The Violence of a Barren Toilet Roll
Posted on April 23, 2007 - Filed Under American Politics, Philosophy |
There’s an interesting syndicated article by conservative American commentator Charles Krauthammer in today’s Irish Times in which he calls out Barack Obama for rather shamelessly seeking to exploit the Virginia Tech massacre. In a speech delivered only hours after Cho Seung Hui ran amok, Obama allegedly (and given Krauthammer’s status as a Washington Post journalist, you can take this to be true) likened the violence committed by Cho with the ‘violence’ of American companies outsourcing jobs; the ‘violence’ of Don Imus making idiotic, off-handed comments; and the ‘violence’ inherent in American foreign policy as a result of the Bush administration’s failure to do anything about Darfur.
As Krauthammer asserts, there are a number of things wrong with Obama’s address. Firstly, it was opportunistic and in very poor taste to highjack the Virginia Tech killings in order to get extra mileage out of a speech touching on some of Obama’s pet issues. The haste with which this was done makes it all the worse. Secondly, what the hell is Obama thinking off when he castigates the Bush administration’s foreign policy for not dealing with the bloodshed in Darfur? As Krauthammer asks, is this politician, famous for his early denunciation a war which toppled one of recent history’s most murderous tyrants, now advocating a US invasion of Darfur? As usual with Obama, it’s hard to tell what he really thinks the solution is.
The third gripe I have with the Obama speech is his use of the word ‘violence’. During the past college year I took a Philosophy module entitled ‘Violence and War: A Philosophical Analysis’ (which could definitely have done with more of an emphasis on, or even a mention of, war). During this course the lecturer expounded his idea that ‘violence’ occurs in almost every possible scenario up to and including finding yourself in the unenviable position of having just taking a dump in a bathroom with no toilet paper to hand.
That last sentence was facetious, but I’m sure you get the idea. The problem with extending the concept of violence to include things like outsourcing jobs, building cars (this was also put forward in the lecture), not donating to charity (ibid), not hiding Jews in your attic in Vichy France (ibid), etc. is that this dilutes the concept of violence until it becomes completely meaningless. I know it can be counter argued that you can still have degrees of violence, but the whole idea of ‘violence’ still suffers irreparably in my opinion.
The very idea of ‘violence by omission’, which Obama was appealing too when bemoaning American inaction on Darfur, is entirely bogus. How can a person reasonably be held accountable for something they did not do, unless it was specifically part of their job/set of responsibilities/etc? American inaction on Darfur may be bad, it may be disgraceful; hell, it may well even be immoral, but it’s certainly not an example of ‘violence’.
If Obama was really interested in violence and not in scoring cheap and ill-gotten political points in his stump speeches then he would have lashed out at America’s unpopularly lax gun laws (to the resentment of conservatives like Krauthammer, who argued ineptly against such an approach in the same article) that allow real violence to wreck havoc across the country. Of course, like all the other Democrats, Obama doesn’t want to touch the issue of gun control with a barge poll (even though clear majorities of Democratic, independent and even Republican voters back tougher gun control measures) for the simple enough reason that US politics is in the NRA’s trousers.
Al Gore 08!
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4 Responses to “The Violence of a Barren Toilet Roll”
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why don’t you read the speech yourself. [See http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/04/barack_obama_on_virginia_tech.html ]
It is intellectual laziness to rely on Charles Krauthammer’s interpretation of Obama’s speech. He is a well known neo-conservative who would say simmilarly terrible things about a speech given by Al Gore or any other democrat. (Krauthhammer = wolfiwitz; william kristol; robert kagan et all)
look at his wikipedia entry. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Krauthammer
and you say you support Gore (Krauthammer is the anti- gore)
geez, i think theyll let anyone write a blog these days .. at least do your homework first.
Okay, I’ll admit that I should have read the speech, and yes, Krauthammer did misrepresent it in places (particularly in relation to Obama’s remarks on Darfur), but most of what I said still holds up in my opinion. Although the speech wasn’t nearly as cynical as Krauthammer portrayed it, Obama’s was still using the day’s events as a mini platform to launch his tirade against outsourcing, etc…. My criticism of broad conceptions of violence isn’t affected either. And Robert Kagan is an interesting and thoughtful writer in my view, but I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree on that.
As for yourself, my good sir/madam, do you not consider it a little hypocritical to firstly criticise me for forming conclusions based on an unreliable source, and then recommend that I enlighten myself with a Wikipedia article bearing the prominent disclaimer that “The neutrality of this article is disputed”?
I only support Gore in the sense that I’d like to see him elected because I agree with his environmental policies; I’m Irish so I have no vote in the matter.
And yes, ‘they’ do let anyone have a blog these days; that’s kind of the whole idea behind blogging and new media in general.
Cheers too for hiding behind the cloak of anonymity, I’d have liked to read some of your well-researched, non-slanted blog.
I would like to take issue with your ‘criticism of broad conceptions of violence’.
You said that the ‘idea’ of violence suffers irreparably in the expansion of the idea
(to the degree that Bufacchi takes it at least).
However, I think that those lectures demonstrated that despite using the term ‘violence’ quite a lot, we don’t actually have a very clear of what exactly constitutes an ‘act of violence’.
It reminds me of the Themes in the History of Philosophy lecture where Prof. Clarke asked us to describe the substance of an orange. If you remember, various adjectives were suggested, but these could be seen to be mere properties of other things. Ultimately it seemed as though the ‘substance’ was in danger of becoming an infinite regress of properties.
My philosophy of mind lectures ask similar questions, but I thought this might be the most familiar to you.
My point (yes there is one in here somewhere) is that we use terms every day which we may not actually be able to define when pressed.
My second point is that while I don’t believe the case to be settled for any particular conception, I disagree with the assertion that if one adopts a definition which encompasses the idea of violence by omission, it means that they could then be ‘held accountable for something they did not do’.
If you’re defining violence, then you cannot presuppose any connection between violence and responsibility, or violence and morality since none can exist until you have actually defined violence itself.
If you want to define violence in terms of morality or in terms of injustice, then you will most likely end up with a fairly broad definition anyway. All one needs to do is define an omission as a ‘decision not to act’, and you can hold someone responsible for something they did in fact do.
The grey area here is unintentional omissions, which it has been suggested, account for a type of violence which does not hold the same degree of responsibility for the agent.
…or not.
I don’t really have riposte to that. Thanks for knocking down my first even slightly intellectual post in ages.
Good comment.