Before I re-light the political lamp, I am still trolling for images. Keep those eyes open for tribal chats/barbeques! Also, I could use images of (1) people collaborating around a whiteboarded project, (2) blatantly Hindi technical workers (e.g. Bangalore software rajas), (3) GROOVE-style meeting in action.
The Lamp is lit
In light of the present political climate... and as a diptych to the movie "Good Night & Good Luck"... I hope people will have a look at Gregory Benford’s story "Things Could Be Worse" currently posted on the web at:
http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/eBook357.htm
Yes, it will cost you a few cents. But this story, set in a parallel universe in which Joe McCarthy becomes president and starts suspending laws and creating American gulags, deserves widespread reading.
-----
Another extremely cogent take on Iraq from another general (former head of the Central Command):
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3430
----------
More from Russ Daggatt: “It was announced earlier this week that this country's current account deficit ("the most complete scorecard of the United States' international trade performance") ballooned to a record $804.9 billion last year, up more than 20% over the previous year. "It's going to start to snowball. ... We're at a tipping point," says Catherine Mann of the Institute for International Economics.
. . No industrial nation has ever run a deficit this size, equal to 6.4% of economic output.
. . This year, the deficit will be at least $950 billion before topping $1 trillion next year, says Brad Setser of Roubini Global Economics."
http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/trade/2006-03-14-econ-usat_x.htm
(Senate Republicans defeated an effort to impose budget rules that would make it harder to increase spending or cut taxes, a move that critics said that showed Republicans were posturing in their calls for greater fiscal restraint.)
* So rapid is the rise of the US national debt, that the last four digits of a giant digital signboard counting the moving total near New York's Times Square move in seemingly random increments as they struggle to keep pace.
The national debt clock, as it is known, is a big clock. A spot-check last week showed a readout of 8.3 trillion -- or more precisely 8,310,200,545,702 -- dollars ... and counting. But it's not big enough. Sometime in the next two years, the total amount of US government borrowing is going to break through the 10-trillion-dollar mark and, lacking space for the extra digit such a figure would require, the clock is in danger of running itself into obsolescence. Read the rest of this article, to both laugh and cry... cry especially over the inability of conservatives to see what’s in front of their eyes. http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/afplifestyleusbudgetclock
* Like the Great Big Immigration Fuss! All this sturm und drang... Letting Karl Rove set up yet another of his set piece battles, beckoning undocumented workers into the streets to wave Mexican fags and thus sparking the best round of Culture War since the Great Big War Against Christmas”... And no liberals catch on. They simply keep on letting Rove play the tune and dancing to it.
If ANYONE were to go to NASCAR America with an utterly clear and simple, in-your-face message...
...that Bill Clinton’s FIRST act in office was to double the Border Patrol...
... and Bush’s first was to fiercely cut it!
Oh, this would not turn NASCAR America into democrats suddenly or automatically. Not all by itself. But it would be the kind of short, sharp shocking factoid that plants doubt. I find this kind of jiu jitsu move (avoiding the standard buttons) leaves my conservative friends slack-jawed and speechless.
It is the sort of CONCISE bullet that hits the most vulnerable spot, the aorta of loyalty to a party and a movement that does not love them back.
NEEDED: A historical tracing of Rovean “Cultur War Triggers.” Someprofessor should do this, but an amateur could do a first cut. Simply start in 2000... or earlier... and track the cyclical appearance of divisive “issues” like (most recently) the Great Big War on Christmas, which was followed by the tepid “min-war on the Easter bunny...” then by the Immigration Fuss. I cannot believe there hasn’t been a tracking done, that shows how rhythmic it all is, with the clear intent of keeping red-state Americans fuming toward “liberals instead of noticing the hand in their pockets and the knife in their backs.
I’d imagine this could be tracked pretty easily, by graphing the hit-traffic on some hot button web site, corelating with the topic-of-the-moment. Such a chart could do a world of good.
.
Friday, May 05, 2006
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
On Income Disparity
Thanks, those of you who have been trawling for images of tribal barbeque socializing and GROOVE-style online meetings. Please keep an eye open.
Now back to politics. I am still catching up from my two months of e-hell... probably caused by powerful forces desperate to shut me up, right? ; ) Oh, but now they’ll move on to other methods.....
==Moyers on Income Disparity==
Many of you know that I find Bill Moyers highly annoying. For someone so bright and articulate to be so often mired in cliches... well, it’s a lot like William F. Buckley and George F. Will on the other side. Proof that brains do not equate to wisdom. Still, I read Mayers for gems amid the dross.
What follows is not one of his gems; it is simply a distillation of fact:
“2005 - the editors of The Economist, one of the world's most pro-capitalist publications, produced their own sobering analysis of what is happening in America. They found great and growing income disparities. Thirty years ago the average annual compensation of the top 100 chief executives was 30 times the pay of the average worker; today it is 1000 times the pay of the average worker.
"They found an education system "increasingly stratified by social class" in which poor children "attend schools with fewer resources than those of their richer contemporaries." They found our celebrated universities increasingly "reinforcing rather that reducing" these educational inequalities. They found American corporations no longer successful agents of upward mobility. It is now harder for people to start at the bottom and rise up the company hierarchy by dint of hard work and self-improvement.
"The editors of The Economist studied all this evidence and concluded - and I am quoting a pro-business magazine, remember - that the United States "risks calcifying into a European-style, class-based society."
People who talk about this are accused of fomenting class warfare. In fact, we are the ones trying to prevent it.
More from Moyers:
The number of lobbyists registered to do business in Washington has more than doubled in the last five years. That's 16,342 lobbyists in 2000 to 34,785 last year. Sixty-five lobbyists for every member of Congress.
The total spent per month by special interests wining, dining, and seducing federal officials is now nearly $200 million. Per month.
But it's a small investment on the return. Just look at the most important legislation passed by Congress in the last decade.
There was the energy bill that gave oil companies huge tax breaks at the same time that Exxon Mobil just posted $36 billion in profits in 2005, while our gasoline and home heating bills are at an all-time high.
==On the National Anthem==
This from Larry Brilliant: “Pres. Bush's comments that the national anthem should be sung only in English remind me of an earlier Texas governor's equally deeply thoughtful (!!) and related comments, as cited in Jimmy Carter's 1997 Commencement speech at Duke:
"The year I was born, Texas had a governor, a woman named Ma Ferguson. Her husband had been governor before her. There was a debate in Texas, which is still going on by the way, about what to do concerning Mexican immigrants who don't speak English well or at all. The debate was should we let them learn in Spanish, or should we force them to go to classes with English only. Ma Ferguson settled the debate. She held up a Holy Bible. She said, "If English is good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for us."
==Miscellaneous==
Check out “I’m The Decider” (to the tune of “I Am The Walrus”). Turn it UP!
Bad news for Donald Rumsfeld. Support for the “grumpy half-dozen” is growing. His troops are siding with the generals. An Army Times poll has 64% supporting his resignation.
Henrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker sure can write. Here's his take on the "Revolt of the Generals" (This was pre-Colin Powell.)
PPI Trade Fact of the Week | April 19, 2006 “U.S. Imports Have Grown By 38 Percent Since 2000” - Export growth between 2000 and 2005, by contrast, was an historically feeble 19 percent.
Now back to politics. I am still catching up from my two months of e-hell... probably caused by powerful forces desperate to shut me up, right? ; ) Oh, but now they’ll move on to other methods.....
==Moyers on Income Disparity==
Many of you know that I find Bill Moyers highly annoying. For someone so bright and articulate to be so often mired in cliches... well, it’s a lot like William F. Buckley and George F. Will on the other side. Proof that brains do not equate to wisdom. Still, I read Mayers for gems amid the dross.
What follows is not one of his gems; it is simply a distillation of fact:
“2005 - the editors of The Economist, one of the world's most pro-capitalist publications, produced their own sobering analysis of what is happening in America. They found great and growing income disparities. Thirty years ago the average annual compensation of the top 100 chief executives was 30 times the pay of the average worker; today it is 1000 times the pay of the average worker.
"They found an education system "increasingly stratified by social class" in which poor children "attend schools with fewer resources than those of their richer contemporaries." They found our celebrated universities increasingly "reinforcing rather that reducing" these educational inequalities. They found American corporations no longer successful agents of upward mobility. It is now harder for people to start at the bottom and rise up the company hierarchy by dint of hard work and self-improvement.
"The editors of The Economist studied all this evidence and concluded - and I am quoting a pro-business magazine, remember - that the United States "risks calcifying into a European-style, class-based society."
People who talk about this are accused of fomenting class warfare. In fact, we are the ones trying to prevent it.
More from Moyers:
The number of lobbyists registered to do business in Washington has more than doubled in the last five years. That's 16,342 lobbyists in 2000 to 34,785 last year. Sixty-five lobbyists for every member of Congress.
The total spent per month by special interests wining, dining, and seducing federal officials is now nearly $200 million. Per month.
But it's a small investment on the return. Just look at the most important legislation passed by Congress in the last decade.
There was the energy bill that gave oil companies huge tax breaks at the same time that Exxon Mobil just posted $36 billion in profits in 2005, while our gasoline and home heating bills are at an all-time high.
==On the National Anthem==
This from Larry Brilliant: “Pres. Bush's comments that the national anthem should be sung only in English remind me of an earlier Texas governor's equally deeply thoughtful (!!) and related comments, as cited in Jimmy Carter's 1997 Commencement speech at Duke:
"The year I was born, Texas had a governor, a woman named Ma Ferguson. Her husband had been governor before her. There was a debate in Texas, which is still going on by the way, about what to do concerning Mexican immigrants who don't speak English well or at all. The debate was should we let them learn in Spanish, or should we force them to go to classes with English only. Ma Ferguson settled the debate. She held up a Holy Bible. She said, "If English is good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for us."
==Miscellaneous==
Check out “I’m The Decider” (to the tune of “I Am The Walrus”). Turn it UP!
Bad news for Donald Rumsfeld. Support for the “grumpy half-dozen” is growing. His troops are siding with the generals. An Army Times poll has 64% supporting his resignation.
Henrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker sure can write. Here's his take on the "Revolt of the Generals" (This was pre-Colin Powell.)
PPI Trade Fact of the Week | April 19, 2006 “U.S. Imports Have Grown By 38 Percent Since 2000” - Export growth between 2000 and 2005, by contrast, was an historically feeble 19 percent.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
A call for miscellaneous assistance!
Because of some recent projects that have me whelmed, I could use some time-saving help.
1. I need images! Drawings, film stills, anything that seems to illustrate:
* Cave or tribal peoples engaged in any kind of activity that might even vaguely resemble a COCKTAIL PARTY. In other words, gathering in fair numbers, but chatting to each other in small sub groups. NOT gathering around fire and chanting together.
* Images of people at a modern cocktail party AND diners at a restaurant (need both: long shots with other conversations in background)...
* Some kind of screen shot showing hot, cutting edge collaboration-in-action, e.g. a meeting in progress in which several people a video-imaged on screen while sharing data.
One example: the best of GROOVE. Also, something showing a really expensive arrangement, with executives talking to each other using big, multiple monitors.
If you know of some images that might suit, let me know under comments. Thanks!
2. In SciFi.com's newsletter, the SCIFIPEDIA is advertised as "Sci Fi's free encyclopedia that anyone can add to". Yet another Wiki. Cool. Though (ahem) a bit sparse on Brin articles. http://scifipedia.scifi.com/index.php/Main_Page
3. Reminder that there are some fresh ideas for opposition candidates this year, that can be found at http://www.davidbrin.com/readiness2.html and at http://www.davidbrin.com/contract.html Know any progressives running for office? If even one dem candidate were brave and imaginative enough to run with issues like this....
4. As you know, I have long dabbled in the theory and practical arts of deliberation and disputation. I had the lead article in the American Bar Association's Journal on Dispute Resolution (Ohio State University), v.15, N.3, pp 597-618, Aug. 2000, "Disputation Arenas: Harnessing Conflict and Competition for Society's Benefit." or at: http://www.davidbrin.com/disputationarticle1.html This one is intense, scholarly and detailed.
At the opposite, end, my novel EARTH portrayed a world empowered by enhanced citizen deliberation. A theme pursued in an award-winning nonfiction book: The Transparent Society: Will Technology Make Us Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?
Now, my attention has been drawn to the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation... (http://thataway.org/). “NCDD's mission is to bring together and support people, organizations, and resources in ways that expand the power of conversation to benefit society. We believe that elevating the quality of thinking and communication in organizations and among citizens is key to solving humanity's most pressing problems.”
Consider this to be my touting of that org’s goal and mission. I have yet to learn whether they are doing it effectively. Indeed, a myriad obstacles lie in their path. The obstacle raised by the right is obsessive secrecy and cronyism, which destroys fair deliberation. The obstacle raised by the left is often harder to notice... an emphasis on the “touchy-feely” aspects of discourse, forgetting that deliberation is often most effective, as a problem solving tool, when it manifests as fair and openminded competition or disputation.
But more on that anon.
1. I need images! Drawings, film stills, anything that seems to illustrate:
* Cave or tribal peoples engaged in any kind of activity that might even vaguely resemble a COCKTAIL PARTY. In other words, gathering in fair numbers, but chatting to each other in small sub groups. NOT gathering around fire and chanting together.
* Images of people at a modern cocktail party AND diners at a restaurant (need both: long shots with other conversations in background)...
* Some kind of screen shot showing hot, cutting edge collaboration-in-action, e.g. a meeting in progress in which several people a video-imaged on screen while sharing data.
One example: the best of GROOVE. Also, something showing a really expensive arrangement, with executives talking to each other using big, multiple monitors.
If you know of some images that might suit, let me know under comments. Thanks!
2. In SciFi.com's newsletter, the SCIFIPEDIA is advertised as "Sci Fi's free encyclopedia that anyone can add to". Yet another Wiki. Cool. Though (ahem) a bit sparse on Brin articles. http://scifipedia.scifi.com/index.php/Main_Page
3. Reminder that there are some fresh ideas for opposition candidates this year, that can be found at http://www.davidbrin.com/readiness2.html and at http://www.davidbrin.com/contract.html Know any progressives running for office? If even one dem candidate were brave and imaginative enough to run with issues like this....
4. As you know, I have long dabbled in the theory and practical arts of deliberation and disputation. I had the lead article in the American Bar Association's Journal on Dispute Resolution (Ohio State University), v.15, N.3, pp 597-618, Aug. 2000, "Disputation Arenas: Harnessing Conflict and Competition for Society's Benefit." or at: http://www.davidbrin.com/disputationarticle1.html This one is intense, scholarly and detailed.
At the opposite, end, my novel EARTH portrayed a world empowered by enhanced citizen deliberation. A theme pursued in an award-winning nonfiction book: The Transparent Society: Will Technology Make Us Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?
Now, my attention has been drawn to the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation... (http://thataway.org/). “NCDD's mission is to bring together and support people, organizations, and resources in ways that expand the power of conversation to benefit society. We believe that elevating the quality of thinking and communication in organizations and among citizens is key to solving humanity's most pressing problems.”
Consider this to be my touting of that org’s goal and mission. I have yet to learn whether they are doing it effectively. Indeed, a myriad obstacles lie in their path. The obstacle raised by the right is obsessive secrecy and cronyism, which destroys fair deliberation. The obstacle raised by the left is often harder to notice... an emphasis on the “touchy-feely” aspects of discourse, forgetting that deliberation is often most effective, as a problem solving tool, when it manifests as fair and openminded competition or disputation.
But more on that anon.
Friday, April 28, 2006
Podcasts and more snippets-of-science...
More catching up. Here are some top-level items... followed (in comments) by more of those tasty science snippets you all love so much.
1. News:
I am quoted in an article about sousveillance, that ran recently in the Village Voice:
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0617,belgiorno,72978,6.html
(Not actually very accurate of my real views, but it adds to the melange of insights and reflects the demand fro reciprocal accountability (RA).
2. Full speeches available for download:
* A talk at the Institute for Accelerating Change about "exploring horizons," or how people peer ahead, spotting errors and avoiding crippling assumptions.
3. David Brin INTERVIEWS that originally ran on National Public Radio - topics include:
* 'Video Surveillance'.
* "The Science in Science Fiction" shared with William Gibson.
* "Science Fiction Writing."
* The Future on a special "NPR Talk of The Nation: Science Friday with Ira Flatow."
* A panel discussion about spying and censorship on the Internet. (Visit www.kpbs.org/thesedays then click on 'itunes'.)
4. Some side notes:
* Kevin Lenagh, the artist & co-author of CONTACTING ALIENS, has written in with the following: “ On lenahgalienfactory.com, in the for sale section, I'm putting some of the Uplift Art on products. If you can, let people know that they can have General Boult on a Tee-shirt!” Kewl!
4. More great science snippets will be posted below... In “comments”...
(This technique of offering the big data dumps as lead items in the comments level, has the advantage of keeping the top layer clean, letting casual find the (pompously) “important” essays. But you citizens of this community are free to weigh in and tell me if you approve, or dislike the method. Ironically though, you can only do so under... Comments.
1. News:
I am quoted in an article about sousveillance, that ran recently in the Village Voice:
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0617,belgiorno,72978,6.html
(Not actually very accurate of my real views, but it adds to the melange of insights and reflects the demand fro reciprocal accountability (RA).
2. Full speeches available for download:
* A talk at the Institute for Accelerating Change about "exploring horizons," or how people peer ahead, spotting errors and avoiding crippling assumptions.
3. David Brin INTERVIEWS that originally ran on National Public Radio - topics include:
* 'Video Surveillance'.
* "The Science in Science Fiction" shared with William Gibson.
* "Science Fiction Writing."
* The Future on a special "NPR Talk of The Nation: Science Friday with Ira Flatow."
* A panel discussion about spying and censorship on the Internet. (Visit www.kpbs.org/thesedays then click on 'itunes'.)
4. Some side notes:
* Kevin Lenagh, the artist & co-author of CONTACTING ALIENS, has written in with the following: “ On lenahgalienfactory.com, in the for sale section, I'm putting some of the Uplift Art on products. If you can, let people know that they can have General Boult on a Tee-shirt!” Kewl!
4. More great science snippets will be posted below... In “comments”...
(This technique of offering the big data dumps as lead items in the comments level, has the advantage of keeping the top layer clean, letting casual find the (pompously) “important” essays. But you citizens of this community are free to weigh in and tell me if you approve, or dislike the method. Ironically though, you can only do so under... Comments.
Monday, April 24, 2006
Political Potpourri...
I don't have anything as high in quality as those earlier essays -- about "The Choices We Face" and "Defending the Officer Corps." But there are a bunch of items I've stored up, that I'll offer below.
First, if you are - or know - a libertarian... or a Goldwater Conservative who is finally fed up with today's lost-cause GOP... do drop by www.reformTheLP.org and view the effort there, to turn that party into a new hope for practical believers in freedom and markets, rather than a bin for lapel-grabbing "oversimplifiers". (Putting a kind face on it.) They are republishing (after a good recent edit by me) one of my best serialized essays about basic political philosophy. Kind of heady stuff. But I do my patented "take a step back" number, quite a few times.
Let's start the potpourri with the most important article out there, this week.
The Worst President in History? by Prof. Sean Wilentz, in the Rolling Stone (Friday 21 April 2006). This Very well written analysis is a good history lesson to boot. A deeply dignified and scholarly look at the panoply of presidencies, including Polk, Buchanan and Clinton etc, comparing at many levels.
Snipped excerpts (but the whole thing really is essential):
“Now, though, George W. Bush is in serious contention for the title of worst ever. In early 2004, an informal survey of 415 historians conducted by the nonpartisan History News Network found that eighty-one percent considered the Bush administration a "failure." Among those who called Bush a success, many gave the president high marks only for his ability to mobilize public support and get Congress to go along with what one historian called the administration's "pursuit of disastrous policies." In fact, roughly one in ten of those who called Bush a success was being facetious, rating him only as the best president since Bill Clinton - a category in which Bush is the only contestant.
“The lopsided decision of historians should give everyone pause. Contrary to popular stereotypes, historians are generally a cautious bunch. We assess the past from widely divergent points of view and are deeply concerned about being viewed as fair and accurate by our colleagues. When we make historical judgments, we are acting not as voters or even pundits, but as scholars who must evaluate all the evidence, good, bad or indifferent. Separate surveys, conducted by those perceived as conservatives as well as liberals, show remarkable unanimity about who the best and worst presidents have been.”
“And these figures were gathered before the debacles over Hurricane Katrina, Bush's role in the Valerie Plame leak affair and the deterioration of the situation in Iraq. Were the historians polled today, that figure would certainly be higher.”
The rest truly is an interesting and non-venomous, professorial set of fascinating evaluations and comparisons.
--
The losers weigh in - if only they communicated like this earlier:
* Worth a glance: the movie trailer for Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth'
* A very thought provoking article by John Kerry... or by a really superier writer on his staff? Does it matter? Worth reading just for the ruthless efficiency of the prose.
----
Recall my appeal to the Officer Corps to save America from a Rovean "Octorber Surprise" contrived to win the November election by stoking fear? Well, Russell Redenbaugh - www.readingtheworld.com -- suggests that the “October Surprise” may not be something horrid loony-awful, like a US strike upon Iran, but the direct opposite... “By examining the structure of incentives, it becomes clear that this administration and the Iranian government each have an incentive to reach an agreement prior to the November election. From the administration’s point of view, the value of any agreement drops substantially after the elections. From Iran’s point of view, the willingness of our administration to take unpopular action increases after the election.”
At one level, of course, this would be great news. I have been urging rapprochement with Iran for years (though with the Iranian people, bypassing the jibbering loons who currently desperately cling to power there).
On the other hand, even a GOOD "surprise" could be dastardly. This is the sort of positive step that would be treasonous to delay many months for mere political purposes. Alas, it is also the kind that the members of our Intelligence Community might NOT choose to interfere with, as the actual effects (nonpolitical) are beneficial. (Unlike, say, an intemperate and rash bombing of Iran.)
I had not thought of this. That the administration might pull some autumnal surprise that’s sane and good. But as atypical as that would be, given their record, it does fit Rove’s penchant for political jiu jitsu. So, how best to prevent this sort of thing from swinging the election?
Talk it up, I guess. Talk up every good thing that you can imagine the administration doing, between now and November. Make every good thing our suggestion. And make clear that we will all be watching the timing. We will know if a good thing was delayed until October, for political effect.
---
Okay, now something both depressing and hilarious at the same time. I do not agree with absolutely everything at this site. Indeed, I am probably the biggest promoter of the idea of creating a Big Tent to welcome honest and decent conservatives into... as the only way to finally end “culture war.” We will all benefit much more by ending it than by waging it. Still, if you want to see it waged well, visit:
---
Finally, as you know, I do a lot of public speaking and corporate consulting. If your organization is seeking a top flight out-of-thebox stem-winder for a major event, have em drop by http://www.davidbrin.com/speaker.html Next eastward trip is to Boston, DC and NYC, end of June.
Thrive in hope.
First, if you are - or know - a libertarian... or a Goldwater Conservative who is finally fed up with today's lost-cause GOP... do drop by www.reformTheLP.org and view the effort there, to turn that party into a new hope for practical believers in freedom and markets, rather than a bin for lapel-grabbing "oversimplifiers". (Putting a kind face on it.) They are republishing (after a good recent edit by me) one of my best serialized essays about basic political philosophy. Kind of heady stuff. But I do my patented "take a step back" number, quite a few times.
Let's start the potpourri with the most important article out there, this week.
Snipped excerpts (but the whole thing really is essential):
“Now, though, George W. Bush is in serious contention for the title of worst ever. In early 2004, an informal survey of 415 historians conducted by the nonpartisan History News Network found that eighty-one percent considered the Bush administration a "failure." Among those who called Bush a success, many gave the president high marks only for his ability to mobilize public support and get Congress to go along with what one historian called the administration's "pursuit of disastrous policies." In fact, roughly one in ten of those who called Bush a success was being facetious, rating him only as the best president since Bill Clinton - a category in which Bush is the only contestant.
“The lopsided decision of historians should give everyone pause. Contrary to popular stereotypes, historians are generally a cautious bunch. We assess the past from widely divergent points of view and are deeply concerned about being viewed as fair and accurate by our colleagues. When we make historical judgments, we are acting not as voters or even pundits, but as scholars who must evaluate all the evidence, good, bad or indifferent. Separate surveys, conducted by those perceived as conservatives as well as liberals, show remarkable unanimity about who the best and worst presidents have been.”
“And these figures were gathered before the debacles over Hurricane Katrina, Bush's role in the Valerie Plame leak affair and the deterioration of the situation in Iraq. Were the historians polled today, that figure would certainly be higher.”
The rest truly is an interesting and non-venomous, professorial set of fascinating evaluations and comparisons.
--
The losers weigh in - if only they communicated like this earlier:
* Worth a glance: the movie trailer for Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth'
* A very thought provoking article by John Kerry... or by a really superier writer on his staff? Does it matter? Worth reading just for the ruthless efficiency of the prose.
----
Recall my appeal to the Officer Corps to save America from a Rovean "Octorber Surprise" contrived to win the November election by stoking fear? Well, Russell Redenbaugh - www.readingtheworld.com -- suggests that the “October Surprise” may not be something horrid loony-awful, like a US strike upon Iran, but the direct opposite... “By examining the structure of incentives, it becomes clear that this administration and the Iranian government each have an incentive to reach an agreement prior to the November election. From the administration’s point of view, the value of any agreement drops substantially after the elections. From Iran’s point of view, the willingness of our administration to take unpopular action increases after the election.”
At one level, of course, this would be great news. I have been urging rapprochement with Iran for years (though with the Iranian people, bypassing the jibbering loons who currently desperately cling to power there).
On the other hand, even a GOOD "surprise" could be dastardly. This is the sort of positive step that would be treasonous to delay many months for mere political purposes. Alas, it is also the kind that the members of our Intelligence Community might NOT choose to interfere with, as the actual effects (nonpolitical) are beneficial. (Unlike, say, an intemperate and rash bombing of Iran.)
I had not thought of this. That the administration might pull some autumnal surprise that’s sane and good. But as atypical as that would be, given their record, it does fit Rove’s penchant for political jiu jitsu. So, how best to prevent this sort of thing from swinging the election?
Talk it up, I guess. Talk up every good thing that you can imagine the administration doing, between now and November. Make every good thing our suggestion. And make clear that we will all be watching the timing. We will know if a good thing was delayed until October, for political effect.
---
Okay, now something both depressing and hilarious at the same time. I do not agree with absolutely everything at this site. Indeed, I am probably the biggest promoter of the idea of creating a Big Tent to welcome honest and decent conservatives into... as the only way to finally end “culture war.” We will all benefit much more by ending it than by waging it. Still, if you want to see it waged well, visit:
---
Finally, as you know, I do a lot of public speaking and corporate consulting. If your organization is seeking a top flight out-of-thebox stem-winder for a major event, have em drop by http://www.davidbrin.com/speaker.html Next eastward trip is to Boston, DC and NYC, end of June.
Thrive in hope.
Friday, April 21, 2006
Catching up on science... And other cool stuff...
This journal is supposedly about more than political and social and philosophical contrarian ponderings! We modernists are also interested in peering ahead in order to grasp the onrushing dangers and hopes of our crucial time. And a great deal of that peering ahead has to do with science!
During my long hiatus in electronic hell (it’s not over yet, apparently) a lot of cool stuff accumulated. It’s probably unwise to post the whole morass of odds and ends up here, at the topmost level. (For one thing, I am hoping people are linking to the more important articles, about “the Choices We Face” and the plight of the US Officer Corps, etc.)
So here’s what I’m going to do. I will post a long set of news items and links to cool science news, etc. as a comment to this topmost posting. If this kind of thing interests you, just click below.
But first...... let me offer a handful of potpourri items:
1. My full essay on "Other Theories of Intelligent Design" (originally tested on this blog) has appeared in SKEPTIC's online edition at:
http://www.skeptic.com/the_magazine/featured_articles/v12n02_other_ID_theories.php
2. For those of you who are starting to nose around for information about leading democratic candidates for 2008, there is a lot of buzz about former VA governor Mark Warner, who does appear to be quite a guy. Here are a couple of brief articles that he wrote for THE GLOBALIST:
http://www.theglobalist.com/DBWeb/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=5218
http://www.theglobalist.com/DBWeb/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=5219
The thing that impresses me most is that he "gets" what the real Culture War is all about. Not between left and right, but between those who believe in the future and those who do not.
3. Please, you go read “Rumsfeld’s Rules”... the well-meaning (or cynically manipulative) list of “wise sayings” published by the Secretary of Defense when he returned to that post in 2001, close to three decades after he reigned over our final humiliation in Vietnam. Please, somebody, hector some better-known blogger than me, so that this link gets wider attention. The Rules should be read at two levels, for their cliched but genuine truth... and for their bitter irony. For one thing, the list makes clear that today’s Donald Rumsfeld has to be the Bizarro-opposite-guy to whoever wrote these rules. Obsessively and perfectly opposite. So much so that I suspect we’re living in an old Star Trek episode! See it all at:
http://www.library.villanova.edu/vbl/bweb/rumsfeldsrules.pdf
4. Some of you feel that the true heir of decent conservatism OUGHT to be the Libertarian Party, but you feel put off by the romantic ideologues who run it? Drop by www.reformTheLP.org to see the group trying to change all that. I’ve given them my extensive essay on “political axes...” and another arguing that socialism and aristocracy are just different versions of the same basic beast. Independent of my own crank positions, these pragmatic incrementalists are just the ticket for transforming the LP into the best and true alternative to the democrats. Also splitting Roves Big Tent by giving freemarketers a home. But only if libertarians become much less - cosmically less - flaky. There’s nothing Rove should fear more.
Now click “comments” to see a melange of cool NON-POLITICAL stuff. Great science snippets and links about weird tomorrows.
.
During my long hiatus in electronic hell (it’s not over yet, apparently) a lot of cool stuff accumulated. It’s probably unwise to post the whole morass of odds and ends up here, at the topmost level. (For one thing, I am hoping people are linking to the more important articles, about “the Choices We Face” and the plight of the US Officer Corps, etc.)
So here’s what I’m going to do. I will post a long set of news items and links to cool science news, etc. as a comment to this topmost posting. If this kind of thing interests you, just click below.
But first...... let me offer a handful of potpourri items:
1. My full essay on "Other Theories of Intelligent Design" (originally tested on this blog) has appeared in SKEPTIC's online edition at:
http://www.skeptic.com/the_magazine/featured_articles/v12n02_other_ID_theories.php
2. For those of you who are starting to nose around for information about leading democratic candidates for 2008, there is a lot of buzz about former VA governor Mark Warner, who does appear to be quite a guy. Here are a couple of brief articles that he wrote for THE GLOBALIST:
http://www.theglobalist.com/DBWeb/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=5218
http://www.theglobalist.com/DBWeb/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=5219
The thing that impresses me most is that he "gets" what the real Culture War is all about. Not between left and right, but between those who believe in the future and those who do not.
3. Please, you go read “Rumsfeld’s Rules”... the well-meaning (or cynically manipulative) list of “wise sayings” published by the Secretary of Defense when he returned to that post in 2001, close to three decades after he reigned over our final humiliation in Vietnam. Please, somebody, hector some better-known blogger than me, so that this link gets wider attention. The Rules should be read at two levels, for their cliched but genuine truth... and for their bitter irony. For one thing, the list makes clear that today’s Donald Rumsfeld has to be the Bizarro-opposite-guy to whoever wrote these rules. Obsessively and perfectly opposite. So much so that I suspect we’re living in an old Star Trek episode! See it all at:
http://www.library.villanova.edu/vbl/bweb/rumsfeldsrules.pdf
4. Some of you feel that the true heir of decent conservatism OUGHT to be the Libertarian Party, but you feel put off by the romantic ideologues who run it? Drop by www.reformTheLP.org to see the group trying to change all that. I’ve given them my extensive essay on “political axes...” and another arguing that socialism and aristocracy are just different versions of the same basic beast. Independent of my own crank positions, these pragmatic incrementalists are just the ticket for transforming the LP into the best and true alternative to the democrats. Also splitting Roves Big Tent by giving freemarketers a home. But only if libertarians become much less - cosmically less - flaky. There’s nothing Rove should fear more.
Now click “comments” to see a melange of cool NON-POLITICAL stuff. Great science snippets and links about weird tomorrows.
.
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
THE SYNDROME OF THE “ESSENTIAL MAN”
How likely is it that any human is well-qualified to judge his own status as an “essential man”?
It is true that history shows some examples of fellows who resisted all external pressures to step down, knowing with brilliant sureness that they had a vital and historic mission. Almost certainly Abraham Lincoln was right, when he took this stance. Arguably, FDR. And yet, knowing humans as we do – especially their most dismal habit of self-serving delusion, should we not have the reflex of holding this kind of self-appraisal in… well… suspicion?
Should not one of the traits of an honest and mature man be to recognize this delusional habit, and worry about it? The way that George Washington did, when he resigned paramount power – several times – and set the Great Example?
Sure, a certain bullheaded determination is essential in politics. But there are ways to compensate. To ensure accountability. To (above all) provide that your institution and constituents get the benefit of the doubt, and not you. The nation and not the leader. When overwhelming evidence suggests that maybe a guy should go… shouldn’t he go?
You see the same classic syndrome across the entire CEO caste, driving up compensation/pay/stock-option rates toward the moon, as chummy fellow members of the caste vote each other outrageous pay scales, justified on what basis?
Why, it seems always to be a variant on (surprise!) the old Essential Man thing!
So let’s veer aside for a moment and ponder this version of the syndrome. The CEO variation.
Start with basics. These guys believe in capitalism, right?
All right, then. The core assumption of capitalism – and I believe this too - is that high rates of return will normally attract new talent to a field! Right? Imbalances and shortages should be self-correcting.
Specifically, if a shortage of good managerial talent stimulates high market prices for managerial talent, then, within short order, new managerial talent should commence to train itself, ramp-up, then compete (presumably fairly) and innovate until there is so much of it around that the shortage is eased. Whereupon, anomalously high premiums will no longer have to be paid.
In other words, the predicted curve is that a brief period of elevated CEO pay should soon give way to a talent migration that causes a surfeit, even a glut of skilled executives, easing the shortage and causing pay rates to drop.
Isn’t that the fundamental premise? Isn’t that the absolutely basic article of capitalistic-freemarket faith?
But it is not what we’ve observed. Not at all. Instead, the pattern across the last two decades has almost perfectly matched what you see when insatiable demand meets an absolutely limited supply. Like the limited supply of Da Vinci paintings, or Stradivarius violins. Or seven foot centers who can both rebound and pass accurately from mid-court.
Members of the CEO caste seem to be saying “we are actually mutants, like pro basketball players. No matter how much we are paid, the pool of skilled corporate administrators will remain fixed and small. Market incentives – even astronomical ones - will never augment supply. All companies can do is bid up CEO pay in order to hire the few mutant managers away from each other, just like sports teams!”
Well? Is that not EXACTLY the logic implicit in the CEO compensation spiral, as we see it endlessly accelerating skyward? The justification for taking billions away from research, from reinvestment, from worker benefits and from dividends for smalltime stockholders? So that top managers can move around like football free agents, playing rapid musical chairs and games of golden parachute?
Hm. Interesting proposition. Mutants. Like Sports stars. (In which case, are we best served coming up with some kind of league-wide reserve clause, hm? Don’t some of these same guys own sports teams and cry for caps? For cost controls? Oh, but then let’s also leave off the whole youth factor. They seem also to be saying that in this field, unlike any other across all of human endeavor, youthful brilliance is entirely irrelevant. Hm. And double hm.)
Alas, there is a problem. In sports, there are explicit performance metrics that can be applied, in order to determine who are the top fifty or so mutant-level -- and thus irreplaceable -- athletes in a given sport. But in business, tremendous effort is made to obscure and obfuscate every performance metric. Correlations with stockholder return or rates of innovation or long term company health are vague, at best. The one correlation that seems always to affect pay is how well you manage to pack the Board with your pals. And that is a dead giveaway. Because truly superior men would be ashamed of having to use tricks like those. They would refuse.
Here’s an example offered by financial expert John Mauldin: “John Walter joined AT&T, but after nine short months he was out of a job. The complaint was that Walter "lacked intellectual leadership." Walter got $26 million for that little stint in a severance package. That's what you call really beating time. Of course, a few of us might have another word for it -- and for AT&T.”
And yet, let’s reiterate the irony -- these same guys sing the praises of capitalism as a perfect mechanism for swiftly correcting imbalances of supply and demand! It always works, they say. Well, except where you just gotta have mutants. Amazing.
Just for the record, I most definitely believe in competitive markets and have said so countless times. Indeed, my aim during this aside is to point out a hypocritical betrayal of markets by those who most vocally claim to be defending them. In fact, there is a business correlate with the kind of price curve that we have seen in the area of CEO compensation. You’ll see a similar curve in a market for a commodity has been cornered so that production is controlled by a small, collusive group, in order to create artificial scarcity. Think diamonds.
And no better example is served (as we return full circle to the earlier topic) than the situation we observe with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
The man who oversaw our humiliation in not one, but two catastrophic Asian land wars, who supported Saddam for decades, till the maniac slipped his leash, who participated in the incredible Blunder of 1991, who later perceived Saddam bulging with hair-trigger WMDs, who suppressed military counsel about troop levels, who confidently predicted we would be greeted by the Iraqi people with “kisses and flowers,” who sanctioned torture, who declared “mission accomplished” while predicting a short happy transition to peace and democracy in Iraq, who oversaw the worst decline in our state of readiness in generations and has alienated most of the Officer Corps and most of our allies…
…now appears to be claiming (without offering a scintilla of evidence) that he is such a superior manager of our nation’s defense that there are no possible replacements. None at all. Not even from the pool of experienced and well-respected conservatives. (e.g. some retired general?) (Er, some other retired general?)
Look, there are many ways to look at these things, but I always try to ask… ”what are you REALLY SAYING?”
And what this “essential man” seems to be saying is “you must continue to put up with all my failures, arrogance, bullying and unending chain of mistakes. Because my political faction cannot find anyone else to bring forward. Nobody else who might – while lacking my heavy burden of liabilities – actually do a better job.”
It’s all the same dreary rationalization – and hearkens to the pattern that really destroyed markets in most cultures, for 4,000 years.
A market for a commodity has been cornered and production controlled, in order to create artificial scarcity. But this market – for managerial talent – must be opened and freed, if our civilization is to prosper.
==The Generals' Revolt==
Some of you have commented upon Donald Rumsfeld’s response to the Generals’ Revolt, in which he firmly dismissed any possibility of resigning the office of Secretary of Defense. He admits that there have been problems and miscalculations and failures – many – worthy of deep criticism. Yet, he insists that his leadership remains badly needed.
Instead of joining the back-and-forth hatefest at its superficial (and least interesting) level, let’s dig a bit. Inherent in everything that Rumsefled is saying appears to be one core assumption -- that there aren’t any other qualified conservatives – untarnished by scandal and failure – who are capable of doing his job.
In other words, despite taking responsibility for AbuGhraib and failed intelligence and mangled war planning and losing the confidence of the Officer Corps, he remains the “essential man.” Impossible to replace, even by another, similar conservative.
Notice how I expressed it. Of course, many of us would like to see neocon leadership replaced at the top of our republic. This movement has acted as if they had a “mandate” to utterly transform America, despite having “won” disputed and at-best profoundly narrow electoral victories. A troglodytic and roughshod era of rationalization and contemptuous dismissal of all dissenting thought.
See: The Real Culture War: Defining the Background
and NeoConservatism, Islam and Ideology: The Real Culture War
But I am not going there right now. Instead, let us perform another of our patented thought experiments.
Let us assume, for a moment, that DR and his movement do have a “mandate.” A blank check from the American people to pursue a general line of policy called “neoconservatism” – including all of the adventurism and romantic Platonism that comes part and parcel with the Straussian worldview.
Even if his movement had such a mandate, that is irrelevant to the issue of whether or not Rumsfeld should resign. For what he is actually claiming is that he – himself – is not replaceable even by some other neocon who has a top defense background and is politically compatible!
In other words, his own movement has such a paucity of talent that it cannot step in with another highly qualified person who can pursue conservative policies WHILE soothing the trainwreck of morale within the Pentagon and across America at large.
Let’s take a moment to delve into the implications of this dogged stand. Whether we call it “stalwart and determined” or “obstinately power-grubbing,” there are even deeper levels that merit exploration.
Should not one of the traits of an honest and mature man be to recognize this delusional habit, and worry about it? The way that George Washington did, when he resigned paramount power – several times – and set the Great Example?
Sure, a certain bullheaded determination is essential in politics. But there are ways to compensate. To ensure accountability. To (above all) provide that your institution and constituents get the benefit of the doubt, and not you. The nation and not the leader. When overwhelming evidence suggests that maybe a guy should go… shouldn’t he go?
You see the same classic syndrome across the entire CEO caste, driving up compensation/pay/stock-option rates toward the moon, as chummy fellow members of the caste vote each other outrageous pay scales, justified on what basis?
Why, it seems always to be a variant on (surprise!) the old Essential Man thing!
So let’s veer aside for a moment and ponder this version of the syndrome. The CEO variation.
Start with basics. These guys believe in capitalism, right?
Specifically, if a shortage of good managerial talent stimulates high market prices for managerial talent, then, within short order, new managerial talent should commence to train itself, ramp-up, then compete (presumably fairly) and innovate until there is so much of it around that the shortage is eased. Whereupon, anomalously high premiums will no longer have to be paid.
In other words, the predicted curve is that a brief period of elevated CEO pay should soon give way to a talent migration that causes a surfeit, even a glut of skilled executives, easing the shortage and causing pay rates to drop.
Isn’t that the fundamental premise? Isn’t that the absolutely basic article of capitalistic-freemarket faith?
But it is not what we’ve observed. Not at all. Instead, the pattern across the last two decades has almost perfectly matched what you see when insatiable demand meets an absolutely limited supply. Like the limited supply of Da Vinci paintings, or Stradivarius violins. Or seven foot centers who can both rebound and pass accurately from mid-court.
Members of the CEO caste seem to be saying “we are actually mutants, like pro basketball players. No matter how much we are paid, the pool of skilled corporate administrators will remain fixed and small. Market incentives – even astronomical ones - will never augment supply. All companies can do is bid up CEO pay in order to hire the few mutant managers away from each other, just like sports teams!”
Hm. Interesting proposition. Mutants. Like Sports stars. (In which case, are we best served coming up with some kind of league-wide reserve clause, hm? Don’t some of these same guys own sports teams and cry for caps? For cost controls? Oh, but then let’s also leave off the whole youth factor. They seem also to be saying that in this field, unlike any other across all of human endeavor, youthful brilliance is entirely irrelevant. Hm. And double hm.)
Alas, there is a problem. In sports, there are explicit performance metrics that can be applied, in order to determine who are the top fifty or so mutant-level -- and thus irreplaceable -- athletes in a given sport. But in business, tremendous effort is made to obscure and obfuscate every performance metric. Correlations with stockholder return or rates of innovation or long term company health are vague, at best. The one correlation that seems always to affect pay is how well you manage to pack the Board with your pals. And that is a dead giveaway. Because truly superior men would be ashamed of having to use tricks like those. They would refuse.
Here’s an example offered by financial expert John Mauldin: “John Walter joined AT&T, but after nine short months he was out of a job. The complaint was that Walter "lacked intellectual leadership." Walter got $26 million for that little stint in a severance package. That's what you call really beating time. Of course, a few of us might have another word for it -- and for AT&T.”
And yet, let’s reiterate the irony -- these same guys sing the praises of capitalism as a perfect mechanism for swiftly correcting imbalances of supply and demand! It always works, they say. Well, except where you just gotta have mutants. Amazing.
And no better example is served (as we return full circle to the earlier topic) than the situation we observe with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
The man who oversaw our humiliation in not one, but two catastrophic Asian land wars, who supported Saddam for decades, till the maniac slipped his leash, who participated in the incredible Blunder of 1991, who later perceived Saddam bulging with hair-trigger WMDs, who suppressed military counsel about troop levels, who confidently predicted we would be greeted by the Iraqi people with “kisses and flowers,” who sanctioned torture, who declared “mission accomplished” while predicting a short happy transition to peace and democracy in Iraq, who oversaw the worst decline in our state of readiness in generations and has alienated most of the Officer Corps and most of our allies…
…now appears to be claiming (without offering a scintilla of evidence) that he is such a superior manager of our nation’s defense that there are no possible replacements. None at all. Not even from the pool of experienced and well-respected conservatives. (e.g. some retired general?) (Er, some other retired general?)
Look, there are many ways to look at these things, but I always try to ask… ”what are you REALLY SAYING?”
And what this “essential man” seems to be saying is “you must continue to put up with all my failures, arrogance, bullying and unending chain of mistakes. Because my political faction cannot find anyone else to bring forward. Nobody else who might – while lacking my heavy burden of liabilities – actually do a better job.”It’s all the same dreary rationalization – and hearkens to the pattern that really destroyed markets in most cultures, for 4,000 years.
A market for a commodity has been cornered and production controlled, in order to create artificial scarcity. But this market – for managerial talent – must be opened and freed, if our civilization is to prosper.
==The Generals' Revolt==
Some of you have commented upon Donald Rumsfeld’s response to the Generals’ Revolt, in which he firmly dismissed any possibility of resigning the office of Secretary of Defense. He admits that there have been problems and miscalculations and failures – many – worthy of deep criticism. Yet, he insists that his leadership remains badly needed.
Instead of joining the back-and-forth hatefest at its superficial (and least interesting) level, let’s dig a bit. Inherent in everything that Rumsefled is saying appears to be one core assumption -- that there aren’t any other qualified conservatives – untarnished by scandal and failure – who are capable of doing his job. In other words, despite taking responsibility for AbuGhraib and failed intelligence and mangled war planning and losing the confidence of the Officer Corps, he remains the “essential man.” Impossible to replace, even by another, similar conservative.
Notice how I expressed it. Of course, many of us would like to see neocon leadership replaced at the top of our republic. This movement has acted as if they had a “mandate” to utterly transform America, despite having “won” disputed and at-best profoundly narrow electoral victories. A troglodytic and roughshod era of rationalization and contemptuous dismissal of all dissenting thought.
See: The Real Culture War: Defining the Background
and NeoConservatism, Islam and Ideology: The Real Culture War
But I am not going there right now. Instead, let us perform another of our patented thought experiments.
Let us assume, for a moment, that DR and his movement do have a “mandate.” A blank check from the American people to pursue a general line of policy called “neoconservatism” – including all of the adventurism and romantic Platonism that comes part and parcel with the Straussian worldview.
Even if his movement had such a mandate, that is irrelevant to the issue of whether or not Rumsfeld should resign. For what he is actually claiming is that he – himself – is not replaceable even by some other neocon who has a top defense background and is politically compatible!
In other words, his own movement has such a paucity of talent that it cannot step in with another highly qualified person who can pursue conservative policies WHILE soothing the trainwreck of morale within the Pentagon and across America at large.
Let’s take a moment to delve into the implications of this dogged stand. Whether we call it “stalwart and determined” or “obstinately power-grubbing,” there are even deeper levels that merit exploration.
Saturday, April 15, 2006
The Officer Corps Fights Back... Shall We Help Them?
As anybody can see, the big news this week concerns a growing avalanche of retired generals who have decided to step forward, speaking out about this administration’s ongoing travesty of failed leadership. Specifically, a series of military men - with nearly twenty stars among them - have called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, calling him unfit for office because of, among other failings, “gross incompetence.”
In fact, for three years I’ve been predicting that this sort of action by stalwart senior members of the United States Officer Corps would turn out to be the ultimate Achilles Heel for Bush-Cheney-Rove & co. My reasons for believing this were - and are - multitudinous, and I’ll get to them in a moment.
See: The Under-Reported Purge of the U.S. Officer Corps.
But first, I want to turn this thing around and shine light on another aspect of the news. A travesty that is erupting on the other side of the political spectrum. I’m talking about the way that some left-wing activists have chosen to react, not by welcoming the generals and embracing them, but by spitting in their faces.
In one case, a shrill blogger referred to these officers as “rats deserting a sinking ship.” Snidely calling the generals shirkers, who are late-comers to the anti-Bush movement, this fellow denigrates them for focusing solely on Rumsfeld, instead of openly and broadly attacking an administration of horrors.
True, this kind of nonsense represents a fringe, a shrill-lefty element that has always railed for the Democratic Party to be a small tent filled with ideological purists, “true to their roots.” (See addendum, below, about how each party has dealt with the radicals in their midst.) So why do I even bother to mention them?
Because, despite their small numbers, the potential damage that these fools can wreak is overwhelming. We -- not just liberals and Democrats, but all decent citizens of the U.S. and the world -- are being offered a gift. A possible way out. And a few loonies want us to indignantly throw it away.
Hence, I want to speak out now for the opposite tactic. For accepting the gift, with eagerness and gratitude.
==THE HISTORIC IMPORTANCE OF THE U.S. OFFICER CORPS==
Few civilians can appreciate how difficult this step has been for military men who spent their professional lives steeped in a tradition of stoical, apolitical silence and submission to civilian authority. Reluctance to interfere in the nation’s political affairs. That tradition, virtually unprecedented in the history of armies and nations, should be revered and respected. It OUGHT to be hard for officers to do what these generals have done. That alone explains why their agonized decision took so long in coming.
It also explains why their focus has been so specific, targeted singly and narrowly at Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. By aiming their bullets only at him, the generals are saying “we choose the monster who is closest to us in the chain of command.” True, they are perfectly aware that any damage to Rumsfeld will carry through, politically, to Bush and Cheney and the GOP. But this approach maintains, to the maximum degree possible, an appearance of veneration to civilian authority. It also expresses a moderate and restrained will toward using “minimum effective force.”
Again, this should be understood and respected.
(Indeed, military men are painfully aware of something never mentioned in the press, that Donald Rumsfeld occupied the exact same office thirty years ago, the LAST time we were humiliated in an ill-conceived ground war-of-attrition in Asia. A startling historical coincidence whose relevance is limited. Yet, it is chilling, just the same.)
If we were to pay attention to these senior military men, we might even learn a thing or two. For example, would it surprise most liberals to realize that the U.S. Officer Corps is, in fact, the 3rd best-educated clade in America today, just after college professors and medical doctors? These senior leaders know an awful lot about history, about the world and its dangers. Would it hurt to listen?
For example, their complaints don’t ONLY have to do with the tactical conduct of the Iraq War, as blithering and imbecilic as that ill-conceived adventure has been, featuring micromanagement by petty armchair Napoleans that would “make Robert MacNamara look like a hands-off kind of guy.” There are other issues afoot, some that cut even deeper, such as the demolition of America’s alliances, the misuse of our reserves, and an incredible, almost unprecedented decline in our actual readiness to respond to any kind of large scale surprise.
(For more on this, see: http://www.davidbrin.com/readiness2.html)
What all of this ultimately amounts to is a golden opportunity to change all of the dynamics that have made the first few years of the 21st Century such bad news for America and Western Civilization. The men and women who have worked the hardest and trained the longest to protect that civilization are holding out their hands to us now -- not just to liberals and democrats, but to all moderate, pragmatic, calm and decent citizens who want common sense to prevail yet again.
Shall we accept the gift we are being offered?
==EMBRACING OUR TORMENTED MILITARY SHOULD BE JOB #1==
For the sake of brevity, let me put forward a simple list of reasons why the leftist reflex should be rejected. Reasons why honest liberals and democrats -- and patriotic conservatives who care to join in -- should make this a key issue in the coming campaign.
1. We have short historical memories. We tend to forget how powerful a weapon this kind of issue can be for democrats, the way national defense served JFK in the election of 1960. How about “support Rummy or our troops, you can’t have it both ways!”
Indeed, by comparing the Clinton-Clark Balkans Intervention, line-by-line, against the Bush-Cheney Iraq Mess, devastating points could be won. (In the Balkans, we never lied, we achieved all objectives promptly, bolstered alliances, improved relations with the Muslim world, and created a Europe that was at peace for the 1st time in 4,000 years, all at the cost of ZERO American service personnel lost to combat! How could this be anything but a winning comparison?)
2. Have liberals really forgotten the debt they owe? That the military was THE lead institution in desegregating America, 60 years ago? After Harry Truman and George Marshall took this step, one historian said “this was the moment when I knew we would change and never go back. It’s when I realized that it would go all the way.”
3. For heaven’s sake, don’t people realize that the military and intelligence communities are among the top VICTIMS of Rove & co?
Yes, there have been other victims. American taxpayers and the poor and the middle class and the environment and freedom of speech and our debt-burdened grandchildren and science and progress itself have all suffered, as have our alliances and our status in the world. But tell me, who else has actually DIED - in large numbers - paying an ultimate price for the venality and stupidity of this gang? Isn’t that enough reason, morally, to reach out and offer them a hand?
4. In addition to combat deaths, and other direct tragedies, these skilled and dedicated men and women have been saddled, spurred and whipped by swarms of the lowest creatures around -- party hacks who were appointed to fill top jobs at Defense, CIA, Homeland Security and countless other agencies. Purely political operatives with negligible knowledge about these fields and few qualifications other than their single-minded dedication to a single goal. The goal of breaking down every tradition and rule of professionalism, bullying our skilled officers and civil servants into submission.
5. Let there be no mistake; this is where the greatest long-term danger to our republic lies. Forgive a bit of chest-thumping, but I have been an almost-solitary voice for years, calling attention to what appears to be a deliberate and far-reaching campaign to transform the US Officer Corps into a political tool. This campaign has not only featured oppression, purges and intimidation at the top - including reassignment, punishment, and forced-resignations of many top generals and admirals - but also a determined effort at the opposite end, by radical Republican House members who are using their power of appointment to fill our military academies with cadets who are either religious zealots or deeply committed to partisan politics. Or both.
All right, it’s possible that my fears are exaggerated, overblown, or even paranoid. Perhaps the long list of anecdotes does not add up to a coordinated and orchestrated “campaign.” Nevertheless, even those anecdotes (e.g. recent tales of fundamentalist bullying at the Air Force Academy) add up to a frightening trend. So why have there been no investigations? No voices risen against all this, from either the free press or the Democratic side of the aisle?
(Those of you who are well-read in the literature of science fiction may know that 2012 was forecast by the great SF author Robert Heinlein, as the year when a fundamentalist fanatic named Nehemia Scudder would take over the USA as “Prophet of the Lord,” and that his very first priority would be exactly this kind of thing, “stocking” the military academies with young men and women whose allegiance would no longer be apolitical and Constitutional, but as personal and ideological as the Praetorians, Janissaries, samurai and jaguar warriors of old. I am not calling Heinlein a soothsayer. But should not this literary horror tale be scaring us right now, fully as much as others that were written by guys like Orwell?)
6. What is the biggest reason why we absolutely must change our reflexive attitudes toward those stern "conservative" men and women, the crewcut types, in the Intelligence Community and the United States Officer Corps?
It is the best reason of all. The simplest and most compelling.
Self preservation.
Think. These people represent our only hope of preventing Rove & co. from pulling some kind of hellacious "October Surprise" in late 2006, and again in 2008. Some nasty event that might frighten the voters silly, turning their eyes away from all the scandals of theft, incompetence and betrayal, prodding the terrified to instead rally around “our national leadership.”
Hey, don’t knock it. This very method has worked for Rove, time and again. Call this paranoid. But can any of you honestly claim that these scoundrels won’t try it again? Care to bet on it? In fact, is there any chance that they won't try it again?
Obviously, the Rove-ists are shaking right now, quivering over the prospect that one or more chambers of Congress may change hands in the next election. Imagine the transformation that would then ensue, away from the worst and laziest legislative branch in our history, with fewer days spent in session, fewer committee meetings, fewer inquiries and audits, fewer bills and debates... and by far the fewest subpoenas issued... in more than a hundred years. Imagine all of that suddenly changing.
If either House or Senate were to resume actual business, recalling vacationing members to their Constitutionally-mandated role of oversight, re-activating slumbering committees, appointing investigators, calling witnesses... well, you can just picture the consequences.
The clang of jail cells will be deafening. You know it. I know it. Karl Rove knows it, all too well.
They have one chance, just one. To spark something truly terrible - perhaps a terror scare, or a pandemic scare, or war with Iran - before the November elections. Moreover, honestly, let me ask you this. Do YOU have a plan for how to stop this from happening?
The courts? The press? Whistleblowers? Oh, please.
Stop and think. There is only one group of people on Planet Earth who can prevent it. They have the skill, the knowledge, the connections and sources, the courage and the wherewithal. Reminded of their duty to the Constitution, to the American people, these members of the Intelligence Community and the U.S. Officer Corps will stand up. They will do what they were trained to do. What they swore a solemn oath to do.
They will put their careers, their bodies, their very lives between us and danger.
They will defend us from enemies of the United States, even when those enemies occupy the White House.
They are our best hope... the crewcut types…
...and it is crucial that people recognize this. Liberals and conservatives. Democrats and decent, old-fashioned Goldwater Republicans.
Above all, the best way for Democrats to prove that they deserve power will be to stand up for these men and women in the IC and the Corps. Only this will show that liberals and moderates and decent conservatives understand the true path.
Not to wage "culture war"... but to end it.
.
See: The Under-Reported Purge of the U.S. Officer Corps.
But first, I want to turn this thing around and shine light on another aspect of the news. A travesty that is erupting on the other side of the political spectrum. I’m talking about the way that some left-wing activists have chosen to react, not by welcoming the generals and embracing them, but by spitting in their faces.
In one case, a shrill blogger referred to these officers as “rats deserting a sinking ship.” Snidely calling the generals shirkers, who are late-comers to the anti-Bush movement, this fellow denigrates them for focusing solely on Rumsfeld, instead of openly and broadly attacking an administration of horrors.
True, this kind of nonsense represents a fringe, a shrill-lefty element that has always railed for the Democratic Party to be a small tent filled with ideological purists, “true to their roots.” (See addendum, below, about how each party has dealt with the radicals in their midst.) So why do I even bother to mention them?
Because, despite their small numbers, the potential damage that these fools can wreak is overwhelming. We -- not just liberals and Democrats, but all decent citizens of the U.S. and the world -- are being offered a gift. A possible way out. And a few loonies want us to indignantly throw it away.
Hence, I want to speak out now for the opposite tactic. For accepting the gift, with eagerness and gratitude.
==THE HISTORIC IMPORTANCE OF THE U.S. OFFICER CORPS==
Few civilians can appreciate how difficult this step has been for military men who spent their professional lives steeped in a tradition of stoical, apolitical silence and submission to civilian authority. Reluctance to interfere in the nation’s political affairs. That tradition, virtually unprecedented in the history of armies and nations, should be revered and respected. It OUGHT to be hard for officers to do what these generals have done. That alone explains why their agonized decision took so long in coming.
It also explains why their focus has been so specific, targeted singly and narrowly at Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. By aiming their bullets only at him, the generals are saying “we choose the monster who is closest to us in the chain of command.” True, they are perfectly aware that any damage to Rumsfeld will carry through, politically, to Bush and Cheney and the GOP. But this approach maintains, to the maximum degree possible, an appearance of veneration to civilian authority. It also expresses a moderate and restrained will toward using “minimum effective force.”
Again, this should be understood and respected.
(Indeed, military men are painfully aware of something never mentioned in the press, that Donald Rumsfeld occupied the exact same office thirty years ago, the LAST time we were humiliated in an ill-conceived ground war-of-attrition in Asia. A startling historical coincidence whose relevance is limited. Yet, it is chilling, just the same.)
If we were to pay attention to these senior military men, we might even learn a thing or two. For example, would it surprise most liberals to realize that the U.S. Officer Corps is, in fact, the 3rd best-educated clade in America today, just after college professors and medical doctors? These senior leaders know an awful lot about history, about the world and its dangers. Would it hurt to listen?
For example, their complaints don’t ONLY have to do with the tactical conduct of the Iraq War, as blithering and imbecilic as that ill-conceived adventure has been, featuring micromanagement by petty armchair Napoleans that would “make Robert MacNamara look like a hands-off kind of guy.” There are other issues afoot, some that cut even deeper, such as the demolition of America’s alliances, the misuse of our reserves, and an incredible, almost unprecedented decline in our actual readiness to respond to any kind of large scale surprise.
(For more on this, see: http://www.davidbrin.com/readiness2.html)
What all of this ultimately amounts to is a golden opportunity to change all of the dynamics that have made the first few years of the 21st Century such bad news for America and Western Civilization. The men and women who have worked the hardest and trained the longest to protect that civilization are holding out their hands to us now -- not just to liberals and democrats, but to all moderate, pragmatic, calm and decent citizens who want common sense to prevail yet again.
Shall we accept the gift we are being offered?
==EMBRACING OUR TORMENTED MILITARY SHOULD BE JOB #1==
For the sake of brevity, let me put forward a simple list of reasons why the leftist reflex should be rejected. Reasons why honest liberals and democrats -- and patriotic conservatives who care to join in -- should make this a key issue in the coming campaign.
1. We have short historical memories. We tend to forget how powerful a weapon this kind of issue can be for democrats, the way national defense served JFK in the election of 1960. How about “support Rummy or our troops, you can’t have it both ways!”
Indeed, by comparing the Clinton-Clark Balkans Intervention, line-by-line, against the Bush-Cheney Iraq Mess, devastating points could be won. (In the Balkans, we never lied, we achieved all objectives promptly, bolstered alliances, improved relations with the Muslim world, and created a Europe that was at peace for the 1st time in 4,000 years, all at the cost of ZERO American service personnel lost to combat! How could this be anything but a winning comparison?)
2. Have liberals really forgotten the debt they owe? That the military was THE lead institution in desegregating America, 60 years ago? After Harry Truman and George Marshall took this step, one historian said “this was the moment when I knew we would change and never go back. It’s when I realized that it would go all the way.”
3. For heaven’s sake, don’t people realize that the military and intelligence communities are among the top VICTIMS of Rove & co?
Yes, there have been other victims. American taxpayers and the poor and the middle class and the environment and freedom of speech and our debt-burdened grandchildren and science and progress itself have all suffered, as have our alliances and our status in the world. But tell me, who else has actually DIED - in large numbers - paying an ultimate price for the venality and stupidity of this gang? Isn’t that enough reason, morally, to reach out and offer them a hand?
4. In addition to combat deaths, and other direct tragedies, these skilled and dedicated men and women have been saddled, spurred and whipped by swarms of the lowest creatures around -- party hacks who were appointed to fill top jobs at Defense, CIA, Homeland Security and countless other agencies. Purely political operatives with negligible knowledge about these fields and few qualifications other than their single-minded dedication to a single goal. The goal of breaking down every tradition and rule of professionalism, bullying our skilled officers and civil servants into submission.
5. Let there be no mistake; this is where the greatest long-term danger to our republic lies. Forgive a bit of chest-thumping, but I have been an almost-solitary voice for years, calling attention to what appears to be a deliberate and far-reaching campaign to transform the US Officer Corps into a political tool. This campaign has not only featured oppression, purges and intimidation at the top - including reassignment, punishment, and forced-resignations of many top generals and admirals - but also a determined effort at the opposite end, by radical Republican House members who are using their power of appointment to fill our military academies with cadets who are either religious zealots or deeply committed to partisan politics. Or both.
All right, it’s possible that my fears are exaggerated, overblown, or even paranoid. Perhaps the long list of anecdotes does not add up to a coordinated and orchestrated “campaign.” Nevertheless, even those anecdotes (e.g. recent tales of fundamentalist bullying at the Air Force Academy) add up to a frightening trend. So why have there been no investigations? No voices risen against all this, from either the free press or the Democratic side of the aisle?
(Those of you who are well-read in the literature of science fiction may know that 2012 was forecast by the great SF author Robert Heinlein, as the year when a fundamentalist fanatic named Nehemia Scudder would take over the USA as “Prophet of the Lord,” and that his very first priority would be exactly this kind of thing, “stocking” the military academies with young men and women whose allegiance would no longer be apolitical and Constitutional, but as personal and ideological as the Praetorians, Janissaries, samurai and jaguar warriors of old. I am not calling Heinlein a soothsayer. But should not this literary horror tale be scaring us right now, fully as much as others that were written by guys like Orwell?)
6. What is the biggest reason why we absolutely must change our reflexive attitudes toward those stern "conservative" men and women, the crewcut types, in the Intelligence Community and the United States Officer Corps?
It is the best reason of all. The simplest and most compelling.
Self preservation.
Think. These people represent our only hope of preventing Rove & co. from pulling some kind of hellacious "October Surprise" in late 2006, and again in 2008. Some nasty event that might frighten the voters silly, turning their eyes away from all the scandals of theft, incompetence and betrayal, prodding the terrified to instead rally around “our national leadership.”
Hey, don’t knock it. This very method has worked for Rove, time and again. Call this paranoid. But can any of you honestly claim that these scoundrels won’t try it again? Care to bet on it? In fact, is there any chance that they won't try it again?
Obviously, the Rove-ists are shaking right now, quivering over the prospect that one or more chambers of Congress may change hands in the next election. Imagine the transformation that would then ensue, away from the worst and laziest legislative branch in our history, with fewer days spent in session, fewer committee meetings, fewer inquiries and audits, fewer bills and debates... and by far the fewest subpoenas issued... in more than a hundred years. Imagine all of that suddenly changing.
If either House or Senate were to resume actual business, recalling vacationing members to their Constitutionally-mandated role of oversight, re-activating slumbering committees, appointing investigators, calling witnesses... well, you can just picture the consequences.
The clang of jail cells will be deafening. You know it. I know it. Karl Rove knows it, all too well.
They have one chance, just one. To spark something truly terrible - perhaps a terror scare, or a pandemic scare, or war with Iran - before the November elections. Moreover, honestly, let me ask you this. Do YOU have a plan for how to stop this from happening?
The courts? The press? Whistleblowers? Oh, please.
Stop and think. There is only one group of people on Planet Earth who can prevent it. They have the skill, the knowledge, the connections and sources, the courage and the wherewithal. Reminded of their duty to the Constitution, to the American people, these members of the Intelligence Community and the U.S. Officer Corps will stand up. They will do what they were trained to do. What they swore a solemn oath to do.
They will put their careers, their bodies, their very lives between us and danger.
They will defend us from enemies of the United States, even when those enemies occupy the White House.
They are our best hope... the crewcut types…
...and it is crucial that people recognize this. Liberals and conservatives. Democrats and decent, old-fashioned Goldwater Republicans.
Above all, the best way for Democrats to prove that they deserve power will be to stand up for these men and women in the IC and the Corps. Only this will show that liberals and moderates and decent conservatives understand the true path.
Not to wage "culture war"... but to end it.
.
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Not dead... just in electronic hell...
Forgive my absence. Or not. It really should not matter, except as evidence that David Brin has priorities.
What have mine been? Other than my daughter's birthday, planting my garden, replacing my pool heater, doing more hours of daddying each week than I received in most years of my own childhood (not my father's fault, but another story) ... and generally living?
What's been the biggest time sink? Well, alas, it has NOT been writing science fiction novels.
Rather, it has been a modern form of medieval torture called technology.
I have just been through the worst imaginable month of electronic hell, with all of my files and computers trashing relentlessly and repeatedly, making me rebuild like a Katrina victim.
It began simply enough, with my son's #@$@#$# Dell 4700 (with expensive graphics card) fritzing just as soon as its internal clock said that the warranty had expired. Three hours on phone with a helpful fellow north of Delhi did not nail it down (so much for $#$@$##@@# MS diagnostics). After five attempted memory swaps, finally realized it is the #$#@# mother board. (Shall I buy a cheap Frys basic, transfer the HD and graphics card and hope for the best?
Oh but then there were all the replacement PCs bought, tried, rejected, returned... till finally a Pavillion HP Media thing seems to work, knock on wood... Only then the downstairs wifi crashed.
But at least I had my Mac. Right? A 4-year old G-4, reliable as a plow horse and just as loyal. I've used Apples (and owned stock) since 1981. Once had an Apple II with a serial number in 5 digits (stolen, alas). I've been quirky and kept the G-4 running sys 9.2, in order to run the only decent word processor ever made, the 1989 version of Word Perfect for Macintosh.
So, did my trusty G-4 HAVE to choose the same month to go fffffft?
Even more frustrating... there in the Mac shop, they said "we can't find a thing wrong with it!" (Oh, yeah, what about all the missing files? I drive south tomorrow to try and save THOSE. Pray for me)
Ah, well, I had already been planning to buy a new G-5 before they switch to Intel chips. Two reasons. The old guys will still run OS9 software. (And yes, I still can use WP'89). Moreover... Intel chips are all "numbered". If you get my drift, folks. So what the heck? I splurged. Hey, once every 4 years ain't bad for a work-horse machine. Give the G-4 to the wife and kids.
Only now I must learn OSX. (Sigh. Must I? Yes, you must) And yes, OSX is marvelous. It's merest bootlace, Windows is not worthy to kiss. Yeah. I know the hype. I even agree, it's all true. But oh! Ten years of productivity tools! Of tricks and time-savers! All needing replacement! Ouch!
Ooooog, I could go on all night. Things that had my blood pressure up and cussing... then slowly calming as I learned to turn into servants instead of horrors. Take the "dock". Sure, it is cute... and annoying... till I got the "dockyard" widget and tamed the thing just great. (Anyone at Apple? I have FIVE suggestions how it could be made better.)
Oh, how I hated the way Apple copied Windows formalism for minimizing, by shunting windows down to the dock and forcing you to go get them out again. Taking away my old OS9 "windowshades"... till I found a $10 app called "Windowshades_X" that wonderfully gives all the old tools back to me, and then some! Suddenly, when you add in stuff like Expose' - my double-wide pair-o-monitors is starting to feel like home. Kind of magical, in fact.
But first, argh... old Quickeys won't work in OSX. Bought the NEW Quickeys because I cannot live without it. Every key on the number pad can become a supercharged macro button. Must have... must... have... only now I must reprogram every single macro and key one at a time, by hand, relearning as I go. My back! Who can spare the neurons!
Is the pain over? Not so fast. Gotta get used to Safari. To the obnoxious blaring colors that they insist folder labels use, if you use colored folders. To browser-style navigation... probably good but hard to adapt. And to the weird logic of desktop/user/HD hierarchy in which NONE OF THEM CONTAINS THE OTHERS!
Oh! Managed to salvage use of my old LAserwriter IINT... a product so fine that it belongs in some Hall of Fame. Asante makes this Appletalk-to-Ethernet box and the guy there talked me thru it.... and it only took ten times longer than it should have.
Oh, it goes on and on. Maybe by May I may be back up to speed... back to NORMAL levels of drowning.
I wonder, might all of this have happened because of my last blog posting? Was it THAT effective?
(There are ways to shut guys like me up, you know....)
As evidence, just look at Newt Gingrich. In the last month, since I started hectoring him, the man has started showing real spine. Oh, I won't claim credit for any of it. (He was already grumbling.) But I sure want to.
And here in Cunningham's district, the democrat, Busby, almost won outright! Oh, there are signs of hope, in the polls, in the defections. But will it all be fast enough to stiffen the few thousand people the republic needs most right now? Those who can step up and say NO to any planned "October Surprise"? Thje officer corps. The intelligence community. The professionals who can save us from monsters, when those monsters start to panic....
-----
Let me close with a couple of items.
1. The inimitable Dan Simmons offers a colorful (and extremely xenophobic)rant about war between civilizations. It sounds like he's been reading my famed predictive speech about "meme wars"
(http://www.davidbrin.com/newmemewar.html#)
while on a fistful of downers. He names folks that I name pretty often, like old Alcibiades, though drawing a very different lesson. His lesson is wrong. Just plain flat-out wrong. But I respect the guy. He writes well. You deserve to be entertained.
http://www.dansimmons.com/news/message.htm
2. Here's a snippet. No special reason. Just one of a myriad I've collected while in the 4th circle of electronic hell. Just clip it and give it to that wvering conservative. All the follows was written by Russ Daggattt.
==BUDGET CHANGES==
Average annual budget change as a percentage of U.S. gross domestic product during these administrations:
Roosevelt 14.8%
Truman -8.6%
Eisenhower -1.3%
Kennedy 0.2%
Johnson 1%
Nixon 1.6%
Ford -1.4%
Carter 1.8%
Reagan -0.6%
G. Bush 0.2%
Clinton -1.8%
G.W. Bush 2.4%
How about that? Bush (with a Republican Congress) has overseen the biggest GROWTH in the Federal Government in almost 60 years. That follows Clinton, who oversaw the biggest DECLINE in the size of the Federal government in a generation. Conservatives who cling to their cliches about this are like freed slaves who stayed with their masters as sharecroppers, rather than standing up, looking around, seeing a new world, and coming to terms with it.
“Corporate profits accounted for 11.6% of gross domestic product in the fourth quarter -- the biggest share of the nation's income companies have taken since 1966. They have been able to do so, say economists, by sharing less with their workers."
I hope to be back in business soon. Thrive till then....
---
(PS can anyone tell me why so many programs like Word insist that when you are selcting passages of text, that you MUST select whole words? Who thinks up these things? WHat PLANET are they from?)
What have mine been? Other than my daughter's birthday, planting my garden, replacing my pool heater, doing more hours of daddying each week than I received in most years of my own childhood (not my father's fault, but another story) ... and generally living?
What's been the biggest time sink? Well, alas, it has NOT been writing science fiction novels.
Rather, it has been a modern form of medieval torture called technology.
I have just been through the worst imaginable month of electronic hell, with all of my files and computers trashing relentlessly and repeatedly, making me rebuild like a Katrina victim.
It began simply enough, with my son's #@$@#$# Dell 4700 (with expensive graphics card) fritzing just as soon as its internal clock said that the warranty had expired. Three hours on phone with a helpful fellow north of Delhi did not nail it down (so much for $#$@$##@@# MS diagnostics). After five attempted memory swaps, finally realized it is the #$#@# mother board. (Shall I buy a cheap Frys basic, transfer the HD and graphics card and hope for the best?
Oh but then there were all the replacement PCs bought, tried, rejected, returned... till finally a Pavillion HP Media thing seems to work, knock on wood... Only then the downstairs wifi crashed.
But at least I had my Mac. Right? A 4-year old G-4, reliable as a plow horse and just as loyal. I've used Apples (and owned stock) since 1981. Once had an Apple II with a serial number in 5 digits (stolen, alas). I've been quirky and kept the G-4 running sys 9.2, in order to run the only decent word processor ever made, the 1989 version of Word Perfect for Macintosh.
So, did my trusty G-4 HAVE to choose the same month to go fffffft?
Even more frustrating... there in the Mac shop, they said "we can't find a thing wrong with it!" (Oh, yeah, what about all the missing files? I drive south tomorrow to try and save THOSE. Pray for me)
Ah, well, I had already been planning to buy a new G-5 before they switch to Intel chips. Two reasons. The old guys will still run OS9 software. (And yes, I still can use WP'89). Moreover... Intel chips are all "numbered". If you get my drift, folks. So what the heck? I splurged. Hey, once every 4 years ain't bad for a work-horse machine. Give the G-4 to the wife and kids.
Only now I must learn OSX. (Sigh. Must I? Yes, you must) And yes, OSX is marvelous. It's merest bootlace, Windows is not worthy to kiss. Yeah. I know the hype. I even agree, it's all true. But oh! Ten years of productivity tools! Of tricks and time-savers! All needing replacement! Ouch!
Ooooog, I could go on all night. Things that had my blood pressure up and cussing... then slowly calming as I learned to turn into servants instead of horrors. Take the "dock". Sure, it is cute... and annoying... till I got the "dockyard" widget and tamed the thing just great. (Anyone at Apple? I have FIVE suggestions how it could be made better.)
Oh, how I hated the way Apple copied Windows formalism for minimizing, by shunting windows down to the dock and forcing you to go get them out again. Taking away my old OS9 "windowshades"... till I found a $10 app called "Windowshades_X" that wonderfully gives all the old tools back to me, and then some! Suddenly, when you add in stuff like Expose' - my double-wide pair-o-monitors is starting to feel like home. Kind of magical, in fact.
But first, argh... old Quickeys won't work in OSX. Bought the NEW Quickeys because I cannot live without it. Every key on the number pad can become a supercharged macro button. Must have... must... have... only now I must reprogram every single macro and key one at a time, by hand, relearning as I go. My back! Who can spare the neurons!
Is the pain over? Not so fast. Gotta get used to Safari. To the obnoxious blaring colors that they insist folder labels use, if you use colored folders. To browser-style navigation... probably good but hard to adapt. And to the weird logic of desktop/user/HD hierarchy in which NONE OF THEM CONTAINS THE OTHERS!
Oh! Managed to salvage use of my old LAserwriter IINT... a product so fine that it belongs in some Hall of Fame. Asante makes this Appletalk-to-Ethernet box and the guy there talked me thru it.... and it only took ten times longer than it should have.
Oh, it goes on and on. Maybe by May I may be back up to speed... back to NORMAL levels of drowning.
I wonder, might all of this have happened because of my last blog posting? Was it THAT effective?
(There are ways to shut guys like me up, you know....)
As evidence, just look at Newt Gingrich. In the last month, since I started hectoring him, the man has started showing real spine. Oh, I won't claim credit for any of it. (He was already grumbling.) But I sure want to.
And here in Cunningham's district, the democrat, Busby, almost won outright! Oh, there are signs of hope, in the polls, in the defections. But will it all be fast enough to stiffen the few thousand people the republic needs most right now? Those who can step up and say NO to any planned "October Surprise"? Thje officer corps. The intelligence community. The professionals who can save us from monsters, when those monsters start to panic....
-----
Let me close with a couple of items.
1. The inimitable Dan Simmons offers a colorful (and extremely xenophobic)rant about war between civilizations. It sounds like he's been reading my famed predictive speech about "meme wars"(http://www.davidbrin.com/newmemewar.html#)
while on a fistful of downers. He names folks that I name pretty often, like old Alcibiades, though drawing a very different lesson. His lesson is wrong. Just plain flat-out wrong. But I respect the guy. He writes well. You deserve to be entertained.
http://www.dansimmons.com/news/message.htm
2. Here's a snippet. No special reason. Just one of a myriad I've collected while in the 4th circle of electronic hell. Just clip it and give it to that wvering conservative. All the follows was written by Russ Daggattt.
==BUDGET CHANGES==
Average annual budget change as a percentage of U.S. gross domestic product during these administrations:
Roosevelt 14.8%
Truman -8.6%
Eisenhower -1.3%
Kennedy 0.2%
Johnson 1%
Nixon 1.6%
Ford -1.4%
Carter 1.8%
Reagan -0.6%
G. Bush 0.2%
Clinton -1.8%
G.W. Bush 2.4%
How about that? Bush (with a Republican Congress) has overseen the biggest GROWTH in the Federal Government in almost 60 years. That follows Clinton, who oversaw the biggest DECLINE in the size of the Federal government in a generation. Conservatives who cling to their cliches about this are like freed slaves who stayed with their masters as sharecroppers, rather than standing up, looking around, seeing a new world, and coming to terms with it.
“Corporate profits accounted for 11.6% of gross domestic product in the fourth quarter -- the biggest share of the nation's income companies have taken since 1966. They have been able to do so, say economists, by sharing less with their workers."
I hope to be back in business soon. Thrive till then....
---
(PS can anyone tell me why so many programs like Word insist that when you are selcting passages of text, that you MUST select whole words? Who thinks up these things? WHat PLANET are they from?)
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
The Choices We Face...
"No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are his accomplices." - Edward R. Murrow
* At last... the mass desertion by true conservatives appears to have begun. See this by Paul Craig Roberts, of all people, who was Ronal Reagan's Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, associate editor of the Wall Street Journal and contributing editor of National Review.
He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Law Enforcement are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Like Paul O'Niel, Ben Nighthorse Campbell and a few others, these are not traitors to conservatism; they are angry over an ongoing betrayal of genuine conservatism by a cabal of extremists who have taken over the movement for their own purposes.
* Even more telling and devastating is the conversion of Kevin Phillips, whose book "The Emerging Republican Majority" (published as he began work for Nixon in 1969) first coined terms like the "sunbelt," forecasting the southern and rural GOP strategy that we now think of as "red state culture war." (That deserves a high score, whatever predictions "registry" you happen to be using.)
Like Newt Gingrich, Phillips foresaw the developing neoconservative movement not only as a march back to power, after catastrophic political defeat in 1964. During the subsequent long process of reappraisal and renewal, those who were reinventing conservatism envisioned a values-oriented return to decent American norms... sort of an immune reaction to - and correction of - purported anti-individualism excess by a fetishistically paternalistic Left.
According to this expectation, a broadly populist political uprising on the right would lead to fiscal responsibility, reduced debt, cautious restraint in foreign policy, efficient and limited government, elevated social discourse, electoral and legislative transparency, emphasis on professionalism and readiness, rising personal wealth for most Americans, a renaissance of entrepreneurial small business and the fostering of healthy civil society through a Tocquevillian process that devolves power from elites to the people.
Read that list of expectations over and over again, as many times as it may take for the irony to sink in. Did this fantastically successful American political revolution, seizing nearly all of a great nation's significant institutions of power, accomplish any of its worthy surface aspirations? Any at all?
That is, aspirations other than raw power? For those special few who in effect own the GOP, the active and profound reversal of all stated goals may not matter very much. (After all, power is power.) And other parts of the ruling neocon coalition - Straussian Platonist Mystics and religious fundamentalists - are easily satisfied with symbolic gestures, rather than tangible outcomes.
But for old-fashioned Goldwater Conservatives, who still make up a high fraction of grassroots Republican voters, the betrayal of every principle and desideratum must tear, grind and fester. Logically, this kind of cognitive dissonance should lead to agonized-but honest reevaluation, starting from the ground up. Well, it should. But, alas.
A deep flaw - perhaps the most tragic in human nature - makes delusional hallucinators of us all, blinding our eyes to any evidence that runs counter to our favorite dogmas. (This applies in all directions, to all dogmas, left as well as right.) Even more urgent is the need to find excuses for our side, our team, our tribe. In the face of this core human trait, it takes an awfully big person to admit that cherished, idealistic plans went awry... even diametrically opposite to every fervent hope.
IS CITIZENSHIP TOO MUCH TO ASK FOR?
And yet, aren't we praying, right now, for just such a grim admission to emerge out of the festering pain of decent American conservatism? The honest and sincere conservatism of Barry Goldwater, that was based upon a straightforward dedication to rectitude and accountability, arising out of some combination of market forces, law, and a vibrantly empowered, democratically enlightened citizenry? The kind that proudly faced the best of liberalism, ready to negotiate how problems should be solved, not whether they should be ignored?
That notion of conservatism remains valid and continues to deserve a place at-table, even now, after the movement's tiller has been hijacked by monsters. Is there even a slim chance that it can be rescued, before its reputation is permanently ruined by association with monsters?
Imagine how it might help save conservatism - and the republic itself - if a critical mass of decent, conservative paragons were to see their public-spirited duty in time. A clear duty to emulate the Miracle of 1947.
That was when several thousand moderate American liberals - having learned the truth about Stalin's Soviet horror - gathered their courage and resolve, stood up, and admitted that "the radicals of our side can be mad." In a combination of patriotism, pragmatism and idealism, they resolved to separate themselves, from any association with Communism, even at the level of nostalgic sympathy!
Nothing less would have sufficed. A schism of the left was necessary, in order to save the American left as a dynamic force in our national life.
Not only was this move courageous, it proved spectacularly successful. What ensued was not a defeat of American liberalism, but rather its greatest era - that of Martin Luther King and Betty Friedan - when citizens were inspired to redouble every progressive effort, to pass bills, revise laws, change their communities, and above-all to repair deep character flaws of racism, sexism and the shortsighted abuse of our grandchildren's planet. These problems were not completely solved, of course. But few of us regret those strenuous exertions, or call them wasted. Nor could any of it have happened, if honest American reformers had not decisively separated liberalism from a far-left that was deeply sick.
CAN SUCH A MIRACLE HAPPEN AGAIN?
Can anyone doubt that matters are just as serious today, on the American right, as they were for the left in 1947? In much the same way that liberals felt torment over disowning the monsters on "their side," so we now see decent conservatives writhing and twisting, like pretzels, in order to make excuses for rapacious kleptocrats, incompetent thugs, moronic armchair warriors, cynical spin doctors, conniving feudalists and screeching fanatics.
Are they truly loyal to such monsters? Are they kept in rigid lockstep out of some misplaced fealty to a ridiculous "political axis" that was insipid even when the French invented it, in 1789? A left-right axis that offers no relevance or insight or utility for an agile and sophisticated Third Millennium? (Gather a dozen people and no two will even define it the same way!)
In frantic denial, these classic conservatives tell themselves that "at least Clinton was worse..." without ever explicitly showing how he was worse, by even a single rationally explicit metric of human governance!
Such is our human genius for self-delusion. The same deep character flaw that toppled every other great nation, even at its height of power. The character flaw that our pragmatic enlightenment was supposedly designed to overcome.
Will decent American conservatives see their duty in time, the same way that members of the ADA and AFL-CIO and NAACP saw theirs, way back in 1947? Or will we finally see how decisively different these two movements really are, when the chips are down? One with a record of openminded heroism and the other... displaying craven cowardice till the bitter end?
Alas, Newt Gingrich hasn't stepped forward yet. (An in-depth essay 'Should Democrats Issue a New Contract with America'? re-appraises Gingrich's 1994 Contract with America, considering how this masterful piece of 20th Century political polemic might be used by the other side, in the 21st. Indeed, Gingrich might even approve... if his goal remained sincere.)
Nor have many other "decent conservatives" who should rise up and put true patriotism over dogma, declaring greater loyalty to our system than to a side in this contrived culture war. Alas, for the most part, top conservatives have either bought into the madness, or else grit their teeth and excuse it, by pointing to a strawman carricature of liberalism - a version that bears no resemblance to mainstream Democrats. It may be satisfying to yammer about terror-coddling, pornography-pandering, overspending, UN -surrendering, effete naifs, but the difference between the Democrats and the GOP is that the liberals' loony carricatures never had any chance of real power, and never will.
(And yet, George F. Will, like Cato, continues shrieking hysterically at anemic Carthage, while making wincing excuses for a homegrown tyranny.)
CAUSE FOR HOPE?
But let's look at the bright side. Look around for signs of hope. Glimmers like Kevin Phillips who recently came out with American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century. A book that every one of us should go out and buy, for two reasons:
(1) in order to make it a best-seller, and
(2) in order to shove each copy into the hands of at least one honest, sincere and mentally-competent American conservative. (Well, perhaps as a test of mental competence.)
I won't go into the author's arguments here. Not in detail, although it certainly is refreshing to see a "conservative" concede the obvious - for example, that an ingrown, secretive, and historically selfish petro plutocracy is hardly the most credible cabal to trust with a great nation's energy policy, or its foreign policy, for that matter.
Phillips admits that he was shocked by the course that his revolution took, veering in directions that left all of the old goals of empowered citizenship and public rectitude abandoned, in the dust. He never expected the mass-populist neoconservative movement could be so easily -- almost trivially -- hijacked by elements that are anti-freedom, anti-future and anti-enlightenment, taking this route not only out of venial self-interest but also as a matter of fundamental personality.
According to Phillips, those elements include not only the petrocracy, but also religious fanatics, contemptuous media moguls and foreign elements that seek world power in the most efficient and straightforward way possible - by directly influencing American elites.
While focusing especially upon two of these elements - the new theocrats and the petrocracy - Phillips comes closer than anybody else to actually recognizing what's going on... a return to the consistent pattern that dominated nearly every other urban culture in human history. A power-sharing arrangement between resource controlling aristocrats and mystical clerics, who chant justifications for aristocratic rule.
Don't even try to deny that this was the freedom-suppressing formula in every culture, from Babylon to China to Rome... and all the way to the British Imperium that our founders finally rejected, in their daring gamble. A wager instead upon Periclean-Lockean notions of institutionalized reciprocal accountability. (Moreover, it is worth pointing out that the same formula dominated the old Confederate South, which Phillips now calls the ultimate winner of an ongoing Civil War.)
* Just to keep up my reputation of balance, let me point out that the Soviet Union followed this classic pattern in every detail, down to a mutually beneficial alliance where power-holders bent on ferociously enforced rule by an inherited nomenklatura, relied upon quasi-religious Marxian dogmatists to justify the elites' monopoly of power. Everything else - every bit of "egalitarian" Communist rhetoric - was hypocritical, Potemkin window-dressing. *
Far from being a matter of left versus right, what we are seeing today is a renewal of the same battle fought by Franklin, Washington, Lincoln, Marshall and every other great American hero. Every generation of American heroes. A battle pitting the new maturity of accountability, pragmatic self-improvement and rambunctious citizenship against the endlessly recycled power-rationalizations that served tyrants of every stripe. An age-old reflex that's the real enemy of freedom, still calling to us from Egypt and Ur. From the caves. From our genes.
WILL "DECENT CONSERVATIVES" BECOME AN OXYMORON?
Alas, though Phillips comes closer than anybody else, he still doesn't lay things out this clearly. Amid a somewhat murky morass of near-term details, he never crystallizes the Big Picture... that all ideologies tend to serve the interests of some freedom-stealing cabal. Especially if we let our favorite dogmas get hijacked by monsters.
Liberals (the smartest and best of them) were able to see this, when they performed a miracle in 1947, choosing to side with Franklin, Madison and Marshall. In a similar manner, decent conservatives may yet rescue us from a similarly dire crisis, in 2006, ending "culture war" by the simple expediency of saying "this is not conservatism. No, this is madness."
Will it happen, though?
Let's be clear about this. Patriots of all kinds will stand up and stop the monsters. As our parents and grandparents passed every test, we too will rise up and be counted, in defense of both our republic and civilization. America will be saved. That is not the real issue.
No, the issue is whether enough decent conservatives will rise up, joining this struggle, to save any hope for their movement during generations to come.
If Newt and his friends want a better version of conservatism to survive and thrive, with a reputation for anything other than spineless dogmatism, they will heed the call of history, and stand up. Now, when we need them most.
In doing so, they will make this not a matter of "culture war" between rural and urban America, but a much simpler matter, about ejecting a nasty gang of thieves, in order to let our nation get back to business. In doing so, they will save their own movement. But don't hold your breath.
So far, the pioneers in this conservative turnaround are so few that individual quirkiness dominates over any sense of momentum. From Kevin Phillips to David Brock to Paul O'Neil, the exceptions merely serve to attract Rovean spasms of character assassination, while raising false hopes, that this generation will be able to accomplish its historic mission - preserving the Great Experiment - with significant help from the right.
So far, despite those few exceptions, it seems unlikely.
If we can find any consolation, during this time of darkness, it is in a strange fact... or rather, a bit of inspiring truthiness... that the State of Arizona has started producing copious amounts of clean electricity from magnetic coils that surround the furious spinning in Barry Goldwater's grave.
===
See more: Politics for the 21st Century
* At last... the mass desertion by true conservatives appears to have begun. See this by Paul Craig Roberts, of all people, who was Ronal Reagan's Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, associate editor of the Wall Street Journal and contributing editor of National Review.
He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Law Enforcement are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Like Paul O'Niel, Ben Nighthorse Campbell and a few others, these are not traitors to conservatism; they are angry over an ongoing betrayal of genuine conservatism by a cabal of extremists who have taken over the movement for their own purposes.* Even more telling and devastating is the conversion of Kevin Phillips, whose book "The Emerging Republican Majority" (published as he began work for Nixon in 1969) first coined terms like the "sunbelt," forecasting the southern and rural GOP strategy that we now think of as "red state culture war." (That deserves a high score, whatever predictions "registry" you happen to be using.)
Like Newt Gingrich, Phillips foresaw the developing neoconservative movement not only as a march back to power, after catastrophic political defeat in 1964. During the subsequent long process of reappraisal and renewal, those who were reinventing conservatism envisioned a values-oriented return to decent American norms... sort of an immune reaction to - and correction of - purported anti-individualism excess by a fetishistically paternalistic Left.
According to this expectation, a broadly populist political uprising on the right would lead to fiscal responsibility, reduced debt, cautious restraint in foreign policy, efficient and limited government, elevated social discourse, electoral and legislative transparency, emphasis on professionalism and readiness, rising personal wealth for most Americans, a renaissance of entrepreneurial small business and the fostering of healthy civil society through a Tocquevillian process that devolves power from elites to the people.
Read that list of expectations over and over again, as many times as it may take for the irony to sink in. Did this fantastically successful American political revolution, seizing nearly all of a great nation's significant institutions of power, accomplish any of its worthy surface aspirations? Any at all?
That is, aspirations other than raw power? For those special few who in effect own the GOP, the active and profound reversal of all stated goals may not matter very much. (After all, power is power.) And other parts of the ruling neocon coalition - Straussian Platonist Mystics and religious fundamentalists - are easily satisfied with symbolic gestures, rather than tangible outcomes.
But for old-fashioned Goldwater Conservatives, who still make up a high fraction of grassroots Republican voters, the betrayal of every principle and desideratum must tear, grind and fester. Logically, this kind of cognitive dissonance should lead to agonized-but honest reevaluation, starting from the ground up. Well, it should. But, alas.
IS CITIZENSHIP TOO MUCH TO ASK FOR?
And yet, aren't we praying, right now, for just such a grim admission to emerge out of the festering pain of decent American conservatism? The honest and sincere conservatism of Barry Goldwater, that was based upon a straightforward dedication to rectitude and accountability, arising out of some combination of market forces, law, and a vibrantly empowered, democratically enlightened citizenry? The kind that proudly faced the best of liberalism, ready to negotiate how problems should be solved, not whether they should be ignored?
That notion of conservatism remains valid and continues to deserve a place at-table, even now, after the movement's tiller has been hijacked by monsters. Is there even a slim chance that it can be rescued, before its reputation is permanently ruined by association with monsters?
Imagine how it might help save conservatism - and the republic itself - if a critical mass of decent, conservative paragons were to see their public-spirited duty in time. A clear duty to emulate the Miracle of 1947.That was when several thousand moderate American liberals - having learned the truth about Stalin's Soviet horror - gathered their courage and resolve, stood up, and admitted that "the radicals of our side can be mad." In a combination of patriotism, pragmatism and idealism, they resolved to separate themselves, from any association with Communism, even at the level of nostalgic sympathy!
Nothing less would have sufficed. A schism of the left was necessary, in order to save the American left as a dynamic force in our national life.
Not only was this move courageous, it proved spectacularly successful. What ensued was not a defeat of American liberalism, but rather its greatest era - that of Martin Luther King and Betty Friedan - when citizens were inspired to redouble every progressive effort, to pass bills, revise laws, change their communities, and above-all to repair deep character flaws of racism, sexism and the shortsighted abuse of our grandchildren's planet. These problems were not completely solved, of course. But few of us regret those strenuous exertions, or call them wasted. Nor could any of it have happened, if honest American reformers had not decisively separated liberalism from a far-left that was deeply sick.
CAN SUCH A MIRACLE HAPPEN AGAIN?
Are they truly loyal to such monsters? Are they kept in rigid lockstep out of some misplaced fealty to a ridiculous "political axis" that was insipid even when the French invented it, in 1789? A left-right axis that offers no relevance or insight or utility for an agile and sophisticated Third Millennium? (Gather a dozen people and no two will even define it the same way!)
In frantic denial, these classic conservatives tell themselves that "at least Clinton was worse..." without ever explicitly showing how he was worse, by even a single rationally explicit metric of human governance!
Such is our human genius for self-delusion. The same deep character flaw that toppled every other great nation, even at its height of power. The character flaw that our pragmatic enlightenment was supposedly designed to overcome.
Will decent American conservatives see their duty in time, the same way that members of the ADA and AFL-CIO and NAACP saw theirs, way back in 1947? Or will we finally see how decisively different these two movements really are, when the chips are down? One with a record of openminded heroism and the other... displaying craven cowardice till the bitter end?
Alas, Newt Gingrich hasn't stepped forward yet. (An in-depth essay 'Should Democrats Issue a New Contract with America'? re-appraises Gingrich's 1994 Contract with America, considering how this masterful piece of 20th Century political polemic might be used by the other side, in the 21st. Indeed, Gingrich might even approve... if his goal remained sincere.)
(And yet, George F. Will, like Cato, continues shrieking hysterically at anemic Carthage, while making wincing excuses for a homegrown tyranny.)
CAUSE FOR HOPE?
But let's look at the bright side. Look around for signs of hope. Glimmers like Kevin Phillips who recently came out with American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century. A book that every one of us should go out and buy, for two reasons:(1) in order to make it a best-seller, and
(2) in order to shove each copy into the hands of at least one honest, sincere and mentally-competent American conservative. (Well, perhaps as a test of mental competence.)
I won't go into the author's arguments here. Not in detail, although it certainly is refreshing to see a "conservative" concede the obvious - for example, that an ingrown, secretive, and historically selfish petro plutocracy is hardly the most credible cabal to trust with a great nation's energy policy, or its foreign policy, for that matter.
Phillips admits that he was shocked by the course that his revolution took, veering in directions that left all of the old goals of empowered citizenship and public rectitude abandoned, in the dust. He never expected the mass-populist neoconservative movement could be so easily -- almost trivially -- hijacked by elements that are anti-freedom, anti-future and anti-enlightenment, taking this route not only out of venial self-interest but also as a matter of fundamental personality.
According to Phillips, those elements include not only the petrocracy, but also religious fanatics, contemptuous media moguls and foreign elements that seek world power in the most efficient and straightforward way possible - by directly influencing American elites.
While focusing especially upon two of these elements - the new theocrats and the petrocracy - Phillips comes closer than anybody else to actually recognizing what's going on... a return to the consistent pattern that dominated nearly every other urban culture in human history. A power-sharing arrangement between resource controlling aristocrats and mystical clerics, who chant justifications for aristocratic rule.
Don't even try to deny that this was the freedom-suppressing formula in every culture, from Babylon to China to Rome... and all the way to the British Imperium that our founders finally rejected, in their daring gamble. A wager instead upon Periclean-Lockean notions of institutionalized reciprocal accountability. (Moreover, it is worth pointing out that the same formula dominated the old Confederate South, which Phillips now calls the ultimate winner of an ongoing Civil War.)
* Just to keep up my reputation of balance, let me point out that the Soviet Union followed this classic pattern in every detail, down to a mutually beneficial alliance where power-holders bent on ferociously enforced rule by an inherited nomenklatura, relied upon quasi-religious Marxian dogmatists to justify the elites' monopoly of power. Everything else - every bit of "egalitarian" Communist rhetoric - was hypocritical, Potemkin window-dressing. *
Far from being a matter of left versus right, what we are seeing today is a renewal of the same battle fought by Franklin, Washington, Lincoln, Marshall and every other great American hero. Every generation of American heroes. A battle pitting the new maturity of accountability, pragmatic self-improvement and rambunctious citizenship against the endlessly recycled power-rationalizations that served tyrants of every stripe. An age-old reflex that's the real enemy of freedom, still calling to us from Egypt and Ur. From the caves. From our genes.
WILL "DECENT CONSERVATIVES" BECOME AN OXYMORON?
Liberals (the smartest and best of them) were able to see this, when they performed a miracle in 1947, choosing to side with Franklin, Madison and Marshall. In a similar manner, decent conservatives may yet rescue us from a similarly dire crisis, in 2006, ending "culture war" by the simple expediency of saying "this is not conservatism. No, this is madness."
Will it happen, though?
Let's be clear about this. Patriots of all kinds will stand up and stop the monsters. As our parents and grandparents passed every test, we too will rise up and be counted, in defense of both our republic and civilization. America will be saved. That is not the real issue.
No, the issue is whether enough decent conservatives will rise up, joining this struggle, to save any hope for their movement during generations to come.
If Newt and his friends want a better version of conservatism to survive and thrive, with a reputation for anything other than spineless dogmatism, they will heed the call of history, and stand up. Now, when we need them most.
So far, the pioneers in this conservative turnaround are so few that individual quirkiness dominates over any sense of momentum. From Kevin Phillips to David Brock to Paul O'Neil, the exceptions merely serve to attract Rovean spasms of character assassination, while raising false hopes, that this generation will be able to accomplish its historic mission - preserving the Great Experiment - with significant help from the right.
So far, despite those few exceptions, it seems unlikely.
If we can find any consolation, during this time of darkness, it is in a strange fact... or rather, a bit of inspiring truthiness... that the State of Arizona has started producing copious amounts of clean electricity from magnetic coils that surround the furious spinning in Barry Goldwater's grave.
===
See more: Politics for the 21st Century
Monday, March 27, 2006
Electoral College redux....
An interesting issue is raised by David Broder of the Washington Post, in a recent editorial titled: "Electoral College foes devise plan for popular vote."
"The question of how we elect a president is up for debate again, with advocates of a majoritarian philosophy having invented a new device for moving to a direct popular vote for the chief executive.
. . Rather than going through the labors of amending the Constitution to replace the Electoral College system with a national tally for president, which has failed every time it has been attempted, they have come up with a plan for bypassing the required two-thirds vote in the House and Senate and the ratification by three-fourths of the states.
. . Instead, the advocates propose that states with sufficient electoral votes -- 270 of the 538 -- to comprise an electoral majority enter into an interstate compact, pledging to give their votes to the candidate receiving the largest number of popular votes. That action could allow the legislatures of as few as 11 states to change the whole system of electing a president."
Sponsored by former independent presidential nominee John Anderson and former Senator Birch Bayh, it has been endorsed by Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker and, earlier this month, by the editorial page of The New York Times, which called the Electoral College ''an antidemocratic relic."
Broder opposes this endeavor, for reasons that I do not dispute.
Yes, had this system been in place, the national tragicomic farce that began unrolling in 2000 would not have happened. We would have been spared the spectacle of a divisively partisan president claiming "mandate" when his opponent actually got more votes.
Still, I am unimpressed with the argument that a plurality winner who has surpassed his rival by only a few hundred votes - or a few thousand - is thus profoundly and qualitatively endowed with special mandatory grace, especially when "plurality" still means that more people voted against him than voted for him.
It is worth remembering that "majority rule" is not the core element of democracy. Rather it is democracy’s most crass and simpleminded aspect, emphasizing the raw power of larger numbers to impose their will upon smaller numbers. An improvement over rule by bullying minorities of gentry and oligarchs, but not a perfect one.
Indeed, majority rule was held in low esteem - considered a necessary evil - by everyone from Pericles to the American Founders, who went out of their way to emphasize other, more important democratic traits, like balance of power, reciprocal accountability, openness, individual rights and the need for relentless and ongoing negotiation. -- especially with aggrieved minorities. The Electoral College was itself set up in order to add complexity and to modify the crude passions of majority rule.
See: The Myth of Majority Rule.
The Anderson-Bayh proposal coarsely attempts to impose the will of just a dozen states upon the whole nation - not in picking a president, per se (since the plurality-winner is at least as righteous a pick as anybody else), but by imposing a principle of pure majoritarianism... nay pluralitarianism... upon the nation without sufficient discussion or deliberation.
In order to see how foolish this is, try on this thought experiment.
Imagine that a truly powerful run by a couple of third-party candidates were to divide the electorate into tiny fragments, as happened in 1912 and even more so in 1860. Should the winner of as few as 26% of the popular votes automatically become president, without even a chance for the nation to take a breath and think things over? In theory, that candidate might be the hated bottom-choice of the divided 74%. Yet, under pluralitarianism, she or he would become chief executive.
Other countries solve this problem by holding run-offs among the top two vote-getters, something that seemed impossibly onerous and time-consuming in George Washington’s time. But why not today? Or let’s get even more modern. Ideally, in an age of computers, we should be smart enough to use preferential ballots, as they do in Australia, a sophisticated and just system under which Americans would get to rank-order their choices and be guaranteed never, ever to get a president who is hated by a majority. (More on this elsewhere.)
Ah, but as has been widely pointed out, these solutions require Constitutional tinkering that is nearly impossible to achieve, when powerful forces benefit from the status quo. Are we thus doomed forever to worry about rule by some dismal crackpot, put into office by some minority electoral quirk?
What is weird is that the Founders actually thought about this problem. We generally think of the Electoral College as a reflex and automatic vote-allocation system that works according to strict allocation by winner-takes-all in every state. But, in fact, the electors themselves are not required, by the Constitution, to act as complete robots. The word "college" implies some level of collegial deliberation is possible, and might even have been expected, by the Framers. Indeed, within living memory, a few electors have broken from strict partisan discipline and cast their votes in unexpected ways.
Consider the 2000 election, in which the Bush-Cheney team entered office by the margin of just ONE electoral vote, over-riding the pluralitarian will of the people. The mind is tempted to ponder some parallel world in which just one of the Bush-Cheney electors might have taken a notion to help heal a divided nation with a gesture, offering something to the disgruntled majority of Americans who had clearly voted against George W. Bush...
... that imaginative and public-spirited elector might have done this by casting a deciding VICE presidential vote for Joe Lieberman. With a stroke, this delegate to a sovereign constitutional institution might have forced a different, possibly more accommodating tone upon an administration that has made "culture war" its guiding principle. Is that parallel America happier than this one, less divided, less bitter? Would that one elector’s gesture have made any real difference? No one can say. But one thing is for certain. The Electoral College would have never again been viewed the same way.
I have taken too long on this. But let me conclude by saying that Anderson-Bayh almost certainly mean well. They just haven’t thought things out. There are some other possible ways to tweak and improve the Electoral College system, WITHOUT either tinkering with the Constitution or imposing an end-run trick, that out gerrymanders the gerrymanderers.
I discuss this one such proposal at:
http://www.davidbrin.com/electoral.html
The kernel idea: we tend to assume that all states are required to divvy their electors according to a rule of "winner-takes-all." But familiar process this is, in fact, just another example of state-based gerrymandering. Two states use a different approach, more closely representing the will of their voters.
Is it possible that a simple lawsuit, demanding "one-person-one-vote"- if cogently presented, might persuade even this Supreme Court to banish winner-takes-all across the board? In a stroke, this would force the distribution of Electoral College votes to more closely reflect the popular vote. Imperfectly, but a step in the right direction. That is, if this Supreme Court actually values "one person, one vote."
For a more general look at gerrymandering, see:
http://www.davidbrin.com/gerrymandering1.html )
Alas, in the near term, none of these matters will make much difference. We are in a situation that few of us would have imagined, only a decade ago. In a 21st Century that was supposed to be sophisticated and subtle, with educated citizens engaged in even-tempered, complicated, problem-solving discourse, we find ourselves instead waging Culture War across ideological battle lines that would have looked simpleminded even to Huey Long.
===
For more on politics, see: Politics for the 21st Century
. . Rather than going through the labors of amending the Constitution to replace the Electoral College system with a national tally for president, which has failed every time it has been attempted, they have come up with a plan for bypassing the required two-thirds vote in the House and Senate and the ratification by three-fourths of the states.
. . Instead, the advocates propose that states with sufficient electoral votes -- 270 of the 538 -- to comprise an electoral majority enter into an interstate compact, pledging to give their votes to the candidate receiving the largest number of popular votes. That action could allow the legislatures of as few as 11 states to change the whole system of electing a president."
Sponsored by former independent presidential nominee John Anderson and former Senator Birch Bayh, it has been endorsed by Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker and, earlier this month, by the editorial page of The New York Times, which called the Electoral College ''an antidemocratic relic."
Broder opposes this endeavor, for reasons that I do not dispute.
Yes, had this system been in place, the national tragicomic farce that began unrolling in 2000 would not have happened. We would have been spared the spectacle of a divisively partisan president claiming "mandate" when his opponent actually got more votes.
Still, I am unimpressed with the argument that a plurality winner who has surpassed his rival by only a few hundred votes - or a few thousand - is thus profoundly and qualitatively endowed with special mandatory grace, especially when "plurality" still means that more people voted against him than voted for him.
Indeed, majority rule was held in low esteem - considered a necessary evil - by everyone from Pericles to the American Founders, who went out of their way to emphasize other, more important democratic traits, like balance of power, reciprocal accountability, openness, individual rights and the need for relentless and ongoing negotiation. -- especially with aggrieved minorities. The Electoral College was itself set up in order to add complexity and to modify the crude passions of majority rule.
See: The Myth of Majority Rule.
The Anderson-Bayh proposal coarsely attempts to impose the will of just a dozen states upon the whole nation - not in picking a president, per se (since the plurality-winner is at least as righteous a pick as anybody else), but by imposing a principle of pure majoritarianism... nay pluralitarianism... upon the nation without sufficient discussion or deliberation.
Imagine that a truly powerful run by a couple of third-party candidates were to divide the electorate into tiny fragments, as happened in 1912 and even more so in 1860. Should the winner of as few as 26% of the popular votes automatically become president, without even a chance for the nation to take a breath and think things over? In theory, that candidate might be the hated bottom-choice of the divided 74%. Yet, under pluralitarianism, she or he would become chief executive.
Other countries solve this problem by holding run-offs among the top two vote-getters, something that seemed impossibly onerous and time-consuming in George Washington’s time. But why not today? Or let’s get even more modern. Ideally, in an age of computers, we should be smart enough to use preferential ballots, as they do in Australia, a sophisticated and just system under which Americans would get to rank-order their choices and be guaranteed never, ever to get a president who is hated by a majority. (More on this elsewhere.)
Ah, but as has been widely pointed out, these solutions require Constitutional tinkering that is nearly impossible to achieve, when powerful forces benefit from the status quo. Are we thus doomed forever to worry about rule by some dismal crackpot, put into office by some minority electoral quirk?
What is weird is that the Founders actually thought about this problem. We generally think of the Electoral College as a reflex and automatic vote-allocation system that works according to strict allocation by winner-takes-all in every state. But, in fact, the electors themselves are not required, by the Constitution, to act as complete robots. The word "college" implies some level of collegial deliberation is possible, and might even have been expected, by the Framers. Indeed, within living memory, a few electors have broken from strict partisan discipline and cast their votes in unexpected ways.
Consider the 2000 election, in which the Bush-Cheney team entered office by the margin of just ONE electoral vote, over-riding the pluralitarian will of the people. The mind is tempted to ponder some parallel world in which just one of the Bush-Cheney electors might have taken a notion to help heal a divided nation with a gesture, offering something to the disgruntled majority of Americans who had clearly voted against George W. Bush...
... that imaginative and public-spirited elector might have done this by casting a deciding VICE presidential vote for Joe Lieberman. With a stroke, this delegate to a sovereign constitutional institution might have forced a different, possibly more accommodating tone upon an administration that has made "culture war" its guiding principle. Is that parallel America happier than this one, less divided, less bitter? Would that one elector’s gesture have made any real difference? No one can say. But one thing is for certain. The Electoral College would have never again been viewed the same way.
I have taken too long on this. But let me conclude by saying that Anderson-Bayh almost certainly mean well. They just haven’t thought things out. There are some other possible ways to tweak and improve the Electoral College system, WITHOUT either tinkering with the Constitution or imposing an end-run trick, that out gerrymanders the gerrymanderers.
I discuss this one such proposal at:http://www.davidbrin.com/electoral.html
The kernel idea: we tend to assume that all states are required to divvy their electors according to a rule of "winner-takes-all." But familiar process this is, in fact, just another example of state-based gerrymandering. Two states use a different approach, more closely representing the will of their voters.
Is it possible that a simple lawsuit, demanding "one-person-one-vote"- if cogently presented, might persuade even this Supreme Court to banish winner-takes-all across the board? In a stroke, this would force the distribution of Electoral College votes to more closely reflect the popular vote. Imperfectly, but a step in the right direction. That is, if this Supreme Court actually values "one person, one vote."
For a more general look at gerrymandering, see:http://www.davidbrin.com/gerrymandering1.html )
Alas, in the near term, none of these matters will make much difference. We are in a situation that few of us would have imagined, only a decade ago. In a 21st Century that was supposed to be sophisticated and subtle, with educated citizens engaged in even-tempered, complicated, problem-solving discourse, we find ourselves instead waging Culture War across ideological battle lines that would have looked simpleminded even to Huey Long.
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For more on politics, see: Politics for the 21st Century
David
Brin
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