Here’s something depressing—-two of the first articles I read this morning when I was first able to read something were about the holidays and loneliness. The Salon article is okay, and it would be better without the whiff of evo psych just-so stories on it. There’s something more than a little fishy about engaging in elaborate and relatively undemonstrable fantasies about hunter-gatherer ancestors and how they must have felt about being alone. The truth is that the evidence that we’re social animals is right in front of us—-no matter what society you’re talking about and no matter how they’re organized, ejection from it into the wilderness would mean certain death for the majority of people. This is true of hunter-gatherers, medieval people, and modern people. The “other people or die” theory doesn’t do shit to explain why some people feel lonely while surrounded by others. What saves the story from being trite is that the author gets another opinion besides the evo psychologist one on the nature of loneliness, and talks to another author who suggests that our society breeds distance between people, and loneliness with all its attendant health problems is the result. This makes more sense to me, and our bitter, grudge match political culture that encourages people to hate and fear their neighbors isn’t improving the situation. That’s why I hate the mandatory “bash the internet” part of these stories (get off your computer and see people, they preach), because before the internet, the opportunities to relieve loneliness were even worse. Go out and meet people, sure. But who and when and why? Internet communities are increasingly giving people an opportunity to develop real communities. Meeting your romantic partner online has gone from being sort of weird to more common than not.
Then there was this article in the LA Times about how psychologists are rethinking nostalgia. It used to be considered a wholly terrible emotion, but now they’re beginning to suspect that it’s a coping mechanism for loneliness that can hold some people back from the brink of depression. And that’s a depressing thought in itself, but as someone who thinks about these things politically, I’m more than a little alarmed at what this could mean. The problem with nostalgia is that it’s inherently rose-colored glasses. Whenever I feel nostalgia creeping in, I remember that there was usually a giant sucky part of life in those times, and that going back would actually suck, even if there were some good points. But someone really swamped by loneliness or depression who uses nostalgia as a coping mechanism might be allowing the sentimentality to completely take over. This has the potential to go way past taking a break to watch a childhood favorite and check out for a couple of hours, and right into living your life around fantasies constructed to relieve loneliness.
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It’s been implied that men need to have appropriate and convincing penis-centric reasons for voting for Obama (and for fearing a McCain presidency), so how about not getting our penises shot off in a series of foreign lands?
[McCain] wasn’t just worried by North Korea’s nuclear program in 1994, he called it “the most dangerous and immediate expression” of “the greatest challenge to U.S. security and world stability today.” He didn’t just favor military action over Kosovo, he wanted “infantry and armored divisions for a possible ground war” thrown into the mix as part of “an immediate and manifold increase in the violence against Serbia proper and Serbian forces in Kosovo.” But he also thinks that Islamic radicalism is “the transcendent issue of our time” and also that the standoff with Russia is the first “serious crisis internationally” since the end of the Cold War, since Russia is aiming “to restore the old Russian Empire.”
As Max Bergmann (yay! another guy!) says:
The big concern with a McCain presidency – a concern which I am surprised has not been vocalized more fully – is that the U.S. will lurch from crisis to crisis, confrontation to confrontation, whether it be with Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria, Saudi Arabia, etc. The danger is that McCain’s pundit-like rhetoric will entrap the U.S. in descending spiral of foreign policy brinksmanship. Just think about the very likely scenario of McCain giving Iran/Russia a rhetorical ultimatum and Iran/Russia ignoring it. Now we are stuck - either we lose face by not following through on our threats or we follow through and go to war. We can’t afford such a reckless approach after the last eight years. For the next eight we need a president not a pundit.
And the truth is McCain is the real empty suit in this race, from the suicidal (and practically nonsensical) foreign policy approach to the POW lunacy to the flip-flop on Roe v. Wade. It doesn’t take genitals of any sort to see that he’s a dangerously bad choice.
Atrios tosses out something of a challenge.
I’ve long been somewhat puzzled by the widespread belief in the inevitability of worldview-affirming apocalyptic scenarios. Obviously you come across everything on the internets, but there are plenty of people across the political spectrum who are quite convinced that [insert apocalyptic scenario here] is inevitable. It’s weird.
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From Photoshop Disasters
* Iran’s military is so inept they have to Photoshop their missile tests, which just proves what a clear and present danger they are to the United States.
I will accept Obama’s cave-in on FISA if, the next time I commit several major felonies all in a row towards no discernible productive result, I can just say he asked me to do it and get off scott free. Deal?
I blogged about the Transportation Security Administration’s invasive screening devices back in 2006, but they are in the news again because the technology is being deployed in even more airports.
The booths close around the passenger and emit “millimeter waves” that go through cloth to identify metal, plastics, ceramics, chemical materials and explosives, according to the TSA.
While it allows the security screeners—looking at the images in a separate room—to clearly see the passenger’s sexual organs as well as other details of their bodies, the passenger’s face is blurred, TSA said in a statement on its website. The scan only takes seconds and is to replace the physical pat-downs of people that is currently widespread in airports.
...The installation is picking up this month, with machines in place or planned for airports in Washington (Reagan National and Baltimore-Washington International), Dallas, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, Miami and Detroit.
...The ACLU said in a statement that passengers expecting privacy underneath their clothing “should not be required to display highly personal details of their bodies such as evidence of mastectomies, colostomy appliances, penile implants, catheter tubes and the size of their breasts or genitals as a pre-requisite to boarding a plane.”
Richard at All Spin Zone:
I’m sure that every one of the TSA security screeners at any given airport are dedicated, highly trained individuals. But I’ve seen some pretty creepy dudes (and dudettes) manning the checkpoints. There is no way - no way - that I want one of these folks randomly pulling me out of a line and checking out my, errrr, details. But I’m just a middle aged man, not remarkable in my appearance, so I wouldn’t expect to be pulled out of line to satisfy some pornophile security screener’s prurient curiosity.
But I can see it happening to a young, buxom woman. Or a strapping, physically ripped gentleman. And I can already hear the stories being told in the TSA screener breakroom.
~~~~~The following note was added by one of the Blend’s contributors, Autumn Sandeen:~~~~~
These scanners mentioned above are real concerns for traveling male-to-female, pre-operative/non-operative transsexuals due in large part to a variation of the perpetrator discussion we’ve been having at PHB related to public restrooms.
Law enforcement officers are trained to look for things that are unusual and out of the ordinary—when transgender people’s outward appearance doesn’t match the genitalia that’s visible on a scanner screen, that will be out of the ordinary. Going back to September 04, 2003’s DHS Advisory to Security Personnel:
Previous attacks underscore Al-Qaeda’s ability to employ suicide bombers - a tactic which can be used against soft targets and VIP’s. Terrorists will employ novel methods to artfully conceal suicide devices. Male bombers may dress as females in order to discourage scrutiny.
Male-to-female transgender people, under that model, are presumed to be perpetrators...terrorists. Given the perpetrator presupposition of the DHS’s unrescinded memorandum, I know I’d be very concerned about having a genitalia related, airport backroom talk with government agents.
