Hobbes at Senate Hearings, Leaves without Covenant

Yeah, I wish.

I thought that Professor Garsten did a fine job lecturing on Hobbes's De Cive, but it was sweet of the Fed to give me an object lesson. So I'm supposed to consent to giving Paulson god-like powers over the economy and at the same time waive any ability to withdraw that consent or check his actions in the future. It's asking a lot, sure, but this is a crisis! Any form of division will delay us for too long! We need to put aside our petty factions and cede authority to one leader!

(I'd have titled this post "Leviathan Wept" but that title's been taken by author Daniel Abraham as the title of his excellent short story.)

I guess Congress didn't notice that the last time we passed a bill in crisis mode, with lawmakers not even bothering to read the bill (I'm looking at you, John McCain) didn't work out so well.

Frankly, whatever the merits of the original failout bill, I'm still blaming Congress for the Dow drop. If they (especially stop-the-presses-stop-the-debates McCain) hadn't built up the bill as a rush job, we could have actually read and debated it, which seems appropriate, given its importance and scale.



I realize I'm following up my last post with another real-life application of my Democratic Rhetoric class. Next week we read Woodrow Wilson, so stay tuned for the dissolution of the UN.

Gorgias visits Yale, Polus is alive and well and hacking at K2

My Democratic Rhetoric class read Plato's Gorgias (his dialogue attacking rhetoric from both a moral and a pragmatic angle) the week before Drew Westen, author of The Political Brain gave a lecture at Yale.

My professor was amazed by the similarity between the scenes, the charismatic orator in front of a crowd of eager, ambitious young people, promising that, if they followed his teachings, they would have

the word which persuades the judges in the courts, or the senators in the council, or the citizens in the assembly, or at any other political meeting?--if you have the power of uttering this word, you will have the physician your slave, and the trainer your slave, and the money-maker of whom you talk will be found to gather treasures, not for himself, but for you who are able to speak and to persuade the multitude.

Westen's thought-provoking book argues that Democrats could actually win elections if they used research on emotional intelligences and networks of associations to better target their messages. The book is worth reading for the close readings of major political ad campaigns alone, and Westen certainly covers the issues that plague the Dems (abortion, health care) with more coherence and less controversy in the frames and talking points he proposes.

But, as in Gorgias, the effectiveness of Westen's methods is called into question less by his description of his methods and more by blind spots where his method is, apparently useless. Gorgias is undermined by his consistent need to defend the morality of teaching rhetoric. He lives in fear of the inhabitants of the various towns who might banish him or worse, but if rhetoric truly gave him the near absolute powers he claimed, he should never fear an angry mob.

The weakness of Westen's method came out in the informal Q&A that followed his lecture. I had read the book and had noticed that many of Westen's proposed talking points included references to Scripture or the speaker's faith, Did he think, I asked, that irreligious candidates could still use his methods or be elected at all? Should the Democrats be imposing a religious litmus test on candidates for their own good?

Westen replied that he believed that atheists couldn't win. Further, he had been asked to run for Congress in his native Georgia and had turned down the Party Elders in large part because he felt his (fairly disaffected) Judaism would be a sticking point that even his rhetorical skills couldn't help him escape.

If Westen is right, I think this is a big problem for American democracy (not to mention any of my hopes for holding office). Westen's approach, ultimately, isn't built on manipulating others by using deceptive practices like priming, but, rather, to reassure voters that your positions are grounded in values that are similar to theirs. It's a shame if we can't trust anyone who doesn't worship our god to share the principles that we care about, particularly as faith in god has not, of late, been a particularly good guarantor of respecting any of his creatures.

What the Left does right

I'm a week late commenting (and complimenting) Sarah Vowell's op-ed which appeared in the Week in Review section of last Sunday's NYT. Here is how it begins:

ON Monday night at the Democratic National Convention, Caroline Kennedy introduced a tribute to her uncle, Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, by pointing out, “If your child is getting an early boost in life through Head Start or attending a better school or can go to college because a Pell Grant has made it more affordable, Teddy is your senator, too.”

To my surprise, I started to cry. Started to cry like I was watching the last 10 minutes of “Brokeback Mountain” instead of C-SPAN. This was whimpering brought on by simple, spontaneous gratitude.

Vowell relied on Pell Grant's to get through college. The grant wasn't enough to pay her way or to let her get out of working. It simply meant she had to work ten fewer hours a week.

Ten extra hours a week might sound negligible, but do you know what a determined, junior-Hillary type of hick with a full course load and onion-scented hands can do with the gift of 10 whole hours per week? Not flunk geology, that’s what. Take German every day at 8 a.m. — for fun! Wander into the office of the school paper on a whim and find a calling. I’m convinced that those 10 extra hours a week are the reason I graduated magna cum laude, which I think is Latin for “worst girlfriend in town.”

I recommend reading the whole article, which is moving and well argued. The Pell Grant Vowell recieved changed her life, without representing too large a fiscal burden for the government (Vowell has since paid back her Pell Grant many times in the form of the increased income taxes she pays on her increased income).

The Pell Grant program is one of the best governmental programs I can think of. It's not a hand-out or a "special right," it just helps hard-working, motivated students clear one bureaucratic hurdle so they can succeed on their own merits. Government governs best when it clears obstacles out of the way of hard-working people who are doing the right thing but just need a boost.

So next time you go knocking the Dems, think about a world without Pell Grants. It's a world that makes it that much harder for poor students to go to college and compete academically with their peers, a world that makes it harder for children to escape the misfortunes or poor decisions of their parents. It's a world in which Assassination Vacation was probably never written.

I don't think any of us prefer that world.


UPDATE: I've just noticed that both posts that I've tagged "verklempt" are about Teddy Kennedy. Just mentioning.

Measles is catching (again), just like hysteria

Parents, brush up on your three C's (cough, coryza, and conjunctivitis) and get your kids ready for bed-rest. The Measles are back! (Just don't let the fact that no treatment exists paired with the 1 in 1000 death rate faze you.)

In an age of superbugs, you might wonder what crazy new mutation has let the measles come roaring back, but the resurgent measles are no different than the old-school measles that we last saw circa the turn of the century in The Lawrenceville Stories (the prequel to, and suprerior of Dink Stover at Yale).

The measles are back because today's parents are refusing to innoculate their children against measles, mumps, and rubella out of a fear that these vaccines could cause autism. The most popular arguement is that thiomersal, a preservative used in some vaccines, can trigger autism spectrum disorders, but this assertion does not hold up scientifically.

Remember, thiomersal and other mercury-containing preservatives were phased out starting in 1999. If there really were a causal link between these vaccines and autism, autism rates should have dropped in the decade following the phase-out. This did not occur.

A few other theories have been advanced, but none has been recognized by the scientific community. Vaccines and autism are not causally related, even though there is a correlation. Children are vaccinated at about the same age they begin to exhibit symptoms of autism, so it is not surprising that parents feel there is a connection.

Parents who don't vaccinate their children aren't just putting their own children at risk. Vaccinations benefit from herd immunity, i.e. that mass vaccination helps protect everyone, even the unvaccinated, by making it almost impossible for the virus to find a host to spread through. Parents who don't vaccinate their children chip away at the herd, putting even vaccinated individuals at risk (since no vaccine is 100% effective) as well as endangering infants too young to be vaccinated.

According to the New York Times, the back when vaccinations weren't common," each year nearly 4 million people in the United States were infected, 48,000 were hospitalized, 1,000 were chronically disabled and nearly 500 died."

Meales may be the tip of the iceberg. It is the most contagious of the childhood diseases, so it is the first to reemerge, but mumps and rubella may follow. The government and medical officials should reach out to parents to encourage them to vaccinate their children. Parents who refuse endanger their children and everybody else's.

Weekend Arts: Keeping it in the Family

This post is of particular interest to Yale Mafiosos (though all theatre afficianados are encouraged to read on).

This week, I have had the pleasure of seeing two shows written and performed by Yalies at the NYC Fringe Festival. I had seen Usher in several incarnations at Yale, and it has gotten better every time. Usher is a musical adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Molly Fox and Sarah Hirsh.

In the musical, James (Casey Breves) is invited to the estate of his university friend, Roderick Usher (Ben Wexler) to paint Roderick's final portrait. During his time in the Usher home, James discovers that Roderick is spinning a web of lies to keep James from seeing his childhood love (and Roderick sister) Madeline (Claudia Rosenthal). These events are overseen by the malevolent portraits that haunt the Usher home.

The show is brilliantly executed. As at Yale, Casey and the rest of the cast do a brilliant job bringing life to cleverly-sketched characters and well-painted portraits. Casey's angelic tenor produces notes so beautiful that I was on the edge of my seat, hardly daring to breathe for many of his songs, and he is well matched by Claudia's haunting soprano. Fox and Hirsch give all their actors great material to work with. (Pariticularly good turns from Aaron Lee Lambert and Danielle Ryan as the Ushers servants in the song "Water and Gruel" and, in the chorus, Emily Jenda shines (without pulling focus) every moment she is onstage).

But perhaps the best recommendation for the show comes from the man on the LIRR platform this morning who complemented my singing (I couldn't get Usher out of my head). Since the only person I usually get singing complements from is my tone-deaf father, I have to assume he was moved by the songwriting prowess of Fox and Hirsh.

Usher has 4 performances left:
Sun 17 @ 4:15
Tue 19 @ 4:30
Wed 20 @ 7
Fri 22 @ 10
In addition, audio and video clips are available at the Usher website at http://www.usherthemusical.com/

The other Yale show at the Fringe is @lice in www.onderland, a dance/multimedia show based on the Lewis Carroll story. It is very difficult to translate a story so dependent on textual jokes to an essentially silent medium, but the production includes some charming moments. The two dancers who embody the Caterpillar is particularly inspired. For now though, my favorite Alice remix is still Alice in Quantumland.

@lice in www.onderland has 3 performances left:
Mon 18 @ 7:15
Tue 19 @ 5:15
Fri 22 @ 9:45

It's a Gay old time in the YA section

Michael Gross's article, "Has Manhunt Destroyed Gay Culture?" on Out.com tells a pretty depressing story (hat tip to David Broockman). Gross terms Manhunt " the world’s fastest-growing gay website, which is quietly abetting a revolution in social and sexual mores, under the slogan “get on, get off." The whole article is worth a read, but here's a particularly choice excerpt:

I began wondering about this connection at a dinner party on Martha’s Vineyard when the host asked why, during the past decade, so many national political victories and legal reforms -- an employment nondiscrimination act, a hate-crimes bill, repeal of the military ban, marriage or civil unions -- have remained beyond our grasp. A fashion photographer from Texas drawled, “I think it’s because so many of us spend so many hours of so many days online, doing things that make us feel ashamed of ourselves.”

During the 15 years since America Online men-4-men chat rooms introduced mass-market online cruising (earlier Internet cruising technologies, like IRC chat rooms, were mostly for techies), some aspects of our lives have become more visible than ever. We are ubiquitous in mainstream culture; we are out to our families, friends, and employers; we’re able to hold hands in public, in some places, without having to worry that we might get beaten up; and some states and cities now permit gay marriage or civil unions (more will inevitably follow now that California has joined Massachusetts). As this wave of enculturation advanced, AIDS treatments made the ravages of that disease less visible and dispelled the sense of crisis that strengthened our connection to each other in the 1980s. These factors, along with straight gentrification of gay neighborhoods and the growth of the long-tail economy, hastened the decline of many urban gay enclaves, and the demise of many bars, businesses, and social groups that gave structure to gay life.

“The implications of that trend are enormous,” says Jeffrey Klausner of the San Francisco Department of Public Health. “It means that gay men who were once socialized in brick-and-mortar establishments, surrounded by other people, are now being socialized online.” Gay men still go out as well, but our nightlife habits are very different than they were 12 years ago. Jeffrey Parsons, professor of psychology at New York’s Hunter College, says his unpublished research confirms the common sense that “when guys go to bars, they’re going to be with their friends, not to meet new people.”

There is an offline analogue to Manhunt: the LGBT bookshelf in any Barnes and Noble. If you peruse this shelf, you will find that it's composed of at least 80 percent erotica. The nonfiction is also mostly sex-themed. I'd assume the writing probably isn't worse than straight erotica, but the troubling fact is, like Manhunt in the dating scene, this seems to be all there is.

Happily, for books, anyway, there may be a generational shift. There is quality LGBT writing out there, but most of it's in the YA section. Empress of the World, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, and especially Nancy Garden's Annie on my Mind. All are well written YA that could stand proudly alongside many other books in the YA canon.

And that's the other part of the problem. Mainstreaming LGBT YA makes it difficult to find, since only the extreme works are in the LGBT aisle. It might be that kids growing up on high quality YA, but not if they think the erotica is all that's out there. Similarly, alternatives to Manhunt may exist, but be so mainstream as to be unremarkable. The best hope is to raise awareness of other paradigms and role models.

The Dark Knight: Despair isn't as Scary as Goodness

I've been enjoying the Yale /Mafia's commentary on The Dark Knight and really enjoyed the discussion what role the outlaw plays in a corrupt society and in one on the mend. I didn't get around to seeing the movie until today and, to be honest, I was relatively uninterested in Batman. Obviously, the Joker stole every scene he was in, and the weird reverb effect on Bale's voice made it hard to empathize with him, but it was Harvey Dent that really left me thinking.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

White hat DA Harvey Dent is transformed into the murderous Two-Face when he is caught in one of the Joker's plots. His girlfriend is killed and he is horribly disfigured. The Joker comes to see him in the hospital, stokes his anger, and frees him, a weapon with only one purpose, revenge.

The film tries to spin Dent's fall as a big victory for the Joker. The white hat loses hope and declares that in an immoral world, the best one can do is follow the dictates of chance. But where is the triumph? The proof that even the strongest have a breaking point is trivial. Besides, Dent's fall is more a conversion of convenience than a genuine reawakening. The Joker redirects Dent's desire for vengeance and gives him a new avenue to express it, but, unlike the Joker, Dent's nihilism is wholly subsumed in his desire for revenge. The Joker is an absolute force, the avatar of chaos, and he is unstoppable. Dent is too limited to be anywhere as scary. Once the targets of his revenge are eliminated, his motivation is spent, and he is defanged.

So could Dent become anything to match the power and terror that the Joker inspires? Maybe, but I think it would entail less of a fall than a rise. In A Wizard Alone, the sixth book in Diane Duane's Young Wizards series, Nita, one of the protagonists, encounters an abdal, a force of pure goodness, a conduit of the One's power into the world. But just because they're on our side doesn't make them pleasant to be around. Nita's mentor warns her that abdals mean

"Virtue, the real thing. It's not some kind of cuddly teddy bear you can keep on the shelf until you need a hug. It's dangerous... Virtue has its own agenda, and it's not always yours. The word itself means strength, power. And when it gets loose, you'd better watch out."

"Something bad might happen..."

"Impossible. But possibly something painful."

Abdals are goodness, but they are so powerful that when they burn the dross off of us, there might not be anything left. This is the direction I thought Dent was going in, especially since he had gotten his start investigating Internal Affairs for the police. Throughout the movie, he harasses the police commissioner over his use of dirty cops, while the commissioner argues he has to make some compromises to have any officers at all. These are the dirty cops that help the Joker maim Dent and murder his girlfriend.

A Harvey Dent fueled by uncompromising virtue is the absolute force to oppose the Joker. (The Lawful Good to his Chaotic Neutral/Evil). Both are forces of destruction. Human beings, inherently flawed but striving for order, can't live with either.

No thanks, I'll just keep living in a world without smallpox

The NYT's Editorial Observer and I are on the outs. Commenting on Spain's recent resolution granting legal rights to chimps, the Observer has this to say:

Strip away the goofier rhetoric of the ape-rights activists, and their claim is straightforward. Great apes are biologically very close to humans; chimps and humans share about 98 percent of their DNA. Apes have complex communication skills and close emotional bonds. They experience loneliness and sorrow. They deserve some respect.

Absolutely. I'm against the horrific conditions in which we raise our livestock, and I support discouraging the use of apes in circus-like performances. Most of us have no problem with outlawing needless cruelty. I just happen to think that "harmful medical research" is pretty darn needful.

I don't mean to downplay the suffering experienced by chimps in medical facilities. Richard Preston's excellent history of smallpox, The Demon in the Freezer details the horrible suffering of chimps infected with smallpox, and the scientist involved genuinely mourn for their charges. I think eliminating crippling diseases trumps our concern for the human-like nature of apes, just as crippling hunger would justify butchering and eating them. We shouldn't outlaw important medical research, but we should, just like the scientists Preston observes, understand the weight of what we are doing and mourn accordingly.

(Of course, I'll admit to being somewhat heartless in this matter. When I read in Paul de Kruif's Microbe Hunters (another great book) that Pasteur neglected to confirm that his TB cure worked, since this would have involved deliberately not treating babies for a control group. Unfortunately for science, TB was already in decline when Pasteur developed his treatment, so there's no confirmation that it works. I would have been in favor of an actual human trial.)