What were they thinking?

Young people (and by young I mean under 25) often do stupid things. I know because I did stupid things when I was that young, casually taking risks that could have resulted in injury or even death that I would not dream of doing now. I am amazed when I recall my younger self that I could have been so foolish and am thankful that I have survived.

Research supports my thesis that young people are prone to stupid behavior since they find that the pre-frontal cortex of the brain, the part that is responsible for reasoning, planning, and making judgments, does not become fully developed until around the age of 25, which is a good reason for raising the age for granting driving licenses, since driving safely in one act that requires particularly good judgment. As a result of both the research and my own experiences, I tend to be very forgiving of young people’s indiscretions, believing that almost all of them, however irresponsible they seem when they are young, will grow up to be sensible adults.

But while poor judgment can be blamed for things like driving while drunk, performing foolish acts of bravado merely to impress the people around you, walking around in shorts in deep winter, and so on, there are some things that young people do that point to deeper problems than simply poor judgment. I am thinking at this point of the two Rutgers University students (Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei, both age 18) who allegedly set up a webcam to record Ravi’s roommate Tyler Clementi (also 18) having sex, and streamed the video live on the internet and tweeted their followers to watch. This ended in tragedy when Clementi was so mortified that he committed suicide.

My reaction to this story was sadness at the death and horror at what those two students had done. What were they thinking? How could they not know that what they were doing was deeply wrong? How could they not have a basic moral compass that would tell them that they had completely lost their bearings? After all, this was not even a grey area where reasonable people could disagree about whether the act was appropriate.

The blatantly wrong nature of what was done suggests that it was not merely an act of poor judgment by Ravi and Wei but points to deeper problems, both personal and societal. The personal one is the homophobia involved. Clementi was gay. If he had been having sex with a woman, I think his roommate would not have streamed the video. It is because homosexuality is still viewed as something outside the norm, a cause for teasing, taunting, and tormenting, that the perpetrators felt that what they did was ‘funny’ and that they would not face any repercussions.

The societal problem is that we now live in an age where the boundary between the private and the public has become blurred almost to the point of non-existence. Some people think nothing of freely revealing the most intimate details of their lives to the public on venues such as Facebook and YouTube. Such people are still few but the existence of reality TV has amplified their impact and made it appear as if fame, however fleeting, is sufficient incentive for people to reveal everything about their lives to a voyeuristic audience.

The government is not helping here. It claims that it has the right to snoop into our lives in order to ‘protect us from terrorists’. Businesses also think nothing of harvesting our personal information for commercial use. All these have added to the pervasive sense that people do not have the right to privacy or the expectation that it will be protected.

TV programs in the old Candid Camera mold or people like Sacha Baron Cohen (in his persona as Ali G or Borat or Bruno) have made it seem acceptable to put unsuspecting people in situations in which they say or do embarrassing things and then broadcast the result to the world. And now the internet has made it possible for reality TV or Candid Camera or Cohen wannabees to try their hand at this, not realizing that this is not a harmless prank, that violating people’s privacy is wrong, that there is deep cruelty inherent in their actions, and that the danger is high of things turning out badly. I suspect that this is what lies at the heart of what motivated Ravi and Wei to do what they did.

The harassment that young LGBT people face at the hands of their peers is appalling. And because their knowledge and experience and worldview is so limited, they may think that their entire life is going to be a continuation of their horrible adolescence. It should not be surprising that so many of them commit suicide or are harmed psychologically, with some of them even growing up to be the kinds of hateful closeted anti-gay bigots that keep getting exposed.

Dan Savage has started a great program called It Gets Better aimed at giving hope to young LGBT people that things will improve, to make them aware that if they can weather the tough early years, then as adults life will be much more tolerable. Adults have much more control over their environments, such as where they work and live and whom they interact with, and thus you can avoid the homophobes more easily. I hope Savage’s program takes off and also that we become a society that can deal with sexuality in all its diversity in a mature way.

UN report on the aid flotilla killings by Israel

The expert panel appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council to look into the deaths resulting from the Israeli attack on the flotilla of vessels bringing relief supplies to Gaza has issued its report on September 27. You can see my series of posts (scroll down) on this tragedy from June 1 through June 10. Scott Horton at Harper’s has read the report and says, “The persons who prepared this report are eminent figures with no obvious prejudices one way or the other on the Gaza controversy. Their report is a model of clarity and masters an impressive body of evidence.”

Horton flags this excerpt:

The circumstances of the killing of at least six of the passengers were in a manner consistent with an extra-legal, arbitrary and summary execution. Furkan Dogan and Ibrahim Bilgen were shot at near range while the victims were lying injured on the top deck. Cevdet Kiliçlar, Cengiz Akyüz, Cengiz Songür and Çetin Topçuoglu were shot on the bridge deck while not participating in activities that represented a threat to any Israeli soldier. In these instances and possibly other killings on the Mavi Marmara, Israeli forces carried out extra- legal, arbitrary and summary executions prohibited by international human rights law, specifically article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
…
two of the passengers killed on the top deck received wounds compatible with being shot at close range while lying on the ground: Furkan Dogan received a bullet in the face and Ibrahim Bilgen received a fatal wound from a soft baton round (beanbag) fired at such close proximity to his head that parts such as wadding penetrated his skull and entered his brain.

Considering that one of the dead (Furkan Dogan) was a US citizen, the lack of outrage from the Obama administration and the Congress and the silence of the media about the report is noteworthy.

Compare this with the fuss raised about the three Americans held by Iran for crossing into that country illegally, even though there is no indication that they were treated particularly badly and one was released on bail and allowed to leave the country for health reasons. Just imagine if Iran had done to them what Israel did to the people on the Mavi Marmara. We would be at war already.

The difference testifies to the fact that Israel can do what it likes to the US and its citizens or even its armed forces (as in the case of the USS Liberty) without fear of repercussions.

The establishment media

One of the big propaganda successes of the right wing conservative movement in the US has been the portrayal of the mainstream media as ‘liberal’. They have become so good at driving home this message that the media goes out of its way to have conservatives and extreme right wing people over-represented in its ranks. It seems like there is nothing that a right wing crank (like Erick Erickson, Marty Peretz, Rush Limbaugh, Pat Buchanan, or Glenn Beck) can say that will prevent him or her from securing a perch in the media, while those who lack that protective barrier (like Helen Thomas or Octavia Nasr or David Weigel or Rick Sanchez) can get fired. People who are not right wing usually have to prove themselves to be ‘safe’ voices (i.e., not say anything remotely insightful, let alone controversial) to get even a toehold.
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Westboro Baptist Church and free speech

Tomorrow the US Supreme Court will hear the case as to whether the Westboro Baptist Church has the right to conduct their anti-gay protests at funerals.

I think it is misguided to try and use the law to suppress the Westboro group because not only it does infringe on their free-speech rights, it also gives them the kind of publicity they crave and allows them to act as First Amendment defenders.

What should be done is to organize flamboyant counter-demonstrations, the way that the people at Comic Con did in July of this year or as Michael Moore did back in 1999 in his TV show The Awful Truth.

Or as Red State Update did.

Ridicule and humor is the best weapon against hateful speech. We should laugh them out of business.

Why does god hide?

It must be really frustrating to be a thinking person who believes in god because he doesn’t help you in the least. Since god does not seem to actually do anything that you can point to as incontrovertible evidence of his existence, believers have to look in obscure corners of knowledge, as was the case with so-called intelligent design. God seems like this passive-aggressive personality who wants you to believe unquestioningly in his existence and worship him but doesn’t give you anything in return. As a result, believers have to confront the question of why god is so elusive.

A rabbi by the name of Alan Lurie has taken up the challenge and written an essay titled “Why Does God Hide?” His essay lays out the problem clearly enough:

This notion, that God’s presence is hidden, is a significant dilemma for many, and for some is clear proof that God does not exist. Why, one asks, would the creator of the Universe be so difficult to spot? Surely if such a creator exists, there would be obvious evidence. And why wouldn’t this creator, in order to silence disbelievers and recruit more faithful, simply appear on the White House lawn, announce his presence, and miraculously end all war, hunger, and disease? For some, this hidden presence is evidence that even if a creator deity does exist, such a being is not worth worshiping. What kind of a god, who religious people say loves us, would stand by as horrible atrocities happen, and silently allow us to suffer? Such a god is either not all-powerful, not all-knowing, or certainly not completely benevolent. Many site [sic] the Holocaust, for example, as clear proof of God’s impotence or indifference.

Why yes, rabbi, these are excellent points and exactly what we atheists say. But please go on.
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Book review: Quicksand by Geoffrey Wawro

The title of this book is taken from a quote by British foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey at the dawn of the twentieth century who said that “The Arab question is a regular quicksand” and that, along with the subtitle America’s pursuit of power in the Middle East, tells you pretty much what this new book is about. In its 610 pages, Wawro, a professor of military history at the University of North Texas, tries to provide a comprehensive overview of that region, with its complex interplay of tribal and religious conflicts, overlaid with superpower geopolitical meddling because of its oil and other strategic values.
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