What A Tangled Web We Weave...

[mycroft]

We are as much in a "war on terror" as we were in a "war on drugs" or "war on poverty" or "war on Communism" (as opposed to a dynastic "cold war" against the Soviet Union). They were and are cute phrases on which to hang whatever new power the government wanted to grant.

 

I do believe the United States is and has been for at least 60 years in an assault on liberty (yeah, I've made that point before). As long as you can feed the religion of a Threat to the State, Stalin's quote applies while you quietly remove everything the State stood for in the first place. And look, it's working.

 

Even the current "scandals" and "investigations" are only discussing whether it was legal, not whether it was right or the American Way. And that's because playing that part of the Liberty card means that the Opposition is going to get held to it when they get in, and they have just as vested an interest in continuing the power-grab and assault on liberty as the current Powers That Be.

 

I really hated the arguments for continuing the PATRIOT Act provisions - "It's useful, don't get rid of them. We use them and they have helped in the War on Terror (oh, and I bet a lot more in the other Wars on Liberty)" Not "It's critical; we would have had X attacks set up and ready to go without them, no matter what other legal procedures we could have followed. Our security demands the continuation of this massive attack on our citizen's liberty - so much of an attack that even in the heyday of Q4 2001, Congress thought this might be too invasive - because it can't be done without it." Rubber-hose cryptanalysis (similarly, RH investigations), Stasi techniques and procedures, violating Miranda, are all *useful*; they aren't legal, and for good reason.

 

I heard an intelligent voice from the Right on the Iranian freeing the British story on Friday. Please note that although he used the talking points of the Right, I'm not referring to him as a talking head; he thought, reasoned, and gave reasoned arguments rather than talking points and jargobabble (please note, while I'm a loony liberal, I can reason with conservatives; and I have the same disdain for the talking heads and debate-by-staying-on-message grunts of the Left as I do of the Right. I hope people understand the difference I'm making between left and the Left and right and the Right).

 

He said "everyone got upset with the U.S. just showing pictures of Saddam Hussein's arrest, because it was against the Geneva Conventions. And here's the Iranians, videoing forced confessions of the British hostages. Talk about an uneven playing field. Why aren't they talking about that?"

 

Well, Sir, the answer is that we hold you to a higher standard than despotic scum because you claim to be of a higher standard - in fact, you're fighting to save the world from scum and bringing Enlightenment and that higher standard to the world. You have two choices - play the uneven playing field you have yourself wrought, or change the game. Oh, you can't change the game any more than you have because you'd show yourself to actually be Imperialistic, even to your own people? Oops. Time to either show your true colours or start walking your talk.

 

Frankly, I'd like to go back to the time of Lincoln; where honesty was appreciated and could actually win elections. These aren't the quotes you usually hear from the rail-splitter turned lawyer, but they show integrity:

 

As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing" as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.

 

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution....If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that....

 

I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.

 

This is what I believe as a man; this is what I believe I am required to do as President; This is my goal. Simple. Straightforward. And honest. Try finding that now. Oh, and reasonable (here I mean "arguing from reason") and therefore rebuttable.

 

Similarly:

I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power. I understood, too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery.

 

I think the primary issue I have with the current Administration is that They do not so believe, and further believe that whatever they can get away with, by any means necessary, is the Right Thing to do. The contempt they hold their subjects in is odoriferous, from almost as far away as one can possibly be and still be on the same continent.

 

Michael.

[Al_U_Card]

When the number of deaths of US soldiers exceeds the number of people killed by 9-11 etc. (The Iraqis went by that number a long time ago.) will they consider that Bush et al are a bigger threat to the survival of US citizens than the terrorists?

[mike777]

"We are as much in a "war on terror" as we were in a "war on drugs" or "war on poverty" or "war on Communism" (as opposed to a dynastic "cold war" against the Soviet Union). They were and are cute phrases on which to hang whatever new power the government wanted to grant."

 

 

The logic is these kinds of posts seem to be, the voters are idiots/stupid easily lead by the elites. Just buy them off with PR slogans or something else.

 

If true then the voters get the government they deserve, if false then shame on you.

[helene_t]

The logic is these kinds of posts seem to be, the voters are idiots/stupid easily lead by the elites. Just buy them off with PR slogans or something else.

 

If true then the voters get the government they deserve, if false then shame on you.

Strange logic.

 

Appr. half of those who voted last time, did not vote for Bush. So even if there was a 1-to-1 relation between being stupid and voting for Bush, you cannot say that more than roughly 50% were stupid.

 

Some may have voted Bush without agreeing 100% with his anti-terror policy.

 

Some may have agreed with his policy without agreeing with his misleading choice of wording. It's perfectly possibly to say "It's bad language use IMO to call this a 'war', but whatever you call it I'm for it".

 

It's also perfectly possible to have a weird notion about the proper use of the word "War" without being entirely stupid. I know a lot of (otherwise) smart people who call their own idiosyncratic version of modified Goren "Sayc" or even "Acol". I think they use that particular term in a sloppy way, but this doesn't necessarily make them "stupid".

[mike777]

1) Elections have consquences.

2) If you accept premise one and do not bother to vote or vote for a lousy government then yes you get what you deserve.

3) If we got a lousy government then you elites seem to think the voters are idiots are easily bought off. Yes that is the logic....sigh..........

 

First of Helene roughly 40% of the voting public did not vote. If 75% did not vote or voted against Bush then yes, the voting age public got the government they deserve.

 

The bottom line is that the comments Mycroft made and others assume the voting age public are idiots, or easily bought off like pawns or worse.

 

If true ok then we get the government we deserve, if not shame.

[helene_t]

OK, we'll probably never agree on the (non)improtance of the use of the words "war" and "terror" (for my part, instead you might as well call it the "huppelepup on guffelipyp" just to make clear that there are two words the meaning of which in this specific context must be clarrified before any discussion makes sense).

 

But then try this: Chaves, Hitler, Berlusconi, Chirac, Putin, Sharon etc. etc. all had, at a certain point in time, stronger electoral support than G.W. Bush ever had. Fidel Castro would probably have had as well if there has been free elections during his first say ten years of power.

 

So yes, on a certain scale, large fractions of U.S. voters could be called "stupid". But everything is relative. U.S. voters are not more stupid than voters in so many other countries. And even if most of them vote stupidly, they may be smart in other respects (some are smart bridge players, other are good at selling used cars or whatever), making many of them quite smart over-all.

[pbleighton]

"Well, Sir, the answer is that we hold you to a higher standard than despotic scum because you claim to be of a higher standard - in fact, you're fighting to save the world from scum and bringing Enlightenment and that higher standard to the world. You have two choices - play the uneven playing field you have yourself wrought, or change the game. Oh, you can't change the game any more than you have because you'd show yourself to actually be Imperialistic, even to your own people? Oops. Time to either show your true colours or start walking your talk."

 

Well said.

 

The fact that Bush got reelected doesn't change this truth.

 

His use of terror to fight his so-called "war on terror" is just another example of his administration's moral and intellectual bankruptcy. The fact that he got reelected doesn't change this either.

 

Peter

[hrothgar]

1) Elections have consquences.

2) If you accept premise one and do not bother to vote or vote for a lousy government then yes you get what you deserve.

3) If we got a lousy government then you elites seem to think the voters are idiots are easily bought off. Yes that is the logic....sigh..........

I have wildly mixed emotions on this topic.

 

On the one hand, I'm a very strong believer that distributed decision making will (typically) produce very accurate results. (Three years back, a New Yorker writer named James Surowiecki wrote an outstanding book called “The Wisdom of Crowds” dealing with precisely this topic. I heartily recommend it) Voting systems like the American democracy are an obvious example of distributed decision making. I find this topic particularly interesting because the underlying math is quite similar to what you find in massively parallel systems which is one of the subjects that I tend to play around with. One point that Surowiecki doesn't really develop, however, is that any massively parallel system can exhibit was called a cascading failure. Simply put, if the failure mode for one mode is positively correlated with failure modes in other nodes you lose the benefits of the system.

 

Returning to Mike's example, the problem is not that the voters are “idiots”. These types of systems don't break because individual nodes lack processing capacity. What does tend to break these types of systems are issue like the following

 

1.If large number of nodes base their “independent” decision making on inaccurate information, they will reach erroneous conclusions. Garbage In, Garbage Out.

2.If individual nodes don't make independent decisions but instead, tend to follow whatever their leader tells them, the entire system can break

 

Regularly members of this forums may recall earlier threads involving Fox News and the hierarchical decision making models that get used in many organized religions.

[mike777]

Yes that was a wonderful book.

 

 

I finally agree with some of these comments but the logic still holds:

1) If you make your voting decision on garbage and not nongarbage you get the government you deserve.

2) If you blindly follow the leader as a lamb, you get the blind government you deserve.

 

The voters need to take ultimate responsiblity. If they make a mistake, no problem, we get another chance in two years with our system of checks and balances. It is not that hard to bring the government to a grinding halt if a lunatic is president in two years. In the meantime learn to live with the lunatic you elected.

 

Not that I am advocating anything drastic but even if you elect the devil there is always the option of last resort to a tyrant.

[pbleighton]

"The voters need to take ultimate responsiblity. If they make a mistake, no problem, we get another chance in two years with our system of checks and balances. It is not that hard to bring the government to a grinding halt if a lunatic is president in two years. In the meantime learn to live with the lunatic you elected."

 

Why should I do this, Mike?

 

The man's a war criminal.

 

Peter

[mike777]

The public had the chance in 2 years to vote in a House and Senate that could bring the government to a grinding halt in 2006 or 2002. They choose not too but did vote in the Dems in 2006.

 

It just seems if he is a war criminal, then the voters got what they deserve. They did not vote for impeachment with the 2006 election. They either disagree with you or are too stupid to know he is one.

[hrothgar]

The voters need to take ultimate responsiblity. If they make a mistake, no problem, we get another chance in two years with our system of checks and balances. It is not that hard to bring the government to a grinding halt if a lunatic is president in two years. In the meantime learn to live with the lunatic you elected.

How many terms of office do you think it will take to undo the damage that Bush has done? Bush has destroyed our international credibility and wasted hundreds of billions of dollars. He's stuffed the civil service full of partisan hacks.

 

Regardless, I sure as hell didn't vote for the *****head, so excuse me for being pissed off that I'm going to have to clean up after him.

 

BTW, who did you vote for in the last two election? (I'm curious who this "you" is in "You elected")

[mike777]

Ya feel free to blame me and my ilk who voted for Bush over the worse alternatives. :)

 

It is this anger that I think give the Dems a huge chance in 2008. They are really out there and voting with their pocketbooks now. I actually think this is great, and how the system should work, if not perfect, pretty darn good.

 

One more reason I really hate McCain/Feingold. Full disclosure yes, limits no.

[pbleighton]

"It just seems if he is a war criminal, then the voters got what they deserve. They did not vote for impeachment with the 2006 election. They either disagree with you or are too stupid to know he is one."

 

How does the result of an election change guilt or innocence under the Geneva Conventions?

 

Presumably you can supply the historical parallels yourself.

 

Peter

[Winstonm]

Does anyone actually believe that in the U.S. a grassroots organization could eventually win the WH with a third-party candidate?

 

The truth as I see it is that we are given two alternatives for president, Scumbag A or Scumbag B, and intelligence has nothing to do with which scumbag wins.

 

Only 6 corporations own nearly 100% of the media in the U.S. - is there any wonder why all we get from MSM is spin based on owenership viewpoint? Which scumbag candidate looks best depends on the spin of the channel you happen to be watching at the time.

 

I think many of the intelligent simply vote no by not showing up on election days. And many think "the government we deserve" is impossible to achieve.

[pbleighton]

"I think many of the intelligent simply vote no by not showing up on election days."

 

It is their right to do so, but they are wrong to do so.

 

Peter

[mike777]

Does anyone actually believe that in the U.S. a grassroots organization could eventually win the WH with a third-party candidate?

 

The truth as I see it is that we are given two alternatives for president, Scumbag A or Scumbag B, and intelligence has nothing to do with which scumbag wins.

 

Only 6 corporations own nearly 100% of the media in the U.S. - is there any wonder why all we get from MSM is spin based on owenership viewpoint? Which scumbag candidate looks best depends on the spin of the channel you happen to be watching at the time.

 

I think many of the intelligent simply vote no by not showing up on election days. And many think "the government we deserve" is impossible to achieve.

Ahh ok we are all victims, I knew it was someone's fault. Now I can blame the darn system and feel helpless and victimized. :)

[mike777]

"I think many of the intelligent simply vote no by not showing up on election days."

 

It is their right to do so, but they are wrong to do so.

 

Peter

Heck if they do not show up to vote, just makes my vote count more. Hmm some may say that is a bad thing. :)

[mike777]

"It just seems if he is a war criminal, then the voters got what they deserve. They did not vote for impeachment with the 2006 election. They either disagree with you or are too stupid to know he is one."

 

How does the result of an election change guilt or innocence under the Geneva Conventions?

 

Presumably you can supply the historical parallels yourself.

 

Peter

ok your evidence overwhelms me, he is a war criminal and we(me) are just too lazy to impeach him. Sort of like the people who lived in Germany just outside the Concentration camps and said, "What the heck who knew, I thought the Jews liked it here."

[Winstonm]

Ahh ok we are all victims, I knew it was someone's fault. Now I can blame the darn system and feel helpless and victimized

 

I don't feel victimized. Only a few times in history have the powerful been challenged, and I don't expect it to happen again anytime soon. So I adapt to what is real.

 

A good friend of mine quoted a favorite of his Sicilian mother: Peter, she said, there is what is right, and there is what is real. You have to deal with what is real.

 

She would also say, Sometimes you're the hammer; sometimes you're the anvil; and you have to know which time is which.

 

Understanding powerlessness does not equate to victimization. You can be a victim if you want; I happen to realize right now I am the anvil and that is what is real.