Billmon becomes a journalist (and loses his mind)

Billmon: "Let's Invade Iran

The AEI says they'll have the bomb any day now. But Kenneth Timmerman says the people love us. He was on the Daily Show.

The White House says things are going really swell in Iraq. So I guess we have enough troops for the job. Plus we've got Shock and Awe. I really like Shock and Awe. I like to watch.

This should be a cakewalk.

I wonder what's going on with that woman in Aruba . . . "

The Speech the President Should Give - New York Times

The Speech the President Should Give - New York Times: "The Speech the President Should Give By JOHN F. KERRY"

Mark A. R. Kleiman: Literalism, skepticism, and tolerance

Mark A. R. Kleiman: Literalism, skepticism, and tolerance: "All knowledge starts from a basis of tradition. Some traditions, including some religious traditions, are more receptive than others to critical discussion of important points. "

Mark A. R. Kleiman makes some good points, in defence of tolerance for religious beliefs. There's a well-established tradition, dating back to the Enlightenment, which puts scientific knowledge in opposition to religious myth. It is a product of two misunderstandings. One is initiated by the scientifically-minded, who choose to see creation myths and other myths as either primitive scientific accounts or historical narratives, and seeks to "debunk" them. The other misunderstanding is initiated by people, who regard themselves as faithful to religious teaching; they, too, regard their mythical beliefs as "literal" equivalents of scientifically established knowledge. It is a silly dispute on a certain level, because the "literalism" presupposed by both sides, is simply an inappropriate reading of myths.

Mark wants us to cut the religious fundamentalists some slack. This reflects his temperment, which does not like public protest demonstrations and nasty political fighting, in general. I think it is necessary to fight back, and viciously and cruelly (within strictly verbal political discourse), whenever religious fundamentalists try to undermine the teaching of biology (or any other subject matter) in the public schools. There's no good compromise on that, and the right thing politically, is to shame and humiliate any religious activists, who get involved in such projects. They are classic bullies, and if you do not bloody their noses, they will soon control your country. (Like they don't, to a scary degree, already.)

On the other hand, it is absolutely wrong, in my view, to exclude or denigrate religious beliefs, qua religious beliefs, in the public schools, or generally, in the public square. The Catholic Church and many other religious bodies have long since reconciled themselves to the scientific study of the world. Thomas Aquinas provided a fine philosophical foundation for a distinction between scientific knowledge and "revealed knowledge", for those, who want an elaborate philosophical foundation, and it forms part of the core doctrine of the Catholic Church, which claims the majority of the world's Christians.

So, as a matter of politics and political conflict, a certain amount of good cop / bad cop will have to go on, to defend the separation of church and state. When the religious fundamentalists cross certain lines, some of the sane among us must pick up the (metaphorical) lance, and make them bleed and suffer, for crossing the line. Kleiman, as a matter of personality, is ill-suited to play bad cop. But, he also should not be so dismissive of those, who carry on a necessary fight, even if they seem to relish it.

Now, as to Kleiman's point, quoted above, I say, rubbish! Scientific knowledge is founded on method -- critical methods. There may be said to be a tradition of critical methods, but it is the method, not the tradition, which is the foundation for that knowledge. Religious "knowlege" (systems of belief) is not founded on method, and tends to be inherently hostile to method. That does not mean that it does not have value. It may have a great deal of value. My statement is about its nature and foundation. Lets not confuse religious "knowledge" and scientific knowledge any more. It is not necessary to denigrate religious knowledge compared to scientific knowledge, if you are committed to understanding that the two are not equivalent and not in competition.

Hullabaloo

Hullabaloo: "ignoring it is the guaranteed wrong thing to do"

Mark A. R. Kleiman: The chastity of the mind

Mark A. R. Kleiman: The chastity of the mind: "Religious dogmatism often leads to a foolish insistence on implausible doctrines, but at least it has the excuse that religious dogmatists think they're transmitting and defending divinely inspired traditional knowledge. I come from the skeptical tradition, so I'm almost always at odds with religious dogmatists, but what they're doing makes sense in its own terms."

"I find dogmatic atheism harder to parse. The notion that religious people, as such, are enemies of humankind seems to me at least as silly as the analogous notion about atheists. And if you're an atheist, you don't even have the bad excuse that God told you to believe it."

Mark A. R. Kleiman reveals the part of his character, which most irritates me: the tendency to reject any sort of argument, which leads to a conclusion, at odds with everyone getting along, quietly, reasonably and with mutual respect and civility.

I submit that his assertions reveal considerable confusion over terms and logic. Dogmatism "is" an insistence on doctrine, by definition; it doesn't "lead" to it. "Religious" dogmatism is an insistence on religious doctrines. Religious doctrines "are" "knowledge", claimed to be divinely inspired. That's what makes them "religious" doctrines: the claim that particular doctrines are divinely inspired, and therefore worthy of religious faith, devotion and obediance, is what makes those doctrines, religious doctrines. (For some, but not all, religions, the claim that the doctrines are traditional, is a secondary claim, of some importance to adherents; it is also a disputable historical claim.)

I am not, personally, an atheist, and do not feel I have a brief to defend them. I do not see why Mark is unable to "parse" what he refers to as atheist dogma; perhaps, this is because I see only his side of the argument, and haven't heard from the dogmatic atheists, themselves. Are religious people enemies of humankind? I find myself unwilling to conclude, without evidence, that none are. If atheists conclude that religion is a "bad" thing, presumably they base that doctrine on the considerable accumulation of evidence, economic, clinical and historical, that that is the case. Mark's complaint would seem to be that some people are adamant about drawing conclusions from a pile of evidence, conclusions, which he doesn't find fully supported by the evidence. But, he finds more cordial, people, who insist that they do not need evidence for their assertions.

Hmmm.

Mark A. R. Kleiman: Evolution, morality, and torture

Mark A. R. Kleiman: Evolution, morality, and torture: "The red team is, I am convinced, wrong to think that believing the account of human origins in Genesis is a necessary condition for behaving well. But red-teamers aren't wrong to think of that account as providing a potentially powerful prop to moral behavior, and can't, therefore, justly be faulted as unreasonable or superstitious for objecting to attempts to kick that prop out from under their children, and other children who are their future fellow-citizens."

Being reasonable and rational is an ethical obligation, and the only way a sane person can reject evolution, is by wilfully refusing to reasonably and rationally consider the evidence. There's a basic ethical lapse at the heart of the "intelligent design/creationist" project.

The argument that religion in general or Christianity, in particular, is a powerful prop to ethical behavior fails the empirical tests of nearly 2000 years of history. More often than not, it is an excuse, a way of avoiding shame and justifying all kinds of nonsense. If you think your "faith" justifies abandoning reason, your ethical foundation is going to need way more than a prop.

Taking the long, historical view, a peculiarity of U.S. politics before 1980, was that ideology and party were largely divorced. In the 1950's and 1960's, there were liberal Democrats and liberal Republicans. In the first two decades of the 20th century, there were progressive Republicans and progressive Democrats. The State parties, the national (Presidential) parties, and the Congressional caucuses, were, at most, loose, overlapping alliances. In the 19th century, the political parties were founded on patronage, and ideology was a distant, secondary consideration for most of their members; the State parties tended to be ideologically cohesive, but not the national parties, creating a regionalism, which cross-cut philosophical outlooks. Ideological movements, like abolition, prohibitionism, populism and progressivism, the civil rights movement, evolved outside the parties; labor unions made only distant alliances with the parties. Congress, generally, overpowered all but the most vigorous and domineering Presidents, and in Congress, seniority (and in the Senate, individual privilege) dominated party loyalty in creating power.

The advent of ideologically driven Parties, at the national level, is very recent in the U.S., occurring only after 1980. The Republicans have led in this, and have had ideologically pure control of the Senate only since 2002. The final remnant of 4 "moderate" Republicans, is less than the five vote margin. The Democrats have a somewhat larger "conservative" contingent in the Senate, but, in the House, both caucuses are pure enough that the Republican majority is also a solid conservative majority. Reagan had to cultivate conservative Democrats and Clinton could still manipulate moderate Republicans, but those days are over.

Because ideological "purity" is so new, neither members of Congress nor voters, have as much experience with it, as do polities, with longer traditions. Although the U.S. looks stable, it may be in a state of profound disequilibrium, in which parties, politicians and voters change their behavioral strategies radically, seeking some kind of, as yet unrealized, Nash equilibria.

The current dominance of conservatism, nationally, is a path-dependent result of how the parties have evolved, especially in Ohio, Florida, Texas and the western Mountain States. In Florida and Texas, conservative Republicans and conservative Democrats have long competed for conservative voters; with Democrats having lost that game, the Democratic parties in those States may veer left seeking new constituencies. In Ohio, Republican control is tenuous. In the western Mountain States, Democrats may succeed with an oddball progressive, libertarian philosophy.

My bet would be that the Republicans have secured themselves a kind of authoritarian, Imperial rule, and the Republic is dead, the Congress, a eunuch, and the Constitution has become exactly the dead letter, the most conservative Republican judicial appointees want it to be.

But, my hope, however, faint, is that the Republican imperium is built on sand, and may be swept away, in the wake of the disasters their incompetence will inevitably visit upon us.

Hullabaloo

Hullabaloo: "I would submit that the pithy way to frame this is by asking the question: 'Why did we invade Iraq?'"

Exactly. The way to exploit the "revelations" in the Downing Street Memos is to build a narrative, beginning with this question.

Consider what we have done in Iraq, and work back from there, to what "our" "real" objectives must be. What objectives make sense of the force applied and the manner in which it has been applied?

Number 1 conclusion: Bush is seeking a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq, and prefers a weak, dependent Iraqi State as a means to that end.

Let's get out. Set a date certain for withdrawal and to hell with the consequences. We don't have the resources to ensure any good outcome. Screw it.

Narratives and Ownership

It is easy for partisans, who hew to their own narratives, and for news junkies, who know a lot of facts, to miss how passive and ignorant most Americans are. The "moderate" unpartisan middle 30% of the electorate do not know what a political issue is, let alone what the current political issues are. Many Americans unquestioningly accept, for example, O'Reilly's populist self-presentation, and never hear or see a bit of the criticism, which might modify their view. They can hear a lot of assertions in a narrative, and never see the contradictions, never begin to suspect the veracity of the presenter or doubt the relation between policy, as it might affect them, and the benign face, which counsels them as to what "it all" means.

Currently, as the newsmedia chew thru the Downing Street Memo(s), it is the inability to construct a convincing narrative, which is preventing ignition of a firestorm. The facts of the Iraq War -- the foolish lack of planning, the duplicity used in place of justification, the horrendous human cost, the massive financial cost, the rampant corruption, etc. -- are available from the mainstream media. But, a narrative, and a narrator, to string them all together, are unavailable to the American public. The will, which was readily apparent in Whitewater, to repeat and relentlessly pursue a narrative critical to the interests of the Republicans, is completely absent from mainstream media. The N.Y. Times, tactfully, contents itself with profiling Bush's controversial judicial nominees, AFTER they are confirmed. You cannot get tamer than that. Bush's Social Security initiatives provoke boring analyses of life expectancy, but rarely the simple, narrative explanation that Bush wants to redistribute income and risk, to benefit the very wealthy at the expense of the middle class. The great "moderate" ignorant middle would have to hear a critical narrative many times before they "get it" and even then would not know many details or understand the subtleties; but, at least, they would vote more sensibly.

Democrats will never have a favorable narrative in the news media and among the pundit class, unless they create institutions, which can and will employ liberal and progressive and genuinely populist narrators. Until then, would-be narrators will keep their voices well modulated, as they contemplate careers amongst the corporate right-wing media jungle.

Ezra Klein: When Class Has Assigned Seating

Ezra Klein: When Class Has Assigned Seating: "the bottom line assumption of American economic policy is that our economy, more or less, runs off of hard work and individual initiative. That's never been totally true, but the past 80 years have certainly seen it prove true enough for incremental policy-making. If that ends, however, we can no longer legislate as if each and every American has an excellent chance, given a bit of hard work and ingenuity, to ascend up the economic escalator. Instead, we're going to have to start legislating for a country where, through no fault of their own, individuals are stuck where they're born. And that's not really a regime I'd like to see."

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, for the past 25 years, with a brief interruption for Bill Clinton, "we" have been legislating to create a society in which people stay where they were born. That is the policy of the Republican Party, pursued at every opportunity. If you are not aware of it, it is because you and every fool you hang with in pundit-land, explains away Republican policies as "ideology" when, in fact, it is about the money.

George W. Bush is a perfect representative of the class, for which he rules: that is, he is without management competence, he went to Harvard Business School, he is the unaccomplished child of a wealthy family, and he's in charge. He's in charge, because the business executive class is the predominant source of political funds, and because the business executive class controls the entire Media. The policies, which Bush favors are not the product of any "ideology" -- they are simply the pursuit of the material interest of the corporate executive class.

I would not expect social mobility to completely disappear. That is not in the material interest of corporate executives. They need enough mobility to mobilize ambitious legions of apprentices and lackeys. But, most people will know their place. Unions have already practically vanished. A diminishing proportion of the population can afford to finish college. (In a largely unnoticed irony, a large part of Bush's electoral support comes from people, who do not finish college; people, who never go and people, who do well in college, both tend to vote Democratic.)

Under Bush the economy has continued to grow at a pretty good pace, led by rapid growth in productivity, nearly all of which has been siphoned off in corporate profits and increased income and wealth for the very, very rich. Bush is succeeding, admirably, and Ezra Klein has only just now noticed.