GutterScrawl

Don’t Vote if You Don’t Know the Issues

From the time we are young, we’re inundated with the message that in our free society, we are obligated to vote no matter what, that not voting is akin to preferring a totalitarian regime. But if you’re one of millions of people who aren’t interested enough, or whose stomachs are turned by politics, or just don’t feel qualified to make an informed decision, let me spare you a little guilt: don’t vote if you don’t know the issues.

I did not invent this advice. I heard it as a freshman in college from someone who was qualified to give it: my political science professor. He said it was far worse to vote for the wrong person out of ignorance than to not vote at all, so if you weren’t making well-informed decisions in the voting booth, then you should just bypass it altogether.

This advice has saved me decades of political guilt. And I don’t think it’s an excuse; I simply didn’t pay attention to politics, so I could happily ignore election days. While other people were walking around with their little “I Voted” stickers, I was feeling smug and self-satisfied in the knowledge that I made the most informed choice possible: to not vote at all rather than pretend I had any idea what I was doing.

Even in those years that I did vote—Presidential elections, every one—rather than guess at names of local judges, sheriffs and representatives, as so many people do, I left 90% of the ballot empty, remembering my professor’s advice and refusing to guess.

I followed the Presidential race closely this year. It was the most interesting election in many years. But about two months ago, right after the conventions, I just lost interest. I wish I could care, but I can’t. How can I take it seriously, when actual issues are the last thing on everybody’s agenda?? I am heavy with sadness at the state of politics in this country. So this year, I’ve decided I am not going to vote. Not because I don’t know the issues, as I have paid closer attention than maybe ever before and I feel I have a pretty decent grip on what’s involved. I’m not voting because neither major party candidate really has much to offer the country, and voting my ideology—Libertarian—is a waste of time and effort. My energy is too precious to spend taking a voting stand in a world where nobody listens. So instead of using my time exercising my right to vote, I’m going to use it exercising my freedom of speech. If I reach even one person, I’ll consider it a success.

So take my political science professor’s advice: don’t vote if you don’t know the issues. And feel good about not voting! You’ll be doing both yourself and your country a great service by owning up to your ignorance and bypassing your right to express your uninformed opinion. Don’t miss such a great opportunity.

Politics and the Art of Persuasion

I wish I’d never decided to pay attention to politics again. What I thought was going to be an historical election is instead just another mean-spirited, mud-slinging, trash-talking, issue-avoiding, soundbyte-grubbing, swing-vote-pandering popularity contest. This got me thinking about Aristotle.

Aristotle studied rhetoric, you see, and he came up with the three methods of persuasion: logos, persuasion by logic; ethos, persuasion by morals; and pathos, persuasion by emotion. Each one is effective, and it is up to the persuader to decide which one will work best in any given situation; this is where the “art” part of it comes in. All persuasion to this day is considered to fit into one of these categories.

The uncritical observer would assume that political persuasion fits neatly in the logos category. Politicians bend over backwards to make the case for their particular view of things: why their ideas make the most sense, will be the most helpful to the greatest number of people, and will make the country, and the world, a better place. They’ll talk whenever, wherever, and to whomever they think will listen. They present a forceful, earnest, rational demeanor meant to make all who hear them, even if they disagree, believe in their keen intelligence. Politicians are, above all else, seen as intelligent, and their arguments and positions and jobs are seen as based on logical, rational, critical thinking.

I’m not so sure this is the case.

While politicians’ jobs certainly require logical thinking—that is, working with other politicians on making policies—getting into office doesn’t, or at least, does so only so far as persuading people to vote for you. Even though we like to think we’re making rational decisions, most of us are shooting from our emotional hips when it comes to who we vote for; without critical analysis of issues, it’s the only way it can be, and most of us are unwilling or unable (due to the great complexity involved) to do such analysis.

Politicians understand this, or at least, those who run their campaigns do, and they try to make it as easy as possible for us to see ourselves as logical as they work at winning over our hearts. And herein lies a great election truth that you should contemplate seriously if you are at all interested in politics: the politician who provides the greatest illusion of logic while evoking the strongest positive feelings is the one who will get the most votes.

Pathos, you see, is by far the strongest persuader of the three in almost every situation. If you can arouse emotion, you will be able to bring people around to your cause. But even more importantly, if you can arouse emotion while making people think they’re acting on reason, you have an unbeatable combination.

This is what politicians have always tried to do. If you examine all the great political speeches of history, their eloquence is invariably tied to the arousal of emotion and not to the great ideas they present. Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” for example. Or Reagan’s “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Or, Churchill’s “iron curtain” speech. While grounded in fact, their universal point is to arouse strong feelings of support for whatever cause the politician lobbies.

When that cause is to get elected, the result is what you see before you, clogging up radios and televisions and newspapers and the Internet with dense layers of fluff that obfuscate logic as they claim to be edifying it. For anyone who’s actually paying attention, it’s exhausting.

There is nothing inherently immoral about this process; not really. Persuasion at all costs and by any means is sort of what “all’s fair in love and war” means. There is nothing wrong with using whatever means necessary to get people sympathetic to your cause. Politicians know this going in; personalities who choose this way of life thrive on the challenge. It becomes kind of an end in itself, I think, a skill unto itself, and those who understand this and are good at it demand admiration on that basis alone.

It only gets messy when we let ourselves believe we’re making rational decisions when we really aren’t, when we fool ourselves into thinking we’ve thought a topic through enough to make an informed decision when we really haven’t. When we pontificate to friends about how great a candidate is when we really like him because of his smile, or his political party, or his way of speaking, or his sense of humor, or because he’s from our state, or because somebody we respect likes him, or because we come from a long line of people who vote a certain way, but we’ve never actually questioned why this is the case. None of these pass for a rational decision-making process, so don’t fool yourself into thinking they do.

This mistaking of emotion for reason explains a lot about the old adage “never talk about politics or religion.” Both are highly charged topics for the same reason: people believe they’ve made rational decisions when they’ve actually made emotional ones. When these decisions are challenged, and they find they have no solid footing to stand on, shouting matches, grudges, and hard feelings often ensue.

And by the way, watching CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News serve largely to enhance the self-delusion of being informed. No major news station offers enough insight into complex political issues to give anyone enough to go on. Such insight usually requires the reading of a few books and in-depth magazine articles to have even a beginning of the kind of knowledge required to consider yourself truly informed. In lieu of such research, you should just vote your basic principles and not worry about it too much. And you should be humble enough to let other people do the same.

So decide as you wish to decide, but don’t fool yourself into believing you’re making rational decisions if you aren’t. The world is a complicated place, and the beginning of knowledge is admitting you don’t know. Sometimes in politics, that’s the best we can do.

Thoughts on the RNC

The Republicans aren’t nearly as fun to comment on as the Democrats. This is because they represent the closest thing we’ve got to hope for a return to rational government, so they need to be taken somewhat seriously (depending, I suppose, on how much you believe government figures in your life). Sadly, this hope is a pretty far cry from the ideas of “smaller government” which they profess to want.

I like John McCain. I think he is a man of integrity and intelligence, and I believe he is sincere about serving his country and its citizens above all other loyalties. Choosing Sarah Palin for his running mate was a shockingly bold and highly astute political move. It instantly ended the “stodgy” debate, identified him as a candidate of change, and effectively distanced him from the status quo of an unpopular party and an unpopular president while simultaneously winning points with the Evangelical Christian base of that same party. Ingenious.

If forced to choose between the two major parties, I would pick the Republicans without hesitation. And yet, there is soooo much wrong with this party, and I’m not even talking about the neocons or the highly offensive evangelical base. I’m talking about John McCain himself, or rather, his policies, as laid out in his acceptance speech on Thursday night.

One disturbing thing Senator McCain talked about was improving public schools by (for example) implementing better certification testing for teachers and giving parents more choice in where they want their kids to go. This is all well and good, except for one not-so-little thing: schools have traditionally fallen within the jurisdiction of state government, for very good reason: state government is ideally suited to managing such systems, while the federal government is designed to handle national and international issues: foreign policy and militia, for example. It is not supposed to get involved in problems that states can solve for themselves. At least, that’s how the drafters of the Constitution saw it.

And while we’re on the topic of foreign policy and militia, I want to talk about Senator McCain’s famous quote, so oft repeated at the convention as a tribute to his selflessness and patriotism, that “I’d rather lose an election than see my country lose a war.” I think that at this point, American presence in Iraq is not so much about “winning” anything; while pulling out now would be disastrous, that is not because we haven’t yet won. It’s because if we left before some form of central government was firmly in place, the country would deteriorate to mob rule and ethnic cleansing faster than you could say “weapons of mass destruction.” Not only would Iraq be worse off than they were when Saddam Hussein was in power, but our oil interests would be as well. So, yes, we need to see it through, but not in the name of American victory; we need to see it through because it is the morally right course.

Senator McCain also spoke about Iran and the fight against terrorism and how we must be “strong” and stand up to these evil people in the name of liberty and freedom. It all sounds good and patriotic and just, but the truth is, our problems with terrorists are all about our own foreign policies coming home to roost. If the Americans hadn’t supported the brutally corrupt Shah of Iran regime in the seventies, it’s quite likely there would never have been Islamic Fundamentalist resurgence in the Middle East in the first place. And if we hadn’t armed the Afghanis and trained them in guerilla tactics to resist the Soviet invasion, there may never have been an Al Qaeda. And, to paraphrase Ron Paul in his Rally for the Republic speech that took place last Tuesday in Minneapolis, “You’d be pissed too if they put troops in our country without asking us.” In other words, the USA has had a bullying, imperialist, holier-than-thou foreign policy that makes other countries angry at us. If you are able to empathize with other countries at all, you can see what perfect sense this statement makes. The fundamental Islamics would be happy to sell us oil on the free market if we weren’t butting into their affairs and treating them like they should be happy to have us doing so. Perhaps a certain amount of strife is inevitable because of our support of Israel, but surely, a less interventionist view is possible, and would be vastly superior to the existing one.

Democrats and Republicans alike take this view of foreign policy and US interventionism for granted, this sense of entitlement to place troops all over the planet. Both take a shortsighted view of problems caused by a government too big for its britches; both fail to understand the action needed to get us out of both the international and domestic messes we’re in. Senator McCain said nothing about the housing loan crisis, and I think we can take that as implicit approval of the practice of government bailing out a failed private industry. The point is, no member of either major party has bothered to point out that the involvement of government is responsible for the mess in the first place.

Republicans accuse Democrats of big government, liberty-restricting policies, but both parties are equally guilty of such self-serving policies and have been for some time; they just operate in different areas. For example, Republicans want to take away a woman’s right to abortion and make it impossible for gay people to be legally wed, but Democrats want to take away guns. Democrats want to use income taxes to redistribute wealth, but Republicans want to use income taxes to increase our military power and ensure our interventionist policies throughout the world. Which is worse?

The answer is, neither. Ideologically, they are identical, and ideologically, they go against the basic ideas of the Republic that the Founding Fathers intended.

(And let’s not forget the Patriot Act, hurriedly passed into law by both parties with almost no opposition and no discussion of its utterly antithetical relationship to the Constitutional protection of its citizens of freedom from government harrassment.)

Sigh.

So yes, I like John McCain, and if pushed, and I would choose him based on nothing more than his personal integrity. But he is a grudging choice, and he seems to me as ignorant of or indifferent to Constitutional ideals as have all presidential candidates in the past several decades.

Luckily, we have more choices. If people are concerned about their disintegrating personal freedom and the collectivist movement of this country, they should familiarize themselves with the Libertarian party and with Ron Paul. He won’t make it in this time around, but the ideas are there; like what John McCain professes to believe in, only more so. Times about a thousand. If there is any hope at all, this is where salvation will come from. In fact, I think if we elect John McCain in 2008, the Democratic Party may cease to exist as we know it. Forced by the American public’s disdain and its own internal factions, it will either reinvent itself as a less socialistic version of its former self or die altogether, in which case the Republican Party will take its place on the Left end of the spectrum and the Libertarians will step into the two-party system spotlight as the true defenders of freedom.

I can’t wait.

Shame On the Hillary Supporters

On and on it goes. Watching the Democratic National Convention is like watching children vie for attention on the playground while the parents look on and discuss how naughty but cute it all is.

Last night, Larry King featured a woman from the “Just Say No Deal” faction of the party who remain unconvinced that Obama deserves their votes. She called herself a “staunch democrat,” yet openly criticized the Democratic Party nominee for President of the United States. Another channel (I forget which one) showed footage of Hillary supporters a thousand strong marching in the streets of Denver chanting “Hillary Hillary Hillary” and waving signs and banners. This morning, much of the talking head discussion focused on the sincerity, or lack thereof, of Hillary’s endorsement of Obama last night and speculation on just how pissed off Bill is that Obama has been snubbing him.

Sigh.

While the focus and undercurrent of the coverage continue to be troublesome, all I can say is shame! shame! shame! on those bitter Hillary supporters who can’t get it together and support their party. They are indeed like children on a playground, unwilling to cooperate and thus causing strife and derision at a time when it’s absolutely critical for the party to unite and look ahead to the Big Election in November. If I were a Democratic politician, I would be absolutely furious at this show of rampant narcissism and shortsightedness which is nothing but detrimental to their cause.

What’s the matter with these people? How can they not understand what’s required of them at this stage in the game? How stupid or lacking in common sense would you have to be to behave like this? It’s nothing short of blatant betrayal, an embarrassing, humiliating public airing of the party’s troubles. Disgraceful. And completely and utterly missing the point, the raison d’être of the convention.

The woman who labeled herself a staunch democrat, for example, is nothing of the kind. To say such a thing, and not support the Democratic nominee for president, she would have to completely misunderstand the definition of the word “staunch” and the word “democrat.” As for the Hillary marchers, congratulations goes out to them on driving at least some portion of the swing voters over to the Republicans, and in making some members of their own party too disgusted to vote. They’ve succeeded in showing the world that petty controversy and childish petulance is more important than the party’s well being. What can that say about the party’s leadership? The party’s unity? The party’s focus, determination, and commitment to its ideals and values?

Nothing good, I’m afraid.

Don’t they get it? Don’t they understand that one of the main problems of the Democratic party in recent years has been exactly this kind of divisiveness and petty bickering amongst themselves? That it is this very thing that’s driven swing voters to the likes of George W. Bush? That a show of strength and unity is absolutely critical to winning the respect of the undecided? That this convention is their big chance to do so?

Apparently, they do not. Which to me means that the party is simply not grounded in sound ideologies or strong leadership.

I write this as a completely impartial observer. I couldn’t care less whether the Democratic Party gets their shit together and unites or not. But I find it sociologically fascinating that at this highest level of politics in the land such small-mindedness can be so openly displayed. The Republicans have their faults, and I expect to be no less disappointed by them next week, but in different ways, because at least they’ve figured out the importance of a public show of unity and support. From what I understand, many Republicans despise John McCain. It will be interesting to observe how that’s handled.

All Frosting and No Cake: Musings on the DNC

I used to think I was apolitical because I paid very little attention to politics. But I came to realize that maybe I’m not apolitical; maybe I’m just cynical. It’s not that I hate politics or am indifferent to them, because I like politics and I am not indifferent to them. But I absolutely cannot stomach the way they’re done in mainstream American media. And maybe, it occurred to me, my cynicism about politics has something important to say, because I know I am not alone with this feeling.

Mostly, politics just make me sad inside. I watched a few minutes of the Democratic National Convention at different times throughout the day yesterday as a case in point. I switched between all the major news networks hoping to find some dignified coverage, or at least some substance. But there was none. The only thing that changed throughout the day was the talking heads.

Interestingly, I heard John McCain’s name mentioned dozens of more times than Obama’s. Now, the journalists are supposed to be impartial, but that doesn’t mean they can’t fuel the fires of smearing and mudslinging and ad hominem attacks, and that is what they seem to delight in doing. First we watched Obama’s negative ad. Then we listened to a critique of it. Then we watched McCain’s negative ad in response. Then we listened to a critique of it. How many houses does McCain own? How much did Obama pay for his? Is Mrs. Obama too ambitious? Is Mrs. McCain too rich? How much do Hillary and Obama hate each other?

Am I wrong in thinking that the national convention is where the party leaders discuss their platform and set forth their agenda for the coming four years? An opportunity for voters to watch the process take place and make informed decisions based on it?

I guess so, because in the times I watched, no policies were discussed. Oh, the necessity of policies was addressed, and everything wrong with the other parties’ policies were certainly verbalized, but as for an agenda that a desperate voter could grab hold of, turn over, and examine, there was nothing. No thing. Nada. All frosting and no cake.

It all makes me sad and weary, weary and sad. I watched and waited for something of substance, but there was nothing. We must be content with commentary on the ad hominem attacks themselves rather than a discussion of how distasteful this practice is and what it says about the man who engages in it. We must settle for analysis on how a speech was “given” and “received” rather than on anything actually said in the speech; maybe because nothing of substance was actually said, which makes me even wearier and even sadder because I know it’s the case.

I don’t know how people can take mainstream politics seriously. While symbolically, Obama’s candidacy marks a tremendous sea change in the halls of power, an end to the 200 year reign of the white male, in reality, he’s just another ambitious politician, willing to say and do whatever is necessary to get elected. The same was true for Hillary. If this is the stuff that gets people excited—charisma lacking substance, history-making by someone exactly like all those that have come before him except in skin color—what does that say about our culture? Are we really that void of substance? Are we really that uninterested in truth? Does anybody actually care about the issues? Or do we just pick a horse and ride him ‘til the bitter end? Don’t bother me with facts or details, media, just look pretty and let me vote my gut or my pocketbook or whatever strikes my fancy.

Until yesterday, I had thought, in all my political naiveté, that for the first time since I’ve been alive, we have two good presidential candidates to choose from. McCain has personal integrity, and Obama has an idealism that’s inspiring. I guess if I watched more TV I’d have seen those despicable ads sooner and realized the truth, which is that once again, we have a choice between the lesser of two evils. The only difference this time is that it’s not clear which is which yet. I’ll probably do what I’ve done in the last several elections and vote my ideology, which is Libertarian. Maybe it’s a wasted vote, but at least I won’t have condoned our sorry mainstream system or pretended that it’s not sick in every way that matters.

Now I remember why I quit paying attention in the first place all those years ago: it was a colossal waste of time. I’d rather watch Seinfeld reruns, and frankly, the DNC coverage has validated that decision. Not only are they more entertaining, they’re more intellectually honest, too.

Driving While Texting: Big Brother Does it Again

On August 1, 2008, it became illegal in Minnesota to “text, read, or send any messages from a cell phone while driving.” In passing this law, the Minnesota legislature reaffirms its philosophy that legislating common sense is 1) effective, and 2) superior to the Constitutional ideal of personal freedom.

They are, of course, wrong on both counts.

Says DFL Representative Frank Hornstein, a sponsor of the bill, “This isn’t really meant as ‘big brother,’ it’s really meant to say ‘This is unsafe, don’t do it, it’s against the law.’” Hornstein also admits enforcement might be difficult, but believes that’s irrelevant: “For me, it’s not so much the enforcement as much as this is the law. And I think there’s a lot of people that will stop this kind of behavior knowing it’s the law.” (See article here.)

So what we have, according to the bill’s sponsor, is an unenforceable law, really meant more as an admonishment, passed in an attempt to force people to use common sense while driving.

On the surface, it just sounds silly, but it’s much more malevolent than that. Legislating common sense is a nefarious practice that negates people’s right and responsibility to use their own critical thinking abilities: The more we rely on government to make common sense decisions for us, the less likely we are to rely on ourselves. The fact that Hornstein actually mentions “big brother” is telling. On some level, he knows this is exactly what such legislation is about.

I don’t mean to get all heavy here. But shouldn’t people “stop this kind of behavior” because it’s dangerous, not because it’s illegal? Shouldn’t common sense take precedence over legal consequences? And shouldn’t we question a value system that considers such legislation preferable to the fostering of personal responsibility?

It would be ludicrous to pass a “Keep Your Eyes on the Road” law because it’s obvious that this is a common sense issue. But a law about texting is the same principle in disguise, and equally ludicrous.

The ludicrous nature of common sense laws is one of several reasons why they are not very effective. Another is that they are usually covered under other, albeit less specific, legislation. Texting while driving, for example, is clearly careless driving; do we really need a specific ordinance for it? Another is that they are often unenforceable, like this one, and therefore difficult to take seriously. Another is that often they’re just illogical or inconsistent, so people ignore them: maybe we can’t text anymore, but we can still use an iPod, talk on a cell phone, change radio stations or CDs, play with our GPS, discipline our kids, put on makeup, and be distracted by garage sales, accidents, and road signs when we’re looking for an address in an unfamiliar neighborhood. Do we need legislation for all of these as well? Chillingly, I know some people think we do.

Furthermore, the trade-off for any effectiveness such laws might have is not worth the decrease in people’s sense of personal responsibility that results. This is important! How free is a free society that lets its government make its common sense decisions? And how does such a mentality bode for our future?

Merely because something is for our own good is not reason enough to make it a law. Adults—and in this texting context, that means anybody of legal driving age—should be free to make their own decisions about what’s right and wrong, good and bad, safe and dangerous for themselves. If they make a bad decision and end up hurting somebody because of it, there are laws—serious laws—to govern that situation. If that isn’t enough incentive not to make stupid decisions, then passing new laws with even fewer consequences isn’t going to help.

I don’t know why people approve of these common sense laws. Maybe they truly believe it’s the government’s responsibility to take care of its citizens in such a manner. Maybe it’s about legislators keeping themselves in work and selling that “for your own good” crap to an un-analytical public. Maybe they truly believe that common sense can and should be legislated. But anyone who believes this hasn’t thought the issue through thoroughly enough to understand the serious issues at stake.

You might think this is a trivial issue. But it is the trivial nature itself that makes it so important. As hundreds of small freedoms (see here,  here and here for more info) have been taken away over the past several decades, we have been slowly conditioned—largely by the “for our own good” mentality—to see such legislation as the norm, and nothing to get too excited about. But it is, and the common sense laws are by far the most dangerous because they deny us our ability to think for ourselves. If and when laws attempt to remove more significant personal freedoms, what will happen? Many say this has already occurred, as with the Patriot Act, and the answer is, “not much.” Other than a few outcries from the more freedom-minded among us, nobody seems too terribly interested in protecting their Constitutionally-granted rights.

For those of you think I’m exaggerating the effects of these common sense laws, I leave you with this, one of the most disturbing things I’ve heard since people expressed their gratitude for employers who forced them to drive off company property if they wanted to smoke a cigarette. A young woman who confesses to texting while driving says of the new law, “I have no problem, it would make me stop and I’d feel safer about myself. I really would.”

I rest my case.

Driving Essay #7: Slower Traffic Keep Right. This Means You!

Okay, I like to drive fast. But please don’t make an instant judgment about that and assume I’m labeling left-lane putzers as anybody driving slower than I am. That’s not what this is about. It’s about people who deliberately and habitually ignore the “Slower Traffic Keep Right” rule and stay perpetually in the left lane regardless of the traffic situation. These are people who are not passing and will not change lanes when it’s obvious the car in their rear-view mirror wants to pass them. Often, these people move from the on-ramp immediately to the far left lane and stay there, changing back only when they want to exit. No amount of being passed on the right, lines of cars behind them, nasty looks, or obscene hand gestures seems to sink in.

I don’t know why they do this. My best guess is that they’re either lazy or timid, because being in the left lane, away from the on and off ramps, appeals to both of these traits: it requires the least amount of attention to driving, and it allows the greatest sense of false security and safety. Most likely it’s some of each. In any case, left-lane driving is a problem that’s growing worse almost by the day here in the Minneapolis suburbs. It’s gotten so commonplace, it’s practically the norm rather than the exception.

Doesn’t anybody remember driver’s training? “Slower traffic must keep right.” And if you have forgotten, there are plenty of road signs to remind you. When did people start thinking this didn’t apply to them, and why???

Sure, the left-lane putzers could argue that as long as they’re going the speed limit, they’re not doing anything wrong, and true, they certainly aren’t going to get the speeding ticket that I might if clocked in the left lane. But there are other considerations, more subtle perhaps, though equally important.

One of these is traffic flow. If traffic is light, these left-lane putzers are just an annoyance. But if traffic is heavy, they really foul up how traffic moves. Flow of traffic is important. It’s a primary reason why driving laws mandate slower traffic should keep right: this way, drivers know which lane they belong in and why (and if they don’t, they need only observe the traffic around them to figure it out). Traffic moves much more smoothly than if this distinction weren’t made. When this rule isn’t respected, we end up with people at varying speeds all over the road, making traffic flow stilted and jerky. And the more cars there are on the road, the worse this problem becomes, and the harder it is for everybody to get where they’re going in a timely manner. It’s one of the most maddening things in all of driving to have cars ahead of you putzing in both lanes, blocking your ability to move freely.

On the German Autobahn there is no speed limit. Vehicles can go as fast as they want to, and the accident rate is very low: the Autobahn carries more than a third of Germany’s traffic, but has only about 6% of the accidents. This is so because German drivers are extremely cognizant of traffic flow. Cars keep right except to pass, period. Every driver on the road is paying attention, aware of their speed in relation to the other traffic, and adjusting position accordingly. In fact, keeping right except to pass is so ingrained in German culture that people also keep right on escalators, sidewalks, and airport walkways to give faster-moving pedestrians room to get ahead of them. (Can you imagine living in such an orderly place??)

Another consideration, related to traffic flow, is safety: a smooth traffic flow is a safe traffic flow. As seems evident by the Autobahn accident statistics, speed is not a major factor in traffic safety. This seems contrary to US statistics that indicate speeding is the number one cause of traffic accidents. What the US statistics don’t take into account, though, is that it isn’t necessarily speeders who are causing accidents, it’s speeders who are also inattentive. Inattentiveness is the real number one cause of accidents, but because it’s harder to measure, it’s largely ignored. The upshot is that when you have a society that tolerates inattentive driving practices—and driving in the left lane for any reason except passing is a form of inattentiveness—you have a society that’s dangerously missing the deeper point.

You simply can’t have people ignoring the norms of driving and expect driving to be as safe as it should be. Those norms exist for valid, logical reasons, and the number one reason is to make driving, an inherently dangerous activity, as safe as possible. I think if people ever stopped to consider how dangerous driving really is, they might rethink many of their driving habits. Being an inattentive, lazy, or timid driver can get you killed. There’s just no other bottom line that matters more than this. And if you are a lazy, inattentive, or timid driver, hanging out in the left lane is not going to save you from yourself. You need to either overcome such traits or not drive, because doing so puts you and everyone else on the road at risk.

The last consideration I want to talk about is common courtesy. It’s incredibly, unbelievably impolite to drive in the left lane for your own selfish reasons. It betrays a level of self-absorption and narcissism so huge that I find it almost unfathomable. Not only are you putting your own desires—not needs, desires; I want to be very clear about that—ahead of all the other drivers on the road, you are putting them ahead of all society. You are saying that your desire to drive in the left lane because “it’s easier” or “less scary” is more important than traffic flow, more important than safety, and more important than conventional social norms. It’s not only an act of extreme rudeness, it also expresses hostility and a sort of passive-aggressiveness directed at the world in general. If you see nothing wrong with this, you are likely a person beyond redemption.

Anonymity is no excuse for rudeness. If we all tattooed this on our eyelids, the world would be a much nicer place. I think a good goal for everybody would be to behave as politely in situations of anonymity (like driving and Internet chatting) as we do with people who know us. I guess that that even needs to be suggested means we have a lot of growing up to do as a society.

I get weary thinking about it.

But think about it I must, because if driving is any indication of our cultural zeitgeist (and I believe that it is), then we’re in trouble. Our democracy may be in its final stages. We’ve slipped past complacency and into apathy, are teetering on dependence, and just shy of sliding back into bondage. Sure, I’m exaggerating, but only slightly.

So please, show some courtesy and common sense and get out of the left lane. The future of personal freedom may depend on it.

Environmental Concern or Self-Image?

Several years ago, I decided to become a vegetarian for moral reasons. I had become aware of practices in raising animals and in slaughterhouses that appalled me, and I decided that it was morally wrong to consume animals that lived and died in fear and misery. I thought it would be easy: just cut meat out of my diet, right? Wrong. When I started reading labels, I discovered that there are animal products in all sorts of foods that you would never think had them: vegetable soup and jello, for instance. And other common products, too, such as soap, shampoo, and conditioner. Then it occurred to me that, if I didn’t want to be a hypocrite, I would have to rid myself of all associations with leather, too. And what about dairy? Do I stop eating dairy because of how milk cows are raised (which is, bred to have udders so large they can barely walk and shot full of hormones to increase their milk production to a freakishly high level)?

The point is, when I really considered this issue in detail, it became an overwhelming problem to solve. I had to wear leather shoes, for example, or my feet suffocated. And there was no way to determine the exact content of many products. Organic was no answer, either. Just because animals are raised with organic feed and not shot up with chemicals is no guarantee of their humane treatment and death. Also, products labeled organic are only legally required to contain 85% organic ingredients; if your stance is a moral one, that’s not good enough. “Free range” was also no solution: “free range” meat is also no guarantee that an animal lived and died humanely. Furthermore, nobody is labeling leather goods “free range” or “organic” yet, so no matter how scrupulous I might become about my food and household products, I would never be able to do so about leather goods, which I could never completely give up.

In the end, I decided it would be hypocritical to call myself a vegetarian for moral reasons and continue to wear leather and consume animal products out of ignorance or laziness, and frankly, I found the vigilance necessary to not do either exhausting (and almost impossible, anyway). I made uneasy peace with the fact that humans are at the top of the food chain, that we’ve been living off of animal products for thousands and thousands of years, and that denying this would be naïve and intellectually dishonest. I am still opposed to many husbandry and slaughterhouse practices, but I realize now that I have no control over them—including buying “organic” and “free range”—and that to pretend I do would be more about wanting to see myself a certain way than to actually care about these things.

After coming to this awareness, I started to notice how many vegetarians and “organophiles” routinely betray their own principles. They eat junk food, dairy, and all sorts of packaged grocery products without questioning the ingredients or production processes, throwing organic produce, Cheetos, and Formula 407 in their grocery carts with equal disinterest, then smugly demanding paper grocery bags at checkout time without ever considering the impact of this on the environment (both reusable cloth and recyclable plastic bags being better environmental choices, according to my understanding). They suspend their principles if they’re at a restaurant or a friend’s house for dinner. They wear leather, and sometimes even fur. They have no inkling of all the products they use and ingest that contain animal products because it’s never occurred to them to look. And I found all of these practices to be the norm, and not the exception: it seems good enough to many people to see themselves a certain way, whether they actually are or not.

A similar pattern of hypocrisy also occurs in environmentalism. I’m afraid in recent years, as the trend toward being “green” has exploded into popular culture, the problem has gotten worse, not better. As more and more media attention is being given to global warming and “the environmental crisis,” more and more products are being invented to satisfy our desire to see ourselves as “environmentally conscious.” You can go to Target or even Wal-Mart, for god’s sake, and see products as diverse as clothing, candy, and cosmetics labeled “organic” or “all natural” or “free trade.” We now have a “green” cable television channel, whatever that means (you don’t need electricity to watch it, perhaps?).

Labeling is no guarantee of a product’s eco-friendliness. Of products that actually are produced organically (by the legal definition) and free of environment-harming chemicals, if they weren’t locally grown and made, then they were transported to market over long distances—sometimes from different continents—with hydrocarbon fuels, and often with eco-damaging refrigerants to preserve freshness, as well. So even “all natural,” “organic,” and most other buzzwords are no guarantee that the product you’re buying is not tainted by environmentally unfriendly practices. (Although the jury is still out on this too: one study says that because locally grown products are brought to market so inefficiently, it’s actually more damaging to the environment than buying non-organic foods shipped in larger quantities. Here’s a Wikipedia article that contains links to many of these issues in more depth.)

Also, buying products in a co-op, natural foods store, or even a farmer’s market, is no guarantee of being eco-friendly. All of these outlets are chock full of products grown or manufactured traditionally and containing pesticides, herbicides, harmful chemicals, and whatever else you want to avoid, unless specifically stating otherwise. Here’s a great article about “natural” beauty products and “natural” food stores that you might find interesting.

All of this is to say that 1) the product-to-market chain and 2) product labeling are both phenomenally, staggeringly complex issues, and unless you are committed to and vigilant about understanding them, then environmental concern, as well as most other claims about conscientious consumption, is largely about your own self-image.

The issue that really brought this to a head for me was hybrid cars. Since gas skyrocketed last spring, I’ve seen a substantial increase in the number of new Priuses on the road. This is one of the most ridiculous hypocrisies of all, because it’s a really, really expensive one.

There are two rational reasons a person would buy a hybrid car: to save money on gas, or to be environmentally conscious. If you’ve gone out and bought a new hybrid vehicle, you’ve missed the mark on both counts.

If you bought the car for economical reasons, you’ve just spent somewhere between twenty and thirty thousand dollars to save about fifty dollars a week on gas. If you do the math, and are honest about the total cost per mile of the new car (including cost of purchase, gas, oil, maintenance, insurance, wear and tear, and depreciation), then it becomes immediately obvious that it’s much cheaper and much more practical to buy a used just-about-anything than a new hybrid, and cheaper still to just keep the car you now have if it’s paid for, even if it’s a gas guzzler.

If you bought the car for environmental reasons, then you aren’t considering all the factors, either. The energy consumption required to put a car out into the world is immense. The raw materials alone include the manufacture and shipping of steel, plastic, rubber, glass, and paper. Then there’s the energy consumption used in the manufacturing itself (huge!). Then there’s designing, engineering, marketing and advertising. Then there’s shipping the car to markets all over the planet. I can’t find any statistics on this, but it seems like common sense that buying a new car, of any make, contributes to this huge amount of energy consumption, while buying a used car, of any make, does not.

What this means is, if you’ve rushed out to buy a new hybrid car without considering all the relevant factors, it’s more likely that it was about your self-image (I care about the environment! I’m driving a hybrid! or worse, I’m going to save money!), or about wanting a new car and rationalizing buying one, or some combination of both, than it was about saving money or saving the planet. The Prius is the new Corvette; hybrids are now fashionable, and who doesn’t want to be fashionable? And there’s nothing wrong with this, as long as you’re honest with yourself about what you’re doing. A hybrid is the best choice out there for anyone who wants to see himself as an environmentally conscious person. But without the aforementioned vigilance about an issue as layered and complex (and political) as the environment, that’s about all it is.

On the other hand, if you went out and bought a used hybrid, and did so because you needed a car, then yay!! for you: you deserve the good environmental citizen award.

You may think me a hypocrite for giving up on vegetarianism because I found it impossible to be true to the practice; you may say making the effort at all is better than not making the effort, regardless of the issue. But I didn’t give up on vegetarianism. I gave up on labeling myself a vegetarian when I knew it wasn’t, and could never be, the whole truth. And I agree that some effort is better than no effort at all. I’m not talking about giving up on the effort; I’m talking about being honest with yourself about the sincerity of that effort.

I object to people deluding themselves into believing they’re making an effort when they really just want to see themselves, and to be seen by others, as making an effort. There’s a big difference. If it’s about making the effort, then you won’t have a problem admitting where you’ve fallen short and have a few things to learn. You will practice skepticism and dig below the marketing fluff for hard facts and true understanding. You will be willing to make some painful sacrifices; it’s not possible to be environmentally conscious without doing so. And you will avoid giving yourself hard and fast labels. But if it’s about your self-image, then you probably resent having this pointed out because it interferes with how you want to see yourself, and might require you to confront both your desire to be fashionable and your lack of any authentic sense of responsibility about the environment.

Is it okay to be fashionably green because “well, at least it’s a start”? Because some effort is better than none? Yes and no. I’m not sure a thing counts if it isn’t motivated by a person’s values, because when something new captures pop culture’s fancy, being green will just fall by the wayside like old technology and the Independent Party, at least until we’re coerced by law to comply (which also doesn’t count, but hey, at least it gets the job done).

I guess it’s the difference between critical thought and dogmatism. Dogmatism, in this case, about blindly believing in marketing phrases, fashionable trends, and inaccurate self-images with little interest in deeper understanding. If you fall into this category, shame on you, because willful lack of critical thinking does the planet way more harm than good whatever the topic. The most important resource we have is 100% renewable, infinitely reusable, and capable of solving any problem we can possibly conjure up: our ability to think.

Let’s not squander it.

Nosy Questions

<rant>
One thing I really hate is nosy questions by people I am obligated to interact with, such as cashiers. The other day, this happened twice, once at the bank and once at the grocery store, prompting me to vent a little.

At the bank, I wrote a check to Cash for three hundred dollars. The teller, a sweet-looking gal with a southern accent, immediately started grilling me. First it was innocent. “How would you like that?” (Hundreds are fine, or whatever.) “Do you have any big plans for the weekend?” (No, not really.) It was at this point that she overstepped my privacy boundary. “Then what’s the money for?” I just looked at her blankly, astounded. My god, I thought. How can she possibly think it’s okay to ask such a thing? So I said, “The casino. I only hope it’s enough, ‘cuz you know how expensive those casino ATMs are!”

That shut her up.

Less than an hour later, I was checking out at the grocery store, and knew I was in trouble when I saw the line being held up by the cashier’s blathering. She was one of those people who is not only oblivious to the fact that her customer does not want to converse, but also has to stop cashiering in order to speak. The double whammy of a bad checkout line, but it was the shortest one, so I succumbed.

When it was finally my turn, she said, “And how are we today?” Using “we” to mean “you” is one of my biggest pet peeves in the adult world. It’s condescending, patronizing, and rude. It’s how a teacher talks to her first graders so they feel included, and it should just stop after that. So on top of the line’s slowness due to her blather, this annoyed me to no end. She actually stood there, not cashiering, until I answered her. So I said, “I’m fine.” Curtly. Shortly. Hoping to make the point that she should SHUT THE FUCK UP and do her job. She picked up my first item and said, “You don’t sound fine” like she was my mother and I had just committed an act of indecency. I ignored her and focused on letting it go, which I was finding difficult. I waved a 2-liter bottle of Diet Coke at her. “I have 20 of these,” I said, in lieu of unloading them all onto the belt. She stopped cashiering again to exclaim, “Oh! What’s the occasion?” I pretended not to hear her, and eventually she gave up on her small-minded, pathetic little power struggle and started working again, and we got through the rest of our interaction without further altercation.

Why, in the name of the Christ, would service people think it’s all right to comment on a customer’s purchase? Or that conversation overrides them doing their job? Aren’t they taught, if not as children then in their job training, that these things are just wrong? That it’s not okay to probe into a stranger’s personal life? That halting what you’re being paid to do so you can chat misses the point entirely? That doing any of these things makes you bad at your job? And finally, that there are no exceptions??

I absolutely hate the feeling of being held captive by a bored cashier trying to make her day more interesting. There’s no excuse for this behavior. And if you’re one of these nosy service people whose life only tangentially intersects with mine, here’s some news for you: I’ll give you a pass the first time, but if it happens again, I’m talking to your manager. I think most of you know you’re out of line, but you think nobody will take the time to complain, so you go on taking your passive-aggressive hostilities out on your customers. Well, I’m going to complain, and I will do so with a clean conscience, whatever the outcome. It would serve you right if you got fired. If you learn something, great, but if not, at least I won’t have to deal with you anymore.
</rant>

Proud to be White?

I just got a circulating email with the subject line “Proud to be White.” It’s kind of a narrative poem about how if white people had all the special days, months, holidays, college funds, colleges, etc., that minority groups have, we’d be called racists. It names blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Native American Indians, and Jews, and is accompanied by a couple of graphics of that great icon of white America, the cowboy, riding the range proud and innocent. At the end, it dares me to forward it. I didn’t, as it is full of skewed perceptions and illogical assumptions (not to mention hateful spewing) but I did decide to write something about it.

I thought long and hard about “Proud to be White.” I wanted to address all the wrong-headed thinking in this rhetoric, and there is a lot of it, most of it glaringly obvious. For example, white people don’t need any special days commemorating their race because this country and government was founded by white people: white Europeans were the first to settle here, they were the ones who established the government, the churches, the universities, and the economic system. Furthermore, European philosophers were the first to write about the rights of man and individual freedom; without them, there would be no USA.

The history taught in our schools is white history. The holidays and commemorative days not specifically designated for a minority ethnic group are, by default, white holidays and commemorations, decided by predominantly white politicians; all Americans may share them, but white Americans established them. And the special days and acknowledgements for ethnic groups that do exist do so only by the decision of the white ruling class who made it happen or were coerced into making it happen.

The truth is, white people hold the overwhelming majority of political and economic power. So for white people to complain that they deserve special recognition is just absurd. Since whites have always been the ruling class, claiming a “White Pride Day” or any other racial tribute would be akin to rubbing three centuries of unabated power in the faces of all the other ethnic groups in this country who have never had it: “We’ve always been in control, we still are, and we’re proud of it! Na-na-na-na-na!”

Mean-spirited doesn’t begin to cover it.

But if you’re a working-class white person, it might be hard to see that, and understandably so. Just because you share the genetic makeup of the people in power doesn’t make you one of them. Poor and working class white people identify wayyy more with poor and working class people of all ethnicities than they do with upper class whites. That being so, they resent that people of their own class and status—that is, lower class, with little status—but of different skin color are recognized in ways that they aren’t. Looked at from this angle, who could blame them? But certainly, a white pride movement is hardly the answer.

In fact, white pride rhetoric only exacerbates the problem, and it does so in two major ways. First, it fans the flames of racism, pitting working class people of different skin color against each other (you don’t see these issues in upper classes of any ethnic groups; economics always seem to take precedence). Second, and more importantly, it misses the point entirely, keeping people focused on an issue only tangentially related to the true cause of their discontent, which is socioeconomic status, or more precisely, the lack thereof.

As I was puzzling all of this out, an old Bob Dylan song came to mind, Only a Pawn in Their Game, from the 1964 album The Times They Are a-Changin’. The song is about how poor whites in the south are manipulated by rich people to hate blacks:

… A South politician preaches to the poor white man,
“You got more than the blacks, don’t complain.
You’re better than them, you been born with white skin,” they explain.
And the Negro’s name
Is used it is plain
For the politician’s gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game.

The deputy sheriffs, the soldiers, the governors get paid,
And the marshals and cops get the same,
But the poor white man’s used in the hands of them all like a tool.
He’s taught in his school
From the start by the rule
That the laws are with him
To protect his white skin
To keep up his hate
So he never thinks straight
‘Bout the shape that he’s in
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game…

For poor whites in the sixties, being a pawn meant voting for white politicians who kept you down, but got your support anyway because they sided with you against the blacks: regardless of your economic status, you were expected to support your race. Apparently, as evidenced by “Proud to be White,” that expectation still exists. Or at least, there are still people who strongly believe it should exist. And once again, the working class white is a pawn, and the flames of his hatred are fanned in order to keep his thinking muddy and his ideologies decided along lines of the red herring of race.

Who benefits from this? Politicians, that’s who. Working class white people are the largest group of swing voters in the country. For every other group, the vote is largely pre-determined. For example, upper class people and social conservatives vote Republican, except for a specific demographic— college professors and the like—who vote Democrat. And middle and lower class non-whites vote overwhelmingly Democrat. This is why McCain isn’t worried about the fundamentalist Christians and Obama isn’t campaigning in black neighborhoods: those votes are already decided. And Clinton vowing to bring factory jobs back to Pennsylvania and “end poverty in America”: there’s no question who she’s talking to. Obvious, right?

What this means, then, is that the battle for votes really takes place among the middle and working class whites, who tend to vote the candidate, not the party. Their overriding ideology is, “Who has our best interests at heart?” What you end up with is an election machine that painstakingly measures the sentiments of this group and aims candidates’ rhetoric ruthlessly toward it. Listen carefully to any major party candidate in any race at the national level, and you will hear him (or her) striving to say what he thinks that demographic wants to hear. The message is packaged differently, but it’s all pretty much the same message, and whoever presents it the most skillfully—and this includes the skill of obfuscating facts with charged emotional rhetoric—will win the election.

The game may have changed, the tactics have certainly become more sophisticated, but the objective—gaining and maintaining political power—has mostly not. Dylan’s lyrics were prophetic, as true now as they were then. Sadly.

What’s more, very little ever improves for the working class, at least not because of politics. The biggest lie of all may be that politics influences working class peoples’ lot in life. Sure, our government created opportunity like no other in the world, and that’s something to be grateful for (even if it took way too long for that government to extend equal opportunity to ethnic minorities and women). But individual politicians and policies don’t affect that opportunity much one way or the other. The only thing that will ever really change a person’s lot in life is his own efforts. Depending on how you look at it, that’s either really bad news, or really good news. I believe the latter. But I can certainly understand why poor and working class people might think the opposite, and why they might be easily distracted by hateful rhetoric that creates a scapegoat for their frustrations, frustrations that might never find a satisfactory solution.

The more working class voters can be manipulated to focus on issues other than their own best interests, the less honesty politicians are required to offer them. The unfortunate truth is that such tactics work. Appealing to people’s emotions to sell a product has been going on since before Aristotle defined the three types of persuasion: logos (logic), ethos (ethics), and pathos (emotion). “Proud to be White” is only one example of an attempt to get people thinking emotionally when it is in their best interest to think rationally. There are many, many others, racial, political, and otherwise. How about gay marriage corrupting the youth of America? Or Jesus returning to claim his own and banishing the rest of us to eternal hellfire? And the W. administration has succeeded in institutionalizing fear mongering with its colorful terrorist alert system. In his essay Fashionable Worries, from All the Trouble in the World, P. J. O’Rourke says, “Politicians are always searching for some grave alarm which will cause individuals to abandon their separate concerns and prerogatives and act in concert so that politicians can wield the baton.” Too true.

I’m not saying that politicians are behind “Proud to be White.” It’s much more likely that it’s some angry, working class individual who’s bought all the racial bullshit and truly believes people with other skin color are his biggest problem in life. But make no mistake that politicians and other people with powerful agendas benefit from such red herrings, and in fact, are the only ones who do. The rest of us suffer greatly, and on many levels; even those of us who don’t buy it still live in a world where people do. Until that changes, we all lose.

The truth is that there will always be poor people, middle class people, and wealthy people in a free market economy. And the truth is that it’s tougher for poor people to get ahead, it just is. Most of us will never get rich, but if we’re focused on non-issues like skin color and accidents of birth—ours or anybody else’s—that fact is pretty much guaranteed. Such a focus only wastes time and energy that could be used to one’s benefit.

Acknowledging your lot in life, taking responsibility for it, and doing the best you can with it are the best options available. You may not get ahead, but it’s your only shot, and at least you’ll have: 1) taken responsibility for yourself and 2) stopped demonizing an Other that is no more to blame for your discontent than the politician who promises to fix it for you. Both are actions you truly could be proud of.

And if you want to end racial hatred, as well as countless other cultural and individual woes, stop equating socioeconomic status with self-worth; stop believing that economic standing (or in fact any external entity) has anything to do with what kind of a human being you are. It doesn’t, and it never will.