Back to Les Miserables

This:

is the very nice, comfortable and acoustically great theatre at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music, where my wife and I saw them putting on the ever popular Les Miserables today. 

I see it's been 6 years since I wrote my extensive post on the show (and Victor Hugo), after seeing it in for the first time in its movie version.  (I'll pat myself on the back - it's great reminding myself sometimes of what I found out in previous research on a topic.)

After that, I saw the show live at QPAC, and noted that I found it more moving in parts than the movie.

Well, increasing familiarity seems to be making it worse for me, as now I feel on the verge of tears every (I don't know) 10 minutes of this show. One song*, particularly well sung, did cause tears, but I think it was manfully hidden from knowledge of everyone in the theatre, wife included.

I could just be succumbing to the tendency of older men to cry more easily, although that's not exactly an idea I welcome.  I was thinking often during the show of the Hong Kong residents singing Do You Hear the People Sing as a protest song over recent weeks, and was very much hoping I would not come out of the theatre to hear news of major military against them.   Maybe these thoughts kept me more emotional than normal.

In any event, as you imagine, a show put on by enthusiastic young music students should be pretty high quality, and it was.  Tickets were about half the cost of the cheapest seats in a professional show too.  I must watch out in future for what other musicals they put on each year.

Update:  don't think I previously linked to this blog summary of the real life events the second half of the musical is based around. 

* not that anyone's asking, it was Bring Him Home in the second half. 

Why compromise on abortion makes sense

Religions are free to develop their own views on the matter of abortion, and their members make their own decisions whether to follow or ignore their Church's teaching.  (It being widely known that many churchgoing women still opt for abortion.)  And personally, I have long adopted what might be called a precautionary approach to the matter:  this is a difficult topic, and I don't know where precise lines should be drawn in any objective sense, but I share most people's moral intuition that a late term abortion of a likely viable and healthy baby is a very serious matter and should have some exceptional justification if it is to happen at all, but a newly conceived embryo warrants a different set of moral concerns.   (As I will argue below, conservative anti-abortionists will say that they are above any line drawing, but by their actions and advocacy, they really aren't.)    My approach is that if there are moral ambiguities to taking an action, people should usually err on the side of not doing it. Hence, in a broad sense, I would say that I am more against abortion than for it.  

But what about the question of how governments should view it, in light of the mixed views held by different voters?   The abortion debate in the US is hotter than ever, with a renewed push for the overturning of the clear compromise position of Roe v Wade, despite it having maintained pretty popular survey support.   In Australia, we have had, for no very clear reason, a burst of recent State legislative activity to decriminalise abortion, but which in effect is changing nothing of the practice of abortion which has been in place for many decades.   (Conservatives who are in a rage about it seem to think legislators need to pointlessly keep prohibitions which everyone knows are virtually never used.)

Here's a pragmatic suggestion:   if both extremes of an issue have a problem with maintaining consistency, doesn't that make it obvious that a compromise between the two is the more justifiable outcome if you're trying to work out a legal framework?     And there are inconsistencies.

First:  on the pro-Life side - as many have noted, if they serious about every embryo being treated with the same value as a fully formed human, they should be calling fertility clinics which routinely dispose of unwanted, viable embryos as detention and execution centres for human life.

They don't.   Quite a few opinion pieces have made this point - here at the New Republic for one.
And if you put it in a utilitarian context of the trolley problem, who seriously would argue that it is would be better to switch the track to save the potential lives of (say) a hundred frozen embryos (of which, treated properly, a large proportion could be brought to term in families that would welcome them), over that of even one elderly woman past the prime of her life?

This article about the new Alabama law with a specific exemption for IVF embryos notes that pro-Life politicians are simply pragmatic on this:

The fertility industry didn’t support the Alabama bill, nor did it lobby for an exemption, says Sean Tipton, spokesman for the Birmingham-based American Society for Reproductive Medicine. It didn’t need to, he says: Politicians recognized that the popularity of fertility treatments was preventing anti-abortion laws from passing.

The pro-Choice side say, with justification, this:

Abortion-rights advocates call the exemption both outrageous and cynical. “When I heard Chambliss say it was for embryos in the woman’s uterus, it really highlighted what this is really about,” says Barbara Ann Luttrell, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood Southeast. “It’s not about the embryo.”

Most people intuit that an embryo, by virtue of its form, does not warrant the same legal status as a more fully formed foetus or new borne baby.   While it has the potential to become a fully functioning  human, and warrants a different ethical attitude towards it than other human tissue for that reason, it goes against most persons intuition to treat it the same as a fully fledged human.

The reluctance of the pro-Life movement to press for equal treatment for all embryos shows they recognise this sentiment and know they will not easily convince people they are wrong.  Hence they will live with the inconsistency in their law making.

Second:  on the pro-choice side, the reaction against the conservative attempts to ban abortion has lead to calls for women to be forthright in praising abortion as a normal and good thing.   Rather than even conceding that they should be rare, as with the old Clinton-ian formulation, they argue that there should be no apologies for having one.  They are usually "empowering".  See the Shout Your Abortion site for examples of this genre.

The inconsistency I have lately been thinking about is the comparison with the increasingly powerful animal rights lobby.   Public concern about the treatment of farm animals, and the associated uptake of veganism, is taking off in a surprisingly sudden way.   While climate change concern is part of the motivation, I would be pretty confident that social media promotion of scenes of animal suffering has also had a very large effect.

I am not immune from concerns about animal treatment, and nor are all empathetic humans, even if it doesn't stop us from eating meat or using animal products.

But the point here is that if a vegan won't eat eggs because the egg industry kills healthy young rooster chicks by putting them through a grinder, how could they not have concerns about a healthy, viable fetus being at risk of death because the mother made a late decision that she does not want the baby?     A well developed and healthy fetus is undoubtedly living, as is a chick.  Why is it a moral concern as to the premature death of one, at the will of humans who deem it unwanted, but not the other?

When you look at protesting young, pro-choice women, surely it would be a good bet that it would contain a disproportionate number of dedicated vegans motivated by wanting to reduce animal suffering, and not cause the premature death of any creature for human benefit.  Surely there is an inconsistency if you think a woman's choice is unquestionable when it comes to late term abortion, but not if it is about whether she should eat an egg for breakfast?

To my mind, the inconsistencies show that neither extreme should be treated as having a fair take on the matter, and legislators should not follow either extreme.

This is what makes the compromise position argued in Roe V Wade such a popular approach.  A reminder:

The Court resolved this balancing test by tying state regulation of abortion to the three trimesters of pregnancy: during the first trimester, governments could not prohibit abortions at all; during the second trimester, governments could require reasonable health regulations; during the third trimester, abortions could be prohibited entirely so long as the laws contained exceptions for cases when they were necessary to save the life or health of the mother.[6 

The matter of how Australia implement a sense of compromise is an interesting issue of itself:   obviously, requiring more doctors to be involved in approving a late term abortion has an element of that.  There was an argument appearing in The Conversation today that there should be no gestational limits on abortion, and the argument was put more convincingly than I expected.   As is often the case with abortion, it would seem the practice tends to override the letter of the law:  

There is no evidence that legal restrictions on second and third trimester abortions reduce the number of abortions that occur later in pregnancy. In fact, based on the most recent statistics, the proportion of abortions performed after 20 weeks in Canada, which has no gestational cut off, is half that in Queensland, which has a 22 week cut off (0.66% compared with 1.34%).   

But overall, I am not convinced that it should be left unregulated.

I can see some conservative arguing that my whole position relies too much on moral intuition, which can be so flexible as to be unreliable.   Indeed, death of unwanted new born babies by exposure was apparently a not uncommon practice in some places:  it is a bit hard to know, though, how their moral intuitions felt about it at the time.

The problem for conservative reasoning about abortion is that it seems to not align with common women's intuition about at least early pregnancy - I know my Catholic mother was annoyed to have fallen pregnant (again - she had 7 children) with me, and said she took hot baths that she hoped might end it early.  My eldest sister laughed at the story when it was told - and I was a bit taken aback at the time.  (I still don't think it's the best idea to tell your kid that you had really hoped for miscarriage at first!)  My sister in her life had fallen pregnant unexpectedly while single while living overseas - I know for a fact that she had the option for legal abortion but she didn't take it. 

But I later reflected on how this showed that many (probably most) women, even from a Catholic background, do not automatically feel any maternal connection with an unexpected embyro attached to their uterus.   Perhaps especially after having all the children they expected to have? 

And I have to say, I find effort to argue against that common women's intuition feels like one of those cases where men (in particular) philosophise themselves into positions against common sense - Kant going on about masturbation being worse than suicide, for example.

So no, I think this is an area of human experience where human, particularly women's, intuition has to be given attention, and moral intuition is a reasonable approach.   And as I say, this should lead to a compromise position in terms of public policy, regardless of how you would feel about your own decision.

Davidson hosting incitement to murder now?

The latest legislative moves to decriminalise abortion in an Australian state have sent the conservatives of Catallaxy over the edge, with one long time participant repeating this often:

Clean up your toilet, Sinclair; it's reeking.  

More on Brexit - and Right wing clowns in politics

I see on Axios that the UK speaker says he won't let Johnson suspend parliament as a way of avoiding it passing an extension to the Brexit deadline.   That's nice of him.

But also, the article ends noting that John Bolton is a strong supporter of a no deal Brexit.

Even leaving aside the clownish behaviour of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage in the UK, and Trump in the US, shouldn't it give the libertarian-ish/classic liberal supporters of Brexit like J Soon and H Dale misgivings that a very, very serious US figure who they presumably feel is disastrously wrong in his interventionist inclinations is a strong supporter?   I get the feeling that they have simply abandoned the rule of thumb about judging people (or ideas) by the company they keep.  

And going back to clowning - why does the nutty Right and its causes attract this type so much now?  Look at Monckton and Delingpole on climate change, for example - they seem to think that acting the clown lends credibility to their cause.   Of course, thousands of words have been written about Johnson's use of clowning - so I'll say more about that.  Farage is a genuine upper class twit:  he doesn't have to act it out.

It's all part of a culture war attitude, I guess - that they want to point at Lefties as being so serious and earnest that they are not to be taken seriously.   The point is valid on some matters of identity politics,  but when it becomes pretty much your whole shtick, it becomes an obvious PR mask for lack of detailed understanding on complex and serious matters.   Look at Tim Blair for a local example.



 

Consitutional crisis coming?

This discussion of whether England is about to face a constitutional crisis [or should that be - a "no constitution crisis":)]regarding steps the Johnson government could take to force a no deal Brexit even in the face of a no confidence vote in Parliament in September is all very interesting.   I bet the Queen is asking for advice already on how to deal with the situation should it happen.

I would be advising locking Johnson in the Tower of London - he would get a thrill from the notoriety. 

If it bends, it's funny; if it breaks it's not...

That line from Crimes and Misdemeanors often comes to mind when trying to work out why some TV shows or movies work for me, and others don't.   (And yeah, I know we're meant to take it as more fatuous than serious.)

Case in point:  Amazons The Boys.  I gave up at about the 30 minute mark. 

I have often explained how I can only enjoy the superhero genre if it doesn't take itself too seriously - otherwise the silliness of the scenarios just leave too much rationality in my subconscious objecting that it's a waste of time. 

But I realised while trying this latest show (essentially, a black humour quasi-satire - pretty much a bloody, sweary adult version of The Incredibles, now that I think of it) that I can't warm to any scenario in which superheros are too engaged in the world, whether or not its done for humour.   In other words, it's one thing for a superhero to live a private life in his downtime; it's another, way less credible thing to have them fully engaged in the world, as they are in the scenario in The Boys.  One bends, the other breaks.

Someone might say, what about The Avengers?   Well, I haven't even watched all of those movies (and hence was surprised how much I liked Infinity War) but I think they are still allowed a private life, even if the identity is not so secret.  And Ironman is more a technological hero than a superpower one.

Anyway, the first episode of The Boys was not engaging me - I thought it was too talky, and could just tell I wasn't going to buy into its world.  I see since viewing that it that Seth Rogan had a producing hand in it, further convincing me that nearly nothing he has touched holds any appeal to me.

Secular stagnation

A nicely explained economics piece here at NPR.

Fast-forward to 2013, and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, fresh from his stint as director of the National Economic Council in the Obama administration, resurrected the term at a speech at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C. And he has been warning the world about it ever since.

Secular stagnation, he says, "may be the defining macro-economic challenge of our times."

Like Hansen in the 1930s, Summers points to declining population growth as one source of stagnation. But he also points to other factors. A big one: Our economy might require less investment than it used to. Think Kodak (the old economy) vs. Instagram (the new economy). Kodak required factories and assembly line workers and trucks and film and film developers and a bunch of other resources to give us photography. Instagram basically needs just an office with laptops and a few hundred smart workers. It needs much less investment.

Meanwhile, there are a lot of savings out there looking for a return, and there don't seem to be enough investment opportunities to sop it all up. As we explained in last week's Planet Money newsletter, a shortage of investment relative to a glut of savings is why we're now in the upside-down world of super-low interest rates.

Summers warns that this world of disappointing growth and super-low interest rates means it will be hard for traditional tools, like the Fed's cutting of interest rates, to rescue us from future recessions. And it could mean the only way we'll get solid growth is if the government attaches the rocket boosters of deficit spending and cheap credit to the economy. Even then, it might look just OK-ish.

Sounds very plausible.  But still not sure about this:

Secular stagnation does have an upside, actually: Low interest rates mean it's supercheap to borrow. That includes for the government. Not only that, but the government might be able to rack up big deficits and give us tons of cheap credit and not cause runaway inflation. That's why respected folks like the former chief economist of the IMF, Olivier Blanchard, are discarding the old rules and saying that deficits don't matter like they used to.

Secular stagnationistas are arguing that now is the time to spend big, on things like roads, bridges and a Green New Deal. That's one way to increase investment in the economy and get us out of this hole. Of course, many disagree. They have faith that new technologies in the pipeline will expand industry, increase investment and productivity and rescue us from stagnation.

Another Netflix review

A surprising benefit of Netflix has been watching foreign language series and seeing how good they can be - for example, the terrifically engaging Babylon Berlin;  Norwegians poking fun at their Viking heritage in Norsemen; Norwegian political drama in Occupied.   I've tried German Stranger Things-ish territory in Dark, but didn't find I liked it enough to stick with it;  I have heard people praise the Danish series The Rain too, and it's OK, but I am not that big a fan of the post apocalyptic quasi-zombie genre.  In  any event, these shows are often interesting in a cultural way - what they show us about how other people live.

Which brings me to a recommendation to try the Indian series Typewriter.

I would describe it as a curry flavoured combination of Goosebumps, an Enid Blyton "Four Go on an Adventure!" style book, and the recent Netflix updating of The Haunting of Hill House.* 

The show is set in the Goa area of India, and there is not a crowded street, wandering cow, or poor person to be seen.  The characters are middle class (at a minimum), and the school the kids go to is Catholic (given the Portuguese history of the place, that is not surprising.)   The thing is, it really looks nothing like what I thought a show set in any part of India should look like.   Maybe this is just my ignorance of Indian movie and TV shows - I doubt many are based around the lives of the struggling poor living in cramped conditions - but I still find the look of the show surprising.

And as for the use of language - I had no idea that Indian folk could move in and out of English so often that it can even be within the one sentence.    (Not just throw in some English nouns or exclamations, but starting a sentence in - I presume - Hindi and finishing it with a whole English phrase.)   I find that really intriguing.  I mean, the Norwegians in Occupied use English often too, at least when needing a common language with (say) a Russian.  But this complete mixing up of languages in Typewriter - it makes this poor monolingual Australia feel even more incompetent for his lack of ability to mind-shift into a different language than do the multi-lingual Europeans.  

The other peculiar thing is that the story and script seems to swing from very child friendly (and somewhat corny) to inappropriately adult at a rapid pace.  It will move from the kids getting up to mischief with a dog that understands instructions as improbably as did Rin Tin Tin (dating myself much, hey?), to adults swearing and making sex jokes as if they are in a different show.  

It is basically a haunted house story, with bits of black magic and people up-to-no-good thrown in.   In episode two, some of it even starting giving an Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom vibe:   not that this bothered me.   As long as it feels creepy at times (and large, quiet  houses  are pretty easy to make feel scary on film, even in daylight) I'm happy enough.   The acting is uneven, but as I say, so is the writing. 

Maybe the show will start to stretch the silliness too far and teeter into un-watchability, but so far, I'm enjoying it not because it's terrific, but for the way it's all so mixed up.     

 

*  My son thought calling it "curry flavoured" would be a bit racist - perhaps he meant stereotypical - but I know someone who recently travelled to India and said, at least going by the hotel food she got sick of, they really do have virtually every meal as a variation on a curry.    

Dear Reader/s (updated)

I'm sorry, but I had to Google the topic of how I got notified of a comment awaiting moderation.  (I thought I might get an email, but no.)

I see now that some have been making comments that have been stuck in moderation.  I have approved some.

I will consider un-moderating comments if it seems Bird has gone, or will abide by the rules.

Soft on Boris

I watched Four Corners on Boris Johnson last night, and thought it was pretty soft on him.  There was lots of generic talk about criticisms and scandals both personal and professional, and how he is a polarising figure; but next to no details on his career, and the inaccuracies in the Brexit campaign he effectively headed.    So it was rather disappointing - more like some lightweight commercial current affairs take on the matter, such as you might see on 60 Minutes. 

And gee, Alexander Downer carries big bags under his eyes now.   Aged 67, I see.  Bad genes, or does too much time on the champagne diplomat circuit cause that?

An alternative gay rights history

Not exactly a topic I spend much time thinking about, but a review at the TLS notes a book which argues that, at least for the US:

“Gay commerce”, writes David K. Johnson, “was not a byproduct of the gay movement but a catalyst to it”. This is the somewhat heretical thesis of Buying Gay: How physique entrepreneurs sparked a movement....

Johnson makes the case that, in the 1950s and 60s, erotic gay magazines (many of which began life thinly disguised as bodybuilding manuals), pen pal clubs and directory guides (to gay bars and businesses) played a crucial role in the formation of a nascent political movement for legal equality and social reform. These outlets created the conditions for the eventual decriminalization of homosexuality, which began on the state level in 1961 and culminated in 2003 with the Supreme Court ruling Lawrence vs Texas, which overturned same-sex sodomy laws across the land.

I think I have read this before - how bodybuilding in the mid 20th century had a very large gay following.  I suspect that this might have changed by the time of (say) Arnie - when championship bodybuilding looked (as it still does to my eye) distinctly weird, and too grotesque to have much of a gay vibe about it.   Perhaps steroid boosted muscles de-gayified the hobby? 

Anyway, the article goes on to note that underground gay business was quite big business:

Bob Mizer did indeed have dreams, but he was also intent on making them reality. A frequent spectator at body-building competitions (where much, if not most, of the audience was discreetly composed of gay men), he started a photography business in 1945, the Athletic Model Guild (AMG), with a casting call placed in the back of a weightlifting magazine ostensibly aimed at heterosexual men. The response – from both potential models and, later, consumers of his beefcake photographs – was immense. Imitators and innovators, unleashed by capitalism’s animal spirits, soon followed Mizer’s lead to vast financial success.....

From its founding in 1955, the Grecian Guild – which, in addition to publishing a magazine, organized gatherings in an early form of gay community-building – appealed to ancient traditions of same-sex desire, as did the homophonic Adonis Male Club, a pen-pal service set up in 1959, which allowed men and women to come out to an empathetic stranger, share experiences and advice, and arrange dates. As homosexuality remained illegal, such outfits relied on coded language (“artistic”, “musical” and “temperamental” being euphemisms of choice).

 I won't extract all of the the parts explaining the aggro action taken against these businesses, except to note this description of one of the key players:  

... US Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield (a cross between J. Edgar Hoover and Mary Whitehouse) described the Adonis Male Club as “one of the most vicious, filthy, and widespread operations” in the country.

All interesting in its own way.  A right wing gay character like "look at me" MP Tim Wilson would lap up this pro-capitalism take on gay rights.   Someone else can tweet it to his attention.  

Mass hysteria noted

Hey, there's a great long read (with plenty of photos) at the BBC site:   The mystery of screaming schoolgirls in Malaysia.

Apparently, Malaysia has a long history of episodes of mass hysteria - interestingly, going back to before the recent-ish period of increased conservative Islamic influence on the country:

Incidents in Malaysia were particularly prevalent among factory workers during the 1960s. Today it largely affects children in schools and dormitories.

Robert Bartholomew spent decades researching the phenomenon in Malaysia. He calls the South East Asian country "the mass hysteria capital of the world".

"It is a deeply religious and spiritual country where many people, especially those from rural and conservative states, believe in the powers of traditional folklore and the supernatural."

But the issue of hysteria remains a sensitive one. In Malaysia, cases have involved adolescent girls from the Malay Muslim ethnic majority more than any other group.

"There's no denying that mass hysteria is an overwhelmingly female phenomenon," says Mr Bartholomew. "It's the one constant in the [academic] literature."

The girls (as it usually is) see it as a supernatural phenomena - seeing a ghost or feeling possessed of an evil spirit.   Scary (and pre-Islamic) ghost folklore plays its role:

Malaysia's fascination with ghosts dates back centuries and is deep-rooted in shamanic tradition and South East Asian folk mythology.

Children grow up hearing stories about dead infants called toyol - invoked by shamans using black magic - and other terrifying vampiric ghosts like the pontianak and penanggalan, vengeful powerful female spirits that feed on the living.

Trees and burial sites are common settings for these eerie tales. These locations stoke fears that feed into superstitious beliefs.

Unfortunately, as the article indicates, conservative Islam is perhaps not the most helpful religion ina society beset by strong supernatural beliefs:

He abides by the teachings of the Koran, Islam's holy book, and also believes in the power of Jinn - spirits in Middle Eastern and Islamic cosmology that "appear in a variety of shapes and forms".

"We share our world with these unseen beings," Zaki Ya says. "They are good or bad and can be defeated by faith."

 Anyway, I was also a bit amused to see in the article this photo:

It is explained:

A more controversial approach comes from a team of Islamic academics in Pahang, the largest state in peninsular Malaysia.

Priced at a hefty 8,750 Malaysian ringgit (£1,700; $2,100), the "anti-hysteria kit" they offer consists of items including formic acid, ammonia inhalants, pepper spray and bamboo "pincers".

 All of this reminds me:   Jason, does your family coming from this part of the world help explain your somewhat hysterical right wing content lately?  I'll be recommending you buy one of these kits if you keep tweeting with apparent approval Right wing numbnuts. 

A not so late movie review

Saw The Invitation this weekend - the 2015 movie which I had wanted to watch for a while but my son resisted during our usual Saturday evening argument over what to view on Netflix.   (I was pumping for the Chinese save the planet movie The Wandering Earth, which has belatedly turned up on Australian Netflix, but for some reason I can't fathom he is against it.)

Anyway, The Invitation is a very fine, dread filled movie experience:  well acted, well made in a one house setting that makes me wonder why Australian movies in one place look cheap to me, but American movies that do the same do not.  Also turned out it was kind of topical, given some of the discussion around Tarantino's latest plot.

It is of the "dinner party from hell" genre, but one that plays on the question of what is really going on quite well, inserting just enough doubts at key points in a pretty clever script.

Recommended.   It did make me feel pretty sick with dread for much of the way, though.   (Reminded me a bit of 10 Cloverfield Lane in that sense.) 

Update:  out of curiosity, I just checked what this movie made when it had a cinema release.  A paltry $232,000 in the US apparently (and maybe got no international release?) - pretty unbelievable, given its quality and generally good reviews.  I don't know where I had heard about it - I thought maybe it on At the Movies, but that show wound up before it was released.   Maybe on the Radio National review show?

Where is the common sense middle on the video game debate?

Once again I find myself getting annoyed with the problems of both sides of an argument - this time on the matter of video games and connection with real life violence.

On the conservative American Right:  of course the claim about the connection of violent video games to shootings is not an argument put in good faith - it is (along with general bleating about mental health) primarily a diversionary excuse for not doing anything very serious about gun control.

On the Left (and libertarian) side:  the point about the low international rates of violence despite the popularity of violent games everywhere is overly simplistic - isn't that obvious?  If people who might be triggered to live out a gaming fantasy in real life are prevented doing so by the sensible gun restricting laws of most countries, that tells us nothing reliable about the possible connection between games and shooting in the USA.   Do those game defenders think that those who worry about a connection are making an argument so unsubtle that it along the lines of "violent games make players want to kill in any manner possible - knives, bombs, cars - any way"?  

Part of the problem here is probably the whole question of "causation" in this context.  I have had my say on the dubious relevance of psychological studies on the effect of video games before - see my posts "Useless Violence Studies" and  "Video Violence and Empathy" - I think they stand up well.

I get the impression that studies on video violence are in a similar position as was research on marijuana use and mental illness about 40 years ago - when there was a great deal of expert doubt that there could be any connection, versus the more common sense reasoning of parents who hadn't seen a psychotic episode in their child until they were smoking cannabis.   Finally, the expert opinion swung around to "well, yeah, it can cause serious problems particularly with young smokers in a real, causative sense - although it's still tangled up with pre-existing susceptibility to mental illness as well."

The problem is that video violence is even harder to study than cannabis, given that it's not as if there are plenty of mass murders to study, and identifying those who are having thoughts of mass murder before they commit it is never going to be easy.

There is also the question of the degree to which one contemplates interference with an entertainment business just because it may implant a bad idea in the mind of some viewer.   This guy, in the Conversation, makes this point - there have moral panics over movie violence which seem quaint today.   But as I have argued before, there is something about the repetitive nature, and the involvement in directing the action, of video games which common sense ought to suggest may have different and more worrying effects than watching a movie on screen violence.    Although of course, I have great concerns about the morally numbing effect of movie violence as well.

It would, in my opinion, be a healthier society if violence in games and movies was decreased from its current excesses.  I am annoyed that there are few mainstream cultural commentators who put that line forward - I am stuck with pointing to a string of recent Popes who haven't liked violence in video games.   On this matter, as with many other social issues (as long at they are not to do with sex and reproduction!) the Catholic Church does maintain pretty sensible views. 

While on the topic of free speech

This Will Wilkinson take seems spot on:

And this comment about how American got there sound right too:

Dear Reader/s

Due to Graeme Bird's insistence on polluting my comments section with complete and utter conspiracy nonsense (as I have said before, just like Alex Jones, but with the added offensiveness of anti-Semitism), I have put the comments onto moderation.    [I have tried deleting his comments, but he just re-posts them over and over again in a game that is tiresome and pretty childish on his part.]

Some may argue that I shouldn't worry - people know he's a nut and will just ignore his rambling theories, even finding them funny sometimes - but really, I don't want to host a forum that spreads such offensive, fact free material.   I have spent years criticising Catallaxy (and Sinclair Davidson in particular) for hosting offensive religious bigotry (about Islam in its case; a religion not above criticism here, of course) and sexist, homophobic, racist and defamatory content in comments in the name of free speech, so it's not as if I can continue hosting  it here without being inconsistent.  

I've never done it before, and I'm not even sure how it works yet. 

He's been told to just revive his dead blog is he wants to rabbit on as he does, but it seems he prefers annoying others instead.

I will see how this goes. 

PS:  can someone try to comment so I see how I get to moderate it?

Bret Stephens gets it right

A lot of Lefties were annoyed with the New York Times taking on Bret Stephens as a regular contributor, but we should all be praising his column today which scorches Conservatives' "whataboutism" in relation to the Dayton shooting (agreeing with my point made earlier today in the context of the same exercise by Andy Ngo), and attacking Trump for his role.   Some highlights:

Connor Betts, the alleged Dayton shooter, had left-wing political views, believed in socialism, supported Elizabeth Warren’s candidacy, and regularly inveighed on Twitter against various personages on the right (including, it turns out, me). This has some conservatives fuming that liberal media is conveniently ignoring the progressive ideology of one shooter while obsessing over the far-right ideology of another — Patrick Crusius, who posted an anti-immigrant manifesto shortly before police say he murdered 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso.

Sorry, but the comparison doesn’t wash. It’s idiotic.

The Dayton victims did not fit any political or ethnic profile: They were black and white, male and female, an immigrant from Eritrea and Betts’s own sister. Crusius’s victims, overwhelmingly Hispanic, did: They were the objects of his expressly stated political rage.

What happened in Ohio was a mass shooting in the mold of the Las Vegas massacre: victims at random, motives unknown. What happened in Texas was racist terrorism in the mold of Oslo, Charleston, Pittsburgh, Christchurch and Poway.

The former attack vaguely implicates the “dark psychic force” that Marianne Williamson spoke of in last week’s Democratic debates. The latter directly implicates the immigrant-bashing xenophobic right led by Donald Trump.

This needs to be said not because it isn’t obvious, but because too many conservatives have tried to deny the obvious. It’s not about ideology, they say: It’s a mental-health issue. But that’s precisely the kind of evasive reasoning many of those conservatives mocked in 2016, when the mental state and sexual orientation of Orlando nightclub shooter Omar Mateen was raised by some media voices to suggest that his attack had not really been an act of Islamist terrorism. 

Alternatively, conservatives have cited the decline of civil society, the effects of the de-institutionalization of the mentally ill, the paucity of prayer and the ubiquity of violent video games — in sum, the breakdown of “the culture” — as explanations for mass shootings. This is the right-wing equivalent of the left’s idea that poverty and climate change are at the root of terrorism: causes so general that they explain everything, hence nothing. Why not also blame Friedrich Nietzsche and the death of God?

Get real: The right’s attempt to downplay the specifically ideological context of the El Paso massacre is a transparently self-serving effort to absolve the president of moral responsibility for his demagogic rhetoric. This, too, shouldn’t wash. The president is guilty, in a broad sense, of a form of incitement.

As for his reaction to Trump's use of "infestation" when decrying illegal immigration:

In today’s America, the dissemination of the idea, via the bully pulpit of the presidency, that we are not merely being strained or challenged by illegal immigrants, but invaded and infested, predicated the slaughter in El Paso.

It’s worth noting that the Walmart massacre is, as far as I know, the first large scale anti-Hispanic terrorist attack in the United States in living memory. On current trend, it will surely not be the last or the worst. The language of infestation inevitably suggests the “solution” of extermination. As for the cliché that sensible people are supposed to take Trump seriously but not literally, it looks like Patrick Crusius didn’t get that memo.

The main task for Democrats over the next 15 months won’t be to convince America that they need yet another health care re-invention, or that the economy is a mess, or that the system is rigged, or that the right response to Trump’s immigration demagoguery is an open border. It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety.

Quite right.

So far from normal as to be virtually inexplicable

Of the many photos of bizarrely inappropriate smiling and thumbs up from Trump and his equally strange wife during the hospital visits this week, this one just takes the cake:

How can we be sure that those two are not aliens wearing human skin suits, as in Men in Black?   It strikes me as just about the only plausible explanation.

As for the reaction on Twitter, Mediaite explains it well:

Twitter Recoils at White House Photo Op of Trump and First Lady Smiling With Baby Orphaned in El Paso Massacre: ‘Act Like a Human Being’

 The baby was brought back to the hospital for this photo op at White House request.

Killed for the avocado trade??

In The Guardian's report of a gruesome scene in a Mexican city:

The merciless dogfight between Mexican drug cartels has produced its latest macabre spectacle with the discovery of 19 mutilated corpses – nine of them hung semi-naked from a bridge – in a city to the west of the capital.

it goes on to note that the cartels fight is not just over drugs, but more importantly, over avocados (!):

Falko Ernst, an International Crisis Group researcher who studies Mexico’s cartels, said this week’s slaughter was clearly intended to intimidate rival criminal groups, the families of their members, as well as Mexican authorities.

Ernst said the bloodbath was partly about the struggle for control of Uruapan’s local drug trade. But a more important motivation was the fight for the region’s billion-dollar avocado industry. “The big magnet here is avocados,” he said.
 

What a sad, strange country - which I would like to visit if only it didn't have such appalling problems.

Fear of invading cultural supremacy

William Saletan writes at Slate that he has read three of the recent white supremacist killers' "manifestos" and finds that all of them actually indicate fear of the cultural supremacy of the "invaders" that they go on to kill.  

Which is kind of odd - it's a bit like self hatred of their own group leads to rationalisations for attacking the other.    Interesting, as Saletan usually is.   Here are his last paragraphs:

These reflections on the assets of immigrant communities—spiritual strength, cultural strength, economic and educational ambition—have led some white nationalists to recalculate their propaganda. Breivik, for instance, rejected “supremacist arguments” and portrayed white Europeans instead as an oppressed native tribe, like “Aborigines in Australia and Native Americans in the US.” “Rhetoric related to ‘indigenous rights’ is an untapped goldmine,” he wrote. “Playing the victim card is the most potent strategy of our times.” He concluded with this message: “Preserving your tribe, cultural and demographical, is a basic human right and has nothing to do with ‘white supremacy.’ ” 

Tarrant offered a similar pitch, based on the idea of “diversity.” His massacre of Muslims, he argued, “was not an attack on diversity, but an attack in the name of diversity.” How? According to his manifesto, the goal was “to ensure diverse peoples remain diverse, separate, unique, undiluted.” “A rainbow is only beautiful due to its variety of colours,” he wrote. “Mix the colours together and you destroy them all.” 

What’s happening among these extremists, in short, is a shift from white supremacy to white nationalism. That’s no consolation to the hundreds of people they’ve killed or wounded, or to the millions they’ve terrified. But it does undercut a core premise of their ideology. Even racist mass murderers are being forced to admit, in their own manifestos, that whites are losing their economic and cultural dominance based on merit. The dogma of white supremacy is collapsing.