Politblogo

Got inner turmoil?

skdadl at pogge reminds us that certain parties regularly get away with spinning their regular wrongitude into a larger, more noble narrative of rightness.  And that those who were right never get the credit for it.

Look: the point is that Iggy and company may have been wrong in the observable, normal universe---what you or I might call "reality"---but they were wrong in a noble, beautiful way.  The kind of wrongness to which they fell victim is the kind of wrongness that allows one to cover ones eyes with the back of one's hand, stretch out the other hand, and sigh, "Ah, me!" 

On the other hand, those who were right are, as Krugman points out, DFHs.  They may have been right in the observable universe, but they weren't right in an ennobling way.  They were right in a childish, "I told you so" way, which only highlights their fundamental unseriousness.  It was easy for them to be right.  When DFHs are right, they are right in a dirty $@#$ing way.

You see, the real distinction between being right and being wrong is not one of verifiability.  It is one of aesthetics.  Was it difficult for you to come to your conclusion?  Did you suffer for it?  Was it dramatic?  Did you sit leaning forward, chin on fist, in pensive repose like that cliché thinker sculpture, only with more clothes?  It's the inner turmoil, and the hard decisions about other people's lives (whether they will live or not) that makes you a Serious Person.

But if the answer was obvious to you, plain as day, well, that's a pretty ugly way to come to the right conclusion.  No drama, no suffering, no inner turmoil.  You didn't even have an interesting pose.  There was nothing tragic about it.  You may as well have been at the grocery store or driving home or doing whatever it is that unserious, unimportant people do.

If you come to conclusions based on evidence, and if you see what obviously is unfolding before your eyes, and you do not have a Deep, Difficult Choice to make to sacrifice the lives of thousands, you are unserious and Serious People should ignore you.  Actually, the choice to sacrifice thousands of lives would prove that you were a Serious Person, because you certainly felt inner turmoil as you did so.

And the inner turmoil is what matters.

DEXTRE SMASH!!!!!

OK, fine, AG wants a new post.  What better thing to do than to point out that us Canadians are building giant space robots for the impending global invasion. 

Hat tip: Gigi

Bad ideas in the world of Canadian criminal law

It is universally entertaining to discuss abstract and hypothetical situations, the life-and-deathier the better.  For instance, many people apparently find it extremely entertaining to discuss the possibility of a terrorist parachuting into, oh, Round Top, Texas and detonating a neutron bomb or something, and whether we should prevent it by anaestheticlessly removing the fingernails of every Swedish grandmother or Palestinian-sympathizing penguin or whatever figures in their imagination.

One of my favorites is the one about "when does life begin?"  After all, all sorts of things come into the picture there.  Ensoulment, individuation, the meaning of life, 42, all those wonderful issues we get to debate.  It's an awesome thing to do when you're high on Mountain Dew. 

But when it comes to any actual law related to the concept, the simple question becomes this: even if you do have an opinion on the deep philosophical question of when life "begins": at what point  are you willing to tie up and intubate a woman who wants to terminate her pregnancy in order to prevent her from doing so?  Because, you see, that's what it takes.  If you're like me, you'll recoil from the concept.  That recoil keeps the debate safely in the hypothetical realm, the world of fun and innocent lunchroom philosophical debates that everyone ought to have.  If you don't recoil from the idea, then you'll be very happy to base laws on the severe restriction of women's freedom on your lunchtime hypothetical musings about the origin of human existence.  There are, in fact, people like that.  For what it's worth.

I am willing, however, to take a crazed chainsaw murderer from a horror movie and, in fact, restrain him or her until I can figure out what to do with this person.  That is why I support the existence of laws on the prosecution or prevention of murder in some form or another.

Why are these two situations different for me?  First and foremost, there is an emotive one.  I am unashamed to say that I do judge some moral situations on an instinctive inner evaluation of relative suffering.  I know that I have to inflict months of torture on some women in order to prevent them from having abortions.  Unless we play silly semantic games with the concept of "suffering," I don't have to do this in the case of the crazed chainsaw murderer.  Even if I did, I would be saving large numbers of people---beyond the mere victims---from a potentially great deal of suffering.  My inner emotive evaluation of suffering forces me to see these things differently.

Even the debate-club ethical discussion forces me to take a position distinguishing these two situations.  In the case of the pregnant woman, she is facing a situation in which her very being and personal existence may be altered by carrying the pregnancy through.  To put it metaphorically, the very weight of her existence and consciousness is an order of magnitude greater than that of any fetus.  We cannot easily say this for the chainsaw murderer or his/her victims. 

Of course, I realize that this is the argument that abortion criminalizers are least moved by.  But the correct and honest response is to persuade us that their debate-club notions of life, the universe, and everything should be used as a basis for law.  Unfortunately, they have recently embarked on a strategy in Canada to circumvent that.   This strategy may very familiar to my American readers.  It is to consider the harming of a fetus during a violent act as a crime separate from that of harming the woman during that act.  I am not saying that this is a stealthy end-run around the distinction between the abortion-seeking woman and the chainsaw murderer.  I'm saying that it is a direct and open end-run around that, and extremely transparent to boot, which exploits the suffering of a small number of victims to enshrine in law a certain kind of debate-club ethics.

I don't normally write about this issue, as I have no personal direct or indirect experience of the matter.  But I thought I would do so this once, as it vaguely appears that it might have a chance to pass in Canada, which would be a bad idea for the same reason that it is a bad idea to enshrine in law anything that has so obviously not made it out of the high-school debating club level of thought* and for the same idea that it's a bad idea to allow any party to get around an up-front discussion of their political motivations.  It also connects a lot of other issues together.  Like why it's wrong to torture Swedish grandmothers or suspected members of the man-penguin armies, or anyone else for that matter.

*No offense to high-school debaters.  I was one too, and I enjoy that sort of thing.  Well, actually, some offense intended.  I think the formats are highly artificial and weird and possibly adversely affect the public discourse when debate-club graduates actually start careers without getting it out of their systems.

The scientist as actor

My Canadian readers may be familiar with this common phenomenon: I have a few American readers of this blog, and even among them, it is not uncommon to hear frustrated expressions of desire to become Canadian when their politics adds another razor-wire loop to the loopiness that it is.  My Canadian readers will also be familiar with the both the feeling of flattery tinged with a small amount of guilt: justified guilt that it is not deserved.

Via ReWind.it at Bread'n'Roses, we find this charming bit of news in the Notional Pest:

Until now, Environment Canada has been one of most open and accessible departments in the federal government, which the executive committee says is a problem that needs to be remedied.

It says all media queries must now be routed through Ottawa where "media relations will work with individual staff to decide how to best handle the call; this could include: Asking the program expert to respond with approved lines; having media relations respond; referring the call to the minister's office; referring the call to another department," the presentation says.

Gregory Jack, acting director of Environment Canada's ministerial and executive services, says scientists and "subject matter experts" will still be made available to speak to the media "on complex and technical issues." He would not explain how "approved lines" are being written and who is approving them.

This sort of thing will be no surprise to anyone following the saga of the frankly excellent Linda Keen, the Canadian nuclear regulator who stood up to a Canadian government presently dominated by an unadulterated Bushian neocon.  (Her total smackdown testimony linked from here.) And by dint of that, these tactics should be highly familiar to American readers, as they were learned from You Know Where.

A note on the NDP victory in Outremont

I used to write a lot more about this sort of thing, but real-life demands and the fact that, well, I live mostly in the USA has reduced my output rate on this topic; but I thought I'd make a brief comment on today/yesterday's federal by-election victory of Thomas Mulcair, the NDP candidate in the Québec riding of Outremont, over all the other candidates, most especially the Liberal candidate.   For my US readers, the NDP is the most left of the federal parties that can get significant numbers of seats in the Canadian House of Commons, but has never formed a government and is mostly the vehicle of anglophone labour and other left-associated anglo activists.   This victory is historic, because it is only the second time ever that an NDP candidate has won in a riding in Québec.

Most of the Canadian media is predictably fixated on the failure of the Liberal Party to keep a traditional stronghold, as this will reverbrate through the structure of the party that is currently the main opposition party, but usually the governing party.  It calls into question the competence of its leader, a man who is, in his policy positions and history, hardly the Liberals' worst chief.  That and other losses by the Liberal Party may lead to an election in a few months. 

But I think the Idealistic Pragmatist is correct in her belief that there is much more to the story.  Political savvy, effort, and good fortune on the part of the NDP are and will be downplayed.  Yes, it's true that Mulcair had a history in Québec that made it more likely for him to win---but that's politics.  The NDP was able to seize the moment.

More importantly, there's another story underlying this that is worth mentioning.  That the NDP can win now, in a race against the Liberals---and that it might even be possible for the NDP to keep this seat in a general election, as well as the poor showing of the Bloc Québecois, the sovereigntist party that is also the place where the Québec left tends to park its vote, is to me further evidence of the political shift that's taking place in the province.  The sovereigntist movement made a critical mistake over the past several years, in which it became apparent that it was possible to decouple leftist and socialist politics from the liberatory movement of Québec nationalism.  This undermines a philosophical and electoral mainstay of the movement to independence---the promise that sovereignty also poses an opportunity for progress in economic equality.

Where I've been, and where Canada shouldn't be

I am sorry.  I have neglected and abandoned you.  It all started in April, when prepositions started invading my brain.  They immediately deleted my blogging module.  By the time I had it reinstalled, I was swamped by reams and reams of annoying and pointless paperwork that amounted to nothing.  After that, I took on a short stint with an enormous evil megacorporation, plying my real-life trade for the betterment and expansion of the empire.  It left me little energy for blogging.

Now I'm on a brief vacation.

You might have noticed that this blog got overrun by spam.  Most of it is deleted now, but sadly I deleted one or two legitimate comments by accident.
Actually, when I abandon my blog, I stop even looking at it, so I didn't even know how much spam there was.  Actually, I almost let TypePad expire my blog by not checking to see whether the 6A bill was being paid.

In other news, Canada should get out of Afghanistan.  Period.  No ifs, ands, or buts.  A two-minute examination of rudimentary Central Asian history should tell you why, if the obvious morality and politics don't.  Just.  Get.  Out.  Why is there any more to say?

Health insurance price control

Apologies to my incredibly gigantic public, but I haven't been posting much lately.  This is due to sheer laziness and ennui.  I confess that the endless peregrinations about Dion and May bore me to tears.  I can't figure out what's so fascinating about it.

Speaking of peregrinations, here's something I found while aimlessly surfing the internets.  A helpful guide from an American about studying in Canada.  Here's the section on health care, to give you the warm fuzzies.

Study Abroad at a Canadian University: If you are a U.S. citizen, chances are your health insurance won’t cover you in Canada. Be grateful you will be going to a country with affordable healthcare. Actually getting on the plan requires a lot of waiting. Once you do, it usually takes three months for your coverage to begin, so make sure you apply as soon as you get to Canada. In B.C. a private company offers virtually the same coverage at the same price during this waiting period. Once you are insured in B.C. (healthcare differs from province to province), you can see any doctor you like and pay nothing.

But the important part is that our public insurance apparently seems to keep the price of private, parallel forms of insurance down in Canada.  Which is not all that surprising, of course, but I didn't know that they tracked so closely.  (Assuming what this person is saying is still true.)

Later today, if I feel like it, there might even be a Tuesday amusing word.

Sovereignty pointless: Canada can sell gas

The following op-ed appeared in today's Le Devoir

Le nouveau Canada, un pays plus convivial?. Pourquoi le Canada a-t-il réduit sa dette de façon aussi considérable? Le contexte énergétique y a contribué pour beaucoup. En 1995, le baril de pétrole valait environ 20 $; il coûte près de 60 $ aujourd'hui. Le Canada est actuellement considéré comme le pays qui a les plus vastes ressources pétrolières au monde après l'Arabie saoudite, surtout grâce aux sables bitumineux de l'Alberta. Au rythme où le pétrole canadien est exploité actuellement, ces réserves pourraient durer plus de 200 ans.

Le Canada est dans une position très avantageuse: il est très envié à travers le monde pour ses immenses ressources pétrolières et gazières et les capitaux y affluent. Des investissements massifs, de l'ordre d'une dizaine de milliards de dollars par an, sont en cours en Alberta, principalement dans le domaine des sables bitumineux. Les Albertains d'abord mais aussi tous les Canadiens du reste du pays commencent à en profiter, et ce n'est qu'un début.

Where to begin?  He says, because Alberta has gas, there's no point in separating.   Now, I'd be happy with this formula if it weren't for the fact that it is massively bad idea on so many levels to be oil-and-gas-dependent like that.  Of course, we just know that Alberta politicians would love to share all that tasty oil revenue with Québec. 

That's just the beginning of what's wrong with that article.  And why for ROCians who have any environmentalist sympathies or social justice sympathies, Québec federalists are often a pretty dangerous bunch with whom to be throwing in your lot.

Le Devoir endorses the PQ; salmon still breathe using gills

Le Devoir is Québec's respectable sovereigntist-leaning newspaper, so it should come as no surprise that they've come out and endorsed the PQ in a signed editorial by Bernard Descôteaux.  However, I cannot blame them.  Caught between mini-Mulroney and Mario Dumont, I'd choose them too, if it weren't for the existence of Québec Solidaire, at least.  However, interestingly, sovereignty isn't high on their agenda.

Le choix du Devoir - Le Parti québécois. Notre deuxième mise en garde a trait à la volonté clairement affirmée du Parti québécois de tenir un référendum sur la souveraineté du Québec. La transparence d'André Boisclair est appréciée. Personne ne pourra lui reprocher d'avoir caché son jeu, le cas échéant. S'il est appelé à former le prochain gouvernement lundi soir, il devra toutefois se demander s'il a la légitimité requise pour engager de nouveau un tel exercice. Ces élections se gagneront à la marge, nous indiquent les sondages d'opinion publique. Quel qu'il soit, le prochain gouvernement ne pourra pas se lancer dans n'importe quelle aventure, y compris dans l'aventure référendaire. Après une campagne éprouvante, le Québec aura d'abord besoin de refaire ses forces et son unité. L'indépendance, ne l'oublions pas, n'est pas une question de temps mais de volonté collective. Ce projet, s'il se réalise, doit être celui d'une forte majorité de Québécois.

This is at the very end of the article, and from what I've seen, that's pretty emblematic of the character of this particular election cycle.  In the time of Lucien Bouchard and before, Québec elections seemed to be a regular epic battle between sovereigntists and federalists, but this time around it's a footnote on the campaign---an important footnote, but one among many other election promises.  The battle is between a conservative party (the Québec Liberals), a kind of neoliberalish social-democratic party, the PQ, flanked by the ADQ and the nascent QS, which each seem to have a greater focus on political economy than nationalist politics, regardless of their stance on the National Question. 

Still, interesting that Le Devoir resorts to the Winning Conditions logic that allowed Lucien Bouchard and company to stave off a referendum after their narrow mid-1990s defeat.  I'm inclined to agree with the sovereigntists who feel that this is a self-defeating strategy---and one with which the Québec electorate is relatively comfortable, and Le Devoir knows it.  Actually, I'm increasingly convinced that the tactic of putting many of their eggs in the Fiscal Imbalance basket was probably a mistake for the sovereignty movement in Québec, and its end result is this desiccated approach to the National Question that seems to be the case in this electoral cycle.

Toronto: mediocre; or, the scales slowly fell from my eyes

So I am now in le vrai Toronto, technically, and I've been in the GTA for a couple of days.  I used to have stars in my eyes about Toronto.  I had and still have a lot of friends and relatives there, and for that reason alone, I will probably be visiting it regularly until Peak Oil makes it too expensive to travel there or anywhere and I will be stuck Victory Gardening in a dystopian cross between Mad Max and Anne of Green Gables. 

But...as a city, now that I'm older and have lived in various places and seen various things, well: I've decided that it's surprisingly mediocre.  No offense Torontonians.  I have to tell the truth, however.  Now that the scales have fallen from my eyes.   

Take restaurants.  I've harped on this before, but Toronto restaurants are on average...surprisingly mediocre.  I mean, any city its size will have some truly bright spots, like Indian-style Chinese restaurants or Korean restaurants, which are pretty good in Toronto.  But the signal-to-noise ratio is just so oddly...low; i.e., if you walk into any random restaurant with a "Pass" rating (one of Toronto's better ideas, by the way), you are likely to be bored by the cuisine.  I've said this before, and I still have to say it: the culinary life in my own hometown of Ottawa is just less mediocre on average.  I find it much harder to have a mediocre dining experience in Ottawa, no matter what the snobby Torontonians say. 

Now, of course, GTA food is a welcome change from Niagara Falls, where there appears to be a 90% concentration of repetitious American chain restaurants.  Which aren't necessarily bad, of course, but it's still true that I can eat at those places no matter where I go these days.  Even stodgy London, Ontario has a better culinary scene than Niagara Falls, which as a tourist town, I'm afraid to say, is surprisingly devoid of anything interesting.  Or maybe that's not so surprising, considering that it's a one-gimmick tourist trap.   But, as usual, I digress.

Back to Toronto.  Even in terms of things to do, however, well, maybe I've just visited it too often, but it's awfully easy to run out of Torontonian entertainment options, especially in the daytime.  Sure, it has a nice musical scene, but what major city in North America doesn't?  The museums are costly.  You say: but New York City has expensive museums too.  That's true, of course, but that doesn't change the fact that Toronto's museums are themselves individually surprisingly easy to exhaust.

Maybe I am being unfair to Toronto, because a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, it was probably fair to say that Toronto occupied more of a symbolic place in my mind than the reality of any city actually ever merits.  It's maybe like one of those cliché stories where someone falls in love with an idealization of someone else rather than a real person, because they already know too much about the person they're supposed to love.  So maybe from the vantage point of living in Ottawa, I expected too much.

But now that I have the benefit of a year or three of another city in another country (and said city has some pretty good eating too!), I can honestly say that Ottawa stands pretty tall in comparison with Toronto, given the fact that it's 4-6x smaller.  Toronto will always have more, much more, because it's bigger, but quality is easier to find in Ottawa.  I still love Toronto, don't get me wrong, as I love the Big City and any place that has so many people that have been part of my life.  But not enough (no longer enough?) to make it as a city into any sort of personal cynosure. 

Oh, and, I have found an abomination to replace Mississauga in the ranks of abominated "cities": Milton*.  Milton, you are abominable.  I abominate you, Milton.  Somebody has to put a stop to all this cheap exurban real estate.

*For the nigletizers, it is perfectly possible to abominate a city without abominating the people who live there, thank you very much.