Am I that anti-Bush?

I’ve gotten a few comments that my last post was over-the-top. Though I mainly posted what Poser wrote because I thought it was a well-written and succinct personal view of what is wrong with our president, I think many took it to be entirely my own opinion. Let me clarify.

For the record, I do largely endorse what Bill Poser wrote. If I have any quibble, it’s with that bit about war crimes. I’m not, however, dismissing it as hyperbole. I am open to that option, but I do not have an informed opinion on what magnitude of injustice requires war crime proceedings.

The only other piece I found tough to swallow is where he calls the Iraq deception “treasonous.” He uses a qualifying “in my view” that makes the whole thing more palatable, but I bet I could swallow it without that too. Treason in a broader sense of the word, as betrayal of the state, would probably encompass Bush’s deception of the public leading up to the Iraq war.

That said, I wasn’t opposed to the war when it started. At moments, I even supported it. I think many reasonable people did. But since it is now known that the administration deliberately deceived the public, I think it is appropriate to speak plainly, forcefully about what terrible things he has done.

As for his performance domestically, I fail to see why any fiscally conservative person like myself would support him. He is, as Poser wrote, a spendthrift. The remainder of his domestic agenda is largely based on wearing American flag pins and selling intolerance. At one time, people could reasonably believe he was an effective war-time leader, but no longer.

Too good to pass up

I am trying not to make this a political blog, I swear. I just enjoy well-worded summaries of why Bush is a terrible president. Because he is. Occasionally Paul Krugman will turn out a good one, and Brad DeLong makes these a few times a week, but I like spontaneous ones from non-political bloggers too.

Here is one from the linguist Bill Poser over at one of my favorite blogs (link). (Context: he thinks it’s silly to correct Bush’s grammar when often there is nothing wrong with it–what’s more important is that we all speak plainly about what kind of president he is.)

[T]he criticism of Bush’s speech seems to me to be generally off the mark, yet I find the man so nauseating I change the channel if his picture comes up on television. For the record, in my opinion he’s the worst President in the history of the United States. He’s dishonest, ignorant, religious in the worst ways and none of the good ones, and a spendthrift. He favors the rich and the privileged, values loyalty to himself and his party over competence, has worked to break down the wall between church and state, and cannot tolerate dissent. He has been slow to address real crises, ranging from Darfur to Hurricane Katrina, forcefully and effectively. His use of false justifications for the invasion of Iraq is in my view treasonous. His diversion of resources from Afghanistan to Iraq has allowed the Taliban to reassert themselves in Afghanistan and made Iraq into a hotbed for terrorism, which it was not until he invaded. He has actively and persistently undermined the rule of law, both domestically and internationally, and has condoned torture. He should be impeached and tried for war crimes. This is just the beginning of my contempt for the man and what he represents.

This wins points because because it does not make any airy claims about civil liberties, illegitimate elections, etc. Those usually seem like catch-all complaints to me and are easily disputed. Instead, this little paragraph hits all the important points of substance.

German philosophy

Three big names in German philosophy are Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. The only one of the three that I’ve explored with any depth is Nietzsche, but after finishing the best book on him I’ve ever read, I think I can give you all a taste of what German philosophy is like by rehashing the section on morality.

With some odd reasoning, Kant concludes that there is one supreme principle of morality that goes like this: “Act according to that maxim which can at the same time make itself universal law.” This is similar to the Golden Rule, except that he claims that all rational people ought to abide by it and that they will draw the same conclusions from it. Thus, you ought to follow the maxim “be kind to others” because you would wish everyone else to follow this as a universal law.

Schopenhauer thought this was stupid for a number of reasons. The most clever is that, despite what Kant says, different people could come to different conclusions from it. While most of us would like others to be kind to us, some people, if they are strong enough, might decide that they would do better than most in a world where the universal law was “help no one.” Thus, by Kant’s formula, they ought to not help others.

Instead, Schopenhauer thinks “our moral beliefs and practices are driven not by the idea that the fundamental evil is, as Kant believed, to make an exception of oneself in the manner in which one acts, but rather by the idea that suffering is evil” (p. 168).

What does Nietzsche say? He thinks they’re both wrong. According to him, suffering is the highest good. It sounds odd, but he means that struggle and the overcoming of obstacles are what life is about and what make us better. You are mistaken if you think true happiness comes with repose, satiety, contentment, and the absence of struggle.

Along those lines, here’s a typically inflammatory quotation from his Die fröhliche Wissenschaft:

If you experience suffering and displeasure as evil, hateful, worthy of annihilation, and as a defect of existence, then it is clear that besides your religion of compassion you also harbor another religion in your heart that is perhaps the mother of the religion of compassion: the religion of comfortableness. How little you know of human happiness, you comfortable and benevolent people, for happiness and unhappiness are sisters and even twins that either grow up together or, as in your case, remain small together.

I can’t find my favorite passage in the book at the moment, but it basically formulates Nietzsche like this. If the choice is between (1) a perfectly egalitarian world free of all suffering where no one feels pain and there are no great achievements and (2) a world filled with suffering but with great human achievements, then Nietzsche would choose (2). Comfort, relaxation, ease, repose are all overrated if not downright bad.

Immigration

A very informative article on immigration is in The New York Times Magazine (thanks to Marginal Revolution for the link). I’ve gleaned my favorite parts for you. Read the whole thing to really get a feel for the immigration debate.

First, there’s the question about how much of the public debate is actually about economics. If you smell racism, you aren’t alone.

German time

According to the Germans, the time is 15:37 right now. They use military time usually but also know the twelve-hour systems from analog clocks too.

Why am I not praising the metric system? I’m not a fan really. 12 inches is easily divided by 2, 3, 4 and 6 inches. How many centimeters go into one-sixth of a meter? Not so easy is it?

Women in Germany

My roommate Sabrina told me that she thinks Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, is manly. It’s because she was a physicist, the way she looks and dresses, and the fact that she’s in politics.

I think this is funny to hear because most American women are trained to say, “women can do anything boys can do,” whenever you get near the subject of women in sciences. Germans, I notice, are a little more relaxed about this sort of thing.

It is a matter of fact that of all physics PhD recipients in 1998, only 13% were women. So one would think that it is safe to say, it is a man’s field. But ouch… doesn’t that just sound bad? Not to Germans.

One of the first strange things I noticed about Germany was the flippant attitude toward what is womanly and what isn’t. Right when I stepped off my flight in Frankfurt, I saw a newsstand with a section for men and a section for women. The men’s section had the European Wall Street Journal and the Harvard Business Review. The women’s had no business magazines at all.

That would never happen in America.

Also I notice that pedestrian crossing signs here show a woman in a dress holding the hand of her kid while crossing the road. Presumably it is the mother with the kid because the father is at work. A subtle implication.

On the whole, I like their uncaring attitude toward gender–not so on edge about it all. But the American in me does wonder whether this steers little girls into certain careers rather than others. Of course, that’s the big debate.

Liberal Spain?

I thought of Spain as conservative, but I was wrong. Luckily, the Pope’s in Spain trying to help it regain its former bigotry and technological backwardness.

Almost every workshop at the World Meeting of Families, and every homily the Pope will deliver, appear to have been chosen to counter the radical social agenda of Spain’s Socialist government.

Since his election in 2004, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the prime minister, has legalised gay marriage and the adoption of children by homosexual couples, introduced fast-track divorce, abolished compulsory religious education in state schools and authorised stem-cell research. [...]

The Spanish church has been fighting a losing battle for the past 30 years – a period of rapid social change that has seen the restoration of democracy after the Franco dictatorship, the emancipation of women, the legalisation of contraceptives, abortion and divorce. A surge in economic prosperity has coincided with a dramatic drop in church attendance and in the national birth rate, which is among the lowest in the world. [...]

“No country has changed so radically in such a short space of time,” says Emilio Lamo de Espinosa, a Spanish sociologist. “Attitude surveys show Spain is one of the most liberal, tolerant countries in Europe, right up there with the Nordic countries and the Netherlands.”

Read more here.

Grammar and Bible study

Germans have two words for “you.” When you are speaking to a stranger, an older person, or an acquaintance, you use the formal Sie (always capitalized). So you might ask them,

Können Sie mir Helfen? [Can you help me?]

But if you’re talking to a friend, you use du. You might say something like,

Warum bist du müde? [Why are you tired?]

Americans here are known for rudely addressing people with du-form when we shouldn’t. The rules are complicated, I think. I get laughed at if I talk to another student with Sie, for example. Students always use du when talking with each other. Sounds easy, right? But what if a college student is taking my order at a restaurant? Well, then the age-rule is trumped by the business-rule. Because she is serving me, we both use Sie.

Who else can you address with du? Pets, kids, good friends, family, and God.

Are you shocked that a German addresses God with less formality than he does an old woman or his boss at work? Don’t be. If you’re Catholic or fundamentalist Christian, you probably address God informally, too.

Today we think of the King James Bible, always using thee and thou, as being very formal, but in fact thou was the English informal pronoun. Here is a bit of the KJV Genesis with a German translation.

And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?
[Und Gott der HERR rief Adam und sprach zu ihm: Wo bist du?]

And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.
[Und er sprach: Ich hörte dich im Garten und fürchtete mich; denn ich bin nackt, darum versteckte ich mich.]

And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?
[Und er sprach: Wer hat dir gesagt, dass du nackt bist? Hast du nicht gegessen von dem Baum, von dem ich dir gebot, du solltest nicht davon essen?]

And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.
[Da sprach Adam: Die Frau, die du mir zugesellt hast, gab mir von dem Baum und ich aß.]

Why does Adam feel so chummy with God that he can use du or thou? Well, having just been created by him from dirt, Adam speaks to God as his father, I think. Still today in Germany, people speak to their parents with du. A king, by contrast, should be called Sie.

So when Catholics and fundamentalists use the old-fashion Lord’s Prayer (Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name…), they are not being more formal, but less.

Who thought I would ever lead a Bible study?

President Bush visiting

When Germany’s leader, Angela Merkel, visited America in May, she invited President Bush to stop over in her hometown of Stralsund on his way to Russia.

This suited Mr Bush, since, as he said then, he found it “fascinating” that Ms Merkel had grown up in the east and that her views had been shaped by having known “the discomfort of what it means to live under the iron hand of a communist ruler”. [Financial Times]

What’s funny is that Stralsund is a very left-wing town. In fact, one of the main political parties there has said that Bush is “not welcome.”

As many as 5,000 protesters are expected to turn up in Stralsund — including the state’s environment and social ministers, both members of the Left Party. The planned presence of senior government officials has angered members of the center-left Social Democrats, the senior coalition partner. [Der Spiegel]

Preparatory security costs will be around twelve-million euros. So everyone is pissed about that too.

This should prove embarrassing for both leaders.

By the way, though Bush and Merkel act chummy, they’re very different really. Do you know what Ms. Merkel did before she entered politics fifteen years ago? She was a physicist. A PHYSICIST.

I am reminded of the single best piece of satire ever. It’s from the Onion: click here to read.

German newspapers

I just gave a presentation in my German class over Germany’s newspapers. The presentation was ill-prepared and a little embarrassing, but I recovered nicely by showing everyone nudity and giving away free newspapers.

The nudity came from Germany’s trashiest newspaper, Bild-Zeitung. Translated, the name is Picture-Newspaper. It’s modelled on USA Today but with some nudity thrown in. It’s famous for its Seite-eins-Mädchen (Page one young ladies), who are usually bare-breasted.

This is not just a trashy tabloid. Well, it is that, but it’s also Germany’s, and therefore Europe’s, best-selling newspaper. No one respects it, however. It receives about one-third of all reprimands issued by Germany’s independent press watchdog group.

There are some high-quality newspapers here, too–or so I’m told. Although I can make out some headlines and a few sentences, most newspapers here are beyond my vocabulary range. I’ve made a few attempts at Die Zeit, a respected weekly newspaper, but it’s tough-going.

As I’ve written before, nudity in newspapers is much more acceptable here than in the US. Die Bild-Zeitung is not sold under the counter, but out in the open with all the legitimate papers. As a side note: I suspect that if it wasn’t so regulated in the America, USA Today would slip in some nudity really quick.

And serious papers here don’t hesitate to use artsy nudity on their front page either. We Americans were stunned a few weeks back at an airport bookstore when we saw the new Die Zeit. The issue’s theme was “Was ist Männlich?” which means “What is Manly?” And so what kind of picture do you think they ran over the whole front page? Well, they were so proud of it that they put it up as a billboard, too. (Click here to see the picture).

The only comparable shock I got from a US publication recently was in The New Yorker a few months back. It ran a review of a book on Playboy magazine (link–no pictures) which blithely included a full-color page of centerfold pictures from 1953 onward. That was a little awkward to read on the bus. It always makes me smile when I find borderline smut in unassailably high-brow publications.

At the same time, some newspapers here are still doing the austere (and pretentious in my opinion) no-pictures-on-the-cover thing. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany’s most respected newspaper, is like this.

Another side note: Mary Ann has called my interest in newspapers old-man-like. Amanda has called me an old man on several occasions. Are they right? Well, I am grumpy when I don’t get my midday nap.

I got a tan

I went swimming at the local Schwimmbad yesterday. It’s beautiful, clean, and cheap–like a lot of things here. The ground is trash-free because Germans cannot, by their nature, litter. Plus, beer cups have a two euro Pfand on them just in case. (Remember what that is? Read here).

It’s a park with green grass and three or four swimming pools. And even though this is Europe, there was no one sunbathing naked. Germans are more lax than Americans in this regard, but this is not the place for that. A few very small kids ran around naked. (My sense is that child abduction isn’t as obsessed over here as in America).

There is a really fun water-slide. Because it is German-made, it was very modern looking with all-steel construction.

I forgot to bring my swimsuit to Germany, so I bought some new trunks. They are definitely European-looking and probably too short for an American beach.

I ate a kangaroo

My life project to taste dolphin meat remains unfulfilled, but I did eat kangaroo stew this week. And yes, it was tasty.

The school’s mensa (meaning cafeteria–from the Latin word for table) serves very high quality food at government subsidized prices. I have a big lunch every weekday for about three euros. I think there are real chefs on staff because we have really creative theme-based menus. Yesterday was Australia day, and they were serving Känguru, which I correctly guessed to be the German word for Kangaroo.

It was sort of beefy. I’m told it’s like deer, but I’ve only had deer once. In any case, it’s much better than pork.

I recommended it.

Here are some kangaroo recipes from the KIAA (Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia)

Here is a animal rights website that says eating Kangaroo meat is unhealthy and cruel.

Conclusion: kangaroos are safe to eat, tasty, and cute–what a tragedy.

House shoe update

My roommate Sabrina confirms: she would be embarrassed to wear slip-on sandals outside of her home. They are only for shuffling around the house and piddling about the garden.  The reason is that they aren’t pretty and are more about comfort. (See this website for examples). Surprisingly, brightly colored flip-flops are okay to wear everywhere. This is because they are “cute.”

Shorts are not appropriate for class according to Sabrina. She would wear them around town, while shopping, to the beach, with friends, but not to class. She says the teacher might say something to her if she did. She is studying dental medicine and so there are special professional ways of dressing that she should follow, but even in the wider university there is some taboo against dressing too casually.

Dressing for class here is somehow different from dressing to go eat ice cream. UT doesn’t have this distinction.

What to wear in Germany

My mom asked if there is anything special she should know about how to dress for Germany. The answer is becoming more complicated.

Mary Ann’s mother, a native German, visited last week and told her that she feels out-of-place wearing shorts here sometimes. And looking around me at the library right now, I see about fifteen girls wearing mostly jeans, capris, and one skirt and one pair of shorts. It’s a little warm today, I think more American students would be wearing shorts.

Also, an American girl told me that she wore Birkenstock sandles to class and had more than two Germans point to her shoes and say “house shoes.” I will need to run this by Sabrina to confirm. That seems like a weird judgment to me considering that flip-flops (be they leather, foam, or whatever) are perfectly fine here, and about one-third of people around me are wearing them right now.

Another German confirms: pajama bottoms, the low point of American casualness on campus, are not acceptable here.

Do Germans like dogs more than kids?

In Germany, dogs can travel on trains, buses, and trams. You can take a dog in restaurants, in cafes, in stores, and in ice cream parlors. Click here for a picture of one I saw on a tram a few days ago. It sat in its own seat.

I like this. And now that I think about it–how do we Americans justify banning them everywhere? Sure, they may make a mess, stink, poop, howl, etc., but children do these things too. And worse, children lack the great redeeming quality of a mischievous dog: cuteness. Everyone likes puppies; no one likes toddlers.

Who can blame the Germans for not having kids:

Germany has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world. The average number of children–1.37 per woman–is not at all sufficient to keep the population size stable without immigration. This would require 2.1 children per woman. In addition, after the wall came down fertility rates halved in eastern Germany mainly because of economic uncertainty. In 1993, the East German fertility rate fell to the lowest ever measured level–0.77 children per woman. Since then fertility has been slowly increasing. Still, in 2001 the average number of children in the East (1.2 children) was significantly lower than the western value of 1.41.

In cities, children are generally rare. Especially low are the numbers of children in towns with big universities. One woman out of every three has no children at all, and among women with university degrees only 60 percent start families. [source]

I’d say Germany is more dog-friendly and less kid-friendly than America. Good for them. (Yeah, yeah, their pension system will go bankrupt because of this, but it’s not like America’s got its budget in order either.)

Koala shortage?

The best story I heard today comes from my state-side pen-pal Ashley:

I went to McDonalds because they had the wild Happy Meal toys. I specifically asked for Nigel the Koala. And they gave me Bridgette the fuckin Giraffe. She sucks. At least I didn’t get that god-damned snake.

This is why I like Ashley.