Perpetual War - Signing the Death Warrant

 Is There a Limit to American Colonialism?

Maybe.  Our rather awkward descent from super power status at the hands of the Republican Looting Festival will lubricate our search.

Next question:  "Do the House tea bags know how to do this?"

Does the United States Constitution really have that much to say about how many wars we will fight?  Again, maybe.  

It turns out that the GOPCons in the House of Representatives have a few things to say about that, that is, to add to what one might find in the Constitution if one were to actually look.

GOPCons clearly don't lose much sleep worrying about whether or not their latest little wealth redistribution scheme sits well with our nation's founding documents.  They also have little interest in the long term effect US "war making" will have on the national health.  Worse, when "wealth redistribution" and "war making" can be blended into the same recipe for disaster, the facts of our national history suffer first.  

Complaints from the electorate can be handled if the task is approached with a clever touch.  There will be the predictable opposition, but that's what lawyers are for.  Every issue that the lawyers can't clean up will be turned over to FOX News for "regrooving."

Ignoring the complicating effects of wrecking the economy with unbridled looting then "solving" the problem with more war is apparently the national policy equivalent of a "heroin and cheap sex sandwich" for our well fed oligarchs.  An ugly manifestation of this can be seen in the latest "marching orders" our local plutocrats have apparently issued to their minions in the Congress.

An Over View of Our Century

One Century of peaceful, modern, enlightened times. (image source)

We have seen enough of such horrible results from the "Authorization to Use Force" resolution of the early years of the autocracy.  

Now, they're at it again.
 
Read the whole article  here.

House Republicans Shred Constitution With Backdoor Proposal of Permanent War

House Speaker John Boehner, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, R-Tea Party, and their circle even attempted -- in unsettlingly bumbling manner -- to read the document into the Congressional Record at the opening of the current Congress.

Now, however, with a backdoor plan to commit the United States to a course of permanent warmaking, they are affronting the most basic premises of a Constitution that requires congressional declarations of all wars and direct and engaged oversight of military missions.

The House Republican leadership, working in conjunction with House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon, R-California, has included in the 2012 defense authorization bill language (borrowed from the sweeping Detainee Security Act) that would effectively declare a state of permanent war against unnamed and ill-defined foreign forces "associated" with the Taliban and al Qaeda.

The means that, despite the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan (which GOP leaders in the House have refused to officially recognize as a significant development), the Department of Defense will be authorized to maintain a permanent occupation of Afghanistan, a country bin Laden abandoned years ago, and a global war against what remains of bin Laden's fragmented operation.

Instead of an explicit declaration of war with Afghanistan or the ill-defined global conflict, the GOP leaders has slipped language into the spending bill that simply announced theU.S. is "engaged in an armed conflict with al Qaeda, the Taliban and associated forces" and that claims an old "Authorization for Use of Military Force necessarily includes the authority to address the continuing and evolving threat posed by these groups."

That's about a wide-ranging as it gets, and the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee argues that the language makes a mockery of the Constitutional requirement that Congress check and balance the executive branch and the Department of Defense when it comes to questions of extending wars.

(The language included in the spending bill) would appear to grant the President near unfettered authority to initiate military action around the world without further congressional approval," argues Congressman John Conyers, D-Michigan. "Such authority must not be ceded to the President without careful deliberation from Congress."

Conyers and 32 House Democrats have written Armed Services Committee Chairman McKeon asking that he "immediately call hearings... so that the American people have an opportunity to consider the serious impacts that this legislation could have on our national security."

That's the right call.

Who says?

James Madison, the essential author of Constitution.

Madison observed in the founding years of the American experiment that: "Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."

The Madisonian impulse is kept alive today not by House leaders who claim to revere the Constitution while adandoning its principles but by those members of Congress who object to permanent war for the same reasons that thewisest of the founders did.

Here is the Conyers letter:

Dear Chairman McKeon:

 We are writing concerning certain troubling provisions in H.R. 968, the Detainee Security Act of 2011, which we understand are likely to be considered as part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of the Fiscal Year of 2012. Whatever one thinks about the merits of the Detainee Security Act, it is a serious enough departure from current counterterrorism policy and practice to merit consideration apart from the NDAA. Accordingly, we request that you use your chairmanship in the House Armed Services Committee to immediately hold hearings so that the public can further consider the various provisions within the Detainee Security Act.

 Among the many troubling aspects of the Detainee Security Act are provisions that expand the war against terrorist organizations on a global basis. The Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) of 2001 was widely thought to provide authorization for the war in Afghanistan to root out al Qaeda, the Taliban, and others responsible for the 9/11 attacks. That war has dragged on for almost ten years, and after the demise of Osama Bin Laden, as the United States prepares for withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Detainee Security Act purports to expand the "armed conflict" against the Taliban, al Qaeda, and "associated forces" without limit. By declaring a global war against nameless individuals, organizations, and nations "associated" with the Taliban and al Qaeda, as well as those playing a supporting role in their efforts, the Detainee Security Act would appear to grant the President near unfettered authority to initiate military action around the world without further congressional approval. Such authority must not be ceded to the President without careful deliberation from Congress.

 The Detainee Security Act also unwisely requires that all terrorism suspects eligible for detention under the AUMF be held exclusively in military custody pending further disposition. The practical effect of this provision will be to undermine the ability of the FBI and local law enforcement to participate in counterterrorism operations, which could have serious negative impacts on national security. Moreover, in a recent hearing in the House Armed Services Committee, Department of Defense General Counsel Jeh Johnson noted that, rather than help clarify detention authority, the military custody provision in the Detainee Security Act would create serious litigation risk for the government.

 The Detainee Security Act contains several additional troublesome provisions that relate to Guantanamo. The Detainee Security Act in effect requires that terrorism suspects be tried in military commissions, thereby cutting out Article III federal courts from conducting terrorism trials. This is unwise, as Article III federal courts have convicted over 400 individuals of terrorism-related offenses since 9/11. Military commissions, mired by legal problems and controversy, have convicted only six. The Detainee Security Act would also make permanent current transfer restrictions on Guantanamo detainees, further undermining the ability of the President to close the offshore detention facility. In our view, restricting the President in this way is unnecessary to promote a robust national security that keeps the American people safe.

 Whatever one thinks of these various proposals in the Detainee Security Act, it is clear that they will have serious consequences and should be examined extensively. We therefore request that you use your chairmanship to immediately call hearings on Detainee Security Act so that the American people have an opportunity to consider the serious impacts that this legislation could have on our national security.

 Sincerely,

Representatives John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), John Dingell (D-Mich.), Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), Bob Filner (D-Calif.), Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.), Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), Michael Honda (D-Calif.), Jesse Jackson (D-Ill.), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), John Lewis (D-Ga.), Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), James McGovern (D-Mass.), George Miller (D-Calif.), Jim Moran (D-Va.), Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), Donald Payne (D-N.J.), David Price (D-N.C.), Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), Bobby Scott (D-Va.), Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), Fortney “Pete” Stark (D-Calif.), Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) and David Wu (D-Ore.).

John Nichols

May 11, 2011  

How It's Done - Poisoning the Well - Words Matter

Some time ago, an anonymous individual -- perhaps a "one time visitor" to MeanMesa -- submitted a subscription to Hillsdale College for the monthly publication of the college, "Imprimis."  The "complete anonymity" of this benefactor of ours who took the time and made the effort to accomplish this task may, in fact, not actually been as "complete" as it first appeared.  The "snail mail" mailing address of MeanMesa's Galactic Headquarters was also furnished to the, uh, Hillsdale College publishers, suggesting that this otherwise robust "blanket of anonymity" may have had a few "thread bare" patches in it.

Oh well, as Una Mae would say, "No one's cut up and bleeding."  

However, this little jewel carries within it a few subtle undercurrents of less than scholarly, literary excess, that is, "undercurrents" which might, in a more frank literary arena, be considered little more than an odorous flood of "trailer park talking points."  Notably, in this case, those "undercurrents" are very craftily (in fact if there is, actually, such a condition, we might go so far as to deem their insertion "remarkably craftily") juxtaposed among the material words of this superficially scholarly writing.

All these critical comments would mean nothing to a MeanMesa visitor if the actual content of the article were not also presented here.  Consequently, what follows is precisely that presentation, copied from the HIllsdale College's Imprimis information site.

The conceptual justification of all this attention would be shallow indeed if it were the intention of MeanMesa to simply ridicule the efforts of this one case.  Instead, the facts are that it is the intention of MeanMesa to present this case as  something of an example in hopes that visitors who consider it will become even more objectively perceptive when they might encounter other, similar "Captain's Lizards in the grass."

There are plenty.

(source MeanMesa)

Let's take a look at the first few paragraphs of this latest Imprimis offering.  (Full text here )

About Imprimis

Imprimis is the free monthly speech digest of Hillsdale College and is dedicated to educating citizens and promoting civil and religious liberty by covering cultural, economic, political and educational issues of enduring significance.  The content of Imprimis is drawn from speeches delivered to Hillsdale College-hosted events, both on-campus and off-campus.  First published in 1972, Imprimis is one of the most widely circulated opinion publications in the nation with over 1.9 million subscribers.

November 2010

Larry P. Arnn

President, Hillsdale College

Outline of a Platform for Constitutional Government

Larry P. Arnn, the twelfth president of Hillsdale College, received his B.A. from Arkansas State University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in government from the Claremont Graduate School. From 1977 to 1980, he also studied at the London School of Economics and at Worcester College, Oxford University, where he served as director of research for Martin Gilbert, the official biographer of Winston Churchill. From 1985 until his appointment as president of Hillsdale College in 2000, he was president of the Claremont Institute, an education and research organization based in Southern California. In 1996, he was the founding chairman of the California Civil Rights Initiative, the voter-approved ballot initiative that prohibited racial preferences in state employment, education, and contracting. He sits on the board of directors of several organizations, including the Heritage Foundation and the Claremont Institute. He is the author of Liberty and Learning: The Evolution of American Education.

The following is largely adapted from remarks delivered on September 17, 2010, at the dedication of Hillsdale College’s Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship in Washington, D.C.

TODAY IS THE 223RD anniversary of the submission of the Constitution of the United States for ratification. It is the greatest governing document in human history. And on this day we dedicate our Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship near Capitol Hill here in Washington. Let me explain briefly why we are launching this center. The reason has to do with the times in which we live, and it has to do with the purposes of Hillsdale College.

The times are pretty easy to estimate. I’ll just mention two things about them that are astonishing and fearful. The first is that we have managed, in about the last 30 years of relative peace and unprecedented prosperity, to pile up a debt that rivals the one we piled up while winning the Second World War, the most disastrous and largest war in human history. And this debt is of a different character. The Second World War was going to end at some point, and we were either going to win and go back to living and working and pay off the debt—which is what happened—or else we were going to lose and then the debt would never be paid. In contrast, our debt today has become the ordinary way our government and our country operate. As my father, a schoolteacher in Arkansas and a wise man, used to say, it is the kind of debt that means it really doesn’t matter how rich we’ve become, because we can waste money faster.

The second sign of the times that I’ll mention is this: We have now a figure in the American government called the regulatory czar. Not only is it shameful and wrong for anybody in America to let himself be called that, he takes the title seriously. Indeed, he writes that some people should be allowed to regulate speech rights—to redistribute them, much as the government redistributes wealth—in the name of what he and his political allies regard as fairness. His is a far different kind of argument about speech than the one our Founders made, which was that speech is an individual right. His argument not only opposes the prohibition the founders placed in the First Amendment, which says that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech,” it rejects the understanding of human nature that grounds the very idea of constitutionalism. James Madison summarized that understanding when he wrote in Federalist 51 that because men are not angels, they need government, but that government must be controlled and limited for the same reason. Because those in our government are men rather than angels, we must not allow them the kind of power that this regulatory czar desires and claims.

There needs to be an argument about whether Madison and the founders are right or this bureaucratic czar and his allies are right with regard to civil liberties, just as there needs to be an argument about whether our nation should keep piling up unsustainable debt. There is going to be an argument about these and other big questions in this city in coming years, and the Kirby Center will have a hand in that argument.

What then of the purposes of Hillsdale College? Those purposes do not change. The College was built in 1844. Just yesterday we had a meeting of our Board of Trustees, and we began that meeting, as we begin every meeting, by reading from the College’s Articles of Association. Those articles commit us to two things. The first is “sound learning,” learning in the liberal arts. This is the kind of learning that lets us answer such questions as: What do we mean by “the laws of nature and of nature’s God”? Who is this God? What is He like? What is man? What is he like? What do we mean by “nature”? These are the ultimate questions. They are the questions in virtue of which ultimately all of our choices are made. And it just so happens that human beings, ever since they have been writing things down, have been writing beautiful things about these questions, things collected in old books. The founders of our country, like the founders of Hillsdale College, thought that if we were to be able to read the Declaration of Independence, and follow its arguments, we would need to read some of these old books. We have always read them at our College. We are not only devoted, we are chained to the reading of them. They are in our core curriculum. There is no escaping them at Hillsdale.

So that’s one thing about the College. And the second is, as they say in the Bible, like unto it. The College is devoted in the first sentence of its Articles of Association to the principles of “civil and religious liberty.” These principles are America’s gift to the world. We are all of us products of that gift. We are not sons of dukes and earls—or of czars. We are Americans because of this gift. And signs are lately that Americans do not much want to give it up. This is a very hopeful thing.

Hillsdale College has always taught the Constitution and has always fought for it. Our teaching of it is intense, difficult, challenging. As for fighting, we are famous in modern times for a decade-long lawsuit against the federal government, and for the fact that we refuse to take money from that government. It is expensive these days, indeed increasingly so, for a college not to take federal money. But we believe that the price of taking it is dearer still. 

No one should think, however, that in refusing money from the modern bureaucratic form of government that exists in this city today, we have forgotten our loyalty to the constitutional form that flourished here for so long.

There is only one way to return to living under the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the institutions of the Constitution. We must come to love those things again. And if we love them, then we will serve them. But we cannot love them until we understand them. And we cannot understand them until we know them. So the first step is to study them and teach them, and Hillsdale College comes to Washington meaning to do that. We aim to create an atmosphere in this city of the study and knowledge and understanding and love of the principles of America. 

For one last "editorial" note before we begin to boil Dr. Arnn's essay "down to the bones,"  you may be interested in knowing a little more about Hillsdale College and its "educational project," the Kirby Center.  Hillsdale itself is in the green woods of rural Michigan.  The Kirby Center is in Washington, DC.  The Google provides a very revealing "About Us" site for each one.

Hillsdale College - http://www.hillsdale.edu/about/default.asp
The Kirby Center - http://www.hillsdale.edu/kirbycenter/about/

Now, to the details noted in (orange highlight) President Arnn's paper.  MeanMesa's position on each of these follows.

We have now a figure in the American government called the regulatory czar. Not only is it shameful and wrong for anybody in America to let himself be called that, he (1) takes the title seriously. Indeed, he writes that some people should be allowed to regulate speech rights—to redistribute them, much as the government redistributes wealth(2) —in the name of what he and his political allies regard as fairness(3). His is a far different kind of argument about speech than the one our Founders made, which was that speech is an individual right. His argument not only opposes the prohibition the founders placed in the First Amendment, which says that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech,” it rejects the understanding of human nature that grounds the very idea of constitutionalism. James Madison summarized that understanding when he wrote in Federalist 51 that because men are not angels, they need government, but that government must be controlled and limited for the same reason. Because those in our government are men rather than angels, we must not allow them the kind of power that this regulatory czar desires and claims(4).

There needs to be an argument about whether Madison and the founders are right or this bureaucratic czar(5) and his allies are right with regard to civil liberties, just as there needs to be an argument about whether our nation should keep piling up unsustainable debt.(6)

1. The implication here is, of course, that President Obama is the "regulatory czar."  Even after the recent violence done to the economy, Dr. Arnn's patrons must find themselves somewhat miffed at the idea of regulating bankers, hedge fund executives and Wall Street brokers.

2. Dr. Arnn's comparative extension of the process of "redistributing speech rights" to the process of "redistributing wealth" is an interesting one.  This is precisely the basis of the Supreme Court's recent ruling in the Citizens United case.  That decision defined the expenditure of corporate money to control the residents of the Senate and House as a  valid form of "free speech," protected under the freedom of speech provision in First Amendment to our Constitution.  As for "redistributing wealth," this is a process which has now been completed.  The richest .5% of Americans now control wealth equal to that of the lowest 50% of Americans.

3. The choice of the word "fairness" is of interest here.  The reference is to the deeply hated and feared (by those with aThis is the kind of learning that lets us answer such questions as: What do we mean by “the laws of nature and of nature’s God”? Who is this God? What is He like? What is man? What is he like? What do we mean by “nature”? These are the ultimate questions. They are the questions in virtue of which ultimately all of our choices are made.n interest other than fairness) "fairness doctrine" which might have required the use of public air waves to serve some public interest.

4.  Here, Dr. Arnn refers to our legally elected President directly with the term "regulatory czar."  (MeanMesa suspects that the term "regulatory czar" could have, in more private gatherings, been replaced with the term "Negro.")

5.  The person Dr. Arnn cites as "this bureaucratic czar" refers to the President of the United States.

6. The threatening phrase "keep piling up unsustainable debt" is an interesting one.  If the role of the "bureaucratic czar" is to be called into question with respect to the "unsustainable debt," does this imply that the most recent alternative to the present "bureaucratic czar" was somehow not responsible for most of the "unsustainable debt?"  Dr. Arnn must be "banking on the hope" that the "critical thinkers" among the "1,900,000 recipients" of his essay have done absolutely no research on the question whatsoever.  MeanMesa's proposition is that it would actually be quite difficult to never encounter the facts concerning the actual origin of the "unsustainable debt."

The second of the highlighted sections.

This is the kind of learning that lets us answer such questions as: What do we mean by “the laws of nature and of nature’s God”? Who is this God? What is He like? What is man? What is he like? What do we mean by “nature”? These are the ultimate questions. They are the questions in virtue of which ultimately all of our choices are made.(7)

7.This section of Dr. Arnn's essay is prefaced with reference to Hillsdale College as a liberal arts college.  The following text is an interesting mixture of deific determinism, the nature of man and the political "choices" which will be defined by such "virtue" and will derive from such an authoritarian, supernatural  amalgam.  Here, Dr. Arnn, perhaps over generously, describes such an education as a "liberal arts education,"  suggesting that he may have not received the memo that all things "liberal" are vile.

And the second is, as they say in the Bible, like unto it. The College is devoted in the first sentence of its Articles of Association to the principles of “civil and religious liberty.” These principles are America’s gift to the world. We are all of us products of that gift.(8)

8. The emboldened version of "religious liberty" President Arnn cites in this statement empowers him to mix "religious" implications with political ad hominems into a new, heady version of "civil liberty."  

This tragedy is not a lament on the invocation of his Constitutional rights to free speech so much as the implied authority of his words, the lack of logical support for the subtle claims he makes and the quiet suggestion that those claims are made legitimate by "religious liberty" rather than issues derived from a separated church and state.  

We must come to love those things again. And if we love them, then we will serve them. But we cannot love them until we understand them. And we cannot understand them until we know them.(9)

9.  Is President Arnn suggesting that rational, common sense Americans support the "principles of the Declaration of Independence and the institutions of the Constitution" because they "love" them?  Worse, is the "love" of such ideals the exclusive condition of "serving them?"  The "principles of the Declaration of Independence and the institutions of the Constitution" are designed to serve us!  These represent an undeniably important "asset" we as citizens enjoy under the definition of the Constitution as a "social contract."

As Americans of course we can "love" our country.  As for our Constitution, we support and defend it because we love ourselves!  MeanMesa is not impressed with Dr. Arnn's version's final claim that "we cannot understand them until we know them."  At this point, President Arnn's message becomes simply too creepy.

 

So, is MeanMesa "beating up" on Hillsdale's Imprimis unfairly?  Hardly.  In fact, although both HIllsdale College and Imprimis deserve all this battering for the drivel on its pages, this case is only the tip of the ice burg.  Not only does the heavily soiled Imprimis deserve this treatment, every similar case of endless, repetitive, twisted "word salad" deserves it just as much.

The wrenching thought of hundreds of young students trapped in this Goebbel's style merry-go-round year after year when they should have been receiving some sort of actual education is troubling, indeed.  The fate of these little "torpedoes" into the future has been utterly and completely sacrificed by the cynicism of men such as the good Doctor.

The future of the students -- and of the country -- has been selfishly sacrificed on this Limbaugh-like altar, gleefully exploited to guarantee the continuing viability of this sick little, pseudo-Christian tantrum while, in the constant "meantime," the whole rancid affair pipes the empty tune of "True Americans."  

Here, MeanMesa must apologize for the hard facts of reality confronting us.  Poisonous messages of precisely the same ilk as these words from Dr. Arnn are literally gushing out of blogs, print and air waves alike.  In every case we are responsible for "noticing" the stench before we contentedly "open our mouths wide" to blindly consume it.

Post posting post script:  We understand that this "detail grinding" post has gone on way too far for convenient reading.  However, the point to be made here is not sufficiently visible without a "blow-by-blow" analysis.  If it were an easy point to make, it wouldn't appear on Short Current Essays.

Polls and Policy from TV Guide?

The neo-con effort to establish security necessities
justified by television scripts

Dreary psychopaths reinventing their integrity, their torture
and their sexual fantasies 90

A brief glimpse of the scandal as seen by MeanMesa:

As more and more details emerge from the now “out of control” scandal of the Bushite Autocracy’s torture habits, we have to wonder: “How could they (we) have been drawn into this disgusting mess?” Of course, they somehow have found the last, allegedly justifying shards of their subhuman, caustic vitriol to trot out as their last frantic vestiges of their claims to humanhood slowly disintegrate. Of course, they make desperate, whiny cries that all their midnight pornography torture episodes were effective -- and in their (our) twisted issue of odorous dishonor -- hence, justified.

It’s time to “kiss the girlfriend!”

Pundits across the air waves, both reactionaries and progressives, have tried to salve the horrifying national embarrassment with an endless addition of more and more “discussion,” always convincingly presented as if the speaker were privy to actual observation of the practices or enjoyed some other kind of credible authority about them. As with so many other matters, none of us is -- any longer -- particularly surprised to find that massive campaigns of lies and misdirection from the Bush regime have left us stunned and remorseful, again. All those who hold up the honor of our country hide our faces and ponder -- “Will there ever be an end to this disgrace?”

The psychopathies of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeldt-Gonzales “horror family” seem to emerge into the light with the sickening regularity of an episodic series of television shows, each one more hideously depressing and outrageous than the one before.

One hundred eighty terrifying, water board driven sensations of death by drowning to “uncover” the same information available on Khalid Shaik Mohammed's previously broadcast Al Jezeera television interview?

The details of these gruesome, sexual gratification fantasies and other facts are still developing, but there is an aside which may be “ripe” enough for MeanMesa’s attention today. What could have inspired this terrible indulgence on the part of someone like Dick Cheney? Although an interesting question, we now face the unnerving material task of trying to rectify the consequences of the matter. Still, we remain curious. What was the motive for all these acts? What was the source that provided the insane motives for these subhuman escapades carried out in our name?

The answers are worse than the questions. Raw vengeance can carry the day only so far. Can we discern the reasons? After all, what else would satisfy the appetite for power and ascendance amid the otherwise humiliating, self crushing boredom of being overweight, effeminate cowards armed -- thanks to us -- with the world’s most powerful army?

Now to the point of this post:

Let’s talk television. (We can painlessly include movies and novels, too. In this case, the medium is NOT the message.) A sinister cycle of carefully grooming the public, both here and abroad, with deceptions disguised as news by the likes of the Foxes and Murdoch’s is no longer a “shocking revelation” to anyone any longer. But what about the fiction? Are the equally carefully crafted themes of fictional plots designed to slowly reconfigure the glacial consciousness of the viewing masses?

For example, the codependent narcotic of CSI reassures us that police investigations can reveal the “truth” necessary to catch any criminal, no matter how ingenious or cautious he might be. We ignore the fact that prosecutors from all across the country now complain that jurors expect this fictional expertise before they convict defendants. Perhaps they simply don’t realize that the popular CSI equipment is more akin to Star Trek technology than fact.

In any event, the message is clear. “Eluding the power of the state is hopeless.” Does it have to do with deterring crime or establishing submission? "Resistance is futile!" (... the BORG...)

Fox’s Jack Bauer -- 24 Hours -- establishes the fictional foundation for the now famously cited H-bomb, anthrax, death ray, insane terrorist in Los Angeles, New York or Atlanta which justifies the necessity of ripping someone’s arms and legs off in order to “foil the plot.” We wonder if Sean Hannity has found a way to watch these films twenty-four hours every day.

The question is, “Did shows like 24 Hours successfully embed this crazy idea into the minds of the electorate? Or even, part of the electorate?”

El Cartel, broadcast here in Albuquerque on the Spanish language Telemundo Network, presents the vindicating tale of government efforts to quash drug cartels. Are these (rather entertaining) tales a move to prepare citizens of Mexico and the Untied States with a fictional model which persuades them that such programs are worth the sacrifice of enduring the inevitable violence they will precipitate? They may be effective. El Cartel may even produce a positive image and acceptance of the value of the policy. But wait, is this the rational approach to prepare a populous to take the right action?

Isn’t it a bit cynical to assume that the citizens of any country can only be convinced that the right course of action is the dramatically simplified motive presented in a fictional construction? What about the mature, educated citizen who is naturally inclined toward governments and policies which reflect his individual interests in doing the sensible, reasonable things necessary to sustain an orderly civilization consistent with his own values -- that is, values which haven’t been predigested, simplified and presented as caricatures of solutions to the real challenges he and his country might face?

It’s easier for the lazy mind to simply be frightened into agreement with the radical actions taken by a desperate, yet imminently -- and artificially -- honorable television star. This seems to be the case whether a government wishes to vindicate torture or campaigns to defeat drug lords.

Good old Jack Bauer has made legitimate all these responses as unexamined, gaseous justifications for non existential, hypothetical terror threats. Once that was accomplished, the justifications went directly to the neo-con wing nuts in the government even as the hypothetical terrors were left behind on last week’s show.

Good old Jack Bauer laid the groundwork. And from that insane foundation, after Fox “innocently” participated in its introduction, propagation and justification, there emerged all sorts of even more bizarre and grotesque further refinements. For example, Cheney’s torture program, since it apparently never produced much in the way of information, can be assigned to the ambition of terrifying the terrorists, perhaps extracting some sort of vengeance. Vengeance? Useful for national security? In the world of Cheney and Rove, any kind of outrage represented the possible utility of its use for political expediencies. That isn’t news to anyone currently still breathing.

Heh, heh, heh. Tune into channel 69. We are now listening to this same, hopefully rather nervous, idiot (Cheney) insisting that our torture techniques are national security secrets. How do we intend to frighten terrorists with his exquisite torture accomplishments if they remain secret? In his next breath, the old crook insists that the Justice Department has intentionally refused to release the documents supporting “all the lives saved” by this violent extraction of terrorist “information.” Naturally, something like that might assist in his defense in court, in his mind, even if it had to be quickly fabricated at the last minute (maybe in a way similar to the official lies he spread like sunflower seeds to start the war in Iraq...).

We must disabuse ourselves of the trash these television scripts have insinuated into our thoughts. The first step will be to finally reveal that they are no more than cheesy manipulations of our fears, vomited out to make us more accepting of the horrors of our actions and more accepting of the necessities of abandoning our ideals and our Constitutional protections.

If the neo-con monsters who so craftily deceived us before can reinvent themselves into something even remotely coherent, we will have been destroyed by our own televisions! Thanks to them, we now find ourselves not resisting external forces intent on our destruction, but instead, sorting uncomfortably through our own thoughts to detect and eliminate the toxin which has been placed there.

Yes, the Bushites created immense poison all around the world, but our first mission will be to cleanse what their incredible network co-conspirators have placed in our own minds.

Not familiar with the al Jazeera network? It is part of our world and definitely worth knowing about!
http://english.aljazeera.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera_English

Any appetite for Chris Matthews? Here he speaks about Cheney's torture justification:
http://www.ecofactory.com/community/green-tv/cheneys-defense-torture-addressed-chris-matthews-hardball

Have we been neglecting our appropriate attention to 24 Hours or El Cartel?
http://www.fox.com/24/
http://foro.univision.com/univision/board/message?board.id=telenovelas&message.id=1135221

Finally, for those with an "appetite" to see a "fictional" representation of an extremely troubling traditional example, may I recommend a movie. The important feature of this movie has no particular relevance to torture scenes or techniques, but rather to the outrage of the attitudes of those in charge.

CAUTION: This film is EXTREMELY PROVOCATIVE. DO NOT FOLLOW THIS LINK UNLESS YOU ACCEPT AND UNDERSTAND THIS WARNING!

http://www.criterion.com/films/532

Pretending It’s Just More Politics

Cut the drama already! It's just another election.
Right? So, chill. Everything will be back to the way it was in no time.70

Here, in America, we love our politics. We take great pains to say we don't, but we do. These athletic contests we hold periodically allow those of us with an appetite for any channel of respect and superiority to proffer up “the right answer according to me,” along with every manner of dramatic persuasion. It seems that we have an unending ambition to have been the ones with insight or perception remarkable enough to either prognosticate our future dilemmas or offer up spectacular solutions which testify to all who watch of our remarkable savvy or, perhaps, even our startling genetic, intellectual prowess.

We also have an indulgent taste for predicting exaggerated dire adversaries and other threats.

We comfortably perceive our politics as an indulgence directed at “better” or “worse” answers. After all, in the past even our worst decisions have been survivable. So far in our entire national history we’ve sought out every answer by dissecting the more acceptable alternative topics not included in the “burning question of the day.” To date we’ve never paid too great a price for our foolishness or naiveté. We’ve never been successfully invaded, conquered, attacked or damaged -- nationally -- so gravely that we could not endure and recover.

Having never been laid that low, our pretense about politics continually provided the narcotic implication that we dealt with every challenge from a position of strength, that is, strength sufficiently great that we would inevitably emerge to correct our errors. Living in that unlikely fantasy, we encountered no events so troubling that we couldn’t disregard them in favor of debating nuances of our national reality as if they were the substance of everything.

Some of our population saw the contest between the extremely old and the frighteningly new in the last election in just this superficial manner. All the banter seemed quite comfortably moribund, couched in no more than another set of traditionally indulgent details to be chewed as fat by fish wives whose entire universe extended only to the last tents in the market square. We moan and reassure ourselves about our skeptical superiority, romantically akin to desperately swimming to the nearest lifeboat -- or any accessible flotsam -- after a sudden and disastrous capsize, then, once again, devolving into endless arguments of inane ideology before scrambling on board.

The United States is not smoothly dipping through another period of “corrections” for some trivial miscalculation, anticipating a few weeks or months of being denied a few normally available prerogatives. Our descent is suspiciously steeper than that, and deeper. We are apparently dumbfounded at the full scope of the damage now that it is revealed in a more rational light.

We have been, perhaps, mortally injured. We may not survive the damage we’ve suffered. The stakes are that severe.

It seems that not a single tool of our national sustenance remains in tact after the last outrageous subversion. We face the possibility that neither our military, our economy, our Constitution nor our spirit has survived in a form strong enough to hold us together while we frantically rebuild what we have left. The final looting of the treasury might be the bright spot. It suggests that the thieves believe the currency will have value again someday.

Of course there’s still the currency exchange.

Obama might be a solution to this national hemorrhage, or he might be just a hopeful triage or, at least, a soothing first aid placebo able only to comfort us for our final denouement. His election may have harnessed a horse which can pull us through this Bush crisis or maybe offer only a lessor promise, that is, a delay and a respite until its final, inevitable outcome.

A few matters are becoming more clear. Yes, we were stunned at the $700 billion cash affair. Those of us who paid just a little more attention to the news now know that the total is actually approaching $8 trillion and that the credit swaps and other doodad parasites imposed on our economy amount to more than $500 trillion.

By the way, that last figure is more money than there is in the world.

We are led to believe that we dare not simply stop, but that we still need to pay it back. Otherwise, those folks who managed to take it will return and scare us even more.

We are led to believe that it was something ugly that “just happened,” that is, “just happened” like a sudden rain storm or a flood. We are led to believe that those who profited so much cannot really be expected to repay the larceny extracted during their schemes. We are led to believe that the same thing would have happened no matter who was in charge of the country. We are even led to believe that the whole business actually has very little to do with us, that it is a problem inhabited by pain and recovery only for the stratospheric elite.

There is a storm coming.

Remember the endless discussion during the most violent period of the Iraq invasion? "Gosh, is it a civil war or not?" The new version addresses whether or not it is a recession, or, even a depression, as if anyone walking on the earth here could still wonder. We may need a new, even more depressing term to describe what awaits us.

The current job loss figure is around 15,000 per day. The value of trillions of dollars worth of retirement investments is around 40% of what it was a year ago. The individual tax burden of Washington’s most recent largess amounts to around $140,000 for every taxpayer. The ninnies of the far right still explode with fractured indignity at the prospect of talking to the enemies they’ve made for us.

Just another election?

Just another correction?

Imagine holding the 23rd century history book which accounts the story of the world. Perhaps, mid way through there is a chapter describing the period of the democracies, two or three centuries around the second millennium. Place the story of the events of the last eight years toward the end of that chapter.

Now, for the “politics as usual” crowd of cynics, try to ignore it. Convince us that it amounts to no more than a wild, silly exaggeration. Just another election.

So, how are the levees? It's Pearl Harbor Day.

Fill in the holes. Exactly what could this turn into? This is an account of a similar situation as it developed in Argentina (you know, that country in South America where the ruling class were crooks):
http://seekingalpha.com/article/111315-america-s-economic-collapse-how-bad-will-it-get

Why Not Revisit 9/11 Seven Years Later?

Messages and lessons we must not neglect.
The 9/11 Attack seen through the eyes in three faces. 56

On the seventh anniversary of the attack of 9/11, 2001, only the most callous can avoid the inevitable mix of both consolation and cause. There were causes which precipitated the attack. There were causes which precipitated the responses to it. Are we finally, after seven years, prepared to examine this again in the cold -- and far less emotional -- light of the present day?

Perhaps the clearest view can be expressed by attempting to place ourselves in the momentary place of players far closer to the event. Let us indulge ourselves with speculation as to the thoughts of three people. First, of course, ourselves; next, a nondescript, common citizen of Baghdad and, finally, Osama Bin Laden.

As we watched the catastrophe in New York and, minutes later, at the Pentagon, we took the moment to invest in an uneducated but comforting question. “Why is this happening? Why are ‘they’ doing this to us?”

We have a certain sickening feeling when we recall the answer to that question, an answer which seemed to fulfill all the requirements of common sense and non-nutritious nationalism. “They hate our freedom.” That “sickening feeling” can, more constructively, be called objective remorse. After all this time we have come to know much more about why that attack was possible, and probably, even inevitable.

There were reasons which explained it, but now we realize that those were reasons we had never considered. Our intellectual curiosity, prior to the attack, was never sufficient to explore just exactly what we had done to them, or, at least, what we had done to them as it appeared through their eyes.

The matter called me to revisit the chilling admonition of a certain Marine officer. He said, “If you find yourself in the midst of a shooting match, and, if you have no clear idea of why the other guy is shooting at you, that is, no idea of what he wants, leave. You have no business there.” My conclusion: “If those are the facts of the moment, the matter has no meaning and no possible constructive outcome.”

Next, a visit -- some months after 9/11 -- to Baghdad. “Shock and awe,” evaluated by the military command of Sadam Hussein’s army had one interpretation, possibly a tactical one, devoid of very much legitimate or popular social politics. “Shock and awe” interpreted by the man walking home in the streets of that distant city has another. Unavoidably, we must assume that he had certain questions in his mind as he ran for his life. “Why is this happening? Why are ‘they’ doing this to us?”

Finally, we stop over for a moment in some chilly cave, the uncomfortable refuge of the perpetrator and planner of the attacks in New York and Washington. Osama Bin Laden is not wondering “Why is this happening? Why are ‘they’ doing this to us?” at all. He has either had reasons or made reasons to answer those questions already. His reasons and his answers had already served to inspire all those young men who were willing to sacrifice everything to carry out his deathly mission in the United States.

Could there have been more to that remote conversation and planning than a “hatred of our freedom?” Did the “wrongs and injuries” that convinced those boys of the necessity of this, amount to something more substantial? Something we missed in the history of our own behavior? Or, at least, something we had assiduously avoided ever noticing?

Here in the United States, we were not allowed to even offer a conjecture that their suicidal passion had any meaning whatsoever. Far be it from us to even speculate, much less investigate, the possibility that we found ourselves involved in an exchange of consequences instead of a crazed act of psychopathic killing frenzy.

History makes its future concrete not from sand and cement, but from details and subtleties. It also makes strange bed fellows. It pays wages to the unlikely in currencies which have value only as a result of their moment of existence. Through this dark chapter, the least deserving, that is, Bin Laden and his counterpart, George Bush, have reaped unanticipated, synergistic extra profits.

Osama Bin Laden had little interest in military success. His satisfaction came from the fear he created. Injuring the United States, for him, could be far more substantial if he could degrade our Constitution and our social fabric. He, undoubtedly, celebrated in whatever way was correct to his religion, when the Americans made “shock and awe” over Baghdad, a serendipitous and unplanned extra benefit to his initial ambitions with the jet liners.

George Bush, likewise, was handed a birthday cake without a birthday. Those falling buildings could be converted by his servant, Carl Rove, into political octane of a stratospheric quality he never imagined. Out came “cut and run” and “stay the course,” all hypnotic invitations to endorse his oil wars and his morbid, domestic machinations and propaganda. If his rich friends made their fortunes drilling out petroleum made by ancient swamps, Bush made his by ruthlessly harvesting the unexpected opportunities of this modern moment.

9/11 calls us to our own inner thoughts. What, exactly, have we as individuals concluded about the facts of this tragic matter? Are we able, or, are we willing, to attempt to examine the unmanipulated reality of this whole affair, now, with clearer heads seven years later?

Perhaps, we are simply too busy or too shallow or too comfortable in this current cess pool of nationalistic drivel and fear. Perhaps, we will need to repeat what we have done previously, experience more “baffling” consequences of it, before we are motivated to consider changing ourselves and our national behavior. This improved destiny will probably never be the result of our fear. It will much more likely be an honest return from our rediscovered honor.

NO More Constitutional Ammendments! Okay?

Unthinkable Solutions
The Supreme Court. A National Toothache? 17

Difficult problems, although they seem to have a comfortable, rent-free existence in our thoughts, sometimes go beyond even that. They present themselves as insoluble dilemmas. “Just unpleasant products of fate,” “just the way things are” or “just something we have to live with.”

The unhappy fact is, that as dynamic and adaptive humans, we cease to consider these “tooth ache” challenges and move on to problems with more present solutions. We vote for the lesser of two evils long enough to finally select the very worst. We steel ourselves to resident powers, although we created them, as perpetual things we cannot “un-create.”

We become quite comfortably willing to accept the unacceptable so long as it can groom itself into an image of inevitability. Worse, the ability to perfect this inevitability in our acceptability becomes more material than the essential nature of whatever it was we were trying to solve in the first place. Whatever the desired function was at the outset of these creations of ours becomes somehow secondary to a constant new effort to remain inevitable.

After presenting such a Rumsfeld style introduction (“You can’t know what you don’t know because you don’t know what it is yet.”), perhaps an example would be helpful. What specific “tooth ache” are we currently accepting as unchangeable? What “unthinkable” thought have we gradually eliminated from our human reserve of ideas?

How about the Supreme Court? It has been gradually filled with sub-judicial embarrassments lately thanks to the petty ambitions of the “head crook” and the inspired work of the gang of fourteen. We, as we fulfill our duties under the democracy, have gradually walked away from the scandal. In fact, most of the gang of fourteen will even be reelected!

But that still leaves the problem of the court. Of course there is nothing we can do about it. Of course we just have to live with it. Sure, we can impeach the Chief Justice for conflict of interest. Right. Can anyone remember the campaign to impeach Earl Warren, also a Chief Justice, during the civil rights times? A legion of southern bigots bought roadside billboards and pumped out incendiary speeches, but the busing continued. Chief Justice Warren outlasted them without breaking a sweat.

Now, we have the new, improved Bush version of the Supreme Court. The young, healthy ones are his corporate monkeys, energetically pursuing their dreams of voter suppression, religion in schools and faith-based charities (tax payer extortion) made necessary by disabling parts of the government with corruption. The old, shaky ones seem to still be able to think straight, but their days remaining on the Court are numbered.

Impeaching any of these new justices would take forever. Much sooner than Congress could even consider such a move, the whole Court could well be inhabited by the same types of troubling cultural and judicial throwbacks. So, there is no possibility for us other than to simply “live with it.” Right?

Not exactly. The “no possibility” ideas only exist in thoughts where other “unthinkable” possibilities have been discarded. Perhaps we should consider the entire affair again, this time allowing these old “impossibilities” another chance.

As citizens, under our Constitution, we can dump the whole Supreme Court.

“Oh my God!” Do you mean amending the Constitution? We have been taught that such a thing is nearly impossible! What we have forgotten is that we were taught this by exactly the same folks who stood to lose the most if we ever thought otherwise. Even if we tried, it would take forever! It would take years, possibly even decades, to trot such a thing around to all the States.

Wait a minute. How long do you think we will have to endure the likes of Chief Justice Roberts? Decades after the other insults of George Bush have been disinfected, Chief Justice Roberts and his cronies on the court will still be injecting the same kind of toxic neo-con poison into our society. Anyone who thinks that is too harsh a criticism can review the accomplishments of the so-called Justices in only a year or two.

We can design and create a new Court with a Constitutional amendment. It might require actual judicial expertise in its appointments. It might become quite removed from the endless production of rulings which represent no more than the battle between its conservatives and its liberals.

The highest court in the country is supposed to think about the laws in its judgments, not cheap ideology. Is it impossible to form sound judicial opinions not embedded in the structure of ideology? Have we become mired in the details of personality so deeply that we have forsaken the possibilities of anything more constructive, more judicial?

Bill boards didn’t do it, but a program to promote a Constitutional amendment just might.

Empires: Brief and Empty Histories

BLOGdoc 5 Separations November 22, 2007

The first chapter of the train wreck that is Iraq divided all public speech between those who have experienced combat and those who have not.

The second chapter is here with us now. It divides those who have read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and those who have not. The United States arose more quickly than the Roman Empire. Do we dare expect its fall to proceed more slowly? More rationally? More comfortably?

No American Rubicon will be required in its passage from Republic to Empire. Our modern Rubicon requires only sufficient fear, executed effectively, for our ultimate willingness to accept the unbridled ambition of pathetic incompetents with tragic, meager goals and corresponding bargain basement promises.

Being driven by the fear of one’s own legacy is similar to being addicted to white sugar. Or maybe, to even less tasteful, high fructose corn syrup. The “drug” is available, dependable and destructive.

It becomes dull, boring. There is no final crisis of the spirit from self-observation which might resurrect human life in the afflicted. There is only a long, slow decline. There is no fiery moment of self-reclamation, only a suspicious kind of irritated soul more akin to a lingering toothache.

A Chinese proverb of suspicious origin:

“If your servant carries the stone three miles the first day and you beat him. And on the second day, he carries the stone eight miles and you beat him. You should plan on three miles per day.”

As active voters we are, in a sense, the servants of our Constitution and our democracy. The perceptions of the self-image of these “masters who have stones which must be carried” are inflated by their transitory positions and power.

We must never see them as anything other than vacuous.

Will we, as individual citizens, dare dream that we, as individuals, might try to do better?