Hillary Rodham Clinton did not lose the 2016 election.
It was stolen.
Had Comey not released his letter a week before the election, she would have a decent margin in the polls. That is clear from the math. It caused a direct fall in the polls that she could not recover or respond to fast enough time time. It really is that simple.
"But that was enough?" is a good question. Shouldn't Clinton have been better than that? Clinton has her own answers: Sexism, the historical wind of parties being unable to hold onto political power for more than two terms, and, of course, the electoral college. These are all good and sufficient answers.
There ought to be something that brings any of the late-millennials a pang of worry: there has only been one election in their lives that Republicans have won the popular election. That is, of 25 years, more than 1/3 of them has seen a Republican, despite Republicans only winning 1/6 of all popular votes. That calls into question the ideas of democracy or republicanism (little r).
Clinton herself is worried: Her writing style is still lawerly. It is still... not good and she often descends into reciting names like the credits at the end of a movie, just like she had in past books. Yet, in between her name dropping and "scene" describing, there is pointed analysis that is worth reading and snark that is worth laughing at.
Read this book for the humor, the analysis, and the pain of reliving 2016. (But don't read it if you expect Clinton to write an emotional memoir that moves you).
Thursday, October 5, 2017
Review: Sex at Dawn
Humans are probably not super monogamous.
That's the strongest argument you can make with the evidence that Ryan lays out. If you accept the evidence that he lays out, too many things don't add up for monogamy: men and women aren't the same height, women display their bodies at the wrong rhythm, and our genitals aren't the right size for our body. Physically, we're all out of whack. Psychologically? It's worse. We cheat, hate cheaters, seem to be wired to like the wrong thing (novelty and status for women, youth for men), and we seem perfectly capable of living in three different psychological states- romantic love, lust, and companionship- all at once.
On the other hand, Ryan spends a lot of time attacking what he calls the "Standard Narrative" or the idea that humans are naturally monogamous but both males and females have competing sexual strategies that result in them cheating on their significant other. He is right this seems kind of dark and screwed up. And yet, the standard narrative seems to describe an overwhelming majority of civilized human society:
Every society ever recorded has a song or poem or story about love. Hell, the Epic of Gilgamesh starts with Enkidu falling in love. Where are all the poems about group sex? Where are all the stories of vivacious group sex? If Ryan's perspective were true, then something is missing.
It seems more likely that, as I have written before, we are an in-between species: we are not gorillas with alphas and harems, or chimpanzees where females cheat on dominant males, or bonobos where sex is used to solve conflicts. We're a flexible species. Men are a bit taller, but not too much. Our genitals are the wrong size, but too much or too little to be categorized. The same neurological machinery can enable African tribes to have group sex when having trade ceremonies can be used to lightly encourage a hunting band to get food with the promise of sex or even be used to throw one man and woman together such that they energize the cultural production of civilizations.
What actionable items does this book give us? That we should all go out and join polyamorous hippie cults? Answer: That's absurd! There isn't enough evidence (yet) for that to be true.
If we accept that the human brain has given us a fair degree of flexibility in our relationships, then the main takeaway is that we should have sympathy for those that couldn't make it- the broken and the divorced and the single parents. There is an immense cultural baggage around our conception of the nuclear family that is quite clearly not an eternal thing. We shame those that stay or stray outside of these culturally defined guardrails, and this shaming hurts those who tried but couldn't make it.
We're still primates, and even if we're running different hardware and improved software, the kernel inside is 6 million years old, and we should be forgiven for that.
That's the strongest argument you can make with the evidence that Ryan lays out. If you accept the evidence that he lays out, too many things don't add up for monogamy: men and women aren't the same height, women display their bodies at the wrong rhythm, and our genitals aren't the right size for our body. Physically, we're all out of whack. Psychologically? It's worse. We cheat, hate cheaters, seem to be wired to like the wrong thing (novelty and status for women, youth for men), and we seem perfectly capable of living in three different psychological states- romantic love, lust, and companionship- all at once.
On the other hand, Ryan spends a lot of time attacking what he calls the "Standard Narrative" or the idea that humans are naturally monogamous but both males and females have competing sexual strategies that result in them cheating on their significant other. He is right this seems kind of dark and screwed up. And yet, the standard narrative seems to describe an overwhelming majority of civilized human society:
Every society ever recorded has a song or poem or story about love. Hell, the Epic of Gilgamesh starts with Enkidu falling in love. Where are all the poems about group sex? Where are all the stories of vivacious group sex? If Ryan's perspective were true, then something is missing.
It seems more likely that, as I have written before, we are an in-between species: we are not gorillas with alphas and harems, or chimpanzees where females cheat on dominant males, or bonobos where sex is used to solve conflicts. We're a flexible species. Men are a bit taller, but not too much. Our genitals are the wrong size, but too much or too little to be categorized. The same neurological machinery can enable African tribes to have group sex when having trade ceremonies can be used to lightly encourage a hunting band to get food with the promise of sex or even be used to throw one man and woman together such that they energize the cultural production of civilizations.
What actionable items does this book give us? That we should all go out and join polyamorous hippie cults? Answer: That's absurd! There isn't enough evidence (yet) for that to be true.
If we accept that the human brain has given us a fair degree of flexibility in our relationships, then the main takeaway is that we should have sympathy for those that couldn't make it- the broken and the divorced and the single parents. There is an immense cultural baggage around our conception of the nuclear family that is quite clearly not an eternal thing. We shame those that stay or stray outside of these culturally defined guardrails, and this shaming hurts those who tried but couldn't make it.
We're still primates, and even if we're running different hardware and improved software, the kernel inside is 6 million years old, and we should be forgiven for that.
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Review: Group Chat Meme
tl;dr: To endorse the concept that European borders are to blame for developing world conflict is to endorse problematic concepts of nationa...
