Short Memory: The NSA Scandal That Wasn't Really News After All

Allow me to address the current NSA situation in its historical context.

Remember back in 2001 when Congress passed the PATRIOT Act, which granted unparalleled surveillance and detention powers to the federal government? You know, the law specifically named the way it was in order to allow its proponents to go McCarthy on anyone who opposed it by calling them unpatriotic? Now think back to 2007, when the PATRIOT Act was made permanent by Congress. Each of these votes occurred during one of Bush Jr's terms, whom Democrats should know as "that president you're not allowed to blame anymore".

Well, let's spread the blame around a little. It was his administration that created the situation we're in right now. It was his that pushed for making that situation permanent by law.

Now I don't know if the GOP really intended to pass that kind of power to the next president the way they did. For all I know, it's equally possible that this program of theirs was the same as the NDAA scandal - wherein Republicans in Congress use riders to fill the Defense Department budget bill (which is what the National Defense Authorization Act is and always has been) with unsavory bits that the president can't excise by line-item veto but has to approve carte blanche in order to fund, well, the military - in that they get to blame the Democrat for their own ideas and thereby fracture the opposition. Maybe they were so confident in following up Bush with another opportunist hack named John McCain that they never imagined the NSA's system being used by a Democrat. I really don't know. What I do know is that this surveillance has been going on a lot longer than the current media firestorm over Edward Snowden's actions would lead you to believe.

I was in 6th grade when the PATRIOT Act was passed, and I completely bought into the mindset presented by its backers that if I wasn't doing anything wrong, I didn't have anything to hide. After all, this was the way things worked in school. If I wasn't doodling in class, why would I be so protective with my arm when the teacher walked by? Now that I'm in college, that's a moot point given how little my teachers care about laptop use in class. In fact, I'm pretty much obligated to use my laptop everyday or risk missing things during lectures or not being able to put enough time into my written assignments, much less all my online quizzes and exams. That being said, I realize now that the argument above about not having anything to hide was basically constructed for people who shared the same mentality that I did in elementary school: black-and-white, with no room for shades of gray or complexities.

This isn't to say that I'm not still torn about the current surveillance debate. After all, none of us wants the US government observing our electronic communications, but some of us undoubtedly need it. That would be the Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev's, the Timothy McVeigh's, and Wade Michael Page's among us, who I don't think any of us would say should've gone unobserved. Yet for all intents and purposes, it appears that they did. Is this simply to say that the men and women whose job it is to find and stop madmen like these are human? Likely. As in all human endeavors, there will be errors and missteps, which can allow tragedies to happen. However, we also have to consider that increasing the vigilance with which we engage in surveillance operations will by definition affect us all. As was posited back in 2001, "if you aren't doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to hide", right?

Taking this conversation to the present day, we arrive at the fallout of the Edward Snowden case and the  unprecedented amounts of information he leaked regarding the PRISM program, created by the Protect America Act of 2007 and renewed last year until 2017. Included were records implicating companies like Verizon Wireless, Google, Yahoo, and Apple in a vast network of data harvesting that encompassed almost the entire world, all leading back to the NSA. In the clamor for answers, we've seen two sides develop with not much in between. The first, represented by at least one FOX contributor, is taking a similar argument to that which was used in 2001: leaking of government documents, even those proving that government agencies are behaving unethically, is treason and should be punished as such. Now this is a man who clearly believes that his side has something to gain from the continuance of not just the spying program, but also the political ideology which gave it birth. This would be the neo-conservative movement, symbolized by the likes of Cheney and Rove, and still pushed by FOX News to an extent. On the other side, we have perhaps the only instance in which Michael Moore and Glenn Beck will agree with each other.

The message we got from the executive branch thus far has been this:

"You can't have 100 percent security and then also have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience. You know, we're going to have to make some choices as a society."

Now as tempting as it is to retort cleverly with a certain quote from Benjamin Franklin about what is deserved by those who sacrifice liberty for security, I think we need to look at what President Obama said here in more realistic terms. To be clear, human societies need both law and law enforcement to function properly. We admit that this is the reality, inasmuch as we don't live in Sir Thomas More's Utopia yet. If law enforcement doesn't have the tools it needs to get the job done, then laws simply go unenforced. On the other hand, we want to avoid a police state as much as possible while still providing those supposedly sworn to protect us with the ability to do their jobs. If it seems depressing to know that we still don't have a solution for this dilemma yet, then it should comfort you (at least slightly) to know that the US is no exception in that regard, as pretty much every human civilization since the dawn of agriculture hasn't been able to do it either.

I guess what I'm trying to say is this: if it looks like I'm not offering a solution here, then it's because I don't really have a complete solution in mind. This is a complex issue and if the most I can do is at least convince readers of that fact, then I feel like I've done my job with this post. The last thing we need in a time that demands reasoned debate is retreats into polarized histrionics. I guess what I'm also trying to say is that anyone who tries to draw you or me into the trap of "STOP BLAMING BUSH!!!11!!" needs to be accosted with a history book posthaste. That's where this program began. We can quite literally state that if it weren't for the Bush administration, then we wouldn't be in this mess, among the many other messes we're currently in as a result of his presidency's failures and outright lies. The connections to the Obama administration come into play here in 2008, where he defended a revised version of the plan and stated his reservations for doing so, and the Senate vote in 2012 that occurred on his watch. Even taking into consideration the fact that PRISM was "can’t be used to intentionally target any Americans or anyone in the U.S." but rather foreign nationals living abroad who could pose a threat to our national security (and US citizens living abroad on a very limited basis), we have to admit that we're dealing with some very complex moral arguments on both sides of the issue.

The sooner we admit that, the closer we come to the state of mind necessary to debate this logically. Violent revolution is not the solution we need, but neither is continuance down the road to a total police state. If anything, these kinds of programs need to be highly regulated if they can't be removed entirely. Even transparency has its risks. As much as we need to know what our government is doing supposedly on our behalf, I also wouldn't have wanted the Operation Overlord plans to be revealed prematurely, even "for the sake of transparency".

I hope we can arrive at a happy medium, but I'm not entirely confident that we will. After all, who says our ethical philosophers are any better than those of Rome or the Greek city-states? They wrestled with these same dilemmas. Perhaps that's why I take issue with claims of American exceptionalism, at least in practice: just because some of our nation's solutions to age-old problems of human society are different hasn't made those problems go away. We still fight over rights stated to be "inalienable" and granted by our Creator, as we have from the days before the Revolution and as we likely will until the end of time. If anything, we feel them more strongly than they've ever been felt before, due to the high standards we set for ourselves in this nation's founding documents. The question, it seems, is this: will we ever be wise enough to collectively realize America's position in regard to historical context? And if so, will we be strong enough as a people to do something about it?

The Allure of Conspiracy Theories, or Even More Intellectual Hipsters

Holocaust denial.

Roswell.

The Apollo program.

9/11.

Barack Obama's birth certificate.

Benghazi.

Aurora.

Now Sandy Hook.

You've seen the documentaries, the books, and the Facebook posts. Maybe you even did some serious research into the claims made by these various "theories". I hesitate to call them actual theories because I actually like science, and a scientific theory has nothing in common with any of the above-mentioned conspiracies. In at least two of those examples, science has actually done a thorough job at debunking the ideas in question. Even Buzz Aldrin got in the action back in 2002, debunking some dude in the chops with a mean right hook.

For as long as we've had public access to the internet, these kinds of conspiracies have been able to spread and mutate at unprecedented rates; that's part of the price we pay for nearly global availability to a good portion of all human knowledge since the dawn of writing and beyond. Misinformation has always been a part of our history as a species, and now the situation is infinitely more complicated. Keeping up with and debunking the kinds of messages which used to be relegated to sandwich boards worn by scraggly-bearded street "prophets" is a never-ending task, and that only refers to the things that aren't so far out there that no debunking should even be necessary. I'm looking at you, Time Cube Guy.

The question I always have is "why". Why should I believe that the US government falsified all seven manned Apollo lunar missions, including the one that didn't even land on the moon, and none of the hundreds of thousands of people involved (much less the KGB) ever spilled the beans? Why should I believe that the September 11th attacks were the result of controlled demolitions when even the so-called smoking guns underlying the conspiracy are perfectly explainable using physics (see Popular Mechanics link above) and have subsequently been corroborated by thousands of independent scientists? Why should I believe that the Obama administration hired and then recycled "crisis actors" who "couldn't even cry convincingly" to pose as lawyers and parents for two different mass shootings, even though they should've known that the crazy corners of the internet would be all over it like, well, moon-spiracy nuts on out-of-focus Photoshops of Apollo capsules?

The other "why" question I have in mind is "why do people even fall for this stuff?" I don't think I really know the answer to this, because I would probably be a rich psychologist by now if I did. What I will do is try relatively hard to figure out why conspiracy theories seem so exciting to the people who believe them, and how they can be so laughable for those of us who don't.

As the so-called Sandy Hook truther movement is still fresh in the minds of everyone with an internet connection and especially a Facebook, we'll first take a look at that. Not necessarily at their claims, which are assuredly addressed in detail elsewhere, but at the underlying factors behind the spread of the ironically-named truthers.

One point that bears remembering at the moment is that American sociopolitical discourse involving guns is functionally retarded, and I mean that in a purely psychological way, as in "we are years behind the rest of what we describe egotistically as the first world". It's now gotten to the point where our gun debate in the US now plays host to both crackerjack Examiner screeds about "false flag Illuminati psy ops" (actually, don't click that link because the author gets paid by the click) and drooling NRA lovers who feel that the First Amendment gives them the right to heckle the father of a murdered Kindergartner during a congressional hearing by shouting "THE SECOND AMENDMENT!" as he talks about why nobody needs military-style weapons.

Now, the Second Amendment and its interpretation are the subject for a different post. In fact, interpretation of said amendment isn't really my job, since I'm neither a constitutional law professor nor a federal judge. What is relevant here is the fact that our discourse on guns has become so polarized that to suggest moderation is, at least for the folks on the "all guns, all the time" side of the debate, inerrant "proof" that you yourself are culpable in a vast, decades-long disarmament conspiracy. Oh, you didn't know that you were suddenly complicit and have in fact been complicit for your whole life? Well, that's easy enough to address. The hardcore conspiracy nut will simply tell you that you're either lying, or that they possess some secret knowledge not known to the rest of the world and certainly not known to you (unless of course you were lying).

And here we've arrived at one of the hallmarks of conspiracy theories: secret knowledge that can be used as a weapon against your perceived enemies, and specifically the belief that said knowledge elevates the believer above the rest. Call them what you will - the masses, sheep, Kool-Aid drinkers (though we all know the folks at Jonestown drank Flavor-Aid instead), what have you. The very fact that you know something they don't (which, incidentally, will probably turn out to be false) makes you better than them, or at least it does in Conspiracy Theory Land.

For some historical context regarding humanity's obsession with secret knowledge, we should to go back about two thousand years to the beginnings of a movement we now know as Gnosticism  Not agnosticism, which is the philosophical position that one does not and cannot know whether there is or isn't a God after all, which seems rather pragmatic when you put it that way. No, Gnosticism is an English adaptation of a Greek term based on the word gnosis, or "direct knowledge". As an adjective, "Gnostic" is typically applied to religious/philosophical groups that emerged after Christianity that were bent on discovering gnosis, or true knowledge of life, the universe, and everything. Their teachings frequently referenced supposedly secret ceremonies, rituals, and teaching that were not only traceable to apostles or other leaders in the early Christian church or even to figures in the Old Testament, but also that were in fact the "true" way to attain salvation.

The Gnostics were naturally derided by early Christian authors, mainly because various gnostic sects of the day worshiped just about any biblical figure you could think of as being the actual savior, whereas everyone else apparently just wasn't hip enough to, say, worship Cain or the snake from Genesis. There were also sects who believed that Jesus the spirit possessed the body of Jesus the man, or that wisdom was personified as a female member of the godhead, or that the God of the Old Testament was actually a demon holding the spirits of humanity captive, or that God was actually a hermaphrodite, etc... I think you get the point.

Basically, all of these Gnostic sects can be seen as 1st century equivalents of the conspiracy movements we see today for the reason that they all relied on a unique belief they thought to be secret and/or ancient, resulting in an over-arching assumption about reality that would ultimately "save" them from the corrupt systems that make up the world around us. In other words, they were snooty, pseudo-intellectual hipsters who believed the world to be just like The Matrix, and they were such hipsters that they did this 2000 years before The Matrix even came out. Whoa. It's like Hispter-ception. They used this "secret knowledge" of theirs to parade around as quasi-enlightened individuals, simply because their beliefs were so much more complicated than everyone else's at the time and were therefore true, because apparently simplicity of belief equates to simplicity of mind. If that's truly the case, then I can only imagine them trying to wrap their heads around all the things we now take for granted as a result of that tiny little equation known as the theory of relativity.

I like simplicity. I like Occam's Razor. If your solution or explanation is too complicated, it's probably not the best. In fact, it's probably stupid. If, when confronted with a mass shooting at an elementary school, you have to resort to "reptilians pulling the strings behind the global bankers pulling the strings behind the UN used President Obama as a tool to use Adam Lanza as a tool (or did they?!) to fake a mass shooting at an elementary school so that he can pass dictatorial executive orders to bring Agenda 21 and the UN Weapons Treaty into America... just like Hitler!", then I don't really have time enough in my day to deal with you. First off, stop to breathe. Run-on sentences don't do anyone any good. Second, the sheer ridiculousness of the premise is defeated by the vastly simpler explanation, which is that a crazy kid got a hold of his mom's guns and shot people with them.

Now, the great thing about believing in conspiracy theories is that you can justifiably resort to ad hominem attacks on anyone who opposes you. What, a physicist debunked your pet moon landing hypothesis? Just scream "Sheeple!" and call it a day! It's really as simple as that. Is your name Sheriff Joe Arpaio and do you doggedly cling to a third-rate hack "journalist" from World Net Daily (who makes his living selling fear), all in an attempt to retain some semblance of relevance through press conference diatribes about the manufactured controversy surrounding President Obama's birth certificate? No problem: just keep promising a bigger bomb shell at your next press conference, and keep sending deputies to Hawaii on the tax payers' dime.

Conspiracy theories can also be comforting in the sickest way possible, because they claim to give us a scapegoat onto which we can pile our collective problems. Housing market got you down? Blame the global bankers/Jews! Don't like the president but don't want to air your real grievances for fear of being called a racist? Just pretend he was born in Kenya, because every single person of African descent was obviously born in Africa: where else would they come from? Do you casually admire Adolf Hitler's racial ideologies because you, as a person of Germanic descent, need to artificially inflate your own fragile ego while accusing others of nursing a 70-year victim complex? Simply assert that "some reports" about the Holocaust were exaggerated! See? Conspiracy theories can be easy and fun, provided you don't have enough properly-firing synapses to see through them.

In short, belief in conspiracy theories is so deliciously tempting for at least two reasons: the believer can feel as if they've been initiated into a secret club of those who know the "truth", and anyone who disagrees with you is simply a non-believer who can be summarily shunned and derided. It's like the ultimate in juvenile non-logic, because all you have to do to be "right" is be afraid and eat up everything the bloggers tell you to believ-




...




Oh my... I... I think just figured it out. So instead of being right by listening to experts (physicists, chemists, law enforcement, astronauts, witnesses, etc.) and studying their respective testimonies, all I have to do is turn over my heart and soul to some basement blogger on WordPress and suddenly I get to call myself an expert now? Well gee, if that's all I gotta do, who needs a degree from MIT or even a basic working knowledge of  history and scientific principles? The world jut became so much simpler! I'm right, everyone else is wrong and most likely culpable in the same cover-up the guy on Examiner was raging against the other day, and any contradicting evidence to my ideas is also part of the cover-up. How convenient!

Of course, the real world doesn't really work like that. The real world, as shown increasingly by science, is based on some pretty simple principles. There's our old buddy e=mc^2 again, allowing everything from a basic understanding of light as energy, to the foundations of nuclear physics. I tend to view all these conspiracies through the same lens. For instance, I can quite easily believe the "official narrative" about the Holocaust because I've actually been to Neuengamme concentration camp and have seen what Christian-in-name-only, supersessionist lunatics can accomplish when they set their minds to it. Also, it makes far more sense to me that decades of theoretical and eventually practical astrophysics would culminate in not one, but six successful manned ventures to the moon, not counting the hundreds of probes and rovers before and after the Apollo program. The idea that determined terrorists would take flight lessons for years before hijacking and crashing passenger jets into buildings makes far more sense than the controlled demolition nonsense getting passed around on the internet, mostly because the alleged holes in the "official narrative" aren't holes at all. By the way, it bears mentioning that whenever you see the term "official narrative" in association with anything even mildly controversial, you can know for sure that you've spotted another conspiracy theorist.

Are you confused as to whether a given viewpoint represents scientific inquiry or fear-mongering conspiracy? Here's a handy guide:

• Science starts with a hypothesis, then collects data, and concludes with a theory designed to match the data. Conspiracies begin with a conclusion, then manipulate existing data into becoming ex post facto "proof".
• Science is falsifiable, meaning experiments are conducted with the expressed purpose of disproving previous hypotheses and theories. Conspiracies pass themselves off as being incapable of falsification, as if only the existence of the idea were proof enough of its veracity, which works to disregard all evidence to the contrary as delusions perpetrated by a nebulous enemy, e.g. Illuminati, Jews/global bankers, Masons, reptilians, etc.
• Science is cumulative and incremental, in that a gradual accumulation of data ultimately leads to an increasingly-complete understanding of a given principle. Conspiracies tend to leap into being rather suddenly, beginning with a single over-arching hypothesis - "someone is out to get me" - and accelerating into a full-fledged conspiracy mythos.
• Science is essentially the pursuit of the simplest possible explanation for natural phenomena. Conspiracies thrive on complex, drawn-out plans which demand acceptance merely because they have the illusion of being far-reaching and all-encompassing.

Remember, folks: if it sounds ridiculous, chances are it's probably ridiculous.

As If You Needed Another Reason...

Ready for another reason to vote blue next Tuesday? Let's go back in time to 2009, when President Obama had just been sworn in and liberal anger was still white-hot against the Bush administration. Remember how so many wanted to prosecute the entire administration for war crimes, dragging out a simple campaign slogan of "no more war" to what would've been a lengthy, bitterly-divisive, and costly investigation?

Well, President Obama put the kibosh on that right out of the gate, promising that he would move forward with rebuilding the nation and stopping the wars before he dragged out the skeletons from W's closet and put his brand-new presidency at risk. Plenty of liberals wanted more, and as new evidence comes to light, we've seen that they likely had a point, especially about allegations that the administration ignored key warnings that  coulda-woulda-shoulda prevented 9/11.

Or that they were torturing prisoners in defiance of the Geneva Convention.

Or that they lied about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Or that they proceeded with the invasion of Iraq in opposition to international law.

Or... Or...

I think you get the point. Now let's come back to the present. I shouldn't have to tell you about the many controversies, manufactured or otherwise, that have cropped up from right-wing circles about President Obama and his administration. We've seen already that prominent Republicans like Darrell Issa have no qualms about making their own highly-public "investigations" into anything that they think will embolden their base and/or hurt the president. They will literally stop at nothing. So in light of what I've just talked about with President Obama flatly declaring that Bush administration officials are to be given immunity from trials, what do you think will happen if Mitt Romney is elected?

Let me tell you.

His administration will give carte blanche to the likes of Darrell Issa, Joe Arpaio, and any other crackerjack conspiracy theorist to launch their own "investigations" into anything about Barack Obama (and anyone who worked for him) that they feel inclined to blow smoke about. The birther quests and Benghazi bloviations of today will look like child's play in comparison.

Now am I arguing that we re-elect the president to shield him from legitimate investigations in the case of actual wrong-doing on the part of himself or his employees? Certainly not. In the case that he or his administration screws up, they should be held accountable according to legal procedure, but not to some vindictive kangaroo court that a Romney presidency would be powerless to stop, if it didn't outright endorse one.

And who's to say that such retribution would stop at Barack Obama and key administration officials? To play a little devil's advocate here, why not also draw in Democratic members of Congress, on the national and state levels? And why not key Democratic fundraisers and activists? Furthermore, what about the volunteers who could also be implicated? And why not take it all the way down to the very root of the "problem": to the very people who voted for him in the first place?

In case you've been asleep these past few months- well, really years- you've no doubt heard people tell you that "this election is the most important one of our generation". Well guess what: they're right. Absolutely, positively right. And before you go accusing me of spreading just another conspiracy theory, just remember who we're dealing with. Remember where their priorities lie: uteri, guns, and theocracy. Now remember that we are the only tangible thing standing between them and total control of the three things I just mentioned.

Do you really need another reason to make Tuesday "Blues-day"? Really?

AZ Proposition 204, Explained For People Who Have Working Brains

Arizona-based fans, I'm calling a huddle here for a minute. How many of you are familiar with Prop 204? It's a ballot initiative that would keep the temporary sales tax increase that we approved last election, to the tune of $1 billion for public schools. Republicans, like the Center for Arizona Policy, Secretary of State Ken Bennett, and State Treasurer Doug Ducey don't like it one bit. Bennett tried to disqualify it from the ballot, and now Herr Ducey has a new bone to pick with Prop 204: it's "fifteen pages long, single-spaced".

Apparently, this is too much for our dear state treasurer, who likes his books 15 pages long, with pictures of dogs on bikes and only one short sentence every other page. He's so perturbed about this page length issue that he's made a commercial to complain about it. Well, listen up, Ducey:

1.) The revenue from this proposition isn't coming from a "tax hike", because it's actually maintaining the current sales tax rate. If you truly understood math, you'd know that "constant" does not equal "increase".

2.) Monies in the fund are not going towards "bigger bureaucracy" as stated in the many commercials I've seen against Prop 204. If you'd actually read the proposition, you'd see that the money gets distributed to school districts with only $1 million out of the total $1 billion going towards administrative costs, with all surplus going to the payment of education-incurred state debt and/or facilities upkeep for needy school districts.

3.) A large part of the proposition sets up need-based scholarships amounting to 50-60% of total revenue, which from what I gather about you would apparently threaten your job. Wouldn't that just be sad if a third-grader could beat you in reading comprehension?

4.) It puts an end to the AZ GOP's sociopathic compulsion to cut education budgets willy-nilly while throwing heaps of our tax revenue at Joe Arpaio's birther quests to exotic Hawaiian resorts.

5.) It also helps out reservation schools and implements a system of accountability, which I guess you don't like because those Indians are just fine on their own, right? HAHAHA wrong.

6.) The proposition places the revenue out of the hands of the AZ GOP and their so-called "sweep funds", which is just code for stealing from the poor to give to the rich. If only we could keep social programs out of your foul grip as well...

7.) Guess what? It also sets up a fund for infrastructure development! You know, that thing that you Republicans liked so much when you could lay claim to it as President Eisenhower's idea. Too bad he's doing backflips in his grave over you people right now.

8.) Wouldn't you know it, we're back to social programs. A children's health care fund paid for by federal money, the tobacco tax, and private donations? Really? You want to kill that, all because the proposition that sets up its legal framework is too long for you to handle? Well, you'd better buckle up, because I'm a college student right now (incidentally, at one of the universities that your fellows love screwing out of budget money so much), and I'd like to give you a peek at my homework for this weekend. I'll be reading 27 pages by Wednesday for my Native American music class, in addition to 135 pages by Wednesday for Colonial Latin American History. That second one is an entire book, by the way, and both assignments are single-spaced. So do us all a favor and get off your high horse about 15 pages before me and my 162 pages tell you do to something obscene, along with that high horse you rode in on. If you're willing to make this much noise over 15 pages at the expense of Arizona's children, then I'd hate to see what you'd do if you had my homework load.

9.) I'm starting to see why you guys hate this proposition so much. Another section about using taxes collected from businesses to keep children and the general homeless population from starving! I'd accuse you of being Dickensian, but if you can't even fight your way through 15 single-spaced pages in a PDF- that, I should add, is also public record- then I really doubt that you've even cracked a Dickens novel. And not being able to read is no excuse: after all, you've always got Wishbone's version of Oliver Twist (parts one, two, and three)!

10.) I would go on about how the proposition includes measures for re-evaluating the revenue and disbursement structure every five years, as well as outside auditing by state and local courts, but I'm probably fast approaching the threshold of your attention span. I should probably start wrapping it up so you can go back to dreaming about ice cream and how best to defraud your franchisees once you leave state office and rejoin the rest of us out here in the real world. With luck, your pals in the legislature will fail at realizing their Hobbesian fantasies in the lives of your fellow Arizonans, but if they should succeed, I'd simply call it poetic justice.

You may be wondering how I was able to gather so much information about Prop 204 in so little time. After all, your commercial made it sound so daunting: "fifteen pages... single-spaced". Well, you wanna know my secret? Do you? Of course you do. Now lean in close... Here it comes...

My secret is...


(wait for it...)


I READ IT (and you can too!). And what's more, I didn't die from brain overload. No really, you should try it sometime. Reading, that is. It's pretty great. At least, I think so.

So does Wishbone, and he's a dog, for crying out loud.

Plausible Deniability and Voting Third-Party

I have a hypothesis. I won't say it's a theory, because that will just bring up all my memories of having debates with people who say things like "it's only a theory!" and I don't have time for that here. Like I was saying...

I have a hypothesis, and that is that third-party voters are the hipsters of the political scene. I've seen this get thrown around with Ron Paul, but he's not even third-party. No, I'm talking about the candidates that are so far out of the mainstream, that the only evidence we have of their existence is the media equivalent of shoddy demo tapes: Ross Perot, Ralph Nader, Gary Johnson, etc.

I'll admit that even though I was alive during Perot's and Nader's respective heydays, I was too busy watching "Animaniacs" to care either way what they did. I knew that Clinton was president and I had some sort of opinion about Bob Dole, but I don't remember what it was other than that he was way old and Clinton wasn't. Don't ask me for details, because I don't know them.

Anyways, now we live in 2012. I'm not too up on Perot's or Nader's whereabouts these days, but I do see quite a bit about Gary Johnson around town and on campus. For instance, a week or two ago I was greeted by a large tarpaulin sign out behind the Student Union that featured nothing but Gary Johnson's name, a picture of some marijuana cigarettes, and the motto "Gary gets it" plastered across the top in large, comforting letters. Well, Gary may "get it", but I certainly didn't. Not the pot thing, but the whole "voting for someone who has a snowball in Mesa's chance at winning the election" thing.

Johnson fans are prepared for skeptics like myself. As pointed out by one of his fans on my FB friends list, "if everyone wasted their vote on him, he'd win". Well, so would Mickey Mouse. In fact, it's highly plausible that Mickey Mouse will pull more votes than plenty of these third-party candidates, if not necessarily Johnson himself. That's a rather silly argument to make about your candidate, because what it really does instead of inspiring confidence is come off with the hipster vibe I mentioned above. It feels like "well, my candidate will never win and you won't vote for him, but I will because then I can get in everyone else's face about how I voted for someone that no one had ever heard about".

This is not a hipster music debate. This is my attempt to understand how an American voter could knowingly (to use a very rough comparison) throw their ballot in the blender, all in order to stand on a soapbox come November 7th to preach to us about how "I voted for x" or "all candidates are the same except for the one I voted for". All I have to say to the first is "how'd that work out for you, to know that your ballot was essentially meaningless in the face of the rest of the popular vote, much less the electoral vote?" What I have to say to the second is "wow, you haven't been paying attention at all to anything but your nobody candidate, have you?" I really don't equivocate on this one.

I have a temporary job as an early ballot registration canvasser. I've also done some volunteering with voter registration on campus. Most of the people I've talked to are already registered, but occasionally I'll get a really unique response that just makes my mouth hang open. Something like "I don't vote", or "I'm too old for that". Well played, sir... NOT. I haven't run into any adamant third-party voters yet, but I'm pretty sure I know how the conversation would go.

Back to the pot thing. Rather than highlighting some more pressing issues on the Johnson/Libertarian platform, his reps on my campus decided to just focus our attention on one thing: smoking dope. They probably figured it would be a sure-fire hit, since my whole campus smells like pot smoke after 8:00 PM. But inquiring minds want to know: what else will he do? "Well," they said, "he won't start a war with Iran." OK, we're on the right track here, but neither will Obama. Can't we just reelect him instead of going with a Libertarian and all the other things inherent in their platform? Like that whole states' rights thing that the Tea Party gets so much traction out of flogging to death with neo-Confederate rhetoric and "land appropriation" bills in state congresses across the nation.

Look: if you want pot legalization, that's a tough call. The Obama administration doesn't plan to budge in the slightest on this one, but if you honestly think that pot legalization is the most important issue in this whole campaign, you've either not been watching the build-up to the election, or you've been lighting up too much of the sweet stuff to see the many-headed elephant in the room known as "GOP fascist theocracy rearing its ugly head if the Democratic Party doesn't win next month". You think things are bad now with government overreach? Just wait until you get guys like Reps. Hubbard and Fuqua out of Arkansas, who think that "slavery wasn't all that bad" and that citizenship in the US should include some kind of religious exclusion for Muslims. Does those sound like Constitutional principles to you? Or how about more Tea Party reps like those in North Carolina that talk tough about "small government", which really means "it's small compared to a Gatorade bottle and fits inside your uterus (but not ours, because we're men)"? Doesn't really smack of governmental non-intrusion, now does it?

We're approaching the point of this post. I promise. If you're reading this and you plan on voting third-party, I'm sorry if I roughed you up too much in the preceding paragraphs... It hurt me a whole lot more than it hurt you, and I'm being dead serious there. I don't really see many voters in your situation changing your minds on some of these issues. What I would like to see, however, is an acknowledgement of something that Democrats (and Republicans at times) have understood for some time now: compromise is essential to progress.

Just as liberalism used to mean an ideology pushing for rapid change and progress, conservatism used to mean progress as well, but it was more measured and methodical, certainly more so than the socialist movements that arose in the US around the turn of the century. This was also a time when Republicans were pioneers in resource conservation and worker protection. I'm most referring to President Roosevelt the First here, but his ideas enjoyed support then and are still inspirational now. Was he a perfect president? By all means, no. Read some of the things he had to say about the Philippines after we "liberated" them from the Spanish. Sure, they won the war with our help, but then when they asked if they could just hang onto that nice sovereignty thing they'd wanted during the revolution, we pretty much gave them a middle finger and fought the Vietnam War 60 years too early, the biggest difference being that we "won".

That being said, even Teddy wasn't perfect. The system needs balance. It needs compromise. If that means we sacrifice some of our pet legislation to the greater good, then so be it. Exercise a great deal of care, talk out your points and/or grievances, then see that going your own way isn't always the best idea. Sure, I'm tired of Democrats playing too nicely with Republicans who lie, but to conflate the distinction between the Tea Party and the moderate Republicans who still exist out there somewhere will do more harm than good. So will looking down the ballot on November 6th and saying that either "both candidates are the same" or "none of them meet all my expectations perfectly, therefore I'll give my vote to someone who will in all likelihood pull in no more than 4% of the vote if that".

You'd actually be pretty hard-pressed to find a Democrat out there who agrees unquestioningly with every single thing that President Obama has done. Heaven knows it's hard to find a Republican who honestly believes that everything Romney touches turns to gold. Even his campaign workers have to spin and twist his words to get some semblance of continuity between him and the language of his campaign platform... But you know what? That's just the nature of the beast. If you want a candidate who represents you perfectly and believes exactly the same way you do, then you should just go ahead and run now, because I promise you now that the phantom clone candidate that you're looking for simply doesn't exist. I'm serious: go run for something next election. I don't care what office you go after, but if you have some good ideas and a willingness to listen to your potential constituents, why not just go ahead and run?

In this election, however, our obligation is to vote. Not for a candidate whose total voter pull could be threatened by Mickey Mouse, but for a candidate who's been able to demonstrate progress in several areas. Even Reagan's old buddies at the Annenberg Public Policy Center concede that the Obama administration has had some rough times and frankly screwed up in certain areas, but these facts can't be denied: consumer confidence is up, unemployment is on a downward trend line from where it was a couple years ago, around 325,000 jobs have been added in this last year, etc.

Do give credit where it's deserved. Don't give it where it isn't.

Do stay informed. Don't wash your hands of this election and the discussion surrounding it, no matter how annoying or disturbing it may become.

Do vote. Don't throw away that right by either abstaining or giving your vote to a candidate who has no earthly chance of winning, especially if you're doing so for the purpose of standing on an ideological soapbox above the rest of us.

I know that post was basically telling you to vote for President Obama, but let's be real here: you really thought Romney could win this thing? And even if he could, would you really want him to?

A Modern Modest Proposal

A MODEST PROPOSAL

For Preventing the White Supremacists and Racists From Being a Burden on Their Constituents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the African Publick

by Steven Kohlbert

2012

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As a student of politics, both national and international, it has come to my attention that there exists, even in this post-Civil War America, a sharp divide between certain members of the White community and people of color. This is highlighted by comments recently expressed in the news and in books published by Republican members of state congresses across the nation advocating the idea that the perpetual slavery of the Black race may have been a blessing in disguise. The reasoning behind this statement being that those fortunate few who survived the institution of slavery until its cessation at the end of the Civil War became citizens of “the greatest nation on earth”. Taking into account the gains of the civil rights movement from that time until the present day, this conclusion- that Blacks eventually became citizens as opposed to merely three-fifths of a non-citizen counted for the purpose of the census- can be accepted as partially true. However, it is certainly distressing to see individuals such as these advocating this position without any first-hand experience with the living conditions inherent in slavery. Rather than simply complaining about this disparity, I instead propose a solution that will be beneficial in many ways, which I shall now discuss.

First, it is very important to understand the historical context for African slavery in the Americas. Begun in the 16^th century by Portuguese traders, slaves- typically from West Africa- originally replaced native laborers on plantations in the Caribbean. From there, the practice expanded to cover the entirety of the American Colonies. However, Abolitionist sentiment in the Northern States eventually led to the diminishing of the institution there, if not an end to the trade itself; it eventually ceased in Union territory with the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all African slaves in areas claimed or reclaimed by Union troops. With the capitulation of the Confederacy and the passage of the Reconstruction Amendments, Africans were finally granted both freedom from slavery where it existed previously, and also full citizenship and equal protection under the law. However, history shows us that traditions of segregation and discrimination lasted long into the next century. Recent events have shown us that this divide was never fully healed.

Part of the justification for this is the erroneous belief that Africans are inherently less civilized than Europeans, a mindset that has prevailed for many a century among the intellectually-challenged. Cited as evidence is Africa's supposed lack of so-called hallmarks of civilization, such as skyscrapers, modern infrastructure, and large-scale food production. To this end, I would like to submit my modest proposal as a way to solve both the problems of apparent African under-development and the ability of White racists to speak about slavery from personal experience.

To state my proposal simply, I would put forward the idea that certain among the White race be eligible for sale into perpetual servitude. This would not apply to all; rather, only those with 1.) a deep-seated hatred or aversion of Black people and 2.) a lack of personal knowledge concerning the institution of slavery would be candidates for such service. This can be ascertained through various methods: analysis of internet, mail, or interpersonal communications; membership in certain groups, clubs, or political organizations; display of or commiseration with symbols known to have connections with any group like those described previously. Additionally, slave status could also be determined by the attitudes held and/or stated by an individual's grandfather on either side of the family, given that the individual holds to the same ideas.

Once prepared for service, White slaves would be gathered at prominent East Coast and Gulf ports like New York City, Charleston, Richmond, and New Orleans, where they would be loaded onto ships bound for the African continent and beyond. In order to facilitate a more realistic experience for our trans-Atlantic voyagers, working replicas of period sailing vessels would need to be constructed from traditional materials using methods proper to the time. Construction of these vessels would be inexpensive as the gathering of materials and the construction proper would obviously be the work of the slaves themselves. While historical African slaves may not necessarily have personally built the vessels that carried them across the Atlantic, it could be argued that this step would be a necessary cost-cutting measure in these tough economic times. Also worth noting is the fact that the United States will incur no debt by this process, as the slaves will be sold on profit in accordance with free-market principles.

The fleet would of necessity follow the current across the Atlantic to ports on the west coast of Africa, a journey of approximately six weeks. As space will be very tight inside the ships, rations for slaves will be restricted to only that which is necessary for survival, though in certain circumstances, even smaller rations may be required. Though not encouraged, this experience will help the slaves prepare themselves for the low-calorie diet inherent of their future lives on African plantations. Additionally, the tight nature of shipboard life will necessitate burial-at-sea for any who unfortunately may perish in the crossing. While safe conveyance of cargo is essential for maintenance of the trade, collateral damage is in some cases unavoidable.

Upon arrival in West African waters, the trading fleet will then separate to distribute their respective cargoes to large ports such as Accra, Lagos, and Monrovia; once there, the slaves will be sold in auction to African landowners and householders. Of necessity, potential buyers will not be obligated to buy a slave's entire family along with an individual. Free-market principles dictate that the owner himself is best-equipped to make decisions regarding his private enterprise, without government or regulation stepping in to mandate the purchase of an entire slave family when only a handful of sundry individuals will suffice. This is further reinforced by the variety of potential occupations for these slaves once they reach their respective plantations or households, which will be discussed presently.

From the ports of West Africa, slaves will be obligated to follow their respective masters to their properties across the continent of Africa and beyond, as circumstances demand. Typical labor could include the following: clearing jungle land for planting; building up infrastructure such as highways, dams, and bridges; farming on existing plantations; even working in their master's house. To ensure that sufficient time is devoted to constructive labors and physical exercise, literacy of slaves will be strongly discouraged where applicable, taking into consideration the prior academic attainments (or lack thereof) of the slave in question.

Here we see the benefit to both the slaves and to the African people as a whole: whereas previously these slaves may have derided the supposed lack of food production and modernity in rural Africa, now they have a unique opportunity to offer themselves selflessly in order to improve conditions for the people of the continent. As standards of living improve for Africans in general, it can be expected that, according to trickle-down economic theory, so too may the lives of the slaves improve, though such evidence is not entirely necessary for the theory to be perpetuated in the minds of men.

Finally, we must consider the hardships that these slaves will undoubtedly encounter, among these are: foreign diseases to which they have no natural immunity; sparse living conditions; lack of clothing, food, and/or clean water; housing insufficient for protection from the elements or family size; physical abuse not limited to whippings, amputation of limbs, attacks by dogs, rape or other forms of sexual abuse; and last but not least, murder or other forms of untimely or unnatural death. While it pains the heart to recognize that such hazards will be inherent to their labor, it also must be borne in mind that despite the illusion of perpetuity, their slavery will most likely not be eternal. Not only will slaves be allowed to purchase their freedom- in relation to the price paid for them in US dollars, as opposed to whatever compensation they may collect in local currency- they will also have the same opportunity given to them that was imparted to the African slaves in days gone by. If, centuries in the future, the respective governments of their new lands decide to end the practice of slavery, these slaves- or at least their distant descendants- will be given the chance to become citizens in their own right, free from service without pay on plantations. Instead, they will likely be able to live in the same hovels they inhabited as slaves, only this time they will be paid wages so small as to be considered insignificant in exchange for their former masters not burning their houses down, sending them to prisons for hard labor, or simply killing them out of hand.

In the end, these future descendants will be able to look back upon the servitude of their ancestors, knowing that in spite of all the many hardships they faced, they are ultimately blessed to be where they now are. Not only that, they will now be able to look African-Americans in the eye and tell them with certainty that they now know what it feels like to be the descendant of a people forced across an ocean to a new land, only to be considered a sub-human beast of burden for many subsequent centuries. The present writer imagines that in that day, many a happy tear will be shed by faces both Black and White. It is worth noting that while the present writer offers the preceding as a modest proposal to be considered by those in positions to mandate such a policy, he also objects himself and his future posterity from such service, as he is not especially adept at manual labor, and has a great love for African contributions to American culture.

Enough About You, Let's Talk About Me

For those of you who read my blog and like my page, you know quite a bit about what I think, but not a lot about the person who's doing the thinking. Today, I'd like you to introduce you to someone: me.

First off, I'm a guy. I thought you should know this. Second, I'm a college student. Not a Mitt Romney "oh, we had to sell some stock to go to school, woe is us" college student, but a "man, I don't know if I can eat chicken ramen again today, maybe I'll just have it for lunch and then go with beef ramen for dinner" college student. I had to take out student loans and get Pell Grants to pay for my education, otherwise I'd still be stuck at home playing Napoleon: Total War instead of majoring in sociocultural anthropology at a state university. Back to Romney, his comments about every American being able to get "as much education as they can afford" really irked me: of course he could say that as a trust-fund baby, but what about the rest of us who can barely continue after high school without working multiple jobs, applying for as much free (and not-so-free) money as we can find, and/or basically selling ourselves into slavery in exchange for student loans that may one day kill us? The kind of plan that Romney puts forward in his statement is one that would leave the wealthy with all access to higher education while relegating the masses to under-educated serfdom. We can discuss serfdom in another post, but just let that point stand alone for now.

Speaking of money, I just got off the phone with my bank an hour or two ago. Thanks to all the mandatory purchases that go along with college- textbooks, an iClicker, rent, etc.- I literally have about $50 to spare this whole semester, provided I stretch my financial aid and possibly work two jobs. Due to a little error of mine in paying for all this, I got hit with an overdraft fee of $38. This turned into a $30 NSF fee on my rent check, which the Paula Deen-esque desk lady at my on-campus apartment said was "just a fact uh laahhf". This got me thinking about the Romneys and their comments about education in America and the ways in which they try to appear as if somehow in some esoteric way they can identify with my struggles as a human being, a student, and a voter (all at the same time).

The more I thought about this, the more furious I became. I don't get furious very often, as any regular on my page can attest, but this was just one big compounding event of fury that really stuck out to me as a way to highlight the disparity between Mitt and me. I'm not talking about religious differences or anything of that nature. What I'm talking about is his ability to empathize with me and others who share similar problems.

In high school, we are shown the same chart; you know, the bar graph that shows relative lifetime earnings based on the level of education we attain. "An AA degree will earn you x," they say, "and a BA will earn you y" and so on. Well, I have two AAs and I'm not exactly making five figures here... Anyways, this chart is supposed to motivate us all to get a higher education and earn lots of money. If we were to assume that this chart is true, you'd think that a society that truly values education as a mechanism of social mobility would want education to be as accessible as possible. You would be right. The problem is that our society doesn't really think like that, at least the guys on top don't. Instead, we get people like Mitt who want education to be a luxury, not a right. Instead, we get guys like the GOP representatives in Congress that want to increase student loan interest rates and cut Pell Grants (which can only be used by the poor). Instead we get a sociopolitical environment that seems to prize ignorance over ingenuity and obedience over objectivity.

If we are to succeed as a nation, much less as a competitor in a global economy that is beginning to favor other nations over our own, this has to change. Fortunately, the easiest way to choose between these two polar alternatives is to vote this November. It really is that simple, at least in the short term.

If you have a similar experience to mine, please share it in the comments.