A Question of Perspective

For once I was somewhat ahead of the craze over The Hunger Games; I got hooked when Catching Fire was still just an ARC. This means I've had several chances to teach The Hunger Games, and each time has been - as teaching any book often is - revelatory.

Now, just a few weeks away from the opening of the movie - which I will go see, though I am nervous - I'm thinking again of some of the adaptational issues that worry me.

There's the obvious critique of reality television, of course, embedded throughout the series, but especially prominent in the first book. The betting, the voyeurism, the enforced spectatorship in the Districts, the pre-Games television circuit, the Gamemakers' work to create the most riveting Games - for the audience - all of that is, I think, important to the politics of the series, though not necessarily to the plot. But what happens when the critiques of that culture of spectacle has been transmediated by nearly an identical culture of spectacle?

The homepage for the film announces that the 74th Hunger Games are about to start. But they aren't; we're about to watch a film adaptation of a book published four or five years ago. Everyone knows that, of course, and it's almost painfully literal - after all, isn't it more compelling for the viewer to be drawn into the Secondary World of the books?

Actually, NO.

It shouldn't be.
Panem is an appalling place, filled with appalling people - either appallingly oppressed or appallingly oppressive and oblivious. We don't - we shouldn't - want to align ourselves with the people of that world at all.

And here's the thing that teaching the book made crystal-clear to me: it is ESSENTIAL that Katniss narrates. It may even be essential that she narrates in the present tense. The only way we as readers can avoid complicity in the horrific spectacle of the Hunger Games is to be inside that Arena, to be looking at everything through Katniss's eyes. Otherwise, we are voyeurs - maybe reluctant, unwilling ones, but we are watching the spectacle, we are guided by the media's editing, we are caught up in the excitement and the dazzle and the suspense. If we're out in the Capitol, or even the Districts, we are not innocent bystanders. If we're in the Arena, locked inside the head of a tribute, then we are not reveling in the spectacle of the Games; we're aware of, alive with, the fear and horror and difficulties and pain of the Games. And that's the part that's important.

And how do you translate, transmediate, re-present, first-person, present-tense narration in a film?
Since you can't replicate it exactly, how do you counter the effects of losing that perspective, the perspective that guides your affective response to everything that happens in the story?

This is what has been worrying me since before I knew there'd be a movie. In class, we talked about the narrative perspective, and how important it is that we see things from Katniss's perspective. A few people thought it would have been cool for Collins to split up the narrative amongst a few of the tributes - Peeta, maybe, Rue, perhaps?  It may have been a student - I honestly don't remember - or it could have been me who brought up the problem of being a spectator versus participant in the Games. And they agreed; virtually everyone agreed that locating the narrative perspective outside of the Arena would NOT be good.

So when I came across this tonight, I was horrified. Capitol Couture. "Whether you're a Capitol fashionista seeking inspiration for your latest look or a District citizen tracking rumors about the Tributes and other celebs, Capitol Couture is the only place to turn for pictures and news reports on the fashion, trends and lifestyle that make Capitol living so grand."

No. No. No NO NO NO NO.

We aren't meant to be Capitol fashionistas. We aren't supposed to want to know the rumors or the trends. To use an unfair analogy, this is like setting up a page about the latest trends and rumors in the Nazi capital Berlin. We aren't supposed to sympathize with the oppressive, privileged class. They're shallow, oblivious, voyeuristic people who excitedly watch children kill each other on television, cheering and betting and getting emotionally involved in the forced plotlines.

We don't want to live in the world Collins has created. It's a miserable place full of want and hunger and sadness and instability and violence. It's a place where children are selected at random to fight each other to the death on live, national television. Where these Games are celebrated, memorialized, commemorated; there is Games-tourism to past Arenas, there are products and styles and trends, there's a huge economy around the Games, entirely aside from the enormous political and social power of it. You don't even need to read Foucault's Discipline and Punish to see the way power and discipline are being enacted here.

This isn't Harry Potter, or Middle Earth, or Narnia; this is a broken, post-apocalyptic world. There is no subject position in that world that we can successfully inhabit; at best, we can want to see things through the filter of Katniss's selfish, stubborn mind. We don't want to be her. We don't want to hold a 12-year-old in our arms while that child dies. We don't want to kill anyone. We don't want to have to care for Peeta, always worrying that he'll die, that we'll die, that the final moment of crisis has arrived. We don't want to have to hunt to scrape together food for our families, hunt and sell the meat and still be hungry at night. We don't want to be pawns in anyone's Games.

But the studio (Lionsgate) evidently wants just that. They want us in the audience of the Games, laughing and gasping and gripping the arms of our chairs and betting and reminiscing.
They want us to be complicit.

And by doing this, by creating a spectacle that draws us in irresistably, they become, like the Capitol, wielders of power. And we become the Capitol people, we become the District people.

They give us bread and circus, and we buy advance tickets for the midnight opening.

I'm worried about this movie.

John & Hank Green [should] Take Over the World; or, A Modest Proposal

The final part in my three-part series on the awesome power of Nerdfighteria and its benevolent "rulers," John and Hank Green (who aren't rulers, really, since it's more of a collective community, but they are a central magnetic force drawing in the nerds). I'm sure the world has been waiting eagerly for this long-delayed final post; it's a long one, so make yourself comfy.

First, a tiny update: a few days ago, John Green tweeted that the Nerdfighter group on kiva.org has now loaned over $150,000 in microloans. I'm not sure exactly when the numbers here started to boom, but it's been in the last six months or so. Again, a reminder that the majority of Nerdfighteria are young people - say, under 21 years old.

On to the Problem: When I was in high school, in my senior year I got interested in students' rights as a result of an amazing history teacher and the appallingly thwarted efforts of some friends to form a public Gay-Straight Alliance. For a long while thereafter, I seriously considered attending law school, with an eye on either civil rights or student/young person-related law. Obviously, law school went by the wayside, but for any number of reasons - including the fact that I specialize in children's and youth culture - I'm still quite interested in the plight of young people.

In some ways, this is a First World Problem: the disenfranchisement of under-21s (or even under-25s) is not quite on par with sub-saharan starvation crises, with southeast Asian political fighting, with South American paramilitary activity. At the same time, if we judged every cause by its relation to more dire causes, we'd be stalled out with inertia. Just because something is a First World Problem doesn't make it not a problem. Perfectability of society is a thing that should belong to all people, regardless of where they live.

Young people ARE disenfranchised. They are experiencing unemployment at higher rates than the general population, sometimes by as many as 3 or 4 times . 
Young people under the age of 18 pay taxes - sales tax, and if they DO have jobs, in the form of payroll taxes for Medicare and Social Security. I started working at a Hallmark shop in a mall when I was 16 - I worked there for more than two years. In that time, I paid in hundreds, if not thousands, to Medicare and Social Security, yet I had absolutely NO voice in how that money was regulated, disbursed, etc. Then, as now, there was a fair amount of political chatter about making changes to both programs; chatter I followed, because I was and am a nerd, but which I was not able to participate in, despite being an American worker paying taxes. This - taxation without representation - is one of the biggest forms of disenfranchisement that under-18s face, and I think it's a significant one. After all, Taxation Without Representation was one of the central causes of the American Revolution, was it not? [debatable, but in popular mythology, still important]

Then we get to other issues: the drinking age, which weirdly supercedes the age at which one is a legal citizen. The arguments for lowering the drinking age to the age of legal citizenship (i.e., age 18) are various, but one I find especially compelling is that it could creation an altered culture around drinking, reducing things like alcohol poisoning and alcohol abuse among teenagers and college students.
The linkage of college financial aid to male enrollment in Selective Service (which is, frankly, creepy and a kind of forced enscription).

The very large, and increasingly more troubling, problems of student loan debt - partially highlighted through the work of the Occupy protesters - is another area of disenfranchisement for young people.


Then there's the fact that the United States, alone with Somalia, refused to sign the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Amnesty International includes this very telling explanation of Somalia's failure to sign: "Somalia currently does not have the governmental capacity to ratify an international treaty at this time."
Primary objections include fears that the Convention would reduce parental authority, lead to lots of abortions, and result in children making their own (!) choices about religion. Two other issues loom in the background of the Convention: child soldiers (yes, weirdly enough: evidently, American 17-year-olds, who are legally children in the view of the convention, can join the US military) and capital punishment for juveniles.

This leads directly to the next item on the disenfranchised list: trial, imprisonment, and sentencing of minors as adults. This is an issue I feel very, very, very strongly about; regardless of crime, I do not feel any child (even a 17-year-old) should be tried as an adult. I would completely support altering penal codes to deal with juvenile offenders; at the moment, it's an all-or-nothing system, which frees teenage criminals when they reach majority, or which treats 12-year-olds like 45-year-olds in the eyes of the law. Neither is satisfactory.

A much smaller issue, but one I think is representative in some important ways of the way the issues of younger people are simply ignored, is the Car-Rental Dilemma. Even if you're the safest driver on earth, if you're under 25, you must pay a premium (usually a very high premium) if you want to rent a car. I have never been able to understand how this isn't illegal discrimination (and I've researched it at some length, but still my brain refuses to process it).

So what is the solution? What's the Proposal?

A powerful advocacy group. A lobbying and activist group on par with the AARP - the American Association of Retired Persons. Membership in that group is essentially automatic. I would model my group broadly after the AARP. I might even borrow their acronymic principle: Why not the American Association of Young People, the AAYP?

One of the criticisms of Kids These Days is their political apathy. I don't see this; most of the younger people I come in contact with do have at least a thin thread of interest or passion about some aspect of political and social life. They're just so thoroughly disenfranchised that they don't exert themselves. In the parlance of one of my favorite podcasters (Merlin Mann), young people have no skin in the game. In fact, they're excluded from the game almost entirely. They want to play, but no one's giving them a leg up.

I dislike, very strongly, the way lobbying operates in American government. I'd love to see that changed dramatically. I don't think this will happen any time soon. Until such a time when powerful lobbies aren't needed, I think it's vital that young people have one. The AARP is strong. It is one potent group of voters. There may not be as many young people voting - I'll limit my group to, say, ages 25 and under - but there are still a lot of them.

And no one speaks for them.
No one in any position of real political efficacy gives one shake of a dead rat's tail about the needs and wants of that age group. And I think that needs to change. The way to make it change is to form a group so numerous and vocal - and let's face it, financially strong - that the media, then the politicians, must pay attention to it.

This is where John and Hank Green come in. They have a large and broad platform from which to speak. John has over a million followers on Twitter. The two have repeatedly been able to marshal the forces of Nerdfighteria to undertake any number of causes, including lending and giving literally hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yes, this is small potatoes in the context of larger political contributions, but I would argue that it represents a much larger "sacrifice" or percentage of income given than one sees in the population at large.

I've been daydreaming about my AAYP for years - ever since high school, when our GSA was reduced to dust, when I learned about PACs, when my folks explained to me how much power the AARP had. One of my huge stumbling blocks, when I try to think how such an organization would be formed, is the need for strongly magnetic, charismatic leadership that would draw in young people. A kind of celebrity spokesperson(or persons), but ones genuinely and truly committed to the cause of increasing the power and influence and respect for young people in this country. There aren't many of these sorts of people in the pages of People magazine.
But John and Hank Green are precisely the kind of people who would work beautifully as loci for a young people's movement. Both are intelligent and very articulate; they manage to be serious and funny simultaneously. They're able to compress information into tidy short packets or nuggets; they can do soundbites and catchphrases like nobody's business. They've clearly mastered the use of the Internet for social networking, charitable work, and general community-building. Both have connections in other fields: John, of course, in the world of books - teachers, librarians, publishing, and Hank in science and entrepreneurship. Those teachers and librarians are an invaluable resource, because they're working with a good portion of the young people in question, and a great many are committed to the welfare and well-being of young people. Yes, they're nerds, but they are also able to speak across a range of nerd-groups: readers, artists, scientists, musicians, computer geeks, video-game-enthusiasts, lego nerds, sports fans (yes. John Green maintains a twitter account for his commentary on sports - @sportswithjohn). They already stage an annual con.

I don't think for one moment that they should be the driving force behind this - essentially, I would pick them as the networking hub. Young people ought to run the show - there's plenty of unemployed, or underemployed, college graduates out there who could do a great job of branding, marketing, coordinating, doing whatever it is one needs to do to set up an advocacy organization.  Clearly, older people - especially those with experience in such things - would be needed as well, but I would want the heart of the organization to be younger people. The core board and directorate would be largely under term limits - say four years. Then new folks would come in. You'd have to have some unchanging people, of course, for continuity, but keeping the main players both fresh and young would ensure new ideas and relevance - if you continually recruit young people into the organization, you'll always have people on hand who are totally up-to-date with the current state of the younger world.

I just love the idea of young people being represented more thoroughly in the halls of power. Can you imagine a group tasked with advocating for young people taking on issues relating to education? or student loans? I am pretty sure there was no one at the table looking out for 22-year-old recent graduates when any and all student loan  regulation was put in place. 

It would be a lovely thing to give power to the young people. AAYP - or whatever you want to call it - for and by the young people of America - it would be a glorious revolution.

hardly unbiased

 

As I seem to mention often, here there and everywhere, I am the child of two public school teachers. My dad was very active in his union as well, serving as grievance chairman, working on negotiating teams, eventually being elected union president. My entire childhood was spent hearing conversations about unions, about administrators, about negotiations, about teachers and teaching. This was standard dinner-table discussion.

Now, I am a teacher, though in less gritty halls; I'm not unionized, though I am appallingly underpaid.

My sympathy and empathy for teachers especially, and unions in general, has always been strong. You could say I was raised in the union way. 

So the latest anti-labor moves by Wisconsin governor scott walker strike me at an especially sensitive spot. I also have a number of friends who live in Wisconsin, or call Wisconsin home; these are extremely good friends, some of them people I've known for 13 years, people who were or are very close to me.

Most of them, as grad students, are affected by Walker's proposals.

I'm proud of the tide of activism that poured out in Madison to protest the governor. I'm very proud of my friend(s) who participated, despite grueling schedules. Democracy - and that is what this is - can be a very impressive and awe-inspiring sight, and seeing grad students, burly firefighters, sturdy-looking plumbers, high schoolers, teachers of all ages, all kinds of people who, on the surface, seem to come from across a very broad spectrum - seeing them all working for a common cause is genuinely moving.

I found photos from the protests online, a collection of the best signs. They're mostly all clever or poignant or witty, but this one - the one posted above - went right to my heart. 

In addition to being the child of teachers, I have always loved school, and for the most part, loved and respected my teachers. Many of them cared for me exceedingly well, even if I didn't know it at the time (others made it obvious to me, even then, even in second grade with Mrs Chapman). 

We ought all, as a society, care deeply about our teachers, our educators. It is not a glamorous job, and it is not an easy job, and very often someone ends up wearing seasonally-themed sweaters or denim jumpers or things adorned with apples. But the kids - whether they're toddlers in pre-school or sophisticated seniors in college - the kids are why they and we do it. And when teachers do it right, as many of them do - the rewards for those kids are manifold.

Care for your educators the way they care for your children. It's asking a lot - because they care, enormously, about your children. But it is not asking too much.

Solidarity with the good people of Wisconsin who want to work and live and be paid well and treated fairly.

Philip Pullman & public libraries

Today a link came down the pipeline to a speech Philip Pullman gave at an Oxfordshire local meeting about the region's public library funding.
I am a devotee of Philip Pullman, and had the incredible, amazing happy luck of actually meeting him in 2007. The His Dark Materials books have had an enormous impact on the way I read, the way I think, the way I think about books, Milton, children, teaching - everything. I am a committed fangirl, and I don't apologize for it (I don't fangrrrrl for too many things or people, so I feel I am allowed this one).

I am also a devotee of public libraries. Well, all libraries, really. But the public ones are the ones being pinched and pulled from both (or all) ends, and they're the ones that really do mean a lot.

Mr Pullman's speech talks both of the importance of the library to the child and to the adult. He talks of class difference, of the insultingly narrow view behind the idea that some magical squad of "volunteers" can just run everything. He talks of the faults of politicians and political appointees, and manages to deploy the adjective "Dickensian" in reference to one Eric Pickles (which is a Dickensian name if I ever heard one).

Public libraries in the United States and, evidently, England - if not elsewhere - are being pushed to their limits. Funding cuts coupled with increased demand and usage by the public equals overstretched resources. It's not just the nerdy, technophobic bibliophiles who are affected; it's the children whose parents make use of all the storytimes - for babies, for toddlers, for preschoolers. It's the groups who use the library for book clubs, for lectures, for discussions. The people who need the library to access the internet. The people who rely on librarians to help them find the information they need about taxes, about the law, about divorces and custody and dog licenses and geography and zip codes and how to become a hairdresser. The people - adult immigrants - who use the children's bookroom to practice or learn English. The people - adults - who use the libraries to learn to read, at all. The kids - of all ages, including teenagers - who spend their afterschool hours in the teen room of the local library (I have seen them do this in Pittsburgh - the teen room and reading/computer areas are never empty of teenagers). The adults like me who don't have enough money to buy all the books they want to read. The people who own e-readers and can now get e-books on loan through their library (the Pittsburgh library has e-books on lend that are compatible with what looks like every device except the kindle). The people who read music scores, who check out documentaries, who borrow music and movies and dvds of cooking shows.

Mr Pullman says it all far more intelligently and beautifully and affectingly than I can, which is why his remarks ought to be mandatory reading for everyone, especially people in town and county governments.One of the most profound comments on the function of public officials I have ever read comes here, in reference to the head of the county council:

"It’s not our job to cut services. It’s his job to protect them."

Imagine that - a town board, a city council, a county legislature whose job is to protect services. 


His final sentences are really admonishments, reprimands. Though I have heard his voice, and know it doesn't really sound this way, I imagine these final words being spoken in a loud roar, a bronze-bells sound that stuns and deafens and moves the auditor:

"Leave the libraries alone. You don’t know the value of what you’re looking after. It is too precious to destroy."

Fabians and Glenn Beck

As posted earlier, I'm doing some Glenn Beck research. I found a transcript of the program in which he discusses Fabian socialism; I've been reading it and struggling to understand Beck's point. [Note: I decided to do this as a break from reading freshman comp essays. I understand Beck is speaking, not writing, but his abuse of pronouns and his general incoherence on the structural level is far below what I would consider acceptable from my freshmen]

So he starts off by talking about "they" and "them," and shows clips from British television, neither of which are contextualized. I am thoroughly unclear about who "they" and "them" are. He uses a number of categories to describe potential "them"s [environmentalists, progressives, liberals] but is not specific about which he's referencing at what point.

Beck goes on to quote from a number of news sources (which, to his credit, he documents) which themselves quote a variety of persons (Robert Kennedy Jr, a NASA employee, etc) asking questions like "when do we jail global warning deniers?" and asserting that denying global warming is treasonous.
I don't have time - or, frankly, interest - fact-check every single one of these quotes. I'm willing to go along with Glenn on this one and say: "golly, these are overblown responses." Sometimes, I like moderation.
But then things get weird.

Beck says, and this comes from the foxnews transcript itself:

Where did these ideas come from? Well, you can find them all from the same place — progressivism here in America, Marxism overseas and Fabian socialism in Australia, New Zealand, England and Europe. They are all the same thing. They are all the same stock of people.
I've talked to you a lot about progressives and Marxists, but Fabian socialists — look them up. You will be astounded what you find. It's all the same pool of people."

Never mind that political or ideological positions aren't really a "place." I'm creeped out by Beck's use of phrases like "stock of people" and "pool of people" - it just feels a little (a LITTLE) like the language of early eugenics-movement proponents. I guess it's "stock of people," which makes my mind immediately leap to racial stock, or genetic stock. This is very likely my own personal bias; I doubt very much that Glenn Beck is a eugenicist, unconsciously or otherwise.
Now we get some history about the Fabians, a topic about which I know more than the average schmuck because of my decade-long scholarly interest in Edith Nesbit. Just this summer I checked out a gazillion library books on Fabianism for my dissertation.

Beck:

But Fabian Socialists was a society that was founded in January of 1884. The members sought to influence public opinion on socialism. But what they — what made them unique was, at the time, if you wanted to be a socialist, you needed a mass revolution. Well, they preferred the selective education — selective education. You've seen it here beginning under the Woodrow Wilson administration. It was the education of the powerful few, especially those in government and the media who could lead reforms in government.
It is why our media is so screwed up. And they all think alike.
Their strategy is called doctrine of inevitability of gradualism. What does that mean? The doctrine of inevitability of gradualism.

 Oh Glenn. I'm going to treat this like a student paper.
First we get the assertion that you need a mass revolution if you want to be a socialist. I don't deny revolution and socialist reformers go together (reformers want change, after all), but Beck's got it backwards: it's your socialist beliefs that lead you to want mass revolution, not the other way round. You don't start with revolution. It's where you end up.
Now, onto selective education (which I think is how Beck ends up with his anti-media line, which lacks transitional phrases surrounding it, and thus is simply tossed into the mix here almost at random).
Here's the thing: late 19th century social reformers (ie, the Fabians) were intensely interested in helping the poor and lower classes. They believed the best way to do this was through education. Socialists of all stripes, including Fabians, were founders and proponents of educational centers, often referred to as workingmen's institutes, where workers (and others) could go hear lectures, see performances, read periodicals and newspapers, read books. Yes, there was political content to some of this, but not all of it.
I don't know about you, but Victorian laborers have never struck ME as belonging to the "powerful few." The powerful few, who have existed in every culture across every nation and every age, are almost always already well educated. And since we know that, even late in the 19th century, there were more workers/lower-class folks than wealthy, any drive to educate the poor is by definition not selective, nor does it target the few.

Now onto the "inevitability of gradualism."
Beck later describes this as "baby steps," and to an extent he's correct. My reading notes from a biography of Nesbit references either Beatrice or Sidney Webb (founders-in-chief of Fabian Society) as believing that "dawning conscience and increased social intelligence" would convince people of the rightness of the Fabian cause - not revolution. My copy of part of an article on the history of fabianism leads with a quote that states that their aim was "to help in the reconstruction of society in accordance with the highest moral possibilities." It was a slow campaign of rational persuasion. So, Beck is wrong again: to be the Fabian kind of socialist, you needed to eschew revolution, not embrace it.

Next up, the origin of the Fabians' name:
Beck says:

"OK. Now why the name "Fabian" — the Fabian society? Well, this is after General Quintus Fabius Maximus. He had a brilliant strategy. He advanced in his battles not through front-on battles, but instead through harassment and attrition.

The early Fabian Society adopted as its motto "when I strike, I strike hard." Their logo, their mascot, was the tortoise. The tortoise.
Quintus Fabius was known, initially derisively, then with approbation, as "Cunctator," which means "delayer." Fabius's military strategy of delay was deployed during the attempted invasion of Rome by Hannibal, when Hannibal's forces far outnumbered the Romans.
And Beck is right: the strategy of Fabius depended on indirect actions, harassment, preventing the opponent from obtaining supplies; essentially, on everything BUT direct engagement.
Beck makes a weird and kind of pointless analogy to rebuilding a carburetor in the living room, and then says "Gosh, is it becoming inevitable that we just can't get out of this debt bubble? A little step at a time?"

This one is inexplicable. I have NO idea what he's trying to say here. Again, if this was a student paper, I'd write "Transitions needed? What is the connection between this and your previous statements?"

And finally, Beck gets on to running down old George Bernard Shaw. He plays a clip of Shaw espousing some of his eugenicist beliefs. He mentions that Shaw received an Oscar and the "Nobel Peace Prize." [at which, after the world's shortest google search, one can see clearly that Shaw - primarily a playwright - was in fact awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Big difference, Mr Beck, especially when you're going to toss around the eugenics accusations].

Fact: In the early 20th century, eugenics was part of medical science. It was not a creepy racist fringe belief, practiced by evil maniacs. G. Stanley Hall, the man who practically invented the category of adolescence, a man who pioneered both psychology and education in the United States, was a eugenicist. Francis Galton, who coined the term "eugenics," was a British eccentric and polymath whose work gave us the techniques and uses of fingerprinting as a method of identification. 
It really isn't until the 1930s - right around the time the Nazis get their hands on it - that eugenics begins to decline and experience a backlash. This after forced sterilization programs in countries like Belgium and the United States - primarily targeted were mentally ill patients, criminals and persons of undesirable nature (prostitutes, alcoholics, the undeserving poor). 

Beck's discussion of Shaw just gets weird, and he wanders way off course - again, frankly, I don't know what he's saying. He calls out George Soros, he rants against secular humanists, he invokes God God God repeatedly. He tells us that George Bernard Shaw invented the gas chambers (this seems to be untrue. I think Shaw was probably busy having affairs and writing plays, not inventing death devices).

And on and on. And then winds up railing against the environmentalists again.  And perpetuating some of the most revolting abuse to pronouns that I have seen in a long time. Beck winds down with this:

When you think the way they do, you tend to dehumanize individual situations. Suddenly, you're convinced that it's OK to kill one person or two in order to save thousands or end suffering for either thousands or for one.

Erm, good sir, this is precisely the reasoning that led to the dropping of the bombs are Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I wonder if Beck argues against that?
And it's also, if I'm not mistaken, part of the reasoning behind the "doctrine" of preemptive strikes created by that wacky Marxist socialist liberal madman, George W. Bush. 
It's a thorny moral decision, really: if you knew that killing ten people could save 10,000, what would you do?
But this is a complex question and Beck doesn't deal in complexities.


After this delightful exercise, I will never again attempt to read and analyze anything said by Glenn Beck. It's more exhausting and infuriating than grading terrible student papers.

But I could not let slurs against the Fabians go unchecked, even weird, vague, inaccurate slurs. E. Nesbit is one of my absolute favorite writers, and she's one-third of my dissertation. People - Glenn Beck or anyone else - can't just throw around anti-Fabian remarks. The sloppy misuse of "history," too, is a big problem. My students do this too - they give "evidence" in the form of huge generalizations with NO context and NO supporting documentation. I mark off for that.

So, Glenn Beck, your grade for this assignment is an: Unsatisfactory, with the additional comment of "see me." At which point I will recommend you go to the writing center for some intensive remediation, because you're unfit to go forward with your speaking/writing career.