Paranoia

Cosma Shalizi notes something we've all been thinking, that being sane involves thinking some really crazy things right now. In college, I found myself to the right of many people I dealt with, in part because I had an active bullshit trigger (not saying it was an accurate one, just active). When I hear conspiracy coming from the right wing, it confirms my liberalism, while when they come from the good guys, I get this close to talking about "long haired hippies." The same goes for suggestions that we impeach the president. So it's not a comfortable position I find myself in thinking that there have been unconstitutional secret wiretaps of American citizens, that the government is just disappearing people, or that the Vice President claims to not be part of the Executive branch.

The biggest issue for me is electoral fraud, especially the fact that no one talks about it. Every so often, articles surface discussing the issue, only to be met with silence, as if there is a tacit agreement that we are better off not discussing the possibility. The most high profile place one appeared was in Rolling Stone, though that source doesn't make it sound less kooky.

I would love nothing more than to read something decisively disproving that the 2004 election was swayed by voter fraud. In the long run, it's more comforting to think that 51% of voters embraced an insane administration than to think that 48% did, and the other 3% of the votes were tampered with. If the election was rigged, I want to know, if it's not, I want someone to step up and decisively refute the whispers.

Deterrence

I'm curious what Ezra Klein's thought is here--he says that impeachment of either Bush or Cheney would be a bad idea, but that the media should be discussing the possibility more. With a slim-majority and near-majority favoring Cheney's and Bush's respective impeachments, the media obviously should be paying attention, but there's other reasons why it's important. The Scooter Libby pardon shows that the administration will resist almost any attempt to restrain its actions. Just as in diplomatic negotiations, leaving all the options on the table is a good idea. Maybe if the MSM was regularly discussing impeachment, the administration would pretend to care about public opinion. If there weren't a case for impeachment, this wouldn't be a defensible tactic, but as Brad Delong has pointed out, there's precedent for viewing this abuse of the pardon as grounds for impeachment.

Only New York Can Save Us

The New Yorker:

If a five-foot-seven divorced Jew with a nasal whine is taken seriously as a Presidential candidate, it would at the very least diminish the power of faux symbols in our political life; and a Clinton-Giuliani-Bloomberg race would so thoroughly explode the Sun Belt’s lock on the White House that an entirely new kind of politics might be possible, in which evolution is not at issue, no one has to pretend to like pork rinds, and the past tense of “drag” is “dragged.”

In order for politics to become less about faux symbols it is first necessary for the press to spend all its time discussing the candidacy of a man who has said he has no interest in running. It is necessary, in a sort of dialectical turn, that the road to a substantive politics passes through a period of horse race journalism.

The truly stunning part is the idea that if Clinton wins, we will have an entirely new kind of politics. Let me say it loud and clear, kids: If Hillary wins, two families will have run this country for at least twenty-four straight years. We might as well have a monarchy.

Expertise

I recently read a piece in The Nation arguing in defense of bureaucrats. The article starts out by noting that at many crucial junctures, members of the bureaucracy were the ones who restrained the illegal or unwise actions of this administration. Part of what makes the bureaucracy so effective is that its members are not put in place by the current administration.

"Like teachers at a high school who watch classes of students come and go, the bureaucrats remain while the administrations change. When the current occupant of the White House leaves, his appointed hacks will leave with him, and whether or not someone actually committed to governing takes his place, the bureaucrats will be there, as always, to do their duty."

A more interesting contrast to me is that bureaucrats are expected to be competent. Elected officials and political appointees are often just career idiots who have no business dressing themselves, much less managing disaster relief. Their primary activity is giving speeches, and most of them are astonishingly bad at it. Even a successful career as a businessman or lawyer doesn't mean a person knows how the government should work, and the electoral process doesn't select for those who do. As an ordinary citizen, it's not particularly important to know the difference between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims, but for congressmen, it's crucial. Moreover, while bureaucrats can be dishonest, just as politicians can, their positions and expertise create strong situational pressures not to be. It's an insult to a technician to ask him to subvert the standards of his practice. While that fact won't stop some from compromising their dignity, it makes them more reliable than an outside for whom that practice is just a tool or an inconvenience.

Addendum: Maureen Dowd had an editorial on Cheney's failure to safeguard classified documents. After noting that Cheney had steamrolled Colin Powell, George Tenet, etc. during the push for war with Iraq, she closed by saying

Archivists are the new macho heroes of Washington.

Archivists aren't bureaucrats, but all the same principles apply.

Just Suppose I'm Juxtaposed With Youuuuuu!

Via The Situationist I'm being told that the Democrats don't understand the role of emotion in politics, focusing on policy and general wonkishness. At the same time, the New York Times has an article on the new energy bill. There are tax changes, a plan to start charging certain companies for the rights to offshore drilling, and subsidies for renewable energy, all of which sound plausible. Then there's clean coal, which doesn't. Then there's a plan to "give the federal government more power to prosecute companies that engage in “price gouging” on gasoline prices, which is broadly defined in the bill as charging “unconscionably excessive” prices that reflect “unfair leverage.” I think they sorta get it.

Silence, Peon

The best way to inhibit blogging is to generalize Brian Weatherson's observation that "Philosopher Makes Mistake" is rarely big news. If you don't have something constructive to say about the mistake, it's rarely worth a journal article. In the same vein, most of the time when I read the latest jackassery, I start to crank out a post, but stop feeling it's worth it after five minutes. This is especially true when the target of the response is itself something ephemeral, such as a blog post.

Had this post continued where it was initially going, it would have booed an Ezra Klein post on drug patents.

Update: A corollary to this point is that if you're not willing to link to it, you should probably not talk about it. Over at Pharyngula, PZ Myers posted about Michael Egnor's extremely bad argument for dualism, but didn't link to the argument on the grounds that it would only encourage Egnor. He then made a second post addressing Egnor's followup. So he's now having a back and forth discussion with someone who is nevertheless not sufficiently important to link to. It's especially obnoxious since the first ten results on google for "michael egnor" don't indicate an obvious way to find the post in question.

There's something appealingly Kantian about this whole bit. By violating the blogging norm of linking to the people you argue with, you end up doing something wrong, not because of a self-subsistent moral truth, but because of the very standards of practical rationality. (Ok, it's a bit of a stretch).

How bout that future?

Between 1981 and 2003, there were 315 suicide bombings in the entire world, but the past 4 years have seen 400 in Iraq alone. (Found on Gene Healy's blog).

My apologies to Chekhov

If there is a database of driver's license data in the first act, it will be hacked in the second.

Please to not exercise your creativity

I went to a go tournament in D.C. this weekend, but I'll reserve comment until later, as it only sets the stage. While driving back to Pittsburgh on I-76, I was behind a pickup with a bumper sticker reading Gun Control Is Racist. Several hours later, I still don't get it.

Ding, dong, the witch is dead

Vernon Robinson is no more. Brad Miller beat him 96,842–55,308 or 64 to 36 percent. Both Vernon's political hopes and half of my traffic have now gone the way of the dodo.

Related News:
GOP FEARS ELECTION “NOT CLOSE ENOUGH TO THROW”