The House of David

Monday, February 27, 2006

Word for the day: "reification"

I'd been reading NRO's "Corner" blog lately. I wrote up the following as a Wikipedia-esque "stub" last Friday, because I was bored and in a bar and without direct access to the Internet. I posted it as such that night, which was probably a bad move, as it relies on links to essays which I could not provide and on names which I did not remember. Anyway. I've boosted this to a later date and to the top of the queue.

Daniel Dennett recently said some stuff about "reason" in his book. Dennett was using this, in its context, as shorthand for the human capacity for argument in accordance with logic. Reason outside a human context means that form of logic which exists independently of individual perspective.

In other words, 2+2=4 for any observer in any language. You don't get to say "it's 10 in base 4" because it's not. It is described as 10 in base 4. Likewise, 5+5 isn't "10" either; it's only described as 10 in our notation. The Babylonians, Maya, and hexadecimal programmers did not roll over the digits as of #"10" and so they were free to give it a truename, which the hex programmers have agreed to call "A".

To a certain degree, Protagoras is correct that "man is the measure of things". But Pythagoras and Plato were right that all must obey number. Like the Logos, this exists outside the frame of this and of any other possible universe. As does Allah in the Qur'an, number and reason have no need of humanity to observe, support, or believe in it.

Which brings us to reification. I suspect it comes from the Latinate roots "res" and "-ify", which means to make something a thing. Normally that wouldn't make a lot of sense to us non-Buddhists. But the Corner posters seem to agree that reification is what happens when we humans declare an abstract something to be concrete in the material world. Their resident English curmudgeon Derbyshire is performing his usual task of exposing fuzzy thinking on this subject as likely politically-motivated humbug.

I would argue that pure mathematics cannot be re-ified. Maths consist of abstract laws which are discovered, not made; anymore than Columbus created the isle of Hispaniola.

Now, when the Gnostics claimed that Wisdom took material form, when John claimed that the Logos became flesh, and when the Muslims claimed that there was an Uncreated Qur'an; that was reification. These statements consist of human ideas which humans, sometimes the same ones and sometimes their lesser successors, have associated with the preexistent and transcendent laws of all possibility.

Similarly, when Paul Cella snidely stated as "fact" that Aquinas's God was the author of reason, he was engaging in his usual breaches of ethics and civility. An alien force might teach humans to use reason, or even create a human like Aquinas capable of being taught it; but even that force must bow to Reason's demands. (Here I am anthropomorphising, but I do not make a literal claim that Reason may be found in some eidolon to be paid a physical obeisance.)

posted by Zimri on 18:15 | link |

Plot Against America, II

I finished Roth's book last night.

Matters do, in fact, get worse for our protagonist. What Roth seems to have suspected was a WW2 replay of Gangs of New York, where Irish, German, and Slavic immigrants persecute the minority whom they blame for their woes (yes, yes, "Jewish is the new Black" again). The FBI get involved; Jewish neighbourhoods are targeted; it's all very ugly.

Roth repeatedly proves brilliant in his intuition, but he does not explain his reasons in the text. That the Irish leant toward Hitler, partly out of pride for their pure Celtic blood, mostly out of hatred of England, is a well known fact. Roth doesn't mention, say, Joe Kennedy's antics. Roth also has a tendency to introduce into his narrative a character whom his protagonist had supposedly known for years past, just so he can use that character to illustrate a point. I prefer my characters to be introduced on their own terms, not the narrative's. If I'd been his editor I'd have asked him about it.

Roth has turned out to be more realistic than Orwell and Atwood; here he has presaged Ferrigno. Lindbergh's soft fascism is accepted by mainstream America, but since his allies are extremists they keep pulling him right. But at the same time, America is too big and decentralised for a tyrant to extend his will over the whole nation. There might be anti-Semitism in the cities and in elite circles; but in the Bible Belt, if one discounts the Klan, the attitude is more "oh that's nice; the Owens-es down the street are Methodist". And since at the end the Rightist edifice must resort to deceit and violence, most Americans won't stand for it and so they put a stop to the regime's excesses.

Roth figures that Lindbergh would have been something of a Coolidge: part empty suit, part pro-capitalist - which is probably true. I'm impressed that Roth understands that laissez-faire economics as practiced by a Coolidge would have worked better than the Keynesian economics of Hoover and Roosevelt.

Although I agree with Roth that events would have forced the US to enter the war eventually, Roth seems to think that History would have brought itself back onto the familiar track. I think the "butterfly effect" applies here, that a later US entry would have weakened Germany further. This would have shifted the Iron Curtain to the east bank of the Rhine and given Russia direct access to the North Sea by way of Bremen. By contrast if the US had gotten involved earlier, the Nazis would have dealt with their lunatic Fuhrer in the early 1930s. A alliance of the soft-fascist states then prevalent across Europe might then have better faced off against the USSR, which up until 1933 was the worst of Europe's evils.

posted by Zimri on 17:00 | link |

Sunday, February 26, 2006

The Plot Against America

People had been bugging me lately to read The Plot Against America by Philip Roth. I've gotten through the first third so far.

In it, Charles Lindbergh makes an appearance at the 1940 Republican Convention and wows it to such an extent that the interventionist candidate Wendell Wilkie does not even manage to get his say. Roth published his book in 2004 and appears not to have had access to Five Days In Philadelphia by Charles Peters; however Roth does know enough about the American character of the day to intuit what Peters knew, which was that isolationism with respect to Europe was then the majority opinion of the Republican Party.

In The Plot Against America, Lindbergh got the Republicans to line up behind him and then won the election. As a result, Hitler was able to convince the Japanese that America was no threat and so there was no Pearl Harbor attack. As of page 159: it is 1942, Hitler is plugging away in Russia, and America is still out of commission.

Roth's book is in the form of a memoir with Roth himself as the young protagonist. In this he owes a debt to Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale. This also allows Roth, like Atwood, to concentrate on a memoiristic prose style, which is often beautiful.

Roth is (so far) sympathetic to Lindbergh and to his supporters in a way that Atwood wasn't to the Christian right. Roth thinks that Lindbergh would see as his mandate to carry out an assimilationist policy against American Judaism but arguably on behalf of the individual patriotic American Jew. Jews start out hating and fearing Lindbergh, but over the first year more Jews make their peace with him.

Roth's family does face anti-Semitism on their first visit to Washington, but much of this is the fault of Roth's dad making anti-Lindbergh comments in the presence of the wrong people. During this time, private entities and the average Joe were just as anti-Semitic in the real world. Lindbergh and Coughlin had done this damage already, and getting into elected office didn't change anything.

There are parallels to our current divided union. What the reader must do is to equate 2004 Blacks with 1940 Jews, and 2002-6 Republican interventionism with 1940-2 Republican isolationism.

Blacks today - I speak in generalities, as shorthand - vote Democrat and against Republican as a matter of ethnic solidarity. Since the candidate preferred by Blacks does not command anything like the support of the Republican candidate among Whites, and since the Democrats lost, Blacks figure that they live in a nightmarish parallel universe of White rule. Since the Republicans officially claim to be reaching out to Blacks, Blacks cannot claim actual oppression, and so they process this as White indifference to their sensitivities. Blacks see the few Republicans in their ranks as chess pieces, just as Roth's family views Bengelsdorf's support of Lindbergh as "koshering Lindbergh for the goyim".

(The House of David's general opinion prior to my cracking open Roth's book has been: if Blacks feel that they are living in a parallel universe, then it is up to them to leave that mental space; Blacks are generally right about Republican indifference, but might want to treat government indifference as a good thing for them; and Blacks are right that Republicans use Black conservatives only to placate White moderates. There is probably a warning coming up in the next two thirds of the book against my no doubt racist complacency.)

As for isolationism, the parallel there is to the frustration we neo-cons felt during the Clinton years; when various squalid nations in the Balkans, Africa, and the Near East oppressed their peoples, developed weapons, and bankrolled terrorists while our glorious leaders sat back and got fellated by their interns.

Lindbergh's policies take American children from their families to work in farms as volunteers, and involve older youths in the military. There are those who say that government-sponsored patriotism is fascism; but even if so, this is (as of 1942) a soft fascism like that which Mussolini and (especially?) Pilsudski practiced up to the mid 1930s. It also would have served to earn the respect (and fear) of the ambitious Japanese but Roth hasn't yet stated this explicitly.

So far this book has set the stage with excellent character and nuance. I'll have to read more before I can say more of it.

posted by Zimri on 13:36 | link |

Friday, February 24, 2006

Hypocrisy and virtue

It's often said that (I'm paraphrasing) hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue. But maybe a virtuous mindset leads one to hypocrisy.

Someone who understands better what virtue is may well view that as a virtue in itself. He needn't be a Muslim or Christian to feel that he is "better" than those not privy to his truths; Seneca became (famously) wealthy from years of friendship with the Emperor Nero. Since the philosopher feels superior anyway, he can slack off on his inferiors' day to day struggle to be better.

The Superman's feeling of innate superiority might conceivably extend even to the Superman's arguments to prove the superiority of his views.

posted by Zimri on 19:42 | link |

Hearts and minds

The problem with hearts-n-minds campaigns is that some positions are non-negotiable. Or should be.

Observant Muslims - those who actually believe what their religion tells them to believe - think that their religion is better than ours. They also think that evicting nonbelievers from a certain place (e.g. Yathrib) is righteous.

The problem is that any truce with an observant Muslim can only ever be tactical. Most Muslims view Yathrib as a microcosm of what the whole universe should look like: Muslims-only. There are various grades of unbelief depending on practical necessity. Non-Muslims can be pushed outside the Hijaz; non-Muslims must live as dhimmi throughout Muslim land; non-Muslims elsewhere must respect Muslim sensibilities. If an infidel should offend any Muslim anywhere anyhow, then terrorism against his land is... well, maybe not to be instigated by anyone in particular and we won't come out and say "permissible", but "understandable".

It's a "good cop / bad cop" routine. We have to appease the "good Muslim" in order for him to promise not to become a "bad Muslim". Both sorts of Muslim are laughing at us behind our backs.

Prayers for the Assassin depicts this quite well: even if we became an Islamic nation, we'd still have to put up with the jerks who say we're not Islamic enough. I'd call it "paying the Danegeld" except that this would be an insult to the only Europeans who seem to see it.

So I am against allowing the port sale to Dubai's state-owned firms as long as Dubai's stance is that no unbeliever should own, say, a helipad in a Medinan suburb. The whole edifice of Islamic supremacism is what I am at war with. To be fair, I feel the same about Christian supremacism; but then, Falwell isn't saying that I can't set up a reading room in Nashville...

posted by Zimri on 19:35 | link |

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

The closing of the Eastern mind, 300-775 AD

Constantine in adopting the faith of the East was likely hoping to co-opt it. Of course that didn't work too well either; the East simply found even more restrictive variants of the faith.

This is what Freedman needed to do: he should have noted that the "closing" of the Western mind started as an attempt by the Romans to justify continued Roman rule over the East. The burning of Alexandria's library was not an instance of the Western mind's closing; last I saw, Alexandria was an Oriental burg, being in Egypt and all. At the same time the Copts were withdrawing from public life, the other main Eastern cities were frittering their minds on theological debate, and the Arabs were indulging in messianic fantasy. And after those "closed Western minds" had given up the East to the Arabs, the Arabs launched on a Blankenslipian "jihad state" which produced very little literature until decades into the 'Abbasid dynasty.

The so-called "closing of the Western mind" was a closing of the Eastern mind, first and foremost. The Eastern mind only reopened in the late 700s AD - and that much only when the Arabs got around to translating what they'd got from the Greeks. And this "reopening" was a fragile thing indeed, subject to critiques from the likes of Ibn Hanbal.

posted by Zimri on 21:37 | link |

Militarism and fundamentalism

The emperors had tried fundamentalism, and persecuted those who dissented from it, centuries before Christianity.

The Jews were known to be pro-Persian and anti-Hellenic, by dint of their fond memories of Cyrus the Great and their hatred of Antiochus Epiphanes. Additionally, during the first Common Era centuries, princedoms on the Persian border were becoming Christian, particularly Edessa and Armenia, and also some Arab tribes. It helped that these peoples were mostly Semitic and/or monotheistic. The last thing the Emperor needed was a rising common Semitic monotheist consciousness to take root in its populous and wealthy Near Eastern provinces.

Persecutions of Christians were done as opportunistic scapegoating (Nero) or for hampering the excesses of heretics (Trajan); but in both cases the persecutions occurred during Jewish riots and immediately preceded a major Judaean rebellion.

Even so Christianity could be dealt with on a low level - at first. But then the Persians and Germans began posing a threat. The Persians were stronger than were the Parthians, and through Cyrus more closely tied to Old Testament messianism.

In the 200s, Emperors Decius and Diocletian were the first to attempt extermination of Christians. And both did it in the name of the common paganism of the Mediterranean.

posted by Zimri on 21:30 | link |

The closing of the Western mind

Currently I'm reading The Closing of the Western Mind by Charles Freeman. It seems to be a philosophical history of the West, in the way Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind was a philosophical treatise on modern university.

In previous months, I'd read about the fall of the Roman Empire in the West - which I see as a tragedy in two centuries. First, the western Roman Empire shifted into an eastern Byzantine Empire (300s AD); then, the Byzantine Empire abandoned its Roman portion (400s). Peter Heather's books are whence I gathered the first part and also much of the second part.

Gibbon's "Decline and Fall" famously blamed Christianity for sapping Roman will to rule. Heather does not follow this theory and neither does Freeman; Freeman makes clear that the fourth and fifth century Emperors had no problem co-opting and moulding Christianity into something which could serve their military needs. For instance, one mosaic dresses Jesus into the uniform of a Roman soldier and in a pose reflecting the martial imagery of Psalm 91. For Freeman: if Christ cannot be blamed for the fall of the West, then he can at least be blamed for the fall of the Western mind.

posted by Zimri on 20:55 | link |

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

The wingnut politics of SG-1

I have some comments about Stargate SG-1, particularly its fourth season. I know that I'm somewhat late to this particular party but it's worth a mention.

I loved the movie which started it all. I bought the first season in 2000 or so. In 2004 I rewatched the season, found out that seasons 2-4 were good too, and got those. I heard that the fourth season was the last of the show's consistently good seasons, so I stopped there.

Some episodes of this season were overtly political. The season's episodes reminded me of Sliders, somewhat.

"The Other Side" introduced the SG-1 team to a faction of racial supremacists. As in our WW2 parallel, the bad guys had the best technology and promised to hand it over to us if we'd save them. Unlike our world, we (that is, SG-1) chose not to save any of the racists and so we didn't get to save their tech either. The show's message is Chomsky's: that saving defeated Nazis for their technology is tantamount to picking up where they left off.

In "Scorched Earth", two races have laid claim to a planet which neither can do without. Due to physiological differences (the nonhumanoids breathe sulphur), the two cannot coexist. SG-1 poses to the nonhumanoids that the latter will be setting their civilisation onto a bad foundation if they must do so by exterminating the competition. Fortunately there is an alternative, that the humanoids should go back to their homeland. The analogy is less exact here; but the implicit message is that refugees should only settle in a region if they would not survive otherwise, and that those which settle anyway are ill-founded. Death to Israel, Death to America, etc etc.

In "Chain Reaction", the villain Kinsey is a Jesus-quoting senator who privately thinks that his constituents are apathetic and stupid. He at once wants the Stargate closed down and wants to use it to perform unethical acts. Kinsey is a caricature of all the factions whom Leftists imagine make up the Republican Party. The message here is that Republicans are evil.

Deep "Beneath the Surface", SG-1 are "workers" in a factory where they are not told of the luxury above them. The world's rulers are conservative, in that they like that the workers remain where they are. The SG-1 team then shows all workers the world above. From the workers' perspective, they live under Communism. What we have here is an indictment of the Communist system wherever implemented.

And the episode which affected me most deeply is "2010". In it, a race called the "Aschèn" allied with humanity in Y2k and defeated all its problems: the Gua'uld, sickness, and even old age. They also convinced the human elite that they should sneak in a sterilising agent against a third of Earth's population. Mankind lives in peace and in eternal prosperity. But it turns out that the Aschen has sterilised all the population, barring some 9% they hadn't reached within the first decade. The SG-1 team realise that humanity is beaten with no hope of recovery. I'd say that our Aschen run the universities of the Western world.

So, of 16 episodes, 5 are political. Of these: two are Anti-American; one is Anti-Republican; one is Libertarian; and one is Pro-Life.

Maybe the best form of citizen in Stargate-land is the armed wingnut hiding in the hills of Montana. In fact that is precisely who the good guy is in "Point Of No Return"...

posted by Zimri on 18:58 | link |

Free Anatolia!

Here's another point, from the world of history. Why are we even bothering with that nation now called "Turkey"?

Who invited the Turks into Anatolia in the first place? Why do people utter words in a barbaric Central Asian tongue within Constantine's city...

The Kurds by contrast have always lived in Kurdistan. At least, some form of Indo-Iranian has been a feature of the region almost since records began of it. The Mitanni (1400s BC) spoke an Indic language, before adopting Hurrian. Throughout the Iron Age various Scythians and Cimmerians passed through there, to deliver pillaging unto the accursed Assyrians. Then the Medes helped end the Assyrians and the Persians helped end the Babylonians. Now the area is Kurdish. Indo-Iranians have dwelt in the Mitanni region centuries longer than the Armenians have been in Armenia (their arrival: 1200 BC).

As far as I'm concerned, the Turks are uninvited guests of the Western / Near Eastern world. Their claim to Anatolia exists on sufferance, on their willingness to admit that their days of slaughtering Armenians and of booting out Greeks are shameful episodes of which they repent.

So now I'm seeing in the news that the Turks join the Cartoon Riots, murder Catholic priests, and attend anti-Semitic films like Valley of the Wolves. They were [Armenian] Holocaust practitioners, and Holocaust deniers, decades before it was fashionable elsewhere; and they remain so. They've lost their rights to the Western world... if they ever had them.

The Turks must acknowledge and repent their crimes. They must reject their anti-Semitism (what did the Jews ever do to them?). Relearning a civilised tongue like Lydian or Hittite might be helpful too...

posted by Zimri on 18:30 | link |

Free Yathrib!

The city of Yathrib in the northern Hijaz, of western Arabia, was noted during the seventh century as "Ethribos" by Syrians writing in Greek. They did not claim that it had never existed before them.

In Islamic tradition, Yathrib is the city which took in the followers of the Prophet after they had been expelled from Makkah. Yathrib was not the Muslims' first choice. Their first choice, after Makkah itself, was Ta'if. However, as that movie The Message illustrated, the local children of Ta'if stoned the Muslims out of town. Only after the Muslims had taken over Yathrib did they get around to renaming the place "Madinat al-Nabi", or Medina for short.

Following that, the Muslims then banned Christians and Jews from living there. (I do not think it was under Muhammad that the Muslims enacted the liquidation of the Banu Qurayzah, but such purges certainly took place; perhaps under his successor 'Umar.)

Moreover, the "Constitution of Medina", which Muhammad purportedly signed with his own hand, includes numerous treaties between Muslims and those Jews allied with them. These latter tribes were native to Medina.

Medina, therefore, is not an aboriginal Muslim city. Muslims' insistence that Jews (and Christians) be barred from it is moreover a treaty violation and, perhaps worse, a violation of the Prophet's written command.

The argument that we respect Muslims' religious opinions on this subject are likewise to be discounted. Our lands are just as holy to us as theirs are holy to them. America is the shining city on the hill; Britain is the green and pleasant land; and I'm sure other nations have their own poetic terms for their countries.

There is hypocrisy in Westerners allowing recalcitrant Muslims sanctuary within our lands. We allow Muslims to establish masajid here while they insist that, by dint of their own special holiness, non-Muslims are forbidden to set up their prayer facilities in Medina.

This is my fatwa, if you please: Muslims need to agree that the expulsion of Jews and Christians from Yathrib was an injustice, and they need to agree to rescind that order.

posted by Zimri on 17:51 | link |

Monday, February 13, 2006

The Unlikely Consequences: Democracy from Locke's Natural Law and Absolutism from Rousseau's General Will

[This blog-entry reprints an essay I wrote for POLI 209 in 12 April 1994. I have altered its format in accordance with the standards of this blog. I have however left alone its sweeping value judgements, its ignorance of footnotes, and its emphasing of key terms.]

In the seventeenth century, the classical ideals of science, logic, and reason were re-emerging from the Dark Ages. In this period, Thomas Hobbes essayed to rationalize the reigning powers' hold over Europe in his Leviathan, without recourse to King James I's doctrine of "divine right". Mankind's life in a state of nature (absolute freedom) is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short," since the laws of nature ("doing to others as we would be done to") are "contrary to our natural passions." Therefore, any group of people must create a commonwealth in order to protect each member from one another and from outside forces. It must have power in order to be effective; therefore, it contracts with itself to promote a sovereign, who takes whatever measures he deems necessary.

Hobbes shocked Europe with his ideas. He had introduced the idea that governments derive their raison d'être from the people, not from a divine entity- but, at the same time, he had restated the unpopular claim that autocracy was the only form of government capable of protecting the populace. Hobbes's Leviathan, like Machiavelli's The Prince, was unacceptable to the leading political scientists of its time. Two schools of thought arose in answer to Hobbes's challenge: one spearheaded by John Locke, the other by Jean Jacques Rousseau.

John Locke was heavily influenced by the science of Isaac Newton. He expanded on Hobbes's theories in An Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent and End of Civil Government, in order to establish a balance of authority between the governors and the governed. Although he agreed with Hobbes's arguments against the state of nature, he refuted him on one point: since the absolute tyrant observes no higher authority, he himself exists in the state of nature! Locke set limits on the power of the sovereign based on Hobbes's definition of natural law. The laws of the sovereign's domain are likewise based, "proscribing no further than is for the general good of those under that law" and "hedging us in only from bogs and precipices." Freedom as defined by Locke is not "a liberty for every man to do what he lists," however; true freedom protects each human being from harm dealt by others. In this way, Locke founded his libertarian edifice upon Hobbes's arguments for absolute authority.

Locke's persuasive arguments spread throughout the world. His writings composed the intellectual justification for the American Revolution, and inspired similar movements for reform in Europe. Over one-half of the countries making up the world today have constitutions based on the American model.

Soon after Locke published his opus, Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote The Social Contract. Rousseau believed that personal property was wrong, and that mankind's nature was essentially good. Natural law, as defined by Hobbes and promoted by Locke, derives from property and is thus "always beneficial to 'haves' and injurious to 'have-nots'." Instead, the people should adhere to the general will of the community. This is the declared will of the majority of the well-informed; it is "an act of sovereignty, and has the force of law." The general populace "are never corrupted though often deceived." Although he did not believe in government, he implicitly allotted to the "well-informed" absolute power.

The left wing of the French National Assembly were the first to adopt "general will" as a concept of rulership. The extreme Jacobins took over France in 1793, and invested emergency powers to the most "well-informed" of them- the infamous Council of Twelve. Within a year, the Council had committed such atrocities in the name of the Revolution that the whole Republic came under disrepute. Despite this early failure, Rousseau's ideas became widely accepted by the European "literati", and inspired certain intellectuals to invent socialist theories.

Socialism, the political and economic theory of social organization advocating a rationally-ordered, collective society, was not new to the world. Plato had posited just such a society in The Republic, based upon the model of ancient Sparta. After Rousseau, socialist thinkers abounded, although most of them were noted eccentrics. Fourier, for example, believed that the world would end in 40,000 years as the oceans turned into lemonade. Saint-Simon and Owen both received visitors from the Spirit World- the former spoke to Charlemagne, the latter Thomas Jefferson.

The most credible of these theorists was Karl Marx, who attempted to utilize the science of economics. According to The Communist Manifesto, human history was the history of class struggle; at this time, the bourgeoisie class was exploiting the proletariat class. Soon, the proletarians would revolt and institute a tyranny, which Marx labelled the dictatorship of the proletariat. Its function was solely to re-educate all sectors of society until everyone had become "well-informed" enough to make this radical government irrelevant. At that point the state would wither away into communism, a Utopia in which there would be no private property nor government.

Marx's ideas were soon subjected to the same dispersion as Rousseau's. The "Internationals" were torn apart by internal strife; socialists and anarchists could not agree on anything, and trade-unionists were viewed as class traitors. Even before the Russian Revolution, the Russian Social Democratic Party split into mutually incompatible Menshevik and Bolshevik factions. After the Revolution and the Second World War, each independent communist state followed a different route from the others; from Albania and Yugoslavia to China and Khmer Rouge Cambodia. This was a direct contrast with the democratic countries, almost all of which are at least loosely allied with the United States of America.

Those states which have followed Locke's model tend to be more prosperous and less oppressive than those which have followed Rousseau's, and they also tend to agree with one another. This is somewhat surprising, because Locke seems to be much more authoritarian than the quasi-anarchistic Rousseau. Locke believed that a people should govern itself on the basis of certain natural laws, and Rousseau believed that a people should govern itself according to its general will. However, Locke's commonwealth sets limits on its sovereign, whereas Rousseau's general will is made by a well-informed elite with absolute power. In short, Rousseau and all who followed him allowed their sovereigns to live in a state of nature. Locke does not.

posted by Zimri on 00:51 | link |

Friday, February 10, 2006

Slowdive to my dreams

I've ported maybe half my CDs into my iTunes. What a chore.

One thing it has been good for, though, is to re-acquaint me with music which I'd forgotten about the last few years. I've been busy sticking star ratings to them all.

I didn't realise how badly Peter Murphy's CD-filler songs suck. Mind, Love & Rockets aren't much better. Most of that crap I've had to delete outright. These fellows needed to write more and release fewer albums.

Apparently I've grown out of the Boo Radleys' Everything's Alright Forever since 1993 or so, but not Pale Saints' contemporaneous In Ribbons.

I'd also forgotten how beautiful Slowdive were when they were at their peak. Catch the Breeze; The Ballad of Sister Sue; Shine (a B-side!); and Alison...

Speaking of which, I see that Smashing Pumpkins saved their best Mellon Collie era songs for the B-sides to its singles (except for the aptly-titled Zero EP).

From New Order: oh my. I've fivestarred almost everything from Low-life, Technique, Substance, and what they've done in this decade; plus Electronic's eponymous CD. Peter Hook and John Maher pwnz me. Joy Division seems more scattershot except for their fatal Closer.

Repeat the above for the Cure: oh my. Here we have: Faith, Japanese Whispers, DISINTI-FRICKIN'-GRATION, and Wild Mood Swings. Tears for Fears, too.

I also seem to have a real yen for the Smiths' The Queen Is Dead and most of their singles (surprise surprise).

The Cocteau Twins' Love's Easy Tears EP was ace, and they had other classics during the 1980s. But they could be pretty scattershot, in EPs and CDs.

My Bloody Valentine were amazing. The Loveless CD never gets old; dittos to their Ecstasy, Strawberry Wine, You Made Me Realise, and Glider EPs. But I still cannot get into Isn't Anything...

What a crying shame that Swervedriver and Curve never broke out of the indie ghetto. If only Swervedriver had shaved some minutes off Mezcal Head's more indulgent jam sessions. If only Curve had welded the first half of the Gift CD onto the Horrorhead EP back in '92. I guess it's "Cold Comfort" that at least Garbage were able to rip them off so successfully.

Echobelly made a serious error in ditching their first CD's Morrissey - Marr sound in favour of whatever crap punk they churned out afterward.

Sunshot would have been a major New Discovery (tm) if they'd started today, if only for Stop Me and the first edition of Baby Doll.

I'm still not seeing the appeal of the Psychedelic Furs beyond the odd single.

I bought a lot of mediocre stuff way back when. The Dylans, Slipstream, and Something Pretty Beautiful were all ... eh. And then there were all those classic shoegazer bands with filler-stuffed CDs that I grew out of: Ride, Chapterhouse, Lush, and Moose.

I should work on the rest of this stuff sometime.

posted by Zimri on 22:26 | link |

Pray for the dancing 'dillo

One of Jeff Goldstein's running jokes, since December of 2004, is that he bought an armadillo (to replace the monkey... long story). Every week he promises us that the 'dillo will dance on Friday afternoon. But something always comes up...

I have this drinking buddy down my street. One day last December, she asked me if she could set me up with anyone. I said I'd like someone smarter than me. She told me that she has a friend called "Billie" (cue the Brokeback Mountain jokes). Billie additionally has long blonde hair and is in her mid twenties.

Anyway I couldn't meet Billie that weekend because I had one of my infamous weekend colds. Since then Billie's missed her chances to meet me for so many reasons, it's become a running joke with me n' the drinkin' buddy.

Billie had the flu on Super Bowl Sunday. And now Billie is in hospital with the pneumonia. I've had that before and it is no fun.

So it's not so funny now.

I hope Billie gets through okay.

posted by Zimri on 18:51 | link |

I hate February

February sucks. It's the coldest, slushiest, rainiest, and all around crappiest day of the year. I'm not at all surprised that it's the number one month for suicides; the fact that Valentine's is in this month doesn't help at all, either.

Anyway. If you're planning suicide this month and you're not a terrorist, please reconsider. It does get better, usually around mid April or so.

Especially don't do it in an aeroplane. If you lock the door, that's one less lavatory for the rest of us; if not, then some poor sap who doesn't deserve it is going to stumble across your bug-eyed and purple corpse. Leave a note and cut your wrists at home like a civilised person.

posted by Zimri on 18:44 | link |

Thursday, February 09, 2006

Archangel Gary

Screen actor Gary Busey has recently come under fire for playing a Jewish doctor who harvests organs from Muslims and Arabs killed by Americans.

But that's nothing to what's coming up.

Busey's next flick is, aptly enough, Souled Out; in which he plays the archangel Jibrîl. From the name alone, it's safe to say that this is going to be a comedy along the lines of Dogma.

Jibrîl is the same angel who spoke to the Prophet Muhammad and delivered unto him the Holy Qur'an. Before he met the angel, Muhammad had evinced no sign of God's Prophetic gift.

Muslims object when Europeans mock the Prophet. Now Busey's mocking the reason they have a Prophet in the first place...

posted by Zimri on 17:24 | link |

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Stephanie speaks out

Stephanie writes a comment in the Cold Fury blog:

For the most part this message board seems like it is here to bash the way African Americans feel about how we are being treated in our own country . Yes it is true that Mrs. King funeral service brought many mourners some different some alike. But what it also did was bring many powerful people into one space that can bring about change to our nation. So what Bush got bashed!!!!!!!! He should have. So what people talked of politcal change at her service!!!! They should have done that too!!! But let us not forget that her legacy was upheld, which is non-violent protest to the powers at be to help us become a better people. I don�t think that because Mrs. King has died that she would want us to pass on the opportuity to bring social consiousness to the people and let the snake we call President Bush sit there totally disconnected to what is happening around him. But as usual when us as African Americans speak out about the injustice we endor on a daily basis we are considered to be trouble making monkies that still haven�t learned their place. So to say that what happen at the Funeral of the late, Great Mrs. Coretta Scott King was an emmbarassment, well it all all depends on who talk to. Because I know one things for sure, as an African American woman living in this day and time I felt nothing but Joy and Honor to know that we still have leaders that are not afraid to speak out for the greater good of the African-American people no matter what the cost.
And to reply to the comment above about the President coming to honor a great American. That is a bunch of crock. To tell you the truth Bush would not have come if he didn�t that that he would be crusified for not attending.

And then:

Sandy it is obvious that you are not African American and don�t understand our struggle. You talk about how gracious Bush was but the truth to the matter is that he always seems to be gracious and put together even when he lying to the American people about a war that shouldn�t take place. Even when her tried to divert out attention away from the real culprit OSOMA BIN LADEN. Or how about when he left the African American in New Orlean to die. So I will give you that. He was gracious as usual. So you can say what ever you want about the democrats this and the republicans that. That is typical of a Bush supporter divert the attention. The issue is that Black people need to be heard. Hell we built this nation and still have nothing to show for it. That is something that we can�t deal with. I personally would not have expressed my political views that time but I can�t blame someone else for seizing the moment. The people that spoke only said what was on the minds of the African American people.

To sum up Stephanie's rants: Bush was responsible for letting blacks die in New Orleans, his struggle to spread democracy in the Muslim world is a deliberate distraction from getting Osama, African Americans built the nation singlehandedly, African Americans haven't gotten anything at all out of being citizens here, and Bush's presence at the memorial was hypocrisy. And disagreeing with all this is equivalent to calling African Americans "monkeys", uppity, and "trouble-making".

Never let it be said that the House of David stifles dissent. All gather around and hear the words of Stephanie! In fact, you can even scroll up and read it all over again if you care to.

The thing is, I already know "what was on the minds" of people like Stephanie. Heard it all before, yanno. I just don't believe that Stephanie's perspective is a legitimate perspective. I believe that it's the perspective of a few kooks and rejects, and I hope that it's not the perspective of the majority. If Stephanie does represent the views of the majority of African Americans, then the majority of African Americans are as delusional as she is.

Also, if someone makes an argument and it is wrong, then repeating the point on top of a coffin doesn't make it any more worthy of a hearing. Beyond a certain point the argument becomes an annoyance. "Give me what I want or I will keep pestering you!" isn't an ethical strategy. It's extortion.

Kiefer Sutherland put it best in Stand By Me: "Okay. You've stated your position clearly. Now I'm gonna state mine. Get in the @#$% car, now."

Except for the bit about wanting to be cooped up in a moving vehicle with her yammering away.

posted by Zimri on 17:29 | link |

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Party time with Mrs King

Malkin has the goods. Four presidents showed up to the funeral: Bushes on the right, the Democrats on the left. Predictably, History's greatest monster chose this moment to deliver a partisan rant. Also predictably, the crowd loved it. But we already know that we cannot expect decorum from anyone involved in an event of this sort.

Call it Zimri's Law, if you will: Any civil rights event will be monopolised by those who most discredit the cause.

The Bushes should have walked out on the earliest pretext, and - together - delivered a blistering response to the demagogues first thing the following morning. Shoulda coulda woulda.

And the dessert cart rolls on... and on.

posted by Zimri on 16:29 | link |

Monday, February 06, 2006

The Daily Dhimmi

The Daily Texan, college rag of the University of Texas at Austin, is refusing to run a cartoon in which the image of the Prophet Muhammad appears.

I've visited that university a few times for its library. The students and faculty there don't mind free speech against Christians, conservatives, Republicans, or the American government. But say a word of which Islamists might disapprove and this is the response...

Bryan,
I'm sorry to inform you that your strip was rejected because a lot of people are very upset by what happened in the EU papers, especially since there's a lot of violence surrounding it and we can't print it. We all liked it though...
Sorry,
Sarah Lim

Your tax dollars at work, fellow Texans!

UPDATE: Wouldn't this mean that Sarah Lim & her fellow editors are assuming that their Muslim colleagues are more violent than all those other people Bryan teased during the run of his strip...? And wouldn't that be a form of prejudice?

posted by Zimri on 17:45 | link |

Sunday, February 05, 2006

Imam John Locke

An emailer has informed me that William Rees-Mogg has written in tomorrow's Times pointing out that Locke would not have supported a cartoon which mocked the established religion of Locke's state (that of Britain); and further that Locke opposed atheism. This much is true. But Rees-Mogg engages in such fuzzy language that he conflates the mockery of the British religion, the mockery of any religion, and atheism all together.

Locke would certainly allow that Muslims have the right to object to their fellow nationals' criticism of Islam; but these cartoons were by Danish freemen and were not the affair of those Syrians who burnt down the Danish embassy. Perhaps Rees-Mogg means that Locke would have objected to a foreign Muslim's attack on British faith from within that Islamic country; or would have thought fair-enough to such a Muslim's objections to Locke's own religion. Perhaps Rees-Mogg imagines that Locke would have objected to a Briton's mockery of non-British religions which were not atheist. Rees-Mogg's most likely opinion is that Muslims outside Europe have a right to riot when a European in Europe offends them; but that opinion isn't Locke's.

Rees-Mogg seems to be saying that Danes have no right to criticise Islam, because if they do some yokel in Waziristan might find out about it and question his own faith. I don't know how available is crack cocaine in London, but apparently Rees-Mogg has managed to find some.

From a British perspective, Islam is not the Crown's religion - yet - and I doubt that Locke would have approved of making it so. Locke certainly wasn't above jabbing the "Papists" of his day. The reason why Papism then and Islamism now must be opposed through the pen is precisely because Papism then and Islamism now oppose Locke's "inward persuasion of the mind". They are "opinions contrary to human [read: English] society, such as manifestly undermine the foundations of society".

Like the emailer, I cannot see where Rees-Mogg has shown that "Locke would not have believed in insulting publications" where they insulted Papism or Islamism, or any other -ism which in its turn insults Queen and Country. Insulting Muhammad (which, incidentally, few of these cartoons actually did) is not the same as professing atheism. Locke would have opposed my secularism, if I had made a big thing about that, but he would have supported me if I promised to concentrate my efforts on enemies of the Anglican Church.

Rees-Mogg is engaging in sleight of hand. He is being economical with the truth. His ethics have rung up the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This... is an ex-journalist. (A pity that Kathryn Jean Lopez and Roger Kimball have not called Rees-Mogg on his statements.)

What with the Times and the Telegraph arguing for the end of free speech in Britain and Denmark, I am wondering if Fleet Street is running very scared about now. Has someone phoned in a bomb threat? or does Rees-Mogg want the Heckler's Veto for his own side, too?

posted by Zimri on 22:26 | link |

Long live the Queen

Hannah Cleaver in Berlin, writing for the Telegraph, thinks that Denmark's Queen "further undermined the image of Denmark as a liberal haven for those seeking a new life in northern Europe". The Queen's offense was to object to a mob of anti-liberal terrorists.

Is it too late for England to give the Danelaw back? Better a free Danelaw than an England in psychological dhimmitude.

posted by Zimri on 21:53 | link |

Assassin Against The Prayers

David Schraub begs to answer the Prayer, to the negative. I suppose what follows will be a review of the review. Such is the blogosphere.

First off, I agree with Schraub that Robert Ferrigno's beef is not against Islam per se. Ferrigno's main characters start the book and end the book as Muslims and (in their way) as believers. Ferrigno's problem is with political Islam and with what Schraub calls "liberalism". That is, Ferrigno thinks that Leftist fanatics will, at a pinch, become Islamic fanatics; and that soft liberals will go along to get along. Schraub takes exception to this.

Johnny Walker and Cat Stevens are powerful arguments for Ferrigno's first thesis, and the Euro-Left's ongoing appeasement of radical imams for his second (although this may be changing). Maybe Schraub will look at this in an update.

Further, I object to Schraub's portrayal of Ferrigno as anti "liberal". Ferrigno argues for liberal ideas of freedom and freethought. So do I. So does Charles Johnson of the "Little Green Footballs" blog. If Ferrigno were not liberal, he would have had his main characters convert to Christianity Omega Code style, or work toward turning the ISA into a dictatorship. It's also notable, at least to Clayton Cramer, that Ferrigno predicts extreme pollution of the sea and air as among the sins of the Islamist state. Ferrigno's book is a liberal book. The difference between us and the Blue State Left, is that (1) we actually believe in these classic liberal ideals and (2) we wish to defend them against its enemies - which, in the West, consist of Islamists and Leftists (although I cannot say "we are prepared to defend them"; I for one have not been tested in this). But Schraub's abuse of the term is unfortunately common among those who adhere to the Leftist and/or multiculturalist standpoints.

Schraub also claims that Ferrigno exhibits a "failure to even attempt to distinguish the overwhelmingly moderate American Muslim community from their radical Middle Eastern (and European) colleague". This is false. In Ferrigno's Vegas vignette, a Dutch Islamist is hectoring the local religious police ("Black Robes") for not being fervent enough. The book also makes clear that the ISA's nominal founders - Redbeard and his brother James of State Security, General Kidd, President Kingsley, and even Mullah Oxley - agreed that the ISA should be reconstructed as a Republic in politics and as moderate in its established faith. Oxley and, to a lesser extent, Kidd (a Somali) feel that the ISA is not strict enough and work to make it more Islamic. Redbeard and Kingsley work toward moderation. There are more indigenous American Muslims in the book who were moderate Muslim before even 9/11 and remain moderate. Ferrigno has, in fact, taken pains to delimit fanatics from moderates, and indigenous Muslims from later converts from recent immigrants. One major argument of the book is that moderates and unbelievers form the majority but that they are vulnerable to fanatics. It is Schraub who has chosen to read the book while failing to make the attempt to understand the characters in it.

Ferrigno lives in the Pacific Northwest, which is why he has set his book in that territory (and why Boston isn't the capital). It is safe to say that Ferrigno is familiar with Disneyland, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Seattle and that he has his finger on the pulse of local thought.

I've seen the photographs of the Berkeley anti-war demos, and I've dropped by the Democratic Underground and Kos to see what the wackier Leftists are saying amongst themselves. I shudder when a demonstrator announces "we support our troops when they shoot their officers" and when a commenter says "screw them" about a contractor strung up in Fallujah. (This is just the latest.) I expect that Ferrigno has seen them too. Schraub either has not seen them, or (more likely) hopes that the radical Left's hatred is unserious and/or confined to a small fringe. Ferrigno sees how many hundred-thousand Americans participated in the 2004 "antiwar" demonstrations (which were objectively anti-West and pro-Saddam) and how many millions voted for John Kerry; he does not share this hope.

Schraub is welcome to disagree with Ferrigno, or even to call him paranoid - although Schraub should explain himself better on that score. What Schraub is not welcome to do is to misrepresent his book: which Schraub did when he called it anti-liberal, and accused it of failing to attempt to understand the difference between the degrees of Muslims' faith. (Ferrigno's actual failure to explain how the ISA resolved the Sunni / Shi'a divide is, by contrast, unimportant to the book.)

posted by Zimri on 15:26 | link |

Prayers For The Assassin

I have now, at last, read Robert Ferrigno's latest thriller Prayers For The Assassin. The premise is what might happen if America should lose World War IV to the likes of Bin Laden. Clayton Cramer's review inspired me to write one of mine own.

The book's premise demands a believable proposition in which America loses, and explanation of what an Islamist victory might look like on the ground. Ferrigno imagines that someone has nuked New York and Washington, and irradiated Mecca; and that a fanatic has admitted to the FBI that his men did it on behalf of the Israeli Mossad. From that, America then fell into chaos and its pieces reorganised themselves as religious republics. Ferrigno can then focus on those parts under Islam's sway and bypass the others.

Among the regions recognised by the family of nations, the Bible Belt is now a Christian nation and the "Blue States" now form an Islamic States of America. In between is an independent and neutral Nevada. Elsewhere, an unrecognised but unconquered Mormon Territory has formed, where Utah and Idaho's Snake River Valley are tacitly recognised as no-go areas but which extends deep into the Rockies in Wyoming and Colorado. Many cities have been laid waste by biological warfare. Other hilly areas are only loosely under ISA control; the Southwest prays to be taken over by the Mexican Empire and the mountains outside Mormon Territory are under armed gangs (although the white supremacists at least are mentioned as having been squashed). Of these areas, only the ISA proper, Nevada, and Catholic California affect the narrative; the Mormons, the plagues, and even the Bible Belt are there as background flavour.

The plot is secondary. In many ways this book is an update of Doomsday Warrior. The main characters are Rakkim the brawn and Sarah the brain. Both are too cool for the rules. Rakkim gets laid, although not in enough detail for the porn connoisseur. People get killed and tortured in creative ways. The bad guy is in a tower in Vegas. This "Old One" isn't the book's sadist, but he does send out the sadist to do his dirty work.

You don't buy a book like this for its plot. You could buy it for the pr0n, but that too is not why a neocon like myself would buy it.

Its main character is, ultimately, the setting. This is a dystopic future, and it needs to be judged against Brave New World, 1984, and The Handmaid's Tale which are also not meant to be read for their plot. We're here to judge the book by its premise: first, how believable is it that an ISA might arise within America? and second, how believable is the ISA's culture?

As for the means by which the ISA came to being: it is best to compare this book with Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Atwood's future came about because the pivotal event proved the anti-Islamic Christians right, that observant Muslims were a danger to them. Prayers For The Assassin's future came about because observant Muslims were able to convince the majority of the views of anti-Jewish Muslims. In the former, the fervent anti-Christian ideologues of Boston became fervent pro-Christian ideologues, and implicitly managed to co-opt the Bible Belt. In the latter, the most popular sports and entertainment figures converted to Islam, and President Kingsley took his oath of office on the Qur'an; and the Bible Belt went its own way (which, not being Boston, did not turn out the way Atwood envisioned it).

To the extent that Atwood's vision is believable, it is despite her narrative. She did not then know how easily a statist fanatic could transfer between beliefs, for instance Leftism to theocratism. As far as she was concerned, hardcore Leftists were the good guys and would be purged in the new order. Ultimately she viscerally decided that political Christianity could be turned into something like political Shi'a Islam, and produced a parallel to Iran in America. Ferrigno for his part tried to explain himself; and by way of illustration, the most violently Leftist parts of the old USA are now the most intolerantly Islamic of the ISA (e.g. San Francisco has literally decorated its bridge with the skulls of Sodomites). On those grounds, Ferrigno is Atwood's superior. Which is not to say that Ferrigno's vision is inherently believable, but it is certainly more believable than Atwood's; which is all a fan of Atwood should require.

I must nitpick at some mistakes in Ferrigno's book. Ferrigno does not seem to appreciate how deep the Shi'a - Sunni split runs. I agree with him on the character of American Islam and on its divisions between moderate and conservative, but I would have explained how it came to smooth over rival Islams. The book needed a throwaway sentence on how the state vets and registers foreign imams. Also in the book, the assassin claims that the blood type AB- was a rare one and required a special donor. This is false; an AB- can take any rhesus-negative type. I'm of AB+ myself; it's giving blood which they don't want me to do. In an Islamic America with heavy infusions of Near Eastern genes and a mostly Mediterranean Catholic minority, the rare type will be O-. Since Irish Catholics and Native Americans are disproportionately O-, the state will likely force them to donate it. (Mind, this can be explained away. The assassin is just screwing with the protagonist's head anyway; and the ISA likely has tech from Asia to synthesise O- blood from within its banks.)

Ferrigno does rather better in terms of believability with the ISA's culture. Ferrigno's ISA is not totalitarian, but a normal moderate Muslim country. The new Bill of Rights is not detailed, but it is clearly demarcated as shari'a: the right for Muslims to be free of offense, no right to bear arms, the right of protection for Catholics and Jews if they pay the tax, and so forth. The state's religion appears to be moderate Shi'ite, in a Zaydi or early 'Abbâsid manner; people take names like Ali and Hassan, those who answer questions and lead prayers are called "imams", and their leaders are "mullahs" and "ayatollahs".

Even moderate political Islam comes with all-too-familiar baggage. The leader expends the nation's wealth on boondoggles so as to show the superiority of the new regime. The new Capitol in Washington state is bigger than the old Capitol in Washington city, there is a big monorail in Seattle, and the old Space Needle is broken. Meanwhile, technology is imported from Asia rather than exported from the ISA's Pacific coast; and there is a lot more poverty and anarchy. Muslims routinely discriminate against the land's remaining unbelievers, and they persecute Jews where they find them and if they can get away with it. Since the California coast is Catholic, the ISA sees nothing wrong with drilling for oil off its coast; and it makes no attempt to reduce Los Angeles's pollution (which is, now, deadly). Disneyland lies in ruins and houses mut'a-marriage prostitutes in accordance with the hadiths of Ibn 'Abbâs. The government keeps having to appease Islamic fanatics by restricting the rights of the moderate and Catholic majority. Needless to say, corruption is endemic and news is filtered.

Good Muslims do argue that there is a good side to the new regime. They claim there is less debauchery, less crime, and more respect for Muslims. The heroes of the book argue that America was richer and more powerful under the sway of freedom, and that freethinking is a virtue for its own sake.

I found the book's premise on how the ISA came about a bit far-fetched, but frightening; not because the Islamists' plan would create an ISA, but because they would certainly try it in the hope that it would and in trying would kill tens of millions. I find the book's premise on how Islamic America would actually work once instituted depressingly familiar. Leave aside how we got there from here. This is the book to explain on American terms how Islamic rule, even moderate Islamic rule, works for the common man. I think that Prayers For The Assassin is the most important book published since 9/11.

posted by Zimri on 13:37 | link |

Saturday, February 04, 2006

Doomsday Warrior

When I went to high school in the close of the 1980s, the Brits were selling us various American apocalyptic pulp novel series, of which I remember The Survivalist and Doomsday Warrior. (Why the Brits thought that there was a market for this in the Midlands must remain a topic for another day.)

In my dorm, the moribund Moser's Hall, someone used to leave used copies of various Doomsday Warrior books just lying around. I read them from there and left them where I found them. What can I say; I was the resident Yank. (I didn't really want them for myself; besides, the best way of purchasing books was through the school shop and those got billed to the parents.)

Its author, "Ryder Stacy", was a coalition of what I'm guessing were two Scandinavians, Jan Stacy and Ryder Syvertsen.

As I recall, the main premise of Doomsday Warrior was that in the year 2089 America was to be a nuclear wasteland whose resources were being exploited by a Russian communist regime. Radiation had sped up mutations among those species which could survive it. A subpremise of the series was that one set of mutations occurred within humanity, and that the most useful mutation in this set improved resistance to radiation. The hero of the story is one such mutant, Ted Rockson, who is your classic All American Hero.

Its premise of a mutation for evolution is a rather late 19th century view of Darwinism, all told, and some call it racist. But it's no different from the main premise of Darwin's Radio, in which a retrovirus mutated certain humans. The "superhuman" mutation occurred across familiar races; and Premier Vassily sent in reincarnated Nazi Germans against our hero in Book Five. (I did mention that the authors were Skandas...) The book is very Darwinist, but it cannot be called racist in a way meaningful to us. Rather, it seeks to set apart the survivalist as its superior breed.

The nemesis of our hero is the local KGB. Premier Vassily's governor in North America is a certain madman named Killov. Killov keeps himself alive through a cocktail of drugs. He hates life and dreams of destroying all life on Earth. He is also a sadist. Clinching the deal, in a blatant theft from Stephen King's books (not to mention Tolkien), Killov makes his home in a black tower in Las Vegas.

Plot and character development are very, very secondary. Killov thinks up creative ways of killing his henchmen. Rockson gets laid a lot; including with all but one lady of an Amazon tribe. People get into lavishly detailed battle scenes. There's lots of interesting and deadly wildlife and flora. As Quizro says, Doomsday Warrior is porn.

The series started in 1984, when the Cold War was heating up and it was becoming clear that the Commies would lose unless they started a war. It was commonly thought, then, that the Politburo might choose some hardliner to start a conventional attack on Europe.

The Doomsday Warrior could not survive the first Bush administration. Even in the late 1980s it was becoming clear that liberalisation was coming to the USSR. At that point in the Doomsday Warrior sequence, Killov became the focus of villainy and Vassily became more sympathetic; Yeltsin to Killov's Putin. And then in 1989 Jan Stacy died, and then the whole Cold War ended (which is why we skip a numeral between World War II and the current IV). People ceased to believe that nuclear holocaust was going to come from a Russia which had lost control of the international Communist movement, and was no longer even communist itself.

Good, clean, American cheese. Mind, now we've got Ferrigno's Prayers For The Assassin...

posted by Zimri on 23:32 | link |

If we are racist anyway

Start with a non-black who wants to give those who look like Spike Lee the benefit of the doubt.

Along comes someone like Spike Lee, or the angry ranter in the the coffeehouse, or the bum who pesters us at the gas pump, or the congressperson who demands our taxes, or the orator who stirs up a riot, or the mugger who attacks us. Even this much one can handle. After all, if we are isolated from contact with peers who are black, by choice or otherwise, then those blacks who do run into will act like strangers of any race; and their disproportion among the bad sort is attributable to one's own isolation.

The problems arise with the unspoken (or spoken) implication that this hassle is just what we deserve. Black leaders tell us that black crime is the result of black rage, and that not giving to the panhandler is failing in our Christian duty (but the panhandler has no reciprocal duty to pass up that bottle of Night Train and get a job). The common people do evil and their leaders call it justice.

There comes the unbidden thought: if we're going to be condemned as evil anyway, why bother trying? Moreover, if one accepts Lee's claim that our anti-racist stance is hypocritical, it is arguably morally wrong to try. The white man's burden can be borne only so long, one might say. It is telling that those racists behind the Sundown Towns thought of their heinous actions as problem-solving; and it certainly solved their problem, if in an unacceptable manner.

I do not think that all black Americans claim that we're irredeemable racists - even those of us who dare object to Spike Lee. But those who do should know that such is not productive to a civil society, any more than any other lie is so productive.

posted by Zimri on 22:30 | link |

Alternate history, same as the real history

A common alternate history theme in the United States is, what if the states south of Dixie won the War Between The States?

It is generally thought that the CSA states couldn't win on their own; but that if they had sapped Northern will to fight, at some point the great powers of the day - Britain and France - would have stepped in to ensure the flow of cotton. Usually Gettysburg is the battle which is considered the lynchpin. If Robert E Lee's men hadn't foolishly mislaid their army's battle plans, Lee might have inflicted more damage.

This is the premise of Spike Lee's new movie, "CSA". It is also the premise of Turtledove's "How Few Remain".

For Spike Lee, the CSA took over the Union and enforced its slave laws upon the North. Reconstruction went on under President Davis without any attempt to improve the lot of blacks. Then, world history followed pretty much the course it did in the real world. The same Indian and then Spanish wars were fought, and the same science was discovered. The CSA carried out pre-emptive attacks on the Japanese instead of the other way 'round in December 1941, but the result was the same. The CSA didn't get involved in Europe, which was taken by the Allies anyway; but the CSA spirited Nazi scientists "away down south in Dixie". Tim McVeigh was a CSA patriot. The same wars against Iraq and Afghanistan took place. Etc, etc.

(That said, I do agree with Lee that a resurgent or even independent CSA would have taken on its own expansion campaign; not into Mexico - Texas might have even given back Nuevo Santander - but definitely into the Caribbean. Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and maybe someday Jamaica would have become slave states in no time if Britain and France had let them.)

For Turtledove, meanwhile, the CSA got what it wanted - secession - and the USA maintained itself as a "more perfect union". The two nations developed independently from there and world history ended up rather differently.

It would appear that Spike Lee's version is a satire, and that Harry Turtledove's version is a what-if scenario.

Lee's message is that American policy from 1865 on is indistinguishable from that of the Confederacy, except in its hypocrisy. America is racist, and evil; the Civil War was futile, and the civil rights struggle irrelevant. And as an evil nation, it had no right to object to Japanese adventurism then nor to militant Islam today.

Turtledove's message is that history can change based on "butterfly effect" accidents, but that human nature can't change.

I disagree with Lee, and strongly. I think that he has not made a good faith attempt in understanding how America works.

posted by Zimri on 21:36 | link |

Happy goldfish bowl

This was the closing (sarcastic) quote from Isaac Asimov's 1960s short story "The Dead Past". That story argues that society has no interest in allowing the private citizen unrestricted access to technology.

In this the story is a bit like Asimov's other older fiction. "Nightfall" warned of the dire effects of ignorant mankind exposed to the truths of the universe; and the "Foundation" stories proposed (in accordance with modern takes on the fall of Rome) that even an oppressive Empire was better than a lack of Empire. Asimov, then, approved of order.

In "The Dead Past", the government had banned study into a technology which enabled photographic reconstruction of past events. A historian colluded with scientists to circumvent this ban. It turned out that the technology was better at viewing the recent past than the ancient past. And by "recent", we mean "nanoseconds ago". Thus endeth privacy. Happy goldfish bowl to all of us.

Adam Ierymenko made a similar point on Protein Wisdom. Suppose biotech and nanotech mature, and Hamas gets them. Do we infidels trust them to use it wisely? Suppose Iran gets the nuclear bomb. Do we trust the Mahdi Nutjob? I guess we'll have to... for a few months. Then I expect they will use the technology, or the threat of it, against us.

If we want to keep our day to day freedoms, Asimov thought that we would require a world government with a monopoly on information.

posted by Zimri on 21:16 | link |