yunioshi

Power Word: Blackface

Movement conservatives have this thing that they do whenever someone is questioning the latest steps toward military aggression. They compare it to appeasing Hitler, because Hitler was appeased and Hitler was bad. So like a lawyer making his closing arguments to a jury, they say, “But what about… WORLD WAR TWO!?”

I call this Power Word: World War 2, like those spells from Dungeons and Dragons that were power words that could not be resisted by their target. Similarly, Power Word: World War 2 ends the discussion, because non-interventionism is obviously wrong, since it’s a proof by contradiction. Everyone has to believe in World War 2 as the good intervention (duh!).

But all the beautiful people know that neoconservatives are stupid, so I will focus on a power word that the beautiful themselves love to use. And that is Power Word: Blackface.

A week or two there was a story about a white man named Michael Derrick Hudson who got a poem published in one of the most prestigious journals of poetry in the country. Hudson had previously had the poem rejected from lesser journals about 40 times. So he used the name Yi-Fen Chou because he thought that appearing to be something other than a white male would get his poem published.

He was right.

“Bluntly stated, I was more amenable to the poem because I thought the author was Chinese American,” the (non-white) editor of the journal, Sherman Alexie, explicitly stated.

Despite the overt favoritism toward poets because of their non-maleness and non-whiteness, in bizarro Twitter world, people took this fiasco as proof that Hudson actually had some sort of unfair advantage.

The contradictions between the narrative and the reality are obvious. But the issue for the commentariat is that this ordeal had:

  1. A white man coming out on top
  2. A white man doing it by seemingly outsmarting people of color, and most, importantly
  3. A white man turning a left-wing narrative on its head.

They couldn’t turn to him getting something because of his privilege, since the exact opposite happened 40 times. So where could the thinkpiece industry find its outrage release valve? Power Word: Blackface.

Blackface was a bad thing. It degraded black people by portraying them as buffoonish and contemptuous. It’s obvious that blackface not being socially acceptable is a good development. Yellowface was a bad thing as well, and Hollywood had quite a few examples of dressing up white people to make them walking stereotypes of Asians, like in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (the header pic). People who write by-the-numbers outrage thinkpieces aren’t very smart, and so they lazily painted Hudson with this brush.

The poet-troll didn’t wear yellowface though, despite the shrieks of the folks at Salon and the Guardian. No stereotypes or degradation happen. In fact, even the editor of the journal that there was nothing “Asian-seeming” about the poem he accepted. Hudson just beat a”no white males allowed” filter that apparently exists at a lot of places, and this made those who want to see those gates do their job very angry.

The absurdity of this becomes evident when considering that 19th-century female authors adopted male pen names to get published and read. It’s not a secret that George Eliot was actually a womann named Mary Ann Evans. Even J.K. Rowling supposedly adopted a gender-indeterminate name to appeal to broaden her appeal. Were these women degrading men and wearing “manface”? No, that’s obviously ridiculous. It’s equally ridiculous to say that Hudson was being a racist and wearing yellowface.

The blackface smear happens lot, and it happens when the contradictions in cultural Marxism are laid bare. People couldn’t quite articulate why Rachel Dolezal is evil and Caitlyn Jenner is brave, so they said “remember that blackface thing? That was bad! And this looks similar!”

Pointing out superficial similarities in things is something that every first grader has mastered. So why are adults paid 100 dollars per article to do it and why do we all pretend that it’s thought-provoking?

Things Michael Gerson doesn’t think are worth being called racist over

Rarely does a conservative columnist state it so plainly as Michael Gerson does in his piece about why Ben Carson should vote for a Muslim president:

What gain or goal is worth the cost of breathing life into bigotry?

Here are some things Michael Gerson doesn’t think are worth that cost, because of his self-fulfilling prophecy that “declaring war on demography is like declaring war on gravity”:

  1. A secure border
  2. Preserving the two-party system
  3. A well-assimilated immigrant population

Lots of people have argued the Iraq invasion was racist, being a war of aggression waged against a Muslim nation with at least the secondary purpose of bringing their government up to 21st Century standards. When Gerson was in meetings of the White House Iraq Group, did he think it was worth the slings and arrows?

We don’t get to decide what bigotry is, the world in 2015 is full of people who do that professionally. Since Gerson is ready to elect a Muslim president of a Brazil-ized America, there is very little conflict between them. The ones who aren’t up for a policy of, ‘invade the world, invite the world, then consider the merit of ideas based on whether someone, somewhere, will call them racist,’ have a harder time finding their views represented in the Washington Post.

2041607369_8d12fe4417_z

My modest proposal: equal hair for all!

Republished from the Press and Journal

Brothers and sisters, it’s good to be on the side of progress in 2015.

Today in America, marriage is no longer considered a conjugal bond to rear children. The rich and middle-class must pay for the health care of the poor. Across the land, restrooms and locker room are being opened to all genders regardless of biology. The last vestiges of the Antebellum South – including the Confederate Flag – are being removed from public life.

Yes, it’s a good era in which to be liberal.

There is no doubt history will judge us correct in our struggle against the patriarchal reactionary forces that wish to keep us shackled in the 19th century. After all, our side represents progress and equality for all!

Unfortunately, a new front has emerged in our war of equaling. It is located in the western part of Pennsylvania, our great progressive state. A barbershop run by a burly, misogynistic poor excuse for a citizen is refusing to cut women’s hair. The barber, John Interval of Washington County, was rightfully fined $750 by the state’s Bureau of Professional and Occupational Affairs after a comrade-in-arms informed on him.

(more…)

A question for conservatives about religious liberty and unjust wars

The political right in America seems to have decided that “religious liberty” is a banner they can rally around. With Kim Davis’s jailing, they have their first hero.

But what is this new thing we claim to value, and what are its limits? Consider a Romanian Catholic infantryman from Ohio, on the eve of the 2003 Iraq invasion, who receives this letter from his bishop:

Because such a moment of moral crisis has arisen for us, beloved Romanian Catholics, I must now speak to you as your bishop. Please be aware that I am not speaking to you as a theologian or as a private Christian voicing his opinion, nor by any means am I speaking to you as a political partisan. I am speaking to you solely as your bishop with the authority and responsibility I, though a sinner, have been given as a successor to the apostles on your behalf. I am speaking to you from the deepest chambers of my conscience as your bishop, appointed by Jesus Christ in his Body, the Church, to help shepherd you to sanctity and to heaven. Never before have I spoken to you in this manner, explicitly exercising the fullness of authority Jesus Christ has given his Apostles “to bind and to loose,” (cf. John 20:23), but now “the love of Christ compels” me to do so (2 Corinthians 5:14). My love for you makes it a moral imperative that I not allow you, by my silence, to fall into grave evil and its incalculable temporal and eternal consequences.

Humanly speaking, I would much prefer to keep silent. It would be far, far easier for me and my family simply to let events unfold as they will, without commentary or warning on my part. But what kind of shepherd would I be if I, seeing the approach of the wolf, ran away from the sheep (cf. John 10:12-14)? My silence would be cowardly and, indeed, sinful. I believe that Christ, whose flock you are, expects more than silence from me on behalf of the souls committed to my protection and guidance.

Therefore I, by the grace of God and the favor of the Apostolic See Bishop of the Eparchy of St. George in Canton, must declare to you, my people, for the sake of your salvation as well as my own, that any direct participation and support of this war against the people of Iraq is objectively grave evil, a matter of mortal sin. Beyond a reasonable doubt this war is morally incompatible with the Person and Way of Jesus Christ. With moral certainty I say to you it does not meet even the minimal standards of the Catholic just war theory.

 Thus, any killing associated with it is unjustified and, in consequence, unequivocally murder. Direct participation in this war is the moral equivalent of direct participation in an abortion. For the Catholics of the Eparchy of St. George, I hereby authoritatively state that such direct participation is intrinsically and gravely evil and therefore absolutely forbidden.

What would today’s defender of religious liberty say to this soldier? Should he quit? Should he be allowed to sit this one out? Should he be jailed for insubordination? Why, or why not?

It’s worth noting that if a government only waged just wars, this conflict would not arise. It also seems untenable to allow soldiers to abstain from certain wars based on religious convictions and still keep their jobs. (Update: Some have pointed out the U.S.’s relatively generous standards for conscientious objectors, however, that status is usually only granted to people who object in principle to all wars — the Selective Service Act is written this way — not just certain bad ones.)

I have doubts that most of the supporters of religious liberty for Kim Davis would support it in this case, but maybe I’m wrong.

Front Porch Republic conference: October 3, feat. James Howard Kunstler and more

Front Porch Republic‘s annual conference is less than a month away, in Geneseo, New York. It’s shaping up to be a great program, and I hope to see some readers there. Please leave a comment if you plan to come. May have to start spamming some like-minded Northeastern bloggers to make sure they do too — Pittsford Perennialist, I’m looking at you!

From the press release:

“Sustainable Localism: Sages, Prophets, and Jesters,” the fifth annual Front Porch Republic conference, will be held on Saturday, October 3 in the MacVittie College Union Ballroom at the State University College at Geneseo.

James Howard Kunstler, whose many books include The Geography of Nowhere, will deliver the keynote address: “Looking for Sustainability in All the Wrong Places.”

The conference will feature a special panel devoted to the life, thought, and legacy of Christopher Lasch, the late University of Rochester historian and social critic. Panelists will be Robb Westbrook, Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, and Eric Miller.

Other conference speakers will include Catherine Tumber, Jeff Polet, Tim Tielman, Bill Kauffman, Abbot Gerard D’Souza-OCSO, Jason Peters, and Jeremy Beer.

The conference registration fee of $50 ($20 for students) includes lunch and light snacks. There will be plenty of opportunities for attendees to gather informally with one another and the speakers. The conference will run from 9 am-5 pm.

Sign up here, hope to see you!

See a flier here.

Applying the ten principles of Burning Man

This year, like every year, there is a discussion in burner circles about plug and play camps at Burning Man, camps where rich people pay over ten thousand dollars to have their camp set up, meals prepared, costumes designed, even sometimes a “sherpa” to help guide them around. These plug and play camps go against several of the principles of Burning Man, most notably, radical inclusion, radical self-reliance, and participation. Though I am a second year burner, I have tried to abide by the ten principles. Here is my attempt to clarify what they might mean in practical terms.

Like all rules, there is difficulty in interpreting the principles. Radical inclusion, for example, if taken literally, could mean no private property. This year dozens of people tried to wander into our camp on Friday night (our neighbors were having a big party and we experienced some overflow). Some lovely members of our camp spent the night directing the wanderers to the party next door and out of our camp. This was sometimes met with questioning, “aren’t all camps open?” The perhaps unfortunate answer is no. Most camps pack only enough food and booze for themselves. If there are leftovers to dinner they might share them with passers by, but most campsites are private property of the campers themselves. In this sense we can differentiate between private and public spheres in Burning Man. Public spheres, them camps and art cars should be radically inclusive, limiting people for mainly for safety reasons. Private spaces include sleeping areas, shade areas, and kitchens which are constructed solely for the use of people in the camp. Of course, these private spaces should be welcoming to outsiders, but outsiders should not feel entitled to use them.

More specifically, what constitutes a plug and play camp. Paying a camp mate for buying groceries does not make a plug and play camp. What about paying someone to use their generator, paying someone for a shade structure. Again, these do not seem to define plug and play camps. Simply by the nature of large camps, a small group of people will keep and maintain important playa gear, shade structures, cooking equipment, art cars etc. Paying for the maintenance and storage seems in line with Burning Man principles.

Let us have another scenario. Suppose you do not live within a day’s drive of Black Rock City. However, you have several friends in the Bay area. They camp together every year and are fairly well organized. One year you join their camp. They buy the food and bring it to Black Rock City as usual, as well as bringing shade structures and kitchen supplies, however, you are un-involved in the process except for an email chain simply because you live in a different area. You pay them at cost for the food and the shade structure. This seems to be getting closer to plug and play, but it is not quite there yet. What if you arrive on Tuesday after they have set up the communal shade structures and leave on Sunday before they take them down. How radically self-reliant are you?

I ask these questions, because, like most things, hard lines are difficult to draw. What then, separates someone of modest means of joining a camp of well-organized burners and paying a few hundred bucks for storing, maintaining and bringing the shade structure and kitchen to camp, as well as food and electricity, from a wealthy burner paying ten thousand dollars for something similar? In the above scenario, the only substantive distinction would be the quality of food/shade/alcohol/etc.

Larry Page, for example, attended Burning Man before 2002, far earlier than me. Who am I to judge him if he wants to organize a camp with all his rich friends? He likely contributes a lot more to the art projects than I do.

That being said, there are substantive differences between the plug and play camps and friends getting together and splitting costs. I will outline them below, but I think the primary aspects are, paid employees, wristbands, and setting up your own tent/yurt/etc.

Paid employees at Burning Man clearly go against radical self-reliance in a strong way. I think having a camp cook is a strong dividing line between chipping in when someone buys groceries and a plug and play camp. If Larry Page wants to eat caviar all week, that’s his prerogative, however, he or his friends should prepare it themselves.

Wristbands are another indicator of a pay to play camp. Human experience puts a natural limit on the number of people who can share a space/food with no formal exclusion. For example, my camp this year had 43 people and I had trouble remembering all of them. This seems around the natural limit for a camp which shares a kitchen. Our camp was small enough that we could identify most of our camp mates. On the other hand, wristbands mean that a camp is so big that facial recognition alone isn’t enough. The wristbands then act as a formal method of exclusion of outsiders from the food and drink. While not as clear of a giveaway of a plug and play camp as paid employees, wristbands still suggest something is running counter to the ethos of burning man.

Lastly, setting up your own sleeping structure. It is better if everyone helps set up the whole camp, but that is not always possible. This year there were a limited number of early arrival passes in my camp so the kitchen and the shade were mostly constructed by the time I arrived. However, people should at least set up their own sleeping structure. Of course, they can ask for help, and some people might be unable to do it. However, if you arrive at camp and everyone had their sleeping structure set up by someone else, it might be plug and play.

These are some of my recommendations on how to differentiate plug and play camps from regular camps. I purposefully left them fairly loose. I think radical inclusion means we should welcome everyone except those who repeatedly and intentionally violate the ten principles. In this context that means only defining plug and play camps as an extreme.

The next question is how to deal with these camps. This year, Larry Harvey said he would visit plug and play camps to see how he was received. This seems like a poor idea. I would be somewhat skeptical of a 50 year old man I did no know entering my camp. I would offer him beer, water, or a snack, but try to guide him out, as I would feel obligated to stay with him to ensure he did not take anything. I imagine female campers would be extra cautious for obvious reasons.

As for how to reduce the number of plug and play camps, I would recommend banning those who advertise for paid positions from Burning Man, and perhaps creating a public registry of them for humiliation. Even if they did not publicly advertise for the positions, word would likely escape it would be relatively easy to set up a mechanism for determining whether or not a camp had paid staff.

In conclusion, I am appreciative toward rich people at Burning Man. They allow me to see beautiful art that I would never be able to fund myself. However, they also have created some camps which violate the spirit and the principles of Burning Man. Banning paid employees at Burning Man (of course this excludes essential staff, police, doctors, EMTs, DPW, etc), would help restore some of those principles.