Magnifisyncopathological

...previously...

So continues The Gore:

American democracy is now in danger - not from any one set of ideas, but from unprecedented changes in the environment within which ideas either live and spread, or wither and die. I do not mean the physical environment; I mean what is called the public sphere, or the marketplace of ideas.

It is simply no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse. I know I am not alone in feeling that something has gone fundamentally wrong. In 2001, I had hoped it was an aberration when polls showed that three-quarters of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on Sept. 11.

Is Gore unfamiliar with the concepts of propaganda, fallacious appeals to emotion and vengeance, and government misinformation? None of this is new and none of this is unique to the post-9/11 world. I think he knows this and unless there is some greater context I'm missing (this is just a large excerpt, after all), he's doing the faux-pandering thing again.

I agree that the marketplace of ideas is suffering. It is suffering from a severe lack of production, in the Randian sense ("with productive achievement as [Man's] noblest activity.")

At first I thought the exhaustive, nonstop coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial was just an unfortunate excess - an unwelcome departure from the normal good sense and judgment of our television news media. Now we know that it was merely an early example of a new pattern of serial obsessions that periodically take over the airwaves for weeks at a time: the Michael Jackson trial and the Robert Blake trial, the Laci Peterson tragedy and the Chandra Levy tragedy, Britney and KFed, Lindsay and Paris and Nicole.

While American television watchers were collectively devoting 100 million hours of their lives each week to these and other similar stories, our nation was in the process of more quietly making what future historians will certainly describe as a series of catastrophically mistaken decisions on issues of war and peace, the global climate and human survival, freedom and barbarity, justice and fairness.

Again: either Gore is completely and hilariously ignorant of media sensationalism that existed prior to 1994, or he's deliberately presenting a historical lie to set up some sort of recent exceptionalism in order to bolster his case. I'm barely nine paragraphs into this shit and it pops up everywhere.

The "the normal good sense and judgment of our television news media"? That statement stands alone at the top of the foolishness I've read so far.

For example, hardly anyone now disagrees that the choice to invade Iraq was a grievous mistake.

More misleading bullshit. Current polling shows

• 34% of respondents "favor the war in Iraq"
• 40% (percentage that's held more or less steady since last October) say the US did not make a mistake in sending troops in the first place (and that's "view of the developments since we first sent our troops to Iraq")
• 39% of respondents believe "going to war with Iraq was the right thing for the United States to do"

Gore's been surrounding himself with people who agree with him and the general Democratic take on the war.

Or, he's lying again.

Yet, incredibly, all of the evidence and arguments necessary to have made the right decision were available at the time and in hindsight are glaringly obvious.

Glaringly obvious to those who wished to dig for them and apply reason to the pile of facts, perhaps. Not to the vast majority of people who are paying attention and who acquire their beliefs consensus-style from talking heads and with which those they already agree. What isn't up for debate is the moral positive in ending the Hussein government in Iraq. That regime deserved to die, but just because it did does not justify any means to accomplish that end. From my perspective, it did not justify using the aggressions of American government embodied in a tax-supported military.

Those of us who have served in the U.S. Senate and watched it change over time could volunteer a response to Senator Byrd's incisive description of the Senate prior to the invasion: The chamber was empty because the Senators were somewhere else. Many of them were at fund-raising events they now feel compelled to attend almost constantly in order to collect money - much of it from special interests - to buy 30-second TV commercials for their next re-election campaign. The Senate was silent because Senators don't feel that what they say on the floor of the Senate really matters that much anymore - not to the other Senators, who are almost never present when their colleagues speak, and certainly not to the voters, because the news media seldom report on Senate speeches anymore.

And here I thought that until recently, the news media had "normal good sense and judgment."

If you'll allow me a nit-picky moment, the above clearly shows Gore believes active, fully-participant debate in the United States Senate is a good thing. I submit to you that has not been proven and I question it as a premise.

Posted by drizzten at 03:37 PM | Permalink

[Updates below.]

There are times when I wish I had a vicious, explosive temper and was known for it. This is because there are times when I read something and CRACK just want to fucking-scream-kick-pound.

Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. lecturing the public about reason would be one of those times.

Book Excerpt: The Assault on Reason

In describing the empty [Senate] chamber the way he did, Byrd invited a specific version of the same general question millions of us have been asking: "Why do reason, logic and truth seem to play a sharply diminished role in the way America now makes important decisions?" The persistent and sustained reliance on falsehoods as the basis of policy, even in the face of massive and well-understood evidence to the contrary, seems to many Americans to have reached levels that were previously unimaginable.

[...]

It is too easy - and too partisan - to simply place the blame on the policies of President George W. Bush. We are all responsible for the decisions our country makes¹. We have a Congress. We have an independent judiciary². We have checks and balances. We are a nation of laws³. We have free speech⁴. We have a free press⁵. Have they all failed us? Why has America's public discourse become less focused and clear, less reasoned? Faith in the power of reason - the belief that free citizens can govern themselves wisely and fairly by resorting to logical debate on the basis of the best evidence available, instead of raw power - remains the central premise of American democracy⁶. This premise is now under assault.

Gore goes from addressing the dire importance of reason, logic, honesty, and honoring the laws of reality (a topic I am with him on 100%) to a set of false, inaccurate, and cravenly pandering bullshit. I knew to expect this upon clicking the link through from Drudge and the only real question was, how quickly will this jackass contradict himself?

I'm going to build upon this entry over the day because I can't spend all my time at work ranting at this shit.

1. No, "we" are not responsible for the decisions the government or country makes. A fraction (people who voted for the winning candidates) of a fraction (people who actually voted) of a fraction (eligible voters) of the American population is responsible for sending idiots to D.C., state capitols, and other seats of illegitimate power. A clear example would be the estimated 5% of Austin who voted for the recent extension of the smoking ban. Even if a plebiscite resulted in some moral authority on their part to represent and act in the name of the people living in an arbitrary geographically defined region of land (and it doesn't), the governing document laying out the rules by which those politicians must follow doesn't say they are our slaves, required to do our bidding on every measure and question (the reality is the exact opposite in practice); rather, those politicians remain as they always were, individual humans with independent minds and unique values. Ditto for community leaders, business executives, and so on. You and I are only responsible for what you and I do. The link of causality doesn't suddenly evaporate when the facts under discussion derive from a society. I haven't voted in years and I pay my taxes under duress. I most emphatically want no association with the state, its agents, and what they allegedly do in my name.

Gore's setting up a collectivist lie right here, one of the most fundamental and ancient. Don't get taken in by it.

2. No, we do not have an independent judiciary. If we did, their salaries wouldn't be paid from government money. They would be neither appointed by politicians (or people appointed by politicians) nor would they be elected through the government apparatus. Independent judges would not be restricted by government guidelines or the crippling false prophet of stare decisis. The judges in the United States do indeed enjoy a degree of freedom that most judges around the world do not.

But if reason matters, so does being accurate with one's words and therefore the American judiciary is not really independent. They are state employees just like any policeman or senator and you'd be right to question whether an element of an entity has any business judging cases brought from the outside against that larger entity.

3. We are indeed a nation of (far too many) laws. But these laws are written, enforced, and interpreted by fallible, corruptible, emotional humans. It takes very little effort to discover these laws are not being uniformly and objectively applied, as Gore is hinting at when he mentions this. He's leaving out not only important context but basically the entire history of the American state in society.

4. Wrong. Free speech is an ideal up to which the people and laws of this nation have never once truly lived. Campaign finance laws, the spectacularly misnamed "fairness doctrine" and "free speech zones" on college campuses, legal punishments against obscenity/libel/slander and "disturbing the peace," the Alien and Sedition Act, the bare fact the FCC even exists...I could sit here and dig up the numerous and varied ways the state has infringed on an individual's right to utilize his or her private property and communicate.

Americans are indeed allowed more room to speak their minds than most people. That doesn't allow Gore to be so misleadingly glib as to say free speech exists in the United States.

5. Everything I said above applies to Gore's assertion the press in the United States are free to publish what they want. This is another lie and one particularly revealing of his non-adherence to reason because it was his party and his side of the political spectrum that raised a great stink over federal attempts (successful and not) to prevent or restrain the media from revealing secrets about intelligence gathering operations.

6. Here, Gore may just be ignorant and not realize the falsehood. He may honestly believe that at its core, American democracy is all about "the belief that free citizens can govern themselves wisely and fairly by resorting to logical debate on the basis of the best evidence available, instead of raw power." If he does, then he's flat wrong. Ironically, if he does believe that, then something like 80-90% of what government does (and almost everything his side of the debate stand for) flies obnoxiously in the face of that central premise.

American democracy is not some special animal the world has never seen before. It may have a unique structure compared to existing democracies and republics, but that structure does not change its nature. A democratic republic relies to a significant extent on the Will of the People (well, that fraction of a fraction of a fraction) to make decisions. Anyone fresh from logic class understands that the number of people who believe something has absolutely ZERO to do with that belief's truth and accuracy. American democracy is fundamentally just like any other: it relies on the half-baked emotional responses to false dichotomy questions held by people who will happily tell you they've got better things to do than worry about the reality of applying their political beliefs into practice. Then there's the small problem of trying to figure out just what The Heavenly Electorate means when they vote for someone...

There is no magical restriction on the Publik Debate that keeps the discussion from straying beyond wise self-governance through a reasonable process of logical, up-to-date argument. Far fucking from it! What has Gore been listening to and reading lately? Certainly not the fallacious excrement pouring out of our bicameral and executive liars. Certainly not the wild finger pointing in the comment sections of political blogs. Certainly not the mindless sound bite gotcha-ism of TV debate. These things (and their older analogues) haven't changed in seven years. Is Gore talking about some conservative-reminscing-about-the-50's-style bygone era when exchanges in the realm of philosophy, ethics, and politics were conducted a high school debate club? And really, who the hell besides "fringe candidates" pay more than gawddamn lip service to the thought of wisely self-governing individuals!?

American democracy is now in danger - not from any one set of ideas, but from unprecedented changes in the environment within which ideas either live and spread, or wither and die. I do not mean the physical environment; I mean what is called the public sphere, or the marketplace of ideas.

And your ridiculous garbage isn't helping any, buddy.

UPDATED 5/19/2007 3:38pm
Continued...

Posted by drizzten at 10:35 AM | Permalink

Posted on National Review Online's second GOP presidential debate symposium:

"[Ron] Paul needs to become a Democrat."

That's Kathleen Parker demonstrating how absolutely bonkers some conservatives and Republicans have become over national security. Here is a guy whose political philosophy - despite being fundamentally statist - runs completely perpendicular to the Democrats'. He speaks out passionately against the welfare state; against economic regulation; against the government forcibly inserting itself between legitimate private property transactions; against taxes in general and the income tax in particular. Even as a shit-poor attempt at a joke, how could you conclude he should become a Democrat?

Because he thinks there are very real consequences to an interventionist foreign policy? Because he is suggesting the United States government frequently stirs up hatred and anger when it meddles in the affairs of others and therefore motivates a small number of those so agitated to strike back?

Democrats only like him because he's against the wars on terror and drugs, wants to reduce corporate welfare, and sticks to a mostly principled legislative policy. They loathe everything else and they particularly loathe the reasons why he thinks the way he does, which ought to be warning enough that they really don't want him on their side.

I don't think Paul believes America "deserved" the terrorism on September 11th, 2001. I think he's closer to my position: the US federal government did things that pissed off Islamic fundamentalists already irrationally predisposed to hate the liberal secular West (as well as its Judeo-Christian heritage), sowing the ground for the attacks throughout the last three decades. Therefore, one way to protect Americans from terrorism is to stop government policies that piss off those Muslim fascists...which would also have the more important primary effect of ending government action in areas it does not belong.

Don't construe this as a "Vote for Ron Paul in 2008!" message. That was just a really stupid thing for Kathleen Parker to say.

Posted by drizzten at 05:05 PM | Permalink

Ralph Z. Hallow of the Washington Times writes this as an aside describing New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg:

"a social liberal and fiscal conservative"

Bloomberg is a social liberal? Really? As in, someone who generally respects the freedom and rights of individuals to pursue their noncoercive desires in a social setting...and not some lazy political label used by conservatives to slap on someone who supports abortion and weaker penalties for smoking pot?

Let me also express considerable skepticism about Bloomberg's alleged fiscal conservatism. I mean, this is the mayor of New York City under discussion. Has he actually "reined in" the budget, "cut the growth" of annual spending, or other buzz words for doing jack shit about the local gov's creeping size? Or has he actually, in reality, truly reduced the size of a monstrosity measured in the tens of billions?

Do these two terms really mean anything anymore when even their meager original meanings have been appropriated for clearly illegitimate use? And what the hell does it say about Our Current Affairs when one of the leading conservative-leaning newspapers allows this bullshit to be said regarding someone who is perhaps the most prominent mayoral example of nanny statism in the United States?

Egads.

Posted by drizzten at 09:33 AM | Permalink

But I'm very uncomfortable with enacting legislation that denies the ability of young women to exercise rational judgment over how they use their bodies.

Ezra Klein

Unfortunately for those of you who wish to exercise rational judgment over how, where, and why you use the tools and materials necessary for the support of your bodies (i.e., private property), Mr. Klein's level of comfort with interfering legislation is higher. In fact, I have no doubt whatsoever that his above-stated unease is really no more substantial than the emotional connotation of which it consists. Several hypotheticals come to mind involving young women exercising their rational judgment commanding their bodies to do things with which he is far from comfortable.

Regardless, in the very next sentence he writes: "...I'd be much more comfortable with a remedy that sought to outlaw the particular model of GGW, which seeks out girls whose decision-making capacities are severely impaired (because they're drunk) and does so in pressured environments (where groups of guys will be hooting for them to flash)."

So much for any hope of this guy to take a real stand against the heavy cultural statist hand of Garance Franke-Ruta.

Posted by drizzten at 01:43 PM | Permalink