The Way of the Dodo

I’m on a mission to call attention to the stupidity and cowardice and inadequacies of human beings as a whole.

Many people in the world make it part of their religion to tout the Glories of Humankind. Humankind, also stupidly called Man, as if the half that birthed and suckled it never existed, is supposed to be created in God’s image. We are supposed to be the Pinnacle of Creation. Our Superior Intelligence is presented as one proof of this alleged fact.

Yes, we are undeniably the most intelligent species on this planet, when we have had our coffee. But we humans also account for all the most grievous stupidity that inflicts Earth, and the total amount of stupid human behavior outweighs the total amount of actual intelligent human behavior by at least a factor of ten, in both the amount of behavior generated and in the consequences incurred.

If a creature is a genius one hour every day, but throughout the remainder of the day the same creature is so stupid it can’t figure out how to exist without persistently contributing significantly to the successful ongoing dismantling of the biosphere of a planet 40 million meters in circumference, then that creature is – in sum total -- dreadfully, pathetically, and laughably, stupid.

If we were created in God’s image, then God is stupider than the dodo. The dodo only managed to get itself extinct by being so stupid as to trust human beings. Humans are so stupid as to be utterly untrustworthy, even toward defenseless dodos. That’s stupider, and if it continues, humans will not only be as extinct as dodos already are, but they will have made of themselves much bigger jackasses in the course of becoming so, by taking down everybody else around them in the process except for an assortment of lucky germs and insects.

This rant is brought to you by a man typing in the morning of March 20, 2006, contemplating the third anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, a war which was never urgently necessary, whose “victory” is costing more than $80,000,000,000 a year, not counting deaths, anguish, and other mere secondary costs.

This rant also comes from a guy who regularly hears people in the local homeless service community, some of them exceptionally intelligent people, when they have had their coffee, say that we need to practice “triage” to solve homelessness in King County and the rest of the country.

French wool traders used “triage” to mean “choose” or “select.” Napoleon’s surgeon used it in a medical context to describe the systematic prioritization of battle wounded for medical care, under emergency conditions, when there is a shortage of medical resources, in the form of personnel, supplies, space, or time.

Where is the shortage of resources to solve homelessness, in the form of personnel, supplies, space, or time, in a country that can afford an Iraq War at more than $80,000,000,000 a year for three or for ten years, or however long it may take, whenever it feels itself in the freaking mood?

The ridiculousness of the situation we find ourselves in was brought home to me yesterday afternoon. I was waiting for a bus in front of the King County Courthouse. As the bus approached, a young man walked across the street to my side, slowly, and steadily, directly in the path of the oncoming bus, deliberately forcing the driver to brake for him 40 feet before the stop, endangering the safety of the passengers on board.

The man got on the bus, and the driver asked him why he had walked in front of her bus. His defiant answer was, “I have a Purple Heart”.

That pretty much summed up the stupidity of the situation we’re in. Question: Why are we squandering our nation’s resources in Iraq? Answer: 9-11. It’s our country’s collective Purple Heart, and in our collective stupidity, it justifies any and all cowardly recklessness.

We are thus so much a part of Humanity.

111 Cardboard Alley, Kissmahoochee, FL

Let’s talk about how stupid people can be!

I’ll start. I can be so stupid, that I could suppose the First Amendment would entitle a teenager to make an anti-Bush poster.

The Progressive reports that the Secret Service swooped down on a highschooler and his school, seized an anti-Bush poster the kid made, and interrogated him and the teacher who gave the Bill of Rights assignment the poster was created for.

The poster showed a photo of George Bush affixed to a wall by a threatening red thumbtack through the forehead area. Red! It also showed the kid making a thumb’s down sign. As we all know the thumb’s down sign today still means “slay the vanquished gladiator” just exactly as it did more than one and a half millennia ago. So Ebert and Roeper have killed hundreds of directors, and both collect “trophy ears” to show off at parties.

Thank you, Selective Service, for straightening me out on that!

Next, how about those Lynnwood police officers that say they were just doing their jobs when they let prostitutes go ahead and service them before arresting them.

I don’t recall the last time a police officer anywhere let a criminal shoot him so as to strengthen a case against him. But maybe the Lynnwood police should also consider that approach.

While I’m at it, I can’t help but note that the Seattle Times story by Jennifer Sullivan and Christopher Schwarzen had this to say: “The Seattle Times is not naming the officers because they work undercover.” Ha!

Let’s move right along and across the country. Not that there isn’t plenty of stupidity around here. Just to stretch our legs.

The Florida State Department of Corrections, or the FSDC, as I’ll call them, had a bad man in their custody, who had been convicted of attempted rape. As bad as he was, he had served seven years and he was due to be released on probation. Before that, neither he nor the FSDC could get him housing, because nobody in Florida wants to house a convicted sex-offender. Since, by law, while the offender is on probation he must report his address, and since he wouldn’t have a regular address to report, the FSDC figured they could just save some trouble and re-arrest the man for probation violation before even releasing him.

Here is how stupid the Florida State Department of Corrections is: not only did they need a judge to tell them they can’t arrest people for being homeless even before they are, they also may need another judge to tell them that, because they’re planning an appeal!

As the judge pointed out, the guy could report his address as being under a specific piece of cardboard, if that’s all the housing Florida can make available for him.

Finally we leave this country altogether to note the story that really got me started on this batch of rants. This is the Mother of All Stupidity Stories, in which the Israeli Supreme Court had to inform the Israeli Army that it was not OK to use Palestinians as human shields.

How stupid has the Israeli Army been? Well, the Israeli Army was already in 2002 told by the Israeli Supreme Court not to force people to be human shields. So it instituted a policy whereby only “volunteer” human shields will be used.

It took another trip to the Israeli Supreme Court for the Israeli Army to be introduced to the difficult concept that when a civilian member of a hated group is “asked” by angry shouting men carrying automatic weapons, hand grenades, and pistols, to willingly “volunteer” to pick objects up to see if they are booby-trapped, nothing that civilian does or says can be considered voluntary.

One member of the Knesset said the court had ruled, "an army in a democratic state cannot act like terror gangs.” To learn this they need a court?

Outrage Fatigue

Oh no! I was about to write this column on my latest righteous outrage du jour, when suddenly to my horror I didn't have one. Should my meds be adjusted again? Have I become laid-back now, according to the principle that everyone becomes the person their friends tell them they are, no matter how wrong their friends' perceptions were originally?

I've never been laid-back. I've always been a seething pool of anger and fury. OK I kept a lid on me, pool that I was, in order to prevent unacceptable actions like land reclamation and inappropriate commercial development of human pools. Boy, this metaphor sucks.

So anyway, like I say, I'm a pool of anger, fury, etc. And I thought I had some outrage to dish up this week. I went so far as to mark my territory (another sucky metaphor!) by warning Anitra "Op Ed Mama" Freeman off the topics of my outrage. "Don't talk about the news about the Pentagon Channel," I said, "because I'll want to rant about that." "Don't talk about the Senate Nuclear Option," I said, "because that really has my panties in a bunch."

But now deadline approaches, and here I am. Though poised to rant, I am rantless. I am like the roarless lion, the croakless frog, the yell-less sixth-grader. I am also lacking even one decent metaphor.

Well, here's the deal, anyway. You know how the government lies to you all the time? They've been lying to our troops since the Napoleonic Wars, but now the Pentagon is institutionalizing it's process of lying by going forward with plans to bring the "Pentagon Channel" to the widest civilian audience possible on cable and satellite dish outlets. They will be providing national and international political news and analysis as well as the expected in-house military news.

An example of Pentagon editorializing-by-headline, from their 24-hour streaming website (www.pentagonchannel.mil): "Taking its cues from President George Bush, the international community is now standing up to Syria demanding the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon." Yes, the international community is just helpless without cues from George. What will they ever do when they lose his manly leadership?

So, terrific, we have the beginnings of our very own US equivalent of Pravda. Why aren't I up in arms about it? Am I losing my touch? Is this that male menopause they're always talking about?

When I first heard about the Senate Nuclear Option I went nuclear. I paced back and forth in my hovel punching the air with my fists. How dare Bill Frist even suggest such a thing, I thought. The thing he suggested was that Cheney, as President of the Senate, outlaw Senate filibusters by fiat, at least for the debate of judicial nominees.

Part of my outrage was at the way some are distorting history of the filibuster. The Senate had UNLIMITED debate before the rule on filibusters was initially established in 1917. The "filibuster rule", currently requiring a 3/5-ths vote to close debate, was actually an improvement on a tradition, since 1806, of no closure without unanimity. Would Frist like to return to those good old days?

But, hey, I don't love the filibuster. I remember how it was used to delay civil rights legislation for years. So the real outrage is about the timing. Under Clinton the Republicans didn't need the filibuster; they blocked Clinton's nominees by refusing to allow the nominees names to go to the floor.

Now it's all the power the Democrats have left. So this is the time the Republicans decide they want to do away with a 199-year tradition, so that a Republican administration can install judges into the federal courts that anyone even slightly to the left of Mussolini or Bill O'Reilly would regard as extremists.

How pathetic is that? How can anyone stay angry at such pathetic behavior? I can only feel revulsion.

Squawking the Squawk

Lately we have been musing much upon the distinction between the rant and the rage.

Well actually, I just lied right off the bat in my first sentence there, since one muse doesn't amount to much "much", and really what I've been doing is ranting. But "much" is such a nice monosyllable, how can I resist it?

Then again, hey, if I muse at all, that interrupts the flow of my rants, so it's a big deal, right? Maybe that was a lot of musing after all. Yeah, that's it. I mused once. For 30 seconds I stopped yelling at the insane idiots presented to me in all their glory by CNN. So now I'm a regular philosopher. Pretty soon I'm going to be so thoughtful, I'm going to read a book. I'll show those idiots what "much" can mean.

"So, Dr. Wes, you say you mused. What, pray tell, was the content of your musing?" -- you might now be asking, if you were someone who talked like that.

Here's what I think is the difference. Let's say an idiot says something idiotic on the television. Subsequently throwing my shoe through the screen at the electronic image of Tucker Carlson, a right-wing CNN opinionator, would definitely be indicative of a rage. Merely uttering long strings of verbiage suggesting that Tucker Carlson had to be raised by whores because his real mother wasn't house-trained, or suggesting that Tucker was named for an alarming personal habit he developed when he was two and still hasn't kicked, or suggesting that Tucker Carlson "sleeps" with a ventriloquism puppet called "Sleeper" Carlson -- none of that would necessarily indicate rage (unless, of course, it was mean-spirited.) But it would definitely be a rant, because it would consist of words coming out of my mouth. OK, that wasn't a good example.

Let me illustrate it another way. Let's say I were a Vietnam War Vet, which I'm not, and suppose that some other Vietnam Vet in 1971 said some things that I interpreted as casting aspersions on me and still other fellow Vietnam Vets as yet undetermined. Were I to say that what that guy said in 1971 was a crock (which it wasn't actually, when you hear it all in context, but I'm being hypothetical here) and therefore he is now and will forever be a poopy-head, that would be me ranting. But if I were instead to insist that John Kerry didn't deserve his Purple Hearts and that he somehow committed fraud to get them, that could very well be slander and I might very well be accused of rage.

Rage is when I think I've been hurt, so I try to hurt back. Rant is when I'm just mouthing off. Or to put it another way, rage is when you do it; rant is when I do it.

No, just kidding there. It's possible to be a little objective about it. Take for example Bob Dole's incredible idea that Kerry didn't deserve his Purple Hearts because he wasn't wounded enough.

We all know that Bob Dole was wounded enough. But we also know that you don't have to lose the use of an arm to get a Purple Heart. Bob Dole knows that. Bob Dole also knows that if he has a problem with the Navy's policy concerning who gets Purple Hearts, he's a very powerful man and he can take it up with the Navy. But Bob Dole isn't interested in the Navy's policy. He thinks he's been personally slighted and so Kerry has to pay for it. Bob needs to SUCK IT UP.

See? That was a rant. No one got hurt, the dog doesn't have a broken leg, there's no food on the floor or the walls, and nobody is on their hands and knees picking pieces of prized Japanese earthenware out of the carpet.

Now let's contrast that with what's going to happen if George Bush continues to insist that there is no way he can lose the upcoming election. I am going to start hurting deep down in that place I hate to go, that Floridian-Harris-chad place. I am going to start saying, "Oh yeah, and how would you know, Mr. Bush, would it be because the election is already fixed?"

Somebody better hide the tea set.

There's Always One In Every Decision

RANT ALERT!

The good news: a panel of the 2nd US Court of Appeals finally, FINALLY, told the Bush administration that simply declaring someone an "enemy combatant" did not provide them with an excuse to deny that person a lawyer or rights to a trial. The bad news: it isn't over.

Jose Padilla, a US citizen, was arrested in Chicago in May 2002 and has been held in a navy brig in South Carolina for a year and a half. He hasn't been allowed to see his lawyers. Although the government has said that Padilla was involved in a dirty bomb terrorist plot he hasn't been charged with a crime in any court of law. The view of the government is that they didn't even have to say what he was supposed to be guilty of, it was enough for them to declare that Mr. Padilla was an "enemy combatant" to detain him in the brig FOR LIFE in ISOLATION if they wanted to do so.

Bush's people still think that's the way it should work and will probably appeal. They are no doubt encouraged by the fact that one member of the 3 judge panel actually sided with them. The idea of the dissenting opinion was that the president needs the power to detain people who may be a threat to the public.

Let's reflect on that dissenting opinion to get a clear idea in our own minds as to what a screaming imbecile that one lame judge is.

The man has been detained for one and a half years. The immediate threat is over. HE'S IN THE BRIG. He's detained already. The issue isn't the detention. His arrest was proper. The issue is, once you've got him, YOU STILL HAVE TO LET HIM SEE A LAWYER AND TRY HIM AND LET HIM GO IF HE TURNS OUT TO BE INNOCENT.

And oh yes, the Bush Administration has had A YEAR AND A HALF to do that. Did I make that clear enough? A friggin YEAR AND A HALF.

Here is a personal note for that one lame judge: * Guess what? I think you're a threat to the American people. Good thing I'm not the president or I might declare your ass enemy combatant material and put you in isolation for, oh I don't know, how about for YEAR AND A HALF?! * -- Ha, ha, just kidding -- Dr. Wes.

Speaking of South Carolina, that was where police stormed a school recently and searched a hundred students for illegal drugs, some of them at gunpoint, because their principal thought it would be swell. What we have here is another threat to the American people. There are getting to be too many of these.

I don't expect the police to know or understand the constitution. That would be dreaming. But is it asking too much for a school principal to have read it with comprehension?

What part of the Fourth Amendment does that principal not grasp, I wonder? Was it the part about "the right of the people to be secure… against unreasonable searches?" Was he not aware that minors also constitute people? Was it the part about how search warrants were required to be specific? How specific is searching every kid in a school hallway whether they have done anything suspicious or not just because a crime may or may not have at one time occurred in that hallway days or weeks earlier by completely different people?

Here's another one, folks. Say you're on vacation in Guadalajara, Mexico, and our government, or some imbecile in it, decides they want to incarcerate you for life without charges or a hearing. Here's how they could do that. They would seize you in Mexico without clearance from the Mexican authorities. Then, they would take you to Guantanamo Base ("Gitmo") and imprison you with all the Taliban, as an "enemy combatant" (It doesn't matter if you are or not, they don't have to prove that part. They just have to declare it.)

Gitmo, a secure US military enclave, isn't really America, so all that constitution BS doesn't apply. -- that's the essence of our government's actual legal position as they fight for that power to the Supreme Court. What a crock.