Life as an Extreme Sport

Lies, Damned Lies, and Mehdi Hasan on Abortion

October 14, 2012 Kelly Bioethics, Philosophy, Politics

I got really annoyed this morning. I woke up, and basically the first thing I saw on Twitter was numerous retweets and comments about a HuffPo UK article on abortion and social progressives attempting to argue that one could be socially progressive and still advocate for an anti-choice position.

I disagree, rather vehemently. To the tune of almost 3000 words, give or take, as I basically deconstructed the author’s entire argument in an attempt to show not only why it was wrong, but obnoxiously so. With thanks to Nicholas G. Evans, Catherine Flick, and Laura Northrup, all of whom provided feedback and helped to focus my irritation into coherence.

~~Without further~~Okay, with slightly further ado: yes, this piece was picked up and published, in edited form, on Comment is Free in The Guardian.

Now, really, without further ado,…

15 Miles: Firearms Violence in America

October 8, 2012 Kelly ...and everything else, Bioethics, Philosophy, Politics

Police are investigating a double shooting that left one person dead in the Northern Liberties section of Philadelphia.

“It seems to be a very violent crime that took place in there which led to this double shooting homicide,” Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Scott Small said.

Just another morning in Philly. Wake up, make note of the body count, get your coffee, go about your morning.

No shooting victims were reported in Philadelphia Friday night but at least 14 people were shot throughout the rest of the weekend, including two homicides and one police-involved shooting. At least four of the victims were women.With thanks to Jim MacMillan and Tara Murtha for the link to guncrisis.org.

But you won’t see an uproar about this, not from the media, not from concerned citizens outside of those few shouting to the roofs about the gun crisis in this country. You won’t hear calls for increased gun restrictions, background checks, 2nd Amendment arguments, or anything except maybe a blip on the nightly news about how sad it is, such violence, don’t these people know better? The well-manicured and coifed anchors will shake their heads sadly, and after the break, perkily bring us to some happier topic.

Because it’s not the Empire State Building. It’s not unexplained white shooters. It’s not people who have everything. It’s not mass casualty where the casualties are people this sort of thing isn’t supposed to happen to. This?

Is expected.

My sister was rotating through one of the northern Philadelphia hospitals last year, and told me about what an odd experience it was — where you note the number of bullet holes on the patient’s bodies, making sure that the number in the chart matches the number on the body. Often, they didn’t; there were more that hadn’t been treated, had healed on their own. Battle wounds and pride. Move 15 miles west, into the suburbs where I live, and the emergency room doctors would be shocked and horrified to have that sort of counting done on the bodies of their patients; it would make the news, rather than be an accepted part of life. Because that’s as far as it takes to move from an area of institutional breakdown, racism, and failed inner-city policies to gentrified and genteel areas where the social expectations are light years difference. You don’t shoot people on the Main Line. Our yards are too well-maintained for that.

I am an anomaly among my very liberal friends: I don’t automatically argue that we need more gun control when violence happens. This is undoubtedly in part because I was raised by a father who hunts, whose family lived in Alaska, because I’ve come face-to-face with a moose before and would very much like to not do that again without being armed and able to defend myself, and yes with a semi-automatic because moose? Are big. Oh, people will excuse hunters and people who live in areas like the wilds of Alaska or even middle of nowhere America, places where it’s still considered acceptable to have a gun, certain sorts of approved and accepted weapons. But that really misses the point, doesn’t it? Because the people who are breaking the law are clearly not motivated by following the law.

And most of the time, those folks who are breaking the law and getting subsequent media coverage? The spree shooters, revenge shooters, the ones who are white and well-mannered and aren’t supposed to be like that? They’re the ones who already own their weapons legitimately, and if they do and have, then all the proposed laws in the world, save an outright ban which has already been negated by the acceptance of subsistence hunters and wilderness safety, won’t help. And no one wants to talk about the illegal guns, the ones that are part of the 14 homicides in two days in Philadelphia. Because those aren’t situations that can be bandage-approached with an appeal to laws and bans. Those are situations that bring us into decaying inner cities and hopelessness and social changes that need to happen beyond a law or two.

It’s not hard to notice that the world that judges the United States for it’s firearms violence tends to be a world that has a more communitarian notion of social health and care. Thus, many times when the world that judges decides to speak up, it comes from an uninformed point of view that assumes that if the United States were to simply do as they do, ban guns, have buybacks, follow the lead of these more progressive societies, then all the firearms violence will simply fade away like a bad memory of a less enlightened time.

This attitude, however, doesn’t consider the very deep social differences between our societies — not differences based on autonomy or amendments, but differences based on the very nature and idea of how we interact with members of our society. In other words, it is not that what is “painfully self-evident to Canadians and citizens of other nations with discernible social democratic traditions needs to be bolstered by sustained reasoning and argumentation in the more atomistic (rights-oriented) U.S. milieu;”Turner L. “Bioethics, Public Health, and Firearm-Related Violence: Missing Links Between Bioethics and Public Health.” Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 1997;25:42-48 this is the argument that occurs whenever there are mass shootings that make the news for their stepping outside of what we consider accepted realms of violence. Because those rights are only invoked when the dialog blows out beyond the inner city. Public good and personal autonomy are polite concepts that come up when the violence invades the middle class neighborhoods; it’s not part of the debate that happens when 14 people are killed in two days in Philadelphia, when 19 people are wounded overnight in Chicago. It’s not part of the debate that happens when two are killed and three wounded in Camden, because there isn’t a debate.

It is simply accepted.And to be perfectly fair to Dr. Turner, whom I quoted earlier, this is largely the point his paper is making: that bioethicists have a responsibility to social bioethics, and that these problems of social justice, public health, and so forth need to be the central focus of the field, rather than the “lure of lucre.” I admit to slightly misreading the quote for my own purpose, in that quite a few of my Canadian and Australian friends do say things like that, which does tend to leave me wanting to pitch them through the nearest window.

In order to have an honest discussion about firearms violence in America, we need to realize that the discussion to be had is not one of regulation first, but of greater social issues. It’s a dialog that needs to be based in equality, access, healthcare, education, and removing the constraints that cause such a dramatic difference in medical, hospital, and social response in 15 short miles.

Is It Moral for Lefties to Vote for Obama What?

September 27, 2012 Kelly Politics

Over at The Atlantic yesterday, Conor Friedersdorf explained why he refuses to vote for Barack Obama this election season. His argument boils down to Obama having a dismal human rights record:

Obama has done things that, while not comparable to a historic evil like chattel slavery, go far beyond my moral comfort zone. … Obama terrorizes innocent Pakistanis on an almost daily basis. The drone war he is waging in North Waziristan isn’t “precise” or “surgical” as he would have Americans believe. It kills hundreds of innocents, including children. And for thousands of more innocents who live in the targeted communities, the drone war makes their lives into a nightmare worthy of dystopian novels.

This, I do not disagree with. Obama has done a lot of things that make me uncomfortable to flat out unhappy. I don’t agree with many of his policy decisions – and frankly, I also don’t expect to. While it would be nice if I was Queen of the World, realistically, that’s never going to happen (and equally realistically, we should all be happy about that). Obama has been a disaster on several issues of international human rights and morality – but taking a look at their positions, it’s not clear to me that Mitt Romney would be any better. Friedersdorf, however, thinks that the moral thing to do would be to vote for Gary Johnson, even though he won’t win.

No. In fact, I’d say that Friedersdorf’s argument clearly shows why it would be immoral for someone to vote for anyone other than Obama – at least, if someone can manage to remove themselves from a biased white male privilege position long enough to stop navel-gazing outward and take a look at our home front for a minute. Friedersdorf says

I don’t see how anyone who confronts Obama’s record with clear eyes can enthusiastically support him. I do understand how they might concluded that he is the lesser of two evils, and back him reluctantly, but I’d have thought more people on the left would regard a sustained assault on civil liberties and the ongoing, needless killing of innocent kids as deal-breakers.

Really? He doesn’t see how a woman can enthusiastically support the person who has created a program of healthcare equality? Friedersdorf can’t understand how a woman may support someone who has been trying to get the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act passed? Or how a woman might feel more kindly inclined towards someone who is strongly pro-choice and advocates for and supports a woman’s right to control her own reproductive decisions?

There are more to civil liberties than those overseas. There are the ones right here at home, and allowing your outrage over foreign issues to cloud the domestic issues is something that you can have if you are holding that invisible privilege knapsack. But charging that I am somehow acting immorally because I am advocating for, campaigning for, and voting for Obama? That’s the kind of position you can take if your rights and your abilities to equality aren’t being threatened on the home front – and that, more than anything else, is a clear sign of the benefit of privilege of gender and race.

I am not, of course, saying that Obama should be left off the hook for his dismal foreign policy record. It is bad, and the human rights issues – held over from previous administrations or otherwise – need to be dealt with, and swiftly. Drone strikes need to end, the military needs to pull back from where it is not wanted or recognized by the local populations, and we need a serious re-evaluation of our entire interaction with the Middle East.

But that doesn’t mean someone should charge that supporting Obama is an immoral act and that moral voters should throw away their vote in protest, giving the chance for a split vote to allow Romney in to office. Not seeing the threat Romney offers – from his hawkish positions on international policy (really, you think he’s going to be better than Obama) to his attacks on women, minorities, and the middle class (the real middle class, not his idea of middle class) – is something you can do if you’re not in the group he’s targeting.

Yes, I realize that Friedersdorf laid out his argument on the immorality of voting for Obama with philosophical language, falling back on various traditions to justify his argument. I could do that; I know my Kant, my Mill. I could loop in virtue ethics.Yes, Nick, I’d even fall on my sword and argue the point with Foot. Shush. The right tool for the problem. The thing is, in this case, I think utilizing that specialized language and thinking – when talking to the general public – is a cop-out. It’s an attempt to use education to beat people over the head to get them to agree because oh, that person clearly knows what they’re talking about, and no. I know that trick, and this is too important for that.

So don’t listen to people who want to argue philosophical positions with youUnless you’re in a philosophy department or otherwise a masochist, in which case please come back, I still need to argue Rawls with someone. or are trying to appeal to their own authority to guilt you in to their position. Don’t look at the people making emotional appeals. Instead, look at what is genuinely important to you. What are your value issues? What is important to you? If you self-identify as liberal, then you’re concerned about social justice, healthcare, women’s rights, GLBTQ rights, equal pay, access to education, STEM advancement; you support science and evidence-based education; and yes, you are concerned about justice and international policy and human rights.

Take a look at both candidates and look at the entire picture. Yes, voting is often a lesser-of-two-evils prospect, but in this case, if you’re going to fall back somewhere, fall back on the needs of the many, and remember the many that live around you as much as you remember the many worldwide.

Politics and Faith in a Pluralistic Society

September 10, 2012 Kelly ...and everything else, Philosophy, Politics

Archbishop Dolan raised some eyebrows by participating in both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions in the last two weeks, something that dovetails nicely with conversations I’ve been having (mostly with myself) over the necessity to reveal religious motivation in political positions.

On the one hand, I think that if someone can make a rational argument in the public sphere to advocate for a position without clearly relying on non-public concepts and beliefs that are developed via their comprehensive doctrineYes, I’m leaning heavily on Rawls here. Should I apologize? Probably. (whether that comprehensive doctrineThis is a kind of important concept for Rawls, since his political concept of justice is set in opposition to these comprehensive views. There’s a good rundown of what Rawls’ idea is here: http://www.wku.edu/~jan.garrett/ethics/matrawls.htm#cd is religion or utilitarianism or whatever), then go for it – differing belief systems can and do often have overlapping principles. For example, Judaism and Islam have overlapping principles regarding kosher/halal foods, and so can very easily find agreement about how animals should be slaughtered – but if these religious groups wanted society to change to embrace those principles, they would need to present it to the non-Jews/Muslims in a non-religious way.For example, by trying to connect kosher or halal butchering to a lower incidence of transmissible pathogens advocates could make an argument for the health and safety of an entire community. Smulders F, Korteknie F, Wollthuis C. Control of the bacteriological condition of calf brain. 1985. International Journal of Food Microbiology 2(3):169-176. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0168160585900364. If their appeal succeeds, well — okay. Society listened to the argument for something, agreed, and there ya go.

On the other hand, though, it sort of skeeves me out when people hide their motivation for a goal. For example, as I’ve discussed elsewhere on this blog, there’s an on-going debate over a drug given to women when they are pregnant in order to prevent something called congenital adrenal hyperplasia, which can cause masculinized genitals, urogenitary developmental issues, and so forth.I’m skipping a lot of the details here in order to avoid detracting from the focus here. If you’re curious, please go read the other post. Go read Dreger et al.’s work. It’s important research. However, this is one of those things that you have to treat before you know for certain that the embryo is female, or has CAH. (Note: treatment isn’t a cure, it’s just an attempt to prevent the worst physical ailments of the disease.) This means that women who take the drug generally have already had a daughter or close family member with CAH.

All sounds good and sane, right? Utilizing the public reason and discourse positions advocated by Rawls, I think just about everyone would go “yeah, if you know there’s a strong chance your baby is going to be born with fused labia, or urethra open to the vagina, or a bunch of other issues, popping a pill for 6 weeks seems to make a lot of sense.”

The problem is when you peel back to the non-public reason and realize that one of the reasons that the researchers are advocating for this treatment is because they think it’s medically wrong and abnormal for women to be lesbians, to be interested in masculine jobs like becoming doctors or firefighters or going into businessNimkarn, S., and M.I. New. 2010a. Congenital adrenal hyperplasia due to 21-hydroxylase deficiency: A paradigm for prenatal diagnosis and treatment. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1192: 5—11., and that they believe it’s actually a medically diagnosable problem if a woman does not want to be a mother.Meyer-Bahlburg, H.F. 1999. What causes low rates of child-bearing in congenital adrenal hyperplasia? The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism 84(6): 1844—1847.

By presenting only a fraction of their beliefs to the public sphere, these researchers are able to deceive people into agreeing with something that I think/hope most people would not actually agree to or with, if they knew the entire story.

While this is largely a secular example, unfortunately this behavior does extend to religious beliefs and motivations; people are driven to create laws that reflect the morality and beliefs that they adhere to (see: opposition to gay and lesbian rights, the issue of abortion, birth control access, and just about every other social issue of the current election). Trying to appeal to public reason, many conservative Republican politicians, as well as religious voices, rely on arguing for smaller businesses, less government oversight, and so on, in order to justify their disinclination for support of these social issues. In theory, this is the correct move — appealing to arguments that are separate from their comprehensive doctrine, in an effort to appeal to a pluralistic society. However, it doesn’t take much to strip back to the religious motivations for these positions (often all it takes is an interview on Fox News).

So while I can see the benefit in being able to portray beliefs across comprehensive theories in a pluralistic society, there’s an element of truthfulness missing that I think forms a fatal flaw in the entire thing.

Practically speaking, that flaw — that inherent lack of open truthfulness — is what drives me away from Rawls’ position. And perhaps this is a reflection of my tendency to ask “why” — why do you hold your position? What makes this a reasonable thing for you? Can you show me science? What forms the foundation that your argument rests on? It seems like Rawls isn’t interested in the foundation so long as the public face is convincing. These seems a bit like an Old West backdrop on a Hollywood backlot, though — put up the pretty front and hope no one knocks the saloon down during filming.

Sometimes, it doesn’t matter if a bunch of diverse opinions all end up at the same final point; people have different life experiences, cultures, and so on. While one person may be motivated by a strong sense of justice, another may be motivated by compassion and a third by pragmatism. The important thing there is that, while their paths may have been different to the conclusion of say, Civil Rights, they all reached the same goal in the end. But at other times, the path taken to reach the conclusion is as, if not more, important as the conclusion itself.

In the realm of public discourse, people should be able to examine the foundations a position relies upon, regardless of if that foundation rests on religion, flawed logic, science, spaghetti or anything else between.

This was written, in part, for the Faith and Science Synchroblog.
It was also written because I told a certain instigator I would.

Apple, Truth and the Audience Contract

March 21, 2012 Kelly ...and everything else, Politics

I’ve always been curious about the world, and from a young age this manifested as an interest in the scientific process. Which, of course, is why I believed in Santa Claus. I had, after all, empirical proof! No, not the “Santa knows where I am even if I’m not home,” or the “Santa ate the cookies and drank the milk” sort of proof that most kids have. That, after all, can be easily explained by other means. No, I had proof. I had sleigh bells, hooves on the roof, and gravel (because in Arizona, there was no snow) dropping off the roof as the reindeer and Santa left. And after that, there were presents around the tree and missing cookies and milk, so clearly Santa existed. The sleigh bells, the hooves, the stuff falling off the roof — clearly that’s something that could never be faked.

Of course, my truth as a child — that Santa Claus existed and I had proof — is a lot different than my truth as an adult: when you get my uncles together with the rest of the family, mischief of a most impressive variety occurs. And as an adult, I can see that what I know now (a relative on the roof, recorded noises, coordination between all the adults in the house) is certainly the truth, and what I knew as a kid was not the truth but an elaborate fantasy. But it leaves me sympathetic to the idea of “different languages for what truth means,” which is Mike Daisey’s excuse for the Foxconn falsity/fiasco. I understand that the truth of a child is different than the truth of an adult.

And, on top of that, I am fond of narrative framing for stories. The hook of a narrative is an excellent way to get attention, and telling a story is always an effective way to share knowledge. Narrative, after all, matters.

So in many ways, I am perfectly set to be receptive to the basic argument Mike Daisey is trying to sell; so why am I not buying?

Well, the simple thing, I suppose, is the dishonesty — the same thing that shot James Frey’s credibility into a million little pieces (sorry). It’s not that Daisey presented narrative non-fiction, or advocacy journalism, or whatever anyone wants to gloss his lying with. It’s that he knew he was lying, and he attempted to hide it by providing This American Life with a false translator name in order to stymie their fact-checking prior to the story being released.

Daisey’s piece — the outrage and the empathy and the demands for justice and parity and all those things — all depended upon his bearing actual witness to what he said. “Oh hey, I heard about X situation and it sucks” is informative, but rarely as moving as powerful description of events witnessed firsthand. (This is why there is such a rush to collect the stories and memories of The Greatest Generation, and survivors of the Shoah, but I digress.) “Knowing” Daisey talked to poisoning victims, people who’s been injured in the pursuit of electronics, created a direct connection between audience and performer and the people supposedly on the other side of that performance — only they weren’t there, at least, they weren’t there in any more concrete way. Daisey violated the audience’s belief that what they were being told was not only real, but witnessed by the person in front of them — and he showed his knowledge of his violation in his shoddy attempts at cover-up (and his now shoddier attempts at passing the buck).

The sad thing* about this is that Daisey is a talented writer who has the ability to move people with his words and plays, and he likely could have created that same emotional resonance while just being honest — that this play was a play, based in truth but not the truth. But instead he attempted to pass it off as the truth when the reality is it was not the truth of a child, not the truth of an adult; it was, plainly, simply, not truth.

*I’ve seen people say “the saddest thing” in regards to Daisey’s talent and the magnitude of his fuck-up, but let’s be realistic here: the saddest thing is still the manufacturing problems that do exist in Shenzhen and other Chinese manufacturing cities. The problems are still real, even if Mike Daisey is not.

Category: Politics

Lies, Damned Lies, and Mehdi Hasan on Abortion

15 Miles: Firearms Violence in America

Is It Moral for Lefties to Vote for Obama What?

Politics and Faith in a Pluralistic Society

Apple, Truth and the Audience Contract

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Seek And Find. Maybe.

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