The Dish

A reader writes:

I’m a moderate-to-liberal Democrat who is no Mike Huckabee fan, but for what it’s worth, he wasn’t educated at a “Bible college”. Ouachita Baptist University is a Baptist institution in the same way that, say, Catholic University in Washington is a Catholic institution. The denominational footprint is undoubtedly heavier at the former than at the latter, but OBU’s curriculum isn’t all about careers in ministry or even about molding warriors for Jesus. There are a lot of similar schools in the heartland – Gordon College in Wenham also fits the bill – that, like Huckabee himself, wear their conservative denominational (or non-denominational Christian) heart on their sleeve but also seem a bit more at ease with the modern world than bubble-world schools like Bob Jones University or Oral Roberts.  I suspect that they may provide a window into what his core support is all about.

A reader diagnoses American politics:

Conservatism and liberalism have little meaning in today’s politics.  As has been pointed out so many times by you and others, the Republican party is a party held together by extremists, right wing Christianists, no-tax absolutists, royalists, xenophobes and others fearful of minorities, to name a few. This is a coalition spawned in the Reagan Administration but exposed in the Bush Administration.  Independents cannot tolerate it.  The extremists are at one another throats.  The party is in chaos.  Unless Hillary is elected or we experience another threat from the outside, the Republican Party is in an almost impossible situation.  Perhaps we will see the creation of a third party. But today the struggle is between realism and extremism, not conservatism and liberalism.

Speaking of the latter, check this out.

Some inferences from E.O. Wilson’s latest work:

With all necessary caveats against reductionism and misappropriation, we can ask: should human societies conceive of themselves in terms of  group-level selection? Have we already developed aspects of eusociality? And — just to make matters really interesting — could non-reproducing humans, such as (most) gays and lesbians, as well as heterosexuals who choose not to have kids, actually be a manifestation of this emergent eusociality?

It’s enough to make even a Clinton-phobe like me want to look away:

The first time [she was booed] was when she said she has always and will continue to work for "change for you." The audience, particularly from Obama supporters (they were waving Obama signs) let out a noise that sounded like a thousand people collectively groaning.

Yep: that sounds about right.

A reader writes:

You just realized this? I swear, the giddy suburban cheerleader quality of the Fox girls has been an ongoing cause of vitriol in my household. They just seem to confirm that peculiarly misogynistic, "who’s yah daddy?" sleaze exuded by all those pasty, wrinkled geezers. I’ve always imagined there must be some ingenious contraption hidden below the camera’s gaze, a ‘giggle prod" of sorts, that gives these teases’ bottoms a good squeeze every time the pruned-dude shows those bedroom eyes.

Another adds:

The women anchors do not look like Barbie dolls. They look like ex-porn stars. I think it’s the look they’re cultivating.

Atrios walks back a little on Obama.

Not good. A reader writes:

While the strong reaction against the stolen election was not so surprising, the extremity of the violence has been shocking. Although Kibaki seems to be effectively utilizing the security forces to maintain a modicum of order in Nairobi, the situation upcountry is more questionable and the main trade route between Kenya and Uganda appears still to be blocked (prices of imported goods in Uganda are skyrocketing accordingly). This may indicate that Kibaki’s hold on power is more tenuous outside of Nairobi. One particularly troubling development is that many members of Kenya’s Asian popluation (which constitutes a sort of "merchant class" in Kenya and much of East Africa) have been fleeing to Uganda. The Asians tend to be pretty tapped into the local situation, and if they’re making a run for it, there may be worse yet to come.

I have to take issue, though, with some of the parallels being drawn with the Rwandan genocide.  I think there are some important distinctions which make such a scenario highly unlikely in Kenya:

— Rwanda is composed of two principal ethnic groups – Hutu and Tutsi, who together constitute the vast majority of the population.  These two groups have for a long time competed violently for political control, with a number of incidents of massacres and ethnic cleansing prior to the genocide in ’94.  The Hutus (who carried out the genocide) were demographically dominant in the country, and had the genocide "succeeded" more fully, they would have totally wiped out their main competitor and thus guaranteed a monopoly on political power.  Kenya, by contrast, is made up of around 40 ethnic groups, none of whom dominate the country demographically and none of whom exceed a quarter or so of the total population.  Thus it would be much harder to for any group to try and exterminate any other group.  And in any case, doing so would not guarantee political control, since by virtue of Kenya’s diversity, any political movement must have some kind of inter-ethnic coalition in order to succeed.

— The Rwandan genocide was not a spontaneous uprising (as seems to be the case in Kenya) but rather was a well-thought-out, heavily planned undertaking.  The Interahamwe (those who carried out the genocide) made extensive preparations well in advance – even discussing the process in national cabinet meetings.  It’s not easy to kill 800,000 people in 100 days, especially if your primary weapon is a panga (machete).  That the Interahamwe were able to do so indicates a tremendous level of prior planning and preparation.  I haven’t heard any evidence of similar preparations by any of the groups in Kenya.

— The genocide was the culmination of a civil war that had been ongoing between Hutu and Tutsi militias for years.  The international community had intervened to push a peace process, but the eventual agreement was not respected and plans by Hutu extremists to eliminate the Tutsis continued unabated.  There is no parallel to this in Kenya; the country has been at peace for years.

That said, small-scale ethnic cleansing could be a possibility – i.e. violently clearing out the Kikuyus and forcing them back to the region perceived to be "theirs" – this seems to be happening already in someareas.  But I don’t think that genocide is likely to occur (note that genocide, which seeks to destroy or wipe out a people, differs from ethnic cleansing, which seeks – often with extreme violence – to push out or relocate a group).