The cheerleaders are losing their enthusiasm. I don’t think we ought to let them off the hook: the policies and plans they went rah-rah over are imploding, and they don’t get to foist all the blame on their new scapegoat, Bush. Bush is merely the protruding tip of their inane ideas, and that they’ve lost the courage of their congenital idiocy does not excuse them.
Watch this video of police action against an anti-war protest in Portland. It clubs you over the head with the Nazi imagery interspersed with video footage taken from police cameras, which is unfortunate and unnecessary overkill: they could have left it out, and you’d still be thinking it. The most effective moments are when the television airheads all parrot the claim that the hoses and pepper spray and pellet guns and nightsticks were all applied in response to someone in the crowd “throwing a bottle”, which is already a rather lame excuse…but then you get to see the police making their plans, and it was clearly not a spontaneous reaction to crowd violence, but intentional, organized suppression of a peaceful demonstration.
Tristero hits the nail on the head with his post about the possibility of a National Christian party (NaXis)—as much as we liberals would like to see the Republicans self-destruct under the influence of the Religious Right, it does us more harm than good if it further weakens the Rational Right.
So, yes, Republicans should boot the Bible-thumpers out of positions of serious influence in their party. But no, the christianists should not be encouraged to form a NaXi Party as that could rapidly lead to Very Bad Things which all of us, especially liberals, would come to regret. And let’s not make the mistake many liberals (and mainstream conservatives, too) made in the 70’s and 80’s. The christianists represent a very, very dangerous element in American culture; they should not be ignored, dismissed, underestimated, or in any way encouraged.
Al Gore is looking awfully good right now. Josh Marshall thinks he has a shot at the presidency; Blog of the Moderate Left has an interesting ranking of potential candidates, and while he puts Gore at #5, he says this:
Last time around, I said, “I just don’t see Al running, and I really don’t see Al winning.” I think both of those statements may be wrong. He’s pure on the left, he’s got a film about global warming in the hopper, he seems to have found his passion for the issues again. Like Nixon in ’68, he’s tanned, he’s rested, he’s ready. And he’s the best-situated candidate to play Anti-Hillary in 2008. The only question is if he’ll run. So far he says no—but nobody will hold it against him if in, say, January of 2008, he tells us he feels he must run…for America.
I unreservedly cast my vote for Gore last time he ran (although I had a great many reservations about Lieberman), and I’d do it again. I’ve just seen the trailer for his new movie, An Inconvenient Truth, and guess what? I got a fever. And the only prescription…is more Al Gore. A president who actually cares about science, and pays attention to good science? Sign me up.
Here’s a controversial topic to discuss, especially for a science blogger.
Science is overrated. This is my contention.
Last night in chat I evidently hit a nerve by (perhaps not so) casually suggesting that maybe it’s not the end of the world that fewer and fewer American students are going into the sciences.
I read that first bit, and you may be shocked to learn that I’m willing to agree. There are some really good arguments to support the position. Science is hard, and it’s true that the majority of people aren’t going to be able to grasp it. We’re oversubscribed and overextended right now, too: more students are going through the science mill than can ever acquire jobs doing science. If every PI is taking on one new graduate student and one new postdoc every year over a career spanning 30-40 years…well, that’s a situation that is rather ruthlessly Malthusian. It is definitely not a practical career, either—the excessively long training period and relatively low salaries mean that, in a purely economic sense, it would be more profitable to plunge into a blue-collar job straight out of high school. It’s also not as if science is the only rewarding career of value out there, and no other work can possibly be as satisfying or productive. My own kids are all going on into non-science careers, and I say, good for them.
That nice guy Chris Clarke has written a paean to speaking one’s mind. It’s wonderfully not-nice.
My point: it is not civil to discuss things quietly and collegially while people are dying because they can’t afford medicine. It is not civil to speak in even, chuckling sardonicism as one beleaguered wild place after another is paved for profit. It is not civil to calmly raise logical arguments against torture, against kidnapping, against using nuclear weapons on civilians to show our resolve.
There’s also a bit in there about “Minnesota Nice liberals.” I should explain that when you first come to Minnesota, you discover that everyone is unflaggingly polite, they smile, they rarely utter a cross word, and even in the most dire situations they struggle to say something positive. It seems admirable at first, but after a while you discover it is a mask covering some of the meanest, most petty, passive-aggressive backbiting you’ll ever experience, as well as a way to justify some seriously screwed up opinions. I have actually heard a Minnesota WWII veteran tell me that Hitler’s Germany was a nice and tidy place, and that maybe he wasn’t all bad.
I’m all for outrage! Especially since lately there have been a few too many commenting whiners who are getting pissy because I think goose-stepping theocrats are evil, or that creationists are idiots, or that politicians who monitor our phone calls are tyrannical scumbags. If you’re complaining because I don’t compromise in damning these people, rather than complaining about what they do, the problem isn’t me: it’s your superficiality.
This is embarrassing. The Atheist Law Center, which I had never heard of before but from its website looks like it is mostly supporting the right stuff (OK, except for the weird calendar reform business), was founded by a guy named Larry Darby, who has since resigned. He is now running for attorney general of the state of Alabama, as a Democrat…with some very strange views.
Tyson said aside from his views on race [he wants to “reawaken white racial awareness”] and the Holocaust [he’s a denier], Darby also has publicly advocated legalizing drugs and shooting all illegal immigrants.
I repudiate this guy’s views. While atheism is not incompatible with kooks like Darby, his positions definitely contradict the principles of the Democratic Party, I can at least say that he’s no Democrat, and I should think the Alabama Democratic Party should refuse to endorse him, even if by some fluke he should win the primary election.
(via Atheist Revolution)
Everybody must have read Michelle Goldberg’s “Kingdom Coming: the Rise of Christian Nationalism” by now, right? This quote from George Grant, one of the big guys with televangelist D. James Kennedy, is simply chilling:
Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ — to have dominion in civil structures, just as in every other aspect of life and godliness.
But it is dominion we are after. Not just a voice.
It is dominion we are after. Not just influence.
It is dominion we are after. Not just equal time.
It is dominion we are after.
World conquest. That’s what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish. We must win the world with the power of the Gospel. And we must never settle for anything less…
Thus, Christian politics has as its primary intent the conquest of the land — of men, families, institutions, bureaucracies, courts, and governments for the Kingdom of Christ.
Take heart, everyone, the magic number today is 29%—less than one third of our American compatriots are insane or stupid!
Now we just have to worry that that 29% will become increasingly desperate and vicious, like cornered weasels.
I’ve been catching up with the blogs, and I’m seeing outrage over the revelation that the NSA has been carrying out wide-spectrum data mining of the American people…that it hasn’t just been surveillance of suspected terrorists. You know, if everyone would just read Gary Farber, you’d have known this five months ago. That’s how data mining works. Now people are trying to argue that we knew it all along, so it’s OK—but this is exactly what the administration has spent the last several months denying.
It’s not just the surveillance. It’s the lying. Well, the obtuseness, too.
