antibogon

Val Thomas had a serious heart attack, and her heart and brain functions stopped for a period of time. She was treated with hypothermia, which somehow prevents cell damage that normally follows such events and which leads in short order to death. It apparently doesn’t have the same mass appeal as saying we don’t know why she’s alive, and that God must have a plan for her, but God’s will is clearly that modern medical scientists learn more about induced hypothermia treatment.

I just noticed something on the front of the Boston Globe web site. It might have been there months or years and I just never noticed before, as I read it only occasionally, and tend not to look below the first few stories at the top of the page before clicking off the front page to the story I’m looking for.

Boston Globe
(Just skim the “Reporter’s Questions” section, bottom, right.)

The Boston Globe are actively and aggressively soliciting personal anecdotes and opinions. Perhaps they are thinking they can improve the quality of the anecdotes they use by generating more from which to choose.

I’m intrigued by this, but perhaps not an advocate. The anecdote and random heard-on-the-street opinion are overused already today, wasting valuable “edited air time and column inches”. It seems to be a race to the bottom, as they are cheaper to collect, assemble into narrative, and disseminate than are deeper thoughts about serious issues, which can be difficult and expensive to gather.

The Fourth Column may not be able to survive the interactive media revolution, which is the engine behind this trend, to emphasize the random flowing opinions and anecdotes of everyman (I notice everyperson is not yet in my spell checker). What’s displaced are critical analysis, considered, thoughtful, and educated opinions supported by research and maybe even objective facts. As a pillar of democratic society, journalism is under siege.

David Brooks: on education as the demographic king, and as a self-defeating conspiracy created by “upscale liberals who revere Obama”. David Brooks is a freak, but this column is interesting both for its analysis of an interesting demographic trend and its affect on politics. The thing that Mr. Brooks doesn’t mention is interesting, too, though. Political scientists understand that, with respect to the history of the modern western democracy, education builds citizens with a more liberal outlook, notably more tolerant of social differences.

Republicans often find themselves opposing education spending, in many forms. They often talk about fiscal responsibility when they are voting against education funding. That’s obviously a smokescreen, since the Republican party in the past thirty years has driven the dramatic increase in the national debt. Their real motivation is much more cynical.

Education builds democrats.

That is a terrifying notion, in a way that isn’t easy to fully understand, not so much for its direct effects, which seem pleasant enough. Education tends to be associated with liberalism, such as the creation of democratic nation-states, the Constitution of the United States of America, the Bill of Rights, and just about everything else about our government and society that makes it a decent place and age in which to live. The more education a person has, the more likely that person is to support abstract liberal concepts like freedom of speech, elected government, a military subservient to elected officials, and an independent judiciary. It also happens that the more education a person has, the more likely they are to vote for a Democratic, rather than a Republican candidate.

That bit is potentially the undoing of modern western liberal democracy, and the bounty that it has brought us, nutrition, medicine, sanitation, free time. Because one party has so closely aligned itself with authoritarianism, education now creates a dynamic where a major political party perceives education to be against the interests of the party. They must work against education or risk becoming irrelevant, politically.

If you want a glimpse of where this unfortunate dynamic could take us, see the 2006 movie, Idiocracy.

NPR suggests that age as the demographic king, trumping the education and other divides.

Idiocracy is terrifying, really. It might be something that you just don’t want to know. You have been warned.

Thomas Friedman: America has no energy policy.

While all the presidential candidates were railing about lost manufacturing jobs in Ohio, no one noticed that America’s premier solar company, First Solar, from Toledo, Ohio, was opening its newest factory in the former East Germany — 540 high-paying engineering jobs — because Germany has created a booming solar market and America has not.

John McCain and Hillary Clinton are competing to see who can further undermine our national security by increasing our reliance on oil from the middle east.

They share the Bogon of the Day Award, for being either so cynical, or so short sighted, and for refusing to use their voices, so much more influential than most of our voices, to rally American’s around meaningful improvements to energy policy, and by extension, national security.

Snuggly Security Bear, you are hereby granted the AntiBogon of the Day Award, for striking back against bogosity and reducing the bogon flux.

Congress, for recently granting retroactive immunity to to the companies who broke the law and assisted in the Bush administration’s illegal domestic wiretapping program, is hereby granted the Bogon of the Day Award, to be shared by all those who voted in favor of the recent act.

Senate Authorizes Broad Expansion Of Surveillance Act

The Snuggly Security Bear (video embedded above) explains, using a hefty does of sarcasm, the cavalier attitude of our highest elected officials toward the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the 1978 law which prohibits domestic spying, unless a warrant has been obtained . Snuggly also lays bear, pardon the pun, the patronizing, rather than patriotic, attitude of the Bush administration, the telecommunications industry, and both Republicans and Democrats in Congress, who have offered no rational defense for their violations of law and of public trust. Warrantless wiretapping and electronic surveillance was illegal, and unnecessary. The FISA court responsible for issuing the warrants denied only 5 warrant request among thousands of requests since it began operations in 1979.

When the warrantless wiretapping began, possibly as far back as 2000, it was an illegal activity, in direct violation of the FISA law. The people authorizing and conducting the activity were undoubtedly aware of it, since they were employed by the same organizations which routinely sought warrants for similar activity under prior administrations. It’s also likely that warrantless wiretapping is a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which requires probable cause to support search and seizure warrants, and requires that warrants be issued by the Judicial Branch. Furthermore, although the Bush administration has used 9/11 as their chief excuse for this illegal behavior, there is some evidence to suggest that the illegal wiretapping program began before the September 11, 2001 attacks (see: Spy Agency Sought U.S. Call Records Before 9/11, Lawyers Say).

I’m sympathetic to the notion that the 1978 FISA law may have needed some updating to more explicitly account for technology changes. When the law was written, the global internet and disposable hand held cell phones and calling cards you could buy in a gas station were not really considered. Information theory has advanced substantially, too, and modern mathematical techniques for traffic analysis which might help identify links among known and suspected terrorists, (and thus help establish probable cause) were not yet developed.

However, the President had the strong support of a Republican Congress and Senate even before 9/11. After that attack he also had unquestioning support of the American people for his efforts against terrorism. Modifying the FISA law to a reasonable degree certainly would have been possible. If the administration is afraid that they are doing unreasonable things that the American people would not support, then they might choose instead to do them in secret.

Here is the real reason that the right wing of the Republican party doesn’t like the New York Times, by the way, a question relevant today, given that John McCain started campaigning against the New York Times in an effort to find a common enemy for the right wing of the party, which thus far hasn’t been unified in support for McCain.
Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts

Finally, here is a fascinating article which hints that the telecommunications industry may be trying to buy votes from Senators and Congresspersons, Republicans and Democrats, in order to get enough support to have Congress grant immunity to the industry for their own illegal activities in support of warrantless wiretapping.

Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) Denies AT&T, Verizon Cash Bought Spying Immunity Vote

Roger Waters was apparently right. Jesus tells this nice couple, Joy Wilson and her hubby, a Jesus fearing and dual bullet wielding loving Christian father and lawfully wedded husband (see: NPR - The Joy of Christian Sex Toys) what sex toys to use to spice up their love life, and to market them to other Christians. Apparently Jesus approves of the “2 in 1 Vibrator (controls operate independently!)” and also of dual bullets.

I’m not an expert, but I do read a lot, and I’m pretty sure that in the case of the “2 in 1 Vibrator” both parts don’t actually fit in the same orifice at the same time. Why would you need independent controls? In the case of the “dual bullets”, I’m just guessing here but, since one bullet seems adequate for all the other bullet models, it seems a safe bet that one of those bullets is intended for an orifice that isn’t Jesus Approved.

Oh, wait, maybe anal stimulation is Jesus approved, so long as it isn’t actual flesh doing the stimulating directly. That could definitely be a loophole that the bullet could, uh, slip through, so to speak. This isn’t the first earthly evidence for Jesus’ support for sodomy, after all (Feederz: Jesus, Entering from the Rear).

Recall that God also told Bush to invade Iraq.

Some would say that God works in mysterious ways. I say he’s a sex fiend.

What God Wants, by Roger Waters:
God wants sedition
God wants sex
God wants freedom
God wants semtex

Yeah, they got their very own, very personal, Jesus. Reach out and touch Joy! Oh, I mean Faith!

For an even more personal Jesus, check out Marilyn Manson’s video.

Mike Huckabee, a candidate for the President of the United States, recently came out in favor of the Ten Commandments. Among other things,

Huckabee at Falwell’s Church: Ten Commandments better than law
“There are only 10 basic laws that we need … the reason that the law is more complicated is because we try to find clever ways around those 10.”

Huckabee on God and State - From the Road
“I hope you know Jesus Christ personally…because the level to which he rules you and governs you, you need less and less of man’s law to tell you how to live and that is what our Founding Fathers understood and we must understand.”

Mike Huckabee is engaged in a willful and dangerous deception. The United States was, intentionally, founded on principles of The Enlightenment, not of Christianity. The founding fathers tried to create a nation where people holding different, and untestable, beliefs, could live together in peace and prosperity and with, they hoped, justice, for all. (Well, for a definition of “all” initially limited to property owning free white men, and definitely not to include the slaves that some of them owned, nor even to include their very own mothers, wives, and daughters. Those problems of injustice were left for future generations to solve, but those, too, were resolved largely on the same philosophical basis and language employed by the founding fathers, the language of The Enlightenment.)

Mr. Huckabee is likely aware of the truth, that The Constitution of the United States of America, and its first ten amendments, collectively known as The Bill of Rights, provide for a clear separation of church and state, and that the Founding Fathers, who wrote and signed it, were, nearly all of them, not Christians at all. They held a variety of beliefs ranging from a naturalistic deism (many thought that there must be some higher power that created the universe, but didn’t believe that said power authored any text on earth) to outright atheism.

Our Godless Constitution
The Founding Fathers Were Not Christians

Mike Huckabee appears to be a Christian Dominionist, a supporter of the idea that the state should be controlled by religion, like all proponents of theocracy, it’s his particular brand of religion that should do the controlling. Conflict arises inherently from tension between the idea that religion should control the state, and the fact that there are many religions. This source of conflict, which would be perpetual until one religion dominated the others right out of existence (which they have repeatedly tried to do to each other throughout history), led the Founding Fathers to conclude that a separation of church and state would be a vital part of the foundation of a democracy.

Mike doesn’t seem to have really thought this whole thing through. Mike is hereby presented with the Bogon of the Day Award, for running for an political office which would require him to uphold and defend the laws of man, notably the Constitution of the United States of America and its amendments, while at the same time espousing views and beliefs in direct conflict with those paramount duties of the office.

If you want to know more about the political implications of Huckabee’s recent statements:

Mike Huckabee, the Constitution and biblical law
Christian Revisionism
The Rise of the Religious Right in the Republican Party
Huckabee: We Don’t Need Man’s Law; We Have the Ten Commandments
Huckabee: We Don’t Need Man’s Law; We Have the Ten Commandments

If you want to know more about Christian Dominionism:

The Christian Right and the Rise of American Fascism
Christian Reconstructionism, Dominion Theology, and Theonomy
Christian Right and Theocracy

If you want to know more about why people might suspect that the Bible is a work of humankind:

One Hundred Contradictions in the Bible
Internal consistency of the Bible
The Ten Commandments

New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof discusses the damage that our national tolerance for torture and violation of our own principles of due process has had on the world reputation of the United States, in his column When We Torture.

His essay inspires consideration of the next important question, why we torture. Why does the United States, one of the foremost champions of Human Rights laws in the community of nations, find itself in this quagmire? Why, following the terrorism strike of September 11, 2001 (aka “9/11″), are we defending practices widely acknowledged to be torture, why are we holding people in detention without charges filed, why are we frantically creating and defending extra-legal judicial systems?

Understanding why this is happening is very, very important. If we don’t understand this, we cannot fix it.

Why does this nation, former champion of human rights, torture?

There are two psychological tendencies, common amongst people, yet not generally discussed outside of academic circles, which contribute to this issue.

Combined, these two issues set up a dangerously self-reinforcing system of authoritarianism and incompetence. Lets consider each of them.

(1) The first is a tendency of people to over-estimate their competence.

This leads people at all levels of governmental decision-making to think they understand what they are doing, and think they know what they are doing. After all, they are the ones in charge of deciding. They are elected, appointed, or hired to make these important decisions, to defend the Constitution, to defend our way of life. In the words of the President, they are “the deciders”, at every level of the operation of governent, in the administration, in the Defense Department, in the CIA. They are charged with defending the country against a dangerous threat. They were hired for the job. They must know what they’re doing. They believe they are right, and believe they know what the ramifications of their actions will be. They over-estimate their understanding, and are reluctant to admit their mistakes, lest they appear weak.

The tendency to over-estimate one’s own competence is something that, apparently, most people have in common.

Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments
(Or available in this HTML version if you prefer: Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments)

We see this playing out in the Bush administration at all levels, in ways ranging from dramatic to mundane, like the ineptitude of FEMA management to recognize and respond to the enormous disaster of Hurricane Katrina, with the president praising the head of the agency even as the failure unfolds before the world on television.

The Bush administration has a pattern of appointing people of suspect competence in the areas they are charged with running. Another example is Mr. Stickler, former operator of mines with questionable safety records, being placed in charge mine safety for the nation. Under his leadership, mining accidents resulting in death stopped declining, apparently for the first time in decades, and started rising. Even the stalwart Republican Arlen Specter apparently opposed his nomination into this role.

(2) The second issue is the tendency of a sizable portion of the general population to follow authoritarian leaders, without question, into the abyss, any abyss.

For a detailed discussion of this claim, and discussion of the research backing the observation, see John Dean’s 2006 book, Conservatives Without Conscience

Dean says that according to researchers, about 23% of the population are pure, right wing, “authoritarian followers”.

My Dad, until his recent passing, was one of them. He would follow authoritarianism, I know, right up until the point where jack booted thugs kicked in his own door. The famous poem, ““They came first for…” (aka: “First they came for…” does not describe these people, like my Dad. It isn’t that he would remain silent. It’s that he would actively follow authoritarianism, actively support it.

His father, my grandfather, fought in World War II, to save the world from fascism. He never understood the irony. He was a good man, and a generally caring person, and he believed in freedom and apple pie and democracy and all that our civics books used to say was great about America, but until he died he was one of that group that mystifies political pundits today. Who are those people, that make up nearly a third of the population, who still approve of the job the Bush administration is doing, even now, with the economy faltering on top of all the years of well documented lies and corruption and incompetence? (See: Historical Bush Approval Ratings).

One of them was my Dad. He approved of Bush right up to the end. Well, frankly even he had his limits, and grumbled form time to time about the fact that the war in Iraq should be ended, but if polled, he would have supported Bush, and if given the chance, he would have likely voted for Bush for a third term, certainly if the alternative were Hillary Clinton. Believe it or not, he might have voted for Barack Obama over a third Bush term, but he was a big fan of, and would have voted for the authoritarian’s candidate of choice for 2008, John McCain.

To understand why we, The United States of America, are back-pedling from our own laws and previously established consensus ethical standards, we need to learn about this tendency to follow authoritarianism, and how this psychological tendency is cynically exploited by some of our politicians.

If you don’t have time to follow and read the links right now, at least watch the videos to get you started thinking. Order the two books by John Dean and Chris Hedges, and read them a chapter at a time.

The Christian Right and the Rise of American Fascism, an article by Chris Hedges.

American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America by Chris Hedges, 2007.

Keith Olbermann interviews John Dean

John Dean - Authoritarians and the Bush Administration
I’m going to extensively quote Dean here, so this is easier to find in Google searches, and to hook people who might not otherwise watch these video clips.

When you analyze these people, and what they have to say about themselves, it is really quite striking because of the proto-fascist potential. But the, but those who tell me about fascism, say, they’re of course well aware of authoritarianism, they’re of course other social scientists who’ve looked at this evidence, and they say, “John, we’re not on the road to fascism, but we’re dangerously close to it.”

Because what drives people to become authoritarian followers, is fear, is a leading cause. Uncertainty about the ambiguities of life. They find comfort in authoritarian systems, whether it be political, religious, whatever.

And we also know that the Bush adinistration, however they have polled this data, found that fear mongering drives people into the Republican ranks. They’ve done it after, for every election since 9/11, and its worked for them.

So, while I don’t think we’re on the road to fascism, a number of these people who I spoke with used very similar terms, in saying to me, “it could come here, and when it comes it will be fascisim with a smile on its face.” It won’t be goose steps. It’ll be people ready and willing to give up their rights and liberties an increment at a time, thinking it’s making them safer.

People seem somehow unable to put terrorism, and evaluate it in cold, statistical, or risk analysis terms. They don’t look at the fact that we’ve had more drownings in the last years, uh, in the years since 9/11 than we’ve had terror attacks. We’ve had more drunk drivers killing people. We’ve had more industrial accidents. Just at the low end. When you get up at the high end, to things like heart conditions and other medical things, well, they’re off the chart, of course, they are much more dangerous. But yet, we let the terrorist win when we are frightened by them, and the Bush Administration has found political hay in doing this. So these are the reasons in very broad strokes, the genesis of this book I’ve written, and the reason I’ve written it, because I certainly hope we never go where any proto-fascists might want to take us.

In conclusion, we torture because (1) we, the administration, lawmakers, soldiers, contractors, and other instruments of the bureaucracy, have fooled ourselves into believing that we know what we’re doing, when in fact we are, as a group, failing to understand the damage which is being done to our own strategic interests, and (2) because we, the voters, have been exploited by politicians who have become very skilled at poking the fear button, and eliciting support for authoritarianism from the voters.

Unfortunately, both of these causes appear to be based on deeply rooted psychological tendencies.

If we are to break out of this cycle, we must, more of us, learn about the fact that we are poor at estimating our own level of competence, and that we are, many of us, susceptible to being authoritarian followers, particularly if we are scared.

I don’t know if we can overcome these problems, but I do know that if we don’t become aware of them, and if we don’t ponder them, and if we don’t discuss them, we will lose our civil rights, then our freedoms, then our democracy, then the tattered remains of our way of life, to fascism. We must think about it. We must understand it well enough to explain it to others. We must help people see past the deceit and manipulation. We must learn to let our blood cool, and think about the real risks and rewards. We must think about the long term strategic objectives, such as energy independence so we no longer fund our enemies’ actions against us.

If this system of incompetence and authoritarianism is self-reinforcing, it seems likely that transparency, rather than secrecy, is an important tool in halting the slippery slide to fascism. We the People must insist that our government remain accountable to The People, and not conduct affairs in secret. To begin with, this means no secret arrests, no secret prisons, no secret trials, no secret evidence, no secret prisoners.

If there is to be a democratic, free, and prosperous future for the United States, it starts with understanding this problem.

Spread the word.

This video, found by accident on YouTube, could be a little more polished, and loses focus here and there, particularly in the last half minute. However, it’s point is made well. Most American politicians are embarrassed by the long history of screwing up on Iraq, particularly because the United States helped create the monster that was Saddam Hussein. When he was engaged in war with Iran to keep their revolution from spilling all over the middle east, Saddam was a useful tool. Then he became a force to be contained. Under the administration of Bush the Younger, he became an immanent threat to be pre-emptively engaged in war.

The candidates for president in this election year who have long involvement in national level politics, notably including John McCain, Hillary Clinton, should be embarrassed at this long and frightfully expensive and damaging history. The current war has gone on far longer and cost far more than they expected it would.

Hillary Clinton said within the past week that she is disappointed that Bush won’t take responsibility for his actions, and end the war before the end of his term.

Ron Paul is a notable exception, for having been one of the few national politicians with a record of having been right about this for a while.

There are few who now doubt that the Bush administration engaged in a campaign of deceit to persuade Americans to get behind the effort to oust Saddam Hussein.

Hussein was a canonical evil dictator, but he was supported by the west, including the United States, including Donald Rumsfeld, until he invaded Kuwait. Even those who supported the effort of regime change in Iraq, and those who still support the effort, now acknowledge that there were no weapons of mass destruction and that Iraq was not involved with the Al Qaeda’s attack on 9/11, nor any other Al Qaeda operation.

The curious bit is that Saddam apparently worked to encourage the belief that he possessed weapons of mass destruction, in the mistaken belief that it would deter his other enemies, Iran and enemies within Iraq. Saddam’s strategy is known as “deterrence by doubt”, and it served to muddy the waters. It’s now known that on the final days leading to the war, Saddam shocked his generals by informing them that there were no secret stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

Bush had good reason to believe there were WMD in Iraq

This intentional obfuscation undoubtedly made it more difficult for the intelligence community to assess the situation. However, this doesn’t excuse the now well documented manipulation of the evidence and intelligence analysis.

Of course, there are those who won’t even accept Saddam Hussein’s word for it, and insist that the weapons of mass destruction were smuggled out of Iraq on the eve of the war, into Sudan, Syria, and/or Lebanon.

For Diehards, Search for Iraq’s W.M.D. Isn’t Over

No matter what you think about the lies and stupidity and shortsightedness that got us here, we are here.

There is a lot more to be said. It is a mess.

We need to stop the bleeding, get out of Iraq, let it fall to pieces which it’s going to do whenever we leave, no matter how long we stay.

We need to invest in the future. We need to get off foreign oil, then get off carbon emitting fossil fuels all together.

Energy independence is a national strategic objective. We need an Apollo program, a Manhattan project, to get off foreign oil.

The AntiBogon of the Day Award is herby granted to… some dude that made this YouTube video.

The cost of producing video continues to fall.

Video, in an age where the literate don’t read, is undoubtedly a more effective means of persuasion.

Anybody with a Macintosh, a copy of Final Cut Pro, and access to YouTube can do stuff like this. A lot of it is utter crap, but this one is very well constructed. Check it out.

“The same old experience is not relevant.”
– Bill Clinton, candidate for president, 1992

OK, if you are interested in the future of the United States of America in any way at all, you should see these two videos. Watch them in order, and the second will be simultaneously (and paradoxically) hysterical and sobering.

Barak Obama - Yes We Can

John McCain - Hope On Crack