Disqus - Latest Comments for Tina_Russell

Re: Democracy Through the Looking Glass

Tina_Russell — Thu, 01 Jun 2017 15:47:26 -0000

I’m a Political Wire member, is there another way to watch it? I was literally perma-banned from Vimeo last year for posting ONE nude art video in which I called for peace in the gender wars (and they call themselves a platform for independent artists, grrrrrr)

Re: Weatherhead Fellow Incites Controversy | The Harvard Crimson

Tina_Russell — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 03:14:30 -0000

Kramer’s solution is not only immoral, but counterproductive. Birthrates go up, not down, with a decrease in standard of living. Trying to starve out Palestinians with terrible living conditions would result in _more_ births, and with those terrible conditions would come more radicalism.

(And, to David: Have you ever heard of B’Tselem, by any chance? Or J Street? Or the many other Jewish organizations which support Palestinian statehood? Jews have always been at the forefront of global human-rights movements, and the plight of the Palestinians is no exception.)

Re: Armageddon: Cancelled

Tina_Russell — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 17:25:30 -0000

Actually, if you look at poll results, America’s more like 30% crazy. Okay, it’s not great, but if you look at various questions (should a woman submit gracefully to her husband, was the moon landing a hoax, etc.), the dumb responses (“yes” in both cases) tend to hover around there.

Michael Moore wrote in “Dude, Where’s My Country,” so many years ago, about how Americans in the aggregate are spectacularly liberal; we favor gay rights, we favor an even-handed approach to crime, we favor a woman’s right to choose, we’re okay with interracial marriage (even for our immediate families), we favor universal healthcare, we favor unions... you wouldn’t be able to tell it from our national politics from the past few decades, but conservatives have thrown a bizarre cloak over the nation where politicians are afraid to be called “liberal” simply because of right-wing think tanks succeeding so thoroughly at branding “liberal” as a negative. Liberal politicians are simply afraid of looking too liberal, when they ought to be branding their beliefs as what they are: common, tested, proven knowledge.

(We veer to the right on two issues that I can think of off the top of my head: gay marriage, and the barbaric practice of the death penalty. With “gay marriage,” when phrased that way, a slim majority are against it, which is why some smart liberals are testing out terms like “marriage equality” and “freedom to marry.” On the death penalty, we’re about 60% for, I think, but the number’s been steadily declining over the past few decades as more people realize what an incredibly dumb idea it is to kill someone who’s already in custody.)

The two elections of Bush to the presidency often cause America to catch hell, but keep in mind four things. First of all, Gore campaigned very poorly in 2000, focusing far too much on middle ground and the middle of the road, creating sympathy for the other guy (a Republican promising to be moderate and bipartisan, when he turned out to be anything but). Second, Gore won the election, only for it to be handed to Bush by the Supreme Court in a rather deliberate shredding of the Constitution. (Black voters improperly scrubbed from the rolls in Florida would have eclipsed Bush’s tiny margin, but the Supreme Court stopped the recount.) Third, Bush’s election in 2004 was under a state of incredible fear; while Kerry trodded the Gore path of trying his damndest not to have any conviction whatsoever, Bush whipped us all into a panic over gay-married terrorists stealing our babies. (The lesson from Bush I to Bush II is this: if you want to win re-election, don’t invade a sovereign country and win, invade a sovereign country and massively screw it up.) Fourth, opinion polls did favor the war in Iraq, back when Colin Powell did his song-and-dance before the UN and our national press (sadly, including reputable papers like The New York Times) ate up Bush’s nonsense and questionable evidence and barfed it directly into the beaks of the American people. People really did think that Saddam had WMDs, not because of any real evidence, but because of grainy satellite photos and journalists trying to curry favor with the administration in hopes of a Bob Woodward-style inside scoop.

Every country has its crazies, and they aren’t really all that numerous in America, they’ve simply had an outsize political influence for far too long. Politicians are so afraid of being branded “socialist” or “liberal” or whatever that they shy away from positions that show commanding leads in opinion polls (like unions and universal healthcare). Notice that McCain had to whip up our worst fears in order to gain any ground on Obama, and he still lost by a solid margin. Moreover, he was the most moderate out of a ridiculously out-there GOP primary crowd. Moreover, it’s not even that an “economic collapse” gave Obama an edge; it’s that a) McCain was a disaster on the economy, taking about seven different positions over the course of a week and looking consistently behind the curve, b) the story turned the page on the Sarah Palin nomination story, erasing McCain’s convention bounce with a fresh news cycle and returning to Obama’s previous lead, and c) a time of crisis made everyone look at Palin and wonder why a 72-year-old man with a history of cancer would have made her number two. (Plus, around then was when she had her disastrous interviews with Gibson and Couric.) Oh, and don’t forget that around then, the undecideds had yet to break for a candidate; by Election Day, Obama decisively won those once-undecideds.

Jimmy Carter has written about this well before. Basically, America’s a liberal country with liberal values; you just wouldn’t know it from our discourse. Meanwhile, as George Lakoff writes, a lot of this stems from our inability to frame the issue; if poor people would benefit from having liberals in office, as they do, then the right wing has to make up stories of “elitists” and “limousine liberals” that are laughably far from the truth (and tend to come from Ivy League-educated right-wingers in East Coast ivory towers). We need to fight back and make clear that Republicans are good for the rich and bad for the vast majority, which we’ve finally started to do.

Oh, and Mitt Romney is a Christian; Mormons are a Christian sect that began in the 1800s or so. (The fact that they’re fighting for “traditional marriage” is cute, since back in the day they actually fought for chattel-style polygyny all the way to the Supreme Court.) We do have two Muslims in Congress, however; one was elected in 2006, and the other in a recent special election. Muslims are the latest in a line of “boogidy boogidy” targets of mean-spirited scare tactics that Jews and Catholics in this country are all too familiar with. It’s kind of a small comfort, but it is amazing that we elected a Barack Hussein Obama to the Presidency, a man whose grandfather was Muslim and whose father was born Muslim and died an atheist.

Tom Cruise ain’t running for anything; as George Lakoff pointed out, Ah-nold could win the governorship of California, but not simply because he’s a celebrity; he’s a specific kind of celebrity that works perfectly with the image the GOP tries to project. Tom Cruise is a national joke.

Re: Armageddon: Cancelled

Tina_Russell — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 06:08:13 -0000

Hey, give us some credit; Sarah Palin is not only a spectacular caricature of everything wrong with the United States, she was a huge factor in McCain’s loss. Polls showed overwhelming concern for the judgment (or lack thereof) of a man who would put _her_ one heartbeat away. And failed VP picks typically lose subsequent primary runs, even though most failed VP picks aren’t total disasters like Palin. So, she’s got two strkes against her in any hypothetical attempt to try and win the country’s affection back.

On Prop 8: yeah, we have one of those awful amendments in place in Oregon. I don’t know what idiot thought it would be a good idea to allow constitutional amendments through ballot measures introduced by petition and passed by simple majority. Once you put that kind of stain in a constitution, it takes decades to get out.

Anyway, I’ve accepted for some time that the world thinks Americans are all idiots, and I can’t say we’ve done enough to fight that image. But I hope that Obama, a man who represents the _best_ of America, will show everyone what makes the United States such an intellectual hub. (Obviously, that status is in jeopardy, since our grade schools are famous for being terrible and our higher-education schools are famous for being hideously expensive. I hope Obama can start fixing all that.)

And... all this crisis and stuff has sort of humbled America. Our idea that we could buy cheap goods from China on a credit card and then complain about the government handing all its money to the Chinese in the form of debt, our sense of entitlement, our spending without saving... that’s kind of over. We’re, uh, in dire straits, and can no longer be Homer Simpsons slouching on the sofa and eating potato chips while the world crumbles. We’ve taken some lumps and learned that the world matters to us in a very immediate sense. I think you should see a lovably chastened America in the next few years.

Then, maybe, we’ll recover enough to become hopelessly arrogant again ;)

Re: Voice Theory

Tina_Russell — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 04:21:44 -0000

Hey, I may only know you from your Flickr self-portraits, but I can't find a millimeter of "tranny" on your face, where most of passing lies. I was genuinely surprised to read that you're fairly newly transitioned and can still go into "boy mode." I kind of thought you had gone through some brilliant transsexual medical procedures (that you Norwegians have been hiding from us for decades, lest we use it for evil means) years ago.

And hey, theory number two sounds plenty flattering...

Re: That Voice Thing

Tina_Russell — Sat, 17 May 2008 00:34:17 -0000

I had one friend tell me that I really need to work on my voice. I had another friend tell me that my voice is good, except when I overdo it. I don't pay much attention to my voice--it's a voice I practiced many years ago, and my old voice is now unavailable--so you can imagine all this made me really self-conscious.

I mean, I think I have a female voice... but I'm _in_ my own head. It's tough.