red fuzzy jesus

In Defense of Dumb

Last semester I took a course in statistics that became the hardest academic experience of my life.  I studied almost every day, hired a tutor, participated in study groups, and took flashcards with me everywhere I went to try to train my brain to compute the material.  On a lesser scale other classes were hard to grasp.  I often left class wondering if I was smart enough for the academic program I had chosen.  I felt so dumb and worried about having that feeling until this semester when a conversation with a professor changed my mind.  According to this guy, a pervasive sense of stupidity is one of the most advantageous qualities one can have as a student. 

I love/hate the Jaywalking segments on the Tonight Show.  They take a camera and ask regular people on the street questions for which everyone should know the answer.   Who was the first president?  How many days in a year?  What do we celebrate on Labor Day?  The humor comes from people not knowing the answers to common knowledge questions.   But, even when goaded by Jay, the people never think they’re dumb.  “Ugh, I’m a smart person, giggle giggle” says the busty blonde who doesn’t know the name of the first lady. 

Why was it significant that I felt dumb during my first semester of graduate school?  Because that feeling drives most intellectual pursuits.  A hunger for learning is an admission of inadequacy in your understanding of the world.  Realizing you’re just one dumb human counters the pride that keeps you from asking questions and challenging your own held ideas.  In order to be open to new ideas one has to suspend some of the confidence from previous learning and accommodate challenges to the brain.

I’m often hard on religious fundamentalists whether they be mullahs in the Middle East or evangelists here at home.  But, there are lots of ways to be a fundamentalist.  Fundamentalism is just mental rigidity – an irrational aversion to multiple ways of thinking.  Fundamentalism is really anti-critical thinking, anti-exploration, anti-innovation.  It’s over confidence in the belief that the way you see the world is the true and only way.  Open-mindedness is the simple humility of knowing you could be wrong.  The student of life recognizes the world of knowledge out there and feels fulfilled by reading and questioning it.  In essence, he feels dumb. 

Students that approach graduate school and people that approach life with an attitude that they’re already so learned end up not learning.  Without some awareness of personal ignorance there’s no reason to be inquisitive.  No matter how much you know or how much you don’t know you’ve got to be willing to let both go if you ever hope to know more.  So, feeling dumb has value only if it forces you to read and think.

I fundamentally believe that.   

UNCHECKED AND IMBALANCED

There is a current trend in American politics at both the state and federal level that I find very frightening.  It involves changing or manipulating the procedures of government in order to bypass protections for minorities.  Our system is brilliantly designed to enact the will of the majority while at the same time restricting the tyranny of the majority. The two best examples of efforts to undermine this design are constitutional amendments instead of laws and the removal of the filibuster in the Senate. 

The most noteworthy constitutional amendment is the Federal Marriage Amendment recently reintroduced in both houses of Congress.  Similar amendments on a variety of subjects from tort reform to prayer in schools have been introduced recently at the state level.  Amendments aren’t new but they have recently sparked in popularity after decades of court decisions that provided reproductive rights and took away segregation and prayer in schools.  Those supporting the FMA use the term ‘activist judges’ as a rhetorical device.  To them, judicial activism is a threat to democracy because it overrides the will of the people.  However, in our system of government that is the whole reason we have judicial review.  If the majority passes a law that violates the rights of a minority it is a judicial branch’s job to overturn that law. 

THE FMA IS NOT A GAY ISSUE

The FMA has nothing to do with gay, straight, Christian, non-Christian, morals…  These buzzwords often frame the debate in ‘gay terms’ meaning one should oppose the amendment because of a belief in equal treatment for gay Americans.  In fact, the FMA affects a lot more people than gays. The wording of the FMA is a follows:

Marriage in the

United States

shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups. [emphasis added]

This amendment if passed would not just prevent gay marriage but would also radically change decades of law and legal precedents regarding benefits, rights, and protections for straight single people, cohabitating couples, and their children.  Note the phrasing ‘legal incidents thereof.’  That’s code for a lot of protections currently enjoyed by unmarried people gay and straight.  It would take away the ability of private companies to offer health insurance to domestic partners or local governments to design their own discrimination laws.  Note the phrasing 'any state... law.' 

Currently many companies allow the cohabitating partner and children of an unmarried employee to be covered by the company’s insurance or allow single people to designate a non-relative as a benefactor in a life insurance policy.  Tax law allows an adult to claim a non-biological child as a dependent as long as the child lives in the household even if the adult is not married to the child’s biological parent.  All this, and hundreds of examples like them, would be negated and redesigned if this amendment were passed. 

The amendment is not only about gay marriage.  It’s about a right to privacy, a right for private companies to decide their own benefits policy, a freedom of association, and a right for individuals to decide for themselves the type of relationships to have and the parameters for those relationships.  Of all the parties affected by such an agenda, gay people are the easiest targets.  That’s why those that support it keep talking about gays even though the law restricts benefits for ALL unmarried people.  Note the phrasing ‘unmarried couples or groups.’  That’s a lot of people.  Saying that the amendment would affect laws for all unmarried people is not alarmist hyperbole or conspiracy theory.  It is the stated agenda of those that support it.  They see married heterosexual couples with children as ideal - and they have every right to that opinion.  They also seek to change the legal system so that only that ideal is recognized or encouraged.  Passing laws that do that would never work. So, they are forced to whip up fear about a threat to the institution of marriage and fabricate a crisis called ‘judicial activism’ in order to pass an amendment that would not be subject to judicial review. 

JUDICIAL ACTIVISM IS A MISLEADING RHETORICAL DEVICE

         

After WWII there was a lot of debate among the allies about what to do with the judges of the Third Reich.  It was easy to prosecute leaders who carried out crimes against humanity but questionable whether judges could be held accountable.  After all, they were just interpreting laws on the books and preserving the will of the majority.  The Jews were not suddenly sent to death camps one day.  It was a slow process of gradually taking away their rights and trending toward the Holocaust.  Each step could somehow be connected to a powerful government which in some way reflected the will of a majority of Germans but at the same time violated the human rights of the Jews.  The judges were held accountable after WWII because it was their job to protect the rights of minorities regardless of what the government tried to do to them.

I make this extreme point not to equate gay Americans to Jews under Hitler but to show that the function of the judiciary is to evaluate laws based on principles and to sometimes negate law even if passed by a majority.  Some argue that ‘judicial activism’ is threatening to democracy.  [example] What they want to do is ram their agenda through Congress and not have that agenda be checked by any other branch of government.  Having a system of coequal branches of government that check each other is part and parcel to a democratic system that values individual liberties.  Efforts to minimize the power of the judicial branch pose more of a threat to liberal democracy. 

ENDING THE FILIBUSTER ALSO TAKES AWAY MINORITY RIGHTS

Not only do some want to bypass judicial review, they also want to mold the judiciary to their liking.  There is support now for the majority party in Congress to do away with 220 years worth of rules in the Senate and take away the filibuster.  [One link in support of this, one link against it] That means any judicial nominee would need just a simple majority to be appointed.  Since the Republicans are the majority now they could easily stack the judiciary with like minded judges sympathetic their priorities.  It would also make the opposition party in Congress essentially powerless. 

Another great aspect of our system is the fact that every citizen has representation in Congress – not just those that support the majority party.  The majority has more power but the minority is represented by those that can restrict that majority.  By taking away tools like the filibuster the representation of those that don’t support the majority party disappears.  It is also a short-minded strategy as majority power in Congress changes hands pretty easily.  Without the filibuster a judicial nominee would not have to have broad bi-partisan appeal.  Judges would just be politicians that pander to whatever party has the majority.  Taking away the filibuster would make judges more politically active, not less. 

RESTRICTIONS ON LEGISLATIVE POWERS ARE GOOD THINGS

Supporters of the FMA and ending the filibuster are frustrated that they cannot push judicial nominees through Congress quickly and the laws they get passed, such as restrictions on abortion, are overturned by judges.  They want the 10 Commandments displayed, prayer in schools, media censorship, and abortion outlawed - all objectives they can't achieve under current legal precedent.  What to do?  Pass amendments and stack the bench.  But the speed bumps that slow government down and make it hard to get something through Congress or kill laws once they're passed are intentional and beneficial. 

Checks in our system keep the government of a frenzied fickle majority from passing laws based on whatever hysteria is in vogue.  Currently the trend is hand wringing about moral decay and threats to marriage.  But in the early 90’s ‘Save the Planet’ was an equally trendy political wave.  Communists were today’s gay cartoon characters during the McCarthy error.  Rules shouldn't be changed every time the American people fire up a new witch hunt.   

Opposing things like the FMA isn’t an assertion of gay rights.  It is a vote of confidence in our system of government and all three of its branches.  The debate over the FMA and the senate filibuster needs to move out of its ideological ramblings and focus more on procedure and function.  In that vein I have included reasoning below that ignores the current terms of debate and provides alternative sound bites.

Reasons to support the filibuster and oppose the FMA that have nothing to do with religion, sexual orientation, or any other specific group identifier: 

·        The core document of the federal government should not be changed to dictate social policy no matter who that social policy benefits.

·        Although conservatives often claim a monopoly on patriotism, true patriotism goes beyond just supporting

America

by name and includes supporting our unique system of government.  Efforts to gain power by bypassing checks and balances devalue American institutions and traditions. 

·        All laws should be subject to judicial review.  Using the amending process to forward policy over procedure prevents constitutional protections.

·        All citizens should be represented by government, not just those that support the majority party.  Taking away the filibuster takes away representation for those that oppose the majority party.

·        The FMA is so broadly worded that it would reorder decades of laws and legal precedents.  Framing the debate over the FMA as a gay issue is intellectually dishonest because it does not take into account the full scope of the amendment. 

·        The FMA restricts rights, protections and benefits to only married couples.  Phrasing that excludes ALL legal incidents thereof for ALL unmarried couples or groups creates a new social caste based solely on gender and marital status. 

·        All people should have the freedom to choose who they associate with and the nature of those relationships. Such decisions are too personal and too private to be covered by broad federal law or an amendment to the federal constitution.

·        All private companies, local governments and their entities should have the ability to determine their own policies regarding contracts, benefits, privileges, and protections.  Augmenting the federal constitution to create one-size-fits-all social policy violates traditions of limited government and federalism as well as economic liberty and self determination. 

Genus d'Zombie: Manifestations of Zombieism in Contemporary Culture

With all that is going on in the world I’m not sure why I am compelled to write two articles on zombies.  I think it is because a zombie movie will remain in my brain (pun absolutely intended) for days after I watch it – even more so than more serious pieces of film.  Today I am contemplating the different ways in which zombieism manifests itself.  To compare and contrast these manifestations I will look at four contemporary examples of zombieism; Dawn of the Dead, Sean of the Dead, 28 Days Later, and Pope John Paul II. 

DAWN OF THE DEAD – ZOMBIEISM AS DEMON POSSESSION:  In Dawn of the Dead, zombie bite victims die, remain dead for a couple seconds, and then reanimate.  The reanimated version only resembles the original person in appearance.  There is no residual personality from the victim.  The zombie then runs with all its strength to bite the next person.  This manifestation of zombieism is the most metaphysical.  Instead of a biological change in the person, the person essentially dies and his or her body is possessed by another entity – something like a demon.  The demon then exists solely to run around and spread zombieism in the most vicious way possible. 

SEAN OF THE DEAD – ZOMBIEISM AS INTOXICATION:  In Sean of the Dead, zombies do retain residual personality traits of the original person.  The person is not vicious as much as slow and unresponsive.  In this way, zombieism manifests itself as being high on a very powerful drug.  The person remains essentially the same but heavily sedated with a bad case of the munchies.

28 DAYS LATER – ZOMBIEISM AS CHEMICAL IMBALANCE:  Dawn of the Dead may be the most achievable manifestation of zombieism.  Instead of dieing the victims’ physiology changes turning them into a mindless raging maniac.  With all the mood altering prescriptions available today it is easy to conceive some sort of cocktail that suppresses higher brain functions like self awareness and reason while over stimulating lower brain functions like adrenaline and rage.   It is not too large a leap then to assume this chemical altering cocktail could be transferred from person to person via blood interaction.  (Likewise, one would assume then that this manifestation of zombieism is transferable via sexual contact if somehow an uninfected person could sustain copulation with a zombie till completion.) 

POPE JOHN PAUL II – ZOMBIEISM AS GOD’S WORK:  Although not recorded in a film, news footage of the Pope shows he is obviously a zombie.  In this manifestation of zombieism the victim dies but somehow retains the ability to move his head and groan in order to complete God’s work on Earth.  This could be considered the converse of Dawn of the Dead zombieism in which dead people are reanimated to release Satan’s will upon humans.  Current debate over when and if the Pope will ‘retire’ centers around the sustainability of zombieism, an unknown component of the undead. 

In contemporary culture, zombies come in many forms.  Whether possessed, stoned, sociopathic, or presiding over mass, current mores regarding tolerance dictate equal treatment to all forms of zombies.  By focusing on the unique qualities of all zombies one can best achieve appreciation for the rainbow of diversity that is modern zombieism. 

Post-Zombieism: Exploring Moral Roots in Zobiefied England

This weekend I finally saw the movie 28 Days Later. While disappointed with the scariness factor I was pleasantly surprised by the number of thought provoking questions the film raised about sources for morality and situational ethics.

Two disclaimers should be stated from the get go. One, if you haven’t seen the movie I may say a few plot spoilers but nothing that will take away from your overall enjoyment should you rent it someday. Two, I know already that I am interpreting messages from the movie that may never have been intended. That’s okay because the value of art is rooted in the interpreter’s ability to ascribe meaning where no obvious meaning exists – at least that’s why I’m told there are so many paintings of plain red squares at MOMA.

Like Dawn of the Dead, society in 28 is taken over quickly by an infection of ‘rage.’ Though the word zombie is never used, those infected lose rationality and act like rabid animals, consumed only with the compulsive need to consume and/or replicate the infection. Also like Dawn of the Dead, the scariest thing in 28 is the total breakdown of society. No loved ones, no government, no utilities, no community are all much scarier than the most vicious infected person. The few remaining uninfected people have to ban together for protection and scurry to stay alive all the while having little if anything left to live for.

The moral questions begin when the four uninfected new friends make it to a military base where about seven British soldiers, all men, have also managed to remain uninfected by use of heavy artillery. Once inside, Jim, Salina, and Hanna enjoy about a day of peace before realizing the soldiers intend to sleep with Salina and Hannah because there is nothing else to live for unless there are women.

The movie takes strong moral stands that follow an incongruent logic.  While never wanting to condone rape I am hesitant to condone murder as presented in this film – especially brutal sadistic murder. In an effort to prevent Salina and Hannah’s raping, Jim shoots one soldier, releases an infected person into the base to run around and dismember other soldiers, and later kills a man slowly by pressing his thumbs into the soldier’s eye sockets. The movie depicts rape as absolutely evil and death by eye gouging as absolutely justified. This contradictory juxtaposition of ethical rationalization is questionable. What makes one action moral and the other immoral?

Presumably, with the break down of society, morals are based on the survival of the individual. That which keeps you alive is morally justifiable even if it means beheading infected children. Even though society is gone, the characters cannot revert to pure natural law because they can’t instantly erase the ethical programming of having grown up in a society. That leaves an imbalanced mish-mash of value judgments. Beyond base level self-preservation a barely higher level of morality would suggest actions are justified by the need to continue the human race. In this way, Salina’s refusal to even consider sex with one of the soldiers may be considered immoral. Since she and the under-aged Hannah are the only two females known to have survived, situational ethics might suggest that her resistance to sex with any of the men is equally if not more immoral than the proposed rape. Also, her vicious fighting of the soldiers in those specific circumstances can be viewed as immoral because it only increases the chances poor little Hannah will get the bulk of the raping.

In order for the survivors to sustain they need to preserve the integrity of the base. Those circumstances then must call Jim’s actions into question, which are depicted in the movie as being heroic. By intentionally setting an infected person loose in the base his intention becomes to kill those inside even though they may be the only hope of creating a new society. Likewise, intentionally killing other survivors, equally depicted as heroic, could also be viewed as immoral simply for the reason that with every death the survival of the human race becomes less likely.

Where do morals come from? What makes one action immoral and another heroic? That is an endless debate among theologians and philosophers that can’t be settled here. But this movie seems to suggest morals are both products of specific circumstances and yet absolute regardless of circumstances. The movie tries to have it both ways creating a situational ethic in which actions that reduce the likelihood of self-preservation are justified by the drive for self-preservation. This is senseless and yet, as the story unfolds, completely reasonable.

The only answer for this contradiction is the scene in which Jim sees a plane in the sky. Just before he continues killing soldiers the plane lets him know that there are other survivors and somewhere is functioning well enough to fly planes. This still doesn’t explain why the movie believes, when society breaks down and there are no formal rules, rape is bad, murder is grrrrrrrrreat! One can usually recover from rape. No one recovers from death by eye gouging.

Someday I will watch a fluffy horror movie and just enjoy the jump moments. But today I will mull these questions of where morals come from outside of any interpersonal system. Why are Jim’s vicious murders in the movie depicted as noble acts in the context of zombies? My ultimate subconscious goal may be to find some justification to murder the obnoxious guy in the silent study lounge that insists on muttering the words of his book under his breath while he reads. Zombie ethics activate!

Don't Call It A Comeback

For those disheartened by the defeat of Kerry in the 2004 election and the absence of progressive activism evident in his nomination, today was truly a red-letter day.

Some people think voters, regular people like you and me, choose the president. We don’t. We only get to choose between two people and often that choice is a lesser-of-two-evils game. The process that goes into anointing those two people is a long one and it’s anything but democratic. Presidential campaigns always begin the day after one is completed. Even though the mainstream media move on to other topics, in national politics there is no off-season. Officially, the race for the Whitehouse 2008 began Nov. 3 2004. (Actually, this race is an anomaly because of endless speculation about Senator Clinton’s maneuvering for a run next time during the 2004 campaign.)

Of course, before the general election there are the primaries. A small pool of party stars (and whackos with no chance of winning who are just promoting books) compete for the party nomination. Those that are true blue or true red party members vote in primaries and select the nominee. But before those people even get to nominate someone that decision is strongly influenced by “party insiders.”

Party insiders are the paid fulltime officers of the DNC and RNC as well as a mix of high end donors, strategists, elder statesmen and who knows what else. They’re the architects of the party, which functions somewhat like a corporation, and they steer the party ideologically before any politician decides to campaign for its nomination.

In 2003/4, many progressive people were thrilled with Howard Dean. He seemed like a liberal hero because of his direct attacks on Bush’s handling of Iraq which were too spicy for timid congressional dems to hold in their mouths. He seemed anti-big-business, pro-environment and possibly even pro-gay. But before he screamed his campaign for the nomination started to derail because party insiders wanted a more practical version with better chances of defeating Bush. Terry Macauliff, the DNC chair, (not a liberal’s liberal) wanted Kerry; someone who could be a diet Republican. And Kerry was pushed hard so gradually more and more congress members and governors, ever dependent on party money, began endorsing Kerry till he looked like the presumptive nominee.

To many people, Kerry’s nomination represented a defeat of progressivism within the Democratic Party. Many dems felt lukewarm about him – not passionate like they were for Dean – and lined up behind him under an ‘anyone but Bush’ banner. The problem with supporting a candidate just because he’s marginally better than the incumbent is that it does little to stimulate enthusiasm or turnout. Kerry was the diet Republican Macauliff wanted, a little less Bush than Bush, but not what a lot of Democrats wanted.

After the election people wandered aloud, “What does the democratic party stand for? Where are their teeth? And how can a 50/50 split country have one party be so dominant while the other rolls over?” Angry with the outcome, the PAC moveon.org sent a letter to the party elite telling them they would take back the party. They were tired of the nominations of diet Republicans and wanted a progressive person to champion progressive causes that progressive people could truly rally behind.

Macauliff is GONE! Good riddance. And the race to replace him was a heated battle. That is, until today. Today Howard Dean became the only candidate for DNC chair. Every other person wanting that job dropped out of the race. Democratic donors and PACs fed up with the direction of the party shoved him through and his win really represents the victory for progressive people we couldn’t get during the primaries.

Election Day 2008 is still far away. In the meantime half the country has to suck it up and deal with Bush and hope his delusions of a mandate translate into hubris and then downfall. However sad one might be over his reelection, one must always look ahead. The first round of 2008 just ended. *Ding* Progressives won.