As we all know, a great writer once said, “the true test of a first-rate mind is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time.” Let’s exercise our first-rate minds, shall we? I’ll go first.
Putin is a disgusting, vicious freak but the law against international adoptions that he passed over the strenuous objections of dissidents is good and necessary.
Reproductive rights are absolutely crucial but Planned Parenthood disgraced itself and fucked up royally this summer.
Stalin was a vicious, bloody dictator who didn’t lie when he said, “Life has become better, more joyful.”
Michael Moore is a brilliant film – maker but his movies are total garbage.
Cuba is horrible but it’s a good thing that diplomatic relations have been reestablished.
It’s wonderful that Spain now has a new party that is disturbing the two-party balance but I hope it gets massively trounced in the elections.
I donated money to Bernie Sanders ‘ s campaign but I can’t wait for him to lose to Hillary. To whom I’ll never donate any money, by the way.
I highly recommend this exercise on a regular basis to prevent brains from fossilizing. And I also want to remind you about the “what have I changed my mind about this month?” exercise. It’s up to us to combat our natural tendency to slip into drooling rigidity.
And to paraphrase the great writer we started with, a first-rate mind can be changed.
Clarissa's Blog 
Did you know that Bernie is University of Chicago class of 1964? That would explain a lot of his idiosyncrasies.
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Vic, what is it about graduating from the University of Chicago with a degree in political science that year which would explain his idiosyncrasies?
I know the Chicago school of economics is conservative and anti-Keynesian and influenced leaders in Latin America, but I know nothing of the politics school there.
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Chicagoans back in the day didn’t do stereotypes well. Milton Friedman was characterized as conservative, although he was an advocate for drug decriminalization. The Econ Department made a home for Gary Becker, the thinker who sought to explain bigotry and racism in economic terms — ultimately blaming racism on inequality. That argument wasn’t popular and most schools wouldn’t offer him a job. More recently, Econ has led the creation of field experiments in the use of financial incentives to motivate poor children to stay in school and improve academic performance. Is that what most people think of as conservative?
One of the hallmarks of the other social sciences at Chicago was/is the Committee on Social Thought. This is an interdisciplinary department and doctoral program. The faculty participants in the program included Saul Bellow (writer, sociologist), Hannah Arendt (poli sci), Karl Weintraub, Edward Shils (sociology), T S Eliot (do you have to ask?), etc. Some of these were conservatives.
Politics and Sociology were closely allied, producing quantitative and often liberal leaning researchers. The National Opinion Research Center was established in that era. SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) was created there; it’s now an IBM product. Norman Nie, one of the creators of SPSS and a professor in political science just passed in April of this year. Andrew Greeley, priest, writer and sociologist , came out of that milieu. So did my father’s dissertation, published as “The Politics of School Desegregation.” Conservative? No.
Personally, I came along toward the end of that era. I’m not prepared to say that UC is today what it was. A conservative bastion back then? No, it was a lot more complicated than that.
And that’s without even mentioning Saul Alinsky.
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“Putin is a disgusting, vicious freak but the law against international adoptions that he passed over the strenuous objections of dissidents is good and necessary. ”
Not so contradictory, even horrible leaders can occasionally make good calls.
“Reproductive rights are absolutely crucial but Planned Parenthood disgraced itself and fucked up royally this summer”
I’d say its unthinking supporters are fucking up even more by refusing to allow themselves to perceive how badly PP has behaved.
For me,
I’m a committed omnivore who has no intention to stop eating meat but I dislike people who are cruel to animals.
I think the EU has done a lot of good in the past but has undone most of it through their thickheaded commitment to the Euro.
I would rezally like for the Euro to work, but I’m convinced that in its present form it cannot (and I think the sooner Greece, Spain and Portugal get out of it the better).
Will think of some more.
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I knew you would be good at this. 🙂 I always can spot people who are not inclined to intellectual rigidity.
In what concerns Planned Parenthood, I’m very disappointed at the pig-headed attempts to pretend like nothing happened and that the only people who are outraged are crazed anti-choicers. I’m not even acquainted with any anti-choicers but everybody I know is horrified by those videos. This is a reality that needs to be accepted. Closing one’s eyes and pretending the anger and the outrage aren’t there is not a smart thing to do.
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“I’d say its unthinking supporters are fucking up even more by refusing to allow themselves to perceive how badly PP has behaved.”
I am not unthinking supporter and I’m not pig headed. I am simply not horrified by this particular discussion of fetal tissue (and I think tissue is the right word here. We aren’t discussing a human being.) I think it’s fine that she discussed tissue with people that she thought were potential clients over lunch while having a glass of wine. I am glad that the tissue is being used in scientific research. It seems that at most, this woman had a failure of manners. I continue to be confused by what is horrifying about the video from a pro-choice context. (I of course get why prolifers are up in arms.)
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It’s perfectly fine that you don’t find the video disturbing. But many people do. And many of them are pro-choice. Pretending that we don’t exist and that nothing special is happening is either a huge mistake on the part of Planned Parenthood or a strategy that conceals something even worse than what the video shows.
As for the video, as a college professor I’m sure you get visits from textbook reps often. I have them visit me all the time because I teach language courses. I shoe them off like the pests they are. And I can’t imagine myself or any of my colleagues going to lunch with the reps, getting drunk with them to the point that food falls out of my mouth, and reporting to them on my teaching process. The whole situation is inconceivable. My status and that of a sales rep are very different. I can’t imagine offering them apologia of my teaching practices because it’s not their place to ask me to render accounts. And I definitely don’t socialize with them.
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In the videos I’ve seen, the PP are clearly the sellers trying to hype up their product to buyers.
This raises a whole lot of unsettling questions that you brought up (which can be summed up as: are they tweaking the medical process to maximize revenue).
To not be bothered is one thing, to assume that anyone who is bothered is an anti-choice zealot is another.
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“In the videos I’ve seen, the PP are clearly the sellers trying to hype up their product to buyers.”
People, tell me, if you were to see your doctor having this kind of a dynamic with a sales rep, would you go back to that doctor? I never would because a doctor who is so servile and eager to please a sales rep is a doctor who will prescribe me all kinds of drugs and procedures that I don’t need to keep pleasing the rep.
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I’m a die-hard union supporter and think that unions do disservice to themselves and their supporters by protecting their most incompetent and corrupt members.
Will think of others.
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I agree most utterly and completely.
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The American Medical Association functionally is a union and protects its most incompetent members by refusing disclosure of doctors who have lost licenses in any state (you can lose a license in one state and still practice elsewhere) or collect an inordinate volume of malpractice lawsuits.
In doing this, the AMA adversely impacts other doctors, consumers, insurers and taxpayers.
You’re thoughts?
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I’m not very familiar with the way the AMA functions. From what you say, it does some disturbing things.
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I fully believe that gender is socially constructed and that anyone should have the freedom to determine and perform their own gender as they see fit. However, I continue to find much of (not all) transgender discourse troubling. When the rhetoric declares “not all women have vaginas,” “pregnant people–not pregnant women,” “men can have abortions too,” or “I knew I was a woman because I always liked makeup and cared about interpersonal relationships,” I think it perpetuates social and political barriers that limit women.
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Hear, hear! I agree completely. I detest transphobia but I equally detest an attempt to define all women as possessing some immutable essence.
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I’m basically a live and let live kind of person but many trans advocates seem to want everyone to accept that a particular cultural idea of gender roles is genetically* determined which is just too weird to take seriously.
*genetics, it’s what post religious people have instead of god!
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“genetics, it’s what post religious people have instead of god!”
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