CelestialFamily

Well I finally finished reading Charlie Pierce’s Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free. Life got in the way of my reading schedule and in spite of how good the book was I had a hard time fitting it into my schedule.
After the first introductory chapters Pierce really got in stride and set aside much of the humor in favor of just a realistic portrayal of several different examples of America surrendering to emotion and what feels right rather than what actually was right. Whether it’s a dinosaur museum with saddles on the dinosaurs so they would be Biblically correct, a room full of terrorism experts whose opinion on Iraq was completely ignored because it didn’t fit the politics, an Island in Alaska that is literally disappearing because of global warming, a Supreme Court Justice referencing a fictitious T.V. character as evidence to support his position on torture, etc, etc, Pierce shows that somehow we’ve gotten things all screwed up. We’ve been mistaking religion for science, science for politics, and politics for entertainment.
This book really hit a nerve with me because I like to look at all issues objectively. I try to look at both sides of the issue before I take position. And even once I take a position I try stay flexible enough to change that position if more evidence arises. Lately I’ve been in a few internet and email discussions about politics and in every case the hardest people to have a rational discussion with were those that had put things in the wrong order. Just like in any conversation you have o at least agree on which language we are going to speak. You can’t have a science discussion is one party wants to use the language of religion, on the language of politics and the other the language of science. It would be just as hard if the three parties were speaking French German and Japanese. Yet time and time again you see exactly these arguments being made. Pierce effectively demonstrates the problem with this type of reasoning.
The scariest parts of the book are when experts in a certain field are called in for initial consultation and then quickly ignored when their advice conflicts with the conclusion that they had already made. The most dramatic example of this was when Al Qaeda experts we asked to provide justification for invading Iraq and they told the Pentagon that Iraq would be the wrong target. They were dismissed and their opinion was not sought again.
My biggest criticism with the book was that it did have a strong liberal slant. Much of this was unavoidable since any critique of government would be dominated by the party that is in charge. Although I do believe that the Republicans have been most guilty of forcing the evidence to fit their pre-drawn conclusion there is also plenty of blame to throw around. I can think of several examples of politicians on the other side of the aisle making similar errors in reasoning, many times on the same issues that Pierce describes. Anytime an author comes across overly sympathetic for one side and overly critical of the other he looses a little bit of credibility in my opinion. To be fair he did criticize some liberals, Jesse Jackson for instance, but the bulk of the criticism was at conservatives. I would have also liked for him to have examined the cult of the celebrety. Jenny McCarthy is a prime example. Her autism activism is seriously diverting attention away from those who really do know what they're talking about and peolpe are dying becasue of it.
I’d recommend this book to anybody who wants to better understand some of the flawed decision making that goes on in our country. Parts of it will have you laughing, parts will have you crying, and parts will have you fuming made. And sometimes all this happens in the same paragraph.

In the last decade or so there has been a carefully orchestrated attack on expertise. Little by little those who knew what they were talking about were marginalized. If a graduate degree holder gives his opinion on an issue well within the scope of his training he is called an elitist. In school board hearings we are told that “Somebody has to stand up to these experts”
Rather than cast our vote for the candidate we think is the most qualified we’ve been encouraged to vote for the candidate we’d most like to sit down and have a beer with. As if being down home and an “Ordinary Joe” is a qualification for higher office. Scientists who know what they are talking about are marginalized simple because they are experts. Doctors are accused of being tools of “big pharma” and patients are turning to modern day witch doctors and celebrities for their advice. Never before in our history has being an expert been viewed as a liability. It’s as if the jocks of the world gained power and decided that the geeks and the nerds didn’t deserve to participate because they knew too much. We used to be a meritocracy. People who worked to be expert in their fields gained higher positions and more respect. Now we label them elitist and marginalize their advice as if their expertise itself disqualifies them.
I just started reading Charlie Pierce’s Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free. When we check books out form the library they give us a little receipt that is roughly 3”x5” that tell us when the book is due. I typically use the same receipt as a bookmark as I read. Victoria has taken to tearing little pieces of the receipt off and using these scraps to mark the interesting parts of the book. Up until know I’ve avoided this technique. But I’m already had to mark several passages of this book and I’m only a few chapters in. I may need to get more scraps of paper because my bookmark is getting really small already.
Pierce is really funny. But you can tell that his humor is his coping mechanism. He’s upset. He’s seriously bothered at the tremendous steps our country has been taking backwards in the last few decades. He makes you laugh with the way he describes the situation before us but the laughter is followed shortly by shame for having taken it so lightly. Because, sadly, he’s right.
In our world where everybody has a blog and everybody is an expert, nobody is. The views of Stephen Hawking are put on an equal footing with any crank on the internet who claims that the world is flat. The view of a hysterical mother are promoted on Oprah as if her discoveries have completely overturned science and the doctors who really understand the disease are only allowed to ask questions from the crowd. We treat everybody’s equal right to have an opinion as if it means that all opinions stand on equal footing. Not true at all. Some opinions deserve to die so that those based on fact and evidence can live on.
Pierce describes our awakening from this state as if describing the first glimpse of lucidity after a hangover wears off:
"This is that moment in the hangover in which you discover that your keys are in your hat, the cat is in the sink, and you attempted late the previous night to make stew out of a pot holder. Things are in the wrong place. Religion is in the box where science used to be. Politics is on the shelf where you thought you left science the previous afternoon. Entertainment seems to have been knocked over and spilled on everything. " (p.30)
Pardon my pessimism, but I think his description is a bit premature. I feel like most of America is still hung-over and quite a few are still enjoying the party and not even thinking about the consequences yet. I’ll give a complete review when I’ve read the whole book. So far Idiot America has been a hilarious yet humbling read.

A few weeks ago we got an email at work from the hive-overmind. The email told us that we needed to get rid of all plants that we might have in our cubes. The reasoning they gave for it was that “plants collect dust and can release spores into the air which may be harmful to people.” No sooner had I read that, I heard a coworker scream “Well yeah but they also collect CO2 and release oxygen which can be helpful to people!” I got a kick out of his response, especially since I’m the one labeled as the “tree-hugger”.
The email got me thinking about a much larger issue. How often do we avoid something because of the potential negative effects without properly weighing the potential benefits? And how often do we not consider the risks of what we would do instead?
We’ve heard it before with the controversy over airbags and children. Many group vilified airbags for a few deaths without considering the overwhelming benefit that airbags offer. One of my kids asked me a few years ago “Why do they put things in cars that kill kids?” He was talking about airbags. I had to explain that airbags are a safety device and in the overwhelming majority of cases they save kids lives.
Last week I was invited to go out to lunch with some co-workers. I respectfully declined since I wanted to get my lunchtime walk in. He told me that I was going to get killed walking along the roads around the office. He was concerned about the potential dangers of the traffic and ignoring the benefits of a 3 mile walk every lunch hour. Sure walking on the sidewalk can be dangerous but so can going out to lunch and eating a high fat lunch and then sitting in front of a computer for 8 hours a day.
I frequently get criticism for going rock climbing. I like to point out that, assuming everything is done correctly, the drive up and back is probably more dangerous than anything I would do on the rock.
I guess I'm just concerend that some really good ideas might be tossed aside for some relatively minor risks without consdiering the risks of what we would use to replace them. I can think of several hot button political issues that we should also exercise thsi same type of anaylisis.

This quote goes along nicely with my previous post.

"The Republican Party is the party of nostalgia. It seeks to return America to a simpler, more innocent and moral past that never actually existed. The Democrats are Utopians. They seek to create an America so fair and non-judgmental that life becomes and unbearable series of apologies. Together the two parties function like giant down comforters, allowing the candidate to disappear into the enveloping softness, protecting them from exposure to the harsh weather of independent thought."

Jon Stewart
America: a Citizen's guide to Democracy Inaction p.107

The hardest part about not really identifying with any major political party is that I actually have to use my brain. I’m not complaining. You see unlike many people I enjoy that. If I didn’t it would be much easier to just sit back and wait to see what my party leaders have to say about an issue. By party leaders I don’t just the official leaders. As we’ve seen far too much of lately the real party leaders are sometimes clueless celebrities and talk show hosts.
I’ve always been kind of a Supreme Court groupie and I’ve made it no secret that I was looking forward to President Obama getting the chance to make a Supreme Court appointment. For decades I’ve felt that the high court was drifting too far to the right and too frequently siding against personal liberties. In particular I’ve been rather disturbed at the extreme dilution of our fourth amendment rights by the likes of Scalia and those who seem to echo however he votes.
So yesterday I was eager to get to work to researching Obama’s choice. Since I had only heard of her once or twice before, my opinion about Sotomayor was pretty much a clean slate for me. For the record I still haven’t decided how I feel about her. I’m still doing my research. But rest assured that when I do form an opinion about her it will not be based on her gender, her race, her height, religion, or whether she eats grits or cream of wheat. It will be based entirely on whether or not she shares my opinions on what a Supreme Court Justice is supposed to do.
What is really frustrating is the water cooler conversations, that were conspicuously silent about this subject yesterday, today are all about how she is a racist. When I inquired why they felt that way all lead me to one single comment that she had made. After very little research at all I found that this is the same quote that all the conservative talking heads have picked up on and are taking out of context to make their point. She may very well be a racist, but this quote taken out of context doesn’t prove it anymore than a similar quote from Justice Thomas taken out of context makes him a racist.
I just find it very sad that so many people are so willing to surrender their thought processes over to a perceived authority. Many of our founders did not like the idea of political parties at all. Perhaps this is exactly why. Personally, I think that the current system in the United States is unnecessarily polarizing and discourages people from thinking for themselves.

A year or so ago I read Plato and a Platypus and really enjoyed it. I thought that using jokes and then explaining the philosophy behind why they were funny was a great introduction to philosophy. I now find that many of the jokes are even funnier after reading the book. Plato and a Platypus should be required reading in conjunction with a PHIL 101 course.
So when I saw that Cathcart and Klien had another book, this one about politics, I rushed out to get it. Aristotle and an Aardvark followed right in line with Plato and a Platypus and used jokes to explain a lot of what goes on with our elected officials. I was a little disappointed at first. I was expecting this book to be equally supportive of an introduction to political science class as the first book was to philosophy. I enjoyed reading the book but the topic leaned more towards a critical thinking course. Rather than explain the different types of government through jokes they criticized statements and jokes made by politicians and then showed the logical hopscotch that they were employing in order to persuade you their way. In many ways I liked it better than I would have a book about the political theory. Identifying logical fallacies has always been a pet favorite of mine.

When I was a kid there was a big stink about a book that made it to the shelves of the library at school. Judy Bloom, who was famous for writing books targeted at fourth graders, had decided to branch out and write a book targeted at post-pubescent teens. Parents protested and got the book pulled off of the shelves. The local news and the local papers all interviewed the parents who felt victorious for getting this book banned. They felt like they had been handed an overwhelming victory.
So what was the end result? Well it wasn’t quite what they had expected. You see the local grocery store sold the same book in paperback and quite a few kids in school went out and bought it. I remember one boy reading a copy at recess that had clearly been handed down quite a few times. I’ll confess, I read it just to see what the fuss was all about. By protesting and getting the book banned from the school they freely gave the book more prime-time publicity than the publishing company would have ever been able to afford without it. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, however if the boycotts and protests had been deliberate stunts perpetrated by the publisher I doubt if they could have achieved better results. If those “concerned parents” had just put up with it the mediocre book would have faded into obscurity.

I’m not a big fan of Catcher in the Rye. I wouldn’t call the book a waste of time, but I just could never see what all the hoopla was all about. I read it a few years ago in a book group I was in. During the post reading discussion I was the only one that didn’t really care for the book. Although they wouldn’t come out an admit it, I have a sneaky suspicion that the same thing was happening again. Take away the controversy and you’re left with a mediocre piece of work that wouldn’t have made any impact on society.

I think the Harry Potter books have benefited quite a bit form this same phenomenon. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the books. I just don’t think they would have risen to such prominence quite so quickly without all the Bible-Thumpers complaining about witchcraft in our schools.

I read a comment on facebook were someone called this the “Marilyn Manson Effect”. If you take away all the controversy and hype Brian Warner would still be making slurpies at the 7-11. Have you listened to his “music”? He’s a talentless hack who’s only real skill is an ability to convince kids that he’s cool by upsetting their parents. Again if the parent hadn’t gotten so upset about him he would have had to go get a real job somewhere.

I’ve been tip-toeing around a current issue that has hit the news so as to not give it any publicity that it doesn’t deserve. My point is that sometimes it’s much better to just put up with something you disagree with. Protesting, boycotting and getting all upset about it will just give it more attention than it deserves.

Free speech is intended to protect the controversial and even outrageous word; and not just comforting platitudes too mundane to need protection.
Colin Powell

When Victoria recommended that I read a book that her book group was reading I confess to being a little hesitant. You see the book is on Oprah’s suggested reading list. Of the few books that I’ve read from the Oprah list I wouldn’t recommend any of them. But the more I heard Victoria sing the praises of The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver I decided to read it based on her glowing reviews and ignore Oprah all together. I’m very glad that I did.

The Poisonwood Bible is the story of a mother and her four daughters who are carted off to the Belgian Congo in the early 60s by the fanatical patriarch of the family. The story has a very interesting perspective. Most books are written either in first or third person. Kingsolver used a combination. The story is told first person but the narrator rotates pretty evenly among the five women in story. I found this approach to be very engaging. You grew to understand the motives and feelings of each of the characters much better than had the story been told in third person or from just one of the perspectives. Even with characters that I didn’t really identify I somewhat felt that I could understand why they reacted the way they did because of the authors unique approach.

The different perspective also allows the story to explore several different themes concurrently. Only to touch on a few: the loss of faith in the face of tragedy, overcoming handicaps, poverty v. wealth, ethnocentrism, the appeal of communism in the third world, the role of women, etc. Each of these themes and more are covered in great detail.

The story jumped around a bunch in time. Multiple flashbacks and back histories made the story unfold not quite chronologically. You had to pay attention to keep up. In the hands of a lesser author the multiple flashbacks would have been very awkward. However, Kingsolver made the transitions beautifully and told the story with much more feeling than a truly linear timeline would have given.

She did not waste a sing word in this entire book. Every sentence, ever word and even the punctuation is clearly thought out and serves a role. Whether it is a metaphor to foreshadow future events, a misplaced idiom, or just a quick poem that leads you to better understand the mind of one of the characters, every mark in the book serves a purpose.

Her brilliant use of several different languages to tell the story also gives a richness and a depth to the people of the Congo. Much is made about the fact that several different meanings can be inferred by just slight differences in pronunciation of the Congolese words. These differences in meaning exaggerate the ultimate futility of the father’s quest to bring Jesus to the savages and also add a new determination to a handicapped child whose nickname has an insulting and also a noble interpretation.

The family is from Bethlehem, Georgia. Even that detail was not casually assigned. The metaphor of a going to Africa and bringing “Christ out of Bethlehem” was brilliant. I live about 20 miles from Bethlehem Georgia. The historical references to places and events in Georgia we appealing to me. Being personally familiar them it created an interesting juxtaposition with the much more foreign descriptions of Africa.

The book is historical fiction. None of the main characters actually existed. However the political events in Africa of the 60s are described perfectly. If only for the political history this book is well worth the read. But it is so much more than just a history book.

I’ve heard of people dismissing this book out of hand simply because some of the characters are sympathetic to Communism. To them I encourage to put your presuppositions aside as I did. Read the book. Yes there are some comments in the book that are sympathetic to Communism. Kingsolver brilliantly explains why the promises on Communism would appeal to a people without a penny in their pocket, and even look on pockets themselves as a luxury.

Each of the five women who tell this story turns out dramatically different. Some I identified with and others I didn’t but Kingsolver’s style helped me understand each one. I will not forget the lessons I’ve learned and the fundamental questions that this book has caused me to re-ask myself.

The latest book I've finished reading is Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army by Jeremy Scahill.
In the last decade the U.S. has increasingly been using private contractors to assist in its efforts to wage war. The spin that is given from Washington is that the contractors are just "providing security" and not actually involved in combat. Scahill clearly documents that these "contractors" are indeed involved in combat and in some cases even commanding enlisted members of the U.S. military.
The most disturbing fact about Blackwater is that they believe themselves to be above any law. They are quick to point out that as contractors they are not subject to the military justice system. They symultaniously claim that since the Pentagon counts them among the U.S total force that makes them immune from any civilian prosecution in the counties they operate, including the U.S.. So who do they answer too? They see themselves as above any laws besides their own company policies.
Scahill goes in depth into the leadership and history of Blackwater. The U.S. has officially claimed that the war in Iraq is a war against terrorism and not a religous war. This point seems to have escaped the leadership of Blackwater. Many of them are members of the Knights of Malta who still believe that the crusades are continuing and they claim to be gaurdians of the Christian hold lands in the Middle East.
The book was very scary. I found the book to be very well researched and I agree with most of the conclusions he has reached.
A few criticisms of the book:
Scahill's style is a little polarizing. He uses politically charged buzz words like "neo-con" frequently. That's surely his right, however his bias probably causes some folks who would have otherwise read it to put it down. A few of Scahill's conclusions were based on circumstaial evidence. He discloses this openly, but I question the ethics of including the conclusions at all without direct evidence.
I actually found much of the book to be rather repetative. Scahill seemed to have written several paragraphs to describe certian organizations, like the Knights of Malta and then inserted the same paragraphs all throughout the book whenever those organizations were mentioned. The result was that each chapter read as if they were separate stand alone articles and not one continuous book.
I'd recommend this book to anyone who is concerned about the details of how the U.S. is fighting the war on terror. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the the U.S. presence in Iraq. This book will have you seriously questioning the decision to fight this war with civilian mercinaries.