Obama FTL

I've been thinking about Obama's speech about race in America. The speech was an absolute masterpiece. It spoke to the best in every one of us, without getting weighed down with sentimentality, without pandering, without simplifying. It recognized the deep anger many Americans carry over racial issues, without letting anyone off the hook for them. Above all, it was a challenging speech, speaking to Americans as though they were adults capable of coming together to reason about complex issues.

No way in hell are we going to elect this guy president.

Michael Pollan lectured at Abravanel Hall

The audio can be found at KCPW's website, at least until they get bought out and turned into a Christian rock station. No, really. It's in danger of happening.

Flanked by a pair of backup photosynthesizers, Pollan gave an insightful lecture about our food system, and what we need to do to reclaim it. Well worth listening to.

Reason #276 to be a vegetarian

From the Washington Post:

The tape, made secretly by a slaughterhouse worker and provided to the Humane Society of the United States, showed electric shocks and high-intensity water sprays administered to cows too sick or weak to stand on their own, and the use of forklifts to roll such animals.

And the kicker? Most of the meat went to kids in school lunch programs.

LDS President Gordon B. Hinckley, dead at 97

I got the news from a cousin over IM. President Gordon B. Hinckley, prophet to millions of Mormons around the world, inventor of the cotton gin, and a basically nice old fella, stepped down as president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (them Mormons), in order to spend more time with his wife. We here at Neon Derby Cars wish him all the best in his future endeavors, and ask that he drop by when he gets a chance, as he can settle more than a couple of bets for us.

I left the LDS Church about twelve years ago, and I have to say that the parting wasn't exactly amicable. The custody battle was vicious. In the end, I kept my soul and it kept the girlfriend. A lot changed in the years that followed, and mostly the Mormons dropped off my radar as I found new and shiny things to distract my hyper-acute sense of outrage.

When Jerry Falwell died, I let out a sigh of relief, and uttered a quiet "Don't let the door hit your fat ass on the way out." I stand by the sentiment. Sure, he was beloved by many, but he was also an angry, small-minded man who would vent his rage against feminists, homosexuals, and non-Christians, and encourage his followers to do the same. Hinckley was a different sort of religious leader. Whatever our differences were (and given the years that have passed since I lost interest in the exmormon scene, those differences have become quite fuzzy), he struck me as a basically kind guy who wanted everyone to get along and be happy. The world has a bit less of that now, and we're the poorer for it.

P.S.: My third thought upon hearing the news was, "How will this affect the Romney campaign?" But that's a subject I'll probably forget to write about another day.

Twenty minutes to kill

I went up to the state capitol building, where the Coalition of Religious Communities was giving a tour-slash-presentation on how to harass legislators effectively. Yeah, yeah, I'm an atheist. That doesn't mean that I felt at all out of place. They're looking to pass a couple of laws this session, which I wholeheartedly support. They want to do some things to rein in payday lenders, get some protections for mobile home owners (right now, the land can be sold out from under them with almost no warning, and if they don't have the time or resources to move their home, tough). They want to make sure that the inevitable demonization of illegal immigrants (six separate bills are being considered this session) doesn't make it impossible (or even criminal) to provide charity to illegals.

So now I'm up here, waiting for a bus, and playing with [cutesy laptop nickname to be determined later]. The capitol has free wi-fi, which means there has never been a better time to flummox your representatives with a citation from Wikipedia.

In Mitt's 'symphony of faith,' I'm the guy who forgot to shut his cell phone off.

Mitt, meet me over by camera three.

Listen, Mitt. I don't think this campaign should descend into bickering and arguing over whose sect is an abomination in the sight of whose God. Frankly, who cares if you think you'll ascend to godhood after you die, or that your church may or may not believe that Jesus is married to multiple wimmins? As Kennedy's speech illustrated, we can get past our differences, and come together in the pursuit of a society that tolerates and values every citizen, regardless of their nutty beliefs.

Damned fine speech Kennedy gave. Yours? Not so impressive.

Nothing against your speechifying, mind you. Perhaps a little effete and uppity for us plainspoken folk here in the West, but you do know how to turn a phrase. It's not the wrapping paper that got to me, but the... how can I put this... the dead puppy inside the box.

Couldn't you have cut me an airhole or two?

I'm an atheist. I used to make a big deal about it, but these days I'm working on a live and let live attitude. You know, cultivating that "tolerance" thing you paid such rapturous lip service to in your speech. But your speech didn't make me feel tolerated, much less valued.

On the surface, you and Kennedy look like similar cases. Like him, you're a member of a distrusted minority religion with somewhat autocratic impulses. Like him, you've got great hair.^[1] But where Kennedy appealed for a nation where we politely refused to elevate one form of religious belief over another, you cravenly admitted that you were fine with a nation that honors any belief -- no matter how kooky -- over no belief at all.

Under the Kennedy principle, nobody should have a moment's hesitation about your ability to serve as president of the entire United States. Under the Romney principle, only those who believe in God, those who kneel in prayer before the Almighty, can properly guide this country. Therefore, it's perfectly legitimate for each citizen to ask, "Does this candidate practice a form of worship that my God finds acceptable? Does my God hear Mitt Romney's prayers?"

Given the crowd you've been so cravenly sucking up to these last few months, I doubt it. Anyone remember this?



I agree that nobody in this country should vote or fail to vote for any candidate simply because of his or her privately held religious beliefs. I wish you felt the same.


[1] I mean, damn but you've got good hair. I swear, if your hair went off and ran for president by itself, it could easily get 15% of the vote.

You don't have to be crazy to vote Democratic, but it helps.

Gallup did an interesting, if not necessarily illuminating poll, showing that Republicans are way more likely to report themselves as being in "excellent" mental health than Democrats. The blogosphere took the news with its usual humility, and good grace, by opening a polite and nuanced discussion about whether Democrats are insane, or Republicans are conscience-disabled sociopaths. I gave my opinion, though to be completely honest, nobody asked:

No, Jeff. The comments here only show that all of us tend to interpret news in self-serving ways. Had the Democrats fared better than the Republicans, which side of the aisle would be playing up the disconnect between self-reported mental health and actual mental health?

You cite Louis' letter, which describes Republicans as optimists and Democrats as gloomy. But shift your perspective a bit, and it's reasonable to make precisely the opposite case. Which party is more optimistic about the government's ability to affect lives for the better? Which party believes that we can have a country that is both safe from terrorism and a staunch defender of civil rights? Which party believes that we can engage in a respectful foreign policy, rather than bullying everyone who disagrees with us?

The Republicans strike me as hopelessly negative, whether it be their acceptance of torture, their increasingly shameless efforts to keep us angry and fearful towards our enemies by invoking 9-11, immigrant hordes, "Islamofascism," and "East coast liberals" (the rallying cry of Utah's recent attempt to pass school vouchers). The message of Republicans seems to be, "Be afraid. Be afraid of the gays, the immigrants, the secular atheists, the abortionists, the environmentalists who want to take your jobs and give them to spotted owls. But above all, be afraid of a Hillary presidency."

Either party can be spun as the party of optimism. I don't think that explains the poll results. None of the explanations offered so far really satisfy me, though a difference in introspectiveness comes close. My guess (which is probably self-serving) is that Republicans tend to be less affected by reports of suffering, not because they're discompassionate or sociopathic, but because they tend to ascribe personal suffering to the consequences of the sufferer's poor choices rather than systemic problems.

Therefore, it would make sense if Republicans were less troubled by bad news than Democrats. As someone who believes that there are severe systemic inequities in the world, such a dismissive, "I gots mine" attitude seems heartless and naive. But it might also give Republicans a feeling of greater control over their circumstances and a more positive outlook. They may also be optimistic because they compare the world around them to a world where everyone lived under Sharia law, or everyone is broke because liberals dismantled the economy and used the scrap to make hemp farms. Democrats are more prone to compare it to the more just, equitable, and sustainable world that they're hoping will emerge, and get frustrated and dissatisfied.

More grist for the discussion: a Pew Research poll indicating that Republicans rate themselves as happier.

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/301/are-we-happy-yet

Is it better to increase your mental well-being by turning a blind eye to suffering? Or to let yourself be dragged down by things you cannot control?

On Vouchers

Now that Utah's voucher bill has gone down to epic, humiliating defeat (67% against vs. 33% in favor), I'm taking a few minutes away from my latest conspiracy theory[1] to think on what that means.

Honestly, what does it mean? On paper, it looks great. The reddest state in the Union overwhelmingly repudiates one of the far-right's most important pet projects, saving itself from the same sort of privatization schemes that brought us Enron, Halliburton, and Blackwater! Go Blue!

I hadn't seen the polls in the run-up to the referendum, and I was sure that voters were going to buy into the "liberal, east-coast unions want to trap your kids in their failing schools" chatter on TV. When state rep. Greg Hughes said, "This is a Ronald Reagan solution, this is a Mitt Romney solution, this is a Governor Huntsman solution... lets trust those we've elected, and let's follow their advice, and let's vote for it,"[2] I thought the "follow the prophet" mantra would be convincing to a lot of people.

Something is going on here, something that doesn't jive with my impressions of Utah as a state that is actively hostile to "big government", and a state that wouldn't put much stock in the church-state issues that plaguevoucher proposals. The most kooky, right-wing reason I could think of was "fear of government-funded madrassahs"[3], but that's an argument I never heard. A lot of rural voters voted against it simply because there were no private schools in their areas. The 100+ mile commute was a bit of a dealbreaker for them.

My current theory is that the public school system isn't what most Utahns envision when they think of "big government." I don't mean that in the "keep government's hands off my Medicare" sense, but in the "we're too busy thinking about arrogant political bureaucrats and welfare queens to think about our neighborhood elementary school." Or maybe voters really do recognize the value of the public education system as the foundation of a diverse, egalitarian society.

Naaaah.

Let me close with the words of Overstock.com founder Patrick Byrne, who donated more money to Parents for Choice in Education than the rest of the country put together: "[Utahns who voted against Referendum 1] don't care enough about their kids. They care an awful lot about this system, this bureaucracy, but they don't care enough about their kids to think outside the box."

He also said that the state failed its IQ test. Can you say "sore loser?"


Notes:

1) The writer's strike is a transparent attempt by liberal unions to derail Stephen Colbert's presidential campaign.

2) KCPW's vouchers debate, closing arguments. (mp3)

3) Islamic schools with a reputation for backward and anti-Western teachings.

Some sorta enviro-bloggy dealie

Cory Doctorow says that today is Blog Action Day, and everyone is supposed to blog something about the environment. But it's late, and I've got nothing, so I guess I can just link to No Impact Man instead of doing anything constructive myself. He's good.

The return of St. Krugman the Outraged

After two years in the wilderness, I am mere hours from being able to read Paul Krugman's columns again (Tom Friedman I didn't miss so much). That's right, folks: the New York Times' TimesSelect experiment is dead.

Since NYT put its opinionators behind the Great Wall, I've seen almost nothing of Krugman online. It's been a huge loss, because I think his opinions on social justice and income inequality really deserve a broader hearing. His opinions on Bush and Iraq are also noteworthy, though folks like Sidney Blumenthal and Gary Kamiya are acceptable substitutes, so I don't feel the lack so keenly.

Anyhow, welcome back to the bloggytubes, Paul. Watch out for freepers.