Passionate Intensity

Abortion, Skeptical Philosophy

By now we have all seen a lot of heat in the abortion debates. Sadly, we have not seen much light.

 

This is what happens when the extremists take over the debate.  This is increasingly common in modern society. The extremists take over and yell at each other. The louder the voice, the more powerful the argument. At least that is the common view. In so many debates, together the fanatics drown out all the humble voices. Perhaps nowhere has that been demonstrated more clearly than in the current abortion debates. Both sides scream at each other and neither side sees the human in the other.

The great Irish poet, William Butler Yeats, got it right when he said, at times of crisis like we have now with abortion debate,  “The best lack all conviction; the worst are filled with passionate intensity.” Inevitably, that leads to disaster.

I begin with the recognition that both the pro-life position and the pro-choice position have some truth on their side.  The people who argue for pro-life and reject all counter arguments do so on the basis of the principle that human life is sacred. Basically, that is true. I accept that principle. But does that really solve the problem? Does it end debate right there? I think it does not.

After all what is human life? Where does human life begin? Are there two lives when a woman is carrying a foetus?  Or is there only one life—i.e. the woman who is pregnant? If so then it is only her life that is relevant to this discussion.

When are there two lives?  It is clear that once the child is born and it’s umbilical cord is severed from the mother then there are two lives. Earlier than that it is not so clear.

But perhaps there are two lives earlier than birth. For example, it has been the implicit rationale of the opinions of many that at some point—before birth—the foetus becomes an independent life. Some have said this point in time occurs when the foetus is viable. In other words, once the foetus is capable of living independently of the mother then from that moment it is should be treated as a human and it’s life is sacred and to abort it after that time is murder.

There is room however for debate about when this occurs.  Is the foetus a human life from the moment of conception, as some believe, or the moment of viability as others believe or the moment of a live birth?  My point is that until then there is uncertainty and we should recognize the uncertainty and we should be wary of absolute opinions. Such opinions are dangerous and can cause grievous harm.

We should be wary of the evils of certainty.

Bertrand Russel also got it right when he said,  “the trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure, while the intelligent are full of doubt“.  That is indeed the problem. The solution is to be aware of that trouble and act accordingly.

Kulture Wars go to Court

Culture Wars, Extremism, Law

 

America is reaping what it has sowed.  People are up in arms about the current Supreme Court overruling the landmark precedent case of Roe V. Wade.  So am I. But, the Supreme Court can do that. Since the previous decision was a Supreme Court decision only the Supreme Court can overrule it. But it can do that and has often overruled previous cases  in the past. This is what the legal doctrine of Stare decisis is all about. That doctrine obligates lower courts to follow historical cases when making a ruling on a similar case. Stare decisis ensures that cases with similar scenarios and facts are approached in the same way. Simply put, it binds courts to follow legal precedents set by previous decisions. The prior decision which is called a precedent is binding on lower courts only. However, it does not bind the Supreme Court.

 

The Supreme Court in Canada and the United States can always overturn a previous decision and when you think about it that is absolutely necessary.  Otherwise the court would be locked  forever when it made a decision. For example, those who now disagree with the decision the court made in the recent Dobbs case where Roe v. Wade was overturned  would have to accept the result forever. That would be highly unacceptable. The fact is sometimes courts make bad decisions that should be reversed.

 

That does not mean I agree with the recent decision of the US court. In fact, I think it shows what happens when for decades Supreme Court decisions and appointments to the court are determined by politics and ideology and not good reasoning. That has happened to an alarming extent in the US for decades. I hope Canada does not follow suit. And let me be clear, both parties have been guilty of this  egregious offence.  The parties have been trying to turn the court into what John Hanna of the Associated Press called “culture warriors.” That is exactly what these people have been doing.

 

The most recent example was the farcical confirmation hearings for Joe Biden’s nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson. Ms. Jackson had 3 important characteristics that drove the Republicans crazy:  She was black, a woman, and smart. As a result the conservative Senators dipped into their arsenal of stupid. Senator Cruz and other Republicans came out and insinuated that she was soft on crime and suborning pedophilia. The insinuations were nasty, brutish, and stupid but that did not build caution in her attackers. It was obvious that her Senate foes cared nothing about the truth or her obvious qualifications but cared only about showing off to the Republican base how they would defend “traditional values” like attack dogs.  As Amy Davidson Sorkin said in The New Yorker, “At one point, Republican Senator Ted Cruz suggested that supporting Jackson was comparable to calling for the police to be abolished.” Republican Senator Tom Cotton  said “Judge Jackson has also shown a real interest in helping terrorists.” Cruz was joined by Josh Hawley  in suggesting that she was part of a liberal conspiracy ring supporting a child-trafficking ring.  Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said the 3 G.O.P. Senators who vote for her were “pro-pedophile.” Senator Marsha asked Jackson to define “woman.” When she did not provide a definition, Cruz asked her how she could expect to  rule on cases involving gender if she did not know what a woman was. Jackson instead said that the woman she admired most in the world, her mother,  who was at the hearing, is a woman. Clearly, she did not need Cruz to help her understand what a woman was.

 When criticisms become so untethered  from reality, it is obvious that the purpose of the charges has nothing to do with an assessment of the candidates and everything to do with scoring points in the Kulture Wars.

 

This has been going on in the US for decades. As a result, America has the Supreme Court it deserves deserves. Our Canadian system is far from perfect, but at least we haven’t gone there.

 

Reclaiming the Moral Ground in the Kulture Wars

Social Issues

 

Mallory McMorrow a Michigan politician found herself deep in the culture wars after she defended the LGBTQ community. A Republican colleague accused her of wanting to groom and sexualize children. She issued a spirited defense. She said that hate would only win if people like her stood by and let it happen. She provided a blueprint for Democrats to navigate the thorny issues of sexuality in schools, race, gender identity, that Republicans like Ron DeSantis had been using to gain support and money from their supporters.

 

Lana Theis, a Republican state Senator said this, to her supporters in a fund raising message :

 

“Progressive social media trolls like Senator Mallory McMorrow (D-Snowflake)…are outraged they can’t teach can’t groom and sexualize kindergartners or that 8-year-olds are responsible for slavery.”

 

McMorrow was justifiably angry, not only about her own treatment but all members of the LGBTQ community who are subjected to such vile hatred from the American right every day. McMorrow is upset at the Republicans who are weaponizing Christianity to target already marginalized people. She says of herself that she is a straight white Christian mother. But she was speaking for the marginalized LGBTQ community against the hateful attack from other white straight Christians. She wanted to reclaim her own identity and refused to let it be stolen by hateful others from her own group. She did this to break through the binary camps to express her own individuality that she would not allow to appropriated by hateful white Christians.

 

McMorrow was interviewed on Amanpour & Co. and said she wanted to “reclaim the moral ground” that others had tried to seize from her. That is how she believes liberals can win the Kulture wars. As McMorrow said, “We should not be attacking people just because they happen to be different. We can debate them; we can disagree with them; but we ought not to attack them with weapons of religion.

 

McMorrow also said,

“Christopher Rufo is one of those who has created moral panic culture wars of manufactured outrage. It started with critical race theory  and he said as much here in Michigan . He admitted there is so much power in attacking the LGBTQ community and the moral panic surrounding around sexuality. So it is the black community, the LGBTQ community, really any community that is targeted by this strategy.”

 

Targeting these people, she said, will not bring down inflation, or fix our infrastructure. The Republicans are playing on fear. She said, “Also it is not sexy to talk about policy when you can stoke fear and anger.”

 

McMorrow emphasizes that this is not a Republican vs Democrat issue. She said she was elected in what was once Mitt Romney’s home riding because people did not want to hate the other.  Republicans who don’t want to hate Democrats voted for her!

 

Mitch McConnell said there were no policy issues in the mid-term elections. Just like there were none in the 2020 presidential election on the part of the Republicans. Their only platform was Trump! That is why they have manufactured Kulture War issues instead.

McMorrow acknowledged that people do not want to have sex acts described to very young children. But that is not the point. Even very young children see everyday that there are a lot of different people in the world that they are already meeting. Some families are different. Some have a mom and dad. Others have 2 moms or 2 dads or single parents or grandparent led families or a transparent. This is a fact. These people are there. You can’t wish them away. There is nothing wrong with openly discussing this, even at a very young age.

She says once we can meet like people we won’t have this fear mongering and the same language that we saw during de-segregation. Some people did not want their kids seeing black kids in school!

 

McMorrow says she has learned things from people like Father Ted Hespeller from Notre Dame who stood for some of the same values she stands for. He fought for many disadvantaged or marginalized people for much of his career. Martin Luther King was scorned by most white Americans at the time, though now that is often forgotten. Father Hespeller as a white man and head of a large institution took a big risk by walking with King. He was able to see his own privilege. He saw his neighbours being attacked, targeted and beaten and he wanted to reach out to them. That is the kind of faith McMorrow wanted.  Change is hard McMorrow says. We can recognize that but recognize our own place and reach out to help the marginalized and those who are being targeted. “How can we remind people that we all want the same thing at the end of the day? Those are the community family values that we all hope for our own kids.”

McMorrow thinks that this is how the Democrats might win the Kulture Wars. Simple, plain, real talk about families, neighbours, and friends. And how we can work together.  But maybe such hopes are pretty far-fetched. What do you think?

War is a very effective tool for firing up political support. That is just as true of Kulture Wars.

 

The Staircase

Television Shows

 

 

The Staircase is a fascinating  HBO television series is based on a “True Crime” or “True Accident.”  Added to that, there was a documentary made about the case as it unfolded and this series presents that documentary as part of the story. I should mention there is also an earlier Netflix series based on the same story which I have not seen yet.

 

It arose as the result of a woman dying at the bottom of a staircase in the home she shared with her second husband a novelist. Did he kill her or did she fall accidentally? That is the question.  The event happened in Durham North Carolina in 2001.

 

According to Doreen St. Felix of the television  critic of the New Yorker magazine,

 

“Antonio Campos, who adapted the original documentary as a scripted series for HBO, treats the staircase as a metaphor. His version, a baroque drama that reimagines not only the tragedy of the Peterson family but also the filming of de Lestrade’s documentary, depicts the transfigurative process by which facts are stacked and elevated to narrative. The resulting staircase is Escherian.”

 

By that I think she means to refer to a staircase which is based on the illusion of  a staircase where not matter where one starts or which direction one walks one ends up at the place one started. How can that be?  Look at the illusion:

 

 

I found parts of the series maddening. Particularly the extreme use of flashbacks.  I had a very difficult time following them. Often, I did not understand whether the scene was before or after the central murder. Sort of like such an Escherian  staircase. I was constantly disoriented. But perhaps that was the plan. Like the illusion. It just can’t be. Can it?

Sometimes a flashback or flash forward came early in an episode and seemed to give away the mystery.  It was maddening until I realized there was more to be revealed. Truth is always murky, even when it seems clear!  Sometimes that is exactly when it is most murky.

This film tackles the very difficult subject of whether or not a wife was murdered by her husband or accidentally fell down the staircase in her home.  And where does justice fit into this exploration for truth. It really is a very interesting mystery.

As a French journalist Sophie, said in the series,

“Justice is no more than a construct. No more than a game.  A game that shapes the outcome a man’s life.”

This film exemplifies the truth of a statement made by Michael Peterson, the protagonist—“a lie cannot set you free.” That is a profound truth. And it is a hard truth as this television series shows.  One of the ironies of that  statement is that is was made by an admitted liar. Yet peculiarly, the liar seems entirely  unwilling to lie to get out of jail. How is that possible? Can such a person nonetheless be a telling the truth?

 

 

The Nightwatchman

Books, Indigenous People After Contact

 

 

The Night watchman by Louise Erdrich

This Pulitzer Prize winning book tells the story of Pixie Paranteau, a young indigenous woman living on an Indian reservation in North Dakota who insisted that everyone call her Patrice, but very one called her Pixie.  Even her friend Valentine Blue, who was “pretty as a sunset,” would not call her what she wanted. As so often in life, people don’t get to choose much about their own lives. That is particularly true about Indians, as indigenous people are still called in the US. To make such choices they must be very determined. That applies to young people and old people alike.

 

Thomas Wazhashk was a nightwatchman at the jewel bearing plant near the Turtle Mountain Indian reservation in North Dakota. He was also a Chippewa council member who was given the task of trying to understand the “Emancipation Act” that was being considered by the United States Congress in 1953. As happens so often in politics, the name of that legislation is badly misleading. It is not about granting them freedom, it is about reneging on treaty obligations and removing the rights of the Indians to their land and their identity. Again, freedom is hard to come by. Others are deciding what is good for them. A Senator from Utah, a Mormon, discussing, the proposed bill was “filling the air with sanctimony.’

 

One day Thomas was beset by the appearance of two young men approaching his house and wearing white shirts and black pants—the unmistakeable uniform of missionaries who would want to tell Thomas what to do. One of the men asked Thomas if he ever wondered why he was there? Thomas said no, because I know. Don’t you he asked?  This deflected the young men. They wanted to tell him why he was there. Instead, Thomas asked them why the Mormon Senator wanted to do away with Indians.  He said he wanted to “terminate” them. The Mormon men wanted him to read their sacred book. The men were so ignorant they believed their religion was the only religion that originated in America.  But Thomas politely told them he had a religion and wasn’t interested in a new one. The two men walked away “full of mystifying purpose.”

 

Patrice learned religion from her mother Zhaanat. Whereas the Senator from Utah wanted to divide the people from each other and from their land and the creatures on it, she refused to see divisions. She instead saw connections. “Zhaanat’s thinking was based on treating everything around her with great care.” Why would people with such a religious world view need Mormons to tell them why they were there and what they should do? Later Louis told them “We are thankful for our place in the world, but we don’t worship nobody higher than…” as he gestured out the window at the dimming sky.”

Bu the heart of the novel is a love story or really 2 or 3 love stories involving 4 couples. This required contradictory feelings, but what was wrong with that? Millie, another friend, of Patrice understood that one explanation did not rule out anything else. The northern lights could be spirits and also electrons. After all, “mathematics was a rigorous form of madness.” So a man could love two women and a women could reject one man and lose another. Emancipation could be termination. These are just some of the issues explored in the novel by a very fine writer.

I recommend you read this book.

Ron DeSantis: King of the Kulture War

American Fascism, Culture Wars, Death of Truth, The Sleep of Reason

 

According to Rick Wilson a former Republican strategist who became an anti-Trumpster, “Ron DeSantis (the governor of Florida) is the undisputed king of the culture war in America now.” I find that comment sickeningly shocking. It is sickening because I fear Wilson is right. In addition to advancing his Don’t Say Gay legislation now he is accusing the Disney Corporation, an icon in America and Florida in particular, of being guilty of pedophile grooming. Again this is part of the right-wing hysteria about protecting children from perverts and liberals.   He is making it illegal in Florida to criticize the country for slavery just because it makes some white people uncomfortable, when they ought to be uncomfortable for their country. As if you can pretend that racism–even the most vicious form of racism, namely slavery, never happened. Now he has passed one of the most restrictive abortion bills in the country.

 

Those are  pretty big pillars in the Kulture war in America.  And according to Wilson that makes DeSantis the king of the war. No other conservative in America, even Donald Trump can claim a collection of scalps like that. He is doing this, says Wilson, because he and his advisors have determined that this is the way to the Republican nomination for President in 2024.  Can he even defeat the Trumpster-in-Chief?

 

As if that is not enough, Wilson says, “The only thing the Republican base now cares about is the Kulture War.” When Wilson was a Republican strategist they did have a coherent ideology whether you agreed with it or not: limited government, individual freedom, free markets, and the rule of law. They were never evenly applied but they were real policies. But as Wilson said,  “at least the principle of the Republican Party wasn’t lets try burn down Walt Disney because they are secretly trying to groom children for a pedophile ring under the Magic Kingdom.” At least in those days, unlike now,  their principle did not require the complete abandonment of reason and truth.

 According to Rick Wilson, “This craziness which has infected the party is very much what Ron DeSantis is running on.”  The base of course loves this.  No doubt many other Republicans will jump on this band wagon for the upcoming mid-term elections.

DeSantis who grew up in Florida, went to the Navy, went to Yale, and became a graduate of Harvard Law School  as a result of which he was viewed as a classic conservative and a serious politician. At least until recently that was true.  Now he has been downing crazy pills. Of course the current Republican Party has very little room for serious conservatives. The current Republican Party is deeply ensconced in FantasyLand.

 

Wilson believes DeSantis has moved so far into LaLaLand because of the influence of Christina Pushaw. She is deep Alt-right and she is very ambitious and influential in the Republican Party in Florida. To her trolling and the social war stuff is all that matters, says Wilson. According to Wilson, she helped transform DeSantis into an “alt-right, trolling, cultural warrior of the first degree.” He is now Trump’s main contender.  There are a number of Republicans who are trying to be “Trump without all the warts. Or Trump without all the moral and cognitive deficits.” A lot of those candidates vying for Trumps leadership position have said they would deliver “Trump without all the crazy stuff, but it turns out many of them want the crazy stuff.”

According to Wilson,

 

“Because of Pushaw in the most distilled and perfect form, the conspiracy theory QAnon aspect of the Republican Party today requires that they be constantly poked and stimulated with terrifying imaginary demons. Whether it’s critical race theory or pedophile groomers or big tech or anything of the things they imagine are going to destroy their lives, he has become incredibly adept at framing these things so that only he can deal with. That is the same thing we heard in 2015 and 2016 from Trump. ‘Only I can fix it…Only I will be the avatar of your rage and anger.”

 

These Kultural War appeals are powerful to the working class of Florida, says Wilson. I think this is what politics is now all about in the US. The Kulture wars are supreme. Nothing else matters (except inflation).

 

The Other War in Ukraine

Politics & Religion, Tyranny and Fascism, War in Ukraine (2022)

 

In north eastern Italy an Orthodox Ukrainian Church leader in Budinay (SP) is leading a revolt by his flock of Ukrainian and Russian immigrants against its mother church in Moscow to join the Istanbul based Orthodox church instead whose leader has criticized the war. The leader of the Russian based church has taken a very different approach. There are roughly 100 million Russian Orthodox, the largest church within Orthodox Christianity. Their leader is “Patriarch Kirill who has framed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in holy terms.” Kirill has been publicly preaching against the decadence of the western world including its excess consumption, “gay pride parades.”  He said, in talking of the Ukraine war “we are talking about human salvation. Andrey Sonitsyn from Russia says “Krill is supporting the war in Ukraine.”

 

Father Cyril Hovorun said “the church is the main supplier of Putin’s ideology.”  He was ordained by Krill. He says the weapons for the war come from the Kremlin but the ideas come from the church. He believes that for Putin this was is  “a sacred operation…a mission from God to purge the world of the western ideas and western values.” He saw this ideology emerging when he worked in Russia. He protested against that but lost that battle.  During the Communist era, the church was required to push Soviet ideals and it is widely believed in Russia that Kirill was in fact a member of the KGB.

 

Hovorun believes that Krill was not enthusiastic about being part of the Soviet government. He calls it a “marriage of convenience not love.”  They have to tolerate each other because each uses the skills and resources of the other. Rather than fighting each other, they co-operate with each other, “each for their own end.”

 

The resources of each of those two major powers in Russia are vast. Sergei Chapnin  also worked for Kirill. According to him, Kirill is “by rough estimations a billionaire and is in fact one of the oligarchs.” He sees him as just like the other oligarchs with financial interests.  He also sees the church as “a state propaganda machine spreading Putin’s message as the defender of conservative values against a morally corrupt west. Chapnin even sees his expansionist ambitions as even exceeding those of Putin.”  He thinks Krill’s main goal is power and influence.

So power and influence is being purchased by a church leader joining forces in an unholy matrimony—sounds like Christian fascism to me as Timothy Snyder called it in his book The Road to Unfreedom.

All of this proves once again, that when politics and religion mate they can breed monsters.

The Friendliest of All Wars

Meanderer

 

I am happy to report that the most ridiculous war of all time is finally over, after about 50 years of wrangling. And to think they were battling over an absolutely useless uninhabited island without minerals or anything of value.

 

The war—well diplomatic dispute is really a better world—over an island half way between Canada’s Ellesmere Island and Denmark’s Greenland was waged over Hans Island. The name says it all. Who would fight for control over Hans Island?  Canada and Denmark that’s who.

 

The dispute engaged 26 previous Canadian foreign ministers who had nothing better to do. And they fought at our expense. Canadian and Danish taxpayers paid for the diplomats to tussle.

 

Now Canada and Denmark took great pride that they settled the border dispute without war. And they bragged that this is what Russia should do too.  All of that makes some sense—at least until you look at the facts. The fact is that Hans Island has no value whatsoever. That is why it is named after me. No one wants it or cares about it. Except the Inuit.

 

In fact both Canada and Denmark are illegitimate colonial powers who have no rightful claim to it. The only people who actually ever used it were Inuit hunters who used Hans Island as a staging platform for hunting. No one lives there. No one else actually uses it.

 

Over the decades, Denmark and Canada left each other whiskey bottles as a joke after they visited it. Some called it the “friendliest of all wars.”  It could just as well have been called the stupidest of all wars.

 

Thank goodness it’s over. It should be named Tarupaluk, because that is what the Inuit call. They should have it. Neither Canada nor Denmark deserves. It. I renounce my right to have it called Hans Island. It shows only how two colonial powers can  settle an absolutely trivial dispute after 50 years of negotiations and threats of legal action. That is an example for the world? Give me a break.