Now at New Voices: For daveners only

I’ve written a second post for New Voices. This one is about the difficulties of providing for all students in a campus Hillel, and what I see as an important step in that direction. Enjoy!

Apple fandom

I’ve been using Apple products all my life. I’ve always found them to be of terrific quality, and I’ve always been better treated by the company in sale and support terms. I’ve also spent years as an Apple Certified Macintosh Technician. I camped out for an iPhone 3G and spent a long time arguing AT&T into giving me a subsidized 3G S after the 3G was stolen. I have just about as much loyalty to the Apple brand as anyone.

But I know which way the wind is blowing. If Apple keeps going down the road of intense user control, doesn’t give up the exclusivity contract with AT&T, and continues to break with Google, I’m not going to stick with them. Google Android, Chrome, and Chrome OS once it exists (not to mention more well-established software like Ubuntu, which I already consider second only OS X), are all completely viable alternatives. I already have all of my email addresses (including MobileMe, which I get for free as a certified Apple Sales Professional) redirecting to Gmail, and it provides all the services MobileMe does, except for Find My iPhone, and for free. See my general rule for computing. It still applies.

So, while I think that Apple is still a generally moral company, one that is providing terrific services to its users, I hope they realize that down the road they are only going to be able to restrict us so far. Google has done an incredible job of making it really easy to switch to their services, and as we offload more and more of our data storage and processing power to the cloud, that ease of transition and context-switching is a big advantage. Either it will keep Apple honest, or I’ll switch. I’m definitely not enough of a fanboy to stick with Apple when there’s a better alternative. Until that point, I’ll continue to defend them as the best hardware and software provider, but I’m not blind to reality.

Thus, I publicly declare Apple not to be the infallible god that its fanpersons so often claim it is. And I call on its directors and customers to take it in a direction that continues to provide good products and services, rather than one that treats its customers, as so many other tech companies have, as endlessly ignorant moneybags. I, for one, will not put up with that. We’re used to getting good value from Apple, and if we stop getting it, we’ll move on.

Terrorists' day in court

With the news that some of the most undoubtedly-guilty-of-one-of-the-most-heinous-crimes-ever people will be tried in NYC, and that Greg Craig (I really like saying that name out loud) is departing the White House, it seems to me there’s a missing piece in the argument over what’s to be done with Gitmo detainees. The GOP whines about trying terrorists, and Bill Kristol has the balls to say that Maj. Hasan shouldn’t be tried.

So what’s the pattern? Conservatives are subverting the due process of law. They’re appealing to the gut reaction of “Oh, you want to try this guy? You must think he’s innocent.” I think that people like Kristol honestly think that it’s okay not to give him a fair trial. That’s because they don’t understand the Constitution. Or they don’t understand its importance. Either way, they’re trying to paint Democrats as terrorists sympathizers.

Enough of this. President Obama’s strategy of avoiding making enemies of Republicans at all costs has gone too far. It’s time for him to make a statement about Guantanamo. Here’s how it should start:

Fellow Americans, I’m here today to talk about something very important. Housed in our prison in Guantanamo Bay are approximately 200 detainees. Some were wanted in connection to various crimes. We have gathered and inherited definite evidence against some of them. Others have been held for years without even the most basic right that we accord to all suspects, the right of habeas corpus, to know the reason for imprisonment.

My administration has made it a priority literally from day one to end this operation. I’d like to tell you about where we see that mission heading in the future.

First of all, let me make something abundantly clear. We do our country a great disservice by continuing to violate the rights of these detainees. Now, I now many of you have qualms about affording people whose names are associated with such terrible acts the same rights we afford each other. I understand this. And I too have deep moral conflicts about the appropriateness of our judicial system as it can be applied to these detainees.

But I am here today to make an unequivocal statement that those people will be afforded just and speedy trials. Tantamount to our country’s desire to preserve its image as a beacon of freedom and democracy is our ability to apply our moral codes equally to all. The continued infringement of the rights of those detainees detracts from our country’s ability to hold others to the same standards. We must be the example we wish others to follow.

So, you get the idea for the flowery rhetoric. He’s good at that, so I think that if he just decided to do it, he could *easily *win the support of most of the country. Obviously, there will be people who don’t want to hear it. And you know what? It doesn’t matter. The lesson that the LGBTQ equality movement is learning from endless failed ballot initiatives, which confirmed by the women’s suffrage movement and the Civil Rights Act is that you can’t put people’s inalienable rights on a referendum. The Constitution does not say that “all free, unaccused, unimprisoned men” are created equal, and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, it says that “all men” are. The Constitution is important precisely because of how universal it is. It’s about people, not just free citizens. We can’t treat these detainees like subhumans anymore.

My proposal is this: Create an independent federal comission of military, terrorism, legal, etc., experts, to review the cases of every single detainee there. That commission will have no decision-making authority, but it will give a recommendation to the Executive branch on which of those detainees should be brought to court. Because they were detained and imprisoned in illegal and unprecedented manners, we need to think outside the box. I’m not a Constitutional scholar, but I do think it would be constitutional to just release all of them. So that’s an option, but I’d consider it a pretty bad one, because a fair amount of them probably do have terrorist connections, and just letting them back out into the wild would legitimately be dangerous (whereas housing them in high-security federal prisons is not, unlike what John Boehner would have you believe). Realistically, we can’t try all of them. There are too many, and the evidence against them has been too poorly handled. For a lot of them, a trial would just be a huge waste of time and money, as they’d just end up walking.

So the panel will make recommendations not only on if they should be tried, but where and how. KSM? Killed people in NYC, so they’re trying him there. Someone was detained for plotting against soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan? Try them in a military tribunal. We’ve spent too long making blanket statements about these people, calling them all terrorists, all evil people. It’s time to treat them with the same respect and investigation that we do all other criminals.

I’m really tired of being told that my opinions on this make America less safe. For god’s sake, we have the highest incarceration rates in the entire world, and the GOP would like us to think that somehow an extra 200 guys are going to be a problem? Again, Steve Benen says it: “…are we back to Republican fears that terrorist suspects are comic-book villains with super powers?”

Seriously, guys. They’re just people. They’re not terrorists yet. They’re not criminals yet. That is the entire point of the constitution.

Republicans either don’t get it, or don’t care. Worse, they don’t care that they don’t get it. In their insular little political “us-and-them” philosophy, there’s no room for liberal elitist “human rights” issues. No room for international credibility. Just America the brave, and the craven enemy. It’s so easy being a right-winger (KFJ’s excellent post on what this means for the Israel debate is totally applicable here too).

I have zero interest in adopting the us-and-them tactic. It’s stupid and regressive. But that shouldn’t prevent us from calling out those who do.

My first post at New Voices!

At the J Street conference, I was approached by Ben Sales, the editor of New Voices, who asked me to blog for them, andI’ve just written my first post for them! I’m really excited about this, and I’ll continue to post here when I write something new over there. As with Jewschool, I’m not going to crosspost the content of blog posts, just a link to them.

I encourage everyone to take a look at New Voices. There’s some really great stuff over there, and I’m really happy to be a part of it.

Exquisite Corpse: Now with timestamps!

I’ve made a small update to the Exquisite Corpse page, one that I had been considering for a while. All poems completed from this point onwards will display a timestamp showing when they were completed.

Activity on the page has been pretty steady recently, which is great. I’m really pleased with how that project is going. Please share it with your friends – it’s really becoming something pretty awesome. Keep up the good work!

The signs are inescapable

I’d say that the fact that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was a Muslim is a lot less important than the fact that he was an Army psychiatrist. His entire job is preventing people from feeling that they have to do exactly what he did.

Coincedence? No. When people with the training to assess and treat psychological syndromes like PTSD succumb to them, something is seriously wrong. Military suicides are already going way up. Afghanistan isn’t the good fight anymore. Service members are speaking out following their experiences there. There was a time when we could have done good there. That time is over.

Bush didn’t care about the troops enough to bring them home. Instead, he deployed more. And that doesn’t just mean that a bunch of them suddenly just materialized. Tours got longer. Time between them got shorter.

Obama, don’t make the same mistake. The deceptively low (considering the length of the engagement [and especially when compared to Iraq]) casualty figures are only or side of the story. This war is driving the country deeper into depression. It’s driving a wedge between us and our allies (cite BBC), not to mention the Muslim world. And it’s putting an unsustainable strain on our military.

You have the power to end it now. Do it before it’s too late.

When is vindictiveness productive?

A while back, I wrote about what I thought the ramifications of Chris Brown’s well-publicized abuse of Rihanna would be. And I compared it to a somewhat more extreme case, that of Scott Roeder. I’m going to go out on a limb, and do something pretty similar. Rihanna has just spoken out about the incident for the first time since the beating occured. Also notably, the DC Sniper is going to be executed on November 10th.

It’s hard to maintain serious opposition to the death penalty when confronted with a case like this. This is someone who clearly had no intention but to murder innocent civilians, a defense that is morally and practically completely indefensible, period. And if I were required to to prescribe the death penalty as the punishment for a single type of crime, reserving it for the worst of the worst, this might be it.

So what’s so complicated about it? An evil person is going to die, and I’m going to keep on fighting to outlaw the death penalty. Conflicting morals, but nothing we haven’t encountered before when talking about the state executing people.

Except people are going to watch.

Let me repeat that: people are going to watch.

The state offered the family of every victim two seats. Call them front-row; they will stand in a ten-foot square room and watch as John Allen Muhammad is strapped to a gurney and injected with poison. They will watch him die.

I know, I know, this is a bit dramatic. But it just seems so wrong to me.

I’m in no position to criticize the hate and misery those people must feel. I cannot even imagine how incredibly hard it must be to have a loved one taken in that manner by the randomly targeted cruelty of another. And there’s pretty much nothing in the world I’d deny those people as recourse.

Except this. I have a sense of complete moral revulsion at the thought of taking pleasure or feeling justice as you watch someone die, stripped of any dignity they might ever have had. I won’t speculate on their motives, because, again, I cannot even try to put myself in their position, but one of the victims (who survived and chose not to attend the execution) said “There was enough killing already with us.” How could anyone want to experience more death, more pain, more loss, after having gone through that?

I never though I’d call domestic abuse “trivial”, but comparing this to what happened to Rihanna is just that. But she had the courage to speak out about it. She’s not vindictive, she’s productive.

What if, instead of watching this freak-show of a justice system, each of those families declined the invitation, and told the state to use their funds to improve subsidized housing, or welfare programs, or other social infrastructure? How much more bitterness and death and tax dollars do we need to inject into the veins of society before we realize what a waste it is?

How many more innocent people will be sniped? How many more innocent people will be executed (h/t thewanderingjew)?

And how many more will watch?

This is just disgusting

The sponsor of H.R. 867, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, also sponsored a bill in March commemorating… “the 15th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide and calling on all responsible nations to uphold the principles of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.”. Take a look at the list of resolution’s she’s sponsored in the past. She’s a champion of the recognition of genocide, human rights violations, hate crimes, terrorism and security threats posed by poverty, and so on. She’s the only member of the GOP in the House LGBTQ Equality Caucus.

What gives?

The dangers of euphemisms

1. Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.
2. Collateral damage.
3. The Internet Freedom Act.

What do these things actually mean? Answers:

1. Illegal wiretapping (courtesy of the Bush administration).
2. Dead civilians (courtesy of just about everyone ever).
3. For-profit bandwidth throttling (courtesy of Sen. John McCain, #1 beneficiary of telecom lobby money)

Honestly, I’m pretty pissed of at Sen. McCain. Every time I think he’s reestablished himself as a paragon of GOP morality in an ever-more-decadent political climate, he slips up again. Given the state of rural broadband, there are a lot of people who can get service from only one ISP, and the idea that that ISP should have the right to control what that person does and doesn’t see is just ridiculous.

Dear GOP: The only thing your insistence on absolute (there it is again) government non-interventionism does is let someone else do the intervening. If you don’t make it illegal for someone to take away someone else’s civil liberties, rest assured that someone will find a way to do it, and to make money off it. Healthcare. Social Security. Internet.

America, wake up and smell the coffee. The people defending corporations and saying that they need protection from the big bad government are getting paid to do so. The reality is that a culture of profit in this country is deeply entrenched. Government regulations aren’t changing that. We are not poised on the brink of communism, despite what John Boehner, Sarah Palin, and Rush Limbaugh would like you to think. This country is more firmly capitalist than perhaps any other.

So now, can we make it a little more moral? Or is that too much to ask of you right-wing GOP extremists who care about nothing but where your campaign money’s coming from? Now, I know I’m sounding like just another left-wing nutjob, but Matt Yglesias was right when he said that Alan Grayson had broken an unspoken rule. And Barney Frank’s comment about Grayson was just as accurate. If the left would just stop bowing to the GOP’s attention to minute details and stick to the moral message, we’d win. I happen to think we’re right on both fronts, so I fully support and engage in debate on financial details of Democrat’s plans, but I think that the reason we’re bogged down in that is that we’ve lost sight of the moral message. If we worked to reframe the debate in terms of “whose political morals are in support of the people?”, we’d practically have won. If we can talk to Americans in terms they understand about moral differences, instead of leaving that entirely to the GOP, they’d listen. Democrats have never been good at this – Grayson is refreshing.

Let’s follow his example. No more dodging points and hiding behind euphemisms. The right does out of dishonesty. The left does it out of inaptitude. If we both stopped, we’d have one person saying “I want to ensure that corporations continue to profit” and another saying “I want to ensure that you have money to stay healthy”.

The choice is clear.

I need a name!

As you might have noticed, I’m making some large-ish changes to this site. As I find that blogging is becoming a bigger and bigger part of how I think about issues, I’ve made this site much more about the blog. Looking at some of my favorite blogs, I’ve tried to present more relevant content to people, and made the site less formally separated. I felt that those separations weren’t doing much good, and it would be better to have more information about me, still cleanly organized (I hope) and easy-to-access.

So I think the site needs a name. Rather than just being “harpojaeger.com”, I want to come up with something to call the blog that makes sense, that communicates the sort of things it might be about. College, politics, religion, culture, and so on.

If you notice the site has weird names in the near future, it may just be because I’m trying things out to see how I like them. I could imagine myself changing the name (and probably adding a subtitle) and letting it sit for a few days to see what it looks like. I’d appreciate feedback if you have ideas or thoughts.

Stay tuned for more…

New post at Jewschool: The relationship between a Jewish identity and a political identity

I’ve decided to stop cross-posting the content of my Jewschool work, so here’s a link to my newest piece over there.

The obsolete conservative mentality

Several conversations and thinking-sessions recently have brought me to a new conclusion: conservativism is obsolete. Mind you, I’ve thought the GOP was obsolete for a while (with no real leader, and Michael Steele proving his inaptitude at every possible opportunity), but this is starting to translate to conservative values as a whole.

If anything, the election of Barack Obama symbolizes an end to the era of extremes. Arguably, that’s an era that America’s been stuck in since its inception. And for an understandable reason. When you have a country born of a violent revolution (whether or not it was just isn’t even at issue here”, that mentality of** **“we’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it any more” is bound to stick around. It’s a core part of what’s up to this point been an inflexible American mentality.

But I’m not afraid now to prophesy the end of that. There are definite signs that this era is coming to an end. Call it relief from Bushism, call it being starstruck, but those things are worth something.

We’re talking to Iran. We’re working for meaningful diplomacy in the Middle East. We’re closing Guantanamo. We’re passing inclusive hate-crimes legislation. We’re going to pass health care reform (so help me G-d).

This isn’t meant to be a laundry list of things that Obama has done right – there are plenty of things he’s done wrong. So far, Afghanistan is a big one, and I’m not yet sure where it’s going from here. But there’s a significance to this progress that is underestimated.

To argue this point, I want to address what I see as the core concept of conservatism – absolutes. Personal responsibility, personal liberty, moral integrity. Now, I don’t mean to trash those things – they’re all very good. I’m all for responsibility, liberty, and integrity. But I don’t look at them in a vacuum. I don’t pretend that you can separate them from all other worldly concepts and still treat them in the same way.

Take, for example, the Republican war on climate change science in the 90′s. Regardless of the industrial, economic, or personal motivations behind the actions of many prominent conservatives, one of their most devastating weapons weapons was the magnification and misrepresentation of scientific uncertainty. Now, I’m not saying there aren’t conservative scientists (there are many smart people who are conservative), but the aggressive right-wing politics that the Gingrich house espoused appealed deliberately to the fear that uneducated conservatives have about uncertainty.

I can’t really call myself a scientist – I’m a college student studying various sciences, but I can say that I have a very good knowledge of and deep respect for the scientific process. It’s a process that’s different from almost any other. The “scientific community” (a phrase which implies more unity of opinion than does in fact exist) has deliberately created a process designed to be self-sustaining (in that those whose ideas are determined to be sound are then given the ability to make that judgment about others), and accurate (in that people are directly responsible for the content, execution, and ramifications of their ideas). There is no other intellectual system this rigorous.

To destroy the public’s perception of that well-founded structure, conservatives (with the aid of industry lobbyists) turned to people’s fear of the unknown. That fear is, at its heart, very unscientific. While a conservative in that fight might say that science cannot explain everything (factually correct), a scientist would argue that that’s mising the point. Science is about quantifying uncertainty. Science accepts that there are certain things we’re not currently capable of understanding, for a variety of reasons, and sets as its primary goals defining the limits of what those concepts are, working to increase our knowledge of the unknown, and allowing us to find concrete ways of expressing exactly what it is we don’t know.

This process is fundamentally subverted by that of politics. Take, for example, the 2001 Data Quality Act. In essence it gives the OMB the power to decide what does and does not constitute valid scientific information. This is a fundamentally unscientific concept. The government has not historically and should not have the capability to make scientific judgments. Within the peer-review process, a scientists rigorously check their colleagues’ work and verify their conclusions. There is no entity doing this for the federal government. So when the government can reject scientific evidence based on anything other than the direct advice or opinion of the scientific community (perhaps indirectly, as in a scientific claim that has been debunked in a peer-reviewed journal), it gains a huge advantage. Suddenly, the government is able to misrepresent scientific data. The only people who can call them out on it are scientists, and when you combine this with a toxic conservative ideological distrust for formally structured, impersonal systems (like the peer-review process), it’s easy to paint scientists as conspiracy theorists who must be stopped by the dedicated pro-small-government advocates. It fits right into those same constituents’ fears of big government. In their mind, the conservatives are coming into office to shrink the government and prevent the scientists from using their massive deceptive structure to fool the common folks.

I’d argue that the 1990′s Gingrich-controlled House attitude towards climate science is largely responsible for some current political phenomena as well. Specifically, the added role that the government played in scientific processes is in my opinion the reason that prominent climate deniers, long disgraced and disproved by near-unanimous consensuses (unanimous to an unusual magnitude), still gain public attention. Had the government acted on the scientific community’s best advice at the time it was given, those people would have quickly faded into the background. And yet we still see this misinformation published by major news organizations. That’s because in the early years of the debate they gained a legitimacy they could have found nowhere in the scientific community due to the government’s willingness to feature their views. That’s a direct result of industry lobbying and concerted GOP efforts to publish false data and conclusions to the public as truth and undermine the legitimacy of well-founded scientific claims based on ad hominem, irrelevant attacks.

For a movement that prides itself on individualism and government non-intervention, conservatives are remarkably willing to support the government in applying their own morals to others. Two good examples of this are abortion rights and marriage equality. In both situations, you have extremely personal issues with far-reaching consequences for all those involved. Decisions on abortion or marriage are among the most important anyone could make in their life. And yet, conservatives are willing to paint with a broad brush the challenges people face in deciding whether or not to have an abortion or the feelings people have for one another, and declare one thing right and one thing wrong in every situation. Absolutism, again. There are endless examples. Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, health care, and so on. In each of them, conservatives are willing to stick to principles of absolutes that are at their core restrictive. To be sure, I, as a liberal Democrat, have very strong values, but my values are based around freedom of choice. I believe that everyone should have the right to choose whether or not they have an abortion. Everyone should have the right to choose who they marry. Everyone should have the right to choose where they get their healthcare from. We should pursue foreign policy that opens us up to the rest of the world, not secures our status as a superpower at the expense of diplomatic relationships. And I believe that the government should take a strong stance to prevent anyone from taking away someone else’s choices. By creating a public option to prevent corporate monopolies on insurance, by passing inclusive hate-crimes legislation (yay!) to prevent crimes and intimidation against people who make different choices, by preventing conservatives from intimidating those who’ve chosen to get an abortion. That’s the government’s job. To give people the freedom to make their own choices.

That’s why I’m declaring the impending doom of a movement based around restrictions of liberty. One that believes, and I am sure quite honestly in most cases, that the way to do this is by taking away the fundamental structures designed to preserve individual freedoms. By seeking to undermine policies designed to strengthen those structures and add new ones as they are found necessary. That hasn’t worked in the past, it isn’t working now, and it will never work.

And I think America is waking up. I’m not claiming that this is a shift I expect to happen in the extremely near future. But this country has been fundamentally changed by the election of President Barack Obama.

It’s change we can believe in. And we’re never going back.

Cross-posted from Jewschool: Opening session, introductions, and surprises

The J Street U opening program has just finished. Technically, this program beings and ends a day earlier than the regular J Street conference, so our individual programming takes place throughout the day tomorrow. In the evening, we join the conference, and go through their programming on Monday. We then have the option of our own advocacy session on Capitol Hill, or staying in the regular conference for Tuesday and going to their advocacy session on Wednesday. I’ve elected to take this option, and so, it turns out, has one of our guest bloggers, Moriel Rothman, whom I bumped into at the beginning of the opening program.

We turn out to have a lot in common (such as as both beatboxing), and we’re spending some time talking about how to cover the events here meaningfully as we go through the program. Tonight has been very constructive. I’m looking forward to crashing at the hostel a few blocks away where a lot of us are staying. Tomorrow’s an even busier day.

There’s a palpable sense of excitement in the air. But people are surprisingly level-headed. No one’s flying off the handle with radicalism or unfounded idealistic dreams of changing the world right away. But there’s real hope here. We heard some speakers talk about the role college campuses play in the shaping and realization of U.S. Middle Eastern policy; it’s empowering to have people address you like that. So tomorrow, when we actually make good on these ideas, and have real discussions with real facts, it’s going to come home – we have a job to do, and we’re here to learn how to do it.

I’ll continue to tweet the student and regular conferences.

This post originally appeared on Jewschool.

My citizens or yours: reflections on "collateral damage"

The Goldstone report has generated quite a splash, to say the least, in a lot of different arenas. Between Israel condemning it, and the most recent developments within the UN, it’s an ongoing issue. And it’s made me think about another important issue – the idea of collateral damage.

So when you’re facing an enemy like Hamas who has no problem using civilians as shields, you’re faced with a difficult moral decision.

Oh wait. That’s right. You’re not actually. At all.

If your enemy is using a civilian as a human shield, you don’t shoot. Period.

I recognize a nation’s right to sovereignty. A nation’s right to defend its own citizens. I don’t think it’s ideal, but I recognize that for the moment, in this world, the most efficient and fair way of organizing things is by separate nations with often-competing interests.

But being a member or leader of a nation doesn’t mean that other citizens are second class. You don’t get to kill other civilians in defense of your own. No matter how you dodge, you’re stating that you value your own citizens more highly as humans than others’. And that’s fundamentally wrong and inhumane.

And the same is true of those using their own citizens or fellow countrymen as shields. It’s inhumane, disrespectful, and ultimately counterproductive.

I will, without reservation, continue to condemn anyone who endangers civilians, whether they’re on the defense or the offense. It’s simply inexcusable.

Coming to terms with Afghanistan

Straight up. U.S. out of Afghanistan.

I’m beginning like this because it’s a change of heart. I’ve never been supportive of a full withdrawal from Afghanistan until now. I’ve believed that there are definite military actions we could take to defeat the Taliban and prevent the drug trafficking economy from supporting them and Al Qaeda. And I still believe this is true. But I don’t think it’s worth it any more.

Which is more of a threat to our national security right now, the Taliban, or global climate change? Which is killing more citizens, extremists or health insurance recision?

There may be a place for U.S. military engagement in Afghanistan in the future. But given the amount of resources and political energy we’re putting into it right now, it’s not worth it. Perhaps with a meaningful international effort, one that gathers world leaders together to discuss not the current strategy but the current problem. Because there is definitely a problem. But what we’ve been lacking this far is an even-handed evaluation of how to best approach that problem. From the beginning, it was the Bush administration botching what could have been an effective campaign by diverting attention to Iraq, turning our allies against us by committing human rights abuses, and now it’s generals holding press conferences rather than using the military chain of command. Our strategy in the Middle East has from the beginning been based around self-interest, and that’s holding with us today.

We need to step back, and confront the problem from an outsider’s stance. I don’t think there’s any other way to really do this well.

Hilary Clinton said something during the 2008 Democratic primaries that I thought was very insightful. When asked about the apparent success of the Bush troop surge in Iraq as compared to her proposed strategy, she pointed out that there are different ways to define victory. She said that yes, it’s true that putting more troops somewhere gives you a tactical advantage. But were we then any closer to being out of Iraq than we were before the surge? And the answer was no.

We may be now, but what was the cost? Too high. We can’t repeat that.

Obama, let’s end this before it starts. Afghanistan will be another Iraq, it will be another Vietnam, it will be another distraction from the countless issues facing this country that affect far more people ad are farm more solvable. As Jon Stewart says, it’s chow time.

Civilian control of the military is important. Go back to the definition of victory. Realize that we’re dealing with generals here. Their job is to win wars. To have a tactical advantage. We don’t need a tactical advantage now. We need our money, our troops, and our time back.

Bring them home now.

On the motivation of campus police

What makes someone want to become a campus police officer? I say this in all seriousness. Not at all to demean them. I’m really curious. Being a normal cop is definitely a drag sometimes you have to do stuff like traffic that I could imagine being pretty boring. But you also see a lot of things, I imagine you learn a lot about society, and you can genuinely help people. Not to glorify the dirty work, but I can empathize with that feeling of wanting to actually get out on the street and help someone who’d be getting hurt otherwise. To be honest, I sometimes think that if I have grand ideas about politics and helping people, I should work as a police officer first. Then I’d have a real understanding of how the problems I’m claiming to come up with solutions for actually look in real life.

The same motivations of wanting to help people could apply to someone wanting to become a campus police officer. You’d help people stay safe in a new place, living away from home from the first time, etc. But there’s another aspect to it that I started thinking about last night.

Last night, I went to a 1920s themed party at a dorm on campus. I had heard about it from a lot of cool people, and it was billed as having a live jazz band, lots of dancing, and I figured it would be a cool scene. I expected that there’d be some drinking, but from the way it was described, it sounded like it would be mostly a fun scene.

So I got dressed up, and headed over a bit after ten. It quickly became clear that the party was not at all what I had expected. It was extremely crowded, and if there was a live band, I didn’t see it (there was a drum set in one corner of one room, but no one was playing). There was of course an iPod sound system blaring some typicalish dance music. And the drinking scene was way beyond what I had been expecting. It was totally out of control. About three minutes after I got there, the campus cops showed up and everyone had to leave. It was a big disappointment given the fact that I was expecting some socializing (I didn’t really care if there was a bit of alcohol I wasn’t planning to drink either way), good dancing, and a laid back night. None of those things happened.

As I was leaving with the same friends I had come with, I was thinking about what the cops must think. It must feel so hopeless. So futile. I mean, maybe some of them had bad experiences with drinking, or knew someone who was badly hurt in a drinking-related incident, and decided to take it into their own hands. But it must be so hard to carry on, busting up one alcohol-soaked party after another. It must feel like there’s nothing you can do. No matter how many drunk kids you kick out, no matter how many times you make someone leave who potentially could have hurt themselves or gotten hurt later, there will always be another. I suppose there’s a satisfaction in knowing that you helped even one person, but it’s not like that’ll make it stop. For every person who is reformed like that and doesn’t do it again after such a close call, there are a hundred who just carry on.

It must take a lot of perseverance to keep going with that job, feeling as though you can never really have an effect. I have an enormous amount of respect for someone who makes that decision. I don’t know if I’d be able to. But I almost feel like I should, like if I’m not going to engage in the kind of behavior they’re up against every night, that I should be out there helping them. Maybe there’s no place for taking a back seat here. Maybe I need to get off my high horse of moral superiority and just try to help someone out.

I don’t know if that’s what the cops actually think about it. This is all purely speculation. But I do know that this is a societal problem. Can the cops fix it? I don’t know that either. But they’ve got an incredibly important job to do. No matter what the politicians are doing, no matter how society is changing or staying the same, they’re there to make sure it happen safely. To me, the institution of the police is one of the most important there is. It’s a government agency that exists for no reason other than us. No politics, no values, just priorities. Safety and respect. Those are elements of a civil society that don’t exist in a lot of places. During the Bush years, when our civil liberties were being assaulted left and right, and our country was making a mockery out of its core values domestically and internationally, I would hear people say that we were living in a dictatorship, that our government was no better than a military junta, and I would say, no, that’s not true. Because we could wake up in the morning and know that there wouldn’t be a mob running through the street. This country’s ability to maintain peace and domestic tranquility through changes of power and huge catastrophic events is incredibly important. It’s something that we should treasure, and not write off thoughtlessly. Without that support from the bottom up, none of the institutions we prize would function.

It’s not always perfect. There are corrupt or inefficient police forces all over the place. But in the big picture, they’re the exception, not the rule. I look at police as a body of people who, as a general rule, genuinely want to help people. And as such, I maintain a great deal of respect for them, and a great deal of sympathy for the things they deal with every day so that we don’t have to.

The question is, should we?

Cross-posted from Jewschool: A season of firsts

This high holiday season was new for me in many ways. It was my first away from my family, it was the first time I fasted without drinking water, and it was also the first time I didn’t go to services during the day on Yom Kippur. This last one, and a related concept I’ve been thinking about a lot recently, are what I want to talk about here. As anyone who’s done it knows, praying is not a simple concept. It’s a big category within the religion (as in it encompasses a lot of practices and ideas), and there are a myriad of opinions about every single aspect of it. When, how, where, and why you should do it, and so on. Like many Jews, I’ve always had a complicated relationship to prayer. I was raised religious, but without much connection to a synagogue. Although very nice, the shul in our town never excited us that much (I think I’ve talked about my struggles with this a bit in a previous post), and I’ve looked for other options for a long time. This was bound to complicate my relationship with prayer. Even since starting to wear tzitzit three years ago, I’ve never prayed regularly, and I’ve never in my life wrapped tefilin. A lot of this has to do with my historical connection to praying it’s never been associated with an excitement to be Jewish for me, so I’ve never felt too enthusiastic about it. Say what you will about willpower, but it’s hard to shake those things.

That being said, do I want to try? If something doesn’t have a lot of meaning to me, how do I make the decision as to whether or not to pursue it with the intention of giving it more meaning? In my life thus far, I’ve never felt the need to pursue regular prayer as a component of my spiritual life, and I’ve never felt a weaker spirituality for it. So it’s clearly not a uniformly bad thing.

Anyway, on the High Holidays, this issue is especially pressing, because the liturgy is so intense. To be honest, I’m really not that into a lot of the language from Yom Kippur. This is not at all to insult those who do appreciate it, but it’s just never really fully synced up with my religious philosophy. I don’t think I’m clay in a potter’s hands. I don’t think I need to give myself up to become a better person. I think that everything I need in order to change for the better is already within me.

So although I went to services on Erev Yom Kippur, I didn’t go back the next day. I slept in a bit, I went to a really excellent class with the rabbi, and I hung around and listened to good music and thought. It was a really good day, and as I mentioned before, the first time I had fasted without drinking. That part was made more difficult by the fact that I hadn’t decided not to drink until late the night before, so I hadn’t drunk a lot beforehand and was pretty thirsty. I made it, though, and was glad I did.

After all this, I’ve definitely figured out more about how I feel about this type of liturgy. Most of my problems with it tend to stem from incompatibilities as a believer in free will, I have a hard time coming to terms with the idea that there are things humans can’t do. I believe in an almost unlimited potential for humans to effect self-change. It’s not easy at all in a lot of cases, and I guess that’s where a lot of people find solace or relief in G()d. So I have a lot of respect for that.

Problems with Yom Kippur-specific prayers aside, in the past few weeks, due I suppose to the High Holidays and their associated increased-shul-time, I’ve had some interesting thoughts about the Amidah. At least one of them was brought on by the use of Xeroxed pages of the Artscroll siddur for a Havurah minyan on Erev Yom Kippur (a weird combination). During the Amidah, there are instructions in Artscroll that say things like “Recite this paragraph while focusing intently on G&d’s sovereignty”. This is, in my opinion, sort of weird. I mean, how can you make a statement like that and expect it to apply to everyone? Before this week I would have said that the answer was that it didn’t have to because the Artscroll is a siddur associated with Orthodox Judaism not everyone’s using it. But now that I’ve used it in a Havurah service, I’m not so sure. This experience makes me think about what role a siddur should have in our prayer. Should it be nothing more than a script in Hebrew, English, and often with transliteration? Should it also contain instructions on how one is to approach the prayers? Most do, certainly. Where’s the balance?

This particular experience is part of a larger shifting of focus I’ve been undergoing about the Amidah. A little background on my experience with this prayer is useful here: I went to Schechter school up until halfway through third grade, at which point I dropped out and went to Hebrew school until seventh grade, whereupon I dropped out of that also, and had my Bar Mitzvah independent of the shul. I learned the Amidah in day school, and then revisited it in a learning sense while preparing for my Bar Mitzvah. The first time, I only learned the parts that are chanted out loud. I never knew anything about the rest of it. We would just be taught something like “You sing this bit, then you wait, and then you sing this bit.” I didn’t have a full concept of the prayer as a whole. This was also the case in my pre-Bar-Mitzvah studies, due only to a shortage of preparation, if nothing else (my tutor was superb).

Given this, davening the Amidah is always an interesting experience for me. I do the first part with a lot of feeling, always adding in the matriarchs as I was taught in Schechter school (I don’t want it to sound like it was a monotonous and completely non-insightful teaching philosophy), but once I pass the Kedusha, I’m in a weird position. I can sound out Hebrew, but I certainly don’t know enough of it to be able to understand what I’m reading, so I often read through the English text of the prayers. This is nice, because I feel connected to the meaning of the prayers. Except for the places where I don’t like the meaning of the prayers. Too often I find myself reciting things I really don’t agree with. In some other parts of services, like a Prayer for our Country, and a Prayer for Israel, I just don’t recite along. I try to be unobtrusive to avoid stepping on other people’s enjoyment of those texts, but I really don’t feel comfortable asking for divine involvement in government. But in the Amidah, I’m doing it silently. There’s no reason for me to say anything I don’t really believe. So after the Kedusha, I’ve started standing silently, usually still shuckling because it feels natural (weird how that happens), but meditating on very different concepts than what’s on the page of the siddur that I now hold closed in my hands, against my chest, on my forehead, or open, obscuring my face. I think about politics, about human rights issues. And usually I end up going back to the three-way bow at the end with “oseh shalom bimromav”. Sometimes I even go back and do the actual motion of bowing many many times, almost subconsciously, between my thoughts. To me, this is the most meaningful part of the prayer. We’ve just spent all of this time glorifying and praising G%d’s name, and now, as a final request, in a final bow, we ask for G@d to use that power for peace. That seems pretty powerful to me, and, based on my complicated experience with the prayer, the most worthy of repeating.

I continue to be challenged by many aspects of the Jewish liturgy. My hope is that I’m able to continue finding ways to make these texts to relevant to me. I also hope that I know when I shouldn’t try. That I don’t feel tied down to those prayers, bound by their sentiments, withheld by their rituals.

Judaism retains relevance to me because of my ability to make it relevant. In this new year, I resolve to continue that quest.

Shana tova.

This post originally appeared on Jewschool.

Why do we expect Iran to be doing anything different?

I think there’s a key misconception in public and diplomatic approaches to negotiations with Iran. We look at it as a defiant country, self-centered and uninterested in meaningful contact with the outside world. To a certain extent, these things are true. But look at them in the lens of Iran’s domestic situation. It’s crumbling. It’s undergone a revolution and a fraudulent election, and the citizens noticed. Ahmadinejad is in fact a crazy Holocaust denier, but it’s not like the country’s being run by a crackpot. I maintain that the Iranian government is scared s*^#less of what will happen when its citizens come round.

There’s an inherent discrepancy in the way Iran presents itself to the outside world. Ahmadinejad repeatedly calls for all sorts of sweeping changes to international politics, for huge changes in the way countries deal with each other. In a lot of cases, the things he’s saying make a lot of outward sense. Countries shouldn’t deal with each other on the basis of military might, and the will of several powerful countries shouldn’t be the only thing that matters. But the reason he’s calling for these things isn’t because he believes that they should actually happen because they’re just or proper. Iran isn’t involved enough in world politics to have any sort of meaningful effect on these issues. No, the reason he keeps mouthing off about them is because in order to join the established world order, to actually deal with other countries without deception, Iran would have to own up to its internal problems. It’s an oppressive theocracy. As this article (which in full disclosure is the reason I decided to write this post) points out, Iran is heavily dependent on the rest of the world economically. If we ratchet up the actual pressure, Iran will have to face its very real internal problems. That would mean stopping the funding of covert nuclear research and starting to build a more functional civil society. It would mean creating honest trade relationships with the rest of the world and deregulating the Internet and cell phone use within its borders. It’s a win-win situation; the people of Iran will be granted the freedoms they deserve, and the rest of the world will no longer be dealing with an angry, insular, and unstable country that’s trying to assert its place in the world to mask its real problems.

The Obama administration has signaled that such sanctions and pressure might be forthcoming.

I’m waiting.

Reflections on the college experience thus far

It’s pretty different, to say the least. Living on my own poses some definite challenges. I have a nasty cold, and there is no one to bring me soup or tea. And I realized that I didn’t know where the Health Services building was. That’s no good. I had to go out and buy myself a thermometer and cough syrup. I mean, in normal life, these are just things that I expect to be there. But I guess someone had to buy them at some point. Which is an interesting thing to think about. At what point in your life, living on your own or with someone else, do you buy household things? Plates, Advil, soap, etc.? I guess I’m more self-sufficient now.

I’m swamped with work. And that’s even after I switched out of the basic freshmen Chem class down to an introductory one that is more appropriate to my level. I’m in a math class that’s intended more for math majors, so it’s very theoretical and proof-based. I like it, but it’s definitely my most difficult class.

I also don’t really like having huge lecture classes. There are so many people in them who have so many interesting things to say, but I don’t get to here most of them. It’s a bummer. It’s also demoralizing, and a hard thing to pay attention to first thing in the morning because of how impersonal it is.

I’m adjusting to the whole experience in some ways, but in others I think my Western-MA, small-homey-school mentality that I’ve been operating within my whole life is pretty deeply embedded in me. And I’m okay with that. I find myself feeling lost in such a huge place as this. Not to say that I don’t have friends or feel comfortable around people. I just don’t like not knowing everyone. It’s weird that I see people I don’t recognize every day. In my dorm, even. I feel like if you live in the same building as people, you should know them. It’s weird.

I’m definitely learning a lot. I do have one class that’s a small seminar, on Talmud, which is great. I mean, all of my classes are, but this one’s just very personal, and the other people in it are really smart and talkative. We’re going to cover various aspects of the Talmud, including historical background and context, legality, morality, ethics, and others.

Also, I am swing dancing weekly.

It’s going to be a good four years. Tiring, but good.

Is there a place for observers in the health care debate?

First of all, I should say that I’m a bit ashamed to call it a debate. I’m tired of trying to include in discussion those who don’t wish to be discussed with. And I fully support the notion of decrying them as such. Good job, Congress.

We’re letting the policy discussion on this issue be co-opted. I know I’ve written about this before, but it’s an issue that I continue to see additional sides to, additional angles from which to approach it.

I’ve moved past the “no cooperation” phase, but I’m feeling more and more strongly about the GOP’s essential hypocrisy: claiming to support reform and oppose the slew of Democratic plans for moral reasons, but failing to generate any serious proposal based on those so-called morals that supposedly resonate so strongly with the American public (as if a lawmaker has the right to make blanket statements about what “Americans” want).

And another thing: GOP attempts to portray this as a scientifically hasty and baseless move should be looked in the same light as climate deniers: lying. Because they’re wrong. If they know that (which they must), they’re lying. If they don’t, they should, and that’s a serious enough breach that they deserve to lose their elected positions.

No one is “ramming” a health care bill through Congress. Obama’s disengagement from the legislative process up until his speech was, I believe, responsible for how slowly the whole thing moved. And in practical terms, we’ve been “studying” this phenomenon for half a century. I don’t think Obama’s going to get his wish of being the last president to take up health care (although I fully intend that this should be the last time such a major overhaul is required), but he’s right that this is not a new problem.

Joe Wilson, you’ve now been formally reprimanded. Chuck Grassley, you voted for the same thing you’re now calling “death panels”. Michelle Bachmann, you expect us to take you seriously when you say stuff like this? To you, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and every other fear-mongering racist xenophobe out there: sit down.

Evan Handler is totally right. This thing’s going to happen sooner or later. To the Democrats: how much more time will you waste? Let’s get something done, and, come 2010, let’s not be afraid to remind people who it was who did it. GOP, either become advocates of progress, or stop labeling yourself as such. Really, I have no problem with supporting a status quo in a vacuum. It’s not like everything always has to change. But saying that you support change while stubbornly working against it is dishonest. You might gain some seats in 2010 for it, but does that matter? Obama’s already been quoted as saying that he wouldn’t mind being a one-term president if that’s what it takes to get meaningful health care reform. Democrats, this puts the ball in your court. If you don’t sell the package well enough, then the GOP can ride in on a white horse in 2010 and 2012 and repeal whatever does pass.

It’s up to us now to prevent that from happening. This is something that the vast majority of Americans will benefit from. Lawmakers, don’t let your opponents shout you down about that. They’re loud, but wrong.

And as for we the people? The pressure can’t let up. Every person in this country with misinformed opinions, who gets their analysis from rich white people and has never bothered looking around at the rest of society, or who stops short of condemning people like Glenn Beck for what they are is going to cost us down the road. Economically, as we shoulder the bill for emergency room care for the illegal immigrants those people want excluded (out of some pathetic sense of patriotism even when it’s to your direct financial advantage not to exclude those people). Diplomatically, as we lose even more credit in the eyes of the world.

And ultimately, morally. I’m not threatening my opponents with some kind of judgment in the world to come. But if we fail to do this, we, as a society, slip further away from our already tenuous grasp on the claim of high moral standards. That alone is enough to make this fight worth it to me.

So, a summary of the argument. Progressives: Health care reform is a moral imperative. GOP: But it’s too expensive.

Seriously, guys? Get your priorities straight.

“In a functioning civil society, people take care of each other.” Elizabeth Smith, the 27-year old Kansas waitress who was laughed at by her Representative (Lynn Jenkins) and told to “go be a grown-up” when she told Jenkins that she’d lost her insurance and her son hadn’t seen a doctor in almost two years (receiving only ER care) because she couldn’t pay for insurance or check-ups, said it best. Would any GOP lawmaker dare disagree with that statement directly?

And if they would, what the hell are they doing in the federal government?