Comment Elsewhere: Zero-Risk Culture

Over at Terry's place I wrote:

I’m not the first to make this point, but our nation’s “zero-risk” approach to life is going to paralyze us if we don’t start pushing back on it pretty hard.

Terry turned that into a very interesting and personal discussion of the nature of risk and fear. Some key points

Taking a chance means being willing to fail in order to succeed, and we should be able to evaluate those odd objectively. Going for a morning run in the park is a reasonable risk, as is taking a solo vacation, or submitting a novel. Yes, there’s a chance of failure, but the potential reward makes it a good payoff.

That doesn’t mean being stupid, however. We need to recognize when danger is real and respond accordingly, by locking our house doors, checking references of daycare providers, making sure the brakes on our cars are in good working condition. And that also means stopping to question whether what we’re hearing on the tv is told to scale or if it’s inflated to sensationalist proportions in order to win ratings. Quite often, there’s more at work than just the facts.

I couldn't agree more.

Quotation: "It subverts meritocracy."

Via Andrew Sullivan, Paul Campos relates a tale from a Mr. Harry Hopkins (yes, it's third-hand. Doesn't mean it isn't true.):

"I remember back in the late 1990s, when Ira Katznelson, an eminent political scientist at Columbia, came to deliver a guest lecture. Prof. Katznelson described a lunch he had with Irving Kristol during the first Bush administration.

The talk turned to William Kristol, then Dan Quayle's chief of staff, and how he got his start in politics.

Irving recalled how he talked to his friend Harvey Mansfield at Harvard, who secured William a place there as both an undergrad and graduate student; how he talked to Pat Moynihan, then Nixon's domestic policy adviser, and got William an internship at the White House; how he talked to friends at the RNC [Republican National Committee] and secured a job for William after he got his Harvard Ph.D.; and how he arranged with still more friends for William to teach at Penn and the Kennedy School of Government.

"With that, Prof. Katznelson recalled, he then asked Irving what he thought of affirmative action. 'I oppose it,' Irving replied. 'It subverts meritocracy.' "

Photo Essay: Things I Destroyed With My Hedge Trimmer, aka, Of course I take my camera with me when I'm doing yard work, don't you?

	It'd been a year with no trimming of any kind for the border plants and small trees, not to mention the vines and weeds. I don't mind a slightly wild yard, mind you, but it was getting hard to mow around them and the holly, in particular, wasn't playing nicely when the ball rolled that way. I didn't kill the hibiscus, I don't think, but I did take off a bunch of flowers and got it back on our side of the fence.
	I'm sure the spiderweb didn't survive the trimmer, but I'm sure the spider lived to spin another day. It'll just have to move a lot further in, now. I do wish the picture had come out better, but after swinging the hedge trimmer around for a while, my arms just didn't have the patience for a lot of that shoot-check-shoot again-check again stuff.
	Here's a sight you really don't want to stumble on suddenly in the midst of a vigorous trim! Fortunately, the wasps were out and about, or something. Just one flew around for a bit, and I continued on my destructive path, unmolested.
	Actually, this little worm/caterpillar/larval something is probably just fine. Maybe even happier with the new layer of foliage on the ground to burrow around, though that won't be there long: tomorrow the mulching mower does the cleanup!

My rainbow is Brown?!?!?!

Your rainbow is shaded brown.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What is says about you: You are a deep thinking person. You appreciate the roughness of nature. You feel closer to people when you understand their imperfections.

Find the colors of your rainbow at spacefem.com. [via]

Picture: Red Bird

Comment Elsewhere: The Birther Game

Over at Washington Monthly I wrote:

I've become convinced that the Birther meme is a long-term game. Nothing that happens now or in the near future matters, as long as the issue remains in the news on a regular basis. What matters is 2012, when Obama's electoral filings are going to be challenged everywhere. While those challenges have very little chance of succeeding individually, the complete derailing of political discourse -- and the potential for a bad judicial or commission decision is small but real -- will almost certainly be destabilizing.

Picture: Soup

Picture: Blue Darter

Comment Elsewhere: Where we are and what to do?

In response to Sara Robinson's frightening but well-argued description of our current crisis, I wrote

Mrs. R,

I'm looking forward -- sort of -- to the second post. I have two thoughts for the moment. First, since I've never read Paxton, I don't know how he handles the case of Imperial Japan, but it provides an interesting counterpoint to the European fascists. Japanese political culture meets many of the definitions of fascist at the time, but without having a political movement as such: a sense of crisis and wide popular support for radical military cliques because they were "patriotic" more or less covered it. Japan's crisis, like ours, had its roots in the failures of capitalism and the price of imperialism. (see 1 and 2)

Second, in resisting these developments, not all voices are equal. As a very liberal, Jewish educator, I'm pretty much part of the problem, as far as the right -- or middle -- of the body politic is concerned. My views are considered predictable, easily dismissed (unless we can prove beyond the whisper of a shadow of a doubt that they are mainstream rather than elite and extreme. This is what I'm looking for in your next piece: how my voice can actually do any good in the resistance to radicalization given the rhetorical environment?

I'll post a link to the second part of her discussion when it's available.

Picture: Butterfly on Ground