The Happy Dance

Maybe I shouldn’t be doing the happy dance.

Will the United States curtail its trade in death and destruction around the world? There’s no guarantee of that. The track record of the Democrats is hardly better than that of the Republicans. For examples from recent history, we only have to look at Clinton’s terrorist actions against Sudan and Yugoslavia (the latter case including actions in which my country took part, I’m ashamed to say).

And the Democrats, no less than the Republicans, are ultimately propped up by corporate interests, so progressive economic reforms will consist of baby steps at best, with even those baby steps being far from guaranteed. Don’t expect anything resembling universal health care in the US in the next four years.

So why is last night’s electoral result something to be happy about? Not because of any great probability of significantly better policies coming from Washington. I’m not that optimistic. Rather, the result is something to be happy about because of what it says about the people of the United States.

It’s like this. The Dems, for all their faults, at least tend to say the right things. Sometimes. The Republicans, by contrast, tend more toward open, blatant evil.

As an (admittedly imperfect) analogy, compare two men whom I’ll call Dennis and Roger. Dennis appears to be a nice guy. He says all the right things in public. People like him. But he’s a rotten hypocrite: He regularly beats his wife. He keeps it a secret, though. So we can forgive his friends for being his friends. Roger, on the other hand, is not a hypocrite at all. Instead, he’s a bit of a psychopath. He beats his wife openly, and thinks there’s nothing wrong with it. Nor do his friends see a problem.

Who is worse? They’re both awful. But whose friends are worse? That’s the question. Dennis’s friends can be forgiven easily, on the grounds of ignorance. But what about Roger’s friends? What’s their excuse?

You may focus on the parties or the leaders, if you like. For the moment, I’m just focusing on the voters – on Dennis’s friends and Roger’s friends, as it were.

And last night shows that Americans can be good folks after all. Something resembling moral sanity has prevailed in their country. A clear majority turned against the Party for Perpetual War.

And that’s why I’m doing the happy dance.

on Georgia, self-determination, and hypocrisy

There is no easy way to decide whether the secession of South Ossetia from Georgia should be recognized or not, in principle. The question appears to hinge on whether we prefer to view the status quo ante automatically as a good thing, which we can hardly do consistently, or whether we favour the unfortunately incoherent idea of “self-determination”, which we absolutely cannot do consistently.

(Suppose a minority of the people of country A live in the region B. Suppose, further, that a majority of people in B wish to secede, while the rest of the people in that region wish to stay with A. How can we simultaneously grant the right of self-determination to the majority and the minority? If the majority of the people of B should rule the fate of that region, then how can we justify the dismemberment of A based on the wishes of a minority? If A should be dismembered, why not B also? And how exactly should the borders of breakaway fragments be drawn? Inevitably, the idea of “self-determination” crumbles under its own weight.)

A war in the early 1990s led to an awkward compromise, in which (most of) South Ossetia became a de facto independent state, but no one (then) recognized it, apart from two other small breakaway states with similar status. Peacekeeping forces, comprised of Ossetians, Georgians, and Russians, were assigned to South Ossetia by the CIS.

Not an ideal solution, of course. We like our maps to depict the world’s land as divided neatly among a bunch of well-defined countries. Sorry, but the real world does not always work that way.

In practice, less-than-ideal solutions are often the least bad of a bunch of bad options. Usually, anything involving further warfare is worse. So it is hard to approve of the Georgian decision to launch a military campaign in South Ossetia this summer.

Moreover, there were Russian citizens among those fired on by Georgian troops. How could Russia not respond to that? So what is the basis for the condemnation of Russia that is so widespread in the West? Is it simply the use of military force without the approval of the United States?

It may be that the Russians have overreacted. But the West has no moral high ground from which to denounce them. The Russian treatment of Georgia this year has been far less brutal than NATO’s pummeling of Serbia in 1999, to name just one example.

The rhetoric from the Bush Administration (of all people!), scolding Russia for invading a sovereign country, and asserting that Russia’s standing in the international community has been damaged, is nothing less than hilarious. Western governments are protesting Russia’s new recognition of South Ossetia’s independence, citing Georgia’s “territorial integrity” as something that must be respected – but these are the same governments that have rushed to recognize an independent Kosovo!

Hypocrisy abounds.

but who is the fastest American in the world?

Usain Bolt of Jamaica has just won the 100m race at the Olympics. In the process, he smashed a world record -- his own record, if I recall correctly. So, according to tradition, he can now claim the title of "fastest man in the world".

But I can't help wondering: When anyone in the USA refers henceforth to the "fastest man in the world", to whom will they be referring?

Think back to the 1996 Olympics for a moment. Donovan Bailey of Canada set the world record when he won the 100m event. But the 200m winner, who happened to be from the US, was introduced as the "fastest man in the world" whenever he was interviewed on US television.

If at least one men's track event is won by someone on the US team, then the precedent is clear: One of those men, not Bolt, will be the "fastest man in the world" according to our friends in the US. And if not? It's anyone's guess.

facing Islam, responsibly

In a civilised world, we would all understand the difference between attacking people and attacking ideas. Attacking ideas -- any ideas -- should absolutely never be restricted by legislation, by treaty, or by cultural taboo.

But horribly, tragically, the Islamist efforts to impose their anti-blasphemy laws on the entire world have made a great deal of progress.

Here in Canada, we have increasingly ridiculous "Human Rights Commissions" that are more and more often working against human rights, kowtowing to the radical Islamist agenda of forcing the rest of us to pretend to "respect" their religion. And what of the rest of the world? Even the UN General Assembly has agreed that "defamation of religion" should be condemned!

Johann Hari spells out the issue better than I can.

compulsive wrestling with mathematical monstrosities

For your amusement, here is a little glimpse into a horribly undisciplined mind.

From time to time, my brain gets tackled by some monstrous mathematical idea that dominates all my thinking for hours, days, weeks, even longer.

Early in 2005, I was innocently walking one evening (pushing my son in his stroller, trying to lull him to sleep), and thinking about something thoroughly un-mathematical, when ... suddenly, I found myself suddenly convinced that I had a counterexample to Poincaré's Conjecture. I didn't ask for this to happen. I didn't intend to ponder topology for the next two weeks. It just happened.

(Like most of the world, I was not aware at the time of Grigori Perelman's proof of the conjecture, since reviewers were still busy checking it.)

The (alleged) counterexample was "obvious". Only the fact that better minds than mine had failed to prove or disprove the conjecture for 100 years or so made me mull it over, again and again, to find out what was wrong with my idea. I figured it out eventually. (The beast in question failed, in a rather subtle (to me) way, to qualify as a manifold in the first place.)

And you wonder why I never accomplish anything...

of mountains, molehills, and misplaced "mea culpa"

Here’s a crazy story.

Summary: Webster Cook, a student at the University of Central Florida, violated Catholic church rules by failing to consume immediately his consecrated wafer. Church members tried to use physical force to take the wafer back, and Cook responded by running away – with the wafer in hand. There were complaints that he was holding the Body of Christ as a hostage.

Some people (such as Bill Donohue of the Catholic League) want Cook expelled from the university. His actions are worse than “hate speech”, according to Donohue. (As far as I know, the witch-hunt is continuing, even though Cook later returned the wafer.)

Now, let’s all calm down and get things into perspective. There is no persecution of Catholics going on here, no inciting of hatred, and no interference with anyone else’s ability to perform properly their own parts of the ritual. All we have here is a ritual gone awry, and only as it pertained to Webster Cook. Aside from offending people’s sensibilities, Cook’s actions did no harm. There is no “theft” here: Even if he had not returned the wafer, the church would not have been deprived of anything that it would normally be expected to possess. (After all, the wafer was given to Cook with the expectation that he would eat it.) And there is no mess to clean up, and therefore no vandalism. There’s also no need to worry about any harm suffered by God. (You’d think God could take care of himself.)

Notice that my arguments do not depend on contradicting Catholic theology. In fact, I agree with P Z Myers’s position (let’s not be silly here; it’s obviously just a cracker), but I have no need to base an argument on that.

I can understand a Catholic getting annoyed if another Catholic messes up their part in a ritual. But what’s the big deal if an outsider does it? If my brain is already full of blasphemous opinions (e.g., that your religion is silly), and I’m going to hell anyway (according to you), then how can it possibly matter if I get my hands on one of your consecrated wafers and do something naughty with it (like failing to eat it)?

That’s where things ought to end. I would like to be able to conclude thus: Catholics are no more affected by these events than they choose to be. There’s always the option to ignore Webster Cook, and forget that any of this happened. After all, you already knew that there are non-Catholics in this world, always saying and thinking things that any party-line Catholic would find offensive.

But it’s not that simple. I’ve left out the most disturbing part of the story.

(And no, I’m not talking about Myers’s response to the story, including his threat to deface a consecrated wafer, live on the web, if someone will send one to him. That’s a rather rude and unnecessary stunt, but it’s far less offensive than the Catholic League’s campaign to get him fired over it. Again, there’s always the option to ignore him.)

Go back to the original story (my first link above), written before the wafer was returned. Notice the words of the priest Miguel Gonzalez (emphasis added).

Gonzalez said intentionally abusing the Eucharist is classified as a mortal sin in the Catholic church, the most severe possible. If it's not returned, the community of faith will have to ask for forgiveness.

"We have to make acts of reparation," Gonzalez said. "The whole community is going to turn to prayer. We'll ask the Lord for pardon, forgiveness, peace, not only for the whole community affected by it, but also for [Cook], we offer prayers for him as well."

Holy smokes.

I can understand Catholics being annoyed at Webster Cook. But having the whole congregation wallow in guilt because of his actions? What on earth is that about?

It turns out that ordinary Catholics are victims in this story, after all. But not in the way that Bill Donohue suggests. They’re not victims of hate crimes; they’re victims of mind manipulation by their own clergy.

But I suppose that shouldn’t come as a surprise.

that missile shield in eastern Europe

I’m trying to find any reports that suggest that Iran is working on missiles capable of reaching central Europe. I haven’t found any. Yet the Bush Administration seems to think a missile shield, to protect Europe against Iranian missiles, is an urgent matter.

And they want to plant their anti-missile defences in Poland and the Czech Republic – the natural place for a shield against Iranian attack, right?

Wrong. Look at a map, for crying out loud.

If the US were really concerned about an Iranian threat against Europe – putting aside the flimsy basis for such a worry – then the natural place for anti-missile defences would be Turkey, not Poland. I’m sure the Turks would happily oblige.

So what is this missile shield really for?

There are very few countries in the world with any significant capacity to retaliate if they happen to be attacked by the US. Wouldn’t Bush et al love to change “very few countries” to “no countries”? (Of course he would. Who wouldn’t, in his position?) That’s the sort of thing that this missile shield, if it works at all, could accomplish.

So who are those “very few countries”? Hmmm. Russia comes to mind, for one.

I can’t blame the Russians for feeling threatened. The evidence is on their side. The assurances of the Bush Administration – “it’s not about you, it’s about Iran” – are worth diddly-squat.