Politics

When Racism Isn’t

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So the first problem I noticed with this NYT op-ed is that it is based on research that is not research. Nancy Ditomaso makes the stunning observation that job-seekers depend on social networks to get jobs. The fact that Ditomaso appears to think that this required “research” to discover–and that the discovery warrants an op-ed piece–suggests quite a lot about Ditomaso. Starting, for example, with the fact that if you’re looking for someone who has anything like expertise on job-searching you should look elsewhere. Seriously, has she never heard of the term “networking”?

2013-05-07 NYT Race Jobs OpEd

Still, despite the fact that the starting point of this piece is basically “when it rains things get wet”, the fact that it appears in the NYT (even the blog section) shows that if you add charges of racism to an otherwise banal story, you’ll make waves. Or at least ripples. Ditomaso’s argument is that since people use their social networks to get jobs, and since social networks are correlated with race (“we still live largely segregated lives”), and since white people have better jobs, the end result is that white people can effectively discriminate against black people not by discriminating against black people, but by showing favoritism towards white people.

As an observation about systemic inequality, Ditomaso is right. I think it’s a real problem, and I think it’s one that should be taken seriously. But there is a huge problem with the way that Ditomaso addresses this legitimate concern. That problem is that she sees the problem entirely through partisan political lenses, thus intertwining left and right with black and white. That’s a terrible thing to do.

For example, Ditomaso levels the heavy accusation that “despite complaints about “reverse discrimination,” my research demonstrated that the real complaint is that affirmative action undermines long-established patterns of favoritism.” The thing that’s most troubling about her specific reasoning is that she never even considered the possibility that people might oppose affirmative action for the reasons that conservatives actually state as their reasons for opposing affirmative action. For example, many conservatives believe that affirmative action is counter-productive, and they have good empirical reasons for believing that. Ditomaso doesn’t even acknowledge that possibility. More generally, conservatives tend to believe in the ideal of a race-blind society.

This doesn’t actually mean that people would have to abandon their heritage of culture. In past centuries, there was significant discrimination among white people against other white people (such as Irish and Italians), but this kind of discrimination is largely non-existent today. That doesn’t mean that white people of Irish or Italian descent have had to abandon, hide, or deny their heritage. It’s just that the specific categories have been largely subsumed. They are there, and people are aware of the stereotypes (positive and negative), but they don’t seem to really matter.

That is the kind of future that conservatives would like to see: the same process of integration that brought various European ethnic groups into tolerant interdependent existence continuing to grow to incorporate all races into a common humanity. That’s not such a bad vision. It’s definitely not a racist vision. And it’s easy to see why conservatives might feel that affirmative action obstructs this progress, by entrenching racial differences in society and law. Ditomaso doesn’t seem to see any irony at all in lamenting that we’re still segregated, and then calling for race-based differential treatment. Conservatives, on the other hand, would love to live in a world where favoritism still exists (if you think that’s going to be stamped out, you’re insane) but social networks are no longer strongly correlated with race.

But Ditomaso isn’t having any of that. We never get to have that discussion. It is cut off at the knees by her myopic insistence that opposition to affirmative action has to be about one of two things: white people don’t like giving black people jobs (“reverse-discrimination”) or white people just really like giving white people jobs (favoritism). Given this whopper of a false-choice dichotomy, the results of her study are not nearly as powerful as she thinks they are:

The interviewees in my study who were most angry about affirmative action were those who had relatively fewer marketable skills — and were therefore most dependent on getting an inside edge for the best jobs. Whites who felt entitled to these positions believed that affirmative action was unfair because it blocked their own privileged access.

Yes: it must be about entitlement and white privilege. The possibility that the other side of the political aisle actually has sincere desires to improve race relations but simply a different view about how to accomplish that is not even entered for consideration.

Please note, by the way, that I’m not denying the existence of entitlement and white privilege. I think these are concepts that do exist. Of course a part of the desire for conservatives for racial integration is that it by white racial integration: integration into a white culture as opposed to integration into a new, pan-racial culture. Everyone prefers what is familiar. There are no angels on earth, and everyone’s politics are going to be tainted with self-interest or prejudice to some degree. The fact that conservative views on race are not perfect shouldn’t be used as an excuse to pretend they are not good. Nor, by the way, do I think this is such a big deal. A couple of centuries ago we would have been talking about the need to assimilate Irish immigrants into American culture. Now we all celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. Clearly integration is intrinsically a two-way street, so I just don’t think that white or black unease with integration should be a dealbreaker for this plan.

I’m not writing this piece because I think America has no problems with race. That would be laughable. I’m writing this because it seems that the only folks who feel at liberty to discuss race come from a particular political viewpoint. And that hamstrings the discussion and also our progress. If there’s one thing I’d like to see change about America’s race dialogue, it would be to make it a dialogue. To actually have a diversity of opinion. I think affirmative action is a terrible idea in practice, but I don’t question the sincerity of those who advocate for it. It’d be nice if that good faith was a two-way street.

Another way to look at it is Hanlon’s Razor, which states: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. The gist of this is that when something bad happens, don’t assume malice. It could be incompetence. It could be stupidity. It could be bad incentives. It could be ignorance. There is no doubt that the combination of social networks and pre-existing racial inequity is self-perpetuating. The outcome is racist. But it’s time we learned to separate between 21st century racism, which is primarily about unintentional perpetuation of pre-existing disparities, and 19th century racism, which was about the belief that some races are intrinsically inferior to others. Using the same terminology to cover innocent (but dangerous and sometimes stupid) behavior and evil behavior is not constructive.

That’s what the title of this article refers to. I’m absolutely not denying the reality of systemic racial injustice in our country. Far from it. I’m saying that the best way forward includes an admission that the battle to be fought in 2013 isn’t the same as the ones that were fought in the 1960s or 1860s. That struggle is not over, but it has changed. Our tactics–and our language–should reflect our past progress if we want to see more progress in the future.

Elizabeth Smart, Chastity, Politics, and the Value of Human Life

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2013-05-06 Elizabeth Smart

In the short few minutes it took me to re-find the original Christian Science Monitor piece on Elizabeth Smart’s comments at a Johns Hopkins University forum on human trafficking, my take on the article shifted dramatically.

The first few references I saw were all from fellow Mormons on Facebook who were highlighting and agreeing with Smart’s message which is, to put it simply, that a lot of the conventional ways of teaching young people and especially  young girls about chastity are irredeemably terrible. From the CSM:

Smart spoke at a Johns Hopkins human trafficking forum, saying she was raised in a religious household and recalled a school teacher who spoke once about abstinence and compared sex to chewing gum.

“I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m that chewed up piece of gum, nobody re-chews a piece of gum, you throw it away.’ And that’s how easy it is to feel like you know longer have worth, you know longer have value,” Smart said. “Why would it even be worth screaming out? Why would it even make a difference if you are rescued? Your life still has no value.”

So originally I intended to just link to that piece and basically say that I thought it was great that such a strong and compelling spokesperson was drawing attention to this issue. I have tremendous respect for Smart and the way that she has risen above her ordeal and refused to be a victim. Her criticism is absolutely right, and religious people (including Smart’s fellow Mormons) need to learn to separate the ideal of chastity (which ought to apply to both genders equally) from out-dated, sexist cultural notions that mix chastity with the horrific notion that women and girls are products or goods that have most value when in “like-new” condition. It’s a simple but vital distinction: chastity ought to be about the choices that women and men  make, not something that applies only to women and includes events that happen with or without their consent.

But while I was hunting around for that article, I was surprised and disappointed to see headlines like these in secondary coverage:

Elizabeth Smart: Abstinence-only education can make rape survivors feel ‘dirty,’ ‘filthy’ (MSNBC)

Traditional Mormon Sexual Purity Lesson Contributed to Captivity, Elizabeth Smart Tells University Audience (Joanna Brooks)

Smart’s comments are being exploited for political gain, and that is neither respectful to Smart nor illuminating for the discussion. An open-ended discussion of the real issues without political prejudice might, for example, talk about the connection between American consumerism and sexual exploitation. The fetish of unwrapping expensive technological gadgets has twisted and eerie parallels with the way women’s bodies are treated as products to be consumed. I believe the problem is deep and pervasive, but MSNBC and ThinkProgress see just left vs. right. The entire discussion, and not just Smart’s views, are being shortchanged.

It’s particularly frustrating because a short perusal of Smart’s Wikipedia page indicates that she continues to thrive within her faith community as an observant Mormon, including serving a mission and marrying the traditional Mormon temple ceremony. Both of these facts indicate–in the absence of any statement from Smart to the contrary–that she remains dedicated to traditional conceptions of virtue. This is why her criticism of Mormonism is so important and insightful (and why I was excited by them in the first place): it genuinely comes from within.

I also think it’s important to realize that Smart seems to have found not only problems, but also solutions within her faith. A traditional Mormon children’s song is titled simply “I am a Child of God“, and Mormons heavily emphasize our divine heritage as children of heavenly parents. As Smart concluded (citing the CSM article again), children need to be taught that “you will always have value and nothing can change that.”

And that, too, is a part of Smart’s Mormon upbringing.

TAC: Our American Pravda

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2013-05-01 White and KeynesThis is a fascinating article from The American Conservative (never heard of it before today) which struck me on many levels. First of all, I’m fascinated by the idea that the world is not the way that we think it is, and Ron Unz provides several real-world examples of this. They are startling, provocative, and credible. For example, he cites the appearance of Harry Dexter White to represent the United States in the formation of the Bretton Wood’s sytem (the system of international monetary finance erected after World War 2). The problem? Harry Dexter White was a Soviet spy. So were hundreds–possibly thousands–of highly-placed American officials in the years after World War 2. Now that the Cold War is over this is less controversial and therefore easier to prove, but it’s still a fact that most Americans are totally ignorant of. Old Joe McCarthy might have gotten a lot of this specific charges completely wrong, but it turns out that the general thrust of his argument–that the United States was riddled with communist infiltrators–was absolutely correct.

From there, Unz goes on to suggest that there are present-day examples of this kind of complete blindness to reality-as-it-really-is, and specifically that this is a result of the American media refusing to cover certain stories. We’re clearly treading close to conspiracy-theory territory here, but I was surprised that Unz’s chosen examples (he has three) seemed credibly substantiated, plausible, and were completely new to me. No Truthers or Birthers here.

So what causes this selective, bipartisan media blindness? There’s the danger of suggesting the New Illuminati or some such are behind it all, but once again Unz manages to stay on the sane side of the fence. He writes:

A likely reason for this wall of uninterest on so many important issues is that the disasters involved are often bipartisan in nature, with both Democrats and Republicans being culpable and therefore equally eager to hide their mistakes. Perhaps in the famous words of Benjamin Franklin, they realize that they must all hang together or they will surely all hang separately.

Explanations based on pervasive incentives are much, much more compelling than explanations requiring a secret cabal (for reasons I won’t go into in this post), so Unz’s case argument continues to appeal to me as plausible. And then comes the last paragraph:

Consider the fascinating perspective of the recently deceased Boris Berezovsky, once the most powerful of the Russian oligarchs and the puppet master behind President Boris Yeltsin during the late 1990s. After looting billions in national wealth and elevating Vladimir Putin to the presidency, he overreached himself and eventually went into exile. According to the New York Times, he had planned to transform Russia into a fake two-party state—one social-democratic and one neoconservative—in which heated public battles would be fought on divisive, symbolic issues, while behind the scenes both parties would actually be controlled by the same ruling elites. With the citizenry thus permanently divided and popular dissatisfaction safely channeled into meaningless dead-ends, Russia’s rulers could maintain unlimited wealth and power for themselves, with little threat to their reign. Given America’s history over the last couple of decades, perhaps we can guess where Berezovsky got his idea for such a clever political scheme.

Now, if the argument was that Berezovsky was trying to imitate an older American conspiracy, e.g. that someone had already done in America what Berezovsky hoped to accomplish in Mother Russia, then we’ve got a problem. But I don’t think that’s what Unz was saying. (Being coy about it probably keeps his readership a little higher, however.) Instead, I think his point is that the American system has evolved into this unfortunate predicament, and Berezovsky wanted an astroturf version of the authentic American political quagmire. It didn’t work, no, but it highlights just how vulnerable America is to being fleeced by those who recognize the superficiality of the differences between the parties.

The question, of course, is what to do about it. And that’s one of the things I’d like to get comments on. (I’d also like a sanity-check on some of his three examples of media stonewalling. Anyone got any info on those?)

I don’t buy the naive idea that our 2-party system is to blame, as though a parlimentary system would solve our problems. I do think that the problem is structural rather than political, however. I think that the best solutions to the false fight between D and R involve nerdy reforms to our system that are unlikely to have any obvious connection to the problem. For example: I’d love to see an end to all gerrymandering, or at least a requirement on the shape of congressional districts that hamstrings the creativity of gerrymandered districts. Creating truly “fair” districts is hard. Constraining the amount of crazy, however, is easy. (That’s a link to various methods of establishing objective criteria for measuring gerrymandering. None of them are perfect, but any of them could be used to put a lid on the current problem.)

Sample instant run-off ballot. You get to rank your votes, and you don't have to vote for everyone.
Sample instant run-off ballot. You get to rank your votes, and you don’t have to vote for everyone.

Another reform that I’d love to see would be the implementation of instant run-off elections. Right now we have what are called “first pass the poll” elections, which means who ever gets the most wins. This encourages what’s called “strategic voting”. Strategic voting is what forces people to vote for candidates they don’t really like because they think the candidate has a better chance of winning, and the result is that it puts tremendous power in the hands of political parties. A couple hundred years ago these political parties weren’t as sophisticated and there really weren’t any other options, so that made sense. Today, we can easily implement instant-run off elections and the parties are much more powerful, so we should. (In an instant run-off election, you vote for everyone on the ballot by ranking them in order of preference. The short version of this is that it means everyone can honestly put a third party candidate first if that’s who they really want to win, then put their “safe” choice second. So: no more strategic voting.)

Here’es another simple reform: create a lottery to determine the order of states in the presidential primary. The only reason we continue to have such a stupid policy as corn-ethanol subsidies (not to mention government hand-outs to agri-business in general) is that Iowa is an early voting state. This is insane. The logical thing to do is to just draw straws or something every four years to see what order the states get to go in.

None of these reforms are sexy. None of them are political. But all of them would, I think, have a significant and material impact on fixing our political system. Once we fixed the system, then we could maybe have a shot at getting some fixes implemented for some of the political problems. (Like reforming our idiotic tax or immigration codes.)

What do you think?

The Truth About Gun Control Legislation in America

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The Economist has one of the only truly honest stories about the gun control debate in this country that I’ve ever read.

2013-04-26 Gun Show SignThe mantra of the gun-control crowd following the tragedy in Newtown has been that no one wants to come after your Second Amendment rights. The only objective is to protect little children. A lot of people who don’t think about the issue much at all seem to have swallowed this rhetoric, which is why there is a lot of genuine anger about the Senate’s failure to get even the smallest change into effect: closing the gun-show loophole by requiring private sales to also go through the background check system. And I’m going to be honest: I’m really surprised that that initiative failed, and even more stunned that it failed in the Senate. Part of the reason President Obama was so furious is that he assumed that if it failed it would fail in the House and therefore be attributable to the GOP. Gift-wrapped 2014 issue, here we come. The fact that it failed in the Senate, still under Democratic control, not only robs the Democrats of a potentially lucrative political opportunity, but also indicates that the whole issue might be practically irrelevant in the 2014 midterms. But I digress.

The point I was originally making is that it is absurd to think that any of the proposed changes would have any impact on gun crime, either on spectacular (but rare) mass-shootings or on mundane (but tragically common) gun violence. The only way to have a significant impact on either metric via gun control is to significantly reduce the number of guns in circulation. In other words, the Second Amendment (as it is presently understood), absolutely is the target. Anyone who says otherwise is ignorant or lying.

Which is why I found this article so refreshing. First of all, it gives a relatively balanced and fact-based assessment of the practical implications of expanding background checks. Secondly, it goes on to put the background check legislation in honest context:

This gets at the crux of the debate over gun control. Background checks are fine, but more background checks are better, and even stricter regulations are better than that at preventing guns from getting into the hands of criminals. As my colleague has stated, the gun control that is most effective is no guns at all. Honest gun-control advocates will admit that the bill that failed last week was merely a first step towards more regulation. Sure it was weak and flawed, but as Barack Obama said, it represented “progress”.

And so, with that clear-eyed perspective on what was going on in this particular case, the article can also present the NRA’s response accurately:

The question asked and answered by the National Rifle Association and those in its thrall was, “Progress towards what?” They know that the endgame for gun-control advocates is not expanding background checks to private sales at gun shows and online. They too saw the bill as the start of a longer-term attempt to place greater restrictions on guns in America. And that’s why they vehemently opposed a sensible measure with minimal impact.

That’s what was really going on. I’m guessing that the NRA had to go all-out to get the background check bill killed in the Senate. They didn’t exert maximal political pressure because they hate background checks that much. If someone could have guaranteed that the background check law would not have been used in any kind of subsequent regulatory rights-grab, the NRA would have preserved their political capital for another day. But such a guarantee is impossible. The NRA dug their heels in because universal background checks are a beachhead for a greater offensive.

The consequence of all this is simple: we’re not likely to see any incremental changes in gun control legislation without some kind of progress on the much larger question of the long-range future of guns in the United States.

Homegrown American Terrorism: Liberal Edition

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The blind eye the media largely turned to the Gosnell story is only one example of the subtle but pervasive media bias in the traditional media establishment. This isn’t a  conspiracy, it’s merely a reflection of homogeneous politics. Journalists and their editors are overwhelmingly from the left of American politics, and they see the world through a center-left lens. So when a someone who claims affiliation with the pro-life movement shoots an abortionists, this is head-line news. It fits a pre-existing narrative. But when someone who claims affiliation with the pro-choice movement shoots a non-violent pro-life protester that gets much less coverage because it doesn’t fit a pre-existing narrative.

In a center-left view of American politics: the right wing is associated with violence, authoritarianism, and oppression.

Flord Corkins II - Mass murder in the name of marriage equality.
Flord Corkins II – Mass murder in the name of marriage equality.

So here’s another story that will get limited coverage because it doesn’t fit that mold. Anyone remember the shooting spree at the Family Research Center that wasn’t? I say “that wasn’t” because an armed security guard managed to stop the attacker (Floyd Corkins II) immediately, but the HuffPo (hat tip for going against the political grain) has some information on what the shooter’s objective was:

A security guard subdued Corkins in the lobby of the Family Research Council in August after he pointed a pistol at the man. Corkins fired three shots, and the guard was the only one wounded. Corkins, who was carrying nearly 100 rounds of ammunition and 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches, later told authorities that he had planned to kill as many people as possible and then to smear the sandwiches on their faces as a political statement.

According to the government’s case against Corkins, if he had not been defeated by the security guard he “would have almost certainly succeeded in committing a massacre of epic portions.” And smearing each corpse with a Chick-Fil-A sandwich. Why a Chick-Fil-A sandwich? Well here’s some video of Corkins being interrogated by FBI agents in which he discusses why he targeted the Family Research Center.

So, a would-be mass shooter picked the FRC by looking at the Southern Poverty Law Center‘s list of anti-gay organizations (the FRC opposes gay marriage). Now the Chick-Fil-A thing makes sense, since the attack happened around the time that some people were boycotting Chick-Fil-A because the CEO gives money to socially conservative causes that opposed gay marriage. So Corkins thought a good, pro-gay marriage response would be to kill a few dozen people and rub it in their faces, so to speak.

Does Corkins represent the pro-gay marriage side of the debate? Absolutely not. I’m not interested in trying to tar an entire half of the political spectrum with this man’s craziness. I just think it’s instructive how much the news cycle depends on pre-existing stereotypes to news coverage. And this isn’t always friendly to liberals, either. There is absolutely no doubt that if you’re a pretty, young, blonde girl who gets kidnapped you’re going to get wall-to-wall coverage, but if you’re a black girl from an inner city forget it. The center-left political lens of American journalists is, after all, also calibrated to a mostly white, college-educated cohort.

I just think it’s useful to keep in mind that violent people come from all parts of the political spectrum, and I can’t help but wonder what some of the national debate on political issues would look like if the violence of conservatism wasn’t taken as axiomatic…

Armed Citizen Uses Gun to Stop Stabbing Spree

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This is the kind of story that folks who are familiar with American gun culture hear all the time, but folks who aren’t close to the culture seem to never hear about.

The two key things to point out are that first: yes, an armed citizen can stop an in-progress attack. No one was killed in this incident, but the two stabbing victims were injured “critically”, so this was a life-threatening incident. Secondly: concealed-carry holders (I’m assuming he had a permit) are not prone to just opening fire at the smallest provocation, putting innocent lives at risk.

I’m also curious about why the attacker shouted “You killed my people!” as he began stabbing, but rather than speculate I’ll just wait for more information on that. (Article here.)

 

Is Science Fiction Intrinsically Liberal?

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Mike Brotherton brought Adam Robert’s Guardian piece to my attention. I can paraphrase the article very succinctly (which is rare for me): “Since science fiction is about the future, and the future is not now, science fiction is about otherness. And is therefore liberal and good. Except that some people (conservatives) hate otherness, so they write stories about killing aliens. And love authority. PS – I hate conservatives.”

2013-04-22 Da Vinci Code
Folks thought Brown was anti-religious cause he said Jesus was married. They missed the fact that every religious person in the book was despicable and at the end the brave, new Pope was an atheist.

You can probably tell I don’t think too much of this piece, but I do think it’s an interesting topic. I love sci-fi, and I’m also fascinated by how political ideologies battle it out in pop culture. That’s actually pretty boring in most media because there isn’t much of a battle. Hollywood is about as politically homogeneous as they come, and soF when it comes to politics there’s not a lot going on. You either get orchestrated propaganda, egregious digs at conservatives, or–very rarely–you get relatively nuanced perspectives precisely because there’s so little threat  conservatism that it can occasionally be trotted out like a strange zoo creature. No, the  most interesting political battles by far are fought in the thriller / action section of the New York Times best sellers. You’ve got all kinds of conservatives, from Tom Clancy on down, but also plenty of blatant liberals like Dan Brown. Both sides interject their politics freely and in not-so-subtle ways, and it’s fascinating to read. So, if I were gong to talk about politics in books, that’s where I’d start.

But Adam Roberts writes sci-fi so he wants to talk about sci-fi. Well, alright then. Let’s drag this argument under a spotlight and take a look.

First of all, the idea that “future” is a proxy for “other” is a stretch. By that logic, all fiction (since it’s about something other than reality) would be intrinsically liberal and all non-fiction (since it’s about reality) would be intrinsically conservative. This might be true for a very, very philosophical definition of “liberal” and “conservative”, but clearly not for anything that actually looks like modern politics in the US or in the UK.

Secondly, there really isn’t that much of a dichotomy between conservatives and liberals in sci-fi. The vast majority of sci-fi writers are liberals, pure and simple. I’d say the next largest segment would be the libertarians. Roberts cites Heinlein as a great conservative, but the only way you could think that is if the only Heinlein story you ever read was Starship Troopers. That book has a decidedly militaristic / authoritarian vibe. But the man who practiced open relationships (in real life) and wrote satirical descriptions of a free-love Jesus (Stranger in a Strange Land) cannot be seriously categorized as “conservative”.

Shadow Puppets is a good example of Card's political writing: he attacks abortion and IVF practices in this one.
Shadow Puppets is a good example of Card’s political writing: he attacks abortion and IVF practices in this one.

Roberts only real conservative is Orson Scott Card. Card is, interestingly enough, a Democrat, but since he’s Mormon that doesn’t mean what it might mean to most Americans. In any case, he is most famous for coming out staunchly in opposition to gay marriage–both in his books and in his public writing–and also for lacing his reasoning with apocalyptic prophecies of the literal downfall of American civilization. But Card, despite his stature, is an exception that proves the rule. Here’s a fun trick: pick another famous science fiction author who is conservative. I can name a couple more, but they are all dead. Phillip K. Dick was so outraged by the Roe v. Wade decision that he wrote an infamous short story about a society that arbitrarily decided that you weren’t considered a person until you could do calculus, and Walter M. Miller Jr’s beautiful “Canticle for Leibowitz” is an elegant paen to his Catholic faith. Both, like I mentioned, are no longer with us.

But when you try to think of sci-fi writers who are overtly liberal, it’s hard to know when to stop listing names. John Scalzi’s politics are not readily apparent in his fiction, but he runs one of the biggest blogs on the Internet and is not shy about his leftwing politics there. Cory Doctorow’s books are basically political sermons with a sci-fi candy coating. Kim Stanely Robinson wrote an entire trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars) to put both is staggering economic ignorance and left-wing political ideology on display, and then recently wrote another novel in the same vein. These are all guys writing today (and there are more), but of course some of the greats were also very liberal. Ursula K. Leguin comes immediately to mind. It’s practically impossible to read a work of modern science fiction without being bashed over the head by certain, core liberal beliefs that sci-fi writers have really glommed onto. The most notable is the idea that sex can and should be excised completely from any consideration (cultural, emotional, etc.) and treated as a purely recreational activity with no implications beyond the immediate gratification of physical desire. If sci-fi, especially male-written sci-fi, had a single, core article of faith that would be it.

So much for Robert’s argument. As for Brotherton, I’m glad to see that (despite being the kind of religiously intolerant liberal who refers to Orson Scott Card as belonging to a “fundamentalist cult”) he rejects the notion that science fiction is intrinsically liberal. But he also rejects the notion that there’s an ideological battle of any kind going on, and there I think he goes to far. As I mentioned in a comment to his piece: it’s really hard to separate the metaphors of “battle of ideas” and “marketplace of ideals”. The key concept in each is competition.

Richard Dawkins’ conception of the ideas-as-genetics makes sense here: There is no demilitarized zone in the struggle for survival, either of genes or of memes.

Down With (Romantic) Love!

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2013-04-22 Flowers

My wife sent me this article (Romantic love–overrated and hyped-up) around or perhaps on Valentine’s Day. What can I saw? We have a robust relationship. :-)

In any case, I had it saved as tab for the last 2 months until I finally read it this past week. And it was actually very, very good. It also–unexpectedly–had something interesting to say about the gay marriage debate. Here’s an excerpt:

Amid all the violent homoerotic imagery in the same-sex marriage debate what I found strange about the whole argument was the idea that marriage was necessarily just about love, and that – even more bizarrely – people wished their love to be recognised by the state. But marriage isn’t the official recognition of love, rather a social contract.

In fact the link between romantic love and marriage is a fairly recent one, and is, in the wider human picture, an unusual though increasingly common one. Now even a premature reactionary such as I would not suggest the society-wide return to arranged marriages, but in terms of actual outcomes the modern model has been a failure. There has not only been a 50 per cent rise in people living alone in a decade and a half, but the percentage of university-educated women (those who would have once been considered a good match) staying childless is approaching 40 per cent, and the failure rate for marriages based on romantic love is high.

I still hope to write up my thoughts on gay marriage, although at this rate the Supreme Court will rule before I have my say (can you believe it?), but a short preview is that this article’s contention that romantic love is often selfish and a poor basis for marriage resonates with me.

I’m a huge fan of romantic love, and I love my wife dearly, but love is for marriage. Marriage is not for love. What I mean by this is simply that the feeling of romantic love that come from sacrifice, dedication, and fidelity are deeper and more meaningful than the chemical high of infatuation. You can build romantic love with hard work, empathy, and compassion. You can fill your marriage with love. But you can’t control infatuation, and if you build your marriage on that both the infatuation and your marriage will fail.

From Terrorism to White Privilege

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I start a lot of posts about discrimination that I don’t finish. I care deeply about the issue, but I also get frustrated because I feel like my take on the issue is sufficiently off the beaten path that it won’t have any impact.

But of course when I write it out like that I feel silly. Do I really think anything I write is going to have a material impact on a national debate? Nope. (That’s actually the topic for another post: why I bother writing at all given the futility of the whole thing). So, having sufficiently lowered the bar for myself, I may as well start with Tim Wise’s comments on the the Boston Marathon bombers and white privilege.

It was clear from very on that both the American Left and American Right were semi-privately hoping that the attacker would come with the “right” pedigree. The American Right was deeply afraid that this would be another Timothy McVeigh, further solidifying the impression of the Right as the violent wing of American politics. Meanwhile, the American Left just as clearly hoped that white guys were to blame:

Yeah, I was hoping for a white guy, because I know the way that American is reactionary, and has proven so in the past. The way that they go after [minorities]. You know, after 9/11 they were killing Sikh Indians in gas stations in Texas, or a Sikh Indian. And it was very difficult, the profiling that happened after that. So, yeah, I think it keeps the flames down.

The quote above (from Current TV host Michael Shure) actually makes sense: if you’re worried about collateral damage from the response to the bombing, then that damage will much likely be greater if the attacker is a minority rather than a white American. Of course, the first hurdle is that we’re worrying about collateral damage from a potential future response before we’ve even laid the first victims to rest. 

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