You Know....

I think that we the USA might be worse off than we thought.

Shit.

I wrote yesterday about the definitions of hypocrisy and sin.  Someone whose writings I respect sent back a quick e-mail clarifying his thoughts, and that helped.

A hypocrite fails and lies about it, to themselves and to others.  A sinner repents.

But then I started thinking, and it took me further into the land of "troubled".  What is the definition of someone who believes that their failures are successes, that instead of bearing false witness against himself, he/she genuinely believe that they have done no wrong.  There are these folks out there.

If you fail, and in your own mind, cannot recognize that failure and immediately paint your failures as success and your weaknesses as strengths, what does that make you?  If you see the act of taking things and selling yourself as as a normal part of business as usual and not a sin, does doing so make you a sinner.

In my mind, we are talking about choosing between two broken vessels.  Folks out there bandy about cold sounding clinical descriptions:  Sociopaths, paranoids...etc...etc...etc.

More and more we are just trying beat around the bush and not say out loud what everyone seems to know.

We are only discussing our choice between one type of madness and another.

False Witness

I found this quote over at Jesse's today.

"The hypocrite's crime is that he bears false witness against himself. What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core."

                                                               Hannah Arendt

I have always been leery of the folks who brand others as hypocrites.   As the above quote states, the hypocrite seems to be worse than the criminal.

But this seems to me to be shaky thought.  If one takes to heart a set of standards for conduct, and they are high standards, that are difficult to attain, and still thinks that those are the correct standards that he wishes to hew to, does that make him a hypocrite when he fails?

Of just a sinner.

Objectivist??

Question for the day:

Is putting a "Who is John Galt" bumper sticker on a late model Toyota pickup.

1. ironic?
2. pathetic?
3. a deeper understanding of a masterpiece? (Note:  That is Irony)

A decidedly odd subject

I really can't figure out why folks are so fucking strange when they talk about climate change.

Otherwise intelligent people screaming like schoolgirls, mocking any writer that doesn't hew to their party line.  Global warming doesn't exist;  the Earth is going to become Venus: All the shades in between.

Look dudes, this is science.  This is mathematical modelling.  This is meticulous data collection over generations.   This is positing hypotheses and testing them.  This is plugging vast arrays of data and trying to establish what the long-term results will be years from now.

Talking about science in a politically or economically oriented discussion group is about as useful as sensitivity training from a Redneck.

The work being generated has flaws.  No doubt about that.  But the trend seems to be real and I will predict (hypothesize) that there will be pain; because the data that has been cross-checked and beat up any number of ways sure as hell points that way.  But remember, the predictions made need to be verified and that can only be done by waiting for the years to pass.

I think that the folks who troll concerning climate change (maybe 20% of the overall) fall into two categories:

1.  People who are concerned about getting rich and don't want anything to interfere with that process.
2. People who used to wear "the world is coming to an end" sandwich signs and stand on street corners

Look, here is the deal.  In science, you wait until the data come in until you say true or false.  You examine the data and try to decide valid or invalid.  In the case of climate science, the decades and centuries subsequent to now are the experiment.

The data thus far, for the most part, support the assertion that the model positing climate change is accurate.  Done and done.  Whether that correlation continues will be decided by facts on the ground.

The science is established.  Correlation currently is supporting the hypothesis of climate change and long-term warming.  Causality is being investigated, with preliminary results pointing toward industrial civilization pumping a whole shitpot of burnt remnants of fossil fuels into the atmosphere.

Who fucking knows?  By the time the data comes in, I will be pushing up daisies.  But to not pay some serious attention to this might make my children and their children's life harder than it needs to be.

I think that the data lends itself to a lot of caution in the next century.  The better bet is to ratchet back on the industrialization thing and the perpetual growth thing.  Time to seriously make inroads on energy consumption (Make that consumption in general) and make an effort to not fuck things up.

My favorites are the "scientist" type that try to disparage the data.  And the methodology.  Over at SST, where I first posted this piece, A "scientist" spent a whole bunch of time slamming my post, only to admit tangentially that his science was as a patent lawyer..

The real point of this over-long ramble is just to emphasize the odds-based nature of global warming/climate change.  There is no "proof" out there.  There are only odds and chances.  To me, the chances that such a thing exists is fairly high.  The chances that humankind's activities are responsible is almost as high.

We probably won't act on it until too late.

But I have always been a fan of Allopatric speciation.

Four: Power, Privilege, Faith and Wealth

The most successful trick was linking the corporate mantra of profit without responsibility to the concept of individual liberty.

Matt Taibbi 

The Galtheads are the problem in America today.  The NeoCon's and the NeoLibs are merely the latest face-paint for this disease.  The idea of the untermensch as contemptible and the Ubermensch as the self-proclaimed savior has a long history behind it.  Kiss up and kick down, the mantra of the Republican party the gospel core of the Calvinists who make up a pretty big damn chunk of the electorate.

Look, the philosophical core of the NeoCon and the NeoLib is simple:  We want as much control and as much wealth accruing to us as possible.  We are in the right.  We will do what we need to do to obtain this control.   This is referred to in some circles as "Liberty".

They don't give a damn about fairness.  Wealth and power accrued is their only goal, starving everyone around them to permit them forgetfulness offered by the elixir of wealth and power is seen as a worthy goal.

So the corporations and their whores made an excellent tactical move in years past.  They bought up the means of mass communication here in the USA.  They installed obedient little coiffed, preferably blonde airheads to read the equivalent of the high school student body speeches every morning.  What we get as news in the mass media is really just the press releases of the corporate state.

Look, I really can't say that the democracy experiment is panning out the way that I thought that it would.  I didn't realize that it could be that easily subverted.  I am astonished that people can't see that the form of government that rules us does not appear to have the interests of the vast majority of the populace in mind when they rule.

It would appear to me that the Neoliberal/corporatist project I defined in the earlier paragraphs has made excellent tactical moves.  They  are in control of the media, they are in control of the Democratic party.  The rage against them is increasing though.  The internet, with all of its odd corners and crazy talk rages against the machine.  The vaunted "Southern Strategy" that the Republicans set 40 some odd years ago has backfired and the docile crackers that they recruited to vote against the blacks and abortion have turned on them.

Gonna be a heck of a year, one way or another.

The Fuse

Question one:

What are the odds of a major Western Democracy having a major insurrection/coup in the next 365 days?

This is a response from good old Russell.  (BTW:  I think that silver is moving again and no, I won't bet you this time).

They don't have a culture for it, and most of the military leadership is old. Modern revolutions tend to come the dispossessed educated youth.

Say what?

I would take a good hard look buckaroo.  I agree 100% with your statement, but you seem to imply that this ain't the case, so it won't happen.

Last time that I checked, this appears to be the first generation where they will probably make less than the generation before them.  They have also been saddled with a huge amout of loans and have been overeducated to the point where their degrees are becoming a weight rather than a aid.

The wealth gap is becoming more pronounced, and the greater bulk of the newly educated and indebted youngsters seem to be catching on to the fact that they have been handed a shit sandwich and that we oldsters expect them to pay for our dotage.

This is evident in other countries too.

I think the real question is:  How long is the fuse.

Casus Belli

For the last six months of my less-than-illustrious military career, I spent time in a leg unit in the good old FRG. The BC couldn't quite get a handle on what to do with the likes of me....way overqualified E-4 with a Bachelors, a GT score of 160, and a crypto clearance. I was very much an odd duck.

Anyhoo....When they found out that I could both type and could nest recursive clauses, I spent a shitload of time editing and rewriting op-plans (infantry officers have a uniquely poor grasp of the English language).

Reforger, NATO dep, etc, etc. I went through them and edited the shit out of them.

One thing that I distinctively remember is the "Denial Operations" aspect of these pieces of screed.

I would posit, that if push came to shove, and Erdo got too frisky, that the 40-80 dial-a-nukes at Incirlik can be rendered moot in a single strike. They won't do much good if where they used to be is at the bottom of a radioactive crater.

I would also posit that even Erdo knows this. What he is trying to discover is: Do anyone have a pair in Washington?

Maybe BHO doesn't, but I would also posit that there are a bunch of AF O-8 through O-10 who damn sure won't let Erdo have their toys.

For that matter, if it comes to that, Vlad P would probably look the other way.

A council of Buehrgers

What are the odds?  There are three answers below in the little blogger checkbox dohickey

Question one:

What are the odds of a major Western Democracy having a major insurrection/coup in the next 365 days?

Maturity

I am an old man

This is not the country I grew up in.

Nor is it the country I want my grandchildren to live in.

A quote from Charles Kingsley Michaelson, III

I read this good gentleman every day.  I enjoy his fellow-traveller, cranky old man personae immensely, as that is my personae as well, and he does it so much better than I do.  Multiple kudos are always in order.

But what is the country he wants to have his grandchildren grow up in?  I would hazard a guess that it is the United States of 1950 to 1975 era.  Life was pretty sweet then, we had full employment, a more-than-ample energy supply, and a set of competitors that were busy rebuilding economies destroyed by a war that never touched our shores.

Simply put, you can't get there from here.

This is a problem with my generation, and Jim is of my generation.  We had it so easy for so long that it is hard for us to believe that what we had wasn't real.  It was an illusion forged out of destruction that we didn't see and a reckless use of limited resources.

The world has returned to its normal fractious state of competing interests that we cannot control. Our foreign policy has been reduced to the Byzantine staples of destabilization and bribes.  Our industry has been gutted and the manufacturing jobs that once formed the core of our vibrant economy have been shipped to third world sweatshops where profits accrue to corporations and despots.

Our education has been reduced to a "drug and sequester" set of tests administered by a professional class more concerned with maintaining their monopoly, regular raises and privileged self-advertisement than the mundane challenge of teaching.

Our corprate and party leadership has become a class of rentier worthy of the title ancien regime.

No Jim, the country in which you wish to raise your grandchildren is long gone.  I am afraid that what we have, with all its warts,  is the best on offer though.

Time to get back to work and roll up your sleeves.  Your grandchildren will live in an environment smaller and less ostentatious than the one you so long to give to them.  It will be defined by the hard work that they and you and their parents put into the mix.  If it is good, it may very well be that they are the exception, not the rule.

In case you have forgotten.

The First Step

Physicist David Bohm liked to stress: “In scientific enquiries, a crucial step is to ask the right question.  Indeed each question contains presuppositions, largely implicit.  If these presuppositions are wrong or confused, the question itself is wrong, in the sense that to try to answer it has no meaning.  One has thus to enquire into the appropriateness of the question.”

Just an Odd Question

Please take the little yes/no/maybe quiz below.

Question of the week:

OMG:  My God:  Mein Gott:  Mon Dieu

Now....the question is:

Is it ever appropriate to use the first person possessive in reference to what you accept as a higher authority

Short and Bilious

OK, I am only going to say this once.

If you are one of the pathetic loser middle-class white men who drive around in their SUV with the windows open and your little lap dog (Read here Shitzu, or King Charles Spaniel, or Bichon Frise or some other little yapping fluffy bag of shit) sitting on your lap.  Please stop reading this blog...Now, forever!  You are a loser who I don't even want reading my material in case there is a chance of any of your utter and complete lameness somehow crawling back along the alleyways of the internet and infecting me.

If you are one of these morons with a SUV and the following;

• a NRA sticker, 
• a pro second amendment sticker, and 
• a sticker defining gun control as holding your weapon with both hands, 

and your little white dog sitting on your lap actually barking at people at traffic lights .......well, all I can hope is that you haven't reproduced.

This country is exceptional, but I posit it isn't for the right reasons.

Quick and Easy

This is probably the easiest post that I have ever written:

I sent an e-mail with the following quote to Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius, and Cicero. 

I suspect the reason has to do with one of the unmentionable realities of contemporary American social life—the fact that so many Americans these days long desperately for a good excuse to hurt someone. Watch the way that Americans behave toward anyone they’ve decided it’s okay to hate, and you can count on seeing a really impressive degree of viciousness in action. This is why we fetishize vampires and zombies, why mass murderers occupy so large a place in our collective imagination, why policies that punish the poor for their own destitution enjoy bipartisan support, and so on.   

Return From Cicero

Relatedly, our video game culture, which mostly involves killing guys (human or monster) and stealing their stuff.   Talk about an "impressive degree of viciousness in action."
Interesting that all the violence in the video games and movies is classified very clearly in our culture as entertainment. I believe it is true that bullet manufacturers have struggled to meet demand from the general public - since the beginning of Obama term one! This is also part of the entertainment industry - ripping off rounds into a picture of a hated individual. Or maybe patriots are just stockpiling the bullets - daydreaming of the day when they might be called upon to commandeer a Bird Sanctuary or something even more patriotic. But if the bullets are being stockpiled, eight years of maximum overtime production is a lot of bullets isn't it? Anyway, the classification of all this stuff as entertainment might be a little red flag that folks are a bit warped these days.

Return from Claudius

(A paraphrase of something I read years ago, I don't recall who said it.)
In commercial, advertising-driven media, you the viewer are not the consumer.
The advertiser is the consumer.
You are the product.

Return from Gaius

It's probably that we've always been a bit warped in the head. Humanity as a whole, that is; look at all the stuff we've come up with (Crusades, slavery, cultural superiority); this isn't really new. You could make an argument that some of the game developers probably just wanted stuff like those video games to work as a vector; that is, something for people to channel their anger on instead of other people. Like a punching bag. And still, there are games and books who show that people are trying to move past the whole hate/violence thing. But even then, it's still there today. That's likely always going to be true.