Who's In a Daze?

Just as I began my blog at the end of the 3rd week of April with a critique about a John Stossel show that he put together around the year 2000 in which he suggested that laws to keep the air and water clean were unnecessary because somehow the air and water in the U.S. had gotten much cleaner over the previous 30 years (I wonder how that happened!), along came a fresh Stossel opinion piece where he asserted that climate scientists have greatly exaggerated the potential threat to our civilization posed by climate change. This time around, JS timed his piece to hit shortly before Earth Day, with a snarky title pun aimed at environmentalists, but the main target of his scorn was a climate science report recently released by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

A few years ago, the Sierra Club magazine published a pair of satellite photos of the Arctic, with September of 1971 next to September of 2011, and just looking at those pictures, I could clearly see the dramatic loss of sea ice now occurring at the end of the northern hemisphere's warm season, compared with much smaller melting from 4 decades earlier. However, when I showed those pictures to a guy living in my house who leaned to the political right wing, he looked at me as if I was playing some sly liberal trick on him, and he muttered something about having seen different pictures of the Arctic sea ice.

Now climate scientists are predicting that within a few short years, and possibly as soon as the summer of 2016, which is a little over 2 years from now, the Arctic will experience a period with no sea ice whatsoever. I do not need a climate scientist to tell me that this is a major change, because I know that just 4 decades ago, the Arctic sea ice, even at its lowest point near the end of the warm season, still extended well beyond the Arctic circle, but apparently people like Mr. Stossel and my old right-wing housemate do not see the complete loss of Arctic sea ice as anything particularly important.

I haven't studied climate science, and so I must defer to the experts when it comes to the details. In the absence of scientists, I wouldn't know that this lack of Arctic sea ice has not occurred during all of the time that human beings have walked the earth, and I also wouldn't have guessed that an average temperature rise of a few degrees C would have caused such a major ice melt. In addition, I wouldn't know what this lack of Arctic sea ice might mean going forward, but I can clearly see that an Arctic with no sea ice will be a dramatic change, not just from 1971, but even from September of 2011, which is less than 3 years ago, and so I have no trouble believing the experts when they predict that this major change will bring about other major changes. Somehow, Mr. Stossel, and probably my old right-wing housemate as well, can see the prediction of an ice-free Arctic coming true, and still say that the scientists who made that prediction are exaggerating its significance. Perhaps the daze that JS sees is just the reflection of what surrounds his own head, but I doubt that he'll ever consider that possibility.

The Forgotten Smog Clouds

Back around the turn of the millennium, John Stossel acquainted me with the modern right-wing political argument, either breath-takingly clueless or slyly corrupt, that when a law works too effectively it should be ended. Mr. Stossel took a swim in the Hudson River in front of the camera to demonstrate how laws to clean up water pollution are unnecessary, and in so doing he convinced me that listening to him was a waste of time.

In his category of the unnecessary, J.S. included laws to prevent or mitigate air pollution, which made me wonder whether he remembers the smog clouds that once surrounded U.S. cities before the E.P.A. came into existence, or if he somehow never noticed the problems. I remember very well that the New York City smog cloud could be clearly seen from the Tappan Zee Bridge, even though the rest of the skyline could not. I don't remember the extent of every smog cloud around the major cities I travelled through in the early 1970s, but I do remember that all of those cities, from Atlanta to Buffalo, Louisville to Washington, and on and on, they all had one.

The smog cloud I do remember well, though, was the Chicago one. It started about 100 miles outside of the city, and you could see it clearly for about 20 to 30 miles before you got into it. As you approached the smog cloud, it seemed to disappear, which meant that you were getting inside of it, and once inside of it, you could easily forget about it, because it showed no obvious signs of its presence. Living inside of it, most of the time you could be completely unaware of its existence, as probably most people were. 

One sunny spring morning in the early 1970s, though, that smog cloud did show itself to me, as I happened to be awake before sunrise, staying up all night in the company of my college text books. I looked eastward across Lake Michigan, wanting to see the sunrise, but I couldn't see the sun come up because the smog was too thick. As the surroundings got brighter and clearer, I kept glancing eastward, and I couldn't see any clouds blocking the sun, but I also couldn't see the sun. About an hour after it was actually daylight, the sun slowly rose above the edge of the haze, but by then I knew I couldn't honestly tell anyone I had seen the sunrise.

Slowly, during the '70s and '80s, the smog clouds around American cities disappeared, largely as a result of laws passed by Congress and enforced by the E.P.A. The 2011 W.H.O. ranking of the cities of the world with the worst air quality showed that U.S. and Canadian cities now have much cleaner air than cities in Asia which, by some odd coincidence, have much less regulation on sources of air pollution. Folks like John Stossel would have us believe that regulations and the E.P.A. have nothing to do with those air quality rankings, which makes me want to say one thing to him: "Give me a break!"

The Most Dangerous Game

For an example of the danger to civilization which the super rich can pose when they control too much of our modern politics, you need to look no further than right-wing casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson. This Richy Rich fellow bought Newt Gingrich during the 2012 Presidential election season, hoping to gain a chief executive in the deal, but fortunately for the survival of our species and all higher life forms on earth, Newt proved to be a bad investment. 

Now Mr. Addledbrain is shopping for a 2016 Presidential candidate, and what does he want? He wants someone who will make sure that a certain casino billionaire with the initials S.A. won't be prosecuted for bribery of foreign officials, which is against U.S. law and which the evidence suggests he may well have done, plus he wants someone who will outlaw online gambling, since this creates competition for the casino business. These two desires certainly run counter to the best interests of at least 99.99% of the remaining U.S. population, but it's SA's 3rd desire that should cause the greatest concern -- he wants someone who will nuke Iran.

It doesn't take a genius to foresee the probably results of such a foolish military action, but you do have to see further than the end of your own nose. Setting aside the callous suggestion of murdering multitudes of people -- and to be fair, Richy Rich has entertained the idea that perhaps we could simply drop a nuke into the Iranian desert as a kind of warning shot, and such a move might only murder a handful of innocents rather than millions -- following such a suggestion would lead step by step to a nuclear arms race in which there would be no winners, but in which human civilization could very well be the loser.

Dropping a nuke on Iran, even in a sparsely-populated desert zone, would send the message to the rest of the world that we as the most powerful military force on the planet could no longer restrain ourselves from using our most destructive weapon. Any nation considering itself a possible target for future U.S. military strikes would suddenly feel compelled to begin stockpiling nuclear weapons purely as a matter of self-defense. Rather than putting an end to a nuclear weapons program in Iran that may or may not exist, such a strike would guarantee that the Iranians would strive as mightily as possible to acquire nuclear weapons as soon as they could. 

We do not want to give Russia, or China, or Iran, or whoever, the idea that we might just drop a nuke on them some day. Or, at least, those of us who can think logically about the foreseeable consequences of our actions, we don't want to do that. Mr. Adelson does want to do that, though, and because he has so much money to spend on buying the candidate of his choice, he has a line of politicians who can't wait to sell themselves to him. For the good of all of us, we can only hope that he makes a bad choice once again. Also, for the future of our species, and all other higher life forms, we need to end this system of political pay-for-play as soon as we possibly can.

The Five Most Corrupt Political Actors on the D.C. Stage

The five most corrupt political actors on the D.C. Stage -- Supreme Court justices Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy and Alito -- just delivered a decision earlier this week, in the case of McCutcheon v. FEC, that clearly shows the depth of their corruption. Their decision will effectively remove the limits on how many members of Congress their Richy Rich friends can buy, and they made sure to hand it down early enough in the year to make a difference in November.

During the oral arguments for this case, Unjustice Scalia remarked that "Three and a half million dollars isn't a heck of a lot of money." To completely understand the context of Scalia's remark, add the phrase for one person to spend on political campaigns in a single election cycle to the end of it. This should give you a clearer idea of who Mr. Scalia works for, and who his friends are. Even for someone making a salary of $10 million/year, spending over a third of that salary on a single election cycle would amount to a heck of a lot of money, so Mr. Scalia's friends, and the people who he wants to please with his decisions, are not mere millionaires with small 9-figure net worths -- they are Billionaires, with a very big B.

Side note to New Hampshire residents: Remember that, when asked, Scott Brown initially named Scalia as his favorite SCOTUS judge, but quickly amended that statement following the gasps of shock coming from the live audience. You might want to take that into consideration when you think about who to vote for in your U.S. Senate election this coming November.

Of course, McCutcheon is only the latest in a series of corrupted decisions designed to please their rich friends, and it is Part 2 of their continuing efforts to dismantle a federal election system that would limit how much those rich friends can spend to buy members of Congress and influence Presidential choices. They began this systematic disassembly with the Citizens United decision in January of 2010, and no doubt they will continue taking apart federal election spending restrictions when and where they have the chance to do so. 

Only someone swimming in a sea of corruption could write, as Unjustice Kennedy did in the Citizens United decision, that money given to national political campaigns does not even present the appearance of corruption. Anyone aware of the corrupting influence of money on politicians would not write such an obvious lie into a legal record and expect it to be taken seriously, so the fact that Kennedy did so, and spoke for his four colleagues when doing so, tells us just how corrupt to the core they are.

In the Citizens United case the corrupt five also made clear their contempt for American democratic traditions, and the very concept of the will of the people, when they equated money with free speech. Anyone who says money equals free speech is saying, in effect, that the more money someone has, the more influence they should have over public policy. From that point of view, the will of the majority only matters if it can be bought and paid for -- the rich should rule, according to these corrupt five, and the more they have their way, the more the rich will rule.

The Right-Wing Approach to Solving Problems

Sharing a living space over the last few years with a right-wing guy, I came face-to-face with a few annoying situations that could easily have been avoided by using a small amount of foresight. For instance, this fellow rarely took showers, for reasons unrelated to the subject at hand, but when he did take one, he would remove the small catcher that I had placed in the drain. Why? He had long hair, and when he took a shower, so much of his hair would fall out that it would clog the strainer and not allow the water to drain out. The longer the shower, the deeper the water would get if he left the catcher in the drain, so what did he do? Before he took a shower, he removed the strainer.

Why did this annoy me? Because, being the responsible one, I would inevitably have to get out the plunger and spend some work time with that bathtub drain at the point when the hair that flowed into it caused a clog further down. It occurred to me, on one such plunger occasion, that my housemate had provided me with the perfect metaphor for the right-wing approach to solving problems. He couldn't see very far past the end of his own nose, so he could not imagine what might cause the bathtub drain to get clogged.

During the Bush/Cheney era, we got used to hearing these right-wingers say "No one could have imagined..." or variations on that theme, when in most cases someone actually had imagined -- just not someone from their ideological circle. Pick a subject, from infrastructure maintenance to disease prevention, unemployment assistance to scientific research, investment in education to environmental protection, and the short-sighted right-wing approach will almost always lead to far greater long-term costs, even if it manages to achieve some small savings in the near term. Right-wingers do not see the long view, even when it's a matter of months rather than years, and they don't have enough brain cells firing at any one time to add up the logic of their actions to get to the inevitable sum of the results of those actions, so we put the future in peril whenever we hand them the keys to that future. 

Beware of the right-wing politician who says he can save you money by not spending for that ounce of prevention --  most of the short-term benefit will go to the wealthy 1%, but even if some of it does trickle down to you, the bill for the associated pound of cure is guaranteed to cost you a lot more in the long run.

The idea of the 7th generation apparently comes to us from the Iroquois nations, where those chosen to lead the tribes and to make the most consequential decisions did so on the basis of how their decisions might possibly affect 7 generations of their children. With right-wingers, you won't get 7 generations of forethought -- you'll be lucky to get 7 minutes.

Hobgoblins of the Right-wing Mind

Note: This is a repost and slight revision of a blog originally posted in September of 2012 on my website (DaveElder.com) back when the website had a blog page, before the March 2013 redesign.

Back when Dick Cheney explained his 1% solution, in which he said he would choose to interpret a 1% threat to the national security of the United States as equal to a 100% threat, he as much as admitted that he didn't have enough brain cells firing at any one time to be able to distinguish between a 1% threat and a 100% one. You would expect a leader focused on national security to weigh each potential threat based upon how it really tips the scales, determine which threats merit greater attention, and then set strategic priorities based upon that determination. Skewing your priorities to make a 1% threat equal to a 100% threat could lead to disastrous ends, such as invading a country that poses no actual threat to your own, based upon false evidence or faulty interpretations of intelligence, resulting in trillions of dollars of new debt on top of unnecessary widespread death and destruction.

After all, what kind of crazy paranoid fool carries around a hazmat suit in the trunk of his car, worried that terrorists could strike at any moment? The same kind of fool who could believe that Saddam Hussein played an active role in the 9/11 attacks, even though logic and a clear understanding of the facts would dictate otherwise. Like many others, I noticed the Orwellian way in which Bush and Cheney often linked Iraq and 9/11 in their speeches, when no such link actually existed, or even could have existed, but in their minds such a link did exist. Mr. C had to admit in a post-administration talk that he never found that missing link, even though while in office he did his best to have such a link tortured out of the mouths of various prisoners.

From a 2012 book entitled 500 Days: Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars by New York Times contributor Kurt Eichenwald, we learned that not only did Bush and Cheney ignore repeated warnings about an imminent Al-Qaeda attack within the United States, but some in their administration floated the idea that Osama Bin-Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack on the U.S. for the purpose of distracting the administration from the very real threat (in their minds) posed by Saddam. While such an idea made no logical sense, it appealed to the simplistic thinking of a group of people who can only understand the world in terms of "us versus them." Sadam and Osama, in reality, never worked together, and never would have done so, but Cheney, Bush and the rest of their neocon cabal could never understand that. When presented with a strategic offer from the leadership of Iran, Cheney responded by saying, "We don't talk to evil." What kind of leader uses such a phrase? One who can only comprehend the world by reducing its complexity to the simplest and most blunt terms, and such a leader will almost always mislead.

Remember back in March of 2003 when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told a live press conference and broadcast network audience that he knew the location of Iraq's non-existent WMDs? Looking closely at those non-existent WMDs now, they bear a striking resemblance to the super-secret Soviet ABMs which The Committee for the Present Danger, run by Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Cheney, worked very hard to protect us from back in the late 1970s and up through much of the 1980s. When the fall of the Soviet Union proved conclusively that no such Soviet Anti-Ballistic Missile program had ever existed, Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Cheney almost immediately found new enemies to fear.

Over the past few years, right-wingers have vowed to keep us safe from the imposition of Sharia Law, the enforcement of martial law by U.N. troops, and the threat posed by hidden members of the Muslim Brotherhood inside of various security-related departments of the executive branch. The echoes of McCarthyism in the Muslim Brotherhood accusations are astounding indeed, but to be fair to Mr. McCarthy, while there were no Communists in the executive branch of his time, contrary to his loud and forceful assertions, the likelihood of there being one was still much greater than the possibility of a member of the Muslim Brotherhood lurking within the present day executive branch. As far removed from reality as right-wingers like McCarthy were in the 1950s, the modern-day heirs to their paranoia have moved a step or two further away from reality.

I had thought that, given their incredible mishandling of security matters related to 9/11 as well as other significant events such as the anthrax attacks (which were never solved) and violations of D.C. air space by small private aircraft, the Bush/Cheney bunch would forever put an end to the myth of Republican superiority in matters of national security, but yet that myth still persists in some quarters. Why? Because right-wingers believe that only other right-wingers can keep them safe from the hobgoblins that haunt their simplistic worlds. Those of us who live in the reality-based community, with its thousands of shades of gray as well as millions of colors, cannot afford to have these clowns handling our national security, because not only will they not see where the next major threat might come from, if it's substantially different from the last one, but they will also drag us into more wars against people and countries that pose no actual threat to us, but who are different enough from us that these right-wingers will see in them some possibility of a 1% threat to the United States, and that possibility will then become 100% to them because they cannot actually tell the difference between the two numbers. The only way to achieve genuine, effective and lasting national security is to keep these right-wing fools, and the hobgoblins that haunt their simplistic minds, as far away from our national security apparatus as possible.

Separating the Conservatives from the Authoritarians

Conservative John Dean did American culture a truly beneficial service, in his book Conservatives Without Conscience, by identifying the true nature of the Dick Cheney types -- they are authoritarians. In the book he speaks about how authoritarians have taken over the conservative movement, and while people like Cheney call themselves conservative, their actions follow a very authoritarian pattern, not a conservative one. 

Growing up in a conservative household in the 1960s, I would not have believed that 4 decades later, someone calling himself a conservative would start an unnecessary war, champion torture techniques and institute a major domestic spying program. We saw and expected this kind of behavior from the Soviet Union, and other Communist states, but surely no American leader, of any party or political leaning, would do that, would they? I couldn't imagine anything more un-American, and more un-conservative.

Mr. Cheney did not try to disguise his obvious contempt for democracy, and the will of the people, when he uttered his famous single-word reply to a reporter's mention about majority opposition to the Iraq War in 2007 (So?), but Dick will not call himself an authoritarian, even though he would have wished to rule by dictate, because he knows that American culture does not respect or value authoritarians. He and others like him want to give the orders, and have those orders followed without question, regardless of what the majority, or even significant minorities, might think of those orders, but these authoritarian types can't openly admit that. 

So how to draw the line between the genuine conservatives and the autocrats who call themselves conservatives? Actually, they draw that line themselves, and unknowingly reveal themselves, when they defend, make excuses for, or try to promote what they usually call enhanced interrogation techniques, which can be clearly understood as torture. Quite simply, anyone who believes that you can beat the truth out of someone is not conservative -- they are authoritarian. 

I remember laughing along with my classmates in grade school when we heard the absurd confessions of the Salem witch trials, where women who had been tortured admitted to turning themselves into cats and birds. In the 1970s, the Spanish Inquisition was a favorite Monty Python joke as well. Among the baby boom generation, it was understood across political lines that torture was an anachronism from the Dark Ages that only survived in the modern world under autocratic regimes like China. I could not then have predicted that an American government autocrat calling himself a conservative would resurrect a technique from the Spanish Inquisition and insist that it has a useful modern application. I don't know if Mr. Cheney believes that the Spanish Inquisition did a good job of ferreting out heretics, or if he's convinced that some women in Salem really did turn themselves into cats, but given his fantasies about yellow cake and Iraqi WMDS, perhaps he does believe these other crazy things. 

The men who, by their labor, crafted the basic structure of the U.S. government in the era that followed The Age of Reason, understood the folly of cruel and unusual punishment, and so they wrote a prohibition against it into the foundation of American law. They understood, by virtue of reason and logic, that torture serves mainly to command obedience and yield false confessions. Anyone who speaks in favor of harsh interrogations does so not from a desire to conserve basic American principles, but from an autocratic impulse to control people in whatever way possible. No matter what the guy calls himself, if he says torture works, he's an autocrat, not a conservative.