Nazi analogies have no place in political discourse

In 1990, veteran information technology attorney Mike Godwin made the observation that "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1." This adage has become known as Godwin's Law, and it holds true. Follow any heated discussion on the web long enough and you'll find, sure enough, someone ends up calling someone a Nazi.

The Internet is generally understood to be a broadly diverse spectrum of the entirety of humankind. Unfortunately this includes on the lower end, which is sadly more populous it seems, darker elements of the human presence who clearly have no desire to be decent people. The anonymity of web, and the statistical improbability of being punched in the face by some guy you pissed off hundreds of miles away, likely contributed to this condition. It's well understood that if you're not encountering assholes on the web on a regular basis, you probably forgot to pay your DSL bill.

Outside the web it used to be different. Television and radio talk show hosts seemed to have higher standards. Sure, every now and then a fringie might have blurted out a Nazi comparison in an interview, but the host would quickly cut them off and, rightly, label them as a loon. They certainly never encouraged that sort of thing, nor promoted it as they seem to be doing now.

As Leonard Pitts Jr. writes in an editorial published in the Detroit Free Press: "it seems obvious the Nazis have invaded American political rhetoric in a big way. As in Rush Limbaugh declaring health-care reform 'a Hitler-like policy,' swastikas popping up at protest rallies, a poster depicting Obama with Hitler's moustache and a pamphlet that says: 'Act Now to Stop Obama's Nazi Health Plan!'"

Dutifully listeners are repeating in step, Nazis, Nazis, Nazis.

So what's the big deal? It's just political rhetoric after all, a little slanting of the historical facts, a little colorization to give a speech more impact. Just words. Obama's evil anyway, right?

The big deal is that it's absurd. It's absurd and it profanes real human tragedy, the nearly 6 million people who died at the hands of real Nazis, real human ugliness.

Pitts reminds us of the real Nazis: "It was Nazis who shoved sand down a boy's throat until he died, who tossed candies to Jewish children as they sank to their deaths in a sand pit, who threw babies from a hospital window and competed to see how many of those 'little Jews' could be caught on a bayonet, who injected a cement-like fluid into women's uteruses to see what would happen, who stomped a pregnant woman to death, who once snatched a woman's baby from her arms and, in the words of a witness, 'tore him as one would tear a rag.'"

Nazi analogies have no place in political discourse because nothing in modern America compares to the above.

There are real places in the real world where human atrocities continue, where genocide is policy, where the ideology of Nazism may possibly apply, but it's not here. We don't suffer nearly enough.

Gun control laws are totally useless...

I read the following and thought, there's no amount of safety laws you can have to protect people from guns.

Glasgow, Ky, Oct. 21 -- Luther Johnson, a young farmer living in the southern
part of this county, blew into the muzzle of a shotgun early this morning to see
if it was loaded. It was.

Actual death notice published in the Louisville Courier-Journal, October 22, 1899

Web tech politics

One of the reasons I try to avoid political discussions is because, I feel, many of the national policy issues being discussed are unsolvable problems. I'm pragmatic. If a question doesn't have an answer, I move on to the next question. Am I concerned how the candidates in the upcoming 2008 Election (less than a month away as of this post) will react to the serious problems facing this country? Of course I am. I just don't know which of the policy-sets being discussed are better. They both have their benefits and drawbacks. I'm well informed on the issues and the proposed solutions, but I haven't really taken a stand. To me, neither stands out as better, they're just different.


Plus, most of the things being discussed don't directly effect the things I'm concerned about, right now, at this moment. For example, my tech interests. I'm extremely skeptical that the governing bodies and talking heads are even qualified to examine the deeply complex issues involved in making web related technology policy; I'm not even sure the role US government plays considering it's a worldwide issue. How do you even define "jurisdiction" in a global system? In any case, it seems to me that politicians can only pass laws in the abstract, applying old ideas that involve the telephone, television, radio, and print industries rather than addressing specific issues involved in something entirely new. The web, while tied to all that old stuff, has qualities that are unprecidented. I just don't think those guys in Congress entirely get it. I don't trust them not to screw it up.

Web technology doesn't get much airplay on the campaign trail. It's far too arcane for the masses to grasp, and, well, the candidates are looking to get elected by those masses. Still, the issue is of vital importance and it really should be addressed more indepth.

I try to stay out of politics because the issues I'm directly interested in are those covered by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (and sadly few others). It is my overriding political philosophy that if you keep electronic discourse open and running smoothly, all the other political issues have a better chance of actually being solved. EFF helps facilitate that as an advocacy group for digital freedoms.

As an example of how web tech plays into politics, take the domestic politics issue that does get airplay: The financial bailout of Wall Street. Here, transparency came to the forefront. Anyone with a desire to do so could pour through the actual bill that was passed and read exactly what was put into the bailout. In fact, for the first time in its history, the House of Representative's website was slowed to a crawl as millions of people logged on to read its contents. House.gov was forced to implement a digital traffic cop to handle all the requests. Massive access to unfiltered information like this was simply not available in old-school political discourse. Examining the bill right away just wasn't something any individual could do.

Web technology policies, I feel, aren't just fundamental, they're overriding in today's political landscape. We really need to put more focus on how congressional leaders are handling this.

Now, I was pleased to see that the presidential candidates did manage to take a stand on the issue of Net Neutrality. Popular Mechanics had a great article on this, and I give them props for echoing that these important issues are being overlooked in the race to the White House. Obama and McCain's stance on Net Neutrality are vastly different, and I'm not going to tell you which one to support. I will tell you that you should familiarize yourself with the issue and the candidate's positions, because however issues like Net Neutrality are finally resolved, it effects each and every one of us.

Should we be 'mad as hell'?

I don't usually post politically since I try to remain moderate, but then again we are in the middle of an election cycle. And there's some crazy stuff going on in Washington, Wall Street, and even on the streets of small-town America, what with the whole country seemingly on the verge of financial collapse. Eeek, to put it mildly. In any case, I'm not "mad as hell" like the guy in this clip, but having seen it on another website and struck by how remarkably it fits in today's climate, I decided to repost it here.



Howard Beale, from the 1976 film Network.

Should we be mad as hell?

Bill Clinton coming to Maysville Kentucky too?

With all the Clooney mania going on around town this weekend due to the premiere of George Clooney and Rene Zellwegger's new movie Leatherheads on Monday (stay tuned for updates), which already has RSVPs from Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear and former Miss America Heather French Henry, and no doubt some other VIP guests who will make a surprise appearance, I was nonetheless floored to learn that Bill Clinton will also be in town on Tuesday, campaigning for his wife Hillary! I'm confused. When the heck did we become so important? The total population of this town is less than 10,000. You can lay in the middle of Second Street on a Sunday morning for a good thirty minutes (at least) without fear of being run over. I'm not making that up either. You can totally do that. So I hope you can understand how surreal it is to see Channel 5 helicopters doing fly-bys like I did today. Too weird.

Clinton coming, that calls for a cigar : )

Happy birthday peace symbol

OK, I'm a few days late, but in my defense I didn't realize that the peace symbol was turning 50 this year! Amazing. It was designed by Gerald Holtom for the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War (DAC), in Britain, and completed February 21, 1958, in time for the Easter march planned by DAC from Trafalgar Square, London, to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston in England. Of course it later became the internationally recognized icon for the 1960s anti-war movement and the general counterculture of the time.

A bit of geeky trivia: The symbol does not represent a bird's foot as is often suggested. It's actually semaphoric signals (flag signaling) for the letters "N" and "D," standing for Nuclear Disarmament.

Semaphore 'N'

Semaphore 'D'

These two signals imposed over each other, surrounded by a circle, form the shape of the peace symbol.

Holtom later told the editor of Peace News that there was also an intent to convey dispair through the symbol. "I was in despair. Deep despair," he wrote. "I drew myself: the representative of an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya’s peasant before the firing squad. I formalised the drawing into a line and put a circle round it."

Peace out ☮

What's a liberal?

Kobe is my nephew. He's a political commentator at age eleven.

I got together with some of my family on Memorial Day to grill out at the park. They tease me about being "liberal," though I'm actually pretty moderate in my political views. I'm liberal in that I believe in spending to support the arts, but I'm conservative in that I believe in controlled spending. I like to think my opinions cancel each other out and leave me neutral, but I must admit I'm more liberal than anyone else in the family. They like to mess with me about it.

So, we're at the park and Justin (my brother) tells Kobe, "Ask Uncle Jeremy what a liberal is." Apparently he had already asked his dad before.

"Uncle Jeremy, what's a liberal?" Kobe asked.

"Well, a liberal is someone who believes in individual personal freedoms," I replied.

He looked at me a moment, and I thought he was going to ask something related. He did. It was in fact very related and straight to the point.

He said: "Uncle Jeremy, can you take out that earring? It's kind of scary. Why would a guy wear an earring?"

I couldn't think of what to say because I couldn't stop laughing. I told him that he had just earned a post on my blog. So here he is: Kobe, 11, political commentator.

The state that bleeds blue and votes red

What's a blog without a little politics? Election primaries (today) suck for registered Independents, like myself. I can't vote (no one to vote for). Local politics are all skewed anyway. Everyone around here are registered Democrats — Southern Democrat I'd imagine — but they consistently vote red, like Southern Democrats do. UK sports led to the phrase that "Kentucky bleeds blue". I joke about the conflicting politics in Kentucky when I say it's the only state that bleeds blue but votes red. I vote the colors of a sunset, and my opinions are just as varied.