Those Damned Facts

Among the commenters who used to troll here but seem, mostly, to have left when they found the stuff they spout doesn't float in deep waters, a favorite comment is that I should stop blaming Bush for our problems. Forget facts, they would have us. Rely on simple and wrong, they prefer to. Ignore information such as the above chart, they do.

Which, of course, is exactly what Congressional Rs and their mouth organ are assuming the public will do as well. That they're probably right doesn't change the central truth; it just reinforces the reality of our collective stupidity and preference for easy answers, misplaced blame, and magical thinking. In times such as these, which demand our best, teabaggers and those of similar disposition toward angry but devoid certitude are the unfortunate -- yet apparently inevitable, given the milieu -- response.

In my practice I was called upon on a (mercifully) few occasions to try to undo the damage done to a patient by a previous surgeon. Picking up the pieces left by another (especially when the patient had had the opportunity to come to me in the first place and have things done right) is by far the most unpleasant and undesirable situation I -- or any surgeon, or any physician at all -- ever encountered. Depending on the extremity of the situation, it can be deeply and irreparably no-win. And yet, there the patient is, in need; and there you are, needed. Among other unpleasantries, it's nearly certain that, no matter the outcome (because it's likely the patient will never be as well-off as if the first operation(s) had been done properly), you know you'll be among those to whom blame is assigned: sued, in other words.

Since an operation is never as easy or more likely to go well than when it's done the first time, there will almost certainly be technically daunting challenges. There may be no good choices; your options might be only among those least likely to be disastrous. Faced -- as I have been -- with distorted anatomy, pockets of pus everywhere, unrecognizable structures, all in a patient depleted of physical and psychological reserve, you may have no other course but to embark on something very hazardous, with countless opportunities for complications, or outright failure. To use the proper medical phrase, from the time of Hippocrates: it really really really sucks.

I don't see much difference, except in orders of magnitude, between those professional experiences, and the assuming of office after George Bush screwed up a (possibly necessary) war; took us into and screwed up a clearly unnecessary and ill-advised (in several meanings of the term) second war; set the economy toward ruin with his tax cuts and steadfast refusal to pay for his wars; ignored our energy crisis and, in fact, made it worse by reversing the meager steps that had been taken before him; increased the Republican assault on science and reason; it goes on and on. It was not without an easily recalled sense of my own fears and trepidation in context of my care of previously-damaged humans that I wondered, during the recent election process, why ANYONE would want to assume the presidency. Anyone with serious ideas and a sense of the magnitude of the problems, that is, which excludes most of the R candidates and, most certainly, their eventual nominees.

It's in this same context that I'm inclined to temper my disappointments with Barack Obama. He's been far from perfect, in my view: not enough focus on jobs; health care possibly ill-timed and too complex, too much based on insurance companies; too slow on DADT; too quick to compromise with or cave to disingenuous criticism from the right. But at least he's trying, with serious intent, facing unprecedented challenges. FDR, after all, faced The Great Depression and WWII more or less single file, and it was only one war, with a couple identifiable and locatable enemies; there was no energy crisis, no oil polluting from a mile under the ocean; no coordinated 24/7 disinformation network annealed with talk radio and the length and breadth of the opposition party to poison the well with deliberate lies; and there wasn't a public unable to face adversity and unwilling to sacrifice for the greater good; a public willfully misinformed and actively engaged in remaining that way.

Which still doesn't explain why the hell Barack Hussein Obama wanted to take it on. I wouldn't have. He's a much better man than I, and he still can't do it.

Which tells you something.

Water Bored?

In the Foxified world, Obama's policies against torture are tantamount to giving the country to the terrorists. Reality, it seems, suggests otherwise:

Michael Sulick, head of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, told a student audience last week that the spy agency has seen no fall-off in intelligence since waterboarding was banned by the Obama administration.

"I don’t think we’ve suffered at all from an intelligence standpoint," Sulick told students and some faculty members at Fordham University, his alma mater, on March 25. "But I don’t want to talk about [it from] a legal, moral or ethical standpoint."

The thing is, though, as Fox "news" and the rest of the RWS™ and their Republican employees know only too well, for their listeners such data mean nothing. Same with the 16,000 IRS agent lie, death panels, and whatever other dishonest talking point is felt likely to sway the greatest number of their unquestioning followers.

A perfect example is the torture cheerleader Marc Thiessen, whose recent book all but claims that in ending torture, President Obama has opened the door and invited terrorists in. That his book is based on lies and errors is well documented. Nevertheless he's been amply rewarded with round-the-clock credibility by the right wing, most especially the editorial page of the formerly readable Washington Post.

The "discussions" about torture perfectly encapsulate, in my view, the problem with political discourse in this country at this time. Devised as a way to get people falsely to confess to crimes they didn't commit -- at that, it's unarguably excellent; just ask John McPOW -- torture has clearly given unreliable information when flipped from its calling. And "standard" interrogations have led to the overwhelming bulk of useful intelligence from prisoners. Yet it's still a perfect left-right separator. To me, that's as incredible as the fact that it's only right wingers who think the earth is six thousand years old and that the globe isn't warming.

At least the torture argument has slipped a bit from center stage. But that's only because we're now arguing about which sort of dictator Obama is.

Mad Scientists

Finally, they feel free to speak out. That they haven't, heretofore, and are now, speaks volumes. Nor is it limited to the FDA: science (facts of all kinds), to George Bush, has been something to be avoided. Redacted. Distorted. Be it climate science, reproductive science, public health, environmental, geological or political science (although that last one might be an oxymoron), we've been through eight years of ignorance, in both senses of the word, the latter one being the act of ignoring.

It's not as if science is all there is. But as a method of evaluating reality it's the best we have: self-correcting, open to questions, orderly, fact-based. There are those who like to point to the past errors of science; but it's the very fact that once-held scientific conclusions are subjected to constant scrutiny and updated and corrected, that confirms its power. Contrary to the contrarians.

Even the most steadfast deniers don't really reject science. (Ben Stein, by the way, is a despicable prick. Smug. And most colossally wrong whenever he opens his mouth; especially on the economy.) How many creationists and young-earthers refuse to fly on airplanes? Won't use GPS, or computers, or the internet? Refuse antibiotics or chemotherapy? How many deny the ability to calculate and predict radiation decay and conclude nuclear reactors are impossible? Refuse radiation treatments? Such self-selection of facts is, of course, anathema to actual science; and it's been the defining modus operandi of the current (still??? My god, it's like waiting for a bus when you're late to work) administration.

So it's refreshing that some scientists are (belatedly) speaking out. It suggests they believe they'll have, in the new White House, a sympathetic -- and intelligent and curious and thoughtful -- ear. Which, by all indications, they will.

Praise the lord!

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Crazy Talk

No longer able to be amazed at political stupidity, I comment once again on the latest inanity: "wealth redistribution." For the Republican party and Joah McPalin, it's the distortion du jour.

To state the obvious: the only government that's not in the business of redistributing wealth is one that collects zero money; ie, no government that's ever existed. You pay taxes, the government gets the money and sends it somewhere, in a transaction that is known as, oh, redistribution. Any change in any tax leads to re of the distribution. Last wealth redistributer: George Bush, when he took money from the peons and gave it to rich folks. Next in line: anyone who makes any change in that plutoid formula.

Whoever it was who said you'd never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people must be all achuckle. Newspapers, talking heads, even commenters here on at least one occasion, are spitting it out like it's poison, certain that it's also a winner for McPalin. Socialism it is!!! Taking money from taxpayers in differing patterns based on income!! If Barack Obama weren't spending all his time palling around with terrorists, he'd be plotting it right now. And he's a liberal terrorist, so he'd probably call it, say, maybe, oh, a PROGRESSIVE income tax. It could happen here, folks. It could happen here.

A recent study found that Republicans are "happier" than Democrats. Well, duh. When your response to reality is to deny it, when facts are minor impediments on the road to ignorance, of course you're happy. (The study also said they're richer.) I'm gonna call it the happiness response: it's like the flight option of "fight or flight." Hardwired, at least in the credulous.

This idea that any change in Bush's incredibly unbalanced and ineffective tax structure is, by definition, socialism, is like saying improving your kids' education is brainwashing. Returning to some of the tax policies of Bill Clinton??? Why that'd be like, like, going back to times of, what did they call it back then, what was that concept, fading from memory?

Oh yeah.

Prosperity.

I believe John McCain is smart, at least enough to know what bullshit this is. And there's no doubt he thinks so little of his "base" that he assumes they'll eat it. Unsurprisingly, lots of them are. From every angle, his campaign assumes the worst in us, treats us like we're stupid. If it works again, as it has in the past, our descent is unstoppable.