War Handwavium

Vocabulary can be interesting.

I don’t like the term “privilege” first and foremost because a privilege in every other context of how its used means some right that can be taken away, and as an example, white drivers not getting stopped by a racist cop is not a “privilege” that should be taken away. Rather, racist cops should be weeded out of the police force so that black drivers don’t get racially profiled by cops.

The term “mansplaining” is another term that gets misused quite a bit, but in a different way. Mansplaining would be useful to point to men who dismiss a woman’s comment simply because she’s a woman and with complete disregard to whether her facts are right or wrong. If a woman suggests an idea to save the company a million dollars and her idea is dismissed and poo-poo-ed, and then soon after a man makes the same suggestion and the idea is embraced, it’s safe to say that “mansplaining” was used to dismiss her idea.

But I see it used quite a bit where the meaning conveyed is essentially, ‘you don’t get to tell me I’m wrong, even if I am wrong.”

A perfect real world example of that happened over here:

Magda attacked bruce’s comment

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/05/06/back-from-the-rt-booklovers-convention/#comment-471755

I believed she was misinterpreting his comment and gave my interpretation
of it. Magda said my interpretation was playing fast and loose with
language and said she’ll stick with her interpretation:

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/05/06/back-from-the-rt-booklovers-convention/#comment-471785

For suggesting that Magda’s interpretation might be wrong and giving my
reasons why, I was told that I was “mansplaining” to women

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/05/06/back-from-the-rt-booklovers-convention/#comment-471860

And I was told I had talked down to women and I was no different than
calling women “little lady”

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/05/06/back-from-the-rt-booklovers-convention/#comment-471884

and somehow I had also “mansplained” to men:

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/05/06/back-from-the-rt-booklovers-convention/#comment-471935

but along the way, a funny thing happened.

Magda apologized to bruce acknowledging that she had misinterpreted his comment:

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/05/06/back-from-the-rt-booklovers-convention/#comment-471930

Pointing out that Magda had misinterpreted bruce’s comment was mansplaining, being condescending, no different than calling her “little lady”, and so on.

And yet, later on, Magda in fact admitted she had misinterpreted bruce’s comment.

At which point, this seems to be a perfectly clear example of how “mansplaining” was used in such a way as to mean ‘no one gets to tell me I’m wrong, even when I am.’

From a recent conversation about what it would be like for a Straight White Male to move to a place where he didn’t have any privilege:

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/04/24/the-lowest-difficulty-setting-as-teaching-tool/#comment-468653

if you live somewhere your SWM privilege doesn’t exist you would be less likely to be promoted over a woman or minority as compared to IRL. … As an actor, you’d be less likely to receive the higher paying roles if they were equally open to women and minorities. If you’re a writer writing in SF, you’d have a lesser chance of being published if men and women were equally represented. What this means in terms of real life is that there’d be a greater chance you would lose out on the opportunities you enjoy now as a result of privilege. That is power and that is a meaningful difference.

And what jumped out at me was just how much the conversation about “privilege” frames the issues of equality as a zero-sum-game. In this frame, for women to gain any victory in gender equality, all men have to lose some power. To gain any victory in racial equality, all whites have to lose power. To gain any victory in GLBT equality, all straights have to lose power.

These were comments in a recent discussion about privilege, but they propagate a framing that goes all the way back to Peggy McIntosh’s original paper about privilege, “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”. McIntosh frames all advances in equality as if it were an equation of power, of Newtonian mechanics. For every action there must be an equal and opposite reaction.

http://www.nymbp.org/reference/WhitePrivilege.pdf

McIntosh starts out portraying women’s studies as asking men to give up some of their power so women can have it instead:

we in Women’s Studies work to reveal male privilege and ask men to give up some of their power

She talks about men’s advantages as coming directly from women’s disadantages:

advantages, which men gain from women’s disadvantages

I think there are many, many issues of discrimination where equality can be gained without anyone having to lose something. A simple, present day example is gay marriage. For gays to gain the power of gay marriage, straight people do not have to lose any power whatsoever. For blacks to gain a victory in the area of ending racial profiling by cops, white people have nothing to lose. An example of the contrary disproves the framing.

Therefore, equality is NOT a zero-sum-game.

But McIntosh introduces the idea of “privilege” and frames the entire conversation in terms of a zero-sum-game. And that framing is brought to every conversation about privilege even now.

So why frame equality in terms of a zero-sum-game? What advantage is there to invoke this framing if the framing is inaccurate? What’s the payoff? Well, “guilt” might be one payoff. I gain nothing from a racist cop pulling over a black driver, so most people will not associate me with being culpable for that racism. But if I get $100 every time a racist cop pulls over a black man? Suddenly, I have motive.

In a criminal trial, the prosecution must show the accused had means, motive, and opportunity before guilt can be determined. In cases of systemic discrimination, the means and opportunity are easy. Someone else does the discrimination and I do nothing. But motive? To enact gay marriage across the country would force me to sacrifice nothing. There is no payoff for me to oppose gay marriage. I get nothing out of gays being denied the right to marry. Therefore, I have no motive to deny gays the right to marry.

But if the problem is reframed from an issue of “discrimination” to an issue of “privilege”, if the issue is reframed such that there is always something the majority has to sacrifice in order for the minority to gain equality, then that automatically assumes a payoff for discrimination, it automatically creates motive, it automatically creates an air of guilt.

Even if I don’t actively discriminate against people, if I get some kind of payoff from other people committing discrimination, then I have motive, and my inaction to oppose the discrimination that benefits me become the means and method.

When I started to see how much the “privilege” conversation wants to misrepresent equality and reframe all issues of discrimination into the idea of a zero-sum-game, at first, I couldn’t understand why. Why would anyone so horrendously misrepresent reality? Why would anyone say equality is a zero-sum-game when there are many examples of large scale equality that could be achieved with no one sacrificing anything? If gay marriage could be achieved with no sacrifice from straight people, why would people misrepresent that into a zero-sum-game? Why would people take something that would cost nothing and present it as if it requires sacrifice?

And the answer seems obvious once you look at it: framing equality as a zero-sum-game renders inaction into guilt.

If a white person gains something from a racist cop pulling over a black driver (say a hundred dollar bill), then if that white person does nothing to stop racial profiling by police, his inaction renders him guilty of complicity. He is allowing racial profiling because he is getting a payoff. Never mind that the payoff doesn’t exist as anything but smoke and mirrors.

If I were suffering from some form of discrimination, and I saw a swath of the population indifferent to my problem, I might attempt to reframe their inaction into proof of their complicity of my disadvantage. If they do nothing, they become part of the problem, they become active participants in the discrimination. At which point, the only way they can demonstrate their innocence is by actively opposing the discrimination and doing whatever possible to appear to surrender any benefit they might have gotten from my disadvantage.

By framing equality as a zero-sum-game, anyone in the majority group automatically has motive for discrimination to continue, and if they do nothing, they can be portrayed as encouraging the discrimination for the personal benefit it generates for them. And therefore the only way they can attempt to avoid appearance of guilt is to vigorously and actively oppose the discrimination.

By reframing the issue of discrimination into something it is not, by reframing it into a zero-sum-game, every person in the majority group is forced to either actively oppose the discrimination or do nothing and be guilty of allowing the discrimination to continue because it gives them some personal benefit.

The payoff of reframing discrimination as a zero sum game is it drafts the inactive members of the majority to oppose the discrimination.

This would seem a noble cause, and one could attempt to argue that the ends justify the means, that equality justifies reframing the issue into something it isn’t.

Except that the reframing has a major negative side effect: it reframes all progress in equality to be operating in scarcity, it requires that all advances in equality require sacrifices, it polarizes a group because of an untruth, and it creates an antagonistic relationship between the minority group and all members of the majority group.

A short version of this conversation:

http://www.warhw.com/2013/01/26/gun-conversation/

Me: I think we should firearms with removable magazines to be regulated the same as a machine gun. The 1934 National Firearms Act regulates machines guns and certain other types of weapons. Civilians can purchase a machine gun, but the person must submit a photograph and fingerprints for a background check, must get the approval of the local police chief, must pay a $200 transfer tax, and must provide the serial number, etc, to register the weapon. Since the NFA regulated machines in 1934, only 2 legally owned machine guns have been used in homicides. Regulating firearms with removable magazines in a similar manner would still allow law abiding citizens to have assault rifles, would help reduce crimes committed with such weapons as the flow of assault rifles becomes regulated making it harder for legally owned guns to end up in the hands of criminals. The cost benefit analysis would look like this:

Me: Firearms with removable magazines would be reclassified the same as machine guns. Hunters mostly use non-removable magazines, therefore they would be unaffected. People who want a handgun for self defense can use a revolver. If you really, really have to have a firearm with a removable magazine, then you can get a Class 3 Federal Firearms License and get the weapon you really, really, have to have.

Them: But guns should be freely available.

Me: There are more than 100,000 machine guns legally owned by civilians right now. How much more freely available do you need?

Them: But why would you want to regulate all semi-automatic weapons as if they were machine guns?

Me: Not all semi automatic weapons, just weapons with removable magazines. Revolvers and long guns with fixed, non-removable magazines (most hunting rifles and shotguns) wouldn’t be affected.

Them: But having a removable magazine isn’t the same as being a machine gun.

Me: Meh. The US M16 rifle has been the standard miltary issue for the last 50 years. During the Vietnam war, the standard issue magazine was 20 rounds. The magazine was later expanded to 40 rounds. Early versions of the M16 were full auto. Later versions didn’t have full-auto and instead only supported a 3-round burst mode. So, even the US military acknowledges by design that the killing capacity of their standard issue infantry weapon doesn’t come from being fully automatic, but rather from having large capacity, quickly reloadable, magazines.

Them: Getting firearms with removable magazines out of the hands of psychopaths won’t change anything.

Me: It would have changed the 2011 Tuscon shooting, Jared Lee Loughner had a Glock with a 33 round magazine. Loughner killed 6 and wounded 13 people, and then he stopped to reload, and was tackled and disarmed. If he only had access to a 6 shot revolver, which is also harder to reload, then he could have been stopped earlier.

Them: But if someone in the crowd had a gun, they could have shot Loughner and stopped him.

Me: According to reports, Joe Zamudio was armed and in a nearby coffee shop when the shooting started. He came out, grabbed a man with a pistol, threw him against the wall, and was close to shooting him, when he realized he had the wrong guy. Loughner had already been tackled and someone took the gun away from him. That was who Zamudio threw against the wall.

Them: But if someone had been closer, they might have been able to stop Loughner.

Me: Yes, and they could do that with a revolver.

Them: But they might need more than 6 shots!

Me: That means this person fired 20 or 30 rounds into a crowd at Loughner and missed. Not exactly an improvement of the situation.

Them: You’re not taking everything into account. The second ammendment says my right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Me: It says “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state….” You completely ignore the part that says REGULATED.

Them: I need to be able to defend myself against future, possible, hypothetical tyranny from my own government, and I need to be able to resist that tyranny by having the firepower to launch an armed insurrection against my own government. The cost/benefit analysis should look like this:

Me: uhm….

Them: Clearly the scale tips in favor of no regulation of guns.

Me: So… right now, 10,000 people are murdered every year by guns. People are killed in mass shootings on a regular basis. How many people would have to die before you’d be willing to consider regulating weapons with removable magazines?

Them: You don’t understand the power of my paranoia. It doesn’t matter how many real people die every year from real guns, my paranoid delusions can always manufacture an even more terrible worse-case scenario where the American government sends in the military and kills even more poeople than are murdered by your criminals.

Me: So, if 50,000 people were murdered by guns every year?

Them: That would still be outweighed by my theoretical, hypothetical, paranoid delusion involving the US government sending the military into New York city and killing everyone who lives there. That would be a hypothetical, theoretical, death toll of millions. How can the real deaths of a few thousand outweigh the theoretical, hypothetical deaths of millions of people?

Me: Why would the government even do that?

Them: That doesn’t matter. What matters is I can imagine it, therefore the second ammendment says I am allowed to defend against it.

Me: I’m pretty sure the second ammendment doesnt work that way.

Them: Nuh huh! It totally does. If I can imagine a scenario of government totalitarianism, and the only way to resist that is that I have a fifty caliber, belt-fed, machine gun, then the second ammendment says I get to have a fifty-caliber, belt-fed, machine gun.

Me: Well, you can have a fifty-caliber, belt-fed, machine gun right now if you file paperwork with the BATF. You can find machine guns for sale on Google, for cripes sake. I’m just shifting some weapons into the same category as machine guns. They’re not outlawed. They just require more paperwork.

Them: No, see, my worst case, hypothetical, paranoid delusion, also includes the sub-plot that registering guns is the governments first step in figuring out who goes into the gas chambers first. In fact, any attempt to regulate guns only reinforces my belief that my paranoid delusions are coming true. Why else would you want to regulate guns but to know where I live so you can round me up and put me in a gas chamber?

Me: Because 10,000 real people are murdered every year by guns and regulations can reduce that death toll?

Them: Bah! That’s one place where your math is wrong. Clearly a million potential hypothetical deaths generated from my paranoid delusions are more important than 10,000 real murders every year. Another place your math is wrong is thinking that getting assault rifles out of the hands of psychopaths would make any difference whatsoever. Psychopaths would just get a sack full of revolvers. And they would create just as much carnage.

Me: Wait. If a sackful of revolvers is just as deadly as an AR15, then why not let us regulate weapons like AR15′s and you could buy yourself a sackful of revolvers. If they’re exactly the same, you should be able to resist tyranny with a sackful of revolvers as easily as an AR15.

Them: …

Me: Unless you know an AR15 is more deadly than a sackful of revolvers, but now you’re just lying to try and get your way.

Them: …. Fuck.

Those things are DANGEROUS!

What could possibly go wrong?

I think I’ve had this conversation more than once:

Discuss

opening doors for others.

Bob opens a door for Alice. Can we consider this to be a good deed of the likes of a Boy Scout helping a little old lady cross the street? Can we tell by actions alone? If our magic mind reader machine indicates that Bob is opening the door for Alice because Alice is a woman, does the good deed suddenly become evil? Does intention alter the deed? If our magic mind reader machine is on the fritz (and mine’s been in the shop for years), then how will we ever know good door openers from evil ones?

Is the evilness of an act defined by intent alone? If someone does the right thing for all the wrong reasons, is the deed an evil deed? Or is the evilness of an act defined solely by the objective, negative effects of an act? If there are no objective negative effects, only positive objective effects, but the thoughts behind the deed are pure evil, is the act evil or good?

Hello there!

Are you pro-life?

Do you think the sovereignty of a pregnant woman should be violated to force that woman to carry her pregnancy to term and deliver the baby even if its against her will? Do you believe the mother should be required to sacrifice her body, 9 months of pregnancy, a lifetime of being the mother to this child, the costs of medical care, the costs of raising this child, because the life of the child is more important than the non-lethal sacrifice you’re forcing the mother to make? Do you think the life of the baby is important enough that the mother should be forced by the State to sacrifice part of herself to deliver that baby?

In short, are you Pro-Life? Do you think abortion should be outlawed?

Yes?

Then read on! Because if you’re pro-life, then there are a lot more lives out there that can be saved by forced government intervention, and you could help make that happen! You could help save those lives too!

20 people die every day waiting for an organ transplant. That’s 7300 people every year. 12 people die every day specifically waiting for kidney transplants. You might be a compatible donor. Your kidney might save the life of someone you’ve never even met. If you think the State should be able to force mothers to sacrifice their bodies to save the life of their unborn, then why not support the State forcing EVERYONE to sacrifice parts of their bodies to save the lives of other people? Think of all the lives you’ll be saving!

The proposed bill is HR-7300 “Friendly Organ Removal, Citizen Exchange” otherwise known as the FORCE bill.

The bill creates a nationwide potential donor list. All American citizens will be required to submit blood samples for testing. Any American citizen needing an organ can have their doctor scan the list of potential donors, and if the list indicates a match, the matching donor will be required to submit themselves to the hospital of their choice for organ removal. Donors will be required to pay for the surgical procedures and followup care they will be needing for their part of the transplant.

By supporting this legislation, you will save the lives of thousands of people every year merely by FORCING individuals to donate a kidney, part of their liver, or perhaps a bit of their lung, to a citizen who needs it. It is a sacrifice being forced on the donor, to be sure, but the life of a citizen being saved far outweighs the smaller sacrifice of the person donating their organ, so it only makes sense that the State enforce this sacrifice by law.

Support Pro-Life! Support the State to FORCE people to sacrifice their bodies to save the lives of others! Call your representatives and tell them you support HR-7300 “FORCE” today!