And the Most Despicable Person On the Planet Is...

Bill Donohue. Apparently, if you're not zealously anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-creativity, anti-Democratic Party, anti-religious freedom, and anti-diversity, you hate America, its culture, Christians, and most importantly, Catholics. I hope most Catholics feel nothing but contempt for this man who wants us to believe he speaks for them.

If you read that article, you're going to feel very dirty, so in order to make you feel better, I give you this man, who is Donohue's opposite, and his better, in every way:

Leiter on Limbaugh on Swine Flu

Is it just me, or is a post like this disturbing? Brian Leiter in full:

I realize eugenics is politically and morally incorrect, but I can not say that I am upset that followers of Rush Limbaugh will not get the swine flu vaccine.

At least he acknowledges that it is, in fact, "morally incorrect," which is a pleasant way of saying immoral. I prefer immorality when it's fully self-conscious. Still, even though Leiter was probably making a really, really tasteless joke, I feel like pointing out that if Limbaugh's listeners don't get vaccines, and get swine flu, then others who, say, can't afford the vaccines or otherwise don't have access or knowledge of them, and who are exposed to Limbaugh's listeners might also get swine flu. I know that H1N1 isn't as deadly as was at first believed (I had it 2 weeks ago, and survived, and I have to say it was the worst bout of flu I've ever had, and I'm still weak as a result of it), but joking about anyone getting a highly communicable and potentially deadly disease because you disagree with their politics is just plain tasteless. It's Limbaughian, even.

Photographic Appeals to Emotion

If you've spent any time around the University of Texas at Austin campus over the last several years, chances are you've seen 18-foot tall photos of aborted fetuses on more than one occasion. These photos are part of an exhibit by anti-abortion groups that periodically pops up at various spots on campus (sometimes off the East Mall, sometimes near the Student Union). It's a very effective exhibit, too. Not in convincing anyone, though it may do that, but in disturbing people. Disgust and horror is often visible on the faces of many of the passers by.

This tactic -- disgusting people with images -- is the purest form of manipulation. Any first year philosophy student taking a logic course will recognize it as an example of the informal fallacy "appeal to emotion," with the argument going something like this: abortion is disgusting, therefore abortion is morally wrong. The fallaciousness of this argument should be obvious, but if it's not, take another example from medicine: open heart surgery is disgusting, therefore open heart surgery is morally wrong.

I bring this up because I find this tactic even more disturbing when people who should know better use it. Anyone who does use photographic appeals to emotion to strengthen their argument should be ashamed of themselves. And they might want to take a closer look at the position they're taking, as well. If you feel the need to resort to manipulation to make your case, chances are you couldn't make it very well without it.

Alain Badiou on the State of Capitalism

From "Is The Word 'Communism' Forever Doomed?" (via):

Just like maybe after 1840, we are now confronted with absolutely cynical capitalism, more and more inspired by the ideas that only work backwards: poor are justly poor, the Africans are underdeveloped, and that the future with no discernable limit belongs to the civilized bourgeoisie of the Western world. All kinds of phenomena from the 19th century reappear, extraordinarily extended forms of misery within these countries themselves. Forever growing in inequality, the radical cut between the people of the working classes, of the uninformed, and the middle class, the complete dissolution of political power in the service of property and capitalist profits. Several years of ratiocination, disorganization of revolutionaries, and the nihilist despair of large portions of the youth, the servility of the large majority of them, and the experience of the base obsequiousness of formal groups in the quest of the contemporary means to establish, re-establish, find new definitions for the Communist hypothesis.

All these characteristics are very close to the political situation which was dominant in Europe in the middle of the 19th century. Which is why the apparent victory of capitalism, occasion to the second sequence of the Communist hypothesis [1917 to 1976], had been, in fact, a very strong reaction, a very strong return to something very old. The politicization of contemporary capitalism is as you see the return to the cynical capitalism of the 19th century. And it is probably why after the 19th century the question is not for us the victory of the Communist hypothesis, but the conditions of its identity. Our problems are much more the problems of Marx than the problems of Lenin, and that was the great question of the revolutionaries of the 19th century.

Badiou is arguing that the problems the "communist hypothesis," which is a very broad hypothesis, is presented with today are not like those that gave rise to the Bolshevik revolution and the subsequent authoritarianism of the Communist Party, but like those that led to the positing of the hypothesis in the middle of the 19th century. The problem for the Bolsheviks was victory: how to get beyond local action and local successes to the triumph of communism generally. The problem of the 1800s was of how to overcome capitalism and its iniquities, and create a better society. That's where we are today, Badiou argues, and the question once again begs for an answer.

I've often wondered if the crises of today will lead to action and change, or merely a reaffirming of the present institutions. Capitalism, at least in the West, has been quite resilient. When pressed, it bends, but only in order to curve around and tackle the very forces pressing it. And what presses it most, ultimately, is itself. So that it often seems as though capitalism will be the death of itself, only to rise again even more dominant, even more cynical, even more controlling, even more reactive. And what would replace it? I sometimes share Conrad's cynicism in Under Western Eyes. Meet the new boss; same as the old boss? I wish I had more hope. I'm not sure we even have a blueprint for radical change. "Communism" as a hypothesis, as Badiou expresses it, is to abstract. It's little more than "human flourishing" with a ring of equality. And that's barely even a hypothesis. It's more like an impression, and a vague one at that.

The Virtues of Disunity or Why Civility Is More Important Than Unity

On the 8th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, I was reading my favorite sports blog, when I came a cross a post remembering those attacks. The post had links to a couple videos, including Paul Simon's memorable performance of "The Boxer" on Saturday Night Live, backed by New York firefighters. The post's comments quickly devolved into politics, as you might imagine if you've read anything about the September 11th attacks in the last few years, and several of the commenters remembered with fondness the political unity that followed the attacks, lamenting the relative lack of unity we're seeing in America today. I couldn't have agreed less.

Now I will agree, for the sake of discussion, to forget what that unity actually bought us: two wars, at least one of which was a tragic mistake (and which was sold to us with lies that would likely have been much less convincing without that unity), the Patriot Act, which most members of Congress failed to read (likely for the sake of unity), Guantanamo Bay and indefinite detentions, a second Bush term¹, etc., etc., etc. But even with such agreed forgetfulness, I'm still loath to believe that the post-September 11 unity was a good thing. For one, democracy, only works, to the extent that it does, with healthy debate and discussion, and the sort of unity this country experienced after September 11, 2001 made debate and discussion nearly impossible. Can you imagine what would have happened to politicians who had vocally opposed our going to war in Afghanistan? Oh wait, I'm supposed to be forgetting that stuff.

The other, related problem with unity of this sort is that a lot of stuff that should get done, or should at least be the subject of discussion, doesn't, because it would threaten the unity. Politicians, particularly those who are members of the party that is not in power, are unlikely to broach certain subjects unrelated to the cause of the unity (e.g., abortion, health care, etc.) that are likely to spark dissent. It's probably not a coincidence that Bush's popularity took a nosedive when he went after Social Security. By doing so, he alienated the American political middle who had, by and large, stuck with him since they had become Bush fans on September 12, 2001, and thereby killed the last vestiges of the post-9/11 unity. We were then left with the old divisions -- left, right, and middle/undecided. And it's not as though Bush hadn't been planning to go after Social Security all along. It's just that he waited until reelection so that his reelection bid could benefit from his residual post-9/11 popularity. With unity comes complacency.

If you ask me (and it's not as though anyone actually did, but still), what we need more than unity is civility. The only thing that can rival unity's ability to stifle political debate and discussion is incivility. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a champion of civility for civility's sake: the next time some asshole driver turning right, but only looking left, nearly runs me over while I try to cross the street, the finger I extend and the words that freely flow from my mouth will show just how committed I am to civility in that context. I don't even believe that civility is called for in every discussion. The purveyors² of Young Earth Creationism, for example, deserve nothing but derision dripping with mocking and smothered in secret disrespect sauce. But in political discourse, the goal at least should be to convince people that your position is the correct one. And incivility, of the sort that talk radio and, in "today's 24-hour news cycle" (scare quotes cannot express how much I hate that phrase), TV news channels thrive on, that inspires political signs painting Bush or Obama as Hitler, or causes books and articles proclaiming liberalism to be based on fascist principles or conservatism to be based in mental instability to be widely read and agreed with, makes convincing anyone impossible. Or at least, it leads to a situation in which the only way to convince anyone of anything is to first convince them that your opposition is a bigger villain than the villain your opposition is portraying you to be. This ultimately gets us nowhere.

Witness the health care debate, with its socialist/Marxist/fascist bogeymen and threats of death panels. Sure, this has seemingly changed certain people's minds, given that until recently, the vast majority of Americans favored universal healthcare and even single-payer health care, but now are convinced that Democrats are out to kill their grandmothers, but where do we go from here? The discussion, or lack thereof, doesn't leave us with many outs, even should we decide that government-run health care, in the form of a public option or whatever, isn't the way we as a country want to go. The Baucus bill, which is a result of this political "discussion," is exactly the sort of meaningless incivility. Meanwhile, health care remains in crisis. Unity wouldn't help us here, because if we were united as we were after September 11, 2001, we wouldn't even be talking about health care (we sure as hell didn't talk about it much from 2002-2007), but a little bit of civility might. At least then we'd actually be able to discuss a single-payer health care, a public option, co-ops, or any number of other potential changes to our health care system, and decide where all of that leaves us. Where it leaves us can't be worse than where we are now.

1I know, I know, Bush was reelected in one of the most contentious elections ever, winning by one of the lowest margins (percentage-wise) ever, particularly for a war president, but ask yourself this question: would Bush have had any chance of reelection, given how close the election in fact was, if he hadn't benefited from the residual popularity he had from that post-September 11 unity?
2The purveyors, but not the believers. The purveyors are to be derided, but the believers are to be educated. Education requires trust, and trust requires, at a minimum, civility.

Dostoevsky vs. Rand

This is undoubtedly not a unique insight, but doesn't Crime and Punishment strike you as a preemptive polemic against pretty much everything Ayn Rand ever wrote? If nothing else, placing Rand into the light of Raskolnikov brings into stark relief her (ironic?) Napoleonism.