Purity and Outreach

Generally, however, purity movements either abandon their quest for purity in favor of rewarding in-group status (see the treatment of recent Republican infidelity revelations) or they splinter into tinier sects, some still obsessed with purity, others offering various loopholes (see the Mormon polygamist groups).

None of these outcomes are anything I want to see for any group I'm involved with, so I twitch when I see someone trying to draw, for example, simple lines between what is and what is not feminism. And when I say twitch, I mean I tell y'all about it.

Most recently, I've been twitching about these big, overlapping groups of rationalists and critical thinkers who are out here fighting the good fight against various forms of irrationality.

It's hand in the blender time, I'm afraid. Over at Quiche Moraine.

Methodology Matters

Via Barbara Drescher comes a lovely analysis behind some rather sensational reporting:

Technology addiction among young people is having a disruptive effect on their learning, researchers have warned.

Their report concluded that modern gadgets worsened pupils' spelling and concentration, encouraged plagiarism and disrupted lessons.

Luckily for those of us who might have some contact with teenagers, education or technology (how many of us is that again?), Anne Marie of Wishful Thinking in Medical Education sprang for the report behind the press release.

With regards to 'tech addiction' this seems to have been a self-assessment based on response to the question: How addicted are you to the internet or your mobile phone? The proportions given in the BBC report are those who stated they were 'quite' or 'very' addicted. Of course, we don't know what the students meant by 'addicted'.

With regards to this addiction harming learning, there is no analysis relating the perception of being addicted to outcomes in learning. In fact very few of the questions are related in any way to learning.

The whole thing is worth a read, as is a comparison between the BBC article and the blog post. It highlights the way that several red flags regarding the research are reported in the article without being emphasized or interpreted in any way for readers who don't already know that these are flags.

Commenter Behavior and Misbehavior

Those of you interested in trolling (the "cross this bridge and I'll eat you" kind, not the "anybody biting?" kind), should read a couple of recent threads. At Making Light is "The Bully Pulpit," an examination in the abstract of dealing with misbehavior and drawing the line between behavior and being. It's a short post with a very long comment thread, which I'm not done reading just yet, but which is remarkably thoughtful and, even while digressing, stays remarkably on topic.

Then, from Greg's blog, an exercise in specifics in which the commentariat is polled: "What do we do about Mike H?" Um, ignore that bit where people are complimenting me, please. It's the rest of the discussion, and the conclusion, that are interesting.

Dear Democrats

You want my money, I know. I gave you a bunch in the last election, and you'd really like me to give more. However, before you send that e-mail and interrupt what I'm doing, here's what you should know about what I want.

I don't want a bunch of money spent on safe elections. As much as I love Rep. Ellison, and I do, I didn't donate to his campaign last year. He didn't need it, and our district didn't need to increase our collective carbon footprint with a bunch of mailings that would have made no difference. Democratic incumbents in Minneapolis, this means you're generally out of luck unless something gets very interesting. Then we'll talk--maybe--after I've done some research. In other words, I'll call you.

I don't want a bunch of money spent on infighting. If you want to be governor, take your pledge to abide by the nomination of the party. Spend your money inspiring your supporters to show up at the caucuses on your behalf, not tearing down your opponents. Remember that it's about the state, not about you.

I don't particularly care about meeting you. I'm not awed by celebrity, speeches are slow, and access shouldn't be something I'm paying for or you're selling. If you want to set up a fundraiser for you, make it a joint fundraiser that also benefits people who are screwed under the current system. Highlight the problems you want to be hired to solve by helping to solve them.

And finally, about health care reform: I'm not donating any money to Democrats in general until they get their act together. Period.

There are damned few of you who have provided leadership on this issue. Ellison has. Franken has. A few others around the country have, mostly in the House. They have my support. MoveOn has my support. A few other groups that are advertising have my support. That's it.

Until the party itself steps up to advocate for affordable care with a robust public option, nothing. Until the DCCC starts extorting cooperation from House members, nothing. Until the White House stops trying to compromise itself into line with the status quo, nothing. It's that important an issue, and it's that simple.

Thank you for your time and all that lovely attention paid to my wallet.

Goodnight, Miss Vida

Joe Wilson and SCV Links

So, I was engaged in a little...discussion on Facebook with commenter Rob (#26) from Greg's post, "Joe Wilson's outburst is not about civility. It's about racism." We were...chatting about Rep. "Joe" Wilson's membership in the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), when someone dropped in some reading that was too good not to pass along. Thanks to Graeme for the links.

Lost Cause

But preserving that firewall is an uphill battle. Hilderman's anti-racism campaign has generated little enthusiasm inside the SCV. Currently, the only publicly identified member of Save the SCV is Hilderman: The men who founded the group with him have since left the SCV--having evidently concluded it was beyond saving--and those SCV members who support Hilderman's cause, he explains, are afraid to say so publicly for fear of retribution. Indeed, ever since founding Save the SCV, Hilderman has been routinely denounced as a traitor and a scalawag; on SCV-affiliated websites, he is portrayed wearing a Union uniform. "May God forgive your ancestors for having such vile and ignorant offspring," one outraged SCV member e-mailed Hilderman.

A House Divided

The grainy video frames, now almost two years old, are somewhat cryptic. At length, the speaker describes "heritage coalitions" as a new way for SCV members to cooperate with other neo-Confederate groups in fighting so-called "heritage violations" — acts like taking down the Confederate battle flag.

"Theoretically, it's a citizen's coalition, anybody can join," the speaker explains to a room full of listeners in this April 2000 videotape.

For those on the outside, such coalitions may seem like harmless anomalies. But the speaker was none other than white supremacist attorney Kirk Lyons, one-time member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance and current darling of neo-Confederate extremists (see profile, "In the Lyons Den," Summer 2000 issue, Intelligence Report).

Standing next to David Duke, Lyons was addressing a gathering of the neofascist American Friends of the British National Party that included many of America's leading far-right activists.

George W. Bush and the Confederacy: Where Does He Stand?

While academics may argue over whether the museum celebrates or simply informs on the history of the Confederacy, it is clear that the Lone Star Ball, held on March 21, 1998, celebrated many of its aspects. Held at the Tredegar Iron Works Gun Foundry Building, the place where Civil War arms were produced for the Confederacy, it flew the confederate flags of all the Southern states and featured hundreds of guests in period costumes. A spokesperson of the museum said that Bush had written a letter of welcome to the attendees of the ball, which each year honors a southern state and in that case honored the state of Texas. Bush’s office refused comment.

What Trent Lott is, cont'd

Rather than reconcile himself and his state to Lincoln's victory in the Civil War, Lott has spent much of his public career seeking to burnish the reputation of Confederate president Jefferson Davis. He has urged the posthumous restoration of Davis' citizenship and proclaimed that the Republican platform reflects Davis' ideas. In May 1998, Lott spoke at the dedication of the Jefferson Davis "Presidential Library" at Beauvoir, the former Davis estate in Biloxi, Miss. His remarks were reproduced in a Sons of Confederate Veterans newsletter, with an introductory note by one of the chapter officers. "If there was any doubt [whether] the Senate Majority leader's heart is in our cause, this speech should answer all doubts." (For a deeper understanding of what is meant by the SCV "cause," look here and here. Lott told the assembled crowd, which included then-Gov. Kirk Fordice, who allocated more than $3 million in state funding to the Davis library, that the Confederate leader had been the guiding light of his political life. "Sometimes I feel closer to Jefferson Davis than any other man in America," he said. Perhaps he aspires to achieve the status he ascribed to Davis, as "the Congress's leading intellect and voice of Southern nationalism."

The Cross They Bear: Whiteness, Religion, and the Confederate Battle Flag in the American South (pdf)

At the regional level of the South, a variety of groups have been actively involved in the flag debate. Most prominent have been ‘Neo-Confederate’ groups who view the region as the exclusive domain of native Southern white Christians (African Americans are largely if not entirely excluded from their definition of the region), and who seek secession if necessary to create their vision of a white Christian South. We discuss the Neo-Confederate movement in more detail below. However these groups including the League of the South, the Council of Conservative Citizens, and, more recently, the Sons of Confederate Veterans, have been actively defending and flying the Confederate battle flag over the past two decades (Potok 2000, Sebasta and Hague 2002, Webster 2004, Webster and Leib 2005). These groups have been prominent in local and statewide controversies about the flag, have worked to defeat legislators they view as anti-battle flag, and have lobbied heavily for legislation promoting, protecting and defining the flag’s meaning (for example, the SCV has filed lawsuits against state motor vehicle agencies to force them to issue specialty car license plates that feature the battle emblem).

Enjoy your reading and any subsequent...gentle debate.

How Many Cops

...does it take to protect a counter-protester from teabaggers?



More than they originally thought, apparently. I particularly like the bit toward the end in which the counter-protester is being a pain in the cops' ass. They'd obviously very much prefer that his protest be done as soon as possible to avoid conflict. That's just as obviously not his priority. More power to him. Literally.

How to Think

I'm feeling terribly lazy today (which is a huge step up from exhausted). In lieu of the thoughts on outreach and purity movements that are bubbling around in my head (the thoughts, not the...oh, never mind), I direct you to the generally excellent Vagina Dentata and a crash course in critical thinking.

This was interesting because it challenged me and my preconceptions about women engaged in BDSM. It wasn’t what she said on the EA Games issue, all of which I agree with: this objectifies women, ‘Booth Babe’ is a demeaning term, it encourages sexual harassment not just of the ‘Booth Babes’ but all women attending ComicCon etc.

There are two things that I find challenging about this: empowered feminists being sexually submissive and BDSM models criticising the objectification of women.

Step 1: Don't dismiss the cognitive dissonance.

Read the rest.

Why Vaccinate? For the Fragile

Carrie, of course, is not otherwise healthy. She's prone to seizures, one of the rare complications of pertussis. She also has that problem with swallowing.

Think back to the last time you had a bad coughing fit. It's gross, but think about the saliva and the mucus. Think about the last time you threw up. Now imagine all that together, along with gasping for air--and not being able to swallow.

If Carrie gets pertussis, she'll almost certainly get pneumonia. Well, she will if the doctors can keep her from choking to death first. There's a very good reason that pneumonia is a common complication of pertussis, even without Carrie's problems.

A far too personal vaccination story, at Quiche Moraine.

What Makes A Man A Man

Hmm, someone's been busy putting good stuff on YouTube, old and new.

Ruby Red

It was the wickedest gift I could give to you.

What Makes a Man a Man

Then answers come from those who make the rules that some of us must break...

The Way You Walk

If I stay now, you don't own me.

Minnesota Politics with National Implications

I'm worthless for writing today, but one of the joys of a group blog is that you can let your co-bloggers take some of the pressure off. Mine have been picking up my slack for a while, but this week, they've outdone themselves.

Mike described the pandering to teabaggers that went on at a health care reform town hall--run by a Democrat.

Betty McCollum did a lot of assuring and comforting of conservatives in the crowd–that the bill would not damage them in any way, that there would be no “death panels,” that the special needs patients wouldn’t have to beg a panel for care, that they would be able to stay with their current plan, that Medicare would be fixed so that Minnesota hospitals are no longer punished for being efficient. She didn’t say anything to show those of us who had campaigned and doorknocked and phone-banked to help Democrats get elected in November that we were going to be heard this September. She didn’t say anything about fighting for a public option, let alone the one fix that would actually take care of the problems, single-payer health care, such as the type that our top competitors on the world market offer.

This post is a follow-up to his report on attending Michele Bachmann's town hall meeting.

Greg has a post up that I wish I'd written. No way I could have, of course, but there it is.

I love this video. I love the kids who made it. I love the message it gives and the way it is given.

But the Saint Paul Police Department saw it differently.

We now know, because of the release of previously secreted information and some excellent reporting at MinnPost, that this video was the primary piece of evidence used by the police to argue before judges, city officials, state officials, and federal authorities that they needed funding, warrants, and overall administrative support as well as coordination at the federal and state level to spend $300,000 invading several homes, harassing several people, confiscating truckloads of stuff that police claimed was either evidence or dangerous materials, and ultimately arresting over 800 people.

OK, have you stopped laughing? Have you stopped screaming? Have you cleared the tears from your eyes? Yes, it is true. This video scared the authorities into spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to carry out dozens of blatantly unconstitutional acts and hundreds of inappropriate activities. Thousands of law enforcement officials were involved. It was almost like a municipally organized pogrom pitting the police against the populous. The mayor of Saint Paul and the chief of police saw this video, shat in their pants, and the smell is still ripe.

Go see what he has to say.

We Can't Afford to Wait

Thanks to Ronald for the link.

Happily Ever After and the Locus of Control

Alma Alexander has written about happy endings over at SF Novelists.

I don’t really believe in the happy ending. In my early reading, few of the old myths had them; when I graduated to fairy tales I tended to prefer Hans Christian Andersen’s dystopias than ache to be in Cinderella’s wedding party – I might have cried bitter tears at the fate of the Little Mermaid (the ORIGINAL Little Mermaid, not Disney’s red-haired sea princess with a chorus of singing sea slugs) but somehow I had more in common with her than I ever had with Sleeping Beauty. I mean, I might not have grown up with a spindle in my hand either, but I think I could be kind of trusted to see a damned sharp point if one came under my hand, and I would like to think (faery curses aside) that I would have the motherwit not to impale myself on one.

I don't particularly agree with her about...well, about anything except that happy endings can be done badly. Happy endings do happen in real life. Happily ever after doesn't mean no work, just not working alone or without hope or reward. Sometimes the cost of happiness really is paid up front.

What really caught my attention, though, were her feelings about Sleeping Beauty.

Both kind of fairy tale endings hinge on a sort of fate or destiny – Maleficent’s curse or the Little Mermaid’s desire to walk on dry land no matter what the cost – but the difference in my head between the Sleeping Beauty tale and that of the Little Mermaid is that Sleeping Beauty almost literally sleepwalks her way through her life (the curse is something that WILL HAPPEN, no matter what she does or thinks about it) and the Little Mermaid makes her own choices, lives with her own pain, and finally turns her back on the dearly-bought salvation that her sisters have paid for because it is not her OWN choice, her OWN destiny. One of these protagonists is in control of her own life. The other is not. I saw the difference.

This bothered me quite a lot, this preference for willful self-destruction over a free release being offered to a young woman who is suffering for her parents' actions. Some of my reaction is a particular hatred for blaming the victim, this time for being passive in a situation in which she truly has no control. Some of it is that this fetishization of control has nasty consequences.

The most sure way to ensure control over what happens to you is to arrange a nice, quiet suicide where no one can find you until you're dead. Failing that, the next most certain is to make lousy choices with known consequences. Good things will happen to you by accident occasionally, but there's no surer way to get kicked out of wherever you live than to stop paying your rent or mortgage, no surer way to see your marriage destroyed than to walk away from it, no surer way to avoid getting an education than to refuse to study, no surer way to keep from being published than to refuse to write.

These things happen to some percentage of us anyway, because when it comes down to it, they are not under our control. Not completely. But they are much more under the control of those who engage in self-sabotage.

Not surprisingly, we see this in politics too. There is no issue so important that someone won't come along to say they're sitting on their hands because we'll never get the outcome we really want. We saw it last year before the election. We see it right now in the people who want a public health insurance option but act as though the decision is up to Rahm Emanuel.

The fact is, defeatism (anticipation of the unhappy ending) just isn't that reasonable. Bad things happen, but good things happen too. One hundred years ago, women couldn't vote. Poll taxes were allowed. Interracial and same-sex marriages weren't allowed in many places. We had a weak antitrust system, no formal national park system, no Interstate system, no Social Security, no Medicaid, no free school lunches, no Title IX, no Pell Grants, no VA, no education subsidies for the people who serve in the Armed Services.

Focusing on that unhappy ending means we are ignoring what we have accomplished--and losing sight of the power we have to accomplish more. We can't control all of our environment, but every decision we make, every action we take has an effect on it. We can choose the more certain path of failure, or we can the risk to try to improve our lot. We can reach for that happy ending. Sometimes, we even get it.

And that is every bit as much a Truth as any presented in the most dismal literature.

Malingering

I was thirteen, which means I was in eighth grade. I hated school for numerous reasons mostly having to do with being a poor geek in a rich suburb in the status-obsessed eighties. I hated gym class for the very similar reason that almost everything was turned into a competition. After all, what better idea is there than making blood-thirsty teenagers play dodge ball (except maybe stranding them on a desert island)?

I liked swimming, both because water was home and because I'd been doing it competitively for a few years in a state where summer wasn't strictly bounded by holidays. All that practice meant that when one of the snobby kids wanted to put me in my place with a swimming competition, they got their asses kicked. Okay, beating one of them while doing the backstroke instead of freestyle was just showing off, but it was fun.

I liked running, too. Like swimming, it was an opportunity to be by myself, even in a class full of other people. I was a decent sprinter and an okay distance runner until I ran out of breath. I never did manage to condition that up properly, despite walking a mile to school every day with a nice uphill section in the middle.

Then I started liking running less. One day, my foot hurt. I didn't remember injuring it, but I figured I must have. I wasn't screaming with pain, but I limped. The gym teacher looked at me funny but let me sit out a day. Then a second day. Then the look was less funny, and I was told to get out there and try.

It hurt, of course, every time I flexed my foot. But I could do it. The pain, just as it had started, never got so acute that I was afraid I was hurting myself more. Sometimes it even waned. Then it waxed again. But I'd already learned I could run through the pain. It was better than that look and all it implied. I even taught myself to walk without the limp.

I think it was the next year that my knees started to hurt. Same gym teacher, though, so I knew better than to sit anything out. As long as I could do it through the pain, the pain couldn't really be that bad, and I shouldn't use it as an excuse. For not doing something I'd like to do until it hurt.

It wasn't until I was sixteen, riding the bus to a more-distant school and no longer required to take gym, that I saw the doctor about my foot and my knees. That may have been the first time I saw a doctor in that period. It may just have been the first time I said anything about this pain that I'd gotten used to living with. I don't remember. Things were complicated then.

It was arthritis. The toe got a whopping huge shot of cortisone, which burns like you can't imagine if you've never had it. A couple hours later, it was fine, a condition that persisted for more than a decade. The knees were more difficult, since my kneecaps are slightly malformed, but I was given exercises to strengthen the appropriate muscles to keep my kneecap from grinding into the rest of my knee.

That's what I'd been living with for three years. That and exercise-induced asthma, but it was even more years later before I figured out that being out of breath after a run doesn't make most people really struggle for air and cough to clear obstructions that can't be cleared. Well, the arthritis, the asthma--and that look on my gym teacher's face that said I was faking it, relying on a tiny boo boo to get me out of work.

I wanted to take the diagnosis back to my teacher and rub her face in it. I still don't know whether I should have. There are so many forces in our society telling us that as long as we can limp along, the only thing that's really wrong with us it that we're not doing it with smiles on our faces.

So I've learned how to smile, just as I learned how to run and how to walk without a limp. Real smiles, too, the kind that will fool experts. I've learned how to push enough air over the reddest vocal cords to defeat laryngitis long enough to allow the smallest of small talk. I've learned to look attentive when I'm falling-down tired. I've trained, "I'm doing well, and you?" as the automatic response to the polite question that isn't really interested.

Of course, I haven't learned how to feel any better. I haven't learned how to keep from resenting the world zipping past me when I have to stop or the people who can't see through the facade.

Most of all, I haven't learned how to stop feeling like a malingerer when I stop short of running. I know that the best thing I can do when I'm sick is sleep. I know that sitting up will just make my joints hurt more and that my temperature will fluctuate broadly, requiring that I have quite a bit of control over my coverings. I know that migraine-induced vertigo is much less likely to make me nauseated if I don't move around a lot. I know that in the past year, I've used five days of PTO for vacation, and all the rest has gone to sick time.

None of that makes me feel any less like I'm slacking off. None of it makes me feel any less useless when I'm not getting something done. None of it makes me feel that it is any less shameful to limp. And none of it makes me feel any less like someone is going to come along and look at me as though I'm making it all up.

Klobuchar Fails Leadership Test

The MinnPost recently interviewed both of Minnesota's senators about health care reform. Franken took the opportunity to, once again, rub his competence into the faces of those who want to think of him as "just" a comedian. Klobuchar didn't do as well. Here are a few of her answers about the public option:

MinnPost: Are you in favor of the inclusion of the "public option"?

Klobuchar: I am open to a public option, but I am waiting to see what it looks like in the Senate bill.

MinnPost: Why?

Klobuchar: I believe we can incentivize more affordable health care in general by better regulating insurance and creating meaningful competition for health care services. However, some of the options before Congress are tied to Medicare reimbursement rates. Before we even consider expanding Medicare, or another program based on its rates, we must reform our Medicare payment system so that it rewards value, not volume, and doesn't disadvantage states like Minnesota that provide high-quality care in an efficient way.

I would prefer a public option that would be a competitive option that would allow people to buy into a Federal Employee Health Benefits Program, which is a series of private plans…

I have long advocated for opening up the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program that uses the purchasing power of 8 million federal employees to lower premiums, while still providing access to quality care and preventative services. I am especially focused on making sure that any reforms make it easier for small businesses and the self-employed to afford health care.

MinnPost: You have faced some criticism about not coming down clearly for, or against, the public option. What is your rationale behind the position that you have taken?

Klobuchar: We have a lot to lose if it isn't done right… I think I am doing the right thing for the state by stepping back. The problem is if you say "yes" and don't see the changes you want, that doesn't get you very far. You would give up any power to change it.

In other words, Klobuchar is taking a wait-and-see attitude on the public option. It would be nice, doncha know, but somebody might, maybe, screw it up. She can't really commit until she sees what is delivered to her desk.

Health care was one of the largest issues of the last election. It affects every one of her constituents. 79% of people polled (including 61% of Republicans) want an option that doesn't involve trusting their health to the insurance companies. What about this issue calls for such a passive approach?

When we elect a senator, we expect her to lead. We expect her to use the power we've given her instead of waffling about giving it up down the road. We expect her to get out and tell the rest of the Senate what is important to her state, to lay out our broad concerns as well as the details that worry her. We expect her to stay involved in the process long enough to make sure decent legislation is written.

We don't expect her to sit back and hope someone delivers legislation to her liking. That isn't being a legislator. That's being a voter, and any of us can do it. We don't need her for that.