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The Party Of No, No, No, No And Never

Dana Milbank destroys Ari Fleischer this morning – and deservedly so. Fleischer’s instant reaction to even the news of an agreement – without any knowledge of its details – was to denounce it. Dana calls the faster-than-a-jerking-knee response “mindless.” And how could one argue against that? To denounce something before you even know what it is … well, what else do you call it?

It is indeed mindless to denounce a temporary agreement for a six month negotiation to end the possibility of Iranian nuclear bombs without offering any feasible alternative. The one proffered – to actually tighten the sanctions that have already brought the Iranian regime to its knees – cannot work to achieve the desired result. Such sanctions would destroy Rouhani’s standing and credibility, split apart the global coalition on sanctions, help cement in Khamenei’s mind that no deal is possible with the West without national humiliation and regime change, and do nothing to, actually, you know, stop Iran’s nuclear program. It is a de facto argument for war as the only acceptable policy toward Iran.

So their policy is effectively another pre-emptive Middle East war on a country with no nuclear weapons with unknowable consequences and without any allies that would only delay, at best, an Iranian nuclear program. Does any of that sound familiar to you? Such a war would, moreover, strengthen the regime, dis-empower the opposition and all but guarantee that any Iranian regime would try even harder to get a nuclear deterrent.  You will find nothing, nothing in the GOP analysis that even begins to absorb the fact that the Iranian opposition also supports a civilian nuclear program. So they are also intent on picking the one fight with Iran that would unite the regime and the people.

Yes, Dana is right. The word for this is mindless. It is an attitude – a nasty, belligerent, impulsive attitude, the kind of attitude that gave us the Iraq war and Abu Ghraib, and made the world less, rather than more safe. Or consider Syria. The GOP was determined to stop a military strike and also denounced the UN-Russian deal to secure and destroy Syria’s WMDs! So that’s a no and a no. And the last no was to a policy that has been remarkably successful in ending a major source of WMD worry in the region. They opposed a policy that made Israel more secure.

As for healthcare, words fail.

They are running for Congress next year entirely on a platform of repeal and sabotage. They have offered nothing faintly serious to grapple with the dysfunctional socialized system America now labors under – no program to end the free rider problem or the pre-existing conditions problem or the uninsured problem or the costs problem. None, none, none and none. One reason I’ve been grateful for Ramesh Ponnuru and Yuval Levin’s proposals is that at least they exist, have some real merits and might be an alternative. But what’s staggering is how lonely their position is within the actual GOP.

This total nihilism on policy and nullification strategy toward the president, whatever he does, is also mindless for another reason. It is not good for the GOP. At some point, they will not get back the White House without an alternative, and the prospect of ending the insurance the ACA would provide without any alternative is a fool’s errand. It will backfire in the end, even though it may feel very good at the beginning. They are setting themselves up once again to appear as callous, intemperate and denialist. In the end, the American people will pick the party and the president with the constructive ideas rather than the destructive attitude. In this, the Republicans have entrenched Obama’s legacy and done nothing to shape it to more conservative ends. Again: mindless.

I care about this not just because I care about the country, but because I also deeply believe in a strong conservative force in politics. We don’t have that right now, whatever they say. We have a nihilist force. And it is cloaking itself in a political tradition they have long ago left in the dust.

What’s So Wrong With “Sucks”? Ctd

Many readers pounce on this post:

If your reader concerned about the use of “sucks” worries that he sounds like a queer studies major, then his worries are founded. By his logic, we should think about ceasing to use “jerk” (from the fuller “don’t be such a jerk-off!”). The British “tosser” has to go too. So does “ass-kisser”, which seems a perfect description of someone who sucks up to the boss – but ‘”suck up” probably has to go too, as well as “brown-noser” obviously. More generally, we should probably consider dropping “fuck” and its infinite permutations (certainly “this fucking sucks”), for we don’t want to suggest that there is anything wrong with fucking. Or are we allowed to keep “motherfucker” because we still disapprove of incest? What about “asshole” – isn’t that just a body part like all the others? Does the use of “asshole” as an insult display a certain puritanical revulsion at the body? I could go on indefinitely …

Another:

I’ve never considered “sucks” – as in “this broccoli sucks” – to be referring to a sex act. To me, it means the thing in question sucks the joy out of the situation. “This broccoli sucks the joy out of eating.”  Nothing derogatory about it.  Maybe it’s a guy thing to automatically jump to the sexual?

Another:

“Sucks” can actually be traced back to a phrase common among farmers during the Great Depression, who would remark that something “sucks hind tit.” This is because pigs, dogs, etc feed from their mothers, and from the perspective of the farmers the rear one was the least desirable (I’m not sure if there’s a reason for that, or just the general proximity to the rear end of the animal).  From there, the phrase was shortened and has certainly be considered low and offensive for a long time.  But that might speak more to the dirty minds of the censors than those who actually came up with the term.

Several more:

A quick Google search reveals that there is an ongoing debate as to the origin of the word.

According to the Urban Dictionary, it comes from jazz musicians.  A great musician on the horn could really “blow.”  Someone who was horrible sounded like they were “sucking” on the horn.  A recent defense of the word on Slate offered other sources, like farmers using the phrase “sucks hind teat” or British schoolchildren using “sucks to you” with no sexual connotation. And even if it does have a sexual origin, who cares at this point?  Your reader should just suck it up and let it be.

Another:

Back when I was a kid, I was able to convince my very skeptical father that I should be allowed to wear a “Boston Sucks” T-shirt (I’ve been a lifelong Yankees fan) because it was plausibly “Boston Sucks Eggs” rather than “Boston Sucks Shit”, which was how he interpreted it.  I seem to remember “Go suck eggs” was a relatively common insult (the functional if less inflammatory equivalent of “Eat shit and die”), even showing up in cartoons. I’m pretty convinced that that’s the etymological line that leads to everything sucking these days.

Another:

In 1986 or ’87, when I was a naive 6th-grader (maybe 7th), on the first day of class my science teacher laid down the rules.  She was a tough, progressive, feminist, four-Swatch-on-one-wrist-wearing bitch. Not butch, but maybe a lesbian – I don’t know.  I liked her right away.  In addition to saying things like, “This classroom is not a democracy, it is a monarchy, and I am the monarch,” she also said:

I will not tolerate the phrase “you suck.”  Do you know where that term comes from?  It comes from the root word “cocksucker” meaning one who sucks cocks, and in no instance is it appropriate in my classroom.  It is derogatory and offensive and will not be tolerated.

Holy Handjobbers!  I’d never heard such a thing, but boy did it stick with me.

Another:

So we have a word that may or may not have originally referred to a homosexual act and that is usually not used to refer to a homosexual act. I fail to see the problem. Etymology is not destiny. Just because the origin of the term is fellatio does not mean that’s what it means now.  Lots of words are secretly vulgar. “Pencil” shares a root with “penis”. “Avocado” is an Aztec word meaning “testicle”. “Scumbag” means condom. I will give you the pleasure of looking up the etymology of “pumpernickel” on your own. Words change. Usage matters more than history.

(I can’t believe I just spent half an hour researching “suck”. This is why I read your blog.)

Tweeting For Tradition

The Herdy Shepherd isn’t your typical social media star: 

Our shepherding work in the English Lake District is all about continuity and being part of a living cultural tradition that stretches back into the depths of time. Our work is often little changed from the way things were done when the Vikings first settled these valleys. Even our dialect is peppered with Norse words. I like old things, old ways of doing things, old stories, old places, and old people. I’m deeply conservative with a small ‘c’. Ask any half decent economist and they’ll tell you that most new ideas are a waste of time, most new ideas fail. Our way of life results in fairly conservative people suspicious of pointless chatter and new technologies for the sake of newness. I am, in short, about as unlikely to get excited by something like Twitter as anyone alive.

And yet, when he “reluctantly” accepted a cell-phone upgrade, he found that he “could now defend the old in my own quirky and probably misguided way”:

Tweeting is kind of an act of resistance and defiance, a way of shouting to the sometimes disinterested world that you’re stubborn, proud, and not giving in as everywhere else is turned into a clone of everywhere else.

I’m not alone, there are some amazing people tweeting about their lives on Twitter. They are fascinating unique lives that were often invisible before the ability to self-publish on social media. I’d like to think that Twitter has given people that had disappeared from view – obscured and crowded out by the loud noise of modernity – the chance to raise their voice, tell their stories, share their lives, and to say “Hey, we didn’t go away, we are still here, and you might just be interested because what we do is important to everyone.”

Being able to share your life enables other people to see you for the first time, to see past clichés and stereotypes. And since the 1960s farming has had a rather poisonous image for some people. Now, for the first time, lots of folk following us on Twitter actually know a farmer. They know what we do each day and that we are essentially decent people doing our best sometimes against the economic and natural odds. They see that we have a love of what we do, and a deep respect for the landscape and wildlife around us. … Most new ideas may fail, and most new ideas might be rubbish – but sometimes a new idea, a new technology, empowers you to defend the old against the new, and some old things are worth defending.

The Abatement Of Cruelty, Ctd

Readers revive a recent thread:

Okay, I know it’s been a little while since you discussed this topic, but you might want to pay more attention to what you feed Eddy and Bowie. I’ve been a vegetarian since college and thought I didn’t really have to worry about “cruelty free” beyond buying the occasional cage-free eggs. However, this thread has forced me to admit that the dog food and cat food I’m dishing out to my pets is probably coming straight from the worst of the factory farms. Searches for cruelty-free dog food on the web only come up with pet food that hasn’t been tested on animals, or vegan dog food that doesn’t seem to be a realistic option for carnivores. My local pet store has some frozen food that comes directly from local farms, so I might end up going with that (incredibly expensive) route. Still, it could be worth putting it out to other Dishheads – any humane dog or cat food that doesn’t need to be cooked and is only moderately expensive?

Update from a reader:

We have been feeding our critters Sojos and they freaking love it. Sojos original mix is a blend of dried grains and veggies. You add your own meat and water to the dry mix. This way you can choose ground meat from locally sourced, humane producers. Hate to do a plug for a product in general, but this stuff is great.

Another:

I feed my dog a dry food called Orijen, which is made by a Canadian company and uses only free-range protein sources. It’s a little more expensive than other dog foods (I pay around $70 for a 28.6 pound bag) but it feeds my 65-pound dog for almost two months, and he loves loves loves it.

Another shifts gears:

I am concerned that your reader who gave up eating meat solely to reduce his carbon impact is missing a holistic understanding of how necessary animals are to the healthy functioning of an ecosystem. This TED talk by Allan Savory explains it far more powerfully than I ever could, but I will summarize by saying that healthy ecosystems require grazing animals. Healthy ecosystems also happen to be huge carbon sinks. Conversely, desertification in particular, and ecosystem destruction in general, may well contribute more to global warming than the burning of fossil fuels.

Your reader is certainly correct that, from a carbon standpoint, as measured in grain consumption, eating unprocessed, industrially produced plant foods is far preferable to eating industrial meat, especially cattle (I am not so certain about all processed, plant-based foods). However, that we are even measuring their relative efficiencies in terms of grain consumption illustrates the false dichotomy presented. Cattle did not evolve to eat grain. Feeding cattle grains, which is difficult for them to digest, is the cause of the virulent strains of E. coli bacteria, rampant abuse of antibiotics, and a host of other problems. Cattle evolved to eat pasture, which humans are unable to digest. Thus, properly employed, cattle are a method of making the energy and nutrients contained in pasture bioavailable to humans.

Cattle is fed grain because it is cheap (due to mass subsidization by taxpayers), because it makes cattle fat, and because it is easily transported. To the last point, when you mass animals together in industrial feedlots, not only do you create serious knock-on problems with disease and excrement, but you require external feed inputs. You also have serious knock-on problems on the land the cattle leave behind, in terms of a broken nutrient cycle and the loss of the beneficial disturbance which results from well managed rotational grazing.

More to the point, even plant-based industrial agriculture is causing us to strip-mine the fertility of the soil. We do this, year after year, with mono-cropping, stripped bare soil, and broken nutrient cycles leading to corresponding pest and disease infestations, top soil loss, nitrogen run off (leading to ever expanding dead zones in the ocean), and lost soil fertility.

Another continues that line of discussion:

Your reader cited that NYT story quoting that it takes 2-5x (and up to 10x in the USA) more grain to produce the same amount of calories of beef than were available in the original feed.  You also tied this to the amount of arable land in the USA, with the implied conclusion that if we just stopped raising cattle and used the land to grow grain for human consumption, then we would actually have more food.

I’m neither a farmer nor a rancher, but I’m skeptical of this simple analysis.  For starters, not all cattle are raised on grain; many are grazed on public lands, eating scrub and natural grasses.  Putting aside the fact that humans cannot consume those things (meaning that the cattle are essentially eating “free” calories), the last thing we’d want to do would be to convert those lands to farming.  The Bureau of Land Management lands that they are grazed on are often scenic forest or grasslands that hunters, campers, hikers, etc. use for recreation, and at least in states like Colorado they are often high mountain areas that with climates inappropriate to growing grains.  I don’t know the proportion of cattle raised in this way, but a quick Google search leads to this page, which claims that 40% are.  That’s a huge proportion.  The Wikipedia page on cattle feeding states:

In fact most beef cattle are raised on pasture from birth in the spring until autumn (7 to 9 months). Then for pasture-fed animals, grass is the forage that composes all or at least the great majority of their diet.

Moreover, though I’m sure some cattle are fed only grain, my (admittedly limited) experience with western ranchers has been that the cattle are generally pastured and then only switched to grain as the final fattening step in feedlots before being slaughtered.  Of course, feedlots are an entire story of cruelty in and of themselves, but my point is that the “calories from grain” story is leaving that part out and thereby overestimating how much benefit we’d gain from switching to eating the grain ourselves instead of first converting it into beef.

Finally, there’s the issue of the kind of grain that we’re talking about.  Corn makes up a lot of that, but the corn raised and fed to cattle is not something you’re going to be enjoying on your dinner plate anytime soon; it’s been specifically developed over years for hardiness in the climates where it is grown and high yields, among other things, not for taste.  In fact, it tastes pretty bland and starchy.  Now, you might ask, could we grow things that humans might like, instead of that starchy corn?  Probably.  But now we’re comparing apples to oranges: yields would be different (and not necessarily higher), cultivation methods might have to be changed, storage methods would undoubtedly be different, etc.

So like anything else, the full story is more nuanced than the one implied by those simple quotes. Nevertheless, I’m 100% in favor of reducing cruelty to animals, myself.  Although not a vegetarian, I only eat fish when I do eat meat, and only fish from sustainable wild fisheries.  It gives me some cheer to see via your blog posts that other people are thinking about these things and considering the ethics of meat consumption.

In the above video, Charles Camosy addresses how Christians should approach the carnivorous nature of humans. In the following video, he extends that line of thought to evolution:

Watch all of his videos here.

Should Private Donors Have To Pay For Poor Parks?

Benjamin Soskis explores an escalating debate:

[New York state senator Daniel Squadron’s bill proposed this summer] targeted the city’s best-endowed park conservancies, the private nonprofit organizations formed to manage and raise funds for public parks. Those with operating budgets greater than five million dollars—the Central Park Conservancy (fifty-eight million dollars) and the Prospect Park Alliance (nine million dollars) were in his sights—would be required to donate twenty per cent of their budgets to a Neighborhood Parks Alliance, which would redistribute the money to the city’s underfunded parks. … [S]ome within the philanthropic community worried that de Blasio’s support for Squadron’s bill would have a “chilling” effect on major benefactions. It represented a dire threat to the voluntarist premises of American philanthropy: the idea that donors can do whatever they wish with their money, and that this freedom is precisely what makes philanthropy so vital to American democracy. …

Others grew concerned that the private funding of certain flagship parks would sanction the erosion of public stewardship, leading to a two-tiered system in which certain green spaces flourish while the majority of the city’s nearly two thousand parks languish. These concerns were roused again last year, when the hedge-fund manager John Paulson pledged a hundred million dollars to the Central Park Conservancy—the largest-ever gift to a public park. Paulson often ran or biked in the Park (which his Fifth Avenue apartment overlooks) and said that he wanted to make sure it would be preserved as an “urban oasis.” His gift won its share of plaudits, but it also provided an exceptionally large target for those who sought to highlight the associations between philanthropy and inequality.

Last spring, Alex Ulam reported at length on the role of philanthropy and its discontents:

In extreme cases, some city parks can become privatized to the point where the public is shut out for most the year.

Damrosch Park, for example, a New York City park run by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, is closed off for seven to ten months every year for private events, such as Big Apple Circus and New York City’s Fashion Week. In addition to being regularly closed to the public, Damrosch Park has had 57 trees cut down and its distinctive granite benches removed to accommodate such events, which help raise money for Lincoln Center. Park closings have also had a significant impact on the public experience in other cities. In Chicago, the Lollapalooza Festival takes over Grant Park during summer every year, and although the festival only lasts a few days, it often results in damage and extended delays to reopening sections of the park. One factor driving the increasing privatization of new state-of-the-art parks is their stratospheric maintenance costs. The pressure to pay for the upkeep of the High Line, which is considered to have the highest per-square foot maintenance costs in the city, has forced the Friends of the High Line into taking positions supporting commercial developments that create the very types of conditions that public space is supposed to mitigate. …

According to [director of New Yorkers for Parks Holly] Leicht, high-profile gifts such as Paulson’s have prompted discussion in New York City between park advocacy groups and city officials about putting donors on notice that in the future, a certain percentage of their gifts will be have to be allocated to a fund that would provide aid to less affluent areas. “It raises the question: Are parks somehow inherently different than other cultural institutions?” Leicht says. “I would argue that as public space they are, and that this probably is a model that should be piloted and tested. And let’s see if donors are truly frozen in their actions.”

The Self-Taught Weapons Inspector

Patrick Radden Keefe profiles (paywalled) the remarkable Eliot Higgins, a 34-year-old college dropout and autodidact who transformed himself into an expert on Syrian arms – thanks to YouTube:

Unlike the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq, the war in Syria has not produced a huge body of journalism by international reporters on the ground. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Syria is currently the most dangerous dateline in the world; the regime of Bashar al-Assad has effectively banned the international press. More than fifty reporters have been killed while covering the conflict, and dozens more are missing, presumably detained by the authorities. Yet Syrians have managed to access the Internet, and all the factions in the ongoing civil war have uploaded videos onto YouTube.

They film their own military offensives and release propagandistic recruitment videos. They document civilian casualties and the ritualized speeches of regime officials who have defected to the opposition. They present evidence of war crimes, including torture, mutilations, and executions. And they show weaponry: rifles, bombs, and rockets.

Although Higgins has never been to Syria, and until recently had no connection to the country, he has become perhaps the foremost expert on the munitions used in the war. On YouTube, he scans as many as 300 new videos a day, with the patience of an ornithologist. Even when a rocket has largely been destroyed, he can often identify it by whatever scraps survive. When he doesn’t recognize a weapon, he researches it, soliciting information from his many followers on Facebook and Twitter. In June 2012, he revealed on his blog that the Free Syrian Army, the leading armed opposition group, had obtained anti-aircraft guns. The next month, he presented video evidence that Assad’s regime had deployed cluster bombs. “It’s very incongruous, this high-intensity conflict being monitored by a guy in Leicester,” Stuart Hughes, a BBC News producer in London, told me. “He’s probably broken more stories than most journalists do in a career.”

Follow Higgins at his blog here.

The Misery Of Miscarriage, Ctd

More readers join the intimate thread:

I had two miscarriages before we tried IVF. The first one occurred on the same day I got a positive on the home pregnancy test. Both were physically quite painful and emotionally draining. My third miscarriage was my daughter’s twin. They were IVF babies, so I was being monitored via ultrasound through the first trimester. I lost the twin around nine weeks. I saw on them both during the ultrasound, my daughter blinking brightly and the sibling a dark silent mass.

I remember exactly the due dates of what would have been my first and second child’s births, and I am very aware that had they lived, I would not have had my awesome mini-me daughter. Every year on her birthday, I remember that there should be two cakes for two children. But now, as then, I am supposed to simply be grateful for her alone. I could have lost them both after all. Count your blessings and all of that.

I haven’t told my daughter she had a twin. Perhaps when she is older. I have mixed feelings about sharing this grief with her. Why should she grieve for someone who was never more than a possibility? Of course that begs the question – why do I?

Another reader:

This thread has meant a lot to me. I will not tell you another miscarriage story, but I would like to share something that might help your readers. After my first miscarriage, what helped me most was giving my lost baby a name. It didn’t occur to me until a week after I was in the hospital to do so, but it made such a difference in my recovery. I did the same with my second miscarriage. Although I am politically pro-choice, I am also an observant Catholic and I think of myself as having five children (two in Heaven). Just that decision to acknowledge what I had lost as real, a person to be named, made the pain easier to bear.

Another:

My first child – a daughter, Lola – was stillborn on Christmas Day, 2008. It was completely unexpected. We went to the hospital as scheduled, planning to bring home our healthy child. Instead, we brought home a box containing a photograph of a dead baby and a pamphlet about grief.

It sent me down a spiral of rage and despair. The tiniest little setback was debilitating for a while. I’d fly into a rage at not being able to find my keys in the morning. Many nights I’d wind up on the floor in my closet, exhausted at having spent the night shouting in anger and frustration because we hadn’t cooked the rice properly or something equally trivial. I hope that it’s the hardest thing I’ll ever have to go through.

All of it – her death, my rage, the sadness that utterly consumed us for a while – was something I was totally unprepared for. The masculine side of grief wasn’t something we understood at all and it took us several years to get past it. We have a beautiful two-year-old boy now who is like a healing balm. We’re just scarred now, no longer wounded.

I want to let your readers know about HAND, an amazing organization that helped us. They are nothing short of amazing, providing space and counseling for us to heal. Imagine what it would be like to “hold grief support group meetings for parents who have experienced the death of their baby through miscarriage, stillbirth, interruption of a wanted pregnancy after prenatal diagnosis, or death in the first year of life,” week in and week out. Friends and family often can’t really understand what you’re going through after something like that happens to you, and groups like this can provide space to come to terms with grief and despair. I’m an atheist, but I know that Chris Lehr, who runs the program, is a saint.

Thanks for shining light on this dark place.

Another:

I know you must have been slammed with responses to your miscarriage thread. I’m so glad it came up. I want to respond with my own experience to the woman who commented on the insensitive comments that people make when they find out about a miscarriage. She said, “For a time I felt like the tainted one. Friends who were getting pregnant for the first time didn’t want me around because I was living proof of what can go wrong.” For me, it wasn’t about taint at all. I still wanted to share with my friend, and give her as much support as I could. For me, it was about feeling guilty at accidentally making someone’s grief worse simply by being in the same room.

A friend and I got pregnant around the same time, myself a month ahead. It was a complete surprise to her. She could not have been happier. She announced her pregnancy well before she was even eight weeks along, absolutely glowing – much happier than I was, since I had aggressive morning sickness that didn’t seem to touch her. She gushed to me about how our babies would bond us closer together.

You can guess the rest.

She lost hers at 10 weeks and was absolutely devastated. I did my best to say I was sorry, and to continue communicating with her, but I can’t describe to you the look on her face the first time she saw me after her miscarriage, with my pregnancy clearly showing. Our other friends there were clearly a comfort to her. I was not. I felt like my pregnancy – the visibility of it, the reality of it – were a knife in her. It clearly upset her greatly, and just as clearly she was trying not to let it, or at least not to let it show. I tried to avoid platitudes, tried to pick up the tone she seemed to want while her grief was still fresh, as I would for any grieving friend – but it seemed to me that the best thing I could do was to step back and not act as a reminder every time she saw me.

I don’t blame her for her reaction. She was trying to be happy for me while dealing with massive grief. My sister-in-law’s reaction (having gone through several miscarriages herself) was nearly identical when I told my brother I was pregnant – happy for me, but sad, with an immediate new emotional distancing from me. I don’t know what the answers are – if there was even anything I could have done better to make it easier. Grief is always tricky, since everyone experiences it differently. But what exactly can be said to a grieving family, except, “I’m sorry”?

Another:

I’m not sure that my miscarriage story fits the thread because although I certainly empathize with all the people who have written, my miscarriage experience was a little different.  My husband and I had been trying for two and a half years to get pregnant.  We tried most everything and finally discovered that he had a problem.  The doctor prescribed some medication for him and a couple of months later, I thought I was pregnant.

We had no time to take it in because all of a sudden, I miscarried.  My husband took me off to the emergency room and the young resident was so nice.  When I started to cry, he reassured me that just because I had had one miscarriage, the odds of having another were no different – if I remember correctly, 1 in 15 or so.  I smiled through my tears and said, “I’m not crying because I miscarried. I’m crying because I know now that I can get pregnant!”  He looked a little surprised but smiled back and took me off to have a DNC.

Two months later I got pregnant with our first child, a daughter whom we both celebrated and are so pleased that she is in our life.  She was followed by our son, who after a few trials and tribulations, we feel exactly the same way about.  There are times when I wonder what that other child would have been like, but would I trade either of my children for that unknown one? Absolutely not.

What’s So Wrong With “Sucks”?

A reader writes:

In light of the discussion of Alec Baldwin’s homophobic rants and your insistence that his use of the phrase “cocksucking fag” reveals much about his deeply-held views on homosexuality (a point I agree with, whole-heartedly!), I’d like to push the discussion in the direction of considering the use of the word “sucks” in general. It is remarkable to me, a heterosexual man, that people in America use the word “sucks” in a pejorative way. Here we have reference to a sexual act that is generally acknowledged as being particularly enjoyable by most men – gay or straight and anywhere in between. And yet, we use the term “sucks” pejoratively. Why?

I believe that the connotations are nothing more than homophobia and sexism in their plainest, ugliest forms. Now, maybe “sucks” is meant metaphorically in some other way. For example, “Broccoli sucks!” could mean that broccoli metaphorically sucks all the enjoyment out of dining. Maybe. But my gut says, no, that’s not what is meant at all.

Something sucks. Sure. But what does that something suck? The answer is often given: it sucks dick! Or, in a few cases that I’ve heard, it sucks ass. I think the answer is plain, that when something sucks, we’re referring to fellatio (or the sexual act of “rimming”, which carries many/most of the same connotations in this particular usage). Something sucks because it is not powerful; it is not manly; it is less than.

I know I sound like an earnest “queer studies” student in my email above. I don’t mean to be. I don’t want to police language, and I don’t want the world to be a sterile place where the use of a particular word can destroy a person. But, as I try to become more understanding of how my privilege as a white-looking heterosexual male affects my life, I can’t help but consider the use of the word “sucks” as being ultimately destructive. And, so, I have stopped using it. I hope you’ll do the same.

The Hot Air Of Iran Hawks

Drezner warns them against freaking about the Iran deal. He observes that “the only thing going ballistic on this deal accomplishes is demonstrating your utter unreasonableness on negotiations with Iran”:

Now the key words in that last sentence are “going ballistic.”  I’m not saying you should love the deal.  You distrust both Iran and the Obama administration.  I get that.  The thing is, you’re distrusting the wrong agreement.  This is an interim deal that is easily revocable in six months if a comprehensive deal falls apart.  Objecting to this deal now does nothing but erode your credibility for future moments of obstructionism if a comprehensive deal is negotiated.

Seriously, game this out.  Let’s assume you implacably oppose the negotiations going forward.  If the deal holds up — and before you laugh, consider that Netanyahu is now describing the much-derided-at-the-time Syria deal as a “model” to follow — then you’ve undermined your reputation before the really big negotiations start.  So whatever justified opposition you might have to such a deal will be largely discredited.  On the other hand, if the deal falls apart — and there’s a decent chance of that — then you’ll get blamed for obstructionism for reflexively opposing it from the get-go.

Larison explains the lockstep opposition of Iran hawks:

Drezner may be right that Iran hawks would retain more credibility with everyone else if they held their fire for a later, comprehensive agreement, but among other Iran hawks they would lose credibility if they endorsed any deal with Iran. So they denounce the current deal, and they will denounce future agreements in the same terms, because they really are opposed to diplomatic engagement with Iran all together. Besides, Iran hawks have raised the bar so high on what it means to be “tough” on Iran that they are stuck defending ludicrous positions that they were compelled to adopt to confirm their status as a hard-liner.

Drum is on the same page:

The sad truth is that supporting the interim deal, even tentatively, is a lose-lose proposition for most Republican politicians these days. They don’t care about you or me or the Beltway consensus. They care about the base. And the base has no interest in seeing Satan make a deal with the devil.

Of Gods, God, And Men, Ctd

This post made a lot of readers bristle:

You have to be kidding. “We don’t know what God is” has got to be just about the most unintentionally hilarious statement about religion I have ever heard. For the longest time, atheists have been trying to make the point that the concept of God as defined in every faith is impossible. The concept of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omni-benevolent deity is self-contradictory using elementary logic.

Now that the New Atheism has gained traction by pointing out the absurdities of this belief, you and your co-believers are evidently so desperate to cling to legitimacy that you are willing to concede the whole argument in order to perform a little bit of rhetorical jujitsu, i.e., “we don’t know what God is, but he is the reason there is a universe at all.” McCabe states this, and you apparently endorse it, with no justification or support at all. It’s just a claim of knowledge backed with a whole lot of nothing. Presumably the purpose of this is to move the argument away from where atheism is succeeding on the merits – pointing out the logical inconsistencies of religious belief – into more favorable and murky territory. “Richard Dawkins get it wrong, because our God isn’t like all those other gods. Because we say so.” This is utter piffle, unworthy of you or your blog.

Every religion ascribes the very existence of the universe to their deity or deities. Otherwise they wouldn’t be gods. Saying “God is in everything” is meaningless. It doesn’t change the fact that religious belief is based on pure faith and nothing else.

Another reader:

Whenever I hear about the version of god that is beyond our comprehension and beyond our reality I just don’t understand how this helps the theist make their case for their particular religion.

Such a god could be any god.  Such a god could be an alien machine intelligence running a simulation on an alien supercomputer to see how organics may have created the first machine intelligence (and we are that simulation).  Such a god could be as concerned about humanity as we are about the bacteria that grows around volcano vents a mile below the ocean.

How exactly does such an undefinable god tie back to the beliefs of any religion?  How does that help make the case that Jesus was anything other than a man that was killed by other men?  How does that help make the case that Moses didn’t carve the Ten Commandments himself?  How does it make the case that Joseph Smith was wrong?

In the attempt to not be pinned down to any part of reality, this argument makes the case that man cannot know the mind of god and hence know what god wants, expects or demands.  If that is the case, you are better off believing in no gods and just trying to be a good person lest you believe something based on the wrong religion and get punished for doing so.

Another:

Argh, I wish I hadn’t broken my rule to avoid your site on Sundays, but I wanted to see what you’d said about the Iran nuclear deal.

I am no fan of Dawkins – I don’t need to buy a book to feel good about my Atheism – but this sort of pseudo-philosophy drives me bonkers.  Why is it hard to imagine that religion, like every other social construct, has evolved over time to fulfill whatever role people need it to do in their own lives? We had an angry sky father in the past, and an unexplainable cosmic something else now. Dawkins’ quip simply suggests that you consider your cosmology is, perhaps, as much a fantasy as those of all the other religions you dismiss as false.  You really can’t reject this suggestion by declaring that your god isn’t like all those other gods because he’s different and beyond human comprehension.  Can’t you see that someone outside your beliefs might think that claim absurd?

I promise to avoid the Dish on Sundays henceforth.  Please keep any breaking news to the remainder of the week if you could. [The above video of] Bender talking to God is my penance for breaking my own rules and letting myself get irritated.

Update from a reader:

A couple of things struck me about your reader who brags that he tries to avoid your page on Sundays.  (1) Haven’t you posted a fair amount of atheist thoughts, links, and quotes on Sundays? (2) If theists are routinely accused of being insular and closed minded, how is it any different when an atheist refuses to engage with a thinker merely because that thinker expresses a Jewish, Christian, or Muslim thought?  If I change the channel when Richard Dawkins comes on, your reader would accuse me of being afraid of the truth.  But when they refuse to read your page on Sunday because there might be a Francis Spufford quote, they think this makes them open minded in comparison with the narrow-minded theists.  The inconsistency is glaring.

Another:

As many have said before, we made God in our own image and imbued it with human characteristics.  In some cases it’s a good way for people to understand that we’re part of something far greater and to seek meaning beyond the materialistic world we’ve created, but mostly it’s just an excuse for people to pretend they’re morally superior to others, to justify their own bigotry, and occasionally to kill each other, sometimes over very benign differences in belief. Christians may not be as bad now as they were in previous days, but they’re still quite capable of violence.  Frankly, I think the human race cannot grow until we purge ourselves of these superstitions. The universe is a vast and wonderful thing, and we do it a disservice to humanize it.