The Bullshit Observer

America: I think we're drifting apart

I don't know when it started, but I suspect it was towards the end of Nixon. We started moving apart as a country.

It started with simple disagreements. Then yelling matches. It eventually deteriorated into a mass migration away from each other. We sorted ourselves based on political affiliation.

According to the official data*, between 4 and 5% of us move each year from one county to another. There are plenty of reasons for this. But one of the reasons that's grown in prominence since Carter and his peanut gallery was political affiliation and the associated belief system. Conservatives, when they chose where to live, chose more conservative leaning areas. Liberals did the same with liberal neighborhoods. And the net result is that, over the years, we haven't really spoken to each other much. The number of "landslide counties" skyrocketed, and the number of voter-mixed counties plummeted.*

In 1976, only about a quarter of America's voters lived in a county a presidential candidate won by a landslide margin. By 2004, it was nearly half.*

The hill I live on in San Francisco, for example, is very blue. You'd be hard pressed to find a single person who voted McCain in 2008. In fact, my whole city is very blue. During Bush, there was nary a functioning car or truck bumper with a sticker expressing support for, or agreement with, the man or his policies. You could feel free to bash Bushy in public and know that anyone within earshot would agree with you. I even heard some people casually talking about the desire for an assassination.

Now, I won't lie. There's some comfort in that for us here. But what was missing was the kind of healthy debate that allowed us to see the other point of view. Clearly somebody support Bush for awhile and for a reason. A good half of us voted for him. Twice. So where are those other half? Not here, I'll tell you that much. And we are the poorer for it, I think.

Cuz, we really need to talk.

Alas, I think we've been stewing in our own juices a bit - all of us. Now we just don't get each other AT ALL. We've drifted apart to such a degree that it could easily devolve into a violent confrontation - as it has over the past year with the health care debates. You see campaigns now and they're not about persuading people that may not agree with you. No, they're about rallying people. Politics is no longer about policy, it's about numbers.

Now I sort of hear you saying, "Well, we have the Internet and the news media if we want to listen to each other."

Yeah, I supposed I can listen to Fox "News" and get your point of view and you can listen to NPR to get mine. Or can we? Does either of those places really represent our point of view? Or is it a gross exaggeration of our point of view designed to get us nodding and agreeing and watching/listening more? Truth is, we really only watch or listen to the things that we are going to agree with. The rest of it, we're inclined to dismiss out of hand. 

So how or when are we going to ever see eye to eye? Are you even as interested in that as I am? Are you out there, reading? Hello? Hello?

Damn.

* Data based on demographic data cited in the book, "The Big Sort," by journalist Bill Bishop.

Side note: look up the cultural make-up of your neighborhood here from the Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc.

Brand America

For those of us who've lived and worked outside the US, we understand how a county's brand perception can have a direct impact on our well-being. Rightly or wrongly, how you are regarded within a foreign society is partly related to how your country is regarded throughout the world (particularly if you're not fluent in the language).

For the last 6 years, our name has been mud.

But the deterioration of brand America has much broader implications from an economic standpoint. A country's brand perception often influences the sale of their goods. It can play a subtle, but very real role in whether US companies get contracts in other countries - or even the proper licenses and certifications to conduct business. It can effect whether consumers in other cultures buy our goods. It can play into negotiations. Bad brand perception can be detrimental to America's standing in business communities within these other countries. It can influence whether foreign companies enter into partnerships with American companies. Our country's continued prosperity is partly tied to the health of our national brand.

A brand that Bush and Cheney have completely trashed.

With Abu Ghraib torture photos, Guantanamo Bay's stain on due process, and the U.S.'s perceived ineffectiveness from Iraq to Hurricane Katrina, Brand America is hurting bad.    

Perhaps an important questions we should be asking ourselves is this: "Is the way that we're conducting this war on terror, our stance on the environment, our unwillingness to sit down without pre-conditions, and other policies counterproductive to the wider agenda of the nation?" I'm not saying our goals are wrong necessarily. I'm not saying we should back down. But the tough-guy cowboy screw-you-all politics of the White House is a style that is doing far more harm than good.

As for the brand implications in the upcoming elections, I think Americans would do well to choose the candidate that will protect their interests while working to restore their relationships. In other words, the candidate most unlike Bush. Someone with a smooth touch, a silver tongue, a persuasive ability. Someone not John McCain.

Yes, Sarah Palin, Apparently You Can Too

You can be uneducated, inexperienced and downright corrupt, but as long as you have the charisma, looks and gumption, you can do anything in America.

You can attend four different colleges in six years (one of which you basically failed out of), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement.

You can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than some high-schools, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as some cities, makes you ready to potentially be President, and people don’t piss themselves with laughter.


You can say you support the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance because “if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it’s good enough for me,” even though the “under God” part wasn’t added until the 1950s and nobody calls you a fucking moron.

You can make fun of community organizers and the work they do, but accept without question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college and a distant view of Russia.

You can convince white women who don’t even agree with you on a single issue to vote for you and your running mate because you too have ovaries.


You can fire people who didn’t support your political campaigns or your personal agenda and not be held accountable for abusing your power.


You can take nearly twenty-four hours to get to a hospital after beginning to leak amniotic fluid, and still be viewed as a great mom whose commitment to her children is unquestionable, and whose "next door neighbor" qualities make her ready to be VP.

You can give a 36-minute speech making fun of your opponents, while failing to present a substantive policy position on any issue AT ALL, and still manage to be considered a breath of fresh air for your party and a viable second in command of the biggest world power on earth.

You can attend churches whose pastors say that people who vote Democrat or criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God’s punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you’re just a good 'ol church-going Christian and not a religious extremist wacko.

Yes Sarah, even though you really SHOULD NOT be able to do any of those things, apparently YOU CAN.

(this post adapted from an article written by Tim Wise entitled "This is your nation on White Privilege." Thanks to Christi for sending.)

What Would Republican Jesus Do?

I think it's fascinating how Neo-Cons have been able to woo the Christian people. Yet most of the things they do, believe in and stand for, save being anti-abortion, would be antithetical to the supposed teachings of the Christian savior. Trashing their God's green earth, warring with other nations without justification, cutting social programs, trash talking immigrants, greed is good, lying is good politics, and on and on. Hey Republicans, how about a little peace love and understanding? How about the ten commandments?

Can you even name the ten commandments? (thanks to sean for sending this my way).

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The War On Intelligence

The war on terror is having a huge impact.

Unfortunately that impact is entirely bad.

Since the US and Britain have declared war on terrorism, it has really blossomed. Declaring war on a problem seems to work like fertilizer instead of weed killer. Getting all worked up about it and paranoid and cowboy makes the idea of it kind of materialize in a more full way. There are better, more intelligent ways to approach problems - but those are easy to sell against and less profitable for certain sectors of our economy.

One of those more intelligent methods is trying to understand first why people turn to terrorism. Hmmm.

"A June MI5 "operational briefing note", circulated within the security services, warns that, unless they understand the varied backgrounds of those drawn to terrorism in Britain, the security services will fail to counter their activities in the short term and fail to prevent violent radicalisation continuing in the long term."

   

According to an MI5 report, most of the popular perceptions about terrorists are off-base. Most British terrorists are British-born religious novices with wives, families, jobs, and an average education.  They are not mentally imbalanced. They are not pathological. They are not disenfranchised young men. If anything, they're underpaid.

Finding out why these men turn to violence against their own society is fundamental to stopping it from happening. Trying to kill or stop them all, as I said above, has had the reverse effect of making terrorist groups grow and multiply.

Frankly, I think it makes the whole thing more appealing and sexy to these guys.

Waterboarding, Nothing Like Wakeboarding or Snowboarding

Snowboarding is where you basically surf on the snow down a mountain.

Wakeboarding is where you surf on the wake of a boat while being towed behind it.

Waterboarding is where they shackle you to a two by four, shove a towel down your throat, and pour water on the towel to stimulate your gag reflex until you are basically drowning. Waterboarding is what we do to people that we think might have information about other people who might want to fight the United States. I've never actually tried this myself. But in looking at the demonstations, I do think I'll have to pass.

I ask you. Is it wise to use 9/11 as a pretext for abandoning our collective sense of honor and decency? Is it wise to turn an enemy into a viciously determined and vengeful enemy? Do they really think the information gleaned from this sick activity would be helpful? Ask yourself, "What does it say about me that I condone this?" Because for those who do think this is necessary to fight terror, you are in this room. Your invisible fears are doing this to people. Don't look away.

From the creator of The Bullshit Observer...a new blog

Together with some friends, I have a new blog creation called The Conceptualist. The topic will be completely fresh ideas and it will feature the same whimsical analysis that you've come to expect from The Bullshit Observer. The idea of The Conceptualist is not just to notice new things, but to celebrate brave thinkers and to marvel at their creations.

How is this different, you ask?

Well, I think it's probably the only blog I've seen that lives entirely in the world of ideas. It's not just about highlighting bizarre new inventions like Geekology. It's not about displaying new products like bazillions of blogs out there. It's about taking the new ideas and turning them over in our minds and seeing how they got that way and what they could become. It's as much about the why as it is about the what. In short, it's about conceptualism - the act of seeing past what is there to what could be and talking about it.

Incidentally, the header image is my friend's daughter, Sophie swimming underwater.

This means, of course, that The Bullshit Observer will need to take a back seat for the time being. That means that my posts will be more sporatic. To any regular reader out there, I am sorry to interrupt your BSO experience.

The Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld

Ran across this on Slate. As we think about how we were misled into this war, it bears considering just how much it sounded like they were making it up as they went along. Nowhere was this more obvious than during Rumsfeld briefings. His responses to questions and his ramblings were often so oblique as to be a sort of haiku - a clear sign that someone is struggling to come up with plausible answers to questions. He relied quite a bit on the sheer force of his character to jam this stuff down our throats though so he wouldn't get cornered by his own lies.

Here's a small selection of them:

The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.

—Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

Glass Box
You know, it's the old glass box at the—
At the gas station,
Where you're using those little things
Trying to pick up the prize,
And you can't find it.
It's—

And it's all these arms are going down in there,
And so you keep dropping it
And picking it up again and moving it,
But—

Some of you are probably too young to remember those—
Those glass boxes,
But—

But they used to have them
At all the gas stations
When I was a kid.

—Dec. 6, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing

A Confession
Once in a while,
I'm standing here, doing something.
And I think,
"What in the world am I doing here?"
It's a big surprise.

—May 16, 2001, interview with the New York Times

Happenings
You're going to be told lots of things.
You get told things every day that don't happen.

It doesn't seem to bother people, they don't—
It's printed in the press.
The world thinks all these things happen.
They never happened.

Everyone's so eager to get the story
Before in fact the story's there
That the world is constantly being fed
Things that haven't happened.

All I can tell you is,
It hasn't happened.
It's going to happen.

—Feb. 28, 2003, Department of Defense briefing

The Digital Revolution
Oh my goodness gracious,
What you can buy off the Internet
In terms of overhead photography!

A trained ape can know an awful lot
Of what is going on in this world,
Just by punching on his mouse
For a relatively modest cost!

—June 9, 2001, following European trip

The Situation
Things will not be necessarily continuous.
The fact that they are something other than perfectly continuous
Ought not to be characterized as a pause.
There will be some things that people will see.
There will be some things that people won't see.
And life goes on.

—Oct. 12, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing

Clarity
I think what you'll find,
I think what you'll find is,
Whatever it is we do substantively,
There will be near-perfect clarity
               As to what it is.

And it will be known,
And it will be known to the Congress,
And it will be known to you,
Probably before we decide it,
               But it will be known.

—Feb. 28, 2003, Department of Defense briefing

Speaking of poetry...

Here's a short poem I found made up entirely of actual quotations from George W. Bush. The quotes have been arranged, but not re-worked, by Washington Post writer, Richard Thompson.

MAKE THE PIE HIGHER

I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen and uncertainty
And potential mental losses.

Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the Internet
Become more few?

How many hands have I shaked?
They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.

I know that the human being
And the fish can coexist.
Families is where our nation finds hope, where our wings take dream.

Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher!
Make the pie higher!

Go, George, Go

Today marks the fifth anniversary of the famed "Mission Accomplished" speech. It would be easy to let that milestone just wash over you like, well...like a whoosh of hot air, but let's take a moment to put it all into perspective. Not only is the Iraq war not an accomplished mission, but it is one of the four longest running wars our country has ever fought.  In fact, if you count Afghanistan, President Bush has initiated and presided over two out of four of America's longest running wars IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

That's right. Only the Vietnam War (August 1964 to January 1973) and the Revolutionary War (July 1776 to April 1783) have engaged America longer. He's definitely earned some kind of award. Something befitting one of the most significant presidents in the history of our nation. I was thinking maybe having a sewage treatment plant named after him.

Bush, in a speech earlier this month, said that "while this war is difficult, it is not endless." And then probably whispered sharply, "Dick, stop nibbling my ear when I'm talking to the people. You know how, how that makes me... I can't - I can't concen-stop it!"