The Shapeshifter

The Wasteland: Why Republican Can't Govern

2006-05-14T14:49:00.000-07:00

Just like the title says, this post will deal with a very curious aspect to our Republican-led government. It's kind of strange--though pleasing--to watch the Republican Congress/Executive flop about and eventually fail its founding principles as stated. Even its successes have been had by abandoning the overall goals of the movement. Just listen to Cato, that bunch of psychotic neoliberals, whine about how Bush has abandoned the Republican plan to 0 everything from roads to the water supply.

I'm going to be talking both about our national Republicans and, because it's a particularly good example, Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota. (Incidentally, as i understand it, that Wikipedia article has its details wrong--but the broad picture, of Pawlenty promising a fairy in every crockpot and a unicorn in every garage, is pretty accurate.) Pawlenty is a good example because, well, i'll get to that...

Anyway, it's not just Cato. We can see the "Republican activists" despairing as their party abandons them and all its principles for their opposite--bloated, useless government instead of smaller and ineffective government. Meaningless wars diminish our powers abroad and our standing with the world--no matter how much of a brave face they try to put on, i think by now basically all the Republicans who are paid any attention to secretly realize this even if they aren't allowed to say the Emperor is naked and ugly. And so on, and so forth.

This is particularly true with Pawlenty--who, as mentioned above, promised no taxation and a balanced government. Now that he hasn't been able to deliver on either the Republicans are starting to wonder--out loud, this time--what that terrible stench is.

And on our side, it seems that the Republicans were just lying about what they believed in a cynical attack on our nation. Of course, they mostly were--but certainly that does not explain everything. How can those who seem to be the most frothing-at-the-mouth Conservatives suddenly hand in their ideology for no apparent reason? Was it really all a plot? Or were they, instead, well-meaning tools used by the powerful and wealthy? What is their true nature?

The outsiders (that being: us) have been a little confused and frustrated by this for a 3, but now--finally--the Republican activists seem to be realizing they're only getting the scraps of power and not the whole seven courses, as they had dreamed they would.

There's another explanation, however, in that perhaps once the Republicans got ahold of real power they found their fundamental "values" useless. Their values are not values at all, but rather phantoms of their own minds. Consider Pawlenty's "no taxes" ideology. It got thrown out the window once he was actually in office and facing the difficult task of steering a state in the real world. No longer would imaginary pledges, economic fudging, and ignoring reason do the trick--you can't will away red ink, no matter how much you try.

I suspect that the reason Pawlenty was told to step aside for Norm Coleman is that Pawlenty is a true believer, but i think Coleman realizes he's lying for the wealthy and doesn't care. Pawlenty ended up publically humiliated--because, after all, nobody can admit the ideas are unworkable so it must be that Pawlenty is a traitor to the cause, and in no small way he is. He's willing to put the well-being of Minnesota above his ideology, one of the few true sins in the modern Republican movement. When he was faced with the real world effects of his policies he realized he would have to do something to address them.

The disaster that is Republican government is a direct result of their lack of values related to governing so they're left adrift. Since their values can't help them, they just do any old thing--maybe they just go along with the tax cuts for the wealthy and the willful ignorance of the icebergs ahead in our nation's path because they simply lack a mental framework that could analyze these things.

When they talk about how people with "no values" end up "back in the caves, flinging our excrement at one another" they're really talking about themselves! And it's not that they don't have values, it's just that their values--developed in fantasy-land--have no relation to the real world.

You can't end taxation and balance the budget, at least not in Minnesota, because in order to do that you would have to make such 0 sacrifices that people would burn you, and not in effigy. You can't force people to not have abortions by jailing doctors. All of this stuff is a complete fantasy. None of it has to do with how to govern. These values are the wasteland where political parties go to die.

I'll end with a quote from Orwell:

"[W]e are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield." -- George Orwell

Next time(s):
The Crito: What Would Socrates Do?
Intelligent Falling: A new "theory" 0 a religious explanation for "gravity" and its merits, including why it is a better theory than Intelligent Design. No, seriously.

Possibly after those:
Principles: So you suddenly don't want to have "values" anymore? (And after this post you might be right to be suspicious.) Where can an honest Democrat go to find a rudder in our modern political maelstrom? I provide what i think is a better way of looking at commitment to ideas than the Republican narrative of "values" and, of course, why i think it's better.

ADDENDUM:
Newt Gingrich seems to have figured this out. Have you seen his speeches lately? You should watch one or two. I'm not sure if they're all the same, but at least some of them are pretty impressive. He seems to have become a technocrat, if a nasty-style capitalist technocrat. He even has some interesting ideas(!)

For instance, he wants real-style debates where two people get together and actually talk to each other, not the audience(!!!)

Right here, right now, i will make a prediction: Newt Gingrich, barring some unforseen weirdness, will be the Republican nominee in 2008. The only candidate on our side that trumps him is Al Gore, although Feingold's weaknesses vanish into thin air versus a Newt opposition. (That is: a divorce and his religion.)

Why does Gore trump Newt? Even though Newt has some good ideas, they're still all in the vein of "The government! It sucks!" Gore doesn't have that sort of tunnel vision, although in Gore vs. Newt you should look for the Republicans to start minimizing all problems except the US government, which they will again state is the source of all badness in the world--specifically, its inefficiency is the source of all badness in the world.

Where am i going with this? Newt has realized Republican values are worthless. (Except, apparently, the whole Republican loathing of government.) So instead he has dropped them and is moving forward with a plan to technocratize the government.

Upcoming posts...

2006-05-14T02:46:00.000-07:00

This is mostly for myself, but i've got a bunch in the queue, so to speak.

Why Republicans can't govern: Their values suck.
The Crito: Socrates explains it all... kind of...
Intelligent Falling: A new theory that offers a religious explanation that counters gravity and its merits, including why it is a much more reasonable theory than "Intelligent Design". (No, seriously. I swear to God i will write this.)

There are also a few others. I need to write them down so i don't forget XP

Unfortunately, i have forgotten them at the moment. Curses. Maybe i'll remember and add them later.

The lie of "capital".

2006-05-06T18:52:00.000-07:00

First off, i know i haven't posted in a while. I sort of ran out of things to talk about, actually.

Well, i still have things to talk about, but i didn't have the time or concentration to work them up into posts. We'll see how well this goes.

I've been thinking about this sort of thing a bit lately, and just recently i had a very interesting talk with someone who has thought about it more than i have--he was one of those guys who really were hippies back in the '60s and '70s. We didn't explicitly talk about this, but he mentioned something that reminded me of this.

He suggested that our modern society has two fundamental problems (among many other fundamental problems) that go like this: we use many resources than are created in the same period of time and we create more garbage than we know what to do with. These problems are connected in that the first causes the second, but other than that they are basically not discussed--and when they are discussed they are discussed independent of one another. However, this person with whom i talked realized--and he realized back in the '70s--that the only way to solve either of these problems was to connect them at the other end: to use the garbage as the resources. We must either build things so that they will last for a long time or so that they can be broken down into easily reusable parts.

We also discussed how corporations "game" the economic markets in a number of ways. The extract money form the environment in the form of "natural resources" and sell it for a profit--the cost of this transaction gets shared among all people, but the benefit (in the form of cash-money) goes to a very small sub-set. For example, when mercury restrictions were lessoned a while ago companies could dump more mercury into rivers than they could previously, so they dump more mercury (rather than some other, less profitable action) and make more money. The cost (more mercury in rivers) hurts everyone, but the benefit goes to those companies which dump mercury.

In fact, most economists (particularly those of the "Conservative" variety) argue today that this is how we can tell the corporation is working. We might, borrowing John Taylor Gatto's description of schools, say that the modern corporation is psychotic because it has no conscience--but these people would say that the modern corporation is healthy because it has no conscience. If it followed conscience, they argue, it would not be following the profit motive and its sole duty to provide profit to its shareholders.

We can see this in the Wal-Mart strategy: by playing separate socio-economic regions and other groups against each other Wal-Mart makes money. We've seen this in comedy a lot: it's the same sort of thing as the person who takes money and trades it for something else, then for something else, then that for something else, and so on, until finally this person trades back into the original currency and ends with more than was started with. Now, an economist would say that this person probably deserves the extra cash because the goods have been redistributed along more efficient lines.

But we have a problem here. The corporation does not actually create the wealth that it acquires, just as in the above example of a corporation dumping mercury. It only looks like wealth has been created because of the redistribution away from the many to those who orchestrated this situation.

Now, the economist might object that the original explanation for this behavior and my objection here are compatible. In other words, that was is being "created" is efficiency rather than any actual product. But the plastic junk that these corporations peddle has little to no real worth outside the system in which it was created. It was invented from whole cloth by the corporation for the purpose of moving it around the and soaking up money in the process. The demand for the product was created mostly by the corporation itself--in the form of advertising.

I suspect we can see the ultimate example of this sort of behavior in a profiteering corporation which stokes the fires of war to create demand and then provide goods and services to both sides. Halliburton and friends are probably a step or two (but probably not more) below this, as they have not (as far as we know) directly designed the Iraq War for their own profit.

There exists another fundamental problem with how we view economies. Despite claims that prices of goods in a "free market" accurately reflect the "value" of a thing exactly the opposite is true: the price is not at all related to the cost.

Aside from the examples i have already used, let us consider another on natural resources: oil versus water. Now, let's assume we're dealing with two sub-sets of those: gasoline versus bottled water. Both of these have prices attached to them. Although there are mitigating factors that tamper with their prices (for instance, gas taxes and subsidies and widely available public waterworks) let us assume they do not come into play for this example. (I do not believe they have relevance here anyway, but i may be wrong.)

Although the relationship of prices between the two (let's say a gallon of water compared to a gallon of gasoline) might be one thing now it will be another later. In fact, over the long run, gasoline will necessarily become more expensive as compared to water.

How can i say that? Let's go back to the first point i made: bottled water can be easily recycled. The byproducts ("garbage", as i put it) of almost all of its uses (actually literally all, so far as i'm aware) can be fairly easily converted back into water or some other useful thing. The byproducts of use of gasoline, on the other hand, requires a great deal of effort to convert back into gasoline. In fact, so far as i'm aware, there is no way to do this directly. This means that our use of water does not affect the total amount of water in the world, but the more we use gasoline the less of it we have--or rather i should say: the less we will have available in the future. And once we run out of oil it doesn't matter how much water you trade in for money, you still won't be able to buy even a single drop of oil.

Some poeple suggest that this is not a problem, because the markets will solve it. Or that, if this ever starts becoming a problem, markets will naturally move into conservationist tendancies so that the corporations (etc) do not self-destruct. I would argue that, under our present systems, precisely the opposite will occur. A corporation should use more of a limited resource like gasoline, if it can, because not using more of it means someone else will get to use more of it and will gain the subsequent economic benefits. In fact, the "correct" action makes the problem worse and worse as the problem gets worse and worse.

Now, many object to my objections by saying that we ought not tamper with markets. The underlying argument being "Markets are natural, therefore tampering with them leads to unnaturalness (or ineffeciency)." Of course, this is self-evidently untrue: markets are only "natural" in a sort of synthetic manner. Just take a look at the rules of the Securities and Exchange Commission if you don't believe me. Of course, those who buy into this sort of "do not tamper with markets" argument will point to examples of market-like behavior arising spontaneously in people--for example, "primitive" markets arising to barter for goods and services when existing structures collapse. Of course, that does not prove markets are natural. Another thing that arises when existing structures collapse is chaos. For instance, New Orleans post-Katrina. But the people who buy into the "markets = natural = intrinsically best form" argument do not suggest we should allow the "natural" chaos of a situation like Katrina to exist because its naturalness is intrinsically good!

So: what is the lie of capital? That "capital" is interchangable. That all things can be reduced to dollars and cents and those dollars and cents interchanged for other things. We even have a word for it: "fungible"--our dear Head Warmonger Donald Rumsfeld even believes people are basically fungible. The lie is that the price of water and price of gasoline says not only one thing about the relationship between water and gasoline but that it says the only relevant thing and that what it says it says accurately.

But corporations want to believe in the lie. They want to believe in the lie because, curiously, it allows them to justify their own self-interested behavior--they claim it's the right thing. It justifies their psychotic behavior.

In fact, many do not even recognize the problems i outlined above because they are not problems that can be described in purely economic terms. They simply do not have criteria to examine problems other than "it will cost you $X." So things like global warming, peak energy, etc are not only irrelevant but also: focusing on them would be wrong for a corporation!

Unfortunately for us, they are the ones who are wrong. Oil and water are not fundamentally interchangable. To put it another way: they do not mix.

Next time: Why Republicans can't govern.
Time after that: The Crito, wherein Socrates rebukes a guy named Crito for his (Crito's) principles and provides an important lesson for modern Democrats. I'll try to keep the stiff philosophy out of it.

My utter loathing for G. W. Bush

2005-11-22T15:10:00.000-08:00

Reaches new intensity.

I want to write a book.

On the odd-numbered pages there will be pretty, childrens' book-ish drawings of George W. Bush in comical scenarios. On the even pages...

"George W. Bush can't find Afghanistan on a map!" (Superimposed on a drawing of a confused Bush and map with clearly labled "Afghanistan" on it.)

"Meanwhile, an Iraqi mother cries and cries because her child is never coming back!" (Superimposed on a picture of an Iraqi mother cradling her bloody, badly mangled baby's corpse.)

"Our President can't escape a room full of reporters..." (Superimposed on a drawing of Bush looking puzzled at a locked door--alternatively, make him pushing hard on the door with a sign labelled "PULL" in big letters. The latter is not historically accurate, but it's hard to draw a locked door.)

"But Iraqis can't escape the every-day reality that Hell on Earth has destroyed every moment of their waking lives (and their non-waking moments, also)." (Superimposed on, say, something from Abu Ghraib or maybe this picture.)

For best effect the pictures should be full-page and brightly colored.

Judge Alito's Big Gay Day

2005-11-04T12:37:00.000-08:00

Not too long ago--although everyone seems to have forgotten about it now--President Bush nominated some guy named Judge Alito to the Supreme Court. Sure, what with the impending collapse of Republicanism in this nation it's kind of hard to pay attention to even Supreme Court nominations. We'll have plenty of time later. Today is Judge Alito's Big Gay Day in my blog-world. It's his "coming out", you might say.

Judge Alito shares a common thread all of President Bush's Supreme Court picks have shared: a committment to gay rights. And we're not talking a committment to obliterating gay rights, here. Each of Roberts, Meiers, and now even "Little Scalia"--a man whose counterpart, Real Scalia, is willing to explicitly deny the Ninth Amendment in order to argue against, among other things, the idea that people can have sex in non-governmentally approved fashion--have all had solid records as one of the big contradictions in modern politics and public life: pro-gay Republicans.

Oh, yes. I know, "Scalito" is a crazy... he couldn't possibly be pro-gay, right?

Also, 30 years before the Supreme Court decriminalized gay sex, Alito declared on behalf of his group of fellow Princeton University students that "no private sexual act between consenting adults should be forbidden."

(From an ABC story on Alito's nomination)

Thirty years before Scalia said there was no Constitutional right to have sex because the Constitution does not explicitly enumerate such a right Alito was taking the opposite position.

Alito, back in 1971, also called for an end to discrimination against homosexuals in hiring.

(Same source as above)

Alito wanted to end discrimination based on sexual orientation--now, thirty-four years later, sexual orientation is still only rarely protected in hiring and firing practices. Most Republicans argue against it because it somehow interferes with the Free Market Magic. (Just ask them, but don't ask them how that works!)

Even the Human Rights Campaign--a powerful pro-gay rights, pro-same sex marriage group--likes Alito.

The only question is: Will the Republicans figure this out or are they too stupid to see that, yet again, Bush is giving their sacred moose the finger? And not the index or pinky...

(Not the ring finger, either.)

Merry Fitzmas!

2005-10-28T11:41:00.000-07:00

Fitzmas is here and Father Fitzgerald has brought gifts! "Scooter" indicted on obstruction of justice charges(!!) resigns and the WH has no comment.

I know a lot of people are kind of dissapointed--Fitzgerald seems to have gone trolling rather than casting the wide net a lot of people were hoping--and i think this is not as good as a solid case against the whole White House, but i think Fitzgerald has a game plan in mind. My theory is pretty complex, so forgive the simplifications for here.

Fitzgerald's stated purpose is to investigate the now-infamous leak.

However, his indictment was of "Scooter" Libby and not on a leak charge but rather obstruction of justice.

During his press conference he said two things: that a grand jury was secret, but an indictment was public (reading between the lines--if my Fitzgerald Decoder Ring is up to the task--it seems like this is an important part to him and part of the investigation into the leak) and that the investigation was almost, but not quite, complete.

He didn't, that i caught, mention Rove, Cheney, or even say Novak's name. That, i think, is pretty huge.

I think he's missing something--we have seen him tease us with this stuff for a while now (he kept putting off the indictments, i mean)--and this looks like another move in his overall investigation and not the end result.

I think the comparison between fishing with nets and fishing with poles is fairly accurate, but Libby is the bait and not (as it might at first appear) the catch.

(Edit)

George W. Bush almost certainly knows--or could easily find out--what's really going on here by putting pressure on his staff, but he isn't doing that. Whether he's incompetent (which is certainly what he will claim--and incompetence is an impression he has been careful to give) or criminal the fact that the White House is still acting as though it has nothing to do with this ("No comment", indeed!) is damning.

The executive summary:

Bad: Fitzgerald doesn't feel he has a solid case against those who perpetrated the leak, at least not strong enough to indict at this time. He might, later, but we'll see.

Good: Fitzgerald seems to have a plan for extracting that information. A high-up is being charged on very serious grounds which do not let the rest of the administration off, either. (Remember he didn't get charged for the leak--he's not ultimately responsible, it seems--but rather for lying about the leak.)

Firefox 1.5 beta 2 review (and existential ranting)

2005-10-10T02:37:00.000-07:00

Okay, i haven't been writing much here lately. Skip the next few paragraphs if you don't like existential rambling.

Yeah, whatever. I have school (18 credits? What was i thinking! Oh wait, i know: "I'll just drop one of these and then i'll be down to something more reasonable". Note to self: "effects on sanity" has not, typically, been a factor in my decision-making process...) and i've been sick and stuff.

Plus, really, the stuff i've been blogging about recently (politics, politics, and oh yeah: also more politics!) has been sort of burning me out. (See: outrage fatigue) and even though it looks like some of the punk-asses are going to get at least some jail time (even if it's Martha Stewart "It's like I'm back in college!"-style jail time--as opposed to "Meet Jake. He murdered five people with his penis; he weighs 350 pounds, a surprising amount of that is muscle, and he's your new cell-mate." jail time) it's still pretty shrug-your-shoulders unexciting. The House, Senate, and White House are all under separate, though thematically related, investigations for illegal wrong-doing. Each has the potential to end some sick bastard's carreer--possibly, though very very unlikely, someone's life in the last case; of course, the death penalty "is for little people" who are very much unlike the ones involved here.

It's all very nice, but what more can i say? Not much. Commenting on the mechanical procedures--although fascinating to me--has never really been my "thing" and there's not really anything else here to say. Republicans still suck, mmm'kay?

Onward:

Skip to here, yo!

Okay: so i downloaded Firefox 1.5 beta 2 about an hour or two ago. It's very nice. Except for one problem. One problem that has plagued Firefox since forever. Perhaps you can tell what it is:

What do you mean "That's the way it's supposed to look!"? It's missing something. Something vital. See if you can spot it in this "corrected" version i made:

See it? Firefox needs--and has needed, as i noted, since forever--the ability to add an action from that dialog. I don't care if the adding is a bit advanced. It's gotta be there.

One bug that has plagued Firefox--at least, for me--is that when you click the "Always perform this action" option on the save options dialog (which, as i understand it, should add an action to the dialog i'm complaining about) it doesn't always work right. That's actually the real problem, but lacking an "add action" button also breaks the interface's intuitiveness: you have to go find a file to download to add an action, but you have to open up the dialog to remove or change one; these are two sides of the same coin and really, IMO, should be findable in the same window at least somewhere inside the browser.

So it's broken. It can't be that hard to fix (both making sure that "always" means "always" and also keeping the interface congruent) but nobody has done it.

There's another problem, although i fear i'm getting into the Holy Wars with this one, in the new save/open file dialog. Or at least there is in Linux. Actually, the problem is the dialog. They switched it from the one i like (the old Firefox) to the one i absolutely abhor (the new Firefox). For comparison:

The good dialog...

The stupid dialog...

Of course, the real difference between the two--or rather, the part in the so-called "stupid dialog" that i really detest--can't be seen. And, i must add, other than this one fatal flaw i really do like the stupid one better. It's just that this one flaw is a dealbreaker.

In the good dialog box i can type in whatever i want to find and it'll try to find a file in the current directory that has a name fitting that. For someone like me (i have over 200 files in my "home" directory) that is vital. Without that i end up scrolling through absolutely tons of files. I know i could organize my stuff more strictly, but there's really no sensible hierarchy that sticks out and so they all sort of get thrown together. It works when i can search it quickly by filename--like i can in the good dialog box--but does not work so much when i have to scroll through a list and manually pick out the one i want.

In other words: it takes a long time to do something really simple. Even with reasonably-sized directories it still takes me a significant amount of time more to work with them when i can't type things.

Now, there's probably more to this than i realize (and i don't just mean the justification for switching) but--here's the real thing--i don't really care. You see: i like the first dialog because it's easy to do stuff. I dislike the second because it isn't. The advantages of the second aren't precisely apparent to me because i don't use programs that use that dialog.

Okay? Well, sometimes i do. But the vast majority of the programs i use have the sane dialog. The others are either used only occassionally or do not really need a save/open dialog that often. Seriously. If i see that dialog, or others like it (hello, Qt) it's a mark against the program. Firefox, however, i use a lot. A whole freakin' lot, in fact. So the prospect of having to scroll through all those files a lot is really, really unappealing.

"So fix your directories, already!"

Here's the problem: it is easier for me to scroll through the list than it is to keep the directories clean. So, although i complain, i scroll. But for lack of a very obvious option i scroll. I say to you: is that right?

Anyway, wrapping it up:

I like Firefox 1.5, barring a couple issues (the pretty serious save/open dialog change, and of course the still-non-existent "add action" option in the download action dialog primarily) and crashes you expect out of a beta (the "sanitize personal data" thing, while cool, segfaults Fireox for me) but i'm reluctant to give it a ringing endorsement as an upgrade right now. Sure, new XML stuff and some CSS3 support is nice. Important, even. But when we're getting something like that--which is, let's face it, pretty optional at this point--over seriously obvious stuff...

Oh yeah, and did i mention the new save dialog interferes with the "add action" issue even more?

Here's hoping for the final version!

Conservatives Believe, Liberals Think

2005-09-23T13:28:00.000-07:00

Now, i know what you're thinking.

"Oh look, yet another post that deals with the philosophical differences between the primary political and cultural groups in our society..."

Well... uh, you're right. It is. Sorry 'bout that.

I figured people could probably use one, though. Recently things have been going even worse than before in the US and, barring a handful of new under-currents, it looks like the Aristocrats, Theocrats, and Corporatists will be able to keep their crooked fingers around the world's collective throat for a bit longer.

God help us all.

So let's step back and look at some big-picture stuff again. How do Republicans and Democrats differ in mode of thought? This has been discussed a lot and, i think, most people come to the same (or similar) conclusion even if they have to wrap it up in Conservative-speak in order to make sure their side comes out on top. (Maybe they should just embrace the fact that they're reactionaries with zero problem solving skills? Well, they probably wouldn't be very popular then...)

So here's my hypothesis:

Liberals believe, generally, that method is important. Just like your college introduction to logic: if the premises are legitimate and the reasoning is legitimate then the conclusion must be accepted as legitimate to the same degree--whether that conclusion is desired or not. The important part is not what a person believes, but how that person came to that belief.

This is partly why, as Armando was desparing of in that link earlier, Liberals tend to be coming from lots of different directions at once. They all have at least somewhat legitimate reaosning and so the diversity of opinion is inevitable.

If i had to sum it up in a sentence: Liberals believe "You are how you think."

Conservatives, on the other hand, believe that it's what you think that's important. The method doesn't matter so much (and can be manipulated for the "right ends") as that you believe things that are "normal" and "right". If you don't think or act or live the approved manner you get tossed out of the club. (I was trying to stay as neutral as possible here, but it's really difficult. Onward...)

For Conservatives "You are what you think."

A Liberal believes in reason, the scientific method, and logic; tolerance is valuable because intolerance ends thought, debate is willingly entered by two parties in order to find the ideal resolution to problems or questions. Liberals believe in the future, therefore how we come to new belief (looking ahead) is important.

A Conservative believes in dogma, obedience, and conformity; tolerance is not particularly valuable and intolerance begins with disagreement (if someone disagrees on what to think there is no problem solving tool--"the other person is always wrong"), debate is one party trying to force another to accept the first party's "right belief". Conservatives believe in the past, therefore what we believe (specifically: that we follow others who have come before us) is important.

Liberals value external input because that input allows refinement of the thinking process.

Conservatives consider external input challenges to their belief system--as though the input was aimed at imposing someone else's "right belief" on the Conservatives in question.

I'm coming very close to "relativism vs. absolutism" or "utilitarianism vs. deontology" here--and to a certain extent that makes sense, but i feel that debate is separate but similar. In some ways i feel this is the over-arching meta-debate that shaped these philosophies, but that does not really make sense. On the other hand it certainly shapes how we, today, view those debates.

For a conservative, facts are things to be massaged or outright altered with the aim that they create "right belief" in others. A lie is as useful as the truth so long as the end result is "right".

For a liberal, facts are of the utmost importance--without correct premises (facts) no amount of reasoning will result in a reliably correct conclusion.

Conservatives see Liberals as enslaved by their own imagination--they do not view science or reason as being superior to anti-science or bigotry, but merely different. Some apparently are incapable of seeing distinctions between the two. Witness, for example, the very popular modern tendency to (when accused, quite reasonably, of racism or homophobia) fire back with "You Liberals are the real racists because you want to destroy the white race." Not in a "white supremecist" sort of way (not necessarily), but rather an inability to distinguish between the two positions and also the fact that the "correct belief" is quite different. All the science and reason and sociology in the world doesn't make a bit of difference because the end result is not the "correct" end result.

Liberals see Conservatives as living in fantasy-land, or in an immature and child-like state from which they never grew out of. The ultimate expression of the Liberal view, most likely, can be found in Suskind's reporting of the "reality-based community" remark:

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

Liberals tend to feel the above is a rather eggregious example of the "naked emperor" fallacy.

(It's my own name, as far as i'm aware, so don't feel bad if you haven't heard it before. It goes, although i'm thinking about writing more about it soon, briefly: just because something is internally consistent does not make it true. The "Invisible Pink Unicorn" fallacy is a sub-set of this and circular logic is related. It comes from the famous story in which an incredibly implausible, but internally consistent lie makes a whole nation feel very foolish indeed. The other thing i would note about this story that most people seem to overlook: everyone but one person was willing to believe, or pretend to believe which is practically identical in this case, something blatantly and obviously untrue.)

In any case, i believe i have at least outlined some of the differences i have been seeing more and more in US politics.

Bloody Ignorant Racists

2005-09-08T18:32:00.000-07:00

Yes, i mean you.

I would write a big long essay on precisely how stupid and wrong the author is but there's not really anything there for me to dissect. It's not that the author makes subtle logical errors, not that the author puts forth an argument that merits logical analysis, there's just nothing there to talk about. (Of course: with that in mind you know i'm going to ramble on for another fifteen paragraphs--but don't mistake that for the author saying something substantial, rather: the author has just accidentally exposed something i have been examining for a while and now i'm going to poke it for a bit.) The author just seems to believe that racism (and bigotry) is about being afraid of dark colors, or something. Wake up, pal: the majority of racism exists because a dominant group (a "tribe", if you really want) invents a new, essentially meaningless division in people and then kills (or whatevers) the "bad" ones. German Jews and German non-Jews were essentially indistinguishable (to the point where the Jews had to wear identification so they wouldn't be mistaken for the majority group) and the Hutus and Tutsis are (essentially) identical and the... well, i could go on forever. That the Serbs are different (genetically) is entirely irrelevant: racism was never about the actual genetics of the question (which was always a side-question, if related at all) and has always been about a dominant group ("tribe", if you desire) oppressing a minority group for the dominant group's gain. (Economic, social, political, geographical, or otherwise.)

The skin color argument (in the US) has always been a red herring; discrimination, bigotry, and racism against Africans and their descendents in the US has always been about "tribes". First it was the "Africans" who it was okay to enslave because they were different (and "their own people"--who were from a different "tribe", also--"sold them" to us). Then it was the "coloreds" who were "gentically inferior" (but--here's the important part--they actually never were and that line was only ever a post-hoc rationalization of pre-existing bigotry toward the "other tribe"). Now it's the "thugs and gangstas" who are "culturally inferior", but once again that's just an excuse to hate on people who the author (and the other Conservatrons) don't know.

And let's get serious here: that's really what this is about. It's a new resurgence in racism--back to the old pre-segregation roots--disguised as social commentary. Are gangs and kids with no parents (not necessarily, mind you, because the parents don't care but rather because single moms can't really take care of kids and hold down the 3 jobs required to "make it" under Republican government) problematic? Yes. But do not mistake that, as the author does, for entire groups of people. Do not take this or that example and use that as a stereotype for the entire group.

Contrary, and quite the opposite, to the author's claim: race has everything to do with it.

It's just not the kind of "race" the author wishes it were.

So the author continues talking about "tribes": specifically that "his" tribe, made up of all sorts of different people he points out, is "good" and "moral" and "just" and so on and that "those people" and their tribe are vicious and savage and evil and (most importantly) looters and thieves. He seems to be under the delusion that this backs up his assertions when it is the height of irony. His "tribe" is, presumably, wealthy or at least wealthy in comparison to the poor of New Orleans--i doubt, though certainly i do not know, the author has ever had to steal bread and water in order to live to see tomorrow but he certainly seems interested in throwing other people (people, i might add, who are under considerably worse circumstances than normal) in jail for doing just that. Maybe he wants thirty years on a chain gang, maybe only fifteen. He certainly seems to buy into the "neo-Javert" notion of law--a notion adopted more and more by Republicans (and even Democrats, much to my consternation) these days although that's a separate issue.

But the author clearly has stereotypes and uses them. He sees looters on TV and assumes everyone there is guilty, he hears of murder and rape in what could charitably be described as "Hell on earth" and assumes that this somehow speaks to some moral defect or personality trait shared by all those survivors but not by him or his friends. But of course he doesn't extend that stereotype to those around him (who it would otherwise fit) because he can see by opening his damn eyes that it's not accurate.

I suppose in this way we have made progress. As compared to, you know, 1800 or so. You see: he sees that those around him are much like he is--smart, well-meaning, hard-working, and imperfect but honest: much unlike he dreams those in Lake New Orleans to be. "So," he says, "It's not about race! It's about culture!"

This argument has been gaining steam, as i believe i have pointed out in the past, among Conservative circles looking to start the old "blame-the-[minority]" game up again now that the fire of the 1960s has more or less died down. "Personal responsibility" is another salvo in that same effort and is, in fact, related. (I would like, here, to take a detour to examine this but will resist the urge.) Of course, this argument (like the argument from genetics popular in the 20th century) is merely a justification for previously held beliefs.

What the author either ignores or does not realize is that there were both heroes and villains among the survivors in New Orleans. Some murdered, raped, and plundered--others organized, protected, and "looted" essentials for continued life. The stories about those "thugs with guns" the author frets about getting together and commandeering a bus to drive survivors out of New Orleans, or ones about breaking into WalMart to get precious water and food (sometimes with the outright support of the police, mind you) in order to save lives. While--simultaneously--those whom the author would, i suspect, place in "his tribe" who were supposed to be in charge of helping people sat on their thumbs and held repeated press conferences about how "America is just about to turn the corner with disaster relief!" while doing nothing of substance.

The author, in fact, flatly assumes "his tribe" would behave in a superior fashion but provides no arguments or evidence to support this; and no, anecdotes are not evidence. Do you think--even for a minute--that if you stuck 10,000 comparatively wealthy, white men with sticks up their butts (a'la our author) into a single building and then ran it over with a hurricane things wouldn't degenerate pretty damn quick? Well, it's a hypothetical: but if i were the betting type i know where my money would go.

Others--presumably more "his tribe" than the "New Orleans poor fucker" tribe--didn't really respond with peace, kindness, and loving understanding themselves; instead blocking refugees from the convention center (who, remember, were getting absolutely nothing from anyone until late in the week) from crossing a perfectly dry bridge into the nearby Gretna by police, at gunpoint. These police, the accounts go, did not want "that kind of person" in their city. "That kind of person" being a lawless, looting refugee. They apply the same type of stereotypes the author does and, as a result, people die.

So who has the high ground now?

The author then goes on into an incoherent discussion of "pink" vs. "grey" personalities, taking a brief stop at the end to worship the altar of machismo and full-auto guns and a trip into slamming Hollywood (the idle-middle-class bourgeois to the Republican's Party's would-be aristocrats) with a bizarre fixation on how they're "not as good as" his tribe. (To which i say: the author wasn't down there in New Orleans--with or without a camera crew--so who is he kidding?) The author, in fact, asserts there's some sort of inherent moral good in carrying around guns with the intent of protecting people. Bullshit. This is just the "freedom emanates from the barrel of a gun" argument all over again. "Freedom" does not emanate from the point of a gun, but rather: red-hot death "emanates" from the point of a gun. Did the national guard troops go down to New Orleans to shoot people "looting" life-giving water? Doubtful, but that ended up happening. Did they go down with the intent of censoring the press? No, but that is what happened. Did they go down there expecting to be reprimanded if they actually did the humane thing and rescue people? No, but i know of at least one case of that happening.

Simply put: the soldiers and police are no more and no less inherently moral than the survivors--though they are more "white"--and it's silly to treat them that way. Much like on the side of the survivors: the police and troops had both heroes and villains among them, but nothing about sticking an assault rifle in either of their hands made either group automatically moral or culturally superior or immoral or culturally inferior. Of course, if we want to talk about violence and a culture of brutality: there are currently (or so the nice man on The Daily Show said earlier tonight) more guns in New Orleans than there are in any geographically similar area on the planet. And, in case it isn't obvious, the survivors don't have most of them.

The author, furthermore, assaults "racial politics"--although this remains undefined, much like everything else, i can guess where he's going: if i say "80% of the survivors of New Orleans are black and this did not happen by accident" that's probably "racial politics". Now, the author suggests he's interested in shooting people who engage in this sort of "politics" (and then regretting it) so i am forced to wonder: does he really think the gross disparities between black and white skinned people in New Orleans occurred merely by chance? That, somehow, the law of averages took a fucking hike and black people got bizarrely unlucky? Does he purport (and i know he does, but bear with me) that it is the "culture"--the same culture which he belittles without knowing anything about, or at the least, not providing any argument about--that hurts them? In other words, is he saying the only reasonable explanation for this disparity between black and white skinned people in New Orleans is that black people don't follow the rules for "his tribe" and that if you disagree with him: he'll shoot you dead? And does he expect us to believe, based on this reasoning, that bigotry or prejudice played no role in the plight of the Hurricane Katrina survivors?

Do i look like i was born yesterday?

The author then goes into a long, drawn-out repetition of the old "HATEFUL, MURDEROUS ASSHOLES WITH GUNS KILL FOR YOUR FREEDOM" meme. At this point even i am having trouble seeing the relevance to the original part--and specifically, that original part is the part i am interested in. As though it's us--the "Democrats", or "sheep" as the label gets applied--who want to hide away from anything related to violence and it's "Republicans" (or "sheep dogs") who bravely confront it and make the world safe...

...Huh? In what universe? In the one i live in the Republicans, not the Democrats, are the ones who want to know as little as possible about what's actually going on--a phenomenon the author of this post engages in even while he claims the opposite--and the Democrats (more often, at least--it would be nice if the Democrats grew a spine, but if we're working with the metaphor as presented the Democrats are a toothless old sheep dog ready for retirement, the Republicans are the wolves, and everyone else is lunch) who are demanding things come out into the open.

Just take a look at the difference between investigative methods recently proposed by the two parties: The Republicans want (and get) a closed-door non-investigation controlled by Republicans and used to enhance the political power of their leader. The Democrats want a real investigation (when it's not them who totally fucked everything up it's much easier to ask for heads to roll, but again: do not mistake this for cowardice or hypocrisy) to ensure the problems are addressed.

Which one of the two is working to fix the problems that have revealed themselves recently--The ones so coolly dismissed by the author?

I'm going to quote this next part because it's really quite bizarre:

And in Louisiana last week the governor cried and the mayor blamed everyone but himself, and half the country bought every single stinking Pink lie about global warming and missing National Guard units and blamed the sheepdogs while the wolves raped and pillaged and looted everything in sight.

So--let me see if i get this straight--the one explicitly and officially in charge of protecting the American People in time of national disaster totally abdicates his duty (i don't care who or what group of people had that responsibility: they work for Bush or are Bush himself and abdicate they did) and the author purports that quite the opposite happened? That their failure was actually not their failure and that this proves they are somehow guardians of the people?

I'm starting to see why this "pink"/"grey" distinction is so incomprehensible: it has to twist impossibly in order to fit the results desired. But it doesn't--and can't, the speed limit (as noted) is still 186,000 miles per seocnd.

And now i'm being told that, as our ice caps and glaciers melt more (a process that has been underway for some time now and is evinced by photographic evidence so clear even someone so muddled as our author could not deny it) and subsequently raise sea level which sinks more cities below sea level we're not going to see a repeat of the New Orleans flood? Because "global warming" is a lie?

And this is the same person who regards tears for the dead as deriliction of duty.

I'm starting to see why Bush's zombified approach to disasters plays well for these people.

Well, here’s the news flash: Nagin isn’t incompetent because he’s black. He’s incompetent because he’s incompetent. Condoleeza Rice is black. [...] Rice and Powell are two of the most competent people on the planet.

Well this is sure funny.

It seems Nagin isn't incompetent because he's black--he's incompetent because he's a Democrat. I don't know, maybe that's not a fair assessment of the author's views. But the author neglects to enlighten us as to what precisely was wrong with Nagin's performance.

In contrast: let me explain why Condoleeza Rice does not deserve to be described as anything nearing "competent": while people were drowning (i'm sure the author has heard this line before) she was shopping for shoes and watching Monty Python plays. Now, i can hear the whining already ("Oh NO! She didn't have any responsibilities in the disaster at all and you're an evil liar for even considering!") but as foreign governments begin offerring aid--some of it quite substantial, including an entire communications network to replace the fallen one in New Orleans offerred by the Canadians--Rice, Secretary of State, was not only not on the job but decidedly elsewhere. Nagin, meanwhile, not only didn't go on vacation while his city drowned but he was actually out there trying to make things better. Not very effectively, but he was at least doing his job.

In short (Hah! I kid!): the author is a racist fuck. The author likes killing people and doesn't care about responsibility for his tribe--only for those others whose tribes are far away. He feels this way because feeling otherwise (in other words: that his position in life is not a result of his "hard work" and "personal responsibility" but rather a gigantic global lottery in which he hit the jackpot and billions of others lost) is unbearable. He wants to believe that the people who make his life of comfort possible are inherently good people and on the side of justice (against those who would prey on the weak) and that they are infailable. He, apparently, does not want to discuss situations in which the "grey sheepdogs" guarding the "pink sheep" go rabid or fail to protect their charges from the "wolves". He wants to believe all that is needed is unquestioning loyalty to the powerful and willingness to kill, kill, kill--that if that's how things are run then everything will always be fine. He can't handle complexity bceause complexity introduces doubt and failability and those are poison to his absolutist/safety-at-all-costs view of the world. He wants badly to be a "sheep dog"--something he appears to admire--but cannot tolerate that the job is more complex than marching around with assault rifles and therefore can do little but sit on the sidelines and cheer... and pretend he's "part of the team" whenever possible.

When his "tribe", when his "sheepdogs" fail spectacularly and let the wolves have tasty mutton dinners he refuses to entertain the notion that they were at fault--that they abandoned their duty to the "pink sheep" they are responsible for protecting--and instead blames others who he derides as too "pink" to get the job done. Because he, himself, is too "pink" to deal honestly with the truth of the matter.

What i'm getting at is that i have met his enemy and it is him. He is the "pink sheep" who lives in denial while others go around making the world livable for him. But it's not just enough for him to be his own enemy: he's going to make sure the rest of us suffer, too.

See, i can even refute his assertions using his own system. But i categorically reject his systems and methods of thought as they are inadequate to describe the fullness of the situation we are facing today.

If he wants to look at what Al Gore would do, as opposed to George Bush, let's look at what Al Gore is doing. To wit: Al Gore has a private plane which he is flying in and out of New Orleans, in direct contravention of the orders of the most powerful military on the face of the planet, and rescuing the survivors of Katrina personally. George Bush is hiding from the big, mean reality and trying to figure out who he can get away with blaming for this whole disaster.

I'll leave the rest of the exercise up to my readers.

(Edit: So i'm reading DailyKos today and come upon a story that made me think of this post: specifically the line contained within the story:

Something bad is going to happen, and there's nothing you can do to stop it.

This is a sort of "grey" thinking that the author has categorically ascribed to Republicans and explicitly asserted the Democrats were constitutionally incapable of entertaining. As he puts it:

The Pink Tribe motto, in fact, is the ultimate Zen Koan, the sound of one hand clapping: EVERYBODY IS SPECIAL

[...]

The Grey Tribe motto is, near as I can tell, THINGS BREAK SOMETIMES AND PLEASE DON’T LET IT BE MY BRIDGE.

Incidentally: he's wrong about the Zen Koan part. "Special" does not necessitate statistical superiority, although he seems to believe otherwise.)

Bloody Knuckle Nation

2005-08-04T21:52:00.000-07:00

So Bush admitted his strategery with respect to "terror" (that is: a "global war on terror") is a failure and that my position, and the Liberal and French and Democratic and so on position, was really the right way to go all along.

Then some terrorist guy releases a video where he says "Hah! You'll have to leave Iraq EVENTUALLY! And when you do? It's ours, motherfucker!" Not in those words, mind you, but something to that effect. Now Bush is back to saying we're at war and of course it's a war and war war war is the only way.

This flip-flop might seem confusing--"Just when the administration was starting to show signs of mental activity he freaks out?"--but let me give an analogy...

Back when i was in high school (a time growing frigteningly farther and farther away...) some of the people with "tough guy" personas would play a game they called "bloody knuckles". This game, for those who have never attended high school/who attended high school in regions where it was not popular, essentially involved a contest of wills where knuckles were struck repeatedly until one of the contestents surrendered. And yes, there was blood involved at times. That was really all there was too it: "I'm a tough guy and I'm tougher than any of you! If you think otherwise I'll make you cry like a little pussy!"

Now, in and of itself that's a fairly benign (though painful and kind of silly) ritual to prove your will. Lots of different cultures (even ones as desolate as high schools) have rituals about proving you can tolerate pain or whatnot. Heck, there's also this thing called "giving birth" that--although i don't know first-hand--i'm told hurts like nothing else.

But when it's a nation playing the game gets sick.

When Bush says "bring 'em on" on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier, when Bush shrugs his shoulders as terrorists and rebels swipe a couple hundred tons of high explosives out from under his nose and use them (presumably) to blow up American troops, when Bush gives political opponents or just random people the finger in what is supposed to be a casual manner but comes off as "endlessly rehearsed", when Bush asserts that--when highly trained terrorists and rebels start a civil war in Iraq--he meant to do that and it was his plan all along (the morally bankrupt "flypaper theory") he's saying "Look at me! I'm a tough guy! I can watch my troops die and not even flinch! I don't even give a shit!"

And his supporters say "Look what a tough guy he is! He won't give them an inch even though his knuckles are bleeding!"

But the reason he doesn't give a shit is because it isn't his knuckles that are bleeding.

He holds up other people's knuckles to get struck while he struts and smirks and sneers (and flips the bird) and people cheer. But when it's their turn to fill in for him they'll have a whole new perspective.

This is also where the right-wingers' dismissal of the Rove issue comes from: "Look at the President! He's such a badass he doesn't even FLINCH even though his knuckles are bleeding from Iraq! You think he'd be afraid to fire some stupid consultant? Hah! He'd have him executed and pull the trigger himself if any of it were true! But he doesn't give a shit about that and he doesn't give a shit you pussy dummycrats are crying about it either!"

Of course, when it was his turn to get bloody for the country--and for the people in power, just others now are getting bloody for him--he ran and hid in a place where nobody was liable to hit me and said "Hah! Just one of you try to do it! I'm ready for you motherfuckers--if you dare!" (No accent because, at this point, he had not yet adopted it!)

He's got nothing except power. No guts, no courage, nothing. He's a spineless, pampered aristocrat in the old style. He talks big but--like the much-vaunted Samurai of Japan, who were cut down by a bunch of well-trained peasants with sticks--he doesn't have any idea what the reality of the situation is. I think i say that--that Bush literally lives in a haze where nothing is real and there are no consequences--quite seriously, too. He's still playing bloody knuckles--this time with a toothless, rotting tyrant and ruthless terrorists on the other side--but when he shrugs as the bodies fall it's not because he's Just That Hardcore; rather: because he doesn't feel a thing.

Hannity, Hannity, Hannity...

2005-07-02T01:52:00.000-07:00

RANGEL: He already intended to knock off Saddam Hussein before 9/11, all of the people that worked in the cabinet….

HANNITY: Is that what you believe? Wait do you believe that?

RANGEL: Do you know about the Project Of A New American Century?

HANNITY: Do you believe that?

RANGEL: There’s no question.

HANNITY: Wow….wow….wow. That’s a conspiracy theory.

HANNITY: Hey Congressman Rangel, we’d like to thank you for the conspiracy theory portion of the show.

RANGEL: Conspiracy is what you said, I’m saying the president wanted to knock off Saddam Hussein before 9/11.

HANNITY: Alright we appreciate it, next time we’ll get some evidence.

No matter how hard you try... well, you're just not Bill "Oh Really".

(Taken from here)

Bush v. Bush

2005-06-30T14:12:00.000-07:00

"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." -- Governor George W. Bush

Yes, Gov. Bush. "It is important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is" indeed.

More here.

Conservatism, Wars of Aggression, and Economics

2005-06-21T07:22:00.000-07:00

Before [1990], "race-baiting" referred to racists. Afterward, it referred [...] to people who oppose racism.

I'm not going to comment much, here. You can find the full paper on the UCLA's website.

I did not believe, only a little while ago, in the assumptions made here. Certainly i understood the similarities between the Conservative movement, but i did not understand the direct heritage it had in aristocracy. Lately, however, i have been paying more attention--now the "Aristocrats" makes up one of the three pillars (alongside "theocrats" and "corporatists") in my Republican Party analysis--and have come to change my mind.

Let me give you a real-world example to illustrate the article's accuracy.

Aristocracy thrives on deference, but direct deference to a person is seen as vile--at least by some--and people balk at that sort of setup. So instead, taking Walmart as an example, we now have deference to institutions and corporations. This deference to Walmart as a corporation, especially by its employees, manifests in one of the many rules about behavior: when travelling on the company dollar all employees are to travel coach, stay in the cheapest motel rooms possible, and if more than one employee is travelling at a time to stay in the same room. The stated reason is to save money--and this is, indeed, what the practice accomplishes. In a show of "good faith", though, even the executives follow this practice. The implication being that the deference is to the corporation--putting the good of the corporation above your own--and not to some group of aristocrats.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

In order to understand why you must consider where the money goes. The benefits of this practice are savings and those savings go somewhere--but where? Not, certainly, to the Walmart employees. Not, contrary to what a person might guess, to the customer. They go to the same place all savings in an entrenched corporatist/aristocratic organization go: to the organization itself and to those who control the organization. Those who control the organization, not coincidentally i assure you, are also often those who own the organization. Those same executives who submit to the same cheap travel accomodations are not submitting to the same effects--in fact, they get it better despite what you might intuitively believe (that being that they have it worse because they give up more). They get their slice of the savings--and at the least, they get their slice first and before the employees at-large--and even their own cheap accomodations turns into cash for them. However, the employees gain nothing directly from this bargain. So even though it might appear as though the situation is a case of collective sacrifice for the good of the whole the situation actually is a collective sacrifice for the good of the top few percent--the aristocrats.

In fact, even if this situation did not exist to enrich the already fabulously wealthy it would still not be a situation of collective sacrifice for the good of the whole. Collective sacrifice for the good of the whole would look more like employees getting the money saved back in their paychecks. Even at best this is collective sacrifice for the good of the corporation--not inherently problematic, but certainly not very good for the employees.

For those who don't know, the Washington Post wrote in respones to the Downing Street Minutes that they were not news because everyone already knew everything they contained--importantly, though the WP carefully avoided mention, the DSM proving that Bush had decided to go to war prior to figuring out a reason and also that he in fact began that war prior to recieving congressional authorization. This is bullshit. First of all, this is proof--positive evidence and not mere speculation. Secondly it is certainly not something "everyone" new, and certainly not something the news was reporting on. Thirdly, i think perhaps the largest shocker of all: it implies the Washington Post knew the war was a fraud from the very start and probably before but pretended it was legitimate. That, if true, would be treason so far as i'm concerned. In the real definition of the word.

Finally: i'm going to tackle an issue of economics.

Recently i've heard a lot of talk from the usual suspects--those same aristocrats mentioned above, in fact--about how we must all sacrifice for the good of the corporation for if we don't we will be incapable of competing on the global stage. Specifically, and this should not surprise you, they are saying wages are too high and that minimum wage hurts companies' (especially the much-praised but more or less ignored "small business") ability to compete with companies that get their labor from India or China or various other places.

It should not be a surprise that i think this is bullshit.

Let me start out my exlanation with a truism: America cannot compete with India or China strictly in terms of wages without sacrificing a great deal of its prosperity.

Oh sure, the elites--the corporatists and the aristocrats and probably the theocrats also--will do fine as they always do. Better than ever, i'm sure, as debt-slavery (born into life with the debt of your parents, never work it off, pass it on to your children) would be a great boon to them. But the sort of prosperity people associate with America? Gone. No science, no technology, no infrastructure. Nothing. America would look, in a generation or two, like China.

China has a comparative advantage in terms of strict dollars-per-hour cost of their labor. If we try to compete with them we will literally be giving up every advantage we have in order that we could be still-not-really competetive with them in terms of strict dollar-per-hour cost of labor.

In other words, we're trying to make our weakness equal their strength. In terms of strategy: the absolute worst thing we could do.

In fact: i believe the corporate "rush to the bottom" on wages has only hurt--and in no way helped--the corporations. Of course, it has enriched the aristocrats and corporatists and that was the real goal all along.

So how, precisely, does America stay on top? I don't actually know.

Yeah, it's a tricky problem and i don't have a clear solution. Some people have suggested technology is the key--but technology is, i think, precisely the opposite of the key. Technology as a comparative advantage against China, for instance, would be very short-lived due to the low cost-of-reproduction of the post-industrial technology level. And it's only going to get worse for us. Eventually, if we try to play up technology, we would end up only one step ahead of China--at best--while they wait for us to take a step and then copy it. Even if those were big steps (such as the ones taken over the last hundred years or so) that will only make a certain amount of difference. China, and the rest of the world, could easily replicate them since we would no longer have our infrastructure advantage. That's not to say i think technology is useless--we're talking about improving the quality of life, in theory, worldwide and vastly so. But it is not the key to continued economic dominance of the United States.

I think science and information (not domination of information through copyright or suchlike but rather creation of information) are the best hopes, but that might be my personal bias.

On a smaller scale, let's take a look at Tim Pawlenty's Minnesota. Tim Pawlenty inherited a wealthy state that, according to the Accepted Republican Narrative, should have been a run-down Communist-Lite mish-mash of unemployed people standing in line for food stamps and business fleeing elsewhere. Of course, instead he got a wealthy state--one of the wealthiest in the nation per-capita--with a moderately successful welfare system and a vast array of powerful public services. The thriving--re-invigorated, even--economy was just the cherry on top of the smashing of the conventional wisdom.

But Pawlenty was going to change all that. He made a "no new taxes" pledge (he's one of the GNC--Grover Norquist's Chosen) and, by God, he was going to keep it even if it meant destroying Minnesota. In the interest of gaining "competetive advantage" with respect to taxes (Minnesota does have high taxes and this certainly does discourage at least some business) he slashed taxes and turned a record-level budget surplus into a record-level budget deficit. His regressive "fee" scam (he had to do something to save Minnesota from fiscal insolvency so he raised all "fees" and introduced new ones--this turned out to be essentially a tax on being poor) has only exacerbated the problem by hurting the lower and middle class. The "fees" reduce the ability of the poor to gain assistance, which reduces their ability to pay the fees, which turns into a damned death-spiral that sends Minnesota further into budget-deficit Hell.

But despite all that, the businesses that were staying away from Minnesota because of taxes still stayed away (at least, in terms of any meaningful scale) because Minnesota still was not competetive with well over half the nation strictly in terms of taxes. And it never will be unless it first gives up its great advantages.

To be a Conservative, you must believe...

2005-06-20T16:53:00.000-07:00

So i saw this while reading that paragon of heterosexuality, Jesus's General, and wondered what would happen if you inverted it. Curiously enough, i think it's more accurate that way. I swapped out some euphemisms for others, too, to counteract propaganda-by-word-choice. With a little of my own, perhaps, but can you blame me? Onwards!

That the AIDS virus is spread by a lack of morality--as long as you are "moral" you are safe.

That trial lawyers are all pond scum but doctors are underpaid.

That global temperatures are affected more by cyclical changes in the earth's climate and the brilliance of the sun than the documented effects of yuppies driving SUVs (among other things).

That guns in the hands of the law abiding Americans are more of a threat
than nuclear weapons in the hands of the Red Chinese.

This one doesn't work. Primarily because of non-binary cognitive dissonance and the fact that the Republicans more or less support nuclear China. Shrug.

That corporatism creates prosperity and democracy creates oppression.

That it doesn't matter who you step on as long as you "achieve".

That federal funding is useless.

That the ACLU is bad because it stands up for certain parts of the Constitution, but that the NRA is good because it stands up for certain parts of the Constitution.
(As an aside: i would harsh on the NRA less if they would at least care about an entire amendment rather than the half of the one they like...)

That taxes are too high. Period.

That there is no problem with children praying in school. Period.

That there is no such thing as systematic discrimination. Period.
(Except, of course, when it comes to discriminating against white people.)

That consistent, planetary change in weather patterns is everything other than proof of global warming.
("Ice caps and glaciers melting for the first time in millenia? Must be the sun!")

That national wealth is determined by what we consume, not by what we
produce.

This one, again, seems to be a Republican position that got in there by mistake. See: Pres. Bush's "Everything is okay! Make sure you keep consuming like rabid dogs!" speech after 9/11.

That the only wars in which America should become involved, are those in
which our national security is not at risk.

I'd say this is another Republican position, but it should go even farther: "That you've never met a war you didn't like". At least, that's true as long as they don't have to do the fighting, as per the link above.

That lying to the nation in order to lead it into war is less of an issue about a blowjob. That a concerted, decades-long effort to destroy a politician and his family is okay--as long as it's a Democrat.

That we can have a strong military while the people who shout the loudest in favor of going to war are the least willing to enlist.

That the way to improve public schools is to take all their money away and give it to private, Christian schools.

That a woman cannot choose whether to have a child or not. Period. And if she does? Don't expect any help from the state in the way of public resources.

That care for the environment is only legitimate when the person doing the caring meets the Republican Moral Standards (that is: white, lives in a red state, and engages in Traditional Manly Activities like hunting and fishing.) Ad Hominem attacks only matter if you're a Democrat.

That you have money to spend and if you don't it's your own fault.

That Hillary Clinton is evil. Period.

That being a movie star means your views on politics are illegitimate. Unless your views align with the Republican party, of course.

That the people who bombed the Oklahoma city building don't matter. Neither do the people who destroyed the WTC. The real threat was a toothless old tyrant who posed no direct threat (unlike Bin Laden and friends) to the United States.

That directly targetting children with highly addictive and deadly products is equivalent to showing a nipple on TeeVee.

That crime can be stopped by throwing people in jail after-the-fact.
(Okay, not really a direct inversion... sue me...)

That the only reason fascism and Stalinism hasn't worked anywhere it has been tried is because people were using the wrong definition of "worked".
(Commentary on the original: huh? Do these people live on Planet Earth?)

That because people are not perfect (or not willing to pretend they are) they shouldn't even bother trying.

That gender roles are the absolute, inviolable Will of God but that everyone is naturally bisexual and they must choose to be heterosexual--or else!

(Alternatively: That heterosexuality is the absolute, inviolable Will of God except for people who choose to be otherwise.)

That life is sacred if and only if it lives within a woman.

That Strom Thurmond, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Pat Buchanan, and Rev. Dobson are the paragons of American Virtue.

That the First Amendment is an Evil Liberal Myth and that all the founders were Christian and wanted Christianity (your particular brand, specifically) as the officially entrenched religion of America. That people ought not have right to speech or assembly if they are unpopular or considered "bad". Only Republican opinions on popularity or goodness should be counted.

Fear on the Eve of Victory...

2005-06-17T00:00:00.000-07:00

I haven't been posting for a while, i guess, but stuff is just going too fast for me to really keep up on. I have about two hundred links sitting in my "current links" folder and some of them go quite a ways back. I'm not really sure why i haven't posted much lately, don't think it has to do with the title--but then again, maybe it does. I've also been meaning to write on "how the Democrats can win the same sex marriage debate", but that also hasn't been happening. I'd better hurry up, too! I don't want 2006 to pass me by.

But without further ado...

Fear on the Eve of Victory

Kind of a strange phrase, perhaps. But, i think, appropriate. The "eve of victory" refers to the coming backlash against the Bush Administration and the Republicans--especially those of the "neo" or "movement" variety. It might be curious to consider this the "eve of victory", but consider it hope on my part. I'm gazing into my crystal ball tonight.

The fear might also seem unusual if we first assume victory is at hand, but i fear that victory will not be a victory for us--those who have stood for the truth of the Bush Administration and especially the war in Iraq from long before it was popular, those who have agitated for change and improvement. Those who might drive Bush out of office with the bludgeon of truth and justice might find themselves on the end of the sword of retribution, the pitchfork of mob justice, and the torch that burns effigies if not actual people. I am talking, of course, about a repeat of the villification of the anti-war crowd of Vietnam. I am talking about another round of "Swift Boat Veterans for Recovered Memory Therapy" who are angry the US lost the war and, instead of blaming those with whom the blame lies, they blame people they disagree with who dared ot speak the truth when it was unpopular and who dared to open the eyes of others to the truth.

I fear, my readers, for the day when the proverbial party (possibly the literal Party of the Republican Party) is over and the Republican machine looks at itself in the mirror--if ever so briefly--and suddenly has an overwhelming need to find a scapegoat. I am neither the only nor the first person to think this. They (and by "they" i mean "failed fascists, stalinists, corporatists, theocrats, war-mongerers, and would-be aristocrats") have blamed their own failures on those who have pointed out their failings before and will do it again--in fact, all of history is chock full of this... no time, save the relatively recent last few hundred years, has ever been even remotely free of it. If US history, especially Vietnam War-era history, is any lesson they can easily succeed at it.

They believe those who stand for freedom instead stand against them personally. They believe those who stand for justice instead stand against them. They believe those who stand for America instead stand against them. And they are willing to spend millions--if not billions--of dollars convincing everyone else the same thing. They have succeeeded before and they can succeed now, even despite the gravity of their crimes. Never before have they been so close to the total power they crave, never have they been so intoxicated and addicted to it, and never have they been willing to stoop so low to maintain it. The question is not "will they seek retribution when they lose it?" but rather "how far will they go?"

I was worried the post-2004 election triumphalism would dissolve into riots in the street or violence against the "unbelievers"--those few who stood out against the tide of Bush in their own communities--and was relieved that did not come to pass. But we are, again, facing that prospect and a thousand times more serious. We are not just talking about impeaching a President: we are talking about shatterring the twisted-mirror world view of millions and they will not thank us for it. But it must be done if the Union is to remain the land of the Free.

Suppose...

2005-06-02T00:26:00.000-07:00

Suppose you went to an ATM machine to do some cash transfers.

Suppose the machine, instead of confirming, merely printed a cryptic message: "Are we having fun yet?"

Suppose the machine then refused to print you a reciept.

Suppose you then called your bank and they said that was just normal bugs in the machine and there was nothing they could do about it, no way to check to see if anything went wrong, and no reason to worry. Suppose they refused to even check up on it.

Suppose that, instead of an ATM machine and cash transfer, we're talking a Presidential Election.

Why do people seem to think that situation is unacceptable up until the last line and fine after that?

Texas GOP Platform pt. 2

2005-05-15T20:31:00.000-07:00

Second part of who knows how many is now up! Get it here. Included in the update is the whole "Limiting the Expanse of Government Power" section.

Texas GOP 2004 Party Platform Analysis

2005-05-14T15:58:00.000-07:00

I was browsing through DKos recently and caught the new (2004-new, anyway) Texas GOP Party Platform.

They have focus-grouped some things into euphemisms, but the new one has all the same craziness as the old one--and new stuff added on!

I was then inspired to write some analysis of it for your enjoyment. Enjoy! I'll be updating on here as i update on that page. Here's a taste:

Welcome! In this document i will attempt to examine the Texas Republican Party's 2004 Party Platform. Since the document is about 28 pages of rambling with a bunch of bland platitudes mixed in with some utter madness it'll take me a while to get through the whole thing, but i intend to do just that. New sections will be updated as i examine them myself. I have a handful of goals with this and let me go over a couple of them:
I want to unravel the code-words to explain how when they say "pro-family" they mean anti-gay, just as one example.
I want to examine what the Republican party really wants
I want to examine how and why what they want is often not reflected in reality at all--ie, how they seem to believe tax cuts reduce the size of government when in fact tax cuts do quite the oposite.
For those who pay attention, the Texas GOP platform usually contains a wealth of interesting information--the sort of information that we, as a nation, ought to be aware of and probably also debating. I, it should either be obvious or become obvious soon, hold the view that a great deal of this stuff ought to also be rebuked and treated carefully. However: very few people, outside of certain political circles, even consider this stuff. The once-important party platform has been essentially reduced to a stage to throw meat to the extreme elements within the party. Furthermore, it can be elightening to an outsider to read since they seem to be counting on the relaive unimportance of such platforms and so they speak fairly freely.

Okay, moment's over!

2005-05-06T13:42:00.000-07:00

Yesterday i held my comments out of respect for the moment. Not today:

US plans to build gas(?) chamber in Camp Delta.

Inevitable parallels to Nazi Germany, as hinted at yesterday, can be drawn here: _______________

Yom Hashoah*

2005-05-05T23:27:00.000-07:00

Yom Hashoah is the day on which we remember the holocaust.

I will refrain from political commentary, even though i think it is appropriate. Today is not about commentary.

Never Forget

(Be careful with that link, it includes photographs taken of concentration camps.)

(*: Actually that was yesterday, i'm lazy and only getting around to it now. Sorry.)

Beg-A-Thon

2005-05-01T18:30:00.000-07:00

One of the people who has been important in pushing for voting reform needs surgery.

Because of his work in the voting area he currently lacks health insurance and therefore is not able to afford the surgery on his own.

So with that in mind, your donations can help a man who has worked to fix our electoral system get treated for cancer.

Words of Wisdom

2005-04-29T00:05:00.000-07:00

I am never forget the day I first meet the great Lobachevsky.
In one word he told me secret of success in mathematics:
Plagiarize!

Plagiarize,
Let no one else's work evade your eyes,
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes,
So don't shade your eyes,
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize --

Only be sure always to call it please "research".

--Tom Lehrer

Two Posts To Underline

2005-04-22T00:31:00.000-07:00

I've been a bit active on dailykos recently and i made a pair of posts that probably deserve to be separate entries on their own. First, from a thread on how the so-called "Ownership Society" plan intersects (or doesn't) with the Religious Right: i suggest both the Capitalists (though in retrospect i think "Corporatist" is a better word) and the Religious extremists think they other side is stupid and in their control. Below is a copy of that post:

The Religious Right thinks the Capitalists (I'm using "Big-C Capitalists" to differentiate them from the more generic variety as their philosophy, rather than economy, is "capitalism") will compliantly accept Biblical Law provided they can continue making a profit. They think they are in charge and the Capitalists are tolerated because they are percieved as subservient. In other words, they think they are the pillar of absolute strength and law and the Capitalists are merely allying with them--to be tossed aside or punished at the whims of the Religious Right.

The Capitalists think the Religious Right "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." As far as my personal assessment i think the Capitalists are right. But then again, the Nazis (they were 1930 Germany's equivalent to 2005 USA's Religious Right) took power under just those circumstances.

But really: the Religious Right is content to vote for Republicans while getting little to nothing in return. Anti-gay laws that hurt straight people more than gay people (relative to their situations prior to such laws, that is) are considered excellent policy by the same people such laws hurt. The Religious Right calls for anti-abortion bills and gets them--except they get anti-abortion bills that are full of holes and get promptly ruled unconstitutional due to legislative laziness. The Religious Right gets Terri Schiavo--which actually might destroy them (if we're lucky), which they had zero chance of "winning", and which they really had to sacrifice a number of their other beliefs for.

But that, perhaps, misses the point. The Religious Right cares very little for the effects of the anti-gay laws on gay people or straight people one way or another. They don't really care about stopping abortions, teenage pregnancy, or the spread of STDs--if they did they'd sure as hell throw their old "solutions". They care about being validated. Much like needy children who demand a series of increasingly improbable gifts from parents and others, throws fits if they don't get one, and are only sated as long as the warm, fuzzy, and hollow warmth of immediate satisfaction lasts. Except unlike children and parents: they are needed--or their votes and money is needed, at least--by those who would grant them their meaningless gifts.

What the Capitalists want and what the Religious Right wants are two different things. Certainly the Religious Right will either get booted (their growing demands eventually become too crazy for the people who will use them) or they will take over and it's down the rabbit hole of Theocracy we go. The Capitalists, on the other hand, don't play games with what they want--they come right out and say it. They don't want the government to let them dump mercury into rivers and lakes because that lets them make money easily.

Now that i've outlined that i'm going to go back on my earlier statement: the Religious Right does actually want something. They demand validation and if that validation ever stopped they would abandon the Republicans just as quickly as the Capitalists would if the money stopped. That's why i often say the Republican Party won't ever pass any serious anti-abortion policy (either in the "reducing abortions" or "illegalizing abortion" sense) as they have trained the Religious Right to gain the validation they are so addicted to from opposing legalized abortion on grounds of religion. It isn't, as many wrongly assume, that their religion cannot tolerate new ideas (after all: most Christians today think of Christianity as the force that ended racial segregation and not as the justification for the same segregation) but rather that this particular function of religion gives them validation.

I think that, somewhere deep down inside, most of them realize this. They know that they are being used and that they are addicted to the particular flavor of crack the Republican Party deals and that the positions they hold are truly abominable--but it is precisely that inner knowledge that allows them to gain feelings of validation when those positions are taken up by the Republican Party (or whoever else). It's like a particular Penny Arcade comic. "Cut yourself." "What?" "If you cut yourself I'll love you."

Except instead of "Cut yourself." they say "Pass totally batshit insane legislation". And instead of "I'll love you" they say "I'll vote for you". What do they get out of it? The thrill that comes with knowing someone did something obscene and moronic because they asked.

This is why a Clinton's blowjob was more important than Clinton's non-response to Rwanda. This is why Feingold's presidential aspirations might be destroyed by his divorce. This is why there has never been a black, gay, or female President of the United States of America. This is why the Democratic Party will never beat the Republican Party in the groups the DLC wants to appeal to unless it is willing to go espouse the Religious Right's lunacy even louder than the Republicans. Not issues, not real-world effects of the law, not Judges, not equality, not freedom: the shaky strangulation of a crack-addicted murderer trying to get just one more high before everything implodes.

This is not a new phenomenon, either, despite the fact it has gotten pretty extreme in the last five to fifty years.

Not to say the Capitalists are necessarily the lesser of the two evils. With the mercury semi-deregulation legislation they've convinced the government to, almost literally, turn human lives into gold for them to collect. It's a sort of inhuman perversity that manages to survive today primarily because it's so difficult to comprehend--a sort of Lovecraftian horror, if you will, that manages to evade notice because none who notice survive unchanged.

Second, i have a post on Salazar's rebuke of Dobson in which i respond to a comment on how the Freepers seem to be turning on the Republican Party. It, too, is pasted below:

One thing i wonder is how long their defection will last.

They might talk a good talk about not supporting the Republican Party anymore but in reality the whole Bolton thing is not a big deal. They might think they're dropping out but once they get into the voting booth (and we can say what we like about them, but they are at least politically active even if for all the wrong reasons) i think they're going to have a real hard time voting for anyone other than those with an (R) after their names.

When we should start having real hope is if and when a major Republican figure drops out of the Party (or if not previously "independent for political reasons", see: Bill Oh Really) and runs as a third party candidate, and only then if said hypothetical candidate can draw support of the underlying Republican political aparatus away from Republicans a bit.

We really want a super-Right party that takes the 5-10% of the really extreme "base" away from the Republicans. With a viable alternative the extremists can put actual pressure on the Republican Party ("Give us theocracy or we will commit seppuku via third party campaign") which will then have a splitting effect on the bizarre coalition that makes up the Republican Party.

It's not so much that they'll split when they've been reamed--they're getting reamed constantly. Corporatism is destroying their rural towns, their culture and religion is being co-opted by the political elites (i'm thinking Dobson and friends, rather than someone on the Democratic side), and their children are being left behind (yes, Mister President, even after your bill) by a government that increasingly doesn't understand the problems facing said kids and doesn't care to find out.

Neither, i would say, does the delay on the vote for Bolton constitute "reaming" the freeper crowd (their fantasies of laying the UN low have been pushed back and put in more danger than previously but they are no worse off now than they were before) and yet that is what they, purportedly, are splitting with the party on. This is why i think they won't turn on the Republican Party: their ill will is not the result of genuine disagreements but rather the fanaticism that has been bred into them. The only way that could turn into them betraying their party, i suspect, is if another group willing to pander to their basest urges (judges, Bolton, gays, the border, and all the other far-Right straw-men).

As far as when the moderate Republicans will speak out? I don't think they will, really, unless they are forced to somehow. And i don't mean that i think the Democrats can force them to. They have obedience to the centralized authority of the Republican Party bred into them as well--and that goes back generations. Perhaps i'm doing them a disservice. Some have obviously switched party affiliations and i think that's perfectly respectable, others (notably for this discussion: Voinovich) have begun to challenge the more extreme positions being put forth by the Party.

Christians, likewise, seem to have a bit of a problem with authority. They'll wake up eventually, but for now they seem content.

I think part of the problem is that they're ignorant of how their faith is being used. When Dobson or whoever stand up and say "XYZ is UNCHRISTIAN!" i'm guessing your average Christian just silently nods, not knowing any better. They need to wake up, but once they do i think they'll probably be pretty fierce.

I had hoped that Pope John Paul II or one of those similar leaders would start pushing by making the economic justice and anti-war stance more prominent, but then Ratzinger took over. I haven't really seen anyone else. There has been some push on those fronts recently, but not much. I'm hopeful they will eventually come to realize how dangerous the current Republican Party is, but i'm not going to wait for the Christians to get their collective butts in gear.

Sinking The UN

2005-04-18T22:08:00.000-07:00

There are three more or less separate threads in the news that i think need to be linked together. I'll make it quick:

The UN oil-for-food scandal, which the US government is busy decrying a sign of institutional corruption.
The nomination of one Bolton to be the US's ambassador to the UN.
The invasion of iraq under the false pretenses that Iraq had WMD, against the will of the UN and quite likely against international law.

Curious, yes?

Let me be upfront and state the hypothesis: all three of these things (and many others) have as one of their causes a contempt by the Bush administration and Republicans in general of the United Nations. Furthermore, the possibility that two of these things were designed with at least one aim as the destruction of the United Nations.

Let me take you back in time about two or three years.

Rumsfeld is busy denigrating "Old Europe" and Bush is busy pushing for war and giving the extended middle finger to Europe and the United Nations. Republicans and their allies are busy throwing around phrases like "surrender monkies" and many calling for the outright dismantling of the UN or at least the US withdrawl from it.

Now let me take you forward to today, but in an alternate world. We'll call this "Bushworld" as there is one point of divergance: Iraq, in this hypothetical world, did have weapons of mass destruction. Not ones that it shipped to Libya, ones that Saddam had lying around ready to be used--possibly they did get used on the invading troops.

What is one of the differences here? The United Nations looks like a group of collectively out-of-touch (ooh, famous Bush propaganda phrase!) fools and the US might even begin a campaign against them.

So it doesn't seem to big a stretch to think one of the goals with the Iraqi invasion was to delegitimize the UN and set up the US as essentially not just the world's superpower but the world's everything. And its followers in the Iraq war get kickbacks; the whole "you give us stuff, but we don't give you anything" approach to allies looks much more rational if still perverse under the assumption that the USA becomes the source of legitimate international power after the Iraq invasion and gaining global hegemony is a stated goal of a number of Republicans to turn the USA into a global empire.

Now that it has become irrelevant that entire scenario is a pipe dream and that, yes, the US still does need the UN and the EU, the US has been backpedalling on its... "Freedom Fries"...

So that's that.

Next up is the oil for food scandal.

I strongly maintain that anyone who was surprised by the oil for food scandal has not been paying attention. Period.

Saddam Hussein got nothing out of the deal (more or less) yet he held the keys and controlled a significant part of it. The other end, corporations, are notorious for running cost-effectiveness analysis on protecting people from mercury and then lobbying the government to allow them to kill more people in exchange for higher profits. In terms of moral compass: theirs is made of lead, mercury, and asbestos. Oh yes, and oil.

So again: this should not surprise anyone, really.

But the response from the Bush Administration has fit with the desires i outlined above. The UN, they claim, is corrupt and irrelevant and stupid and full of ~~terr'ists~~ umm... ~~commie bastards~~... err... full of French!

Of course, the US's own involvement never gets mentioned. Not that that is unexpected.

So now we're onto John Bolton. John Bolton, from what i can tell, was a combination of hit-man for the Bush admin, a spy on and internal propagandist for Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, and someone willing to slant what evidence sees the light of day to suit his own Conservative bias.

The possibility that Bolton slanted evidence (with the assumption that "Well of COURSE Saddam has WMD!") with the goal of ultimately isolating the uN, among other things, cannot be overlooked in this analysis--whether the cause for such slanting was Bolton himself or orders From On High.

So i can hear the shrieks and wailings of "Liberal! Liberal!" already.

I'm sure some out there are thinking "Well, you sure are putting some strong words into Bush's mouth! He never said we should withdraw from the UN!"

But don't listen to me, take it straight from the year 2000 Texas GOP Party Platform:

p.26: "The Party believes it is in the best interest of the citizens of the United States that we immediately rescind our membership, as well as financial and military contributions to, the United Nations... The Party urges Congress to evict the United Nations from U.S. soil."

And Bush most certainly has seen and agreed to this platform. How do i know that? Everyone involved in the Texas GOP has--it says so right as a plank of the Platform that anyone getting their support must read and sign it.

And that's only one instance--the UN is a long-time whipping boy, so to speak, of the Right and the only reason this Platform doesn't call for total dissolution of the UN with bayonets if necessary is because cooler heads prevailed. I would put money on a similar suggestion being put forth in all seriousness. We're lucky the Texas GOP is so corrupt (see DeLay, Tom) or they might be pursuing these goals with just as much seriousness.

So what do we have here?

We have a goal of the Bush administration: tear down as much of the UN as possible. We have three separate instances (and there are more out there) in which the Bush administration has acted in ways that would certainly further that goal: nominating Bolton, harassing the UN over Iraq, and harassing the UN over the oil-for-food scandal. We finally have a statement of intent from the Texas GOP.

What does this mean?

I'm not entirely sure. I think we can draw several conclusions, however:

John Bolton was not nominated to the UN post as a reformer. His purpose (or at least: one purpose) is to destroy the UN.

The Bush Administration is waging a covert war on the UN as a whole and will continue doing so as long as they are in office.

The Right has not given up their anti-UN (etc) crusade and in fact that crusade has shown signs of strengthening.

Connecting the dots can yield interesting results.

Propaganda: Then And Now

2005-04-17T19:04:00.000-07:00

Are There Decent Jews?

Four Germans sit talking in a public house. One is a Jew, Salomon, who is telling the others that the Jews are the most decent people to be found anywhere.

Zimmermann won't have it and cites cases of Jewish rogues he has met.

The Jew gets uneasy, and seeks a way out by saying:

"Oh well, but those are exceptions!"

The peasant joins in the talk and supports Zimmermann.

"Salomon gets angry. He has paid for the beer and still must listen to that sort of talk from them.

"You talk a lot of stupid nonsense!" he cries, "but not a word about decent Jews. And there are plenty of decent Jews. Am I not one? Was I not a soldier at the front? Did I not defend the Fatherland. Have I not paid for your beer, you impudent creatures, stupid Gois!"

There is silence in the room. Then the worker gets up who has said little, and throws a coin to the Jew.

"Finished, Salomon. Here is your money. We will not have you paying for us. But now you shall have the truth! You liar! You never heard a bullet. You were 'indispensable' and stayed at home profiteering, then you were with the Reds, calling 'Down with Germany!' 'Long live the World Revolution!' And now you are a decent Jew? Not a bit of it! There aren't any decent Jews.

Salomon picks up his hat and runs like the Devil from the public house. Everybody laughs.

"What a pity he has gone!" says mine host. "I should like to have repeated the following saying to him:
'So oft we hear the yarn
How brave such and such a few was.
How he gave his money to the poor
And was an angel in the world.

A Jew, like a pure angel?
That must be a fairy tale!
Who invents such things?
It is the Jew, himself, who does it!'"

Taken from the Nazi Germany Propaganda Archive, you can find it here

There's your Ms. Right, Time Magazine! But then again, Time has--historically--notoriously poor judgement with respect to right-wing extremists. They also featured Hitler on their magazines a number of times between around 1930 and 1945.

I wish, now, that i could find the piece of Nazi propaganda this quote brought to mind. The "There are no decent Jews" line was an official piece of propaganda. The piece i am thinking of had a quote that was almost literally like Ann Coulter's--it was an exchange similar to the one above, something like:

"There are no good Jews."

"Yet there are also bad Germans, right?"

"Yes, there may be some bad Germans but there is not a single decent Jew."

But sadly i'm not sure where i saw it so now it's just an unsourced quote floating around in my head.