House of Eratosthenes

That’s why I ride my bike to work every single day. I tell everybody who asks, it’s about being a moderately fat middle-aged guy as opposed to a grotesquely fat middle-aged guy, and not only that, but UNLESS EVERYBODY STARTS DOING THIS RIGHT NOW THE EARTH IS GONNA DIE!!!! An umptyfratz-many esteemed scientists have told us so so it must be true.

I deadpan that last one. Just for fun. It makes me happy when I get funny looks. I wouldn’t have gotten funny looks on that one just a couple years ago.

The most devastating thing you can do to a stupid idea is to take it seriously.

Or, elect it to be your next President.

Earlier today, I noted that Barack Obama’s team has started hinting that they will move back towards John McCain’s position on interrogation techniqiues. Now supporters of Obama who have criticized the Bush administration’s position on indefinite detention have begun rethinking that policy as well:

As a presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama sketched the broad outlines of a plan to close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba: try detainees in American courts and reject the Bush administration’s military commission system.

Now, as Mr. Obama moves closer to assuming responsibility for Guantánamo, his pledge to close the detention center is bringing to the fore thorny questions under consideration by his advisers. They include where Guantánamo’s detainees could be held in this country, how many might be sent home and a matter that people with ties to the Obama transition team say is worrying them most: What if some detainees are acquitted or cannot be prosecuted at all?

That concern is at the center of a debate among national security, human rights and legal experts that has intensified since the election. Even some liberals are arguing that to deal realistically with terrorism, the new administration should seek Congressional authority for preventive detention of terrorism suspects deemed too dangerous to release even if they cannot be successfully prosecuted.

“You can’t be a purist and say there’s never any circumstance in which a democratic society can preventively detain someone,” said one civil liberties lawyer, David D. Cole, a Georgetown law professor who has been a critic of the Bush administration.

You can’t? That’s all we’ve heard from the close-Gitmo crowd for the last seven years. Indefinite detention supposedly violates American values, we’re losing the war if we adapt to the threat against us, blah blah blah. Certainly Barack Obama never gave any indication of nuanced thinking along the lines of indefinite detention during the last two years while campaigning for the presidency. In fact, Obama made the absolutist case that Cole now belatedly rejects in June 2007:

“While we’re at it,” he said, “we’re going to close Guantanamo. And we’re going to restore habeas corpus. … We’re going to lead by example _ by not just word but by deed. That’s our vision for the future.

Now that Obama has to live with these decisions and not simply snipe from the sidelines, the game appears to have changed. A month ago, the NYT’s editorial board scoffed at the Bush administration’s efforts to keep Gitmo detainees from being released as merely a way to avoid bad press and not to keep dangerous people from killing Americans. Suddenly, the New York Times discovers that the American system does allow for indefinite detention to protect society from dangerous individuals without full-blown criminal trials — as with the criminally insane.

Gosh, and all that “shut down Gitmo” stuff sounded so rational and sensible back in the olden days, when we were reassured it wasn’t really gonna happen soon.

So how far did you get when you parents told you to go ahead and run away from home?

I wish like the dickens I could patent this obvious truth, that some silly ideas seem attractive and sensible right up until they’re about to be implemented and then suddenly the beer goggles fall off. But I can’t. The earliest I became aware of it was when Carlin Romano said it after announcing in a book review that, according to Catharine MacKinnon’s “logic,” he just finished raping her. “People claim I dehumanized her,” he said. “In fact, I did worse — I took her seriously. The worst thing that can happen to a flamboyant claim is to be tested.”

That was way back in ’94. Since then, I have seen the wisdom of his words proven over and over again.

So this McCain voter is not weeping, wailing, or gnashing his teeth. He’s not stomping his feet or holding his breath until his face turns blue. He’s conducting his life, riding his bike to work…occasionally indulging in making an Obamaton squirm about driving that enormous SUV everywhere while the earth is dying. And, just reading the news to see how this hopey-changey goodness turns out. This McCain voter is very much like your mom and dad telling you to go ahead and run away from home, and watching to see what happens next.

This McCain voter is expecting — and not just a little bit — that what comes down the news pipeline, as all this hopey-changey goodness is nailed into place, resembles very much this first example. Oh no, Obamatons, your ideas are being taken seriously! What’re ya gonna do now?

Hat tip: Anchoress.

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I Keep Telling You And Telling You; The Most Devastating Thing To Do To A Stupid Idea…Sunday, November 23rd, 2008

I Keep Telling You And Telling You; The Most Devastating Thing To Do To A Stupid Idea…
Sunday, November 23rd, 2008