You can have your state do it too:
http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/tlodocs/82R/billtext/html/HB02454I.htm
and it's on such a sublime level, too! This way they can hurt both those who believe in magic and those who study the world we live in!
I've been labeling it "magic", but I think I might change that to "panic."
2011-03-19
2011-03-18
Happy birthday
My son is 15 years old today.
I still remember, of course, the day he was born. I carried him out of the room and over where he got cleaned up a bit, and looking into his face I felt, down to my toes, he looked just like me. I never did any real investigating of how that feeling comes about. It can't be very rational, because I just don't look much like a baby. The features I saw in his face were mine, not my father's or my brother's. I think I mentally compared him to old pictures of myself and that's hard to link to any biologically motivated illusion. Mirrors and photographs are just too recent to have had any impact on evolution.
We named him Axel, which turned out to be a quite popular name in his generation. No surprise, though it really was hard to realize these things could apply to us. "Axel" after relatives and perhaps a bit after Axel Oxenstierna. (Not after A. Rose, who can't even spell his name.)
Fifteen years later he still looks a lot like me, but recently my greatest revelation has been not how much of my boy he is but how different from me he is. He's a whole other person, and in most ways, better than I am.
We've done a lot, especially the last 5 years. Music festivals and concerts, movies and books. I think it began about when he started playing online games and learned English and surfing the net. He was 6 or 7 then.
He speaks English more or less fluently and writes it better. He's better at my best school subject than I ever was. He reads books almost exclusively in English and he likes to switch off the subtitles on movies.
Movies have become his greatest interest and he dives into it like nothing else in life. By now he has long passed me. He has seen more films by more great directors than I have. Only one book on his birthday wishlist this year, and it turns out it's a novel that Herzog is filming - Axel wants to read it before seeing the film. Herzog is his favorite director, for reasons I cannot understand. The sentiment is sincere, I think perhaps more so than I ever was about movies or any other culture thing. I was sort of looking forward to get to watch a few action movies while he was a teenager but Axel prefers Almodovar over Hollywood.
I compare his interests and thoughts to my own at fifteen and it strikes me, I look like a hillbilly compared to him. It makes me proud and sad at the same time. By the time I was watching real movies, not just the odd Star wars or James Bond - in cinemas only mind you, no internet or dvd back then - I was closer to 18, and my taste was nowhere near the refinement my boy shows. We went to a local movie club last night, and Axel got a membership card - age requirement 15, I just said "he's 15 tomorrow" and that was that - and we saw Hrafninn flýgur (from 1984, "When the raven flies", this could be the only really worthwhile "viking" movie ever made or at least one of very few). It was great and Axel had a great time. I sat there thinking this might be as close as we'll ever get to that idea of seeing a guy movie together just us two. Ok, that wasn't really true, for instance we saw True grit just a week or two back.
Now I'm worrying about letting him get in touch with working life and about student exchange.
At least my daughter will always be my little girl... No?
I still remember, of course, the day he was born. I carried him out of the room and over where he got cleaned up a bit, and looking into his face I felt, down to my toes, he looked just like me. I never did any real investigating of how that feeling comes about. It can't be very rational, because I just don't look much like a baby. The features I saw in his face were mine, not my father's or my brother's. I think I mentally compared him to old pictures of myself and that's hard to link to any biologically motivated illusion. Mirrors and photographs are just too recent to have had any impact on evolution.
We named him Axel, which turned out to be a quite popular name in his generation. No surprise, though it really was hard to realize these things could apply to us. "Axel" after relatives and perhaps a bit after Axel Oxenstierna. (Not after A. Rose, who can't even spell his name.)
Fifteen years later he still looks a lot like me, but recently my greatest revelation has been not how much of my boy he is but how different from me he is. He's a whole other person, and in most ways, better than I am.
We've done a lot, especially the last 5 years. Music festivals and concerts, movies and books. I think it began about when he started playing online games and learned English and surfing the net. He was 6 or 7 then.
He speaks English more or less fluently and writes it better. He's better at my best school subject than I ever was. He reads books almost exclusively in English and he likes to switch off the subtitles on movies.
Movies have become his greatest interest and he dives into it like nothing else in life. By now he has long passed me. He has seen more films by more great directors than I have. Only one book on his birthday wishlist this year, and it turns out it's a novel that Herzog is filming - Axel wants to read it before seeing the film. Herzog is his favorite director, for reasons I cannot understand. The sentiment is sincere, I think perhaps more so than I ever was about movies or any other culture thing. I was sort of looking forward to get to watch a few action movies while he was a teenager but Axel prefers Almodovar over Hollywood.
I compare his interests and thoughts to my own at fifteen and it strikes me, I look like a hillbilly compared to him. It makes me proud and sad at the same time. By the time I was watching real movies, not just the odd Star wars or James Bond - in cinemas only mind you, no internet or dvd back then - I was closer to 18, and my taste was nowhere near the refinement my boy shows. We went to a local movie club last night, and Axel got a membership card - age requirement 15, I just said "he's 15 tomorrow" and that was that - and we saw Hrafninn flýgur (from 1984, "When the raven flies", this could be the only really worthwhile "viking" movie ever made or at least one of very few). It was great and Axel had a great time. I sat there thinking this might be as close as we'll ever get to that idea of seeing a guy movie together just us two. Ok, that wasn't really true, for instance we saw True grit just a week or two back.
Now I'm worrying about letting him get in touch with working life and about student exchange.
At least my daughter will always be my little girl... No?
2011-03-10
Wall of text
Tim, this is for you, or for anyone who needs help getting rid of an hour or two browsing the interwebz.
Some of the topics I've been researching for my writing. I can look at the list and feel like at least all this work wasn't completely wasted.
Virology, genetics and the combination of the two. Horizontal gene transfer, huh - it's like nature is cheating. Diabetes, hemophilia and the digestive system. Ebola, rabies. Bats and rodents, virus vectors. Kept news feed on atom-level research in virus and drug manufacture. Back to some basic school chemistry and biochemistry long forgotten. Structure of the UN, organization of the CDC. Some geography and politics of various areas of the US. Hundreds of conspiracy theories, hundreds of delusions and extremists, militia and patriots. History of vampire literature and vampire myths. Some "unsolved" mysteries - like the Voynich MS and Oak island (Nova Scotia). A side track on pirate history. I didn't really need looking up algorithmic trading but did a little reading anyway. Spent a week getting to know Skykomish and to a lesser extent Seattle. There's a bakery in Seattle I want to visit someday. The human senses. UFOs - no really, there's some interesting things there. Maybe 100 historic Europeans, like Tycho Brahe, Hernan Cortez, the Sforza family. About two weeks' research on Torsten Stålhandske. ADHD, autism and Asperger's. Free running. Reading and re-reading roughly a dozen novels and series of novels, pinpointing what their draw-in is and what their weakness is, for me. In the process I've become a constant reader of liberal Kentucky blogs and a bunch of other things. Spent some time reading up on the biology of Borneo and Sumatra. Did case study on the topics I would have needed to look into for background of Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon and Baroque cycle, like thief takers and the myths and stories of that world (Neal is so awesome he probably already knew all of that but I would have needed to read a lot). The history of feminist, sexually explicit or pornographic literature; this was one of the harder topics to research without having time and materials provided by an institution or university, and probably also one of the topics where my results remain most shallow. I didn't really need to research Wikipedia but I've kept writing down notes and collecting loose ends about it. Cryptids. Cross-over research from my UAV hobby. Numbers stations. The lesser key of Salomon, demonology. Insular dwarfism.
When I put the topics together like that I feel less like I wasted over a year on non-productive procrastination. No the procrastination was probably the topics I didn't even know where to start researching - attraction and gender, fashion and feeling of self-worth, online truth, self image and expectation, technology as magic of the future
Clarke's third law:
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.Gehm's corollary to Clarke's third law:
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
2011-03-09
Set your sons up the bomb
Or, How to tease your kids by pretending to teach them something so that when they get older they'll definitely flunk any serious education in that awesome subject. Seriously, fundamentalist approved dinosaur teachings?Says magic-believer mommy,
"We gave the boys the dinosaur book from the museum for Christmas, and they LOVE it ...because it's a book about dinosaurs that they can believe EVERYTHING they read!!...Yours truly, the mother of a future scientist/geologist/archaeologist:)"
Yes, it really is that awesome. And it teaches how dinosaurs lived along-side humans a few thousand years ago or so. Yup. Close your eyes, kneel and believe.
I'll throw in an additional free hint for mommy dearest as well: Believing everything you read is generally a really bad thing, and churches speaking about science is often especially bad.
2011-02-07
I dreamt about
I had a dream this weekend, about me and me son. We were out driving, I don't know where we were going, it didn't seem like we quite knew. I think we were someplace near home, it was all open and flat landscapes, just like central Uppland. After a while we came to a place. Somewhere that tries to be some place, it had a parking lot and some houses. The parking lot was sort of big, in several sections but not in that industrial way like outside a big well planned shopping mall but like near some ancient attraction where the parking spaces are just sprawled about all around in little pieces. People were walking everywhere, it must have been a pretty popular place. Some houses where nearby, several of them pretty big though we were in the countryside. Two cars were just ahead of us and they were revving and playing, going much too fast, there were people everywhere. It was summer or late spring.
Strangely, it didn't turn into a nightmare where I hit the gas to get away from the kids driving too fast.
One of the cars, I think it was a small BMW estate, had pulled ahead, then turned around and came back full throttle. I could imagine him showing off to the rest of us and he wasn't looking at what he should have been looking at. People were milling about. Some young men were loitering and not paying attention to the cars, too cool to care. One of them was just standing in the street and that BMW just ran head on into him. It was a nasty accident though not spectacular. Just real. Except I knew I was dreaming, just waiting for it to turn nightmare-nasty.
In my dream I thought huh? Am I not supposed to wake up now? But it wasn't a real nightmare.
I pulled my car over diagonally behind the run-over kid. The BMW sped away and went off. I hit the warning blinkers and fumbled for my phone, stepping out.
Nobody else was moving. Nobody was doing anything. The driver was gone. The kid's friends melted away into the scenery and nobody else was stepping forward. Frantic, I found myself trying to do the right things, calling for an ambulance and doing what I could for the kid.
My son was awkwardly moving around and I tried to tell him how to act.
In that instant I understood that this wasn't a nightmare about something I did or had to do but a nightmare about my son.
And then I woke myself.
Later the next day, I went to get some movies at the library. I found two movies I knew my son wanted - The drunken angel and A streetcar named Desire, the old one with Brando and Leigh. Yep, that's his taste. But best of all, I found Cyrano, and Axel sounded like he'd really like watching it. For some reason, library movies are in much worse shape than rentals. I don't quite understand why, people must be less careful with them maybe because they're free. Maybe these movies just see more traffic.
After dinner we popped Cyrano into the player and started watching. Cyrano is such a delightful movie. Axel just discovered knowing languages is fun and though he doesn't know any French he does know a bit of Spanish and I'm trying to encourage pretending you know languages just so you can pick up a smattering of it.
"Holy crap he's speaking in verse all the time!"
Delightful. Of course, just then the movie just... ceased. Popped out the disc and sure enough upon inspection it's clear this disc isn't playable. It's so scratched it's a miracle we could even watch the first ten minutes.
We are not to be deterred however, it's Saturday and we're set for a movie. Next we try Streetcar. Inspecting that disc would have been cheating so we didn't and the first ten or fifteen are just fine. We sit there adapting to new manners, new language, another way to condense drama.
Of course, that one didn't work either.
Now we're laughing at the hopelessness of it all. I say we'll check the online rental. We're talking about other times when movies haven't worked for us and we're agreeing that this is worse than all of them, even worse than when Queen of the damned failed in the last ten minutes.
We find 8 1/2 in the rental menu, but there's an Almodovar as well, and Axel really likes those, partly because it's Spanish. So we choose that one - All about my mother. I hadn't seen it, don't know what it's about.
Turns out it's about a kid being killed in a car accident. Freaky, with the dream the night before. Then the film changes. This film turns around so many times, you never really settle into the story. The kid's mother is into theater and one play is in focus for most of the movie. At first we don't notice what play it is.
After a few minutes more Axel suddenly exclaims, holy crap, it's Streetcar.
And it is. It's Blanche and Stella and Stanley. I just sit there taking in this weird situation and it's like the whole dream the night before and the whole evening, everything has just been leading up to this story about Spanish prostitutes.
Nothing else of consequence happens this evening but I will never forget the BMW and Streetcar named Desire. I'm not the one to believe in hidden life messages in dreams but sometimes it's hard to stop your mind from wandering.
Now I just have to figure out what that dream meant.
Strangely, it didn't turn into a nightmare where I hit the gas to get away from the kids driving too fast.
One of the cars, I think it was a small BMW estate, had pulled ahead, then turned around and came back full throttle. I could imagine him showing off to the rest of us and he wasn't looking at what he should have been looking at. People were milling about. Some young men were loitering and not paying attention to the cars, too cool to care. One of them was just standing in the street and that BMW just ran head on into him. It was a nasty accident though not spectacular. Just real. Except I knew I was dreaming, just waiting for it to turn nightmare-nasty.
In my dream I thought huh? Am I not supposed to wake up now? But it wasn't a real nightmare.
I pulled my car over diagonally behind the run-over kid. The BMW sped away and went off. I hit the warning blinkers and fumbled for my phone, stepping out.
Nobody else was moving. Nobody was doing anything. The driver was gone. The kid's friends melted away into the scenery and nobody else was stepping forward. Frantic, I found myself trying to do the right things, calling for an ambulance and doing what I could for the kid.
My son was awkwardly moving around and I tried to tell him how to act.
In that instant I understood that this wasn't a nightmare about something I did or had to do but a nightmare about my son.
And then I woke myself.
Later the next day, I went to get some movies at the library. I found two movies I knew my son wanted - The drunken angel and A streetcar named Desire, the old one with Brando and Leigh. Yep, that's his taste. But best of all, I found Cyrano, and Axel sounded like he'd really like watching it. For some reason, library movies are in much worse shape than rentals. I don't quite understand why, people must be less careful with them maybe because they're free. Maybe these movies just see more traffic.
After dinner we popped Cyrano into the player and started watching. Cyrano is such a delightful movie. Axel just discovered knowing languages is fun and though he doesn't know any French he does know a bit of Spanish and I'm trying to encourage pretending you know languages just so you can pick up a smattering of it.
"Holy crap he's speaking in verse all the time!"
Delightful. Of course, just then the movie just... ceased. Popped out the disc and sure enough upon inspection it's clear this disc isn't playable. It's so scratched it's a miracle we could even watch the first ten minutes.
We are not to be deterred however, it's Saturday and we're set for a movie. Next we try Streetcar. Inspecting that disc would have been cheating so we didn't and the first ten or fifteen are just fine. We sit there adapting to new manners, new language, another way to condense drama.
Of course, that one didn't work either.
Now we're laughing at the hopelessness of it all. I say we'll check the online rental. We're talking about other times when movies haven't worked for us and we're agreeing that this is worse than all of them, even worse than when Queen of the damned failed in the last ten minutes.
We find 8 1/2 in the rental menu, but there's an Almodovar as well, and Axel really likes those, partly because it's Spanish. So we choose that one - All about my mother. I hadn't seen it, don't know what it's about.
Turns out it's about a kid being killed in a car accident. Freaky, with the dream the night before. Then the film changes. This film turns around so many times, you never really settle into the story. The kid's mother is into theater and one play is in focus for most of the movie. At first we don't notice what play it is.
After a few minutes more Axel suddenly exclaims, holy crap, it's Streetcar.
And it is. It's Blanche and Stella and Stanley. I just sit there taking in this weird situation and it's like the whole dream the night before and the whole evening, everything has just been leading up to this story about Spanish prostitutes.
Nothing else of consequence happens this evening but I will never forget the BMW and Streetcar named Desire. I'm not the one to believe in hidden life messages in dreams but sometimes it's hard to stop your mind from wandering.
Now I just have to figure out what that dream meant.
2011-02-03
frustrated
I've had problems with my lower back for about 15 years. I've been to doctors and therapists and they've confidently given me training programmes and told me to quit smoking.
Side note: There *is* a possible connection between a bad back and smoking - smoking hinders the blood flow and if the muscles in the back are a little too weak the smoking can be what breaks the camel's back, so to speak. None of the doctors bothered to explain this so I just thought they were bullshitting me with the standard "quit smoking" formula.
I've had x-ray of spinal discs. I've been more or less handicapped at times. Especially in later years it has been worst in the mornings and I've had to become careful with what beds I sleep in, as some could almost paralyze me. In the mornings after getting up I sometimes get a sharp stabbing pain in the lower back that hurts so much my whole body just shuts down. I just fall to the floor like a ragdoll. Way scary to feel it coming while walking in the stairs.
This new year's, I slept on one of those new air matresses while we were visiting my folks. It's about 2 ft thick and they come with an integrated reversible electric pump, I'm sure they're being sold everywhere.
I slept like a baby and had no back pain when I got up. That has not happened in years, literally.
So last weekend I went and bought one just to see if it was really true and not some freak coincidence. I've slept on it every night since then and ... wow. I'm like a new person. I'm 25 again.
Rumour has it it's similar to sleeping on a waterbed. I'll be shopping for a really good bed shortly. Right now I'm so relieved, and at the same time so frustrated at all the professionals I've paid to help me and who never considered this or asked about it. I thought my bed was as good as they get but evidently I was wrong.
At the same time I'm angry that I've been so ignorant and naive, myself.
Side note: There *is* a possible connection between a bad back and smoking - smoking hinders the blood flow and if the muscles in the back are a little too weak the smoking can be what breaks the camel's back, so to speak. None of the doctors bothered to explain this so I just thought they were bullshitting me with the standard "quit smoking" formula.
I've had x-ray of spinal discs. I've been more or less handicapped at times. Especially in later years it has been worst in the mornings and I've had to become careful with what beds I sleep in, as some could almost paralyze me. In the mornings after getting up I sometimes get a sharp stabbing pain in the lower back that hurts so much my whole body just shuts down. I just fall to the floor like a ragdoll. Way scary to feel it coming while walking in the stairs.
This new year's, I slept on one of those new air matresses while we were visiting my folks. It's about 2 ft thick and they come with an integrated reversible electric pump, I'm sure they're being sold everywhere.
I slept like a baby and had no back pain when I got up. That has not happened in years, literally.
So last weekend I went and bought one just to see if it was really true and not some freak coincidence. I've slept on it every night since then and ... wow. I'm like a new person. I'm 25 again.
Rumour has it it's similar to sleeping on a waterbed. I'll be shopping for a really good bed shortly. Right now I'm so relieved, and at the same time so frustrated at all the professionals I've paid to help me and who never considered this or asked about it. I thought my bed was as good as they get but evidently I was wrong.
At the same time I'm angry that I've been so ignorant and naive, myself.
2011-01-12
More of the same
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose
(Note, this is a preliminary version, but I put it up anyway cause I don't have time to fiddle with images right now)
The assault on Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, AZ, has sparked an intense debate in the US, and immense media coverage abroad. The US debate is focused on how some see the violent agitation in US politics to be directly or indirectly responsible for the attack. Outsiders will probably be quick to accept that view and at least from a European or Scandinavian point of view, it's easy to also blame the US (AZ) gun laws.
What I'm missing from the coverage here is the memory of our own experiences of similar events, which is really disturbing considering I'm speaking of two of the defining moments of Swedish history of the past 25 years: the murders of Olof Palme and Anna Lindh.
Yeah. Murders of prominent politicians right on the street, apparently committed by outsiders. Way more prominent than Giffords. Twice. And Swedish political climate is way off from the anti-Obama polemics of present day US politics.
Note: for simplicity's sake, the characterization of the Palme and Lindh cases are vastly simplified in the following. The Palme case especially so, since it is officially unsolved. For the sake of discussion, assume in the following that the Pettersson-Tingström connection is the valid and proven guilty party of the Palme murder. I don't mean to imply that this is the case, I'm just using the possibility to make a point and create a discussion.
Some background: Swedish PM Olof Palme was gunned down in 1986. The man who was tried for the shooting (convicted and then aquitted, since deceased) was a small-time criminal, Christer Pettersson, with lots of links to a guy who is probably the closest you'll get in Sweden to US anti-fed extremists, Lars Tingström: a violent and systematic offender who saw in society a conspiracy against himself specifically, and the government and the left, led by Palme, as the head of the snake. Tingström was convicted of three bombings against government and justice targets, like Pettersson he also died a few years later (both from natural causes, btw).
Anna Lindh was stabbed to death in an apparent spur of the moment attack in a Stockholm department store in 2003. The murderer was Mijailo Mijailović, a 24-year old with mental issues. He simply encountered Lindh and decided to get a knife and attack her. Mijailović stated later that he'd been hearing voices and not sleeping for a period of days leading up to the attack. Mijailović's guilt is beyond doubt, linked by DNA evidence from the murder weapon and his presence documented by cameras, and after a few months in jail he also admitted his guilt.
As far as is known, neither Pettersson-Tingström nor Mijailović acted on behalf of any political group nor did they have views that aligned them to any particular extent with such groups. In the case of Palme, he was a target for right-wing hatred in a way that is quite similar to that aimed at Obama the past few years. Less abundant perhaps, but just as over the top and tasteless. Lindh was not a target in this sense. She was widely assumed to be the next leader of Sweden's biggest party, a well liked and respected political figure at the very top of the political hierarchies of Sweden. At 46, most people in the country assumed she would have gone on to become Sweden's first female PM within the next few years.
Loughner seems to be more insane than political, judging by the incoherent ravings on Youtube. More Mijailović than Pettersson or Tingström.
Enough with the background detail. Each case is different and more so the more you look at them. The point I'm getting at is that there have been two high-profile murders of prominent Swedish politicians, murders not so vastly different from the attack on Gabrielle Giffords. Perhaps the similarities between the cases could teach us all something?
Obviously, gun laws would not have stopped Mijailović - he used a Mora knife. The Smith & Wesson used to kill Palme has not been found but if one continues to assume that the Pettersson-Tingström theory is plausible, they were well enough at home in outlaw territory that they could easily have gotten hold of a weapon regardless of gun control laws. I gather that Loughner should not have been allowed to buy that Glock under the present gun laws of Arizona (though I've seen tatements indicating the opposite as well), this part of gun control obviously failed. Comparing to Mijailović, it's clear to me that nut-cases will be able to get hold of a weapon, but: if Loughner had had to make do with a knife, 5 people who are dead today would probably not have been.
The part that really interests me though, is the moral issue of the rethorics. Let us assume that Tingström indeed did enroll Pettersson in his private crusade against the Palme government. The anti-Palme rethorics of the 80s included leaflets with bull's eye patterns and caricatures that most resembled the pictures of jews favored by Julius Streicher's Der Stürmer. If that doesn't qualify as violent rethorics, I don't know what does. This rethoric appeared on the fringe of the right wing of the established political spectrum of Sweden. Similar to how the Tea party consists of the far end of the established conservatives or the Republican party in the US, actually.
That anti-Palme fringe was never part of daily political debate, but if it had been, what would we have said about guilt? Would it have been a valid point to say that it shared responsibility for the murder of Palme? Of course not. Would it have been disgusting polemics that should have no place in political debate? Certainly. It was, regardless of actual violence.
So, do Palin, Kelly and others who use violent rethorics on either end of the political spectrum share responsibility for Loughner's deed? Equally certainly, of course not. Is it disgusting polemics that anyone with a functional moral compass should stay clear of? Oh yes. Palin for one knows this. The fact that the much talked about cross hairs were promptly removed from her website tells us that she does. The lack of a straightbacked apology for the tasteless symbolics is disturbing, but it's hardly criminal in any sense of the word, nor should it be. Tasteless, foul and stupid - yes. That's the only crime relevant to the cross-hairs.
And for readers in Europe: what happened in Tucson can and will happen in Europe. It has happened in Sweden already, and it didn't take violent agitation or lack of gun control. An assault only takes one nut-case. The assault on Giffords does not prove or even illustrate anything about America being different from Europe - in fact it shows that some things are eerily similar.
Violent and tasteless rethorics has no place in serious political debate and should be left out. How this can be a surprise to anyone is beyond my grasp.
Despite the bible thumping and gun toting, America and Americans are more similar to Europe and Europeans than most of us realize. Under the skin, we're just the same. Even the psychos.
* Now you're at the end of the text and you're thinking I don't know about those cross-hairs not being cross-hairs but surveyor's markers ("purveyor's markers" according to some sources). Wrong. I do know about it. I'm still pondering whether I should write about that or not because I'm simply not sure I can keep that part as respectful as I'd like. As things now stand, I don't think I'll write that second part - for instance, Barefoot & progressive expresses it much better than I could do.
(Note, this is a preliminary version, but I put it up anyway cause I don't have time to fiddle with images right now)
The assault on Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, AZ, has sparked an intense debate in the US, and immense media coverage abroad. The US debate is focused on how some see the violent agitation in US politics to be directly or indirectly responsible for the attack. Outsiders will probably be quick to accept that view and at least from a European or Scandinavian point of view, it's easy to also blame the US (AZ) gun laws.
What I'm missing from the coverage here is the memory of our own experiences of similar events, which is really disturbing considering I'm speaking of two of the defining moments of Swedish history of the past 25 years: the murders of Olof Palme and Anna Lindh.
Yeah. Murders of prominent politicians right on the street, apparently committed by outsiders. Way more prominent than Giffords. Twice. And Swedish political climate is way off from the anti-Obama polemics of present day US politics.
Note: for simplicity's sake, the characterization of the Palme and Lindh cases are vastly simplified in the following. The Palme case especially so, since it is officially unsolved. For the sake of discussion, assume in the following that the Pettersson-Tingström connection is the valid and proven guilty party of the Palme murder. I don't mean to imply that this is the case, I'm just using the possibility to make a point and create a discussion.
Some background: Swedish PM Olof Palme was gunned down in 1986. The man who was tried for the shooting (convicted and then aquitted, since deceased) was a small-time criminal, Christer Pettersson, with lots of links to a guy who is probably the closest you'll get in Sweden to US anti-fed extremists, Lars Tingström: a violent and systematic offender who saw in society a conspiracy against himself specifically, and the government and the left, led by Palme, as the head of the snake. Tingström was convicted of three bombings against government and justice targets, like Pettersson he also died a few years later (both from natural causes, btw).
Anna Lindh was stabbed to death in an apparent spur of the moment attack in a Stockholm department store in 2003. The murderer was Mijailo Mijailović, a 24-year old with mental issues. He simply encountered Lindh and decided to get a knife and attack her. Mijailović stated later that he'd been hearing voices and not sleeping for a period of days leading up to the attack. Mijailović's guilt is beyond doubt, linked by DNA evidence from the murder weapon and his presence documented by cameras, and after a few months in jail he also admitted his guilt.
As far as is known, neither Pettersson-Tingström nor Mijailović acted on behalf of any political group nor did they have views that aligned them to any particular extent with such groups. In the case of Palme, he was a target for right-wing hatred in a way that is quite similar to that aimed at Obama the past few years. Less abundant perhaps, but just as over the top and tasteless. Lindh was not a target in this sense. She was widely assumed to be the next leader of Sweden's biggest party, a well liked and respected political figure at the very top of the political hierarchies of Sweden. At 46, most people in the country assumed she would have gone on to become Sweden's first female PM within the next few years.
Loughner seems to be more insane than political, judging by the incoherent ravings on Youtube. More Mijailović than Pettersson or Tingström.
Enough with the background detail. Each case is different and more so the more you look at them. The point I'm getting at is that there have been two high-profile murders of prominent Swedish politicians, murders not so vastly different from the attack on Gabrielle Giffords. Perhaps the similarities between the cases could teach us all something?
Obviously, gun laws would not have stopped Mijailović - he used a Mora knife. The Smith & Wesson used to kill Palme has not been found but if one continues to assume that the Pettersson-Tingström theory is plausible, they were well enough at home in outlaw territory that they could easily have gotten hold of a weapon regardless of gun control laws. I gather that Loughner should not have been allowed to buy that Glock under the present gun laws of Arizona (though I've seen tatements indicating the opposite as well), this part of gun control obviously failed. Comparing to Mijailović, it's clear to me that nut-cases will be able to get hold of a weapon, but: if Loughner had had to make do with a knife, 5 people who are dead today would probably not have been.
The part that really interests me though, is the moral issue of the rethorics. Let us assume that Tingström indeed did enroll Pettersson in his private crusade against the Palme government. The anti-Palme rethorics of the 80s included leaflets with bull's eye patterns and caricatures that most resembled the pictures of jews favored by Julius Streicher's Der Stürmer. If that doesn't qualify as violent rethorics, I don't know what does. This rethoric appeared on the fringe of the right wing of the established political spectrum of Sweden. Similar to how the Tea party consists of the far end of the established conservatives or the Republican party in the US, actually.
That anti-Palme fringe was never part of daily political debate, but if it had been, what would we have said about guilt? Would it have been a valid point to say that it shared responsibility for the murder of Palme? Of course not. Would it have been disgusting polemics that should have no place in political debate? Certainly. It was, regardless of actual violence.
So, do Palin, Kelly and others who use violent rethorics on either end of the political spectrum share responsibility for Loughner's deed? Equally certainly, of course not. Is it disgusting polemics that anyone with a functional moral compass should stay clear of? Oh yes. Palin for one knows this. The fact that the much talked about cross hairs were promptly removed from her website tells us that she does. The lack of a straightbacked apology for the tasteless symbolics is disturbing, but it's hardly criminal in any sense of the word, nor should it be. Tasteless, foul and stupid - yes. That's the only crime relevant to the cross-hairs.
And for readers in Europe: what happened in Tucson can and will happen in Europe. It has happened in Sweden already, and it didn't take violent agitation or lack of gun control. An assault only takes one nut-case. The assault on Giffords does not prove or even illustrate anything about America being different from Europe - in fact it shows that some things are eerily similar.
Violent and tasteless rethorics has no place in serious political debate and should be left out. How this can be a surprise to anyone is beyond my grasp.
Despite the bible thumping and gun toting, America and Americans are more similar to Europe and Europeans than most of us realize. Under the skin, we're just the same. Even the psychos.
* Now you're at the end of the text and you're thinking I don't know about those cross-hairs not being cross-hairs but surveyor's markers ("purveyor's markers" according to some sources). Wrong. I do know about it. I'm still pondering whether I should write about that or not because I'm simply not sure I can keep that part as respectful as I'd like. As things now stand, I don't think I'll write that second part - for instance, Barefoot & progressive expresses it much better than I could do.
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