Emission

Yegods, this is a special kind of stupid:

But surely she must see, I counter, that the majority of British Muslims are moderates? Sitting in her publisher’s office in an elegant grey-flannel trouser suit and pearl earrings, she fixes me with her lucid brown eyes. “If the majority are moderates, why did the Muslim community never take to the streets to abhor the 7/7 bombers? Why is it that the only time we see Muslims protesting en masse is when Islam is allegedly insulted, like with the Danish cartoons, or the Pope’s comments?”

“I’ll tell you why: because Islam is the new fascism. Just like Nazism started with Hitler’s vision, the Islamic vision is a caliphate – a society ruled by Sharia law – in which women who have sex before marriage are stoned to death, homosexuals are beaten, and apostates like me are killed. Sharia law is as inimical to liberal democracy as Nazism. Young Muslims need to be persuaded that the vision of the Prophet Mohammed is a bad one, and you aren’t going to get that in Islamic faith schools.”

Forget the “Islam is the new fascism” thing, if one can (I’d like to save that for a more involved post, whilst I’m not hitting my head off a wall, here).

Ayaan Hirsi Ali suggests it was deviant of Muslims not to take to the streets in mass protest against the bombings, possibly waving signs around and suchlike. This is a strange attitude to take. For one thing, like most national tragedies, Britain after the tragedies was in mourning, for which the kind of political theatre a mass rally would undoubtedly be is incongruous at best, and tasteless at worst. There were a number of vigils held, in which British Muslims took an active part (as you would expect, since some British Muslims were actually killed in the attack; collateral damage is unimportant to the fanatic), one of which was co-organised by the Muslim Association of Britain, which we are always hearing has been co-opted by the treacherous Islamofascist hordes. Must have just been some really deep cover.

As for the assumption that “there are no moderate Muslims”, i.e., there are no Muslims that do not support the terrorist tactics of Al-Qaeda, why don’t we actually ask the Muslims what they think? About a year after the bombings, Populus polled British Muslims on various subjects, including their responses to 7/7. Only 6% thought that “the 7/7 bombers were acting according to the true principles of Islam”, 13% thought that “The 7/7 bombers should be considered martyrs” and 16% thought that “The 7/7 attacks were wrong but the cause of the bombers was right.” This suggests a fairly sizeable fringe, but no-one could possibly read those polls and think “Boy, most British Muslims simply loved those bombings, and are slavering for more! This truly proves that Islam itself is the problem, and all Muslims want to see us dead or slaves in the new, glorious Caliphate!”

As usual, there’s some of the usual demographic panic, where Hirsi Ali suggests that Muslims will become the majority in Britain in the next 50 years. Seeing as Muslims currently make up a paltry 3% of the British population, even making the very questionable assumptions that Muslims wouldn’t integrate further into British society and only marry amongst themselves, Muslim women would have to be squeezing out babies on Fordist principles for this to make any kind of sense. I suspect Hirsi Ali is bullshitting us.

One can probably tell I find Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s commitment to rationalism slightly underwhelming; more totemic than actual, using philosophers as human shields and massed ranks of infantry than through any sustained intellectual challenge. Just another front in the ongoing, and utterly fucking interminable culture wars. But then, that’s why she’s at the AEI, and I’m here at my blog. Warfare is fun, easy, and cheap, especially for the armchair generals and keyboard warriors.

Update: Is it just me, or is it really fucking creepy how the author keeps going over Hirsi Ali’s looks in every other paragraph of that piece?

Frost/Nixon

There’s a curious compulsion within the American conservative movement to classify everything as either “conservative” or “liberal”, much like the Daily Mail’s attempts to order the natural world into things which cause cancer, and those which do not. Mostly one finds – unexpectedly, of course – that “good” things (Mom, apple pie, whichever film is most critically acclaimed at the time of writing) are conservative, and “bad” things (syphilis, plagues of locusts, BBC Three) are liberal. But really whatever is most conservative is usually that which it is tactically expedient to claim as conservative.

It’s kind of like cheerleading – prurient, unseemly, and irrelevant to the matter at hand – and it reached its’ apogee in literal cheerleading for John McCain’s campaign, where everything, from the financial crisis, to McCain not remembering how many houses he had, to being continually behind Obama in the polls, was “good news for John McCain”.

The peerless Roy Edroso links to one such attempt, with the National Review’s Charlotte Hays claiming that:

“The blizzard is definitely a force for conservatism”

Cold, potentially deadly, and mostly wind?

and not only because it has had the global-warming crowd scrambling for explanations.

Oh, of course. It’s always nice when someone says something this bone-shatteringly stupid (weather is not climate, and you cannot generalise conditions in one area to the whole world). It acts as your own personal filter; if they believe that, then it’s likely much of what they believe will probably be nonsense. This is a little unfair, but in a world where there is vast trenches of information waiting to be dredged, you need some shortcuts. Otherwise you’re just going to be bringing up a lot of muck, and precious little brass.

But wait! There’s more than just boiler-plate climate change baiting here:

The blizzard reveals something basic:  Liberals in government want to tell us what to eat, counsel us about how and when to die, and in general attempt to engineer our lives. But when reality knocks, they can’t do the basic stuff such as clearing the streets so that newborns don’t die in bloody apartment-building lobbies. Mayor Bloomberg may be receiving an unfair amount of criticism for his lackluster [sic] performance in coping with Mother Nature, given the almost unprecedented nature of the storm, but the unplowed city streets provide a metaphor for the nanny state: It can order us to do anything, but it can’t take care of the basic obligations of government.

It is a compelling philosophical argument against liberalism that it cannot save everyone all the time, apparently. It is also responsible for unforeseen extremes of weather. Despite the storm being “almost unprecedented” and criticism against Bloomberg being “unfair”, liberalism, by not using its’ Power Ring or X-Ray Vision or supreme, omnipotent clairvoyance, killed a newborn baby, because it’s spending money on poor people and safety at work and other useless fripperies. You can’t have road gritting services and unemployment benefits, apparently. That would just be ridiculous.

But at least a child is dead! It’s good news for conservatism!

Cthulhu/Kodos ’12!

And so this is fun, watching the Democrats blow a once in a lifetime opportunity to do something vaguely centre-leftish. Of course, since they’re not technically a centre-left party, but an agglomeration of almost everyone in America who is not definably crazy, it means you have a party whose ideological range leans from mild social democracy to reactionary social conservatism. It’s not exactly the optimum centre-left vehicle, as d-squared notes. And despite calls for sanity, that only seemed to get everyone excited because it was vaguely ironic, which worries the hell out of me.

Estimates that the Republicans are going to get about 50-60 seats, and about 8 or so seats in the Senate seem about right so far, although it had been argued that there was an extremely wide variance in possible outcomes. It seems like the mushy middle was the best place to go, although there are bright spots in the dark firmament. Not many, though.

More to come, as more votes come in.

Updates under the fold. An elitist fold, hiding the true hatred all left-wingers have for America from salt-of-the-earth billionaires!

Dear America

Please don’t suck too bad tonight.

That is all.

A slight return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Well, bugger, I’ve neglected this, haven’t I? I do apologise. I am an unreliable sort.

As a return, here’s, as usual, a slightly half-formed post with an economic tinge.

I’m often torn when it comes to the matter of modern financial capitalism. Considering the utter rottenness of the edifice, part of me wants to go full wild-eyed anarcho-communist and actively tear the whole goddamn thing down. Watch it burn. This would be tremendously satisfying, a propaganda of the deed on a mass scale.

It’s also thematically satisfying, I guess, since our financial overlords hold what is essentially an economic timebomb over us all; without the effective regulation needed, there is no safeguard against another major financial crisis in the future. Sometimes, when in a drunkenly belligerent, political mood, I have described Wall Street as functionally equivalent to terrorists; using economic violence, and the threat of economic violence, to their own benefit. I was only half-joking, largely because terrorism is usually the tactic of the politically and militarily weak, rather than the powerful, who can easily employ much greater force, and much greater destruction.

And that’s where the problem lies; the destructive force of a financial crash would hurt the self-described Masters of the Universe, it’s true. As individuals, some, perhaps many would be reduced to bankruptcy. Others would find their wealth, their source of credibility, greatly denuded. The status of financial capitalism as a whole, as the giant which it is almost impossible to tackle critically, would possibly be destroyed outright. It would make sane reform much easier. But it would hurt so many people as collateral damage, honest hardworking people whose only vice is believing that the American Dream will, in fact, give the sucker an even break. And I couldn’t do that, even if I had the capability. I couldn’t immiserate that many people, just to shatter their illusions about what the financial elite are doing to ruin their livelihoods and their nation for generations to come.

And so the illusion continues; and due to the survival of modern financial capitalism thanks to things like TARP (which is an incredibly successful, competently administered program, in terms of what it set out to do and what it has accomplished) and the American stimulus bill (similarily, with the caveat that it was much too small and wrongly focused to have the necessary effect on demand hoped), means that it managed to get away with causing the crisis relatively untouched, and even managed to eventually deflect the criticism to government spending. The crisis suddenly became the fault of modern society’s bete noir, the overbearing, statist, bureaucratic government and the amount of debt it held, despite that debt largely being a function of a) the recession, as tax receipts fell and benefit claims rose as a result of the financial institutions’ malfeasance, and b) how much it cost to make sure the little fuckers didn’t take us all down with them, Lehman Brothers style. And so the enemies of growth became not the unstable financial sector and the house price bubble, but benefit cheats and public services. A familiar story, if not a truthful one, and I can only hope Clegg, Osborne and Cameron’s tongues blacken, swell and choke them as a karmic result of the continual mistruths and false, pious stories told in lieu of data to support their claims.

It actually reminds me a little of a specious argument made to me about climate change. It was along the lines of “We probably don’t have to do anything, it’ll probably resolve itself. Who’s heard of the hole in ozone layer anymore?”

Of course, the reason we don’t hear about the hole in the ozone layer any more is that we bloody well did something about it. That argument really made me despair a little. There’s a significant body of people who seem to be ignorant of the processes of government and how we resolve issues, and seems to take it as given that some problems are eternal, or will be worked out on their own without any real contribution from anyone.

The next financial crisis will come, and it may come soon. Ironically, it may develop out of the ashes of the last financial crisis, merely proving what a gigantic clusterfuck that was for everybody involved. Sorting out the twisted, complex, and sometimes fradulent financial instruments which were responsible for the mess we’re currently in could cause the great houses of capital to collapse inwards again as investors realise to what scale they were had and as houses are taken away from homeowners who are supposed to take the banks at face value when they say they have to foreclose, without any corroborating paperwork.

And what happens when it comes? Another bailout, another increase in debt held by governments in order to weather the storm of collapsing financial institutions, more slashing of public services as the primary function of government becomes the stabilizing wheels on a careening, wonky unicycle of finance, rather than, say, the general welfare of its’ citizens, until the kind of governments that we know in the developed world, mostly stable, mostly liberal, mostly democracies, could collapse under the weight.

I’d like to hope that won’t be the case, that as with Marx’s predictions about the death-throes of capitalism merely being its’ birth-pangs, we learn from our mistakes slowly and painfully,  still fumbling our way towards a tolerably humane society. But I’m not holding my hopes up just yet.

So, Yeah…

Ok, ok, I know, I’m shit. TEZHI has never really got off the ground and life (specifically moving into a place which has no internets) has got in the way of this blog. But we shall begin anew! A year zero! But not in a Republican France or Khmer Rouge kind of way. Well, maybe a Republican France kind of way before it started to look like a Saw film with better dialogue, which is not difficult, I must admit.

To give me impetus, Facebookery has been connected! Oh me! Oh my! And this most thrilling and yet at the same time most boring of election campaigns is still in our midst! Hooray!

Stay tuned for a review of manifestoes, with, as always, a number of obscenities.

Socialism for me, but not for thee.

From the mouths of libertarians, little acorns of selfishness grow into gigantic oaks of twattery.

If you’ve clicked on the link, you’ll find Matt Welch, part of a collective of motherfuckers called Reason magazine, a publication celebrating that peculiarly American ideology, libertarianism. Sometimes it can be principled, but most of the time it seems to be an excuse for being a sociopathic, selfish wanker, as we shall see here.

So Matt begins with the obvious, the thing that libertarians have tried to deny above all; American healthcare sucks, and France is awesome:

To put it plainly, when free marketers warn that Democratic health care initiatives will make us more “like France,” a big part of me says, “I wish.” It’s not that I think it’s either feasible or advisable for the United States to adopt a single-payer, government-dominated system. But it’s instructive to confront the comparative advantages of one socialist system abroad to sharpen the arguments for more capitalism at home.

For a dozen years now I’ve led a dual life, spending more than 90 percent of my time and money in the U.S. while receiving 90 percent of my health care in my wife’s native France. On a personal level the comparison is no contest: I’ll take the French experience any day. ObamaCare opponents often warn that a new system will lead to long waiting times, mountains of paperwork, and less choice among doctors. Yet on all three of those counts the French system is significantly better, not worse, than what the U.S. has now.

Slam. Fucking. Dunk. This is the obvious point, and it’s one Matt Welch makes well. The American system, the most marketised, is the one which is least satisfactory on all levels compared to all those “socialised” systems (although, of course, socialised systems vary, but even the suboptimal, like Britain’s NHS, do well in comparison with the American clusterfuck). Universal systems generally have better outcomes, for much less cost, than the American system. And lest we forget, this is a system that leaves a significant portion of its’ population unable to receive most healthcare. It is a brutal system which leaves people to die, or to live in penury for the rest of their lives.

But you could say that about capitalism in general. (And I do.) But capitalism has benefits as well. It’s Dynamic! Flexible! There’s so much choice! Yadayadayada. These claims are usually overstated, but as Welch himself notes, nowhere are they more overrated than in the health care industry. There is precious little choice; most states are dominated by one or two insurance companies. It’s tempting to say that due to the process of rescission, allowing insurance companies to reject people for pre-existing conditions (that sometimes they didn’t even know they had until they had insurance and were able to get a medical examination. Yes, that’s right.), it’s insurance companies that have the choice, not the patients.

Due to the fact that most people’s insurance is paid through their employer, it also restricts people’s ability to move between jobs, afraid to switch jobs, enhancing the natural power the employer has over the employee simply by being the one in charge of the purse strings. I’d even suggest one of the major reasons for the American workforce’s submissive, conciliatory stance towards employers is based upon the extra power that employers have as dispensers of health insurance. So there’s real drawbacks to American healthcare even if you’re looking at it from a position which does not see any problems with inequity, a position which is classically liberal.

However, despite all this, despite the fact that the health care industry is a failure even on capitalist terms, Welch swings back in favour of it over a universal health care system, like France. Why? Well, partially, it’s that curious libertarian belief that the American federal government is uniquely incompetent, so even things government does well are fucked up by it. But mostly it’s so the motherfucker doesn’t have to pay taxes:

We know that the horrific amount of third-party gobbledygook in America, the cost insensitivity, and the price randomness are all products of bad policies that market reforms could significantly improve. We know, too, that France’s low retail costs are subsidized by punitively high tax rates that will have to increase unless benefits are cut. If you are rich and sick (or a healthy doctor), you’re likely better off here. But as long as the U.S. remains this ungainly public-private hybrid, with ever-tighter mandates producing ever-fewer consumer choices, the average consumer’s health care experience will probably be more pleasing in France. [...]

I’ve now reached the age where I will better appreciate the premium skill level of American doctors and their high-quality equipment and techniques. And in a very real way my family has voted with its feet when it comes to choosing between the two countries. One of France’s worst problems is the rigidity and expense that comes with an extensive welfare state.

That’s right kids! Despite the excellence of the French healthcare system, which Matt Welch enjoys because he’s able to flee the Kafkaesque, bureaucratic nightmare that is the American healthcare system, he doesn’t want to pay for it. He loves France, as long as he doesn’t have to live there and contribute. He can skip merrily on, contributing nothing but defenses for a system he doesn’t even have to deal with.

What a fucking selfish bastard, inconsistent even on his own withered libertarian principles. “I want every service! As long as I don’t have to pay for it!”. This is one of a kind of person who complains about progressive taxation because it “redistributes wealth”, bitches the need to cut the welfare state to get people to take “personal responsibility” for themselves. But the rich, the upper-middle class, never need to take personal responsibility for themselves.

How wonderful that everyone, rich and poor alike, can travel abroad and take advantage of French healthcare!

Did You Know We Also Wank About Culture?

It was decided fairly early on (by BITS. In my BRAIN. BRAIN BITS.) that I felt I needed somewhere to rant about politics, and also a more whimsical, calm place where I could talk about things that are interesting to me, like culture, etc.

This isn’t because I consider culture some kind of distinct creature from politics, a “non-overlapping magisterium”, to borrow a phrase from the Æsahættr Debates. This is obviously bollocks. Politics interacts with culture at every level from the mundane to the subconscious, from the biting satire of The Thick of It and Yes, Minister to the twatty, overrated woman-baiting that is likely to be the outcome of  The Pregnant Widow, Martin Amis’ latest work. (It may be unfair to judge a book before it is written, but I read Yellow Dog, I’m owed some unfairness.) Politics is a human activity, one of the most human, and it is weaved into and throughout society. You could argue that it is society, if you don’t take the narrow view that politics is what a Scottish ex-red with a felt tip said to a posh ex-PR man with a mannequin face ad infinitum. That’s just boring.

But it’s a question of ethos. I want a place where I can witter on about whatever takes my fancy (with a focus on film, tv, books, and all cultural ephemera), where I can let my brain run free over connections and ideas, where I want to post stuff that I think is really, really cool, and I grin so widely I swallow the Cheshire Cat and all his mates.

And I want a place I can be angry, because fuck knows there’s a lot to be angry about. Our economy was fucked over by the very institutions that are meant to bring us growth. The people “in charge” become more and more divorced from what the rest of us are thinking. The morality of capitalism becomes almost as criminal and venal as it was back when companies owned towns and workers were little better than indentured servants. We have lose as much faith in the organs that counteracted the grossest indignities as those that revel in them. Our presses are run by people who think facts are expensive and news is a commodity. This shit, as they say, is fucked up.

But this is a Venn Diagram, and all things overlap. So I might get annoyed at bad art in an expressly political way (Oh Twilight, I am coming for you with a foot length of lead piping), and I might feel like there’s something political that just needs a bit of a giggle over.

It’s all a matter of taste. I like oysters, and snails. I hope you do, too.

The Erich Zann Harmonic Institute, for your perusal.

The Revolution Will Be Bloggified

Or something like that. You know how things need to be portentious or dramatic in the blogosphere, so I’m doing my bit.

This is a wordpress version of a blogspot blog, also entitled Cynicism From Concentrate, which you can view here. It is the sincere wish of the writer that this is a more long-lived blog, which the more hyperlink-happy of you will notice is a task that is Not That Hard.

Still, I try.