Petraeus throws Obama into the Briar Patch

I've never thought Barack Obama was an idealist. Nor did I ever think that his "lack of experience" as a legislator was a critical factor. It's the "community organizer" aspect that caught my attention. You see, in Chicago, that means you learn to deal with a lot of various sorts of people, and this very much includes fronting up to stone killers and squeezing a donation or some leverage out of them.

I think he's a man who is very much a realist, and very familiar with dealing with things as they are and the people on the ground that are there, and rather less affected by the various idealistic and doctrinal slants that people on the "left" and the "right" try to assign to him.

I consider him to be the very sort of person that you would want piloting an crippled airplane toward a distant airfield with one single chance of putting it down in one piece. I don't think for a moment that he's confused about the real "mission at hand."

So I'm amused to see this headline: "Petraeus Locked Obama In."

At this morning’s hearing, General Petraeus tamped down talk of an early withdrawal from Afghanistan—and warned of greater U.S. casualties to come.
With his four stars and battle ribbons speaking for themselves and his reputation soaring, Gen. David Petraeus Tuesday told the Senate Armed Service Committee just what President Obama wanted its members to hear: (1) fighting the Taliban and al  Qaeda in Afghanistan remains essential to U.S. security; (2) the president’s counterinsurgency strategy and U.S. troop reductions projected to begin on July 2011 were fine; and (3) this general and this president are in harmony unlike the departing U.S./NATO commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

But make no mistake, the thrust of the general’s remarks in these confirmation hearings was to further lock Mr. Obama into the Afghan war and to protect his right flank against Republicans and conservatives who have begun charging that the president is about to cut and run from the war. He offered very little to Democrats and liberals who have stepped up their demands for an exit strategy.

There are many stories written by the Terribly And Professionally Sincere from the left, the right and the clueless, who don't see that the "exit strategy" for a politically-driven war has to be, first and foremost, a political maneuver, one that places the price of failure on the heads of those who carry the banners for the satus quo ante.

President Obama absolutely must achieve a fundamental shift in the way Americans think about the projection of power, the use of military force and the expense in terms of guns, of butter and human life. Given the things he has expended political capital to achieve, he is either working in this direction or accepting it more readily than many others.

His critics haven't read their Sun-Tsu or their Von Clauswitz or their Rommel - or they would understand that victory comes from creating conditions in which your enemy will make some very critical mistake.

American financier Jay Gould. 

After hiring strikebreakers, he said "I can hire one-half of the working class to kill the other half."^{[Wikipedia >Wage Slavery;#35]}

In order to win a war, you need to know exactly what the war is about, which side you are on, and who your enemy is.  For President Barack Obama, the most direct threat to his policies, and indeed, to the people who gave him his mandate is the Military Industrial Complex and the National Security State types - the ones who are all in favor of the War on Drugs, the War on Crime, the War on Terrorism - that is to say, the war on you.


He's fighting the war that Eisenhower predicted, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq give him cover and opportunity to bleed his opponents dry, discredit or kill them and created conditions whereby a long-term socio-political shift might be achieved.

What Obama needs to do is allow his enemies the opportunity to make mistakes - and then use the mistakes they make against them. So when someone says this out loud, I giggle.

 Peter Galbraith writes in the Daily Beast:

The U.S. will have to be deeply engaged diplomatically to keep the erratic and ambitious Karzai from destroying his own country. Eikenberry and Holbrooke understand the man and the terrain. The last thing President Obama needs now is a group of new faces who believe the U.S. strategy is working, and who take his recent Karzai charm offensive seriously.

Clearly there have been strains in the relations between Eikenberry and Holbrooke, which is hardly surprising since both men sit atop large organizations devoted to making progress in Afghanistan. But both Eikenberry and Holbrooke are exceptionally competent and they know it is essential to work together.

With Afghanistan possibly headed for a full-scale civil war, this is not the time to replace an experienced and accomplished diplomatic team. The mission in Afghanistan is difficult enough without the Afghan leader believing he has the upper hand in his relations with the United States.

Yep. A terrible mistake. Assuming that Obama actually thinks the situation in Afghanistan is actually more critical to the national security of the United States than the threat to the United States presented by it's National Security establishment. But Iraq and Afghanistan are both wars of political choice, based on neoconservative assumptions about the role of the US in the world and what it should use it's military and economic power to achieve, at the expense of the entire demographic that President Obama grew up with, went to church with and was largely elected to represent.

I'd be looking to see what Obama has Eikenberry and Holebrooke do next. Because I think that giving Karzai what he thinks HE wants, and giving Petraeus what he thinks HE wants, Obama is achieving three important goals. Setting up Karzai to fail, sooner rather than later. Setting up Petraeus to personally fail to make make his Counter Insurgency plan work - sooner rather than later. And getting his people out of the way so they will not be damaged by the inevitable association with a huge military and foreign-policy failure.

The COIN doctrine is what much of the Pentagon and the civilian Neo-Conservative hangs it's hat upon, and the doctrine justifies and necessitates a commitment to indefinite, potentially global low-level counter-insurgent warfare - a prospect that is the life-blood of the military-industrial complex.



It is a strategy that absolutely depends on a very close diplomatic support and skilled intelligence. If Obama "acceeds to pressure" to replace "his people" with those who are philosophically inclined to support Karzai and COIN, it will be a strategic maneuver to generate victory in the very real cold civil war that is raging in the United States right now. Afganistan is a sideshow for Obama, but the "graveyard of empires" could indeed become the undoing of those who thought the United States had the right and the need to become one. But of course, that's not the sort of thing a President can say out loud.

Obama may be the titular commander in chief, but the tail has been wagging the dog for several Administrations. What he's doing is slipping the leash, and letting the puppy try and bite the tires off of the rolling semi.

Obama will be be handed a political exit, and he will take it like a statesman. In part, I think this perception will be genuine, but in order to achieve it, he must first get his enemies to eliminate each other - and ideally, it should occur all at once. What it will be - well, I can't say for sure. But it might look something like this...

A Churchillian Fortitude

 

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Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

Sir Winston Churchill, Speech in November 1942

William Rivers Pitt is having trouble finding a sense of measurable accomplishment after ten years of hard work in the front lines. I empathize and concur, to a degree. He starts out thus:

t r u t h o u t | Go:

"I've been writing about unbelievably bad news for more than a decade now, so when the New Year came around this time, I made up my mind to try and come up with something to write about that was optimistic, positive, more upbeat, or something."

But in the end he finally comes to this conclusion:

The Left has done some truly amazing things in the last ten years, things that took great effort, concentration, passion and will. The need for those qualities did not evaporate with the election of the "good guys." Indeed, those qualities are needed more than ever before.

In passing, he noted:

The Left has a reputation, partially deserved, for being a motley collection of scatterbrained, cause-of-the-week, ego junkies who never really get anything done. But I saw what the Left was able to do when confronted with the criminal ambitions of the Bush administration, and it didn't stop after the war got going. Groups sprung up in every corner of the country and kept the heat on until they made a difference. Whatever one may think about the Democratic Party today, there is no doubt the fortunes of that party were turned in 2006 and 2008 because of the tireless efforts of millions of people to push popular opinion and understanding away from the yawning precipice of national neoconservatism.

 Mr. Pitt, no movement of any sort has ever succeeded by internalizing the labels their enemies give them. I would say, further, that the spontanious, individually directed, cause-oriented and - yes - ego-driven activists, all loosely networked in spontainous communities, each understanding that such alliances are defined by the task at hand, and NOT definitive of some overarching "cause" they must ascribe to in order to be "permitted" the "privilidge" of joining a march, stuffing envelopes or writing a blog is precisely what has carried this day.

Sir, if you are a pessimist, I'm the greater one. And the fight has been longer and bloodier and more discouraging than you care to define. Personally, I mark the beginning of it with the election of Ronald Regan. And from that point, all that has happened has been pretty much what I expected, save not quite so immediately catastrophically as I had expected.

And this has been due to some very damn skillful guerrilla action, which would have certainly have been defeated had the counter-moves been expected.

Let us speak for a moment of the entire concept of asymmetrical warfare. The goal is not to "win" - it is to delay, to disrupt, to disaffect - to give the enemy time and space and conditions under which they will generate their own failure. It really is about "hearts and minds," folks. And the greatest part of the battle is getting the enemy to show their true selves, their genuine feelings and ultimate motivations.

It's been alleged that Ronald Regan was secretly a member of the John Birch Society. It's one of those easy allegations that is probably not in the least true - but it's also quite beside the point, because he certainly acted in ways and in collaboration with people who shared the core understandings and furthered the goals of the John Birch Society.

And we must also observe that there has been a concerted effort - from the eighties on - to place "stealth zealots" into public office, where they will vote and act in accordance to Dominionst Evangelical principles, without the slightest regard to the the goals they claim to be working toward. And we all know what this led to; the sort of preference for idiological purity over professional competence that gave us the Iraq war as it was and the aftermath of Katrina as it still is.

So, we have been fighting a guerrilla war against covert warriors - a covert mirror of the overt proxy wars fought in places such as Nicaragua and Columbia - where the real goal was not the liberation or freedom of the people, but who would control them in the name of what ideology. And gradually, one of the emergent prizes of the battle, a great and largely unrecognized victory, is that the "right" to control other people is not just something to be contensted, but is an idea that absolutely must be contested in it's own right. For when it's a fight between the left hand and the right hand, everyone in the middle gets screwed.

It's not just because the Right is wrong about having such a right - it's utterly wrong in asserting that it's even possible, and that the difference in outcome between what it's stated and sincerely held principles suggest and the outcomes that happen every time they are applied to a protesting population attests without exception - people do as they will, and at the very best, can be persuaded at great expense and pain to visibly conform in public, while quite likely doing something else in private that ultamately leads to far greater ills than those supposedly "cured" by whatever simplistic moralistic wild hair was induldged upon us.

I might easily cite Prohibition, a folly of the Left. Or arguably, the folly of The Great Society and the lunar landscapes and Stalinist Modern Projects left in it's wake. Oh, but their intentions were so noble!

Then there's the whole issue of Reproductive Choice, or the unanticipated fallout of "Abstinence Only" education, which has not affected teen pregnancy but has substantially contributed to the rise in sexually transmitted disease. 

But these bad outcomes are dismissed as being unimportant, the results of sins, an acceptable cost of upholding some nebulous and indefinable "principle."Apparently the Left in North America has learned it's lesson, that you can't force people to behave in ways they won't, even if it is for their own good - which it probably isn't.

The strength - or at least the great blessing - of the modern "Left" is that there IS no single defining ideology, and therefore the only thing that may unite "the left" is an agreement about particular circumstances, particular facts and particular problems that demand at the very least the cessation of old policies and perhaps some new, more pragmatic ones. The issue of Marajuana and the outcome of the whole Drug War is one conspicuous example illustrating some very strange bedfellows, from old and very Liberal hippies to Randian Libertarians to law enforcement professionals.

One thing is for sure, when you see old Communists putting aside their sectarian issues and marching together with Anarchists (their natural enemies) in concert with Liberal Christians, Union Activists, militant athiests, feminists, pro-choicers and environmental activists - people with extraordinarily divergent views and priorities - you can be reasonably certain that what they each see as being a problem from their various perspectives is INDEED a problem, and anyone who lumps them all together as "libtards" is not just ignorant of the issue, but is in fact likely some personification of the issue - or profiting from it.

Needless to say, the only way any large group of opposition to issues of the day can coelece and persist in the face of reality is by focusing on one particular commonality, while accepting as a given that some will be on the other side of the line on other issues, and that diversity is to be celebrated, rather than demonized.

And it's empowered by the Internet, which I think can be stated as being, arguably, on the front line of disorganized dissent and unlikely alliances since it's very inception and spread through Government and those bastions of Godless Liberalism - Universities.

A person who understands this has no difficulty with the ACLU or the Annenburg Foundation's Factcheck.org - but on the neoconservative/Dominionist Right - all must agree about everything, or they are apostates, while none within the tent may be criticised at all (save when they are cast into the Outer Darkeness.)

Now, one thing Mr. Pitt may or may not have noticed, but the opposition to a centrist consensus about certain "litmus test" issues held dear by the Right has become increasingly unhinged, it's arguments increasingly paranoid, it's reliance on conspiracy theory and outright lies becoming it's primary mode, it's online and print proponents becoming less and less capable of coherent argument. This is also a victory. You see, it is, as I said above, a war for the hearts and minds of people - in the United States, of course, but indeed within the Americas and the world as a whole.

And in the United States, we are now beginning to see the contents of the hearts and the quality of the minds shrieking that we must all comply with their paranoid and infintile dribblings.

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There's yet much to be done - but one by one by one, we must take back the organizations and structures that they have polluted, the school boards, the charities, the political organizations, the precincts - and I don't just mean "along partisan lines." They need to be taken away from the crazy people, by sane people of all political and religious persuasions.

From what I see out there, from the near absence of intelligable voices from the Right - when it used to be the core of political intellect, councelling against emotionalism and populism as the greatest enemies of democratic representative republics - there are a whole lot of utterly disgusted Conservatives trying to pretend it will all go away.

Well, it won't. Not without your help, ladies and gentlemen. And if you fear being called a Liberal or a "RINO" for your stances - remember, you are being called that by people capable of calling Obama a Communist and a Nazi in the same paragraph. What they really mean is "poopy-head," and all it shows is that they are simply not capable of behaving as functional, responsible adults in public places.

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Keeping the Moral High Ground.

A little reminder on the tactical and strategic value of maintaining the moral high ground.

t r u t h o u t | The Moral Character of Our Country: "What the revisionists fail to understand is that morality is not a tool of advantage for the strong and/or the privileged to be used and appealed to when it is in their interest to do so, and when it is not, to be modified, ignored, or manipulated. Nor is morality a prop, a façade through which we may proclaim our superiority and/or condemn others. If morality is to have any meaning at all, it must recognize as a fundamental principle the dignity and the rights - the lives and well-being - of ALL human beings. If we do not value persons, all persons, not just members of our particular community, religious group, ethnic group, gender etc., and respect their dignity and their rights, then all other things, whether it is property, possessions, national boundaries, the flag etc., lose their meaning and their value as well. Like justice, morality is blind and requires universal and equal application, holding everyone to the same standard. It is the hypocrite, the rogue nation, that attempts to modify the tenets of morality, or argues that it be ignored, or rationalizes loopholes (collateral damage) through which to pursue their individual or national interest.

Further, the refutation of revisionism rests not on moral argument only but on sound war fighting science as well. Contrary to the view of the revisionists, knowledgeable military tacticians who understand the nature of asymmetrical/counterinsurgency warfare, realize that despite what may have been the perception in the past, morality and military science share common concerns. Consider, for example, the status of noncombatants. While much mental effort has been expended explaining ('rationalizing' is probably better) that innocent deaths, though regrettable, are necessary and justifiable as collateral damage, both the moralists and the military theorists such as Gen. Stanley McCrystal, the commanding officer of the NATO forces in Afghanistan, agree that killing noncombatants is not only immoral and illegal but counterproductive to achieving the military goals necessary for success (victory) in asymmetrical/counterinsurgency war, i.e., winning the hearts and minds of the people. It has become clear, therefore, that morality and military science are fundamentally compatible and the move to abandon or 'modify' the former indicates a lack of understanding of the latter. Collateral damage, then, is not only morally disingenuous, it is militarily unsound and those who advocate that we abandon or modify this particular moral (and legal) criterion are both morally and militarily misguided and lack expertise in both areas of study."

Emphasis mine.

This argument apples just as strongly domestically as internationally. It applies to the "war on drugs, the "war on terrorism" and the "culture war," particularly when we see these situations re-framed in such a way as to make our ethical principles "more flexible" to "fit the emergent nature of the situation."

The author was pointing out the moral dimension of health care reform, and reasoned their way to this observation. Ultimately, all actions are governed by ethics, simple, broad principles from which we draw our morals.

Warfare, far from being a "special case" in which the "ordinary rules" do not apply, is a case wherein the the cause and effect dynamics of human nature are painted in blood for all to see. The Karma of war has sharp teeth and moves swiftly indeed; actions that are unethical, unjust and stupid breed resistance from the enemy and demoralize those who are supposedly on "your side."

This is exactly the situation celebrated by chairman Mao's observation that "The revolutionary swims in a sea of peasants." And that very understanding is being illustrated with rocket grenades built, smuggled and even fired by ordinary Afghans and Iraqis of no particularly fixed religious or ideological orientation more complex than "get the HELL off my LAWN!"



You would think that Republicans would understand that most basic motivation. The fact that they do not indicates some moral and practical confusion as to who's lawn it actually is.

And so I draw the circle closed. When one group of people sees another group of people in terms of a problem that stands in the way of achieving their goals - problems that can, may or must be eliminated to achieve that goal - what we have are incompatible moral structures. It's not exactly a stretch to understand why people targeted for elimination will determine that to be an immoral act, one which entirely justifies a response. Obviously, there are no better placed people to understand the depth of delusion here than - in the alleged words of Boss Tweed - that half of the poor hired to kill the other half.

When morality becomes a means to rationalize expedient action, instead of a framework to define RIGHT action, it becomes, at best, an impediment. It's certainly not an argument that is persuasive to those who, in examining it's tenants, can easily see themselves as being "the next group up against the wall." C.F. The Solidarity Movement.

Ideology counts, but it counts with a sword. And in the other pan of the balance, we weigh the Politics of Personal Survival. That which weighs more, well... I suppose in pragmatic terms, it depends on where the sword cuts - and it's a persuasive argument against using it at all.

Ideological movements tend to create their own antithetical movements which in turn tend to be traduced by opportunistic bastards who see them as a horse to ride to immortality and damnation.

It's an environment that encourages the development of absolute moral systems that work from xenophobic first principles. To mention two, but hardly the only examples, the Dominionist theocratic movements within the Conservative Evangelical Protestant movement and of course the equally un-scriptural and immoral theocratic Islamic movement exemplified by Osama Bin Ladin.

Each show distinct similarities in rhetoric and rationalizations to the equally delusional religions of Communism, Fascism and "New World Order Neoconservativism."

For both groups, "right" is defined as actions that advance the group and "wrong" as things that disadvantage the group - as defined by their hierarchical leadership, of course.

Frankly, I attribute much of the growth of these groups to the breakdown of the concept of the rule of law and respect for the individual, much of which was sacrificed on the alter of the Cold War by all participants.

But ultimately, all individuals of any intelligence must come to the conclusion that if a nation or cause would not hesitate to sacrifice them in the name of "national interest" or "national security" or "for the good of the People" or for the "advance of the Cause," they understand that the most fundamental tenant of the social compact with them no longer exists.

That fundamental tenant is that they are as significant to the society as any other person, that their value does not flow from wealth or position or status; that these things are role and reward, a product of a complex interaction between fortune, necessity, opportunity and education, all of which depends upon those that the pathological narcissist would dismiss as being "Useless Mouths."

When you are somewhere within the top third of the pyramid, it makes very little sense, even in an hierarchical, patriarchal, disorderly authoritarian sense - to blow up the bottom third.

It makes the creation of a different pyramid an imperative, for it defines the leadership as being unworthy, having violated the social compact. Self-preservation is the strongest motivation of all, and there is no higher cause for creating a social order than mutual self-interest.

Therefore, violating that compact is a misdeed that is both grave and self-defeating.

When you have large numbers of people within a culture who see their interests as being in conflict with a much greater number of individual, lawful citizens, and who see no problem with acting unethically toward those people, who rationalize their unethical and unjust activities with exactly the same words and reasons as do incompetent generals who are quite willing to "destroy the village in order to save it," they have made a fateful choice. They have designated more enemies than they can possibly dispatch, and, short of a dignified redefinition of the terms of engagement, they are in a situation defined long ago by the Great Sage of War, Sun Tsu.

12. Therefore, in your deliberations, when seeking to determine the military conditions, let them be made the basis of a comparison, in this wise:--

13. (1) Which of the two sovereigns is imbued with the Moral law? (2) Which of the two generals has most ability? (3) With whom lie the advantages derived from Heaven and Earth? (4) On which side is discipline most rigorously enforced? (5) Which army is stronger? (6) On which side are officers and men more highly trained? (7) In which army is there the greater constancy both in reward and punishment?

14. By means of these seven considerations I can forecast victory or defeat.

Note that the moral high ground is Sun Tsu's most important consideration. And here's another observation from him that is of immense importance to the current world situation.

2. When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men's weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength.

3. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain.

4. Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue.

5. Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.

6. There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.

Dear Morans: What Would Edmund Burke Do (To You)?

Robert Creamer writes in Huffpo about a political backlash against the Republicans for the "Death Panels" lie intended to make people fearful of health care reform.

His last two paragraphs sum up the debt they incur by this starkly, and I'm sure he's correct about the political dimension.

In their attempt to enflame the powerful emotions surrounding the deaths of loved ones by spreading intentional lies, the Republicans have stooped to a new low. The Terry Schiavo case should have taught the Republicans that some emotions are too precious to be exploited for partisan political advantage. Apparently it did not.

But when Americans begin to discover just how far the Republicans have been willing to go to stop health insurance reform, they may receive a new lesson. Republicans will learn that combining those powerful emotions with deceit can create an explosive mixture that they will find impossible to forget.

Correct - but only superficially so. However shrewdly he sees this situation, he sees it through the lens of politics, purely as a political opportunity created by an "emotional reaction."

And for that (and only to the extent that it is true, of course,) he deserves reproof. For it should be clear that there is a larger, ethical dimension that is, or should be obvious to everyone.

We ignore those larger considerations at our peril, for that leads directly to evil flourishing due to the unwillingness of good men to do what they know to be right.


The reason that both the Terry Schaivo case backfired and the current Death Panels lie will have a shocking backlash is that they are evil deeds done by evil men for evil reasons and the political justifications made in favor of doing such things are simply more lies by evil, conscious and willful liars.

To quote my shirt which quotes Edmund Burke, "All that is required for evil to flourish is that good men (and women) do nothing."

It is no accident that I quote Burke, who is correctly credited and blamed for his part in founding a long and storied tradition of philosophical Conservatism amongst the English-Speaking peoples. And yet an overview of his words and his causes reveals complexity, intellectual rigor and above all, a deep and abiding regard for doing the Right thing.



Burke was observing the injustice of law being wielded by commercial interests against the interests of the common man, and he would say no less caustic things regarding corporate theft and the misuse of political office in defense of thieves.




Burke might well be alarmed at the idea of any sort of public health insurance scheme - but I doubt that he'd balk at the idea of some sharp regulatory checks on unrestrained greed, or the application of Justice to those to those who's criminality while in service to the state brought it's honor into disrepute.

As a Whig, he of course approached Right Action in the Whig way. But for the most part, it seems, he did not place the cart before the horse. It's a tribute to the lasting import and continuing influence of Edmund Burke that the Modern Whig Party has been established.

I absolutely endorse that effort, an effort among good men and women to do something. They have realized that the GOP has become a creature of evil, a thing to be discarded and supplanted by a party that does not merely stand against this or that, but which stands staunchly for the things that are worth conserving and are worth achieving.

It is as yet still possible to do something good by political means - and as Iraq Vets, many of the founders have a FAR clearer appreciation of "Politics By Other Means" then have slide-jacking funnymentalist eliminationist peckerheads that have made their exodus from the party a moral imperative.



When someone lies to my face for the third time, in order to induce me to go along with some transparently stupid or evil deed, I stop listening. Indeed, I have no trouble whatsoever using whatever reasonable and necessary force is required in order to remove them from my front porch.

Indeed, I see waiting for the third strike to be an exercise in most Christian charity. But "Three Times is Enemy Action" is a rule of thumb that has served me well. It requires a little forbearance, but with that comes a reasonable certainty of conviction.

But clearly, I'm in a distinct minority, even should I count the current members of the Modern Whigs, It saddens me that one explanation may be my lifelong unwillingness to "go along to get along."

Perhaps if more people were more concerned about right actions and right outcomes, and a little less tolerant of those who think that there is no social problem that cannot be solved by sticking someone else with the expense or the cleanup, a civilization might arise between the borders of Canada and Mexico.

I'm not sure if this sort of situation is what Menckin had in mind when he uttered his widely-cited observation, that "Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the Jolly Roger, and start slitting throats."

What I am sure of is this; that when that temptation starts to become a creeping suspicion of an impending moral obligation... it's definitely time for good men and women to do something besides complain. Perhaps you should run for office.

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The Bitter, Low Hanging Fruit Begins to Fall

Pennsylavnia cop killer obsessed with conspiracy theories:

"Richard Andrew Poplawski was a young man convinced the nation was secretly controlled by a cabal that would eradicate freedom of speech, take away his guns and use the military to enslave the citizenry.

His online profile suggests someone at once lonely and seething. He wrote of burning the backs of both of his hands, the first time with a cigarette, the second time for symmetry. He subscribed to conspiracy theories and, by January 2007, was posting photographs of his tattoos on white supremacist Web site Stormfront. Among his ambitions: 'to accumulate enough 'I punched that [expletive] so hard' stories to match my old man.'"

It seems like I've been writing about this sort of thing from various angles for years now. Bad ethics, poor education, bad fellowship, gullibility and probably some combination of depression and early trauma came together to create a lethal mixture.

Whether that lethality is the result of deliberate policy or simply toxic waste from a conspicuously tactical political agenda is, sadly, immaterial. Cause leads to effect, regardless of intent. Part of the effect of this attempt to "defend the Second Amendment" is to become far more a threat to legitimate recreational, survivalist and well balanced self-defense advocates than any "left wing" agenda.

It's not the tools. It's not the cause. It's the culture that has gotten stuck to the cause and the tools; it's like gun grease; You just can't get the smell off your hands.

For most of us, this sort ignorant, testosterone-fueled gullibility passes soon enough; we grow up, we get a life, we get married and begin careers. All of these things tend to socialize us, give us the opportunity to reality-check our views about other people, politics and life. But this only works if we allow it to work; if we do not expressly reject all the countervailing hints that life is an exercise in pastels and shades of gray, not black and white with Red White and Blue. (Or Red and White, domestically speaking.)

When you isolate yourself, surround yourself with like minded people and rigidly maintain an authoritarian world view - well, let's just say that it's a failure-prone situation. Maintaining that zone of absolute control requires an "or else." The more absolute the control, the greater the violence that you have to promise as a consequence of "misbehavior."

Police: Dad killed 5 kids because wife was leaving
Tammy Dettwiler, right, and her sister Penny Flansburg, left, are comforted by Dettwiler's son, Tim Martin, center, Saturday, at trailer park near near Graham, Wash., where the bodies of five children belonging to the women's niece Angela Harrison were discovered dead in their home Saturday afternoon. (Ted S. Warren / AP)

The night before, the father and his eldest daughter went in search of the wife, Angela Harrison. The daughter used a GPS feature in her mother's cell phone to find her with another man at a convenience store in Auburn, said Ed Troyer, a spokesman for the Pierce County Sheriff.

The woman told her husband she was not coming home, and was leaving him for the man with her at the store. The father and the daughter left, distraught, Troyer said. Sometime after the children went to sleep, he shot them each multiple times. Four died in their beds. The fifth was found in the mobile home's bathroom, surrounded by signs of violent struggle.

You might be tempted to dismiss this as inexplicable, the sort of insanity that simply cannot be predicted or anticipated. But in fact, it makes perfect sense to an extremely authoritarian parent, and the patterns of that sort of authoritarian personality [pdf] are there for anyone to see. Isolation. Micromanagement. Control. Restrictions on behavior, thought control, arbitrary rules that control every aspect of life. And no matter how it's packaged, no matter what excuses or doctrines are presented, it is always about power and control. I guarandamntee you that that home will be filled with symbols and totems that underline the maculine authoritarian right to dominate and control, much as Poplawski chose to conspicuously tattoo himself with a Teutonic eagle.

James Harrison's world was wrecked by his wife's break for freedom; his self-worth depended entirely upon controlling and dominating his family - and his wife was the keystone. Without her example of mute compliance, how long would it be before his children escaped? This was of particular urgency, given that his eldest was already older than when he impregnated her mother - who was 13. He'd already "had to" commit a "minor assault" on one of his children in a way that his exercise of control was noticed by others. He could feel his grip slipping - and this translated into anger and fear, which turned inward and was focused upon his own children.

"He wanted the kids dead," Troyer said. "It wasn't like he shot a few rounds. He shot several rounds."

The woman told her husband she was not coming home, and was leaving him for the man with her at the store. The father and the daughter left, distraught, Troyer said. Sometime after the children went to sleep, he shot them each multiple times. Four died in their beds. The fifth was found in the mobile home's bathroom, surrounded by signs of violent struggle.

"He wanted the kids dead," Troyer said. "It wasn't like he shot a few rounds. He shot several rounds."

Investigators believe he then returned to the area near the convenience store looking for his wife. His body was found near the store, Troyer said.

"A working theory is that he probably went back up there looking for her, wasn't able to find her, realized the gravity of what he'd done and shot himself," Troyer said.

The story mentions that several weapons were found in the home. Given the personality type, we can safely assume that they were as much symbols of authority as hunting or sport weapons.

From a Buzzflash review of Gun Show Nation, by Joan Burbick

Guns do more than just shoot; they are powerful iconic symbols in American culture and have been used to label who's in and who's out; who is a "real American" and who is not.

More disturbingly: "She found hate literature at all the guns show that she attended, except for one. That should tell you something in itself."

I'm not saying that Harrison was exactly the same sort of nut as conspiracy-theorist Richard Andrew Poplawski, I'm not saying Harrison took Limbaugh or Beck as Serious People With Opinions That Matter. What we DO know about him is a related syndrome - a wide streak of authoritarianism, a need for control and the willingness to use violence to get his way.

Candy Johnson, Angela Harrison's aunt, described James Harrison as a strict, controlling husband and father who didn't allow his wife to make any decisions without asking him first.

"My niece has been so controlled from the time she was young," Johnson said, adding that James Harrison had impregnated Angela when she was 13.

"It's unbelievable," Johnson said. "My whole family is in shock. How does this happen? How does anyone do that?"

Others will tend to blame the guns and ammunition. I disagree - guns are in some ways innocent victims of "gun culture." If it's simply about killing people, In this day and age, it's not at all difficult to come up with truly lethal substitutes for conventional munitions. I could easily create such a text - but as tempting as it is to make a small fortune selling it to Paladin Press, I shall refrain.

Just take my word for it that available materials - electronics, compressed gasses, commonly available explosives, easily available high strength materials and common, Yankee ingenuity have already managed to come up with some pretty damn terrifying ideas.



Now, that's what you can accomplish with a spare bulldozer and a little jack-leg engineering skill. "Killdozer" could have gone one on one with many WWI tanks and turned them into scrap metal. Now, imagine if it had mounted a slightly more sophisticated variation of this terrifying device developed for - of all people - the US Department of Agriculture!

(Joel Suprise previous owner of spudtech.com)

Above is a picture of the massive custom air cannon that was built for the US Dept. of Agriculture a few years back. It's a tornado simulator designed to fire a 12 foot long, 15 pound 2 x 4 at a wall at 100 MPH. Testing this monster was a RUSH!!!! Believe it or not... 22 of these "pneumatic artillery pieces" have been built. Click HERE for a video.

Trust me - if you are even slightly male, you want to see the video.

Of course, it has no reloading mechanism, no elevation controller, no way of aiming it, and two-by-fours are hardly aerodynamically stable. So, as is, it doesn't seem all that terrifying a weapon.

Until you realize that the only reason that it's a lousy weapon is because nobody has added possibly fifty dollars worth of extra parts and a small computer. With that tiny addition - and an easily added breach mechanism - this monster could be flinging spears, metal and concrete projectiles, explosives, or anything else with impressive accuracy. This is damn impressive artillery - and it's actually more sophisticated than a field mortar.

Here's the problem; you cannot outlaw physics. This is why the right to bear arms is in fact an inalienable right. Pass all the laws you wish; it's quite immaterial, if the people you legislate against having weapons feel safer having them then not. This thing could easily be used to level a police station, in either direct or indirect fire mode. Even more fearsome things can be created with a trip to a junk yard and a welder's ticket. "Punkin' Chunkin" air cannon can fling a pumpkin - not the most ideal projectile in the universe - over a mile. Imagine the same device being used to launch a fin-stabilized projectile?

Oh, and did you know there are amateur rockets that can launch a bowling ball over a thousand feet - straight UP?

The problem is not one of availability or even of effective lethality. It's all about symbolism, will and intent. Punkin' chunkers and amateur rocketeers don't belong to toxic subcultures. They are gleeful, playful kinetic engineers. They don't sit in the dark jacking their slides and fantasizing about putting a full mag into someone deserving.

While amateur rockets and air-powered kenetic weapons are, or could be devastatingly lethal, they simply don't communicate to the psyche the way an AK-47, a Colt .45 or an M16. It's not what the weapon can do - it's about the associational values and the culture they serve as totemic badges.

Let me illustrate by counterexample.

This weapon fires 11 3/4 mm lead ball (.463" caliber) with air pressure supplied by a bike pump.

It was created in WWII by a French bicycle-maker turned partisan, out of what appears to be common plumbing pipes. And it very likely has several bodies on it.

It's capable of perhaps 10 or 20 shots at useful power, and it's a true semi-auto.

By useful power, I mean somewhere in the neighborhood of ".38 Special area of modern firearms, or even, as probably overstated by Fred Baer (1973) into the range of the .45 ACP cartridge, famous in pistols and submachine guns favored by police, gangsters, and the military for several wars of the 20th century." -Beeman

That is certainly impressive lethality - but it's cultural connotation would be "child's toy." Even though it will cheerfully create messes like this, it's a seen as a geeky, steampunk curiosity, although it should be intuitively seen as a truly amazing survival tool, easily capable of taking deer and smaller game.

You can build your own with parts from any hardware store. The ammunition is cheap or free. It's perfect for recreational shooting - if that shooting is not about conspicuous consumption and vicarious violence. If your "recreational shooting" is about proving that you can afford to feed your weapon, and therefore that you are a "solid citizen," an air rifle simply will not serve your needs.

Even though it actually would - if shooting was about feeding and defending your family.

Weapons of this sort are used even today as very serious hunting weapons, capable of firing a wide range of lethal projectiles. Are they part of American Gun Culture? Nope. Nobody takes you seriously if you brandish an air rifle - because they don't go "bang."

I see the Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot as being a malignant devolution of Potlatch culture - an exercise in white male bonding and cultural immersion. It glorifies violence, paranoia and authoritarian group-think. And this is the culture that produces people like Richard Andrew Poplawski
and James Harrison.

It's all about the upbringing, the culture and the associations. The guns, as I said, are innocent bystanders - chosen for their appearance of power, rather than their functional effectiveness.

I hate to say this - but we have to. This is NOT a "Second Amendment" problem. It's a "First Amendment" problem. It comes directly from willful misinformation; lies and deceit. I think it's time to talk about means to regulate culture. I don't favor a legal approach - what I do favor is a far stronger and more effective cultural approach. We - sane, freedom loving people - need to take over the soapboxes. We need to verbally and materially demonstrate our displeasure with and informed dissent with xenophobic idiocy and special interest sedition.

Real Men don't shoot kids. They don't excuse it as "the price of freedom," either. Rational people - even rational paranoids - don't create pretexts to kill people, to "defend their rights." And most particularly, they don't kill pointlessly, just to make a conspicuous show of their demise. That's not patriotism, it's terrorism.

So, when you see cultures like this - and you hear them howling about being "profiled" due to their association with various political groups and activist associations known for their problematic - nay, wackadoodle belief structures - respond with a horselaugh. They are potential terrorists. Tim McVeigh came from JUST such a subculture. So did these two. They all have a common thread - the belief that they are - or were - right, and have the right to use force to impose their world view.

They belive they have the right to freely assemble in order to present an "or else" to the rest of us. Well, I suppose, strictly speakiing, that's true. But they don't have the right to do so without the rest of us taking notice - and a few reasonable individual and collective precautions.

Cafferty says the War on Drugs is insane

Lincoln on Prohibition by webcarve

Commentary by Jack Cafferty on CNN: War on drugs is insane:

"How many prison cells are filled with drug offenders? And how many corrections officers does it take to guard them? How much food do these convicts consume?

And when they get out, how many parole and probation officers does it take to supervise their release? And how many ex-offenders turn right around and do it again?

So how's this war on drugs going?

Someone described insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result each time. That's a perfect description of the war on drugs."

Cafferty is right on this. The more you look at the "conventional wisdom" of drug policy, the less sense it makes, the less savory the motives, the more side effects and the less social benefit. And let's remember that this isn't as simple as - say, outlawing chewing gum. It's not even as simple as outlawing the use of Marijuana as a recreational drug. It banned the plant itself - and made all products and uses illegal.

Many of those products and processes have the potential to form the core of next-generation, "green" industries - and if you will note, the United States has a conspicuous and very significant lack of domestic industry and innovation.

Hemp can be rendered into fiber, fuel, plastics, paper and engineered materials - all of which are sustainable. Hemp - before it was banned - was integral to agriculture and industry. The more one looks into the banning of the entire family of hemp plants, the more one begins to believe that the point was not to eliminate drugs - but to eliminate entire industries that, under free-market conditions - would have enormous competitive advantages over tree-based paper, petroleum refineries, cotton grown with petrochemical-based pesticides and so forth.

Perhaps even more significantly, there is little point to large, centralized methanol and biodiesel refineries. The technology to produce fuels from organic materials is far less expensive and unwieldy than petrochemical refining - to the extent that it could well make economic sense for individual farms, and certainly would make sense in any three-elevator prairie town.

The domestic security advantages of a widely distributed fuel supply that is not vulnerable to foreign intervention, terrorism and hurricanes is pretty obvious.

You need an oil press - a simple device. Cold pressed hemp oil can then be processed into biodiesel - or used on your salad. Meanwhile, the fibers are extracted and the leftover biomass is fermented into methanol. It's three crops in the space of one - although obviously, various strains are going to have greater or lesser utility for each of those outcomes.

Oh, it requires no pesticides to grow - and it's an immediate, fast growing crop that can be used, right now, to deal with excess CO².

Hm. I wonder what that would do to large energy monopolies? More to the immediate point, wouldn't it feel good doing it to them?

Hemp for Victory Template Sticker by webcarve

"Creationism" - an insult to any Creator worth seeking.

The Stupid; It Burns! Mug by webcarve

Properly, I should have created a really impressive looking "Master's Degree" certificate as the proper header - perhaps with an abstract background executed in crayon and finger-paint - but there are depths to which I cannot descend even in jest.

To me, it's an insult to even have to consider this matter, much less have to stoop to mocking it. And yet, here it is, a steaming pile of stupid, communicated in an incredulous tweet.

- Texans, please don't let this flat-earth BS happen - bill proposed to grant Master's in Creationism. http://tinyurl.com/c25qsh

Twittering about twittery of this sort has been a House Blend Special since before twitter existed. :)

Oh. My. God. The inmates are running the asylum in the Lone Star State legislature:

Bill Would Allow Texas School to Grant Master's Degree in Science for Creationism.

State Rep. Leo Berman (R-Tyler) proposed House Bill 2800 when he learned that The Institute for Creation Research (ICR), a private institution that specializes in the education and research of biblical creationism, was not able to receive a certificate of authority from Texas' Higher Education Coordinating Board to grant Master of Science degrees.

Berman's bill would allow private, non-profit educational institutions to be exempt from the board's authority.

"If you don't take any federal funds, if you don't take any state funds, you can do a lot more than some business that does take state funding or federal funding," Berman says. "Why should you be regulated if you don't take any state or federal funding?" HB 2800 does not specifically name ICR; it would allow any institution that meets its criteria to be exempt from the board's authority. But Berman says ICR was the inspiration for the bill because he feels creationism is as scientific as evolution and should be granted equal weight in the educational community.

"I don't believe I came from a salamander that crawled out of a swamp millions of years ago," Berman told FOXNews.com. "I do believe in creationism. I do believe there are gaps in evolution.

I've linked first to the House Blend because there, the discussion is of fairly high caliber while the source Pam cites, Oliver Willis - well, there it is being treated with the respect it properly deserves.

"Texas Engages In A Whole New Breed Of Stupid: Master's Degree For Creationism."

Now, speaking as a Theist who does believe that there is a Prime Cause - I cannot bear the stupidity that is creationism. I don't think that if there is a Creator, that we would be created with critical facilities in order to not apply them and I cannot begin to tell you how utterly farcical Creationism and ID is.

Any proper scientific theory, indeed, even a respectable theological hypothesis must first, last and always deal honestly with facts in evidence. Even theology has standards of evidence and, as a discipline, puts a high value upon critical review.

When you try and simply dismiss facts that incontrovertibly exist (whatever you may make of them) while making naked assertions, such as the claim in ID that each species was created as it is, just as it is now, with the expectation that they should be taken as seriously as, say, transitional fossils in the geological record, the proper response is not to "consider the evidence." An assertion is not evidantary. A rationalization of scripture is not even an hypothesis, much less a theory.

If the goatherd's creation myth differs from the geological record, if it's proposed timeline does not match the data gathered by cosmology and paleontology, if it's modern expression is contradicted by experiment - then the goatherd's story loses. The goatherd's Rabbi would have told you, had you a time machine and could have asked. Who the hell do you think developed and founded the whole search for The Meaning Of It All? Who sharpened and codified the tools of the intellect? Who developed the idea that this sort of thing was worth writing down and discussing? These are the people who's efforts and thoughts created and defined the scientific method itself!

The abomination that is ID, Creationism, and more boldly, the bankrupt and ignorant theology that is what has become known in general as "American Conservative Protestantism," from it's thin white skin to it's bitter core of intolerance is founded upon a denial of the whole root, branch, tree and fruit of the genuine spiritual explorations of the last ten thousand years. It is a most damnable counterfeit, and their first response to anyone resembling Jesus would be to waterboard him to find the rest of his terrorist sleeper cell.

The absolutely proper response is to treat it as an impertinent fraud upon the public. And that's how it is treated by people smart enough to tell shit from shinola.

Moreover, let us take this further; the sheer, mind boggling contempt for intellectual rigor and critical thought will absolutely ensure that nobody associated with "creation theory," anyone foolish and deluded enough to invest a scintilla of their life-path into this onanistic cargo-cult mockery will, by definition, never approach any understating of creation or Creator worth having - any more than the associated social understandings and political imperatives have contributed in the slightest measure to a nation worth living in.

I say this while being personally convinced that the Universe is pervaded with intelligence, that there is, for want of a more precise concept, a God/Essence; one who is ultimately knowable and that we must certainly be intended to make the effort. We have, after all, been given the tools. And at the very least, if you believe in intentional Creation, must not the tools imply the task?

Don't bitch about what that hearty shovel digs up. There it is. Cope.

Truth is truth and facts are facts; the understandings of primitive goat-herders cannot be assumed to be superior to our own, if we are achieve progress toward knowing what is yet unknown, embracing the unknowable implications of such discoveries that may present themselves.

And that, of course, is the problem. When you achieve a a greater understanding, one often has to come to terms that one's previous worldview was limited, childish, possibly even a tad delusional.

Well, faced with such a fate - and such a potential loss of revenue and influence over the willful fools that prefer comforting lies to uncomfortable truths, lies will be produced. Evident lies, lies that are an insult to fine, professional liars of all ages.

The utter, batshit, false-to-fact, hysterical assault on reason and critical thought that Creationists have mounted underlines this. Treating them with respect traduces the very concept of "respectable."

Vive La Evolution 2 T-Shirt by webcarve

It's nice to get a little validation, once in a while. Oh, wait...

It's not the size of your fish... T-Shirt by webcarve

PERRspectives Blog: The GOP and the Growing Right-Wing Terror Threat: "As the beaten and battered conservative faithful gather at the CPAC event in Washington, casual incitements to violence against the President, Democratic leaders and liberal Americans once again are filling the air. While former UN ambassador John Bolton produced guffaws with the specter of Obama's hometown being destroyed in a terrorist attack, Joe 'the Plumber' Wurzelbacher earnestly suggested some members of Congress should be shot. Meanwhile readers of the web site of Fox News host Sean Hannity voted on 'what kind of revolution' they found most appealing, even as Glenn Beck discussed the coming American civil war.

As recent events show, these increasingly frequent episodes are no laughing matter. More disturbing still, whether concerning abortion, gay Americans, immigration or judicial appointments, the line connecting the rhetoric of the Republican Party and the mainstream conservative movement to right-wing terror is a very short one."

Now, if only it had been possible for someone other than - well, someone with nothing to lose by saying it - to have been saying this for as long as I have been.

I'm not sure if I'm bragging or whining. Both, I think. But I sincerely wish, over and above both - that I had been wrong.

Perfect for The Science Class

I wish I'd thought of this. I really wish I'd thought of this! But I'll settle for blogging it, and strongly suggesting that it makes an hilarious point. Call it a signpost on the road back to sanity, evidence and politics in actual contact with reality.

Oh, and the fact that it will cause spontaneous cranial detonations among mindless Midwesterners can only be seen as a bonus. For the latest in evolutionary schadenfreude from a verbal perspective, check out P.Z Myers who often writes about small changes smart people believe in.

The Texas legislature is generally the butt of jokes, and it's not hard to see why: it's an awesome body of distilled stupidity. However, that doesn't mean there aren't some good ones among the chaff, and State Senator Rodney Ellis and State Representative Patrick Rose should be counted among them. They've written an excellent op-ed for the Houston Chronicle in which they point out the contradiction of a state that wants to build a leading-edge set of scientific research institutions with a State Board of Education led by a mob of incompetent creationist cretins. They've put together some legislation to hold the SBOE accountable for their performance — a marvelous turnabout of the No Child Left Behind philosophy of policing schools on their performance. Let's see the rascals who want to put together bogus curricula scrutinized on the basis of long-term performance in science by the kids!

Here's something you can do right now. Thank these two smart politicians by signing a letter. It's the least you can do. And if you're a Texan in their districts, vote for them!

Very Gradual Change We Can Believe In by darwin2009
View more Prints posters At zazzle
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Digg This: Marriage is a civil right.

Ganked with Glee from Declarations of Pride.

...above all else, marriage is about protecting property and relationships. Marriage isn't about God. I doubt, in spite of what you may have heard, whether God cares one way or another about who is married to whom? Those are the petty worries of man, not the lofty contemplations of a Supreme Being. Marriage is now, and has always been...Even before Christ, about the claiming, protection, and definition of property. How can so many ignore this obvious fact when you consider the history of this supposedly "sacred" union. Have we collectively forgotten about so-called "arranged marriages?" Those were not about love, God, or anything else so noble...They were about the planned & protected consolidation of power, heredity, wealth and property. Marriages are about protecting wealth and allowing for its preservation from generation to generation through a legally defined family unit. It is a construct of legal necessity, not one of religious wrangling.

Marriage is once and for all, a civil construct.

In the United States of America, marriage is a manifested by a government issued license that defines and legally binds a couple. It confers, without respect to race, creed, and we hope someday, gender, approximately 1,038 federal rights. Rights; which in the United States are by definition to be given equally to all citizens under the law. That's the ideal.

This is the reality. In many states, there will be so-called "Marriage Protection Amendments" that will exist to blur the lines of faith and the lines of government with one another. They are faith-based initiatives designed to push an agenda of hate into the legal construct of marriage. If left unchecked, this blending of religious myth and the law has far reaching and devastating potential for America. The religious-right uses so many false arguments to defend the position of need for these amendments. They claim the need for "protection." From what? They claim marriage is sacred. Then why all the divorce? They (the ones demanding the amendment) say many things, yet offer no factual defense of their own positions.

As usual, this is a cultural divide created by Americans who don't understand something, and who are praying on the fears of others who are woefully ill informed. Whenever that happens in this great nation we get anger, hate, and a call for division or punishment. Instead of growth or living up to our stated ideal of "equality" we turn to hate, and sink to the ugliest of American traits: hateful ignorance. The kind of hate that results in men lashed naked to fences. A place in our history where it is OK to hang a man from a tree by his neck as a cross is lit aflame. A place where Americans can tie other Americans to the back of trucks and drag them to their deaths. Fear has always worked to create hate in America. Fear builds towering walls between reason and logic. Hate obliterates what we know in our hearts to be right, and covers all with ignorant rage. That is the path we are on in the name of God.

I see this ignorance as the ultimate sin.

Amen. Selah. Digg it here.

Perception affects outcomes

If you were to ask any autistic person - or indeed, any person at all who is different enough that they cannot entirely conform to what passes in their socioeconomic context for "normalcy" - the response to this would work out to "duh." And yet, somehow, and obviously, it needs to be said and it needs to be said until it's broadly understood that "normalcy" is at best a useful social construct and at worst, and all too often, a pretext for the systematic abuse of social, physical and mental outliers.

sp!ked review of books | ‘Autistic children are now seen as a burden’: "‘Autistic children are now seen as a burden’

Dr Michael Fitzpatrick, author of Defeating Autism, talks to Helene Guldberg about how raising a child with autism can be made infinitely harder – emotionally, financially and practically – by the charlatanic ‘war on autism’.
by Helene Guldberg"

Amen. I commend this book to you, in hopes that it may be a useful tool to get through to those who are - with the best intentions and the worst possible advice - are being abused.

I use the term "abuse" with a very narrow intent. I speak only of outcomes. I'm not speaking of intent; I presume that for the most part, parents of "different" children honestly think that their lives would be better if they could be less different. But this presupposes that the parents themselves have a valid perception of what normal is, and furthermore, that it's better for a child to learn to emulate normal behavior rather than to learn how to best express and express who and what they actually are. And that is my critical point here; which is not about panicked parents dealing with the "burden" of an autistic child, or indeed, any child. Furthermore, we must be careful to ensure that what we are "fixing" is an actual problem and not a social construct that may be irrelevant to the persons involved, if not utterly false.

So, this is not even about parenting, per se. What I'm trying to address is a problem that the autism issue has made visible, and which has been made visible in several other contexts, the inability of our society to come to terms with the idea that it's fundamental assumptions about who people are, what they do and how they should behave are incorrect; not just slightly incorrect, but dangerously so.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but in every serious matter facing the world today, we are in tension between evidence and people who are in absolute denial of the evidence because the actual, measurable testable evidence would conflict with their fundamental assumptions about reality.

You might be tempted to think that at this point I'd be asserting a tension between faith and science. I'm not. Faith applies when evidence does not exist. When evidence is in conflict with faith, when evidence promises an outcome and actions validate that reality, it's not a matter of faith to act against evidence in expectation of a different outcome. It's insane.

I don't think it particularly controversial to suggest that it's unwise to act as if the viewpoints of delusional people are as valid as people who do their best to disabuse themselves of delusion are equally valid, much less that people have an inherent right to act upon these ideas when those ideas must inevitably cause harm. The delusional segments of our society claim that this harm is not real. But then, they would, because they are insane. That is how we know they are insane. They do things that are predicted to cause harm to others, do them anyway, and then blame the harm on either the actions or inherent nature of the victims.

And since this is a general social phenomenon that seems to transcend borders and cultures, I want to emphasize that I'm pointing to autism and the behavior of the people involved for one reason, and one reason alone; it is an accessible topic that most people are not directly impacted by to the extent that it's more than usually difficult, in an emotional sense, to evaluate it objectively. That, and I know it well enough myself to find sources and talk about it intelligently.

I could just as easily have picked energy policy, prison policy, drug wars, various manifestations of religion and cultural warfare, or climate change, but most of these have far greater general emotional investment or far higher barriers toward evaluating the quality of the arguments on either side.

All these disputations, wars and disagreements arise from one common root - the formation of various systems of thought and human belief structures that permit us to absolve ourselves from the consequences of our own choices and actions.

If you have the interest and capacity, you can look at any such seemingly intractable situation, and you can see that at the root that it came about due to someone or some group decided that their problems could and should be solved at someone else's expense. Since this is obviously wrong, you have to develop an ideological, religious or institutional excuse to allow people to square it with their consciences.

And in doing so, you have created a self-perpetuating institution that exists and feeds upon gaining a benefit, while dumping the costs on someone else, and it's such a seemingly wonderful idea, it spreads widely, perverting everything it touches. Sometimes it's effect is so profound it's almost impossible to discern. But that's why I chose the title: in very important ways, our our perceptions of what someone can do affects what they will be able to do, even when we are honestly trying to act in their best interests according to the best information we have available. Nowhere is this phenomenon clearer or the consequences more evident than in the literature and the blogs of the Autism dispute.

Inarguable disabilities and meaningful distinctions aside, the perceptions of what autism is, what autistics can and cannot do, and what goes on in autistic minds are often carried on without any evident fact checking, or even the simplest and most obvious step of fact-checking with an autistic.

This very curious situation is typical when a group wishes to insulate itself from people or ideas that might call their fundimental assumptions into question. It's of course, unethical and corrupt, but the problem is actually far more fundimental. It makes it impossible for a group (Autism Speaks) to gain any practical insight into autistic persons if they create an institutional culture that precludes even speaking to the primary data source. This makes the entire excercise self defeating, even calling into quesion the validity of research they might actually do, and further, lends fuel to the broadening perception that they exist mainly to extract money from the gullible in order to do very little at a very high price.

I state these things as things that are being said, and being responded to in ways that seem unconvincing at best. It's not really important to me at this moment what is true here, again, we are speaking to a larger point. These perceptions directly interfere with even the illegitimate goal of sucking money out of the autism community. It would certainly be easy enough to scrounge up a credible enough aspie and contrive circumstances that would cause them to speak and act in ways placiate criticsm even if there was no better motive than to placiate critics.

We must reluctantly conclude the possiblity that we are dealing with delusional behaviors and that autistics and aspies are being seen as some sort of visceral threat. To what, one wonders?

I'm afraid I can't tell you. I am on the spectrum and I've been faced with this my entire life, yet I still do not understand. And as I've passed the half century mark, I'm coming to doubt that there is a rational explaination. That's why I've started to look past the immediate consequences to me of particular manifestations and look for something that I can actually hang a useful thought on. And, again, over the years I've come to realize that I was dealing with exactly the same sort of people in many different sorts of circumstances and every time the point where communication ceases is when it becomes obvious that their fundimental belief structures are being called into question by facts and circumstances.

It can be called denialism, and it leads to many very bad things and manifestly stupid and deadly courses of action. Nor, I am deeply relieved to find, am I alone in seeing this phenomonon, seeing it as a unifying thread beween many seemingly separate, but critical issues. Hence, I'm linking to the Denialism Blog, here and in the sidebar. This is an excerpt from a very cogent explaination of what the blog and the phenomonon are.

The Hoofnagle brothers (those handsome lads pictured at the left) started the denialism blog quite a while ago because they saw a pattern. Certain issues in science and the news seemed to attract a certain type of wacko. For example, there is a large and somewhat influential community that denies that HIV causes AIDS. This pissed them off. What the Hoofnagles recognized is that this "denialism" may infect many issues (AIDS, global warming, the Holocaust, evolution, to name a few), but the tactics, the logical errors, remain the same. People who deny the Holocaust happened use the same tactics as those who claim AIDS is something other than HIV infection. Those of us who follow these (very harmful and often hateful) movements have noticed how the people involved use certain tactics over and over to try to show the public how "reasonable" they are.

The study of denialism roots out these tactics, reveals these patterns, and shows these folks to be what they really are---charlatans, hate-mongers, corporate shills, and sometimes just poor, deluded souls.

Of course, if the manifest insanity of Denialism is is so pervasive, how can we rid ourselves of it? What can we do?

Three of the simplest things imaginable. First, do not delude yourself that you have the right to displace your costs onto other people. Second, dissocciate yourself, mentally and financially from institutions that are based on on denialistic thought Third do not accept even trivial costs imposed upon you that exist only to empower the agendas and validate the ideals of others.

You see, for the vast majority of human beings, there is no way that this can be an effective power exchange - because if it were to work out equitably in theory, we would not have extreme concentrations of power with equally extreme pockets of consequence - like, prisons, leaky toxic waste dumps, Africa and the US Congress. There are two things you can take for granted; anyone who tells you that you are entitled to a free lunch is lying, and that the free lunch itself will cost you at least twice what you'd have been willing to pay in an honest transaction.

While it's never possible to ensure that a particular action has no consequential negative effects to others, we can and should start by at least asking ourselves if we do this thing, then what consequences to others may be predicted according to what we do know. And if we all do that, consciously and conscientiously, to the best of our imperfect ability, we will absolutely make this world suck far less for far more people than we could possibly imagine, and it will impact us and improve our own lives a great deal more than most people would consider possible.

Moreover, it's something you become better at with practice - once you perceive that such choices are both possible and ultimately rewarding.