Combat! - Page 120 of 406 - A blog by Dan Brooks

College students not prepared to think about Israel, apparently

By Dan Brooks in Epistemology May 11, 2015 2 Comments

A campus protest against Israeli checkpoints in occupied Palestine

I defy you to find the original in his published work, but Howard Zinn famously paraphrased Camus as saying that in history, “it is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.” Certainly, this principle has guided academia. Virtually all of the humanities are taught within the framework of historical injustices. We decry the liberal arts major for not knowing much, but he knows about oppression and the system of values it determines. He knows not to be on the side of the executioners. But what happens when two historically oppressed groups come into conflict? One becomes an executioner, and the other suffers oppression of the same kind as latinos in the United States. So runs the logic of the campus debate on divestment from Israel, which the Times reports is breaking the historic coalition between Jews and other minorities.

Friday links! Formal expectations edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links May 8, 2015 0 Comment

If I see a bicycle and a ramp on my computer screen, I know someone is going to get hurt. Certain forms create their own expectations, and the internet video is one of them. So is the school board meeting, the science fiction book, the episode of MTV Cribs. But what about more organic forms, like the parent-child relationship of the presidential campaign? Once you start thinking this way, anything can be a form, and events within them take on a strangely concocted quality, as they shift from the realm of ontology to aesthetics. Not Combat! blog, though—we will never succumb to formal expectations. Today is Friday, and it’s hard to realize what you’re doing from the inside. Won’t you satisfy the conventions of the form with me?

Conservatives score last, Pyrrhic victory in MT House

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized May 7, 2015 0 Comment

Rep. Art Wittich (R-Belgrade) would miss you, were he not such a good shot.

Rep. Art Wittich (R-Belgrade) would miss you, too, were he not such a good shot.

The Montana legislature adjourned its 2015 session last week, three days ahead of schedule. The last joyous spectacle out of Helena was the repeated failure of HB 416, an infrastructure bill that enjoyed bipartisan support but needed 67 votes to pass because it involved bonding. House conservatives shut that one down with a quickness, not so much because they hate sewer and road repairs but because they wanted to finally stop something. As Art Wittich put it to the Billings Gazette:

“Frankly, from a conservative standpoint, it may be the only thing we did in this session. We have virtually lost everything that we came here to accomplish, including truly compromised legislation.”

He was right, finally. Conservatives in Helena started the session with immense power, and they squandered it by systematically opposing compromise within their own faction and from without—much as I predicted. They forced moderate Republicans into a working majority with Democrats, inadvertently creating a legislature more productive and liberal than the one they despised in 2013, when they were weaker.

It’s almost as if ideology were not a substitute for governance. You can read that and other crazy theories in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent, which reaches Combat! blog late today because I spent the morning letting strangers inspect my testicles. We’re still very sick, but it’s not as bad as the first doctor thought. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links and test results.

FEC chief says agency can’t curb abuse

By Dan Brooks in Politics versus Government May 6, 2015 0 Comment

The Federal Election Commission

In an interview with the New York Times, FEC chairwoman Ann Ravel said that her agency would not be able to control campaign abuses in 2016. Quote:

“The likelihood of the laws being enforced is slim. I never want to give up, but I’m not under any illusions. People think the FEC is dysfunctional. It’s worse than dysfunctional.”

There are six FEC commissioners—three Republicans and three Democrats. The Times describes this people as “perpetually locked in 3 to 3 ties” along party lines, probably due to fundamental disagreements over the agency’s proper function. Democratic members believe it should investigate campaign finance abuses. Republicans believe it should, um, not. “Congress set this place up to gridlock,” said Republican commissioner Lee Goodman. “This agency is functioning as Congress intended. The democracy isn’t collapsing around us.”

Madison bans discrimination against atheists

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized May 5, 2015 0 Comment

The wrestling match between Tucker Carlson and his conscience enters round 426.

With a song in my heart and protein in my urine, I rise from my sickbed to write Combat! blog, sort of. I’m still very sick. But thanks to antibiotics, I am much less sick in the throat, albeit still pretty feverish and alarmingly sore in the kidney region. You don’t want to hear a minute dissection of my health problems, though. You want a minute dissection of Madison, Wisconsin’s decision to amend its anti-discrimination ordinance to include atheists. Or, as Fox and Friends describes it, Madison’s decision to make it illegal to discriminate against atheism. You see what they did there? Hang on—I have to throw up. Watch the video after the jump and I’ll meet you at the end.