U.S. Involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan

Before the Vietnam War ended, some 56,000 American soldiers had been killed, to say nothing of a perhaps-unknown number—but hundreds of thousands--of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians. Plus enormous suffering and property damage—loss of families' homes and environmental devastation.

And what was gained in return for all this loss? If anyone can still recall, or even care, 30 or 40 years later, the purpose of the Vietnam War was supposed to be to keep South Viet Nam from being taken over by the communists of North Vietnam. And what happened in the end, after all that loss? No one seems to like to think about it, but Vietnam was reunified. In other words, the North Vietnamese did in fact take over the South, the very thing the war was supposed to prevent. So, to put it very plainly and even harshly, the war was for nothing. But no one wants to dwell on the fact that many American lives were sacrificed for, in the end, no purpose.

During the Bush years I kept thinking of parallels between the Vietnam War and the Iraq war. In both wars, Congress and the American Public had been manipulated by the White House and the Defense Department into supporting the war by means of false and distorted information. It became clear that the danger to America from Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction" was trumped up. (And Colin Powell, who was U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, has said he regretted the speech he gave to the U.N. about Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" because he was unwittingly basing it on incorrect information.) Plus, another reason the Government used to try to sell the war, the link between Saddam Hussein and al Quaeda, was also very dubious.

So the original rationale for the war was very questionable. Yet once Hussein was toppled, we had to keep Iraq from descending into a religious civil war. Thus we are still there, after—what is it now, eight years? And we no longer even hear the statistics on how many Americans have been killed in Iraq. Last I heard, it was over 4,000, but that was quite a while ago.

And there's Afghanistan. How many Americans could immediately and clearly tell me why we are fighting in Afghanistan? Waging a war against the Taliban in Afghanistan might have a little more direct connection to the security of the U.S. than was the case with invading Iraq. But again, consider this: The Russians left Afghanistan in defeat and the U.S. succeeded them. It's too similar to the U.S. taking over in Vietnam after the French withdrew in defeat. It's a very sad fact that the lessons of history are not learned.

Living in an area which is in some ways rather conservative—it's pretty much believers in "God and Country"—I see a lot of bumper stickers saying "Support Our Troops." Since I was opposed to the U.S. invasion of Iraq from the very beginning, some people would say to me, Well, you can support the troops even if you don't support the war.

I have a problem with that logic. I'd say Yes, I agree—if the troops were all there involuntarily. Then they'd just be poor pawns, as was the case in the Vietnam War. However, remember that we do not presently have a draft. Every Army soldier, National Guardsman, Marine in Iraq is a volunteer. Many of these men enlisted because they felt their country called, and they should respond. That's putting the best construction on it—rather than saying, for example, that their belief that they were defending their country was based on incorrect information they had been fed by the Government.

Copyright © 2009 by Richard Stein

Politically correct language

The latest is, Is the term master bedroom offensive? Well, how about calling it a mistress bedroom instead?

Seriously, as regards "non-sexist" language, I have no problem at all with saying police officer instead of policeman, fire fighter instead of fireman, letter carrier instead of mailman. But what about manhole? I think I did actually come across some ridiculous substitute for that, perhaps personnel hatch. This from a book publisher, terrified of having the wrath of the feminists unleashed upon them.

What about manhunt? I bet the feminists are perfectly happy to leave that one alone, since only males are bad enough to be hunted for, right?

At the University of _____ (okay, I'm leaving out the name but probably should let the opprobrium be applied), they have an "ombudsperson." This is political correctness going way too far. They presume to take a Swedish word and open it up and change part of it, a word that just happens to be the same in Swedish as it is in English—man—and substitute a morpheme which is not Swedish, person.

And I don't like changing alderman to alderperson. My objection here is that alderman is a fine old word—in fact, very old, going back maybe 1500 years to Anglo-Saxon times—and I hate to see it morphed. But maybe that is not all of my objection to it since I don't like congressperson, either.

Copyright © 2009 by Richard Stein

Queer Eye for the Straight Guy

I only watched the TV show, "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," a couple of times, but I have to say that I agree with its premise: that when it comes to matters like style and grooming, gay men know what they are doing, and straight men are clueless.

Let's just take haircuts or hair styles. I used to observe, on the commuter train, that so many men had just dreadful haircuts. I'm sure these guys go to barbers (no barber has cut my hair for maybe 40 years) and get a very poor haircut. You have to wonder why their wives don't tell them and try to get Hubby to get a better haircut. (Well, come to think of it, it probably wouldn't do any good—although these same men are ruled by their wives when it comes to clothes. What percentage of men let their wives pick out their clothes? Do I have to tell you?)

Today I had my hair cut. I go to a stylist. Most of those chain or franchise haircut places aren't very good; their people either can't or won't cut my hair the way I expect it. Nevertheless, one of those outfits--maybe a little better than its competitors-- is where I've been having my hair cut for some months now. I've generally been satisfied with the cut I get there or, you can be sure, I wouldn't go there. 'Cause I'm a gay man and I care about things like how my hair looks. (But, so as not to be over-generalizing, let me admit that I have some geeky gay friends who are just as bad as any straight.)

As I was waiting for my stylist to finish another customer, I was watching the cut this guy was getting: Very closely trimmed on the sides, with the clippers, and longer on top. I thought it was very unbecoming. There's no excuse for a haircut like that unless you're in the Marines. I was considering saying to the stylist, When a guy comes in and asks for a cut like that, you should tell him that you can't do it, because it's illegal.

And, as my hair was being cut, I saw a fairly nice-looking dude come in and sit in the chair of another stylist. His hair, I thought, looked good just the way he had it when he came in. But with this one, too--out came the clippers, and after a bit of buzzing, his hair was too short to look good on him. Little short of a tragedy. Gawd, I wish I could tell these people what they don't seem to be able to see.

And while we're on men's hair, let's talk about facial hair. It's been the fashion for some time for younger guys to have these "goatees" (the quotes are because that term properly applies to a pointed beard, like a goat's). I think that, in about 96% of cases, these are not becoming. Darker-haired guys, like Latinos, often look very sinister with moustaches and goatees. And the guys with lighter hair, if they have a longish tuft of hair on their chins, it simply looks disgusting.

Many guys have long hair together with full beards. Hair just surrounds their faces. There was one like that at a place I was working. Every time I passed him, I wanted to say, Too much hair!

So, sadly, straight guys just can't judge what is or is not good for their appearance. Now, when do I get on that TV show?

Copyright © 2009 by Richard Stein

Rev. Donald Wildmon and Same-Sex Marriage

I recently saw Donald Wildmon, head of the anti-gay American Family Association, being interviewed in a film. The film was several years old and Wildmon was predicting that God would punish Massachusetts for legalizing (and legitimizing) same-sex marriage.

Well, it has not happened--not yet, anyway. The Netherlands was the first country to marry same-sex couples, in 2001. By now there have been six other countries and three U.S. states, with same-sex marriage set to start in three more states. I haven't noticed any divinely-ordained catastrophes striking any of these states or countries.

If God wanted to punish the Netherlands, it ought to be pretty easy for Him to cook up a big storm that would cause the sea to breach the Netherlands' extensive system of dikes that keep the water out of many hundreds of square miles of below-sea-level land. Doubtless, if pressed, Rev. Wildmon could explain What God Is Waiting For. Guess that when you become a rev., there's some piece of paper you get that certifies, "Knows What God Is Thinking."

If Wildmon, and people of his ilk, believe what they say, when they say things like that, then they are big fools. I am not sure, though, that they do believe what they are themselves saying. If that's the case, then they are mendacious liars and downright evil, trying to manipulate their followers for their own advancement. (And how many of these preachers have made themselves rich? How many anti-gay preachers and politicians have been arrested in public washroooms or in some other way been shown to be big hypocrites? If you follow the news, I don't need to start enumerating them.)

For more on Wildmon, see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Wildmon

Copyright © 2009 by Richard Stein

Jews, Germany, and the Holocaust

I am Jewish, and I want to talk about the attitude of Jews toward Germany. Many Jews hold a very strong animus toward Germany because of the killing of millions of Jews during the Holocaust. Some Jews would not buy a Mercedes or fly Lufthansa or drink a German beer, if they could avoid it.

So I want to tell a little about what feelings I have come to have, where Jews, Germany, and the Holocaust are concerned.

I would never use the word "forgive" because, human nature being what it is, forgiveness surely is asking too much for anyone who has been closely touched by the Holocaust. (In the interest of disclosure, relatives of mine who were still in Europe at the time were killed, but I only heard about this from my mother and I did not know those people. On the other hand, I did know cousins who survived the concentration camps and still had their concentration camp numbers tattooed on their arms.)

I do believe, though, that I have heard some such as the famous writer and concentration camp survivor Elie Wiesel say they can forgive but they can never forget.

For much of my life I just did not know how one should feel about Germany. By now, though, I have had a number of decades in which to form my thoughts.

First, killing of Jews, over the hundreds and thousands of years, was not a new idea conceived by the Nazis.

From pogroms in Russia in the late Czarist era, going back and back: country after country in Europe, where Jews dwelled, at one point turned anti-Semitic and expelled the Jews. In 1492—not coincidentally the same year that Columbus sailed because that was the year that Ferdinand and Isabella completed the Christian "reconquest" of Spain from the Islamic Moors—the Jews of Spain, who had for the most part enjoyed very favorable conditions under the Moorish rulers of Spain, were given an ultimatum: convert to Christianity or get out. Of course many did leave, very large numbers, the ancestors of all the world's Sephardic Jews. Some converted--sometimes not sincerely, thus becoming crypto-Jews or "Marranos" (literally 'pigs'). Some remained and then were tortured to death by the Inquisition.

During the Crusades, it was not uncommon for Crusaders, on their way to the Holy Land, to slaughter any Jews they happened to come upon along the way. All in the course of carrying out their holy mission as urged by the Pope.

During the plagues of the Middle Ages, the Jews often were blamed for causing the plagues. I happened to come across a letter from the bishop of one town to the bishop of another (one of them, if I recall, was in Switzerland), advising his clerical colleague to burn the town's Jews in order to keep the plague away.

(To digress a bit, that kind of thinking is not as outdated as we might hope. Witness the modern preachers who blamed Hurricane Katrina's devastation of New Orleans on that city's "sinfully" permissive attitudes toward gays, etc. And a right-wing member of the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) recently said that earthquakes in Israel were caused by homosexuals. Seems we never learn.)

So, over a thousand years and more, killing of Jews has gone on. The anti-Semitism and persecution of the Jews by the Nazis was nothing that new, and anti-Semitism could be found in France, England, Hungary, Bulgaria—well, everywhere. The Germans simply applied their characteristic thoroughness and efficiency, although to even say this certainly conjures up gruesome images.

So what is the attitude toward Germany that I have arrived at? I find it hard to believe that there can be such a thing as an intrinsic flaw in the German national character. Germany had been the most cultured and enlightened country in the world. (There was a TV drama about the experiences of a Jewish family in the 1930s as the storm clouds gathered around them. The wife said to her husband, "This can't be happening here. This is the country of Lessing [a playwright who preached tolerance in his play about a Jew, Nathan der Weise], Goethe, Beethoven." The husband replied, "Unfortunately, none of them is in power right now.")

So, Germany was okay before a certain time, and I'm willing to presume that now, after three generations—when few mid-century Nazis are still alive—that it's okay now. They have paid reparations to the Jews, they have erected monuments to Holocaust victims.

True, some of the Nazis directly involved, like concentration camp commanders, were monsters—and in a way, or on a scale, that boggles the mind. I prefer to think these few Germans were a minority. Other Germans risked their lives to save Jews—for example, Otto Schindler, about whom the movie, "Schindler's List," was made. A list is kept of "Righteous Gentiles" who helped save thousands of Jews, often at risk to their own lives. Four hundred fifty-five Germans are on this list* but it must be admitted that there are more individuals on the list from nine other countries.

There was also a very interesting story about a German woman who had to learn, only much later, in her adulthood, about her father and his role as a concentration camp commander. There was no loyalty to, or defense of, her father, but only revulsion, horror, and shame. (In this case, and even in the larger issue of how we feel toward the country, we might ask whether we agree with the stern edict in the Bible which says, "The sins of the father are visited upon the children.")

And there have been other examples of genocide in human history. Some meliorists believe that the human race has been evolving, but it's not clear to me that genocide has become less common in modern times. One example, on nearly the scale of the Nazi extermination of the Jews, is that the Turks, over three years starting in 1915, wiped out perhaps 1.5 million Armenians. More recently we've had genocide in Rwanda. And Stalin in the Soviet Union and Pol Pot in Cambodia killed hundreds of thousands of their own people.

Any nation, any group of people, has its good and bad eggs. For a variety of reasons, which I won't go into, it was easy for Nazi propaganda to stir up hatred against the Jews. (No, I do not think it was easy because the Germans were inherently more prone to such manipulation. View other postings on this blog which discuss the use of propaganda, and dehumanizing of "the other," to arouse hatred of an enemy.) I am not sure that it couldn't happen as well somewhere else, even here. We certainly have neo-Nazi hate groups here, today. Look at the Netherlands, often pointed to as a country that always remained hospitable toward the Jews during World War II. The other side of that is that the Dutch Nazi Party had 15,000 members—a small number, but it's a small country. And some fine, upstanding Dutch person turned in Anne Frank and her family.

So, I feel what is to be concluded is that the Germans are not somehow inherently flawed, nor any worse, as a group, than the general run of humans. However, I do not presume to tell anyone how they should think. You can't, really. This is only a summation of the point I have arrived at, after many years in which to think about this issue.
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* From Wikipedia: "Including Oskar Schindler, the businessman who saved over a thousand Jews by employing them in his factory, and Hans and Sophie Scholl, sibling members of the White Rose resistance movement, Captain Gustav Schroeder who commanded the "Voyage of the Damned", and German army officer Wilm Hosenfeld."

Copyright © 2009 by Richard Stein

Cheney and Palin Redux

I have previously written about Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin. Unfortunately, both are still in the news. They will not lower their profile, shut up, or go away as I have hoped they would.

The latest on Cheney is that he was being interviewed on TV. The interviewer said that 73 percent of Americans, according to a poll, have said that they have to question whether the initial decision to invade Iraq was worth the cost to date in American lives. Cheney paused a moment, gave a dismissive gesture—I'd have to see it again to see if it warrants being called a shrug—and said, "So what?" In other words, We are the Emperor, we make the decisions and don't have to give a damn about what the people think.

And Sarah Palin has distorted what is in the health-care reform bill when she claims it includes a provision for a "death panel" that would decide when to pull the plug on the terminally ill and elderly.

This is a very serious distortion, a misreading of what the bill says. A commentator on MSNBC said he'd call that intellectual dishonesty, except that he does not want to use the word "intellectual" in the same sentence as the name of Palin.

Ms. Palin quoted a Washington Post columnist to support what she claims. If she had quoted just one more sentence—that is, the sentence following the quote—she would have included words that attack and discredit her.

On the former point, we can't be sure whether her misreading of the health-care reform bill was deliberate or simply lack of understanding it properly. I'm willing, rather than accusing her of malice, to assume it's her lack of adequate comprehension of what she was reading. However, when she reads and quotes the Washington Post, and goes no further in quoting than suits her—that is deliberately taking what she quotes out of context, and there's no mistaking intention there.

I see now (news a little bit more recent) that Obama has said she's wrong, but she refuses to back down. Why, oh why, can't everyone see her for the clown that she is?

So, even though I'm pretty sure my saying this yet again will do no good: Palin, Chaney, just shut up. Go away. I am sooo sick of you both.

Copyright © 2009 by Richard Stein

Human Infants Compared to Dogs, etc.

A recent online article was headlined "Dogs as smart as tots, study says."

I'm not terribly surprised. The intelligence of extremely young human beings should not be overestimated. For example, at birth, a human infant and a chimpanzee infant are really very similar in their cognitive abilities. Of course at some point–and I forget what age this is—the development of the human infant really takes off and leaves the chimp far behind.

And, as to dogs, anyone who knows and loves dogs knows they are smart. The study cited in the article says "Even the average dog has the mental abilities of a 2-year-old child."

A lot of birds, too (such as parrots) are very smart. And then you’ve got dolphins. And squirrels.

So, to look again at the human infant: at some point, at least, being human is more about potential than about present skills and abilities.

Copyright © 2009 by Richard Stein

The Fallacies of Astrology

I recently had a date with someone who believes in astrology—not the first time this has happened, but maybe this time I was a bit too outspoken in expressing the derision in which I hold astrology. I say I may have been too outspoken; that is, at least as far as my interest in securing a second date was concerned.

The man in the street often is not clear as to the difference between astronomy and astrology. (I've worked with the astronomical community and have had ample evidence of this.) One big difference: astronomy is a science, and modern; astrology is a pseudo-science, and ancient.

Astrology is to astronomy what alchemy is to chemistry—an ancestor, you could say. Try making modern medicines or plastics with alchemy instead of chemistry and you'll appreciate the difference between a modern science and an ancient superstition.

Astrology is based on the assumption that the stars and planets influence our lives here on earth—that the configuration of the heavens at the time of our birth—in other words our "sign"--establishes certain traits we will have throughout our lives; and then from day to day, the motions of the planets in the skies determine, for example, what kind of day we will have, what actions we should avoid, and so on. Astrology says the stars spell our destiny.

Astrologers may draw up elaborate and impressive-looking charts. But astronomers, who are the genuine scientists, keep trying to tell the public that this is all nonsense. Astronomers point out that the stars and planets are too far from Earth to exert any influence on Earth, and on us who dwell on Earth.

Also, here is another fallacy of astrology: Everything is now about one sign off. Let me try to explain that. According to astrology, at any one date, we are in a certain "sign"; that is, the Sun is in one of the zodiacal constellations, meaning the background of stars against which the Sun is seen.

The trouble is, astrology is very ancient, and since the zodiacal signs were determined, things have shifted so that, according to the facts of astronomy, the Sun is actually about one sign away from where astrology says it is. So, your real sign is not what astrology says it is!

The implication of all this is, even if the position of the Sun in the plane of the ecliptic—that is, what sign the Sun is in—had any meaning, what astrology tells us for one particular sign should actually apply to a different sign.

Copyright © 2009 by Richard Stein

No Such Thing as Dirty Words

I don't believe there is such a thing as "dirty words." Think about it, why are some words "dirty"? What makes them dirty?

Words are not intrinsically good or bad. Do you believe in magic words? To believe in dirty words is the flip side of a belief in word magic.

Word magic is a very old human superstition. Look at abracadabra, hocus-pocus, open sesame. In Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) times, there were charms you could say, for example, to cure a stitch (a pain in one's side), and there were curses (magic spells placed on a person whom you wanted to harm). Hopefully we don't believe in charms and curses anymore, yet we still insist on ascribing a magical power (rather than absolute neutrality) to some words. (If you want to stop and analyze human behavior in which we ascribe special efficacy to words, blessings are an example of "good" magic words that many believe in. Note that much worship is done in a special or even dead language--Hebrew, Latin, Coptic, Old Church Slavonic--and the priest knows the special, or "magic," words to say.)

The aversion to many "dirty" words is really just a matter of our being uncomfortable with talking about certain things—specifically the sex act, body parts, body functions, and bodily secretions. An English anthropologist has a very interesting theory to explain some of this: he says we are uncomfortable with bodily secretions (for example) because they pose an ambiguous case as to whether they are "me" or "not-me." One might reply to this that we ought to be similarly uncomfortable with hair clippings and fingernail clippings. And maybe we are: Orthodox Jews will flush fingernail clippings down the toilet while saying a special prayer.

But why are the "clinical" terms (for example, urine) somehow nicer than the four-letter, Anglo-Saxon words (for example, piss)? Somehow the clinical words are more detached, since they are "learned," often Latin words.

Note: This posting is an abridgement and reworking of an article titled "Dirty Words and Magic Words," IDEAS, Dec. 1990.

Copyright © 2009 by Richard Stein

People = Polution

Humans are killing the planet by their sheer numbers.

As we all know, global warming is caused by greenhouse gases from our cars and from power plants. Pollution of the air, land, and sea is caused by chemical plants and other industrial sources that generate toxic chemicals, and the use of pesticides and fertilizers, and so forth.

There's also destruction of the environment and extinction of plant and animal species due to increased farming, which sometimes means removing the tropical rainforests that absorb CO2 from the atmosphere; and increased "development" to make shopping malls and housing tracts. There's depletion of the oceans' fish due to over-fishing.

The real and ultimate cause of all these things is not "industry" or some abstract entity; it's people. Individually and collectively, we are destroying the Earth. It's people that cause pollution and destroy the environment.

Small human groups typically have a small impact on the environment. Hunter-gatherer societies usually harvest only sustainable amounts of plants and animals, meaning not more than can be replaced by those organisms' natural reproduction. But it's a very different situation when human societies number in the billions.

The human species has been too successful, and population growth is the ultimate threat to our species' own survival. When we pave over our land for parking lots and deplete the oceans of fish for our tables, this should make us think about the consequences of uncontrolled growth of human populations. Even a bacterial colony will multiply and grow until all its nutrient resources are gone; and then it will completely die from lack of available food.

The solution to this problem is to be found in virtually every home, every human habitation on the planet. The human species needs to control its own fertility.

China has gone from a country perennially threatened by mass starvation to a very prosperous country. How? By limiting population growth. Chinese families are not allowed to have more than one child.

By contrast, in America, we value individual rights and choices. It's inconceivable to Americans that the government should ever dictate how many children a family has. And we feel, "If I can support my family, I have the right to have all the kids I want." But those kids will need more houses, more refrigerators, more cars, more schools, more roads, more parking lots. But heck, America is a big country, we still have lots of room.

Well, very much of all that "room" or space in America is not good for anything (well, to be more accurate, it's good for whatever nature is adapted to living there, and it should be left that way). Have you seen the vast emptiness of the West? Humans have already invaded the deserts and made huge efforts to make them habitable. We have, with incredible massive irrigation projects, made desert areas like Los Angeles and Las Vegas habitable. But it's been at a price. To supply Los Angeles with water, we divert rivers, we use up lakes and completely destroy them—all with tragic ecological impact. The water must continually be brought from farther and farther away.

We need to change the ethos by which we give positive approval to families with many children. Politicians running for office list, as if a credential, the number of children they have (at least where I live, maybe just to demonstrate to the voters—heavily Irish or Polish and Catholic--that they have a "good Catholic family").

We cheer and applaud and congratulate people for having children, even if it's the fifth or sixth or seventh. We have to stop doing that. Any couple who have more than three children should be met with disapproval, not approval.

Also, the U.S. federal income tax system subsidizes having children by giving parents a tax break—a deduction—for every "dependent." If we were ever to get serious about addressing population problems, I think even this would have to be examined.

Copyright © 2009 by Richard Stein.

Americans Can't Spell Anymore

Nowadays, people's competence in English spelling is very poor, at least to judge from what I see people writing in online chat rooms and so forth. No one knows the difference between your and you're. There's also ignorance of the differences among to/too/two, there/their/they're, and even then/than. Hardly anyone, anymore, respects the distinction between it's and its. (This problem, or mistake, has become well-nigh universal.)

Some of these things are not new. I very well remember, when I was teaching college freshman English, some 40 years ago, writing (over and over and over) on student themes, "It's = it is." And it seems no one knows, anymore, how to spell a plural possessive (no, it's not the same as the singular possessive).

To my mind, the blame for this situation rests squarely with teachers. Decades ago (but after I was in school), teachers adopted a philosophy of allowing students to write with no correction or criticism of "mechanics" by the teachers—because it was thought that requiring students to pay attention to mechanics would distract them from expressing themselves and stifle their creativity.

This is part of a larger phenomenon of what is wrong with education. Teachers (and "educationists," those educators with Ed.D. degrees) want to turn all learning into a game and have enormous dread, and avoidance, of ever having to tell their pupils that something must simply be learned by applying a little effort. All out of (to my mind) an exaggerated fear of stifling the kids' fragile little psyches. Maybe this is why, according to many measures, America's kids can't keep up with those in some other countries.

However, if everybody begins to write your when they mean you are, I don't really believe that will mean the end of the world is upon us. Because of my linguistic training, I know that orthography (spelling) is arbitrary, to a degree--with English orthography being more arbitrary than that of many other languages. To spell or write homonyms the same or differently is not going to matter a great deal—unless maybe you want to worry about whether, at some future time, people won't be able to read older literature anymore. Maybe today's authors will be as hard to read, in the future, as Chaucer or even Shakespeare is for us today.

Copyright © 2009 by Richard Stein