America: It Just Might Work

I love music. It can move us in ways nothing else can. And you never know where it will come from. A certain tone and a certain set of lyrics hits you in a certain frame of mind to produce an experience whose description defies the use of words, and whose memory will come back, albeit muted over time, each time you hear it again.

I've always been a proud American. Years ago I would stand straight during the National Anthem at sporting events, even if everyone around me was drunk and laughing. I don't like people fucking around with the lyrics and yelling "Stars" or "Braves" or whatever other word in the song has the misfortune of being a sports team mascot. We were Americans, and we should have more respect than that, or at least that was how I saw it. We were the greatest nation on earth. Experience has chipped away at that ideallic view over the years, the past few especially. The torture thing was the last straw. We were America. We were supposed to be the good guys. They tortured, we didn't, that's what made us better than them.

Anyway, it's been a while since my chest swellled with a little pride in America, not so much our greatness of self as much as the greatness and uniqueness of vision that this country represents. Whatever flaws we have, America still stands as one of the greatest political and social experiments ever conceived, a nation of immigrents, descendents of slaves, and passers by who decided to stay in this huge land, clinging to its traditions and rugged individualism while the limitations of the world and an ever growing population gnaw at its foundations, forcing it to constantly change to avoid splintering into permanently warring factions. The civil war, and perhaps more, are inevitable with a society constructed as this one is. And yet here we are. Spalding Gray once said, in Swimming to Cambodia, "Consider a country like America, or rather, consider America, because certainly there's certainly no country like it..." Indeed there isn't, and it's ours, and it's time we held our leaders and ourselves up to a higher standard, and make America better than it is. I think some of that has been lost lately.

But there's something else to consider when we think ill of America. We might not be the greatest nation on earth any more, but we arguably were, and easily can be again. That's a helluva lot more than most countries can claim. Leave it to Roy Zimmerman to elicit this in me. The guy has a way with a phrase, a catchy tune, and a bizarrely sensible, average-guy approach to some heavy unusual views. We can make this crazy thing work.

And yeah, it's a little politically partisan at the beginnning, but that's the exception rather than the rule. Besides, anyone with no biases has no opinions of his own.

Hat Tip: Pharyngula

James Dobson won't back McCain

Since the death of Jerry Falwell (praise Jesus) James Dobson is arguably the most powerful Christian leader in the U.S., so his announcement that he won't support John McCain is big news in many ways.

While the knee-jerk reaction to this might be to write off McCain based on the popular wisdom that Republican candidates need the support of the religious right to win, the fact that he is winning, and against some very conservative candidates, suggests the religious right may be losing some of its power and relevance. When we examine Dobson's comments, we see a clue as to why:

"I am deeply disappointed the Republican Party seems poised to select a nominee who did not support a Constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage, voted for embryonic stem-cell research to kill nascent human beings, opposed tax cuts that ended the marriage penalty, has little regard for freedom of speech, organized the Gang of 14 to preserve filibusters in judicial hearings, and has a legendary temper and often uses foul and obscene language."

Now let's consider this for a moment. In a time of record budget deficits, a failing economy, impending global warming, military efforts of questionable success and unprecedented expense, a looming social security crisis, failing systems of education and medicine, and constutional crises that strike at the heart of our nation, James Dobson is going to sit out the election of a president because the Republican candidate does not believe in banning gay marriage, stem cell research, tax cuts for married couples, and judicial hearing filibusters. Oh and he uses bad words.

With such infantile and irrelevant concerns, it is a wonder that Dobson could find no candidate to support. Dobson, like too many on the right side of the aisle, is living in an alternate universe, where all economic problems are solved with tax cuts, only heterosexuals can love, and blastocysts are human beings. He is out of touch with reality, plain and simple, and is destined to become more and more irrelevant with each passing day and each scientific discovery.

"I think we're facing such a point of crisis in our country, that we're going to have to have the strongest leadership we can. And I think I could deal with that in the polling booth."

I agree with Dr. Dobson on that point. We are indeed in a point of crisis in our country, but it was caused by the very same faith-based out-of-touch view that he is promoting. We've had eight years of that, thank you, that is enough.

Good News from Florida, and the Simple Question that can stop the Nonsense!

Good news from Florida. The Highlands school board broke with the recent trends of the phallic state and tabled an anti-evolution resolution after 10 citizens spoke against it. The statements presented the usual refutatoins of the creationist canards, but the knockout blow was this refreshingly direct approach by James Broen, a Ph.D. in microbiology and a parent of three students in the school district:

"There is a lot of distortion, misrepresentation and misinformation about science and biology circulating about this community and apparently it permeates this board to some degree," he said. "Clearly there is a deficiency in science literacy and it would be a shame to see it perpetuate with students in this county."

The evolution of all organisms that live on earth today from ancestors that lived in the past is at the core of many science disciplines, Broen said.

Concerning the proposed resolution and the teaching of alternative theories, he asked the board, "what theories are you advocating being presented in the scientific curriculum?"

After a pause, Hancock replied, "I don't think you are going to get that answer."

Broen said, "since the resolution states there are other theories to be presented to the student, yet the board members have failed to produce them, then it seems this resolution must be discarded."

That's the approach that these nitwits need to be confronted with at all these meetings. You want alternative theories taught? Fine, then you must have some idea of what those theories are, and you should be proud to inform us all. What? You don't want to tell us what is so important for the children to hear? That wouldn't be because what you have in mind is mind-numbingly bad science and a violation of the first amendment now would it?

Of course it is.

Florida is Gay!

In case anyone was wondering if the entire state of Florida has lost its mind, given all the recent anti-evolution proclamations, well wonder no more. Here is a school that truly has the best interests of the children at heart, and has consequently outlawed…the rainbow:

”The ACLU has filed suit against Ponce de Leon High School in Florida on behalf of several students who have been forbidden from any form of expressive support for gay rights - t-shirts, buttons, even a rainbow symbol on a bookbag or a notebook. The school board is taking the bizarre position that any such symbol is evidence that students belong to an "illegal organization" and that all pro-gay speech is inherently disruptive. “

An illegal organization? Funny, I don’t recall there being a system of organizations being declared legal and illegal in the United States. Freedom of assembly is one of our fundamental freedoms, and if anyone wants to gather together to support gay rights, or gloomy rights, or any kind of rights one might like to envision, they have a right to do so (just don’t say “Al Quaeda” when you do it.) Just what are these illegal organizations?

” As you know, Illegal organizations are defined by the School Board as any attempt to use the school day for activities that are not school related or school sponsored. Illegal organizations are, therefore, prohibited as they interfere with the educational process.”

You mean like handing out Bibles? Funny how they never seem so concerned with the connection between school and activities when Bibles are involved.

And I LOVE this “inherently disruptive” shit. In other words, if we have enough bigots in our community that one person wearing a rainbow is going to cause coniptions, then by golly you strangers are disruptive all right.

Apparently, all this concern for the students’ personal decorations revolves around an incident wherein the principle told a student she should not be gay and should not talk about being gay. The students wore the symbols of gay pride to show support for the student. And the principle, in typical pigheaded style, suppressed opposition he couldn’t defeat intellectually.

This brought a lawsuit from the ACLU, which the school district is sure to lose. This also adds to the stories on the subject of homosexuality that raises my suspicions that rabid anti-gay people are themselves gay, and their vitriol arises from their suppression of self. This principle’s behavior is bizarre in the extreme.

Hat tip: Ed Brayton

Do it Yourself Electoral Map

For all you political junkies wanting to keep score in the Presidential election, here is a great site where you can try various scenarios, and even get a probabilistic prediction once only a few states remain.

American Politics through European eyes

I’ve seen it noted several times on non-American blogs that all of American politics falls on the right side of things, and here is a good article and discussion of that:

”From a European perspective, US politics are an ongoing battle between the extreme Right and the middle Right. The Republican presidential candidates are really, really scary people in my view. So all of us in the world at large who live under the shadow of US political hegemony are holding our breaths, hoping that Clinton or Obama will make it into office. They're pretty bad, but the alternative would be unspeakably dreadful.”

I guess I’ve become a European, because that is what it looks like to me.

Political Position Tests

I love those tests that tell you where you fall on the political spectrum. I don’t necessarily take their conclusions as gospel. I find it interesting what they say about the test makers. The questions people choose to ask, and how they ask them, tells you a lot about how they view politics. It wasn’t hard to tell what my congressman was after when he’d poll us on questions like “Are you against wasteful government programs?” No, I’m for waste, give me all you got. It’s also easy to see the question doesn’t really address anything substantive, or allow for a full range of responses. Political questions are often like this, being variations of “have you stopped beating your wife?”, tacitly sneaking in any number of assumptions, the most basic being that the issue is important enough to be asked about. It was with this in mind I looked at the test on vote chooser, which was a fairly decent test with mostly reasonable questions, save two. Being on a Republican site, I thought it revealed much about the Republican mindset going into these most important elections, at least of the testmakers.

After asking if invading Iraq was a mistake, and whether and when troops should be withdrawn, came this:

“The people that need tax cuts most are:

Lower and Middle Class Americans
Middle Class Americans
Lower, Middle, and Upper class Americans (ie everyone) “

Now there is a question. Two things jump right out of that one. The middle class is in all three answers. Perhaps they should have been clear and asked “who, besides the middle class, deserves tax breaks?” And where is the response for “more taxes”? It continues to be one of the great ironies of modern American politics that the self-proclaimed “party of fiscal responsibility” is also the party that makes its unofficial party platform the notion that the income side of the equation is never to be increased. Those who would assert that government should be run like a business are going to run that business by never raising prices? That could lead to incredibly large debts, right? Oops.

America, especially the right wing, needs to understand that we are in an unprecedented financial crisis, and must face the reality that if we lower taxes, we will have to reduce government spending even more, and that means YOUR pet project. And if we aren’t willing to do that, then increased taxes it must be. So no pretending tax reductions are a given. FOUL!

The rest of the test covered the usual points, abortion, immigration, health care and education, before hitting us with this doozie:

”The best way to save the environment and gain energy independence is:

Giving companies more incentives to be energy efficient
Developing alternate energy sources
Both of the above
Allowing citizens to protect their land by suing polluters”

Um, gee, they completely left out the most direct route, stiffer government regulations on pollutants. Now to be clear, I’m not promoting more regulation as the answer. Government regulation is the rectal exam of politics: only done when no other alternatives exist, and I’m not convinced we’ve exhausted those other possibilities. But leaving such an option off an opinion poll is inexcusable. It seems some of my free-market brethren need a refresher on the tragedy of the commons. The free market deals very well with decisions where what is good for the individual is good for the group. But when what is good for the individual is bad for the group, the market fails us, and we need an outside body to intervene, and in our imperfect society, that body is government (and in the end, rebellious, grassroots force). The case of pollutants seems a classic example, where one individual’s polluted gain is everyone else’s loss. With whatever pollutant ceiling we have, the pie is indeed fixed.

Watch those test questions. If you want an answer that isn’t there, it isn’t you, it’s the test. Or rather, it is the test maker, attempting to get you to frame the question in your mind the way he wants you to.