Elizaphanian

Our image of Palin

2009-07-13T14:10:00.005+01:00

Erik's comment got two 'bravos' from NMMNG and Al, so I guess it's worth saying something about it up front. After all, as Erik says "as a priest, you [sh]ould find such hypocrisy, used as it is to violate the trust of the duty she has to the people of Alaska, to be utterly appalling". Clearly if I did believe that Palin was hypocritical and corrupt I certainly would find it appalling. What I want to dig out by going through Erik's comment is the way in which Palin is carrying the burden of all sorts of projections (including my own, no doubt) - which to my makes her a more interesting figure, not less.

Erik's comments in italic:
I find your attachment to Gov. Palin very strange, as she evinces none of the honesty or forthrightness that you yourself do.

Thanks.

Her resignation is a strange mish-mash of motives, all of them mercurial and, apparently, obfuscatory at the least. First, she declared that she would not run for governor again, thus making herself a "lame duck" -- one of the more enduring and not-at-all factually-based myths of American politics: that an exiting executive cannot get anything done. And then, citing her self-inflicted lame duckness, she stated that she would resign her term as governor 18 months early. This is nothing if not the political equivalent of "I'm taking my ball and going home!"

I don't believe that's a fair characterisation of her actions. I think she found herself drowning and unable to do the job she was elected to do; at the same time she has become a national figure and finds all sorts of opportunities for furthering her argument opening up there. I take her statement at face value, and I certainly don't think that she's finished as a political figure, rather the opposite. The 'mercurial' charge is an interesting one, as I don't see her as being mercurial at all - on the contrary, this action seems entirely consistent with her publicly stated principles. It says something interesting about the perspective from which she is viewed that this action can be perceived as mercurial.

The citation of the ethics complaints by "outsiders" that "cost the state millions of dollars and thousands of employee hours" are likewise false or, when not false, exaggerations of a deliberately mendacious nature. Of the 15 ethics complaints filed against her in her tenure, only one was filed against her by non-Alaskans (a watchdog group arguing that the $150,000 worth of clothes and such given to her and her family by the RNC during the 2008 election constituted an illegal contribution under Alaska law). Likewise, the majority of complaints were filed by Alaskan Republican Party members.

To deal with this latter point briefly, it is unsurprising that the establishment Republican Party in Alaska (aka the Corrupt Bastards Club) has been fighting her and trying to diminish her - they were the ones who were ousted when she took charge.

The ethics investigations' total cost to the state were just over US$275,000 -- money that was owed by contract to the legal firms conducting the investigations whether they performed work during that time or not. Please allow me to reiterate that -- outside auditors performed the actual investigations, not state employees, costing the state absolutely no work-hours from its employees whatsoever, for a total cost of a fraction of that Palin cites, and that from moneys that would have been paid no matter what.

This doesn't seem to be true, see eg here, but I'm happy to explore it further. I would say, however, that it wouldn't faze me if a politician maximised the 'cost' figure for political purposes, using the hourly cost of wages paid to public servants, as it is an absolutely standard practice. Whatever the true figure might be, the substantial point that Palin is making seems unarguable - much of her time, and her administration's time, was being taken up with politically motivated "ethics" investigations. Again we have a sort of Rorschach test - there is enough material to compose a plausible-sounding case one way or another - and which way it is spun reveals the character of the person doing the spinning.

The most involved of the ethics complaints that was investigated was the one Palin filed against herself regarding "Troopergate" -- whether or not she abused the power of her office in harassing her brother-in-law, a state trooper. She filed this complaint because, in so doing, the ethics investigation by statute superseded an investigation by the Alaska State Legislature that found she had indeed abused her office in this matter.

This seems a good example of a pejorative reading: the Alaska State Legislature pursued a politically motivated investigation of "Troopergate" which whilst finding that she had broken no law said that she had 'abused her power' (which was about as strong as could conceivably be defensible); the more thorough investigation gave her a totally clean bill of health. Seems like an astute and thoroughly defensible move to me.

In spending hundreds of thousands of dollars defending herself, it is revealed that Palin did so unnecessarily -- most of the complaints, according to the ethics board, could have been addressed by her simply drafting a letter in response to each one detailing her position and reasoning on each decision called into question. She chose to hire an expensive, out-of-state lawyer -- hardly a fiscally responsible act, unless one ascribes to the maxim that a politician with national ambitions must never explain oneself.

Well, this is her own money being spent, not the state's, and if she felt, given the amount of flak being sent her way (and the scrutiny that she was under) that she wanted to be properly advised, I can't see that as a problem. It's certainly not something that is either hypocritical or dishonest.

Rather than manage the transition of power, Palin has been fishing. She behaves at no time like a statewoman and always like a rather petulant country aristocrat. The wounds she complains about are self-inflicted, from making herself a lame-duck governor to choosing to abrogate her duty to her electorate to choosing to instigate the financial costs to her family.

This seems a bizarre comment to me. One of the things that I find admirable about Palin is her refusal to sling mud at people - which is surely stateswoman-like? Given that all of this brouhaha was triggered by her agreeing to a request to be the VP candidate, in what way was all this self-inflicted? It seems to me that her accession to VP ruined any possibility of her continuing as governor. Her resignation a) acknowledges the new reality; b) establishes Parnell as a sympathetic successor with time to build up an incumbency advantage; and c) liberates her to take her agenda and message into the wider US political scene. The idea that Palin is a 'petulant country aristocrat' I find mind-boggling.

Palin gives lip-service to ideals you hold dear. But in all ways, her conduct gives the lie to her rhetoric. I would think that, as a priest, you would find such hypocrisy, used as it is to violate the trust of the duty she has to the people of Alaska, to be utterly appalling.

Well, I just don't see the hypocrisy, rather the opposite. I see someone who believes in ethically sound and small government who - within pragmatic constraints - has achieved that. (And NMMNG I don't see her record in Wasilla as much of a counter-argument to that, the increased debt was primarily to develop the sports centre, ie it was a mortgage supported by a referendum. Wikipedia seems balanced on this.)

Thing is, Palin does seem to be a hook for all sorts of projections and neuroses (not to suggest the commenters here are neurotic even if the blog-author is) and bits and pieces of evidence can be scraped together to justify all sorts of calumnies. Some assert that Palin is a brain-dead, trailer-trash, slutty and incompetent waste of space. Some assert that Palin is a machiavellian careerist hard-hearted psycho-bitch who is only in it for publicity and personal advancement. Others - like me - see her as being someone who is making it up as she goes along, but who is guided by a normal and well-grounded set of values pursued with integrity and character. Obviously time will tell which of these caricatures is closest to the truth. Yet there is one thing that everyone (except for the lunatic fringe, eg Andrew Sullivan) agrees on - she chose not to have an abortion when she could have, and now there is Trig Palin. That seems more in line with my characterisation of her personality than the other two.

TBTM20090713

2009-07-13T08:46:00.001+01:00

Some Hypocrisies Are Not Hypocrisies

John Bell on Directors of Music, Organists and related matters

2009-07-10T10:13:00.002+01:00

Listened to this a while back but thought it would be worth linking to directly.
He's always interesting.

TBTM20090710

2009-07-10T08:41:00.001+01:00

Feminists and the mystery of Sarah Palin.

TBTM20090709

2009-07-09T11:29:00.002+01:00

Fascinating article at the Technium which, inter alia, explores why Wendell Berry can't have the last word on technology. Excellent stuff.

Go Sarah!

2009-07-08T12:21:00.004+01:00

I wasn't going to comment on this, but....

The other day my therapist told me I was "different". Obviously everyone is different, and he did say - reassuringly explicitly - that I wasn't "different" in the sense of being dysfunctional (along the lines of, eg, crack addicts or something like that); another thing that my therapist said is that I'm not someone who needs therapy, I just want to grow as a person. It put me in mind of a comment from a friend in church about the recent unpleasantness in the parish (on which topic I might write something before too long - in brief, as it is no longer in any way a secret, I asked the Director of Music here to retire) who wrote to me - objecting to what I'd done - but did so in a really nice way, listing my various eccentricities, such as growing a ponytail and taking a service whilst wearing a Hawaiian shirt. That's what the therapist had in mind - I'm an eccentric. Which is fine, I probably am.

I think that one of the reasons why people find me a bit eccentric is that, to borrow the cliche, I march to the sound of a different drum. I would say (I would wouldn't I?) that I'm trying, more or less successfully, to follow what God is telling me to do, and that, inevitably, leads to conflict with the consensus of a particular community - any community. I also suspect that I'm keener on the truth - possibly to a pathological degree - than is comfortable for most people. (I should add that sometimes my pursuit of truth is a tilting at windmills; one example would be the 9/11 truth movement which I spent some time having sympathy for, but mostly don't any more. Thing is, having explored the issue in a great deal of depth I end up in a place which is much more solidly grounded than before, even if where I end up is basically where conventional opinion is - to leave a place and return and know it for the first time - but that's what happens when you grow.)

So, all that is by way of preamble, and why I mention it is because of all the crap that is being hurled at Palin over her decision to resign from being Governor - which is, of course, not much changed from all the crap that has been sent her way for most of the last year. She is marching to the sound of her own drum, she is an independent eccentric and it scares the willies out of conventional consensus opinion - because she has the capacity to be a game changer. First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

She said "Energy independence and national security, fiscal restraint, smaller government, and local control have been my priorities and will remain my priorities." That's a genuinely conservative statement of principles - and a statement of genuinely conservative principles which I'd support. In the context of the utter FUBAR of Obama's economic policies I can well imagine her becoming the head of a revolutionary movement that takes her into higher reaches of power, not least given the three years of mounting disaster that the US will endure in the meantime. But maybe that's just me tilting at windmills again.

Anyhow, I recognise, respect and admire her independence of character. Even if she never runs for political office again (and I wouldn't blame her for making that decision): Go Sarah!

TBTM20090708

2009-07-08T09:31:00.003+01:00

(The Vikings are coming!)

One of the things the disturbed character knows very well about relatively well-adjusted or “neurotic” individuals is that they hate to see someone else suffer. Not only that, they hate it more to think of themselves as the cause of someone else’s suffering. That’s why playing the victim role is such an effective tactic. Especially when they’re confronted about their own malicious behavior, disordered characters will try and turn the tables by trying to get you to see them as the injured party.

TBTE20090703

2009-07-04T17:03:00.002+01:00

The forensic psychology dictionary.

TBTM20090703

2009-07-03T08:59:00.002+01:00

Strictly speaking not a beach photo at all - it's what I see when I leave the beach and walk up to church to say Morning Prayer, and it looked particularly beautiful this morning.

Today's link: Without Batman, Bruce would be truly screwed-up but with Batman he becomes mythic, more than human and genuinely useful to his community. I believe he began to slay his demons the moment he became a demon.

TBTM20090701

2009-07-01T11:25:00.003+01:00

The Great American Bubble Machine.

Climate change as - at best - a secondary issue

2009-07-01T09:14:00.001+01:00

Climate change (and Peak Oil) are two symptoms of a much deeper problem, the Limits to Growth. That problem can be simply stated: in a finite environment, the exponential growth of one element within that environment is unsustainable. Our western industrial capitalist system has been growing exponentially for some two hundred and fifty years - accelerating over the last sixty or so - and this is unsustainable; in other words, it will come to an end. I believe that it will come to an end over the next twenty or thirty years or so, not by our own conscious choice but because we have gone into 'overshoot' and we are presently crashing into the wall at 100mph.

The original Limits to Growth report outlined the various problems that would manifest themselves and cause the system to break down: resource limits, pollution, overpopulation etc. These can all be understood as symptoms of the underlying problem, the idolatry of growth. Peak Oil, for example, is only one example of a resource constraint; other fossil fuels (and uranium) also go through a peaking cycle, but there are also very significant issues related to the availability of potable water, fish stocks and many others. Climate change is one form of pollution, but again there are others, less global but no less significant for those affected by them.

With all of these single issues it is possible to address and solve that particular issue. The force of the Limits to Growth argument is that even when one is solved, the others then become more acute. In other words, there is a systemic issue to be addressed: we need to tackle the root problem of growth itself; we need to shift to a steady-state economy. If this is done then all the subsidiary problems will be dealt with. Even if climate change is true, and - marvellously! - action is taken to address the problem and it is "solved" - the underlying issue remains. The same applies to the problem of Peak Oil. All it would mean is that we have dodged one bullet; if we don't address the root causes then we will simply have to keep dodging more and more as time goes on, until one day one hits us and kills us.

Sometimes, I have the sense those who advocate radical action to deal with climate change miss this bigger picture (that's certainly true of any politician who talks about climate change whilst also talking about 'growth' for example). The risk is two-fold: first, that the wider issues fail to be addressed through an over-emphasis upon one subsidiary aspect; second, that if too much weight is placed on climate change as the dominant problem - and it turns out that the issue is either false or not as bad as presently thought - then not only will effort have been wasted but those who may have been persuaded to address important problems on the back of climate change will become disillusioned and sceptical about the wider issues as a whole.

More fundamentally, as a Christian, my concern is with the habits of life that are bound up with the ideology of growth; the systematic cultivation of deadly sins by the advertising industry, for example. The problem of growth is, at root, a spiritual problem; it is a dislocation of our values, a distortion of our human nature. That is what the church needs to address - our human sinfulness which gives rise to these problems. We must be wary of jumping on particular band-wagons, stick to what we know best, and do the job that Jesus commanded us to do, remembering that “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
(2 Chron 7.13-14)

A few thoughts about Climate Change and Peak Oil

2009-06-30T12:59:00.004+01:00

Al sent me a copy of the latest IPCC summary which includes this quote: "More importantly, the IPCC concluded that there is over 90% probability that this global warming is primarily caused by human activities"; Al asked me "Could you agree to that? How many % would you say?"

I initially said my answers were 'No' and 'I don't know'. However, on the latter, I would now suggest that the answer is 'less than 30%' (because of this and associated research).

Of course, I'm not a climate scientist so my opinion isn't worth much. What I would say, however, is that - as an interested layman - the quality of the science related to climate change seems much less robust than the science related to the problem of Peak Oil.

With oil, for example, the core science related to the development of an oil-field is extremely well understood and has proven robust in oil-fields in various unrelated countries worldwide over many decades. It is, after all, the science that the oil companies use when considering what flow of resource might be generated from particular prospects. Moreover, the phenomenon of 'peaking' has proven universal at the individual well, wider field, regional and continental scales (the only one not yet proven is precisely the world-wide scale - hence the problem). There is no need to rely on 'models' in exploring the question of Peak Oil - historical data and common sense are sufficient.

None of this applies to the issue of climate change. Not only is there a large amount of guesstimating judgement necessary (= 'computer models' and the GIGO principle) but the observable data themselves don't match up (eg the decline in temperatures over the last decade, vis-a-vis the increased output of carbon). Obviously the situation is 'very complex' - the atmosphere is a complex system - but that is precisely my point. The science is not yet hard enough to be robust, and therefore a dependable basis for public policy.

In addition to this, real world concerns render - to my mind - the climate change debate academic. Firstly, the IPCC reports hugely overestimate the amount of fossil fuels available; secondly, they ignore the negative feedback cycle that will kick in in terms of recession/depression. In other words, most of what the politicians and activists seek in terms of a rapid and drastic reduction in carbon emissions will be achieved no matter what, as a result of the peaking of fossil fuel production.

So in most cases (eg investment in windmills, changing lifestyles to pursue green transport options etc) the desirable way forward is the same for coping with Peak Oil as with climate change. The differences come at the margin, eg the costs of carbon capture (clean coal) which seems a bit pointless to me. Lomborg is very good on this - more lives will be saved by investing in clean water than scrubbing power station emissions. So, basically, I'm an agnostic-shading-to-sceptic on climate change, and I see it as a distraction from more urgent problems.

Does that answer your questions Al?

TBTM20090630

2009-06-30T10:59:00.002+01:00

This is my version of 'No Line on the Horizon'.

"Drugs policy in most nations is a matter of religion, not science."

TBTM20090629

2009-06-29T08:54:00.003+01:00

Free MIT courses (this one is on brain science, but there's lots of others. Definitely the future of education; or, should I say, this form of education definitely has a healthy future. I'm not sure tutorials can ever be fully replicated on-line.)

TBTM20090627

2009-06-27T16:06:00.002+01:00

An interesting (yes!) motorway map of the UK.

News options

2009-06-26T12:06:00.002+01:00

One day we will be able to set our TV/Internet/Radio/etc news sources to 'exclude anything about Michael Jackson' (for example) in order to find out what else has been happening today.

We might also be able to set it to 'exclude any tragedies involving children which don't have wider implications', as I tend to get distressed when I read those.

What would you exclude?

TBTM20090626

2009-06-26T09:00:00.001+01:00

Good morning. The title of this talk is a bit of a mouthful, but what I want to say can be summed up in simpler words: we all have to prepare for life without much money, where imported goods are scarce, and where people have to provide for their own needs, and those of their immediate neighbours. I will take as my point of departure the unfolding collapse of the global economy, and discuss what might come next. It started with the collapse of the financial markets last year, and is now resulting in unprecedented decreases in the volumes of international trade. These developments are also starting to affect the political stability of various countries around the world. A few governments have already collapsed, others may be on their way, and before too long we may find our maps redrawn in dramatic ways....

TBTM20090625

2009-06-25T14:19:00.002+01:00

Baptism Preparation: What to Do?
Also this.

The Hangover

2009-06-24T19:47:00.001+01:00

Hilarious, and neither cynical nor misanthropic. Recommended. 4/5

TBTE20090624

2009-06-24T19:44:00.001+01:00

The 29 healthiest foods on the planet.

TBTM20090624

2009-06-24T19:40:00.002+01:00

Here's a truism: people that have had a life-changing experience with God want others to find God in a life-changing way. This is surely true. It is also true that most people that sat in church pews last year never invited one single person to their church. So what is the disconnection?

TBTM20090622

2009-06-22T11:43:00.001+01:00

24 Dark and Light photos. Probably photoshopped but they look good.

TBTM20090621

2009-06-21T15:32:00.003+01:00

Are we not men?

Juno

2009-06-21T12:23:00.001+01:00

Watched this prior to going on retreat: warm, sweet, real and held together by a great central performance. 4/5

The Long Descent (John Michael Greer)

2009-06-21T10:17:00.003+01:00

I bought this as soon as it was published, as I am a fan of Greer's blog, but I hadn't had the space to read it with any justice until last week. Summary impression: excellent, highly recommended, one of the best peak oil books, etc etc; it's also one of the few books I've read on Peak Oil which starts to treat some of the spiritual aspects with any seriousness (indeed the book I hope to finish on my sabbatical is in some ways a Christian equivalent of this), and, other than a forgiveable equation of Christianity with it's North American instantiation, he says a lot of good things on the spiritual side.

However, I do have some minor disagreements, the most important of which is that Greer holds out no hope for a high-technology future. To my mind, given the existing expenditure on infrastructure, there is no necessary reason why (in, obviously, a much reduced form) some sort of internet, for example, couldn't be maintained indefinitely. I take the point that, eg, clean rooms for the manufacturing of chips will become virtually impossible to sustain, but I see no reason why, once the changed context is understood, the industry couldn't make a laptop which would last for fifty or a hundred years without needing any maintenance. In other words, I think the sustainable point on the far side of Hubbert's curve is higher up the technological scale than Greer anticipates. I suspect that there is a spiritual judgement hovering behind this; I think we'd agree that the true outcome would surprise us both.

How about this for the outline of a novel, a sort of cross between Canticle for Liebowitz and The Road (and could easily be Joseph-Campbellised): peasant boy with talent is commissioned by monastery for a task - take this book to the monks at [High Monastery in the Mountain]; boy goes through various adventures to get to High Monastery; arrives, is asked to accompany the monk into their 'chapel' - has to put on pure white robes - astonishingly bright white light - watches as his 'book' is repaired. Of course, the contemporary reader can understand that this is a laptop being repaired in the sole remaining 'clean room' in the entire US continent, but that needn't be spelt out explicitly.