Free Speech and Whatnot

"The remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence"
 --Louis Brandeis (originally), Asshole White Guy Playing Devil's Advocate (usually)

As you're undoubtedly aware, the US is current mired in a fight for its very political soul, as college kids occasionally interrupt literal Nazis giving speeches. Ok, that might be setting up a bit of a straw man, but it's more-or-less correct. Read pretty much any David Brooks column from the past several years (this is a rhetorical device, under no circumstances should you actually read a David Brooks column) and you'll hear an old white guy ranting and raving about how the kids these days don't accept free speech because they keep interrupting people who are just saying the maybe there's an intellectual case to be made for why Black people are subhuman, or trans people should be beaten up in the streets, or anyone with brown skin should be rounded up and deported en masse. You know, for the sake of argument.

Again, maybe I'm being a bit unfair to the position, but it's so difficult for me to take that position seriously that I can't genuinely write out their arguments, because they're so obviously facile that presenting them with a straight face offers them far more legitimacy than they deserve.

Of course, in an empirical sense, the war on free speech is not happening at all. In fact, actual data demonstrates the vast majority of Americans strongly support free and open speech, and those who show most support for it are...wait for it...the very college students who hack writers love to wring their hands about for the blue-hairs that actually still read newspapers. But let's skip right past this, since the empirical reality of what's happening has very little to do with why people are writing these columns and think pieces and whatnot.

If you do read the link above, you will find that there is one group that Americans of all stripes feel pretty comfortable in denying free speech rights to, and that group is Muslims. Funny that I've yet to see a David Brooks article worrying about the abuse of free speech rights for Muslims, but I'm sure that's just because his cab driver hasn't told him about this yet.

But what makes it most interesting that the same Americans who just ~love~ free speech have no problem with it being denied to Muslims, is that the group most often harmed by their beloved free speech just happens to be Muslims.

A central facet of the argument made by the white guy free speech warriors of today is essentially the old "sticks and stones" bit, in which they note that, sure, sometimes these speeches are pretty caustic and offensive, but at the end of the day, they're just words. And words have never hurt anyone! Why, even the implication that words could harm someone means you're just so juvenile! You should have thick skin, like the rich white guys who write these articles who have, just coincidentally, never been on the receiving end of racial slurs or wide-scale attempts to demonize them. Some even go so far to concede this point, but argue it's a strength that allows them to view these issues rationally and dispassionately, not like all those hot-blooded, irrational coloreds (well, they use a bit more polite coded language to make that point, but that is unmistakably the point they are making).

This is, of course, a very dumb point. Words hurt immensely, as literally thousands of psychological and sociological studies demonstrate. But even if we ignore the mountains of evidence regarding how discourse can harm people at the individual level (which we absolutely shouldn't!), there's plenty of evidence to demonstrate that words hurt in a very substantial and real way on a larger scale.

A recent study by the New America Foundation found that spikes in anti-Muslim hate crimes in American happen not after notable terror attacks or other major news stories regarding the supposedly perfidious acts unique to Muslims, but rather that such attacks follow a clear pattern of mimicking the election cycle; that is, people don't attack Muslims because they saw a news story about a terror attack and felt the need to retaliate, they attack Muslims because they listened to a politician speak about how bad Muslims are.

So I ask of the "the only counter to speech is more speech!!1!!1!!1!" crowd -- exactly what speech should these Muslims who were beaten and/or killed by bigots riled up by bigoted speeches have used in their defense? Because I'm willing to bet they tried the counter speech of "Please don't beat me to death!" but that was clearly not effective. Seriously, though -- what speech would have countered this? Because it sure looks like shouting down those speakers before they riled up a crowd of murderous bigots would have had a chance at being successful, but that's an open empirical question. But what is not an open empirical question is if more speech would have prevented these attacks, because there's been a shitload of "more speech" about how Muslims are human beings who do not deserve to be beaten and/or murdered simply for who they are, but that has been emphatically proven to not be effective.

This is not a process limited to the United States. For instance, the preeminent criminologist John Hagan has pretty conclusively demonstrated that rhetoric (a/k/a speech) was integral in laying the groundwork for the genocide in Darfur (particularly these two studies). Once again, many people tried the "more speech" option of arguing against the mass slaughter of human beings, but once again, that was clearly not effective.

Obviously people of good faith can argue about, say, what limits on speech are or are not acceptable, or what utility there is in shouting down individual speakers, and all of that sort of thing. But what is clearly inarguable is that the idea that "more speech" will effectively counter hate speech is simply false. And not "false" in the sense that I disagree with it, but "false" in the sense that all available empirical data demonstrates the "more speech" tactic to be completely ineffective.

But the point, of course, is that the "more speech" crowd is not arguing in good faith. Their central argument is not about the freedom of speech, but about the freedom of bigots and white supremacists to continue being bigots and white supremacists without anyone doing anything about it.

The Only Good Foreigner is Rod Stewart

Of the many stickers, posters, and other political ephemera I have hanging in my office, one of my most favorite is a bumper sticker referring a joke from the great webcomic Wondermark. It's so great, this is at least the second time I've used it as the header of a post. If you can't read it, it's amending a famous old quote attributed to Ghandi to now read "First they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win. Then their children claim it was their idea all along."

I think it so very perfectly encapsulates our desire to constantly re-write and whitewash the past. Since history has already decided who the good side and the bad side are in most every conflict, it's pretty easy to look back and pat ourselves on the back for our presumption we would have been squarely on the good side. It's what allows us to pretend like everyone loved MLK and the freedom riders and the lunch counter sit-ins, because they were so obviously correct, when at the time, a majority of the nation disagreed with what the freedom riders were doing and felt lunch counter sit-ins were doing more to hurt the cause of civil rights than help it.

We've got another handy example of this happening in real time as Trump's attempt to ban entry for travelers from numerous nations was shot down, only to be followed by a ramping-up of immigration enforcement and deportations, with ICE raids happening all across the nation and ICE agents working to lie about who immigrants are to paint them as villainous. And, of course, this is likely to only get much worse following Trump's SOTU, in which he played the classic xenophobic card of claiming all of our problems are due to dirty, dirty foreigners and their dirty, dirty foreign ways.

A popular narrative to try to sell these policies is that the people we're deporting or not allowing to enter the nation are bad and dangerous people, and keeping them out/kicking them out is a matter of national safety. Many others counter that by pointing out that a large number of people being deported/prevented from entering are actually refugees, very often refugees from political violence either directly inflicted by the US government or indirectly through regimes supported and financed by the American government.

But regardless of the position take, ultimately the heart of the debate is whether these people are "worthy" or "deserving" to be in America, in large part defined as whether they're fleeing something truly dangerous, thus giving us a moral imperative to accept/continue to allow these refugees.

The problem is that for one side of this "debate," there seems to be no one who is truly deserving.

Side note: this pretty well parallels the Right's concern over the "deserving" poor. Realizing that a platform of "Fuck the poor, let them starve to death in the streets" is not terribly politically palatable, they instead attempt to divide the poor into the "deserving" and...well, they pretty much never articulate the implied other category, again I'm assuming largely because it's not terribly palatable to many. But given the constantly-shifting and extremely-narrow criteria it takes to meet the definition of "deserving," it leaves one to strongly suspect they truly see no poor people as deserving of assistance.

It's pretty easy to understand this by looking at a case in which it's extremely difficult to argue the "deserving" portion of the immigration debate -- Jewish refugees during the Nazi regime. As you can see from the poll below (from the twitter account Historical Opinion, though I snagged them from this pretty good WaPo article) in 1938, about 2/3rds of Americans not only opposed allowing refugees fleeing Nazi persecution into America, but actually agree that "we should try to keep them out."

Of course, you could argue it's easier to see which opinion is "correct" with the benefit of hindsight and all that. But hindsight wasn't really necessary for the second graph below, which is the results from a poll conduct after Kristallnacht, so it wasn't really a secret that the Nazis were pretty shitty to Jews and other groups they didn't like. Not that the Nazis had exactly ever hid this fact, but I suppose you could make the argument that in the early days of the regime people might not have known to take them seriously. But once they started instituting official mass violence against Jews and other minorities, it's hard to argue that people could have assumed the Nazis weren't serious about all of their anti-Semitic proclamations. Not only that, but this poll question was only asking about whether we should accept children who are fleeing Nazi violence. So you can't even make the (already absurd on its face) argument that there might be Nazis posing as refugees to sneak into America and then...I dunno, take us down from the inside? Whatever the argument is, it doesn't hold up when we're discussing children fleeing from the Nazis. If ever there was a group that would be the dictionary definition of "deserving immigrants," I think you'd be pretty fucking hard pressed to come up with something better than children fleeing Nazis.

But as you can clearly see, a strong majority of the nation felt children escaping from the Nazis did not meet the definition of "deserving" immigrant. So I could write several thousand more words on the problematic construction of dividing immigrants/refugees into "deserving" and "not deserving," but nothing I could write would make this point nearly as well as this poll result. If Jewish children fleeing Nazi violence does not meet the bar of "deserving," I think it's safe to say no one ever will. Although, of course, now pretty much everyone would agree that we should have accepted these children fleeing the Nazis. Just like I'd be willing to be that in 50 years it will be so obvious that we should have been open to accepting Syrian refugees.

But of course that belated realization will be just about as useful to Syrian refugees as it was to those Jewish children denied entrance to the US...

For those that don't get the reference in the title, you really need to watch Much Apu About Nothing

A Shithole by Any Other Name Is Still As Exploited By Colonialism and Imperialism

So Trump has said something really stupid and racist again and we're all angry about it (this sentence should probably precede every post I make for the next several years). It was obviously stupid and racist and bad and this is most definitely not going to be some contrarian post about how, like, he wasn't really wrong if you think about it, you know, or some bullshit about how it's good he said it.

Nor do I want to minimize what he said -- calling large swaths of the world "shitholes" and the implications about those places and the people that live there, especially when this comes from the President of a world superpower, has real effects and does real damage to real people. Everyone condemning Trump is right to do so.

Now here is where the obnoxious contrarian "but" comes in. What I can't jibe with is a central feature of many of these condemnations, which is that Trump is violating some great norm or going well beyond the pale here. Certainly his rhetoric is unsavory, but if you think Presidents like, say, Nixon didn't say this exact same kind of thing, then...I dunno. Go listen to the many White House recordings of him saying exactly these kind of things. Maybe not these exact words, but the same sentiment.

But more than the nasty rhetoric, I can't stand the insinuation that Trump's assertion that there are "good" and "bad" nations and that we only want people from "good" nations and those "bad" nations need to quit whining and get their shit together is somehow a viewpoint unique to Trump or his brand of far-right incoherence more generally. As Corey Robin has done a yeoman's job pointing out repeatedly since Trump first entered the presidential race, most of Trump's views (and his actual policies since becoming President) are pretty boilerplate Republican views (even more, they're often pretty traditional bipartisan views). He just doesn't put as nice of a sheen on them. Here's Robin discussing this while Trump was but a candidate, but there's plenty more where that came from and I highly encourage you to read all of his work on Trump.

Even more to the point, though, Trump's castigation of African nations as "shitholes" is, again apart from the course language, pretty much been official US policy since...oh, the founding of the United States. Hell, take a look at the person most often used as contrast for Trump's "unpresidential" ways -- his predecessor, Barak Obama, who is often held up as the eloquent, compassionate statesman we wish the President could always be.

Well, what were Barry's views on these shithole African nations? He told them, basically, to quit whining about colonialism, slavery and racism and to admit that everything wrong in Africa is their fault and they need to get their shit together. From the article: "And yet the fact is we're in 2009," continued the US president. "The West and the United States has not been responsible for what's happened to Zimbabwe's economy over the last 15 or 20 years." (Click on through for more victim-blaming fun!)

The difference between Trump and Obama in their view toward the political and economic problems facing so many African nations is not a difference between compassion and belittlement, it's a shared belittlement divided by using nice or mean language. Eloquence in defense of colonial empire is effectively no different than vulgarity in defense of colonial empire, at least in terms of outcomes.

And really, one could argue that Obama's eloquent defense of empire is more dangerous than Trump's artless bumbling, as empire sure goes down easier with pretty language and thoughtful speeches than it does with the equivalent of a drunk fratboy bragging at a kegger.

So I end this rant as I have many of my Trump-related rants by looking for the silver lining in our current dystopian hell scape; in this case, its that Trump's inarticulateness serves to sharpen the contradictions (as an old Marxist might say) of US policy. At least with this jackass crowing about our foreign policy in the most crude and brash way, people might start to see the problems with what we're doing to the world.

Or to put it in an even simpler way: at least he's admitting how we've always officially viewed these places. And the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem...

Everyone Wants Nuance (But Everyone Hates Nuance)

The vast and growing #MeToo movement has long since moved from exposing the people pretty much everyone knew were creepy abusers (your Harvey Weinsteins of the world) and has moved on to exposing people that are a bit more surprising (Al Franken comes to mind), though at this point, we probably shouldn't be surprised by any man being outed as an abuser or harasser, save maybe a Fred Rogers or Tom Hanks.

Recently we've seen a prime example of someone I think most people were surprised got called out in the person of Aziz Ansari, whose generally-thoughtful writing and comedy around gender relations and whose position as a relatively-outspoken feminist made him seem like one of the least likely to be called out. But called out he was, by an anonymous woman's account of a really shitty date they had where she felt pressured to perform sexual acts she didn't want to.

There's a lot to unpack in this story, but the angle I find most interesting is where this fits in the larger #MeToo movement. One thing those opposed to this movement toward some justice for women (or at least an acknowledgement of the difficulties they face) have focussed on relentlessly is the concept of nuance -- that is, are all men who have been accused of bad behavior to be all lumped together? For instance, as was constantly heard throughout the Franken affair, sure he shouldn't have done what he did, but that didn't make him Weinstein. And shouldn't that matter? Shouldn't we talk about that difference?

Predictably, this crowd has jumped all over the Ansari story as proof that those crazy feminists have gone too far again. The New York Times said Ansari is guilty only of "Not being a mind reader" while WaPo has deemed this "A gift to anyone who wants to derail the #MeToo movement" (which I assume means them, because that's exactly what they're doing). Anyway, you can find a million more hot takes on this line of thinking, where the regressive forces of people who are so concerned that in the middle of the thousands and thousands of women coming forward to tell their tales of abuse, assault, and harassment, a man might be inconvenienced have finally found their hallelujah moment.

Except...this story is really what these people have been calling for all along, a nuanced portrayal that recognizes it's not a white/black dichotomy of good and bad, that consent is not always a completely straight-forward matter, and that there are degrees to this kind of thing. If you actually read her story, you'll see she presents a pretty nuanced understanding of what happened, and indeed, it was only after parsing through the nuance that she came to see it as a sexual assault. Why, it's almost as if she did exactly what all these people so concerned about nuance and not getting carried away say they want, and yet it's still not good enough.

Because the bigger point is that sexual consent is not simply a yes/no matter, and is impacted by all sorts of things (remember, I bet very few people explicitly said "no" to Weinstein or Cosby, yet we don't forgive them their crimes for that). As this great piece points out, consent is just the baseline, not a get-out-of-jail-free card, and it's not ridiculous to expect men, (all men, but especially men who make a big public deal out of what a feminist they are) to conceptualize consent beyond a simple yes/no. It's not a terribly difficult or onerous task to recognize that gendered power imbalances exist and then take the incredibly minuscule effort required to address that. Whether it be the fact that women are socialized since birth to prioritize the feelings of others (especially men) over their own, to try to navigate an impossible Madonna/Whore complex, and of course, to fear for their safety should they dare explicitly say "no" to a man, it's clear that it's not as simple as saying no and walking away, as the incredibly offensive NYT opinion piece linked to above claims.

But what that horribly offensive NYT piece (seriously, don't read it unless you've taken your blood pressure meds this morning) misses is that, no, Ansari didn't need to be a mind reader to know she wasn't comfortable. You know what magical powers he did need? The ability to have a conversation at an adult level. For instance, maybe after the third or fourth time he forced her hand onto his penis and she clearly wasn't into it, maybe he could have been a grown up and spoken to her? Remember, this isn't a 15 year old kid figuring out what all this stuff is, this is a grown man who literally wrote a book on romance and relationships. But instead of actually seeking out her consent (her active consent, if you will), it seems that Ansari took the fact that she wasn't screaming "RAPE!" at the top of her lungs to mean she must be into it, right? I mean, who has ever heard of a woman going through with a sex act she didn't want to simply because she felt like she had no other choice?

Gee, if only there were a handy hashtag one could use to quickly find literally thousands of such stories.

In that way, this reaction to the Aziz Ansari story seems to be like a modified version of Lewis' Law ("the comments on any article about feminism justify feminism") -- something like "the reaction to any particular #MeToo story justifies the need for the #MeToo movement."

Because the real impact of the #MeToo movement is not that we're outing famous abusers (though it's great that's happening), it's bringing to light all of the many much smaller ways women are harassed, intimidated, and abused on a daily basis that don't rise to the level of the explicit legal definition of rape. It's about recognizing how the personhood of women is so easily discarded by men whenever it's convenient to them. Or, to put it a much more nuanced way, it's about recognizing that just because someone didn't do what Harvey Weinstein did doesn't mean they're incapable of being shitty to women.

The Brazen Conceptual Activities of the Wealthy

So Trump is an obnoxious asshole, but he is good for some things -- laughing at his insanity as we inch ever-closer to the destruction of all humanity, driving a nail though all meritocracy-based arguments about American society and/or politics, and of course, hilarious pictures of super-long ties (seriously, what is up with dude's ties?).

What I think Trump is especially useful for is how well he pulls back the veil of rich person executive culture in a way that few others have. Anyone who follows most any news about corporate malfeasance knows that the majority of corporate executives do basically nothing of any meaningful or substantial use -- they golf, they drink, they have meetings with other do-nothing rich assholes, and just kind of putter their way through their days, collecting giant checks and stock options along the way.

But their life of do-nothing opulence is typically only visible to those who seek out information about them; I think most people assume they must be working hard. After all, they're CEOs and high-level executives! Surely they're doing something. And, of course, these CEOs and other executives will be glad to tell you about all the hard work they're doing, albeit without providing any evidence of having done any actual work. But again, I think the majority of people don't give it much thought at all and instead just fall to the default assumption that those above them on the economic ladder must be working much harder then they are. You know, American meritocratic myths and all that.

Trump is a fantastic example of this kind of do-nothing corporate ridiculousness. By all accounts of his professional life prior to the White House, he was pretty much the archetype of what I'm discussing -- he'd golf and have discussions with important people, but his actual money came from inheritance, not from any actual work he'd done or good deals he'd made (indeed, more than a few accounts have argued he'd have more money if he just sat on his inheritance and never actually tried to do any of his beloved deal-making).

While he was just any other rich asshole, like most all other executives, could skate by on reputation and a political and media environment that worships wealth and is unlikely to question its holders, the office of the President carries with it some level of scrutiny. I'm certainly not arguing that contemporary American media really hold the President's feet to the fire, but there's at least a certain level of scrutiny about basic aspects of the job and his performance thereof that just doesn't exist for the CEO of a hotel chain. Not to mention, of course, that simply by being in the world of partisan politics, no matter which side, you instantly have a group of people on the other side with a vested interest in scrutinizing what you're doing, again in a way that no random CEO is ever going to experience, save some sort of major scandal.

So when you switch up the corporate penthouse for the White House, you start to get stuff like this, where people leak what your daily schedule is actually like.

Now in the linked article, Trump's absurdly lackadaisical schedule is presented as some sort of aberration, but I'd argue this looks pretty much exactly like any other rich asshole's schedule. It might be different than that of your typical President, but compared to your typical CEO, I'd bet it's basically run-of-the-mill.

What really stands out to me is not how short and light the scheduled day is for someone whose job supposedly carries such great weight, but more so how it's conceived of by Trump. Especially this sentence:

The schedule says Trump has "Executive Time" in the Oval Office every day from 8am to 11am, but the reality is he spends that time in his residence, watching TV, making phone calls and tweeting.

This is the purest distillation of the worthlessness of high-level executives one could possibly find. What you or I would call "screwing around" and what any of our employers would call "knock that off and get back to work," for Trump and his ilk is "Executive Time."

Ooooo! Executive Time! Time for doing executive stuff! He's not "sitting on his couch watching TV," he's having "Executive Time!" He's not "fucking around on Twitter," he's having "Executive Time!" You see, you and I are not executives, so when we sit around watching tv and scrolling social media, we are doing nothing special. But when An Executive sits around watching tv and scrolling social media, they are doing Important Executive Things.

And I've not a doubt in my mind that this is not cynical manipulation by Trump, as if he knew he were just dicking around doing nothing of any worth but felt the need to dress it up. No, it's pretty clear he (and those like him) genuinely see this as qualitatively different from when you and I do it. It's not hard at all to believe Trump honestly believes that his twitter and TV time is of vital necessity, and therefore is truly, genuinely part of his working day.

But again, this is almost assuredly not an aberration in the high-levels of the corporate world. I'd be willing to bet the CEO of wherever you work is having their version of executive time right now. It might not be Fox and Friends and twitter, but it's of similar value.

So there's a small silver-lining: Any time any person tries to make the argument that wealth is obtained through hard work can simply be presented with the schedule of Mr. Trump, the schedule of a very wealthy and therefore successful businessman. And then the rest of whatever they have to say can be completely ignored, as it already should have been, anyway.

Thoughts on the Kurdish Independence Referendum

Having spent a fair bit of time in Iraqi Kurdistan over the past several years, a number of people have asked me for my opinion about the recent independence referendum. Of course, there's an entirely separate post to be written about why there is a dearth of news and analysis on this relatively major global political moment available to these people such that they don't have to ask me, but this post turned out to be far too long already.

So to cut to the chase, do I support the independence referendum? Well, it really is a case of short answer: "yes" with an "if," long answer: "no" with a "but."

Ideologically, ethically, and morally it makes sense for Kurds to have their own nation (although I'm generally opposed to states defined in large part by ethnicity, but again, that's another post). There's not nearly enough room to go into all the history of it here, but the Kurdish people have been, to put it very mildly, quite poorly treated in most every nation they've been a part of.

At one point in time, Kurds were promised their own nation after the break up of the Ottoman empire and the end of the first World War, but instead they were partitioned into 4 separate nations (Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey) by the major world powers of the time (Britain being most guilty for the, again to put it quite mildly, poor conception and design of what is now the Iraqi state). There have been many times throughout the history of Iraq when the Kurds might have had a chance at gaining independence had everything broken exactly the right way, but world history is complicated and things are always easier to figure out in hindsight.

But importantly, there have been more than a few times the West in general and America specifically have either strongly implied or outright promised to help build an independent Kurdistan, which is a bit more relevant for the purposes of this conversation. Iraqi Kurds were very much led to believe that their assistance in the first Gulf War in 1991 was going to earn them if not their outright independence at the moment, at least US support in gaining it eventually. After all, the genocidal Anfal campaign Saddam carried out against the Kurdish people was a major selling point of the war to the American public (indeed, as a third grader at the time, I remember the phrase "gassed his own people" as being used nearly every time Hussein's name was mentioned).

Instead, the US more-or-less abandoned the Kurds as soon as the war was declared over. Sure, they maintained a No Fly Zone above Kurdish airspace, but that was far from enough to stop Saddam from enacting all sorts of revenge against the Kurdish people. So instead they had to settle for the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), the semi-autonomous state-within-a-state they continue to occupy to this day. Although there was supposed to be a referendum regarding Kurdish independence completed by 2007 as part of the original federal agreement, for a laundry list of reasons this never happened. Most recently, as by far the most effective force in fighting the Islamic State, again Kurds hoped to earn their independence by successfully ousting the group from their territory as the central government forces had been unable to do.

This thumbnail sketch is obviously a woefully too short summary of the various trials and tribulations of the Kurdish people within Iraq, but I think it's more than sufficient to demonstrate why I said at the top there are so many reasons to support immediate Kurdish independence.

The but, however, is one of practicality.

As the KRG currently stands, it's somewhat difficult to envision where a lot of the basic necessities of a functional state would come from. There's little industry or agriculture in the area, and the KRG as a whole imports the vast majority of what it consumes. This is already a big enough problem before you realize that an independent Kurdistan would immediately be surrounded by four nations that are strongly opposed to its very existence, two of which (Turkey and Iran) are currently the KRG's biggest trading partners, who would likely immediately cut them off upon independence. Not to mention that land-locked Kurdistan's only trading routes would be through Iran, Iraq, and Turkey, all of whom again are strongly opposed to the existence of a Kurdish state. That's...not ideal.

Independence could be somewhat feasible with meaningful support from the United States, but that support was not forthcoming from the Obama administration and will not be coming from the current administration, either. Pretty much the only nation that supports an independent Kurdistan is Israel, and I probably don't need to give you an extended primer on Middle East politics to know why that's not super helpful.

Again, I want to make it clear that I fully support Kurdish independence. Pointing out the many reasons it's largely not feasible right now is not at all to say it shouldn't happen, just that its prospects for success right now are dangerously slim.

Somewhat ironically, the Kurdish people get a fairly good deal  in the current Iraqi constitution. For instance, the region gets significantly more in its share of the nation's oil revenues, at least in the context of what the KRG itself actually produces. Which is yet another reason independence will be quite difficult -- the only way the KRG could survive as a nation is if they control Kirkuk, a disputed city on the edge of the region which is also the only oil-producing area within/near the KRG.

Kirkuk has a long and interesting history (Mary, as in the mother of Jesus, was said to stay at a temple there for a period of time), but that is again another post for another day. What is relevant now is that Kirkuk used to be a Kurdish city. However, in the 1980s, Saddam began a campaign of Arabization in Kurdish areas, giving the cities Arabic names and offering large sums of money to Arab families that would move from the South into homes of displaced Kurdish people. It was a concerted campaign to break up the large Kurdish majority in the city, and it largely worked, as the city is now quite multicultural. Which is generally a good thing, but in this case was done specifically in an attempt to thwart Kurdish claims to the city.

So the current Government of Iraq will never just cede Kirkuk to the KRG without a fight, and sure enough, immediately after the independence referendum, Iraqi troops and tanks began massing on the border of Kirkuk. While tensions are still fairly high, at this point it doesn't look like any major fighting is going to happen, but it almost assuredly would if the KRG actually declared independence and officially severed ties to Baghdad.

All of these practical problems are not lost on the people of Iraqi Kurdistan. Having spent the majority of this past summer there and spoke to a lot of people about the referendum, opinions were pretty mixed. More than a few people felt it to be a political ruse, an attempt to distract people from the corruption of the KRG's current ruling regime (and there's quite a bit of that!) and the current economic crisis the region is experiencing. Others felt it to be a useless exercise, given all the issues I've laid out here and the many others that could have been brought up. Indeed, there was a concerted political campaign called "No for Now" that made many of these arguments. Of course, a number of the leaders of this movement have been receiving death threats and facing violent retaliation. Which I'm sure is completely unrelated to the aforementioned corrupt political leaders who would greatly benefit from independence.

Of course, many people were more than happy about the referendum, and the fact that it passed with something like 85% indicates whatever problems most people had with it, they still voted yes. And really, how could you blame them? You live all of your life under a brutal dictator and then a violent occupation from a world super power and you get a chance to declare that you should finally be allowed to rule yourselves? Even with all I've written about the actual practical problems of trying to create an independent Kurdistan right now, I'd have voted yes if given the opportunity.

So to drastically oversimplify it: Of course the Kurds deserve independence, but it's hard to see how an independent Kurdistan would be able to survive for long under current conditions. So, do I support Kurdish independence? As the Right Reverend Lovejoy would say "Yes, if they can grow a domestic economic base and secure more regional political cooperation" or "Not but that's only because there's so many seemingly insurmountable challenges right now." Which is  fancy way of saying I can't really say whether independence should happen right now or not.

What I can say is that there is no doubt the United States owes the Kurdish people some meaningful assistance in this matter. The Kurds have been the only allies the US has actually had in Iraq or probably even the wider Gulf region, and the US has constantly leaned on their assistance in a number of important and serious issues, not least of which the number of Kurdish fighters who have died defeating IS and securing the nation they don't even want to be a part of. And for all of their decades of loyal assistance, we've done...well, pretty much nothing for them.

So I guess I'd say independence is not really advisable right now from a cold realpolitik standpoint, but that's really easy for me to say when it's not my life and freedom on the line. And ultimately, that's really the point -- this is a question for the Kurdish people, who have pretty clearly laid out their preference. And despite the long odds, if they want independence, I want their independence. And, really, the United States should, too.

Las Vegas and the Meaninglessness of "Terrorism"

The ol' blog has been silent for some time now, assuredly bringing great disappointment to its tens of readers. But I was overseas all summer and had more important shit to do. More important than rant on the internet? I know, crazy but true. Anyway, it's fitting to come back on something somewhat related to the work that kept me away for so long.

By now, you have of course heard of the shootings in Las Vegas. As per usual, we know the identity of the killer, but none of their motivations or much other reasoning.

But one thing we do know: this is definitely not an act of terrorism. Or it is obviously an act of terrorism, and not referring to it as such is an injustice. I'd be willing to wager I could predict which of these responses you'd chose if I asked you how you feel about Colin Kaepernick. My take? It's not an act of terrorism because there is no meaningful conception of what an act of terrorism is.

As many before me have thoroughly demonstrated, the term "terrorism" is completely meaningless. Well, actually it does have a meaning (which I'll get to in a minute), but it's not the meaning everyone is thinking of when they argue about whether the Vegas shootings are or are not examples of it.

Take a trip with me in ol' wayback machine to the heady days of late 2001. Truly, a simpler time: Donnie Darko gave college sophomores the rare opportunity to pretentiously espouse about the state of, like, the world man, Shaggy was instructing us in the ways of gas lighting our lovers, and of course, Joe Piscapo remained a national treasure. But they weren't all happy days, as the US government was busy readying a War on Terror.

Except there's a problem -- if you're going to declare war on an abstract concept, you need to define that concept in some way. So Top Men Of The Day set to work on what exactly "terrorism" is and they came up with something about using force or the threat of force to try to push people into following particular political/governmental dictates. Except these same folks were also busy reading the invasion of a sovereign nation in the event that nation's head of state didn't quit and leave the country. Which would pretty directly be the threat of force to push people into following our political dictates, which would be our literal definition of terrorism. So they worked it a bit more and added some stuff about the targeting of innocent people. Except the entire concept of Shock and Awe, which was going to guide this invasion of a sovereign nation, was premised entirely upon hitting civilian-heavy areas so the cowed people would do what you want them to. Which, again, was literally terrorism according to their own definition.

So long story short, they gave up on trying to define it and we went to war against a concept we couldn't even define. It is not going particularly well, in case you haven't had a chance to check the news in the last 14 or so years.

Because the problem in trying to define terrorism is that terrorism isn't really a thing that exists. War exists. Mass murder exists. But the concept of "terrorism" isn't a thing. Seriously, try it for yourself, I'll wait. In fact, take all the time you need, as I am not literally speaking to you, so I'm not actually waiting on you...

Are you back? Here's a test for your definition -- would any "legitimate" act of war not fall under your definition of terrorism? Because pretty much every definition I've ever seen of the word is something about using force or the threat of force to get some group of people to follow your political dictates. Which would describe every war ever. Which, if you want to go the super-radical route and declare all wars acts of terror, hellz yeah, I'm down for that. But that still makes the term rather useless, as it describes not only every war, but really the majority of acts of violence. And again, I'm totally down if you want to call all acts of violence terrorism, but that again renders the term pretty meaningless.

But I said earlier there is a meaning to the term. And that meaning is "violence committed by Brown People against white people." Think about that big act of terrorism that kicked all this off -- the 9/11 attacks. Remember the places they attacked? The World Trade Center, which housed various CIA offices, the Pentagon, the central command center of our armed forces, and reportedly the last plane was headed for the White House, the seat of our executive authority. The problem? Those pesky definitions again! According to our own military's guidelines for attacking other nations, those would all be considered legitimate military (not civilian!) targets. Which would mean that, again, by our own official definitions, the 9/11 attacks were not terror attacks. Well, they wouldn't have been if we had done it to someone else. Take, for instance, our ongoing drone wars (Thanks Obama!) -- the Pentagon fully admits that we don't know the identity of 90% of our drone strike victims. 90%! 9 out of 10 people we kill with a drone are likely innocent people.  If a suicide bomber killed 10 soldiers and 90 innocent people, we probably wouldn't consider that a justified act of legitimate warfare.

And therein lies the rub -- what distinguishes "terrorism" from acts of war or just regular ol' violence is that it is violence done to us by "them." And of course, the "them" in this equation is largely Arabs and/or Muslims, though it can be expanded to other Brown peoples as the situation warrants.

The point of the term is to heighten the "otherness" of the violence of brown people; that is, it serves to make their violence somehow different than our violence (which, of course, it is not). This allows you to drone innocent people all day and chalk it up to breaking freedom eggs for a democracy omelette, while at the same time locking up a child in an indefinite torture center for the "terrorist" crime of allegedly throwing your own grenade back at you.

So it's a super meaningless word, one that falls apart pretty much the second you put any thought into it. Why do so many people want it applied to the Vegas case?

My guess would be out of some sense of fairness -- if every time someone with any level of melanin above 0 kills someone it instantly gets labeled terrorist, well then it's only fair that when a white person kills a bunch of people we also reflexively label that terrorism. It strongly reeks of trying to bargain some benefit out of resigned acceptance of this horrid, racist term: "Sure, you created that term as an excuse for you to murder and torture by the thousands. We'll let you keep it as long as you let us call the people we don't like by it as well."

But where does that argument go? As in, what do we possibly gain from calling Vegas an act of terrorism? Are we going to secretly extradite the shooter to Bulgaria so he can be tortured in a secret location? Are we going to ban all white men from getting on planes? Are we going to launch a war on this guy's hometown? Because that's what happens when we successfully label something a terrorist act. In all seriousness, what do we gain other than a false sense of equality by getting a white guy called a terrorist on the news?

Because I submit that warm fuzzy of useless equality that comes from the (meaningless!) label of terrorism finally being applied to a white person for once is the only outcome of that. That's about it. Which not only is not a terribly gainful outcome in and of itself, but would serve to only further justify the use of the term, what with all these voices of people calling for the label to be used, even though I strongly suspect those same people would not be so happy to use this label in most other contexts.

What I humbly suggest would be a better tact would be to fight to get rid of that term. Vegas was certainly bad, but calling it terrorism does nothing to help us stop it from happening again. Just as the 9/11 attacks were very bad, but calling them terrorism has gotten us no closer to (and indeed, it could be argued, much further away from) preventing more instances of this particular form of violence.

Unless the term terrorism helps us understand and prevent further violence (and it most assuredly does not), then there's little utility in spreading its use.

Happy May Day!

May the bourgeois tremble and flee at your approaching steps!

Quick Follow Up

To follow up with the last post on the importance of recognizing the early stages of mass radicalizing violence, I stumbled upon this chart from the Anti-Defamation League and Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, a group of folks who probably know a little bit about the subject. Note all of the stages before the violence stage, and ponder how travel bans, list of crimes, and other early actions of the Trump administration might fit into the ol' Pyramid of Hate here.

Godwin's Law and Trump's Fascist Cosplay

Probably everyone who has ever used the internet (at least in the English-speaking world) is familiar with Godwin's Law, if not by name than at least by experience. Godwin's Law, in full, is that the longer a conversation occurs on the internet, the likelihood that someone invokes Hitler or the Nazi party will approach 1 (on the classic statistical scale of 0-1). It's important to note that Godwin's law is descriptive and not proscriptive; that is, it doesn't say anything about whether it's a good idea or not, or whether it's relevant or not, or anything else about the invocation of Hitler or the Nazi party, other than that the longer the conversation goes on, the more likely it is to happen.

However, the rule has become greatly distorted (much to the dismay of Godwin himself) to now hold that anyone who ever invokes Hitler or the Nazi party is engaging in hyperbole and is automatically wrong.

This is not good! For many, many reasons. One of the biggest, of course, is that Hitler and the Nazi party were not magical monsters, but instead regular ol' human beings. So by keeping them to rarified air that no one else can ever approach for any other reason, we do ourselves quite a disservice, as plenty of other humans have proven themselves just as capable of enacting Nazi policies and actions. For instance, there have been multiple genocides since the Holocaust.

Another major reason is that plenty of people are happy to call themselves Nazis (or maybe not use the exact term due to its baggage, but otherwise hold all of the beliefs). In large part this blog post was inspired by me reading an article this morning in which Richard Spencer (he of the Nazi getting punched in the face memes) was referred to as a Nazi. One of the first comments on the article was someone chastising the author for using the term Nazi so cavalierly, arguing that it devalues it to apply it to just anyone you don't like.

But the problem is: Spencer's a Goddamned Nazi. He regularly quotes Nazi propaganda, denounces pretty much anything ever done by a Jewish person, and has refused to denounce Hitler or the holocaust any time he's been asked. He's done everything short of walking around carrying a comically-large sign reading "I AM A NAZI."

So if you can't call an active Nazi a Nazi, then whom can you call a Nazi? No one, I guess. And that's the very problem with how people abuse Godwin's law. Nazi is a very useful term to describe Nazis, and we shouldn't throw it out because people online occasionally engage in hyperbole.

For instance, today Trump unveiled his promised list of crimes committed by undocumented peoples, a list which will apparently be a weekly phenomenon.

You know who else published a regular list of supposed crimes committed by a group of people he didn't like and was actively trying to make others scared of? Hint: he had a funny little mustache.

This is important, because this isn't one of those "Hitler once said he didn't like bowties, so if you don't like bowties you're just like Hitler!!1!1!!1!" kind of ridiculousness that the people ruining Godwin's law think they're fighting against.

Rather, the regular publication of lists of "crimes" committed by Jewish people was an integral part of the necessary dehumanizing of Jewish people so that regular human beings could be goaded into killing them en masse. As plenty of people have pointed out, the Nazis didn't start with the Holocaust. Or any mention of the Final Solution. Or really, any sort of public pronouncement as to what was actually coming.

No, instead what they did was spend years spreading misinformation, falsehoods, and straight-up lies about Jewish people to dehumanize them. To get regular, otherwise good-natured people to see Jewish people as some kind of unique threat. You know, the kind of threat that means you need to build a giant wall to keep out of your nation.

And this is why we can't throw out the Nazi baby with the hyperbolic Nazi-accusations bath water. Because we've seen this exact thing before and we've seen exactly where it leads.

Is Trump Hitler? No. But is he quite literally enacting a centerpiece of Hitler's methods for dehumanizing a group of people? Yes, he is doing exactly that.

So we compare him to Hitler. Not because we don't like him, but because he is literally doing what Hitler did.

And remember how we had this whole big thing after the Nazis were defeated where we collectively as a world declared we wouldn't let this happen again? Well, it's happening again. Let's not let it.

The Free Market Is Only Free When It Does What I Want It To (Academia Version)

The American right wing loves the free market. Listen to literally any of them talk for more than three sentences, and it's all but guaranteed that not only will they mention the free market in glowing terms, they will have also suggested it as the solution to whatever you're discussing. Taxation? Free market. Income inequality? Free market. Hang nail? Free market.

Except when the free market doesn't do what they want it to, that is. This is, of course, why we have socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor. The actual consequences of an actually free market only apply to the lessers of the world.

Take, for instance, the latest in the cottage industry of "libruls are ruining universities!!11!1!!1!" pieces that seem to run in the Chronicle of Higher Education pretty much every day. (Don't judge: the Chronicle is my favorite hate read. It's like an slightly more sober but significantly more niche Breitbart).

This piece was written by one of the interchangeable jagoffs who writes these things, most of whom typically hold some sort of position with "freedom" in its name, and who are always ironically complaining that conservatives in academia are oppressed and never given a platform while never noticing the irony of themselves being a conservative academic with a prominent platform. But my point is not their individual hypocrisy (though there's plenty of it!), but the larger issue of them suddenly and completely abandoning the singular solution they offer to everything else.

Because if the professorate has been drifting ever leftward (though the evidence always offered for this is, to put it lightly, incredibly suspect, but again, not the point) despite the fact that students have not (as the linked article claims), and if this is truly a problem in that students are being denied the viewpoints they so desperately crave, then the question becomes obvious: why hasn't the free market stepped in and solved this?

After all, if our universities were truly dominated by a rigidly leftist ideology with little-to-no variety in thought, then shouldn't the market be supplying an alternative? Shouldn't there be a cadre of conservative professors rising through the ranks, with their classes swelling past capacity as students flock to the ideologies they've been so cruelly denied all these years? Shouldn't individual departments and colleges, not to mention entire universities, note this market inefficiency and recruit conservative faculty members so they can capitalize on this woefully underserved market?

I find this incredibly interesting because I hate-read pretty much every article I can find about how universities are the worst examples of rigid group think and ideological orthodoxy, and yet I've never once seen the argument made by conservatives that the free market will solve it. Which, again, is quite odd, as these same folks hold that the free market will cure literally everything. And yet, the free market has had literal decades to solve the "problem" of academic ideology, and yet according to these same people, the problem is actually getting "worse!"

Now, of course, you and I and every person who has the ability to reason beyond the level of 6 year old knows this is because markets don't and never have operated in such a simplistic manner. But then you and I and every person who has the ability to reason beyond the level of 6 year old have not suggested the market as the cure to every social ill.

Of course, none of this is to address the fact that said ideological orthodoxy does not actually exist, but even if it did, wouldn't that mean the market has spoken and said that this is what the people want? And who the fuck are we to disagree with the omnipotent brilliance of the free market?

Holy Shit! Some Lady Put Her Feet On A Couch!

Look, I get it: you hate Trump. I hate Trump. Lots of people hate Trump. Hell, if we count the entire world, it's probably true that the majority of people hate Trump. Heck, I wouldn't be too surprised if a majority of Americans hate Trump. He's a white supremacist, a moron, and most definitely a jagoff.

But! That doesn't mean it's cool to just throw every possible negative thing about Trump and his cronies against the wall in the mad hope that something will stick.

This isn't coming from some misguided notion to respect the office of the Presidency or be fair to Trump or any of that other milquetoast centrist shit people keep coming up with. Rather, it's about strategy and recognizing the fact that opposing this dude will require some effort and discipline.

The current hubbub over Kellyanne Conway being photographed sitting with her feet tucked underneath her on a couch in the Oval Office is a perfect example of what I'm talking about here. People are freaking out like she murdered a baby and bathed in its blood, not sat awkwardly on some fancy furniture.

For one, here's literally dozens of pictures of Obama putting his feet up on the furniture in the Oval Office, which somehow did not draw the same level of condemnation from people freaking out right now. But more important than who has or who has not put their feet on furniture, this is not something to be concerned about. Because, and I genuinely cannot believe I have to point this out, the reason the Trump administration poses such a threat is not because of their disrespect for furniture. Making any criticism about Trump's team hinge on such a superficial (and come the fuck on, completely meaningless) action only serves to legitimate them.

This odd freakout is wrong-headed for the same reason it's completely moronic for people to reply to exhortations to give Trump a chance with some version of the faux-witty rejoinder of "Oh, just like you gave Obama a chance?" Because, again, opposition to Trump is not because the other side was mean to the Democratic president, so now we all get to be mean to the Republican president.

Engaging in petty squabbles like this serves to legitimate the Trump administration, because it gives credence to the notion that "both sides do it." Our opposition to Trump is nothing like the Tea Party's opposition to Obama -- they opposed him because he's Black and they think he's a Muslim, we oppose Trump because his cabinet is stuffed full of ardent white supremacists and he's openly courted a growing fascist movement.

Those two things are not equal.

But when you equate them by pointing out the Tea Party did the "same" thing, or focus on completely meaningless superficial things like the way a woman sat once, you're building a narrative that the opposition to Trump is due nothing more than the fact that he has the wrong party affiliation, and the demonstrations are nothing more than the predictable anger of the losing side of the election. This is what allows America's desperately-seeking-the-middle-and-objectivity media to normalize Trump's actions -- sure, they draw massive protests, but lots of people didn't like Obama, either. It's just the way shit goes!

I mean, look, if you want to clown on Conway for sitting awkwardly, fine whatever, I'm sure she's heard worse. But quit trying to make this out to be some giant scandal. This is like complaining that Hitler drank shitty beer. Yeah, drinking shitty beer is a dumb thing to do, but that's not what was bad about Hitler. We've got a woman happy to go on television while spouting obvious lies and framing them as "alternative facts" while giving cover to the closest America has had to a genuine fascist threat in decades if not ever, and we've got half the internet freaking out about how she sits on a couch.

I just...I mean...come on. I don't know how to end this post other than with a series of bewildered ellipses as I struggle to put into words how idiotic this whole "scandal" is. But for what it's worth, I've written this all while sitting politely in a desk chair with both of my feet planted firmly on the floor, so you can take my word for it...

Welcome! We've Been Waiting For You.

The Women's March on Washington, and affiliated marches throughout the nation, that took place this past Saturday were huge. Demonstrations took place on every continent on Earth and have been argued to be the biggest collection of protests in world history. I even saw on the social media this morning that a pair of political scientists had used crowd-size estimates to argue that roughly 1-2% of the entire US population was at a protest of some sort that day.

So needless to say, it was a pretty popular demonstration, the kind we haven't seen since the dawn of the Iraq war (and those demonstrators, it bears constant repetition, were pretty much right about everything).

The incredible popularity of this past weekend's actions put those of us regular demonstrators in an odd position, as we're not used to nearly this much attention nor support. And I have to admit, it's easy to feel like a demonstration hipster (indeed, in creating a back patch to wear to Saturday's rally, I cut up an old demonstration shirt I had made that read "I was against the war before it was cool").

To be fair, this isn't an entirely glib point about something niche suddenly becoming mainstream. As many have pointed out, none of the problems folks were discussing during Saturday's many speeches are new in any way, and while Trump is a terrifying specter indeed, it's not as if the election of Clinton would have made these problems go away. I'll admit that as much joy as I felt witnessing the thousands who were marching along side me and the many millions more marching elsewhere, more than once my mind returned to the speaker at an emergency post-election meeting I mentioned here before who pointed out that had Clinton won, these problems would still be here, but it's pretty unlikely everyone would be organizing emergency meetings and mass demonstrations to address them.

So yeah, there's definitely a sense that many of the people who showed up to the protests this past weekend were only doing so because they felt like all of the problems in the world might now start applying to them. I think the feeling is captured quite eloquently by this sign, which I've seen multiple versions of popping up in various photo collections from Saturday:

It raises a good point about participation, and less directly, about how these demonstrations were policed compared to many others; as more than a few people have pointed out, if there were Black Lives Matter rallies this big all over the nation, it's hard to believe police would be so polite and helpful, or that we would see so few pre-emptive riot police and tanks on the street.

These issues are real and important, and definitely should not be dismissed, but instead form a central part of the discussion on where to go from here.

But as important as these issues are, and as fun as it is to be holier than thou about such things (and it's very fun!), in my ongoing quest to learn some form of humility, I'm going to try my best to remember that everyone starts somewhere. And while people should be held to task for not caring about an issue until it effects them personally, I think it's also important to ask which is more important during these times -- excoriating those who didn't get to the movement soon enough, or building as massive a movement as possible to push back against the Trump agenda and toward social justice?

So in that vein, I'm going to do my best to try and welcome people to the resistance. Even if they didn't get here on time or in the right way, they got here, and it's a lot more important where they go from here than where they've been before. Because simply put, we need them. As ol' Leon Trotsky put it, "Without a guiding organization the energy of the masses would dissipate like steam not enclosed in a piston-box. But nevertheless what moves things is not the piston or the box, but the steam."

Or for a bit more contemporary spin on that same though, I'll let Dr. Angela Davis have the final word:

Today is a Shitty and Depressing Day

I've already written at length about my reaction to the election, and I don't have anything particularly erudite to add to that right now. Today is appropriately grey and foreboding, fitting the mood of much of the nation. It's shitty and depressing and feels like little can be done right now (but actually, much can be done. I'm going to go march and shit tomorrow and probably feel a lot better).

In the meantime, while I can't offer inspiring words, I can offer a cute picture of an adorable dog happily sleeping at my feet. It's worth something:

Your Credulity Regarding Trump Rumors Is Concerning

Alternate Title: 2008-2016 -- Unverified and Error-Filled Accusations the President is an Operative of a Foreign Government is an Affront to the Very Concept of Democracy; 2017 -- All Unverified and Error-Filled Accusations the President is an Operative of a Foreign Government are Obviously True

Alternate Alternate Title: Partisanship is a Helluva Drug

First, something I shouldn't have to spell out but will for the sake of this argument: Trump is a shitty human being whose presidency will likely be a disaster at best. He is a bad man and I don't like him.

Ok, that being covered, I need to ask a semi-rhetorical question: has the entire Democratic left lost its collective mind?

The steady stream of "Trump is a Russian Puppet!!1!!1!!1!!!1!" reports coming out every day and being breathlessly shared on social media and throughout the center-left sphere are nearing the point of anti-Obama hysteria in 2008 (and yup, to address your criticism, Trump is certainly a worse person than Obama. That is quite irrelevant). And yet, as Glenn Greenwald has done a yeoman's job documenting, not a single one of these accusation have a shred of evidence connected to them. The closest any of them get to anything resembling evidence are the anonymous and unverified accusations of CIA operatives. And if you're willing to believe what the CIA tells you without any shred of evidence, then well...I've got a Latin American regime to sell you.

Take, for instance, the latest report making the rounds with its incredibly salacious stories of Trump apparently having Russian hooker parties which the Kremlin is using to blackmail him. This would be quite the explosive set of allegations. Would be if there were any evidence. Any evidence at all. Except in place of evidence, we have a report written by an anonymous man paid by the Democratic party to dig up dirt on Trump that relies exclusively on unverified reports from anonymous sources. Hell, not only did it not have sources or even details to corroborate its fantastical claims, it's full of spelling errors and basic geographical mistakes. Seriously, go read the actual report. Hell, even official Hillary Clinton public relations firm Jezebel had to admit the report "contains some clear errors and mistakes." Even Buzzfeed, the outlet that broke these allegations, had to admit that there is "serious reason to doubt the allegations.”

But the allegations make the other side look bad, so people whose identities are wrapped up in the Democratic party and its success will apparently continue to latch on to any rumor, no matter how fact free and obviously implausible it is. But hey, maybe someone will find an old picture of Trump in "muslim garb" and then we can demand he prove he wasn't born in Kenya!

To me, what this sad on-going spectacle really displays is the inherent problem with a two-party system and the odd loyalties it engenders, especially when it leads otherwise rational people to support really, really odd positions only on the basis of being on the other side of the bad people (a/k/a the other major political party).

Much of this hysteria around Comrade Trump's Secret Russia Directives reminds me a lot of a conversation I always think of when prompted to remember the idiocy fostered by a two-party system. Several elections ago I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who I must point out is a very intelligent, highly-credentialed, and all-around thoughtful human being. This was the first election in which the possible legalization of recreational marijuana had a real chance of passing, and I was really surprised to learn this friend of mine opposed such measures. This was very strange, as he's an intelligent man and ending prohibition is an intelligent thing to do, not to mention that I know this particular fella likes to indulge in the devil's lettuce from time to time himself.

So when I asked him why he was taking such an out of character position, his explanation was that when medical marijuana was first proposed, Republicans opposed it because they saw it as a backdoor to legalizing recreational marijuana, to which Democrats argued of course it wasn't, it was just for people who needed it medically and there were no plans for its legalization for recreation. So my friend went on to explain that by now advocating for its full legalization, we would be proving the Republicans correct, and we can't have that.

This is, of course, a terrible argument. As I pointed out to him, if your political opponents claim that taking one measured, logical action which benefits many will only lead to us taking further measured, logical actions that benefit many, that's not really an argument against taking that action. That is, actually, how politics is theoretically supposed to work.

To my good friend's credit, he came around on this point eventually, but I keep coming back to this conversation as so perfectly laying bare what's happening with so much of the left right now. The very same people who spent 8 years mocking conservatives who questioned Obama's loyalty to America and his right to the office he was elected to, the very same people who wondered how anyone could be so stupid as to question the outcome of free and fair American elections, the very same people who spent months before this election saying anyone who challenged its outcome would be a traitor and threat to the very concept of Democracy...these are now the people who will gladly parrot any unsubstantiated and almost impossible to believe report that makes Trump look bad and call for the CIA to depose him. I feel like this shoots straight past simple irony to some form of super, dodecahedron irony indescribable in words.

Again, Trump is a terrible human being and I legitimately fear the damages his presidency will inflict upon the world. But we're reaching 9/11 truther levels of derangement here, people. But then what do I know? I'm probably just a Kremlin operative so brainwashed I don't even realize it. Makes about as much sense as most of these other rumors.

From You, Alright! I Learned It By Watching You!

This is possibly the most iconic anti-drug ad of my youth (though not the best, that would unequivocally be this one), and it seems especially fitting for today's hysteria revolving around possible Russian interference in our most recent presidential election. The anonymous CIA leakers spreading the story have caused quite the uproar here, providing us another one of those odd spectacles when Leftists completely contradict everything they stand for and are simply aghast that anyone would question the word of the CIA!

Now, we can set aside the fact that there's no evidence any of the email leaks supposedly orchestrated by those nefarious Russian were falsified, which would mean that people are essentially throwing a fit over the fact that we finally saw behind the curtain and learned how high-level politicians and political operatives talk about us when they think no one's watching. Or we can set aside the fact that there's literally no evidence Russia had anything to do with this, other than the aforementioned anonymous leaks by anonymous CIA officials. And I don't mean to get too crazy here, but I feel like there's a reason or two to doubt the anonymous claims of CIA operatives. Because of, you know, weapons of mass destruction. Or the bay of pigs. Or...well pretty much anything the CIA has ever done.

So sure, we could ignore those two points. Of course we shouldn't, because those two points in and of themselves pretty much invalidate the story from the get-go, or at least turn it from a pressing matter of concern to something that we should maybe wait a minute or two for some form of evidence before losing our collective shit.

But just for funsies, let's say those two very compelling points can be ignored, and that the anonymous word of people whose very job by definition is to operate in secrecy to ends that aren't known to the public can be totally trusted and that those damn Ruskies are back up to their Soviet-era tactics.

Even if we do all that, it's pretty fucking rich for the United States of America to complain about interference in their elections from another nation. For one, we currently have literally thousands of soldiers continuing to occupy two nations we invaded and overthrew the governments of. Which is, you know, maybe even a bigger deal than releasing some emails to influence their election. For another, there are the literally dozens of governments we as a nation have either overthrown or attempted to overthrow. Or hell, we could point out that Hilary Clinton, the candidate said to be harmed by this Machiavellian interference of a foreign government in our elections, has directly supported a coup in a sovereign nation and argued we should have interfered in the elections of another.

But even more to the point, we can't even claim to have clean hands in this specific instance, as the US has been more than happy to intervene in Russian elections in the past. Or much like our mustachioed pot-head dad wondering where his kid learned to smoke weed, maybe we should check out the cover of Time magazine from July 15, 1996 and ponder where they night have learned this from:

What To Do When The Fascists Come To Town

Last week the university I work for hosted a talk by a fascist cut-rate Kathy Griffin in which he personally attacked a member of my department for several minutes. I won't link to the video or even use the guy's name because a) he deserves neither the recognition nor the web traffic, b) he's probably the only openly-gay fascist currently on a college speaking tour, so you can figure it out yourself, and c) in many ways, the particulars of this individual are not the point. After all, this clown is a dime a dozen; he's one of those political performers you can tell doesn't even believe a large amount of what he says, he just knows that his entire appeal (and income) is based on being the person who says Ka-Raaaazy!!1!!1!11! shit and that if he doesn't keep it outlandish enough, he'll be discarded for someone who will say even more incendiary things (as will happen soon enough, anyway).

To be fair to the university, he wasn't part of a speakers series or endorsed by the university in any way other than being allowed to use campus space due to being invited by the Campus Republicans, a registered student group. His speaking fee, as far as anyone has been able to figure out so far, was most likely paid by a private, non-university-affiliated individual. That all being said, many in the campus community point out that delivering a talk on campus definitely gives the appearance of being sanctioned by the university, accurate or not. So, not too surprisingly, many are upset the talk was allowed to happen on campus.

In this case, the objections stem from much more than the usual opposition to someone coming to campus to deliver the empirical definition of hate speech -- this time, he singled out and abused a popular instructor in the department of sociology and anthropology (in which I also work). This instructor (whose name I'll also refrain from using, but in this instance because he's currently sifting through dozens of pieces of hate mail as a result of the talk), happens to be gay, so the speaker projected a picture of him with the caption "fat faggot" underneath it for several minutes of his talk. He also described the instructor with that and similar terms quite a few times while, irony apparently being a concept this speaker is unable to grasp, decrying how liberals bully people who don't agree with them.

Shortly after the speech, the university president released the typically milquetoast response administrators always release, noting that while the speaker has freedom of speech and the university doesn't hold any particular political views, the speaker clearly went beyond the pale with such personal attacks and vulgar language. He quite pointedly did not use any terms such as "hate speech" or "hate crime" or any other such language that would have required taking anything resembling a stance, but again, that's not surprising, as that's what high-ranking administrators do.

But needless to say, it's been quite the subject of discussion in our department as we try to figure out how we can more productively respond to what was a hate crime being committed against one of our own. And I think it's quite a testament to the times we live in that a group of people who quite literally study society for a living have been having a difficult time figuring out what to do.

Though to be fair, it's a pretty tricky question -- after all, the schtick of this guy and those like him is that conservatives are under attack from crusading liberal professors who won't allow them to express their viewpoints (again, the irony of saying this while literally standing in a university classroom delivering your thoughts completely without censorship or any challenge being completely lost on them). As such, pointing out the many times he made empirically false statements, or the many gaps in his logic, or challenging his right to come onto campus and commit a hate crime against a university employee plays right into that argument. But obviously we don't want to just ignore this, so much to the credit of my colleagues, we're having an on-going discussion of how to respond.

One possibility that keeps coming up is some sort of debate or dialogue with the Campus Republicans who sponsored the speech and more likely than not fed the speaker the information that led to him attacking my colleague*. But the problem I have with that is that there's nothing there to dialogue or debate about; as I argued in our faculty meeting yesterday, our colleague's fundamental humanity is not up for debate. There's no discussion to be had about the way in which he was slandered and insulted, or the wave of hate mail he's received as a result of being publicly threatened by this speaker and his followers.

Aptly enough, immediately after that meeting I read this great piece by the always reliable Damon Young. Although his argument is not completely analogous to this situation, I feel the same logic holds -- there's merit to finding compromise and common ground with people of different opinions, but there's no merit in legitimizing hate crimes by being polite to those who commit them. Pretending this kind of vile attack is a simple disagreement over which we should be able to overcome through finding mutual shared interests serves to do nothing other than accept that this kind of hate speech is a legitimate argument technique even if not the correct analysis of the facts.

All this is a long way of saying that this is why I feel that strongly condemning the speech and the group that sponsored it and refusing to entertain further discussion of any merit the speaker may have even theoretically had is not at all a refutation of open debate or a challenge to the First Amendment or any of these other incredibly specious claims to civility by those committing hate crimes themselves. Simply put, physical appearance and sexuality are not things that alter any person's right to being treated a human being. To not justify these arguments with any response beyond complete and unconditional condemnation is the same as a biologist responding to creationism or an astronomer responding to geocentrism -- not only is there no "moral" or "political" debate to be had about these topics, there is no empirical debate to be had about them. We should not pretend there is.




*The short version is that someone told the speaker that my colleague a) fails students who don't agree with him politically, and b) was giving students credit to go to a different even that night so they wound't be able to attend his speech. Both of those claims are, of course, completely false.

The Revolution Is What It Managed To Be And Not What It Wished To Become

I was originally going to write a really long-winded obituary on Fidel, but it's that point in the semester when I'm typically just too tired to think straight (coming off of stuffing myself full of food for a week probably doesn't help).

There's very little I can add to the conversation that hasn't already been said. Castro was a hero to many, a villain to many others, with many more holding complicated feelings toward him. Regular readers of this blog will have little difficulty guessing where I fall on that spectrum (though for those having trouble, I tend to agree with Nelson Mandela, a man Castro defended while my own president called him a terrorist).

Really the only surprise to me in the aftermath of his death was finding out how many liberals and other shades of the left despised him. While I typically hate the hand-waving condescension of saying people have fallen for propaganda, I guess if you call someone a brutal dictator enough, most people will believe you. I personally was accused of falling for propaganda when I happened to mention the oft-cited statistic that even though Cuba is a tiny island nation under embargo from most of the world, they manage to have significantly lower infant mortality rate than the United States. And maybe my accuser was right; if anyone is going to be peddling pro-Cuba false stats, it's gotta be the CIA. I guess maybe the 639th assassination attempt is killing him with kindness?

But yeah, Castro had his worts, as does any world leader. But because he was considered an enemy of the US, his sins are foundational and unchanging, unlike the many sins of the US, which are accidental and non-consequential. This leads to the bizarre spectacle of President Obama condemning the human rights violations of the Cuban government while he runs a literally lawless torture prison on Cuban soil.

While I searched around for the words to capture the heights and lows of Fidel's life, as is usually the case, it turns out someone else already said it better. So rather than ramble on any further, I'll instead offer my official endorsement of the poetic words of Eduardo Galeano on Fidel's life and legacy:

His enemies say he was an uncrowned king who confused unity with unanimity.
And in that his enemies are right.

His enemies say that if Napoleon had a newspaper like Granma, no Frenchman would have learned of the disaster at Waterloo.
And in that his enemies are right.

His enemies say that he exercised power by talking a lot and listening little, because he was more used to hearing echoes than voices.
And in that his enemies are right.

But some things his enemies do not say: it was not to pose for the history books that he bared his breast to the invaders' bullets, he faced hurricanes as an equal, hurricane to hurricane, he survived 638 attempts on his life, his contagious energy was decisive in making a country out of a colony, and it was not by Lucifer's curse or God's miracle that the new country managed to outlive 10 US presidents, their napkins spread in their laps, ready to eat it with knife and fork.

And his enemies never mention that Cuba is one rare country that does not compete for the World Doormat Cup. And they do not say that the revolution, punished for the crime of dignity, is what it managed to be and not what it wished to become. Nor do they say that the wall separating desire from reality grew ever higher and wider thanks to the imperial blockade, which suffocated a Cuban-style democracy, militarized society, and gave the bureaucracy, always ready with a problem for every solution, the alibis it needed to justify and perpetuate itself.

And they do not say that in spite of all the sorrow, in spite of the external aggression and the internal high-handedness, this distressed and obstinate island has spawned the least unjust society in Latin America.

And his enemies do not say that this feat was the outcome of the sacrifice of its people, and also of the stubborn will and old-fashioned sense of honor of the knight who always fought on the side of the losers, like his famous colleague in the fields of Castile.