The White Peril 白禍

I've never understood why more people don't seem to do this kind of thought experiment (via Rondi):

Imagine a woman – let’s call her Beth – who has been an unthinking atheist all her life, just because her family and her friends are too. One day, she decides to convert to Islam. As soon as she dons the hijab, her neighbours start to swear and spit at her in the street. A brick is thrown through her window; while she is sleeping, her car is torched. When she speaks out publicly, the death threats come. She is a “whore” who will be “raped to death”. All the other converts to Islam are receiving the same threats. Some have been beaten. Some are on the run. When they approach the police, they are wary-to-hostile. The officers ask suspiciously: what have you been doing to anger these Muslim-bashers?

If this was happening this way, it would – rightly – be a national scandal. There would be Panorama specials, front page fury and government inquiries into Islamophobia. But it is happening – only in the reverse direction.

...

Women like Mina expose a hole in the stale logic of multiculturalism. She shows that secularism is not a 'Western' value: she thought of it all by herself, in a rural village in Iran. Yet the attitudes that lead to the persecution of apostates are widespread even within British Islam, because we patronisingly assume it is 'their culture' and do not challenge it.

I don't agree with everything in Johann Hari's piece. His "basic atheist truth," that because holy books are in fact nothing more than the productions of flawed humans, they can be interpreted however believers please, overstates the case. Even taking into account the difficulties of understanding ancient languages and determining which passages "belong" in a sacred text, the resulting book says some things and does not say others. As civilization evolves and expands our understanding of the way life works, believers do stop taking some passages literally and repurpose them as metaphor or what have you. But that doesn't mean there isn't genuine, concrete wisdom in holy books that can't be waved away as "superstition" that is infinitely "elastic."

I'm also, I must say, less hopeful than he that the "secular humanist" alternative will be alluring to many Muslims who are questioning their faith. I happen to think that belief in God is dodging unpleasant reality and that the wonder of life does not need to be legitimized by a transcendent, immanent personality—but that is not, to put it mildly, the way most people think, even those with a healthy level of intellectual skepticism. Judeo-Christianity at this point has a mature tradition of disinterested scientific inquiry, the separation of church and state, and tolerance of others' beliefs that make it possible for citizens to debate our differences without knives being drawn. Islam as a political force hasn't. In Western countries, conversion to Christianity is probably the obvious alternative for most Muslims who are alienated from the faith in which they were reared but don't want to dump their belief in an Abramic-ish God altogether. Those who think Islam can be reformed from within are not helped by condescending dismissals of barbarous behavior as a defining feature of their culture that needs husbanding.

It could be argued that Hari is wrong about the racism bit, too. There are white Muslims in the Balkans and elsewhere, after all. But I suspect that he's far more right than wrong, given the prevalence of thinking like this (via Erin O'Connor):

The [University of Delaware]'s views are forced on students through a comprehensive manipulation of the residence hall environment, from mandatory training sessions to "sustainability" door decorations. Students living in the university's eight housing complexes are required to attend training sessions, floor meetings, and one-on-one meetings with their Resident Assistants (RAs). The RAs who facilitate these meetings have received their own intensive training from the university, including a "diversity facilitation training" session at which RAs were taught, among other things, that "[a] racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality."

The issue here is with a university in the United States, not with European social-democratic functionaries. Even so, the animating principle is the same: non-white people are underprivileged in some a priori way and should get a pass. If you question that, you're the one with the funny ideas.

Reason has an entertaining interview with fark.com founder Drew Curtis about how the site developed and what it says about the future of the Internet. Like other commentators I've seen, he thinks that some sort of personal-shopper model is what's next up, since we're all swamped by the amount of information available.

I like Fark. My only problem is that frequently the funniest tag lines lead to the least interesting articles. My favorite example from this week:



The link takes you to a decent but decidedly non-fabulous piece arguing that presenting a well-groomed, pulled-together image is good for your career. Yawn.

Reason also--I assume this month is some sort of media issue, but I'm too lazy to look--has this piece defending The Onion in terms I very much agree with:

Most dailies, especially those in monopoly or near-monopoly markets, operate as if they’re focused more on not offending readers (or advertisers) than on expressing a worldview of any kind.

The Onion takes the opposite approach. It delights in crapping on pieties and regularly publishes stories guaranteed to upset someone: "Christ Kills Two, Injures Seven In Abortion-Clinic Attack." "Heroic PETA Commandos Kill 49, Save Rabbit." "Gay Pride Parade Sets Mainstream Acceptance of Gays Back 50 Years." There's no predictable ideology running through those headlines, just a desire to express some rude, blunt truth about the world.

One common complaint about newspapers is that they're too negative, too focused on bad news, too obsessed with the most unpleasant aspects of life. The Onion shows how wrong this characterization is, how gingerly most newspapers dance around the unrelenting awfulness of life and refuse to acknowledge the limits of our tolerance and compassion. The perfunctory coverage that traditional newspapers give disasters in countries cursed with relatability issues is reduced to its bare, dismal essence: "15,000 Brown People Dead Somewhere." [The unforgettable dateline for that one was "OOGA-BOOGA LAND OR WHEREVER."--SRK] Beggars aren't grist for Pulitzers, just punch lines: "Man Can't Decide Whether to Give Sandwich to Homeless or Ducks." Triumphs of the human spirit are as rare as vegans at an NRA barbecue: "Loved Ones Recall Local Man's Cowardly Battle With Cancer."

A lot of what passes for irreverent satire is little more than sub-adult pushing of the obvious buttons. But skewering the tendency of journalists to airbrush any story into a palatable human interest feature, or to invest any story they write or broadcast about with selections from a tired laundry list of Deeper Human Significance it may not have, is a real service. And it's encouraging that it's so popular. Some satire is funny enough to stand alone, but most isn't. That people keep clicking on stories in The Onion and sending them to friends is a reasonable indication that they understand the news and issues that they're twisting into humorous new shapes, despite all the gnashing of teeth about how ignorant everyone is nowadays.

You know what's really annoying? All you silly people out there who think you're in the best position to make decisions about your own lives. What gives you the right to make your own trade-offs when planners--people with credentials--have figured out the one true way to live?

Well, don't expect to win. The latest from here in Japan is a litany of targets for achieving the perfect national balance of work and family life. Just look at all these numbers, each the glorious result of expert cogitation:

The government has come up with a long list of numerical targets to let men in their 30s to 40s work less and spend more time with their families.

...

One target is to halve in 10 years the percentage of workers who put in 60 hours or more a week from 10.8 percent in 2006.

Another goal is to raise the percentage of male workers who take child-care leave to 10 percent, up from the current 0.5 percent.

The draft guidelines were presented Thursday to a task force under a high-level council working on the issue. The council consists of representatives from labor and management, Cabinet ministers and other experts.

...

The government will consider measures to achieve the targets included in the guidelines and seek cooperation from business organizations and labor unions.

The draft charter emphasizes that it is essential to review the nation's working style to maintain the vitality of society.

The numerical targets are aimed primarily at lightening the workload of men in their 30s and 40s.

To make up for the reduced work, the government has set employment-rate targets for women and elderly people.

For example, the government aims to have 69-72 percent of women between 25 and 44 in the work force in 10 years, up from the current 65 percent.

For people in the age bracket between 60 and 64, the employment-rate targets, also in 10 years, are 79-80 percent for men and 41-43 percent for women, up, respectively, from the current 67 percent and 39 percent.

The government also aims to raise the rate of women in employment after their first childbirth to 55 percent in 10 years, up from the current 38 percent.

In 2006, men with a child under 6 years old spent an average of one hour a day on child care and household chores.

The government's target in 10 years is 2 1/2 hours.

Of course, most of these things will not be legislated directly. No prefectural governor is going to be taken out and shot if his or her jurisdiction doesn't reach the approved average of 2.5 hours' worth of male domesticity by 2017. But what happens with these things is that they expand from high-level technocratic committees into offices, community programs, and ad hoc task forces that suck up money without demonstrably serving citizens. (Also, while Japanese men spend more time with their families than they used to, I suspect that plenty of them would use the extra time off from work to heft golf clubs rather than toddlers.)

Japan's not the only island country to exhibit such impulses. Perry de Havilland of Samizdata linked indignantly to BBC coverage of a new government report that essentially tells each Briton, "You're a porker, but it's not your fault."

The largest ever UK study into obesity, backed by government and compiled by 250 experts, said excess weight was now the norm in our "obesogenic" society. [Don't let's be spoilsports and point out that we're otherwise hearing how rail-thin models and actresses are setting unrealistic beauty standards and causing an epidemic of eating disorders--that was last Wednesday's problem.--SRK]

Dramatic and comprehensive action was required to stop the majority of us becoming obese by 2050, they said.

The government pledged to draw up a strategy to address the issue.

But the report authors admitted proof that any anti-obesity policy worked "was scant".

Details, details. The experts haven't figured out exactly how they're going to force you to be healthier, it might be noted, though they're full of consciousness-raising ideas:

From planning our towns to encourage more physical activity to placing more pressure on mothers to breast feed - believed to slow down infant weight gain - the report highlighted a range of policy options without making any concrete recommendations.

...

"The emphasis on cross-governmental initiatives is particularly welcome, as is the importance of addressing issues across society whilst avoiding blame," said its president, Professor Ian Gilmore.

Perhaps Professor Gilmore is a Japanophile. He's certainly got the ability to settle blame everywhere and accountability nowhere down pat.

And the result in the UK will probably be similar to what we see here in Japan: distortions of economic decision-making with the attendant unintended consequences. Those consequences will, it goes without saying, be interpreted as yet more evidence that individuals are incompetent to make their own decisions without "guidance."

Added later: Okay, the only connection between this and the above is Catherine Tate, but Michael mentioned yesterday that Larry Craig is still going on television to make pathetic attempts at damage control. Am I the only one who's spent the last few months thinking, "Who, dear? Me, dear? Gay, dear? No, dear" whenever his name comes up?

Added still later, after a glass of Coke that was large enough to be satisfying but not so large as to compromise health--so there: Kim has, naturally, already weighed in on the obesity report. He leads into it with a discussion of restaurant eating habits:

I remember seeing a lady once go up to the salad bar at a restaurant, and my initial reaction was, “Ohh, good—she’s going to eat something healthy.” Then I watched her coming back to the table, and I was nearly sick. It looked as though someone had put a brick on her plate, and covered it with salad—and drenched the whole thing with about two cups of salad dressing. Then I watched her eat all of it.

And then she went back for seconds.

I worked at Golden Corral in high school, back when very few restaurants had all-you-can-eat troughs salad bar/buffets. The experience was very instructive about human nature, though it was nearly enough to put me off food for the rest of my life.

One of the things I've trained myself to do when back in the States is to eat at a normal pace no matter how much food is Matterhorned onto my plate. When you have a lot of food in front of you, instinct tells you to start hoovering it up because there's so much to get through, which means you end up both failing to enjoy the sensual experience of eating and feeling excessively full when you're done. (And in that case, why not just stay home and fortify yourself with cold oatmeal?)

I'll give Connie the last word:

Just because we can doesn’t mean we should.

And to add yet another of my pet peeves....

I did not suggest that there should be a law in what we should do. We can talk about the way things should be without bringing the law into it.

I noticed Rondi had added some election-related application on Facebook, so I clicked through to look at it. The text at the right said something like, "The 2008 election is almost here." I didn't do a double-take until a few seconds later--that's how accustomed I am to the idea that we're already in the run-up to the election.

The good citizen in me is not looking forward to the coming year. Following politics can be good, wicked fun sometimes, but I mostly do it because I consider it a duty. I will listen to the debates and read up on candidates' records as legislators and seek out the opinions of commentators whose judgment I find helpful. But I am expecting this to be the least fun election season of my adult life.

A lot of that has to do with Hillary. My sainted aunt, I am so sick of hearing about Hillary. I'm not referring to her relentless spotlight-seeking in and of itself--what else do you expect an ambitious politician with designs on the Oval Office to do? She's actually become much less grating to watch and listen to over the years. As an old-fashioned celebrity-loving gay guy, I've taken some pleasure in watching her develop a more bankable image. Work it, Hills, I say.

Unfortunately, there's a flip side, which is that everything she says or does is examined to death, by friend and foe alike, for what it might indicate about her emergent Hillaryness. Of course, every politician makes tossed-off comments or clothing choices that get overworked in the media, but with Hillary the enterprise reaches a whole new level. Some sources speculate that Clinton's newest shade from Clairol suggests her commitment to the reconstruction of Iraq is less than sincere.... I understand that there are reasons for it--she may lack Bill's charisma, but in her own weird way, she may be just as compelling a figure. A lot of her fans seem to think she's some kind of saint, and a lot of her detractors seem to hate her more than they do Satan.

[Added on 15 October: Thanks to Eric for the link. He uses the obvious word in this context: "cult [of personality]." The reason I didn't myself is that I think it really bothers Hillary that that's what she has. However ruthlessly loyalty may be enforced in the Clinton inner circle, I think that with respect to the electorate, Hillary clearly wants to be the natural, rational choice for thinking people. Not that she'll refuse the votes of blind partisans, of course.]

You can imagine what I think of her politics. Hillary represents just about everything I detest about arrogant, technocrat-in-group statism. Since she's such an inveterate triangulator, I'm not sure how many of her overweening policy points she would actually work to push through in their purest illiberal form, but I'd prefer not to find out.

I will say that in one sense I sympathize with her: She clearly wants to be a natural at winning over voters. She works and works and works at it, all to little effect. It must be frustrating to want so much to be good at something for which you have no talent, especially when you're married to someone who could charm the spots off a leopard. She always reminds me of Tom Cruise, who refuses to settle into being a movie star with a presence a lot of people will pay to see. He struggles mightily to be an Actor, and it doesn't work because you can always see the gears turning. Same with Hillary. The more "on" she is with her gestures and her speech patterns in technical terms, the more she comes off as an animatronic Anna Lindh doll. It would be nice to see her just cut the crap and be the steely, high-handed bitch she clearly wants to be. (And America needs a steely, high-handed bitch or two, now that Madonna's been domesticated and run through the Brit-erator.) She would be utterly fabulous at that. But it would obviously cost her the election, so it's not going to happen.

Instead, we're going to spend the next year in the spin cycle perfected when Bill was in the White House, only with a senate term and a grown-up Chelsea ("See? At least one person in this family is normal!") sloshing around in it. Eric has two posts up about Control of the Narrative. While they don't address the election explicitly, they're pertinent here. Apropos of something else, he says, "I think media culture and hypersensitivity tend to fuel each other, and the result is a latent hysteria constantly lurking in the background, and ready to break out upon the slightest provocation." We're so used to hearing that every bracelet Hillary wears may say something about what's going on in that calculating head of hers that I think a lot of people have started to buy it without realizing they're doing it. We're in for an annoying year.

[Added on 15 October: Thanks to Eric for the other link, too. If you haven't read that post of his, BTW, you really must. The situation he's discussing is absolutely hilarious. Of course, if there were serious threats issued or an injury that drew blood, that's not funny. But the indignant haggling over which type of identity-political aggrievement is warranted on the part of which involved party is like something out of Through the Looking Glass. Eric's final comment: "You'd almost think they were trying to avoid getting on the wrong side of Cotton Mather."]