Recently in Politics Category
I have probably missed the boat on talking about the election at this point; with only a few days to go, almost everything that I've wanted to say about this has been said by someone else (Todd Alcott's endorsements of Obama here, here, and here sum up a lot of what I think). However, it's worth saying that for me, the most surprising part of this two year long campaign has not been the ascent of Barack Obama, but the complete collapse of John McCain.
In 2000, I remember thinking that I really wished that John McCain had gotten nominated instead of George Bush; aside from not coming across as a barely literate moron, McCain also seemed more thoughtful and more willing to call out people that others in his party were kowtowing to, such as the religious right. Sadly, over the last eight years, he seems to have lost that edge, and decided to embrace more of the standard Republican line, and it seems like that very thing may have cost him this election. I have no idea why he picked Sarah Palin as his running mate -- if you name any of her attributes, it seems like there's someone more qualified he could have picked. It's less a question of experience than a question of intelligence, of introspection, of analysis. The feeling I get from Sarah Palin, when she is talking about a subject, is like a student in school who simply memorizes something to pass a test and has no deeper understanding of the topic, even on subject she's supposedly an "expert" on.
I don't expect a politician to know everything on every subject. I don't expect to agree with a politician on every subject. However, I do expect politicians -- especially ones that are running for a national office -- to display some amount of thought on a subject, even one they don't know much about. I expect them to be able to tell me why they hold their opinions in a way other than circular logic. During the second debate, when Obama explained to one of the members of the audience what the credit crunch meant to him, that was something that really stuck with me because it showed a level of understanding that I didn't get from either of the Republican candidates.
I tend to be rather liberal on social issues and conservative on fiscal ones -- if the 2000 election had been between Gore and McCain, it would have been very hard for me to choose between the two (and I suspect I'm not alone in that). This year, the choice is trivial, which is disappointing. While I think Obama is probably the strongest presidential candidate from either party in a long time (at least in my voting lifetime, not that that has been all that long), McCain is incredibly weak, simply because his campaign has shown a lack of intellectual fortitude that I consider horrific. The most despicable part of it has been seeing McCain (and even moreso Palin) mock the idea that we might want someone who is smart, who is eloquent, who is thoughtful, who is diplomatic, who is better than the average American to be the most powerful person in the world.
Last time I checked, it's generally a good idea to hire the best candidate for the job.
In 2000, I remember thinking that I really wished that John McCain had gotten nominated instead of George Bush; aside from not coming across as a barely literate moron, McCain also seemed more thoughtful and more willing to call out people that others in his party were kowtowing to, such as the religious right. Sadly, over the last eight years, he seems to have lost that edge, and decided to embrace more of the standard Republican line, and it seems like that very thing may have cost him this election. I have no idea why he picked Sarah Palin as his running mate -- if you name any of her attributes, it seems like there's someone more qualified he could have picked. It's less a question of experience than a question of intelligence, of introspection, of analysis. The feeling I get from Sarah Palin, when she is talking about a subject, is like a student in school who simply memorizes something to pass a test and has no deeper understanding of the topic, even on subject she's supposedly an "expert" on.
I don't expect a politician to know everything on every subject. I don't expect to agree with a politician on every subject. However, I do expect politicians -- especially ones that are running for a national office -- to display some amount of thought on a subject, even one they don't know much about. I expect them to be able to tell me why they hold their opinions in a way other than circular logic. During the second debate, when Obama explained to one of the members of the audience what the credit crunch meant to him, that was something that really stuck with me because it showed a level of understanding that I didn't get from either of the Republican candidates.
I tend to be rather liberal on social issues and conservative on fiscal ones -- if the 2000 election had been between Gore and McCain, it would have been very hard for me to choose between the two (and I suspect I'm not alone in that). This year, the choice is trivial, which is disappointing. While I think Obama is probably the strongest presidential candidate from either party in a long time (at least in my voting lifetime, not that that has been all that long), McCain is incredibly weak, simply because his campaign has shown a lack of intellectual fortitude that I consider horrific. The most despicable part of it has been seeing McCain (and even moreso Palin) mock the idea that we might want someone who is smart, who is eloquent, who is thoughtful, who is diplomatic, who is better than the average American to be the most powerful person in the world.
Last time I checked, it's generally a good idea to hire the best candidate for the job.
Jeremy pointed me to this article on Kotaku regarding Jack Thompson's latest mental breakdown in a Florida courtroom:
Before walking out of the courtroom, Thompson filed what he called "Thompson's Formal Objection to June 4 Sanctions Hearing." In the rambling, 4,500-word objection, Thompson questioned Tunis' ability to preside at his hearing, calling her incompetent and arrogant and threatening to have her removed from office "in the days and weeks ahead." He also went on to call the people run The Florida Bar fascists and denied that he was involved some sort of "petty culture war."Before I read the article, I said that if he had screamed "no, you're out of order!" he would have completed the scene; having read the article it looks like that's pretty much exactly what he did. It's getting to the point where I actually feel sorry for the guy....
So those of you who know me (which is everyone, because I'm pretty sure no one who doesn't know me personally reads this) know that one of the things I look forward to every year is NSDM at GenCon, and that I am fairly involved with the people who run the games, more than most other players anyway. To that end, I'm on the NSDM listserv, which is usually just people passing along various articles on national security topics. Every once in a while though, there's an article that strays a bit more into politics (which is a focus of the game too) and it will spark a (usually) fairly interesting and generally well-informed debate.
As you might imagine from a group of people who are, for the most part, ex-military or current military, the political slant of most people on that list is fairly conservative; there might be a few people more towards the center, but there's no one really on the far left, for the most part (and neither am I, really). However, that puts me in a bit of an odd place; I'm by no means the most "liberal" (in the current sense of the word) person ever, but I generally tend to be very socially liberal and I've not really been a fan of the Iraq War, as previous blog entries will show. That's not generally the prevailing opinion on the NSDM list (there are folks there that can find some virtue in Fox News, at the very least, which I would be hard pressed to do).
In contrast, in my daily life, most of the people I deal with on a regular basis are completely the opposite -- generally very center-of-the-aisle or left-leaning, though I'd hesitate to call any of them "liberal" in the Nancy Pelosi sense. Most of them have similar political views to myself, so it's a very different environment from an NSDM event or the mailing list there. Today brought up an interesting example of this, when someone sent a story to the list about John Murtha saying that Bush's "surge" was working, and indicated that it could end up being bad news for the Democrats, opening up a chink in their armor; the same person sent along the story about the Democrat-aligned questioners at the CNN/YouTube Republican debate.
Now, on the topic of the CNN debate thing, I suspect that's a lot more CNN being irresponsible and/or incompetent, not malicious. I'm less inclined to believe that about Fox News with their mysterious "mislabeling" of disgraced Republicans as Democrats and other journalistic problems, but I admit that's at least partly because I think most of the talking heads on Fox News are idiots; perhaps that's a bit contradictory. I certainly don't think it was anything on the scale of Karl Rove blaming the Iraq War on the Democrats. That said, I think CNN should have at least spent a little effort to make sure they weren't letting the Democrats stick their people in the Republican debate like that. On the other hand, I would much rather have candidates answer questions they aren't prepared for or that make them uncomfortable -- whether they are Republican, Democrat, or any other party -- than hearing them answer rehearsed pablum that tells you nothing other than that they love babies and hate criminals. It's a lot harder to say you think atheists cannot be patriots or citizens or that gays will ruin the military when someone who fits the exact description is sitting there asking you about it. I do think that CNN should have at least told these questioners to disclose their ties with Democratic campaigns, even if they let them ask the questions (which frankly is not really a problem, I think -- it would have been interesting to see it in reverse that the Democratic debate).
As far as the Iraq war, my feeling is that right now, we have two options being presented, and both are idiotic. The first, from the Republicans, is that we need to stay in Iraq, no matter the cost, until the job is finished -- but don't worry, it's not a big deal and we can totally keep this up for decades without impacting the American way of life whatsoever (to say nothing for our image around the world). On the Democratic side, the option presented is that we must withdraw from the country immediately because the situation is completely untenable and it will never be won no matter what, and it's only getting worse and worse, and our leaving isn't going to do anything to make it worse than it is already.
Now, while my opinion is closer to that of the Democrats than the Republicans, both are gross simplifications of the issue -- the truth of the matter is that it is probably possible to stabilize Iraq eventually, if we're willing to put the effort in to do it. The problem is, it isn't going to happen with things as they are now. It's not going to happen with 150,000 troops, and it's not going to be over in a few years. Chances are it will take a draft to get the number of people we need to put in the country, as well as a substantial shift in military funding from gee-whiz tech gadgets that get manufactured in Congressional districts to equipping, training, and paying soldiers much better than they are now. It won't be cheap and there will probably be a lot more body bags landing in Dover before it's over.
If the Democrats (or the Republicans) came out and laid out the facts, said it was possible but it was going to cost us dearly, and that stabilizing Iraq was going to require the same kind of commitment that the United States had to endure in order to win World War 2, that pulling out now would have long-term and possibly rather bad consequences for the Middle East as a whole, and that Americans needed to decide which of the two crappy possibilities they wanted to accept, they would have a nearly unassailable position. The problem is that half-assing it like we are now isn't going to accomplish anything but waste a ton of money and piss off the Iraqis, while not actually contributing the stability of the country or the region. The problem is that that isn't a position that can be articulated in a 15 second sound bite and it requires the voting public to make a difficult decision with no easy, good answers.
Sadly, that doesn't appear to be what anyone wants to hear.
As you might imagine from a group of people who are, for the most part, ex-military or current military, the political slant of most people on that list is fairly conservative; there might be a few people more towards the center, but there's no one really on the far left, for the most part (and neither am I, really). However, that puts me in a bit of an odd place; I'm by no means the most "liberal" (in the current sense of the word) person ever, but I generally tend to be very socially liberal and I've not really been a fan of the Iraq War, as previous blog entries will show. That's not generally the prevailing opinion on the NSDM list (there are folks there that can find some virtue in Fox News, at the very least, which I would be hard pressed to do).
In contrast, in my daily life, most of the people I deal with on a regular basis are completely the opposite -- generally very center-of-the-aisle or left-leaning, though I'd hesitate to call any of them "liberal" in the Nancy Pelosi sense. Most of them have similar political views to myself, so it's a very different environment from an NSDM event or the mailing list there. Today brought up an interesting example of this, when someone sent a story to the list about John Murtha saying that Bush's "surge" was working, and indicated that it could end up being bad news for the Democrats, opening up a chink in their armor; the same person sent along the story about the Democrat-aligned questioners at the CNN/YouTube Republican debate.
Now, on the topic of the CNN debate thing, I suspect that's a lot more CNN being irresponsible and/or incompetent, not malicious. I'm less inclined to believe that about Fox News with their mysterious "mislabeling" of disgraced Republicans as Democrats and other journalistic problems, but I admit that's at least partly because I think most of the talking heads on Fox News are idiots; perhaps that's a bit contradictory. I certainly don't think it was anything on the scale of Karl Rove blaming the Iraq War on the Democrats. That said, I think CNN should have at least spent a little effort to make sure they weren't letting the Democrats stick their people in the Republican debate like that. On the other hand, I would much rather have candidates answer questions they aren't prepared for or that make them uncomfortable -- whether they are Republican, Democrat, or any other party -- than hearing them answer rehearsed pablum that tells you nothing other than that they love babies and hate criminals. It's a lot harder to say you think atheists cannot be patriots or citizens or that gays will ruin the military when someone who fits the exact description is sitting there asking you about it. I do think that CNN should have at least told these questioners to disclose their ties with Democratic campaigns, even if they let them ask the questions (which frankly is not really a problem, I think -- it would have been interesting to see it in reverse that the Democratic debate).
As far as the Iraq war, my feeling is that right now, we have two options being presented, and both are idiotic. The first, from the Republicans, is that we need to stay in Iraq, no matter the cost, until the job is finished -- but don't worry, it's not a big deal and we can totally keep this up for decades without impacting the American way of life whatsoever (to say nothing for our image around the world). On the Democratic side, the option presented is that we must withdraw from the country immediately because the situation is completely untenable and it will never be won no matter what, and it's only getting worse and worse, and our leaving isn't going to do anything to make it worse than it is already.
Now, while my opinion is closer to that of the Democrats than the Republicans, both are gross simplifications of the issue -- the truth of the matter is that it is probably possible to stabilize Iraq eventually, if we're willing to put the effort in to do it. The problem is, it isn't going to happen with things as they are now. It's not going to happen with 150,000 troops, and it's not going to be over in a few years. Chances are it will take a draft to get the number of people we need to put in the country, as well as a substantial shift in military funding from gee-whiz tech gadgets that get manufactured in Congressional districts to equipping, training, and paying soldiers much better than they are now. It won't be cheap and there will probably be a lot more body bags landing in Dover before it's over.
If the Democrats (or the Republicans) came out and laid out the facts, said it was possible but it was going to cost us dearly, and that stabilizing Iraq was going to require the same kind of commitment that the United States had to endure in order to win World War 2, that pulling out now would have long-term and possibly rather bad consequences for the Middle East as a whole, and that Americans needed to decide which of the two crappy possibilities they wanted to accept, they would have a nearly unassailable position. The problem is that half-assing it like we are now isn't going to accomplish anything but waste a ton of money and piss off the Iraqis, while not actually contributing the stability of the country or the region. The problem is that that isn't a position that can be articulated in a 15 second sound bite and it requires the voting public to make a difficult decision with no easy, good answers.
Sadly, that doesn't appear to be what anyone wants to hear.
I watched the Nova documentary "Judgement Day: Intelligent Design on Trial" over at CK and Mel's house last night (on their brand new HDTV, which was very impressive) and it was both one of the most frightening and also most reassuring things I've seen on television in a long time. Considering the sort of people in my peer group, I admit I don't run into many people that think intelligent design is anything more than repackaged "creation science" hokum and that tends to bias me even more than I would be already against the kind of people who buy this. The fact that the federal judge in the case, a Republican appointed by Bush, so clearly saw through this mess was the reassuring part.
The thing I couldn't stop thinking about was how this idiocy seemed to be so much like Lysenkoism it was scary. For those of you who don't know what that was, it was basically bad science perpetrated for a political agenda in the Soviet Union under Stalin -- a "scientist" that came up with solutions to the country's agricultural problems with "practical" solutions that jived with the Communist Party's dogma exhorting the common peasant, solutions which didn't work at all, nearly starving the country to death and destroying Soviet progress in genetics for most of the first half of the century. It wasn't until the 1960s that it was finally thrown out by the Communists, by which time the West had left it far behind in the biological sciences.
The most frightening thing about this fraudulent movement is that if they succeed, they want to roll back 150 years of scientific progress in medicine, biology, and chemistry. 150 years that have seen the average American lifespan increase by 30 years, thousands upon thousands of new cures and treatments for disease, a dramatic new understanding of how the human body works and develops, and dozens of other invaluable scientific advances. This isn't hyperbole; this is what they set out to do in the infamous Wedge document. As the judge said in this documentary, with as important as science is in the modern world, especially genetics and biotechnology, this sort of thing seems completely irresponsible. These people would have the United States descend into a dark age while the rest of the world passes us by as it did the Soviets.
Because biotechnology has such a huge business potential, I am actually somewhat hopeful that this movement will eventually cause so much concern to the giant companies that depend on strong science education that they will spend their lobbying dollars to simply make lawmakers that support this nonsense politically irrelevant. The fact that the two groups generally share the same party's favor at the moment is an irony which isn't lost on me. As much as I'm wary of big business, I would much rather the Republicans favor a group which is at least capable of acting on a rational argument in their own self-interest than one which sticks its fingers in its ears and tries to ignore anything said to the contrary.
It's sad really; I consider myself atheist or at the very least agnostic, and honestly the question of whether a God or gods exist is an irrelevant one to me. Whether there is some sort of supreme being makes no difference to how I live my life; if there's a God there, he seems to have given up the practice of dramatic miracles. However, I cannot deny that when I see things like 4000-year-old Egyptian artifacts up close and personal, or when I would hear the priest at my parents' church talk about how he felt visiting holy sites in Israel that are thousands of years old, or when I walk on a Civil War battlefield where thousands of men died, you can feel the weight of history. There is something emotional, unquantifiable about places and things like that. To think that embracing modern science destroys any sense of wonder or awe at our insignificance in the universe, and that because a supernatural force is unnecessary means that life is meaningless -- that must be a frightening way to live.
I hope that people are really smarter than these creationists give them credit for; there is no reason that science and religion cannot coexist, indeed many of the greatest scholars of the last millennium have been profoundly religious men and women who saw their pursuit of science as a way to look upon the face of God. However, we cannot remain willfully ignorant of the universe in order to save the egos and small minds of people who think things were better back in the 15th century.
The thing I couldn't stop thinking about was how this idiocy seemed to be so much like Lysenkoism it was scary. For those of you who don't know what that was, it was basically bad science perpetrated for a political agenda in the Soviet Union under Stalin -- a "scientist" that came up with solutions to the country's agricultural problems with "practical" solutions that jived with the Communist Party's dogma exhorting the common peasant, solutions which didn't work at all, nearly starving the country to death and destroying Soviet progress in genetics for most of the first half of the century. It wasn't until the 1960s that it was finally thrown out by the Communists, by which time the West had left it far behind in the biological sciences.
The most frightening thing about this fraudulent movement is that if they succeed, they want to roll back 150 years of scientific progress in medicine, biology, and chemistry. 150 years that have seen the average American lifespan increase by 30 years, thousands upon thousands of new cures and treatments for disease, a dramatic new understanding of how the human body works and develops, and dozens of other invaluable scientific advances. This isn't hyperbole; this is what they set out to do in the infamous Wedge document. As the judge said in this documentary, with as important as science is in the modern world, especially genetics and biotechnology, this sort of thing seems completely irresponsible. These people would have the United States descend into a dark age while the rest of the world passes us by as it did the Soviets.
Because biotechnology has such a huge business potential, I am actually somewhat hopeful that this movement will eventually cause so much concern to the giant companies that depend on strong science education that they will spend their lobbying dollars to simply make lawmakers that support this nonsense politically irrelevant. The fact that the two groups generally share the same party's favor at the moment is an irony which isn't lost on me. As much as I'm wary of big business, I would much rather the Republicans favor a group which is at least capable of acting on a rational argument in their own self-interest than one which sticks its fingers in its ears and tries to ignore anything said to the contrary.
It's sad really; I consider myself atheist or at the very least agnostic, and honestly the question of whether a God or gods exist is an irrelevant one to me. Whether there is some sort of supreme being makes no difference to how I live my life; if there's a God there, he seems to have given up the practice of dramatic miracles. However, I cannot deny that when I see things like 4000-year-old Egyptian artifacts up close and personal, or when I would hear the priest at my parents' church talk about how he felt visiting holy sites in Israel that are thousands of years old, or when I walk on a Civil War battlefield where thousands of men died, you can feel the weight of history. There is something emotional, unquantifiable about places and things like that. To think that embracing modern science destroys any sense of wonder or awe at our insignificance in the universe, and that because a supernatural force is unnecessary means that life is meaningless -- that must be a frightening way to live.
I hope that people are really smarter than these creationists give them credit for; there is no reason that science and religion cannot coexist, indeed many of the greatest scholars of the last millennium have been profoundly religious men and women who saw their pursuit of science as a way to look upon the face of God. However, we cannot remain willfully ignorant of the universe in order to save the egos and small minds of people who think things were better back in the 15th century.
Well, in my first sojourn into political commentary, last night's Daily Show rubbed me the wrong way a bit and I've been trying to figure out why -- usually my feelings aren't too far off the ones that Jon Stewart is vocalizing. I think I've figured it out; while I've got no problem savaging the usual politicians and talking heads, everything I've read about Petraeus makes him look to me like the best kind of person you want in charge of an operation like this, and someone that should be able to give a straight answer about what is going on, and Jon was treating him as just another member of the Bush administration.
On the other hand, a lot of Jon's points made perfect sense -- Petraeus has towed the party line about the progress in the region, even when the situation on the ground has been dubious at best. I just have a hard time thinking he's being another yes-man, and I think part of that is my tendency to look upon military officers with a certain reverence, at least when I don't have reason to think otherwise. Even those I disagree with on some issues (like some of the NSDM folks) usually have well-thought out opinions, and I have to admit they have more experience and probably a better perspective on the matters than I do. And Petraeus is hardly an idiot -- the man has a PhD in International Relations from Princeton, for crying out loud. On the other hand, his report does seem to conflict with the recent GAO report, and seems a little rose-colored when we hear about that violence every day.
I think the root of the problem comes down to the fact that there is so much ill-will towards this whole mess that it doesn't matter what happens now, the pooch has been well and truly screwed. The war was a bad move in the first place, and it sounds like decisions were made during the initial phase of the occupation that doomed this project, and they continue to be made on the political side at the very least. And now, even the best progress that Petraeus can wring out of the situation is cold comfort, and while it may be true that he's made great strides, the man's been hobbled by three years of the war being run as a giant game of whack-a-mole and testbed for whacky neocon political ideas.
I honestly don't know if the situation would be salvageable even if we had 20 more years to spend trying to get the place in a state of semi-normalcy. The strategy that fighting an insurgency requires is not something that can be won in a few years, really -- it's a long, difficult mess, and one I don't know if the US military is really the best instrument for. I have sympathy for Petraeus being stuck in a situation with no good answers, and being forced to give an answer that is not going to be well-received no matter what it is, whether it is completely accurate or not. For his own sake, I hope that he is not acting as an agent of the administration -- that he is his own man, and giving an interpretation of the facts that is as honest as possible. For all the cynicism I have about the American political process, I want to believe that the military still serves the best interests of the United States, and not the best interests of the Bush administration.
On the other hand, a lot of Jon's points made perfect sense -- Petraeus has towed the party line about the progress in the region, even when the situation on the ground has been dubious at best. I just have a hard time thinking he's being another yes-man, and I think part of that is my tendency to look upon military officers with a certain reverence, at least when I don't have reason to think otherwise. Even those I disagree with on some issues (like some of the NSDM folks) usually have well-thought out opinions, and I have to admit they have more experience and probably a better perspective on the matters than I do. And Petraeus is hardly an idiot -- the man has a PhD in International Relations from Princeton, for crying out loud. On the other hand, his report does seem to conflict with the recent GAO report, and seems a little rose-colored when we hear about that violence every day.
I think the root of the problem comes down to the fact that there is so much ill-will towards this whole mess that it doesn't matter what happens now, the pooch has been well and truly screwed. The war was a bad move in the first place, and it sounds like decisions were made during the initial phase of the occupation that doomed this project, and they continue to be made on the political side at the very least. And now, even the best progress that Petraeus can wring out of the situation is cold comfort, and while it may be true that he's made great strides, the man's been hobbled by three years of the war being run as a giant game of whack-a-mole and testbed for whacky neocon political ideas.
I honestly don't know if the situation would be salvageable even if we had 20 more years to spend trying to get the place in a state of semi-normalcy. The strategy that fighting an insurgency requires is not something that can be won in a few years, really -- it's a long, difficult mess, and one I don't know if the US military is really the best instrument for. I have sympathy for Petraeus being stuck in a situation with no good answers, and being forced to give an answer that is not going to be well-received no matter what it is, whether it is completely accurate or not. For his own sake, I hope that he is not acting as an agent of the administration -- that he is his own man, and giving an interpretation of the facts that is as honest as possible. For all the cynicism I have about the American political process, I want to believe that the military still serves the best interests of the United States, and not the best interests of the Bush administration.
