Not many people read my blog, but I'd thought that I'd post a video that I made on the crime in New Orleans.

Enjoy

Salvaging the non-party of Lincoln

First of all, let's get something straight about the GOP: they are not the party of Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln was a moderate liberal, in comparison to the current Republican party that tends to be far to the right of moderate. While Lincoln was interested in changing the status quo, the current GOP is interested in maintaining it, or reverting back to some happy shiny time that never existed. In other words, Lincoln probably would have identified more with Barack Obama than George W. Bush on principle alone. The fact that republicans and their proxies continue to use the "party of Lincoln" rhetoric is a sure sign that they don't understand why they lost big this time around.

The Republican Governors met today in Florida to do a little soul searching, or so it would seem. Very little of interest came out of the meeting other than that they still do not understand what it is that the Democrats are getting right. The most notable thing to come out of the meeting is that Republican governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, began his run for the White House. What's that you say? Didn't we just have a presidential election a week ago? How could we possibly be talking about 2012? Well, to be fair to the governors, there was no mention of the next presidential election that I heard, but it's definitely posturing. Mark my words, Jindal is going to run in the primary, and right now, the only other serious contender I see for the nomination is Palin. The interesting thing about a Jindal bid is that an Indian-American would be running against an African-American. The bigots would be left out in the cold. Govenors are a good bet for presidential nominees. Both parties have successfully run governors in the recent past, and it's a better launching pad than the Senate for a number of reasons. In fact, senators have a very tough time running for president and winning.

But even the most promising governor for the nomination, Jindal, misunderstands why the Republicans are losing, and losing big time. There is a fracture in the GOP that has been brewing for a while, and yet they do not see it. On one hand you have republicans that tend to care more about "fiscal responsibility," and on the other you have those that focus on morality. The latter is a bad bet, and the former is pretty much discredited as happy talk. Fiscal responsibility, in the way that the GOP imagines it, cannot work in current federal governance because that "responsibility" turns into the same two points that have never been implemented by any republican administration effectively: lower taxes and cuts in spending. A little news for everyone who doesn't' understand the way that federal government expenditures work: there is never a cut in spending. Governments, like economies, rarely shrink wholesale. Growth may slow, but it is never reversed. Most Americans understand this, and most do not think that tax cuts for the super rich are good for America. In the current clime, a large gap between the super rich and the rest of us, the free for all that has been made out of the 700B bailout package, and the irresponsible behavior that led to the recession we face are all laid at the feet of the super-rich and their allies in government.

Morality is a losing battle as well, and at least some of the GOP is realizing it. While we see battles over gay marriage in many states, most notably Prop 8 in California, the values debate has been brushed aside as little more than a wedge tactic by conservatives. A little history reveals that societies grow more socially liberal continuously. We are much more socially liberal than we were even ten years ago, let alone fifty. There is no reversal, and as the young republicans rise up in stature and try to take control of the party, they will realize that there is not much truck to be had in these issues. They are born and raised in the same increasingly liberal society as the rest of us, and like it or not, they are conditioned in the same way we are to respect different people and their ideas. The internet is a huge part of that, sort of how MTV effected the youth in the 80s. When people in rural North Dakota are exposed to the same liberal society that we in urban areas are exposed to, their tolerance for difference increases to the point where moral power plays are hollow.

So how does the Republican party salvage itself from the ashes of a mighty defeat? I'm not sure that it can. It could become a more moderate party, move more toward the center of American politics, but that would a rejection of the principles that they have built their party on since at least Reagan. If they were to show that the free market can lead the green revolution instead of denying the need for it, if they were to cut programs that didn't work and actually solve the problems with the programs that most Americans enjoy, if they admit that supply-side economics does not work (as Greenspan almost admitted recently), if they admit that abortion and gay rights are complicated issues with multiple solutions, if they do all of those things, they may have a chance at having a voice again. But I don't think they will.

What the failure of the GOP does, however, is open the door for another party to come to power. That is not to say that a third party that is competitive with the Democrats and the Republicans would rise up. Successful third parties are next to impossible in American politics. This is due to Duverger's law, which states that plurality election systems (winner take all) like we have in the US, strongly favor two parties. Third parties that challenge the other two have the election system stacked against them. What may happen is that another party may replace the Republicans. Only time will tell with this one, but if the Senate really does go all Democratic, with house control and a strong, popular Democrat on Pennsylvania Avenue, then the Republicans will have a very hard time resisting the change that will come.

As a side note, if you are reading this on Live Journal, you're probably wondering why the formatting is all screwy. This is due to the imperfection of migrating Blogger to Live Journal. If anyone has any suggestions on how to retain formatting (and to create cuts so that LJ folks don't get swamped with my lengthy blog posts) let me know. You can comment on my LJ or on my Blogger account at abandon-the-ship.blogspot.com

Internet Globalization and Obama

After spending nearly an entire day playing Spore, ignoring my homework, and generally enjoying the beautiful weather we had here in New Orleans today, I figured it's finally time to write my post on Obama winning the presidency. Before I go into that, however, I want to discuss something that I find quite interesting. This though originated from my younger brother. He sent me an email that quoted a bit of monologue from Californication:

“We have all this amazing technology and yet, computers have turned into basically four finger wank machines. The internet was supposed to set us free, democratize us, but all it’s really given us is Howard Dean’s aborted candidacy and twenty-four hour a day access to kiddy porn. People they don’t write anymore, they blog. Instead of talking they text, no punctuation no grammar. LOL this and LFMAO that. It just seems to me that it’s just a bunch of stupid people pseudo-communicating with a bunch of other stupid people in a proto-language that resembles more what cavemen used to speak than the King’s English.”

This is a sentiment that I encounter sometimes, ironically, on the internet. I think, however, that this statement obviously comes from a certain privileged perspective. We see the internet phenomenon that is such a part of a lot of our lives through the lens of a Western culture that already had decent access to information and ideas before we went online. We already had such an open culture in America that it seemed that the internet was more of a toy than a tool, more of a way to be interconnected and yet isolated.

But if we were to look at the internet and its effects on developing countries, where societies are usually lacking in literacy, stability, and plurality, we see that the internet has done amazing things for these peoples. The internet is still, despite its distractions, a source of knowledge that grows every day. From Project Gutenberg to Google books to Wikipedia, these sources have given us a new toolbox that we can use to play with the world.

So when we deride ourselves for spending so much time doing shit that doesn't matter online, we should also remember the people who are truly aided by access to this beast. Here's just a short list of ways that I've changed my life because of the internet:

I never use a phone book

I never use a map (unless I'm driving across the country)

I take classes online

I take part in philosophical discussions with people around the world

I get a much larger survey of news on any given day than I could without it

I can find out which businesses are local and support local causes

I encounter old friends and keep in contact with them

As for Obama...

In July of 2004, Barack Obama gave the keynote address. Some of us knew who he was, certainly people in Chicago did, but most had never heard of him. He offered a vision of unity during the most divided time in this country that I think we've ever seen. When I heard his speech, I knew that he would be president. I put my money on him from that point on. I watched his votes in the Senate, I listened every time I heard his voice. Only the most cynical of Americans would claim that he speaks rhetoric without substance, but usually that complaint has come from people who supported the unintelligible attempts at communication that Bush 43 had offered us for nearly eight years now. Obama can speak well, and I tend to listen when anyone can speak that well.

My official call of the overall election was Obama wins with over 300 electoral college points, the Democrats get close, but would not win all 60 seats they wanted in the senate, and they would gain some in the house (I didn't have a figure for the house).  So I was right on all counts. A feather in my cap, but that doesn't matter any. I'm not a guru or anything...a lot of people saw it coming.

So what's next for America? Can we go from a hellish economy, a failed state of perpetual war, a destroyed education system, deficits beyond belief, and a large part of culture taken over by those who hate intelligence. The latter is the most concerning to me. If you haven't noticed, the American people no longer respect science, higher learning, heresy, skepticism. In short, many Americans hate the only thing that can lead us out of this mess. We can longer afford to run our country on knee-jerk reactions to complicated situations. We must assess things relentlessly, find where we can do the most good, and abandon the bad ideology that we used to depend on. When we finally find a pragmatic leader, like Obama, we need to be sure to work with him. He won't take your guns away, he is not a Muslim (like it would matter if he was), and he is not a foreign policy wimp. We'll see what actually happens next year, in the meantime, I'm going to enjoy this feeling of pride I have in our country and system. Republican democracy worked well this time around. Let's ensure it continues.

By the way, I should clarify a term I will use in this blog frequently: pragmatism, Pragmatism does not mean an ideology of the practical. I means a certain method of thinking that is dependent on ascertaining meaning through action ('pragma' from the Greek). In other words, we judge the truth of something, the value of something by how well it works, not by concrete, unalterable principles that fail to meet what we encounter in 'reality'. (I'll talk about the need for quotes around the word 'reality' later. This is meant to avoid any accustation of me supporting any sort of Realist epistemological stance.)

On finishing Fukiyama and YouTube Spats

A warning to myself: do not make bold statements about how the world will be without regard for the possibility that it will change in the future.

Fukiyama's view that Hegel was essentially right, that there would eventually come a point at which conflict would meet an ultimate mediation, was naïve in retrospect. He props an ideology up by saying it's the ultimate of all the others. How is that different than Marx?

He discounts religions as a problematic force in liberalism, but he again was trimming the evidence to fit his idea. Religion is indicative of the real problem that liberalism faces: any force that is strong enough to push democracy down to a secondary level. Overreach by capitalism and religion are the two obvious enemies of sustained liberalism currently. Instead of patting ourselves on the back and propping up liberalism with Hegel, why not address the very real threat that overreaching ideologies pose?

I awoke to an email from someone who watched (or maybe didn't) my YouTube video on Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois. 

Here's the email:

Your choice of words and expressions, "- On", is very telling. it shows the lack of respect and knowledge you have for both of these fine men and their era.
However the video is provoking hopefully it will be used to springboard more respectful and truthful videos.

The gist of freedom? It's still faith

Needless to say I was pretty confused and kind of offended at the email. It wasn't just some random troll comment, but an email. The "-On" was a place marker for "hard-on" which I used in response to a comment on the video that was dealing with Washington's hard-on for capitalism. It was a response to a comment by one of my subscribers whom I know does not give a shit that I use fucking language like this. I was also put off by her assertion that the video was not truthful. I wonder what it was that I said in the video that was not truthful. I read from the text "Up From Slavery" and some biographical information. Analysis by definition does not fall under the True/False dichotomy so long as the evidence is presented fairly. An analysis may be unsuccessful, but not false. At any rate, I responded:

Sorry if I offended your sensibilities by using a little short hand for Washington's blinding love for capitalist ideology, but that's the way I talk. I'd say the same sort of thing in reference to Jesus and Hitler and their ideologies. People throughout history were still people, and they deserve respect because of their actions. Respect itself is achieved through action, not worrying about language that we use when we comment on a YouTube video.

As for your accusation that I don't know what I'm talking about, give me specifics, or are you happy to accuse without backing yourself up? All I did was outline the clash betweent the two men and focus on Washington's ideology that failed him and African Americans. I have yet to make the follow up in which I'll show how Du Bois tried to correct the movement and ended up having trouble of his own.

I have an immense respect for the civil rights movement and its leaders, but that does not make them immune to criticism or analysis. Propping up heros does nothing without remembering their mistakes. Else, if we use the tools they created without knowing their pitfalls, we will make the same mistakes.

As for your "gist of freedom? It's still faith" statement, I don't know what you are talking about.

I found out later what that last thing meant. It's the from title of the book that the emailer has written. At any rate, the point of the video was to analyze (which includes critique) of these two figures ideas. Since she did not deal with the content of the video, I'm assuming she didn't watch it. This is the second time that I was criticized for this video without specifics to substance, which leads me to a recommendation: if you want to argue something, actually engage in the issue. Ad hominem attacks, no matter how nicely dressed, are not an acceptable form of argument.

Also, if you are offended by language that I use, don't read my words or listen to me speak. I live in a place where these words and many more are commonplace and I find them acceptable and important. If I say the word 'Fuck' does that show that I have bad character? I find that actions are a far better indicator of a person's character than their choice of words.

Got my scroll ball working on my mouse again. Hurray for me.

Ahem...

This blog's content is copyrighted under the following Creative Commons copyright

This is yet another rendition of my thoughts on the interwebs. The reason for the copyright, which says that you can use the contents of this blog, modify it, etc. so long as the credit is given to me, is because I intend to use this blog for creative and academic purposes. I will be posting thoughts on certain topics that I may use later in my academic career, and while I believe in freedom of information and thought, I also believe that credit must be given where it's due. That is not to say that what I will be posting is worth using, but in the off chance that it is, please give me credit.

So, welcome to my blog. After a few hours of playing Spore, only to have it crap out on me in the middle of an integral point in the game, I decided that I should do something a little more productive. My Apple Mighty Mouse scroll ball is on the fritz, so I'm using a different mouse, which is nice, but for some reason the scroll won't work. This has happened to my mighty mouse before, but this time I think it might be dead.

I was reading Fukiyama's The End of History tonight for my comparative politics class and I realized why it is that I love political theory so much. It's the right blend of philosophy and political science that makes me squishy inside. Not that I agree with Fukiyama, but after spending most of the semester either looking at graphs of GDP PPP and HDI, and parsing analytic philosopher's meaningless attempts at meaning in philosophy of mind, it's nice to have a more continental approach to deal with. I was amused at the film Zizek! in which Slovoj Zizek goes off about contemporary analytic philosophy.

I think I've come to an understanding about why it was that I chose the moniker Abandon Ship about 8 years ago. At least, I have an explanation that fits now. I hate ideology. I think ideology is the worst thing for mankind and should be disregarded. Now, that is not to say that we should attempt to start a process of inquiry or action without presuppositions; that seems to be impossible. What we must do is start with presuppositions on the condition that they can and probably will change as time and evidence force us to reassess them. The largest mistake ever made in philosophy is the mistake of religion: most philosophers assume their conclusion. By starting a philosophical inquiry on the basis of a certain thing being solidly true is to deny the seeming nature of everything: things change. I tire of people trying to shove a square peg into a round hole (trying to force the evidence to fit) instead of adapting the hole. There's no changing the peg, but the hole, we have created that. 

That brings me back to Fukiyama, who claims via Hegel, that the end of ideological evolution is at hand, that one will guide us to the Geist: democratic liberalism. Now, don't get me wrong, I like democratic liberalism, at least some of the time, when it works well. But there are far too many problems with it for it to be the pill that will make us bliss out Soma style. So let us start, with assumptions built on a caveat of possibility of revision, and go from there. The world is a'changin, and we aren't doing anything useful if we don't change with it.