Sarah Palin and Sponge Bob in 2012

Here's a picture of our neighbor's truck. His Bush/Cheney '04 sticker makes me sad and mad every time I see it (we go to work and come home at about the same time). And I noticed this morning, when he stopped at the little neighborhood cafe, that he has a brand new sticker:

This guy, not the Bush/Cheney/McCain/Palin neocons, not the economy or climate change or immigration, is THE top problem in America. We have the power and the wealth to become a pretty cool country ALMOST OVERNIGHT if half of our people weren't morons. The average American car sits unused 22 hours a day and the average American commute is 16 miles. GM had a production ready electric car in 1999, the EV1, yet after testing it and leasing out about 1,000 of them, they took them all back and crushed them and sold the battery technology to Exxon/Mobil. The drill-baby-drill mentality prevailed.

I do, however, realize it's not that simple. I've finished Obama's first book, Dreams From My Father, and I'm halfway through his second, The Audacity of Hope, and I'm learning from him that by focusing on what tears us apart rather than on what binds us together, "conservative" and "liberal" adversaries push one another to extreme positions.

I'm actually kind of a Republican at heart, and I do understand where these guys are coming from. If we "liberals" were given free reign, the world we'd make might not be a utopia at all, but more like a communist nightmare. Capitalism works great when you have a gigantic almost-virgin land mass you can rape, while communism seems to go very, very bad very, very quickly no matter what.

But now that the whole world is in peril, and since there are no more virgin continents to settle and rape (unless we want to make Africa the new America and kill off those pesky Africans like we did the Native Americans), we Americans really need to find a brilliant amalgam of capitalism and socialism. There are literally millions of possible permutations of human economic activity possible, but it is morons like our neighbor who put it all in terms of only two choices, rather dead than red. And it is morons on our side that make a more socially responsible world seem so goofy, weak, and corrupt, e.g., teaching Ebonics as a real, viable language. Our neighbor, who might have some valid insight about the potential horrors of socialism, digs his heels in even more and becomes almost clownish in his politics.

On some level he knows that his new Palin sticker makes him look stupid. But just as rap and hip-hop music have made the ghetto (a sad and tragic place if there ever was one!) seem cool, somehow, with the popularity of shows such as "Jackass," "Sponge Bob," and "The O'Reilly Factor," STUPIDITY has become cool!

This neighbor is unteachable. However, if he had to experience terror and extreme physical hardship due to the policies of his capitalist masters, he might completely change his tune. He may soon have the chance to go through just such hardships, thanks to his voting against himself (and against me and my children and you and yours) during the last few election cycles. If I sound a little self righteous, it's just that it's very hard for me to abide people who think it's OK to hog the supplies on a lifeboat, that they're somehow better than the other passengers, especially when they call themselves "Christians."

Explanation of The Split

By Richard Hamilton-Gibbs

In the scientific world, where experiments can be repeated by other scientists to confirm consistent outcomes, the only question is the integrity of the scientists conducting the studies. Scientific fraud is relatively rare, because it is exposed by the work of other scientists when they do not get the same results. Scientific fraud also disposes of the reputations of the fraudulent scientists once and for all. For example, Korean researcher Hwang Woo-Suk was exposed as a confidence trickster in stem cell research. His findings have been completely discredited, and are not quoted by even scientific nut-cases as "proof" for anything.

In the real world, many world events are "one-time", and will not be repeated. Then, there is simply a question of Belief. Do you believe the event actually happened? 

This is compounded by the acceptance that politicians recounting current events are not held to the same standard of honesty as scientists. In fact, it is common for American politicians to lie, and the American people regard this kind of "flexibility" with the truth as acceptable, for any number of reasons ranging from national security issues to economic stability.

For example, I have long considered the invasion of Iraq as a dreadful error, wrong on so many levels, and justified by non-existent WMD claims  by the Bush White House.

However a conservative friend of mine has suggested to me that there were WMD's in Iraq, and he listens to Republican conspiracy theorists, who turn up on late night radio and claim that they Believe the WMD's were there in Iraq, but they were spirited over the border into Syria during the invasion of Iraq by the US in 2003, or somehow magically concealed.

This is a perfect example of an event that, if it happened, only happened once. If those weapons were spirited away into Syria, it happened in a very tight time window. To test this theory, the event cannot be repeated, and there appear to be no eye-witnesses, just True Believers. 

To reach any logical conclusion requires Investigation, not unsubstantiated Belief, which means examining every information source on the subject, before making your personal judgment of what happened. Along the way, you have to take into account that many people will tell self-serving untruths, or quote unreliable sources themselves.

At the end of this analysis, people will all believe different things, based on the credibility they assign to their different sources. So a committed Bushie will still be saying today that they believe there are still WMD's somewhere that we haven't found, and anti-Bushie's will be saying today that the whole GWB White House line was always a fraud to justify invasion.

I think a lot of this has to do with how fearful people are about the motivations and intentions of the rest of the world, and what they then perceive we need to do to protect ourselves from them.

My conservative friend has conservative instincts that lead him to see the rest of the world as very threatening. This allows him to see GWB in a positive light as doing something about a dangerous world. Now he is not a bad person, but he tends to use information sources that reinforce his existing beliefs, and discount sources that he dislikes. In this, at times he is as susceptible as any Creationist to  the dogma of the True Believer, by discounting any information  from any source he dislikes.

This lack of rigor at times needs gentle correction, and that may be because he is under a misconception of how something works, or the relevance it has in any given situation. He needs to have a clear logical pathway, but getting rid of his Belief System can be an impediment to clear thinking. For example, he so loathes Hillary Clinton (and Bill) that there is no point in discussing anything related to them. There is no way either of them can ever redeem themselves, and any successes they have will always be countered by any bad tales, even fictional tales, to make them look either incompetent or evil.

My progressive friends, on the other hand, make connections of great compassion, and do not see the rest of the world as nearly as threatening. Accordingly, they are much more into outreach and helping, and they see the military interventions that have been committed in their name as Americans as not being justified, and rank them as atrocities. Accordingly, the numbers of Vietnamese who died as a result of American intervention there, they take some responsibility for. Many conservative Americans find reasons to justify America's involvement, and as a New Zealander, we suffer from the same issues, because NZ was there supporting the American effort (with regular NZ Army troops). 

Now at times, either view is correct. There are plenty of instances where people have taken advantage of the caring efforts of others to abuse them. There are also plenty of instances where paranoia has led to heavy-handed mass-murder.

Meanwhile, nothing much is going to change with the US  Military, unless this economic meltdown impacts US spending.

http://www.economist.com/daily/chartgallery/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13314915

This nicely illustrates the huge disparity of US "defense" spending compared to the rest of the world. The next 14 players all added together still fall about $100 billion short of US expenditures.

I think this is probably the difference between the Left and Right wing. Fear. Left-wingers do not fear the rest of the world so much. When, as a Left-Winger, you express anger at the neocon approach to "peacekeeping", neocons feel even more threatened, and more fearful, and talk about a "more dangerous world", because they feel the need to exert more control at any cost over the elements in the world they perceive as a threat they fear. Left-wing resistance to this control makes neocons very paranoid, and have them perceiving the Left Wingers as part of the problem. Neocons often talk about Liberal Conspiracies, Bleeding Heart Liberals, and Commies, to group the less fearful into the Opposition they have to defeat. And as I mentioned before, True Believers, in their paranoia, regard killing their enemies as a viable solution to their problems. 

Both sides can quote examples of the failed policies of the other. Left- and right-wingers each have their successes and failures, and history always tells the story, and the longer ago the events happened, the more accurate the history becomes, because it is not such an emotional issue to the historian, unless it is a pivotal part of his Belief System. For example, ask a Christian Fundamentalist if Jesus rose from the grave, and he will look at you as if you must be nuts to even ask that question, because for them, the answer is "of course!".

And yet, there are other historians who can equally argue that Jesus never existed. That he was a historical fable, of whom the first writings appeared about 60 years after his death, with no record in the secular record of his ever having even existed!

So this is an example of how Belief Systems are built, and persist, and can continue to be supported by people who are not bad people, just totally different in what they choose to believe.

What we choose to believe is always a personal choice. Changing other people's beliefs is often impossible, and is not something I try to do.

I think Google got it in one with their company slogan, "Don't be evil".

I think we all have to define what we regard as evil, or "intentional behavior that is unacceptable to me personally", and make our case for our positions. Too often, people have these underlying beliefs that they have not thought through, and as a result, build a tower of logic that has no real support even in their own belief system. When they examine their fundamentals, they themselves discover that the logical axioms on which they have positioned their beliefs are so flawed that they need to completely rethink their position.

Unfortunately, it is often an impossible task to get people to examine their basic axioms, because they cannot divorce their examination of their basic axioms from the body of prejudice they have built  based on these axioms.

And I think it comes down to fear. The more fearful we are, the more essential it is that "we kill them before they kill us." It is easier to adopt this path when we have no empathy for the "enemy", and do not take their humanity into account.

I think this topic of reconciling people who have very different world views is becoming more and more important. To get into the real basics of what people believe, and why, and how to sift information from dishonest sources to reach the multiple possible logical conclusions, and evaluate all of them to choose what we believe in.

For a more successful future, we need Americans to become a lot more logical in their information analysis, and less trusting of their beliefs.

Split in America

I want to ask all of you to think about how to heal the split in America. I might not have time to answer every response--there are 441 of you on my email list, and I know most of you, plus many of you send out my stuff to others--but you know I will read every one carefully. 

Here, below, is a perfect example of the split, a letter to the SF Chronicle by my friend Karl and a response to it. Please read them both and then think about how we can bring these two sides together. 

Karl's letter:

Isn't it about time for GOP apologies?

As Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele falls all over himself to apologize to the real leader of the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh, I think it is a good time to ask the Republicans to go one further and apologize to Americans.

Apologizing for such crimes as lying, and starting a war based on some of those lies, torturing, phone tapping, judge fixing, not to mention offshoring our jobs, making the way for fraud on Wall Street, and otherwise ruining the economy.

It was just a few days ago that Limbaugh was called out for being incendiary and when he asked for them, the apologies even came on his radio program.

So we can wait a few days, now that you Republicans know that America wants you to apologize. You know where to find us.

Karl Hodges

Response to Karl's letter:

Here's a Republican apology

Karl Hodges wants Republicans to apologize for America's problems. He is correct; the GOP owes America an apology, and also a promise to make amends.

As chairman of the San Francisco Republican Assembly, I apologize to every man, woman and child in America. We Republicans failed to do our job to defeat the most unaccomplished and unqualified presidential candidate in history. We Republicans expected the media to expose a glib community organizer from Chicago who never held a job. We apologize for failing to convince rational adults that mindless slogans will not protect the life, liberty and property of the American people and the free world.

America's investors know this president is using the present crisis to dismantle capitalism. That's why the stock market is crashing and Americans are losing their retirement savings. America's adversaries: Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and al Qaeda know this president opposed liberation of 25 million Iraqis, and heads the party that whined, "this war is lost." That's why the world is a more dangerous place.

But an apology is not enough; the GOP also must make amends for what it failed to do in November 2008. Therefore, we Republicans will work harder to ensure that this president fails to impose European socialism and second-rate health care on America. We will also tell every American what this president never will tell: "We will pay any price, bear any burden to assure the survival of liberty," and with no apologies.

Mike DeNunzio

Let me just add this, now that you've read both letters: The atom bomb that ended our war with Japan (whether it was right to use it or not) was not a Democrat or a Republican atom bomb, it was an AMERICAN atom bomb. With the economy tanking, we're probably in more immediate trouble than we were in during World War II, and yet America has become so divided that we're almost crippled when it comes to dealing with the problem. 

Please comment below, or send me an email.

Republican IT Specialist Dies in Plane Crash

Was Michael Connell assassinated?

This short, interesting interview really makes you wonder. Seems like at the last minute they're trying to dispose of some dirty laundry. 

Questions That I Have for the Secret Service

Here's a very funny blog entry, 10 questions by Jon Friedman. I wrote some comments, which follow, and I hope you will click the comment link and add your own two-cents worth as well. I'm curious what you think about the incident referred to in Friedman's blog and how you feel about this rather strange interim period we're going through right now.

1. Shouldn't you have jumped in front of that shoe? [after clicking the link, scroll down to see video]
2. Shouldn't you have jumped in front of that second shoe?
3. Second shoe = the one thrown after being removed from foot after first shoe was thrown.
4. Let's say people had three feet. Would you have allowed a third shoe to fly unimpeded?
5. While the shoe was in the air, were you like, "Oh, its just a shoe."
6. Same question about the second shoe.
7. Do you think this is funny, "Throw a shoe at me once, shame on--you. Throw a shoe--you throw a shoe, you can't throw a shoe again."
8. Is there not "protection training" for lunatics launching objects?
9. Let's say there isn't training for that--but do they tell you that if someone does throw (or shoot) something to be on the alert in case they want to repeat this behavior?
10. Where were you?

BONUS QUESTION: Do you think the Iraqis want us there? (Hint: their journalists are throwing their shoes at Bush)

This blog was originally posted here: http://www.236.com/blog/w/jon_friedman/questions_that_i_have_for_the_10713.php

You might find it interesting to read some of the commentary written about the Secret Service over the past couple of days, since Obama's life is going to depend on these guys doing a stellar job. Obama must be scratching his head right now and wondering why the hell he ever wanted to be president.

Here's why I haven't been posting here lately: I've been kind of tongue-tied since Obama was elected--I feel that because the way our system has been designed, we all had a LOT of power to effect huge change on November 4, and I worked very hard during the two years leading up to the election to wake up as many people as possible for that moment. And we truly succeeded, whether Obama turns out to be a great leader or not, because it's simply a fact that McCain/Palin was a national disaster in the making. Because of a wonderful aspect of our society that is still functional, i.e., that we can vote in a reasonably fair manner, we were able to literally win a war (McCain/Palin were actual enemies of regular working Americans, and we vanquished them!) in a matter of minutes, without a drop of blood being spilled.

But now that this incredibly powerful collective action is over, I feel quite powerless. One guy is saving some whales, a smart lady here in the Bay Area is saving some endangered smelt in the Delta, a guy at work is writing a blog about plug-in hybrid cars, but at this moment, America is still hemorrhaging money, still escalating its occupation of Afghanistan, still floating a huge armada off the Straights of Hormuz, ready to attack Iran at any moment, still creating 25 percent of the world's carbon emissions, still putting 6 percent of its black men in cages (prisons), etc.

Since we remain so fragmented politically, the chance for collective action is, at the moment, on hold. Most people are just freaking out about money, jobs, buying Christmas presents, etc. Since our system somewhat "worked" this November, I feel humbled, and it's a good thing for me. I no longer feel like I have to save the world. I'm a technical writer at a manufacturing company, and Obama is the leader of the free world. I'm finally content to lay back a bit and do my job, and hope that Obama will do his.

About Muntadar al-Zaidi, I simply must say something, even though Bush is well on his way out and you all must be sick of me talking about him. I personally have felt so incredibly oppressed by the Bush/Cheney government, so incredibly degraded, so very freaked out (absolutely like being stuck in a "Twilight Zone" episode without end!), that I just have to say something about Mr. al-Zaidi. He is the hero of Iraq and of all journalists everywhere, the man who threw two shoes spot-on at Bush's head and delivered one of the most eloquent speeches ever, all in approximately 4 seconds.

Here's his speech: "This is a farewell kiss, you dog," he yelled in Arabic as he threw his shoes. "This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq."

Some people asked to be removed from my mailing list when I mass e-mailed this link, which just gives an evenhanded account of the shoe-throwing incident. Since it's BBC, they gave Bush more time to talk about the meaning of the attack than our media did. I suppose some people thought it was offensive that I seemed to delight in an Iraqi throwing a shoe at our president. But it's not quite that simple. I've just been feeling incredibly oppressed by the weight of the ignorance of almost half of all American adults, who could vote for Sarah Palin with a straight face and could actually consider this moron fit to lead our great, powerful, modern, free country! I guess it was a relief for me to see someone finally act genuine, instead of going along with the charade that Bush is a real president and that somehow what he's doing makes sense.

And this shoe throwing incident expressed perfectly the feelings of several billion people on our small planet. Having been an English major (BA and MA in English), I really like symbols and metaphors, and this shoe attack, a sign of huge disrespect in the Arab world, was a perfect symbol for the outrage I feel at how my country has been abused, ripped off, and despoiled, and how we've been forced to finance the murder of a million people with our tax dollars and with the future labor of our children, who will pay back China, Japan, and Saudi Arabia the money our government borrowed to accomplish it.

According to Robert Kennedy Jr., for half the cost of the Iraq invasion and occupation, we could have built a new electricity grid, making it possible for wind farmers and solar power collectors to effectively put the power they generate onto the grid and sell it. We could have been free, in short order, of all need for oil from the Middle East. If you get a chance, download the speech linked above and put it on your MP3 player. It will blow your mind.

I heard that Muntadar al-Zaidi has a broken arm and that he's been sentenced to 2-7 years in prison. I think that since he's a national hero, he probably won't have to do all that time, and the misfortunes he's going through right now might give him some real "street cred" that will allow him later on to be a policy maker instead of a policy protester.

Take care, and happy holidays to all!

Change or No Change? 

Change or no change, that is the question. It's up to you. We must be vigilant from the very beginning of the Obama presidency. We must swear to ourselves and to one another: never again! We must never again allow ourselves to be degraded and our country to be wounded by criminal leaders. We must truly become the leaders.

Here is a starting point. People are already talking about the Clinton recycles and right-wing operatives Obama is choosing for his cabinet and advisors. Here is an evenhanded article, "This Is Change? 20 Hawks, Clintonites and Neocons to Watch for in Obama's White House," by Jeremy Scahill, that gives you a nice (but unfortunately scary) thumbnail description of the people he's already chosen. I hope and pray that Obama will be able to control these powerful people and direct their diabolical powers towards working for good, but I fear that it's totally up to us.

What do you think?

Can You Believe This Bumper Sticker?

A few days ago I saw this bumper sticker on the back of a Corolla in Dixon, California, and took a picture of it. You may ask yourself, "How could such a sticker exist?" The short article below offers a possible explanation.

America the Illiterate

By Chris Hedges

We live in two Americas. One America, now the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world. It can cope with complexity and has the intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth. The other America, which constitutes the majority, exists in a non-reality-based belief system. This America, dependent on skillfully manipulated images for information, has severed itself from the literate, print-based culture. It cannot differentiate between lies and truth. It is informed by simplistic, childish narratives and clichés. It is thrown into confusion by ambiguity, nuance and self-reflection. This divide, more than race, class or gender, more than rural or urban, believer or nonbeliever, red state or blue state, has split the country into radically distinct, unbridgeable and antagonistic entities. 

Read the rest of the article here! And please leave a comment for me by clicking the "comment" link below.