Author: Ophelia Benson

I take the ostrich approach about certain things. Maybe it’s because I’m conserving my irritation-energy in order to use it here – but some sources of irritation I just do my best to ignore. I would ignore people shouting into their cell phones (mobiles) in public if I could, but alas I cannot. I would ignore CNN news on the tv set at the airport if I could, but alas I cannot. I would ignore the nasty music playing in the supermarket and the bookstore if I could, but – you get the idea. But some things I do have control over, some on-off switches I do have access to, and I keep them firmly in the off position. I ignore the presidential campaign (mind you, I always do ignore those), and I ignore tv news and various tv argument shows and shout-fests. But once in awhile I bump into one by accident, on my way somewhere else, and my attention is caught. It was caught a few evenings ago, and I stared in slack-jawed amazement. At? A couple of telegenic guys were mouthing about something on MSNBC, but what I was gaping at was the blurb at the bottom of the screen. It said: ‘Elite media bashes ‘The Passion.’ This was on MSNBC, remember. Oh yes, MSNBC, poor penniless non-elite MSNBC. What on earth does ‘elite’ mean in that illiterate sentence? Something along the lines of ‘Has a different view of things from Normal Amurrikans,’ I suppose.

But of course I shouldn’t be amazed. It’s everywhere, that kind of thing. Which is exactly why I ignore so many pieces of everywhere, so that I don’t have to keep being reminded of that. Of the staggering idiocy of people who swallow that line, and the infuriating perversity of people who peddle it. The line that the elite is no longer the rich and powerful, it’s simply anyone with views however microscopically to the left of whoever happens to be using the epithet. Or, that it’s anyone who’s ever read a book, or who likes reading books, or who likes to think now and then. The line that people like that are bad and evil, and that therefore the way to be a good person is to go to great lengths to seem even more incurious and anti-intellectual than one already is. As in this article about what a ‘regular guy’ George W Bush is.

Until last month, President Bush hadn’t been to a NASCAR race since he was governor of Texas and running for president. On Monday, he goes to a rodeo and livestock exhibition in Houston – again, for the first time since he was governor. Such appearances at sporting events this election year help Bush shore up his standing with his core supporters: white men. They also show him as a plain-talking boots-wearer with Middle America tastes – an image Bush has cultivated for years to counter his background as an Ivy Leaguer from an old, wealthy, New England-based family. That comes in handy particularly this year, as the president will almost certainly face Democratic Sen. John Kerry, a wealthy Northeasterner the Bush campaign aims to paint as out of sync with much of the country. Allan Lichtman, a political scientist at American University in Washington, said the events call attention to Bush as “both the macho guy and the regular guy. Despite all the charges that his administration is a giveaway to the rich, this shows President Bush as in touch with the concerns and the lives of ordinary Americans in all the ways the patrician, distant, former hippie war protester John Kerry isn’t,” Lichtman said.

What? What? It does what? It shows what? In touch? What does that mean? The concerns? The lives? The boots? What in hell is the man talking about? Have we been completely invaded by pod people who have sucked out all our brains and eaten them, leaving small pools of Miracle Whip in their place? Do people really not realize that the ol’ boots-wearer, Mr Plain-talking (that’s one way to describe it), is also a wealthy Northeasterner? Who is in fact himself ‘out of sync with much of the country’? (That usually is the case, actually. That’s why we have more than one party, at least it’s supposed to be.) That however many boots he wears he is still who he is and not some ranch hand? That tastes are one thing, and what he does to us is quite, quite, quite another? Is that really so hard to grasp??

Well, you see why I ignore this kind of thing. My voice rises to a piercing scream in a matter of seconds, my eyes bulge out of my head, and then I start to foam at the mouth. So it won’t do. I’ll let Tom Frank do it instead. He does a very good job.

That’s the mystery of the United States, circa 2004. Thanks to the rightward political shift of the past 30 years, wealth is today concentrated in fewer hands than it has been since the 1920s; workers have less power over the conditions under which they toil than ever before in our lifetimes; and the corporation has become the most powerful actor in our world. Yet that rightward shift-still going strong to this day-sells itself as a war against elites, a righteous uprising of the little guy against an obnoxious upper class.

Frank also goes on to say interesting things about the grain of truth in the Volvo-driving liberal stereotype, and what the left ought to do about it.

One question we keep hearing a lot in relation to this discussion of religion is one along the lines of ‘Why bother?’ Why bother to argue about religion, or to analyze it, or to point out weak arguments some of its defenders use? What is the point? Religion is a need, it’s always been there, it’s probably hard-wired, people aren’t going to give it up, arguments are beside the point, you’re wasting your time. Well, one, I’m not entirely sure that’s true. Not in all places and all times, and if not there and then, then not in general either. That is, I think there may be a confusion between what is hard-wired and what is simply heavily reinforced by the surrounding culture. There have been people, cultures, areas, that were more or less secular, more or less skeptical, more or less unsupernatural. Surely if that has happened in some situations, it can happen in other situations. It may or may not be desirable, but I think whether it’s possible or not is an open question. And two, and more to the point, even if that is true, obviously it’s not universally true. Obviously some people do not feel a profound unappeasable need for a deity. Some people (I’m one) even feel an active repugnance for the idea.

That being the case – surely there must be vast grey areas in between. Between ardent believers who wouldn’t change their minds no matter what anyone said, and determined skeptics who ditto. Surely there are plenty of people who believe, but tentatively; who believe, but are open to argument; who believe, but recognize the difference between belief and certainty. And plenty more people, especially young people, who just don’t know.

It’s not as if people never do change their minds about anything, after all. They do. We do. I do it myself all the time, and I don’t think I’m so peculiar that I’m the only person on the planet who does. Often the mind-changing we do is fairly easy, because it meets no reisistance: it’s not a matter of altering engrained habits of thought or entrenched intellectual commitments, but simply a matter of learning something we didn’t know before, or learning more on a subject about which we knew little. But now and then, if presented with powerful arguments or evidence, or if we are at some kind of mental turning point, we can even change our minds about things that really matter to us.

And it is worth chivvying away at all this, I think, because bad arguments go on being made. It is worth pointing them out, in hopes that their perpetrators will at least manage to come up with better ones. There is for instance this one which a reader sent me a link to. Read that article and then wonder if the ‘scientist’ (why does the article never say what kind of ‘scientist’ the guy is? what is the point of that absurd honorific use of the word ‘scientist’ in such a totemistic way? that’s the kind of thing that puts people off the very word. And what’s with the repetition of the ‘Dr’ bit? What, he has a PhD therefore what he says can’t really be as silly as it sounds? Is that the idea? Well, I hate to tell you, but…) would have started from such a bizarre assumption if he hadn’t been setting out to find what he wanted to find in the first place.

A scientist has calculated that there is a 67% chance that God exists. Dr Stephen Unwin has used a 200-year-old formula to calculate the probability of the existence of an omnipotent being. Bayes’ Theory is usually used to work out the likelihood of events, such as nuclear power failure, by balancing the various factors that could affect a situation. The Manchester University graduate, who now works as a risk assessor in Ohio, said the theory starts from the assumption that God has a 50/50 chance of existing, and then factors in the evidence both for and against the notion of a higher being.

Oh is that the assumption it starts from. Ah. Can we use that for everything? For anything? Shall we all become Bayesians and see how it works? Let’s see. Zeus has a 50/50 chance of existing. So does Tinkerbell. So does Francis the Talking Mule, and Krishna, and Spider Man, and the crew of the Enterprise, and the dramatis personae of ‘The Tempest,’ and the characters in Middlemarch. Everything we can think of has a 50/50 chance of existing, and so does everything we can’t think of. That should cover it.

‘Assumption’ is a very interesting word. It makes a large difference which ones we start from, and why. And it goes on being worth pointing that out, I think.

Update: here is an excellent comment on the book, recommended by José.

What was that I was saying only a day or two ago about smelly little orthodoxies and the hijab? This article from the BBC certainly gives a good illustration of what I mean. Two mentions of Muslim opposition to the ban, and no mentions at all of Muslim support for the ban. If you don’t already know a little about the subject, and read that article, you’ll be left with the impression that Muslims who have any opinion on the matter are opposed. But that is simply not true. Forty percent of Muslim women support the ban, according to news reports I’ve seen.

Most of France’s political parties, and around 70% of the population, support the ban which some Muslim leaders say risks being perceived as intolerant…Some French MPs, backed by Muslim leaders and rights groups, have warned that the new law could be seen as intolerant and undermine the integration of France’s Muslims. They say young Muslim women are being forced to wear the headscarf, though the few hundred who have turned out for demonstrations against the new law say they wear it of their own free will. Many governments and human rights groups have criticised the bill – including the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights and the US-based advisory group, the Commission on International Religious Freedom.

That’s it, those are all the places the word ‘Muslim’ is used. It says ‘some’ Muslim leaders in that first sentence, but doesn’t bother to point out that other ‘Muslim leaders’ are not merely indifferent or neutral or not bothering to say anything, but are in fact in favour of the ban. Sly, subtle, sneaky, and not a very forthright form of reporting, I would say. Though it may not be deliberate. The malodorous orthodoxy may be so well internalized that the reporter wasn’t even aware of giving a partial (incomplete) account. It may be so taken for granted that all Muslims love the hijab, and that a school dress code is an interference with religious freedom, that the fact that some Muslims don’t see it that way simply fails to register. As does the fact that many of the people who favour the hijab and oppose the ban are not just nice pious people but extremely reactionary, are well to the right of your Jerry Fallwell and your Pat Robertson, are in fact the kind of people who beat up and rape women for not ‘covering up.’ That’s how smelly little orthodoxies work, isn’t it, they just get dug in until people stop noticing them and stop being able even to see alternatives. A good reason to point them out then.