Falsification 101 and the Frauds of the Left

This rant was prompted after some futile attempts at dialogue with another cadre of academic opportunist-aesthetes at http://www.long-sunday.net. Skimming the site I note not only the longwinded, dull, proustian-marxist laments (which make ol Karl's prose seem witty by comparison), but also the numerous messages blocked and censored and altered. The leftist aesthetes, such as the cowards and frauds found at Long Sunday, are not so fond of anarchic libertarianism or freedom of expression as were most liberals until the 80s and 90s: finally attaining his authentic Bukharin-like soul, the Young Hegelian Clown is all about control and censorship and Authori-TAY (as Cartman said once); if he were able to detect the right State Official to snitch to, he'd attempt to find some way (probably by licking, in good lit. poodle fashion, the boots of a lesbian department chair) to put you in Gulag for informing him of the obvious; e.g. he's a worthless, sycophantic bag of irrational shit on his way to the lower levels of Tartarus.

This new type of onanistic leftist blogger, having attentively sat for years at the feet of his marxist, psychoanalytical, or feminist mistresses and masters, has been repeatedly conditioned with the idea that the bad guys were not Stalin or even Hitler (the obscure, dense writings of the one-time nazi Heidegger being a current post-mod. fave); the bad guys were really English and American scientists, Cambridge logicians (notwithstanding that someone such as Turing helped defeat the Germans), behaviorists, Enlightenment thinkers (whether religious or not) and anyone who naively thought reason, inductive or deductive, was a reliable guide to attaining truth.

The rationally-challenged clowns such as those found at Long Sunday or The Weblog or any number of other sites seem to have nothing better to do than to spew pages and pages of unverifiable, quasi-freudian drivel in hopes of demonstrating that rational writing and argument is itself an oppressive discourse. The hip leftist blogger (such as Lacanian stooges RI Pope or Adam Kotkso) is always ready with some cheap bon mot, and ready to take on politics as well as psychology and art--anything "cultural". Like older aesthetes such as Wilde or Gide, he's only nominally leftist (while avoiding any real discussion of employment issues or money or housing or other concerns of the poor); he generally whines and bitches his way to some smarmy and instantly dismissable conceptual excretion (the beats and existentialists, at least the saner ones, would have detested such opportunistic freaks as well). He relishes an attack on GOP economic policies yet knows nothing about stats or demographics or economics at all (having been taught the lie that Marx was some sort of metaphysician), and thus his feeble attempts at political journalism or economic analysis are as futile and laughable as are his examinations of the "political unconscious." Many people are now aware of this; a few years ago a physics professor, Sokal, in fact wrote a brilliant parody of post-modernist leftist jargon which many major post mod. leftists fell for.

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After the frustration of trying to argue with people who both do and don't believe in reason as a means to truth (since any recognizable statement is itself a truth claim), it's really somewhat amusing to witness the harmless, though animalic attacks (sort of like a bunch of rabid shrews) by postmodernists and marxists on moderate analytical types (or those brave or foolish enough to advocate such positions), who are regarded as more obnoxious and threatening than are the right wing fundamentalists or conservatives. THe current academic marxist would seem to feel more in common with Heidegger (if not Goering)- than he would with a Jefferson or a Bobby Kennedy (Or Russell, etc. etc.)

Who are the enemies of tolerance and open debate and, as the liberals used to say, the spirit of disinterested inquiry? It is academic leftists as much as the biblethumping right. The hysteria and zealotry of the American protestant echoes the more sophisticated hysteria and zealotry of the postmodernist communist; to the naive, marxism is, as so many have noted, as much a sort of religious ideology as is methodism or catholicism; it replaces the sunday-school of the gullible American liberal arts student-types.

Popper's insistence on falsifiability and falliblism (though his programme is not without errors) would, if implemented, cure this enthusiasm on both sides.

Uncle Bertie Died for your Sins

'Do you think that, if you were granted omnipotence and omniscience and millions of years in which to perfect your world, you could produce nothing better than the Ku Klux Klan or the Fascists?' - Bertrand Russell, 'Why I am not a Christian', 1927

Incommensurable realities: PK Dick and George Lucas

Summer's nearly arrived, as has the summer's space spectacle, provided by George Lucas. After a few weeks of watching the Star Wars Inc. images infiltrate the Net, burger stands, Walmarts, etc. I was reminded of an older essay on simulation by Ho-wood's favorite dead cyberpunk, P.K. Dick: “How to build a universe that doesn’t fall apart two days later.” Here is a brief excerpt from the essay:

“So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing. It is my job to create universes, as the basis of one novel after another. And I have to build them in such a way that they do not fall apart two days later. Or at least that is what my editors hope. However, I will reveal a secret to you: I like to build universes which do fall apart. I like to see them come unglued, and I like to see how the characters in the novels cope with this problem. I have a secret love of chaos. There should be more of it. Do not believe— and I am dead serious when I say this— do not assume that order and stability are always good, in a society or in a universe. The old, the ossified, must always give way to new life and the birth of new things. Before the new things are born the old must perish. This is a dangerous realization because it tells us that we must eventually part with much of what is familiar to us. Unless we can psychologically accommodate change, we ourselves will begin to die, inwardly. What I am saying is that objects, customs, habits, and ways of life must perish so that the authentic human being can live. And it is the authentic human being who matters most, the viable, elastic organism which can bounce back, absorb, and deal with the new.”

The Dick universe is obviously entropic, and thus unpredictable and disruptive. The Lucas universe is not. It is at best Gene Roddenbury-like, with cute fuzzy aliens and heroic star pilots and evil nazi-like villains. A Dick story such as "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" (barely recognizable in Blade Runner, nonetheless not a bad flick) offers chaos and plenty of it: Deckard, a hyperspace Philip Marlow, wanders among the heaps of "kipple" searching for the replicants, unable to determine what is or is not human, and some of the replicants, such as Rachel, appear more human and less schizoid than humans themselves. Lucasworld does not present such ambiguities; kipple is rare (though the rusting hulks of the ships and so forth as in The Empire Strikes Back are at least visually pleasing). The EFX may be great and it's safe for the parents and their kiddies, yet regardless of the EFX the Lucas narratives are simplistic and melodramatic, the characters as wooden as those in a John Ford western.


But only a dweeb would take the time to address the narrative structure, one-dimensional characters, or overall Newtonian shortcomings of Star Wars movies. The Lucas spectacle does dazzle yankee consumers with its EFX, but more importantly the Star Wars buzz itself is on display--it's not only a movie, but a marketing campaign, suburbanite "mall mythology" (as William Gibson said somewhere), and consumer bonding session bundled together into one tasty product, as Ho-wood execs say; one that sells millions of movie tickets as well as hamburgers, t-shirts, and lunch pails.

Images associated with this fabricated product, the Lucasburger, gradually overpower and replace current political reality; the puppy-dog aliens and Darth Vaders and space princes are now enforced on all. (some French post.mod. figure such as Baudrillard most likely wrote about this issue, and snooty lit.crit people would surely roll their eyes at my admittedly dilettantish analysis). America's most beloved cyber-melodrama subsumes the tragedies of the Iraqi war and terrorism, the catholic church scandals and dead pope, the tsunami (a disaster far more horrific than Voltaire's Lisbon quake), and the takeover of LA by a nearly maoist mayor. A Bay area wunderkind's jungian bongdream obliterates each pulp scandal and political outrage currently in progress.

Belle-lettrist


The Lovely Chucky McLucky

Reichmarshall



Da Chief of AVC, Jackie Swischer

The Consolations of Skepticism.

Supposition: there exists an all-powerful entity x (God), who causes and controls all natural events.

1. If x is an all-powerful God (G), x kills (K) thousands of innocents (by way of natural disasters, plagues, famines)

2. If (x) kills (K) thousands of innocents, then (x)is a mass-murderer and identical to Evil (E) (at least according to any commonly accepted legal or moral codes).

3, Thus, if x is God, then x is Evil
------------------
I think there would need to be a way to single out such a supposed omniscient entity (monotheistic too as Xtians/muslims/jews claim) x, perhaps like this: there exists an (x), such that x is God, and for any other (V) supposed entity y (thought also to be God), such an entity equals x. E(x) = "there exists": E(x)(Gx & V(y)( Gy -> y = x).

The universal ((x), for any x) is more suited to the hypothetical syllogism:

(x)(G(x)->K(x))
(x)(K(x)->E(x))
thus (x)(G(x) -> E(x))


Q. E. D.

Kern Boy in the Big To-mah-toe--Re-run



(I posted this back during the DNC convention--anyone remember John Kerry?--yet I feel it remains relevant given Schwarzenegger and his bitch McCarthy's new plans to gut the state infrastructure and further punish the non-wealthy of CA)

Kern representative of greed and pollution, Kevin McCarthy (as in "Joe"), thinks the efficiency-minded Repugnicans could have already settled the economic issue: sure, just cut all the programs, slash education budgets, eliminate state jobs, no more unemployment offices, etc. That's the official GOP line, which, as so many liberals have pointed out ad nauseum, is pretty much in direct contradiction to the principles of the Good Book (i.e., the Bible, if anyone still reads that useless "old book" as Hank Thoreau once said) which quite a few conservative hypocrites like to think that they uphold....

The simple solution of raising taxes on the very wealthy--on income, wealth, and luxury--seems to not have crossed the minds of anyone lately, including the overly placating democrats, who more and more seem just like Republicans with a few sentimental attitudes held towards gays and unions...At least Cruz Bustamente had the cajones and modicum of intelligence to suggest that the CA budget could be repaired with a few adjustments to the income tax brackets (increases in both federal and state income taxes and capital gains on wealthiest brackets would be most prudent)..........


Note also that the DNC and Kerry are sort of skirting the tax cut issue---Kerry in fact supported Bush's tax cut, to Kerry's disgrace. The only dem to have really mentioned it was Billy Clinton in his preacher-like rant on Monday night (July 2004), to his credit. Although he was too conservative in many aspects, liberals and leftists should not just dismiss Billy Clinton's record, which was (apart from the one rather large faux pas with a pretty jewess's mouth) successful in many basic, measurable ways: i.e. solving the deficit and creating jobs.....

Kern Law's new motto


Yee haw. At least los puercos del Kern are honest. Perhaps they should have added,
"We'll kick your ass, whether you are guilty or not."

Hitchens on Dead Pope

Hitchens' politics are a bit strange: he professes to be leftist and anti-religious, but he did support the Iraqi war, though more as a supporter of Blair than of Bush. I think he should have rallied for Kerry a bit more. My feelings towards Mr. Hitchens are a bit ambivalent, yet one cannot deny the power and style of his somewhat Swiftian prose.

"Without, it seems, quite noticing what they are saying, the partisans of the late pope have been praising him for his many apologies. He apologized to the Jewish people for the Vatican's glacial coldness during the Final Solution, and for historic filiations between the church and anti-Semitism. He apologized to the Eastern Orthodox Christians, and to the Muslims, for the appalling damage done to civilization by papal advocacy of the Crusades, and by forced conversion and massacre in the Balkans during the church's open alliance with fascism during World War II. He apologized to the world of science and reason by admitting that Galileo should not have been condemned by the Inquisition. These are not small climb-downs, and they do not apply just to the past. They are and were admissions that the Roman Catholic Church has been responsible for the retarding of human development on a colossal scale."


Dead Pope

End Democracy Now

The assumption that voting somehow is innately equitable or democratic is one of the greatest farces of American politics: not only does Chimpy McBushCo's re-election show that, so does the CA recall and the ascendency of Schwarzenegger, California's cartoon King. Education requirements, poll tests, etc. however un-populist they may seem, might be in dems and 3rd party interests. A poll test would not play well with poor urban minorities but might keep large numbers of uneducated, redneck bible-thumpers out of the voting booth.

Establishing some criteria to insure voter intelligence/fitness is no more absurd than say a college professor giving tests to insure student intelligence/fitness. Is the right answer to dy/dx sin (Pi*x) a matter of raising hands in the math classroom?

Yes, it certainly could be dangerous--i.e. if fundamentalists or organized criminals got in control of voting process (oh that's right they already have)--but not so much more dangerous than thinking a popular vote leads to equitable politics. Plato himself disparaged democracy and a popular vote in the Republic; majorities supported Hitler and Mussolini. What if say Larry Flynt (who garnered over 200 thousand votes in CA recall) had actually triumphed in California recall? Flyntville would hardly seem an acceptable democracy.

I brought this up on a blog and some of the resident academic liberals were a bit irked. But what is really irksome is the sentimental liberal's trust in the masses, the naive hope that the underclasses will all perceive the great truths of democracy and eventually start voting in qualified, rational candidates and propositions.

Remember the California propositions in the last election? 64 for instance. Thanks to some high-priced ads paid for by the corporate deep pockets, the corporate boys got out the message that this law would be like a Prop 13 reform, and keep attorneys from making excess profits etc. But what it really did is protect corporations from lawsuits and in effect reverse decades of decent environmental policies that allowed people and groups to sue corporations. So an injust or at least oligarchic prop. was put into effect. It would be easy to think of many other examples of unpleasant policies and laws put into effect by popular mandate, or by politicians put into office by popular vote. And in addition to voter intelligence tests, requiring some modicum of education for aspiring candidates--economic and historical education if not scientific--would be a prudent course. I think people should be aware of whether the Governator really knows what say present and future value is. Or something like that.

John Paul II does seem to have been a very decent, ethical, and erudite man. He spoke numerous languages, and was, as the obituary writers say, "an avid sportsman." He fought against the nazis and later the stalinists: the catholic poles certainly did not have an easy existence from about 1938 to 1945 (nor did the polish jews or ukrainians either). Many died at both nazi and stalinist hands; the atrocity of Katyn, where thousands of polish officers were slaughtered at the hands of Stalin's NKVD , may be one of the most brutal acts of the 20th century.

Yet Catholicism was and is not the answer. In fact it's quite absurd--absurd in both ordinary and philosophical sense-- that someone would, after surviving the terror of nazis and stalinists, decide to join a church that proclaims that a "God" exists who would allow such horrendous brutality. Not only is the concept of God itself quite indefensible ( and more so after WWII), the catholic tradition is rife with irrational, unscientific and anti-humanist doctrines. The mass itself is ludicrous, as are the attitudes toward birth control: for the real implications of Catholic family planning spend a few days in one of the massive slums of any Central or South American city. And yet the Catholics keep marching on. Recently a monumental cathedral was finished in LA, courtesy of Roger O Mahoney, the Cardinal who has refused to turn over names in the priest sex scandals. And the cathedral, however beautiful (featuring works of art from leading LA artistes, such as Grahams' massive, plebian Maria) is another Temple to Irrationality which does little to nothing to help solve real social and economic problems.

Kern Judge Sherry Muttler

Are there rational grounds for religious belief? (various skeptical musings)

If you assume a religious perspective is justifiable by dogma--the mere presence of Scripture--there's really no point in arguing; yet if you think the dogma can be justified rationally (as the jesuits used to assert) you have to overcome all those Phil. 101 chestnuts: the problem of evil, immateriality, status of other faiths, and the basic epistemological issue of why anyone should accept any religion as a true account of reality, rather than say a commnon-sense physico-logico account.

That may be unsubtle, and not very appealing to those who work for Christendom Inc., but theists continually assume that those Phil. 101 issues have been settled in their favor, when of course they haven't been

As you probably know, Kant himself rejected all the classical arguments for a deity, and there are I think far more philosophers and scientists arranged on the skeptic side (e..g, that there are no convincing, rational grounds for religious truth, or for an omniscient and just God) then there are rational theists. There does not seem to be a shortage of irrational theists however.

* * *

Is the existence of miracles used to confirm the truth of Scripture? If it is, then obviously other religons and cults claim miraculous events (though I assert wrongly), so the mere presence of claims that a miracle occurred doesn't really prove anything: that water was instantly converted to wine is about like saying the Buddha levitated. One can believe that, I guess, just as people believe in astrology. But most theists believe that there's more to the plausibility of scripture than the presence of miracles; if not, it would be a situation of which cult features the best miracles (and all the creepy pagans and occultists in LA would say their's does).

In fact the catholic church routinely confirms miracles, yet as Chris Hitchens recently pointed out in a great essay on Mother Theresa's death, the confirmaton is in no way scientific or objective: it's usually based on flimsy, anecdotal evidence (and an incredibly sentimental process as well). It may be thought such claims of miracles are amusing or charming, but as Hitchens points out, the belief in miracles acutally does great damdge to rationality as a whole.

I shall let Mr. Hitchens speak for himself (and for rationality), since he does it much better than I:

"Those of us who are against miraculous claims for the more obvious reasons--that the laws of nature do not respond to petitions and that what can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof--have a tendency to forget that this vulgarity and hysteria also increases the sum of misery on Earth, without at all diminishing it in the false promise of the afterlife."

* * *

Quote (from Christian blogger):

"in order to do that without actually investigating each miracle- or religious experience-claim, you'd need to give arguments for why we shouldn't believe in miracles or see religious experience as evidentially weighty"

In other words, prove to you that pigs don't fly. I have never seen a flying pig in person or photos. I don't know anyone that has, and never read any history indicating that pigs do fly. I did see a drawing of one with wings on a website. But it was not flying.

You are right, though to some degree: all the laws and rules of physical science could be overturned tomorrow and pigs might fly, just as Hume said tomorrow his billard table might obey different physical laws--I would agree there is no logically necessary reason why physical laws could not be overturned. But I'd wager the probability of the pig flying ( or billard balls flying backwards after the break of the table) is about the same as Jesus out strolling on the waves or the Virgin of Guadalupe making her annual appearance in the reflection of some campesino's windshield or whatever. I think Bayes theorem shows this too: each day a miracle has not been confirmed increases the unlikeliness of the original anomaly having occurred.


Mystical experiences are another thing. I don't doubt many people have those experiences, but they in no way demonstrate or confirm theological concepts. Recently some experiments have shown that the mental state produced by monks and nuns meditating or praying can be electrically stimulated in various brain lobes. So what was thought to be a calm "oneness with god" or satori was in fact some biochemical process in the corpus callosum.

* * *

Does that imply that if there are no rational grounds for accepting the all-powerful, spiritual Being then there are no grounds for His morality either? If there are no rational grounds for either Christianity or pagan feminism (and I don't think there are) then any laws or policies based on those irrational ideologies would not seem to be permissable. I.e if you allow one cult's morality it would seem you would have to allow all major cults be represented. (Should laws be allowed which are based on Astrology? And Christianity is in many ways akin to astrology)

Re: The Schiavo ordeal

If there were no specific, written instructions indicating that a patient preferred to die rather than be left in a vegetative state, I think the doctors and courts should presume she would desire to live (and thus feed her, keep her on machine, etc.). I don't see that as a necessarily conservative perspective, but as a humanist and ethical one. A ruling that said the state could terminate the life in absence of those written instructions could certainly lead to some scary scenarios: doctors "pulling the plug" on anyone who was in a coma who had not signed some release or consent or whatever: a bad precedent.

Moreover, there are no logical reasons why a cure or new surgical technique could not be discovered; her recovery might be highly unlikely, but it's not impossible. And how does the hospital know that her husband and/or relatives are reporting the truth about her wishes? And yes we should be very alarmed that the appelate court did seem to decide against the patient's rights here.

There should be a federal law that presumes that, unless there is clear and reliable written evidence to the contrary, the patient desires to live and thus should be fed, kept on machines, etc.

Big Tony Scalia, Supreme Court Seditionist

Not that many notice or seem to mind, but Antonio Scalia, Supreme Court Justice-for-life, routinely contradicts the principles of the Constitution with nearly each court opinion he hands down. Commenting on a case involving the legitimacy of having the Ten Commandments displayed outside a Texas courthouse, Scalia recently asserted that political authority does not derive from the people, claiming that the displaying of the Ten Commandments “is a symbol of the fact that government comes — derives its authority from God.”

Justice Scalia must have missed out on his Constitutional Law course, for a cursory reading of the opening Preamble reveals that it begins with “We the people.” References to “God” or Judeo-Christian scripture are nowhere to be found. Indeed, Founding Fathers of both the right (such as Hamilton) and left (Jefferson), influenced by Locke's concepts of individual rights, rejected theological authority as well as monarchical authority. It is not unfair to claim that a great deal of the intellectual justification of the American Revolution thus was in essence opposed to the theocratic assumptions regularly espoused by Scalia and the fundamentalists.

Those people who do value a secular society—e.g., one based on reason and democratic politics instead of religious dogma--might ask themselves whether Justice Scalia should be held accountable for such un-American comments and behavior.

Progressive Taxation is Good


The question of taxation relates, at least in part, to meritocracy: should a just or democratic society allow individuals of equal talents and abilities--say a smart high school math teacher and a Bill Gates--to have hugely disproportionate incomes? Let's assume the small-town math teacher and Gates (or whatever IT baron you care to instantiate) earn similar scores on an objective, quantitative skills test. Should the math teacher thus have the same income as Gates? (Or in other words, shouldn't wealth have something to do with measurable worth)? I think not--it's Gates whose income and wealth should be limited, i.e., readjusted and/or seized.

Pure capitalism leads to a society of speculators and gamblers, where the individual's fate depends on the whims of the market and of other wealthy (or their henchmen, ie, management). Progressive taxation thus is justified not only to protect public services but to keep the playing field from tilting towards plutocracy. Raising capital gains taxes and allowing taxes on luxury items, second homes, SUVs, etc, is more than justified to correct the imbalances of power ( i.e wealth) that the free market leads too. Even small increases in taxation on the very wealthy bracket could substantially reduce deficits, budget crisis, create better schools, etc. etc. Indeed the argument should be at what point does the govt. step in and seize the assets and funds of the uber wealthy such as a Gates, Ellison, Allen.


Some "classical" economists (i.e. Ricardo and Keynes) argued for high taxation on estates and those who inherited large pieces of property. A high tax would keep the inheritors from becoming the types of aristocratic or feudal "rentiers" who earn large sums of money for simply inheriting or obtaining large pieces of property. The same argument applies to speculation--while you and I are grading scantrons or papers or administering networks or even slamming nails into drywall or digging ditches, the speculator or rentier derives far more capital simply for doing nothing but for being fortunate enough to have inherited an estate or win big on the stock market (or for that matter having succeeded in organized crime). Marx obviously had a solution to that, but barring Marx it seems quite prudent to implement a tax system that would prevent the resurgence of a landed aristocracy.

And let's be honest: the average academic economist, like the average successful conservative, is pretty much of the Hamiltonian-aristo-protestant variety; he views the poor and probably even the middle class, especially minorities, as deserving of their fate. Higher taxes mean punishing the successful, the noble and the Good, and giving their hard -earned cash (even if from stocks or rents) to the rabble. The protestant sort of economist thus also is a Social Darwinist to some extent. To be poor or unsuccessful in neo-puritan America entails that you are somehow not fit, morally or intellectually, not that the market and corporate America or the bureaucratic state (including its universities) might have exploited you for years.

Should American patriotic holidays be permitted?

Recently I read some comments from a neo-conservative blogger arguing that Americans need to return to a sort of "civic republicanism"; my own perspective is that this flag-waving "civic republicanism"' is, if not identical to nationalism (in a sense an irrational patriotism), quite close to it. It's quite a basic argument, though I guess the premises could be debated:

--If America's political leaders have been, since the inception of the Republic, guilty of committing political and military atrocities, then celebrations of American patriotism are not justifiable.


--America's political leaders are guilty of committing political and military atrocities over the last 229 years or so. (for instance, Founding Fathers were found to be racist, supporters of slavery, or dedicated to eradicating Native Americans, and the military injustly violated treaties, committed military blunders or outright brutalities which cost the lives of thousands in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam, etc.)

--Thus celebrations of American patriotism (including parades, miltary celebrations, even President's, Memorial, Veteran's day) are not justifiable.

Bill Moyers on X-tian Doomsday

"There are millions of Christians who believe the Bible is literally true, word for word. Some of them—we'll come back to the question of how many— subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the nineteenth century by two immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them with their own hallucinations into a narrative foretelling the return of Jesus and the end of the world. Google the "Rapture Index" and you will see just how the notion has seized the imagination of many a good and sincere believer (you will also see just where we stand right now in the ticking of the clock toward the culmination of history in the apocalypse). It is the inspiration for the best-selling books in America today—the twelve novels in the Left Behind series by Christian fundamentalist and religious- right warrior Tim LaHaye, a co- founder with Jerry Falwell of the Moral Majority.

The plot of the Rapture—the word never appears in the Bible although some fantasists insist it is the hidden code to the Book of Revelation—is rather simple, if bizarre. (The British writer George Monbiot recently did a brilliant dissection of it and I am indebted to him for refreshing my own insights.) Once Israel has occupied the rest of its "biblical lands," legions of the Antichrist will attack it, triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. As the Jews who have not been converted are burned the Messiah will return for the Rapture. True believers will be transported to heaven where, seated at the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents writhe in the misery of plagues—boils, sores, locusts, and frogs—during the several years of tribulation that follow.

........

For them the invasion of Iraq was a warm-up act, predicted in the Book of Revelation, where four angels "bound in the great river Euphrates" will be released "to slay the third part of man." A war with Islam in the Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed—an essential conflagration on the road to redemption. The last time I Googled it, the Rapture Index stood at 144—approaching the critical threshold when the prophesy is fulfilled, the whole thing blows, the Son of God returns, and the righteous enter paradise while sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire."

Moyers

McCarthyite Language Tactics

Joseph McCarthy was an American senator who made a career in the 50's by accusing various humans of being communists or having some association with communist or left-wing organizations. His tactics, such as guilt by association, defamation of character, insinuations about a person's political and sexual life, are still used by many morally corrupt persons, especially those involved with communication: bureaucrats, politicians, journalists, academics. Although usually and correctly identified with various propagandists of the right-wing, McCarthyite tactics are used by liberals as well, especially by those types of putative liberals who are dedicated to "identity politics."

McCarthyite tactics are of course logical fallacies--simply because someone attended a leftist rally against death squads in El Salvador while in college does not imply that the person is a marxist or socialist. Many former college students who diligently read Marx and supported the Sandinistas are now respectable suburban professionals making regular house and car payments--hopefully they haven't come full circle and voted for the GOP, right?


McCarthyism is really about power and control: instead of logic or debate or evidence, slander and libel are employed to destroy perceived enemies, thus valuable ideas and debates are kept from becoming discussed, and intellectual reputations are ruined by means of insinuation. Labels and terms are essential to the McCarthyite: "red" was the favorite, now it's become just "knee-jerk or bleeding-heart liberal" or even democrat as an insult.


Accusing or speculating about someone's sex habits is another tactic of McCarthyites of both right and left: by conveniently placing a "gay" label, on someone's ideas or character that accused person's logic and argument or evidence is thereby discredited. For instance, a typical Republican idiot most likely makes the following assumptions: X is opposed to say the recall of Davis. Thus X is not supporting the GOP, he is therefore a democrat and advocates socialist policies and is probably gay. X of course may not be a democrat or socialist or "gay", but GOP idiot will assume that X is in reality all of those things and will make his assumptions known to his cronies as well.


Mockery of a person's appearance is another McCarthyite tactic. Davis is attacked in cartoons and in print as a small and therefore weak person--caricature is a favorite and useful tactic of propagandists. Schwarzneggers are approved and Davis and Ralph Nader types are not: consumer masses are drawn to heroes, to macho men that represent physical strength, and nerds such as Nader and Davis's are viewed with suspicion by the generally anti-intellectual and violent mob.


An organization may use these tactics as well. A student finds a professor to be injust and biased and has some confrontations. Said professor then punishes student by giving him a B when he earned an A. And Professor spreads the word in the Department that student is a radical, a troublemaker, a rabble rouser, or straight (being straight is viewed as a flaw in many modern college departments) or gay or from a rich family or from wrong side of the tracks or Westside or Eastside or he' s a caucasian or a mexican or black or WHATEVER. In fact this sort of herd mindset might be discovered at most UCs and CSUs---where many professors, especially those who teach "qualitative courses," care little about real merit or accomplishments but attempt to determine a person's "character" and then assign grades. There are plenty of McCarthyite-minded professor dolts, and, surprisingly, many of them are putative "liberals" or feminists.