Pocahantas Simba Binks Meets Avatar

Warning: Plot Spoiler. This review gives away parts of the plot (such as it is). My personal opinion is that a movie worth seeing won't be diminished by previous knowledge of the narrative, but some people can't live with it, so there you are.

The short version: Very long (2.5 hours), watchable, highly Disnified fairytale. No literary classic, but respectable visual and audio effects.

The longer version (but not as long as 2.5 hours):

In a galaxy far, far away, a mining company searches a primitive jungle planet for a mysterious precious mineral with the unlikely designation of something like “Unobtanium.” What this stuff is good for, we never know exactly, since all of the transportation modes involved in the fantasy world appear to operate in old-fashioned combustible ways, but for whatever reasons the stuff is highly desirable. Okay, we'll give them that.

The native inhabitants are a unique and vaguely jurassic group of spiritually interconnected plants, animals, and elongated blue humanoids with little use for the low-consciousness of the invading miners and their environmental carelessness. Coincidentally, deposits of the valuable mineral tend to be associated with the most important places in the native culture. Opposition from the natives and the hazards of the environment require the mining company to employ an army of ex-marines to insure security. If the native population doesn't cooperate, the Marines will also either forcefully relocate them, or eliminate as many as necessary to insure success of the mining operations.

Racing against the military profit schedule set by the corporate business manager, a team of dedicated scientists led by the crusty but culturally-conscious Sigorny Weaver as Grace, the science manager, struggles to find a workable diplomatic compromise by gaining knowledge of the native culture through the interaction of avatars, biological android replicants controlled by transfer of consciousness from a human operator. Just in case that wasn't sufficient provocation to produce avatars, human beings can only live in the atmosphere for about twenty seconds without gas masks. (Sorry folks, those are the rules, I didn't make them up.)

Into this predictable conflict of methodology and objectives, stumbles, so to speak, Jake Sully, a disabled Marine veteran who has lost the use of his legs under circumstances that are not clear, and is now, for reasons that are also not clear, the only suitable replacement to do the job of “sullying” the native culture as an avatar operator that was supposed to be his twin brother who has inconveniently died under circumstances that are even less clear. In a likewise somewhat incomprehensible deal, the militant and determined Marine Drill Sergeant Maniac commander of the security force offers to insure replacement of Sully's legs in return for his cooperation as an avatar operator to find something about the natives the mining company can use to force their cooperation. Apparently, as a fellow Marine, the Marine Drill Sergeant Maniac feels Jake's loyalty can be trusted. Unfortunately for the Marine Drill Sergeant Maniac, the native chief's attractive, independent daughter (think blue Pocahantas) conveniently rescues Jake in the character of his avatar (with a stylized minority face remarkably similar to Simba the lion cub) from the consequences of his own impetuous ignorance in the jungle. The inevitable follows.

Jake learns to appreciate the native culture as well as his shrewd and attractive native guide. His loyalties shift. The infuriated security chief convinces the business manager the time has come for violent action. The company sends in a team to destroy the native home-base (think Disney Tree of Life). The attack aircraft launch explosive incendiary rockets at the base of the colossal tree. The tree falls, and in the chaotic aftermath, the father of Pocahantas, I mean Blue Native Princess, gets speared by a fatal spike of the splintered tree.

Disowned by the natives for his human connections, poor Jake has to find a way to regain their confidence. This he accomplishes with a minimum of fuss by jumping onto a giant flying dinosaur and piloting the awesome beast in for a landing at the powow, becoming only the sixth or so successful major dino pilot in the long history of the natives. This is good enough for them. They take it as a sign.

The natives worship another weird tree (think fiber optic weeping willow) that serves as a kind of connection to the spiritual network of the planet. Unfortunately the tree grows on a promising location for Unobtanium. The company sends out an expedition of giant mining equipment, but Jake and the blue warriors head them off at the pass, so the business manager decides to go ahead with plans to drop a huge bomb on the site, and Jake leads the defense. Some kind of natural forces on the planet interefere with navigational instruments, so it's mano-a-mano, dino-riders against exo-suits.

In spite of their valiant effort and some help from their friends, including the scientists and a rogue copter pilot, the dinos and the natives are getting whacked by the massive firepower of the secuirty machines. Blue Jake jumps onto a flying humvee for a showdown with the Marine Drill Sergeant Maniac, and tosses a missle into the rotor, but Marine Drill Sergeant Maniac escapes in an exo-suit and Blue Jake makes a successful crash-landing through the sympathetic jungle vegetation.

On the ground, Marine Drill Sergeant Maniac in exo-suit takes on Blue Jake, Blue Pocahantas, and some of their dino back-ups. I won't spoil the duel by describing the outcome. I'll only suggest that it won't surprise you much.

As a teacher once put it to me, the simplest way to explain literature is that it messes with your head. Literature sells ideas like billboards sell cruises. How the ideas come across depends on a lot of things, including language, logic, comparisons, organization, all those things literature teachers are always ranting about as elements of literature whether they understand it themselves or not. This is also critical thinking, understanding how ideas are presented and their effect.

As literature, Avatar doesn't especially convey ideas successfully. The fundamental conflict between economics and nature represented by the mining company and the blue natives, a thinly veiled comparison to European colonial expansion, is something Disney has routinely exploited, exploited more effectively, and exploited with more blatant and complete hypocrisy (and I'm not even arguing that would necessarily be a bad thing for a business project).

What impact the narrative has depends, not on discovering any important or novel aspect of the relationship between nature and economics, but on contrived sentimentality of the sort criticized by Horkheimer and Adorno as products of the culture industry, predictable devices: destruction of the loyal companion, destruction of the devoted father, destruction of the loyal pet, destruction of the noble warrior, joining of the romantic characters, not things that have impact because of fundamental, inescapable personal connections, but things that have impact because of conditioned behavior, things that make you want to cry because they are supposed to make you want to cry.

To an extent, all emotional reactions are learned, conditioned, social behavior, but if that's all it is, then there is nothing authentic in the reaction. In that way, Avatar adds little or nothing to the conversation in the way that films like Blade Runner or Brazil added to the conversation, and the construction of the narrative is inconsistent. What supposedly happens to these avatars when the operator disconnects? Apparently they just go to sleep wherever they happen to be, which seems rather careless. Shouldn't they at least be parked somewhere secure?

Like a demanding mother, Grace insists on poking macaroni and cheese into Human Jake while the fate of the planet hangs in the balance. What kind of planning is that? Are clothes generated for avatars the same way as the avatars themselves? Why does one of the scientists' avatars always wear identical clothes? Doesn't that guy ever change clothes, in or out of the tank?

The only real critical success of Avatar is not in narrative or in social issues. The success is almost strictly in the detailed aesthetic world of imagination that conjures up the frightening proximity of unfamiliar creatures, provokes stomach-turning vertigo on the verge of numerous heights, or involves the viewer in the ceremonies and environments of a mystical race. Dinosaur-like predators attack with jarring presence. Fragile, glowing reptiles with wings and luminous jelly-fish insects float through the air. The characters scamper recklessly along mossy branches far above the apparent surface. The meager story advances through myriad views of unfamiliar life forms, but the thing painfully apparent is confinement to the passive visual and audio experience.

This is not an alien world. It is 3-D, the dimensionalizing of fantasy art into movement and sound. The floating mountains, the dinosaur-like dragon creatures, the weapons of the primitive tribe are all standards, not of profound insight, but of an esoteric, mock-medieval style of legend. It is a magnificent set without a script of any significance, and even the technical effect is questionable. It lacks the novelty of a Star Wars and merely utilizes the hyper-real production techniques of a Final Fantasy or even a Toy Story. In some ways more like the arbitrary identity shifts of a video game than narrative, Avatar ends up as an only somewhat successful and very long (2.5 hours) look through a constrained window of special effects, although for that length of time, even the accomplishment of not being totally boring is a degree of success.

I was rather struck that so many people in the audience would accept the corporation and the caricatures of the US military as enemies, that they would literally applaud the destruction of the strike force. But perhaps the joke is on me, because ultimately the representation of military loss is only pretend, and the message that remains attached to the visual spectacle seems to be that the fate of nature and culture depends not on right, or justice, or even on inner strength, but on the disputes and intervention of Anglo, male, U.S. Marines. Whether you are a predatory corporate enterprise, or a valiant blue native, you can't win without an Anglo male Marine on your side. Everything else is incidental, and resistance is futile. As true as somebody might like that to be, 2.5 hours is a long time to take for the message.

Here's Thinking for You
Iffy

Emily Dickinson Writes "The Gingerbread Man"

This is sort of a Christmas post, Martha Marinara’s fault. Suppose Emily Dickinson made gingerbread like she wrote poetry, or even worse, suppose she wrote poetry like she made gingerbread....

A pudgy fellow cooked by gas
Occasionally hides--
You may have met him--
Did you not
His notice sudden is--
The nose reacts as to a fork--
A flattened shape is seen--
And then it dashes past your feet
And sassy further on--
He likes an open doorway
A floor apart from meals--
But when a child and hungry
Returning after school
I passed I thought a morsel
Escaping on the run
When stooping to secure it
It danced away for fun--
Some of the kitchen’s people,
I know and they know me
I feel for them a transport
Of familiarity
I never met this fellow
Accompanied or alone
Without a warmer feeling
And spicy taste of home.

Here's Thinking for You, Best Wishes for the Holidays

Iffy

Phantom Post

Information for Living

Probably most human activities involve critical thinking. Information frequently finds you unprepared, unavoidable, attacking in the most merciless and inconvenient ways. Walking across the street requires knowing and accumulating volumes of information about imagery, lighting, traffic, sounds, physics, customs, laws, history, religion, and philosophy, not to mention personal capabilities and characteristics of response. How to apply the information to the task requires analytical and associative thinking, projections of future outcomes and identification of patterns. Should I cross here? Is it safe? Should I hurry? Can a car get here before I can get across, or in the case of imminent danger and spiritual insecurity, perhaps before I can get a cross? Where’s the nearest traffic light? Should I obey the law? Is it convenient? Why should I cross in a pedestrian crossing? Do I care what other people think? Is that Brad Pitt over there?

Therefore, it goes without stating, which means, of course, that it will be stated, critical thinking concerns the most intricate and personal aspects of our lives, so why would critical thinking be an issue of concern somehow separate from any particular problem? Maybe one answer has to do with the necessity of noticing patterns. Accumulation of information for such diverse projects as genetic research and identity theft or hacking requires the identification of patterns connected to the production of information.

What are the situational patterns, the parameters, that provide clues to the operation of natural processes and to the behavior that controls access to property or other valuable information, and how do people think who gather and use that information? The analytical processes are closely related, the patterns that generate databases fundamental. One scholarly critic describes it as “Unit Operations,” the idea of producing information processing programs that are both reusable and modifiable in ways that allow adaptation to a variety of purposes. In general, for instance, word processing serves the purposes of both divinity and drug dealers.

What the recognition of fundamental or underlying patterns means for information fluency is that understanding how information works, finding information, using information; research, rhetoric, and critical thinking, suggests clues, not just to the subject of a specific inquiry, but to the complete range of information-critical problems. Understanding how to prepare and use research makes the products of the thinking and development behind hacking, identity theft, and online scams not entirely avoidable maybe, but certainly easier to recognize and deal with, which is another way of saying information fluency represents information for living.

Here's Thinking for You

Iffy

Playing Electronic Gotcha

Considering what mainstream remote computer surveillance software programs can do, the idea of either interfering with electronic communications or stealing information from electronic communication isn’t much of a stretch. Numerous programs available for under a hundred dollars can record information from a computer in as much detail as individual keystrokes or streamed display recording. (http://www.awarenesstech.com/TestDrive/overview/frame5.html)

If keystrokes and images from a computer screen can be recorded remotely, and not only remotely, but now over wireless connections, even from cell phones, gathering information surreptitiously (stealing?) only becomes a matter of getting the control program onto the target device. We don’t even want to think about how easy that may be, really, but apparently at least it isn’t completely automatic, because this is where scams and viruses come in as a convenient way of convincing people to cooperatively turn over their protected information.




http://www.ripoffreport.com/Employers/Career-Network-Aka-A/career-network-apple-staffing-2bn92.htm

http://www.gradtogreat.com/tips_advice/article-jobboard_scams.php

Stealing personal information, such as passwords or Social Security numbers can be as simple and direct as looking over somebody’s shoulder at an ATM or as technical as hacking into a network database from a remote, wireless location. Sometimes the most sophisticated technical security remains open to the most simple-minded access, such as the British net surfer (more or less) almost accidentally hacking U.S. military intelligence. None of that encourages great confidence in the ultimate security of electronic information, but it also suggests that the obvious mode of operation for stealing information is the path of least resistance. If the U.S. military will give up information conveniently, why go to the trouble of elaborate technical programming, except maybe as an ego trip to prove superior technical capability? Another answer may be in the potential payoff of individual records in the millions, but by and large, attempts to collect protected information concentrate on more direct approaches. Why go to a lot of trouble dealing with complex technology if all you have to do is ask through email?

The variations are many and diverse, stealing for both fun and profit, but most follow the basic patterns of either convincing us to supply a click that a computer program interprets as authorization to perform a restricted operation, like downloading a document with a virus, or convincing us to provide confidential information, and away we go on the familiar carnival ride of unauthorized use and malfunctioning devices. Everybody knows what these cheerful requests for mindless cooperation look like. Please confirm your account information. Follow this link for photos of Lindsay Lohan. Click here to renew your subscription. We’d like you to join our company. In order to protect your personal security, and so forth.

The psychology of this operation is diabolically simple. We want things, and we worry a lot (about identity theft, among other things), so verifying account information to prevent unauthorized access is, like, a high priority, and clicking on an external link or an attachment is so easy (Like the one with a graphic link as a big red disk labeled “Do Not Press This Button”). Worst of all, sometimes we want to believe those lurid claims are true. So how do we avoid entrapment by these inventive hucksters? Most of it, especially on a personal level, depends on those simple concerns. Maybe the first line of defense is simply being alert to our own priorities. The agents, bots, and cookies that collect information for more or less legitimate marketing also provide potential guidance to scammers.

Familiarity with the routine transactions of banking and/or using a variety of credit cards online makes financial information an attractive target and our response potentially careless. Think twice about any unanticipated electronic communication concerning money and financial transactions, especially if it involves submitting passwords, numbers, or other personal information. What could be easier for identity theft than simply asking for the information? Think twice about any unanticipated electronic communication concerning any subject, especially if it involves clicking on anything. Consider the composition of the URL. Paste it in as a browser location address if you really have to check it out, although that can have a downside also. A very undesirable web location may now be permanently recorded in your address list, that can only be removed by either deleting your entire browsing history or by locating and modifying the registry file that keeps the list. Modifying registry files is not necessarily a convenient operation, so avoiding the problem makes sense.

There are other general precautions worth considering. There is no perfect way to insure security in cyberspace, but Leaving a computer on with accounts open or any kind of useful information displayed is potentially problematic as the remote variations of wardriving become more sophisticated and effective. The size and complexity of both video and animation files and the programs to display them are better suited to concealing virus and information control activity, so avoid videos if your security software has deficiencies. Transferring malicious material or controls in text files is very difficult through direct connections on the internet and pretty much impossible without opening the files on an individual unit, even without additional security programs. If files aren’t downloaded and attachments aren’t opened, viruses and information control can’t get connected.

While advisable, security software is notorious for slowing down operating systems, and security programs aren’t necessary for every kind of problem. An example is the disconcerting experience of receiving hundreds of undeliverable messages as a consequence of having email hijacked by a bot to distribute spam. While free security programs like Spybot and AdAware can remove uninvited intruders (although don’t confuse AdAware with the opposite and deliberately similar Adware, which installs rather than removing snoopy gate-crashers), sometimes the situation can be managed simply by changing the email password. Another danger of allowing bots to operate in email accounts is that the email account will eventually be virtually shut down by anti-spam control from recipients of the commercial or malicious messages, which can be excrutiatingly inconvenient for personal email accounts. Even if we have security software on our computers, sometimes we already have the best security installed in our heads. All we have to do is use it.


Here's Thinking for You
Iffy

Sarah Writes

Judging by the reactions to Sarah’s book, what she seems to have accomplished is mostly to prove she can’t remember phone conversations any better than email, or that she even knows the difference (what might be a legitimate point for someone who thinks a photograph for a running magazine wouldn’t turn up anywhere else). Apparently, to her it’s all just words. I can’t argue with that.

But moving on to important stuff, it’s not the shorts in the photo. It’s the classic “I am sex object on display” pose that’s sort of offensive. I’ve seen some dramatic photos of Palin running along a rocky beach somewhere in front of a glacier that seem to say more about an effective personality than standing with your hands and one leg hitched up in a beauty-contest, fashion-mag celebrity pose, although even with the glacier, she is alone. She may be a highly intelligent and savvy politician, but she’s channeling it into a fool’s image. How are we supposed to respect that? She has to get beyond Wasilla-league popularity to be a serious political factor.

"I'm going to have my official portrait painted on the nose of an F-22."





And by the way, isn’t it a desecration of The Flag to throw it over a chair and plant your elbow on it like a placemat? I thought there was a specific way to fold and store an American Flag when it isn’t on proper display? What do the swift boat veterans for patriotic BS have to say about that?

No doubt Newsweek chose the photo because it seems to reflect badly on Palin’s ideology and would generate controversy, but that isn’t even the issue. Yeah, unless you’re Bill O’Reilly or Hannity, and sexual harassment is your cup of tea, so to speak, this is a demeaning photo, whether it’s Newsweek, Runners World, Hustler, or the Catholic Review. What makes her think she can get away with it? I’ve seen photos of presidents running and playing golf or tennis, but unless they were just being goofy I’ve never seen presidents dressed for exercise and standing around in a Mr. Universe flex pose with American Flags wadded up under their arms.

If you have some, trot them out.

Here’s Thinking for You.
Iffy

Government Transparency

The only thing Republicans hate worse than opaque government is transparent government. The Bush Administration had a firm grip on understanding that ignorance can only complain about lack of information. Knowledge opens up all kinds of potential issues. Look at the Whithouse guest lists. Under Bush, the only complaint was that nobody knew who had access to the President. Under Obama, knowing that George Clooney has access to the President makes Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney feel inadequate again. Poor Rush. Poor Dick.

And speaking of Rush and Dick, we’re on to another week of the inexperienced and immature Obama thing. Uh, did I miss something, or was not extension of the “war” in Afghanistan a Bush administration policy? Afghanistan was never going to be easy, and how we are going to get out was never clear, but none of that makes the previous administration less responsible for anything except having any idea of how to get out before going in. Once the military solution was achieved (except for failing to neutralize Bin Laden, which correct me if I’m wrong was why we went in. No? Oh, my bad.) , how do you democratically maintain a government that you put in place but the inhabitants seem less than enthusiastic about, without leaving it to be lynched if you leave, like the Russians?

Oh, I know. We can move Karzai over here and give him Canada. The Canadians are moving to Florida anyway. In fact, we can just cut out the dealer and give Karzai Florida up front. Florida gave the election to Dubya, it’s only fair that we should have Karzai for King. We’re done with Crist anyway. He’s going to have to switch parties after the Obama hug thing. Don’t forget, Charlie, Sara Palin’s out there somewhere, very far out there.

Maybe my wife is right. The Republicans don’t want to take stimulus money, because the more people without work, the more people default on their mortgages, and the more cheap houses go to those bright enterprising Christian conservatives to share with their less fortunate brethren, at a fair rent that defaults to 27.99%, of course. The work ethic rules.

Here's Thinking for You
Iffy

Snarling and Mauling

Oh Mr. Dik, you rascal you. Are we dithering in Afghanistan again? Well, we shouldn’t be surprised. You only had eight years to mess it up. A couple of more years and maybe you could have done a thorough enough job that nobody could do anything about it ever. That must be a big disappointment. No wonder you make so much noise.

Yeah, we’re letting those naughty little Talibanistas walk all over us, like they had any business running a country in the first place. And what’s with this taking opinions from other countries into account? The US of A don’t take no sqwak off nobody. We are the pit bulls of politicals. We know only snarling and mauling. With us or agin us.

Now why isn’t it that we invaded Saudi Arabia? Oh yeah, we only invade undemocratic despotisms where distribution of wealth is way inequitable.

So why don’t we just invade us?

Here’s Thinking for You.
Iffy

NObamable

You might think from the title that this would be a complaint about the award to President Obama, but actually, no. That's just a little wordplay to get the opposition all excited.

Remember Croatia and Serbia? Does anybody remember Croatia and Serbia? There was, like, this war with guns and violence and killing and atrocities, and it was getting genocidal and threatening to be regional, and Silly Bill sent over the U.S. Airforce, and they bombed the hoorah out of Serb military installations and production facilities, until the Serbs ran out of stuff to blow stuff up, and they made a separate country for Croatia, and now they don’t necessarily like each other or even get along, but at least they don’t kill each other so much? Remember that?

The problem was, obviously, that we were just too clinical about the whole thing. We sent in aircraft to cut off the means of waging war, and it worked. The number of Americans who died as a direct consequence of combat was what? Under a hundred? What kind of intervention is that? You can’t have a war without killing people. It just doesn’t work that way. It’s contrary to the whole concept of war.

And so, what kind of political capital do you accumulate by ending wars without adding bloodshed? Answer: not much. The Army wasn’t happy about it. Veterans weren’t happy about it. Patriotic political organizations weren’t happy about it. Conservative politicians weren’t happy about it. They didn’t want it to work, and the absolute worst thing about it was that it worked. Well, so they didn’t waste any time whacking Clinton down to size. They had trouble making the Bosnian strategic success into a bad thing, but Silly Bill cut his own throat, so to speak, for them by the mistake of participating in a questionable personal relationship, and even worse, thinking it might not be that big of a deal. Politically, you may be able to survive not killing people, but you sure aren’t going to get away with any personal indiscretions. That, my friends, would be grounds for impeachment.

Thus the foundation was built for the advent of George Bush, who in the aftermath of 9/11 quickly demonstrated that he could have only one hope of ever achieving anything like presidential stature, and that was to take responsibility for the decision to sacrifice American lives in the execution of a Great Cause. What the Great Cause would be remains somewhat unclear, but we escalated the killing straightaway, and the place of George Bush in history was thereby assured.

Why we betrayed the rebels and accepted Hussein’s repression of the Shiia after the Gulf War in the first place remains another mystery. Apparently the simple expedient of neutralizing his helicopters and tanks would have been sufficient to achieve regime change, but maybe the question of internal instability somehow initially justified the need to intervene only in a direct and comprehensive way. For reasons that remain mostly incomprehensible, however, Hussein was allowed to continue his repressive policies, which somehow eventually became part of the justification for the Heroic invasion by George Bush. Five thousand American casualties later, the coalition of token participation has achieved little assured result other than unresolvable conflict and international skepticism accompanied by an economic collapse aggravated by the continual diversion of attention elsewhere, and Bush slipped away into history to write his memoirs, his war predictably unconcluded, a presidential stature of mythic proportions undoubtedly under construction. That is, if anybody remembers he was ever president, or wants to. It was Bush that was President, right? Not Karl Rove?

This is the preposterous situation, going back at least to the first Gulf War, into which Barack Obama enters as successor to George Bush. My concern for Obama has always been taking over a no-win situation that the conservatives were only too happy to relinquish, so they could blame it on someone else. Just as obviously, they wasted no time jumping on that bandwagon. Witness Hannity and Beck. If anything, their real consternation, once again, is the all too apparent danger that Obama might at least move toward some kind of international consensus. Even the mere prospect of achieving progress in the global resolution of conflict is just too much for his opponents.

And you are still clueless enough to wonder why the man deserves a Nobel Peace Prize? You should work for Fox News.

Here's thinking for you.

Iffy

In John We Trust

I now have the disappointing distinction of supporting two prominent liars in the course of my life, George Bush and John Edwards. By comparison, Bill Clinton’s response to the investigation of his relationship with Monica Lewinski doesn’t even rate with Reagan’s bad memory. When Bush claimed that Iraq represented a threat to the progress of international peace by WMD development and imminent deployment, I believed that the President of the United States had more at stake than some kind of schoolyard attitude. I was wrong. Perhaps my outrage at the failure of my judgment in that case led me to an excessive desire for retaliation that made me blind to the apparent character (or lack thereof) on the part of John Edwards. Or maybe at that point I just really didn’t care that much. When controversy usually seems to mean increasing the divide between rich and poor, and the military cheerfully obeys illegal orders just to keep the funds flowing, you tend to develop a kind of cynical attitude toward the prospects for performance of government and politicians, despite the necessity for both.

The excessively sordid saga of John Edwards' infidelity, however, has an additional ironic, poignant resonance in the UCF composition program, where one of the textbooks on argument included an essay by Edwards discussing the essential nature of trust and credibility. HOO Rah. There’s a laugh, you would think. The only redemption for Edwards in that discourse may be Hank Lewis’ distinction between morality and ethics, the idea that perhaps you can be professionally ethical without being entirely moral on a personal level. A philandering doctor or real estate agent or convenience store clerk can still perform the functions of the job, maybe even exceptionally well. Why should their behavior off the clock impact professional expectations?

What we expect of professionals is to do the best job they can, regardless of their personal prejudices. Morality is a kind of personal responsibility, a personal prejudice in a sense. However, excusing bad behavior as irrelevant to professional performance assumes a distinction between personal and professional that may not exist. Showing up late and falling asleep, or stealing to finance multiple relationships are common ways that the complexity of the personal can directly affect the professional. At that point, at least, we generally agree and acknowledge by policy and law that the limits of the personal and professional have been exceeded, but what if the relationship is less obvious? Lawyers, for instance, are supposed to be committed to excluding individual morality from performance anyway. Lawyers are supposed to choose the best argument regardless. Why should infidelity and public deception be anything other than what you would expect? A good lawyer being a good lawyer?

The reason is the same reason we don’t allow doctors and fighter pilots to kill runaway children on the weekends as part of the compensation for their value to society. A doctor for whom destruction is personal entertainment would neutralize the value of professional performance to society. Likewise, anyone for whom destruction is personal entertainment neutralizes their value to society, and so we discourage destructive personal behavior regardless. Murder for entertainment on weekends wouldn’t prevent a doctor from treating the flu, but the value of treating the flu pales by comparison, so to speak. We don’t even tolerate a doctor who goes out on weekends and knocks over convenience stores for fun, in spite of how valuable the medical skill may be. There are degrees of destruction, both personal and public, but when the destruction has been sufficient to be acknowledged by everyone involved, then the value of the profession has been neutralized. Call that morality of a sort.

If I didn’t know about Edwards’ infidelity, maybe it wouldn’t matter, but on the other hand, if I don’t know about a crime, does that mean it didn’t happen or it isn’t important? Everybody takes up some space on the planet. That’s the space we agree to allow each other by virtue of the planned or unplanned fact of existence. Connections of family and the routine affairs of subsistence are personal. Services rendered on an impersonal basis are professional, but where personal affairs, personal space, becomes destructive in a comprehensive and acknowledged way, the social value of the professional has been neutralized. John Edwards’ infidelity may not be entirely illegal, but it was destructive on both personal and public levels. As far as I’m concerned, Edwards’ value as an attorney and as a politician has been neutralized, or should have been.

Here’s thinking for you.
Iffy

The Shrill Sillies of Righteousness

Jesus was a socialist. In his outrage at the exploitation of class distinctions, however paternally condescending such outrage may be, there was a fundamental insistence on mutual consideration. Jesus may not want you for a doormat, but he certainly doesn’t want you for a military elitist reactionary. As much as you might like to think Christianity is parochial, colonial, and safe from universal concerns, Jesus had other ideas. The unfortunate down side of Christianity for supremacist interpretations is the Christian part, and there is, by the way, one sin that will not be forgiven regardless of all the love in the heart of Jesus, righteousness. Judgement is God's turf, and God don't take kindly to squatters. So much for theology.

The heart of socialism, shared with humanism before Darwin got hold of it and ripped it out, is the idea that people are fundamentally equal and valuable. Seem familiar? Individual expression is also valuable, but distribution of resources depends on the determination to find places for everybody that fit their individual capacities, not on the mighty power of randomly individual supremacy and survival of the most contentious. Hysterical objections to socialism are based, not on the reality of an economy and society that has already demonstrated the essential nature of interdependence, but on perceptions of a failed communist experiment that established a new aristocracy of party affiliations unequal to confrontation with the established aristocracy of capitalism. In spite of technical expertise formidable enough to at least put a good scare in the capitalist technocracy, the Soviet Union failed to compete toe-to-toe as an industrial capitalist initiative, much as any under-funded and badly organized business venture fails to compete with other established competitors in the market. Soviet communism was only socialist in the sense that it confined the majority of the population to subordinate positions, creating a façade of equality that, like capitalist class distinctions, does not even allow participation in public discussion, much less socialist ideology, Marxist base and superstructure. Therefore, unable to continue support of a non-productive aristocracy and competitively outclassed, Soviet Communism collapsed under its own weight, an outcome previously predicted by a few shrewd analysts, and since Soviet Communism was neither socialist nor competitive, we need to get over fear of Soviet Communism as justification to oppose the suggestions of the President.

The underlying premise of socialism produces such cooperative consequences as public roads, health standards, educational opportunities, legal recourse, and free speech. The ancient and excessive fear of an aggressive and totalitarian aristocracy disguised as communism now justifies opposition to initiatives that are both socially and religiously imperative, and the inference of irrational volume and intensity suggested by characterizations of shrill and silly resistance are about right. If the objection to health care reform depends on resistance to government and the threat of socialism, then my response would be to get your sorry hypocritical parasite butt off the public streets produced by socialist consensus, and find a privately constituted route home, and good luck with that.

Here's thinking for you.
Iffy

Advice from the Other Side

Poetry is the language of profound observations, and I wouldn't want it to be said that I did not aspire to literary achievement, so here is a cautionary tale as an account of personal experience in traditional lyrical style.

An armadillo in repose
With outstretched arms and pensive nose
Extended to the sky.
Only the armadillo knows the reason why
It’s lying in the road.
Perhaps it paused to think great thoughts
And having thought of lots and lots,
It stood up to command attention,
Preparing for the exposition,
Of insights too profound to mention,
When in due course it was fatally struck
By a careless, careening pickup truck.

Take counsel all you small and great,
When legs are short and hazards wait,
Don't dawdle in obtuse reflection,
Inviting horrible dissection.
Recollect the armadillo
Snuggling asphalt for a pillow.

Here's thinking for you.
Iffy

Intercultural Communication

I had some trouble with my presentation at the conference of the National Council of Teachers of English in San Francisco due to the simple logistical problem of a wireless mouse that was too small for my nervous fingers. I plead Aspasia, either that or early onset dysfunctionality. I was okay once I gave it up and switched back to the keyboard, but when I made one of my cryptic remarks about mice in Orlando with more political influence than Arnold Schwarzenegger, in the middle of the presentation, somebody in the audience said “What’s that supposed to mean?”

I suppose they considered it to be criticaI of the governor of California, although the point was simply that in Orlando Walt Disney World is the political power. California and Anaheim have Disneyland, but it’s not quite the same where an entire region sort of owes its existence to a theme park.

I like Arnie. For a Republican, at least he seems to have some common sense. Everybody wants big cheerful guys to be their friends. I’m all about that, and I considered stopping and explaining the remark, but to me it seemed like it would be even more embarrassing to have somebody explain in the middle of a presentation that mice in Orlando was a reference to Walt Disney World. Would that be a credit to your information fluency? And I wouldn’t want to make the issue any more complex and contentious, because, after all, that one individual represented 20% of my audience.

Here’s thinking for you.

Iffy.

Horton Hears a Heffalump

My previous reference to Oliphant and the chimpanzee rampage cartoon was somewhat ironic since one of Oliphant's new cartoons outraged the Semitic community. I’m not totally enthusiastic about the cartoon myeself because it isn’t really funny, and it’s too obvious to be clever. It has sort of a Dr. Seuss sense about it, with the little wheel under the monster star. Dr. Seuss produced patriotic propaganda during WWII, before he used the characters for children’s books. That's another lesson in recycling swords and plowshares. Maybe the Semites should give some thought to how Gaza has been coming across, however. Complaining about Oliphant isn’t exactly going to fix the problem, no matter how mindless the cartoon may be.

Oliphant 2009


Dr. Seuss 1942

***************

MSNBC published a somewhat uncharacteristic article about Bill Clinton signing off on the derivatives regulation exclusion in 2000. Some things the article neglects to mention are that besides burying the clause in a morass of complex financial legislation, in 2000 the Republicans (and I use the capitalized form lightly) had Bill on the verge of an executive layoff. It wasn’t like he could afford any showdowns over individual components of budget legislation. His veto would have been overridden faster than you can say “Monica Lewinski.”

We can blame nitwit Bill for doing something petty, arrogant, and self-indulgent in the first place, but somehow I can’t help thinking that in 2000 the Republicans should have been concentrating more on the economy and national security and less on presidential indiscretion. We would have all been better off in the long run. In a crisis, if you had to choose between whether the president gets oral sex or a long vacation in Texas, which one would you go for?
Here’s thinking for you.
Iffy

Another Pot of, Well, Gold

Spring Break is over. Another St. Patrick’s Day has come and gone. President Obama got in touch with his Irish roots. That must have been invigorating.

AIG bonuses are in the news again. The idea of a retention bonus seems to presuppose some kind of value to be gained from retention, although the value in the case of AIG employees is a little hard to conceptualize. How much value to a company can employees be who engineered a two hundred billion dollar loss, unless their expertise actually depends on sucking up government bailout funding? If that’s bad for company moral, Gee Whiz, excuse me all over the place. I’m sure there are many decent human beings working for AIG who don’t deserve to be identified with unfortunate company initiatives. On the other hand, I also suspect there are plenty of homeless people who made better choices than working for a conglomerate without moral principles.

Somehow the argument of contractual obligations leaves me unimpressed. Let’s see. I work for a company that loses vast amounts of money with operations that are barely even legal. Now I want a bonus to continue working for the company? Why didn’t I think of that in previous jobs? I could be a CEO myself by now.

Just say no. If they don’t like it, let them sue. Breach is always an option. I like Cuomo’s question about where would the bonus money come from if there was no bailout. There would be no bonus money.

Let’s look at it this way. If we don’t pay out million-dollar bonuses to keep these brilliant economic yahoos employed, they could wind up panhandling for change on street corners, and considering AIG, I’m afraid it would require a whole new infrastructure program to build additional street corners, but on second thought, maybe that would help revive the economy. It could be a win-win.

Here's thinking for you.
Iffy

Elmo Love Bernie

A fifty-four year old woman required treatment by teams of surgeons over a period of seven hours for injuries inflicted by a confused chimpanzee living on lobster and ice cream in Connecticut. If the victim survives, she will require years of treatment to repair the disfiguring injuries suffered after offering the chimpanzee an Elmo doll as a present. There is a temptation to speculate that the chimpanzee was not a fan of the Muppets, but unfortunately the consequences and implications of this event transcend humor, to the detriment of a New York Post cartoonist.
http://enews.earthlink.net/article/nat?guid=20090219/499cf560_3ca6_15526200902191164606112

Selma Hayek inspired international outrage by breast-feeding a starving baby. The baby has no doctors. The baby has no medical care. The baby has nothing to eat. Selma Hayek did the only thing a decent human being could do.

The chimpanzee died of gunshot wounds from police faced with the task of controlling an unpredictable animal the size of a large man with twice the strength. A controversial political cartoon subsequently appeared in the New York Post portraying police shooting a chimpanzee and commenting that the chimpanzee could have produced stimulus/bailout legislation more competently than Congressional legislators, suggesting a connection to the sad event of the Chimpanzee Rampage.

In a rather ironic political twist, civil rights activists compared the chimpanzee to President Obama, and complained about discrimination by the cartoonist. The cartoon tastelessly exploits an unfortunate tragedy in an unoriginal way that has been treated more effectively and humorously, by Oliphant during the Reagan administration, for instance, but the racial discrimination is in the eye of the beholder. The baby, on the other hand, will be lucky to live as long as the chimpanzee.

There is a moral in these events, confused as morals usually are, something about expending resources to establish and maintain impossible relationships doomed from the start, while the most basic needs of others go unanswered. Can I excuse myself any more than the nation or humanity? No I cannot. I have adopted defensive habits of moderation that regard punishment as the only reward for good deeds. Witness Selma Hayek. I have retreated into the noncommittal middleground of Martin Luther King’s frustration, yet I cannot help reacting, like touching something unpleasant in the dark, to the unregulated opportunism and unfocused excess of economic and administrative cowboy culture that has encouraged disregard for just responsibility and produced an environment characterized by the vast and historic scope of self-indulgence represented by the superficially benign but ominously paradoxical images of the Dick Cheneys and Bernie Madoffs and their spiritual kin.

As far as I can tell, nobody offered the baby an Elmo doll.

Here's thinking for you.

Iffy

Down with Tall Letters

The American Psychological Association distinguished the construction of citation forms in professional publications by removing capital letters from titles. I would like to suggest extending this efficiency to modification of all titles, such as “the wizard of oz,” for example.

In fact, the construction of all text could be vastly simplified by dispensing with capital letters entirely, thereby eliminating controversies over such thorny issues as hyphenated constructions (Web-Based or Web-based?), and other derivative terms. capital letters are really only a form of linguistic imperialism anyway, an extension of patriarchal dominance that privileges assertive thought. elimination of capital letters would therefore establish more gender-neutral and diversity-friendly language forms.

likewise, the complexity of language imposed by capital letters is at least equaled by complications imposed through punctuation. elimination of punctuation in addition to capital letters would also simplify the use of text no more controversies over dependent clause inversions set off by commas elements of lists or sentences connected improperly the meaning now depends as it should entirely on the context

having dispensed with the cultural tyranny of capital letters and punctuation consider the relative usefulness of various letters of the alphabet most vowels occur with a frequency that makes them intuitive the use of vowels is therefore redundant and merely contributes to spelling errors wtht vwls th lngg bcms vstly mr ffcnt nd n fct mny rptd ltts r qully nprdctv wtht vwls or dbl ltrs mny ns pr nfrquntly w rly nly nd th cmn ns gt rd f x y z k q v nd m d wth th rst ndgtrdspcs

And so I conclude my argument. APA has the right idea. Psychology rocks.

Here's thinking for you.

fy

Save the Lemmings

Would somebody explain to me the logic of raising credit card default rates to 30%? How exactly is this supposed to encourage economic activity or even protect lenders?

Consider the scenarios. Take employed borrowers interested in making credit purchases. Except in desperation, are they going to look at using or applying for credit cards with 30% default rates and variable rates up to prime plus 22%, or even more? Oh yes, they’re going to say “I can’t get enough of that. Give me more.”

Likewise, for someone laid off or on reduced income with dwindling assets, how exactly do astronomical default rates encourage continued payments? Even psychologists grasp the simple concept that organisms faced with insurmountable obstacles either give up completely or turn their attention elsewhere. How does compounding loss encourage recovery?

With billions in bailout money propping up credit providers, at the very least, a moral obligation has been imposed to moderate obligations, not to mention the simple business wisdom that raising prices, in this case the price of credit, does not increase sales. Increasing the price of consumer credit is a Reagan era bait-and-switch strategy that has been sustained by economic trends of increasing income and asset values, but in a depressed economy you might as well go out and beat yourself in the head with a brick.

Forcing consumers into bankruptcy with astronomical default rates will not increase recovery for lenders, only for lawyers. What it really does for lenders is to temporarily inflate balance sheets by adding theoretical debt to assets, an effect that got us into this mess in the first place, and a practice that is only just this side of outright criminal, and only theoretically this side.

In a free market economy, price increases are an argument of supply and demand, but it is abundantly apparent that neither the economy nor the free market are what they were cracked up to be. You must have either a genuine contempt for humanity or complete disconnection from reality to believe otherwise. Raising prices in a context of dwindling resources is either the depredation of a predatory monopoly (think oil), or the last resort of the truly desperate.

Price increase is the historic mentality behind failing businesses, and you would think after the lessons of the last presidential administration, that lenders would be smart enough to figure out business as usual won’t cut it. Evidently, hope isn’t the only thing that springs eternal. Bankers, like the lemmings of legend, want to lead us on over the cliff, but the truth is, even lemmings are smarter than that.

Here's thinking for you.

Iffy

Living Within Somebody's Means

The New York Times published an article arguing that the half million dollar salary cap requested by Obama for bank executives under the bailout plan isn’t realistic for NYC. The article wasn’t totally in earnest, but let’s make sure that NYC delight with its own costliness doesn’t excessively distort reality.

It may be true that bank executives have become accustomed to million a year life-styles, but they are going to have to realign their perspectives. In the first place, the limit is partly symbolic. They will probably find ways around it. Limits on compensation don’t necessarily preclude creative variations. There will probably be loopholes that allow some flexibility, if not too much. The only hope is that a definitive statement of limits will convey the message that some restraint has to be applied.

A hundred thousand a year mortgage in NYC may not be so unusual, but there is no valid principle on which bankers should continue to maintain wealth at the expense of people who have no jobs. Plenty of people are available to replace bank executives, and experience has shown that it might not be that bad of an idea. I’ve known grapefruit with more aptitude and moral principle. We have no obligation to be grateful for the opportunity to keep banks in business by rewarding the administrative class that both failed to forsee and to manage financial failures effectively, and as far as I’m concerned, that responsibility trickles pretty far down the food chain in the management of those organizations.

The name of the game is redistribution of wealth, unless we want to play O’Reilly-Limbaugh free market depression disparity again, and I fail to see the justification in that. Civilized accumulation and retention of wealth requires the cooperation of a complete society, not just individual performance. If you don’t believe that, I have some Congolese rebels and Russian Mafia I’d like to introduce you to.

Let them refinance their mortgages or give up their houses and move into five-thousand dollar a month apartments instead of ten thousand a month houses for awhile. If they don’t like it, let them go find jobs in Iceland, where people will appreciate their talents for what they are worth. Better yet, let them subdivide their million-dollar bungalows and rent out the back bedroom so they can get in touch with reality. Their children might even have to attend, shudder, public schools, where they would be crammed elbow to elbow with financially challenged low-lifes like me.

Here's thinking for you.

Iffy

All My Dreams Daschled Again

You have to allow some slack for the possibility that everything will not work perfectly in government. It’s inevitable that the Obama administration would eventually run into some kind of ironically appropriate and embarrassing obstacles, like unreavealed tax issues for a cabinet nomination, but you have to be impressed by the sheer scope of the impact with respect to Tom Daschle.

I like Tom Daschle, and the truth is that I think he would be okay as secretary of something, but $140,000 in back taxes? Let’s see, when was the last time I even made $140,000 in a whole year, never mind incur a $140,000 tax obligation? To tell you the truth, I can’t remember the last time I made $140,000 in a year. I must have been on drugs or something. Maybe that was the summer of love. But when I consider $140,00 in back taxes against a $150,000 wardrobe, to tell you truth, the wardrobe kind of palin’s by comparison. I consider tax evasion to be even more contemptible than expensive shoes.

How do you pay $250,000 for “car services?” There’s no love lost between me and Sarah Palin, which I’m sure is a great relief to Todd, and so far, I’m in Obama’s corner, but even speaking as a slightly liberal-leaning, independent conservative, if we’re not going to allow some kind of double standard here, Daschle did the right thing to hit the road. After all, he’s got a $250,000 car service to take him there. Maybe he should be secretary of transportation instead, or the treasury.

Here’s thinking for you.

Iffy

Undecided: An Election Retrospective

I was undecided well into the presidential election campaign. I don’t think I’m particularly partial to old white guys, but to an extent, I felt like McCain deserved to be president. McCain paid his dues, military service in combat, POW in Viet Nam, struggled with physical injuries and other personal obstacles, both in and out of politics, yet never lost the determination to succeed in government. We had a military situation that needed sound military judgment. My gawd, how could you fault the man for experience and focus? Who was Barack Obama? A junior Senator on a fast track end-run into the big time? Looked like a light-weight.

There was the economy, which I held Bush responsible for ruining by a combination of stupidity and Reagan policies, not that the difference is clear. I voted twice against Bush in futile opposition to a small man in a big job who literally turned the presidency into a joke, but I also thought McCain was not a small man. Obama I wasn’t sure about, and to tell you the truth, I’m still not a hundred per cent sure, but I’m hopeful.

Palin was a stroke of genius. I guess like a lot of people, I was dazzled by the canny political audacity of matching the experienced, old-guy Republican politician with a bright, capable, effective Republican woman more in touch with a different generation and a different constituency. It took me a couple of days to figure out that only some of the vision was true, however. She was in touch with a different constituency. Catch is, that constituency amounts to a small proportion of voters, those for whom a ditzy personality is the only criteria for choosing somebody to tell them what they should do. For them, Palin was perfect, but those weren’t the voters that needed an alternative, and Palin wasn’t just a poorly qualified prop, her selection was an insult to the many truly capable women involved in Republican politics. With somewhat mystified regret, I had to conclude that McCain was taking bad advice or bad drugs, or both, and after taking leave of his senses, his campaign seemed to dissolve into a floundering parody of purpose, served up by John Stewart on The Daily Show as comedy straight off the news service reports, no embellishment required, equaled only by the inevitable bumbling of “President Goofus.” Unfortunately for McCain, a lot of people seemed to recognize the last-ditch return to Bush/Rove/Cheney staple fear-tactics delivered by Palin for what it was, pathetic. Like everybody else, I wanted some inspiration, and I didn’t necessarily want to vote for Obama by default, but you could look at it that way.

I came from Alaska, but I don’t know what happened to the people up there. The only thing I can figure is that, like everybody else, oil made them stupid, and they had more oil, so they got more stupid. How else can you explain election of a governor without any qualifications? It’s great to be a down-home, turkey-ripping, sled- waxing, soccer mom, but if your best organizational assets are experience as Wasilla Solid Waste Management Home-coming Queen, and a sneaky, vindictive kind of administrative style, then you should maybe be in organized crime instead of state government, or who knows, maybe it’s the same thing. I can tell you from experience though, even in the old days, not everybody living back there in the woods was an environmental idealist. I just never realized how seriously they took their work. I see that Palin has been organizing an exploratory committee for the next election, but I hope she will be no more dangerous than Punxsatawney Phil and only stick her head out once every four years before she returns to her burrow.

Here's thinking for you.
Iffy

Iceland

The incomprehensible audacity of using bailout money for bonus payments to employees of failing companies only exceeds the incomprehensible audacity of bonus payments to employees of failing companies in the first place. The rationale for retaining valuable employees in this crisis environment is equally absurd. Where are they going to defect to? Lehman Brothers? AIG? Fannie Mae?

How long can the government hope to keep this parking lot bailout carnival going? In the 1930s, public works programs made a difference in the economy. World War II has sometimes been claimed as the real solution to the Great Depression, which may or may not be true, but either way, George Bush already made our war, which only distracted us from what should have been the real issues and contributed to the economic crisis instead of alleviating it, so war as an economic solution doesn’t look hopeful this time around, leaving us with the more benevolent domestic approach.

The argument that we still aren’t socialist is nuts. Banks that aren’t “troubled,” are of course whining that they are being discriminated against for their prudent management, which is true in principle, but as they know well enough, and the reason they aren’t whining louder, is that failure of the lunatic fringe would create an economic vacuum eventually threatening to suffocate even the most conservative financial operations. Perhaps the result would only be the equivalent of the 1930’s, in which a small portion of the population continued to possess great wealth while a much larger portion struggled desperately, but why the general population tolerated that condition at the time is sort of a mystery in itself except that the thirties may have been more hopeful, because there is a crucial difference. In the thirties, the government was not yet saddled with trillions of dollars of debt from decades of cold war competition and general bad management.

The savings and loan failures of Reagan era deregulation precipitated a financial crisis at the time, but it was headed off by another crucial difference, the advent of the information technology revolution, equivalent to or exceeding the economic effects of steam power, railroads, chemistry, electricity, and wireless communication. The IT industrial revolution produced a huge new global economic enterprise that didn’t begin to deflate until the dotcom collapse at the advent of the new millenium, while the economic momentum continued to sustain the Iraq war and residential construction until the saturated market at home and the lack of encouragement for opportunities in developing economic markets left the financial community without any realistic alternatives except reality, and Reagan’s other shoe finally dropped on us.

The U.S. has not used up its capital resources, either financial or psychological, and to a larger extent the entire world still has a vested interest in US economic viability, but we’re running out of options, and without some kind of general economic production on the scale of IT development, there will be no revival. Where’s that going to come from? Space exploration? Environmetnal restoration? Maybe, but where are you going to get that kind of consensus?

In the meantime, here’s what we need to do. The laws and services that make Accumulation of wealth possible depend on cooperation and participation of the entire society, not just on individual enterprise. We’re all in this together. The government should create a general fund. Any individual net worth of more than a billion dollars should be collected and contributed to the fund. To paraphrase Muhammed Ali, if you can’t live on a billion dollars, you can’t live on nothin’. We’ll allow a half a billion per individual for wiggle room. Income tax will be increased, not decreased. Everybody with jobs and/or money is going to contribute something. If this is not to your liking, then just go live somewhere with an economy and laws that suit you better. Go to Iceland.

In the long run, Iraq and the Middle East may achieve stability, although it’s hard to see how the alternative of not invading Iraq could have been much worse. As a matter of both capability and vision, George Bush has been a disaster. The government can intervene effectively as long as the global investment community on which we depend continues to consider the U.S. a good and necessary risk, but without the reassurance of either intense national commitment or revived economic activity, or both, how long can we keep that perception going? How long can you hold your breath?

Arguing at the Level of the Conservative Bogey Woman (annotated)

I can’t get enough of Anne Coulter (Actually, it didn’t take much). Her writing is like the low-cut dresses she wears in publicity photos. There doesn’t appear to be much worth either concealing or revealing. (This is a misleading argument strategy sometimes called False Comparison, although if you’re really into fashions, there may be more truth in it than dr. Coulter would like to think about.) But dr. Coulter knows how to make an argument, and that means I don’t have to worry about thinking for myself (implying that anyone who agrees with Coulter is happy letting somebody else do their thinking for them). There is no doubt about who the bad guys are. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28524234/ (dr. with a small d implies that Coulter lacks both credentials and intellectual stature without any effort on my part to substantiate either one.)

In argument there are other misleading rhetorical strategies, like Ad Hominem, which kind of means suggesting somebody is wrong because they look scary in a low dress instead of making a substantive reply to the argument. Another one is called Poisoning the Well. Poisoning the Well more or less means assuming the truth of conditions without any information, such as the assumption that liberals are bad guys. The first sentence in the excerpt from Coulter’s book explains that liberals make up pretend victims like Cesar Borja (the retired NYC cop chosen by Hillary Clinton as the poster child for 9/11 emergency services) to crank up sympathy for their cause, very similar to John McCain and Joe the Plumber, but palin’ by comparison (a pun alluding to McCain’s vice-presidential candidate).

There is another misleading rhetorical strategy called Oversimplification. Oversimplification would be like dr. Coulter making selective remarks about the two politicians with connections to discrimination. One of the politicians might never have expressed any regret about discrimination and might have only refrained from openly practicing discrimination because it could mean jail time. The other might have publicly expressed regret for any association with discrimination and left a discriminatory organization because he thought the people in the organization were crazy, but oversimplification only takes into account that both politicians had connections to discrimination, and are therefore equal. That’s what I like about dr. Coulter. She can use a misleading rhetorical strategy per paragraph, and like her heroes, George Bush and Karl Rove, she is proud of it (implying that she deliberately uses misleading strategies).

If you want to talk about deceptive seminal imagery, let’s talk about Weapons of Mass Destruction instead of NYC Emergency Services, but seriously, folks, let’s be frank, ‘n forget all the propaganda extremes on both sides (another pun, this one alluding to the senatorial candidate who previously wrote a book commenting on, among other things, Anne Coulter’s misleading rhetoric). Suppose for the sake of argument, that Cesar Borja is a fraud and Hillary Clinton knew it. The idea was, what? Federal funding for New York City emergency workers? Oh my gawd, there’s a cause we wouldn’t want to accidentally contribute to. We need far too much of that money to blow up things in Iraq. (That’s a misleading rhetorical strategy called Ad Populum, which means connecting the argument to a well-known issue that inspires either common support or common opposition, but this isn’t sensible, or even intellectual. This is satire, or at least sarcasm, so I can get away with it.)(Also implying that intellect doesn’t necessarily make sense.)

And finally, I reluctantly (nothing reluctant about it at all) point out that regardless of any moral issues and misleading arguments involved, regardless of how pathetically pandering and perverse liberal ideology may be, it’s palin’ (ibid., a Latinate abbreviation meaning see the previous related reference) by comparison to the fraud and larceny perpetrated by corporate banking and other pillars of conservative finance that did not benefit anyone except corporate executives. Bernie Madoff, former NASDAQ chairman, CEO of an investment firm renowned for successfully cautious management practices, parlayed Reagan financial deregulation (implying that Reagan is responsible for current economic problems, which he is, which is in itself an oversimplification) into the most fantastic Ponzi scheme since the French monarchy (suggesting that conservative economics reflect aristocratic arrogance), and “made off” with enough money from investors to supplement New York City Emergency Services for a hundred years. (What’s in a name?)

The only trouble is, he didn’t give it to New York City Emergency Services. Nobody knows what he did with it exactly. While dr. Anne Coulter was busy complaining about misleading liberal political strategies, conservatives were out there making a real difference in the real world (implying that yeah, they made a difference, but a negative difference). None of your petty, hypocritical, grand-standing for conservatives. By gawd, when conservatives rip somebody off, they do it right. (A misleading rhetorical strategy implying that all members of a group behave the same.) They’ve got the liberals beat again, and so I congratulate dr. Coulter for making a point in the best conservative tradition, clearly, cleverly and completely bogus. (And I congratulate myself for applying the same strategy. I may not be better, but at least I’m as bad, even if I'm not syndicated.)

And just as an aside on Coulter’s NBC interview, I’m equally appreciative of the brilliant performance by George Bush in the White House (if you’re that fond of dancing), but an economy spiraling into collapse is a funny idea of keeping the country safe. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28537291/ On the other hand, the economy isn't an issue for Coulter, so maybe she's referring to how George and Laura have been champions of free speech.

Here's thinking for you.

Iffy

Blasted by the Light

About half a mile from my house, I come to the light where the exit from my ghetto subdivision intersects a major cross-street. If the light is green, I go. If the light is red, I stop. If the light is yellow, I probably speed up like mad, hoping to squeak through, but that doesn’t happen often. With a perverse will of its own, it deliberately chooses to turn red according to what causes the most aggravation. Basically, it turns red when it sees me coming.

The response produces a pattern of behavior that amuses it, and so it continues to perform adversely. The light is green. The light waits. I approach the intersection. The light turns yellow. There is still hope. I accelerate. At the last possible point for any rational potential to legally enter the intersection, the light turns red. It then pauses in derision, all traffic from all directions momentarily suspended to contemplate the indignity of my defeat while it savours the grandeur of victory and the affirmation of power. All the civilized world pauses and ha-has my reluctance to collide with cross traffic and incur the willingness of law enforcement to commit acts of imposition on my personal freedom.

The tyranny of this traffic light has a statistical kind of validity. I have had numerous opportunities to sit and observe the complete cycle. 90 seconds for the traffic on the main street. 20 seconds for the left turn out of the through street from the other direction, and 10 seconds for exit from my subdivision. Out of the 120-second cycle, 10 seconds barely represents 8%. From a strictly empirical quantitative view on the subdivision side of the light, the light remains red 92% of the time, perhaps even a little more, depending on how the intervening yellow plays out, but does that mean I should miss the green cycle by less than a second 100% of the time? I don’t think so. There is an adverse power of the universe at work here.

Despite the evil nature of this particular traffic light, however, like Republicans, it serves a social function for which I must grudgingly acknowledge some gratitude. Without the traffic light, I might never leave my subdivision at all. During the last hurricane, for instance, a somewhat bemused law enforcement officer described stopping a driver going seventy miles an hour along the main road through intersections at which the lights were out.

Technically such intersections should be considered four-way stops, yet even in emergencies, the momentum of the major thoroughfare seems to overwhelm the public interest in caution. The force of the flow sweeps aside the interesests of the intersecting side streets, and the need for more obvious enforcement of the conventions becomes apparent. Unchecked, the path most traveled becomes the path of intimidation, and the bullies prevail.

But in a Democracy, even bullies proceed along paths prepared for them by the operation of social contract, a complete system of agreement and controls. There would be no seventy-mile-an-hour violations through native sand-pine wilderness and swamp. Only the existence of multiple lanes of pavement enables such carefree excess. In fact, anyone who stops at a stoplight, anyone who uses a public road, anyone who goes where they want and does what they want benefits from an agreement to join together in public interest, a social contract. Anyone who uses a public road is a socialist. Anyone who uses a public road takes a handout.

You can make whatever arguments you want about free enterprise and individual responsibility. Those are good things to the extent that they encourage self-actualization and constructive activity, but as recent economic failures have finally made painfully apparent, Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, and J.K. Rowling can only accumulate vast wealth because the economic storms are controlled by complex systems of communication and transportation in which their products can flourish. In a Democratic society, without universal participation, they are nothing, and the readiness of rough men to commit violent acts on their behalf that serves as law enforcement in the global economy, while necessary, is overrated.

For whatever reasons, there are people in the world, and Sadam Hussein was one of them, who understand only violence, but do we want traffic lights with attitudes? The readiness and willingness to commit acts of violence is vastly different from the commission of violent acts willy-nilly. Like the light at my intersection, the operation of violence takes on a perverse attitude of its own, like a traffic light that operates entirely at random, or not at all. Indiscriminate violence, or even worse, poorly considered violence, therefore defeats its own purpose.