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ibnfirnas puts it, hang out with dead people.
American Responsibility to its Past and Consistency in its Present
The United States has a history of sponsoring terrorists and dictators.
This is a history that has come to haunt it.
It is no good to remove Saddam Hussein without acknowledging that this country supported him in the Iran-Iraq war (even while doublecrossing his ass); it is no good to hunt Osama bin Laden without acknowledging that he was trained, in part, by the CIA.
These people were called "freedom fighters" when they were with us, and "terrorists" or sponsors of terrorists when they're against us.
This is Not Cool.
It is not cool that anti-Castro terrorists can travel on (possibly fake) U. S. passports, get questioned by Federal agents, and then let go. Their murders are still murders, their bombs are still bombs.
If we are really interested in stopping terrorism as a functional political tool, we have to stop sheltering terrorists and stop supporting terrorists who are targeting our political enemies. If this impulse to end terrorism is something that needs to be worldwide, it needs to be not a partisan thing, not something that can be swayed by the expat vote in Florida, not something that gets overlooked when the resulting destruction is politically convenient.
The United States as a whole needs to acknowledge the terrorists and dictators it has sponsored in the past, and needs to take responsibility for sponsoring investigations into them when they violate international law and human rights, responsibility for gathering forces against them when force is necessary, responsibility for acknowledging that these people were trained or supported or funded or maintained by United States dollars.
It is our fault as a nation that they are where they are. We need to clean up our damn crap, not just because it comes back to bleed us, but because our hands are not clean when people in other nations bleed as a result. We should put special effort into dealing with the horrible people who are out there, in part, because we put them there.
It's not enough to just cut off support for these pet monsters. The people who are trying to bring them to justice need our active support; we owe that much for our past actions. We do not want to obligate ourselves to invade every damn nation that looks like it might be sponsoring terrorists -- conquering the world is not what our troops signed up for -- and we'd have to invade ourselves to deal with the people who have funded the IRA and the anti-Castro terrorists. We need to can the hypocrisy and pay attention to the world, coming down hard on sponsorship of terrorism and human rights violations (which are pretty closely related, really, in a snake-eats-its-tail way) both as an individual nation and as a world leader. I want a consistent national policy that doesn't have Iranians dithering about which potential administration is most likely to ignore their human rights record or mess less with their nuclear program.
I'm back to that McCain quote. Do we? Do we actually present evidence of that to the world? To the American public?
Do we have the evidence to back up our actions? Can we convict?
We need that. We can't go around "fixing" things without that evidence.
The United Nations
So what the hell do we do about this?
We have evidence the system is corrupt, most recently and dramatically with the subversion of the Food-for-Oil program in Iraq.
It's often ineffectual, with member states ignoring resolutions that don't suit them, has very limited resources of its own to bring to bear on conflicts, and minimal practical enforcement powers.
And the United States has, over time, put in a fair amount of effort to undermine the United Nations, including refusing to pay its bloody dues, which are a significant part of the UN's budget.
Some sort of world gathering organisation is, I think, necessary. I don't know if the UN has gone the way of the League of Nations, or whether it can be restored to something useful.
Finally, Terrorism in General
There are two things that need to be done to deal with terrorists. There's a lot of emphasis put on one of them, and I'm worried that the other one is going to completely get lost.
The one that there's the emphasis on is, of course, getting the terrorists and dealing with them, though as I mentioned above there's a certain lack of consistency here. These people need to be removed from their operations and dealt with, ideally in a way that doesn't convert them into martyrs -- but at least martyrs aren't supplying their personal contacts, resources, and skills into those systems.
But the extensive issues that create terrorists, the place from which murder and explosions and suicidal actions so long as they kill others, that needs to be dealt with too. Otherwise we just get the next generation of would-be martyrs rising up in the wake of the fallen, like the dragon's teeth.
To explain what I'm looking at, I have to write about Chechnya. This hurts like hell. And it bothers me that it's not getting press, that people aren't aware of it, that it is . . . a footnote.
Chechnya was conquered by Russian forces in the nineteenth century. They're still not happy about that. They're also not happy that Stalin attempted to wipe out their entire population by shipping as many as he could get his hands on to Siberia. This is a region that is less than pleased with Russian rule, and wants out. And has tried, several times, to get out.
And failed.
And in the course of that failing, there have been mass graves. There was a girl raped literally to death; there may well have been more. A baby impaled on a bayonet while the mother was forced to watch. Grozny has no undamaged buildings. People used as target practice and other casual murders.
And now there are people who will say "Strike back at the Russians. Let's blow up this school. Let's take out those soldiers. Let's drive the Russians out, make them leave us, by whatever means possible. We've already lost our families, our friends, our towns, and our hope; make them lose until they leave."
I see people expressing incomprehension that anyone could become a terrorist. I wonder how they can not know. These are the roots of terrorism. These are where the bomb-makers are made.
And this is why I hate the phrase "war against terror" beyond any of the other "war against" phrases. Wars breed hopelessness: they breed blood feud, they destroy economies, break social infrastructures, they leave disease and destruction in their aftermath. And they provide a very direct and obvious enemy, the source of these problems. They leave survivors behind who have lost their livelihoods, their kin, who are in pain, who want to do something; these are the people who will join organisations suggesting that they can do something, they can strike back. It may get them killed, but there's a point at which that is the only peace to which one can aspire. War is a fertile ground for the conditions that make terrorism plausible or even appealing.
The article I linked, the PakTribune one -- read it if you don't understand where terrorists come from.
Terrorists come from war. They come from genocide. They come from helplessness, from a lack of hope, from losing all that they loved. And terrorism is a tool for fighting against a stronger foe, one with better equipment, better technology, better means.
This stuff can be fixed. Paying attention to human rights and stopping situations that feed into the hopelessness can happen -- needs to happen. Working on programs that work on building self-sustaining communities that are healthy, that are economically sound, that aren't shot through of holes because of deaths and disappearances can happen. Presenting as an ally, not as an enemy, can happen.
It is probably too late for a number of the people currently involved in terrorism to be stopped, to be brought back. Maybe most of them. I don't know. But it's not too late to make the difference to the creation of the next generation of them.
Domestically speaking -- domestically speaking, I'll talk about the spindoctoringly named "USA PATRIOT" somewhere after this, but speaking of ineffectual notions, how about that "no-fly list", protecting our noble skies from Ted Kennedy and Cat Stevens. Which perturbs other nations, who wonder if the U. S. government has taken leave of its senses. By the way, a U. S. Representative who found his name on the no-fly list? Started making reservations that included his middle name, and stopped getting flagged by it. Aren't you glad the thing is so difficult to foil? Doesn't it make you feel safer?
Thrashing about checking names as if it does something effectual isn't doing anything but looking like they're doing something useful.
It's not putting serious thought into intelligence failures. Nor is it getting those finished reports out where people can actually look at them. It's not actually looking into the backgrounds of government employees properly.
Space, NASA, and so on
Some people will probably wonder why the fuck I put the space program here. "Because I think it belongs here" is not bloody useful for that.
Here's the thing, though; first of all, the space program is full of jobly goodness, and I'm all in favor of jobly goodness. But that's not enough for this sort of thing, really. On the flip side of that, dollar for dollar the space program has produced far more economic power than was invested in it, through consequences of the jobly goodness and the results of spin-off products.
And the spin-offs. Wow, the spin-offs. NASA has a publication on the subject. Structural analysis programs. Water purification systems. Scratch-resistant glasses lenses. Superior weather forecasting techniques. Fire-resistant fabrics and other such materials. Breast cancer prevention techniques, plural. Laser angioplasty. Programmable pacemakers. Computer training programs -- "Interactive Multimedia Training". Robots that can handle hazardous response situations. Emergency rescue cutters (for getting people out of wrecked cars). Better air tanks for firemen. Improved brake linings.
To name a few.
Now, NASA's had some organisational difficulties in recent years, as well as a bad habit of having its budget cut out from under it. A while back, President Bush put up a reorganisational plan for it, establishing a long-term goal to work towards, and cutting back on a lot of the pure science and also the faffing about, all of which provoked a fair amount of outrage in some of the communities where I hang.
The thing is, I think this was pretty much a good idea (after some discussions on the subject withteinedreugan, at least, who is good for such things). For one thing, the space program has a history of being a direction that can unify the nation in a direction of Accomplishing Something, and without something to Accomplish it can't do that very well. Also, without some sort of long-term, unifying goal, there isn't a frontier to push at that demands the sort of technological development that makes me say, "Wow, the spin-offs." That sort of thing, the finding a way of handling the new situation, happens best when there's a new situation to shove up against, and establishing lunar and Martian bases is a new situation to shove up against.
Yes, this means less funding going to the pure science end of things, but . . . well, I've got a section on the subject of pure science at the end of this, so I'll leave my thoughts on it to there. I'll make the note that I do think that pure science oughta be funded, and that some of that funding should probably be governmental, but the details and reasonings are fidgety.
Food and Poverty
A really remarkable fraction of the very poor live on pre-prepared food. Part of this is time issues, part of this is skills issues, and part of this is lacking anywhere to cook in the first places. (I've heard that some landlords in low-income housing don't allow cooking on their property. This makes me start blowing steam out my ears.)
This has a bunch of problems associated with it. First of all, TV dinners and the like are expensive, compared to cooking equivalent meals from scratch, even meals with meat in them. (Also, TV dinners are tiny, as I learned when I was atjenett's mother's house.) It's harder to get enough food on a limited budget when one's only choosing prepared stuff. It's harder to get good nutrition out of them, even aside from the issues with preservatives and additives; this cascades out into long-term health issues and associated costs.
The other factors are time and knowledge. I've known how to cook for long enough that I can't readily imagine not knowing, but (unlike reading) I can pull back and see the things that my parents (mostly my mother) did to convey the skillset to me. Without the knowledge, I wouldn't be able to improvise with food to the extent that I do and can. I also have the time to cook; I'm not holding down several jobs to make ends meet or coming home from work so exhausted that I can only shove a TV dinner in the nuker.
I only have a clue about things that I'd do in urban areas; I can think of things that would take advantage of population centralisation. I want to set up buildings that will not only provide food, but provide skills and access to stovetops and perhaps ovens. Ideally, some of the staff would be drawn from the same population that's working in fast food stores, and would be picking up real cooking skills as they do it. Offer instruction to those people who want to get it. Offer meals prepared by the staff, too; if there isn't time to cook at home, perhaps get some to-go meals for N parcelled up so people can get them for cheap. (I'd be inclined to offer meals for free if eaten in-house and a nominal fee when prepared for pickup if I had infinite money; in practice tweakage might happen.)
What else I'd do? I'd get bins of dry goods that keep -- rice and beans are the obvious ones, some cereals probably as well, maybe flour? -- and set them out free for the taking. I don't want to introduce administrative costs for figuring out who deserves to have a pound of free beans, that winds up being some multiple of the value of the beans, it's not worth it. Make it worthwhile to learn the food-generation skills, make the staples readily available. Maybe try spread it beyond the government-sponsored stuff -- give a tax credit to businesses that set up the bins, deduction for the costs of maintenance and supplying.
If something like this exists out there, I'd expand it. Local administration, tweaking to local conditions (more likely to do the free or low-cost food in-house with a large homeless population, say), backup funding from higher government. Get the skills out there: back it up with nutritional knowledge, too, all the associated stuff. Even the stir-fry rule of thumb (meals should be multicoloured; more colours better) would be something.
I wonder if some of the subsidised farms could have their produce earmarked for such a program in any useful way.
Health Care
There are a number of things that I don't understand about the whole arguments about health care and public health in the United States.
One of them is the weird notion that there's a market for health care, in the sense that "free market" refers to. It's not like people have a serious, practicable option to not get treated for illnesses, injuries, and diseases. This is aggravated by the weirdnesses of insurance and access to same.
I mean, yes, some things can be toughed out on their own, or dealt with on their own -- I suspect my injury to my right wrist a few years ago was actually breaking it, and it was never set formally, I just kept it in a brace until it more or less mended. But it wasn't a major break, I didn't do anything to major blood vessels, and all like that there. I've dealt with some illnesses through a combination of toughing it out and a little herblore and over-the-counter meds, but I also sometimes have to go to the damn doctor.
The other one is why there isn't universal access to, at minimum, basic preventative medical care. Yearly physicals and the like. Serious illnesses are expensive. The ones that aren't readily preventable with decent prophylactic stuff are much easier to deal with when they're caught early. But the system doesn't promote that, doesn't encourage it; people can't afford the preventative care, and then the bloody crisis hits, and the expensive coverage has to come from somewhere.
The clinic I currently go to has a free care program. Back beforeteinedreugan and I were married, when I was uninsured, they tried to put me on it. I wouldn't let them, because damnit, we could afford it, and they should be able to keep those resources for people who need them. This isn't a rich city. (And that was what I told them, and they looked dubious at me a bit.) But that question of funding shouldn't have to be there, people should be able to have access to what they need to take care of themselves.
I've had good doctors over the course of my life -- I think I've had every major body system investigated in some detail to address the possibility of it being defective. (memerath, I think, back in high school, referred to me as "An interesting amalgamation of medical problems.") Minor ones, but persistent and obnoxious. And it's good to check, y'know, that I didn't have a brain tumor ("They did a CAT scan, but they didn't find anything") or an ulcer (at the age of eight, they checked me for an ulcer; anyone surprised that there are gastrointestinal disorders running in my family?) before the potential problems got really scary. And I got that care because I'm conscientious about the preventatives, in the stuff that's been there since I've been an adult.
I'm wary of the insurance industry for health care. Bigtime. I'm disgusted by the people who shot down universal health care proposals by screeching "Socialism!" Just drives me nuts. There is no damn good reason that people shouldn't be able to get physicals, consistently, and even on straight economics it's better to have that regular doctor's visit to catch problems early while they're still cheap and possibly avert issues down the road.
Other things about health care.
Men's sexual dysfunction issues are well-funded; women's sexual dysfunction issues are not taken care of or as well-funded. And other irritating disparities, like Viagra-equivalents having wider prescription insurance coverage than hormonal birth control. Because, I guess, getting it up is just that much more critical, and needs to be advertised on the telly.
And I hate the idea that these prescription drugs are advertised freely, that the advertising is the biggest part of some drug companies' budgets. I've heard of doctors complaining that patients come in "asking if Epoxyloproprophenol is right for them" and basically getting upset if they don't get a prescription for it -- even if it's not relevant to their conditions.
On the one hand, yes, I can see people with, say, sexual disorders being too ashamed to bring them up in the doctor's office without the awareness that there is some treatment for them, but damn, this is some really messed up stuff.
The only good thing that I've seen come of the relaxing of the advertising prescription medication to the general population laws is the miserable ovoid creature. (Courtesybaratron, some time ago.)
Affirmative Action
This is the text of a comment I posted over indirtydianadd's journal; it says what I need to say, I guess. This is a subject that I find intrinsically awkward.
I'll add to this that I'm bothered by training regimens in the military or for firefighters and the like that have different requirements for men and for women. If it's necessary for the job that one be able to do something, that doesn't depend on what's in your damn pants. If the standards that are being used for women are all that's really necessary for the job, what the hell business is there expecting the male participants to do more than that? Stupid. "Equality" doesn't mean setting up different standards. It means that the people who are qualified for the job should be able to do it without being disqualified on the basis of an irrelevant factor.
Environmental Issues
The thing that gets me the most about environmental stuff is how much is pushed off into public cost from private effort. (Just like Wal-Mart.)
This is one of those "screwed by the market" problems.
If a company goes to effort to minimise pollution and dangerous byproducts of the manufacturing of their product, they have to sell it for a higher price to make up for those costs. And that makes it harder to get the market share, especially when people aren't including that as a factor into their decisions.
The ones who don't do that still have those costs, the costs of cleanup or dealing with aftereffects, but they're not paying them; everyone else is. The people who have to get extra filtration and purification on their water sources are paying for it. The people who're coming down with medical disorders from long-term exposure are paying for it with blood, and everyone else is paying for that with cash. We're paying in the loss of diversity in ecosystems -- which not only is a loss because of sadness, but because there's some critical level of diversity that keeps them working, and we don't know what it is, because monocultures are more vulnerable to plague, because we don't know what some of these species that we may be losing might be able to do for us in the future when we've had a chance to learn about them. We're paying with it in chaotic weather systems and ocean salinity levels.
By the way, I think "global warming" is probably a misleading term overall, as it doesn't necessarily lead to higher temperatures. What happens when more energy gets dumped into a complex, choatic system tends to be more drastic and extreme chaos -- more major changes, higher highs and lower lows. (This is ignoring the stuff about the Gulf Stream, which requires certain ocean temperature differentials; that's a scary thing to think at. Go look. I mean it.) Things are moving more when they've got more energy, the small shifts can make a much bigger change. I start waving my hands around here, it's a shape in my head, I can't make it come out right. I wonder what Chay's doing these days; he had the maths for the shapes in my head.
But back to costs -- I'm talking about mercury levels in the bloodstream here. To pick a subject I have a cite for. So we have something that could be killing fish, can cause long-term damage in people, coming out of coal plants. And we're paying for it in the medical stuff and in the cost of seafood, and those are costs the coal plants aren't having to cover.
I'd rather pay for it in electricity costs from power plants that don't spew mercury, y'know? The market isn't putting the costs into the product; it's taking advantage of the entire system to clean up after it. I want some sort of regulations that will make the costs actually reflect the costs. I have no fucking clue how to do it. I'm reminded of an idea for shifting taxation off property/income basis onto an environmental impact one, and that appeals to me. I don't know how to make it work.
I know what I think needs to happen: the environmental costs of things need to be considered as part of the cost of production. Among other things, that turns the market into a potential ally rather than an enemy: reducing environmental damage may somewhat lower the costs, not consistently raise them. I didn't buy the fish full of mercury; we're still having to pay for it, though.
Families
There are people out there who call themselves "pro-family" as a political identification.
They're fucking liars.
They're in favor of one sort of family, and wedging everyone into it, this nuclear family thing, this destructive myth, whether or not it even remotely resembles what they need.
Real families don't look like that.
Real families include stray other members, they don't fit tidily into the mother-father-offspring mould: they include grandparents sometimes, or aunts and uncles, or foster children, people bloodkin and not who are under the care of the family. Some of them have only one parent, some have two, some have more; the sexes of those people vary.
These are real families.
I've written several times about marriage rights and the importance of those rituals in social dynamics. This is one of the things that matters to me, a central part of my concept of ma'at, that principle which organises people together into societies: the recognition of the formation of family is essential. I do consider it, in my own case, more important than the matters of law (while being aware that for some people the legal concerns are bloody yooge).
I'd love to see the law recognise households instead of just individuals and nuclear-family-faking units, organise itself that way, make sense of things that way, without trying to define what goes into a household, because that's making space for families, real ones.
That's a bit of a pipe dream. It's a wicked lot of work, an insane amount.
I want to see some sort of legal bond-formation that could establish a relationship equivalent to "sibling" in the eyes of the law: we already have one for creating spousal relationships and parental ones. Because that's making space for families, real ones.
But that's in there, the importance of real families, the ones that exist, not just the ones that fake looking like the pretty fantasy by having two parents, one of each popular genital configuration, and their offspring.
I'm not going to write about the need for marriage access; I've written about that, and my position is known. This is one of the places I approach single-issue status, though, because I get really cranky about people who oppose the existence of families that don't look like they belong on the Donna Reed Show. I'm in full colour, babe, not black and white. People who are hostile to the existence of my family have made the politics personal, and I'm not forgiving when it comes to threats to my family.
Some people will likely object to my considering things like DOMA, anti-gay legislation, and the like a threat to my family. After all, I'm not gay, I'm legally married, I don't have anything to worry about, right?
Wrong. These are people who have made it clear that families that fall out of their defined norm in one way do not deserve recognition as families or access to the rituals of social continuity. In some cases, they don't even think that those atypical families should have any ready way of getting legal rights. And actively work to disrupt those families and prevent them from being stable and secure.
So it's not my minority. Big fucking deal. Do I have any real reason to believe that my not-to-their-model family will fare any better?
Unfortunately, this is my major issue, and I hardly ever get the opportunity to vote for someone who actually is in accord with my position. (My local representative is almost there, though not quite; I appreciate him a lot.) So on my major, personal, big-ticket issue, I tend to have to weigh the candidates to see whose position is least awful.
Minor footnote: I was going to write a gay rights-in-general section, with reference to some of the Federal foofaraw about various agencies in the executive withdrawing protection for gays and then putting it back when people noticed and got cranky, and a kid who got censured for wearing a gay-positive shirt because it might offend people, when lots of people around him were sporting anti-gay materials, and probably some other stuff too. I don't have anything coherent to say anymore, I've written so much politics and it hurts so much, so I'm just sticking in this paragraph to say why I didn't write the rest of it.
Here's a big one: abortion.
(Now, I'm writing this in a bit of a temper because I just saw someone claim that the position 'pro-choice, anti-abortion' was intrinsically a hypocritical lie, and I'm not bloody well up to the stupid pissing match that would come about through responding to the little twerp, so I'm sort of semi-writing my response here. I've finally learned to identify the larger windmills.)
As can probably be judged from the parenthetical above, I consider myself pro-choice, anti-abortion. And let me clarify that latter: I would love to live in a world where every sex act is consensual, where good information about birth control and responsible sexuality is universally available, where every conceived child is wanted, where every potential mother is in sufficient good health, physically and mentally, and in stable enough financial condition to have a healthy baby and care for it properly, where no medical conditions suddenly change any of those factors, where there is no miscarriage, no womb death, none of that stuff. Given that none of that is the case, my opposition to the existence of abortion lives in the same theoretical la-la land in which I favor the death penalty.
And by the way: arguing about when life begins is completely fucking specious. Pregnancy is not spontaneous generation; life proceeds from life under the current conditions on this planet. Don't base your political positions on science this bad. It gets stupid all over everyone.
The life exists. That isn't some rhetorical point that can be handwaved away: the tissue is alive. It will become an independent human being with an investment of time, energy, health, and nutrition, all of which is filtered solely through the bearer for the early portion of its existence. That investment is a heavy one, sometimes extremely so; that burden cannot be shared in any way with current technology. The choice of whether to continue to bear that burden is bloody important. Other people can't take it on for her; until they can, she has to be the one who decides if the burden will be carried.
I've heard the notion that certain arguments opposing choice are at some level carrying intent to punish adult female sexuality; I am in partial agreement with this. (I've run into the "She made that choice when she decided to have sex" response rather often, along with "she has to deal with the consequences of her actions", as if abortion isn't one possible response to a consequence.) I think, though, it's more the case that there needs to be some level of societal recognition of the importance of nonprocreative purposes for sexuality (such as pair-bonding) so that the possibility that someone can be sexually active for responsible reasons that don't include reproduction sounds more plausible.
And because a moral dimension is bloody required in discussions of this subject, I consider life too precious a gift to be compulsory. I want to live in a gift economy in my family, and that starts with my organs.
Setting all that aside, there's the cold and practical end of things. Abortion (and exposure) have effectively always existed; they will quite likely always exist. There are safer ways to go about this and harsher ways to go about it, and acknowledging that people will seek this out, encouraging the dangerous, the reckless, and the bloodier solutions is just plain irresponsible.
And gods, do we really want to go back to a world where there might be police investigations of miscarriages as cases of possible murder? Isn't losing a child enough grief to put a family through?
Arming Bears
This isn't a big issue for me, but it is for a number of other people I know.
My major bafflement about the whole right-to-bear-arms issue is actually that it seems to be limited to discussion of firearms. Here in Massachusetts, single-edged blades longer than four inches, all double-edged weapons, and all triple edged weapons are just plain illegal. And switchblades, too.
Admittedly, these laws tend to get ignored a lot of the time, except when the authorities want to make an additional charge, but these are still arms, damnit.
On the subject of firearms, though, as that's what most people are wound up about. I don't personally care for 'em, which is part of why, if I were still in Maryland, I'd probably have askedsstaten to teach me target shooting by now. (There is a logic here, but it's not relevant to the point.)
But my basic feeling is that I don't have any more issues with licensing for competence and safety of firearms than I do for automobiles. In principle, I have no objections to things like gun registries; in practice I'm aware that these are often lead-ups to more invasive restrictions, and so I'm rather wary of them.
I don't like the idea of military-grade weapons being readily available to anyone; on the other hand, I consider the "assault weapons ban" thing that recently went around to be in the "histrionic nonsense" category as noted above, as it was pretty much a cosmetic thing, not something worked through on the capabilities of the weapons involved. It was all thrashing about so as to be seen doing something. In practice, and on the gripping hand, I don't think that "I don't like" is a relevant argument; it doesn't have enough factual support to make politics on.
I'm of the firm opinion that violent crime levels have a lot more to do with drug trafficking effects than gun availability effects in any case, and I've already expressed my opinion on how I think that should be addressed.
With regard to carrying such things, I don't really have a good grasp on why carry and concealed carry laws are as controversial as they are. If people have legitimate ownership of the things, they should be able to carry 'em around if they want to, except if there's a specific reason that they shouldn't. But most people aren't going into buildings with security checkpoints or onto airplanes on a daily basis; those are special cases.
The "PATRIOT" Act and Civil Liberties Issues
This is something that really bothers me about public discourse.
The thing that bothers me the most is the idea that expressing a contrary opinion is somehow un-American. (Because, of course, this country was founded on principles of the trustworthiness of authority and obligations to same.)
Or perhaps not.
More recent, perhaps?
(I get cranky at the people who elide the second sentence of that one.)
The idea that "loyal opposition" is not a useful term, that it's an oxymoron, is poisonous. I am glad to see it living -- I found it in The American Conservative magazine, and I felt a little better about the state of the world. But the thing is nasty, a viper in politics.
I'm bothered that the spectre of terrorism has made it seem plausible to segregate protestors from campaigns -- and both campaigns are doing it to some extent or another. (I have heard that the Secret Service has some influence on the segregations at a non-partisan level, I think, but I don't remember where to cite it.) I'm bothered by the evictions of peaceful protestors from rallies. I'm bothered by people being evicted from rallies for wearing t-shirts that say "Protect Our Civil Liberties"; I am slain by irony here, and only resurrect in time to vote.
I'm bothered by a novelist getting investigated as a potential terrorist for doing her research. (I'm concerned, but not bothered as such, by the recent stress about the LJer who got a visit from the Secret Service; they're obligated to investigate all reports. I'm bothered by the paranoia around it, though, including the possibly that someone might well have reported the thing in order to cause trouble.)
I'm impressed by the number of communities which have passed laws that limit the effectiveness of 'PATRIOT' within their confines. And I'm bothered that they felt they had to do that to protect their citizens. I'm bothered by searches and bag checks on my damn subway, and I need to look into getting one of those tote bags with the Fourth Amendment printed on it. I'm bothered by the pursuits of innocents, the shaky cases built for convictions, the occasional racist undertones (or, for that matter, overtones) such asbrownterrorist had to deal with. This all bothers me.
More, it scares me. It scares me that the idea of presumption of innocences no longer seems to hold sway. It bothers me that people have comparatively free rein to search through things in order to find something to charge -- and the case of the romance writer's research neatly shoots holes in the "If you're not doing anything bad, what do you care?" argument. The thing's been challenged in court on a variety of points, and I wouldn't be surprised if large portions of it were thrown out as simply bad law.
The thing not only scares me, it scares some non-Americans, who are, by the way, potentially affected by it.
Church and State
Church and state issues are actually fairly complicated.
The big one that comes up most noisily lately is the Ten Commandments and monuments containing the text on public land. My position on this tends to go something like: if the thing is on its own, without any context or diversity in its vicinity, then it's a bad idea. If it's in a context, I don't object. (I don't care if the context is 'a bunch of religious monuments' or 'a bunch of legal codes through history', though I think 'a bunch of religious monuments' is more problematic if one comes across people who want their religion represented.)
Oh yeah. And the "creationism" thing. I wouldn't care about this if it weren't being tried to force into science classes. There are certain sets of principles that science is based upon; only things according to that principle should be taught as science. Not as "alternative theories", not in a science class. If they want to teach cosmology and creation stories, they're entirely welcome to. (But they have to include the Heliopolitan creation myth, too, or I'll annoy them to death.)
And the posting of passages from Psalms in public parks just strikes me as a bad idea. I don't have an objection to poetry, even religious poetry, being posted, but if someone wants to submit a passage from the Qur'an or the Bhagavad Gita or something else, that should have just as good a chance of getting stuck on a bronze plaque.
A while back there was a student who got a college scholarship that got revoked because he chose to go to a seminary, because of church/state issues. I wonder how that worked out; I thought it was unreasonable that he should have to go through that. (It's not state sponsorship or involvement in religion, in my eyes; it's state sponsorship of education, which is a damn good idea overall. The award didn't define what sort of education the fellow had to be interested in pursuing.)
I don't have anything coherent to say about "faith-based initiatives" that hasn't been said here or here, so I won't bother. I feel like muttering that the separation of church and state is not merely for the protection of the state so it's not warped to a particular theology, but also to try to keep the religions from going at each other for political power pie-slices.
Voting Access
Okay, first of all, is anyone else bothered by the fact that the organisations which are supposedly our primary source of political information are pretty extensively involved in the political process? Can we trust that we're well-informed by these people? Is informing us in their best interests?
Yikes.
I'll start with the electronic voting machine craze. At least it has no chads, right? Plenty of people are skeptical,, though, not least because Diebold (the major manufacturer) had its CEO say that he was committed "to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President" and has tried to sue people who made publically available some documents that revealed the flaws in the equipment. (The memo archive is available on this page, if you want to go poke at it. And some early voters have reported that the machines are recording their votes incorrectly. In other words, get a receipt.
Okay. So let's just take the whole electronic voting machines strike me as a bad idea, couldn't we just, y'know, make marks on paper and drop them in a box? part of this rant as read at this point.
Then there's the concern about purges of the voting ranks. Now, I don't have a significant problem with the fact that in rather a few places, convicted felons do not have access to voting during the course of their incarceration; I have a big damn problem with the ones who deny voting rights to people after they're out of jail. That's extra punishment, and further, it's a conscious exclusion of some people from the responsibilities of government, which strikes me as both a problem and a bad idea. People are being purged from the voting rolls with neither notification nor recourse, in some cases without the lists being checked for accuracy or that the names on the list actually attached to the people being removed. Some people who feel they have been unfairly excluded have access to a "provisional ballot", which is not counted with the other votes.
Some people are being intimidated at polling places. Some of the vote suppression techniques that are being observed are racist constructions. Voters are being challenged because they refused to accept registered mail from the other party. Fraudulent letters have been sent to recently registered voters, at least one of which has been taken seriously enough to get an official rebuttal (warning: that's a link to a pdf file and will trigger a download). Not to mention other creepy lies.
I'm worried about this. No matter the results of the election, there is going to be litigation. I'm expecting lots of it.
Note: There are organisations that are trying to supervise the voting, especially in swing states, to try to keep the intimidation tactics and similar issues from disrupting the polling places. It's probably not too late to join one of them. Here ismarykaykare's information, which seems to be mostly geared to New Yorkers.
OurVote is an organisation that is asking anyone who has trouble voting to give them a call. Keep them in mind if you or someone you know needs help.
Arts and Sciences
Now here's the interesting thing: somewhere I got the notion that the real value and merit of a society comes about in the arts it produces. (And I'm using an idiosyncratic meaning of "arts" here, perhaps; I'm not just referring to literature, to painting, to sculpture, to the symphony, or even just expanding that to include grafitti and garage bands, but also pure science and philosophy. Pure science is a big art I'm in favor of.)
Not just because these are the things that make a rich, worthwhile life; not just because these are things that I and people I care about want to pursue. Not just because these are the things that get remembered in a hundred years or a thousand. But because these are the things that make the practical differences tomorrow; not just the raw science that brings about the possibility of curing another disease or solving another technical problem, but the art that makes people change the world, the worms that people hide in their writing. This is where sociogenesis lies. (Born-men like fractal patterns.)
In my ideal world, there would be a way of making this work. For people to pursue their art, even get a stipend for doing so. I cannot for the life of me figure out a practical way of doing this. So I'm just going to go socialist on it and try to work for a universe where folks can be sure they aren't going to starve, die of exposure, or collapse from plague while they're pursuing their thing on their own. It's all about the options.
I've been dithering about whether or not this thing just sort of peters out into nothingness or needs some concluding notes; I've decided to write concluding notes, just in case it needs something.
I think I can try to sum up the axioms of my politics, and that will do for a manner of conclusion.
ibnfirnas puts it, hang out with dead people.American Responsibility to its Past and Consistency in its Present
The United States has a history of sponsoring terrorists and dictators.
This is a history that has come to haunt it.
It is no good to remove Saddam Hussein without acknowledging that this country supported him in the Iran-Iraq war (even while doublecrossing his ass); it is no good to hunt Osama bin Laden without acknowledging that he was trained, in part, by the CIA.
These people were called "freedom fighters" when they were with us, and "terrorists" or sponsors of terrorists when they're against us.
This is Not Cool.
It is not cool that anti-Castro terrorists can travel on (possibly fake) U. S. passports, get questioned by Federal agents, and then let go. Their murders are still murders, their bombs are still bombs.
If we are really interested in stopping terrorism as a functional political tool, we have to stop sheltering terrorists and stop supporting terrorists who are targeting our political enemies. If this impulse to end terrorism is something that needs to be worldwide, it needs to be not a partisan thing, not something that can be swayed by the expat vote in Florida, not something that gets overlooked when the resulting destruction is politically convenient.
The United States as a whole needs to acknowledge the terrorists and dictators it has sponsored in the past, and needs to take responsibility for sponsoring investigations into them when they violate international law and human rights, responsibility for gathering forces against them when force is necessary, responsibility for acknowledging that these people were trained or supported or funded or maintained by United States dollars.
It is our fault as a nation that they are where they are. We need to clean up our damn crap, not just because it comes back to bleed us, but because our hands are not clean when people in other nations bleed as a result. We should put special effort into dealing with the horrible people who are out there, in part, because we put them there.
It's not enough to just cut off support for these pet monsters. The people who are trying to bring them to justice need our active support; we owe that much for our past actions. We do not want to obligate ourselves to invade every damn nation that looks like it might be sponsoring terrorists -- conquering the world is not what our troops signed up for -- and we'd have to invade ourselves to deal with the people who have funded the IRA and the anti-Castro terrorists. We need to can the hypocrisy and pay attention to the world, coming down hard on sponsorship of terrorism and human rights violations (which are pretty closely related, really, in a snake-eats-its-tail way) both as an individual nation and as a world leader. I want a consistent national policy that doesn't have Iranians dithering about which potential administration is most likely to ignore their human rights record or mess less with their nuclear program.
I'm back to that McCain quote. Do we? Do we actually present evidence of that to the world? To the American public?
Do we have the evidence to back up our actions? Can we convict?
We need that. We can't go around "fixing" things without that evidence.
The United Nations
So what the hell do we do about this?
We have evidence the system is corrupt, most recently and dramatically with the subversion of the Food-for-Oil program in Iraq.
It's often ineffectual, with member states ignoring resolutions that don't suit them, has very limited resources of its own to bring to bear on conflicts, and minimal practical enforcement powers.
And the United States has, over time, put in a fair amount of effort to undermine the United Nations, including refusing to pay its bloody dues, which are a significant part of the UN's budget.
Some sort of world gathering organisation is, I think, necessary. I don't know if the UN has gone the way of the League of Nations, or whether it can be restored to something useful.
Finally, Terrorism in General
There are two things that need to be done to deal with terrorists. There's a lot of emphasis put on one of them, and I'm worried that the other one is going to completely get lost.
The one that there's the emphasis on is, of course, getting the terrorists and dealing with them, though as I mentioned above there's a certain lack of consistency here. These people need to be removed from their operations and dealt with, ideally in a way that doesn't convert them into martyrs -- but at least martyrs aren't supplying their personal contacts, resources, and skills into those systems.
But the extensive issues that create terrorists, the place from which murder and explosions and suicidal actions so long as they kill others, that needs to be dealt with too. Otherwise we just get the next generation of would-be martyrs rising up in the wake of the fallen, like the dragon's teeth.
To explain what I'm looking at, I have to write about Chechnya. This hurts like hell. And it bothers me that it's not getting press, that people aren't aware of it, that it is . . . a footnote.
Chechnya was conquered by Russian forces in the nineteenth century. They're still not happy about that. They're also not happy that Stalin attempted to wipe out their entire population by shipping as many as he could get his hands on to Siberia. This is a region that is less than pleased with Russian rule, and wants out. And has tried, several times, to get out.
And failed.
And in the course of that failing, there have been mass graves. There was a girl raped literally to death; there may well have been more. A baby impaled on a bayonet while the mother was forced to watch. Grozny has no undamaged buildings. People used as target practice and other casual murders.
And now there are people who will say "Strike back at the Russians. Let's blow up this school. Let's take out those soldiers. Let's drive the Russians out, make them leave us, by whatever means possible. We've already lost our families, our friends, our towns, and our hope; make them lose until they leave."
I see people expressing incomprehension that anyone could become a terrorist. I wonder how they can not know. These are the roots of terrorism. These are where the bomb-makers are made.
And this is why I hate the phrase "war against terror" beyond any of the other "war against" phrases. Wars breed hopelessness: they breed blood feud, they destroy economies, break social infrastructures, they leave disease and destruction in their aftermath. And they provide a very direct and obvious enemy, the source of these problems. They leave survivors behind who have lost their livelihoods, their kin, who are in pain, who want to do something; these are the people who will join organisations suggesting that they can do something, they can strike back. It may get them killed, but there's a point at which that is the only peace to which one can aspire. War is a fertile ground for the conditions that make terrorism plausible or even appealing.
The article I linked, the PakTribune one -- read it if you don't understand where terrorists come from.
Terrorists come from war. They come from genocide. They come from helplessness, from a lack of hope, from losing all that they loved. And terrorism is a tool for fighting against a stronger foe, one with better equipment, better technology, better means.
This stuff can be fixed. Paying attention to human rights and stopping situations that feed into the hopelessness can happen -- needs to happen. Working on programs that work on building self-sustaining communities that are healthy, that are economically sound, that aren't shot through of holes because of deaths and disappearances can happen. Presenting as an ally, not as an enemy, can happen.
It is probably too late for a number of the people currently involved in terrorism to be stopped, to be brought back. Maybe most of them. I don't know. But it's not too late to make the difference to the creation of the next generation of them.
Domestically speaking -- domestically speaking, I'll talk about the spindoctoringly named "USA PATRIOT" somewhere after this, but speaking of ineffectual notions, how about that "no-fly list", protecting our noble skies from Ted Kennedy and Cat Stevens. Which perturbs other nations, who wonder if the U. S. government has taken leave of its senses. By the way, a U. S. Representative who found his name on the no-fly list? Started making reservations that included his middle name, and stopped getting flagged by it. Aren't you glad the thing is so difficult to foil? Doesn't it make you feel safer?
Thrashing about checking names as if it does something effectual isn't doing anything but looking like they're doing something useful.
It's not putting serious thought into intelligence failures. Nor is it getting those finished reports out where people can actually look at them. It's not actually looking into the backgrounds of government employees properly.
Promote the General Welfare
Space, NASA, and so on
Some people will probably wonder why the fuck I put the space program here. "Because I think it belongs here" is not bloody useful for that.
Here's the thing, though; first of all, the space program is full of jobly goodness, and I'm all in favor of jobly goodness. But that's not enough for this sort of thing, really. On the flip side of that, dollar for dollar the space program has produced far more economic power than was invested in it, through consequences of the jobly goodness and the results of spin-off products.
And the spin-offs. Wow, the spin-offs. NASA has a publication on the subject. Structural analysis programs. Water purification systems. Scratch-resistant glasses lenses. Superior weather forecasting techniques. Fire-resistant fabrics and other such materials. Breast cancer prevention techniques, plural. Laser angioplasty. Programmable pacemakers. Computer training programs -- "Interactive Multimedia Training". Robots that can handle hazardous response situations. Emergency rescue cutters (for getting people out of wrecked cars). Better air tanks for firemen. Improved brake linings.
To name a few.
Now, NASA's had some organisational difficulties in recent years, as well as a bad habit of having its budget cut out from under it. A while back, President Bush put up a reorganisational plan for it, establishing a long-term goal to work towards, and cutting back on a lot of the pure science and also the faffing about, all of which provoked a fair amount of outrage in some of the communities where I hang.
The thing is, I think this was pretty much a good idea (after some discussions on the subject with
teinedreugan, at least, who is good for such things). For one thing, the space program has a history of being a direction that can unify the nation in a direction of Accomplishing Something, and without something to Accomplish it can't do that very well. Also, without some sort of long-term, unifying goal, there isn't a frontier to push at that demands the sort of technological development that makes me say, "Wow, the spin-offs." That sort of thing, the finding a way of handling the new situation, happens best when there's a new situation to shove up against, and establishing lunar and Martian bases is a new situation to shove up against.Yes, this means less funding going to the pure science end of things, but . . . well, I've got a section on the subject of pure science at the end of this, so I'll leave my thoughts on it to there. I'll make the note that I do think that pure science oughta be funded, and that some of that funding should probably be governmental, but the details and reasonings are fidgety.
Food and Poverty
A really remarkable fraction of the very poor live on pre-prepared food. Part of this is time issues, part of this is skills issues, and part of this is lacking anywhere to cook in the first places. (I've heard that some landlords in low-income housing don't allow cooking on their property. This makes me start blowing steam out my ears.)
This has a bunch of problems associated with it. First of all, TV dinners and the like are expensive, compared to cooking equivalent meals from scratch, even meals with meat in them. (Also, TV dinners are tiny, as I learned when I was at
jenett's mother's house.) It's harder to get enough food on a limited budget when one's only choosing prepared stuff. It's harder to get good nutrition out of them, even aside from the issues with preservatives and additives; this cascades out into long-term health issues and associated costs.The other factors are time and knowledge. I've known how to cook for long enough that I can't readily imagine not knowing, but (unlike reading) I can pull back and see the things that my parents (mostly my mother) did to convey the skillset to me. Without the knowledge, I wouldn't be able to improvise with food to the extent that I do and can. I also have the time to cook; I'm not holding down several jobs to make ends meet or coming home from work so exhausted that I can only shove a TV dinner in the nuker.
I only have a clue about things that I'd do in urban areas; I can think of things that would take advantage of population centralisation. I want to set up buildings that will not only provide food, but provide skills and access to stovetops and perhaps ovens. Ideally, some of the staff would be drawn from the same population that's working in fast food stores, and would be picking up real cooking skills as they do it. Offer instruction to those people who want to get it. Offer meals prepared by the staff, too; if there isn't time to cook at home, perhaps get some to-go meals for N parcelled up so people can get them for cheap. (I'd be inclined to offer meals for free if eaten in-house and a nominal fee when prepared for pickup if I had infinite money; in practice tweakage might happen.)
What else I'd do? I'd get bins of dry goods that keep -- rice and beans are the obvious ones, some cereals probably as well, maybe flour? -- and set them out free for the taking. I don't want to introduce administrative costs for figuring out who deserves to have a pound of free beans, that winds up being some multiple of the value of the beans, it's not worth it. Make it worthwhile to learn the food-generation skills, make the staples readily available. Maybe try spread it beyond the government-sponsored stuff -- give a tax credit to businesses that set up the bins, deduction for the costs of maintenance and supplying.
If something like this exists out there, I'd expand it. Local administration, tweaking to local conditions (more likely to do the free or low-cost food in-house with a large homeless population, say), backup funding from higher government. Get the skills out there: back it up with nutritional knowledge, too, all the associated stuff. Even the stir-fry rule of thumb (meals should be multicoloured; more colours better) would be something.
I wonder if some of the subsidised farms could have their produce earmarked for such a program in any useful way.
Health Care
There are a number of things that I don't understand about the whole arguments about health care and public health in the United States.
One of them is the weird notion that there's a market for health care, in the sense that "free market" refers to. It's not like people have a serious, practicable option to not get treated for illnesses, injuries, and diseases. This is aggravated by the weirdnesses of insurance and access to same.
I mean, yes, some things can be toughed out on their own, or dealt with on their own -- I suspect my injury to my right wrist a few years ago was actually breaking it, and it was never set formally, I just kept it in a brace until it more or less mended. But it wasn't a major break, I didn't do anything to major blood vessels, and all like that there. I've dealt with some illnesses through a combination of toughing it out and a little herblore and over-the-counter meds, but I also sometimes have to go to the damn doctor.
The other one is why there isn't universal access to, at minimum, basic preventative medical care. Yearly physicals and the like. Serious illnesses are expensive. The ones that aren't readily preventable with decent prophylactic stuff are much easier to deal with when they're caught early. But the system doesn't promote that, doesn't encourage it; people can't afford the preventative care, and then the bloody crisis hits, and the expensive coverage has to come from somewhere.
The clinic I currently go to has a free care program. Back before
teinedreugan and I were married, when I was uninsured, they tried to put me on it. I wouldn't let them, because damnit, we could afford it, and they should be able to keep those resources for people who need them. This isn't a rich city. (And that was what I told them, and they looked dubious at me a bit.) But that question of funding shouldn't have to be there, people should be able to have access to what they need to take care of themselves.I've had good doctors over the course of my life -- I think I've had every major body system investigated in some detail to address the possibility of it being defective. (
memerath, I think, back in high school, referred to me as "An interesting amalgamation of medical problems.") Minor ones, but persistent and obnoxious. And it's good to check, y'know, that I didn't have a brain tumor ("They did a CAT scan, but they didn't find anything") or an ulcer (at the age of eight, they checked me for an ulcer; anyone surprised that there are gastrointestinal disorders running in my family?) before the potential problems got really scary. And I got that care because I'm conscientious about the preventatives, in the stuff that's been there since I've been an adult.I'm wary of the insurance industry for health care. Bigtime. I'm disgusted by the people who shot down universal health care proposals by screeching "Socialism!" Just drives me nuts. There is no damn good reason that people shouldn't be able to get physicals, consistently, and even on straight economics it's better to have that regular doctor's visit to catch problems early while they're still cheap and possibly avert issues down the road.
Other things about health care.
Men's sexual dysfunction issues are well-funded; women's sexual dysfunction issues are not taken care of or as well-funded. And other irritating disparities, like Viagra-equivalents having wider prescription insurance coverage than hormonal birth control. Because, I guess, getting it up is just that much more critical, and needs to be advertised on the telly.
And I hate the idea that these prescription drugs are advertised freely, that the advertising is the biggest part of some drug companies' budgets. I've heard of doctors complaining that patients come in "asking if Epoxyloproprophenol is right for them" and basically getting upset if they don't get a prescription for it -- even if it's not relevant to their conditions.
On the one hand, yes, I can see people with, say, sexual disorders being too ashamed to bring them up in the doctor's office without the awareness that there is some treatment for them, but damn, this is some really messed up stuff.
The only good thing that I've seen come of the relaxing of the advertising prescription medication to the general population laws is the miserable ovoid creature. (Courtesy
baratron, some time ago.)Affirmative Action
This is the text of a comment I posted over in
dirtydianadd's journal; it says what I need to say, I guess. This is a subject that I find intrinsically awkward.- This is something I need to write about for the political post; I may take what I say here and copy it over there.
I'm very uncomfortable with a lot of forms of what's called "affirmative action"; I dislike the idea of establishing different standards for different people on the basis of non-relevant characteristics. I don't want to get a job (or whatever) because I'm a woman; I want to get a job because I'm qualified, because I'll do it well. It feels condescending to me to change the standards for one group or another, as if people in one group can't be expected to live up to the standards of another (or people in one group should be held to higher standards).
I'm less uncomfortable with the idea of minority status as a tiebreaker, in the case where there are two people of the same qualifications. I'm not really bothered at all by things like outreach programs trying to increase applications from minority areas, whatever the minority group might be.
At the same time, I'm aware that, for example, "colour-blind" often means in practice "pretend you're white", that "no sex bias" means in practice "everyone is male, including the people with breasts", that "religion-neutral" means "presumed to be Christian, probably Protestant", that mentioning one has a dinner date with one's boyfriend is either completely unremarkable or in-your-face depending on whether one has an innie or an outie. And it's important to do something about those biases, and not thinking about them in the real world is a good way of keeping them in place.
I think the important thing, the long-term effective thing, is to go in to where the systematic biases perpetrate themselves -- like dealing with poverty being both self-perpetuating and more likely to hit blacks and Hispanics. The idea of doing economic preference rather than ethnic in college admissions -- that could help with that. There are other things that help with that too.
But they're all long-term, that's generational thinking -- maybe two generations at best. There's still the question of what we do with things now. And I don't think there are any easy answers to that.
I'll add to this that I'm bothered by training regimens in the military or for firefighters and the like that have different requirements for men and for women. If it's necessary for the job that one be able to do something, that doesn't depend on what's in your damn pants. If the standards that are being used for women are all that's really necessary for the job, what the hell business is there expecting the male participants to do more than that? Stupid. "Equality" doesn't mean setting up different standards. It means that the people who are qualified for the job should be able to do it without being disqualified on the basis of an irrelevant factor.
Environmental Issues
The thing that gets me the most about environmental stuff is how much is pushed off into public cost from private effort. (Just like Wal-Mart.)
This is one of those "screwed by the market" problems.
If a company goes to effort to minimise pollution and dangerous byproducts of the manufacturing of their product, they have to sell it for a higher price to make up for those costs. And that makes it harder to get the market share, especially when people aren't including that as a factor into their decisions.
The ones who don't do that still have those costs, the costs of cleanup or dealing with aftereffects, but they're not paying them; everyone else is. The people who have to get extra filtration and purification on their water sources are paying for it. The people who're coming down with medical disorders from long-term exposure are paying for it with blood, and everyone else is paying for that with cash. We're paying in the loss of diversity in ecosystems -- which not only is a loss because of sadness, but because there's some critical level of diversity that keeps them working, and we don't know what it is, because monocultures are more vulnerable to plague, because we don't know what some of these species that we may be losing might be able to do for us in the future when we've had a chance to learn about them. We're paying with it in chaotic weather systems and ocean salinity levels.
By the way, I think "global warming" is probably a misleading term overall, as it doesn't necessarily lead to higher temperatures. What happens when more energy gets dumped into a complex, choatic system tends to be more drastic and extreme chaos -- more major changes, higher highs and lower lows. (This is ignoring the stuff about the Gulf Stream, which requires certain ocean temperature differentials; that's a scary thing to think at. Go look. I mean it.) Things are moving more when they've got more energy, the small shifts can make a much bigger change. I start waving my hands around here, it's a shape in my head, I can't make it come out right. I wonder what Chay's doing these days; he had the maths for the shapes in my head.
But back to costs -- I'm talking about mercury levels in the bloodstream here. To pick a subject I have a cite for. So we have something that could be killing fish, can cause long-term damage in people, coming out of coal plants. And we're paying for it in the medical stuff and in the cost of seafood, and those are costs the coal plants aren't having to cover.
I'd rather pay for it in electricity costs from power plants that don't spew mercury, y'know? The market isn't putting the costs into the product; it's taking advantage of the entire system to clean up after it. I want some sort of regulations that will make the costs actually reflect the costs. I have no fucking clue how to do it. I'm reminded of an idea for shifting taxation off property/income basis onto an environmental impact one, and that appeals to me. I don't know how to make it work.
I know what I think needs to happen: the environmental costs of things need to be considered as part of the cost of production. Among other things, that turns the market into a potential ally rather than an enemy: reducing environmental damage may somewhat lower the costs, not consistently raise them. I didn't buy the fish full of mercury; we're still having to pay for it, though.
Secure the Blessings of Liberty To Ourselves and Our Posterity
Families
There are people out there who call themselves "pro-family" as a political identification.
They're fucking liars.
They're in favor of one sort of family, and wedging everyone into it, this nuclear family thing, this destructive myth, whether or not it even remotely resembles what they need.
Real families don't look like that.
Real families include stray other members, they don't fit tidily into the mother-father-offspring mould: they include grandparents sometimes, or aunts and uncles, or foster children, people bloodkin and not who are under the care of the family. Some of them have only one parent, some have two, some have more; the sexes of those people vary.
These are real families.
I've written several times about marriage rights and the importance of those rituals in social dynamics. This is one of the things that matters to me, a central part of my concept of ma'at, that principle which organises people together into societies: the recognition of the formation of family is essential. I do consider it, in my own case, more important than the matters of law (while being aware that for some people the legal concerns are bloody yooge).
I'd love to see the law recognise households instead of just individuals and nuclear-family-faking units, organise itself that way, make sense of things that way, without trying to define what goes into a household, because that's making space for families, real ones.
That's a bit of a pipe dream. It's a wicked lot of work, an insane amount.
I want to see some sort of legal bond-formation that could establish a relationship equivalent to "sibling" in the eyes of the law: we already have one for creating spousal relationships and parental ones. Because that's making space for families, real ones.
But that's in there, the importance of real families, the ones that exist, not just the ones that fake looking like the pretty fantasy by having two parents, one of each popular genital configuration, and their offspring.
I'm not going to write about the need for marriage access; I've written about that, and my position is known. This is one of the places I approach single-issue status, though, because I get really cranky about people who oppose the existence of families that don't look like they belong on the Donna Reed Show. I'm in full colour, babe, not black and white. People who are hostile to the existence of my family have made the politics personal, and I'm not forgiving when it comes to threats to my family.
Some people will likely object to my considering things like DOMA, anti-gay legislation, and the like a threat to my family. After all, I'm not gay, I'm legally married, I don't have anything to worry about, right?
Wrong. These are people who have made it clear that families that fall out of their defined norm in one way do not deserve recognition as families or access to the rituals of social continuity. In some cases, they don't even think that those atypical families should have any ready way of getting legal rights. And actively work to disrupt those families and prevent them from being stable and secure.
So it's not my minority. Big fucking deal. Do I have any real reason to believe that my not-to-their-model family will fare any better?
Unfortunately, this is my major issue, and I hardly ever get the opportunity to vote for someone who actually is in accord with my position. (My local representative is almost there, though not quite; I appreciate him a lot.) So on my major, personal, big-ticket issue, I tend to have to weigh the candidates to see whose position is least awful.
Minor footnote: I was going to write a gay rights-in-general section, with reference to some of the Federal foofaraw about various agencies in the executive withdrawing protection for gays and then putting it back when people noticed and got cranky, and a kid who got censured for wearing a gay-positive shirt because it might offend people, when lots of people around him were sporting anti-gay materials, and probably some other stuff too. I don't have anything coherent to say anymore, I've written so much politics and it hurts so much, so I'm just sticking in this paragraph to say why I didn't write the rest of it.
Here's a big one: abortion.
(Now, I'm writing this in a bit of a temper because I just saw someone claim that the position 'pro-choice, anti-abortion' was intrinsically a hypocritical lie, and I'm not bloody well up to the stupid pissing match that would come about through responding to the little twerp, so I'm sort of semi-writing my response here. I've finally learned to identify the larger windmills.)
As can probably be judged from the parenthetical above, I consider myself pro-choice, anti-abortion. And let me clarify that latter: I would love to live in a world where every sex act is consensual, where good information about birth control and responsible sexuality is universally available, where every conceived child is wanted, where every potential mother is in sufficient good health, physically and mentally, and in stable enough financial condition to have a healthy baby and care for it properly, where no medical conditions suddenly change any of those factors, where there is no miscarriage, no womb death, none of that stuff. Given that none of that is the case, my opposition to the existence of abortion lives in the same theoretical la-la land in which I favor the death penalty.
And by the way: arguing about when life begins is completely fucking specious. Pregnancy is not spontaneous generation; life proceeds from life under the current conditions on this planet. Don't base your political positions on science this bad. It gets stupid all over everyone.
The life exists. That isn't some rhetorical point that can be handwaved away: the tissue is alive. It will become an independent human being with an investment of time, energy, health, and nutrition, all of which is filtered solely through the bearer for the early portion of its existence. That investment is a heavy one, sometimes extremely so; that burden cannot be shared in any way with current technology. The choice of whether to continue to bear that burden is bloody important. Other people can't take it on for her; until they can, she has to be the one who decides if the burden will be carried.
I've heard the notion that certain arguments opposing choice are at some level carrying intent to punish adult female sexuality; I am in partial agreement with this. (I've run into the "She made that choice when she decided to have sex" response rather often, along with "she has to deal with the consequences of her actions", as if abortion isn't one possible response to a consequence.) I think, though, it's more the case that there needs to be some level of societal recognition of the importance of nonprocreative purposes for sexuality (such as pair-bonding) so that the possibility that someone can be sexually active for responsible reasons that don't include reproduction sounds more plausible.
And because a moral dimension is bloody required in discussions of this subject, I consider life too precious a gift to be compulsory. I want to live in a gift economy in my family, and that starts with my organs.
Setting all that aside, there's the cold and practical end of things. Abortion (and exposure) have effectively always existed; they will quite likely always exist. There are safer ways to go about this and harsher ways to go about it, and acknowledging that people will seek this out, encouraging the dangerous, the reckless, and the bloodier solutions is just plain irresponsible.
And gods, do we really want to go back to a world where there might be police investigations of miscarriages as cases of possible murder? Isn't losing a child enough grief to put a family through?
Arming Bears
This isn't a big issue for me, but it is for a number of other people I know.
My major bafflement about the whole right-to-bear-arms issue is actually that it seems to be limited to discussion of firearms. Here in Massachusetts, single-edged blades longer than four inches, all double-edged weapons, and all triple edged weapons are just plain illegal. And switchblades, too.
Admittedly, these laws tend to get ignored a lot of the time, except when the authorities want to make an additional charge, but these are still arms, damnit.
On the subject of firearms, though, as that's what most people are wound up about. I don't personally care for 'em, which is part of why, if I were still in Maryland, I'd probably have asked
sstaten to teach me target shooting by now. (There is a logic here, but it's not relevant to the point.)But my basic feeling is that I don't have any more issues with licensing for competence and safety of firearms than I do for automobiles. In principle, I have no objections to things like gun registries; in practice I'm aware that these are often lead-ups to more invasive restrictions, and so I'm rather wary of them.
I don't like the idea of military-grade weapons being readily available to anyone; on the other hand, I consider the "assault weapons ban" thing that recently went around to be in the "histrionic nonsense" category as noted above, as it was pretty much a cosmetic thing, not something worked through on the capabilities of the weapons involved. It was all thrashing about so as to be seen doing something. In practice, and on the gripping hand, I don't think that "I don't like" is a relevant argument; it doesn't have enough factual support to make politics on.
I'm of the firm opinion that violent crime levels have a lot more to do with drug trafficking effects than gun availability effects in any case, and I've already expressed my opinion on how I think that should be addressed.
With regard to carrying such things, I don't really have a good grasp on why carry and concealed carry laws are as controversial as they are. If people have legitimate ownership of the things, they should be able to carry 'em around if they want to, except if there's a specific reason that they shouldn't. But most people aren't going into buildings with security checkpoints or onto airplanes on a daily basis; those are special cases.
The "PATRIOT" Act and Civil Liberties Issues
This is something that really bothers me about public discourse.
The thing that bothers me the most is the idea that expressing a contrary opinion is somehow un-American. (Because, of course, this country was founded on principles of the trustworthiness of authority and obligations to same.)
Or perhaps not.
- Dissent is the highest form of patriotism. --Thomas Jefferson
Loyal opposition is the mark of a patriot, principled dissent the obligation
of every citizen. --Thomas Paine
More recent, perhaps?
- Our country, right or wrong. When right, to be kept right, when wrong, to be put right. --Carl Schurz
"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it." --Abraham Lincoln
(I get cranky at the people who elide the second sentence of that one.)
The idea that "loyal opposition" is not a useful term, that it's an oxymoron, is poisonous. I am glad to see it living -- I found it in The American Conservative magazine, and I felt a little better about the state of the world. But the thing is nasty, a viper in politics.
I'm bothered that the spectre of terrorism has made it seem plausible to segregate protestors from campaigns -- and both campaigns are doing it to some extent or another. (I have heard that the Secret Service has some influence on the segregations at a non-partisan level, I think, but I don't remember where to cite it.) I'm bothered by the evictions of peaceful protestors from rallies. I'm bothered by people being evicted from rallies for wearing t-shirts that say "Protect Our Civil Liberties"; I am slain by irony here, and only resurrect in time to vote.
I'm bothered by a novelist getting investigated as a potential terrorist for doing her research. (I'm concerned, but not bothered as such, by the recent stress about the LJer who got a visit from the Secret Service; they're obligated to investigate all reports. I'm bothered by the paranoia around it, though, including the possibly that someone might well have reported the thing in order to cause trouble.)
I'm impressed by the number of communities which have passed laws that limit the effectiveness of 'PATRIOT' within their confines. And I'm bothered that they felt they had to do that to protect their citizens. I'm bothered by searches and bag checks on my damn subway, and I need to look into getting one of those tote bags with the Fourth Amendment printed on it. I'm bothered by the pursuits of innocents, the shaky cases built for convictions, the occasional racist undertones (or, for that matter, overtones) such as
brownterrorist had to deal with. This all bothers me.More, it scares me. It scares me that the idea of presumption of innocences no longer seems to hold sway. It bothers me that people have comparatively free rein to search through things in order to find something to charge -- and the case of the romance writer's research neatly shoots holes in the "If you're not doing anything bad, what do you care?" argument. The thing's been challenged in court on a variety of points, and I wouldn't be surprised if large portions of it were thrown out as simply bad law.
The thing not only scares me, it scares some non-Americans, who are, by the way, potentially affected by it.
- "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." --Ben Franklin, 1759
Church and State
- Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law. --Thomas Jefferson
Church and state issues are actually fairly complicated.
The big one that comes up most noisily lately is the Ten Commandments and monuments containing the text on public land. My position on this tends to go something like: if the thing is on its own, without any context or diversity in its vicinity, then it's a bad idea. If it's in a context, I don't object. (I don't care if the context is 'a bunch of religious monuments' or 'a bunch of legal codes through history', though I think 'a bunch of religious monuments' is more problematic if one comes across people who want their religion represented.)
Oh yeah. And the "creationism" thing. I wouldn't care about this if it weren't being tried to force into science classes. There are certain sets of principles that science is based upon; only things according to that principle should be taught as science. Not as "alternative theories", not in a science class. If they want to teach cosmology and creation stories, they're entirely welcome to. (But they have to include the Heliopolitan creation myth, too, or I'll annoy them to death.)
And the posting of passages from Psalms in public parks just strikes me as a bad idea. I don't have an objection to poetry, even religious poetry, being posted, but if someone wants to submit a passage from the Qur'an or the Bhagavad Gita or something else, that should have just as good a chance of getting stuck on a bronze plaque.
A while back there was a student who got a college scholarship that got revoked because he chose to go to a seminary, because of church/state issues. I wonder how that worked out; I thought it was unreasonable that he should have to go through that. (It's not state sponsorship or involvement in religion, in my eyes; it's state sponsorship of education, which is a damn good idea overall. The award didn't define what sort of education the fellow had to be interested in pursuing.)
I don't have anything coherent to say about "faith-based initiatives" that hasn't been said here or here, so I won't bother. I feel like muttering that the separation of church and state is not merely for the protection of the state so it's not warped to a particular theology, but also to try to keep the religions from going at each other for political power pie-slices.
Voting Access
Okay, first of all, is anyone else bothered by the fact that the organisations which are supposedly our primary source of political information are pretty extensively involved in the political process? Can we trust that we're well-informed by these people? Is informing us in their best interests?
Yikes.
I'll start with the electronic voting machine craze. At least it has no chads, right? Plenty of people are skeptical,, though, not least because Diebold (the major manufacturer) had its CEO say that he was committed "to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President" and has tried to sue people who made publically available some documents that revealed the flaws in the equipment. (The memo archive is available on this page, if you want to go poke at it. And some early voters have reported that the machines are recording their votes incorrectly. In other words, get a receipt.
Okay. So let's just take the whole electronic voting machines strike me as a bad idea, couldn't we just, y'know, make marks on paper and drop them in a box? part of this rant as read at this point.
Then there's the concern about purges of the voting ranks. Now, I don't have a significant problem with the fact that in rather a few places, convicted felons do not have access to voting during the course of their incarceration; I have a big damn problem with the ones who deny voting rights to people after they're out of jail. That's extra punishment, and further, it's a conscious exclusion of some people from the responsibilities of government, which strikes me as both a problem and a bad idea. People are being purged from the voting rolls with neither notification nor recourse, in some cases without the lists being checked for accuracy or that the names on the list actually attached to the people being removed. Some people who feel they have been unfairly excluded have access to a "provisional ballot", which is not counted with the other votes.
Some people are being intimidated at polling places. Some of the vote suppression techniques that are being observed are racist constructions. Voters are being challenged because they refused to accept registered mail from the other party. Fraudulent letters have been sent to recently registered voters, at least one of which has been taken seriously enough to get an official rebuttal (warning: that's a link to a pdf file and will trigger a download). Not to mention other creepy lies.
I'm worried about this. No matter the results of the election, there is going to be litigation. I'm expecting lots of it.
Note: There are organisations that are trying to supervise the voting, especially in swing states, to try to keep the intimidation tactics and similar issues from disrupting the polling places. It's probably not too late to join one of them. Here is
marykaykare's information, which seems to be mostly geared to New Yorkers.OurVote is an organisation that is asking anyone who has trouble voting to give them a call. Keep them in mind if you or someone you know needs help.
And the Bonus Points
Arts and Sciences
Now here's the interesting thing: somewhere I got the notion that the real value and merit of a society comes about in the arts it produces. (And I'm using an idiosyncratic meaning of "arts" here, perhaps; I'm not just referring to literature, to painting, to sculpture, to the symphony, or even just expanding that to include grafitti and garage bands, but also pure science and philosophy. Pure science is a big art I'm in favor of.)
Not just because these are the things that make a rich, worthwhile life; not just because these are things that I and people I care about want to pursue. Not just because these are the things that get remembered in a hundred years or a thousand. But because these are the things that make the practical differences tomorrow; not just the raw science that brings about the possibility of curing another disease or solving another technical problem, but the art that makes people change the world, the worms that people hide in their writing. This is where sociogenesis lies. (Born-men like fractal patterns.)
In my ideal world, there would be a way of making this work. For people to pursue their art, even get a stipend for doing so. I cannot for the life of me figure out a practical way of doing this. So I'm just going to go socialist on it and try to work for a universe where folks can be sure they aren't going to starve, die of exposure, or collapse from plague while they're pursuing their thing on their own. It's all about the options.
Concluding mumblings
I've been dithering about whether or not this thing just sort of peters out into nothingness or needs some concluding notes; I've decided to write concluding notes, just in case it needs something.
I think I can try to sum up the axioms of my politics, and that will do for a manner of conclusion.
- Information is critical. Without good, sound information about matters, it's not possible to make sound decisions. Without the ability to evaluate information, it's not possible to make sound decisions. Not making sound decisions fucks things up bigtime.
- Responsibility is critical. This means things like not spending more than you've got (except in emergencies), like accountability, like evidence.
- Things that don't work in the long-term are stopgaps, not solutions. Establishing preventative things that will persist in perpetuity is both cheaper and more effective than big programs that don't work.
- The language we use for things matters.
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Even if all this scares the daylights outta me. :-p
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The vast majority of my psyche, at this current point in time, has gone completely apathetic on politics. I've thrown the baby out with the bathwater, in a futile attempt to remain sane. I'm still capable of considering such things as intellectual abstractions, but the difficulty of "roll to attempt to care" is such that.... I just don't have the dicepools.
But everything you've said, yep, I'm sitting here nodding.
The only other comment I have is on the thing on science. Among the many "if I had more money than ghod" fantasies that I maintain is the idea of finding some brilliant and creative scientists, giving them a pile of money, and telling them to go *play* with things. Not product-driven, or fame-driven, or money-driven. Just, go play with whatever fascinates them.
And, on the off chance that they *do* find something interesting, or useful, that can be made into something for the betterment of man, it gets placed firmly into the public domain. I am consistently enamored by the ideals that create such a thing as Copyleft, even if the implementations sometimes fall short.
In my rare bouts of self-righteous altruism, I want to go into law school, learn the copyright/patent law, and then attempt to tear down the system from the inside, and make something new that works better. Then I get over it, and wander back towards something achievable.
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I don't quite agree with *everything* you said, but this is definitely one of the sanest commentaries I've seen in a while. I wish more politicians would share your way of thinking.
I agree with what was said before. I'd vote for you. That is, if you'd run in the Netherlands so I *could* vote.
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I wonder if some of the subsidised farms could have their produce earmarked for such a program in any useful way.
Given that there are farmers which are paid *not* to plant for a year, I think the least we could do is pay them to feed to homeless and/or starving.
I don't want to get a job (or whatever) because I'm a woman; I want to get a job because I'm qualified, because I'll do it well.
I had this conversation with a friend in high school. If people were judged only on their merits it wouldn't be an issue. But we (very generic we) are conditioned from an early age that women/minorities/gays/etc. are different and different is not good.
"You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!"
--You've Got to Be Carefully Taught, South Pacific
RE: Abortion
This is a serious hot button issue with me for many reasons. I've always been pro-choice, largely because I didn't think anyone had the right to make that decision for me. My main issue with people shouting about "you made your decision" is what choices do they have? They can abort, they can hope for a miscarriage (I sincerely hope that isn't one that people take), they can have the baby and give him/her up for adoption or they can keep the baby. Those often aren't good choices. Choosing the lesser of many evils isn't going to help the world. A baby who is unwanted and unloved isn't going to be a happy one. And adoption isn't always a free option. For myself, I never could have had a baby and given them away, regardless of whether it would have ruined my life or not. I don't see the people screaming about killing babies volunteering to help those mothers in need. She did it to herself, don't you know.
Hrm, sorry about the rant...
Anyway, I appreciate having this very conherant statement about issues. The issues are big and scary and having them pulled into smaller bits is very helpful for me at least.
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(Actually, the main point on which we disagree, the death penalty, is largely academic anyway. I don't think the death penalty is a viable option even if we could somehow manage a perfectly fair and 100% foolproof justice system - but since we'll never achieve that, it's a moot point.)
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I thought that the US actually produces more than enough grain, etc. to feed everyone comfortably - the problem is more about distribution than production.
Also, while I don't know that farm subsidies are meant to enourage this specifically, not planting for a year is actually sound environmental practice. Better would be rotating crops, but not planting is better than planting the same corn/soybeans/whatever year after year - it kills the soil, making farmers more reliant on chemical fertilizers (as opposed to the more organic fertilizers, i.e. cow dung), which is bad.
I don't have any references for any of this (feel free to prove me wrong! :), but my point is that it's not as simple as growing crops vs. getting paid for nothing.
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Partly. (And I am basing this off of my knowledge from back home, sans sources, so I may be totally off base.) I believe that part of the farm subsidies is to pay farmers not to produce, as there would be a glut on the market. Given that, I would see no problem with paying them to produce something and give it away, since they are already being paid for it. Again, I could be totally off base on this, but that was my understanding.
Letting fields lie fallow to restore them is one thing (even if you have to pay someone to do it), but letting fields lie fallow because you don't want them to produce (not because it's bad for the earth) is another story.
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I totally agree with you about the physical standards thing for men and women- making the physical standards lower for women doesn't help them achieve equality in the workplace. Rob actually rants about this a lot in the military. He works with a lot of women, and although they (NOTE: There are *some* females who actually do live up to the physical requirements, he just complains about some who cause the following issues) are physically capable of achieving "male standards" if they just tried a little harder, and they choose not to. Some of the work that needs to be done, needs those physical qualifications, and he gets pissed when they gang up on him and make him do it and don't even try to help him. They use being female as an excuse not as a reason to be equal and powerful, which hurts all females. Although it might interest you to know, that at least for Rob's age group, the sit up requirements for males are lower than for females, because it is easier for women to do sit ups...but that is kind of messed up too. I agree with your overriding point that, if for a job you need to be able to have certain physical requirements, they shouldn't change that b/c of gender. You only need to look at Serena and Venus Williams to know that women can be physically strong if they choose to work at it, just like anyone else.
I also get really pissed off at the "pro family" or whatever lobby- as long as no abuse is involved and the adults are consenting, how dare someone else tell you how you must define your family. Hell I get really pissed when people tell me that I don't love my life partner b/c I won't change my last name- I can't imagine how angry I'd be if I was gay and my partner and I couldn't adopt a child if we wanted to. Old maid aunts have been raising children for years and no one seems to bat an eyelash. It's all about LOVE, y'all. Something that we need more of in this world, not less.
I agree with you that things that don't work in the long term will probably not fix the problem they are meant to fix. I am tempted by these "short term" solutions, though, when I can't seem to figure out a long term one. What do you think about "course corrections" though? Like, small steps to try to aim an issue to the place you want it to go? Or what if what you want to do isn't possible now, but a short term solution is? Is it better to wait or to go with the short term thing? (I don't know the answer, I'm just collecting opinions...like some people collect Russian tablecloths.:)
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farm subsidies
Left to itself, the market will theoretically regulate agricultural output to a good level. Unfortunately, agricultural output depends on unpredictable, year-to-year variations in weather. And once you notice you're getting a small crop this year, it's too late to go back to Spring and plant some more. So if you want to avoid underproducing in bad years, you need to plant enough that, in normal or good years, you have an excess. But this excess represents an inefficiency. If some farms do not plant excess, but instead leave it up to other farms to take up the slack in famine years, then the non-excess farms can drive the other farms out of business. And bang, the next time you have a bad year, you have people starving in the streets and waiting in bread lines.
Even worse is that the weather fluctuations are slow enough that during the good years your farmland might turn into parking lots, and then even if you know a bad year is coming you don't have enough land to do anything about it.
From the market's perspective, occasional bouts of starvation are OK; they serve as a feedback mechanism. From a humane perspective, it's preferable to avoid mass hunger.