The not really terribly controversial survey
[01] Do you have the guts to answer these questions and re-post as The Controversial Survey?
Well, yes; but that doesn’t say much for my bravery, as this is about as controversial as a very uncontroversial thing from where I stand. Maybe I shouldn’t get involved, because obviously all of these questions are about specific knee-jerk issues that are currently dividing a nation not my own. But I feel like I should, mostly because my heart bleeds for the wonderful people I know in the US who have to define themselves within these narrow cultural confines, and I want to test how much wriggle room I have myself.
[02] Would you do meth if it was legalized?.
I might try it to see what it was like, but then I might do that without it being legalized, as I have with many other substances. Legal is not the same as right or wrong; it’s a pretty arbitrary and shifting target.
[03] Abortion: for or against it?
How do you mean, for? What, make them mandatory for certain people?
I’m against poverty. And what’s going on behind the rhetoric of the abortion debate in the US (and bleeding into the UK) right now is nothing short of enforced poverty designed to underpin the economic system. Somebody’s got to be a sub prime borrower, after all.
The Sarah Palin school of family planning is a classic Catch 22: restrict sex education, limit the availability of contraception, and then put a slam on preventing the (inevitable) unplanned pregnancies: what you get is a lot of young single mothers. Young single mothers are among the poorest sections of society in the US (in part because the welfare system is stacked against them, another staunch Conservative principle), and poverty is self perpetuating - despite the occasional Clinton or Obama (funny how it’s those American Dreamers who go on to talk about wealth redistribution, whereas the oligarchs of the right are all for the poor pulling their socks up), many children of impecunious teenage moms turn into impecunious teenage moms, or dads. And the economic class system is safely reinforced.
So, quite apart from the obvious feminist issues of choice, a woman's right to a fulfilling life unencumbered with unwanted dependants, the legalisation of morality and the writing of the laws on women's bodies, I think abortion should be also available (along with effective contraception) in order to help eliminate child poverty and help towards creating a fairer society.
[04] Do you think the world would fail with a female president?
I like trunkbutt's answer to this: the world (the real one, not the simulation wedged between Canada and Mexico) already has lots of female presidents and prime ministers. Define how it’s failing.
[05] Do you believe in the death penalty?
I think the death penalty is an interesting litmus test for the real modern day Christian morality. Basically, the way I see it, they believe that the fifth (is it fifth?) commandment applies only to people they like. By this logic the lives of the unborn are sacrosanct - they haven’t done anything to piss the rightwingers off yet, after all. But once someone has done something they can disapprove of, like committed a serious crime or happened to have been born in Iraq, all bets are off.
There is no way, no how, that you can morally justify the death penalty. It’s an obscenity, a pre-rationalist horror on the scale of genocide. Every time the state terminates a life, the rivers of blood shed by every terror regime from the French revolutionaries to the Khmer Rouge are being laundered, made whiter, more legitimate. After all, they were doing it to protect the state and the public, too. It’s utterly, inexcusably abhorrent and it never ceases to shock me that it can still exist in a liberal democracy.
[06] Do you wish marijuana would be legalized already?
Legalized, taxed and regulated, as should all other psychotropic substances. Prohibition is such an awfully bad idea, it beats me why the Americans ever decided to try it a second time.
[07] Are you for or against premarital sex?
Again, as in the case of abortion, this question is falsely polarizing. It would be meaningless to be “for” premarital sex. I’m not against it, as I am not against gay sex, kinky sex or any other kind of sex between consenting, self empowered agents.
[08] Do you believe in God?
No.
[09] Do you think same sex marriage should be legalized?
Yes.
[10] Do you think it's wrong that so many Hispanics are illegally moving to the USA?
See my answer on abortion. The US economic system can’t sustain itself without an underclass. I also think that American culture has a genuine need to have an immigrant underclass to look down on - it’s part of what helps to create a national identity in such a diverse society. It’s a truism that each wave of immigrants always resent and look down on the flowing wave; at the moment the discourse revolves around Latin Americans and the legality or otherwise of their arrival in the US, but the fundamental tensions haven’t changed since the Italians succeeded the Irish in Hell’s Kitchen. Or maybe even since the Pilgrims, who knows.
In that sense the only thing that’s “wrong” is that the Latin American citizens who wish to participate in what is really an essential and necessary part of US statehood are made to jump through such humiliating, dehumanizing and dangerous hoops.
[11] A twelve year old girl has a baby, should she keep it?
That’s not up to me, and is most emphatically not a question that can be answered on anything other than a case-by-case basis. Trying to turn it into a party political hypothetical is just nasty.
[12] Should the alcohol age be lowered to eighteen?
It does seem to make sense that if we limit certain activities (having sex, getting married, serving in the military) by age, then we ought to be consistent in what that age is - a catch-all demarcation line for adulthood, as it were. So in that sense, yes. But it’s hard to say whether it’s the drinking age that’s too high or the voting age that’s too low. Where adulthood begins is a tricky gray area that’s different between individuals anyway.
[13] Should the war in Iraq be called off?
How in heaven’s name can it be called off? What is it, a baseball game? Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains?
If the question is should the US have invaded Iraq, then the answer is no. If it’s whether or not the US should, now that this party is no fun anymore, go back home with nothing worse than a bit of a political hangover, then maybe it’s the legal age of statehood that needs to be raised here.
It would be virtually impossible for the US to sort out the god-awful mess created in Iraq. The best hope for a reduction in violence and at least partially viable statehood is for the next president to go cap in hand to the UN and beg for a broad international coalition - a diplomatic coalition - to help with mediating and financing the necessary concessions and agreements between the different Iraqi players as well as the main protagonists elsewhere in the region, especially Syria and Iran.
[14] Assisted suicide is illegal: do you agree?
Forbidding people to die is a bit of a flip side to the killing them business, isn’t it? It’s all tied in with abortion, state sponsored killing and control of the population. And it sucks.
[15] Do you believe in spanking your children?
What a weird question. I believe that parenting is a hard and imperfect job. I believe that more people should keep their noses out of other people’s family dynamics.
[16] Would you burn an American flag for a million dollars?
It’s a piece of fabric. You figure it out.
(And yes, I’d burn an Israeli one just as fast, in case you’re wondering)
[17] Who do you think would make a better president? McCain or Obama?
Neither of them will make a good president.
They both have some good points and other bad ones, both as policy makers (I prefer Obama’s economics, but am attracted by McCain’s insider knowledge of Washington, which is needed to push any economic reform through, for example) and people (yes, McCain is bordering on the bible basher and owns waaaay too many houses; but I’m not sure how much time I have for a man who chooses his heritage and cultural affiliation based on a father that abandoned him and not on a mother and grandmother that brought him up - the whole “Obama is black” thing has grated on me all along).
More to the point though, they will both be so maddeningly crippled as to be lame duck more or less from day one. McCain will never get shod of Bush’s legacy; the financial crisis, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, everything is going to be his fault for ever. He won’t be able to enact effective policy in either of these spheres without usurping even more legislative powers than Bush already has, because a Democratic Congress is going to tie him up in knots over every decision. Obama, on the other hand, will be carrying the even greater weight of 300 years of American history; my prediction is that he will be so crippled by the need to not appear radical that he will leave most of the Bush policies more or less intact, in which case, what’s the f*cking point?
That’s why the Democrats should have chosen Clinton. Everybody already hates her, and none of the immediate mess is directly her fault. That is a position from which brave politics can spring, and we really need some brave politics right now.
[18] Are you afraid others will judge you from reading some of your answers?
I know they will judge me. I’m not afraid that they will judge me to be inferior, misguided, evil, immoral, radical or whatever. I am afraid that they will skim my answers looking for the left/right markers and read no further, contracting my ethical and political worldview into a simplistic “with us / against us” schematic and continuing about their business without a pause for thought. That would be a shame, and a slightly scary shame at that.
Well, yes; but that doesn’t say much for my bravery, as this is about as controversial as a very uncontroversial thing from where I stand. Maybe I shouldn’t get involved, because obviously all of these questions are about specific knee-jerk issues that are currently dividing a nation not my own. But I feel like I should, mostly because my heart bleeds for the wonderful people I know in the US who have to define themselves within these narrow cultural confines, and I want to test how much wriggle room I have myself.
[02] Would you do meth if it was legalized?.
I might try it to see what it was like, but then I might do that without it being legalized, as I have with many other substances. Legal is not the same as right or wrong; it’s a pretty arbitrary and shifting target.
[03] Abortion: for or against it?
How do you mean, for? What, make them mandatory for certain people?
I’m against poverty. And what’s going on behind the rhetoric of the abortion debate in the US (and bleeding into the UK) right now is nothing short of enforced poverty designed to underpin the economic system. Somebody’s got to be a sub prime borrower, after all.
The Sarah Palin school of family planning is a classic Catch 22: restrict sex education, limit the availability of contraception, and then put a slam on preventing the (inevitable) unplanned pregnancies: what you get is a lot of young single mothers. Young single mothers are among the poorest sections of society in the US (in part because the welfare system is stacked against them, another staunch Conservative principle), and poverty is self perpetuating - despite the occasional Clinton or Obama (funny how it’s those American Dreamers who go on to talk about wealth redistribution, whereas the oligarchs of the right are all for the poor pulling their socks up), many children of impecunious teenage moms turn into impecunious teenage moms, or dads. And the economic class system is safely reinforced.
So, quite apart from the obvious feminist issues of choice, a woman's right to a fulfilling life unencumbered with unwanted dependants, the legalisation of morality and the writing of the laws on women's bodies, I think abortion should be also available (along with effective contraception) in order to help eliminate child poverty and help towards creating a fairer society.
[04] Do you think the world would fail with a female president?
I like trunkbutt's answer to this: the world (the real one, not the simulation wedged between Canada and Mexico) already has lots of female presidents and prime ministers. Define how it’s failing.
[05] Do you believe in the death penalty?
I think the death penalty is an interesting litmus test for the real modern day Christian morality. Basically, the way I see it, they believe that the fifth (is it fifth?) commandment applies only to people they like. By this logic the lives of the unborn are sacrosanct - they haven’t done anything to piss the rightwingers off yet, after all. But once someone has done something they can disapprove of, like committed a serious crime or happened to have been born in Iraq, all bets are off.
There is no way, no how, that you can morally justify the death penalty. It’s an obscenity, a pre-rationalist horror on the scale of genocide. Every time the state terminates a life, the rivers of blood shed by every terror regime from the French revolutionaries to the Khmer Rouge are being laundered, made whiter, more legitimate. After all, they were doing it to protect the state and the public, too. It’s utterly, inexcusably abhorrent and it never ceases to shock me that it can still exist in a liberal democracy.
[06] Do you wish marijuana would be legalized already?
Legalized, taxed and regulated, as should all other psychotropic substances. Prohibition is such an awfully bad idea, it beats me why the Americans ever decided to try it a second time.
[07] Are you for or against premarital sex?
Again, as in the case of abortion, this question is falsely polarizing. It would be meaningless to be “for” premarital sex. I’m not against it, as I am not against gay sex, kinky sex or any other kind of sex between consenting, self empowered agents.
[08] Do you believe in God?
No.
[09] Do you think same sex marriage should be legalized?
Yes.
[10] Do you think it's wrong that so many Hispanics are illegally moving to the USA?
See my answer on abortion. The US economic system can’t sustain itself without an underclass. I also think that American culture has a genuine need to have an immigrant underclass to look down on - it’s part of what helps to create a national identity in such a diverse society. It’s a truism that each wave of immigrants always resent and look down on the flowing wave; at the moment the discourse revolves around Latin Americans and the legality or otherwise of their arrival in the US, but the fundamental tensions haven’t changed since the Italians succeeded the Irish in Hell’s Kitchen. Or maybe even since the Pilgrims, who knows.
In that sense the only thing that’s “wrong” is that the Latin American citizens who wish to participate in what is really an essential and necessary part of US statehood are made to jump through such humiliating, dehumanizing and dangerous hoops.
[11] A twelve year old girl has a baby, should she keep it?
That’s not up to me, and is most emphatically not a question that can be answered on anything other than a case-by-case basis. Trying to turn it into a party political hypothetical is just nasty.
[12] Should the alcohol age be lowered to eighteen?
It does seem to make sense that if we limit certain activities (having sex, getting married, serving in the military) by age, then we ought to be consistent in what that age is - a catch-all demarcation line for adulthood, as it were. So in that sense, yes. But it’s hard to say whether it’s the drinking age that’s too high or the voting age that’s too low. Where adulthood begins is a tricky gray area that’s different between individuals anyway.
[13] Should the war in Iraq be called off?
How in heaven’s name can it be called off? What is it, a baseball game? Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains?
If the question is should the US have invaded Iraq, then the answer is no. If it’s whether or not the US should, now that this party is no fun anymore, go back home with nothing worse than a bit of a political hangover, then maybe it’s the legal age of statehood that needs to be raised here.
It would be virtually impossible for the US to sort out the god-awful mess created in Iraq. The best hope for a reduction in violence and at least partially viable statehood is for the next president to go cap in hand to the UN and beg for a broad international coalition - a diplomatic coalition - to help with mediating and financing the necessary concessions and agreements between the different Iraqi players as well as the main protagonists elsewhere in the region, especially Syria and Iran.
[14] Assisted suicide is illegal: do you agree?
Forbidding people to die is a bit of a flip side to the killing them business, isn’t it? It’s all tied in with abortion, state sponsored killing and control of the population. And it sucks.
[15] Do you believe in spanking your children?
What a weird question. I believe that parenting is a hard and imperfect job. I believe that more people should keep their noses out of other people’s family dynamics.
[16] Would you burn an American flag for a million dollars?
It’s a piece of fabric. You figure it out.
(And yes, I’d burn an Israeli one just as fast, in case you’re wondering)
[17] Who do you think would make a better president? McCain or Obama?
Neither of them will make a good president.
They both have some good points and other bad ones, both as policy makers (I prefer Obama’s economics, but am attracted by McCain’s insider knowledge of Washington, which is needed to push any economic reform through, for example) and people (yes, McCain is bordering on the bible basher and owns waaaay too many houses; but I’m not sure how much time I have for a man who chooses his heritage and cultural affiliation based on a father that abandoned him and not on a mother and grandmother that brought him up - the whole “Obama is black” thing has grated on me all along).
More to the point though, they will both be so maddeningly crippled as to be lame duck more or less from day one. McCain will never get shod of Bush’s legacy; the financial crisis, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, everything is going to be his fault for ever. He won’t be able to enact effective policy in either of these spheres without usurping even more legislative powers than Bush already has, because a Democratic Congress is going to tie him up in knots over every decision. Obama, on the other hand, will be carrying the even greater weight of 300 years of American history; my prediction is that he will be so crippled by the need to not appear radical that he will leave most of the Bush policies more or less intact, in which case, what’s the f*cking point?
That’s why the Democrats should have chosen Clinton. Everybody already hates her, and none of the immediate mess is directly her fault. That is a position from which brave politics can spring, and we really need some brave politics right now.
[18] Are you afraid others will judge you from reading some of your answers?
I know they will judge me. I’m not afraid that they will judge me to be inferior, misguided, evil, immoral, radical or whatever. I am afraid that they will skim my answers looking for the left/right markers and read no further, contracting my ethical and political worldview into a simplistic “with us / against us” schematic and continuing about their business without a pause for thought. That would be a shame, and a slightly scary shame at that.