Nathaniel launched Difficult Run in November 2012 and ran the website alone until August 2013, when he invited the first Difficult Run Editors to join him in adding content to the site.
Nathaniel has a background in math, systems engineering, and economics, and his day job is in business analytics. His real interests are science fiction, and theology, however. He is an avid runner, but not a very fast one. He is married to fellow DREditor Ro and they have two little children.
In addition to Difficult Run, Nathaniel blogs regularly for Times And Seasons and writes a lot of reviews on Goodreads.
That was the question a self-described “white, male poet—a white, male poet who is aware of his privilege and sensitive to inequalities facing women, POC, and LGBTQ individuals in and out of the writing community” asked at The Blunt Instrument (“a monthly advice column for writers”). Well, more specifically, he said:
It feels like a Catch-22. Write what you know and risk denying voices whose stories are more urgent; write to learn what you don’t know and risk colonizing someone else’s story. I genuinely am troubled by this. I want to listen but I also want to write—yet at times these impulses feel at odds with one another. How can I reconcile the two?
The response took a long, convoluted, and circuitous route to get where it was going, but the basic answer was simple: Yes, stop writing. Or, more specifically, you can go ahead and write all you like, but you should stop trying to get your works published.
Don’t be a problem submitter. When I edited a magazine, we got far more submissions from men, and men were far more likely to submit work that was sloppy and/or inappropriate for the magazine; they were also far more likely to submit more work immediately after being rejected. When you submit writing, you’re taking up other people’s time. Be respectful of that. I said in my last column that getting published takes a lot of work, which is true—but most of that work should take the form of writing, and revising, and engaging with people in the writing world, not just constantly sending out new work, which starts to look like boredom and entitlement.
Think of this as something like carbon offsets. You are not going to solve the greater problem this way, on your own, but you might mitigate the damage.
It’s vague enough for plausible deniability, but the logic is clear. The only way to “mitigate the damage” is to submit fewer works. Publish less.
This is the logic behind the social justice movement. It’s not always as clear cut as this, but it’s always there. For a fantastic article documenting just how long this mentality has been around, I recommend Privilege and the working class. I don’t agree with all of it (obviously, as it is printed in The Socialist Worker), but the analysis of nascent social justice warrior ideology (aka “privilege theory”) is spot on:
Third, white workers were blamed for systemic racism because their “privileges” came, purportedly, at the expense of Blacks: white workers got more because Blacks got less, and vice versa. This assumption bought into the liberal capitalist idea that the size of the share of the economic pie available to workers is fixed and highly limited, and that different sub-groups of workers must fight against each other to expand their shares. Privilege theory focused on workers battling each other for the same shares, rather than on their fighting together for a just division of the share appropriated by the bosses–that fight, in the form of shop floor and union struggles for class demands, was explicitly opposed.
The analysis of capitalism is tragically and catastrophically off-base, but the insight that the essentially divisive nature of SJW ideology is itself a statist (and therefore elitist) tool is entirely valid. Once you accept the premise that we are fundamentally divisible into racial, sexual, and other categories, the possibility for cooperation and synergy disappears and all that is left is fighting over scraps.
These are not the guys I want as the face of gun rights activism.
I’ve been following Michael Yon for quite some time, since he was an independent journalist embedded with US armed forces in Iraq and then Afghanistan. He’s a bit of a loose cannon, and I certainly don’t agree with everything he writes[ref]I’m pretty skeptical of his recent criticisms on the history of comfort women from World War II, for example[/ref], but this post makes some good points: Be a Palm Tree: Tobacco, Rebel Flag, 2nd Amendment.
The basic thesis is that back in the day smokers never took the complaints of non-smokers seriously. They arrogantly assumed that their rights as smokers trumped the rights of other folks to, for example, not be enveloped in a smog of carcinogens when stepping into an elevator. As a result of their rigid position, when the public sentiment turned against smokers and smoking it turned hard and they lost basically everything. He extends the same idea to the defenders of the confederate battle flag, arguing that if they’d been satisfied to fly the flag on their private property and wear it on hats and belt buckles, their probably would have been little uproar, but their insistence on flying the flag over (or very near) state buildings set up the backlash we’re seeing today.
And then Yon gets to what I thought was most interesting: open carry.
Yon’s Caption: Billy feeds Susan, while I stand guard with rifle and pistol.
Open carry refers to carrying a firearm openly (i.e. not concealed) and in many states (like Virginia, where I live) it is legal in most places and does not require a permit. The open carry movement is a loose coalition of gun rights organizations who, under the mantra of “use it or lose it,” engage in open carry to prevent the right from fading into obsolescence. Yon, as a person who grew up around guns, is strongly supportive of the 2nd Amendment and is supportive of open carry in general, but he has a problem with open carry extremists:
Those of us who have seen people shot both intentionally and negligently – I have seen plenty – do not like to be in the presence of goofballs with guns in their hands. Even trained US combat troops regularly shoot and kill fellow troops through negligence. British forces also do this… Hundreds of troops have been killed and wounded since 2001 by gunshot ‘accidents,’ which the military calls negligent discharges… US military commanders do not allow most troops to carry loaded weapons on any but the most dangerous bases: we typically take more casualties on bases from negligent discharges than from insider attacks. And this is from trained troops.
So, when Yon reads about a open carry advocate carrying a shotgun into a Walmart and then loading and racking a shotgun. That’s not a made-up example, and the local police chief (the incident took place in Gulfport, MS) was not amused:
“If I were in a situation where I’m in the store shopping with my family and I see an individual loading a 12 gauge, and racking it, I’m not coming to the conclusion this is good,” said Papania. “While the actions of these two men are sanctioned by state laws, what they did negatively impacted our community.”
Yon also goes further, and cites basic common decency. Although folks (like Yon) who grow up around guns do not bat an eye at responsible open carry, there are lots of Americans who did not have that background and are scared at the sight of a firearm. Common courtesy says that you shouldn’t go out of your way to further intimidate, harass, or scare folks like that. Let them be.
All of this leads Yon to conclude that “Fanatics are being allowed to hijack 2nd Amendment issues.” I agree with Yon on that, and also on his final words from the post:
Many of us want to keep the 2nd Amendment strong. We must pay attention to our political environment, and to history. We must be the Palm Tree, and understand that no right is absolute, and that our rights never trump the rights of others.
In case you don’t want to watch the video, here are some snippets.
Major Garrett: As you well know, there are four Americans in Iran — three held on trumped-up charges and according to your administration and one whereabouts unknown. Can you tell the country, sir, why you are content with all the fanfare around this deal to leave the conscious of this nation, the strength of this nation unaccounted for in relation to these four Americans?
President Obama: I’ve to give you credit for how you craft those questions. The notion that I’m content as I celebrate with American citizens languishing in Iranian jails — Major, that’s nonsense, and you should know better. I’ve met with the families of some of those folks. Nobody is content, and our diplomats and our teams are working diligently to try to get them out. Now, if the question is why we did not tie the negotiations to their release, think about the logic that that creates. Suddenly Iran realizes, you know what? Maybe we can get additional concessions out of the Americans by holding these individuals.
I’ve seen this story making the rounds on Facebook, predominantly among conservatives where it has been paired with headlines like “Obama finally snaps” or “Garrett unloads on Obama.”[ref]Exactly the opposite of what this particular video, chosen because it’s the highest quality I saw, says at the top.[/ref] From the headlines, you’d get the impression that this was some kind of Joseph N. Welch “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” moment.
Well, it’s not. And it’s not even close.
I’m not going to weigh in on the entire Iran nuke deal issue, because I don’t know enough about it. I’m generally optimistic and hopeful. I have a very high opinion of Iran and the people who live there (in distinct contrast to the radicals who run the place), and the deal seems reasonable, based on what I’ve heard. On the other hand, lots of conservatives seem to be pointing out that the deal with North Korea seemed reasonable as well, and look how that turned out. So I don’t know.
But on the specific issue of signing the deal with Iran while Americans are still in Iranian jails, Obama’s response was absolutely on point. He cited the exact same logic behind the US policy of not paying ransoms or negotiating with terrorists. The fact is that if you make it profitable to take hostages, then more hostages get taken. So, even though in any one case you want to negotiate for the sake of today’s hostages, you can’t because it would cause more people to become hostages tomorrow. That response is an excellent rebuttal to Garrett’s question, and it’s one conservatives (with all their much-vaunted tough-mindedness and realism) should be particularly cognizant of.
Secondly, in terms of tone, Obama’s response was equally fitting. Garrett’s question was loaded and arguably even exploitative. For Obama to address that directly was well within bounds. So, on both levels, Obama handled this particular question fairly and adeptly.[ref]I’m not saying anything about the second portion of Major Garrett’s question because, again, I just don’t have enough context to have a firm opinion.[/ref]
Complaints of media bias are tiresome. I get that. But, on the other hand, I’m really not convinced that folks are fully cognizant of exactly how far off-kilter the media is from the rest of society, or how profoundly that impacts how a lot of us see the world we live in. This chart, more than any other chart I’ve seen, conveys that reality.
I promise to do my best not to include this image in every post that I write for the next couple of years, but let me explain why it’s so important. (The post is from a Business Insider article, by the way: These Charts Show The Political Bias Of Workers In Each Profession.)
First, I mean “media” in the most general way possible. The entertainment industry, newspapers & print media, and academics: these are the sectors that determine, if not what people think, then certainly what people are thinking about. Folks marvel at the rapidity with which the country changed its mind on gay marriage, but it’s really no mystery when you think of how committed these sectors were to the campaign. (I’m not as sure about Online Computer Services, exactly, but it sounds like you may as well toss in the Internet with the rest of the media as well.)
So why is is that conservatives often feel under siege despite their numerical superiority (according to many polls)? This is why. Why is it that liberals cannot fathom what motivates conservatives? Again: this is why. There are essentially no representatives of conservative thought in the media that dominates this country.
This simple fact explains an awful lot about the current political climate.
I’d been storing up a couple of articles about Planned Parenthood, unsure of when I was going to post them, and then news broke yesterday of Planned Parenthood’s side gig selling human body parts from aborted fetuses. Well, it doesn’t get much sicker or more morally repugnant than that, but let’s back up before we get to that.
First, here’s an article from Secular Pro-Life showing how Planned Parenthood is aggressively expanding to increase their abortion numbers despite an overall decline in abortions nationally. At the same time, the work PP likes to be known for–cancer screenings and prevention services–are going down.
The graphic comes from a report by another pro-life organization (Americans United for Life) which (according to SPL’s summary):
covers a huge amount of ground: how Planned Parenthood is running away from its less profitable contraception and cancer screening services; how it is siphoning abortion business from its competitors, allowing it to take a greater share of the market even as nationwide abortions plummet; how it is putting its proverbial eggs in the basket of “mega-centers” that commit abortions six or seven days our of the week instead of just one or two; how it is developing those mega-centers by deceiving local authorities; and how our tax dollars are the scaffolding for the whole twisted enterprise.
Planned Parenthood likes to pass itself off as a woman’s health organization, but the reality is that it is (now moreso than ever) a highly profitable commercial enterprise founded on killing human beings.
Then there was this article from the WaPo that I thought was very interesting in light of the controversy over the Confederate battle flag: Planned Parenthood: The next relic from our racist past that must be purged. Steve Deace points out that, as racist legacies goes, Planned Parenthood’s is a stand out in all the worst ways possible:
Sanger left behind a documented legacy of racist screeds. Long before Democrats got a former grand wizard of the KKK named Robert Byrd elected to the U.S. Senate, Sanger proudly proclaimed the following:
“(We) are seeking to assist the white race toward the elimination of the unfit (blacks).” (Birth Control and Racial Betterment, 1919)
“Birth Control to create a (white) race of thoroughbreds!” (Subhead to Sanger’s magazine The Birth Control Review)
“We are paying for and submitting to an ever increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings (blacks) who never should have been born at all. That our wealth is being diverted from the progress of human civilization … Our eyes should be opened to the terrific cost to the community of this dead weight of (black) human waste.” (The Pivot of Civilization, 1922)
“Birth control is not contraception indiscriminately and thoughtlessly practiced. It means the release and cultivation of the better racial elements in our society, and the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extirpation of defective stocks–those human weeds (blacks) which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization.” (New York Times interview, 1923)
“I accepted an invitation to talk to the women’s branch of the Ku Klux Klan … I saw through the door dim figures parading with banners and illuminated crosses … I was escorted to the platform, was introduced, and began to speak … In the end, through simple illustrations (explaining the problems with inferior races), I believed I had accomplished my purpose. A dozen invitations to speak to similar groups were proffered.” (Margaret Sanger: An Autobiography, 1938)
Sanger established her first full-service “clinic” in Harlem in 1929. Why Harlem? Because, silly, that’s where a lot of the black people she often referred to as “human weeds” lived. Sanger described it as “an experimental clinic established for the benefit of the colored people.” In this case, she defined “benefit” as the overall reduction of the black population.
You might say this is all in the past, but the fact is that Planned Parenthood–which Sanger founded–still names its most prestigious award after her.
That kind of legacy explains photos like these:
So, all of this would have been bad enough, but yesterday we learned that Planned Parenthood is in the business of harvesting and selling body parts from the unborn human beings they kill. This isn’t just some fringe benefit, either. According to undercover video, they decide exactly how to perform abortions in order to avoid damaging the most valuable body parts that are currently on order. Here is Dr. Deborah Nucatola (Senior Director of Medical Services at Planned Parenthood since February 2009) describing her own procedures for ensuring optimal organ harvest from the abortions she personally performs:
For example, so I had 8 cases yesterday. And I knew exactly what we needed, and I kinda looked at the list and said okay, this 17-weeker has 8 lams, and this one — so I knew which were the cases that were more probably likely to yield what we needed, and I made my decisions according to that, too, so its worth having a huddle at the beginning of the day and that’s what I do.
This Breitbart article goes into more details, including Nucatola’s discussion of how to get the ban on Partial Birth Abortions. These abortions, which involve crushing the head of an unborn human being before delivering the rest of the body intact, are optimal because they allow everything (other than the head, obviously) to be resold. She says: “The Federal [Partial Birth] Abortion Ban is a law, and laws are up to interpretation. So, if I say on day one, I do not intend to do this, what ultimately happens doesn’t matter.”
There is some doubt about whether or not the body parts are technically sold since, as you can imagine, selling human body parts is not legal. Not even, I was surprised to learn, body parts from aborted humans. Snopes lists the allegation as “unconfirmed,” and for its part, PP has replied with a statement claiming that no body parts are sold, but that “tissue” (their euphamism) are donated for a fee:
In health care, patients sometimes want to donate tissue to scientific research that can help lead to medical breakthroughs, treatments and cures for serious diseases. Women at Planned Parenthood who have abortions are no different. At several of our health centers, we help patients who want to donate tissue for scientific research, and we do this just like every other high-quality health care provider does — with full, appropriate consent from patients and under the highest ethical and legal standards. There is no financial benefit for tissue donation for either the patient or Planned Parenthood. In some instances, actual costs, such as the cost to transport tissue to leading research centers, are reimbursed, which is standard across the medical field.
Consider me skeptical. The idea that there is “no financial benefit” is the same thing that PP would say about all the abortions they perform, since PP is ostensibly a non-profit, after all, and just in it for the health of women. Besides, as Hot Air summarizes the actual content of the video:
The context of the video was clearly not reimbursement for transportation of random tissue. Nucatola talks extensively about the demand for specific body parts in relation to price. “A lot of people want liver,” Nucatola states, and then explains how they train their staff to perform these abortions so that PP clinics can harvest organs to meet specific demand, and then make the sale. At one point, Nucatola even talks about body parts being on a “menu.”
I’m not a lawyer, but from what I’ve seen I doubt that Planned Parenthood is going to face a criminal investigation over this any time soon. The regional franchise might, but the national organization has been careful to keep its nose clean. But it’s equally obvious from the video that the only thing stopping them from whole-hearted retail is legal stricture. A change in the Supreme Court, as Nucatola says, and then it’s a different ballgame.
The whole thing is pretty grisly business, but none of my friends in the pro-life movement are at all surprised. This is what Planned Parenthood is. This is what they do. If you want to watch the video itself, here it is below.
Found an interesting blog post from a Canadian economics blog: There are no Friedmans today, except maybe Friedman himself. The basic point is simple: “The right won the economics debate; left and right are just haggling over details.” Of course, you wouldn’t know that from most economics debates. The world has a funny habit of forgetting when conservatives win major debates. Everyone is well aware that evolution beat out any and all opposing theories. Few remember that the Big Bang Theory was seen as a controversial, conservative-aligned view before it was thoroughly validated. Same basic notion here: everyone wants to give credit to Keynes but forgets:
The way that New Keynesians approach macroeconomics owes more to Friedman than to Keynes: the permanent income hypothesis; the expectations-augmented Phillips Curve; the idea that the central bank is responsible for inflation and should follow a transparent rule. The first two Friedman invented; the third pre-dates Friedman, but he persuaded us it was right.
And one more quote to show how far we’ve come:
We easily forget how daft the 1970’s really were, and some ideas were much worse than pet rocks. (Marxism was by far the worst, of course, and had a lot of support amongst university intellectuals, though not much in economics departments.) When inflation was too high, and we wanted to bring inflation down, many (most?) macroeconomists advocated direct controls on prices and wages. And governments in Canada, the US, the UK (there must have been more) actually implemented direct controls on prices and wages to bring inflation down. Milton Friedman actually had to argue against price and wage controls and against the prevailing wisdom that inflation was caused by monopoly power, monopoly unions, a grab-bag of sociological factors, and had nothing to do with monetary policy.
Imagine if I argued today: “Inflation is dangerously low. In order to increase inflation, governments should pass a law saying that all firms must raise all prices and wages by a minimum of 2% a year, unless they apply for and get special permission from the Prices and Incomes Board to raise them by less.” What are the chances my policy proposal would be accepted?
Friedman had a mountain to move, and he moved it. And because he already moved it, we simply cannot have a Friedman today.
Oh well. I guess sometimes it’s more important to win than get the credit.
There was an article in the New Yorker last month called The Square that pretty well encapsulates why I am deeply suspicious of both modern art and professional philosophers. The eponymous painting is above. A sample of the text follows:
In 1913, or 1914, or maybe 1915—the exact date is unknown—Kazimir Malevich, a Russian painter of Polish descent, took a medium-sized canvas (79.5 cm. x 79.5 cm.), painted it white around the edges, and daubed the middle with thick black paint. Any child could have performed this simple task, although perhaps children lack the patience to fill such a large section with the same color. This kind of work could have been performed by any draftsman—and Malevich worked as one in his youth—but most draftsmen are not interested in such simple forms. A painting like this could have been drawn by a mentally disturbed person, but it wasn’t, and had it been it’s doubtful that it would have had the chance to be exhibited at the right place and at the right time.
After completing this simple task, Malevich became the author of the most famous, most enigmatic, and most frightening painting known to man: “The Black Square.” With an easy flick of the wrist, he once and for all drew an uncrossable line that demarcated the chasm between old art and new art, between a man and his shadow, between a rose and a casket, between life and death, between God and the Devil. In his own words, he reduced everything to the “zero of form.” Zero, for some reason, turned out to be a square, and this simple discovery is one of the most frightening events in art in all of its history of existence.
Here is what irks me: the painting only works within the context of a bunch of fairly esoteric and inside-baseball talk. The picture, itself, represents nothing. It means nothing. It is, more or less, nothing. Not in some pseudoprofound “Zero, for some reason, turned out be a square” nonsense, but in the mundane, “not much to see here” sense.
I suppose you could argue that it’s a matter of taste, and I’m sure to some extent that is true. Some people like art that speaks to them. Others, for whatever reason, prefer art that requires a thesis-worth of material outside the work in question to be able to find a voice. Call me a grouchy old man, but if you listen to a section of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana or stand before a Gothic cathedral or stare up at the Sistine Chapel, you’re going to feel something. You might feel much more if you are a musician, or an art historian, or an architect, but just anybody is going to feel something. [ref]Carmina Burana was finished in 1936, by the way, so I’m not just fetishizing old stuff.[/ref]
And that is what I fundamentally don’t like about modern art. Or about professional philosophers. They are elitist to the point of nihilism. They are belligerent and arrogant in their intentional impenetrability. They are fundamentally hostile to the everyman. And, quite frankly, ain’t nobody got time for that. Give me art, any day of the week, that is actually trying to communicate something to me as I am. Not that is intentionally whispering to only a chosen, select few. Even if I can hear, I have no interest in being part of that anti-humane snobbery.
So, my take on this issue is actually more extreme than the headline of the article that inspired it, which is pretty rare for me. The article in question is The U.S. Navy’s Big Mistake — Building Tons of Supercarriers, and the case it makes is pretty simple.
First, aircraft carriers are really, really easy to sink.
Soviet Adm. Sergei Gorchakov reportedly held the view that the U.S. had made a strategic miscalculation by relying on large and increasingly vulnerable aircraft carriers. The influential U.S. Adm. Hyman Rickover shared this view. In a 1982 congressional hearing, legislators asked him how long American carriers would survive in an actual war.
Rickover’s response? “Forty-eight hours,” he said.
Things have gotten much, much worse since 1982, by the way. Long-distance, very-fast, relatively cheap, shore-based anti-ship missiles are a problem. So are diesel-powered submarines, which are actually quieter than nuclear subs. But the US military has been deliberately hiding the vulnerability of their prized carriers.
Now let’s take a look at the unofficial record derived from war games. In 2002, the U.S. Navy held a large simulated war game, the Millennium Challenge, to test scenarios of attacks on the fleet by a hypothetical Gulf state — Iraq or possibly Iran.
The leader of the red team employed brilliant asymmetric tactics resulting in 16 U.S. ships, including two supercarriers, going to the bottom in a very short span of time. The Navy stopped the war game, prohibited the red team from using these tactics and then reran the exercise declaring victory on the second day.
When I shared this quote in a Skype chat with some friends, one responded instantly with “that is f—ing treason.” And I was just getting started with the juicy quotes.
One carrier, the USS Kitty Hawk, used up three of its nine lives having been run into by an undetected Soviet sub in 1984, overflown by two undetected Russian planes — an Su-24 and an Su-27 — in 2000, and surprised by a Chinese Song-class attack submarine that surfaced undetected inside its perimeter and within torpedo range in 2006.
What that tells you is that the only reason that no one has sunk an air craft carrier of ours since World War II is that nobody has tried. I should say, “sunk in real life,” of course. The simulated sinkings are apparently not few nor far between.
In March of this year, the French Navy reported that it had sunk the USS Theodore Roosevelt and half of its escorts in a war game, but hurriedly removed that information from its website.
And yet, despite this dismal track record and the even gloomier future prospects, we’re sacrificing other, more capable ships to keep building super-carriers.
The reason the article irritated me so much is that it’s just one of a ton of examples. Consider, for example, the asinine efforts of the Air Force to kill the A-10 Warthog. Cheap, slow, and ugly, the A-10 continues to be one of the most important aircraft in our inventory because of it’s incredible prowess at close-air support. The Air Force wants to get rid of it to fund shiny new toys like the F-35, despite the fact that the F-35 doesn’t offer any genuine opportunity to fill the role the A-10 fills.Things got so bad that an Air Force general told officers if any of them praised the A-10 to lawmakers it was “treason.”[ref]Luckily, he got fired, but only after public outcry. It just shows the pressure going on behind the scenes to lie or be silent to the detriment of our troops.[/ref]
Then there’s the F-35 itself, which is a late, overbudget, maintenance queen that can’t even replicate the dog fighting abilities of the 40-year old F-16. The sad thing? That’s not even the worst of it. The fact that we’re investing this much in manned aircarft at all shows that we’re not thinking seriously about the future. Putting a human in the cockpit means taking up space and weight and–more importantly–means limiting the aircraft’s performance to what the human body can withstand. The day of manned aircraft is over. We need to catch up with that reality.
Here’s the thing: maybe you think the US spends too much on military. That’s fine. Maybe you think the US should continue to maintain military dominance. That’s fine, too.[ref]And closer to my position. I believe Pax Americana is under-appreciated.[/ref] But regardless of how much we spend, the money should be spent efficiently. There’s no excuse for what is happening now. It’s a disgrace.
It’s difficult to see how the nationwide legalization of gay marriage could have any kind of significant negative repercussions for anybody who’s not gay. Difficult – but not impossible. Because now that the US government formally recognizes marriage equality as a fundamental right, it really shouldn’t skew the tax code so as to give millions of dollars in tax breaks to groups which remain steadfastly bigoted on the subject.
I’m talking, of course, about churches.
Gay marriage was legalized by the SCOTUS in no small part as a reflection of public will, as the majority of justices saw it. And that public will was based largely in the rhetoric of civil liberties and live-and-let-live. One of my concerns all along has been that it will not stop there, however.
It is too early to say the sky is falling. And, in any case, skies tend to fall slowly. But it’s worth thinking about.
How many backers of theoretical gay marriage will regret the reality of gay marriage? As a matter of policy, it doesn’t matter much anymore. And I have no moral qualms about same-sex marriage itself. I don’t believe it destabilizes the institution or ruins the lives of children. Then again, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum, either. If same-sex marriage isn’t just a pathway to happiness, freedom, and equality for gay citizens, but a way to pummel religious Americans into submission, it will be a disaster.
We’ll see how things go, but I have a hunch I already know. The same people who told me again and again that I was being silly to fear these kinds of repercussions will, one by one, begin to ask me, “Well, why shouldn’t this follow logically?” Which, as I’ve always known, is precisely the point.
Results of Google Image search for “minimum wage political cartoon.”
Conservatives are heartless. Everyone knows this. Working poor can’t afford to put food on the table, but conservatives still oppose increases to the minimum wage. Why? Either because they are rich and want to keep their profits, or because they are not rich but they are being manipulated by rich conservatives who play on their fears like Rick Wakeman plays a keyboard.[ref]If that reference confused you, watch this video. Skip to just before minute 3 if you’re impatient.[/ref]
That’s one of the reasons the minimum wage issue frustrates me so much, and it’s why we write about it so often at Difficult Run. Some conservatives oppose the minimum wage because they care about the poor. Another response–probably a more common one–is to make sure that you are not confused for those backwards, bigoted, Bible-thumping conservatives by establishing yourself as someone who is conservative economically but doesn’t share their weird religious hangups. For example: Bleeding Heart Libertarians or the Secular Right.
But, in this post, I just want to explain one more reason why conservatives can appear heartless to their liberal friends and families: hoaxes and hysteria.
Not long ago, you may have seen the story of the woman who received a letter from a neighbor that her yard was “relentlessly gay” because she has rainbow-colored lamps in it. This kind of thing validates all your fears about those bigoted conservatives and their intolerant ways, and it was shared widely. Conservatives like me, however, were a bit skeptical. Especially when the article was linked to a crowdfunding campaign to make her yard even more gay [ref]Seriously, what does that even mean?[/ref] Well, it turns out that conservatives were probably right to be skeptical:
Anti-hoax consumer activists raised suspicions as soon as the fundraiser began, because Baker’s own idiosyncratic capitalization and punctuation matched the style of the alleged letter from her neighbor. Quoth LaCapria: “…Although Baker had stated the previous day that police were “satisfied” with her claim, the detective to whom we spoke said that Baker was either unwilling or unable to produce the letter in question, and that she had maintained it was no longer in her possession. The detective also indicated that he had attempted to meet with Baker in person the previous day but was unable to do so.”
This isn’t an isolated incident. In another example, I saw all kinds of liberal friends on Facebook react with horror to the story of how a gay Utah pizzeria worker had been viciously assaulted for being gay. It turns out that this attack was also staged:
A man who reported someone beat him and carved a homophobic slur into his arm staged the attacks, authorities in rural Utah said Tuesday. Millard County Sheriff Robert Dekker said Rick Jones, 21, could face charges after officers investigating the series of reported attacks found inconsistencies in the evidence. The Delta man eventually acknowledged faking the harassment, Dekker said.
His lawyer says it was “a cry for help,” and that seems reasonable to me. My heart goes out to someone who, for whatever reason, thought that this might be something that would make their life better. I’m not mad at the people who shared the story either, because I know they were acting out of a desire to do good by showing solidarity for (as they thought) a victim of a hate crime. But I am saddened (thought not surprised) that the news that the attack was staged will not make the rounds as the news of the initial assault did. I wonder, what percent of people who saw the initial story will miss seeing this followup?
Here is just one more example. You may have heard of Sir Tim Hunt, the Nobel laureate biologist who was fired within days of apparently making sexist remarks such as:
Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab. You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them, they cry.
It really was hilarious, but my mirth was tinged with sadness. First, because I was pretty sure that a man smart enough to be a knight and a Nobel prize winner probably wasn’t dumb enough to say something that absurdly sexist even if it reflected his true beliefs, and secondly because it’s depressing to think that so many people live in a world where they think that kind of rampant misogyny is common and unsurprising.
Well, it turns out that the critical account of Hunt’s words came from a single source, and that source has a track record of lying and dissembling, primarily by either falsifying her CV or just claiming things that sound way more impressive than they actually are:
Elsewhere in the six-page CV is a section devoted to ‘Qualification and Training’. In it, St Louis trumpets the fact that she is ‘a member of the Royal Institution’.
Again, very prestigious. Or so it seems, until a spokesman for the Royal Institution told me: ‘Anyone can be a member. It’s simply a service you pay for which entitles you to free tickets to visit us and gives you a discount in our cafe.
‘It’s like having membership of your local cinema or gym.’
Why would someone include such a thing on their CV?
‘Actually, that’s a bit of a problem,’ the spokesman added. ‘We have heard of a few people using membership on their CV to imply that they have some sort of professional recognition or qualification. But it means nothing of the sort. It’s very, very odd to see this on a CV.’
This woman’s uncorroborated (and now, contradicted) testimony is all that it took to trash a successful scientist’s 50-year career.
As far as I understand it, the primary reason that social liberals don’t talk about these hoaxes very much is that they are concerned that admitting to the prevalence of hoaxes will erode their position and make people apathetic about racism and sexism. The problem is that refusing to talk about the hoaxes actually does the same thing, but the effect is even stronger. It gives conservatives the impression that social liberals are either intentionally using false events for political gain or, at a minimum, are reckless in their handling of the truth.
At the same time, however, the fears of liberals are not unfounded. There is a very real chance that conservatives tend to dismiss the real costs of inequality and prejudice because this parade of hoaxes (these three articles are all from just one week) creates a festering cynicism.
So what should we do? Well, I’d like to see more data-centric articles to tell the truth. I’m really tired of breathless, sensationalist reporting that rushes to judgment and completely fails to take any context into account. For example, there are numerous articles out these days about spate of fires in predominantly black churches. How bad is this problem? Is it a new trend? How many of the fires are definitely arson? None of the articles I have seen go into that, which seems bizarre given how incredibly important this story is.
Something else I’d love to see: a little more generosity in how we evaluate each other’s motives. Here’s a great example of how not to do it: Amanda Marcotte’s Talking Points Memo piece The Real Reason Why Conservatives Like Ross Douthat Oppose The Gay Marriage Ruling. The article Marcotte is referring to is Gay Conservatism and Straight Liberation in which Douthat argues that “the gay rights movement has won twice over. Its conservative wing won the right to normalcy for gay couples, while rapid cultural change has made the definition of normalcy less binding than the gay left once feared.”
Clearly Douthat is a conservative, and so I would hardly expect for Marcotte to agree with him. But her article is breathtaking in its vicious assumptions about his motives and not just his arguments. According to her, Douthat “declines to spell out exactly what parts of traditional marriage he would like to keep.” That’s absurd: the parts he wants to keep are: monogamy, permanence, and an orientation towards procreation. This is the same for all conservatives. But by pretending that Douthat is unclear, she gives herself license to put words in his mouth, noting that “the human past is one where women were treated as chattel to be passed from father to husband, legally and socially regarded merely as extensions of their husbands instead of people in their own right” (which is true) and alleging that Douthat is pining for precisely that ancient misogyny (which is absurd). She concludes that Douthat–and all conservatives–oppose gay marriage because “it redefines marriage as an institution of love instead of oppression.”
This is hysterical nonsense that exists on the same level as Dinesh D’Souza’s conspiracy theories about President Obama dedicating his entire life to becoming President of the United States so that he could intentionally destroy the country from within to honor his absent father’s anti-colonial ideology and thereby win his ghostly approval. Or something.
Please, America, just walk away from this stuff. There are monsters out there, that is true, but most of your neighbors are not monsters. Your conservative neighbors don’t hate gays and your liberal neighbors don’t hate America. When you see another article making the rounds on Facebook that says something else, either speak up against it[ref]I mean that liberals should speak out against the idea that all conservatives hate gays and that conservatives should speak out against the idea that all liberals hate America. It doesn’t do much good the other way around.[/ref] or just let it go without a like or a comment or a share.
I’m not saying that both sides are equal. I have chosen a side. I am a conservative. I’m not hiding that. I’m not pretending that I think all views are equally correct. But it really is time to back away from the crazy brinkmanship and hysteria.
