Monthly Archives: November 2011

Celebrating The Only “Left-Handed Gay Jew” in Congress

Posted on by
Reply

Barney Frank announced his retirement from Congress after 45 years of service.

He didn’t shy away from speaking his mind, and usually did so in a damn entertaining way. I think it’s fair to say that there are very few people in Congress that can outdo him in witty trash talk.

The reason I’ve always respected him is that he had the guts to come out as gay on his own accord in 1987 (the first to do so) and served openly since then. As he said: ”I’m used to being in the minority. I’m a left-handed gay Jew.” But he was also a liberal, and all those factors attracted a s*** storm of vile commentary from his critics.

I always take my hat off to men and women that stand tall, with or without the approval of others, especially in political office where being different in any way is a heavy burden.

Here is a recent interview with him on Charlie Rose:

Deficit Reduction Super Committee Fails

Posted on by
Reply

Breaking news: Congress is dysfunctional.

Republicans think they’ll win the presidency and Senate next year so they don’t want to agree to anything now, and instead are going to wait a year when they’ll be able to push their plan through with much less resistance.

Democrats found some backbone (fragile though it is) and are not giving up their push for higher revenue (tax increases). So now, they’ll get to run all year on the fact that those evil Republicans held them up from doing anything good for America.

It’s infantile politics at it’s purest, and it makes me ashamed. Sure, partisan bickering has always been a part of our political process, but in this case it seems that the (financial) stakes are higher.

The Whispers of War With Iran

Posted on by
Reply

Main Point: Suppose Iran will eventually get a nuclear weapon. Given that, how do we work towards peace in the Middle East? And no, war should not be “on the table” (maybe under it).

In recent news, interviews, books, the drums of war with Iran are beating. Top political leaders have gone from talk of sanctions, to talk of “all options are on the table”, and finally to explicit statements that if all else fails we must be willing to invade Iran.

What is the justification for such a preemptive war? It echoes that of the Iraq war: “we must prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons.”

“If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.” – Ehud Barak (Israeli Defense Minister) talking about Iran on Charlie Rose. For him, and many others in the Israeli government, a nuclear-armed Iran is the end of Israel. Moreover, he claims that if Iran gets a nuclear weapon, and then decides to invade a small state in the region (as Iraq did with Kuwait), the claim is no one will want to do anything about it.

Even if you believe everything Ehud Barak is saying, the common sense reality it seems is that most of the countries in the Middle East will gain access to a nuclear weapon eventually. That’s the reality from which all conversation has to begin.

It seems to me that there are no comforting answers here, but the hope has to lie in the doctrine of mutual assured destruction. We have to confront the terror of a nuclear attack rationally.

I’ve asked this question before: what happens if a nuclear bomb goes off in one of the major cities in the United States? From the interview above and the many conversations I’ve had on this subject, it seems that people are not willing to even remotely consider such a possibility. It is spoken of as some infinitely horrible event that would destroy all of civilization.

Talking about it in such a way does two things. First, the fear of it is grows without bounds and leads to irrational domestic and foreign policy. Second, it increases the likelihood that the response to such an attack will lead to an even worse catastrophe than the attack itself would cause.

These discussions need to happen in the international community and every country in the world has to be heard, included, and an agreement reached.

The Burden of Responsibility in the Health Care System

Posted on by
Reply

Main point: Either we have to be willing to watch a poor man die or we have to force that man to pay for insurance throughout his life.

Suppose a man is lying in the street, bleeding to death. He has no money, no insurance, but a simple procedure would save his life. The libertarian argument is that this is the cold moment when a man must take responsibility for the decisions he has made in the past and the cruel turn of luck that has led to his current circumstance.

It seems to me that we don’t live in a society that is willing to let such a man die. The alternative is to force the healthy and the fortunate to pay for the sick and the unfortunate. So until we are willing to turn a bleeding man away, I see no other option but to let government step in and force us to be responsible. I purposely phrase it in a way that seems like a contradiction, but one that’s no worse than the contradiction of our moral system.

By the way, the Supreme Court is scheduled (next year) to hear the case of whether Obama’s healthcare overhaul is constitutional:

This case is not as philosophically interesting as at first may seem, but unfortunately it will likely be politicized to a point where it may influence the decision of the judges.

Slavoj Zizek: The Mad Marxist

Posted on by
Reply

I used to be a bit skeptical about the praise that the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek received among the younger generation of casual armchair philosophers. After all, it’s hard not to be distracted by the man’s random movements and random composition of words into sentences that at times contradict the sentences that precede it.

However, now I am beginning to understand and admire the man. He embodies the best of what a philosopher can be in the 21st century: one who provides no answers, a few rare questions, but mostly just makes us think:

Now, my favorite part of that Charlie Rose interview is Zizek’s “analysis” of the movie Titanic. It captures brilliantly what I’ve always saw as the fundamental flaw in that love story. That love always felt to me as the kind of love that would not outlast the Titanic trip were it not to sink:

That there is what Zizek does well: reveals the absurdity of topics, events, people that somehow feel a bit sacred and yet not at all. For example, he is fascinated with Stalin and claims that the failure of communism in the Soviet Union is much more complex than, for example, the failure of fascism in Germany. Again, he provides no answers, but explains quite brilliantly that the reasons for its failure are not trivial. Again, he asks good questions, and provides no answers. That is the role of the 21st century philosopher.