I once saw a blog post criticizing Banned Books Week, on the basis that nowadays, the problem isn't the suppression of ideas so much as the proliferation of absurd ideas faster than they can be discredited. I agree completely, and I wish I could find it again, to link it. However, while awareness of a problem is preferable to ignorance of danger, it doesn't do much good if action isn't taken.
The way to fight misinformation is with properly-researched information, and there are plenty of fact-checking sites out there already, such as Snopes and Politifact. However, we can't force people to do research. While writing this, I thought back to an xkcd strip (http://xkcd.com/810/), which seemed to offer a suggestion, especially with the title text: "And what about all the people who won't be able to join the community because they're terrible at making helpful and constructive co-- ... oh." While it might seem tempting to apply this idea to the real world, the thing about a democracy is that we can't just say who can vote and who can't, nor should we want to (http://www.crmvet.org/info/lithome.htm). Those people who would be pushed outside the system wouldn't just disappear, and the worst thing one can do with the ignorant is to remove their sense of belonging to the community.
The reason the xkcd suggestion would work on the Internet is because the 'Net is fractured, an exaggeration of our tendency to self-segregate according to hobbies and interests, without the real-life counteracting need to cross these social boundaries for such basic needs as groceries. What defines a nation is the fact that the majority of its members think of themselves as belonging to one nation, and this is why alienating fellow citizens through disenfranchisement would be self-destructive.
In the early '90s film Pump Up the Volume, Val Kilmer's character was given the line, "The truth is a virus"; well, we've been shown that misinformation is, too, only it's more virulent. How do we stop it? I dunno. But this is one of the Internet's strong points: hooking people up, and allowing for brainstorming on a scale unthinkable without it.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
A White Southerner Writes About the Civil War.
Originally posted on June 20, 2011 at 3:15am
So, I have a confession to make: I own two Confederate flag handkerchiefs, purchased by me with the intent of invoking the idea of the secession attempt as a positive thing. I needed handkerchiefs for geology camp (attended the summer before I came to the Baton Rouge campus in LSU back in 2001), and I made no attempt to hide my ownership of them there. But that's not the worst part: I have, on repeated occasions, been heard to say, "The South shall rise again!" in the latter half of my high school career -- those keeping score may well note I'm describing my days at LSMSA. Yes, I do cringe in embarrassment. I know this all looks bad, but please, let me explain.
I was always bothered by one key detail regarding the Civil War: that major policy was decided by military victories rather than policy discussion and debates. For me, it was my hippie liberal idealism which prompted me to travel a path that is often associated with fringe right-wing NRA supporters. This was my first real confrontation with the basic fact that the military is necessary, and me being young and foolish, I rejected the notion. This is what dictatorships do!, I thought to myself. There should be some principle other than fear of armed conflict that keeps a nation together! Granted, the textbooks I was given in grade school didn't help. I clearly remember one making the argument that perhaps at most a quarter of the people who fought in the war were slaveowners, so obviously the war could not be about slavery. (Considering a different textbook -- a science textbook -- described how people were being hoodwinked by lawsuits against asbestos, and the pain I unwittingly had caused someone who, when we first met, had lost a dear relative to mesothelioma, I am severely angry in response to aspects of my education; but I am even angrier at how uncritical I was of anything I read.)
I would have to say my saving grace is my curiosity. Or more precisely, that even if it takes a while, I have an innate need to understand, almost to the point of a compulsion, that kicks in whenever my stronger emotions have sufficiently dissipated. So, for instance, in response to a childhood of hearing certain influential grown-ups rant about the evils of affirmative action, when finally presented with the opportunity, I tried to learn as much about what affirmative action is, even though people at that particular Hugh O'Brien Youth Leadership seminar came to think of me as "that kid with the weird obsession with affirmative action." Whatever; I had made an attempt to sate my curiosity, which was my goal in the first place. That would have been during my sophomore year, I believe; since then, I have actually learned something of how to navigate social events, even though it took me a while. Well into my undergraduate years.
For a while I was content to take information passively, for the most part. So I would sit in such-and-such a talk, where afterwards, during the Q&A mingling, it was pointed out to me that the chattel slavery that was practiced in America before its abolishment was inherently different from the slavery practiced by, say, the Greek city-states or Roman empire; and that even if someone wasn't a slaveowner, the Southern economy was based to a large part on slavery -- surely there would be economic ramifications. While listening to NPR, I heard the point made that, contrary to popular belief, the Civil War did not end slavery; that was done by a change in law -- in particular, Amendment 13 to the Constitution -- as it should be: we see our mistakes, and we fix them as a result of discourse, not bloodshed. However, the issue of secession still bugged me.
Then I realized I had the answer all the time: the Articles of Confederation. America already went through a period of a weaker central government, and realized how bad an idea it was. So what do you do with someone who fails to learn the lessons of history? However, I'm no historian, and this argument really does nothing but taking further out of my preferred depths. But -- there's a more deciding factor, which is that the South attacked first, at Fort Sumter. One can well argue that the South was quite within their rights to attempt a secession through violence, but for honesty such a person must concede that in such an environment, the only rational move for the North was to retaliate: to expect anything else would be madness, willful ignorance, or outright stupidity regarding the workings of human society. With this realization, it becomes clear that morally, the North was in the right, and any attempt to repaint the Civil War as "Northern aggression" is either cynical revisionist history, or else a sharp break with reality.
This was not all I learned, however. I learned that the comeback of the Confederate flag, during the 1930s, was the result of action by White Supremacist groups. I was also introduced to an explanation to the "one-quarter are slaveowners" numbers problem, one which fits cleanly with my understanding of human nature: white supremacy was a defense mechanism used by non-slaveowners to rationalize their own inaction regarding the assistance of people in need; this one left me feeling like a member of The Family chasing after a Timelord: what I at first took to be a sign of strength on my part, in the silence of these experts, may well be their mercy to an arrogant, vicious group, an attempt to spare hurt feelings. But foolishly, I just pushed, and pushed.
Maybe I should keep the handkerchiefs, as a personal reminder about the dangers of using a symbol without knowing what it truly signifies; and also, as an admonishment to keep my mouth shut whenever I don't know what I'm talking about. (Speaking of which, it *is* "Toe the line." Sorry, CNN newsanchor I wrongly called out for that spelling.)
PS: The ultimate irony in all this is that the term "Yankee" is the ultimate badge of the rebel in America. We, the Americans, took a British insult and proudly adopted it as an identity. And yet as a Southerner, I've been conditioned to cringe at the thought of being described by this word, as if we lived in an alternate reality where the South wasn't part of the USA. I want to claim this term to describe me, but it just feels weird.
I was always bothered by one key detail regarding the Civil War: that major policy was decided by military victories rather than policy discussion and debates. For me, it was my hippie liberal idealism which prompted me to travel a path that is often associated with fringe right-wing NRA supporters. This was my first real confrontation with the basic fact that the military is necessary, and me being young and foolish, I rejected the notion. This is what dictatorships do!, I thought to myself. There should be some principle other than fear of armed conflict that keeps a nation together! Granted, the textbooks I was given in grade school didn't help. I clearly remember one making the argument that perhaps at most a quarter of the people who fought in the war were slaveowners, so obviously the war could not be about slavery. (Considering a different textbook -- a science textbook -- described how people were being hoodwinked by lawsuits against asbestos, and the pain I unwittingly had caused someone who, when we first met, had lost a dear relative to mesothelioma, I am severely angry in response to aspects of my education; but I am even angrier at how uncritical I was of anything I read.)
I would have to say my saving grace is my curiosity. Or more precisely, that even if it takes a while, I have an innate need to understand, almost to the point of a compulsion, that kicks in whenever my stronger emotions have sufficiently dissipated. So, for instance, in response to a childhood of hearing certain influential grown-ups rant about the evils of affirmative action, when finally presented with the opportunity, I tried to learn as much about what affirmative action is, even though people at that particular Hugh O'Brien Youth Leadership seminar came to think of me as "that kid with the weird obsession with affirmative action." Whatever; I had made an attempt to sate my curiosity, which was my goal in the first place. That would have been during my sophomore year, I believe; since then, I have actually learned something of how to navigate social events, even though it took me a while. Well into my undergraduate years.
For a while I was content to take information passively, for the most part. So I would sit in such-and-such a talk, where afterwards, during the Q&A mingling, it was pointed out to me that the chattel slavery that was practiced in America before its abolishment was inherently different from the slavery practiced by, say, the Greek city-states or Roman empire; and that even if someone wasn't a slaveowner, the Southern economy was based to a large part on slavery -- surely there would be economic ramifications. While listening to NPR, I heard the point made that, contrary to popular belief, the Civil War did not end slavery; that was done by a change in law -- in particular, Amendment 13 to the Constitution -- as it should be: we see our mistakes, and we fix them as a result of discourse, not bloodshed. However, the issue of secession still bugged me.
Then I realized I had the answer all the time: the Articles of Confederation. America already went through a period of a weaker central government, and realized how bad an idea it was. So what do you do with someone who fails to learn the lessons of history? However, I'm no historian, and this argument really does nothing but taking further out of my preferred depths. But -- there's a more deciding factor, which is that the South attacked first, at Fort Sumter. One can well argue that the South was quite within their rights to attempt a secession through violence, but for honesty such a person must concede that in such an environment, the only rational move for the North was to retaliate: to expect anything else would be madness, willful ignorance, or outright stupidity regarding the workings of human society. With this realization, it becomes clear that morally, the North was in the right, and any attempt to repaint the Civil War as "Northern aggression" is either cynical revisionist history, or else a sharp break with reality.
This was not all I learned, however. I learned that the comeback of the Confederate flag, during the 1930s, was the result of action by White Supremacist groups. I was also introduced to an explanation to the "one-quarter are slaveowners" numbers problem, one which fits cleanly with my understanding of human nature: white supremacy was a defense mechanism used by non-slaveowners to rationalize their own inaction regarding the assistance of people in need; this one left me feeling like a member of The Family chasing after a Timelord: what I at first took to be a sign of strength on my part, in the silence of these experts, may well be their mercy to an arrogant, vicious group, an attempt to spare hurt feelings. But foolishly, I just pushed, and pushed.
Maybe I should keep the handkerchiefs, as a personal reminder about the dangers of using a symbol without knowing what it truly signifies; and also, as an admonishment to keep my mouth shut whenever I don't know what I'm talking about. (Speaking of which, it *is* "Toe the line." Sorry, CNN newsanchor I wrongly called out for that spelling.)
PS: The ultimate irony in all this is that the term "Yankee" is the ultimate badge of the rebel in America. We, the Americans, took a British insult and proudly adopted it as an identity. And yet as a Southerner, I've been conditioned to cringe at the thought of being described by this word, as if we lived in an alternate reality where the South wasn't part of the USA. I want to claim this term to describe me, but it just feels weird.
Humans versus animals: Who's Better?
Originally posted on March 28, 2011 at 11:54am
I read a comment today that prompted me to address this topic; the gist was that, given how much damage people are doing, the commenter viewed animals as being superior. Now, in the past I've joked that it's time humans went extinct to give orangutans a chance to develop sentience and use it properly; but in reality, I'm fully aware just how bad an idea this is. What makes it so bad is that it's what we have in common with other animals, rather than what makes us different, that's mucking up the world: if other species had the means to do so, they would be just as destructive as we are, without either the conscience or the sense of aesthetic, or even the sense of being one of a larger whole, that push some of us at least to voice the idea that perhaps we should slow down a little. The problem comes about when a species develops just enough know-how to do some very serious damage, but has not yet developed the maturity to handle it -- like a child with a power tool. Or, as Einstein put it, "It has become appallingly clear that our technology has surpassed our humanity."
I read a comment today that prompted me to address this topic; the gist was that, given how much damage people are doing, the commenter viewed animals as being superior. Now, in the past I've joked that it's time humans went extinct to give orangutans a chance to develop sentience and use it properly; but in reality, I'm fully aware just how bad an idea this is. What makes it so bad is that it's what we have in common with other animals, rather than what makes us different, that's mucking up the world: if other species had the means to do so, they would be just as destructive as we are, without either the conscience or the sense of aesthetic, or even the sense of being one of a larger whole, that push some of us at least to voice the idea that perhaps we should slow down a little. The problem comes about when a species develops just enough know-how to do some very serious damage, but has not yet developed the maturity to handle it -- like a child with a power tool. Or, as Einstein put it, "It has become appallingly clear that our technology has surpassed our humanity."
In Defense of Bill O'Reilly
Originally posted on Tuesday, January 11, 2011 at 12:03am
So recently, David Silverman of American Atheists was a guest on the O'Reilly Factor, and O'Reilly confronted him with the following proof of God's existence: the tide. At first glance, it sounds as if Mr. Bill needs to take a refresher course in high school geology; but it turns out that he's also used the sunrise and sunset as a similar proof, which leads one to believe Bill O'Reilly is an utter moron, or we're missing something; and as tempting as it is to think so, I can't believe anyone that influential would be that stupid. So what are we missing?
I believe that what O'Reilly is arguing isn't the event itself, but its regularity, its periodic nature which he feels is rock-solid evidence of God's existence. The fact that not only do these events happen, but they happen with a remarkable predictability. Now, there are various ways to address this -- the worst, but most relevant, being the rotation-invariance of the laws of physics -- but I will address this the way I always address a teleological argument: this is yet again an example of conditional probability causing difficulties. The question is not: what is the likelihood that the planet where we find ourselves has such nice periodic behavior? The question is, rather: what is the likelihood that some planet somewhere would have sufficient periodic behavior to allow for the formation of intelligent life; and what then is the likelihood for intelligent life to arise?
Of course, there are some subtleties involved in these questions; and there are deep philosophical questions involved with defining the terms I'm using (such as, how do we define "intelligent life" in a time before there is intelligent life to use as a benchmark?); but that doesn't matter to show why O'Reilly is wrong. The simple fact is that whereas religion is interested in establishing Real Truth, science is satisfied with a working explanation, even though it may never come close to the correct answer. Since religion is asking the harder question, the burden of proof is higher for religion, if it is to have the surety of science. That is the main difference: science asks questions it thinks it might be able to answer, whereas with some of the questions religion asks, there's not necessarily any way to make sure the questions even make sense! So surely, O'Reilly can be forgiven if he haughtily makes silly statements as a result of getting into philosophical questions that are much deeper than he can fathom, without realizing it; deep philosophy can be quite the hall of mirrors, and it takes special training just to stop and ask, "What did I just say?" (For the record, I don't have that training, and in terms of philosophical thought, mathematical training is a sorry replacement for extended analysis of deep questions, or whatever it is philosophy students do.)
I believe that what O'Reilly is arguing isn't the event itself, but its regularity, its periodic nature which he feels is rock-solid evidence of God's existence. The fact that not only do these events happen, but they happen with a remarkable predictability. Now, there are various ways to address this -- the worst, but most relevant, being the rotation-invariance of the laws of physics -- but I will address this the way I always address a teleological argument: this is yet again an example of conditional probability causing difficulties. The question is not: what is the likelihood that the planet where we find ourselves has such nice periodic behavior? The question is, rather: what is the likelihood that some planet somewhere would have sufficient periodic behavior to allow for the formation of intelligent life; and what then is the likelihood for intelligent life to arise?
Of course, there are some subtleties involved in these questions; and there are deep philosophical questions involved with defining the terms I'm using (such as, how do we define "intelligent life" in a time before there is intelligent life to use as a benchmark?); but that doesn't matter to show why O'Reilly is wrong. The simple fact is that whereas religion is interested in establishing Real Truth, science is satisfied with a working explanation, even though it may never come close to the correct answer. Since religion is asking the harder question, the burden of proof is higher for religion, if it is to have the surety of science. That is the main difference: science asks questions it thinks it might be able to answer, whereas with some of the questions religion asks, there's not necessarily any way to make sure the questions even make sense! So surely, O'Reilly can be forgiven if he haughtily makes silly statements as a result of getting into philosophical questions that are much deeper than he can fathom, without realizing it; deep philosophy can be quite the hall of mirrors, and it takes special training just to stop and ask, "What did I just say?" (For the record, I don't have that training, and in terms of philosophical thought, mathematical training is a sorry replacement for extended analysis of deep questions, or whatever it is philosophy students do.)
My ever-changing views on war.
Originally posted on January 5, 2011 at 12:03pm
Those who knew me growing up might be surprised to see me defending the act of war, as I was strongly anti-war as a child. Since war and the death penalty were two issues which survived such a major life-altering event as my rejection of my religious beliefs, to some degree I clung to them (irrationally) as reflections of who I truly am, since not even something as powerful as religion seemed to define "the real me."
As I see it, war results from a peacock's tail effect: just as a long, beautiful tail increases a peacock's chances at reproduction, although the resulting arm's race of tail length makes the species more prone to predation, I believe that human behavior which works well in individual cases (say, preferential trust for that which is more familiar when confronted with a world of so many unknowns, or parents struggling for basic resources for their children) become less and less advantageous as the social system in question becomes larger and larger. If we throw in some of the basic human motivations, say, revenge, and hatred or indifference toward "The Other" as perceived by us (to paraphrase from Western Front, we dehumanize the enemy to make killing easier), or even sheer frustration, we have the seeds of many atrocities of war: rape as a tool for demoralizing the enemy; the Bataan Death March/Trail of Tears; Abu Ghraib; the murder of Archimedes; the Diaspora.
Lately, whenever I pose the question of the necessity of war, I consider the following hypothetical: if I had a child who depended on me to live, what ideals would I be willing to sacrifice to ensure this child's life, and what ideals are important enough to let this child die? I then extrapolate to increasingly larger realms of responsibility, until I become a vote in Congress/POTUS/Grand Dictator of Le Republique de la Banane. If I believed there were credible threats among a group in my country, could I okay a document-checking program of potential American citizens, deporting those who don't have the right papers? The internment of Japanese Americans? The Rwandan genocide? The Holocaust? I like to think that I would stop before I get into "genocide" territory, but why? If I truly believe that they would stop at nothing to build powerful weapons to kill us, what choice do I have but to fight until the threat is eradicated from the face of the earth? If I am a soldier, and I am told that the strangers being put in my hands live and die solely for the purpose of destroying everyone and everything I hold dear, why on earth would I not treat them like dogs, reveling in their humiliation? As I've said before, the problems of war are the problems of the modern western human.
And yet I do have lines I dare not cross. If I cross them, I may not feel bad just then, but give me two days, or two months, or two years: I come to feel guilt, maybe anguish, and instead of finding the act easier (which does happen sometimes), it becomes harder once an idea becomes an action, and the emotional fallout becomes fact rather than prediction. Of course, this brings us back to the original question of divided loyalty: what conditions would make it possible to kill a stranger to save a child? On this note, I would like to point out that in the school board shooting of last year, the heroic security guard who killed the hostage taker, instead of rationalizing his behavior as "I killed a bad man who deserved it," struggled with his conscience over the act of taking another person's life, which I believe one identifier of a true hero as contrasted with a sociopath who happened to be in a place to save some people. (Or, to put a pessimistic slant to that last statement, "The truly good guys are the ones who suffer.") This is also why I think the argument that women shouldn't be on the front lines because they're mentally unable to handle it is complete nonsense: no human being is able to handle it, and those who are aren't the people we want out there.
And speaking of the people we don't want out there, what of the screening process? Be it the case of the Fort Hood shooting, the flight school that taught the 9/11 hijackers how to fly, or the cop who killed my aunt, surely there were signs that should have indicated something was seriously wrong, am I right? Except I've taken statistics; I know there are two types of errors one can make -- reject someone who should not be rejected, or do not reject someone who should be rejected -- and it takes increasingly larger access to resources to make these errors smaller and smaller. If we want enough cops on the street to keep the criminal element in check, if we want sufficient field psychologists to aid our troops in an environment that is mentally taxing to an extreme, or if we are a flight school that wants enough customers to meet our financial needs, we need to weigh the fact of limited resources against potentially unforeseen, perhaps unknowable risks. The saying is that hindsight is 20/20; I disagree. Hindsight causes tunnel vision: we only see what did happen, not what could have happened. This is not to dismiss incompetence which perhaps allowed tragedy; this is merely a reminder of the realities of living in a messy world. The very unpredictability which makes the world a wondrous place to live is also what makes it so scary at times.
Those who knew me growing up might be surprised to see me defending the act of war, as I was strongly anti-war as a child. Since war and the death penalty were two issues which survived such a major life-altering event as my rejection of my religious beliefs, to some degree I clung to them (irrationally) as reflections of who I truly am, since not even something as powerful as religion seemed to define "the real me."
As I see it, war results from a peacock's tail effect: just as a long, beautiful tail increases a peacock's chances at reproduction, although the resulting arm's race of tail length makes the species more prone to predation, I believe that human behavior which works well in individual cases (say, preferential trust for that which is more familiar when confronted with a world of so many unknowns, or parents struggling for basic resources for their children) become less and less advantageous as the social system in question becomes larger and larger. If we throw in some of the basic human motivations, say, revenge, and hatred or indifference toward "The Other" as perceived by us (to paraphrase from Western Front, we dehumanize the enemy to make killing easier), or even sheer frustration, we have the seeds of many atrocities of war: rape as a tool for demoralizing the enemy; the Bataan Death March/Trail of Tears; Abu Ghraib; the murder of Archimedes; the Diaspora.
Lately, whenever I pose the question of the necessity of war, I consider the following hypothetical: if I had a child who depended on me to live, what ideals would I be willing to sacrifice to ensure this child's life, and what ideals are important enough to let this child die? I then extrapolate to increasingly larger realms of responsibility, until I become a vote in Congress/POTUS/Grand Dictator of Le Republique de la Banane. If I believed there were credible threats among a group in my country, could I okay a document-checking program of potential American citizens, deporting those who don't have the right papers? The internment of Japanese Americans? The Rwandan genocide? The Holocaust? I like to think that I would stop before I get into "genocide" territory, but why? If I truly believe that they would stop at nothing to build powerful weapons to kill us, what choice do I have but to fight until the threat is eradicated from the face of the earth? If I am a soldier, and I am told that the strangers being put in my hands live and die solely for the purpose of destroying everyone and everything I hold dear, why on earth would I not treat them like dogs, reveling in their humiliation? As I've said before, the problems of war are the problems of the modern western human.
And yet I do have lines I dare not cross. If I cross them, I may not feel bad just then, but give me two days, or two months, or two years: I come to feel guilt, maybe anguish, and instead of finding the act easier (which does happen sometimes), it becomes harder once an idea becomes an action, and the emotional fallout becomes fact rather than prediction. Of course, this brings us back to the original question of divided loyalty: what conditions would make it possible to kill a stranger to save a child? On this note, I would like to point out that in the school board shooting of last year, the heroic security guard who killed the hostage taker, instead of rationalizing his behavior as "I killed a bad man who deserved it," struggled with his conscience over the act of taking another person's life, which I believe one identifier of a true hero as contrasted with a sociopath who happened to be in a place to save some people. (Or, to put a pessimistic slant to that last statement, "The truly good guys are the ones who suffer.") This is also why I think the argument that women shouldn't be on the front lines because they're mentally unable to handle it is complete nonsense: no human being is able to handle it, and those who are aren't the people we want out there.
And speaking of the people we don't want out there, what of the screening process? Be it the case of the Fort Hood shooting, the flight school that taught the 9/11 hijackers how to fly, or the cop who killed my aunt, surely there were signs that should have indicated something was seriously wrong, am I right? Except I've taken statistics; I know there are two types of errors one can make -- reject someone who should not be rejected, or do not reject someone who should be rejected -- and it takes increasingly larger access to resources to make these errors smaller and smaller. If we want enough cops on the street to keep the criminal element in check, if we want sufficient field psychologists to aid our troops in an environment that is mentally taxing to an extreme, or if we are a flight school that wants enough customers to meet our financial needs, we need to weigh the fact of limited resources against potentially unforeseen, perhaps unknowable risks. The saying is that hindsight is 20/20; I disagree. Hindsight causes tunnel vision: we only see what did happen, not what could have happened. This is not to dismiss incompetence which perhaps allowed tragedy; this is merely a reminder of the realities of living in a messy world. The very unpredictability which makes the world a wondrous place to live is also what makes it so scary at times.
And now, poetry time.
Originally posted on May 17, 2010 at 12:05am
"Design," by Robert Frost.
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth --
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth --
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.
"Design," by Robert Frost.
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth --
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth --
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.
My view on the 2008 Presidential election.
Originally posted on May 9, 2010 at 12:13pm
When JFK ran for President, many people were afraid he'd be a puppet for the Catholic church; and now he's one of the nation's most beloved leaders. Fast forward to the Republican primaries for the 2008 election, where it was feared that if one of the candidates became President, he would be a puppet for the Catholic church. This shows me that in 1960, it wasn't a Catholic the American people elected; it was a charismatic man who happened to be Catholic, and Catholic-Protestant relations weren't changed by that election. This is why I believe that, after eight years of President George Bush, people were willing to overlook Obama's skin color and vote for him. The fact that we have a black President is at most a fleeting symbolic victory for race relations, and I don't think it will have any real effect. I, for one, am just glad to have a President who thinks before he acts.
"In fact today I think I'll have a French Tickler, for I am a Protestant!"--Graham Chapman
When JFK ran for President, many people were afraid he'd be a puppet for the Catholic church; and now he's one of the nation's most beloved leaders. Fast forward to the Republican primaries for the 2008 election, where it was feared that if one of the candidates became President, he would be a puppet for the Catholic church. This shows me that in 1960, it wasn't a Catholic the American people elected; it was a charismatic man who happened to be Catholic, and Catholic-Protestant relations weren't changed by that election. This is why I believe that, after eight years of President George Bush, people were willing to overlook Obama's skin color and vote for him. The fact that we have a black President is at most a fleeting symbolic victory for race relations, and I don't think it will have any real effect. I, for one, am just glad to have a President who thinks before he acts.
"In fact today I think I'll have a French Tickler, for I am a Protestant!"--Graham Chapman
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