Month: June 2004

I had a writing assignment for my Anthropology class. Find an article published in The American Anthropologist magazine, write a summary followed by commentary. The subject was up to the student.

So I went to the college library and started to go through the volumes of back issues. What I found appalled and frightened me.

There were numerous articles written after 9/11 that dealt with violence. Not surprising for work by academics for academics, the focus was on trying to discover Why They Hate Us. The main unifying theme found through all of these works was that violence was an aberration. The ground state of humanity (the authors insisted) was peace, cooperation, good fellowship and concern for others.

This is where I became appalled. History teaches us in no uncertain terms that violence is the natural state of human beings. We’re the killer apes, the master predators, the most successful land-dwelling beings on the planet considering the environments we inhabit. There’s no place on Earth that’s free from conflict, no society that doesn’t spawn its own crop of violent criminals.

The reason why I was frightened was the way that the academic community prepared for violent encounters. They ignore it!

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We are often told by our friends on the left that the poorer among Republican supporters are voting against their own interests, and that conservative politicians induce them to do so by appeals to their racism or to their unreasonable attachment to their weapons.

I won’t comment here on their alleged racism or the wisdom (or lack thereof) of gun control. But I will declare them not guilty of voting against their own economic interests and Republicans, by implication, not guilty of “tricking” them into it.

How can that be, you say? Lots of areas where conservative economic policy holds sway, the people tend to be poorer than average. Surely, you say, I should admit that the idea that lower taxes and less regulation leads to more wealth for anyone but the elites has been soundly refuted by the evidence?

Not so fast. While it is true that the average income of such areas is unusually low, that doesn’t mean that conservative economic policies have made those particular people poor. The question we should ask ourselves is not “why are those people poorer on average?” but “why do so many poor people tend to live where relatively non-leftist economic policy holds sway?”.

I submit to you that the answer is simple: Because they can.

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Amazing photo gallery by Luke Powell. National Geographic quality.

Paging through the photos from the 1970’s is surreal. It’s a journey back into the depths of time.

In one of my email accounts I am receiving numerous spam messages touting penis-enlargement products. In another account I am deluged with offers for cheap software. I need to get these people together so they can start marketing cheap penis-enlargement software.

The recent stories about Bush and Kerry falling off their bicycles were more revealing than they initially appeared to be. Jim Miller picked up on this point, noting that Bush was the better sport for not making fun of Kerry after the latter’s mishap a few weeks ago. The fact that Kerry didn’t return the favor when Bush took a spill more recently, shows at the least a lack of class on Kerry’s part. (Chicago mayor Richard Daley has BTDT and said what Bush was either too nice or too politically cautious to say.)

The stories were revealing in another way too, which Bill Hobbs caught. Kerry got into a car after he fell, Bush got back on the bike. You shouldn’t read too much into it, but public perceptions matter in politics, and Kerry, his fancy bike quickly abandoned, ended up looking like a phoney. He may have had good reason not to get back on the bike. However, his spokesmen were in a bind, because if they told the truth — i.e., Kerry was acting reasonably for a 60-year old guy, even a fit one, who had taken a spill — they might diminish the he-man image he works hard to maintain. So they brushed the incident off. It wasn’t Dukakis in the tank, but Kerry might have gotten more political mileage in this case by getting in some additional bike mileage.

Bush’s behavior here reinforces my impression, gained since Sept. 11, that he deals well with pressure and setbacks. Would Kerry do as well? I don’t know and I don’t want to have to find out.

UPDATE: Lex raises questions in the comments about Kerry’s supposed wussiness and about the cost of his bikes. I don’t know that Kerry is a wuss; he is reputed to be physically courageous. I suspect that he was on the bike in large part because he wanted to be seen being on a bike, to reinforce his green/macho/athletic image. When the going got tough he got in the car. Bush, by contrast, was riding on a trail, out of public view. He was 16 miles into a 17-mile ride (equivalent in exertion to a much longer ride on the road), and after he fell he got back on the bike and finished the ride. That’s the kind of behavior you would expect from a serious person who has limited time and a commitment to staying in shape. Maybe Kerry has done some long rides, but he comes across as a showboater by comparison.

As for the bikes, according to news articles Kerry has multiple bikes including one that cost $8 grand. There’s nothing suspect about having expensive bikes, especially if you’re tall like Kerry and can benefit from having them custom made, but $8k is pricey by any standard. I think it’s like the SUV thing: he comes across as either a poseur or someone who has grown accustomed to having other people pay for his stuff. Neither trait is desirable in a seeker of high public office.