House of Eratosthenes

That they’re popping up around us like zits on a teenager’s face, is a bad thing, but the reason they’re doing so is rooted in something healthy. People understand that whatever your feelings about the war, like it or not we have a War President right now. Which means very little, really — except, where you normally have to get out of bed every morning being suspicious of your government when it’s at peace, in times like these you’re better off harboring renewed suspicions every hour on the hour.

And this calls for crisp, cool, thinking. Knowing what you know, and knowing what you don’t. Ideally, relying on logic that is so solid, that someone who passionately disagrees with you on the conclusion would say “I don’t like to admit it but that makes a lot of sense.” That’s what you have to do in order to make sure our government has all the tools it needs for the unprecedented threat, and at the same time, our constitutional protections remain firm.

As a whole we are woefully unprepared for this task. McDonald’s-And-Hookers type Presidents, Cabbage Patch Dolls, Tamagotchi Toys and Oprah Winfrey have left us with an intellectual toolset which, for the task that awaits us, is roughly equivalent to clear-cutting a redwood forest with a hundred spatulas. We don’t know what we’re doing. I think we know that we don’t know what we’re doing.

Poll a hundred people about their primary source for what’s going on in the world. I’m sure you’ll get back CNN and the New York Times…and say what you will about those sources, at least they try to lend an appearance to reporting news. But adminster truth serum before the questioning, and ask which news source consumes more time out of your participants’ daily lives as they collect information from that source — well, who wants to be in the kitchen grabbing a beer, or in the bathroom, when the commercial is over and John Stewart’s smiling face comes back on? He’s so funny, so glib, so witty. Nobody wants to miss a single minute of that. So most people get news from there. They don’t admit it; they think it doesn’t show; but when they start arguing about politics, it shows. Certain people, everything that comes out of their mouths, is a cliche. Some cliches are rhetorical questions. They are not met with answers, or with logical arguments about why the questions set up false choices, or why the questions are off-topic — they are met with a change-of-subject. Nobody ever digs in. Rarely does anybody actually exchange ideas with someone else.

But a conspiracy theory makes you feel like you’re doing something. Nevermind the patent absurdity of believing your government is out to kill you — and then hopping in your car Monday through Friday, going through your stupid little commute to your stupid little job. Aren’t you supposed to go underground, drive yourself paranoid and have Patrick Stewart chase you all over hell-n-gone? So really, nobody wants to do anything about the problem we have with the government lying to us — most people just want to look like they’ve identified the problem, or at least, become wise to the problem before most other folks.

Is it harmless?

I used to think so. Then I read this…

Former US Attorney General Says Prosecutors Botched McVeigh Case
Tuesday October 03, 2006 8:01am

Washington, DC (AP) – Former U-S Attorney General John Ashcroft says federal prosecutors “botched” the case of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

Ashcroft’s claim is in a new book called “Never Again: Securing America and Restoring Justice” which goes on sale today.

Ashcroft criticizes prosecutors for agreeing to provide material not normally given to criminal defendants.
:
Prosecutors in the case are dismissing Ashcroft’s claims. Former prosecutor Larry Mackey says the prosecution team provided unprecedented information to the defense because they wanted the public to know the government wasn’t hiding anything. [emphasis mine]

It’s not harmless.

There is a difference between a government that is transparent, and a government that is toothless and ineffectual. And like it or not, we seem to have a pattern going where whenever we ask for the first of those two, we end up getting the second. And, like it or not, part of the legitimate business of our government is to do things to incredibly evil men…things that, like Jack Nicholson said, “you don’t talk about at parties.” Our leaders start showing off how fuzzy and harmless their agencies are, and the next thing that happens, people die.

That is not to say I intend to plug my ears and go “LA LA LA LA” if & when someone provides real evidence that the Flight 77 crash was staged and there never was a plane, or that Flight 93 was hit by a missile. But I wish people wouldn’t promulgate such things just to make themselves feel important. Or to make a buck.

It’s not harmless. It’s just not.

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Harmless?Wednesday, October 4th, 2006

Harmless?
Wednesday, October 4th, 2006