1.) Using rational choice theory, argue that the outcome of the 2006 mid-term elections demonstrate that the American electorate is, individually or corporately, stupid and/or insane.

2.) Using rational choice theory, argue that constructing an argument premised on utilitarian reasoning to explain why people join the army is a task than can only be conducted by those who either themselves have volunteered to serve, or by those who are related to someone that has volunteered to serve.  Bonus points if you can do this incorporating Weber’s arguments regarding how social scientists attempt to understand human behavior.

3.) Using rational choice theory, construct an argument for why support for the war is best explained by looking at individuals’ felt senses of the following: patriotic duty, sympathy for the victims of 9/11, and a desire for retribution.

4.) Using rational choice theory, explain how the President’s veto of funding for stem-cell research derives solely from his personal commitment to evangelical Christian moral precepts.

5.) Using any theory you damn well please, decide whether (a) you, the essayist, are congenitally stupid, (b) you, the essayist, are, through some combination of sheer laziness and willful perversity of heart, attempting to drive your professor batshit insane, or (c) your professor has utterly failed to impart basic social science concepts to you, the essayist.

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The best bar in America.

And you had the temerity to doubt my judgement, Commander Plaza?

More musings on Minneapolis fabulosity to follow in a bit.

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So we’re putting up a new fence in our back yard.

Now, like any youth of the male persuasion, I’ve done a fair amount of digging in my back yard, both here and back home in Sacramento.  And while it is true that both houses (my own and my parents’) were built around the same time (approx. 1920), what one finds when one goes rooting around is quite different.

FoWo: the sewage and gas lines from a mother-in-law apartment, long since gone.  It is completely unclear if they are still hooked up to anything, though the gas line is (thankfully) still capped.

Sacto: A still-standing, if rapidly deteriorating, four-car garage, complete with walk-in pit from which one easily do one’s own car repairs.

FoWo: The perimeter beam foundation from a one-car garage, long since gone.  But, oddly, either it was built a full foot below the current level of the ground, or the beam has sunk, or after it was built something like a ton of soil was trucked in and laid down over the entire yard.

Sacto: an old cistern, buried under two feet of soil, but otherwise still perfectly functional.

FoWo: the remains of a concrete wall or curb — perhaps from a masonry fence — buried 2-3 inches below the current gound level, and extending approximately three-quarters of the way across the back of the lot.

Sacto: a few glass marbles, still usable.

FoWo: starting about two inches below the surface of the alley (not paved), and extending down about one foot, a layer of thick, shattered glass, apparently from large jars.  Also, the remains of entire bags of concrete left in the soil.  The concrete has, of course, long since solidified, but with the bags rotted away one can see the pattern in the new stone.

Sacto: Ummm, I’m running out of things here… Can I count the stuff I found in the paved alleyway, even if it wasn’t buried in our backyard?  ‘Cause I once found a crack-pipe made from a Gerber baby-food bottle.

FoWo: Please.  We’ve got discarded oil cans, paint cans, mufflers, chunks of paving, electrical wiring, bricks (dozens and dozens of bricks), glass transformers, lead weights, and roof shingles.  All buried just below the surface. 

Sacto: Um, soil?  See, we’ve got this great dirt, you can grow anything in it, and it goes down, well, pretty much forever.  Plus it’s sandy and drains like a charm…

FoWo: Soil?  Yeah, we got soil.  If you want to give the name soil to a hardpan clay that increases in volume by 50% after a good hard rain (foundation?  Here’s to your stinkin’ foundation!),  turns damn near to laterite stone when it dries (better have a pickaxe if you want do any digging in the summer), and is only a couple feet thick at the best of times — otherwise you’re sitting on the rottenest ghastly-yellow/ filthy-laundry grey limestone.  Oh, and fossilized clamshells.  Hundreds of fossilized clamshells.  Not trilobytes or anything cool like that, mind you.  Just… clamshells.  Like you’d find on any beach.  Only these are made of rotten limestone.

Sacto: dude, you win. 

FoWo: No I didn’t.  That’s the point.  I’m sitting on a goddamned midden, the trash discarded by 80 years (or more) of crackers too stupid not to dump their shit in their own damned back yard.

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So, of the 26 papers that are due today for one of my courses, how many of them do you think will be:

a.) plagiarized

b.) not use any of the course readings at all

c.) be of B+ quality or above, or

d.) not be turned in on time.

Hints: from past experience, I can tell you that (b) will be smaller than (c), that (b) is usually greater than (d) (though not always), and that I count (b) when people have a bibliography, but not when they refer to my lecture.   And (a), of course, depends at least partially on my ability/willingness to catch them.

Otherwise, I’m taking bets on all numbers. 

UPDATE:

a.) None, so far as I could tell.

b.) 6, or approximately 1/4

c.) 6, or approximately 1/4

d.) 4, if you count the three that weren’t turned in at all.

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I was going to title this post something like “post-election musings on the options in Iraq” but then my computer crashed (we’re having 60-mph winds here at the moment), and I lost the whole thing.

Ya would think I would learn from past experience.  But anyway, back to my original post (at least, as best as I can reconstruct it).

I was talking with a friend and colleague yesterday (a gentleman whom I believe has commented on this site before, but under what name I do not at this time recall.  Let’s call him Zed-mon for the moment).  He and I were both surprised at the, well, graciousness of the defeated Republican incumbents in this past election.  Santorum, for instance, gave what was evidently a perfectly decent speech.  Allen conceded without calling for a re-count.  Burns exited stage right without demanding even so much as a farewell ovation.  In fact, the only person sniping is fecking James Carville.  So what gives? 

Well, I suppose it’s possible that this is the return of civility to politics.  I suppose it’s possible that some of those fellows have come to recognize the corrosiveness of endless recounts, of suits and counter-suits, of media spin and spittle-flecked podium-pounding speeches.  I suppose it’s possible that this reflects a deep and abiding commitment to the American democratic process regardless of results — an acknowledgement that there exists something more important than winning, something more important than the raw and naked exercise of power. 

Yeah, it’s possible, I suppose.

It is also possible that this graciousness reflects the knowledge that the next two years (at least!) will involve no good options, especially about what to do in Iraq.  That with an incompetent smug-monkey still driving the bus, it’s probably better to get off while you can and avoid the crash.

Because while I loves me my new Speaker of the House, and I think Rep. Pelosi has done a bang-up job with her first speech, focusing on all the bread-and-butter economic populism issues of the day (e.g., minimum wage, health care), the fact remains that I wake up every day, open up my New York Times, and read the roll of the dead. 

And what can we do about Iraq?  The options, as I see them, are the following:

a.) the status quo.  Keep believing in the neo-con ceegar-and-bourbon-induced fantasy — that democracy is a matter of wanting and hoping and not of social structure, that “stature” and “demeanour” and “will” — in a word, trash-talk — will keep “the evildoers” in line.   Keep believing in Donald Rumsfeld’s lies about what a “new” military can and cannot accomplish.  Keep, in other words, to a foreign policy of “speak loudly and carry a small and flaccid stick” and then continue to be amazed when the great unwashed masses do not bow down in amazement at our display. 

b.) a managed and careful withdrawal.  Recognize, in other words, that our presence is the problem and not the solution.  That until and unless we remove ourselves from the situation, it will continue to deteriorate.  Recognize that we are, in so many words, like some drunk 22 frat-boy on a binge in TJ who’s killed a pimp and raped a bystander, and we’re too fogged with booze and too busy lashing out with a knife — still bloody from the foul deeds we’ve committed — to recognize that our pants are around our ankles, the crowd is gathering and increasingly angry, and that mommy and daddy or even the American consulate are not within screaming distance.  Recognize that the only thing to do at this point is to call for help, put down the knife, and hope that someone in the crowd is responsible enough to call for justice and not a lynching.  Recognize, in other words, that we have sinned, that we must repent, that we must make an amendment of heart. 

c.) Or, do what we probably should have done in the first place, commit something like half-a-million troops, and dedicate all the blood and treasure we can muster to building up a new nation from the wreckage we have made.

Option (a) involves too much moral cowardice — not to mention that, whatever else last week’s election was about, I believe it was a rejection of the failed policies of the current administration.  So, no more status quo.

Option (b) involves a kind of moral courage.  But it also entails playing into the bullshit rhetoric of “cut and run” — and the very real danger that the Democrats will never, in our lifetimes, have the kind of wartime credibility that appeals to the yawping, bloodthirsty mobs of American heartland jiongoists.  Option (b) would also, it is worth noting, require the exercise of power by some country other than the United States.  Because despite what any of us might hope or pray or believe, Iraq is not now, and will not for the near term be, able to run itself without serious assistance from foreign powers.

Option (c) involves a different kind of courage, although not one that I would precisely call moral.  It would involve asserting that America is, in fact, the only superpower.  And that, will we or nill we, multilateralism is simply not possible anymore.  Until and unless China grows into her majority, we are the biggest bully on the street — and that with power comes responsibility.  Take up, in other words, Niall Ferguson’s call that America embrace her imperial destiny.  This would, of course, require that we abandon certain illusions about our collective morality and our national heritage.  It would also require a draft, though we would almost certainly never call it that.

I think Allen and Co. all recognized that this is a bad situation.  Option (a) has failed.  We do not currently possess a commander-in-chief competent enough for option (c) — though perhaps McCain has pretensions to be that CoC come 2008.  And the Democrats possess neither the moral bent, nor the specific leader, to articulate a commitment to (c).  After all, what’s Hillary gonna do?  Call for the occupation of North Korea?  Has Obama said squat about his willingness to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age?  Does any currently elected leader of the Democratic Party have the foreign-policy credibility and experience to lead us into a new Imperium?  Not to my knowledge.  And that leaves Congressional Democratic leaders with option (b) — which of course, Bush will do his level best to stymie and to spin to his own best ends, leaving us with (a) by default for the next two years.

In the meantime, pray for the dead and the wounded, and give material support to vets when and how you can.

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Why you got to be so hateratin’, Mr. Carville?

There is so much bizarrness to be examined here, I don’t know where to begin.

a.) How did that flappy-lipped, jug-eared, balding, closet-case monkey manage to stay on so long as head of the RNC?

b.) What in heavan’s name is Mitt Romney doing offering him a job?  That logic is so twisted my head hurts.  Does he think that appointing a closeted fag to be his campaign manager will somehow compensate with the Christabigots for the fact that he presided over the legalization of gay marriage?  Good luck in the primaries, Mr. Romney — it’s good to have goals, I guess.

c.) Why is Carville doggin’ on Dean?  Couldn’t the man wait, oh, I don’t know, a fecking week before he started in on the bash-the-screamer bandwagon?  Not to mention, by what stretch of the imagination is the fact that the Republicans lost control of Congress Mehlman’s fault, but not to Dean’s credit? 

UPDATE: Dean’s response. In so many words: look at the facts, motherfucker.  Now eat shit and die.

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And I am happy to admit it.  What a good day.  Kick those fuckers in the nuts where it hurts.

More later.  Oh but it’s good to see that smug sonufabitch gone.

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Why do all these homosexuals keep sucking my cock?

There was a brief moment of deliciously tempting schadenfreude.  The kind of cold glee that lets you know that, yes, hell is not in fact a warm place, but a place annealed and frozen by hate.  It was a passing moment, and in its place I find myself deeply cynical about what has happened.

With the help of these bastards, we have managed to have gayness clearly linked to (a) the chasing of minor boys, (b) the purchasing of whores, and (c) meth.  Of all the narratives in all the world, you, Ted Haggard, had to bring us this one.  Not the narrative which says that the truth will set you free.  Not the narrative which says that the closet is a charnal house of contagion.  Not the narrative which says that power, not meth, is the ultimate corrupter of men.  No, you had to bring us this tired old lie, this dubiously persuasive and ever-changing falsehood, this subtle and precise piece of deviltry, the narrative that gays are the other, that only the saved will survive, and that the gays are always, already, and for all eternity doomed. 

You, sir, have picked out your guilt sacrifice, you have found that goat whose pain will allow you to ’scape your penance.  For you are already forgiven, aren’t you?  You received forgiveness the moment you put me and all my ilk in your place to be consumed by the fire.  You will pay no price — save for the loss of your high position — for the damage you have wrought.

And worse, all the good you did do (before, that is, you lost your nerve), is now lost.  All the work you might have done for stewardship is blotted out by the indelible image of you, sucking on a glass dick, submitting to the headship of authority.

And just to top it all off, we had to get this recent news to bump your sorry flat ass off the headlines, just in time for the election.

Speaking of which — don’t forget to vote, everyone!  Because, you know, democracy matters. 

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