I’m sure everyone (as if more than one person actually reads this) is aware by now of the turmoil in Congress over the idea of granting retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies who aided the Bush administration’s surveillance into the lives of many ’suspected terrorists’ — some Americans, some foreigners in America. I have a few things to say about this.

I have no doubt that someone needs to be held accountable for this ridiculous violation of one of the core assumptions underlying American life. It is more than just an assumption — it is written and rewritten in various forms of law, all the way down to the very core document that theoretically guides our legal and structural processes’, the Bill of Rights — assumed innocence and a protection against unlawful search and seizure.

The very idea that immunity needs to be granted is an admission that a law was broken! I think we can all agree that this action was a violation of what we have been taught to be a basic ‘right’ (I’m scared of this word after a series of comments on vdov.net) in our society. In fact, the wording of the preamble to the Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence, would suggest that these rights should be universal regardless of citizenship (a much bigger topic as the United States has repeatedly shown its indifference to the rights of anyone without US citizenship). Now what there is debate on is whether or not the actions taken are some how excusable given some level of ‘imminent threat’ or risk to ‘national security.’

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Funny, I don’t see either of those provisions there. So, if we can somehow agree that we have an interest in upholding the basic ‘rights’ set forth by the core structural documents guiding our society, it becomes fairly clear that someone needs to be held accountable (unless we want to follow the Russian traditional of government by men and not by law? I grew up thinking this was a bad idea, though.)

So who is accountable? Ultimately? George Bush. Second? His top advisers. Third? The rest of his administration. Fourth? The intelligence agencies involved with the telecommunications industry on these actions. Fifth? The telecommunications industry.

It is unfortunate that over the past eight years this nation has become, through repeated abuse and indifference by our government’s highest office, apathetic to obvious, blatant abuses to the Constitution and other more trivial (but not trivial, ultimately) laws. Given that the nation has, though, I’ll just forget the first four and concentrate on the telecommunications companies.

It would be a tragedy to grant these companies retroactive immunity (I’m trying very hard to forget how terrible these companies are, universally, on a daily basis dealing with customers when taking this position). There are a few reasons for this.

1) Being fifth on the list does not mean accountability is unimportant or trivial. These companies violated the ‘rights’ of human beings, US citizens and not, and should suffer the deepest consequences possible for this.

2) Retroactive immunity further develops the tone in this nation that any action is excusable as long as you attach ‘national security,’ or ‘imminent threat’ to the explanation. This is a dangerous tone.

3) Today’s America has already excused Bush and his cohorts for their abuses (which is pathetic), but tomorrow’s historians have not weighed in. It would be the very last tragedy along the road of many if George Bush somehow managed to secure any sort of positive remembrance in the annals of history. The retroactive immunity of these companies would solidify the nations support and excuse of what should be remembered has a horrific period in the American Presidency.

This could certainly be attacked with more fervor or many more characters of text, but this is my basic idea. I don’t want to get into a long drawn out defense of whether or not Bush did or did not violate many laws and the Constitution. Those who think he did are right, and need not be further encouraged, those who defend him are idiots and assholes and will not be swayed by what I say.

Good day.

    Much to my dismay, as I read the hard-copy (readers of vdov.net should appreciate this) of the WSJ this morning, I found myself feeling interest in the candidacy of Obama.  My first reaction was to recoil in fear, certain I’d have to tell my wife I’m switching teams with a schoolboy crush; after-all, this couldn’t be the feeling of support for a American political candidate!?!?!?  Turns out I’m still in love with my wife and not switching teams anytime soon, but rather I’ve taken one more step to going completely soft on all my previous political and philosophical passions.  I like an American politician, son of a bitch.

It’s going to take some time for me to come to terms with this, but I didn’t want to fester in the closet, so here I announce it to the world, I MIGHT vote this year.   (Where is an AIM emoticon when you need it)

I’ll surely post once I decide which  justification to follow in explanation of my support.  I hope to come up with an unheard or relatively unique rationalization, but since I am still holding firm to the notion that origin thought is a myth, that it cannot exist, this is unlikely to happen.  I’m sure you can reasonably expect the explanation to follow the “now I have a family and have different priorities” spiel.  Evidently I’m no different than the life of a fictional quarterback played by ‘The Rock.’ (Yes, I saw that movie, and kinda liked it)

I’ll leave this post at that, and get to rationalizing with great haste.

Well since Super Tuesday has come and gone, it’s about time for me to start thinking about how I’ll defend my position as a rabid anti-voting advocate through yet another election season. In past elections I’ve oscillated back and forth between attacking the idiocy of each candidate (man to man coverage) and taking a higher, more abstract and philosophical attack (the zone). Last round the targets were just so very easy, I really had no choice. I suppose that means it’s time to employ the zone, sorry Bobby.

The easy opener is, of course, to reference a philosopher of just enough obscurity to seem uniquely educated and trustworthy, but with just enough familiarity to make the reader feel well-informed. How about Locke? No, not the only remaining bad-ass on Lost, but that writer/thinker guy, you know, the Englishman. In fact, it was his idea on the method of consent in a Democracy that saved me from casting my first ballot. Phew!

In a nutshell, Locke explained that the only method of consent available to a citizen of a Democracy is casting a ballot. Seems obvious enough, but it is actually a significant statement. When he says consent he isn’t saying consent to the government of the candidate you selected, but rather consent to the governmental structure that produces all the candidates the voter is presented with — consent to the system that can put any of those candidates into office — and consent to the government of any winning candidate. So, those of you who voted against Bush consented to his government and all of his actions. Congrats! That being the case, I would encourage any American citizen who does not see all potential presidents as worthy of office to stay away from the ballots — and then complain endlessly and loudly!

I actually made this argument four years ago, at greater length, so while it’s worth writing twice, I’ll move on to some new territory.

Lately I’ve become more and more convinced that there truly cannot be a worthy candidate — convinced that just as we discovered centuries ago that man is essentially incapable of ‘ruling’ over man in an appropriate manner, man is also incapable of ‘governing’ over man in an appropriate manner (my apologies to any feminists who happen on this writing, ‘man’ is just more concise than any bi-gender friendly language). To approach this lets consider some qualities most voters would insist are desirable in a political candidate.

We can deal with two qualities at once, the qualities of intelligence and of being ‘a thinker.’ I think most people would group these together, and my argument against them as desirable qualities is parallel and at times overlapping, so I might as well hit two birds. For these two qualities, the ago-old question of the existence of ultimate truths has to be called into play. I would insist that the only circumstance under which intelligence or the impulse to think and reason are desirable is a world with a definitive ultimate truth to all questions, and a world where the process of thoughtful consideration is certain to lead a discerning human being to the ‘right’ conclusion. Sound like the world we live in? Not to me. The fact of the matter is, the question of the existence of an ultimate truth, a certain right answer to all questions (in this case, all questions in the political realm) is unanswerable. The simple fact that people have disagreed over the existence of this truth since the dawn of human consideration suggests quite convincingly that even should it exist, the human brain is not equipped to discover it, with or without deep rational consideration. Sure, within the confines of an argument any answer has the potential to be proven correct — and that is the true purpose of reason and thought — to prove unequivocally within a strict set of subjective parameters that one’s impulse is in fact intelligent. If the human mind were capable of thinking completely objectively I insist we would see the fallibility of every conclusion ever reached by a human mind, including this one. So the first conclusion here is that no candidate is truly intelligent, but rather seems so to some portion of the population whose experiences and inherited impulses mirror that of the candidate. The second is that the ability to think rationally only gives us a politician more equipped to justify to us, actions that may or may not fall in line with some ultimate ‘right’ that may or may not exist, but does not give that candidate a method of discovering why his or her impulse lies where it does or any method of acting contrary to it. This is truly my favorite human quality to talk about, so I’ll likely write more later, but I’d like to deal with a couple others today.

Next on my list is a pair of contradictory qualities: determined (or uncompromising) and open-eared (or opportunistic). Both of these qualities are used as compliments and as insults. Again, it comes down to whether the describer likes the candidate or not. President Bush is a prime candidate for the exploration of the determined and uncompromising. Whether you like or dislike Bush, one is hard pressed to disagree that he was doggedly determined President. To those who dislike him, this was to a fault, to fans, a wonderful quality. So what is the point of discussing it? There isn’t one.

It appears that the tone (at least among those I talk to) surrounding the candidacy of Hillary Clinton has turned quite negative and mostly lies on the notion that she is uniquely opportunistic. While I dislike her as much as any other candidate, I have to play devil’s advocate. At the heart of ‘opportunistic’ lies an impulse to follow the whims of the constituents! A friend of a friend wrote in an away message that she would “bomb Iran for votes.” This might be the case but isn’t the flip side of this that she would NOT bomb Iran if it was against public opinion? That sure sounds like a breath of fresh air to me, and a more philosophically Democratic method of governing. But it is very, very opportunistic.

So, should we care about determination or the willingness to listen? Doesn’t seem that way to me.

Well then what the hell do we make a choice based on? Here’s where you will all start to really dislike me. In the same way that no President elected will contain the potential for decision-altering consideration, neither do I, and neither do any of you. At the end of the day, your decision is already made, but you will spend the rest of election season justifying it to yourself. The human being is nothing but the result of generations of influences, of learned reactions, of chemical responses. Were there to be a being of enough genius, the future is certainly predictable, at least to varying degrees of accuracy, and it would likely  be explorable through a series of mathematical formulas. So enjoy the season as one enjoys a particularly rousing sports match, and let’s get ready for some heavy rationalization and justification!

Internet is up and running, new posts will be coming by the end of this week.  Woohoo!

I’ll be back to my initial rate of publication shortly.  I’ve been sans-internet for some time now, and it’s about time I go ahead and start paying for my own.  As soon as that is set up I’ll be updating regularly.

Well big surprise, Bush needs a history lesson. The NY Times stated this morning that “Mr. Bush suggested that missile defenses would be a deterrent the same way that an overwhelming capacity for nuclear retaliation once was with the Soviet Union.” This statement is fraught with idiocy.

First, the suggestion that the United States’ overwhelming nuclear arsenal was a deterrent to the Soviet Union is at best a half-truth. The Soviet Union had the capacity to destroy the entire world many times over, just as the United States and Russia still do. MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) was a policy meant to keep both powers in check. The idea was that each side could withstand a first-strike enough to completely obliterate the initial aggressor. One of the key factors in this was the outlaw of the development of missile defense systems. If one state had an effective enough defense system, that state would lose any deterrence to unilateral military action throughout the world (sound like anyone you know?). At the core of this is the idea that any state with an overwhelming military power, including the United States, left unchecked is a danger to the world.

Many of the later years of the Cold War were marked by treaties steadily reducing the number of arms of both sides, out of mutual recognition of the absurdity of arsenal sizes. Does this sound like Bush’s picture of the United States overwhelming a fearful Soviet Union with its muscle? What is really aggravating is that the Soviet Union was a major advocate of arms reduction throughout much of the Cold War. The United States went back and forth. This is certainly a different picture than the ‘evil empire’ Reagan would have us believe he defeated (He didn’t, by the way. Not even one little bit.). But I digress…

The protection of the United States from missile attacks via a missile defense system in fact reduces the security of both the United States and the world. It encourages our leaders to think less and less about the opinions of the rest of the world. It encourages the rest of the world (I’m specifically thinking Russia here, simply because Russia remains the closest second to the United States’ worldwide destructive power) to develop defense and weapons capable of slipping through. In essence it ignites a worldwide arms race.

Defense Secretary Gates said today the US is considering a delay to its implementation of a missile defense system planned for Europe. What is interesting here is not obvious. Gates says that the US is considering waiting to implement until “definitive proof” of a threat from Iran is found. Well, we all know what “definitive proof” means to the American military machine.

So why the delay? Russia baby! This update reflects Russia’s return to a central role in international politics. In order to entertain the idea of a missile defense system, the United States had to withdraw from a landmark treaty meant to stall nuclear proliferation between the US and USSR during the Cold War. The Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty signed in 1972 by Nixon and Brezhnev was terminated in December of 2001 by Pres. Bush during a period that was the high watermark in Russian-American relations. Since that point, the relationship has steadily declined. Talks of the missile defense system to be installed in Europe by the US have returned very negative reactions from Putin and the Russian political body. Including a speech by Putin, in 2007, that essentially highlighted the willingness of the Russian Federation to return to a Cold War mentality with regards to the United States if the US did not put a halt on unilateral policies.

The missile defense system, especially its components planned for Poland, were an especially sensitive issue for Russia. It is indicative of the respect Russia once again commands in the international arena that the United States is considering a delay.

New Radiohead album is pretty hot. No real surprise there. The 10/20-21 WSJ had a great article about the music. I’m unlikely to do it any better justice so I’ll just refer to that.

WSJ Article

There have been a string of articles in the WSJ lately examining the disintegration of the Republican party. There seem to be two groups of Republicans leaving. One is the real hard line fiscal conservatives who have watched the Bush administration make poorer and poorer financial decisions as the years have passed. The other is a group that highlights social issues as their reason for departure. I’m torn over what to think of this. On the one hand, my gut tells me to hate the Republican party, so I can’t help but feel a bit elated over any problems the party faces. I realize that is a bit childish. More importantly, it scares me as it highlights exactly how unpopular the views that have become the center of the Republican paradigm are in this country. There have been no surprises from Bush. It was not unpredictable that the past eight years would at least slightly embolden the unforgiving and uncompromising Christian right. And it was not unpredictable, at least by the time of Bush’s reelection, that new debt and widely irresponsible spending would be the name of the game. And yet, he found support enough to be in office for eight years. Where were these Republicans four and eight years ago? Did they think Bush would stand for equality of everyone, including homosexuals? Was it an unprecedented shock that yesterday Bush asked for an additional $46 billion over the already requested $150 billion this year to deal with the Iraq war? I doubt it. But they voted for him. I understand that the two party system makes the voting process more manageable for the electorate, but at some point, the American public needs to realize it is at the helm of the most powerful economic and military machine in human history. Maybe ‘more manageable’ isn’t what we should be striving for. With all the ‘rights’ we have, someone really needs to start talking about ‘responsibility.’ Not of our leaders, but of our people. Because if this experiment in democracy is going to last, our leaders need to be accountable to us, and not just during election season pep-rallies.

The NYTimes had an op-ed this morning suggesting that the United States should make moves to further divide Iraq. Making ‘walls not wars.’ The article can be found here.
I’m not sure which reason for outrage I should address first. I would say we should take a look at some history, but frankly, some of the generation that divided the Middle East along political negotiations following WWII are still alive! Now certainly the suggestion here is a bit different from West/East negotiations of over a half century ago. However, the United States has repeatedly shown an inability to understand the culture in Iraq, as well as the willingness of the Iraqi people (and yes, the rebels do count as ‘Iraqi people’) to accept intrusion and regulation by a foreign police state.  It doesn’t take a lot of work to see the parallels between the faults of mid-20th century middle east division and the suggestion that we should get back into that game.  It is just a hunch of mine, but I would guess that groups who are so willing to risk death you might call them excited are unlikely to accept the division of their homeland by a House and Senate vote.
Are we really going to further divide a region in order to correct the mistakes of our initial division?
Well, let’s say, for the sake of conversation, that the new division would accomplish its goal. Let’s say violence dies down, the society becomes more stable. Now I have a different concern. The success story might actually encourage this nation to think invasion, followed by segregation, to be a workable and productive method for dealing with states the white house defines as dangerous. Sure you could say the nation seems to be swinging back towards the Democrats, and they might be less likely to go flying around the world with a texas six-shooter. But let’s face it, it doesn’t matter all that much who is in office. And even if we manage to elect a more cautious leader for the next four years, the slow-drawl / breadbasket / love it or leave it folks will be back. And who is next?
Well, at least segregation still has a strong, beating heart.

I recently picked up my copy of The German Ideology, one of my favorite Marx texts. Marx begins the section of The German Ideology entitled “The Relation of the State and Law to Property” by examining the history of private property and its separation from the first forms of ‘property.’ Tribal property, he explains, is confined to landed property. The first emergence of real ‘private property’ is in movable property. According to Marx, this transition (whose stages include tribal communal property, feudal landed property, corporative movable property, capital invested in manufacture, and finally modern capital, pure private property) is the main contributor to the evolution of the State. In previous stages of economic society, property was landed or certainly less fluid than the bourgeoisie’s pure capital. The State, then, was far more embedded in civil society through regulation of property that was concrete, landed, and tangible. “Through the emancipation of private property from the community, the State has become a separate entity, beside and outside civil society; but it is nothing more than the form of organization which the bourgeois necessarily adopt both for internal and external purposes, for the mutual guarantee of their property and interests.” (GI 80) If one does not know Marx’s opinion of the raison d’être of the State in general, here it is made perfectly clear. In all phases of society, Marx sees the State as an appendix of the ruling class, existing to maintain their dominance and further their interests. Marx makes a case for this by examining how the evolution of the State has consistently been a result of, rather than a cause of developments and transitions in the socio-economic world. continue reading »

I think it’s a shame that the world seems to have at best misinterpreted Marx, and at worst, used half-truths and mutilated ideas from his writing for the benefit of small groups. He is quite a thinker, and quite a writer, so I’m sure many of my posts will be responses to passages I find particularly interesting.
If one approaches a Marx passage with the intent to find an antagonist, and to turn critical analysis into moral dogma, one can find success fairly easily. I believe this to be a central reason that the name Marx stirs such distaste among many people today. In my opinion, this is a shame. Marx was certainly a critic, and often he was criticizing capitalist societies and governments because he knew them to be the direction in which society was heading. What is the point of criticizing dying forms of social organization? If one reads a more complete array of Marx, one will find many passages trumpeting the many positive developments that come hand in hand with democratic capitalism. We should all take a lesson from Marx in our outlook. We are where we are; there have been great developments, and horrible deeds. What can we do to improve? Self-adulation serves no purpose, let’s be doggedly critical.

Here’s a quick note about myself:  I recently finished up as a political science undergrad, with a concentration on the Russian area. I’ve returned to grad school studying mathematics. I’m also a classical music fan, avid reader, rower, new father. As far as sports, I’m a Yankees, Giants, Michigan football, Villanova basketball, fan.  So don’t be surprised if some off-topic posts pop up from time to time.

Welcome to the home of the rantings of teebs! I suppose my purpose will be to expand and diversify the underlying questions posed by the American political culture. Most of the writing will be done by myself, though I look forward to developing a network with individuals who sometimes entertain what have come to be known as ‘radical’ views.

Also, though, I just wanted to see what this whole ‘blogging’ thing is all about.  So here I go.