The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach

Category: politics

In which Dinesh D’Souza proves he doesn’t know the difference between past tense and present tense.
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(written in response to an insipid Facebook post by the -- thankfully -- inimitable Dinesh D'Souza, showing the idiotic comic copied above)
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“Is” is not the same as “was”.
But, hey, what would you expect from a hack?

I think it’s actually hilarious that defenders of the modern GOP think they can win arguments by brining up what the Republican Party was before the Southern Strategy. Sure, the GOP used to have moderates and even progressives in it, and sure, the GOP of the 1860s took some bold stands on racial equality. Moreover, the Democratic Party was home to racists, segregationists, and secessionists.

Oops, there’s that key word again…”was“. Starting in the middle of the 20th Century, the Democratic Party began to take a more progressive stand and to drive out the racists, segregationists, and secessionists. Luckily for those outcasts, the other major party — that would be the Republican Party, if you’re having trouble keeping track — decided that, to score cheap electoral victory, it would happily become the new home for racists, segregationists, and secessionists. It banked on exploiting the fears and prejudices of the White majority because electoral success looked easier that way. Of course, you can’t spend 40 years pandering to the lowest ugly factors of human nature without eventually becoming tainted by them and transforming into the beast you thought you were controlling. So here we are today, with Donald Trump nothing more than the unfiltered id of the raw sewer of racial entitlement and resentment that Richard Nixon, Kevin Phillips, and Lee Atwater tapped into.

It must be conceded that “The Democratic Party opposed integration and Civil Rights for over 100 years”. That puts the end of their opposition to, hmmm, let’s see, carry the one… oh, yeah, the 1960s. Meanwhile, the Republican Party embraces racist attitudes and policies today — not fifty years ago, but today. Really, which one are we supposed to cheer? Proving once again that Dinesh D’Souza is an idiot.

I am actually quite proud of the fact that I was disdaining Dinesh D’Souza back in the late 1980s, before he was a national disgrace and a widely-known joke.
2016 April 20
Three thoughts on the FBI’s bite at the Apple

I read a primer in Vox on the developing fight between Apple Computer and the FBI, and it spurred three distinct thoughts in me.

The basic contention is whether Apple should be forced to disable a security feature on the phone of the San Bernadino shooter, so that the FBI can brute-force the phone without fear of it nuking itself after some number of bad guesses (10, I think, but I’m not sure).

Firstly, the author includes the line

The concern is that the government is trying to take advantage of a particularly odious defendant to set a precedent that could have much broader implications.

Well, duh. The defendants in all important civil liberties cases look like terrible people, because those are the people the state most egregiously assaults.

Secondly, there’s a thing I don’t understand, and would love to hear from someone who knows: To change the behavior, it seems to me, Apple would have to craft a special iOS update. But after that, the crippled update would have to be installed. Won’t it require knowing the passcode for that to happen? Can Apple force an update down the pipe even to phones that are locked? It seems to me that the request of the FBI is not only odious and an offense to the safety of citizens. It might also be technically impossible.

Thirdly, I am a little disappointed — assuming what I’m about to say is actually true — that the NSA or other competent agency doesn’t have the capacity to read out the non-volatile memory non-destructively somehow. They could then run an iPhone simulator with the copied data and brute-force it. Every time it froze or self-erased, the agency could just reboot the simulator and try again. This would take time but then you wouldn’t need any sort of help from Apple.

Or maybe the NSA doesn’t want to admit to having such a capacity. 🙂

2016 February 17
“Morning” After Blues?

I had the same thought as Steve Bennen when he penned A generation later, Rubio flubs ‘Morning in America’:

Maybe the whole “morning” metaphor was a little too subtle for Marco Rubio. He’s not pitching Reagan’s message; he’s offering the literal opposite.

The point of “Morning in America” was that things had turned a corner and were getting better under the current President at the time (Reagan). The Gipper had vanquished darkness and we were headed into a glorious new American day. Things would only get better. Is that really the impression Rubio wants to make on current voters? That Barack Obama healed our wounds and improved our standing? (I happen to agree but it’s odd for Rubio to make that case.)

The ad itself is appropriately apocalyptic and more in keeping with the current GOP memes. I wonder if the Rubio campaign commissioned a more upbeat ad, then realized that Rubio as optimist wasn’t getting any traction, and thus called up the ad company and said “Make it completely different”, but all the contracts had been printed or something.

Or maybe they just got the name wrong. Maybe it’s a typo. Maybe the title was supposed to be, “Morning After in America”. Or “Morning … of DOOMSDAY in America!”

Odd and sloppy, no matter what. Well, at least the cognitive dissonance is getting them some free airplay, I suppose.

2016 February 16
Versailles on the Potomac

{Originally penned 2015 Apr 26 and recently rescued from the Drafts folder}

So there have been police confrontations (and possibly even riots) in Baltimore over the past 12 hours, but apparently CNN didn’t feel compelled to cover them. Instead they kept with covering the White House Correspondents’ Dinner where various people, including the President, got to make jokes. Justification for ignoring the major story a mere hour’s drive north included:

“You can find a live feed if you actually want to watch what’s going on”

though apparently not on CNN, a 24-hour news network to which people (supposedly) turn for exactly that — live coverage of significant events.

Also offered was this gem:

“People will be informed….They’ll find out all of what happened in the streets of Baltimore by this time tomorrow”

I sort of thought that informing people was exactly the role of — and I repeat myself — a twenty-four hour news network. But hey, maybe I’m old fashioned. And this could easily be spun into a “death of old media” story about how traditional news renders itself irrelevant by ceding the breaking stuff to the Internet., and get off my lawn, and all that. But I want to go a different direction.

This is not just CNN old-media cluelessness. This is a symptom of rot at the core of our democracy. The opinion-shapers and policy-makers of the Republic gathered in that room, and it was shown for all to goggle over. They entertained themselves and rubbed shoulders and celebrated just how accomplished and how connected they are. And they are! All the big names in politics come out and make nice with the so-called journalists tasked with covering them. A big messy live situation? That would ruin the ambience.

The WHCD has become a festering boil, a signal of the decline of American reporting and the rise of what might be called the journalism-industrial complex. All that matters to the powers that be is a navel-gazing exercise of petty partisan politics and vast egoism. While real people march and protest and die, the influence-peddlers of our day can’t be bothered to even note it in passing.

2016 February 16
Regarding >> “America has a simple ideology”: how one of Russia’s top US experts tries to explain America – Vox
A couple of observations:
1. What might underlie this Russian perception — which I think is over the top — is something far more threatening to the Russian psyche than the idea that America is scheming and plotting to topple them. Far worse indeed is the truth, which is that since the end of the Cold War we’ve more or less ignored them. A lot of what Putin has done, seems to me, to be the geopolitical equivalent of a moody tweener screaming for attention from the once-idolized cool kid who nows ignores them. Going from being one of two superpowers, where every time the Kremlin caught a cold, Washington sneezed, to a perceived backwater minor power, is bruising.
2. Having said that, from one point of view, they’re not entirely crazy. While I think they overestimate the coherence of any “American worldview”, there is a certain evangelizing tendency in American politics. We’ve solved it, many Americans think, and of course everyone else should reap the benefit of our leadership. It’s cloying and positive but threatening in its own way. And the ongoing cultural ascendancy of American media — where our action films and pop fashions rule the world — can’t help anyone feel secure.
3. It’s hard to see what to do about this. You can’t convince someone you’re on their side by simply repeatedly telling them that. And our actual attitude — dismissive neglect — is unlikely to generate either the evidence of a benign attitude or reciprocal respect. The nigh-complete breakdown of the American political machine implies more neglect and drift, with sporadic and counterproductive engagement mixed with saber-rattling for domestic benefit. It’s a bind.
Regarding: “America has a simple ideology”: how one of Russia’s top US experts tries to explain America – Vox
2015 May 4
On riots, protests, and the legitimacy of violence (short)

For everyone who has counseled the citizens of Baltimore (and Ferguson and…) that “violence is not the answer” and that it would be better if everyone just protested peacefully:

1) As has now been documented extensively, the protests were by and large peaceful — and even more by and large, ignored by the national media.

2) Violence certainly is an answer — and one which history shows can be quite effective in prompting change. See for proof the French Revolution, or the American Revolution, for that matter. Of course violence is a random and uncontrolled beast, and the odds are that the reaction it prompts will not be the outcome desired… but usually, something will change. For people who’ve spent their whole lives trapped in a system crushing them without end, any change might be welcome, at least at first.

Would you prefer peaceful protest to violent outbursts? Would you see people advocate for the redress of grievances without resorting to threats or damage to property or even lives? Then address the systemic evils, the in-built hardships and unspoken oppressions, the things done not through active racist thought but through the far worse passive racist without-thought. You want people to respect the police? Then demand that the police behave respectably. You want your cities to be bastions of peace? Then save them from being cauldrons of hopelessness.

Above all, if you want this problem to “just go away”, pay attention to it — and for love of all that is true, pay attention even when the fires have gone out and the windows have been repaired and the next big distraction comes down the tube. This problem has been centuries in the making and we’ve squandered five decades or more in addressing it — it won’t ever go away until we finally put it away.

2015 April 30
re: Sexism in science: Peer editor tells female researchers their study needs a male author – The Washington Post

Apparently the study was so flawed that only a man could fix it.

Just ’cause, you know, it isn’t science without at least a trace amount of testosterone spilled on it.

Or — and this seems more likely to me — the editor is himself hard up for papers with his name on them, and desperately hopes that he’ll be the man they chose for co-author.

Source: Sexism in science: Peer editor tells female researchers their study needs a male author – The Washington Post

2015 April 30
Regarding “Huckabee: The Supreme Court ‘Cannot Overrule God’ On Gay Marriage”

Gov. Huckabee is entirely correct: SCOTUS cannot overrule God. The justices can’t make a gay marriage sanctified. But then, they can’t make a straight marriage sanctified either. It’s really quite simple: To the extend that marriage is a sacrament, the government cannot have an opinion, and the marriage-equality suits do not speak to this. To the extent that marriage is a social contract for the transmission of and management of property — i.e., its historical role in society — then the government can regulate and must ensure equality. Anything else is sophistry.

That means I happen to agree with the loons in Oklahoma and elsewhere, though I disavow their motives: Get the state out of marriage entirely. Enact universal civil union laws that any pair of consenting adults may enter into, and leave the sacraments to the churches.

From Talking Points Memo:

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R), no stranger to mixing religion and politics, might have outdone himself on Wednesday night when he greeted the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference.”I do not come to you tonight with the ability to speak Spanish. But I do speak a common language: I speak Jesus,” he said, according to CNN.

Full article: Huckabee: The Supreme Court ‘Cannot Overrule God’ On Gay Marriage

2015 April 30
Happy Victory over the Confederacy Day

On this day one hundred fifty years ago, a scruffy, scrappy, but determined general accepted the surrender of his well-born, well-dressed, and traitorous counterpart, effectively ending a vast sedition launched in the name of slavery, orchestrated by cowardly politicians, and fought — like most wars are — by poor men dying at the behest of rich men. There was no nobility in the losing side; there was no honor; there was only the proposition that one man might justly hold another as property, and that in support of that one twisted principle, oaths may be broken, loyalty suborned, and a great democracy threatened with sectarian dissolution.

Stragglers of the Confederate army fought on for a few more weeks. Their descendants, stragglers of history, fight on today. Their cause is equally dishonorable, equally seditious, and, thankfully, equally ultimately futile.

2015 April 8
One sentence can pull you out of an entirely fine essay

I actually agree with most of what Fareed Zakaria writes in his Washington Post op-ed “Why America’s Obsession with STEM Education is Dangerous“. We need balanced, robust, well-rounded education, not narrow business-driven training. It will take many different vantages points to see solutions to the problems we face in this hardest century of human history. Students of mine often express shock (and perhaps a little betrayal) when they complain about, say, their history teacher and ask me “Don’t you think it’s just a waste of time?” only for me to reply that it is one of my favorite subjects. As a physics guy, I obviously think we need more and better science teaching, but I also think we need more and better teaching in the humanities and the arts.

Having said that… boy, does this one sentence put me in a slow burn:

No matter how strong your math and science skills are, you still need to know how to learn, think and even write.

It angers me that Farakaria, with a vast platform, falls into the stereotypical thinking that these skills — learning, writing, thinking — are somehow not part of the math/science pool. In actuality, of course, scientists, engineers, and coders practice those skills constantly. While there are surely scientists who cannot write, there are English majors with the same problem. STEM thinking isn’t the only kind of thinking we need, but it is thinking. It is both disingenuous and insulting for him to imply otherwise.

I know it’s a small piece of a larger argument, but it still rankled me.

2015 March 27