ShrinkWrapped

A Question

Once again time pressures are interfering with blogging.

Here is a question to discuss among yourselves: 

Does Barack Obama believe that increasing deficits exponentially will guarantee an ever expanding government, which will ensure the perpetuation of an ever expanding government (aka liberal) class?

Or is it more likely that he has been convinced that only deficit spending can pull us out of the current recession, in which case expanded government is a collateral rather than the primary intention?

When Psychiatrists Over Simplify

Two weeks ago we saw reports of a new study purporting to show that anti-depressants were of little use for most people suffering from mild to moderate Depression.  Dr. Richard Friedman wrote a rebuttal for the New York Times which he explained some of the reasons the study was inaccurate:

Before You Quit Antidepressants ...

Last week, The Journal of the American Medical Association published a study questioning the effectiveness of antidepressant drugs. The drugs are useful in cases of severe depression, it said. But for most patients, those with mild to moderate cases, the most commonly used antidepressants are generally no better than a placebo.

For the millions of people who take these drugs, and the doctors who prescribe them, this provocative claim had to be confusing, if not alarming. It contradicted literally hundreds of well-designed trials, not to mention considerable clinical experience, showing antidepressants to be effective for a wide array of depressed patients.

But on close inspection, the new study does not stand up to that mountain of earlier evidence. To understand why, it helps to look at the way it was conducted.

The study is a so-called meta-analysis — not a fresh clinical trial, but a combined analysis of previous studies. A common reason for doing this kind of analysis is to discover potential drug effects that might have been missed in smaller studies. By aggregating the data from many studies, researchers gain the statistical power to detect broad patterns that may not have been evident before.

You should read his report to understand how limited the JAMA study was in its usefulness.  My interest is in discussing the treatment of Depression that is not studied or measured by Academic Psychiatrists.

During the 1950s and 60s, Psychiatry was dominated by Psychoanalysis.  Patients with mild to moderate Depression were usually treated with Psychoanalysis or Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, with variable results.  There was a very good reason for the therapy approach at the time: the field of biological Psychiatry was in its infancy and our drug armamentarium was essentially non-existent.  The first antidepressants, developed in the 1950s were the MAOIs (monoamine oxidase inhibitor), drugs with dangerous side effects difficult to tolerate and take safely.  In the 1060s the Tricyclic antidepressants came into widespread use.  These drugs were easier to tolerate but were still quite dangerous, with narrow safety margins, and were typically prescribed only by Psychiatrists who specialized in Pharmacotherapy.  As such, the use of TCAs and MAOIs were restricted to those patients for whom the benefits clearly  outweighed the risks; mild to moderate Depression of the non-life threatening variety were still addressed primarily by Psychotherapy.

The approval of Prozac in 1988 changed the entire field.  Prozac, and the other SSRIs were far safer (almost impossible to use for a successful suicide attempt) and far easier to tolerate.  With such a safety profile there was little reason to withhold such medications from patients who suffered from even mild Depression; to most people there was no downside.  However, there has always been something missing in the reports on the efficacy of anti-depressants.  Such medications are always given in the context of a relationship of the patient to the Doctor.  Such therapeutic relationships have been recognized since antiquity as beneficial to the sufferer.  Since Freud's day we have learned a great deal about the relationship and its impact on the people involved.  Psychodynamic Psychotherapy is that treatment which mobilizes the unconscious aspects of the relationship in order to help the patient resolve previously poorly resolved conflicts.  Such treatments are effective, though not for everyone, and offer long lasting benefits. [HT: NS]

Psychodynamic psychotherapy brings lasting benefits, new study finds

Psychodynamic psychotherapy is effective for a wide range of mental health symptoms, including depression, anxiety, panic and stress-related physical ailments, and the benefits of the therapy grow after treatment has ended, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.

Psychodynamic therapy focuses on the psychological roots of emotional suffering. Its hallmarks are self-reflection and self-examination, and the use of the relationship between therapist and patient as a window into problematic relationship patterns in the patient's life. Its goal is not only to alleviate the most obvious symptoms but to help people lead healthier lives.

"The American public has been told that only newer, symptom-focused treatments like cognitive behavior therapy or medication have scientific support," said study author Jonathan Shedler, PhD, of the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine. "The actual scientific evidence shows that psychodynamic therapy is highly effective. The benefits are at least as large as those of other psychotherapies, and they last."

There are several reasons that there exists so much less empirical evidence for the efficacy of the Psychodynamic Psychotherapies.  There exists no way for a large corporation to make money off of the dispensing of such treatment and therefore little incentive to actually perform the studies.  Psychodynamic Psychotherapy also typically takes a longer time that Medication and the short term treatments (like CBT) to show its effects (though there is evidence that the benefits are deeper and longer lasting.)  Insurers have lots of incentives to discourage long term treatments, even when such treatments are more definitive than the short term approaches.  in addition, learning to do Psychodynamic Psychotherapy is difficult and takes significant training.  Not everyone is well suited to do the work and not every therapist is a good fit for every patient.  All of these points conspire to incentivize medication treatment for everything ranging from unhappiness to full bore depression and leaves unaddressed the question: Is there any downside to our current Medication-centric approach to unhappiness and Depression?  There are different answers for patients who are moderately to severely Depressed and those who are mildly Depressed or merely unhappy.

Most Psychiatrists, even the Psychopharmacologists if they are candid, will admit that the patients with Depression who do best are those who receive a combination of Psychotherapy and Medication.  Patients in therapy are most likely to take their Rx consistently, a necessity for a good result, and are most likely to take their Rx for a long enough time to treat the current episode. The best way to minimize the risks of relapse has always been recognized as determining the triggers of the episode and the cascade of psychological events which cause unhappiness to spiral into Depression. 

For those who use anti-depressants as a way to numb their unhappiness and allow themselves to remain in unhappy conditions, when such drugs do their partial work, it can interfere with the person's' ability or interest in actually resolving the causes of their unhappiness.  The lost opportunity costs of the SSRIs can be considerable.

Not everyone can benefit from Psychodynamic Psychotherapy; not every Therapist-Patient pair is workable; not every unhappy or Depressed person should enter Psychodynamic Psychotherapy.  However, we do know, and are adding to our knowledge on a daily basis, that human beings are social and cannot exist outside of relationships (even if the depth and intensity of those relationships is unconscious.)  To put it into more Psychobiological terms, the human brain exists in a web of relationships with other human brains, all with multiple feedbacks affecting their functioning.  Imagining we can tamper with the chemistry of our brains without regard to the interrelationships involved is an oversimplification that ultimately leads to unnecessary suffering.

The State of the SOTU

Mrs. SW and I tried to watch the SOTU address.  (Mrs. SW is temperamentally liberal leaning and was hoping he would impress.)  After 20 minutes I gave up.  I found him hard to listen to and wondered if he actually believed everything he was saying.  When I checked back with Mrs. SW 10 minutes later, she was fast asleep.

Addendum: Was anyone else distracted by the Joe Biden bobble head doll behind the President?

The State of the Union in Millennial Times

Michael Ledeen is suggesting that the Democrats are misreading the zeitgeist:

The Real State of the Union: Fear.

This fear is extremely broad-based.  It is not limited to social class nor to domestic or foreign policies.  Banks are not lending, companies are not hiring, because they are afraid of what Obama will do next.  Both are afraid of onerous taxes, including new health care burdens, and the banks fear new regulations and the consequences of the recently declared war on evil bankers by the president.  Seniors are afraid they will be deprived of medical treatment.  Juniors are afraid they are going to be forced to buy health insurance they don’t think they need.  Across the board, Americans are afraid they’re not going to find work, and won’t be able to afford a house.  And, as the Massachusetts vote showed, Americans are worried about threats from abroad, worried about Iran, afraid of terrorist attacks, and afraid the Obama Administration doesn’t take all this seriously enough.  As Scott Brown put it, most Americans think our tax dollars should go to fighting terrorists, not to pay lawyers to defend terrorists.

Coincidentally, Richard Landes posted a copy of an interview he had with Daniel Kalder at Big Journalism.  The whole interview is well worth your time.  Richard Landes approaches the topic from a more historical and sociological point of view than my more narcissism-centric view; both angles are useful in understanding why apocalyptic movements arise and flare up, occasionally into full fledged conflagrations.:

Death Wish: Why Are We So In Love with the Apocalypse? Kalder’s Interview with me

Why is the pull of apocalyptic belief so strong?

Our love for the apocalypse is connected with our sense of our own importance. To live in apocalyptic expectation means that you are the chosen generation; that in your time the puzzle of existence will be solved. It appeals to our- by which I mean humanity’s- megalomania: we all want to believe we’re special, that God has given us a front row seat for the most important events in history.

But where does it come from?

The West is fundamentally an apocalyptic culture. It came with the first missionaries when they went north to convert the tribes in Europe. The old chronicles speak of ‘glad tidings’, which had to be news of Christ’s impending return. Do you know the French cartoon strip, Asterix and Obelix? Asterix had to drink the magic potion to become strong. Obelix fell into the cauldron when he was a baby, so he didn’t need to drink it. That’s the relationship between Western culture and apocalypse.

If apocalyptic fervor seems more intense now it’s because ever since the Industrial Revolution Western society has been built on the idea of constant change, and so we need to constantly be thinking about the future. Scenarios like the Millennium Bug or Global Warming thus have special appeal to secular minds because as they are situations we created ourselves, we think we can solve them.

Here is the key meme:

What are the dominant apocalyptic scenarios today?

The two most compelling contemporary secular apocalyptic prophecies of our time are Climate Change and Global Jihad. By secular I mean based on empirical evidence rather than heavenly visions and ancient texts. But still they follow the apocalyptic thread of destruction and rebirth and are ripe for transformation into millennial movements.

Global Jihad involves actors inspired by sacred texts, but the danger of what they can do is very real. It is unfolding in real time, thus we can see it, and make observations. And so I describe it as a secular apocalypse.

The secular Millennialists have disguised their own chiliasm behind a pseudo-scientific edifice.  They have a dogma involving the destruction of the planet but because they do not see themselves as religious fanatics, they do not recognize their own Millennialism as faith based.  At the same time, because of the intensely personal nature of their belief system (ie, its narcissistic investment) they fail to appreciate that religious fanatics are far more devoted than they are.  (Most AGW true believers want everyone else to help save the planet by making financial sacrifices; the fact that a devastated global economy would cause starvation in marginal far away places is immaterial.  The religious fanatics are much more direct in their desire to kill and die for their cause.)

Shabaab suicide bomber kills seven at Mogadishu medical clinic

A Shabaab suicide bomber killed seven people in an attack at a medical clinic used by African Union forces.

The suicide bomber detonated his vest while waiting in line to enter the Halane medical clinic at the Mogadishu airport, the headquarters for the African Union Mission in Somalia.

Shabaab, al Qaeda's affiliate in Somalia, took credit for the suicide attack, claiming African Union doctors and soldiers were among those killed.

"We killed some of the senior medical officers and soldiers in the mercenary base," Shabaab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mahamoud Rage told reporters. "It is part of our retaliation attack against the occupiers’ massacre of our people."

An African Union spokesman said that only Somalis were killed in the suicide attack. Eleven people, including three African Union soldiers, were wounded in the attack.

The last suicide attack carried out by Shabaab also targeted medical personnel. On Dec. 3, 2009, a suicide bomber, who was disguised as a woman, detonated his vest in the midst of a graduation ceremony for Somali medical students from Banadir University. The ministers of health, education, and higher education, along with two reporters from Shabelle and Al Arabia, nine medical students, and a well-known doctor, were killed in the blast. Scores more were wounded, including the sports minister.

Part of what gives terrorism its fearsome intensity is the fervor of its proponents.  In the Wets we have difficulty appreciating a faith that motivates suicide-murder and some fear that fighting back (not necessarily in kinetic ways but more importantly by upholding our values) will cause an increase in the numbers of committed enemies.  There is a perhaps Jungian Unconscious fear that the Millennialism that has so often plagued our race will explode into chaotic fire; the enemy desires the apocalypse, many int he west fear trying to fight back will trigger the apocalypse.

For those enamored of Millennialism, and I do believe we are living in Millennial times, (as per Richard Landes, years that end in 00 tend to foster Millennial fervor) there are already rumblings, louder by the day, that the next Middle East War is a misstep away:

Lebanon’s next war may also be Syria’s

Media reports in recent days have painted dire scenarios for what is, supposedly, the inevitable conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. Of particular note are persistent indicators that the next round, if or when it comes, will very likely involve Syria as well.

For quite a while now, the official position in Israel has been that the next war in Lebanon would be waged against the Lebanese state, not just against Hezbollah. The Israelis have also been warning Damascus that they would not tolerate Syria’s passing on to Hezbollah weaponry that might alter the military balance of power, namely air defense systems.

On that point, two recent reports are of interest. The first, in the Qatari daily Al-Watan a couple of weeks ago, quoted Syrian sources as saying that “there is a strategic decision taken by Damascus not to allow Israel to defeat the resistance movements.” One might have been tempted to dismiss this as rhetorical bluster, but another news report only a few days later called for a somewhat different assessment.

Speaking to the Kuwaiti daily Al-Rai al-Aam, an unnamed American official sent a shot across Syria’s bow, telling the newspaper that should Syria deliver to Hezbollah anti-aircraft missiles, “a war would doubtlessly break out, and this time Israel would strike targets in Damascus.” The official added that the Syrians, according to intelligence reports, had allowed Hezbollah fighters to train on the SA-2 anti-aircraft (AA) system on Syrian soil. Those accusations were repeated last weekend by Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Daniel Ayalon, after his meeting with Michael Williams, the United Nation’s special coordinator for Lebanon.

 A War that spreads from Southern Lebanon to engulf all of Lebanon would likely spread to Syria as well.  Iran could not afford to see its client states decisively lose a War with Israel (which is why a "planned" war would wait until Iran has a nuclear bomb; an accidental or miscalculated war would be a different problem.)  War is more likely if the Millennialists in the Middle east believe they can win and/or that they have the tacit support of the international community, which includes the United States.  No American President could survive tilting far enough against Israel as to endanger its existence, but the perception of Obama as weak and anti-Israel (or tepidly pro-Israel) can only increase the likelihood of a tragic miscalculation in the Middle East, birthplace of so many Millennialist movements.

Whether and how Obama addresses these inchoate fears will be the test of his speech tonight.

Syzygy

Call out the instigators
Because there's something in the air
We've got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution's here, and you know it's right
And you know that it's right

We have got to get it together
We have got to get it together now

- Thunderclap Newman*

America was founded upon the idea that government should do the minimum necessary to ensure that people would be left free for "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" in whatever manner they deemed most appropriate for themselves. 

In a rather elegant piece of linguistic legerdemain (and I mean that in the most positive way) John Opie discerns the contradiction at the core of the "campaign finance" restrictions on free speech:

A Question Best Left Unanswered...

This caught my eye in today's WSJ's Best Of The Web Today from James Taranto.

You'll have scroll down a bit: it's about campaign financing.

The killer quote:

In other words, as a result of the Watergate-era campaign finance restrictions, it is now settled law that congressmen are sufficiently corruptible that they can't be trusted with campaign donations of more than a few thousand dollars.

...

But what James Taranto says is particularly relevant:

Which raises the question: How can they be trusted with our tax dollars?

The answer, of course:

Government in general can never be trusted: that is one of the reasons why the US constitution is such a subversive document. It says that people can criticize the government, that the government can't disarm them, that the government has only those rights explicitly given to them and all other rights belong to the people, not the government.

... the US Constitution is the most subversive document ever published. With it, citizens can deny tyrants and the corrupt from taking over the system, and the system of checks and balances has, as we've recently seen, even worked when only one part of the system refuses to countenance the sins of the other two.

Since WWII there has been tremendous momentum in favor of trans-national elites controlling a greater and greater share of global power.  There were a great many extremely salutary effects which flowed from the increased internationalism of the post-war elites.  Two large blocs unable to fight wars directly with each other (through the intercession of MAD) meant that the world became more peaceful in almost every sense.  With the resolution of the Cold War and (temporary) discrediting of collectivism, the world rapidly became even more peaceful and prosperous.  Although it often seems counter-intuitive, wars are claiming less lives today (and most wars are now being fought within individual countries or with non-state actors) than at any time in the last century.  Further, people are moving out of abject poverty at an incredible rate (though the world wide recession has slowed the growth of the global middle class since 2008.)  The paradox fueling much of the elite discontent, however, is that once people have achieved a middle class existence (with increased personal autonomy and more time) they begin to chafe at the restrictions their increasingly out of touch rulers design for them.  The failure of the elites to enact what is euphemistically called "healthcare reform" or for the international elites to enact an AGW agenda designed to enhance their power (and wealth) at the expense of the world's middle class, should be instructive.

Two years ago I wrote about The Social Singularity and linked to a post by Warren "Bones" Bonesteel  discussing the same ideas.

[Although I could not find the original citation this morning, in my post I included this prescient comment:

First of all, I share Warren's optimism; we have already seen, in these earliest days of the blogosphere, how falsehoods and outright lies (even when "false but accurate") have been exposed by individuals using their ability to reason and research.  Not long ago I predicted that the Anthropomorphic Global Warming alarmists had already lost the mimetic battle (though they didn't know it then, and still don't.)  [Emphasis added-SW]  In consonance with Warren's description, the "traditional information and educational Gatekeepers and for traditional bureaucrats, politicians and power mongers," exemplified by the UN, continue to spout alarmist nonsense about AGW.  They continue to propose various plans to rescue the planet, all of which would increase the regulatory and tax burden on the successful while enhancing the power of themselves.  Yet none of these plans will ever come to fruition.]

Warren Bonesteel included these comments in his post:

Social Singularity

This is a true mega-trend. We're going to see more signs of credibility and accountability as the primary standard of interactions. We're already witnessing the decline of unquestioned (and almost) religious respect for those who have lengthy CV's, high social status and other traditional credentials. We're also seeing a rise in creativity and in the sharing of ideas. There are even now growing trends in multi-disciplinary approaches to problem solving, no matter the venue or discipline. There also appears to be a growing trend towards Open Source works in nearly every discipline, particularly among those who wish to make the world a better place to live. Most of mankind's traditional institutions are so far behind the curve on these issues that they will never see it coming.

The media, our cultural and social institutions, the powerbrokers and politicians no longer control the memes and narratives of our society. The changes that we are going to see will be deep and profound. I have had a very positive feeling about the future since I — finally — understood what I was seeing. What is happening won't end in Xanadu or Utopia, but, in time, it should result in much better scenarios than we presently face as a world culture and society.

One point one billion People around the world are on the internet, with another one billion people projected to join them in less than five years. For our traditional information and educational Gatekeepers and for traditional bureaucrats, politicians and power mongers, this is fearsome news, indeed. For the rest of us, this is empowerment of a type and kind never before seen or imagined. This is true Democracy.

...

Future currency for everyone will be credibility and transparency. Indeed, that is even now becoming the 'currency' for us all. That credibility is predicated upon accountability. If we do not tell the truth, if we do not strive for accuracy in our spoken and written words, we will be held accountable. If we are not willing to accept correction or admit to our mistakes and immediately correct them, we lose credibility.

The future will not be about ideology, ambition or agenda. It will be credibility.  

Read David Brooks discussing The Populist Addiction and Bob Herbert discussing Obama’s Credibility Gap and you can appreciate that our elites are at a loss.  The ground is shifting beneath their feet.  It has been an accepted truth, conventional wisdom, that voters have short memories and not only do not, but can not, understand the work that their masters perform.  Our legislators could tell us what was best for us and we would have little way to actually compare and contrast their policies and evaluate the outcome of their policies in a timely manner.  They expected to be able to say whatever necessary to get elected and then do whatever they desired to help their constituents (especially those who were their friends and contributors) while enhancing their own power and wealth.  The MSM could hold itself out as the interpreters and arbiters of reality, creating and destroying people at will.  That was the source of their power and wealth.  They are now entering a strange, new world for which there is no operating manual or instruction set.  The new model is based on credibility and they have none.

The elites will not go down quietly.  They are fighting a rear guard action, especially in Europe and Canada, as per Mark Steyn:

'Jihad Chili'

As I mentioned the other day, Ezra Levant, my comrade in the battle to restore free speech to Canada, is being sued by the same Islamist sock puppet who attempted to make me legallly unpublishable up north. Robert Sibley in the Ottawa Citizen puts it this way:

Awan and his Muslim friends weren’t really concerned about rights or justice or wanting to be treated the same as other Canadians. Nope, it was all about making it too expensive for anyone to dare criticize Islam.

They are aided in that objective by the soft totalitarianism of the multicultural state, which in Europe and Canada increasingly presumes the right to police the citizenry's opinions in the interests of social mediation. [Empahsis mine-SW] ... Robert Rubin writes:

A state that puts people on trial for things they’ve said, written, or drawn — as have the Netherlands and Canada's human rights commissions, to name but two — is no longer a truly democratic country. Or how about the United Kingdom where, for example, a blogger who accurately depicted an Anglican cleric as a Holocaust denier and an associate of Islamist terrorists received a threatening visit by police? In the same country, the police tried to prosecute a television network for showing videos of sermons taken inside mosques, though a court finally ruled that the police (that is, the taxpayers) had to pay damages to the television network.

The Islamo-left alliance is attempting to criminalize discussion of public policy. As Geert Wilders's Dutch prosecutors admit, whether what he says is true is not relevant; the very act of raising the subject is illegal.

America must remain the beacon on the hill.  With Congress in Democrat hands and a soft ideologue of the left in the White House, we could have easily embarked on a slow descent to Euro-style despotism.  Our system is self correcting to an extent that is impossible in most of the world. 

On Sept 11, 2001 we discovered we were at war.  Since that time there has been a great deal of commentary concerning the myriad ways in which the state must be empowered to protect us, along with significant commentary about the myriad ways in which the super-empowered individual was eroding the power of the state.  There was an additional lesson learned on that terrible day, however.  The passengers on Flight 93 showed that empowering individuals went in both directions.  Now we have Tea Parties, but even more important than the Tea Parties are the empowered individuals, using nothing more than their minds and curiosity, who have punctured the elite monopoly on their constructed reality.

The trend lines are lining up nicely.

*Thunderclap Newman was a "one hit wonder" from the late 1960s; from wikipedia:

In 1969, Pete Townshend, The Who's guitarist, created the band to play songs written by the former Who chauffeur, drummer/singer/guitarist John "Speedy" Keen (miscredited as "Keene" on the single's label). Keen wrote the opening track on The Who Sell Out album, "Armenia City in the Sky". Townshend produced the single, played its bass guitar under the pseudonym Bijou Drains, and hired for it GPO engineer and Dixieland jazz pianist Andy "Thunderclap" Newman (born Andrew Laurence Newman, 21 November 1942, Hounslow, Middlesex) and the fifteen year old Glaswegian, Jimmy McCulloch.

I imagine they thought their lyrics to Something in the Air were stirring, in a martial, revolutionary sense; today the lyrics are now mostly heard on TV commercials and on Golden Oldie stations.  The wonderful irony is that the song reflects a truly revolutionary idea and the new elites are the target.

Welcome Instapundit readers; feel free to look around and join the conversation.

What Will They Think of Next?

The entire edifice of Anthropogenic Global warming is unraveling with amazing speed.  Watts Up With That? has been posing multiple posts daily which document fraudulent behavior by the IPCC and its minions.  Simon at Classical Values offers a nice summary of the metastasizing scandals thus far, and ends with a question:

A Disaster Of Biblical Proportions

The UN's IPCC has just taken a few more torpedoes below the water line.

Well it turns out that the WWF [World Wildlife Fund] is cited all over the IPCC AR4 report, and as you know, WWF does not produce peer reviewed science, they produce opinion papers in line with their vision. Yet IPCC's rules are such that they are supposed to rely on peer reviewed science only. It appears they've violated that rule dozens of times, all under Pachauri's watch.

A new posting authored by Donna Laframboise, the creator of NOconsensus.org (Toronto, Canada) shows what one can find in just one day of looking.

Here's an extensive list of documents created or co-authored by the WWF and cited by this Nobel-winning IPCC AR4 report:

I'm not going to reprise the long list. You can find it at the links provided.

...

... they knew it was bad and did nothing. You know, that is not the only fraud uncovered. We may now be in possession of tens of them. So far. In fact it is looking like the whole IPCC enterprise is a fraud. And that doesn't even get to the bottom of the CO₂ emissions trading fraud.

[Among the scandals are those mounting around Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the now embattled head of the IPCC.  Almost all of their dire predictions are coming undone and his financial improprieties and conflicts of interest are receiving attention in the foreign press, though you wouldn't know this from the American MSM, as far as I can determine.]

Simon's conclusion and question:

The good news is that the whole fraud is unraveling. It will be interesting to see what the Watermelons try next.

It looks increasingly likely that the entire AGW scam represents a serendipitous cooptation of some immature science by the international left.  (Hence the derivation of Simon's visual pun.)  After the fall of the USSR, communism and socialism were held in disrepute.  Among other problems for the left was that in every instance it failed to raise the living standards of those who were its nominal beneficiaries.  However, those who support collectivism and leverage envy and hated of those who are successful for their own aggrandizement, were not about to give up on their dreams of dismantling capitalism simply because they had lost the Cold War.  AGW was a perfect fit.  It threatened disaster at some indeterminate future, a disaster that could only be avoided by crippling the world's most developed economies; all directed by those who were uniquely equipped to "save the planet."  It was based on a belief structure that leveraged faith in the new religion of Gaiaism and thus had an already prepared population of worshippers who would fully adopt the dogma and be immune to countervailing data.  As a bonus, it offered the kinds of virtuous self regard that has been a traditional motivator for those who suffered significant guilt over their good fortune to be born and live in materially successful societies.  The international left were quite clear, if not terribly overt, about their desire to use AGW as a weapon to diminish the power of the wealthy nations and transfer large amounts of wealth to the poor (with the wealth first passing through the fingers of the international elites.)  The game is up now on AGW and those who desire above all to create the promised Utopia on earth that only they can envision and produce, must now look to other means by which to introduce such "necessities" as world governance, greater wealth transfers, and enhanced power to the elites.

As it happens, reader/commenter Expat sent me a link yesterday that offers a likely candidate for what's next:

Tax and Spend: U.N.'s Rx for New World Medical Order

A member of a World Health Organization (WHO) panel of experts that is pondering new global taxes on e-mails, alcohol, tobacco, airline travel and consumer bank transactions, has charged that she was given only selective information at group meetings, that deliberations were rushed and that group was "manipulated" by the international pharmaceuticals industry.

All of her charges were strongly denied by the head of WHO's Expert Working Group on Research and Development Financing (EWG), a 25-member panel of medical experts, academics and health care bureaucrats which is due to present a 98-page report in Geneva on Monday, after 14 months of deliberations on "new and innovative sources of funding" to reshape the global medical industry.

...

The executive summary first revealed the possibility of a multibillion-dollar "indirect consumer tax" as one means of financing an epic shift of drug-making research, development and manufacturing capabilities to the developing world that is the central aim of WHO's fund-raising strategy.

Fox News has obtained a copy of the full EWG report, Research and Development: Coordination and Financing, in advance of its publication Monday, which lays out in greater detail the working group's proposals for fund-raising. These include not only indirect consumer taxes but also greater donations by wealthy governments as a percentage of gross domestic product, voluntary individual payments tied to such things as individual mobile phone use, health care lotteries, new commitments from charitable and philanthropic organizations, and the possible diversion of current philanthropic giving from developed-world causes into developing world health care.

...

The tempest created by Lopez Montano's accusations is liable to fade quickly as people around the world — especially Americans, who are far and away the world's biggest funders of medical research and development — absorb the variety of the EWG's revenue ideas and the full extent of WHO's ambitions to reshape the international health care industry in favor of research and development for the "neglected" diseases of developing countries.

The full EWG report lays out in some detail a battery of other possible consumer taxes on citizens of rich countries for such things as alcohol and tobacco use, weapons sales, and airline travel, to create a burgeoning medical R&D industry spread across the developing world.

Click here for the full report.

...

After itemizing all those potential sources of new money, however, the report suggests that only a "balance" of options be selected, which it projects would amount — again, conservatively — to about $4.6 billion a year. That would "nearly triple current research and development funding for neglected diseases in developing countries."

How would all the money be channeled? Mainly, it appears, through institutions that in many of cases have close ties with WHO.

The report that will be released Monday suggests that a global blossoming of developing-world research networks, many of which appear to be rapidly sprouting up in tandem with WHO's efforts to create new ways of financing them, could be "coordinated" via an "effective global health governance structure" by WHO itself — an organization whose 34-member executive board is made up largely of non-elected health bureaucrats from around the world.

...

Not by coincidence, new health research networks like ANDI cropped up in 2008 — at about the same time that WHO's legislative World Heath Assembly adopted a global strategy and plan of action that mandated the organization, as the EWG report puts it, to "play a strategic, central role in the relations between public health and innovation and intellectual property."

Among other things, that meant driving the global health-care agenda "to promote a new approach to innovation and access to medicines, which would encourage needs-driven rather than market-driven research." [Empahsis mine-SW] The aim: "to target diseases that disproportionately affect people in developing countries."

Just for clarity, a UN panel is suggesting raising global taxes to fund a new regimen of of "needs-driven" rather than market -driven research, ie centrally planned versus the much messier, and uncontrolled, decentralized research.  Nowhere in the report is there any mention of the fact that the various poor health outcomes so prominently mentioned, the source of the WHO concerns, are primarily caused by poverty, which is primarily caused by poor governance and the lack of market economies in the developing world. 

To no one's surprise, Lopez Montano's accusations were not related to the dishonesty and misunderstanding evinced in the WHO report but to the fact that the report did not go far enough in attacking the intellectual property rights of the large corporations.

Perhaps what is so remarkable is that at a time when smaller and smaller groups of people and individuals have become more and more empowered by our technology (just ask Scott Brown and Martha Coakley) those who desire nothing more than to exert power and control over everyone are left grasping at straws.  The President appears to be "doubling down" on his current course (which is all about increasing the size and power of the federal government) and the UN doesn't appear to have noticed yet that AGW is no longer working as anticipated.

It is worth pondering what comes next for them because people who believe it is their right to control the rest of us (and to live off of our earnings) will never disappear; they are part of the mosaic that makes up human nature.  As we become more empowered (Tea Party, anyone?) and increasingly realize that we are gaining, moment by moment, increased control over our own lives (although with the current economic straits it probably doesn't feel that way for many) the power of the current and traditional elites to tell us what is best for us can only continue to erode.  The struggle for freedom and power between those elites and the rest of us will be determinative for the early years of the 21st century.

Playing With Fire

It is no secret that neutral words often gain import from being freighted with all sorts of acquired meanings.  At one time, to call someone "gay" meant that he was a happy, light hearted character.  Such usage now seems jarringly archaic.  Other terms have longer histories and are more problematic.

Yesterday, President Obama, in response to the electoral disaster that Massachusetts meant for him and his agenda, took a populist tack, and focused his ire on the banks and the bankers who have failed us: [Emphasis mine-SW]

But credit has stopped flowing the way it should. Too many bad loans from the housing crisis have made their way onto the books of too many banks. With so much debt and so little confidence, these banks are now fearful of lending out any more money to households, to businesses, or to each other. When there is no lending, families can't afford to buy homes or cars. So businesses are forced to make layoffs. Our economy suffers even more, and credit dries up even further.

That is why this administration is moving swiftly and aggressively to break this destructive cycle, restore confidence, and re-start lending.

We will do so in several ways. First, we are creating a new lending fund that represents the largest effort ever to help provide auto loans, college loans, and small business loans to the consumers and entrepreneurs who keep this economy running.

Second, we have launched a housing plan that will help responsible families facing the threat of foreclosure lower their monthly payments and re-finance their mortgages. It's a plan that won't help speculators or that neighbor down the street who bought a house he could never hope to afford, but it will help millions of Americans who are struggling with declining home values - Americans who will now be able to take advantage of the lower interest rates that this plan has already helped bring about. In fact, the average family who re-finances today can save nearly $2000 per year on their mortgage.

Third, we will act with the full force of the federal government to ensure that the major banks that Americans depend on have enough confidence and enough money to lend even in more difficult times. And when we learn that a major bank has serious problems, we will hold accountable those responsible, force the necessary adjustments, provide the support to clean up their balance sheets, and assure the continuity of a strong, viable institution that can serve our people and our economy.

I understand that on any given day, Wall Street may be more comforted by an approach that gives banks bailouts with no strings attached, and that holds nobody accountable for their reckless decisions. But such an approach won't solve the problem. And our goal is to quicken the day when we re-start lending to the American people and American business and end this crisis once and for all.

I intend to hold these banks fully accountable for the assistance they receive, and this time, they will have to clearly demonstrate how taxpayer dollars result in more lending for the American taxpayer. This time, CEOs won't be able to use taxpayer money to pad their paychecks or buy fancy drapes or disappear on a private jet. Those days are over. 

...

I understand that when the last administration asked this Congress to provide assistance for struggling banks, Democrats and Republicans alike were infuriated by the mismanagement and results that followed. So were the American taxpayers. So was I.

A mini-furor has erupted over some comments Rush Limbaugh made in regard to this speech. 

Another Day, Another Slander   [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

Rush Limbaugh is getting smeared with the accusation of anti-Semitism by people who should know better. A generous gentleman who knows of what he speaks, Norman Podhoretz defends our radio friend, who Norman calls a "loyal" "friend of Israel" in a statement passed along to me:

In my new book, "Why Are Jews Liberals?", I argue that it no longer makes any sense for so many of my fellow Jews to go on aligning themselves with the forces of the Left. I also try to show that our interests and our ideals, both as Americans and as Jews, have come in recent decades to be better served by the forces of the Right. In the course of describing and agreeing with the book the other day, Rush Limbaugh cited a few of the numerous reasons for the widespread puzzlement over the persistence of liberalism within the American Jewish community. And while discussing those reasons, he pointed to the undeniable fact that for “a lot of people”—prejudiced people, as he called them twice—the words “banker” and “Wall Street” are code words for "Jewish." Was it possible, he wondered, that Obama’s attacks on bankers and Wall Street were triggering a certain amount of buyer’s remorse within the American Jewish community, which gave him 78% of its vote?

Jeffrey Goldberg approvingly quotes from a Media Matters release on Rush and suggests he is being disingenuous:

Rush Limbaugh on What "Some People" Think

Of course, Rush Limbaugh doesn't think this; he's just reporting:

I rarely listen to Rush Limbaugh but on the few occasions I have heard him, I have heard very little to suggest he is a racist or anti-Semite.  Further, I believe that Rush is smart enough and wise enough, and uses language eloquently enough, that he would not say anything anti-Semitic (or racist) on the air; he is simply too smart to do so, even if he believed it (which I doubt is the case.)  I understand that those on the left side of the political divide are more willing to offer understanding for those who express ideas that are noxious; those on the right offer the same succor for "their side", too.  Jeffrey Goldberg wrote recently that he does not see J Street as being anti-Semitic, and I am willing to take his word for it, despite that J Street opposes the positions of more than 90% of the Israeli public and to my mind put Israel in danger by their advocacy.  It is possible to disagree with Israel so profoundly and not be anti-Semitic, though I would suggest the burden of proof should be rather substantial.  Nonetheless, such an empathic response is singularly lacking in Jeffrey's response to Rush.  This is not a surprise but I would caution that there is a certain overly disaffected aspect to the accusations against Rush in contrast to the apparent insouciance with which the President's speech attacking the bankers has been received.

[As an aside, yesterday I had a private correspondence with a former Wall Street denizen who agreed that Wall Street needed to be better controlled and that their behavior was execrable, and expressed some concern about the ability of the Obama administration, with their very close ties to Wall Street, to "get it right."  He then volunteered the unsolicited opinion that the identification of Wall Street Bankers and Jewish bankers was "obvious" to most people who heard of the speech.]

"Wall Street Bankers", just as "neocon" more recently, has long been associated with the unspoken "Jewish" bankers.  For those who are extraordinarily sensitive to racist penumbras in common speech to deny the past associations of Jewish and Bankers is troubling.  Further, to deny that there is far more anti-Semitism (some of it quite overt) on the left (and insinuating itself into the heart of the Democratic party and the Obama administration) than on the right is far more troubling.  Anti-Semitism and its efflorescence in populist political campaigns has been a dangerous ploy which has repeatedly led to disaster.  I do not think there is adequate kindling in America for such a conflagration to start here, yet if/when the Obama administration finds its most important plans impeded by popular distaste, their current tendency to identify scapegoats may make the disguised and/or unintended anti-Semitic meme more appealing.

None So Blind

The common idiomatic expression is that "there are none so blind as those who will not see" and there is certainly good reason to apply such an expression to our political elites inside the beltway who imagine themselves to be the incarnation of Plato's philosopher kings.  Victor Davis Hanson notes the tendency in the Obama administration:

Our Philosopher-King Obama

In Plato's ideal society, philosopher kings and elite Guardians shepherded the rabble to force them to do the "right" thing.

To prevent the unwashed from doing anything stupid, the all-powerful, all-wise Guardians often had to tell a few "noble" lies. And, of course, these caretakers themselves were exempt from most rules they made for others.

We are now seeing such thinking in the Obama administration and among its supporters.

A technocracy - many Ivy-League-educated and without much experience outside academia and government - pushes legislation most people do not want but is nevertheless judged to be good for them. 

I agree with VDH that Obama and his administration imagine themselves to be wiser and smarter than the people in whose name they govern, yet I think there is another aspect of the situation that is potentially more troubling.  It is an hoary trope that Presidents live within a bubble and at one time there was a great deal of truth to the idea that all of the elites by necessity shared the same bubble.  When a very few news organizations controlled the flow of information, whatever "news" that existed was essentially the news that was reported.  Elites all could share a weltanschauung formed from perceiving the world through the perceptual apparatus of the New York Times and a very few other lenses.  Because almost all news, except the most local, was perceived through the same filter, it was expected that within narrow tolerances, most people would agree on the basics.  There was no blogosphere to perform real time fact checking and there was little incentive for the major news organizations to fact check themselves.  Correcting a few errors, when there was no one external to the organization to question their "facts" would enhance their reputation; admitting significant, frequent, and deeply meaningful errors on a regular basis would destroy their reputation.

Consider two disparate current situations in which unsubtle bias has distorted decision making processes in America and England:

First, from Mary Katharine Ham: [HT: M_O_M]

Press Takes a New Look at Tea Parties After Brown Win

It would have helped Dems if they'd done it sooner

Now that voter discontent has appeared in the bluest of blue states, and it's focused on the president's handling of terror, taxes, and health care, it's become much harder to marginalize Tea Party activists and other critics of the administration as:

"extremist mobs" by the Democratic National Committee, pawns of the insurance industry by Senator Dick Durbin, "un-American" by Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, "brownshirts" by Representative Brian Baird of Washington, "manufactured" and "Astroturf" by White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, "evilmongers" by Senator Harry Reid, accused of "fear-mongering" by the president, and been deemed "political terrorists" by Representative Baron Hill of Indiana.

It was always wishful thinking to believe that town hall protesters were a tiny segment of the country— all sound and fury signifying nothing. Even when it was a smaller group, their concerns were legitimate. It was disrespectful and dumb of Democrats to smear people giving voice to their worries, evincing the exact arrogance that turned voters in Massachusetts away from Martha Coakley.

From the beginning the Tea Party protesters were disparaged and marginalized by the national media.  This led to the perception by the consumers of the MSM that the Tea Party movement was a radical fringe movement of no particular significance.  The need to maintain such a viewpoint in the face of reality can lead to severe disturbances among the purveyors of the altered reality.  The consequences of the accurate perception of a filtered reality were merely electoral for the Democrats.  If they continue to consume "news" so filtered as to be misperceptions of reality, they will suffer further electoral losses in November.

The second example is more troubling and comes courtesy of Robin Shepherd:

Prime time BBC documentary on Jerusalem: An anatomy of bias and distortion

On Monday night, the BBC’s flagship documentary programme Panorama was devoted to Jerusalem. Rarely will you get a clearer insight into the flagrant institutional bias inside the world’s most powerful media outlet than this. The slipperiness of the tactics employed, the unabashed censorship of vital historical context, and the blatant pursuit of a political agenda constituted a lesson in the techniques of modern day propaganda. It was something to behold.

.... objective versions of the law are soon complemented by a historical narrative which forms the backdrop to the entire programme:

“When the State of Israel was born in 1948, Jerusalem was divided,” says Corbin. “The West of the city became part of Israel and the East was controlled by Jordan. In 1967, Israel annexed East Jerusalem after seizing the West Bank following war with its Arab neighbours.”

And that’s it. That is the broad historical context offered to a prime time British audience on the BBC’s most prestigious weekly documentary programme. Is her version accurate? Well, yes, modern day Israel was formed in 1948 and Jerusalem was indeed divided — Jordan on the one side and Israel on the other. It is also true that “following war” with its Arab neighbours in 1967 East Jerusalem was annexed by Israel.

...

Consider another way of phrasing that paragraph which, once again, is vital to the documentary since it serves as the key context for a largely uninitiated British audience. Try this, with the salient points in italics:

“When the State of Israel was born in 1948 — following Arab and Palestinian rejection of a peace agreement accepted by Israel which would have seen the internationalisation of the city — Jerusalem was divided. The West of the city became part of Israel and the East was controlled by Jordan — which expelled Jewish residents and forbade Jews from praying at all of the city’s holy sites. In 1967, Israel annexed East Jerusalem after seizing the West Bank following war with its Arab neighbours. That war was caused by Arab governments and the Palestinians who had the aim of eliminating the state of Israel in its entirety and expelling its Jewish residents.”

The particular tissue of lies and distortions cited by Robin Shepherd is primarily significant by virtue of its reflection of a prevailing and highly filtered view of the world, specifically Israel, but a view that increasingly includes viewing the United States through the same distorted lens.  (Jeffery Goldberg and Yaacov Lozowick offer additional examples of biased reporting just within the last two days.)  An alert observer can find such examples on a daily basis.  And for those who do not recognize how the United States is increasingly treated to the same MSM filtering, consider the comments of the French minister in charge of humanitarian relief, noted by Fausta in her post discussing the "esteemed" Hugo Chavez, hero of the left:

Chavez accuses US of using the earthquake as pretext for military occupation

Hugo Chávez says U.S. is using earthquake as pretext for occupying Haiti

Speaking on his weekly television show, Chavez opined that the U.S. mission in Haiti was a ruse to initiate military occupation.

“I read that 3,000 soldiers are arriving, Marines armed as if they were going to war,” Chavez said. “They are occupying Haiti undercover.”

Alleged pedophile and Hugo’s buddy Daniel Ortega last Sunday also warned of US deployment in Haiti

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega says that the United States has taken advantage of the massive quake in Haiti and deployed troops in the country.

“What is happening in Haiti seriously concerns me as US troops have already taken control of the airport,” Ortega said on Saturday.
…
The leftist Nicaraguan president denounced Washington’s move in deploying military forces in Haiti, saying “It seems that the bases (on Latin America) are not sufficient.”

“There is no logic that US troops landed in Haiti. Haiti seeks humanitarian aid, not troops. It would be madness we all began to send troops to Haiti,” said Ortega.

Ortega of course doesn’t give a damn about the security of medical and relief personnel arriving in the island, much less the safety of the Haitians themselves.

Alain Joyandet, the French minister in charge of humanitarian relief, called on the UN to “clarify” the American role amid claims the military build up was hampering aid efforts, because the US is in charge of air traffic control.

The humanitarian catastrophe in Haiti is turning out to be a classic illustration of anti-Americanism in seven easy steps (h/t via Instapundit), predictable as it can be: for some, the US can do no right.

The Post-Modernists have always had a grain of truth in their claims that reality is constructed.  Where they were wrong was in emphasizing the individual's efforts to construct the world rather than the larger role played by the filtering and shaping of perception where most of the work takes place.  Once journalism abandoned an ethos of observing and reporting as close to the facts as possible and substituted an ethos of working to right injustice wherever it could be found (though not in places where they could be exposed as out of step with their colleagues or where actual courage in the face of despotism and tyranny might be required) our perceptual apparatus slowly became so impaired and distorted as to effect our societal sense of reality.  When information is filtered so dramatically, the effect is much more significant than simply the loss or gain of votes; actual people die because our MSM cannot do its job of serving as our perceptual apparatus in parts of the world which are far from our immediate experience.

The blogosphere is currently limited in its ability to clarify.  It can occasionally force actual news onto the front pages so that those who are less sophisticated or interested can gather a glimpse of a more robust and nuanced reality behind the stories the MSM promulgates, yet there are also a great many people quite willing to surrender their critical faculties to those who shape their perceptions.  Whether a greater sense of shared perceptions can emerge from the current chaotic evolution of our media environment as opposed to a more highly fragmented and discontinuous network of disparate nodes through which different populations experience an almost literally different world, is a key question which will determine the peace and prosperity of a great many people.

The Peasants Are Revolting!

 

Welcome Instapundit readers. 

The election of Scott Brown to the Massachusetts's "Kennedy" Senate seat is a resounding victory for common sense and reality.  It is also the first shot in the electoral wars of 2010.  Before we have the opportunity to go to the polls in November to choose the next Congress, both parties will need to sort out some significant issues.

For the Democrats, the problems are more overt and basically amount to whether or not Barack Obama can morph into Bill Clinton II.  Obama is much more a prisoner of his Ivy educated ideology than the more pragmatic Clinton was, so such a metamorphosis would be correspondingly more difficult.  However, if the Democrats are to have any hope of maintaining their control of both Houses of Congress, such a shift will be of great benefit.

For the Republicans, the problem is a bit more subtle, if just as significant.

The election of Barack Obama, following the repudiation of the old guard represented by Hillary Clinton, infused youth and energy into the Democratic party.  Obama squandered his gift by running as a moderate and then attempting to govern as a far left ideologue.  The results from Virginia, New Jersey, and now Massachusetts have underlined the folly of his approach.

The disasters of 2006 and 2008 have allowed a similar revolution within the Republican party, however, the old guard and the base have not yet accepted a completely new direction for the GOP.  They have not had to address the tensions within the GOP and have been able to be content being the party of "No."  This is not a long term strategy for success.  Exhibit "A" would be the Democrats of 2004-2008.  By gaining power before sorting out whether ideological or pragmatic Democratic policies would rule the party, the Democrats ended up with their current evolving disaster.  If the Republicans are to avoid a similar fate in the next few years, they will need to find their lowest common denominator of acceptable Republican behavior.

Cassandra  approvingly quotes Dennis the Peasant (and isn't that a wonderful name for a blog?):

The Seas Part...

This isn't about supposedly lilly-livered senators like Evan Bayh. This is about bad legislation that voters do not want. The pros are coming to the conclusion that biting the bullet for the sake of Bambi's ego is simply no longer a viable alternative politically.

Cassandra adds some very insightful points that should be taken to heart by our politicians:

Dennis the Peasant Nails It

It never ceases to amaze me that the very same folks who jumped on the Dede Scozzofava is a big fat RINO bandwagon have been going gaga over a candidate who is arguably even more liberal than Scozzofava

Brown’s score puts him at the 34th percentile of his party in Massachusetts over the 1995-2006 time period. In other words, two thirds of other Massachusetts Republican state legislators were more conservative than he was. This is evidence for my claim that he’s a liberal even in his own party. What’s remarkable about this is the fact that Massachusetts Republicans are the most, or nearly the most, liberal Republicans in the entire country!

Shor’s research shows us that even compared to Dede Scozzafava, Scott Brown is a very liberal Republican.

The point is that the "base's" support for Brown is a bit ironic in light of their continual excoriation of so-called RINOs. It's also a vindication for what many moderates (including yours truly) have been saying all along: rigid ideological litmus tests and a small tent approach are a sure fire prescription for staying out of power.

Now that we've won, I'll be happy to tell you what I think. Any party that thinks they can ignore what voters want (even if what voters want isn't entirely rational, which it often isn't) is doing politics wrong. The Dems were just handed a stinging reminder of the truth of that principle. But it applies to us as well.

The Republican Revolution began with us winning back 4 key seats. Three of the victors who returned us to power were liberal or moderate Republicans. In other words, what Ace said.

No one's going to like me for saying this, but so much for purity. I prefer being in a position to fight idiotic ideas like ObamaCare.

To repeat Dennis the Peasant's point: Voters do not want bad legislation.  That should not be so difficult a concept for our political class to comprehend, and as soon as they discover that we do not appreciate when our "betters" (the Democrat and Republican Political-Industrial Complex) treat us as the peasants they seem to imagine us to be, the better off we will all be.

Glenn Reynolds offers worthwhile advice to the Republicans:

But while Scott Brown could get elected as the anti-Obama figure — and while others will be able to pull that off in the fall — the GOP needs to be sure that it doesn’t just look like it’s lining up for its turn at the trough. Polls show that most Americans want smaller government, even with fewer “services.” Running on a platform that money’s better kept in voters’ own pockets, rather than handed over to special interest logrolling and vote-buying, will work: If it’ll work in Massachusetts, it should work pretty much anywhere. It is a fashionably-gloomy line among some on the right to say that the country’s too far gone in statism and the government-handout parasite culture to support such an approach — but again, if you can make it with this in Massachusetts, you can make it pretty much anywhere.

Of course, what the GOP apparat does is less important nowadays than it was. As I noted before, there’s a whole lot of disintermediation going on here — Scott Brown got money and volunteers via the Internet and the Tea Party movement, to a much greater degree than he got them from the RNC. Smart candidates will realize that, too.

And lies don’t work as well as they used to. Obama promised transparency and pragmatic good government, but delivered closed-door meetings and outrageous special-interest payoffs. This made people angry. If Republicans promise honesty and less-intrusive government, but go back to their old ways, the likelihood that the Tea Party will become a full-fledged third party is much greater. Are the Republicans smart enough to realize this? I don’t know. The Democrats weren’t smart enough to look at Virginia and New Jersey and realize that what they were doing was a mistake that would backfire.

Read the whole thing, as the man says.

How Do Universities Breed Terrorists?

"There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them."
— George Orwell

Jeffrey Goldberg links to an interesting piece today by Delia Lloyd:

Smart Bombers: Do Universities Breed Terrorists?

"What most people say is that people who turn to terror are the underclass, excluded, social detritus of the globalized economy," says Anthony Glees, a professor of political science and director of the Centre for Security and Intelligence at the University of Buckingham. "But a significant number of people convicted of terror offenses or killed in the commission of those offenses are university students or graduates."

In fact, the Centre for Social Cohesion -- a non-partisan think-tank that studies issues related to community cohesion in the U.K. -- puts that number at slightly over one-quarter for this country. According to a forthcoming report by the center, 26.2 percent of those involved in Islamist related terrorism convictions and attacks between 1999 and 2009 in the U.K. were educated at or above university-degree level. As Glees -- who identified extremist organizations on as many as 30 British university campuses in his 2005 book, "When Students Turn to Terror" -- put it, "Not every radical is a violent extremist. But every violent extremist has been a radical."

Interestingly, two sociologists who looked into the situation determined that Engineers are over-represented among terrorists:

More recently, however, two sociologists -- Diego Gambetta and Stefan Hertog -- discovered that what really matters isn't so much the level of education of would-be terrorists but what they study. According to their research, engineers are four times more likely to pursue violent extremism than their peers in finance, medicine or the sciences. In the West, at least, these scholars found that jihadist organizations actually attract fewer educated individuals, drawing more heavily from the working and middle classes. But there are proportionately even more engineers among their ranks than there are in similar organizations in the Middle East.

In his comments, Jeffrey asks a salient question:

Fighting Terror by Closing Engineering Schools

While they're at it, I'm wondering if Gambetta and Hertog can explain why so many Palestinian physicians (even pediatricians) take the leadership of terror organizations.

[He includes a rather chilling exchange from an interview he had with Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a Pediatrician who became head of Hamas after the assassination of Ahmed Yassin.  Rantisi was later removed from the scene by an Israeli missile in April 17, 2004.  The leadership of Hamas during periods of active attacks against Israel is an insecure professional path.]

Although all such outcomes are over-determined, there are some fundamental reasons why Engineers and Physicians end up over-represented among ideologues who are so readily willing to murder those they see as their enemies.  In a post from 2007 I specifically considered the genesis of Doctors of Death:

Several trends intersect to produce Doctors of Death.  The intellectual underpinnings go back to the Nazis, whose ideology forms part of the ideology of the Islamists, adapted to their interpretation of Islam.  For certain types of Doctors who have an overabundance of intellect and an insufficiency of humanity, Physician training can be easily corrupted by ideology.

Physicians during their training must reconcile several seemingly contradictory impulses.  In order to cure illnesses it is almost always necessary to first inflict greater pain.  Early on, we learn that pain is a signal, it points to the source of the problem.  Patients who enter an emergency room in terrible distress ideally should not be treated with pain killers until the Physician has a very good idea what the underlying problem is; the alternative, treating the pain alone without an etiology, risks masking the illness and leading to disaster.  While pain medication should never be needlessly withheld, it is often necessary for the Doctor to allow for such pain in the service of the patient's greater well being.  Worse, many times manipulations and tests must be done that actually make the pain a great deal worse before a diagnosis can be found and definitive treatment established.  The only way for most Physicians to overcome their natural empathy is to objectify the patient in order to maintain an appropriate and helpful distance.  Only by turning the patient into an object, for example, can the surgeon allow himself to cut into a human being, causing immediate terrible damage and pain, with the ultimate aim of curing or ameliorating.  As our technology improves, the need for pain to direct treatment decreases, but pain will always be a part of Medical practice and, of necessity, so will objectification.

...

The Nazis took such objectification several steps further.  They skillfully created an ideology, based on identity politics, that considered the population as a whole as an organic entity, akin to a person.  The body politic was reified.  Once such a conceptualization had been made, the step toward seeing certain sub-populations as being akin to infectious agents or tumors, causing illness and distress in the body politic, became inevitable.  Medical Doctors then were tasked with curing the body politic by excising the offending sub-populations.  The gas chamber followed.

Islam as practiced by the purveyors of Wahhabism, goes yet another step.  Here the objectification of the sub-population is religiously sanctioned.  Islamic states overtly treat non-Muslims as sub-humans, with limited rights, whose very existence is a stain on Islam, though Islam gains stature by not only tolerating such lesser beings but actually hold themselves out as moral and peace loving by protecting the "inferior" races and religions ("Muslim man's burden", perhaps.)

The confluence of the Nazi inspired objectification of entire populations with its attendant genocidal rationalization with the Islamic religiously sanctioned genocidal rationalizations, creates a powerful toxic mixture which can easily overcome the rationality of a Muslim Physician.  Add in the tendency of the Muslim world to eschew any responsibility for their own suffering and the need to project all their hatred and failure onto others, and the Physician, in complete agreement with Mengele, Habash, Rantisi, and Zawahiri, takes it upon himself to "cure" his community by murdering the objectified other.  Murder and suicide then become evidence of his loving devotion to the well-being of his people and all the while he keeps himself unaware of the sadistic hate that fuels his "treatment."

The nature of engineering is such that there is a self selection of people who have less than the usual quota of "people skills."  The Engineer is then trained to understand problems in the most objective and objectified ways.  For someone steeped in the ideology of radical Islam (or raised in a religiously rigorous Islamic household)  it is a small step to perceive the problems of the Ummah as stemming from deformations of an ideal system caused by the presence of foreign objects, ie sand in the gears.  The necessity of removal of the offending dirt would naturally follow.

In the 14 Signs of Large group Regression discussed by the American Psychoanalytic Association panel at the 2005 winter meetings, number 3 on the list was:

3. Severe splitting. This can occur as a polarity between "us" and "them" or within society.

Fundamentalist Islam specifically divides the world into the World of Islam and the World of War, members of the Ummah and infidels. 

Number 10 on the list was:

10. Dehumanization.  Exemplified by the Nazis, this is a two-step process.  Step one is identifying undesirable humans; step two is turning them into nonhumans, as in the Hutus' degradation of the Tutsis, referred to as cafrads, or insects.  Interestingly, the Tutsis were also called the "Jews" of Rwanda.

The combination of a Regressive religion which fosters splitting and dehumanization with specific intellectual pursuits which foster objectification of other human beings can, in unfortunate cases, create a toxic mixture which enables the emergence of the well educated terrorist murderer. 

Ideologues have always valued the masses more than the individual human beings who occasionally have to be purged for the "good of all."  Islam does it as well as any other ideology we have seen.