politics

Connecticut, gun-control, and human nature

/ bharatwrites / 20 Comments

LAWS are written for the average citizen, the meaty portion of the demographic bell curve, but a referendum on a law usually springs from something an outlier does. It may be subtle, like someone exploiting a tax-loophole, or in-your-face, like someone walking from classroom to classroom firing multiple rounds at cherubic victims.

Adam Lanza (Wikipedia)

Adam Lanza discharged a firearm on innocent children, teachers, and his mother, before killing himself. Twenty eight people died, fourteen of them children. We have seen this before. The Virginia Tech shooting happened about five years ago. And a few months later—not nearly as gruesome, but closer to home—a man had sneaked a gun into my university campus before he was apprehended. Luckily there were no casualties. These, with the Gabrielle Giffords case,  and the Aurora shooting, have ensured a stalemated gun-control debate, with one side claiming it’s too soon to talk about it and the other questioning the logic of civilians carrying assault weapons. What we have here is a nation divided, with most participants refusing to budge, on an issue that isn’t elucidated as much as we’d like to believe.

For every gun-owner who kills innocent people, there are thousands who don’t. That we cannot ignore. Instead of restricting the sale of weapons, let’s collect and publicize information on gun-owners. Nancy Lanza was a survivalist who owned over a dozen guns and stockpiled food in preparation for the ‘apocalypse.’ She also took her sons to shooting practice. There are fewer red flags at a communist rally. Instead of banning assault weapons for civilians, why not use the information? Put someone such as Lanza’s mother on a watch-list. When a twenty-year old has access to and carries semiautomatics, in violation of Connecticut law, follow him around in a chopper if you like. The Second Amendment prohibits none of that.

The more regulatory hoops people have to jump through to get whatever they want, the likelier that they pursue illegal methods to get it. And shadow economies that fly under the radar use violence as currency. The drug war and Prohibition have taught us that. Let people buy the weapons legally, but keep tabs on them. Educate them that the Second Amendment doesn’t protect them from a tyrannical federal government that possesses nuclear weapons. Nothing does. It was drafted back when the government and the people had the same weapons. Today, you have the right to own a gun, not the right to keep it secret. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s something.

Some say that had twenty-eight people died in a terrorist attack, the people drooling all over the Second Amendment right now would have gladly forfeited what’s left of their Fourth Amendment. That, I believe, is a false equivalence. Terrorists are malevolent but sane people who kill in cold blood. Every single terrorist act must be punished swiftly and harshly, or more will happen. But this man was crazy, and besides his mother, he didn’t know his victims; so this wasn’t personal.

It is a natural human tendency to take for granted the good things that happen and to regard as the workings of the devil the bad things. And that if a bad thing comes along, you say, my God, we ought to pass a law and do something. — Milton Friedman

Gun ownership prevents crimes too. Sure, fewer guns are fired in defense than offense, but the presence of a gun, or even the possibility of one, makes a person less of a sitting duck. We cannot know of all the attempted burglaries, rapes, and muggings thwarted by the victim’s possession of a gun, without even firing it. While this argument does not justify a 20-year-old carrying a Bushmaster XM-15, it does muddy the issue.

It’s human nature to make sense of tribulation—a significance, anything to escape the sad truth that we are but dots on a tapestry, whole lives without meaning to anyone except those living them. (Perhaps that’s why our ancestors invented religion.) I don’t mean to insult the loss of life, or those that died. But these events are an aberration. It’s unlikely and unfortunate when an earthquake or a tsunami occurs, and similarly, now and then someone, somewhere snaps and hurts people without reason. This wasn’t an act of terrorism, not a murder for profit, nor anything preventable. This was a tragedy. Let’s grieve with all of our hearts and comfort the bereaved.

Source: abcnews.com

Let’s not forget, in our sorrow for the victims and our indignation on guns, that there were heroes in that school. It is often said that heroes are those who put themselves in harm’s way. The teachers and aides, the principal, and the school psychologist showed outstanding courage as they selflessly rescued as many children as they could, often paying with their own lives. Victoria Soto actually misdirected Lanza by telling him that her students were in the auditorium, while she hid them in cabinets and cupboards. She probably knew he’d kill her, but she protected the tots in her charge anyway. These women did more than save lives. They did wonders to conserve my faith in humanity. And probably yours.

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Zombie arguments from the GOP

/ bharatwrites / 10 Comments

I won’t lie to you. I lean right.

Seriously. I appreciate low taxes and believe religion is a choice. People should be permitted to bear arms if you ask me. I regard the individual more than the collective. I like limited government. I believe that wages should be contracted between employers and employees. I want more private schools. I believe we will never eliminate prejudice through reparations and minority-appeasement.

But I also love nice roads. I enjoy some government-sponsored facilities. I know that science trumps religion. I doubt peaceful people need assault weapons. I believe that when an individual pollutes, the collective can hold him accountable. Therefore I can’t imagine a reason for any Republican vote. The party is fragmented, non-directional, and at the mercy of the Tea Party and the Evangelical wing. Most importantly, they haven’t accomplished anything. The Republicans might not be in the executive office, but they have had legislative majority and been an opposition party. They sucked at both.

The Obama administration of 2009 with a Democrat majority in Congress would have been helped by a strong opposition. But the GOP was anything but constructive. Obama’s election victory began with Rush Limbaugh calling for him to fail; and, strangely, the disgruntled Republican voters took political direction from a radio-host with a penchant for oxycodone. There was no room for discourse. Now that they have the House, instead of playing Devil’s Advocate to the President, they’re still carping about the birth certificate—after he has already produced it. It’s one thing to adhere to an ideology that isn’t even a declarative statement. That’s politics. But the GOP of today spews arguments that have been disproven. So, taking a leaf out of John Quiggin’s book, I declare some of the GOP’s discharges Zombie Arguments. Here we go.

Obama is a leftist

I know he said, “You didn’t build that.” And that he once said, “…spread the wealth around.” But he doesn’t mean that the government gave you everything. Nor does he want to hand your 5000-square feet mansion to the illegal immigrants. All he said was that every business enjoyed benefits of government facilities and that taxes are the way to buy into this service. Oh the outrage! You’d think we were in Animal Farm in 1984.

This man has upheld the Bush tax cuts, ignored the demands from his base for single-payer healthcare, and pulled out of Iraq no earlier than the deadline the Bush administration had set. And he is a foreign-policy hawk. He has killed Osama bin Laden, Badruddin Haqqani, and the second in command at Al Qaeda without losing American lives.

Guns protect you from government oppression

The Second Amendment is impotent against the federal government. The White House has nuclear weapons and drones. Your huge shotgun collection makes Joe Biden want to pinch your cheeks and cuddle. The gun-nuts need to remember that until and including Vietnam, every paper-cut that America inflicted overseas was accomplished with a draft. And everyone complied. Don’t let them fool you with faux patriotism. Most went because they had to. Even today, young men must register at 18 or face prosecution and lose their federal employment eligibility.

Short version: if the federal government wants something, you’ll do it.

The debt is Obama’s fault

Really? Did Obama begin two wars, double the defense budget, and cut taxes on the rich? Did he, when refused a bailout by the Congress, sign an executive order to do it anyway? Criticizing Obama for not fixing the economy might be fair, but blaming the debt on him is disingenuous.

States’ Rights are paramount

I hear this all the time. The individual mandate is against states’ rights. Roe v. Wade violates states’ rights. As if it matters. An oppressive state government is no different from an oppressive federal government. We must protect individual rights—not states’ rights. But let’s not forget that rights are privileges over your body and property. Not just something your heart wants. Those are wishes. Forcing a pregnant girl to carry her fetus to term so you can look Jesus in the eye is not a right.

I have the right to teach my child about Noah’s ark

You do. As long as you tell him that it’s as true as Harry Potter.

Funny how the Bible posits with 99.98% precision the age of the Earth but misses certain glaring facts…such as…the earth is a ball, not a plate; and it’s not the center of the Universe. Charlie Sheen is.

Children cannot be owned. All that parents have is the right to care for their children. To be honest, I doubt that the state has any place between parents and kids, but few things rile me up as much as children being put in harm’s way. But if religion supplants science, especially at a young age, it could destroy creativity, dull curiosity, and teach unquestioning obedience. So, no. Shaping your impressionable child’s mind with a subjective, unproven dogma flouts his rights. Pick someone your own size.

Steve Jobs did so I can too

No. You can’t. That’s the dream they sell you. Hey once you make over $250 000 a year, your taxes go up. So, don’t vote Democrat.

True. But that’s no reason to get your underwear in a bunch now. Worry about that when your start-up becomes the next big thing, or your album drops, or your novel outsells The Hunger Games. Please consider the likelihood of that happening before you cast that ballot.

Finally, I criticize the Left a lot, but they aren’t guilty of petulance. I understand that politics is about compromise. No one can have all that they want. But the GOP keeps moving to the right and then demands a compromise from the Democrats. Even that would be tolerable if their arguments were cogent. We would have scope for debate. Instead the GOP resorts to faux patriotic and religious one-upmanship.

And that bodes well for no one.

7 thoughts on Satyamev Jayate (female feticide)

/ bharatwrites / 27 Comments

Is there anything more embarrassing to our national conscience as Indians than the demand for a male child and the extents to which it takes us?

Episode summary

The show opened with a story about a woman’s fetus being aborted by her family without her knowledge, under the guise of a check-up. Knowing India’s sex ratio and male-child obsession, it’s not hard to decipher that the fetus was female. Another woman got her nose bitten by her husband for conceiving a girl. After discussing such stories, Aamir Khan showed us the decline of female births per 1000 male births over a few decades. He explained that sex-selective abortion happens more among the rich and upper-class people—not the poor and uneducated as we would like to believe. Aamir interspersed interviews with sympathetic victims with phrases on the importance of the girl-child and how it’s the sperm that determines the sex of the offspring and that blaming mothers for fetal gender is as baseless as it is immoral. The audience seemed almost infomercial-like and appear to be crying on cue. The show ended with Aamir saying that we need fast-track courts to punish the wrong-doers. Oh and by the way, women are awesome, mothers are awesome.

1. The issue of consent

Of course, nobody bothered to isolate this question—what about the mother’s consent? There’s no legal or moral crime here bigger than aborting a fetus without the woman’s consent. Clubbing it with anti-female-feticide sentiment dilutes the issue. Of course, to tackle a type of crime, its societal cause must be noted. The desire for a male child makes people want to abort female fetuses (feti?). If that desire is irrational or immoral, making people aware of that is important. So, let’s address that murky question.

2. Should female feticide be legal?

Most people I know and hang out with are pro-abortion. It is a yes or no question—just not easy. If the law considers a fetus living, it cannot be killed—abortion should be illegal. If a fetus is non-living, it can be legally killed. The ‘why’ should be up to the person on whose body the fetus takes maximum toll—the woman. Proscribing abortion where you find it distasteful is basically punishing people for their thoughts. Why stop here? A stray homicidal thought when your boss forces overtime or refuses a pay-raise would become punishable.

Making prenatal sex-determination illegal—like many other prohibitions—has just made it expensive. That’s one reason female-feticide happens more in rich households.

3. Is it moral to want a male child?

If I ever decide to spawn, I wouldn’t want a boy, or a girl for that matter. But it’s no longer cool to voice a preference a male child. It’s kosher to declare how much you want a daughter. This kind of political correctness sweeps biases under the carpet. There is nothing moral about preferring a daughter to a son.

Let me be a little cynical here. In today’s India, conceiving a boy is a good retirement plan. Under that axiom, is it wrong for people to want financial security? It sounds repugnant to kill a fetus because it’s female, but once we say that the fetus isn’t living to support abortion—rightly I might add—we must give the woman the right to abort her baby for any reason she deems fit.

4. Oh! The sex ratio

The skewed sex ratio is bad, but for whom? Fewer women means greater demand for each available woman. LET ME MAKE IT CLEAR THAT I THINK IT IS WRONG TO SELL ANYONE, MAN OR WOMAN. We must punish the sale of women. The concept of owning people needs to die.

UPDATE: This article in the economist says that skewed sex-ratio is leading to women immigrating from neighboring countries like Bangladesh and Myanmar. Also the sex ratio is improving—or rather—worsening slower than before. The worst offending states like Punjab and Haryana are improving quickly. It is unlikely, says Monica Das Gupta (pdf link) of the World Bank, that India will ever reach Chinese levels. 

But, if the rich community finds itself short of eligible women, rich men will start marrying middle-class women. And so on. That has been the tradition everywhere. Typically, women marry up in lifestyle and finance, and men marry up in looks. Whom we marry is a combination of family compatibility, wealth compatibility, attractiveness etc., and these are fungible—there are many rich unattractive men with pretty wives who used to be poor. As this happens, women in each economic tier will marry men in a higher economic tier. So, each individual woman has a better chance to marry up, or to be appointed to a female-only job. It’s just statistics. The losers in this situation are poor men. Men in the lowest economic tier will suffer the lack of a partner.

The show highlights this by caricaturing what should have been a serious interview with some older men who are unable to marry. But that’s not society’s problem. No man is owed a wife.

5. How the show annoyed me

So many to choose from—Aamir Khan saying, “Kitna seekhney ko milta hai hamare Adivasi bhaiyon se!” (Look how much we can learn from our Adivasi brothers!) or people cheering the homeless woman who said, “Hamein yeh paap nahi karna” (I don’t want to commit this crime) about abortion.

6. What’s the harm?

Most people would chide me with Oh come on. Surely, the proletariat of India needs simplified black-and-white information delivered from Aamir Khan’s lips and seasoned with drama. As long as people don’t abort female fetuses, really, what’s the harm? The harm is that this is top-down misinformation. No matter how you explain lying-for-good or embellishing the truth, ends don’t justify means. The right of the pregnant woman to not be harmed is paramount, and it shouldn’t be clubbed with the ‘immorality’ of female feticide.

7. Any positives?

  1. We must appoint a fast-track court for those cases where the mother was side-stepped by the family. Only the pregnant woman can decide whether a fetus is carried to term. That point was highlighted.
  2. The importance of the girl-child was well-explained.
  3. Despite his smug self-righteousness, Aamir seemed sincere.
  4. Who knows, the resultant awareness might help.

I know the second episode is already out—better late than never I guess.

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5 things feminists need to stop saying

/ bharatwrites / 25 Comments

We owe feminism for challenging the traditional kinder, küche, kirche role we had delineated for women. As more women went to work, the feminist movement helped make the workplace safer and work schedules flexible: changes that helped men too, says Warren Farrell in The Myth of Male Power. Working women commanded more respect from their husbands and children. Most women in the developed world know and exercise their rights. Efforts are being made to reduce the suffering of women in developing countries.

But feminism in the developed world is running out of dragons to slay. While Rush Limbaugh’s comment on Sandra Fluke was unfortunate and classless, the outrage it provoked and the attention it received suggest that there are few outright gender-discriminatory injustices in the Western world. Devoid of real enemies, feminist zeal and passion are becoming tools for social engineering. Truth has become subservient to the collective female emotion, which, like all forms of collectivism, is set by those who represent it. Even if most women identify as feminists, at least some women are victimized by feminism. Feminist arguments have been used to oppose prostitution and pornography even on occasions where the women were willing. Feminism has taken an ugly turn. Now it is sexist to suggest anything that might displease a woman. We are all supposed to shut up and nod along or get relegated to the doghouse. Whatever women say, say yes or you are a sexist. If you’re eloquent about it, you’re a misogynist. Fine. We surrender. But it’s time to retire some statements –

1. If women ran the world, it would be more peaceful

At the 2007 Emmy awards, Sally Field said, “If mothers ruled the world, there wouldn’t be any goddamned wars in the first place,” to tumultuous applause. Sally Field is just one person, but I’ve heard other women say this. Wendy Schiller, a Brown University professor, said on Real Time With Bill Maher that women are get-together-to-solve-problems kind of people, and hence appointing more women-leaders will make things better. (She has not read this or this. Here is the original research article.) The audience responded with a big female cheer. When Andrew Sullivan tried to argue, she silenced him with petty rhetoric. Shouldn’t any particular woman feel insulted when characterized solely as a group-member, no matter how superficially positive the characterization?

And let’s not forget that history is replete with violent female leaders. Queen Mary Tudor is called Bloody Mary because she burned over 300 Protestants at the stake for heresy. Queen Elizabeth I massacred Ireland. Indira Gandhi had operation Blue Star and imposed the national emergency during which she ruled by decree. Golda Meir had operation Wrath of God. Hillary Clinton’s vote for the Iraq war shows that she is pro-violence at least some of the time. Margaret Thatcher had the Falklands War. These records are among the bloodiest. And by the way, these women sent men to their deaths.

The lady’s not for turning … the other cheek (Wikipedia)

Good politicians need to be ruthless. They need to make tough decisions. These qualities were attributed to men. The political process simply selects for such personalities, male or female. So if only women ran the world, it would be the same. Women are capable of injustice as well. Remember Lynndie England at Abu Ghraib?

United States Army photo from Abu Ghraib priso...

Such a sweetheart (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As a bonus, here’s a bunch of women laughing about a man getting his penis chopped off and thrown into the garbage disposal. His crime: asking his wife for a divorce. One woman who notes the blatant sexism is quieted with more jokes. I am for all kinds of humor, and free speech above all; but can you imagine the outrage if the roles were reversed?

2. Government must ensure women earn as much as men

Sounds great right? Who except the purest, most-distilled sack of chauvinistic excrement would disagree with this? For every dollar a man earns, a woman earns 66 cents. Surely something has to be done to fix this injustice. It would solidify women’s presence at the workplace, and cement their rights, right?

Only if you’re unaware that over 95% of the people in the professions with chronic and acute health risks are men. Firefighting, pest-control, construction and other such jobs have over 95% men. Because these jobs are harder and carry higher risk of death and almost a certainty of injury, it’s hard to find people willing to do them. So we need to offer higher salaries. On the flip side, women represent over 95% of dental hygienists, secretaries, speech pathologists, preschool and kindergarten teachers etc. (2010 census report here.) Nobody denies that these jobs have challenges, but they are a lot safer and much less grueling. Men work more hours, commute farther, and do not get pregnant. As sexist as that last one sounds, an employee going on maternity leave is a cost, and employers consider it while negotiating salaries.

I’m sure some employers believe that women aren’t as good as men, and therefore pay women less. But governmental action isn’t going to change them. These prejudiced employers will stop hiring women if they are forced to pay them as much as men, as Milton Friedman explains. Without the government forcing hands, a sexist employer is forced to pay a cost of the higher wage when he arbitrarily chooses a man over a woman. His prejudice costs him. If for whatever reason, a woman is less preferable for a job, the best bargaining power she has is the offer to work for less. Feminism aims to reduce this power thus screwing the pooch for female employees.

Also, one of the best ways to get a raise is to ask for one. Fewer women than men have families dependent primarily on their income. Consequently, a man is more motivated to demand a raise or else because there is a direct correlation between his raise and the improvement in his family’s standard of living. Another instance of this differential earning pressure on men and women is the evidence that self-employed women make less than self-employed men do, probably because they choose other comforts in life that are incongruous with a large profit, according to a 2001 study by Rochester Institute of Technology.

3. Women are smarter because they don’t hump everything they can

This popular refrain seems anecdotally true. Most women could go outside and suggest sex, and guys would line up to oblige. Hence we assume that men are slaves to their primal nature and that women are cerebral and ethereal beings who cannot be distracted from their goals. The most sophisticated of men, on the other hand, turn into blithering idiots by a glimpse of cleavage.

That conclusion is premature. In our society, sex for sex’s sake has consequences. People who get a lot of action are often assumed to have some moral deficit or a self-esteem deficiency for which they overcompensate with promiscuity. So people weigh the risk of getting labeled against the benefit of a dalliance.

When guaranteed a good sexual experience, women are as promiscuous as men, says Terri Conley at the University of Michigan. Of course, this guarantee is often more easily available to men. Most men can gauge with one look whether a woman will please them in bed. A quick head-to-toe scan isn’t enough for women. Given the social price of sex, the high cost-to-benefit ratio for women makes them more discerning. There goes that female philosophical high-ground, which brings us to…

4. Women are more spiritually evolved than men

This is classic question-begging. First, few people can define spiritual evolution, and they are all meditating under Himalayan icicles not to be disturbed. If we can’t even agree on a definition, how can we go about laying men and women on a continuum of spirituality. But some feminists love spouting this party line. Men are impulsive, women are thoughtful. Men are stupid, women are smart. Isn’t this what we see on TV? From Everybody Loves Raymond to Scrubs and even How I Met Your Mother, the woman in the relationship is a genius who swoops in and solves the problem while the husband is busy screwing up. (You gotta love Everybody Loves Raymond. They showed nine seasons of a housewife who never kept a clean home, couldn’t cook to save her life, but yelled at her husband for not contributing.) But it makes sense why TV shows are like that. Women watch more TV than men in any time slot. Women also shop more than men do. No sponsor would want to mess with that. Women need to see this for what it is: a ruse to make them swipe that credit card. As Bill Maher asks, “If women are more evolved, why are they so impressed by shiny objects?”

I’m trying to imagine the mixed emotions of an evangelical feminist about this pic.

Side note – No present species or sex is more evolved than any other. Humans of today are no more evolved than the chimpanzees of today. Humans and chimps  simply have common ancestors. Read The Greatest Show On Earth by Richard Dawkins for more information. (Side side note – I don’t support Professor Dawkins’ condescending reply to Rebecca Watson regarding Elevatorgate. However, the ad hominem attacks on Dawkins for expressing an opinion were disturbing. Tracy Clark-Flory of Salon.com called him a dick: sexist lingo, which apparently women are allowed to use, you know, when the guy deserves it.)

5. You can’t say that because it’s offensive to women

My favorite argument. Anything that offends women is now off the table. When Larry Summers was President of Harvard, he asked if the poor representation of women in science could be due to inherent differences in aptitude between men and women. To be clear, this was one of his theories. He was booed off the academic stage followed by crucifixion in the press, which ended only with his resignation. Such sentiment is rife in colleges today. Suggest an idea a woman might find repugnant, and you’re a chauvinistic pig.

German designer Karl Lagerfeld was given the collective middle finger for calling singer Adele ‘a little too fat’. What he said was, “The thing at the moment is Adele. She is a little too fat, but she has a beautiful face and a divine voice.” I’m probably standing too far, because this looks like a compliment. (They make it sound like he camped outside her house with Atkins pamphlets.) Adele responded that she was happy with the way she looked and how she represented most women. She has since hired a trainer to help her get healthier, according to a source of the Daily Mail.

A few years ago, conservative talk-show host Dennis Prager was accused of endorsing marital rape. I immediately pictured a grinning Prager motivating a large congregation of rapist husbands lauding their tireless pursuits and egging them on while lecturing on combinations of physical force and emotional blackmail simmered to perfection.

Tomorrow: alibi practice and crime-scene cleanup.

His article (Part I and part II) was about how sometimes for the health of a marriage, a woman should consider having sex with her husband even if she’s not ‘in the mood’. Prager also argues that we rarely leave other important things in life (going to work, taking kids to school etc.) at the mercy of our moods. I don’t agree with everything he said in the article, but he never endorsed any form of force. The feminist argument assumes that women are animals who have sex when and only when their monkey-brains tell them to, and a woman having sex for any reason other than raw desire is being raped. If that’s true, all prostitutes are rape-victims. Shouldn’t it be anti-feminist not to distinguish a woman’s free will from her feral instinct? Yet, feminists were happy to take this position and over-simplify women. Prager simply suggested that women make a conscious decision to have sex in spite of their mood. He respected a woman’s volition more than his critics did. Men are constantly told to cuddle and hold their partner after sex, buy flowers, give back-rubs, foot-massages and the like, in spite of their moods or lack of them. But they comply for the health of the marriage. And they should. Being aware of one’s desire and going against it for a good reason is a sign of maturity. Women cannot expect equal treatment (neither can men) and demand qualified speech. That is injustice.

Finally, the adversarial interaction between feminists, masculists and those in between keeps everyone in check. (I ignore the squiggly Microsoft Word uses to nudge me to reconsider ‘masculists.‘) Stifling opinions for their apparent repugnance only drives prejudice and bias underneath. Say whatever you want, but when contrary evidence is presented, evaluate it, and change your opinion if necessary. Stop being loyal to a fault.

GOP race to the bottom

/ bharatwrites / 9 Comments

And then they were four

So what by Miles Davis serenades me while writing about the Republican primaries. It’s always fun to watch presidential candidates coddle their bases during primaries by extolling the magnitude of their orientation, only to reach the general election and water down everything they said merely months ago, their chests still smarting from self-righteous thumping.

Mitt Romney needed to cruise through the primaries without any extreme right wing proclamations to take on Obama in November. He probably didn’t realize that the Republican base would sooner endorse a welfare-using pot-smoking mother-of-six than the ex-Governor, whose capacity for emotion would make a sociopath sit up and take notes. And they haven’t even played the Mormon card yet. Well, at least we can conclude that magic underwear can barely withstand the triumvirate of one wrinkled heartless crypt-keeper, one Christy senator whose main claim to fame is the guarantee of giggles upon googling his name and one shameless adulterer who was cheating on his wife while lampooning Bill Clinton for the same. The NIH budget is richer by a few thousands that can now go to fund illegal abortions.

Some people need to be sat down and explained to that making abortion legal doesn’t make it mandatory. Only that confusion can explain the outrage on this issue. Also, wide availability of contraception doesn’t mean that the high school lunch lady will sprinkle crushed Plan B over your daughter’s apple pie.

I think the employer-insurer nexus must go, but while it exists, insurance plans must cover contraception and abortion. An employer whose religious beliefs do not allow these interventions might be skittish about shopping for such a plan, but consider the alternative. Unwanted babies are less cared for and more prone to crime. Steven Levitt suggests that legalized abortion is responsible for half the drop in crime in the 90s. What if a Jehovah’s witness organization claims that forcing it to cover blood transfusions is religious persecution? Christian scientists do not believe in any medical intervention, and that disease is merely God’s will. Where does it end?

Pharmacists who believe that contraception is against their religion shouldn’t be forced to sell them, and at least one judge agrees. People should not be forced to engage in any transaction. No questions asked. This isn’t a matter of religious freedom. It’s freedom. Don’t worry about the supply of contraceptives drying up. There are plenty of sane pharmacists. But I must ask these pharmacists how they reconcile their faith and their professions. The Bible does not weigh in on melanoma or the common cold. It’s not a big leap of faith that some scientific information led to their career choice.

We live in a country where churches have automatic tax-exempt status. (Other religious organizations must file for this status if their gross annual receipts exceed $5000.) Everyone is forced by threat of state-funded violence, to subsidize Christianity in a country whose bill of rights begins with the words Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…etc. Republican politicians love saying that the U.S. Constitution is founded upon Christian principles. If a 4,543 word document is based on ten sentences that would fit on an index card, wouldn’t the founders have mentioned that as a footnote? Maybe they were being paid by the word.

What is exceptionally galling, is that a barely legitimate argument about gay marriage, immigration and abortion has descended to discussion of previously undoubted issues like contraception and mentioning Satan among adults (link to 2008 video).

This election was supposed to be about the economy. But the economy, to the right-wingers’ chagrin, is doing better. Nobody is breaking out the champagne just yet, but we are far from the train-wreck predicted most gleefully by the right. Now that that angle is out of the window, the right has gone back to what it does best: kiss up to Christ and call Obama a pansy on the international stage. Whatever your politics, you won’t be taken seriously if you don’t admit that as far as national security is concerned, this president does better with a scalpel than the previous one did with a sword. He has ridden us of Osama and al-Awlaki with minimal cost.

Mitt Romney cannot come out of this unscathed, and if he gets wounded enough, he won’t pose a real threat to Obama in November. The primaries have shown that Christ one-upmanship can reach ridiculous levels. The Christian death-grip on the right has sapped the traces of political discourse left in this country.

Benevolent dictatorship

/ bharatwrites / 6 Comments
English: india against corruption

Anna Hazare (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The blogosphere and Facebook and Twitter are abuzz with support for Anna Hazare and his hunger strike against corruption. Thousands have signed up to show solidarity with this anti-establishment movement. So far, so good. After all, democracy allows us to voice unpopular opinions, be they against the government, its decisions, its policy or democracy itself. Democracy is the only system that tolerates criticism and even encourages it.

But what is Anna Hazare’s answer to the problems of the current establishment? More establishment. He and his supporters are asking for an independent body to oversee government actions and protect us from those who have a preferential access to government.

Before I go into why I believe Anna Hazare’s approach is flawed, let us tackle the fundamental question. What is corruption and why does it happen?

Now I’m sure that there are intellectuals out there who can define corruption better than I can imagine it, but let me rustle up a working explanation.

Corruption is government employees performing their duties and exercising their discretion for or against the law in exchange for compensation from the party directly benefiting from said duties or discretion. This ranges from a policeman pocketing Rs. 50 instead of a legal Rs. 500 fine to a stamp duty officer who won’t let your file move up until you put money on his table.

But why does this happen? Are all government employees inherently evil? Is there a special screening in these job interviews that ensures the exclusive entry of psychopaths and purges the system of all honest and responsible people? And what of these citizens, who encourage venality by rewarding it with bribes? Are they the cause or a symptom of this horrible situation?

The answer, of course, is a lot simpler, and depending on your perspective, either heartening or disheartening. People, as Steven Levitt often says, respond to incentives. A tiny, insignificant fraction of us actually do good or evil for its own sake. We do things that benefit us. Sometimes that benefit is obvious.

The problem with government officials who can be bribed is that they have powers to grant you permissions or hand you prohibitions regarding property that’s not their own. A policeman who ignores your speeding (for a small bribe) doesn’t personally stand to lose from its adverse consequences. So he barters his power to excuse your transgression against the importance you place on reaching where you want to on time (which can be correlated well with the amount of bribe you’re willing to offer). The same goes for the stamp duty officer, or the MTNL guy we had to bribe to get our dead telephone line working after an outage.

Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited

MTNL — We remind you of a time before phones (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The more a person controls what you do over property he doesn’t own, the more the incentive for him to look the other way when you grease his palm. This principle can be applied for almost all but the very necessary functions of government. The solution to corruption is to check the growth of government, which first taxes you to establish organizations which control your actions, and then imposes a secret tax in the form of a bribe to remove those controls.

Let’s now take a look at Anna Hazare’s panacea. He believes that if we appoint a group of the right people with power to look over the government’s shoulder, we will achieve a corruption-free India. He also wants to dole out brutal punishments to strike fear in the hearts of the corruptible. Despite Arvind Kejriwal’s false equivalence of the Lokpal with the income tax department that oversees the finances of the nation’s top officials without — he believes — being influenced by them, I’m quite convinced that given enough time, the Lokpal can be corrupt too.

And then businesses will have more palms to grease than they do now. As Milton Friedman once reproached — and I paraphrase —  “What is business? Any costs that a business pays is borne by its stockholders, employees or its customers.” Have no doubt — we the customers of India Shining will pay for this extra red tape, probably more than any bribe.

Let’s take a look at our kind martyr, the genial old man supposedly on a Gandhian route to clear our national conscience. The village of Ralegaon Siddhi is Anna Hazare’s first claim to fame. It is not common knowledge that Anna Hazare endorsed the public flogging of alcoholics to shape them up, and he personally flogged some of them with his belt. When questioned about this, he nonchalantly replied that rural India was rough, and such measures were needed. Distillers who sold alcohol in the village were told to shut shop or else. This man fighting for freedom made his bones by curbing the free enterprise of people who did no bodily harm by threatening them with just that.

I’m glad that this man was instrumental in getting us the Right to Information Act, but it is worthwhile to note that many of his past collaborators don’t support him now.

While I’ve stated my case for the lack of justification for Anna Hazare’s ends in this situation, we must also examine his means. Make no mistake, fasting unto death is extremely violent. It is nothing but blackmail and coercion. This is where the comparison with Gandhi falls apart. Gandhi’s fasting was violent and coercive too, but it was violence against an imperialistic establishment, one that treated Indians as almost sub-human, subjected us to taxation without representation, and curbed our basic human rights. Anna Hazare is practicing coercion against a democratically elected government (however corrupt), which democracy has done almost nothing to curb his freedom. I say almost because I vigorously oppose his arrest, but when we put it in perspective, the matter was resolved quickly, and it gave him more publicity and sympathy.

Finally, we will truly be free, safe and democratic when we rid ourselves of the notion that the ‘right people’ in power will make things rosy. The benevolent dictator is, all said and done, a dictator, and that’s not what we signed up for.

Weird week update

/ bharatwrites / 1 Comment

I must disclose first and foremost, that this June is a month of relaxation for me. My sister’s visit from India means we’ll do most of the touristy things along with meeting family and seeing some understated NYC places that are familiar only to people who’ve lived here, breathed the air, experienced the essence of the city, or attempted a perfunctory glance of nymag.com.

Meeting family in DC

No visit with family is complete without beer, political arguments turned into shouting matches and ridiculously early bedtimes. My uncle and aunt took us bro and sis to the national arboretum, of which we saw a small part, namely the bonsai exhibits (there were trees as old as 500 years grown to an impressive height of two feet! Wait what? You know, bonsai is the Japanese art (or is it science?) of growing small trees and re-potting them so they live to impressive ages).

With some family members, you find yourself hunting for topics to talk about simply because while there is no dearth of love between people, conversational gelling isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. I am usually particularly handicapped in this department. With my uncle, however, there’s no such handicap. Usually our peaceful conversations that begin about the weather escalate to shouting matches that are tie-broken by a scream of “Zip it!” from my aunt. Thank god for her, because we are usually quite out of new material by then and are spouting opposing rhetoric at each other hoping to hose our adversary down with condescension and categorical theses instead of arguments.

Weinergate

Courtesy: Wikipedia

Just in case we might have run out of topics to talk about, our friendly New York Congressman Rep. Anthoy Weiner (D) showed us the true zenith of surname oriented jokes. In simple words, he tweeted to the public (accidentally of course) a picture of his crotch area (clothed) as opposed to sending it as a direct message to a 21 year old girl. No crime, so far. As usual with politician sex scandals, people start to gather and question the regularity with which these guys put their feet in their mouths (not literally, that would need some serious Yoga). Some of course, go on to make sweeping generalization about men.

My opinion on this is as amateurish as it is unsolicited. Good politicians are go getters, and it takes a certain pushiness to climb up to the top of any ladder. The characteristics that propel people to such heights also seem to correlate with predilections of deviance. As such, in a highly competitive society, the people that get ahead are those who think outside the box, interpret the rules differently, and any more cliches I could use that those winners wouldn’t ever. Of course, their real smartness lies in keeping their indiscretions secret, and never ever using a cent of public funds for any such activities. In the latest news, while various Democratic politicians are taking turns to throw Weiner under the bus, a stark difference between the Clinton era and today is revealed. A difference that is heartening, I might add. While Clinton was nearly put out of commission for getting oral appeasement from an intern, Weiner might just get away with a leave of absence for treatment. My whole sense of pride that comes from being a New Yorker (almost four years now!), stands to be blasted to smithereens at the edge of a cliff if the people of my current city start calling for Weiner to resign. What we need to respect, and this sounds like such a given that I’m exhausted just typing it, is that it is his personal life, and that he didn’t use government funds to do this, nor did he let his affair affect any political decisions he made. He did not use his position to obstruct any sort of investigation into his private life (something Clinton has been accused of doing).

(Update: Anthony Weiner has since resigned, the pressure from fellow Democrats being too much. I guess times haven’t changed that much since Clinton, except that people might have to resign for smaller sexual indiscretions than earlier!)

Tracing Morgan?

Courtesy: entertainmentrundown.com

Tracy Morgan, who plays Tracy Jordan in the super-hit NBC laugh-riot 30 Rock, recently made some seriously anti-gay remarks during a stand up act (yes I understand how stupid the use of serious and comedy in one sentence sounds, I am not back-spacing, forget about it). He said that the president should stop being soft on bullied gay kids, and that he would stab his own son should he be gay. I am paraphrasing of course, but you can see how this set of statements couldn’t be mangled no matter how poor the translation.

People like Chris Rock have made it clear that the freedom of speech is especially relevant to unpopular speech, and this should be protected as well. Other comedians like Wanda Sykes have openly chided Morgan for these statements. I don’t think this should be turned into a referendum on free speech simply because Morgan got carried away. It happens. Comedians all over are pushing the envelope of edginess in order to shock people into laughter, and the only test they’re supposed to satisfy is, “It better be funny.” This is why George Carlin and Chris Rock get away with some of their routines, while Joel Stein and Michael Richards get universally chastised. Some of these people are funny, and others aren’t. Comedy is a rough business, and sometimes they don’t laugh. You keep going, pushing the PC barrier harder and harder, till you realize that there’s nothing funny about your train-wreck of a bit, and that you’re gonna pay for this. While this Tracy business will blow over, it just makes me respect even more the comedians who are edgy and steadily funny. Tina Fey, the head honcho of 30 Rock has helped dispose of this issue with her recent comment.

That’s it for the week update. Maybe I should make this a regular thing?

The aftermath

/ bharatwrites / 4 Comments

The ISI has leaked to the media the name of a CIA agent stationed in Pakistan as some sort of childish retaliation to American forces violating the sovereignty of their country. Apparently, the fact that the world’s most wanted terrorist was hiding in their country in a large villa opposite a military base isn’t bothersome enough for them. They are way more worried about how US helicopters entered their country undetected, and executed a surgical mission to kill a man who was responsible for the death of many Americans directly and indirectly responsible for bankrupting the country by leading them into two wars.

What I don’t get in this whole scenario is why America keeps funding Pakistan so much when it is seems that the Pakistani army and intelligence are definitely incompetent, and/or quite likely that there are some bad apples in the ISI.

Who cares? Let them cry foul and throw a tantrum. When they want to buy weapons to arm themselves against India, they’ll know whom to kiss up to. Cui bono is an important question to be asked in political debates. It basically means to whose benefit? It is in Pakistan’s financial interest and political expediency to foster terrorism within their borders. Keeping militants happy in their country ensures the death of a few Indians every year and guarantees the flow of cash from Uncle Sam to stem terrorism as it were.

The sovereignty of Pakistan is a tricky question. In a civilized world, it shouldn’t be legal for agents from one country to enter another and commit murder. Surely there’s something wrong with that. It would have been a different thing if CIA agents in disguise had entered the compound and killed bin Laden in some guerrilla way and quietly exited the country without a trace. Kinda like how Mossad runs things. The Obama administration needed a nice victory. No one would say that they killed bin Laden to increase polling numbers but publicizing this as an American effort and painting red, white and blue all over the news does reek of opportunism.

On the other hand, had this been a special OPs kind of operation, the Pakistani intelligence or army would’ve taken credit for this, further obfuscating their role in the war against terrorism. It must have been a dicey situation.

Now we have another question to answer. Did the enhanced interrogation techniques authorized by the Bush administration directly or indirectly lead to this operation? If it did, is it still fair for a democratic civilized nation to torture people for information, whether it is reliable or not?

There is some evidence to say that important information obtained about bin Laden’s courier was a product of torture, but the people who were waterboarded the most like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, produced very little usable information at best. They also misled the investigation more. This leads credence to what was said by Nice Guy Eddie in Reservoir Dogs, “If you f**king beat this prick long enough, he’ll tell you he started the goddamn Chicago fire, now that don’t necessarily make it f**king so!”

It is expedient, and not just politically, to do whatever measures seem necessary to protect innocent people. I just end up thinking that in that zeal, we might turn into the very people we are fighting against. We must draw a line. There are some things that civilized people just won’t do. Something as barbaric as torture should be one of them.

I think it is best summed up by Tommy Vietor, the spokesman for the National Security Council, “The bottom line is this: If we had some kind of smoking-gun intelligence from waterboarding in 2003, we would have taken out Osama bin Laden in 2003.”

bin Laden ke: my thoughts

/ bharatwrites / 5 Comments

My first reaction to the news was surprisingly nothing. I mean, I wasn’t really concentrating. I was on the phone and simply checking my google news feed during a lull in the conversation, but I must say that it took me to the moment I was checking my mail in 2001.

I was still using a dial-up internet connection and was logging into my rediffmail account, for which I had to go through rediff.com. While I was entering my username and password, I inadvertently noticed a piece of news saying something to the effect of “Plane crashes into World Trade Center building”. I barely took notice of it, and the page refreshed quickly anyway to my email inbox, which preoccupied me completely. I basically did nothing productive, just replied to a bunch of emails and logged out. I was brought back to rediff.com and by now the news had changed to “Second Plane crashes into World Trade center” or something like that. Now, my interest was piqued.

As I read about what would probably be the largest single act of terrorism I will ever see, I felt a kind of fear I didn’t understand. Sure, people died needlessly on the streets of Bombay and Delhi etc, but America was untouchable…or so I had thought.

Living in a developing country makes us susceptible to a bunch of misunderstandings about the developed world. To us, places like America seemed like a large playboy mansion where everyone was comfortable and getting a lot of nookie. Of course, I was 16 in 2001, so you can excuse my sweeping generalizations. But most of all, I was under the delusion that people in the Western world were a lot safer than us. This event scared me a lot because I just realized how far from the truth I was.

While I was but 16, I couldn’t understand what force could be so strong as to motivate 19 young educated people to giving up their lives and their futures while taking so many people with them. It was later revealed by the media that the planes were to hit the buildings at exactly the right height and angle, and with the right amount of speed in order to inflict the damage that they ultimately did. So this wasn’t some spur of the moment hot-headed act. It was planned, cold-blooded mass murder.

And now the perpetrator of that was dead. What bothered me so much was that all we heard was that he died. Sure, there were some details as to the incident, but was there an attempt to capture him alive? They said he resisted, but he didn’t seem to have a weapon. Just how do you resist capture by armed forces without weapons?

The reason I did not feel the closure I wanted to feel was that I wanted him captured. I wanted him handcuffed, held against his will, pleading for the right to live and be free. I wanted him tried in a court, so that we can show the numerous other misled folk what happens to people who hurt us. I wanted it to be clear that while we will avenge our wrongs, we are not barbarians. We will not deign to deal with scum like him the way he deals with our people. And most of all, I wanted his followers to see what a common man he was, who lived secretly and died a joke, and not the martyr they probably think he is now.

While the Republicans are scrambling for photos of his body, I do believe that releasing them to the public would be a bad idea. Photos of bin Laden with a bullet hole in his eye are inflammatory. Representative Duncan Hunter of California says that terrorists who want to hurt innocent people will not be dissuaded by the lack of these photos. Perhaps. But photos like these are great recruiting material for the Muslim fundamentalists. These people are easy to rile up. Mere Danish cartoons generated unbelievable vitriol, and actual photos of their hero’s corpse will shore up Al Qaeda’s enlistment numbers.

While I’m pissed off with President Obama for a bunch of things, I do believe he made the right call here. We all just need to move on.

Update: Chembelle argues that bin Laden could’ve had bombs strapped to his chest which he could’ve detonated at any time. Maybe trying to capture him alive would’ve been too big a risk to take.

Either way, hope this issue is settled now, and we can focus on real stuff.

Birthers aborted?

/ bharatwrites / 6 Comments

The White House finally made public the long form birth certificate of Barack Obama. This whole non-issue has been stirred by a lot of people on the Republican side suggesting that the president wasn’t born in Hawaii but in Kenya. There was never any truth to these allegations, and there was an implied tone of racism there. I can’t imagine a white president being asked to prove his citizenship by birth.

Article II, Section I, Clause V of the US Constitution says, “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.” So, if Barack Obama had indeed been born outside the US, he would be automatically disqualified for the office he currently holds. Hence the whole controversy. It has been discussed that the original reason this clause was put in the constitution was to prevent a member of the British royal family from becoming president and then turning the country over to the very same imperialists it was fought and obtained from. Makes sense right? Except when it tends to discriminate against naturalized citizens who might otherwise be extremely qualified for the post. That of course, is a topic that deserves its own post.

Courtesy: Jerry Breen (newbreen.com)

IMHO, it’s quite sad that some of the people who’ve been clamoring for more liberty and less taxation have chosen to align themselves with the nuts who believe that the president wasn’t born in the US. If anything, it takes away from any morality that existed in their political stand. Of all the people who’ve taken on this ridiculous project of questioning the president’s birthplace, Donald Trump has been the most disappointing but not very surprising. He actually had fueled a lot of this controversy by pandering to the ‘birthers’. He even apparently released his own birth certificate in a tongue-in-cheek way. Now that the president has released the long form of his birth certificate, Trump has the gall to take credit for helping settle the issue. My opinion of Trump’s arrogance is better expressed by Mr. Jim Mitchell. In any case, people who attack the president on policy and question his methods of resolving the debt and jobs crisis were being drowned out by this incessant yapping from a faction of the right. I must admit that I too was wondering why Obama doesn’t release the long form of his birth certificate for all this time. I thought of some good reasons:

  • Apparently, the state of Hawaii doesn’t release long forms often
  • Obama didn’t want to dignify this non-issue by reacting to it
  • Obama wanted the birthers (and the Republican candidates who align themselves with the birthers) to collect enough rope so he could hang them at the right time
All of the above could be reasons for his hitherto silence. If it is the third reason (which would be serious realpolitik by the way!), perhaps Obama would have been helped by waiting a little longer. Trump seemed like he was gonna take this issue further, and cutting him to size would have been better if done closer to the beginning of the 2012 campaign.
Either way, hope this issue is settled now, and we can focus on real stuff.