The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach

Author: mongreldogs

  • Can seeing a US flag turn you Republican?

    And if so, what can be done about it?

    A study referenced in Discover has the provocative conclusion that seeing a small American flag while completing a political questionnaire can induce the respondents into being more Republican, even up to 8 months later. Is our society doomed by our optic nerves to surrender to the rabid right?

    First off, extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. If the description given is accurate, this study doesn’t meet the bar. The sample size is smallish (worse for the followup) and the controls seem ill-defined. Correlation doesn’t imply causation, of course. There is also a danger in defining some policies as solely Republican, or pretending that the conservative position is monolithic. Serious replication efforts are called for.

    But for the moment assume the causitive effect is real. Why would seeing a flag make one more identify more with Republican views? I would argue it’s because, since the 1960s, the Republicans have highjacked the symbols and language of patriotism. They have been aided in this by the tacit complicity of the media (which like simplistic us-v-them soundbites), the Democratic Party (which has been timid in defense of its country and of itself), and the American people (who have lazily accepted the sports-team approach to politics pioneered by Fox News and embraced by the rabid right).

    What path of action is there for progressives and liberals, who perhaps might be driven to despair over the apparent psychobiological advantage this gives the Republicans? The same one as always: Fight back by reclaiming those symbols. The advantage comes from two crossed circuits in people’s brains: “flags = patriotism = good” and “flags = Republican”. This leads them to erroneously conclude “Republican = good”. Progressives must break the chain at the second link. If we concede ownership of the trappings of patriotism to the rabid right, we will lose the public.

    Granted, this will be a challenge. Firstly, a lot of time has been wasted and a lot of ground lost. People would have to unlearn their unexamined habits of thought, and no one welcomes that. More importantly, patriotism is more complex for progressives. The message of the rabid right is starkly simplistic: My country, wrong or right. America – love it or leave it. If you’re not with us, you’re against us. The progressive position is more abstract, more nuanced: I love my country, but I don’t always love what it does. I recognize its greatness but I also recognize the uncomfortable ugly truths that are part of its history. America is not the pinnacle of history; it is a path to a better tomorrow. That’s harder to sell. It’s harder to enforce message discipline. It’s harder to tweet. 🙂

    But it is no less a stirring vision of America. Indeed, I believe it is more so. I think that the American people are sleeping, and in their slumber, the rabid right have been whispering illusions of a center-right nation. But at root, despite it all, the American people are a smart and a good people who will not dream forever. They believe not in an America that never was but in an America that should be. That is a message that finds far more resonance in the progressive ethos.

    Do people associate the flag with Republicanism? Has the rabid right seized the symbols of patriotism? Maybe. But that’s not reason to surrender them. It’s a call to take them back.

  • Review: Transformers: Dark of the Moon

    Rating: 3 out of 5 (meh)

    Transformers: Dark of the Moon is a Michael Bay film.  That pretty much sums up exactly what the movie is, and you don’t really need to know any more about it.  It’s not a bad film, exactly, and it’s not a good film (definitely).  It’s a film, a Michael Bay film.

    Spoilers follow.

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  • Review: Perdido Street Station

    Rating: 3 out of 5

    I picked up Perdido Street Station because I was looking for a good steampunk novel, especially after Dreadnought, and the reviews were strong. This book was supposed to be amazing, sweeping, and alluring – a detaile new world to explore. After finishing it, I felt the praise was overblown. The world is complex and involved, but the steampunk setting was wildly inconsistent. Though the book starts as hardcore steampunk, it eventually decomposes into low fantasy – all the trappings of industrial magic but no clear concept of what that would mean. Though much of the setting is explicit in using steam, there are “aetheric flows” and, for some reason, literally miles of insulated cabling in a society that seems to have very little electricity. There are zepplins, of course, and steam-driven automatons. But it all seems, well, lazy.

    The story is OK but hardly epic. Its initiation and its resolution both depend on astonishing coincidence, of the sort that sinks high school writing. The characters have moments of depth and substance but never really take off. Character threads start and trail off to no resolution. The first part of the book is quite slow. The middle third is well-done and sets up situations and themes that offer much promise. Once the actual action starts, though, it all goes out the window and the plot lurches to its frenetic end a complete mess.

    My overriding impressions is that China Meiville bit off way more than he coukd chew, and left us with the partly-masticated glop that was left over.

  • Cross-post test 2

    Still trying to get WordBooker to move my Mongrel Dogs posts to Facebook.

  • Cross-post (test)

    Just checking to see if the automagical migration of posts from my blog (The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach) to my Facebook page actually works.

  • The debt ceiling and the 14th Amendment

    The 14th Amendment is more-or-less the Swiss Army knife of the US Constitution.  It defines citizenship, extends constitutional protections to state constitutions, and so on.  Lately, it’s become popular to posit that it also holds the key to avoiding a default of US credit.  Specifically, Section 4 reads

    4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

    That last bit is not particularly relevant right now.  But the first part (in bold) — it is said — could be.  President Obama could cite that portion of the 14th Amendment and direct the agencies of the United States Government to issue debt pursuant to the existing budget, regardless of whether that debt exceeds the amount authorized under the debt ceiling.  Voila! Crisis averted!  (See, for example, this piece by Jonathan Zasloff in the Washington Monthly.)

    This 14th Amendment option is decisive, elegant — and completely irrelevant.

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  • Currently Reading: Second Quarter 2011

    • Better to Beg Forgiveness by Michael Z. Williamson
    • Perdido Street Station by China Melville

    ?????

  • Published in the Hun Review

    This is just a list of things I’ve managed to get published in the Hun Review, my school’s literary annual:

  • The Burning Moment

    or, Mikey’s Last Night

    I’m scared now.

    Everyone is scared now — they’re scared of me because of something I did, and now they look at me with new eyes, and I’ve caught their fear the way I’ve caught their scent. I can’t hear Little Little crying anymore, but that’s because Big Lady and Little Little are gone. But I know that Little Little is crying, somewhere, and it’s because of what I did, and the memory of her crying is breaking my heart. And breaking my heart, too, is Old Lady, who is sitting on the fluffy bed and weeping. I love Old Lady; she gives me treats and rubs my belly and grooms my fur, which I love even though I pretend it kills me. And now the Old Lady is weeping for what I did, and that is killing me. I love the Old Lady, I have loved her my whole life, and now she is weeping because of me.

    I can’t remember.

    I don’t know what Little Little did that brought on the burning moment. Maybe she didn’t do anything. Maybe this was just something inside of me. Maybe it’s always been waiting to get out. Everything’s been so jumbled lately. Nothing’s been the same since the Big Ride. Patty and I love to ride, to get out into the world and see it rolling past the windows like magic. But this Ride was different, so long, so long. After a while it seemed like we had lived our whole lives in the car, escaping only briefly each day on the leash, jetting outside to do our business and then back, until that night’s motel and the tomorrow’s ride. And when the Big Ride was over, we were somewhere else, not home, not in our usual world. Somewhere big and open and dry.

    We never went home again.

    I don’t know why, but Old Lady took us away from Loud Old Man — which was no loss at all — but she didn’t go home. She took us somewhere else, even hotter, even drier. And then another Big Ride past all the world that we didn’t know, to somewhere that wasn’t home. Things are shaped wrong here. They’re not like I know at all. Things are too cramped, and too tall. The air smells different. But that doesn’t matter, because there was no Loud Old Man, and there are children — Big Little and Little Little, who takes care of Lucky and took in Patty and me. Big Little gives us treats when she thinks Old Lady isn’t looking, even though Old Lady is looking and just smiles. Little Little plays with us all the time. Old Lady is happy and so is Big Man and Big Lady. This isn’t home but it was even better.

    But I did something.

    Patty lies on her bed, whimpering and watching me, and Old Lady is weeping, and Big Little doesn’t know what to do. She holds Old Lady’s hands, and then she walks away, and then she runs upstairs, into the big house that isn’t our house. And then she comes back down and holds her hands again. They’re all so scared, and I want to waddle over there and nuzzle Old Lady and comfort her, but I can’t, because they’re scared because of me. I did something, something that made Little Little cry and bleed and Old Lady weep. Something that I know is wrong, that I knew was wrong when I did it, and I can’t take it back and I can’t make it right.

    The burning moment just came.

    I don’t know why I did it, I didn’t want to do it, I want so much to have not done it. The burning moment just came and it took me. My jaws and my teeth did what they’ve done my whole life, what they’ve made to do, what it’s right that they do. But just then it was wrong. The burning moment just came and Little Little was there at the wrong time and I did the most terrible wrong I’ve ever done. And now Big Lady had to take Little Little somewhere else to get made better, and Old Lady sits and wrings her hands and weeps, and Patty whimpers in her bed. I just lie in the corner, silent and heartbroken, my ears flat against my skull, my tail a dead weight, my world ending.

    The burning moment just came and I don’t know when it will come again or what I might do then.

    I meet Patty’s eyes and I can see that she sees in mine what I see in hers, what we both know. There is a Pact, a deal from time long before anyone remembers, and I have broken it. I have broken it in the worst way imaginable, and there is no walking home from that. I have taken these people that I love and I have made them cry, made them weep, made them hurt — I have made them unsafe in their own home. I am the proud descendant of a proud line of watchers and keepers, the eyes in the night who keep the hearth safe, defenders and companions. And tonight I am the danger, I am the menace, because the burning moment just comes and I don’t know how to keep it back.

    I meet Patty’s eyes and there I see understanding of what must come. I meet Old Lady’s eyes and see there infinite sadness and loss, and I know she knows, too. I have broken the Pact and I might do it again, and worse. The walk from here leads only one way and it doesn’t lead home. The Old Lady loves me, and it will be the breaking of her heart to do what has to be done. But she loves Little Little and Big Little even more and it does have to be done, because the Family must be safe. Yet it will be the breaking of her heart and I wish, oh, how I wish that I could pad over to her and say to her, I love them too, I love them because you love them and you love me, and they must be safe. You must be safe, and I cannot protect you from the burning moment, because it comes and it takes me, and I don’t know how or when. I love them because you love them, so I cannot be here with them any more. I love them because I love you.

    But all that escapes my throat is a low, mournful whine, a half-note that will have to convey all my shame and remorse and love. I cannot move to her because it will make the morning that much harder, for both of us. What comes tomorrow will put so much distance between us, more distance than there is in the world, and yet not so much as I feel right now. But when the sun comes, I know, Old Lady will be strong, for her Family, and will do what must be done. And then there will be peace — peace in the house, peace in me. The burning moment will never come again and I will never hurt anyone I love again. The burning moment will dissolve in the soothing wind and I will feel peace again, forever.

    I hope Patty will come, someday, and play with me again.ikoniИкониПодаръциикони

  • Blaze

    A thrill runs through them –
    swarming in the darkness cast by the night sky –
    as a man steps to the microphone
    And harangues..
    A moment before they were a hundred lives
    with a thousand cares
    milling about in momentary association.
    A moment later they are a seething oneness
    with two hundred eyes
    but a single vision that is somehow
    still blinded.

    It takes just a moment,
    the tiniest sliver of time,
    no longer than a spark takes
    to ignite a blaze.
    With it they blaze,
    their murmurs become chants,
    their chants become roars,
    their roars become silence
    of the most thunderous kind
    full of intent
    empty of craft
    finding meaning in their meaningless
    taking shape in their formlessness.

    Through it all their leader
    provides their words
    massages their emotions.
    validates their prejudices
    In charge but not in control
    he is just another expression
    another organ
    of the dark spirit animating their shouts
    which fears the light
    but revels in the fire
    and loves to see it consume.

    A will emerges in the crowd
    Not the will of the leader
    or of the people
    or of any person
    but the Will of generations
    of a hungry jealous impulse
    born of starving days,
    of freezing nights,
    of countless unformed terrors
    of millennia of slights real or projected
    of infinite loves offered and rejected
    of all the individual scars borne in common
    with their parents and their parents’ parents
    and even unto the first generation.

    This Will emerges from the crowd
    diffusing from their pores,
    their mouths, their eyes,
    and looks upon the fire that blazes still
    the center of attention yet curiously
    unheeded.
    The Will looks upon the leader
    calling out the slogans
    stoking the crowd.
    The Will looks upon the crowd
    Feeding the leader with their adulation
    Feeding the fire with their anger and fear
    Feeding the darkness with their tainted light
    The Will looks upon this
    small patch of world
    and deciding it is good
    returns Itself to slumber
    knowing Its time has not yet come

    But it will

    again.