Posted by: Froth on: 3rd of November, 2009
Graham writes about the balance of power in the USA, and his concern that we on the east of the Atlantic want President Obama to be something other than a US President – we want him to fix things faster than he can, and in ways he can’t, and still be working within his own system. Essentially, I think, Graham is concerned that we want Obama to be a benevolent dictator, by our definition of benevolent, and not a democratic leader.
It’s certainly a valid worry, but I want to talk about why the expectations of the new President were so high, and why the disappointment is so acute.
I think we wanted Obama to fix America.
I think a lot of the frustration and anger we felt at watching America in the past eight years were based on things about America, not about Bush Junior. Most people in mine and Graham’s generation came to political awareness during the Bush years. It was easy to conflate Bush with everything we disliked, because we didn’t know any different. And it gave us hope: if everything wrong with the US was Bush’s fault, then everything could be put right by the first liberal who came along.
We were wrong.
The US is simply not as sane or civilised as we had hoped. Now that Bush is gone, and the glow of relief has faded, we realise that the barbarism of American society is far more deep-seated than we knew. Obama can’t fix it. The world is still being ruled by a violent bully, and it’s worse than we ever thought, because the bully wasn’t Bush, it was America.
The people of the US let their poor die of hunger and cold, rather than be taxed. The people of the US let others rot with treatable illnesses, rather than risk their tax paying to save someone they don’t like. The people of the US let their fellow citizens be killed by criminals and policemen alike, rather than give up their guns. It is not the President who chooses these things.
These things are not the fault of George Bush, and so Barack Obama cannot fix them. We had pinned our hopes on the election, but it was always a false hope. I still believe that America can fix itself, that it can earn the right to stand among the free peoples of the world – but it cannot be done by one president, no matter how much better he is than the last.
Posted by: Froth on: 20th of October, 2009
Below the cut, you will find a poem. It is, I think, a real competitor for the title Worst Poem Ever Written.
It is below a cut because it may cause temporary blindness and extreme mental anguish.
It is written by one Paul Ginz, and is here reproduced in full, not because I agree with the sentiment but because I think it illustrates something about the Men’s Rights Movement.
Its members make too much of their problems.
Their problems are undoubtedly real. But they place more weight on them than on anything else. Their own pain looms so large in their eyes that the whole world is distorted by it. In their eyes, women rule the world, and have easier lives, and have always had easier lives.
This failure of empathy comes with a distressing vision of the ideal world – a world where men and women are always, irreconcilably different, suited for different tasks and deserving of different status. They will deny the last, but when only one sex is to have a voice, a say, a right to decide things and to hold positions of leadership, that sex has higher status. And that higher status belongs to men.
Because, you see, their problems and their pain demand reparation, and no sacrifice is too high for women to make for that goal.
Posted by: Froth on: 12th of October, 2009
Recently, my housemates watched High School Musical. Since I was in the room at the time, I had no choice but to watch too.
Well. What a weird culture.
It’s not just that particular film, of course. American high schools feature heavily in popular entertainment, and I’ve noticed it before. The culture shown on screen is alien and, frankly, bizarre. School life over here is nothing like that.
At least, I think it isn’t. But I was largely an outcast from the social life of my senior school, so I could be mistaken.
It seems to me that over here, we don’t do cliques in the same way. There are cliques, of course; and there are very insular friendship groups; but nobody calls themselves a clique. There are the stupid sporty people, but they don’t wear a uniform and call themselves jocks (actually, nobody calls them jocks), and they aren’t usually very big or threatening, because the major sport over here is football. They just play a lot of sport and are friends mostly with other sporty people. There are popular people and unpopular people and the shy people who spend their time in the library, but as far as I can tell, none of these groups has an entrance exam. Or a ringleader. Or a membership list; they’re just a group of people who like X or do Y, or enjoy each other’s company.
I may be completely wrong about this, as mentioned above. Am I?
Posted by: Froth on: 9th of October, 2009
There is something about the arguments of the American ‘Christian Right’ that I find deeply troubling. They speak in a faith born from their holy texts, but somehow they are not reading from any Bible I have ever met.
Partly, of course, this is because there is a strong tendency among conservative evangelicals in the US to read and quote only the King James translation. Somehow, it is supposed to be the only infallible English translation. Well, maybe it is and maybe it isn’t (and I for one think it isn’t), but perfectly translated or not, the language of the King James is not modern American, and I doubt most of its adherents can read it fluently.
But partly, it is because certain traditional interpretations have become the only permissible interpretations. The orthodoxy must never be questioned. The more restrictive and specific and definite the tradition can be made, the better. No adultery becomes no sex before marriage becomes no kissing before marriage. Not showing off wealth becomes prescriptive modesty becomes every woman wearing skirts.
Not questioning the religious orthodoxy becomes not questioning the secular orthodoxy becomes socialism is evil.
Somehow there is no room in this faith for more than one way of doing anything, religious or otherwise. The religious right know the One True Way and all other paths are evil. All wars are just and all charity is perversion. All wealth is earned. All difference is heresy. Seeking to change the Tradition is radical and faithless – regardless of whether you’re exploring new ways or old ones. Incense and candles and new translations and liturgy and liberalism and evolution and bare feet and uppity women all go in the big box marked Bad, and there’s only one kind of Bad and it’s all as bad as each other.
So far, we’ve only got rigidity and judgementalness.
Where it start getting really weird is when the US Constitution, and all its amendments, get put in the same Holy Writ category. It’s unchangeable, complete, perfect, and must never be questioned. Only one way of reading it is possible, and it’s the harshest and least loving way. And all good people must believe its every word – or else they’re being Bad.
It has somehow become part of this particular faith that the fabled ‘American Way’ is also God’s way. The Constitution is his new covenant with America.
Which is seriously heretical and, quite frankly, makes me want to retch, because Gos would have to be barbaric and cruel to do things America’s way.
To the American Christian Right, basic human decencies like wanting everyone to be warm and fed and none of the sick to be left to die have become evil.
And yet somehow these people are my brothers. They are believers in my faith. They say they are saved, and who am I to deny it? They are my family in a far-off land, and I have no power there.
So all I can do is this:
Come back, my sisters. Come back, my brothers. Turn away from this cold hard path and step back into the Light. Remember that the Samaritan was a foreigner and an outcast, who payed for the healing of a wounded stranger. Remember the terrifying parable of the sheep and the goats. Will you stand at the seat of judgement, and argue your rights? Will you leave the hungry unfed and the naked unclothed, and say the Constitution makes it right?
And shall I stand before the seat of judgement, and say I saw my brothers turning from the path of love, and I said nothing?
Posted by: Froth on: 8th of October, 2009
There are many ways to derail a conversation. You can introduce new topics, go on tangents, complain about minor aspects of the language of the initiating text, all sorts of things.
But one of the most pernicious, in my book, is the “please explain this to me” method. Asking to be taught about the blog you’re reading or the movement it’s part of or the meaning of the words (like ‘cisgender’) you haven’t seen before is an excellent way to get a discussion off course. Helpful people try and explain things to you, and people try and correct or agree with them, and before you know it the original topic is long ago and far away.
And that sort of thing is just not on. It is not hard to find resources on the Internet. Definitions and discussions are archived for all to see. If you really want to know, go and look it up, and join in when you know the words.
Posted by: Froth on: 6th of October, 2009
There is no such thing as a terrorist threat.
No, really, there isn’t.
There’s such a thing as a bombing threat, or a hijacking threat, or a murder threat or an assault threat or a graffiti threat, but there’s no such thing as a terrorist threat, because terrorism isn’t an action.
Terrorism is a whole range of actions performed with the intent of causing terror and, in effect, holding the safety of an entire country hostage. If I murder somebody because I really hate them personally and want them to be dead, that’s not terrorism. If I murder the same person to make a political point and make sure it’s known why I killed them, that’s terrorism. In the first case, other people I personally hate may be in danger, but in the second case, anyone publically holding the same views as my victim may be in danger, and will feel unsafe – I will have spread fear.
A terrorist threat might be understood, therefore, to mean “We think some people might be planning something intended to scare people for political or religious reasons,” but it doesn’t constitute a reason to shut down whole festivals, because it’s too vague. “Some people might do something” isn’t a threat.
Unfortunately, “terrorist” has become a word to conjure by, and things are shut down and people frightened away by the mere mention of terrorism. It puts huge power in the hands of the police. If they don’t want something to happen – and I’m not convinced that the police only ever act out of good, unpolitical, lawkeeping motives – then they need only to say “You can’t do this, because we suspect there may be a threat of terrorism,” and who will question it?
I wish this wasn’t true, but after what happened to Big Green Festival, I think it is. And I think we need to stop talking about a terrorist threat, and start being specific. A bombing threat. A hijacking threat. A damage-to-property threat. If it isn’t a crime unless politically motivated, then it shouldn’t be a crime at all. And if it’s a crime regardless, the police should care regardless.
Posted by: Froth on: 4th of October, 2009
Sometimes, there is no more money.
This is a thing that well-off people do not know or have forgotten. They live in a world where there can always be a little extra squeezed out of this budget or that, where you can save money up for holidays, borrow against the university fund, or just buy cheaper food that week.
This came up as a problem recently on a LARP forum. Various people were complaining that the standard of set dressing was not high enough, and people should make more effort. I was one of the people pointing out that, by the time we’ve bought the ticket and paid for transport and an acceptable costume, there’s no money left for proper canvas tents and altars.
It didn’t seem to sink in. Explanations abounded that costume can be done quite cheaply from charity shops, and that set dressing doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated and that tents can be shared by a group so nobody needs to put in more that twenty pounds or so. Which is all true – except that by the time I’ve done all that I’ve spent another fifty quid.
I belong to the class of LARPer that has no money. My only income is student loan and what my parents give me. I scrimp and save and live on instant noodles (literally) to pay for tickets, transport, food and kit. I own one sword and three daggers – no mace, hammer, greatsword, staff, or anything else many larpers consider to be vital pieces of equipment. I don’t own any armour. Armour would be a wonderful thing to own and would make my larp life much easier, but it would cost me a hundred pounds.
I had to cancel the last event of this year, despite its being hosted by my character’ allies, despite the personal storyline I needed to pursue, because I didn’t have enough money for trains and food.
I can’t afford to spend fifty pounds on improving my set dressing and costume, because there is no more money. The money is all gone. No more. No savings to rob, no earmarked funds to borrow against, nothing. “Just an extra ten pounds” is too much, because it’s more that I have.
People who aren’t poor, who haven’t ever made the choice between breakfast and lunch, don’t seem to understand the concept of having nothing left to spend.
And because they don’t understand the concept, because they don’t really know what no more money means, they expect the poor to keep up with them. To the rich, the comfortable, the well off, washing your clothes without detergent is unthinkable. Washing powder isn’t expensive, so there’s no justification for not buying it. The same applies to new clothes when the old wear out, and bus fare to the hospital, and haircuts and heating and fresh paint for the walls. The rich very often fail to realise that poverty means exactly that. It means your youngest child, for his sixth birthday, asking only for “something nobody else has ever worn before”. It means telling your children they can’t have sweets because there’s only fifty pence left in your purse, which will buy a loaf a bread, which will provide beans on toast for dinner and toast for breakfast and then, God willing, the paycheck will come through. It means giving up ever eating lunch at work so that your children can wear shoes. It means walking everywhere and calling a weekend at a friend’s house a holiday.
It means that when the money is gone, it’s gone.
Posted by: Froth on: 15th of September, 2009
As you may have gathered, one of my hobbies is Live-Action-Role-Play-ing, or more usually, larping. We dress up and hit each other with rubber swords; or, to put it another way, we engage in extended sessions of collaborative improvisation, with a framework of rules to accomodate combat without breaking role.
In these games, religion tends to feature heavily. By various methods the gods of the games interact with their worshippers and their worshippers talk about and pray to them.
Which is all great fun, and I very much refer playing religious characters to nonreligious ones, because it gives me more to work when I’m constructing the character and it makes their head a more interesting place to be.
But I get irritated with some of my fellow larpers, and their tendencies to bring Christian language and imagery into their game religions.
The most common offences are asking for things ‘in Your name’, and speaking as if the gods love their followers. It’s easy to think of these things as being common to all religions, especially if you aren’t a believer in your real life, but they aren’t. They’re specific. The power and importance of God’s name, and the idea of asking for things through the power of God’s name, are specific to the unnamed god – the God of Abraham, whose name cannot be known by mortals. And the idea that God is Love, and even that God loves, is specific to Christianity. God loves us. But unless it’s specifically written into the setting – and it rarely is – it irritates me when people import it.
For instance, and I apologise for the let-me-tell-you-about-my-character nature of this instance, and since the point has been made you can feel free to skip the illustration – For instance, my character Irska is a member of a religious order dedicated to the god Mina. She loves Mina’s teachings and serves Mina wholeheartedly. And Mina does not love her back, because it is not in her nature to love. She is the god of justice and of law. Love is a temptation to leniency, to mercy, and so Mina is free of love. She rewards her followers according to what they deserve, for she is justice personified and her servants are given their wages, but she does not, cannot love.
And Irska is certainly not a child of Mina. People who talk like that really need to do some research into the religion they aren’t following.
Posted by: Froth on: 13th of September, 2009
Climate change. That’s the spectre that most of us think of when we think of burning oil and wasted fuel. And climate change, and therefore the emission of greenhouse gases, matters, no doubt about it.
But climate change isn’t what gets me riled up, as many of my friends can tell you. When I see fossil fuels being wasted it isn’t the thought of melting ice sheets that gets me incoherent with frustration.
It’s the fact that we’re burning the feedstock.
Say you’ve got a limited supply of something incredibly useful. You can make it into machines, medicines, clothes, furniture, huge numbers of things and new uses get invented every day. What do you do with it?
Why, set fire to it, of course!
It’s not like we need plastic. It’s not like medicines are useful. It’s not like complex hydrocarbons are hard to synthesise from scratch*.
Why are we burning the feedstock? Why, when we have a dozen other ways to generate electricity, are we instead taking irreplaceable raw materials and setting fire to them?
*Incidentally, some chemist is going to save the world within my lifetime, and they will do it by figuring out how to catalyse the reduction of carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide, which is much more reactive and can be used in syntheses. But that still makes burning the feedstock stupid.
