Step back, and look at this violent planet

My last article triggered a great deal of furious response. Some of it was outrageously stupid: this one, in particular, is the frontrunner for blithering idiocy.

Sometimes I wonder if PZ Myers is capable of empathy at all. This anti-war message, coming ironically from someone who has essentially declared war on others to promote his own values, is more insulting to veterans than to decision-makers, all the while dressing itself as morally righteous.

You don’t need to be pro-war to be pro-veterans, but it is especially abhorrent to chastise others for fighting for what they value when you insist that anyone who doesn’t fight for what YOU value is the enemy.

Right. Because what I do when I disagree with someone is conscript an army of riflemen and shoot them, followed by blowing up their house and bankrupting their country. But let me ignore the truly stupid comments, of which there were so many, and talk a bit about the one rather more intelligent rebuttal.

This is the argument of the form, “What about Nazi Germany, and the atrocities they were committing?” Another good example is “What about the Confederate States and slavery?” And I have to agree — the world is an uncoordinated, tragically short-sighted mess, and all too often we let horrendous circumstances accumulate until suddenly we’re confronted with a situation so dire that only violence can resolve it. We could not let genocide continue or slavery to persist, and we let the problems smolder until we reached a breaking point. My argument is not that we should have laid down our arms and let Jews be murdered or blacks languish in servitude, but that in every case war is a belated and expensive solution, and always a mistake. Sometimes we’re stuck with going to war, because we are stupid. Because we often lack the international tools to stop destructive behavior any other way.

Another point: it’s easy to damn the CSA and the Nazis. Are Americans as willing to recognize the evil violence we perpetrate? If we agree that it was acceptable for us to use violence to stop the Holocaust or slavery, are we also willing to concede that therefore it is acceptable for others to use violence against us, to stop the drones, to end our nuclear threat, to stop our meddling in other countries? I don’t think so, and at least I’m consistent in saying that violence doesn’t solve the problem. How are you going to justify other wars, where good and evil are not so clear? Was the Vietnam War a just war? The Franco-Prussian War? The Thirty Years War? The Peloponnesian War?

And finally, step back and back and back. Take a human perspective for a change, rather than a nationalistic one.

We sent young men, little more than boys, to slaughter other young men in Europe and in the South. Did the German soldiers have mothers? Did the Southerners? Did most of them go to war telling themselves they must preserve the right to murder Jews or blacks? Most of them, on both sides, were doing what they thought they must to defend the homeland, to promote their way of life, and to be men of honor. On both sides. Both sides were absolutely convinced that they were in the right, and so we had two large masses of people flailing viciously at each other until one side or the other collapsed in submission, and I’m sorry, victory was not determined by who was right, who was fairer to humanity, who had the most noble values. It was a contest where right was determined by bloody, brutal might.

How can you say that the soldiers of one side deserve honor and the other does not? And if you’re going to claim that both deserve respect, than what a bloody stupid flailing exercise in futility war is.

You can obviously state that there is a difference in cause: fighting for the right to enslave or kill some of your own citizens, or to enslave or kill your neighbors, is clearly an unethical, even evil, goal. But you do not persuade people to live ethical lives by killing them, or shooting their neighbors. We do not seek to convince people at gunpoint, but only to stop them from carrying out criminal action. And unless you are prepared to police the planet with a gun, that is not a satisfactory solution — a lasting peace can only come from a long-term effort at education and equality, not a burst of gunfire.

But if you’re going to equate education and argument with gunfire and militarism, well then, we’re back to the idiot I quoted at the beginning.

Other good perspectives: Ta-Nehisi Coates pointing out the Civil War was just one flash point in a long smoldering human failure. And good god, read about the Battle of the Somme. There is no moral justification for that slaughter.

Who deserves honor?

Today is the day when nations around the world pause to celebrate their most colossal failures, the events that killed the greatest numbers of their citizens, that broke and crippled their men after they’d been intentionally trained to dehumanize other human beings. We love to take our young people, especially our young men and boys, and grind them up in bloody battles, and then once a year we remind ourselves of what we do, and we congratulate people for it. Dulce et decorum est pro fucking patria mori and all that.

Meanwhile, our veterans hospitals are crumbling (and desperately needed) and we talk about more wars with Iran or whoever crossed us most recently, and doesn’t have nuclear weapons with which to smack us back. But we’ll go to all the effort of saying “Thanks, gramps” to people who suffered in terror and terrified other sufferers right back. All so a few people can get richer, and so politicians can thump their chests and claim to be braver than other politicians.

I think the only way to honor veterans of war is to make sure there are no more veterans. They are not heroes, but victims. There is nothing brave or heroic about picking up a gun and threatening to kill someone for a matter of principle, or even worse, because someone else is ordering you to do so — and the repercussions of celebrating violence tear our society apart.

For example, four women in Dallas met for their state chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America — a quiet lunch in a local restaurant. Texas gun advocates got word of the meeting, and gathered in the parking lot outside.

violentmen

Brave heroes, all. In what world could such a gathering, intending to intimidate unarmed mothers, occur without the men involved withering in shame and guilt? Our world, obviously, where righteous terror with weapons in hand is celebrated. Perhaps these men will meet again in years to come, to remember the honor of being among the heroes who drew their weapons in the parking lot of the Blue Mesa Grill in 2013.

Just like right now, we honor those who carried arms against the young men of other countries, where right now, citizens honor those who carried arms to resist our young men. When are we going to wake up and realize that this is all madness, that it’s not a point of pride to be trained to kill, that we gain nothing and lose all when we settle disagreements with threats of lethal force.

How can we stop? Perhaps it would help to celebrate the right heroes.

I was horrified by this story of the Nazi scientific enterprise. The Nazi regime killed millions, members of despised ethnic groups, gays, and political dissidents, and some of their bodies were appropriated by the science establishment for medical studies. As the article reveals, sometimes scientists would go out to the prisons and mark certain individuals as desirable for their research; one, for instance, wanted to study the effects of stress on the menstrual cycle, so young women in a state of terror for their lives were particularly desirable (these are the studies our Republicans now cite when they want to claim that raped women don’t get pregnant!). It’s a terrible tale of scientists closing their eyes to the consequences of their work, and worse, actively participating in murder.

It tells of a young couple, Harro and Libertas Schulze-Boysen, who worked for the resistance against the Nazis, were caught and executed, he by hanging, she by the guillotine, and their bodies ended up on the anatomy table. Charlotte Pommer, a medical school graduate working as an assistant in the Institute of Anatomy, walked in to the lab to work and recognized the bodies waiting for her.

“I was paralyzed,” Pommer later wrote of the sight of the bodies. “I could hardly perform my task as an assistant to Professor Stieve, who did his scientific study as always with the greatest diligence. I could barely follow.”

Pommer was 28. Libertas Schulze-Boysen was 29 when she died. In her last letter to her mother, she said she’d asked for her body to go to her family. “Don’t fret about things that possibly could have been done, this or the other,” she wrote. “If you can, bury me in a beautiful place amid sunny nature.”

Pommer stopped working for Stieve—and left the field of anatomy—because of what she saw that day in his laboratory. She went on to help resist the Nazis herself, by hiding the child of a man who participated in the “July Plot” to assassinate Hitler in 1944. In the spring of 1945, just before the war’s end, Pommer was herself sent to prison.

So on this Veterans Day, I choose to honor the conscientious objectors and the Charlotte Pommers of the world, rather than the participants in war. They are the real heroes, the ones who made the greatest sacrifices to better humanity.

Meanwhile, look at what the media find important today: the poppy on Google UK’s search page isn’t big enough. But Bing puts a big photo of a poppy on their search page. Jesus fuck, millions dead in wasteful war and the big issue today is whether a photo of a flower is big enough to honor them properly.

I’ll tell you the answer: no, it isn’t.

I thought they claimed to be the small government party

Now, in addition to controlling who you are allowed to have sex with and how long you are supposed to be pregnant, the Republicans want to make sure science goals are short term and in the “national interest”.

Key members of the US House of Representatives are calling for the National Science Foundation (NSF) to justify every grant it awards as being in the “national interest”. The proposal, which is included in a draft bill from the Republican-led House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology that was obtained by Nature, would force the NSF to document how its basic-science grants benefit the country.

Yeah, OK, so how does working out the interactions in the hedgehog signaling pathway “benefit the country”? How does measuring the lipid composition of neurons in the substantia nigra “benefit the country”? How does documenting the identity of waxes on the abdomens of fruit flies “benefit the country”? Shall we just stop all research that doesn’t make a profit, doesn’t improve the range of cruise missiles, and doesn’t directly improve heart disease treatments for sclerotic old conservatives?

This is a first step in imposing a patriotism requirement on science…and a first step in killing the enterprise altogether.

It’s also terrifying that judging the worth of science is being put in the hands of Republicans — the know-nothing party of ignorant Jebus-lovin’ buffoons. (It would also be terrifying to see it under the thumbs of the credulous new-agey clowns in the other party — how about keeping science apolitical?)

Virginia done good

It looks like that kook Cuccinelli is losing.

Bad news to wake up to: Chris Christie won handily. He’s cocky far-right wing conservative with anger management issues, who yells at teachers. He’s now probably the Republican front-runner for the next presidential election, so we’re going to be seeing a lot more of this blowhard now.

Good news to wake up to: Bill de Blasio is mayor of New York. Our new mayor of Minneapolis is a Democrat, and a woman: Betsy Hodges. Minneapolis also has a new city council member, Abdi Warsame, who is now the highest elected Somali official in the US. By the way, our mayoral election used ranked choice voting, which I rather like, and would love to see in place for our presidential elections, except that our countries religious devotion to a gang of white male slaveholders in the 18th century colonies means we’ll never get out of the 1780s on that issue.

And most importantly, Illinois joins Minnesota in the 21st century by passing legislation to allow gay marriage.

rainbowillinois

I’ve got a bit of headache and general ickiness this morning, and even though that image kind of sears my eyes, I still like seeing it.

I’d dismissed the problems with Obamacare enrollment…until now

I know it seems to be the comedy routine du jour to mock the software glitches plaguing the new health care program rollout. I hadn’t worried about it: I’d heard nothing but encouraging words about the program itself, and putting together a huge web service for the entire country is a gigantic undertaking, and I could imagine lots of ways it would run into problems, problems that would eventually shake out. I remember when we first fired up FtB, and saw it buckle under the traffic immediately!

But then I saw what the Oregon state health exchange website put up.

Oregon health exchange requires Microsoft Internet Explorer!

Holy hell. Who designed this abomination? It’s 2013, and they’re requiring users to access the site with Microsoft Explorer? And the submit button doesn’t work on any other browser?

I’m not usually a conspiracy theorist, but this is so ridiculous and such bad design that I’m thinking sabotage.

The libertarian mindset on proud display

I hope you aren’t working on dinner right now, because watching John Stossel and Steve Doocy flaunt their inability to empathize with anyone but their own selfish interests will cause you to lose it.

Stossel is outraged that he has to pay the same insurance premiums as a woman — they go to the doctor more! It’s not as if regular checkups might actually reduce health care costs, you know — he’s saving money by skipping on the maintenance and waiting for the catastrophic disaster.

As for smug little twit Doocy: “I’m in my 60s. Why should I pay for your maternity care?”

Hey, I’m in my 50s, why should I subsidize your greater health care needs, old man? My kids are in their 20s, they shouldn’t have to pay for any insurance, ’cause they’re healthy and young!

Maybe because someday I, and they, will be in our 60s, too. And maybe somebody Doocy loves will need maternity care (oh, wait, no, that can’t be can it? These are Fox News goons, they can’t possibly love a woman, ever.)

Stossel, by the way, is 66. Why the hell is he still employed, still insured, still supported by anyone? Isn’t it way past time for society to stop subsidizing the old geezer, shuffling him off to pasture so young people can move up?

Or is it possible that a responsible society values all of its members and gives them all lifelong equal citizenship?

Badly done political plagiarism

Rand Paul gave a terrible political speech for his buddy Ken Cuccinelli, in which he used a dystopian science fiction movie, GATTACA, as an illustration of what liberals aspire to. I would tell him that the operative word there is “fiction” — it’s not real. “Dystopian” is kind of important, too, because it was portraying a nightmarish authoritarian future that we liberal types would oppose. It was not the Democratic Party Platform, quite the opposite.

But the truly hilarious part is that he cribbed the speech from the Wikipedia entry on the movie. He just outright stole whole lines from it.

I’m sorry, Rand, but I’m tearing up your whole speech and giving you an “F” in the course. You know, I tell my students outright that you can’t trust Wikipedia as a source — go ahead, use it to get a quick overview, but everything you say about a subject has to be backed up by a better source, preferably a peer-reviewed primary paper — so Paul was plagiarizing a poor resource. Come on, guy, at least steal from quality!

Now I’m wondering if he’s even seen the movie.

I approve this message

Although the title is a bit weird: Atheists can’t be Republicans? That’s a bit off. One thing we know is that atheists can be all kinds of things: Republican, Libertarian (oh, jebus, but there are a lot smug Libertarian atheists), Progressive, smart, idiotic, egalitarian, elitist. The message is good, though: it’s not enough to just be an atheist. We have to stand up for something, rather than just being against something, and that means that atheism has to find a conscience.

Individual atheists can, of course, have wildly divergent views, but the atheist movement, if it is to have any political clout at all, must focus on some key issues and make those part of the message. If we are going to claim to have positions based on reason and the intelligent interpretation of the evidence, then the climate change denialists, the sexists, the racists, the narcissistic worshippers of the Holy Market…they cannot be regarded as representative. The ones who think the solution to Islamic theocracy is to bomb Muslim countries or deport brown people should be considered as lunatic and beyond the pale as atheists who advocate nuking the Vatican or ostracizing Catholics.

It’s time for the movement to address bigger and real issues, and the biggest issue of our time is income inequality. Of all the developed nations, the U.S. has the most unequal distribution of income. In the past decade, 95 percent of all economic gains have gone to the top 1 percent. A mere 400 individuals own one-half of the entire nation’s wealth. Meanwhile, median household income keeps falling, and our poverty levels resemble that of the Great Depression era. In other words, the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer and the middle class is being decimated.

Atheists like to talk about building a better world, one that is absent of religiosity in the public square, but where are the atheist groups on helping tackle the single biggest tear in the fabric of our society — wealth disparity? They are nowhere. Its absence on the most pressing moral issue of our time makes it difficult for the movement to establish meaningful partnerships with other moral communities.

To remain white, middle class, intellectually smug and mostly apolitical will not only serve to alienate atheism from minorities and the poor, but will also ensure it remains a politically impotent movement that is incapable of building a better America. Growing up means less time and money spent on self-righteous billboard campaigns, and, instead, more resources allocated to fighting the political conditions that have caused this nation’s middle class and infrastructure to resemble that of a hyper-religious Third World nation.

I would broaden the mission a bit, though. On economic issues, atheists as a whole ought to be behind reducing the rich-poor divide — it’s the only rational position to take — but I would consider it legitimate to regard human rights as an umbrella topic to be more important, or to make the even bigger issue of environmental degradation the major crisis of our time. We can have a broad tent, but that does not include supporting ideas that conflict with reality.

Atheism is ultimately going to have to be a progressive political force, fighting for inclusion, evidence-based policy, humanist values, and the goal of expanding knowledge and power for all. We’re hampered right now by a rather reluctant leadership that tends to focus on pettier issues in the name of unity.

Guest post: Fighting for refugee and migrant rights

[This is a guest post from Walton. Trigger warnings: violence, sexual abuse, child abuse and neglect, hyperskepticism, racism.]

In January 2013, Jackie Nanyonjo was forcibly returned to Uganda on a charter flight, escorted by guards from the private security contractor Reliance. Jackie was a lesbian woman from Uganda who had come to the UK to claim asylum, fleeing the wave of horrifying anti-gay violence in her home country. In common with many other LGBT asylum-seekers, her claim was rejected, authorities refusing to believe that she was “really” a lesbian. She was detained, and eventually put on a plane back to Uganda. With no options left to her, she resisted – and was beaten so badly by her security escort that she later died of her injuries.

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