Poking both right and left in the eye

This time I will aim jabs in both directions! Because even you… yes you… indulge in some pretty simplistic stuff. This is Contrary Brin... and hence, though I think one 'side' is a lot more-wrong than the other, I despise the notions of oversimplifying 'sides.'

First though… is this the start of my prediction coming true, about a Donald Trump veer to the center?  Trump proposes to double Clinton's spending on infrastructure.  Yes, all he's done is take a popular Democratic platform goal and multiply it by two, in order to seem even more populist.  But that's exactly what I originally forecast, back when I thought that DT was a disciplined and brilliant conniving manipulator, instead of just a gut-reflexive one.

It could still happen.  The huge silver lining to a Trump candidacy would be if - at the debates - he announced "of course I now understand that climate change is real and that Supply Side 'economics' is not."  If he did that... and his torching of the GOP forced American conservatives to re-evaluate the confederate madness inflicted by Rupert Murdoch... then there could be real benefits.  But no... he is way too impulsive and ill-disciplined.  Which brings up the opposite extreme possibility --

Might Donald Trump duck out of the Presidential Debates, as he did several times during the Primaries? His whining about “rigged against me” this-or-that have become routine.  But this analyst tells the history of presidential debates and how they might vanish. 

The wild card? If Libertarian Gary Johnson achieves 15% in polls, he can get onstage with HC and DT.  And yes, the first order effect of helping give twenty million fiscal conservatives who don't care about bathrooms a home away from the mad GOP-confederacy sounds alluring. But DP strategists know there'd be a downside.  Especially if Green Party's Jill Stein wrangle a slot... or whines from the sidelines.

America’s favorite capitalist – the Oracle of Omaha – Warren Buffett, whose investment brilliance and down home modesty has won him hero status, once boggled the world by making his principal heir… Bill Gates!  In the sense that the unassuming Buffett needs no fancy charitable institution named after him.  So he picked the best-run one he could find (sorry Clintons) and will leave most of his wealth to the Gates Foundation. A rarity, he is admired across all walks of life and from moderate left through moderate right. 

The far left won’t favor a capitalist under any conditions, even when the true enemy of flat-open-fair capitalism is, in fact, feudalism. As for the far right, they know very well how Buffett despises oligarchy and Supply Side Voodoo so-called “economics.”  Now see Buffett campaigning for Hillary Clinton in Nebraska and demanding that Donald Trump release his tax records.  You want a businessman?  I got your businessman, right here.

== Why no hearings about any of this? ==

President Obama just ordered release of the infamous “28 pages” from the 9/11 report, that GW Bush declared secret, pages showing that the hijackers "were in contact with, and received support or assistance from, individuals who may be connected to the Saudi Government." No real surprise there, as this Salon report shows: “Saudi Arabia has been a major source of financing to rebel and terrorist organizations since the 1970s,” the European Parliament wrote in a 2013 report, adding, “countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Kuwait do too little to stop rich and conservative donors from financing terrorists through charitable and religious institutions.”

There’s lots more, but again the question rises: why did the FBI not question - way back in 2001 - the scores of royals and Saudi government officials and radical Salafist-Wahabbi activists who were in the U.S. at the time of the 9/11 attacks, many of whom were shown to have known or even given money to 9/11 attackers? To what extent did GW Bush run interference so they could leave the country, without questioning?  Above all… why were no Benghazi-style hearings held about that? Or the billions in raw cash that Dick Cheney sent to Baghdad, that promptly and simply disappeared?

(Could be one of two dozen reasons that the Republican Party Convention in Cleveland never even mentioned the names of their previous two presidents? Something never before seen.)

But that was just the beginning of a horrendous series of treasons that included lying about “weapons of mass destruction” in order to send America into quagmire wars costing trillions of dollars and thousands of US lives. (Oh, and about a million non-American lives.) Wars whose only clear beneficiaries were Iran, the Saudis and Cheney family companies. 

Just remember that the GOP in Congress never raised a single question about any of that, next time you hear “emails” or “Benghazi.”  Stunning hypocrites.

Oh but now I will shock by aiming a poke at a shibboleth of the left.

== Proving we’re not monolithic… I dissent on trade! ==

Sorry, but I do not like party catechisms and litmus tests. And even though well over half of the lunacy in current American life comes from a raving, anti-science and anti-fact confederacy… well.. there are some ‘democratic' dogmas that I deem to be premature or rash or ill-considered.  One of those is reflexive opposition to globalized world trade.

Take the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and NAFTA. These are deemed top enemies by populists of both left and right – one of the few areas in which their rhetorics overlap. But what I've seen makes me lean toward support for TPP.

For one thing, it welds the nations of SE and East Asia together with the U.S. in ways that help to maintain the one best thing that ever happened to the world, the American Pax or unprecedented world peace, that all of you shrug and simply take for granted, but that – compared to 6000 years of grueling-awful history, is a damned miracle. 

Globalized trade is directly responsible for the fact that ¾ of today’s children come home with schoolbooks each day to dwellings that have light and toilets and refrigerators. The stunning failure of globalization opponents to take that into account could qualify as inadvertent or cryptic racism.

Have some of the world’s elites also benefited, disproportionately, from globalization?  Damn straight, and I am on record for wanting and demanding actions to correct that imbalance that has flowed into the gaping maws of cheaters.  Look up the “Helvetian War.”  But that aspect can be solved via rigorous, militant and aggressive transparency - by vigorous politics demanding re-negotiation - without needing to choke off the one thing that uplifted billions around the world, more than all the foreign aid and charity combined.

TPP also sets new rules on labor and ecology that the signatory nations must obey and that brings them all much closer to responsible standards. Sure… folks in enlightened countries like New Zealand complain that their environmental rules may be weakened under TPP!  And am I worried about that?  Hell yes! See below where I talk about RENEGOTIATION. Still, just getting Vietnam and Laos etc aboard with basic enforcement of bans on child labor and pollution will be wonderful.

More TPP benefits. It protects intellectual property better. And don’t for a minute shrug that off. American inventiveness is the goose that has laid the world’s golden eggs for 70 years.  It is time to save the goose from short-sighted fools who would destroy the engine that uplifted the world. 

Above all, it sets a new plateau that China knows will become the standard and if they don't start living by these rules, they will not be invited to the party.

Now a concession!  Folks have good reason to be angry at the secrecy under which TPP was negotiated.  In fairness, it was a complex deal and early press could have messed up everything.  But indeed, I am pissed too.  Details should have been leaked long ago so that western political protests could have been added, coercing even higher labor and environmental and equal-trade standards.

Here’s the deal though… it’s probably not too late for that.  Clinton, in particular, is now behooved to shelve the TPP, as it stands and demand a renegotiation, compelled by the US voters.

== But there’s an even deeper reason ==

What bugs me most of all is the subliminal racism and stunning lack of ability to see long term self-interest on the part of those who have decried – for example – the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA.

Those who denouce NAFTA for losing some American jobs are fools who miss a key point.  It was and remains stunningly, staggeringly, spectacularly in our interest for Mexico to become a prosperous, middle class country.  And NAFTA is the biggest thing doing that, as we speak. Rapidly, right now. 

When that happens it will be easier for a prosperous, continental North America to defend a border with - say Guatemala - than for the U.S. to build some infantile-stupid giant wall against a poverty-stricken Mexico.

The latter is the gopper fixation now... and it is obsolete!  Immigration from Mexico is now NEGATIVE! Mexico is on the rise and we helped do that and they know it.  We are helping make another Canada, next door, and boy will that be a happier soft landing than any alternative.

Failure to recognize that aspect of NAFTA is a stupidity shared across the spectrum, from right to left.  Already Mexico is importing vastly more from the U.S. than it did before, and that will rise as this investment pays off.

Were there corruptly derived components to NAFTA or TPP?  I am sure. And I would address those with fierce measures to strip elites of all secrecy.  But the self-righteously indignant hate of trade treaty opponents, who did not try reading or parsing or rank-ordering good and bad portions, meant that they could not use their ire to force negotiations that might retain the good and reduce the bad.

In fact, that possibility… “let’s see if we can get the good stuff and eliminate the bad”… never occurs to dogmatists.  Of the sort that infest a wing of one of the U.S. parties… and that comprise the sum total of nearly all members of the other party, nowadays.

Canceling TPP entirely will not help the child laborers that it would ban and send to school, nor the improved environmental codes Vietnam and Malaysia would have to obey, nor the inspectors for health and safety in factories, nor the auditors requiring payment of royalties for stolen American inventions. It won't make Japan open up its markets to nearly all our farm exports, which TPP demands. It WILL embolden China and cause new allies to scurry away from us.

The fact that all of this will come as a surprise to most TPP opponents is just sad. There was something worth improving.  Your opposition could have been the stick in a carrot-and-stick campaign to improve it.

Instead, knowing nothing but reflex, you killed a potential egg-laying goose.

  

== And finally… ==

“A man with a conviction is a hard man to change.” So opens Leon Festinger’s account of doomsday cults and conspiracy believers in When Prophecy Fails. “Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.” Festinger coined the term “Cognitive dissonance” - for when reality clashes with our deepest convictions. We’d rather recalibrate reality than amend our worldview.

To be clear, this applies to all dogmatists - or humans. Possibly even you. Indeed, I admit that I must struggle to read, rather than contemptuously skim, when presented with facts  that might force some adjustment.

Read this article. Scientists are trained to say: “I might be wrong” and to allow contradictory evidence to sway them. And still, it is not the mantra but the fiercely competitive quality of science that keeps it moving forward against obstinate human nature.  Alas, many other fields - especially politics - have no such feedback loops.  Indeed, I knew we were in for delusional times, when Congress banished  from Capitol Hill all the geeks and fact checkers of the Office of Technology Assessment. The criminal traitors who performed that raving-dogmatic act should not be qualified to be dog catcher.

Oh… this  article is also truly informative about the Mt Pelerin conference of 1947, in Switzerland, where neo-liberal (or ultra free market) conservative economics got its momentum to take over the world. Which sounds a lot like the “trillies conference” in EXISTENCE, portrayed happening exactly a century later, very nearby the same locale.

The GOP vs. the U.S. Military: Part Six- Purging the Officer Corps, Indoctrinating the Ranks

* The Danger Grows...

Our topic is an ongoing campaign by President George W. Bush and the Neoconservatives to undermine, discredit, suborn and crush the professionals who make up the U.S. Civil Service, the intelligence and law enforcement communities, the courts, scientists, and any others who might stand in the way of their principal program -- the unlawful usurpation of unaccountable power.

Foremost among these skilled and dedicated public servants -- who have been the Bushites’ first and worst victims -- are members of the United States Military. As I have been showing, our men and women in uniform are harassed, overworked and undersupported. The services are worn down and misused, apolitical traditions shredded, and careers terminated... especially whenever a brave officer or enlisted person stands up to protest.

Whether this destructive process is driven by obstinate dogmatism -- or something diabolically deliberate -- is left to opinion. (Or else, it is a matter for our harried professionals to uncover.)

Nevertheless the overall outcome is unmistakable. It appears that flag-waving jingoism and noisy posturing do not guarantee genuine support for our troops. Indeed, they seem to correlate with the exact opposite.

* The Great Purge

In Parts One and Two we discussed the demolition of our nation’s reputation for invincibility and our stature on the moral high ground. Two traits of inestimable value, even in strictly military terms. But those are still abstractions, so Part 3 focused on the marrow -- the plummet in readiness of the United States army and Marines. A situation that is horrifying, the more you learn.

In Part 4 we saw how demolishing the Army, the Marines and the Reserves, without asking the rich for money or the rest of us for volunteers, does not even remotely resemble how leaders of a rational nation would fight either a war of national policy or a response to dire crisis. All of the excuses that have been offered have been revealed as absurd.

* But that ain’t the worst, by far.

Vastly more chilling is the relentless effort to purge the officer corps. A culling process that has only accelerated in the last couple of years, eliminating men and women of high calibre from what had been a pool of supremely educated, competent and apolitically dedicated professionals, replacing many of them with yes-man hacks...

...a catastrophe that could justifiably be compared to Joseph Stalin's purge of the Red Army in 1937-1938, which is widely blamed for leaving the Russian officer corps understaffed and undertrained on the eve of war with Nazi Germany. True, the neocons aren’t shooting our generals and admirals, just forcing them into early retirement. But be patient. We may still be in early days.

A couple of years after I first broached this matter (pretty much alone), news articles began circulating about clusters of retired flag officers, speaking out against the creeping betrayal.

What remains puzzling is the gaping silence from prominent democrats -- except for Wesley Clark -- about a scandal that should be right out there. Treated as a major campaign issue and one of our paramount concerns.

(Let’s take a note of optimism in the rise of Navy CNO Admiral Mike Mullen to be our nation’s next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, along with Adm.William Fallon as Commander of US Central Command -- both of them outspoken critics of administration policy and diametrically opposite to kind of officers we are accustomed to seeing rewarded by this president. These important promotions suggest that the military professionals aren’t exactly lying down. Dedicated to silence on political matters, they may nevertheless have applied forceful back pressure of their own, behind the scenes, against the ongoing Bushite purge. If so, these people deserve honor for defending us, yet again, this time from an enemy within.)

See: The Under-reported Purge of the U.S. Officer Corps

* But the Great Purge Has Many Sides

Alas, our military’s professionalism and dedicated tradition of Constitutionalism are under assault from many directions, not just the ongoing effort to bully or dumb-down commanders at the top. There is also a deeply worrisome campaign to suborn and infiltrate dogmatism into the ranks, from the side and from below.

Bruce Wilson a lead researcher for the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, wrote to me about ongoing neocon efforts to transform the United States Military, turning it into an active force for the fundamentalist Christianization of America. (Moderate churches have always played a very different and positive role.)

Read more about scandalous efforts to turn our apolitical and Constitutional military into an instrument of religious orthodoxy, on our way toward a theocratic state like the one forecast - in fiction - by a worried Robert A. Heinlein. (In prophetic novels he portrayed theocracy beginning, chillingly, in the year 2012.) MRRF is commendably trying to combat this trend, which some services have resisted more vigorously than others. (For a darker view, from an even more worried perspective, see http://community.livejournal.com/dark_christian)

Take this testimony from a recently-serving Army NCO: “In Basic Training in Kentucky, all soldiers are sent to a local church that gives you a few hours of downtime on a weekend and required to attend an Evangelical Christian worship service - no matter your religious persuasion. (Those who objected based on religious grounds were so harshly threatened that they gave in and went.) This fire and brimstone service in no uncertain terms paints the current geopolitical situation in terms of the Book of Revelations, anoints these trainees as chosen soldiers of God converting and killing heathens, and ends with a conversion ceremony where nonbelievers are peer-pressured into being 'Saved' .”

(In fairness, when I queried soldiers and marines whom I know or could reach via blog, only a minority report having seen this kind of travesty, though more subtle attempts at suasion appear to be common. Notably, none of the sailors I’ve spoken with -- either serving or retired -- have experienced anything like it. But that’s the Navy for you.)

Responding to my recent articles, Bruce Wilson wrote: “I can guarantee your concerns were not overblown. In fact, my research findings have recently demonstrated that.” Wilson acknowledged though, that none of their efforts have yet been directed at what may be the most dangerous part of this trend, an attempt by up to one hundred far-right members of Congress to stock the military academies with young men and women whose allegiance would no longer be Constitutionalist and neutral, but rather, as personal, ideological and lopsidedly political as the praetorians, janissaries, or jaguar warriors of old.

Of course, I had hoped that MRFF would already be monitoring this part of the problem. Perhaps now they will. It could take substantial dedication and research... or else, perhaps, just a simple polling of Congressfolk, under the letterhead of a quasi religious group, asking a straightforward question: “Are you using your Congressional privilege to appoint dedicated evangelical Christians to the military service academies?” One might be surprised how eagerly obliging and up-front some of the representatives are likely to be. (If any of you out there have suggestions or contacts that might be helpful, do contact MRFF. http://militaryreligiousfreedom.org/

I am especially interested in further confirmation of one clear impression -- that the Navy has been stalwart in resisting attempts to “stock” fanatics into Annapolis, while the Air Force has given in completely -- lock, stock and MX missile.

* Again... at least there is the Navy.

God bless the United States Navy.

And let’s go save the Army.

==Continue to Part 7

The Real War of G.W. Bush -- Against the U.S. Military

One of the key points I keep trying to raise is that our core problem is not the War in Iraq, per se.

The real issue people should be talking about is what is being done to America. A nation that has been -- and remains -- historically vastly more important to the future of our descendants, and humanity in general. A country and civilization that is steadily being diminished, crippled, robbed and distracted. Not by a party or a movement, but by a bona fide criminal gang.

We need to remember that the Iraq war is a horror, but its core effect has been to divide, corrupt, cheat, demoralize and steal from the people of the United States.

This time, specifically, I want to aim at one aspect of the betrayal of America. One that I was among the very first (anywhere!) to point out, as long ago as 2004...

... that the number one accomplishment of the Bush Administration has been the partial-destruction of the United States military. Accompanied by (in some ways even worse) a near-complete demolition of its hardwon reputation for overwhelming invincibility.

This problem lies not only at the feet of the mad, neocon right, but also on some bad habits that Bush opponents have to break. It will be impossible for liberals to deal with the devastation of the Bush Era, if they nurse even a scintilla of simplistic hostility toward our men and women in uniform. That silly reflex is not only inaccurate and unjust -- picking on the wrong target -- but also self-defeating. We need these people. They are the Bushites’ worst victims.

Moreover, they are a large part of our hope, for the restoration of a lawful, constitutional and confident American Republic.

* But first, some preliminary data dumps.

One of you wrote in about an article in this month’s Rolling Stone "The great Iraq Swindle," covering a topic I have long spoken-of - that the Iraq incursion features truly vast amounts of contractor graft and corruption. So much that theft from the US taxpayer may plausibly have been one of the principal drivers of the entire misguided campaign.

Consider that our ongoing “Mess o’ Potamia” never followed the standard leftist scenario preached by Michael Moore and others, of being "about grabbing oil."

What oil? Do you see any Iraqi oil on the market? Standard left-wing excuses -- that the Bushites simply botched the oil grab -- look tired, after so many years. Especially since the FOBs (friends of Bush) have proved stunningly competent at getting rich off this war, by other means. (Indeed, keeping Iraqi oil OFF the market serves the desire of the world’s very top FOBs.)

No, the swindle is simple. In a "war" or "emergency," normal competitive contracting rules can be thrown away, enabling a Decider Presidency (look up "autarchy") to privatize anything it wants, any way it wants, and hand deals to its favorite, family friends.

Note that defenders of privatization do not even try any longer to justify it as "more efficient," since it takes four times as much (on average) to pay contractors in Iraq to accomplish nothing, as it took soldiers and civil servants.

This is one of a dozen issues that would let Democrats attack the Bushites from a conservative perspective, awakening “ostrich Republicans” and tearing apart Karl Rove's Big Tent coalition. That is, if any of the dems had enough savvy to look at the big picture.

-------
Here is sad and worrisome news. Two US soldiers who helped write an article from the front saying America had "failed on every promise" in the Iraq war have been killed in Baghdad. Staff Sergeant Yance Gray, 26, and Sergeant Omar Mora, 28, were among a group of seven soldiers serving in Iraq who wrote a piece excoriating America's conduct of the war, published in The New York Times last month. ... Their public criticism caused a flurry of debate in the US because of the candor with which the men, all serving in the elite 82nd Airborne, described the war. "Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise," the seven wrote. "When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages."

------
View Keith Olbermann’s latest “J’accuse” polemic toward the Gang of Crooks and Liars.

* And now, on to the main part of this missive.

To reiterate, our main focus here concerns the number one accomplishment of the Bush Administration -- the ongoing demolition of the United States military.

...accompanied by (in some ways even worse) a near-complete evaporation of its hardwon reputation for overwhelming invincibility.

* The illusion is as important as the substance

Let there be no mistake. When it comes to practical politics in a dangerous world, these two things -- both actual and real power -- are equally important. For perception often guides what others do. Indeed, as recently as 2002, it seemed that the US military services could do nothing wrong. That their skills and equipment and elan were so far ahead of any possible combination of foes, that any future adversaries would have to act against us in secret, or not at all.

This impression was doubly reinforced after stunning military (though not political) success in the first Gulf War (1991), followed by almost perfect execution of skilled diplomacy and policy in the Balkans Intervention. (All stated goals were achieved within weeks, at zero cost in US lives, clear exit strategies were followed to the letter, all “nation building” chores were delegated to others, readiness and budgets were unaffected and our popularity in the Muslim world went up.)

Moreover, if anyone was still unconvinced of US prowess, there came 9/11, followed by our swift intervention in Afghanistan when President GW Bush said “Go!” to an existing Clinton-Clark plan - one that hewed closely to the Powell Doctrine of professionalism, intense diplomacy and selective application of overwhelming (if surgical) force.

If Osama’s ultimate 9/11 plan was (according to many experts) to draw us into the Kush Mountains’ killing zone, where he had already helped to humble one superpower, he was shocked and bitterly disappointed when the US led a coordinated campaign, combining local forces with air power and extensive local expertise, swiftly eliminated the Taliban regime that had succored bin Laden. An entire enemy regime toppled - fair enough retaliation for 9/11... and Osama was running for his life.

And all of these successes (since 1992) were accomplished without any truly substantial stains upon our nation’s or the military’s honor. (Indeed, at that point -- with the Taliban toppled -- shouldn’t we all have been allowed to get back to our lives? Would not that have been the ultimate punishment of terrorists?)

At this point, there also seemed to be a peak in international acceptance of unipolarity... the notion that having just one superpower is a good thing. Despite some gnashing of teeth in Moscow, Paris and Beijing, very few other nations sent delegates to meetings on the topic “what shall be done about America?” We were that popular. That strong. And apparently that unbeatable.

Only now... where is that reputation?

Reiterating: even if you put aside all the unnecessary death and theft and incompetence and immorality of recent years, you would still be left with a Bush Administration that has squandered and spoiled something both pragmatic and precious -- an appearance of invincibility that helped to keep the peace, better than whole divisions.

Now that inestimable aura is gone. Ask anyone, around the world, what their perception is, of a US Army that flounders, mired up to its neck in a quagmire of confusion, sloppy waste, plummeting morale and blurry goals. Is our current reputation an effective deterrent? Or does it encourage others to restore a multipolar, militarily competitive world?

Even (especially) American conservatives should find this a case of utter - and possibly criminal - betrayal of leadership.

A multi-part series on the GOP vs. the U.S. Military:
Next time... Part 2: But it Gets Even Worse: Neocons vs. the U.S. Military
Part 3: Destroying Readiness
Part 4: Botching Both Kinds of War
Part 5: Let the Excuses Roll!
Part 6: Purging the Officer Corps
and More on the War Against Professionalism in Government

==Also see: How Republicans and Democrats wage war

Planning for the "Pardon Tsunami"

At my DailyKos blog I’ve started posting segments copied from my posted article on “Suggestions to the new Congress”. Although you folks have seen it all, you are welcome to weigh in there (and possibly boost my Kos ratings). Certainly the topics merit further exposure. Right now we are discussing suggestions 1,2,3 which are about investigating corruption.

There I only hinted at what I think would be the cleverest gambit of all. To try and HEM IN President Bush's power to issue vast numbers of "get out of jail free" pardons.

There are several ways to do this without attracting automatic cancellation by the Supreme Court. Any solution must not infringe on his actual right to pardon. And yet, with sufficient cleverness, it should be possible to...

option 1- Hem him in POLITICALLY. A top Dem should issue a dare. "Will you promise not to pardon more people than the previous two presidents COMBINED?"

The idea is to put him between a rock and a hard place. If he accepts the dare (unlikely) each of his myriad corrupt cronies will worry whether their promised pardon will make it under the cutoff. They may contemplate whether to instead take the bird in front of them - if Democratic Congressional committees start offering immunity for testimony.

If (more likely) he refuses to make the promise, then a seed of wonder is planted in millions of American voters minds, about just what he may have in mind for after the 08 elections.

At minimum, it will enhance the political damage when (not if) he issues the pardon tsunami,


option 2. Hem in the DEFINITION of a"pardon". Congress may be able to get past the Supremes a definition that restricts a pardon's ability to let a bastard get off scott free. For example: "A pardon can only apply to actions that a person openly admits and avows. It must specify whatever illegal actions it is meant to cover. Furthermore, the person pardoned must testify and answer questions, in order to qualify for complete erasure of responsibility."

This would still let this monstrous cabal of thieves pardpn wretched-awful SOBs who have been ripping us off, saving them from going to prison. That can’t be helped. But it would mean that they must testify (perhaps in the original, latin meaning of the word!) They must point fingers at others. And restitution of ill-gotten gains would remain a possibility.

Above all, by drawing attention to the approaching pardon tsunami NOW, we would put it up front in the public's mind. They will start viewing items in the news in this light and perceive patterns. It is something to start pondering now.

-----

Other matters: See an interesting new book:  Reinventing the Bazaar: A natural history of markets, written by John McMillin of Stanford’s School of Business.


And finally: YOUR NEXT ASSIGNMENT IN THE POLITICAL BESTIARY!

Apparently, some folks in my area are willing to start reconsidering their policy of trying to run classic Santa Monica liberals in districts that have been gerrymandered to be conservative by personality. When I wrote to our recent democratic candidate, Francine Busby: "Help recruit military veterans who can resonate with local voters and LOOK conservative... while being faithful to core liberal values..."

She responded: "If you are aware of anyone who is a good match and is interested, please let me know."

Aha. A counter-dare. Fair enough. Let's all ponder, then.

I know that by now all of you have chosen an "ostrich conservative" -- a decent person who remains obstinately delusional about the neocons -- to clamp onto like a lamprey and never let go until they open their eyes. And you are all spreading this meme, recruiting others to be ostrich-awakeners. I have faith in you all and I know you won't let us down.

Now another task: look around you for another creature in the zoo. Look for a mongoose!

A mongoose is a person who has utter toughness and willingness to face cobras, combined with big-hearted ability to stand up for the little guy. Ideal are former military men or women, who convey the surfaces of old-fashioned, patriotic and crewcut conservatism -- and certainly adhere to the best values from that side of things -- while also being open-eyed aware of what's going on around us and eager to strengthen the one institution in American life that stands of chance of saving this country -- The Democratic Party. These are the candidates we need to find for every gerrymandered GOP district. So that when folks in such inherently (by personality) conservative districts are fed-up and looking around in 2008, we won't make the insanely self-destructive mistake of forcing them to choose between Dick Cheney and Ellen Degeneris.

All of you. Find a mongoose and start twisting his or her arm to consider running for office in 2008. It is NOT TOO SOON!

Of course, given the odds, maybe you should talk to five or six of them. That's why we must start now. It's a talent search that could take some time.

The War on Science - and a counter-attack...

I cannot too-strongly recommend that you all read... and carefully re-read... an op-ed piece that ran in the Los Angeles Times a while back. Can Washington get smart about science? by Chris Mooney and Alan Sokal, cogently speaks up for the scientific/modernist “reality-based community” against a recent wave of know-nothing depredations by barbarians of both the far left and the far right.

Calling for re-establishment to neutral advisor agencies like the Office of Technology Assessment (also near the top of my own list of suggestions to the new Congress), Mooney and Sokal issue a challenge for both extremes to stop trying to bully society and objective reality to suit their own subjective notions about the world.

While Mooney is well known for his recent book THE REPUBLICAN WAR ON SCIENCE, Sokal would seem to offer (at first sight ) the perfect balance, since he is best known for having skewered blatant hypocrisy and inanity of the postmodernist/deconstructionalist movement, with his famous satirical essay that used deliberate gobbledygook-jargon to “prove” that physical so-called “laws” are nothing more than linguistic constructs created by western white males in order to perpetuate hegemony and oppression.

Sokal’s later revelation that his highly-touted article was a hoax and a trap set off what became known as the “science wars,” during which he became known as almost an archetype of calm reason, a rock against which the postmodernists dashed themselves furiously, before lapsing, spent and forever (one can hope) weakened.

Having taken on shibboleths (and their neo-mystical wielders) of the left, one might have expected Sokal remain focused in that direction. But “directionality” is, in itself, a trait of the romantic mind set and not of moderate, reasonable people, who can recognize similar nasty habits, wherever they arise. Indeed, Both Mooney and Sokal know - as would any reasonable person by now - that the silly postmodernists of the campus left are not one-thousandth as threatening to Western Civilization as their cousins, the neocon subjectivists who have been attacking western civilization from the barbarian right.

In this piece, it is easy to note the clear prose of Sokal, who has a rare gift - well-tested - of being able to disarm shrill adversaries with a single, rhetorical flick of the wrist. Take the following short paragraph:

“In truth, there was nothing wrong with inventing science studies; the error was to leap from the valid observation that science arises in a social context to the extreme conclusion that it is nothing more than politics in disguise.”

In other words, it is perfectly reasonable to keep subjecting science to reasonable scrutiny (or citokate) by appraising the myriad ways that fallible and all-too human individual scientists inevitably let cultural and subjective biases color their work. Nearly all honest scientists will acknowledge this tendency in themselves (at least in abstract mea culpas). Indeed, the obstinate flaw in human nature called self-delusion is the very thing that science was invented to help overcome!

(Once again, the over-arching theme of reciprocal accountability.)

And yet, as Sokal says far more efficiently than I do, here, it is quite another thing to claim that the only truly honest human truth-discovering process is inherently delusional! If the scientific process of perpetual re-examination and testing against reality cannot incrementally improve our models of the world, then why has scientific civilization learned so vastly more than all others combined?

We have discussed elsewhere the likely psychological reason for lefty postmodernists to have pursued this silly rant -- in what basically amounted to a jealous snit, attempting to drag down rival sages who have found much better -- titanically better -- methods of enquiry and truth discovery than the discredited incantatory paths of Plato. And yet, what has become clear in recent years is just what a service Sokal and his colleagues have done, by engaging the post-modernist movement in strenuous debate, rather than simply dismissing it as a pack of loonies.

Evidence for surprising, unexpected progress can be found int the chagrin expressed, lately, by some of the better and more aware postmodernists, over their role in having helped to tear down society’s greatest bulwark against other forms of mystical fanaticism. Others who are fully engaged in tearing down the entire Enlightenment Experiment.

Mooney and Sokal rightfully point to the all-out assaults upon science waged by an unholy alliance of Big Capital and reactionary Theocrats -- a coalition that has control over the Bush Administration, despite the fact that countless more-reasonable members of big business and the communities of faith want nothing to do with this vile cabal.

(Mooney and Sokal leave out a third group in the controlling triumvirate, one that has waned considerably, in recent years, ever since it instigated our “sicilian” quagmire in Iraq, but the very one that juxtaposes in eery ways against the campus post-modernists. That third group consists primarily of the Straussian Neoconservatives of the Heritage Foundation and Enterprise Institute etc, whose devotion to platonist incantation and the triumph of pure “will” bears worrisome similarities not only to the philosophy department lefties they claim to despise, but also to such reactionary and tyrannical movements as Nazism and Leninism.)

But I am quibbling. As I have said -- e.g. in my review of Mooney’s book THE REPUBLICAN WAR ON SCIENCE -- these two authors are bona fide heroes of the fight to restore American modernism. At the near-term, pragmatic level, they share with me a strong desire to see restored the independent Congressional scientific advisory boards that the New GOP so cynically and hypocritically dismantled.

What has become clear is that this fight will not be won by reason and science and moderation alone. It must be a militant moderation. One that - while promoting tolerance and diversity and openness and accountability and negotiation and science and fair-competition and pragmatism and other nice/liberal ideas - is also capable of recognizing genuine enemies. Foes who deeply despise all of the traits that I just listed and countless others... who indeed despise us for holding to them and attempting to build a decent civilization around such “wishy washy” and secularly “tepid” principles.

And that is where their short-term advantage of passion has let them steal a march on us, seizing control over what has been (so far) a benighted and moronic 21st Century. For while they attack, it is not our reflex of natural inclination to think in terms of enemies! Like merchants and tradesmen and craftsmen and chemists, standing at the city gate, trying to bargain and reason with barbarians, we blink in dismay as they use swords to chop away the underpinnings of our city. And then we try reasoning some more.

Enemies? That is not the way that we who invented markets and democracy and science and the arts of practical compromise generally want to think. But make no mistake. Those who would take advantage of our good natures in order to destroy this way of life will attack from every angle and every dogma. Because fundamentally it is a matter of personality, not ideology. And we moderate-pragmatist-progressive-problemsolving modernists are gradually learning that the personality of rage can only be dealt-with from a position and an attitude of strength.

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