I was watching the February 4 episode of the Colbert Report this morning.
In his "A Formidable Opponent" segment, Stephen argues with himself about whether to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a jury trial in New York.
I actually don't know much about the trial or what exactly the deal is, but before the episode of the Colbert Report I was of the opinion that he should be tried before a jury because that's what was supposed to happen and the only reason he may not be is because people are so angry and frightened that they wanted to punish him in the worst way possible and make sure he didn't escape or bring any additional security threats to New York by having the trial there. I figured that wasn't enough of a reason to continue to abandon our principles as well as flaunt the law just because we were afraid of a terrorist.
After watching the show, I realised that it is possible some people don't want Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to be given a jury trial in New York because there is a possibility that he will be determined innocent, and to them that is an unacceptable alternative. I have to admit, based on what I know, I find it to be a frightening outcome as well. As Stephen pointed out in his segment, insisting that it is okay to give Khalid Sheikh Mohammed a jury trial because we need to uphold our principles of justice--everyone is innocent until proven guilty--but then insisting that the outcome must be guilty is a false definition of justice.
At first when Stephen articulated the broken logic behind the view that we must give a jury trial even when the defendant has been already decided as guilty before the trial starts, I began thinking of what the other alternatives are for him, wondering what the legal options are, and wondering what would be the most fair for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Stephen made several points that could be used to determine his innocence, such as confession after torture being inadmissible. But then Stephen unbuttoned his jacket to reveal some suspenders and adopted a southern accent and the mannerisms of Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird, insisting that it is dishonorable to hang a man before he has been tried and asking the jurors to do their duty.
Stephen's defense convinced himself that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is innocent. But I'm not so sure. The allusion to To Kill a Mockingbird made me think. In that book, the jury convicted a wrongfully accused man anyway, just because he was black. I guess there's probably little chance that an American jury would acquit a man as demonized as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. And even if he really did mastermind September 11, that's still a discouraging thought.
Update!
The lovely and talented rob mason has let me know about this interview Jon Stewart did with Bill O'reilly.
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
06 February 2010
30 September 2009
Consensus
I've been reading through a couple of books that discuss the politics of religion and the environment to try to gain some perspective on the topic I'm writing about. (I decided to go with the Christianity and sustainability topic, mostly because I had done the most work on it so far and I didn't want all that time to go to waste, but so far I'm finding it pretty interesting).
God and Country looks at the religious history of America, pointing out the constant struggle between our Puritan and Enlightenment histories that characterizes our national debates. Its tone is objective and conservative, and by conservative I mean that it is reserved about casting blame and cautious about suggestions for change--acknowledging that both "sides" of America must reach consensus. I found myself drawn in to the ideas presented, and thought its perspective on America's religious history insightful and illuminating.
The Last Refuge takes a more aggressive approach against all right-wing politics. The introduction launches into a series of accusations about the Bush administration. Further investigation reveals some of the accusations to be based on sources such as "Two Years Before 9/11, Candidate Bush Was Already Talking Privately About Attacking Iraq, According to His Former Ghost Writer." I don't recall hearing about this, but I don't pretend to remember everything that happened when I was 13. However, I do recognise that a lone former ghost writer is not really a credible source. People make up accusations about famous people frequently, as I understand it. However, I do recall in the fall of 2004 feeling that there was nothing I wouldn't believe about Bush. I was so angry that he had somehow won another election, I may have bought into the radical accusations of the type The Last Refuge is flinging. Now, though, I have some perspective, and a president who is oodles better than Bush, no matter what his faults (ahem, gay marriage?), so I'm more willing to be reasonable. And I find this book to be too extreme to be believed. Even though I'm sure the book echos many of my own beliefs, I don't feel the solidarity with its positions as I did with God and Country.
The introduction of The Last Refuge claims that Americans have a fault of following a leader blindly. It claims not enough Americans understand that "automatic obedience to power is merely subservience" (page 11). In the conclusion of God and Country the author assumes that "most Americans--Puritans and Modernists alike--are willing to abide by laws they disapprove of, if they are confident that those laws were passed by fairly elected legislators who listened to all sides of the argument and voted on the basis of their best judgment" (page 231). I don't really think that's the case. Now that Obama is in office, the people who were supposedly blindly obeying the authority du jour are raging against everything that is happening under Obama's administration. Likewise, I think that a lot of Americans want laws that reflect their own personal beliefs, even when those laws obviously exclude the rights of a group of people with opposing beliefs, and that Americans are more than happy to break laws they find inconvenient--especially laws that aren't regularly enforced like speeding. I think that Americans simply choose a side or an authority figure that they can mostly trust and then relax and let that specific authority figure (be it a president, a media agency, or merely a civilian exemplar) do the moralizing for them.
The media, as is pointed out in both books, has become partisan. An American can choose a radio station that agrees with her point of view and make it one of the presets on the car radio and never hear any views or opinions that oppose her own. But I don't think that is entirely the fault of the media itself selling out. Americans want to be able to position themselves on the political spectrum early in life and then choose the channels they want to watch for the rest of their lives and let other people do the thinking for them. It's much more pleasant not to be on the defensive all the time. I know, because I mostly just listen to NPR, and when I do venture over to foxnews.com, I feel a headache coming on. And it is this artificial partisanship that is really causing schisms in our communities and delaying action at the federal level on important issues.
Consensus building is necessary to create action. But how can we build consensus when we don't even know how "the other side" defines its terms and its goals? I think that most Americans probably agree that it is important for us to live within our means economically and environmentally. Obviously, most people do not want to fell every last tree on earth to build bigger houses, extract every last iron deposit in the ground to create better technology. If sustainability means living within the means of the next generation, then I think the majority agrees that sustainability is a good thing. Most people understand the need to budget. If buying CFLs saves money and electricity, then who could argue that CFLs are a good thing? The problem is, people do argue just that. And I think the reason they argue that is because they are so steeped in the rhetoric of their own chosen place on the political spectrum that they can't understand that we all want essentially the same things.
God and Country looks at the religious history of America, pointing out the constant struggle between our Puritan and Enlightenment histories that characterizes our national debates. Its tone is objective and conservative, and by conservative I mean that it is reserved about casting blame and cautious about suggestions for change--acknowledging that both "sides" of America must reach consensus. I found myself drawn in to the ideas presented, and thought its perspective on America's religious history insightful and illuminating.
The Last Refuge takes a more aggressive approach against all right-wing politics. The introduction launches into a series of accusations about the Bush administration. Further investigation reveals some of the accusations to be based on sources such as "Two Years Before 9/11, Candidate Bush Was Already Talking Privately About Attacking Iraq, According to His Former Ghost Writer." I don't recall hearing about this, but I don't pretend to remember everything that happened when I was 13. However, I do recognise that a lone former ghost writer is not really a credible source. People make up accusations about famous people frequently, as I understand it. However, I do recall in the fall of 2004 feeling that there was nothing I wouldn't believe about Bush. I was so angry that he had somehow won another election, I may have bought into the radical accusations of the type The Last Refuge is flinging. Now, though, I have some perspective, and a president who is oodles better than Bush, no matter what his faults (ahem, gay marriage?), so I'm more willing to be reasonable. And I find this book to be too extreme to be believed. Even though I'm sure the book echos many of my own beliefs, I don't feel the solidarity with its positions as I did with God and Country.
The introduction of The Last Refuge claims that Americans have a fault of following a leader blindly. It claims not enough Americans understand that "automatic obedience to power is merely subservience" (page 11). In the conclusion of God and Country the author assumes that "most Americans--Puritans and Modernists alike--are willing to abide by laws they disapprove of, if they are confident that those laws were passed by fairly elected legislators who listened to all sides of the argument and voted on the basis of their best judgment" (page 231). I don't really think that's the case. Now that Obama is in office, the people who were supposedly blindly obeying the authority du jour are raging against everything that is happening under Obama's administration. Likewise, I think that a lot of Americans want laws that reflect their own personal beliefs, even when those laws obviously exclude the rights of a group of people with opposing beliefs, and that Americans are more than happy to break laws they find inconvenient--especially laws that aren't regularly enforced like speeding. I think that Americans simply choose a side or an authority figure that they can mostly trust and then relax and let that specific authority figure (be it a president, a media agency, or merely a civilian exemplar) do the moralizing for them.
The media, as is pointed out in both books, has become partisan. An American can choose a radio station that agrees with her point of view and make it one of the presets on the car radio and never hear any views or opinions that oppose her own. But I don't think that is entirely the fault of the media itself selling out. Americans want to be able to position themselves on the political spectrum early in life and then choose the channels they want to watch for the rest of their lives and let other people do the thinking for them. It's much more pleasant not to be on the defensive all the time. I know, because I mostly just listen to NPR, and when I do venture over to foxnews.com, I feel a headache coming on. And it is this artificial partisanship that is really causing schisms in our communities and delaying action at the federal level on important issues.
Consensus building is necessary to create action. But how can we build consensus when we don't even know how "the other side" defines its terms and its goals? I think that most Americans probably agree that it is important for us to live within our means economically and environmentally. Obviously, most people do not want to fell every last tree on earth to build bigger houses, extract every last iron deposit in the ground to create better technology. If sustainability means living within the means of the next generation, then I think the majority agrees that sustainability is a good thing. Most people understand the need to budget. If buying CFLs saves money and electricity, then who could argue that CFLs are a good thing? The problem is, people do argue just that. And I think the reason they argue that is because they are so steeped in the rhetoric of their own chosen place on the political spectrum that they can't understand that we all want essentially the same things.
24 April 2009
Barrier
Today at work a little boy wandered into the home electronics department. He couldn't have been older than 3 and a half years old, probably closer to 3. My co-worker and I looked down at him and smiled. He stopped in front of us. "What do you need? Do you need to buy that?" my co-worker asked. He looked a little uncertain. Then I heard a voice speaking Spanish coming from the other side of the aisle, just outside the department. The little boy looked bemusedly from us to the speaker, who I assume was his father. Then I realized what was happening. The little boy was being sent into the department to buy the DVD he was holding or ask a question for his father, who was standing 10 feet away using the aisle as a barrier between himself and my co-worker and me.
This awkward moment sort of symbolized the struggle of the family, of our culture, and of our country as a whole to co-exist with others whom we don't understand. This little boy was so young he can barely speak either English OR Spanish, yet was forced to be a go-between for grown adults because neither side of the aisle had been given or taken the opportunity to learn the language of the other side. This lack of ability to communicate, and the innocent caught in the middle, and most interestingly the barrier that separated us, this obstacle, this bulwark, evoked an image of partisan politics that wrenches our country apart and leaves us standing confused and unable to function. Somehow we've become a nation with so much mistrust and shame that we've become the father, the son, the employee, and the store itself, unable to ask for help, unsure what help to ask for, and unable to give help even if we did know what was needed, and everybody spending valuable time and money trying to figure it out.
This awkward moment sort of symbolized the struggle of the family, of our culture, and of our country as a whole to co-exist with others whom we don't understand. This little boy was so young he can barely speak either English OR Spanish, yet was forced to be a go-between for grown adults because neither side of the aisle had been given or taken the opportunity to learn the language of the other side. This lack of ability to communicate, and the innocent caught in the middle, and most interestingly the barrier that separated us, this obstacle, this bulwark, evoked an image of partisan politics that wrenches our country apart and leaves us standing confused and unable to function. Somehow we've become a nation with so much mistrust and shame that we've become the father, the son, the employee, and the store itself, unable to ask for help, unsure what help to ask for, and unable to give help even if we did know what was needed, and everybody spending valuable time and money trying to figure it out.
16 October 2008
Lies
James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me is undeniably a thought provoking book. But I find that it can be long-winded, meandering, and worse: while it proclaims to despair the lack of critical thinking of America's students and teachers, it engages in an alarmingly small amount of critical exposition itself. It is vague about details and almost never cites its sources. If I wanted to learn anything more about a particular study that he cites, I'll have to look it up on my own, as he provides no bibliography. He does provide bibliographical information in his extensive notes section, but I think his erratic use of endnotes is not appropriate, especially in his case. For someone who wants to change the way history books are written, you'd think he could demonstrate some of the techniques he himself laments that history books don't use! Try footnotes as well as endnotes, and a bibliography that links to every statistic that he used. Also, just elaborating on who his experts are, the context of their words, would help.
But not only do I wish he had spent more time bracing his text, I also wish that he would have spent a little less time inserting himself into the book. His side notes, which I can only assume he means to be amusing, seem interfering and unscholarly. While disparaging a quote from Alabama law, instead of discussing the choice of diction, he inserts his own interpretation without so much as a footnote for explanation: "Alabama law used to require that schools avoid 'textbooks containing anything partisan, prejudicial, or inimical to the interest of the [white] people of the State'," (page 280, Touchstone 1996 version, brackets Loewen's). You see what I did there? I gave you the context and where to find it if you want to know more, and I left my personal take on it out of the original quote so as not to contaminate a historian's most important evidence: the primary source.
But not only do I wish he had spent more time bracing his text, I also wish that he would have spent a little less time inserting himself into the book. His side notes, which I can only assume he means to be amusing, seem interfering and unscholarly. While disparaging a quote from Alabama law, instead of discussing the choice of diction, he inserts his own interpretation without so much as a footnote for explanation: "Alabama law used to require that schools avoid 'textbooks containing anything partisan, prejudicial, or inimical to the interest of the [white] people of the State'," (page 280, Touchstone 1996 version, brackets Loewen's). You see what I did there? I gave you the context and where to find it if you want to know more, and I left my personal take on it out of the original quote so as not to contaminate a historian's most important evidence: the primary source.
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