My part of the world — the United States — seems to me to be in some kind of downward spiral and I don’t know what to do about it. Does it make sense to try to write and make some sense of it that way, and perhaps persuade a few other people that something needs to be done, or we’re doomed?

Are we, in fact, doomed? Or is this just the same old story that’s been going around for as long as there have been human beings disagreeing on how things should be done?

When I was younger, I remember running across quotes from ancient Greek writers saying things like,

The youth of today are lazy, no good, slackoisie who left unchecked will bring down all civilization. They don’t want to learn anything; all they want to do is party all day; and they won’t listen to their elders (like me).

Okay, that’s a paraphrase. But the wording really was pretty close to that. I deliberately “updated” it by adding in words like “slackoisie,” which is favored by a group of attorneys I enjoy reading on the Internet.

And lest those attorneys read this and are offended at my using “slackoisie” here, because they are absolutely convinced things are different today, I just have to say “so were the ancient Greeks who wrote such things thousands of years ago.”

Who knows? Maybe I’m wrong. Things may be different today, too. The Internet certainly seems to have had a significant impact on society that is farther reaching than my meager brain can completely grasp.

On the other hand, in many ways I think the Internet has just highlighted particular issues. I argued years ago on Internet Relay Chat that the distinction some drew between IRC and RL (“real life”) was bogus. Many people — Tom Christiansen, for one — seemed to me to use this distinction as a justification for being assholes online. But, as I said then, the Internet wasn’t really something totally different; it had real-world impact.

Today we plainly see that. People actually sometimes die because of the Internet. Companies change their policies because of things said on the Internet. Stock prices go up and down because of what happens on the Internet.

To a large extent, I think the Internet has made what happens around the world more visible. Since there are more people, doing more bad — as well as more good things — there is more bad stuff to see.

At the same time, as noted two paragraphs ago, things really do happen because of the Internet. So to that extent, the Internet really has possibly changed the playing field. The problem, of course, is knowing how much. At some point, quantitative changes have qualitative effects. Put a little smog in the air, nobody notices; a little more, people start to get sick; keep going, and folks are going to die.

So is the world really becoming a worse place? Are kids today really all that different from kids of yesterday in terms of drive, intelligence, and what they will do, or not do, in this world?

Are we doomed? Or does the Internet warp our perception that the end is nigh because we can see so much more, so much more quickly?

I’m also not sure why — maybe it’s because of the new year, turning my mind to new starts and new opportunities — but I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the kind of world we’re creating. I got a huge push in that direction the other day from a client who was doing pretty well on probation…until his mother told him she was sorry he was born, that he was a mistake. And he decided to show her just how bad he could be. He’s a really good kid at heart. Just lost. No, not lost: thrown away. *sigh*…

Last night, on one of my law blogs, I wrote about “Building a Nastier World Through Law.”

This commentary from Keith Olbermann could have used the same title.

What is it about us — especially, it seems, the most religious amongst us — that drives us to make the world such an ugly place? You want to turn people towards your version of “G-d” instead of away from any version of “G-d”? Try modeling your deity’s behavior, rather than trying to play the role which — by most accounts in most religious writings — has been reserved to your diety alone.

A “light shining on a hill” does nothing more than illuminate. It does not attack. It does not control. The light itself is just what it is: a light.

Whenever a human being performs an act of integrity, honesty, kindness, compassion, or self-sacrifice, he is revealing godliness in the world. “Kiddush Hashem” literally means “sanctifying the Divine Name.” …

Conversely, whenever a human being performs an act of meanness, cruelty, avarice, dishonesty, or selfishness, he is hiding God’s presence in this world. “Hillul” comes from the Hebrew word for “empty space”; a Hillul Hashem makes the world seem empty of God.

Every action is a stone thrown into an infinite pond; the ripples it causes go out in ever greater circles, endlessly. (Sara Yoheved Rigler, “Now You See G-d, Now You Don’t: Unmasking the Divine on Purim” (February 29, 2004) Aish.com.)

Do those of you who work so hard to enforce your vision of what the world should be upon others think you convince them by your methods? If you tell your children you think they were mistakes and you wished they’d never been born, do you think this inspires them to a higher level? If you strip others of their unalienable rights — let’s even put it in your terms: their G-D-GIVEN rights — to freedom of choice, to live the way they choose, to exercise free will — do you think you turn them towards your deity, or compel them in the other direction?

Let’s see if we can’t do our part to heal the world — at least a little bit — this year.

Wait. A. Minute.
How can we have real liberty if we lack safety?
How is a man free to “pursue happiness” — another key phrase to our country’s Founders, if his house may be burned or his family killed?

Safety is a necessary condition to liberty. Not a sufficient condition, of course, but necessary. And we cannot have safety without our criminal code, which means “tough on crime” and docket management. Granted, there must always be a balance between safety and liberty, but they are not always at odds. Without safety, there can be no liberty. Without safety, any liberty we might have is an empty notion of what might have been.

There are a number of issues one might take with this.  For that reason, I decided to blog my response, rather than leave what would only be an overlong comment.

It’s difficult to know where to start with this.  Mark Bennett makes a good start in his own responsive comment. As Mark impliedly notes, there is no metaphysical or logical connection between being free and being safe. Sometimes, as Mark states, we deliberately move beyond a place of safety in pursuit of freedom.

What is not so clearly stated is that no absolute level of safety can ever be achieved.  Even in the most “locked down” of cultures, someone may burn your house, or kill you and your family.  You could even assign a police officer to every home — don’t worry, we’re getting there — and still not be completely safe.  Assuming the officer could protect you from your son, daughter, mother, or father, who’s to protect you from the officer?

The more that the rules or laws of a particular country attempt to lock things down “in the interest of safety,” the less freedom exists.  And, frankly, the pursuit of “safety” in the United States has reached the level of insanity.  Petty officials such as the Presiding Judge of the Fresno County Superior Court routinely ignore the constitutional requirements of the Fourth Amendment because it’s apparently reasonable to expect that anyone entering the courthouse might be armed and dangerous.  We’ve forgotten that the Constitution required probable cause particularized to the individual being searched, not a belief that it was reasonable to think some person entering a courthouse might have a weapon.

It was against the very idea of indiscriminate searches on baseless suspicion — fishing expeditions, you might call them — that our Founders rebelled.  It was this very sort of attempt at making sure all the rules are followed by everyone all the time — and overbroad rules like the “search all persons entering the courthouse” rules we’re increasingly running into now — through the application of arbitrary and indiscriminate searches that our Founders revolted.  Yes, revolted.  As in, “they started a revolution and overthrew the government.”

In spite of a Constitution which requires particularized reasons to subject a citizen to a search, we are routinely subjected to searches while moving from one area to another.  Try to fly without being searched.  Try to enter any government building without being searched.

The government gets away with this for two reasons.

First, on the whole, we are sheep.  We’re not actually citizens, we’re submitizens.  When some new procedure or directive comes down from “on high” requiring us to empty our pockets, strip off our clothing, or otherwise submit to interference in our personal lives from the government, the majority of us don’t even ask why.  We just do it.  Those of us who don’t, suffer the full wrath of the government because the majority of us are submitizens.  Why should the government fear acting as if there were no Constitution, when it knows the submitizens will let them get away with it?

Second, if someone actually does resist and takes the issue to court, the court (which, incidentally, is still the government) simply redefines the term “search.”  Somehow, someway, going through people’s things and making them empty their pockets is not a search.

This is okay, “Y” tells us.  Y?  Because we must have safety before we can have freedom.

But since we can never be safe, I guess what “Y” means is that we can never be free.

You think I’m kidding? Name me one place where true capitalism, as a social structure driving the economy of a real country, actually exists.  It just doesn’t.

The United States Is Not A Capitalist Country

The United States of America famously claims to be the bastion/defender/premier example of capitalism.  Many of us know this is a lie.  If we don’t, then shame on us.  The recent $700 brazilian bailout should have taught us otherwise.  Now we’re talking about a bailout for automakers. Sure, that may not happen, but it’s telling that we’d even consider it.  Besides that, the alternative being discussed — allowing them to declare bankruptcy — is really just another form of socialism: bankruptcy utilizes the apparatus of government to prevent people rightly owed money from collecting it in order to ensure the bankrupt company or individual will survive.

Earlier this year, the United States government began taking over certain large businesses to prevent them from collapsing.  After the government seized Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the CEO of Rogers Holdings noted,

America is more communist than China is right now. You can see that this is welfare of the rich, it is socialism for the rich… it’s just bailing out financial institutions.  This is madness, this is insanity, they have more than doubled the American national debt in one weekend for a bunch of crooks and incompetents. I’m not quite sure why I or anybody else should be paying for this.  (“US Is ‘More Communist Than China’: Jim Rogers” (September 8, 2008) CNBC.)

Socialism, or Feudalism?

Is it “not socialism” when it only supports large companies and the richer segments of society?  I suppose an argument can be made that it isn’t: it’s more like feudalism.

One of the definitions of feudalism is “control by an entrenched minority especially for its own benefit: social, political, or economic oligarchy.” (“feudalism.” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 2002. http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com (15 Nov. 2008).)

This, actually, is a fairly good description of the United States at least from 2000 through 2008. But it began long before 2000.

The Socialism of the Corporate-Military-Industrial Complex

The most recent — and currently most prevalent — form of socialism was born out of World War II.

In 1961, President Eisenhower recognized that the Federal government was being drawn into the seizure of power by corporate schemers who collaborated with powerful military officers and their network of supporters.  He saw how the corporate-military-industrial complex was first aided and abetted by the lend-lease programs of World War II.  [These internetworked groups and their agents] find it opportune to have their activities subsidized in some way by the United States Treasury, the American taxpayer and the wealth of the rest of the world.  (Charles Merlin Umpenhour, Freedom, a Fading Illusion (2d ed. 2005) p. 154.)

If the unfortunate reign of George W. Bush has taught us anything, it has taught us about the power of corporations, particularly the oil companies who, if they didn’t actually start the war, are the major benefactors of it.

Building a Better Society

The point is, America is already a Socialist country.  But does welfare for the rich, and not for the rest of us, really build a better society?

What would happen if we took the money spent on the war in Iraq and spent it on social programs in America?  With just the money California taxpayers will pay for the war, we could provide over 34 million people with health care, or put renewable electricity into more than 148 million homes, or fund 12.5 million university scholarships for a year, or any number of other beneficial things.

Wouldn’t it be interesting to try some of these things and see what happens to society?

Socialism, Not Communism

Whenever someone — and now I suppose that someone includes me — suggests experimenting with American socialism, many, if not most of us, think only of the horrors of Communism.  Yet, Communism is not Socialism and, in fact, there are varieties of Socialism. As noted above, we practice a form of Socialism already; it’s just not a very beneficial form for the majority of Americans.

So I’m not suggesting we implement Socialism: we already have. I’m suggesting we consider experimenting with another form than the one currently ensconced in the laws passed by Congress.  These laws aren’t limited to the most obvious: the recent bailout packages.  The economic laws favoring the corporate-military-industrial complex constitute a largely hidden, yet invidious, form of Socialism.  I say we begin to experiment with real Socialism by re-directing dollars away from the corporate-military-industrial complex and towards more social programs.  If war is so profitable, let these companies fend for themselves, while we use our tax dollars to improve, rather than destroy, societies.

And let’s be clear about another thing: I’m not calling for a “Communist America.”  I’m only suggesting that there might be some kind of alternative to the Corporate Socialism we currently practice.  Because, in the end, I can’t tell the difference between our Corporate Socialism and the Social Darwinism lately offered up by the last Republican presidential contestant.

How Will You Answer the Question?

And so I ask the question, “Should America try real Socialism?”

What do you think? Leave your comments using the form below. I’m interested in what you have to say!

It always puzzles me that some of my (economically) middle- and lower-class friends, none of whom ever seem to do any reading on the subject, believe that Republicans have a better handle on things like lowering taxes, spurring job growth, and just generally protecting our standard of living.  I haven’t lived very long — just a half century so far — but even I have noticed that whenever we have a Republican President, things tank.  Whenever we get a Democrat in the White House, things improve. All the way around.

The current administration has, however, far surpassed past Republican administrations in damaging our country on just about every front imaginable.  Perhaps this is not surprising. After all, influential Republican adviser Grover Norquist once famously said one goal was,

to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub.  (Sheldon Rampton & John Stauber, Banana Republicans: How the Right Wing is Turning America into a One-Party State (2004) p. 6.)

And journalist Elizabeth Drew noted that,

It’s not just because taxes are irritating and unpopular and all that.  He [Norquist] has a long-term view, which is the lower the revenues that the government takes in, the less spending it will be able to do, the less money will go to the groups that he sees as the base of the Democratic party and its power—the teachers’ unions, welfare workers, municipal workers and so on.  This is the big, long-term war.  It’s total.  It’s Armageddon.  And I have to say that the people on the right, I think, have thought this through much more than their opponents on the other side who really don’t much know what they do and how the opposition thinks and are just waking up to it.  (Elizabeth Drew, Whatever It Takes: The Real Struggle for Political Power in America, quoted in Banana Republicans, p. 7.)

I can only hope that people will start to wake up to what’s happening.  I’m personally concerned that the United States cannot survive another Republican President, not even one from the great hockey-playing, moose-shooting state of Alaska.  (Yeah, truth is, Obama isn’t running against McCain; he’s running against Palin.  Because while I’m concerned about whether the United States can survive another Republican President, I’m convinced that his health and age make it unlikely McCain will.)

Maybe it’s time we recognize that there’s a reason George W. Bush continues smiling and appears to be unconcerned about the severity of the problems into which he’s gotten us.  The reason is at least as old as the recognition that Rome needed a more robust fire department. I doubt it’s a mistake that Grover Norquist was once called “Field Marshall” of the Bush economic plan. And people think the administration doesn’t know what it’s doing.  Bush continues to smile and nod and grin and bob his head because everything is going exactly according to plan.

So I’m not surprised at either the economic devastation that we’ve seen under Bush’s watch, nor at his apparent lack of concern.  I suspect there may well be private parties in the now anything-but-transparent White House where Bush gleefully fiddles away, impervious to the vagaries of the economy he and his friends are helping to destabilize.

What does surprise me is the lack of recognition on the part of everyone else that this mess is caused by eight years of unbridled Republican policies. What does surprise me is that middle- and lower-income voters can’t see in their own lives what economists have long recognized:

The real incomes of middle-class families grew more than twice as fast under Democratic presidents as they did under Republican presidents. Even more remarkable, the real incomes of working-poor families (at the 20th percentile of the income distribution) grew six times as fast when Democrats held the White House.  (Larry Bartels, “Inequalities” (April 27, 2008) New York Times Magazine.)

Unfortunately, the thing that has created this mess is what will also make it virtually impossible for a true government bail-out.  For that, we need only look at the now-historic (and thus largely forgotten) Great Depression.  Only the oldest amongst us really remembers — and understands — the depth of that depression, the key cause of which was “an expansion of the money supply in the 1920s that led to an unsustainable credit-driven boom.”

The factors noted by the Austrian School economists, primarily Friedrich Hayek (The Road to Serfdom) and Murray Rothbard (A History of Money and Banking in the United States), are present again today.  And the government is trying the same things it tried after the crash of 1929 that preceded the Great Depression.

But forget that for now.  If you’ve ever tried to balance a checkbook, or run a household, just think about this:  George W. Bush has spent years — almost eight of them — cutting taxes.  Forget also, for the moment, that those tax cuts have largely benefitted the rich, and not the rest of us — seriously, forget that part for now.  Just think of it this way: Bush has cut the “income” of the United States government.  At the same time, he started a war that costs billions per day to run.  Coupled with that, he and his friends have failed to regulate lenders, effectively removing the controls that kept the kids from dipping into the piggy bank whenever they ran low on cash.

How long would your household last before you lost everything, if you did the same things our government is doing?

Even now I can see Dick Cheney and Grover Norquist sitting in a bathtub, clinking glasses, toasting one another, while George Bush fiddles (read that however you want) in the background.

Suggested Reading

The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents–The Definitive Edition (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek)	A History of Money and Banking in the United States: The Colonial Era to World War II	Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age

Either the Washington Post is leaving out significant chunks of its stories, or there is no basis for making this comment. Imagine someone saying, “I’m sure there are patients who need diabetes medication, but it is not 10 percent of all 65-and-older adults.” (Hint: It’s actually 22 percent.)

The claim is that ADHD drugs can cause heart attacks. If true, maybe we do need some kind of warning on ADHD drugs. I don’t know. But what I do know is that 1) there is no basis for the statement Furbrain made and 2) given the choice of suffering from ADHD all your life, or possibly having a heart attack if you are treated with medications, a large number of people I know with ADHD would probably risk the heart attack. I know I would.

Even more interesting, though, is that the Washington Post article says nothing — yep, that’s right, nothing — about either the percentage, or the actual number, of people who will have heart attacks because of drugs like Ritalin. In fact, there’s no indication whatsoever in this article that anyone, particularly not any 10-year-old boys, has suffered a heart attack after taking ADHD drugs.

And while I don’t necessarily think pharmaceutical companies are bastions of honesty and openness, the makers of Ritalin are quoted in the article as stating that they “saw no more evidence of a higher rate of heart problems in people taking its drug.” Almost nine million prescriptions for another ADHD drug, Adderalll, were written last year; yet, again, there is no mention of the number of heart attacks, if any.

Instead, the article merely notes that the number of prescriptions for adults is on the rise.

Sometime after the mid-1930s, the number of people taking Prontosil — essentially the first “sulfa drug” to combat bacterial infections — began to rise dramatically. (I won’t say “number of prescriptions for adults began to rise,” because my recollection is that Prontosil didn’t require a prescription when it first came out, but I could be wrong.) Nevertheless, the number of people who survived bacterials infections after the invention of Prontosil was rather dramatic. Although there were possibly people who died from allergic reactions to the drug, or other side effects, the number of people who survived wound infections (or just armpit boils) was astronomical after the discovery of antibacterial drugs. (Okay, the armpit boil is cheating, because that was 1871, and a carbolic substance, rather than sulfa, was used. — it was still antibacterial and a new discovery which resulted in less people dying from “simple” things like armpit boils.)

Like I said, it may very well be that there is some scientific basis for requiring warning labels on ADHD drugs. My complaint here isn’t about that question per se.

What I’m complaining about is the state of reasoning today. Why in the world do we accept statements like “the number of prescriptions for X is on the rise” as proof that warning labels should be required for X?

The real problem is this: The number of government agencies recommending more control over the lives and choices of citizens is on the rise — I think we all political appointees should come with a warning: “May be hazardous to the exercise of rational thought.”

Or something.

These days, anything the police wish to do is not only justified, but considered a-ok, no problemo, what-the-hell-are-you-complaining-for?-we’re-just-trying-to-keep-everyone-safe. Anderson Cooper goes so far as to complain about stupid people (kids, in this case) who “waste time” by protesting the abuse of their civil rights.

In my job as a defense attorney, I’m having to file motions to obtain the most basic of my clients’ rights. People who have been arrested, apparently, no longer have them. Just because they were arrested. Forget preliminary examinations; forget trials; forget due process of law. Our nation no longer follows the rule of law. Instead, we have the rule of law enforcement. And anything goes.

Sheriff wants to put intercom systems into all interview rooms where attorneys meet with clients, so they can listen in at the flip of a switch? So what. It’s for “safety” purposes. Police want to invade parties because they see kids drinking from red cups? So what. “Safety” is the issue. Our President wants to invade countries that have not attacked the United States? So? Again, it’s safety.

Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad if safety actually mattered. But it doesn’t. “Safety” is the pretense that allows the State to do whatever it wants. The State may violate any law — it matters not that the laws may have been enacted hundreds of years ago to constrain the State.

No one, no law, no Constitution must stand in the way of “safety.”

People who don’t know me — which is to say “almost everyone” — are sometimes surprised to learn the variety of things in which I’m interested. When they learn, it’s usually, but not always, a positive event. I’m interested to see how this one is going to turn out.

Recently, I discovered Second Life.

Second Life is a “virtual word.” Virtual worlds are “places” that exist only virtually, in what is sometimes known as “cyberspace.”

I’m not going to talk right now about exactly what Second Life is, because I’m still learning. I’m only “a few days old” in Second Life. I’m having a blast so far. Ironically, it’s the unexpected learning experiences I’m having that are proving both the most interesting and the most exciting.

Back in the very-late 1980s to about the mid-1990s, I often played MUDs, or multi-user dimensional games. Although I know a lot more about MUDs than I do about Second Life, suffice it to say that there are a variety of types. Those that I frequented were usually more “game-based” or game-oriented than what I’ve seen in Second Life so far, but as with Second Life, they allowed “building” your own virtual places. However, it seems to me that Second Life is very much like how a lot of the MUDs in which I was involved turned out: although game-oriented, the folks who logged onto the system and played frequently ended up creating their own small social network of friends.

Not infrequently, these friendships came to be more important than the games. Some folks, including me, would log on to the system and play the games as a diversion while they awaited the arrival of their group of friends. Then they’d all wander off to a virtual bar, sit, drink and chat.

In that sense, both MUDs and, now, Second Life seem to me to be essentially hyped-up Internet Relay Chat (IRC) rooms. MUDs, like regular chat rooms, are text-oriented; but they include “room descriptions” and the text frequently includes descriptions of other people wandering in or out of the room, grabbing objects, ordering drinks, etc. In Second Life — which is built with “three-dimensional” graphical representations of people, places and things — this is, of course, more visually-oriented.

In the end, Second Life, because of the way it’s built, lends itself to greater emphasis on socialization — what I think of as the IRC aspect. (However, I understand that there are role-playing games in Second Life, as well; the only one I’ve actually seen parts of is Port Kar.)

At any rate, one of the side benefits of my past experience with MUDs is that I’m apparently adapting pretty quickly. I’ve had a few people even accuse me of “pretending” to be only four days old. They think my current “avatar” — or computer-representation of myself — is a hoax and that I’m really an experienced Second-Lifer with some kind of ulterior motive. It’s no hoax, of course, but I’m grateful that I don’t appear to be a total “noob” because the (mis)perception that I’m an experienced Second-Lifer allows me greater interaction with others, a bit more freedom and leads to a wider array of invitations from other, more experienced, Second-Lifers.

And with that, I’ll leave off this post — I’ve been told people don’t like reading these if they get too long. In my next post, I plan to talk a little bit more about the surprising learning experiences I alluded to above.

Until then, you might want to check out Second Life yourself.

I’m going to reiterate something I’ve said numerous times before, because it still amazes me that so many people just don’t get it: I don’t have any vested interest in this, really. I have no children. I will never have children. (Personally, I think most of you should stop popping out babies like so many virus-laden cells which cannot help but contribute to their own destruction, but that’s another blog entry.) If you ignore these things (e.g., what I’m going to mention below) and contribute to the destruction of the Earth, I couldn’t really give a crap, for the most part. To me, it’s mostly an intellectual or conceptual issue, a question of what would be the moral thing to do in an ideal world; I doubt even the increasing climate change can destroy the Earth fast enough for me to be very negatively impacted. Most people, on the other hand, have children. And I’d think they would love their children, too.

Apparently, most people don’t.

Even more surprisingly, they have no shame about that.

At any rate, the Earth has been around for so long that apparently that everyone just assumes it will be around tomorrow. And to some extent, that’s true. The question is, “What kind of Earth will be around tomorrow?” We know that there have been times in the past when the planet was not really habitable by human beings, or when continents had differing amounts of total mass above water than today. Do you really believe that it could never change? Sit for just a minute — hell, just do it for 30 seconds — do you really believe things could never change?

Drive down the freeway sometime and look at the side of the road. Notice all the garbage that collects there. Think about the fact that when someone threw that napkin out their window, they were probably thinking (if they thought about it at all): “Well, it’s just one napkin. How can that hurt?” And that’s how all the trash you see got there. (Even more incredible: think about the numbers of times you’ve seen road crews picking stuff up, and yet the freeways will still amaze you if you pay attention to the amount of trash there.)

This doesn’t just happen on the sides of freeways, folks. In the same way that little bits of paper — a cup tossed here, a can tossed there — add up to give you what you can see on the side of the freeway, so, too, do the pollutants given off by our cars, our trucks, our chimneys, and our power plants, to name just a few sources of pollution, accumulate in our air and water. Yet just as the trash along the side of the freeway doesn’t “register” with you unless you pay attention to it, so it is with the rest of pollution. And, yet there’s another way in which that pollution is like the stuff on the side of the road: If you actually stop to look and think about it, it will blow your mind.

Here in the San Joaquin Valley, how many of you have ever noticed that there are times of the year — mostly in the rainy seasons — when you can see the mountains? And yet there are other “perfectly clear” days in which you cannot. Why do you think that is?

It’s the gaseous pollutants in the air which haven’t yet been washed down to flavor our ground water.

These pollutants have a significant impact — much more than most of us realize — on climate. They heat up our cities by helping to create thermal inversions. And they do the same thing over glaciers, ice packs and other areas that normally keep significant amounts of water from flowing into the oceans.

Yet people like “christian” commentator James Dobson (who made millions of dollars pretending to care very much about your children) and Pat Robertson (who has made millions pretending to care about souls and whether or not they were “saved” by God even as Pat and his minions were praying for their death and destruction) argue that by caring about the planet, we are demonstrating “an underlying hatred for America.” (I guess they think Genesis 9:1-3 was only about consumption. Or maybe they figure since the whole earth is God’s — Exodus 19:5; 1 Samuel 2:8; 1 Chronicles 29:11 — he can take care of it. Or maybe they figure that our responsibilities — see Genesis 2:15 — ended on the day we became like Pat Robertson and James Dobson and were tossed from the Garden.)

Even the chance that [global warming] is a real issue should motivate each and every one of us to action. — Thomas Leppert, Chief Executive of Turner Construction, quoted in Andrew T. Gillies, “In The Eye Of The Global Warming Storm” (June 16, 2006) Forbes (alteration in the original).

The fact is, that no one can be said to have more of an underlying hatred for America, and every other place on the Earth, than those who would stand idly by and allow it to be destroyed.

And, leaving you with that thought, I return to my bar studies.

It’s just a shame you aren’t as intelligent as you are prolific.