Crushing Crazy

Below, I'll offer two lists concerning American conservatism. One recounts "conservative" stances that have always been welcome at the negotiating table... in fact we'd be poorer not to have voices speaking up for them and demanding accountability from liberal zealotry. 

The other list - alas - is much longer, case after case in which conservatives destroyed their credibility by screaming against clear science, genuine progress, or honesty itself. Example after example in which time proved them utterly wrong. From tobacco and smog to drug wars and gerrymandering, it's a long litany that our neighbors want desperately to forget.  

And yes, there were liberal errors, too. Two of them on a par with any single item on the conservative list. I'll cite those, down at-bottom.

First though... let's start with the sort of screeching insanity we're getting today.

== And now, this. What has driven our neighbors mad ==

Broadcaster and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones said it was a “form of psychosis” that caused him to believe certain events — like the Sandy Hook massacre — were staged. Jones, who founded InfoWars.com - carried on more than 160 stations - repeatedly called the Sandy Hook shooting a “giant hoax” carried out by crisis actors on behalf of people who oppose the Second Amendment. InfoWars also suggested the September 11 attacks were an inside job orchestrated by the US government.

In a defamation case brought against him by Sandy Hook victims’ families, Jones tried a number of writhing excuses, like: “I’m a performance actor!” Now it’s “a form of psychosis back in the past where I basically thought everything was staged, even though I’ve now learned a lot of times things aren’t staged,” he said. “So I think as a pundit, someone giving an opinion, that, you know, my opinions have been wrong, but they were never wrong consciously to hurt people.”

Putting aside the fate of this spectacularly evil traitor, the more general key words are Credibility and Accountability. Can we find ways to apply them systematically? That is the core question in The Transparent Society. 

I've long pushed that people on the sane-Union side of this culture war demand wagers, since the prospect of having actual stakes dependent on their ravings sends these cultists into blind panic, and can force a few RASRs to start admitting their own political psychoses. 

Dig it, the Sandy Hook parents' lawsuit was essentially a forced wager! It proves I'm right - the essence of this war is not left-right or even Putin-Saudi-Mercer-Koch-Murdoch enemies. The essence is the very existence and primacy of objective reality. Demonstrable facts, and the professions that use them.

I am not the only one who sees around us harbingers of hard times for the American Union. I’ve called this Phase Eight of the U.S. Civil War, a recurring mental illness and curse which dates all the way back to 1778. I’ve touted Sean Smith’s novel Tears of Abraham which portrays how many millions might die, if thing get hot, as our enemies – foreign and domestic – clearly intend.

== Defend the defenders ==

The administration is forming a National Security Council panel stacked with climate deniers, which reports suggest is intended to challenge established science, over-riding widespread opposition from former military officials, security experts, and climate scientists. While the Navy has been furious about denialism for a decade, facing loss of Norfolk, the greatest naval base in the world, plus many others, the Air Force is now learning the cost, with a $5 Billion burden repairing bases just from Hurricane Michael alone… money taken away by Trump’s “emergency” wall grab. 

Meanwhile, the Russians are opening twelve new bases along the increasingly ice-free arctic. And Putin and the Saudis giggle over how easy it has been to lobotomize America.

Liberals, dump your obsolete reflexes! This is a time to recognize the men and women of the U.S. military -- despite their crewcuts -- as allies in saving America and the world. 

Welcome them into our Big Tent of national - and world - salvation.

== Hope for rationality ==

This is worthwhile, even if you already knew some of it from my own postings. “A Field Guide to Bad Faith Arguments: Once you recognize these weak tactics in your mentions, you can easily outwit them.” For example, while climate denialists declare “We need more data and the jury is still out!” the cult has sabotaged satellites, cancelled instruments, banned research and silenced scientists, while claiming that any forward movement would leave us all “shivering in the dark.”

A good faith position would be “let’s find out more while taking policy steps that would help us all, whether or not 99% of scientists prove right.” 

This article covers other specious and valid arguments, and you – yes, you - need these insights to do your duty…

… which is to peel just a few RASRs (Residually Adult-Sane Republicans) out of the Fox-Putin hypnosis orbit and into the light. If each of us can manage just a couple, this phase of the U.S. (and world) civil war – the Idiocracy’s all-out war against smartness and all smart people -- will end in a rout.

 Lies are defeated by competition but it should be fair. See my FACT ACT.

== Capitalists who get it ==

This is an essential story about an immigrant who became an American business mogul, who now says "Capitalism is committing suicide." With the steady reduction of corporate investment ROI (return on investment) horizons -- from decades down to mere months -- corporate R&D outside of Detroit and Silicon Valley has plummeted, relying ever more on government research that members of the CEO caste then politically disdain. (The Bush-McConnell-Ryan cuts to US science are vastly amplified, under Trump.)

500 golf-buddy members of the CEO-caste ramp-up compensation packages, secretly divvy-up markets and allocate consumers among themselves, "planning" the economy with specificity that's similar to the Chinese Politburo, but without any long view. Moreover, not a single prediction ever made by "Supply Side" (voodoo) economics ever came true. (Repatriations of foreign held profits weren't even a quarter of the amounts predicted under the 2017 tax cuts.)

This was predicted by Adam Smith, who said that top aristocracies will always turn to cheating, vampirism and passive rentier tactics, rather than risky-productive investment. And recall that feudal-syndicate oligarchy was the hateful oppression that American Revolutionaries rose up against.

... and now the topic I teased about, above...

==  A place for conservatism? ==

I call for a Big Tent that welcomes the saner versions of conservatism -- versions that remind us that market competition is the greatest generator of the wealth that then enables good things. Indeed, before the entire movement was suborned by petro-sheiks, coal barons, casino lords, tabloid monsters and re-branded KGB/Kremlin conspirators, there were American conservatives who staked reasonable negotiating positions on:

- generating market alternatives to government solutions...

- reducing the overhead burden of excessive paperwork...

- only 'picking winners and losers" when there's a clear long range need 

          (e.g. sustainable energy)...

- encouraging responsible gun ownership...

- encouraging voluntary service...

- encouraging entrepreneurship...

- encouraging home ownership and a rising middle class...

- ecological stewardship...

- investment in an educated/healthy workforce...

- investment in infrastructure...

- investment in federal R&D beyond most corporate ROI horizons...

- honest, long range thinking in board rooms...

- defending the right of millions to live demure lives without in-your-face 

         shock confrontation.

Alas, out of all of these goals, only a metastacized, bilious version of the last one remains in today's mutant conservatism. The rest have all been functionally (if not polemically) adopted by a liberalism that already had plenty else on its plate. (And yes, Democrats did all the useful DE-regulating; offer me wager stakes on that, please.)

Let's be clear. U.S. Conservatives are in no position to lecture us, given what they’ve allowed to happen to their movement. Moreover, while conservative skepticism-toward-excess-bureaucracy is welcome, when it is sane, we need to recall how often they have simply been wrong, wrong, wrong, and again wrong... and now want us to forget:

Aid to farmers? Never!
Break up monopolies? Never!
Tobacco? No worries...

Cars and Smog...

McCarthyism...

Burning Rivers...

The insane War on Drugs...

Vietnam*...

Resisting Civil Rights* and hating on MLK...

Watergate, defending Nixon long past proof of treason...

Resisting Women’s rights...

Supply Side lies and outright theft of trillions...

Resisting easy fixes to the Ozone Layer...

Unleashing the upsurge in gambling, vice, mafiosi and casino moguls...

Climate Change denialism and science hating...
Claiming moral superiority while Red America scores worse in every moral category
      from teen sex/pregnancy/STD/abortions to domestic violence, alcoholism etc...

Endless Drug War and ever-more supply side never-right voodoo theft...

Most traitor spies since 1955 were Republican...

Most child molester politicians...
Iraq Wars, based on outright lies...
Undermining energy independence...
A proved track record of far worse economic outcomes... 

Gerrymandering and dozens of other blatant cheats...
Open war against all fact-centered professions; science, teaching, journalism, 
        medicine, law and "deep state" public servants...

Kowtowing to Vladimir Putin, Rupert Murdoch, Saudi princess & Trumps...

Skepticism toward "socialism"? Sure, criticism is welcome. But remind your neighbors how incredibly consistently and repeatedly the GOP/dixiecrat stance has been simply, factually wrong.

They know it's about credibility. Name one major gop leader between Reagan and Ryan who was even mentioned at the 2016 Republican Convention. Except for Newt, all were brushed under the rug, including both Bushes, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Dennis (friend to boys) Hastert, Tom (convicted felon) DeLay, Boehner. This shows how writhing ashamed Republicans are, of their record at governance. And if you disavow those past Republican administrations as incompetent, Russia-hating, enterprise-destroying, warmongering liars, then where is your party’s credibility?

And yes, liberals make mistakes! Their worst: Vietnam and desegregation through forced school bussing. Republicans supported the former more vigorously than democrats. But the latter was titanically evil and stupid and it did more to shatter the Rooseveltean coalition than anything. So don't automatically assume that everything that's PC is automatically correct. I could name a dozen latter-day rants and exaggerations that some of you push, that are not being helpful right now. 

But I don't dare. And that fact is the most damning of all.

Welcome allies and refugees from the madness/treason. Spread the tent. Defeat monsters. Welcome your neighbors.

The political circus

The true issue dividing Donald Trump from the rest of the Republican Pack? He has realized something that strikes terror into the hearts of the Kochs and Murdochs and Saudis who have grown accustomed to treating the Republican Party as their private legislature.  That the angry white men who make up the GOP's core-base are ready for some populism to mix with their gruel of guns and confederate values. 

Hence, Trump has called -- then pulled back -- but will certainly call again for tax increases on the uber-rich, while Jeb Bush and the rest reiterate their wish for ever-lower rates for the skyrocketing oligarchy, long after Supply Side (Voodoo) "Economics" has been proved never to have made one successful outcome prediction. 

Ever. Even once at all. Ever.

Heck, Trump has also spoken for campaign finance reform (if a bit hypocritically, given he's a self-funding billionaire).

Sure, he's repulsively crazy in many of his own (entertaining) ways. But if Donald Trump is leveraging the disappointment of millions of angry white males, perhaps we should cheer a bit that at least he is pointing out: “hey, the foxes and goppers have been lying to you, like mad, too.”

But what's his secret?

== Trump - Comic or Genius? ==

Scott Adams of Dilbert fame has a blog - Clown Genius - that decrypts the salesmanship methods of Donald Trump.  The essay is revealing and fascinating: 

“As far as I can tell, Trump’s “crazy talk” is always in the correct direction for a skilled persuader. When Trump sets an “anchor” in your mind, it is never random. And it seems to work every time. Now that Trump owns FOX, and I see how well his anchor trick works with the public, I’m going to predict he will be our next president. I think he will move to the center on social issues (already happening) and win against Clinton in a tight election.”

Um… did I also mention that Scott is also – though a genius – a bona fide crackpot much of the time? “Trump owns Fox,” my patoot.  The Donald’s truce with Roger Ailes is based on mutual self- interest that shifts from day to day.  And the notion that Trump might actually become president is based upon comparisons to 1980’s Ronald Reagan that are not pertinent.  

Reagan was likeable, for one thing, and would have lost anyway, but for two things: the Iran hostage crisis and Jimmy Carter’s patriotic willingness to let Paul Volcker cure inflation, even in an election year. (Something no other politician would have done for the country – Carter was our only grownup president.) 

See also: Insane Clown President: Dispatches from the 2016 Circus, by Matt Taibbi. 

How deep can the madness go? As we see the very-right-wing John Boehner canned from House Speaker for not being right-wing enough, we should consider where this could all lead.  Here is a very thoughtful essay that plumbs the 1950s roots of "Movement Conservatism" that is based upon fundamental "values" that cannot be argued-with through evidence or cause and effect.  (To be clear, there is a wing of the Left that is also exactly like this, only smaller and (presently) less dangerous.)

What this writer's analysis fails to do is:

1) Apply the word "confederacy" and thus show that this has a context, a clash of cultures that goes back to 1775 as we reach a frenzy of phase 8 of the American Civil War.

2) Reveal the danger that this movement poses to its cynical instigators. As we've noted, Donald Trump is getting huge response from white males with not only his anti immigrant etc slogans, but also sniping at Rupert Murdoch, whose Fox News is used to utterly controlling the right's narrative.  Including the "do everything for the rich" policies that are the sun that the GOP revolves around.  Ironically it is Trump, the rogue billionaire, who now rails against that centerpiece, drawing millions of former sheep to look up, blinking amid an awakening populism that the Koch-Saudi-Murdoch cabal ought rightfully to fear.

Watch as Mike Huckabee or one or two others take moves in that direction, as they see their options wane. Seeing a chance for a Hail Mary gambit, they may start lacing in some anti-oligarch populism, hoping to strike a chord with those angry white males.

Hence, like all the talk show comedians, I am rooting for Donald to last a good while.  He’s mixing things up and shaking people out of ruts, and drawing white males to at long last question their confederate loyalty to Marse Rupert. By questioning the GOP reflex -- that tax cuts for the rich are the core and central sacredness -- he is laying seeds for a different sort of middle-class right-wing.  One that - while still raving crazy - finally glances at self-interest.

 Now… please… Jerry Brown and Jon Stewart… do the same thing!  Get in and have some fun.

== The banal insatiability of evil ==

The thing about evil is that it is insatiable*.  Republicans already control every lever of power in Alabama. Yet they bend heaven and earth to stymie voting by their minority citizens. Now, after passing a strict voter ID law, they are closing nearly all of the DMV offices in counties where most black citizens reside, making it much harder to get ID. 

I have oft pointed out that sincere Voter ID advocates would push also for compliance assistance to help poor citizens, married-or-divorced women, and young people to comply with an onerous new burden applied by the state.

Not one red state has done this, even a cent! Proving them utter hypocrites. (GOP legislators often appropriate Compliance Assistance funds for big business, when new regulations come down. Alabama did it this year, in amounts that could have kept those offices open.)

Read this.  There is no clearer illustration of the depth to which the red-gray side of our re-ignited Civil War has sunk. 

Oh… and the rationalization of “budget balancing”?  When a state is so poorly run and its economy so wretched that it cannot keep open its DMVs? The most basic service citizens need, in order to have freedom of movement and ID necessary for so many modern tasks? Nothing better illustrates a party's utter incompetence at the craft of government.

Oh, but this is the tip of the iceberg...

== Electoral Dishonesty ==

And now comes evidence that the Confederate cabal is willing to take cheating much farther. "Days after tea party republican Matt Bevin shocked the state of Kentucky by winning the election for governor in a landslide despite having been notably behind in every poll, political experts are still trying to figure out what happened. Initially the blame was directed at registered democratics, who appeared to have turned out to vote in historically small numbers. But now numerical evidence is pointing to the possibility that the election may have simply been rigged in favor Bevin."

Is this more "loser whining?" Or does fact after fact indicate that we should get ready...

... for the most cheating in a U.S. federal election in modern times.  This will happen for two reasons. 

First: "legal cheating" such as gerrymandering and voter suppression laws have reached their effectiveness limits and they can no longer compensate for  increasing demographic disadvantages facing the Republican Party, as well as the hemorrhage of intelligent conservatives (e.g. scientists, law professionals and military officers) who can no longer rationalize any continued relationship with the GOP’s plummet into lunacy. 

The second reason for panic on the right is simpler – if a Democrat enters office in 2016, the courts will eventually rule that corporations are not “people.” They will rule that it is okay to limit the buying of elections. The courts will also (winds are blowing) finally end the travesty of gerrymandering.

Fortunately for Rupert Murdoch, the Kochs and their Saudi partners, there is an ace up their sleeve. Through shells, they own every company that makes voting machines in the U.S. Machines that have proved to be easily hackable.  In blue states, this does not much matter, since most of them require that voters be provided with a paper receipt that then goes into a box, the old-fashioned way. Back-door hackers and machine company owners do not dare attempt major exploits, wherever random precinct audits could nail them.  

But voters in red states like Kentucky don't get such paper audit trails.  They seem blithely trusting of electronics – so long as it’s mostly white males who own the chips and levers.

Is Kentucky an isolated case? Then try these smoking guns. 

1) Virginia’s voting machines were built with a literal back dook… a locked USB port whose physical key was the same for every WinVote machine ever made.  Read this scandalous story.... Virginia Ditches 'America's Worst Voting Machines.'

2) Without paper audit trails, the cheaters in pyrotechnically-corrupt Kansas thought they were safe, till mathematicians arrived!  “Analyzing election returns at a precinct level, Wichita State mathematician Beth Clarkson found that candidate support was correlated, to a statistically significant degree, with the size of the precinct. In Republican primaries, the bias has been toward the establishment candidates over tea partiers. In general elections, it has favored Republican candidates over Democrats, even when the demographics of the precincts in question suggested that the opposite should have been true.” 

Hence, shouldn’t Tea Partiers be just as angry at the Murdoch Machine as democrats are?  Shouldn’t they make common cause over just this one issue?  

“According to their analysis, Mitt Romney could have received over a million extra votes in the 2012 Republican primary, mostly coming at the expense of Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich. President Obama also ceded significant votes to John McCain due to this irregularity, as well.”

Could this underlie some of the support for Donald Trump – the only GOP candidate with the guts to tell off Murdoch and his machine? Read this article and see how Clarkson has been blocked at every level with a consistency that shows complete, Orwell-level contempt for even figleaf accountability.

====

* I just spent 3 weeks as Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Residence at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College, in New York.  Arendt famously commented on how insipidly mundane and inferior one often finds evil men to be, seldom mad-genius types. Far more often one sees -- as she put it -- the "banality of evil."  Banal, yet nearly always insatiable.

Salvaging a Sane "Indispensable" American Involvement with the World

We are hearing the word "indispensable" a lot, in conversations about the role of the United States in an ever-changing world.  A word almost as misused as the phrase "American Exceptionalism" as a way to create false dichotomies and substitute reflex for thought. 

I’ll get to dissecting some of this flawed analysis of foreign policy in a sec.  But first –

== Doubling down on insane delusions ==

Well, Republicans are nothing, if not consistent. Having doubled down on “Supply Side” fantasies for 30 years, they relentlessly promise that every new tax cut for the rich will “pay for itself and erase federal deficits,” after the rich use each new largesse we pour unto them, to invest in productive enterprises. 

Ah, but then how inconvenient is it to the narrative, that they never did that thing? Instead, as Adam Smith himself said of the “rentier caste,” they almost always pour any excess funds into rent-seeking and asset bubbles.  (Techie billionaires are, of course an exception: but they tend to be democrats and urge credits for RandD, not across the board gifts to the aristocracy.)

And so, instead, every tax cut for the rich sent us deeper into steep deficits and debt. Now? Are they correcting a single assumption, based on 30 years of contrary evidence?  Hah! They're doubling down on the voodoo!

Let's be clear about the contrast: switching to well-proved “demand side” would have hired half a million workers to repair bridges and infrastructure — things we will have to do anyway -- sending high-velocity cash passing quickly through poor pockets and stimulating the economy. They know it would work.  But that would mean admitting Keynsians were right. Indeed, preventing that hi-velocity recovery is one reason the GOP blocked the Infrastructure Bill. (And when bridges collapse and trains topple, you will know whom to blame.)

So, what do they want now? To end the Estate Tax, a cut costing the treasury $269 billion over a decade, “that would exclusively benefit individuals with wealth of more than $5.4 million and couples with wealth of more than $10.9 million. That’s a tax break for only the 5,500 wealthiest households in the country.” And as proof of pure stupidity, the “populist” Tea Party movement backs up this proposal, to the hilt.

Read this article: Republicans push for a permanent aristocracy! Only it leaves one thing out. The Estate Tax need never be paid! Just create a foundation and use most of your riches to do some cool thing in the world, in your name, instead of pursuing the ancient and animal-reflex ambition of inherited aristocracy.

See proof of supply side’s failures here: Do Outcomes Matter More than Rhetoric?

 No wonder they hate science and facts. Feudalism failed across 6000 years.  So those aiming to bring it back must rely — as the Lords always did — on incantations and fantasy.

== Thay’r Baaaack!  The neocons lift their heads… ==

At the urging of economics guru John Mauldin, I’ve read Ian Bremmer’s new book, SUPERPOWER: Three Choices for America's Role in the World.  Alas, I must say that I am less impressed than John is.  Bremmer sets up three possible future scenarios for how the United States (both government and people) might interact with a rapidly changing world.  

Alas, the “scenario” process of engaging with the future is fraught with mental perils and one of them is tendentious leading-the-conclusion.

Of Bremmer’s three scenarios, Moneyball America (aggressive self-interest) and Independent America (isolationism) are clearly set up as strawmen for the author to knock down - knowing that his readership will reject them. He does this in order to extoll an oversimplified third option called Indispensable America – still the key planetary player that must remain engaged with the world, helping it to move ahead toward better and presumably more lawful times.

Well... um… duh?  I am on-record elsewhere demanding that critics of Pax Americana offer up any plausible scenario that would have handled the last 70 years -- setting aside some awful blunders --better in the broadest sense, maintaining a general peace that allowed most (not all) nations and peoples to prosper as never before.  Name one past “pax”… or period of interregnum… that was handled even 1% as well.

Oh, but those "awful blunders" have done harm!  Especially devastating America's ability to continue in a benign leadership role.  And here you get to the tricky part.  Because "Pax Americana" is not just one thing.  When well handled, in the traditions of Marshall, Acheson, Truman and Eisenhower, you get something that at least tries, sometimes, to be decent and mature. At least tries.  More often than not.  Enough to average positive. And proof of that is the plain fact that the USA is clearly the least hated pax in the history of the world.

In sharp contrast, when the U.S. "pax" is pushed as an imperial dominance trip -- the approach declared gleefully by neocon madmen like Wolfowitz, Nitze, Perle, Cheney and both Bush presidents, raving manifest destiny babble concocted by an insane philosopher named Leo Strauss -- then you get calamities that wreck American influence and prestige and even USA power.

Of course we all know that, now.  Both Bushite eras revealed domestic and foreign policy stupidity on a scale of insipidity that might be better suited to 12 year olds, playing DandD, while stoned on Wild Turkey. I have open challenges for republicans to name a single unambiguous and attributable statistical metric of US national health that improved across either span of a Bush Presidency.  (Most such metrics have improved markedly across the Clinton and Obama spans.) This disparity of outcome is so devastatingly clear – like the demolition of Supply Side “economics” fantasies – that it explains the current GOP fixated hatred of science.  Anything having to do with facts is now anathema. 

Bremmer cannot defend the neocons openly, so he goes for a trick, a bit of polemical legerdemain. He proclaims that this mania crosses every partisan divide: "US foreign policy has been reactive and improvisational for 25 years. And we can no longer identify a Democratic or Republican approach to foreign policy."

This amounts to "All right, I am forced to admit that my side has been awful, but... but our opponents are just as bad!"  The clarion call of any modern Republican who has retained a glimmer of sapience.

But it is… um, wrong.  In fact an outright lie. Indeed, I show here that Democrats and Republicans handle matters of war and peace in diametrically opposite ways.  Democrats do fight!  But in totally different styles.  Likewise in every domestic policy at-contention, the differences are total and as clear as they were in 1863.

 Those on both the entire right and the far-left who assert “They’re all the same” are playing up a narrative with one agenda, to staunch the arterial bleeding of sanepeople from an insane GOP, a fevered exodus by almost every person of skill and knowledge.

Sure, there were very cogent moments in Bremmer'sbook! He is a bright fellow and there are decent observations, on a case-by-case level. But sorry.  It is clearly a polemic, arguing slyly that we should let the basic neocon perspective back in, for another go.

No way. America is indispensable for the foreseeable future... and indeed, "exceptionalism" has certain merits. But not as excuses to give reins of power back to the maniacs and morons who today constitute the entirety of the "intelligencia" of the American (confederate) right.

== Others are saying this ==

Sometimes a journalist sums things up just right: "None of the conservatives running for president want to be associated with the last Republican president — not even his brother (for whom stepping away is rather complicated). After all, George W. Bush left office with an approval rating hovering in the low 30s, and his grandest project was the gigantic catastrophe of the Iraq War, which we're still dealing with and still debating. If you're a Republican right now you're no doubt wishing we could talk about something else, but failing that, you'd like the issue framed in a particular way: The war was an honest mistake, nobody lied to the public, and anything bad that's happening now is Barack Obama's fault."

In this cogent and compelling piece -- George W. Bush didn't just lie about the Iraq War. What he did was much worse -- Paul Waldman dissects this assertion both ways. 

If the trillion dollar debacle of Bushite Wars - whose only winners were Iran and Bush-Cheney family companies like Halliburton - was based on lies, then the entire Republican establishment shares decadal and epic levels of blame for outright treason. 

But supposing that George W. Bush and the GOP establishment actually believed those delusional rationalizations… as his father believed it was right to over-rule Gen Schwarzkopff and betray Iraq's Shiite majority, laying bitter dragon seeds for us to harvest … then in fact, the narrative turns even worse. Instead of their treason the blame is our stupidity, for having failed to remove power from the hands of idiots.

The absolutely unalloyed record of negative outcomes from Bush eras - in every statistical metric of US national health - would then reflect a "marching morons" effect of staggering magnitude and implications.

Only it gets worse, as the latest scion of that monstrous family calamity for America now asserts that Iraq is all Obama's fault.

 ooooog… What does it say about today’s Republican party that James Baker is persona non grata and John Bolton is a hero, urging war with Iran on the op-ed pages of the New York Times?

Notice that I am no longer calling on “ostrich republicans” to lift their heads and notice what has happened to the once-proud movement of Barry Goldwater.  There is only one solution left.  To end this phase of the American Civil War the way the others did.  The Union simply has to win.

SETI and Libertarianism

What better launching point for this topic than my previous posting about science fiction Grand Master Robert A. Heinlein, who both lifted our gaze skyward and exemplified what I deem to be an older and far saner form of "libertarianism" than today's culti-like version of the movement.  

Was that a provocative-enough opening?  Well gird yourselves, because it's all about life and destiny and the Galaxy.  There's a whole lot more at stake than just you and me and Earth.  Indeed, it boils down to - forgive me - the nature of Existence. 

What can the absence of SETI extraterrestrials tell us about human history and politics?

Routinely, I am called a “liberal” or even “leftist” or “commie,” because I denounce the treason-drenched insanity that spreads outward from today's Fox’d American right. 

Anyone who follows me at all chuckles at that knee-jerk response. No science fiction author, for example, speaks at a wider variety of gatherings and political groups, sometimes indeed poking at left-wing shibboleths.  

Indeed, I talk regularly at libertarian gatherings, like Freedom Fest, and once keynoted an LP convention. True, I speak as a heretic, speaking up for Smithian flat-fair-open competition, as opposed to loony-randian solipsism and propertarian worship of oligarchy - the 6000 year sickness that historically ruined markets and freedom.

Still, grant this much even to Rand-Rothbard cultists: unlike conservatives... and many leftists… they still love to argue!  They are probably better than you, in that one respect. They welcome a challenge and keep inviting me back to disturb their incantations.

Hence…

My article in the latest issue of Cato Unbound discusses "Libertarian aspects of the search for Extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI)." 

How's that for a juxtaposition?  In fact, the essay gets to the libertarian aspects only in part 4. Till then, you get a digested version of my JBIS treatise about the current state of SETI -- and recent foolish attempts to "beam messages" to ET.  Come get perspective on our place in the Cosmos!

As for the other aspect in part 4? SETI and... libertarianism???

Well. In the Cato article, I lay out today's SETI/METI debates and the Fermi Paradox... the mystery of why we (so-far) see no sign of advanced alien civilizations.  

I then show how the struggle within libertarianism could be about issues far wider and deeper than most ever bother to realize. Like our galactic destiny.

Just one of many aspects... what if feudalism turns out to be just as compelling a social driver in other species, out there, as it has been in 99% of human cultures that achieved metals and agriculture? Given how repressive almost all feudal-oligarchic cultures have been, and how anti-science, could it be that most fail to spread to the stars because of such a simple -- but darwinistically compelling -- flaw?

In fact, this hypothesis -- that alien races might also be trapped by a cultural attractor state of feudal stagnation -- is only one of many hypotheses for the Fermi Paradox. Others loom just as high... and are discussed elsewhere....

I have catalogued a hundred "fermi" theories.  Frankly, I deem this one to be in the top ten! There are a few others that I rank higher. Go ahead and give the Cato article a look... then comment here. 

Only know this... you are a member of a rare civilization that loves argument, that fosters it.

That may be our trick.  Our Secret Sauce.

We are only likely to make it if we exhibit -- constantly -- the agility and willingness to re-evaluate that are hallmarks of our band of clever, gregarious apes. That is, when we are at our best. Only if we deal with complexity will we gain access to those baubles overhead that we've started to relish, with rising eagerness and ambitious greed.... the stars.

== Following though == 

See also: Models, Maps and Visions of Tomorrow.

PS... this shows that you folks who call me "just another liberal" are dopes.  As are those who try to label me on the other side. 

I can turn my political head. Can you?

It's not my fault that most of you have bought into Political Fused - Spine Disease and can only look in one direction.  When Big Brother can and will try to launch himself from any direction. Any part of the "spectrum" where angry people convince themselves that ends justify means.

Moreover, while I consider today's right to be the sicker and more dangerous treason-to-reason at this moment... that does not make me forget there is a ditzy-far-far-left. They control nothing, certainly not the Democratic Party. But I am old enough to remember the USSR.

Snap out of your dogmas! Our descendants... and possibly the fate of the galaxy... depend on it.

    

 ==   ==

See more on:

Libertarianism: Finding a New Path --

SETI: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life.