That Thing Called Human Rights

I’m somewhat surprised at the hot rod magnet that is Prop 8, that I can still browse the news today and why hello, it’s still there. I probably shouldn’t be; when you pressure people into a corner and say ‘no’ to what they deem as a basic human right, oh how impassioned they become. “A cornered fox is more dangerous than a jackal,” yes?

What stands out more to me than this debate (aside from it being a classic case of the frustratingly inane “You’re either with us or against us” mantra) is the sheer amount of money lobbied during its campaign. I don’t recall the exact figure, but it was well in the tens of millions of dollars.

Aside from the fundamental ‘duh’ that is campaigns costing money, both sides have justifications for the money they willingly donated to the cause (with some now trying to block a list of donors from being released). Among them, there is no price tag on fighting for a basic human right that is being consciously denied to us. I suppose their counterparts think the same in reverse: how much is it worth to preserve a longstanding tradition and belief, and prevent one special interest group from changing society? Easy. Mastercard cue please.

It got me thinking. If I were in either group’s shoes (and apparently you must be in one), I wonder how much money I would be willing to fork over.

And in almost all cases, the answer is–zero.

As a Chinese American, there are a slew of rights you could deny to me. Yet to be honest, I still wouldn’t donate to any cause fighting for my rights, not because I don’t believe in them or want them, but because if I had the money where I could donate to a cause, I believe there are more important things the world needs.

If President Obama enacted a law tomorrow that said all persons of Chinese descent can no longer marry outside of their ethnicity, I would voice my opposition, yes, probably even take to the streets to protests, but no I would not donate to a campaign that would try to overturn it. I cannot bring myself to give money to something like this when people down the street from me don’t even have money to eat. Who cares if I can’t legally marry the person I love? If the law were a reality I could still forever commit myself to the life of the one I loved, legal papers be damned. There are so many pressing things my money can go to: AIDS. Poverty. Global warming if you believe in it. Getting people clean water.

Of course, the exception is this. If a government enacted a rule that deprived you of something more fundamental than marriage, something like food, I would absolutely be up in arms and my wallet open. But sustenance marriage is not, and while it’s easy for me to say, a monetarily worthwhile cause this is not.

The same is true, even more so, of the opposition. Is keeping a longstanding tradition, and only in nominal terms mind you, really priceless? Was it worth the tens of millions spent?

I could never look a starving kid in the eye, and still say yes; let alone every say ‘priceless.’

Sunset on a Bush Dynasty

It’s almost been eight years since we first elected Bush into office. Quite an amazing fact if you ask me and like so many others it’s going to feel good having someone new take the reins of this country. Still, I can’t help but look back on Bush’s two terms and feel some slight twinge of empathy. It probably comes from some bone and nerve we haven’t discovered yet mind you, but it’s there.

When I look at what he’s done with his eight years and avoid the emotional responses that usually surface, I can honestly come to the conclusion that George Bush must genuinely be a nice guy who equally genuinely cares about people.

This is the guy who spent $13 billion on starting an AIDS relief organization in Africa. He’s saved millions of lives. No administration before has ever cared about Rwanda. Now they have over 100 AIDS testing centers. In the past five years, more than forty times the number of people are on life-prolonging medication.

This is the guy who wanted to improve education, and implemented a nation-wide system to provide monetary incentives for school’s to improve their curriculum, staff, and students’ performance.

This is the guy who continued and expanded a system so minorities in particular, could own a home for the first time.

It’s just a little hard to believe that this is also the same guy who took us into Iraq, staunchly defends Israel’s current actions and seems oblivious to every piece of common sense. But looking closer at #2 and #3, suddenly Bush makes a bunch more sense.

No Child Left Behind didn’t work because poor schools just got poorer. Incentives didn’t work, and the “you always get what you worked for” idealistic attitude was proved to be exactly that, an ideal.

The plan to get low-income families into a home failed. Low mortgage and financing rates, coupled with low down payments led to an initial increase in home ownership, but suddenly people couldn’t pay for it once they moved in. In fact what we ended up with was one of the major pillars of the credit crunch and subsequently our current financial crisis.

What this shows me is that for all the failed policies Bush has engineered, there have been noble intentions behind them. Probably almost all of them. Even the failed Iraq war.

People are pretty creative and imaginative when they come up with reasons Bush must have taken us into Iraq. He wanted to avenge his father, or finish what his father started. He wanted us to have oil. He wanted to unseat someone and replace him with an American friendly puppet.

I think there’s a simpler answer, and one that fits Bush’s equally simplistic “you’re either with us or against us” mindset. He wanted to protect America. After 9/11, Bush, especially as president, must have felt America was in danger. That’s why we went into Afghanistan. And that’s almost certainly why went into Iraq. Acting out of fear he probably dismissed certain evidence contrary to Iraq having WMD’s. The last thing he’d want would be to be a president who “allowed” not one but two terrorist attacks on US soil. And so blind into Iraq we went, on faulty intelligence and an idealistic and ungrounded approach.

The same is true of Israel. Israel is God’s chosen country. America is a Christian nation. Two and two together, voila.

It’s unfortunate that what I believe to be Bush’s noble intentions have caused such grief among the world. I imagine it’s like a child realizing for the first time that the world is more than 32 colors of crayons, more than good and evil.

I understand why we–as American people–voted Bush into office. From all accounts, Bush is a likable man, assuredly funny and a good buddy to go have a beer with. I’m also sure he genuinely cares about people.

But those qualities are not the qualities of being a president of the United States, or a leader in general. Nice people do not necessarily make good leaders. Charming people, shrewd people, not even super spiritual people necessarily make good leaders.

Being a good leader is more than just any of those characteristics. It’s unfortunate that for what character Bush had, he lacked the rest that he needed.

One Last Thing on Gaza

I found this article, well more like a report, to be pretty insightful and informative, and succinctly sums up why Israel may be shooting itself in the foot.

Gaza, and Testing True Motivations

There are lots of times when people make decisions which leave me wondering if they really thought through things before making said decision. Not in some, ‘gosh you’re dumb’ attitude, but some serious ‘what exactly were you trying to accomplish’ sense of curiosity.

A couple months ago, Prop 8 was the battle all over California. So much so, that it consistently made headlines on Google’s news aggregator and so I could easily read about it from Hong Kong. There was a story in it about how a Mormon had a sign on her front lawn that said, ‘Yes on Prop 8.’ Couple days later, somebody came over, parked an SUV on their sidewalk and spraypainted ‘bigots live here.’ The article didn’t say how long the SUV stayed, but that’s besides the point.

If I ever get the chance, I’d like to talk to those people who parked that SUV and ask them some questions, mainly:

“What was the point of that?”

I would expect to get a response that covers some of the following:

“Prop 8 upsets us and we felt the need to fight back.”
“Those Prop 8 supporters needed to be shamed.”

Because that’s really what the action accomplishes. You let out some steam and shove it into someone else’s face, namely your enemy’s. I’m sure it feels oh so good to do something like that.

Here’s the problem. What it didn’t accomplish, was make anyone more likely to vote against Prop 8. Find me one person who would see such an event and feel embued with motivation to join your side. If anything, it makes people more apathetic to your cause because you appear to be extremist, or it makes people want to fight against you, again because you appear to be extremist. So congratulations, by letting yourself feel good you’ve ended up hurting yourself.

A blogger I read summed it up well. The question people forget to ask when doing actions is, “What happens then?” Which leads to another point. The “question is all the harder to ask when the step in question feels so good.”*

Why do I bring all this up with the title of Gaza? Because in the same way, Israel is now the country I’d like to ask some questions. I’m not interested right now in if Israel is right and Hamas is wrong (I’ve read enough to know that both are wrong), but I’m interested in knowing what Israel’s goals are, its motivation for doing what it’s doing.

I’m sure right now Israel would tell me that the goal is to stop Hamas from firing rockets into Israel. The true goal then, of course is: make Israel safe.

I’m not convinced, that Israel’s actions right now, are really going to accomplish that objective after this operation is finished. In fact, like those Prop 8 detractors, they might just have ended up hurting themselves.

* – http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/