Cryptography is a science of deduction and controlled experiment; hypotheses are formed, tested and often discarded. But the residue which passes the test grows until finally there comes a point when the experimenter feels solid ground beneath his feet: his hypotheses cohere, and fragments of sense emerge form their camouflage. The code “breaks.” (John Chadwick, The Decipherment of Linear B, as quoted in The Code Book, by Simon Singh)
If only … people would treat politics like cryptography. The breaking of the ancient Greek Linear B was an intellectual accomplishment of historical significance – a remarkable feat. Understanding American politics is far less complicated. It is coded and needs to be unencrypted, but once done is quite easy to understand. There are several basic rules:
1. Assurances mean nothing. In fact, assurance are as often a means of disarming opposition. For instance, Obama’s campaign pledge to support a public option had just that effect. Assurance we are receiving now that the Bush tax cuts will be allowed to expire should not be trusted. 2. Politicians can favor something in public and fight it behind the scenes. And often do. Sen Michael Bennet’s (D-CO) public support of the public option as he worked against it was just such a maneuver. Master of the fake voting record3. Votes cast on bills can be real or fake. Perhaps this is the hardest idea to sell, even though it is so obvious. Once the votes are in place to pass or kill legislation, all subsequent votes cease to matter. They can be cast for cosmetic purposes. 4. Party affiliation is skin deep. Having two parties gives us the illusion of choice, but the same people finance each party and have power and leverage over them. So, when they go behind closed doors, it is about interests, and not parties. This gives rise to the notion that politicians ought to wear patches of their corporate sponsors, like NASCAR drivers do. 5. Politicians rarely appear on uncontrolled forums. There are always a thousand questions we would like to ask office holders, but they are never cornered on a public forum. They rarely take questions from the floor, and usually appear in scripted debates facilitated by professional journalists, who are taught not to be confrontational. Hosting a debate is a sure sign that a journalist is thought to be safe. We just don't have the votes!6. A politician who will not fight for an issue or idea is actually opposed to that issue or idea. When Democrats say that “the votes aren’t there”, what they mean is that they are not willing to fight for an issue. Ands that unwillingness is just another way of saying “screw you.” 7. Money matters, but power matter more. As I mentioned to my arch-enemy Rod Kailey below, the fact that wiretaps are everywhere in DC, and yet there are no investigations of those wiretaps, is telling. There are call girls all over DC, and office employees more than willing to canoodle the boss. There are free trips, junkets, tickets to sporting events, jobs for family members … and more. Each of these items opens the door for pressure. That’s how power works. They have to use force people to get people to do things they do not want to do. It takes power, and that power is knowledge.
Sunset on the Sea of EthicsThat’s it. It’s cynical, I know. There are many good people in Washington, mostly in the career positions. But with elected officials, remember that once they get there, once they realize how easy it is to fool the public, once they realize that they will not be punished for bad behavior nor rewarded for good – once they internalize all of this, they are corrupted. An alert and informed public would vote them out on a regular basis, and good laws would prevent them from lobbying or accepting jobs or payment for themselves of their family members after leaving office.
The only answer is eternal vigilance, and that ship sailed long ago.
Well, the Colorado primary is over. The Obama-appointed Rahm-vetted Michael Bennet won, beating a more liberal contender, Andrew Romanoff. Bennet will lose in November, as a scandal erupted around him that was exposed by the New York Times in the past couple of weeks. Unfortunately, 250,000 votes had already been cast by the time of the exposure. I’m a little concerned now that post card voting has real drawback. (The Denver Post had this story, and elected to sit on it.)
Romanoff got 46% of the vote -amazing given that Obama himself came here to support Bennet. It is testimony to the weakness of conservadems that there are such strong primary challenges, even to anointed candidates.
The lesser lesser, Ken BuckNow it starts … we are going to be told that yeah, Bennet ain’t that good, but he’s better than the alternative. But he’s not. He’s worse. Here’s an example of why: During the health care debate, after the Democrats had killed the public option, Bennet circulated a letter to President Obama demanding that he include a P.O. in the final bill. It was Kabuki Theater – when Bennet had a chance to insert such an option in the reconciliation process, he declined to do so.
That’s his salt. That’s his ethos. He’s a fraud. It is not better to have a fraudulent Democrat in office than a Republican of any stripe. With a Republican we can organize. With a Democrat, we are fractured and pointless.
I am officially changing my voter registration from Democrat to Green this week. I only signed up as a Democrat to vote against Bennet.
I beg to differ!I know, this sounds like whining. And honestly, Romanoff was an unknown quantity, himself a former member of the DLC. So often in this country we do not have real choices. As with Jon Tester in Montana, even if you get the desired result, the power and corruption in Washington undoes them when they get there.
Ground-level organizing is not just another way. It is the only answer. However, when Democrats are in power, it does not happen. So where Democrats put up fraudulent candidates, I will vote for Republicans. So for Senate this fall in Colorado, I will vote for Republican Ken Buck.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs lashed out at the “professional left” in The Hill magazine. He did not name names. But he made some interesting comments:
“I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested. I mean, it’s crazy.”
“They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.”
“They wouldn’t be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president.”
“There’s 101 things we’ve done” (mentioning both Iraq and health care “reform”).
Follow just one line of thought: The Democrats gave away everything in the health care debate. They didn’t really even try. But to oppose such a sellout is said to be like wanting “Canadian Health Care.” He is adopting the extreme position to confuse the issue, to make it appear as there was no willingness to compromise on a reasonable deal on health care. It’s cagey perception management.
With Iraq, Obama is merely following through with the Bush agenda, permanent occupation. Nothing has changed. Afghanistan was on deck no matter who won the election. Guantanamo is still there and festering. Mere spying on Americans has turned into assassinating Americans. It is all as if George W. Bush were still in office, but … we are not allowed to say that. It’s “crazy.”
There is no mystery here. Gibbs hates lefties. So does Rahm Emanuel, and is logically follows that Obama too has a hard spot for us. Bill Clinton hated the left. But during his years the left was pretty much confined to the “Alternative Media” and Democracy Now! These days there are some prominent leftish voices out there, like Rachel Maddow, Elizabeth Warren, Glenn Greenwald, some blogs … and they are attracting attention.
In the Clinton years, the left was frozen out of the debate. Gibbs’ only frustration is that we have a foot in the door. This is, after all, The United States of America, and in this country, there are Republicans, Democrats, but if there is to be a left, we will hire actors to play them.
If Democrats are voted out of power in the coming six years, as they should be, the left will be blamed. And the ultimate insult will be this: Democrats will never acknowledge that having Democrats in power made no difference anyway. They are that dense.
Here is an interesting exchange that took place on a national call-in show yesterday regarding the recent ruling on Proposition Eight.
Caller: Hi Thom. I’m calling about that judge’s decision on proposition eight. It doesn’t make any sense!
Thom Hartmann: In what way?
Caller: Well that judge is just writing law. He’s sitting there making stuff up. We all know that marriage was meant to be a man and a woman.
TH: Where in the Cons…
Caller: It’s like every time we try to do the right thing Obama steps in and forces us to do the wrong thing.
TH: But it wasn’t Obama …Caller: I don’t care! He’s changing everything! I just want my country back! Now I can’t even know who’s living next door to me, or if I can let my kids out to go the store … TH: Have you read the rul… Caller: It’s like when we tried to clean up our neighborhoods and some socialist judge tells us we have to read people their RIGHTS when we’re just trying to fight to keep our country safe from the terr…TH: But what’s Miranda got to ….. Caller: I have a daughter and I want her to get married like anyone to a regular guy and now I can’t even know who she’s marrying because of some Obama judge telling me that she has to marry …. TH: But that wasn’t the ruling …Caller: It’s you guys and your socialist ideas that are making it hard for regular people to just be themselves what with people coming across the border now and living in basements …TH: Let’s get back to Proposition 8 – why do you think…Caller: The people of California SPOKE and said they don’t want Adam and Steve living next door and a judge tells them they can’t SPEAK! It’s socialism like when Obama took over GM and now cars are running off the highway everywhere … TH: Let’s try to stay on subject here … have you read the rul…Caller: I want my country back! You guys are ruining it for all of us with your immigrants living in basements and socialism and now gay people having to get married and my daughter can’t even talk to her friends because she doesn’t know … TH: Caller … I’m going to stop you here … let’s not talk over one another. Now, when I put you back on the air, I want you to tell me if you have read the judge’s ruling, and also where in the Constitution marriage is defined … OK? Alright. Put him back on. Caller – are you there? caller?
_____________________
OK OK … I made it all up. That call never happened. But doesn’t it sound like talk radio?
We spent time back in Montana on our recent trip, and had meals out with everyone we wanted to see that we had time to see again in Bozeman. Each of those meals was a trip of its own, leading to long conversations that I wished would never end. My thanks to our good friends who read this blog and spent time with us. It was really fun.
One dinner companion had an interesting observation: Most people who read this blog don’t get it. Most Americans don’t get the kind of talk that goes on here. They don’t look behind the curtain, don’t suspect that greater minds than ours are about the business of managing our perceptions. That phrase itself is an insult, as each person presumes to know his own thoughts and to be the originator of those thoughts.
Christopher NolanI asked one meal companion, who doesn’t come here, if he had seen the movie “Inception.” He’s a movie buff, and generally our tastes run the same way. On this movie, his reaction was negative. He hated that movie. He’s smart and patient, so it isn’t that he didn’t get it. Quite the opposite – he got it. It offended him. The very idea that anyone could plant ideas in his mind was abhorrent. He claimed, with mock self-deprecation, that he believed himself to be too smart to allow such a thing to happen.
So we all think alike, and we all think the same things, and we are all the originators of our own thoughts.
Cuban propaganda posterIn most countries, perception management isn’t much of an issue. There’s some of it going on no matter where we live – the French and Canadians and Ruskies all believe in the essential goodness of their own homelands, and all turn a blind eye to their own weaknesses, just as Americans do. That is natural, and not a result of active thought management. But certain countries have set about to manage their populations so as to keep them contained and controlled – among them are the Russians, the Cubans, North Koreans, the Chinese, and the Americans.
American propaganda posterThis is not the same as totalitarianism, where brutal thugs threaten people who go astray. It’s much easier to think for oneself in such places as Saudi Arabia or Sri Lanka, as the only requirement is to shut up about it.
But to actively manage a population that thinks itself free is a much more difficult task. So it starts early, when we are very young. Our schools teach us a version of history that probably never happened, and it becomes our backdrop. We are also taught that our form of governance is the best, and that we had forebears that were saintly and courageous. We are constantly put through rituals, such as saying the Pledge of Allegiance and singing the national anthem, to reinforce those ideas. We monitor one another to see if the open displays of patriotism are appropriate – do our neighbors take off their caps, put hand over heart?
Most importantly, after our leaders are decided for us, we decide on our leaders. It is essential that we view ourselves as self-governing.
It is usually enough to reach a person in the primary education phase. Most will go on to ordinary workaday careers, the backdrop firmly in place. Their lives will be occupied with work and bills and children and sports. Many of the poorer classes will be called upon to become soldiers and participate in attacks on other countries, and will presume to know that the cause is just, and will demand honor and repayment for their dishonorable work.
A few of us are people who Napoleon referred to as being “of noble mind.” We think further and harder, and so it is not enough that we be swathed in patriotism as young children and let go. The process has to be ongoing, reinforced in higher education, and deeply embedded by the social reward system. You might think the intellectual class of people to be the hardest to manage, but they are not. They are Orwell’s trained circus dog. They actually teach themselves to jump through the hoop without the crack of the whip of the trainer. They self-indoctrinate.
He's really, really good at itI’ve had encounters with many of the educated class, and there is usually hubris littered about, and I usually react negatively. I’ve had run-ins with a manager of a public radio station, two newspaper editors, Budge, and many others. It is essential that the journalists serve the state, and that profession is buried under six feet of self-adulation. They are so sure that they have arrived at their own thoughts that the mere suggestion that anyone else was managing their perceptions causes them to not merely disagree, but to react with anger. Hence, our dinner companion, a genuinely nice man, did not just dislike the movie “Inception,” He “hated” it.
Not pictured: PowerEvery country has an intellectual class, and these people share certain characteristics. One, they cannot stand the idea of being “ordinary”, and so they go to great lengths to separate themselves from the masses. Two, they usually hook up with power, somehow serving the interests of non-intellectuals who can give them the proper rewards for their service. So, if you are one who haunts the cable news dial, you will see that it is loaded with members of this class, each pontificating in a serious manner on why the leadership of the country is right about this or that, why our wars are just, why tax policies that punish the working classes and favor the rich are appropriate. They work for power. It can be no other way.
If they are Republicans, they are critical of Democrats, and visa versa. When necessary, when new people take power, they switch positions, criticizing the same policies they once espoused, since that policy is now being carried out by the other party. The act of position switching, which recently happened on our resource wars in the Middle and Far East, and on budget deficits, is truly a wonder to behold.
This class is everywhere to be found in chatterland, with one exception: Anyone who eschews the two-party makeup is ostracized. Outside the two parties, you will find honest thoughts and observations, critical thought and true patriotism, which is the love of a land and people couple with a desire for the good will of others and prosperity and happiness for the entire planet.
Christopher Nolan, who wrote and directed the movie Inception, seems to be at once uniquely talented and smart enough not to openly challenge power and the perception management system. He is smuggling his message to us. Good film makers do this – David Russell with Three Kings, Barry Levinson with Wag the Dog, Stuart Rosenburg with Cool Hand Luke … the list goes on far into the night – The Wizard of Oz, Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Lesser attempts that more pistol-whip than smuggle include There Will Be Blood and Avatar.
Luke emptying Boss's holeBooks can also smuggle truth, but in a non-reading culture, who cares? Movies can reach us with smuggled messages because independent thinkers in that industry are let free to do their work, and are rewarded if they make money for their sponsors. The embedded message slips right by the power structure. Ad-based television cannot do this, though the pay channels occasionally offer up good fare. But it is in movies that we find embedded messages that sometimes hit their mark. In the anger that I saw in our dinner companion, there was evidence that the movie Inception succeeds in delivering its message.
For that reason, I am going to see it today. It must be quite good.
Have you ever had one of those rare moments of insight where something at once seems so obvious that you break out laughing? I had one last week. We were standing at the Ted Stevens airport in Anchorage, one of those zigzag lines, and a guy going the other way in line said “Are you going to Dallas?” I said no, and he quickly shot back “Chicago?”. I did not tell him our destination, but thought that if he had asked a typical American, he’d be turned into authorities for suspicious activity.
He probably just wanted me to deliver some cocaine for him. No big deal.
And then it hit me: All of our airport security, even if it is effective, is pointless. All a ‘terrist’ A-Rab or Muslim has to do is put a bomb in a suitcase, take it to security, and blow it up right there, where all the people are. Nothing has been screened at that point, so that it could be a pipe, nuclear, fertilizer or McDonald’s grease bomb.
My dream jobAnd it hasn’t happened. For whatever reason, very few people on the planet want to kill civilians for its own sake. We’re safe. But our governing system since the early 1950’s has been predicated on the fact that we are a National Security State, and that we must always be afraid of something. So we are inculcated from youth in the culture of fear – crime, drugs, Communism, and now terrorism. The result is a people so easily manipulated by some archetype villain like Osama or Saddam that we readily support our government, run by sociopaths, as they plunder, attack and terrorize the globe.
It is tempting at times to simply go some place where people are both relaxed and behaved, like Canada or Costa Rica. We have talked about it at times, but family, of course, keeps us here. Neither of those countries is likely to be attacked by the U.S. any time soon, and so their people are at peace.
Sociopaths on a morning strollLife is always a struggle to survive, and bad things happen. There are bad dudes everywhere. Our country is run by cliques of corporate and military sociopaths who dangle images of pretty people in front of us to act as “leaders.”. SociopathSociopaths are everywhere, maybe four percent of our population, and one percent in other countries, according to Harvard’s Dr. Margaret Stout. So there is nowhere to hide from them. George W. Bush is one, as surely were Cheney and Rumsfeld, Kissinger, Nixon, and Bill Clinton, to name but a few.
You get the idea, no doubt.But people in other lands have a more casual attitude about danger, perhaps due to the incredibly low odds of bad things happening, but most likely because they have not been subject to the intense and corrupting propaganda that enmeshes us. These colors don't run, babyThe French have been overrun in the past by real monsters, and their country devastated by two wars in the twentieth century alone. Yet the country does not run on fear, as ours does. We make fun of them, I know, but it is we, and not them, who are the real pussies of the planet.
So please, dear Americans, take a deep breath, let it out, and then next time as you make your way through airport security, remember that you are in more danger at that point in time than at any time during your flight. And that danger is virtually nil.
Think of airport security for what it really is: A jobs program, and as George Carlin reminded us, a way to make white people feel safe when they fly. If only … if only … Americans could know that they are safe, then the rest of the planet could relax too. We could stop the bombing, invading, occupying. .
Americans … you are safe. Now sleep … sleep, my sweet white knights of the planet. Tomorrow is a brand new day. Keep up what you are doing, and there will be no one left alive to rescue.
We have three days now where wePilot and Index Peaks, Wyoming have no place we have to be, no motel reservations, no obligations of any kind. We are in Cooke City, Montana, which is not the end of the world. No Internet, no newspapers. I sit here in the parking lot of a motel where we stayed last week, as I know the password.
The web site for the Pilot-Index image is patmahan.com.
Imagine that it is virtually impossible to make a call from a cell phone to the ground below from an aircraft traveling at high altitude.
As I read it, it is indeed virtually impossible. Aircraft have to be equipped with special communication equipment to achieve this feat, and hardly any are, none in 2001. And, in my routine flights here and there over the last ten years, I have tried to do so. I often made contact – that is, the phone tells me that I have a connection, but it does not complete the call. It is just dead air.These days we we can be fined, even arrested for trying to do so, and it is odd, as it does not interfere with the aircraft in the least.
Anyway, set that aside. Religious groups insist on adherence to dogma, as do political groupings. And yet, internally, most people know that group dogmas are false, that two plus two does not equal five. They internalize such dogma to achieve harmony, as it is important to belong to a group structure. So people who profess otherwise know that there was no rising from the dead or walking on water or virgin birth. They are merely submitting to group dominance.
The suppression of the knowledge that the beliefs are false is often described as “cognitive dissonance,” which is simply the ability to adhere to irreconcilable beliefs.
Some of us do not bond easily to groups, and suffer accordingly. But we learn to live on our own, without approbation. The odds of us meeting are slim, as most people meet other people via membership in various groups. But the blogs are a good way to meet outliers.
A nasty aspect of my personality is to hold in disdain those who define themselves by group membership. I rebel when groups try to bind me and force me to conform to group norms. I was never a good employee,and never happy as an employee. I was not a good Republican, and was horrible Democrat. I even found the Greens restrictive – they more than any party have a large share of nonconformists, but it was a little bit oppressive.
Cell phones work on airplanes ... got that?What is the mechanism by which groups enforce cohesion? I think there are two elements: One is a need in each of us to belong, and the other are enforcers who patrol the fringes of groups to make sure that none leave the herd. These are self-appointed sheepdogs.
In real life, I am a nice person and indistinguishable in a crowd. I do ordinary work for ordinary pay, watch football with family on Thanksgiving, smile and joke and do all of the normal things. But on the blogs I am impatient, condescending, snippy, and even mean at times. The people who have been on the receiving end of this negative torrent are genuinely nice and caring of the people around them. But on the blogs, they too exhibit different characteristics.
Hex! Hex!These are the sheepdogs. They patrol the edges of groups, and define what is acceptable and what is not. Or so I perceive. each of them, as I perceive them, is so caught up in group insight that they have lost track of what is real, in fact, have no desire to know what is real.
And so they literally whip people, citing grouptruth, using absurdly tedious reasoning to force reality into a square box. “It is so, as my words force it to be so.“ The act of banning is a sheepdog at work, patrolling the outer perimeters of the group. Mormons call it shunning.
Noam Chomsky (NBC file photo)The whole of the allowed political spectrum in the U.S. is right-leaning. In such an environment, Republicans are free to explore as far into the extremities of thought on that parameter as they please. Thus we have our Beck’s and Coulter’s, each day bringing us new outrageous thoughts, never disciplined. Lefties, on the other hand, are not even seen. Noam Chomsky* is not allowed on the airwaves. But even those who we perceive to be leftist – right-leaning centrists like Ed Schultz or Paul Krugman, have to constantly watch their words and mind their manners, as jobs are lost, promotions denied … there is no easy way for even a right-leaning centrist to make it in this in mad mad city called Rightwingville.
Have Democrats become boring?Democrats who hold steady to party doctrine know this, and so internalize massive contradictions and acknowledge 2+2=5. To do so as well requires enormous self-persuasion and internal denial, a need to belong to a group that runs so deep that they cannot embrace the idea of not belonging.
So what has all this to do with the ability to make a cell phone from a jet aircraft? There is a mechanism in place that forces group adherence. It is accomplished by sheep dogs riding the perimeter. When you read that cell phones cannot make phone calls from airplanes, you immediately felt the pressure of the group and thought to yourself … “oh god, he’s not going there, is he?” That, my friend, is group pressure at work, the power of conformity. You just experienced it.
I don’t know what happened that day, and am missing so much information that I cannot begin to ever know what happened that day. I merely doubt the official conspiracy theory – the one about 19 Arabs.
I refuse to waste my time worrying about this, as whoever had enough power to unleash that event controls perceived reality. There’s no changing that. Essential information is missing, and will not appear in my lifetime, if ever.
Let's roll, patriots!But inside, when I think of the official explanation of the events of that day, I sort of doubt it all. There were no phone calls, there was no “Let’s roll!” The aircraft that crashed in Pennsylvania was surely shot down.
But I know nothing of demolition dynamics or the behavior of metals at high temperatures. I cannot begin to parse together the behaviors of thousands of people in utter chaos. It’s too much for me. It is madness. And compared to the crimes my own country has committed against others in response, it is minor.
My only point here is that it isn’t just me, but you too, who doubts the official version of events on 9/11, and the only difference between us is that you will never say so publicly, because you know you will be ridiculed and brought back into line by group strictures.
Life in AmericaI don’t cotton to sheep dogs, I guess. It is not necessarily a good thing. It is what it is. So now, at this time, group member,, your appropriate response to this post and the thought crime contained therein is … ridicule. Have at it.
________________
*PS: I hasten to add here that Professor Chomsky does not disparage the official version of events on 9/11. He is not guilty by the fact that he is mentioned here. He merely exemplifies official “shunning” as practiced in the U.S.
I love Alaska! We are for sure coming back. The road into Exit Glacier from Seward has little pull-offs are regular intervals specifically designed to allow a larger vehicle pull in and spend the night. No charge. The larger pull-offs, the gravel pits, the parking lots are full of campers and tents, all at no charge. The place is made for free-wheeling, away from KOA’s. Next time here, we will rent a conversion van and camping equipment, all of which is much cheaper than a rental car and motel.
This was a learning trip for us, what to do, what not to do. We loved Kenai in all its magnificence, and riding with a hungover bush pilot was a trip in its own, in addition to being a real trip. We saw the great brown bear, flew up and around a volcano, saw a pod of whales down below. There are very few airstrips up here, so when it is time to land, they look for an open stretch of gravelly beach. Quite a surprise to those of us expecting a runway.
We are on the Glenn Highway, away from the big attractions. There are some massive glaciers here, and the whole area is sculpted by glaciation in addition to ancient volcanism. But the hiking is sparse, and we were warned about bear activity, advised to stay close to people. We drove into Lake Louise, not THE Lake Louise, and there was eighteen miles of paved road leading to a small resort and some houses. The road is four years old and wavy, badly in need of repairs. The resort owner wants the state to fix it for her.
How did these fortunate few people get a million dollar highway to their (probably summer) homes?
Can’t say for sure but I’ve a hunch. Ted Stevens, the man they named the airport after, the guy who wanted to build that bridge to nowhere that Sarah belatedly opposed.
Not much time, and my reflections on what I’ve seen are like those of a mosquito on a moose. There is so much more here. Tonight we board a plane at 10:30 PM and fly to Denver. It will be 102 in Boulder tomorrow.
1. Assurances mean nothing. In fact, assurance are as often a means of disarming opposition. For instance, Obama’s campaign pledge to support a public option had just that effect. Assurance we are receiving now that the Bush tax cuts will be allowed to expire should not be trusted.
4. Party affiliation is skin deep. Having two parties gives us the illusion of choice, but the same people finance each party and have power and leverage over them. So, when they go behind closed doors, it is about interests, and not parties. This gives rise to the notion that politicians ought to wear patches of their corporate sponsors, like NASCAR drivers do.
Piece of Mindful 