TQ White II

This is response to a commentary written by a friend. That's who the "you" is. I don't have the patience right now to edit this into an independent essay but I also feel like I caught a bunch of decently interesting ideas and want them preserved.

Abortion

As far as I can tell, the two sides of this issue are 1) the government decides what sort of surgery a woman can have or, 2) they don't. You say that you like the first trimester compromise and, in the spirit of compromise, I'm ok with that, too, as are all liberals I've ever known about. However, that's not the conservative position. The conservative position includes a constitutional amendment to dictate what a woman can allow a doctor to do to her body. I know, they will say that it's all about the baby. That's an obvious lie. Remember, they cut Head Start.

Affirmative Action

This has nothing to do with "hard working people." You have been dup'd by the righties' propaganda. Affirmative action refers to laws that allow universities to consider race in admissions without violating racial equality laws. Some people (students, not workers) claim to have been harmed when a minority person got a slot they they think they should have gotten. Strangely enough, nobody on the conservative side feels that this is a problem when some (usually rich) kid gets in ahead of a better qualified minority because his or her parents are alumni. Affirmative action laws exist to level the playing field and to allow universities to create a learning environment that they think will help students and that includes having minorities present.

Death Penalty

If we could shoot them and get it over with and eliminate false positives, we would be implementing the death penalty in heaven, not America. False positives are part of the reality that humans are fallible. In your best possible outcome in reality, someone would get killed wrongly. In our real world, the amount of people that have been convicted wrongly is horrifying. Oddly enough, we have excellent affirmative action here. Black people get much more than their fair share of executions. But even if we could do it perfectly, the existence of the death penalty makes *you* a killer. Me, too.

Economy

You are right that regulation is necessary (speed limits are annoying, but nice; water quality standards, too). There is no other option for how regulations should be managed. It's got to be government. I assume that by "benevolent" you mean fair, uncorrupt, or something that adds up to the idea that regulations are necessary but badly implemented. The thing is, that's not true. As with all flawed human enterprises, there are mistakes and problems and villains but, we live in an extremely complicated society with regulations that help us in, literally, millions of ways. If you could do research and find hundreds of examples of terrible regulatory malfeasance, that would still leave hundreds of thousands of regulations that are working just fine. The idea that regulation is some terrible burden is a conservative lie pushed by corporations who want to run roughshod over your life.

Education

Of course charter schools do a better job! They get to kick out kids who are stupid. Imagine a classroom filled with kids who are interested in learning, smart, with involved parents. That's what charter schools have. The public schools you incorrectly excoriate include mentally ill children, stupid children, children who don't speak english, children whose mothers' are crack whores. But, it's false to say that the schools are screwed. What's screwed are the people who insist on high stakes testing. Ot, those who fund the schools so that teachers have to buy supplies out of meager salaries. Or, the fact that children in inner cities have to move their desks out of the way of leaking roofs or hide from gang bangers.

There are, in fact, substantial arguments made that say that the common view of failed education is completely wrong. That it's based on measurements that have nothing to do with reality. (If you care, you can find the information. I'll be happy to discuss.) You probably think your kid's schools have sucked. Most people do. However, how badly does your kid suck as a result of being there? Can she read? Is she bright and motivated and wonderful ?(She seemed to be so when I met her.)  I have that experience, too. It's hard to figure out why you think the schools should be defunded or otherwise dismantled considering that.

Stem Cells

This is a place, as with abortion, where conservatives reveal themselves to be the American Taliban, a retrograde force of anti-intellectual, anti-science movement to prevent peoples' lives from being improved by modernity. The suggestion that stem cell research has a moral component is the most fantastical of fabrications.

Energy

And here is where conservatism shows it's true nature as the philosophy of profit for the already empowered. In any sane world, a view associated with conservatism would be very, very excited about supporting the development of new technology and markets. In that world, they would be criticized for fabricating crazy new reasons to coerce the markets to buy alternative energy and energy conservation equipment. But, modern conservatism does not want companies to develop that would compete with the current, powerful energy companies because conservatism is a corrupt philosophy in the pockets of the corporations.

Assisted Suicide

I do not know of a conservative position or a liberal one relating to assisted suicide. Personally, I'm in favor of the status quo where people quietly make it happen with benign neglect on the part of the law unless something weird happens. I don't know whether the conservative priority is killing people or forcing people to die in pain. I'm guessing the latter. Maybe they just want to make sure that people cannot control their own lives if they are not rich.

Climate Change

The dishonest corruption of the conservative position on climate change is proof that I am 100% right when I say that anyone who isn't fighting these bastards is either a coward or a traitor. If you are not actively working to oppose the destruction of our culture that will result from their viewpoint preventing us from changing our environmental trajecory, you are saying to your children, "Fuck you. I don't care what happens to you."

Gun Control

32,000 people die each year from guns. Half of those people are suicides. Turns out that guns are really good at suicide. Without guns, many of those people would survive and almost no one tries a second time. Almost 75,000 more people are hurt by guns.

You probably are in favor of drunk driving laws. What on earth would make you opposed to regulating guns? Both restrict your freedom to do stupid crap and save lives.

Healthcare

I don't know what you think the 'sides' are but there are not two sides. Conservatism does not have a side. They just hate Barack Obama who implemented an annoyingly pro-corporate, conservative inspired compromise. Fifty votes to repeal. Not one to replace or improve it. Their talking points include lies like death panels.

Obamacare, on the other hand, is simply insurance reform. I am intensely interested in this topic and read everything. I have *never* read anything that presents a single idea of why insurance companies should be allowed to screw people as they always have. To say that you disagree with this side is to say, "I want to allow insurance corporations to continue the practice of canceling your insurance when you are sick."

Homeland Security

This phrase is so broad that I don't understand the point. Liberals want to avoid terrorism and so do conservatives. Personally, I do not believe there is a meaningful threat from terrorists but that's not a political view. I think it's simple reality.

Immigration

Throw out eleven million people. Call them criminals. Deny them and their children vital services. Make it so that they can't get jobs or feed their families. Denigrate them and "illegitimate". Tell the police to hound them. Deny them medical care. Deny them drivers licenses.

That's the conservative position. That's the conservative position in a nation of immigrants. The conservative position is not only impractical, counterproductive and foolish. It is immoral.

Private property

Conservatives only want corporations to have the ability to do things in our society. Liberals believe that we can and should work together to do things that are not driven by profit. Eminent domain inherently includes the ideas of 1) necessity and 2) just compensation. The conservative position says that no matter how important the need, ownership is the most important thing. The fact that it prevents people from working together is gravy.

Conservatives are not so troubled by taking away someone's house based on a contract signed twenty years ago under completely different circumstances, say, a time when jobs existed. Property ownership in the conservative world is only important when it serves corporate interests or inhibits the ability of people to work together.

Religion and Government

You may not have a strong religious affiliation. I do and I feel pain when I see Christian symbology everywhere. When I see my tax dollars being spent maintaining religious sculptures, I feel robbed. When my kids had to put up with a 'moment of silence' that we all know is required by right-wing Christians, I feel like I am being forced to kiss the Pope's ring.

You might not want to go ballistic about the matter but, if the world continues its current trend, there will be Moslem icons everywhere for your grandchildren. In the name of being reasonable, of compromise, we will be asking girls to cover their arms. Allowing religion to be involved with government functions is the most dangerous kind of slippery slope. Religion should be private and never, ever expressed in a public context. If it is, my God says that I have to kill you for being a heretic. Most other peoples' Gods do, too.

Same Sex Marriage

The hypocrisy of the right on this is stunning.

Social Security

Social Security is a good thing. Conservatives most emphatically demonstrate their dishonesty with their view on this topic. They don't want to 'save' it. It doesn't need saving. They want to change it so that we are less secure. That way we will argue less with mistreatment at work. We will also work longer, increasing the number of people in the workforce and keeping wages low.

Taxes

The conservative view on taxes was coined by Ronald Reagan. He equated taxation with theft. Of course, it's actually the way that we work together to accomplish things. Though the conservative viewpoint is greedy, even more, it's a way of making it so that we are all left on our own, so that the only way that money can be grouped into useful piles is under the control of a corporation. The anti-tax policies of conservatism are anti-America and anti-community and anti-worker.

United Nations

The United Nations provides a place where nations can come together and talk. I do not understand how that can be a bad thing. Opposition to the UN is incomprehensible.

War on Terrorism

This is the conservative excuse for implementing a police state and spending giant amounts on armament.

Welfare

As long as there is unemployment, we must have welfare. Corporations have conquered the country. If they don't give you a job, you still need to eat. If we don't have welfare, you have no choice but to steal.

I am angry because I think 'unconscious uncoupling' is a nice phrase and an nicer idea. I think it's a really, really good idea. We live in a world where marriages end. That is reality. Devising new ways to refer to it that don't carry a ton of negative baggage is a good thing. News ways to 'do' it is even better.

I believe that intellectual property is a fiction and that the legal obligation to pay royalties is a bad thing.

My view is based to three things. First, I believe that compensation should come from work. Payment for work that is done on spec, as in the case of a photo library, is not mandatory. I do not believe that Paul McCartney should be sitting on his ass and getting money for something he did in an afternoon forty years ago.

Payment for work that is done on spec, as in the case of a photo library, is not (and should not be) mandatory.  I believe that asserting that the law should force people to pay for this category of 'spec work' is a bad idea because intellectual property is a nouvelle fabrication to enrich a certain category of workers.

However, I'm ok with helping workers if it won't make the world worse and, in the case of royalties (and most other forms of intellectual property) it does. I believe that the motivation of being able to get rich off of royalties has encouraged a gigantic amount of awful 'art'. Our culture would be infinitely better off if only people so crazed and determined that they would do it without royalties were producing our cultural products.

(Since Napster, there has been a huge flourishing in the world of music. There are now a billion bands. The variety is amazing and there is a ton of awesome stuff out there. I can't bear to think about the hideous conformity and superficiality of music before.)

I believe that the traditional word 'property' is stretched to the point of insanity to get to the 'intellectual' kind.Property is something that can be taken away. When I publish your picture, you still have it, ergo, not property. Stealing is when I deprive you of something. I possess it. You don't. Not true with a photo.

The so-called value of the pictures in question comes entirely from the people who look at an enjoy a picture or other work of art. It is bizarre to realize, but true. If no one had ever listened to a Beatles hit, nobody would think it was important in any way if you played it to a friend today. I do not believe that the artist is entitled to that money in any way.

(I do think it's a good idea to give him or her money though and often do for artists that I want to keep producing, an inducement, if you will. That's how I like to spend my culture money.)

Which is to say, as a legal/political philosophy issue, I do not think that royalties (etc) are 'legitimate'. I believe that royalties induce bad art and a bad culture. I don't think there's any justice in the claim that the value in a cultural artifact derives from the artist. I believe it derives from the audience.

But there's more!!

Just about every aspect of the modern intellectual property regime stifles progress. Software is the most egregious example. Since this intellectual property era, there are tales of many startups either not getting off the ground or being killed by intellectual property lawsuits. It's true also of every other medium.

Every artistic representation is a consequence of one's experience. These days, a person has to not only be creative but able to do so in a way that doesn't too closely refer to the artistic context of his or her life. That, imho, represents a huge, unfair reduction in the ability of people to do art. Many people that can't hit that high bar could be doing lots of entertaining and interesting things if they didn't have to worry about being sued for using too much of the things that are around us.

Remember, it is illegal to play your favorite song at your wedding unless you pay royalties. And no, there's not some sort of "it's just one song" exception. If it's in a public place, you owe. Even though the song has no value beyond the fact that they played it at an important moment in your life. If you hadn't done that important moment, it would be completely uninteresting and without value.

ps, Your furniture guy comparison falls apart because the person is taking the guy's property away from him. After that, the bad guys will have it and the good guy will not. Real property is a real thing and we had to develop rules to deal with reality. Intellectual property is, even if one really supports the idea, a fabrication. It has to serve a goal to exist. I believe it doesn't.

In 2010, I discovered a new singer named Caro Emerald. Her album, Deleted Scenes from the Cutting Room Floor, is a serious candidate for the best album I've ever heard. The lyrics were poignant, music fascinating, performance superb. It was rich, powerful, intense. I can't praise it enough.

2014 arrived and brought with it a reminder of the saddest thing about music, the second  album.

Long ago, I found another album by an artist named Lizzie West. It was also, imho, a tour de force. She's a folk singer and song after song, the poetry was powerful, her performance touching. There are songs that made me verklempt every time I listened to them.

Her second album came along and there was none of the magic. Everything about it was competent. None of it thrilling.

SInce then, I've concluded that many artists spent their entire young life, sequestered in their teenage bedroom, writing stuff, thinking stuff, experiencing the frustrations of growing up and recording their perceptions of the world around them in their art. Their first record, to a substantial extent, took ten years to write.

When, finally, the music is produced, it has richness representing the extensive, layered thought behind it.

The second album is done over the course of a year or two and, it's a busy one. Based on an excellent album, they are much busier than before. The amount of thought and inspiration that contribute to the album is microscopic by comparison to the first.

And it shows.

Caro's second album is completely good. I have played it several times and like it. She had medical trouble with her voice before making this record and the damage shows but, she's a spirited singer with a lot of style and a good voice.

What she has in common with Lizzie and other second album writers is that she is aware of what was awesome about her previous record and that influences her work in a profoundly negative way. Again in the context of a fine record, it lacks new ideas. The things that were amazing and charming about the first record return here in a way that reminds me that her pinnacle was on the last record.

I could see this Johnny Depp's performance as Jack Sparrow in his second movie. You could easily imagine him sitting in his trailor watching clips of his brilliant, inventive performance in the first movie, practicing the fey gestures, etc. When he got to the camera, what was magical before was now practiced and artificial. For Caro Emerald, it's nowhere near as bad as that performance became, but it is diminished.

It breaks my heart. In my sixties, I am aware of the passing of youth and the loss of capabilities. It is weird and sad to realize this whole new class of ephemera. Unless she runs into some huge inspiration or bit of luck, this woman has passed her musical prime and she's not yet thirty.

Of course, she might have other opportunities for excellence. New capabilities that come to the fore in her thirties and ones after that in her forties. Etc. I feel that's happened to me in some ways.

Or she might have a change of heart and turn into Madonna. People whined about her constant reinvention but one thing you never, ever heard was the echo of the previous album's good bits on the next one. Consequently, she was consistently inventive, usually excellent and changed the face of music for twenty years.

In any case, it supports my current intention never to stick with something because I'm good at it. That is, I think, the real lesson of the second album.

I think it's ok to prosecute Snowden, even if he should have revealed the breadth of the NSA program. I accept the need to have state secrets and, virtuous or not, that has to be protected.

Where I veer into strict, horrified agreement is that I am completely certain that he would be brutalized by our government if apprehended. While Guantanamo is a completely bad thing, it's a side-issue. What's real is the three years before charges for Jose Padilla or the grotesque torment of Bradley Manning.

In these cases, the government imprisoned the person in harsh, torturous circumstances for years before even granting a trial.

And, of course, it's telling that the correct phrase is "granting a trial". Neither got one until the government bloody well felt like it.

As you know, I am not as concerned as you about the NSA's (possible) abuse of our data. Instead, I am worried as hell about the rest of the government's abuse of people's real, live bodies.

I recently posted an article about the increasingly widespread use of SWAT teams to serve search warrants, destroying property, terrorizing families, and otherwise acting in the way of the jackboot, often toward completely innocent people.

As a result, I completely understand Snowden's unwillingness to accept the consequences of his, as I'd call it, civil disobedience, because it won't be a legal punishment. It will be torture and 'enhanced' interrogation and years of wondering if he will ever get a trial.

Holder didn't say he wouldn't be abused. He said they would not seek the death penalty and he would not be tortured. While Obama has significantly revised the idea of torture by our government, Bradley Manning's example makes clear that Snowden can expect to be severely punished well before a trial is convened.

It is an embarrassment and it is the biggest threat. We think of the fact that we have more people in jail than any other country except, what is it?, Iran is a awful but, the more important clue is that we have become a real, live police state.

Cops do stop and frisk. They use battering rams to serve search warrants. They put people in jail for years without trial. They set up roadblocks to see if your ok to drive. They check your papers at the airport. It goes on and on.

This is big stuff and we need to fix it.

I am 100% strict in my insistence that nobody gets to tell any woman what kind of surgery she has but appreciate your interest being pleasant about it.

Here is why my side goes crazy when they pass laws about abortion clinics: We don't believe that anyone is sincerely trying to 'help'.

You say two things that highlight places where we differ. First, the notion that it's up to you or to the law to make sure a woman has made the correct judgement is a presumption that is offensive to me. I believe that women are fully capable of deciding if they are being coerced and that it is an insult to suggest that they need to be protected.

The other thing is your observation that we fail to see the other's point of view. I actually believe that I do. I realize that you feel sad about the little babies. I realize that you have the belief that those fetuses are tiny humans that you want to protect. And, in fact, I sympathize with you.

The problem is that you want to assuage that feeling by interfering with the bodies of women who disagree. The part of the anti-choice side I cannot fathom is how you can believe that you have the right to interfere with some other woman's decision. To me, it is incomprehensibly arrogant for you to say that any woman should be compelled to compromise with you over the actions she takes with her own body because you have an emotional attachment to, what she and I believe is a fantasy about the potential of that lump of cells.

If I was to say to you (if this exact example applies), "Look, it's obvious that Mohammed is the real deal but, I'm no hardass, let's compromise. You admit that Jesus and Mohammed are equal. You keep worshipping your guy, just don't call him the Son of God."

You (or someone who was Christian if it doesn't apply to you), would consider that request offensive. You would say that I was encroaching on your fundamental right to live your life the way you want. That you *know* that Jesus is the Son of God and the idea that you would compromise on that knowledge is offensive.

For me, and the women I know, your assertion that we should compromise on our belief that women are free to use their bodies as they want and that fetuses are just biological bits is every bit as offensive.

It's worse though, because the anti-choice types want to force women to live their lives, possibly have them ruined, in the name of beliefs you hold but they don't.

It is true that many women are deeply conflicted about this and that's why I use the analogy of a soldier. A soldier does things that are very difficult to make life better for his or her family and country. Many times, the things that must be done are morally ambiguous. (Ask any soldier who has seen combat if you doubt it.)

A woman that judges her best option to be abortion may not like it. She might have visions of cute little babies in her head. She might also have visions of being an impoverished single mom. Or of being thrown out of her parents' house to live on the street. Or of a million other things. When she makes the judgement that her life and that of her family and society are better served by aborting this fetus, that is often a very difficult decision.

It is the brave decision of a warrior. Just as it would be appalling for you to think that you should stand on the battlefield to second guess whether the soldier should have shot that particular opponent or if it was really an innocent who had been forced into the army, it is wrong, wrong in the big moral sense for you to try to interfere with that woman's life and karma.

And so, it comes down to respect. The anti-choice types somehow conclude that their decision about the unprovable reality of the fetus should govern the life of some woman. A woman who, almost always, the anti-choice types are unwilling to help (it's no coincidence that the term 'welfare queen' was coined by anti-choice people).

Even if you are right and fetuses are cute little babies, in the end, it's a matter of respect for women that they must make that decision without having to 'compromise' with some third party. She's already compromising with her emotions. It's none of anyone else's business.

Your turn. Comments are turned on.

"When the government grabs every single fucking telephone call made from the United States over a period of months and years, it is not a prelude to monitoring anything in particular. [...] When they ask for everything, it is not for specific snooping or violations of civil rights, but rather a data base that is being maintained as an investigative tool."

"For us, now — years into this war-footing and this legal dynamic — to loudly proclaim our indignation at the maintenance of an essential and comprehensive investigative database while at the same time insisting on a proactive response to the inevitable attempts at terrorism is as childish as it is obtuse."

http://tqwhite.org/?07E97F

"[B]ecause what I cherish most about America is our open society, and I believe that if there is one more 9/11 — or worse, an attack involving nuclear material — it could lead to the end of the open society as we know it."

"Imagine how many real restrictions to our beautiful open society we would tolerate if there were another attack on the scale of 9/11."

http://tqwhite.org/?BE9C88

"The danger, it seems to me, is not surveillance per se. We have already decided, most of us, that life on the grid entails a certain amount of intrusion. Nor is the danger secrecy [...] The danger is the absence of rigorous, independent regulation and vigilant oversight to keep potential abuses of power from becoming a real menace to our freedom."

http://tqwhite.org?5D7235

http://tqwhite.org/?5D7235

I find myself embattled with my usual crowd of political friends as I have taken the unpopular view that I think that Barack can be trusted to administer the NSA wiretapping and data collection programs properly.

There is one thing that I have read repeatedly, both in personal conversations and in the media, that I need to dismiss. That canard goes something like, "Sure, if we do these programs, we will eventually collar some bad guys. It would be even better if we allowed the police to search everyone's home."

This is a classic case of false equivalence. In fact, the entire Fourth Amendment, "unreasonable search" argument is slightly off, in my opinion. (Not, mind you, that I am entirely comfortable with government monitoring.)

There are two points I want to make. First, these programs are not actually interfering with your life in any way, as would a periodic search of your house. The phrase "unreasonable search" also includes "and seizure". While I am as enthusiastic as anyone about interpreting the Constitution in a modern context, looking at information that one leaves sitting around other people's computers is not comparable to jackboots stomping all over your carpets.

The other point is that, given my intent to charitable interpret the situation, I can easily see this more as 'community policing' than searching everyone's homes.

In the community policing model, cops are sent to basically  spend their lives in a neighborhood. The goal is that they can unobtrusively become aware of the nature of the community and its inhabitants so that they can, without having to hassle everyone, know who is causing problems and head off crimes before damage is done.

The knowledge in that neighborhood cops head is an uncontrolled, detailed set of information that could be used for good or evil. The NSA database could be characterized as analogous to that cop's awareness. Given proper controls, it could be seen as a way for defenders to see know what is going on in a way that allows an overview.

It could be providing a capability where, as the cop notices that a handful of young men are suddenly flashing rolls of cash with no apparent explanation, the NSA guy could see that there is phone traffic focusing on some location that procured unusual amounts of potentially explosive fertilizer recently.

For me, the whole thing is presently acceptable because I believe that the President has the good intentions, moral fortitude and discipline to administer the program fairly. That is, I am confident that this particular database is run according to a set of rules defined by a guy I trust.

For it to be acceptable in the long run, it has to be protected against the next George Bush. That is, legal rules must be created to turn abuse into a crime and establish permanent norms that prevent this tool from turning into a monster. That also means that the corporate databases from which the NSA derives it's database must be controlled as well, including responsibility for the uses to which their data is put by others, including the NSA.

This program is not going  away and I'm not sure that I want it to. I am sure that we do not have sufficient protections concerning the use of our personal data in any context, governmental or corporate. That should change.

An undercover guy was in a bar and had a conversation where a guy he knows to be a really bad person tells him to stay out of the subway for the foreseeable future. He leers and says that he's heard something really big is going down. He doesn't know much but what he does know sends a serious chill down the back of the good guy. The undercover guy tries to get more information but can only learn that the guy found out about this while overhearing a cell phone conversation in a bar last Thursday.

He contacts his bosses with the information. The undercover guy is hopeful that the problem can be tracked down because the bar where the cellphone conversation happened  probably only had twenty people pass through it on a quiet Thursday night. There would only be a handful of cell calls from the place. That list should be available at the click of a mouse. Finding the cellphone on the other end should be another click. A quick check of the location data for those phones reveals that they have been talking to a phone that came up in another investigation.

Wait! They can't do that. We decided that, instead of "a click of the mouse", they had to fill out a form, get a warrant and wait for those things to be approved. Oh, and they had to know the name and phone number of the guy in the bar before they could get the warrant. Since they don't know that, they don't even apply.

The government defenders are saying that a plot to blow up bombs in the New York subway was foiled a while ago. Imagine how frustrated that undercover guy and his support team would feel as they thought about that overheard conversation. Imagine how annoyed you'd be at your mother's funeral.