I’d originally intended to finish my much delayed overview of some of the books I’ve read this year, or perhaps comment on the US presidential race (particularly the incredible blathering of the Republican candidate), but instead I’ve decided on a very interesting piece of recent news in the field of astronomy. Last week it was announced that a planet had been found orbiting Proxima Centauri, which is the closest star other than the Sun (hence its name). Not only is this the closest exoplanet that has ever been discovered or will be discovered (unless we find a closer free floating planet or one orbiting a currently undiscovered nearby brown dwarf), it is at the right distance from Proxima Centauri to have a reasonable chance of having liquid water on its surface and thus being habitable to life as we know it (though as I will get into below, a number of factors could substantially increase or decrease its habitability). All things considered, this looks like the most important exoplanet discovery yet.
Proxima Centauri is just over 4.2 lightyears from our solar system. It is also sometimes called Alpha Centauri C, as it probably (though not certainly) is gravitationally bound to the binary star Alpha Centauri, orbiting the other two stars (known as Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B) at a distance. The Alpha Centauri binary is about a tenth of a light year further away and is one of the brightest stars in Earth’s sky. Proxima Centauri, on the other hand, is not visible to the unaided eye. This might seem surprising considering the proximity it is named for, but not quite as much so if we keep in mind that it is a red dwarf. Such stars are actually by far the most common in the galaxy (and presumably the rest of the universe), but they are much smaller and cooler, and thus much dimmer than even the Sun, which is less intrinsically bright than the majority of stars that are prominent in our skies.
Since Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf, its habitable zone – as the range of distances at which an orbiting planet might be reasonably expected to have liquid water on its surface is known – is far closer in than it is in the case of the Sun. The newly discovered planet, for now simply known as Proxima Centauri b (or just Proxima b), is much closer to its star than Mercury is to the Sun, and its year is just 11 Earth days. This means that it is probably tidally locked with one side always facing Proxima Centauri. Though this means that the planet would have one hot side and one cold side, if it has a substantial atmosphere that could moderate temperatures enough for it to remain habitable. Nevertheless, it is still unlikely to be as comfortable an environment for life as Earth. This is even more so because of a major issue with Proxima Centauri itself, namely the fact that is a flare star, prone to outbursts that would bathe the planet in intense radiation. Some astronomers think this alone may make it unlikely that life has arisen on the planet, but others note that if the star hasn’t always been as active as it is now, life on the planet may have had a chance to evolve some resistance, or other factors might help mitigate the radiation problem.
Another difference between Proxima b and Earth is that the former is more massive. The figure that has appeared in reports about the planet is 1.3 Earth masses, but this is actually the minimum mass – it could be quite a bit more massive, depending on the angle from which we are viewing its orbit. However, it is at least 90% likely to be less than 3 Earth masses, which is still closer to Earth in size than most known exoplanets, so in this respect at least it’s one of the most Earth-like planets found yet (on the negative side, the most Earth-like planet in terms of mass that I know of is Venus, which is not at all habitable now, though it might have been in the remote past). What we don’t know is what kind of atmosphere it has, and that is naturally a crucial piece of information in determining its habitability. It needs to have enough of an atmosphere to warm the planet up past the freezing point of water (the Earth itself would be frozen if it didn’t have an atmosphere that trapped heat, though of course our current problem is that we’re changing it so that it traps too much) and to spread heat around if it is tidally locked. Other factors that may affect how habitable Proxima b is include whether it has a strong magnetic field (which would help stop some of that deadly radiation from hitting the surface of the planet), whether it has plate tectonics (which keep things stirred up inside the planet, ensuring that elements essential to life as we know it get to the surface), and how much water is in the system.
Despite all the unknowns which could potentially lower or even eliminate the chance of life having developed on the planet, it is clear that based on what we know now, this is the most exciting discovery yet in terms of potential life bearing planets outside our solar system. Proxima b is, as noted above, fairly close to Earth in mass, orbits in the habitable zone, and is closer than any other potentially habitable exoplanet we have found or that we will ever find in the future. The only discovery that could beat this one would be an Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone of Alpha Centauri A or Alpha Centauri B. Why? Because these two stars, unlike Alpha Centauri C (Proxima Centauri), are much like the Sun, with A being a little larger and B being a little smaller. However, my understanding is that even if there is such a planet around either of these stars, it would be undetectable with the technology we have now. This is because an Earth-sized planet at that distance would not tug on its star enough for us to detect it. There was an announcement several years ago that a planet had been found orbiting Alpha Centauri B; I even wrote a blog post on it. But that discovery has never been confirmed, and later analysis seems to indicate it doesn't exist. In any case, it was said to be orbiting very close in (making it much easier, though not actually easy, to detect than a planet in the habitable zone). So until in the (we hope near) future advances in technology make it possible for Earth-like planets, if they exist, to be found in the right orbits around the Sun-like Alpha Centauri stars, Proxima b is our best bet for exploring a potentially life-bearing exoplanet.
One thing must be kept in mind, though, when we use words like “close” to describe Proxima Centauri and its planet, and that is they are only close in comparison to other stars and their planets. They are still extremely far away. As I’ve mentioned in several previous posts, it’s important to keep in mind that interstellar distances are enormous, so much so that even Proxima Centauri is currently far beyond our reach. It took New Horizons almost 10 years to reach Pluto, while light makes the same journey in just over five hours. By contrast, it takes light over four years to travel from the Sun to Proxima Centauri. Voyager 1, the most distant spacecraft humanity has launched, has traveled more than 100 AU since its launch in 1977, but that’s a tiny fraction of the distance to Proxima Centauri. Neither Voyager 1 nor New Horizons is aimed at th is e Alpha Centauri system, but if they were, it would take them tens of thousands of years to get there. As for exploration by humans, we haven’t gotten as far as Mars yet, so it will take some really big technological advances to send humans to Proxima b, if it ever becomes possible at all.
However, this isn’t to say that Proxima b will remain beyond our reach forever. While humans are unlikely to go there in the foreseeable future, we might send robotic spacecraft there as soon as the next half century. Unless we make a major effort, we probably won’t find a way to accelerate New Horizons-type craft to the speeds necessary to reach the Alpha Centauri region this century, but we might pull it off with something smaller, such as the miniature spacecraft of the Breakthrough Starshot project. By the (possibly optimistic) timeline that those involved have suggested, a fleet of these laser-propelled probes could be launched within a few decades, if all the difficulties can be overcome. If they are launched, are successfully accelerated to a significant fraction of the speed of light, and a few of them make it all the way without incident (a collision with even a piece of dust at that speed would likely destroy the craft), we might be getting some kind of pictures and other data (depending on how successful the project is at miniaturizing the science instruments to fit on such small probes) from Proxima b forty to fifty years from now. I hope, however, that a few craft are sent on to Alpha Centauri A and B, since whether or not a planet has been found in the habitable zone around either star by launch time, if no search has been able to rule such a planet out, it would be worthwhile to look for one, since as noted above these two stars are much more similar to the Sun than their dim companion Proxima (or for that matter any other star within ten light years). There’s even a slim chance that all three stars have habitable planets or even inhabited ones. If just one planet in the Alpha Centauri system, whether it’s Proxima b or a planet orbiting the other two stars, is indeed home to life, it will drastically change our view of the universe. Even if the system is without life, close-up views of a planet orbiting another star would be well worth the time it would take to get there.
Wednesday, August 31, 2016
Sunday, July 31, 2016
Bullying, Bribery, and Brazeness: China and the South China Sea Arbitral Court Ruling (plus Taiwan's Unfortunate Reponse)
A few weeks ago, an international arbitral court (the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague in the Netherlands) handed down its ruling in a case brought by the Philippines against China with regard to its claims in the South China Sea. China claims ownership over nearly the entire sea, including parts which are distant from China but close to other countries such as the Philippines and Malaysia, based on the so-called "nine-dash line" that goes back to a map first drawn in 1947 by the Chinese government (then controlled by the KMT, prior to its defeat by the Communists in the Chinese civil war) and further claims exclusive economic rights throughout much of the region based on an assertion that the rocks and atolls in the area are islands. The Philippines challenged both Chinese claim to historic control over the region and its assertion that the features in the sea are islands rather than mere rocks. China refused to participate in the hearings, claiming the court had no jurisdiction over the disputes in the regions (while also claiming that China's claims were "indisputable").
Unsurprisingly, the court ruled against China, finding that the "nine-dash line" hand no validity and that the features in the sea are rocks, not islands. It didn't rule on the sovereignty claims made by China and other countries in the region (including the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei). Equally unsurpisingly, China rejected the ruling. But not only did it reject the ruling, it engaged in a massive campaign including propaganda against the court, recrutiing countries to supposedly support its claim that the court had no jurisdiction, and even blatant bribery to ensure that its neighbors were unable to present a untied front in support of the ruling. Tellingly, China started its propaganda campaign well before the ruling was actually handed down, no doubt because it knew it would lose. But its most extreme behavior came after the ruiling was handed down. A few days after the ruling was announced and in advance of a meeting of foreign ministers of the 10 states making up the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), China announced an aid package to Cambodia, its closest ally in ASEAN, worth a reported US$500 million. Cambodia then proceeded to block efforts by other ASEAN members to include any reference to the ruling in the joint statement issued following the meeting (while ironically also claiming that the South China Sea dispute had nothing to do with it). Since ASEAN operates by consensus, meaning that any statements or actions by the group have to be agreed to by all its members, China's bribery (to call a spade a spade) of Cambodia and also Laos, another recepient of massive Chinese aid, has once more prevented the group from presenting a united front against China, even though four of its members are rival claimants in the South China Sea and Indonesia has also recently expressed opposition to some of China's more expansive claims. China continues to insist that any disputes should be settled in bilateral talks, which of course favor the much larger China. In the meantime, China can continue its blatant bullying of its rivals, using its greater military might to push and keep them out while it engages in massive land reclamation projects and builds air strips and other installations on the artifical islands it is creating in the sea.
Despite China's repeated protestations that it has the "facts" on its side, its "historical" claims are flimsy at best. A few historical artificats of Chinese origin found on the rocks in the South China Sea hardly constitute evidence that the islands were actually occupied by China, any more than the various items left on the Moon by the Apollo missions constitute evidence that the Moon belongs to the US. There's no evidence that the islands were ever actually inhabitated, and as recently as the Ming dynasty Chinese maps of the area were full of imaginary places similar to in contemporary Eurpoean imagination such as the "Island of Women" (女人國). China also may be altering less fanciful historical maps to erase evidence contrary to their claims. This isn't to say that the other countries involved necessarily have much stronger claims, but at least they don't claim the entire sea, just the areas relatively close to them, with one exception that I will come back to. In any case, as I have said before in talking about the dispute between China, Japan and Taiwan in the East China Sea, passionately arguing over rocks in the ocean makes all sides look at best a bit silly.
One other claimant in the South China Sea has also disputed the ruling by the arbitral court - Taiwan, the country where I live. One of Taiwan's biggest objections was the finding that Itu Aba, called Taiping Island by Taiwan and China, is a rock rather than an island. Since Taiwan actually occupies Itu Aba, the largest feature in the area, this objection is not surprising. Since I don't know the exact definitions used to determine whether a feature is a rock or an island, I don't have any particular opinion one way or another on whether the Taiwanese government or the court is correct on this particular point, though Taiwan might well have a case. But other aspects of Taiwan's reaction to the ruling were a bit absurd, even if the worst reactions came not from the current DPP-led govenment but from the anti-reason KMT (which bears a fair bit of responsibilty for the entire dispute due to their creation of the original 1947 map with its baseless claims). Rather than taking the opportunity to distinguish its position from that of China, such as by abandoning its equally ridiculous claim to virtually the whole sea, Taiwan is mistakenly simply aping China's reaction, marginalizing itself and incidentally endangering its own sovereignty, as China's absurd "historical" claims apply to Taiwan as well as the South China Sea. Regrettably, the curse of nationalism makes it hard for even the more Taiwan-oriented DPP government to take a rational approach to the issue, one which might allow to Taiwan to put forth its own independent claims in the area (for example, to Itu Aba) without appearing as irrational and fact-free in its claims as China.
Unsurprisingly, the court ruled against China, finding that the "nine-dash line" hand no validity and that the features in the sea are rocks, not islands. It didn't rule on the sovereignty claims made by China and other countries in the region (including the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei). Equally unsurpisingly, China rejected the ruling. But not only did it reject the ruling, it engaged in a massive campaign including propaganda against the court, recrutiing countries to supposedly support its claim that the court had no jurisdiction, and even blatant bribery to ensure that its neighbors were unable to present a untied front in support of the ruling. Tellingly, China started its propaganda campaign well before the ruling was actually handed down, no doubt because it knew it would lose. But its most extreme behavior came after the ruiling was handed down. A few days after the ruling was announced and in advance of a meeting of foreign ministers of the 10 states making up the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), China announced an aid package to Cambodia, its closest ally in ASEAN, worth a reported US$500 million. Cambodia then proceeded to block efforts by other ASEAN members to include any reference to the ruling in the joint statement issued following the meeting (while ironically also claiming that the South China Sea dispute had nothing to do with it). Since ASEAN operates by consensus, meaning that any statements or actions by the group have to be agreed to by all its members, China's bribery (to call a spade a spade) of Cambodia and also Laos, another recepient of massive Chinese aid, has once more prevented the group from presenting a united front against China, even though four of its members are rival claimants in the South China Sea and Indonesia has also recently expressed opposition to some of China's more expansive claims. China continues to insist that any disputes should be settled in bilateral talks, which of course favor the much larger China. In the meantime, China can continue its blatant bullying of its rivals, using its greater military might to push and keep them out while it engages in massive land reclamation projects and builds air strips and other installations on the artifical islands it is creating in the sea.
Despite China's repeated protestations that it has the "facts" on its side, its "historical" claims are flimsy at best. A few historical artificats of Chinese origin found on the rocks in the South China Sea hardly constitute evidence that the islands were actually occupied by China, any more than the various items left on the Moon by the Apollo missions constitute evidence that the Moon belongs to the US. There's no evidence that the islands were ever actually inhabitated, and as recently as the Ming dynasty Chinese maps of the area were full of imaginary places similar to in contemporary Eurpoean imagination such as the "Island of Women" (女人國). China also may be altering less fanciful historical maps to erase evidence contrary to their claims. This isn't to say that the other countries involved necessarily have much stronger claims, but at least they don't claim the entire sea, just the areas relatively close to them, with one exception that I will come back to. In any case, as I have said before in talking about the dispute between China, Japan and Taiwan in the East China Sea, passionately arguing over rocks in the ocean makes all sides look at best a bit silly.
One other claimant in the South China Sea has also disputed the ruling by the arbitral court - Taiwan, the country where I live. One of Taiwan's biggest objections was the finding that Itu Aba, called Taiping Island by Taiwan and China, is a rock rather than an island. Since Taiwan actually occupies Itu Aba, the largest feature in the area, this objection is not surprising. Since I don't know the exact definitions used to determine whether a feature is a rock or an island, I don't have any particular opinion one way or another on whether the Taiwanese government or the court is correct on this particular point, though Taiwan might well have a case. But other aspects of Taiwan's reaction to the ruling were a bit absurd, even if the worst reactions came not from the current DPP-led govenment but from the anti-reason KMT (which bears a fair bit of responsibilty for the entire dispute due to their creation of the original 1947 map with its baseless claims). Rather than taking the opportunity to distinguish its position from that of China, such as by abandoning its equally ridiculous claim to virtually the whole sea, Taiwan is mistakenly simply aping China's reaction, marginalizing itself and incidentally endangering its own sovereignty, as China's absurd "historical" claims apply to Taiwan as well as the South China Sea. Regrettably, the curse of nationalism makes it hard for even the more Taiwan-oriented DPP government to take a rational approach to the issue, one which might allow to Taiwan to put forth its own independent claims in the area (for example, to Itu Aba) without appearing as irrational and fact-free in its claims as China.
Sunday, July 17, 2016
Police Violence, Dallas and Black Lives Matter
A lot has been happening lately, and I haven't been able to keep up with all that I'd like to write about. This post was half finished for a couple of days, and I've also been itching to comment on the recent ruling on China's South China Sea claims. Then there have been events ranging from the space probe Juno's arrival at Jupiter to the violence in South Sudan, the terrorist attack in Nice, and the coup attempt in Turkey. I hope that I'll manage to write up something on at least the South China Sea issue in the next couple of weeks.
Another week, another bunch of people killed in gun violence in the US. To a certain degree, especially given my residence outside the US, I can’t help but be a little desensitized to all of it. Still, there are some factors that make it hard to dismiss these incidents so easily. For one thing, I grew up in Dallas, and though I’m not particularly sentimental about it as a place, it was a little startling to see it make the headlines in the way it did. But to tell the truth, even before the sniper struck in Dallas, I was feeling the urge to comment on the police shootings that led to the protests like the one attacked by the shooter.
First off, let me make clear that I have absolutely no sympathy for the killer who struck in Dallas and every bit of sympathy with the families and loved ones of the police officers he killed and with those who he wounded. As someone else commented somewhere, by indiscriminately striking at people simple because they were police officers, he was engaging in exactly the kind of behavior that protestors have attributed with some reason to a minority of police officers, that of treating all members of a group with automatic suspicion and hostility. There is absolutely no justification for what he did. I will also add that I agree that everyone should support the police force as an institution, one that is absolutely necessary in our society, and the vast majority of individuals who constitute it. What form that support should take is the question, one which I will come back to.
On the other hand, I also support the Black Lives Matter movement in its quest to do something about the obvious disparities in how people of color are treated by law enforcement and the failure of the current system to hold police accountable for even egregious cases of abuse. I should note, as many others have, that when we say “black lives matter” it is not saying that other lives don’t matter. What it means is that black lives ALSO matter. While that should go without saying, the casualness with which black and other people of color have been killed by police in many recent incidents, and the way some people have defended the officers involved (e.g., saying that the person killed deserved to die, despite the often extremely minor nature of the offenses that were accused – and not even convicted! – of), it is clear that some people both in law enforcement and outside it act is if black lives really don’t matter. There is no doubt in my mind that in at least some of the incidents over the past few years, if the victim had been white he or she wouldn’t have ended up dead. It is for good reason that even African Americans who have never committed even the most minor crime say encounters with police make them extremely nervous. There are plenty of unequivocal instances of innocent black men being arrested for crimes they didn’t commit merely due to the misfortune of being nearby and black.
But the problems with law enforcement in the US are not limited to the unquestionable differences in the treatment people of color receive from the police. The other major issue is that of the almost complete lack of accountability for violence committed by police, regardless of the race of the victim. Hundreds of people are killed by police every year, and while in the majority of cases the police were probably justified, there are many in which they clearly were not. Even where there is some doubt about whether a police shooting was justified, it is not unreasonable to expect a thorough investigation and even a trial. After all, when a civilian kills someone, even in self-defense, they often have to prove it in court, unless the circumstances are so unequivocal that the prosecutor doesn’t bring charges. But police officers are almost never even indicted, much less convicted, even when it is clear that there was no justification for their actions. This applies not only to police shootings, but other violence such as beatings. Even if we accept that police officers should have a little extra leeway in their use of force due to the nature of their job, they can’t be completely unaccountable when they kill or assault innocent people.
The truth is, as many have pointed out, including some police officers, if the police commit unjustifiable violent acts and are never held accountable, this just makes it harder for the good officers to do their jobs. If people in a community see that the police not only behave badly but are never punished for their bad behavior, no one will trust them. Not only will the police be unable to work with the community to stop criminals, the people of the community will start to see the police as just as much of a threat as the criminals. This is already the situation in many communities across the US. If, on the other hand, police who abuse their authority are punished, not only will it make the police better by getting rid of the bad apples, it will show the people of the local community that the system is working, making them much more willing to work with law enforcement.
Of course, we should also recognize that the police have a difficult job, one in which they face a great deal of stress and even life-threatening danger for little reward. But that doesn’t mean we should support them when they have clearly crossed the line. The kind of support they really should be getting is better pay, better benefits, reduced work hours, more training (particularly in how to handle dangerous situations without resorting to violence) and other measures to make their jobs less stressful and more rewarding. What’s more, strong measures need to be taken to reduce the number of guns in the US. One reason police in the US are so trigger-happy is because they know that there’s a very good chance that anyone they deal with is armed. This is not something that police in most other countries have to deal with, and it makes the job of American police a lot harder. Though at this point it would take a mass confiscation of weapons as thorough as the most paranoid imaginings of gun nuts to reduce the number of guns in the US to a level similar to that of most civilized nations, even a few steps to make sure that the most dangerous people have trouble getting guns and the most deadly weapons are no longer widely available would at least make things slightly easier on the police.
In the end, holding police accountable by punishing abuses of authority and irresponsible use of violence; taking steps to improve the problem of conscious and unconscious racism among police by improving hiring practices, firing overtly racist cops and providing racial sensitivity training to the rest; training police better in ways to deescalate dangerous situations; and improving community outreach by law enforcement will in fact improve the lot of the police as well as that of the communities they police, especially if at the same time, we increase pay and benefits for police and take other steps to make their jobs easier, including taking steps to reduce the number of guns out there. The siege mentality displayed recently by many police officers and particularly their unions, on the other hand, will only make things worse for everyone, including the police themselves. As people from Jon Stewart to Hillary Clinton have observed, it is not at all difficult to recognize that police officers have it tough and to give the majority of them our sympathy and support and at the same time to want police who abuse their authority or through overly careless use of force kill or maim people unnecessarily to be held accountable, and for black and other people of color to be treated fairly. Indeed, the best kind of support that good officers can get it is to make sure that bad ones don’t cause ordinary people to lose their trust in the police force as a whole.
As an aside, it is worth addressing the claim by some that the Black Lives Matter movement and even President Barack Obama (and “liberals” in general) were responsible for the attack on police in Dallas because they created an atmosphere of hostility toward the police. This can be contrasted with the assertion that the right wing is in part responsible for the mass shooting at the gay nightclub in Orlando because of their anti-LGBT rhetoric. In the latter case, the anti-LGBT people have implied that gay and transgender people don’t deserve equal treatment, which is another way of saying that they are inferior. Some of the more extreme voices have come right out and said they shouldn’t even exist. On the other hand, while I have no doubt that on the fringes of the BLM movement there are some that act as if all police are the enemy (and therefore legitimate targets), that sort of attitude is not held or in any way implied by the majority of BLM activists, much less President Obama, who has bent over backwards to express his support for the majority of police officers. As I explained above, saying that the police who killed people like Tamir Rice, John Crawford, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Darrien Hunt, or Philando Castile should be held accountable is not at all the same as saying that all or even most police officers are bad, much less that they should be targeted for assault. In other words, except for a few extremists, most people who have said that something needs to be done about police violence have not condemned police officers in general, and in fact many have specifically expressed support for most police. On the other hand, even the least offensive of the anti-LGBT rhetoric from the right implies a negative view of LGBT people in general. So which type of rhetoric can be most fairly implicated in an assault that indiscriminately targets members of the group in question? The answer to that should be obvious. In any case, what is needed in the case of police violence is for the police and those with authority over them to work with BLM activists and others to find ways to fix the problems that clearly exist. While that may not be easy, with a little good will on both sides it should be possible to make real progress. But it should be done as quickly as possible, before the hardliners on both sides make things worse.
Another week, another bunch of people killed in gun violence in the US. To a certain degree, especially given my residence outside the US, I can’t help but be a little desensitized to all of it. Still, there are some factors that make it hard to dismiss these incidents so easily. For one thing, I grew up in Dallas, and though I’m not particularly sentimental about it as a place, it was a little startling to see it make the headlines in the way it did. But to tell the truth, even before the sniper struck in Dallas, I was feeling the urge to comment on the police shootings that led to the protests like the one attacked by the shooter.
First off, let me make clear that I have absolutely no sympathy for the killer who struck in Dallas and every bit of sympathy with the families and loved ones of the police officers he killed and with those who he wounded. As someone else commented somewhere, by indiscriminately striking at people simple because they were police officers, he was engaging in exactly the kind of behavior that protestors have attributed with some reason to a minority of police officers, that of treating all members of a group with automatic suspicion and hostility. There is absolutely no justification for what he did. I will also add that I agree that everyone should support the police force as an institution, one that is absolutely necessary in our society, and the vast majority of individuals who constitute it. What form that support should take is the question, one which I will come back to.
On the other hand, I also support the Black Lives Matter movement in its quest to do something about the obvious disparities in how people of color are treated by law enforcement and the failure of the current system to hold police accountable for even egregious cases of abuse. I should note, as many others have, that when we say “black lives matter” it is not saying that other lives don’t matter. What it means is that black lives ALSO matter. While that should go without saying, the casualness with which black and other people of color have been killed by police in many recent incidents, and the way some people have defended the officers involved (e.g., saying that the person killed deserved to die, despite the often extremely minor nature of the offenses that were accused – and not even convicted! – of), it is clear that some people both in law enforcement and outside it act is if black lives really don’t matter. There is no doubt in my mind that in at least some of the incidents over the past few years, if the victim had been white he or she wouldn’t have ended up dead. It is for good reason that even African Americans who have never committed even the most minor crime say encounters with police make them extremely nervous. There are plenty of unequivocal instances of innocent black men being arrested for crimes they didn’t commit merely due to the misfortune of being nearby and black.
But the problems with law enforcement in the US are not limited to the unquestionable differences in the treatment people of color receive from the police. The other major issue is that of the almost complete lack of accountability for violence committed by police, regardless of the race of the victim. Hundreds of people are killed by police every year, and while in the majority of cases the police were probably justified, there are many in which they clearly were not. Even where there is some doubt about whether a police shooting was justified, it is not unreasonable to expect a thorough investigation and even a trial. After all, when a civilian kills someone, even in self-defense, they often have to prove it in court, unless the circumstances are so unequivocal that the prosecutor doesn’t bring charges. But police officers are almost never even indicted, much less convicted, even when it is clear that there was no justification for their actions. This applies not only to police shootings, but other violence such as beatings. Even if we accept that police officers should have a little extra leeway in their use of force due to the nature of their job, they can’t be completely unaccountable when they kill or assault innocent people.
The truth is, as many have pointed out, including some police officers, if the police commit unjustifiable violent acts and are never held accountable, this just makes it harder for the good officers to do their jobs. If people in a community see that the police not only behave badly but are never punished for their bad behavior, no one will trust them. Not only will the police be unable to work with the community to stop criminals, the people of the community will start to see the police as just as much of a threat as the criminals. This is already the situation in many communities across the US. If, on the other hand, police who abuse their authority are punished, not only will it make the police better by getting rid of the bad apples, it will show the people of the local community that the system is working, making them much more willing to work with law enforcement.
Of course, we should also recognize that the police have a difficult job, one in which they face a great deal of stress and even life-threatening danger for little reward. But that doesn’t mean we should support them when they have clearly crossed the line. The kind of support they really should be getting is better pay, better benefits, reduced work hours, more training (particularly in how to handle dangerous situations without resorting to violence) and other measures to make their jobs less stressful and more rewarding. What’s more, strong measures need to be taken to reduce the number of guns in the US. One reason police in the US are so trigger-happy is because they know that there’s a very good chance that anyone they deal with is armed. This is not something that police in most other countries have to deal with, and it makes the job of American police a lot harder. Though at this point it would take a mass confiscation of weapons as thorough as the most paranoid imaginings of gun nuts to reduce the number of guns in the US to a level similar to that of most civilized nations, even a few steps to make sure that the most dangerous people have trouble getting guns and the most deadly weapons are no longer widely available would at least make things slightly easier on the police.
In the end, holding police accountable by punishing abuses of authority and irresponsible use of violence; taking steps to improve the problem of conscious and unconscious racism among police by improving hiring practices, firing overtly racist cops and providing racial sensitivity training to the rest; training police better in ways to deescalate dangerous situations; and improving community outreach by law enforcement will in fact improve the lot of the police as well as that of the communities they police, especially if at the same time, we increase pay and benefits for police and take other steps to make their jobs easier, including taking steps to reduce the number of guns out there. The siege mentality displayed recently by many police officers and particularly their unions, on the other hand, will only make things worse for everyone, including the police themselves. As people from Jon Stewart to Hillary Clinton have observed, it is not at all difficult to recognize that police officers have it tough and to give the majority of them our sympathy and support and at the same time to want police who abuse their authority or through overly careless use of force kill or maim people unnecessarily to be held accountable, and for black and other people of color to be treated fairly. Indeed, the best kind of support that good officers can get it is to make sure that bad ones don’t cause ordinary people to lose their trust in the police force as a whole.
As an aside, it is worth addressing the claim by some that the Black Lives Matter movement and even President Barack Obama (and “liberals” in general) were responsible for the attack on police in Dallas because they created an atmosphere of hostility toward the police. This can be contrasted with the assertion that the right wing is in part responsible for the mass shooting at the gay nightclub in Orlando because of their anti-LGBT rhetoric. In the latter case, the anti-LGBT people have implied that gay and transgender people don’t deserve equal treatment, which is another way of saying that they are inferior. Some of the more extreme voices have come right out and said they shouldn’t even exist. On the other hand, while I have no doubt that on the fringes of the BLM movement there are some that act as if all police are the enemy (and therefore legitimate targets), that sort of attitude is not held or in any way implied by the majority of BLM activists, much less President Obama, who has bent over backwards to express his support for the majority of police officers. As I explained above, saying that the police who killed people like Tamir Rice, John Crawford, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Darrien Hunt, or Philando Castile should be held accountable is not at all the same as saying that all or even most police officers are bad, much less that they should be targeted for assault. In other words, except for a few extremists, most people who have said that something needs to be done about police violence have not condemned police officers in general, and in fact many have specifically expressed support for most police. On the other hand, even the least offensive of the anti-LGBT rhetoric from the right implies a negative view of LGBT people in general. So which type of rhetoric can be most fairly implicated in an assault that indiscriminately targets members of the group in question? The answer to that should be obvious. In any case, what is needed in the case of police violence is for the police and those with authority over them to work with BLM activists and others to find ways to fix the problems that clearly exist. While that may not be easy, with a little good will on both sides it should be possible to make real progress. But it should be done as quickly as possible, before the hardliners on both sides make things worse.
Thursday, June 30, 2016
Brexit, Nationalism and the Dark Side of Democracy
The biggest event in world news in the past week was of course the results of the United Kingdom’s referendum over whether to leave the European Union. Though the polls had been quite close in the run up to the election, most people, even including some of the leaders of the Leave camp, expected the Remain side to come out on top. To the surprise of almost everybody, the Leave side won, by a small but clear margin. Since then people have been trying to figure out not only the consequences that might be expect to arise from the vote, but also why it went the way it did.
While the Leave camp made a number of arguments about why leaving the EU would be good for the UK, they were mostly distorted or outright false. The money the UK gives to the EU is easily outweighed by the benefits it gets from membership, and while there are no doubt quite a few unreasonable regulations imposed by the EU bureaucracy, I would suspect that in fact most of them are justifiable and even necessary. What’s more, if the UK wants to maintain a close economic relationship with the EU, which some of the leading Leave politicians claim to desire, it would have to keep complying with many of the regulation, at least as far as goods being exported to the EU are concerned. The reactions of the currency market and stock market show that investors take a very pessimistic view of the economic consequences of the vote, and though the markets do sometimes overreact to political events, in this case they seem likely to prove right. A more reasonable criticism of the EU is that, like so many other governments around the world, it sometimes seems to work more in the interests of big corporations than ordinary people, and the EU specifically is overly fond of austerity measures that hurt most people (without really solving the economic problems they are supposed to address). But it seems unlikely that the kind of right wing government that is likely to be formed in the wake of a British split from the EU will be substantially different in these respects. If anything, it might make things worse by freeing big business from the restraints imposed by the EU in the name of the environment and human rights.
Though without actually asking all of them it’s impossible to know why all the people who voted to leave did so, it is certain that for at least a few of them it came down to nationalism and even downright racism. The Leave campaign made use of a lot of scaremongering rhetoric about the refugee crisis in Europe, implying that the UK would soon be invaded by a horde of mostly Muslim people from places like the Middle East if it didn’t cut ties with the EU. This xenophobic attitude resembles that of many far right parties in Europe itself, and of course that of the presumptive Republican nominee for US president (dubbed by a young girl of my acquaintance “Pumpkin Hitler”). In all cases they ignore the fact that statistically speaking, refugees are much less likely to commit violent acts than native born people, particularly right wing extremists, a fact tragically illustrated a few days before the UK vote when a right wing British racist murdered a Member of Parliament who was outspoken in support of refugee rights.
Since nationalism certainly played at least some role in the Leave victory, this vote is yet another example of the mostly harmful consequences of nationalism. Given that the differences between humans of different nationalities and ethnic groups are actually miniscule, even more so since if you trace things back far enough everyone has ancestors of diverse origins, it makes no sense to care much more about the interests of people of one’s own nation than those of everyone else. While it might not be possible to get rid of all borders now, an ideal world would indeed be borderless. In the meantime, the EU, for all its faults, represents the kind of direction we should be going in. Of course the EU itself needs to be more welcoming to refugees, and it can’t let larger countries like Germany run roughshod over smaller countries such as Greece. But at least the EU manages to maintain a much better balance of interests between different nations than is seen elsewhere in the world, where nations like China and even the USA use their size to bully other nations. This is one reason for supporting the rights of smaller nations (including occupied ones such as Tibet) until we can get rid of nations altogether. So while I don’t care for nationalism, I’d be more pleased than otherwise to see Scotland hold a second vote on independence with a different result from the first one, especially in the wake of the Brexit vote (in which Scottish voters overwhelmingly voted to stay in the EU), as long as it is merely an expression of a diversion of interests rather than local chauvinism. Another useful step towards minimizing nationalist feelings is to ensure that everyone receives as balanced and objective an education as possible regarding history and the current geopolitical situation, rather than one that is biased towards one’s own country – in other words the opposite of the kind of education that people receive in most countries, with China being just one particularly egregious example.
Unfortunately, until countries all over the world stop indoctrinating their people in nationalistic thinking, election results such as the one in Brexit vote will continue to occur. Nationalism and ethnic prejudice represent the dark side of democracy, allowing extremists all over the world to get a disturbing amount of power through elections. This doesn’t mean that we should abandon democracy, but it does mean that until we can get rid of or at least drastically reduce these harmful attitudes we need institutions that can help restrain populist leaders and parties who appeal to them. While I think it is unlikely that the abovementioned Pumpkin Hitler can win in the US, it is bad enough that he even has a chance. It’s also disturbing that parties like Britain’s anti-immigrant UKIP are growing across Europe, and in countries like Hungary are even dominating the government. This is largely down to nationalism, and it is because of nationalism that a democratic China, for example, would not necessarily be more peaceful toward neighbors such as Taiwan, the Philippines or Japan. Hopefully more and more people will begin to understand that their interests are under more of a threat from forces such as overly powerful multinational corporations and financial institutions (not that even these are monolithic interests groups or unequivocal evils), economic inequality in general or climate change than from immigrants or ordinary “foreigners” of whatever origin.
While the Leave camp made a number of arguments about why leaving the EU would be good for the UK, they were mostly distorted or outright false. The money the UK gives to the EU is easily outweighed by the benefits it gets from membership, and while there are no doubt quite a few unreasonable regulations imposed by the EU bureaucracy, I would suspect that in fact most of them are justifiable and even necessary. What’s more, if the UK wants to maintain a close economic relationship with the EU, which some of the leading Leave politicians claim to desire, it would have to keep complying with many of the regulation, at least as far as goods being exported to the EU are concerned. The reactions of the currency market and stock market show that investors take a very pessimistic view of the economic consequences of the vote, and though the markets do sometimes overreact to political events, in this case they seem likely to prove right. A more reasonable criticism of the EU is that, like so many other governments around the world, it sometimes seems to work more in the interests of big corporations than ordinary people, and the EU specifically is overly fond of austerity measures that hurt most people (without really solving the economic problems they are supposed to address). But it seems unlikely that the kind of right wing government that is likely to be formed in the wake of a British split from the EU will be substantially different in these respects. If anything, it might make things worse by freeing big business from the restraints imposed by the EU in the name of the environment and human rights.
Though without actually asking all of them it’s impossible to know why all the people who voted to leave did so, it is certain that for at least a few of them it came down to nationalism and even downright racism. The Leave campaign made use of a lot of scaremongering rhetoric about the refugee crisis in Europe, implying that the UK would soon be invaded by a horde of mostly Muslim people from places like the Middle East if it didn’t cut ties with the EU. This xenophobic attitude resembles that of many far right parties in Europe itself, and of course that of the presumptive Republican nominee for US president (dubbed by a young girl of my acquaintance “Pumpkin Hitler”). In all cases they ignore the fact that statistically speaking, refugees are much less likely to commit violent acts than native born people, particularly right wing extremists, a fact tragically illustrated a few days before the UK vote when a right wing British racist murdered a Member of Parliament who was outspoken in support of refugee rights.
Since nationalism certainly played at least some role in the Leave victory, this vote is yet another example of the mostly harmful consequences of nationalism. Given that the differences between humans of different nationalities and ethnic groups are actually miniscule, even more so since if you trace things back far enough everyone has ancestors of diverse origins, it makes no sense to care much more about the interests of people of one’s own nation than those of everyone else. While it might not be possible to get rid of all borders now, an ideal world would indeed be borderless. In the meantime, the EU, for all its faults, represents the kind of direction we should be going in. Of course the EU itself needs to be more welcoming to refugees, and it can’t let larger countries like Germany run roughshod over smaller countries such as Greece. But at least the EU manages to maintain a much better balance of interests between different nations than is seen elsewhere in the world, where nations like China and even the USA use their size to bully other nations. This is one reason for supporting the rights of smaller nations (including occupied ones such as Tibet) until we can get rid of nations altogether. So while I don’t care for nationalism, I’d be more pleased than otherwise to see Scotland hold a second vote on independence with a different result from the first one, especially in the wake of the Brexit vote (in which Scottish voters overwhelmingly voted to stay in the EU), as long as it is merely an expression of a diversion of interests rather than local chauvinism. Another useful step towards minimizing nationalist feelings is to ensure that everyone receives as balanced and objective an education as possible regarding history and the current geopolitical situation, rather than one that is biased towards one’s own country – in other words the opposite of the kind of education that people receive in most countries, with China being just one particularly egregious example.
Unfortunately, until countries all over the world stop indoctrinating their people in nationalistic thinking, election results such as the one in Brexit vote will continue to occur. Nationalism and ethnic prejudice represent the dark side of democracy, allowing extremists all over the world to get a disturbing amount of power through elections. This doesn’t mean that we should abandon democracy, but it does mean that until we can get rid of or at least drastically reduce these harmful attitudes we need institutions that can help restrain populist leaders and parties who appeal to them. While I think it is unlikely that the abovementioned Pumpkin Hitler can win in the US, it is bad enough that he even has a chance. It’s also disturbing that parties like Britain’s anti-immigrant UKIP are growing across Europe, and in countries like Hungary are even dominating the government. This is largely down to nationalism, and it is because of nationalism that a democratic China, for example, would not necessarily be more peaceful toward neighbors such as Taiwan, the Philippines or Japan. Hopefully more and more people will begin to understand that their interests are under more of a threat from forces such as overly powerful multinational corporations and financial institutions (not that even these are monolithic interests groups or unequivocal evils), economic inequality in general or climate change than from immigrants or ordinary “foreigners” of whatever origin.
Monday, June 20, 2016
The Orlando Shootings -- Ideology, Anti-LGBT Hate, and Deadly Weapons
The recent mass shooting in Orlando, Florida has led to another media frenzy, with a number of related topics being discussed and debated, though in many cases with very little real thought behind what is being said. Unsurprisingly, most Republicans, including their presumptive presidential nominee with the orange hair and repellant personality, have tried to make the shooting out to be entirely about “radical Islam” and in the case of DT(aka Donald Drumpf) about immigration as well. While purveyors of twisted Islamic fundamentalism like ISIS/Daesh or al Qaeda are certainly a menace, it is clearly an overstatement to claim that this one incident proves that they are the greatest threat the US faces, especially given the indications that the shooter’s direct ties to ISIS were rather flimsy at best. Before this shooting, more people had been killed in the US since 2001 by right wing extremists, including white supremacists and radical Christians, than by ones claiming to be Muslim jihadists, and we don’t hear Republicans talking about the threat from extreme right wingers or radical Christian fundamentalists. Should all right wing groups be put under strict surveillance because of Dylann Roof? Should all Christians be treated with suspicion because of Robert Dear? As for immigration, the shooter himself was native born, and statistically, an immigrant or a child of immigrants is not more likely to commit an act of this sort than a person whose ancestors came to the US many generations ago, so it’s equally absurd to use this one case to attack all immigrants and their children. What’s more, those of us who don’t live in simplistic worlds where everything is black and white realize that a lot of factors contribute to incidents like this, some of which have nothing to do with the shooter’s background, such as the easy availability of extremely dangerous weapons to violent people of all ideologies and ethnicities. What’s more, the fact that the targets of the attack were LGBT people arguably shows that he was motivated as much by the domestic political climate as the international one.
While some found it is easy to characterize the attack as a “terrorist attack” by a “radical Islamist”, that is at best a gross oversimplification, and in fact is very misleading if other factors are left out. It is true that the shooter himself tried to present it as being a terrorist attack on behalf of ISIS, and that he was a Muslim with a fundamentalist background. So to the extent that the shooter was motivated by his ideology and a genuine desire to aid ISIS in its war against the West (against everybody, really), then it was indeed a terrorist attack by a radical Islamist. But the evidence is that he was motivated by a number of things, some of which had nothing to do with ISIS. For one thing, it seems that he may not actually have been devoutly religious and may not even have known very much about the radical group he claimed to support. I’ve read that in his 911 call, aside from claiming allegiance to ISIS, he also claimed allegiance to Hezbollah. If so, that proves that he really was pretty clueless about the realities of Middle East politics, as Hezbollah is one of ISIS’s biggest enemies. Given that he was apparently mentally unstable and had a history of violence, it’s almost as if he was just randomly attaching himself to ISIS due to its notoriety, rather than any real dedication to its cause. In any case, the evidence indicates that unlike, for instance, the Charleston shootings, or the mass shooting in Norway some years back (both of which of course were committed by white males who were right wing extremists), this shooting was not solely and maybe not even mostly motivated by a definite, though twisted, political ideology.
One important fact that has to be kept in mind about the attack is that it targeted LGBT people, even though many Republicans managed to completely ignore this element of the attack in their reactions. Since the shooter seems to have been partly or even largely motivated by a hatred of gay people, this was unquestionably an anti-LGBT hate crime, whatever else it may have been. There are some indications that the shooter himself may have been secretly gay, in which case his inability to reconcile his true orientation with the homophobic ideology he had been raised under (his Afghan father, who immigrated to the US back when the Soviets were still in Afghanistan, is apparently a pro-Taliban fundamentalist) may been a major factor behind his mental problems and indeed may have been the biggest motivation for the attack. But while his own family background was that of an Islamic fundamentalist, it seems highly plausible that the anti-LGBT rhetoric that the right (mostly on the basis of a fundamentalist interpretation of Christianity) has been spouting recently over issues such as same sex marriage and transgender rights reinforced his negative attitude toward LGBT people (and, if he really had tendencies in that direction himself, accentuated his self-hatred. While short of discovering specific evidence that he was influenced by such rhetoric it may be impossible to prove that he wouldn’t have committed the same crime if the attitude toward LGBT people outside of his own religious background had been one of universal tolerance and love, it is at least safe to say that some of the negative stuff that has been said about LGBT people by politicians and media figures on the right didn’t help. In any case, the fact that he deliberately targeted LGBT people in a climate where a significant number of prominent people have been making anti-LGBT remarks is as important to understanding the event as the fact that he made a confused claim to be acting on behalf of ISIS.
The uncertain degree to which the shooter was influenced directly or indirectly by religious fundamentalism (whether of the Islamic or Christian varieties) aside, in some ways this incident had as much in common with the mass murders in Aurora or Newton as with more obviously political shootings like those committed by people like Roof and Breivik. As noted above, those were committed by people with a clear though demented ideology. In this case, the perpetrator was considerably less coherent in his political beliefs, but seemingly suffered from mental issues, as did the shooters in Aurora and Newton. Also like those shooters he was able to easily obtain a weapon that is designed to kill large numbers in a very short period of time. The truth is, even a weapon such as a handgun is more likely to end up causing injury or death to its owner or someone close to them as it is to be actually used in defense, but it is possible to see how someone could rationalize purchasing one, or how those who get pleasure out of shooting animals from a safe distance might be able to rationalize purchase of a hunting rifle, but there is no even remotely reasonable rationalization for allowing ordinary people to buy weapons like the ones used in these shootings. Only paranoid fantasists with a very questionable grasp on reality could seriously think that they will ever need one for a Rambo-like stand against an army of attackers. Anything that can fire that many rounds in that short a period should not be available for sale to anybody, period. What’s more, people with a clear history of violence, including domestic violence (the ex-wife of the shooter in this case has said he abused her frequently, though my recollection is that she didn’t ever press charges against him), serious mental illnesses or ties to terrorist groups (and that should include the worst of the extreme right wing groups based in the US itself) should not be allowed to buy any guns at all. To prevent this, of course, every single gun sale has to involve a background check that must be passed before the gun can change hands. While neither of these steps can guarantee that shootings like the one in Orlando won’t happen again, they will certainly make them less frequent. What’s more, the second step (universal background checks) will noticeably reduce the vastly greater number of deaths resulting from domestic violence or suicide. What is certain is that toning down the anti-LGBT rhetoric and, even more, actually doing something to make it harder for dangerous people to buy dangerous weapons will go a lot farther toward making the US a safer place than handwringing about ISIS or hostile measures against Muslims or immigrants.
While some found it is easy to characterize the attack as a “terrorist attack” by a “radical Islamist”, that is at best a gross oversimplification, and in fact is very misleading if other factors are left out. It is true that the shooter himself tried to present it as being a terrorist attack on behalf of ISIS, and that he was a Muslim with a fundamentalist background. So to the extent that the shooter was motivated by his ideology and a genuine desire to aid ISIS in its war against the West (against everybody, really), then it was indeed a terrorist attack by a radical Islamist. But the evidence is that he was motivated by a number of things, some of which had nothing to do with ISIS. For one thing, it seems that he may not actually have been devoutly religious and may not even have known very much about the radical group he claimed to support. I’ve read that in his 911 call, aside from claiming allegiance to ISIS, he also claimed allegiance to Hezbollah. If so, that proves that he really was pretty clueless about the realities of Middle East politics, as Hezbollah is one of ISIS’s biggest enemies. Given that he was apparently mentally unstable and had a history of violence, it’s almost as if he was just randomly attaching himself to ISIS due to its notoriety, rather than any real dedication to its cause. In any case, the evidence indicates that unlike, for instance, the Charleston shootings, or the mass shooting in Norway some years back (both of which of course were committed by white males who were right wing extremists), this shooting was not solely and maybe not even mostly motivated by a definite, though twisted, political ideology.
One important fact that has to be kept in mind about the attack is that it targeted LGBT people, even though many Republicans managed to completely ignore this element of the attack in their reactions. Since the shooter seems to have been partly or even largely motivated by a hatred of gay people, this was unquestionably an anti-LGBT hate crime, whatever else it may have been. There are some indications that the shooter himself may have been secretly gay, in which case his inability to reconcile his true orientation with the homophobic ideology he had been raised under (his Afghan father, who immigrated to the US back when the Soviets were still in Afghanistan, is apparently a pro-Taliban fundamentalist) may been a major factor behind his mental problems and indeed may have been the biggest motivation for the attack. But while his own family background was that of an Islamic fundamentalist, it seems highly plausible that the anti-LGBT rhetoric that the right (mostly on the basis of a fundamentalist interpretation of Christianity) has been spouting recently over issues such as same sex marriage and transgender rights reinforced his negative attitude toward LGBT people (and, if he really had tendencies in that direction himself, accentuated his self-hatred. While short of discovering specific evidence that he was influenced by such rhetoric it may be impossible to prove that he wouldn’t have committed the same crime if the attitude toward LGBT people outside of his own religious background had been one of universal tolerance and love, it is at least safe to say that some of the negative stuff that has been said about LGBT people by politicians and media figures on the right didn’t help. In any case, the fact that he deliberately targeted LGBT people in a climate where a significant number of prominent people have been making anti-LGBT remarks is as important to understanding the event as the fact that he made a confused claim to be acting on behalf of ISIS.
The uncertain degree to which the shooter was influenced directly or indirectly by religious fundamentalism (whether of the Islamic or Christian varieties) aside, in some ways this incident had as much in common with the mass murders in Aurora or Newton as with more obviously political shootings like those committed by people like Roof and Breivik. As noted above, those were committed by people with a clear though demented ideology. In this case, the perpetrator was considerably less coherent in his political beliefs, but seemingly suffered from mental issues, as did the shooters in Aurora and Newton. Also like those shooters he was able to easily obtain a weapon that is designed to kill large numbers in a very short period of time. The truth is, even a weapon such as a handgun is more likely to end up causing injury or death to its owner or someone close to them as it is to be actually used in defense, but it is possible to see how someone could rationalize purchasing one, or how those who get pleasure out of shooting animals from a safe distance might be able to rationalize purchase of a hunting rifle, but there is no even remotely reasonable rationalization for allowing ordinary people to buy weapons like the ones used in these shootings. Only paranoid fantasists with a very questionable grasp on reality could seriously think that they will ever need one for a Rambo-like stand against an army of attackers. Anything that can fire that many rounds in that short a period should not be available for sale to anybody, period. What’s more, people with a clear history of violence, including domestic violence (the ex-wife of the shooter in this case has said he abused her frequently, though my recollection is that she didn’t ever press charges against him), serious mental illnesses or ties to terrorist groups (and that should include the worst of the extreme right wing groups based in the US itself) should not be allowed to buy any guns at all. To prevent this, of course, every single gun sale has to involve a background check that must be passed before the gun can change hands. While neither of these steps can guarantee that shootings like the one in Orlando won’t happen again, they will certainly make them less frequent. What’s more, the second step (universal background checks) will noticeably reduce the vastly greater number of deaths resulting from domestic violence or suicide. What is certain is that toning down the anti-LGBT rhetoric and, even more, actually doing something to make it harder for dangerous people to buy dangerous weapons will go a lot farther toward making the US a safer place than handwringing about ISIS or hostile measures against Muslims or immigrants.
Tuesday, May 31, 2016
What I've Been Reading: A Political Autobiography (Late 2015 to Early 2016)
Not only have I gotten behind on my reading lately; I've also gotten behind in writing about the few books I've managed to read. This is a small step towards getting caught up, but only a small step, because in this entry I only cover one book. I originally intended to cover all the books I finished in the first few months of this year, but due to this particular book's current relevance, I decided to talk about it at some length and save the books I finished more recently for a future post.
Living History by Hillary Clinton
This, of course, is Hillary Rodham Clinton’s autobiography, covering her life from her childhood to a little after the end of her husband Bill Clinton’s second term as US president and her own election as US senator from the state of New York. Given that she has a better than even chance of becoming US president herself after the next election, it seemed like a good time to find out more about her from her own perspective (to be sure, when I read the book at the beginning of the year the presidential race was still packed with candidates, but despite Bernie Sanders’s impressive performance and the train wreck on the Republican side, Hillary has remained the candidate with the best chance of winning pretty much throughout). I can’t say that the book dramatically changed my views of her, either for better or for worse, but it was informative nonetheless.
Unsurprisingly, I couldn’t resist comparing Hillary’s autobiography to the book written by the man she wants to succeed. Based on these two books alone, he is a much better writer and his story is much more colorful. This isn’t to say she’s a bad writer (or rather she and her co-writers, as she had three ghostwriters help on her book) or that her story wasn’t interesting, just that where she is competent, he is brilliant. In a way, this reflects one of the biggest problems that has plagued her in her political career; she has a great grasp of details and is good at explaining things, but she has difficulty generating inspiration. However, as I have noted before, in governance if not in literature, inspiration isn’t everything, and in some ways it’s more important that a president be competent than that they be inspirational. Anyway, it’s not really a fair comparison. Hillary’s is a solid political biography, whereas Obama’s book is really literature, the sort of life story that would be considered an excellent book even if the person who wrote hadn’t gone on to become president of the United States. What’s more, when he wrote it, even he probably didn’t have any definite ambitions on the national political stage, as he hadn’t begun his political career. In other words, Obama was not writing as a politician who has to watch every word lest it damage his future prospects. Hillary, on the other hand, was, and the difference is readily apparent.
Despite the success of the American right wing in painting Hillary as fundamentally dishonest, her account for the most part rings true. The story of her mother, though told very briefly, is particularly interesting, as is her account of her own evolution from young Republican to Democrat. This particular part of her background has become a club for some on the left to beat her with, as they like to cite her admission that in high school she was a “Goldwater girl”. Having undergone a similar political evolution I find such attacks absurd, especially since someone who has proved open minded enough to change their views through a rational comparison of the different sides is in fact rather more convincing than someone who has been a true believer all their lives. A more legitimate angle for criticism is that in describing the period of Bill Clinton’s governorship and presidency, she expresses support for many of the problematic centrist positions he supported. However, even here there are some points that her critics seem to miss. For instance, in talking about the various welfare reform bills, she says that she told Bill and his staff that if the bill was too harsh, she would publicly oppose it. In the end, the final bill that came out of the Republican Congress had enough protections for the most disadvantaged to satisfy her, so she didn’t oppose it, but that was only after Bill had rejected more draconian proposals. Granted, it came be fairly argued that the bill that passed was still far too harsh, and Bill and to a lesser extent Hillary can be faulted for going along with it. What’s more, those who insist that she is untruthful may not accept her assertion that she pushed behind the scenes for a moderate bill. But while the first point is reasonable, the second is not, as her account is consistent with the rest of her record, even if it to a certain degree punctures the view of her as bearing major responsibility for the negative aspects of welfare reform.
While at times she seems to take pains to portray herself a pragmatic centrist, providing ammunition for her progressive critics, she also makes clear her advocacy for a number of progressive positions, from improving the status of women to protecting the environment. I also appreciated her positive remarks about the Dalai Lama and her account of confronting Jiang Zemin, then president of China, on the issue of Tibet. On a less serious note, the book constantly brought to mind her appearance on The Colbert Show, which amusingly poked fun at her tendency to drop names. Though they were talking about her book about her time as US secretary of state, in this book she also seems to make an effort to mention almost everyone who crossed her path, famous or otherwise. In most cases, she also makes an effort to say something positive about them, though there are several notable exceptions. While she praises Dick Morris’s political skills and says she encouraged Bill to consult him, she also acknowledges that he worked both sides of the political aisle and that he has “the people skills of a porcupine”. Unsurprisingly, she has nothing good to say about Kenneth Starr and her comments about Newt Gingrich are largely negative. I share her views about Starr and Gingrich, but while I can appreciate her inclination to otherwise follow that old rule “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all”, especially if you are in politics, in retrospect she might have been wiser to, for example, more strongly emphasize the autocratic nature of Hosni Mubarak’s rule in Egypt as a counterpoint to her more positive remarks about him. Likewise, her relationships with people like Mark Penn and Rahm Emmanuel don’t look so good in retrospect. But all in all, given that she knew everything she wrote would be gone over for intemperate remarks that could be used against her, the caution that governs much of what she says about people is understandable.
Despite the cautious nature of most of her account, all the more inevitable given her personality and her political ambitions, Hillary still manages to get in flashes of the personal. Her stories of her childhood and college years give a revealing look at her background. Her discussions of some of the troubles she got into on the couple’s first political campaign are candid and occasionally show flashes of humor. Her defenses against the attacks launched against her and her husband, both during the campaign and during her husband's presidency, are generally quite credible, not surprisingly considering the outrageous nature of some of the attacks. Even at the time, it was clear to me that Whitewater, for instance, was much ado about nothing, and the partisan nature of Starr’s “investigations” (or, rather, desperate digging for the least little thing that could be used against the Clintons) were obvious to anyone with an ounce of objectivity. Certainly anyone who thinks there is anything to the “scandals” the right wing attacked Hillary and her husband for should read her account of them, and those who have acquired a vaguely negative view of her in general might find themselves seeing things differently after reading her book. While the dyed-in-the-wool Hillary haters will not believe anything she says, and even those on the left who dislike her will find as much to confirm their views of her as to contradict them, those who are more open minded but less knowledgeable about her are likely to emerge from the book with a picture of her as a person who, despite some missteps and occasional questionable viewpoints, is extremely talented and knowledgeable, and who has come through a lot of political fire to get where she is today. While the book is unlikely to convince readers that she’ll be an inspirational president who will institute dramatic changes, it may help persuade them that she would at least be a solidly competent one who will in general move things in the right direction, which is enough to make her vastly preferable to the potential disaster that her prospective opponent represents.
Living History by Hillary Clinton
This, of course, is Hillary Rodham Clinton’s autobiography, covering her life from her childhood to a little after the end of her husband Bill Clinton’s second term as US president and her own election as US senator from the state of New York. Given that she has a better than even chance of becoming US president herself after the next election, it seemed like a good time to find out more about her from her own perspective (to be sure, when I read the book at the beginning of the year the presidential race was still packed with candidates, but despite Bernie Sanders’s impressive performance and the train wreck on the Republican side, Hillary has remained the candidate with the best chance of winning pretty much throughout). I can’t say that the book dramatically changed my views of her, either for better or for worse, but it was informative nonetheless.
Unsurprisingly, I couldn’t resist comparing Hillary’s autobiography to the book written by the man she wants to succeed. Based on these two books alone, he is a much better writer and his story is much more colorful. This isn’t to say she’s a bad writer (or rather she and her co-writers, as she had three ghostwriters help on her book) or that her story wasn’t interesting, just that where she is competent, he is brilliant. In a way, this reflects one of the biggest problems that has plagued her in her political career; she has a great grasp of details and is good at explaining things, but she has difficulty generating inspiration. However, as I have noted before, in governance if not in literature, inspiration isn’t everything, and in some ways it’s more important that a president be competent than that they be inspirational. Anyway, it’s not really a fair comparison. Hillary’s is a solid political biography, whereas Obama’s book is really literature, the sort of life story that would be considered an excellent book even if the person who wrote hadn’t gone on to become president of the United States. What’s more, when he wrote it, even he probably didn’t have any definite ambitions on the national political stage, as he hadn’t begun his political career. In other words, Obama was not writing as a politician who has to watch every word lest it damage his future prospects. Hillary, on the other hand, was, and the difference is readily apparent.
Despite the success of the American right wing in painting Hillary as fundamentally dishonest, her account for the most part rings true. The story of her mother, though told very briefly, is particularly interesting, as is her account of her own evolution from young Republican to Democrat. This particular part of her background has become a club for some on the left to beat her with, as they like to cite her admission that in high school she was a “Goldwater girl”. Having undergone a similar political evolution I find such attacks absurd, especially since someone who has proved open minded enough to change their views through a rational comparison of the different sides is in fact rather more convincing than someone who has been a true believer all their lives. A more legitimate angle for criticism is that in describing the period of Bill Clinton’s governorship and presidency, she expresses support for many of the problematic centrist positions he supported. However, even here there are some points that her critics seem to miss. For instance, in talking about the various welfare reform bills, she says that she told Bill and his staff that if the bill was too harsh, she would publicly oppose it. In the end, the final bill that came out of the Republican Congress had enough protections for the most disadvantaged to satisfy her, so she didn’t oppose it, but that was only after Bill had rejected more draconian proposals. Granted, it came be fairly argued that the bill that passed was still far too harsh, and Bill and to a lesser extent Hillary can be faulted for going along with it. What’s more, those who insist that she is untruthful may not accept her assertion that she pushed behind the scenes for a moderate bill. But while the first point is reasonable, the second is not, as her account is consistent with the rest of her record, even if it to a certain degree punctures the view of her as bearing major responsibility for the negative aspects of welfare reform.
While at times she seems to take pains to portray herself a pragmatic centrist, providing ammunition for her progressive critics, she also makes clear her advocacy for a number of progressive positions, from improving the status of women to protecting the environment. I also appreciated her positive remarks about the Dalai Lama and her account of confronting Jiang Zemin, then president of China, on the issue of Tibet. On a less serious note, the book constantly brought to mind her appearance on The Colbert Show, which amusingly poked fun at her tendency to drop names. Though they were talking about her book about her time as US secretary of state, in this book she also seems to make an effort to mention almost everyone who crossed her path, famous or otherwise. In most cases, she also makes an effort to say something positive about them, though there are several notable exceptions. While she praises Dick Morris’s political skills and says she encouraged Bill to consult him, she also acknowledges that he worked both sides of the political aisle and that he has “the people skills of a porcupine”. Unsurprisingly, she has nothing good to say about Kenneth Starr and her comments about Newt Gingrich are largely negative. I share her views about Starr and Gingrich, but while I can appreciate her inclination to otherwise follow that old rule “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all”, especially if you are in politics, in retrospect she might have been wiser to, for example, more strongly emphasize the autocratic nature of Hosni Mubarak’s rule in Egypt as a counterpoint to her more positive remarks about him. Likewise, her relationships with people like Mark Penn and Rahm Emmanuel don’t look so good in retrospect. But all in all, given that she knew everything she wrote would be gone over for intemperate remarks that could be used against her, the caution that governs much of what she says about people is understandable.
Despite the cautious nature of most of her account, all the more inevitable given her personality and her political ambitions, Hillary still manages to get in flashes of the personal. Her stories of her childhood and college years give a revealing look at her background. Her discussions of some of the troubles she got into on the couple’s first political campaign are candid and occasionally show flashes of humor. Her defenses against the attacks launched against her and her husband, both during the campaign and during her husband's presidency, are generally quite credible, not surprisingly considering the outrageous nature of some of the attacks. Even at the time, it was clear to me that Whitewater, for instance, was much ado about nothing, and the partisan nature of Starr’s “investigations” (or, rather, desperate digging for the least little thing that could be used against the Clintons) were obvious to anyone with an ounce of objectivity. Certainly anyone who thinks there is anything to the “scandals” the right wing attacked Hillary and her husband for should read her account of them, and those who have acquired a vaguely negative view of her in general might find themselves seeing things differently after reading her book. While the dyed-in-the-wool Hillary haters will not believe anything she says, and even those on the left who dislike her will find as much to confirm their views of her as to contradict them, those who are more open minded but less knowledgeable about her are likely to emerge from the book with a picture of her as a person who, despite some missteps and occasional questionable viewpoints, is extremely talented and knowledgeable, and who has come through a lot of political fire to get where she is today. While the book is unlikely to convince readers that she’ll be an inspirational president who will institute dramatic changes, it may help persuade them that she would at least be a solidly competent one who will in general move things in the right direction, which is enough to make her vastly preferable to the potential disaster that her prospective opponent represents.
Thursday, May 19, 2016
Political News from the US, the Philippines and Taiwan, Plus More Planet Discoveries
In the last few weeks, there have been quite a few interesting news items, some good, some not so good, but all worthy of talking about in some depth. Unfortunately, I’ve been too busy lately to do a lot of writing, so for now I’ll settle for a few quick comments on some of them.
In the US, it looks more and more like the US presidential election is going to come down to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump (aka Donald Drumpf). While Bernie Sanders is still in the race, looking at the math it is highly improbable that he could end up winning a majority of the pledged delegates, and if Clinton ends up with a majority of the pledged delegates (as she is almost certain to do), there is no reason for any of the superdelegates who support Clinton to change sides, and no justification for protests by Sanders supporters that the establishment (in the form of the superdelegates) somehow stole the nomination for Sanders. I do think Sanders should stay in the race until the primaries are over, but I hope he and his campaign will focus on policies, rather than attacking Clinton, and I hope Clinton will make an effort to win over Sanders’s followers (the open-minded ones at least) by taking even more strongly progressive stands. As for how Clinton compares to Trump, I’ve addressed the question some in previous posts, and I will no doubt do so again. But to put it succinctly, anyone who thinks that, whatever Clinton’s real or imagined flaws, Trump would be in any way a better president for anyone inside or outside the US other than Trump himself and a very narrow group of other people (e.g., those who would rather see the country collapse and the Earth overheat than have to live near Muslims, undocumented people or other “undesirables”) is either ignorant, delusional, somewhat lacking in intellectual capacity or, in the most charitable interpretation possible, not thinking clearly. Trump would be a disaster, and Clinton would be at worst adequate and possibly even excellent.
Speaking of terrible presidential candidates, the Philippines not only managed to elect one, but did so in a landslide. Former Davos city mayor Rodrigo Duterte is supposedly a socialist, so his economic policies at least shouldn’t blatantly favor the elite, but his complete and open disregard for human rights and the rule of law is appalling. He claims he will wipe out crime through summary execution of criminals (he claims to prefer hanging them), and considering his seeming support for virtual death squads as mayor, he is likely to at least try to do what he has said, no matter how many innocent people get killed by “mistake”. Then there was his utterly appalling rape joke, which alone should have been enough to turn off most reasonable voters. He even aimed a crude insult at Pope Francis. It’s no wonder he has been compared to Trump. Unfortunately, the Philippines is now stuck with him. While it’s tempting to say that they deserve him because they elected him, there were plenty of Filipinos who didn’t vote for him, and even some of those who did may come to regret it. Unfortunately, tough talk appeals to a lot of people, especially those who want simple solutions to complex problems – here in Taiwan that has manifested in the form of bizarre statements by all sorts of people in support of the death penalty, such as asserting that executing one particular criminal will somehow prevent random killings in the future, despite there being no evidence that the death penalty in general (let alone a single execution) has a significant deterrent effect.
Meanwhile in Taiwan, we're finally getting a new President, as Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party is taking office four months after her landslide election victory. This will be the first time since Japanese rule ended in 1945 that the KMT (the Kuomintang, i.e., the Chinese Nationalist Party that fled to Taiwan after losing power in China) controls neither the presidency or the legislature, as during the previous DPP administration of Chen Shui-bian, the KMT held a solid majority in the legislature, whereas this time the DPP won a solid majority. Of course China is not happy about this, since the DPP is more inclined to stand up to them on sovereignty issues, but hopefully Tsai will not bow to the pressure China is already attempting to exert. In any case, while it's fair to expect some improvement under Tsai, outside groups still have to keep an eye on the DPP to make sure it remains responsive to the public.
A more unequivocally positive piece of news was the announcement of 1284 new exoplanet discoveries. While we still haven’t found a true twin of Earth (i.e. a planet with a size and mass very similar to Earth’s orbiting a star like the Sun at a distance similar to that of Earth’s distance from the Sun), in part because the methods used make detecting such a planet difficult, we are finding more and more planets that are comparable to Earth, and some that at least theoretically could be habitable by life as we know it. What’s particularly amazing is the Kepler telescope that has made these discoveries focused on what it actually a very small slice of the Milky Way galaxy, so the actual number of planets in the entire galaxy is vastly greater. It’s easy to forget how truly huge the galaxy is. The number of stars that Kepler observed for evidence of planets is a tiny fraction of the total number in the Milky Way, and from what I can tell, even some of these parent stars of the newly discovered planets had never been specifically catalogued, despite the fact that they are for the most part relatively near to us (relatively being a key word here, as the distances are still vast). The huge number of stars in the galaxy, not to mention the huge number of galaxies in the universe, is why I am pretty sure that there is certainly some form of alien life out there somewhere. The problem, as I have observed in the past, is that intelligent life capable of creating a technological civilization (and not destroying it again relatively quickly through environmental degradation, war, or some other means) may still be extremely rare, and given the distances involved, our closest neighbors of that sort may be too far for us to find them anytime in the immediate future. But just by searching we will learn a lot, and I suspect that in the next half century or so we’ll at least have found strong evidence of life (though not necessarily intelligent life) on planets beyond our Solar System. That at least will be some consolation if things are not going well here – though we should do our best to ensure that is not the case, by preventing the Trumps and Dutertes of the world from getting too much power.
Saturday, April 30, 2016
Andrew Jackson and Evaluating Historical and Political Figures
Not long ago, the US Treasury Department announced that in the upcoming redesign of the US$20 dollar bill, African-American anti-slavery activist Harriet Tubman will replace former US President Andrew Jackson on the front of the bill, though Jackson will apparently appear on the back. This follows years of activism with the goal of getting a woman on the front of at least one US bill, an area hitherto dominated solely by white men. A few years ago, the US Treasury suggested that they would put a woman on the US$10, replacing Alexander Hamilton, but this met with a lukewarm response, largely because many felt that on the one hand Hamilton, as the first Treasury Secretary and the primary architect behind the establishment of the federal banking system, was relatively deserving of his place, while Jackson was not, in part because he had complete disdain for the federal banking system, but also because of his record in other areas. Thus, further pressure led to the current proposal. Inevitably, there are still some people who are dissatisfied. Some conservatives are insisting that Jackson was a great president and deserves to remain on the front of the bill, while others say he should be removed entirely. Like the recent debate at Princeton over the record of President Woodrow Wilson, whose name is on one of the schools there, this all comes down to the difficult task of judging a historical figure – or for that matter a contemporary one – as “good” or “bad” based on their record. This is something I’ve talked about before, but it’s worth going over again, as it relates not only to how we view history but how we look at present day political figures, such as candidates for office.
Defenders of Jackson point to his positive accomplishments, such as defeating the British in the Battle of New Orleans at the end of the War of 1812, or making US presidential elections more democratic. They respond to criticism of the bad things Jackson did, such as his violent treatment of Native Americans, by saying he was a man of his times, and since many others at that time believed or even acted in ways similar to him, we shouldn’t judge him by today’s standards. This is similar to the defense offered for Woodrow Wilson’s pro-segregation actions as president. They observe that most, if not all, historical figures were complex people who combined great virtues with major flaws and that it is not fair to expect those who are honored by various monuments to have been perfect.
There is some merit in these arguments. It is certainly true that no one is perfect, and if we were only to honor people who never committed a morally questionable act then we’d end up honoring no one at all. I’d also agree that people should for the most part be judged against the standards of their times. For instance, slavery was not only widespread in the early United States but also in many societies throughout history. Slavery was common in ancient Greece and Rome, with Aristotle explicitly justifying it (by what seems today a specious argument that some people were inherently suited to be slaves). According to the Torah, even the mythical father of the Jewish nation, Abraham, owned a slave who he also had children by (how willing a participant she was isn’t not clearly stated). So the mere fact that a historical figure owned slaves is not alone grounds for saying they are not worth of being honored. Likewise, strong prejudice against other ethnic or religious groups was virtually universal in many past societies, as was the opinion that woman were inferior to men. Attitudes that seem reprehensible to us were often held by people who otherwise seem wise and just. I recently finished reading Ammianus Marcellinus’s history of the late Roman Empire, and while Ammianus was clearly bothered by injustice and was able to take a fairly objective view even of groups he didn’t belong to (for instance, despite being a pagan and a great admirer of Julian, the last pagan emperor, he criticizes Julian for barring Christians from teaching rhetoric), he also made negative comments about Jews and homosexuality. He attacks the shortsighted Roman officials who mistreated the Goths who had taken refuge in the Empire after their lands were invaded by the Huns, and yet after the Goths rebelled (eventually killing the emperor Valens and wiping out his army at Adrianopole), he praises a Roman leader in the East who took the precaution of massacring all the Goths serving in the eastern armies. It seems likely that not only would Ammianus not have thought Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s internment of Japanese-Americans to be wrong, he might even have considered it too mild. Nevertheless, for his time, Amminanus was probably a fairly decent person.
It’s not even quite fair to use the fact that a few people in the society in question recognized the injustice of some contemporary institution to condemn all those who did not. For instance, just because a few people in colonial America realized that slavery was inherently wrong and that people of African descent were fully equal to Europeans is not necessarily reason to consider all their contemporaries who failed to see the same thing to be evil. It would be more reasonable to say those that those few were ahead of their time in reaching an insight that eluded their fellows. What seems obvious to us was not necessarily obvious to people raised in a society where racism, like sexism, was pervasive. It takes an especially insightful person to break free of ideas that they have absorbed and been surrounded by all their lives, especially when there are few if any people around them challenging those beliefs.
On the other hand, judging people by the standards of their times does not mean excusing or whitewashing their bad deeds, even if they did not know how wrong they were. And many historical leaders including Wilson and especially Jackson, committed acts that were reprehensible even by the standards of their times. Wilson didn’t merely conform to the racist attitudes of his contemporaries; he was clearly more racist than many other political leaders of his time. He imposed segregation on the civil service where it had not existed before, actually taking things backwards. As for Jackson, his violent temper was notorious even in his own day, as was his greed in seizing vast tracts of land for himself and his friends, and his bloody slaughters of the Native Americans, by our standards genocidal, were extreme even in comparison with the generally terrible treatment of the natives by the white Americans of the time.
In other words, even when the standards of a previous era or culture included beliefs and prejudices that we now know to be wrong, it is still possible to judge people of the time in a relative sense, and in many cases to reach the conclusion that this or that historical figure was, overall, a bad person. Of course even the most horrible person is bound to have a few good points, and the best will still have flaws. So of course it would be possible for someone to list negative things about Harriet Tubman, just as people arguing for or against Jackson will list his virtues or his flaws. But to reach a truly balanced judgment, we have to, as much as possible, consider both their good deeds and their bad ones. The problem is that there is a tendency for people (even many historians, particularly in the past), to categorize a historical figure as a hero or a villain, and then to play up their virtues while minimizing their flaws or vice versa. To judge anyone fairly, we have to look at both sides. However, in some cases, even when looking at both positives and negatives, it is not hard to reach a conclusion in one direction or another. In the case of Andrew Jackson, for example, the bad things he did were so numerous and so awful that it is difficult to argue that the good things he did could possibly outweigh them. This doesn’t mean that we should erase him from our history books or ignore his good deeds. But since being placed on a bill is a highly exclusive honor that only a few people receive, there are clearly many Americans far more deserving than Jackson.
Still, while it is not hard to conclude that someone like Andrew Jackson was bad enough to be undeserving of a special honor like a place on the currency, or that the dictator Chiang Kai-shek shouldn’t have a massive memorial hall in his name in central Taipei, we still should resist easy characterization of any individual in history as a flawless hero or a thorough villain. Instead, we should look at all of them as objectively as possible, taking care to look at both positives and negatives, at least as far as we are aware of them. This applies to current political figures as well. For example, we have to acknowledge that Donald Trump (or Drumpf, as I call him) has occasionally gotten some things right, such being the only Republican candidate to say Planned Parenthood did some good work, or saying that he would try to be a neutral mediator between Israel and the Palestinians, or condemning North Carolina’s ridiculous bathroom bill. But even if he hadn’t backtracked on some of those statements, the things he’s gotten right cannot begin to make up for the worst things he’s said, not to mention his ignorance and awful judgment on a wide variety of subjects, from President Barack Obama’s birthplace to foreign policy. In other words, his good points can’t begin to make up for his bad ones, at least when it comes to whether he would be acceptable as US president. Clearly he is completely unqualified for that position, even if he sometimes manages to get things right.
Conversely, some people on the left seem to focus entirely on the worst things Hillary Clinton has done, to the point where some will make the absurd claim that she’s no better than a Republican. For example, practically the only vote she made as a US senator that they talk about is the one authorizing President George W. Bush to use force against Iraq. That vote was certainly a mistake, as Clinton herself has admitted, but she was far from the only Democrat who voted that way at the time. Her overall voting record was in fact quite progressive, even more so than both Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Likewise, they cite her worst policy positions, ignoring the many areas where she is as progressive as Bernie Sanders (or even more so, in the case of gun control). While of course Clinton could be better on numerous issues, an objective assessment of her record shows that she would be at least as progressive as Obama overall. Even if that’s not good enough (and there are some on the left who are not big fans of Obama), what really matters is that in a side-by-side comparison, Clinton is vastly – and I mean vastly – superior to Drumpf or any other character that the Republicans might try to foist on their base in Drumpf’s place. The idea that there is no substantial difference between Clinton and the Republicans is absurd beyond belief, and yet by focusing entirely on the worst aspects of Clinton’s record and ignoring the rest, some people apparently have convinced themselves that it is true, just as some have managed to convince themselves that Drumpf wouldn’t be so bad. In reality, when judging candidates for office, as when judging historical figures, we have to look at both the good and the bad, and remember that with human beings, as with pretty much everything, there are no absolutes. No one is completely virtuous or thoroughly evil, but by looking as objectively as possible at someone’s overall record, we can judge whether they are worthy of being honored – or being elected to office.
Defenders of Jackson point to his positive accomplishments, such as defeating the British in the Battle of New Orleans at the end of the War of 1812, or making US presidential elections more democratic. They respond to criticism of the bad things Jackson did, such as his violent treatment of Native Americans, by saying he was a man of his times, and since many others at that time believed or even acted in ways similar to him, we shouldn’t judge him by today’s standards. This is similar to the defense offered for Woodrow Wilson’s pro-segregation actions as president. They observe that most, if not all, historical figures were complex people who combined great virtues with major flaws and that it is not fair to expect those who are honored by various monuments to have been perfect.
There is some merit in these arguments. It is certainly true that no one is perfect, and if we were only to honor people who never committed a morally questionable act then we’d end up honoring no one at all. I’d also agree that people should for the most part be judged against the standards of their times. For instance, slavery was not only widespread in the early United States but also in many societies throughout history. Slavery was common in ancient Greece and Rome, with Aristotle explicitly justifying it (by what seems today a specious argument that some people were inherently suited to be slaves). According to the Torah, even the mythical father of the Jewish nation, Abraham, owned a slave who he also had children by (how willing a participant she was isn’t not clearly stated). So the mere fact that a historical figure owned slaves is not alone grounds for saying they are not worth of being honored. Likewise, strong prejudice against other ethnic or religious groups was virtually universal in many past societies, as was the opinion that woman were inferior to men. Attitudes that seem reprehensible to us were often held by people who otherwise seem wise and just. I recently finished reading Ammianus Marcellinus’s history of the late Roman Empire, and while Ammianus was clearly bothered by injustice and was able to take a fairly objective view even of groups he didn’t belong to (for instance, despite being a pagan and a great admirer of Julian, the last pagan emperor, he criticizes Julian for barring Christians from teaching rhetoric), he also made negative comments about Jews and homosexuality. He attacks the shortsighted Roman officials who mistreated the Goths who had taken refuge in the Empire after their lands were invaded by the Huns, and yet after the Goths rebelled (eventually killing the emperor Valens and wiping out his army at Adrianopole), he praises a Roman leader in the East who took the precaution of massacring all the Goths serving in the eastern armies. It seems likely that not only would Ammianus not have thought Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s internment of Japanese-Americans to be wrong, he might even have considered it too mild. Nevertheless, for his time, Amminanus was probably a fairly decent person.
It’s not even quite fair to use the fact that a few people in the society in question recognized the injustice of some contemporary institution to condemn all those who did not. For instance, just because a few people in colonial America realized that slavery was inherently wrong and that people of African descent were fully equal to Europeans is not necessarily reason to consider all their contemporaries who failed to see the same thing to be evil. It would be more reasonable to say those that those few were ahead of their time in reaching an insight that eluded their fellows. What seems obvious to us was not necessarily obvious to people raised in a society where racism, like sexism, was pervasive. It takes an especially insightful person to break free of ideas that they have absorbed and been surrounded by all their lives, especially when there are few if any people around them challenging those beliefs.
On the other hand, judging people by the standards of their times does not mean excusing or whitewashing their bad deeds, even if they did not know how wrong they were. And many historical leaders including Wilson and especially Jackson, committed acts that were reprehensible even by the standards of their times. Wilson didn’t merely conform to the racist attitudes of his contemporaries; he was clearly more racist than many other political leaders of his time. He imposed segregation on the civil service where it had not existed before, actually taking things backwards. As for Jackson, his violent temper was notorious even in his own day, as was his greed in seizing vast tracts of land for himself and his friends, and his bloody slaughters of the Native Americans, by our standards genocidal, were extreme even in comparison with the generally terrible treatment of the natives by the white Americans of the time.
In other words, even when the standards of a previous era or culture included beliefs and prejudices that we now know to be wrong, it is still possible to judge people of the time in a relative sense, and in many cases to reach the conclusion that this or that historical figure was, overall, a bad person. Of course even the most horrible person is bound to have a few good points, and the best will still have flaws. So of course it would be possible for someone to list negative things about Harriet Tubman, just as people arguing for or against Jackson will list his virtues or his flaws. But to reach a truly balanced judgment, we have to, as much as possible, consider both their good deeds and their bad ones. The problem is that there is a tendency for people (even many historians, particularly in the past), to categorize a historical figure as a hero or a villain, and then to play up their virtues while minimizing their flaws or vice versa. To judge anyone fairly, we have to look at both sides. However, in some cases, even when looking at both positives and negatives, it is not hard to reach a conclusion in one direction or another. In the case of Andrew Jackson, for example, the bad things he did were so numerous and so awful that it is difficult to argue that the good things he did could possibly outweigh them. This doesn’t mean that we should erase him from our history books or ignore his good deeds. But since being placed on a bill is a highly exclusive honor that only a few people receive, there are clearly many Americans far more deserving than Jackson.
Still, while it is not hard to conclude that someone like Andrew Jackson was bad enough to be undeserving of a special honor like a place on the currency, or that the dictator Chiang Kai-shek shouldn’t have a massive memorial hall in his name in central Taipei, we still should resist easy characterization of any individual in history as a flawless hero or a thorough villain. Instead, we should look at all of them as objectively as possible, taking care to look at both positives and negatives, at least as far as we are aware of them. This applies to current political figures as well. For example, we have to acknowledge that Donald Trump (or Drumpf, as I call him) has occasionally gotten some things right, such being the only Republican candidate to say Planned Parenthood did some good work, or saying that he would try to be a neutral mediator between Israel and the Palestinians, or condemning North Carolina’s ridiculous bathroom bill. But even if he hadn’t backtracked on some of those statements, the things he’s gotten right cannot begin to make up for the worst things he’s said, not to mention his ignorance and awful judgment on a wide variety of subjects, from President Barack Obama’s birthplace to foreign policy. In other words, his good points can’t begin to make up for his bad ones, at least when it comes to whether he would be acceptable as US president. Clearly he is completely unqualified for that position, even if he sometimes manages to get things right.
Conversely, some people on the left seem to focus entirely on the worst things Hillary Clinton has done, to the point where some will make the absurd claim that she’s no better than a Republican. For example, practically the only vote she made as a US senator that they talk about is the one authorizing President George W. Bush to use force against Iraq. That vote was certainly a mistake, as Clinton herself has admitted, but she was far from the only Democrat who voted that way at the time. Her overall voting record was in fact quite progressive, even more so than both Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Likewise, they cite her worst policy positions, ignoring the many areas where she is as progressive as Bernie Sanders (or even more so, in the case of gun control). While of course Clinton could be better on numerous issues, an objective assessment of her record shows that she would be at least as progressive as Obama overall. Even if that’s not good enough (and there are some on the left who are not big fans of Obama), what really matters is that in a side-by-side comparison, Clinton is vastly – and I mean vastly – superior to Drumpf or any other character that the Republicans might try to foist on their base in Drumpf’s place. The idea that there is no substantial difference between Clinton and the Republicans is absurd beyond belief, and yet by focusing entirely on the worst aspects of Clinton’s record and ignoring the rest, some people apparently have convinced themselves that it is true, just as some have managed to convince themselves that Drumpf wouldn’t be so bad. In reality, when judging candidates for office, as when judging historical figures, we have to look at both the good and the bad, and remember that with human beings, as with pretty much everything, there are no absolutes. No one is completely virtuous or thoroughly evil, but by looking as objectively as possible at someone’s overall record, we can judge whether they are worthy of being honored – or being elected to office.
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