In the continuing theme of conservative racism, I present you with the following image which recently made the rounds:

Indeed.

This week, Rick Santorum told a Puerto Rican newspaper that English should be the commonwealth’s primary language if it is to be considered for statehood (notably, this was not a requirement for any of the currently recognized states). This is coming from a man who — earlier in the primary season — said “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.” He later went on to issue a correction … that he had actually paused to say “blah people.” But as retarded as that sounds, it didn’t sink him. He made it out of the situation relatively unscathed, and is now battling Romney fiercely for the title of front runner. Why? Because the people he is courting for nomination know what he meant, and his later retraction is all but a formality. In my mind, Santorum (and other conservatives) are like scarecrows filled with racist straw. Every time they bend in the wrong direction, it pops out, and they scramble to push it back into place.

These aren’t just unfortunate coincidences. Racist Freudian slips are a recurring problem for these people because their rhetorical strategy requires that they constantly flirt with overt disdain for minorities. Reagan coined the term “welfare queen,” whose plausibly deniable reference to impoverished black women is poorly concealed. In his defense of deeming President Obama the “food stamp president,” Newt Gingrich describes youths in “poor neighborhoods” who have no work ethic. These phrases don’t need to be delivered with a wink or elbow nudge to for their implications to become clear.

Today, it’s safe to say that not all right-wingers are racist, but all racists are right-wingers. A recent study shows that people of low cognitive ability tend to gravitate to conservative ideologies. This may seem unfair, but in the way the researchers frame it, it makes perfect sense: people who are seldom exposed to different groups and viewpoints are poorly socialized. Because of this, they’re less intellectually developed, and are attracted to belief structures that reinforce their prejudices. The same observations about racism are also true of homophobia … which is (quite unremarkably) another problem for the right-wingers in the US.

This is why — even if I was convinced of the virtues of the unfettered free market — I could not conscionably vote for Republicans. There’s too much icky baggage that comes with.

I guess I spend too much time listening to Dan Savage, because until recently, I thought Rick Santorum was just a boogeyman: a hyperbolic caricature whose name was merely invoked to illustrate the ridiculous extremes to which social conservatism can be taken. I thought that even among republicans he was a sort of pariah, too embarrassing to actually support.

Turns out I was tragically wrong. As his recent performance in the primaries has demonstrated, many people actually consider him a viable candidate for the presidency. To properly understand my shock and puzzlement, consider if Bill Ayers won three primaries in the 2016 election.

Anyway, here’s this farce of a man explaining how he reconciles his religious belief that health care is a human right with his political belief that the government shouldn’t provide it.

Rick Santorum is right. Even if we hold a deep-seated religious conviction that something is right, we shouldn’t ask the government for help effecting the necessary changes. The government only offers inefficient solutions that trample our personal liberties.

Which is why we have to immediately outlaw abortion, or in the least, make it as difficult to access as possible…

If Santorum actually went through the process of weighing rational solutions against biblical prescriptions — as he says he does — then he would have considered that the number of women seeking abortion does not change when the procedure is outlawed. He’d realize that providing birth control decreases the number of unwanted pregnancies, so it constitutes a much better means of prevention for “baby murder.” But it’s clear that he doesn’t actually think about the bible rationally. In fact, it’s clear he doesn’t even think about the bible. In December of 2011, he was taken aback when a student at Dordt College (a christian institution) asked him how we can care for our poor without our social programs. Santorum, visibly shocked that a Christian would be concerned with helping the poor, replied “You go to Dordt College and ask me that question?”

Evidently, Santorum believes charity should be limited to personal or church-mediated giving, but assuming his confusion was not simply feigned for the sake of his condescending retort, it’s frustrating that he wouldn’t have considered that many christians’ motivation for supporting social programs is due to their theological beliefs.

One more Santorum gem:

(Embedding disabled, so watch here)

Yeah, this is why all math majors just dogmatically believe that x⁰=1 … because if they didn’t, the liberal establishment would not have granted them membership to their elite, close-minded echo chamber.

Dear butthurt Catholics:

My brother-in-law Z– came to visit this weekend, and after an extraordinarily fun day of touring wineries and visiting friends in Sonoma, we awoke the next morning to find ourselves hazy-headed with an open schedule. So we decided to visit what my wife and I have called the “Mormon Castle” since we moved to Oakland: an imposing temple perched in the Oakland hills, clearly visible from most parts of the Bay. I was excited, but also mildly apprehensive that a confrontation with a believer could turn sour pretty rapidly.

We arrived with no expectations, but decided it could be fun to tour the visitors’ center, upon entering which, we were immediately accosted by a doe-eyed twenty-something who was secreting a mucilaginously welcoming demeanor. She introduced herself, but I promptly forgot her name. Her badge read “Hermana T–”, which I initially thought to be a feminine form of Herman.

She sat us down next two to other gentleman: a hardened-looking man dressed in black leather, and his adult son who looked terribly inconvenienced and desperately in need of a cigarette. I began asking Hermana questions about the history of the building, and of the western migration of Mormons to Utah. However, I was soon cut short when she directed us to focus our attention on the larger-than-life statue of Jesus in front of us, and his presumptive voice that was being piped in from above. It was the standard “get to the father through me” stuff that you’ll hear from most Christians, and was pretty uninteresting.

When she returned, she eagerly asked us what we thought of the presentation, and all I managed to muster “this room is cool.” Z– said it made him wonder who did the voice. She seemed unfazed when we admitted we didn’t feel touched by Heavenly Father over the course of the presentation.

Hermana, and her associate, who I’ll call Hermana Dos, then asked us if we wanted to watch a 20 minute presentation. Z– and I looked at each other, back to the Hermanas, and said “sure, why not.” They took us to the entrance of a presentation room that I could tell from the lobby contained dioramas. My heart sank, as I was then sure we were entering a Hell House. Luckily however, it turned out to be nothing more than a rather boring video about the story of a Mormon family. It was presented in vignettes, as we moved from exhibit to exhibit. It laid the “importance of the family” theme on pretty thick, but didn’t say anything that surprising. Finally, we ended up in a room where we watched a short video about the role of the Mormon Temple in the lives of the family, and how Mormons are “sealed” to their spouses and children, so they can spend eternity together.

When the lights came up, the Hermanas picked on Z– to ask a question, and he obliged. “I grew up in a Christian church,” he said “and from this presentation, I don’t see a difference between that and Mormonism.” The Hermanas looked at each other, and then to the man in leather: “maybe you can answer.”

Turns out he was a recent convert — two weeks a Mormon — who was ostensibly trying to straighten out his wayward son. The man looked down solemnly for a moment, and then cast piercing (but somewhat vacant) gaze directly into my eyes and said “love. It’s the love.” He went on to explain how Mormonism had led him out of bad times, which made me feel icky (read: vaguely malicious/immature) for visiting what I thought to be a theological petting zoo.

We wrapped up the visit in a fantastically beautiful room with soaring windows looking out over the Bay. I tried to extract some more details on dogma and doctrine from Hermana Dos, but she was more interested in having us interact with a touchscreen kiosk that explained the different rooms in the temple (since we were “unclean” and therefore forbidden from entering to see them ourselves). I tried to get her to state the church’s position on evolution, but all I could elicit was a vague distrust of Darwinism, and that we are not apes. Nothing on the age of the earth.

I also asked (rather pedantically) how you could expect to be together with your nuclear family for eternity, if your spouse will still be “sealed” to her parents and your children will be sealed to their spouses etc., to which she responded “we have faith that it will work out, though we do not understand.”

Hermana Uno returned for her comrade, and they left us for a moment while we marveled at the display of Books of Mormon in different languages. I salivated over the Mayan copy.

They returned with literature for us, as well as an (English) copy of the book, inscribed with a handwritten blurb from each of them on the front cover. We said our goodbyes and thanked them warmly.

–

It was an interesting experience and I’m glad we did it, but it wasn’t life altering. Mostly what I took away was that Mormons are deeply preoccupied with the concept of family, surely because they believe you’ll be with yours for eternity. In retrospect I remember hearing this before, when Proposition 8 was on the ballot. At the time, a source I read stated that the measure carried great meaning for the eternal family: if gays can marry, then shit gets all fucked up. My visit to the temple brought this fact into sharper focus.

Also, I gathered from the presentation that Mormons obsess about the afterlife in a way that would be foreign to most “vanilla” Christians. Each of their temples has a “celestial room” which partially replicates the place where you’ll lounge with your ‘fam in perpetuam. This gave me the feeling that they’re a creepier death cult than mainstream Christians.

As for the nitty-gritty on the history of the Mormon church, I think I learned more from South Park’s Mormon special.

The sisters Hermanas were great sports. They were very kind and did an excellent job leading the tour and answering questions. They never seemed judgmental or rude, although Z– and I were on our best behavior. I just hope that someday they make it out of the church, for their and their children’s sake.

Well, it’s been the better part of a year since I’ve written anything for Sour Apples, but I’m back — here to work off the ache of projects abandoned.

Lots has happened this year. I’ve gotten all but one of the pre-requisites for medical school under my belt. They were hellish at times, but I never doubted my commitment to sparkle medicine. Now I’m set to take the MCAT in April, and I’m looking forward to four months of frantic cramming in preparation. Admittedly, part of my motivation to come back to blogging was is to re-sharpen my writing skills for the essay portion of the test.

But more importantly, there’s all kinds of religious and political wackaloonery that I’ve just gotta soapbox about.

Here’s to coming back with a vengeance.

I put someone in a box, and I’ll tell you they’re either a Ku Klux Klan member, or a Republican. You must devise questions to ask this person, to find out which of the two they are. You are limited to asking them yes/no questions about hot-button political issues.

For example:

1) In general, do you support welfare?
2) Do you support Arizona’s law SB 1070?
3) Do you support affirmative action?
4) Do you oppose the “Ground Zero Mosque”?
5) Do you believe the United States is a Christian Nation?
6) Do you believe president Obama is the legitimate president of the United States?
7) Do you support a ban on burqas, niqabs and hijabs?
8) Are you against immigration?

I think you’ll generally find the Republican position on the issue is indistinguishable from the racist position. Note, the default “conservative” position on questions 2, 4, and 7 is opposite the Republican position.

This is why conservatives get called racists. Because assuming there’s a little racist homunculus living inside their head is a perfectly reasonable way to predict their opinion on any given issue. In fact, doing so even explains their deviation from principles which might otherwise be considered conservative, like supporting constitutional freedoms of minorities.

In response to my post “Quick, let’s talk about my pee pee” commenter namae nanka provided a link to an article entitled “A Rose by Any Other Name? Rethinking the Similarities and Differences between Male and Female Genital Cutting.” I read the entire thing from start to finish, and all I can say is thank you. I found it extremely illuminating, and I implore anyone considering becoming a parent to read it through and thoughtfully examine your position on circumcision.

The article cogently addresses the main point of my previous post — the assertion that consistently drawing a comparison between FGM and MGM can be useful:

[Some researchers] criticize the fortresslike separation of male circumcision from FGM and suggest that the real issue in the debate is child protection: “Whether we should be subjecting any children to . . . procedures involving the excision of healthy tissue” (Fox and Thomson 2005a:467). In a further article, Fox and Thomson (2005b) develop these arguments and criticize medical and legal authorities for neglecting the rights of children and failing to undertake a full cost-benefit analysis of the effects that routine circumcision has on males.

From an ethics perspective, no coherent criticism of FGM on the basis of a child’s right to bodily integrity can be mounted without also being a criticism of MGM. I think that’s an extremely important point to grasp. The authors drive it home by observing that practitioners of FGM often point to MGM as an equivalent Western practice, saying that it’s hypocritical of us to decry FGM while routinely circumcising our infant males. And in America, you’re cutting boys!

The authors also make an interesting conjecture about Western studies addressing the cost/benefit of circumcision:

…[O]ne wonders whether it is culture or medical science that is really in the driver’s seat here. The evidence thought to show a “potential health benefit” for MGA may in fact be an artifact of its cultural acceptability and long history in U.S. society. By the same token, the absence of any culturally conditioned demand for FGA has discouraged researchers from seeking evidence of the potential advantages of such surgery. It is the cultural demand for MGA that generates the research that appears to implicate the foreskin in whatever disease is holding the public’s attention (Goldman 2004). In a culture that values science, medical (usually miscalled scientific) justifications for cultural rituals must be found, hence the numerous horror stories about the terrible risks of retaining normal human anatomy (Van Howe et al. 2005). As Lawrence Dritsas (2001) has eloquently argued, the cultural tail would appear to be wagging the scientific dog.

Indeed.

One final excerpt, because everyone loves an appeal to evolutionary biology :)

All mammals have foreskins; males are what they are because that is how they have evolved … Evolution, however, appears to be favoring ever-longer foreskins in males (Cold and McGrath 1999), suggesting that they improve survival chances and reproductive health rather than the reverse.

Definitely worth the read.

Bill Maher nails it as always:

New rule: now that they’ve finished reading the Constitution out loud, the teabaggers must call out that group of elitist liberals whose values are so antithetical to theirs. I’m talking of course about the founding fathers.

In the video, he references this crazy f*cking painting:

I want to stab my eyes out.

For those of you who aren’t up to speed with your 4chan memes, you’ve been missing out. Behold, the fingerbox:

Your typical, baseline model fingerbox.

What is it? From Encyclopedia Dramatica:

A finger box, though ostensibly a relatively simple device, is in fact a staggeringly complex machine comprised of several thousand finely crafted components. These are most often distributed in sets of nine, but the poor, the disenfranchised and the mentally handicapped have all been observed amusing themselves for hours at a time with just a single unit. Finger boxing (also referred to colloquially as ‘fingering’ and/or ‘boxing’) is a rapidly growing trend among teens aged 13-18. The first instance of the device, though in a cruder and less intricate form, was invented by Sir Eustace Henry Trollington more than 130 years ago in Dunbartonshire, Scotland.

A Finger box basically creates a variety of sensations by stimulating the nerves of the finger tip, though the fun was short-lived when a group vicious saboteurs started contaminating the devices with old razor-blades, broken glass and ebolavirus. Panic ensued as a result of the dismemberments, lock-jaw and in some cases, slow and inexorable deaths. This led to the inevitable banning of the devices by the UK parliament in 1919, with the rest of the developed world quickly following suit.

No, really, what is it?! Know Your Meme gives a great explanation, but basically the fingerbox is a way of ferreting out newcomers on forums. Someone will post a picture of a fingerbox, at which point everyone who’s in on the joke will compliment the original poster on the quality of his/her fingerbox, or wax nostalgic about fingerboxes they used to own. Inevitably, the trap is sprung when someone asks “what is a fingerbox?” The trollers then proceed to lol vigorously at the n00b. Pretty stupid, right?

That’s what I thought, until I realized this phenomenon is analogous to bizarre religious doctrines like the Trinity. Many ambitious people have endeavored to explain a triune God who sent himself to earth to be killed so humans could be forgiven in his own eyes, but it remains a perplexing part of Christian dogma.

However, it may not be important whether belief in the Trinity actually makes sense. Like the fingerbox (or a secret handshake or codeword), such articles of faith could serve to define an ingroup, and nothing more.

In fact, the success of these phenomena may be due, in the end, to their incomprehensibility. One of the roles of religion — and 4chan — is to provide members a sense of belonging. This sense is augmented when the qualifications for membership become stricter. Religious groups “up the ante” of exclusivity by being increasingly demanding of their constituents — the harder it is to make the cut, the awesomer it is to be a member of the extra-special cool club. Ultimately, this may explain certain commonalities in practices among the world’s religions: abstinence, fasting, dietary and sartorial prohibitions, eschewal of certain music and dances, and demonization of certain sexual practices, to name a few. It makes sense that this process could extend to the articles of faith themselves, such that paradoxical or outlandish dogmas act as stringent qualifying criteria: “if you can believe that, then you definitely deserve to be a member!”

Intriguingly, nuttier beliefs could be an asset to a religion?

In Breaking the Spell, Dan Dennett makes the point that America is a thriving free market of religious ideas in vigorous competition. It makes sense that the religions that offer a better “product” — that is to say, exclusivizing doctrine — would be more successful by garnering more adherents. In other words, there’s a tendency towards an arms race of crazy beliefs, wherein sects with loonier beliefs are more fit and have greater selective advantage.

Anyway, next time you’re listening to some Christ-bot defend Noah’s Ark or Jonah living inside a whale, and you’re like “lol wut?” … you have just been pwned, ya n00b.

I think of this every time I type “facebook” in the address bar, so I finally made it a reality: