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Obama should honor McCain's request to suspend

By: Joel Monka — 25 September 2008 at 16:01

Senator McCain has suspended his campaign to concentrate on the economic fix, and asked Senator Obama to do the same, postponing debates until after an agreement on the economy is reached in Congress. So far, Obama has refused, saying the debates will go on even if he's the only one there. I think Senator Obama would be wise to change his mind.

Was McCain's request made in good faith? President Clinton thinks so . ""We know he didn't do it because he's afraid because Sen. McCain wanted more debates," Clinton said..." Even so, it could still be a trick- any grand gesture in an election cycle is suspect. But I still think he should go along with it.

Why? To do what Senator McCain is doing- to keep his Vice Presidential pick out of the public eye for some coaching. Joe Biden is a walking gaffe machine. If someone doesn't get him a tranquilizer and get him back on message, he could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory all by himself. Here's a sampling from the last ten days:

He angrily denied being in favor of clean coal technology, ranting about how that was something the Chinese did, and "No coal plants for America- let them build it over there,"... when both he and Obama individually as Senators have championed clean coal, and together have it in their campaign energy policy. The gaffe resulted in this devastating McCain ad.

Got their stance on the economic bailout package wrong, causing him to be publicly chided by Obama himself.

That echoed an earlier gaffe on the economy when he said that he didn't know a single economist who had said that raising taxes on the rich would hurt the economy during our present crisis- after Senator Obama had said that very thing himself.

And while we're on the economy, he criticized Bush's lack of public discussion by saying "When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed." FDR wasn't President when the market crashed, of course, and commercially available television wouldn't be offered to the public for another ten years...

Called one of his own campaign commercials terrible , saying, “I didn’t know we did it, and if I had anything to do with it, we’d have never done it.” This from the man who says the other candidate is "out of touch".

Said that raising taxes on the rich- you know, that thing that Obama said would harm the fragile economy- was patriotic . How can Obama complain about the Republicans wrapping themselves in the flag when his running mate is doing the same thing?

I'm not even counting a myriad of lesser gaffes, like "You need to work on your pecs", or "Stand up and let them see you", or "She might have been a better pick". These are harmless in themselves, although if he keeps it up the cumulative effect could be toxic.

Senator Obama has nothing to fear in his own debates, but he'd better start worrying about the Vice presidential ones. Governor Palin is no Jefferson or Adams in the intellect department, but she is a savvy politician with a true talent for snark. Biden has already given her enough ammunition to turn the debate into a celebrity roast if she so chooses. Or she could take just one- use his coal gaffe as a launch pad for her only area of expertise, energy, for example- and make herself look presidential. And that's assuming he doesn't make another gaffe during the debate- something i wouldn't bet on.

Senator Obama should listen to Senator McCain and take the bye week- and use it sending Biden back to political boot camp.

WWUUD?

Of symbols and Chaos Magic

By: Joel Monka — 24 September 2008 at 16:44

Doug Muder has an interesting article in the UU World entitled Assembly of a lesser god , and discusses it further in his blog . The concepts he uses are, as he notes, Pagan, derived from Choas Magic . The question is whether there is anything to it, or is it all New-Age gobbledygook that should be disdained any rational modern?

I am a Pagan and, amongst other things, an animist. I believe that we, and everything around us, is made of the stuff of gods, (and vice-versa), and that everything has (to whatever minimal extent it might be) a soul and a level of understanding. And no, I cannot prove it; it just feels right- I know the difference between faith and fact. But I do know that good things come from behaving as if it were true.

One part of such animist belief is trying to understand things as their own souls perceive themselves. People have noted that cats seem to have an affinity for me. Perhaps that's because I perceive them differently than many, as I explained in a post I wrote for Ms. Kitty : "The lesson is to learn to love things as they are, not as we would like them to be. Cats are not small dogs, nor fuzzy children, nor animated stuffed toys- they are the most ferocious killing machines Mother Nature has ever unleashed into the underbrush, their ecological niche. We must remember that their affection for us, while genuine, is a perversion of their pack (pride?) instincts- we haven't tamed nor civilized them, we have merely stepped into one or more roles that would otherwise have been filled by elder cats in a pride."

The same holds true for "inanimate" objects; you have to find what a tool "wants" to do. I once had a pocketknife that I liked, even though it wasn't good for anything. It was awkward and near useless whittling; I couldn't even cook with it. (Yes, I use pocketknives and a small hatchet for cooking rather than kitchen cutlery- I learned a lot of my cooking outdoors, ok?) Then one day I got frustrated while trying to sculpt "The Hound of the Baskervilles"; it was going nowhere, and in my anger I threw the sculpting tools across the room and drew my pocketknife... and it came alive in my hand. Every stroke was sure and true, smooth and accurate, without hesitation. This was what the knife was meant for- I never used it for mundane cutting again.

How does this relate to Doug's article? Many Pagans will search for a deity with a known affinity for the subject they're addressing (I often appeal to Calliope), just as I searched for the proper role of that knife. A Chaos Magician may decide to create such a deity, imbued with the attributes needed, and appeal to that god(dess)- like Doug's Olly. And it works, if he can control his perception. Why? Because none of us- not Pagan nor Christian nor Muslim nor Jew- addresses the true deity; we address what our mortal limits allow us to perceive.

It's a political axiom that perception is reality. They mean that cynically; Chaos Magicians- and many other Pagans- mean it literally. Materialists dismiss that claim as self delusion; there is only objective reality and fantasy. But what is "objective reality"?

A physicist will tell you that we don't live in Newton's world; we live in the universe of Einstein, Schrodinger, and Dirac. That is "reality". But in truth, unless you're a nuclear physicist or a former citizen of Hiroshima, you do live in Newton's world. Everything you will ever do or see follows his rules; even the supersonic jets and missiles that would deliver an atomic bomb obey his laws- that, too, is "reality". You could build a rocket and send men to the Moon without ever doing business with Einstein.

It is also "objective reality" that anything dealing with the human equation- which is virtually our entire lives, even if you're an engineer- is dealing with human perceptions and human understanding. All our loves, hates, happiness, despair, success, failure, joy, misery- everything that matters- is utterly dependant upon how we perceive and understand our world... and those perceptions and understandings are controlled by our symbols. Manipulating those symbols- even your own- means controlling those perceptions- even your own- and thereby controlling your reality. Is life "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.", or is this "the best of all possible worlds", with any hardships being just a foible in a thing of beauty, like getting a flat tire on a Lexus? Both are equally true, for by believing them, you make them so.

As Doug noted, followers of Rita really do find parking places, and followers of placebo really do get well. And, as Doug also noted, one can create all kinds of explanations as to why that might be so. If you demand a definitive answer- "Do witches and magicians affect objective reality or not?", I will quote Louis Armstrong: "If you have to ask the question, you wouldn't understand the answer." But I will note one thing in passing: Rita's followers are happy when they find a parking spot; aggressive atheists like Dawkins find happiness in proving everyone else fools- I know whose company I'd rather keep.

WWUUD?

I felt a sense of deja vu reading the blog discussions of cultural misappropriation,

By: Joel Monka — 24 September 2008 at 13:45

and I've finally realized why; I'd heard the same arguments from one of my brothers:

He: It's not their ritual; they have no right to it. It can't possibly have the same meaning for them.

Me: They draw their own meaning from it. And anyway, what skin is it off your nose? It doesn't affect your use of it.

He: But it does! It distorts the whole concept, makes it meaningless!

The only difference is that my brother was referring to gay marriage.

WWUUD?

I got a call from a pollster...

By: Joel Monka — 22 September 2008 at 16:35

A quick aside- dontcha just love how when the "No-Call List" legislation was written, the politicians exempted themselves from it? Anyway... here's how it went:

Her: Do you intend to vote in the Presidential election this year?

Me: Yes.

Her: Are you going to vote for John McCain or Barack Obama?

Me: Neither one.

Her: Then you're undecided?

Me: No, I've decided.

Her: Then are you going to vote for John McCain or Barack Obama?

Me: There are five Presidential candidates on the Indiana ballot, you know. And eight more allowable write-ins. I'm not going to vote for either McCain or Obama; I'm voting for one of the other eleven.

Her: That's not a choice on my sheet.

Me: Well, it should be.

Her: I'll put you down as undecided. Does supporting abortion rights make you more or less likely to vote for that candidate?

Me: It's not a consideration.

Her: What do you mean?

Me: I mean abortion isn't one of my issues. I don't care where they stand. Put me down as undecided.

Her: Undecided isn't one of the choices for this question.

Me: Imagine my surprise.

Her: Then what do I put down?

Me: I don't care; pick one.

Her: Ummm...

It kind of went downhill from there. I actually did try to cooperate with her as best as I could- but given the nature of her questions, my best wasn't very good. I couldn't help wondering as she continued if this was one of those polls that would determine that Obama would have 75% of the vote if it weren't for racism.

WWUUD?

Simple answers to global warming

By: Joel Monka — 22 September 2008 at 13:32

One of the biggest problems in dealing with any complex question is that many simple, common sense measures are dismissed because they are not a complex, comprehensive solution- a corollary of the axiom "the perfect is the enemy of the good enough". There are always people who, when your house is on fire, want to debate the root causes of house fires, and create blue ribbon panels to draft legislation about home building codes and materials- putting the fire out would be "too simplistic".

I have written here before about one such simple partial solution: giving tax breaks to encourage people to replace their black or dark colored roofs with white or light colored roofs. I have been talking about this program (and many other similar ones) since the days of the first gas crisis thirty years ago, when the issue was just saving energy. I've even put it on the internet before- when I was a guest on a radio show to discuss school vouchers , the host suggested before the show that I ought to put it on a website, and he would give out the address on the show; to flesh out the site, I included many of my other proposals, including some on passive solar energy .

Back then, when people wrote my proposals off as "too simplistic to have any real effect", I didn't have the resources to put numbers to it. But now some researchers have, and the numbers are even bigger than I had guessed. According to these stories from Science Magazine and The LA Times , replacing black roofs with white ones and replacing black asphalt roads with white concrete would offset 44 metric gigatons of greenhouse gases!

One of the best things about this proposal is that it can be done immediately, and we don't have to wait until it's finished to reap some benefits- even the smallest beginning will yield big results right away. "According to Hashem Akbari, a physicist with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a 1,000-square-foot roof -- the average size on an American home -- offsets 10 metric tons of planet-heating carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere if dark-colored shingles or coatings are replaced with white material."

Is this a solution in itself? No. But this, (any many other similar, easy programs) can have a huge effect, can be done immediately, and require no new scientific breakthroughs, no new research programs- it's all off the shelf stuff, using materials already in mass production. But will any of our politicians adopt them? No, they're too simplistic. They don't buy votes in wavering congressional districts. They don't result in new government plum jobs to hand out to supporters. They won't get your name put on a new government office building in your home district. Better to just keep debating Kyoto.

WWUUD?

One last time...

By: Joel Monka — 20 September 2008 at 10:08

I had intended to let this matter drop, but since I have been addressed directly by Rev. Sean , I'll take one more stab at what I meant.

There's an old joke that rewritten for this situation might help explain how I see it. There's a long line at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, and people are starting to grumble. A conservative says, "Typical government inefficiency- they should contract this out to private enterprise." A liberal says, "Typical of this miserly administration- they should raise taxes on the rich and hire more clerks." A Unitarian Universalist says, "They're just stalling to avoid waiting on the black man in line- typical of our oppressive society."

Any of their theories might be true. Or maybe the Bureau is having computer problems. Maybe someone is sick, and they're shorthanded. Maybe it isn't the clerk's fault at all- the people in line don't have their paperwork in order. It doesn't really matter what the truth is. All three of the complainers, with no objective basis for their opinion, using only their predisposition to believe certain things, have constructed a scenario that "obviously must be true". This is what the author of "This is your nation on white privilege" did.

He took ordinary political hypocrisies, (some of which weren't even true, but that's beside the point), rewrote them as racial hypocrisies, then criticized the nation for what were, after all, his own assumptions. Example: "White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves with laughter,..." Four years ago, Howard Dean ran as Governor of Vermont- a state with a smaller population than Alaska, much smaller in fact than the city of Indianapolis- and a much smaller Gross State Product than Alaska. He had no political experience prior to his election as Lt. Governor, (He became Governor when Richard Snelling died in office); not even as Mayor of a small town- not even as community organizer. Not only did people not piss themselves laughing, he was the early front-runner. There is no objective basis for the charge of "white privilege".

The Eclectic Cleric did much the same thing. He set up a series of hypothetical situations, presumed to know what our reactions to them would be, then presumed to know the motivation for those presumed reactions, then said "This is what racism does." Doesn't anyone see anything wrong with that?

Of course, all the hypotheticals of both authors exist only to set up their basic assumption: the only reason that Senator Obama isn't 20 points ahead is racism. That's possible, of course- but what is the objective reason for believing so? As I pointed out in my previous post , Senator Obama is polling as well as or better than every other Presidential candidate has in the last twenty years at this point in the cycle. There's simply no discrepancy to explain away.

Rev. Sean doesn't accept that answer. "And sorry Joel, “Other elections were close too” is NOT a logical argument. It’s possible that if Obama were a white man the polls would be showing a landslide in his favor. We’ll never know." He's right- we'll never know. But since we don't know, why are you assuming that an unknowable possibility is more logical than a known history? It's also possible that if Senator Obama were a white man, he'd have lost the primaries in a landslide and Senator Clinton would be the nominee. We'll never know.

Rev. Sean also said, "See, there is one huge fallacy in Joel’s response: He argues that pointing out systemic racism is itself an act of hatred. He thinks uncovering and talking about racism is the same as “an ugly desire to see the worst in the other side.”" He has two fallacies of his own there. The first is that his "quote" is not my words. But more importantly, he has the concept wrong. I applaud pointing out systemic racism. What I object to is inventing systemic racism when there's no objective reason to believe that it's an important factor in a given situation. I object to assuming that a given situation must exist, and then when it doesn't, assuming without evidence that the reason for the discrepancy is not a flaw in your own logic, but rather a flaw in other people's character. I do believe that you must have a deep contempt for your fellow man to believe that the reason half of them disagree with you is racism.

Rev. Sean also says, "Neither of the essays accused people of racism. They did, however, look at some of the ways systemic racism (the preference for white folks over black that is built into our culture and systems) may be affecting the election." That is sheer sophistry. This whole discussion is about why Senator Obama isn't as far ahead as his supporters think he should be. Well, cultures and systems don't answer pollsters. Cultures and systems don't vote. Oppressive laws and corporate practices don't vote. People do. It's not possible to blame racism for poll results without accusing the people who answered those pollsters of racism.

Nobody is arguing that racism isn't a pervasive problem. Although they do argue about whether it's "white privilege" or "class privilege", no one is arguing that unearned privilege isn't an obstacle to raising people out of poverty. Racism is a factor. But it is A factor, not THE factor. I believe that today- not in the days of slavery, not in the days of lynching and Jim crow, but in 2008- there are other "isms" of equal and even greater importance.

Sexism: Does anyone seriously doubt that sexism- and the cover-up of the Edwards affair- is the reason Senator Clinton isn't the nominee? Polls showed that even in the deep south, men preferred a black man to a white woman in the White House- and an amazing number of women agreed. Women have always ridden in the caboose of the civil rights train. I remember hearing Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, say at a convention that he got more complaints over Lt. Uhura, a woman, giving orders to men than he got over having Capt. Kirk being court-martialed by a black admiral.

Lookism: I could never be elected to a position much higher than City Council because I'm fat. Despite being an overweight nation, it's been nearly a century since we've had a portly President. Even Governors have to be slim- you can count on one hand the number of overweight governors there've been since the invention of television. People simply won't vote for a fat person unless they know them personally. You have to be tall, too- there have only been a couple Presidents under six foot tall in the history of the United states, and none in the last hundred years. President Bush stands unique in the modern era for having defeated a taller man. And these qualities are very nearly as important in the corporate world as the political. People who go above and beyond in the recruiting of minorities still have no problem with telling fat jokes, and hiring, firing, and promoting by weight.

Able-ism: there has never been a candidate from either party with a widely known handicap (Roosevelt and Kennedy concealed their infirmities) except for John McCain and Bob Dole- and they're special cases in that their ailments were received in the process of becoming war heroes. Even so, they can still get around on their own in public. I don't believe we'll ever see a wheelchair in the oval office, because medical science will develop cures and life-like powered exoskeletons faster than the public will get over this prejudice.

CORRECTION: The Eclectic Cleric is not the author of the quotes I mistakenly attributed to him; they were emailed to him, and he just posted it. The authors:

Mary M. Gaylord
Sosland Family Professor of Romance Languages andLiteratures
Director of Undergraduate Studies
Undergraduate Adviser for Romance Studies
424 Boylston Hall, Harvard YardCambridge MA 02138

Jane R. Dickie
Professor of Psychology and Women's Studies.
Hope College.
Holland, MI 49423

WWUUD?

Enough of discord

By: Joel Monka — 19 September 2008 at 15:54

Seek your bliss, soothe your spirit with Loops of Zen

WWUUD?

Real change in campaign '08:

By: Joel Monka — 19 September 2008 at 15:54

"Stop hating the other party.", says Seth Freeman of The Christian Science Monitor. "As angry and politically active as I am this presidential election, I'm starting to notice a problem as I fight for my side: The more engaged I am and the more the polls seesaw, the more I find I have an ugly desire to see the worst in the other side. The technical term for this condition is hate."

Did anyone out there just wince? I pray that many did, because I don't know anyone who is truly involved in politics who is wholly immune to this, myself included. I have seen the faces of thoughtful, considerate people- the kind who, when discussing a mass murderer, would try to understand the terrible childhood traumas that must have driven him to the act- harden as they spit venom at anyone who would vote for the other party.

"Hate has the annoying tendency to turn into hypocrisy. I laugh with glee when my side catches the other's lies and follies. To a point, that's healthy and cathartic.
But you don't hear me laughing when the other side returns the favor. Then I discount the point and quietly fume at the attack itself. Don't they understand our side is the good one?"

Still haven't winced yet? How about this:

"Hate also kills thinking. In 2004, my wife and I did a simple exercise with some of our liberal and conservative friends.
We asked each to imagine seeing their side from the other's perspective. "We're not asking you to agree with them," we said, "we're just asking if you can understand them."
Though our friends were educated, compassionate, and capable of great empathy, they found our request impossible. "I can't," they said. "Maybe I should, but I can't. They're just crazy – or evil." Perhaps you felt that way recently as you watched one of the conventions. "Who are those people?""

Has anyone recognized themselves yet? Yes, I have been guilty of that emotion- but I also have been actively fighting against it, and have defended both sides from unfair attacks. But I can count on one hand the number of blogs who are doing so; the whole country seems to be wallowing in their spite.

"But can I fight hard without damaging my heart, my relationships, or the country I claim to love?
Borrowing from two astute politicians, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Abraham Lincoln, I'm looking for ways to want good things for the other side, see the good in them, and genuinely see the force of their arguments."

Don't you wish those words had appeared in a UU blog? The sad truth is that the UU blogosphere is damaging hearts, relationships, and the country without fighting effectively for their side. You think I exaggerate? Look at what we have been posting; as an old local politician myself, I can guarantee you that no mind has ever been changed by a "GILF" tee shirt, a "Jesus was a political organizer" button, or accusing your opponents of being racist- if anything, it hardens hearts against you. Can you show me a blog post with an in-depth, deeper-than-bumper-sticker discussion of issues? The only ones I can think of are Rev. Debra W. Haffner's- and she was only using political news as a hook for her standard (excellent) sexuality discussions.

Can't we take the lead here? We're UUs; we pride ourselves on bringing rational discussion to moral issues. As Seth said, "Think of it as a kind of counterinsurgency. Or a response to another, more serious, inconvenient truth."