When did the Right become space cadets?
For years it was an article of faith among the right that they were hard-headed realists while the left was a bunch of wooly, cosmic, anti-science space cadets. Every bit of environmental ludditism, faith-based alternative medicine, counter-cultural anti-modernism, and New Age spiritualism was laid on the doorstep of the Left regardless of how non-political it may have been. At least two generations of science fiction fans grew up reading neo-Heinleinist right-wingers, like Jerry Pournelle, to whom conventions like plot and character were only secondary considerations after bashing liberals. However wrong they might have been over the last thirty years, they were at least consistent in demonizing the Left as anti-science and promoting the Right as pro-science.

When did that change?

In a very short period of time (oh, I'd say no more than the last four years, not that four years is significant in any way), the Right has become ruthlessly anti-science. They have even gone so far as to dump scientists into the cabal of the enemy along with liberal arts professors and Hollywood. You could even say that, to the Bush era Right, intelligence and talent are suspect.

For years, leftists have warned that extremist theocrats are on the verge of taking over the Republican Party. Republicans snorted in response that such an idea was ridiculous; the GOP remained the party of the center. Hidden in such a claim was the admission that they felt secure in their ability to manipulate the loyalty of the far right without making any concessions to them. But who, we on the left asked, was manipulating whom?

In the last few months a surprising number of realistic and secular rightists have felt it necessary to write editorials or take to the airwaves attacking evolution in the name of Intelligent Design Creationism. If the issue was simply climate science--which theatens certain business interests, and can be countered with something calling itself science--this wouldn't be surprising. But attacking all of the biological sciences in the name of mythology is something else.

Why now? Though some of these conservatives have shown tendencies in this direction, others have been thoroughly secular in their careers--till now. Pat Buchanan, Phyllis Schlafly, Michael Medved, Rush Limbaugh and the lesser Limbaugh, David are all lining up to swear fealty to religious obscurantism. Is this base opportunism or a sign that the balance of power within the Republican Party has shifted from the rational, business-oriented right to the superstitious, religious right? Have the last moderates given way to the extremists?

Just by the numbers
Via Converger's diary at Daily Kos:

• Number of deaths due to four Florida hurricanes in 2004: 117
  
• Number of deaths due to Aceh earthquake and tsunami in 2004: 120,000+
  
• Homeless due to Florida hurricanes: 11,000
  
• Homeless due to Aceh earthquake/tsunami: 5,000,000
  
• US government aid to help Florida hurricane victims: $2.04 billion
  
• US government aid to help Aceh earthquake/tsunami victims: $35 million
  
• Estimated cost of George Bush's upcoming inaguration celebration, not including security costs: $40 million
  
• US government direct cost, per hour, of the US war in Iraq: $9 million
  
• US per capita government contribution to help earthquake/tsunami victims: $0.12
  
• Jackie Chan's personal contribution to help earthquake/tsunami victims: $200,000

There is, of course, a lot more to be said on the issue af American stinginess (and I'll say some of it). The point here is not whether we are the best or the worst, it's the perception. And the perception is bad.

We never learn
In 1944, as the allied armies approached the western border of Germany, Hitler and his generals planned a brilliant counterstoke. Following the same path as the 1940 invasion of France, a specially picked reserve army would crash through the allied armies and drive to the North Sea. One side would be destroyed and the other would find itself with impossibly long supply lines and a huge exposed flank. They would have to retreat.

German resources were short. To make the most of them, they needed an intensive commando operation to spead confusion and fear among the allies. Famed commando Otto Skorzeny was assigned to carry out that operation. He planned to take fluent English speakers behind the enemy lines in American uniforms. They would change road signs and spread rumors. Those captured would "confess" to scouting the way for assassination squads hunting the allied leaders. Of course, as a first step, he needed to recruit those fluent English speakers. Field-Marshal Keitel sent a memo to all units of the German Army:

Very Secret: To Divisional and Army Commands Only

Officers and men who speak English are wanted for a special mission. Volunteers selected will join a new unit under the command of Lieut.-Col. Otto Skorzeny, to whose headquarters at Freidenthal application should be made.

Of course, a memo sent out in the hundereds of copies would never be intercepted and read by the allies.

Today the following was reported on CNN.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Wanted: Good doctors to analyze the health of terrorists and foreign leaders. Must pass polygraph and other "security procedures."

To apply, call the CIA.

That's the classified ad running in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, right between an ad calling for an internist in Chicago and another promising "exciting opportunities in geriatric primary care."

Stupidity or misinformation. You be the judge.

Arthur C. Clarke is safe
Sri Lanka's most famous foreign resident is safe. Sir Arthur has a message up on his foundation site.

Thank you for your concern about my safety in the wake of Sunday’s devastating tidal wave.

I am enormously relieved that my family and household have escaped the ravages of the sea that suddenly invaded most parts of coastal Sri Lanka, leaving a trail of destruction.

But many others were not so fortunate. For hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans and an unknown number of foreign tourists, the day after Christmas turned out to be a living nightmare reminiscent of The Day After Tomorrow.

Among those affected are my staff based at our diving station in Hikkaduwa and holiday bungalow in Kahawa -- both beachfront properties located in areas worst hit. We still don’t know the full extent of damage as both roads and phones have been damaged. Early reports indicate that we have lost most of our diving equipment and boats. Not all our staff members are accounted for -- yet.

This is indeed a disaster of unprecedented magnitude for Sri Lanka which lacks the resources and capacity to cope with the aftermath. We are all trying to contribute to the relief efforts. We shall keep you informed as we learn more about what happened.

Sir Arthur has lived on Sri Lanka since it was Ceylon. He is no mere ex-pat, he contributes generously to his adopted home. He served for 23 years as Chancellor of Moratuwa University (to which he also contrbuted a computer science department). He is now completely confined to a wheelchair due to post polio syndrome and never leaves the country. That seems to suit him fine.

The king is a Fink
RDF, over at Corrente, has a good post up today on the tendency of Bush supporters to cite his muleheaded stubborness as a positive trait that they call consistency. "You might not like what he stands for," they say, approvingly, "but at least you know where he stands." We should admire his indifference to real-life change, and because we know where he stands, vote for him. Bah.

Anyone who has paid attention to politics for any period of time is familiar with this crowd and this character. I think of old Tom Fink in Alaska (yes, that's really his name. He replaced Tony Knowles as mayor of Anchorage when Tony was term-limited out). My feeling about the Fink was that, while it was nice to know where he stood, he stood against everything I cared about. If I stood where he did, I'd have the sense to move a few steps over and scrape that stuff off my shoe.

The author Eugene Weber, author of Varieties of Fascism, wrote in that book:

Sincerity has no intristic value. A sincere fool is still a fool, a sincere Inquisitor still a torturer.

As RDF says, muleheadedness isn't a virtue, it's a character flaw.

Another Bush concession
Josh Marshall warns us that, by their own words, we can expect the administration's war on Social Security to follow the same course as their war on Terrorism (Iraq digression phase).

The president and the White House have now compared their build-up to the Iraq war with their push to phase out Social Security enough times that it seems worth creating a detailed taxonomy of the Bush White House approach to major policy initiatives in order to predict their efforts over the next two years.

The [Wall Street] Journal said last week ...

The president has yet to lay out specific ideas for changing the entitlement program; he and his aides are focused first on selling the idea of change. "For a while, I think it's important for me to continue to work with members of both parties to explain the problem," he said in a Monday news conference.

This would suggest that we're now in the lying and fear-mongering phase of the campaign, which would be followed of course by a later phase in which a specific policy remedy is brought forward, nominally meant to address the fake problem.

I'd like to tie this in to my previous post on the pathology of George W. Bush. I think the WSJ quote is a perfect example of his belief that teamwork means letting you join his team and follow his leadership. Teamwork does not mean listening to you or meeting you halfway. "I think it's important for me to continue to work with members of both parties to explain the problem." Again and again, during the build-up to the Iraq invasion, he would answer charges of unilateralism by saying he had explained his decisions to our European allies. The testiness that often showed through when he made that answer was, I think, a clear indication that he really does not understand the concept of collegiality. The source might be a rich kid sense of entitlement, or something else, but in any case, I really believe that's how his mind works.

The bottom line is, Bush gets an F in "plays well with others."

PS - Mustang Bobby has also been on to the frat boy/bully theme (for example, here and here). As they say, great minds think in the same gutter. At least, I think that's what they say.

The pathology of George W. Bush
In the ideal spirit of the holiday season, I'd like to take a moment to admit that I have probably misjudged George Bush. I still think he's a shallow, petty, and vindictive wanker, but I no longer think he's as intentionally mean as I once did.

Huh?

I'll elaborate. There is an old cliché among columnists that you can never go wrong comparing the political scene to school cliques. That might not be entirely true, but it's a helpful way of looking at Bush 43. I often say of Bush that there hasn't been a president since Nixon who has so demanded amateur psychologizing from those who would understand him. What is the deal with his father? Is he trying to redeem his father by completing his unfinished agenda or show him up? What's the deal with his inability to admit to even the smallest mistake? I don't know the answer to all of those questions, but I think I've had an insight into one of his more annoying characteristics.

For the last four years, those of us who are not lock-step supporters of Bush's every utterance have faced the irritation of his rhetoric of inclusion. "I'm a uniter," he says, while his actions are clearly the most divisive in a generation. Is it hypocrisy? Is it pure spin? Is he insane? Coming from his staff, it is calculated hypocrisy and spin. There's no question there. But when it comes out of his mouth, you get the feeling that he really believes it.

After the election, Bush made his famous statements about "political capital," implying that he had a mandate do whatever he damn well pleased. But at the same time he suggested that he was once again reaching out to the Democrats. He offered to let us support his program. "That's awfully damn white of you," I thought. As propaganda framing, that's a fairly unremarkable trap. When congress reconvenes in January and our senators object to his incompetent or extremist appointments, he will look wounded and claim that he tried to reach out an we rejected him. This will be followed by Frist eliminating the filibuster and the Republican caucuses ruling congress as if they were the only party in town. Again, I have no doubt that his staff is operating on a purely political and cynical level. But Bush, does he believe this on some level? I think he does.

The Bush boys are all bullies (at least the older three are; I know nothing of Milton). However, there is more than one kind of bully in this grade school of ours. Our usual motion picture cliché of a bully is a lower class brute. Abused at home he preys on more vulnerable children at school as a way to restore his demolished self-esteem. It won't work; he's on a one-way ticket to a life of crime and a bad end (think Scut Farcus in "A Christmas Story"). Rich kids have another kind of bullying open to them. They can form packs of sycophants and psychologically terrorize social outcasts (think of all the recent alpha girl movies or Draco Malfoy in "Harry Potter").

Whatever home trauma made him a bully, Bush is a bully of the second sort, privileged, arrogant, the leader of a pack of rude sycophants. So how does this make him less mean than I originally thought? When Bush offers to let us support his program, he probably really does think he's making a concession. He could leave us out of the game entirely, but instead he's picking us to play on his softball team. When he was in eighth grade at an expensive private schools, such big man behavior probably was enough to co-opt his critics.

Alcoholics are famously immature, rarely growing beyond adolescent self-absorption. Bush probably doesn't get that we might care more about the actual issues that about being allowed to play on his team.

I'm here for you
My clever wife and I are spending our days off as close to home as possible. I plan to spend my days off doing a little writing (when I'm not sleeping). Not everything I write will make it onto archy, but a significant portion will. So, if you are home, or relaxing somewhere else, and want to see what's happening at your favorite bloggers, but they're not home, check me out. I'll be here for you.

A good news, bad news joke
The good news is that after all of the brou-ha-has for sending troops into combat without proper equipment and failing to lift a personal finger to acknowledge their resulting deaths, Donald Rumsfeld has learned his lesson. The bad news is that the lesson he has learned is never to allow an unscripted moment to exist.

First the AP version:

MOSUL, Iraq -- The questions from the troops for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld were considerably more friendly on his Christmas Eve visit to Iraq than they were on his previous trip to the region a couple of weeks ago.

"How do we win the war in the media?" asked one soldier in Mosul. Another soldier in Tikrit wondered why there is not more coverage of reconstruction efforts going on in the country.

"I guess what's news has to be bad news to get on the press," Rumsfeld responded to the first question - after supposing, with a big grin, "that does not sound like a question that was planted by the press."

[...]

"We are a great country and we can benefit from having a free press," said Rumsfeld. "From time to time people can be concerned about it, but look where we've come as a country because we do have a free press."

The New York Times adds this:

"The purpose of the trip is to thank the troops and wish them a merry Christmas," Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters during the 12-hour overnight flight to Iraq from Washington, a trip that aids went to unusual lengths to keep secret. Only a few reporters and one television crew accompanied him.*

According to Armando at Kos, the one television crew was Fox (I believe Armondo is deducing this from the fact that he saw the Q&A with the troops on Fox airport cable news). Let's assume Armondo is correct.

After his last appearance, where troops asked difficult questions, and the following poopstorm over his remarkable insensitivity to the safety of the troops and mourning of their survivors, Sec. Rumsfeld has made a show of talking about the pain he feels for their sacrifices and how sad he is that no one appreciates that. He has followed his public show of sensitive new age guy (SNEG)-ness with a surprise visit to the survivors of a unit decimated by Halliburton contract failures. There, filmed only by a friendly propaganda agency news network, he was asked softball questions that might as well have been written by the administration.

Hmmm. In fact, the whole Q&A session sounds surprisingly like the staged "town hall" campaign events held for Bush all through this year. Okay, it's not surprising. Does anyone doubt that the troops and their questions were screened in advance? My only question is, how much was left to chance? Were they screened by their officers, in the expectation that careerist considerations would be enough to protect the administration from embarrassment, or was the whole thing scripted by the administration?

* This paragraph appears in my print copy of the New York Times story, but does not appear in the current online version.

Let me see if I can get this straight
This is how budget appropriations are managed by the party of fiscal rsponsibility.

BAGHDAD (AFP) - US President George W. Bush is expected to seek authorisation for spending of an additional 80 billion dollars in Iraq, the head of a visiting congressional delegation said.

"In early February, there will be ... a supplemental appropriation in addition to the 2006 budget for defence submitted to Congress," Jim Kolbe, Republican congressman from Arizona, told reporters.

[...]

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who was also in Iraq visiting troops, promised Friday that the extra funds would be spent on equipment for ground forces stationed in the country in 2005 and 2006.

[...]

Kolbe was very critical of the pace of spending on reconstruction in Iraq given that 87 billion of supplemental funding for operations and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan was approved in October 2003 by Congress on the assumption that they were "urgently needed."

Of the estimated 18.3 billion dollars allocated for reconstruction projects in Iraq, through October, roughly one billion dollars had been spent with officials citing security concerns as the main obstacle.

Kolbe also said there has been "little planning" in the way funds are spent as the White House requested earlier this year that more of the money be diverted from infrastructure to the training of Iraqi security forces.

"My subcommittee has raised serious concerns," he said. "All and all, we have been frustrated with the pace of reconstruction."

Kolbe is frustrated because, of the 18 billion that was appropriated for reconstruction in last year's emergency appropriation, only one billion actually was spent on reconstruction and the rest was diverted into military operations. This has him so upset that he's going to give the military 80 billion more. Why exactly? Is he hoping that if he gives them everything they want that they might like him better and let him have some of what was apportioned for his projects in the first place? Why is this man a Republican when he thinks so much like a DLC Democrat? Republicans are supposed to be the party of the stern father, don't they understand that you're not supposed to reward bad behavior?