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Through the Looking Glass
Jul. 3rd, 2013 12:46 pmA very strange mirror-world 24 hours.
1. Yesterday, I captioned part of a session of the Ohio House of Representatives - an hour-long debate over whether to ban red light cameras. Both sides made reasonable points. About 40 minutes into the debate, a representative who felt the cameras should be banned because of the possibility for their abuse, even if they were in the majority of cases employed responsibly, said this: "Would we not change it if it was the rights of women, minorities, or anybody else, that we had abusive systems in the state of Ohio? And our responsibility is to all 11 million of them, depending on who's counting -- would we not all be on the same side?"
He made this appeal with complete sincerity, speaking with what seemed to be unshakable belief that the Ohio House has a history of acting unanimously to protect minority rights from potential majoritarian abuses. Which is a strange thing to say to a group of people in a state which has a well-documented recent history of vote suppression (in the spotlight this very week thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court case) and which mere days before enacted some of the most far-reaching (and unconstitutional) abortion restrictions in the country into law as part of a budget bill, likely closing all women's health centers in the state. In other words: it's a strange thing to say to a group of people who are noted for their willingness to trample the rights of women and minorities, in ways far more threatening than traffic tickets.
Making things perhaps stranger, the representative making this appeal was African-American, a condition which generally makes institutional racism less invisible to the bearer.
2. Today's Wall Street Journal editorial page, which I normally skip to spare myself the trolling, was cogent, learned, and almost perfectly in line with my own thoughts, including a letter from the editor about the immigration bill before the U.S. House that I could myself have written. To be fair, Murdoch and I are typically fairly hand-in-glove when it comes to desirable immigration policy, which puts us historically out of step with both Republicans and Democrats. (The U.S., for a nation of immigrants, tends to be irrationally committed to a policy of "get off my lawn." Murdoch owns Fox News, that Tea Party prod; yet he was born in Australia and is himself a first-generation American immigrant, and has enough real conservatism in him to support free movement of labor.)
However, the editorial section went on to give a brief and illuminating overview of the past 100 years of Egypt's political history, and why it makes it difficult to imagine a quick resolution to the current impasse, or what such a resolution would look like, and then, in the final editorial, it gave a quick and welcome debunking to some of the overheated rhetoric around Snowden, echoing some of the exact points I had just made in conversation before turning to that page. (Specifically, the piece looked at whether it was likely that the U.S. was at the beginning of a slide into facism, with the conclusion that current activities did not credibly mirror any historical descents into facism.)
There was no crazy rant by Karl Rove anywhere, nor were there any suggestions that Democrats are evil, nor that we should turn major branches of the government over to corporations, nor that we should abolish all taxes. Even letters to the editor - overwhelmingly about the release of DSM-V - were logical and raised reasonable points, unlike nearly every letter to the editor I have read in any publication for the last three years (and every call-in show, and every town hall meeting...)
What is going on.
I'm dead, aren't I.
I died and am now in a different place, where Ohio and the WSJ and people who write letters to the editor are civilized and moral.
I am holed up in my room for the rest of the day, but perhaps should not be, in case I am missing out on a Spike TV airing of a feminist consciousness-raising seminar. Someone check Reddit and 4chan for sudden reasonableness.
1. Yesterday, I captioned part of a session of the Ohio House of Representatives - an hour-long debate over whether to ban red light cameras. Both sides made reasonable points. About 40 minutes into the debate, a representative who felt the cameras should be banned because of the possibility for their abuse, even if they were in the majority of cases employed responsibly, said this: "Would we not change it if it was the rights of women, minorities, or anybody else, that we had abusive systems in the state of Ohio? And our responsibility is to all 11 million of them, depending on who's counting -- would we not all be on the same side?"
He made this appeal with complete sincerity, speaking with what seemed to be unshakable belief that the Ohio House has a history of acting unanimously to protect minority rights from potential majoritarian abuses. Which is a strange thing to say to a group of people in a state which has a well-documented recent history of vote suppression (in the spotlight this very week thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court case) and which mere days before enacted some of the most far-reaching (and unconstitutional) abortion restrictions in the country into law as part of a budget bill, likely closing all women's health centers in the state. In other words: it's a strange thing to say to a group of people who are noted for their willingness to trample the rights of women and minorities, in ways far more threatening than traffic tickets.
Making things perhaps stranger, the representative making this appeal was African-American, a condition which generally makes institutional racism less invisible to the bearer.
2. Today's Wall Street Journal editorial page, which I normally skip to spare myself the trolling, was cogent, learned, and almost perfectly in line with my own thoughts, including a letter from the editor about the immigration bill before the U.S. House that I could myself have written. To be fair, Murdoch and I are typically fairly hand-in-glove when it comes to desirable immigration policy, which puts us historically out of step with both Republicans and Democrats. (The U.S., for a nation of immigrants, tends to be irrationally committed to a policy of "get off my lawn." Murdoch owns Fox News, that Tea Party prod; yet he was born in Australia and is himself a first-generation American immigrant, and has enough real conservatism in him to support free movement of labor.)
However, the editorial section went on to give a brief and illuminating overview of the past 100 years of Egypt's political history, and why it makes it difficult to imagine a quick resolution to the current impasse, or what such a resolution would look like, and then, in the final editorial, it gave a quick and welcome debunking to some of the overheated rhetoric around Snowden, echoing some of the exact points I had just made in conversation before turning to that page. (Specifically, the piece looked at whether it was likely that the U.S. was at the beginning of a slide into facism, with the conclusion that current activities did not credibly mirror any historical descents into facism.)
There was no crazy rant by Karl Rove anywhere, nor were there any suggestions that Democrats are evil, nor that we should turn major branches of the government over to corporations, nor that we should abolish all taxes. Even letters to the editor - overwhelmingly about the release of DSM-V - were logical and raised reasonable points, unlike nearly every letter to the editor I have read in any publication for the last three years (and every call-in show, and every town hall meeting...)
What is going on.
I'm dead, aren't I.
I died and am now in a different place, where Ohio and the WSJ and people who write letters to the editor are civilized and moral.
I am holed up in my room for the rest of the day, but perhaps should not be, in case I am missing out on a Spike TV airing of a feminist consciousness-raising seminar. Someone check Reddit and 4chan for sudden reasonableness.
