Image via WikipediaWhen the Wall Street Journal publishes a piece like this, you best stop whatever you are doing and pay attention. Because we are not speaking now of subtle indications of possible future unrest, we are talking about immediate, actionable intelligence.
Yes, tax the Super Rich. Tax them now. Before the other 99% rise up, trigger a new American Revolution, a meltdown and the Great Depression 2.
Revolutions build over long periods — to critical mass, a flash point. Then they ignite suddenly, unpredictably. Like Egypt, started on a young Google executive’s Facebook page. Then it goes viral, raging uncontrollably. Can’t be stopped. Here in America the set-up is our nation’s pervasive “Super-Rich Delusion.”
The same thing, from a different perspective, to the parents of the potential revolutionaries.
Remember the Reagan standard? Are you better off today than you were a decade ago? Two decades? Three? Unless you make more than $380,000 a year, the answer is no. In fact, your standard of living over the last quarter century has actually decreased while millionaires have added 30 percent to their net wealth. Why? Two reasons.
First, hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs went overseas while the politicians you elected did nothing to stop them. Yet you continue to elect leaders who offer nothing but tax cuts, as if that would stem the flow of disappearing jobs.
Did you demand your leaders address America’s trade imbalance or continuous outsourcing of jobs? Did you demand your leaders require foreign countries to buy a dollar’s worth of American goods for every dollar of goods they sell here?
No and no. You didn’t bother. You simply crossed your fingers and prayed, “I hope my job’s not next.” You made concessions to your employer and hoped that would stem the exodus of jobs, or at least yours. How’d that work for you?
I've spoken a lot about this potential over the last decade, and this is a recurring theme. Sane people do not govern or regulate like feudal barons, because, well, history tells us what happens in the historical short term to such barons. When authority abuse becomes pervasive and when those who complain of it are routinely targeted for reprisals, those people who are in authority and the institutions they control cease to be supported by those who pay for them. What happens next? If you are an American, I suggest you re-read the preamble to the Deceleration of Independence and the Second Amendment.
Unless it becomes quite clear that the danger to the administration from the left is just as grave as the danger from the right, and by "danger" I mean a very literal potential danger, there will be no progress. It's not about Left and right, it is about Lawful and Unlawful, a choice between the Rule of Law and the rule of unworthy, corrupt, unaccountable sociopaths. Such people will not simply admit defeat. The only "dirty bomb plot" EVER proven to be greatly advanced past the wishful thinking stage was by a Nazi-identified Maine Millionaire.
And it was apparently aimed at the Obama Inaugural.
It's not cynical to say that might makes right - for no right has ever been established in the face of superior might. So progressives should start thinking as to whether their convictions carry with them the courage to fight, at need. For that need may well come, and weak Reids will not serve you well.
I expect that the next decade will be of great interest to future historians, and I publicly doubt there will be a recognizable United States for much longer than 50 years. I just hope that the changes will occur with only moderate loss of life.
History and human nature doesn't lead me to optimism on that score, but I still strive to hope.
Conservatism does, I admit, feature a certain degree of paranoia. I like to think of myself as a "rational paranoid," in the "keep an emergency kit near the door and fresh batteries in the smoke detector" sort.
I believe in preparedness. I believe in competance and I believe that selecting the right insurance for your needs matters. So, if we look at government as if it were GIECO, what do you get for your premium payments?
Fewer deaths occurred in Hiroshima in August 1945 than in Port-au-Prince last week and more people will die there soon than in Rwanda in 1994. Yet the modern global world was unprepared for it, so busy were they with Terrorism, which has killed fewer people in the last thirty years than quarrelsome Americans with handguns in the last eight months.
When are we going to get the arithmetic right, and distinguish what threatens us mightily from what threatens us barely at all?
Cuba, a socialist state, is well-prepared for natural disaster and few die there in the hurricane season, and rebuilding happens quickly. The United States, a capitalist nation, was ill-prepared for Hurricane Katrina though experts had warned for years of broken dykes, inundation, chaos, disease and looting, and its response was an international joke.
China, a socialist state, handles earthquakes well. Australia, a social democratic state, handles floods and bushfires fairly well. Yet on the US's back doorstep a million people may die soon, thirsting to death under piles of bricks or in those rapidly-spreading diseases that follow earthquake, unhelped by America whose borrowed billions were that day bombing Kandahar not funding ambulance teams in Port-au-Prince.
When will we get our priorities right, and realise our biggest foe is wild nature not militant Islam and do such things as we can to survive it?
Ayup. Billions for surveillance to prevent an unlikely event - but rotting bridges and substandard emergency response are simply not priorities in "times like these."
Welcome to the United States, where when you try to make a claim on your policy, you are told that being alive is a "pre-existing condition."
I don't know if you've noticed this, but within the ungentle confines of political reality within The "Untied" States, the only way to run for office as a well known conservative is to run away from the GOP.
New York City's generally well regarded and quite conservative mayor has "shaken the dust from his feet," in a way that can't have made him any friends within the GOP. But then, his political calculation is pretty much summed up as "And your point would be?" (NBCNewyork.com)
Mayor Michael Bloomberg doesn't know who the GOP candidates for citywide election are, but he says they've got no chance at winning – an interesting comment from the guy who, ahem, is running for mayor on the Republican line.
"They have no chance whatsoever … whoever they are," the mayor said at a press conference today.
Suffice it to say, Bloomie's probably not making any new friends in the GOP. Last week he said he didn't even know the names of the Republicans running for citywide offices, reports the Daily News.
The New York GOP probably won't be happy about Bloomberg's latest comments, considering his name is at the top of their ballot in November. But perhaps the mayor may be deliberately saying things that annoy the GOP in order to court the city's Democratic voters, who outnumber Republicans by four or five to one.
This situation has been brought to you by our good friends, Cause and Effect. Literally years of increasingly delusional and counter-productive stupidity have created a situation whereby genuine conservatives must distance themselves from the movement radicals who have taken the party hostage. The political process requires credibility. It requires the ability to compromise, to negotiate, to contribute to the debate above a standard found on a grade-school playground.
Practical politics requires a willingness to work in concert with people who have differing agendas, different priorities, different needs. That politics is "the art of the possible" and being held hostage by ideologues and simpletons makes politics impossible and conflict inevitable.
Erick Erickson, the managing editor of RedState.com and a city councilor in Macon, Georgia, has called for the abolition of Macon’s police force if it votes to unionize.
The Macon Telegraphreported on Monday that some 130 police officers on the city’s municipal force want to unionize because of “officers bearing the burden of rising insurance costs, a loss of incentive pay and the city not having a pay scale.”
In an interview with The Hill this week, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) boasted that “the best vote” he ever cast while in Congress was to deny $52 billion in aid to Hurricane Katrina victims. Yesterday, the Times-Picayune, New Orleans’ award-winning newspaper, calls King’s comments “heartless” and “appalling,” especially because he is from “a state that’s also vulnerable to flooding“
Rep. Steve King (R-IA) is one of Think Progress's favorite topics. Every time he opens his mouth, it's a freakin' gift to whoever says something vaguely sensible in opposition.
Stands like this will please only the hardcore fringe of the social-conservative right. They will make more moderate and better informed conservatives uncomfortable, for whether or not they specifically disagree - they are certainly aware enough of the social context to realize there's a price to be paid for standing next to shrill idiots.
Independent voters will see no political or social advantage to being identified with such an obvious tool, even if they have particular issues in common - and the major indicator for those left of center is how badly they want to kick him in the nuts.
But center-progressive political operatives must view this conspicuous lunacy as a gift from God on High. It's not even so much the politics any more, or the absence of any critical thought that might actually contribute to the dialoge. No, it's the obviousness of the complete, smug, impervious armor of utter ignorance and incompetence - and an increasing awareness of how dangerous it is to let such icons of confident incompetence anywhere near the levers of power.
People who do things badly, Dunning has found in studies conducted with a graduate student, Justin Kruger, are usually supremely confident of their abilities -- more confident, in fact, than people who do things well.
"I began to think that there were probably lots of things that I was bad at and I didn't know it," Dunning said.
One reason that the ignorant also tend to be the blissfully self-assured, the researchers believe, is that the skills required for competence often are the same skills necessary to recognize competence.
The incompetent, therefore, suffer doubly, they suggested in a paper appearing in the December issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
"Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it," wrote Kruger, now an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, and Dunning.
The deficiency in "self-monitoring skills," the researchers said, helps explain the tendency of the humor-impaired to persist in telling jokes that are not funny, of day traders to repeatedly jump into the market -- and repeatedly lose out -- and the politically clueless to continue holding forth at dinner parties on the fine points of campaign strategy.
"Going Rogue" must be the all time most stupid title for a political memoir. It could only have come from the woman who stumbled through an interview with that hard-boiled journo Katie Couric, stood in front of a turkey slaughter for a photo op, winked at us during debates and said the word "maverick" often enough not only to inspire a drinking game but also to ensure that the entire nation was completely obliterated by the time she was done speaking.
And that brings us to "rogue." It's almost like she just decided she couldn't call the book "Maverick," because that was McCain's word, so she used a thesaurus. Except look more closely at the definition, governor.
According to the New American Heritage dictionary (figure that would appeal to her more than Mirriam Webster) there's this: "a dishonest or unprincipled man."
And this: "an elephant or other large wild animal driven away or living apart from the herd and having savage or destructive tendencies."
This: "a person or thing that behaves in an aberrant, faulty, or unpredictable way."
And finally this: "an inferior or defective specimen among many satisfactory ones, esp. a seedling or plant deviating from the standard variety."
Is it any wonder that Mayor Bloomburg is saying what he's saying? He has the advantage of having demonstrated his competence in a notoriously difficult political job. But the other candidates on that slate have no such advantage - and furthermore, in order to get on the slate, they need the backing of core, committed, doctrinaire republicans who are in charge of the party right now. People like Palin. People like Representative King. People like those who support them with time and money. The people who nominated them. The people who think these folks are appropriate representatives.
Bloomburg and other rational conservatives know that even if these factors fail to screen out competent, qualified candidates, hardly anyone could be expected to believe it.
And that, gentle readers, is why they have no chance, and why Michael Bloomburg is perfectly willing to say so.
Recently, government-sponsored agencies like NIH have moved toward open access of scientific findings. That is, the results are published where anyone can see them, and in fact (for the NIH) after 12 months the papers must be publicly accessible. This is, in my opinion (and that of a lot of others, including a pile of Nobel laureates) a good thing. Astronomers, for example, almost always post their papers on Astro-ph, a place where journal-accepted papers can be accessed before they are published.
John Conyers (D-MI) apparently has a problem with this. He is pushing a bill through Congress that will literally ban the open access of these papers, forcing scientists to only publish in journals. This may not sound like a big deal, but journals are very expensive. They can cost a fortune: The Astrophysical Journal costs over $2000/year, and they charge scientists to publish in them! So this bill would force scientists to spend money to publish, and force you to spend money to read them.
Why would Conyers do this? Interestingly, if you look at the bill sponsors, you find that they received twice as much money on average in donations from journal publishers than Congresscritters who don’t sponsor the bill — though to be fair, the total amount is not large. Still, Conyers got 4 times as much.
Interesting.
This amounts to a huge "science tax." It also forces everyone through editorial choke points. I'm all for peer-reviewed science - but not at all for a journal getting to decide whether or not an idea deserves peer review. Considering how often science, business and government become entangled, it is to be assumed that editors will have inherent conflicts of interest - aside from purely disciplinary biasas - that put the question to objectivity.
Therefore, a rich variety of alternate means of discussion is vital to a vibrant and productive scientific community, particularly in areas where political interference is not just possible, but probable.
Frankly, I see no particular way in which traditional journal publication is inherently superior to simply dumping an article onto the web for open examination - and the reaction there will certainly refine anything worth refining.
Let us also remember that science is not the exclusive province of the purely academic community. Anyone willing to do the work to accepted standards and present results so that they may be reviewed and replicated should be able to do so. After all, the costs of internet publication are negligible - as opposed to traditional journals - which are anything but. Indeed, the costs of the literature is one of the most significant barriers to participation in any given field, limiting it to the wealthy or those with access to a good academic library.
There is a great deal of science that is not being done because there is no money to do it- and some evident reluctance to allow anything done outside of accepted circles to be granted any attention.
I concur with the author that this is a damn stupid idea - and one that will impose obvious disincentives to people wishing to do serious science in the United States.
I happen to believe that government should be as small as possible, and structured to do as little as possible. Unlike many Libertarians, it is not because I believe that private enterprise can do things better by definition. There are some things that must be done privately and some areas where you could go either way.
The place where I depart with ideology is here: a government is a means by which a group of people can be well employed doing something worth doing. It has precisely the same basic rationale as a business - but it exists to account for those circumstances where common interests preclude any particular private interest.
Oh, and as an ideal principle, and as a way of testing the value of any particular government enterprise, it should produce the desired net positive outcome at a lower net cost than private enterprise could - if private enterprise could produce any acceptable outcome at all.
This is admittedly a complex idea and it's difficult to reduce to even simple mathematical expressions. You see, while a government should be profitable in terms of "adding value" to the area for which it is responsible, it does it in ways that are inherently and necessarily diffuse.
Take, for example, the building and maintenance of roads and bridges. It's almost impossible to justify a road that goes anywhere you want or need development to occur, without some government involvement or guarantee. Toll roads - a popular Libertarian idea - tend to dissuade people from using them, which in many cases has the effect of making the entire effort pointless - or at least blunting it's point.
And if roads are problematic, public transit is far more difficult to persuade as being directly profitable. They have to be evaluated as being a means to offset other, greater costs, while generating secondary economic effects.
For example, you really do not want people taking their cars into downtown cores. Those cars impose tremendous infrastructure costs, from parking (and enforcement) to pollution to congestion. At some point, people will simply go elsewhere, rather than put up with the "hassle tax."
This can be directly addressed by public transit.
Now, here's the problem with diffuse solutions to socal problems. No diffuse solution can ever be perfect, it cannot possibly solve every possible combination of issues one might raise as an objection to doing it in the first place, etc.
But again, here's where we get back to the entire point of having a government.
You need a mechanism in existence that serves to deal with things that cannot be solved without resolving various conflicts of interest.
Or in other words, a government is called into being by the existence of a "free market," and the absolute necessity for a "commons" in which that market may exist.
That which is literal and obvious in a village becomes difficult to discern when dealing with a congested urban area or, indeed, a nation.
But it becomes obvious again when we see what happens when government is taken over by those who do have a particular ideological vision that absolutely precludes an impartial, pragmatic and informed decision making process; who believe that government is an inherent evil, or who use that simplistic talking point to conceal a more basic lust for unchecked power and a complete lack of qualification for having it.
Governments exist to achieve certain things. In order to do that, they need talented, ethical, responsible people and ethical, responsible, fair and relentless critics. The goal is NOT to have one philosophy of government "win out" over another - the idea is to achieve a workable, useful, satisfactory consensus with a minimax outcome. I suspect that it's possible to mathematically prove that such a minimax outcome is absurdly unlikely if partiasan politics becomes completely divorced from the inescapable view that the objective matters in practical human terms.
Govenrment is not hockey. Hockey is hocky. At the end of the day, it is the game that counts, how well it is played and whether it's fun to watch. Government, on the other hand, must be judged by outcomes; when the process gets in the way, or even precludes dealing with real and serious problems, it's useless. I would suggest this is the fault of the participants - those who are elected, those who are appointed, and those who prefer to let it be somebody else's job.
One way or another - if you have ever complained about the result of government, well one of those roles has obviously not been filled. So, what are you doing that's more important?
The latest arms controversy embroiling the White House has nothing to do with the Second Amendment. Instead, it's sprung from criticism about Michelle Obama showing off her toned triceps and biceps in her first official photo as first lady.
Some suggest that this is a sexist grump by Old White Men who would prefer Michelle to be seen in a Hijab. But I think it's a fear of a beltway arms race. A pasty white flabby arms race.
But you know, folks, do what she does. Wear something that shows off your best features.
Hm. I wonder what flatters conscience and intelligence?
The debate in Washington right now is defined by what media pundits have taken to labeling as 'Realism.' As is the case with any 'ism' it has man-made borders. The cornerstones of this brand of realism appear to include:
- A notion that it is an American birthright to lead the world, and profit by doing so.
- A notion that the US can maintain over 700 military bases worldwide and not unify the world in opposition.
- A notion that an Iraqi government, or any government orchestrated, protected and funded by US occupiers can someday be sovereign.
- A notion that the occupation of Iraq or Afghanistan can end well.
Those are clearly false, unsustainable and quite dangerous realisms.
Indeed they are. And they are long-standing ones; as Marc Ash points out, the question as to which "side" was right in the US dispute with Cuba (and the larger struggle with various anti-American/anti-imperialist movements) is somewhat beside the point. The more useful and important question is this; what got us to the point where a nuclear showdown over a tobacco and gambling enterprise seemed like a good idea.
I grew up in the US, so I have to tell you that finding out what was really behind all of that was not easy. The issues are cloaked in ignorance and idiology. Nor do I doubt that of the other side; the Marxist cant of Castro and Che tended to conceal for everyone involved that the issues involved were not at all idiological. They were not even abstract manifestations of human rights.
And when the demagogues hauled out words like "The Free Market" and "Capitalism" and "Communism" and "Imperialism" - even before they got to the insults designed to motivate their respective power bases, well, the end result was nothing good for anyone.
I point to the Cuban Missile Crisis and the history leading up to it because it's relatively accessible and because it's an expression of basic US Foreign Policy that has not fundamentally changed in my lifetime. And sadly, the rhetoric of Hugo Chavez is not very different from that of Che or Castro because that side of the coin hasn't changed much either.
The problem is not one of economic systems; both capitalism and communism - socialism as well; all these systems can and do work rather well when applied intelligently by the professionally minded to situations they are suited to with the goal of maximizing gain for all. In other words, they need to be applied ethically, with the goal that everyone involved is better off at the end of the day by participation within the system than they would be by opposing it.
Or in other words, the goal of any sane government, any sane approach to foreign policy, any sane approach to avoiding expensive drama in any human context is to avoid approaches that are known to create opposition and will tend to create a highly motivated pool of pissed off individuals willing to act politically, economically and violently with the aim of frustrating your goals.
This has the effect of sharply limiting the goals one may legitimately aspire to. Oh well. It has been my observation over many years that accepting and working within limitations tends to boost creativity and generally produces better outcomes than plans that admit no limitations at all. For ideas that accept no human, practical, economic or ethical limitations simply do not fit into any human context. That means that some degree of violence will be required to make them work at all.
And aside from the ethics - it's metaphorically identical to having a furnace that must be firmly addressed with a sledgehammer in order for the feed auger to move coal into the firebox. The proper way of addressing this problem is not to sanctify the office of auger-banger, nor to devote great attention and effort to building better sledgehammers. The problem is that you are trying to heat your house with a hundred-year old coal fired furnace that was badly designed to start with and which has not improved with age.
Rip it out, recycle it and install something that works. This is what ethics tells us; that we must not invest ourselves in institutionalizing wrong answers. That creating an edifice of institutional justification for wrong actions will not make the action right - and all mysticism aside, wrong actions lead to undesirable outcomes, every single time, and almost by definition, at a cost that is exponentially higher than doing it right in the first place.
So instead of "realisms," worldviews in which "men of the world" take for grated that the actions of Great Men and the Legitimate Aspirations of Great States will lead to vast numbers of enemies, internal opposition and economic dislocation for the "lusers," we should take for granted that any person that takes those things for granted is dangerously, obviously and provably wrong.
CF: Cuba, Afghanistan (History, International, Military, Year Dot to Date), Carpetbaggers, The War of Northern Aggression and The Decline And Fall of the Roman Empire.)
It takes a good deal of willful blindness to look at the situations, history and people behind these conflicts and celebrate the outcomes as being the proper outcome of any defensible plan or legitimate, desirable outcome.
"That one," in reference to Barack Obama, might be the most talked about sound byte from any election or primary debate this year.NOW Magazine
McCain made the remark tonight when discussing a 2005 Senate vote on an energy bill. “There was an energy bill on the floor of the Senate loaded down with goodies, billions for the oil companies, and it was sponsored by Bush and Cheney. You know who voted for it? You might never know. That one,” he said, pointing to Obama. “You know who voted against it? Me.”- WSJ
You know what I think? I think the whole debate - such as it was - revealed a grumpy, shallow, occasionally incoherent old man, one who can barely contain his disrespect for his colleague.
Is it because Obama is black? Is it because Obama is clearly smarter? Is it due to some coatroom slight? Ya know, I don't really care.
I wrote this@ 2001-09-19 18:11:00 in a LiveJournal group. Every year or so, I go back and re-read it, at times wondering why I've ever bothered writing anything more, considering all I've achieved in writing them. But then someone has to write them. And I haven't had anything better to do.
This time around I realized that it was at least time to revisit, republish, correct a few omitted words, fix grammatical errors, put it into context - and spell check!
I am uncomfortable with the idea of my words having lasting meaning, and given the topic I was writing on, even more uncomfortable with the idea than I might otherwise be. But I'm starting to face the fact that if these particular words do or do not, some words saying something like them must be uttered for any of the crap we have all been through to make sense, and to honor those who didn't make it all the way through.
Still I cannot escape the idea that I was entirely too correct for my comfort, and all the more so by how uncommon that viewpoint was, outside of those opposed to all violence for any reason.
And yet, I go back to this piece, I see what was clear to me a mere eight days after 9/11 - and I wonder where all the professional, paid pundits, where all the trained journalists, where all those we trust to have better trained and more restrained reactions than the ordinary run of persons were.
I'm gratified that out of so many, I was one of the few to be this correct - until I stop to think about what I was correct about, and how little intelligence, moral courage and will on the part of so very many people at so very many different choke-points could have made me seem utterly hysterical in retrospect. It's not at all difficult to see how those who have a better opinion of their fellow man could have been led astray.
How much I wish I could look back on my work and see how utterly wrong I was, and how depressingly ironic it is that those who have been as wrong as I wish I had been - are better paid the more incorrect they have been.
But then, that seeming irony also explains a great deal. We all trust that those who have the smarts, the insight and the access to know better will actually pass on their insights, instead of saying the complete opposite in return for large packages of unmarked bills.
And, lest that be seen as slander, let me say that it's a far more charitable assumption than the presumption that people such as O'Reilly, Malkin, Coulter and Savage are speaking to us out of sincere conviction.
Since, well, when you make provably untrue statements or unprovable statements with the assertion they are factual, you are either lying, or deluded. Don't much matter which, really; though I happen to think that being a knowing, paid liar might just be a little easier to live with than having been a useful, sincerely deluded tool - all untraceable bearer bonds aside.
I'm not complaining. I could conceivably have chosen to roll that way, and it was damn clear at the time there was no profit at all to be had in being reasonable.
But, well, I'm me, and that's how I am. Every once in a while sheer perversity ends up putting you on the right side, in retrospect. That doesn't mean that it wasn't the result of being naturally perverse. It was, and is a tragedy that any sort of perversity could shake out this way at all - much less to this degree.
The Grand Old Flag and all that. I'm having an aspy moment. In fact, I've been having an aspy moment ever since the rubble of the World Trade Center stopped tumbling.
I'm tying to figure out how posting flags on every available surface and hanging them from every crossbar, antenna and flagpole is supposed to achieve anything.
It sure appears that everyone is convinced it will, and anywhere will do. Around Reno, someone has figured out that you can print flags out with your computer, and someone slapped one on the apartment's dumpster.
I think that's in very surreal taste.
I'm completely baffled by the consensus that I should be emotionally devastated by the deaths of so many people and the blow to our national prestige.
Well I'm an aspy who's spent a lot of time out of the country. I'm not emotionally affected... and I assure you, rumors of our national prestige have been wildly exaggerated!
That shouldn't be a shocking revelation. If we were universally loved and respected, people wouldn't be diving airliners into our landmark architecture.
You don't see people dive-bombing Canada. Of all the aspects of American Culture that the Taliban and other funnymentalist Islamic splinters revile, Canada is every bit as gleefully guilty. Hell, it's not even illegal for women to go topless in public in Canada, in the aftermath of a Charter of Rights ruling. You can just see Ayatollah eyeballs bleeding at that concept. And in terms of enforcing social conformity and family values on the general population - well, Canada is utterly delinquent, much to the impotent frustration of the DEA.
Yep, the interdiction of that Demon Weed, Marijuana is not exactly a high priority of Canadian police agencies. And that sort of lax response to moral turpitude is something that convinces the self-righteous that God or Allah will rain retribution upon the offending culture.
But for the most part, they are indeed content to leave such things TO Allah.
On the other hand, Canada doesn't routinely fire cruise missiles at people in the fond belief that it's a solution to a complex foreign policy issue.
The peculiar American delusion that one can rain death from a great height and not gain enemies thereby is somewhat baffling to me; it seems an obvious violation of common sense, however justified such "big stick" actions are.
"Justifiable" does not mean that those ducking the shrapnel are going to be suddenly struck by the irrefutable reason of our diplomatic position. If they were, it wouldn't have been necessary to deliver a stiff diplomatic cruise missile.
But whatever I think of American foreign policy, it doesn't follow that diving airplanes into buildings is a reasonable, appropriate or defensible thing to do.
Anybody who thinks I'm attempting to justify such an act is utterly mistaken. I do, however, think it's wise to at least attempt to understand it; the motivations for it and the context it exists in, just for the sake of self-preservation.
But the national psyche seems to support any number of bizarre and inexplicable assumptions.
Today, a man said on national television that those who are not overwhelmed by grief at the untimely end of thousands of unrelated strangers is emotionally disturbed and should seek treatment. And one is tempted to nod until you realize that no one would suggest that the entire nation should be so paralyzed with grief at the passing of an equal number of Chinese in an earthquake. It would be tragic, it would noted, we'd contribute money and dry socks to the rescue efforts - and then we'd get on with our lives.
More directly and relevantly - where were the candlelight vigils for the civilian victims of the aerial assault on Baghdad? Whatever you thought of it, whether you felt it a justifiable and necessary act, no matter how unavoidable those civilian casualties were - still. Why were we not moved? How can we justify being horrified now, if we were not then?
The fact that the US military moved heaven and earth to avoid civilian casualties and managed to do so up to the limits imposed by physics, intelligence and human perversity is beside the point. If every corpse in the World Trade center is worth a bio on CNN, SO WERE THEY.
And while it was not precisely a terrorist act, certainly the idea that we were "sending a message" was an integral part of the exercise.
Personally, I was not moved at all. And after the sheer, overwhelming surprise wore off, I was not moved by this, even though a distant cousin I'd never met perished in one of the planes.
My response seems to be purely intellectual, and from an intellectual viewpoint, I can see the argument for launching cruise missiles at Baghdad - considering the Scuds raining on the whole region and the Iraqi attack on Kuwait.
The fact that our national motivations were not entirely idealistic doesn't bother me. Our government's JOB is to pursue our national advantage. That includes securing an oil supply. If that happens to mesh with our national ideals, O happy day! And it did, very much so, and that's aside from treaty obligations.
But still, I don't see why a dead US citizen should be regretted more emotionally than the deaths of strangers who have the misfortune of living in an a tyranny with opposing agendas. But it's apparently supposed to be, for "normal" people.
So in order to be "normal," I have to place myself in a disordered, irrational mental state that prohibits me from thinking clearly or doing anything useful about the situation.
Well, I'm not normal, and thank God. I'd think that at times like this, we could profit by having more like me manning vital functions while all the normal people make utter inconveniences of themselves.
I don't see how being paralyzed with grief, racked by irrational fear and plunged into depression is going to help anyone, any more than wearing a red, white and blue jockstrap is going to do one single thing to combat world terrorism.
I would like to see a lot less patriotic posturing and a lot more serious thought about what can be done to prevent such things from occurring while at the same time, how to do that without turning ourselves into a repressive police state.
That's real patriotism. It's an expensive habit, real patriotism. Ask any of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. At the end, those that weren't dead were mostly broke.
Real patriotism takes a deal more commitment than printing out a stack of flags, sticking them up randomly and sighing with contentedness at how much of a Real American you are.
It demands an unemotional determination to do what it takes, while maintaining our Republican principles. (Some would say Democratic principles. That's another cultural myth. This has never been a democracy. It's a republic. That's a significantly different thing.)
Irrational patriotic fervor will not help and will likely lead to yet an exponential increase in the number of our live enemies, instead of what we actually want - a smallish smoking hole filled with thoroughly dead ones, communicating the global impression that a policy of terror against us is not just a bad idea - it's an absolutely fatal bad idea.
I refer you to what happened to the terrorists that killed the Israeli Olympic team at the 72 Olympics. The Mossad tracked each of them down and killed every one of them with surgical precision. There have been terrorist acts against Israeli citizens since - but none like that.*
This can only be achieved by a very clear view of the ends and a diamond-hard determination that the means must be both measured, appropriate, and applied with total commitment.
It will take a great deal of time to do this. It's complicated, messy and it will be unavoidably bloody. The world at large is convinced that the United States is willing to do whatever it takes - so long as it doesn't take more than six months, result in any actual casualties, raise their taxes or affect their lifestyle in any way.
So far, I see no evidence this perception is inaccurate to any significant degree.
That is exactly why the terrorists think they can get away with this - they are convinced that the United States simply does not have the attention span to allow any other outcome.
We had best decide to disabuse them, or this will continue. And next time, it might be a building you are in, or even a city.
We also have to face something else - that this particular conflict arises out of an irreconcilable ideological difference. It's not something we can defuse with gifts, bribes, apologies or even the removal of key figures in the terrorist community.
Ultimately, there IS no rational solution to this situation because the fundamental world views of the opposing sites are utterly, starkly and completely incompatible; the two systems cannot co-exist. The means by which western culture will destroy the Islamic Fundamentalist Movement don't involve bombs and guns; they are nonetheless as destructive of that culture as a rain of atomic weapons on us would be.
More so.
And it's a good thing, too, because it's an evil culture that should be eradicated, root and branch.
Those who are aware of the world outside of the Lower 48 have been warning of the increasing threat of religious fundamentalism in general and Islamic fundamentalism in particular.
In ironic illustration of this, Jerry Falwell made a statement that any Ayatollah would agree with.
"RICHMOND, Va., Sept. 18 ? The Rev. Jerry Falwell has apologized for saying God had allowed terrorists to attack America because of the work of civil liberties groups, abortion rights supporters and feminists. Falwell said his comments were ill-timed, insensitive and divisive at a time of national mourning. President Bush had called the minister?s statement inappropriate."
You note that he didn't say he'd changed his mind, he just apologized for bad timing.
While the Ayatollahs and Mullahs may disagree with Jerry about certain abstract theological issues, boy, they sure do agree about the proper fate of faggots and loose women. They certainly agree that religion should have the right to enforce "proper" behavior, even on those who don't share the beliefs that would make sense of those behaviors. If Jerry had his way - we'd be stoning "harlots" and "apostates" in the street too.
Think on that.
Think on the logical danger of permitting that degree of delusional self-righteousness to take on the form of a government. Realize what sort of threat that is to EVERY person of EVERY belief EVERYWHERE... and then realize what needs doing. It's not something we can afford to tolerate; not a movement that we can allow to spread.
The fundamentalism - stupid and irrational as it is - THAT we must tolerate. It's the idea that it may permissibly be enforced on those who do not share those beliefs is what must be eliminated from the world consciousness.
It's that paradigm that has prevented any widespread outrages against the large Islamic communities in the United States in particular and the West in general. Contrast that against your survival chances as an identifiable Westerner in the general vicinity of whatever happens next, folks.
Maybe you can't do anything personally about middle eastern terrorists - but you can speak against the sort of mindset that exists here that would do the same here and HAS done it, in Oklahoma City, Selma, Alabama and at abortion clinics across the nation. The idea that anyone has the right to enforce a moral standard or ideological belief through terror cannot be tolerated.
It's not an idea that can be combated selectively and conveniently; it's far too fundamental. It has come down to a choice. This is, if you like, Armageddon; The Place of Decision.
So decide.
So the next time you see hate speech, do something. The next time you hear someone advocating violence against others based on their beliefs, sexual orientation or gender, do something.
You think there's any fundamental difference between Operation Rescue, the KKK, Bader-Meinhoff, the Red Brigade or Islamic Jihad? They all believe passionately in their causes; they are all willing to die to further it. Now, that's reasonable. It's even laudable to be willing to die for a belief.
Being willing to kill innocent (or at least, uninvolved) persons in wholesale lots in order to terrify the surviving masses into compliance with an agenda - that's just plain evil.
It must not be allowed EVEN IF YOU AGREE with their goals. No matter HOW urgent, how imperative it is. If your cause is not such that passionate speech and personal example will not serve to sway the majority - it could just be that you are passionately and sincerely wrong.
That's what the marketplace of ideas is for, what freedom of speech and freedom of the press is intended to ensure; that ideas are fully tested before they are implemented as social policy.
We can see what happens in cultures where this doesn't happen. Not only are they generally tyrannies, they are dusty, repressive, broke and BORING tyrannies.
We must also embrace that ideal as a national policy. The US government has, from time to time, thought it appropriate to "support freedom" by supplying "freedom fighters" in their struggles against... well, usually something that will cost us money or prestige.
We have to stop doing that, if for no other reason than an easily-documented history of this short sighted policy biting us on the butt.
The Taliban is just the LATEST example of "heroic freedom fighters" who suddenly became terrorists when they decided we were legitimate targets. Understand that their motivations and means havn't changed in the slightest - just their point of aim.
The Viet Minh, The Chinese Red Army and the Cuban patriots of the Bay of Pigs have all managed to inconvenience us. And that's just from this century. It's taken the South over a century to live down Quantrell.
You would think someone in Langley, VA might have gotten a clue by now, but since that is apparently not the case, you might wish to write your Congresscritter about your concerns - and suggest that more attention to the long term effects of foreign policy is NOT incompatible with their responsibilities for packing the pork in barrels and shipping it home.
In light of the likely costs of "America's New War," I'd say that a little more attention would have been cheap at nearly any price.
But hell, I'm just an aspy. I obviously don't grasp the damage to the social fabric, or the visceral need to go and kill someone, anyone, whether or not they had anything to do with this. Forgive my impatient foot-tapping as you persist in flapping helplessly, achieving nothing at great length. But if I hear one more person say that this outpouring of patriotism has Strengthened Our Great Nation, I may just puke.
I'm not hanging any damn flag, going to any candlelight vigils or indulging in any other pointless exercises that are intended to promote the sort of emotional solidarity I'm mentally incapable of feeling.
But I do see the utility of meaningful gestures.
Click here and donate to the Red Cross.
In retrospect, I see only two failures of assumption - the idea that given the circumstances, evangelical funnymentalism would lose rather than gain support, and the slightly less embarrassing assumption that the Red Cross was a responsible and charitable organization.
I wish I'd had a few more inaccuracies - and that they were inaccuracies in favor of a more charitable view of human nature and the intelligence of the American People.
As seen in this clip dating from 1994, Vice-President Dick Cheney had a very solid appreciation of the problems inherent in invading Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussain.
The Cheney tape re-aired for the first time since 1994 on July 11, 2007. But it wasn't until C-SPAN aired the interview again on August 9 (on the same channel, at the same time) that the blogosphere noticed.
As far as we know, the Cheney remarks on Iraq were first noticed by the site Grand Theft Country.
Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride said she was not authorized to comment.
She did, however, direct us to an interview that ABC News conducted with Cheney in February of this year in which Cheney was asked how his views had changed from 1991, when he also spoke of military action in Iraq as a "quagmire."
"Well, I stand by what I said in '91," Cheney told ABC. "But look what's happened since then -- we had 9/11."
But 9/11 had nothing to do with Iraq, and changed none of the fundamental and obvious calculations that made the invasion of Iraq an obvious, losing proposition. 9/11 was merely an opportunity, a pretext upon which to build a massive edifice of fear, panic, theft, subversion and lies, the apparent point being to create the conditions for another protracted, expensive, bloody conflict such as Vietnam for the twin goals of consolidating power and looting the treasuries of two nations.
Leaving aside the obvious - that Cheney is an evil bastard who has no fundamental objection to mass casualties when it's profitable to him - we need to look at why an effort that was untenable in '94, despite widespread right-wing demands for just such an invasion became profitable enough to go to such lengths to implement. I think we need to back up and look at the larger picture.
Warfare is a magnificent distraction - and in it's own way, a very unpopular war is an even better distraction. If you fundamentally do not care about the opinion of the American People, save as a means of manipulating them, an unpopular war is very useful tool, for it concentrates the minds of the opposition on the obvious. It casts long shadows that one may hide anything within.
So let us look back at the net effects of this administration. The first thing it did, of course, was to squander a budget surplus and start to build the most massive debt in US history, debt that is held in part in the Middle East and in part in China, due to our massive trade imbalances. Laws were passed that gave tax breaks to large corporations moving offshore - taking HUGE tax revenues with them, while monetary and credit policies were pursued that encouraged the middle class to take on unsustainable levels of personal debt. Then, the mousetrap was sprung - completely unconscionable revisions in the Bankruptcy act.
Meanwhile, the War On Terror was declared, and many steps were taken - almost none of them having any effect on actual terrorism, save to increase the potential for it, while obvious precautions, such as securing ports, rail transport and airline baggage screening were dismissed in favor of purely cosmetic harassment that had the effect of ensuring that the American people became used to being arbitrarily questioned and inconvenienced by barely competent officials of the state, often in conspicuous violation of both the Constitution and personal dignity.
The Patriot act - along with widespread, clandestine and illegal activities, such as arbitrary arrest, suspension of habius corpus and of course the quite deliberate specter of torture as one possible fate for Administration critics became part of the national consciousness, with most of us still believing that, fearful and potentially disastrous as these policies were, the idea was to combat terrorism.
But in hindsight, it's clear that our national policies have taken what was a potential threat - one worth attention and concern, but by no means something to panic about - and turned it into a world-wide emergency situation. The only conclusion I can come to reasonably is that US policy has the direct and probably intentional effect of creating conditions where terrorism will flourish, both abroad and domestically.
How will domestic terror arise as a widespread thing? Well, the first acts will likely be "black operations." But Bush's domestic policies and what appears to be a calculated campaign of focused contempt for the sensibilities and needs of the vast majority of the citizenry can be reliably expected to result in an incident here and there, at least if the pump is primed by an example or two that is suitably publicised.
And what that permits is the imposition of martial law, the suspension of elections and the Constitution itself - "for the duration of the emergency."
It is very difficult to impose a dictatorship on a wealthy, secure nation - which is what we were when President Clinton handed off the Presidency to the Shrub. Now we are a debtor nation, both personally and nationally, with such levels of debts that many of us are effectively slaves to giant corporations that are no longer headquartered in the US, making them far less accountable to US law.
What we are seeing is the engineered collapse of the US economy - and far more critically, it's position of moral and social influence over the world's population.
But I am distinctly concerned that this agenda is one that is broadly advantageous to people of power and influence within and without the Government to a degree that it pushes politics aside. To be blunt - I think it's a pretty obvious agenda by now, that the Democrats are not idiots and that they are, in essence, furthering it by offering token and ineffective resistance.
So, we must shed our illusions that we can assume that anyone in Washington is concerned about our welfare, and go back to the state and local levels to organise, resist and adjust - for the very best possible response to Washington's meddling and interference would be to ignore it.
The individual States still hold enormous economic and political power, and there are cities and metropolitan areas that in themselves wield power that many states - and indeed, many sovereign nations - would envy.
When it's clear that the Federal Government is doing everything it can to disempower citizens, it''s time for the citizens to band together and address the emergent threat - which is not terrorism. It is the Federal Government, and it needs to be reminded of and returned to it's Constitutionally intended status. The Federal Government exists because it is permitted to exist. It governs with the consent of the governed - as do all governments.
So let us be clear - if there are acts of resistance against federal power, against arbitrary federal laws, this is not terrorism, treason or disloyalty. It is the withdrawal of consent by the governed. We all have the inalienable right to say "no," providing we have the courage to face the probable consequences.
But if enough citizens in enough states demand it, there will be habius corpus, there will be safety and security. State laws and existing regional state conferences and associations will serve us as well or better than a Federal Government that has chosen to disregard it's duty.
I would suggest a simple starting point; a general passage of laws and constitutional amendments restricting unsupervised access of federal agents and agencies to anything. That, in other words, by state law, all federal agencies must comply with state oversight, so that there are witnesses. I would suggest that states assert jurisdiction over state communications networks and make wiretapping a state felony, if it is not already.) I would suggest that the various states begin investigations of and prosecutions of federal crimes against state citizens. And recall - the vast majority of the Federal Government - and most particularly, agents and employees tasked with various violations of privacy do not live within Federal preserves. The vast majority are subject to state laws and state sanctions.
Finally - and I think this should be blindingly obvious, but I suppose it needs to be said - the various States need to ensure that they are prepared for all eventualities, to face the possibility of a general collapse of central authority. They need to look to what areas of their budgets are dependent upon federal largess and make some hard choices. They need to call upon their citizens to take up the slack. Perhaps that will mean tax increases, but I would suggest that organized volunteerism in the face of emergency is a reasonable approach. Or in other words, set up a co-ordinated "Phone tree" where, in an emergency, the Governor can communicate with the state as a whole, and everyone in the state has something they are willing to do already on record, whether that be driving trucks, filling sandbags or toting a rifle.
This was the concept of the "Milita," way back when - organized LOCAL response plans that could "hold the line" against civil unrest or natural disaster until help arrived. If we have learned nothing else from Katrina and 9/11, it's that deferring to the judgment of federal responders is a very bad idea. The people who are already on the scene are the ones who know best what is needed - and to the greatest extent possible, they should have done as much pre-planning and pre-positioning as possible.
All of this has a very important goal, both long-term and short term. First, in the short-term, it may preempt attempts by the Federal government to take further steps toward restricting individual and state's rights, or even imposing direct dictatorship. In the longer term, it will make our nation more secure and less vulnerable to both terrorism and civil war.
But as much as I would like to see an outcome that sees the United States still united, with it's borders where they are now, my personal view is that we will see the US fragment into several viable nations based on culture, history and economics, and the United States will pass into history much the same way that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics did - as the result of manifest centralized ineptitude combined with imperial ambitions that demanded too much of it's citizens.
The entire Administration agenda depends upon several factors, but they all boil down to us, as Citizens, being willing or at least accepting of this Brave New World Order. I think, quite frankly, that is a dangerously foolish assumption, one that only someone who's contacts are restricted to fellow-thinkers and fellow-travelers could or would contemplate. In the end, it is fundimentally unethical and unjust and therefore, as a matter of what might as well be a natural law, it will blow up in catistrophic, chaotic and unpredictable ways.
And as General Petraius has observed in Iraq - there will be no military solution.
Image via WikipediaWhen the Wall Street Journal publishes a piece like this, you best stop whatever you are doing and pay attention. Because we are not speaking now of subtle indications of possible future unrest, we are talking about immediate, actionable intelligence.
