We have been slacking and really need to push hard this week. Big write-up about her in a local NC newspaper.
Go vote.
Early Morning Open Thread
Good news for John McCain angry activists! The Boston Globe says that psychologists Tim Kasser and Malte Klar find “activism”, however futile, makes people feel better about themselves!
Psychologists curious about what fuels human happiness have looked at political engagement and political activism, and they’ve found that it provides people with a sense of empowerment, of community, of freedom, and of transcendence. Political activists, in other words, are all happy warriors…
Kasser and Klar ran a study in which they sought to get subjects to think like activists, then measured how it affected their short-term happiness. They gave their subjects, again college students, a survey about the food in the dining hall. Some were given questions that primed them to think about what Kasser and Klar call the “ethical-political aspects” of the food: For example, they read a statement asserting that the cafeteria should offer fair trade products, then were asked to rate the importance of two different rationales offered for that decision. Another group was given suggestions that focused on apolitical aspects like the variety and the taste of the food. Both groups were then asked to write a note to the cafeteria director about the aspect of the food that was most important to them.
The students were then tested on a variety of psychological well-being scales. And while there were not appreciable differences on most of the scales, on one, “vitality” – a measure of both well-being and motivation – the students primed to think like activists did indeed outperform those who were primed simply to think about food quality.
“What we found,” says Kasser, “was that the activist felt significantly more vital and alive and energized than did the nonactivist group.”
Complaining about cafeteria food is probably the perfect example of Sisyphean futility, after all. Being dreadful is the whole point to cafeteria food (“Cheap, fast, good: pick any two”), so if complaining about its political incorrectness is more satisfying than complaining about its tastelessness, might as well go with the whine that gives you a warm glow!
True happiness, Thomas Jefferson insisted, is private, not political, something found “in the lap and love of my family, in the society of my neighbours and my books, in the wholesome occupation of my farms and my affairs.” Of course, Jefferson himself, despite his family and farms and books and myriad private interests, was drawn time and time again back to public life and to politics, in a way that suggested a deeply personal yearning…
Hope you’re feeling better soon, John Cole.
Monday Night Open Thread
There have been better days. And I’ve really been slacking on the pet pics:
Don’t forget to vote for Bitsy (link on the ad to the right).
America’s next great pundit
I’ve got a bit of start on entering Washington Post’s “Next Great Pundit” competition. I decided to write as a crazed Liebercrat who is anti-Obama but is obsessed with the idea of appeasement. I need a lot of help. Ideally, the thing sound good with lots of little catchy sound bites, but make as little actual sense as possible. Also, is anyone willing to send it under their name? I have a friend here who will do it, but I’m not sure his profile is what they are looking for. Here’s what I have so far for my essay — it is *very* rough and only maybe a quarter finished. A lot you should be much better at this than I am, so please pitch in if you’re so inclined with suggestions, rewrites, etc.
———
Slouching Towards Munich
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate
intensity” Yeats wrote a few years after the close of what was then
called the Great War. The war we are now engaged in has yet to be
given a name and is more Hobbesian all-against-all than Yeatsian
good-against-evil, but otherwise circumstances are much the same.
Obama is among the best, of that there is no doubt. He is reason
incarnate, silver-tongued, and unquestionably well-meaning. But there
is a lack of conviction. Abroad our enemies and ostensible
allies pay us little heed. North Korea and Iran are building nuclear
arsenals. Russia thumbs its nose at our proclamations about freedom
and free markets. At home extremists on both sides — birthers and
truthers, tea partiers and foul-mouthed bloggers, Keith Olbermann and
Glenn Beck — dominate the discourse as never before. In Congress,
unions and insurance companies control the fate of health care
legislation, while the administraion is silent and the fiscally
prudent are silenced.
Appeasement goes by many names and by any, it tastes as bitter…
More interested in apprehending Roman Polanski than Osama Bin Laden….
Open Thread
I’m not even going to comment on what I want to comment on because I don’t want the flame war that will follow.
Oh, what the hell… I don’t know if I would use the term fringe, but I will say that people who freak out because the HRC speech was not up on the WH website fast enough are the photo negative of wingnuts screaming for Obama’s birth certificate. At any rate, here comes a couple more days of the circular firing squad as the internet gay activists and the HRC have their little proxy war at the expense of you, me, and the administration.
I’m going back to bed. Felt better yesterday, feel worse today. Heading to the doctor tomorrow morning.
Also, vote Bitsy.
Late Night OT (Steve Gilliard Memorial Ed.)
Fuck the Fucking Yankees.
That is all.
Late Night OT (Steve Gilliard Memorial Ed.)Post + Comments (157)
Have a little respect
What really bothers me about the Hiatt/Sully Nobel for Neda campaign, beyond the fact that Nobel prizes cannot be awarded posthumously, is that it seems disrespectful of Neda’s humanity. This courageous young Iranian woman was a human being, who can no longer speak for herself. Sully and Hiatt don’t know anything about Neda, and they certainly don’t know exactly what she would say, what she would she advocate for, if she were still alive. To use her dead body as a symbol for their own political beliefs is deeply wrong.
I’ve always had the same problem with Christianity. You would like to think that if you spent your life preaching a message of peace and tolerance and were eventually executed for doing so, that people wouldn’t spend the next 2000 years waging wars and torturing people in your name.
I understand the impulse to use the dead bodies of people who died for their beliefs as tools to advance your own agenda. But it’s a temptation that should be resisted, out of respect. It’s one thing to be inspired, it’s quite another to put words in the mouths of the dead.