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Torture Follow-up

Here I argued that torture does not work for intelligence gathering, basically just recapitulating a large section from Darius Rejali's excellent book Torture and Democracy . I think it gets the point across fairly well, but reading it again I think I could have done a better job framing the argument. The argument isn't that torture never results in a prisoner divulging true information — that clearly does happen on occasion. Rather, the argument is that torture is worse than traditional interrogation and investigation techniques. (As Josiah Neeley noted on Twitter, even a Magic 8-Ball will give you "correct" information through mere chance on occasion.) Torture apologists make grandiose claims about its effectiveness, arguing that it is far more reliable than traditional techniques. Torture is a great and terrible evil, so if it can be shown that it is even simply equal to non-coercive techniques, that obviously implies its use is absolutely inexcusable under a

Winter Soldier and Fascism in Modern Superhero Movies

This is a pretty devastating indictment: The implicit support of Bush-era security policy is, to my mind, the biggest political problem with modern superhero treatments. As Olson says, the logical conclusion behind most of these movies is that the rule of law and democratic oversight are luxuries we cannot afford if terrorist attacks get bad enough. Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier  (I just caught this the other day) gets closest to why this is wrong, but doesn't quite grasp it. It's interesting both because it illuminates pretty starkly why the proto-fascism of the Yoo/Addington legal doctrine (that the president has no restrictions whatsoever on the use of force, and may kill, kidnap or torture whomever he wants) is so monstrous, and because the last-minute hesitation at closing the case weakened the movie considerably. So (spoiler warning), here's the basic plot outline. Captain America and Black Widow work for SHIELD, a government agency. It turns out this

Where Can Rockstar Go After GTA V? Reconstruction

Here's something astonishing: Grand Theft Auto V has sold more than 34 million copies . That amounts to something like $2 billion in revenue . (For a point of contrast, that's a third again as much as The Avengers  took in.) Late as usual, I played through it a couple weeks ago. Was it any good? My standard these days for a good game is one that holds my attention enough that I can finish the damn thing, so I basically agree with Carolyn Petit that it was "politically muddled and profoundly misogynistic" but still quite good overall. The world-building in particular was spectacularly deep, and the set-piece heist missions featured splendid design. My main problem with the title, aside from the sexism problems that Petit outlined, is the yawning abyss between the series' continuing underdog pose, and the reality of it as a cultural and economic colossus. The first major games in the series, GTA and GTA II , had minor sales and mixed reviews.  GTA III , whic

Inflation and the Class War

Rick Santelli's unhinged rant against underwater mortgage relief in 2009 (see above) marked not just the birth of the Tea Party, but also the turn of the American monied class: from desperately accepting gigantic piles of free government money towards frantically mobilizing to prevent anyone but themselves from getting the same treatment. Through a tsunami of political donations, and a slew of lavishly funded think tanks and foundations, they demanded austerity in the teeth of the worst economic collapse in 80 years, especially cuts to social insurance. They destroyed any chance at mortgage relief for ordinary people. And perhaps least appreciated, they have constantly demanded hard money policy. So over the last several years, one question has been persistently nagging one percenter analysts: is this behavior stupid or evil? That is to say, are the rich just slickered by very poor economic advice (like that dispensed by Santelli, who would have lost you a ton of money ov

The Bizarre Bankshot Feminism of Tomb Raider

Tomb Raider is one of the weirdest games I have ever experienced. The story is hackneyed, predictable, and irritating. Despite having a female protagonist, it has serious issues with sexism. The violence, particularly that directed at Lara herself, is gratuitous and at times smacks of misogynist sadism. And yet, despite all that -- indeed, partly because of those problems, it is one of the most compelling games I've played. One which, for me at least, ended up in a surprisingly pro-woman place. The game is so dichotomous it could have almost been made by two different companies. There is the Lara of the traditional videogame story moments -- the cutscenes, spoken dialogue, and quick time events. This Lara is largely helpless and repeatedly subject to shocking violence. A very early cutscene shows her being stabbed through the midriff with a filthy stick. The QTEs are infrequent and have fairly finicky timing, so I failed nearly every one repeatedly, thus having to watch Lara be

Neal Stephenson on the Miracle of the Human Body

"The room contains a few dozen living human bodies, each one a big sack of guts and fluids so highly compressed that it will squirt for a few yards when pierced. Each one is built around an armature of 206 bones connected to each other by notoriously fault-prone joints that are given to obnoxious creaking, grinding, and popping noises when they are in other than pristine condition. This structure is draped with throbbing steak, inflated with clenching air sacks, and pierced by a Gordian sewer filled with burbling acid and compressed gas and asquirt with vile enzymes and solvents produced by the many dark, gamy nuggets of genetically programmed meat strung along its length. Slugs of dissolving food are forced down this sloppy labyrinth by serialized convulsions, decaying into gas, liquid, and solid matter which must all be regularly vented to the outside world lest the owner go toxic and drop dead. Spherical, gel-packed cameras swivel in mucus-greased ball joints. Infinite phalanxe

John Rawls and Race

I stumbled across this and thought it was wildly tendentious. Was Rawls really utterly unaware of the basic facts of American history? But then I watched this, and it has a much more extensive, much more convincing discussion of Rawls, traditional political liberalism, and race; and trying to adapt the Rawlsian framework to include racial justice. Very, very good: I reckon Mills just wanted to include that Chris Rock bit.

The War Crimes of the Bush Regime

Damon Linker : "No, Condoleeza Rice is not a war criminal." They mean that leading members of the Bush administration are war criminals in the precise legal sense that they violated the imposing body of rules and regulations that have grown out of the post–World War II Nuremberg Trials and Geneva Conventions. These rules are known as "international law." There's a reason I placed the term in quote marks — because I think it's inaccurate to describe these rules and regulations as laws. They are, strictly speaking, bilateral and multilateral treaties between and among governments. Laws, by contrast, are written, enacted, and executed by governments, and they apply exclusively to those residing within territorially defined political communities (be they city-states, nations, or empires). Citizens of liberal democracies hold, moreover, that laws gain legitimacy — and become binding — only with the consent of the governed. And that standard is (tacitly) met

Towards Redneck Socialism

We are now nearly six years out from worst crisis of capitalism in 80 years. That crisis, and subsequent lack of recovery, is an ongoing confirmation of the Left’s critique of unrestrained capitalism: that it is prone to crisis, that most of its benefits accrue to a tiny minority, and that it undermines democracy, the rule of law, and the social cohesion on which a decent society depends. Yet the Left’s response, almost across the world, has been weak and ineffectual. Mike Konczal put it fairly well : “leftists continue to seem lost, unable to turn the middle of the plate pitch of a global financial crisis to their advantage.” I think this is due, in part, to what has become the default mode of leftist cultural operation. Leftists (by which I mean, broadly speaking, people to the left of mainstream liberals) have scored some tremendous victories by shaming prejudice: the fact that there is now gay marriage in Utah ought to be proof enough of that. But I think this style of oper

"Civility," Rhetoric, and Argumentative Tactics

Matt Bruenig has been in a bit of a spat of late with some right-leaning commentators, who took extreme exception to the way he described Megan McArdle's personal life in this post (in quite a similar fashion to others who were enraged when he gave David Brooks and Ezra Klein the same treatment). I don't have anything much to say on the merits of his actual argument (see careful explanations here and here ), which I find totally convincing. I think he is completely correct in diagnosing enormous class prejudice throughout the elite media and in his contention that calls for "civility" in these instances are always deployed against people saying rude things about rich, powerful people and never against rich, powerful people saying equally rude (and bogus) things about poor people. There is perhaps something to say about rhetoric and tactics. Bruenig's profile has reached boost phase in the lefty political sphere because of his extraordinarily sharp analysi

Comparing the 2007 and 2014 IPCC WGII Summaries for Policymakers

This is a question of of tone and confidence. Which report provides a more stark view of the dangers of climate change? (I'm comparing the summaries since that's the only part the vast majority of people will read, and therefore is a good view on what the IPCC Working Group II wanted to emphasize.) On current effects of climate change: 2007 : With regard to changes in snow, ice and frozen ground (including permafrost), there is high confidence that natural systems are affected... Based on growing evidence, there is high confidence that the following effects on hydrological systems are occurring: increased runoff and earlier spring peak discharge in many glacier- and snow-fed rivers [1.3];  warming of lakes and rivers in many regions, with effects on thermal structure and water quality There is very high confidence, based on more evidence from a wider range of species, that recent warming is strongly affecting terrestrial biological systems... Based on sa

Dust storm

It's snowing again in DC apparently, but in the old hometown there's a hell of a dust storm going. Update, about an hour later:

Matt Yglesias on Hippie-Punching Before and During the Iraq War

"Driving the ineffectual liberal response was the continuing near-pathological obsession with the far left, the sentiment that in a moment of national crisis the most important task facing liberalism was not to combat the errors of in-power conservatism but those of the hopelessly marginal left, who became the primary target of their rhetoric. In some cases, it seems reasonably clear that simple loathing of left-wing antiwar activists pushed liberal intellectuals into support of the Iraq War. But even many mainstream writers and pundits who would eventually reject the war contributed to the problem in the early postattack months, in effect firing in the wrong direction for so long that they wound up outnumbered and outgunned when they finally switched targets." --  Heads in the Sand

Good Grief

Three days to spring and this is the view off my back porch.

Piketty and Pop Culture

This piece was a little bit tongue-in-cheek: The French economist Thomas Piketty has a new book coming out soon, Capital in the 21st Century . It is a great work, a fearsome beast of analysis stuffed with an awesome amount of empirical data, and will surely be a landmark study in economics. It also references The Aristocats , a 1970 animated Disney film about some upper-class cats who stand to inherit a fortune. But there's actually kind of a genius technique there. Piketty uses pop culture references throughout the book (and not just Disney films, mind, but also Balzac and Austen) to show how the logic the economic system percolates down through a society. Austen's day was a time of extreme rentist inequality, so in her books the whole of upper-class life revolves around securing a big enough fortune to live "comfortably" on the interest (i.e., with 20-50 times the average income), because even profession work (like being a lawyer) didn't account for nearly so

Yikes

Been quite some time since I've had the gumption to post anything here. But here are some scattershot updates from here and there. It's hard to bother with this place when pretty much every idea I have gets sucked up by other first. But anyway, first, here's a piece in TNR about Mike Lee . Second, here's something about progressives and tax cuts . I'm particularly proud I managed to get "It’s the center we’d have to worry about most, actually — blowing up the deficit with such a proposal would send Washington’s Very Serious People into spasms of murder frenzy." into that second one. Third, some big news: I've got a new job! I'm going to be starting as a National Correspondent (read: daily blogger) for TheWeek.com, starting a week from tomorrow. Huzzah! In seriousness, it's been great working here at the Monthly , and I'll always be grateful for the opportunity to work here. It's no exaggeration to say I wouldn't have gotten th

Elsewhere

I wrote something for TNR (for the first time!) about how 2014 might be the year America finally ditches its fixation on austerity , and something for the Monthly about Escalate, a little town in southern Utah .