Dangerous Time For The Nation

The ultra-right wing is composed of racists, homophobes, xenophobes, theocratic totalitarians, those who cling to failed economic doctrines, those who long for a blissful past which never existed, those who fantasize a government-free future which is not possible, and those who hate anyone that isn't like them - them being, basically, middle aged, white Christians who think everyone else should and will burn in hell.

In opposition is not the left wing - there is no real left wing in America and never really has been except for some naive flirtation with communism during the time of the depression - but a diverse, slightly right of center assortment of ideologies which is probably best described as not being ultra-rightist.

Although it professes some ideology, the ultra-right is really fueled by ignorance, fear and hatred - all of which are powerful, motivating forces. And, have no doubt, they are mobilized. Their blind urge to unseat all whom they blame for their current ills leads them to support candidates who are not only unqualified, but dangerously inept and/or actively dedicated to policies against the interests of their supporters. In many cases, it is very much like the chickens voting to put the foxes in charge of the chicken coop.

By contrast, the opposition to these forces of darkness are demoralized, frustrated, and giving ample evidence to support Will Rogers' quip, "I don't belong to any organized political party. I'm a Democrat."

Well, as a nation, as a world, we cannot afford to succumb to this sort of malaise. There is simply too much riding on it. Despite its flaws, the Obama administration has managed to pass the only significant health care reform in decades; ditto for financial industry oversight; despite the naysayers it has saved the US banking and auto industries. As a matter of fact, a little judicious googling will provide you with a list of over 100 significant achievements that everyone who voted for him, and even those who opposed him, can and should be proud of.

Take a good, long look at the climate of the country, and the quality of the opposition. Ask yourself if you dare take the chance of political control by Palin, O'Donnell, Gingrich, Beck, Limbaugh or their ilk. Is that a world you could live in, or even survive?

So, whatever your sense of disappointment with the slow pace of recovery, or the compromises in policy required by political necessity, or the anxiety over the national debt, etc., put these aside and focus on the need to rebuff the tide of hatred, ignorance and fear. Use the magnificent power that makes a U.S citizen stronger than the mightiest monarch, and vote. Do it yourself. Make sure that every like minded person you know does it. Speak out on every appropriate occasion and try to motivate others.

Without, I think, being overly dramatic, what depends on it is the future of the nation and, in many ways, the world.
- posted by Martin Eagle @ 12:58 PM

 
The War On Drugs

The "law of unanticipated consequences" posits that actions often have results different from or even antithetical to their aims. On the other hand, I believe the best way to determine the aims of a behavior is to look at its outcomes. This is quite interesting when applied to drugs. The word itself is problematic since it is used in so many different ways but, for purposes of this discussion I'll use it to refer to the illegal pharmacopeia against which nations legislate.

In The Underground Empire (1974), James Mills reported that the income from the illegal drug trade was greater than the GNP of all but the six largest industrial nations.In the succeeding decades, this has only increased. He also reported on the active participation in this trade by virtually every government, and every law enforcement agency, on earth. This has been confirmed and further explicated by Michael Levine in The Big White Lie.

Almost all such governments have mounted very public anti-drug campaigns. What has been the result of this behavior: the creation of the largest income engine on earth; the corruption of all governments and law enforcement agencies; the creation and enrichment of violent, ruthless drug lords; the enrichment of violent, ruthless politicians; the creation and enrichment of enormous anti-drug law enforcement agencies; the expenditure of about 90% of all law enforcement funding; virtually no diminution of illegal drug usage.

So, who has benefited from anti-drug legislation, only those who sell the drugs and those who ostensibly try to stop them. As a further "benefit," it should be noted that there is no surer way to guarantee that adolescents will do something, than to tell them their parents don't want them to - adding that the behavior feels good is just icing on the cake. This is how you guarantee an emerging market.

All of the above could be halted immediately by the simple expedient of legalization of all drugs. The illegal profit margin and its corruptive influence and associated violence would disappear, the taxes would benefit society and there would be no effect on drug usage. If you find this last assertion questionable, ask yourself this simple question: do you think there is anyone who wanted to do drugs who was dissuaded by their illegality? I would suggest such numbers are miniscule and are counterbalanced or exceeded by the number of those who try drugs precisely because of their illegal cache.

It should be noted that the most ardent opponents of legalization, aside from deluded ideologues, are drug dealers and anti-drug enforcers, all of whom owe their employment to the status quo. So, based on my original premise, the aims of drug prohibition are: the creation of huge illegal profits; the creation of huge legal anti-drug agencies which amass wealth and power of their own and the corruption and subversion of every government and law enforcement agency.

Labels: War On Drugs

- posted by Martin Eagle @ 4:50 AM

 
Here is a very small sample of the paradoxes involved in religious belief.


Omnipresence - This means everywhere, no exceptions. If god is omnipresent this means there is nothing in the universe but god. The only way to dispute that is to change the meaning of the word.

Omniscient - If god knows everything, past,present and future, then free will is a myth since all decisions have already been made and, of course, there is only god to be acting (see omnipresent).

Omnipotent - if god is the only thing which exists, knows everything and is all powerful, and, as holy books insist, has a plan, then everything that happens is exactly as god wishes. Which leaves you with the problem of evil. The religious like to blame satan, or some variation, but god created satan, knew exactly what he would do, and ditto for us.

Ever notice how the phrase "act of god" always refers to a disaster?

By the way, I believe that the overwhelming majority of people who profess to believe in god or follow a religion, do not. This is based on the fact that they cannot give even the most superficial definition of the god they claim to believe in, have the barest minimum of knowledge of the religion they profess, and do not follow its precepts.
- posted by Martin Eagle @ 3:53 PM

 
Danger of Faith

To believe in a god as defined by every major religion, is to come up against logical paradoxes which are unresolvable. To maintain belief in the face of these paradoxes there are several strategies available. One can attempt to compartmentalize mental processes, so that the reasoned approach generally used everywhere else in life, is abandoned in this one context, in favor of faith which requires neither logic nor evidence and is, in fact, asserted even in the face of logic and evidence against it. Or one can simply pretend that these paradoxes do not exist, engaging in some version of what Freud called "denial." Or one can use elaborate semantic constructs which have the grammatical appearance of meaningful sentences, but which actually contain no content which has any definable relationship with reality, or involve circular reasoning - using their own hypothetical constructs to prove their existence, or which confuse a metaphor, which is meant to help illuminate something, with the thing itself.

Compartmentalizing doesn't work. The conflict always bleeds over from one area to the other. This makes faith vulnerable and fragile and, the more fervently it is held, the greater the tension between belief and reality, the more desperately and with more desperate measures the believer will defend it. Likewise, it makes reason subject to the whims of belief, promoting myth, superstition, and enabling the justification of any behavior which can be forced into the structure of that belief. As long as the faithful believe what they do is right, that belief can never be discredited since there exist no criteria or tools to do so.

Denial also fails because, in order to deny something, one first has to experience it and recognize it as threatening. Once "denied," this knowledge does not disappear but is simply forced out of the top layer of consciousness into more sub-conscious levels. These levels of awareness are constantly interacting. Being forced to maintain and act upon mutually exclusive data induces, at best, anxiety and neuroticism and, at worst, psychosis of every variety.

The semantic approach teaches one to construct and accept meaningless arguments, to develop habits of thought which pervert logic and meaning, and generally to lose the capacity for accurate, critical thinking.

Since ideation and perception are intimately connected, all of the above phenomena distort not only our thinking, but our experience of reality. Further, since faith defines itself as not subject to logic or evidence, it can neither be substantiated nor refuted. There is no way to determine its truth or falsity. This essentially robs the faithful of the one characteristic generally though to define our species - our ability to think.

All of the above means that faith both arises from and perpetuates the worst aspects of human consciousness.
- posted by Martin Eagle @ 11:07 AM

 
Before beginning, let me say that I consider myself a capitalist, in that I think it allows for the most creative and productive expression of human nature. However, since human nature is predominantly driven by ignorance, fear and insanity, and invariably leads to corruption, greed, cruelty and all other forms of evil, I think that capitalism requires careful regulation.

That being said, I often wonder what those who so ardently defend the "free enterprise" system are advocating. Even a rudimentary glance at history will show that, the more capitalism has had a laissez faire environment, the worse it has behaved. While the right wing often sites the excesses of Stalinism as an example of the horrors innate to communism - and rightly so - most of the same behaviors have been exhibited by capitalists in furtherance of profits. Granted, the scope of these behaviors does not compare with Stalinism, but that is probably only due to the limiting effects of democracy which, as Winston Churchill observed, is probably the worst form of government, except for all other forms of government.

As an aside, there is a vast difference between communism and socialism as economic policy and as political structure. They are independent functions and it is perfectly possible to have a democratic socialism.

With regards to free enterprise, it is often cited that corporations are beholden to their stockholders and that this is a path to riches for all. However, the empirical evidence says that corporations don't give a damn about their stockholders, with the exception of those who hold a controlling (as opposed to majority) interest, and thus represent the tiny minority of plutocrats who, essentially, rule the world. Further, said corporations repeatedly act in such a way as to sicken, maim and kill a substantial subset of their stockholders, taking an actuarial approach to profit as justification.

And now, a word about THE GOVERNMENT, an entity which, it should be noted, does not exist. There is no monolith sitting atop the power heap and imposing its will on we poor subjects. Rather, there are a large number of pieces, staffed by a large number of people, all of which are acting to some degree in concert and to some degree independently. It is a huge, inefficient mess, which is both its vice and its virtue. Were it better organized, then it might be possible for the most psychopathic among us - who are the most driven to accumulate power - to truly dominate the structure of our lives. The same, of course, can be said for corporate structure, and even more so since the will of the common shareholder is even more diffusely expressed than that of the common voter.

The bottom line is that our problem is not with our "isms" but with ourselves. Since we refuse to even take an objective look at our nature, much less investigate any possibility of improving it, our social system must juggle the needs of individual freedom and the welfare of society as a whole. The only person truly free is someone totally alone. As Hobbes observed such a life is solitary, poor, nasty brutish and short.
- posted by Martin Eagle @ 7:27 AM

 
A few comments on recent news.

Re the recent article on the christian/creationist bias in home schooling textbooks:

I am struck by the unintended irony of "creationists" criticizing evolution as an unproven theory, when there is nothing more unproven than religion. Founded on "holy" books who's claim of revelatory status is supported only by their own assertion, and based on "faith," who's definition is the belief in something without evidence and despite evidence or logic to the contrary, this is circular reasoning at its most blatant.

While it would never occur to most religious people to question their beliefs, having abandoned evidence and logic, how could they ever know if they were wrong? It is one of the great swindles of religion that it defines away anything which might discredit it.

Re the movement in Uganda to invoke the death penalty for homosexuality, spurred on by visits from American Evangelicals, and the constant invoking of the word "sin" as justification, I did a Google search on "list of biblical sins," and found one site with at least 600, for most of which, death is prescribed.

I wonder why homosexuality should arouse such singular ire (actually, I don't wonder about this at all.) To paraphrase The Bard, methinks they do protest too much. Also, should they lend their support to a death penalty for all those other sins, their own ranks would likely be so decimated as to render them virtually invisible.

Generally speaking, all the violent crazies are on the self-professed side of the angels. When was the last time you read a headline that said "Fundamentalist Abortion Proponent Kills Anti-Abortion Leader," or "Fanatical Atheist Slays Priest?" And the answer is ...

And, just to make sure I haven't missed anyone on the radical or religious right to offend, here are a few more pithy observations.

Everything wrong with the human species can be summed up in two words - Sarah Palin.

Some senatorial whacko wants to put Ronald Reagan on the $50 bill - this for a man who's Alzheimers probably ante-dated his election, who was a shill for the radical right and never had an original political thought, nor initiated a single political action.

And so, gentle reader, goodnight.
- posted by Martin Eagle @ 4:32 PM

 
Here is the acceptance speech I'd like to hear from Obama.

My friends, I have run a campaign based on the need for change and the American people seem eager for that to happen. But I think it's important to clearly state just why that change is so necessary.

First, let's talk about Iraq. The Bush administration and the Republican party have led us into a colossal misadventure based on trumped up evidence and outright deception. In so doing they are responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans and our allies, and hundreds of thousands of the Iraqi people. They are responsible for the destruction of the infrastructure of a sovereign nation and have created and abetted the emergence of Al Qeida in Iraq, a terrorist group which did not exist before. They have engineered the installation of a puppet government which is now attempting to defy its masters by calling on the United States to leave, in the face of which the Republicans are trying to continue their occupation.

In the eyes of the world, and to the growing horror of the majority of Americans, we are seen not as the world's beacon of democracy, but as the world's symbol of brutal imperialism. This has got to change.

Now, let's talk about oil. Almost all of the world's economic ills are tied up in that word. Because we are an oil dependent planet, our environment is on the brink of disaster, the free nations of the world are in thrall to some of the most despicable governments, who wish us nothing but harm, and the multinational corporations who control the oil trade are reaping unconscionable profits at the expense of everyone else.

The Republican's response is to seek more oil drilling in more environmentally sensitive areas, holding out the promise of a solution to high oil prices. This is no solution. If we were to drill every last drop available to us, it would be more than a decade before any of it was available for use, and a matter of another few decades before it was gone. The hard fact is that the planet cannot survive on oil, we must find alternative sources of energy.

But the Republicans cannot and will not seek this, because the oil companies own them. Well, they don't own me, and I can and will direct our efforts to moving away from the domination of oil. This will change.

"It's the economy, stupid," - a campaign slogan that has been used over and over again, and which we have, in fact, ignored for far to long. The current devastation of the housing and banking industries and all the collateral damage from that, is one inevitable result of that failure. Under eight years of Republican administration, and during all the Republican administrations of the modern era, the rich have gotten richer while the middle class and the poor have suffered.

This has got to change. But the Republicans cannot and will not do it because they are the problem. Their natural constituancy is made up of those who view the rest of us as their servants. Luxory properties sell in the multi-millions while the homes of the middle class sink into forclosure. Corporate CEOs earn salaries and bonuses in the multi-millions while the people who work for them find their jobs disappearing. This has got to, and it will change.

Hillary Clinton has made health care a central issue of her concern and I applaud her for it. In all the developed world we are the only nation that does not provide for universal health care for all its citizens. This is a disgrace and this must and will change. But the Republicans cannot and will not do it because they are just as much under the control of the pharmaceutical and health care industries as the oil companies. As a matter of fact, there is hardly a sector of the business community which does not exert its influence over the Republican party, usually against the interests of the American people.

I am not anti-business, but I am opposed to business which places profits over responsibility and which damages our environment, our economy and our lives as a whole. And this, too, we will change.

So, how do we do it? There will be detailed plans made available immediately after this convention, but for the moment, let me outline the broad strokes.

First, let me make something extremely clear to the world of terrorist extremism. The United States and its allies have been extraordinarily conservative in our response to brutal provocation. Despite the targeting of innocent civilians, the revolting excesses of terrorist violence and the utter disregard for life or property or freedom or rights or anything the civilized world deems valuable, we have done everything possible to exert our might selectively, judiciously and against a discernible enemy. I do not mean to minimize our failures in this regard - war is a bloody and messy business and too many non-combatants have been killed or injured or their lives devastated.

While the difference between harm by accident and harm by intent doesn't matter much to the victim, it is still an important distinction. While our enemies behave without regard for morality, we have at least tried to do the opposite.

But this forbearance can not continue indefinitely. We have no quarrel with Islam - there is more freedom to practice that religion in the United states than anywhere in the so-called Islamic world. But, if the moderate population does not take action against the extremist element, the west will be forced to use more severe measures. We will not simply allow ourselves to be eaten away and we will not collaborate in our own destruction.

So, to begin. We will withdraw from Iraq by phasing out our troops as they phase in their own. We hope that they will be successful in establishing a viable government and we will be available for any help they require. But their country is their responsibility and they must step up to it. We will set a series of guidelines for our withdrawal but that process will continue and failure to meet the guidelines will be the responsibility of the Iraqi government and people.

We will embark on a new energy policy grounded in the development of non-petroleum based energy sources. We will, in fact, make use of all exisiting oil leases and insure that the oil companies use their revenues to both extract these resources and fund development of alternatives. In so doing, we will have created a new "green" economy providing new industries and employment.

We have already begun to change the legislative framework that made the current economic crunch possible, but more is needed and will be forthcoming. We will insure that Fanny and Freddie will remain solvent and that the sub-prime fiasco of the last decade is not repeated. We will assist those legitimately in need to convert exhorbitent variable rate mortgages into reasonable fixed rate instruments.

A framework for universal health care already exists, it is called Medicare. We will seek to extend these benefits to all Americans. This will not interfere with the ability to obtain private insurance, but will guarantee that no one is without coverage. In the past, the cost of Medicare to the tax payer has been inflated by massive fraud. Rigorous enforcement of statutes and regulations and severe penalties for violations, will curb these excesses.

These are only the broadest outlines of our policies, the details of which will be published and made readily available. For the moment, we must concentrate on winning the Presidency for the Democratic party and for the American people. The ascendancy of the Republican party has been a disaster. They have led us into an illegitimate war, destroyed our relations with our allies, ruined our reputation in the world, fostered the growth of terrorist activity, devastated our economy, trampled on our environment and conducted a profound attack on the bedrock of our nation identity - our constitution.

All of this must change and, with your help, it will.
- posted by Martin Eagle @ 5:53 AM