Thursday, March 27, 2008

Be true to your school (of thought)

Nicholas Kristof has an opinion piece in the Times today similar to opinion pieces in many many papers these days. Clinton is really going to fuck over the Democrats by staying in too long. While I somewhat agree, this isn't what I'm most worried about right now. What concerns me more than the general chances of the Democratic party in November is the poll Kristof cites indicating that 19% of Obama supporters would consider defecting to McCain if Clinton were the nominee, and 28% of Clinton supporters would vote GOP if Obama were picked at the convention.
This is really really scary. I know that people have strong feelings about their favorite candidates, but they're really not that different. I think Obama's policies are slightly better, and that he's much more charismatic. Clinton supporters think her policies are slightly better, and that she's more experienced. Fine. Whatever. But none of those reasons are good enough to engender the kind of bitterness it takes to abandon a party.
I don't know what those 19% of Obama supporters are thinking, but I imagine it's along the lines of, "Clinton is too divisive and bitchy and won't get the world's respect, whereas McCain's a stand-up guy." So what if he's a more "real" than Hillary? He's still a Republican with very very conservative views; the kind of views we've all been hating on for nearly 8 years now. As to the 28% of Clinton's camp who would go to the Reps, I imagine you're thinking, "experience is too important for me to trust Obama. Clinton's gotten a lot of shit for her phone call ad, but there's some truth to it. I really don't think Barack is qualified to get stuff done." To you I say: okay, experience is helpful. But, once again, as we've seen with Bush, experience that's bad is worse than no experience at all. GWB was governor of a major state, has a gazillion connections and has since birth, has politics in his blood, and can't run a country worth jack. McCain may be a respected senator and a war hero, but that won't help him get America out of the problems we have now. The guy either doesn't know or chooses to ignore that Iran is a Shiite nation, and no doubt will do with both foreign and domestic policy whatever the fuck he wants.

Obama is better than McCain. Clinton is better than McCain. Al Gore is better than everybody, but unfortunately that's irrelevant.
Do the right thing. Vote Democrat in 2008.

Edit: Here's the link to the actual poll, and here's what you should do now.

Saturday, March 22, 2008

The Issues

By now, I'm sure most of you have seen this, but if you haven't, do. It's possibly the best speech I've ever seen by a contemporary politician.



This isn't anything original to point out, but this is why Barack Obama is a better candidate than Hillary Clinton. If you want an issues-based campaign, these are the issues. If you want change in America, this is where it comes from: point out the problems, and try to find solutions. And be candid. Obama is the real deal in a way that most politicians, that most people, can't even begin to be. He, at least in this speech, is talking in a way that makes people listen. He isn't speaking for applause. He isn't spouting soundbites. The incidental applause, the quotations CNN puts at the bottom of the screen, are out of place. He answers all the questions. He speaks plainly. He eliminates the jargon and the doubletalk and all the political bullshit that disenchanted pundits and intellectuals have been ranting about for decades. The man is smarter than I took him for; not cleverer, necessarily, not craftier, but smarter. I have never seen a politician look to the root of America's soul, love the country so much. I have come to trust him like I might trust an old teacher. It isn't charisma he's exuding. I thought that was all it was. I didn't like the "yes we can" change crap because I thought it was a tool. I knew it was a good tool, so I voted for him because I knew others would and because I wanted a Democrat in the White House. But his "yes we can" goes beyond the rallies and the posters and the psychology. He wants to try to fix America the way nobody has perhaps since Roosevelt. I have never before valued truth so much.

He'll probably still lose Pennsylvania. It will probably still come down to the superdelegates, and they may or may not choose to make him the nominee. But I hope they do because there is a chance--just a chance--that Obama will be the kind of president that the president is supposed to be.

I thought Howard Dean saw America the way it should be, and I liked him for it. He was smart and able and had good ideas in a time when almost all the ideas coming out of Washington were bad. But Obama doesn't see America the way it should be, he sees it the way it is. America can be distrusting and cynical and even hateful. It can destroy lives and it can cripple communities. But he has also seen the part of America that can make men strong and give them fulfillment and joy. Clinton's presidency would be historic. The first female president. She would be fine. She would break down barriers. But Obama's presidency wouldn't be remembered for being the first time a black man sits in the Oval Office. It would be remembered for showing America what it is, for better or for worse, and for trying to make it as great on the inside as we say it is on the outside.

Obama still panders. In Ohio, in Iowa, in Texas. I wish he wouldn't. He is still a politician, and Washington is still run by those who want it most. But maybe, just maybe, he can make some of the citizens want it more than the farmers. He wants a more perfect union. Excelsior, Alex. If you want Excelsior, look to the man who wants to change the way Americans think, not the way they pay their taxes or the way they buy their corn. Bush and Cheney have showed us how a country can start to hate itself. Obama can help us love ourselves, not because America has a bigger cock than the other guys, but because America cares for itself and makes great men who care for America.

I don't know precisely what policies he would implement. I leave that research to Ted Kennedy, to Bill Richardson, to David Broockman. I don't know how being a "community organizer" will help him correctly respond to that 3 AM phone call. But what I see in Barack Obama is more than a talking head, more than a bleeding heart, more than a helping hand. I see a man, a flesh and blood person, who wants to be president of the country that made him great so that he can make the lives of its citizens better. More perfect. Yes we can? I don't know for sure. But at this point I can't help but try.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

The Decline and Fall of Nothing in Particular

So apparently our economy sucks. This is somewhat interesting to me. People have been saying for as long as I've been willing to listen that America is on the brink of a recession, and this looks kind of like the real thing.
It might be kind of fun. I don't really have any money to speak of in the market, and the nice thing about recessions is that people recover from them and then are richer than before. Either that or we'll be bought by the UAE, which might be an interesting experience in and of itself. Also, it might encourage people not to be investment bankers.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.

A better liberal than I posted about sin taxes, and solicited comments from libertarians in response. I'm against sin taxes, but I don't use the libertarian approach. In a sense, I think my reason for opposing them is more authentically liberal than Broockman's reason for supporting them. He says:
We know that people that get hooked on either of these things are hurting themselves. Furthermore, since they tend to be lower income, its likely that whatever health complications they get will end up being paid for in large part by us since over half of bankruptcies in the US are related to medical costs, and the loss to providers from those services are passed onto the rest of us.

Therefore, we should help them help themselves by de-incentivizing undesirable expenditures like cigarettes and alcohol and help American society in the process by having fewer sick people. Everybody wins.

No. That's not what we're about. It isn't that the people choose to smoke or drink. I don't give a shit about what people choose. But sin taxes discriminate in the same way that drug laws discriminate. Yes, the poor, those who are least able to afford the taxes, are the most likely to pay them. Poor people don't buy cigarettes and alcohol because they're easy to buy, they buy them because their lives suck and smoking or drinking makes them feel better. They know that cigarettes are unhealthy, and that alcohol can be destructive. They've probably witnessed the effects. But they don't particularly care, because the hurt is now and the relief is the buzz of a Marlboro or the numbness of a beer. If you've tried cigarettes or alcohol (or even both at once...mmm...) you'd understand.
"But then the poor people get sick and we have to pay for them! That's no fun!"
True. But that is precisely why we have such a system. To help those in need.
There are lots of things that cause illness. Sex causes the spread of diseases like AIDS and syphilis. Sugar causes diabetes. Red meat raises cholesterol. Fish contain mercury. Even exercise can cause broken bones, muscle strains, shin splints. I'm not saying that it's as bad to run a mile as it is to suck down a Camel, but if the primary argument is the burden on the taxpayer, then you're sounding more like a libertarian than I think you'd like to admit.

I'm all for anti-smoking campaigns. I'm all for AA. You can talk at me until you're blue in the face about the dangers of dependency but if I'm working 14 hours a day in some shithole and you charge me a half-hour's wages for my pack of smokes so that you don't have to pay 20 bucks a year to your local hospital I'm gonna be pissed. My life won't get better if it's harder for me to buy cigarettes. It'll get worse. If you don't want any kids to start smoking, then ban cigarettes. Go ahead. It's not the lack of choice I'm worried about, it's the discrimination. If you think these... sins are worth eliminating, do it. But shaking your finger and taking my money just makes me feel bad, and that's no fun.

I may have presented a couple of half-written arguments here, and if so I apologize, but it's late and I'm kinda angry.

Friday, March 14, 2008

The fetish of history

I've been in Boston for the past few days, which is my excuse for not posting (blah, blah, blah). There's a lot of history in Boston, and if you haven't been, I suggest you go. Boston has done a good job of preserving its (extensive) history, and giving the tourist a nice "wow, that happened here" feeling. But did it? I feel that we often forget the significance of the time-space continuum in our fetishization of monuments. So this is where the the Boston Massacre happened. Where Paul Revere started his ride. Where the Red Sox won the World Series. But I don't fully understand why this brings us closer to the actual event than if we were to read about it in a book.
I agree that it does, and I'm quite a big fan of looking at old things, but I still don't get it. There's a nice quotation from The History Boys by Alan Bennett:
Wanting toilet paper, or paper of any description, the monks used to wipe their bottoms on scraps of fabri... linen, muslin, patches of tapestry even... Some of these rags survive, excavated from the drains into which they were dripped five hundred years ago and more, and here now find themselves exhibited in the abbey museum.
...it is conceivable that one of these ancient arsewipes was actually used by [St. Aelred]. Which at the time would have made it a relic, something at which credulous pilgrims would come to gaze.
But what are these modern-day pilgrims gazing at but these same ancient rags, hallowed not by saintly usage, it's true, but by time...and time alone? They are old and they have survived. And there is an increment even in excrement, so sanitised by the years and sanctified, too, they have become relics in their own right...

Not to say that standing in Boston Common is the same as star-gazing at toilet paper, but the instinct is similar. "Wow, this is so old" vs. "wow, this place is so important." I think that Americans, as people of a young nation, might crave this sense of history more than the Europeans who pass medieval churches daily, but there seems to be a universal human attraction to cool old things. I certainly don't mind this inclination, and I engage in it myself with regularity (as most Yalies do), but I want to be sure to remind myself that these people I'm deifying were men, too, most of whom were less well-educated and worldly than me.

Aren't we special.

Monday, March 10, 2008

The Lost Generation

I just watched "Across the Universe," and it got me thinking. Is there something to be said for drug-addled radicalism? I didn't think there was, but now I'm unsure. These people who lived their lives so in the moment as to destroy themselves, their generation, and their own culture may be more worthy of applause than we who wear natty suits and drink cognac. The Vietnam War, which is portrayed as such an unstoppable force, engendered more outburst of pure feeling than any other event in American history that I can think of at the moment. Gertrude Stein called the children of World War I "the lost generation," but we still seem to have them. Maybe Allen Ginsberg had it more right: "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by / madness, starving hysterical mad". The first Great War caused chaos and disillusionment, but the madness was different. The madness of Vietnam was a madness that took its madmen down, piece by piece, until we reached the stifling banality that I want to escape now. When I see pictures of the drug dens and riots and concerts and cafes I don't think "man, I want to do that," but even worse I think "there is no way that could happen anymore." It isn't in our psyche. What frustrates me about today's "radicals" isn't their impovrished idealism and desire for iconoclasitc individualism, it's their complete and utter inability to mean anything. We are living in stable times, when the world is presented to us on a ticker tape, and we nod and approve or disapprove and discuss the implications of yesterday's coindicences. The worst atrocities of the world are unfortunate. The heights of human achievement are laudable. There is nothing to go crazy about. There really isn't.

"The poor will always be with us." "Death comes to all." Drugs aren't enough, sex isn't enough, rock and roll is words to music. Everything is mainstream, everything is kosher, everything is selfish and pointless and we should accept everyone for who they are. Hate isn't dead. Violence exists. Always has, always will. Pride cometh before the fall but the fall really isn't that bad. We've created a nice cushion of acceptance and complacence and social security for the failures and the punks and the angry students. Boys will be boys. Mid-life crises are mundane. Go out and buy a car and get addicted to morphine or heroin or sex and come back and work out the rest of the week.

I'm not angry. There's nothing to be angry about. I'm just disappointed.
God has always been dead, but for how long has life been dead?

Sunday, March 9, 2008

At the Gates of the Ivory Theme Park

I'm on spring break now (SPRING BREAK!!!111!one!), and Yale has flicked out of existence, more or less. The YDN won't come out tomorrow, I won't have to get up early, and I won't drink cheap vodka on weeknights for a while. This is supposed to be a relief, and to some degree it is, but I've also started getting that feeling everyone gets of "oh no, my life! It's going so fast!"
Yalies seem to have a minor obsession with time; generally, there isn't enough of it. I sympathize. My father (an alum; yes, I'm a legacy brat) from time to time proposes offering a 5th year of Yale with full tuition, no housing, and extra degree. There are enormous and glaring problems with this idea, of course, but at the same time it seems somewhat compelling. Another year of college? Another two semesters of irresponsibility and debauchery? Sign me up! But is that what college is really about?
It seems that a lot of us really aren't sure whether we're actually becoming sophisticated adults or whether we're putting off being sophisticated adults by going to college. I'm sure the sentiment varies from person to person, but for all the undergraduate organizations we create and community service we do and navel gazing we engage in, we also binge-drink and hook up and fight against the man in our own special way.
I doubt this will ever be resolved. I suppose what ultimately matters is that sophisticated adults come out of Yale somehow, and go on to do important-sounding things. But I kind of wish we could decide whether Yale is a training camp for life or a protracted gap-year from it.

Friday, March 7, 2008

Lo, for I am the Shepherd... and You are the Sheep

Yaron Brook came to the Yale Political Union last night to debate "Resolved: Your Poverty is Your Problem." I voted in the neg, and the resolution failed (coincidence?), but the debate allowed me to look at Objectivism with new concerns.

The classic objection to Ayn Rand's philosophy is that it's cold-hearted and that it takes the human element (relationships, community, empathy, etc.) out of life. A community of egoists might be rational and meritocratic, but if we don't feel beholden to people we can't meaningfully interact with them in any way that might improve our solitary and poor lives.
In the (approximate) words of Dr. Brook, "my life is my life, your life is your life." If we all think only of ourselves, everything turns out dandy. Those with important skills go to the top, and those who don't "think" enough drop out of the race.
I'm tempted to say that this kind of Objectivism doesn't go far enough. Sure, if you're smart, acting in your own self-interest is an effective way to live, but why respect others' right to do the same? If life is good when I act in my own self-interest, wouldn't it be much better if everybody acted in my self-interest?

Premise 1: I know how to live my own life well (if I didn't, then Objectivism wouldn't work in the first place, which is possible).
Premise 2: My only obligation is to myself (I don't have children).
Premise 3: Most people are sheep (this has been shown by history).
Conclusion: It makes perfect sense for me to bend others to my will, and have them help me life the good life.

Not by violent means, of course. Dr. Brook doesn't like violence, and I agree with him. He also thinks that violence is the only means of coercion, and I'll go with him on that, even though I've got a decent inkling that it's not true. But if I can convince people that they should do things which may or may not benefit me (they do; shhhh...), what possible obstacle could there be to mentally exploiting millions and millions of people, provided nothing terrible happens to them as a direct result?

After all, nothing matters in the long run and we're all going to die.

Cheers.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

La nouvelle vague

So Keith Richards is the new face of Louis Vuitton, or, as my roommate says, "the new shriveled skull of Louis Vuitton." What are these people thinking? Is our obsession with celebrity such that we will buy handbags hocked by a geriatric druggie, so long as he appears in Who's Who? We should not take high fashion advice from somebody whose prime was spent in a spandex leisure suit.
In other news, Texas and Ohio had their primaries today. Ohio has been called for Clinton, but the Texas votes aren't all in. I wish Bill Clinton would have just one moment of extreme disloyalty and endorse Obama the way he knows he wants to.
Also, my will is very strong. More later. Gotta read some Wordsworth.

Monday, March 3, 2008

Hello, Internet

Greetings, travelers. I've begun this little timekiller mostly on a whim (like everybody else in the electronic world), and don't fully expect to pursue it to its full potential. In high school, my drama teacher always recommended that we keep at diary, suggesting strongly that it would make us better actors, but I never did. I'm far too lazy to stay disciplined, and my life wasn't at the time interesting enough to write about myself without feeling guilty for wasting everyone's time.

Well, my life is still probably not worth bookmarking, but I've been formulating a philosophy of life over the past few months, and this may or may not serve as a decent sounding-board. Apparently, other things happen in the world, too, and I'm allowed to comment on them.

A bit about me, in case you don't know me and just happened to stumble upon this by Googling "alcibiadesatyale blog" (I know I often do): I'm an undergraduate at Yale University in the gorgeous utopia of New Haven, CT, in the glorious United States of America. Whoopee. I like to argue, act, and engage in other performative activities. I've chosen Alcibiades (ancient Greek military leader, character in Plato's "Symposium") as my pen name because he was arrogant, ambitious, attractive, bright, charismatic, and other things I either am or aspire to be.

This whole affair of writing on the web is merely part of a larger scheme in my lifelong attempt to achieve awesomeness. I'll probably be wrong about a lot of things I write on here, and I invite you to correct me. I'll probably say vapid, substanceless things unworthy of being written or read, and I invite you tell me so. I'd like to try to keep this as interactive as possible, because I honestly take very little pleasure in gabbing on to nobody in particular. I like conversations, not soliloquies, and if nobody listens then all this has been in vain.

What am I saying, all this? This baby most likely won't last past spring break.



Cheers.

Post-Modern Conservatives and the Weather

Just had a brief dinner with Nicola (bisexual pseudo-neo-conservative) and Noah (gay pseudo-neo-conservative). I had been looking for the Tories, having just read Burke, but they had broken tradition to move to another dining hall. How absurd. Nonetheless, I seated myself and my sticky rice ("Ingredients: sticky rice, water) at the table and engaged in a conversation about meaning. Duh.
Nicola is apparently trying to rediscover or manufacture meaning in life, an endeavor which she calls "post-postmodernism." I immediately launched into my usual schtick of how there is no meaning, and how everything is already manufactured, so what's the point.
"But what will you teach your children?"
How to cheat at cards.

The conversation itself was nothing particularly novel (sorry, Nikki), but it got me thinking about what this whole modernism/postmodernism/post-structuralism/post-postmodernism/antidisestablishmentarianism thing is, anyway. Does it really matter? There either is meaning, or there isn't, and the terms seem to only be useful to the extent that it allows us to categorize eras of thought, which are unlikely to be unified in the first place. If somebody calls themselves a postmodernist, does that tell us anything about them? Is it fair to believe them? Why did they get the chance to say that, instead of talking about something else, like bunnies?
I honestly don't know. I've always tuned out when people use words any more technical than "epistemological," which I only Wikipedia'd last month. If you can talk about philosophy and meaning without sounding like a douchebag, shouldn't you do it? Or is the pretension part of the fun.

The weather, by the way, is pretty nice. Andrew E. was sitting outside in a t-shirt this afternoon. Such is post-postwinter in New England.