This week in The Slacktiverse, July 30/31 2011

The Blogaround

This week Ana Mardoll posted:
Twilight: The Unbearable Lightness of Being... Edward Cullen
In Biology class, we learn that Edward and Bella are not so different after all: they’re both stellar students because they’ve repeated the material previously before. So why does Bella constantly compare herself unfavorably to Edward, and why does Mr. Banner jump to the conclusion that Bella has had the material before, but doesn’t ask the same of Edward? The only real difference here is gender and species... and Mr. Banner doesn’t know that Edward is a vampire. Come help us explore stereotypes in schooling this week!

If Obama had been a Progressive... contains Mime Paradox's musings on the idea that things would be better if Obama had turned out to actually be a committed Progressive.

Literata discovered that an extremely conservative Christian group is mounting a prayer "siege" on the District of Columbia starting in October. In response, she suggested ways for Pagans to cooperate in prayer and magic for protection from these would-be theocrats, focusing on honoring the goddess Columbia, personification of Freedom and Liberty, as one of the ideals our country should continue to work towards. She also wrote a little more about the people behind the DC40 event and what they might be planning, and about how framing a response to them makes all the difference.

Coleslaw writes: This week, my cat Truffle turned five and I observed Anti-Procrastination Day.

Trigger Warning: some talk about rape/sexual assault

aravind asks: Who are these vampires and what do they want?
Summary: A few recent vampire films seem to be getting a clue and responding to vampires or portraying vampires from a more female-inclusive perspective, but several of those movies still seem to reduce female characters to victims or heroines with motivations rooted in other male characters.

This week Laiima wrote: What can you do with old books? here's what I'm doing and I'm surprising myself with an interest in reimagining how my family works

This week mmy posted a review of E. F. Benson's Paying Guests, asked the question Would it have been less of a tragedy had she not been beautiful? and imagined what her mother would have thought of the way American politicians are dealing with the debt crisis.

This week, storiteller finally posted the rest of her photos from the Climate Ride, wrote about her second experience with the party-like D.C. Grey Market and pays tribute to a community activist that she's never met, but nonetheless has touched her life.

This week, hapax hauled herself out of her month-long funk sufficiently to post something. Alas, what she came up with was a bitter tirade against the idiocy of her current representatives in the U.S. government.

The former conservative blogger writes: This week I criticized another Christian blogger's treatment of atheists, deconstructed the first 12 minutes of a Christian scare film about hell, criticized a fundamentalist blog's ideas about children's ministry, wrote about some things that I saw on Media Matters and wrote about the unfair criticism of interactive media in our culture

Trigger Warning: Transhumanism, Language, Violence, Disturbing Imagery in the synopsis

Josh Enigma writes: I've been working on transhuman fiction story called Human Black Box that I've broken up into posts; here are links to the first three: (Things go sideways Part 1, Part II and Part III.
The plot so far concerns an individual named Chloe who woke up without any memories of who she was, trapped on Earth, revived by a entity claiming to be a hard AI calling itself "Antares." The goal, Antares told her, was to get from where she was, Flagstaff, Arizona, to Groom Lake, Nevada, in one piece where there would be people waiting to lift her off of the planet. It becomes a game of survival as Chloe tries to make her way there, through a blasted, post-apocalyptic wasteland populated by killer robots, scoured by sudden and violent storms, and inhabited by something all together worse... (it uses the EP universe as a backdrop).

Josh Enigma writes: Trigger Warning: Islamophobia, Racism, The recent Events in Norway I also did a take-down of the language and framing in Pat Buchanan's recent racist, victim-playing screed over on the Human Events forum (leader in Conservative Media - and by "Conservative" they mean "extreme right wing") and I followed that up Trigger Warning: Extreme Racism, Genocide, Holocaust, Islamophobia with an examination of a comment from the Free Republic that..., well, let's just say that those Trigger Warnings play out exactly like you would expect.

Last week Ana Mardoll posted:
Twilight: Being Flung From the Narrative
What new hijinks are in store for us this week as Bella concocts wild plans to escape to the nurse’s office and contemplates violence against her fellow classmates? Will Bella take the long-view of the situation and maintain her cool or will she throw down on Jessica right there and then in the cafeteria? And what Hogwart house would Bella be sort into? Come help us decide!

Last week Ana Mardoll posted:
Narnia: Identifying with the Aggressor
Edmund has been dubbed a bully and so shall he remain for the rest of the novel... but why? Is he really a “bad” child or has he been placed in situations where he has learned to imitate stronger bullies in order to survive? As Lucy and Edmund disappear into Narnia to each meet their respective Narnians, it’s worth wondering if Edmund’s adventure might have turned out very differently had he run into someone other than the White Witch. Is the country of Narnia setting Edmund up to fail? Join the debate!

In case you missed this

Coleslaw writes: Speaking of Anti-Procrastination Day, some Googling brought me to this post, Bite me, National Anti-Procrastination Day, from a few years ago. I find the whole blog (http://www.fluentself.com/blog/) fascinating but, like catnip and Death By Chocolate cake, it probably needs to be taken in small doses.

Anointed: A Devotional Anthology for Deities of the Near and Middle East was published this week, with two contributions from Literata related to the goddess Inanna.

Trigger Warning: discussion of rape/sexual assault

MercuryBlue writes: Further to the Elevatorgate uproar in the atheist and feminist communities, an explanation of why men approaching women the way rapists would is scary and why rejecting men who approach in such a way can be scarier.

Things you can do

From the Center for Reproductive Rights:

Here’s what Fox host Bill O’Reilly thinks about insurance coverage for contraception:

“[M]any women who get pregnant are blasted out of their minds when they have sex and [are] not going to use birth control anyway.”

O’Reilly’s statement is obviously ridiculous, but there are anti-choice lawmakers who want to dissuade Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius from covering contraception without co-pay under the new healthcare law. We cannot let him have the last word.

Take action NOW—Secretary Sebelius has said that she will announce her decision by August 1st. Tell her to protect women’s health by designating birth control as preventive care for women!

Leum writes: USians need to call their member of Congress and Senators and tell them that we must raise the debt ceiling or risk plunging the nation into economic collapse. The USA.gov provides useful links to the White House, individual Senators and individual U.S. Representatives. The site also provides links to members of State Governments.

From Avaaz.org:

Muntaha's sixteen year old son was abducted from a peaceful democracy protest by Syrian security forces. She has spent the last eight weeks scouring the country for her child -- braving warnings from the Syrian regime that her other son would also be "disappeared" if she continued with her search. Our urgent action now can help her son and the thousands of other disappeared Syrians.

Since March, almost 3000 people have been taken by regime forces and disappeared into secret jails. The international community has spoken out, but done little to stop this attack -- but India, Brazil and South Africa have close ties to Syria and could push for an international human rights delegation to find the missing and reunite families with their loved ones.

SIGN THE PETITION
To the leaders of India, Brazil, South Africa, Kuwait and Qatar: We call on you to send a human rights delegation to Syria immediately to investigate and press for an end to the disappearances of nearly 3000 innocent Syrians. It is time to end the regime's bloodshed, bring justice to victims and their families and push for a democratic, peaceful future.

--Co-authored by the Slacktiverse Community

---

The Board Administration Team
(hapax, Kit Whitfield and mmy)

Comments

[J. Enigma (the Transhumanist)]

@ Aravind's link:

I typed up a comment but Livejournal hates me, so I'll post it here. For those who haven't read hir article, you really should: it's a insightful article.

Not only that, but maybe the community can weight in on it, too:

(TW: Misogyny and the treatment of women in movies)

"I think we're looking at this backwards. Hollywood has no control over their use of stereotypes, for the simple reason that the movie houses, in a bid to do what works and makes them money, will simplify their demographics into stereotypes. The result: stereotypes that are designed to entertain stereotypes. For Hollywood, it's a matter of doing what they know works. The Damsel in Distress works (they think), thus they continually fall back to it. They've been using that cliche trope now since the early 1900. At the same time Hollywood does what they think will work, they hedge their bets, and they build their visions off of stereotypes of moviegoers. Thus, the average moviegoer is stereotyped as a young White male, aged 18-25/30. Anything that's not a young white male aged 18-25/30 is not considered the average moviegoer and, thus, only specialty movies get aimed at those individuals, and even then, it's a matter of stereotype. Hollywood doesn't want to break out of their stereotypes of who see their movies, and as a result, their movies contain stereotypes designed to entertain their stereotypes. This is also why you see so many plots reused, with just the window-dressing changed. The gaming industry does the exact same thing (or, at least, most gamers want to think it does, anyway). To be perfectly honest, this is actually a lot more insulting to moviegoers than if we just gave them the leeway and said, "yeah, they're including those stereotypes because they're lazy."

Actually, I'd say that's the truth for *every* entertainment medium, rather than just movies. About the only one I can think of that doesn't function like that would be literature, and that's because literature isn't that wide spread a medium, and there's a lot of different minds working in literature with a lot more female writers (I'm not sure what the total ratio of female to male writers/authors is, but it's more than any other female to male ratio aside from population demographics and elementary/primary school teaching, I'd bet).

It's transgressive to use a powerful female character by Hollywood's standards simply because the average moviegoer stereotype is White, male, and probably won't be comfortable seeing a woman on the screen stronger than he is (even though that probably isn't the case). Thus, women get regulated to sex symbol status, where they're considered sub-servant to the male main character. This is *especially* bad with so-called "Strong Female Characters" (glares daggers at Transformers). I regularly use strong characters who are female, but like I said - literature isn't usually a medium built around "stereotypes designed for consumption by other stereotypes"."

[J. Enigma (the Transhumanist)]

Actually, on second thought, I rescind part of my earlier comment - I wouldn't be surprised to learn there are far more male authors than female authors, and that the ratio is less than I originally anticipated.

[Mmy]

We published an updated version of "This Week" on Sunday afternoon.

[aravind]

TW: sexism, misogyny

J. Enigma: I think what I was trying to hint at was how a role reversal in the case of the damsel in distress situations that are pretty much stock for vampire movies doesn't really solve much, since it tends to feed into sexist representations of women as centered around the men in their lives. I think the predilection of movies to cast women near exclusively for eye candy, body bags, the "beyond logic" folks (cuckoo cloudlanders if they're good, psycho killers if they're bad) makes it really difficult for many movies to pass any sort of betchel-type test (female characters that aren't exclusively centered on their male counterparts). Add into that how physically strong female characters are usually written deliberately to be insane and evil if they don't fit the checklists exactly right. Also, in this case, vampire movies are basically built out of sexualized violence or violent sexuality or both, so it's even more difficult to break out of women-as-objects (of desire, violence, etc).

It's really important not to just step back at some point and declare yourself "subversive" - there's a lot of interrelated but rather complicated things to combat to reach that point, and I'm just one guy on the internet pointing this out, not a woman who could probably pick out even more problems or a horde of audience members who could (and in many fandoms, do) run discussions on these issues. I think the most frustrating thing movies do on this issue is address one very narrow problem and ignore the whole suite of issues they have with regards to gender (and race, and sexuality, and class, and...). Declaring the problem "fixed" at that point is rather annoying.

/TW

PS: Oh, livejournal, I'm going to switch at this rate, because of all the trouble I've seen it give people.

[MercuryBlue]

It isn't LJ's fault. It's the fault of whoever doesn't want Russia to have a free press.

In unrelated news, and more or less on impulse, I came out to my parents today. I did not get kicked out, which I was afraid of and preparing for. I also did not get 'we support you no matter what', which I was hoping for but not expecting. I got "Are or are curious? Curious is normal. Until you have actual relationships person to person, I am not believing it." Also got chastised for doing it by email, but, social anxiety. I could not do it face to face.

[Mmy]

@MercuryBlue: {{{hugs}}} could have been better -- could have been much worse.

Maybe as they become more acclimatized to the idea.....

[Brin]

MercuryBlue: Also got chastised for doing it by email, but, social anxiety. I could not do it face to face.

I wouldn't want to do something that big any other way. (Which isn't necessarily the same thing as not doing such things any other way.)

I hope things improve as they adjust to the knowledge.

[Laiima]

{{{{MB}}}}

Not only social anxiety issues, but doing things by writing means your viewpoint *gets expressed*. In F2F, what if the other person goes off on a tangent when you're right in the middle of your spiel? Potentially, your points are never heard. (My family of origin is filled w lousy listeners, so for me, that's been a thing.)

[aravind]

{{{MB}}}

I had to come out over the phone, because it was just too difficult to face, and I was coming out to lesbians.

[Mary Kaye]

MercuryBlue, congratulations. That is a hard step to take, and I am glad the response was not as negative as you feared.

[J. Enigma (the Transhumanist)]

<--- Echoes Mary Kaye. Congratulations on coming out, and it's good that the response wasn't as bad as you feared. I read through your post the first time misread that as "I got kicked out" and I'm thinking "oh no." I've heard far too many stories of kids, and I've even met a few through my experience as a substitute teacher, who have been kicked out, and I've heard of many more. Props to your parents for being rational people, even if their reaction was to be found lacking; individuals like them are less common than they should be.

Also, I empathize greatly with the social anxiety.

[Lonespark]

MercuryBlue, wow. Congratulations, I think, are in order for taking a big, brave step. And I am very glad the response was ok.

[J. Enigma (the Transhumanist)]

Hmm... if this is a double post, I apologize, because I posted this before and it's gone now.

OT:

If you live in the U.S. (like I do) and you've been watching the debt ceiling debate (like I have, sorta), you may now commence to panicking:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/07/31/1001311/-Debt-ceiling-compromise-appears-to-include-everything-far-right-demanded

Our wonderful leaders may just sell us upstream again, and with it, our entire economy and chance for recovery.

[kisekileia]

Here's the New York Times' description of the deal. It sounds bad, especially given the lack of tax increases when they are obviously badly needed, but not as bad as it could have been. At least there are some defense cuts.

MercuryBlue, I'm glad your parents aren't kicking you out, but sorry that they're not taking you seriously.

[Leum]

I have a question for y'all. So, this debt ceiling (and our politicians' responses to it) is essentially triggering me, making me really anxious, contemplate self-harm, etc, etc. I feel powerless and helpless, terrified and feeling like there's not escape from descending into utter devastation. I can't avoid hearing about it, and I'd feel guilty if I tried. Is there anything I can do? My therapist advises working on accepting my powerlessness over the situation, but that's really effin' hard to do and doesn't really help, kinda makes it worse. What can I do?

[Lonespark]

Can you really not avoid it? Is there no way you can immerse yourself in something else? That's been working for me, off and on. Like, I know some things that need doing as a result of the situation, so I'm making more of a point to get together a bunch of food pantry donations, and volunteer for campaigns of politicians who don't suck, and help out with the refugee ministry, and so forth. I still feel awful when I'm not actively doing stuff, but awful with direction, and there's a lot of stuff to actively do.

[Jason]

@MercuryBlue-

Wow, I was a little reticent to tell my parents that I most likely will be voting for Obama in 2012. If THAT makes me uncomfortable I can't even imagine what it took for you to do that.

[Coleslaw]

@Mercury Blue
I think your parents are kind of nibbling around the edges of your announcement. It's probably overwhelming for them to take in all at once, so they focus on irrelevant details (like the medium you used to convey the message) and try to minimize the content (You're just curious. Curious is okay.) They may yet work their way around to "we support you no matter what". The important thing is that you were able to be honest. They can't even get a start on supporting you no matter what if they don't even know there's a no matter what.

[Mmy]

@Jason: Wow, I was a little reticent to tell my parents that I most likely will be voting for Obama in 2012.

This is a serious question. Given the events of the last few months (and indeed the events since Obama was elected) would you be voting for Obama or against the Republican candidate?

The disturbing thing (at least to me) is that a vote for Obama is a vote to move the Overton window still further to the right. Obama is, as of today, arguably to the right of some past Republican presidents. Since the Democratic party seems to view everyone to the left as captive supporters the only way (they apparently have persuaded themselves) to gain more votes is to offer concessions to those on the right.

This is not going to end well for the American left. Indeed one could argue that it has already ended the American left.

[Jason]

@mmy-

Well, really I don't have anything against Obama at this point. You must understand that given the environment that I grew up in and the part of the country I live in, anything to the left of Rush Limbaugh is considered left-wing, which makes my perspective on everything STILL skewed. People around here think Senator Lindsay Graham is left-wing.

Rick Perry, assuming he intends to run, scares the hell out for me, like seriously, I can't think of someone I'm more scared of having in the White House. Michele Bachman is only marginally less scary than Perry. Herman Cain is bigoted against Muslims. The choice seems to be Obama or a bunch of bigoted religious extremists or umm...Newt Gingrich. When Newt Gingrich is the number one best choice besides the incumbent that doesn't really leave me with many options.

I'm mainly voting for Obama because he's the only candidate that doesn't either scare the shit out of me or is someone I think is crooked and dishonest. Nearly everyone the Republicans have makes my blood run cold.

[Amaryllis]

@MercuryBlue: congratulations on your courage, and I hope it all works out with your family.

@Mmy: I just don't know. (And on this machine, I can say no more.)
(Except that almost all the time, I seem to voting Against insted of For-- it's depressing.)

@Laiima: I left a comment on your blog about a local destination for recycling books, The Book Thing in Baltimore, with a link in it which seems to have sent it to your spam filter.

[Ross]

@Mmy: These days it feels very much like a vote for the right is a vote to destroy the world, and a vote for the "left" is a vote to let the world die by attrition. (And a vote anywhere else is a vote for the right).

For me, there's no "arguably" about it: Obama is an Eisenhower conservative. The media keeps portraying him as a hard left liberal who is "forced" into watered-down moderate-right actions, but I'm pretty confident that, no, that's how he really feels. On nearly every issue. He isn't "making huge concessions" to the right -- he's pushing his own middle-right agenda, and *pretending* to be upset about it. He *believes* tax cuts are good for business, he *believes* that wealth trickles down, he *believes* that government spending can't create jobs.

I'm pretty much convinced that the majority of the political left believes about 90% of what the right is selling -- including the part that says "Liberals aren't Real Americans".

[Mmy]

@Jason: I'm mainly voting for Obama because he's the only candidate that doesn't either scare the shit out of me or is someone I think is crooked and dishonest. Nearly everyone the Republicans have makes my blood run cold.

My POV (for what it is worth).

You vote in a scary Republican and they take the country's economy down in flames. The voters react in horror and for a generation no one will vote Republican again.

You vote in a "reasonable Democrat" who folds every time the Teabaggers look sideways at the White House. The economy, destroyed by the fact the President caved in to the Republican demands, goes down in flames. The voters react in horror and for a generation no will will vote Democrat again.

If you have a Democratic president who basically says "yes" to every Republican demand you might as well have a Republican president. At least that way the finger of blame will be pointed at the people who are the proximate cause of the disaster.

[Laiima]

@Jason, first, I agree with mmy. Second, my take on things (as a Green who is far to the left of the Democratic party) is to wonder this: if we keep voting for people who call themselves Democrats, but are far to the right of our own views, how is what we're doing any different than what Obama has done with the Tea Partyers? That is, we are "appeasing" people who won't even meet us at the table, never mind offer compromises of their own. Apparently we're supposed to just give up everything we care about because supposedly that's "easier" or somehow "better" than voting For something we actually want?!?

I voted For Obama in 2008, because I wanted to be part of a historic moment (even though I really wanted to vote for Hillary Clinton), not because I thought I would agree with his positions all that much. However I've been shocked at how I seem to have helped elect a DINO. So in 2012, I'm voting Green. Because the Democrats are never going to change if they don't have to. If large swaths of their party desert them, however, perhaps they'll wake up and decide to join us back on the left.

Because you notice how no matter how much Democrats pander to the Tea Party, TP keeps insisting on *more* concessions? They never say, "oh no we got all we need; what can we do for YOU next round?" Well, the Democratic Party is doing the same thing to us on the left. (But I'm not a Democrat, so I don't owe them anything.)

[Laiima]

@Amaryllis, your comment has been rescued! thanks for the suggestion!!

[J. Enigma (the Transhumanist)]

@mmy - In my case it was a vote against the potential for Sarah Palin to be president. Just like this time around it'll be a vote against any potential for Michele Bachmann.

That's not how democracy is supposed to work. The system is clearly broken, and the two party system isn't doing it's job (not that it ever did).

TW: DOMA and DADT

We don't have any far left leaders in this country. The US is a centrist, moderately-right wing nation. While the window has been moving slightly to the left over the last few years, politicians cling desperately to Nixon's stereotype of the "silent majority" - a moderate to right-of-center political bloc that decides things.

American left? What left? We're routinely ignored, attacked as traitors by the conservatives, and marginalized by our own elected officials. It ended for us back in 2004, and started back in 1984. Obama arguably sits where Reagan was at on the political spectrum.

Figure that. He sets where Ronald McDonald Reagan sat. And to the Republicans, who view Reagan as a saint who could do no wrong [/hyperbole... maybe], they still consider Obama to be a hard leftist. I've argued with people who say he's a socialist. Now, *I'm* a socialist (technoprogressive socialist, but still a socialist). I have nothing in common with the man. But that doesn't stop them anyway. They use words we recognize with radically different meanings; that's how they pull stuff like that off: I recently made a post about language and the Right, but that's slightly off topic. But still; you're right. He's further to the right than past presidents, and sets roughly where Reagan was at.

@ Ross: Obama isn't a Eisenhower Republican. Obama is a politician, through and through, and will vote whichever way the wind is blowing. He displayed that on the topic of DOMA, and again with DADT, despite his campaign promises. I can't help but wonder if there isn't some kind of deeper game at play here. He bends over backwards for these people, but they don't play the game. They end up looking bad, but then, so does Obama. It's self-destructive.

[J. Enigma (the Transhumanist)]

Oops - above comment needs a TW: DOMA and DADT (I think... it's always best to err on the side of safety and how other people might feel).

[Ross]

The voters react in horror and for a generation no one will vote Republican again.

I like this part,

You vote in a scary Republican and they take the country's economy down in flames.

But I'm not willing to pay this price.

Or rather, I'm not willing to watch others pay that price with their blood, their health, their dignity and ultimately their lives.

[Jason]

This is probably going to make me sound ignorant but...

According to my rough estimation, I went through roughly 16 years of indoctrination from Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Bill O'Reilly and Fox News. From the time I'm was 12, which was about the time I became aware of politics beyond it being "something boring that my parents watch on TV" until I was 28, my news came from one of those sources....EXCLUSIVELY from one of those sources.

It wasn't until I was 28 years old that I started really noticing that stuff was wrong. I've had 2 years to try to educate myself. In that time, I've only really been able to educate myself about why the people I'd been blindly following all of this time are wrong. I've been so appalled that I fell for their propaganda that I've spent all my time learning what's wrong with all the people I used to vote for and listen to, so that I won't repeat the same mistake. I haven't reached the point yet where I'm positive about what I really believe politically. I would guess that I am left of center, (real center not the center where Obama is considered far left) but still to the right of a lot of folks that comment here. I'm not sure.

I'm mostly just confused and trying to vote for who isn't scary, which at the moment is only one person. I'm trying to take in more liberal views. I've taken to listening to the audio podcast of Rachel Maddow every day lately.

[Mmy]

@J. Enigma: The US is a centrist, moderately-right wing nation. While the window has been moving slightly to the left over the last few years, politicians cling desperately to Nixon's stereotype of the "silent majority" - a moderate to right-of-center political bloc that decides things.

Huh. What US are you referring to? Because the one in which I used to live, the one (mostly) to the south of Canada is not moderate to right-of-center and has not moved slightly to the left over the last few years.

The US has one of the lowest rates of corporate taxation in the western world. It doesn't have a particularly high level of social mobility in the western world. It has a rate of income inequality similar to that in China and Mexico. It doesn't have universal health care (unlike just about every other industrialized country.)

As for moving left I doubt that women seeking family planning, women seeking abortion services, voters who have been "purged" from the voting lists, people who have had their pensions slashed, people who have had educational grants slashed, people who no longer have access to any health services, people who have had their access to libraries slashed, people who have seen their local infrastructure underfunded and a long list of others would testify that the US has been moving steadily to the left for some period of time.

[Mary Kaye]

One glimmer of good news: the health care mandate will include free contraception without co-pay. (There are worrisome exceptions for religious employers, but it's still overall good news.)

CNN report here.

[Lonespark]

I think I heard something potentially good about something related to the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. If it's not actually good news, nobody tell me til next week.

And yeah, that's wonderful news on the contraception funding...

Plus also, the Debt Ceiling Cat lolcats make me lol, so some of my emotions still sort of work right.

[Mmy]

@Mary Kaye: the health care mandate will include free contraception without co-pay

That is good news.

@Ross: I'm not willing to watch others pay that price with their blood, their health, their dignity and ultimately their lives.

Unfortunately you are opposed by people who are apparently quite happy to watch other pay the price. Which is a real advantage in a negotiation process such as this. They will never blink.

[Lonespark]

Ross, the problem is we're paying that price anyway, with too many people sharing the blame for no good reason. It just encourages more hostage taking.

It's like the situation with unemployment benefits back a while ago. We sort of avoided screwing some people over by agreeing to screw them and many others over. Yay?

I don't disbelieve that Obama has a number of principles similar to mine. But the one principle he never violates is a desire to compromise, so that doesn't much help.

[Laiima]

@mmy, I think you have a double negative in your lengthy post:

"As for moving left I doubt that women seeking family planning, ... and a long list of others would testify that the US has been moving steadily to the right for some period of time.

That is, I think you meant to close with, "...the US has been moving steadily to the LEFT for some period of time."

[Mmy]

@Laiima: Thank so much for catching that. mmy just went cap-in-hand to mmy-slackmod and the latter edited in the correction.

[Ross]

I guess my issue is just that it feels way too much like saying "The poor are screwed either way, so let's just make sure that *our* hands stay clean in it."

It's a lot like the feeling of unease I get from ISO requirements: we sacrifice a lot of prevention in exchange for making sure that when things go wrong, we know who to blame. (I've had to accomodate ISO requirements along the lines of "If you stop the hacker from getting in at stage X, we won't be able to accurately log the hacking attempt, so let him get as far as Y so that we can tell what kind of attack it was")

It's fine to say that you're thinking about the long-term, that someday when the republican party have all been rounded up and dare not show their faces in public, then we can make ourselves a proper utopia, but "Just be patient, I know we're not making your plight any better now, nor are we even tryign to run interference against the peopel who are actively screwing you to the wall. It's for the greater good, and *eventually* we'll be in a situation to make things better" is a political message with a TERRIBLE track record.

[J. Enigma (the Transhumanist)]

@Mmy -

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/

I could only find it for the 2008 election, alas, it will have to do - that's county-by-county. Some of those blue states are actually swing-states - Florida, Ohio, and a few others are states that can and usually do vote republican. Now, all those counties that vote republican always vote republican, a few examples notwithstanding. Because the majority of the republican voting block is retirees and the like, they usually get out and vote. And they vote in the important elections - the Senatorial and Gubernatorial(?) races. Because the majority of the people in this country who vote left are poor, minority, single mothers, or young (or all four at the same time) among others, they usually do not vote in those races; the districts get gerrymandered and it makes it harder for them to find their way to the polls, along with their other problems that they're facing because economic status, work issues, or what have you. That's how the Tea Party, and the Republicans, won in 2010. They vote, by in large, in the Presidential races, because they can't manage the spoons to vote any other time.

You are right - poll after poll suggests that the U.S. is moving to the left. The voting bloc, however, remains centrist to right wing, because it's the centrist to right wingers who get out and vote in the other elections beyond the presidential one. And as a result, the consistent voting bloc becomes the one that represents the country's interests.

TL;DR - the country can lean left all it wants. Until it starts voting that way, and left-wingers start voting more regularly, it'll be a centrist-to-right wing country controlled by a consistent voting bloc of centrist-to-right wingers. We've had left leaning presidents and governor candidates run at the local levels within the Democrat party, so it's not a matter of finding left-leaning politicians. They get voted against and lose; it's a matter of the left-leaning population voting with more regularity.

[Mmy]

@J. Enigma: it'll be a centrist-to-right wing country controlled by a consistent voting bloc of centrist-to-right wingers.

The most the data you present indicates is that the people are leaning towards the center. The only reason that that slight lean looks "leftish" is that they are already standing to the right of the center line. The country (if you consider the country to be the laws that are enforced and the social norms that govern society) is significantly to the right of Canada and Canada is not on the far left wing of countries in the western world.

The people (including everyone not just those who vote) of the United States are somewhat to the left of the people who vote. The people who vote are somewhat to the left of the people in Washington. The people in Washington are distinctly to the right of most other western countries. The people in the GOP are FAR TO THE RIGHT of most other western countries.

[Ross]

TW: Homophobia, bullying

Hi all. I don't normally bother mentioning the sewage that comes out of the mouth of Mike Adams, but this one made me especially twitchy. He's a criminology professor who spends his time pitching far-right vitriol in the guise of obviously false personal anecdotes (Frex, he tried to defend the "All poor people are filthy crack-smoking hippies" with an anecdote which assumes that a DEA agent friend of his would on a lark, take him to the home of some violent crack dealers and drop him off there for an evening so he could see how wretchedly they lived). Last week, he decided to speak out in defense of bullying, claiming that (paraphrase) "The reason we have such weak, effeminate men who need protection from bullying is because we don't have enough bullying to force them to man-up". He also claims that the very fact we see bulling as a problem proves that gay men are weak, because otherwise they would be able to defend themselves, like bullied straight boys did when he was a kid.

The article is here: THe Bullied Gene. I discovered it via World-o-Crap's takedown of same.

[J. Enigma (the Transhumanist)]

"The people in the GOP are FAR TO THE RIGHT of most other western countries."

100% agreement.

The people in Gawd's Own Party are Far to the Right of any thing remotely resembling sanity, not just most other Western Countries.

And that's fair assessment; in terms of other countries in the world, the U.S. sits on the right end of the spectrum. The non-voting population is to the left of the voting population who are to the left of folks in the Beltway who are ... still living in the Real World when compared with the current Republican party.

TW: Bullying, Mild Language

@Ross: You would be (or may not) shocked at how many people at least tacitly agree: "well, it happened to me, and it's a feature of growing up [so why should we do anything about it and stop the cycle? that goes said but unsaid]." Really, whenever I hear someone say that, I'll call them out for it, because they're arguably worse than bullies. They're spineless cowards who can't even take a stand on the issue. At least men asshat in your link take a stand, as stupid and wretched as it is. People who say that don't even have the moral fortitude to make their own decision (or they're parroting it because they've heard others say it), and they'd rather run and hide from it, justifying it by saying because it happened to them growing up, it should happen to everyone else, too.

Thanks for that link. I think I'll go take his article apart on my blog now. I'll be back when I'm done to post the link.

[truth is life]

If I may ask, why is the side-bar the bottom bar now, TBAT? It's a bit inconvenient (especially as I continually use the "latest comment" thingy to, well, go to the latest comments)

[The Board Administration Team]

@truth is life: The sidebar is in the usually place on all the browsers we used to check things out this morning.

Calling all readers -- anyone else have this going on and if so, what browser are you using?

[The Board Administration Team]

@truth is life: Are you still having a problem? We weren't having the problem in the first place so we can't see if it has been fixed.

[truth is life]

@truth is life: Are you still having a problem? We weren't having the problem in the first place so we can't see if it has been fixed.

Oh no, it works fine now. I thought it was just some change that I hadn't seen a warning for, and was just wondering why it was changed.

[The Board Administration Team]

@truth is life: I looked over the code with a fine tooth comb and there was a piece of "orphan" code buried in something that had been submitted. The orphan code was ignored by our browser but not yours.

That is the joy of having dozens of versions of code out there -- they don't all play well with others.

[aravind]

J Enigma: [the GOP] are Far to the Right of any thing remotely resembling sanity

*sighs* Yes, let's equate kyriarchic douches with the non-neurotypical, that's bound to end well for everyone!

[Mmy]

@J Enigma: Seconding aravind here. Please don't use "sanity" in as a measure of praise, complaint or judgment.

@aravind: I personally would appreciate it if people did not use epithets such as "douche." The history of using the names of any and every product/event associated with women as an insult adds to the underlying misogynistic nature of much discourse today.

[MercuryBlue]

Hugs to everyone who offered hugs, thanks to everyone who offered congratulations, and sympathies with everyone who's debating whether to vote Obama. Personally, I'm volunteering for his campaign, or planning on it (depends how the thing Wednesday goes), on the strength of the Affordable Care Act. Which is crap, because his opening offer was the compromise position, but it's still the best we've had in decades. Also repealing DADT. If he can pull one more such rabbit out of his hat, he'll justify my confidence in him. Also I figure this is the best way to help progressive get-out-the-vote efforts, which are the only way we've got a shot in hell of kicking out the teabaggers. (Not that my state currently has teabaggers in Washington. We have more sense than that. I pity those like my mother, though, she can't remember whether she voted 'teabagger' or 'sensible Republican' in the primary, which means she doesn't see a difference.)

[J. Enigma (the Transhumanist)]

@ aravind - sanity is a legal term, in both law and mental health law, not anything implying mental illness; it doesn't appear in any DSM-IV manuals, and the psychiatric community is careful with that distinction. Psychopathology is the proper, mental health term is the term used to describe what happens when you're suffering from something like schizophrenia, schizoid disorders, and the like. Being rational is one of the requirements to being found sane. If you're not rational, you aren't sane (and therefore, insane); and the far right certainly is not rational. One can be judged "legally insane" and not have any kind of mental illnesses, either, or one can be judged "legally sane" and suffer from a debilitating psychosis.The term is independent from mental health issues.

FWIW, I correct people when I see them using that term to describe individuals who display psychopathology. It has a narrow definition. As an individual who has suffered from minor psychotic episodes in the past (voices especially, but seeing moving shadows, feeling like I wasn't alone when I knew I was, and the like - stemming from my depression), I prefer to keep my definitions very narrow and clear cut in this realm.