandment really read: "Thou shalt not kill, except for: mice; mosquitoes and other annoying insects; deer; pigs; sheep; cows; fish; octopus; or any other being that you happen to find convenient to kill as long as it is not a human or will become a human in this lifetime"? Now, I am not making an argument for the kind of craziness of, say, Operation Rescue, but directed against the killing of other beings; I am simply pointing out that there is a real tendency among many Christians to be extremely selective in the way that they treat the basics of their faith.
At a minimum, there should be some sort of explanation as to why humans are distinct and thus are the only ones who should receive the benefit of the "Thou shall not kill" commandment. Is it because of the "soul"? If so, then our laws are quite obviously based on religious notions that are dubious at best, and would constitute an unconstitutional enshrining of religious doctrine into secular law. Is it because humans are intelligent? But then what about dolphins? What about pigs? What is the feature that is the dividing line between us and other sentient beings, and can it be drawn in a way that doesn't have its basis in a religion adhered to by a minority of the earth's population?
Mercifully, the narration (impeccably done by Sigourney Weaver) doesn't get too preachy. Nor does it spare us the brutality of the wild. But the impact of seeing the planet in this detail is enough to drive anyone to environmentalism. I don't believe in a neurotic resistance to all climatic and environmental change. But I do believe in responsible guardianship. The possibility that our carelessness and selfishness in carbon production could rid the world of whole species or transform rich flora into deserts, or drown delicate eco-systems, is a terrible one. And the urge to conserve, to pass the world on unharmed to the next generation is not a radical or necessarily atheist impulse. It's also a conservative and Christian one. How we lost sight of that is a mystery to me. But technology may help us both see the danger more clearly, and give us new sources of energy to avoid it.
Here, I think that it is absolutely no "mystery" as to how the "conservative and Christian" impulse for environmental preservation was "lost." I think that it never existed, and it never existed for very good reasons. Even here, Andrew has fallen into a trap that is objectively false: he places the environment as an external, inanimate object, one to be "preserved" and "passed on" as if it were collective property. This is a benevolent reading of Christian doctrine (see Leonardo Boff's work for a more coherent and convincing Christian perspective).
The mere fact that humans do not exist except within the context of the earth's environment, however, should be evidence enough that the relationship is a bit different from the subject/object split that Andrew clings to here. Put another way, if my body is 98% water, it doesn't mean that I am not different from water; but it sure means that my relationship to water is an incredibly complex one. I cannot be entirely separate from water; I cannot be entirely separate from air; I cannot be entirely separate from food, sunlight, and minerals. I am not identical or simply reducible to them, but to posit them as completely distinct from me would be to fly in the face of the most obvious facts of human existence.
And, of course, to do that, you need the folk tales.
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
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