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<title>LOL Civil Liberties - Garbled</title>
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<h1 class="entry-title">LOL Civil Liberties</h1>
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<time datetime="2012-08-31T00:00:00-05:00" pubdate data-updated="true">Aug 31<span>st</span>, 2012</time>
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<div class="entry-content"><p>The other day, <a href="https://twitter.com/Carols10cents">Carol Nichols</a>
<a href="https://twitter.com/Carols10cents/status/240539655211196416">linked to an interesting article</a>.
It is a transcript of a <a href="http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/08/john-cusack-jonathan-turley-on-obamas-constitution.html">conversation between John Cusack and Jonathan Turley about politics</a>.
We traded a few tweets and I said I'd get back to her, but… tweets are short
and shit is complicated and, here's a blog post. I don't generally talk a lot of
politics here, but, screw it. It's my blog.</p>
<p>So, before I read the piece, Carol was talking about deciding not to vote at
all for the Presidency and some stuff about not letting the good things a
person has done excuse the lines they've crossed. Hopefully I'm not
mischaracterizing her statements due to some misunderstanding on my part. In
any case, I'd said something in reply about choosing the lesser of two evils (I
don't by <strong>any</strong> means consider myself a Democrat, but the
Republican party is… <em>way</em> off the rails these days). Then Carol said
something I hadn't really considered: If both options have crossed a threshold
of minimum-allowable-bad, then choosing the least-bad rather than demanding
better enables increasing badness. So I said I'd read the article and get back
to her with my thoughts.</p>
<p>Having read <a href="http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/08/john-cusack-jonathan-turley-on-obamas-constitution.html">the thing</a>
(you did, too, right?), I have to say I see what Carol was saying
much more clearly. Surprise, surprise. The thing that stood out to me was that
I'd <em>heard</em> about Obama's whole authority-to-assassinate-US-citizens
thing when it came out. I heard about it and thought, "That doesn't sound
right." And… then forgot about it. Or, more accurately, I filed it under "Bad
Shit In The World That, Thank Eris, Doesn't Affect Me" and then got all riled
up about health care and tax breaks for the rich at the expense of the rest of
us, etc. How did that happen? How did I <em>let</em> that happen? Talking about
how the Whitehouse has sold us ideas is <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/111920-all-statements-are-true-in-some-sense-false-in-some">true in a sense, but also false in the sense</a>
that it can sound like we are actors without agency. They don't have some kind
of mind control over us. I have to accept that I wasn't really looking at the
world as clearly as I'd like or as I'd been telling myself I was.</p>
<p>Some stuff that's bad in the world and doesn't affect me, I can live with
ignoring (I think this is only pragmatic). But some stuff should go in the
other file: Not OK, Damnit. Things like Sexism, Racism, Child Abuse… and The
President of the United States deciding he has the authority to unilaterally
assassinate people (whether US citizens or not). Ugh. So, OK. I'm upset about
that now. And also upset that I wasn't appropriately upset about it when I
first learned of it. That feels like progress.</p>
<p>That issue when paired with the whole unprosecuted war crimes thing and the
implications that has for mediating international interactions and Nuremberg
precedents really drove Turley's question home to me: "Morally, are you
comfortable with saying, ‘I know the administration is concealing war crimes,
but they’re really good on healthcare?’"</p>
<p>And, you know what? That's a really depressing question to be in a position
to even be <em>asked</em>. War crimes are serious shit, you know? They're the
list of things that we've agreed we don't even wish on our enemies. It's the
list of things that super heroes won't stoop to because "if we do, we're not
better than them." They are <em>exactly</em> the stuff that we've decided the
doing of differentiates the Good Guys from the Bad Guys. So if I'm OK with the
POTUS doing them, or allowing them to be done or protecting those that did
them, then I'm comfortable being a Bad Guy. And fuck that.</p>
<p>So, I guess we've established that I feel like there's a problem and that
I'm not happy with either of the candidates put up by the US's major parties.
The next question is: What do I do about it? As part of this discussion, there
is the idea that voting makes you implicitly culpable and that if you refrain,
you can be said to be calling for better candidates. The culpability angle, I
agree with. But I'm also <em>really</em> wary of casting inaction as
activism.</p>
<p>I am not an activist by nature; I've never been to a rally or demonstration.
I've never occupied anything except various chairs and sofae mostly in front of
video screens. I am also, by nature, physically lazy. So anything that sounds
like something I'd do doesn't seem like it should count as activism. Like
changing your Facebook avatar to reflect some fad cause, or writing a ranty
blog post about politics (heh). So on that front, I find the "so don't vote"
thing kind of… dissatisfying.</p>
<p>Also, there's a sort of game theory issue, here. And this may be an
illustration of why we're all just screwed, rather than a justification for an
individual's actions. But this also bugs me: If I was planning on voting for
Obama (I was), and now I don't (undecided, still), then I am letting someone
else decide which candidate wins. If I do vote, then I'm at least increasing
the chance that the fate I've selected is the one I'll suffer. It feels very
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilema">Prisoner's Dilema</a>-ey to me.
That's not an excuse, but it seems to predict that getting a low enough number
of people to vote such that the parties notice there's a reason is
infinitesimal.</p>
<p>Of course, on the other hand, not voting is throwing away a resource in a
sort of a similar way as voting for a Democratic Presidential candidate in
Texas is, so my vote or non-vote is actually pretty unlikely to affect which
way my state's electoral votes go. If I lived somewhere swingey, it would
matter more. I guess the decision comes a little more easily, then.</p>
<p>Anyway, I'd love your (thoughtful, respectful) comments and reactions.
Especially, I'm interested in help expanding and deepening my thinking about
this stuff. I'm sure there's prior art on some of these ideas that I'm unaware
of.</p>
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<span class="byline author vcard">Posted by <span class="fn">Ben Hamill</span></span>
<time datetime="2012-08-31T00:00:00-05:00" pubdate data-updated="true">Aug 31<span>st</span>, 2012</time>
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<h1>About Me</h1>
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<p>Rubyist, hacker, gamer (video, board, role-playing), fanboy (Linux, git, vim, Firefly, Dr Pepper), language pedant. Nerd.</p>
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<a href="/2012/08/31/lol-civil-liberties/">LOL Civil Liberties</a>
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<a href="/2012/02/03/install-ruby-enterprise-edition-with-ruby-install-on-arch-linux/">Install Ruby Enterprise Edition With ruby-build On Arch Linux</a>
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<a href="/2012/01/19/changems/">Changems</a>
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<a href="/2012/01/04/the-parameter-object-pattern/">The Parameter Object Pattern</a>
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<a href="/2011/08/25/a-smarter-has_many-through/">A Smarter has_many :through?</a>
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