Recycling Content

Recycle Reduce Reuse by Kevin Dooley is licensed CC BY 2.0.

Been fighting off a cold for the past couple of weeks - took some antibiotics last week, which cured the sinus infection that hitched a ride on Rhinovirus Alpha and helped me feel better for a few days, then caught another cold a few days after that. 

Needless to say, I'm not amused.

So, while I suffer through yet another week of keeping the facial tissue industry singlehandedly in business, here's something I wrote recently for the LP Nevada blog - Trump's followers might not be racist:

I was at a gas station a couple days ago when I overheard the clerk talking with a customer about the last GOP debate. What caught my attention was that he was the first person I met that openly expressed support for Trump - most conservatives I've talked to can't stand the guy (he's not conservative enough for them), and most Libertarians are doing their level-best to contrast themselves from his xenophobia - so I naturally wanted to know more. Why, of all the candidates on that stage, did the gas station clerk favor Trump? 

"He's genuine. He speaks his mind." 

That he does. You have to give him credit - he's not parsing every sentence that comes out of his mouth through a series of focus groups or think tanks. That genuineness, that willingness and ability to say what's on his mind and damn the consequences, is actually one of the first things supporters consistently love about him. He's not beholden to campaign contributors - he's a billionaire, after all - he's not beholden to the GOP establishment, and he's not beholden to the media, which happily laps up his every absurd utterance like a kitten splashing around in a milk bowl. In short, whether you love him or hate him, he's different. Sure, a lot of what's on his mind is utter nonsense, but he's willing to share his mind with America and let us decide among ourselves which of his ideas have merit and which of his ideas belong in the rubbish heap of history. That's pretty rare among aspiring politicians these days, who, more often than not, would rather run every utterance past expensive political consultants, focus groups, polls, major donors, and so forth before they take even the shakiest of stands. 

Read the rest at the link.

In Defense of Creeps

Creeper by Thangaraj Kumaravel is licensed CC BY 2.0.

[Content warning: I'm going to stick to a generally cis-heteronormative perspective here because, frankly, that's the one I live in and I prefer to "write what I know". I'll try to keep it broad when and where I can, but I don't want to make blanket assumptions here if I can help it.]

A couple weeks ago, I turned my attention to "creeps" and why men defended them. In that article, I tried to make two basic points:

1. There are good reasons why men might defend creeps, and it has a lot more to do with empathy toward those that are less romantically fortunate than anything else.
2. Creeps don't deserve the empathy, especially those that lean hard on supposed "disabilities" as an excuse for their creepiness.

Those two basic points rested on a rather specific definition of "creep", however:

Creepiness occurs when someone demonstrates sexual intent while undermining or disregarding the recipient’s personal autonomy or consent.

Some comments, both here and elsewhere, convinced me I need to fine-tune this a bit. Before I do, though, I want to start by acknowledging that this is probably going to end up as a male-targeted version of this, via The Unit of Caring:

I think some fraction of the obnoxious people saying, 'but I just don’t find X people attractive!!!’ are trying and failing to articulate this: 

I have a really strong instinctive 'no stop telling me who to be attracted to and what it says about me’ reaction to the thing you’re saying. I feel like acknowledging 'yes my preferences cause harm to people’ is giving leverage to a pattern of thought where my sexuality gets distributed to people who deserve it. I feel like 'but I am not attracted to X people' has to be sufficient, has to be respected, for me to feel safe. I feel like 'well maybe you should question that’ is an open-ended obligation to improve my sexuality toward your ends.  

And so 'shut up and keep hurtful preferences to yourself’ doesn’t work, not if we want everyone to hear the message 'your sexuality isn’t something that gets distributed to the deserving. Your 'no’ is always good enough. Experiencing or not experiencing attraction does not make you a bad person, ever.'  

And yet. 

Preferences are culturally mediated! There are lots of people who would totally be attracted to trans people and to fat people and to disabled people and to every other constructed-as-undesirable category of people if they asked themselves about it! There are even more people who would be attracted to those groups if they hadn’t been raised saturated by media messages about what beauty is!  We should be angry about this! We should say things about this! 

…and when we do, people will hear 'your sexuality makes you a bad person, fix it, fix yourself’, and they respond 'but I’m just not attracted to Xs’, and they aren’t wrong either, and telling them to shut up is not as obvious or as necessary as it once seemed to me.  

I have no idea how to fix this.

A lot of the conversation I see surrounding "being creepy" strongly resembles this dynamic. On the one hand, we have a group of people saying, "Hey, people shouldn't feel comfortable following other people around and demanding sexual attention!" On the other hand, we have a group of people saying, "Hey, people shouldn't feel uncomfortable asking about mutual sexual attraction!" Then, just to add insult to injury, we have people behaving poorly on both sides of the argument - certain men openly defending something dangerously similar to the "50 nos and yes mean yes" school of thought, while certain women treat men who complain that it can be quite challenging to talk to women without unintentionally coming across as "creepy" as self-entitled jerks. Of course, it doesn't help that not everyone uses the same definition of "creepy". For a lot of people, "creepy" means "person I'm not attracted to", so when they see articles (like mine) that say, "Hey, stop being creepy!", what they read is, "Hey, stop being unattractive!", instead of, "Hey, stop demonstrating sexual intent while undermining or disregarding the recipient's personal autonomy or consent!"

This, needless to say, does not go well.

Which brings me back to the end of my last post on this subject:

Of course not. Creepy guys kill vibes. Nobody wants to be around Uncle Lou. Nobody wants to be Uncle Lou. If you see someone being an Uncle Lou, pull them aside and tell them to stop being an Uncle Lou. Tell them what they’re doing that’s Uncle Lou-ish. Make it clear that, if they persist in being an Uncle Lou, you’re either going to escort them out of whatever venue you’re both sharing or you’ll find someone who will. Make it clear that, from that moment going forward, if they don’t alter their behavior, you will name names. You will take pictures. If they can’t be a good example, then they’re just going to have to be a horrible warning. Don’t let them oppression olympics their way out of it, either - a truly neuroatypical person isn’t going to say, “Oh, sorry - I’m autistic. I can’t help it.” No, they’re going to apologize and they’re going to ask what they can do to avoid that sort of behavior in the future. If you get any other response, you’re not dealing with a neuroatypical person - you’re dealing with a manipulator.

This paragraph was, by far, the most contentious of the entire article. I got a little push-back regarding the numbers I used on sexual violence (intentionally so - I went for conservative, government sourced ones that probably understate matters considerably to demonstrate that, even using the official numbers, it makes rational sense for women to be concerned about creeps and their intentions), but nothing like I got on the part in red. The most consistent criticism was that, well, actually, neuroatypical people can be manipulators too, which, okay, fair enough, and that was that. The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that I needed to put some serious thought behind the ramifications of this. Let's assume for a moment that:

• Neuroatypical people, especially those on the autism spectrum, aren't strong on picking up social cues.
• For a variety of reasons, women are conditioned to give "subtle" hints of attraction or rejection.

Given these assumptions, it's not a stretch to assume that, at some point, a neuroatypical person is going to engage in behaviors that seem legitimately "creepy", in the sense used in the definition I posted at the top, simply because they're not going to pick up the signals that say, "No, seriously, I'm not interested in you!" without actually saying exactly that. Then, when they finally get that forthright negative response they need to actually know that, no, really, that person isn't interested in them, and it's followed with, "you creep!", from their perspective they see it as someone using "creep" in the "You're unattractive!" sense, not the "You've been demonstrating sexual intent while undermining or disregarding my personal autonomy or consent!" sense that the person rejecting them meant it in. After all, from the neuroatypical standpoint, that's the first, last, and only sign of rejection they've perceived from that individual - why wouldn't they shrug when someone tells them to "stop being creepy" after that? If you briefly greeted a woman at a party and then some "well meaning gentleman" immediately approached you and told you to stop creeping everyone out, wouldn't you tune him out, too?

Thinking about this further, I also realize there's another group of men that are going to be in the same boat - younger men with zero experience with women who are dealing with women that don't know how to communicate rejection effectively because they have zero experience with men. Considering how many teenagers are firmly convinced, either through Hollywood or hormones (I haven't decided which - someone page a psychiatrist) that romance confers telepathy to both partners if it's "true love", it doesn't take a leap of imagination to think of a scenario where a young woman decides, "Well, I'm touching his shoulder, but not in that way, so he should know I'm just being polite and friendly" at the same time that a man thinks, "Wow! She's touching me! She must be interested!", which then leads to a correspondingly inevitable confrontation later that day that leads to a series of angsty blog articles shared across the MRA/Feminist banks of the Tumblrsphere. Then, we fast-forward a few weeks and the woman says something like, 

There’s another reason why I don’t like to go places alone — and it has nothing to do with my own failings. I’m afraid of being approached by men who want to chat me up, or ask me on a date. I don’t know how to reject them — the fact is, it doesn’t matter how polite I am, things can turn dangerous in a split second. 

[...] 

"It’s awkward that they would put you in this sort of social position in the first place. I guess men feel it’s necessary because they tend to require more direct communication while women pick up more on feelings, social cues, etc. While we feel we’re making it obvious that we’re not interested or only want to be friends, men think that we are in fact interested and showing our interest."

So, what do we do about this? Feminists have a point - men can turn dangerous (or at least ill-tempered) in a split second if rejected. Obviously, this isn't true of all men, or perhaps even most men, but, as I discussed previously, even at a rate of 1 in 5,000 (a rather low estimate of the number of men that are rapists), there's a pretty good chance that a woman is sharing a public space with a rapist at some point in her life, and there are a lot of other unpleasant things men can do to a woman that don't involve rape or sexual assault. There is a simple, straightforward solution to this problem - encourage women to make the first approach, that way they're the ones in control of the situation - but then that would mean "women are doing all the work".

*rubs bridge of my nose while sighing audibly*

Ignoring society's failure to apply simple predicate logic for a second, though, let's be honest with ourselves - if women were encouraged to make approaches, it wouldn't solve the problem. As women will be happy to tell you, quite a few women aren't approached, and they're not happy about it. Realistically, the only guys that are going to consistently get approached are precisely the same women that are consistently approached - the top 20% (or less) most attractive guys in the bar. Everybody else is going to get filtered out as "background radiation" - they're neither handsome nor ugly enough to draw attention so they're never noticed. Since most of the "creepy" people women complain about aren't in that top 20%, they're still going to have to make approaches to get noticed, which is going to lead us right back here once again, especially as long as there's a large enough group of people out there that insist on using "creepy" as a synonym for "unattractive person".

What's the solution? I honestly don't know.

What I do know is that we can't simultaneously believe that men approach women because they think they're entitled to sex while we're simultaneously complaining that men won't approach women. We can't have a society where women are considered "desperate" if they approach at the same time we're telling men that they may approach if and only if they follow a very particular set of rules, especially when the first of those rules violates another set of rules. If we're lucky, that is the path to neo-Victorian flower exchanges, which might be useful for the descendants of Dutch tulip stock owners, but is less useful for those of us that would prefer courtship rituals to take less than a few years to complete while each side initiates the first few delicate feelers of interest through friends-of-friends in front of neutral intermediaries.

Quite a few of us, believe it or not, do not see Jane Austen novels as something worthy of emulation. Not even the ones with zombies.

So what do we do? Personally, I think we have to accept that some people are going to approach when they shouldn't, some people won't approach when they should, and there's not enough virtual ink on the Internet to keep that from happening. An opt-in "fuck yes or no" approach might help - if we taught everyone that, if you're not seeing clear, unambiguous signs of interest almost instantly, that's a "no", that would not only help those who are less adept at reading non-verbal social cues behave according to more sensible, less "creepy" defaults, but would also take a lot of the pressure off of women to make a clear, confrontational rejection - but that's not going to keep people from making potentially inappropriate approaches in the first place. It would also help if we could decide, once and for all, whether or not we should encourage women to make the first approach, or at least decide whether or not men are immature and worthless if they don't make that first approach. It would also help if every side of this issue realized that we all want the same thing, more or less - to be loved by people we love and to not be forced to cause pain to others. Rejection hurts on both sides - it's not fun - so if someone is rejecting you, it's because it's the least worst of the options available to them. If you don't want the sting of rejection to feel so sharp, don't force someone into slapping your face before you get a clue. 

Why Do Men Defend Creeps?

Lone creeper by Quim Gil is licensed CC BY-SA 2.0

Fun fact: I’m an admin for a feminist forum. I’m not sure how it happened, exactly - my bet remains a drunken, drug-fueled dare at a Burning Man kick-off party somewhere in Southern California that I was hundreds of miles away from - but, be that as it may, I’ve been reading quite a bit of feminist content lately and attempting to approach it evenhandedly enough to execute my duties with a modicum of professionalism. One recurring topic that pops up from time to time is this:

Why do men defend creeps?

It’s a good question. Why are people asking it?

**********

A common refrain among the feminist community, especially since the UCSB shooting a couple years ago (an incident I wrote about), is that “Men fear rejection, women fear rape”:

While men fear rejection, women fear rape and murder. Saying "no" shouldn't be dangerous. #YesAllWomen

— Stop Patriarchy (@StopPatriarchy) May 27, 2014

I’ve talked to several women through the years about this idea and received near-universal agreement about the sentiment behind it. To really understand this sentiment, though, it needs to be unpacked a bit further. Most “women fear rape” the same way that soldiers in Iraq were instructed to “be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet,” and for many of the same reasons. That advice was given to soldiers in Iraq because, while most Iraqis wouldn’t hurt American soldiers and were reasonably friendly and accommodating, all things considered, it only took one in a group to choose differently for everything to go sideways. It would only take one Iraqi to decide that perhaps today is a good day to die, strap some bombs to their body, and approach a convoy; one Iraqi to talk a child into stopping a convoy so that they can stage an ambush; one Iraqi to plant a roadside bomb. It might be one Iraqi in a hundred, it might be one Iraqi in a thousand - either way, it just takes one. The soldiers can’t know in advance which Iraqi it would be that would make that choice, so they had to assume, once they left their base, that it could be any Iraqi, at any time, that might make that choice - and they had to plan accordingly.

So it is with women and rape.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, for women between the ages of 18 to 24 in the United States, anywhere from 6.1 to 7.6 per 1,000 are a victim of sexual assault or rape. The vast majority of reported sexual assaults and rapes are committed by people close to the victim - family members, friends, or acquaintances - but it’s not so vast for women to write off strangers entirely. Using some rough arithmetic and estimation, given that up to 1 in 100 are a victim of reported sexual assault and rape, and given that 1 in 5 victims of sexual assault or rape are assaulted by people unfamiliar with them, that works out to about 1 in 500 women that are a victim of sexual assault or rape by a stranger. This is about the same probability of being diagnosed with Asperger’s, being diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, dying from a foodborne illness, or being diagnosed with sickle cell anemia at birth if you’re Black. In other words, it’s not common, but it’s not uncommon. Since rapes have to be committed by someone - thus far, the number of rapes by inanimate objects remains low - we can safely assume that anywhere from 1 in 500 of the men surrounding each woman (assuming each women is raped by a different stranger) to, say, 1 in 5,000 men (assuming the serial rapist model) are potential rapists. Those aren’t high odds, but, if you live in a major metropolitan area, it’s highly possible that you’ll pass 5,000 different men over the course of a year.

Note that the 1 in 5,000 number is probably a safe lower bound - there’s considerable debate about whether or not sexual assault numbers are underreported or not and by how much, with the infamous “1 in 5” surveys taking center stage of the debate. Even at this low of a number, though, there’s a strong chance that, over the course of a year, a woman’s going to be in the same room as someone willing and capable of raping a stranger. It might be on the bus, it might be at a concert, it might be at a club, it might be in school, but it’s bound to happen sooner or later. So, how do women identify who might be capable of doing this before they are placed in danger?

Enter the creepy guy.

It’s important at this point to identify what “being creepy” is, exactly. A good definition that crossed my vision recently was this:

Creepiness occurs when someone demonstrates sexual intent while undermining or disregarding the recipient’s personal autonomy or consent.

Simply put, a person who’s willing to disregard someone’s personal autonomy or consent regarding sex - which, I’d argue, is the textbook definition of someone capable of being a rapist - is probably going to be alarmingly consistent about it. They’re going to be creepy. They’re not going to take no for an answer when they approach a woman online. They’re not going to respect personal privacy - maybe they’ll catcall, maybe they’ll touch someone that doesn’t want to be touched. They’ll make sexual advances against a captive audience, like someone sitting next to them on a long flight (like the person brought up in the article I pulled the definition of “creepy” from) or perhaps a long, late night elevator ride. Chances are, someone willing to do those things and cross those boundaries is much more likely to rape or sexually assault someone than someone that isn’t willing to engage in those behaviors. Naturally, people sense this intuitively and react accordingly.

And yet, some men defend creeps. Not all men, of course - there are quite a few outspoken critics of creep defending, like Dr. NerdLove, and John Scalzi - but it’s still more than a few. What’s going on?

**********

It’s time to unpack the second half of that refrain: Men fear rejection.

To be clearer, most men don’t fear individual rejection - they fear rejection. Being rejected by someone that you’re attracted to isn’t fun - we’ve all been there - but being rejected by everybody is scary. Being viewed as “unfuckable” is scary. Being viewed as unworthy of sexual desire is scary. This is what men fear, and like anyone else, when men are facing this fear head-on - perhaps because they’ve been rejected by just about everybody they’ve approached, perhaps because they’ve talked themselves into seeing themselves as “unfuckable” - they react irrationally. If you’re afraid of spiders and you see one in the bathroom, right when you get out of the shower, you’re not going to capture it in your hand and bring it outside - you’re going to smash the shit out of it. You might even scream while you’re at it. Fear is the mindkiller, especially when you’re naked and dripping.

And just about every man on the planet has felt this exact fear at some point in their lives. Including me.

This might sound kind of strange, but when some men defend creeps, they’re doing so from a position of empathy. They remember that fear and, when they see a million women agree in unison that yes, this particular man, he’s creepy, he’s unfuckable, he’s unworthy of sexual desire - that hits a nerve. The adrenaline starts flowing, the flashbacks from failed awkward attempts at expressing desire growing up come back (remember, men are often still the ones expected to make the first approach), the laptop is right there - to the barricades! Defend our brothers in arms!

**********

Want to know something else I learned from being an admin of a feminist forum? Men aren’t the only ones that fear rejection, that fear complete and utter desexualization. Imagine a man writing something like this:

It doesn’t help when there are, from within the feminist community, cries (often of the second wave “Male gaze!!! MALE GAZE!!!” timbre) of, “Well, why are you so obsessed with being sexy anyway? Is that all women can be? Sexy? It’s ok to be ugly! It’s ok to not be pretty!” 

Yes. Yes, of course it’s ok. The problem is that terms like “pretty” and “ugly” have been dropped on us, like rigid, rubric lead weights, without our having any say in what defines them. Being pretty isn’t the best thing a person can be, nor is ugly the worst. But who gets to decide what pretty is? Who gets to decide if I’m pretty? 

Isn’t pretty for me to define? 

[...] 

But I want people to know that sexiness is not a privilege, saved for those who earn it. Sexiness is for anyone that wants it.

This is a piece written by a woman who’s stating, clearly and concisely, that, just because a person is conventionally sexually unattractive, that doesn’t mean they don’t have the right to see themselves as sexy. Everybody has the right to see themselves as sexy, as worthy of desire by someone - or, failing that, at least the right to see themselves as a human being. For men, being “creepy” is a big part of being seen as sexually unattractive - a big enough part, in fact, where I can't imagine a man writing that last sentence with any seriousness without an asbestos-lined monitor, a locked credit report, his cell phone number in his neighborhood SWAT team's speed dial, and frequent lodging points with his neighborhood's Witness Protection program.

Now imagine if someone responded to the article on sexual attractiveness with something similar to the following:

It is unfair. It’s okay that it’s unfair. You know why? Because whether someone likes you enough to want to be your friend, to want to hug you when they see you and let you into their personal space, wants to flirt with you, or wants to joke around with you about certain topics IS a subjective decision they get to make. If Commander Logic comes up to me and puts her arm around me, that’s a friendly bit of affection from a trusted friend. If Joe or Jane New Person sees that and thinks “that’s how Jennifer likes to be greeted” and does the same thing, they’re going to get to watch me jump out of my skin because: Bad Touch! I get to set different boundaries for different people. 

I feel like a lot of the people who are looking for a rubric on how to make sure they aren’t being creepy are the same people who are looking for a rubric on how to pick up dating partners. They want rules and steps that will guarantee a certain outcome, and they don’t like being told how much of it is subjective and totally out of their hands. But other people – the people you want to date, the people you want to be friends with – have their own tastes, opinions, likes, and dislikes. To imply that there is some kind of system that guarantees that other people will like you or to make it a question of fairness robs them of agency.

It’s unfair that you’re not considered pretty. It’s okay that it’s not unfair. Being seen as attractive and pretty IS a subjective decision that they get to make. Sorry.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Right about here is where every woman reading this develops a violent, sudden case of empathy. The adrenaline starts flowing, the flashbacks from not experiencing failed awkward attempts at expressing desire from that really cute guy (or girl) they were really into growing up come back (remember, women are often still the ones expected to wait for the first approach), the laptop is right there - to the barricades! Defend our sisters in arms!

Save your breath. I’m on your side, at least as much as I’m on anyone’s. Hang tight - we’re almost done. Then you can roast me to your heart’s content.

**********

At this point, I want to be clear about a couple of things:

• It’s not okay to be creepy.
• It’s okay to be creeped out.

Men, it’s natural to put yourself in other people’s shoes, especially when you identify with them and their struggles, especially when you’re experiencing those struggles yourself. I understand the fear. I understand the pain. I’ve been there. I get it. I’ve been the awkward guy. If I lived in an area full of elevators in high school, I probably would’ve tried to ask a girl out in one, too, without thinking through the logistical and emotional ramifications of that. But here’s the thing - adult creepers take advantage of that empathy. Being a creeper isn’t the same thing as being physically unattractive, though there’s certainly a non-trivial overlap between those that are “being unattractive” and those whose behaviors are viewed as “being creepy” (to borrow from a particular SNL skit). There's little we can do about physical attractiveness - going to the gym and wearing better clothes won't make you taller, wealthier, or funnier - but we can do something about guys being creepy. The only way to make a creeper stop creeping is to call them out for being creepy - period, full stop. If you know what’s good for you, you will call them out on it, too.

Why? Because creeps ruin it for the rest of us.

Let’s say you’re a guy in mixed company, you see an attractive woman, and you want to get her attention. Do you think it’s going to be easier when there’s someone:

• Touching her without her consent?
• Making endless sexual innuendo the entire night?
• Following them around everywhere?
• Getting angry when she says no?
• Trying to “score” with her and her friends as soon as any of them make eye contact with him?

Of course not. Creepy guys kill vibes. Nobody wants to be around Uncle Lou. Nobody wants to be Uncle Lou. If you see someone being an Uncle Lou, pull them aside and tell them to stop being an Uncle Lou. Tell them what they’re doing that’s Uncle Lou-ish. Make it clear that, if they persist in being an Uncle Lou, you’re either going to escort them out of whatever venue you’re both sharing or you’ll find someone who will. Make it clear that, from that moment going forward, if they don’t alter their behavior, you will name names. You will take pictures. If they can’t be a good example, then they’re just going to have to be a horrible warning. Don’t let them oppression olympics their way out of it, either - a truly neuroatypical person isn’t going to say, “Oh, sorry - I’m autistic. I can’t help it.” No, they’re going to apologize and they’re going to ask what they can do to avoid that sort of behavior in the future. If you get any other response, you’re not dealing with a neuroatypical person - you’re dealing with a manipulator.

Creepers are manipulators.

Remember that and treat them accordingly. Show no mercy. Save the empathy for those that deserve it. Do not let them manipulate your fears or your empathy to tell you otherwise.

I Had Oatmeal For Breakfast

oatmeal by Nate Steiner is licensed CC BY 2.0.

I had oatmeal for breakfast.

Or did I? Is that all I really had for breakfast? Well, no - there was a pat of butter and a tablespoon of brown sugar in my oatmeal, plus I had a large cup of coffee with it. So, I really had a bowl of oatmeal with brown sugar and butter, plus a cup of coffee for breakfast.

Clearly I must be hiding something. We must dig deeper.

What time did I have breakfast? 11 in the morning? Well, that's not breakfast time - McDonald's stops serving breakfast at 10:30. So, clearly, I didn't have breakfast at all - I had brunch. Therefore, I had oatmeal with brown sugar and butter, plus a cup of coffee for brunch.

Clearly my story is unraveling. What do I have to hide?

Are we even sure I had oatmeal? The box said oatmeal on it, or so I say, but it might not actually contain oatmeal. After all, I could have emptied the contents of the box and refilled it with something else - farina, or barley, or rice, or rye, or some other cereal grain. It might not have even contained a cereal grain at all. Who knows what was really in the box? It could have ground up cricket corpses in there for all we know. Will I let the public examine the contents of the box? Will I let anybody come in, examine my dishes and trash, and confirm that I did indeed eat oatmeal? Will I let anyone examine my plumbing for oatmeal-containing waste? Well, no, that's a rather serious privacy violation right there, and I don't really think that's necessary. It's just a bowl of oatmeal I had for breakfast...

Or is it?

You know what else waits a long time before meals and eats later in the day? Reptiles. Snakes famously eat large meals, then digest them for a week. Snakes don't eat breakfast, lunch and dinner the way we do; neither do other reptiles, since they're cold blooded and don't need as much energy as warm blooded mammals. Isn't it a little suspicious that I don't seem to need as much energy as your average mammal? Isn't it a little suspicious that I overslept through breakfast and don't have as high of a metabolism as your average human? Isn't it a little suspicious that I've never openly denied being a Reptilian? I've lied about everything else - what I had for breakfast, or whether I even had breakfast or not. I've been evasive about everything else - I won't let anyone verify my claims about my so-called "breakfast" independently.

What do I have to hide?

What? I'm just asking questions.

The truth is, I really did have oatmeal for breakfast, at least in the conversational sense of talking about "oatmeal" and "breakfast". Trouble is, any moment in time is like an irrational number - if you examine any moment far enough, you get steadily increasing levels of precision without end. It's physically impossible to know "the full story" about anything because any story in any measurable moment in time is infinitely deep and infinitely wide. Do we look for "the full story" down to the subatomic level? Do we examine "the full story" in a cosmic sense? Do we even possess the ability to measure "the full story" in either extreme, or in any other extreme we can possibly conceive of? Of course not. All we can do is establish that any story is "true" up to a certain level of resolution, then decide which level of resolution we need to look at. Sometimes, it makes sense to decide that "π = 3.14", like if you're trying to calculate the area of a circle on a cocktail napkin at a bar to impress someone. Other times, it makes sense to dig deeper and declare that "π = 3.141592654", like if we're building a bridge and need "exact" measurements of load, stress, and dimension.

What we can't do - what we must never do - is decide that, since π does not, in fact, equal 3.141592654 - since, if we dig deeper, it actually equals 3.1415926539 - then "the story of π" must be all wrong and π actually equals 2 or 5. No amount of digging and analysis changes the simple fact that π equals "roughly 3", or "roughly 3.1", or "roughly 3.14", or so on. Proving that the 4 in the billionth's place is "secretly" a 3 because the number in the ten-billionth's place is a 9 does not destroy the truth of π or the truth of the values of the more significant digits, nor does it prove that there's a conspiracy to hide "the real value of π" from anyone. Similarly, proving that I didn't have plain oatmeal doesn't disprove that I had oatmeal - it just means you discovered a less significant digit in the story of my breakfast. Whether that particular piece of data is still important when looking at the story of my breakfast is subjective - sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. It might be significant if I was talking to my doctor about my diet and the doctor told me to cut sugar and fat out. It's probably less significant if someone asked me what I had to eat for breakfast to get a good idea of how hungry I'll be when it's time for lunch; on the other hand, the fact that I had breakfast at 11 might be worth mentioning, or it might not be if I didn't have much oatmeal because I knew I'd be eating lunch a couple hours later. Either way, no amount of questioning or investigation will empty my stomach, turn me into a reptile, or make the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter 5.

It can't be done. Don't let anyone else tell you otherwise.

Why the Soviet Union fell

Lenin, Soviet Union by rlzobreaker is licensed CC BY 2.0.

I've read a fair number of books about the Soviet Union recently. Each book has done a good job of explaining the problems with the Soviet experiment - the brutality that was used to install the system during the October Revolution; Stalin's symptomatic and seemingly random cruelty; the way politics and ideology bled into every single corner of Soviet life, even the sciences, stalling technological progress; the inherent inefficiencies of the command economy, especially as implemented under "Socialism in One Country"; and so on. None of them, however, explained why the Soviet Union collapsed. Sure, the system wasn't as efficient as capitalism, but North Korea and Cuba have both proven that's not enough to prevent a totalitarian "socialist" government from maintaining power. North Korea's mass starvation in the 1990's proved that a major disaster isn't enough to topple a totalitarian government (as if the Holodomor wasn't sufficient to prove this already), so why is Chernobyl considered one of the keys to the collapse of the Soviet Union? Why was Gorbachev so unsuccessful in his attempts to reform the Soviet system? What made the Soviet Union different? What happened?

Halfway through the first chapter of The Russians, I immediately understood.

Pretend you work in a widget factory for a multinational conglomerate. It's a big, sprawling mess of a company, with as many employees as you can imagine and locations all over the world. To keep the company moving in nominally the same direction, several policies and procedures have been crafted and they are strictly enforced. To ensure the company's procedures are followed and losses are minimized, the company utilizes a sophisticated system of intelligence gathering - surveillance cameras wherever possible, paid bonuses to employees that tattle on their coworkers, transfers to unpleasant departments for people that are found guilty of minor transgressions, and termination of employees caught doing anything halfway major.

One of the rules that all divisions of the company must follow is they are not allowed to buy anything from external vendors if it's being made internally - since the company is quite large and makes all sorts of things, this means the company sources most of its supplies internally. From pens to automobiles to produce to machine parts, the company makes near everything for itself, which ensures that its competition never profits from the company; if the company can't make something, it usually tries to find as close to a substitute as it can make internally, if possible, while it tries to find a way to ultimately supply that thing internally in the long run. This even extends to news and entertainment - since the company owns some newspapers, radio stations, and TV stations, only company-owned newspapers, radio programs, and TV shows are allowed on company grounds. Another rule that employees of the company must follow - and failure to abide by this rule will lead to swift termination - is they are expressly forbidden from talking to employees of competing companies, lest they leak "trade secrets". Since the company makes and sells just about anything and everything, that effectively means that employees of the company can only safely socialize and talk among themselves. To further restrict potential leaks, the company strongly discourages employees from even talking among each other, especially to employees from other divisions.

From your perspective, your particular division doesn't seem to be run particularly well. In fact, near as you can tell, it's run unconscionably poorly. There are frequent supply issues - sometimes you end up with the wrong parts, sometimes the quality of the parts is extremely poor, sometimes you just don't end up with the supplies you need at all. Consequently, your division has serious difficulties satisfying the needs of other divisions that rely on your widgets, to say nothing of your company's customers. Though you and your coworkers generally do your best, you each catch yourselves sometimes letting things slip, letting a substandard widget or two through - better they receive a bad widget than no widget at all, right? Besides, the company has strict quotas about what each division is supposed to produce, and the penalties for failing to produce enough widgets - of any quality - are best left unsaid. On top of the supply and production issues, your division also suffers from a steadily ratcheting culture of micromanagement. For example, management determined one day that it took you 38 seconds to walk from the time clock to the widget press; consequently, if you ever take 39 seconds, you are supposed to lose an hour of pay due to "laziness". One of your coworkers was informed that "shock workers" - the best workers from other widget factories - only required a 74-degree deflection from the top of the press lever to the bottom, which was more efficient than pushing the press down as far as possible due to the reduced range of motion and reduced wear and tear on the press; however, when your coworker attempted to apply this advice, he found that his press wouldn't always cut the widget all the way through the metal. Even so, failure to adhere to management's policies and procedures was strictly frowned on; the last thing your coworker needed was for you or one of your coworkers to turn him in for using a 75-degree deflection and collect that informer's bonus while he and his family were transferred to North Dakota.

Despite it all, though, your division muddles through and keeps producing widgets. Believe it or not, you and your coworkers take pride in your work. Sure, your division may be one of the most poorly run divisions in the company, but you each get it done when it matters and still find a way to deliver. In your own, imperfect way, you and your division are helping to make the company you work for successful. Fellow coworkers around the world - around the world! - count on you and your widgets, a fact that's brought up during every employee meeting, in every internal newsletter, and sometimes even in the company news broadcasts. Not everyone can say their work is relied upon across the world.

To make sure nobody in the world is let down by your poorly run division, you and your coworkers bend the rules a bit. In exchange for you re-pressing some of your coworker's widgets, he'll sometimes clock you in while you're already walking to your press - this way you don't get in trouble for walking too slowly between the time clock and the press and he doesn't get in trouble for improperly pressing his widgets. You have similar arrangements with other coworkers to work around some of the other rules put into place by management, and vice-versa; though this means you could inform on half of the plant if you so desired, they could also inform on you in a heartbeat. None of you really want to do that, though - if the rules weren't bent, the widgets wouldn't get made and none of you would get paid. Sometimes, you even bend the rules a bit and talk to people outside the company - none of them make widgets, so it's probably not competing, right? - or even sneak in some tools and supplies from outside of the company when nobody's looking. Sure, maybe one of the conglomerate's other divisions is losing business because of this, but some of the tools and supplies you're bringing in are really good - way better than anything you can find internally, assuming you can even find it in the first place - and, after all, your job is to produce widgets, right? As long as your division meets its widget quote, it's surely all good.

Again, the alternative is best left unsaid.

One day you wake up and one of your friends from outside the company is calling you. You answer and they immediately ask if you're okay, if you're all right, if your coworkers are all right. "Of course we are," you reply, "why wouldn't we be?" "There was a terrible accident at one of your factories - it's in all the news!", they exclaim. "I'll look into it," you declare, then get ready for work. Once you get to the factory, everything appears normal. Your coworkers are still making widgets, parts and supplies (such as they are) are still coming in like normal. There are no announcements over the intercom and the internal company newsletter mentions nothing out of the ordinary. Surely there was no disaster, you decide, and tell your friend as much once you get home.

A week later, you spot a terse notice in the company newsletter - "Sprockets from the Tennessee Valley factory will be unavailable until further notice." That's it - no explanation, no further details. Even so, that sole sentence is rather strange. You can't think of a single time that the company shut down an entire supplier without some sort of planning, some sort of announcement beforehand. This is very peculiar.

A week after that, a letter from the new CEO thanks the Tennessee Valley factory workers for their "sacrifice" and also thanks the company's internal disaster response team for their "service to the factory workers". "Remaining factory workers", the CEO further explains, "will be transferred to other factories."

Two weeks later, a couple of new factory workers arrive. They look like they haven't slept in ages. They claim they're from "Kentucky", but neither of them say much else. They barely talk to each other and never talk to anyone else. At first, you and your coworkers decide they must be informants - these two aren't willing to "scratch your backs", nor do they seem particularly interested in letting anyone else "scratch theirs". After about a month or so, though, none of you notice any odd firings or transfers, so each of you decide these two just must be the quiet type and leave them alone.

A year passes.

You and your coworkers are really starting to like the new CEO. He's much younger than any previous CEO you can remember, and the company news all show him visiting and conversing with other division workers - really conversing with them, not just lecturing at them or letting them parrot company-sourced motivational phrases. Your father, who also worked for the company when he was your age, mentioned there being a CEO like this one when he was your age, but "that CEO didn't last long". You hope this new CEO lasts a while.

Recently, the new CEO announced two new changes to the rules. First, he announced, the company was going to pursue a policy of "Openness" - though employees were still forbidden from talking to employees of competing firms, they were now expressly encouraged to talk to each other, even if they were in separate divisions. Next, he announced the company was going to pursue a policy of "Restructuring" - it was no longer forbidden for company divisions to purchase goods from competing companies.

Finally!, you and your coworkers thought to yourselves. Now you can get supplies and parts from anywhere - no more waiting on unreliable internal suppliers of dubious quality. Surely you'll be producing your quota of widgets in no time. However, you and your coworkers quickly discover that you actually can't - there's no money. It was one thing sneaking in the occasional used tool or scrap when times were tight - none of your competitors minded that - but it turns out it's something else entirely when you want a regular supply of something at a consistent quality. In fact, now that your division is a potential customer, your competitors are even keeping a closer eye on their leftovers.

Meanwhile, as you and your coworkers grow increasingly confident in talking to each other - really talking to each other - about work, about life, and even talking to people in other divisions about these things, you begin to realize that your division isn't particularly poorly run - all of the company's divisions are poorly run. Every single coworker you talk to from every other division shares with you the same stories you know so well - of failed supply lines, lousy quality, and endemic micromanagement. Near as any of you can tell, none of you have made anything bought by anyone other than another company division; the company swears it has billions upon billions in sales, but none of your coworkers are making enough widgets or anything else to meet internal demand, much less enough to sell to the public. This, you suspect, explains why your division has no money to buy anything.

At the same time, you also discover that several other divisions also had some silent transfers, just like the two guys that showed up at your factory a year ago. Some of them, it turns out, are actually willing to talk about what happened now, and the stories they tell leave you awestruck. They describe, independent of one another and with near-total fidelity between each of them, a horrific cataclysm, one that killed several of their coworkers and led to entire cities being evacuated. The pollution from the cataclysm destroyed nearby forests and rendered much of the surrounding countryside uninhabitable. The kicker? The factory is still open. Despite the disaster, despite the devastation, the company still insists that factory workers show up at the remains of the factory each day and keep the lines that weren't destroyed operational. You can't believe it - surely, after a disaster like that, they would shut down such an unsafe factory, or spend some time rebuilding it so such a disaster would never occur again, or... or something.

If they won't shut that factory down, if they won't make that one safe after something like that, how do you and your coworkers know that your factory is safe?

You and your coworkers decide it's time for action. You collectively decide to do something unprecedented and talk to your manager. Understand, this sort of thing is never done - everybody fears management, the threat of transfer, the threat of termination far too much to ordinarily consider something like this - but you and your coworkers feel your lives are on the line. Much to your shock and amazement, when you share your concerns with your manager, the manager actually agrees with you and your coworkers. In fact, the manager says something downright amazing:

"I'm not showing up here again until they get this place fixed up, and I don't think any of you should, either."

Then, even more amazingly, the manager left.

At first, you and your coworkers are at a loss. Do you keep working? Do you go home? Something like this has never happened before - a manager has never, ever walked off the floor like that. On the other hand, the manager did tell all of you to go home... right? You and your coworkers talk among yourselves for a bit, trying to sort out what to do next. Finally, after a while, one of your coworkers announces that, "screw it", they're going home. Then, a little while later, another one makes the same announcement and leaves. Then another. Then another. Before long, it's clear to the rest of you that there won't be enough workers around to run the factory, so all of you might as well just head home.

What you don't realize is that, while this is going on in your widget factory, the same conversations are happening in every other division in the company, and many of them are making the same decision yours did. Before long, none of the divisions are able to work - since your factory isn't making widgets anymore, any division that relied on your widgets has to shut down, which causes other factories and offices down the line to shut down as they lose their supplies of whatever divisions the widgets were supplying, and so on. Just like that, the entire company collapses, one division at a time like a row of dominoes, first slowly, then really, really quickly as each small failure in the company cascades into progressively larger and larger ones. It doesn't take any time at all before, one day, you wake up and read in the newspaper that the company you work for - the company you worked for - is now bankrupt and liquidating its assets.

**********

That, more or less, is what happened to the Soviet Union. It might - might - have been able to survive Chernobyl if a hard-line Stalinist was at the helm and carefully controlled information about the disaster, or at least left everyone so fearful about the consequences of speaking up that they'd continue to work anyway. It might - might - have survived (or even thrived!) after Glasnost and Perestroika if Chernobyl didn't prove that the people in charge of the USSR had been all too willing for far too long to sacrifice everything - people, the countryside, everything - for the sake of the system as it was written on paper. It might - might - have survived losing in Afghanistan, might have survived the oil glut of the 1980's, might have survived the effort required to keep the increasingly dysfunctional satellite states in the Warsaw Pact economically viable, might have endured the Soviet Union's increasingly expensive adventurism in Africa. But the Soviet Union couldn't survive all of these things - not with a polity that, by the 1970's, the time period The Russians describes, was already doing everything within its power to work around the system to meet their needs. Once it became clear, crystal clear, that the system didn't mean well, that the system simply didn't work, it didn't take long before everyone just stopped pretending to live under its rules anymore.

And that was that. That was the end.

In short, by the 1970's, the communist experiment, at least in the Soviet Union, was already done. Everybody had been working around it for generations by that point. They tolerated working around the system because they thought that, well, maybe it's kind of working - who knows? There was a time, especially in the 1950's and 1960's, when it really did look like it was working, when it really did look like it might catch up to the capitalist countries in the West. There were Soviets flying to space, advanced Soviet military hardware going toe-to-toe against the West in Vietnam and Africa, even the standard of living was slowly but steadily improving. But, once the Soviets started comparing notes with each other, once the Soviets started comparing notes with what was really going on outside the Soviet Union, and once the Soviets came to grips with their past - not all of it, not even close to all of it, but enough of it - they realized that enough was enough.

Will that happen here some day? Why didn't it happen in Cuba or North Korea? What happened in China? These are good questions, but they will have to wait for another day.

Government in action - a parable

red tape by Eugene Peretz is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

All characters appearing in this work are fiction. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely farcical.

Once upon a time, there was a government worker. She was a good, conscientious, publicly minded individual of high morals, higher standards, and impeccably professional decorum and bearing. Her job was to prepare a report for the State, a job which she had performed without complaint for over two decades, which, according to a state law that was drafted in the 19th century, was to be mailed to the State Capitol about a half hour away every quarter for review and submission. This report was a fairly large, heavy document, totaling at least a hundred pages, and was consequently not particularly cheap to send via post.

One day, a politician was searching around for examples of waste and fraud. He noticed that this report had ostensibly been generated by the same person for over two decades, but he didn't believe it. Surely, he thought to himself, this lazy public servant had found a way to delegate it to one of her coworkers while she sipped some tea and added public funds to her overly fat pension plan! Clearly, he thought to himself, what this public servant needed was greater transparency. So, he drafted a piece of legislation, which was approved by like-minded politicians, that required our government worker to drive the report to the State Capitol herself so that the politicians in the Capitol could ask the government worker questions and confirm that she did, indeed, write the report in question.

The government worker was annoyed, but she had served in public service long enough to know not to take the whims of politicians seriously. She performed her duty faithfully - every quarter, she drafted the report, got into her car, drove to the State Capitol, handed it to an administrator that would politely nod and ask a few perfunctory questions about its contents, then she would drive back to the office. Being a good, conscientious, publicly minded individual of high morals and higher standards, she faithfully recorded her mileage and her time, all of which were spent performing State business, and submitted them for reimbursement every quarter, just like she was supposed to.

One day, another politician was searching around for examples of waste and fraud. He noticed that the cost of submitting this particular report had increased dramatically - what used to cost only $5 in postage every quarter suddenly jumped to $30 in mileage reimbursements and an hour and a half of experienced public servant labor! This politician was no fool - there was no way this government worker was consuming $30 in gas driving to the State Capitol, which was about a half hour away, and back. Furthermore, why was it taking this worker an hour and a half to drive to the Capitol, drop off the report, and then return? He knew from experience it only took a half hour to get to the state worker's office from the Capitol - multiply that time by two to cover both legs of the trip and it should only take an hour. So, he drafted a piece of legislation, which was approved by like-minded politicians, that required our government worker to use a state-owned car - this would save money since state mileage would be reimbursed at cost, not IRS reimbursement rates - and required the government worker to submit the report and return back to her office in an hour or less.

The government worker was annoyed, but she had served in public service long enough to know not to take the whims of politicians seriously. She did, however, have a problem - her office did not have a state-owned car issued to it. So, she submitted a requisition for a new car, using the newly-passed piece of legislation as justification, which was summarily approved. In order to meet her hour-long window, she also started to take some liberties with the speed limit when driving to the Capitol to submit her report - this didn't sit well with her high morals, higher standards, and impeccably professional decorum and bearing, but, if pressed, she felt she could explain to her fellow state employees that, since the law demanded she drive fast enough to submit the report, answer any questions asked, and return in an hour or less, she must therefore drive fast enough to accommodate that legislative requirement.

One day, yet another politician was searching around for examples of waste and fraud. He noticed that the cost of submitting this particular report had increased dramatically - what used to only cost $30 in mileage reimbursements and an hour and a half of experienced public servant labor every quarter suddenly cost over $20,000 thanks to a recently requisitioned new car and sundry maintenance expenses! Furthermore, he recently received complaints from his constituents about how state employees in state-owned cars weren't respecting the rules of the road and were passing them like they were standing still. This, the politician decided, simply could not stand. So, he drafted a piece of legislation, which was approved by like-minded politicians, that required government workers to adhere to the speed limit when driving state-owned cars and required state workers to drive the same state car for longer periods of time so the state would buy fewer new cars.

The government worker was annoyed, but she had served in public service long enough to know not to take the whims of politicians seriously. She did, however, have a problem - it was physically impossible for her to drive to the Capitol, submit the report, field any questions asked, and drive back in an hour or less while adhering to the speed limit. She thought about the problem for a bit, rereading the offending piles of legislation that circumscribed how she must discharge her duties, and then made some phone calls. The law required three things - for her to use a state-owned car, to submit the report and return to her office in an hour or less, and to adhere to the speed limit - but at no point did it say where she was to drive to. So, she drove to a nearby helicopter pad, chartered a flight to the pad next to the Capitol, and made it with time to spare. She couldn't think of very many public servants with enough creativity, drive, and willingness to embrace this sort of out-of-the-box thinking to serve the demands of the public.

One day, yet another politician was searching around for examples of waste and fraud. He noticed that the cost of submitting this particular report had increased dramatically - what used to only cost $20,000 in car purchasing and maintenance suddenly cost tens of thousands of dollars each quarter for private helicopter rides of all things! He simply couldn't believe it. Clearly these public servants were not getting the message - belts needed to be tightened and this sort of wanton extravagance had to be nipped in the bud. So, he drafted a piece of legislation, which was approved by like-minded politicians, that forbade government workers from chartering personal helicopter flights for official business.

The government worker was annoyed, but she had served in public service long enough to know not to take the whims of politicians seriously. She did, however, have a problem - it was still physically impossible for her to submit this report by car, the airport took too long, and the helicopter was the only thing close enough and fast enough to get her to the Capitol within her legislatively mandated hour long window. Very well, she thought to herself - she knew what she needed to do. Within a quarter, she secured a helicopter pilot's license - the costs of which she billed to the State - requisitioned a helicopter, and even requisitioned a helicopter pad for her office, which she justified via her new legislatively mandated requirements. To her mild amazement, her requisitions were approved; the measures she was taking were, after all, the only way she could possibly perform her job according to the requirements set forth by statute. Thus, she proceeded to fly a brand new, state owned helicopter from her office to the Capitol, report in hand, each and every quarter.

One day, yet another politician was searching around for examples of waste and fraud. He noticed that the cost of submitting this particular report had increased dramatically - what used to only cost tens of thousands of dollars each quarter for a chartered helicopter suddenly cost tens of millions of dollars for helicopter flying lessons, a brand new helicopter, and associated maintenance personnel and parts! This wasn't just out of hand, it must have been downright criminal! - and all of this just to submit some stupid report every quarter. So, he drafted a piece of legislation, which was approved by like-minded politicians, that eliminated the report and those responsible for generating it from the books.

The government worker was no longer annoyed - she was unemployed - but not for long. Thanks to her new helicopter license and flying experience, she found work flying chartered helicopters for well-heeled clients. The politicians that put her out of a job were all reelected owing to their ability to slash waste and fraud - especially the last one, which save taxpayers tens of millions of dollars!

And that's the story of how the government saved itself $5 in postage each quarter.

Make Friends with the personal - not the political

Moloch by Karl-Ludwig Poggemann is licensed CC BY 2.0.

When I first ran across Slate's moralist harangue against Friends yesterday, my initial thought was, "Ah, this is obvious clickbait - pick something relatively non-offensive, choose a contrarian position against it, then let the clicks of outrage flow in". It looked like a classic toxoplasma, an intentional summoning of Moloch himself - intentional enough, in fact, that I assumed everyone else would see through it for what it was and let it silently die into obscurity.

I was wrong.

In my defense, I travel frequently in libertarian circles, where this sort of thing is such a predominant business plan of several notorious bloggers that even sympathetic libertarians are getting sick and tired of it, so what seemed obvious to me might be less so to others. Even so, I didn't seriously expect the idea that Friends needed some sort of moral and political deconstruction to actually receive anything resembling widespread support. And yet, there were so many bloggers that pursued this line of reasoning that this was the most "positive" conclusion that Salon could finish its roundup with:

As Vulture’s Margaret Lyons wrote in her “Stay Tuned” TV advice column, in response to a reader expressing discomfort with the show’s homophobia: “You can still love ‘Friends,’ but why would you want to love it like you did before? Love it the way you see it now, with the things you know now and the values you have now. I love ‘Friends,’ but I do not love its body or queer politics. Those things can be true at the same time.”

Indeed they can, assuming all entertainment and life experiences must be filtered through a political or ideological lens. That, however, is a very bad idea - and a very old one.

**********

For whatever reason, I've been on a Soviet history reading kick lately. More recently, this has included Red Plenty, which came to my attention via Scott Alexander, and my current read, Anne Applebaum's Gulag: A History. One recurring theme of these books was how thoroughly the Soviet state and its ideology inserted itself into daily life, from scientific discovery to entertainment and beyond. See, from the Soviet Union's perspective, the New Soviet Man had to be consciously crafted - all bourgeois attitudes and mannerisms had to be cast out and replaced with a more socialist attitude. According to Soviet dogma, though they didn't quite phrase it quite this succinctly, the personal was political - as Trotsky put it, "You may not be interested in the dialectic, but the dialectic is interested in you." In order for the New Soviet Man to overcome his selfish, bourgeois habits, he needed to be reeducated so that he may better serve his fellow man according to his ability without requiring more than his need. To that end, artistic expression was closely proscribed - so closely, in fact, that the CIA secretly sponsored abstract art to undermine the Soviet government. Soviet biology, meanwhile, had been thoroughly destroyed by Lysenkoism, which asserted, among other things, that plants behaved according to communist principles and that genetics (a rather dangerous concept for an ideology that requires people to be perfectly malleable like clay) was a "bourgeois" concept meant to undermine the revolution. Soviet plays and shows had to express uplifting, socialist attitudes, as did Soviet music. This concept was adopted by other Soviet-aligned regimes - Kim Jong-Il famously wrote about opera, cinema, music, and architecture, focusing on how to best align these disciplines within the greater socialist project.

In short, everything - everything - had to advance the cause of communism and the revolution. Everything must show more concern for society, as defined by communism, than for the individual. Nothing could be enjoyed solely on its merits; everything must be enjoyed solely in the context of how it might better improve society.

**********

The Soviets and their Communist allies weren't the only ones, of course. Just before Friends came out, former Vice-President Dan Quayle famously blasted Murphy Brown because it failed to display sufficient concern for society:

It doesn’t help matters when prime time TV has Murphy Brown – a character who supposedly epitomizes today’s intelligent, highly paid, professional woman – mocking the importance of a father, by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another “lifestyle choice.”

I know it is not fashionable to talk about moral values, but we need to do it. Even though our cultural leaders in Hollywood, network TV, the national newspapers routinely jeer at them, I think that most of us in this room know that some things are good, and other things are wrong. Now it’s time to make the discussion public.

This wasn't a new theme. In 1985, Tipper Gore, former wife of former Vice-President Al Gore, co-founded the Parents Music Resource Center, which wished to provide greater control to parents over music that wasn't sufficiently deferential to the concerns of society. To that end, the PMRC staged a Senate hearing, during which American government officials grilled various artists that were deemed "objectionable" by the PMRC about the content of their music. This led one targeted artist, Frank Zappa, to give a spirited defense of individual expression against the concerns of society. I encourage you to stop right now and read the whole thing, but if you're feeling impatient, here's the start of it:

The First thing I would like to do, because I know there is some foreign press involved here and they might not understand what the issue is about, one of the things the issue is about is the First Amendment to the Constitution, and it is short and I would like to read it so they will understand. It says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

That is for reference. 

These are my personal observations and opinions. They are addressed to the PMRC [Parents’ Music Resource Centre] as well as this committee. I speak on behalf of no group or professional organization. 

The PMRC proposal is an ill-conceived piece of nonsense which fails to deliver any real benefits to children, infringes the civil liberties of people who are not children, and promises to keep the courts busy for years, dealing with the interpretational and enforcemental problems inherent in the proposal’s design. 

It is my understanding that, in law, First Amendment Issues are decided with a preference for the least restrictive alternative. In this context, the PMRC’s demands are the equivalent of treating dandruff by decapitation.

Zappa then proceeds to explain not only why the PMRC's proposal is wholly inappropriate to a culture that ostensibly prizes freedom of expression, but also how the proposal actually obscures a hidden issue - a proposed tax on blank tapes, which was proposed by the recording industry to discourage copying of music while simultaneously serving as a handout to politically connected music companies. Whether the politicians of the time were opportunistically using the "cover fire" generated by the PMRC's proposals to sneak in a measure for their friends or whether the politicians themselves actually consciously generated the "cover fire" is certainly open to debate; whichever way it happened, though, it was crystal clear that the call for censorship had far less to do with any concerns for society and far more to do with the concerns of particular politically connected individuals.

This, it should go without saying, mirrored the experience in every other country that insisted that all speech is political and must be controlled accordingly.

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Again, however, this isn't a new idea. Even by the time of the October Revolution, European civilization had hundreds of years of experience with treating the personal as political. As the French Revolution spiraled out of control, the Reign of Terror left no corner of society untouched. The French people were stripped of their religion and even their calendar. Even by then, however, this was still old hat. Puritans famously banned several forms of entertainment on the grounds that such pleasures interfered with their ideological struggle against sin, and personal enjoyment of such pleasures lacked sufficient concern for society - "idle hands are the Devil's playthings" and all that.

Speaking of "idle hands", who came up with that saying? Why, it was St. Jerome in the 4th century.

What's old is new again.

As Mark Twain once said, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme."

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Interestingly, though you wouldn't know it by reading that Salon article today, quite a few people on the left are starting to realize that politicizing the personal really isn't a good idea. Fredrik deBoer noted a few months back that this tactic is a two-edged sword (emphasis added by yours truly):

I’ve really been genuinely disturbed by #GamerGate. Obviously, some of that is just the threats and harassment of women online. But it’s also disturbing how successful they’ve been in pressuring advertisers, and in getting parts of the media to credulously accept much of their narrative. To me, it’s indicative of the problems that come about when there’s no limit to how much we politicize the personal.

We on the left have argued for ages that “the personal is political.” We’ve told people that they should look for political resonance in every aspect of their personal lives, in order to see the hand of various oppressions at play in microcosm. And we’ve incentivized that behavior in the way we always do, by treating the deployment of that kind of argument as a trump card against those who you’re arguing with. We have this magic words theory of argument where if you deploy certain terms like “tone policing,” the expectation is that you’ve won the argument and the other side has to stop arguing immediately. But those tactics don’t occur in a vacuum. Campus conservatives, for example, have succeeded in so many of their provocations because they have very deftly adopted the tactics and vocabulary of the academic left and employed them for their own purposes. And now we’re seeing the same thing from the GamerGate crew: this isn’t a fashion or hobby for me, it’s an identity. Your criticisms aren’t criticisms, they’re bullying. I’m not being blamed for bad behavior, I’m being oppressed.

And by two-edged sword, I mean a giant sinkhole that swallows all who dare stare into it:

Argument is like all other human behaviors: subject to conditioning through reward and punishment. And we’ve created these incentives on the left: always politicize; always escalate; always ridicule. We’re living with the consequences of those tendencies now. Unfortunately, I don’t know how we build a new left discourse, given that the two current modes of left-wing expression appear to be a) showily condescending ridicule and b) utter fury. I mean you can guess what the response by some will be to this essay: deBoer doesn’t think racism is real, he doesn’t think sexism is real, he wants people to just get over it when they’re the victims of sexism and racism. None of that is true. I write about the structural racism of our society constantly. I believe that we’re still a deeply, inherently sexist culture. (For example, you may have heard of #GamerGate.) And I absolutely believe that there are tons of daily encounters that demonstrate these problems, and that the victims of them should feel comfortable speaking out.

I just also think that we have to be able to say “you know, I don’t think that your particular political critique here is correct” without being accused of failing to oppose racism and sexism in general. And I think that we have to recognize that, by treating claims of oppression as immediate conversation winners, without the expectation that people actually have to defend and support those claims with evidence, we make the appropriation of these techniques that we’re seeing with GamerGate inevitable.

History has shown time and again what happens when you politicize the personal. When all personal action becomes a political statement, any personal action might command a political response. At best, this might involve a bit of hand wringing and calls for better "standards" and "taste". At worst, the ultimate embodiment of the political - the state - exercises its muscles, its guns, and its soldiers and provides the ultimate political response.

This still doesn't stop people from trying. It never will.

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What really concerns me about the attempted politicization of Friends - beyond the raw ad-driven avarice that's powering it and which, by commenting on it, I'm contributing to - is that at least the Puritans and Tipper Gore and Dan Quayle were fighting for a fairly constant set of well known rules. Oh sure, there are some variations and oddities here and there in terms of interpretation and how naively literally we should interpret the Bible, but at least nobody's adding new chapters to the Bible on the fly (well, almost nobody). The basic rules that the Pilgrims and Tipper and Dan were fighting for are more or less the same, though they might disagree individually on degree - choose activities that glorify God and family and shun just about everything else. They're not rules I agree with - I'm an atheist, personally - but they are rules, they are written down, more or less, and just about everybody in our cultural corner is generally familiar with them. Granted, they're rules that are almost explicitly designed to guarantee that you'll be guilty of something - just looking at someone and experiencing some sort of sexual attraction is technically a sin, after all, and if you're still full but keep eating, well, that's one too - but they're there. The rules being applied to Friends, however, are nowhere near that constant. Take Chandler's homophobia, for example. The show established pretty thoroughly that Chandler was an insecure loser (he worked in data entry, had troubles dating, and so on) that used sarcasm and humor as a defense mechanism and had various attitudes that you would expect from someone with some deep-seated insecurities about his position in the world. Of course he was homophobic - that was the joke. He was so insecure about his own ability to find love that he took it out on pretty much everyone else - fat people, homosexuals, his father, sometimes even his friends. That's why it was okay to laugh at him - he was clearly written to be a flawed, insecure, occasionally horrible human being that we could all relate to from time to time and poke fun of. He was a younger, hipper, somewhat less reactionary Archie Bunker. By laughing at him, we were laughing at our worst. It's the same reason Homer Simpson and Peter Griffin are funny. It's why people laugh at Stan Marsh.

But that's no longer enough. 

It was in the '90s, when Friends came out - even in that dark, almost medieval age of misogyny, trans-erasure, and structural racism, it was pretty clear that homophobia was the product of a reactionary, insecure mind, one that deserved derisive laughter and jest. However, just as the Puritans slowly turned the ratchet, then quickly; just as the Jacobins slowly turned the ratchet, then quickly; just as the Bolsheviks slowly turned the ratchet, then quickly; just as Mao's followers and their like in Cambodia and Vietnam slowly turned the ratchet, then quickly - now it is time to quickly turn the ratchet on the heretics and to truly identify and weed out the faithful, the followers of whatever Revolution we're celebrating and pushing today. To do so, we must cast away the past - if we do not, people might actually learn something from it, and we can't have that. We must continue to change what's acceptable. Homophobia is no longer a laughing matter since it is proof of dissent, and dissent is most certainly no laughing matter. Transphobia must be redefined from "fearing trans-gendered people" to "speaking openly of vaginas". We must fight the patriarchy until it becomes clear that fighting the patriarchy no longer suitably identifies the truly faithful, at which point we shall fight the kyriarchy. We shall demand that businesses advertise to the revolution, then, once they start doing so, tell them that the revolution is not for sale and how dare they co-opt our cause.

Humor is potentially subversive and subtle, so of course it must be crushed. Socialist realism abhors subtlety. Subtlety breeds variation and dissent. Can't have that.

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Before anyone gets the wrong idea, conservatives shouldn't pat themselves on the back too hard right now. You had your turn - oh, believe me, you had your turn. America knows what happens when you get to call the cultural shots:

An illustrative Dune quote rendered by Calvin & Muad'Dib

Believe me, given the choice between arguing with a few semi-obscure left wing giblet-heads on the Internet and dealing with what happens when you get the keys... look, we're a long, long, long way from getting from "Let's politicize Friends for ad revenue!" to "Let's send anyone who finds Friends acceptable to a kolkhoz in Manitoba!" We are not near far enough from 90% of the legislation, attempted or ratified, that you've thrown at this country through the years. America fought long and hard to actually take "freedom of speech" seriously - don't think for a moment that we've forgotten how hard you fought us every step of the way.

With that, I think I'm done here for the moment.