Strange Doctrines

Life's Defective Cadence

Slowly, ruthlessly, one by one, death takes from us those we love the most. And then, eventually, it takes us.

There are roughly two ways of reconciling our desire for life with this gradual, careless annihilation. One is to posit a transcendent eternity. The other is to accept the finitude of our existence and find within its bounds some form of immanent redemption.

The former strategy won't concern me here. I want to look at the latter strategy, within which the most common move seems to be to cast finitude as the very precondition for any meaningfulness at all -- the tack Patrick Lee Miller takes in his poignant essay here. (I'm only dealing with a small part of his overall argument here, so please read the whole thing.)

Race and Galton's Whistle

Matt Yglesias contends that "a case could be made that you'd be right to [read just about [any McCain attack] as [an encoded] racist appeal]...."

Ross Douthat demurs:

Applying Low-Risk Philosophy

The problem of evil has elicited myriad attempts at theodicy. Many of these "proofs" engage in a rich set of complex rhetorical and logical maneuvers. It can be tempting to engage with these on a case-by-case basis. But doing so almost always involves a lot of risky philosophy. We should look for lower-risk solutions where available.

The Last Theorem

I've discovered a truly marvelous proof of nihilism. Of course this margin is more than wide enough to contain it. It's just...what would be the point?

What's the Matter with Black Folks?

Ross Douthat quotes the following passage from Daniel Larison for the benefit of the liberal "trying to understand the conservative mind, circa 2008":

The small cottage industry out there cataloguing the "real racism" of liberals represents a genuine conviction in the modern GOP that they are the only true defenders of color-blind equality. The Republican obsession with Jeremiah Wright cannot be understood apart from this "fight the real racists!" mentality. The enthusiastic reception of Palin and the sudden willingness to label any criticism of her as sexism and elitism reflects a similar impulse to out-egalitarian the egalitarians. This is opportunistic insofar as it is aimed at confusing conventional definitions and throwing the opponent off guard ("we're the real feminists, so there!"), but it is quite serious in that reflects a widely-held Republican belief that their agenda and their party represent "empowerment" for women and minorities.

Diurnal Recurrence

From the New York Times, "Hospice Chaplains Take Up Bedside Counseling":

“I talked to my mother yesterday,” said Robert, an 83-year-old man with Alzheimer’s, whose mother died in the 1960s.

“How was she?” said the chaplain, Tom Grannell. “You haven’t talked to her in a while.”

“Pretty good,” said Robert. “She agrees with my father: I’m laying here too long. Time to get back to work.”

“Your mother always believed in you,” said the chaplain.

“Yes, she did,” said Robert.

A Fine Line

Hendrik Hertzberg in the New Yorker:

The Republican argument of the moment seems to be that the difference between capitalism and socialism corresponds to the difference between a top marginal income-tax rate of 35 per cent and a top marginal income-tax rate of 39.6 per cent.

Black and White

Rush Limbaugh, on Colin Powell's endorsement of Obama: "This is totally about race."

Yes. After all, they are both white.

The Lion Sleeps

We've lost our beloved Toby:

Life is sad.

My wife and I feel like we've lost our best friend. His personality dominated this place. We still feel him, hear him, see him, smell him. But..not enough. (And too much.)

I guess I should declare for the sake of pet skeptics that our grief is not due to the error of anthropomorphism. (Well, at least not entirely.) Rather, it flows from the loss of love that is distinctive precisely because it lacks the standard character of love between humans. The thought is related to this well-known passage from Whitman's "Song of Myself":

I think I could turn and live with the animals, they are so placid and self contained;
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition;
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins;
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God;
Not one is dissatisfied--not one is demented with the mania of owning things;
Not one kneels to another, nor his kind that lived thousands of years ago;
Not one is responsible or industrious over the whole earth.

Now, Whitman here gives too much credit to animals, and shows too little sympathy for the plight of poor human beings. (We--humans and nonhumans alike--are all bits of fate.) But he does get at the idea that animals have in them a uniquely helpless honesty. Even the least trusting among us can trust an animal. There are no ulterior motives or agendas, in the main because animals aren't capable of formulating ulterior motives or agendas. Whatever affection animals show us follows perfectly from their character just because rational calculation cannot intercede.

And Toby was a virtuoso of affection. The picture above is exemplary of how Toby would spend his day when his humans were around. Hugs and kisses and headbutts and chatting and cooing. He seduced us every time, and we fell in love with him anew, over and over.

We will miss falling in love like that.

_______________________

TOBY DRAKE
1994(?)-2008

The B Isn't the Only Thing Backward

Shorter Glenn Reynolds' updates: Sure, maybe the B attack is a hoax; but if it hadn't been we'd never have heard about it.

(Via Mark Kleiman.)

Spelling "B"

This is...intriguing. A McCain poll worker volunteer claims she was mugged by a tall black man, who after seeing a McCain bumper sticker on her car became enraged, beat her, sexually assaulted her, and carved the letter 'B' (ostensibly for 'Barack') on her right cheek.

Which is where the intrigue begins:

I guess that's actually B for Backwards.

UPDATE: And, as has been confirmed (not that we needed it), F for Fake.

UPDATE II: I've removed the original picture of the woman's entire face, since it's become clear to me from the footage I've seen that she is very troubled. The point here isn't to criticize or embarrass her but to chastise those who so readily hyped a story that was fake literally on its face.

McCain Sullied

Andrew Sullivan limns John McCain: "George Bush, without the prudence and caution."

*Sigh*. I guess Leibniz was right after all.

(Via Brad DeLong.)

Or Maybe We Could Count Them?

So Diane Kavadias-Schneider was appointed as a special judge in a voting fraud case brought by the GOP, who want to shut down several voting centers in the largely Democratic Lake County, Il., on the grounds that the election process there will increase the likelihood of such fraud.

After touring several sites and hearing hours of testimony, Kavadias-Schneider was apparently satisfied that at least prospectively, the early and absentee voting in the county is secure against potential fraud. But when she asked GOP lawyer R. Lawrence Steele about ballots already cast, he replied: "Maybe those votes should be discarded."

Just throwing it out there, I guess.*

(Via Talking Points Memo.)
____________________
* In fairness to Steele, though, it's not as if there's a federally protected right to vote.

Doesn't Pass the "Gaffe" Test

John McCain tested Obama's youth and supposed inexperience. McCain lost.

The GOP tested Obama's youth and supposed inexperience. The GOP lost.

Nikita Khrushchev tested John F. Kennedy's youth and supposed inexperience. Khrushchev lost.

Joe Biden predicts* that some foreign aggressor will test Obama's youth and supposed inexperience.

And Ross Douthat (God love him) argues that Biden's prediction is a gaffe because, well, because he "specifically highlighted Obama's youth...and specifically compared him to John F. Kennedy."

I guess I just don't understand politics.
___________________
* I can't imagine what history Biden might be drawing upon in making that prediction.

UPDATES under the fold.

Ambinder Knows Strategery

Via Ross Douthat, here is Marc Ambinder on Biden's admonition to supporters that Obama will be "tested" early in his administration:

In the 2008 election we were participating in circa August, Sen. Joe Biden's musings would have traversed the river separating gaffe from Gaffe. If the economy weren't collapsing, if Barack Obama's national security credentials were still suspect, if the conflict in Russia and South Osettia had yet to be resolved, then one can envision a scenario where Biden's comments would be given a gloss a la Gerald Ford's freeing Eastern Europe.

True! And if Sarah Palin had up and accused Obama back in August of being a socialist and friend to terrorists, things would be so much worse for McCain-Palin now. Which is sort of beside the larger point that there's no way in Hell she would have done that back in August. The simple reason being that tactics are time-sensitive and situational. You don't throw Hail Mary passes like that in the first quarter.

Biden's remarks, ill-phrased as they were, make some tactical sense two weeks from the election with Obama up by over as much as 10 points, contemplating a landslide victory. They obviously wouldn't have made any tactical sense back in August. Ambinder's counterfactual is a pointless, tendentious distraction.

The Canine Economy

Since I don't have much time today to do much else, following after the fold is a note I left Will Wilkinson (under this post) regarding the degree to which the current economic downturn implicates libertarian anti-regulatory doctrine.

Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood

Drew Griffin's interview with Gov. Sarah Palin was what you would have expected. Griffin was unerringly fawning through the whole thing. ("I mean I could go on with you forever." Really. He said that.)

But TPM's got a clip here that makes it look like Griffin was actually asking some tough questions:

That's an Answer Piper Would Give

Good heavens:

Q: [Third grader] Brandon Garcia wants to know, “What does the Vice President do?”

PALIN: That’s something that Piper would ask me! … [T]hey’re in charge of the U.S. Senate so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom.

A Glympse of Hope

It seems some members of this Republic are concerned that spanking might constitute a form of child abuse, particularly in cases where it leaves visible contusions. I share their concern.

And so I ask: Why not try waterboarding instead?

Waterboarding -- also known as the "water cure," "water treatment," "water torture" or simply "torture" -- is a fine way to discipline one's helpless infants without inflicting any pain on them whatsoever.* * And of course it leaves no telltale marks. Besides which, it is a most advantageous inquisitional procedure. (Believe me, a father inquiring into which of his children transgressed upon the cookie jar will not have to suffocate them twice to find out!)

In sum, waterboarding secures all the fear of spanking and more, with none of the ugly bruising. Let there be no talk, then, of other expedients.

Some Discommoding Poop on the Impending Shit Crisis

Johann Hari reviews Rose George's The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters. Selected passages here.

(Via 3 Quarks Daily.)