Stop Defending the Catholic Church: Day 3

Day Three: The Church Hates Africa

Scientists at The Lancet are really sick of the Pope distorting the evidence---AKA lying--about AIDS.

It is evidently the official position of the South African RCC that condoms have not prevented a single case of HIV ever, and that's what they're teaching vulnerable African populations. What could possibly go wrong?

Cardinal who heads the Pontifical Council for the Family suggests that condoms in Africa be labelled as unsafe and ineffective, comparing a condom to a cigarette filter. Way helpful, guys.

The RCC has such a problem with Africa that they're willing to let priests rape African nuns. Presumably they're less likely to get AIDS that way than if they rape African children. Or something. Of course, this plan doesn't work as well if you're still also raping the children. But more about that on Day Four!

If you missed it, here's Day One: The Church Hates Gays, and Day Two: The Church Hates Women.

Damn, Gloria.

Gloria Steinem. You and I, we've had our differences. We have, really. There've been times when the phrase "calm the fuck down this isn't about vaginas" crossed my mind, and times when it came right out my mouth before I could stop it.

But you definitely nailed it this time. Thanks to kaiserbrown for linking this. I went ahead and linked to sources so that no one can claim Steinem's talking out her ass.

Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton's candidacy stood for -- and that Barack Obama's still does."

Palin's value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women's wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves "abstinence-only" programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers' millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn't spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.

So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has attracted is James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Of course, for Dobson, "women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership," so he may be voting for Palin's husband.

Damn, Gloria. 

Mediocrity

Thank you, Ezra Klein.

I just want to note, if only for the record, that in a saner country, the fact that Sarah Palin wants us to teach our children lies rather than biology, and doesn't believe in man-made global warming, should be enough to cost the Republicans the election. The other way of stating those two position is that part of her platform is telling schools to misinform kids and telling the government to ignore a preventable ecological catastrophe that could cost countless lives. But for whatever reason, those positions are considered totally acceptable in American political debate, but god forbid someone comes out for single payer health care or a gun ban. Now that would be crazy.

At first I didn't mind her too much, but the more I learn about her the more astonished I become. Evidently it turns out I can't credit her for her state's fairly respectable record on providing contraceptive access, since Palin herself only supports abstinence-only sex ed. Evidently her scorn for research (AKA reality?) also extends to evolution in addition to sex ed, and the human impact on the Earth's climate.

Does she trust experts on anything? Or is this philosophy over fact all over again?

Do we really want another administration that thinks evolutionary biologists don't understand biology? That thinks that the CDC and everyone else studying teen pregnancy and STD rates don't understand teen pregnancy or STD rates? That thinks ecologists don't understand ecology?

We've already seen McCain's willingness to ignore economists with his little gas tax holiday (and his offshore drilling plan), since evidently economists don't understand the economy either.

I'm sick of this. Really, I am. Is it just the Dunning-Kruger Effect?

The Dunning-Kruger effect is the phenomenon wherein people who have little knowledge (or skill) tend to think they know more (or have more skill) than they do, while others who have much more knowledge tend to think that they know less. Dunning and Kruger were awarded a 2000 Ig Nobel prize for their work.

The phenomenon was demonstrated in a series of experiments performed by Justin Kruger and David Dunning, both of Cornell University. Their results were published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in December 1999.[2]

Kruger and Dunning noted a number of previous studies which tend to suggest that in skills as diverse as reading comprehension, operating a motor vehicle, and playing chess or tennis, "ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" (as Charles Darwin put it). They hypothesized that with a typical skill which humans may possess in greater or lesser degree,
1. Incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill.
2. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others.
3. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy.
4. If they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill.

I hope so. Disgusting as it is, at least it's an explanation. It also explains why so many people in America truly believe that the Judicial Branch should have no power. The legislative branch is elected by the people. That makes them qualified to have legislative power and the power of the judicial branch. Why do people believe this? Because they mistrust expertise. Experts are scary, holding dark and arcane knowledge that makes them dangerous. The fewer experts we have involved in government the better! Apparently.

Even if you don't believe it, those of you who plan to vote McCain had better get really comfortable with this really fast. Because this is the trend you're playing into. There are people out there who believe that truth is a matter of consensus, not of... well, truth. These are the people who want local governments to vote on whether to teach their children science or religion in science classes, as if by voting they could determine the truth. These are the people who want local governments to vote on whether to teach children sex ed that works, or sex ed that sounds good to parents who're afraid their kids may one day grow up. These are the people who want the majority to determine the rights of the minority, as if justice were also merely a matter of majority rule.

These are the people who mistrust experts because experts erode the notion that one person's vote of confidence in a complicated matter is as good as any others. They claim to know more than you do. Those assholes. Who do they think they are, anyway? Elitist bastards. We don't need them. We don't need science at all. We'll just put everything to a vote and decide on whatever sounds best... not necessarily what those nasty elitist experts and their "research" indicates.

There are fewer of them anyway, how much can they possibly know? We're the people. Vox populi, vox dei. If we vote that something is so, damn the facts. We voted.

A vote for McCain-Palin is a vote for the disrespect of education and the disrespect of truth. And do you know why?

"Mediocrity know nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius."
-Sherlock Holmes

McCain and Palin are mediocre representatives of a mediocre party that elevates mediocrity itself above expertise. Do they represent you?

Philosophy and Fact

So... if you had to choose between doing something that kept with your principles and doing something that had a better chance of achieving the end you're looking for, which would you choose?

Classic example, sex ed as a way to reduce teen pregnancy, STDs, etc. If you're a conservative Christian, you're faced with a choice. Will you advocate for your values as they were given to you (meaning, teach only abstinence)? Or will you compromise your values to do what the facts indicate will actually achieve the end you desire (teaching about contraceptives and even abortion)?

To me this highlights a common conflict between liberals and conservatives. In keeping with the sex ed example, conservative Christians are ostensibly trying to protect families and children. Since they believe that premarital sex is wrong, they would rather discourage that than compromise on their hardline stand to achieve the result they claim they care about most.

And this means one thing: to conservative Christians, the means are more important than the ends... to the point that they completely disconnect from the reality of the situation. This is why showing statistics about teen pregnancy and STDs and high school dropout rates to conservative Christians will not convince them that children should learn anything but "abstinence good, sex bad." It won't convince them because the end isn't the point. The result isn't the point. They don't care nearly as much about the actual fates of children as they do about their moral high ground.

This is why you see liberals advocating for practical sex education, even if it means allowing for the possibility that young people will have premarital sex. Sure, it'd be nice if they weren't, but if our end is really to reduce teen pregnancy and STD rates... we've gotta do what we've gotta do.

That practicality is completely lost on many conservatives. Even if they support their arguments with facts and predictions of results, in the end the results are secondary. 

You've heard this before.

"Teaching teens about contraceptives may reduce the rates of teen pregnancy and accompanying dropout rates (which would result in economic and social benefits for those teens who would otherwise have dropped out), but it's wrong! Teaching them how to have responsible sex is... well, it's teaching them to have sex!" Link.

"Some wealth redistribution may reduce our deficit and reduce the tax burden on poor and middle-class families to fund our whole economy. Sure. But it's wrong! Did you know Hitler was a socialist?!" Link.

"Sure, entering peace talks with countries hostile to us might help us handle global challenges. But damn it, we're America! We'll handle global problems ourselves, our way, and you'd better either help us or get the heck out of our way." Link.

So at this point you have to ask yourself. How dedicated are you to the principles behind your goals? Are you dedicated enough to the principle to sacrifice the goal?

This is one of the sticking points for me when talking to my very conservative friends (and yes, I do have them). It seems most of the time like they'll uphold all these great and noble goals, but they have little interest in achieving them or actually working toward them. They feel teen pregnancy is a tragedy, but they reject any practical means of reducing it. They moan about the economy, but cling to Bush's "principled" stance that there's nothing more important than protecting the wealth of the wealthy. They sigh that America's always having to pick up other people's messes and finish other people's fights, but they don't want to admit that we don't have all the answers, that other nations may have something to bring to the table.

At this rate, there is nothing I can do to convince them. I can't offer facts or expert opinions, because those are merely result-based. My "reality-based thinking" has no impact because we're not really talking about the same thing. This is why every discussion with conservatives I've ever had has become a philosophical debate and not a practical one.

Most conservatives I've spoken with (particularly conservative Christians) truly are interested in philosophy first and results second. If I can't somehow argue that my solution doesn't just work but also fits into a philosophical model of America as God's Chosen Blessed Land of Opportunity, they don't care. The fact that a plan could work for the goal we agree upon doesn't matter if it requires a shift away from a comfortable philosophical model.

I don't know if this helps anyone reading this, but here's my summary.

To conservatives: If you're talking to a liberal, be honest when you're upholding principle most highly, and when you're upholding results. It will muddle the discussion much less if you make your priorities clear.

To liberals: Conservatives are listening, honest. Odds are you're just not talking about what's really on their minds. When they reply to studies or statistics by reasserting their philosophy, they're trying to reiterate what matters to them in the debate. They may not intentionally be shifting the goalpost onto philosophical terrain; odds are that to some conservatives that's where it's been the whole time.

The Persecution Complex

To all those people who lament the impression that colleges and universities are biased against them?

To all those people who lament the impression that human rights groups are biased against them?

To all those people who lament the impression that foreign countries are biased against them?

To all those people who lament the impression that the media is biased against them?

Have you ever considered the possibility that all or some of these people might actually be right and you're the one who's wrong?

1. If educated people are often liberal, is it simpler to assume a broad-sweeping brainwashing conspiracy, or to assume that upon exposure to other views and the facts behind them people don't seem to remain conservative? If liberals claimed that universities had a conservative bias, you know that conservatives would be claiming that it's not their fault educated people lean right. Why do you let them get away with the anti-intellectual bullshit when you would never allow it from liberals?

2. If human rights groups tend to be liberal, is this a sign that they're all secretly members of the anti-conservative conspiracy bent on eradicating an entire school of thought from the face of the earth? Or is it simpler to assume that the liberal philosophy places a higher emphasis on the well-being of individuals, from which it follows naturally they'd care more about human rights?

3. Maybe the fact that everyone thinks you're acting like an imperialist dick means that imperialism makes you a dick. Calling you a dick and treating you like you're a dick when you're being a dick isn't biased. It's called "self-preservation."

4. Media coverage of the election doesn't have a liberal bias... it has a bias in favor of McCain. Conservatives loved the guy doing this study when it said the opposite, but now that they're the bad guys, suddenly the methodology must be wrong. See, you gotta be skeptical about the media if you're a conservative. A good unbiased source will agree with you. Never trust a source that doesn't agree with you. It's just that damned liberal conspiracy acting up again, but thankfully they're easy to detect. They say crazy things like "pissing off other countries makes them hate us," and "voodoo economics doesn't work" or "abstinence-only sex ed doesn't work." They're always pushing this ideological bias, so it makes them easy to detect and ignore.

All in all, I'm getting tired of the "I hate your evidence! You elitist liberals are always pickin' on us simple salt o'the earth conservatives. Just because I don't have any credentials in the field we're talking about doesn't mean that my opinion isn't just as valid as yours!"

Well, I'm an elitist bastard and let me tell you something. If I hear one more time about how educated people can't be trusted (because too much exposure to the diversity and complexity of reality brainwashes you liberal, see), or about how educated people are out of touch with reality (at least compared to people who've only ever exposed themselves to their own way of life), or some other bullshit excuse to cover the bitterness and resentment of uneducated people that educated people always abandon their cause... I'm going to have some kind of episode.

I don't know how to say it more simply than this. If education is a danger to your worldview, that is hard proof that your worldview needs examining. If entertaining other worldviews turns out to be a danger to your own, your worldview is a hell of a lot more fragile than you want to admit. If studying other cultures is some kind of threat to your own, your own culture isn't worth your slavish loyalty. If exposure to people who believe they can make the world better somehow erodes your reinforced sense of self-serving exploitative entitlement and privilege, perhaps that's a clue that you need to abandon that sense of entitlement.

There are too many people who resent educated people for learning a few new things and suddenly changing their minds. I didn't think I was a liberal. Sure, I thought that gays were human beings and so were women. Sure I thought that it'd sure be nice if college weren't a way to transform wealth into privilege so that the super-rich could claim they'd earned what they've got. Sure I'd love to have the first, last, and final say over when I carry a child. But I didn't think that made me liberal. I thought liberals were these frothing man-hating Communists out to create a man-free, gun-free Marxist paradise off the cost of California on a human-made island of singed bras.

I didn't realize what would happen to me. I didn't realize that once I left my town of 8,000 people I might really have a chance to learn how other cultures lived and what made them that way. I didn't realize that this would cause me to take a good hard look at my own culture. I didn't realize this was all part of the grand liberal mafia brainwashing conspiracy.

In short, reality turned out to have a liberal bias. Once exposed, I fell.

For all you conservatives out there... it could happen to you. I suggest you do what the Amish do. Drop out after eighth grade. Wouldn't want to start getting ideas and putting on airs. Wouldn't want to change your mind. Wouldn't want to become liberal or anything.

Drop out. Delete every news channel from your cable but Fox News. In fact, delete every channel but the televangelists. Burn every nonfiction book you own. Save yourselves before it's too late! Above all remember!

The liberals are sly. The liberals are stealthy. The liberals will find you.

YOU MAY ALREADY BE ONE.

Flag pins>living wage.

A blog entry from one of my new favorite bloggers over at En Tequila Es Verdad

Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

The Carpetbagger Report has a quick overview of "red meat" issues for both parties:

So, for Dems, throwing red meat to the base is taking on wage discrimination and insurance companies denying coverage. For Republicans, it’s constitutional amendments on gays and the flag.

Someone's priorities seem to be a little fucked up. Maybe I'm just sheltered, but I haven't had anyone tell me that they put flag protection above a livable wage. Why do people vote Republicon, again?

In related news, Republicons not only have difficulties with priorities, they seem to have a congenital inability to understand science:

Programs teaching U.S. schoolchildren to abstain from sex have not cut teen pregnancies or sexually transmitted diseases or delayed the age at which sex begins, health groups told Congress on Wednesday.

The Bush administration, however, voiced continuing support for such programs during a hearing before a House of Representatives panel even as many Democrats called for cutting off federal money for so-called abstinence-only instruction.

[snip]

Rep. John Duncan, a Tennessee Republican, said that it seems "rather elitist" that people with academic degrees in health think they know better than parents what type of sex education is appropriate. "I don't think it's something we should abandon," he said of abstinence-only funding.

That's the most entertaining definition of elitist I've heard so far. An "elitist" is someone who actually knows what the fuck they're talking about compared to, oh, say, John or Jane Public. Lemme tell you something from experience: some parents don't have the first fucking clue about what's best for their kids. They have a completely pollyanna view of what their darling angels get up to, and no amount of reality changes their minds. Back in the day when my high school classmates were trying to get AIDS education on the agenda, their parents were saying, "But our kids don't have sex." This, mind you, is when an average of five girls were running around pregnant out of a student body of 500. Females are half a given population. You do the math and tell me nobody's having sex.

But for Republicons, anyone with a better understanding of reality than them is "elitist." Feels good to be an elitist, don't it?

Speaking of the terminally reality-challenged, John McCain's cunning plan to assist struggling families in our tanking economy is - wait for it - to offer "choices" on such things as education and health care, instead of providing what he likes to call "hand-outs." He further shows his spectacular lack of common sense by making this little speech before people who wouldn't be able to afford those choices should they be presented. Carpetbagger turns him over a knee for a well-deserved spanking:

So, on the one hand, McCain wants to cut taxes dramatically to benefit “corporations and upper-income families,” and on the other, McCain wants to cut federal spending. Since spending cuts for the military and national security are off the table — indeed, he’s vowed to
increase spending on both — it would necessarily mean McCain would make billions of dollars in cuts in spending that would benefit those who aren’t in “upper-income families.”

But if you’re in Appalachia and living in poverty, forget about a “handout.” In a McCain administration, they’re reserved for the same wealthy interests that have benefited throughout the Bush years.

What’s more, in about five months, Republicans will tell these same people in impoverished areas that they shouldn’t even consider voting for Barack Obama (or Hillary Clinton) because what really matters are flag pins. It’s like an arsonist telling a family whose home is on fire not to trust the man outside in the firetruck.

Indeed 'tis.

Just had to pass that on.