You're Ruining It For Everyone

The original Ironman triathlon took place in Hawaii in 1978, and quickly became iconic.  By 1983, entry was restricted to triathletes who had qualified by racing fast enough at another triathlon.  But another method of entering Ironman Kona was created in 1983--the Kona Lottery.  The idea in 1983, and until yesterday, was that athletes of all abilities (not just the fastest) should be have the opportunity to race at triathlon's greatest event.  And so, for 32 years, for a relatively small fee ($50 most recently), anyone could enter the Kona Lottery for a chance to race.

That's over apparently.  The Department of Justice launched a criminal investigation into WTC, and came to an settlement yesterday.  We can all sleep better tonight knowing that our federal agents are watching out for public safety.

The lottery has been in place for over 3 decades, with as much publicity as WTC's budget will allow.  This is not private gambling, with all of the attending ills:  extralegal enforcement, financial ruination, etc.  No one is skipping car payments or spending the kids' lunch money on a $50 lottery fee for a race that will cost thousands to actually attend.  No one is going to get their fingers broken for failing to pay WTC.

It's been long time, in any event, since our state and federal governments moved from discouraging gambling as a moral evil to promoting them as a retirement plan and pretending we don't know that lotteries are a tax on the poor.  But apparently that's not criminal.  WTC's $50 lottery fee for Kona is.

This sort of insanity happens with regularity.  The central problem:  the government is simply too big.  Every agent and every bureaucrat with a desk and a phone has to find something to do.  In this case, it seems that a frustrated triathlete named James Muench also happens to work at the Department of Justice.  I can imagine the too-predictable thought process.

1. I wish I could race Ironman Kona.
2. There's a lottery I could enter.
3. Didn't someone at work say lotteries are illegal?
4. Maybe I can fill my quota for prosecutions this year and get to spend more time thinking about my triathlon hobby.
5. Two birds with one stone!

Here's what didn't enter the thought process:

1. Laws against lotteries are directed at gambling for money
2. WTC's lottery is not like those lotteries
3. Maybe I can find something useful to do

Mr. Muench is an 8-time Ironman Florida finisher.  If there's justice in the world, WTC will never welcome Mr. Muench to any Ironman race, ever again.

Least Objectionable Doesn't Matter This Time

I'm the sort of person who is entertained by politics.  It's important, of course, and what our political leadership does matters.  But for me, it's also entertaining.

The last two Republican presidential primary cycles have been hard to watch.  On a popcorn scale, I'd give half a small bag, mostly old maids.  It was a bit like watching the dwarves march to the Lonely Mountain without Bilbo, Gandalf, or Thorin Oakenshield.  

I voted for Mitt Romney twice (twice!) in the Pennsylvania Republican primaries, despite my strong aversion to any candidate who wants to be president mostly because he wants to be president.  He was the least objectionable candidate left by the time Pennsylvania voted, which wasn't saying much.

There's a collection of polls out today that shows that Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and Donald Trump are at the top of the list of most objectionable GOP candidates in early primary states.  That is, when a question like "Could you support Jeb Bush in the Republican primary?" is asked, Bush, Christie and Trump get the most "No" responses.  Scott Walker and Marco Rubio are the least objectionable.

For Mitt, being least objectionable got him the nomination--it turned out that all the other GOP candidates were just too swamped with baggage, gaffes or goofiness.  This cycle is different though.  The Republican field is full of candidates that appear attractive.  We won't be voting for the least problematic candidate--it's a game of figuring out the best option among good options. 

That means that, despite the great position Walker and Rubio are in right now, even the most objectionable candidates can't be counted out.  (Well, except for Trump.  It would take a yuuuuuuge series of weird events to get him anywhere near the nomination.)  Bush and Christie both have assets that could turn the race in their favor.

I'm looking forward to the popcorn.

To Make You Faster

I sprinted 200 meters this morning.  Four times.

I doubt that I've sprinted that far since high school track and field.  Maybe not even then--I'm not made for speed.  Our track and field coach was quite aware of that fact, and I spent all of my time working on events that didn't demonstrate my less-than-blazing non-speed.  I do recall being part of a 4 x 100 meter relay once.  Just once.

I looked at today's workout online before the sun came up.  It called for a run with some longer intervals at a fast-but-not-sprint pace, and then 200 meter "sprints".  I had to read that a few times to get my head around it.  Aside from chuckling to myself at what I might look like "sprinting", and being pretty happy that there was no one else at the high school track when I arrived, I wondered what it would feel like.

The first one didn't feel too bad.  Correction:  the first 100 meters didn't feel too bad.  By the end I was struggling to keep my legs moving.  I walked for a minute and then started sprint #2.  By the end of that one, I was dizzy, nauseated and gulping air as if I'd been underwater for the past week.  Honestly, I don't remember much about #3 and #4.

I got in the car and drove home.  I pulled into the garage and started to climb out, then stopped as my legs complained sharply and bitterly.  I had a brief discussion with my legs and convinced them to cooperate.  Once inside, Julie asked how the run was.  "Um," I said, "I sprinted."

"Oh," she said.  And repeated:  "How was it?"

"Not used to sprinting," I smiled, weakly.  "They hurt."

Because Julie is a perceptive woman, she didn't immediately continue the line of questioning.  I walked slowly into the kitchen and got something to drink.  Out loud:  "Why am I sprinting?"

From the other room, with a joke in her voice:  "To make you faster."

Hardy-har-har.

But true, of course.  Triathlon has ranged from hobby to obsession over the past four years, and I've done lots of uncomfortable things that I hope will make me faster.  Why?  I'm not sure.  I like the training almost as much as I like the races, and I especially appreciate mornings like this--doing something that I don't do, that I might not be very good at, but that stretches me in some way.  Something that makes me faster.

Triathlon is a long project, with goals that are set months and years in advance.  The only way to get from here to there is a long string of daily challenges, fitting them in around the rest of life's daily challenges.  Why do I want to be faster?  I really don't know.  But it's good finding out.

Evil/Power explained

This is a continuation of the Evil/Power test case post--read that first.

I talk past my friends on the Left, and vice versa.  There is a basic difference in how we view the world that leads to very different instincts as to what is important, what events mean, what problems exist, and how they should be addressed.  Everyone knows this.  It's true across all sorts of issues that seem unrelated on the surface.  The reaction to Garland and Satan's lawsuit is just one example--as a Righty, I get a little dizzy trying to understand how anyone could be amused by Satanists suing for quicker abortions, but outraged by cartoonists making fun of Mohammed.

Incomprehension of the other side exists in economic policy, foreign policy, social policy and every other sort of policy.  It's common for each side to blame partisanship, or base self-interest for the other side's arguments.  Partisanship and self-interest exist, but I don't think they don't explain how my friends on the Left view the world, or how anyone decides which side to take in the first place.  Neither partisanship nor self-interest are the fundamental source of the divide.

The divide is old.  Let's have our Enlightenment theorists Rousseau and Burke explain:

From the moment one man began to stand in need of the help of another; from the moment it appeared advantageous to any one man to have enough provisions for two, equality disappeared, property was introduced, work became indispensable, and vast forests became smiling fields, which man had to water with the sweat of his brow, and where slavery and misery were soon seen to germinate and grow up with the crops.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, 1750

I should therefore suspend my congratulations on the new liberty of France, until I was informed how it had been combined with government; with public force; with the discipline and obedience of armies; with the collection of an effective and well-distributed revenue; with morality and religion; with the solidity of property; with peace and order; with civil and social manners. . . .Considerate people, before they declare themselves, will observe the use which is made of power; and particularly of so trying a thing as new power in new persons, of whose principles, tempers, and dispositions, they have little or no experience.

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790

Rousseau and Burke talk past each other, too.  Rousseau described man’s natural state as free and happy.  The problem--the reason that we are poor slaves--is that power itself is a disaster.  The creation of social structures, social rules, legal rules, legal structures, institutions and associations destroys freedom and happiness.  The only solution is to reorder society according to the General Will--the common sense identification of what is good for the society as a whole.  To do so requires that power be defeated.

Burke, on the other hand, is not hostile to power.  His concern is how power is used--it can be used for good or for evil.  We don't necessarily need a radical reordering.  What we need is to encourage use of power for good, and discourage its use for evil.

These are not compatible views of society or politics, and they lead to radically different assessments of what to do about problems, and even radical differences as to what counts as a problem in the first place.  These two approaches have been driving Western politics for the last few hundred years, and perhaps longer.  Let me summarize what I'll refer to as Evil/Power theory:

1 Our problems are caused by the evil actions of individuals

2 Our problems are caused by the exercise of power by the strong over the weak

The first is Burke.  The second is Rousseau.  The first is the Right.  The second is the Left.  The first rejects Evil.  The second rejects Power.

So how can I explain to a Righty like myself the Left's happy support for Satanists and scowling disapproval of cartoonists?  As so:  the Satanists are attacking the power of the dominant religion in their societies, that is, Christianity.  Christianity has power, and that power must be weakened if we are to become freer and happier.  The cartoonists, on the other hand, are attacking a religious minority--it's a case of the strong beating up on the weak.  That is always unacceptable.

For my Lefty readers, I'll explain the other side of the aisle:  It's impossible to find a more obvious evil than Satan.  That's pretty much the point, isn't it?  Without knowing any other facts, the Right will assume that the side that chooses to identify itself with Hell is up to no good and should be opposed.  As for Mohammed, his followers don't get any points for being a minority.  A minority can be condemned for using its power (in this case, bullets) for evil ends.  If they choose to shoot people for drawing pictures, it's easy for us to pick a side.

I do have a lot more to say about Evil/Power, but will save it for future posts.  For now, one last thing that I'm sure my Righty friends are already puzzled about:  Doesn't the Left love the power of the Government?  Don't they want more power, not destruction of power?  No.  Government power is not power.  Government is the General Will.  Government is what we choose to do together.

Evil/Power Test Case

I saw a story yesterday that the Satanic Temple of St Louis Missouri is making a legal argument that waiting periods can't apply to a Satanist's right to an abortion.  On religious liberty grounds.  Apparently Satan doesn't like to be kept waiting 72 hours for the death of a baby.

Another major story from yesterday, of course, is the failed jihad against cartoons in Garland, Texas.  At a Draw Muhammad event organized by the American Freedom Defense Initiative, two Muslims opened fire on security guards at the event.  Both jihadis were shot and killed by police.

What these two stories reminded me of is a theory of mine.  Not so much the stories themselves, as much as the reaction to these stories that I saw on the Left.  It's a nice illustration of the theory, so I'll describe the reaction today.  It's going to be a longer project than the typical blog post, so tomorrow I'll apply the reaction case to the theory. 

First, the Satanists.  Over at Slate, leftist Amanda Marcotte quite enjoys the Satanist "pranksters."  Their legal arguments have "complicated" the efforts of assumed "conservative" baddies such as Hobby Lobby to make Christian religious liberty arguments.  She sums up: "[A]s a public act of trolling, this stunt gets an A-plus. It exposes the double standards of those who claim to stand for “religious freedom,” and it highlights how waiting periods and other restrictions are actually an attempt to impose religious dogma about abortion on those who don't agree with it."  

There is more approval to be found on the Left side of the Interwebs:  at ThinkProgress, we learn that the Satanists are a "unique blend of activism, satire, and what appear to be sincere humanist beliefs"; The Frisky roots hard for the Satanists and their "glorious act of killing two birds–or rather, two stupid laws–with one stone"; Jenny Kutner of Salon helpfully links to the Satanists' GoFund me effort to defray travel costs (and later Tweeted with the good news that they "got the $$ they needed!").  

And so on and so forth.

Next, cartoons.  You might think (if you arrived here from another culture, time and place) that the Satanists and the Muhammad cartoonists have a lot in common--activism, satire, "public acts of trolling," sticking their thumbs in the eye of organized religion.  But you'd be wrong.  

Slate can't get through the first sentence of its report on Garland without telling us that the cartoon contest organizers are reactionary and anti-Islam.  

Talking Points Memo is against shooting cartoonists, of course.  But lest anyone get the idea that the cartoonists were courageous (or A-plus trolling pranksters!), TPM is mostly concerned that we remember that we shouldn't "valorize people who run hate groups."

NPR gives us "5 Things To Know About The Organizers of Muhammad Cartoon Contest"  The first two are variations on the theme of AFDI as an anti-Muslim hate group, the third is a recording of a cartoonist asking if the shooter was a Muslim (video redacted because NPR won't show Muhammed cartoons), the fourth is a review of AFDI's subway ads supporting Israel and against jihad, and the fifth is history of AFDI's opposition to Park 51, the planned mosque on the 9/11 site in Manhattan.  If NPR has a similar list detailing views and behavior of the jihadis that it (presumably) finds distasteful, I could not locate it.

MSNBC's (weirdly parallel) list of 5 things we need to know about Garland leads with a long discussion of AFDI's history as an anti-Muslim "hate group".  It lists mostly the same facts as NPR.

And so on and so forth.

From one perspective, this makes no sense.  We have two groups--the Satanic Temple and the AFDI--organized against what they believe to be the evils of the two largest religions.  The activities of either can be characterized as satire or expert trolling, but only the Satanic Temple gets that kind of smiling approval.  The AFDI is a "hate group."  The difference didn't arise just yesterday.  Almost every time AFDI is referred to as a hate group, The Southern Poverty Law Center is referenced as the authority for that judgment.  What is the SPLC?  Its a Leftist organization which is in the business of labelling "hate groups" for the purpose of calling them such. SPLC identifies AFDI as an anti-Muslim hate group.  It does not identify the Satanic Temple as an anti-Christian group (despite what are presumably the best efforts of the Satanists).

Why would the Left side of our media cheer on Satan worshippers while spitting on AFDI?  It certainly doesn't have anything to do with any policy affinity between the Left and Islam--Islamic views of abortion (and women's rights, and gay marriage, and so and so forth) are much less compatible with Leftist preferences than anything found in Christianity.

Evil/Power theory will explain mañana.  I'm off for Cinco de Mayo lunch with the wife.

We Changed Our Minds

Everyone thinks we're in for more "racial disturbances" this summer, according to yesterday's WSJ survey.  At least 96% do--and for all practical purposes, that's everyone. Just for comparison purposes, it's more agreement that you get on the question of whether we're being governed by shape-shifting reptiles, or the existence of Bigfoot.

This isn't what we expected a few years ago--at the election of Barack Obama, the percentage of Americans who were optimistic that race relations in America would become a non-issue spiked to 67%.  People generally look for facts that will confirm their expectations, so the decline from general optimism over the past 7 to universal pessimism today is striking.  Something real is happening.

But what?  The current focus is on the police.  Have the police changed over the past 7 years?  There are statistics on police use of force, and here's a useful chart (from Mother Jones!) showing deaths of blacks and whites resulting from "legal intervention involving guns."  The chart shows black deaths declining steeply through the 1970s and then settling into a narrow range and basically flat from the mid-1980s to today.  None of this is enough to say one way or another whether more force is being used today than in days past--but it's enough to say that there's no dramatic jump in police gunning down black men.

There are other theories that focus on poverty, which hasn't changed recently and which was much worse decades and centuries ago, or on irrelevancies such as iPhones and Twitter.

Why did so many think race relations were on the way to resolution in 2009?  Because we'd elected a black President.  Our theory was that racial representation will lead to racial reconciliation.  We had a vague sense that it happened that way in South Africa, so the same should follow here.

It doesn't work that way.

If anyone needed the perfect test case, we have it in Baltimore.  If there was ever a situation in which racial tensions should have been eliminated by the implementation of liberal policies by black leadership, Baltimore is it.  The Police Commissioner is black; the first black police commissioner of Baltimore was appointed in 1984, and the position has been held by several black officers since then.  The Mayor is black (as were two of her three successors; Baltimore mayors have been Democrats since 1967).  The City Council is majority black, including its President.  The state prosecutor is black.  Of the six officers involved with the homicide of Freddie Gray, three are black, including the only one charged with murder.

And yet, somehow . . . somehow all of this moves us to be completely certain that more "racial disturbances" are coming soon.  This is the end of the idea that we can create racial harmony by ensuring that leadership has the same skin color as citizenry.  Ninety-six percent of us have declared ourselves certain that it does not.

The Mayor Has Nothing To Do With It

Unlike most people, I don't know enough about what happened to Freddie Gray to know who, if anyone, is to blame for his death.  Unlike most people, I don't have special insight into the relationship between the citizens of Baltimore and the Baltimore Police Department.

However, I do have enough information to know that this interview with Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is proof positive that she should not be mayor.  Her wild careening between allowing "space to destroy" one day, labelling the occupants of that space "thugs" the next, and taking it all back the day after that is unsettling enough, but it's not the fundamental problem.  

Actually, there are two fundamental problems.  The first problem is that the Mayor seems unaware that the Baltimore Police are largely her own creation.  She speaks of wanting answers, of looking for justice for the Freddie Gray family, of working to heal the pain of the community, as if she's somehow outside the system.  She speaks of reforming and retraining the Police Department, as if she just arrived on the scene.

There is no one--no one--who has had more impact on and control of the system that is now of concern to her, than the current Mayor.  The police department reports to the police commissioner, who is appointed by the Mayor with the consent of the City Council.  She has been Mayor for more than 5 years.  Five years.  She appointed the current Commissioner in 2012.  Before she was mayor, she had been a member of the City Council since 1995.  Twenty years.  Who, exactly, has been in a better position to ensure a well-trained police force, to improve its relationship with the "community" and to address the pain of the community, if not the Mayor?


The second problem is the reason she gave for not appearing in public to attempt to calm the situation. Her words:  "I know that my presence can be a calming presence and can be a flashpoint.  I’m not going to risk inserting myself — you know, it might look good to some people — but I’m not going to insert myself in a situation that we know is potentially hostile and very fragile."

I had to watch that bit of the video twice to wrap my head around that.  She's afraid her presence would make things worse?  Really?  But she continues to think that she's the right person to lead the city?  She doesn't want to "risk" a personal appearance because of the potential consequences, but she's also the best person for the task of healing the pain of the community?  How does that work, exactly? 

Maybe Baltimore should just give Governor Hogan the Mayor's office as well.  His presence apparently causes nothing but friendly chit chat and basketball games.