Nicholas Kristof: I Fart in Your General Direction

In what can only be called a journey of epic proportions, Nicholas Kristof decides to apply for a protest permit from the Chinese government to test the process:

“What I didn’t realize is that Public Security has arrested at least a half-dozen people who have shown up to apply for protest permits. Public Security is pretty shrewd. In the old days it had to go out and catch protesters in the act. Now it saves itself the bother: would-be protesters show up at Public Security offices to apply for permits and are promptly detained. That’s cost-effective law enforcement for you.

Fortunately, the official at Window 12 didn’t peg me as a counterrevolutionary. He looked at me worriedly and asked for my passport and other ID papers. Discovering that I was a journalist, he asked hopefully, “Wouldn’t you rather conduct an interview about demonstrations?”

“No. I want to apply to hold one.”

His brow furrowed. “What do you want to protest?”

“I want to demonstrate in favor of preserving Beijing’s historic architecture.” It was the least controversial, most insipid topic I could concoct.

“Do you think the government is not doing a good job at this?” he asked sternly.

“There may be room for improvement,” I said delicately.

The official frowned and summoned two senior colleagues who, after a series of frantic phone calls, led me into the heart of the police building. I was accompanied by a Times videographer, and he and a police videographer busily videoed each other. Then the police explained that under the rules they could video us but we couldn’t video them.”

As if this interview wasn’t Kafka-esque enough, Kristof describes what happens next:

“After an hour of waiting, interrupted by periodic frowning examinations of our press credentials, we were ushered into an elegant conference room. I was solemnly directed to a chair marked “applicant.”

Three police officers sat across from me, and the police videographer continued to film us from every angle. The officers were all cordial and professional, although one seemed to be daydreaming about pulling out my fingernails.

Then they spent nearly an hour going over the myriad rules for demonstrations. These were detailed and complex, and, most daunting, I would have to submit a list of every single person attending my demonstration. The list had to include names and identity document numbers.

In addition, any Chinese on a name list would have to go first to the Public Security Bureau in person to be interviewed (arrested?).

“If I go through all this, then will my application at least be granted?” I asked.

“How can we tell?” a policeman responded. “That would prejudge the process.”

“Well, has any application ever been granted?” I asked.

“We can’t answer that, for that matter has no connection to this case.”

The policemen did say that if they approved, they would give me a “Demonstration Permission Document.” Without that, my demonstration would be illegal.

I surrendered. The rules were so monstrously bureaucratic that I couldn’t even apply for a demonstration. My Olympic dreams were dashed. The police asked me to sign their note-taker’s account of the meeting, and we politely said our goodbyes.”

And yet, after describing all of this, Kristof somehow draws the conclusion that

“My hunch is that in the coming months, perhaps after the Olympics, we will see some approvals granted. China is changing: it is no democracy, but it’s also no longer a totalitarian state.”

Huh? Didn’t he just descirbe a bureaucratic process so burdensome and so rigged as to make any real protests by non-Westerners/non-journalists virtually impossible? And yet this is supposed to be a sign that China is progressing away from a totalitarian state? My god, what kind of fucking drugs was Kristof on? And this is with his own admission that the process is a charade, that the “application process” is still just a way for the Chinese government to identify potential trouble-makers easier. How does his conclusion fucking follow anything he has said previously?

And the worst sin of the op-ed, at least in my view, is Kristof’s decision to use concepts first employed by Tom Friedman. When Krisotf says:

“The Public Security Bureau (a fancy name for a police station) gleams like much of the rest of Beijing. It is a lovely, spacious building, and the waiting room we were taken to was beautifully furnished; no folding metal chairs here. It’s a fine metaphor for China’s legal system: The hardware is impeccable, but the software is primitive.“

When I read that, I just about fucking died: here it is, Nicholas Kristof employing the words of Tom Friendman, truly the case of the blind following the blind, one hack to another. The funny thing was that I couldn’t pinpoint exactly where I heard the metaphor of “hardware” and “software,” but I knew it was something that I had encountered previously. Then I remembered that last summer, I read The Lexus and The Olive Tree (not mine, my roommate’s) while taking shits. After I had finished reading it, I wanted to wipe my ass with the book, but since the paper was rough and pulpy, I decided against it, because Tom Friedman is not worth it to sandpaper my ass.

Besides, the book is already full of shit as it is; there is no point in adding more.

Today’s Lesson: Being Maced Sucks Ass

I was coming out of the gym around 7:30 tonight, and going into the Columbia Heights Metro station, this incredibly pungent smell assaulted my nose. My first thought was that some fucker detonated a stink bomb in the station, but as I descended down the escalator, I started to cough violently, and my eyes started to tear uncontrollably.

By the time I made it down to the station, I knew what that fucking smell was: it was mace. And there it was: two cops were macing this one guy as a struggle ensued. I don’t know what the fuck that guy did, but it was serious enough that the cops had to mace him. By this time, I, along with everyone else in the station, was trying to get the fuck out, because the mace was seriously spreading.

So today’s lesson is this: don’t ever get maced. If just being in the vicinity of mace can cause violent coughing, tearing, and difficulty of breathing, imagine what the fuck it feels like to be sprayed in the face with that shit.

Verily, I say unto you, They have their reward

“And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.”

-Matthew 6:6

Apparently, someone should have told both Obama and McCain before they appeared with Rick Warren and discussed issues of faith.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with either Obama’s or McCain’s being devout Christians, and even as a former Catholic and now atheist, I am not militant against religion: otherwise, why would I quote the Gospel of Matthews and use the very terms of the Bible to criticize them?

What disturbs me about tonight’s spectacle are the two things: religion as theatre and the creeping phenomenon of a de facto religious test in American electoral politics.

The first trend–of religion as theatre and spectacle–is explicitly condemned in the Bible by Jesus himself in the passage I quoted at the very beginning. I find the very idea of a “megachurch” offensive, because even as an atheist, I find myself agreeing with Kierkegaard that faith is essentially an intensely subjective experience. It cannot be expressed in collectivity, and any such attempt inevitably demeans the experience of having faith. Thus, as religion becomes more theatrical, it becomes less and less authentically religious: it is being transformed from an existential experience to an entertaining one. The institution of religion will have become more central than the religious experience itself.

The second trend–the establishment of a de facto religious test for office–in my opinion violates the Constitution. I mean, let’s face it: the only reason why both Obama and McCain appeared in Rick Warren’s church is because of how big the potential constituency is. It has become conventional wisdom that any presidential candidate must successfully court the “value voters,” which is just code for religious people. But the conventional wisdom unjustfiably assumes that religious voters constitute a single, coherent electoral base, when the truth cannot be any further. Not only that, by giving the religious voting-bloc, if such a thing exists, the kind of electoral power that candidates seem to believe, then this is in fact establishing a religious test for office. Sure, it’s not a de jure one, but it is definitely a de facto one.

The establishment of a de facto religious test for the office of the president raises two troubling issues. First, it demonstrates John Stuart Mill’s argument that sometimes, it is not the established laws that violate individual rights, but rather it is social customs and convention that seriously limit individual liberty. Mill would not be shocked were he alive today to see the phenomenon: sure, Obama and McCain do not “technically” need to pander to the religious voters, but in reality, they do.

Second, a de facto religious test is self-sustaining: because it has become a political necessity, future candidates will have to deal with it. And this means that unless something dramatic happens, the de facto religious test is here to say. And if it is here to stay, then whether or not it is officially instituted no longer makes a difference because the effect is the same in the end.

So yes, verily I say unto Obama and McCain: you have your reward. If they can successfully court the religious voters, then their chances of winning will have increased. So yes, they are going to talk about their faith loudly and publicly, but by doing so, they are demeaning both religion and politics.