Day: September 14, 2009

America, I Love You. Americans, On the Other Hand…

Mike Nobody america, healthcare, obama, politics, teabaggers, usa

America, I Love You. Americans, On the Other Hand…
By Evan Handler
Actor, author, screenwriter, and journalist
I have found the last week to be one of the most politically dispiriting of my adulthood. After President Obama’s address to the nation on health care, I posted an opinion piece on Huffington Post which garnered well over 600 comments, as well as dozens of emails sent directly my way. The piece was in support of strong health care reform legislation, including a “public option,” and used my own history of overcoming acute myeloid leukemia, as well as my wife’s Italian family’s health care experiences in that country, as reference points. Most responses were of the “Thank you for saying what I’ve felt” variety, and it’s always gratifying to be told I’ve said something important, or made someone else feel heard.

The strong minority current won’t surprise anyone who’s followed the health care debate, or most any political discussion, over the past couple of years. A vocal minority has let me know, over and over again, that they don’t want the government taking any more of their money; that they want to be able to decide how to spend and invest their own money; that they don’t want to have to pay for anything for anyone else; and — the big time, firecracker, most-consistent comment of all — they don’t want any Americans to have government-subsidized health care insurance if one single, goddamn, fucking, disgusting illegal immigrant might be able to get their hands on it, too.

Okay. I get it. And here’s my response to both groups.

First, to those opposed to any European-styled government subsidized health insurance option: I found every one of your arguments to be small-minded, selfish, fear-driven, ill-informed, self-serving, and — most crucially — detrimental to the long-term interests of the United States of America. As I indicated in my last piece, the oft-stated logic of “government out of my life” is a fantasy existence you’ve never experienced, and that you’d whimper in fear over were you ever subjected to it for an instant. Make a list of the industries you’re aware of: medical, chemical, automobile, steel, housing, whatever. Each and every one of them would crush you with glee without government regulations if it added to their profits by one one-millionth of a percentage point. They’d sell the juice they squeezed out of you as a refreshment drink, if they could get away with it. As corrupt and inefficient as your government is (and it clearly is), it’s the only thing keeping you alive moment to moment. Reform it, by all means. Keep it honest. Throw out the bums who aren’t protecting you adequately enough. But, end its involvement in your life? Scale it back? You’re kidding yourself. That’s a joke. Take one look back at history (please, just one look!), and see how workers, and children, and consumers are now protected where they were once injured and exploited. That’s called “progress,” and we’re hoping to add a little more.

To those who insisted, “I don’t use public transportation, my local taxes pay for my town’s sidewalks, I don’t use this, I don’t use that,” yours are idiotic arguments. The concrete under your feet, the steel used in elevators, the earthquake and flood resistant building codes, the dams that don’t break and drown you, the cars that (hopefully) don’t fall apart as you’re driving them, the airplanes that don’t (usually) land on your head — every single thing that keeps you safe every day of your life is provided to you by a government standard or regulation. Argue with me about it all day long; go ahead and take offense at my use of the word “idiotic.” None of it changes the fact that you wouldn’t survive a week if you were really in it on your own, and that your resistance to recognizing it is a much bigger problem than 11 million people who entered this country illegally. You, in your refusal to acknowledge your interdependence with everyone else, are a bigger problem than they are.

As to those immigrants, and the rage I’ve seen inspired by them, just give me a break. You’re all immigrants. Every one of you. Every one of your pink, overstuffed, jiggly “American” asses is stuffed full of tortillas, or pancetta, or paella, or schnitzel, or knockwurst, or moussaka, or Dublin Coddle, or whatever the fuck your ancestors ate before they crawled their way over here. And, when they got here, someone hated them just as much as you’re hating whoever’s newest here now, and fought against their having anything you now enjoy.

If it’s only the illegal entry that’s an issue for you, let me ask you this: If you lived in Country A, where you and your family were starving, and you knew you could get a job in Country B, are you telling me you wouldn’t sneak across a border to feed them? Of course you would. And, if the people of Country B kind of, sort of allowed it, and benefited tremendously from your willingness to harvest their crops, or work on their assembly lines, or vacuum their offices, or clean their children’s school toilets for pennies, it would be pretty shitty treatment, indeed, to turn you away from an emergency room if you got got sick, like I’ve heard recommended in terms of the undocumented residents of the United States.

As to those undocumented residents, get ready to have your blood really boil. They’re not going anywhere. No one is going to round them up and send them home, other than in token gestures to calm you down, and no amount of mistreatment is going to force them to run home in any meaningful numbers. What needs to happen, and what will happen, is that they be put on track to gain legal residency status, so that they will pay taxes, and be rightfully protected from all the evils I’ve outlined above, just like the rest of us human beings living here. The reason it needs to happen and will happen is that it’s the more cost efficient thing to do. It’s cheaper than keeping them here as a marginalized population, with all the costs included in that, and it’s cheaper than the impossible process of gathering, prosecuting,and sending them away. Really, when will enough be enough? Don’t you realize, can’t you realize, that all the change you’re fighting against — just like the protections that are now taken for granted, but that someone fought against once-upon-a-time — will happen, eventually, whether you like it or not?

That last bit is the only thing that comforts me right now. No matter how hard the nitwits (and the clever ones who manipulate them) fight, eventually everything they despise will come to pass. Gays will get married and enjoy equal protection. There will be some form of government-subsidized health care coverage for all. And the vast majority of the 11 million or so undocumented immigrants currently here will be granted some degree of permanent residency status. These things will all happen, even if it’s thirty more years until they do, because they need to. They are the most correct solutions. (Don’t tell me, “There’s no right or wrong. We just happen to disagree.” Nonsense. I don’t accept it. There is right, and there is wrong, and those against strengthening protections for those least able to protect themselves are wrong.) The joke is that, by fighting, and delaying, those who think it’s just “unfair,” or that providing rights or protections for others will “cost too much,” or who want “the government out of my pocket,” will make the final tab so much higher than if the reforms were implemented now. The costs of exclusion are astronomical, from ER care for those with no coverage, to cultural warfare and political campaigning, and eventual (lost) lawsuits by those who’ve been trampled upon.

My prediction is that, finally, one day, with fewer fireworks than anyone could now expect, with more of a groan of exhaustion than much celebration, enough of the opposition will have seen enough carnage to come to their senses, or have discovered they can love the gay children they’ve given birth to (imagine that!), or had a catastrophic illness themselves, and the right laws will come into play, and the country will change. But what will we have gained from the long delay?

As to those who agree with some, or much, of what I say, you’d better get off your asses right now. I mean right now. The greedy and the foolish are ruling the day, even after they lost an election (and even though they hold no majorities, either in government or in population). Because they’re working harder. They’re yelling louder. Their hatred is out hustling your good will by a mile. How many of them showed up in Washington, fifty-thousand, or 1.5 million? It doesn’t matter. Because no bigger demonstration existed to demand government-subsidized health insurance be available to those who want it. Were there facts shouted at the town hall meetings, or lies? It doesn’t matter. Because there was no larger force, to sing “I Ain’t A-Scared of Your Lies, ‘Cause I Want My Health Care,” to the tune of the old civil rights song “I Ain’t A-Scared of Your Jail, ‘Cause I Want My Freedom.” That would have made the evening news. Because it would have taken a spectacle, and used it as a jumping point to create a bigger, more powerful, one. Because it would have framed the effort for what it is, a struggle for what should be a civil right. And, at least for one small day, a news cycle would have been won, instead of lost.

Oh, the mail I’ll get now. The comments will scream that I don’t know what I’m talking about, because one or two of my facts might not be perfectly correct, or phrased. People will take offense, and say I’ve lowered the level of dialogue with my language. But there is no dialogue. One glance at the comments section to my last post, or at my emails this week, and you can see. Dialogue is over. There is no convincing those who will not listen to reason.

It’s funny to remember and compare such a small incident, but it applies. When I still lived in New York, I owned a small apartment in a co-op building. There was a security guard who patrolled the block at night, and he was paid by voluntary contributions from those who chose to give. Ten dollars a months was the requested amount. Ten dollars a month, from people who owned Manhattan real estate, in order to make the block a bit safer, and a bit cleaner. But payments to the guard’s salary were dwindling, so a survey was done, and it became clear that while 50% of the people on the block were contributing, our building had a participation rate of only 30%. At a board meeting, some of my neighbors said, “I don’t go out at night. Why should I have to pay for a security guard when I don’t go out at night?”

“Well, would you rather have to step over broken glass and used condoms during the day, when you do go out?” I asked. “Would you rather have noise and music from groups that gather at night, or hear screams from people being robbed, or worse?” It didn’t matter. They weren’t moved.

So we did what the law allowed us to do. We took a vote, and we made the ten dollars a month a mandatory part of the building’s monthly maintenance charges. We went from 30% participation, to 100%. In other words, we stopped trying to reason with them, or make them understand, or agree. We used our majority, and we rammed it down their throats. It’s time now to do the same. This is a war we’re in. Not a shooting war (and I condemn anyone who takes up arms on either side of it, like some have already done at supposed “Town Hall Meetings”). It’s an ideological war. And the longer it takes to recognize and acknowledge that fact, the longer it will take for our society to throw off the outsized influence of those who are willing to wage one from the other side.

So, if you feel inspired, if the words of the last post meant something to you, do something. Don’t write to me on Facebook, or merely pass the article on there (though I thank you for doing so this past week). Call Senators and Congressmen/women. Flood their phone lines. Send them emails. Shout out to them from the street. Carry signs. Gather. Organize. Call ten friends, or a hundred, or fifty-thousand, or a million-and-a-half, and go to Washington. Scream and shout. Wage war. Insist.

We were once a nation of such potential. A nation built on the pride of its self-proclaimed superiority. We’ve been embarrassing ourselves in front of the world since shortly after 9/11, 2001. In spite of a change of leadership, there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight. Shame on the citizens who are trying to obstruct, and shame on the politicians who pandered to them this past week.

The words on the Statue of Liberty, liberators of concentration camps, inventors and innovators throughout the twentieth century. And what’s the United States’ most recent contribution? Collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps, and eleven million brown, yellow, and red-skinned people who’ll be denied the privilege of paying money to purchase health care insurance. Hooray for the red, white, and blue.

Evan Handler’s latest book is “It’s Only Temporary: The Good News and the Bad News of Being Alive.”

EvanHandler.com


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What Makes People Want to Play Rock Band and Guitar Hero?

Mike Nobody aerosmith, america, metallica, music, nirvana, pop, rock, technology

What Makes People Want to Play Rock Band and Guitar Hero?
By Gary Marcus
Director of the NYU Infant Language Learning Center, and Professor of Psychology at NYU

In some ways, Guitar Hero and Rock Band seem like the stupidest games on earth. Colored discs scroll down a TV screen, and eager participants mash colored buttons in time with what they see. You press a red button when you see a red disc, a blue button when you see a blue disc, and hold your fire when you see nothing. Rinse, lather, and repeat; that’s about all there is to it. Since the sequence and timing are provided by the game software, you don’t really even need to know the songs. There’s no need to strategize ahead (as in chess); no need for big muscles (as in basketball), and no need to bluff past one’s opponent (as in poker). Few games demand less of the player; I suspect monkeys could be trained to play, and know for a fact that robots can cruise through Guitar Hero on Expert.

Yet the two games together have grossed over three billion dollars, and received extensive coverage in highbrow outlets like The New York Times and The Atlantic Monthly.

What is the appeal of a game that demands so little of the human mind? Part of it of course lies with the music; the latest Rock Band comes complete with Beatles music, and for people like me, who grew up listening to music, no body of music is more compelling. (For people with rather different tastes, there’s Guitar Hero: Metallica and Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, with Steely Dan allegedly on its way, although Jimmy Page swears there will never be a Guitar Hero: Led Zeppelin).

Still, at $60, the game costs as much as 4 or 5 albums, and the game takes more work to play. Why mash buttons on a video game controller, when you could put Sgt. Pepper on your CD player, or learn to play a real guitar? If an alien scientist came to observe humanity, they’d find a lot of things puzzling, but few would be as puzzling as Guitar Hero.

* * *
Some games, of course, could be seen as practice for the real world; Monopoly could be viewed as preparation for a career in real estate, chess for the art of war. Many evolutionary psychologists believe that play evolved as way to ease children into their ultimate adult responsibilities; chasing your friends in a game of tag prepares you for the bison hunt on which your life will later depend.

Whether you buy that theory or not, the plastic “guitars” in Guitar Hero have little to do with real guitars; there are no strings, and no frets, there’s no soundhole, and no jack to hook up to an amplifier, either; except for a bit of clattering, the plastic pseudo-instrument makes no sound at all. And there’s no room for genuine creativity, as there would be with a real instrument. A real apprentice guitarist must spend hours and hours practicing scales and chords, and learning about the relation between melody and harmony; an aficionado of Guitar Hero skips straight to the songs, and may well never learn the difference between a major scale and a minor.

Economists would be puzzled, too. It generally costs the same amount or even less (once you factor out the costs of the plastic guitars) to buy the songs on iTunes as to get them in a package for your Xbox, and if you buy them on iTunes, you can play them over and over, wherever you want, in the car, or in the gym, and not just when you stand in front of your television set. You also aren’t stuck suffering through the abominable mid-80’s Hair Metal, in order to “unlock” the next song that you actually like.

What gives? If it’s not practice for a career in music, and it’s not efficient or rational from an economist’s perspective, what is it that drives people to play these games?

* * *
It’s a lust for power.

Not, mind you, of the sort that allows one to rule the world, but the sort that allows one to control one’s own world.

Dozens of studies over the years have shown that human beings are happier when they believe themselves to be in control. In one famous set of studies, participants were asked to solve simple arithmetic problems while sitting in a room in which sudden blasts of noise occurred at random intervals. One group of subjects had no choice but to listen, the others had a panic button they would be allowed to press if the noise became too much. Though few participants actually pressed the button, the mere feeling of control made the entire experience considerably more bearable. In another famous study, dogs were put in an environment in which nothing that they did correlated with their situation; so-called “learned helplessness” — essentially a form of depression — was the result.

Alas, although humans are very fond of being in control, we aren’t always so good at telling whether we actually have it. As Harvard psychologist Dan Wegner has argued in The Illusion of Conscious Will, Oujia boards were designed to trick people into thinking they didn’t have control when they really did. Guitar Hero is designed to do the opposite.

Inferring control is really an exercise in inferring causality; we want to know whether A causes B, but sometimes all we know is that when A happens, B happens too. In technical jargon, we infer causality from temporal contingency.

Games like Guitar Hero set up one of the most potent illusions of temporal contingency I’ve ever seen: if the player presses the button at the right time, the computer plays back a recording of a particular note (or set of notes) played by a professional musician. The music itself is potent and rewarding — Keith Richards really knows how to bend a note — but the real secret to the game is what happens is that fact if you miss the button, you don’t hear the note.

The brain whirs away, and notices the contingency. When I push the button, I hear Keith Richards; when I fail to push the button (or press the wrong button, or press it late), I don’t hear Keith Richards. Therefore, I am Keith Richards!

* * *
It’s not simply that you hear the songs (which bring pleasure) but that the game skillfully induces the illusion that you yourself are generating the songs. You aren’t paying $60 to hear the songs; you’re paying $60 to trick your brain into thinking that you are making them. Your conscious mind may know better — and realize that it’s all just a ruse — but your unconscious mind is completely and happily fooled.

Is that worth $60? If you want to feel like Keith Richards, the answer is surely yes.


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Katrina’s Lessons Are as Important as 9/11’s

Mike Nobody 9/11, america, bush, censorship, cheney, hurricane, Katrina, united states of america, usa

Katrina’s Lessons Are as Important as 9/11’s

By Casey Gane-McCalla

Assistant Editor for BlackPlanet.com’s NewsOne

Last Friday was the 8th anniversary of 9/11. The previous week was the 4th anniversary of Katrina. While the media covered a lot of the 9/11 memorials, concerts and memories, it seemed as if the legacy of Katrina got very little attention. Both events have had a great impact on our country, but it seems as if politicians and pundits only learned something from 9/11.
I’d like to think that the lessons of 9/11 would be: Be extremely cautious about domestic terrorists, don’t train militant religious fanatics to fight your enemies, because they might come back to bite us and treat all threats against our country seriously.

While people in the media talk about the lessons of 9/11 very often, it is rare to hear pundits and politicians talk about the lessons of Hurricane Katrina. While 9/11 left 2,998 people dead or missing, Hurricane Katrina left 2,536 people dead or missing and displaced over one million people.

But 9/11 changed several ways the government operates in terms of foreign and domestic polices, while Katrina changed very little. After 9/11, we invaded two countries, started the patriot act and changed airline travel as we know it.

Katrina has caused no significant changes in US policy. What the world saw after Katrina, was a natural disaster inflamed by poverty, segregation and racism. While the government may not have been able to stop the hurricane, the U.S. could have definitely prevented the racism and poverty that made Hurricane Katrina way worse than it should have been.

Hurricane Katrina was an embarrassment to the United States. Despite its great wealth, the U.S. could not take care of its own. After Katrina, George Bush’s approval rating was 45%, half of the 90% it reached after September 11th.

Hubert Humphrey once said, “A nation is judged by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. Congress should not ignore the plight of our nation’s poorest and sickest beneficiaries any longer.”

The judgment on George Bush from his reaction to Katrina both domestically and internationally is part of his legacy forever. Still, it seems as if the lessons of Katrina have been lost on the Republican party.

The Republicans obviously have not learned anything from Hurricane Katrina, as they continue to disregard poor, disenfranchised people, which is reflected in their opposition to health care.

Diseases, like hurricanes, affect everybody. Yet, as in Katrina, the rich seem to be protected against them, while the poor and minority populations are vulnerable and often left with no help to protect themselves against them.

If the next Katrina comes as a virus (like Swine Flu), once again the rest of the world will see how America treats its poorest and sickest beneficiaries. That is why we need health care for every citizen. If America has learned anything from the lessons of Katrina, it is that America must protect all of its citizens, regardless of economic or racial backgrounds.

Katrina was a reminder of the poor people who are rarely on TV and not seen or heard. These people are Americans, not third world refugees. They are entitled to the life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness given to us in the Declaration of Independence. Just like the government is responsible for trying to help its citizens from disaster, it should be responsible for taking care of its citizens from diseases and health risks.

Protecting our citizens and keeping our country safe is no just about bombing countries that we think our threats. Not all threats come from Islamic extremists. Hunger, poverty, crime, natural disasters and diseases also threaten the safety of our country and citizens. If we can spend billions of dollars to invade other countries to keep our country safer, we should sacrifice to make the country safer for all of our citizens from natural disasters and diseases.

It is time to heed the lessons of Katrina. We are one country and all of our citizens are important, rich and poor, black and white. When a government gives an every man for himself attitude towards disease and natural disasters, it reflects badly on our country. It is the duty of our country to protect its citizens not only against terrorist attacks, but also against natural disasters and diseases as well. That’s why we need to make sure every one of our citizens has the right to health care.


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