Casual Asides by D. J. Waletzky

JUN

2008

Driving Like Jehu

What drives oil prices? Everyone has a theory that suits their ideological niche—Democrats blame lack of regulation, Republicans blame too much regulation, and the rest of us wonder why prices aren't higher than they are already. Earlier this month, Congress got an earful from a variety of oil experts on both sides of the ideological divide (and on a variety of paychecks), and the upshot is—it's all of those things, and more.

Really, what can and should politicians do about high gas prices in the U.S.? We've had plenty of Congressional hearings, firmly establishing the facts that a) much, but not all of oil's price can be ascribed to unregulated 'speculation,' and b) the larger point is that global demand is going to keep rising. The UN's International Energy Agency estimated recently that China and India will account for up to 70 percent of new demand from now until 2030, when the IEA projects the need for Asia's new power-players to import 20 million barrels' worth of oil a day between the two.

Karl Rove was on Fox News the other day saying that he knew people in the oil industry and they had told him that only a small part of the price of oil's increase was due to speculation, but really it was about supply and demand. Congressional hearings, on the other hand, say that the so-called "Enron loophole" which allows unregulated trading in energy markets contributes 25-50% of the current record price increases. But all the speculation in the world won't change the basic fact that global demand keeps growing, which of course is why people are speculating in the first place. It used to be that gold was considered an inflation hedge—nowadays, it's a better bet to put your money into oil instead. (By the way, small investors, the minimum amount of crude oil you can buy at a time is 1000 barrels, or 42,000 gallons, so start saving those pennies.)

Merely saying "supply and demand" doesn't cover the whole of it—American gas demand is actually down and supply is actually up, and prices continue to rise, past $4 a gallon at the pump. As we learned in the 1970's, when our domestic production peaked, the United States no longer controls the price of oil. And because even the crude we pump out of American soil is priced according to the global market, it doesn't matter if Americans curb their consumption, which is actually what we've been doing for the past year. This is a great deal for oil companies with vertical monopolies, because they just pass the high global cost of oil onto consumers without having to buy their own crude on the open market. That's why, even though the cost of extracting oil is definitely going up, the speculative rise in price lead to record oil company profits.

Now that we created the globalized world, we have to live in it, and that means facing up to the reality that cheap oil is gone. As I wrote almost exactly three years ago, the point about 'peak oil' is not that oil will run out, but that it will become increasingly more expensive to extract in terms of both money and energy. And now that crude prices are never going below $100 a barrel, all sorts of 'unconventional deposits' are becoming economically (if not environmentally) feasible, such as all that shale oil extraction which is ruining everything it touches near Fort McMurray in Alberta.

Is there a responsible way to stave off $5 gas at the pump come September?

There is, sort of. If you look at the news coverage of crude oil increases, there are always two things cited as contributing factors: growing global demand and political instability threatening supply. It's no coincidence that an energy-intensive lifestyle and war are two of our major exports. Let's look at how demand is structured first.

As I've mentioned before, one of the major factors in the increase of demand is the rapid industrialization of countries like China and India, whose depressed labor markets have become newly available (thanks to globalization) to make large amounts of stuff for export, which takes even more oil to get to the industrialized countries which used to make the same products. And as I've said before, the price of oil will continue to climb as long as Americans drive their SUVs to Wal-Mart.

Break down the chain of events implied by this example—driving an SUV or minivan necessitates a certain amount of refined gasoline, of course, and Wal-Marts tend to be located in suburban towns (made possible by the Federal Highways Act and oil company subsidies), or exurban, smaller communities which are rapidly losing their manufacturing base to factories in China and India. Wal-Mart itself is largely responsible for this phenomenon. A memorable scene from CNBC's documentary about the world's largest retailer, "The High Cost of a Low Price" shows the buyers explaining to an entrepreneurial couple who came down to Bentonville to hawk their latest tchatchkeh that there is simply no way they can sell their item at Wal-Mart stores if the insist on manufacturing it in the United States (there are price targets which must be met). Of course, most of the items sold in Wal-Mart are actually made from oil in whole or part, from all the plastic to various industrial solvents and chemical process components. Not to mention the raw oil has to be moved from refining stage to processing stage to factory to consumer, all of which involve the consumption of even more oil as fuel. Even the agricultural products you can buy at a Super Wal-Mart invovle petroleum-based fertilizers and diesel-powered machinery, thanks to the Green Revolution in the 1970's, which saved the world's food supply at the cost of installing agriculture's dependence on plentiful oil (the Rockefeller Foundation, itself built on windfall oil profits, bankrolled that research). Transportation only accounts for two-thirds of our petroleum usage—and only 19.5 of 42 gallons in each barrel of crude end up as regular gasoline; 9.2 gallons become diesel.

China's exports, for example, have increased tenfold from 1992-2005. There are no available figures (please let me know if you have any) for exactly how much oil is involved in America's burgeoning trade deficits like the one we've been accruing with China, but I can say with certainty that they are a major factor in the rising global demand for oil. It's no coincidence that the Clintons have a long history with Wal-Mart and that Hillary (a former Wal-Mart board member) became the health-care industry's darling by stealing Mitt Romney's corporate health care plan. Whether or not you think the Democrats who were pushing it were betraying their constituency at the time, the promises of globalization (or at least as it was sold to the working class Democratic base) have certainly been exposed as folly. Not only are jobs, but entire industries are leaving, and they aren't being replaced. And underpinning all of this is a dependence on advances in transportation, which makes cheap labor affordable in the larger scheme of things by letting developing countries export back to developed countries. But some analysts are wondering whether fuel costs are challenging the structure of globalization, which, like everything else the United States has built, relies not only on petroleum, but cheap petroleum.

Globalization is designed to address those market inefficiencies which have made the middle class possible. Let's start with labor costs: the wages and job security which made America the envy of the world in the post WWII boom years were unsustainable in a globalized world, in two important ways: a) taxes were much, much higher for rich people back then, and b) organized labor and the industrialization required by World War II enjoyed a brief and fruitful affair. Workers got higher wages, health coverage, pension plans, and the promise of a career. To be fair, I don't think corporations should be handling any of these things, because look how they've screwed up wages (stagnant, while productivity has soared), health coverage, pension plans, and job security. The problem, of course, is that the so-called 'golden straightjacket' of globalization, the neo-liberal regime imposed on developing countries, is to have the government privatize these functions and leave everything to the market. "When America sneezes," they used to say, "the rest of the world gets a cold." Through the World Bank and the IMF, we've elevated our Reaganite 'pro-market' policies to (what used to be called) a social disease.

Post-war America (and correspondingly, the American-built global marketplace) was built on the assumption that we could rely on extracting cheap domestic oil indefinitely. European drivers pay twice what we pay for gas, so they have smaller cars and avail themselves of government-built public transportation. Which, as we all understand, is totally un-American. We need to have highways and suburbs and three-car families and two hour commutes and cheap plastic knick-knacks because these are God-given rights. That's why we consume so much oil (and everything else) per capita—it's not just because we can, it's a matter of national pride. Recognizing the consequences and costs of our lifestyle, however, is probably more un-American than taking a national rail service to a soccer match. This is the land not only of Manifest Destiny, but of white flight. America doesn't like to deal with problems directly; we'd rather just get in a fast car and keep moving until we lose them in the rear-view mirror. And for a long time, it worked for many people.

Conservatives seem to think that no matter how much demand grows, we should be able to keep extracting more and more oil from the earth in order to preserve our way of life. Unfortunately, even if we increased our domestic oil production, we'd still need to import large amounts of oil because our production peaked over thirty years ago. Take, for example the folly of drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Any day now, Jon McCain will flip-flop and declare that he is for oil exploration in ANWR, the same way he just came out for off-shore drilling. In many ways the ANWR issue is a bellweather for your concept of America, because allowing companies to go in there today would mean Americans would see the oil start flowing in 2013 and hit a peak of just under 900,000 barrels per day (about 5% of our current daily consumption) somewhere around 2025. The question is, do you want to put America in the position of needing 900,000 more barrels of oil a day in 2025, no matter the cost to the environment?

Of course, the dynamics of demand are only half the story. Global demand has certainly risen greatly in the last ten years, but that isn't what's been fueling the sharpest upturns in the price of oil. Demand has been rising arithmetically worldwide, according to the IEA's web site:

But prices rose exponentially:

This rise in demand is totally fueled by globalization; demand in developed countries is actually shrinking. Supply is up, too:

So if supply is increasing and our consumption is shrinking, why are Americans paying $4 and more at the pump? It's simple: war is the answer. We export conflict; much as real and projected increases in global demand for oil drive speculation, real and projected disruptions in the flow of oil come to bear on prices as well. This phenomenon is concentrated in three countries: Iran, Iraq, and Nigeria. You'll notice that the price of crude drops during the beginning of the Iraq war by about $7 during the month of March 2003, when it seemed as though Bush's plan for $20 gasoline through sheer force of personality (and depleted uranium) might actually work. But soon after it became clear that "Mission Accomplished" was a bit premature, crude began its inexorable climb.

When it comes to Iran, which sits atop the world's second-largest proven reserves, U.S. policy, though less violent, is just as much responsible for driving up the price of oil. But our embargoing and sabre-rattling are always directly quoted as causes for any jump in the price of oil, even when we do it by proxy. Consider this snippet from earlier this month, when the price of oil sustained its largest single-day increase in history:

"It's Iran — all Iran," said Bernard Picchi, a senior managing director at Wall Street Access. "Iran is the bête noire of the Bush administration, the last remaining member of the 'Axis of Evil' that has not been militarily or diplomatically neutralized," Picchi said in emailed comments. Comments from Israel's transport minister, reportedly a close adviser to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, that an attack on Iranian nuclear sites looked "unavoidable" has driven buying to a fever pitch, according to Michael Fitzpatrick, an analyst at MF Global. Israeli Transport Minister Shaul Mofaz* was quoted by Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper as saying that if Iran continues with its program for developing nuclear weapons, Israel will attack.

By the way, Shaul Mofaz is actually Persian himself, one of the few 'Oriental' Jews in Israel's power elite.

And Nigeria? The oil companies have been engaged in a "low-intensity conflict" with Nigerians for many years; lately even these multinational corporations' white-collar Nigerian workers are ready to strike, not to mention the rebels who want their Nigeria's oil to actually, you know help Nigeria. Last year, Chevron (who, with Shell, represent the western oil interests in Nigeria) were dragged into U.S. court for some of their routine murders of Nigerians in the name of petroleum extraction:

United States (US) District Court Judge in San Francisco, Susan Illston, ruled that Chevron was directly involved in the alleged attacks by acting in consonance with Nigerian government security forces, paving the way for a trial which the company had made spirited attempts to avoid for eight years.
The lawsuit was brought against Chevron eight years ago in San Francisco Federal Court by nine Nigerian plaintiffs for alleged deaths and other abuses in the two incidents in 1998 and 1999. The plaintiffs assert claims ranging from torture to wrongful death.
According to information made available to THISDAY, Judge Illston "found evidence that CNL [Chevron Nigeria Limited] personnel were directly involved in the attacks; CNL transported the GSF [Nigerian government security forces], CNL paid the GSF; and CNL knew that GSF were prone to use excessive force."

Of course, there's one more component to how our foreign policy has raised the price of oil—the massive debts and global ill-will incurred by Bush's war-mongering have driven the dollar into a downward spiral.

Now, it is entirely possible, that if we stop threatening Iranian democracy, withdraw troops from Iraq, make Chevron and Shell pay for their crimes in Nigeria, enact a real alternative transportation energy policy, start drilling in North Dakota, and rebuild our railway system, we could get through this oil crisis. Or, there may actually be an oil speculation bubble to burst (although I think it's pretty unburstable, barring some major advance in alternative fuels). Let's see what Obama actually does in office.

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JUN

2008

I Don't Believe In Bullshit

In 1517, a young monk named Martin Luther, began a new era in Christianity by declaring his independence from what he saw as the excesses and iniquities of the Roman Catholic Church. Having kicked off the Reformation by nailing an itemized list of complaints to a church door, Luther challenged not only the orthodoxy of the Church but the political structures of Christian Europe.

In the early years of Luther's new religion—Protestantism—he became known as a defender of the Jews, whose treatment at the hands of Catholics horrified him. "If I had been a Jew and had seen such dolts and blockheads govern and teach the Christian faith, I would sooner have become a hog than a Christian," he once wrote. As his theological revolution had purged what he saw as the impurities of Catholic dogma, Luther thought that now the Jews would finally be able to be converted to Christ.

Of course, the problem Jews had with Christianity wasn't with the selling of indulgences, but with the divinity of Christ. When Europe's Jews failed to join Luther's new church, he turned on them most viciously. By 1536, he presaged the Final Solution in his book, "Of The Jews And Their Lies," calling for Jews to be put into bondage, killed, or expelled from Europe if they did not convert to the gentle message of the Gospels (he put his money where his mouth was by driving them out of many a German principality.) In the introduction to this seminal work of anti-Semitism, Luther writes,

"I have received a treatise in which a Jew engages in dialog with a Christian. He dares to pervert the scriptural passages which we cite in testimony to our faith, concerning our Lord Christ and Mary his mother, and to interpret them quite differently. With this argument he thinks he can destroy the basis of our faith."

Chris Hedges, author, journalist, and himself a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and son of a Protestant minister, has written his own 21st-century version of "Of The Jews And Their Lies," entitled I Don't Believe in Atheists. Anti-Semitism is a bit passe for today's Christians (a bit tacky after Hitler, wouldn't you say?), but bigotry against the godless remains relatively safe to express in public. Many a reviewer and interviewer have called the title "cute" (cuter than Von Der Juden und Ihren Lugen?), and Hedges' bigorty seems to be getting a pass from folks on the left for who probably would have reacted differently had it been anyone else writing the same words.

I feel the same about Hedges as I do about Christopher Hitchens, after he came out so forcefully behind the Bush's invasion of Iraq; a deep admiration now gone sour. Hedges says the book was born of his debates with what he calls 'the new atheists,' writers such as Hitchens, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and E. O. Wilson. He calls today's atheist writers religious fundamentalists, assigning them to "the cult of science" and decrying their intolerance and bigotry while doling out plenty of his own.

In foreign policy terms, an atheist like myself has much more in common with Hedges—we both oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (unlike Hitchens and Harris). In searching for a larger framework to contest what he sees as Hitchens' and Harris' support of imperialist war, however, he decides to tar even war opponents like Dawkins and Dennett with guilt by association and lumps us all together as evil and a danger to the Republic. But while atheism might be said to have a political philosophy (the separation of church and state), it certainly doesn't have a foreign policy.

Within the 224 pages of I Don't Believe in Atheists, Hedges winds his way through a dense thicket of strawmen. Not only has Hedges created a new Christianity for himself (one without heaven, hell, religious institutions, or an interventionalist god), but he's created another one for his enemies. "To turn away from God is harmless," Hedges grants, magnanimously, but "to turn away from sin is catastrophic." You can have your Model-T in any color you want, as long as it's black as religiously-defined sin.

Works like I Don't Believe in Atheists reinforce the fact that nonbelievers are one of the most hated minorities in America. Hedges' liberal bigotry is writ small, at least in the physical sense—the book is a pocket-friendly 5" by 7". The sprawling (and often repetitive) critique of today's out-of-the-closet atheists finds Hedges equating us with Nazis, all the while calling on the reader to heed the wisdom of, say, Christian Realist theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, who helped shore up support for the atomic bomb and is considered by many to the first neoconservative. Niebuhr's "just war" theory is often invoked by Iraq war supporters, because it frames mass murder as the necessity to confront evil.

I Don't Believe In Atheists is a gentle, liberal incitement to an American pogrom against nonbelievers, based on his very own version of a blood libel:

"while the new atheists do not have the power of the Christian Right and are not a threat to the democratic state as the Christian Right is, they do engage in the same chauvinism and call for the same violent utopianism. They sell this under secular banners. They believe, like the Christian Right, that we are moving forward to a paradise, a state of human perfection, this time made possible by science and reason."

Do atheists believe in a 'state of perfection?' Do atheists belong to what Hedges calls the 'cult of science?' Must we all have gods, as Martin Luther once said?

A thoroughly modern believer, Hedges declares he can pick and choose truths and falsehoods from science with the same ease as he does from Bible (parts of which he calls 'morally indefensible'). As with other intelligent design advocates, a faulty understanding of science buttresses a foregone conclusion—that the divine inhabits the gaps in human scientific understanding and the pursuit of further understanding is hazardous to the soul. Richard Dawkins, a target of Hedges' self-righteous indignation, calls this belief the 'god of the gaps,' and Hedges tries mightily to sacralize the mysteries of the universe in order to warn scientists against the hubris of discovering truths about reality instead of waiting for revelation about the mystic.

Intelligent design, a modern descendant of creationism, is the same impulse which lead ancient mapmakers to draw sea serpents in unexplored parts of the oceans and declare: "thar be monsters." Hedges' book amounts to nothing less than the intelligent design argument applied beyond biology to all realms of human endeavor, from physics to philosophy. And the monsters are the so-called "new atheists."

"Religious thought is a guide to morality. It points humans toward inquiry," announces Hedges, but his dogma leads him toward an inquisition instead. The main thrust of the book is the idea that today's atheists are trying to 'perfect' humanity, which is at the top of Hedges' list of cardinal sins:

"[t]he belief in human perfection, that we can advance morally, is itself an evil. It provides cover for criminality and abuse, a justification for murder. It sanctifies war, murder, and torture, for an unattainable purpose. It denies our own moral pollution."

One could substitute "the divine" for "human perfection" in the above sentence, but that's the easy way out. Even if the new atheist authors really believe in human perfection, is that the same thing as a belief in moral progress? "There is nothing in human nature or in human history that points to the idea that we are moving anywhere," protests Hedges. Well, it all depends on your metric for progress, of course—not to mention your definitions of 'moving' and 'anywhere.' If nothing in nature or history supported the idea of progress, Hedges' wouldn't have to repeatedly and weakly dismiss the notion. For Hedges, the fact that there is still murder and hatred and all manner of iniquity and inequality proves that there is no progress ever past or present, QED.

But really, is there anything in human nature to say we, as a species, I suppose, are moving anywhere? There's a whole science of genetics which is helping to explain how we got here in the way we did, from helping us trace the movement of early humans out of Africa to developing cures for birth defects which were never possible before. Did morality work differently for our pre-human ancestors as it does for homo sapiens? Does the evolution of and within hominid society qualify as moral progress? I would venture to say so, if only because I don't think animals are capable of the kind of abstract reasoning ethics require. Evolutionary biology shows us that change is slow, and its smallest increment is generational.

Hedges' idea that naturalists believe we are the culmination of a process leading towards perfection shows the limits of his understanding. "The belief in human perfectibility, in history as a march toward a glorious culmination, is malformed theology." Actually, it's malformed science; biologists understand that evolution is a continuing phenomenon, and we are not the end of it. Only under the weight of eschatology (the study of the end of time) does evolution have an 'end.' For scientists, Darwin only described a 'means.' What Darwin showed was that evolution was random, as opposed to competing evolutionary scientists of his day—like Lamarck, who theorized that giraffes grew long necks in order to feed from tall trees.

Hedges is just getting started mischaracterizing science for his own ends: "[p]luralism has no place in science. Neither does the principle (so familiar from the arts, humanities and human sciences) of competing truths. Scientific ideas, because they an be demonstrated or disproved, are embraced or rejected on the basis of quantifiable evidence."

Pluralism certainly has a place in science, and it's called the cutting edge, where such ideas are called theorems. (Just look at the panoply of string theories, which are themselves intended to resolve the competition between quantum field and general relativity theories.) Hedges' rants remind me of an English major drunkenly explaining that Science majors have no soul. And not only that, adds Hedges, but neuroscientist Sam Harris "does not engage in the laborious work of acquiring knowledge and understanding... He has no interest in debate, dialogue or scholarship." (One presumes Hedges had compelled Harris to debate him against his will in San Francisco in 2007). Or, "[Sam Harris'] assertion that Muslim parents welcome the death of children as suicide bombers could only have been written by someone who never sat in the home of a grieving mother and father in Gaza who have just lost their child." Now, I have never been to Gaza, but one such parent, known as 'Umm Nidal' (who famously encouraged her sons to become martyrs and handed out chocolate and halvah upon hearing her son was killed attacking an Israeli settlement) was, in fact, elected to Palestinian parliament on the Hamas ticket in 2006. Similarly, Hedges protests that somehow religion had nothing to do with the slaughter of Bosnian Muslims by Bosnian Christians. The book is full of such hollow falsehoods, Jesuit-level equivocations and semantic boondoggles.

The tone of the book is reminiscient of a sermon—long, tedious, repetitive, and full of earnestly resolute pomposity:

"The question is not whether God exists. It is whether we contemplate or are utterly indifferent to the transcendent, that which cannot be measured or quantified, that which lies beyond the reach of rational deduction. [...] God—and different cultures have given God many names and many attributes—is that which works upon us and through us to find meaning and relevance in a morally neutral universe. [...] God is, as Thomas Aquinas argues, the power that allows us to be ourselves. God is a search, a way to frame the questions. God is a call to reverence."

Reverence of what, exactly? It isn't clear, but it seems that if anything should be exalted, it is human limitation and our irredeemable shortcomings, whatever those might be. Hedges not only constructs a strawman (the belief that atheists and scientists are trying to perfect humanity) but a new religion—the worship of human flaws. There is no greater sin for Hedges than to turn away from the concept of Sin, and those who do are embracing an evil so profound that Hedges' doesn't talk about much else. Hedges' speaks of the "wisdom of original Sin" and exalts, at length, human evil:

"Human evil is not a problem. It is a mystery. It cannot be solved. It is a bitter, constant paradox that is part of human nature."

Hedges goes on to accuse the new atheists of 'externalizing evil' — but the truth is that Hedges is guilty of internalizing 'good.' English doesn't have a distinction between religious and secular definitions of 'good' the way it separates 'evil' from 'bad,' so let me clarify that as an atheist, I believe in 'bad' but not 'evil.' Because contrary to what religion wants you to think, the relevant parties to telling right from wrong are your fellow beings, rather than any imaginary ones. Yes, there is bad and good, but we must always ask—bad for whom? Good for what?

In a summary of his book published by the Free Press, Hedges writes,

"Religious institutions, however, should be separated from the religious values imparted to me by religious figures, including my father [who was a liberal minister]. Most of these men and women frequently ran afoul of their own religious authorities. Religion, real religion, was about fighting for justice, standing up for the voiceless and the weak, reaching out in acts of kindness and compassion to the stranger and the outcast, living a life of simplicity, finding empathy and defying the powerful."

Leaving aside for the moment the question of how Hedges gets to cleave 'real religion' from the kind most people practice, we must ask—what exactly are religious values? Are there such things regardless of the religion in question?

The truth is, there's only one universal religious value: orthodoxy in the service of power. The world's faiths share a vast-ranging disagreement on everything else, even the number of gods to be worshiped—from zero in Theravada Buddhism to the Trinity of Catholicism to the countless loa of Voodoo. Everything about the temporal world is up for spiritual grabs, from the threshold for justifiable homicide to the divinely inspired way to wipe your ass.

Much as science is morally neutral, religion is merely a tool for the powerful to control the masses. And yet, there is a process by which religions themselves evolve. Within my own lifetime, for example, Bob Jones University, which went from defending their ban on interracial dating and marriage on God's ipse dixit 1983 before the Supreme Court to revoking the policy in 2000—not because George W. Bush was about to make a speech there and they didn't want to offend the heathens for political purposes, but because the sacred words of God must have changed, mysteriously acquiring a new meaning.

Whether there's a text or an oral tradition, every religious person picks and chooses, interprets and reinterprets the tenets of their faith and applies them to the real world. Those choices are temporal, secular—because religion is all in your head. Interaction with your fellow humans is real, and therefore will never live up to Hedges' idealized 'good.'

Morals are personal, ethics are interpersonal. The zeitgeist (as described by Dawkins) describes the movement of social mores—the definitions not only of evil, but of 'good' as well.

When Hedges admits that some parts of the Bible are 'morally indefensible,' it is the reader's duty to ask how they got that way. So when Hedges writes, "All ethics begin with religion. We must determine what moral laws to accept or reject. We must distinguish between real and false prophets," while enjoining us from using reason and science to do so, on what basis does Hedges make these distinctions? It would appear that there is no rational distinction between true and false prophets.

The truth is that all of us, Hedges included, create a personal moral code using real-life, secular ethics—the realm of human interaction which Hedges finds so spiritually devoid: "Those who focus only on human communication, who are unable to step out of the realm of prosaic knowledge, sever themselves from the sacred. They remain trapped in a deadening self-awareness. They lose the capacity to honor and protect that which makes life possible."

A band of prophets known as the Firesign Theatre once said, "when you clock the human race with the stopwatch of history, it's a new record every time." Things we view as "evil" or immoral by today's standards were moral yesterday, and we gauge our progress by comparing these standards. For example: would Jesus buy an SUV? Has burning gasoline always been sin, or just bad for the environment? And how could we possibly answer such a question (much less ask it) without the advances of science? Moral 'progress' is inevitable, if only because morality has to address new problems every day.

Hedges goes on at length about how the new atheists want to 'perfect' humanity, but suspiciously, he doesn't use any direct quotes. So, I decided to read Harris and Dawkins in search of this ideology of perfection, but I couldn't find any. Dawkins definitely speaks of the Zeitgeist and of "evolving complexity," but nowhere does he say that 'perfection' (whatever that is) is attainable or that he has set his sights upon it. Harris hardly speaks in absolutes, and certainly doesn't say that atheists seek to achieve perfection. So, where is this murderous ideology of perfection?

Seek and ye shall find, says the Bible, and Hedges' uses his denseness as his guide: "Wilson and Dawkins build their vision of human perfectibility out of the legitimately scientific theory that human beings are shaped by the laws of heredity and natural selection. They depart from this position when they assert that we can leave determinism behind. There is nothing in science that implies our genetic makeup allows us to perfect ourselves. Those who, in the name of science, claim that we can overcome our imperfect human nature create a belief system that functions like religion... there is nothing, when you cut through their scientific jargon, to support their absurd proposition."

Leaving aside whether Hedges is truly capable of understanding scientific jargon—as opposed to simply cutting through it—you have to wonder (as with his claim that "Dawkins, like Christian zealots, reduces the world to a binary formula of good and evil") where he's getting this stuff. As Hedges writes, "these are not questions atheists answer. They attack a religious belief of their own creation." Atheists don't believe in eschatology, and neither do we seek to negate ourselves by becoming gods. Atheism merely seeks to turn the pyramid scheme of religion upside-down.

"Because there is no clear, objective definition of God," writes Hedges, "the new atheists must choose what God it is that they attack." Actually, that's not true, but like all good debaters, Hedges needs to reframe the debate on his terms in order to claim rhetorical victory. What Hedges fails to understand is that atheism is a rejection of the whole notion of a top-down universe, no matter whom your particular creation myth places at the top. A universe without gods is one which is eternal and works from the bottom up, without meaning or intent. Hedges characterizes the universe as "morally neutral," but at the same time posits an objective 'good' and 'evil' and that God is the good in each of us. One wonders why, if there is only one god, why it can't be the morally neutral in each of us? If animals have a moral value, what is it, and do they share the same god as humanity or the rest of the universe?

For most of the book, Hedges' seems hell-bent on conflating atheists with Raëlians, an extropian UFO cult who send out press releases claiming to have cloned a human being every so often. For all his Western-centric chauvinism, Hedges' concept of the universe, with its personally uninvolved deity in an amoral universe who works through us, sounds a lot more like some Yoruba-derived syncretic religion, such as Candomblé or Santería: Oludumare, the creator, doesn't deal with people, and so requests are made of orishas ('the owners of heads') who possess and work through their followers. But Hedges' Christian prejudices against atheism and polytheism are merely precursors to the real weakness in his arguments.

When Hedges writes, for example, that "[w]e progress technologically and scientifically, but not morally. We use the newest instruments of technological and scientific progress to create more efficient forms of killing, repression and economic exploitation, and to accelerate environmental degradation," is he saying that the pursuit of any scientific knowledge (for example, genetics, which can certainly be said to "change human nature") is an evil because it attempts to improve the human condition? And if some science is OK, where is the boundary between good and evil science, the border line where Hedges and the Unabomber stand, wagging their fingers at humanity?

"There is a good and a bad side to human progress. We are not moving towards a glorious utopia. We are not moving anywhere," he proclaims. It seems by definition that if there there is human progress that we are moving somewhere (if not towards some glorious utopia). Hedges lives in a world of absolutes, as much as he protests otherwise; since the imaginary end (utopia) is deemed impossible, he seems to say there cannot be any movement altogether, failing to make the distinction between 'perfect' as a verb and as an adjective. When, for example, America's founding Deists employed the phrase 'a more perfect Union,' it didn't suggest (to me, anyway) that they thought there was going to be a perfectly perfect Union.

I Don't Believe In Atheists plumbs the depths of Hedges' unwillingness to engage with atheism, or atheists—encapsulated by the way he laughs off Christopher Hitchens' lack of theological training with regard to his question of who created the Creator:

"This is the declaration of an illiterate. Aquinas, along with many other theologians, addressed at length the issue of who created the creator. God, Aquinas argues, is not an entity. God is not a thing or a being. Creation is an act of handicraft. Creation is the condition of there being something rather than nothing. Creation didn't happen long ago. Creation is a constant in human existence. It is part of life."

This is what's known as "conversion by definition" (or "the bear hug") where extremely lazy evangelists posit that the fact one is alive is proof that at least one god exists. (For the sun, or your electronic devices, which operate on the principle that matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed, it's a different story.) "God is a human concept," admits Hedges, but that's about as far as he's willing to go in understanding the subjects of his monograph. Because Hedges' doesn't understand atheism, his critique is understandably flawed. Worse still, he is unwilling to subject himself to his own critique:

"They see the "other" as equal only when the other is identical to themselves. They project their own values on the rest of the human race. ...Those who are different do not need to be investigated, understood or tolerated, for they are intellectually and morally inferior. Those who are different are imperfect versions of themselves."

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MAY

2008

Knock On Wood

It's Casual Asides' 5th anniversary. Consider (with the new word count feature at the bottom of each post) that at this point, I've written about 260-odd posts and hundreds of thousands of words, enough to fill a decent sized book. That's gotta be worth something, right?

I pause here to consider that although I like to complain that nobody reads this blog, I have gotten the following things out of it (at least, in part):

A lot of blank stares
A Koufax Nomination for Best Writing
Internet-only friends
Internet-only enemies
A job
A girlfriend
Several free books to review, which I never get to
A radio appearance on Sirius
An embarrassingly small amount of actual visitors over five years, but at least in the six-digit range.

Draggin' The Line II

Just to remind you of my predictions from last week and their current status (error margins tabulated by delegate count):

................. Popular Vote ..... Net Gained ... Error
.............. Clinton ... Obama ... Delegates .... Margin
Guam .......... 50% ...... 50% ..... 0 (wash) ..... 0%
Indiana ....... 50% ...... 50% ..... 0 (wash) ..... 1%
N. Carolina ... 46% ...... 54% ..... +9 Obama ..... 2%
W. Virginia ... 53% ...... 47% ..... +4 Clinton
Kentucky ...... 51% ...... 49% ..... +1 Clinton
Oregon ........ 47% ...... 53% ..... +2 Obama
Montana ....... 46% ...... 54% ..... 0 (wash)
S. Dakota ..... 48% ...... 52% ..... +1 Obama
Puerto Rico ... 60% ...... 40% ..... +11 Clinton

I'm doing OK so far. Now, it should be clearer to everyone that Hillary's uphill battle to gain the nomination has become demonstrably steeper. As Republican strategist Alex Castellanos just said on CNN, Hillary has run a Republican-style campaign against Barack Obama, and it's time for her to throw in the towel.

There are now more superdelegates in play than pledged (elected) delegated at stake in the upcoming contests. However, Hillary's going to win Kentucky and West Virginia (and Obama will win Oregon) unless soething changes in the next week. And here's what it should be:

Obama's Gas Plan: Green and Transparent

President Bush himself said that this country is addicted to oil. All McCain and Clinton is offer our the promise of a cheap fix. That's why this pandering is so destructive—if the government is going to help you, we've got to help you get clean.

I support a windfall profit tax on record oil profits. I support the elimination of $18 billion in subsidies to the oil companies. All Hillary Clinton wants to do is launder the money through a three-month tax holiday that will leave the price of oil higher and the roads in dangerous condition. I support a windfall tax, but nothaving that money go right back to the oil companies.

Now, there are a lot of people who are suffering with the price of gas climbind steadily towards four dollars a gallon. Especially working people who depend on their cars for a living. Long distance truckers. Pizza delivery people. Firefighters. We need to do something to help the people who are caught in this crunch, but we're not going to do it in a way that keeps you dependent on more cheap gas.

I propose the money from any oil company tax and reduction of subsidies should go towards a government-issued coupon to replace your gas engine with a hybrid, electric, hydrogen, or biodiesel engine. This money should be retributed to those who are suffering the most from our oil national addiction. Any new cars with reduced gas usage should also be given this credit, of course.

Now, in recent days, I've been examining another part of the kind of challenge we face today connected to our disastrous environmental and energy policies. I'm talking about food prices. Food prices are being driven up by two things—the price of gas, and the price of corn which is being added to gasoline in the form of ethanol. I support ethanol. But we simply cannot continue to use food as a fuel additive. It doesn't make sense. We are getting close to a real breakthrough with other sources of ethanol which will be much more productive than using corn. So I propose we mandate that no human food be used for ethanol production. There is still plenty of demand for corn from people, and we have better ways of helping the small farmers build a sustainable crop than giving fat checks to giant agribusiness.

The cost of using fossil fuels doesn't just hit us at the pump. In West Virginia, coal companies are levelling mountains—literally erasing them from the landscape—in search of cheap coal they extract at tremendou environmental cost and fewer jobs for coal miners. On the one hand, we have enough coal in America to last 150 years; on the other, the burnign of coal is one of the leading sources of carbon in the atmosphere.

In Washington, they look at a problem like this and they see it as an opportunity to play people against one another; coal mining families against environmentalists, Democrats against Republicans, blue collar against white collar. They try to find the angles, look for a way to pander to people by offering short-term solutions. But when your short term solution counteracts your long-term goals, you have a problem.

We understand that what we have here is an opportunity to bring people together. We need to use American ingenuity and the power of the government to make sure that we use the resources we have responsibly and in a way that helps American families no matter who they are. We need a coal industry, but we also need the figure out how to neutralize the greenhouse gases coal produces. There are many exciting technologies Americans are working on, from turning emissions into baking soda, or feeding algae, or using it for natural gas exloration, that we can develop and ensure a sustainable economy and a sustainable environment.

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MAY

2008

Bulls in the China Shop

It's hard to watch the news lately, because it's just an interminable vivisection and slow broil of the Democratic candidates, thanks to Hillary's stalwart refusal to do the math. C'mon, folks, it's all on CNN's delegate counter game, which has helpfully added a feature which lets you see exactly why Clinton needs a 66% margin of victory in the rest of the contests in order to take back the nomination in the name of bullshit dynasticism.

Giant Gasbags

You can't get a better illustration of what kind of choices America faces in the race for the presidency than John McCain's "Gas Tax Holiday" proposed between Memorial and Labor Day.

The relevant graphs from a relevant McClatchy article:

Obama had backed a similar temporary gas-tax freeze as an Illinois state senator in 2000. So Republicans are tagging Obama as a "flip-flopper," calling his current position "calculating and contradictory."
At a filling station in Indianapolis Friday, Obama said he opposed McCain's plan because it would leave a nearly $10-billion shortfall in the Highway Trust Fund. "You don't know that the oil companies are going to pass the savings on to the consumers, or if you'll just see an increase in prices by the same amount that the gas tax goes down," Obama said. "And it would deplete the Highway Trust Fund that we need for rebuilding our roads and our bridges."
"I don't want somebody to save 25 bucks — that's what the savings would yield for the average driver — and now they're potentially driving over an unsafe bridge," he said.
He's proposing instead long-term changes — a windfall-profits tax on oil companies and "steps to reduce the price of oil and increase transparency in how prices are set."
Obama also rejects charges that he's switched positions since 2000, noting that he voted to keep in place the Illinois gas tax to preserve money for infrastructure repairs.
McCain economic adviser Carly Fiorina called the temporary tax break a "very effective way to give consumers a break when they need it most."

Obama's failure to endorse a summer-long gas tax repeal is one of the many reasons Casual Asides is officially endorsing him for President. But don't you wish he had the temerity to say something like,

"My opponents are guilty of the worst kind of pandering with their proposed 'gas tax holiday' — the kind where they kill you with their supposed kindness. John McCain, who just blamed that tragic bridge collapse on federal spending in New Orleans of all places, thinks that screwing the government out of money it needs to help people is the way to deal with our crumbling highway system. Hillary Clinton's proposal is even more craven because it amounts to making the Federal government launder $10 billion of the windfall tax we've been working on so hard in the Senate and send it right back to the oil companies, and make you the patsy.

If we lift gas taxes for three months when demand traditionally peaks, you can bet your gas cap those oil prices are going to rise more than 18.4 cents a gallon, and there's nothing the government will be able to do about it. This week ExxonMobil posted a record $11 billion profit, which was deemed a major disappointment by Wall Street. They are making more than any company has ever made in history for the last three months, AND THEY'RE NOT MAKING ENOUGH. So what better excuse to raise prices permanently? Come September you'll be paying for all that relief you got, and more."

The average American buys about 500 gallons of gas per year, so three months' worth of tax relief comes out to $23 in savings. And the truth is, no matter what we do, gas will probably keep heading toward $4 a gallon no matter what we Americans do. That's because we are no longer in control of the price of oil; Iraq proved that—oil prices dipped abit in 2003 during those two months when the war seemed to be going well, and they've been shooting up ever since.

Instead, it's China which is largely responsible for the surge in worldwide demand, and there is nothing we are going to do about that (unless America follows my suggestion and opens up its renewable energy patents to the world, including China).

And how did we get to this point? In 1993, as Bill Clinton took office, we were importing and producing about the same amount of oil and our trade deficit with China was around $22 billion dollars. By the time Senator Clinton took office in 2000, we were importing 3 million barrels of oil a day more than we were producing, and our trade deficit with China had grown four times over.

Meanwhile, people are gassing up their SUVs and minivans to go to Wal-Mart to buy things made out of oil in China by prisoners. Our trade deficit stood at $256 billion last year, over 11 times what it was in 1993.

In 1994, we were sold a slightly different story by everybody's pal, Bill Clinton:

Clinton had been the subject of heavy lobbying by American business interests and his economic advisers to continue China's trade privileges. With China now the world's fastest growing economy, the United States exports $8 billion a year there, which sustains up to 150,000 American jobs. Many major American businesses see even greater potential in Chinese markets, expecting China to become a massive purchaser over the next decade of the phones, electronic gadgets and thousands of other products made in America.
"I think we have to see our relations with China within a broader context" than simply human rights, Clinton said, adding that the link between rights and trade was no longer tenable. "We have reached the end of the usefulness of that policy," he said.

China gets to intimidate its labor force in ways American corporations can only dream about and not only do we pay the price in trade deficit and jobs going overseas, but we even pay indirectly because of the secondary effects of the massive industrialization we prompted back when everyone was telling us it was a great idea to bring China into the WTO and all that.

Breaking the Bank

Speaking of Bill Clinton and how he screwed us, it ought to be noted that, as I stated before, Clinton's repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act kicked off this whole speculative mishegas, fueling a series of bubbles which made it appear as though we were building a real economy.

I spent a weekend arguing about this with Elephant, eventually locating a superb article in the American Prospect from last year which made my points as ably as I could about how Alan Greenspan, Sandy Weill, Robert Reich, and Bill Clinton got us in this mess.

Update for the latest financial crisis: the Gramm-Leach-Billey Act which repealed Glass-Steagall is the law which made it possible for our pals the banks to sell and resell the "CDOs" — collateralized debt obligations — which helped bring down a stalwart financial institution like Bear Sterns in a spectacular devaluation/government bailout/takeover by JPMorganChase, a financial hydra created by Gramm-Leach-Billey.

But back when we watched the "New Democrats" plant the seeds for this, you'd hardly hear a whimper of protest. Everybody was buying into this bullshit hook, line and sinker; remember when Wired Magazine put out that issue with the mutant smiley face on the cover saying that America had invented a new kind of capitalism featuring the end of business cycles? It was called The Long Boom; and its cheerful stupidity infuriated me back in 1997—to wit:

We are watching the beginnings of a global economic boom on a scale never experienced before. We have entered a period of sustained growth that could eventually double the world's economy every dozen years and bring increasing prosperity for - quite literally - billions of people on the planet. We are riding the early waves of a 25-year run of a greatly expanding economy that will do much to solve seemingly intractable problems like poverty and to ease tensions throughout the world. And we'll do it without blowing the lid off the environment.

Ha! What morons. But this was the the popular story, and Clinton was skillful and lucky enough a politician to make it look like Bush had screwed up the economy single-handedly. Now Bush took the ball and ran with it, but let's not forget who got us to the Superbowl of economic meltdowns.

The problem isn't just that the unsustainable growth of the 1990's was paper-thin; Bush's America was so fucked up that Clinton became hugely popular after he left office, merely by comparison. Those blue-collar voters who are voting for Hillary because they liked Bill are doing themselves a grave disservice, because the Clintons are going to turn around and screw you again. Really, it does take a remakable amount of skill for the power couple who brought you triangulation, NAFTA, and neoliberalism in America to emerge as the voice of a working class they impoverished.

If they made you, they can break you, I suppose.

Dig Up, Stupid

Speaking of federal fiscal policy, does it bother anyone else that the government's response to a debt crisis is to make it even easier for the responsible parties to borrow money, and from the Federal Reserve, at that? Part of the gospel of 'pro-market' policy is that the government be enjoined from doing anything that might work (see the McCain-Clinton gas tax proposal above—pumping up demand is the only acceptable solution).

I say the government is making a bad investment, and generally speaking, it gets shitty returns on all those bailouts and subsidies. If you're going to get entangled in the marketplace, just go whole hog and nationalize instead of bailing out failing companies. Britain just did this with the failing Northern Rock bank after a good old fashioned bank run. That ought to put some fire into the marketplace—fail and you get bought out by the guv'mint! (Cue sinister music.)

Recently I was in a bar and was talking to someone who worked for Citigroup in some financial racket, and we got to talking about the economy. He said not to worry, the market is just undergoing a correction and everything will be fine in a while.

I laid out what I think is a more likely scenario: the price of oil and the massive private and public debt weaken the dollar first (check) and then our inability to make payments on the burgeoning debts leads other countries to begin devaluing our national credit rating, the dollar is replaced by the euro or renminbi as the global currency.

"What's your plan for that?" he asked with indignant smile. "If that happens we're all fucked."

Tell me about it.

Draggin' The Line

My predictions for the upcoming contests:

.................. Clinton ... Obama ... Net Delegates
Guam ............... 50% ...... 50% ..... 0 (wash)
Indiana ............ 50% ...... 50% ..... 0 (wash)
North Carolina ..... 46% ...... 54% ..... +9 Obama
West Virginia ...... 53% ...... 47% ..... +4 Clinton
Kentucky ........... 51% ...... 49% ..... +1 Clinton
Oregon ............. 47% ...... 53% ..... +2 Obama
Montana ............ 46% ...... 54% ..... 0 (wash)
South Dakota ....... 48% ...... 52% ..... +1 Obama
Puerto Rico ........ 60% ...... 40% ..... +11 Clinton

All this goes to show that Obama should have gone to Puerto Rico instead of the Virgin Islands when he went on a mini-vacation a few weeks ago. But I'd say the odds are 50-50 of this going all the way to Puerto Rico.

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MAR

2008

Any Minute Now, Amos 'n' Andy Broadcasts Will Reach Planet X!

Dear readers, exciting things are happening. Here's a quick review of the past few months.

That Book I'm Always Talking About

For the last two years, I've been writing a non-fiction book—it's what I'm doing when I'm not posting here. When people ask me what the book is about, I usualy say something like, "it's about killer robots and globalization." While this is true in some sense, the book is actually about a lot more than just those things, but when you work on something for two years (or longer) the ability to faithfully summarize it kind of falls away.

This book, entitled Why Can't Money Grow On Trees?, is about the open-source movement, the global economy, and the connection between, for example, Adam Smith, Jean-Pierre Proudhon, Howard Scott, and the Unabomber. It is subtitled "A Practical Guide to Building Your Own Utopia."

Now, because the book is about open source and contains a lengthy section about how lethal intellectual property rights can be, I decided to make the book into a wiki. This way, you can actually watch me write the thing in real time (at this stage it is a lengthy proposal and not too much more) in a format meant for your computer monitor, unlike the 50+ page PDF file I have been sending people.

If you are confused about all this, just go visit whycant.org and you will probably become slightly more or less clear about what I'm trying to say.

Catch me on Sirius Satellite Radio's Indie Talk March 13th at 5pm EST

I've had this blog for almost five years now, and sometimes I wonder if anyone is even listening anymore. But occasionally, I will get some random confirmation that I have, in some small way, had an impact in the media universe. Sometimes, I'll get questions from college students asking me to elucidate a point they're writing a paper on; sometimes publishers offer to send me advance copies of suitably "progressive" books to review. Sadly, I no longer get hate mail, which I used to enjoy immensely.

But I found something even more fun than hate mail—free media ops! Sirius, which just launched their new "Indie Talk" channel, asked me to come down to "The Blog Bunker" this Thursday and chat about politics for half-an-hour, after which I will spend the rest of the week trying to figure out how I can leverage this appearance into one on the O'Reilly Factor.

But D. J., I hear you cry, "I don't have Sirius Satellite Radio!" Don't worry. You can sign up for a free 3-day Internet radio trial on their web site. It'll be just like when the whole family used to gather around their gigantic vacuum-tube powered radio cabinet after dinner to listen to Fibber McGee & Molly or Suspense!, only without the family, or the radio.

Free Xenu! Shirts!

The other way I found out that people actually do read this blog is that someone ordered a "Free Xenu" T-shirt from my lonely and neglected T-shirt shop. So I actually had to make one, and now that I spent all the revenue on the first shirt, I implore you, dear readers, to buy one, too.

For those of you who don't know the story, Xenu is the deposed alien overlord who is currently being held in intergalactic superjail by the Church of Scientology, according to court documents. As far as I can tell, Xenu is being held without bail or formal charges, with no method of redress or habeas corpus. I don't even think there was a trial. If any of you give a damn about civil rights, I implore you to wear this shirt so that the CoS knows you will no longer abide by their illegal detainment of what, for all we know, is just a sweet, harmless, 75 million year-old man.

It's Her Party, She'll Cry If She Wants To

I'm less of a Barack Obama supporter than an ABC voter—anybody but Hillary. What's my beef with Hillary, you ask?

Is it that she's a carpetbagger? I do resent the fact that my state is apparently so welcoming we'll let anybody in the President's family who wants to run for the White House represent us. Tempting, but not sufficient.

Is it because she's a hawk? Her stance on Iran is basically the same as McCain's, which is that they would really rather prefer to go to war Iran than not. Both of them have been agitating for this for years, although Hillary's anti-Iran record is long and storied and includes her potential running mate, Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana. As a matter of fact, Hillary's foreign policy is remarkably similar to McCain's in many respects. That's getting closer to why I can't stand her, but there's more.

Perhaps it's Hillary's right-wing pandering like her clearly unconstitutional throw-flag-burners-in-Federal prison law, which was fortunately rejected; perhaps its her authoritarian top-down style, presaged by her Wellesely senior thesis dismissing the whole idea of bottom-up community organizing.

Yes, these were all fine reasons to dislike Hillary, and I have made full use of them in the past. But what burns me about Hillary the most right now is her gargantuan sense of entitlement, a thing so huge it was pretty much her platform—before that young upstart upstaged her "get-out-of-my-way" campaign style with—you guessed it—bottom up grassroots organizing.

Barack Obama may be well-spoken (somebody check Lexis-Nexis to see if Hillary's camp has ever slipped up and said it in those terms), but he clearly hasn't suffered enough to win the 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Medal for overcoming adversity. As Aristotle said in Poetics, tragedy works best when the sufferers fall from privilege and fortune, and Hillary's story is characterized by the most fortunate of circumstances.

As I've said before (maybe not in these exact words), when you challenge white people's privilege, watch the fuck out. Hillary's whiteness isn't her sole privilege, but it's clearly working to her advantage. For example—let's look at Ohio, the "firewall" which helped Clinton turn her campaign around:

Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International— respected polling firms — surveyed 1,612 Democratic primary voters in 40 precincts across Ohio on Tuesday. Among other things, the pollsters asked if the race of the candidate was important to them.
Twenty percent of those surveyed said yes, and three out of five of those voters said they cast ballots for Clinton.

As a pundit once said on CNN a while ago, this is the first time identity politics-based attacks have been trained on the identity groups themselves as opposed to, shall we say, hegemonic power. And it's threatening to rend the Democratic party.

It is in this light that we must examine the comments of Geraldine Ferraro, Clinton supporter and former VP candidate:

When the subject turned to Obama, Clinton's rival for the Democratic Party nomination, Ferraro's comments took on a decidedly bitter edge.
"I think what America feels about a woman becoming president takes a very secondary place to Obama's campaign - to a kind of campaign that it would be hard for anyone to run against," she said. "For one thing, you have the press, which has been uniquely hard on her. It's been a very sexist media. Some just don't like her. The others have gotten caught up in the Obama campaign.
"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position," she continued. "And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept." Ferraro does not buy the notion of Obama as the great reconciler.

How refreshingly reprehensible! It always strikes me, whenever this meme is floated, that the name "Carol Moseley-Braun" seldom crosses the lips of these Clinton supporters. Moseley-Braun, whose Senate seat was won by Obama when she stepped down, ran for president in 2004, the second black woman to do so after my old Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm.

While Moseley-Braun did receive a modicum of support from NOW and some other feminist groups, I guess it wasn't too important, because seldom did you see a Gloria Steinem-penned op-ed calling women gender traitors if they didn't support a female candidate based purely on chauvinism.

The forgotten campaign of Moseley-Braun, who dropped out just before the Iowa caucuses, is an embarrassment to the Clinton campaign, and that's why she never talks about it.

When I meet people who hand me that 'if Barack was a woman line," I always counter with, "If Barack Obama was a woman, he'd be Carol Moseley-Braun. And do you know who she was married to?" I ask.

"No..." they say.

"Who the fuck cares?" I reply. (Of course, the answer is "Mr. Braun." They are now divorced, and she founded Ambassador Organics) And that's really the crux of the issue—the only reason Barack Obama is black is because the laws in this country won't let him marry Bill Clinton. Hillary's only doing this well because she is now the most corrupt woman in America. Don't think for a minute that her experience as intern to a few Senate subcommittees was what propelled her to the Senate seat of a state she in which had never resided. It was because she was so inside the Democratic machine, she was married to the president, and so the DLC told all other Dem Senate contenders to get out of her way.

And yet, if this is anyone's party, it's Hillary's party. She is the most invested in the machine, the backroom deals, the money-fueled corruption, the chickenhawk foreign policy. Not only does the Democratic party owe her the nomination, but the audacity of Obama's candidacy is inappropriately inopportune. That's why she's intent on destroying the party.

Take a look at CNN's delegate counter. After one of the dirtiest primary challenege the party has seen in decades, she managed to work her way up to 'spoiler' in the delegate count, but there is no way she will be able to catch up with her opponent without a significant helping hand from the superdelegates. But now, neither will Obama, unless the party spends even more of their war chest redoing the Michigan and Florida primaries.

Is it because, as she has implied on the campaign trail, she'd rather have McCain in office than Obama? The scorched earth, kitchen sink approach Hillary has adopted constitutes a pyrrhic victory, but what does she care? It's this supreme arrogance, the way she offers Obama a VP slot shen she's trailing in delegates, the way she pretends that sleeping in the White House is a qualification for being commander-in-chief, the indignance at being challenged for what she seems to believe is some kind of birthright—that's why I'm an anybody but Clinton voter. Because a victory for Clinton has become, through her machinations and speechifying, a victory for corruption and against hope.

More on this in a few days.

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DEC

2007

Casual Policy Suggestions

It's time for me to tell you what's good for you, besides the obvious—cod liver oil, plenty of sunshine, and switching to a 'light' cigarette.

Start Snitching

The greatest thing about the immigration debate today is that everyone involved in debating it in the media is totally full of shit.

You have your Lou Dobbses, crotchety old men whose doctors' orders are obviously the only thing prohibiting them from taking to the streets armed with shotguns and Civil War-era cavalry sabers, ridding the streets of the zombie menace of illegal immigrants. The host will accuse illegal aliens (I will not call them 'undocumented workers! We don't even know what planet they're from!) of doing something to the country, and then the hapless guests respond:

First the Democrat says, what are you gonna do, round up 20 million people? Yes, that what these people want to do, haven't you been listening? Lou Dobbs has a reality show in the works where he personally picks a screaming waitress or construction worker up over his head and tosses them into the ocean at the end of every show. Democrats have little to say about the issue generally because illegal immigrants are, by definition breaking the law. And when these foreigners break the law, they ought to be punished—not like when the President or one of his friends do it. This is serious law-breaking.

So the Republican starts scolding us that these so-called people are trying to take over this country from real Americans! What Indian tribe is this asshole from? Your ancestors came off a boat, get real. They usually send someone vaguely ethnic, too, to let Catholic and Jewish Republicans know it's OK to hate immigrants now because they're all darker than you, thank goodness!

The real reason illegal immigrants can't get a break in this country is because they are unwilling to adopt the simple, honest, God-fearing American ways which won us the West and made us a great nation. If illegal immigrants are ever going to get respect from Americans, they need to change up their whole game plan—guns and horses and broken treaties and disease-bearing blankets! That's how you conquer America!

You think Custer came to Montana armed with a toilet brush so he could sneak into Crazy Horse's camp as a minimum-wage worker? Hell no! He had the U.S. Cavalry! Not that it did him any good, but you get my point. America has a long and proud history of illegal immigration—ask an Oklahoman why they call it "the Sooner State."

But we all know you can't get up in a state or national legislature and say that. Recently, Governor Spitzer and Hilary Clinton were taken to task for supporting and then decrying drivers licenses for undocumented workers. In principle, I agreed with Spitzer's original argument, which was that without a drivers' license, you end up with a lot of uninsured drivers on he road, which only ends up costing everybody more money in the end. But immigration is such a hot-button issue that you can't be soft on it even if you're a Democrat!

So, my proposal combines the parts nobody likes about the other proposals and mixes them all into one perfect plan. It's called The S.T.A.R.T.S.N.I.T.C.H.I.N.G. Act of 2008. I don't know what the acronym stands for, but like any great piece of legislation (U.S.A.P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, I'm looking at you!) I'll figure out the insignificant details later.

Immigration reform that keeps borders closed doesn't work until housewives go to jail for hiring illegals as babysitters. So the plan is simple: we should grant amnesty to any illegal immigrant who informs on their employers to the authorities. Special hotlines with Spanish, Chinese and other language-speaking operators should be set up, and the fines paid will go toward agricultural subsidies for labor-intensive farming.

Dam The Atlantic

It's really wonderful that the majority of Americans are now on the climate change bus, just as it's becoming too late to reverse it. Yes, we need to get off carboniferous fuels, but we have an equally large problem: preparing for the effects of what one environmentalist called "climate chaos" on Fox News recently.

More freak weather, strange patches of drought, and of course, sea level rise. And honestly, as a native New Yorker, I care about sea levels far more than I care about any of the other adverse effects of climate change.

Our mayor, the newly independent Mike Bloomberg, is at a climate-change conference right now. Bloomberg is the kind of guy who's not afraid of large projects, so I implore him: Dam the Atlantic! We need to start building a breakwater between Rockaway Beach, Queens and Sandy Hook, New Jersey now, because the construction of such a massive dike will take just long enough to actually start seeing sea levels threaten Manhattan.

We need to construct a six to twelve mile long sea wall to stop the Atlantic from reclaiming New York City and its harbor. And wile we're at it, why don't we build five miles of tidal barrage hydroelectric plants and a lock system to accommodate commercial traffic? IT will take years to build, so we'd better start now.

I also have a two-birds-with-one-stone aspect to the project—New York City produces an incredible amount of garbage each year, and we have a real problem figuring out how to stash it. Why don't we reclaim as much of that garbage as possible and use it as construction material? That way we save money on landfill fees and supplement the materials budget. In fact, we could double-wall parts of the wall and just start a new, narrow landfill for structural support in some sections.

Of all the mayors New York has ever had, I think Bloomberg would have to be the one who has enough wherewithal to make it happen. Look at his bid for the Olympics—a terrible idea, sure—but you couldn't say it didn't have vision. Now, imagine that you could extend Flatbush Avenue all the way into Route 36 in New Jersey? We could set up rail links in both directions and a new container port on the inland side of the wall that makes New York a real port city again.

The Fairer Tax

A few years ago on this blog, I endorsed a version of the Fair Tax which is being pushed by libertarians and Mike Gravel (my hero!) alike. The Fair Tax proposes that a standard 23% sales tax be placed on all goods instead of an income tax, and to modify the regressive nature of the tax, a "pre-bate" of around $10000 would be give to each American in monthly installments so as to offset the higher cost of goods and provide what Gravel calls "a national wage."

I acknowledge that such a tax would be regressive and it would reduce the total amount raised, which is why I would rework the proposal as follows:

Instead of a 23% sales tax, the Fairer Tax would be a 30% VAT on all goods and services. VATs, or value-added taxes are collected on the value added by each stage of production rather than the total sale price of the item to the end consumer. Businesses actually get a rebate on the VAT they pay by reselling their products to another business which adds value. Canada and France reap major revenue from their GST and TVA, respectively.

From Wikipedia:

VAT is a general tax that applies, in principle to all commercial activities involving the production and distribution of goods and the provision of services. VAT is assessed and collected on the value added to goods in each business transaction. Under this concept the government is paid tax on the gross margin of each transaction. VAT proposes to replace sales tax which in most developing countries trying to shift to some variant of VAT, like India, is the 'only' major revenue source for the regional governments since low per capita income and unemployment render income tax inadequate as a revenue source.

VATs work better than traditional taxes because they're easier for consumers to understand (the increase is pre-calculated into the price of goods) and provides an incentive for businesses to collect and properly file (because they get to reclaim taxes already paid). A properly structured VAT might help close some of the notorious loopholes in our tax system. And the national wage ought to be pegged to the Consumer Price Index.

Oh, and there should also be a whopping estate tax with exemptions for actual family farms.

Ring Around Darfur

I just realized—Darfur represents the end of America's claim to unipolarity in the world political system. I have always seen Darfur as China's mess—in the same way we subsidized the terror regimes in South America and such during the days of Jeane Kirkpatrick's "Double Standard," China is doing to Sudan, which is a key oil supplier and arms purchaser.

If the state-armed militias carrying out the genocide in Darfur didn't get their weapons from China, they'd get them from some other dealer—a Victor Boot or some such—and it would be its own problem, but the involvement of China in Darfur is hard to ignore. Except we do it all the time.

However, the list of divestment options identified by SaveDarfur.org is a virtual who's who of campaign donors: JPMorganChase has given politicians $9,436,814 since 2000; Fidelity gave $8,772,000; the Vanguard Group gave $1,390,330 since 2003. Save Darfur also fingers the Women's Equity Fund and Pax World Funds as culprits).

The bigger problem has always been China, who sit squarely in the way of the UN doing anything about the situation. It's kind of cute—they're doing the same thing we used to do when Reagan was president—they've got the whole "we're doing all we can, but intervention at this time is not prudent" stuff big brother Ronnie Reagan used to pull. (A self-proclaimed Stalinist recently divulged to me his secret love for Reagan as a Stalinist icon in his own way.)

So, how can we solve this problem? I have always advocated taking the high road, which is to open-source all renewable energy patents and devote massive government resources toward a moonshot of global oil independence in 10 years. But in realpolitik terms, why don't we just hang the Sudanese government out to dry by offering an embargo combined with an oil-for-food program for Darfuris backed by UN peacekeepers? China would still recoup its investments in the oilfield while winning a PR victory and a great price for its agricultural exports.

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NOV

2007

Why I Am A Pacifist

I missed the anti-war rally last weekend. I'd call it a peace rally, but nobody's really for 'peace' anymore; the majority of the country still thinks the war in Afghanistan was justified, and they're even receptive to bombing Iran. Even the majority of the country who is now against the Iraq war isn't really against it for the right reasons (as I see them), but because the terrorists are on track to kill up to 4,000 American soldiers by years' end.

I used to be a big believer in rallies. I remember marching against Newt Gingrich and the "Contract on America" when I was 14. But as I got older and continued my study of politics, I realized that mass protests weren't as effective as people used to think they were. Sure, if we had a responsive democratic government, there might be an impact, but unfortunately, we Americans live in the worst democracy money can buy.

If you believe in the war, and are able-bodied, the only moral course is to volunteer. At the same time, the only moral course of action for any soldier asked to kill or help kill is desertion. I know these sound like opposing concepts, but see if you can keep them both in your head at the same time while I explain.

Who is responsible for war? Everybody has their favorite culprit—Mel Gibson and his family blames me and mine, conservatives blame foreigners, liberals blame conservatives, charismatic Christians blame the Devil, and so forth.

The War in Iraq, which happened while the whole world was watching, gets pinned on all kinds of people. It's a terrible chicken-and-egg problem—it's deceptively easy to blame George W. Bush, because he was nominally in charge of the war. But those who live to delve a bit deeper have unearthed a treasure trove of culprits, from Dick Cheney to Curveball to the Project for a New American Century to Hillary Clinton to Bill Clinton.

There are all kinds of interesting philosophical questions about where the buck stops, because in this case, it isn't necessarily what you did that caused (or helped cause) the war, but who you were and when you did it. When Hilary and Edwards falsely tied Saddam to Al-Qaeda, it was forgivable in the eyes of the protestors, but when Bush and Cheney did it, it's totally unforgivable. When Bill Clinton bombed Iraq, it was prudent; when Bush bombs Iraq, it's genocide, never mind that roughly equal numbers of Iraqi civilians were killed under both presidents. Conversely, when Barack Obama says he was against the war from the beginning, it gets discounted because he wasn't really in a position to do anything about it as a state senator. And no one will ever really be taken to task for continuing to fund the war even though defunding it is the only way to stop the war legally.

Usually, when it comes to morality, the distinctions are a bit clearer; if you commit act X, you are responsible for its consequences. So, in the end, who is ultimately responsible for war?

The truth is so simple, it hurts. War is the fault of the soldiers. Soldiers on both sides. I figured this out using the "but-for" test, which I learned in a class on the Philosophy of Law; if it hadn't been for a certain action, the result would never have happened. In the causal chain of events, the but-for test helps you figure out the last moment something (usually an injury of some kind) could have been averted.

As I've said before, war is a game cowards play with other people's lives. Today wars are giant abstract board games, from the view of the commanders. The modern military keeps abstracting commanders further and further from he troops they command, reducing them to marks on a chalkboard or dots on a computer screen; and the politicians who engineer war are even more insulated from the reality of war.

But at the most basic level, war is impossible without soldiers. If there were no combatants, politicians would be revealed for what they are—loudmouthed invalids who would rather see you die in uniform than live up to the ideal of the public trust. Without soldiers, Bush can say anything he wants and have no less capacity to kill people with a word than the next citizen. Without soldiers, elites on both sides are can scream at each other all they want without piling up corpses.

It's true that war didn't always work this way; back when organized violence was more of a cottage industry, leaders used to actually lead their troops into battle. I'm reminded of the Genesis song "One for the Vine" which starts:

Fifty thousand men were sent to do the will of one.
His claim was phrased quite simply, though he never voiced it loud,
I am he, the chosen one.

In his name they could slaughter, for his name they could die.
Though many there were believed in him, still more were sure he lied,
But they'll fight the battle on.

Often people will accuse one another of situational ethics, which means that they view the morality of an act based on its context rather than on principle. War is the ultimate case of situational ethics;murder is wrong unless someone in a uniform tells you to do it. And because the state is telling you to kill, it won't hold you responsible for that killing—they'll probably give you a medal for killing enough people. On the other hand, if you get captured by another state, all bets are off and you may be held accountable for the deaths you caused in any number of ways, from being held as a POW to being summarily executed.

As a pacifist and a conscientious objector, I refuse to make a distinction between the battlefield and civilian life, for the simple reason that there is no place on earth exclusively reserved for war. Even if you're in uniform, you're still waking through someone else's town or field or community.

The crux of war is the act of killing. Anyone who demands death but doesn't do the killing themselves is at best a pansy and at worst a deserter. Call me an AWOL wallflower, but that is the uncompromised truth. This is why, for example, the machismo surrounding 9/11 drives me crazy. Susan Faludi, whose recent book examined the impact of 9/11 on gender in America, The Terror Dream, notes how a search for father-figures and manly men like firefighters and soliders created a new wave of misogynistic backlash against the recent cultural gains of feminism. It always mystified me how an ineffectual preppy like GW Bush was suddenly revered as a strong, manly leader—Laura Bush has literally killed more people than her husband if you look at the world in terms of proximal causes. If the President doesn't lead the charge up San Juan Hill anymore, what's the difference if they're macho or not?

As I've mentioned before, putting a woman in charge doesn't cause peace—just ask Maggie Thatcher or Golda Meir. And neither do apparently limp-wristed men; I have it on good authority that Vladimir Putin, who is killing people left and right, was beaten up and teased by the people he was assigned to intimidate as a KGB agent. Napoleon was short and had gynecomastia. Richard the Lion-Hearted was rumored to be homosexual.

I don't bring up these examples or characterizations to be sexist or homophobic—on the contrary, I mention these things because this ridiculous fiction that projecting strength will bring about peace (or war) is killing people. Elites play at war because they can, no matter what they look like.

You can't be a puppet-master without puppets. I can rail about how person X should be killed, but unless I have influence over someone with the means to do so, it doesn't matter. In the perverse logic of war, killing someone in cold blood based on what they're wearing isn't just acceptable, it's demanded.

I've mentioned before that my cause is averting civilian deaths; people with guns can shoot each other in the head for all I care. I know that sounds flip—and most of the people serving in the world's armed and irregular forces are my generation, in some cases even my former schoolmates. And while that makes it hard to blame the soldiers, it doesn't lessen their fault. It's the simplest categorical imperative—if everyone refused to kill, there'd be no way to force them, and no war.

The complement to the willingness to kill for your country is the willingness to die for it (if all you want to do is kill, you're just a garden—variety sociopath). And so, there will never be peace until the last person willing to die for their country is killed.

We're constantly admonished to "support the troops," who in turn are in uniform because they're "protecting our freedom." Neither statement makes sense. If you were really supporting the troops, you'd be one; if getting into uniform had anything to do with protecting freedom, you wouldn't be compelled to kill. Killing Iraqis only makes us less safe, and machismo is hardly a requirement for war-mongering.

To blame the war on the gum-flappers, the elites for whom war is a game, dishonors both the soldier who does the actual dirty work and the conscientious objector for whom killing is abhorrent. At the moment of death, all that truly matters is whose finger was literally on the trigger.

Politicians don't kill people, guns don't kill people. Killers kill people. Let the buck stop there and the chips fall where they may.

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OCT

2007

Fall Behind

Dear readers, you may be wondering what I've been up to, since lately dispatches are few and I never call anymore. Well, I've been working on a book. If you want a copy of the proposal, e-mail me and I'll send it to you. For the purposes of this website, the proposal is to be distributed under the terms of the Godfather Intellectual Property License: If you want to take a look at the book proposal I've spent the last three years working on, you may do so free of charge as long as it never redistributed in an incomplete form (i.e., without my name on it). However, in return, know that someday—and that day may never come —I'll call upon you to do a service for me.

If that's too much for you, you may enjoy this little video clip I did for MediaChannel a few weeks ago (during this blog's autumn vacation):

Did I mention I hate what the web does to video? No? Never mind. Let's just say that as an editor, I deeply resent the reduced frame rate of web video, because all that time I spend making sure the cuts are exact within a thirtieth of a second is essentially wasted. Sigh.

Good For the Gander!

Remember how I used to complain about torture? Well, I have put those fears to rest. The President himself has assured me that the United States does not torture. We merely apply psychological or physical pressure, nothing that leaves marks (never mind that these exact techniques rendered Jose Padilla unfit to stand trial).

Donald Hebb—who worked my old alma mater—helped the CIA figure out that basically, you can drive anybody crazy with a bare minimum of equipment:

From 1950 to 1962, the CIA led a secret research effort to crack the code of human consciousness, a veritable Manhattan project of the mind with costs that reached a billion dollars a year. Many have heard about the most outlandish and least successful aspect of this research — the testing of LSD on unsuspecting subjects and the tragic death of a CIA employee, Dr. Frank Olson, who jumped to his death from a New York hotel after a dose of this drug. This Agency drug testing, the focus of countless sensational press accounts and a half-dozen major books, led nowhere.
But obscure CIA-funded behavioral experiments, outsourced to the country’s leading universities, produced two key findings, both duly and dully reported in scientific journals, that contributed to the discovery of a distinctly American form of torture: psychological torture. With funding from Canada’s Defense Research Board, famed Canadian psychologist Dr. Donald O. Hebb found that he could induce a state akin to psychosis in just 48 hours. What had the doctor done—drugs, hypnosis, electroshock? No, none of the above.
For two days, student volunteers at McGill University, where Dr. Hebb was chair of Psychology, simply sat in comfortable cubicles deprived of sensory stimulation by goggles, gloves, and ear muffs.

Ironically, Hebb was the one pioneered research into the physical manifestations of thought patterns in the brain, but as Dana Perino said, "The bottom line is, we don't torture." Principally because torture, as we are now defining it, isn't supposed to leave marks.

And whom do we ~~torture~~ er, 'legally and successfully interrogate,' again? Only the most important suspects are tortured in the name of national security, as the television keeps reminding us. We're talking high value targets here, the Justice Department assures us. Which brings me to point here: if these techniques are truly legal and effective, the next Attorney General really needs to use them on Alberto Gonzalez.

You're probably thinking, who's Alberto Gonzalez, and what's his connection to Bin Laden? Well, in keeping with the 'eat your own dog food' principle, it's important for Gonzalez, if he truly steered the United States government away from committing war crimes (i.e., torture) on a systematic level as he claims, ought to be able to let those same safe, effective techniques help him jog his memory. You may recall the countless (OK, 64) times he said he didn't recall things during Congressional testimony. What he needs is a little help from his friends, and afterwards, he can testify to Congress about those techniques as part of their ongoing torture investigation. I mean, don't you think his testimony will be enhanced by a little real world experience?

They Love That Dirty Water

The comic book villain potential of Erik Prince is truly awesome, as noted by the Daily Show—a wealthy, secretive ex-Marine who runs a wildly corrupt mercenary outfit above the law. But while it's easy to blame Blackwater for the awful things that they do (routinely), let's look at why Bush needs Blackwater so much in the first place.

Private contractors are needed to protect high-value targets, like American State department employees or drive fuel trucks from Kuwait. Now, Iraqis, including lawmakers and police, get killed all the time. But private contractors—mercenaries— who occupy the kind of legal grey zone that lets you shoot first and ask questions later.

When you can't distinguish between civilians and assailants, you have to get aggressive, otherwise, you'll get hit. And we can't afford that kind of PR. When a Congressional delegation visits Iraq, you need the kind of security detail that plays offense as defense, no matter how many civilians you kill. The Iraq body count website is full of civilians who got shot travelling too close to Americans on the highway.

Running an occupation requires a certain amount of brutality, because the citizens there are never going to view your troops as legitimate. In fact, the only time you get suicide bombers is when you have a foreign military presence. And the kind of targets Blackwater protects are huge gets for an insurgency, because it makes foreign higher-ups wary of visiting the troops.

If you want to wage war, you have to kill as many people as possible—that's why soldiers make bad peacekeepers. An occupation like the one we're running in Iraq requires war crimes. And that is just one more reason we need to leave.

Not So Noble

Videos like this one make me ashamed of our side of the global warming debate:

First of all, I appreciate using a chart and all, but this guy needs to stop talking to people who agree with him, because it's affecting his ability to make an argument.

First of all, the biggest flaw in the argument is the assumption that whatever measures we take will work. Now, I don't think it's necessarily impossible for us to curb or a