Since we finally replaced our ancient tv at Christmastime with a huge flat-screen, I’ve really been enjoying my nightly political news. My hero Rachel Maddow is almost real-size! What a treat it was to finally watch Elmer Gantry, and I got a good chickflick dose with The Holiday and The Notebook.

Sometimes I just feel like relaxing and being entertained. I flip through the channels – most of it doesn’t interest me. I’m not big into “reality” shows, but I sometimes like the ones that show how different people’s lives can be from one another – like Trading Spouses and whatever that one was with the British nanny. I wish that Holmes on Homes guy would come renovate *my* house. I enjoy profiling, and shows like Snapped if it’s an unusual case. The first couple of seasons of 24 were interesting, but I lost interest when they brought in torture (it *was* on Fox!). I’ve attempted to get into a regular schedule with my collections of Twin Peaks and Ultraviolet – but those haunt me so much that I can only watch them once in a while. I like the odd something on the History channel or PBS, but nothing was grabbing me tonight.

Then – I caught a show that’s been on for a long time but I had only caught a minute here or there before. I’m not really in tune with what’s popular, and I had written it off just because of the title.

So now I’m busy every Sunday night at 9 pm, because that’s when Desperate Housewives is on. I just watched two back-to-back episodes – Lovely and The Chase. It looks like tomorrow’s episode follows from there – YAY! It’s been on since 2004! I’ve already missed six whole years?!?!?!

I’m fairly sure that some of my friends will find it amusing that I’m enthralled with this show.

What can I say?

• So much is under debate.
• So much is culturally modulated.
• So much has a history of discussion rather than a solid truth claim.
• So much seems a little strange.

Warning: Your answers may differ.
This is meant to be thought-provoking; sorry for all the things I’m leaving out.

Comments are welcome, but only if you’re civil. All comments are moderated.

For each of the following, is this a person?

Non-living:

• Rock – NO!
• Table – NO!
• Book – NO!

Beings:

• Flower – NO!
• Tree – NO!
• Monkeygrass – NO!
• Frog – NO!
• Beetle – NO!
• Ant – NO!
• Tilapia – NO!
• Worm – NO!
• Dog – NO! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Cat – NO! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Cow – NO! (DISAGREEMENT)

Scale/Boundary:

• Electrons – NO!
• Nuclei – NO!
• Fungi – NO! (LIFE, MAYBE GROUP INTELLIGENCE OF A KIND, NOT PERSON)
• Bacteria – NO! (LIFE, MAYBE GROUP INTELLIGENCE OF A KIND, NOT PERSON)
• Virus – NO – um… probably not! (DEAD/ALIVE, IMMORTAL? SOME UNKNOWN)
• Prions – NO! (DEAD/ALIVE, IMMORTAL? MUCH UNKNOWN)
• Mitochondria – NO! (MAY HAVE DEVELOPED HUMANS, HISTORY OF DISCUSSION)
• Planet – NO! (ECO-REACTIONS, SOME DISAGREEMENT)
• Star – NO! (HISTORICAL SMALL DISAGREEMENTS)

Sex/Gender:

• Female – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Male – YES! (SOME DISAGREEMENT)
• Hermaphrodite – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Transvestite – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Transgender – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Heterosexual – YES! (SOME DISAGREEMENT)
• Homosexual – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Bisexual – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Married – YES! (SOME DISAGREEMENT)
• Single – YES! (SOME DISAGREEMENT)
• Complicated – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)

Class/Money/Economy:

• Poor – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Rich – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Middle-class – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Blue-collar – YES!
• White-collar – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Upper-class – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Migrant – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Inner-city – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Rural – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Suburban – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Socialist – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Communist – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Crony Capitalist – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Regulated Capitalist – YES! (DISAGREEMENT) (etc.)

Education:

• Highly educated – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Highly trained – YES!
• Untrained – YES!
• College – YES!
• No College – YES!
• Under-educated – YES!
• Literate – YES!
• Sub-literate – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Intentionally ignorant – YES! (DISAGREEMENT) (etc.)

Political Values:

• Democrat – YES! (CONFUSION AND DISAGREEMENT)
• Libertarian – YES! (CONFUSION AND DISAGREEMENT)
• Republican – YES! (CONFUSION AND DISAGREEMENT)
• Independent – YES! (CONFUSION AND DISAGREEMENT)
• Green – YES! (CONFUSION AND DISAGREEMENT)
• Reconstructionist – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Imperialist – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Fascist – YES! (CONFUSION AND DISAGREEMENT)
• Nazi – YES! (HEATED DISAGREEMENT)
• Uninterested – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Fanatical – YES! (DISAGREEMENT) (etc.)

Nationality / Ethnicity / Race:

• American – YES! (MINOR DISAGREEMENT)
• Non-American – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Registered US Immigrant – YES! (SOME DISAGREEMENT)
• Non-registered US Immigrant – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• American Terrorist – YES! (SOME DISAGREEMENT)
• Non-American Terrorist – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Same Ethnic/Racial Composition as Yourself – YES!
• Different Ethic/Racial Composition from Yourself – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• German – YES! (SOME DISAGREEMENT)
• French – YES! (SOME DISAGREEMENT)
• Kenyan – YES! (SOME DISAGREEMENT)
• British – YES! (SOME DISAGREEMENT)
• Chinese – YES! (SOME DISAGREEMENT)
• Iraqi – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Afghani – YES! (SOME DISAGREEMENT)
• Iranian – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)

Religion:

• Christian – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Muslim – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Jehovah’s Witness – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Wiccan – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Buddhist – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Fanatical – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Orthodox – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Evangelical – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Reformed – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Unitarian – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Atheist – YES! (DISAGREEMENT)
• Eclectic – YES! (DISAGREEMENT) (etc.)

Corporate Groupings: (UNDER CONTESTATION!!!!!)

• Homeland Security – NO!
• CIA – NO!
• Dept. of Eduction- NO!
• NRA – NO!
• ACLU – NO!
• Catholic Church – NO!
• US Marines – NO!
• Al-Qaeda – NO!
• Taliban – NO!
• KKK – NO!
• Halliburton – NO!
• Chevron – NO!
• Microsoft – NO!
• Google – NO!
• MacDonald’s- NO!
• Citibank – NO!
• Walmart – NO!

Stage / Distinctions:

• Egg – NO!
• Sperm- NO!
• Fertilized egg – NO! (DISAGREEMENT – UNDER CONTESTATION!)*
• Zygote – NO! (DISAGREEMENT- UNDER CONTESTATION!)
• Fetus w/Beating Heart – ALIVE, BUT NOT PERSON! (DISAGREEMENT- UNDER CONTESTATION!)
• Fetus w/Brain Waves – MAYBE! (DISAGREEMENT – UNDER CONTESTATION!)
• Late-term Pregnancy – MAYBE! (HEATED DISAGREEMENT- UNDER CONTESTATION!)
• Baby – COULD BE! (SOME DISAGREEMENT, HISTORICALLY NOT, BUT PROBABLY CONSIDERED ONE NOW)
• Toddler – PROBABLY! (DISAGREEMENT – HISTORICALLY NOT, BUT PROBABLY CONSIDERED ONE NOW)
• Child – PROBABLY! (DISAGREEMENT- HISTORICALLY NOT, BUT PROBABLY CONSIDERED ONE NOW)
• Teenager – PROBABLY! (DISAGREEMENT – PAIN IN THE BUTT, AND SOME CONFUSION ABOUT RITE DE PASSAGE)
• Adult – YES!
• Middle-Aged – YES!
• Elderly – YES! (DISAGREEMENT – HISTORICALLY SO, MAYBE STILL IS)
• Corpse – PROBABLY NOT (SOME RELIGIOUS DISAGREEMENT)
• Australopithecus – NO! (EXTINCT HOMINID! SOME DISCUSSION)
• Neanderthals – NO! (EXTINCT HOMINID! SOME DISCUSSION)
• Early Modern Human (EMH)/Anatomically Modern Human’ (AMH) (also referred to as Cro-Magnon) – UNKNOWN (DISCUSSION and DISAGREEMENT)
• Homo Sapien Sapien – YES! (MINOR DISCUSSION, MOSTLY BY CURMUDGEONS)

* Fertilized chicken egg does not equal chicken either.

Predatory on the people who cannot bear to examine themselves, leaders of such movements play on fears of contagion, defilement and stain from without – from the evil others – and project a colonization and epidemic spread of the embodiment of such fears. This defensive projection is unstable because hidden in it is more than a grain of attraction and desire for what they have rejected.

The sin bucket is never full because it never matures into a meaningful guilt. The bucket cannot be emptied since what is rejected cannot be seen in oneself, cannot be recognized, cannot be repented of – or forgiven.

This monstrous dynamic demands more and more sacrifices to shore up the fragile selfhood and half-baked ideologies of its victims. Moreover, one finds sometimes a rafter-in-thine-own eye correlation between the prioritized issues and the behavior: the anti-gay closeted homosexual, the undereducated or abusive home-schooler, the priest/preacher sexual predator, the televangelist with the diamond mines. They dance on the edge of a witch-hunt they have helped to create. Maybe it’s thrilling.

Rather than working on their own issues in humility, they isolate, dehumanize, and demonize others. It’s more exciting, and it allows them to continue to avoid confronting themselves.

While a self-protective and isolated local tribal structure might have some use for this psychology (at least, some might claim this, perhaps in combination with folk magic and other elements), it doesn’t work in any positive way today. The neo-archaic conflation of stain with criminality re-employs the rhetoric of evil and the mechanics of scapegoating in a denial of complexity that is as comforting to its followers as it is complicit in the destruction of the lives, spirits and liberties it claims to champion.

Individual insights and wisdom are drowned out in the mistrust and hysteria of the misled masses, and the people are manipulated into beliefs that work against their own interests at every level. It’s not only the paranoid religious who hide their sins – while making claims to authority! – in the distributed masses. The right-wing haters have discovered the vein runs deep in the American public, and have found myriad ways to leverage it. Terrorists and intelligence agencies alike – and many corporations – have learned that a distributed network of the masses works better than centralization – they form cells, nodes, groups and global networks. The avoidance of accountability at the group, national, and global scales works in much the same way. These are horizontal, not vertical, structures. If you deal with one appearance, several others pop up to replace it. Hate groups shall rise again.

Self-integration, individuation, and transformation seem to be impossible for such to mature into, and they appear to be stuck in the shame/stain/defilement space that exists before the existential experience of guilt and forgiveness (and perhaps grace). Because they cannot move along psycho-spiritually themselves, they continue to fling this childish judgment out onto others. They are underdeveloped as human souls.

I have found that direct confrontation with affected persons and groups is usually fruitless, although it must be done.

Action through affiliation, cooperation, and alliance with others are the better strategies. Humor and satire work to undermine propaganda and to culture-jam destructive memes. It’s also good training for ambiguity tolerance, which is perhaps the first step to many solutions.

Setting a better example, in essays and editorials and public performances, can create new possibilities for points of view. Widely-circulated stories and poetry and interviews and photographs make it more difficult to dehumanize others. Jesus urged his followers to visit people in prison, to treat the stranger with hospitality, to clothe and feed the poor.

I have to remind myself of all of this more often than I would like, both for self-reflection and frustration tolerance. I have to remember that no matter how awful, unfeeling, and unethical some folks seem to be, they are also human and they have their own path. Except in very rare cases, we ought to be able to have a dialogue. I try, but I wish that I were better at seeing the sacred within others sometimes. At times I react with sadness and anger. It’s easier to talk with people who have self-awareness and some modicum of ability for meta-reasoning (becoming aware of your processes of thought as they happen, thinking about thinking) – but I often seem to lack the patience to work things through in as loving and civil a way as I would like.

It’s still something that is very important to me to cultivate in myself. Beyond all the ethical reasons why, there is a reward in it. When you do things – including thinking and believing – that welcome understanding, empathy and compassion for another, when you allow the other to speak to you (and in a sense through you) it’s a powerful reminder of just how human and just how numinous each of us really is – and all of us really are. The paradox of that moment for me is that through paying attention to what can resonate in particularity, one also experiences the divine, complex interconnectedness of all.

All you need is love.

• The World’s Shortest Philosophy Books
• Dennett’s Philosophical Lexicon
• Philosophers’ Cause of Death
• Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?

Fair enough. But really… let’s think about intellectual courage…

Yeah, Derrida has a lot going on. He is sometimes very difficult to read. And it’s easy to make fun of Derrida and deconstruction, and to think what it means is that there is no basis for justice or ethics. Many so-called religious leaders make this mistake, and far too many academics do as well.

There is no more careful reader than Derrida was – and to start to understand what is at stake, you have to develop the skills to read and to think in ways that are a little different than what you might be accustomed to, but it’s worth it.

A careful reader can easily discern that not only does his work *not* discard or undermine ethics and justice, but it really demands better forms of both than what many of his detractors can offer or (in many cases) care to offer.

The following is probably as clear as Derrida gets on these issues in a short space. Read slowly and carefully, and then try to argue that Derrida was proposing that we have no obligation to pursue (and construct, and deconstruct, and reconstruct) our truths in the light of ethics and justice….

I do not believe that the whole ‘left’ in general is more occupied with cultural identity than with social justice. But if some who call themselves leftists had done so they would deserve Rorty’s critique. On this point and to a certain extent I would agree with him, for then two grave risks would have been neglected: first, though legitimate in certain situations and within certain limits, the demands of cultural identity (and this word comprises all ‘communitarisms’, of which there are many) can often feed into ‘ideologies’ of the right – nationalist, fundamentalist, even racist. Secondly, the left may relegate to the background and gravely neglect other struggles, social and civic solidarities and universal causes (transnational and not merely cosmopolitical, because the cosmopolitical supposes again the agency of the state and of the citizen, be it the citizen of the world – we will return to this). But why must one choose between the care for cultural identity and the worry about social justice? They are both questions of justice, two responses to anti-egalitarian oppression or violence. No doubt it is very hard to lead both of these debates in the same rhythm, but one can fight both fronts, cultural and social, at the same time, as it were, and one must do so. The task of the intellectual is to say this, to mediate the discourses and to elaborate strategies that resist any simplistic choice between the two. In both cases, the effective responsibility for engagement consists in doing everything to transform the status quo in the two areas, between them, from one to another, the cultural and the social, to establish a new law, even if they remain forever inadequate for what I call justice (which is not the law, even if it determines its history and progress).

There is no ‘politics’, no law, no ethics without the responsibility of a decision which, to be just, cannot content itself with applying existing norms or rules but must take the absolute risk, in every singular instant, or justifying itself again, alone, as if for the first time, even if it is inscribed in a tradition. For lack of space, I cannot explain here the discourse on decision that I try to elaborate elsewhere. A decision, though mine, active and free in its phenomenon, cannot be the simple deployment of my potentialities or aptitudes, of what is ‘possible for me’. In order to be a decision, it must interrupt that ‘possible’, tear off my history and thus be above all, in a certain strange way, the decision of the other in me: come from the other in view of the other in me. It must in a paradoxical way permit and comprise a certain passivity that in no way allays my responsibility. These are the paradoxes that are difficult to integrate in a classical philosophical discourse, but I do not believe that a decision, if it exists, would be possible otherwise.

In my eyes what you call ‘a kind of political metaphysics’ would be exactly the forgetting of aporia itself, which we often try to do. But the aporia cannot be forgotten. What would a ‘pragmatics’ be that consisted in avoiding contradictions, problems apparently without solution, etc.? Do you not think that this supposedly realistic or empirical ‘pragmatics’ would be a kind of metaphysical reverie, in the most unrealistic and imaginary sense one gives these words?

One has to do everything to see the laws of hospitality inscribed in positive law. If this is impossible, everyone must judge, in their soul and conscience, sometimes in a ‘private’ manner, what (when, where, how, to what extent) has to be done without the laws or against the laws. To be precise: when some of us have appealed to civil disobedience in France on behalf of those without identifying papers (and for a small number among us – for example in my seminar, but publicly – more than a year before the press began to discuss this and before the number of protesters grew to be spectacular), it was not an appeal to transgress the law in general, but to disobey those laws which to us seemed themselves to be in contradiction with the principles inscribed in our constitution, to international conventions and to human rights, thus in reference to a law we considered higher if not unconditional. It was in the name of this higher law that we called for ‘civil disobedience’, within certain limited conditions. But I will not reject the word ‘grace’ (of the unconditional gift and without return) that you offered to me, provided that one does not associate it with obscure religious connotations which, though they can sometimes be interesting, would call for quite different discussions.

I’m so sick and tired of being sick and tired.

VirusHead

I’ve spiked a fever at 105 degrees, and hovered around 100-101 most of the rest of the time. Vertigo and light-headedness. Fatigue and balance problems. Coughing. Sneezing. Aching, but I can’t rest (and I won’t take that medicine). Crossing my fingers that it doesn’t go into bacterial pneumonia like in many other cases.

It’s been a week now, and I’ve racked up five sick days at work. That’s going to mean a lot of late nights toward the end of the year to meet deadlines, and give me even less time and energy to do everything else.

And there’s so much to do that I need to be doing and I can’t! Christmas shopping and preparations, housework, helping out with some family stuff – and I guess I’m probably not going to get the cards out this year. This is the first day I could really concentrate on anything and I’m getting weepy even trying to edit what should be a very straightforward document.

And of course this whole healthcare reform fiasco is very frustrating and disappointing. The way the bill is now, it just seems like a gift to the insurance companies.

Keith Olbermann’s rant on this last night was incredibly depressing, but it’s worth watching the video.

You have just agreed to purchase a product. If you do not, you will be breaking the law and subject to a fine. You have no control over how much you will pay for the product. The government will have virtually no control over how much the company will charge for the product. The product is designed like the Monty Python sketch about the insurance company’s “Never-Pay” policy … “which, you know, if you never claim — is very worthwhile. But you had to claim, and, well, there it is.”

And who do we have to blame for this? There are enough villains to go around, men and women who, in a just world, would be the next to get sick and have to sell their homes or their memories or their futures — just to keep themselves alive, just to keep their children alive, against the implacable enemy of American society, the insurance cartel. Mr. Grassley of Iowa has lied, and fomented panic and fear. Mr. DeMint of South Carolina has forgotten he represents people, and not just a political party. Mr. Baucus of Montana has operated as a virtual agent for the industry he is charged with regulating. Mr. Nelson of Nebraska has not only derailed reform, he has tried to exploit it to overturn a Supreme Court decision that, in this context, is frankly none of his goddamned business….

Which brings us to Mr. Lieberman of Connecticut, the one man at the center of this farcical perversion of what a government is supposed to be. Out of pique, out of revenge, out of betrayal of his earlier wiser saner self, he has sold untold hundreds of thousands of us into pain and fear and privation and slavery — for money. He has been bought and sold by the insurance lobby. He has become a Senatorial prostitute.

And sadly, the President has not provided the leadership his office demands.

I see the centrist Dems are trying to paint Howard Dean as a quack again – using energy they reserved from their lack of criticsm of Republicans – but check out Dean’s article in today’s Washington Post. I can’t say I disagree.

Real reform would insert competition into insurance markets, force insurers to cut unnecessary administrative expenses and spend health-care dollars caring for people. Real reform would significantly lower costs, improve the delivery of health care and give all Americans a meaningful choice of coverage. The current Senate bill accomplishes none of these. Real health-care reform is supposed to eliminate discrimination based on preexisting conditions. But the legislation allows insurance companies to charge older Americans up to three times as much as younger Americans, pricing them out of coverage. The bill was supposed to give Americans choices about what kind of system they wanted to enroll in. Instead, it fines Americans if they do not sign up with an insurance company, which may take up to 30 percent of your premium dollars and spend it on CEO salaries — in the range of $20 million a year — and on return on equity for the company’s shareholders. Few Americans will see any benefit until 2014, by which time premiums are likely to have doubled. In short, the winners in this bill are insurance companies; the American taxpayer is about to be fleeced with a bailout in a situation that dwarfs even what happened at AIG. …

To be clear, I’m not giving up on health-care reform. The legislation does have some good points, such as expanding Medicaid and permanently increasing the federal government’s contribution to it. It invests critical dollars in public health, wellness and prevention programs; extends the life of the Medicare trust fund; and allows young Americans to stay on their parents’ health-care plans until they turn 27. Small businesses struggling with rising health-care costs will receive a tax credit, and primary-care physicians will see increases in their Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates.

Improvements can still be made in the Senate, and I hope that Senate Democrats will work on this bill as it moves to conference. …

I have worked for health-care reform all my political life. In my home state of Vermont, we have accomplished universal health care for children younger than 18 and real insurance reform — which not only bans discrimination against preexisting conditions but also prevents insurers from charging outrageous sums for policies as a way of keeping out high-risk people. I know health reform when I see it, and there isn’t much left in the Senate bill. I reluctantly conclude that, as it stands, this bill would do more harm than good to the future of America.

If the Dems push through a bill that will make things worse, then they’ll have to live with everything that happens as a result of not holding to a line of integrity. Don’t count on those votes next election.

Ooohh, it gives me such a headache.