Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 162

Marijuana On The Menu

by Dish Staff

Vogue’s Jeffrey Steingarten educates his readers on the finer points of cooking with cannabis. A snippet from the conclusion:

Our host, Kip, and a few of his friends greeted us. The kitchen was enviable, lacking nothing. There were even two stone mortars and two stone pestles for the cannabis. More friends drifted in for the next few hours while, using the medicated oil and butter we had brought, Pieter prepared a hundred or so savory gnocchi with rosemary, and Laurent pan-fried fresh local trout and made a sabayon for dessert. One friend of Kip’s who makes cannabis edibles for sale in Boulder, brought a tray of scrumptious medicated chocolate fudge. Kip supplied bottles of good wine. Somebody suggested that the bhang would make a lighter, more delicious substitute for eggnog at New Year’s. A few guests smoked joints. Unlike the folks in downtown Boulder, nobody recoiled from the smoke.

The 50 guests thus had a wide choice of intoxicants, and nearly everybody seemed mellow and happy and chill. Nobody fell asleep or acted out or had a bad trip. The newly legalized cannabis was simply another option.

Jon Walker puts Steingarten’s piece in context:

This is how marijuana legalization gains acceptance and goes mainstream. The more places that legalize it the more different journalists, politicians, writers, and media outlets are willing to talk about it. This in turn makes it easier for others to talk about openly, and it provides a look at legalization from a variety of perspectives. This self-feeding cycle enables the issue to move beyond a narrow political debate to the broader culture.

(Photo by Dank Depot)

Grover Gone Wild

by Dish Staff

Hey there, @GroverNorquist, it was great camping with you and sharing jokes at #BurningMan . Glad you had your clown nose handy.—
Ouchy The Clown (@ouchytheclown) September 03, 2014

It was two. RT @1101110112: BREAKING: Grover Norquist gets 70,000 signatures on no-tax pledge at Burning Man in exchange for one joint.—
Grover Norquist (@GroverNorquist) August 31, 2014

Grover Norquist doesn’t see why loving Burning Man should affect his conservative cred:

Some self-professed “progressives” whined at the thought of my attending what they believed was a ghetto for liberal hippies. Yes, there was a gentleman who skateboarded without elbow or kneepads – or any knickers whatsover. Yes, I rode in cars dressed-up as cats, bees and spiders; I watched trucks carrying pirate ships and 30 dancers. I drank absinthe. But anyone complaining about a Washington wonk like me at Burning Man is not a Burner himself: The first principle of Burning Man is “radical inclusiveness”, which pretty much rules out the nobody-here-but-us liberals “gated community” nonsense. …

You hear that Burning Man is full of less-than-fully-clad folks and off-label pharmaceuticals. But that’s like saying Bohemian Grove is about peeing on trees or that Chicago is Al Capone territory. Burning Man is cleaner and greener than a rally for solar power. It has more camaraderie and sense of community than a church social. And for a week in the desert, I witnessed more individual expression, alternative lifestyles and imaginative fashion than …. anywhere.

Kevin Roose talked to Norquist at the festival about why it’s “a natural place for free-market libertarians”:

Norquist believes Burning Man’s popularity among “high-tech, pro-growth” elites says something profound about changing attitudes toward state supervision. He also thinks the festival is wrongly caricatured as a hippie drug den.

“The expectation that there’s a cross between absentminded professors and bohemians and that’s what artists are, it’s not true,” he says. He gazes down the road at a gigantic bus that has been decorated to look like a pirate ship. “Look at the amount of work that goes into building something like that! That was not done by lazy people. That was not done by people who think the world owes them a living. Or people who say, ‘Let’s pass a law to build a boat.’”

In the long run, Norquist thinks that the high-profile regulatory struggles of tech companies like Uber and Airbnb could help the GOP attract young Silicon Valley voters if it positions itself as the innovation-friendly party.

But Denver Nicks disputes Norquist’s takeaway that Burning Man operates “on the principle of self-reliance without a lot of government intrustion and with few rules”:

H]ere Norquist’s understanding of Burning Man falls apart. You’re only really self-reliant insomuch as you bring in enough water and food (likely purified and inspected for safety by U.S. government agencies) to last for a week or so. And the government is everywhere at Burning Man, since the whole time you’re dancing or body painting or riding an enormous flame-spitting octopus or whatever in a landscape protected from spoilage by the Bureau of Land Management. And Black Rock City actually has lots of really important rules, like not dumping water on the ground and not driving. There aren’t persnickety rent-a-cops running around staking out potential litter bugs, but rules are enforced by Burning Man Rangers and more directly by the community itself through feelings like shame, withholding participation in taco night at camp or giving you a terrible “playa name” like Moophole or something.

A Story About Recognizing Yourself

by Dish Staff

Micaela Blei won a Moth StorySlam with this hilarious, heartrending story about a summer crush gone awry:

Previous storytelling on the Dish here.

The Logic Of Reverse Racism

by Dish Staff

Nicholas Hune-Brown attempts to understand it, looking to a study published earlier this year by professor Nolan Cabrera. Cabrera interviewed white male students at two large, public universities, which he calls “Southwest University” (65% white) and “Western University” (35% white):

He found that many students at WU, who were part of a diverse campus, were angry about race. WU does not practice affirmative action, yet many white students still felt that their skin colour had somehow made them victims of race-based policies at the competitive university. … The interviewees from SWU were far less aggressive when talking about race. Living in a predominantly white environment, they weren’t confronted with it. Thinking about race was a nuisance more than anything. “[It’s] just that I wish it didn’t even have to be a subject at all,” one student sighed. There was also a tendency to equate race-consciousness with racism itself. “I [grew up] in a very [racially] neutral household in that sense,” explained one student. “We didn’t really discuss race a lot, which I don’t think it necessarily should be discussed a great deal. It shouldn’t be over-emphasized because that’s what leads to racism.”

As Cabrera himself notes, the study is too small to make any broad generalizations about The State of White People Today. But studies like these are attempts to understand some of the emotions that underpin today’s systemic racism—the feeling of victimization beneath white supremacy, the way that a self-professed “colour-blindness” acts as a denial of discrimination. Because the attitude at SWU, while less outwardly angry, is in some ways more insidious. Downplaying the significance of racism—acting like the enlightened, rational one in the room while those who dwell on race are a little whiny and perhaps even racist themselves—is a remarkable [sleight] of hand. It goes a little way towards explaining why so many white Americans could possibly believe that “reverse racism” is a dangerous scourge.

Mental Health Break

by Dish Staff

Wu-Tang takes the big screen (NSFW):

No Privacy For The Dead?

by Dish Staff

In his book The Lobotomist, Jack El-Hai published the names and identifying characteristics of some of some of the deceased lobotomy patients whose medical records he uncovered in his research. He explains why he concluded that “after death, nobody’s life should be off limits to researchers”:

Here’s the remarkable thing about literature, factual or fictional: readers imagine characters in their mind’s eye and identify with subtle aspects of the characterisations. Small, specific details transform into universally felt feelings. That’s what gives great writing its power. A detail untruthfully presented changes the reader’s experience and the magical chemistry of the narrative. I steadfastly believe that the dogged adherence to fact – not to be confused with maintaining an impossible pose of objectivity – is the only way to allow nonfiction narratives to resonate with readers. …

Maybe this is why I was never interested in a medical career, but for me public interest will nearly always trump personal privacy. I agree with Allan G Bogue, former president of the Social Science History Association, who years ago sparked controversy by declaring that knowledge advances best when researchers have unrestricted access to private historical records, including medical files. ‘Open’ should be the default status of these records after the decades pass and the subjects die.

Why Do We Subsidize Mansions?

by Dish Staff

Danny Vinik wants to know:

The traditional defense of these [homeowner] tax breaks is that they promote homeownership, which has been shown to have numerous additional benefits including improved health. But there’s a big problem with this argument: these deductions don’t actually subsidize homeownership. They subsidize bigger homes and more debt instead.

Consider the mortgage interest deduction that allows homeowners to deduct their interest payments on loans up to $1 million. The larger the debt (up to $1 million), the larger the interest payments—and the more the homeowner can deduct in taxes. As Nick Bunker, a research associate at the Center for Equitable Growth, wrote Wednesday, “The deduction gets pitched as an effort to increase homeownership, but academic research finds that really it just increases the size of homes purchased.” At the Washington Post, Catherine Rampell shows how the median house size has increased over the past 40 years. It’s at a record-high, after a slight dip post-Great Recession. Homeowners are incentivized to build larger houses thanks to the mortgage-interest deduction.

I’ve Seen Israel From Both Sides Now …

by Jonah Shepp

At one point or another in my short life so far, I think I have held every position on Israel that it is possible to hold, from militant support to equally militant opposition. But this summer, I briefly reverted to the right-wing Zionism of my teenage years, at least for the purposes of Facebook. Amid the Gaza war, my feed was suddenly inundated with denunciations of the racist, fascist, Zionazi terrorist state. There wasn’t much to love in the rants about the ZOG or conspiratorial nonsense about ISIS being an Israeli-American plot, but what really got my goat were comments like this one:

Settlers can go back to anti-semitic Europe where they came from! … Every last zionist shall be kicked out and notice the emphasis on the word zionist. Jews however are welcome to stay and woreship like they have among us for the past 1500 years. (sic)

This oft-expressed distinction between Zionists and Jews betrays a total misunderstanding of what Zionism is and what Israel means to most Jews. Palestinians who say that “the Zionists” must go but “the Jews” can stay need to come to grips with the fact that Zionism, at its core, is about creating a space where Jews do not need someone else’s permission to live. Diaspora Jews of my generation may be much less attached to Israel than our parents and grandparents, but when push comes to shove, we’d rather it exist than not, because we know that our permission to live freely and safely in any other country can be withdrawn at any moment. In our history as a people, we have seen it happen time and time again with devastating consequences. With a well-armed territorial state to our name, we no longer have to fear those consequences.

There is no question that anti-Semitism is alive and well in the world, and not only in its traditional strongholds in Europe, but is world Jewry really in such great danger as to match our insecurities? More importantly, given the imbalance of power between Israel and its enemies, can we really fear that it will cease to exist? Noah Millman took up that question the other day:

I have, myself, plenty of fears for Israel, a country with which I am deeply concerned, but essentially no fear at all that Israel will “cease to exist.” I don’t even know what that phrase means – that Israel will cease to define itself affirmatively as a “Jewish state”? That Israel will merge into a larger entity, or subdivide into smaller entities? Those would be big changes, yes, but “cease to exist” is a funny phrase to use for something could happen to the UK, or Belgium, or Canada. When I listen to both of them, what I think they mean is: that the Israeli Jewish population will cease to reside there; that Jews will move, en masse, to some other place or places, or will be physically annihilated. Does anyone really believe that kind of outcome is likely?

“Israel is not, in any meaningful sense, a provisional experiment,” he concludes, and both its supporters and its detractors ought to stop speaking of it as such. This, as I see it, really gets to the heart of the matter. Israel is a fait accompli; it is not going anywhere, no matter what Hamas feels the need to tell its constituents. We really ought to stop catastrophizing.

But Palestinian nationalism isn’t a provisional experiment, either, much though right-wing Zionists wish it to be. Netanyahu claims that there can’t be peace with the Palestinians until they get used to the idea that Israel is there to stay and stop espousing delusions of getting rid of it. But by persistently denigrating and stepping on Palestinian aspirations for fundamental rights and self-determination, his policies encourage a Palestinian discourse of resentment, fear, and hostility toward Zionism, Israel, and ultimately Jews. You can’t claim to wish for the day when Palestinians become OK with Israel while actively working to undermine that possibility. And it’s just nuts to pretend that Palestinians have no legitimate reason to feel angry and even hateful toward Israel. Until Israel grapples with the fact that its creation was indeed a nakba (catastrophe) for the Palestinians, and finds some way to make amends for that, the conflict will surely never end.

It would also behoove the Israeli right to acknowledge that Zionism has won, and how. Anti-Semitism may be rooted in the resentment of Jewish power, but the power Israel wields today is such that it really doesn’t matter what other countries think of it: nobody is going to wipe a wealthy, well-armed, nuclear power off the map. Israel’s choice isn’t between defending itself or being dismantled; it’s between continuing to exist with the support of other countries and world Jewry, or as a pariah state.

What disheartens me is that it seems to be on the latter path, as the center shifts farther to the right and the “Arab problem” takes up a shrinking segment of its public consciousness. When Tzipi Livni heads the dovish camp in the security cabinet and Netanyahu holds the center against a militantly anti-Arab right flank, it’s hard to see how this ends well. To some extent, this was inevitable: the influx of immigrants from post-Soviet countries after the fall of Communism brought a new demographic to Israel that despises the left on principle and has actually experienced persecution, so paranoid politics resonate especially strongly. The growing ultra-Orthodox population also contributes to the shift.

But Israel also made choices. Its leaders might have forced a two-state settlement at Camp David if they had taken the refugee problem seriously and proposed a bold solution to it. The Arab Peace Initiative has been on the table since 2002 and still stands, but who knows for how long? The Israeli right remains convinced that the Palestinians must learn to accept Israel before the occupation can end. That is about as convincing as someone claiming in 1960s America that the end of segregation would have to wait until black people stopped resenting white people. Peace is nearly always made between leaders before it is made between peoples. Israel is no exception to this rule; claiming otherwise just avoids the issue. And Israel must take the lead on this, precisely because the balance of power is so lopsided.

A permanent solution isn’t even necessary in the short term. Whether the parties finally opt for one state, two states, twelve states or no state, as Noam Sheizaf argues, what matters now is ending the occupation and the deep inequities it entails:

[O]nce Israeli society decides to end the occupation irrespective of the political circumstances, the power relations and various interests will determine the nature of the arrangements on the ground. That is the moment in time where we, Israelis, will need to conduct an honest conversation about the kind of arrangement we would rather negotiate (Palestinians would do the same probably). Such a debate cannot exist now because the one thing we can all agree on is prolonging the status quo.

In The Gaffe Business

by Dish Staff

Emma Roller profiles campaign trackers, individuals “employed by an opposing political party to follow a candidate on the campaign trail, documenting his or her every move, in hopes of capturing a slipup”:

American Bridge [a Democratic organization] employs 43 trackers to cover 39 states. Since 2012, the organization has tripled the number of events its trackers cover. In 2012, Bridge’s 20 trackers recorded 3,000 events in 33 states. In 2014, they have tracked more than 9,000 events and traveled a cumulative 693,000 miles.

“When it’s a presidential campaign, you’re going from flight to flight to flight to event,” Farr said. “Their schedule is your schedule. So if you have a candidate that’s having eight events a day, you have eight events a day. And you’re obviously usually surrounded by people that have different opinions than you, and are definitely fighting for the exact opposite of what you are.”

Some trackers have been following the same candidate for years—around the state, around the country, on planes, on buses, in town halls, in swanky fundraisers—all on the off chance that they’ll get the candidate on tape saying something politically distasteful or flip-flopping on a position. A new “47 percent” or “Macaca,” if you will.

Good News (?) From Ukraine

by Jonah Shepp

A ceasefire was announced today:

The two sides agreed to stop fighting at 6 p.m. local time today, Heidi Tagliavini, a representative of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which will monitor the agreement, told reporters after negotiations in Minsk, Belarus. The talks included representatives of Ukraine, Russia, the self-proclaimed people’s republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, where most of the fighting has occurred, and the OSCE. “Proceeding from President Putin’s call to leaders of illegal military formations to cease fire, and from the signing of the trilateral agreement in Minsk to implement the peace plan, I am ordering the General Staff to cease fire,” Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said in a statement. He canceled a summer truce on July 1 after his government cited more than 100 violations by the separatists. … The rebels, though, remained defiant, with the leader of Luhansk, Igor Plotnitskiy, telling reporters that the cease-fire doesn’t alter the goal of “splitting” from Ukraine.

In his press conference today at the NATO summit, Obama attributed the ceasefire to the success of US and EU sanctions on Russia, but the allies still approved a new rapid response force to beef up defense in Eastern Europe, among other measures. Considering the way the conflict has played out so far, I’m hopeful that the truce will hold, but not optimistic. And even if it does, Leonid Bershidsky calls it a win for Putin:

If the peace holds, people like Semenchenko will soon be returning from the front, and they may well decide that Poroshenko gave up too easily and that Ukraine should have fought on and martyred itself. Poroshenko’s plan to get a loyal parliament elected in October now faces many threats, ranging from a new escalation of fighting to a radical nationalist revolt. As for Russian President Vladimir Putin, he has secured a ringside seat and may settle down with a bowl of popcorn.

Any outcome suits him as long as Ukraine struggles to get out of its impasse alone. He will be happy to see the Lugansk and Donetsk regions turn into a frozen-conflict zone, precluding Ukraine’s further integration into NATO and the European Union, and equally pleased to have them gain broad autonomy from Kiev and a veto on major political decisions. A military solution suits him, too, since the West has refused to engage him except in the form of ineffectual sanctions.

Adam Swain notes that even a lasting ceasefire won’t address “the political problems that underpin the conflict, both within Ukraine and in Europe at large”:

As far as those deeper issues go, there are three possible outcomes. First, the ceasefire could hold, but without a diplomatic breakthrough; the conflict would effectively be frozen, and Ukraine would lose much if not all of its industrial heartland in the Donbas. Second, the ceasefire could be broken, leaving an unwinnable war to simmer in east Ukraine for years yet. Thirdly, an international peace conference could be held to map out a neutral and federal but united Ukraine, creating a buffer state between NATO/the EU and Russia. … Instead, the mostly likely upshot as things stand is a frozen conflict in a formally divided country, with a pro-Russian Donbas protectorate partitioned from a pro-Western Ukrainian rump. Of all the possible outcomes of the ceasefire deal, this is probably the worst for the ordinary people of both the Donbas in particular and Ukraine at large.

Brett LoGiurato suggests that Poroshenko was forced to call the ceasefire:

Geopolitical expert Ian Bremmer, the president of Eurasia Group, told Business Insider last week that Russia’s decision to escalate its involvement had forced Poroshenko into a corner. Bremmer said Poroshenko would most likely seek a quick cease-fire solution to prevent his country’s economy from completely collapsing. “The Ukrainian government has been in an impossible position, they gambled, and they’ve lost,” Bremmer said. “Poroshenko now needs a cease-fire so that he can try to restart negotiations, the terms of which will effectively mean freezing the conflict and ceding significant pieces of Ukrainian territory to the separatists. That’s politically perilous for him and risks counterdemonstrations against his government in Kiev. All the while his economy will be falling apart, with very limited support from the West.”

But now, Max Fisher flags another alarming development in Estonia:

It’s not clear whether or not the attack has anything to do with the Russian government — Russian organized crime is active throughout the region. But the incident comes at an extremely tense moment between Russia and Estonia, one in which the United States has publicly committed to Estonia’s military defense, meaning that a Russian invasion of Estonia would trigger war between Russia and the US, a prospect so dangerous that the world managed to avoid it throughout even the Cold War. “Unidentified persons coming from Russia took the freedom of an officer of Estonian Scurity police officer on the territory of Estonia,” Estonia’s state prosecutor’s office announced. “The officer was taken to Russia using physical force and at gunpoint.” … The Estonian state security officer is identified as working on counterintelligence and organized crime — a confusing combination, and one that does not shed much light on whether his kidnappers appear to have been Russian government or Russian organized crime.

If the Kremlin did have a hand in that abduction, it would be a very serious escalation of the tensions in Eastern Europe and make clear that Putin is acting less rationally than John Mearsheimer believes. But let’s not jump to conclusions before we have the facts.