Wistful Musings & Howling Rage

Intimidation for fun and profit

2004-07-20T02:11:00.000-07:00

Every thursday I attend a peace vigil here in my lovely hometown organized by a woman named Patricia, who just so happens to be one-half of the brilliant minds behind The Iraq Coalition Casualties website.

This past thursday, we had a visit from our local Protest Warrior chapter. It was alternately mind-bogglingly dumb and really really scary.

There are accounts of it in two seperate DailyKOS diary entries here and here, as well as in the blog of a fellow protester, Jonathan Gibson, here (scroll down to 'Protest Jammerz').

His signs were typically non-sequitir laden, including stunning attacks on such imagined enemies as 'communism' and 'the green party.' As effective as these atacks were, they would likely have been even more effective had the vigil been, say "Greens against Capitalism" or something. As it was, it fell a little flat. Still, points for downloading and printing premade signs and all that. I'm sure it was hella hard.

What none of the other accounts mention is the part where the Protest Warrior guy or one of his friends stopped his car in the middle of the street, and got out, blocking traffic and refusing to move. That was a little freaky.

What was freakier was his buddy wih the digital camera and the videocamera following us around taping everything we did. For a moment, I found myself a little worried and hesitant about continuing the protest. I mean, Jesus, if my image ends up on some psycho-right website, I'm really not that hard to find. It's a small town. Which, of course, is the point.

I believe that the videotaping part of the Protest Warrior methdology is as much about trying to bully protesters into stopping as it is about documenting their 'infiltrations' for posterity. What they're saying is "We know who you are. We have your photograph."

I have always believed that, as the saying goes, 'the solution to speech you dislike isn't censorship, but more speech," so on one level, I support the Protest Warrior's idea. I mean, I think the counterprotesters are dumbasses, but clearly they have a right to air their dumbass views. What they do not have a right to do is try to stop us from airing our views through intimidation, infiltration, or whatever they want to pretend it is. They're not trying to get a message across, they're trying to make sure we can't.

Therefore, I now get to the part where I beg all of my loyal readers who live anywhere near Benicia, California to please consider joining us at our peace vigil this thursday. It's at 5:00 in the afternoon at the intersection of Military and First, in front of the park. It's pretty easy to find, and I'll be glad to e-mail a map for anyone who's interested.

There's strength in numbers, folks, and right now, I feel like we need some strength.

Same Sex Marriage - Let loose the fury of the righteous.

2004-07-12T23:27:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Ampersand at Alas, a blog, I got turned on to Long Story, Short Pier, who has an extremely frustrated sounding post up about Oregon's upcoming anti-SSM amendment. The post is great in general, but it ends with possibly THE most scathing paragraph attacking the anti-SSM movement I've ever had the pleasure of reading. Just absolutely stunningly brilliant.

From LS,SP, I was directed to this post by Real Live Preacher which comes at the anti-SSM folks from another tack . . . that of a pro-bible, pro-Christian, pro-SSM preacher-man. I swear to god, after reading these two posts in quick succession, it makes me glad I'm already in favor of government recognition of gay marriages, because if I wasn't I think my brain would have tried to dive down my throat and hide somewhere in my abdomen to avoid the blinding light of truth and reason that these two guys radiate.

Top notch. Once my "to-this-point-entirely-theoretical-blogroll" gets started, they're on it. In a quick minute.

Ralph Nader: What the hell is that guy's problem?

2004-07-11T12:07:00.000-07:00

Spurred on by this post at Crooked Timber and this one at Pandagon, I've been thinking about Ralph Nader a lot lately.

First off, I have always liked and respected Ralph Nader, I like the Green party (of which he's no longer a representative), I think building alternatives to the two-party system is a good thing, and I agree 100% with Nader that the Democratic party is too much in thrall to corporate interests. My problem is, I don't see how supporting Nader's bid (either this year or in 2000) does much to help any of these problems. I believe that the chief (although not sole) barrier to strong third-parties in the US is that our system is set up to discourage them. Therefore, as I posted in Pandagon's comments, I'm just absolutely mystified as to why Nader doesn't offer Kerry a deal like "look, I'll drop out right now and tell all of my supporters to vote for you, and in return, I'd like you to come out strongly in favor of Instant Runoff Voting."

The thing is, IRV is good for the Dems, because it means no more spoiler bullshit, IRV is good for the Greens, because it means that everyone who actually wants to vote for them can do so without feeling like they're drinking lye, I can't imagine that endorsing it would lose Kerry any supporters, and it might well gain him some new ones. Nader doesn't pull away enough of Kerry's vote to demand huge concessions, really, but something relatively minor like this, I would think would be well within the realm of possibility.

Perhaps most important, Kerry could do it without looking like he's caving in to Nader, and Nader could do it without looking like he's selling out to Kerry. It's a win for everybody.

Sure, if Nader did this, it would mean that he'd be out of the race this go-around, but so what? I mean, HE'S the one who keeps telling us that we have to think long term, right? Well: Think long-term, bucko!

Now, I'm not one of those people who will infer from the fact that Nader hasn't done this yet that he's not serious about building the possibility for third-party involvement in US politics . . . after all, 'not doing what I say' isn't a decent metric for serious commitment. I do, however, infer that Nader's not serious about building the possibility for third-party involvement in US politics from the fact that he hasn't done a goddamn thing since the year 2000 that would actually advance his stated goal. It's okay if he doesn't favor IRV for whatever reason, but to just repeat over and over "they're the same . . . they're the same . . . bzzzt . . . they're all the same" is not helpful.

James Burke's KnowledgeWeb

2004-06-22T00:47:00.000-07:00

Okay, I'm going to bed, but I ran across a link I just had to toss up here. I've checked the original Connections series out from the library recently, and Lucy and I have been working our way through it, getting ever more impressed with James Burke as we went. Thus tonight, I was poking around the net to see what he's up to these days, and I ran across James Burke's KnowledgeWeb Project. I swear to god, this is really, really cool. I have no idea how they'll ever get it up and functional, considering the obscene amount of information they must be working with, but here's hoping.

Oh, and check out the video demo to get some idea as to why I'm so jazzed about this.

Why Nerds are Unpopular

2004-06-21T22:48:00.000-07:00

Okay, okay, I know I haven't posted lately. Between trying to get my upcoming Vampire game ready and trying to find a job, I've just been too damn busy. Once I have the game in a more coherent form, I'll write it up here, though . . . sans secrets for those of you who are playing in it.

Anyhow, while we're on the topic of role-playing games, social ostricization, and horrible childhood trauma, I ran across an absolutely fantastic article, entitled Why Nerds are Unpopular. Everyone should read this. Parents, children, students, and teachers. Everyone. Teachers should read it twice. Nerds should read it five times. It's something Lucy and I have been planning on for a while, but reading this article really cemented my desire to homeschool any kids I have.

It's an odd position for a liberal who believes so strongly in public education to take, I realize. It's not that I think homeschooling will give my kids a better education (although there's certainly that possibility) so much as I'm utterly unwilling to subject my kids to the kind of social torture that Junior High School creates. I'm all for cleaning the system up and trying to actually punish bullies instead of rewarding them, but until that time, no. Hell no.

A Lovely Afternoon

2004-06-03T21:27:00.000-07:00

This afternoon, I went to the Solano Peace & Justice Coalition's weekly 'Vigil for Peace,' held every thursday on First Street here in town. There were a few counter-protesters across the street, and we'd get the occasional angry drive-by shouting, but 80% of the reaction from passers-by was positive. I got to spend time arguing with a Green about the prospects for gradual or dramatic political change. It was a good time. I'll probably take photos to post next week.

After the vigil, Lucy and I wandered down first street to the Farmer's Market, stopping to chat with a few friends at the local coffee shop. At the market, we browsed for a bit and picked up some good organic fruits and veggies. Of course, no food pyramid is complete without junk food, so we got a big-ass bag of Kettle Korn too.

The afternoon finished up with a visit to the library, where I had 5 or 6 books on hold, then back home. All in all, a damn fine day.

It wasn't until I got here that I realized: I just lived the stereotypical leftie afternoon.

*sigh*

I guess I'm officially part of the coastal elite now.

If we'd only had time to take in a foreign film (preferably something anti-American) it would have been really perfect. Oh well. Maybe next time.

I Told You So.

2004-06-02T23:18:00.000-07:00

First, a little scene-setting:

From June 1999 to September 2001, I was working at a place in San Francisco called Pulse Entertainment. They did streaming 3D graphics over the web . . . typical late-90s dot-com startup kind of place to work, and typical early-00's layoff. Anyway, when I was working there, I had a long, involved discussion with a co-worker of mine, David (who was a pretty excellent guy, despite his politics), about the energy industry deregulation. My argument was, more or less, "What's to keep these unregulated energy companies from deliberately restricting energy flow in order to drive prices sky-high?" David, a dedicated libertarian, argued that it wouldn't be in their best interests to do that, because the laws of supply and demand dictated that they couldn't make money that way, as usage would fall off as prices rose. it's a fairly standard sort of argument. "The Invisibe Hand is never wrong" and all that.

Time passed.

Then, in 2000 the energy crisis hit. David and I revisited our discussion. "Well," I said, "surely this is proof of what I was saying?" "No, no," said he, "the problem isn't that the energy companies are manipulating the market, the problem is that we don't have enough supply. If anything, we should have deregulated further!"

Well, this morning, I woke up to read that apparently there are tapes of Enron employees gloating over how much money they were making by deliberately restricting energy flow in order to drive prices sky-high.

I hope you'll all indulge me, but it's not too often I get to win a four and a half year old argument.

David, I was right.

Phbbbbttt.

Wait. . . . tear what down?

2004-05-27T10:23:00.000-07:00

Huh. I suppose this is just par for the course, but the New York Times is reporting that the Pentagon claims that Bush's plan for tearing down Abu Ghraib wasn't something they'd ever heard of or discussed.

God, I even think it's a good idea . . . a really good idea, to the point that it doesn't even bother me that it smells of cheap symbolism rather than effective reform. I mean, sometimes symbolism is important too, after all. But the fact that it seems President Bush just pulled it out of his ass without talking to the Pentagon first? Well, it really just is the icing on the 'poor planning' cake, isn't it?

Liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein? Good idea, shitty planning.
Democratizing the Middle East? Good idea, shitty planning.
The postwar occupation and rebuilding? Good idea, shitty planning.

It's not even as if I share many of Bush's goals, you know? On 85% of the issues out there, I couldn't possibly disagree with him more. What's revealing to me is that even on the issues I totally agree with him on, he just can't be trusted to carry them out without screwing them up.

At this point, we would even be better off with another, different Republican in the White House.

I'm voting Kerry, of course. I meant that totally hypothetically.

The Wrong Side of History

2004-05-27T02:04:00.000-07:00

Kevin Drum, as he often does, nails the connection between anti-miscegenation and anti-SSM folks.

What surprises me isn't that opponents of same-sex-marriage are so willing to go to ridiculous extremes to stem the tide of progress. I mean, readiness to go to ridiculous extremes is, like, the definition of crazy-ass fanatic. So no, I'm not surprised by that.

What I must admit I am surprised by, though, is that they've not figured out that they can't win this one . . . not in any kind of long-term way. My impression of America's Right (perhaps just of late) has been that their main 'principle' is 'win at any cost.' I mean, they arguably control all three branches of government, so they can do whatever they like, right?

Well, what are we seeing? Huge, massive explosions in government spending, contra any 'small government principle' we've heard about in the past. Why? It gets votes. People like lower taxes, but they don't like lower services, so the modern Republican Party just says, "heck we'll do both!"

It's possible that I am not the first person to notice this.

Anyway, this brings us back to same-sex-marriage. There's just absolutely no way that we're not going to see fairly widespread same-sex marriage within the next ten or fifteen years. I'm betting national, but if not, certainly a bunch of states. We've already got Massachusetts, after all, Mitt Romney not withstanding. Well, as soon as a little time has passed and we've got some proof that SSM won't lead to mass extinction through lack of heterosexual copulation (or whatever their argument is this week), I think we'll see public opinion start to shift . . . and, once again, the Republicans will have painted themselves solidly as the party of discrimination, separatism, and bigotry.

The thing is, they have just got to know this. I mean, say what you will about them, but they're not dumb, so why would they sabotage any future claim to big-tent inclusion like this? Weird.

This, THIS is my point!

2004-05-27T01:26:00.000-07:00

David Craig Simpson, who also draws the sublimely funny Ozy and Millie, explains the recent political positioning of the Catholic Church quite succinctly.

Actually, now that I'm poking through his "I Drew This" archives, I'm enjoying it even more. Knowing him only through his Ozy and Millie work, I had no idea he was so political.

This is great. I love it when artists I already enjoy turn out to be people I can groove with politically. Of course, that just made me extra-bummed when I found out that Tom Stoppard leans to the right.

I want to have sex with Eric Idle

2004-05-24T18:11:00.000-07:00

Oh god, just go listen to it.

Supply, Demand, Liberals, Conservatives, and Role-Playing

2004-05-24T10:25:00.000-07:00

DISCLAIMER: This post is part of my ongoing effort to reach new heights of geekery each day. Tomorrow I'll probably post on how Voltron and the Transformers lead me to embrace the virtues of a socialist, multicultural society at an early age. Lordy, I'm a big dork-ass.

Saturday, my friends and I had our twice-a-month game of Vampire. My buddy John and I are playing Jacob and Tobias Gould, a pair of twin brothers who were Kabbalists in life, before their embrace into House and Clan Tremere.

Now Jake and Toby are pretty good at all this 'magic' stuff, and because we work together well, we're turning out to be fairly formidable, despite our relative youth, newness to the group, and high generation. It was when we, as part of a larger coterie (or 'party'), were getting geared up to take out the third Sabbat safehouse in an evening (think of the end of The Godfather: multiple surgical strikes, not leaving the enemy any time to regroup) that our storyteller, Mike, said "Man, I think next time I'm going to have to limit how much willpower you guys can start with."

Well, this lead into a discussion on how Mike would like to see more broad-based characters with less narrow specializations . . . less "I'm the mage, I'm the fighter" more "jack-of-all trades realism", in other words. His proposed solution was to limit the number of points anyone can put into any specific skill or discipline at the beginning to three. Although I share his goal (well-rounded characters can be more fun to play, after all), I dislike his solution, favoring, instead, trying to modify the way the story flows so as to encourage people to build more well-rounded characters. Reward diversity and punish specialization.

My argument, in a nutshell, is that people are Smart, Devious, Sneaky Little Self-Interested Bastards, and saying 'no' never really works out as well as we'd like it to. If you tell someone that he can't increase his melee skill to 5, instead he'll increase his melee, brawling, archery, firearms, and flamethrower skills to 3 each. Or he'll find a way to kick ass with skills at 3 points anyhow. Or he'll wait for gameplay to begin and THEN begin the race towards specialization. If, instead, you just run your game in such a way that the player realizes that putting points in "science," "expression," and "politics" rather than "whoop-ass" is good for him, then he'll do that. Make his self-interest work for your plan, not against it.

Anyway, after that digression, we finished up, and the next day I was talking over the game with John, when I realized that the argument I made was, in microcosm, the liberal argument about all sorts of social issues. The two that come to mind immediately, of course, are drugs and abortion. If you take as granted that we want to reduce the number of abortions (I know, it's not necessarily granted, but indulge me) and the number of drug addicts, there are really just two ways to do it. We can reduce supply (outlaw abortions, outlaw drugs, arrest drug dealers and abortion doctors) or we can reduce demand (spend more on drug treatment facilities, spend more on drug education, make sure high-quality contraception is universally available dirt-cheap or free, make sure high-quality child care is universally available dirt-cheap or free).

That's it. Supply and demand. Those are our only options.

Reducing supply tends not to work, like I said, because people are SDSLSIBs, so when you make crack against the law, they won't stop getting high. They'll just buy it illegally, or make it themselves, or steal it, or move to another, still-legal drug . . . and, oh look you made the problem worse. When you make abortions against the law, women won't stop having abortions, they'll just have them illegally, or go out of the country, or try to self-induce, or leave the infant in a dumpster . . . and, oh look you made the problem worse.

The basic argument pattern seems to hold true for most issues across the board. On issues where liberals and conservatives agree on our goals, we disagree on the methods, with conservatives favoring attacking the supply and liberals favoring attacking the demand. The funny thing is, free-marketers that they are, you would think that conservatives would realize that attacking the supply without fiddling with the demand just makes the remaining product that much more valuable. Hell, even if you completely WIPE OUT the supply, as long as there's demand, someone will figure out a way to provide a supply.

I guess the one caveat is that for many conservatives, abortion, at least, is a 'moral' argument, so results aren't important. "Whether we increase or decrease the number of abortions isn't the issue. The issue is that abortion is wrong, period, so it should be against the law." This is why I've always had trouble with the image of conservatives as 'hard nosed realists' willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done . . . 'whatever it takes' never seems to include doing 'stuff that works.'

Anyway, does anyone have any issues this pattern doesn't hold true for? Anything where the rightward side of our political spectrum favors fiddling with the social demand while the leftward one favors outright criminalization? I guess might guns come close, although it's more that the lefties want to impose modest restrictions, while the righties don't give much of a shit about supply or demand. Huh. Go figure.

---Myca

Consent

2004-05-21T14:41:00.000-07:00

Okay, so here's the issue: how do we meaningfully define 'consent' as in "consenting adults"?

The issue came up in a discussion over at Alas, a Blog (who I'll have a link to as soon as I figure out how the hell blogrolls work around here) while we were discussing prostitution, pornography, & related issues. Being a pretty committed civil libertarian, my argument has always been "look, pornography and prostitution may not be good things in any way, but do we really want to start denying consenting men and women the ability to decide for themselves?" Anyway, the rejoinder, as it usually is, was that prostitutes are not "consenting" in any sense that we would traditionally understand. They tend to come from backgrounds of poverty and abuse and are trapped in a system that amounts to sexual slavery. A similar (although, I believe harder to back up) argument can be made for pornography.

Anyway, that's the question. Is it really "consent" to do what you need to do in order to survive, even if you believe you have few other options?

If the answer is no, then wouldn't the shitty minimum wage jobs I've worked count as nonconsentual, even if they didn't involve any kind of sexual exploitation? How about the office job my wife has that's killing her hands through carpal tunnel related issues? She has to keep it for us to pay the rent, but it's affecting her physically in a serious way.

I guess my issue is, where do we draw the line? Is is just sexual exploitation? If so, why? Does psychological or emotional exploitation count? I mean, if my job is making me horribly depressed, but I need to keep it in order to buy food, am I in a nonconsentual position? Does the salary level offset any of this? Is a line-cook being exploited nonconsentually while an executive isn't? If so, then is a streetwalker being exploited nonconsentually while a high-priced call girl isn't?

I'm not trying to downplay the possibility that prostitution ought to be considered nonconsentual at all, and I apologize upfront if this post comes off that way, but I'm not so much making an argument as, seriously, saying 'hey, I don't know, and I think it's worth discussing.'

Where is the line drawn?

Posting Philosophy

2004-05-21T14:03:00.000-07:00

So I was thinking about my blog's title, and I realized that I'm likely to be making two types of posts here (well, three if you count the RPG stuff). The first type "wistful musings" will probably cover my occasional semi-philosophical disagreements with some leftist thought. Now here's the thing . . . I don't disagree that much or that often, but, unlike my feelings about much of the right, I respect most leftists I know. Thus when I do disagree with fairly widely held opinions, I'd generally like to discuss it. I mean, hell, maybe I'm wrong, you know?

As for the "Howling Rage," that's where we get to the part of the blog where I discuss my disagreements with the right. Now, there's a lot of right-wing thinking that, although I disagree with it, I believe reasonable people can have differing views on. Affirmative Action, for example: I believe that affirmative action is necessary in order to correct historic and systematic discrimination against certain groups. However, I don't think that believing that affirmative Action does more harm than good is, itself, evil. I mean, I think it's wrong, but I don't think that it makes anyone a bad (or unreasonable, or racist, or sexist) person to have that point of view, and I can see how utterly well-meaning people could reach that conclusion.

There are some issues, however (and there seem to be a growing number of them) that I simply believe that good and reasonable people ought not to disagree on. It may not be fashionable to say it, but YES, I believe that if you are pro-torture, that makes you a bad person. I don't give a good goddamn what your reasons are, I don't care how you justify it, I don't even want to listen to you anymore. You lost my attention when you said "torture is justified sometimes, because . . ." See, when you said that, my mind filled in the rest as ". . . because I am a very very bad person who ought to be driven from polite society with torches and pitchforks. And I like to rape children."

Lately, this is how I've felt while reading the rightmost half of the blogosphere.

sigh

Maybe I just need more vitamin C or something.

Welcome!

2004-05-21T13:27:00.000-07:00

Well, greetings, all. Welcome to my little corner of the universe. I'm Myca, your host around these parts. I'll be writing primarily about politics, with occasional stopovers into the land of role-playing games. it all depends on my mood.

Politically, I'm a big ol' leftie, but I'll often have views or perspectives that differ from the party line in one way or another. Fer example: "I believe that John Kerry is actually an okay candidate. I do not believe that voting for him is a vote for 'the lesser of the two evils,' because I do not believe that he is evil." Or: "Although I believe he is the wrong man for the job, I do not believe that George Bush is evil either. Horribly, unforgivably incompetent, perhaps, and almost certainly guilty of war crimes, but not evil per se."

When it comes to RPGs, I mostly play and run World of Darkness stuff, but I've had a lot of fun with Runequest (the much-hated Avalon Hill edition), In Nomine, Champions, Paranoia, and a few others.

D20 can fuck off.