The White Peril 白禍

With holiday travel (including my frenetic trip next week) coming up, your friendly TSA has released its air passenger recommendations.

Note again that the first and most important contribution you can make the air security of the Republic is NOT TO BRING ANY LIGHTERS IN YOUR CARRY-ON BAGS.

Also note that you should be getting to the airport "in plenty of time." (Since the TSA, and not we hapless travelers, is in charge of safety procedures, perhaps it would be the better positioned to judge what "plenty" means. Say, two hours? Four hours? Just one hour if it's a domestic flight? I guess they figured specifying a time would seem, you know, coercive and arbitrary. Wouldn't want that.)

Also, you won't be required to take off your shoes. Well, unless you are.

Enjoy your trip!

Joe e-mailed me a week or so ago to say that the local paper where I grew up, The Morning Call, was getting a new publisher. It didn't mean anything much to me--I no longer live in Emmaus, and it's doubtful that the publisher cast a Katherine Graham-like cultural shadow, in any case. I did go back to the Call's website, though. Among its blogs is one by a guy from the Poconos who's stationed in Iraq. As you may imagine, he doesn't get to post much, and he seems to be in a hurry when he does, but it's interesting:

Yes, there are women here and after talking only with guys it is nice sometimes to talk to a woman. Female soldiers are mainly at the brigade level and the medical field. Recently we actually requested one for a mission. It met with great resistance. See, bringing women along on the mission actually helps a lot. We, male soldier, don't interact with the women in Iraq because of their culture but often come across them when we go into homes. Having a female soldier there to do searches on the Iraqi women if necessary and to hlep out with information gathering. The women of Iraq are very shy, but when there are female soldiers around they seem very eager to talk. One incident the other day a 8 year old boy was crying when we went into the home and our female soldier put her arm around him at what seemed to be the perfect time and he instantly stopped crying and felt comforted. We believe that this helps extremely with getting to know the Iraqi people and help them see us not as an invading force but as real people trying to help.

That was posted on 11 September, BTW.

The Harrisburg correspondent runs one of the paper's other blogs. I'm not sure he's quite the wit he appears to think he is, but lamentably few of us are. In his favor, he comments on federal as well as state legislators, meaning that he keeps an eye on how Specter and Santorum are voting.

I know this question is going to sound redundant coming from a homosexual, but what sort of man wants his children to enter the world through Christina Aguilera's baby chute? Sheesh.

Somehow, it's easier to read about this stuff in Japanese. Drains some of the sting away:

On the night of 18 November, the lower house of the United States Congress voted down a resolution proclaiming that "it is necessary to end the stationing of US troops in Iraq immediately." The vote proved to be wind in the sails for President Bush, who opposes immediate withdrawal, but both the Republican and Democratic parties are thinking ahead to next year's midterm elections, and the haggling continued up to the final [vote].

You know, if congressmen want to be arguing over the WOT, instead of taking potshots at each other over who's a good Marine, how about looking into air security? Port security? Border security? Many of these characters have points of vulnerability right in the middle of their districts that their constituents--and by extension they--should be hopping mad about. On the other hand, I sincerely doubt that most of them are any better able to assess whether Iraq has stabilized enough to govern itself than the rest of us can.

I was hoping someone would get around to saying this so I didn't have to (it's Dale Franks posting):

So we're starting to see articles like this one from Khaled Duzdar, the Palestinian co-director of the strategic affairs unit at the Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information in Jerusalem. Now, I don't know anything about Mr. Duzdar. For all I know, he's been a beacon of sanity and peace in the Arab Muslim world for all his adult life. But there's something about his article that strikes me as...odd.

Last week's suicide attacks against innocent civilians in Amman shocked us all. It is unclear what message the suicide bombers were conveying and there is no logical cause justifying such insane acts. What could the aim of such attacks be, and what were the mad executioners aiming to achieve? For some time, they have claimed they are defenders and combatants of Islam and the Muslim world. However, Islam has no use for such people and their acts and ideologies - if we believe they have any ideology at all. They promote nothing more than killing and aim only to bring about a state of lawlessness and instability in the Middle East.

Yeah. All of the sudden, terrorist acts have gone from the acts of frustrated national aspirations on the part of a helpless people to wondering, "What could the aim of such attacks be?" Yep. All of the sudden, terrorism is just incomprehensible.

No kidding. For years, many--if not most--of the Arab and Muslim condemnations of terrorism have come with qualifications on the order of "But let's remember the sense of rage and powerlessness such people feel" or "But their bodies are the only weapons they have to fight with." (To be fair, Palestinian-sympathizing Westerners have taken the same tack, too.)

It's all very strange. There are certain things that generally good-hearted, disciplined, civilized people simply do not do when they're cracking under pressure. Chilly premeditated murder of dozens of random people peaceably going about their business is one of them--even, I would submit, if the killing conveys a clear "message." I was saddened and outraged by the bombings in Jordan this weekend, but like Dale, I'm having a little trouble getting myself worked up into extra-special shock, grief, and epistemic crisis just because it was Amman and not Tel Aviv that was hit.

Should I be worried about the facility with which Eric can unravel truly loopy states of mind? Our junior senator in Pennsylvania kind of wigged this weekend:

Santorum, a conservative Republican and usually a strong Bush ally, said the unpopularity of the war should be shared between the White House and the media.

"Certainly, mistakes were made," Santorum said of the war's conduct. "But that's a criticism you can make of every conflict."

...

"Terror is nothing more than a tactic," Santorum said.

He noted Bush recently redefined the conflict as a war on Islamic fundamentalists.

Bush, however, used the "war on terror" moniker in his speech at Tobyhanna.

I've always thought the designation "War on Terror" was silly-sounding. Perhaps it might have been better if the Bush administration had sat around for a few extra days, with ad hoc committees and posterboards and magic markers, and devised a better one. But it's been around for years now, it's basically serviceable at signalling that we're fighting anyone who would resort to a particular unconscionable low, and we all know what it means. Making a dramatic point of dissing it makes you sound kind of lame.

Eric writes:

Santorum has my sympathy, as it must be tough facing a pro-life Democrat. But if he runs to the right of himself and Casey holds the center, I'm not sure there are enough Toomey-style voters to carry it for him.

There don't seem to be. While the hard right has its complaints about Bush, I'm not sure it's going to see back-stabbing as the right approach. Those who aren't so hard-right are likely to be even less receptive.

Thank you to all Americans who have served in the military--always, but especially this Veterans Day. The rest of us are in your debt. Since I have relatives still in England, thanks and a happy Armistice Day to British veterans as well.

I understand why gays would be excited about ousting Rick Santorum, but this kind of thing (via Michael) is ridiculous:

New Keystone Poll out in Pennsylvania and the news keeps getting worse for the current GOP number three in the Senate.

In the same poll in March Senator Santorum trailed by 1 point, in June by 7 points, in September by 13 points, and in the latest (Nov. 2 - 7) Casey leads by a whopping 16 points, 51% - 35%.

Bottom line, barring a major event that totally reshuffles the national playing field, or a major scandal involving Bob Casey, Santorum will lose in 2006.

WTF? There's a year until the next election. A YEAR. (The Malcontent points this out in Boi from Troy's comments.) Furthermore, let's remember an important political truth: Pennsylvania is weird.

Pennsylvania is still one of the most populous states in the union, though its relative population has been sinking like a stone for decades, and--as we're tediously informed every three seconds in the run-up to a close election--it's a swing state. There are pockets of hard Democrats in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh (of course) but also on the West End of Allentown, in the college towns, and (I imagine, though I don't know the place well) in Erie. But there's also a very high rural population; outside the cities, Pennsylvanians, like upstate New Yorkers, are spread relatively smoothly over the land area. That's where a lot of the conservatives are.

Of course, there are plenty of people who don't vote in both town and country. But local coverage in election years always makes it very plain to people that, taking the commonwealth as a whole, we're pretty evenly split on a lot of hot-button issues. With that in mind, you also have to factor in the Specter Effect: we already have an influential, moderate, triangulating, peace-making man in the US Senate. I suspect--this is just a hunch on my part--that many people are willing to overlook Santorum's more extreme pronouncements because they just sent Finger-to-the-Wind Arlen back to Washington a few years ago, too. (Given a chance to replace Specter with my then-congressman, hard-conservative Pat Toomey, PA primary voters said, "No thanks" last go-round. And those were just the Republicans.)

For voters who lean right/libertarian, deciding between Santorum and Casey isn't likely to be quite as easy as deciding between Santorum and Harris "let's resurrect HillaryCare!!!!!" Wofford was ten years ago...or between Santorum and What's-his-face (Colonel Klink, I want to say?) in 2000. Casey's website takes the now-de rigueur line: "I'm for curbing government spending unless it goes to subisides for the elderly and mothers who need child care and public schools and small-business owners and...uh, have I missed anyone else who might vote for me?"

That makes it hard to tell what many of his particular policy proposals are going to be. Given Republican spending practices these days, if he can work the pro-family angle and strike a convincingly patriotic pose in connection with the WOT, he's unlikely to stand out as a statist. He could very well succeed in portraying Santorum as a freaky extremist by comparison, without making himself look like a milquetoast. Casey's family name is a well-known Pennsylvania brand, of course, and it's not hard to imagine his adding enough votes from moderate Republicans and Independents to those from his expected Democratic base to unseat Santorum. The idea that Santorum is already finished, though, is highly suspect.

Added later: Eric (also a Pennsylvanian) writes about Santorum's "scheduling conflict" with President Bush's visit to Scranton. He also characterizes himself this way:

I'm so used to being cynical and disappointed that I barely noticed, and I think it just goes with the turf of being a libertarian Republican. I just voted for the Republicans on Tuesday, and all that entitles me to is to have the label of "RINO" thrown at me by "real conservatives," and "conservative" thrown at me by liberals. If I registered and voted Democrat with my views, I'd be equally (if not more) suspect.

I downloaded and filled out the absentee ballot form, then decided not to vote. All the Pennsylvania seats this time around were low-level or local, and as someone who doesn't actually live at home, I didn't feel right sticking Lehigh County with, like, a vice-deputy-assistant commissioner that I was never going to have to deal with. But that's neither here nor there. The point I wanted to make is that this coming senatorial election is probably going to be utterly excruciating for those of us who are sick to death of being told we're not "real" members of a group whose label we never adopted to begin with. With Santorum and Casey looking like the candidates, there's room for endless please-make-it-stop finger-pointing over who's a RINO or DINO or covert totalitarian or closet socialist, all based on, say, the fact that one candidate favors ten or so million more dollars in federal layouts for prozac for senior citizens. Even from the opposite hemisphere, I am not looking forward to this.

Joanne Jacobs, whose wonderful blog was one of the first three or four I began reading five years ago or so, has a book out and wants to bum-rush Amazon with as many orders on 10 November as possible. Here's the rundown in her words:

Our School: The Inspiring Story of Two Teachers, One Big Idea and the School That Beat the Odds (Palgrave Macmillan) tells the story of a San Jose charter school that prepares students who are "failing but not in jail" for four-year colleges.

It really is an inspiring story. The average Downtown College Prep student comes from a Mexican immigrant family and enters ninth grade reading at a fifth grade level; 100 percent of graduates have been accepted at four-year colleges and 97 percent are on track to earn a bachelor's degree. DCP now scores well above the state average on the Academic Performance Index, ranking in the top third compared to all high schools, including affluent suburban schools. DCP follows what I call the work-your-butt-off philosophy of education. Its leaders analyze what's not working, adapt quickly and waste no time on esteem inflation or excuses.

While I discuss the charter school movement as a whole, Our School isn't written for wonks. I think it's a good read, sort of Tracy Kidder meets Up the Down Staircase.

My favorite part of the book is the part I didn't write. The book includes Pedro's rap, essays by Gil and Emilia, Roberto's speech, a discipline report on Hector, a teachers' list of DCP jargon, the principal's e-mail conversations with teachers, a phony field trip permission slip created by a girl who wanted a parent-free weekend and a copy of the school's budget.

I pre-ordered the book a while ago; if you're interested in education policy, either as an interested parent or just as a citizen who's frightened pallid at what the current state of schooling means for the future of civilization, it promises to be a valuable read.

I love reading the book excerpts Joel chooses to post most of the time; the only problem is that it often means he doesn't deliver much of his own thinking on things, which is unfortunate. He's got a few posts up about the rioting in France that are well worth attention, though: here and here. It certainly is hard to buy the line that a feeling of downtroddenness is driving the miscreants. Wounded ego, sure, but not downtroddenness.

As a social commentator, Margaret Cho is a great stand-up comic. She writes the following:

I like Gwen Stefani, she's alright. She is very stylish and has a nice voice and a really flat stomach. She is a rock star, and quite good at it.

...

Now she has 4 things all together, the Harajuku Girls. I want to like them, and I want to think they are great, but I am not sure if I can. I mean, racial stereotypes are really cute sometimes, and I don't want to bum everyone out by pointing out the minstrel show. I think it is totally acceptable to enjoy the Harajuku girls, because there are not that many other Asian people out there in the media really, so we have to take whatever we can get. Amos 'n Andy had lots of fans, didn't they? At least it is a measure of visibility, which is much better than invisibility. I am so sick of not existing, that I would settle for following any white person around with an umbrella just so I could say I was there.

I think it's worth gently pointing out that Harajuku Girls--I mean, the real ones and not Stefani's backup dancers--are not Asian-Americans but actual Japanese. Many of them, I'd wager, would react to Cho's post along the lines of "Excuse me? We don't need you to defend us, you stupid Korean bitch."

Let me hasten to say that I do not endorse such an attitude. My love for Japan and the Japanese has never stopped me from pointing out, when people here intimate that they think Koreans are lazy and dumb, that South Korea now has some of the highest educational achievement stats in the world. I'm only pointing it out because you constantly hear Asian-Americans complaining about their lack of visibility and the stereotypical way the American media represent them. It always makes me wonder: surely many of them have visited relatives in their ancestral homelands, if they themselves didn't grow up there part of the time. They must be aware of the jaw-droppingly reductive and stereotypical ways foreigners are frequently depicted in China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. So do they believe in racial equality as a universal moral principle--in which case the Far East has at least as bad a track record as the US--or do they think it's somehow America's job to be extra-special inclusive, while Asian countries get a pass if they fall back on local heritage as an excuse for treating people of other ethnicities like crap?

I'm not playing tu quoque here. I just think some perspective is called for. America is far from perfect when it comes to race relations, but it gives you an opportunity to carve out your own space in whatever place you find most hospitable. You'll meet hostile, or just plain provincial, people sometimes; but that's true everywhere. It wasn't long ago that people of Anglo-Saxon, Irish, Italian, and German descent would not have been indiscriminately identified with each other as equally privileged white people. Lasting social change takes time, even in this media age. I don't think Gwen Stefani's annoyingly twee cutesifying approach is all that helpful, but neither is drippy depressiveness.

(Thanks, Toren.)

Rondi Adamson is wondering about something that's so simple and obvious I hadn't noticed, and now I feel kind of stupid:

Hmm...Something's missing from the French riot news and analysis. I haven't heard about, or read of, anyone blaming the United States, George Bush, the Jews or Israel for all of this...yet. I may have just missed it.

It has been a full, what, ten days? Kind of odd. All the Reuters and CNN coverage I've seen has referred to "root causes," of course, and lack of integration into society; and there have been some gingerly references to anti-Semitic violence over the past few years. But the obvious role of America, and those Jews who have had the temerity to become affluent, in fostering a climate of disaffection and hate, hasn't been touched. Of course, I don't go near the op-ed pages of The Guardian unless someone I trust gives me a good reason. The front page of The Guardian is right now, BTW, referring to what's been going on in France as "urban unrest," which is euphemistic even for the English.

I ran into a French acquaintance last night, and it was all I could do not to blurt out, "I hope your family's cars are all okay, honey!"

Ann Althouse reminds us of Jonathan Rauch's wonderful article from a few years ago on being an introvert. There are too many good parts for an excerpt to do it justice, but I think this is my absolute favorite:

Are introverts misunderstood? Wildly. That, it appears, is our lot in life. "It is very difficult for an extrovert to understand an introvert," write the education experts Jill D. Burruss and Lisa Kaenzig. (They are also the source of the quotation in the previous paragraph.) Extroverts are easy for introverts to understand, because extroverts spend so much of their time working out who they are in voluble, and frequently inescapable, interaction with other people. They are as inscrutable as puppy dogs. But the street does not run both ways. Extroverts have little or no grasp of introversion. They assume that company, especially their own, is always welcome. They cannot imagine why someone would need to be alone; indeed, they often take umbrage at the suggestion. As often as I have tried to explain the matter to extroverts, I have never sensed that any of them really understood. They listen for a moment and then go back to barking and yipping.

Not the nicest way of putting it--but hey, truth hurts. It's funny that I should have run across a reference to Rauch's article again now because I was just told last week for the gajillionth time that I am "intimidating." There's just no good answer to that. "Why, I'm the most approachable guy in the world!" is not exactly something you want to be bellowing heartily in a crowded gay bar. I tried my stock response ("There's nothing intimidating about me; I'm just not very talkative") and got the stock response right back ("Well, that's intimidating"). At this point, in my experience, all hope for a fun conversation--let alone the germ of a potential friendship--is lost for good. Anyone who believes that the occasional silence signals contempt or lack of interest will fail to be satisfied by anything but non-stop smiling, eyes-shining banter. Not my strong suit. (My first boss once told me before a work function, when I offered to be sociable, "Oh, jeez, Sean, no--you're much scarier when you're trying to be nice.")

One of the many wonderful things about being in a relationship with Atsushi is that we're both introverted, so we get each other; but we're complementary types of introverts. When he doesn't need quiet time, Atsushi is very social. When I don't need quiet time, I need even quieter time. We give parties, and Atsushi chats and keeps food and drink circulating. I stay in the kitchen communing with the cutting board and gas range. It's become a joke among our friends, but it makes us both happy.

Actually, many of you know Connie and Kim, so it will mean something when I point out that one of the best things about visiting their home last year was that it was considered perfectly okay to shut the hell up sometimes. Of course, we talked a lot--and man, do you have to be sharp to keep up with that family. But you could read. You could savor your coffee. You could watch the television. You could stare out the window thinking deliciously naughty thoughts. And then you could share them after they'd had time to germinate in peace. It doesn't get any better.

It's a good thing I'm an atheist, because that way I don't have to believe I'm going to hell for guffawing at this:

[Criminologist Alain] Bauer said that, contrary to popular opinion, these youths are in a way quite well integrated into French society. The way they erupt in protest and violence against the strong central state reflects the model they see, he said, for example from protesting workers and far-left social agitators.

I like that man. He is sly. I also liked this (unintentionally, I'm sure) drocirc;le summing up of France's attempts to deal with its immigrant problems:

France promised liberty, equality and fraternity but failed to create the jobs that helped integrate earlier immigrants. Paris has tried everything from social programs to police crackdowns to deal with frustration that has resulted.

Market liberalization is apparently not even within the range of possibilities in its mental framework--of course, those protesting workers help to explain that.

I love Erin O'Connor (what I know of her from her blog, that is) to death, but I hate opening her site because what she reports always makes me want to punch something. Get a load of this:

The University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire has forbidden RAs (students who work as residential assistants) from leading Bible-study groups in their dorms. Administrators claim they are compelled to forbid RAs from engaging in this activity because RAs who lead such groups risk seeming "unapproachable" to the students entrusted to their care.

Last summer, RAs who had been leading Bible study groups in their dorms--not as official dorm activities, but privately, on their own time, in their own rooms--received a letter from Associate Director for Housing and Residence Life Deborah Newman forbidding them to continue and threatening them with disciplinary action if they did. When one RA questioned the edict, Newman informed him that "as an RA you need to be available to your residents both in reality and from their perspective." The suggestion is not only that students who work as RAs don't have the same First Amendment rights that other students have, but also that religious RAs are off in some nether world, and that leading religious study groups violates in some manner their obligation to live in "reality" and to share their residents' presumably godless "perspective" on life. Newman has also forbidden RAs to lead Koran- and Torah-based study groups.

She also links to FIRE's report on the matter.

When I entered college, I was a creationist. None of this wimpy-ass, evolutionist-placating Intelligent Design crap, either--the religion I was brought up in believed that the Genesis account of creation was only marginally non-literal. That is (IIRC), the order of events was accurate, but since length of time doesn't bind God as it does us, the actual space between the steps was not necessarily what we humans, with our limited understanding, would know as a single day. I'm probably misrepresenting it somewhat--ten years of Japan-dwelling atheism and you get a little rusty--but that was the basic idea.

Anyway, my point is, both RAs I had the two years I lived in campus housing were very, very liberal. I think they were both atheists. But aside from the occasional Saturday when, coming back from church services, I'd be teased good-naturedly for being the only person on the hall who wasn't rising for the first time that day after nursing a hangover, it was never an issue. Yes, our differences in beliefs also emerged when we were discussing academic or intellectual issues, but it was a university, so I guess we just figured that, you know, that was what was supposed to happen. I would have found it incomprehensible if someone had asked whether I found Elise "unapproachable" because she was pro-abortion or Bob's "perspective" alienating because he didn't like my letter to the editor about some retarded column saying David and Jonathan were gay. (If you think I don't like gay leftism now, you can imagine what I was like when I was a conservative Christian!) What the hell does that have to do with a burned-out light bulb in the bathroom or whether Professor Soandso in the biology department is a good teacher?

Actually, I didn't go to Penn right out of high school. My parents' dream was for me to go to the college affiliated with our religious sect. It was in the middle of nowhere in eastern Texas (halfway between Tyler and Longview, for anyone who knows the area). I was devout at that time, too, and while I thought the academic standards were likely to be somewhat slack, it seemed a worthwhile sacrifice to be at a Godly college.

Until I actually got there and experienced it in practice. There were some ritual pronouncements about being all Berean and proving everything by testing it against reality and counter-arguments, but in the classroom and college-run discussion groups, you were shut down immediately if you deviated from the party line. I ventured the opinion that perhaps some women might hypothetically be able to serve in combat positions in the armed forces and WHAM! I was cut off.

After six weeks of this, I snapped. I might not have minded a frank Bible seminary, but the post-Enlightenment bait-and-switch act was more than I could take. I called my parents very agitatedly, and they sorrowfully sent me an Amtrak ticket home to Pennsylvania. I worked for a year at my high school restaurant job, reactivated my application to Penn, was reaccepted, and started gratefully the next fall.

When, in due course, I started hearing people talking about how silenced they were on campus, I thought they were insane. These were the most stridently voluble silenced people I'd ever encountered. There was a women's studies program. The newspaper always seemed to have at least one gay columnist. The WEB Dubois College House was expressly devoted to housing students who wanted to work for black community interests. There were arguments--real, substantive arguments over competing ideas--inside the classroom and out.

Most of the time, my religious beliefs made me the freak, but I don't remember more than two or three people in the entire four years I was in college being frankly disrespectful, even during that screaming match after we watched The Accused and had a discussion about rape. The idea was still in the air that people were supposed to bring their most sincere, reasoned beliefs to the table and pit them against each other. Everyone got a fair hearing, and everyone got the chance to approve or disapprove of what he heard.

But you could already see things hardening. It was in 1993 that the Eden Jacobowitz incident occurred, after all. Now, apparently, you don't even have to make specific remarks that could offend a given group at the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire. You just have to sit around reading a book that might kinda indicate something vaguely different about your "perspective" from those of unnamed hypothetical students. Oh, and you probably won't be surprised by this from the FIRE page:

FIRE also pointed out a 2004 article in UWEC's student newspaper in which the Office of Housing and Residence Life praised an RA who for three years in a row staged the controversial feminist play The Vagina Monologues as an official "residence hall activity." This praise came despite the RA's acknowledgement that "with the Vagina Monologues...she [did not have] as much time as she would have liked for her wing." UWEC has failed to respond to FIRE’s letter.

Well, she was probably still approachable in spirit. It's not as if she'd been reading the Bible, or anything.