Miscellaneous Aphorisms & Observations

Dear Reader,

Below is a collection of twenty-four aphorisms and observations. This is a bit of a Crib From This tradition (albeit an extremely occasional one): It represents Our Blogger's attempt to resuscitate a dying form (or perhaps to deal it a final death-blow). Anyway, please enjoy: Comments are especially welcome (particularly if they are written while in a state of intoxication). Until next we meet, Dear Reader, I shall undertake to remain, as ever,

Your humblest and most obedient servant,
Crib From This

i.

On the nature of outrage. Outrage can be induced only by design.

ii.

To acknowledge reality. To the extent to which we acknowledge reality, we control it.

iii.

On authoritarianism. The authoritarian impulse is produced through the coupling of egoism and moralism.

iv.

On the nature of megalomania. The megalomaniac lives in a universe in which he is necessary.

v.

Concerning the word "lazy." Be careful with the word "lazy," one of the most overused words in the English language.

vi.

On problem-solving and imagination. The central task of problem solving is to imagine a world in which the problem no longer needs solving.

vii.

A thought experiment. Try assuming you're wrong. And try assuming you don't know why you're wrong.

viii.

On declaratives. The substance of a declarative is located in the questions it implies.

ix.

On how people view consensus. Beware of those for whom consensus implies validity.

x.

On fashion. Fashion is a devil, and as such must be given its due.

xi.

On changing yourself. There is no changing yourself without falling out of comfort with who you are.

xii.

On cleverness. Cleverness can be a double-edged sword. Especially for a child.

xiii.

To render decisions arbitrarily. There can be no interesting thoughts without arbitrary decisions.

xiv.

On egotism. The egotist lives in a universe in which he is useful.

xv.

On the nature of "wish-fulfillment." "Wish-fulfillment" is an oxymoron.

xvi.

On fascism. The fascist impulse arises from the coupling of moralism and narcissism.

xvii.

On Sarah Palin. The worst of Sarah Palin is not located in the contemptible things that she says, nor is it located in the cynical causes that she represents: It is that she was tailor-made for us to hate and, sure enough, we cannot help but hate her.

xviii.

On the nature of human weakness. No one is aware of his weaknesses except in an abstract and imprecise way. Were he truly aware of his weaknesses, he wouldn't exhibit them, and they thus would not be weaknesses.

xix.

On Fake Christianity. To be a human being is to be blind: to one's pride, weaknesses, motives and subterfuge. This is precisely why Evangelical or "Born-Again" Christianity is the most cynical kind of unbelief (more cynical by far than atheism): the renunciation of humility and self-doubt.

xx.

Concerning first- and second-order hypocrisy. To the Evangelical/"Born-Again" Christian, we say: "You're a hypocrite, and the stewards of your system of purported 'belief' are the worst kinds of hypocrites in the world. How can you live with yourself?"

She responds: "Everyone's a hypocrite. You're a hypocrite too. How can you live with yourself? At least I, having recognized and renounced my own hypocrisy, am setting out to purge from this world that which is unclean, to put into place the conditions under which man will be worthy of salvation."

Here the conversation ends, because we realize that within her self-enforced ignorance (which she calls, grotesquely, her "faith") resides a second-order hypocrisy: The worship of death.

xxi.

On home-schooling. This is the inherent problem with home-schooling: It reproduces the limitations of the parent—his delusions, demons, psychoses, prejudices, vectors of self-hatred—by transmitting them, simply and baldly, to his child. Home-schooling has been called child abuse, but it's worse than that: It's incest.

xxii.

On the role of "working hard" in formal education. Anything but "work harder." If a bright kid's performance is inconsistent for any number or reasons—be they developmental, socioeconomic, biological or cultural—telling him, "work harder" does little more than restate the problem. It's not good enough.

xxiii.

Concerning the need for comfort. Everyone expends her energies working chiefly toward the end of preserving and maximizing her own comfort. Comfort and leisure are not one and the same: When they coexist, more often than not, they are placed in inverse proportion to one another. In fact, a person is comfortable only insofar as she is (1) a lackadaisical thinker and (2) possesses an incurious disposition.

xxiv.

On the nature of atheism. Atheism can't be defended any more than Christianity can be. Polemicists who frame discussions of their belief or non-belief in the form of a defense are in fact saying nothing at all about their identified subject. Rather, they are advancing a political cause, the nature of which either they are attempting to occlude from credulous readers or about which they, with their adolescent minds, are themselves entirely uncomprehending.

The trouble with phony multiculturalism.

I happened upon an item on CNN.com that illustrates what I shall call phony multiculturalism. I shall define phony multiculturalism as the cynical and superficial brand of multiculturalism that is promoted by the corporate/political oligarchy for purposes of marketing/propaganda.

The item concerns a Photoshop mishap in a Microsoft advertising campaign. Take a look at the two photographs in question. The first comes from an advertisement tailored to an American market. The second is an altered version of the same photograph, intended for a Polish market (apparently Polish people haven't yet caught on to the superiority of the Macintosh):

Kinda disturbing, no? I mean, it's bad enough that they replaced the head of a creepily smiling black man with the head of a creepily smiling white man. But to add insult to -- as it were -- injury, the white guy's head is the wrong size and is contorted such that it looks like he doesn't have a neck.

I realize that this is for the damn Poles, but still....

Here's an excerpt from the article, titled Microsoft apologizes for gaffe in online ad:

SEATTLE, Washington (CNN) -- Software giant Microsoft apologized Wednesday for the apparent bad judgment that led to the head of a black model being swapped for that of a white model in an online advertisement.

The ad -- which showed three business people, one Asian, one white and one black -- was altered on Microsoft's Web site for Poland to place the head of a white man on a black man's body.

"We apologized, fixed the error and we are looking into how it happened," said Lou Gellos, a Microsoft spokesman.

He said that because the company was still reviewing how the swap occurred he could not comment further.

Okay. So, this is typical a PR/damage control cant. But just consider for a moment how completely dishonest this claim is: They are "looking into" how it happened?

How it happened is, of course, obvious:

The business Web site CNET.com, which first published reports of the swap, wrote that the change in models may have been made with the "racially homogeneous" Polish market in mind.

So, Microsoft created an alternative version of the image in its efforts to "target" the Polish market, such as it is... This wasn't an "error." Nor was it really a "gaffe." The only mistake that Microsoft made was getting caught. The "gaffe" is that, embarrassingly, some graphic designer did a sloppy enough job that people noticed.

What's actually unsettling to people about this might be a more fundamental problem: There's a level at which such portrayals of diversity function to perpetuate the illusion that actual diversity is far more common than it really is.

To the extent to which this illusion is perpetuated, this species of multiculturalism creates a decline in the impetus or perceived necessity for measures bringing into effect actual multiculturalism.

I think that witnessing the shenanigans of Microsoft's marketing department somehow spotlights this problem. In other words, it reminds us that, in the hands of publicly traded corporations, such warm-and-fuzzy phenomena as multiculturalism, environmentalism and healthcare always function first and foremost as tools to be used in the service of making money.

And making money will always be, by definition, a conservative enterprise.

Robert Reich poses a very good question about health care reform.

Why is the so-called "Gang of Six" -- a group of six senators, three Democrats and three Republicans (two of whom are on the extreme/fringe Right) who sit on a committee devoted not to health care but to finance -- deciding the fate of health reform for the entire country? Is "bipartisanship" that important? Don't the Dems, uh, have a majority in both houses and control the White House? Is it just the power of lobbyists, or have the Republican Brownshirts succeed utterly and finally in poisoning the well of civil discourse? Thomas Jefferson would be proud of you, Rush Limbaugh. Jolly good show...

Why the Gang of Six is Deciding Health Care for Three Hundred Million of Us

HYPOCRITES!!! (Part III)

Finally a journalist read by more than five people has given some attention to the hypocrisy of Right wing assholes who decry as "socialistic" the very idea of government-funded healthcare.

The article Health Care Hypocrisy: Many of the pundits attacking government health insurance rely on government health insurance for their own families, written by Daniel Gross, appears in Slate:

As we've noted before, if you add the failure of employer-linked health care with Medicare, Medicaid, government employment, and the military, a huge chunk of Americans already have taxpayer-funded health care. It's a diverse lot. Rich old people and poor kids, university professors, congressmen, teachers, DMV clerks and their families. Pretty much everybody you see on CNBC yelling about socialism? Their parents and grandparents (if they're still living) get taxpayer-funded health insurance. Mine do. Charles Grassley, the septuagenarian Iowan who is doing his darnedest to torpedo meaningful health care form, has it. Arthur Laffer, the 69-year-old economist who went on television and suggested that Medicare isn't a government health care program, is eligible for Medicare. Dick Armey, who spent many years teaching at a state university and served several terms in Congress, has had taxpayer-funded health insurance for much of his adult life. Same for Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich. Democratic senators like Max Baucus, Kent Conrad, and Ben Nelson? Yes, yes, and yes. Law professors at the University of Tennessee have it. The employees of George Mason University, which houses the free-market Mercatus Center, do, too. Policy analyst Betsy McCaughey, currently reprising her 1990s role of health care bamboozler, will be eligible for it in a few years' time.

Obvious? Yes. But it's still worth pointing out. All these people rely on—or have relied on—the government to pick up the tab for their health care and for their health insurance. And that hasn't caused euthanasia or the abolition of private property. Funny how you don't hear any complaints from worthies about taxpayer-funded health insurance when it's covering them, their staffs, and their loved ones. For many of these people, especially the older ones, there literally is no affordable alternative. Insurance companies prefer to insure healthy people, not sick people—that's how they make money. And older people are more likely to run into health trouble requiring expensive care. Dick Armey, who is suing to get out from under the tyranny of Medicare, is apparently under the illusion that insurance companies are really eager to cover 69-year-old men at a low cost. House Minority Leader John Boehner is a 59-year-old smoker whose skin has an orange hue. What do you think Aetna would charge him per month for a good policy?

Thank god for Daniel Gross: A journalist who tells the truth.

Robert Reich speaks the truth.

You remember him, right? He was Secretary of Labor under Clinton, and represented the sensible (Leftier) wing of that administration. In his blog, Reich advises us on How To Fight Heathcare Fearmongers and Demagogues.

Why are these meetings brimming with so much anger? Because Republican Astroturfers have joined the same old right-wing broadcast demagogues that have been spewing hate and fear for years, to create a tempest.

But why are they getting away with it? Why aren't progressives -- indeed, why aren't ordinary citizens -- taking the meetings back?

Mainly because there's still no healthcare plan. All we have are some initial markups from several congressional committees, which differ from one another in significant ways. The White House is waiting to see what emerges from the House and Senate before insisting on what it wants, maybe in conference committee.

But that's the problem: It's always easier to stir up fear and anger against something that's amorphous than to stir up enthusiasm for it.

I have been thinking and saying this a hundred billion times lately. Particularly after news leaked of the administration's icky deal with Big Pharma, in the absence of a guarnatee that there will be a public health insurance option as a part of the plan, how the hell can anyone get enthusiastic about the plan? Other than in a negative direction against the fearmongering thugs?

Anyway, Reich's commentary is definitely worth reading in its entirety.

HYPOCRITES!! (Part II): Health care, Medicare Part D and generational politics.

At the conclusion of Part I of this discussion, I mentioned the hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty of Republicans who oppose a public health insurance option, yet have nothing negative to say about Medicare and Social Security, which, when combined with Medicaid, represent by far the most expensive government entitlement programs currently in existence.

The Republicans, like the Democrats, would never be caught opposing these unfunded programs because they are massively popular with the most active and influential sectors of the electorate: the elderly. As the Baby Boomers continue to age -- and increasingly bottleneck the system -- this popularity of these programs is unlikely to decline.

So, somehow, these government-administered entitlements do not get mentioned in the same breath as Congressional/Obamian health insurance reform when hard-Right ideologues and thugs hit the pavement or spread lies over the Internet about death panels and whatnot.

Thing is: Many of those who decry health reform as "socialistic" are themselves willing and continuing recipients of Medicare and Social Security Benefits. Thus, I should like suggest that these people are a bunch of crusty old self-centered whiners and liars, and that we ought to declare a generational war!

Doesn't it shame them that they would deny to succeeding generations the same entitlements from which they themselves have benefited, from the Social Security Act to the GI Bill to Medicare to Medicaid, up to and including the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit for those 65 years of age and older that was passed, without funding and in between the two largest tax cuts for the wealthy ever to be passed into law?

Nothing -- including military spending! -- even comes close to the costliness of these programs. Apparently, Americans 65 and older are simply more deserving of this bounty than those of my generation. My generation, by contrast, has been weathering an inhospitable economic and educational environment. Ours is an age in which the notion of class mobility has long been a cruel joke. Our experience is one of the accumulation of debts, of forgoing health insurance, of meager opportunities.

I'm not arguing that the Great Depression was a walk in the park. I am, however, arguing that, in the wake of the Social Security Act, the radical expansion of opportunities for higher education represented in the GI Bill and in the proliferation of colleges and universities in order to accommodate the Baby Boom, the United States enjoyed a sustained period of economic, social and cultural progress.

Anyway, in my limited experience with such things, the clearest, most objective and most focused discussion of the recent political-historical context of Republican flip-flopping on government-coordinated public health insurance plans is contained in a recent episode of the PBS series Frontline, titled: Ten Trillion and Counting. (You may wish to click here for a link to streaming video of the entire episode, which is well worth your time.)

The piece actually tackles the subject of the United States' skyrocketing national debt. but its discussion of George W. Bush's passage of Medicare Part D -- sandwiched between the passage of the two largest tax cuts for the wealthy in United States history -- could not be more relevant to our present discussion. Here is that section of the episode:



Here's part of the transcript:

FORREST SAWYER: It finally passed by five votes.
[on camera] Why would a small government conservative initiate a program that is so massive?
JACKIE CALMES, The New York Times: Politics.
FORREST SAWYER: What do you mean?
JACKIE CALMES: There's no group that votes at the rate and in the numbers as those over 55, and 65 and over certainly. And Democrats, as well as Republicans, want to please seniors, and that's why our entire budget is tilted towards programs for seniors.
FORREST SAWYER: [voice-over] The reason that the Bush administration could pass Medicare part D was that the Republican Congress in 2002 had let a rule called "pay as you go" lapse. It was a rule established by the first President Bush and a Democratic Congress to enforce fiscal discipline.
GREGG IP: His father endured some very serious political pain to do the right thing to get the deficit down. And one of the steps was that a rule called "pay-go," or pay as you go. And this rule basically meant that if you wanted to introduce a new tax cut or a new spending program, you had to find a way to pay for it with an offsetting tax increase or spending cut. Well, in 2002, that rule expired.
ALICE RIVLIN, Dir., Office of Management & Budget, 1994-96: In the Clinton years, we had the "pay-go" rule, pay as you go, and that meant we couldn't pass a lot of good-sounding ideas, including Medicare prescription drugs. It's not that nobody thought of that in the '90s. A lot of people thought of it. But we couldn't pay for it. To pay for it, we would have had to have done a tax increase or cut out some other spending in major proportions, and nobody wanted to do that, so we didn't do it.
FORREST SAWYER: But the Bush administration did do it. With "pay-go" no longer restraining spending, they had pushed through Medicare part D, a program that's projected over time to cost as much as $8 trillion.
DAVID WESSEL: They did not come up with a way to raise taxes or cut spending somewhere else to pay for it, so they just passed this thing. It goes into law. It's a promise to elderly people that we'll pay- subsidize their drugs, and we borrow every year to pay for it. And in the end, it's more expensive than the war in Iraq because the war in Iraq ends at some point. Certainly, it will end now that Obama's president. But the prescription drug benefit will go on forever.
FORREST SAWYER: It will go on forever because it's a promise made by the federal government to its citizens. Seniors are entitled to this benefit, just the as they are entitled to Social Security and Medicare itself. These entitlements are all enormously popular, but they're also enormously expensive. Medicare part D alone will cost $60 billion this year.
JACKIE CALMES: The expense of that over time, unfunded liabilities for the government, at a time when more people are reaching retirement age and qualifying for Medicare, added more to the long-term obligations of the government than all of Social Security.
FORREST SAWYER: Medicare part D was the largest spending bill the president signed, but there were dozens of others. During his first five years as president, with a Republican-controlled House and Senate, George Bush never vetoed a spending bill. Fiscal conservatives in his own party accused him of being the biggest spender since World War II.

I think this is worth bringing up next time one finds himself in a bar, confronted by someone who insists that Obama is a socialist or that the Democrats are the big spenders... It was, after all, Bill Clinton who balanced the budget.

LIAR!!!: GOP stance on Medicare vs. "Government Health Care"

By way of The Huffington Post:

Excerpts from the accompanying article:

Lawrence O'Donnell interviewed Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas) in a devastating segment on "Hardball" on Friday, implying that the conservative congressman was a hypocrite for opposing a public option yet refusing to cut government-run health-care programs such as Medicare and Social Security.

O'Donnell repeatedly pushed the conservative Congressman to give a straight answer about what federal entitlements he would cut. Culberson refused to give a response for several minutes before finally admitting that he would have voted for Social Security and Medicare despite the fact that they are government-run health-care systems.

[...]

O'Donnell [asked] Culberson: "If Medicare is not socialism, why don't we just delete the over-65 part of Medicare and make it available to everyone? What's your argument against that?"

[...]

An exasperated O'Donnell asked the Congressman: "You know that Medicare is a completely government-run health care system and yet you're saying you would have voted for it."

Culberson's response: "Yes"

By the end, O'Donnell accused Culberson of hypocrisy and more:

"You lie to America about the evils of government-run health care because you people, not one of you liars about government health care is willing to repeal Medicare, to stand up and be consistent... 'I hate government health care so I want to repeal Medicare'... That is a lie that you perpetrate every day."

Has the Obama administration already sold us out to 'Big Pharma'?

According to a document apparently leaked to The Huffington Post, it looks like a definite possibility.

So, as I've been saying repeatedly: It's kind of hard to galvanize enthusiasm among those on the Left for health care reform (or "health insurance reform" as the Dems have now decided to characterize it -- not a very good sign...) if in the end we're really just talking about some piece of shit neoliberal industrial re-shifting.

If there turns out to be no public option on the table, that's basically the straw that will break the camel's back as far as I'm concerned. I'll still be quick to point out what a bunch of liars and hacks the Republican so-called response is, but that's about it.

To his credit, Obama is doing exactly what he said he would be doing, which is forging compromises and getting the ball rolling on matters that are way way way overdue. But if this reform plan ends up doing nothing to lower the costs of prescriptions and care and to finally stick it to the 100% parasitic health insurance industry, then I'm basically just going to retreat back into my world of bleeding heart utopian daydreaming and soporific 12-string acoustic guitar arpeggios. That'll be it for giving a shit about politics. At least until the fascists start taking over for real......

Maybe I'm in a bit of a down mood. Gotta go watch some House.

A heroic moment in conversation with the Deranged Right on health care.

Anecdote time.

Gypsy Sun and Rainbows, a longtime friend of Crib From This, recently found himself at one of his local watering holes, engaged in a political conversation with his

good friend who also happens to be rightist ideologue, who claimed that there was a provision in the Congressional/Obama Health Care reform proposal that allows for abortions of people up to fifteen years old. Whew!

Whew, indeed! But that's the kind of dissembling that is so incomprehensible that even the person who believes he believes it can't actually, at the end of the day, believe it.

I mean... Cause, how would that work, exactly? Kind of difficult to picture... That's what happens, Republicans, when you simply memorize talking points without actually thinking through what (or, for that matter, whether) they mean!!

But wait: It gets better! I give you, the Crib From This community, courtesy of Gypsy Sun and Rainbows, the Deranged Dixiecrat Right in its full glory:

Also, we were at a bar and a random drunk dude came to our table and my friend and he struck up a conversation and he happened to also be a rightist ideologue who predicted (with my friend) that Obama was leading the United States into the worst depression in history AND that we would have another Civil War within the next two years. Whew!

Yes, you read correctly. This man thinks that there's going to be another CIVIL WAR within the NEXT TWO YEARS! To which our correspondent, Gypsy Sun and Rainbows, responded, in the heroic moment to which our title refers:

When the guy brought up the Civil War thing, I said: "Yeah, if it happens, it will because of people like YOU."

YYYYEEEEESSSSS!!! And Gypsy Sun knocks one clean out of the park!!!

I think that I am not the only one for whom the Rightist rhetoric is increasingly alarming/disconcerting: Where does this venom and hatred come from? Why are so many people making themselves impossible to talk to? What's behind all this? Just incoherent hatred of taxes?

(Incoherent because Medicare, Medicaid & Social Security combined are currently by far the biggest national expense, and we are borrowing trillions of dollars from China to pay for it, instead of just taxing the Viagra-addled dicks off of those crusty old bastards!!! ["Greatest Generation," MY ASS!!!!?])

Just racism? Just propaganda about "socialism" and whatever? What the hell is behind this out-of-control turn that Rightist rhetoric has taken?

A few Right-wing apologists say: "These health care protests are no worse than the Left-wing protests during the lead up to the Iraq War!"

But that's a bit of a stretch, don't you think?

Why is it a stretch? Because nobody took those war protesters seriously. Tell me I'm crazy, but that seems fairly obvious to me.... Was there any moment during the run-up to Iraq upon which you recall thinking: "Maybe we're not really going to go to war??!!!"

No. The Iraq War was a done deal, long before it was even mentioned to the American People, and we all knew that at the time. The Right-wing anti-health care astroturf campaign, by contrast, threatens to derail the entire debate.

But, I repeat: What the hell is behind the disturbing militarization of Rightist rhetoric?

Gypsy Sun and Rainbows weighs in:

Yeah, kind of brings us back to our Sarah Palin debate. Since this health care stuff began, I think I am beginning to understand your concern [about the Right's increasingly ominous and irresponsible rhetoric]. Death Panels? It's been debunked, but people still believe it. Same with Obama's birth certificate thing.

Right. What I personally find alarming is the sheer number of people who seem to be obsessed fanatically with these kinds of bizarre things.

Now, admittedly, I've never exactly met these people, but from what you and some others have said, it seems like a lot of the people saying this type of thing are people of whom you'd expect different -- more sober and less hysterical -- behavior.

Fortunately, unlike the health care nut jobs, I gather that the "birthers," as people seem to be calling them, are not exactly ever going to have the numbers to make anybody have to care about their bullshit, which I think makes it unquestionably a GOOD thing for the Democrats and for Obama: Even though all of the rhetoric and posturing is extremely unsettling, it definitely helps keep the Republican't Party* submerged in its present untrustworthy/uneducated/fanatic/non-mainstream cesspool.

By the way, although by no means do I wish to legitimize these so-called 'birthers', I would like to point out that there is so much evidence out there at present of Obama's having been born in Hawaii that it is almost unbelievable that anyone -- even mentally unbalanced people -- could actually continue to harbor doubts about this.

Specifically, in addition to all of the other evidence, there are numerous clippings from different Hawaii newspapers announcing Obama's birth!

Click here to see one of them. Ha ha ha!! Are there people who actually see stuff like this and STILL BELIEVE that he wasn't born in Hawaii??



___________________
* I just thought this up as I typed it. I'm sure I can't be the first. It's just too obvious.

HYPOCRITES!! (Part I): Health care, ideology and rhetoric.

The elegantly monikered and frequently brilliant blog Phuck Politics brings to our attention a highly entertaining and singularly infuriating exercise in Far-Right talking points.

You know what talking points are, right? They're these bullet-pointed 'arguments' circulated among Far-Right activists, politicians, Fox News-"personalities" and, of course, the Brownshirts that have been doing their inbred, mouth-breathingly thuggish best to carry out the bidding of demagogues and insurance industry brass alike. Their goal?: to interrupt 'town hall meetings' that are being held by congressmen in their home districts in order to discuss health reform.

This is a phenomenon to which we may refer as "astroturfing," or perhaps with still greater accuracy as "astroweeding."

Anyway, Phuck Politics shares with us the talking points that are being advanced by something called the Liberty Counsel (sounds friendly enough: Who doesn't like liberty??!!), which is apparently the Joseph Goebbels-like misinformation-propagating arm of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University:

Sec. 59B, Pg. 170, Line 1 – Any NONRESIDENT alien is exempt from individual taxes. (Americans will pay for their health care.)

Sec. 1177, Pg. 354 – Government will RESTRICT enrollment of special needs people! “Extension of Authority of Special Needs Plans to Restrict Enrollment.”

Sec. 1233, Pg. 425, Lines 4-12 – Government mandates Advance (Death) Care Planning consultation. Think Senior Citizens and end of life. END-OF-LIFE COUNSELING. SOME IN THE ADMINISTRATION HAVE ALREADY DISCUSSED RATIONING HEALTH CARE FOR THE ELDERLY.

Sec. 2511, Pg. 992 – Government will establish school-based “health” clinics. Your children will be indoctrinated and your grandchildren may be aborted!

The late, windy Jerry "Tushy-Faced" Falwell. May he rest in piss.

The reader will observe that Phuck Politics has some astute and howlingly funny things to say about this, including an imaginative description of the type of dialogue that must have gone down among the Liberty Council staffers when they were cooking this stuff up.

I wish to weigh in specifically on the fourth item listed above, which for my money is the most ermm...side-splittingly hilarious. The idea of referring to health clinics as "health" clinics... Wow!

Let's have another look!:

Sec. 2511, Pg. 992 – Government will establish school-based “health” clinics. Your children will be indoctrinated and your grandchildren may be aborted!

This takes the idea of seeing the world through the prism of ideology to its paranoiac limits.

I mean...really. Were the (il)logic of this statement to edge a fraction-of-an-inch further in the direction of mechanical-pre-judgment of empirical reality, it would represent a brand new pathology, wherein bigotry, myopia, resentment and rank stupidity begin to chew away not only at its believer's capacity to relate to the world around him -- which clearly is already on the skids -- but at one another.

The myopia begins to resent the bigotry, the bigotry looks askance at the myopia, and all the while, the stupidity reproduces itself like a cancer, slowly reducing the entire thing into a kind of droopy incoherence.

There is something so reprehensible about this rhetoric, something so completely offensive and prejudiced and pathetic and self-serving and self-undermining and willfully dumb, that it becomes almost beautiful. The sheer absurdity of questioning the very notion that health clinics are concerned with health!

The nerve displayed in this deployment of the word "indoctrinated," which reads not so much as a shocking revelation, but as a casual aside. Like: Oh yeah, of course these supposed "health" clinics are actually no more than "indoctrination" clinics!!! Indoctrinated into what? Into viewing the practice of medicine as based upon empirical science?

And then, to top it all off with what could only be called an astonishing feat of transgression-for-transgression's-sake: "your grandchildren may be aborted"!

Round of applause, please!!!

Think about this for a moment.....while keeping in mind, of course, that it is not the sort of provocation that is designed to make people think. The fear that's being expressed here is that the reader's son's and daughter's daughter's yet-to-be-conceived-unborn child may be aborted.

This begs the question: What kind of children are the reader's sons and daughters raising? Don't they learn about abstinence at their Bible Camp??? Are America's preteen Evangelicals having wild parties with the close-dancing and the listening to that race-music?

One rather suspects that this particular exercise in Right-wing hysteria is directed against the idea of public schooling in general more than against the idea of having health clinics in those schools. Let us take a look at a few quotations on the subject of public education, from Rev. Falwell, Herr Hitler and President Jefferson:

I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be! -- Rev. Jerry Falwell

The idea of separation of Church and State was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country. -- Rev. Jerry Falwell

Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has no religious instruction and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith.... We need believing people. -- Adolf Hitler

Education is here placed among the articles of public care, not that it would be proposed to take its ordinary branches out of the hands of private enterprise, which manages so much better all the concerns to which it is equal; but a public institution can alone supply those sciences which, though rarely called for, are yet necessary to complete the circle, all the parts of which contribute to the improvement of the country, and some of them to its preservation. -- Thomas Jefferson

A bill for the more general diffusion of learning... proposed to divide every county into wards of five or six miles square;... to establish in each ward a free school for reading, writing and common arithmetic; to provide for the annual selection of the best subjects from these schools, who might receive at the public expense a higher degree of education at a district school; and from these district schools to select a certain number of the most promising subjects, to be completed at an University where all the useful sciences should be taught. Worth and genius would thus have been sought out from every condition of life, and completely prepared by education for defeating the competition of wealth and birth for public trusts. -- Thomas Jefferson

Hmmm... Looks like we have some disagreement here. Between Founding Father Thomas Jefferson in favor of public education and the dynamic duo of Rev. Falwell and Herr Hitler against.

But back to the talking points: Such is their unsurpassed incoherence that the only comparison I can come up with is to a black hole: the vortex at which space and time and light and matter and mass all collapse upon and within themselves. (Or something like that.....)

Come to think of it, doesn't this artist's rendition of a black hole a whole lot like the images adorning the covers of books published by weirdo Right-wing nut-job literalist Southern Evangelical religious people? You know, like one of those ultra-cheesy depictions of the Apocalypse or the Book of Revelation or whatever?

Anyway, in the second part of this discussion, to be titled "HYPOCRITES!! (Part II): Health care, Medicare Part D and generational politics," I shall explain why this ludicrous Republican rhetoric opposing health care reform is truly and deeply hypocritical: Have you considered the fact that the people objecting most strongly to health care reform are precisely those who benefit the most from Medicare?

And Medicare is the single most costly government program in existence, far exceeding anything else, including military spending?

That's right, people over the age of 65, many of whom live in the South, are the recipients of the most expensive public program in existence. The same people who are so fervently opposed to Obama's 'socialistic' proposal for a public health insurance program that would compete with the private insurers....

The expense of this government program increased by several orders of magnitude when George W. Bush signed Medicare Part D, which is the prescription drug benefit, without bothering to figure out how he was going to pay for it, and sandwiched between the two biggest tax cuts for the wealthy in American history??

Time for 'liberal' jurisprudence to mount stronger challenge to so-called 'originalism'.

So, The Nation magazine reported the confirmation of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Nothing surprising about that. What interests me at the moment is that the piece quotes a speech in which the deceased Justice Thurgood Marshall cited the centrality of "social transformations" in bringing the United States into alignment with the designs of its written Constitution:

[The] government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and major social transformations to attain the system of constitutional government and its respect for the freedoms and individual rights, we hold as fundamental today.

The more I have read about and from the history of the Early Republic, as they call it, the more proof I have unearthed as to the consciousness of the Founders of the fact that the necessary social and economic conditions for the development of American democracy had not yet been established at the moment of the nation's birth. Many of the Founders commented frequently on the fact that the future was an unknown quantity and that this fact could cut in either direction, negative or positive. An example of the latter is the specter of the apparatus of governance one day falling under the control of greedy, petty or self-interested men. As John Adams put it, during the extensive correspondence he and Thomas Jefferson conducted during the later decades of their lives:

Democracy [...] while it lasts, is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.

If democracy's ideals, continued Adams, were to succeed, this success could and would be obtained only with great effort and with the passage of time:

When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking or thinking I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists; but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more.

The awareness among the Founders of the role of contingency and shifts in meaning in history extended beyond their comprehension of the fact that the future was likely to look, as it were, hella different than the Revolutionary Era looked. However: the importance of this understanding in a way can be seen to have been a function of revolutionary action itself, an activity that by definition consists of trading in a world of familiarity and predictability for a world of struggle and unpredictability. This act is one that faces off against the possibility of a future of utter failure in a way that today we are too constitutionally (pun acknowledged but not intended) weak even to ponder.

Our Founders and the Framers of the Constitution also knew that there are limitations inherent to the capacity of words to transmit their "intended" meanings. They understood that words therefore cannot be comprehended exclusively in reference to the context of a specific time and place. They were shrewd enough to know that this was impossible. (Or, maybe "shrewd" isn't the word: maybe it's "thoughtful.") And, therefore, in framing the original articles of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, they painted with a brush broad enough to inform the interpretive abilities of intellectually honest and morally engaged future stewards of democracy.

Upon reading the actual documents, it is simply impossible to imagine that the Founders would be pleased to see the likes of Dick Cheney in a position of power. But that's an obvious point....

The important point is that Justice Antonin Scalia and other adherents of the judicial philosophy of originalism fail utterly to comprehend the significance of the fact that the Framers possessed this very comprehension of the relations among contingency, meaning, words and history. Scalia argues that, when interpreting the Constitution, as well as federal and state laws, judges must interpret language in a manner that accords with the meanings that the words possessed at the time of their having been written and passed into law.

But: if the Framers were aware enough of these historical processes, if they were conscious and even deliberate in imbuing the language of the Constitution with this cognizance, this anticipation that subsequent readings would bring to bear unimaginable contingencies, then should not the originalist be the first scholar on his block to insist upon granting serious consideration to capacious readings of Constitution language? Especially in tricky and consequential areas of Constitutional law, like its implications for what we would today call 'privacy' rights??

Does this make sense? It's late as I type. I'll maybe explain a bit more when I'm in a lucid frame of mind (should my mind come to be so framed....).

In the meantime: we on the putative "left" side of center should start articulating a couple of easily-identifiable fallacies that are promoted by originalism, as Scalia conceptualizes it. Both of these fallacies have widespread implications for the rule of law in areas of individual liberty and privacy. Scalia's first demonstrated fallacy is that he removes the words of the Constitution from the context of their overriding systems of value and signification, in effect, stripping words of their meanings.

To illustrate this fallacy conceptually, here's an example: Nowhere in the Constitution does there appear the word "abortion." Therefore, to recognize in the Constitution the rights of women to have abortions is to read something into the document that isn't there. Now, don't mistake my example as making the claim that Roe v. Wade was good jurisprudence or even a good idea; let's save that discussion for another day.

Instead, focus closely upon the internal logic of the cited example: Does this reasoning in and of itself indict Roe? No way. Because there is plenty of language in the Constitution that is aimed at protecting spheres of individual prerogative from the intrusion of governmental tyranny. Scalia would say: Well, there's no way the Founders would have imagined the concept of a 'legal right to an abortion'.

True. And, advocates of 'liberal' jurisprudence should respond: To precisely the same extent, the Founders could under no circumstances have imagined the concept of a 'legal prohibition upon abortions'. Only when framed in this manner can the notion of 'originalism' be seen as on 'all fours' with supposedly 'competing' judicial philosophies.

There is a second fallacy upon which Scalia's originalism is premised. I would argue that Scalia accords an overabundance of meaning/significance to perceived connections between the words of the Constitution, including its early amendments, and the 'actual thinking' of those who wrote these texts. This is first because the notion of these texts as having been 'written' is in itself potentially misleading: The documents themselves are compromises, at which the Framers arrived only after extensive debate, and -- more importantly -- the brokering of deals.

There is no doubt that the Framers themselves often interpreted the same language differently.

Thomas Jefferson, who was in France being a diplomat during the Constitutional Convention and subsequent passage of the Bill of Rights, probably interpreted the separation of Church and State as something akin to what he had described in his correspondence as a "wall of separation between Church and State." Others may have understood the First Amendment differently. In other words, the Founders were in many respects engaged in the very same debates in which we are engaged today.

So, one response to Scalia is to point out: To appeal to the Early Republic for definitive guidance in interpretation is to appeal to an era that possessed a diversity of interpretations equivalent in extent to -- if not exceeding -- the diversity of opinions that we possess today.

Whereas Adams hoped for a future of greater human liberty and happiness, Jefferson was always at least slightly -- and often exceedingly -- more optimistic than was his friend. For all of the trouble it's brought us, you've gotta show the love for The Enlightenment (somebody: cue up a vinyl copy of Beethoven's Ninth!) and give Jefferson his due for being such an Enlightenment fundamentalist.

He probably would have preferred conscientious, ethical and -- yes -- empathic Supreme Court justices to Scalia's dry, supposedly technical, and operational jurisprudential ideal:

When I contemplate the immense advances in science and discoveries in the arts which have been made within the period of my life, I look forward with confidence to equal advances by the present generation, and have no doubt they will consequently be as much wiser than we have been as we than our fathers were, and they than the burners of witches.

The fallacies I have identified are not only general characterizations of originalist jurisprudence. Instances of these fallacies can be spotted in many specific legal opinions. To the degree to which the legal opinions can be described as relying upon fallacious premises, 'originalism' itself is exposed as a tactic by which its adherant convinces himself and others that his judgments do not rest upon (or emanate from) ideological and political premises. Sorry, Justice Scalia: Guess you'll just have to begin formulating actual justifications for your interpretations and stop seeking the shelter of quote-unquote originalist legal philosophy.

At some point I want to explain why I belief the prevailing explanations/justifications for 'liberal' jurisprudence to be flawed. But maybe I'll have to use more brevity and not be such an insufferable pedant. Because I'll bet you twenty dollars that you haven't read this far into the post.

Birthday Fun with Wolfram Alpha

I think I heard about this Web site on NPR. Not sure what it's really for. Not even really clear on what things it can do. Except, I know it can provide you with lots of information about your birthday. Specifically, with whom you share one. Lo and behold: the present blogger shares a birthday with Laetitia Sadier!

In the United States, this date apparently also commemorates nurses and scrapbooks. Oh, and also, I share this birthday with many others, among them Sigmund Freud:

Perhaps it's time for me to stop wasting time and get back to work....