Ciceronian Review

Forbidden Fruit

Apparently readers of the NY Times Magazine have uncontrollable urges to eat things denied them at home as children.  Consider this letter (in excerpt):

I, too, was raised by hippies in the ’80s who gave no mystique to drinking, drugs or sex. What was verboten were sweets and junk food, except for my once-yearly indulgence of birthday sugar cereal (always Lucky Charms, a tradition that I’ve maintained), and ever since it has been the siren song. I longed for the Valhalla decadence of a Sizzler buffet and the rapture of a Hostess cherry pie until I broke free at 18 and discovered the divine pleasure of dipping pretzels into Marshmallow Fluff and late-night drive-through windows.

At Jeffrey Dahmer's house the children were never allowed to eat other human beings.  ....  Mine either, but I can't explain the difference.

Stump Thinking

I wonder what Hamas' plan is.  The fight with Israel is not one Hamas can win, not even by stalemate.  Its rockets are too inaccurate and small and infrequent to constitute a military danger.  They harass civilians, but cause very little injury or death (12 deaths in a year is not all that serious).  The rocket attacks are not going to drive Israelis out of the area near the border, and do nothing at all of military value.  So the point must lie elsewhere.  One might think that it is symbolic resistance.  As symbol, the attacks also seem ineffective.  Compare to IRA or ETA or ANC attacks.  In part, Hamas lacks the symbolic impact because it is not in Israel, and, I think, maybe because it is using rockets.  (I am not cure about the last -- there is something else that is ineffective as symbolic about what Hamas has been up to.)  The attacks seem designed, or at least better designed, to push Israel into attacking Gaza.  And that seems a foolish aim ultimately.  There is gain to Hamas when Israel attacks.  I don't see reason to think Gazans would be much different than others when it comes to being under attack.  During the attack, people rally round the flag.  (We don't expect Israelis to give up and run from the borders because of Hamas rocket attacks -- isn't the psychology pretty much the same?)  And with high levels of destruction of the infrastructure attributable to the invaders, it seems unlikely that post-war there will be a serious shift away from Hamas.  Anyway, it is unlikely that anyone in opposition would be in a position to do very much.  Weapons would be even more concentrated with Hamas, those who could exit likely would have (and they are the ones most likely I think to be the opposition).  At least, over the foreseeable short future, then, Hamas gets to consolidate rule, but over an increasingly impoverished place.  Maybe there are ideological rewards.  It is a religious movement and they frequently are driven by completely idiotic ideas.  What is clear is that the rocket attacks don't move Gaza closer to a state, and do not move anyone closer to either two state or one state solutions.  They don't make Palestine any more likely.  Seems like a diversion.  And completely without justification.  So immoral, even setting aside the culpability from using indiscriminate weapons aimed at nothing in particular.  Fails as guerrilla war or liberation.  

Glow in the Dark

One of the entertaining aspects of life in Zion is the funnily open corruption of government.  Legislators do their friends favors in ways which are more direct and open than other states I have lived in, including Illinois.  For example, a state Senator McCoy (sometimes referred to by the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee as "the gay") introduced a bill to regulate nuclear power plants.  The newspaper coverage focused a bit on the opposition, to be expected.  What was odd is not just that there was opposition from a company, but the language of opposition:

But Aaron Tilton, promoter of the state's first nuclear power plant, called the measure "a backhanded slap" at nuclear power and "a grandstanding bill" that will be dead on arrival in the upcoming 2009 Legislature.

"The bill is basically going to go nowhere," said Tilton, a Republican who lost his own House seat last year, in part, over his involvement with the power plant, a 1,500-megawatt nuclear station.

        ...

Tilton questioned the seriousness of McCoy's effort in light of the fact that his company Transition Power Development LLC wasn't included in discussions about the bill.

The issue is not that some industry folks dislike some of the language.  No, the bill will go nowhere because McCoy did not first talk with the guy who is trying to build such a plant, and lost his seat over the issue, or more accurately, lost his seat over self-dealing on the issue.  So the Republican Rules Committee will see to it that it is Tilton's way or now way.  Skip the merits. 

No Good Believer

The ware in Gaza elicits an array of odd arguments and passionate posturing.  In a recent post, David Kopel advanced in very brief form an argument that shows up elsewhere -- the people in Gaza have no grounds for complaint in this war because they voted for Hamas:

"No nation should have to endure years of terrorist rocket attacks aimed at civilians. Israel has every right to destroy Hamas. The civilians who elected Hamas are the ones who are to blame for the suffering of the people in Gaza, just as the voters who elected the Nazis bore the responsibility for the necessary Allied military invasion of Germany."

This is a claim that deserves at least a little examination.  First, one wonders if "blame" means here something like ultimate responsibility, or means something like solely responsible, or directly responsible, or something else.  Is it that the Gazans who voted for Hamas are thereby permissible targets in war?  So it is okay to kill those who vote wrongly?  And what an odd story to tell about responsibility.  If one is in a group that votes wrong, one is fair game (on the theory that one should have done more to exit?).  How would one carry out this approach to politics and violence.  Does the fact that one has not voted matter?  It is pretty hard to see how the many children living in Gaza come to be responsible because they were born to parents who could have voted.  What about voting in a country with other sorts of objectionable policies or laws -- do we get to shoot them too?  I suppose one might think that only those done wrong get to use violence, but even so, why would one think that merely being in the polity justifies such treatment.  One could go on and on about what a remarkably bad idea Kopel has advanced.  It is an example of collective punishment, and all the stranger from someone who claims libertarian inclinations. 

Books

Time to catch up on the reading.  I finished Magnifico, and quite liked it.  Well written and entertaining, and through much of it made Lorenzo an interesting person.  Of course it is not the whole world that has an interest in Renaissance Florence, but this is a good work if you do.  And not too weighed down by scholarly apparatus.  Along the way, I got through some other things of entertainment value.  Last Day in Limbo, one of the Modesty Blaise series.  They are truly silly books.  I find the whole series diverting.  Along the same lines really was Gordon Campbell's Missing Witness.  It has a significantly higher degree of versimilitude, but is essentially a diversion.  A bit formulaic, but that is fine with me.  Got through them in a couple of days.  On the hefty side, Collapse by Jared Diamond.  Much better written than his previous book.  The argument is clearly set out.  I am not in a position to assess it, at least, not in a serious way.  I don't have any detailed indpendent knowledge of the societies and places he discusses.  And, in the end, it is hardly a revolutionary thesis -- people sometimes screw up their environment so much that it no longer supports the society.  Hard to see that as controversial.  Also, back in the light entertainment, Bennet Boskey's Some Joys of Lawyering.  Unfortunately I am not so warm about Mr. Boesky.  Different eras I suppose.

Franken

As a good party man, I should applaud the certification of Franken as Senator.  For near term political reasons, and on the merits, I do, and prefer Franken.  But, my side of things or not, the election leaves me a little uneasy.  The margin is really too small.  Out of four million votes, the two are separated by a couple of hundred. It is not all that different from the original margin, although in a different direction.  The recount method does not increase confidence in the accuracy of the outcome.  Counting by hand strikes me as unreliable, at least when these kinds of numbers are involved.  I think a coin flip would have been as good at settling things, and much cheaper.  And as likely to replicate the accurate count (i.e., the one done by angels or very reliable robots). 

The lesson is that this is a circumstance in which a settled decision will be sufficient, because the facts are too difficult to discern.  Which is also to say it is a little delusion to think that we know who won and who lost.  Still, I like the Minnesota Supreme Court more, cause it is on my side.