As it happeneth

As it happeneth to the fool, so it happeneth even to me; and why was I then more wise? 

-Ecclesiastes 2:15- 

For a long time after I began to write here, it was enough to enumerate the foolishness of the "other side," the Tea Party, the NRA, Fox News. . . and as the man said, the danger is in becoming the monster you oppose, because one gets used to the other side being not only wrong but demonic and at best, foolish.  It does not follow that if mine enemy is wrong, I must be right. It's a vanity we all share. The model of the world we form in our heads; the model we nourish and prop up with facts, with truisms and tropes, with axioms and articles of faith, is not the real world any more than the Tao we can discuss is the real Tao. Can it be that our cherished wisdom is no more than a vanity? 

Watching Bill Maher's panel of the wise the other night was like being at the same circus you've been watching for too long.  When the clown car pulls into the ring, you already know the names and number of the clowns and when the discussion turned to the Washington State school shooting I knew it was only a matter of time until every last one climbed out, from the NRA to Drone Strikes.  But even a circus car can hold only so many.  There's hardly room for objective truth and no part for him in the show.  Why drone strikes When Muslim armies are raping torturing and beheading innocents?  Because the drone strike clown is part of the circus crew and the mission of the crew is assigning blame, prescribing from the official pharmacopoeia as well as to blame everyone but the perpetrators,  and of course he's a distraction, a way of substituting an answer we have, an argument we favor to any real discussion of what happened, its relation to other happenings and a way of attaching blame to what just might be random.

Last out of the clown car was the editor in chief of The Daily Beast to tell us that "surveys show" the people want background checks, which might have prevented this and the NRA was opposed. Facts are that we have had mandatory checks for decades, the gun in question was bought pursuant to one and was registered to a legal owner. But it's a small car and the clown has to stretch his legs.

So it happeneth to the fool and I'm getting tired of it happening to me.  Just what is the risk to any one of us from Ebola, from ISIS insurgents,  Central American child refugees,  racist police -- and how does it compare with the risk of heart disease,  urban street gangs and soccer moms texting while driving?  Don't ask because you'll become the enemy yourself, the enemy of those who insist on there being trends and conspiracies and the ever growing risks of living in America today.  Yes, the subject of drone strikes came up (Cornell West) as supporting evidence of Western sin along with the details of how "we"  arbitrarily created countries to our benefit and thus earned the enmity of the Muslim world.  Did anyone bother to ask if this mechanism made thousand year enemies of Japan and Germany after we conquered and occupied them?  No because that would challenge the model of Islamic innocence.  Do we examine the possibility that the media circus surrounding any of the events CNN chooses to obsess about every week or so, has made it glamorous for disturbed teenagers to become a bright shining star and go out like a supernova?  No, that distracts from the need to obsess about the NRA and to reenact our passion play about weapons of war, spraying high caliber, armor piercing, cop killer bullets and the total absence of all gun control measures. The chess board is set up and only the official pieces can be played.

And how then are we wise?  How do we decide what's true and what the risks are and who is to blame?  There is much written about this question and related questions of  how we see the world as we are, through rose colored or dark glasses.  The psychologist Paul Slovic's oft quoted article in Science, about risk perception theory and what he called affect heuristics, the particular heuristics and biases people invent to interpret the amount of risk in their environment.  Is the risk of Ebola running rampant to be compared with the existing risk of the flu, (about 2.5 million deaths per year) much less all infectious diseases still endemic in the US?  How many die because enlightened people oppose vaccinations?  Indeed fear of science rides in that clown car as it does in the Tea Powered version. Is the NRA opposition to study of gun crimes any different than the steadfast refusal of their opposition to discuss ( or to read or admit the existence of)  gun laws and their statistical correlation to positive results?

Did Florida's revised self defense laws really "Make it illegal for black people to go outside" as one pundit said about a case that did not, by his own admission, involve that law, or is that the result of vision through a bias darkly?  Did a  "gentle giant" really commit a robbery and assault a police officer or is his innocence to be presumed and to the extent that we need no fair trial to hang the policeman?  The answer was in the bias, the affect heuristics of the observer and the judgement to which he is accustomed to snap.  Does the fact that over 90% of the shootings of young black men are by young black men enter into the equation and cause wonder about the lack of  media circuses when that happens?  Can we really not go to the movies any more, or send out children to school where they are statistically safer than they are at home or driving with mom and her smart phone?

Can we see current events and the surrounding hoopla as anything but a cosmic frame shop, selling framed reproductions of  paint by the numbers reality?  Should we look at the news of the day as another day's entry in the logbook of the ship of fools?  Will our inherent nature ever let us be the rational beasts we pretend to be?  

 "For there is no remembrance of the wise more than that of the fool forever; seeing that which now is in the days to come shall all be forgotten.  And how dieth the wise man?  as the fool."

CRIMINALIZING POLITICS

Georgia Senate Candidate David Perdue Wants To 'Prosecute' Democrats:

“What would you do to end partisan gridlock and dysfunction in Washington?” asked Georgia Senate candidate Michelle Nunn (D) of her challengers, David Perdue (R) and Amanda Swafford (I). Here is the exchange:

Michelle Nunn: “I think that we do have a very clear contrast in terms of how we see breaking through that dysfunction. I don’t think it’s about prosecuting the other party; I think it’s about problem-solving.”

David Perdue: “I disagree […] When you have a failed presidency, you have to prosecute it.”

Why stop there! Let’s prosecute every former president for every official act – good, bad, or indifferent. Let’s prosecute former President Jimmy Carter for the Iran hostage crisis; then charge Ronald Reagan, in his grave, for sending arms to Saddam Hussein. Let’s impeach former President Bill Clinton for one more blowjob; then indict George Bush for a mismanaged war and a broken economy.

Let’s regulate free speech and reign in human rights that have been allowed to run rampant for far too long. Let’s shelve the U.S. Constitution and trade in our dusty old democracy for a used Trabant.

According to the latest polls, David Perdue holds a two-point lead over Michelle Nunn. Do you trust the voters of Georgia to do the right thing? I have reservations – for a permanent residency hotel in Belize.

Party and Ideology Aside Senator Rand Paul Makes Valid Arguments...

by: Les Carpenter 

 This fiscal conservative and social libertarian certainly does not agree with or advocate all of Senator Rand Paul's positions. Nor is it clear at this point the Senator from Kentucky has the attributes to eventually assume and execute the duties of the presidency of the United States of America. However, the points the Senator makes in the following video with respect military action and how our nation has reacted to current world events, especially in light of our Constitution, are worth serious consideration. Our world has changed and continues to change at an ever accelerating pace. With the above in mind can someone, anyone, point out errors in Senator Rand Paul's speech? If so what are they and why do you believe they are errors in judgment?



 Full text of the Senator's speech and be found BELOW THE FOLD. 

 Via: Memeorandum 

 Cross Posted @ Rational Nation USA

Nothing changes

Even when it does.

Oh goodie, we can stop obsessing about Ebola and the Ottawa shooting and renew the obsessive hysteria about school violence until something else happens.  Of course something else is happening constantly, but there's no money in discussing it when you compare it to the blockbuster ratings boost from red-eyed, glued to the tube, round the clock repetition of the same damned video clips under the rubric of "breaking News!"

I suppose there will be little or no comment on the likelihood that the massive coverage will produce copy-cat incidents of suicide by shooting spree and the usual refusal to attempt perspective by noting that such things seem to clump, but all in all have been declining significantly - over 50% - for more than 20 years. It's more profitable to claim that schools aren't safe although impartial statistics seem to show it's more dangerous at home and that any one American school can expect to have a gun or explosives incident only about once in 12,800 years.  People are demonstrably terrible at assessing risk and news providers get rich by helping them panic while other institutions of reform and anti-reform distract and misinform to promote their programs, all of them so convinced of their rightness and righteousness, truth can be damned as an obstruction and lies praised as noble.

Bias

Bias, everything is about frame of reference.  If you don't agree, go argue with Einstein.  It's unavoidable and that's why news outlets need to spend more time on verification than on making sure they're the first to air a rumor, or indeed a slander: to spend more time on being right than on ratings, more than on being for a Right or Left wing audience.

If you read the comments on this blog, you'll remember that a short while ago there was a bit of conversation about Public broadcasting and the Republican antipathy toward it. Does the relatively small financial support PBS gets from the Federal government really create a risk of bias in news reporting?  Is that risk countered by the absence of pressure for ratings?  Has the government censured PBS for contradicting the President?  Perhaps this is one of these arguments argued from 'principle' rather than from experience, because experience is other than is predicted by theory. Is the test in how well facts fit the theory or in how much the theory fits you?

 I can easily remember, having spent many hours as a boy listening to programming from Radio Moscow during the Cold War, and to US and European based propaganda stations, just what propaganda looks like. It doesn't look like the McNeil Lehrer News Hour. It looks more like a panel of out of work politicians giggling and speculating and providing no facts. It looks like talking for weeks about every last rivet and piece of upholstery on a Boing 777 just to keep you watching, about speculating on what a shooting means until it means nothing or everything.

Looking back at the world of 60 years ago, I've had to admit that although grossly exaggerated, some criticism of the US was true, but really, the Soviet news agencies, owned and operated and with scripted "news" reports that praised them and assaulted us can't be compared to a network that spends a few hours a day reporting events and the bulk of it's time with educational programming. In principle, yes, one must suspect government news releases as much as one must suspect the corporate news releases like the ads and articles that tell you Toyota Camrys are wildly exiting vehicles for loveable rogues and 4 door Nissans can't be distinguished from race cars.  Can we compare how well the various sources do that?  The "independent" sources seem more about speculation and conjecture disguised as "telling both sides" and about fewer stories. PBS tends to stick to reportage, in my opinion anyway.  In all these years I don't remember any PBS stories about Saginaw Michigan outlawing Christmas, the sort of thing that's daily fare at a certain "independent" News company. They have refrained from suggesting that not only is Ebola not Pandemic in the US, but speculating that Obama is in favor of it or even now that all proof is visible that Obama is not from Kenya. Is it bias to refrain from Swift Boat Stories or is it "just the facts ma'am?

To Quote the fictional Dr. Gregory House: "everyone lies" and  as we all know, the wheels of commerce and the gears of government are greased with Bullshit.

One might be tempted to argue that we turn off the tube altogether.

But do we leave it at that:  the suspicion that the McNeill Lehrer Report is government supported propaganda while "independent" MSNBC is owned by the Democrats because they don't report things Obama is not guilty of, while Fox, their endless speculations and conjectures, their well documented fabrications, false statistics and scurrilous attacks on Liberal principle can be trusted?

Is CNN really so financially independent that it can avoid obsessive sensationalism while ignoring the important events of the day, that they can resist publishing Apple press releases as news?  My answer is brought to you by the letter N, which stands for NO.  Everyone lies or at least everyone has their frame of reference when they get fare enough away from saying it rained this morning or a bomb went off in Boston.  The rest is politics and advertising - and sometimes lies.

I fear the argument against PBS usually stops with the theoretical because, as with so many arguments, the facts don't support the arguments for bias and in fact many of those arguments don't really support the sanity of the proponents.  Are the Teletubbies really trying to make your kids gay?  or are you a crackpot? Is Sesame Street radicalizing your kids or are you an extremist loonie?  Are McNeil and Lehrer covering up for Obama's secret agenda just as they covered up Clinton's secret plan to turn the US military over to NATO?  Are they being biased by failing to provide "fair and balanced" coverage of all those Fox Fables that never happened, like Obama's blocking of white voting rights, lack of a US birth certificate, that Home Depot has given up selling Christmas trees ( go look for yourself ) or that the Post Office forbids the use of the word God on their premises?  Or is all that harder to establish than that Charles Krauthammer is a pathological and irresponsible liar who makes up statistics. Will any of the independents spend a moment proving that wrong -- oh excuse me, MSNBC provided proof, thus showing their bias no doubt.

They're all biased in some eyes and to those visionaries who think their personal interests trump the national interest. Ask yourself how much coverage PBS gave to the Malaysian airliner or to the two US cases of ebola relative to the 18 to 20 hours a day of all the "independent" news sources?  Who made it all about blaming it on their political enemies? And who was it that tried to blame Obama for failing to have a Surgeon General or an "Ebola Czar" after obstructing his every effort to appoint one?  It wasn't MSNBC with their alleged ownership by the Democratic Party, or CNN with their corporate puppet strings firmly attached, it was Fox with their heavy financial relationship with the GOP.  It was not PBS.

To me, and of course that's only my opinion because I don't have the patience to write the thousand page list of  irrefutable acts of dishonest propagandizing in the various news outlets: to me the heaviest and smelliest load of that universal lubricant is produced by the segment of the political right that worries about PBS being a government news outlet out to steal your money, to put you in a FEMA camp, import indigent colored people into your living room and outlaw your religion.  If I can indulge in an analogy, it's like the people who support the destruction of a river because they profit from it but want to fine you for leaving a cigarette butt on the ground because they don't -- on principle, of course. Principle is important.

Announcement: Help Wanted

By (O)CT(O)PUS

This watery realm known as The Swash Zone has always been a favorite meeting place for beachcombers. On any given day, you never know what ideas, curious oddments or strange spars of knowledge drift ashore and collect at the high tide line. Beachcombers always find those fished up trophies and take strange gain away.

People too come and go like flotsam on the currents and gyres of life.  Sadly, having lost our great sea-hoard of riches through attrition, we seek new writers to join our floating fellowship. Do you have ambergris, rare inlays, or special expertise to share?  Are you interested in casting messages in bottles upon the waves for posterity? If so, please contact your intrepid cephalopod here: SwashZone@Gmail.com.

PARTISANSHIP BY THE NUMBERS

Not in Congress but at least in some sectors of Cyberspace, I am starting to notice a change in attitude.  Bloggers from the center left and center right are putting rancor aside when discussing issues of vital public concern. Are the twin crises of Daesh and Ebola - plus far rightwing fringe fatigue - driving a newfound convergence of opinion?  Will the time-honored art of compromise and consensus return to public life – without the “my-way-or-the-highway” intransigence that has caused past resentments and deadlock?  Or am I being irrational and unreal with foolish optimism?

Bring in the McClowns

It seems I write the same things over and over again because the Republican pattern repeats indefinitely.  It's OK when we do it or say it or demand it, it's anti-American, tyrannical, too little, too late, too much, too soon when they do it. Even if Republicans invented it or pioneered it or used it until yesterday it's different when "they" do it.

How long ago was it that John McCain and  Fox News and the rest of the merry bunch made a circus act with all three rings full of how Obama is a "tyrant" for appointing all those Czars?  "More Czars than the Romanovs," tweets the funny man.  So where's the big red nose and oversize pants when John McCain tells us that hapless weakling Obama isn't appointing the Czars we need?  That's right, John McCain has joined Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), sponsor of H.R. 3226 (111th): Czar Accountability and Reform (CZAR) Act of 2009  in condemning the administration for this egregious failure, invoking the "if it's bad, it's Obama" clause in the Party rules. 2009 is when George W. Bush left office -- just coincidentally -- and of course George had 33 of them, but let's keep that quiet.


Of course there's no public office with the title Czar on the door as far as I know. It's a media epithet that began in the 1940s and of course there's nothing unconstitutional about the President appointing "other public ministers" no matter how much they chuckle and chortle and lie in the Fox newsroom.
But quoting history and public record never seems to have much effect on the magic thinkers and pea-brained partisans of any stripe.  The public's eyes are always on the jugglers and clowns and what they're doing now, not what they did ten seconds ago.

"No one knows who's in charge," says McCain, his face revealing nothing of how his party, with the help of the NRA has blocked the nomination of a Surgeon General, an office designed to take control and coordinate the process of informing the country of what's being done.  Yes, the NRA, because the Surgeon General might just get involved in gun policy.  Can't have that. Better a plague than risk a gun grabber liberal doctor commie near our weapons. Better this country perish from the earth.

A kind word turneth away wrath

Drone strikes. Another one of those things we like to oppose for reasons with holes in them.  Malala Yousafzai, the young Nobel Peace Prize winner told the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner last Friday that drone strikes fuel terrorism and kill innocent people.  Somehow I recollect the saying that being against bad doesn't make you good.  It doesn't make you make sense either.

Is it the use of an unmanned vehicle that makes bombing terrorist targets wrong?  Would we be better off  using billion dollar manned vehicles that are less accurate and far more risky for US personnel?  Send in another 100,000 troops?   Would we be better off not doing anything and as she suggests just give Pakistan more money for "Education" in the phantasmagoric hope that it will somehow not be used to teach Islamic intolerance for so much of what we hold dear, including freedom for young women like Malala Yousafzai?  Surely that would work as well as the billions and billions and billions we're already given them while they housed bin Laden. 

Drone strikes, like Gluten and fruit sugar, is an enemy without portfolio and it's not surprising to hear it from someone hoping that somehow the insanity and hatred infesting Islamic culture will simply go away if we ignore it, or at most address al Qaeda and ISIS and the Taliban with a little more understanding.  Maybe they'll see the error of their ways if  we all are just a little more patient. 

Fall

Florida falls into autumn
the way you grow old:
with a sense of change you
may not see in the weather
or on your face in the mirror 
or in the falling of leaves
or ripening fruit,

but you feel in an easing, 
a thinning of the still hot air,
a pause in continuity.

The odor of this morning is different.
Something is changing.

Black vultures in a tree.
An osprey on white wings
screams down at us.