In Which TERROR! TERROR! TRUMP! and--If You Stick Around to the End--a Nice Palate Cleanser

For the record, the front page, above-the-fold story in today's New York Times chronicled the terrorist attack on a hotel in Mali.  So, progress?

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In other-ish news, members and supporters of Al Qaeda and ISIS are squabbling like Republicans and Democrats over which political party is superior.  ISIS murders dozens in Paris, and Al Qaeda jeers the indiscriminate nature of the attacks; Al Qaeda, showing infinitely more restraint and decorum, attempts to weed out Muslims in its Mali killing spree, and no doubt ISIS rolls its collective eyes at the resulting minimized body count: Only twenty-something killed?  You call that jihad? The bickering has reached such a point that one disgusted supporter tweeted a plaintive, can't-we-all-just-get-along message: “I just wish we could all be brothers again&not argue."

Boys, boys, no need to fight: You're both a bunch of sociopathic barbarians.

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Speaking of sociopaths, Donald Trump is sort of backing off his call to create a national registry for Muslims.  I don't see why.  Sounds perfectly reasonable.  I mean, what could possibly go wrong?  We could keep it simple, too: Maybe just a little yellow crescent moon patch on the sleeve?

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Finally, let's end on a pleasant note.  I just saw this commercial for Campbell's soup.  I guess it's been out for awhile, but this is the first time I'd seen it--such are the perils of DVR'ing everything and fast-forwarding through commercials.  Anyway, in the ad, two men take turns feeding soup to a toddler.  As the first man brings the soup to the child's lips, he does his best Darth Vader interpretation, "Cooper, I AM your father."  Then, the second man, also Vadering, says, "No, Cooper, I am your father."  The image of an attractive gay couple raising an adorable child--and quoting "Star Wars," no less!--has predictably angered right-wing bluenoses, such as the activist "Million Moms" group, who fear the ad "normalizes" such an abhorrent lifestyle.  Relax, Moms!  The ad never explicitly states that the men are a gay couple: For all we know, the baby was conceived during a drunken three-way with the kid's coked out mother.

I'm here to help.

But I personally choose to think the ad does, in fact, "normalize" what to me has been perfectly normal for quite some time: The fact that same-sex couples are just as capable of being loving (if incredibly dorky) parents as their heterosexual counterparts.  And maybe this commercial will help some people reach the same conclusion.  So, progress.


I assume we are meant to conclude that this is a gay couple raising a child, and not that the child is the product of a drunken three-way. 

In Which We Experience 'That Moment When. . . '

People respond to tragedy in various ways.  The Eiffel Tower forms the peace sign's inverted 'V' in countless Facebook profile pictures, while in others the picture remains as it was before the events of November 13, only now superimposed by a ghostly tricolor.  #PrayforParis is a popular hashtag.  Whatever helps.

Less benign, though, are those status updates that chastise people for the apparent hypocrisy in condemning the French attacks while remaining silent about (if not ignorant of) similar attacks in other parts of the world.  They question why people pray for Paris but not Beirut, which suffered a major terrorist attack just one day earlier.  They ascribe to callousness the Western world's lack of sufficient grief at an attack on a university in Kenya--which seems somewhat off-topic, as the event in question happened some six months ago and was, as I recall, covered quite extensively by any number of news outlets.  But these people do certainly have a point: Western media in general devote exponentially more coverage to terrorist attacks against "First World" nations like France than they do to similar carnage in poorer places like Lebanon.  I guess my question is, And so?

Don't get me wrong: Any victims of terrorism deserve outpourings of sympathy; any bloodthirsty zealots spilling innocent blood in the name of delusional causes deserve scorn.  The French don't matter more than the Lebanese (or the Kenyan or the Chinese or the Australian).  But there are any number of reasons why the American news media would focus more on what happens in France than on what happens in Beirut.  Let's be honest: Walk up to a typical American--a good-hearted, caring, American--and say, "A terrorist attack just killed over 100 people in Lebanon," and that good-hearted person says, "Oh my God!  That's horrible!"  Walk up to that same American and say, "A terrorist attack just killed over 100 people in Paris," and that same good-hearted person says, "Oh my God!  That's horrible!  What happened?  Tell me what happened!"

Is that right?  Fair?  Equitable?  Maybe not.  But it is human: We identify with people who are "like" us.  The "typical" American--for better or worse--identifies more with France than with Lebanon or with Kenya.  It doesn't mean we don't care.  And frankly, the time to point out people's supposed "hypocrisy"--if, that is, you want to encourage more openheartedness--is not when those people are feeling understandably traumatized.  "Your buddy just died in a car crash?  Well, sure, that's sad, but what about the two-hundred civilians killed by Syrian airstrikes yesterday?  Why aren't you crying for them?!?"

Back in July, Martin O'Malley, the former governor of Maryland, elicited scorn when, in response to the activist "Black Lives Matter" movement protesting police brutality against African-Americans, he remarked that "All lives matter."  While the comment is undoubtedly right in a literal sense, it reflected a certain tone-deafness to the protesters' concerns.  Of course all lives matter, but that wasn't the point at that moment for that audience: People who were processing traumatic events and expressing their grief and outrage about those events.  I wonder if those expressing dismay at the lack of coverage of terrorism in Beirut, people whose general worldviews most likely mirror those of O'Malley's critics, realize that they just all-lives-mattered Paris.

And that's something I've noticed over the last few days: The way the events of last weekend have led to outbreaks of what can at best be called cognitive dissonance and at worst hypocrisy.  I'm speaking of myself here, too.  When I hear about France sealing its borders, or GOP hardliners calling hysterically for a ban on Syrian--or even Muslim--immigration to the United States, I roll my eyes and think, among other things, of how ridiculous such non-solutions are.  After all, I think, what good will sealing borders do, as anyone bent on infiltrating the US to wreak terrorist havoc will surely find ways around whatever laws we put in place. . . . And then I realize that I am making exactly the same argument used by NRA sympathizers to pooh-pooh attempts to strengthen gun-control laws.

It's been said that hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue.  Perhaps its also the wage extracted by events too terrible to rationalize.

In Which We Imagine No Religion

Generally, this blog is a funny place (I try), but it's hard to generate that kind of content on a day like today, when the front pages of the world's papers are filled once again with images of senseless slaughter and mayhem, this time in Paris.  We struggle to maintain our sense of proportion, of rationality--to say the right things about not judging all the members of a group based on the actions of a tiny minority, about how responding to violence with more violence leads only into an abyss--all the while longing secretly, guiltily, for some massive, cathartic act of collective vengeance.  But there's the problem, right?  As righteous as our angers feels, the lunatic rage of those who struck Paris yesterday oozes up from the same desire for revenge, the craving to get even for injuries real or perceived. 

The temptation is, first, to blame the seventh-century mindset of fanatical Muslims, as ISIS zealots claim responsibility for the latest carnage.  But then, we really need to blame not Islam, but religion in general, as every faith claims to promote peace while slaughtering its "enemies" in the name of a supposedly all-powerful deity--an all-powerful deity so insecure in its omnipotence that it requires murderous suppression of anyone who dares to so much as raise an eyebrow at its claim to superiority.  Bottom line, of course: Old-time religion's sole purpose is the rationalization of suffering: People suffer, see no reason for suffering, justify suffering as somehow holy--as proof of their actual status as beloved of God--and then release their frustrations on others who are, by definition, unbeloved of God and therefore fair game. 

Imagine no religion?  I'd like that.  I really would.  Still, I despair.  Even without God to blame, we'd still find excuses to kill each other.  A secular prayer, then: That one day we--the collective we, the we that is all humankind--will one day harness the near-unfathomable power we possess in our magnificent brains, and turn our attention to solving the problems we all face, instead of squandering our genius on blame and hate and rage.  I fear this prayer will prove as effective as those uttered by true-believers the world over.  But, hey, I'm only human--groping, too, for some hope in the dark.

In Which We Review the Republican Debate

So, let me get this straight: At last night's Republican debate, Donald Trump argued that no increase in the minimum wage is necessary because wages are "too high."  At the same time, the tide of illegal immigration must be stemmed and some 11 million people deported because, as Ted Cruz claims, these illegal immigrants are "pushing down American wages."  In other words, restricting immigration will raise the wages of American workers, who are already overpaid.  I'm so confused.  Not as confused the masses of red-state blue-collar workers supporting billionaire Donald Trump, who apparently thinks that they--the workers--are paid too much, but confused nonetheless.

Also from the debate, according to Marco Rubio, America needs "more welders and less philosophers.”  As Stannis Baratheon would surely point out, what we need are "fewer" philosophers, but aside from that Rubio is absolutely right.  America must reduce its well-documented glut of philosophers!  Why, one can't swing a dead cat--or, if you're a Schrodingerian, a dead and alive cat--without whacking a philosopher in the face!  And I, for one, am sick and tired of placing ads for welders on Craigslist (none of your business!) and having twenty to thirty philosophy majors show up!

In Which We Wonder about Higher Education Priorities

The President of the University of Missouri's Columbus campus, Timothy M. Wolfe, has tendered his resignation in reaction to wide-ranging protests.  Wolfe first stirred anger when he announced the university would stop paying for graduate students' and teaching assistants' health coverage.  Then the university's medical school severed ties with Planned Parenthood in response to attacks from Republican politicians--only to then be attacked by Democrats who felt the college was kowtowing to political pressure.  But the proverbial last straw for Wolfe came when the football team threatened to boycott its games due to the college leadership's insufficient response to racial incidents on campus.

Good on them for forcing change, but, to put this in perspective: First, they stripped healthcare away from the underpaid and overworked graduate students who presumably shoulder much of the responsibility for actually educating the student body, but nothing happened because those overburdened grad students should be thankful for whatever they get.  Then, they failed to support the medical school's right to cooperate with a non-profit organization that actually provides necessary medical care for countless poor and uninsured women, but nothing happened because all the women who go to Planned Parenthood are abortion-happy slatterns who should be shamed and inconvenienced as much as possible.  And then they angered the football team, and MY GOD THIS MAN MUST RESIGN IMMEDIATELY!!! Because FOOTBALL!!!

'Murica!

In Which We Enlighten the Masses

Fun fact: The first pies were baked by primitive statisticians for the sole purpose of conveying information about the relative quantities of the parts that make up a whole. It was centuries before people realized these "pie charts" could be filled with delicious fillings and eaten.

In Which We Wonder about Various People's Intelligence

The New York State attorney general is investigating Exxon Mobil, claiming the company defrauded investors by minimizing the dangers that climate change posed to the oil company's business.  I am, of course, shocked--shocked!--that an oil company would minimize the dangers of climate change.  I am, however, less than sympathetic to people who may have suffered financially because they took that oil company's word about the relative lack of dangers posed by climate change.  It seems to me that if supposedly savvy investors are so willfully ignorant as to ignore overwhelming scientific evidence, they deserve whatever financial penalties befall them.  That's just Darwinism.  A concept these investors would presumably also deny.

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Ben Carson has released a rap song--guess he felt his campaign hadn't provided enough fodder for ridicule.  In the song, he speaks about picking up the "baton of freedom."  Presumably to fend off the pom-poms of tyranny.