Cause everything is rent
While I continue to wrap up the spring semester (just tying a few loose ends, making formal comments on papers, etc.), prepare for my summer semester's teaching and later taking of classes, and open Rent tomorrow night, I have a few moments to record some thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head for a while. I've been busy with rehearsals, performances, classes, papers, and a small semblance of a social life.
First, I recently wrote an essay on Game Theory and an essay on what's wrong with all sides of our political system, which I have expanded on below. Perhaps the first will see the light of publishing here in LJ, and maybe one day I'll actually publish both somewhere. Writing feels good--I just wish I had more time to do it. I love teaching, but it will be nice when I don't have to plan so many different lessons each week--when I can just tweak the ones I've got.
Second, it's old news by now, but I wanted to touch on the whole Osama Bin Laden issue briefly. For the purposes of justice and tentatively, tenuously security, I am glad that he is dead. For the sake of those who lost loved ones on September 11 and those who have lost them since, and in honor of those who put their lives in danger's path every day, I am glad that one, small objective has been accomplished. But it is still another death on top of a continuously growing heap of deaths. War is hell. This was scarcely a victory, and it should not be celebrated like we celebrated V-Day in the 40s. For God's sake, a man (albeit a severely misguided and perhaps evil) was killed. The ensuing days should have been a time of sober reflection and attempts at reconciliation, a fractured, uncertain gaze into our hearts as we wrestle with the tumultuous reality of modern warfare and politics. It sickened me to see my fellow countrymen rejoicing in the streets. I deleted several people from Facebook that night.
Third, this May 21 Rapture deal is bullshit. I am a committed Christian (though probably not very orthodox or evangelical), and I find all of the activities surrounding this disgusting. First, an argument does not exist. I read through the website and several other articles, and none of it makes sense. Even if the form was sound, the premises are not valid. It's a terrible load of malarkey, but the more upsetting part of this fiasco is that these people have wasted millions of dollars to go around and propagate fear, anger, confusion, and hatred instead of doing what the God they claimed to follow asked them to do: spreading love and caring for those who need it most. Why not do something useful and use what they think are their last days on this earth to solve some real problems? And if God chooses to take us all up at 6pm on May 21, then so be it. But I doubt that's going to happen.
Fourth, there's been a lot of political bullshit lately. I don't particularly care for either party (thus why I call myself a moderate, independent, progressive libertarian), but I can't take the Republican Party seriously at all anymore. Between Sarah Palin, Christine O'Donnell, Glenn Beck, Newt Gingrich, and Donald Trump, I wonder if there are any sane leaders left. Ron Paul looks pretty good, even though I certainly don't agree with him on everything, but I'm increasingly discouraged by the loudest voices.
Anyway, the arguments as of late have focused far too much on laws and constitutionality instead of looking at the underlying principles and figuring out what is best for everyone. In other words, either 1) the politicians and pundits focus too much on what they want and could care less about anyone other than those who agree with them, or 2) they scream that an opponent is socialist, fascist, communist, Muslim, not from this country, liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican, or violating the Constitution--and they mean every one of these as a toxic insult.
Back up. These are normal words that have perfectly reasonable denotations, but the acid connotation that has been imbued within each has made a mockery of our political system. The following is from a Facebook comment I made the other day, so it may feel somewhat out of place, but this is the best place to put it:
"Is it worse to vote uninformed or not to vote at all?
"The problem is that it is almost impossible to be completely informed about everything because that would require being knowledgeable about the day to day work lives of hundreds (if not thousands) of people (local, state, national, executive, legislative, judicial). So what we face is how to be the most informed that we can so that we take our right seriously and vote responsibly according to what is best for all of us (not just for each of us individually).
"I actually think it's the more ethically sound thing to not vote if you don't understand the issues and aren't informed about how things go. But you'll always have people who vote because of fire and brimstone speeches that they hear from the pulpit, their neighbor, their news anchor, or the voices in their heads. You can't stop them. What we can (and I think must) do is find a way to encourage people to be interested in the process again and show them that they really do have a stake in affecting change.
"And further, we need to stop the rhetoric of division and connotative acid. When we can say conservative, liberal, Democrat, Republican, socialist, Muslim, and any other number of (unfortunately) toxically-charged terms without shutting out a part of the population, we'll be getting back to a functional and worthwhile political system that I'll be consistently proud to be a part of.
"Instead, politicians and pundits alike pander to their ignorant followers by using these terms stereotypically as catch-alls for good and evil. This improper use of ethos and pathos where logos belongs is debilitating to any manner of argument. Whenever a politician tries to respect the intelligence of the people, he or she loses the ignorant (and most of the informed) with unnecessarily confusing terminology that has largely been invented to create (and subsequently deal with) legal loopholes. Politics suffers from the same problem that most academic professions deal with--jargon. It works behind closed doors, but you need to be able to translate your technical stuff to the unindoctrinated.
"I go back to what I said both in 2008 and 2010: if you were eligible and didn't vote, you don't have a right to complain."
So back to my thoughts for today, which may include some repetitions. Socialists, fascists, communists, liberals, conservatives, Democrats, Republicans, and many other pockets of people who have organized under verbal banners that are meant to encompass a particular set of beliefs all have valid ideas and beliefs about how political systems ought to be run. When we use these valid terms as pejoratives for "someone who disagrees with me and is probably evil," we shut them out of the conversation and ignore the helpful ideas that they can bring to the table. Further, it's not a problem for a Muslim to have political power, and I personally think that it would be fine for a person not originally from this country to have power. But Obama is a Christian and an America-born citizen, no matter what the fools who balk at those claims say. But it shouldn't matter. This is the "violating the Constitution" part.
Yes, our Constitution says that only American-born citizens should be eligible for president (though just American citizens for any other federal position--why the difference?). It says nothing about religion. But the people who continue to call Obama a Muslim socialist fascist from Kenya do so at their own peril. They are doing everything in their power to try to discredit a fairly elected person, making un-back-able claims and appealing to whatever power they can since they can't come up with a real argument to say why Obama is wrong in what he does.
"He's a Muslim! Impeach him!" Okay, no he's not, but what's wrong with that anyway?
"He's a socialist! Impeach him!" Closer to the truth, but still not entirely accurate. Do you even know what that term means denotatively? If you do, what's the problem with elements of socialism?
"He's a fascist! Impeach him!" Completely off target and nonsensical when paired with socialist. Try again. Also, what's wrong with that?
"He's not an American citizen! Impeach him!" Again, you're wrong and there's plenty of evidence to show it. Furthermore, what's wrong with not being an American citizen?
I haven't heard any reasonable arguments to respond to the first three up there. They mostly consist of frightened (and misguided stereotypical) appeals to Al-Qaeda, Communist-Russia, and Nazi-Germany while ignoring the paragons of virtue found in the above religion and following governmental systems. I'm perfectly willing to discuss the pros and cons of socialism and fascism as I am capitalism, feudalism, democracy, oligarchy, monarchy, and other socio-politico-economic systems.
I have heard a supporting claim for the rallying cry of American citizenry, and it's an appeal to the law. This argument goes something like this:
1) According to the U.S. Constitution, only American-born citizens are eligible to be President of the United States.
2) Obama is not an American-born citizen. (This premise seems obviously false, but whatever)
3) Therefore, Obama is not eligible to be the POTUS. Impeach him!
The form is sound. Premise two seems invalid, but I want to focus on the first premise. According to the U.S. Constitution...
I have immense respect for constitutional scholars and other academics of history, politics, law, and so forth. It's not my bag, but I recognize the validity of these studies. My biggest problem is that some politicians, pundits, and other people appeal to the U.S. Constitution as if it were perfect and perfectly applicable in all situations. Let me be up front now so that I don't piss anyone off and get federal agents knocking on my door. I think that the U.S. Constitution outlines a pretty damn good form of government. But it's not perfect and we shouldn't treat it like we discovered the world's best political system 224 years ago. After all, we have amended the Constitution 27 times since 1787, and we've tried and failed 6 other times. We keep passing other laws, too. It seems like a living document to me.
While I was teaching Ethics this spring, my constant refrain in the last half of the course, especially when we started getting into applied business and social ethics, was to ignore the laws on the subject. I quickly corrected myself somewhat--I said that I cared about the laws, but that they were largely irrelevant to our discussion and only helpful in pointing out what certain groups of lawmakers considered to be ethical at a particular time in our nation's history.
Ethics examines what is right to do in a particular situation and why. In my way of thinking, I have to have a good reason to follow a rule or a law. That reason can be to avoid punishment, but I prefer something else--a psychological, biological, philosophical, physical validation of the rule to demonstrate why it is worthwhile. Critical thinking, analysis. Unfortunately, critical, logical, lateral, out-of-the-box thinking is at high-risk in today's world, particularly in American society. There are a lot of reasons for this (including but certainly not limited to an outdated educational model older than this country, an over-diagnosis of ADHD and other disorders, and a pandering media), but intellectualism is simply not prized like it used to be.
In fact, those who think and apply themselves are often cast out and looked down on by a public who mistrusts them and a government who doesn't want to fund them for fear of the mistrusting public. We need to return to critical analysis of situations and an understanding of why we should do things instead of blindly following whoever has the loudest voice, the prettiest face, or the biggest army. We need to return to collaborative efforts in which we respect the needs and views of those around us. Then and only then can we solve some of the problems facing our world today and work towards restoring the U.S. to a respectable position in the world.
So instead of throwing out a (falsely) pejorative term to attack those with whom we disagree or appealing to rules and laws that most of us don't understand and don't know the foundations of or reasons for, we should engage in real dialogue about the why for all this stuff. An educated, aware, empowered, active populace is the only line of defense for this trend of absurdity.
So here's the opening salvo. Yes, the law says that only a natural-born U.S. citizen is eligible to be POTUS. Why is this the case, and why would it be a (non-legal) problem to have a U.S. citizen not originally born in this country as its most powerful executive? I hear one reason already--how could we trust someone who might still deep down bear allegiances to another country? Two things--we probably already have those in natural-born U.S. citizens and you just don't know it. So how could we trust anyone at all? Second, how would such a person (one who harbors deep allegiances elsewhere) from the outside ever gain enough real support on the inside? If a person truly cares enough to invest the 4-8 years of a presidency and however many years in other political positions plus countless years of campaigning and fundraising and spending lots of money, undergoing innumerable stressors in an attempt to be a significant but still small part of the political equation, then why shouldn't we let them? There are enough checks and balances at the top and enough hoops to jump through on the way up that the chances of a major conspiracy where the president of the United States is an alien or a Russian spy are very low. So let's be realistic here. Give me a real reason from some substantive, grounded in fact body of knowledge why it really matters whether Obama was born in the U.S. or not. Then we'll talk.
First, I recently wrote an essay on Game Theory and an essay on what's wrong with all sides of our political system, which I have expanded on below. Perhaps the first will see the light of publishing here in LJ, and maybe one day I'll actually publish both somewhere. Writing feels good--I just wish I had more time to do it. I love teaching, but it will be nice when I don't have to plan so many different lessons each week--when I can just tweak the ones I've got.
Second, it's old news by now, but I wanted to touch on the whole Osama Bin Laden issue briefly. For the purposes of justice and tentatively, tenuously security, I am glad that he is dead. For the sake of those who lost loved ones on September 11 and those who have lost them since, and in honor of those who put their lives in danger's path every day, I am glad that one, small objective has been accomplished. But it is still another death on top of a continuously growing heap of deaths. War is hell. This was scarcely a victory, and it should not be celebrated like we celebrated V-Day in the 40s. For God's sake, a man (albeit a severely misguided and perhaps evil) was killed. The ensuing days should have been a time of sober reflection and attempts at reconciliation, a fractured, uncertain gaze into our hearts as we wrestle with the tumultuous reality of modern warfare and politics. It sickened me to see my fellow countrymen rejoicing in the streets. I deleted several people from Facebook that night.
Third, this May 21 Rapture deal is bullshit. I am a committed Christian (though probably not very orthodox or evangelical), and I find all of the activities surrounding this disgusting. First, an argument does not exist. I read through the website and several other articles, and none of it makes sense. Even if the form was sound, the premises are not valid. It's a terrible load of malarkey, but the more upsetting part of this fiasco is that these people have wasted millions of dollars to go around and propagate fear, anger, confusion, and hatred instead of doing what the God they claimed to follow asked them to do: spreading love and caring for those who need it most. Why not do something useful and use what they think are their last days on this earth to solve some real problems? And if God chooses to take us all up at 6pm on May 21, then so be it. But I doubt that's going to happen.
Fourth, there's been a lot of political bullshit lately. I don't particularly care for either party (thus why I call myself a moderate, independent, progressive libertarian), but I can't take the Republican Party seriously at all anymore. Between Sarah Palin, Christine O'Donnell, Glenn Beck, Newt Gingrich, and Donald Trump, I wonder if there are any sane leaders left. Ron Paul looks pretty good, even though I certainly don't agree with him on everything, but I'm increasingly discouraged by the loudest voices.
Anyway, the arguments as of late have focused far too much on laws and constitutionality instead of looking at the underlying principles and figuring out what is best for everyone. In other words, either 1) the politicians and pundits focus too much on what they want and could care less about anyone other than those who agree with them, or 2) they scream that an opponent is socialist, fascist, communist, Muslim, not from this country, liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican, or violating the Constitution--and they mean every one of these as a toxic insult.
Back up. These are normal words that have perfectly reasonable denotations, but the acid connotation that has been imbued within each has made a mockery of our political system. The following is from a Facebook comment I made the other day, so it may feel somewhat out of place, but this is the best place to put it:
"Is it worse to vote uninformed or not to vote at all?
"The problem is that it is almost impossible to be completely informed about everything because that would require being knowledgeable about the day to day work lives of hundreds (if not thousands) of people (local, state, national, executive, legislative, judicial). So what we face is how to be the most informed that we can so that we take our right seriously and vote responsibly according to what is best for all of us (not just for each of us individually).
"I actually think it's the more ethically sound thing to not vote if you don't understand the issues and aren't informed about how things go. But you'll always have people who vote because of fire and brimstone speeches that they hear from the pulpit, their neighbor, their news anchor, or the voices in their heads. You can't stop them. What we can (and I think must) do is find a way to encourage people to be interested in the process again and show them that they really do have a stake in affecting change.
"And further, we need to stop the rhetoric of division and connotative acid. When we can say conservative, liberal, Democrat, Republican, socialist, Muslim, and any other number of (unfortunately) toxically-charged terms without shutting out a part of the population, we'll be getting back to a functional and worthwhile political system that I'll be consistently proud to be a part of.
"Instead, politicians and pundits alike pander to their ignorant followers by using these terms stereotypically as catch-alls for good and evil. This improper use of ethos and pathos where logos belongs is debilitating to any manner of argument. Whenever a politician tries to respect the intelligence of the people, he or she loses the ignorant (and most of the informed) with unnecessarily confusing terminology that has largely been invented to create (and subsequently deal with) legal loopholes. Politics suffers from the same problem that most academic professions deal with--jargon. It works behind closed doors, but you need to be able to translate your technical stuff to the unindoctrinated.
"I go back to what I said both in 2008 and 2010: if you were eligible and didn't vote, you don't have a right to complain."
So back to my thoughts for today, which may include some repetitions. Socialists, fascists, communists, liberals, conservatives, Democrats, Republicans, and many other pockets of people who have organized under verbal banners that are meant to encompass a particular set of beliefs all have valid ideas and beliefs about how political systems ought to be run. When we use these valid terms as pejoratives for "someone who disagrees with me and is probably evil," we shut them out of the conversation and ignore the helpful ideas that they can bring to the table. Further, it's not a problem for a Muslim to have political power, and I personally think that it would be fine for a person not originally from this country to have power. But Obama is a Christian and an America-born citizen, no matter what the fools who balk at those claims say. But it shouldn't matter. This is the "violating the Constitution" part.
Yes, our Constitution says that only American-born citizens should be eligible for president (though just American citizens for any other federal position--why the difference?). It says nothing about religion. But the people who continue to call Obama a Muslim socialist fascist from Kenya do so at their own peril. They are doing everything in their power to try to discredit a fairly elected person, making un-back-able claims and appealing to whatever power they can since they can't come up with a real argument to say why Obama is wrong in what he does.
"He's a Muslim! Impeach him!" Okay, no he's not, but what's wrong with that anyway?
"He's a socialist! Impeach him!" Closer to the truth, but still not entirely accurate. Do you even know what that term means denotatively? If you do, what's the problem with elements of socialism?
"He's a fascist! Impeach him!" Completely off target and nonsensical when paired with socialist. Try again. Also, what's wrong with that?
"He's not an American citizen! Impeach him!" Again, you're wrong and there's plenty of evidence to show it. Furthermore, what's wrong with not being an American citizen?
I haven't heard any reasonable arguments to respond to the first three up there. They mostly consist of frightened (and misguided stereotypical) appeals to Al-Qaeda, Communist-Russia, and Nazi-Germany while ignoring the paragons of virtue found in the above religion and following governmental systems. I'm perfectly willing to discuss the pros and cons of socialism and fascism as I am capitalism, feudalism, democracy, oligarchy, monarchy, and other socio-politico-economic systems.
I have heard a supporting claim for the rallying cry of American citizenry, and it's an appeal to the law. This argument goes something like this:
1) According to the U.S. Constitution, only American-born citizens are eligible to be President of the United States.
2) Obama is not an American-born citizen. (This premise seems obviously false, but whatever)
3) Therefore, Obama is not eligible to be the POTUS. Impeach him!
The form is sound. Premise two seems invalid, but I want to focus on the first premise. According to the U.S. Constitution...
I have immense respect for constitutional scholars and other academics of history, politics, law, and so forth. It's not my bag, but I recognize the validity of these studies. My biggest problem is that some politicians, pundits, and other people appeal to the U.S. Constitution as if it were perfect and perfectly applicable in all situations. Let me be up front now so that I don't piss anyone off and get federal agents knocking on my door. I think that the U.S. Constitution outlines a pretty damn good form of government. But it's not perfect and we shouldn't treat it like we discovered the world's best political system 224 years ago. After all, we have amended the Constitution 27 times since 1787, and we've tried and failed 6 other times. We keep passing other laws, too. It seems like a living document to me.
While I was teaching Ethics this spring, my constant refrain in the last half of the course, especially when we started getting into applied business and social ethics, was to ignore the laws on the subject. I quickly corrected myself somewhat--I said that I cared about the laws, but that they were largely irrelevant to our discussion and only helpful in pointing out what certain groups of lawmakers considered to be ethical at a particular time in our nation's history.
Ethics examines what is right to do in a particular situation and why. In my way of thinking, I have to have a good reason to follow a rule or a law. That reason can be to avoid punishment, but I prefer something else--a psychological, biological, philosophical, physical validation of the rule to demonstrate why it is worthwhile. Critical thinking, analysis. Unfortunately, critical, logical, lateral, out-of-the-box thinking is at high-risk in today's world, particularly in American society. There are a lot of reasons for this (including but certainly not limited to an outdated educational model older than this country, an over-diagnosis of ADHD and other disorders, and a pandering media), but intellectualism is simply not prized like it used to be.
In fact, those who think and apply themselves are often cast out and looked down on by a public who mistrusts them and a government who doesn't want to fund them for fear of the mistrusting public. We need to return to critical analysis of situations and an understanding of why we should do things instead of blindly following whoever has the loudest voice, the prettiest face, or the biggest army. We need to return to collaborative efforts in which we respect the needs and views of those around us. Then and only then can we solve some of the problems facing our world today and work towards restoring the U.S. to a respectable position in the world.
So instead of throwing out a (falsely) pejorative term to attack those with whom we disagree or appealing to rules and laws that most of us don't understand and don't know the foundations of or reasons for, we should engage in real dialogue about the why for all this stuff. An educated, aware, empowered, active populace is the only line of defense for this trend of absurdity.
So here's the opening salvo. Yes, the law says that only a natural-born U.S. citizen is eligible to be POTUS. Why is this the case, and why would it be a (non-legal) problem to have a U.S. citizen not originally born in this country as its most powerful executive? I hear one reason already--how could we trust someone who might still deep down bear allegiances to another country? Two things--we probably already have those in natural-born U.S. citizens and you just don't know it. So how could we trust anyone at all? Second, how would such a person (one who harbors deep allegiances elsewhere) from the outside ever gain enough real support on the inside? If a person truly cares enough to invest the 4-8 years of a presidency and however many years in other political positions plus countless years of campaigning and fundraising and spending lots of money, undergoing innumerable stressors in an attempt to be a significant but still small part of the political equation, then why shouldn't we let them? There are enough checks and balances at the top and enough hoops to jump through on the way up that the chances of a major conspiracy where the president of the United States is an alien or a Russian spy are very low. So let's be realistic here. Give me a real reason from some substantive, grounded in fact body of knowledge why it really matters whether Obama was born in the U.S. or not. Then we'll talk.