Psalm 109:8

This one speaks for itself.

Dear Katherine Kersten: You’re dumb. And wrong.

Sadly, I guess, Minneapolis Star Tribune opinion writer Katherine Kersten is the worst. This piece isn’t a useful outlay of facts but instead a splatter of unsolicited personal bias. It’s also really jumpy, so I decided to flow it out for you below.

In Kersten-land, everyone will end up harmed if gays get to marry. Here’s the deal (her ordering):

1. (Assumed.) People want to have sex; marriage is a thing.
2. Marriage channels sex-drive into “productive ends” (babies).
3. Then mothers “harness” man sex-drive.
4. Ergo, marriage is and must be about babies.
5. Gay marriage, on the other hand, is about adults.
6. Which results in the invalidation of even more of my assumptions. (Like about your spouse and family.)
7. But like I was saying, not all kids live with a mom and a dad and the gays will make that even worse! Talk about societal erosion!
8. Plus gays only marry when they want to- not when they feel pressured to.
9. And that will transfer to straights as soon as the gays marry and then people will start to do even more things simply because they “want to” or “don’t want to.”
10. So marriage will become an option, not requirement or pressure for bunches of people.
11. And then in a few seconds or whatever people will be all, “I live with my sister, so I should get a marriage to her.”
12. And that’s because, clearly, sex is going to stop being a part of marriage as per its definition (because each time I think about gay sex I throw up a bit so I decided I had to stop believing it was real and then #11 popped into my head).
13. Plus, we all know “nature” is a thing. I mean, except for climate change of course, but the dumbo-heads who believe in that are pretty much the ones who want the gays to marry in the first place. They don’t want to change anything but then they want to change everything! HOW IRONIC.
14. Marriage is so amazing; who can even know it?

All-in-all, quite strong arguments. These things are all so… slippery and sloppy. I mean, sloped. A slippery slope.

The Meaning of Maine, The Meaningless Governors’ Races, and the Magic 23rd

I’ll get the bad news out of the way first. Maine, you disappoint me.

I’ve been to your state. Some of the nicest people live within your borders. You’re surrounded by some of the world’s finest natural beauty. And you brew some of the finest beers in the country.

But why? Why do you believe that you have the right to usurp the legislative process with a show of hands? Why do you think issues that affect the lives and rights of a minority of your residents, should be decided by a simple majority? Why do you believe a homosexual couple entering in to a committed monogamous relationship should be viewed as anything different than your own heterosexual marriage? And why do you believe that you should decide that for them?

I don’t understand, I really don’t. I just know that when you put the rights of the minority in the hands of the majority, it rarely turns out well. I’m going to use the old worn-out examples that come into my mind: putting slavery to a state-by-state popular vote. Putting a woman’s right to the ballot to a state-by-state popular vote. Putting the Civil Rights Act to a state-by-state popular vote. Putting the Americans With Disabilities Act to a state-by-state popular vote. It’s ludicrous.

I feel like I’m hitting my head against a wall over and over and over and over and over and over again. Thump thump thump. We do not live in a direct democracy, in which we the people vote on every single issue on the table. This is by design. Thump thump thump. The masses are fickle and so often and easily misinformed, and prone to the mob mentality. Our founders were supremely aware of this, and looked to strike a fine balance between tyranny of the few, and tyranny of the masses, between excessive authority, and excessive democracy. Thump thump thump. This is why we live in a representative democracy. Majority rule, minority rights. We elect those who best represent us to a higher deliberative body, which balances the interests of all people involved, including those who believe and act differently than ourselves. And also those who would have sex with people different than we would choose. Thump thump thump.

And the moment they stop representing us, we vote them out. So Maine, vote your legislators out. Or, better yet, as you have so ardently proven to us, just cut out the middle man and make laws yourselves. That’s a great precedent to set for the rest of the country. Why not go to the polls every Tuesday and vote on a whole slate of new laws? You apparently know more than the idiots that you… elected… to office. Thump thump thump.

But I guess everyone’s an expert! Including myself. (Goodness, I hope you don’t think so.)

And this is precisely why I don’t trust the “experts” who are breathlessly declaring the governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia to be “referendums” on President Obama. To link the subpar performance of one state’s governor (NJ) and the perceived inadequacy of the state Democratic Party in another (VA) and call it the one-year report card on the federal government is tenuous at best, and downright ahistorical at worst.

Ahistorical, you ask?

Well, to begin with, I can look at the two states I’ve lived in most. In 2002, a year that still makes Republicans giddy, the state of Wisconsin elected Jim Doyle, Democrat, to the governorship. They didn’t just elect him flat-out, they elected him over an incumbent Republican, in a year of Republican victories everywhere else. The same can be said for Minnesota. In 2006, the great Democratic comeback, the state of Minnesota re-elected incumbent Republican Tim Pawlenty. Why are these significant? Because it shows that governor’s races have more to do with state-level political dynamics than with federal politicking. In 2002, Jim Doyle ran against a perceived weak candidate in Scott McCallum (does anybody even remember him any more?), and won in a year dominated by Republicans on the federal level. And in 2006, Tim Pawlenty ran against a perceived flawed candidate in Mike Hatch (does anybody remember the “Republican whore” incident?) and won in a year dominated by Democrats on the federal level. You can’t convince me that New Jersey in 2009 is any different, and should therefore hold some special place as a bellwether for the performance of the federal government.

And then there’s Virginia. If the election of a Republican governor in Virginia in 2009, the year after a presidential election, is a referendum on a new Democratic president, then why, oh why, was the election of a Democratic governor in Virginia in 2001 not a referendum on a new Republican president? Could it be because, with the benefit of hindsight, we can see what followed in the 2002 midterms, when the Republicans won by a landslide? And the 2004 repeat of the same? The Virginia governor race in 2001 did not predict that. It seems to me that for the last 30 years, Virginians have been contrarians, voting exactly opposite the presidential winner from the year before. Virginia elected Democrats in ’81, ’85, ’89, Republican in ’93 and ’97, Democrats in ’01 and ’05, and so it would follow that the answer in ’09 is certainly not fourty-two. What does this mean? Either Virginians have taken issue with each of our presidents for the last 8 election cycles and deliberately voted for the candidate from the opposite party in the following year, or there’s just some state-level things going on that can’t be explained through the lens of a referendum witch-hunt.

In neither the case of New Jersey or Virginia are we able to come to the conclusion that this was somehow a referendum on the sitting president, or the majority party. But beating it to death sure makes a GREAT television storyline, no?

But the best storylines are those you can’t make up. And so we come to what I would argue is the only referendum that actually took place last night, and that is the circus of the New York 23rd district US House special election race. Yes, the US House, as in, the federal government, as in, the only government currently being operated by Barack Obama and the Democratic congress that America is allegedly “fed up” with… yes, this was the only national race taking place last night. And it did not follow the example of New Jersey and Virginia.

A quick review: the New York 23rd district is in upstate New York. The seat was formerly held by Republican John McHugh, who resigned earlier this year to become President Obama’s Secretary of the Army, making last night’s special election necessary. Facing off for the seat would be Republican Dede Scozzafava and Democrat Bill Owens. A fairly unexciting race, until leading national Republicans, apparently after consuming too much tea at this year’s tea-party protests, began tripping over themselves to endorse the third-party, outside-the-district, local-issue-ignorant candidate named Doug Hoffman, holding him up as the “true conservative” in the race.

And by “leading national Republicans”, I’m talking about Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich, Fred Thompson, Dick Armey, Michele Bachmann, Bill Kristol, Steve Forbes, Rick Santorum… folks like that who are fairly heavy-hitters for the new Republican party.

So it’d be hard as the Republican to run when the soul of your party is opposed to you, accusing you of being “too liberal.” And it was. Scozzafava dropped out of the race on the Saturday before the election, and threw her support to the Democrat.

Wait, what?

Yes. Such was the ideological insanity from within her own party that she threw her support to her Democratic opponent. Such is the ideological insanity of the conservative wing of the Republican party that they are now sacrificing their own candidates for the sake of ideological purity. That’s scary.

Oh, and the other scary thing: the New York 23rd district hasn’t been represented by a Democrat since 1852. One-hundred and fifty-seven years.

So after all this cleansing, all this talk of who’s a “real conservative” and generally making things ridiculous, we go to a vote.

And the Democrat wins. For the first time since 1852.

So, by no means am I saying that the Democrats are a lock for more success next year. Quite the contrary, they’ve got their work cut out for them, and may still lose ground if they don’t stop dragging their feet with futile attempts to kowtow to their ideological antitheses in the name of “bipartisanship.”

But the only one of last night’s elections that had any real bearing on the future of the conservative ideology turned into an embarrassment for the Republicans pushing it. Regardless of state-level wins, the national Republican party is still a mess, remains woefully out-of-touch with America, and enjoys a 36% favorable opinion, while the Democrats find themselves at a not-too-shabby 53%.

Chin up!

How do you choose what to believe? ALSO, GUNS.

Ok, so first: tool on over to this (because it won’t embed, sorry). Hilarious.

And, then, wonder with me how and why people choose to believe crazy shit. Because I have no idea. One of the latest best says that direct response to critic’s health reform questions is actually a secret way to develop an enemies list. Which, of course, is something the administration does. They’re definitely not working on real things, like, oh, health care reform. Nope. The president, in fact, is hiding from the other kids on the playground scrawling out a “NOT MY BEST FRIEND” list.

Really.

And these things are, of course, all fake lies:
Health Reform Reality Check
Reform FAQs
(via WhiteHouse.gov)
and HealthReform.gov

Clearly, people really do think these things are lies. That’s why they go to town halls and chant about death panels and Obama “not caring” and shit.

The mere presence of some attendees could be considered a threat. Via Gawker, a really good piece on a (legal) gun-carrying distorter of a Thomas Jefferson quotation.

I see this as boiling it all up to, “You can’t do anything (especially reform health care and insurance). Also, I can carry a gun. And do whatever I think is necessary to stop you. I define liberty.” And I’ve no idea of how people come to these conclusions or where they even started.

All of this makes me want to call the Wahmbulance for myself. Will that be covered by Obamacare?

Ok, so. The health care “debate” has gotten to be a real shit show, hey? Let me throw a couple of things out there.

First: Socialism and Fascism are mutually-fucking-exclusive. Let’s just all get that straight right now.

Second:  “End-of-life care,” (aka: Obama’s Diabolical Plan to Kill Old People For No Discernible Reason Other Than Democrats Apparently Hate Old People Now) as introduced into the health care bill now in the House refers to, you know, “end-of-life care.” Not “end-your-life care.” For anyone who has not been alive and speaking to any other people during any portion of their adult life, “end-of-life care” is an actual term used in the actual health care industry to describe the creation of a living will that actually outlines things like: whether or not the patient would like heroic measures taken to save their lives, how long they want to be left on a ventilator, etc. This is an actual process that already takes place — and now it would be covered by Medicare. That’s all. Seriously, read the provision if you don’t believe me.

Third: Some people think this means that old people would have to meet for end-of-life discussions, simply because it would now be covered. If an old person falls down and breaks their hip, Medicare covers the medical costs. This does not make breaking one’s hip mandatory. Larry Summers does not freelance on weekends cracking bones in bingo halls.

Fourth: One of the most common complaints about liberals from the right is that they spend too much money caring for people who aren’t economically productive enough to care for themselves. Sarah Palin thinks that:

The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care.

So, Obama wants to spend too much money taking care of people whose “level of productivity in society” is such that they cannot take care of themselves. He also wants to kill those selfsame people. These are, again, ideas that are mutually-fucking-exclusive.

Fifth: Some people need to go back and watch some School House Rock. This bill is still being drafted in the House. Into said bill, three Democrats and three Republicans sponsored a provision providing for the End of Life coverage linked above. The bill still has to pass in the House and then the Senate. Then Obama will have the opportunity to sign it. He is not writing the bill. He is not writing its provisions. If all of his political aspirations revolved around the creation of his very own “death panel” (and, by the by: “death panel”? Really?), he would have stayed in the Senate where he actually had the power to introduce such provisions. At this point, you’d be more apt in calling this “Susan Collins’ death panel.” But not any less fucking stupid.

Also, for those who need it:

Town Hall: Politics over Policy

Krystal and I have been (not) busy tooling around Milwaukee and its exurbs all summer, and she found a Health Care Town Hall for us to attend yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately, I had to work so we did not go.

And, apparently, that’s for the best. Because these things aren’t civil discussions anymore- they’re just big old dumb shit-shows. Literally, garbage, instead of facts and real questions, flying through the air. Just dumbness.

AND, apparently, not even real people! Nope! Instead, political operatives lying about being from the neighborhood.

So, you know, what you end up with is a small number of normal people, a mass of window-banging idiots, and then some vocal political operatives!

Sadly, your town hall is basically going to be about pushing some political bullshit and not local voters having their questions answered.

Damn. Pretty much I should just go watch some network teevee now. Maybe it will make me want to throw tomatoes and shout about Nazis and call in gun threats to healthcare supporters.

Sigh.

Separate and not equal: The distinct legal and moral arguments in favor of same-sex marriage.

Some years ago I absorbed this information from a now-long-forgotten source: The reason that we will likely never see an AI-style robot uprising is that human intelligence differs from artificial intelligence in one specific and significant way. Human beings think, in large part, using analogy. This means that we  absorb data from one event, tweak it in our minds appropriately and apply it to other situations. Pretty basic, if you think about it, which I guess is kinda the point.

I also absorbed this quote from a vividly-remembered movie, (As Good As It Gets): “People who talk in metaphors oughta shampoo my crotch.”

So, as beings who think analogously, it’s a bit difficult to avoid speaking and articulating ourselves analogously. Most of the time, however, I think that analogies (and metaphors) only serve to obscure the point that one is trying to make. If one wants to talk about something, I think we’re all best served if one talks about that actual thing instead of talking around it. Which is why I flip out so immediately with the “This is just like when Hiltler killed all those Jews” stuff. Because nothing is “just like” anything else, really. (Though, I’m sure if you search this blog, you can find points at which I’ve made my share of analogous statements. I try not to do it often. But, you know, shit happens.)

Having said all of that, I think that the struggle for gay civil rights exists in murky territory. Often, the analogies that we attempt to make are not helpful. First of all, denying anyone the right to marry is not “just like that one time” when black people had to ride in the back of buses. It’s simply not. Trying to make a moral equivalency argument between black and gay civil rights not only obfuscates the horror of our racial history, but it also will diminish the effectiveness of the gay rights movement. This is because, in part, our victory in the present civil rights struggle will depend on our ability to address the idiosyncrasies of the opposition to this specific movement.

Keeping African Americans “separate but equal” was a largely economic endeavor — give black people access to the same rights and opportunities as whites and they’ll be able to compete for jobs and a share of the wealth. Biblical justification for white supremacy were trotted out, but underneath the layers of divine aye-okays and on-the-nose racism, was always the “they’ll take our jobs” fear.

None of this is really applicable to gay civil rights. Yes, there is an attempt to “other” a specific group of people, but the rationale is not economic and so our counter-attempts cannot be the same as those of the anti-slavery movement or the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Pretending that we are fighting the same fight will only hurt us and slow our progress.

On the other hand, there is still room for comparison, and as my esteemed co-Elpisian, BFRANK, demonstrated in a recent post, the way best to do that is to make a “these things go together” argument instead of a “this is just like that one time” argument. And it’s not just that “go together” arguments are acceptable, but rather that they are necessary.

Like it or not, same-sex marriage has become a legal issues. And while those who pepper everyday conversation with analogies may well be required to shampoo my crotch, those who do so in court are called “lawyers.” Our entire legal system is based on precedent. So, while our current civil rights struggle is not “just like” the civil rights struggle of the ’60s, we must employ the language of previous court cases as legal justification for granting civil rights in the present.  A plethora of cases cite Roe v. Wade, and this is not to say that the substance of those cases — say, drug trafficking or sodomy — are “just like” abortion. These cases have simply dealt with similar legal issues.

So, when we say “separate is not equal,” I think we’re justified in doing so, no crotch-shampooing required. When I discuss gay marriage in these terms, I mean to say that Brown v. Board of Education declared “separate but equal” to be unconstitutional.  And whether or not anything will every again be “just like” this nation’s “colored only” segregation is irrelevant. The legal precedent is arguably applicable to any myriad of situations.

So, I guess what I’m saying is this: Let’s keep our legal and moral arguments distinct. This distinction will not hinder our moral argument for legalizing same-sex marriage. First of all, because there’s no need to pretend that any injustice has to be exactly like racial segregation in order for that injustice to be immoral. And second, with arguments that specifically address the issue at hand, we’ll be in a position to better respond to the fight at hand rather than to the fight of 50+ (or a century-and-a-half+) years ago.

And I know that this whole post is relevant to pretty much nothing that’s happened in the most immediate news cycle, but it’s something that I’ve been tossing around in my head for a long time. Semantics, semantics, there will always be a special place for you on this blog. And in my heart.

Why does Shepard Smith Hate America?

Take-away from this clip:

Shep:

Of course, we know the problem is — we know what this is, though, Cliff. This isn’t about what’s torture. What this is about is a series of dots which people are now mentally connecting in a backward fashion — If there was torture, that’s a crime. If there was crime, there were criminals. Who ordered the torture? That’s the problem. It’s political. And the Right is going, “Get away from George Bush and his administration! It’s over. Remember, look forward! Remember, look forward!”

But later — and this is even more interesting — after saying time and time again that well, yeah, obviously no one likes torture, but what we’ve done isn’t technically torture, it’s just “harsh” treatment, so, you know, whatever, it’s all cool, May says this in response to the assertion that even John McCain opposes torture because it doesn’t work:

They were using torture on John McCain to force a false confession. We’re not talking about torture for confessions. We’re not talking about it for punishment or revenge. We’re talking about it to get information to save American lives.

Which of course means that even this tool knows that what we did was torture. If he believed the bullshit he was spewing about waterboarding not being torture, he’d have said, “I agree with John McCain that torture isn’t effective, which is why we don’t do it.” Instead, May responded by pinpointing the situations in which torture is effective. Which only serves to illustrate that even the supposed torture-deniers know what we’ve done.

(And P.S., just because something is effective doesn’t mean it’s legal. Stealing money would be an effective way to pay my rent, but they don’t actually let me do that. Douche.)

Preaching for Beating?

So, Krystal really wants me to start a “I read OneNewsNow so you don’t have to” deal or whatever. The thing is, I don’t. I read OneNewsNow because I apparently hate myself and like hitting things (ok, not really, but almost). And I don’t have the time patience to actually pick apart everything OneNewsNow reports for us.

But, today, I must respond to this. Apparently, these supposed “hate crimes” are tricksy and bad for you! (Note, OneNewsNow has this thing with parenthesizing whatever it likes to pretend is fake- i.e., “homosexual ‘marriage.’”) Anyway, this is what I find here: Andrea Lafferty of the Traditional Values Coalition wants to make sure you’re aware that the government will lock up your pastor if you beat up homosexuals! (Second note: OnesNewsNow and various other anti-gay groups never talk about “gays” and “lesbians,” they instead like to focus on sexual actions and always say “homosexual.”) But back again… This is what will happen! Your pastor will say something like, “We believe the Bible and we do not believe homosexuality is part of God’s perfect plan.” So, then, you, the hearer of your pastor’s message, will go out and, you know, kill some gay people. Perfect response to that message. AND THEN THE GOVERNMENT WILL PUT YOUR PASTOR IN JAIL.

Except not at all. (This is the point at which my head is about to explode from OneNewsNow-ism.) I have no idea how the ONN people came up with this. Their link makes no sense. Anyone who commits a hate crime against a gay person and then attributes his or her actions to some pastor’s talk about not accepting gays is simply an idiot. There’s no argument. Some white dude can’t kill a black dude and then have his racist grandpa sent to jail for the crime. Seriously. This isn’t news. It’s bullshit.

As an aside on your religion not accepting gays or lesbians or transgendered people, Jesus (I guess he’s the biggest target) never said anything about beating up your “enemies.” And, again, the Bible talks about him hanging out with such “sinners.” And, he didn’t tell them he hated them or was politically seeking their ruin or knew about their plan to wreck the “traditional” family. No. None of that.

And, that’s why I can’t read OneNewsNow for anyone. There’s nothing there but nonsensical fear of people who are different than you.

amazonfail and the new way forward

My now-delayed reaction to the #amazonfail flap discussed in my last post is this: The kinds of people who would concern themselves with systemic censorship and the kinds of people who do the bulk of their book buying on Amazon would seem to share very little space in a Venn diagram, which is why I’m surprised that this is getting so much attention. That is to say, the act of shopping on amazon.com itself serves as a kind of self-selected censorship.

Let me explain: Find some time this week to go into an independent bookstore, chat with someone who works there for a while, and then let that person hand-sell you a book. I guarantee you that you’ll leave with a book better suited to your tastes than the ones you’d be presented by Amazon Recommends. Because, the thing is, indie bookstores know indie publishers, and indie publishers tend to publish books that are a little off the mainstream, quirky, deviant, experimental, and often quite different from anything that Random House is doing. And all of us are quirky, deviant, etc., in some ways. So while Big Generic Book may pass the time without offending your tastes,  if you can find the right person to sell you the right Little Specific Book, chances are you’ll be a lot more satisfied.

And little and indie publishers rely on little and indie stores to do this. Because big and corporate stores won’t or can’t. Buying Tiny Indie Book from Amazon is good, but buying that same book from Awesome Indie Bookstore is better, because you’re not only supporting disparate literary voices, but you’re supporting the structure that props up those voices as well. What happens when places like Schwartz Bookshop in Milwaukee close up shop for good (for shame, Brew City, for shame) is that we lose one more outlet that devotes itself to good literature over the corporate business of books. And as these small stores fold all over the country, we’re left with ever-expanding conglomerates that cast an ever-shrinking net over the kinds of books that they’ll stock. Buying from Amazon instead of Main Street Books is self-censoring. When all we have left are Amazon and Barnes & Nobel, good luck finding any books with voices or ideologies that deviate from mainstream culture.

The Da Vinci Code, Harry Potter, Twilight – it’s great that people are reading, really — but should we all be reading the exact same book? I think that a populous with a diversity of knowledge and touch-points is a good thing. And that as the number of independently owned bookstores shrinks, we also lose visibility for less standard, less safe, less mainstream literature and ideas, and our culture becomes just that much more homogenized.

And, yeah, it sucks that Amazon was doing that bizzarro de-ranking bullshit, but when we effectively drive small bookstores — that serve as the obvious alternative to Amazon — out of business, can we really complain about Amazon’s business practices?

So here’s my suggestion: Find an IndieBound Bookstore near you. Go in. Buy some books. If you can’t find a bookstore near you, call one up — a lot of them will ship.

Also, if you’re in the Milwaukee area (as I know many of our readers are), you might want to check out A Broader Vocabulary. Milwaukee’s only feminist bookstore recently closed, and ABV is fighting to bring it back. Not sure what they’ve got coming up next, but they’re worth watching.

Anyway, forgive the soapbox, but this is kind of a big one for me. I get the convenience-factor of online shopping (believe me. I’m practically phone-phobic), but for this, the cost is just too high.