Monday, March 31, 2014
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Up to Bat
Been a little while. Let's get back into it.
Crimea
Putin has made no new moves in Eastern Ukraine. The G-8 is now officially the G-7. Crimea is firmly in Putin's hands but President Obama has started to lay the rhetorical groundwork for a third round of sanctions based on the build-up of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border. The Kremlin's relative silence over the past week means two things to me. (1) Russia is trying to see how far the US/EU is willing to push penalties before officially responding, since it is always easier to start staunching the PR wound after the blows have stopped. (2) Russia is quietly negotiating with the West to reverse the current sanctions and, more importantly, stop any future sanctions before they get proposed.
On the first count, I think Russia/Putin is just now being forced to weigh the long-term consequences of his recent purchase. Aside from the short to moderate term economic depression, what he really has to worry about are the coming government subsidies/investments in alternate energy and alternate market that will start popping up in the US/EU. Obviously he cares about one more than the other but they tend to spiral together. On the second count, this is anyone's guess. If the first true, then I would hope that means the second is true.
(Update: the phone call between Obama and Putin has been been much talked about. Strange PR move from the Kremlin. I think it is a genuine concession that Russia wants to at least appear to be looking for diplomatic solution. I know everyone wants to talk about the troops on the border as a guarantee that Russia wants to invade but, take it from me, a country putting large numbers of troops on the border can often just be for show. Trust me, I was one of 3,000 soldiers staged in Kuwait purely to send a message to the Middle East. Sometimes they're just there to check a block.)
(Update: the phone call between Obama and Putin has been been much talked about. Strange PR move from the Kremlin. I think it is a genuine concession that Russia wants to at least appear to be looking for diplomatic solution. I know everyone wants to talk about the troops on the border as a guarantee that Russia wants to invade but, take it from me, a country putting large numbers of troops on the border can often just be for show. Trust me, I was one of 3,000 soldiers staged in Kuwait purely to send a message to the Middle East. Sometimes they're just there to check a block.)
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Priebus, It's Worse, It Really Is
I was talking with my friend Jake about age/branding IRT political parties here in America. Specifically, how I believe that the Republican Party has, by and large, lost my generation and at least one or two after me. Jake argued that the lifecycle of generations shows that they will change allegiances as they hit middle-age and on. I agree, that the overall temperament changes but I think that certain branding issues remain regardless of the personal beliefs. Especially when there are certain emotional issues tied to that branding. My mother is my best example of this uncomfortable Republican fact.
My mom was a child of the 70s, and a Hispanic woman who grew up in small-town Texas. The defining political movement in her childhood was the labor movement of Caesar Chavez. Her parents had the whole family boycott California grapes, she followed his campaign, and because of that movement she grew up seeing the world through the lens of racial inequality apparent in her own life. Whenever she talks about it, I can see that young girl's fire in her eyes.
A lot has happened since the 70s. She's grown up and grown more conservative, slightly. Perhaps it's more that the world finally caught up to her liberalism and slightly overtook it. But she does not forgive or forget how bitterly the Republicans of the 60s/70s opposed the movement. She can't. She will occasionally take Republican positions and will even vote Republican once in a blue moon. But she will NEVER consider herself a Republican. The emotional impact of her childhood remains.
It also doesn't help that the Republicans have botched up few things as completely and repeatedly as Hispanic outreach for the last half century. But still.
I believe, and there have been a slew of articles/polls recently that back this up, that while the Democratic ranks are not necessarily controlling the entire Millennial vote, Republicans are not growing at all. Instead more and more are considering themselves Independent or Libertarian. Even many of those who consider themselves severely conservative want nothing to do with the Republican Party. No one suggests the Democrats are having this same problem with Liberals.
The Republicans wish this was just an issue problem, those are much easier to cure than a branding problem. Issue problems go away the minute a platform changes. Branding sticks long past facts have changed.
The uncomfortable truth is that when you add up the various emotional issues (same-sex marriage, climate change, immigration reform, etc.) the emotions are so completely against the Republican platform and so are the percentages. I would imagine that more than 50% of the population falls somewhere on one of those major issues. When you add in the remaining amount who are Democratic for other, less knee-jerk, reasons, then that is a sizeable percentage who will never intend to be a part of the Republican Party. They may vote for the occasional candidate but they will never consider themselves a part of the overall system.
Whenever I hear someone like Priebus talk about how the RNC is changing course on it's negatives, I have to wonder if he honestly believes this. I would assume he doesn't. To be more charitable, I would hope that he at least believes that the current actions are starting to staunch the wounds for the generation just reaching awareness and onwards. So, in his own way, he believes that, yes, the Republican Party is beginning to dig itself out of the hole that is currently 2-3 generations deep by looking towards the post-post Millennials. If this is not true then he's simply delusional. A successful 2014 midterms is a sign that the 40+ crowd is more fluid than many of us think, not that the Millennials are "starting to come around." It doesn't even begin to address a point that I have been telling to anyone who will listen since 2012: the post-Reagan Republican platform can no longer win a national election. Period.
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Greetings, Professor Putin. How about a nice game of chess?
A quick thought about the recent “tit-for-tat” of US and Russian sanctions over Crimea. For one, they aren’t “tit-for-tat.” Everyone on the Right loves to make comments semi-praising Putin and outright-dissing Obama by claiming that on most topics “Putin is playing chess and Obama is playing checkers.” (Note: Many on the Left have extensively, and I think correctly, discussed Senator McCain’s apparently man-crush on Putin. The hate-lust is palpable. And sometimes I wonder if these old weirdos recognize the fact that they continue to demand that a US president act more like a Russian quasi-strongman/despot.) Well here is one area in which they emphatically are not. Obama has imposed real and painful economic sanctions against some of the highest advisors and “cronies” in the Kremlin, on top of a major Russian bank many of the oligarchs use for their personal piggy banks. He has even left open the possibility of directly sanctioning their major industries, and I think is a fair bet that Obama will end up following through on those threats.
Russia has made it harder for seven Americans to get visas.
….
This is emphatically chess and checkers. It could be said, charitably, that Putin has no interest in actually trying to respond to the US sanctions since he is more interested in consolidating his control in Eastern Ukraine. He will convince his sanctioned countrymen to just “wait it out” till the next thaw. Maybe. I think a more likely explanation is twofold. (1) The token economic advisors remaining in the Kremlin have explained to Putin that any attempt to impose a penalty will also have the effect of imposing a cost on Russia as well (as all sanctions do in a free trade environment) and the last thing Russia needs is further damage to their markets and a dive in investor confidence in the event of a trade war. Perhaps nosedive is a better word for it. (2) Russia understands that any sanctions they impose on the US would have little or no effect on a sluggish but growing US economy. The thud of sanctions failing to have any impact is much louder than imposing tooth-less sanctions and calling it a day. The weak trading relationship between the US and Russia makes sanctions a tricky proposition. The main reason the US has teeth in this is the usual reasoning of the US as an investors haven and the dollar’s control over international finance.
Putin called an emergency meeting of his economic advisors in Sochi back in April 2013, almost exactly a year ago. (Note: what a perfect backdrop for an economic emergency meeting, then the scene of the 2014 Winter Olympics. They could have looked out the window and seen the ongoing orgy of government waste, corruption, Pyongyang-level hubris, and overall fiscal irresponsibility as they get berated by Putin about why his toxic policies aren’t growing the economy.) From that meeting, Putin made stopping and reversing the economic slowdown in Russia a top priority. It hasn’t gone well. This won’t help.
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Soviet Stock Markets
I want to piggy back on AB and give my own bit on isolationism and the elephant in the room of his post: Russia's ongoing annexation of Crimea.
I will skip the legitimacy issue, which I think is, oddly enough mostly on Russia's side in this one. (Note: I could instead expound on Russia/Putin's absolute idiocy in fixing an election that he would have easily won and seizing a region that would have mostly gone over willingly. But I won't do that either.) The parts of this affair I find interesting are directly related to how this is and is not similar to Russia's invasion of Afghanistan.
Similarities are obvious enough, Russian invasion and annexation with little to no opposition against their overwhelming force. International outcry. Russia attempting to use petro-state influence to sideline the West (especially Europe).
Differences are much more interesting. The existence of a Russian stock market. There was no such stock market in the USSR. In a matter of days, taking into account ongoing fluctuations, the Ruble has sunk to a five-year low and lost somewhere from 20-25% of it's value. This is all without a single formal sanction being enacted. It'll be interesting to see if this trend continues or abates, now that the first sanctions have been passed. (Note: I would assume that the devaluation is going to start reversing, since the trend was mostly a product of investor fears over possible sanctions.)
I had a brief but friendly squabble on Facebook with a more conservative friend, quoting an article comparing Putin's more "traditional/materialist" view of power and Obama/Kerry's wishy-washy idea of power as being "on the right side of history." I can appreciate that Putin was, apparently, working towards more concrete goals (naval ports and some generic talking point about "gas pipelines", even though all Crimean pipelines run through Western Ukraine, so that gain is dubious at best) but that's the real point here. The US had almost nothing to gain here, except for some vague goal of resisting Putin, while Putin had an entire country and very well an entire region's worth of influence to gain here. And on both counts he has failed spectacularly. Kiev is, diplomatically and internally speaking, more united in opposition to the Kremlin than ever and the rest of the region has been left far from cowed and if anything, are more wary of a Russian government which is none too worried about international norms like territorial integrity.
And a crashed Russian stock market to boot. Them's been some expensive ports.
My main critique with the saber-rattling "get-tough-with-Putin" types and the "America is turning isolationist" types is that, at least in this case, it clearly wasn't needed. I don't think any honest, sober assessment of the situation makes a case that anything or anyone could come between Russian and Crimea if the Kremlin was dead-set on taking it. And they clearly were. So if stopping this annexation was a foregone conclusion, the only positive result possible (in the interests of the West) is for Putin/Russia to suffer a penalty so punitive, as to be dissuaded from making such a decision in the near future. The goal should be to change the Kremlin’s calculations. On this I think most rational critics of the US administration agree.
With that in mind, the reason why I don’t think it is honest of either camp to cry foul in this instance is that, Obama/Kerry’s actions or in actions have worked. Russia is/will suffer a massive economic hardship from this and is only going to fall further into economic slowdown. The calculations are going to change. Mission accomplished.
It is my strong belief that this entire enterprise is spin on a massive level. Putin’s equivalent of being denied the deed to a store, settling with taking some clothes off the nearest rack, and pretending that this was his goal in the first place and is a great personal victory as well. I find it sad that most of the MSM/Beltway insiders seem to buy into this spin. This was a monumental miscalculation for Putin, which I have heard can be chalked up to an inner circle that no longer contains any sane voices who understand/care one iota about economic policy. I understand something which, I believe, Obama/Kerry understands as well. This did not need big pushes. It needed a few small nudges. You can call it isolationism when their inactions are having a negative effect on US/allied influence in the world but that is simply not the case here. This has worked. Anyone who thinks that a government can watch its currency lose 25% of its value almost overnight, for factors directly tied to its actions, and not have to re-assess its strategy is living in even more of a fantasy world than Vladamir Putin.
It's not 2000 anymore...
A thought that's been trickling about my brainstem....
Progressives often decry (correctly) conventional GOP formulations on economic recovery because "it's not 1979 anymore." Tight money is antithetical to what we need. I think there's a similar moment emerging on foreign policy with the shoe on the other foot. The following idea is still deeply embryonic, so bear with.
The last decade+ has seen a significant rise in liberal advocacy for isolationism masquerading as realism and retrenchment. The idea that there's an emergent multipolar world and that the US has no choice but to retrench for its own sake and take advantage of its own natural cover. This foolishness amounts to a self-fulfilling prophecy.
As the police stop walking the beat, crime rises. As crime rises, you need more cops to walk the beat. As the US retrenches from hard and soft power projection, international lawlessness spikes. As the Obama administration turns its head towards myopic Pollyannas like Mearsheimer, America is losing its natural alliances with Westernized democracies and the soft power projected from its role as global hegemon. Because of some bizarre, fetishized devotion to an Eisenhower presidency that never existed (mimicking the right's own Reagan fetishism), the Obama administration has successfully completed the task started by the Bush 43 administration by drawing down the US' role after bungling imperial wars that have confused a public that probably still broadly supports their more righteous cousin, liberal interventionism.
And so, it's 1979 all over again. It's not 2000. We've drawn down to the field and made ourselves small enough to be sniffed. For once, the right is at least a little right. The US must return to projecting power in a meaningful way, to abandoning counterproductive detente policies, and to buttressing liberal democracy the world over against its pernicious foes.
The world's gone multipolar, and the tonic is Reagan-era neoconservativism.
Progressives often decry (correctly) conventional GOP formulations on economic recovery because "it's not 1979 anymore." Tight money is antithetical to what we need. I think there's a similar moment emerging on foreign policy with the shoe on the other foot. The following idea is still deeply embryonic, so bear with.
The last decade+ has seen a significant rise in liberal advocacy for isolationism masquerading as realism and retrenchment. The idea that there's an emergent multipolar world and that the US has no choice but to retrench for its own sake and take advantage of its own natural cover. This foolishness amounts to a self-fulfilling prophecy.
As the police stop walking the beat, crime rises. As crime rises, you need more cops to walk the beat. As the US retrenches from hard and soft power projection, international lawlessness spikes. As the Obama administration turns its head towards myopic Pollyannas like Mearsheimer, America is losing its natural alliances with Westernized democracies and the soft power projected from its role as global hegemon. Because of some bizarre, fetishized devotion to an Eisenhower presidency that never existed (mimicking the right's own Reagan fetishism), the Obama administration has successfully completed the task started by the Bush 43 administration by drawing down the US' role after bungling imperial wars that have confused a public that probably still broadly supports their more righteous cousin, liberal interventionism.
And so, it's 1979 all over again. It's not 2000. We've drawn down to the field and made ourselves small enough to be sniffed. For once, the right is at least a little right. The US must return to projecting power in a meaningful way, to abandoning counterproductive detente policies, and to buttressing liberal democracy the world over against its pernicious foes.
The world's gone multipolar, and the tonic is Reagan-era neoconservativism.
Friday, March 14, 2014
Andrew Sullivan, shut up and take my money!
Last week, I spent $20, the minimum possible amount, and became a subscriber to Andrew Sullivan’s current events blog “The Dish.” While I don’t agree with all of his positions and points of view, I am consistently impressed with his voice as a writer and his refusal to pigeonhole the blog to topics which are his traditional strengths. His tendency to use “ctd” posts to showcase responses to his posts or to the ideas in general is an especially interesting way to do business.
But what I what you to take away from this is the fact this is the first time I’ve ever paid for a blog. And now I’m scratching my head on a general idea that comes from this fact: what is a blog worth to me? I understand that this idea is hardly new and has already been debated ad nauseum by some in the blogosphere and MSM, but it’s the first time I’ve had to consider it myself.
On the one hand, a professional blog such as The Dish is little different from my subscription to the New Yorker. I’m paying for news and opinion and analysis which are rich enough and numerous enough to warrant hours out of my week spent on it. Now that I’m paying, I visit it daily, when before I was only visiting it when another site or friend (AB) had recommended something to me. But that is itself ipso facto logic. Still, it is certainly interesting enough to warrant a daily visit and the voice of the blog is distinct enough to offer me something I can’t get elsewhere. So time spent and the exclusivity of materials are two factors on my side here.
Next is the price. $20/year? Too much? I’ll skip the usual Save the Children type comparison (for the record, this works out to about $0.05/day) and instead focus on personal value. How much would I spend for the free blogs I currently enjoy and MUST visit at least once a day? If I’m really being honest with myself, if one of my main blogs (io9 [the sci-fi blog], Towleroad [the gay news blog], or Politico [guess what it’s about]) were to suddenly become a paywall, I’d probably cough up a bit of cash. In fact, for io9 definitely, I’d probably cough up a bunch of cash. If someone were to quote me the price of $1 per day, I’d probably think that is fair for the value I get out of it. I’d balk at the $365 price tag but might very well end up paying it. (I NEED sci-fi, much like Bill Kristol needs puppy blood.)
The issue I think a lot of us have over price is that this price comes before the value. I’d say this is the default way we do transactions in society. Cars, food, apartments, etc. But the internet has made us think differently about something as intangible and, seemingly, fungible as blogs. For so long they have been relegated to the domain of “they should just be happy I’m paying attention” that they have had an infinitely weak bargaining position.
Has that changed? I suppose. For me it has, at any rate. After years of enjoying and being impressed by how much a professional blog can influence my life, I’m willing to take a leap of faith based on good reviews, good “samples”, and over a decade of built-up respect for a medium that I have come to consider irreplaceable.
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Truth and Reconciliation
Sometime in the near future, I pray, there will be a vast and difficult undertaking of Truth and Reconciliation between the Israeli and Palestinian people. I look forward to that day. Mostly because it would mean that there is some measure of peace between them and an end to the conflict. In so far, as there is ever an "end" to anything.
But I do not know when that day will come.
Instead, let me talk about one such undertaking, which many people think has yet to come but I believe is already underway and will continue for many years to come. To be more specific, one side in this struggle has given in and has begun to sue for peace, truth, and reconciliation. To be even more specific, that side is the anti-gay rights faction.
To be clear, I do not believe that the fight is in fact over. Mostly because it isn't. The signs and facts are so many and obvious that I do not need to list them here. However, I think we can all agree that the majority of the US conservative "intelligentsia" have finally and quietly thrown in the towel. Those who continue to rail against gay marriage for instance have lately been looked upon by their conservative peers as if they were repairing an old house on a beach, when a mile or so off the coast there is a tsunami approaching. Which is to say, "that's a beautiful house and I'd love to help, but that's not just the daily tide and it is soon to drown us all if we don't GTFO." These are the ones who have begun to sue for peace.
Ross Douthat being the most recent example, with his post in the NYT, conveniently (for me) named The Terms of Our Surrender. I will admit that Ross' article gave me the impetus for this post but this is a topic I've had to think about for a few years now. I do not pretend that there is not still years ahead of us in this fight and many hearts/minds to win over but sooner or later the gay community is going to be faced with the question all civil rights movements are forced to ask themselves. What is to be done with those who stood in our way? Even after this is over, we will continue to be a small minority so our "power" to exert some penalty or fine on those who continue to oppose gay rights will continue to be only as large as the straight community allows it to be. Perhaps even less so, since in progressive circles a group's "influence" tends to be in direct proportion to how much "oppression" it appears to be under. So at least in that sense, our victim card will be severely diminished as more time elapses. But what we do after winning will define our movement and the growth of our community for the next generation or two. So it requires some thought.
This topic of "what is to be done" has been explored in depth by Andrew Sullivan here and with links to other ideas here. The consensus being that the conservative intelligentsia want to "carve out" some space for religious protections and the gay activist community is just as eager to deny them that space. I won't rehash their arguments here, you can follow the links for the full stories. And before I give my own opinion I want to tie this into a larger strategy that is happening and will become even more obvious as we approach/reach equality: the all-mighty backpedal.
It comes in stages and this one is no different. As we've already seen, it starts with the qualified peace-offering of support: "I believe all states should be allowed to vote on this issue however they wish." And let's be honest, anyone who says that they always held this view is going to have to completely white-wash over the fact damn near all of them supported a constitution amendment that would have, theoretically, taken the choice away from many many voters/states. (Since it did not need 100% of states to approve it for it to be ratified.) It continues with a tepid offering of slight support: "I believe same-sex couples deserve the same rights as other couples." It follows with an outright declaration of support: "I believe that same-sex couples should be allowed to enter into civil marriage, so long as the rights of religious believers are protected." And finally, the day will come, as it always comes in these situations, when the stage is set for the final act: "I have always had nothing but respect for the rights of LGBT Americans and a belief in marriage equality."
Who here doesn't believe that we will all hear those words come out of the mouths of many current politicians in the years to come. Hopefully delivered in the most awkward gay pride/celebration setting as possible. Many of our current politicians who are against gay rights will most likely be dead or retired (hopefully due to being fired) before things like marriage equality are universally praised. But the rates on incumbent re-election and the youth of some of our current representatives correlate sufficiently, so many of them will live to prostrate/humiliate themselves by trying to ingratiate themselves to "the gays." Frankly, I can't wait to see Paul Ryan awkwardly holding a rainbow flag and, oh, I don't know.....hugging an equally uncomfortable gay intern while trying to connect how "awesome" gay marriage is to how awkward tax reform is. Make no mistake, not only will they come out in support of it one day, but they will deny in no uncertain terms that they have EVER been against same-sex marriage. There will be a period where they will use words like "evolve" or whatever but much like our most famous "evolve-er", President Obama, it will quickly be shucked aside and replaced with a revisionist, eternal support. The difference being that I think President Obama has perhaps the much better case for it actually being true.
You can already see shades of this every time a "moderate" like Christie or Rand Paul says something to the effect that "I have no problem with gay people in general and I have nothing but support for those in committed same-sex relationships, I just think it should be left up to each state to decide." If you take out most of the middle and replace "gay people" and "same-sex marriage" you can hear the future being spoken right now.
How does this tie into a discussion of SSM v. religious protections? To be honest, how we fight against one is going to directly influence how we fight against the other. And here is my opinion: we shouldn't.
Let me be clear: in the pursuit of full rights and full equality, we must not stop fighting until every ounce of denied liberty has been gained. This will not be given to us. Despite my "optimism" on the surrender of the conservative brain-trust, I know that the rank-and-file conservatives of this time will not be so gracious and will fight us tooth and nail. The House of Representatives and the Senate will fight us tooth and nail. When we win it will be because we fought for every inch of ground. And victory should not be accepted as anything less than total and complete recognition of our dignity as citizens and human beings in the eyes and laws of our government. Any who stand in our way must be confronted and called out for who and what they are until they are made as irrelevant as their policies.
But after that? We must be gracious and we must be forgiving and we must be respectful. Even if it means accepting that there will be those who will re-write their own histories or hold into their old prejudices.
I understand the yearn to see justice for rights denied and to see those who denied those rights to have to pay some price. But we must fight this impulse at every turn. To do otherwise would be to lead our movement away from a long and noble history of fighting for the rights of others and plunge it the tragic and predictable dead-end of "settling scores."
There are more people in this country and in other countries who will continue to have their rights denied, and every ounce of effort we make trying to punish those who have wronged us is one less ounce of effort we make towards more worthy causes. Also, there is an important debate that needs to go on in our country. In fact, in every country. Between conservative and progressive. Between spending more, spending less, more government, less government, higher interest rates, lower interest rates, more isolationism, less isolationism. Neither side is ever completely right, because facts do not stay facts for long. Our world grows and sheds its skin and changes. We find ourselves coming back to these same arguments for a reason. None of them generally stay true for very long. These fights are important and when they are shut down because of old fights and old positions, we all lose out.
We will not forget those who stood with us and those who stood against us but that doesn't mean we need to devote more of our lives to seeing our opponents punished. And once they support us and our movement, we accept it, hope that they have truly learned something, and get on with the real work of progress. And for those who will continue to fight us and deny us equal rights in whatever small ways they can, for whatever reasons they claim, we must accept them as well. We do not need to sue or attempt to bring the sword of civil power down on them. We need only turn our backs and encourage our friends/family to turn their backs and leave them behind. It should be enough that history, the law, the government, and their own children will most likely become so strange to them that they will indeed feel as if they are alone in the wilderness.
And, yes, we should be ready to accept them as well with open arms if/when they should tire of the solitude.
But I do not know when that day will come.
Instead, let me talk about one such undertaking, which many people think has yet to come but I believe is already underway and will continue for many years to come. To be more specific, one side in this struggle has given in and has begun to sue for peace, truth, and reconciliation. To be even more specific, that side is the anti-gay rights faction.
To be clear, I do not believe that the fight is in fact over. Mostly because it isn't. The signs and facts are so many and obvious that I do not need to list them here. However, I think we can all agree that the majority of the US conservative "intelligentsia" have finally and quietly thrown in the towel. Those who continue to rail against gay marriage for instance have lately been looked upon by their conservative peers as if they were repairing an old house on a beach, when a mile or so off the coast there is a tsunami approaching. Which is to say, "that's a beautiful house and I'd love to help, but that's not just the daily tide and it is soon to drown us all if we don't GTFO." These are the ones who have begun to sue for peace.
Ross Douthat being the most recent example, with his post in the NYT, conveniently (for me) named The Terms of Our Surrender. I will admit that Ross' article gave me the impetus for this post but this is a topic I've had to think about for a few years now. I do not pretend that there is not still years ahead of us in this fight and many hearts/minds to win over but sooner or later the gay community is going to be faced with the question all civil rights movements are forced to ask themselves. What is to be done with those who stood in our way? Even after this is over, we will continue to be a small minority so our "power" to exert some penalty or fine on those who continue to oppose gay rights will continue to be only as large as the straight community allows it to be. Perhaps even less so, since in progressive circles a group's "influence" tends to be in direct proportion to how much "oppression" it appears to be under. So at least in that sense, our victim card will be severely diminished as more time elapses. But what we do after winning will define our movement and the growth of our community for the next generation or two. So it requires some thought.
This topic of "what is to be done" has been explored in depth by Andrew Sullivan here and with links to other ideas here. The consensus being that the conservative intelligentsia want to "carve out" some space for religious protections and the gay activist community is just as eager to deny them that space. I won't rehash their arguments here, you can follow the links for the full stories. And before I give my own opinion I want to tie this into a larger strategy that is happening and will become even more obvious as we approach/reach equality: the all-mighty backpedal.
It comes in stages and this one is no different. As we've already seen, it starts with the qualified peace-offering of support: "I believe all states should be allowed to vote on this issue however they wish." And let's be honest, anyone who says that they always held this view is going to have to completely white-wash over the fact damn near all of them supported a constitution amendment that would have, theoretically, taken the choice away from many many voters/states. (Since it did not need 100% of states to approve it for it to be ratified.) It continues with a tepid offering of slight support: "I believe same-sex couples deserve the same rights as other couples." It follows with an outright declaration of support: "I believe that same-sex couples should be allowed to enter into civil marriage, so long as the rights of religious believers are protected." And finally, the day will come, as it always comes in these situations, when the stage is set for the final act: "I have always had nothing but respect for the rights of LGBT Americans and a belief in marriage equality."
Who here doesn't believe that we will all hear those words come out of the mouths of many current politicians in the years to come. Hopefully delivered in the most awkward gay pride/celebration setting as possible. Many of our current politicians who are against gay rights will most likely be dead or retired (hopefully due to being fired) before things like marriage equality are universally praised. But the rates on incumbent re-election and the youth of some of our current representatives correlate sufficiently, so many of them will live to prostrate/humiliate themselves by trying to ingratiate themselves to "the gays." Frankly, I can't wait to see Paul Ryan awkwardly holding a rainbow flag and, oh, I don't know.....hugging an equally uncomfortable gay intern while trying to connect how "awesome" gay marriage is to how awkward tax reform is. Make no mistake, not only will they come out in support of it one day, but they will deny in no uncertain terms that they have EVER been against same-sex marriage. There will be a period where they will use words like "evolve" or whatever but much like our most famous "evolve-er", President Obama, it will quickly be shucked aside and replaced with a revisionist, eternal support. The difference being that I think President Obama has perhaps the much better case for it actually being true.
You can already see shades of this every time a "moderate" like Christie or Rand Paul says something to the effect that "I have no problem with gay people in general and I have nothing but support for those in committed same-sex relationships, I just think it should be left up to each state to decide." If you take out most of the middle and replace "gay people" and "same-sex marriage" you can hear the future being spoken right now.
How does this tie into a discussion of SSM v. religious protections? To be honest, how we fight against one is going to directly influence how we fight against the other. And here is my opinion: we shouldn't.
Let me be clear: in the pursuit of full rights and full equality, we must not stop fighting until every ounce of denied liberty has been gained. This will not be given to us. Despite my "optimism" on the surrender of the conservative brain-trust, I know that the rank-and-file conservatives of this time will not be so gracious and will fight us tooth and nail. The House of Representatives and the Senate will fight us tooth and nail. When we win it will be because we fought for every inch of ground. And victory should not be accepted as anything less than total and complete recognition of our dignity as citizens and human beings in the eyes and laws of our government. Any who stand in our way must be confronted and called out for who and what they are until they are made as irrelevant as their policies.
But after that? We must be gracious and we must be forgiving and we must be respectful. Even if it means accepting that there will be those who will re-write their own histories or hold into their old prejudices.
I understand the yearn to see justice for rights denied and to see those who denied those rights to have to pay some price. But we must fight this impulse at every turn. To do otherwise would be to lead our movement away from a long and noble history of fighting for the rights of others and plunge it the tragic and predictable dead-end of "settling scores."
There are more people in this country and in other countries who will continue to have their rights denied, and every ounce of effort we make trying to punish those who have wronged us is one less ounce of effort we make towards more worthy causes. Also, there is an important debate that needs to go on in our country. In fact, in every country. Between conservative and progressive. Between spending more, spending less, more government, less government, higher interest rates, lower interest rates, more isolationism, less isolationism. Neither side is ever completely right, because facts do not stay facts for long. Our world grows and sheds its skin and changes. We find ourselves coming back to these same arguments for a reason. None of them generally stay true for very long. These fights are important and when they are shut down because of old fights and old positions, we all lose out.
We will not forget those who stood with us and those who stood against us but that doesn't mean we need to devote more of our lives to seeing our opponents punished. And once they support us and our movement, we accept it, hope that they have truly learned something, and get on with the real work of progress. And for those who will continue to fight us and deny us equal rights in whatever small ways they can, for whatever reasons they claim, we must accept them as well. We do not need to sue or attempt to bring the sword of civil power down on them. We need only turn our backs and encourage our friends/family to turn their backs and leave them behind. It should be enough that history, the law, the government, and their own children will most likely become so strange to them that they will indeed feel as if they are alone in the wilderness.
And, yes, we should be ready to accept them as well with open arms if/when they should tire of the solitude.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
The Contrarian
I can literally remember the first time I saw Christopher Hitchens speak on television. It was 2003, just before the start of the Iraq invasion. I was watching CSPAN for some reason (I was a fairly odd kid) and it was a debate on the merits/legality of the invasion of Iraq and Hitchens was on the side of the invasion, of course. I was, at the time, a knee-jerk liberal teenager and ready to hate anyone who spoke for it. The anti-intervention speaker was kind of bland and generic. Then Hitchens came on and instantly made me angry. I hated everything he said and stood for. But as I kept listening, I realized something else was happening at the same time. Bit by bit, he was convincing me. I had this deep, emotional, gut feeling about the coming war and then using nothing other than his own words he was convincing me to ignore my gut. That onto itself felt like a magic trick.
I still didn't like a man who spoke so eloquently and, most damning of all, so persuasively about something I would go blue in the face shouting against. So I didn't intend to follow him but as he continued to show up on television or write columns in Slate or Salon or Vanity Fair, I took notice. Until at some point, for his second magic trick, he made me into not only a fan but into someone who considers him a mentor and a model for living one's life. All this even though I never got the chance to see him speak in person.
I think few people can claim to have had as rich and full of a life as Christopher Hitchens. To quote one of the loveliest lines from Tony Kuschner, he was "a whole kind of person." From chasing after mujhadeen for an article to hosting a cocktail party in his own home and "popping off" for 30 minutes to write a full Slate article in the time it would take most of us to think of the title. More importantly, to me, he did it all with a Roger Williams-esque zeal and devotion to the truth. He enjoyed grandstanding and he enjoyed throwing molotov cocktails, sure, but I don't think anyone can call his passionate opinions on the worth or lack of worth of various ideas and public figures as anything but painfully honest. He was willing to lose friends and lose jobs for the right to speak his mind. An atheist Trotskyist who rubbed shoulders with the US conservative elite for a time. That right there probably tells you exactly how much he subscribed to orthodoxy and the opinions of others.
He's been dead for quite a while now, but I recently started reading his final book of essays, "Arguably." I've only started but every sentence reminds me of his voice and that sadness I felt when he died. It's probably a sign of how little I'd had to deal with the death of loved ones in my life at that point, that his death hit me the hardest I had felt for a long while. But the point is that his death hit me because I knew he was the kind of person who would not get replaced in my life. I do not think I will ever have another mentor who makes me want/need to be a more....complete man. Maybe it's a part of aging where your goals get more specific and less expansive. I'll admire this person or that their achievements in one field or another. He makes more money, she's gone further up the ladder, etc.
But I will not have another Hitchens in my life. He was one and done.
Monday, March 10, 2014
This is Not About HBO's True Detective
I want to mention that I just downloaded the first three episodes of HBO's new show True Detective. It's received amazing, yet somewhat also low-key, acclaim. (Note: The low-key part I find particularly intriguing, since I am a huge Game of Thrones fan, which has a much splashier and trumpeted media presence but I have never read anything about it quite like the recent story wherein True Detective's season finale crashed the HBO streaming site. Weird, right?).
Now I don't mention this to talk about the fact I downloaded True Detective. I mention this to talk about the fact I have not downloaded HBO's OTHER new show Looking. You know, the show made expressly for me. (Note: Demo: Gay males age 25-40.) Ish.
Now there are a couple of different ways I can talk about this. On the one hand, I can talk about the fact HBO has a knack for merging art and commerce (see: The Wire, Rome, GoT, Deadwood, Carnivale, etc.) as so few TV networks have before or since. However, this is apparently a good example of art and commerce working against each other, where the creators are so dead set on not being JUST entertainment that they forget to actually BE entertaining. On the other hand, I can talk about the fact I’ve dismissed this show based purely on ads and reviews of the show. This could be a pretty fertile topic, vis a vis the inherent idiocy/douchiness of dismissing any piece of art based purely on the opinions of others or the counter fact that I think the wisest course of action is to pull a Nate Silver and realize that when the gross aggregate of criticism is uniformly negative, it’s almost dumb to waste your time on something unless your job is to be one of those unhappy reviewers.
Instead I’m going to chose the third hand (?) and talk briefly about the inherent fallacy about trying to make any kind of art about a generic “you” or “them” or “us.” Art, especially a visual/language medium like TV, really only works when it is a specific you/them/us. Game of Thrones has magic and gods and dragons. It has a woman who gave birth (kindda) to dragons. It is implied that she will one day ride said dragons. She is utterly captivating but not because she is a pastiche of dragon queens or warrior princesses or some idealized version of a woman with the will to command this mythological force. She is a fully realized character with a specific back-story that has made her into a distinct/flawed character. She can be childish and thick-headed and make some really bad choices because, based on what we know of her, these are the choices we would probably make in her position. Or not. She’s not the strength that you find in all women or the wisdom that all mothers find within themselves or some other cliché intended to make her into an everywoman. She’s a person.
In regards to Looking, I understand their goal is to show the kind of groups that I’m told are pretty common, even if I’m not part of one, gay men who “hang out and smoke weed and talk about whatever and just basically act kind of boring.” But apparently that's it. A group of guys that could exist. As the creators have said to dismiss the charges of being a boring show, they made it boring “intentionally.” Instead of complex/complicated/interesting characters, the show presents us with characters who have been made as generically as possible so as many gay men as possible are able to identify with each of these precise arch-types. But therein lies the rub. We (the viewers) don’t connect with characters because we think they have a certain minimum percentage of similarity to our own existence. We connect because they are a unique character and we either recognize a moment of their existence as mirroring a specific moment of our own or even just because they are portrayed well and force us to empathize with the joy/suffering/experience of another human being. Even someone emphatically not us.
This brings me to probably the single most depressing idea this show has wrought on our already troubled world. The fact is that the creators have essentially told the gay male community, and by extension the whole of humanity, that when we think of ourselves we want to be bored. That the best way to make people connect with their own lives is to show us “similar” lives.....in which not much really happens. Is this meant to be auto-biographical? Do the creators think their lives are quintessentially boring? Maybe they just think “our” lives are boring. This is either the most nihilist television show since The Prisoner or the most complex/expensive hate letter directed at the gay community in television history. Are the creators endicting just themselves, all gay men, or all of mankind in this modern day adaptation of No Exit?
In either case, the best takedown of this idea of life as boring has already been delivered and the words are not mine. So I won’t even pretend I deserve the last word on this. Instead I will leave you with the words of Mr. Charlie Kaufman in his 2002 film, Adaptation:
[at a seminar, Charlie Kaufman has asked McKee for advice on his new screenplay in which 'nothing much happens']
Robert McKee: Nothing happens in the world? Are you out of your fucking mind? People are murdered every day. There's genocide, war, corruption. Every fucking day, somewhere in the world, somebody sacrifices his life to save someone else. Every fucking day, someone, somewhere takes a conscious decision to destroy someone else. People find love, people lose it. For Christ's sake, a child watches her mother beaten to death on the steps of a church. Someone goes hungry. Somebody else betrays his best friend for a woman. If you can't find that stuff in life, then you, my friend, don't know crap about life! And why the FUCK are you wasting my two precious hours with your movie? I don't have any use for it! I don't have any bloody use for it!
Charlie Kaufman: Okay, thanks.
Art
I bought my first piece of original artwork at an art show this weekend. It was bizarre. Like the first time I rode in a tank back in the Army. It was something I've always known happened but never thought I'd do it and never thought it would be that easy. (Note: firing a tank isn't bizarre. That's just plain fucking awesome.)
It's a really stunning piece made by a Chicago street artist. I loved it at first sight and, truth be told, buying it also had a sorta bucket list feel to it.
However, it also makes me feel better about my place in life. Buying art to hang on my wall makes me feel like my little rent-stabilized piece of NYC is just a bit more solid than the day before yesterday. I've been on the go for so long that I can't remember the last time I thought about my present having any physical connection to my future. Until yesterday.
Sunday, March 9, 2014
The IWC IRL
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_professional_wrestling_terms#Smark
I... am a smark. That means I spend much of my waking time thinking about, reading about, and commenting about pro wrestling. Awful rumor websites called "dirtsheets"? I'm there first thing in the morning. /r/SquaredCircle for a new AMA? In.
The Internet Wrestling Community (IWC) is a small, dedicated one. Consequently, meeting another smark in real life is a wonderful bit of serendipity. After a quick secret handshake of references, conversation will ensue and it. will. not. stop. Moreover, I've found that smarks are quick to introduce each other to all of their smark friends. Like any movement, we understand the strength of numbers. How else will we get Daniel Bryan into the main event of Wrestlemania XXX?
Last night, my girlfriend, a fellow smark's girlfriend, and poor, poor Chris were subject to smark bonding. They wanted to be like normal young people and experience the bonhomie of drinks, dancing, and frank discussions of sex. The smark and I wanted to discuss sex, too: specifically, sex involving "The Nature Boy" Ric Flair.
So, there we were at Eastern Bloc. My girlfriend? Texting away. Anonymous smark #2's girlfriend? the same. Chris? Finding convenient armrests.
The smarks? Feverishly debating TNA while refreshing our Twitter feeds to read a "livetweet" of WCW Great American Bash 1989. It was all about TNA for us, too. TNA Impact Wrestling, that is.
The Big Red Machine
http://www.lewrockwell.com/author/glenn-jacobs/
Think about this for a second: Kane is a popular libertarian blogger. He's got Ron Paul's stamp of approval.
...#imjustsayin
P.S. The only decent Rockwell is a Rockwell who gets Michael Jackson to do vocals... and Lew Rockwell ain't that Rockwell.
Saturday, March 8, 2014
Jew-ness and Catholic-ness
In case anyone hasn't noticed, my co-writer (AB) has something of a thing for all things Jew and Israel. I think his three favorite words right now are "dog-whistle", "Bibi", and "framework."
I'm not gonna pretend I understand the Jewish experience or whatever, however, I will pretend that I understand what he experiences when he has to explain his unwavering support/zeal/Reddit posts in defense of the nation of Israel. Especially when the Far Left speaks entirely in various synonyms of "wall" "partition" "occupation" "oppression" "apartheid" and "war crimes." Mostly because I find myself having to directly or obliquely defending the diaspora of Catholicism, and having to defend it against many of the same inflammatory language. And the bitch of it is, some of those words are true/deserved, even AB will agree with me on that. It's also entirely not the point.
Despite men such as Ross Douthat and Tony Perinkins' furverent insistence, Christianity and Christians is at no risk of suffering a political or literal Kristallnacht. Catholics included. So I can't pretend to equate the Jewish level of defensiveness with my own Catholic one but we are both most assuredly playing defense. There are two parts to this (1) past/present actions by members of the faith and (b) cultural norms founded in religious circumstances. To the first, this is neither the time or the post to get into that, but the second I can quickly sum up. AB and I are both shades of secular-religious-cultural. The Far Left, like all idealists, can see no good coming from bad. I sympathize but I also don't care. I live in a world of results. I was raised in a mainly Catholic household, with a large Catholic extended-family who for the most part embodied all the best of Hispanic/Catholic culture (tight family bonds, lifelong marriage, belief in forgiveness, practice of a specific kind of joie de vivre). My parents raised me in the Church but never shoved it down my throat or even pretended that their goal was to "convert" me (note: I found out later that my dad is agnostic despite himself being raised Catholic, but for the most part he never discussed it when we were kids aside from brief hints). My parents, mom especially, raised me from a very young age to celebrate LGBT equality even before coming out myself. To me, Catholic life taught me some very important/strong/optimal views on life and how to live. This is not everyone's experience or belief. Got it. But this is mine and it is great and it exists because of the Roman Catholic Church, more than it is in spite of the Church.
I believe AB has a very similar belief/reverence for his own faith/culture. The Jewish culture is one of spiritual doubt/introspection/challenge/search/historic responsibility/quest. I have nothing but admiration for every bit of that. Defending the nation of Israel can easily and naturally be seen as a defense of Jewish-ness at the same time it is not a defense of Judaism, much as my defense of Catholic culture is not the same as a defense of Catholicism. The Far Left think about forests. AB and I live in trees. Oy, viva!
Re: Re: Heteronormativity
Anime, you ignorant slut.
A few things.
One, I find the entire argument of "acceptance of LGBT in America leads to cultural genocide of Queer life" interesting and kindda funny. Not funny because it's wrong (it isn't) or it isn't tragic (it is) but because it's the result of something fantastic and inevitable from the beginning. Cultural heritages die out. At least in the sense of a "living culture." They die out, get subsumed, get replaced, etc. World without end. This is not to diminish what Queer Culture accomplished in it's all too short lifespan, including new ideas on gender and sexuality and historical whitewashing. But Queer Culture was a direct result of persecution. Not in spite of it. Like most great movements, it is a nightshade, it only thrived in the shadow of oppression. Those in this culture yearn to understand themselves, find definitions for things left ignored and share that understanding with the world, prove they are just another aspect of human existence. Well, it worked. The Western culture agrees. Queer Culture has been brought out into the light of day. Like all nightshade it will now shrivel and desiccate. The Beatles put Motown out of business in one night and it looks like acceptance will put overall Queer Culture out of business in one generation. The one right behind us. And its wonderful!
Overly, flippant? Probably. But I never expect Doctor Who to have to apologize for fighting evil and I will never apologize for celebrating the fact that acceptance of LGBT people has grown by leaps and bounds. The vanguard, who fought and struggled and sacrificed everything for the rights those after them enjoy, are heroes. No doubt. But they also inevitably become the ones who look at the younger generations, enjoying/accepting the right to live alongside the former "oppressors," and call them sell-outs. It's the life cycle of causes.
Two, I find the argument of "gentrification" or "assimilation" or whatever can be boiled down to a simple "our socialization is better than your socialization!" Both seem to me a form of corralling people into particular lifestyles. I get that one is a vast majority and the other is a tiny minority but the control seems just as strong in either group. The Queer impulse to be, well, "queer," I think can be just as constricting and just as suffocating as the yearning to emulate my parents and just put a ring on it. When "normal" is the enemy, by attempting to destroy orthodoxy you just created your own to replace it. So I've never found that complaint to be especially interesting.
Three, you hit on this but not nearly to the level it deserved. Marriage equality is just another option we give those who come after us. It is not a judgement or an edict or a demand. Just an option! And like all options in the marketplace of idea (CPAC 2014, hollah!), it gets chosen based on it's merit. Accept it or not. Those who wish to fight for more marriage options like polyandry or whatever are free to fight that battle but, aside from all the larger implications of equality and acceptance and justice and symbolism of said ideas, we rarely fail in giving younger generations more options. In fact, we generally fail when we leave them with too few options.
And finally, the real engine driving this churn is as obvious to me as it appears to be unfathomable to the Queer vanguard: parents. I don't think I am incorrect or out of line to say that most who lived at the height of Queer Culture were not close to their parents, if not outright disowned. Another tragic wrong has been righted. Millennials are being accepted by their parents/family en masse. Not to say that far too many children aren't still being abandoned by their parents/monsters but I would stand to believe that the ratio is almost entirely flipped now and will be approaching zero by the time our generation becomes parents. Thank god. And, as I hinted at earlier, anyone who thinks they can override the biological imperative of parents passing on their hopes and dreams and neurosis to their children, is fooling themselves. Perhaps it was easier to ignore/hate/rebel against parents who showed you nothing but scorn/hate/shame. But kids come out now and get hugs (I was one of those{!}). How do you tell them that they need to throw off the trappings of a home where they grew up happy?
So this final section becomes not a discussion of how/if heteronormative trends can/should continue. I could argue historical precedents or non-precedents, et al. Instead I will just close with the hard truth that whatever this trend is, it will not be stopped. For the simple, fucking-amazing reason that LGBT children are growing up in happy homes with proud straight parents. A lot of them. Hopefully, one day, almost all of them. I honestly believe that even after being subsumed into that vast normal majority, they will grow up liking Broadway plays or football plays or Legos or Barbies or tractor trucks or Bravo reality shows, all based on factors that are still out of the control of any person or cultural theory. If they look around and decide that this 2.5 kids, dog, married life ain't so bad, well, at least now they have the choice which Queer Culture now regrets giving them.
A few things.
One, I find the entire argument of "acceptance of LGBT in America leads to cultural genocide of Queer life" interesting and kindda funny. Not funny because it's wrong (it isn't) or it isn't tragic (it is) but because it's the result of something fantastic and inevitable from the beginning. Cultural heritages die out. At least in the sense of a "living culture." They die out, get subsumed, get replaced, etc. World without end. This is not to diminish what Queer Culture accomplished in it's all too short lifespan, including new ideas on gender and sexuality and historical whitewashing. But Queer Culture was a direct result of persecution. Not in spite of it. Like most great movements, it is a nightshade, it only thrived in the shadow of oppression. Those in this culture yearn to understand themselves, find definitions for things left ignored and share that understanding with the world, prove they are just another aspect of human existence. Well, it worked. The Western culture agrees. Queer Culture has been brought out into the light of day. Like all nightshade it will now shrivel and desiccate. The Beatles put Motown out of business in one night and it looks like acceptance will put overall Queer Culture out of business in one generation. The one right behind us. And its wonderful!
Overly, flippant? Probably. But I never expect Doctor Who to have to apologize for fighting evil and I will never apologize for celebrating the fact that acceptance of LGBT people has grown by leaps and bounds. The vanguard, who fought and struggled and sacrificed everything for the rights those after them enjoy, are heroes. No doubt. But they also inevitably become the ones who look at the younger generations, enjoying/accepting the right to live alongside the former "oppressors," and call them sell-outs. It's the life cycle of causes.
Two, I find the argument of "gentrification" or "assimilation" or whatever can be boiled down to a simple "our socialization is better than your socialization!" Both seem to me a form of corralling people into particular lifestyles. I get that one is a vast majority and the other is a tiny minority but the control seems just as strong in either group. The Queer impulse to be, well, "queer," I think can be just as constricting and just as suffocating as the yearning to emulate my parents and just put a ring on it. When "normal" is the enemy, by attempting to destroy orthodoxy you just created your own to replace it. So I've never found that complaint to be especially interesting.
Three, you hit on this but not nearly to the level it deserved. Marriage equality is just another option we give those who come after us. It is not a judgement or an edict or a demand. Just an option! And like all options in the marketplace of idea (CPAC 2014, hollah!), it gets chosen based on it's merit. Accept it or not. Those who wish to fight for more marriage options like polyandry or whatever are free to fight that battle but, aside from all the larger implications of equality and acceptance and justice and symbolism of said ideas, we rarely fail in giving younger generations more options. In fact, we generally fail when we leave them with too few options.
And finally, the real engine driving this churn is as obvious to me as it appears to be unfathomable to the Queer vanguard: parents. I don't think I am incorrect or out of line to say that most who lived at the height of Queer Culture were not close to their parents, if not outright disowned. Another tragic wrong has been righted. Millennials are being accepted by their parents/family en masse. Not to say that far too many children aren't still being abandoned by their parents/monsters but I would stand to believe that the ratio is almost entirely flipped now and will be approaching zero by the time our generation becomes parents. Thank god. And, as I hinted at earlier, anyone who thinks they can override the biological imperative of parents passing on their hopes and dreams and neurosis to their children, is fooling themselves. Perhaps it was easier to ignore/hate/rebel against parents who showed you nothing but scorn/hate/shame. But kids come out now and get hugs (I was one of those{!}). How do you tell them that they need to throw off the trappings of a home where they grew up happy?
So this final section becomes not a discussion of how/if heteronormative trends can/should continue. I could argue historical precedents or non-precedents, et al. Instead I will just close with the hard truth that whatever this trend is, it will not be stopped. For the simple, fucking-amazing reason that LGBT children are growing up in happy homes with proud straight parents. A lot of them. Hopefully, one day, almost all of them. I honestly believe that even after being subsumed into that vast normal majority, they will grow up liking Broadway plays or football plays or Legos or Barbies or tractor trucks or Bravo reality shows, all based on factors that are still out of the control of any person or cultural theory. If they look around and decide that this 2.5 kids, dog, married life ain't so bad, well, at least now they have the choice which Queer Culture now regrets giving them.
Friday, March 7, 2014
Three Peas in an Awkward, Strict-Constructionist Pod: Justice Scalia, President Obama, and I
I think I can speak for a Supreme Court justice, the 44th US president, and myself in saying that we all believe Justice Scalia is an arrogant asshole who also turns out to be right some of the time. Sorta.
All three of us have shown, either through words or actions, that we believe legislation by decree is a bad way to do business in a constitutional republic. More specifically, ours. For Scalia, this takes the form of judicial restraint. For Obama, a reluctance to issue executive orders on controversial issues. (Note: reluctance, not refusal.). For me, general rambling to co-workers and friends on this topic. We all approach this from different POVs but come to the same conclusion. For the president and me, an appreciation of the fact that what one to nine people have done, one to nine OTHER people can undo. For Scalia, it's the usual complex law professor system of levers and pulleys, that all leads back to the usual Godhead complex some have for our founding fathers. A subject on which my own views are complex, and I won't even begin to discuss here. Anyway, we all agree.
Which brings me to the heart of the matter. Something else we all have in common: we're all strict constructionists*. Scandal! Liberal heretics! Fire! Ruin! Un-friend!
In Re. Heteronormativity
(Prof. Andrew Ross of NYU, the man who taught me the word "heteronormativity.")
To be crystal clear, I wholeheartedly support marriage equality for a multitude of reasons, not least of which is the obvious problem of equality under law. Civil unions are at best Don't Ask, Don't Tell incrementalism and at worst, a modern Plessy that causes further stigmatization through "othering" (please find some time to read on to Lu-in Wang's fantastic work on this.) In all likelihood, any federal attempt at civil unions would have wound up like France's PACS as a legal device primarily used by opposite sex couples. However, the assimilation foisted upon America's young homosexual population through the legalization of gay marriage works to the detriment of existing gay sociocultural norms.
Andrew Sullivan is often credited as the progenitor of the modern gay marriage movement (See Douthat, Ross.) While I'll get into it another time, my own politics were very much shaped through the lens of The Dish prior to Sullivan's defection into the Walt/Mearsheimer clique. Sullivan, a self-styled Burkean, sees incremental change and modest social unrest at the core of conservativism and that ethos has thoroughly imbued the ascension of gay marriage in the United States. President Obama (a fellow Tory, it should be noted) has similarly "evolved" into the same confederate position which seeks to use the many levers of democratic checks and balances to slowly enfranchise the LGB population* while causing minimal social unrest.
My blogging mate, correctly, believes that the tide of history is against the Republican Party and that there will come a moment when the GOP will have no choice but to support marriage equality. While the court cases, referendum, and legislative acts taken across the 50 states have proven a slow moving but powerful force for equality, it's worth noting what it has meant. The tide of history is moving inexorably towards the adoption and idealization of the heteronormative gay couple. Dan Savage is about as risqué as it gets. Swinging has been left to the 70's, and the modern family is two monogamous parents, regardless of gender. There's certainly some behavioral science to back up the utility in that structure, but unfortunately, that rise will necessarily coincide with the loss of the existing (and already collapsing) gay hookup culture.
Sure, Grindr is probably going to sell for a billion dollars any day now. OKCupid has added non-monogamous relationship types. However, just as polyamory is ever so slowly becoming a less-stigmatized (not to be confused with accepted, much less encouraged) lifestyle choice, young American gays are expected to go find a partner, a dog, a baby, and a picket fence. Essentially, the white middle class is extending to its newest upwardly mobile minority: homosexuals. In the assimilative process, gay popular culture is becoming trivialized, stereotyped even further, and removed from the everyday existence of life.
It's probably a social good that we look back at The Birdcage as a sort of minstrel show. However, I'm not entirely sure that the social value shift which has occurred since the late 20th century is without cost, and that's really the point of this post. The 50 state approach to equality may well be rendered moot by a SCOTUS decision that supports gay marriage and finds in a minority community a suspect class deserving of scrutiny of (at the very least, the formalization of) "rational basis plus." However, the social unrest and sociocultural change will likely continue unabated.
Really, it's much like anything else in a capitalist society, with growth comes cultural assimilation and gentrification, no?
*The ongoing struggle for transgender rights absolutely should not be included, as there is massively more progress to be made.
Happy Happy Joy Joy
On the Mainstreaming of Modern Anti-Semitism
(Prof. John Mearsheimer, co-progenitor of the modern anti-Semitism and fan of Gilad Atzmon.)
An example of Anti-Semitism masquerading as pro-Palestinian sympathy (look to the comments). Here, the author ignores the Holocaust and Palestinian terror in the initial post and when challenged in the comments, responds in a tone best described as blithe and exasperated. Moreover, other comments refer to Holocaust exploitation in a loathsome way and, as the new anti-Semitism is want to do, rehashes all manner of Judenhaas with the supposedly polite alteration of "Zionist" for "Jewish". Umkukn zikh.
UPDATE: So, I just noticed this thread.
Please take note of the tone and direction of the commentary. It's hard to avoid the inevitable conclusion that the anti-Israel conversation is deeply suffused with anti-Semitism. As to the topic on hand, this is more just a general comment and an opinion of mine:
What I find interesting here is that this is an example of the commitment and power of the Israeli center and left, demonstrating that Zionism is essentially and naturally secular in its practical character.
Yair Lapid (who is currently polling poorly, granted) swept in on the Yesh Atid ticket largely because he promised to deal with the Haredi problem pragmatically. Now Lapid has begun to do so in a fashion which will (in the tradition of the Israeli founders and especially Herzl) suffuse the Israeli character further through the population of the state at the expense of traditional religious Judaism. This is precisely the opposite of what the national-religious YB/JH right might support, but what is precisely necessary for the continuing success of the Zionist project.
OMG! STAHP THE POPULAYSHUN TRANZFER
The Israeli government's lust for population transfer and displacement knows no bounds! Those Zionists won't stop until they've moved every single person around like the Levant is a Risk board.
...wait, wha? It's actually ultra-efficient, beneficent and stimulative eminent domain policy that would make any urban planner squeal with delight? And it's happening in Tel Aviv?
Unlike San Francisco, Tel Aviv has taken steps to mitigate the effects of the new arrivals on existing residents, chiefly through a program known as Pinui Binui—Vacate and Build. What it means, in practice, is that private real-estate developers are invited to raze old and decrepit housing in places like Neve Sharett—where the average apartment size in the three-story housing blocks is just 540 cramped square feet—and erect luxury high-rises. The original owners are given new apartments, and the rest of the units are sold off at market price.Right now, six apartment blocks—450 apartments—have been vacated to make way for nearly 1,200 new ones. But Tel Aviv has already approved Pinui Binui plans for the entire neighborhood of Neve Sharett—all 3,000 apartments, which house about 7,500 people. The city has also announced that it is eyeing the neighborhood of south Florentin—another impoverished and neglected area—for the next major Pinui Binui push.
Really, this is no worse than anything that's been done under Kelo. Frankly, it's better on a great many levels, not least of which that this is more akin to NYC's own development policy (see Sugar, Domino) than it is to any sort of spin Mondowuss is sure to try and fling on this. This incentivizes major capital investment from heavyweight companies while creating more and better housing stock. It improves density, and in concert with green spaces and efficient planning, that's actually better for the environment.
Win-win, eh?
Intro: Chris, Addendum
Because of my current job and issues of ethics, conflicts of interest, impartiality, etc., I will not be commenting on any topics related to NYC government or policy or politics. Any posts related to those topics by my current comrade (Anime) or others here are not endorsed or supported by me and I have no in way helped them in their creation.
I can’t promise that I won’t personally agree with this or that post, especially since no such post on NYC yet exists, but I can promise that you will not hear my voice in any such debate.
Thursday, March 6, 2014
Support Marriage Equality? Vote Republican!
A vote for a Republican is a vote for marriage equality in America. So. Okay. Let me explain.
The UK is never a very good example to compare against the US for domestic policy. But on this it's close enough, so why the hell not! Even if they lack a two-party system, this is generally a yes/no issue so they still break down into two camps, if not parties. And frankly, with 90% or more of Congressional Republicans officially against marriage equality, while the Democrats are almost exactly the opposite, I think it is more than fair to separate our parties just as neatly.
(Everyone who disagrees can tell me if when 90% of a country's population has declared war against you, would you consider it a partially-peaceful country simply for the sake of the 10%? I would assume not, so don't pretend there are a "variety of opinions" inside the GOP. There is a Republican party consensus, and then there is a fringe, nothing more. And if the last few years are any indication, not even a growing fringe.)
So. The UK has two camps, we have two camps. See, neat. What happened in the UK? They had laws criminalizing homosexuality in some form on the books until late in the 20th century. Familiar? In 2004, they passed nation-wide Civil Unions legislation and then, in the space of a few short years, marriage equality. As one of my faves, Keith Olbermann (KO), says "what in the WILD, WILD world of sports is goin' on here?!" I say it not only because of the speed of progress compared to our own but also because this is a supremely counter-intuitive sequence of events.
Intro: Chris
This is my first post and it begins at the end: take off
your coat and pull up a chair.
I claim no particular expertise, save what experiences I’ve
gone through already or will go through in the days/weeks/years to come. The posts in this blog are the opinions of a
man (myself) who claims no expertise save what experiences he has gone through already
or will go through in the days/weeks/years to come. Some of these posts will be funny and some
will be serious and some will undoubtedly be introspective of my own views and
why I come to those views in the first place.
I will write about domestic policy and foreign policy and contemporary
culture and political theory and science fiction and dark comedy and death and
fear and relationships and the sounds my niece or nephew make when they play
with dinosaur toys, because these are the things I think about and have come to
some kind of opinion.
Right now, at the start, there are only two of us writing on
this blog (the un-royal “we” my comrade spoke of in his intro) but I hope for
that to grow and evolve. Some of the
best times of my life, when I felt the most alive, were when I sitting at a
table with friends in a dingy bar and we were building/de-constructing the
world in our heads. We’d agree and
disagree, fight, get angry, get personal, get profound, ramble, get quiet, and
never come to a real conclusion, especially after the fifth or sixth round. But we forced each other to speak and to have
an opinion, even if only to shout down the opinion of another. The world right here and right now has become
too big/dangerous/complex /small for us to not even accidentally have opinions
and add to the discussion.
So, once again, I ask you: take off your coat and pull up a chair.
Fap!
Not that I necessarily agree or that I've had time to process but I think it's just absolutely marvelous that Kissinger is still around and still giving his thoughts on geopolitics. I'd say the same goes for Brzezinski, but I don't have anywhere near the same faible for him.
While Kissinger walks this back in his prescriptions, this sounds dangerously likeThe West must understand that, to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country. Russian history began in what was called Kievan-Rus. The Russian religion spread from there. Ukraine has been part of Russia for centuries, and their histories were intertwined before then. Some of the most important battles for Russian freedom, starting with the Battle of Poltava in 1709 , were fought on Ukrainian soil. The Black Sea Fleet — Russia’s means of projecting power in the Mediterranean — is based by long-term lease in Sevastopol, in Crimea. Even such famed dissidents as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Joseph Brodsky insisted that Ukraine was an integral part of Russian history and, indeed, of Russia.
*It would be deeply unfair to Finance Minister Yair Lapid or Justice Minister Tzipi Livni to be included in that statement. However, Avigdor Lieberman can cram it with walnuts.
- Anime
Katz
My girlfriend and I have two cats.
Our female was a stray until she was a little under a year old, and we did most of the domestication ourselves. That was a while ago and now she acts like a somewhat high strung nine and a half pound kitten.
Our boy was born in a cat colony, but discovered when he was a couple of days old and has been with people ever since (and with us since he was maybe 7 weeks old.)He is in every way a fifteen pound kitten.
Our female was a stray until she was a little under a year old, and we did most of the domestication ourselves. That was a while ago and now she acts like a somewhat high strung nine and a half pound kitten.
Our boy was born in a cat colony, but discovered when he was a couple of days old and has been with people ever since (and with us since he was maybe 7 weeks old.)He is in every way a fifteen pound kitten.
The only way you could ever tell that our girl was ever a stray is that every so often, our boy gets on her nerves (he's much more playful than she is) and she beats the ever loving crap out of him.
The lesson? You can take the cat out of the alley, but you can never take the alley out of the cat.
- Anime
In Defense of The Ultimate Warrior
(culled and adapted from my initial post under a different pseudonym at Cagesideseats.com: http://www.cagesideseats.com/2012/6/13/3081645/css-pro-wrestling-tournament-match-3-gorgeous-george-vs-14-ultimate#105210931)
The Ultimate Warrior was, for a not-too-brief period, an absolute megastar in this-ah business-ah. He succeeded as a gimmick aimed at kids, and his legacy has been tarnished because Warrior the man is an epic weirdo (so much so that he legally changed his name to Warrior.)
From the late 80’s to the early 90’s (roughly 88-91, if we want to bookend it but I wouldn’t put too fine a point on it due to Warrior’s capricious nature), Warrior was an absolutely huge draw. Though we may look back and laugh, Warrior’s demolition of the Honky Tonk Man for the WWF Intercontinental championship made waves. His Wrestlemania VI match with Hulk Hogan was genuinely great, and he had a lengthy run at the top of the WWF. While business may have gone down during his title run, I think there are external factors which have to be considered. Warrior carried the belt during the height of a recession. After his first absence (which correlated perfectly with the federal ban on steroids), a noticeably smaller Warrior returned and was still a huge draw in a WWF which was still marketed towards kids. His final two runs, in 96 and 98, were basically nostalgia runs derailed by Warrior’s aforementioned capricious nature.
The Ultimate Warrior’s character was not aimed at smarks. That is obvious. What is also obvious is that Warrior was AMAZING at getting over with the kids he was targeted at and the gimmick he was given. He was meant to be confusing and awe-inspiring. His superhero physique and power style made buck, and he played the gimmick perfectly. 20 years after his peak, we still discuss wrestlers (and particularly monster babyfaces) in terms of Warrior – Cena’s shoulder tackles, Batista’s ring shaking, Goldberg’s snorting, Ryback’s entirely derivative gimmick. However much those references might be intended as derisive by the smark community, they remain indicative of Warrior’s lasting impact. You have to be very big, very famous, and very dominant in the pro graps industry to leave that sort of a lasting legacy, and that means you drew coin, even if your tenure on top is remembered less than fondly.
Finally, I think a big part of Warrior’s legacy (or lack thereof) is his acrimonious departure from both WWE and WCW. Think of how few wrestlers this is true of: Warrior succeeded in the business on his own terms, beat Vince McMahon in court, and is comfortably self-reliant in his retirement. Vince is well known for his ability to carry a grudge. No other wrestler has been a target of a DVD like “The Self Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior”. Warrior’s treatment has been the opposite of the lionization of Owen. He’d probably have even fared better historically if he’d simply been whited out like Chris Benoit. Instead, Warrior lurks in the margins as a Jimmy Carter-figure: years of scorn have reduced to a punchline what was, in reality, a very popular figure in his heyday.
Warrior was a shitty worker in the ring. He became unstable and unreliable after his first big run. His promos were bizarre. Dave Meltzer utterly hates his guts, and Warrior’s blog is not on par with the top dirtsheet. However, Warrior deserves his place in history: he’s a rightful Hall of Famer and frankly, something of a legend in this business-ah. Don’t let fans whose perceptions are colored by an ornery Vince McMahon obscure just how great Warrior was at his job in his prime.
- Anime
- Anime
May I Make Montaigne Proud
Welcome to the Alt-New-Land. We* hope to displace your worldview through ponderous ruminations, general blowhardery, replies to the people we read, and all other manner of prattling folderol. My name isn't Anime Bollocks, but that is what We** shall use for now. Expect a stream of consciousness that would do Faulkner proud, and you, dear Reader, are encouraged to reply in the comments.
The topics on my mind of late (and as usual) have been sabermetrics as applied to baseball, smark analysis of pro graps, general wonkery on domestic (American) political economy, law, rhetoric, non-monogamy, gastronomy, and the liberal Zionism from the perspective of the Diaspora. I skew Tory but I think that means something different in the United States in 2014 than what you'd might expect.
That's all I have to say for now, but expect more shortly.
- Anime
*Is it the royal we? No. There's more than one of us.
**This is the royal We.
The topics on my mind of late (and as usual) have been sabermetrics as applied to baseball, smark analysis of pro graps, general wonkery on domestic (American) political economy, law, rhetoric, non-monogamy, gastronomy, and the liberal Zionism from the perspective of the Diaspora. I skew Tory but I think that means something different in the United States in 2014 than what you'd might expect.
That's all I have to say for now, but expect more shortly.
- Anime
*Is it the royal we? No. There's more than one of us.
**This is the royal We.
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