Is Bernie damaging Clinton's chances in November?

Well it's primary day, though the chances for Sanders winning the nomination look slim. This has led many to assert that, by staying in the race, Sanders is hurting Clinton's chances of beating Trump in the general election.

So I'll ask an honest question: Is there any evidence whatsoever that Sanders is damaging Clinton's chances at all by staying in the race? Or is it just pure speculation phrased in terms of what "everyone knows"? As far as I can tell, it's the former. This campaign has already lasted a year; let it last a few more months until the convention, and then let's talk about the general, OK?

On Empathy and Drow

I have spent a large amount of my free time recently ravenously reading through the archives of the webcomic Drowtales ("drow" being a type of elf from Dungeons and Dragons; more info here). If you yourself happen to have a large amount of free time, or will have free time in the future, I highly recommend checking it out (start here); while it's extremely long, it retains a very high quality throughout. The reason I'm writing about it here, though, is because I want to talk about the feature of the webcomic I find most compelling. First, though, let me talk about my favorite character: the main character Ariel's mother, Quain'tana.

The story takes place mainly in the underground city of Chel'el'sussoloth (yes, there are a lot of apostrophes in the names). While the city is officially ruled by the Sharen clan, there are eight other major clans, each of which have a fair amount of power and authority. Quain'tana is the leader of the Sarghress clan, a relatively new entrant onto the scene. The Sarghress clan is quite controversial due to the fact that it's made up of mercenaries and other commoners, so the nobles of the other clans see their rise to power as a threat to their rule. Their fears are justified because Quain'tana's stated goal is to overthrow the rule of the noble class and give freedom to the commoners.

Quain'tana has many admirable qualities. She built the most powerful clan in the city literally from scratch--she's an orphan who gained the allegiance of many mercenaries due to her strength, intelligence, and charisma. She is confident, courageous, and honorable, willing to fight with her soldiers on the front lines. Her goals are justified; not only are the Sharen an oppressive upper class who believe all commoners are inferior by birth, but their leaders committed a great crime in the past (I won't say more in case of spoilers) that they've hidden from the rest of the city. Ariel almost worships her mother and it's easy to see why.

On the other hand, she also has many despicable qualities. She is, to be frank, a terrible person who does not understand how to give or receive affection. Her confidence too often becomes arrogance and a refusal to admit any mistake. This comes out clearest in her relationships with her children, whom she does not hesitate to punish and abuse if they fail to live up to her extremely high standards. Even though Ariel worships her, by any objective standard she is treated horribly, and Quain'tana treats the daughters who don't worship her much worse. Quain'tana doesn't have friends so much as she has allies, and while she objects to the Sharen's rule she runs her own clan in a dictatorial manner. It gets to the point where several characters rightly question whether a Sarghress victory over the Sharen will really improve things for the majority of commoners, or whether it will merely replace one ruling class with another.

What fascinates me the most about Quain'tana, though, is that her positive and negative qualities are inextricably linked. Her life experiences which enable her to be a "living legend," a figure behind whom thousands can rally to defeat a thousand-year-old empire, are precisely what prevent her from having meaningful relationships with other people. She is my favorite character not because I like her as a person--there are many characters who are far more likable--but because she's fascinating as a character, as she is an essentially broke individual who because of that brokenness is able to do great deeds nobody else can.

In this way, Quain'tana almost represents the quality of the webcomic I find most compelling. After consuming a new piece of entertainment (or often while consuming it), I like looking it up on TvTropes to see what others have said about it. Here's one thing an anonymous editor of the wiki said about Drowtales:

While Drow society does operate on a different moral wavelength from humans, slavery is still tolerated by almost everyone, everyone is a huge racist (or speciesist more accurately), and -- if female -- a misandrist to boot with few exceptions, and their culture is plagued by violence and self-centered debauchery. Several readers have expressed the thought that most characters could die and they wouldn't be that bothered by it or that the setting's degenerate society could collapse and they wouldn't mind either in the sense that whatever replaces it can't be any worse.

All this is quite true. (Clarification: Drow society is matriarchal, seemingly at least partly because female drow are actually bigger and stronger than male drow on average. Almost all female drow see males as inherently inferior.) Not to mention that most of the main characters, including the protagonist Ariel, commit at least one morally repugnant deed during the course of the story. Normally in a situation like this, fiction makes people root for the protagonists by making the antagonists clearly and obviously evil. What I find most fascinating about Drowtales is that it doesn't take this roue. Rather it expects, or requests, that the readers sympathize with the characters regardless of these massive moral defects--even the villains.

While there are many comparisons one can make between Drowtales and the A Song of Ice and Fire series (perhaps better known these days through its "Game of Thrones" TV adaptation), as they're both sprawling fantasy epics with gigantic casts and dark tone, this is a major difference. There are many characters in Ice and Fire who are just straight-up sociopaths the reader is expected to hate while alive and rejoice when killed. Drowtales, though, doesn't really have anyone like that. Even the ones who are most villainous and despicable have redeeming, or at least sympathetic, qualities that make their actions understandable from their own point of view. Even the comic itself makes this point, when it has an omniscient narrator say:

[T]here is no hero nor villain in these drow tales, only actors in history, wearing their masks and playing their roles.

This made me think about empathy--understanding someone else's perspective, seeing the world through their eyes. I think most people would agree that empathy is an important virtue. But most people seem to refuse empathy to certain people, people who commit crimes so repugnant that they're considered unworthy of empathy. What these crimes may be varies from person to person--holding a different political opinion, being a bigot, molesting a child, committing mass murder--but this line always seems to exist somewhere, beyond which someone becomes a nonperson, unworthy of empathy, fit only for opposition and destruction.

I strongly believe that everyone, regardless of their crimes, deserves empathy. This does not mean they should go unopposed. Some people must be fought. But as we fight them, we must do our best to understand why they fight, what drove them to commit the acts they did. To do otherwise is to ignore the darkness in our own souls, not to mention the darkness in the souls of our idols. At its best, fiction like Drowtales can give us experience at viewing fatally flawed persons who commit morally horrendous acts, forgiving them, and rooting for their success as they claw their way toward doing good.

"Hillary Clinton will kill lots of people, but why do liberals hate her?"

Journalist for the New Republic Jeet Heer recommended an article, claiming it's "The best case for Hillary Clinton I've read." In this article, Elie Mystal states:

Hillary's foreign policy is terrifying. If elected, she will kill people. Many of them will be terrorists and some of them will be criminals, but all of them will be people and she will not let other, non-terrorist people, stand in the way of killing the people she thinks we need to kill. And when she's not killing people, she will be spying on people in case she needs to kill those people later. 

So... that's bad. 

But I don't understand liberals who hate Hillary Clinton.

I know and read a lot of socialists, and many of them have rather harsh things to say about "liberals." Most of the time, I think that's unfair. But Mystal's statement here represents the worst tendencies of liberalism as an ideology.

Seriously, read that again. "Hillary Clinton has a terrifying foreign policy"--foreign policy, of course, being the area where the President has by far the most power. "She will kill lots of people, many of whom are civilians. And she will be spying on many more. Anyway, on a completely unrelated note note, it appears many liberals don't like her for inexplicable reasons!"

Reading the article, you'll note that as justification for his Clinton vote despite his belief she'll kill lots of people, Mystal argues she's more likely to "make a deal (with the devil, no doubt)." In other words, Mystal is willing to elect someone who he admits will kill lots of foreigners if that means "a crappy law that has some positive outcomes" will get passed.

I don't mean to pick too hard on Mystal personally, and I actually don't hate Hillary Clinton myself--in general, I'm not sure if hating politicians is very helpful. But when even self-proclaimed liberals blithely slide past the prospect of tons of deaths just as long as it's foreigners who are dying, something is seriously wrong with our political culture.

Later tonight I'm going to make a post tearing apart Paul Krugman's latest column.

Preview: The Left and Presidential Politics

This Sunday, I think I'm going to talk about Presidential politics; specifically, the attitudes the modern American Left take toward it, and how they are fundamentally mistaken. While there are many reasons behind the undeniable fact that the Right is much more effective at politics than the Left in America since at least the 1970s, the different ways they approach presidential elections (and elections more broadly) is at least the most easily fixable, so it seems a good place to begin.

In the meantime, let me share with you my predictions for the 2016 Presidential race:

-Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee.

-Ted Cruz will be the Republican nominee.

-The general election will be close--much closer than the 2008 and 2012 ones were, at least.

I will argue for all three of these points on Sunday. For now, pause to consider that "President Ted Cruz" is a distinct possibility, and just what that says about the state of the modern American Left.

The Tone Argument Preview: John Stuart Mill

I'm starting to realize posting twice a week was a bit ambitious, so I think I'm going to focus on posting once a week on Sundays. Instead, on Thursdays I'll offer brief "previews" for what I'll be writing about that week.

This week, I'm going to write about the tone argument. From reading articles on the internet about it, one might get the impression that criticism of the "tone argument," critique of the idea that we should always be civil, is something new, perhaps cooked up by those "SJWs" a bunch of people seem to be upset about these days. I believed this too (well, not the SJW part), which is why I was quite surprised when I re-read the British philosopher John Stuart Mill's famous defense of individual freedom of speech and action, On Liberty, and found he spoke on precisely this topic. Considering On Liberty was written in 1859, and is usually considered one of the chief achievements of liberal political theory, I think what Mill has to say on this matter is very much of interest. It can serve as a "teaser" for my own discussion of the issue in a few days. (Note: I've introduced paragraph breaks into the original text for reason of readability.)

Before quitting the subject of freedom of opinion, it is fit to take some notice of those who say, that the free expression of all opinions should be permitted, on condition that the manner be temperate, and do not pass the bounds of fair discussion. Much might be said on the impossibility of fixing where these supposed bounds are to be placed; for if the test be offence to those whose opinion is attacked, I think experience testifies that this offence is given whenever the attack is telling and powerful, and that every opponent who pushes them hard, and whom they find it difficult to answer, appears to them, if he shows any strong feeling on the subject, an intemperate opponent.

But this, though an important consideration in a practical point of view, merges in a more fundamental objection. Undoubtedly the manner of asserting an opinion, even though it be a true one, may be very objectionable, and may justly incur severe censure. But the principal offences of the kind are such as it is mostly impossible, unless by accidental self-betrayal, to bring home to conviction. The gravest of them is, to argue sophistically, to suppress facts or arguments, to misstate the elements of the case, or misrepresent the opposite opinion. But all this, even to the most aggravated degree, is so continually done in perfect good faith, by persons who are not considered, and in many other respects may not deserve to be considered, ignorant or incompetent, that it is rarely possible on adequate grounds conscientiously to stamp the misrepresentation as morally culpable; and still less could law presume to interfere with this kind of controversial misconduct.

With regard to what is commonly meant by intemperate discussion, namely invective, sarcasm, personality, and the like, the denunciation of these weapons would deserve more sympathy if it were ever proposed to interdict them equally to both sides; but it is only desired to restrain the employment of them against the prevailing opinion: against the unprevailing they may not only be used without general disapproval, but will be likely to obtain for him who uses them the praise of honest zeal and righteous indignation. Yet whatever mischief arises from their use, is greatest when they are employed against the comparatively defenceless; and whatever unfair advantage can be derived by any opinion from this mode of asserting it, accrues almost exclusively to received opinions.

The worst offence of this kind which can be committed by a polemic, is to stigmatise those who hold the contrary opinion as bad and immoral men. To calumny of this sort, those who hold any unpopular opinion are peculiarly exposed, because they are in general few and uninfluential, and nobody but themselves feels much interested in seeing justice done them; but this weapon is, from the nature of the case, denied to those who attack a prevailing opinion: they can neither use it with safety to themselves, nor, if they could, would it do anything but recoil on their own cause. In general, opinions contrary to those commonly received can only obtain a hearing by studied moderation of language, and the most cautious avoidance of unnecessary offence, from which they hardly ever deviate even in a slight degree without losing ground: while unmeasured vituperation employed on the side of the prevailing opinion, really does deter people from professing contrary opinions, and from listening to those who profess them. For the interest, therefore, of truth and justice, it is far more important to restrain this employment of vituperative language than the other; and, for example, if it were necessary to choose, there would be much more need to discourage offensive attacks on infidelity, than on religion.

It is, however, obvious that law and authority have no business with restraining either, while opinion ought, in every instance, to determine its verdict by the circumstances of the individual case; condemning every one, on whichever side of the argument he places himself, in whose mode of advocacy either want of candour, or malignity, bigotry, or intolerance of feeling manifest themselves; but not inferring these vices from the side which a person takes, though it be the contrary side of the question to our own: and giving merited honour to every one, whatever opinion he may hold, who has calmness to see and honesty to state what his opponents and their opinions really are, exaggerating nothing to their discredit, keeping nothing back which tells, or can be supposed to tell, in their favour. This si the real morality of public discussion: and if often violated, I am happy to think that there are many controversialists who to a great extent observe it, and a still greater number who conscientiously strive towards it.

(These are from pages 54-55 of On Liberty and other writings, edited by Stefan Collini, first published in 1989. For people with access to other editions, it's the last paragraph in Chapter 2.)

To end with, I will provide another quote from On Liberty, which may in its own way provide an even better view into Mill's views on the proper use of "invective, sarcasm, personality, and the like" (page 33, same edition):

What is boasted of at the present time as the revival of religion, is always, in narrow and uncultivated minds, at least as much the revival of bigotry; and where there is the strong permanent leaven of intolerance in the feelings of a people, which at all times abides in the middle classes of this country, it needs but little to provoke them into actively persecuting those whom they have never ceased to think proper objects of persecution.

Mill places a footnote at the end of this sentence. The footnote reads (page 33, same edition):

Ample warning may be drawn from the large infusion of the passions of a persecutor, which mingled with the general display of the worst parts of our national character on the occasion of the Sepoy insurrection. The ravings of fanatics or charlatans from the pulpit may be unworthy of notice; but the heads of the Evangelical party have announced as their principle for the government of Hindoos and Mahomedans, that no schools be supported by public money in which the Bible is not taught, and by necessary consequence that no public employment be given to any but real or pretended Christians. An Under-Secretary of State [William N. Massey], in a speech delivered to his constituents on the 12th of November, 1857, is reported to have said: 'Toleration of their faith' (the faith of a hundred millions of British subjects), 'the superstition which they called religion, by the British Government, had had the effect of retarding the ascendancy of the British name, and preventing the salutary growth of Christianity. . . . Toleration was the great corner-stone of the religious liberties of this country; but do not let them abuse that precious word toleration. As he understood it, it meant the complete liberty to all, freedom of worship, among Christians, who worshipped upon the same foundation. It meant toleration of all sects and denominations of Christians who believed in the one mediation.' I desire to call attention to the fact, that a man who has been deemed fit to fill a high office in the government of this country, under a liberal Ministry, maintains the doctrine that all who do not believe in the divinity of Christ are beyond the pale of toleration. Who, after this imbecile display, can indulge the illusion that religious persecution has passed away, never to return?

Introductory Post

Hello. My name is David Nagy, and this is my blog, "The Beautiful Night." Here, I will mainly be talking about politics, philosophy, and fiction.

1) Politics: Politics is my main theoretical interest, and has been for a while. When I was a teenager, I was a libertarian; until a few years back, I was a liberal; now, I'm a leftist, though I don't identify with any particular stream of leftist thought. If I had to apply a label to myself, it would be "radical democrat" (with a lowercase 'd'). Much more information on all of this, as well as commentary on other political theories, particular political issues, social justice stuff, etc., will be coming in the weeks, months, and years to come.

2) Philosophy: I'm currently studying for a PhD in philosophy (at the ABD stage). As I've said, my main interest is politics, but more political theory than individual issues/activism; moreover, I enjoy other subfields of philosophy other than just politics. As such, I will also be posting about non-political (or at least, seemingly non-political) philosophical topics here, though I will strive to do so in an accessible way.

3) Fiction: I have a huge amount of respect for fiction, both as a way of understanding the world and as a way of seeing how other people understand the world. I also respect, and am interested in, analysis and critique of fiction, especially so-called "pop-cultural" fiction. Part of this blog, then, will be reviews and analyses of various narrative-driven artistic works. Since my favorite type of fiction is Japanese anime and manga, that will be my focus, though Western movies, TV shows, books, etc. will also show up occasionally.

For now, I will be posting twice a week, on Thursdays and Sundays by 12pm midnight. Once I get used to it, I will attempt to speed up this posting rate.

I hope you enjoy reading my blog!