Moving the Goalposts Part I: "vaxxers" and climate denialism

Back to the core dilemma of our era: rousing future-oriented folk (like you) to fight back against a wave of troglodytism that threatens our children's very lives. And no, I am not talking about mere voting or activism, but getting right into the faces of the folks who are fighting with all their might, against tomorrow.

Here's our first example --

On April 12, 2015, we celebrated the 60th anniversary of a vaccine developed by Jonas Salk that prevented polio and drove it close to extinction. Just one result? Soon, a scientist, Jonas Salk, was the most popular man in America. A scientist. Inventor of vaccines.

From the article: “Rumors spread that soft drinks were responsible — or too much rain or heat. In some places people stopped handling paper money and refused to shake hands. But mostly people mobilized to fight the disease by raising money for the March of Dimes, which promised us a life-saving protective vaccine. And, in the end, it gave us two vaccines — the injected killed-virus version of Jonas Salk and the oral live-virus version of Albert Sabin."

Too bad Salk couldn’t come up with a vaccine against stupid. Can you imagine a nationally-beloved scientist today, despite the endless wave of bona fide miracles we benefit from, weekly? The wave of outright scientific miracles has burgeoned... yet merchants of fear and nostalgia in mass media have overwhelmed any sense of gratitude, stoking instead resentment toward every profession of knowledge and skill.  

Moreover, while many  brands of dogmatic idiocy are solely products of a fervid and jibbering-insane American right, our “anti-vaxxer” movement spans the spectrum, sweeping up gullible romantics also on a vapid far-left. One proof among many that the crazy is only 90% on one side. Be wary, also, of the other extreme.

Above all - Call up this article, if only to copy the lead photo, showing several dozen children of my generation, surviving their polio paralysis only inside coffin-like iron lungs.  Show the picture to your troglodyte-romantic friends, and tell them that the War on Science is an addiction of fools who have misplaced their Suspicion of Authority (SoA) reflex.  

Generally, SoA is a healthy reflex! But one requiring careful thought... and not the lowest of all human vices.  

Ingratitude. 

== Are you kidding me? This comes as a surprise? ==

And now, on to the main example...

“The Bank of England has joined growing ranks of those warning of the financial risk posed by a "carbon bubble," which will occur if urgently needed climate change regulations (and efficiency improvements) "render coal, oil, and gas assets worthless.” 

This is, of course 100% the reason why coal barons and petro-sheiks have joined forces to fund the Denialist Cult, which strenuously blocks moderate-compromise efforts at energy efficiency -- and even investments in science to find out what's going on.  They have to unload these soon-to-be stranded assets onto "greater fools." And that will take time.  Hence their frantic delaying tactics.

Why else would the Fox-line be “absolutely no science and no compromise, ever!” Again, from the Bank of England report:

"As the world increasingly limits carbon emissions, and moves to alternative energy sources, investments in fossil fuels and related technologies—a growing financial market in recent decades—may take a huge hit."

Notice how the Fox line keeps changing. Have you heard any "solar and other sustainables will never be competitive" stuff, lately? As recently as a year ago, you still saw that talking point, all over the place. Till the break-even and efficiency curves became so consistently good that it could not be maintained, and articles like this one are taken very seriously in investment circles. Even smart-conservative ones.

Moreover: “Leaving aside the ethics of divestment and pursuing a purely rational economic analysis, the cold hard numbers of putting money into fossil fuels don't look good."

More on this at the end.

== Seven In-Yer-Face Challenges for Climate Trogs ==

Okay now, if we were dealing with reasoning people, I'd recommend using scientific facts, like this one -- Arctic sea ice hit a record low for the winter season - thinning by as much as 65 % between 1975 and 2012. Or the new estimated rates of demolition of the Antarctic and Greenland main ice sheets.

Meanwhile...2014 was the hottest year in recorded history… and the last decade featured several other top-scoring scorchers. The last 300 months -- all of them -- were hotter than the average for that month in the 20th Century.

Alas, we've tried that "proof" approach for decades. See where I crafted my own sweet-reason variant, in the past. And you're welcome to apply those methods, if you encounter one of these fellows who still claims to nurse some logic and neural capacity.

In most cases, though? They just swivel to Fox n' Pals and concoct truthy-sounding factoids that have the incantatory mouth-feel of sciency-cant. 

So, let me offer up an alternative approach

Rehearse these seven confrontational challenges in front of a mirror. Then use them... aggressively... for the sake of our kids.

"Okay, it's time to lay it all down to you denialist cultists… 

1 - You have relentlessly moved the goalposts… backpedaling from jabbering about “ice ages” and “glaciers are advancing!” to “what warming?” … then shifting to “It’s minor natural warming”… then backing up and proclaiming “it’s amazingly coincidental MAJOR but natural warming!”…  

...and so on…  

… and you actually think that no one will remember your earlier ravings?  Such credibility-destroying past behavior? 

Dig this. Your goalpost-moving cheats are known, remembered and noted. Including your even-earlier shouts of “tobacco is harmless” and “marijuana is as bad as Heroin!” and “Cars don’t cause smog!” 

Come on. A sane “climate skeptic” would own up to all that. Admit it. 

A denialist cultist won’t.

See: Distinguishing Climate Skeptics and Climate Deniers.

2 - Fox trots out “scientists” who claim that “the jury is till out” on human causation of climate change. Never mind that these are mostly low-level dolts. None of the top experts in climatology or meteorology have accepted Heritage Foundation and AEI offers of lavish grants, to defect over to the Koch-Saudi side….

… But forget all that. You proclaim “we need more research to verify what’s going on!” 

But then, how do you explain the right’s relentless sabotage of climate research? The Bushite cancellation of satellites and atmospherics programs? Their demands that NASA and NOAA stop even looking at the Earth? The recent Florida bill forbidding any state agency to even think about the consequences of rising seas? You are on a “side” that tries desperately to prevent science.  Proud?

3 - Dig it, we know the truth now.  That the War on Science (e.g the GOP House destroying OTA, packing the science committees with loonies and a million other outrages) is not part of a campaign to deny climate change. 

It’s the other way around. 

The chief purpose of climate denialism is to undermine science -- and every other profession of knowledge and skill that might question the New Oligarchy. Moreover, we are figuring out, at last, why your masters have it in for scientists — the most rambunctious, individualistic, creative, smartest, and most competitive humans our species ever produced. 

The image of scientists that you suckle and cling to is diametrically opposite to true, and only proves that you know no scientists.  Just sayin’.

4 - Ocean acidification,  Ocean acidification,  Ocean acidification,  Ocean acidification,  Ocean acidification,  Ocean acidification,  Ocean acidification,  Ocean acidification,  Ocean acidification,  Ocean acidification,  Ocean acidification,  Ocean acidification,  oh… yeah… and Ocean acidification.  

Or else use de-basing the seas. It gets around one of their trick responses.  You'll see.

Please dig this well. The reason why Fox and pals never mention Ocean Acidification is that there are zero conceivable non-human causes for this extremely blatant trend — caused by rapidly rising, human-generated atmospheric CO2 -- that is already killing the seas.  

Oh and now we know that CO2-induced ocean acidification was responsible for the greatest mass die-off extinction on Planet Earth, far worse than the asteroid-caused doom of the dinosaurs. 

For you denialist-cultists to ignore ocean acidification… shouting “squirrel!” and pointing elsewhere… is the act of psychopaths. Again, just sayin’.

5 - Can you parse the Navier Stokes equations and create a billion-cell, dynamic, real-time, world-wide gas-vapor model of the Earth’s ocean and atmosphere? 

What, no? Hm.

I know some of the men and women who do that - who transformed the old 4 hour joke of a “weather report” into the ten day miracle that you hypocritically use, to plan your vacations. Those people are smarter than you! Much smarter and more honest than the Fox-hired jabber-mouth shills who provide your incantations and noxious jpeg snarks against science. 

Heck, they're smarter than me, too. And all of them… all of those geniuses… are really worried.  

(Please… oh, please… next time you have a medical problem, treat physician experts the way you treat scientists! Ignore their advice and third, fourth… hundredth opinions. At least maintain the saving grace of consistency.)

6 - BTW the “grant-hugging” nostrum for why all scientists are lemmings, following a mewling herd — yes, that Fox-Ailesheimers dogma — ignores the fact that the weather modelers get billions from insurance companies, airlines, TV networks, shippers, military and a myriad others. Compare those billions to the few millions generated by climate-change studies. (More, even, than those "join the dark side" grants the the Koch-Saudis offer as bounties for any top scientists to come over and tout denialism. None have - so much for scientists as money-grubbers.) 

In other words, anyone who credits the “grant-hugging” incantation is a proved idiot.

But here's the dare.  Find for us one place where the Koch-Murdoch-Adelson-Saudi machine has tried to tabulate the "grants" that have supposedly bribed a million scientists into skipping along to a party line. 

Far more telling... have you - even once - asked for such a list? Basic Journalism, Hannity could do it with his pocket change. Yet, you never asked. I repeat: you never asked.

It's like when you nodded, accepting Glen Beck's rant that Fox's enemy, George Soros, was so scary because he "toppled eight foreign governments!"  In fact, believe me, the accusation is true! Soros did help topple eight governments! But again, you never asked "Hey Glen, which governments did that commie Soros topple?" 

If you ever saw the list... the eight foreign governments that commie George Soros instrumentally helped to topple (in fact, there were ten)... well, you would never watch Glen Beck or Fox again, without emitting gales of laughter.

 Indeed, the greatest crime of confederates like you? It is simple incuriosity.

7- Here’s the big one. 

This is the one no one else mentions (proving that a lot of those on the pro-science side are terrible debaters.) But it goes to the heart and gut of this “controversy.” It proves which side is totally dishonest, short-sighted and effectively insane.  Here goes...

… Even if the 98% of smart folks and scientists who are worried about human generated climate change prove to be 100% wrong -  (hey, it’s happened, just a few times, that such a well-based consensus model has proved wrong; rarely, but it has happened) — even if that proves out, the big question remains this: 

       Why Won't You Negotiate?   

Seriously... why spend two decades blocking any and all research, any and all investments in energy efficiency, any and all incentives to wean ourselves off coal and oil? Actually believing that it's black vs white.  That your opponents want to "ruin the economy" and make us all "shiver in the dark."

Who on this planet would have benefited from the campaign to make you take such a rigid stance?

Good question. I'll deal with it in Moving the Goalposts: Part II.

YOU can start a shift in U.S. politics

You Americans out there: it's time.  The primaries are approaching, which means you and all your friends have a chance to vote in the only 2014 elections that truly matter… the ones in the spring, not the fall!  Tell everyone you know to use this one little trick and we all, as individuals, can help defeat gerrymandering… and thus help de-radicalize American politics.  YOU can  do it.  By getting all your friends to re-register using this one little trick…

== The parties are the same? ==

That is the new mantra being fed to depressed "ostrich republicans," who can tell that their party has gone insane, but are scratching for any excuse to hold on to their old loyalties… "They're all corrupt statists... so let's assume the dems are worse and hold your nose and vote GOP!"

Look, I am conservative enough to prefer a budget that's close to balanced, and libertarian enough to think government should be very tightly scrutinized and always need to satisfy a burden of proof, that its services would not be better performed by… us.  I show such trends -- toward a devolution of government activity to tech-empowered citizens -- in EXISTENCE.  Indeed, anyone who shares those desires… along with wanting a scientific, flat-and-open, just and entrepreneurial and future-looking civilization… would have to be crazy to support the current (hijacked) version of the GOP.

One graphic shows clearly how gullible are all the watchers of Fox News, who actually believe the rant that Democrats are the fiscally irresponsible big-spenders.  It starts with the Clinton era surpluses then shows how revenues initially dropped under the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy… without any "supply side" (SS) rebound.  (SS has never predicted correctly, even once.)

Watch the the spectacular (9/11/Iraq/Afghanistan) rise in spending - and in taxation (now pounding the middle class) -  under republican rule, then even steeper, after they torched the economy and revenues plunged in Bush's last two years. Then?  The chart shows federal spending almost perfectly FLAT under Obama, proving the one truth that should make any fiscal conservative vote democratic.  That the 2nd derivative of deficit is always negative under demmies and almost always positive under goppers.

Show this.  Remind your crazy uncle that we narrowly avoided a second great depression.

This is not about classic left-right issues.  It is about insanity.

== Wisdom from … Osama bin Laden? ==

Anyone -- including Buckley-Goldwater conservatives -- who believes that the currently constituted Republican Party -- the version owned by Rupert Murdoch -- with its heritage of Bushite calamity -- should ever again be trusted with anything more than a burnt match, should contemplate the following quotation from Osama bin Laden.

"All that we have to do is to send two mujahedin to the furthest point East to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaeda, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies.

"This is in addition to our having experience in using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers, as we, alongside the mujahedin, bled Russia for ten years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat... So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy."  

-- Osama bin Laden

It's not that Osama wasn't our enemy.  He deserved to die (note who killed him) and the Taliban who assisted him deserved to fall.  But did we have to chase him in exactly the fashion that he wanted us to?  In exactly the way that the 9/11 attacks were designed to entice? Plunging -- Russia-style -- into a futile, absurdly senseless exercise in so-called "nation-building," into a quagmire attrition of insurgency in Asia?  Didn't we learn that mistake in Vietnam?

Note that my complaint is in no way "leftist." It is as one who actually thinks rather well of Pax Americana -- compared to all other eras across all of human history. As one who believes that PA must remain a strong and calming world leader for at least another decade or two or three. One who knows many generals and admirals, most of whom (at one level or another) have expressed horror over being so badly led during the Bush years.

Frankly, I do not care if this quotation attributed to bin Laden is real or an urban legend. It blatantly expresses what the 9/11 attacks were for. And the Bushites knew this when they plunged us into trillions of dollars of waste and thirteen years of agony, leaving only two victors on the battlefield. One was Iran…. and the other group was Bush family companies like Haliburton and Bechtel.

(See the extremely different ways that (fundamentally) Democrats and Republicans wage war. )

This is not about who's a pussy.  It is about who is competent.  Who preserves the reserves and keeps readiness high. Who is smart enough to avoid blatant traps that only overcompensating small-organ twits would fall for. The kind of overcompensating twits who are the opposite of Patriots, no matter how loudly they yell "Yoo Hess Hay!"

== Return of the Feudal Pyramid ===

 Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World by Nicholas Shaxson, takes a somewhat radicalized investigative expose of how the corporate world uses tax havens to shirk paying its share of taxes. This costs the United States alone 100 billion dollars in lost revenue each year.  As you dive into this subject, the only question that keeps popping up is "am I being insufficiently radical in my anger over this?"

Now we see why the mantra of the new-right and of the hyper-libertarians is "death to all government" as a matter of fundamental principle, instead of the older movement to minimize or reform.  It must be absolute war, because only civil servants stand in the way of utter feudal oligarch. Hence civil servants must be "statist" satans… nothing less. Let's ignore that for 6000 years the enemy of freedom was oligarchic feudalism, whose rebirth is chronicled in books like this… till the lords forbid books like this altogether.

Liberal moderates can fight back by reclaiming "the first liberal" - Adam Smith - as their very own. His call for flat-open-fair-accountabble competitive markets included uplifting all children to a level playing field.  A level field whose destruction is the sole and central goal of the New Lords.

Will the 21st Century Actually Begin in 2014?

(NOTE: a somewhat expanded version of this speculative essay appeared syndicated on the Bloomberg network, at the very end of 2013.)

……………………..

As if you didn't already have enough to be nervous about, here's something creepy to ponder as the year 2014 gets under way.

This what-if isn't technological, social, political, or even science-fictional. Rather, it’s a bit of wholly unscientific, superstitious pattern-recognition. That the last two centuries (and possibly more) didn't "start" at their official point, the turning of a calendar from 00 to 01. That wasn't when they began in essence, nor when they first bent the arc of history.

No. Each century effectively began in its 14th year.

Think about it. The first decade of the 20th century was filled with hope and a kind of can-do optimism that was never seen again -- not after the horrific events of 1914 shattered any vision that a new and better age would arrive without pain. Yet, until almost the start of World War I, 19th century progress seemed unstoppable and ever-accelerating.

Consider the world of 1913, when regular middle-class folks in the U.S., U.K., France, Germany and so on were acquiring unexpected wonders: clothes-washing machines, gas stoves, gas and then electric lighting, indoor plumbing, refrigeration, vaccinations, telephones, radios, gas cooking stoves, motor cars. Stepping outside you would see and hear  human beings flying through the sky!

Science was pouring forth what seemed unalloyed goodness.  New dyes and industrial textiles doubled a working family's access to fresh and beautiful clothes. Cheap iron bedsteads kept cheap spring mattresses clean, making sleep both healthier and far more comfortable. Nations were banning child labor and providing free schooling. Astronomers discovered what galaxies were. Physicists were pushing their pure and harmless science to fantastic frontiers. And the Haber-Bosch process  brought cheap fertilizers that tripled crops, as chemistry proved itself to be everybody's friend.

Think our era is similarly fast-changing? Just compare the kitchen of today with a kitchen of 1950. Sure, everything nowadays is shinier, bigger, smarter. Still, a person from 1950 could use our apparatus with fluid familiarity. But the drudgery-saddled housewife of 1880 would blink in bedazzlement at what her daughter used in 1913, enabling that daughter to start contemplating fulfilling jobs outside the home. Life was changing at a pace never-before seen, and mostly for the better.

Sure, all those techno-advances continued after World War I. Social changes such as women getting the vote were harbingers of more to come. But after 1914, the naiveté was gone. People realized that the 20th century would be one of harsh struggle accompanying every step of advancement. And along the way to hard-won better times, the age would spiral downward first, into the deepest pit that humanity ever knew, before our parents (or grandparents) clawed their way out of the nadir of 1944 -- the focal year of a century that truly began in 1914.

All right, that's just one data point. Is there another? Well, look at 1814, when Napoleon's fall led to the Congress of Vienna and the so-called Concert of Europe that made possible the continent's longest extended period of overall peace, as the great powers turned from fighting bloody wars to perfecting their colonial empires. Or aloof back another hundred years, to when the War of Spanish Succession culminated -- in 1714 -- in what came to be called the "French Century."  In each case, the fourteenth year marked a dramatic shift in tone and theme, so much so that they represented the real beginnings of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.

(Indeed, there were major, threshold events in 1414 and 1614… but I am not here to make some case for mystical-numerologiucal patter!  Rather, I have a different point, entirely, as will become clear.)

Suppose the pattern holds -- and remember this is just a thought experiment -- what might it mean about the true 21st century? What theme will typify or represent its arc?

First, let's dismiss one parochial notion -- that the terror attacks of September 2001 were the major break point between centuries. Nonsense. We were engaged in the same struggle before and after. The U.S. shrugged off more damage during any month of World War II. Indeed, nothing could be more “twen-cen” or 20th century than the overwrought hysteria that some (not all) Americans apply to "9/11." Much of the world assigns no particular relevance to that date.

Oh, we are still in the 20th. Consider the pervading doom and gloom we see around us, right now. Post-apocalyptic tales and dystopias fill our fiction, films and politics, especially the Young Adult genre where today's teens seem terminally allergic to stories containing hope. How very `60s. And `70s. … and so on.

There was a similar sense of apocalypse in 1813 Europe, but at least there were good reasons, after decades of ferocious struggle that seemed poised to last forever. What excuse do we have, in a time when per capita violence has been plummeting for decades? When the fraction of kids -- worldwide -- who are well-fed and in school is higher than ever?  Sure, the planet faces dire problems. But the things keeping us from addressing pollution, oppression, climate change and all of that are political inanities. The War on Science that has hobbled innovation, for example, can be won if we do one thing -- tell the gloomcasters of both left and right to get out of our way and let us get back to problem-solving.

Indeed, the only real obstruction we seem to face is a dullard-sickness of attitude, dismally ignoring every staggering accomplishment since 1945. Hence the question: Is it possible that a new theme for our 21st century requires only that we snap out of our present funk?

If only. That would truly be the Dawning of an Age of Aquarius, forecast by hippies long before the old 20th was anywhere near done with us, but arriving at last. You shake your heads, but it could happen.

We can still choose our own fate. Next year, we might decide to cheer up and rediscover the can-do optimism that was crushed by the tsar and kaiser and a small group of insipid, inbred monarchs, exactly 100 years ago.

We could choose to become problem-solvers, in part, because (let's imagine) someone in 2014 discovers a simple, cheap and safe IQ-boosting pill letting millions finally see past their hypnotizing dogmas. Or suppose politicians decide to get over their self-serving snits and resume the adult craft of negotiation. Or some cable news owner decides to rediscover citizenship. Or some brave director releases an inspiring film that astounds people with an unexpected idea called hope.

Or else... go ahead and wallow in the obvious notion that 2014 will see a violent ruction of its own. A phase transition into a century whose theme we'll all regret. Or we’ll see a continuing retreat from confident civilization, a turning away from the Enlightenment Dream, relapsing into fearful obeisance to a leader, or New Lords, or some simplistic ideal.

That, too, could take place. In which case, please don't give me any prediction points. All I did was spot a pattern. I don't want respect from a people who would allow something like that to happen.

…..

--Reprinted from: What If the 21st Century Begins in 2014? in Bloomberg Press.

Where do we stand - verging on 2014?

On New Years Eve, the Bloomberg system will syndicate worldwide my year-end essay -- more of a scary-provocative story -- about the real meaning of "the fourteenth year." 

== Reasons to believe a better world is possible ==

I have long inveighed against a pair of matched personality flaws: that some on the far-left seem compelled only to chide, never praise… and that savanarolas on the right use that chiding as an excuse to denounce progress, in general.

Both extreme wings are crazy, of course.  The world and its people and ecosystem etc do need to be saved! We have a full plate of vital projects and bad things to repair. We need to move forward if our grandchildren are to survive… and I speak to this in many places, including EARTH (1989).

Still, I have hammered on the cynically-chic pessimism expressed by playground bullies of both extremes, declaring - contrary to all evidence - that everything is getting worse.

The disproof is all around us, in steep declines of per capita violence, worldwide and steep rises in the fraction of children who live in clean homes and go to school.  No possible combination of past civilizations accomplished a fraction of what this one has -- an assertion that does not insult the best of our ancestors, who strove to prepare the way for us.  As we are duty-bound to stop cynical, dyspeptic moaning and prepare the way for better-greater grandchildren.

So let me begin this year-end political round-up with more good news, that is sure to infuriate some of you! Louis Gave - a well-known investment guru - pointed out these additional milestones:

 "The United Nations recently released a heartening update on its ‘millennium goals’ for the developing world, with many of its 2015 targets on the way to being met, or indeed already met. The target to halve the number of people living on less than US$1.25 per day was achieved in 2010; the proportion of undernourished people fell from 23% of the developing world in 1990-92 to under 15% in 2010-2012; more than 2 billion people gained access to improved sources of drinking water. 

"The list goes on but suffice to say that never in history have so many people across the globe lived so comfortably. This reflects the fact that with global GDP set to exceed US$74 trillion this year, never has the world produced this much."

Economist John Mauldin adds: "New energy production (and new forms of energy), robotics, nanotech, the second (or is it the third?) wave of the communications revolution, and the amazing discoveries in biotech are all unfolding before our eyes. Global trade is expanding, and slowly but surely governments are changing. An ebb and flow thing, to be sure, but the tide is clearly lifting more boats than ever."

To be clear:  I do not call any of this cause for Pollyanna complacency -- (the fear that makes liberals and leftists suppress good news) -- but rather for guardedly optimistic militancy to keep all trends positive.

Nor is there a lack of counter-balancing bad news or heavy items dumped on our to-do agenda!  For example, ever since 2001, America has had trouble sharing in the rising boats effect -- even as we propel it in other lands by our trade deficits. With the rates of hunger in this country actually going up as a result of deliberate politics, with skyrocketing wealth disparities threatening neo-feudalism, and a tetanus-locked political caste unable to grapple with desperate economic and ecological problems, one thing is clear -- that Olde Enemies of progress are baying and chasing our sleigh.

If this goes on, the world will continue its march upward and forward.  But America will forfeit any leading role, sinking into a mist of anger and nostalgia and civil war.

Still, if you are personally unable to parse the vast number of good news items on the other side of the scale and weigh them in-balance, then YOU are part of the problem!  Because only those who see and acknowledge what is working are even remotely qualified to chide us into trying new endeavors.

Folks who want progress, but then deny that progressivism ever worked in the past, are not just very bad salesmen.  They are crazy.

=== Back to worries ===

Oh, but the To-Do list is immense and worrisome! Just because I am guardedly optimistic, that does not stop me from feeling militant about some things!  For example:

I cannot recommend too-highly the documentary INSIDE JOB -- laying bare a calamitous chain of delusions, inanities and cheating that led to the 2008 crash and the near demolition of the American (and world) financial systems. I slid it into the player with mixed feelings, expecting something of a polemic in the style of Michael Moore -- a fellow who is often on-target but who makes me cringe with his excesses and often one-sided righteousness. (Oh, I watch Moore, but taking notes for things to double check.)

INSIDE JOB was far better. Featuring in-depth interviews with financial experts and insiders, this sobering, Oscar-winning documentary (directed by Charles H. Ferguson) presents in comprehensive detail the pervasive and deep-rooted Wall Street corruption that led to the global economic meltdown of 2008.

The flick is not just for liberals and/or leftists. You folks right-of-center desperately need to watch INSIDE JOB. It should be of special interest to those who do believe that capitalism can be made to work!  Indeed, if you want capitalism to work, and to stop being the top victim of a rising lordly-oligarchy of cheaters, then you should especially want to get informed.

(Ancillary note: I kept notes in this one, too. There were dozens of places where the producers glossed over or ignored ways in which the system did work right. But that hardly matters. There are thieves out there who do not deserve jail.  They deserve tumbrels.)

== Denying the heinous infamy ==

Memes take a while to percolate, I know.  But will someone add this to my Foresight Wiki?  Back in the late 1980s I used to regularly publish op-eds calling for the "Erastratos Effect"… denying terrible villains the reward of seeing their names go down in history.  In a 1999 issue of Salon Magazine (updated last year): "Names that live in infamy: Killers want notoriety. Let's not give it to them" -- I argued that society has a perfect right to remember heinous criminals any way it chooses.  And we could choose derisive contempt.

At last, the idea is gaining traction.  In the aftermath of a recent, gruesome suburban Denver shooting, families of victims and law enforcement officials have begun urging journalists and public officials to avoid using the gunmen’s names and photos in public. The first notable effect of this trend came last year, when When President Obama flew to Colorado in July 2012 to memorialize the 12 people killed in an Aurora movie theater. He agreed not to mention the gunman’s name. And on Saturday, the sheriff investigating a shooting inside the halls of Arapahoe High School in suburban Denver announced he had made the same decision.

This New York Times article, A Plea to Deny Gunmen their Quest for Infamy, takes a simplistic view and I suggest elsewhere that there are ways to do this without engaging in "censorship."  But at least the ball is rolling.  One variant I just thought-of?  Identify the perp by his membership in whatever group helped to enable his actions.  "NRA Member 524239B12" might be a salutary appellation.

== Bitcoin and other non-standard payment systems ==

Recently I posted a rumnination-tutorial on Bitcoin that got a lot of viewers. I've been toiling in this realm for another reason, though, which I'll get to in a minute.

First, Paul Krugman has a very interesting article about Bitcoin, gold-mining and the relatively greater value of (responsibly managed) paper money: "(Adam) Smith is often treated as a conservative patron saint, and he did indeed make the original case for free markets. It’s less often mentioned, however, that he also argued strongly for bank regulation — and that he offered a classic paean to the virtues of paper currency. Money, he understood, was a way to facilitate commerce, not a source of national prosperity — and paper money, he argued, allowed commerce to proceed without tying up much of a nation’s wealth in a “dead stock” of silver and gold."

Mind you, as the world's top Keynsian, Krugman is only right about 70% of the time.  I'd be more critical, if his opponents in the Austrian School weren't wrong 80% or more of the time… with their Supply Side associates batting a pure and perfect 0%.

But back to my own obsession. Micro-payments. I have been poking at ideas with others, that boil down to this: we need a way for internet browsers to empower surfers pay a nickel for an article they want to read online. A one-cent or five-cent or ten-cent button that would let any of us hand over a small increment of value for something we choose to use for short time. (I wrote about this in The Transparent Society in 1997.)

There is a mythology that "people won't pay, they want everything online to be free!" But that is baloney. Only a fool would refuse to pay a nickel for access to something she or he values enough to read for ten minutes (at 30 cents per hour.)  No… the issue is convenience! We do not want surfing to be slowed down by paywalls and passwords. Anything that takes more than one-click is criminal. But I know a way around that…

…and I believe micro-payments will not just open a billion dollar industry.  They could also save professional journalism.  Which presently is bordering on extinction.

== Cyphers are Wafers ==

But getting back to the BIG issues of freedom, privacy and all that, let me offer this over-broad and deliberately provocative assertion: Anyone who calls encryption a panacea is a religious fanatic.

I described this to the cypherpunks way back in 1996… that encryption can be broken by spies and cops and competitors in a plethora of old and new-fashioned ways… such as the different sounds that each of the keys on your keyboard make, allowing any room recording to become a transcription keystroke-logger. Oh, by all means, learn and improve your security!  But know that your favorite cypher-ware is not a six-gun "equalizer" and odds-are that someone could see-all, if they cared.

Oh, but it gets much worse.  "Thanks to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, we already knew the NSA played a central role in promoting a flawed formula for generating random numbers, which if used in encryption, essentially gives the spies easy access to computing systems. A piece of RSA software, bSafe, became the most significant vector for the security flaw. The encryption tools which hundreds of millions of people rely on to protect the private information are significantly weaker as a result."  Now it seems that -- according to some reports -- the NSA additionally bribed the security firm RSA to leave the back door to computers all over the world open.

Now RSA is fervently denying the allegation that they sold NSA keys to the back-door.  But in fact, it does not matter. There are a jillion-bazillion methods and work-arounds that cypher guys blithely ignore as they armwave sugarplum visions of encrypted utopia, without ever - even once - studying the range of secret police methods used by powers from Sumeria to the Okhrana. It is not pragmatic defense of freedom… it is religion.

And it is not how we will prevent Big Brother.

== How to live in the modern world? ==

Finally, let's circle back to that first matter… how to be a person who pragmatically and effectively  pushes for improving the world, without rendering yourself impotent with smug-sanctimonious finger-wagging?

Bertrand Russell’s Ten Commandments for Living in a Healthy Democracy are much wiser than anything else I have run across in a good long while.  I've been trying to live by them. Do give them a look.  They include:

1: Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.

2: Do not think it worthwhile to produce belief by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.

3: Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed.

4: When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.

This particular page goes on to offer Russell's definition of "liberalism." And caution is necessary, since he lived long ago and that word has been kicked all over the map in subsequent decades.

"But the liberal attitude does not say that you should oppose authority. It says only that you should be free to oppose authority, which is quite a different thing. The essence of the liberal outlook in the intellectual sphere is a belief that unbiased discussion is a useful thing and that men should be free to question anything if they can support their questioning by solid arguments. The opposite view, which is maintained by those who cannot be called liberals, is that the truth is already known, and that to question it is necessarily subversive."

Here Russell is stunningly on-target in the modern context.  For indeed, his definition reveals the yawning divide between "liberals" and "leftists."

Indeed, the greatest of all of Sean Hannity's towering lies is the one he repeats daily, that a "liberal" is the same species (or even phylum) as the kooky "leftists" he describes with grotesque anecdotes about this or that ludicrous-pushy political-correctness police-person.

They may be allies at the moment (liberals and leftists), out of necessity (given the screeching madness that has taken over Barry Goldwater's conservatism). But they are uneasy allies, since leftists believe that the expansion of inclusion and care must be a coercive process, while liberals want progress to come 90%+ from persuasion and negotiated compromise.

Also from Russell: "Liberalism is not so much a creed as a disposition. It is, indeed, opposed to creeds.”

This latter point explains the main difference with Leftists, who do respond with rage when you question dogma.  It also explains why rightists like Hannity conflate the two.  For on the right there IS uniformity of essential dogma.  All of their recent "civil wars" - say between tea-partiers and Fox-supported establishment Republicans - have been over minutiae of tactics.  Conservatism has become a creed, with Roger Ailes its pope.

Likewise, libertarianism has long abandoned any devotion to pragmatic competition -- touted by Adam Smith and Heinlein and Hayek -- in favor of incantatory quasi-religious doctrines of solipsism spread by acolytes of Rand, Mises and Rothbard. Sanctimony is its core agenda. Adam Smith's enlightenment -- including his contempt for monopoly and wealth disparity and oligarchy -- is spurned with contempt.

Hence, staring at their enemies, it is only human for those on the left-right-randian wings to assume that "liberals must be dogmatically driven, as I am."

But it ain't so.  Among the four main political segments of the American political landscape, only liberals are American, in their devotion to pragmatic and testable experiments, "whatever works," and negotiated compromise… all of which their authoritarian, dogmatic leftist allies despise.

(Dig this well… that it PAINS me to write the preceding paragraph! I consider myself to be a Smithian/Heinleinian libertarian with some liberal tendencies. But with the LP and the GOP having abandoned Adam Smith and pragmatic common sense entirely, I have no recourse but to negotiate with the one sane group that remains in American political life.)

Liberals need to make this distinction clear and disavow any fealty to the hoary and lobotomizing "left-right axis."  Admit that you must be allies with your lefty friends… the New Confederacy's blatant pathology and civil war mania require it.

But the Left, too, is mad. Perhaps even 10% as crazy as the red-confederates whom Rupert and his Saudi co-owners of Fox have riled into a froth.  Yes, that mad.

And they will remain loony-birds, so long as they refuse to admit that progress is possible.  That much of it has happened already, and that science and open argument are preferable to incantatory doctrines.