THANKS

Why are Americans so easy to terrify?

It took next to no effort to frighten every American into believing they were going to be killed by terrorists. That belief is statistically and logically ridiculous. There's no guarantee a terrorist won't single you out, but it isn't very likely if you live in Keokuk.

I blame the news media, both local and national. It is their business to terrify us - because if we're scared we're going to keep watching to find out when it's going to hit. Germs, foreigners, Antichrists, gays - everyone's after us. It's amazing we manage to get any sleep.

Fighting fears (defining "fighting" loosely, to include things like putting magnetic ribbons on the back of your car) gives us a fleeting sense of valued accomplishment. Then we go out and buy something to celebrate. But when the fear is vanquished we risk falling back into wondering what the hell is the point of life. Thankfully, the media gives us another fear to fight. Keeps us busy our whole lives long. Keeps us a little excited, too. There's nothing like a shot of adrenalin to make you feel you're actually doing something.

I suppose we should be grateful to the media. Thanks.

WELCOME TO REALITY

On Friday's Real Time, Andrew Sullivan proved to me that he - like Arianna Huffington before him - is making the transition from conservative nincompoop to a man with a pragmatic view of the world.

He attacked Hillary Clinton for saying nothing about global warming. I suspect she hasn't said much because it's Gore's thing and she doesn't want to compete on his ground. This is good to see in a politician but not in a potential president. Wesley Clarke defended her - I like him, but it seems he's now staunchly Hillararian - by attacking Bush. Sullivan pointed out that this is what Hillararians do, to avoid having to say what she would do. He said she was not going to do anything about warming OR the war. That may be an overstatement, but she is not going to do anything that will keep her from re-election or piss off her big-money clientele.

When Maher brought up Hillary's vote on Leiberman-Kyl, Clarke said it was a fact that the Revolutionary Guard is a terrorist organization. Maher pressed Clarke to explain what a "terrorist" was - and Clarke ducked the question. In fact, he said Bush didn't need Leiberman Kyl to start a war. That's literally true, of course, but it completely ignores the purpose of Leiberman Kyl. Then he defended Hillary's attack on Obama for saying he would meet with Ahmedinijad.

We have to assume that Clarke's views are Hillary's too - that war is an option if diplomacy doesn't work. Considering that diplomacy is in the hands of people who can't - or won't - work it, which Hillary certainly knows, I will be highly surprised if when push comes to shove she doesn't support a war. Whether she will admit that openly remains to be seen; but I think she's a Bush kind of sneak, so we won't see her do what really matters. The main point is that she has signed on to the underlying false premise that Iran is a threat to America. So how does she differ from Bush? She's a whole lot brighter.

Getting back to Sullivan - he then said that Clarke had written recently that Hillary's vote for Leiberman-Kyl was standing up to the Bush administration. That is blatant nonsense I hate to hear out of Clarke's mouth (or pen), because I've viewed him as honest and thoughtful til now, and this seems like Hillaryspeak - which does not, in principle, seem to differ much from Bushspeak. Sullivan called her "Cheney in a pantssuit," and I think he's right (Martina Navratilova, the other guest, thought this was outrageous.)

More Sullivan: "There is no principle she won't sacrifice." Sullivan confessed that he had been wrong about Bush in 2000, when he voted for him. When Maher said it didn't take much even back then to realize that Bush was going in over his head, Sullivan asked why Maher wasn't pleased to have a convert move over to his side, and why they couldn't all work together to accomplish their common goals. To which Clarke replied that it wasn't easy to do when Sullivan was spouting the Republican attack line on Hillary.

I have lived through eight years of logic like Clarke/Hillary's. I don't want to live through any more of it. So I forgive Andrew Sullivan, and I welcome him to reality.

MY GOD!

Egypt announces its intention to build nuclear reactors, and the US is overjoyed!

Does this make any sense?

Egypt is a step away from Islamic revolution. Israel has to feel threatened. Egypt is a dictatorship which tortures people. What the hell is going on here?

What's going on is that the sunnis have decided they need the bomb to counter the shia's Iranian bomb - as if there was one. But sunnis already have the bomb - Pakistan's. Hasn't anyone in this stupid government figured this out?

The State Department says it's okay for Egypt to build a bomb as long as they adhere to the nonproliferatin treaty and IAEA guidelines. Iran has done both.

Now Jordan, Turkey and several Gulf countries are interested in reactors. I guess it's okay if they let American companies build them.

This is so devious and so short-sighted that I'm afraid the Bush administration has lost its senses completely. Not that this is news.

My God.

IMMUNITY?

The State Department has apparently promised immunity from prosecution to some Blackwater personnel in exchange for ... what?

This administration is determined that no one associated with it shall ever pay a criminal price for breaking the law. They have immunized everyone except themselves, and I'm sure they will get around to that.

But how does the State Department get off granting immunity? As I understand the concept, that is a prosecutorial tool. Only persons charged with pursuing criminal penalties have the authority to grant immunity. The Justice Department can do it. The State Department cannot. Under normal circumstances, I would have to advise Blackwater people they have no protection from prosecution. But with the courts suborned the way they are, I'm sure the problem can be fixed by judicially giving another Executive agency power it's never had.

SURPRISE?

The New York Times reports the Afghani warlords are hoarding weapons. The warlords say they're afraid of the Taliban.

Why is this a story?

Afghani warlords have been hoarding weapons for at least a hundred years, and probably longer. They hoard weapons to defend themselves, and they hoard weapons to attack the other guy. The Times says this may herald a return to internecine warfare. Please tell me: how can you be surprised by this?

The fact that this shocking news appears in a major story proves not only that the press doesn't understand history, but also that it doesn't understand human nature. These are the sorts of stories that terrify me - not because of the threat they report but because of the ignorance and naivete they show in what is supposed to be the world's most sophisticated nation.

NO ONE

I don't think there is a country in the world that likes the idea of a nuclear Iran, and I don't think there is a country in the world which would be displeased if the US takes the consequences of an attack. What could those consequences possibly be?

China would be delighted if Iran refused to sell oil to the US. Iran could become China's guaranteed source - if it is not already. Sunni states would be willing to take up the slack for the US - and it could be argued that the reason Bush wants to stay in Iraq is to get his own guaranteed oil source to replace the Iranian. Russia will likely continue to sell oil to anyone. There will not be major oil consequences to the US.

Terrorism in the US? Al-Qaeda's major achievement so far has been to force the US to spend two trillion dollars needlessly, on their own investment of $500,000. Al-Qaeda has not been able to mount a new attack in the US. I don't think Iran has any more capability.

Israel seems to be the nation most at risk, with Hezbollah and maybe Hamas coming under Iranian control. But if Israel has cut a deal with the Sunnis - for the moment - they will not face a widespread reactive war, and they think they can deal with Hezbollah, or at least that Hezbollah is a lesser threat than a nuclear Iran.

This strategy may backfire. If Hezbollah has any significant success on Israeli territory, sunni states may launch their own attacks. Hezbollah has little chance of controlling what was formerly Israel and is now a sunni Palestinian state. Sunni neighbors may want to make sure their influence with Palestinians remains paramount, or just to share in the spoils of jihad.

Europe is secondarily at risk, since terror attacks can be easily mounted against them. They're not talking about Iran, so I have to conclude they do not care.

No one is going to oppose an American attack on Iran.

RE-EXAMINATION

As I said, there will be an attack on Iran. Whether Israel or the US initiates it depends on how many targets they want to take out. If there are too many targets for Israeli capability, the US could go in first or let Israel go in first and then join in after any retaliation against Israel. But remember, there will be no Sunni retaliation. It would be better for US policy if the US went in first.

If Congress refuses to specifically authorize an attack on Iran, Bush will use his "inherent powers" as confirmed by Leiberman-Kyl. Hillary Clinton was the only Democratic presidential candidate to vote for Leiberman-Kyl. Since the track being followed is identical to the pre-Iraq track, Hillary had to know what her vote meant. Which raises the question: which side of America is she on?

The answer to that lies in an examination of her donor list and a re-examination of the Bill Clinton presidency. I hope to get around to the second of those.

PECULIAR

Simple alleged scenario: Syria is building a nuclear reactor with the help of North Korea. Israel bombs it. Syria carts away all the debris so inspectors don't find confirmation of the attempt to build the reactor.

But something stinks with this explanation. Bush has threatened Iraq, North Korea and Iran, called them the Axis of Evil, because they were alleged to be developing nuclear weapons. Yet even now Bush has said nothing about Syria. Not only that, Syria has not complained about the raid, nor has any Arab country. This is highly peculiar. Why would it be?

Try this on for size. There was no reactor.

Sunni countries do not want a Shia bomb. That would include Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and ... Syria. So - Syria puts up a building, Israel hits it and Syria carts away all the debris so inspectors don't find out that it was not a reactor.

Why? To demonstrate to Iran that Israel has the capability to take out their nuclear facilities, and that nobody is going to protest if Israel does.

Keep in mind that one of the countries the US rendered alleged al Qaeda to for torture was ... Syria.

This demonstration is going to fail. It will not deter Iran. And then the US-Sunni-Israeli Axis will support an attack.

FOUR SAFE BETS

(1)The administration and the media are explaining the recently imposed sanctions against Iran as America's attempt to avoid the necessity of "having to" attack Iran. The questions of whether there is any reason to attack Iran, or whether it's a good idea to attack Iran, are dispensed with. This game is over. The sanctions will not work - no one expects them to. In a globalized world unilateral sanctions can't possibly work. China, Russia and India are assuring Iran that they will take up any slack.

We are reliving the buildup to the Iraq war. The US will attack Iran before the end of Bush's term.

(2) The Democratic presidential candidates will not take a firm stand against attacking Iran, thereby blowing any chance of pinning the Iraq war on the Republicans.

(3) Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. She will not win the general election. That's why I am so focused on the Congressional races, which provide us the only hope of guaranteed survival.

(4) American policy will continue to be the distribution of tax income to wealthy corporations.

You know, people keep bemoaning the fact that we're spending two trillion on the Iraq war, instead of, for example, on children's health care. They point out corruptions. They point out that we're saddling our children with huge debt. What they don't point out is why this is happening - that is, exactly who is getting this money.

We are not just throwing cash into the breeze. This is not an abstract issue of wasted money. The cash is directed at warmaking corporations. If there were no corruption, the outcome would be the same. It has been this way in America since the Civil War. There's nothing new here, folks. This is who we are.

FATWAS

Something struck me today.

When the Bush administration wanted to justify warrantless wiretapping (not to the country, which it did not feel beholden to, but to operatives in the executive branch who were uncomfortable about doing it), it relied on the opinion of John Yoo. And when it wanted to justify torture (for the same reason) it relied on the opinion of Albert Gonzalez.

These opinions were fatwas. They were the same kind of justifying documents as those that bin Laden relied on to convince his people that they could kill civilians.

Fascinating, huh?

There is another similarity between the Bush and bin Laden administrations. Muslims who were not invested in perverting Islam said that bin Laden had no authority to issue fatwas - because fatwas were to be issued only by religious scholars who had wide respect within the Islamic community. Bin Laden didn't have those credentials - he may have been widely respected, but not as a scholar. In other times, his fatwas would have been disregarded.

So what wide respect did Alberto Gonzalez - a punk Texas lawyer - command? What credentials in constitutional scholarship did he have? John Yoo was somewhat better known and somewhat more of a scholar - but again, how wide was respect for him?

No. Like bin Laden, Bush took his authorization from a formal but empty exercise. And I have heard no one ask the question: who were these guys to issue pronouncements that became the law of the land without any challenge or discussion or debate?

That's how a dictatorship works.

ONE DOWN

David Brooks, former CEO of the company which made body armor for our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan was arrested at dawn and charged with securities fraud, insider trading, obstruction of justice and tax evasion. The worst thing he allegedly did was artificially inflate the company's stock and then sell it before it dropped due to reports of the bad quality of the body armor. For %186 mil.

One down. Now let's check on the other million Iraqi contractors.

ADDENDUM TO NO MESSAGE

Democrats might also want to describe how Republicans define themselves:

We're taking care of ourselves and we don't give a shit about you.

THE CLASH

I can't decide whether the Bush regime intends to attack Iran or merely to pressure it.

The home front propaganda, the Israeli attack on Syria and the prominent presence of Joe Leiberman in the "hit Iran" talk push could be seen as proof of either. Rice's recent impatience with the Palestinians suggests that Bush is prepared to let Israel get aggressive there (although how they could be more aggressive than they have been escapes me) and, concomitantly, with Iran.

The Bush regime may have been fooled by its success with North Korea into thinking they can get Iran to back down. With Islam ratcheting up in response to us, that is very unlikely. The impending end of the Bush regime means that if pressure doesn't work, and if we have the capability to do it, Bush will probably attack. If there is not a "clash of civilizations" now, the neocons want to be sure there is one by the time Bush leaves, freeing both us and Israel to do whatever is "necessary." Never mind the religious reasons behind such an attack.

Whether the Bush intent is pressure or war, war is the likely outcome, either through escalation of anger and rhetoric or the kind of misjudgments that started World War I. And I believe Bush's intent is to trap the next president into continuing that "clash" until ... until what? Until one side or the other wins. And history is not on our side on this one.

GREEK FIRE

I have not heard anyone point out that what's happening in California happened in Greece just two months ago.

Cannot be coincidence. What should we be learning?

NO MESSAGE OTHER THAN THIS

I just listened to Rahm Emanuel drivel on Chris Matthews on why the Congressional Democrats' poll numbers are so low, without ever answering the question. These guys, they try to stay on message but so many of them don't know what the message is. On top of that, they get impatient if you don't get the message - which they make impossible to get. They've watched Republicans do this to perfection for thirty years. Anyone who can't fix a message and stick to it does not deserve to be called a professional politician.

The message is very clear: it's up to you Americans to get what you want. This is what we've tried to do (name a few). We don't have enough Democrats in Congress to override a veto or get past obstructive Republicans. If you want us to be successful, give us more Democrats in Congress.

Very simple. If you say it over and over, people will understand it. And it shifts the focus from now to next November, and it hammers Republicans all the way til then.

Considering that Giuliani can beat Clinton, it seems to me the Congressional races are more important than the presidential. And it seems to me that another Republican president, dealing with the Congress we now have, will be able to do as much damage as Bush did.

No Democrat should be allowed to speak in public on any message other than this.

MRSA VETO?

Bush has threatened to veto a bipartisan bill that would provide $5 mil in emergency funding to combat a MRSA epidemic which has spread out of hospitals and nursing homes and into communities, killing 19,000 people a year.

Why would anyone veto a bill like that? Only if you didn't want the federal government doing anything at all. The veto threat is consistent with the entire Bush policy, which I have been laying out here lately. I only hope Americans understand the message and throw all Republicans out in 2008.

ANOTHER WAR COMING

Condoleeza Rice says that a two-state solution in the Middle East is in jeopardy and said there is a narrow window of opportunity to accomplish it.

Really? What's closing the window? She didn't quite say. The closest she got was blaming Iran for supporting Hamas militants.

She also didn't say what she was going to do about it.

Since the negotiations are between Abbas and the Israelis, and Hamas has been excluded, I really don't see the point of putting pressure on Abbas, if that's what Rice intended by the comment. Without Hamas involvement in the discussions, there's no real hope of peace. And since Rice and the Israelis have excluded Hamas, it's hard to believe either of them really want peace.

So I have to conclude that what Rice was saying was that Bush has no patience for the peace process, and probably that Bush is going to attack Hamas - either before or after he attacked Iran.

Let's not forget that, according to Bush's beliefs, Gaza has to be part of Israel if Jesus is going to come back. Leaving Hamas out of discussions means that the US (more than Israel, which has had no success defeating Hamas) must attack Gaza before Bush leaves office. And that is the time frame that is running out.

TEETH

China has launched a moon orbiter. So has Japan, and India is working on one.

Not only that, China has put men in space twice, in 2003 and 2005. I don't remember seeing a word about that in US news.

The real significance is that, with the ability to orbit satellites, Asian nations can move into direct competition with US and European dominance of satellite-based technologies.

Our day of absolute dominance is coming to an end. The only overwhelming power we retain is military. I guess that's why Bush keeps trying to use it. But we had better get used to the idea that the time is running short when the US can do whatever it wants in, and to, the world. If Bush is not our last megalomaniacal president, the next one is going to find him- or herself gnashing his or her teeth.

BORES

A brilliant post by georgia10 at dailykos points out, among other cogencies, that the conservative strategy for dealing with issues where public opinion is decidedly against them is to attack a person or persons identified with the other side of that issue. They take the focus off the concerns behind the issue and direct attention to the foibles - real or imaginary - of the opposition messenger.

It's a brilliant strategy in these times. The public has - or has had, up to now - much more interest in individuals - let's call them celebrities - than in issues. They're fascinated by personalities - good and bad. They love to see people who look like angels taken down a peg. And conservatives are extraordinarily effective at coming up with a point on which the most impervious can be skewered - Kerry, of course, comes to mind - and then enlisting their rankers to focus unrelentingly on pushing that point in deeper.

The success of the approach, I believe, is based on the fact that, these days, all life seems to be a movie. Anything we don't know personally is viewed as a filmed drama; it has no other reality if it doesn't affect us. Actually, it's even worse than that, because the idea that the little lives of us all are entertainment fodder (reality TV) begins to mean, not that reality shows are constructed drama too (which they are), but that our lives are as much a movie as "Elizabeth the Queen." If we then look at public figures in the same way we look at ourselves, and knowing our own foibles and not being happy about them, we're delighted to pull the guts out of people who are demanding respect from us and to dwell on their foibles as worse than ours.

I guess the sum and substance is that if you think everyone else is really like you, you're devaluing real talent and/or dedication - not to mention deluding yourself. So Al Gore may be a genius, but he's a bore. We're bores too, and no one listens to us - so why should we think well of and listen to him?

SUZYN

Is the New York Yankees' radio announcer really named Suzyn Waldman?

Did her mother name her that?

With all due respect, when you're on the radio "Suzyn" still sounds like "Susan" and "Susan Waldman" sounds like a nice Jewish girl from the West Side. Or maybe the East Side. This name change will only get attention from people who read. Now, if she could sing, and she changed her name to just "Suzyn" I bet people would remember it. But I don't think she can sing.

It's a half measure, girl, it's pathetic, it's a measure of just how far you're prepared to go to to mark yourself as a truly hip individual. Not so far that your mother won't recognize your name when you call.

I would have gone with "Shu Chin" Waldman. Implying that my father was Chinese, which is really hip these days. And he had weak chromosomes and that's why my eyes aren't slanty. But I'm a product of the world's two brightest races. I am an uber sportscaster.

BIDEN

If the Democratic race gets close during the primaries, I'll think about who I'll vote for when the Florida primary rolls around. If it doesn't, I'm going to vote for Joe Biden - because he's the only guy out there who's telling the truth about what he believes with whom I agree on almost everything. (Ron Paul is also telling the truth, but except on the Iraq war what he believes scares the shit out of me. Kucinich is telling the truth, but I don't think he has the knowledge base or pragmatic sensibility Biden has. Gravel is telling the truth, but I have no idea who he is.)

He won't be president, but I'll sleep well.

ITALY

Re his veto of SCHIP, Nancy Pelosi says Bush doesn't get it.

No, Nancy, he gets it. You don't get it.

Bush will oppose any bill which expands the function of government. He will always have enough votes in Congress to sustain his veto.

Stop telling us he doesn't get it. Start telling us what he's doing and why he's doing it - because that's about all you can do. The investigations are great, keep it up, and of course keep pressing legislation - but be prepared when you lose, which you will, to use the opportunity as a great propaganda moment. Tell us the truth - this veto is not about SCHIP, but about drowning the government in the bathtub. If Americans don't want the government drowned, they'll get the message and you'll score big points for the next election. If they do want it drowned, let me know when you move to Italy.

MOUTH BREATHER

So Congressional Democrats send Rush Limbaugh a letter condemning him for calling an anti-war veteran a "phoney soldier." And Limbaugh puts it up on eBay, and it goes for $2 mil, which Limbaugh had promised ahead of time to match.

The press calls this a PR triumph for Limbaugh. And certainly the Democrats should know better than to try to tangle with Limbaugh on his home ground. He is the master of this kind of demagoguery. They should not even have attempted it.

According to the AP, the winning bid came from the Maryland-based Eugene B. Casey Foundation, which lists assets of $294 million in its latest IRS filing and was established by Casey, a real estate developer, and is run primarily by his widow, Betty.

The foundation's largest grants during its last fiscal year included $4.9 million to a Bethesda, Md., hospital, $3.5 million to the Washington Opera and $850,000 to the American Arts Network. It also gave $110,000 to the Salvation Army and $100,000 grants to a Washington public television and radio station and Salute America's Heroes, which helps wounded soldiers. It also gave $6,900 to Barack Obama.

It is possible Betty Casey really did this to help the Marines, but it's equally possible this was a setup. Either Betty Casey played the game for Limbaugh, or, as is more likely, somebody played Betty (who, from other stories I've read, is perhaps a bit eccentric.) I don't know the lady, so I can't come to a conclusion. But other people do - and what do they think?

This story is all over conservative newspapers and blogs, but I have yet to hear or see anyone on the left suggest that what I just said be checked up on. Probably wisely, because if they catch Limbaugh in something here he'll just trump them again.

Anyway, here's some interesting stuff on Betty's deceased husband. And their son. To believe that something odd isn't happening here ... well, these days my jaw has been dropping so often and so far that I've had to become a mouth breather.

I guess the most interesting thing to me is the level of Republican joy this has generated. They do take immense pleasure in showing Democrats up for fools; in fact, the pleasure they seem to get from a little thing like this is as much as they got when they beat Kerry. It is, for them, all out war and every victory is to be celebrated. Too bad the Democratic politicians don't feel that way.

HOW TO VOTE

Tornadoes in Indiana, Michigan and Kentucky. Ya think maybe the politicians from those states might be changing their mind about whether to support national catastrophic windstorm coverage?

Nah. The problem is hurricanes, and they're only in Florida, and those stupid people don't even know how to vote.

WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT

It is important to understand that Fox News is the embodiment of the government/media collaboration envisioned by George Orwell in "1984".

So far its audience is limited. But every evil propaganda technique is being perfected there. Shouldn't we be concerned when other networks are bought by companies in cahoots with the corporatists?

It is worse than we thought.

WHO IS ERIK PRINCE

The following is from Wikipedia:

Erik D. Prince (born June 6, 1969 in Holland, Michigan) is the founder and sole owner of the private military company Blackwater USA. He was born into a wealthy and powerful family, the youngest child of Edgar D. Prince, founder of the Prince Corporation, an automobile parts company. He was an intern in the White House under President George H. W. Bush and subsequently criticized that administration's policies to the Grand Rapids Press, saying: "I saw a lot of things I didn't agree with -- homosexual groups being invited in, the budget agreement, the Clean Air Act, those kinds of bills." He also served as an intern to California Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher.

After college, he earned a commission in the United States Navy after joining in 1992 via Officer Candidate School. He served as a Navy SEAL officer on deployments to Haiti, the Middle East and the Mediterranean, including Bosnia. When his father, Edgar, unexpectedly died in 1995, Prince ended his Navy service prematurely. Prince's mother, Elsa, sold the family's automobile parts company for $1.3 billion to Johnson Controls, Inc. Now a billionaire, Prince moved to Virginia Beach and personally financed the formation of Blackwater USA in 1997.

Prince's father founded the Family Research Council with Gary Bauer. Prince is the brother of Betsy DeVos, a former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party and wife of former Alticor (Amway) president and Gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos[10], son of Richard DeVos, Sr. (listed by Forbes in 2007 as one of the world's richest men, with a net worth of $2.4 billion).

Prince serves as vice president of the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation, which gives money to organizations of the Christian right. Salon reports that "between July 2003 and July 2006, the foundation gave at least $670,000 to the Family Research Council and $531,000 to Focus on the Family"[14] headed by James Dobson. He also serves as a board member of Christian Freedom International, a non-profit group with a mission of helping "Christians who are persecuted for their faith in Jesus Christ."

So - Prince is not only a shock capitalist; he is also a strong believer in and supporter of the most radical elements of the Christian right.

Now - when the Iraq war is over, in what way do you think Prince is going to use his private army?

We are in so much trouble.

COULTER AND THE JEWS

A word about Ann Coulter and the Jews:

To those who now believe she is anti-semitic because of recent comments, let me say:

Coulter is a throwback to an earlier generation of Irish for whom Jew-hating was bottle-fed. I suppose that makes her a good conservative, because she has not grown more civilized with some of the rest of us. Everything this nation learned from the 30's to the 60's plays no part in the way she thinks and behaves. She'll never change, because she gets paid good money to be who she is, and she wouldn't recognize her attitude as a problem even if it was one.

Antisemitic? Replace the word "liberal" in any of her speeches or books with the word "Jew" and see how close the rhetoric gets to Nazi Germany's. And don't forget: until the recent malignancy in the community, leftist politics was fed to most Jews through the breast and the bottle. A lot of Jews are liberal (used to be "most") and a lot of liberals are Jews. You know what she's talking about.

WHO WON THE CIVIL WAR?

"The Shock Doctrine" has gone a long way toward exposing the truth of the times we live in. But there is one book that hasn't been written yet - or, if it has, it has not been publicized. That is the book about how the South now runs America, how the South belatedly won the Civil War, and what that means for the way we live.

Maybe I'll play with that.

ADS

If I were Howard Dean and the DNC had a billion dollars, I'd take the money and move to the Cote d'Azur. No, just kidding. Here's what I would really do:

Every time Congressional Republicans blocked a law that people wanted, or Bush vetoed it, I'd hit the airwaves in all areas represented by Republicans with a spot pointing that out. I wouldn't distinguish between Republicans who voted with Democrats and those who didn't. I would target them all, increasing the pool of possibilities.

As we got closer to the election, I'd add some language, like: We've tried working with the Republicans, but they won't cooperate. Unfortunately, it seems that the only way we're going to be able to do what needs to be done for this country is to replace the Republicans now in Congress so we have a majority which can override the vetoes of whoever the next president is.

I.e., this is not a political pitch and it's not tied to the presidential race. It's simply a plan to restore our democracy.

Actually we don't need the DNC to do this. Any group of rich progressives could manage it. And I would get it started right away - before Republican attack ads started showing up. I would use the SCHIP fiasco now. Others will follow soon.

MUKASEY

In confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, AG nominee Michael Mukasey did not answer questions about his views on Bush policies, although he did say he would depoliticize the Justice Department.

Democrats say he is certain of confirmation.

The last guy who played this game was Samuel Alito, and look what we got. Where Supreme Court justices are concerned, there are legitimate arguments that they should not identify their positions on issues before having to rule on cases involving them. But Mukasey is not up for a judgeship. There is absolutely no reason why he should not have answered every question asked - and when he didn't, Democrats should have dismissed him out of hand.

Don't you begin to think that the people running our government don't really understand how to do their job? How do you maintain a democracy with people like that?

DEATH IS DEATH

The Turkish parliament has voted 507-19 to give their prime minister the right to attack in Iraq.

Geez, that sounds awfully familiar.

They say they are going to go after the Kurdistan Workers Party, which has been trying to reunite the Kurds in Iraq with those in Turkey in an independent state. They say that party, the PKK, has been raiding Turkey out of Iraq - which is probably true. But will Turkey limit its actions to cross-border raiders, or will it try to take out the nascent Kurdish state in Iraq? Wanna bet they go for regime change? It's the disease of the moment.

The US and the EU have named the PKK as a terrorist organization. Seems to me, at least insofar as motives are concerned, the PKK is a group with legitimate political aspirations - not ones Turkey likes, to be sure. Are they denominated terrorists because they want to change the current status quo? If so, isn't Bush a terrorist?

It's the use of terror tactics - not its motivations - that makes an organization terrorist. And, incidentally, those organizations labeled terrorist are those without the money to mount "normal" military campaigns - that is, army against army, war as it has been defined in the West since I don't know when. No matter how you conduct yourself, if you have tanks and war planes you are not a terrorist organization - unless Bush says you are. The response of the poorer states is: you drop a few bombs or a lot of bombs and you get the results you want. We don't have airplanes. We use the methods available. And don't tell us the distinction revolves around targeting civilians - you've done that plenty of times.

They're right, of course. But the moral to be drawn from all of this is: killing is killing, murder is murder and death is death. It doesn't matter what you call the people doing it.

TRAGEDY

NBC Nightly News called it a "tragedy." Ellen DeGeneres was hysterical on her show. At first, when I heard it was about a dog, I thought someone had tortured her pet.

But no. She had adopted a dog; it didn't get along with her cat, so she gave it to her hairdresser. The adoption agency came and took the dog back. And the hairdresser's kids were devastated.

I understand the adoption agency's concern. They check out the homes they place dogs in, to make sure they go to good families. They have no idea who, or what kind of person, the hairdresser was.

But ... SCOPE, please! SCALE! Since when have we decided that no one should be disappointed, no one should be upset, no one should be "heartbroken?" This is a national story? Give me a break. Only if we are all completely divorced from reality.

Someone got killed in Iraq today. That is a tragedy.

AMORAL TADPOLES

The AP reports a new study run out of Harvard Medical School which found that nearly 2/3's of teachers at medical schools have financial connections with drug companies, whether as paid consultants or as occasional free meal diners. The conclusion of the study was that drug companies "are involved in every aspect of medical care." The concern is that with this "ethic" in the med schools, students are going to conclude that it's perfectly OK. And they're going to be prescribing stuff the patient doesn't need or shouldn't get.

Going to be?

I've been trying to figure out when docs - who used to be proud of their ethics when my dad was practicing years ago (although it was not their ethics they discussed at the country club) - decided that money was more important than caring for patients properly. Not all docs, I'm sure - a lot of them actually can care for patients properly and still make a ton, and some of them are focused on America's health. But 2/3's with obvious conflicts of interest in the med schools?

But hey, he says, I'm an orthopod, not Halliburton. I'm a pipsqueak corrupter, an amoral tadpole. Just like all the rest of youse.

My longterm point precisely.

BLIP

The AP reports that after so many Chinese-made toys have been recalled, business for American companies who make their toys in the U.S. is booming. Sales are up as much as five-fold, and more workers are being hired. One has to assume their prices aren't terribly out of line with Chinese goods.

Is there maybe a lesson here about what happens when you don't globalize?

Nah. Toys "R" Us says it's a temporary blip.

ONSLAUGHT OF THE HUNS

Worldwide pirate attacks went up 14% this year, many in the waters off Somalia and Nigeria, and Indonesia had the largest number of them.

Surprised?

OK, the barbarians are at the gates. But they're also inside them.

Are we Rome at the end of its empire? Question is: who's Rome? We seem to have a lot of barbarian citizens right here. We can't count them as part of Rome. Is Rome the progressive remnant of our years of democracy? Is Rome the "Americans" who are robbing us blind?

If it's the latter, here's my bet: Rome moves to the Cayman Islands (the equivalent of Byzantium) and the rest of us fall under the onslaught of the Huns.

THE MEMORY HOLE

Interesting.

The House has passed a shield law for journalists protecting their sources. The vote was 398 to 21. Bush has threatened to veto it as it could (he says) "completely eviscerate the federal government's ability to investigate acts of terrorism."

The House also passed a resolution disapproving of State Department concealment of information about Iraqi government corruption and condemned the rampant classification of documents to cover up abuses by private contractors. The vote was again 398-21.

What's going on with Republicans? Are they actually beginning to think the Constitution is more important than the "War on Terror"? Or do they think that's what voter's think - even in safe Republican districts? (Not so sure they're right about that.)

Anyway, I welcome the change - for as long as it lasts.

Less welcome:

Democrats are backing off support for the House bill labeling the Armenian genocide for what it is because Bush - and the Turks - have said it could damage relationships with Turkey, which would interfere with the Iraq war since more than half of the cargo going into Iraq and Afghanistan goes through Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. Turkey has made some pretty specific threats as to what it would do if this resolution passed - including unleashing its troops on Kurds, perhaps even in Iraq.

I don't know how this issue of recognition of the Armenian genocide got to be so important right about now. But once it was proposed, to back off because of Turkish threats seems craven to me. Here's a president - ours - who has said he will never do anything because another government wants him to, and now ... well, but of course, it would interfere with HIS WAR.

There are signs that Turkey may go Islamist. It could use this vote as an excuse - but I don't think it will. That this matters to Turkey at all tends, in my opinion, to show that the country suffers from the fairly common Muslim ailments of denying truth and then taking umbrage when somebody points it out. This is not the sort of pressure we should be bowing to. What if, after World War II, the West Germans had said that if we publicized the Holocaust they would sign up with the Russians? Would we have allowed the Holocaust to go down the memory hole?

The Germans didn't do that, nor did we. So how has the world changed so that it's now OK to revise the truths of history to avoid a little problem down the line?

EGO TANK

A new IKEA opened down here in South Florida this week, and ten women lined up in front of the store two days before the opening. One of them, at least, was honest about why she did it - or honest within her understanding of it. She said: "It's something to do to pass the time."

There are enough store openings around here to keep her busy every day - if it's just keeping busy that she needs. But IKEA is a trendy brand, and a lot of us want to be the first to own the trendy thing. Witness the iPhone line-ups not long ago.

It's sad that she needs something like that to fill up her life. But it's even sadder that people think so little of themselves that they are desperate to have a gadget to boost their social status.

Personally, I'm going to wait at least a couple days more before I head down to IKEA to fill up my ego tank.

WHAT WAS IT?

Wow! Today another convicted West Palm Beach City Commissioner serving a sentence for corruption in a maximum-security federal detention center wants early release so he can attend the funeral of his father's ashes.

Honestly, I do get it. Why should he pay a price when half of America is corrupt?

What was it that happened to Sodom and Gomorrah?

JUSTICE

A West Palm Beach City Commissioner sentenced to ten months for tax evasion is asking for release after just three months - because he's got restless leg syndrome.

Wow! I'll bet when the pharmaceutical companies invented this disease they never figured it would come in useful in this way.

The Commissioner also claims he needs to go home to take care of his alcoholic mother and because the prison's post-secondary education facilities aren't up to snuff. And because people will lose their jobs if he can't run his Rotelli's Pizza and Pasta franchise.

I like the one about post-secondary education. I guess the prison's ethics courses leave something to be desired.

You know, these days it's just not fair to make somebody pay for his crime - unless he's a black guy who stole a bag of donuts. Unfortunately for the Commissioner, he's already screwed up his options - he didn't get the jury that let seven Florida boot camp guards go free of charges they murdered a 14-year old boy by suffocating him with their hands over his mouth while they forced ammonia fumes into his nose. Verdict: not guilty. And it wasn't even L.A.

LOW EXPECTATIONS

A Vatican official was caught on hidden camera making advances to a young man. His excuse? He is not gay. He's a psychoanalyst. It was his job to go on gay chat rooms and meet gay men in order to find out about "those who damage the image of the Church with homosexual activity."

Right. It's Larry Craig disease.

Didn't religions use to have a rule about not lying?

Do religions pay a price for hypocrisy? Actually, that question should be: in the 21st century, does anyone pay a price for hypocrisy?

By the way, in order to bring those with scruples up to speed in the modern day, I will be teaching a course at the New School on "How To Be A Hypocrite." We do not expect a lot of people will need to sign up.

IN LINE

According to the New York Times, Bush has not formally filled a lot of high-end positions in Federal agencies. That should not surprise anyone. Why would they fill jobs they intend to outsource? If no one's in the position, it's easy to say that government can't do the work, so a private contractor should.

In the interim before that plan is finalized, Bush is running these agencies with "acting" officials. This gets around any obligation to have Congressional hearings on appointments. He can do that because in 1998 the Vacancies Reform Act gave acting officials 210 days of full legal authority which could be doubled once their names are forwarded to the Senate. An acting official - who may be someone Congress would absolutely refuse to confirm - could hold the office for 420 days. That's long enough to wreck anything.

Excuse me - where was Bill Clinton when this awful law was passed? Don't tell me he was too busy protecting his political life; it's America's political life he should have been protecting.

And that's the rap against Hillary too - all self-interest. These days I begin to suspect that Bill Clinton seduced me and blinded me to what he was actually doing. Move over, Monica - I'm right behind you in line.

BACK BURNER

Last month, Israel bombed what is supposed to have been a partially constructed nuclear reactor in Syria. Syria has done nothing in response. If it has said anything about it, that has not been reported in the U.S.

I wonder if, when and how Syria will react. Keep this one on the back burner.

IGNORANT

Two stories in the Palm Beach Post this morning:

1)There is a debate going on at Fort Leavenworth over whether the Joint Chiefs or Rumsfeld are more responsible for "mistakes" in Iraq. Sorry, guys, but Rumsfeld didn't make mistakes in Iraq. When he sent in too few soldiers he opened the door for the huge private contractors who came in and took over the war. That was Rumsfeld's plan, not a "mistake." As for the Joint Chiefs, the question becomes: did they understand Rumsfeld's plan? If they didn't, they were negligent. If they did, and they facilitated it, they contributed to the degradation of the US government. But who cares what they did? It was irrelevant.

2) A black woman in South Carolina can't decide to vote for Hillary because she's a woman or Obama because he's black. Apparently she is not giving any consideration to voting for the best potential president.

We remain ignorant. Oh, well.

YOUNG MAN'S GAME

Ever since Reagan was elected, I've been railing against the American people for allowing themselves to be easily distracted from keeping their attention on what really mattered to them. The distractions I meant were things like Britney Spears, Angelina Jolie, American Idol. So it saddens me greatly to have to admit that I have allowed myself to be distracted, too - only by other diversions.

Take, for example, the tale of Bush administration "incompetence". Since it is now clear that what was presented as failure in Katrina and Iraq was actually success (yes, I'm still talking about "The Shock Doctrine") - i.e., Brownie in fact did do a heck of a job, just not the job we thought he was doing - it also must be clear that the idea of "incompetence" was nothing more than a gimmick to keep us from focusing on what was really happening.

Where did that gimmick come from? I wish I could trace it back to its first appearance in the press, or its first appearance in the public discourse. Sadly, I suspect that it first appeared in left wing blogs - proving that those writers were no smarter than I am. It was quickly taken up by Democratic politicians - and I am now distrustful of any of them who believed this argument - and the press, which I distrust completely anyway.

But then neocons started saying it - saying the reason for the mess in Iraq was Bush administration incompetence. And people got all excited about that "admission." It was no admission, of course. They were just using the left's confusion to divert us further. They knew it was not incompetence. They understood what was happening. And the fact that they were saying it should have tipped us off.

So there was the story, and it even helped the Democrats take Congress in 2006. But so what? I begin to think that election "victory" itself was another neocon diversion for the more aware American.

Democrats did not campaign against the massive wealth distribution which is the goal of Bush policies. They hardly even mentioned it. The candidates themselves were diverted from the real issue, and the neocons and war profiteers could continue to take everything away from the rest of us. And still are continuing, because the Democrats have still not approached the issue, and have proved ineffective in getting done just about anything that could present a serious threat to the neocon plan. Neocons had to know that, with Bush in the White House and Congress split as closely as it is, Democrats would be limited to making bleating noises. So why not let them win in 2006? Why not help them to win in 2006? They'll be so excited about false possibilities they will continue not to see the forest for the trees.

The worst of it is that, in view of my past delusions, I'm afraid they are still diverting me. Maybe you had to go to B-school to understand what's being done out there. Maybe you had to work for a bank or a hedge fund. Maybe even then you wouldn't get it unless you were at the top. I don't know what to expect of my ability to understand. I'm beginning to feel like a political Alzheimer's victim - and also that I've lived longer than I ought to have. Maybe finding the antidote to economic poison is a young man's game. If so, I hope there's a young man out there who has - or is about to - figure it out.

DONE DEAL?

Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" is the "Silent Spring" of our time. It gives us a way to understand what is truly happening out there - an understanding we have been kept from both by conscious diversion and propaganda and a lack of intellectual acuity.

First, read the book. Then, make your choice:

You can do nothing, because you don't get it, or you don't care, or you think none of it is going to affect you.

You can sign on to the program because you're part of the oligarchy or you expect to be, or you hope to be, or you want to be.

You can attack on single issues, at the fringes, satisfied with small accomplishments - if you have any. You can oppose the war, you can demonstrate for health care, you can fight for abortion, or gay rights, or whatever, and spend all your energy.

Or

You can defend the Constitution and American democracy by confronting the enemy, publicizing it and making certain that what's happening no longer remains under the rug. You can insist your candidates confront the truth, which none of them are doing.

Myself, I no longer think any other decision is worth bothering with. Go to the core, figure it out and take your place in the battle. Or else there will be no battle, and you won't know what you've lost until long after you've lost it - and the corporate takeover is nearly a done deal now.

IT'S ECONOMICS, STUPID

Finally listening to The Shock Doctrine. More on that later - but damn it, why does everyone laugh at me when I say that what's behind all the nonsense of these times is not religion, not terror politics but economics?

STORIES

Persephone says the left needs a story - a myth - to explain what it stands for and to counter the right-wing myths which have been so successfully propagated over the last thirty years. She's right. And there's a myth within reach which perfectly suits the need.

The right-wing myths have been, to boil them down to their essence, "they want to kill you and we will protect you," "we'll give you freedom to be whatever you want to be," and "God loves Republicans." The myth I have in mind will counter all three. It's as old as religion - but it's the part of religion now being ignored. It's the historical core of left beliefs - we just seem to have forgotten it. And without that overarching story, politics - all social behavior - comes down to small issues, or cackles, or particular votes in Congress. There is no vision involved, and without vision the left is nitpicked to death

The story is: all people are brothers; and the Golden Rule - do not onto others what you would not have others do unto you. Otherwise put, the social contract, or "the public good."

There was a discussion somewhat on this point on a recent Tom Ashbrook show. A guest was pointing out that the right claims to be working for "the public good" as well - they just define it differently: trickle-down economics, for example. And also that the left, when it defines what it wants, essentially puts it terms of going back to what used to be - the 60's type of life. I'm guilty of that.

But people know that the right's claim to be working for the public good is bullshit - the people on the bottom see that the public good is ignored, and the people on top know from their own practices that it's just propaganda. Nevertheless, I would not use that term.

And the left can avoid the pitfall of trying to reinstate the past (odd, isn't it, that what used to be conservativism is now progressivism, and what used to be radicalism is now conservatism) by going back to the core belief and then using it to support new ideas rather than getting stuck in the old issues - abortion, feminism, gay rights, etc., which do not resonate and never will.

There needs to be a revival of progressive religion, directly thrown in the face of the Dispensationalists. And the left needs to adopt that religion as its keystone - religion being so important to everyone these days, it seems obvious that bad religion needs to be countered by good: stuff that comes directly from the Sermon on the Mount. And there needs to be a revival of progressive political belief which is phrased more generally, and more powerfully, than by stating positions on specific issues. We're not talking about issues. We're talking about the essence of humanity.

Americans are desperate for an end to petty squabbling, class war and partisanship. Some people think the answer is to move to the center, or bipartisanship - based on expediency, not principle. The left desperately wants its candidates to stand on principle - that's why Hillary is having the problems she has. She is taking the Democrats in precisely the wrong direction.

But the principle Democrats should be announcing - which has been essentially ignored by all candidates - is that we need to care about people besides ourselves, we need to respect them and we need to think about them and understand them. Sure it's okay to pursue your destiny as far as you can, but not by placing yourself above everyone else.

I need to think about this more, to hone it to a sharper point. But I refuse to believe that a message like this would not resonate hugely.

Guy Saperstein, one of the billionaires funding the progressive movement, says this has to be done outside the Democratic party. He's right about that. But what he's thinking about is following the conservative pattern - establishing think tanks, recapturing the press, essentially honing propaganda skills. He's right about that, too - but that's not the be all and end all. The core principle of progressive belief is already known. It can be spread in simple language. It can come from the pulpit, from business, from pundits, from politicians, from bloggers. It can be made to sound fresh.

And people of good will - which is most of us - will sign on to the program as fast as they can.

TIKKUN

Anyone who's been interested in what I've been saying about the Israel Lobby: please read this from the current issue of Tikkun, a magazine I have very belatedly discovered.

ON THE ONE HAND

John Hagee, head of Christians United for Israel, sounds a little confused. No wonder his parishioners are off the wall.

Christian Zionists used to say that Iraq would trigger Armageddon. Now it's Iran. How convenient.

Heres Hagee's problem, though: On the one hand he's telling Congressman they must attack Iran to prevent Iran from getting nuclear capability to destroy Israel and, he insists, us too.

On the other hand, he's telling his parishioners that Iran is going to use nuclear weapons to trigger Armageddon. Which presupposes we don't stop them from getting nuclear capability.

On the one hand, he says if we don't attack Iran, they will destroy Israel.

On the other hand, he says God will not let Israel be destroyed.

Hagee's an evangelical. He wants to see Armageddon - from his seat in heaven, of course, after he's been Raptured. So it's the other hand which is Hagee's real goal. I.e., he does not want us to attack Iran? Or is he pushing us to attack Iran to get them to trigger Armaddon? One way or another, it isn't Jews he's working for - nor is it Americans.

The plague of insanity runs on.

I wonder how many "shock capitalists" will be Raptured?

I wonder why we didn't let the South secede. Maybe Old Abe was not as smart as we think he was.

ASSUMPTIONS

I have not read Naomi Klein's "Shock Capitalism" (I've ordered it), but I read an interview she gave John Cusack and that was enough for me to know I don't need to spend more time outlining Totalitarius. She's got pretty much all of it.

If you understand what she understands, you also understand that all other issues - abortion, gay rights, religion, Iraq - are less than irrelevant. Having won their victory (it wasn't really a fight - no one seems to be on the other side), all the people she talks about care about is making sure there's no backsliding. Which means health care remains a relevant issue, until it is buried - as it likely will be.

As for the rest of us, we have a decision to make. If we care about America and all of its people, we must do everything we can to fight the corporate enemy. If we don't, then we're free to entertain ourselves with whatever we want - like listening to presidential debates, or caring who wins.

I have to assume - in hindsight - that the Clintons have signed on with the privatizers (some pretty significant privatizing went on during Bill Clinton's terms.) I have to assume therefore that she will be the Democratic candidate, and I further have to assume that, from that point on, the privatizers do not care who wins.

I do not believe the American people will wake up on this. I do believe that any Democratic candidate who brings up the withering away of the American state runs a large risk of being shot. So I don't think it's going to happen, and I'm not even looking for it.

I think, however, serious thought has to be given to trying to predict how it all is going to end. Everything ends, after all - even long-term plots. It won't end in my lifetime - I have no personal reason to think it through, and not enough intelligence to figure it out. But it would be interesting to know what the world will be like when the corporations begin to collapse due to their own internal rot.

Maybe the evangelicals have it right. Maybe we are heading for Apocalypse. But there will be no Rapture - just a lot of ignorant people wondering how we got to this.

EQUIVALENCE

A friend sent me photos of a Muslim demonstration in London. They were holding signs promising us another 9/11.

I sure didn't like the sentiment. But here's my question: are those people with the signs actually going to perpetrate another 9/11? Or are they the precise equivalent of the ignorant motherfuckers who are calling for American bombing of Iran?

Let me put it this way: if they're on the street holding signs, they're probably not in a secret cell that is planning to do anything. But some of the people calling for the bombing of Iran could actually do it. Or get it done.

Some talk is cheap. Some is not.

HERE IT COMES

The AP reports that Israeli Vice Prime Minister Haim Ramon is talking about giving some of Jerusalem back to the Palestinians. And Ehud Olmert warned that if Israel misses another opportunity for peace, it will see "a demographic struggle steeped in blood and tears."

Wonder what AIPAC thinks of all this?

One thing's for certain: Christian Zionists are not going to be pleased. All of Jerusalem must be under Jewish rule if Jesus is going to come back soon. If those damned (literally) Jews give away any part of it ... well, the return of American anti-semitism, anyone?

PRINCIPLES

The New York Times reports that Democrats are going to support a long extension of NSA wiretapping procedures because they're afraid of being seen as soft on terrorism.

Thanks for voting your principles, folks. When we vote people like you into office, we get what we deserve.

I'll tell you one thing: any Democratic presidential candidate who does not speak out against this will not get my vote in the primary.

THE RATIO

So far General Petraeus has found (he says) three Iranian agents in Iraq.

That makes the ratio of Iranian agents to US agents about 1:100,000.

Does that suggest we need to go to war with these people?

TIDAL WAVE

I know we've all been waiting for the joyous day when these rapacious Republicans are voted out of office. But I'm not so sure we should be hoping too much.

First, the Democrats can lose in 2008. I see no reason to assume that Republicans are going to back off tactics which have destroyed previous Dem candidates. I see no reason to assume that Dems can use those tactics against Republicans. It's far too early to predict how a campaign will go, but whoever the candidates are, the race will be tight.

Second, even if the Democrats win, why would we assume Republicans would start acting like pussycats? How much did Clinton really get done in the face of Republican obstructionism - even when he had a majority in Congress?

It will take a nationwide moral and political tidal wave to put things back the way they're supposed to be. I see no reason to expect there's going to be one. There's certainly no one out there teaching us how to do it. We're going to live in this crappy environment for years.

MAKE IT, SPEND IT

Somebody paid more than $4,500 for a ticket to a Hannah Montana concert in South Florida. $65 tickets are selling for an average of $214. A 20 person suite at the venue costs $12,240.

There are so many things to say about this - completely ignoring whether this particular concert is worth seeing.

Firstly, average people are being priced out of pop culture events.

Second, you could buy ten 120 gig ipods for $4,500. iPods can give you pleasure for years. A concert is one night. Why is it worth that kind of bread? Only one reason I can think of - you want your kid to be one of the privileged few who got to go. Why is it a mark of status to go to this concert? Why pay $600 for a dinner in New York? Because you don't have a clue what matters in this life. You make it, so you spend it. OK.

THE BOTTOM LINE

The New York Times reports that, to attract teens, evangelical churches are holding Halo nights. In case you haven't heard, Halo 3 is an extremely violent video game in which killing brings victory (and which is not sold to people under 17, although the churches are letting much younger kids play the game). Some people think this is a bit inconsistent. I don't.

Now I know there are members of these churches who are kindly and look to do good to and for others. But that - the message of peace and love which used to be considered the central message of Christianity - is not the theology of these churches. These churches are angry, often hate-filled and theologically aggressive. Some of them are sending out their parishioners to kill - whether in Iraq or on the corner of an abortion clinic. They do not expect anything of their members except to heed the rules the church sets up. They promise salvation just by accepting Jesus, and do not require that any good works be done. In other words, they do not teach. They simply take your money. They are no different from other predatory corporations.

Focus on the Family says it hasn't figured out yet what its position is on this practice. That shows you how morally guided that organization is. It will take the position that increases its membership, not based on WJWD.

What's interesting is that the game's enemy is a group called the Covenant which welcomes the destruction of Earth as a path to their ascension. I.e., the hero has to fight the apocalypse. Another inconsistency? Only in theory.

The president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy points out that these churches might as well use pornography and alcohol to bring kids in.

We do not live in a world of principle. We live in a world of rampant capitalism, and for these churches these kids are bankable assets, something that shows up on the bottom line.

THE SECRET

One of these days the very continuation of democracy is going to come before the Supreme Court. (Oh, it already did, in Bush v. Gore? Well, let's ignore that for the moment.)

With the current split on the court, the decision is going to be made by Justice Kennedy.

So why don't we dispense with all the rigmarole and make him king?

Or better yet, we could give him a cave, feed him nuts and berries and approach the cave once a year, on the first Monday in October, and ask him to tell us the secret of life.

RESERVED JUDGMENT

I just had to quote this from Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone, because I've never heard it said so well:

In the absurd black comedy of the American electoral process, our presidential candidates are mostly two-dimensional monsters, grotesque approximations of human beings born by some obscene asexual reproductive method in the demeaning celluloid muck of the campaign trail. They might be manicured, market-tested pieces of ambulatory political product like Mitt Romney, or bottomless pits of vengeful little-guy ambition like Rudy Giuliani - but they are almost never fallible, thinking, multidimensional human beings.

What we need to decide is whether those descriptions can be extended to other candidates. So let me begin - leaving the remainder to some other time - by saying they don't fit Biden or Kucinich or Dodd or Gravel. Which, I'm sure, is why they haven't got a chance. I don't believe they fit Edwards - just because of what he says. The rest of the Democrats I reserve judgment on.

Oh, and Fred Thompson? He isn't thinking or multidimensional, but he does appear fallible.

FALLING APART

Democrats say that a political party (the Republicans) which believes the major problems America faces are gays, sex, abortion, guns, uppity women and Mexicans should not be trusted to govern in an era where America must deal with much more important and dangerous issues.

They're right. But if that's true, why should we trust them?

For many Democrats, those issues (or at least one of them) have become their reasons to claim the right to govern. Before Clinton, they were about the only reasons. Clinton added the economy.

It's true that the Republican candidates campaign almost exclusively on these terms. But they're only saying what their base wants to hear. I've just spent six days outlining what Republicans are really after. Gays, sex, abortion etc. are not Republican issues. They are evangelical issues, uptight people's issues. They're tools, not convictions.

I'm not sure I can say the same about Democrats.

But I can say that any time spent on talking about any of them - when we face the possible destruction of American democracy - is a hugely dangerous waste of time and effort.

Please - get to the point and stick to it. We're falling apart over here.

REALLY PISSED

Southwest Airlines keep threatening to kick people off planes because they wear sexy clothes or T-shirts that reference sex. Pretty odd for the airline who's symbol is "LUV."

Is Southwest the new evangelical airline? If it is, just let me know and I'll stop flying it. And that's really gonna hurt, because basically they're the only ones who go where I have to go and get there on time. But look, I wouldn't have supported Hitler because he made the trains run on time. And if God is running the airline, I'm scared to death - what if He's really pissed at a pilot, or a passenger?

CONTAGIOUS

Oh, I just love this one.

Richard Roberts, who is Oral Roberts' son and president of Oral Roberts University (is that position mandated to a Roberts by God? Didn't we get rid of this sort of thing with the Magna Carta?) is accused of using university resources to aid a county commissioner's bid for Tulsa mayor, a practice against the law because of the university's non-profit status. Also apparently Roberts' wife had someone fired so his position could be taken by an "underage friend." She apparently has made a lot of calls and texted to a lot of underage males who were given phones at university expense. They also used the university jet to take a daughter to Orlando, calling the trip an "evangelistic function of the president." The matters came up in a suit filed by former professors for wrongful dismissal after reporting the involvement in the Tulsa race.

The really pathetic thing here is the mini scope of these offenses - leaving the wife aside for the moment. I guess they figured little things couldn't hurt. The solution, it seems to me, is to take away nonprofit status for schools like this which are clearly not non-profit. And how about churches? Can you call them non-profit because the profits are taken out in services rather than cash?

As to the sex, it's amazing really how many religious people have fallen over various and sundry sexual practices. If they got sex out of religion - if they weren't continually using the repression of sex as a means to greater goals - none of these people (except the pedophiles) would have gone down. Oops, bad choice of words.

It's a wonder they never learn what Jesus taught: humility. But when you regularly talk to God (Roberts said God told him the lawsuit was about intimidation, blackmail and distortion) I guess you don't learn anything except what God is telling you.

In saner times, people who conversations like that one were locked up, or at least drugged insensible. I wonder if God told Mrs. Roberts to make those calls - and if He did, what He figured would be accomplished by it.

Sometimes I feel bad for people who are suckered by people like Roberts. But mostly I don't. They obviously get something they need out being suckered. On the other hand, I'd like to know which of them lives in my neighborhood. That sort of moronism might be contagious.

PODCAST TALK SHOWS

I thought I'd comment on the political talk shows I listen to via podcast:

Keith Olbermann - the Rush Limbaugh of the left. Aside from the fact I agree with everything he says, I love the way he says it. Somebody needs to kick in a few conservative teeth. Olbermann's got the platform, and he's doing it. Although I do think that every once in a while his Edward R. Murrow impression is over the top, Olbermann always seems not only well informed but to have thought through what he's saying and figured out the best way to say it. That is true of Limbaugh, too - but I do appreciate somebody being skillful on my side.

Chris Matthews - sometimes he says things that absolutely amaze me. He will take moral positions on dangerous (i.e., anti-conservative) ground. But I think he is - on his show at least - largely driven by ego, and I've heard him kiss up to people who should be slapped in the face.

This Week with George Stephanopoulos - the host is an excellent interlocutor. He is not afraid to interrupt an answer and bring the interviewee back to the point. But very often he doesn't ask the obvious question that would get to the heart of the matter discussed. His press panel is saddening: George Will is bright and can be amusing, but clearly always advancing the right-wing position. Sam Donaldson is too old to be doing this - he tends liberal but never says anything new. Cokie Roberts is pathetically un-incisive and is definitely not a part of the "liberal" mainstream press. I often wind up shaking my head, but not at Stephanopoulos.

Slate Gabfest - I enjoy listening to them, but it's like listening to sophomores yakking on college radio. Very often I don't think they get the issue they're discussing. I also think they are flip and not particularly thoughtful. I guess "cute" is what they are trying to be. I don't find them cute - although I do sometimes find them funny - and I don't look to them to convince me of anything.

KCRW Left, Right and Center - an excellent group. A good spectrum of opinion is rationally exchanged, and Tony Blankley is the only Republican I can listen to for more than a few seconds at a time. I don't agree with him, but I can see where he's coming from. You may not learn anything new, but you will get a clear focus on the issues.

On Point with Tom Ashcroft - the best of what I'm aware of. Ashcroft's focus is on society, not politics, but he digs deep into whatever interests him. This is the show I actually get information from. No ego here, just a thirst for knowledge and incisive questioning by the host. Don't miss it.

Bill Moyers' Journal - Moyers works from an obvious liberal slant, but you feel like you're hearing the voice of the last honest man. You need to listen to him, at a minimum, as an act of penance for all the bad things you've done in your life.

So - there we are. Anyone with another show for me to check out should let me know by comment.

MY HERO

Sy Hersh - my hero. Check him out on MSNBC Countdown podcast of 10/1/07.

NOT A BIG PROBLEM

Totalitarius has a problem. Congress is considering legislation to shield reporters from being forced to reveal their sources, except where investigators are tracking acts of terrorism.

But it's not a big problem. Democrats won't get it passed.

WHO KNOWS?

The papers keep reporting Congress' approval rating at 22%. But this figure is completely meaningless.

The questions to ask, if you want to know what people really think of Congress is:

Do you approve of the actions of the Democrats in Congress? and

Do you approve of the actions of the Republicans in Congress?

With the question phrased inclusively, it's impossible to know what people don't like.

Can you think of a reason why the press hasn't figured this out? Could it be that they really don't want to know? Or us to know?

TOTALITARIUS PART SIX

Americans had now lost the protections once afforded by the unions, the Congress, the president, the supreme court and the press. Totalitarius was almost where it wanted to be.

9/11 was a godsend to Totalitarius. Totalitarius must have recognized immediately that it now had the one tool it needed to complete the job. It has been suggested by other conspiracy theorists that Totalitarius mounted the attacks. To believe that, you have to believe that bin Laden was their agent. I grant you that, in the Bush One years particularly, Totalitarius and bin Laden were cooperating. I don’t believe that Totalitarius attacked the World Trade Center. But consider this: Totalitarius had enough information to conclude that an attack was coming imminently. Condoleeza Rice and the president have been accused of incompetently ignoring that information. But what if they ignored it to an end – as Roosevelt has been said to have done before Pearl Harbor?

I do not accept incompetence as an explanation for anything Republicans or Totalitarius have done. People who have brilliantly organized the subversion of democracy, using with great effectiveness every tool they could get their hands on, cannot be incapable of running a government. Whatever has happened, or not happened, on their watch and within their control is because they wanted it to happen, or not to happen.

I am not suggesting that Bush or Rice had any such intentions. Bush and Rice are incompetent, in the literal sense of the word: they have no competence. But they’re not supposed to. They’re only for show.

The action against Afghanistan was politically necessary. But it was quickly abbreviated. A government truly concerned with the interests of the American people would have 1) pursued and destroyed al Qaeda and 2) rebuilt Afghanistan and created the economic environment which allows a nation to resist nihilistic terrorists and creates the conditions on the ground for civilization, so another attack on America would not be launched from Afghanistan. Bush promised both, and did neither. Totalitarius never intended either to happen.

After the fall of Communism, Totalitarius needed to find another external enemy, for three reasons: 1) to distract Americans from its real efforts and goals; 2) to create a pliable, unsettled populace through fear and 3) to cement that populace to Totalitarius by its promises to protect them. The enemy needed to be capable of a high level of world-wide threat. Grenada was not going to do. Al Qaeda – as it ultimately came to be defined as including any unsupportive Muslims – was perfect.

So, actually defeating al Qaeda would be counterproductive. It was important that al Qaeda live. On the other hand, if you didn’t defeat al Qaeda, you had to have an excuse for that. So Republicans have been oscillating between saying that al Qaeda was finished to al Qaeda isn’t important, and yet when they needed to raise the level of fear, we are told that al Qaeda is going to kill us all.

The absurd inconsistencies in these statements are obvious, but when people are terrified they do not reason through inconsistencies. They are grateful when you tell them that al Qaeda is finished, and grateful when you tell them that you’re going to protect them from al Qaeda which wants to kill them all. And if that gratitude begins to wane because of your inaction, you take out a high-profile al Qaeda guy – or someone alleged to be.

Most Muslim fundamentalists’ primary goal is turn their native countries into Islamic states. Their only bitch with America is America’s interference in that attempt. Some who are called fundamentalists or terrorists are not – for example, the Palestinians, whose sole interest (until recently) has been the return of territory and the end to their physical occupation.

But you can’t create American fear unless you tell Americans that all of them want to kill us. So, of course, that is what’s been done.

Al-Qaeda, and some other organizations, genuinely want to hurt America. Americans have not been told why that is. What they have been told is that it is due to the Muslim religion. Because religious beliefs are theoretically fixed (a study of Catholicism will prove that they are not), you can tell the American people the fight will be permanent. Because there are a billion Muslims in the world, you can tell them they are at war. You condition them to the presence of the military in their view. So if you ever need to use the military at home, nobody is going to be exactly shocked.

These dangerous organizations are minimal in size, and most of them are not in America, nor do they have any real chance of getting here. 9/11 showed they have the potential of major actions in America, but the odds of an American being injured by terrorists are lower, I suspect, than the odds of death by snakebite in Manhattan, where there can’t be many snakes. You don’t want Americans to understand that. They’re preconditioned to being terrified anyway, by sex offenders, black people, people who drive drunk. So even though you know that a terrorist attack, if it comes, will come in a major US city, you declare national threat levels that apply throughout the country, and designate as potential targets popcorn stands in Peoria. This kind of fear is the food of propaganda and the primary precondition for an end to democracy.

Because you want to be able to repress the population if they ever wake up and stage a revolt, you erode civil liberties and protections like habeas corpus (concentration camps have already been built in America and not for the detention of enemy combatants) and you set in motion procedures for indiscriminate internal spying. And people are happy to have you do it, as long as you tell them it will make them safer.

Totalitarius has done all this, and done it well.

The invasion of Iraq is a puzzle to me. None of the reasons given for it make any sense. The purpose for it was clearly to set up a permanent American presence in the heart of the Middle East, but the purpose for that presence is not entirely clear.

If Iraq was conceived as a Totalitarius operation, the only logical explanation for it has to be oil, since my basic assumption is that Totalitarius exists to gather the lion’s share of world wealth into its members’ hands. That would follow from the involvement of Cheney and Bush pere in oil, and that of a large number of people behind the Iraq war.

The question I have concerns the neocons. For those who have more intellect than they have wealth, I have to assume their motivation is what they say it is: the forced introduction of democracy into the Middle East, as well as the protection of Israel. Totalitarius doesn’t care about either of those. I have to assume, then, that Totalitarius uses neocons in the same way it uses evangelicals.

The only other real possibility is that Iraq was not a Totalitarius operation. But if that is the case, they have put it to good use. Tying it to al Qaeda enhances fear. Allowing the country to collapse prolongs instability and tends to guarantee a permanent “war.” And using private armies is good preparation for what may come inside America some day.
Iraq has gone very well for Totalitarius.

Yet the Republicans lost the Congress in 2006. How did Totalitarius allow that to occur?

It points out two problems Totalitarius has. The first is that it used Bush, who is beyond doubt a boob, and suffers from the great disadvantages of boobs – particularly his unwillingness to think anything through. The second is that it has not overseen Bush sufficiently. Perhaps it has become a bit too overconfident.

Bush’s reaction to Katrina is the reason the Republicans lost. Americans would have continued to tolerate high levels of corruption. No matter how badly the war was going, Americans would have supported it – if they’d continued to believe in George W. Bush. Bush’s indifference to the destruction of a major American city made people understand that he was not keeping them safe. And that loss of confidence was fatal to him.

Bush’s indifference to New Orleans was consistent with Totalitarius’ policy. They certainly were not going to spend money helping poor blacks. And there was the ancillary benefit that Democratic voters had been driven out of Louisiana by that indifference – making it likely Louisiana would go Republican.

But what Totalitarius did not remember – and it was the first serious mistake they made – was that, as Ellul put it, if they were to be successful at propagandizing America, they had to honor, as Reagan did, the American myth – they could bend it to their purposes, but they could not operate counter to it. The Katrina mess was an insult to the American myth. Americans may not have realized that, but they felt it.

What Totalitarius should have done was make certain that Bush responded appropriately to the disaster – showing sympathy for the victims, and investing in rebuilding the city. Neither of those would have come naturally to Bush, who is a damaged sociopath. But why didn’t Totalitarius insist he do them?

I will give you three reasons: 1) they were no longer able, even tactically, to act against their ultimate goal, and 2) they were overconfident. They had already massively shifted wealth to themselves. Not one of their long-term plans had misfired. They were so close. They were in a hurry. They didn’t think it through.

And 3) they are sociopaths. Just like Bush.

Who are these people Totalitarius? Once upon a time they were radical right-wing ideologues – the people who funded the beginning ot Totalitarius. But now, as I’ve said, they are really not ideological. They are the people to whom money is everything.

They are the folks who moved America from a productive economy to one whose primary activity is charging fees for money. They are the folks whose every thought is of how they can profit. They are the folks who will trash anyone for their own benefit. They are the folks who sent American jobs overseas, who will not pay a nickel for anyone else’s health care or retirement security, who in fact will not pay a nickel for anyone else’s benefit. They have cut themselves off from the social contract. They simply do not give a shit.

They certainly do not give a shit about America. As the world has globalized, America has become unnecessary to American CEO’s. They send their work overseas, they send their profits overseas. They buy the materials and people they need wherever they are best or cheapest. Their loyalties are to their international class, not to their fellow citizens. They don’t need their nation – other than its army and police, for self-protection. In fact, they are no longer Americans. They are international capitalists. They, and their brethren, will run the world.

And when they do run the world, they will leave America, and America will tumble over a cliff. The rest of us are potential third world citizens. We need to get up and fight them, or get used to that idea.

I am not saying that all globalists, or all CEOs, or all Republicans, all conservatives or all anything belong to Totalitarius. I am simply describing the type.

Where do they stand right now?

They recognize that Bush can’t help them anymore. They know the Democrats are likely to take the next election – although they will do everything they can, along the lines they have been pursuing, to keep that from happening, and to take back Congress or at least prevent the Democrats from increasing their seats. Worst case, though, they are not worried. Americans have not woken up. The transfer of capital is still happening. They will stir up trouble with Iran and keep Iraq a mess so that a Democratic president has to deal with both. They will make his or her life a living hell, as they did to Clinton. They will elect a Republican president in 2012.

And then they will finish the job.

So what do I recommend we do? Click the link below and listen to Lou Reed.



----------------
Now playing: Lou Reed - Busload of faith
via FoxyTunes

BEING OUT THERE

I'm always screaming about how people need to get into the streets - so tonight I joined a moveon.org demonstration, about thirty people by the side of a main road with signs protesting Bush's veto of SCHIP.

What I was doing was checking out what kind of cars honked support. We didn't get any Escalades. No Hummers. We got one Mercedes, but the driver was black. We got one BMW, but I think the car was a loaner while the guy's Toyota was in for repairs.

We got a lot of blacks and mexicans. We got more men than women. We got a lot of pickup trucks, which may signify that the Reagan-Bush voting block of 1980-2004 may be coming to its senses. We got a lot of bus and truck drivers, but you had to figure that.

I guess cars have always been political statements, but I'm thinking if I don't want to be counted on the wrong side of the divide, I'd better get rid of my Z3. I've got my eyes on a Smart car, but I'm waiting to see where they end up on the political spectrum.

Meanwhile, I liked being out there.

AT THE EXPENSE OF OUR SOULS

What would happen if Israel or the US bombed Iran? Probably nothing we couldn't live with.

Whether or not Europeans were outraged would depend on whether or not they saw Iran as a threat. In any event, Europe will do nothing about the situation. Russia or China will not act unless they have a larger agenda. Frankly I don't think either nation needs a trigger to act against us if they decide that's what they want to do.

Non-Iranian Shia will be outraged. But how much damage can they do? They could step up attacks on our troops in Iraq. They might be able to activate some cells in the US. They might attempt a coordinated Shia attack on Israel - nothing Israel hasn't faced before. They could cut off Shia-controlled oil - but there isn't much of that, and we don't use it anyway. Oil prices would certainly rise, but that hasn't seemed to bother us much.

The Sunni - excluding al Qaeda types - would probably be delighted. They're not looking forward to a Shia bomb. The only Islamic bomb that exists now is Sunni. I suspect they want to keep it that way. They may be forced into some concerted actions with Shia, so as not to look like cowards or insufficiently dedicated to Islam. But that will last only as long as it is necessary.

Al Qaeda will recruit more people - but they're doing pretty well with that anyway. I don't think anything much will change, unless Iran slips bin Laden a bomb or two. I doubt that will happen, because Iran is not enamoured of the Sunni maniac.

What could Iran do? They could invade Iraq - but why bother? Things are probably going to work out well for them there anyway. They could screw up oil transport in the Straits of Hormuz - but I don't believe we use Iranian oil, so the screw up would damage the Chinese and I don't think Iran wants to do that. They could try to kill Bush - but the consequences to them in nuclear destruction would be much too much to accept voluntarily.

So, on the whole, we could get away with it. We will only have to pay a price when we're well along our downward slide into insignificance, and the rest of the world pays us back for all we've done. That depends on how fast the Chinese move.

The fact is, we could do this. At the expense of our souls, of course - but who gives a shit about that?

TOTALITARIUS PART FIVE

Bush One should never have been president. He is a member of Totalitarius, but his skills run to political and financial conspiracy, not to electoral politics. In office he showed the indifference to public needs that one would expect of a Totalitarian. But the pre-propaganda had not been completed then, and there was a public resentment of that indifference. When the economy went south, so did Bush One. Bill Clinton was a magnetic personality. It was Kennedy-Nixon all over again – except Nixon came across as nasty, while Bush One came across as a schmuck.

Totalitarius accepted the setback and forged ahead. By 1994 it felt strong enough to shift – under the aegis of Newt Gingrich – from pre-propaganda to active propaganda, with the aim of taking control of Congress. The combination of years of pre-propaganda, Gingrich’s Contract With America (which spelled out clearly for the first time what seemed to many to be logical Republican goals) and Bill Clinton’s disastrous early focus on gays in the military – plus Hillary’s failure on universal health care, and the endemic Clinton sex scandals – was enough to put the Congress in Republican hands.

From then, Congressional Republicans immediately set out to totalitarianize Congress. A system of rules and procedures began to be put in place which ultimately 1) blocked all significant debate; 2) forced votes on legislation before members had time to read the bills they were voting on, and 3) did not permit votes on any bill which did not have the support of the majority of Republicans.

But the Republican majority was not large enough to override the threat of a Clinton veto, and it was still a bit too early for all the pieces of Totalitarius’ plan to have been set in place. Very little of the Contract with America was enacted. (Although Totalitarius later managed - with The Hammer's help - to increase its majority when it redistricted Texas illegally and then had a court declare the illegal legal.)

Totalitarius wasn’t too worried about that. It expected Clinton, like Carter, to be a one-term president. Clinton’s victory in 1996 enraged Totalitarius. What followed – an attempted coup d’etat – does not need to be discussed by me. Everyone, I hope, remembers. Suffice it to say that when Hillary Clinton said her husband was the victim of a vast right-wing conspiracy, she was almost right. It was a right-wing conspiracy, but its core was not vast. What made it seem vast was its great number of acolytes and servants.

Clinton’s greatest accomplishment was turning back the right-wing tide (although an argument can be made that, in pushing NAFTA, he was actually part of that tide). Even when he was most under attack he remained very popular. It’s difficult to say how much of that was due to his own personality and how much to the public’s lingering longing for at least some scent of progressivism (and the scent of progressivism was about all there was to Clinton. What he basically did was make the intelligent decision that when the country is running well, the best thing a president can do is leave it alone.) It seems there was enough of the latter to give Gore the popular vote win. On the other hand, it is a great tribute to Totalitarius’ pre-propaganda that the election was as close as it was, considering the enormous economic successes of the Clinton administration and the healthiness and self-satisfaction of much of the populace, and the fact that Bush – if you looked at him from outside the propaganda’s influence – was clearly not presidential material.

Bush is the first candidate created by Totalitarius. There is nothing to the man outside of his positions; he is propaganda personified. He was chosen, I think, because he was personable and, it was hoped, malleable. It was Cheney, the grand vizier and a member of Totalitarius, who was intended to act as president behind the scenes and to move the country toward Totalitarius’ goals.

Gore was a bad candidate to run against Totalitarius. He was essentially Stevensonian – he was position oriented and did not project a winning personality (which has become more and more essential in the television age, and as reality has become less important to the public). In other words, as a propagandist he was doomed to ignominious failure (no Democrat has really understood it, and there have been minimal Democratic efforts over the years either to counter Totalitarius’ pre-propaganda or to present a pre-propaganda of their own). He did not really understand attack politics, although there had been so much of that in the last twenty years – and the effects of Totalitarius’ pre-propaganda had created a climate it was not difficult to comprehend - that it was inexcusable in him not to comprehend it. He did not know how to meet it, and he did not meet it.

When Gore nevertheless won the popular vote, Totalitarius went to work.

There has been much discussion of the politics of the Supreme Court in 2000. Clearly social conservatives had been pushing for a court which unequivocally supported their positions. Although almost all the judges had been appointed by Republicans, many of them could not be counted on by Republicans, because those appointed by Nixon and even Reagan were relatively moderate. Totalitarius did not have control of the process then, and with a Democratic congress, could not have control of it. The failed nomination of Robert Bork proved that. At least one of the justices who got through, however – Scalia - was a member of Totalitarius; and another – Thomas – was closely allied.

Totalitarius moved ruthlessly in Florida to position the recount situation there to be of the least benefit to Gore, and then – through Scalia and Thomas – conducted the coup d’etat they had failed to pull off with Clinton’s impeachment. Rehnquist, I’m sure, was easy to convince. What pressure was used to bring the rest of the Bush v. Gore majority together is something I hope we learn some day.

Totalitarius now had both Congress and the Presidency. The work began to undercut democracy. The goal was enrichment of Totalitarius.

The easiest thing for them to do was to use the executive order to begin to dismantle the government and protections for the citizenry which they opposed, primarily because they cost money to operate (which Totalitarius had to pay for in taxation) and because they made it more difficult for Totalitarius to rule. They turned countless bureaucracies over to people whose instructions were to make sure the bureaucracies did nothing at all, other than to remove restrictions on Totalitarius’ freedom of action. They are still busily doing that.

They brilliantly got a tax cut through which benefited only the wealthy, by convincing the public that it was primarily for their benefit. They cut taxes on capital gains, arguing that it benefited everyone, since everybody had stocks in their pension funds (this while eliminating many pension funds and completely wiping out employee’s expectations of a pension.) Without tax dollars, government can’t perform – even if there were people in office who wanted it to.

The takeover was proceeding, but the pace was slow. America recognized that Bush was not any sort of leader – and did not yet understand that he was not supposed to be.

Tomorrow we’ll discuss the 9/11 attacks.

BIG SECRET

Maureen Dowd wrote recently deploring the split of the Supreme Court into conservative and "liberal" blocs because it makes the court "seem" political.

Dear Ms. Dowd:

The court is political, has always been political to some extent, and is likely to get more political. The court follows a results-oriented approach: it decides what it wants to do and then finds a rationale for it, hopefully one which does not look as radical as the results. In fact, where political or ideological matters come up on the docket (and "ideological" describes more and more decisions in more and more areas these days, particularly as conservatives determine to intrude into everyone's life on a regular basis), every court is political. Who is on it determines what it does. I am surprised Ms. Dowd doesn't know this. Every honest lawyer does.

Courts are likely to get more political because we don't seem to be training lawyers to concentrate on law as opposed to policy - I guess because the money is in the policy fights. Or maybe we train them to do that, but they don't - either because they are following the cash or because their parents didn't endow them with respect for democracy. The rare occasions when a judge holds that he or she finds merit in a position which runs counter to his or her personal ideology are to be celebrated like World Series victories - and happen about as infrequently.

Take Bush v. Gore. Mario Cuomo recently pointed out that the Supreme Court has had, nearly since its inception, a doctrine called the "political question" doctrine. It holds that when an issue is political rather than legal, the court will not become involved in it. The thing is, however, that this doctrine is not uniformly applied. Each court has used it as an excuse not to touch what it doesn't want to touch. In the old days, what it didn't want to touch were decisions which could bring the court into disrepute - i.e., weaken its constitutional authenticity. They didn't want to give the citizenry a reason to figure out what they were actually doing. That didn't stop the court on Plessy v. Ferguson or a raft of cases touching on the slavery question. When they're dealing with a matter of core ideology, they will take the risk. And it certainly didn't stop the court in Bush v. Gore - a decision which also approves that an objection to "judicial activism" means an objection to the other guy's legal inventiveness.

The danger of decisions like Bush v. Gore - what the court has historically been afraid of - is that the public may finally figure out that we are a government of men, not of laws; that the court is no less political than Congress or the Executive; and that a citizen has nowhere to go if he is looking for objective justice. That's the big secret lawyers have hidden for centuries. It is, in fact, the secret that has held this country together.

But will the public get it? My bet: nah.

TOTALITARIUS PART FOUR

Ronald Reagan had very strong convictions and opinions, yet Totalitarius allowed him to win the presidency. Why? Firstly, because many of his convictions coincided with theirs. I am not sure that Reagan agreed with Totalitarius’ goals. He seemed to have a deep love for the myth of American democracy. On the other hand, he was an actor. And it may be that the conception of freedom Reagan loved was the Texas conception of freedom which spread all over the American West in the late 19th century: that those with the balls to do it should have absolute freedom to pursue their personal interests as far as and in any way they wanted to. That is, in fact, Totalitarius’ concept. See the writings of Ayn Rand.

Secondly, Reagan was an amiable guy with a reputation for being somewhat lazy. He had no particular interest in implementing “his” policies, or in how his policies were implemented. That left his apparatus relatively free to accomplish anything that did not directly challenge him. And Totalitarius, being the primary Republican money source, had ways of putting its people into that apparatus.

Totalitarius accomplished four important things during the Reagan administration:

1) The air controllers’ strike. Unions, which were the Democrats’ primary vote-getting and financing tool, had to be eliminated. When the air controllers struck, Reagan ousted them and their union. The weakness of progressivism was exposed when the unions – which should have understood the threat but were jealous of the air controllers high pay scale – did not call a national strike. The public was also unsupportive, bemused by (mostly true) stories of union corruption. The unions ultimately were taken down one by one, and progressives were weakened horrifically.

It is true that progressives by then had other vote-getting mechanisms: the women’s movement and the gay rights movement, primarily. But to expect either of those to have the ability to replace unions as political mechanisms across the nation, on a wide spectrum of issues and without regard to gender or sex was to delude oneself beyond repair. Men rejected both of these, and many women rejected feminism. The progressives were on a self-destructive course.

At this point, unions represent something like 8% of the American workforce, and Americans don't even comprehend the reason unions existed: that you could counter the power of the employer through collaborative effort, strength in numbers, cooperation. Truth to tell, though, I think that once jobs started to go overseas as globalization grew, unions were doomed to extinction anyway, in the absence of a government policy that protected workers' jobs. We need to remember it was Clinton who iced this deal.

2) The elimination of the fairness doctrine. The doctrine itself may never have been very effective, but the idea behind it – that the airwaves belonged to the public and that everyone who was using them had the obligation to provide a politically and socially balanced perspective – was critical to the survival of democracy. That idea whimpered to death without America noticing, leading directly to right-wing dominance of radio and the creation of Fox News which, I’m sure with conscious irony, calls itself “fair and balanced.” Or maybe the thought behind the use of that slogan was to capitalize on a longstanding, but now dead, widely held part of the myth of American democracy

Totalitarius now had the airwaves to use for pre-propaganda. In Clinton’s administration, limits on the number of outlets one entity could own were dropped. Totalitarius now bought up all the airwaves it could get its hands on, and became the predominant pre-proganda force in America.

Meanwhile, the mainstream press continued to present itself as fair and balanced, but in the oddest possible way. Not understanding – or not caring, or purposely disregarding – the fact that the purpose of balanced reporting was to present the truth, the mainstream press insisted on presenting both sides of every question with equal coverage even where one of those sides was clearly absolute bosh. This planted in the public the conception of relative truth. They came to believe there was no absolute truth, and that there was something to be said for every perspective, however bizarre. This conception primarily infected progressives, moderates and independents, leading to PC behavior and knee-jerk multiculturalism. The right was protected from this conception, as we shall, by an inoculation of born-again faith.

This conception opened the doors of the mind to Totalitarius’ use of the media to do incredibly efficacious pre-propaganda.

3) One of its most effective pre-propaganda efforts was the introduction into politics of the concept of evil – as in Reagan’s “Evil Empire.” If you paint your enemy as evil, you accomplish three things: firstly, anything the enemy says or does is inherently evil, and will not be believed or accepted. Secondly, you can pick and choose among the things the enemy does or says to characterize as evil anything you oppose or that stands in your way, not only in your enemy but in anyone. What is evil in your enemy is evil in Americans who say or do, or seem to say or do, anything which is similar or can be presented as similar. Thirdly, if you live in a Manichean world and your enemy is evil, then you by definition must be “good.” This was effective use of one of Ellul’s first principles, which was to identify your policies and goals with people’s favorable preconceptions of themselves, and to reinforce those preconceptions, giving people pleasure, in order to lead them down your chosen path.

This was not the first time the concept of “evil” was introduced into American political affairs. It was very much operative at the time of the Civil War, and it played a large part in World War One. The reason it was so effective in Reagan’s time is that it coincided with the rise of evangelical politics. Evangelicals are Manichean by definition. They need give no thought to whether an enemy is evil. By bringing the concept of evil back into politics, and defining evil consistently with the evangelical bent, Republicans gained a powerful vote-getting mechanism at the same time they were destroying that of the Democrats. These evangelicals, among other things, worked at the grass roots to take control of local politics where they could, ensuring as far as possible that no Richard Daley could steal another presidential election. I think, in fact, that what look like phony campaigns against “voter fraud” these days are sincere; these people, being Manichean, expect the worst from everyone else.

4) All of the above were used to demonize liberals, to the point that even liberals were afraid to use the word. That was the most effective pre-propaganda effort since St. Paul’s efforts for Christianity.

The public reaction to the corruption of the Reagan administration – Iran-contra, etc. – was nowhere near enough to counter the above accomplishments. It wasn’t even enough to defeat George Herbert Walker Bush – whom we will discuss tomorrow, along with the Clinton presidency.

BIDEN

Which Democratic presidential candidate is actually doing something about the Middle East?

While Hillary votes for Leiberman-Kyle, Joe Biden gets a bill passed 75-23 which would decentralize Iraq and devolve power to regional governments, hopefully stepping around the Sunni-Shia-Kurd split.

The bill accomplishes nothing, of course. Bush won't pay attention, nor will the current Iraqi government, which certainly would like to keep itself alive.

But here's a presidential candidate who's actively involved in the process instead of standing there posturing like the rest of them (excluding Edwards, who has no seat to vote from.) I have said before, and I'll say it again - if Obama or Clinton want to win my vote, they need to get back to the Senate and fucking lead. They make themselves irrelevant by not doing that, and we already have an irrelevant president.

So far Biden gets my vote.

ENTITLED

In case you were wondering how deep the arrogance and lack of concern for the public interest goes in the Bush administration, the GAO reports that at least $146 million has been blown on premium-class travel by Pentagon and State Department employees. These expenditures were unauthorized or unjustified. Many of them were by high-ranking senior officials or political appointees who said they were entitled to exceptions to federal travel rules based on old medical records or approval by a subordinate. They were 5-10 times higher than authorized under government travel rules, which require them to fly coach on flights under 14 hours.

This while Bush vetoes SCHIP because he doesn't want the budget to go up.

It's just another example of the upward redistribution of wealth. In this case, it's just not quite going up as high as in other cases.

But hey, this is how America works these days. Everyone is entitled to screw someone else, and the more people you screw, the prouder you can be.

America is Enron. Fuck 'em all.

AGAIN

On Hardball, Mario Cuomo castigated the Democrats who voted for Leiberman-Kyle, not only because they were supporting Bush's war policy, but because they had delegated to him the power to declare war, which Constitutionally belongs to the Congress alone.

As Chris Matthews pointed out, through all the turmoil over Iraq, no one else has pointed out that it is up to Congress to decide if we go to war. Certainly Hillary Clinton wasn't remembering that when she gave Bush the authorization on Iraq.

Democrats are afraid to impede action against Iran because they're afraid they're going to get blamed if Iran does something bad. The logic behind this escapes me, because Democrsts are supposed to know that Iran is extremely unlikely to seriously threaten this country, and that Iran has a very civilized and sophisticated opposition which one hopes some day soon will take that country back. They won't, of course, if Bush drops the bomb on them.

What Leiberman-Kyle did specifically is declare Iran a supporter of terrorism. That would reference Hezbollah, as well as the vague, so far unsupported claims that Iran is supplying weapons being used against our soldiers in Iraq.

Calling Hezbollah terrorists is questionable. As to the weapons being used in Iraq, who did Iran allegedly supply them to? Sunnis? Not bloody likely. Shiites? Maybe. But what you need to remember is that Iraq' Shiites are not fighting us because they want to bring us down but because we are there. The Shiites are not terrorists, as the word is now defined - meaning anyone who wants to bring the US down. One could call them freedom fighters, if one wanted to risk being called a traitor and a spy. Not me, baby. I don't call them that.

Democrats didn't have to look like they were supporting Iran by voting against, or amending, Leiberman-Kyle. They could easily have said simply that Bush is not to go to war against Iran, or take any action against Iran, without the assent of Congress to the specific intended move. That's what having the power to declare war means. But these Democrats are just not as smart as they think they are. And it is truly pathetic when you consider that the top Democratic candidates for president either voted for Leiberman-Kyle or did nothing to oppose it - except John Edwards. Who cares which one of these other frauds wins the nomination?

Why did they do what they did, or why did they do nothing? Who's got the most to fear from Hezbollah? This bill was sponsored by Leiberman. 'Nuff said. Again.

SAD LITTLE PEOPLE

Why is it that in order to get people to reduce carbon emissions we have to make it trendy? It's not enough that you can pat yourself on the back and call yourself a good person for your little effort? You have to be perceived as cool on top of that?

Well, I guess we need the sad little people too, if we're actually going to do something about global warming.

A NICE GIRL

The British royal family is supporting the current inquest into the death of Lady Di in the hopes that it will lay to rest conspiracy theories to the effect that the royal family - specifically Prince Philip - had her killed.

No inquest in a case like this could possibly accomplish that. People care about Diana - God knows why. They don't want to believe that God was the one who took her away. They need to believe she was done in. She's already a saint, but we've bypassed touting her martyrdom. That is a tactical error which needs to be corrected.

Even if this inquest satisfactorily laid to rest every possible doubt about how and why she died, rumors of murder will still be believed. You didn't need foul play to canonize Elvis or Joplin or Hendrix - they were all bad people who played around with drugs. We loved them anyway, but we understood it was possible for them to kill themselves. But Diana is a "nice" girl - she would never do that - so someone must be responsible, and we know who.

TACTICS

From MEMRI:

Yesterday, on October 1, 2007, Saudi Mufti Sheikh Abd Al-'Aziz bin Abdallah Aal Al-Sheikh issued a fatwa prohibiting Saudi youth from engaging in jihad abroad. In his fatwa, he stated that setting forth to wage jihad without authorization by the ruler is a serious transgression, and that young Saudis who do so are being misled by suspicious elements from both the East and the West who are exploiting them in order to accomplish their own aims, and who are actually causing serious damage to Saudi Arabia, Islam, and the Muslims.

Sounds like they've got some pretty moderate clergy in Saudi Arabia, huh? People who might actually have some influence on radical clergy elsewhere?

Well, not exactly.

There has been an alliance between the Saudi royals and the Wahhabbi clergy for a very long time now - in fact, that alliance was essential to the establishment of the Saudi state and the kingship in the current royal family. The deal was this: in return for unconditional support of the al Sauds, the clergy would be permitted to spread their ideology - which was and is the most vicious form of Islamic fundamentalism. Not only were they given permission to spread it, but the state underwrote the establishment of Wahhabbi madrassas all over the world, including the US. The only thing the clergy couldn't do was use the religion against the al Sauds - essentially a recognition that there is a difference between the clergy and the state, a recognition which Islamic radical clergy outside of Saudi Arabia no longer are prepared to give. The benefit to the royal family has been not only the initial support of the clergy in creating Saudi Arabia, but the refusal of the clergy to support or create people like bin Laden who believe the al Sauds are corrupt and want them replaced with an Islamic state.

This has made the Saudi clergy suspect outside of Saudi Arabia, and this fatwa is an illustration of why there is that suspicion.

Saudi Arabia has been under attack for its support of Wahhabism, which is the underpinning of Sunni radicalism. So they called in a chit with the clergy, and got the fatwa made. Believe me, the Saudis have not changed their colors one bit. But they have always played the PR game which works well in Arab countries, where the citizenry expects to be lied to regularly (note the Koran says that Allah uses deception to win victories). They expect it will work outside Islam. Whether it does or not, we will have to see.

There are two interesting aspects of the fatwa, however. The first is that iT condemns jihad outside Saudi Arabia. It doesn't seem to condemn jihad inside that country - which it seems to me would not leave the al Sauds altogether comfortable.

The second is that it alleges that jihadis have been led onto that misguided path by the West as well as the East. You have to assume that what this refers to is the opinion still held in many Arab countries that the US, or Israel, took the World Trade towers down.

So what we have here is a slightly milder form of insanity. It is a tactical move with no more impetus for peace than what bin Laden's minions are handing out.

PLEASE GO AWAY

In an op ed piece I read today, Tom Friedman basically apologized for everything he's said since 9/11.

Well, thanks, Tom, we appreciate it. Now would you please go away? Or are we going to have to expect another apology five years from now?

ADDENDUM

In Part Three I mentioned that Nixon's opening to China was adverse to Totalitarius' interests. What I meant was that it muddied the perception of Communism - in other words, it put a chink (no pun intended, but I like it anyway) in the solid wall of the fear-inducing enemy. Considering what has happened since, Totalitarius certainly has used the opening to China to its advantage. I will discuss this further on.

I also said Watergate was not helpful to Totalitarius. A good tactician would not have subverted democracy in such an obvious way. What Nixon did was driven by his paranoia, as an immediate reaction to his "enemies". It was not part of an integrated long-term plan.

TOTALITARIUS PART THREE

In 1962, Nixon was politically dead and progressivism was in the ascendancy. Yet he was president in 1968. How did that happen?

I don’t know if Nixon was a member of Totalitarius or just an adjunct, an employee, so to speak. I suspect the latter, because Nixon doesn’t appear to have made any efforts to obtain huge wealth. In his own mind, he remained middle class. That would not have earned him a ticket inside.

Nixon was a historical anti-Communist – I suspect by personal predilection, not as part of a plot. Here is a case of Totalitarius co-opting a man’s set of beliefs and putting them to its own use – something we will see often in the course of this narrative.

Vietnam was dragging Johnson down, but what did in progressivism was public revulsion by the counterculture, which pre-propaganda positioned as the ultimate expression of progressivism. (It still is doing that. The reaction to moveon.org.) The call for sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll was terrifying to people too repressed and scared to take advantage of them. In other words, free expression of beliefs (particularly if they were challenging to years of strait-jacketed thinking) was precisely what Americans couldn’t tolerate. Pre-propaganda used that revulsion and that fear.

One of the brilliant accomplishments of Totalitarius is the replacement of the concept of “democracy” with the concept of “America.” America was great because it was democratic – but if you stopped thinking about democracy and thought only about America, you might forget that simple fact. Democracy is a complicated concept – particularly as it is practiced in America. America, though, is simple to understand – it’s a geographical place, it’s where you and your family live. Of course you are going to support your home. Once you do that, you no longer have to think about what it is or why you support it – and if you’re challenged to do that, you can easily conclude that you love America because of mom, or apple pie, or baseball, or General Patton, or God knows what. You just know it’s the best place on earth. And that was the myth Totalitarius used most effectively.

Nixon loved America and hated Communists. Hubert Humphrey probably didn’t do either, right?

Other than continuing the “fight” against Communism, Nixon actually didn’t do much to further the totalitarian agenda. Actually, some of what he did ran against that agenda – the opening to China, and Watergate (which led to another setback for Totalitarius.) He certainly didn’t shrink the federal government.

But I don’t believe Totalitarius was looking for that shrinkage then. Totalitarius seems to adhere to the Marxian view that the withering away of the state comes only after complete victory and the unquestioned rule of, to Marx, the proletariat and to Totalitarius the unquestioned rule of itself. That victory has only happened quite recently. In fact, it has not entirely happened yet. Until it does, the state can be usefully employed, though Totalitarius has now begun to wither those portions of the state which it does not need for its own ends.

I’ve always believed Nixon was filled with self-loathing, and that self-loathing led to his being trapped in Watergate. I think he subconsciously failed to burn the tapes because he knew he was a bad man and wanted to be caught and punished. This is a not uncommon phenomenon among criminals, as any number of novels has instructed us.

Totalitarius learned two lessons from Nixon: 1) they never again allowed a Republican with strong personal convictions and an unreliable personality to hold the office of president (because he would not be entirely their implement and because his instability – like Hitler’s – could cause him to make disastrous mistakes) and 2) they understood that they needed to be more efficient with dirty tricks. They needed an organization like the Nazis had, not a bunch of loons and kooks like G. Gordon Liddy. They needed to institutionalize and control all tactics centrally.

As I said, Watergate was a setback – but only a temporary one. The pre-propaganda conditions were proceeding apace. A Democratic presidency was inevitable, but by then enough of the media-and-think tank structure was in place to convince America that the most honorable man in living memory elected to the presidency was afraid of a rabbit and everything else. The Agnew effort against the “liberal press” had borne fruit, and we saw the beginnings of the mainstream media’s fear of reporting the truth and only the truth. Awful things were said about Carter by people who should have known better – but they were afraid, after Nixon, that if they only told the truth their access would be cut off to Republican centers of power, and that Republicans would convince the populace that they were biased and could not be trusted. And so they became untrustworthy. They became part of the problem. They became tools of Totalitarius.

One of the unexplained marvels of this time was the Iranian’s release of the hostages as Reagan was sworn in. Unlike Nixon, who had to deal with Johnson’s Vietnam (his method of doing that was what ultimately brought him down), Reagan never had to deal with the crisis that had brought Carter low. Some day I hope we will know how that was done. I just find it proves my point that no one is asking.

Tomorrow we’ll talk about Reagan.

TOTALITARIUS PART TWO

Totalitarius did not necessarily believe what Joe McCarthy said. But it recognized that McCarthy could be very useful.

Totalitarius has always needed an external enemy to scare people away from comprehending even the existence of Totalitarius. They already hated Communism because its ideology stood in direct opposition to theirs. That is, in theory Communism stood for a downward distribution of wealth – while they stood for an upward distribution. In practice, what became of Communism was quite helpful to them. Stalin’s purges and the invasions of Eastern European countries did present a threat, of sorts, to America – although one has to wonder whether it was Communism’s aim to do away with America, or whether Communism armed itself as it did because it was aware that Totalitarius’ aim was to do away with them. Soviets certainly had reason to believe that was true, in view of the White counter-revolution in the ‘20s. The Soviets never even seriously attempted the same kind of activity in America. For example, much was made of Khrushchev’s comment: “We will bury you.” This was interpreted by Totalitarius to the American public as a threat to annihilate America. I’ve always believed, however, that what Khrushchev meant was that Communism would still be around when capitalism expired, and would officiate at the funeral. Some people undoubtedly wanted to bring Communism to America, either from the outside or within, but given the American myth, the chances of that happening were always precisely zero. Capitalism’s fear of Communism was manipulated – by people to whom world Communism was a threat: that is, by capitalists whom Communism might shut out of certain world markets.

What McCarthy did that was useful was to internalize the threat. He made people believe that there were Americans who wanted to destroy democracy. I am sure such people existed – but they were never more than a nuisance. Most American socialists never opposed democracy – they opposed capitalistic manipulation of it. Unfortunately, they helped McCarthy by taking a very long time to realize that Communism, as implemented in Russia, was very hostile to democracy. By sticking to their support of the Soviets for too long, they gave McCarthy the ammunition he was looking for. (Why did the Rosenbergs give the Soviets nuclear secrets – if in fact they did? Not because they wanted the Soviets to destroy America, but because they were afraid America would destroy the Soviet Union. )

What McCarthy did most effectively was to destroy Americans’ trust in each other. That trust had become very strong because of the mutual effort involved in the Second World War. Destruction of that trust was a key element in pre-propagandizing America for Totalitarius’ purposes. It worked because it manipulated the core beliefs of Americans. Each side believed that the other was working against democracy. This is a clear example of the truth of one of Ellul’s postulates.

That specific effort failed to complete its objective because there was still significant progressive strength in America. But, in the creation of groups like the John Birch Society, it planted the seeds for the era we are living in today.

Progressive strength was not enough to eliminate the threat. Stevenson, the ultimate rational progressive, was massively defeated twice by Eisenhower. Eisenhower was no part of Totalitarius – but I conceive of his two terms as a totalitarian holding action. Political conditions were not yet right for the election of a Totalitarius candidate – the pre-propaganda had not been completed. But at least Totalitarius could be relatively certain that during Eisenhower’s presidency it would not lose ground.

Kennedy’s election came as a shock to Totalitarius. It realized that it had to go deeper into the electoral process to eliminate the possibility of people like Richard Daley stealing elections for the liberals. And it realized that it had to control the media – certainly to the extent of making sure that its candidates looked a lot better on TV than Nixon did.

Totalitarius realized that it lacked essential tools to subvert American democracy.

Most of the press was still dedicated to the fairly recent proposition that it was supposed to report the truth. (This was not an old American tradition. It developed after World War II in journalism schools operated by progressives.) In order for its pre-propaganda to succeed, Totalitarius had to 1) eliminate this conception and 2) establish media outlets whose purpose for existence was to disseminate that pre-propaganda. It would also help to bring more of the current media under its aegis (through purchase), and to discredit the media it didn’t or couldn’t buy.

The other thing Totalitarius realized was that it needed to create a rational-sounding voice to present its pre-propaganda. The voice of conservatism then was the John Birch Society, which spoke in extreme and lunatic tones. Totalitarius had to set up a production line for “acceptable” presentations of its pre-propaganda – scholarly presentations of absurdities. It was the lack of that voice which made it easy to defeat Barry Goldwater – although Totalitarius took the first step in the right direction at the convention at which Goldwater was nominated when it selected Ronald Reagan as the keynote speaker – Reagan being an eminently rational-sounding soul.

The efforts Totalitarius made to destroy the tradition of objective journalism, to establish its own media, to buy up opposing media, to discredit other opposing media and to create think tanks to produce rational-sounding presentations of its positions are brilliantly and extensively outlined in the Brock book I referenced early. I’m not going to repeat what you can find in that book. Many Republican think tanks were funded by Richard Mellon Scaife – a founding member of Totalitarius.

While Totalitarius was perfecting its pre-propaganda, there were other things it could do to move its agenda along. The first of these was the assassination of Jack Kennedy.

Say what you will about “magic bullet” theories, Bugliosi and Oliver Stone, it is impossible, in the context, to come to the conclusion that Kennedy’s killing was a random act – particularly when you consider Bobby’s killing five years later, not to mention the killings of King and Medgar Evars.

Kennedy was a huge threat to Totalitarius – firstly, because some of his policies worked against their economic interests, but most importantly because he was a brilliant media presence. Kennedy had the capacity, and the intention, to return America to the engagement and cooperation it had manifested during the Second World War. He intended to bring, and was bringing, people – particularly the young – back into the political process after the quietus under Eisenhower. He was restoring belief in democracy, and worse – he was actually threatening to make democracy work. He was undermining Totalitarius’ pre-propaganda.

Totalitarius realized that progressivism needed charismatic leaders to succeed, because progressivism would never work as a movement, it would not follow unified direction, it would not concentrate its mind and its efforts toward its goals – primarily because the core of progressivism is the intense belief in the value of diverse opinions arrived at through rational and intelligent analyses. Making it, by definition, anti-totalitarian.

Take out charismatic progressive leaders and you disempower progressivism – you move it out of the way of your pre-propaganda efforts. That, I believe, is why Kennedy was killed.

I have never believed the fact that the assassination happened in Texas was the result of happenstance – because I believe Texans are at the core of Totalitarius. More on that later.

What surprised me the most was the participation of Earl Warren in the whitewash of the Kennedy assassination. I hope some day someone sheds some light on that.

Assassinations also accomplished another result. Although, as a result of the civil rights movement, some blacks have been able to escape the ghetto, the condition of American blacks in general is worse now than it was forty years ago. That is because there has been no effective charismatic black leader since the deaths of King and Malcolm X – Jackson and Sharpton are far too self-involved – and because those blacks who did escape the ghetto have not been particularly interested in raising the fortunes of their race (unlike Jews and Irish in earlier times). In fact, some blacks either have joined Totalitarius or are unwitting accomplices of theirs. I speak particularly of Clarence Thomas – although I think in his case he follows the second of these courses, because he is unwitting in general.

Why was this an important aim of Totalitarius? Because blacks are large-scale users of government services, and other government services – police and prisons – have been expanded to deal with “uppity” blacks. When Grover Norquist – either a member or employee of Totalitarius – said he wanted to reduce American government to a size at which it could be drowned in a bathtub, he wasn’t kidding. The only purpose for which Totalitarius needs an American government is to keep the otherwise irrelevant citizenry in line. If the American people ever woke up and started talking revolution – an extremely unlikely prospect – Totalitarius would need a military to knock them down. That is one reason for Totalitarius’ pre-propaganda constantly sets up the military as a societal icon; when Totalitarius gets through with its program, the military may be the only thing left of the government. In fact, the constititonal military isn’t strictly necessary. Totalitarius could employ private armies to accomplish the same result. Maybe that’s what they’re practicing in Iraq.

Totalitarius could expect an adverse reaction to the assassination – and the result was Johnson’s Great Society. But Johnson was no Kennedy – in fact, the Democrats did not have another Kennedy until Bill Clinton, whom I will discuss later - and although his program was the exact antithesis of Totalitarius’ goals, he had no ability to charm Americans and he let himself – and his programs – become trapped and enervated in the Vietnam war. I often wonder whether Totalitarius 1) led Johnson into that trap and 2) fed the counterculture which destroyed Johnson’s credibility, leading to the ultimate death of the Great Society.

Tomorrow we’ll continue with the Nixon years.

PURITY

A group of evangelicals, including James Dobson and Tony Perkins, have announced that if the Republicans nominate a pro-choice candidate (read Giuliani) they will bolt the party and might support an independent.

Good for them, for standing by their principles.

And it's good for the rest of us, too, any time a Republican decides ideological purity is more important than getting a Republican elected. That is, as long as Democrats don't do the same thing.

THE REAL PROBLEM

Southwest Airlines is stopping its policy of preboarding people with children, in response to a survey they did of their customers.

Parents, of course, are hopping mad. Parents in America have come to expect that by making babies they become entitled to preferential treatment. As someone pointed out, though, a cockroach can make a baby. I guess there is an argument that they are doing America a favor by underwriting the huge expense of maintaining our population. They're right about that - but I personally just don't care.

On the other hand, I don't see what's gained by the change in procedure, and I'd love to know what customer complaint Southwest is responding to. There usually aren't so many kids on a plane - unless you're flying to Orlando - that you have to sit way in the back to get away from them. It's true that they slow up disembarkation, but so what? Americans have conceded the right to disembark to people who are sitting forward of them (I've always thought if you got into the aisle first you should be allowed to get off first.)

But some kids on planes are annoying - they're noisy, and they kick your seat back - and many parents have no idea how to control their kids. The problem is, it's hard to tell, when the flight begins, which kids are going to be pleasant and which are going to be awful.

My solution has been to create a kid's section - maybe in the back of the plane where smokers used to sit. Passengers should have the right to travel in relative comfort - and these days any improvement in comfort, considering the general horror of flight, is a blessing. That includes people who fly without kids, as Southwest seems to be recognizing. I just think the change does not address the real problem.