Factions and Facts

Politicization of factual issues is making it so we cannot have a clear, honest debate in the slightest.

For instance: Oil. Should we keep digging up oil in every way we can, or should we pursue alternative energy sources? Well, to help combat global warming...

STOP! Already you're taking a liberal stance -- that GLOBAL WARMING EXISTS! Already the conservatives know to stop listening. (I'm generalizing here when I say "liberal" and "conservative", but for the exact same reason that this is a problem -- for many people this is a political issue, not a factual one).

Okay, so we just leave global warming out of the equation altogether. Well, oil is a valuable source of energy, and if we keep using it up in all its ways, we'll have enough time to manufacture more of it scientifically... so we need to engage in fracking, which involves basically blowing fissures into the earth to get more oil, which can cause ecological and environmental issues... STOP!

Worrying about environmental issues makes you a liberal. Damnit, stop doing that!

Er, okay. Well, we COULD pursue alternative forms of energy. Of course, it's more expensive now, but as it's invested in and adopted more widely, it would become cheaper and we'd develop better methods of doing so. But we'd need to invest -- STOP!

Now we come to another general conservative talk point. To invest in it, you'd have to do so with the free market, not with subsidies. If you needed to subsidize it, that means it would necessarily fail; the market is always right, and if it doesn't work in the market, it would fail. Okay, I mean, we subsidize oil as well, and oil relies on a lot of lobbyists to keep oil free in the government, but that's using hard-earned money from business...

You see where this all starts to fall apart as a debate? It's a huge tangle; you can't argue the general point without people rabidly attacking each other's throat about any particular point (and yes, I know, I admit my bias here, but it's a bias based on what I've seen and looked into regarding the subject... but yes, I do have a particular viewpoint).

There's no way a dialogue of this ONE subject can have any hope of getting resolved without extreme levels of partisanship... unless people were to take science seriously and take the effort to look into that science. But very few people are. Most go off what they know from the mainstream populace about it -- they "ditto" points made by others. "Green energy!" without looking into what green energy is, the cost-benefit analysis between the different forms of it, and other side issues to consider. But also "Oil! Oil!" Without looking into the issues with oil, and closing off their ears to the real environmental considerations of relying on it.

But that's also partly because science is hard, yo. We have lives, we have other things to do, we can't just keep reading about all these little things in the world... but if it matters to you, if you view it as important, SHOULDN'T you spend some time on the subject? And if you don't, should you really have a strong opinion on it?

This is the problem with political debates, and why so many are apathetic about it. It's just too much effort, and discussing it risks losing friendships, thanks to the first point.

There has to be a better way for us to organize ourselves, than into factions on factual issues.

The Future

I'll keep this one short.

My view is that humanity has to come together if we have any hope of getting into space. We can't think in short-term objectives, but long-term. We have to think of what we want to accomplish by 2050, or 2100, not by 2016 or 2025.
We cannot do that while we are so divided. Religion, nationalism, racism, all of it holds us back. What we have now is unsustainable.

We burn fossil fuels, and instead of looking for alternatives, we look for more fossil fuels to burn to keep the old system going, even limiting the uses of batteries in the process. Electronics and devices have "planned obsolescence" built into them, causing them to fail shortly after their warranty expires. We create more waste than ever before, and it's starting to pile up in our oceans. We have this idea that, if you just work hard enough, you'll succeed, but the gap between rich and poor is immense. We live in a period where we can change. We have the technology -- machines replacing human labor, energy for everyone, transportation worldwide. We HAVE the food resources to feed the world, but they aren't being properly distributed. One of my heroes, Norman Borlaug, helped feed 1 billion people -- ONE BILLION PEOPLE -- and very few people even know his name. Our priorities are in the shitter, and we need to focus on what we respect and what we do not.

The web of human influence -- ignorance and acceptance

Recently in an argument, I brought up (in a discussion about capitalism vs. socialism) the idea that there are many things that are accepted as necessary evils, or simply go ignored, even though real people suffer.  The reason why, is that others benefit from them, and this is merely accepted as a necessary evil, or something better not thought about.  To keep things cheap, for instance, we will benefit off the labor of child slaves in other countries, or sweatshop labor (outsourced to other countries), or any number of things that are simply accepted as a necessary evil by large corporations.  Now, I'm not a communist myself, and in fact consider it an extreme predictive philosophy that I don't think the world is "ready" to adopt (I think Star Trek tech is necessary to get to that point), but I do think that these are things that it's best not to put a complete blinder to, either.


As Thomas Paine said, "The long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it the superficial appearance of being right."  We should call out wrongs for being wrong, instead of finding some justification for it.


The idea generally is, if it's out of sight and doesn't affect you, why should you get involved in any meaningful way?  Many, if not most people, feel helpless in the world; politics, economy, ethnic strife, all are a much larger force than they could possibly influence, and indeed involve "necessary evils".  This mentality cannot be said to be completely wrong-headed, as it's a way to keep sane; you aren't going to be able to influence everyone, and you aren't going to be able to make huge changes without huge investments and huge risks.  But at the same time, if enough people put real suffering out of mind, they might as well be allowing that suffering.


As I once heard (paraphrased as I can't find the quote), "To keep neutral never helps the oppressed, it only helps the oppressor."  The oppressed are the ones that cannot defend themselves, so the oppressor is able to do as they will unless acted upon by another party, even if that party is simply majority opinion.


The world is a complex web that's weaved with many strands that go unseen or unlearned.  These strands come together to what we see, and cannot be unwoven without effort.  But, the first step is understanding and tracing their origins.  No one has an idea or a feeling for completely no reason.  Everything has a history, whether oppressed or oppressing or neutral.


If politics is kept as politics, then the only ones to influence it will be politicians.  If war is viewed as politics, then the only ones to influence it will be politicians.  If far-off oppression is viewed as "not my problem", it will only go to those that will view it as their problem... which generally won't be the politicians.


Now, why SHOULD you consider it as your problem?  The sad fact is, it is almost impossible to live in this world without influencing other people.  Even if all you do is eat and sleep, using no electronics or modern technology whatsoever, that food comes from somewhere, and if you like your pick of food, it generally isn't local.  You need space to sleep.  Even these two fundamental requirements for living have an affect -- and with our globalized society, any effect will go along the "web" of human interaction, and influence someone else.


Just sticking with food products, do you like chocolate?  Have you purchased chocolate?  The thing is, cocoa beans have a long investment time in their production, that is not offset by the current cost of chocolate... so to keep your chocolate affordable, child slavery and similar exploitation is required.  If the freedom of the cocoa farmers is respected, either they would stop growing cocoa altogether, or the price of cocoa would go up more than others would be willing to pay.  But child labor, sweatshop factories, and similar forms of labor that go to benefit those in developed countries, will go ignored, because it's a good thing to keep prices low, and many won't ask what goes into making them low in the first place.  Many point to the modern system as what makes people happy, but they will necessarily ignore whoever might be unhappy involved in the process, since they don't live next door.


Anyway you look at it, you have influence over others, and the ability to own and use certain items will not appear out of nowhere.  Someone makes the iphone you use.  Someone makes your computer.  Someone does maintenance on the ISP that keeps you connected to the internet.  Someone builds your car.  With globalization, a far-off event could influence prices on items you would otherwise consider innocuous; chocolate, bananas, diamonds, oil, all are influenced thanks to international politics and interplay.


In this complex web of human interactions, all of this lies, as well as more -- history, race relations, cultural ideas that existed or were thrust on others.  Exploitation, slavery, genocide, all of which happen for various reasons, ideologies, ethnic tensions, etc.  All of this combine together to make a world in which one group of people will be willing to kill another group of people -- Nazis killing Jews, Japanese killing Chinese, Hutu killing Tutsi, etc.  The problem is, dealing with these major influences by major nations has always been erratic and unpredictable.  It's widely considered a good thing that the Nazis were opposed and the remaining Jews freed from genocide.  At the same time, few were punished for the Rape of Nanking, even though that was a case of genocide, torture, and medical experimentation that went beyond inhumane.  As for the Rwandan genocide, a handful of Belgians are killed, and then there's immediate extraction, and 800,000 Rwandans get murdered horribly.  In Somalia, a handful of U.S. soldiers die, and the rest get extracted.  Why are these cases taken so differently?  The answer is complex, naturally, but ultimately it comes down to politics and economics.  Rwanda is not "interesting" politically or economically.  Somalia is not "interesting" politically or economically.  Thus, the slaughter of 800,000 people is not seen as important as the deaths of 10 men, because 10 happen to come from one particular culture and political border (European).


This kind of mindset is baffling if one looks at the world as one where we should work for justice for all, or to see others as people.  It isn't baffling if one is looking at the world as a politician that must consider his own nation first and foremost.


Thus, the politicization of morality and moral actions MUST be questioned.  Ignorance and acceptance of this form of thought must eventually die away.  Nations should not be considered more important than people, and suffering should never lie in the shadows, but be brought to light.


If your happiness is bought at the cost of another, and if that happiness would fade when you realize where it comes from, then you should question whether that happiness is a good thing.  If others suffer because you want to be neutral, then you have to ask why you say you're against suffering in other cases.

"A lie is a lie. Just because they dress it up and call it history doesn't make it the truth."

The title of this post is a very very good example of poor thinking -- in this case, the person in question was either denying the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, the Colfax Massacre, United States v. Cruikshank, as well as the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, or he was simply denying that they had any historical validity, especially in the question of government power.

The person in question was an anarcho-capitalist sort of Libertarian, one that believes that there should be very little to no government power -- which I've always had as a problem with this sort of thinking.  To get this out of the way, one of my biggest problems with anarcho-capitalist grade Libertarianism is that they suggest that a body of people making a government is innately more evil and harmful than a body of people making a corporation -- and they suggest that self interest and greed, in the true Ayn Randian way, does far more good than a social construct that supports its own citizens. Oh, they also promote "freedom", but want to strip any ability to enforce that freedom.

But getting past all that, the categorical rejection of history that does not support your idea is naturally something to be worried about.  However, it's also a common meme -- "History is written by the winners, not the losers"... hence, History is always subject to propaganda, which is true.

However, you have to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

There's good history, and there's bad history.

Generally, historians have a few things to work on. Unlike archaeologists, who work almost entirely on artifacts, images, architecture, and (if they're lucky) inscriptions they can read, a historian has a vast amount more documents, recorded speeches, as well as all the rest -- inscriptions, architecture, images, art style (art history plays a big part in historical understanding, etc.). Linguistics and language are also tools, just as good as tracking the movements of people as material possessions. Now, both Archaeology and History need some interpretation; but the problem is, with the history of archaeology, it's more about analyzing the items and *then* coming to a conclusion (and then constantly adding to it as new data and artifacts become uncovered, so in, say, Mesoamerica, it's a constantly changing field), and History has an unfortunate history (heh) of being used for propaganda and to push ideals.


There's a big difference between going off these sources, and being told what to believe about these sources. This is why history generally is vastly dumbed down in high school, especially as they remove all the nasty parts of history that you'll have to learn in college.


In this way, there's a big problem with many history *teachers*, as they basically teach a dumbed-down version. The worst of it is history that's meant to make you feel patriotic -- that teaches you, for instance, that America won WWII entirely (and fails to mention its many allies), as a very basic example. I've heard the case in some Slavic countries where they teach that their own cultural group (Czech, Polish, Russian, whatever) were the "leading figures" of their time period that outshone all the other groups near them... while not understanding, for instance, that their cultural groups inter-mixed ideas and culture quite a bit (The Polish Hussar, for instance, was actually from Hungarian influence originally).


You can generally tell a good source vs. a bad source by how they cite their sources, as well as going to the original sources they're using and deciding based on that.


A big example here, actually, is how the Nazi party took a document called "Germania", by Tacitus. Now, the proper way to view such a document is by putting it in its historical context. It was a document written about the "German" peoples in the second century AD by a Roman that never even lived near it, who was using the "Germans" as a way to explore what it meant to be Roman.


Medieval historians picked up on this, and later the people that would make up the Nazi party. Both of these read into the source what they wanted to -- they didn't put the writer in the context of his time, and they used it to justify their own ideas of what "Germania" was all about -- medieval scholars in wanting to define the Holy Roman Empire (whose many fractured states stand, more or less, where Germany and some outlying countries stand today), and by the Nazis to justify a racial ideal, of the "brave, honest, noble" German. Both of these groups read what they want into the source, and when you understand more about Tacitus and the state of the Roman Empire at the time, you start to understand why and where the problems occur.


A good historian would take Tacitus, medieval historians, and the Nazi party in their own time periods, and analyze them in their own framework. To teach bad history, you ignore all that and basically teach a hashed down pseudo-analysis that takes your own assumptions, promotes a personal viewpoint, and then moves on.


(I just want to add that the previous example is actually given because I'm currently reading "A Most Dangerous Book", exploring this very issue -- http://www.amazon.com/Most-Dangerous-Book-Tacituss-Germania/dp/0393062651)


Overall, what I'm saying here, is that you can tell the good from the bad in those who can SHOW you where they got their information. A scientist can have you run an experiment yourself, or at least show you the data and how they came about it, whereas a historian can show you the first-hand sources, or let you analyze the first-hand and second-hand sources... but they often give you the "big picture" for levity, but can come up with examples with original sources as examples, or when asked where they got their data.


This is why, say, holocaust deniers are so ludicrous. There's few other conflicts with so many documents from so many sources than in WWII. There's no way you can legitimately deny the holocaust happened -- we have the documents from almost any faction involved, we have the concentration camps, we have images of the bodies, we can trace who a lot of those killed are. Holocaust deniers will assert you something and then show you a very very limited view of the data -- but very quick searches in very public archives (easily found on google, no less) can paint a very different picture.

Ultimately, you can't avoid having multiple people with multiple interpretations using more or less the same data... but generally, good historians will agree on many of the basics and disagree on more of the fiddly bits than have entirely radically different ideas of the past.  Exceptions generally involve what sources they're using, or how much they dug through said sources... or if they're pushing a particular propaganda.

Moral Relativism vs. Israel

So, I've seen lots of accusations of moral relativism lately. The latest I wandered onto was a years-old blog post here: http://haemtza.blogspot.com/2009/03/is-npr-anti-semitic.html


I don't support Israel because I'm "misguided", I don't see the morally objective viewpoint, I'm blinded by moral relativism and can't see "the light", is what this blog post is saying.


Well, you know what? My moral compass DOES lead me to support an oppressed people, no matter who is doing the oppression, and no matter what god they subscribe to.


Really, this is so much evidence for what Carl Sagan said... my problem with this idea of God is that it's such a small-minded god, such a jealous god -- a ruler that rules by bullying, that plays favorites with his own "chosen people", and sets them out to kill, burn, and massacre all they can to gain land for themselves. This is the god that promotes stoning, killing, and division in his own name -- that can only compete with other religions by burning alive their worshippers, or otherwise killing them in some gruesome way.


Is this is the god of our universe? Its creator, its founder? The creator of billions of galaxies, wherein Earth is but a single mote in a sunbeam? How can such a powerful, creative force that has put into place all the laws that would lead into the orbiting of planets, the creation of stars, the many beautiful and elegant pieces of the universe, be only focused on a small group, of a small planet, in a small galaxy? How does this fall in line with how much of the universe lies outside of our grasp without technical aid -- a whole spectra of light, only a small portion of which we can see? Sound, of which only a certain amount we can hear? Chemicals, of which we need complex understanding and instrumentation to dissect?


Why create all this wonder, if he's just going to act like a petty dictator that cares about your personal life -- that cares about the threads in your clothing, what food you eat, who you have sex with in your own spare time? Why analyze the thread of every single person's life on this blue ball, punishing some in horrendous ways?


Even if this small-minded god could exist, never could I see him as the Creator of the universe, the Prime Mover, the First Cause. I don't even think there has to be such a thing in the first place, but if there was, this small-minded god couldn't even come close.


You know the problem with the idea of the Bible being the objective morality that we all should follow? It's that it doesn't stand up to reality. It doesn't even come close. It's a book written by a people that put in the morality and understandings of the universe at their time... and how small, how pathetic it compares to what we actually observe. How small it seems, how narrow-minded, how bigoted... and how arrogant.


How arrogant that some think that the universe watches them, cares about them, moves itself for them, and devotes itself to them -- or punishes them, dictates to them, cares about their little lives on their little planet.


Imagine, in your mind's eye, the vast cosmos. Here, let me help you:http://ircamera.as.arizona.edu/NatSci102/NatSci102/images/hdfwf3.gif


Imagine all of this, and then imagine that you zoom in on any one of those galaxies, zoom in on any one of its solar systems, zoom in on one of its tiny planets -- would you consider them the all-important race of the cosmos? Much less a small smidgeon of that race, selected for their ethnicity?


This post might be considered anti-semitic. I prefer to think of it as pro-reality. I think it was great that we spent money, resources, and even human lives protecting the Jews and other ethnicities (gypsies, polish, etc.) from the Nazis -- said without sarcasm. That was a terrible time, and the US eventually did the right thing. But that doesn't mean that I should support the subjugation of another culture because of that horror.


Anyways, rant over. I had to get that out of my system.

Random Political Argument, or Why I Don't Think Obama Is Satan

So, I was randomly browsing through Deviantart, when I saw this image:   http://balddog4.deviantart.com/#/d4wlr19

His argument:

"What I meant is that if you don't have the education you really don't know what is good for the economy and what isn't. However, there are people who are blind to the truth, because they don't care. And that right there is what is frustrating. They are so wrap up in the lies that the media tell them, that they don't look around for the facts. They don't research these things."

So basically, his argument that you need education to know what is good for the economy and what isn't, and that those that don't hate Obama are "blind to the truth".

My argument:

"But the fact simply is that you're claiming that others that disagree with you about Obama must be ignorant while you hold onto the One Truth, which does sound incredibly insulting.

The facts don't make any of the other candidates look good. Maybe Ron Paul, because he seems the only politician in the race that was capable of saying, even when it wasn't popular, that bombing Iran was stupid instead of going with the "we should declare war!" line -- something that Obama is being criticized for not doing himself. Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney, and Newt Gingrich seem more jokes than real presidential candidates.

I haven't seen much involving the economy that hasn't been cherry picked; Obama isn't doing perfectly to suddenly change the economy, even though the economy has been slowly getting better. That's kind of to be expected. It would be nice if he could pull an FDR and throw out a ton of resolutions to solve the problem, but there are real restrictions to that with the Supreme Court and Congress throwing their lot into things, and now super PACs mean that more and more politics are going to be decided by corporate influence than even before (whether or not Obama ends up in the white house for re-election).

The fact is, we might get more done if the Republican Party was more willing to compromise, but they are growing more and more extremist. They are ousting their moderates or browbeating them into toeing the party line, they are stronger than ever before on neoconservative social issues, and can you really justify Grover Norquist's requirement of never raising taxes, ever? If you want a stupid economic policy, that's it; when you're in a time of plenty and without war, you lower taxes, but then you can't raise them if war falls on you or a major event occurs, which would cripple the country."

He returns:

"The Republican Party are willing to compromise. The reason they aren't is because the Democratic Party are trying to get things voted in that the people of the United States don't want. The Democrats are trying to put their agenda, which is full of Socialist and Communist ideals by the way, in power. They want to get rid of the second amendments which allows people to own fire arms, )if they get rid of this amendment I'm still going to own my own gun.) They want to change the Constitution which is what our nation is built apon. If they get rid of the Constitution then America is done for. They want Obamacare because, oh "Europe has the best medicare in the world." Nothing, in the Democrats agenda is good for America. That is all there is to it."

Basically:  "The Republican Party are willing to compromise, but they won't because the Democrats are Communists."  I mean, this is basically "They're willing to compromise, but they won't compromise because..."  This kind of logic is a little baffling.

But I fire back:

"So you know economics and I don't, but you're claiming that the Democrats are pushing "Communist ideals". Maybe you should look into what Communism is about.

The second amendment does not socialism or communism make. Furthermore, "the people of the United States" do not all agree like a great hive-mind about the second amendment or its limits. There is a lot of room for debate on the second amendment. I should also add that the second amendment does not an economy make.

You do realize that the Occupy movement is made up of "American people", right? Yes, they're Americans, whether you like it or not -- though I wouldn't say that all of them support Obama (but they certainly aren't for business or the rich, which Romney almost entirely represents in every way, shape, and form, and is the one that super PACs have put most of their support behind).

You know, I looked up "Obamacare" when it came up (being the ignorant person I was). I still can't see why there's such an uproar in calling him a communist or Hitler over it. It's not this major awe-inspiring fundamental change to healthcare. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act reforms certain aspects of private and public health insurance programs and industry, increases insurance coverage of pre-existing conditions, expands access of insurance, increases projected national medical spending and lowers projected Medicare spending. It's making amendments to how health care was previously handled, and speaking as someone who recently got into an accident and isn't broke because of health care, that isn't a bad thing.

(I also want to note that I lived in Germany for quite a bit of my life and fail to see the dystopian health care system there...)

You say nothing in the Democrats agenda is "good for America", and that I'm ignorant because I don't see things your way. But yet, the more I look into things, the more it seems like you have an oversimplified view of things, and focus quite a bit on fringe issues.

You also haven't explained why "never raise taxes, ever" is a good policy. Yet it's a BIG Republican policy! You claim that Republicans are able to compromise, but yet 41 out of 47 Senate Republicans and 238 out of 242 House Republicans signed Norquist's pledge, to "oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rate for individuals and business; and to oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates."

I don't see anything that even remotely looks like compromise there."

Finally, he explains his stance on Taxes, defending Grover Norquist's absolutist stance:

"Okay, the thing about the taxes is, that if the government raise taxes, the people get less and less money. If the people gets less and less money, they aren't going to buy things, they won't even go anywhere. If the people don't buy things then production stops. If production stops, then the economy fails. If the economy fails, then the government is screwed.

If the government lower taxes, then the people will have more money. If the people have more money, then everything I have just said about raising taxes is reversed. The production indistery productions skyrockets, the economy gets back on it's feet, and people will have jobs.

The problem with Obamacare is that it doesn't give the right that everyone gets treated. Let me give you an example. Say you need a heart implant and you make enough money just to get by and you've been waiting to get it. After so many months you've finally get a donor and you've been prep for surgy. It looks like you are going to live. But then a guy comes in and he is rich and he needs your heart transplant. Who are they going to give it too. Not you, because you don't contribute enough to society. Because unlike you the other guy owns a big corpration that brings in money. So your heart transplant goes to him and you are kicked out of the hospital and left to die.

You probably don't think that Obamacare is going to be like that. But the truth is that it's not about what the Obama medicare plan is or how it's going to work. If it's a socailist ideal, then that's what it will be like. Because Communism controlls everything. Communism controlls how you work, where you live and weither or not to give you medicare. That is what Obamacare is. It's all about controll."

Now this is where I get wordy, people, and THIS is what I think is so silly about all of this anti-tax rhetoric.  I make three different posts, so I'll keep them separate in three sets of quotation marks:

"That's an extremely oversimplified (and thus false) view of the economy. You aren't impressing me as having the sole knowledge of the economy by far.

Taxes are there to provide services -- to pay for police, for public education, fire services, and yes, the military (which takes a pretty good chunk of the budget), just for the top priorities. If there is a major event -- for instance, declaring a war and engaging in an occupation lasting several years -- money has to come from somewhere. Where do you think the money for bombing Iran will come from? Or sustaining forces in Afghanistan?

Generally, lowering taxes is a good popular move during a time of peace and plenty, but there comes a time when tax rates need to hike. Eisenhower, a Republican, knew that; tax rates under him were critically high. Even Reagan raised taxes. Lincoln would not have been able to wage the Civil War if he was not able to raise taxes at all.

The economy and the government are related, but one does not entirely control the other, nor does one entirely destroy the other. Except in the case of Communism, but we haven't even come close to that (no matter what you say).

If the tax rate were truly high enough, what you say would be theoretically true. But even Eisenhower taxed those making over $400,000 92-91% of their income! This does not cause a grinding halt to our economy at all.

Taxes do not break the economy in and of themselves, and refusing the ability to raise taxes will cripple a government from propertly functioning in times of crisis. You cannot engage in conflict and then simultaneously cut taxes, or you run into an even larger deficit (as we are).

Furthermore, this isn't even mentioning the power of government services. We require skilled labor to get anywhere, but skilled labor can only really be acquired through higher education (even trade schools and apprenticeships). Investing in the education of the populace helps that populace get jobs in the future, and helps their ability to apply themselves to the economy. While there are private schools, the vast majority of the populace will go to a public school or otherwise be subsidized in some way, whether by government or some form of tuition.

In fact, investments in better education have real, demonstrable results that can be seen in studies and research -- whereas we don't see this idea that "lower taxes cause instant economic boom". In fact, during this whole recession, do you know who pay the least amount of taxes? It's those that own the greatest amount of wealth; they keep far more money than they give back into the system. Yet we still suffered a recession, being the biggest elephant in the room with your argument.

Your bit on Obamacare doesn't seem to have anything to do with the proposals, the reforms, or anything. It also intermixes the concepts of Socialism and Communism, which are not the same thing -- and you still don't seem to understand what Communism is. You assert that this will be Communism, but you offer no validation of this claim. I am sorry, but I have yet to see ONE SINGLE PERSON validate their idea that Obama is a Communist or is pushing Communism. I'm a history major; I've read the words of Marx, and I know the differences between Marxism, Stalinism, Maoism (I've done quite a bit of research on China, its history and its present state), and I still don't see anything similar to that and anything Obama has done.

About the only two arguments have been "healthcare is communism" and "he gave bailouts". But in the case of healthcare we already had that (he's just expanding it) with medicare and medicaid. And the bailouts had nothing to do with Communism; he gave money to major corporations to keep them from going under, because of the dramatic results of what would happen if some of the top, most powerful, most influential, international corporations tanked -- you don't achieve Socialism OR Communism by supporting corporations from collapsing. While there is room to debate the wisdom of his decision, it's not a discussion of Communism vs. Capitalism.

Also, if he's such a Communist, why is he accepting millions and millions of dollars in Super PAC money? Sure, they aren't throwing as much money at him as they are Romney, but he's still got a damn decent chunk of change."

"And just to further the point about economics vs. ignorance: Robert Reich is an economist. This is something he's studied. He also completely disagrees with you. [link]

However, you can say that he might not necessarily be right. Hey, that might be true; there's lots of economists, and several of them disagree with each other. One can even say that economics isn't an exact science. But if you reject his ideas out of hand, you have to reconcile that with the claim that the people who support Obama must necessarily be ignorant of economics."

"Sorry, this will be my last post. I forgot to mention something else that I find very important in the discussion.

The Great Depression was a major event, and it wasn't caused by government taxes (though one could say it wasn't helped from protectionism and tariffs on trade goods that made foreign countries not want to deal with us, which IS an example of how government interference isn't always a good thing). It happened partly thanks to a barely regulated stock market, a system of "boom and busts", and a good series of events that would take a book to adequately summarize.

Yet the Presidents that handled it refused to give government aid to those that needed work. It was FDR that really pulled our asses out of the fire (and WWII didn't hurt, either), but it was through government interference. He also did a lot to try to prevent the ecological damage of the dust bowl, which was an immense and terrifying event. Yet his policies didn't destroy America, it helped it rise up again. He threw out hundreds and hundreds of proposals, so many that few history books really try to enumerate them, and tried to see which would "stick" and discarding that which didn't seem to be helping. It seemed to help."

I haven't gotten a response yet, and it's only been a few hours, so the discussion isn't quite finished.  I may post more of it up here, but I'm not sure if this is really going to lead anywhere.  But I've seen these viewpoints mirrored in several different locations on the net, not simply here.

Here's the really scary part though.  From here:  http://balddog4.deviantart.com/#/d4qz9ox

"Yep, and I for one will not stand by and let this country fall because of people who hate America. That's why when I'm 35 years old, I'm going to run for President."

If he ran for president in this election, and was pitted against Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich*... would you have noticed the difference?

*Existence of Ron Paul redacted as being irrelevant to politics

Fiction: Interesting Things Happen to Boring Characters

I was recently reading through writing.com, giving some reviews, when it really struck me that there was a real problem with fantasy and science fiction stories.  Basically, you have a protagonist that's a "fish out of water" for whatever reason.  In one particular story, a modern day protagonist gets sucked into a world of supernatural conspiracy against a vampiric evil overlord; he's a fish out of water, bringing the modern day world view into the world of fantasy, intrigue, and gunplay mixed with magic.  Can be interesting, right?  But he's not; he's a boring person.

Why's he boring?  Because he doesn't assert himself in the story.  He's a blank slate.  He makes a few wisecracks, then just accepts everything, wants to know what gun he'll be using, and overnight is being thrown in combat with little to no training.

Now, one can quickly simply dismiss this as a self-insertion; the writer imagines he wants to be put in an interesting situation, and then imagines himself quickly adapting and turning into a badass fighter capable of wisecracks and survival against impossible odds.  But as much as self-insertion is a possibility, I've seen this happen in stories, even popular stories, where the character does not seem as simplistic as a self-insert.

I think the problem also stems from the idea that in fantasy and science fiction, the setting is interesting.  Interesting things happen.  You have magical abilities!  Strange races!  An overwhelming evil presence!  A few people with special powers!  In science fiction, it's more fantastic machines!  Alien races!  New technology!  Future governments!  Weird societal laws!

But, while interesting, those things don't make a good story.  They are components to a story that can make it interesting, but they do not make the story.  In any story that involves characters, the characters should have a voice.  If you want to have a story that involves a fish out of water, that person should show he's a fish out of water.  They should be confounded, questioning, but also surprised, exasperated, and even opinionated.  They should comment, not be immediately accepting.  If you're going for a more comedic tone, they could be wry-witted; a modern-day protagonist being thrust into a strange world might use action and horror movie logic ("You go first!  The guy who goes first always buys it."  "No way I'm wearing a helmet!  Everyone that wears a helmet dies in the movies!")  Or you can go more for someone that's horrified at what other characters in the world have long since considered acceptable, whether for necessity or for cultural reasons.

If you tear a character from one set of beliefs, setting, or culture, and transplant them into a completely new setting, it needs to show.  Or else you have Interesting Things Happening to Boring People.  This means you have to work double hard at making the interesting things interesting, because that's the only thing carrying forward the story; who cares about boring people?

Overzealous Feminism

Something recently came up that made me frown:

http://www.goblinscomic.com/wow-just-wow/

Now, I'm a (male) feminist myself. I  believe in equal rights for women, and I do my best to try to stop violence towards women.  This is a very opinionated person that, naturally, do not represent the Feminist movement at large, nor even a significant portion of feminists.  However, I do want to analyze, from what I perceive, to be the problems I have with the person's approach in condemning Goblins, and then attempt an analysis of what went into those perceptions (more or less).

From my perspective, the woman in question here committed many actions that cannot lead to an honest discussion.  First of all, she drew an assumption on the meanings of words in the comic itself.  Second of all, she assumed that a webcomic is reprehensibly misogynist if it includes a villainous demon that rapes, enjoys raping, or looks forward to rape.  Third of all, she refused to admit that she was wrong, instead putting the blame on the author as much as she could (the "I was wrong, EXCEPT..." kind of mindset, where you do anything but admit you were wrong).

The first mistake you cannot hold someone too accountable for; it was a bizarre way to interpret the page in question (seen here:  http://www.goblinscomic.com/02242012/), but many people misread song lyrics, comics, books, or even other people completely when they come into it or an argument in the middle and without context.  That, in and of itself, was not the problem here.

The second was assuming that a comic is innately misogynist when it involves a villain that rapes.  This is the truly bizarre part; true, she claims later she had other reasons for considering the comic misogynistic, but the gangrape issue did seem to be forefront on her mind.  See, now, I can see why someone would be disturbed if rape were to be brought up too lightly.  I could also see if someone we were to be considered a hero committed an act of rape.  I could even see the argument that a major villain could still be brought up as being a rapist in a better way, but really, I feel that demons specifically are about a lack of subtlety unless they're the manipulative sorts, simply because they're supposed to (on the whole) represent the evil humans are capable of when we have no masks, conscience, or subtlety.  Showing a demon as reveling in rape or future rape would not be a bad representation of a demon that glorifies the violence it does against humans.

The third mistake was how she refused to admit she was wrong, and hid behind semantics (more on that in a moment) in doing so.  I just want to say that calling someone's work of fiction as glorifying rape IS implying that the AUTHOR is glorifying rape; calling his works misogynistic does imply that he's a misogynist.  Saying "I didn't call you a misogynist, I just called the comic you've been working on for months out of your life misogynist" doesn't amount to much of a defense.  This is a very human instinct; to fight and fight against the admittance of doing a wrong.  Politicians excel at this, partly because politicians have to.  Furthermore, she pits the blame on the author; she didn't read it wrongly, it was wrongly written in such a way that it was easy to come away with that assumption.  It wasn't her fault, it was the author's.  This is a big step to overcome that every human being encounters; when to admit that you're wrong, assume responsibility for being wrong, and then make amends.  "I'm sorry, I was wrong, I did not realize the word 'dogpile' had other meanings, and I was wrong to make such a rash post about how your comic promoted rape.  I still do not like your comic, and I still think that it has problems, but I was still wrong."  Furthermore, she lays blame on the author for the actions of his fans, as if he has direct authority and control over them, claiming that he has done "nothing at all" to stop them, even though as you see in my link, he said that they should not insult or attack her in response.  I'm not sure what else he's supposed to do.

Her actual final post was close enough to this that I could accept it as an apology, but giving someone criticism about their comic after you just claimed that they made light of rape isn't going to go over well.  She gives a very "Yes... but," sort of argument.  "Yes, I was wrong, but you're still wrong."

As for semantics, this is an important thing to note.  There's a lot involved with the use of the word "semantics".  In the way I use it here, it's the use of terminology to try to draw a line between one claim and another to keep oneself free from criticism, even when that line really is flimsy.  In short, "rhetorical trivia", the focus on minor differences in major claims.  This is not a note on the overall educational field of semantics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantics).

Now, why do I mention all this?  Why this analysis?  Well, I've seen it crop up quite a few times.

Take, for instance, a long rant about how Joss Whedon's Firefly is about rape and misogyny:  http://users.livejournal.com/_allecto_/34718.html

A lot of these arguments are just as spurious as the previous one.  Why these spurious arguments?  Well, a lot of this reminds me of a lecture I saw once by a feminist speaker; I forget her name, but her message wasn't a bad one.

Her message was that misogyny is all around us; it's in advertisements, it's in magazine ads, it's in movies, it's in television, it's in books, it's in comics, it's everywhere.  Violence or implied violence towards women is a common theme.  She even goes so far as to say that showing an African woman painted to look like a leopard for attractiveness makes her "an animal", and to be treated as such (personally, I highly disagree on that point, but not on all her points).

Taken to its extremes (and only when taken to its extremes) this leads, unfortunately, to demon-hunting attitudes, and it has demon-hunting logic involved (see the second blog post I made to see what I'm talking about).  See, if you see something you FEEL is misogynist or FEEL promotes rape, then it does, and its author is held accountable for that.  HE promotes rape, HE is misogynist.  Anything the author says can therefore be dismissed; he's a misogynist, after all, he's a word that carry with it implications, and anyone that defends him therefore is also a misogynist.  In this case, the woman in question did keep from accusing the author, but she does make him responsible for her own feelings and the feelings of his fans.  She also validates her own feelings about the comic through the fans; if a minority of the fans call her names, then the comic itself represents what she feels about that.  If a few fans act misogynistic, then the comic they share a liking of must be as well.

This is flawed logic and will never lead to anything constructive.  Joss Whedon's Firefly is given the same treatment, but has a much larger twisting of logic, that I may analyze later if I feel I could say more than I did in this post.

You can consider this post incomplete as I rather rushed it, and may edit it later on to include or rearrange ideas that I felt I did not adequately express or could have expressed.

The Monkey Governments and the problem with "Us vs. Them"

So, when I argue with a conspiracy theorist that is telling me that there's a massive government conspiracy, one of their fallback positions tends to be, "Well, are you telling me that you trust the government?"  The answer isn't going to be, "Of course I trust the government!  The government knows what's best for me at all times!"  I don't think many people really believe that.  But that doesn't mean that I support their conspiracy ideas, too, nor their ideas as to how the government really works.  The most basic reason for this is, essentially, that I'm not trusting a Monkey Government, while they're not trusting  a (rather Machiavellian) Shakespeare Government.

What do I mean by that?  Well, basically, I'm going with the analogy of the government being like a story, or more specifically a play.  The conspiracy theorist sees a Shakespeare at work, some malevolent hidden figure that's writing the script, and everything that happens within the narrative is thanks to this hidden power.  Meanwhile, continuing with that analogy, I more see it as a bunch of monkeys hammering away at keyboards to try to make their own narrative.  Eventually we may get something systematic, comprehensive, and with little conflict; but it'll take a very long amount of hammering away with a great many monkeys to get to that point.  And just because you have it, doesn't mean another power might not come in and take it away from you.

See, the larger a conspiracy is, the more fallible it is.  The more people you have involved in something, the more likely something is going to slip.  You can't keep people from blabbing forever.  Instead, what you more of get is the monkeys; but I'm not saying that everyone involved is stupid, but I will say that they are ignorant.  Yes, I am saying everyone is ignorant, even me.  No one knows everything, no one can see or foresee everything, and some people are naturally more ignorant than others; but when you compare what someone knows to what they DON'T know, what they don't know will always be a greater amount.  Nor am I necessarily saying that it's just a bunch of individual monkeys; no, we can get monkey coalitions, corporate monkeys, monkey special interest groups.  But ultimately, every group has limited knowledge and limited interests.  We even elect a presidential monkey, but with the balance of powers for monkeys, that monkey is still just part of the machine.  Even dictator monkeys are generally kept in check with having to reinforce their power to keep internal revolt from occuring, and have to worry about foreign monkey powers trying to dethrone them.

That's the point here.  The reason politics can be tragic, seemingly arbitrary, seemingly random, and downright contentious at times, is because politics isn't under control by a Machiavellian Shakespeare.  Countries and factions don't go to war or revolt because it was written into the play.  It's more a bunch of monkeys all trying to hammer out something that sounds good, get upset with each other, and then start to fling feces at each other.

Okay, perhaps I'm starting to stretch the analogy.  You have to admit, though, imagining WWII as monkeys flinging feces at each other is probably more amusing than it should be.

But here's the tricky thing.   For the most part, these monkeys are trying to do good.  Who they're trying to do good for is an issue in and of itself, but it's going to be for someone (in the case of a truly sociopathic dictator, generally themselves and their immediate family).  Communists want to do good for the working man (communist dictators are a different story).  Socialists have a similar goal, but aren't as extreme as communists.  Even Nazi Germany was trying to do good in eradicating the Jews.  Jews were seen as a major problem to having a happy civilization, they were seen as traitors that hurt the Axis war effort in WWI, and propaganda films had to show them as base, inhuman creatures that did more harm than good in their existence.

In fact, I'll go a step further here:  Nazi Germany wasn't unique.  They were under a spell of Nationalism; where Communism makes demons of the Bourgeois, Nationalism makes demons of those that don't fit within the nation.  For the Nazis (and, in fact, many people throughout history, not just the Nazis), that was the Jews; Jews didn't conform to the national idea, the national language, the national customs, the national religion; for the same reason is why gypsies were also targeted.  There was also the Armenian Genocide, which is an even better example of monkey politics.  See, Turkey was also setting itself up under Nationalism, and their ideas of national heritage, language, and religion did not incorporate the Armenians.  The Armenians were killed off as much as possible, one million of them being slaughtered.  But the US government today won't admit that it's a genocide, purely because of political concerns with Turkey; the US wants Turkey as an ally, and to question Turkey's policies is to question their nationalism, which is still strong.

Now, I don't know if I have a good segue into this, but I'll go ahead and try:  "Us vs. Them" is a really problematic way of thinking.

Who's us?  Who's them?  Why is the them so much worse than the us?  If you're a police officer, you tend to think in "us vs. them"; there's you, and then there's the public, there's the criminal, etc.  If you're in the armed forces, there's the "us" of the soldier, and the "them" of the civilians, the "them" of the enemy.  If you work at McDonald's, there's the "us" of your fellow employees, there's the "them" of your customers and management (if you take by my examples that management is your enemy then... well, I'll let you be the judge).  Now, to take the example of someone that works with customers, how you view the "them" will largely depend on your mindset and experiences, but possibly not in the way you think.

You see, I can almost guarantee you that if you work with customers, you'll get just as many, if not more, cases of "good" customers than you will "bad" -- "bad" being defined as a customer that will yell your head off for something unjustified, or otherwise is a source of stress for no just cause.  If you get many good customers, you enjoy your job, and you've made good friends with some customers, you probably won't think too poorly of your experiences, even with a few bad customers that made you roll your eyes.  If you didn't like your job, and you think back to it, your thoughts will generally be on how you didn't like the job, and your first thoughts will be justify your dislike; you'll remember the bad examples of customers.  Of course, many people avoid that altogether, can mock the bad customers while also remembering the good ones.  But the point is, three people can have the same experiences, but for subjective reasons, have totally different views to those experiences; one has bad experiences with bad customers, one has good experiences with good customers, and one has a mixture of both and can recognize that.

In the same way, two people can have the exact same viewpoints and yet identify themselves with seemingly diametrically opposed sides.  For example:  Abortion.

In the case of Abortion, there are considered to be two major "sides": pro-life, and pro-choice.  Pro-life is so-called because they support life, and presumably they define life as starting at the embryo -- but I'm not sure if all pro-life "advocates" actually do define life as starting then.  Pro-choice is so-called because they support the choice of the mother; they aren't going to say "pro-death", and it would be inaccurate to say that, because they're not centered on the killing of the fetus, but on the mother's decision whether to keep it or not.

Now, we have two people that define themselves.  They aren't on the extremes of either group.  Observe:

Person A says:  "I'm pro-life.  I do make an exception for cases where the woman is raped, is too young to bear a child, or in cases where the birth of the child would kill the mother."  If you press him further:  "Well, I can see an abortion before the egg is fertilized, or even shortly after."

Person B says:  "I'm pro-choice.  I do make an exception for the third trimester, though."  You might even convince them down to the second trimester.

Where is the huge divide between these two?  Both are willing to ban abortion for a certain period of the baby's development, both have cases where they think the woman has a choice.  Neither is truly "pro-life" or "pro-choice" in the extreme definitions of the term, because neither has fully adopted the viewpoints of the extreme examples of their respective sides.  But both define themselves as one side or the other.

Now let's say I want to make a blog post about abortions.

I open with "I'm pro-life" or "I'm pro-choice", and you, the reader, see this.  Now, if you're my diametric "opposite", your brain is probably already starting to shut down, or it's going into "opposing argument mode", where you look at my post trying to find things to nitpick or argue against.

I can avoid this by not coming out and saying which I am, but generally you're going to connect which side I might fall on; even if you're not out to do so, it's a subconscious thing we do when reading people's arguments, since we innately do want to know where people are coming from, and we have an innate ability to fill gaps.  The problem is, often times we fill gaps with what we THINK the person thinks, and not what they SAY the think; and the less they say, the more we can fill that gap with the stereotype.  In this case, if I'm pro-life, and I mention only a few things about being pro-life, you might think that the ideas I haven't stated would fall under the extreme end of being pro-life; what the extremist advocates tend to state.

Often, when I argue with someone, I'm told that I'm the "1%" of my side that "seems rational", while the "other 99%" have crazy ideas.  Well, take the above examples; if you saw many people from a specific side and assumed that they all were in that 99% without asking them what they really felt or thought, then what you say would be technically true, but based on an assumption that probably isn't true.  It could just as easily be true that 1% of that group makes extremist arguments, and 98% are assumed to share it (the other 1%, of course, being those few "rational" ones that actually come out and say what they think in a less divisive fashion).

Okay, I'm going to end this long post with one last example:

I once had a conversation with someone about their experiences with people from a small country (I think an African country, but I forget which one, unfortunately).  He basically said they're all assholes, and he knew that because he personally met people from that country, and they were all assholes.  "That's the problem with using personal experience to generalize..." I started.  He seemed taken aback and said, "Then what else should I use?", as if I was being crazy.

Well, here's the problem with that:  let's just say he did meet many people from that country, let's just say most of them men, if not all.  Let's say he met 20 men from that country, and they were all assholes.  Wow, 20 people all assholes from one country?  Maybe there's something to that!

But 20 people out of how many?  Let's just assume that this is a small country.  Even small, that could give it a population as "high" as, say, 200,000 people.  20 men out of 200,000 people?  That doesn't seem so representative, now.  In fact, it falls well below the scientific standards for a blind sample size.

Now, a big example of this kind of generalization, are the many US citizens who think that we're at war with "Islam", and not islamic countries; or the many people who think that people that are Muslim are intrinsically like the terrorists, are all massively violent, etc. etc.

Well, how many Muslims do you think are in the world?  200,000, like above?  2 million?  200 million?

Try between 1.3 billion to 1.65 billion.  Carl Sagan's billion with a b.

Now, take every bit of footage ever used to depict violent muslims; people cheering for bombings, Muslim riots over the Danish cartoons, etc. etc.  One argument is that these massive crowds show what Muslims worldwide must think.  But it really doesn't, does it?  If 1.3 billion people rioted, attacked, and were violent, then there would be a massive force to deal with well beyond what our military is currently tackling.  In fact -- and I haven't actually crunched the numbers to do this, so I'm more speculating -- I think that if you took all the Muslims that appeared violent in media reports, and put them all on a field, including with suspected terrorists, they would fill a space that could be measured in football fields in the double digits.  Put 1.65 billion Muslims on a field, and I think you'd need one hell of a huge field!

That's the problem.  Our "personal experiences" don't match the reality, because we have such a small sample size.  But we think of a negative event like 9/11, we think of negative events like wars against Muslim believers, and we see the riots against the Danish cartoons, and a picture forms.  That picture is necessarily limited.

But that's the problem with monkey governments.  It's always going to be limited.  You aren't Shakespeare.  To deal with large groups, you have to generalize sometimes.

And this is probably why politics will always be the mess it is.

Emotional arguments and the nebulous concept of "freedom"

So, one of the things I've long been noticing with debates, are emotional appeals with little backing to them.  This seems to be a much more widespread use of argument in the United States than in other countries, but I could be wrong.

This is especially true when it comes to politics and political decisions, which is also where the US government differs from many others.  The leaders in the US aren't just seen as someone to run the country and solve situations as they come up, but as a force to instill your beliefs on others.  Contentious issues like abortion, stem cell research, gay marriage, etc. are put up as major issues to be decided by the president, and if you're a conservative Republican that actually is fine with gay marriage and some forms of abortion, you better not come out and say it, or your party will put pressure on you to conform to their moral stance.  This is a terrible way of running politics, especially when it's more pathos than logos based, and especially when it's based on one particular religious perspective that is not shared amongst all religions.

Now, what do I mean by "pathos-based"?  Well, that's simple enough to explain for those that are not familiar with it.  There are three components to a well-made argument; ethos, pathos, and logos.  Ethos has to do with the speaker's credibility, and let's face it, not a lot of people work to establish this, especially those that start an argument with an ad hominem attack.  Logos is the logic used to support a claim; facts, statistics, observations, etc. fall into logos.  Pathos is the emotional appeal of a claim; vivid language, emotional language, and numerous sensory details.

Saying, for instance, that you support the idea of freedom, of a brighter future, of a future where humans can be happy, etc. is a pathos-based argument.  But without the supporting logos or ethos, it has no real effect on others, and in fact obfuscates issues instead of leading to an intellectually honest debate.  For instance, let's just say that I'm of the opinion that healthcare should be provided to those with disabilities.  Now, one argument against this (as shown on the Daily Show recently) was, "I support freedom!"  That is a pathos-based argument; YOU support freedom, I support tyranny, neverminding the nebulous nature of the word "freedom" (which I'll get into later).  A better response would be to show why this kind of coverage would be a necessarily bad thing; if you can show that the people that would be covered wouldn't be any better off and the previous buyers of healthcare would be put into such a difficult spot, then you'd have a better argument.  Of course, it is also possible to build an argument based on bad logos; relying on studies that you've cherry-picked specifically to demonstrate your point and forgetting that ever important point "...but these other studies show...", or by relying on the claims of someone who specifically has falsified claims or invents studies altogether without citing sources.

Now, the thing about "I'm for freedom!" is that freedom is a very moldable concept.  For instance:  I'm for freedom.  A conservative is for freedom.  All Americans are for freedom.  But freedom for who?  I'm not for freedom of criminals; while I think our prison systems could use an overhaul, I'd be just fine with locking up convicted murderers and serial killers and rapists.  I think we could agree on that.  I AM for foreign prisoners of war -- including those suspected of terrorist actions -- to be dealt with in a way that respects their rights as human beings, but there's many people that would disagree with me, and this has led innocent people to be held in secret prisons where their treatment isn't good.  But there's a deeper thing here that falls under the basic principles of human logic; we're very very good at twisting ideas of freedom, and one of the big examples I would like to pull up involves the antebellum south, specifically involving slavery.

See, when the US became independent and people hashed out a constitution, there was agreement that it would be to represent freedom.  Freedom of the US to be independent and have self-determination, but also freedom for the people in general to be represented in their government, and even the overall overriding idea of freedom for the individual in a more moral fashion.  But freedom for who?  For the African slave?  Oh no, not for them for sure!  With that special form of chattel slavery, in fact, it's not just the slave but their children that are also made slaves -- including children fathered by white men.  There also wasn't freedom for the woman; they could not vote and had little voice.  When the Irish immigrants came, I don't think they felt free when they were kept starving and unable to get jobs, so you can't say the idea supported all white males either.

Still, slavery was the topic I recently studied in my Civil War class for this semester, so it's the one I've had on my mind specifically.  See, the thing about the nebulous definition of "freedom" is that the antebellum South felt that slavery made people free.  "People" didn't include the slaves, of course, but they came up with paternalistic explanations for taking care of slaves; the slaves were provided for, were happier than if they were free, and if a slave was punished, it wasn't because the master was cruel but because the slave was like a misbehaving child that needed to be punished by their betters.  "Punishment" wasn't just beating, whipping, or sometimes even killing though.  "Punishment" could include selling a woman's children so that she'd never see them again, or splitting up friends and family.  So as you can probably already see, their ideas didn't really hold much water, but for them it did.  From their perspective, they were for freedom, and this is why...

See, without a slave to do the household chores and the farming, a white family doesn't have much spare time.  They aren't "free", they have to do menial labor.  The housewife does sewing, cooking, teaching the children, etc.; which, back then, was pretty much a full-time job! Men were doing the farming, often of cash crops that were not easy to process.  Slaves would free up the family, making them able to focus on more cerebral tasks.  Of course, not every family had a slave in the south, and in fact a small percentage did.  But it was part of the dream of most people wanting to rise in Southern society to own a slave someday.  The best slave you could try to get, on a limited budget?  Well, your best investment would be a black woman.  You can then breed children by her, and sell the children off to make money or use the children as slaves as well.  Think about that for a second; you're making your family more "free" and investing in that ideal by selling your own children.  This is baffling logic that really made southern society schizophrenic.  You had the idea that housewives were more free and happier now, but they were often jealous of their husbands, constantly suspecting them of sleeping with the black slaves.  Furthermore, women had to uphold a standard of "purity", while also beating and disciplining the house slaves, which fell under their jurisdiction -- the home.  You were supposed to treat slaves as if you were the parent and they were the child... but then you'd lash them and sell them off in ways you would NEVER treat your child.

So, very few Americans today support slavery, so why do I bring this up?  Well, to show that we tend to be VERY myopic when it comes to ideas of "freedom", and logic can be distorted to support it.  Wolf hunters claim that they want the "freedom" to engage in hunting and so do support their freedom, they have to wipe out wolves, and the implication is that the US government is tyrannical when it tries to stop them from doing so.  Some evangelists proclaim they want the "freedom of religion" to force others to their particular religion, wishing to institute required group prayer in schools... which will necessarily be to one god of one belief in one specific fashion.  Many support the idea of "freedom" from terrorism by engaging in foreign wars and also support the idea of people being held in secret prisons, where legal loopholes keep their rights from being recognized.  Some animal extremists, such as PETA, thinks that the idea of freedom should apply to animals as well, and take such conclusions to extreme and irrational lengths.

Now, naturally I don't agree with those I mention above, but some people do.  The thing is, "freedom" is a subjective argument.  No one is fully for freedom; not for criminals, not for animals kept as pets, not for prisoners of war, not even for people that enlist in the armed forces.  "Freedom" is an ideal that's thrown around, often when someone is seeking to justify the killing of other men, or because they want to do something that's a hobby or controversial, or because there's risk of something changing in society that you've gotten used to, no matter how minor.

To paraphrase Aldous Huxley again (I have to admit, I've become a recent fan of him), the subjectivity of morality has to be tempered with the objectivity of results.  If your head is in the sky and you walk around talking about how all animals should be set free, or all wolves are a problem for wildlife, etc., you're more likely to do harm than good.  We're only human, and your moral code has to take in the facts of nature and the limits of human endurance and social life.

Emotional appeals need backing to them.  Studies cannot be cherry picked to justify a subjective viewpoint. Intellectual honesty should be practiced by everyone, not just those whose jobs require it.  Since "freedom" can justify anything, it really can't justify anything alone.  And, I feel, this entire world could deal with quite a bit more introspection.

Rather strange wolf hunting logic

So, browsing the youtubes recently, I came across a rather stirring argument in the comments involving the subject of wolf hunting in Idaho.  This led me to some "interesting" arguments given from quite an avid fun of wolfhunting,  ruj1970 .   Now, I'm not going to go ahead and claim that all people that want to kill wolves are like these people, but they certainly do seem to have some support from a handful of other hunters that share his mindset.

Now, here's a glimpse into his mindset and justifications for wolf killing:

"Your claim that wolves only kill the old sick or weak animals is a blatant lie. It's pathetic that you little lemmings believe such propaganda. The wolves favorite meal is an elk calf Very often they will rip it from the mother elk as it is being born then leave the mother to die a slow death. Elk herds need a survival rate of calves 25-30 per 100 cows to sustain their numbers. Thanks to the wolves in most areas of Idaho that number is in the single didgets. All you are doing is repeating...."

"I'm making rugs out of the wolves that I killed. I will proudly hang them on my wall so all can see that I saved hundreds of elk from a meaningless slaughter."

"The USFWS has done nothing but lie from the beginning of the wolf recovery project. You think they are going to tell the truth now? LOL, you are a lemming."

In response to a video showing the shooting of a wolf, the description for the video made by  Rockholm66:

"Our Game agencies have been working to destroy the North American Model of Hunting. They infested us with wolves, and we will never hunt our way out of this massive problem. We need to fire the vast majority of these welfare biologists who have conducted fraudulent science. Idaho Fish and Game commissioner, Tony McDermott is the only reason Idaho has more than the 10 breeding pair, and now we have thousands."

says user wildcountry270 :

"Wolves have never been endangered> The illegal wolf introduction is all about agendas, killing off the wildlife to end hunting, killing off livestock to end ranching, ruining country life and heritages in order to condem land for the WIldlands project. Environmental groups lie about the real wolves and appose films such as this that tell the real story. Go visit the land of bones, once known as the Yellowstone. Good Job Scott!!!"

From AntiHuntersLoveMe :

"The wolf disaster will come to be known as how not to manage wildlife and how dispicable the intentions are of the pro wolf cult. It warms my heart to see all those dead wolves and true sports men and woman fighting for our wildlife....our future...our country!"

From furtaker101 :

"shoot those mother fuckers then pull that electric collar off and throw that shit in the water!"

This idea of a massive conspiracy by the US government to get rid of hunting baffles me.  So is the idea that all biologists are in on it.  But really, that's just the thing; this is really what demonization is all about, and once you go full-scale, it's really hard to go back.  For instance, take all those arguments above and assume that you believe in them fully.  What are the results?

Well, basically, there is literally nothing that can possibly dissuade you from your mindset.  The wolves are monstrous animals; every snarl, every gesture, every movement is going to denote that to you.  The government is against you; every law that they pass that promotes wolf conservation is naturally spawned by an innate desire to work against you, and any defense or argument they make is obviously a sign of that.  Biologists that study wolves are "bought" by the government, meaning that anything and everything they say is in support of The Lie.

Now, I've seen this logic before, and I think we all have at one point or another.  It's conspiracy theory logic, but you could also say it's witchhunting or devil-fighting logic.  As Aldous Huxley wrote in The Devils of Loudun (which I am paraphrasing, not quoting), an introspective morality based around desiring to do good leads to virtue, but an external morality centered around defeating evil leads to doing bad things.  Doing good for your own sake is not going to lead to harm as much as intending to fight those that you view as evil, to whom you can justify doing anything and everything, since they're pure evil and anything you do will simply be a "necessary evil" done for good reasons, and we see this in witch hunts; anything the accused says is, naturally, a lie, and anyone that supports the accused are either heretical, sorcerors, or possessed and influenced by demons.  The more "power" you give evil, the more you can justify against that evil, and the more you can close your ears off to it.

Witch hunters employed such tactics when hunting witches; if you're accused, you better hope you have the right connections, or you might as well be guilty.   Conspiracy theorists employ such tactics to support their theory.  Conspiracy theorists start off small enough, really; they see a video or hear an idea and think, "That can't be right", then they look for data that specifically supports that initial presumption.  The thing is, when you start cherry picking data, that can accumulate, and spurious claims can be build on spurious "evidence" that neglects everything that contradicts it, building a house of cards.  Anyone that seeks to topple that house of cards can succeed to the eyes of a layman, but it won't to the conspiracy theorist, because any "debunkers" are with the government or they're "sheeple" just repeating what the government tells them.

That is exactly what is being done here.  Biologists are being paid by the government, so any evidence they give is going to be seen as false.  The US government is after the wolf hunters, so any law it passes must be unjust (unless, of course, it supports the hunter, and then it was passed by a lone hero in the corrupt system).  The wolves themselves will be cherry picked as well; every snarl, every gesture of dominance in the pack, every kill, will have all the bad taken out and none of the good added in.  The wolves kill for sport and target children, they're evil, they're vicious, and they'll kill humans (as many anecdotal cases with little support will be shown).

Now, I am not saying that the wolf is a docile creature that would never ever hurt a human.  Of course that's not true; a starving wolf will do anything it can to survive, as will a human being.  As far as large predators go, wolves are one of the less dangerous predators, but they're still predators that are large enough to do damage to a human being.

However, wolves have a very large part to play in ecology.  For instance, one of the reasons for the ballooning populations of foxes and coyotes was primarily thanks to the eradication of wolf populations thanks to human settlement -- and ask any rancher how big a pest coyotes can be.  Wolves also keep populations strong.  While it IS true that they would kill a young animal if they had the chance, it's also true they kill the sick and wounded.  It isn't a willful choice on their part, but simple hunting logistics; you go for the animals you can catch, and you prefer the animals that fight back the least.  This strengthens herds while human hunting weakens them; with the firearm making killing healthy game easy, and the hunting score system, the killing of large healthy animals is prized, leading to further harm to prey populations.

But still, all of this is based on observations, some logic, and simply put, how ecologies actually tend to work.  It's easy to remove these observations once you discredit those that make them.  Already, biologists that study wolves are discredited; government programs are discredited; what's left?  Well, the wolf hunters. Everyone else are sheeple or in on the conspiracy.  It's as simple as that.

That's what's wrong with this mindset.  But as difficult as it is to argue with it, most conspiracy theorists are pretty harmless.  In this case, wolves are being killed in large quantities because of that very mindset. It can't be shuffled under the carpet and ignored, I think, but at the same time you can't argue and convince these people over the internet, or even face to face.  But this mindset has to be understood, and maybe someone will find a solution for it.  Ultimately, I don't know; I can only watch the images of killed and skinned wolves, I can only see tips made openly on how to poach wolves, and shake my head and wonder... what can be done?