Interview with the Neo-Con

Sometime during the 90's...........

Back in the days when race was debated around the OJ trial, when feminism portrayed as a match between Naomi Wolf and Camille Paglia, and when the prospect of "another Vietnam" was written of as the paranoia of a few leftists. When Timothy McVeigh was the big name in terrorism on US soil. Back when most Americans were very secure in their belief that "it could never happen here" whether *it* was a number of things from a botched election, a serious economic meltdown, a major internal natural disaster, or a the threat of losing our Civil Liberties.

At that time, I was not particularly complacent. While not aware of what the future would bring, I was quite concerned about the environment and afraid that someday there would be "another Vietnam", but at the time had little to go on but a series of eerie hunches.

But back then in my pre-WTO protest adulthood, I did run into a series of college professors whose ideas I never realized would gain such power. Indeed, I was more worried at the time about the sociobiologists with their zeal to prove women not fit for full citizenship. But yet, they were a bunch you could not ignore or forget.

Only years would I come to know the significance of what I saw when dealing with a pack of neocon professors and neocon students.
Of course, part of that came from the fact that they were less than honest about selling their ideas to undergraduates and used a good deal of manipulation in the process. In retrospect that should surprise nobody. Often what they would do if you disagreed with their ideas was suggest that you were simply too "limited" or "provincial" or caught up in closed minded middle class morality to understand. It reminded me of certain Freudians who tried to paint everyone who disagreed with them as prudes who didn't want to hear about sex.
Among the students many of those who bought into the neo-con thinking were also great fans of Frank Herbert's "Dune" series (which has been posthumously increased by his son since). In both cases, I felt portrayed as a schmuck for suggesting that for all the problems of modern democracies, that replacing it with a bunch of scheming feudal elites wouldn't be a great trade. Such ideas according to this bunch were just corn-fed naivete. Of course, politics was all about deceiving the masses. Even as a first year biology student, I was able to point out several biological impossibilities in the stories. But that was also dismissed as closed mindedness. This crowd deemed such "mere details" as rather beneath them and best left to the "techies types" who would of course never grasp their master plans or have a real say in their grandiose master plans.

One consistent theme with the neo-cons was the idea that the ordinary person needs to be deceived. That people will behave irresponsibly if not kept in line somehow. One neo-con professor of political philosophy told me that to let people make their own decisions was tantamount to forcing them to have bad habits and watch TV 40 hours a week. In his mind the idea that people could control themselves was simply that they don't, and that to try and argue for anything different was childish and irresponsible.

In fact, both Sayyid Qutb the founder of the radical Islamist movment and Leo Strauss founder of neo-conservative political thought, believed that any people in a supposedly free society were in fact slaves to their own animal nature. And both believed that such persons are universally capable of committing extreme acts of brutality such as those committed by Gestapo, the Chinese Red Guard, or the My Lai masacre because having grown up in a democratic society left them with absolutely no internal moral compass and no ability to understand the difference between right and wrong. However, people with this "sickness" didn't know they were sick and are not capable of knowing how easily they could commit atrocities until they had done so.

Of course the irony of this is extreme seeing how both groups were so concerned about such brutality but advocated violence themselves. In fact, neo-cons see war as another necessity designed to keep the ovine gullible masses from going crazy.

"Are we at war with Eurasia or Eastasia, at the moment?"

Or something like that.

But perhaps the most important lesson in dealing with the neocons is that ideas matter and political ideas can often gain power faster than anyone ever dreamed.

Now as was in the case during the 90's, there is a bit of chaos in terms of idea. People will throw terms like "Socialist", "Communist", "Nazi", "death panel" and such. Of course, the neocons blamed this on liberalism and the dangerous chaos of democracy.

But nowadays I put most of the blame on a culture of manipulative political arguments which is fostered more by the political right if anything. However, it is of utmost importance to make sure the political ideas are taken seriously by progressives rather than basing everything on broad coalitions or attempts to poke holes in what the right is doing.

To accept anything less is to risk getting caught unaware of what might be coming down the pipe next.

Say Goodnight Readers!

Water Saving Tip 6: Skip the "Ethos" and Donate The Money

Lately, I've seen more and more people carrying around water bottles bearing the name "Ethos". I found this quite ironic. Indeed there is in my view, a certain Ethos surrounding bottled water. Namely an Ethos of unbridled consumerism, corporate control of natural resources, and unchecked exploitation of nature. But surprisingly, this claimed Ethos of this brand was ostensibly one of providing sanitary water to those who do not have it.

But I seriously question whether or not it is worth it. Bottled water is by its very nature endorses the idea that water is a corporate commodity rather than a human right.

Do people really buy bottled water because they sincerely believe that they are helping the poor of the world? If so they are grossly misinformed and mistaken.

One important question they need to ask themselves is how much of the money they spend on "Ethos" water is actually going to go to solving the world water crisis. According to their website every bottle of Ethos purchased will result in $0.05 going to provide water to those in need. This figure doesn't surprise me given the basic realities of running any business or large venture. But all the same, when I looked at a bottle of "Ethos" next to a bottle of "Dasani" in a local store, I found that the prices were $1.85 and $0.95 respectively.

But many people are sure to protest. Isn't it better to give more money to an NGO like the one sponsors by Ethos, than to the Coca Cola company? Maaaybeee!

But I have a better idea.

1. Drink tap water.
2. Or if you are truly and honestly uncomfortable with that buy both a home and a pocket water filter, along with some bisphenol free water bottles to carry.
3. Make a conservative estimate of how much money you've saved.
4. Donate 25%, 50%, or 100% of it to one of the many NGOs in this world that deal with the global water crisis and/or other problems. Or maybe to an environmental group that deals with environmental issues.

Why are people so eager to embrace a product like Ethos? What's next? Will somebody market a Hummer with the promise that some percentage of the proceeds will go to some organization finding solutions for global warming?

But for those of you desperate to buy a product that will help save the earth, you likely will have an interesting new option in the near future. It turns out that some companies trying to make algae fuel commercially viable, are diversifying into food products.

That's right food products made out of algae. With a recession and difficulty getting bank credit they have to start selling something made from their algae in order to build the facilities they need to commercialize algae fuel.

Of course, those of us who grew up on 70's and 80's portraits of ecocide perhaps had the expectation that we'd always have to filter and bottle our water-or perhaps even recycle it from our sweat and urine. That drinking from the taps would be a luxury rather than a form of thrift.

Well, plenty of predictions made in the 70's and 80's turned out to be wrong. So don't worry about mysterious foodstuff marketed as coming from algae (it isn't just a cover for something else!!). Bon appettite!

Say Goodnight Readers!!

The Dolchstosslegende Returns Home

In Ursula LeGuin's 1974 science fiction classic "The Dispossessed" the fictional philosopher, revolutionary, and founder of a planetary syndicate Laia Aseio Odo once said that "True Journey is Return". Of course, you could more simply attribute this quote directly to LeGuin, but the concept nevertheless is one that has been understood throughout the ages by religious, pilgrims, archaeologists, sailors, and tellers of tales from Homer to Tolkien. Or for that matter, anyone who has in their life time ventured not just "there and back again" as Bilbo Baggins described his adventures but moved between locations more than once.

A romantic idea indeed. But sometimes "amazing journeys" back home again, involve matters that are anything but romantic. Indeed what is arguably among the ugliest and most destructive forms of collective and politically motivated slander has found its way home back to its native land.

Like a less than penitent prodigal son gone back for succor, the Dolchstosslegende has through an unlikely journey that piles layer upon heaping lay if irony, returned home again. And those who know it's destructive history, can only look upon this development with a great deal of trepidation. Because the results were not good last time the Dolchstosslegende took hold in the Germany.

For those who haven't read my previous posts or any other sources about the Dolchstosslegende, the word literally means "dagger-stab legend" in German, but is often translated as The Stab in the Back stories. Basically it refers to the belief that the "fatherland" didn't loose the war because the a victory couldn't be procured against the other side militarily or politically because of internal factors. Which is to say that the war was lost both because the population at large failed to rally behind the war effort sufficiently (ei "Support the Troops") and because certain suspect elements of society actively sabotaged the war effort. In Weimar Germany these suspect elements were communist, socialists, labor unions, but above all the Jews. But in other well known social contexts the scapegoats were the hippies, the liberals, the draft dodgers, the protesters, and Jane Fonda.
In recent years there has been some growing recognition about the extent to which stories such as WWI Veterans getting spat on by Jews and Communists (sound familiar anyone?) fueled the rise of Nationalist Socialism in Germany during the 1920's and early 1930's.

In an age when an honest accounting of history, is becoming an ever more precious thing, I was shocked to see Jerry Lembcke (as much a scholar of the Dolchstosslegende as there has ever been), has pointed out that the these stories have taken this disturbing homeward journey. My first thought on reading the article "No Parade for Hans", was to hope that this was just a veiled warning to anti-war Americans and that the Germans themselves aren't actually going to buy into such rhetoric, as it has such a sinister and -dare I say it-evil history in their country. But upon reflection I couldn't help but wonder a series of other things.

1) How far exactly is this depoliticization of the issue going to go?

2) Did this article talk about the German reaction to WWII as "opposition to most war" in such pathological terms to convey that idea that all such opposition is pathological?

3) Does even the Holocaust counts for almost nothing in the conviction of that the most important thing is always to "support the troops" and say little else?

4) Why can't the German reaction to their own history been seen as a rational response to a terrible thing?

5) Are people losing their sense of that history or are some pundits of our day truly trying to convince people to suspend all moral scruples in favor of wanting a guaranteed compliant population during wartime?

6) Wasn't and aren't that perversion/suspension of basic morality a major part of what Nazism, neconservatism, and the Dolchstosslegende all ask(ed) of the citizen?

7) Why is so little room in this story given to the variety of opinions that different veterans may hold? And why does it occur to so few that many anti-war veterans in particular may not even want some victory parade?

8) How many people even notice the running assumption that ordinary people have no say in whether or not their government initiates a war under the new rules? Indeed, people are always told that the war is being waged in their name, and that the soldiers are fighting for their sake, and yet public opinion on the war is increasingly seen as irrelevant. Or even a potential source of disobedience if enough ordinary people aren't so sure that the war is really for their benefit or the nation's. Why have so many Americans forgotten their high school civics class?

It's been said that Hollywood movies often put historical periods through a contemporary lense. I can't help but thinking of how towards the end of the Bush era Tom Cruise playing a dissident Nazi officer said "North Africa is lost. You can serve the Fuhrer or you can serve Germany. Not both." And this from the actor who has played both a Top Gun pilot and Ron Kovic. Can it be that Americans who were once horrified and mystified so much by Nazi Germany can now more easily understand a nation that was led to horrific, unspeakable things by stories of a war effort stabbed in the back and troops spat upon?

Ultimately, this begs the question of exactly how low those who promote the Dolchstosslegende (American, German, or otherwise) are truly willing to go. If they are willing to low-ball the Holocaust and the forces that helped bring it about to support their own version of history, what else are they willing to distort, minimize, or even lie about?

Say Goodnight Readers!

Mrs. President

In 2008, the Democratic party came closer to nominating a female Presidential candidate than any major US political party ever has. I happen not to think she would have been a very good candidate, but more on that later. In my mind, this is clear evidence that our society is as ready to elect a woman as President as it ever will be short of actually doing it. (And I was ridiculed for saying much the same thing about a black President as of 2005.)
The question now is merely one of when it will happen and who it will be.

One important starting point is the fact that feminist reactions to her, are likely to be varied and unpredictable. Feminism never was about unconditional gender solidarity, especially where elected officials are concerned. One example of popular misconceptions on this point, are the recent claims that Sarah Palin is "redefining feminism". No she's not. Feminism is as Gloria Steinem is so fond of saying "simply what the dictionary says it is" namely the pursuit of full legal, societal, and economic equality for the sexes. One cannot redefine feminism but merely present a case as to how one's agenda or actions fit in with this program. And Sarah Palin's case is highly questionable at best, as it lies somewhere between that of Camille Paglia and Phyllis Schlafly. Indeed anyone who argues that because Palin is a successful woman that she's automatically a feminist has forgotten that Schlafly was also a successful lawyer.

Indeed not every female head of state has been a staunch promoter of women's rights. Golda Meir in particular was infamous for quotes to the tune of "Women's liberation is a bunch of foolishness." Margaret Thatcher while not overtly anti-feminist in the same way, was generally lukewarm at best. Often she claimed feminism had nothing to do with her success and supported policies such as indifference to high unemployment which were generally not good for women's advancement-or the society in general.

So it can be assumed-without assigning blame or charges of hypocrisy-that whether a female candidate gets support from feminists will depend on both the candidate and on the opinions of different feminists. During election 2008, there was a lot of talk about the "dilemna" of choosing between a black man and a white woman-often talking as if gender and skin color were the only relevant facts about either candidate. To this feminist the *correct answer* was to make a decision that was not based on either gender or skin color, and I ended up backing Obama in the primary and general election. I will say that despite all the talk of the "white female" vote in that election Ms. Magazine was fairly neutral on the Democratic Primary and utterly opposed to John McCain and Sarah Palin in the general election. It is worth mentioning however, that contrary to popular stereotypes Ms. Magazine enjoys a more diverse readership than most "women's magazines". Not to mention a whole list of other issues feminists tend to care about (even if not all share the same opinions) such as Iraq/Afghanistan, global warming, health reform, workers issues, the economy, education, social security, civil liberties, the environment, and more.

Another major issues regarding a female President, is that for nearly 2 decades the very concept has become all but synonymous with a particular woman, however she may have gone from first lady to Senator to Secretary of State.
In my opinion this is mostly not a good thing. Hilary Clinton's areas of popularity simply doesn't look very good on an electoral college map, and therefore it is questionable at best that she could win. One bottom line in this situation is that most people who hated Bill Clinton also hate Hilary. And not everyone who liked Bill Clinton likes Hilary.
Is misogyny a factor in this?
Probably. But it isn't the whole story.
During the 1990's Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and other right winged media got a huge amount of mileage out of the anti-Clinton cottage industry. And in part because of them a massive level of right winged media and social infrastructure was built, which made it all but impossible for any dissenting voices to be heard.
Another feminist angle on this is whether or not it is wise elect a former first lady for that role in our history, let alone pin all hope on her.

It is certainly true that Hilary Clinton does have a certain number of core supporters. From my own anecdotal experience most of them seem to be women of a certain age (late silent to mid baby boom generation) who feel a certain solidarity with her. Much of it seems to be based on life experiences. Most of these women despite all the hype did not seriously consider voting for McCain out of spite, or as Tim Wise suggested as a form of "white racial solidarity". And nearly all were insulted by the suggestion that Sarah Palin was a worthy substitute.
No. This supporters were/are better than all the media with the usual dismissive talk of them joining McCain, being "racial loyalists first" or being the same group who liked Sarah Palin will every likely acknowledge.
Such genuine solidarity is impossible to argue against directly. No matter how much patriarchal society may hate to acknowledge it as anything above petty spite in women. And no matter how much younger feminists by and large see things differently. But all the same, it is unlikely to win the day in 2016.

But too often the main reason that Hilary Clinton is seen as the "obvious" choice if the Democrats were to run a woman for President, is the assumption that there is "nobody else".

And have they learned nothing from the past elections? Surely the experience of the 21st century and before shows us that always picking the person who has been the "obvious choice" for years, is no sure strategy for victory let alone the only way to go.
Al Gore was considered an obvious choice for Democratic Nominee throughout the 90's, and John Kerry was nicknamed "JFK" at Yale. However almost nobody outside of Arkansas heard of Bill Clinton as of 1988, and before 2004 Obama was just another new Senator. Nor did many people outside of Georgia know much about Jimmy Carter when Nixon was in office.

So it would be folly to assume that just because nobody can name any possible female candidates besides Hilary Clinton (or Sarah Palin on the Republican side) doesn't mean that none exist, or that other hopefuls might not emerge at any time.

It may happen sooner than you think.

Say Goodnight Readers!

Biophilia and The Once and Future Predator Beast

These days it has become fashionable to suggest that biophilia or love or nature or biophobia or fear of nature, is the result of correct vs. corrupt socialization or education.

According to this view largely pioneered by David Orr in the 80's children will learn to fear nature if they are taught about serious environmental problems prior to high school age. And the result will become contempt of the natural world or insistence on viewing it as nothing mroe than a resource. Instead, this view suggests children should simply be given hands on projects or taken into the woods without much adult comment, in order to create "genuine environmental stewards". Increasingly, proponents of environmental literacy are influenced by this view.

In addition many "alternative" schools of thought such as Montessori suggests that kids should if possible, not know about political or global problems, until well into adolescence. According to this view if "political" parents don't wait for the right developmental moment to talk to their kids about things like war, world hunger, climate change, poverty, and other serious issues they will grow up to be detached cynics who can't bring themselves to care about anything.

But is this view correct? I decided to start by asking somebody with a lot of experience in education: my mother. She felt from both decades of teaching experience and a background in child development that such views were "simplistic". That there was no formula style of education guaranteed to make all the kids grow up to be environmentalists. Or concerned about other political issues for that matter.

So where does this view come from? Mostly the answer lies with research done in the 80's which found most environmental activists and scientists remember positive experiences with nature as children. However, I can't help but think that for every such person, there is also an avid outsdoorman who listens to Rush Limbaugh and scoffs at global warming.

Other people argue that human beings are innately biophilic such as E.O. Wilson. Many proponents of this view argue that this is simply because humans evolved in the natural world and consider it home. On a more cynical note some people argue that biophobia is natural or at least honest, considering how people have achieved a higher life expectancy in a modern industrial setting, you'd find in a Stone Aged tribe.

However a more provocative theory exists. That while humans may at one level love outdoor settings, that they are also seen as somewhat scary for a reason. And that reason involves an aspect of our evolutionary history, that many people don't want to accept. That our ancestors weren't "Man The Hunter", but largely a prey species. After all, look at the extent of predator imagery in horror movies, in children's fairy tales, in religion, and above all in war stories and war related rhetoric. After all, why is it that people tend to fear animals with sharp teeth to a degree that far outweighs the actual risk of being killed by one? Why have cats inspired so many extreme reactions from humans ranging from being worshiped in Egypt (something they seem to feel entitled to!!) to associated with the Devil or evil spirits in many other cultures? Could some of the hostility towards nature come not from a corrupt socialization or pure greed, but an unwillingness to acknowledge any human vulnerability towards nature?

Could it be that the correlation between *hawkish* politics and refusal to acknowledge problems like global warming or natural disasters, is not purely accidental? Many evolutionary psychologists, however are reluctant to take the role of predators in human evolution or our current behavior seriously. And if largely feline predators shaped our species in a way that was crucial to the development of war, could it also be more than a coincidence that so many militaristic leaders throughout history such as Napoleon, Hitler and others were known to hate and/or fear cats?

But the issue here is human love of nature. Could it not be lurking somewhere in our consciousness that nature of course provides food, water, and basically life. We know it can be beautiful. But watch out you never know what might be lurking!! A tiger! Shark! Wicked witch! Zombie! Shark! Something that is going to eat you! Could it be that in order to truly address human attitudes towards the environment that we may not just have to address rational risks and economic needs, but also a sort of innate ambivalence? A mindset that is drawn to nature and sees it as home, but also can't help but wondering what lurks behind the trees/bushes.

Either way the hidden role of predators in the phenomena of biophilia/biophobia seems to be an underexamined question. And *food* for thought.

Say goodnight readers!

Remembering Armstice Day

Happy Veterans Day Everyone!

Of course in much of the world it's Armistice Day today. And it used to be in the United States until 1954, Congress declared that the holiday would be changed to Veteran's Day. Why was this done?

In theory to recognize all veterans rather than just those of WWI. But this of course raises some of it's own questions. Was Armistice primarily about honoring WWI veterans or was it more? Or was it more about remember the end of WWI in its entirety, the living and the dead? Could the old Armistice Day have been extended to a celebration of all peace treaties where a war has come to an end? If Congress wanted to create a Veteran's Day, was it necessary to replace Armistice Day in order to do so?

I admit, that I'm taken a bit by some of the things done around the world in celebration of Armistice Day. For example many parts of the world a two minute silence is observed at 11 am. Why can't we in the US, share this with the rest of the world?

Apparently much of the change was motivated by the desire of some WWII veterans to "get their share" of what they perceived as a holiday for the WWI set. Of course, creating a "all veteran's holiday" was not a bad idea in itself-much as some people complain about too many holidays in the US. But I do question the perception of those WWII veterans who saw the Armistice Day as something that was *for* WWI veterans. In fact, it was more than that. It was a Remembrance of all those involved living and dead on an international basis. And also of the peace which ended it.

In today's world it would seem strange to have a remembrance for a war that most at the time felt was essentially over nothing. These days it is often seen as an insult to even suggest that might be the case. But in past generations, many people felt differently. Maybe it was partly because "The Great War" was believed to be the "war to end all wars" rather than the first in a sequence. (Which officially only goes to 2, but where many speculate about 3, 4, and even 5.)

However, one thing that become painfully apparent is how little WWI, is seriously remembered except as a prelude to WWI. And how it's legacies have never been taken seriously. For example people often talk about the Vietnam generation as having WWII veterans for fathers, but less is said about the generational relationship of the many Korean Vets and other member of the "Silent Generation" with their parents who lived through WWI. A lot is said about how during the early buildup of the Nazi Empire, that people who were reluctant to engage Hitler militarily had an "isolationist" mentality. But little is said about how fresh the memories of WWI were at the time. How some of the blame can be placed on WWI era propaganda about how the Germans were gassing prisoners. Or thd fact, that supposedly rearming was not in Germany's economic interest and nor were any additional war. Which is to say, that the conventional wisdom about how and why nations become aggressive CONTRIBUTED to the tendency to not take Hitler or Nazi ideology seriously. And how fundamentally those same paradigms have not changed much in terms of how geopolitics is analyzed.
Other overlooked realities involve talk about support for the Vietnam War by age. Often we are taught to think about it as young spoiled baby boomers opposing the war, unlike their wise parents who had been so hardened by WWII and The Depression. But in reality, support for the Vietnam War was higher among those under 30 than those over 49. Looking at the figures presented, those over 49 would have been born by 1916 in 1965, and by 1922 in 1971. I don't know what the breakdown of age cohorts would be within that older group, but I can't help but wondering how the many still living WWI veterans looked upon the Cold War and Vietnam War as it started, turned sour, and eventually left a nation profoundly disillusioned. I've never found much on the topic. And sadly, since the number of living WWI veterans is now down to three, I fear it may end up another largely untold and perhaps overlooked story.

Perhaps the bottom line as to why Veteran's Day ended up replacing Armistice Day (as opposed to finding another date for Veteran's Day), is that American society both in the 1950's and now, is much more willing to celebrating the making of war, than the making of peace. And that's a shame. Especially in these times, when Americans could have shared that 20 minutes of silence with so much of the world.

Say Goodnight Readers.

Whose Patriotism Would You Question?

Today, I'm going to talk about a major double standard in American society. But this one unlike those involving skin color, gender, and even class by and large goes unnoticed and unquestioned. This double standard is about political views, and goes to the heart of how love of one's country is seen is contemporary-especially post Vietnam War-America.

Of course, there's been a lot of talk over the past three decades, probably too much talk, about the so called "white working class Republicans". Why too much talk? Because above all, it's a bit of a Red Herring. Sure it is possible to find poor and working class Caucasians who vote Republican, but they are in reality a small minority. As statistician Andrew Gelman demonstrated very well in his book "Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State", voters in nearly every state and demographic become more likely to vote Republican as their incomes rise. However, this increase is simply much steeper among whites than minorities, among Red State voters than Blue State voters, men than women, rural than urban, and among heavily observant Protestants than everyone else. It is certainly true that many blue collar voters are do in fact vote Republican against their economic interests and that many liberals are well off or even rich-also against their economic interests. But both of the above represent visible minorities rather than the norm. After all, if 70% of all low income white voters are primarily democrat and if George Bush got 60% of all high income voters, the minority 30% and 40% will still amount millions of people-plenty enough to feed the common stereotypes if one is determined enough!!! But on the whole most of the conventional wisdom over how income, education and religion influence American voters should probably be thrown out with the morning trash.
The differences between "liberals on the coast" and those with "heartland values" is not a class struggle so much as a regional difference between people who are mostly middle to high income.

Now we've gotten the idea of class resentment out of the way, as an explanation:Why is it that so many people would question the patriotism of anti-war protesters without knowing their intentions? But yet, the same people would take for granted that the much talked about "guys with Confederate flags" are the most patriotic Americans of all-despite any reactionary politics-even though that flag symbolized an attempt to succeed from the United States? I've thought about this a bit, and could not escape the conclusion that this is either about regional power struggles or it is about a double standards that systematically finds ways to judge the right as more patriotic than the left.

"Wait a minute!" some readers may say, "Aren't Southerners often unjustifiably labeled as ignorant, backwards, or racist?". The answer to this is "Yes. It happens all the time." Sometimes even very progressive and/or educated Southerners are misjudged completely. Regional conflicts often do cut both ways. However, this might not be a purely regional conflict. After all, Confederate flags have become common in places other than the former Confederacy. I've been told by multiple sources that the Confederate flag is much more common in much of Pennsylvania than in most of the South. Personally, I didn't see much of it, during a brief time period spent in Georgia, but have seen it all over the place in Washington towns-not too far from notoriously liberal Seattle.

So if the Confederate flag is no longer confined to regions of the US that were once a part of the Confederacy, what exactly is being asserted against "political correctness", liberalism, and "big government"? For many the answer to this is simple: racism. But is it that simple?
Often the flying of the Confederate flag DOES raise some very emotional debates from the racial angle. But even when this happens nobody decides to question the patriotism of conservative white males in the way that anti-war protesters are ASSUMED to at least be a "less patriotic" class of Americans. And when people are called out for not only flying the stars and bars, but also doing other things that romanticize the Southern cause, such as claiming that their favorite book and/or movie was "Gone with the Wind", generally their patriotism won't be questioned even if their racial sensitivity is. Could it be that there's is a certain ideological bias and not just a regional one? Probably considering how rarely Southern or Texan accents are shown on TV, movies, or in the media. And most likely that ideology would tend to involve certain things like relative hawkishness, a distrust of big government, contempt for liberals, boosterism for "traditional" family values, and so on.

In fact, sometimes the inequity in how Confederate flag flyers and "Gone with the Wind" lovers are treated compared to protesters goes deeper than that. It is not unusual for diversity training as it exists in some segments of the left to portray Confederate flag flying or enjoying "Gone with the Wind" as "typical of white people". And any white person who grew up in a family/community where none of this is the norm will often be told how blind or sheltered they are and even firmly told not to "put themselves above" the guys with the Confederate flag. So in the context of diversity training anti-war protesters are often told not to put on any snotty airs about being less racist than those who express some level of "Confederate pride" or "rebel pride", and that yes of course, they are just as racist if not more so. They are just too lacking in self-awareness to see that what they think is greater tolerance is really just an uppity look down attitude on more open working class whites.

And yet, the minute the context shifts to the topic of patriotism they are automatically labeled as "lesser" Americans. And told that they "failed" to appeal to the "guys with the Confederate flags" because they supposedly didn't fly the American flag quite enough.

However, having been to a number of protests I can tell you that American flags actually are a fairly common feature. And no. The overwhelming majority of them are NOT burned, defaced, or presented upside down. Of course, some people have suggested that we should replace a number of other symbols with the stars and stripes. Among those things include the UN flag, Peace Symbols, images of Iraqi people and/or their suffering, signs, slogans, and even the rattlesnake with the "Don't Tread on Me". Also many suggested getting rid of the puppets, the street theater and costumes used for political commentary, and even the bandannas some people bring in case there's tear gas.

So should a protest look like a 1970's Nixon rally? One important thing to consider is that these rallies are not just watched by "Middle America", but by people all over the world. And if the anti-war movement presents itself as only concerned about American death, that could look less than empathetic towards other people around the world. And it is. At this point we unelected an administration who horrified, enraged, and even scared large number of people around the world with this behavior. And in many other countries people who will be watching these protests in the US, are also seeing much more of the carnage in Iraq than is typically shown on US television.

Perhaps the solution to a lot of public perceptions about anti-war protests is that perhaps more people should just try and see a few for themselves. After all, the whole society has been filled with images and stereotypes since the 70's. And what better way to replace stereotypes than a little reality.

But either way, we'll think about replacing the peace symbol when The Confederate flag is no longer sold as a bumpersticker.

Say Goodnight Readers!

Persistance of the Classics and Why They Really Matter

Hi Everyone!

Today I'm going to talk about an issue where for the most part what most people assume has turned out to be wrong. All long as I can remember, there has been talk about how young people just didn't appreciate fine literature anymore. And in a way, this post is setting the ground to write about my own experiences with neo-conservatives before we took them seriously.

Certainly the idea that interest in classic literature is one the decline has been around since 1951, when Ray Bradbury wrote the book "Fahrenheit 451", but my guess would be that it goes back further than that. However, the astonishing thing about Ray Bradbury's own view of his book is that in his mind the story was not about censorship. This came as a surprise to many readers of the book, who saw the very idea of firemen burning books with or without the owner's consent, the constant wars, and the fact that people who memorized books have to live on the Lam as hobos, as very clear indications of social repression. Yet, Bradbury says that despite having written in the McCarthy era, that the book was about how television would destroy all interest in literature and turn people into a bunch of narrow minded morons. That he NEVER had any real concerns about censorship per se. However, this picture of very violent social repression where the problem was not a dictator but a sort of "tyranny of the majority" where no dissent is tolerated, and where ordinary people are both so ignorant and so out of control that they can't even see their own condition or their own brutality falls right in line with neoconservative political theory.
Although to my knowledge Ray Bradbury has no direct connections to any neo-conservative organizations, and while much of his iconoclastic romanticism would put him at odds with the harder neo-con political thinkers such as Leo Strauss, William Kristol, or Harold Bloom, there is a common set of assumptions involved. Basically the assumption goes that codes of human behavior are a fragile thing and can easily be disrupted or destroyed by bad ideas, or even more openness to imagery, technology, and such than "the masses" can really handle. Furthermore, that our basic humanity and the ability to recognize atrocities depends on either full inculcation into these finer things in life, or some form of social control. And that a human being without either a very conservative style of education or strong social constraints would be capable of committing terrible atrocities without knowing that they were wrong. That ordinary citizens who had not committed these crimes as of yet, and maintain that they would not slaughter, gas, or torture simply lacked the self-awareness to know how readily they would do so.
This may sound crazy, and it is. But several key architects of the Bush administration including Karl Rove as well as the heads of PNAC, all believed in these theories. In their minds the most dangerous tyranny was the result of a society that was too open as far as free speech and freedom of thought. And loss of interest in fine literature was one of the troubling early symptoms of this decay.
As a youngster who was at the same time very taken by both "Fahrenheit 451" and Oliver Stone's "JFK" (which had just come out), I had no idea how much the the neoconservative ideas hinted at in the novel would conflict with the movie's idealistic notion that truth for its own sake mattered. And that is very much at the heart of why classic literature's demise has been greatly exaggerated. Let me explain.
In the 90's there were basically two camps as to why literature was "simply no longer appreciated". There were those who welcomed this change and those who did not. The reasons that the neo-cons were concerned has already been outlined. Some paleocons, moderates, and liberals lamented the loss of "fine literature". Some liberals shared this lament often blaming underfunded schools and social problems. Others say the "decline" in more neutral or even positive terms, saying that this was inevitable with a more diverse society. Some even advocated for throwing the "dead white males" out of the curriculum entirely.

And yet,

Early in the Bush years a unsuspected truth came to light: That the death of the classics has not just greatly exaggerated, but entirely wrong. And I remember reading this article and looking upon it as a rare tidbit of great news, in grim times. After years of hearing classics dissed as "dead white males" or having their supposed demise blamed on the "liberal agenda", it was nice to hear that through it all classic literature was bringing more profits to book publishers than they realized. How would a corporation not notice what was making them money? Part of the reason was the force of conventional wisdom. But part of it, is ironically it took newer computer technology for the figures to become apparent. I say ironically because it was the very technologies that were predicted to render classics anachronistic and "irrelevant" to young people, that have made it all possible. As younger member of Gen-X who relates well with Millenials, I can tell you that TV, movies, and pop culture have had a real role in attracting young interest in reading the classics. Furthermore, it was the internet and computer technology-another predicted literature killer-that alerted publishers as to how popular some of these novels actually are. And what I find even more impressive about these sales figures, is that they not only exclude academic/school publishing but have showed up in the context of the books having been around for if not at least a hundred years. Anyone who's browsed used bookstores can figure out that books that have been in continuous print for a long time are generally easiest and cheapest to find-and you even get a choice of multiple editions. Plus with so many students buying these books (but excluded from the sales figures) there is probably also a lot more people who already have a copy in the house than with a bestseller that just came out.
During the late 90's, I remember having to wait four months to borrow a copy of "Les Miserables" even though the local library had five copies of it.
Of course, a lot of people misconstrued this finding as a "revival" of interest in these books. But really the only thing revived is publisher interest in promoting them. The actual popularity has been going on under the radar for decades, at least. Some of my militant Latina feminist friends in the anti-war movement were skeptical of my happiness at the finding and suggested that this "resurgence" reflected a "return to dead white males" in neoconservative times. One rather dour woman suggested that it probably came down to money, grim economic times. That classics were generally cheaper on a per page/per pound basis than more modern titles. And that books written in the past tended to be "denser" and have a bigger "bang for page" in terms of both effort and reward. A few Russians I knew pointed out that during Soviet times people read the classics (Pushkin et al!!) simply because there were few modern fictional titles-and the Politburo liked it that way. And that American publishing in their view was starting to develop a similar quality in a hidden way. That beneath the large fancy bookstores with their beautiful wood decor, fake fireplaces, and mini cafes selling so many coffee confections that there are dramatically fewer titles than there were in plain old Waldenbooks back in the 80's-when said Russians came to America. Other the other hand many say that libraries offer much more than they did 40 years ago, and not just in terms of both classic, modern, children, young adult (much more sophisticated these days than in the past), foreign language, and other titles, but in terms of lectures, public forums, and more.

So how do we make realistic comparisons on these things? To start out one has to evaluate the claims and arguments as to what is desirable.

One claim I've debunked is the idea that young people "just aren't interested in these books anymore". Not as the result of technology, or TV, or school budget cuts, or feminism, or liberalism, or an increasing number of people who are "not of European ancestry". As for the last, they were saying similar things about Germans, Irish, Italians, Swedes, Poles, Greeks, Hungarians, and Jews not too ago. But what about the idea that books are better appreciated by people of the same color, national origin, ethnic background, gender, class, religion, cultural background, and/or sexual orientation as the writer? Or that Shakespeare is simply "not relevant" to anyone who isn't a middle class WASP male? Personally, consider these claims to be fairly groundless. It is true that some evaluation was in order for the recognition of authors who maybe were overlooked due to various prejudices and didn't get the recognition they deserved. But at the same time Shakespeare was once scorned for not speaking Latin. And Dickens was once looked upon as a low class radical. Some feminists have made an interesting argument that sexism and an unsophisticated concept of racism influenced the fact that "Huck Finn" is considered such a great American novel-despite recurrent campaigns to ban it- while "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is relatively ignored by comparison. But these sorts of debates are very different from arguing that writer and reader need to come from similar backgrounds.
For the most part these sorts of debates are healthy. Because I've concluded from the evidence that the classic endure not for lack of interesting contemporary literature, nor because of some deep need to glorify dead white males, nor because of nostalgia or commitment to neoconservative thinking. They endured the late 20th and into the 21st century for the same reasons they made it that far in the first place, which to say by being truly great works of literature. And they are in no danger of being rendered irrelevant by social or technological change nor interest in non-English speaking and non-Western classics. Ordinary people with a modicum of education ARE much more capable of appreciating literature for its humanity and the desire to understand worlds other than the here and now, much more than the panicking of conservative thinkers, nor any dismissive ideas about "relevancy" and identity politics, ever came close to recognizing.

Say Goodnight Readers!!

Water Saving Tip #5: Save the Ice Caps and Aquifers

That's right. After decades of being asked to save the whales and the tigers, and more, you are now being called upon to save glaciers and underground bodies of water. It has longed been theorized that the ability to store food was the ultimate lynch pin of human civilization. However, one of the ecology movement's most important insights is that food is water (often lots of it). And so far, our methods of storing and transporting are very limited in scale, and very expensive in terms of money, infrastructure, energy, and losses to evaporation. If you look at the distribution of freshwater on earth, a very high percentage of it however is "stored" either underground or in the form of ice.

Of course, glaciers have largely been looked upon either the visually beautifully casualties of global warming, or as synonymous with the purest water on earth. Of course, the consumers in supermarkets who buy "glacier pure" bottled water have most likely never been too close to an actual glacier. Real glaciers are often full of debris, dirt, pebbles, dead animals, and even pollution from far away. But what many people don't know is that glaciers are to a large extent nature's "water towers" with the snowmelt feeding many of the world's rivers. Some parts of the world such as India and parts of the United States are heavily dependent on ice melt for both human uses and the ecosystems. Restoring the glaciers may sound right out of science fiction, but artificial glaciers have in fact been used as "appropriate technology" in India. And if done on large scales they might not just serve as a water saving tactic, but might help slow down climate change. Basically the ice on the planet reflects sunlight, while rocks especially the ones with dark colors, tend to store heat from the sunlight. Physicists refer to this property as "albedo" or the propensity of materials to reflect light rays rather than absorb them-mostly as heat. And it can be a major factor in the temperature of a planet. So if ice caps and glaciers melt on earth, the planets albedo could drop and global warming would accelerate. And similarly more ice could cool the planet. This is the reason some people have suggested painting roofs or even rocks white, white topping streets and so on as either a way to cool cities, or even the planet itself. However, it is unlike that such technology could be a magic bullet if greenhouse gases are not addressed more directly.

Also groundwater has been found to be more than just a series of passive vessels that take in rainwater until it is removed. For example scientists have discovered that having a lower water table over a certain land area can influence the length and severity of droughts, even if they do not cause them per se. In the past it was taken for granted that depleting groundwater wasn't an ecological problem per se, because it didn't degrade the ecosystem but simply meant that the resource was no longer available. Now we know that reality is a lot more complicated. Also more recent studies shown that some methods of "water conservation" such as lining canals with concrete can decrease the amount of water penetrating the ground table. As can the placing of concrete and asphalt over many land surfaces, and in some cases the losses of certain animals such as prarie dogs. Another controversial measure to increase the amount of water underground is the concept of injecting highly purified sewage into the water-table. Somehow this idea generates more opprobrium than the amount of uncleaned sewage that gets into the groundwater table regularly, or the number of poorly maintained septic tanks all over America. Is the idea of recycled sewage the next thing people will have to "get over" for the sake of survival? Very likely.

But more important is the idea that groundwater far from being an inert underground mass, is in fact, deeply connected with other aspects of the local ecology, including the above ground flora and fauna, the soil conditions, and even the land/atmosphere interactions.

Say Goodnight Readers!

Absurdities of our Time: Part 4

When I look at the solutions proposed for alternative energy, one thing that stands out is how few options are being seriously considered, and how many are being relatively ignored. And in some cases at least, the ones that are getting the least attention are technologically the easiest to implement.

In the long run, I don't doubt the importance of algal fuel, photovoltaics, or other wild ideas such as VIVACE and thermo-electric cells. But what doesn't make sense is the lack of attention to multiple and highly effective solutions that can be implemented either immediately or in the short run, that are getting very little attention.

For example biomass gasification is very little different from coal gasification in terms of the technology involved, and coal gasification largely supplied Nazi Germany during WWI and South Africa during the Apartheid era. Yet most of the attention is going to technologies such as algal fuels and carbon recycling. And this is not meant to doubt the long term benefits of algal fuels and carbon recycling. But rather to suggest that maybe, we should implement now (not to mention in the 70's) what is and was backed by experience.

The same thing applies to the issue of solar electricity. Of course, I'm very happy that the photovoltaic "solar revolution" finally seems to be coming around. However, it's been mentioned on this blog that commercial scale solar thermal power plants existed in the first few years of the 20th century. Why with so much knowledge of fossil fuel issues, and so much anticipation for solar electric technologies, is there not a much wider utilization of solar thermal energy. And of course, in addition to hybrid cars, there is such a thing as a hybrid power plant: It uses solar thermal energy and combustion (coal, oil, biomass gasification, etc) either at different times and/or the same time to produce electricity. Not to mention solar water heating, commercial level solar steam production and other industrial uses for solar thermal energy, solar air cooling and refrigeration, and more. Perhaps an even more interesting possibility involves solar chemical power, in which many energy intensive chemical production applications are done with solar energy rather than combustion of fossil fuels, and/or massive amounts of electrical heating. PV are a great technology, but why such a narrow conception of solar energy? How about solar lighting during the daytime, where various innovations are used so that a wide variety of buildings can get most of their light from the sun even in during relatively cloudy whether or when the sun has only partially risen or has at least partially set. Many of these don't rely on windows, but use various "light pipes" with mirrors and lenses.

On the other hand, if we want to explore wild ideas, why not some of the wild ideas involving wind energy. Since wind energy is already somewhat successful at the level of basic tried and true stodgy old turbines shouldn't that be the type of energy in which we can put our eyes on the skies, both literally and figuratively? How about kite energy? Or solar-wind tower generators? Or high flying wind turbines? Why have both the micro wind and micro solar thermal industries gotten so little attention compared to rooftop photovoltaics.

And if photovoltaic (and perhaps soon solar thermal) cells are coming out as frustratingly slowly as the swine flu vaccine, put all the emphasis on rooftops rather than on putting them in arrangements that will maximize their exposure to sunlight?

Also it's no secret that much of the issue with renewable energy and a very high energy efficiency world is not so much the energy available or even the technology available to produce it, but also the issue of energy storage. And contrary to popular belief this isn't just a problem for renewable electricity, but also for combustion and nuclear efficiency. Basically it's very hard to run a nuclear reaction so that it produces "just enough" electricity to meet the current demand. And with coal or gas plants trying to find tune the combustion level for current needs can lower the overall energy efficiency of the plant and defeat the purpose. As a result a high percentage of electricity in the grid is wasted. And too often the popular solution has been to look for the "perfect battery" or hydrogen fuel. But little attention is paid to other options. Why not time the most energy intensive tasks including the powering of electric or plug-in hybrid cars so it occurs primarily at peak production? Or improve the amount of air pressure or flywheel based energy storage? And why have options such as nitrogen energy storage, or the concepts of zinc, lithium, or aluminium economies?

Why hang everything on hydrogen as the great big carbon free hope?

Ultimately the biggest lesson of today's problems is not to put all your eggs in one basket. Hopefully humanity won't make that mistake with renewables.

Say Goodnight readers!

Empathy in a Cynical Society

A couple days ago, President Obama paid a visit to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to witness the return of 15 war dead. When asked the President claimed that certainly such sights were going to influence how he sees the war in Afghanistan. While I don't know if Obama is going to be able to tie things up well in Iraq or Afghanistan or not, because ending a war with a decent outcome is among the hardest things a political leader can ever do. And because in our society there is a very strong faction and cultural attitude in many quarters, that plays into the idea that the US can achieve victories in these sorts of wars if only the country sorts of sticks together and doesn't show any "weakness" in the form of dissent within. Also the idea that ending a war constitutes a betrayal of the troops (ei. "Didn't let us win."), is deeply woven into post-Vietnam War America. Unfortunately, these factors are going to heavily influence what Obama is likely to accomplish and how portions of the public will react to it.

But looking at this reminds me of how certain debates are played out in America. One thing it brings to mind is the President's use of the word "empathy" in the context of choosing a Supreme Court Justice. Many peoples, especially those on the right, pounced on Obama for suggesting that empathy was an important quality. Indeed much of the debate about Sotomayor and her "wise Latina" comment boils down to a common idea in modern society: that empathy is entirely about having the same/similar set of life experiences, versus the competing idea that empathy is a sort of weakness-and is usually seen as "feminine". And indeed those are the dominant two assumptions in a society where cynicism runs rampant. Although science has found some unexpected correlates with empathy, most people hold more philosophical concepts of empathy. Some people either sincerely or cynically conflate this ability with a person who is very emotional, lacks reasoning abilities, and is often seen as weak. The other mostly cynical concept is the view that people can only empathize with those who are pretty much exactly like themselves, and to say otherwise is to talk nonsense. However, real world psychologists define lack of empathy as a mental illness, and the prevalence of such people in the human race creates a wide variety of problems from petty crime to local tyrants to genocide and so much in between.

Another thing that this President's reaction to seeing 18 caskets underscores for me is the contrast to his predecessor who often visited wounded soldiers and once brought a Thanksgiving Turkey to soldiers in Iraq, but who never considered the fact he might be wrong to have started the war in Iraq. Above all Bush never expressed any remorse over the uncounted numbers of Iraqis who died in his war. None at all. And many people blamed Bush's sitting out the war in Vietnam for this.

And yet, seeing 18 caskets appeared to have a very real effect on Obama, as hard as it is to determine how that will translate into action. While I'm making no predictions on that score, I doubt that John McCain would have reacted the same way. Although during election 2008, people tried to make so much out of his POW status. And those who knew the man was a hard core hawk with a terrible temper a special explanation was often sought, for why someone who had been in a war would be so eager to wage another one.

As I've written before, the last thing I would want to imply is that there are any easy answers here. But one thing is certain. In our cynical society, any concept of empathy that isn't either seen as a weakness or as an almost political "scorecard" is likely to be dismissed out of hand or even looked upon as insulting. In fact, I consider it a major commentary on our society that empathy was rarely seriously studied outside the area of gender roles, until an autism epidemic, an obsession with serial killers, and an increased awareness of the prevalence of sociopathic persons almost forced us to invest more serious resources in that direction.

So to what extent do we need empathetic leaders? Often of course, empathy has been considered a liability. And certainly, I spent as much time as anyone not paid to do so, making fun of Clinton's "I feel your pain" approach during the 90's. Perhaps more than most Republicans. But one thing we clearly don't want in a parent, police officer, mayor, CEO, or President, is the complete lack of response to humanity who has either held one or more of these positions or have at least been "considered" for them.

That much is certain.

Say Goodnight Readers

Fear of Crime

Hello Everyone!

I'd like to talk about the myth of "exploding crime rates" in our society and the consequences it carries. Recently, there was a lot of talk about a mother who let her nine year old son ride the New York Subway and received an immense amount of criticism for it. In my experience women who do things like walk or take the bus alone when it's dark are often criticized for it, as has been the case since the 90's-and probably a lot longer. Some parents will not let their children walk to school for fear that they will be kidnapped or assaulted.

Of course, driving in a car carries its own share of risks and therefore the issue largely boils down to risk perception. Yet many people largely ignore those risks, but let the fear of crime dictate their actions. This could be because we are wired to fear interpersonal violence, more than accidents or it could be because of the conventional wisdom.

And to many if not most Americans, the conventional wisdom is something like this. During the 1950's nobody really worried much about their personal safety. People felt comfortable leaving their doors unlocked and letting young children run errands for their parents. But sometime after the 1960's, things changed. People started to live in fear. Children could no longer walk to school and women could no longer go outside alone at night. Crime rates exploded, and the safety that had once been taken for granted, became a distant memory. And this view tends to predominate on both the left and the right.

Of course, the left and right never did agree on the causes. According to most conservatives the rising crime rates could be blamed on decline in the "traditional" family, lack on "old fashioned" concepts of child discipline including spankings or even corporal punishment in schools, working mothers, gay and lesbians raising kids, and of course a justice system that is "soft on criminals". The solutions in this view include harsh punishments for criminals often including the death penalty, stricter discipline for young people often including measures such corporal punishment in schools or instituting a universal military draft to insure that most young men (and in some cases young women) go through boot camp, and the promotion of "traditional family values" which can include discouraging gays from raising kids, discouring divorce, and even discouraging mothers from working outside the home. Criminals if they could be reformed at all, would only improve under harsh often physical discipline, and possibly religion. Robert A. Heinlein a conservative science fiction writer described a 20th century that fell apart because parents did not spank their child "even as babies", in a lecture made by a teacher to his students in the book "Starship Troopers" in which the teacher told a student that it was impossible for any human to develop a conscience if they hadn't been spanked as babies.
And historically most liberals have taken the view that crime is the result of bad life circumstances and deprivation such as poverty, racism, discrimination, abusive family lives, and such. In this view the solutions include things such as greater social welfare programs, spending money on schools and education rather than police forces or jails, promotion of more job/educational opportunities for the less fortunate, the dismantlement of racism and other forms of social discrimination, more public education in areas such as parenting or non-spanking forms of child discipline, and such. Also some versions of this view have at times claimed many/most criminals could be reformed or rehabilitated variously with work programs, education, psychological therapy or counseling, and in some cases prayer.

Of course after two centuries of liberals sometimes viewing conservative ideas about crime as callous and lacking sympathy for those unfortunate enough to fall into lives of crime, while conservatives have been known to look upon liberal view as softheaded, naive, and rewarding bad behavior.

But what would happen if both of these views were wrong?

That crime in America has NOT consistently exploded since the end of 1959, and has in fact dropped a great deal during the 90's, and has been dropping throughout 2009? That neither liberal, nor conservative, nor other theories about the causes of crime are terribly effective at explaining crime rates? Apparently that is our current reality.

One the whole comparing estimated and reported crime rates before the 1970's or so, to recorded rates in recent decades may be like comparing apples and oranges for several important reasons:

1) In the past police departments were often on the same page as city politicians in that they wanted to shoot for the lower estimates of local crime rates in order to make the community look good. In during the 70's police budgets became more influenced by perceived crime rates, and politicians found that exploiting fears of crime could be a way to get elected. This does not automatically mean that crimes were suppressed or fabricated. It simply means that estimates over large populations are not perfect, and that sometimes subjective choices are made over which one is the most reliable.

2) Often crimes were never reported in areas where the Mafia or KKK was powerful.

3) The installment of the 911 emergency number starting in 1968 (but it didn't reach some communities until the 80s) , along with the introduction of the National Crime Victimization Survey both added several crimes that were not reported to the police to the accepted crime statistics.

4) Some of the most dramatic increases in reported crimes in the 70's and early 80's involved rape, domestic violence, and incest. However starting in the late 60's the Second Wave feminist movement worked hard at encouraging women to report these crimes, to fight back, and to speak out against and the victim blaming/shaming attitudes that had prevailed for generations.

5) Modernization of statistical methods and the introduction of computers and more advanced communications.

6) Newer forensic methods made certain types of criminals (ei serial killers) easier to catch, and certain crimes easier to prove.

But whatever uncertainty might exist about actual crime rates in past decades, anyone who has seen the movie "Changeling" or read books like "Huck Finn" or stories about "The Old West" with a critical mind, can figure out that the past wasn't necessarily a crime free Golden Age, and that police corruption is nothing new. While we shouldn't ever take serious crimes like murder lightly, it clearly does no good to think that violent crime is particularly rampant or perpetually on the increase. It is true that the United States as a whole has a very high murder rate for an industrial nation, however this murder rate only applies to certain parts of the US, mostly in the Deep South. And that a recent decline in murder rates has shown a good deal of variation in different places.

Another interesting aspect of crime rates is that by and large what both liberals and conservatives have traditionally believed about crime rates both appear to be wrong.

See previously posted article.

In the 90's many people predicted that the decline in crime rates would reverse in the early 21st century because the number of young adults would increase. Yet with the coming of age of the hip hop generation, and the beginning of the Bush era, that didn't quite pan out.
So it looks like the children of working mothers and high divorce, who didn't face a universal military draft, and grew up listening to rap and hip-hop didn't turn into the violent homicidal maniacs, wanton thieves, and lost drug addicts that many conservatives feared. At the same time traditional liberal expectations that economic deprivation is a factor in crime have no been supported by a trend towards increased crime rates during economic hard times. The controversial theory in Freakonomics, which could be welcome or condemned by factions on both the left and right albeit for somewhat different reasons, that legal abortion lowered crime rates also doesn't fit the facts. Not only did this effect not show up in other countries, as the article mentioned, but also the increasing difficulty obtaining an abortion starting in the late 80's and early 90's, along with the high teen pregnancy rate in the 80's, should have led to a marked increase in crimes committed by young people starting in the past few years rather the the current decreases, if it were true. Another hypothesis advanced by some thinkers such as Lt. Colonel Dave Grossman that better EMS services and medical advances are creating an artificially suppressed homicide rate, and masking true levels of violence is also highly doubtful given the decline in other types of violent crime as well. Ideas suggesting that the levels of gun ownership cause or decrease crime, are generally not back up by any strong evidence. The notion that cultural attitudes are an influence could explain regional differences but not fluctuations in the national crime rate. Some might suggest that various political cycles or the "spirit of the times" could influence crime rates, but I've yet to see a clear working hypothesis that can be shown to fit the actual facts.

One of the things this situation reveals is that for over 200 years Western society has debated the root causes of crime in a highly politicized framework with surprisingly little basis in hypothesis testing, and beneath it all tantalizingly few clear working hypothesis that seem to explain much about crime rates. As an college student in the 90's, I was very strongly attracted to Ralph Nader's somewhat beyond left and right view, that contrary to popular opinion the poor did not commit the majority of crimes in America, and that the media failed to focus on corporate crime, white collar crime, and middle class drug abuse the way it did on crimes committed mostly by the poor. In the early years after 9/11, although no supporter of the Bush administration or its wars, I considered the link between the attacks on America and radical Islamic fundamentalism, to issues like world poverty to be questionable and the relationship to misguided US foreign policy to be at the very least less simplistic than was usually portrayed. In both cases, I found myself to be in the minority: assumed to be conservative by many leftists and seen as an iconoclast or a fool by nearly all conservatives.
Of course, in those days I was younger and relied mostly on facts and figures for this position, although they were far from uninfluenced by my own experiences. However, in more recent years, I've come to depend more on my own experience in life: Namely that basic decency among most people is much more resilient than liberal theories about deprivation and bad circumstances, conservative theories about the decline in values and lack of discipline, or iconoclastic Naderite views blaming the decline of civic values and the triumph of corporate selfishness, would have us believe. And the presence of malice and wickedness in some people is much more mysterious, than most of the explanations I've seen can do any real justice to.

But either way, I can see four possibilities with regard to explanations for crime rates:

1) That people will continue to debate the liberal/conservative frame of crime that has been in place since at least the early 19th century, even though it has little real value.
2) That a new set of theories with limited real world value will end up being hotly debated and politicized for some time-perhaps another 200 years!
3) That some new unforeseen model will arise that actually works, and if that happens, I doubt it will support either right or left wing politics in any neat and tidy way

But one thing is fairly clear. The realities of crime do not seem to fit the historical partisan framework. And any politician who uses fear of crime to get elected is operating on false premises. Improving job opportunities for the poor and funding schools are worthy goals, but not effective ways of reducing crime. Perhaps a better argument for creating opportunities for the poor and better school systems, is simply that they would benefit society and large numbers of people, most of whom were never likely to become violent criminals.

Equally important is bringing the public's perception of crime closer to the reality. Because a skewed perception has contributed to the public's reluctance to use public transit, abandonment of city center and urban sprawls, overprotection and lack of exercise among children, increased racial prejudice, the perception that women must avoid traveling alone and other social problems.

But in looking at the culture, I see some signs that the public might be more ready to engage in sophisticated discussions of crime than was the case in the past. TV shows such as "Cold Case" and "Law and Order" rarely portray criminals as sympathetic figures, but they tend to put the crimes in a historical or political context that reflects a largely liberal outlook. Newer crime films include portraits such as "Zodiac" with it's in depth character study of the people who were connected to the investigation of the Zodiac murders and how it affected their lives over two decades. And "Changeling" with deals very well with issues such as serial killers, a morally ambiguous portrait of the death penalty, police corruption, a feminist view of abuse of power, and a realist portrayal of children confronted with violence. These movies and others already deal with more multi-dimensional realities than the historical liberal/conservative dichotomies .

I'm confidence that our political discourse overdue for the same thing.

Say Goodnight Readers!

Desert Patriarchy: Global Warming and The Future of Progress

I'd like to wade into a rather thorny and potentially controversial topic today. One that raises more questions than it answers.

A number of observations and theories have suggested that human cultures based in the deserts tend to be more patriarchal, more fatalistic, more accepting of inequality, and tend to put more emphasis on military style "honor" than societal justice. So the questions I'd like to address here are whether or not those theories are accurate, whether or not they are relevant in the modern world, and what if anything they mean for human society and global feminism in the context of global warming, forest loss, and desertification. And what should be done about it.

The point of this piece is not to play alarmist, but rather to look seriously at the questions involved. If desert societies tend to be more patriarchal, is it possible that in a world troubled by climate change, forest loss, and desertification, that sexual equality may find itself on at the very least precarious grounds.

Of course, the observation that desert societies tend to be more patriarchal than the ones in forest, oceanside, and grassland areas, is nothing new. And there are different theories as to why this is the case. Some explanations simply point to the fact that closely related primates will behave differently in different environments. Many primatologists will point to the differences between the hierarchical, violent and patriarchal baboons on the harsh savannahs and the more egalitarian and relatively less violent bonobos living in much more lush forests. Of course, the savannahs are not deserts, but proponents of this view argue that primates simply become more patriarchal and violent from living in harsher environments. Of course, the main debate about this explanation is likely to center on the difficulties of going from comparing difference species to comparing different human cultures.

Another explanation for the tendency of desert societies to be patriarchal, is the claim that when resources are scarce it becomes more important to regulate fertility and as a result you see more stringent control on sexuality and marriage and more regulation on the females.

Of course, if these two explanations were the main reason it would be easy enough to say that they are not as likely to become an issue with global warming and forest loss. As serious as those problem are, humans now have modern tools to mitigate resource loss. And control of fertility should not require such stringent behavioral controls with the availability of modern birth control and family planning.

But what if the desert environment in itself does not promote patriarchal societies? Correlation doesn't always point to causation. Could it be that the development of patriarchy was not the result of the actual desert environment but of some historical circumstance that coincided with it? After all, many of the world's deserts lie in a sort of "desert belt" that crosses North Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Asia. And many desert societies that are not as strongly patriarchal or warlike such as the Hopi or the San, are found in deserts outside of the main desert belt.

Could it be that when when grasslands give way to deserts, that more egalitarian societies may also shift to more patriarchal and aggressive societies? Could this be the result of dramatic climate change, rather than an actual desert? Of course, history has generally not shown famine to cause a shift towards patriarchy in modern countries such as China, Ireland, Russia or Ethiopia. So what was the case in the prehistoric or ancient world may or may not translate to modern times. If the disruption of climate change lead to widespread warfare could that have led to a long term cultural shift in a more warlike and patriarchal direction? Could the epidemicity of war be a factor in this?

And while it would be hard to translate between the rise of patriarchy in the ancient world, and how modern humans would react to global problems, it is worth noting that many modern liberal people see patriarchy and militarism as a practical responses to social adversity, regardless of logic or the actual circumstances involved.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about the rise of patriarchy is how little we truly know about how it actually happened. And if we don't know that much about the origins, we might not be able to see a repeat of such conditions in the future, or on our changing and uncertain planet. But one thing is certain. Now we have the history to know about the evils of a patriarchal society. And while we may not know the preconditions, we can recognize the nature of the beast, and can choose to fight back against it. However, it could become the case that global feminism may increasingly have to operate in the context of global warming, forest loss, and water shortages. And that the consequences of those things on the culture could be worse than most have anticipated.

Say Goodnight Readers!!

Geo-Engineering: The Dilemna

There's been a lot of talk about where or not humanity should try to engineer itself out of global warming.

At this point the question isn't so much about whether or not humans should try to geo-engineer the planet, because unfortunately geo-engineering has started already. Most arguments against geo-engineering boil down to three basic ideas.

1) It's inherently immoral-
I would consider this a legitimate philosophical position. But the problem is that humans have already put the earth into a big unplanned geo-engineering project. As on Oregon teacher pointed out, "No matter what the outcome we're in the test tube." Some people might protest with a certain amount of the legitimately that not all humans are equally responsible. Certainly there are significant differences between countries, wealth levels, regions within the same country, and to some extent from individual choices. Also the leaders of certain industries such as the main US auto-manufacturers have made choices such as promoting big clunky cars, and working against public transit. Not to mention the unholy alliances between big oil, big coal, and the military industrial complex, which have consistently underrated any attempt to develop alternative or even low carbon energy sources.
However if not all humans are equally responsible for the problem, we are all stuck in the test tube. And often it's the poorest people who have historically been responsible for the least greenhouse gas emissions who suffer the most severe consequences of global warming such as hurricanes, droughts, and crop failure.
So if geo-engineering is immoral, unfortunately a geo-engineering fix for global warming wouldn't be the first experiment.

2) If we have a geo-engineering fix for global warming people will use it as an excuse to not cut greenhouse gas emissions.-
I admit a certain bias against that type of argument. Certainly there are people who think geo-engineering should be the whole solution, and that energy conservation, renewables, and low carbon energy sources needn't be explored. And I have no truck with them. But at the same time, earth may already be past the point where emissions cuts alone are enough. And some people carry this argument to the point of saying that humanity needs to experience the consequences of global warming, or even "bottom out" in order to have any real incentive to change. And frankly, I've never been a fan of "bottom out" style arguments being applied to large groups of people, including many who aren't yet born. Finally, I can't help thinking about scenarios where a degraded planet and low quality of life becomes "normal" for large numbers of people. Something which is found not just in eco-dystopian science fiction such as Soylent Green and Silent Running, but also in slums around the world and in drought ridden communities such as the one described by Xinran in her book "The Good Women of China".

3) The possibility of unforeseen consequences-
To me this argument is ultimately the strongest case against geo-engineering in order to stave off global warming. The Irish saying "Better the devil ye know.", may seem all to fitting with a look at history. Ozone depleting chemicals, DDT, endocrine disrupting pollutants, the introduction of rabbits to Australia, the removal of wolves from North America, introduction fire suppression, the Bhopal gas tragedy, and a long, long list of other cases that would lead one wonder about what sort of "side effects" could result from a geo-engineering fix for global climate change. Given the track record, one can't help but find the claim that adding particles to the atmosphere to reflect sunlight "shouldn't" have any unforseen effects on the atmosphere less than reassuring.

But that said, it should be noted that not all engineering fixes are equally high risk. Geo-engineering approaches can be as conservative as painting roofs white, and mass tree-planting, or as filled with unkowns as seeding the seas with iron, adding sulfur particles to the atmosphere, and putting shades in to lower the amount of sunlight hitting the earth at certain times.

Some of the arguments in favor of geo-engineering include:

1) Global warming is already happening and we may not be able to lower the amount of greenhouses gases in time to prevent earth from passing a tipping point, where the effects could become wild an unpredictable.-
Of course, the idea of a tipping point is somewhat uncertain. But there is little doubt that global warming is already here. Even some conservatives who object to drastic action have started to shift from arguing that global warming is non-existant to arguing that the consequences aren't going to be all that serious. Hence all the talk about "moderate global warming" in many new articles and even books. But the even with changes in greenhouse gas emissions we are already dealing with the amount of greenhouse gas that has been added to the atmosphere.

2) That geo-engineering can be implemented more quickly, than fundamental changes in the world's energy utilization. -
This may be true. However, questions must be asked about resource allocation and how much money that might go to a particular mitigating technique, might have otherwise gone to wind/solar energy, energy conservation, public transit, carbon recycling, development of newer 2nd/3rd/4th generation biofuels and new renewable energy concepts.

3) That geo-engineering will put most of the responsibility on the wealthier nations of the world, who are responsible for the most historical greenhouse gas emissions.-
This is no doubt true. But with some emerging economies such as China, conflicts over who should pay for what are inevitable. Other economic arguments have suggested that some concepts may create jobs. Another problem is that it could be used by some parties in poor or emerging nations as an argument to pursue a course of development that relies heavily on fossil fuel, and ignore the development of renewables, biofuels, and low carbon options.

Needless to say that the number of suggestions and concepts in geo-engineering are evolving and that not ideas are equally risky ecologically or equally likely to succeed. New ideas are being churned out all the time. In evaluating these concepts I would suggest some basic questions that would have to be asked if any attempts at geo-engineering are made.

1) Does it address all the effects of greenhouse gases or only temperature changes?
This is important, because some suggestions such as painting roofs white, white-topping streets, or putting up solar shades in space may address the issue of rising temperatures, but not deal with problems such as ocean acidification or the changes in plant physiology that can occur at higher carbon levels. So far we don't know much about the latter or the ecological ramifications.

2) Does it actually lower greenhouse gas levels from the atmosphere? Which ones? At at what price per tonne? How much energy would be consumed?
Needless to say that removing the offending gases from the atmosphere is the most effective way to solve the problem. That is assuming that we can do so in sufficient quantities to make a differences. And that is where the issue of price becomes important. The amount of energy used is important because otherwise you could end up defeating the purpose. Some examples of removal ideas include "artificial trees" in which various polymers are used to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and then are either buried in old mines and/or are reused after the carbon dioxide is either sequestered or recycled into new fuels. More basic suggestions include massive plantings of old fashioned trees, or the opinion of some atmospheric scientists that stricter controls on carbon dioxide emissions combined with some technologies that increase the amount of hydroxyl radicals found naturally in the atmosphere can decrease the amount of time that methane remains in the atmosphere. Additional low risk concepts include ideas such as carbon dioxide absorbing concrete, speeding up natural geological processes where carbon dioxide in absorbed into rocks.

3) What is the probability of ecological unknowns?
This is obviously the area that generates the most doubts. But it is safe to say that not all risks are created equal. The environmental risks of white paint used to paint roofs or perhaps white wash rocks or mounts in parts of the world can be understood for the most part by conventional environmental risk assessments used for any other paint. Carbon dioxide absorbed into rocks for the most part is likely to remain inert. But pressurized carbon dioxide stored underground could at the very least escape, and perhaps create the kind of natural disaster that occurred when Lake Nyos released a large carbon monoxide bubble killing both people and animals. Concepts that could involve a large number of uknowns would include adding sulfur or other particles to the atmosphere to lower incoming sunlight, or seeding the ocean with iron to increase the productivity of algae. In the case of the former we've already learned from problem with ozone depletion that messing with the atmosphere is risky business, and besides lower the levels of income sunlight could also affect the productivity of plants or even PV cells and solar thermal power plants. And the potential for unforeseen consequences of messing with the oceans are greater still. It has been suggested that raising algal productivity could result in fish kills, jellyfish blooms, or other ecological disasters. Or worse that much of the algae could decompose under anoxic conditions and be released as methane-which is seven times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide.

4) Are there other environmental benefits?-

Concepts such as planting trees speak for themselves. Mass tree planting might be severely labor intensive and may not be a total solution. But the benefits of trees as far as cleaning water, removing other air pollutants, preventing erosion, and providing various economic goods in certain places. Other suggestions with side benefits could include soil enrichment. The idea of mandating that a certain percentage (5%-10%) of algal oil or algal crude be injected into old depleted oil wells, could effectively provide a "ride" on the coattails of an industry that has promised to provide an alternative to oil and a method of cleaning water. More radical ideas have included creating rainforests in what are now relative wastelands or creating new coral reefs by adding old train cars into certain waters. In some parts of the Himalayas artificial glaciers are being used as a way of storing/gathering water for crops and trees. If this was done on a large scale it could provide some temperature mitigation much like white roofs, increase plant growth, and mitigate the costs of global warming.

5) How will it be financed? What sort of jobs will be created and where? Is it a one time shot or can it be done continuously?

Obviously these questions are likely to determine how "sustainable" the plan is economically, and how strong the political will to continue the plan will remain over time. On the other hand if negative consequences emerge, changing course could become unpopular among certain portions of the population.

6) Is it reversible if negative consequences show up?

In short the conversation might be shifted from if geo-engineering should be used, to what forms of geo-engineering are acceptable and which are not.

Say Goodnight Readers!