Montana Headlines, one of the more thoughtful blogs, has not been posting for quite a while. I hope he’s just busy and that he gets back in the game. As Steve demonstrates below in post #1000, blogging is vewy, vewy important.

Headlines last two entries are off-kilter, coming as they do from a man of considerable depth. He offers praise to Sarah Palin, but is less impressed with Ayn Rand. There could not be a more stark juxtaposition – a deep and thoughtful woman whose philosophical meanderings might possibly have changed the world for the worse, and Ayn Rand.

First, Palin:

The question, rather, is whether Gov. Palin is the right person to spearhead the GOP’s comeback 4 to 8 years from now. We must confess that since we are so steeped in the conservative movement’s not inconsiderable intellectual heritage, our main question about Gov. Palin is whether she has the intellectual chops to make it happen. We unreservedly reject the condescending, haughty put-downs directed at her from her betters (after all, we heard the same sort of panicked attacks about Goldwater, Reagan, Thatcher, and Gingrich during their ascendencies, all of whom had intellectual chops far exceeding what they were then given credit for.)

But saying that the caricatures of elitist snobs (or of that even lower form of life, the elitist snob manqué) are grossly unfair is not quite the same thing as saying that Gov. Palin should be handed the Goldwater/Reagan/Thatcher/Gingrich mantle, post-haste.

In this vein, one of our favorite conservative writers, John O’Sullivan, has written a nice piece in which he comes to her defense:

Inevitably, Lloyd Bentsen’s famous put-down of Dan Quayle in the 1988 vice-presidential debate is resurrected, such as by Paul Waugh (in the London Evening Standard) and Marie Cocco (in the Washington Post): “Newsflash! Governor, You’re No Maggie Thatcher,” sneered Mr. Waugh. Added Ms. Coco, “now we know Sarah Palin is no Margaret Thatcher — and no Dan Quayle either!”

Jolly, rib-tickling stuff. But, as it happens, I know Margaret Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher is a friend of mine. And as a matter of fact, Margaret Thatcher and Sarah Palin have a great deal in common.

It’s a trick! Don’t fall for it. The comparison is apt, but not in the way Headlines imagines. Margaret Thatcher brought Reaganism to Great Britain, and the presumption on the right is, just as with Reagan, that she is indisputably a great leader. But she was not. She surely had an adequate mind and a strong sense of purpose, but she also led Britain down the road we are now on in the U.S. … collapse. Unregulated capitalism always brings about collapse – that she could not see this is her own blind spot. That Reagan could not see it was part of an overall intellectual deficit that Thatcher had spotted when she said of him:

Poor dear, there’s nothing between his ears.

To bring Sarah Palin into this mix is both appropriate, in the Reagan sense, and inappropriate in the Thatcher sense. Any fool can plainly see that Palin is a second-rate intellect, perhaps third-rate. She ought to be an embarrassment to Republicans, but instead some of them are touting her for president. That’s comical.

Just one example of Palin’s qualifications: it’s part of a policy speech she gave on October 24, 2008:

Where does a lot of that earmark money end up anyway? […] You’ve heard about some of these pet projects they really don’t make a whole lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not.

Fruit flies are used by scientists to help them understand, and maybe fix, human disorders like autism and other disabilities. Sarah, who wants to be president, doesn’t get this. I kid you not.

Concerning Rand, Headlines is a little more circumspect. There’s a rift between conservatives, libertarians and objectivists, though the overlap in their philosophies is probably over 90%. All three are immutably opposed to government intervention in society beyond a few basic functions, like military defense and courts. All see failure in systems all around them, and blame government. All are blind to the unworkability of unrestrained capitalism.

Here’s Headlines on Rand:

Traditional conservatism has a mixed relationship with Rand. On the one hand, her novels cut to the heart of socialism, collectivism, and government regulation in their various forms in a way that is readable and indeed gripping. A page-turner like Atlas Shrugged probably did more than the writings of a dozen prominent economists ever could, creating a healthy suspicion of “managed” economies and helping ordinary readers to understand the inextricable connection between the loss of economic liberty and the loss of all liberties.

Think of them as being similar to the recent, grittier movie adaptations of super-hero comic books such as the (quite impressive) Christian Bale Batman movies.

On the other hand, her hostility to traditional religion and her lack of any respect for tradition in general caused most thoughtful conservative thinkers, in the end, to reject her ideas as being just as flawed and potentially dangerous as were the communist and socialist ideologies she was mercilessly flaying in her writings.

That’s astute, except for the “page-turner” part. Rand was as hostile to religion as she was to non-smokers, and in fact was in total contempt of humanity. The cardboard characters she constructed in Atlas Shrugged were robots, purely analytical about even our frail emotions and romantic love. Her economic system was as devoid of color as her perverted love life. She constructed an Alice-in-Wonderland system of trickle-down benefits for the unworthy, provided by a few good men. It has as much bearing on how our system really works, how we really live and love, as Scientology.

Headlines seems to think the rift between conservatives and objectivists is merely about contempt for religion. He seems to be with her all the way on her off-the-wall economic system. I hope it is not so. I hope that Rand is soon relegated to the dust bin of failed philosophies, along with Mr. Marx.

And I hope he soon understands that Sarah Palin has not read AtlasShrugged, never will, and not much else either, and that she has far more in common with Ronald Reagan than Maggie Thatcher.

Here’s a cute little web site that practices the art of reducing life’s complexities down to mathematical formulas. A few examples:

PONZI SCHEME = ROI – R – I

CRAZY = TALKING TO ONESELF – (CELL PHONE + EAR PIECE)

BRUNCH = BREAKFAST + LUNCH + CANTALOUPE

DOGGIE DAYCARE = KENNEL – GUILT

You get the idea.

Here’s a blog piece by Paul Krugman that analyzes the financial policy of the Obama Administration, captive as it is of Wall Street. He claims that Obama is basically trying to put Humpty Dumpty together again – that is, securitization failed to spread risk, but instead intensified it. Now they want ot go back, pick up the pieces, and try securitization of risk, one more time.

Underlying the glamorous new world of finance was the process of securitization. Loans no longer stayed with the lender. Instead, they were sold on to others, who sliced, diced and puréed individual debts to synthesize new assets. Subprime mortgages, credit card debts, car loans — all went into the financial system’s juicer. Out the other end, supposedly, came sweet-tasting AAA investments. And financial wizards were lavishly rewarded for overseeing the process.

But the wizards were frauds, whether they knew it or not, and their magic turned out to be no more than a collection of cheap stage tricks. Above all, the key promise of securitization — that it would make the financial system more robust by spreading risk more widely — turned out to be a lie. Banks used securitization to increase their risk, not reduce it, and in the process they made the economy more, not less, vulnerable to financial disruption.

But if Wall Street has spent $5 billion over the last ten years to influence policy, Wall Street is pretty well going to get its way, and forget for a moment whether a “D” (45% of contributions) or an “R” (55%) is in power, because that person is not really in power anyway.

To be fair, officials are calling for more regulation. Indeed, on Thursday Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, laid out plans for enhanced regulation that would have been considered radical not long ago.

But the underlying vision remains that of a financial system more or less the same as it was two years ago, albeit somewhat tamed by new rules.

As you can guess, I don’t share that vision. I don’t think this is just a financial panic; I believe that it represents the failure of a whole model of banking, of an overgrown financial sector that did more harm than good. I don’t think the Obama administration can bring securitization back to life, and I don’t believe it should try.

But try they will. Wall Street, I mean. Obama is merely a conduit, as McCain would have been. Two parties is nonsense. It’s one party – the capitalist party, with two right wings, one of which flaps harder than the other, meaning we go in circles.

But who knows the future? Well, one person does – here’s the tail end of a blog comment by Dave Budge at Electric City Web Log, 3/26/09 11:49am:

In other words, we’re screwed. The only thing that can save us is to reduce spending as a percentage of GDP. But for at least the next two years that ain’t gunna happen.

I think what he is saying there is that change is in store, two years down the road. Mid-terms. Restoration of financial sanity. ‘R’s (55% of $5 billion) take over from ‘D’s (45%), and we’ll have a change of course. Of course.

He’s also saying that the government should not be spending money like it is – in fact, many R’s are saying this – that we should be cutting spending, reducing tax rates for the wealthy once more – you know – all of these people who did not see this coming now know how to get us out of it. It’s pure insanity.

Here’s some more formulas:

Steve and I are going back and forth now on our upcoming post #1,000. This one is #996, so we get to do three more of no consequence, and then have to deliver profundity. I suggested that we do something on this TV phenomenon called The Hills, but Steve says it is “painfully shallow.”

Who knew? I presumed that pop culture would contain elements of self awareness and would embed a deeper message, perhaps satirizing our consumer-driven wealth-crazed existence.

Not so. It’s just a show. The actresses are simple, stupid, pretty people. Totally.

Here’s something interesting I learned from that: It turns out that beautiful people don’t have to work as hard for success as the rest of us, and so end up in professions like modeling and acting, where looks trump everything else. So people in those professions tend to be shallow.

But that makes me wonder – I like this TV show called “House”, but can’t help but notice that everyone involved in that show is stunning and beautiful. At our local hospital, nurses tend to be a little frumpy and stressed – the medical profession in general attracts people who work very hard. Pretty people can make a living without working hard. So most doctors and nurses are pretty ordinary looking.

Could it be that TV is peddling a fake bill of goods? Could it be that ordinary people lacking in extraordinary beauty and charm are worthy too? Could it be that Jennifer Aniston will never marry again, and that it will not matter? Could it be that Brad and Angelina are really just very shallow and self-absorbed people, so much so that they think their own public ‘caring’ for others is just another form a narcissism?

I’m leaving #1,000 to Steve. I’m out of ideas. I don’t know what is profound, what is shallow. I mean, if Brad Pitt is just another pretty boy, if George Clooney is not really a deep thinker, if Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon are just paper mache, then all I have left to guide my thoughts is Jon Stewart. And when I listen to him when he is not scripted, he doesn’t seem to know very much.

I am lost. Where to go for guidance? How to know what to think? I’m calling on Steve now to use post #1,000 to help me out. It will be a doozy – maybe the best blog post ever. No pressure.

Closing the Collapse Gap is a wry and wonderfully witty talk by Dmitry Orlav, an expatriate Russian living in America. Since it is a slide show/lecture from 2006, I am probably miles behind the curve. I just discovered him.

Orlav observes in 2006 that a collapse in the U.S. is inevitable, and will probably occur within the near future. He was prescient. But he’s not a pessimist by any means – just a sardonic observer with some useful experience for us as we stumble through it.

A few samples:

Many of the problems that sunk the Soviet Union are now endangering the United States as well. Such as a huge, well-equipped, very expensive military, with no clear mission, bogged down in fighting Muslim insurgents. Such as energy shortfalls linked to peaking oil production. Such as a persistently unfavorable trade balance, resulting in runaway foreign debt. Add to that a delusional self-image, an inflexible ideology, and an unresponsive political system.

Then there is our dependence on foreign oil – something that did not trouble the Soviets:

… [an] untenable arrangement rests on the notion that it is possible to perpetually borrow more and more money from abroad, to pay for more and more energy imports, while the price of these imports continues to double every few years. Free money with which to buy energy equals free energy, and free energy does not occur in nature. This must therefore be a transient condition. When the flow of energy snaps back toward equilibrium, much of the US economy will be forced to shut down.

Americans don’t like being compared to Russians, since we are exceptional people. But Orlav does the comparisons, and finds Americans coming up short in the survival of the fittest game. And then there is the American holiday season … We live miles apart for a reason. We don’t like each other.

When confronting hardship, people usually fall back on their families for support. The Soviet Union experienced chronic housing shortages, which often resulted in three generations living together under one roof. This didn’t make them happy, but at least they were used to each other. The usual expectation was that they would stick it out together, come what may.

In the United States, families tend to be atomized, spread out over several states. They sometimes have trouble tolerating each other when they come together for Thanksgiving, or Christmas, even during the best of times. They might find it difficult to get along, in bad times. There is already too much loneliness in this country, and I doubt that economic collapse will cure it.

Then there is our food system, with “organic” meat and vegetables shipped to various Whole Foods in refrigerated diesel trucks:

[Americans] don’t even bother to shop and just eat fast food. When people do cook, they rarely cook from scratch. This is all very unhealthy, and the effect on the nation’s girth, is visible, clear across the parking lot. A lot of the people, who just waddle to and from their cars, seem unprepared for what comes next. If they suddenly had to start living like the Russians, they would blow out their knees.

Perhaps the greatest efficiency of the Soviet Union was its incredible inefficiency. Things that benefit humans, like day care, paid vacations, pensions and health care, are not so conducive to “efficiency” as are fear of job loss, loss of home and savings.

A private sector solution is not impossible; just very, very unlikely. Certain Soviet state enterprises were basically states within states. They controlled what amounted to an entire economic system, and could go on even without the larger economy. They kept to this arrangement even after they were privatized. They drove Western management consultants mad, with their endless kindergartens, retirement homes, laundries, and free clinics. These weren’t part of their core competency, you see. They needed to divest and to streamline their operations. The Western management gurus overlooked the most important thing: the core competency of these enterprises lay in their ability to survive economic collapse. Maybe the young geniuses at Google can wrap their heads around this one, but I doubt that their stockholders will.

Then there is American “democracy” with our switches back and forth between two parties who are more alike than different. We can’t even get rid of the worst president in our short history for eight long years. That’s dysfunction junction.

Perestroika and Glasnost were all about democracy, and in my opinion it had the same chance of success as the hopelessly gerrymandered system that passes for democracy in the US, (although much less than any proper, modern democracy, in which the Bush regime would have been put out of power quite a while ago, after a simple parliamentary vote of no confidence and early elections). The problem is that, in a collapse scenario, democracy is the least effective system of government one can possibly think of (think Weimar, or the Russian Interim Government)…

Collapse is here, it seems. Are we prepared? My wife and I occupy a small patch of land, and use it to grow trees (currently being eaten by pine beetles) and flowers. Maybe we will convert it to a food coop. Maybe our neighbors will shoot us and steal it from us.

If you have a few minutes, read the whole talk. For me, it was rewarding and well-spent time.

“War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength.” The Party Slogan, Orwell’s 1984

Ward Churchill took the stand yesterday to defend himself. He was a University of Colorado professor who was removed from his position after he made impolitic comments in the wake of 9/11. He said some of the victims were, apparently, worthy of death

because they were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants. If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I’d really be interested in hearing about it.”

Offensive? Yes. Quite. It’s not that he isn’t on to something, however. The U.S. has rained hell on various countries around the world, leaving a trail of corpses that would reach to the moon if stacked. It seems to bother no one here that we bomb cities, starve children, torture and use chemical warfare on other countries.

But 9/11 happened to us , and that’s not right. The outpouring of victimhood was sad to watch – people so blind as to not be capable of seeing suffering in others, yet wanting vindication and revenge when it happens to them. Americans are an insulated people, kept ignorant by a pliable news media, and distracted by games and TV while our soldiers are off committing atrocities in our name.

It was blowback. Churchill said as much. The University people, of course, acknowledged his free speech rights. He could, as a citizen and a professor, make offensive remarks.

Then they railroaded him out of town. His scholarly work underwent scrutiny none could withstand, and sure enough, they found some alleged incidents of plagiarism and an unsourced conclusion regarding the U.S. Army infecting native Americans with smallpox way back when. (Churchill is Native American.)

Something very similar happened to Norman Finkelstein, who was denied tenure at DePaul for his controversial stands on Israel. His real crime was to expose Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz as a fraud. He got the Dixie Chicks treatment, as did Churchill.

Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely for views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech. (Chomsky)

I have commented elsewhere at this blog on the seeming contradiction that the people of East Germany and Russia could bring about meaningful change. They overthrew oppressive governments thought to be intractable. Here in the United States we don’t seem to be able to affect much change, no matter what.

Oh yeah – and freedom of speech … it’s kind of an illusion. Isn’t it.