Let’s Control the Government’s Guns

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2013 02 13 SWAT

You might think that that’s a sarcastic comment, but it’s not. The increasing militarization of law enforcement agencies is totally unneccesary and deeply disturbing. Deroy Murdock explains why for the National Review in one of those rare pieces that I’d expect the Nation to also grudgingly agree with. There’s a lot of scary and wrong in that article, but the worst is definitely the police murder of Jose Guerna in 2011:

Fearing that criminals were invading his home on May 5, 2011, Iraq veteran Jose Guerena, 26, hid his wife and son, age 4, in a closet. He grabbed his rifle and went to investigate. An Arizona SWAT posse seeking marijuana kicked down Guerena’s front door, saw his rifle, and lethally pumped 71 bullets into him. Guerena did not fire a shot. Indeed, his rifle’s safety mechanism remained engaged. The dead father and husband had no criminal record, and his home was devoid of contraband.

Jose Guerena, murdered by a SWAT team while trying to defend his family.
Jose Guerena, murdered by a SWAT team while trying to defend his family.

None of the officers involved in killing Guerena ever faced criminal charges. Some of Guerena’s family members were later found to be guilty of drug trafficking, but Guerena himself has no criminal record, was never charged, and had no contraband of any kind in his home. All of this leads me to two thoughts:

  1. Murdock doesn’t fully diagnose the problem. It’s not just about excess money. It’s also about incentives: No government official wants to have to explain why cops got killed when a SWAT team was available. They get held responsible for that. They don’t get held responsible for killing innocent people or shooting the family dog. (Which they do a lot, read the article.)
  2. The fact that neither the Democrats or Republicans are willing to take a stand on this issue shows you how pathetic our current political parties are, and how divorced they are from common sense and basic principles.

Faith Is Rational

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My guest stint at Times And Seasons went well enough that they decided to let me join as a permablogger, for which I am both grateful and excited. This coming Monday, I’m going to start posting weekly with the first in a series I’m planning about modern secularism and Mormonism. But I’ve got some general comments about the claims of modern secularists that I want to get to right now.

1. Atheism and Christianity: Not Apples to Apples

Any debate between a modern secularist (i.e. New Atheist or New Skeptic) and someone of religious faith starts with a tactical advantage for the atheist because atheism, as a category, has no history, no text, and no dogma. There’s virtually no content and therefore nothing to defend. The representative of religion, by contrast, is expected to answer for the history, text, and dogma not of theism (which, like atheism, is a mere category), but of Christianity (or other religions), which is a particular instance of theism.

2013 02 13 New AtheistsA fair debate would either pair generic atheism with generic theism, or it would pit a specific instance of atheism against a specific instance of theism. It’s not as though there are no organized instantiations that fall under the broad umbrella of atheism, after all. Maoism would be one particularly unpalatable example, since it clearly embraced atheist belief in the non-existence of God and drew the conclusion atheists often draw which is that religion is irrational and dangerous. As a result, Mao bloodily repressed religion during the Cultural Revolution. Am I suggesting that atheism ought to be held responsible for the actions of every instantiation of atheism? Absolutely not, nor am I suggesting that Maoism is typical of atheism any more than radical Islamic terrorists are representative of religion (or even of Islam). I’m just illustrating how much of a tactical advantage it is to only have to defend a generic abstraction.

The reality is that the New Atheists actually do make specific, concrete claims that deserve scrutiny and require defense. In particular, the New Atheism entails myopicy materialism, radical reductionism, and extreme empiricism. Each of these is a contentious philosophical proposition, and none of them can be defended by pointing to scientific, quantitative experimentation. Nope, it’s experimentation itself that actually requires philosophical defense.

It’s not that modern secularists are deliberately avoiding these tough questions, of course. It’s more a matter of the fish not knowing what “wet” is. Scientism is so ascendant in particular regions of Western civilization that folks aren’t even aware that they have a specific paradigm, and much less that it might have feet of clay. 

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Father Receives MoH While Son Eludes White House Marines

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A view of the terrain around Compat Outpost Keating that made it virtually indefensible. Romesha helped defend it against 400 attackers anyway.
A view of the terrain around Compat Outpost Keating that made it virtually indefensible. Romesha helped defend it against 400 attackers anyway.

Today, Clinton Romesha was awarded the Medal of Honor for his bravery during the Battle of Kamdesh. His young son Colin completely stole the show, however, when he ventured out behind the podium and had to be coralled back to his mother by some White House marines. I guess if it takes two marines to get little Colin Romesha to his seat at 3 years old, it’s not hard to see why 400 Taliban couldn’t keep his father coralled in Afghanistan, either.

Incidentally, the Romesha family is Mormon (it’s #10 on the list). That should have been obvious to me just based on the video, but I’m sad to say I didn’t clue in until after I read the article.

The Man Who Killed UBL

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2013 02 12 The Shooter's Gear

Esquire has a really, really long and really, really good article about a man they call simply “The Shooter”. He is the Navy SEAL, since retired, who killed Osama bin Laden. Now, after 16 years of service, he has retired with no pension, no health care, no job, and no protection for himself or his family against retatliation. Read this fascinating story about the raid that killed the #1 terrorist, the men who went even though they were sure it was a suicide mission, and how our nation is now letting them down.

Lena Dunham and Privilege

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I don’t watch Girls (or anything else with, from, or about Lena Dunham), but I was still interested in Silpa Kovvali’s take on Lena Dunham and privilege.

The clear implication is that Girls is an origin tale of sorts, chronicling what life was like for Dunham before she got it together and made it big. But in reality, Dunham and her castmates, all of comparable pedigree, are by and large playing characters far less privileged than they are. AtGirls‘s worst moments, the show veers dangerously close to mocking people poorer than her. Its most prominent theme — Hannah’s irresponsibility, laziness, and self-satisfaction — seems less a systemic critique of unpaid creative internships than an allegation that middle class kids who wish to pursue the same career paths as their upper class friends are spoiled and bratty. In a particularly grating scene, Hannah’s mother shrilly screams that she is cutting her daughter off because she wants a lake house. But it is simply good parenting for members of the middle class to steer their children away from fields that don’t promise a steady income. They don’t have the luxury of supporting their children forever, even if they’re willing to forego their desire to “sit by a fucking lake.”

Yet when asked about what distinguishes her from Hannah, Dunham shows no comprehension of the degree to which privilege can drive life choices. Frighteningly, she sees herself as less entitled than her on-screen counterpart, whose parents revoke their financial support in the series’s opening scene. “I’m sure that I’ve had some really unattractive, spoiled moments in my years, but I’ve never — that conversation that Hannah had has never happened to me, in large part because when I graduated from college, my parents let me live with them, but they made it really clear that they weren’t going to support any of my endeavors,” she told NPR. One wonders precisely what the starlet thinks supporting oneself means. The most glaring differences between Dunham and her character seem to be that she is far wealthier, better-connected, and has parents who live in Manhattan.

I’ve been reading more and more about privilege and class issues over the last couple of years, and this is one of the more interesting pieces I’ve read.

The Paranoid Style in (All) American Politics

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Richard Hofstadter sort of wrote the book on paranoia in American politics with his 1964 essay in Harpers: The Paranoid Style in American Politics (full text). In the first paragraph, Hofstadter wrote that the paranoid “style of mind… is not necessarily right wing,” but (written during the heydey of the John Birch Society) he did focus more on contemporary right-wing rather than historical left-wing examples. It’s been nearly a half-century, but the partisan dichotomy has stuck around.

Today there is no doubt that paranoia and conspiracy continue to thrive among the right wing. The most prominent example would be Glenn Beck. I actually used to watch him regularly, but I grew too disgusted after the episodes about George Soros being some kind of international puppetmaster. And of course there’s the well-known Birther movement and a whole ecology of lesser-known conspiracies including everything from chemtrails to faked moon landings.

2013 02 11 Glenn Beck

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Excellent Analysis of the Super Bowl

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This is the best football analysis that I’ve ever read. I guess that’s one  of the advantages of the supremacy geek culture, now even sports analysis has some statistical sophistication!

If you think that tells you that the Ravens1 elevated their game when they needed to, I can’t agree. What it really tells us is that we know way less about teams than we really think we know. Every recent piece of information we had about the Ravens heading into the postseason suggested that they were a floundering team limping in by virtue of a successful start to the season, some lucky bounces, opposing injuries, and strong performance in close games. Baltimore started 6-1 in games decided by a touchdown or less, with its only loss to Philadelphia, of all teams, before losing their final three such contests. We had a clear curve for Baltimore’s true level of play, and it was trending further and further downward. And yet, from that point forward, everything we thought we knew about the Ravens was wrong. For every power rankings article you read in November and every set of odds you saw in December, nobody had any idea that the Ravens were capable of putting together a four-game stretch this good. Was “play like the best team in football” really a switch they were waiting to turn on during the playoffs? Or were they capable of this all along and just hadn’t yet exhibited this level of play?

The one disagreement I had is with the analysis of momentum. Bill Barnwell thinks that there’s no reason to believe that the lights-out at the Super Bowl could plausibly have changed the momentum of the game.

Why was the blackout supposed to offer the 49ers momentum, anyway? Because it stopped Baltimore in their tracks for a half-hour after they had been dominating the game? If that really made a difference, why wouldn’t halftime have accomplished that?

I thought about that while I was watching the game, and I think the difference is that the halftime is expected. In terms of really getting your mind clear, that’s not going to do it. The random 34-minute lights-out would have been much better at creating a real and genuine break in the mental state of the players. Other than that: great analysis!

LA Manhunt Getting Ridiculous

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This is a blue Toyota Tacoma. Dorner's truck is a silver Nissan Titan. Oops.
This is a blue Toyota Tacoma. Dorner’s truck is a silver Nissan Titan. Oops.

The first time police opened fire on a completely innocent person was bad enough, but now we’ve got two separate instance of LA cops spraying bullets because they thought that they saw Chris Dorner. Dorner, who has killed three cops and is still on the loose with a promise to kill more, is nothing to joke about. But neither are cops blasting away at innocent civilians who driving cars that aren’t like Dorners and who look nothing like Dorner. In the first case, they wounded a newspaper delivery woman and her mother who were driving a truck that is not the same make, model, or even color as Chris Dorner’s. The second example is no better:

His pickup, police later explained, matched the description of the one belonging to Christopher Jordan Dorner — the ex-cop who has evaded authorities after allegedly killing three and wounding two more. But the pickups were different makes and colors. And Perdue looks nothing like Dorner: He’s several inches shorter and about a hundred pounds lighter. And Perdue is white; Dorner is black.

“I don’t want to use the word buffoonery but it really is unbridled police lawlessness,” said Robert Sheahen, Perdue’s attorney. “These people need training and they need restraint.”

It reminds me of the way that gun-control advocates are always saying that we can’t afford to have concealed carry permit holders because only highly trained specialists would be able to react to a crisis rationally. Every time I hear that, I know that I’m talking to someone who has never actually followed stories of police violence. Sadly, these embarrassments are pretty much par for the course.

Chris Dorner is on the left. David Perdu, whose truck was rammed and then shot, is on the right. It's easy to see how the two could be confused for each other. They are practically twins.
Chris Dorner is on the left. David Perdu, whose truck was rammed and then shot, is on the right. It’s easy to see how the two could be confused for each other. They are practically twins.

I don’t want to make light of this situation, but as Michael Yon has pointed out (Facebook), police incompetence and media lust for blood are making this so much worse than it has to be. And it’s already bad enough.