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23 July 2009 - 15:40 UTC

Some thoughts on the depths of idiocy

by Jack Grant

This excerpt from The Daily Show titled “The Born Identity” illustrates exactly how idiotic the “birther movement” is:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
The Born Identity
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes
Political Humor Joke of the Day

Is it “post-partisan” to say that some political stance is idiotic?

I say it is, because if you cannot call a spade a spade (and before anyone gets upset, “spade” in this aphorism means “shovel“…) then there is no point in trying to have any discussion at all.

There are some so-called “political positions” that are so beyond the pale that they deserve to be ridiculed. The “birther movement” meets all the criteria.

This illustrates the key difference between what in the United States we call “conservative” extremists versus “liberal” extremists (“liberal” and “conservative” mean different things in Europe and the rest of the world… as with measurements, English units versus the metric system, we are unique, and not necessarily in a good way). The “conservative” extremists are exclusive, with their moronic focus on saying how those who don’t think like them “don’t belong” and should be rejected if not outright destroyed. The “liberal” extremists are naive, thinking that this Darwininan world will all come together in harmony if merely shown the rational path to success for all.

A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject
-Winston Churchill

Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.
-George Santayana

I miss the old definitions of “conservative” and “liberal“, those that held before the words and their meanings were perverted by the politics of fanaticism in the United States.

Which extremist view has the higher moral ground, the “conservative” view of destroying opponents, or the “liberal” view of success for all?

Before you cry “but you have used straw man arguments” take a moment to seriously examine the positions of the extremists and most critically, their motivations, then let your conscience be your judge.

Cross-posted to Random Fate and The Moderate Voice.

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24 June 2009 - 04:47 UTC

On God, doubt, and personal struggles (to be continued)…

by Jack Grant

Usually, I am at no loss for words, but lately I cannot seem to express myself. Fortunately, or not, I am continually running across music that conveys at least in part feelings that seem like they would need paragraphs or pages to get across properly. The lyrics express my conflicted feelings about God in a way that I can’t seem to do with words, and only with some of my photographs in an incomplete fashion.

I’m surprised Sarah McLaughlan recorded this song. If it got widely noticed, it might hurt her sales in the United States at least. We’re not known for tolerance of doubt when it comes to God.

We’re not so open as we think…

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21 June 2009 - 18:15 UTC

More on love

by Jack Grant

From an episode of House : You can’t feel that much guilt without love.

Love is difficult, very difficult in such a graceless age.

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20 June 2009 - 02:49 UTC

On friends…

by Jack Grant

There is a humorous aphorism regarding friends that I like to recall at times:

Friends help you move, real friends help you move bodies…

I’m fortunate enough to have at least one friend like that, and possibly one other, although he and I fell out of touch when I made a decision he regarded as a huge mistake, and the situations in our lives forced a drifting apart.

There are many classic friendships of this type in the arts, ranging from Holmes and Watson in the Sherlock Holmes series of stories to House and Wilson as depicted in the House television series, which had several characters and situations based upon those created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for his Sherlock Holmes stories, to the friendships of Kirk and Spock, McCoy and Kirk, and Spock and McCoy as depicted in the Star Trek series of television, novels, and movies.

My life and the people in it do not follow any straighforward archetypes, however, making things messy and hard to describe.

I won’t be revealing what characteristics combine for me (as I have commented elsewhere, I don’t reveal much about myself willingly), but the lack of archetypes is not surprising, as life is rarely as clean as fiction.

Unfortunately, my life seems to be rarely clean at all.

I do have friends, though, even if I haven’t done what I should have done to keep them, they are still there, and I appreciate them for it.

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15 May 2009 - 06:01 UTC

The new Star Trek movie

by Jack Grant

I have now seen the new Star Trek movie twice. I’ve been a fan of the series since pretty much the first broadcast, assuming the stories of my Mom are correct about how I was mesmerized during the original broadcasts. The earliest memory of mine I can trace is that of Neil Armstrong stepping on the moon while the afteroon sun shone in through the windows of our den, making reflections on the television while I listened to the static clouded audio distorted the first words of a human stepping on another world.

Well, as a fan of the “original series” (referred to as “TOS”), one of the slowly dwinding numbers of those who actually saw the first broadcasts along with the live pictures of men walking on the moon, I can say that the new movie balances the spirit of the original versus the weight of the “canon” that has been built up over the ensuing decades by those managing the “franchise” that arose from the unexpected appeal of the original series while adding on the requirements that anything must have to appeal to the current cultural norms.

To put it in blunt terms, as a stand alone movie, it works very well. As a “reboot” of the franchise, it also works reasonably well, if one ignores several issues that could have been easily addressed.

In other words, I am happy that the new people in charge of the franchise have chosen a reboot, but even though I know that I am not an expert in creating entertaining movies I could have written something just as entertaining that would not have the huge plot holes that the rebooted timeline is burdened with.

Sigh…

My fault for pursing the sure money instead of the creative dream, where I could have been in Hollywood affecting the direction of my childhood dreams…

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12 October 2007 - 02:19 UTC

Creeping Authoritarianism

by Jack Grant

Let us take at face value the nominal, stated reasons as why various office-holders claim the have for taking their various actions.

So, President George W. Bush vetoes the recent renewal/expansion of the S-CHIP bill because he is concerned that it is “creeping socialism” that would ultimately result in publicly funded healthcare, which goes against the libertarian philosophy of self-sufficiency and avoiding governmental interference.

Yet, he promises also to veto any bill regarding the FISA courts and wiretapping statutes that limits the ability of the executive branch to monitor communications that the government claims are important to preventing “terrorists” from attacking.

In other words, do not trust the government to be involved at all in health care, but do trust the government to know when to and when to not monitor the activities, statements, communications, and other matters routinely regarded as private in order to “prevent terrorism”.

Do not trust the government when it comes to protecting collective heritages, such as the environment in the form of clean air, clean water in the rivers, and land preserved in its natural state, do not interfere with property rights, but it is OK to search citizens in the most personal way when they want to fly or have any other kind of interaction with the government such as attend court sessions.

Unfortunately, those in nominal opposition to George W. Bush are no better, promoting agendas that interfere with the rights of individuals when it comes to the “collective good” while decrying the individual invasions of quasi-impersonal searches using millimeter wave radar, which reveals in images far more than a pat down search without the indignity of having someone actually touch you in a far more invasive manner.

In the end, both the right and the left are hypocrites.

What we, the people, need to decide is what exactly is the role of government in our lives.

It has been publicly proclaimed by President George W. Bush that he feels that one of the primary goals of the United States’ government is to “protect the people from terrorists.”

Does that come under the fundamental right of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” in the preamble? That assertion would be debatable at best if the “protection” involved the invasion of “liberty” explicitly stated because of a self-proclaimed power of the Presidency to declare any US citizen as an “enemy combatant” who can be imprisoned indefinitely with no appeal, no access to legal counsel, and subject to treatment that by any reasonable definition would be called torture.

By contrast, one of the largest goals of the Democrats has been to establish a nationally financed system of health care. This is invasive upon liberties because it would force those who have large incomes to pay for the medical care of those who do not have have the same level of income.

Is that fair?

It depends upon what factors one chooses to consider in your personal calculus.

Both the left and the right are now on paths that lead to creeping authoritarianism, where the government knows what is best for you, The only difference lies in whether the government monitors your activities to make sure you are not a “terrorist” who threatens the authority of the state and its protection of the collective good against “terrorism” or whether the government monitors your activities to make sure you are not engaged in any behaviors that are a threat to your own good or the collective good as defined in fuzzy terms such as health and societally good or bad behaviors ensuring conformance to the notion that it is good for you.

Many like to label themselves as “small ‘L’ libertarians” yet they continue to participate in the kabuki play that we call our representative democracy, assuming they choose to vote at all.

Is that sufficient?

I say it is not.

Thomas Jefferson warned against the very situation in which we find ourselves, and he stated flatly, in no uncertain terms, “The tree of liberty occasionally needs to be refreshed with the blood of patriots.”

Where are our patriots, who are not beholden to parties, but to ideals?

Ideals are worth dying for, parties and ideologies are not.

Are the ideas and ideals of 1776 and 1790 still too radical for the majority to fully understand?

I fear they are…

Related links that you can parse for yourself:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21205942/

http://www.courierpostonline.com/specialreports/statesecrets/m062403b.htm

http://www.slate.com/id/2142155

http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/2004/01/012604.html

http://www.privacydigest.com/2007/09/20/state+secret+overreach+editorial+barry+siegel

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2006/05/70785?currentPage=2

http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2007/10/09/1013076-supreme-court-refuses-torture-case

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/16/3876/

http://supreme.justia.com/us/345/1/case.html

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=345&invol=1



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13 July 2006 - 21:41 UTC

Guantanamo, the Supreme Court, and the rule of law

by Jack Grant

The Wall Street Journal (posted online at OpinionJournal.com) betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of the rule of law in an editorial on the recent ruling by the Supreme Court on the applicability of part of the Geneva Conventions to the prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay by the United States.

In the editorial Osama in Genevaland (subtitled Terrorists are now getting lawful-combatant legitimacy) they write:

The Geneva Conventions of 1949 govern the treatment of lawful combatants and civilians during wartime. But now a new Pentagon memorandum concludes that Common Article 3 of the Conventions also governs the treatment of unlawful combatants: pirates, drug mafias and especially terrorists. So, five years after 9/11, the U.S. is about to give to people who ram commercial jets into buildings many of the same legal privileges and immunities as the average GI.

This hyperbole makes the unstated assumption that everyone held by the United States as an “unlawful combatant” is indeed merting of that designation, despite the fact that there has been no process put in place to establish that status for prisoners. Through what means was it decided these people are “unlawful combatants” and who made that determination? Was it fair? Was it based on evidence, or merely hearsay?

This does not even address the basic flaw in the subtitle regarding giving legitimacy to terrorists, because we have already done so in our reaction to the murders of September 11, creating an inflated “War on Terror” from our fear and anger thereby giving the terrorists their victory and elevating them from a bunch of thugs to an “enemy of the homeland.”

We claim we are fighting against uncivilized opponents, yet we are throwing away the basis of our civilization when we ignore the principle of the rule of law when dealing with those we declare are our enemy.

Is each and every person at Guantanamo a terrorist? No, the release of some of the prisoners held there show that as in every human endeavor, mistakes were made. Once it was said, “better to let 1,000 of the guilty go free than condemn one who is innocent.” If this is no longer one of our fundamental beliefs, what level of collateral damage in the form of condeming those not guilty is acceptable? Remember, though, when you make this grim calculation, with every innocent punished for no reason we create not one but many enemies.

The end of our Pledge of Allegience states that we are a nation with “liberty and justice for all.” Depriving people of their liberty is one of the most feared powers of a government, and the arbitrary use of that power has sparked more revolutions than can be easily counted. This confers a grave responsibility to use that power through a system of justice that is understandable and fair, and if we feel the principles upon which our Constiution is based are fundamental in applying to all humanity, what does it say when we choose to ignore those principles when dealing with non-citizens?

The editorial is partially redeemed by this statement:

What the world needs is a new legal framework for distinguishing between legal and illegal combatants, but instead we are now heading toward the European model where terrorism is seen as just another fact of life and not a unique evil or grave threat. In Germany, the High Court earlier this year released from custody Mounir El Motassedeq, an accomplice of 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta, on a technicality. Germany may be able to afford such legal exquisiteness; as the main terror target, the U.S. and its citizens cannot.

Yet the call for a new legal framework is weakened by the complaint about “legal exquisiteness” for it is precisely that attention to the law that is what makes us civilized as compared to those who say they can do whatever they want to their enemies.

Fundamentally, the rule of law is not about selectively applying the law only to the lawful; it is about applying the law to the unlawful, preventing their unlawful nature and despicable acts from degrading our society and our civilization.

If we ignore the law or only apply it when it is convenient, what exactly differentiates our system from arbitrary rule?



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20 May 2006 - 23:27 UTC

Recommended reading: Quis custodiet custodes ipsos?

by Jack Grant

In response to some simple-minded assertions, here is a long list of links, most related, some not:

If You’re Not Doing Something Wrong, You Still Have Something To Worry About

Rumsfeld Reveals Split Over Interrogations

Just War

Talking Points Memo on Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) remarks at the Hayden confirmation hearings

Social Security for Illegal Aliens?

America’s Future…isn’t in America

Illegal Alien!

AT&T Whistle-Blower’s Evidence

Another battlefront

In the hunt for golden buckyballs

Almost Enough to Make me Buy a Mac

Interactive graphic of the flooding of New Orleans because of Katrina

New Presidential Memorandum Permits Intelligence Director To Authorize Telcos To Lie Without Violating Securities Law

The Eternal Value of Privacy from which comes:

Two proverbs say it best: Quis custodiet custodes ipsos? (“Who watches the watchers?”) and “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Cardinal Richelieu understood the value of surveillance when he famously said, “If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged.” Watch someone long enough, and you’ll find something to arrest — or just blackmail — with. Privacy is important because without it, surveillance information will be abused: to peep, to sell to marketers and to spy on political enemies — whoever they happen to be at the time.

Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we’re doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.

So, given what has happened in the last six years, what do you think, and what do you want for the future?



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21 February 2006 - 04:49 UTC

…on freedom of speech and fundamentals

by Jack Grant

Joe Gandelman at The Moderate Voice has posted on the conviction in Austria of British “historian” (in quotes because I think he does not deserve that appellation) David Irving for the crime of denying the Holocaust occurred. The outcome of the court case caught my eye earlier today because of the implications of a person being jailed because of something he wrote.

Think about those implications for a moment.

Yes, denying that the Holocaust occurred is criminal, but should it be a crime in a society that treasures liberty and wishes to avoid the very mindset that permitted something as horrible as the Holocaust to occur?

Note that criminal is defined “having the nature of a crime” while crime is “a violation of the law”, a subtle but distinct difference.

In other words, where does the line between true political speech the freedom of which does indeed protect a democracy from descent into the tyranny of creeping expansion of government power versus the equivalent of “crying fire in a crowded theater” lie?

Millions died in the Holocaust, a systematic extermination of a people based upon their religion that was perpetrated in a society where dissent was punished by at the least exclusion from society and legal protection if not by the very same extermination.

Where does the line lie between the “internment” advocated by some versus the concentration camps that the Nazis created with such efficiency?

Ponder that for the time it deserves: Dissent was punished in Germany in the 1930s; in other words, the lack of freedom of political speech helped make the Holocaust possible.

Yet some democracies now make denying the Holocaust a crime. What is to prevent those same democracies from making other “undesirable” speech a crime, and more importantly, who chooses what is “undesirable” speech?

If we allow those in power to make the choice, what is to prevent them from choosing speech that is in opposition to their policies or even to their remaining in power?

Respect for the law? It appears that the law can be over-ridden by simple legal opinions written by lawyers in the pay of those in power if recent events in the United States are taken as a guide, or to put it simply, the interpretation of the law is rather too fungible to rely upon it to prevent the choices by those in power to preserve that power for the sake of keeping power rather than protecting freedoms.

I have recently been writing posts that reference the fundamentals that form the foundations of our Constitution, allusions that have been misinterpreted by some as calls to a “strict constructionist” interpretation of the Constitution. I do not follow the constructionist interpretation, I prefer to review the fundamental freedoms as laid out in the writings of the founders in the light of the understanding and culture of today.

What exactly are the fundamentals that apply to freedom of speech?

Do those fundamentals include the suppression of photos taken by American troops at the US-run prison at Abu Ghraib, where acts that were taken, regardless of whether they were sanctioned “officially” or not, have lost for the US the trust of the Arab Muslim world?

Do those fundamentals include cooperating with a repressive regime in finding dissenters when we condemn those who cooperated 70 years ago with a different repressive regime?

What exactly do we believe in now, and what do we believe is worth sacrificing to preserve?

More importantly, what sacrifices are we willing to make?

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3 February 2006 - 03:06 UTC

…upon cartoons and the wholesale condemnation of groups

by Jack Grant

Let’s start with a brief synopsis for those who are not to speed on the imbroglio of some cartoons published in a Danish newspaper:

Anger grows over Muhammad cartoon

Protests have spread across the Muslim world over the publication in Europe of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

The drawings, first printed in Denmark, sparked a fresh row when they were re-run in several newspapers, leading to the sacking of a French editor.

The row intensified on Wednesday when France Soir, alongside the 12 original cartoons, printed a new drawing on its front page showing Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy figures sitting on a cloud, with the caption “Don’t worry Muhammad, we’ve all been caricatured here.”

Publications in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain also re-ran the Danish cartoons to show support for free speech.

Islamic tradition bans depictions of the Prophet or Allah.

It should be noted that these were not normal political cartoons published in a day-to-day context but were the products of a “dare” that no paper would be willing to publish cartoons of Allah and Mohammed, especially in an unflattering light.

This context is important, because there was an element of deliberate provocation involved.

Next, a troubling development:

Danish plea for calm on cartoons

Danish PM Anders Fogh Rasmussen has appeared on Arabic television to try to defuse a worsening row over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in European media.

Mr Rasmussen again apologised for any offence but insisted his government was not responsible for newspaper articles.

Since I don’t know the wording of the “apology” I do not know if it was a true expression of sorrow for the publication of something that many Muslims found offensive, or an expression of regret for the reaction to the expression of free speech.

There is an subtle but important difference between the two.

If the Danish Prime Minister expressed regret for the reaction of the Muslims while not apologizing for the free speech which allowed the offensive cartoons to be published, although that is not a response I would prefer, it is far better than a confession that the act of publishing the cartoons was wrong. (NOTE: The response I would like to see is a statement similar to this – “We regret that Muslims were offended by the depiction of Allah and Mohammed as terrorists, especially when any images of these two important figures in Islam are forbidden to those following that faith, but perhaps those same followers should consider why Allah was depicted with a bomb for a turban before they choose to take umbrage.”)

We should not apologize to anyone who chooses to take offense at something that, while offensive, is indeed political speech and therefore protected under OUR traditions, just as making images of Allah and Mohammed are forbidden under the traditions of Islam.

However, it is important that we not stop here, but look deeper, especially into ourselves.

Over at Bloggledygook, the proprietor of that weblog (I need to ask one day if he minds if I use his real name since he has no author listed for his posts) brings up a comparison that I noticed immediately between a cartoon about wounded US troops and offense taken by the Joint Chiefs of Staff versus the imbroglio with the cartoons of Allah and Mohammed (I subscribe to a service that emails me political cartoons, and a different service that had the Joint Chiefs of Staff letter in their news, the parallel was obvious to the most casual observer). I suggest you go read what he has to say and examine the cartoons in question.

I want to comment specifically upon this:

What is instructive is how the lines are being drawn around these two cartoons and what they say about those offended by them and from those defending them.

In the case of the first cartoon, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were so offended that they sent of a stiffly worded letter to the Washington Post.

In the second, threats of bombings and boycotts were the reaction.

Hmmm. Letters versus physical threats.

Make no mistake, I am not accusing the author of this post of anything other than a common fallacy, one of blanket labeling.

Yes, threats from people who call themselves Islam have arisen from the publication of these cartoons.

Should we use these threats to label all of Islam?

Let us first discout the indignant over-reaction to “Piss Christ” that some have referred to (scroll to the bottom of the post) and instead choose to look at broader trends.

Refer to the recent remarks of Ann Coulter, “jokingly” calling for the assassination (well, more exactly the poisoning) of a Supreme Court Associate Justice, which I commented upon here at Random Fate.

So, should we label all right-wingers as nut-jobs who believe in killing political opponents who hold high office?

The predictable response is that her remarks were intended as a joke. In remarkably poor taste, but not serious like those Islamist crazies.

Well, then, let’s look deeper.

I’m sure most recall the groups self-named with unintentional but biting irony “pro-life” who published the names of doctors who performed abortions and labeled them as murderers. Groups who also preached that killing a murderer was not a sin. At least one murder of a doctor was encouraged by this behavior of “pro-life” groups.

So, should we label all devout Christians who are truly pro-life as hypocritical nut-jobs?

Let’s look even deeper.

Christianity has a history longer than that of Islam, a history that is arguably more bloody and far more fratricidal even when recent internecine wars between Islamic sects are accounted for, the Crusades and the Inquisition are included, and we should not forget the remarkably intense internal to Christendom wars of the Protestant Reformation.

Again a predictable response, that was hundreds of years ago, but Islamists are murdering people in the modern world.

People who call themselves Christian are not?

Take this example, from not so long ago:

Sabra and Shatila massacre

The Sabra and Shatila massacre (or Sabra and Chatila massacre) was carried out in September 1982 by Lebanese Maronite Christian militias in then-Israeli-occupied Beirut, Lebanon, when Palestinian refugees were killed in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. The Maronite forces stood under the direct command of Elie Hobeika, who would later become a longtime Lebanese parliament member and in the 1990s also a cabinet minister.

To put it simply for those who prefer the math done for them, people calling themselves Christian massacred non-combatants in refugee camps.

Do we now label all Christians as supporting the murder of women and children?

But that was over 20 years ago is the raised defense.

So, what is the time-frame we use to stop our blanket labeling?

Six months, a year, five years…

Perhaps ten?

Or just possibly the wholesale condemnation of groups based upon the acts of the nut-jobs is too simple-minded for our 21st century world, wars, and combats, as some members of the right-wing have labeled the world, these wars, and the combats.

Apparently, then, we should consider expanding our minds to encompass all the facts before we jerk our knees and label all members of a group based upon the words and actions of the lunatic fringe.

Do the math.

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20 November 2005 - 00:53 UTC

…on blogging and the internets

by Jack Grant

It is odd how blogworld works.

You make friends you might never have met, and you gain enemies you would otherwise never have made.

Is this a gain, or a loss?

It remains to be seen.

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6 November 2005 - 18:21 UTC

…Crystallized

by Jack Grant

As recently noted at Bloggledygook, I’ve been trying to pull together a number of different things I see, such as attitudes expressed in blog posts, statements made by public figures, actions taken by the US government, and many other things. It has been tough slogging, until today when I read a blog post that had a title and a message that was essentially, “the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim.”

History is rife with statements like that.

“The only good injun is a dead injun.”

“The only good Jew is a dead Jew.”

“The only good Kraut is a dead Kraut.”

“The only good nip is a dead nip.”

“The only good gook is a dead gook.”

“The only good nigger is a dead nigger.”

The list goes on. Some statements prompted by wars, others by racism, yet others by simple, unreasoning hatred.

Making it impersonal, using offensive names to make it abstract merely hides the fundamental hatred. A hatred which is more tragic because it is hollow, because it originates out of fear.

The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him but because he loves what is behind him.
   -G.K. Chesterton

Are we fighting for hatred?

It begins to sound more and more that we are fighting not simply for self-defense, but in the name of hate.

Is this truly the best we can do?

I think it is not our best.

If we fight out of hate, we will lose because we will have become the same as our enemy.

This is not hyperbole. You have to only look at our own history for what hate can prompt “right-thinking men” to do.

Just this summer a murderer was finally convicted of a crime that 40 years ago when he committed it a jury of “right-thinking men” would have refused to reach a verdict of guilt.

Never underestimate the power of hate in how it twists and distorts right-thinking into something its practitioners would reject if they were not in thrall to the hate.

I am choosing not to link to the post that prompted the crystallization of my thoughts (along with many others) because I am not interested in getting into a blogwar, nor do I desire to give the despicable sentiment expressed in the post that was the catalyst any additional readership beyond the large volume it already has.

There is more to life and blogging than trackbacks to gain momentary traffic consisting of people who will doubtlessly disagree and leave frequently idiotic and always hate-filled comments.

There is more to life than blogging.

We each have to make our own decisions, we each must choose between unreasoning hatred and reasoning doubt.

The unreasoning hatred is far more comfortable, but the reasoning doubt has more probability for long-term success, despite what those who chose hate may spew in their absolutist screeds.

What are the fundamentals? What are we truly defending when the President stands up and says, “The terrorists hate everything we stand for.”?

I ask you to read what is written on the right and the left sides of the political spectrum, and then ask that question of them both.

I suspect the answers you might get if they choose to reply will be unsatisfying.

Neither side truly represents the fundamental principles.

As I am sure has been articulated before, but not recently that I have seen as well as that by Josh Neuhouser at The Descent of Wonder:

Ideas are dangerous, and not because of the reasons people usually cite. It’s not because they have the chance of making people think and question their assumptions about the world, but because the more an idea gets propagated throughout society, the simpler it becomes, eventually losing all nuance and possibly (usually?) have nothing to do with the original intent/meaning.

Our founding principles have lost all nuance and possibility, and now have nothing to do with the original intent and meaning, not as currently interpreted by our courts, our legislative branch, nor our executive branch, not even if those supposed advocates of “originalism” get their way, for their thinking is not in alignment with the spirit of the ideas.

I recently posted a quote that might have perhaps made some uncomfortable and others react in derision:

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stomping on a human face — forever.
   -George Orwell

As Michael Reynolds wrote at The Mighty Middle in tribute to Rosa Parks:

George Orwell wrote 1984 as a warning against the power he thought government had to obliterate freedom and even to erase the fundamental yearning for freedom and justice. The counterpoint to Orwell’s pessimism was Rosa Parks. She was the proof that humans will never entirely submit, will never be entirely cowed, will never finally forget freedom and accept tyranny. After two hundred years of slavery and a hundred years of Jim Crow, after a million lashings and lynchings, there, at the very epicenter of American racism, was a tiny little black woman, outnumbered and overpowered, who still knew right from wrong, still burned for justice, still had the courage to say, no, I won’t submit.

Yet, despite the counterpoint of the individual that Reynolds celebrates, in the 50 years since Rosa Parks and her simple defiance, in the five decades since George Orwell’s warnings, the power of government has expanded both through the advance of technology and in an increase of scope of power through fear in the wake of terrorist attacks.

Most of the choices I have seen in the past four years have been made out of fear, or made when using fear to manipulate, to spin.

What was true 54 years ago has not changed, what we have to fear most is fear itself, along with the hate engendered that is so easy to manipulate.

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31 October 2005 - 22:33 UTC

…on the universality of mortality, something we refuse to accept

by Jack Grant

Perhaps this is appropriate for Halloween, but instead I find it very sad. In my post the other day from when I chose to visit the municipal graveyard in Grenoble, I took this photo:

There was a plot against one of the exterior walls of the graveyard that had no marble headstones, but instead had metal nameplates scattered around on the ground:

Nameplates-Bw

Why were the nameplates scattered on the ground?

The likely answer is that they had lost their larger plot some time earlier, and had only recently been able to purchase another “freed space” that some other family had lost through neglect or whatever reason.

So, they spread on the ground the nameplates coming from the former plot in memorial to those who had passed long ago but who were not entirely forgotten, even if the actual remains were no longer present.

An effort to recognize those who had come before, yet sad none the less.

One thing I did not write about of my visit to the graveyard, it is large enough so that on can be in the center of it and not hear the noises of the city surrounding it.

A refreshing silence, but also a melancholy one.

I have a few photos of the graveyard taken from the height of the Bastille that ruled over the city for so long showing the expanse of the land of the dead.

Often, far too often, we forget the familiar yet – perhaps unconsciously but also deliberately – repressed refrain, “ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” the ultimate fate of us all.

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31 October 2005 - 15:40 UTC

…on “Why blog?”

by Jack Grant

As you can see in my updates on the health status of my father, I have been a bit too distracted to post this weekend.

That is not the sole reason I have written very little. I was so disgusted by the reactions of both the right-wing and the left-wing to the indictments against Lewis Libby arising from the CIA agent leak investigation that I needed a break.

I wonder, what is the point? Why blog?

An article at Forbes.com entitled “Attack of the Blogs” encapsulates what I see entirely, even though the article is written from a business point of view, with the attacks of the title directed against products and companies rather than political parties and their supporters.

From the article:

“Bloggers are more of a threat than people realize, and they are only going to get more toxic. This is the new reality,” says Peter Blackshaw, chief marketing officer at Intelliseek, a Cincinnati firm that sifts through millions of blogs to provide watch-your-back service to 75 clients, including Procter & Gamble and Ford. “The potential for brand damage is really high,”says Frank Shaw, executive vice president at Microsoft’s main public relations firm, Waggener Edstrom. “There is bad information out there in the blog space, and you have only hours to get ahead of it and cut it off, especially if it’s juicy.”

Remove the word “brand” from the Blackshaw quote, and it covers the political side of blogging quite well, especially the remark about bad information that never gets corrected because there will always be some blogger out there that will repeat it, no matter how often it has been refuted.

Dave Taylor at his blog Intuitive Systems agrees with the thesis of the Forbes.com article and summarizes some reactions he has observed in blogworld that in a show of ironic non-self-awareness illustrate exactly the tendencies in the article that the quoted bloggers are reacting against. Taylor then summarizes the points from the article with his own take on them (again from a business perspective, but it is easy to substitute “politics” for “business” when reading it to see the trends are the same):

1. You Don’t Know Who Is Blogging and Why

This is a point that even bloggers admit is true when we talk about “fake blogs” or “character blogs” and criticize typically miserable attempts by corporations to plug into the blogosphere with the “Lincoln Fry Blog” (from McDonalds, since shut down) and Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit Gum Blog (a Flash-based site that has nothing to do with blogging other than the word appears on the site).

Sure, these are poorly executed and obviously fake, but there’s a somewhat naive assumption in the blogosphere that everyone is genuine, everything is built around “credibility” and that if anyone were to dare even fake their motivation for writing a weblog entry (get paid to blog), well, that’d be terrible.

Consider the fate of Marqui, who dared to offer cash to bloggers who would write about their clients. The bloggers could opt whether to admit they were sponsored or not, but Marqui was roundly vilified nonetheless.

I mean, for all you know, dear reader, Daniel Lyons is my pseudonym or my best pal from our business school days. He’s not, but do you trust me 100% given that you don’t know me?

2. Misinformation and Lies are Quickly Disseminated

You need merely to look at the breathless analysis of as-yet-unreleased services and products in the blogosphere to see just how much whispers and innuendo can affect business. Google’s right in the cross-hairs with that one, and people were busy disassembling their still unreleased Google Base product without any more information than a single screenshot that might have been faked.

Or ask Apple Computer, where they have had to change their method of disseminating information to the media due to incessant leaks and misinformation about new products. The Motorola ROKR phone suffered from this prejudged-by-bloggers fate, as did the Video iPod, which has had to “prove itself” in a way that previous products have never had to worry about.

3. Bloggers are not Subject to Libel Laws

While I really want to say that this is patently false, it is surprisingly difficult to find any legal cases that have been successfully prosecuted where the defendant was a blogger or was publishing their libelous material on a weblog. There are cases like Aaron Wall versus Traffic Power (see my writeup on the case for background), but the case isn’t about what Aaron wrote as much as what other people wrote as comments on his site.

The combination of being able to go back and edit weblog entries, the relative anonymity of most weblogs, and the lack of precedent suggests that Lyons does have a good point here, one that we should be thinking about quite seriously. It has profound implications for the legitimacy of blogging that every blogger seeks.

4. Bloggers are not Journalists

I’ve wrestled with this point myself, having been on panels about blogging sponsored by the Society for Professional Journalists and similar. It’s fashionable to be skeptical of journalists, especially after con men like Jayson Blair sully the reputation of even the most revered bastion of professional journalism, but it is nonetheless true that the vast majority of journalists check their facts and ensure they have at least two sources to corroborate information.

Bloggers, on the other hand, are happy to cite other bloggers as the source of information, a tortuous chain that often ends at a single person opining something controversial and interesting about a company or product. Bloggers also don’t respect moratoriums on publishing information from companies, arrogantly believing that the blogosphere is more important than any sort of announcement schedule by the organization. As a result, few companies pre-release information to even the most serious and professional of bloggers.

To be fair, there are bloggers who take the responsibilities of their bully pulpit more seriously and try to avoid gossip and innuendo in favor of facts and direct sources, but they really are in the minority.

And so, enough…

There are more points that I think can be culled from Daniel Lyons’ “Attack of the Blogs” article in Forbes, but let’s stop here as I think I’ve made my point.

Like any other medium, blogs are just tools that will be used thoughtfully and artfully for communication by some and viciously and vindictively to propagate lies and misinformation by others.

The important thing is to step back from the overt bias in the Forbes article and read through it a second time, asking yourself whether anything said is really false, or simply just a bit breathless and one-sided.

I am tired of the thoughtlessly, relentlessly predictable reactions I see. Few are interested in what is right for the nation, they are too busy “scoring points” against the “other side.”

We are all on the same side, but we have forgotten this simple fact.

Rome fell after centuries of success not because of external forces, but because of internal rot.

Before the invasion of Iraq, from the outside the United States appeared at its strongest, invincible.

Now?



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13 October 2005 - 18:04 UTC

…on the reaction to the Miers nomination

by Jack Grant

The nomination of Harriet Miers to fill the seat of retiring Associate Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Conner has created something of a furor among those who lean to the right-wing, almost resembling internecine war in some aspects.

I do understand and appreciate the points made by those for whom there are fundamental principles at stake, principles of competence, qualifications, the problem of at least the appearance of cronyism (if not the actual fact, which is difficult to dispute at this point).

The odd arguments coming from the White House attempting to justify the nomination serve as an exemplar of exactly the issues that critics of the administration have been pointing to as the fundamental causes of the mishandling of so many crises such as the aftermath of the “catastrophic success” in Iraq, the bizzare priorities of what is frighteningly termed “homeland security”, and the apparent indifference of the President in remaining on vacation when what was universally recognized as a major storm executed a slow-motion horror as it approached New Orleans and wreaked havoc that was documented for days afterward live on national and international television.

The crushing irony for me is I see those self-same people who feel their fundamental principles are being assaulted express shock and surprise at the tactics of attack being used by the Bush administration in defending the rationale behind this seemingly inexplicable choice of nominee, tactics that are now being aimed at Bush supporters who aren’t toeing the line rather than being directed at “the opposition.” The shock and surprise seem rather excessive given the Bush allies had no problems with the politics of destruction being used against others.

Those “others” are American citizens, and those “others” have their own fundamental principles that were derided and left for naught in the face of the attacks that had little to do with principle and everything to do with personal destruction for the sake of political gain to the attacker.

I have frequently pleaded both here and at other places I have the privilege to post (such as The Moderate Voice) for a real discussion of issues, to move away from the tactics of attack, for a removal from the politics of personal destruction, because what is being destroyed is not the people being attacked, but the very foundations of our system of self-government. Frequently, my pleas have been dismissed by those who lean right because they saw no problem with the tactics because “their side” was winning.

The problem now presented to the right-wing: those whom they thought were on “their side” were not interested in the fundamental principles, not interested in what they thought at all, the only interest was in gaining and keeping power. Those of us who looked a bit deeper than simple partisan victory saw that the fundamental principles were not even “honored in the breech” as the old saying goes. They were not honored at all, but merely paid lip-service to gain power.

Now, the utter lack of interest by the Bush administration in the fundamental principles held by those who supported the President has become obvious; the scales have fallen from the eyes of those who were not blind but would not see.

Some have even recognized how destructive the supposed “satire” and “humor” of Ann Coulter truly is to our system now that they are the targets, long, long after moderates pointed it out.

Yet, I have no joy in this discomfort being experienced by those who, in some cases, dismissed my concerns out of hand.

I have no gratification in saying, “I told you so,” regardless of how “earned” that statement may be.

This is damaging to the nation I love, MY country.

How could I find any joy in that?

Now, I am trying to find a way to show us all that we need to understand that NONE of us is 100% correct 100% of the time, and we need to listen to the views of others.

I am trying to find a way to show us all that we need to not advocate for the complete destruction of those who do not think the way we think (as I have read frequently on many weblogs, vitriol and calls for destroying not directed at foreign enemies, but at domestic political opponents, be they Democrats or Republicans).

I am trying to find a way to show us all that we need to follow in the tradition of those who wrote the Constitution we still follow after more than 200 years as the foundation of our system of self-government, but we need to follow the TRADITION, not merely the words of those who were desperately seeking a compromise among the competing interests of more than two centuries past.

I am trying to find a way to show us all that we need to find a better way.

Please help.

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26 September 2005 - 22:05 UTC

…on when I was young and stupid

by Jack Grant

When I was young and stupid, I married the wrong person.

The person I married was not and is not evil, yet she was the wrong person for me. I suffered for that bad decision, but it was purely a personal suffering, a consequence confined to myself and to those who loved me.

Today, I read about the verdict in the trial of Army Pfc. Lynndie England (as she is described in the news) as a result of her actions at Abu Ghraib.

The age she was during the commission of the acts for which she was convicted was roughly the same as I was when I made a poor choice in marriage.

This woman is now 22 years old, which although when I was that age would bristle at the statement I am about to make, is scarcely an age to fully understand the consequences of acts that are apparently endorsed by higher authorities.

In other words, the environment created by the actions (or lack of supervision) of her superior officers is at least as culpable in what occurred at Abu Ghraib as the actions that she herself committed.

Is the punishment that will be meted out to her superiors even potentially as grave as that she will face (a maximum of 10 years in prison), or is it limited to “ruining their careers”?

Somehow, I find the ruination of a career a wee bit less than a multiple-year prison term imposed upon someone who was 21 or less when the crime was perpetrated.

Accountability.

It depends upon how high up the ladder you are.

If you are the Secretary of Defense, you might suffer the indignity of receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

For a Private, you get to go to prison.

This is what we have come to.

Fuck Radio Saigon, my “immoderate” weblog, this has to stop NOW, and I don’t care who thinks this is “immoderate” when they cannot step outside their god-damned comfortable thinking-box.

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12 September 2005 - 20:14 UTC

…on perfidy, or was it a “pre-emptive war”?

by Jack Grant

Step outside your partisan box for a moment and consider this:

What if the decoding and delivery of the message the Japanese Ambassador was supposed to give to the Secretary of State of the United States had not been delayed on December 6, 1941 (Washington, DC time)?

Would we still call the attack on Pearl Harbor “perfidious” and “evil”? Recall, Japan was engaging in a pre-emptive war because they believed the policies of the United States were resulting in a clear and present danger to the future that Japan had planned out for East Asia for the safety and success of their nation.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq, is it not “perfidious” and “evil” because we gave an ultimatum beforehand, an ultimatum remarkably similar to that the Japanese had intended to hand to the United States in December of 1941?

My thoughts on the 2003 invasion of Iraq have been evolving. I am beginning to believe that in a Machiavellian world, we did need to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein, but I still maintain that we did so with amazing incompetence, alienating allies and simultaneously not providing enough troops to control the nation we toppled (see the recent, belated remarks by Colin Powell for only the most recent validation of my opinion on this matter of troop numbers for the occupation in the wake of the ill-termed “catastrophic success”).

I was taught when I was a child that the attack on Pearl Harbor was evil because it was both a “sneak-attack” (although according to the history of the time, the delayed delivery of the message from the Japanese Ambassador was supposed to provide a butt-blanket to avoid the sneak-attack accusations), but I was also taught that attacking someone who had not directly attacked you first was morally wrong.

Arguments of “freeing the oppressed” in Iraq fail miserably because there are far too many oppressive regimes in the world that we could easily topple and free the same number or even more of people being abused.

Arguments of “spreading democracy” in Iraq fail miserably because there are far too many oppressive regimes in the world that we could easily topple and replace with democratic governments.

The Machiavellian argument is twofold: First – the regime in Iraq was destabilizing in an area of the world that has control over a vitally strategic resource (no, I’m not repeating the canard that the war was all about the oil and making the energy companies rich, but we must be realistic and state that oil is indeed a strategic resource whose supply lines must be protected).

Second – the regime in Iraq was without any doubt hostile to the United States and would finance any terrorist attacks against the United States.

However, the second argument by itself is not sufficient to justify the invasion, otherwise we would have been equally or even more justified to invade many other nations long before Iraq.

An FYI to those apologists for the Bush administration: moral arguments are not good to make because there are many more cases where the moral justification was both more urgent and far more necessary than an intervention in Iraq.

Think about these things, and think about what might have been a better way to accomplish our goals.

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11 September 2005 - 13:03 UTC

…on how after four years, there are still only questions

by Jack Grant

If you are looking for some profound reflection on the “meaning” of September 11, go elsewhere, for you will not find any meaning to that lethal day here.

If you are looking for some words to salve the grim memories, such as those images of ones who chose to jump from 100+ stories above the street – fleeing flames climbing ever higher, go elsewhere, for you will find no comfort here.

If you are looking for some unique insight linking history both long past and more recent to find some sense in the past four years, go elsewhere, for you will find no unique insight here.

If you are looking for some hope within the days that seem to march ever darker since our rude awakening to the realization that the United States is indeed a part of the world at large that it generally chose to ignore, go elsewhere, for you will find no hope here.

If you are looking for some paean to “honor the memory of those who died” on the anniversary of the day they, along with hope, were murdered, go elsewhere, for you will find no paeans here.

Today, as is often the case, here you will find only questions.

Questioning is how one learns.

Since it is mainly other bloggers who read weblogs, the questions I ask today are relvent mainly to those who write weblogs or opine on politics routinely, but they can and should be applied more broadly.

My question is this:

When you write, when you opine, when you post, what is your main goal, the advancement of your “side”, or the success of our nation?

A second question:

When you write, when you opine, when you post, will the world be a better place, or at the least no worse, than it was before you chose to write, opine, post?

How are these questions relevant to this day?

Think about it.

It has been four years.

What have you done to make the world a better place?



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23 August 2005 - 01:00 UTC

Some on the right are beginning to notice…

by Jack Grant

…that they are not getting what they voted for.

In other words, the neoconservative agenda is not what it promised to be.

Warning – this one is long… with subheadings…

Anyone who thinks this is black and white has not read up on the subject…

Professor Bainbridge, at his eponymous weblog, has apparently stopped toeing the party line:

It’s time for us conservatives to face facts. George W. Bush has pissed away the conservative moment by pursuing a war of choice via policies that border on the criminally incompetent. We control the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives, and (more-or-less) the judiciary for one of the few times in my nearly 5 decades, but what have we really accomplished? Is government smaller? Have we hacked away at the nanny state? Are the unborn any more protected? Have we really set the stage for a durable conservative majority?

Meanwhile, Bush continues to insult our intelligence with tripe like this:

“Our troops know that they’re fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere to protect their fellow Americans from a savage enemy,” Bush said in his weekly radio address. {Ed: Full text here}

“They know that if we do not confront these evil men abroad, we will have to face them one day in our own cities and streets, and they know that the safety and security of every American is at stake in this war,” he said.

I guess that’s all he has left. After all, if Iraq’s alleged WMD programs were the casus belli, why aren’t we at war with Iran and North Korea? Not to mention Pakistan, which remains the odds-on favorite to supply the Islamofascists with a working nuke. If Saddam’s cruelty to his own people was the casus belli, why aren’t we taking out Kim Jong Il or any number of other nasty dictators? Indeed, what happened to the W of 2000, who correctly proclaimed nation building a failed cause and an inappropriate use of American military might? And why are we apparently going to allow the Islamists to write a more significant role for Islamic law into the new Iraqi constitution? If throwing a scare into the Saudis was the policy, so as to get them to rethink their deals with the jihadists, which has always struck me as the best rationale for the war, have things really improved on that front?

The trouble with Bush’s justification for the war is that it uses American troops as fly paper. Send US troops over to Iraq, where they’ll attract all the terrorists, who otherwise would have come here, and whom we’ll then kill. This theory has proven fallacious. The first problem is that the American people are unwilling to let their soldiers be used as fly paper. If Iraq has proven anything, it has confirmed for me the validity of the Powell Doctrine.

While we remain bogged down in Iraq, of course, Osama bin Laden remains at large somewhere. Multi-tasking is all the rage these days, but whatever happened to finishing a job you started? It strikes me that catching Osama would have done a lot more to discourage the jihadists than anything we’ve done in Iraq.

These are points that if made by someone on the left side of the political spectrum, they would be immediately be dismissed as “partisan politics” by the right-wingers in blogworld.

With them coming from an avowedly and proudly self-proclaimed conservative from the old mold, if the discussion quoted above is any indication of his provenance, can the accusation of “partisan” continue to be leveled at any and every one who condemns the new-mint neoconservative policies that appear to have if not completely failed, have fallen far, far short of what was promised by the acolytes of the new faith?

It’s hard to answer what is wrong, when nothing is right…

Meanwhile, political science professor Dr. Stephen Taylor (who from my reading at least appears to be right-leaning) at PoliBlog offers this concern regarding the current draft of the proposed Iraq constitution:

I have long wondered if the usage of “federalism” in the press is accurate, and have thought for a while that it was not (and Shugart’s post today confirms it). Indeed, what seems to be on the table is a form of confederalism or a strange hybrid of kinda-sorta-federalism with a unitary government–neither of which is a very good idea.

Indeed, this sounds like a potential disaster–but I will think some more on the topic and wait and see what is actually in the document.

In short: the confederal version (a Kurd zone, a Shiite zone and a Sunni zone) is a recipe for breakup, and a Kurd + the rest of Iraq version seems to equal a relatively quick exit for the Kurds, which would cause problems with the rest of Iraq, not to mention Turkey and Iran.

Did they not consult with anyone who knows something about constitution design and institution arrangements? It would appear not.

And at this point I am more prone to believe the negative assessment vis-a-vis getting a draft to parliament, rather than the optimistic one.

To say that his analysis and questions are troubling is an understatement.

Elsewhere in the world, since both Iran and Kim Jong Il, the dictator in charge of a North Korea that likely has the very nuclear weapons that Iraq was discovered to NOT have, a regime that desperately needs hard currency incidentally, has already been mentioned by Professor Bainbridge, perhaps we should discuss what I have often argued is the true medium to long-term existential threat to the United States, which is China, not terrorism (a tactic, not an ideology) or Islamofascism:

China today differs from Japan in 1980s
Country may be a far tougher force to reckon with going forward

Associated Press
Updated: 4:59 p.m. ET Aug. 21, 2005

NEW YORK – It sounds like history repeating itself: The United States faces a huge trade deficit with an Asian country, which is also under intense scrutiny for its interest in buying U.S. assets and having a currency many deem undervalued.

Today, that best describes how China is viewed. Two decades ago, Japan came under similar attack for its growing global presence, and that spurred all sorts of protectionist talk out of Washington.

The Japanese hysteria eventually died down as the country fell into a long recession. But don’t look for that to happen with China, where its politics combined with its potential for growth may make it a far tougher force to reckon with going forward.

There are also significant political differences between the two. While the Chinese have been more open to foreign investment than Japan, there are some concerns that the communist political structure means that the Chinese won’t embrace all kinds of foreign involvement such as an American company buying a big Chinese company.

In addition, Standard & Poor’s chief economist David Wyss points out that China’s huge population — which he estimates is 10 times as large as Japan’s — means that China has the capability of taking over world production of just about everything.

So talking about China today as though it were Japan 20 years ago might not accurately size up the situation of this fast-growing empire. China’s might just be beginning to build its power as an economic force.

To the dismay of many Americans, that will likely mean a bigger, bolder China to contend with for many years to come.

If we do not defeat ourselves through our over-reactions to perceived dangers by passing or making permanent laws such as the USA PATRIOT Act that arguably are unconstitutional (the requirement of judicial approval for search warrants, anyone?) and other ineffective but freedom-denying actions that degrade the very liberties we proclaim to be defending, then we may very well not be able to combat the economic threat posed by China.

Recall, we did not defeat the Soviet empire through a direct war. We won through other means.

In other words, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Think of the Web as a big bathroom wall, and everyone has a marker…

Those bloggers and professional editorialists who repeat the current right-wing talking points blame the so-called “liberal media” for poisoning the atmosphere regarding Iraq by the insidious plan of the heinous MainStream Media (MSM) to only present the bad news out of Iraq while completely ignoring the good news.

An aside here, if I had to don body armor and only go out with an armed platoon of the US military to “report” on the situation outside the infamous Green Zone in Baghdad, I would question the efficacy of the occupation of Iraq, too.

However, returning to the substance of the accusation of a “biased media”, it is interesting to observe that many of these same writers who are claiming that the supposedly biased media are turning the citizens of the United States against the policies of the administration in Iraq, implying that citizens are incapable of making their own judgments and instead swallow what they are fed by the MSM whole, are the very same writers who were proudly proclaiming that those very same average citizens are now miraculously smart enough to make their own choices regarding retirement planning and investing, so it is vital (according to the right-wing talking points) for both fairness and the future of the retirement system that we make Personal Accounts a key part of the Social Security system.

Do you sense an inconsistency here that is rather insulting to the “average Joe”, just as insulting as is the arrogance of the left-wing?

At times I suspect that both extreme wings suffer from the same syndrome of hubris and smug certainty that they are the only ones who know what is right, but the right-wing is better able to come across as “folksy” while the left-wing doesn’t hide their own version of the same elitist arrogance at all.

I wonder, which is truly more honest…

Anything can be put to use, even the dead…

In an ironic symmetry, recently John Donovan of Castle Argghhh!, a milblogger who leans right but is happy to engage in reasonable discussion, posted on his agreement with a Christopher Hitchens article in Slate decrying using the dead to make a political point, a condemnation that I agreed with if applied to both wings equally. Hitchens wrote:

Finally, I think one must deny to anyone the right to ventriloquize the dead. Casey Sheehan joined up as a responsible adult volunteer. Are we so sure that he would have wanted to see his mother acquiring “a knack for P.R.” and announcing that he was killed in a war for a Jewish cabal? This is just as objectionable, on logical as well as moral grounds, as the old pro-war argument that the dead “must not have died in vain.” I distrust anyone who claims to speak for the fallen, and I distrust even more the hysterical noncombatants who exploit the grief of those who have to bury them.

Yet today, Blackfive, a milblogger who also leans right but doesn’t seem to drink the right-wing kool-aid wrote this at his eponymous weblog (NOTE – bolded italics added):

One point (and not critical of the above post by my pal Andi), I really do object to using the name “Sheehan” to identify the protests. I doubt very much that Army Specialist Casey Sheehan would appreciate that. Instead, let’s call it Cindy-fest or something else. Cindy-land. Cindy-stock. Anything but Casey’s name.

To put it bluntly, Blackfive has just ventriloquized the dead by stating that he knows better than what the mother of Army Specialist Casey Sheehan knows her son, the dead Casey Sheehan, would appreciate.

Ventriloquizing the dead? Everyone is doing it.

I know the irony was unintentional, but that is what makes it all the more cold and hard.

The only lesson history has taught us is that man has not yet learned anything from history…

Even though I did not like George W. Bush even before he became President of the United States, recent trends are not good for our nation (thanks to Jonathan Singer posting at The Moderate Voice for the link):

George W. Bush’s overall job approval ratings have dropped from a month ago even as Americans who approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president are turning more optimistic about their personal financial situations according to the latest survey from the American Research Group. Among all Americans, 36% approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president and 58% disapprove. When it comes to Bush’s handling of the economy, 33% approve and 62% disapprove.

Among Americans registered to vote, 38% approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president and 56% disapprove, and 36% approve of the way Bush is handling the economy and 60% disapprove.

This is the second month in a row when improving economic ratings have not been matched by higher job approval ratings for Bush. A total of 24% of Americans now say their personal financial situations are getting better, up from 17% in July, and 27% say they believe that their personal financial situations will be better off a year from now, which is up from 21% in July.

(Full disclosure: I lived in Texas long before George W. Bush became President and observed his performance then… along with the very American tendency that I do not like sons of privilege who have never held a real job, or even any job that was not acquired through who your father is rather than what you have actually accomplished on your own… I ask the hyper-partisan among you to give me an example of where any business that George W. Bush was in charge of prospered under his leadership, or indeed any job he did not get through who he was related to but instead based upon his qualifications and what he had achieved)

How can any American who is interested in the success of his nation, regardless of his partisan leanings, take joy in this?

I take no joy in it, because it shows the failure we are undergoing despite the price we have paid in treasure and, far more importantly, lives both lost and damaged beyond any repair we can give them.

It only gets worse, however:

Militias wrest control across Iraq’s north, south
Newly empowered Shiite, Kurdish forces hold mixed allegiances

By Anthony Shadid and Steve Fainaru
The Washington Post
Updated: 6:19 a.m. ET Aug. 21, 2005

BASRA, Iraq – Shiite and Kurdish militias, often operating as part of Iraqi government security forces, have carried out a wave of abductions, assassinations and other acts of intimidation, consolidating their control over territory across northern and southern Iraq and deepening the country’s divide along ethnic and sectarian lines, according to political leaders, families of the victims, human rights activists and Iraqi officials.

While Iraqi representatives wrangle over the drafting of a constitution in Baghdad, forces represented by the militias and the Shiite and Kurdish parties that control them are creating their own institutions of authority, unaccountable to elected governments, the activists and officials said. In Basra in the south, dominated by the Shiites, and Mosul in the north, ruled by the Kurds, as well as cities and villages around them, many residents say they are powerless before the growing sway of the militias, which instill a climate of fear that many see as redolent of the era of former president Saddam Hussein.

Militias gain power, but authority unclear

The parties and their armed wings are sometimes operating independently, and other times as part of Iraqi army and police units trained and equipped by the United States and Britain and controlled by the central government. Their growing authority has enabled them to seize territory, confront their perceived enemies and provide patronage to their followers. Their rise has come because of a power vacuum in Baghdad and their own success in the January elections.

Since the formation of a government this spring, Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, has witnessed dozens of assassinations, claiming members of the former ruling Baath Party, Sunni political leaders and officials of competing Shiite parties. Many have been carried out by uniformed men in police vehicles, according to political leaders and families of the victims, with some of the bullet-riddled bodies dumped at night in a trash-strewn parcel known as The Lot. The province’s governor said in an interview that Shiite militias have penetrated the police force; an Iraqi official estimated that as many as 90 percent of officers were loyal to religious parties.

Across northern Iraq, Kurdish parties have employed a previously undisclosed network of at least five detention facilities to incarcerate hundreds of Sunni Arabs, Turkmens and other minorities abducted and secretly transferred from Mosul, Iraq’s third-largest city, and from territories stretching to the Iranian border, according to political leaders and detainees’ families. Nominally under the authority of the U.S.-backed Iraqi army, the militias have beaten up and threatened government officials and political leaders deemed to be working against Kurdish interests; one bloodied official was paraded through a town in a pickup truck, witnesses said.

Violence a black mark on U.S.?

“I don’t see any difference between Saddam and the way the Kurds are running things here,” said Nahrain Toma, who heads a human rights organization, Betnahrain, with offices in northern Iraq and has faced several death threats.

Toma said the tactics were eroding what remained of U.S. credibility as the militias operate under what many Iraqis view as the blessing of American and British forces. “Nobody wants anything to do with the Americans anymore,” she said. “Why? Because they gave the power to the Kurds and to the Shiites. No one else has any rights.”

There is more, and none of it promising.

In other words, if not a complete and utter failure of the administration’s handling of the post-war situation in Iraq, the reality there is far, far from a ringing endorsement of the policies and leadership.

Yet, the warbloggers who chanted “weapons of mass destruction” for months and months before and after March of 2003 until ultimately they were proven completely and totally wrong continue their drone of unquestioning support despite the incompetence their revered leaders have shown.

Is it any wonder that this poem from almost a century ago, written in the wake of the First World War seems even more applicable now?

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
   -William Butler Yeats, January 1919

After pulling together all of these seemingly disparate threads and slogging through all of this text, one must ask what is the pattern?

The answer is simple.

We are being distracted by things that are not true threats, and neglecting the real perils to our nation.

Islamofascism?

Yes, it is dangerous, but will it ever overthrow our government unless we help it from within through ill-considered laws that are contrary to the liberties envisioned by our founders?

No.

China and other rising powers in Asia (including India, the largest democracy in the world)?

That is where the real confrontation to our current pre-eminent position of power technologically, economically, and militarily (for the three are linked far more profoundly than most realize) in the world lies.

How do cultures die?

When they are more concerned with internecine conflicts over ideologies that are more similar than the fundamental culture is to the external threats opposed to them.

We have to step outside our ideology, outside our partisan talking points, and deliberately choose to look at the world as it is.

The consequences if we do not?

I leave the rest of the math as an exercise to the reader.

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12 August 2005 - 00:21 UTC

…on thinking outside the box

by Jack Grant

When I was in graduate school, on an exam in my Classical Electrodynamics class, we were asked to re-derive the Maxwell Equations assuming that in addition to the existence of electric charge, magnetic charge also was present in the universe (aka magnetic monopoles, of the north and south variety, analogous to positive and negative charge, magnetic monopoles definitely do NOT exist by the way).

The details of the theory are not important, but the implications of what we were asked to do are. In straightforward terms, we were asked to derive the fundamental equations that would govern the behavior of electricity and magnetism assuming that the universe was a different place; not as it exists, but a “what if” scenario.

Then, using the newly derived “electric and magnetic charge” equations along with the Maxwell Equations, we were given a set of real-world measurements and asked to use the two different sets of equations to predict the electric charge density and magnetic charge density required to account for the data.

Needless to say, the “electric and magnetic charge” equations resulted in answers that either did not converge to a solution or gave results that were not reasonable.

This is a routine exercise both in the process of learning the “how” of science along with being a key part of the methodologies of experimental and theoretical research. Working out what would happen if some variation up to and including the opposite of the theory or hypothesis under consideration was valid allows us to figure out what the results of an experiment would be, and then helps when the data is taken and must be interpreted, because data rarely matches the model cleanly enough to yield no doubts.

Engineers refer to this as “thinking outside the box”.

Here at Random Fate, I put categories on all my posts, displayed prominently above the post title on both the main page and the individual entry pages. While I readily confess to having the traditional tendencies of any technologist to be anal retentive, I categorize so prominently for a reason beyond any need I might have for order and classification.

The categories of the posts are intended to be an indication of what I am trying to communicate. Opinion is not intended to be balanced and is therefore publicly acknowledged as “opinion“. When I write something I label as commentary, I strive to be relatively balanced, as evenhanded as any human can be.

In posts under the heading Patterns in the White Noise I am trying to go beyond the short-term, ADD nature of both weblogs and the so-called MainStream Media (MSM) to find broader patterns that may be of interest or concern.

When I categorize a post as some thoughts… I am in effect “thinking out loud”, trying out thoughts that may be well outside of my opinions and beliefs, trying the “what if” scenario, working out the math to see if the results conform with reality.

Recently, I wrote a post that briefly mentioned the bombing of Hiroshima by the United States near the end of World War II. I was trying to illustrate the limitations of using old thought-models to understand the current world, in other words using limited theories to explain data that went beyond the limitations, hence the categorization and title of the post “Some thoughts …on using Newtonian Physics in an Einsteinian universe“.

My brief mentioning of the bombing of Hiroshima was quoted completely out of context by someone whom I did not think would try to score cheap political points by engaging in such egregious distortions. I am not linking to the offending post because I am not interested in starting a pointless pissing match. Instead, I am trying to illustrate what I see as a grave drawback and potential problem relating to the interaction of weblogs and politics.

What I wrote, in the best context that can be provided without requiring a reading of the entire work, was:

Linear thinking in a complex, multifaceted, nonlinear world is simple-minded at best, and can lead to catastrophe.

Yet, most thinking on both the left and right in America is still linear, us-versus-them, whether “them” consists of the political opposition or “the terrorists”, whatever that nebulous term really means.

For in the end, what does “terrorism” mean? In these days when we are about to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the first use of an atomic weapon in warfare, and where we recently commemorated the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the death camps created in Europe by the fascist regimes led by Nazi Germany the question has not been fully answered, and not the least because of the tactics used by the victors of six decades past.

Germany set up a deliberate mass-murder holocaust directed against a group because of their religion, and Japan practiced genocidal warfare on a scale still not fully recognized in the West. Both Germany and Japan were defeated by the United States and allies using tactics that today would be called “terrorist” by the bombing of cities in nominal aims of disrupting production of vital war materiel in campaigns that by even the standards of the day were indiscriminate. The fires of Dresden and Tokyo stand in accusation of the terrorist aspect of the assaults.

These tactics are defended as what was necessary to defeat evil.

In these days of the Global War on Terror, who has the privilege of defining what is “evil” so that terrorist tactics can be used to defeat it?

If “evil” is that which seeks to destroy your culture and way of life, then can we truly call the Islamofascists “evil” when in their eyes the West, led by the United States, is destroying what they believe to be the basis of Islamic culture and way of life, and they use terrorist tactics to defeat what they perceive as “evil”?

“Evil” and “good”, the two sides of the edgeless coin of bipolar thinking.

One side or the other, impossible for the coin to land on a nonexistent edge that might bridge between the two sides.

I was attempting to turn the “War on Terror” rhetoric on its head in an effort to find out if there was a non-obvious way to end or at least reduce the threat posed by the Islamofascist terrorist organizations.

I was rewarded by an out of context citation that referred to my discussion of the Hiroshima bomb as “someone in the moral equivalence industry” trying “to argue that the dropping of the atomic bomb was an act of terrorism.”

I was very angered by this distortion, and unfortunately I reacted in a way that does not reflect well upon me, much to my regret.

In addition to leaving some rather heated comments to the post that referenced my words far out of context, I put up on Random Fate the following quote:

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
   -F. Scott Fitzgerald

I still believe in the truth behind that statement, but the insult towards the person I perceived had offended me that I included in the accompanying text only added fuel to a pointless fire.

As we all learn the hard way, however, good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from poor judgment.

In the end, it is the hardest lesson in life, what is done is done and cannot be recalled.

Yet in of itself, the incident shows the limitations of our ADD attitudes as we are constructing them in this brave new world of weblogs.

Attempting to “think outside the box” by presenting as rational what is apparently “unthinkable” to some results in cherry-picking of passages out of context to prove a point that has nothing to do with the original context.

Striving to understand instead of simply react seemingly results in more misunderstanding than illumination if the thoughts are expressed aloud.

Expecting people to be willing to make the intellectual effort to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time, especially on topics close to their heart, is unrealistic.

The final conclusion: Assertions that the advent of weblogs encourages a more widespread “discussion” that is more “balanced” than that displayed by the much-derided MSM is a will o’ the wisp that if followed will indeed lead us astray.

We have the same blatant and subtle partisan distortions, the same out of context quoting, the same cherry-picking of events and data; the only difference is it is now being done by people who are NOT being paid to do so.

This is progress?

Until more people are willing to put in the skull-sweat to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function, we will grow more and more unable to cope with the complexities of the world.

As the phrase I used to create the title of my post that was selectively, distortedly quoted said, “We must stop using Newtonian Physics in our Einsteinian universe.”

If you insist on adhering to the old models, cherry-picking your data, selectively quoting when it gives your “side” an ephemeral advantage, whatever the Hell “advantage” means today, go elsewhere and do not bother to read what I post here, for the work I put into these writings is not for you.

If you are willing to look at my arguments as a whole, not focusing on what offends your sensibilities but instead examining why you are offended, then please, read on, comment, argue even, but do NOT pick pieces to assault as if each piece represents the whole of my beliefs. If you do so, you only reveal your own small-mindedness.

The small-minded may well be the death of the grand ideals that are the foundation of the United States.

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