Design for the One Percent

A Daily Caller columnist recently argued that the government should force food stamp recipients to buy low-grade food in drab packaging, in order to teach these soi-disant "poor people" a tough lesson about freedom and responsibility and taxation and so forth.

I seem to be suffering from outrage fatigue, because instead of fantasizing about the guillotine, I found myself pondering the logistics of setting official specifications for poor-quality, revenge-oriented food, and of creating a style guide for socially stigmatizing package design.

With these interesting issues in mind, I've taken a stab at designing some product labels for a new taxpayer-funded line of shameful, marginally nutritious foodstuffs. While I can't pretend that they'll deliver the stern dose of humiliation hungry poor people and their hapless children deserve — only the withering patrician scorn of a God-appointed billionaire can do that — I do hope they'll inspire crueler people to produce uglier work.






(Image at top: "The Rich Man and Lazarus the Beggar" by Gustave Doré.)

The Next President of the United States

Roy Edroso recently made an offhand remark to the effect that if you want consistently conservative governance, a robot is your only man.

He's got a point. The problem is, robots come from Old Europe; they come from the pit of Hell. And while they may be a bit more gemütlich than Mitt Romney or Michele Bachmann, they require expensive maintenance and they're not as adept with stairs. It's bad enough that Obama bows to foreign dignitaries; the last thing we need is a president whose clockwork runs down in the middle of singing "Les Oiseaux dans la Charmille" to Hu Jintao.

The Commodore PET is a safer choice. It's adorably retro, hearkening us back to that simpler, more innocent time before all of us hated everything. It was made down home in Pennsylvania by square-eyed, steely-jawed men, so you know Peggy Noonan's gonna get on board. You can have a beer with it, or at least near it. It can repeat the numerals "9-9-9" with all the hebephrenic fixity of Herman Cain and twice the conviction. It blows Rick Perry out of the water with a whopping 8K of RAM. You can easily store replacement units at Mount Weather. And its dependency on the extraction industries is no mere metaphor; if you want the President to boot up in time for World War III, drill baby drill!

And of course, it's ideologically consistent. Bedrock principles in, bedrock principles out:

10 PRINT "FUCK YOU, HIPPIES! TAX BREAKS FOR THE RICH!"
20 GOTO 10
RUN

The only downside is, when it inevitably turns on humanity, no one will notice.

Mastery Over Nature

One of the rules of pop-science journalism is that one must pay lip service to everyday moral concerns before descending into uncritical technophiliac babble. The point is not to achieve balance, but to deploy an army of strawmen that can then be incinerated with Promethean fire.

Thus, The Economist initially seems troubled by the news that scientists have created a synthetic cell. What now of that "divine spark," that "vital essence," in which we all believe, whether we actually believe in it or not? Don't all the world's religions explicitly tell us, somewhere or other, that it's impossible, or at least wrong, to create artificial life of any kind? Doesn't this milestone confirm that we are gods, with all the power and responsibility -- but especially the power -- that entails?

[Creating life] would prove mankind’s mastery over nature in a way more profound than even the detonation of the first atomic bomb.

I'm more likely to see atomic weapons as proof of our subjection to nature. But there's no sense straining at that gnat when we've got this camel to swallow:

Biology is about nurturing and growth.

If you doubt this, consider the myriad plagues and injuries from which this new discovery might protect us.

This is a golden age, almost. But inevitably, some people will accuse scientists of "tampering" with nature, and causing more problems than they're likely to solve.

Such questions are not misplaced—and should give pause even to those, including this newspaper, who normally embrace advances in science with enthusiasm. The new biological science does have the potential to do great harm, as well as good. “Predator” and “disease” are just as much part of the biological vocabulary as “nurturing” and “growth”.

In other words, it's a great-idea-but-possibly-not-and-I'm-not-being-indecisive!

[F]or good or ill it is here. Creating life is no longer the prerogative of gods.

So let's reason with the worst that may befall:

What if a home-brew synthetic-biology club were accidentally to launch a real virus or bacterium? What if a terrorist were to do the same deliberately?

In that case, decimating humanity with deadly diseases would no longer be the prerogative of gods! We'd be capable of...of...destroying ourselves! Who ever dreamed that things would come to this?

Luckily, there's a solution, and it has to do with Free Markets and the Wisdom of Crowds:

Thoughtful observers of synthetic biology favour a different approach: openness. This avoids shutting out the good in a belated attempt to prevent the bad. Knowledge cannot be unlearned, so the best way to oppose the villains is to have lots of heroes on your side. Then, when a problem arises, an answer can be found quickly.

It's hard to single out the silliest claim in this paragraph, but I'm going to go with the assertion that "knowledge cannot be unlearned." This entire article is a testament to our ability to unlearn, from its prattle about "mankind's mastery over nature," to its cockeyed optimism about the "openness" favored by "thoughtful observers," to its astonishing assumption that "when a problem arises, an answer can be found quickly."

All this philosophical maundering amounts to a means of sounding serious while avoiding any serious discussion of the political and economic contexts in which this research actually takes place. The moral issues here were old news in the sixteenth century, and The Economist simplifies them to the point of banality by focusing almost exclusively on the idea that there's some clear limit beyond which human science must not go (which wasn't self-evident even in more orthodox ages than ours).

The interesting question is not whether synthetic biology amounts to "playing God," but who gets to define terms like "heroes" and "good," which The Economist throws around like confetti on New Year's Eve.

Encourage the good to outwit the bad and, with luck, you keep Nemesis at bay.

"Luck," in this context, shouldn't be confused with mere chance; it's more like the rain that follows the plow. Or a piñata that will shower candy on you if you keep swinging blindly at it with a stick.

What disturbs me isn't the creation of artificial organisms per se, but this article's assumption that "we" can easily distinguish heroes from villains, good uses from bad ones, and unforeseen accidents from predictable disasters. The problem, as always, isn't what we know how to do; it's who we are.

UPDATE: John Horgan addresses other aspects of the hype surrounding this research.

Mohonkgate

The "Climategate" scandal raised doubts many of us have long had about the integrity of the temperature data that allegedly support the AGW hypothesis. A new article attempts to strangle this newborn dissent in its cradle by praising temperature records from the Mohonk Preserve in New York:

It is the rarest of the rare: a weather station that has never missed a day of temperature recording; never been moved; never seen its surroundings change; and never been tended by anyone but a short, continuous line of family and friends, using the same methods, for 114 years....Mohonk offers a powerful confirmation of warming climate, as well as a compelling multigenerational yarn.

If these records really comprise "a powerful confirmation of warming climate," why is there any need to stress that point? Surely, the data should speak for themselves, without any need for "warmist" editorializing! Right away, one begins to suspect that there's more here than meets the eye. And sure enough:

The weather log, for many decades kept on hand-written sheets, lacks only 37 days of precipitation data from 1901, 1908 and 1909, due to a missing data sheet, and a few days when observers apparently didn't look at the rain gauge.

"Only" 37 days? Clearly, the authors of this piece fail to understand that in Science, no detail is unimportant. A butterfly flapping its wings in Cairo can cause hurricanes in the Arctic, as the Law of Unintended Consequences conclusively shows. And yet, we're expected to believe that 37 days' worth of missing data are "unimportant" to the climate models upon which the alarmist case rests.

Consider this: If these data are unimportant, why are they missing? And what transpired on those days when observers just "happened" to ignore the rain gauge? If there's nothing to hide, then why hide anything?

Apologists will say that the missing data pertain to precipitation rather than temperature. Of course, it's an article of faith among warmists that higher temperatures result in more precipitation (I guess they've never been to Death Valley). We know that if the missing data had shown heavy rainfall, they would've been hailed everywhere as "proof" of AGW. The fact that the data are missing suggests that they were...well, let's just say "embarrassing," from the warmist perspective.

Of course, there may be an innocent explanation, like incompetence or stupidity. However, Science does not advance by giving charlatans the benefit of the doubt. On the contrary, Science requires us to check and recheck data until we are 100-percent positive that they weren't gathered by moral cripples.

With this solemn duty in mind, I have sent upward of 400 FOIA requests to Mohonk personnel and their families, requesting all their data in double-reverse triplicate with knobs on. Furthermore, I have requested all handwritten correspondence to and from the "scientists" who collected these data, so that their handwriting can be subjected to a fully transparent process of ethico-graphological time series analysis (the precise details of which I'm not able to reveal at this time, for obvious reasons).

I'm also trying to find out where their kids go to school, just in case a little pressure is needed to encourage these bean-counters to obey the Constitution.

Needless to say, I will keep you informed about my growing suspicions as this case unfolds.

The Doctrine of the Powerful

Contrary to what Robert Green Ingersoll once said, heresy is the name given by the powerful to the doctrine of the powerful. It's what you're accused of — approvingly — when you dare to accept the conventional wisdom, while acting as though there are no professional rewards for doing so, and pretending that being handed a megaphone is roughly equivalent to being silenced.

Thus, Stewart Brand is a heretic for supporting nuclear power and seeing a positive side to slums, just like functionaries all over the planet.

Zoning in past the noise, Brand is saying heart-warming things about London and New Scientist. Then come the bombshells. Nuclear power. Now. Slums good. At the back of my mind, the word "heresy" is half-forming.

You heard it here first! This "hippy icon" from "supercool California" has dropped a "bombshell" by announcing his support for nuclear power! As he's been doing with monotonous regularity for years, to the dutiful astonishment of the hack journalists who are routinely assigned to cover his radical pronouncements, the likes of which no one has ever heard before! Ever!

One of the most important tactics for eco-heretics — and the journalists who love them — is to grant "old-style greens" enough retroactive power and authority to make wresting it away from them emotionally satisfying. If you can find the courage, somehow, to contradict the monolithic hippie establishment that effectively ruled America from the Summer of Love until the Reagan Revolution, you're a visionary thinker in perpetuity, even if no other idea ever wanders into your head. Such are the rewards of replacing "ideology" with "ecopragmatism."

[Y]ounger generations have never heard anything optimistic about the world, says Brand of students he has lectured to. They were especially enthralled, he says, by the idea that in the future biotechnology could be used by anyone.

I feel better already.

Meanwhile, South Africa needs coal, because it must grow, because growth is good, and growth requires cheap electricity, and coal provides cheap electricity, which makes coal good, no matter what dirty fucking hippies like Stewart Brand have to say about it.

A strong body of opinion holds that multilateral development banks should be discouraged from funding coal-burning power projects with carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to climate change. We share this concern but, after careful consideration, have concluded that the course we have chosen is the only responsible way forward.

We could use a popular term for this concerned, responsible, optimistic approach to AGW. I suggest "ecopragmatism."

In unrelated news, a Japanese editorialist notes the 20th anniversary of the Sarin attack on Tokyo's subway system:

The shock spread worldwide because the chemical-weapon attack was the first time weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were used in a major city with the intent to commit mass murder.

Blowing up cities with atomic bombs don't count as "mass murder," obviously. The same goes for firebomb attacks like Operation Meetinghouse, because intentionally creating firestorms in a densely populated city isn't mass murder and incendiary bombs aren't chemical weapons and their victims aren't "victims" in any morally meaningful sense. (And of course, all of that goes double for the activities of the Japanese Imperial Army.)

To suggest otherwise would be...well, not heretical, obviously. That term is reserved for sensible people.

The Dream

Chris Good checks the stock ticker of our national soul, and finds that unexamined faith in meaningless abstractions is down 2.8%.

The "American Dream" means different things to different people, but according to a new poll from Xavier University Americans think it is increasingly harder to attain, even as they say hard work makes the dream possible.

According to this poll, the American Dream is one or more of the following: opportunity, freedom, family, financial security, happiness, a good job, home ownership, wealth, or something else entirely. E pluribus unum, just like it says on our worthless fiat currency.

What does "opportunity" mean? Hard to say. What does "freedom" mean? Beats me. "Happiness"? God only knows. What's the difference between "financial security" and "wealth"? It's anybody's guess.

It's times like these I wish we had a more unanimous and concrete national dream, like the Iranian Dream of beheading infidels, or the Québécois Dream of annexing Maine and Vermont in the name of Lebensraum.

Putting these quibbles aside, the lesson here is that no matter which vague concepts you reflexively invoke when asked to define the fuzzy outlines of the alleged Dream that makes America a theoretical Promised Land for prospective non-failures, all is not well.

Think of it as a much more detailed version of Right Direction/Wrong Track polling, and a possible explanation for the strong anti-incumbent, anti-Washington sentiments shown in generic election polling--a facet, or a motivating factor, in voter dissatisfaction.

Now we're getting somewhere: Most people who feel dissatisfied with the brightness and trajectory of their personal ignis fatuus blame those fuckers for ruining things in some unspecified way, or failing to do something or other about it, posthaste.

Who can deny that it's time for a change of some sort?

(Image via Morons With Signs.)

These Things I Believe

In recent months, I've come to realize that there are certain things I need to acknowledge if I wish to be taken seriously by my intellectual betters.

1. If we're talking about global warming, it's impossible to see how small changes could have enormous negative consequences. If we're talking about culture or politics, it's impossible to see how they can't.


2. The Free Market is the world's best and most efficient force for transformative change, the vast majority of which must be opposed on principle lest we end up in some sort of queer eco-gulag.
   


3. Alarming news must be viewed as "alarmist," and therefore false, unless it involves Muslims, socialism, environmental regulations, faggotry, blacks, immigrants, academia, or gay black Muslim eco-socialist immigrant academics like "President" Obama.


4. Civility is in a sad state of decline, and everyone who's responsible is worse than Hitler. (PS: Fuck you!)


5. Argumentum ad hominem is the logical fallacy of disagreeing with someone who's confident about being right. This is one of the very worst things you can do, online or off. If you choose to indulge in it anyway, don't be surprised when people ignore your so-called "evidence." After all, you've demonstrated that you're a bad person.


6. Argumentum ad verecundiam, or appeal to authority, is the logical fallacy of assuming that working climatologists are a better source for information on climate than economists, retired weathermen, eccentric British peers, and anonymous online paranoiacs.


7. The most logical explanation for consensus is collusion or groupthink. Everyone knows that!


8. Confirmation bias is a plausible explanation for the belief that a given scientific study supports AGW. However, it is not a plausible explanation for the belief that this support can be explained away by invoking confirmation bias.
   


9. The Law of Unintended Consequences only applies to stuff you don't really want to do anyway.
   


10. Global climate is very, very complicated. That's why it must be approached with much more humility and caution and thoughtfulness than relatively straightforward endeavors like civilizing Muslim nations at gunpoint, or regulating human sexuality.
    


11. AGW probably isn't happening, or at least not very much. And if it is happening, it probably isn't a serious problem. And if it is a serious problem, we'll probably have plenty of time to address it through geoengineering, which is a much better solution than reducing emissions, because it relies on the creation of a global regime dedicated to micromanaging our atmosphere and oceans in pursuit of benefits predicted by the same climate modeling we can't trust to predict AGW, instead of imposing some tyrannical big-government measure like a carbon tax. So why worry?
    


12. If I believe that the IPCC is fallible but essentially honest, and you believe it's a snake pit of anti-capitalist ideologues who are only in it for the money, the spirit of compromise obliges me to admit that nothing it says can be trusted until you tell me otherwise.
    


13. If scientists are telling you something you don't want to hear, but you can't quite bring yourself to believe that they've all become Marxists, the most likely explanation is that they've forgotten some fundamental Rule of Science with which you're vaguely familiar. Perhaps they've sinned against the Second Law of Thermodynamics, or the Principle of Bivalence, or the Empirical Method, or Occam's Razor, or all four. Whatever the case, you can undoubtedly find a quote from Einstein that will put them in their place.
    


14. Most scientific breakthroughs are achieved by angry, incoherent conspiracy theorists with no training in their adopted field and an implacable contempt for pretty much everyone who works in it professionally. This was definitively proved in 1776 by Galileo, and also by that plate tectonics guy, whatever his name was. If you doubt this, please consider the fact that I AM NOW TYPING IN CAPS.
    

If there's anything else you feel I should know, please feel free to explain it to me in comments.

UPDATE: In comments, Rich Puchalsky advances a theory that could potentially unify all the points listed above, as well as everything else worth knowing:

No statement made by a hippie can ever be true. Even in cases where the statement is finally generally accepted as being true, that doesn't it make it retroactively true when it was said by hippies. It only started to be true when the first non-hippie condescended to say it.

Why do I hesitate to affirm that this is 100% true in all possible universes? Only because I don't know for certain that it wasn't written by a hippie. Here's hoping Mr. Puchalsky will soon provide us with evidence of his bona fides, so we can all get on with our vastly enriched lives.

Here's some music while we're waiting. Please note its tasteful use of diminished chord arpeggios, which are of course the best kind.

Discarding Data

An article at Daily Climate discusses the hate mail that climate scientists have been getting, and the likelihood that it's part of an organized campaign of intimidation.

The e-mails come thick and fast every time NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt appears in the press.

Rude and crass e-mails. E-mails calling him a fraud, a cheat, a scumbag and much worse.

To Schmidt and other researchers purging their inboxes daily of such correspondence, the barrage is simply part of the job of being a climate scientist. But others see the messages as threats and intimidation – cyber-bullying meant to shut down debate and cow scientists into limiting their participation in the public discourse.

I can't help wondering if it's really wise to delete e-mails like these, which could possibly provide forensic evidence for orchestrated attacks and astroturfing. As I see it, someone should be gathering these e-mails from as many recipients as possible: simply deleting hate mail, while understandable in emotional terms, doesn't seem like a good idea from a scientific standpoint or a political one.

While we're on the topic of discarding useful data, get a load of this:

The nature of public discourse – be it climate change or health care – has changed; information that does not fit one's worldview is now discounted or rejected.

Increasingly," wrote Pulitzer-prize winning columnist Leonard Pitts, Jr. in the Miami Herald recently, "we are a people estranged from critical thinking, divorced from logic, alienated from even objective truth."

This just in: Public discourse is irrational pretty much by definition, and our self-styled defenders of "objective truth" might be a little more convincing if they weren't constantly wringing their hands over the loss of some rationalist Golden Age that never fucking existed, ever.

Never mind obvious examples like the Scopes trial and the decades of witless bickering it inaugurated; even something as apparently straightforward and logical as the imposition of standard time zones, back in the 19th century, was widely seen as arrogant tinkering with God's handiwork. To the extent that Pitts has a point, it's a point about the erosion of authority, not of "critical thinking." And even then it's dubious, since scientific authority has always tended to wax and wane along with its political utility. Power is knowledge, you might say.

As for being "alienated from even objective truth," I think Plato made a somewhat similar argument. As did Francis Bacon, when he said that "the mind of man is far from the nature of a clear and equal glass wherein the beams of things should reflect according to their true incidence; nay, it is rather like an enchanted glass, full of superstition and imposture, if it be not delivered and reduced." As have more people than I can name, again and again, from the dawn of recorded history 'til now. If Pitts is truly unaware of these little details, I'd say he's a better example of our intellectual decline than the fact that the man in the street has insufficient respect for climate modeling.

You can't treat AGW as an appropriate matter for public debate, and demand that the debate be conducted rationally, strictly on the basis of the evidence, because that's not how the public reliably operates even when the evidence is clear and accessible. Unless we intend to dissolve the people and elect another -- or to treat dissenters as irrelevant anti-patriots, the way we do when it comes time to launch wars -- we're stuck with them. Which is to say, we're stuck with us. If we're going to treat realism as some sort of civic duty, perhaps we should start being realistic about human history and how it's made, and stop blaming its victims.

(Illustration: "Credulity, Superstition, Fanaticism" by William Hogarth, 1762.)

Nationality Without Territory

Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have glad tidings for current and former residents of the Marshall Islands:

Through Laboratory soil cleanup methods, residents of Bikini, Enjebi and Rongelap Islands - where nuclear tests were conducted on the atolls and in the ocean surrounding them in the 1950s - could have lower radioactive levels than the average background dose for residents in the United States and Europe.

Good to know. Now, all they'll have to worry about is rising sea levels:

According to the vast majority of scientific investigations, warming waters and the melting of polar and high-elevation ice worldwide will steadily raise sea levels. This will likely drive people off islands first by spoiling the fresh groundwater, which will kill most land plants and leave no potable water for humans and their livestock.

Low-lying island states like Kiribati, Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands and the Maldives are the most prominent nations threatened in this way.

The latter article makes a fascinating point:

There are few legal precedents for how these nations can exist without dry land....

"The biggest challenge is to preserve their nationality without a territory," said Lilian Yamamoto of Kanagawa University in Japan. "It is unlikely that they can still have a state without it."

Over the last couple of centuries, the Marshall Islands "belonged" to Spain, which sold them to Germany, which lost them to Japan, which lost them to the United States, which used them as a proving ground for nuclear weapons. They were finally granted sovereignty in 1986, a year after the epochal Villach Conference on the “Assessment of the Role of Carbon Dioxide and of Other Greenhouse Gases in Climate Variations and Associated Impacts," which concluded that “as a result of the increasing greenhouse gases it is now believed that in the first half of the next century (21st century) a rise of global mean temperature could occur which is greater than in any man’s history.” Out of the frying pan and into the fire, as the saying is.

Should one's "nation" remain in the UN even after its territory sinks beneath the waves? Can you conceivably enforce sovereignty over a cultural territory, or a genetic one, or a mental one (as per Elgaland-Vargaland)? What should the status of such territories be under international law? Can one immigrate or emigrate? Could some sort of minimally occupied floating platform anchored over the submerged islands satisfy the legal demand for territory? Or would territory simply be redefined in terms of global position, regardless of the habitability of the space designated? After all, states routinely claim rights to airspace, so perhaps the Marshall Islands could define that as their territory: Cuius est solum, eius est usque ad caelum et ad inferos!

The notion that one can form a new nation without territory has some politically uncomfortable implications, so it's hard to imagine that idea catching on. More plausibly, a new "homeland" could be granted to the displaced population. But that, of course, begs the question of how many people will ultimately be displaced, and what kind of land will be available to them, and what sort of life can be lived on it (i.e., what sort of cultural continuity would the Republic of the Marshall Islands have if it were relocated to, say, the Arctic?).

These strike me as extremely complicated issues, so it's just as well that the recent snowstorms revealed AGW as a hoax.

Playing a Role

A press release from the Society for Research in Child Development explains the findings of a new study:

Moms influence how children develop advanced cognitive functions

Executive functioning is a set of advanced cognitive functions — such as the ability to control impulses, remember things, and show mental flexibility — that help us plan and monitor what we do to reach goals. Although executive functioning develops speedily between ages 1 and 6, children vary widely in their skills in this area. Now a new longitudinal study tells us that moms play a role in how their children develop these abilities.

The study "looked at 80 pairs of middle-income Canadian moms and their year-old babies." (Apparently, all the fathers were out hunting mastodon.) Here's how the lead author describes her findings:

"The study sheds light on the role parents play in helping children develop skills that are important for later school success and social competence," according to Annie Bernier, professor of psychology at the University of Montreal and the study's lead author.

That's pretty straightforward, and reflects the language of the paper itself. So why does the press release focus on "moms," as though executive functioning were dependent specifically on the (middle-income) mother's presence and level of engagement? Beats me. But since this sort of distortion often happens when research into gender roles, sexuality, and parenthood is summarized for the media, I assume that the people in charge of PR know their market, and have a good sense of which emphasis is more likely to get the research noticed.

Which leads me, naturally enough, to this quote from Pierre Bourdieu:

[S]ocial scientists, and especially sociologists, are the object of very great solicitude, whether it be positive - and very often profitable, materially and symbolically, for those who opt to serve the dominant vision, if only by omission (and in this case, scientific inadequacy suffices) - or negative, and malignant, sometimes even destructive, for those who, just by practising their craft, contribute to unveiling a little of the truth of the world.

The Eyes of Others

As part of the DoD's Quadrennial Defense Review for 2010, Michèle Flournoy and Shawn Brimley discuss emerging threats to a "global commons" comprising sea, air, space, and cyberspace. It's an interesting use of the word "commons," in that these domains remain "free" to the extent that America dominates them.

Apparently, this contradiction has not escaped people in other countries:

[R]ising powers will not likely be content to simply acquiesce to America's role as uncontested guarantor of the global commons. Countries such as China, India, and Russia will demand a role in maintaining the international system in ways commensurate with their actual or perceived power and national interests. Such demands are already occurring, from declarations of interest in space capabilities, to indications that the Indian and Arctic oceans will become new global centers of gravity.

It sounds like what we're discussing is not maintaining these commons, but enclosing them. Though as we learned when we were trying to save Western Civilization from the Viet Cong, it sometimes becomes necessary to destroy a village in order to save it.

The consequences of a shift in the international system that opens [!!!] the global commons for other state and non-state actors to pursue their interests — and perhaps credibly threaten America's use of these domains — are likely to be profound....

One worry is that The Evildoers will "look for ways to deter, deny, or frustrate our ability to swiftly employ and sustain combat forces across a variety of scenarios." The logical method is asymmetric warfare, which involves "using both simple and sophisticated technologies in innovative ways."

Of course, a strong global posture isn't necessarily a good defense against these tactics. A few years back, we bankrupted and demoralized ourselves by launching two pointless wars, which just goes to show how easily strength becomes weakness. The state's "need" to launch and sustain attacks is a structural flaw that asymmetrical warfare seeks to exploit, as I've illustrated more than once with this quote from Mr. Osama bin Laden:

All that we have to do is to send two Mujahedin to the farthest point East to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qa'ida in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human economic and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note …

One of the exciting new challenges, in coming years, will be to "[advance] our interests while legitimizing our power in the eyes of others." It's hard to believe no one thought of this before.

While legitimate global dominance has its diplomatic and philosophical aspects, it's sustained, as ever, by "power projection"...armed drones, for instance. Like heaven in the eyes of fundamentalist Christians, it's a generous gift from a loving father, and woe betide you if you dare to refuse it.

Being as the Obama administration has rejected the more déclassé aspects of BushCo's imperial arrogance, Flournoy and Brimley are careful to stress that "protecting and sustaining stability throughout the global commons cannot be achieved by America alone. We must lead in the creation of international norms and standards that can help advance the common good and expand the rule of law in these domains of growing importance."

Which sounds pretty good, as long as we don't simply come up with norms and standards that sanctify transnational logistics, and enforce them "surgically" with all sorts of long-range, remotely controlled weapons. Unfortunately, we may have no choice, given the likelihood that there'll be opposition to our domination of the global commons...even though we can be fairly sure that this opposition will grow louder and more compelling and more violent as a direct result of the actions we're taking to head it off.

Such is life, though. Maybe thermite-bearing termites will help.

Either way, there are difficult days ahead, and "the same factors that may engender the rise of new great powers may also accelerate the decline of other states that — by virtue of poor leadership, economics, and/or geography — are unable to adapt to a new era and meet the basic needs of their populations." Let's hope it can't happen here!

On the bright side, Flournoy and Brimley are concerned about the effects of climate change. So we are making progress, of a sort.

Advertising Space

Google has patented a new system that will allow companies to advertise on billboards and signs captured in Street View.

In this patent, Google describes how it plans to identify buildings, posters, signs and billboards in these images and give advertisers the ability to replace these images with more up-to-date ads. In addition, Google also seems to plan an advertising auction for unclaimed properties.

As fascinating as this idea is, I'm far more interested in the options for product placement. Old pickup trucks covered in NRA stickers could be replaced with the latest luxury sedans. Soda bottles could be placed label outwards in pedestrians' hands. Up and coming bands could be seen leaning arrogantly against brick walls, or loading their gear into clubs.

Better yet, why not have movie tie-ins? If some dramatic scene takes place at a certain intersection in Baltimore, Google could easily add that imagery to the appropriate address on Street View.

It needn't be done digitally. A more logical method would be to reshoot the street scenes as needed, with whatever content reputable advertisers are willing to pay for. And it needn't be strictly mercenary, either; a scheme like this might well aid community redevelopment and rebranding efforts. If a street or town has a bad reputation, discarded mattresses can be cleared away, feral dogs hauled to the pound, and figures of ethnic menace replaced with Boy Scouts and nuns. With a little spit and polish, the mean streets of Trona could look like a Norman Rockwell painting.

There are also interesting possibilities for political campaigning. Candidates could be "accidentally" photographed enjoying local delicacies, tackling purse-snatchers, or praying outside abortion clinics. It'd be useful for negative campaigning, too: We're not saying that's definitely Nancy Pelosi burning an American flag in front of an inner-city mosque, but the controversy is undoubtedly illustrative of something.

Of course, there are possibilities for abuse. But that's true of everything under the sun, and I suspect that sensible guidelines for self-policing are being drawn up as we speak. All in all, I'd say this is the most exciting marketing idea since 19th-century British electricians "made the well known features of Mr. Gladstone appear in ghostly outlines in the heavens."

(Photo by Cobalt123.)

Family Values

Conservative astroturfers who are looking for more strident and garish forms of political protest would do well to consider this:

Revelations the Italian mafia has been disposing of toxic waste by putting it onboard ships and then sinking the vessels has sparked health fears along the nearby coastline.

A Mafia informant confessed to sinking three such ships and it is estimated the mob may have sunk 32 more in the last two decades, as European regulations covering waste disposal grew tougher and it became more expensive to comply with them.

Surely this is a cause that all good conservatarians can support, once they've been told to. Modern Republicanism has rallied behind far worse environmental crimes than this, and hailed them as downright Jeffersonian.

The Mafia has some other good things going for it, from a conservative standpoint. Hypermasculine posturing? Check. Achieving social dominance through bootlicking submission to authority? Check. Enforced privatization of public services? Check. Racism and misogyny? Check. Loyalty to the group first, and the country second (if at all)? Check. Unctuous sentimentality about family and children? Check. Gun fetishism? Check. Arms trafficking? Check. A rigid social code based on the bottomless demands of male egotism? Check. Loan sharking? Check. An uneasy marriage of homoeroticism and homophobia? Check.

But all of that is small potatoes, compared to the Mafia's decisive stand against the European Nanny State. The enemy of the friend of my enemy is my friend, and just as it was formerly necessary to arm Iraq against Iran (and vice versa), it is now necessary to stand with organized crime against enviro-socialist tyranny.

Teabagging and going Galt is all well and good, but here's a chance to make an even grander statement, simply by doing what comes naturally. Why shouldn't real Americans dump their garbage in rivers and lakes, in order to assert the inalienable right of legitimate businesses to do the same? It makes at least as much sense as agitating against public health on behalf of the insurance industry, God knows.

And unlike racial and sexual taunts, which linger only in the mind, it'd provide a stark visual reminder of bedrock conservative principles, among which taking unapologetic pride in one's own personal ugliness currently seems to be foremost.

Plus, think of how much fun it'd be to contrast the normal garbage of the workin' man with the effete biodegradable detritus of the Coastal Elite! This is the sort of extra-fancy-grade cultural theorizing that could keep Jonah Goldberg busy for months. (Dig it, man: it's not the garbage that freaks out the Establishment. It's, like, the Truth that the garbage represents.)

It might seem like a bad idea, at first glance, to side publicly with the Italian Mafia. (They're foreigners, after all.) But for a movement that takes an almost erotic pleasure in transgressing social norms, and turning logic on its head, the main danger of declaring that it'd be better to be ruled by the Cosa Nostra than Obama is that it might not be heard above the general din. Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin say stranger things, and defend worse people, almost every day.

Which is why Massey Energy had better get busy, and base a spontaneous grassroots movement on this idea before it's too late. If the general tone deteriorates much further, the moment will be lost, and it'll be like trying to palm off Spooks Run Wild on an audience that's expecting Cannibal Holocaust. The sad truth is, even an über-patriotic orgy of illegal dumping may eventually seem unremarkable, or even quaint.

Hell, if people can get used to this, they can get used to just about anything.

A Call for Political Clarification

Since I don't have time, this week, to problematize the role of left-humanist ideology in the social reproduction of oppression, I figured I'd simply link to this excellent survey of emerging best practices in neo-Socialist polemics.

Every word is a sermon in itself, but points 7, 9, and 10 are dearest to my heart:

7. Your opponents are dogmatic and sectarian, unless they are not, in which case they are opportunists....

9. What people say is less important than what they imply. What they imply is what the correct political analysis leads you to decide that they imply. Don’t take their account as to what they are saying: tell them what they are saying. Be abusive if necessary. You have been provoked.

10. Welcome the new audience for socialism and always remember what they find of interest. What they find of interest is minutiae, because they are interested in political clarification and to that end the smallest details are important. Do not neglect the political ferment inside Skegness SWP, a council byelection in Oxford or what was on the front of Socialist Worker in 1969. This should fascinate a younger audience who missed the discussion the first time around (or the first two hundred).

These points can't be overemphasized, particularly if we wish to avoid falling prey to the sort of Zinovievian factionalist opportunism that marred the Fifth Comintern Congress.

Consider yourselves warned.

(Link via Moonbootica via rootless. Illustration by yours truly, stolen lazily from an earlier post.)

Trickle Down

Having just read an article on Guy Laliberte, the founder of Cirque du Soleil, and his upcoming voyage into space, I'm feeling slightly peeved.

Laliberte will be paying about $30 million for his flight. Which is fine, I guess...it's his money, and people have spent more than that on worse things. What bothers me, apart from his unctuous expressions of self-admiration, is that he sees this as a humanitarian mission, on account of he's going to read a poem about water while he's up there, in order to convince the struggling masses that water is important to children and other living things.

"My mission is dedicated to making a difference on this vital resource by using what I know best: artistry," Laliberte said. "This will be the first poetic social mission in space.

You know what? Fuck you. In the first place, space missions were poetic long before anyone ever heard of your dunced-out new-age horseshit. In the second place, you're an asshole. In the third place, if you care that much about access to water, $30 million could save a pretty amazing number of lives over the next 12 months. Hell, AIDG could work miracles with one million bucks. For that matter, it looks as though your own One Drop Foundation could use it; as far as I can tell, they have exactly two projects up and running: one in Honduras and one in Nicaraugua.

Unfortunately, Laliberte seems to be less worried about saving lives than about raising global consciousness through mime and poetry and mawkish entrepreneur-speak about the power of dreams.

"I think this is one of the best investments anybody has done in order to promote the awareness of water," he said.

"If the impact is achieved, we will reach much more people than I would have done if I spent that money on Earth trying to convince people that water is an important issue."

Did I mention fuck you? Perhaps I'm a cynic, but I suspect that if Laliberte had simply taken the money he spent visioning and test-marketing the noxious phrase "poetic social mission in space," and given it to an NGO that deals with water issues, it would've done more good for the world than any of his pompous techno-hippie hijinks.

If Laliberte really wants to make the world a better place, perhaps he should consider staying up there.

Then again, maybe it's actually a noble and inspiring idea, and I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. What do you think?

UPDATE: In comments, jaytingle makes an excellent point:

Cirque siphons a huge portion of their revenue from visitors to a pointless city in the Nevada desert. There is an obvious disconnect between promoting the importance of water (who knew?) and making a buck off of pissing away massive quantities of that same substance.

I couldn't agree more. And I think it's gonna take more than a $30 million one-man poetry slam to make up for that.

Non-Lethal Protection

As everyone knows, pirates (!!!!) are the worst existential threat this nation has faced since sometime last week.

What to do? If you've browsed the comments sections on popular blogs and news sites, you're probably aware that "KILL 'EM ALL!" remains the acme of sophisticated strategic thinking in many circles. This plan is usually recommended as though it's the easiest thing in the world to do, and the hardest thing to imagine doing. Its advocates always seem very proud that they know something the experts don't...just as their forebears did when they leaned against the pickle barrel with their thumbs in their suspenders, and offered a one-step solution for the nigra problem.

You'd think that this resolute optimism would make equally short work of every other problem we face. But if you scream "INSURE 'EM ALL!" or "PAY 'EM ALL A LIVING WAGE!" you'll be astonished at how quickly these folks develop an appreciation of nuance. (I suppose it's possible that these positions are actually consistent, in that they're both informed primarily by bone-deep sadism...but honestly, what are the odds?)

Anyway, there's the "KILL 'EM ALL!" school of anti-piracy. And there's their great enemy, the "Offer the Pirates Aromatherapy and Jungian Analysis While Holding Hands and Singing 'Kumbaya'" school, which comprises everyone who doubts that screaming "KILL 'EM ALL!" really makes you the new Clausewitz.

And then there's the reasonable, centrist Third Way, which is spearheaded by defense contractors and theorists; its motto is "kill some of 'em; torture, burn, blind, poison, electrocute, detain, or starve others; threaten the rest of 'em; and eventually become rich and influential enough to drive US policy towards your preferred high-ticket weapon system." This approach has the support of conservatives and liberals, so you know it's much closer to correct than anything on the extremist sides of the argument.

Apropos of which, Rep. Joe Sestak wants us to deter pirates with the Active Denial System, or "pain ray." David Hambling begs to differ.

Theoretical studies for the maritime tests showed that reflections from the hull could produce "hotspots" with twice the normal energy density, while reflections off the water could be three to four times the baseline....

The whole point of the ADS is that it is not supposed to cause harm. If you zap a boatload of suspected pirates and some of them jump into the water while others keep coming, do you cease fire? Continue firing until you cause real damage ("Ha ha, let's fry 'em!") and legally you might as well have a machine gun. If you're forced to stop, then how useful is the weapon?

Good question. Since the whole point is to avoid making merchant crews feel like they're in a real-life game of Area 51 or House of the Dead, the pain ray does seem like a nonstarter. Fortunately, Sestak is not out of ideas:

According to Rep. Sestak, a barrier might be what's needed to protect merchant vessels. One maritime security company makes an electric fence called Secure Ship. It's linked to a sophisticated alarm system and provides 9,000 volts of non-lethal protection which completely blocks access to the ship. Plus, it has the added benefits of preventing stowaways or thieves from getting on to the ship when it is in port. However, for obvious reasons, Secure Ship only recommended for vessels with a non-flammable cargo. And determined pirates will probably eventually get through it – if they remembered to bring wirecutters and insulated gloves. Despite the shortcomings, the fence might buy the crew valuable time while they call for help.

If the fence had three layers, it'd buy the crew even more time. And as always, the perimeter should be patrolled by drones or militarized animals (unless the Minutemen are willing to trade their pickups for speedboats and redeploy to the Indian Ocean, which would give us the best of both worlds).

Still, these are all stopgap measures. I think it'd be best to enclose each ship in a huge metal sphere filled partially with water, and let it travel over the bounding main like a hamster in a ball, thanks to a rotary apparatus at the prow. It could even be spiked all over, like an enormous pollen spore (isn't biomimesis all the rage these days?).

I imagine David Hambling will have some petty objection to this scheme, too, so I'll just launch a pre-emptive first strike on his pet idea:

Instead of going after the pirates, why not disable their boats? Something like the Running Gear Entanglement System -- or "James Bond Harpoon"-- might do the job. It releases a high-tensile line which snags on the boat's propeller. This would allow the pirates' target to escape, leaving the stranded pirates to be dealt with by the nearest warship in due course.

An entangler has a number of advantages over other options. One is the low cost, which should be thousands of dollars, rather than tens of thousands for LRAD or millions for ADS. Given a suitable launching system, it should be possible to deploy an entangler at a good range. And its method of operation means nobody gets deafened, blistered or blinded by friendly fire if it all goes wrong. Of course there's a risk of entangling the wrong small boats, but that's not the same as the risk of leaving people injured for life.

The thing is, there's also a risk of entangling whatever birds, fish, and aquatic mammals have managed to survive years of toxic dumping and overfishing. I'm not convinced that choking and strangling and drowning what's left of Somalia's wildlife is the best way to deter regional piracy, in the long run. As I've argued elsewhere, we only have one planet, so it's essential that we find sustainable, eco-friendly ways to thwart, cripple and destroy the subhuman filth who threaten our way of life.

All of which makes me more certain than ever that my giant metal sphere is the only feasible solution to Somali piracy. If anyone from Raytheon or BAE wants to discuss this further, you'll find me lying in the gutter in front of the Alibi tiki bar on Interstate Avenue.

A Plea for Snowballing

Tomorrow, approximately 250 million outraged American patriots will attend Teabagging parties in order to protest Communifascist Monarchialism, just as the Founding Fathers did when they did that thing with the tea, way back whenever, and "set in motion a chain of events that birthed the greatest nation on earth."

Granted, this insurrection eventually led to the election of an illegitimate, minority president who forced the nation under the yoke of Socialism as punishment for the slave trade. But what are the odds it'll happen again? The next time we take our country back, we'll know better than to cede any ground to the Diversity Cult.

There's only one cloud on the horizon, and that's the cadre of Somali pirates that ACORN has (probably) smuggled across our porous border with the help of the Mexican Army, in hopes that committing acts of violent pro-taxation extremism will distract the nation from "President" Obama's phony birth certificate.

This aggression will not stand. Teabaggers aren't violent — unless they're angry about something — but they do know how to take care of themselves and their country. These foreign agitators will not be permitted to interfere with the process of moving America forward by taking it back to a time when people could still imagine a future in which Freedom will once again thrive like it could've if things had gone just a little bit differently at certain decisive moments in history.

One such moment was when James Monroe boldly vetoed the Cumberland Road Bill, and transferred responsibility for infrastructure to the states. Suggest today that this country needs a Monroe Transfer, and people will laugh in your face. Make no mistake: We have a long way to go.

Part of the problem is that it's so hard to believe these things are actually happening in America. It was bad enough when the Radical Left was simply trying to close secret prisons, criminalize torture, and stand in the way of warrantless wiretapping. But now, they're trying to rewrite the Constitution...in order to allow a return to Clinton-era tax levels. It may not look like a new Holocaust, on the surface. But remember: Hitler hated the Jews because they had all the money. Sound familiar?

I think we need to make this comparison even more obvious, so I suggest that all of us who make $250,000 or more per year, or would like to someday, should sew a green dollar sign prominently onto our clothes, in memory of the yellow star the Jews were forced to wear under National Socialism. At a time when the wealthy are being demonized as arrogant, out-of-touch, self-obsessed crybabies, this gesture will put a human face on the plight of the financially secure, and remind the public of what can happen when a brutal dictator starts persecuting a minority whose only crime is being thrifty and industrious.

I've already made up some dollar-sign patches, and am making them available for $29.99 each, or two for $50. No self-respecting Teabagger should be without one!

It's not all about the money (although it'd be OK if it was, of course). What matters most is that I believe this tactic will help the Teabagging movement to snowball, and I hope it will inspire likeminded patriots to come up with their own strategies for snowballing. One thing is certain: Teabagging without snowballing is doomed to peter out. But if we're all willing to snowball, we can look forward to a golden shower of success that will transform our movement from bottom to top.

UPDATE: Satire is pointless.

Distrain and Oppress

A while back, I argued that the manufactured uproar over Obama's birth certificate might constitute a weird sort of wingnut proceduralism, in which certain legalistic pseudo-measures have to be taken before violence is "officially" justified.

What's fascinating — and frightening — about this idea is that the nightmare illogic of the accusation is its primary strength; if your goal is to delegitimize the courts, what better tool is there than an emotionally attractive conspiracy theory that no sane judge will take seriously? Faced with a totally irrational claim, the system functions as it should, and that's precisely what endangers it. Each time a lawsuit is dismissed or a motion is denied, the true believers become more convinced that the fix is in and an extralegal remedy is the only option left.

Apropos of which, WorldNetDaily informs us that a "citizen grand jury" of 25 people has been convened, and has indicted Obama for being born in the wrong place, at the wrong time, to the wrong people, for the wrong reasons. Since this is a Nation of Laws, certain legal steps must now be taken:

"If the government does not amend the error within 40 days after being shown the error, then the four members shall refer the matter to the remainder of the grand jury," it says. "The grand jury may distrain and oppress the government in every way in their power, namely, by taking the homes, lands, possessions, and any way else they can until amends shall have been made according to the sole judgment of the grand jury."

In other words, someone has rewritten clause 61 of the Magna Carta, and is offering it as a threat against the Obama administration (and, by extension, anyone who fails to grasp that Obama is an usurper, and that multiple governments have been colluding for years to hide the facts of his birth, on the assumption that the GOP would eventually fuck things up so badly that it'd become possible to elect a black guy with a Muslim name).

It's hard to critique this tactic. I can either write 750,000 words to explain exactly why it's batshit crazy even by the standards of modern conservatism, or settle for some form of understatement. Suffice it to say that while I'm as disappointed with representative government as the next gink, the idea that we need to start from scratch, with a new Great Council comprising wingnut conspiracy theorists, sticks in my craw.

It takes money to file frivolous lawsuits, and to appeal unfavorable judgments, so this new "emergency" could simply be another cash cow for the hard right, as well as an absorbing hobby that'll keep the base from yearning after the shiny bauble of center-right pro-capitalist semi-reformism.

But I can't shake the feeling that all this legal posturing really is intended to bring about the Glorious Revolution...or at least, the sporadic outbreaks of violence that herald its coming as surely as earthquakes herald the Rapture. While it probably won't lead to a post-apocalyptic society in which New Magna Carta Barons wielding barbeque forks battle Teabaggers armed with lawn darts for the right to gnaw on the bones of Galt-Goers, it does stand a pretty good chance of getting people killed.

Let Them Truckers Roll!

In times of crisis, great men frequently look to the example of a fictional character for guidance.

When Thomas Jefferson was laboring to abolish the death penalty, he was often heard to say that he wished he had a magic hat like Fortunatus. Cecil Rhodes initially tried to win South African mineral concessions through ventriloquism, just like Carwin, the anti-hero of Charles Brockden Brown's 1798 novel Wieland, or The Transformation. After becoming acquainted with R.F. Outcault's Yellow Kid, Mahatma Gandhi wore a saffron kurta emblazoned with the words "Dis gang tinks dey kin queer me but wait an see."

Ronald Reagan based his presidency almost entirely on the character of Jack Browning, the dead-eyed reptilian thug he played in Don Siegel's 1964 version of The Killers. And George W. Bush, of course, was inspired by some guy's painting of a horse thief.

So it's no surprise that the wisest and most productive members of our society would try to overcome the existential threat of taxation by imitating — or at least talking about imitating — John Galt, that sempiternal blowhard and hero of misunderstood teen geniuses from Nova Scotia to Nome.

The thing is, they're doing it wrong. I've argued before that C.W. McCall's 1975 novelty hit Convoy is the finest explication of libertarianism ever penned, and I stand by the claim. The hero these people ought to be emulating is The Rubber Duck, who leads a group of liberty-lovin' truckers on an epic journey to nowhere, for reasons that are never made entirely clear. The song is a celebration of spontaneous collective action in defense of individual liberty, as conceived by people whose revolutionary outlook begins and ends with the glorification of their marginal role in late capitalism, who see speed zones and tollbooths as tyranny, and who would rather shit in their pants for three days straight than pull over and get hassled by The Man.

Let's consider the song's narrative in more detail. Through the democratizing power of CB radio — a sort of proto-Internet, if you will — truckers who are enraged by bureaucracy and speed limits and stuff conspire to drive together across the United States at top speed, without stopping for cops, scales, gas, food, or anonymous gay sex at rest areas.

Come on and join our convoy,
Ain't nothin' gonna get in our way.
We're gonna roll this truckin' convoy
Across the USA.

If that's not an inspiring metaphor for the crazy quilt of modern conservatarianism, what on earth is? The song even anticipates the Crunchy Con movement, with a reference to "eleven long-haired friends of Jesus in a chartreuse microbus."

The police set up roadblocks, prompting The Rubber Duck to boast "I'm about to go a-huntin' bear." Don't ask how, or with what, or to what conceivable end. It's attitude that really counts in life, and the Duck's righteous 'tude seemingly reduces the police to toothless slapstick figures, because despite having chicken coops and choppers, and "armored cars, and tanks, and jeeps, and rigs of every size," Smokey can't do a thing to stop the Duck and his band of brothers in their "thousand screamin' trucks." At least, not before they achieve this apotheosis:

I says, "Pig Pen, this here's the Rubber Duck.
We just ain't a-gonna pay no toll."
So we crashed the gate doin' ninety-eight.
I says, "Let them truckers roll, 10-4!"

The song specifies that the toll is a dime, and there's a thousand trucks, so that's — wait a moment now, while I fetch the abacus — that's one hundred dollars that wasn't extorted from truck-drivin' men to maintain the roadbeds on which they ply their trade. Starve the beast!

It's not clear what happens next to these freedom fighters, but who cares? The important thing is that for a brief time, these men were members of a high-speed vehicular mob that could do anything except handle a sharp turn.

Why shouldn't disaffected conservatives and libertarians stage a similar populist revolt (or at least threaten us with one)? These folks have always had a hard time deciding whether they're William F. Buckley, Jr. or Hulk Hogan, but given the general mood of the country, I think it's time to come down from Parnassus and groove with the People.

I mean, going Galt is all well and good, but it's a bit too upscale, amirite? A bit too stilted and recherche? Organizing a series of national anti-socialist "Convoys," where people race around hootin' and hollerin' and wastin' gas to no clear purpose, would be much more likely to excite the Common Man than Ayn Rand's mindnumbing sophistries. Plus they'd have a readymade theme song. (And a movie, come to think of it, which the New York Times described as "a big, costly, phony exercise in myth-making, machismo, romance-of-the-open-road nonsense and incredible self-indulgence." That clinches it; I really do think we have the makings of an awesome new white-guy uprising here.)

Come on and join our Convoy, America! We ain't a-gonna pay no toll! It's not like you actually have to "crash the gates doin' ninety-eight"; you can simply talk about how cool it would be if someone else did it. Hell, you don't even have to know how to drive, really; this is more about the freedom that driving ideally represents, where you're not hampered by nanny-state obstacles like insurance and stop signs and road crews and bears in the air. As I said before, it's the attitude that counts; what matters is not what you actually do, but which absurd adolescent wish-fulfillment fantasy would guide you if you ever did do anything besides boring the birds out of the trees with your anti-civilization horseshit.

As for myself, I've decided to protest the prison-industrial complex by going Tenzil Kem. Of course, this doesn't mean that I'll actually eat iron latticework, any more than the people who claim to be going Galt will actually shut the fuck up, forfeit their incomes, banish themselves to the wilderness, and die in a shootout over who's gonna dig the latrine. But it does demonstrate my high ideals, don't you think?

Losing the Plot

Some ideas are so stupid that they can prevent you from realizing how stupid they actually are.

Normally, I dismiss out of hand the idea of a multi-decade international socialist plot to convince people that a) CO2 is a greenhouse gas; and b) there's no magical force field that prevents local emissions from having a cumulative global effect. But perhaps it'd be worthwhile to assume, for a moment, that the conspiracy theory is true.

What has this enormous, well-regimented cabal accomplished since 1991, when an NAS panel claimed that "greenhouse warming poses a potential threat sufficient to merit prompt responses"?

Not much, I'm afraid. It scored a bit of a coup by getting Algore, the inventor of global warming, into the White House for eight years. But its hopes were dashed when the Clinton administration passed virtually no meaningful climate legislation. It didn't cap emissions, nor did it ratify the Kyoto Protocol. It had a perfect excuse for authoritarian overreaching delivered to its doorstep on a silver platter, and it couldn't even be bothered to issue an imperial edict banning wood stoves or gas-powered leaf blowers or SUVs.

More to the point, the Warming Cult hasn't even managed to impose an understanding of the basic facts on the American public. And I'm not talking about the "fact" of AGW, by any means; I'm talking about elementary matters like the difference between weather and climate, or the fact that North America's winter is Australia's summer, or any other grade-school knowledge that would give the average citizen a fighting chance of understanding the issue at hand.

If we had a really effective global conspiracy, the latest effort by conservative pundits to establish the proposition that it's winter in America would've been met with gales of laughter and a blizzard of pink slips. Instead, an untold number of Americans nodded sagely when presented with clear proof that seasons exist, and felt themselves superior to all the scientists whose blinders force them to overlook the really salient issues:

Echoing a Drudge Report headline from the previous day that read, " 'Largest public protest of global warming' ever in USA faces DC March snowstorm!" Fox News hosts Neil Cavuto, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity each suggested on March 2 that, in Cavuto's words, a "massive snowstorm," which recently hit the East Coast, calls into question the scientific consensus on "global warming."

Media Matters goes on to explain, dutifully, that weather is not climate. What they fail to mention is that local weather is not national weather; it was sunny and warm in many parts of the country on March 2, and severe to exceptional drought conditions continue in California, the South, and elsewhere. They also don't mention that national weather isn't global weather. (It's supposed to hit 91°F in Kuala Lumpur tomorrow...in winter, no less! Maybe Algore is on to something!)

Trillion of dollars are at stake in this conspiracy, as well as the right to rule the globe with an iron fist. And yet the entire well-laid plot is in danger of unraveling, because no one thought to remind the average American citizen that it can be cold in one place and hot in another at the very same time.

I'm being flippant, of course. But this is actually a real problem. There are plenty of people, on the left particularly, who simply expect everyone to kowtow to scientific authority whether they understand its simplest concepts or not. Honest confusion ends up getting ridiculed, with the result that people become resentful and dig in their heels. Never mind AGW for a moment; the fact that Beck and Hannity can spout peabrained gibberish like this and be applauded for it would be tragic even if there were nothing more serious at stake than people's rudimentary understanding of the world in which they live.

If the idea of AGW as an elitist plot is so appealing to so many Americans, maybe it's partially because so many people who actually do understand the issues enjoy feeling superior to those who don't. If so, that's kind of obnoxious, given that people on the left ought to be aware of the forces that have crippled our educational system, instead of simply blaming the victims.

Blaming Hannity and Beck would be acceptable, natch, as would launching them headlong into the sun. But I'm sorry to say that the Warming Cult has tended thusfar to coddle dissenters. Nonconforming scientists should be languishing in a new Gulag as we speak. Instead, they wax fat and sassy, secure in the knowledge that a single sentence from them outweighs the official position of every major scientific organization on earth. In essence, their oppression is of the type that a diner at Citronelle suffers when asked to extinguish his Gurkha Black Dragon.

Worse, even though the media is owned and operated by eco-socialist one-worlders who know that doomsday predictions sell papers, conservative politicians who deny AGW enjoy instant access to a respectful, if not fawning, MSM, while a conservative politician who calls Rush Limbaugh "incendiary" is obliged to issue an immediate self-criticism.

This amounts to doing things exactly backwards, in my view; it's no wonder our cardboard-grey dystopia is so many years behind schedule.

Meanwhile, power-drunk communist madmen control China, North Korea, and Venezuela, and all we got was this lousy increase in emissions. And the People's Republic of Canuckistan has decided that exploiting Alberta's tar sands is more exciting than destroying capitalism.

I could go on, but you get the idea. As diabolical socialist plots go, this whole thing is a bit of a washout, and we'll be lucky if we're reduced to shivering in moss-lined caves by 2050.