So long and thanks for all the comments.

I started this blog five years ago, late into high school and headed towards Tulane. I originally thought this was going to be about gaming and politics, but I soon found myself writing about race and Unitarianism at least as much as politics, and I wrote about gaming here all of once. I'm going to leave it up, in the grand tradition of nothing on the internet ever really going away, but for now it's done. It remains as an archive of my youthful speculation, with all the warts, rash decisions, embarrassingly naive decisions I wrote here left intact. I am still blogging, now with a narrower focus, over at wordpress.

Thanks for reading. It's been good.

That's All Folks by Scott Campbell from Purple Magazine on Vimeo.

The wars of the future will be the legacy of the austerity of the present

Half the fun of reading foreign policy wonks is that at times they feel like the hipsters of the commentariot; "Oh, sure, we're still involved in three wars, but c'mon, focusing on what we're doing right now? Sooooo last decade." It is this insistence upon forward-looking that most informed me as I read the following three articles.

The first, and most far-reaching, was John F. Cooper's assessment of the strategic importance Taiwan plays in the grand strategy of the United States. As long as Taiwan remains sovereign and supported by the American navy, then it will remain the primary focus of Chinese military power, much as (to use Cooper's analogy) the independent American Indian nations remained for a century the primary focus of US expansion and campaigning. As Cooper relates, if Taiwan were to fall, China will be able to project her power globally, through a navy that was no longer

“contained” by a proximate chain of islands extending southward from Japan, through the Ryukyu’s, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia."

What's fascinating about Cooper's piece is the emphasis it gives to preparing for and/or safeguarding against great power war as the primary goal for US strategy. Decades ago, this had been a given; throughout the Cold War many smaller wars were fought with the ultimate objective of making the situation favorable to the United States should a great power war break out. But since the fall of the USSR, the United States has had a clear and uncontested global reach but no similar singular focus. Part of Cooper's argument is that this has been possible because our probable global rival has been singularly focused on an enemy just off their shore. The wider implication of Cooper's piece, though, is that our military focus (and, explicitly in the piece, budget priorities) should guarantee our military strength against other great powers.

I read Cooper's article the same day that the New York Times published this editorial, about the experience of NATO in Libya. This was the first war undertaken by NATO where the United States was insistent upon taking a secondary role to the militaries of Canada and Europe. While Qaddafi's regime was ultimately toppled by the NATO-supported Libyan rebels, it was a success more guaranteed by the weakness of the opponent than the prowess of the Western forces involved. The editorial cites ammunition shortfalls and outdated technology as the genuine problems, and suggests more broadly that the combination of austerity measures during the economic downturn has only exacerbated a general trend in Europe of allowing the largess of the Pentagon to substitute for European defense spending. It ends with this condemnation

European leaders need to ask themselves a fundamental question: If it was this hard taking on a ragtag army like Qaddafi’s, what would it be like to have to fight a real enemy?

The nations of Europe, it appears, are unready for any war, and are notably unprepared for a great power war for the first time in centuries.

This is fine if one believes that the coming wars will not be symmetric ones. Such skeptics of major conflicts can point to the aughts most memorable strategist, who has spawned a whole school of thought focused on how big powers fight the little wars. Given the present balance of power, and cognizant of the last half-century of American warfare, this makes sense. But such a narrow focus has limitations. Spencer Ackerman writes

With the wars of the future looking likely to occur in sea, air, space and cyberspace, a generation of Army officers forged in counterinsurgency — critics call it a cult — will be challenged to adjust

The nature of wars that will be fought in the future remain a fortunately-unanswered question. But the defense priorities set now, in a time of austerity for the West, will profoundly shape the warfighting of the next decade and beyond.

Fetishizing the Peasant

Peasants into Frenchmen is a classic text in a niche field that hits at the very central problem of modernity: how does a nation convert its population from subsistence farmers into modern citizens? This problem is as old as the concept of citizen itself: it is easy to have a collective identity within a city, and urbanites have formed the early core of states since we have had states, and in many cases a dominating city has gone on to found or anchor empires and civilizations. There's a clear urban bent in history, which makes sense given that cities had the wealth and literacy to devote to writing history.

Outside the city, life for most people, throughout most of human history, has been very much the same: live in a village, grow as much as you can, hope the crops don't fail and the taxes aren't too high and that the neighbors don't raid, and then survive to do it all again next year. There is a simplicity to this, a romanticism, that emerges almost exclusively in urbanites at least three generations removed from having to live like this.

It is seemingly without any knowledge of this history and informed by romantic notions filtered through the modern environmental movement that articles like this are written. Subsistence farmers are, in the strictest sense, "locavores," but very rarely are they so by choice. It is, instead, a lifestyle adopted by necessity, or maintained when they are no seen to be no viable alternatives.

Pushing for development away from subsistence farming, maligned here as the specific failing of USAID programs in Afghanistan, has been the whole project of modernization for the last several hundred years. In The Great Transformation, economist Karl Polanyi documents the century of legal changes it took to provoke small-time farmers in England to give up their farms and take jobs elsewhere. The labor-intensive nature of agriculture has traditionally hindered nations in their attempts to pursue any other path of economic development, whether it be the command systems of Soviet Russia and Communist China or market economies of the West. Encouraging development in other directions is not about trying to destroy what is unique in Afghanistan, but is instead about understanding what the term development means.

The Death of an Enemy

The gestation period for revenge is 9 years, 7 months, 20 days. Or for justice. Or for closure. However you read the death of Osama bin Laden, it took about twice as long as the Manhattan project to go from notion to completion. We messed it up once before - in November 2001, just two months after the attacks of September 11th, we failed to capture him in a battle at Tora Bora. We have kept a military presence in Afghanistan since then, with it escalating over the past several years into counterinsurgency against a resurgent foe. We went chasing other demons abroad, declared that we had found one in Iraq and embroiled ourselves in a regime change there as well. For just shy of a decade, the man who twice bombed the World Trade Center evaded capture, to the point that seven years after 9/11, prioritizing his capture became a presidential campaign promise. It became the stuff of far-ranging speculation (not to discredit these guys - their approach to the problem was both novel and damn close to accurate). And yet, here it is, the death of America's Most Wanted.

Other people have more interesting and informed accounts of what his death mean. Here's my favorite of the facty ones, in ten bullet points. Here's my favorite emotional reaction read, in lots of words. And here's my least favorite spot-on response, in 140 characters: "Recall, this is a huge operation, a huge cost (over $1 trillion since 9/11/01) to get an elderly man on dialysis in a small town in Pakistan"

The 9/11 attacks cost $500,000. That's chump change to pay if the goal, as it was stated in later years, was US bankruptcy. What bin Laden did was unquestionably an act of evil. But it was one that provoked something very much like an allergic reaction - in responding to one threat, the US spent over a trillion. We as a nation failed to adequately respond to the threat. Not that we didn't respond - we did, with excess and paranoia and jingoism and two wars, one relatively justified and one entirely superfluous. We surrendered civil liberties, made air travel a farcical exercise in security theater, and justified torture and indefinite detention of people who we maybe had evidence on. We ignored large swaths of the constitution and made ourselves less safe. The way we responded to 9/11 was all out of proportion. Hunting down the criminal took a year of intelligence work, the cooperation of Pakistan's government, and a strike team consisting of exceptional skilled men in boots on the ground.

What this means going forward comes from the writer at Transitionland with, I think, the best short statement of the impact this will have:

To be clear on Osama bin Laden's death: 1) I wish he had been captured alive. 2) His death isn't a blow to the Taliban, because his life was pretty irrelevant to the post-2001 Taliban. 3) For better or worse, bin Laden's death will be used to cement US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

This isn't really a moment about that future, though. This is a reconciliation with a long overdue past. In late September 2001, my uncle wondered "why are we focusing on getting the messenger, instead of getting the message?" I was 12 when this happened, and never particularly clear on the message we were supposed to get (was it that America must acknowledge bin Laden's demands? was it that we were responsible for generic capitalist unpleasant byproducts in the world at large that turn people against us?).

I like to think it was "maybe the US should stop explicitly supporting autocrats so that radicals direct their frustration with domestic politics outwards at us," which I like to think it was, and we did. It is still supremely satisfying to know that, at the very least, we have reached a moment of closure, if not exactly a moment of justice.

Amidst the immediately jubilant atmosphere of last night, a couple of friends, posting in various places, quoted the same line of scripture, which is especially fitting for the moment. "Rejoice not when your enemy falls, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles. Proverbs 24:17"

This is a time of closure, a awareness that this worst moment of the last decade is, finally, over.

One Part Fatigue, Two Parts Snark

It is apparently really, really hard to be democratic, and impossible to be successful as an elected democratic leader if your last name isn't Roosevelt and the year is anything past 1932. Or at least, that's the impression I get reading Stephen M. Walt's piece "What Hath Obama Wrought?" in which the sitting president's failure is plotted from... well, I'm not sure exactly.

He starts by claiming "[Republicans] will almost certainly pick up a lot of seats in Congress come November, which is the normal mid-term pattern after a big swing the other way." Which is true, but so irrelevant to his point that it risks undermining it. Presidents almost always lose support during midterm elections, barring something tragic that is seen as entirely beyond their control. To label this a failure of Obama's is to set the bar for presidential success during the first 18 months in office at "suffer 9/11, receive benefit of public sympathy." Which is impossible for any president to replicate (Exception: conspiracy theorists, chime in now!) So that's not a loss. That is dull, tried-and-true routine.

The next paragraph hits the Poli-Sci 101 (or AP government) level truism that voters care most about the economy. This is a fact! And he follows with the Poli-Sci 201 truism that "Voters don't care about the disasters-that-might-have-been-but-weren't." Also a fact! Voters have a very, very bad sense of perspective relative to presidents, and tend to punish them for it. Voters are sometimes selfish jerks, but they have to be because otherwise they'd start caring about things like foreign policy. This is why a minority party can, should they so desire, tank efforts of the majority to go as far as they need in rebuilding an economy, and be rewarded for it.

So if the economy isn't something the president can claim credit for (and he can't! avoiding econocolypse by steering the ship of state into recession harbor means you're still not at Candy Island and everyone is tired of how boring the cruise is; at least an iceberg would have spiced things up), what can the president claim? Foreign policy is totally his arena, so let's look at a highly selective list of foreign policy choices that voters might think about. (Side Note: did you know that the US operates embassies and, therefore, foreign policies in a fuckton of nations? Neither do most voters!)

So what foreign policies do voters care about that the president, as head of state, will be judged by? Iraq, Iran, Israel-Palestine, and Afghanistan. Oh, goody.

Iraq

Walt is perfectly right in saying that Iraq is Bush's fault, and Obama doesn't deserve to be blamed for it. But apparently the one Bush success in a steaming pile of everything gone wrong was the surge, and Walt sees that being undone. Perhaps it is! Over at the Atlantic, there's a handy checklist of things the surge has failed to do. Note that of the 4 items on the list, only one is a US action. Which is withdrawal. Which is what the voter cares about most anyway. Also, they throw in that al Qaeda in Iraq has been mostly decapitated, which is about as explicit a US success as you can claim (we needlessly arrived in a hostile environment, watched the country fight through a civil war, decided to start pulling out during a shaky peace, and all the while casually defeated the enemy whose whole existence is built around our destruction, in a nation where they had the potential for ample support? I'm declaring V-aQ-in-Iraq day TOMORROW.) Also, maybe the surge wasn't even the kind of thing that could have success.

Omar Khdhayyir over at gorilla guides says of the surge: "it fit into a series of converging and violent dynamics on the ground, coinciding expediently with a shift in the balance of power. That is what the empirical evidence shows." Maybe this has something to do with the fact that in insurgencies, as Abu Muqawama said, "actions of local actors matter more than those of external forces." Those 3 items on the Atlantic list that show the surge has failed? Those are all Iraqis being unable to reach political settlement, despite the efforts of the US to create a climate in which they can do that. So Obama, here, will get knocked for the internal politics of a foreign nation not lending themselves to compromise. Awesome.

(Sidenote: Walt is upset that we'll leave a "government that is sympathetic to Iran" in Iraq? Iran and Iraq fought the largest conventional war of the last 30 years against each other, and that conflict itself convinced Saddam to go for Kuwait. I think it's safe to say that if they can make friends, the whole stability of the region will be less in jeopardy.)

Iran

I stand by my assertion that, if the 2008 election had gone the other way, US tanks would have rolled towards Tehran during 2009's "Green Revolution." Why do I say this? Call it a fucking hunch.

Honestly, I think Obama can borrow entirely from Woodrow Wilson and campaign on a "he kept us out of the war" platform in 2012, and win.

Israel-Palestine

"Two-States" talk, that perpetual project of US presidents from Nixon onwards, has suffered an awkward pause in dialogue, and this will frustrate voters at home. Probably true, but it's the most predictable of frustrations - talks have halted every single time an election has brought a hardliner into power in one of the relevant countries. This first happened when Nasser accidentally started a war in 1967 because the US and the USSR wouldn't facilitate talks, and has continued onwards as Egypt regained territory but abandoned claims to Gaza, as Begin proclaimed the idea of "Greater Israel," as Jordan lost and then relinquished its claim to the West Bank, as the Palestinian Liberation Organization moved from exiles in Algeria to an old man under house arrest in Ramallah, as Israel elected another former general, as the PLO became the Palestinian Authority, and as Hamas decided to seize power in Gaza after Abbas and Olmert's talks proved fruitless. Really, Netanyahu and the continued existence of Hamas rule in Gaza fit the pattern of slow moves toward progress falling short every other election cycle. Soon enough, after a stalemate here, Israel will elect a moderate who will probably loosen restrictions on Gaza, and Hamas will have to show itself just as capable of compromise as it is of bombastic defiance. But that's an election cycle or two from now.

Obama will get a little bit of heat for this, as the respective Israel and Palestine lobbies are long-suffering. But the staggeringly slow pace of progress here at all times means that this is just a given, and the amount of votes lost nationwide will probably be in the dozens.

Afghanistan

Let me start by saying that the wikileaks information doesn't reveal anything beyond the names of afghans the US has worked with, and the fact that a bureaucracy at war generates paperwork. In 92,000 documents, there is enough evidence to cherry pick every single perspective that can be written on the war. So to claim that the information in it "doesn't matter" and then use it to justify your already established opinion is sheer laziness and shitty journalism.

So what is happening in Afghanistan? Lots. Like the high success rate of embedded 12-man special forces teams in facilitating dispute resolution that doesn't involve adding or using guns. But there is a lot that isn't going well. Karzai protected his office at the expense of ruining elections. This is both a) an act of local agency and b) insanely frustrating. And that's been the biggest failure of Afghanistan since Obama was elected, which is, again, something he doesn't have control over.

But if Obama's commitment to Afghanistan is problematic in the eyes of the American voter (and it is! kind of!), there is no way he could have not committed to fighting the faction that housed al Qaeda without suffering an equally negative blow to his ratings.

Remember the 1990s, when the democrats tried to play humanitarian with the military, got black hawk down, then played cautious, got Rwanda, and then didn't really know what to do in Bosnia and Kosovo so we had cluster bombs in villages missing Serbian tanks and almost risked a war with Russia? That sucked. As the first Democrat commander-in-chief since then, Obama has handled the wars he inherited fairly well. Focusing explicitly on the nation most closely identified with the actual attack on US soil wasn't something he could have chosen not to do.

Does this matter?

Walt seems to think that the cautious approach Obama has pursued in his foreign policy will turn off voters, who will see it as largely unchanged from the second Bush term. That's sheer craziness - voters haven't made a real distinction between the diplomacy of the Bush terms, and still associate him with pre-emption and two long stupid wars we didn't really need to fight. Obama's caution will be seen as distinct from that, and because it is uninteresting to be cautious, voters won't care about it. Which makes the whole article (and, um, this critique) unnecessary. Voters are thinking about other things.

They are thinking that there isn't food on the table and a British company has ruined the gulf for the next 50 years. They'll hate Obama for that.

Fantasy Wargaming: Nuclear Weapons in Videogames

When I started this blog, I initially wanted to write about gaming. That's the reason for the "plastic" in the title. That my attentions went elsewhere are unsurprising - I play less games than I did before I started college, and I suddenly had all these new exciting things to write about, like Nukes and Iran and elections and rights and things. So I'm really excited to find an intersection between my dorktastic hobby and my dorktastic studies.

Nuclear weapons feature in many, many videogames, and a friend of mine had expressed concern on how their presence in videogames relates to public perception of their effects. Games writ large are too diverse to treat as one mass, so I figured I'd start by breaking down the ways nuclear weapons feature in games.

1. Gameplay mechanic itself

• Missile Defense
• DEFCON
  
• Balance of Power

In Missile Defense, nuclear war is abstracted to the point that a successful nuclear missile strike leads directly to defeat. Consequences of such a strike don't need to be more descriptive than game loss, because in a game, that's enough. Not being able to play any more is as deadly as the abstraction can get. (I haven't played DEFCON or Balance of Power, but from their description they seem similar.)

2. Narrative Device (Modern warfare, Metal Gear Solid)

• Modern Warfare (First Person Shooter, FPS)
  
• Modern Warfare 2 (FPS)
  
• Metal Gear Solid (FPS)
  
• Frontlines: Fuel of War (FPS)
  
• The Ace Combat series (Flight Simulator)
  
• Trinity (Text adventure)
  
• Nuclear Strike (Shooter)
  
• Metal Gear series (FPS)
  
• Tom Clancy's EndWar (RTS)
  
• Warhammer 40,000 (Minature wargame/RTS)
  
• Warzone 2100 (RTS)
  
• Syphon Filter series (3rd person shooter)
  
• Splinter Cell: Conviction (FPS)
  
• others
  

The size of this category should be unsurprising - since 1945, nuclear weaponry, nuclear strikes, and post-nuclear wastelands have all featured heavily in fiction. Games are, to a large extent, a story-telling medium, and the first-person shooter is a narrative vehicle, as a character follows along and plays through scripted experiences. Plots in these games include nuclear weapons often as a climactic moment in the story, mid-plot twist, or prologue which creates a setting different from the present day but featuring similar weapons. That's commonly done in every medium - Orwell uses a nuclear war as premise for the stalemate society he depicts in 1984. The same needs-of-narrative fuel RTS's, and all of the above have nuclear weapons as plot-points but not in game weapons.

3. Weapon available to the player

• Starcraft (RTS)
  
• Empire Earth (RTS)
  
• the Civilization series (Turn-Based Strategy, TBS)
  
• World in Conflict (FPS)
  
• War Front: Turning Point (RTS)
  
• Supreme Commander (RTS)
  
• Spore (RTS, at least for the stages in which players can use nukes)
  
• Mercenaries 2 (FPS)
  
• Metal Gear Solid 3 (FPS)
  
• Rise of Nations (RTS)
• Ratchet and Clank (third person shooter)
  
• the Unreal series (FPS)
  

The games here again are divided between strategy and shooter, and the way they depict Nuclear weapons is different. In Ratchet and Clank, the Unreal series, and Metal Gear Solid 3, a nuclear rifle appears, usually as the games' BFG. This use is both entirely unrealistic and fitting within the nature of these games as fantasy. For Unreal, that fantasy is FPS combat isolated of plot, meaning, or worlds. For Ratchet and Clank, it's a fantasy galaxy, inhabited with nonhuman creatures, where the main characters are a robot and a cat-alien. In Metal Gear Solid 3, the weapon is a doomsday machine that is part of the plot. The nuke rifle is a fantasy allowed by videogames.

In the World in Conflict and Mercenaries 2, tactical nuclear strikes are an unlockable weapon. These games depict small nuclear weapons as not only viable, but as an option that would be similar in usage to a predator drone (to emphasize this effect in Modern Warfare 2 predators are unlockable for much the same purpose).

In the RTS games listed, tactical nuclear weapons are available. In Starcraft, they are the superweapon of the humans against both a horde of buglike aliens and another more advanced alien race. In Empire Earth, nuclear bombers can be built from WWII onwards, and while they are a deadly attack, the area and permanence of the blast is limited in keeping with the aims of game balance. War Front is a science-fictional retelling of WWII, and nuclear weapons are again used within the context of that conflict. In Spore, both city- and planet-destroying nuclear weapons are available. In Supreme Commander, nuclear weapons are fired from silos and deal damage in a smaller area than one would expect. In Rise of Nations, nuclear weapons can be used, though anti-missile lasers can be purchased and a missile defense shield can be researched which protects one's entire territory from nuclear strikes. Rise of Nations also has an Armageddon clock the limits the total number of nuclear weapons that can be fired before the game ends in defeat for everyone. Civilization, though not a real-time strategy game, also offers nuclear weapons that can destroy cities, and with it's more advanced resource system, can slowly have the world die out from after-effects of nuclear weapons.


4. Some combination thereof

• Fallout series

The Fallout series is set after a total nuclear war, and cold-war culture is the substance of the games. It also features, in Fallout 3, a tactical nuclear rifle.

~

So what does it mean to have nuclear weapons be part of videogame culture? For the most part, it is no different than having nuclear weapons in fiction, in movies, in comic books, and in song. Sometimes, they will be treated with proper understanding, sometimes they'll be used as a cheap plot accellerant, and more often than not they'll used somewhere between. This is fine, because that's the state of our cultural understanding of nuclear weapons right now.

Games could make a strong statement about tactical nuclear weapons, and on the surface they appear to do so. After all, games, more than any other medium, feature small nuclear strikes. But this isn't really an argument for the use of more nuclear weapons - this is a constraint of game design. When games feature realistic, all-destroying nuclear strikes, they are exclusively plot devices/scripted events, and happen outside the control of the player. When players are given control, nuclear weapons are small, because, and this is important, players will be using these against other players online, and instant-game-ending shots don't make for popular or enjoyable games.

Nuclear weapons could be depicted realistically, but if history has shown us anything, the more powerful a nuclear weapon is, the less likely people are to want it used against themselves. And, in the games-design universe, the certainty that players will use a horribly destructive weapon in a setting where consequences are low translates directly to scaling-down weapons so that they are a balanced component of gameplay. It's not realistic, but it's also very clearly not reality.

The intersection of faith and politics

Religion and Politics seem to be about where all my interests overlap. I've more experience in church governance than anything else outside of school. At school, I'm most fascinated studying Turkey and Iran, which are both outliers for the role of religion within their government. My advisor has made his work studying Western Europe, and the consensus state that failed tom emerge in 1918 but came about after 1945; a consensus marked clearly by the inclusion of religious parties in many mixed-confessional nations. The role of confessional political parties in post-war Europe is significant enough that a case has been made attributing the rise of fascism to a lack of meaningful participation in politics by the deeply religious. It is an intersection so rich that I go from idle musing to wonkish details in seconds.

In academia, this works out well: comparing the struggles that led Europe to its mostly secular public sphere coexisting with the occasional state-sponsored church is a valuable reference point for understanding similar the church and state relations happening elsewhere in the world today. Very good, but very niche.

The more immediate intersection of religion and politics, and the impetus behind this post, was their role in the politics of the US today. On twitter, many friends of mine, whose opinions I value, argued that if churches take political stances, they should lose their non-profit status. I mentioned that churches can lose tax-exemption for endorsing candidates, but this only slightly dodged the issue. What matters is not so much that a tax-exempt organization doesn't support specific people - it matters that they both get to be tax-exempt and engage so actively in the public sphere.

At the core of my friends' distaste for politically-vocal religion are images like this one:


From Overcompensating: "Here is a picture of a group of Americans who just found out they have successfully denied equal rights to another group of Americans." That is, to put it lightly, disgusting. The categorical denial of rights to a group of people is something abhorrent to the ideals of most Americans'.

It's deplorable activity, for which the correct response is disgust, distaste, and shaming. But these people should never be forcibly excluded from politics. If we exclude them, we exclude the very idea the morality can be based on religious experiences/teachings, and we are left with secularism alone to inform our collective values. There's an argument to be made for that - secularism is the shared values of everyone sans religion, and in a world where multiple religious interpretations exist, removing religion altogether has a lot to say for it. Another large part of the European consensus involves having a forcibly secular public sphere.

But there are problems with that. In France, the secular public sphere has invaded the realm of personal choice and religious practice, where most notably muslim women are forbidden from wearing veils in public. Rather than allowing for a shared society of shared values, that's oppressive. And in England, there has been controversy over the relation between the country's historic legal system and the values of some of its residents. This lead the Archbishop of Canterbury to claim that Shari'a law in the UK will be inevitable, and led a Tory shadow minister to say in response:

"We must ensure people of all backgrounds and religions are treated equally before the law. Freedom under the law allows respect for some religious practices. But let's be clear: all British citizens must be subject to British laws developed through parliament and the courts."

While the debate is framed as between religious law and secular law, the religious context and values that formed and informed british law go unmentioned. What is ostensibly secular law tends to reflect the values of protestants fairly closely. In this case, trying to keep the religious out in the name of secularism is similar to the nativists of the 1890s-1920s trying to keep southern Europeans out of the USA in the name of "Nativism". It can be done, sure, but it's hypocritical, and it assumes as normal a state that was itself the result of centuries of change.

But even more important than the implicit religious values that informed secularism to the inclusion and protection of religious institutions as tax exempt is the role of religious activism. The easy example here is the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s in the United States, and it's one of the most meaningful as well. Nationwide religious associations motivated and coordinated activists on an issue that was as explicitly political as it was anything else. Religious groups also protested and argued against civil right in the South, too; even my Unitarian church suffered a split thanks to disagreement over the civil rights movement. But the civil rights movement could not have acted as it did, and had the success it did, if it did so without the religious values that enabled it to both challenge the status quo and to call upon the US to live up to its own ideals.

And then there is today, where the appearance of religious activism is of one march to quash rights after another. Certainly, that religious activism is happening, but it is happening because conservative religion is generally about quashing rights anyway, and while I can accept individuals voluntarily taking on religious restrictions on behavior, it will always be hard for me to accept forcing such restrictions on others in the name of religion. But today's religious activism is not exclusively activism on behalf of the right.

Today, at All Souls Church in DC, Mayor Fenty signed into law a bill granting marriage equality to gay and lesbian couples. This is the second-to-last step (a confirmation by the national legislature is next) of a long campaign, spearheaded by the religious community of DC and helped by the Unitarian Universalist Association's Standing on the Side of Love campaign. Here was religion acting inconcert with secular society to better secure the rights of all citizens, and this was the result of seeing marriage equality as not just a secular concern, but as one with a religious mandate behind it. This activism in specific is crucial to the purpose of our nation, and having religious activism as a valid means of expression, as a protected means of expression, is vital the vibrancy of our democracy. And crucial to all of this: we must let religious organizations be invested in this world. If we take that away, if we make it hard for religious groups to engage with the nation in which they exist, we lose the participation of part of the population (itself a problem in democracy), and we lose the ability for religion to remind us of our higher values and nobler virtues.

The problem has nothing to do with the religious being active in politics. The problem has everything to do with *which* religious are active in politics, and I for one prefer the participation of all to the exclusion of any.

Remembrance Day

Given how much I write about war here, it only feels appropriate to mention Veterans day. Or Remembrance day. Or Armistice Day. It's a tricky holiday, mainly solemn, but with such a strong focus on service and internationalism it's hard to not get lost pondering it.

My initial response to today was to be annoyed at the change that has befallen Armistice Day. This day, 91 years ago, ended the most needless war in human history. It ended for many thoughts of glory in war, and it especially ended (for all but one nation) the notion of glory on the offense. It was a powerful halt. Humanity would give it one more go before throwing out the very idea of actually fighting annihilistic war, but WWI was the first moment when not fighting wars even became a considered idea. Honoring the Armistice is important.

A blogging acquaintance of mine posted today a great, semi-connected series of remembrances. Most striking about her memories and the stories she relays second-hand are their modernity. While very few alive today remember WWI, Europe saw hot war in the past two decades. And we forget so easily in the West that while hot war may be dead at home such peace is a modern anomaly. We forget that many parts of the world suffer lingering effects of where our Cold War was actually fought, or where our abandonment and indifference let senseless war happen again. Rwanda may now be as much a part of history books as WWI, but that's still only 15 years old. Hesitancy to act and memory of the costs of engaging in war must always be measured against the costs of inaction. Remembering only part of it helps no one.

Then there is veterans day. I have only one immediate relative that actually fought in any war - my father and uncles were not part of US action in Vietnam, and my maternal grandfather has been a cyclops since he was six. So the veteran I knew was my paternal grandfather, Alfred Leroy Atherton Jr. I've written about him before, and I have this somewhat mythologized version of his legacy as family history. He was late to WWII, and spent his year or so in the war as the spotter in a plane scouting for an artillery division. It's easy to make metaphors about that - "he saw the totality of war" or "he was removed enough from combat to get the big picture", and it is very tempting to make these part of the myth. I don't actually think his experience as a spotter specifically influenced his life that much, but I never had the chance to ask. What I do know is this: after the war, and after finishing his degree on the GI Bill, he joined the Foreign Service, and his first deployment was in what was becoming West Germany. He became a diplomat, and spent 36 years as an agent of his country working to prevent wars.

It's for this reason, I think, that I tend to link appreciation for diplomats with appreciation for veterans. We respect and honor those who served their countries in times of need. I just support a definition of that service which includes those who did everything they could to keep us out of wars.

Agency: A Case Study

The latest bit of life-threatening trivia that's seen some major media coverage has been the fear of a link between vaccines and autism. Such a link does not exist. The science is there, is solid, and is not an evil plot. So why does the myth persist? As the linked-to story in Wired says, parents are willing to do anything out of love for their children. They are eager and willing to believe in alternative cures, or in radical measures to save their children. A lot of emphasis has been places on this as a failure of rationale choice: vaccines are inherently safer than the diseases they protect against. A striking visual example is this chart discussing the risk of taking the HPV vaccine versus the risk of not doing so. HPV not in any way associated with Autism, but the case against HPV is similar: well-publicized incident of a side effect gone wrong, or of the potential for a harmful side-effect, with little real coverage of the damage caused by not taking the vaccine. To scientists (and, generally, to rational human beings) this makes no sense: the least risky action is desired, and should be taken.

So why the resistance to vaccinations? Agency.

People see themselves as having control over whether or not to get a vaccination; they are upset at laws about mandatory vaccinations, which to them imposes the risk of side effects. In refusing to be vaccinated or vaccinate their own children, this people are acting against the only risk they perceive: that caused by vaccines themselves.

They are, at the same time, assuming that disease is a factor beyond their control. Getting infected by any of the diseases that a vaccine would protect against is seen as something against which they are powerless (or, more likely, unaware), and so isn't a risk to avoid. They've seen/read/researched the stories about things gone terribly wrong with vaccines. But the renewed outbreak of diseases like measles (basically non-existent for my generation and the one immediately preceding it) doesn't register as a new risk. These people, these parents fearful of autism (or more generally the mercury in all vaccines) are making a terrible assessment of the possible risks, but it's not irrational - they just have no idea of the risks where the balance of risk falls.

Most relevantly, they don't see getting vaccinated as reducing risk. Because exposure to disease isn't something they have control over, but exposure to medicine totally is. It's a major disconnect they've developed between vaccinations and disease. The solution? Coming from my social-sciencey background, I'm inclined to think that the problem can be solved by a reframing of vaccination. Vaccinating is a choice just as much as not vaccinating is, and the positive good caused by vaccines is little publicized, and even more rarely seen as an actual decision.

We humans remember when things go wrong. We have a terrible problem with forgetting when and why things went right.

Support Your Local Papers! Gordon Sisters in the Times-Picayuner

Here's something genuinely weird: I don't have internet in my apartment, and I just signed up for a month-long subscription to NOLA's local paper (the Times-Picayune). I'll probably get another when that one runs out. Why? Well, the easiest reason is that I like having something disposable to read every morning. A better answer would be that, with my church membership, apartment, and employment(ish) here, I feel committed enough to through down some more shallow roots.

And the best answer? Have some foreshadowing, and check this space again in a week.

Edit 10/5: After my totally unsubtle buildup, the Times-Picayune story on the Gordon Sisters Window. It does a better job of the history than I do (easy access to newspaper records helps with that), and on the whole, I think it's well done. My only qualms are, funny enough, nitpicking with my ministers language - while it's important to emphasize the good that the sisters did, I think there is little gained in excusing them as "products of their time", instead of focusing on them as "flawed people acting on contemporary notions of justice." To me, what is fascinating about them is not the views they held in common with their peers, but instead how they managed to hold those views and do lots of good works despite them. That said, I think the story does justice to the Gordon sisters, and First Unitarian Universalist of New Orleans decision to honor them as flawed humans. The newspaper article gets the nuance down, and for that I am grateful.

Again, my previous post discussing their complicated historical legacy is here.

The Realist goes M.A.D.

Over the past two days, I've made some fairly bold claims about nuclear power on my twitter account. Here's my claims:

• I trust the sanity of people who have the most to gain by not engaging in nuclear war. Being king > being dead. And yes, even Kim Jong Il has more to gain by not nuking, and he's as close to insane as we've got. It's in Kim Jong Il's interest for people to think he is crazy - he (and those in power around him) gain nothing, however, by actually engaging in Nuclear War.
  
• The main argument I've heard for Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) not being stabilizing: Bernard Lewis, who claimed that the Iran govt was apocalyptic, and saw the certain destruction of nuclear war as an inducement, rather than a deterrent. I spent a good part of last year writing a response for my War on Terror class. My core counter argument was, essentially, that while Ahmadejinehad (and Iran proxy) have a lot to gain through nuclear posturing, and even through the possession of nuclear weapons, they are first and foremost a government. And as a government, things are better for them if they both a) stay in power, and b) stay alive. Religious belief may be strong enough to motivate a terrorist to kill himself on behalf of his community, but very few people are genuinely willing to risk initiating the actual death of their community. Altruistic motives fuel suicide terrorism; if you think your death will benefit the community, you may well do it. But it does not extend far enough to risk the entire community, because nothing is gained by that.
  
• M.A.D. works precisely because even if the leader has more to gain in a war, and leaders usually have the most to gain, gains in war become impossible w/nuclear second strikes. Were a nuclear nation to initiate war against another nuclear nation, the damages that resulted would be, well, apocalyptic. You'd get two devastated nations, and the cost + time involved in rehabilitating them is certain to be expensive. Not going to war is, in this day and age, always cheaper and the better economic prospect for a nuclear armed nation. Plus, any government that initiates such a war is sure to either die, be deposed, or be greatly reduced in power within minutes.
  
• Finally: a single person may be irrational (Ahmadejinehad, Kim Jong Il). But a small group of people (say, the rest of the governing bodies in Iran with a special emphasis towards the Supreme Leader, or the bureaucratic elite of the DPRK) errs towards rationality.
• Governments of States, as collections of people with a vested interest in preserving the status quo, are going to be more rational and more restrained that the sum of their parts. They might posture, and they may well pursue nuclear weapons as a deterrent, but actually engaging in nuclear war is not in their interest.
  

That is, more or less, the whole of my argument as regards states. Nonstate actors are generally perceived as less rational. Fortunately, however, nonstate actors can't really produce outright nuclear weapons on their own (dirty bombs being another matter). Nuclear forensics, while not as developed as it should be, mitigates the risk of a nonstate actor obtaining (and therefore using) a nuke. Nuclear forensics, ideally, makes the nation that gives a nuke to a nonstate actor (read: terrorist) responsible for any deaths caused, and therefore vulnerable as though the state itself had launched the weapon. So rather than MAD deterring the use of weapons by nonstate actors, it deters nations unloading nuclear weapons on terrorist groups. And so that makes the governments of all nuclear nations put a premium on tight control, small stockpiles, and encourages nuclear actions to be controlled as a state, rather than enacted by nonstate proxies. Following the thesis of states as rational actors, MAD is an effective deterrent, so long as nuclear war is seen as fundamentally unwinnable.

Qualifiers and Postscripts:

Nuclear forensics is valuable, but it isn't as effective a deterrent as MAD. MAD is purely a "between states" thing, and works on the premise of states as rational actors. Since states have a lot to gain by posturing, posturing through nonstate loose cannons is a fancy little risk in this day and age. That said, nuclear forensics still holds promise of making deterrence continue to be relevant, two decades after the cold war.

Security through proliferation? The topic itself came up because a friend made an aside about how giving everyone nuclear weapons was not the path to peace. Another friend interjected that I "might advocate giving all STATES nuclear weapons. Some silly thing about rational actors." So, I then went out and kind of babbled my way through a rough version of the argument you see above. I genuinely trust states rational actors, and I stand by the value of deterrence in a world with nuclear weapons. What I omitted in the above argument but included in my conversation are two fairly important asides:

1. The only nation that was nuclear and actively, unilaterally disarmed itself was the apartheid government of South Africa. The reasons for this were multiple - the cold war was ending, South Africa really didn't see a need for itself to be nuclear, and the outgoing government really did not trust the rationality of the people they were handing the reins of power over to. It's an example of disarmament, which is a net win for everyone, through an explicit distrust in the rationality of states, which is probably fair but makes me a sad panda. I'm not sure what relevance this has, beyond being basically a silver bullet counterargument to my stated claims. Seemed worth mentioning, any way.
2. Having nuclear weapons protects a single nation while increasing the risk to all other nations, resulting in a net lose of security. This is a macro-scale effect of the SUV phenomenon: if you drive an SUV, you yourself are safer, but every SUV on the roads makes the roads less safe. More nuclear weapons among more states doesn't actually provide much in the way of stability to anyone outside the most recently nuclear state, and greater proliferation comes with a greater risk of loose nukes and nonstate actors using them. For this reason, while I don't begrudge a nation like Iran seeking to protect itself with a nuclear deterrent, I'm really not all that fond of greater proliferation. I understand it, and don't see it as leading to the end of the world, but in absolute terms it's not a good thing.
   

The Gordon Sisters, their Window, and Quiet Little Faults

Today in my church we dedicated a pair of stained-glass windows. The new set is a beautiful post-Katrina triptych, donated and made by volunteers who made many a trip to the city to rebuild. It's not a subtle piece, but it is very pretty, and hyper-relevant to the building in which it is now housed. It's history, though already pretty elaborate, is nothing compared to the main focus of this morning's service.

At the center of the morning, and at the center of the wall facing the congregation in our sanctuary, is the Gordon Sisters window. It's a piece of stained glass with more history than most towns, and it commemorates two little-known but tremendous figures for social justice, who just so happened to be members of the First Unitarian Church of New Orleans.

The sisters were fascinating people. Childless and never married, they brought sanitary water and sewage to New Orleans, worked to build a "model home-school for the care and vocational education of the mentally handicapped", spent ten years working for children's rights (which resulted in the Child Labor Act of 1906), one of them directed the Louisiana State Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and they "pushed for the state constitution to allow women to vote," where "partial victory was granted and women taxpayers were given the vote, in person or by proxy, on matters relating to taxation." It's about the perfect distillation of late 19th century progressive causes. Reading that, it's a wonder that we don't lionize Kate and Jean Gordon with Susan B. Anthony and Clara Barton.

But there are reasons for this. For all the progressiveness of the Gordon Sisters, there are some quietly omitted flaws. Kate fought for women's' suffrage, but she fought for it through state rights. There's a reason Louisiana only gave the right to vote to women taxpayers - that's a category that is almost exclusively white women, and this was the Jim Crow south. Pursuing suffrage on the state level meant that you could still exclude some as you expanded the franchise. This was intentional. This is a stark contrast to the standard progressive discourse about late 19th century liberation movements. We remember Susie B as an abolitionist and a suffragette - they go together perfectly in the progressive canon. We forget, in praising our forebears, all the murky grey area and disagreeable positions that came before.

Jean, too, falls into the grey area of history. The second hit on her name is a book discussing eugenics in the deep south. At the above-mentioned model home school, Jean Gordon admitted only whites, and then sterilized them so that feebleness could be weeded out of the white race. We, as a church community, honor the fight against hardship and feebleness, but it is hard to look back with fondness on forebears who embraced so overtly racist a policy as eugenics. These are sins of omission, perhaps, but it makes a platonic ideal of what should be an examination of caring but deeply flawed people.

This will emerge into a new light soon, and it was already simmering at the service today. Racist predecessors are hard people to acknowledge. More challenging even than that is reconciling the tangible good they produced (sewage and drainage, child labor laws, and even the murkily reasoned good of expanded suffrage) with ulterior motives we would today find appalling. History is not the kindest of materials to work with, and Unitarian Universalism is not free from it's ill effects.

The window itself is still beautiful, it's figures all full of dignity. They're all white (and a dog), but that doesn't have to diminish from the dignity of the piece. It just requires that we are conscious of the exclusion, and mindful that when we focus on achieving justice, our definition of justice is limited to our experience. One day, history may well judge us for our biases, and it is good that it is done.

I'd worry if progressive meant the same thing after a century later.

Mayoral Quickie

Having not read the Albuquerque Journal in a while (being out of state can do that), I missed an article about the Mayoral Candidates positions on Albuquerque's water future. Here's what they have to say, in turn, using the same order as my earlier post.

Romero:

Romero said the Mayor's Office should take more interest in the Albuquerque-Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority, which has a voting position reserved on its board for the mayor.
Chávez does not attend water authority meetings but sends his chief administrative officer instead.
"We can't just stomp our feet and say, 'I don't like this authority,' " Romero said.
He said more oversight of the authority from a mayoral administration could help coordinate conservation, growth and acquisition efforts.
Romero supports acquiring new water rights, and said the focus needs to be on conservation. He said the city's water conservation record can be improved in its golf courses, parks and buildings.
"The program (to improve city conservation) needs to be accelerated," he said.

Chavez:

Chávez touts his administration's water record with what he calls the most important act as mayor — pushing for the San Juan-Chama diversion project to get off the ground after decades of unused, city-owned surface water in the Rio Grande flowed past the city every year.
Chávez was one catalyst for the construction of the new water system in his first term.
Chávez said he supports desalination, but only as a short term measure. He said reuse systems and new technology, such as toilet-to-tap systems, "if people can get over the 'ugh' factor," would also be welcome in the city.
Chávez is also proud of the steep decline in water use per person in Albuquerque since the 1980s, where personal usage has dropped per capita by about 90 gallons a day.
He said the real improvements can come from the state Legislature, which could force surrounding areas that use the aquifer to implement conservation programs.
Chávez, a former state legislator himself, said the city can do "virtually nothing" to force conservation on other communities. The state has that power, however, he said.
"We can't continue to be the only entity with a meaningful conservation system," Chávez said.

Berry:

Berry said the city needs a vision and a plan for conservation and future water sources. He said his administration would have a scheme to not only help look for new water rights, especially large water transfers like the San Juan-Chama project, but to also make sure the city is prepared to responsibly pay for it.
"I think the city should have a leader who ... helps drive the vision and helps implement the plan," he said.
Desalination of brackish water, using the aquifer for water storage and the large water transfers are all options to add to the city's water supply, he said. Conservation, for the short term, is the city's best bet for more water, he said.
"Enhanced conservation is the cheapest supply of new water," Berry said.
But Berry also warned that some conservation techniques he supports, such as water reuse systems and low-flow toilets, do not save any water for the city's new water system, which requires the city return its used water into the Rio Grande downriver. He said only new water supplies will satisfy large growth in the area.

My Take:

All the candidates argue for conservation as the first and best way to manage our cities water. Good. Romero wants the Mayor to take a more active role in water policy (which includes acquiring more water rights), Chavez says that the real change needs to happen in the state legislature, and Berry wants to marshal new resources in a way that allows for long term growth. Given that choice, I'm kind of disappointed in all of them, but least disappointed in Romero's position. The city needs a very strong orientation towards conservation, because any growth that happens without it will only make the city much more likely to die out. Marty Chavez should be able to step up on this - the Albuquerque/Rio Grande corridor is the biggest fish in the NM water usage pond (I believe - correct me if I'm wrong), and the mayor of ABQ can do a lot more with that than he thinks he can. Romero sees that active role, but doesn't have any more sweeping vision. As for Berry, he sees conservation as a way to enable growth, which isn't inherently bad so much as a little risky.

Your thoughts?

Katrina-after-4

Here's what I've written about New Orleans before on this blog.

I mention that because one never takes a city in all at once, but instead develops a relationship with the place, which is transformed and changed by time. I've spent the better part of two years here, and my feelings are very different than where I started out.

Initially, I came to Tulane because I found the premise of a college committed to rebuilding a city after a natural disaster to be both exciting and refreshing. I have long been eager to be thrown into good works. That hasn't happened as much as I would have liked yet; it is easy to forget the the key component of good works is works. But I've done some, and I've joined a church here. I've also moved into my first apartment, near the campus and still paid for by folk not me, but an actual residence with implied duration. It's small steps, signs of more permanent action.

I've evacuated this city once. Last year, Gustav looked ominous and deadly. It wasn't; the storm got weaker, and they city, having already had it's difficult evacuation, came back together much more smoothly. It was an odd moment, to be a refugee within the US and leaving a city I was only slowly growing into. For me, it was novel. For my co-congregants, it was very close to traumatic. They'd fled Katrina. They had seen the worst that could happen to a city, lived through it, returned, and spent a week anxious that the very worst would happen again. I've no idea how one gets used to that, but apparently it is possible.

There's a lot to say about Katrina, four years later. I've gone from viewing it as a natural disaster to a human one. Sobering, but it means that it was preventable, and the next one is preventable too. There's more to say than that, but I'll leave it to the (hopeful) next First Couple of New Orleans, Melissa Harris-Lacewell and James Perry:

While these grassroots efforts are extraordinary, they have proved insufficient for the herculean task of restoring New Orleans. Despite the spirit and commitment of its people, the city's levee protection is inadequate, its violent crime is soaring, its school system is failing, its local economy is overly dependent on tourism, and its neighborhoods are ravaged by blight. For example, millions of volunteer hours over four years have put more than 2,000 units of housing back into commerce. While noteworthy, the success pales when one considers that more than 80,000 units of housing were damaged.

New Orleans teaches us that individuals and families bear an important responsibility in restoring the city and our nation. New Orleans shows the innovative capacity of civil society and local entrepreneurship. But New Orleans also reveals that recovery is limited without effective, transparent, responsible government action.

There's a lot more here, but I'd be remiss if I didn't include their excellent conclusion:

The lesson from New Orleans is clear: racial injustice and racialized politics too often stand in the way of doing what is best for the whole community. We need both local and national leadership that will stand for fairness for all people while also refusing to misuse historical racial antagonisms for their own purposes.

The survival of New Orleans is no longer just about restoring America's most distinctive city. We are all living in Katrina Nation now. Learning the lessons of New Orleans may just have the power to save all of us.

Four years ago, negligence nearly killed this city. I'd like very much for it's suffering to have not been a death, and for the lessons here to be well learned.

Why UUs Are Political at Church

Editor's Note: This piece is a rough draft or part of the rough draft of a sermon, intended to be given at either First Unitarian Universalist in New Orleans or First Unitarian in Albuquerque. It is written with that kind of audience in mind, and is also in part a response to Rev. Davidson Loehr's piece on "Why Unitarian Universalism is Dying"

We are a people always on the verge. For many years, it was at the forefront of religious liberalism, that jargon-filled term which we so often use to say we are theologically diverse, and are comfortable being theologically diverse. And for many years, we have prided ourselves on being at the front of many social movements on the political left. For many Unitarian Universalists, there is a tacit agreement that political liberality and religious liberality go hand in hand. After all, if everyone is free to have their innermost religious beliefs, why won't they think just like us?

It is an easy trap to fall into. There is an ever-present vocal minority in our congregations that reminds us of our hypocrisy, constantly chiding us for being overtly political, and being so consistently political one-sided. Remember, we set out to embrace a diversity of beliefs. Politics is filled with division. Why is it that, for so many of us, church has become the place where we are comfortable politically?

A good political scientist would tell you that the last 50 years, and especially the last 25, have seen a rise in the use of religious language in politics, and the explicit use of religious sentiment for political gain. I am not going to say that. Well, I'm not going to say that any more than I already have. We do not need such a cynical perspective for why religion has been involved in politics.

What I will say is this: people care about politics in a religious way. We say that we have faith in our candidates. When we vote, we say we vote our values, and religion does nothing if not help us reaffirm our values. And when our candidates' lose an election, we become apocalyptic. Politics can shape our external world in ways that often seems remote and all-powerful. And this effects us, as religious people.

When we see a piece of discriminatory legislation get passed, that hits us. We take it as a challenge to the inherent worth and dignity of every person, and that is as much a political position as it is a theological one. We feel for it religiously. Environmental legislation affects us because we care so deeply for the interdependent web of life of which we are all a part. And for many UUs, it is hard to see how military action can possible help us be part of a world community with peace and justice for all. These things are not just politically upsetting, they are spiritually disturbing. We are a political people precisely because we are a religious people.

We are not excused for being so one-sided politically. My vision of inherent worth and dignity may include universal healthcare, but another vision may just as easily see the first principle only meaning the equal right to choose to buy insurance. The principles leave a lot unsaid, and that is for the best. For me, and I suspect for at least a few of you, they form a core around which we have built our own beliefs, and while we may share the same core, we are not in any way obliged to share the same body.

That doesn't mean some political action won't shake us all to the core. And it doesn't mean we cannot share in our profound distress just because our bodies of belief are so different. What it means, for me at least, is that rather than replacing religion with politics, we are more honest than most in how closely the two are fused.

~

Coming in part II: Why our Universalist heritage in particular lends theological weight to a closer religious relationship to politics.

Bonus thought-provoking statement I wish I could write more about: How does the political/religious relationship in Black Liberation Theology serve as a counterpoint to the desire of many for UUism to be apolitical?

~

Edit # 2: There's been some discussion in the internets! Lots of back-and-forth here, and then some responses here and here.

The Mayoral Race in Albuquerque

As is my custom, here's a post about an election for an office I care about. Normally, I'd do a separate post for each candidate, but there are only three, so I figured I'd just run them down in one entry. As is also the norm, my commentary is based primarily on the issues page of each candidate.

Starting from the Left:

Richard Romero

1. Public Safety
1. It's bare-bones, with a focus on more boots on the street. There is nothing here to object to, but a special mention should be made of Romero's desire to fire the current APD police chief. The current chief is decent, and there is no need to turn the mayor's office into a spoils system. If he thinks the problem is the current approach to policing (which he does, by promising specific change there), then the problem is programmatic and not rooted in leadership.
   
2. Education
1. (Side note: I'm waiting for a detailed analysis of the mayoral candidate's education plans from Scot Key over at Burque Babble; until then, I'm just going to poke the summary)
2. When he says "cut waste", he does not specify any waste to be cut. Far as I'm concerned, that makes those words empty.
3. He has generally good ideas - make school more involved in the community, let city resources be more broadly shared.
4. Attending school for 7 years of No Child Left Behind, I am exceedingly hesitant to see an executive with other duties get involved in education. Romero does not seem to be overstepping - he wants better city/APS integration more than he wants to dictate school policy, but my hesitancy stands.
   
3. Ethics and Honest Government
1. It's a bare-bones section
2. Yay for ending pay-to-play, yay for being upset about Suncal TIDDS
3. Ethics and Honest Government requires more than just an audit. If he wants to create ethical government, he should propose some more lasting changes, and create some better, independent policing organs.
   
4. Building a Clean and Green Economy. Supporting Small Business
1. He understand how the internet leads to efficiency! Praise Xenu! But no, seriously, internet-driven efficiency in more of what the city does (provided they keep a well staffed and well paid web team) is a great idea.
2. The rest of this, about sustainable development and reasonable development fees, is better than I was expecting.
3. But we really don't need the petty sniping at Marty that fills the discussion of how things are currently done.
   
5. Renewable Energy
1. Interesting plan to start turning over 1/10th of city buildings to exclusively alternative energy, as an inducement for those wanting a market to already exist when developing alt. energy for the city
2. Beyond that, nothing

Our Once-and-Future Mayor Marty Chavez
(a special note: Marty does not have actually have an issues page; instead, his views are culled from the "Achievements" section of his website. Yeah.)

1. Public Safety
1. More cops, and better police coverage. Not inherently bad things
2. "Through numerous town halls the Mayor, APD, and the FBI have created state of the art software to help fight cyber-stalkers." is an absolutely meaningless line. maybe the city has helped with the development of software, but until we see some data about how the city was a test lab/funded/encouraged/lobbied for the development of this technology, you can know as fact that town hall meetings did not create software.
3. Genuine "Yay!", though, for the family advocacy center.
4. These two lines:
1. The Safe City Strike Force continues to clean up crime-ridden parts of Albuquerque, especially many parts of historic Route 66.
1. Albuquerque is virtually graffiti and litter free due to Mayor Chavez' strict zero tolerance policies.
5. Taken together, they read to me as a policy of "we will intimidate and crack down on the homeless, the destitute, and the young", rather than address the problems that these things are symptoms of. Not to say that I endorse the crime along Route 66, graffiti, or litter. I just think that Route 66 is already excessively patrolled (downtown, at least), I think he's using coded language.
6. I mainly think that problems are more complex than the "more police, faster crackdowns" approach he's advocating.
7. (And, as disclaimer, my bias is that I don't assume Marty understands youth and instead have felt, as a youth growing up in his Albuquerque, that he sees them as a problem.)
   
2. Economic Development
1. Recession should limit expectations but
2. Albuquerque sure is on a lot of good lists!
3. Let's quietly gloss over the fact that some of why we are doing so well now is that we didn't have a real estate boom that could collapse on us. Some lists mention this, and while that is not *bad*, it does mean that Marty deserves perhaps less credit here than he claims.
3. Transportation
1. We have buses!
2. Some of them are pretty fast!
3. Also, yay for other modes of transportation, like the bike avenue that was the work of many, many advocates. Oh, right, them...
1. It's not bad for the city or even the Mayor to claim credit on this one. It'd be more powerful to me, as an undecided voter, to see acknowledgment of government working with community activists.
4. Sustainability
1. It's a great big list of conferences/ranking/initiatives which all show that either we're really good at green, or we're good at lip service to green. Very hard to figure out which is which, though.
2. The genuine point worth mentioning is the methane capture system, which seems like a modest step, but one in the right direction.
5. Amenities
1. Landscaping! We have it! (And, okay, it is pretty).
2. Skate parks, and the BMX facility are evidence that Marty doesn't hate all youth. Also, they're pretty great.
   
3. The biopark and Isotopes stadiums are all finished now and great!
1. Qualifier: many of these things were started under mayor Jim Baca, and so it's like Nixon stealing credit from Kennedy for the Apollo missions.
   
6. Seniors
1. Albuquerque does have some pretty functioning senior centers
2. A lowered age of eligibility for access is a genuinely good thing
3. Expanded "Meals on Wheels" program shows that this isn't just a middle class thing
4. I can't find flaws here besides brevity.
   
7. Animals
1. Marty has animals up for adoption at every press conference, which seems oddly genuine for the guy
2. This is also pretty great when it means an APD officer has to handle Kittens
3. But what about the big pitbull controversies we've had? Something seems iffy and missing.
4. On the other hand, this isn't a section he has to have, so that's forgiven.
   
8. Education
1. Marty created a small charter high school that somehow managed to send all it's seniors to college.
2. There isn't policy here, just vague talk of coordinating local public resources.
3. If you're going to be involved in local education, say more. If not, say less. This is just awkward right now.
   

Richard J. Berry
Again, I'm using the issues as defined by the candidate

1. Immediate and Long-term Job Growth
1. Initial Shock Moment: the GOP candidate is advocating for a rapid use of funds on hand to help fix our recession
2. An appropriate economic policy of having the city buy local first, or help create local suppliers instead of relying on out-of-state ones. Isolationist/populisty, but I like the city and am all for it standing on it's own, so those fears are put aside.
3. More local workforce training, which is always a good idea, but I think it's also parts of most every candidate's plan
4. New Business Round Table
1. Pro: "that brings leaders in business, labor,
   education, and the environmental and civic communities together" ; yay inclusivity of all community factors! (and minor yay for not feeling a need to specifically mention religion here)
   
2. Con: "knock down barriers that are
   preventing businesses from starting, growing or relocating to
   Albuquerque"; while regulations are not always an inherent good to citizens, "knocking down barriers" could undermine efforts to go green, which paradoxically could also hurt Albuquerque tech-heavy business
3. Verdict: probably a good idea, and probably not anti-green, esp. given the nature of City Council as a check on the Mayor
   
2. Public Safety "Sanctuary City" Policy
1. Berry wants to end this
2. "This" is a policy that makes life in Albuquerque easier for illegal immigrants
3. It will instead merge APD policy with current Bernalillo county policy, which makes illegal immigrant status relevant upon arrest, instead of waiting to see if illegal immigrant status matters specifically to the case at hand
4. Also: he wants to end the practice of drivers licenses for illegal immigrants
5. He sees the drivers license policy an enabling crime, and is careful to mention that he voted in favor of anti-profiling laws
6. I can't figure this one out
1. I don't know the data on how Marty's policy is specifically intrusive.
2. I am not sure I like the Bernalillo policy of "immigrant status only on arrest" better than the ABQ policy of "immigrant status only if explicitly necessary", but I like them both better than most things most states do about illegal immigrants in the name of crime prevention
3. I'm a very big fan of the drivers license program for illegal immigrants - it allows them to report crimes without a fear of themselves being arrested, and that is great, and an anti-crime measure. I do not see where it increases crime (besides, of course, the crime of being here illegally).
4. I think coherence between Bernalillo and Albuquerque police departments would be good, but I'm not sure they both shouldn't adopt Marty's policy instead.
5. Despite evidence to the contrary, I don't think this is actually racist. Berry wouldn't have voted for an anti-profiling law if he was, and he'd also be opposed to Bernalillo policy if this was racially motivated, or just about not liking illegal immigrants
6. Then: I don't know how this benefits safety, and I don't have racism as an easy excuse for a police policy that isn't about safety.
7. I would really like to see the data that made Berry support this position, because I feel as though something vital is omitted here that would give it all coherence.
3. Public Safety: Property Crime
1. My prior biases on this section:
1. Property crime is inherently a class-biased concern
2. I'm generally more for saving the lives of people than I am for saving their stuff; if I have to prioritize, that is how I am doing it.
3. That said, protection of property is what allows for stability, investment, and western civilization.
2. Proposes actual budget reallocation: away from beautification projects like Tingley and the Trolleys, and permanently to Youth Gang Prevention, Substance Abuse Programs and Neighborhood Deterioration
3. Acknowledge the economics of the issue by making the selling of stolen property, and the ensuing profits, much more difficult
4. The plan to cut down on resale of stolen property mainly involves carrying through with persecutions
   
5. None of this is inherently bad. Some of it is actually quite good.
6. Very little of this gets in the way of saving lives when lives need to be saved; in fact, that he sees Substance Abuse programs as linked to property crimes is really, really smart. I think he gets this.
   
4. Government transparency
1. Oooo, online searchable trackable spending of tax dollars. Accountability-lovers dream.
2. Also, public, online access to "The City’s “Checkbook” and General Ledger Accounts
   Contract Amounts and Vendors; Government Salaries; and Study/Program Data." is in no way a bad idea.
3. There isn't much more, but none of this is bad, and much of it is quite good.

Conclusions

I'm not going to endorse anyone in this race.

I like what Richard Romero has to say about Green Energy and Sustainable Development. I think he has great ideas for education but I worry about involving the mayoral office in education. I also think he feels the need to improve policing and transparency, but I am not convinced he knows a way to do that.

I think that Mayor Marty has done less than he credits himself with, but more than his critics think. I'm genuinely skeptical about his approach to public safety, and what that means for youth in this city. But he's not all bad, and many of his non-development initiatives are things that have improved Albuquerque. I can't really deny that. I don't like that he has been mayor of my city for 3/5s of my life, but he's not incompetent enough to outright disqualify.

I knew nothing about Richard Berry before this post, and I have been genuinely surprised to find a pro-active-government member of the GOP. Perhaps the past decade of neocons and the past years sparking of libertarian activism have thrown off my understanding of what republicans can be, but it's kind of pleasant to discover a sane, pro-business centrist. That said, I'm still not sure I like him. His proposes policy changes concerning illegal immigrants are savvy, and I do not think they are done with malice/hatred/xenophobia or any other excuse that would interfere with his logic. I still can't see what that logic is, however, unless it's a simple belief in the rule of law, and the includes immigration law. To me, immigration law is secondary to the lives of the people residing in Albuquerque, but such a legalistic perspective is at least something I can disagree with reasonably, instead of vehemently oppose. His section on property crime (and, actually, his plan on immediate and long term growth) seems to include a smart reading of behavioral economics (or at least a partial one, to which I say: yay!), and his transparency plans are, simply put, great. My hesitancy on him unrelated to illegal immigrants is that I'm don't see any focus on Albuquerque green and even better for tech. "Green" is never mentioned, and the tech is just assumed. These are not bad things, but they are not great things. I want, in 2009, to have a mayor that is about renewable energy, and about long-lasting renewable energy growth in my desert city. Much as I like his other policies, he doesn't have that little crucial bit.

What does this mean to you, the voter?

Albuquerque has three comprable candidates, none of them bad, none of them stellar. Whoever wins the election, I will disagree with/be skeptical of their Public Safety initiatives. But otherwise, there's some real choice - Romero is aiming Burque green and sustainable, and that's good. Marty is all about making Albuquerque a city that is thriving, and he's done that repeatedly through odd ways (curiously, most of the development that in my mind defines Marty was left out of his list of achievements). And Richard Berry has some good economic policy, and perhaps the transparency plan the Duke City needs. These are not bad choices. They all come with downsides (Romero's education intrusiveness, the person of Marty Chavez, Berry's skepticism about illegal immigrants), so it's a choice to weigh carefully.

Last Word

I mention all of this as a gigantic aside to a future discussion about the Mayoral Race in my second city of New Orleans, where my biases are clear and I'm outright supporting a candidate. Next to the range of possibilities afforded New Orleans, the ABQ race is dull. Be grateful - that dull means it is very, very, very hard for a wrong choice to fuck up and destroy the city.

How to Lose Students and Alienate Community

In the Albuquerque Journal this morning, there was an article discussing the new smoking bans on the university of New Mexico campus. Here's a map of the designated smoking areas with perhaps the best one-sentence summary of the issue. Initially, it is easy to sympathize with the college - in an ideal world, no one ever dies of lung cancer from second hand smoke, and that's a noble aim. But noble aims go pear shaped all the time.

When I was a high schooler, I helped engineer and pass a ban on smoking at UU youth conferences in my district. I'd lost a grandparent to lung cancer not long before. I was no fan of smoking, and high school conferences had previously had a problem of an exclusive community of smokers existing. That in turn led to people who wanted to spend time with their friends either breathing a lot of second hand smoke or starting smoking themselves, both of which are far from ideal for a religious youth conference. On top of it all, UUs tend to have a high ratio of asthmatics/those with breathing problems, and smoke itself was a hazard for them. So many of us moved to pass a ban by majority vote. We succeeded.

What happened, then, was a lot of destruction. Con-goers who smoked would come with their addiction, but being high schoolers, without the income to have nicotine gum or patches instead of cigarettes. Or they would sneak off to try and calm their addiction so they could be present for community, and we'd ban them from coming back. A few youth, in the middle of high school, just stopped coming to cons outright, feeling unwelcome and hated by their peers. It was against the spirit of the community, and the values of the religion, and the ban remains to this day. It is by far the most lasting decision I had made as part of that community, and it causes harm. What it doesn't do is get people to stop smoking. Our noble aim failed utterly.

The ban didn't actually address any real problems. It was a prohibition, and it attempted to excise a behavior. Had we been concerned about the health of the asthmatics, we would have kept smoking outside and away from entryways. Had we been concerned about the health of smokers, we could have provided nicotine patches for them, and let them still be part of our community. And had we cared for the whole of the community, we would have enacted a policy by a system of consensus, not a majority vote, and certainly not by a handed-down ruling. We did none of this, and instead shifted problems around. We lost people, we made others feel uncomfortable, and we violated our own principles.

The UNM smoking ban is well-intentioned. But it is a frustrating prohibition forced upon legal adults, and it goes beyond necessary restriction (like 30 feet from entryways) to become an obsessive nanny state policy. And it might ultimately have the desired effect, but I still feel that it shows a disregard for the capacity of adults to make personally responsible choices. Part of giving people freedom, and giving people responsibility, is giving room for mistakes. Here, I think, it'd do well to quote Lux Alptraum:

And this is, perhaps, the crux of a progressive discourse: to be able to recognize the reality and rationale of bad decisions, while still pushing forward with an idea of what we all should be doing, of what our best decisions look like. Because it’s only with the knowledge of what we should be doing, and why, that we have the ability to stray safely — to make those mistakes and live to regret them (or not regret them, as the case may be).

In order to be rational people, we have to have that range of decision making. Forcing people's decisions simply doesn't work.