The Audacity of Oversimplification

A contributor to National Review Online (NRO) has been promoting a book called Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism by James Piereson. Piereson describes the basic gist of the book thusly:

Kennedy constantly talked about the future, and [for him] the future was going to be brighter than the past. What happened [with his assassination] was that the assumption of American progress among liberals was shattered.

Obviously a full critique of this idea would entail reading the book, but there 2 problems with this idea that immediately come to mind:

First of all, the idea that liberals have not believed in American progress over the last 45 years is a ridiculous generalization. For one thing, it was the conservative Reagan revolution that was associated with the idea that government can only do harm, whereas the Clinton administration believed in governmant and ran it rather effictevly (Compare the federal response to any natural disaster under Clinton to the federal "response" to Hurricane Katrina)

Second of all, to the extent that the hope Liberals had for this country in the 60s deteriorated (which it certainly did to a degree), it wasn't just because Kennedy was assassinated. Also Martin Luther King and RFK. And Malcolm X. And Medgar Evers. And Vietnam and Watergate.

JFK's assasination of course had huge impact on the course of American politics, but a lot of other things happened in the 10 years following it.

Love and Theft

I just finished listening to Bob Dylan's 2001 album, "Love and Theft" for the first time while I stuffed envelopes at work (hope you're excited about that B.A., Vassar class of '08!). God damn, it's even better than Time out of Mind I think. How many other musicians of the album era have released fantastic albums 38 years apart? Ray Charles maybe? Miles Davis? Certainly a miniscule group.
For the last 5 years or so, when I considered my favorite bands/artists, it was The Beatles at number 1 with whoever number 2 was far behind. Now it's Beatles at 1, Dylan at 2, and then everyone else.

Bigot Day on AOL/Netscape

is every day.

Netscape.aol.com is the homepage of my computer at work, so if a news story on the page catches my eye, I generally read it rather than finding the story at a better news source. I recently started looking through the comments on the stories - they can be posted by anyone and are obviously not screened (not to say that they should be) - and quickly discovered that the AOL/Netscape home page apparently attracts every bigoted, crazy, and ignorant asshole with an internet connection. Here's a sampling of unedited comments on a story titled "Obama Tells GOP to 'Lay Off My Wife'":

-HOW CAN ANYONE DEFEND OBAMA AND HIS RACIST WIFE? IF YOU THINK MICHELLE IS PATROTIC JUST READ HER SR. YEAR THESIS. EVERYOTHER WORD WAS WHITE THIS WHITE THAT AND SHE ENDED UP CONDLUDING THAT SHE WOULD SPEND HER LIFE USING HER RESOURCES, EDUCATION, TO ENHANCE THE POOR BLACK FOLK. AND WHEN OBAMA GETS INTO OFFICE THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT SHE WILL BADGER OBAMA INTO DOING. WHITEY, YOU'VE HAD IT. EVEN YOU PATHETIC DRONES WHO GO TO HIS RALLY'S AND SIT LOOKING AT THE ADORING OBAMA WHO DOESN'T GIVE A HOOT ABOUT YOU. THE BEST YOU WHITE FOLKS WILL EVER DO WITH OBAMA IS GET TO VOTE FOR HIM TO HELP HIS RACE ADVANCE. YOU GET NOTHING FOR YOUR TAX DOLLAR EXCEPT YOUR TAX RECEIPT...... SUCKERS.

-ever wonder why Mr. Obama is so thin? Have you ever met an African American who does not participate in the drug culture? Mr. Obama has admitted that he has...his thinness suggest we should ask him to take a drug test.I bet Mrs. McCain would. And by the way unless you have proof shes in to drugs you are slandering her. Mr. Obama and his wife both have admitted to prior use.

-HOW CAN THE PEOPLE OF OUR WONDERFUL COUNTRY VOTE FOR A MUSLIM. HAVE YOU ALL FORGOTTEN WHAT HAPPENED ON 9-11? HE IS A SHEEP IN WOLFS CLOTHING. WATCH OUT. WHY WON'T THE MEDIA SAY HIS REAL NAME? BARAK HUSSEIN MUHAMAD OBAMA? THEY ARE AFRAID OF OFFENDING HIM. IF HE BECOMES OUR NEXT PRESIDENT, WE WILL BE OFFENED. THIS IS VERY SCARY.

...And so on.
I'm as quick as anyone to say that there are a lot of ignorant assholes in this country, but I find the number of comments similar to the above on any given AOL/Netscape story to be staggering to the point where I've actually wondered if there's a sociological reason that AOL/Netscape attracts bigoted assholes more than more reputable news sites. Anyone have any theories?

Return

I'm starting (resuming?) a blog. I'm writing it on this space where I briefly blogged 3 years ago because:
1. It's easier than creating a new blog
2. I have a nostalgic/masochistic desire to have the tripe I wrote 3 years ago be visible along with the new stuff I write.
3. I like the name of the blog.

I expect that this blog will be different from the old one in a couple of ways:
1. It will have a bit more of a livejournal type feel to it - I plan on talking about noteworthy/interesting aspects of my daily life rather than just my opinions on things. That being said, I plan on keeping the woe-is-me type stuff to a minimum.
2. Less political essays - I will certainly write about politics as much as anything else, but I plan on writing short comments on things in the news or things I read on other blogs rather than drawn-out essays because I'm never happy with such essays when I look back on them; the time it would take me to write an essay that is up to my personal standards is far more time than I'm willing to spend writing one.
3. Less chat, more hat.

estate tax

Many Republicans want to abolish the estate tax, or the "death tax" as they call it to make it sound scary. In support of their position, they tend to argue that the American people are on their side. I think that the Democrats should give the Republicans the benefit of the doubt and propose that we have a nationwide vote on the issue. The important caveat is that since the average American does not have time to research the issue, the vote would consist of answering 2 questions that effectively explain what the death tax is in simple language. I am so confident that the Republicans are wrong in claiming that the American people are on their side on this issue, I would propose that the American people should only have to vote the Republican way ("No" on this issue, as will be shown) on one of two questions for the Republicans to get their way and the death tax to be repealed. Here are the two questions:

Do you think that it is better to tax the wealthy than the poor and the middle class?

Do you think that is better to tax dead people than living people?

(The wordings of the questions could be reversed for some people so as to eliminate the bias of preferring to answer no rather than yes, or vice versa.)

If at least 50% of the American people answer no to either of these questions, the estate tax will be abolished.



Ok, I know what you're thinking...I characterized the estate tax unfairly. I implied that the estate tax only applies to wealthy people when in fact 2.3% of those the estate tax applies to have assets worth a measley $750,000 or less excluding the value of the estate. And in fact, the estate tax is a horrible scourge on those with estates worth $1.5 million or more as it taxes those in the $1.5-2 million range at a draconian 1.6%.

I apologize for my misrepresentations. Working men of all countries unite to abolish the estate tax. You have nothing to lose but the 4th Porsch of the asshole down the street.



-Larry

First Music List!

This blog was never meant to be exclusively about politics. In fact, when I created this blog I was planning to write about music - at least post lists - rather frequently. That being said, here's a newly updated list of my 20 favorite artists:


20. Michael Jackson
One word: Thriller. The Bad and Off the Wall albums both have some great stuff and helped get Jackson onto this list, but it's Thriller - the best album of the 80s and one of the best albums of all time - that allows Jackson's musical talent to distract me from how disturbed a person he is. Michael Jackson could be a couple spots higher on this list, but it's difficult for me to listen to his music without thinking of the type of person he's become (always was?). Nevertheless, nothing will ever change the fact that Thriller is 9 songs of absolute brilliance.

19. Stevie Wonder
Talking Book, Innervisions, and Songs in the Key of Life are all really damn good albums. Those are supposedly his three best, but getting a couple more of his albums could move him up a couple notches on the list.

18. Simon and Garfunkel
My friend Anna is right, Paul Simon invented emo. Don't believe that? Check out "I am a Rock" and just consider the fact that he wrote a song called "The Dangling Conversation". While inventing emo may be a rather dubious distinction, songs like "I am a Rock", "America", and "Homeward Bound" have some of the most wonderfully sad lyrics ever written. It helps that Simon (with the help of Garfunkel, I guess) wrote beautiful melodies as well.

17. The Ramones
Talking about the Ramones, someone on VH1 once said something along the lines of, "The first time you hear their songs, you think, 'Hmm, this is catchy'. The second time you hear their songs, you think, 'Wow, this is really good'. The third time you hear their songs, you think, 'I could worship this!'. I couldn't have said it better.

16. The Smiths
No one makes self-pity as wonderful or as funny or as clever as Morrissey, and god can he sing. And Johnny Marr has some nice guitar parts as well.

15. U2
I will always defend Bono. He may have a bit of a messiah complex, but that's because he's the closest thing we've got. In between saving the world, Bono and the (very important) rest of U2 created some of the most uplifting music ever with The Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby, and the underrated All That You Can't Leave Behind, amongst others. They also put on what may have been the best live show I've ever seen.

14. The Velvet Underground
They live up to the hype. White Light, White Heat is overrated and Loaded is underrated by most, so it's a wash. As far as I know, they also have the best B-sides of anyone but the Smashing Pumpkins.

13. Billy Joel
Maybe it's the fact that I grew up on him, maybe it's the New Jersey/New York thing, maybe it's the fact that I like mainstream music more than most "serious" music fans...I love Billy Joel. He's one of the greatest storytellers in all pop music and is vastly underrated by critics and other "serious" types.

12. Bright Eyes
I love them for the same reason so many of my peers do - because Conor Oberst captures what it's like to be a depressed teenager/young adult without any of the cheesiness or lack of cleverness that usually marks those types of songs. He's not Dylan (He's really more Paul Simon), but he's the best songwriter of the last 7 or so years.

11. Pink Floyd
The Dark Side of the Moon is as incredible as everyone says it is, and I like The Wall even better - it's one of my 5 favorite albums. Add Wish You Were Here and the oft overlooked Meddle to the equation and you've got 4 classic albums in a 9 year period.

10. Nirvana
The recent release of the long awaited box set, With the Lights Out sealed their place in the top 10. It showed that while Nirvana only released 2 really good albums, albeit both of them classics, Kurt Cobain was actually a fairly profilic writer of really good songs. I could do plenty of empty speculating about "what could have been", but the point is what was - for a brief time in the early 90s, Nirvana was arguably the greatest band in the world.

9. Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin is the only band/artist that I know of to release 6 great albums out of the gate (Springsteen comes close). Jimmy Page is my favorite guitar player; he's hands down the best riff writer of all time, on both electric and acoustic guitar. Robert Plant is one of the great rock vocalists and John Paul Jones (not the Pope) and John Bonham were arguably the greatest rock bassist and drummer, respectively.

8. Bruce Springsteen
"I have seen the future of rock and roll, and his name is Bruce Springsteen" - John Landau, 1974
Landau was certainly right, but he couldn't have possibly anticipated the career Springsteen was to have...his first 7 albums (8? I need to give Tunnel of Love more listens) are all really good and he released one of the best albums of the year in 2002, almost 30 years after his first album.
And yes, I get as excited as anyone when he sings of being "sprung from cages out on highway 9" or "stuck in the mud somewhere in the swamps of Jersey".

7. Bob Dylan
Because only Dylan could make, "The sun's not yellow, it's chicken" sound meaningful.

6. Radiohead
Because I listen to a lot of classic rock and "alternative" rock from the early 90s, I got into most of my favorite bands when they were past their prime. Radiohead is the only one of my favorite bands that I have followed through the prime of their career. I bought OK Computer the summer that it came out and fell in love with it shortly after. I remember anticipating Kid A for more than 2 years and eventually enjoying Radiohead's third classic album in a row. Two of the three best concerts I've been to were Radiohead shows; I've seen them live three times. They've made some of the greatest albums of the last 15 years, and even if they're past their glory days (as Hail to the Thief seems to signify), I'll always have an attachment to them.
And, oh, the Pablo Honey album is criminally underrated.

5. The Rolling Stones
I once said that not liking the Rolling Stones much when I was younger was the biggest mistake of my life. That was an exaggeration, but not by much. In my opinion, the only group that surpasses the Stones in terms of quantity of great music is The Beatles. In other words, the Stones should possibly be as high as number two on this list (Ok, so I gave away number one, as if you didn't know already), but I haven't been into them long enough yet to develop the attachment that I have to the bands that I rank higher than them.

4. Pearl Jam
Pearl Jam does not get enough credit. Their first three albums are generally recognized for the great albums that they are, but No Code and Yield are two of the most underrated albums of the 90s. The most recent two albums have some very good stuff too, and the excellent Lost Dogs shows that Pearl Jam has a great collection of non-album tracks as well. It should also be mentioned that they're great to their fans, Eddie Vedder as well as the rest of the band support liberal political causes, and Eddie Veddier is hot. Really hot.

3. R.E.M.
R.E.M. is my band. Yes, I know they have millions of other fans, but they can still be my band. I'm a bigger R.E.M. fan that anyone I know with the possible exception of a second cousin (cousin once removed?) of mine. I identify with the personalities of the band members; I feel like I could have lunch with Michael Stipe or Mike Mills. Peter Buck is my kind of guitarist and certainly an underrated one - the parts he plays are almost always simple, but they're also diverse, distinct, and create great hooks. R.E.M. began making great music in 1983 and they've released a great album as recently as 1998. They may be the best band of the past 25 years.

2. The Smashing Pumpkins
I've only had two favorite bands in my life and Smashing Pumpkins are one of them. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness got me hooked in '96 and it remains my favorite album. The album displays everything that is great about the Pumpkins. It has twenty-eight songs and clocks in at over two hours, but I wouldn't want it to be much shorter, which is incredible considering my tendency to think that sixty minute albums should have been forty-five. What's more incredible is that the Pumpkins had twenty-eight more songs that they didn't put on the album, many of them great. Few people recognize how profilic a songwriter Billy Corgan was from 1991 to 2000. While the Pumpkins only released five albums in that time (the last three being very long), Corgan wrote a ton of other songs not released on albums and an anstonishing number of them are great. Moreover, I dare say that Corgan is a diverse a songwriter as anyone of his generation...his songs span alternative, metal, new wave, prog rock, techno, jazz-influenced rock, acoustic ballads, and I can't even begin to classify a song such as "We Only Come Out At Night". To simply classify The Smashing Pumpkins as "alternative rock" is grossly unfair; they're one of the most innovative bands of the last twenty-five years.

1. The Beatles
You knew this was coming. I'm not going to try to tell you why they're the greatest band of all time, because it's been explained by countless others better than I'll ever explain it. But I do want to say that I've been listening to the Beatles since I was eight and they continue to amaze me. They were far and away my favorite band prior to my recent obsession with the Hard Day's Night album. I owned 11 albums by them (as well as some compilations) prior to recently acquiring Beatles '65 and discovering some great songs that I wasn't previously aware of. I have more albums to get by them, but even when I no longer do, I don't expect the Beatles to stop amazing me.


Wow. So that was a fucking long post. Thank you very much for reading, and thank you even more if you didn't just skim. I plan to write a much shorter post within the next couple of days about bands that might make this list in the future. Again, thanks for reading.



-Larry

25,000 Civilian Deaths

I'm hoping my first post in 3 months will mark the beginning of routine posting (like at least once a week), but don't count on it (not that I presume you care...).


A couple posts ago, I wrote,
While it is true that Iraqi citizens may still be being killed in large numbers, one can safely assume that this number will fall and remain at a level significantly lower than the number that were being killed under Saddam Hussein.

Unfortunately, I don't think this is a safe assumption at all anymore. The more conservative estimates of civilian deaths in Iraq since the beginning of the war in March of 2003 put the number higher than 25,000. This still doesn't come close to conservative estimates of civilian deaths under Saddam's regime, which put the number between 300,000 and 400,000. But it must be considered that the civilian deaths under Saddam were spread out over a 24 year period, so a conservative estimate of the amount of civilians killed per year under Saddam is about 14,600. Since it was only 2 years ago that the U.S. began the Iraq war, a conservative estimate of the civilians killed per year is about 12,500. This is certainly a disturbingly close number. Moreover, using the less cautious estimates, which put civilian deaths under Saddam as high as 1 million and civilian deaths since the beginning of the war as high as 100 thousand, the numbers become 41,700 per year under Saddam and 50,000 per year since the war began.

There are a couple qualifications that need to be made here. Regardless of the similarity or dissimilarity of the numbers, there is certainly a moral distinction to be made between Saddam's deliberate killing of civilians and the U.S.'s accidental (but arguably sometimes careless) killing of civilians while targeting military personelle. Furthermore, many of the civilian deaths that have occured since March of '03 have been the result of the insurgency, not the U.S. military. But it is of course true that the insurgency would not be doing what they are doing if it wasn't for the presence of the U.S. millitary.

The point is that the humanitarian rationale for the war, the only rationale that to me has any legs to stand on, seems to be fading...We all know now that the war wasn't fought over WMDs and I don't buy that the war has made us safer in the U.S. I still stand by my statement that the number of civilians being killed in Iraq will inevitably fall, but the question to be asked is how long will that take. If it takes another 10 years, which it certainly seems like it might despite Cheney's claims about the insurgency being in its "last throes", then this seems largely irrelevant, as Saddam (who is 67 or 68 now) might have been dead in 10 years if we hadn't captured him, and might die within the next 10 years anyway. While I'm still "very much confident that whoever comes to power [as a result of the U.S. war] will be worlds better than Saddam Hussein", I'm not confident that whoever comes to power will be worlds better than who his successor(s) would have been, given the U.S.'s track record.

None of this means that we should immediately pull out of Iraq; I in fact think that sudden withdrawal would be the worst thing we could do. We must finish what we started. I even think that one could still rationally support the war, given the effects it could have on the future of the Middle East and the future of terrorism. But it's clear to me that this war was by no means necessary and may not even be beneficial. While we still may save more lives than we destroy in the long run, if one was to err on the side of life - the cornerstone of the much lauded "culture of life" *- one would have to be opposed to such a bloody war.


-Larry

*I'm not saying that I adhere to the "culture of life" whatever that actually entails, but erring on the side life is generally a good principle, one that Bush, and most Americans, certainly claims to abide by.

"No Regrets"

Am I the only that gets extremely annoyed whenever anyone says "I have no regrets" or "If I could do it all over again, I wouldn't change anything" or anything alone those lines?
Let me make this clear: I have a lot of regrets, and if I could do it all over again, I would change many things. That's not because I'm living in the past, it's because I'm living on Earth.
Aside from the blatant dishonesty inherent to claiming to have no regrets, the other thing that bothers me about it is that a person with no regrets is probably a complete asshole. For instance:
Joe: "You know Bob, I really didn't appreciate it when you fucked my girlfriend."
Bob: "Meh, I have no regrets."
Obviously most of us haven't fucked someone else's girlfriend, but we've all done things that we should regret, not just for our sake, but for everyone else's.
Next time someone tells me they have no regrets, I want to punch them in the face and then ask, "Oh really, do you regret saying that?"