Filed under: united states of america, war | Tags: apocalypse, josh levin, natural disaster, nuclear war, slate, usa
A fun and interactive tool for predicting the end of America: Slate’s “Choose Your Own Apocalypse”. Writer Josh Levin researched the work of scholars detailing potential final moments for the grand ol’ U.S. of A. He came up with 144 possible scenarios for the impending end of the only remaining superpower.
The very cool tool also allows you to contrast possible end games, with live updates on its impending “doominess”.
My favorite part: you can filter the results by category, including “Politics”, “Culture”, “Sex”, and “Elderly”. Imagine if, by some kind of strange impulse–some collective lethargy–we just became too lazy to reproduce. The demise of the U.S.A. not by natural calamity or biological warfare, but because we all became disinterested in having sex.
I chose to end the world with swine flu, opt-in government, Bush’s “Axis of Evil”, bureaucracy, and “The End of History.” The game results analyzed me in this way:
You are a humanitarian internationalist. You’re convinced mankind will terminate America—but at least we won’t off ourselves in the process. You’ll know you’re right when: Everyone on Earth pledges allegiance to a world government; the feds default on the national debt.
Seems about right, considering how I waffle between misanthropy and camaraderie. I shudder to imagine the results if I’d chosen “Voluntary Human Extinction“.
Filed under: politics | Tags: black, gay marriage, mormon, prop 8, slate
Many in the media have pointed toward two groups of voters who defeated gay marriage in California: members of the Mormon church and African Americans.
This first group, Mormons, I agree with–the church encouraged its members to contribute to the campaign, resulting in $22 million to end gay marriage (the most spent on any social issue in the United States).
The second group, however–African Americans–I’m not so sure I agree with.
The thrust behind this antagonism toward African Americans largely comes from exit polls that cite statistics such as this one about Prop 8 in California:
Whites and Asian-Americans, comprising 69 percent of California’s electorate, opposed Proposition 8 by a margin of 51 percent to 49 percent. Latinos favored it, 53-47. But blacks turned out in historically high numbers—10 percent of the electorate—and 70 percent of them voted for Proposition 8.
Drawing inferences from these numbers can be elusive. For example, African Americans are not a homogeneous group–they possess a variety of beliefs, morals, politics, and sexualities. Unlike Mormons, who possess a similar belief system, politics, and sexuality.
A surprising article in Slate this morning tries to break down why African Americans believe that homosexuality is a choice. Slate’s editors have chosen to analyze the loss of gay rights through the lens of African American prejudice. In his article, William Saletan cites the victory of Barack Obama and the confirmation of gay prejudice on election night. He then asks:
Why, then, are the people targeted by those laws supporting bans on same-sex marriage?The answer is: They think sexual orientation is different from race. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of a nation in which individuals would be judged not “by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
This kind of rhetoric–the choice of discourse itself–attempts to divide both the African American community, as well as African Americans and other ethnic groups. It’s a topic that encourages blame toward one ethnic group rather than finding those African Americans who support civil rights for all. It’s the same kind of institutionalized racism that pits minority groups against one another instead of encouraging them to unify, to collaborate, to strengthen their power through caucus rather than division.
