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It turns out that playing through a new 5w Marshall plus a mid-sixties Silvertone at the same time IS FUCKING AWESOME

That Princeton study from last year claiming that America is an oligarchy is extremely frustrating.Or, rather, the popular response to it is frustrating.

The various takeaways I’ve seen include:

• America is an oligarchy
• America is no longer a democracy
• Voting doesn’t matter because the rich get what they want anyway

It’s the last notion that is particularly frustrating. Here’s why:

Most political organizations are and have always been oligarchies. That is nothing new. At America’s founding, it was an oligarchy and there’s a bunch of stuff written into the constitution to secure it (mostly in the form of indirect democratic rules like the Electoral College).

The Princeton study reveals nothing new, except a different way of measuring how oligarchical America actually is.

What the study doesn’t say anything about is how America’s oligarchy quotient (so to speak) has changed over time. And, that’s the real story.

The data set it draws on, if I understand correctly, spans roughly twenty years from ~1980-2002. Drawing conclusions about the directional strength of oligarchy (whether or not America is becoming more or less oligarchical over time) based on its conclusions is dumb. (And, the study authors make no such directional claim.) There’s no reason to believe, based on its conclusions, that America is more oligarchical now than in the past.

Consider that the voting franchise as recently as 1923 excluded half of whom we now consider to be eligible voters: women of majority age.

Consider also that the franchise extended to African American men only in the late 19th century.

Consider further that at least a third of eligible voters don’t vote.

Consider even further that many people are persuaded to vote against their interests for various (stupid) reasons.

All of that means that we have a polity that is essentially brand new to voting. We are new at this democracy thing in a political system that was designed explicitly to buffer political power from the will of voters.

My takeaway from this study is not that America is an oligarchy, but that voting is extremely important. Everyone who can vote should–and should vote for their own interests, rather than ideologically. We’ve only been able to do it for a short while. It will take a time and discipline as voters to have an impact.

Keep the faith.

Here’s a write up of the study of you want to read it for yourself:

https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf

I was trying to write something about this that, boiled to its essence, claimed that at least the Zuckerberg-Chans weren’t as bad as, say, Jamie Dimon or Donald Trump, until I was confounded by my own logic

The truth is, no one, no matter their intentions, should have this much power.

That one or two people can make a decision to do great good or great ill is a threat. A threat to our society, our democracy, and, ultimately, to civilization.

http://says.com/my/news/what-no-one-is-telling-you-about-mark-zuckerberg-donating-99-of-his-fortune-to-charity

I’m going to dump all of these into a pile of movies/tv that I love for similar reasons and let those of you with more film education than me figure out why (honestly, if I knew, I wouldn’t ask):

• Patton
• Tora! Tora! Tora!
• The Streets of San Francisco
• The Ninth Gate
• Ronin
• 7 Samurai/Magnificent 7
• The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
• Yakuza
• Ran/Sanjuro/Yojimbo

Is it that they’re genre films? 60s-70’s?

There’s something about them that seems like they should be in the same book. Or film festival.

Everyone (who’s not a psychopath) knows that the story of Abraham and Isaac is deeply wrong. No non-psycho parent would attempt to kill their child. Nor should they be asked to because someone else–anyone else, for any reason–told them to.

Kierkegaard wasted pages explaining all the different ways the story might or might not make sense, as, I’m sure, have millennia of theologians before him. But, the truth is, we all know it’s wrong and Kierkegaard could have saved a lot of ink.

For this reason alone, not to mention the hundreds of other instances where the bible presents an immoral position as a moral one, it should be treated as, at best, extremely suspect advice, and, at worst, an immoral guide to how to be a psychopath.
What remains in the bible that isn’t terrible is either irrelevant or so obvious that it can be neatly tucked into the golden rule.

The bible has no place as the moral center of our culture.

While the “War on Christmas” doesn’t actually exist, there should exist a campaign to rid our culture of the bible. It is a bad book, poorly written, poorly conceived and full of terrible, harmful ideas best ignored.

There are many advantages to being young. And yet, I would never go back. It’s been said a million times before, but perhaps the greatest gift of aging is perspective. After having the shit kicked out of you, repeatedly, just by being alive, the trials of any particular day, month, or year dissolve and the beauty of being alive, moment to moment, becomes ever more apparent.

There are two cornerstone fallacies common to many pro-gun arguments.

The first is that curbing (not even eliminating) gun ownership is the thin end of the wedge to the total erosion of constitutional rights. At worst, it’s a paranoid stance that the power of the government is overweening and that once they take our guns, they’ll be free to take every other freedom because we won’t be able to defend ourselves. At best is a similar argument without the tinge of conspiracy that the government is actively trying to own and control everything.

This is a fallacy because private gun ownership can’t stop the government from imposing martial law and taking all the guns by force if it wanted to. The military has far bigger guns and is better than the polity at large, armed or no, at exerting control.

The real bulwark against that happening is not guns. It’s voting and political engagement. Nearly half of eligible voters don’t vote. If they did, the government would have far less power to act against our best interest.

The other fallacy is the notion that a gun in hand can solve the problem you intend to solve in any particular situation. My guess is that the majority of gun owners have never been in a firefight–have never experienced the fog of war. Guns don’t actually provide safety or security. They radically escalate conflict, making unintended consequences far more likely. The notion that there are “good guys” and “bad guys” is a Hollywood myth. In a conflict where there are many people with guns involved, what you have is mostly a bunch of idiots with guns who don’t know how to adequately assess risk in a situation that has become extremely risky because guns are involved.
Both fallacies are rooted in fantasy. The first is a fantasy that there’s an imminent danger that the government is looking to take all our rights away and that private gun ownership is somehow a curb against that threat. The second is that, with a gun in my hand, I can somehow exert control over a situation that is out of control–and that I will make perfect decisions in a very short amount of time with very limited situational understanding.
On top of these fallacies lies the false notion that constitutional rights can not be curtailed in any way. The truth is, constitutional rights are bounded in many cases. The right of free speech is curtailed when you falsely cry fire in a crowded meeting place or say the word “bomb” on an airplane or threaten people’s lives or defame them. The right to vote is often curtailed if you are a convicted felon. The right to freedom of religion is curtailed when you try to proselytize using public funds or public fora.

There are no constitutional rights for which there is no case where they can’t be abridged under certain circumstances.

Guns are no exception. The public health risks of unfettered gun ownership are too great not to be curtailed. The implementation of those curtailments is up for debate, but the core notion of curtailment is not.

Those in favor of gun control are mostly seeking a reasonable balance between the right to bear arms and public safety. It’s my opinion that guns are far to easy to obtain and that many of kinds of weapons available are far to dangerous to be allowed in private hands.

[This was originally a comment to Dan Hicks’s thoughtful post about engaging in conversation with people who are against gun control]