Importance and culture

A key indicator of how perfective a society is, is how important the typical subject matter is in the popular culture and media (including cable news media and the internet).

Concretization question: How important is the typical subject matter on Glenn Greenwald and Glenn Beck's (call 'em "The Glenns" for convenience) columns/programs, as compared with (i.e., contrasted to) the rest of the media?  How about Noam Chomsky?  Whatever else you think of him, the shit he typically talks about is damn important.  And how about what representative members of the Ayn Rand Society have to talk about, as it relates to contemporary political culture?  Why aren't they prominent in today's mass-media discussion?Wouldn't they have the most of importance to offer in explanation of this whole "Ayn Rand phenomenon?"  (One of them is a prominent Aristotle scholar currently at the No. 3 ranked department of philosophy in the English-speaking world, for crying out loud - and is editing a volume on Ayn Rand's epistemology due out this summer, as well another, much-anticipated Wiley-Blackwell volume due out hopefully in the very near future.  Which would be of greater importance for understanding Rand's Objectivist ideas, that or the next rendition of Ayn Rand Nation by a fuckin' amateur?  Which will the leftwing interblogs devote their attention to this time around?  Last time around, with near-identical publication dates ca. March 2012, it was Gary Weiss's Ayn Rand Nation getting all their attention, with Leonard Peikoff's Understanding Objectivism getting none of their attention.)  I mean, how fucking low does a culture have to be for their voices not being the most prominent in media discussions of Ayn Rand?  Isn't that pretty much as pathetically bad as Chomsky not being all over the popular media?

Relevant distinction: "Intellectually high-brow" and "Important" (also consider: "Relevant")

More to come . . . .

#saganized

P.S. Another checkmate to come . . .

P.P.S. 24 days left...

The "bad guys" in the Wikileaks saga

UPDATE: There's a necessary edit below, which I'll re-state in slightly different form here: [EDIT: A better google search than the one I conducted before brings these results.  The March 2006 military incident in Iraq highlighted below was investigated by the Pentagon, which in June 2006 cleared U.S. soldiers of wrongdoing.  So, um, I fucked up.  Lesson to be learned here.  I figure I'll leave this posting up for now, as an example of how fuck-ups can happen.  I mean, how plausible is it that both (a) the incident happened as Iraqi police claimed and (b) the alleged perpetrators got away with it?  More epistemic discipline is called for.  Still, the rest is at least very nearly spot-on.]

Our federal government - the same entity that granted final immunity to CIA personnel who tortured two detainees (Gul Rahman and Manadel al-Jamadi) to death, the same entity that a human rights court determined had tortured and sodomized another detainee (Khaled el-Masri), the same entity that has conducted a well-known extrajudicial assassination of at least one American citizen - has charged Pfc. Bradley Manning with, among other things, "aiding the enemy," when he released classified documents to Wikileaks.  Many people in a complacent and complicit American lamestream media have echoed the government's claims in this instance.  How much credibility does this government have, though, really?

One of the documents leaked by Wikileaks concerns this incident:

WikiLeaks: Iraqi children in U.S. raid shot in head, U.N. says

[Original photo caption] This cell phone photo was shot by a resident of Ishaqi on March 15, 2006, of bodies Iraqi police said were of children executed by U.S. troops after a night raid there. Here, the bodies of the five children are wrapped in blankets and laid in a pickup bed to be taken for burial. A State Department cable obtained by WikiLeaks quotes the U.N. investigator of extrajudicial killings as saying an autopsy showed the residents of the house had been handcuffed and shot in the head, including children under the age of 5. McClatchy obtained the photo from a resident when the incident occurred. |

(h/t: Matt Taibbi)

What has the federal government's response to inquiries about this episode been?

Silence.  [EDIT: A better google search than the one I conducted before brings these results.  This March 2006 incident was investigated by the Pentagon, which in June 2006 cleared the soldiers of wrongdoing.  So, um, I fucked up above.  Lesson to be learned here.  I figure I'll leave this posting up for now, as an example of how fuck-ups can happen.  I mean, how plausible is it that both (a) the incident happened as Iraqi police claimed and (b) the alleged perpetrators got away with it?  More epistemic discipline is called for.  And, now, how about Matt Taibbi's dropping that link the way he did? ;-) ]

Now, who is the bad guy (or guys) here again?

Who's the one (or ones) being targeted by the federal government for punishment?  Who's the one (or ones) being held to the accountability of the rule of law?

And all those lapdog media outlets accusing Bradley Manning of treason -- what have they said, if anything, about the CIA's acts of torture and sodomy (sodomy - a moral crime in itself according to many of the very same pseudo-patriots who've cheered our government on), or about the un-responded-to claims concerning execution of Iraqi children and air-raid coverup?

Jack shit, that's what.

(Apparently, since the rights of American citizens are at issue in the case of extrajudicial assassinations, these people are "concerned" all of a sudden; this one hits too close to home, apparently.)

How can these people display such righteous outrage (or, in the case of the fedgov, vindictiveness) about Bradley Manning's supposedly horrific transgressions - which are, arguably, by a sensible analysis, roughly comparable to the "transgressions" involved in the leaking of the Pentagon Papers - but remain so tight-lipped or willfully ignorant of these activities carried out by the federal government, the very sorts of activities Bradley Manning believed needed to be brought out into the open?

What kind of credibility, moral or intellectual, can these individuals claim?

Along these lines, individuals in our political discourse who are ignorant of (or choose not to mentally integrate) Glenn Greenwald's column can claim no intellectual credibility, either.  And that goes for just about all our political "leaders."  That goes for the so-called constitutional lawyer whose main prima facie credential for the presidency was that Harvard-cultivated legal expertise.

What would Thomas Jefferson think about all this?  Patriots and tyrants and all that....

P.S. Reminder: 29 days left....

What would Jefferson think?

What might be the cause of the intellectual corruption that leads to the culture of corruption discussed here?

Some antidote to that.

Were he around today, I think that the one-time president of the American Philosophical Society would be a big Ayn Rand fan.  Actually, I'm certain of it.

Why the fuck does no one else get this (or so it would seem)?

Thanks a lot, professional "educators"....

(Here's the spawn of the professional "educators," with the standard primacy-of-politics orientation we UP blog regulars have naturally come to be disgusted by; it's philistine-level crap.  Isn't a primacy-of-politics mentality the sort of thing that got us into the situation where the U.S. government can torture innocent people without accountability, all the while being brazenly hypocritical about it?  Well?  Being that philosophy is more all-encompassing cognitively than politics, wouldn't getting our nation's philosophical shit together generate more all-encompassing solutions to whatever problems that afflict it, than trying to fix its hierarchically-derivative political shit atop a crumbling foundation?  [Are you listening, "bleeding heart libertarians"?]  What would Jefferson think about all this?  I mean, like, duhhh!)

More antidote.

Poor Sully (poor America!)

[Okay, so America isn't quite as poor as Sully's place in the current discourse would indicate.  But if that status quo were to continue, with the likes of Sully giving away the case for what made America great, we might well end up in deep poop.]

So I was doing an Ayn Rand search in the "Blogs" tab of Google search, and this link by Sully appears, which references Boston U. Professor of Political Science Alan Wolfe's piece-of-shit article in the online Chronicle of Higher Education last year (which I briefly touch upon here).

(Just for once, will there ever be an interwebbed critical article on Rand by a professor of philosophy, conversant with the other side?  There is critical discussion by Swanton and Cullyer in that recent book on Rand's ethics and in the brand-new book by James P. Sterba, long-time proponent of a "from liberty to welfare" argument which I've somehow managed not to address in this blog - yet.  From the available Amazon.com "preview" feature, Sterba correctly identifies Rand's ethics as a version of Aristotelianism [Chapter 5] - now that's progress! - and given all the pages left out of the Amazon preview feature I can't yet adequately assess his arguments there regarding Rand or much of anything else.  Anyway, the Ayn Rand being discussed by these philosophical critics in these hard-copy books bears next to no resemblance to the "Ayn Rand" that Sully and many other fools on the interwebs speak of.  Okay, okay, so there are webbed articles criticizing Rand available here, including from Profs. Bass, Huemer, and Vallicella, which partly answers my question . . . and guess what, that Rand bears hardly any resemblance to the incompetently-depicted Rand appearing all over elsewhere on the interwebs, either.  There are other relevant distinctions pertaining to these articles to make as well, for another blog entry; one of them has to do with whether Randian egoism is indeed correctly interpreted as a version of Aristotelianism - i.e., of perfectivism. ;-) )

Anyway, this blog entry isn't (directly) about Rand, it's about the sad state of the political blogosphere as reflected by arguably its most representative figure, Andrew Sullivan.  (For the positive, the antidote to this sad state, try here for starters.)  The aforementioned Google search brought be to Sullivan's "Dish" (which I hardly read otherwise).

Speaking of sad states, how about The Dish's masthead, taking  pride (however ironically or humorously) in being "biased and balanced"?  The whole idea among philosophers, of course, is to fight like hell against any biasing influences - hence the whole goddamn enterprise of philosophy, to weed out bullshit and fallacies and wishful thinking and inexactness, so as to differentiate mere opinion from knowledge.  (The success of that very enterprise - reflected most smashingly by the success of modern science - gives lie to whatever thrust there might have been behind Plantinga's "evolutionary argument against naturalism," discussed here.  We can reason past initial biases which were selected for survival value, and that's all there is to it.  Also, how does Plantinga's free will theodicy account for the suffering of non-human animals?  Is their undeserved and morally-pointless suffering justified by the "greater good" of human freedom?  Is God a utilitarian?  Have I misunderstood the argument?  Have I seen anything by Plantinga to be all that impressed by?  Does the notion of a maximally excellent or perfect being, which is at the root of his modal-ontological argument, make any more sense than Anselm's original notion?  And why is it that, seemingly, the best philosophy of religion nowadays is associated with panentheism, of which Plantinga is not a known proponent?  How did I get off on this tangent?  Oh.  Bias.  It's like Sully takes pride in being a fool.)

So, Sully's "latest keepers" include these items:

Where Have You Gone,
Barack Obama?

Um, Sully is about five years late to asking this question.  Glenn Greenwald - one of the major redeeming figures of the blogosphere - asked this question at the time that Obama voted on the 2008 FISA bill to grant retroactive immunity to telecoms complicit in illegal eavesdropping.  One might well rationalize that breach of integrity as a necessary maneuver to secure establishment support so that the charismatic and very-ambitious ("Yes we can!") future head of state could then reform the establishment from within.  (Was it naivete to buy into that, or was it a last gasp of idealism in an age of cynicism?  Keep in mind that the only reason this asshole got re-elected was because the opposition party is half-nuts, the only viable candidate it offered being an out-of-touch, no-ideals-having, culturally-reactionary, personally-boring, retroactively-retiring plutocrat.)  Even then, the signs of unraveling were already there - as Greenwald was pointing out - in the presidential transition season between Nov. 2008 and Jan. 2009 when the future head of state brought onto his team scores of members of the very cynical, hypocritical establishment he had (fraudulently) rhetoricized against.  It was then that lingering sentiments of idealism about this future "leader" should have been seriously called into question or abandoned outright.  This "leader" is never going to do anything to seriously address the coming $107 trillion Social Security and Medicare cluster-fuck, is he.  None of the "leaders" in the District of Cynicism wants to even mention it.

The story of this "leader's" initial appeal - his stated vision in 2008 - and of his cowardly betrayal of that vision is told in summary essence in this NPR interview with Harvard Law (the irony!) professor Lawrence Lessig.

Sully pleads:
"Come back, Mr Obama. The nation turns its lonely eyes to you."

Joe DiMaggio had a 56-game hitting streak (and 72 games out of 73) and hit 361 career home runs with a homer-killing deep left field in Yankee stadium, along with three prime ballplaying years away for military service.  What's-his-face was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for doing nothing, and then later killed U.S. citizens with no judicial oversight.  What the fuck is the comparison supposed to be here?  I mean, Joe D. wasn't the hitter that Ted Williams was, and neither does the current head of state merit mention in the same breath as the guys depicted on Mt. Rushmore, but c'mon.  Joe D.'s highest similarity score through age 27 was Hank Aaron, for crying out loud.  Who tops the current hypocrite-in-chief's similarity score chart?  I'll let you, the reader, guess who the Babe Ruth of American presidents was.  Babe Ruth was on his way to the Hall of Fame as a pitcher, keep in mind, before going on to slug .690 lifetime.

Hitch And Sully: Is Religion Fossilized Philosophy?

There are various gems from Sully in that exchange; a sampling:

A: But the kind of Christianity that Jefferson espoused—

---
A: No, because philosophy doesn’t help you live.

---
A: Religion is the practical impulse, it is how do we live, how do we get through the day knowing that we could die tomorrow, knowing that we are mortally—

H: But how does the belief that Jesus was born of a virgin help you to do that?

A: That particular belief may not.

Sully, of course, has no idea just how embarrassing his performance in that debate really is.

Your New Dish

Oh.  Enhancing the blog in the cosmetic dept., not in the dept. it needs real enhancing ("philosophy doesn't help you live" - this sonofabitch taught at Harvard for Prof. Sandel????).  Gee, thanks.

For insight and edification on the nature of today's political-cultural scene, read Greenwald and the other blogs listed in the column to your right, instead.

"Checkmate, asshole."

These are not worthy fucking adversaries

https://www.google.com/search?q=obama+romney+not+taking+questions+from+media

So Romney has gone 22 days at a time without taking any questions from the press, and Obama has gone six weeks at a time without doing so.  They do not want to be caught in any "gotcha" moments.

This is not accountability or transparency.  This is a sham.

Fuck it, dude, let's write in Glenn Greenwald.

(Oh, snap.)

Now there's a worthy fucking adversary.

I'm pretty Saganized at the moment. :-D

UPDATE: I've heard that the Romney/Ryan ticket is too odious even for some serious long-time students of Objectivism (SLSOs) despite Ryan's professed support for Ayn Rand.  When you get some of those SLSOs migrating to even the "subjectivist, anarchist, and nihilist" Libertarian Party candidate (ze nihilists [not an ethos], zay vote for CHONSON!!!), you know what a joke this whole election is. The serious change can only come intellectually/culturally, as the SLSOs know quite well.  This time around, I'm at least as "apathetic" about a presidential election as I've been since Bush/Gore 2000.

UPDATE: Miguel Cabrera - HOF or no?  (Frank Robinson and Hank Aaron are the most similar through age 29!)

UPDATE: Bigger circle-jerk: FOX News or /r/politics?  The FOX pundits are all working themselves up into a lather in expectation of a Romney upset.  I guess it just makes them and their audience feel better to ignore the statistically-best projections?

American Exceptionalism

Greenwald.

Rand.

Not really a tough call for me to say that Rand trumps Greenwald. (Greenwald is right, though, that Obama has become an empty suit after presenting such a promising and principled-sounding persona during the '08 campaign. Fool me once....) America as it is right now - in all its intellectually-stunted glory - is not obviously exceptional, even if it is still exceptional compared (in full context) to the alternatives. But America as it might be and ought to be? Of course it's exceptional. It's all about individualism and a benevolent sense of life. (America is also uniquely situated to boldly lead the world toward the Singularity. Ain't integration fun?)

To see that as clearly as Rand did or yours truly does, requires a massive amount of well-focused integration - e.g., a well-integrated understanding of Galt's radio address. Attaining such an integrated understanding is not at all quick or easy (if it were, everyone would be doing it), and the leads (e.g., this) are not at all obvious or accessible. Without the requisite context of understanding, Rand's words - about America, or just about anything else - fall on uncomprehending and/or cynical ears.

Hence the assignment at the end of my previous posting.

"Let your mind and your love of existence decide."

Glenn Greenwald (and Ayn Rand) vs. Evasion

Evasion - i.e., the refusal to think, to see, to know - is, as Ayn Rand pointed out - and which many people (ironically? non-ironically?) evade because of the messenger - the root of all human evils.

Glenn Greenwald documents on a daily basis the devolution of the American justice system going on right before our eyes in the wake of the so-called War on Terror. It's nothing short of fucking disgusting what's going on - as are the evasions that enable it.

Is it any coincidence - any coincidence at all - that the American justice system, and the American political system, were perverted in the face of the so-called War on Drugs? In fact, we might as well assume that the perversions enacted by the so-called War on Drugs were a test by our Political Class to see just how far the American People could be hoodwinked into giving up the principles of freedom in order to Keep Us Safe. Hence, the so-called War on Terror.

I say principles of freedom here, because even if you or your neighbor's rightful freedom wasn't infringed by these ridiculous policies, the principle involved was torn asunder. Hell, let's just make it plain: the principles of freedom have gradually been torn asunder since the days of FDR (to "keep us free from fear," or whatnot). Perhaps before that, going back to who-knows-when. As the ever-prescient Rand pointed out, quite incontrovertibly, there was a contradiction from the very start between the nation's founding political principles and the wider moral-intellectual ethos of its people. As she pointed out, America didn't have a well-recognized moral-philosophical base (i.e., reason and egoism, but primarily reason) for its political ideals.

We're seeing the results of this split. It's quite inevitable, really. And we continue to ignore - i.e., to evade - the inevitable consequences of this split, at our own peril.

Back to the matter of principles: one thing that an anti-intellectual ethos does, is to destroy people's ability to think in terms of principles. So if some far-off stranger has his freedoms trampled upon in the most egregious of anti-American ways, an intellectually-stunted populace will sigh in relief that at least their own freedoms aren't being trampled upon - ignoring the principle of fredom involved. (This is even assuming they value freedom any longer, as distinct from, say, Safety.) Well, the departure from principle has led to the de facto state of lawlessness in which our Political Class now operates. That's what happens when a principle is abandoned.

Anyone who is paying attention - i.e., doesn't evade in one fashion or other - realizes that the current state of things, politically and intellectually, would make Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration, and long-serving president of the American Philosophical Society, fucking vomit. Further, if you pay attention and exercise any capacity for independent thinking in principles, you realize that this problem won't - and can't - go away, not without some significant change in the mindset of the American People. Only the ire and rage of the American People against its lawless Political Class could serve as a check against the perversions of its founding principles (i.e., individual rights). Only the evasions of the American People can keep the problem festering, and keep diminishing America's standing in the world.

So, during the times I'm not posting here, a good blog to read is Greenwald's. He is one of the few still remaining who have the courage to call out the corruption of our political system in the most clear and uncompromising terms.

The problem is, at root, an intellectual one. A philosophy like Rand's is the ultimate solution. The ultimate diagnostic approach is philosophical. But at the least Greenwald is highlighting what our political problem is in the starkest terms, even if he hasn't identified the why. (I've added "pragmatism" as a tag to this post, seeing as how pragmatism - a most unfortunate intellectual phenomenon in America - has proved insidious against its founding principles. Also, I've added "integration," since this all ties together. Oh, I've also added "torture," since that integrates with the rest. Long story short: Pragmatism leads to disintegration, which leads to lawless torture.) Greenwald constantly kicks ass; as far as I can remember, he's always putting the apologists for the Status Quo in their place in any debate that arises. The defenders of the Status Quo have a vested interest in people evading what Greenwald says. So far, these slimeballs have been getting away with it well enough to keep conducting a progressive erosion of all law and decency. If you get the People dumbed-down enough through a long-enough train of evasions, they will accept tyranny, plutocracy, endless war, you name it.

Far as I can tell, Greenwald identifies as "left-liberal" politically, which really has little to do with the effectiveness of his blog, which focuses on constitutional rights and their abuse by politicians of both parties. Further, he's not a philosopher, so that limits his intellectual context and range of awareness. He does share with Ayn Rand at least one feature: marginalization by the Establishment. But, more essentially and crucially, he shares with Ayn Rand a basic intellectual attitude: the refusal to evade facts. It's just mind-boggling how rare such an attitude is today.

Now, back to composing....

P.S. Please take a look at my previous posting and let it sink in, if it hasn't yet.

On Being an Ultimate Blogger

Without people like Glenn Greenwald around, I would not have found inspiration to become The Ultimate Philosopher. Greenwald is someone with an (almost) unparalleled ability to condense issues down to their very essence. Consequently, he sees pretty much of all that counts as "mainstream narrative and debate" in this country as corrupted through and through, in some fashion or other. His approach to the whole Wikileaks/Assange farce is one such instance of this.

(From what I can tell, the very charismatic some-sort-of-genius-figure Glenn Beck is invoking America, Ah, America (tears) against the "threat" posed by Assange, nevermind what Judge Napolitano was saying on your very network not hours before. You know, America's News Network. You know, GOP figurehead Roger Ailes's brilliant Network-ized media experiment. You know, America and Democracy. And we all have a good laugh at that one.)

Greenwald recognizes what the whole farce the "left-right" "mainstream" discourse is in this country. The politicians are . . . politicians, you idiots!. You just can't expect to have serious, honest, principled, heartfelt debates from weasels, can you? Everything in politics these days is going to the highest bidders, and those very high bidders are the same ones running the media, so what better can you expect than the kind of media we're getting? There's a reason an Ultimate Commentator like Glenn Greenwald would not get any interviews on Fox News - because Greenwald is in the business of exposing in the nakedest terms the hypocrisy of our present-day political system, and Fox News is right in the middle of all that hypocrisy. Hence, The Media get the "Julian Assange - Terrorist!" discussions going. It's so obvious what's going on here to anyone who's paying attention. Greenwald, despite his credentials for intellectual integrity, just doesn't serve "the content needs" of Fox News, Inc. Network-ized, remember. Always remember that. "But how did things get to be the Network-ized way?" asks The Ultimate Philosopher, who knows about Rand and Hegel in addition to various and sundry other items of considerable interest and how they all interconnect.

Greenwald has come to the naked essence of matters concerning him as a constitutional attorney and a Jeffersonian at heart: the political system we have today is a farce of what the Framers envisioned for us. What we have here are two distinctive phenomena: (1) America, and (2) the political system currently situated within America. No one worth taking seriously is against America or at least the idea of America. But the politicians already know that and pander to that America-love to continue their farcical political games. We as a nation have forgotten the original lesson of America: keep your affairs from the hands of politicians as much as you possibly can. Rely on your selves and your communities, governed by some basic virtues like common sense. It's the whole notion of politicians as we know them that's against the ideals of America. But Greenwald also points out how the media establishment is in on the whole cynical farce, in which case the media as we know it - a vehicle of infotainment rather than enlightenment first and foremost - is also against the ideals of America, where the media is supposed to exercise an intellectual independence from the political system.

There's a way out of all this, says The Ultimate Philosopher. Does Greenwald see things at that great a level of generality and essence? Greenwald is describing the many symptoms of severe dysfunction in regard to his areas of expertise, in a better way than anyone else in his profession has described, but has he diagnosed the core problem with the country?

Is he aware of things beyond constitutional law and politics, such as philosophy or maybe Ayn Rand? Does he diagnose things at a level a philosopher would aim to diagnose it? I don't recall any time he has mentioned a specifically philosophical issue or demonstrated a familiarity with the great philosophers in his blog. He is just really good at what he specializes in, though.

What I'm saying is that my aim is to philosophize at the level that Dr. House diagnoses illness. Perfectionism and whatnot, at least on my part. (Dr. House is lost for the time being as a person, though; I don't admire his cynical-amoral methods.) Even if that doesn't make either of us popular or well-liked by the many.

[ADDENDUM: The mainstream media coverage and discourse in regard to the shootings in Arizona has been about as low as one would reasonably have come to expect with this country lately. The fact that Dingbat, a.k.a. Sarah Palin, is at the center of it all is confirmation of that point.]

Kudos Again to Greenwald

Greenwald picks apart a Nation article which cast doubts on the authenticity of the "don't touch my junk" guy.

It's almost like reading Ayn Rand dissecting all the conceptual evasions in a run-of-the-mill article of her day (most likely one attacking, undercutting, or impugning good things like capitalism). Outlets like The Nation are left-partisan to begin with, so already there's reason for suspicion, prima facie. Then come all the conceptually sloppy associations, "wonderment" passing as legitimate fact-based observation, etc. Hell, the Nation's smear-piece reads much like your typical hit-piece on Ayn Rand herself. I wouldn't be surprised if the history of the Nation is peppered with all kinds of sloppy, shoddy, awesomely-committed-to-misconception (h/t Michael Herr) references to Rand.

In fact, googling up "the nation ayn rand" brings up this incompetent pile of shit as the first result. See?

The GOP: Truly Disgusting

As a hardcore philosopher, I have no option but to be a hardcore independent in today's political scene. I can't stand either the Republicans or the Democrats. Today, however, I would like to comment on the GOP.

Ever since the disaster known as the Bush Presidency, and ever since the nomination of Sarah Palin for Vice President in 2008, the GOP has absolutely jackshit for credibility as a major political party.

As a hardcore philosopher, I am also a hardcore liberal in the original, true sense. (Today the concept is associated with the term "libertarian.") It means that I have at least as much animus towards state power as many in the GOP claim to have. When it comes to state power, however, the GOP has absolutely shat away its credibility.

Supposedly, according to the thoroughly dishonest narrative foisted on us by the Republican Establishment (read: Roger Ailes's propaganda outlet, FOX News), the American People are fed up with government and, therefore, fed up with Barack Obama and his big-government ways. The solution, goes the narrative, is to hand the reigns of power right back over to the very same sonsabitches who gave us George W. Bush, Dick W. Cheney, and Sarah W. Palin.

If the GOP gave the slightest two shits about out-of-control federal power, they would have been calling for remedies to the war crimes of the Cheney/Bush era. But they haven't, for the simple reason that they have no principles whatsoever. The war crimes were committed by Their Side, so that's okay.

And let's not kid ourselves here: the GOP - just as with the Democrats - is all about serving the interests of an Establishment Elite, a corporatist oligarchy that is always looking for new ways to screw over the American People. That is how we got the fucking farce of a War on Terror that pours trillions of taxpayer dollars into the tried-and-true Military Industrial Complex with the taxpayers' fear-manufactured acquiescence. To sum up the 9-year-and-counting War on Terror: Osama bin Laden is still alive and sending out messages. That fact alone ought to be fucking mind-blowing to the American People.

But, alas, the American People have very short memories. That's the way of the sham that is human politics. Remember the GOP/FOX/Ailes/Palin-fomented paranoia as little as a year ago that was the Birther nonsense? All part of a strategy to discredit Obama and stoke fear in the American People. There is little doubt that it worked to a considerable extent. The very same GOP-voting crowd that believes in 2,000-year-old Resurrections, also disbelieves the evidence that Obama is an American-born citizen. This is the same crowd that turns a blind eye to America-conducted war crimes, mind you, despite all the overwhelming evidence. This is the same crowd - loosely aligned with the so-called Tea Party - that now professes to want to go back to America's roots. I guess that means shitting all over the pro-reason (read: anti-bullshit), pro-freedom philosopher, Thomas Jefferson, in the process.

This is what makes the whole Tea Party thing a sham. First off, the Tea Party phenomenon succeeds in conflating original American liberalism with ignorance, anti-intellectualism and paranoia. The American People - 50 percent of whom deny the reality of evolution in spite of the overwhelming evidence - supposedly want freedom from federal tyranny, too. The true voices of reason and freedom - i.e., people like Ayn Rand - get drowned out in all this. The GOP really doesn't give a shit about them. They will use them up and then spit them out after the election returns are in, so that they can go back to fucking us a la Bush, Cheney, Rove, Ailes, and Palin. In short, the Tea Party is just another cause for cynical opportunism by the GOP so that they might take back some power from the Democrats. Period.

The Tea Party, on its face, is a positive thing, reminiscent of founding American ideals. Distrust of government power. Advocacy of freedom from things like lawless torture and surveillance and people-killing wars of convenience. This also does not reflect maintream American opinion today. Mainstream American opinion is full of all kinds of falsehoods, lies, evasions, equivocations, cowardice, intellectual laziness, gullibility, inconsistency, politician-trusting, media-trusting, church-trusting, and any number of other intellectual vices. (For evidence: look at the completely stupid, unwarranted, and illiberal prohibition on marijuana, still supported by a majority that simply does not know any better.) This is what the GOP Establishment feeds off of, for one primary purpose: political power. The power to illegally kill, torture, and spy, and to enrich corporate sponsors at the expense of the people. And when it comes to totally credibility-destroying things like war crimes and the '08 Palin VP nod, the Establishment is full of nothing but fucking cowards who won't call it like it is for fear of alienating the voters/corporations that might get them elected.

Just remember this as we approach Nov. 2 and are told, once again, how we need Change in Washington.

Andrew Sullivan: Mushy, Cont'd

Glenn Greenwald puts on a clinic. In what deep shithole would our political discourse be mired were it not for the seeming-lone-wolf Greenwalds laying the smackdown on the teeming hordes of lesser-thinking, power-deferential, D.C.-based wussies?

Hmmmmm?