Tom Ridge and the Terror Alert of Doom

I have always tried to avoid the worst of anti-Bush hysteria, mainly because I thought well-intentioned, ideologically-driven incompetence was a much better explanation for what went on during that administration than cackling Evil Villainery. Besides, I've always thought that ranting on about the evilness of the principals and their imagined acts distracted from the evilness of the things they actually did do, which were no less evil just because they were motivated by negligence and stupidity. Banality of evil and all that.

And now we have this.

I never put any stock in the idea that anyone in the Bush administration would actually purposefully manipulate this country's national security apparatus to win an election, both because I discounted the whole cackling hand-rubbing image, and because while I knew they were dumb, I never thought anyone could be that dumb.

Well, almost no one.

As is the usual way of these things, we're hearing about it third or fourth hand from the second cousin of someone who read a draft of a book that looks an awful lot like a grindstone, by someone who has plenty of axes lined up and ready to go. So I don't think we can say what really happened yet.

For example:

"[Ridge says he was] pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush's re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over."

Key phrase there, and you don't know what to make of it until you read the book. Suffice to say we don't have all the facts yet.

Also,

"We went over backwards repeatedly and with great discipline to make sure politics did not influence any national security and homeland security decisions," -- former WH CoS Andy Card

Which I buy, actually.

But that doesn't mean it didn't happen anyway. That's the kind of thing Cheney's office would have done just because someone told them not to.

"Of course we'll hit our own troops. But appearances must be maintained. Fire at will."

Still, grain of salt firmly in place, I'm tempted to give Ridge the benefit of the doubt. He always struck me as a good guy stuck with one of the most poorly-thought-out job descriptions in all of Washington, and that's saying something.

"Could you take responsibility for the security of the entire nation without any real authority? Knew you could. 'Preesh."

So I buy it, at least on the face of it. All that remains is to see who said what when, and exactly how bad it really was.

This never-ending stream of revelations about the Bush administration, each one confirming that not only as bad as we thought, but it was actually worse, does nothing to shake my faith in humanity. I didn't have that much to begin with. Humanity is capable of far worse; despite what some lulubirds shriek, we've never even scratched the surface of the Nazi or Stalinist kind of evil. But it has shaken my faith in this country. That we could have ever let things get so bad, that we're so slow to face what actually happened, and that we'll probably never hold anyone truly accountable... at least the Constitution held, and we changed governments. But it took so little for us to get scared out of our most basic principles, and to betray our better natures as a people.

-- The Prolix Wag
My faith in myself, of course, remains profoundly unshaken.

PLEASE READ

Hi folks.

As some of you may know, I have been using Google AdSense on my blog. Many of you have been very supportive in your willingness to visit the sponsors AdSense has presented to you on my blog.

Some of you, unfortunately, have been a little too supportive.

Google AdSense has disabled my account for "Invalid Activity". While they are (understandably) unwilling to reveal what that means, exactly, I'm pretty sure it involves some of my more supportive fans clicking repeatedly on ads.

Please don't do that.

While I encourage you to visit the (oh-so-generous) sponsors on my blog, simply clicking at random because you love me, understandable as it may be, does no one any good.

I'll let you know as soon as I do whether AdSense renews my account. If they don't, I'll probably be forced to move to another site. I'll keep you apprised.

Thanks for your support, everyone.

-- The Prolix Wag
Commerce is a harsh mistress.

If the Unexamined Life Isn't Worth Living, Why Are So Many People Living It?

As I noted in "Stupid Liberals, Evil Conservatives", political belief is often received knowledge, a culture built around a shared set of beliefs, with more emphasis on the shared part than the beliefs part. Maintaining political orthodoxy has become so integral a part of political identity in this country (thanks, two-party system!), we're surprised when someone breaks ranks. We're downright shocked if they're doing it because of what they actually believe instead of for the sake of political expediency.

Enter Ted Olson.

Go read the article. If you don't have a free account with the NYT already, shame on you and go get one. I'll wait.

A couple quotes of note from the article before we dive in:

"...during the Reagan administration, when Mr. Olson was asked if the Justice Department could dismiss a prosecutor for being gay, he wrote that it was “improper to deny employment or to terminate anyone on the basis of sexual conduct. In 1984, Mr. Olson returned to private practice and was succeeded by Mr. Cooper, his adversary in the marriage case. The switch eliminated 'what was seen as a certain libertarian squishiness at the Office of Legal Counsel under Ted,' Mr. Calabresi said."

Libertarian squishiness. Libertarian squishiness. That's right. If you have an internally consistent set of political beliefs and you stand by them in the face of political pressure, you're squishy, because you agree with the opposition. This, ladies and gentlemen, is why orthodoxy is not a thinking man's art.

"Mr. Cooper asserts that Mr. Olson is stretching the scope of the Lawrence decision, pointing out that it dealt with the criminalization of private sexual behavior, not a state’s duty to recognize a marriage. But Mr. Olson notes that no less a conservative than Justice Antonin Scalia argued in a blistering dissent that the majority in Lawrence had indeed opened the door to same-sex marriage. "

This is why I fucking love lawyers. Also, I have a newfound affection for Scalia.

"Furthermore, the Court's ruling in Ambler v. Whipple all but guarantees that I shall be forced by stare decisis to lower the disco ball and perform my famed Gloria Gaynor impersonation at the beginning of each session. I find this deeply distressing."

"Since then, he and Mr. Cooper have been filing dueling briefs. "

*snort* He said "dueling briefs". Gaaaaaaaaay...

It could also mean "undergarments to be worn during a duel". This is just how my mind works.

I don't know about you, but I find this article incredibly inspiring.

It's not so much that Mr. Olson has "seen the light" on gay marriage that I find cause to celebrate. It's the fact that he didn't need to "see the light" at all. Here's someone who is intelligent enough to understand the underpinnings of his own political beliefs, and has enough intellectual integrity to follow them through to their logical conclusion, AND isn't a whackadoo about it. What I think about his take on gay marriage is pretty much irrelevant; I respect this man for the depth of his thinking and the integrity of the way he lives.

I find the line between having a consistent ideology and being an ideologue fascinating, mostly because so few people ever tread it successfully. Usually, political beliefs are determined by your party, which is a mish-mashed coalition of sometimes mutually exclusive interests that a lot of people don't want to examine too closely. To take just two examples:

The Right
Government should stay out of our lives
UNLESS
It involves people having sex in a way I think is icky.

The Left
Government should stay out of our lives
UNLESS
It involves guns.

There are exceptions to this kind of schizophrenic political thinking, but they tend to be of the proves-the-rule variety.

*cough*

How many of us would be willing to follow our political and personal philosophies to conclusions we didn't like?

I don't have this problem, what with the being always right and all, but sometimes I wonder how the little people live.

-- The Prolix Wag
Why does everyone assume that just because I'm elite, that makes me an elitist?

D&D Will Eat Your Children

Sweet Jesus, here we go again.

And in Cedar City, no less. The city where I spent three lovely summers Shakespearifying and Dungeon Mastering. Hell, the year after that I was flown in for the express purpose of running a D&D game. And making out with my girlfriend at the time. Who I suspect was in it mainly for the D&D anyway.

We'll start with Penny Arcade's take, because it's brilliant:

It got me thinking about D&D's storied history of causing insanity in people who never actually play it. Although the game-blame isn't nearly as blatant and hysterical as its been in the past, there's something in the reporting that makes one's head twitch to the left in quizzical annoyance:

"Testimony Monday suggested a motive for the attacks may have grown from the trio playing the fantasy role-playing game "Dungeons and Dragons" and jealousy over a girl who King and Bryson knew."

It just doesn't scan right if you substitute "the live-action sports game 'football'". One could have a disagreement/motive for manslaughter that started over a game of football, started at a game of football, maybe even was a direct result of events that took place during a game of football, but "the motive for the attacks may have grown from the trio playing football"? Not so much.

Setting aside the fact that they chose gaming as the lead over the girl -- and as any fool knows, the hoohah is much stronger than the dice -- there's a nasty little insinuation there about the origin of the hammer-beating motive.

Combining the power of the hoohah with the power of the dice, of course, is the most powerful force in the universe.

Because to imply that a game like football might have directly caused someone to beat someone else with a hammer by its very existence and intrinsic nature would be ridiculous, right?

But you can do that with D&D. Still. I honestly thought we were past this. Well, I thought we should be past it. I guess there's a reason I felt it necessary to address the stupidity of the James Dallas Egbert Steam Tunnel Incident in my play Of Dice and Men. In my heart of hearts, I knew there was more educating to do. People still want scapegoats. And my chosen hobby is just weird enough to be a perennial favorite.

All while this bastard still walks the streets, free as a bird.

-- The Prolix Wag
Marcie, get out of here. YOU'RE DEAD! You don't exist any more.

Paging Dr. Mario

There's a fascinating piece in the Washington Post today about the possible therapeutic uses for video and computer games.

As I have alluded to previously, this doesn't really come as much of a surprise to me.

Looking back, I've been using computer games (and, to a lesser extent, arcade games and consoles) to manage my mood going back at least as far as college, and probably longer. When my high school sweetheart broke my tender young heart Freshman year, I sought some solace by sobbing dramatically in front of friends and classmates, but also by spending some time in the arcade at the Student Union. Far more serious chunks of time than I might spend otherwise... and given how hard I used to hit the Tekken machine, that's saying something.

Just as with any other artistic medium, gaming can lead you to a host of different emotional states, but there are some that are more common and consistent:

There's the heart-pounding, adrenaline-pumping Jesus-Christ-shoot-all-the-zombies kind of excitement.

There's creeping, Jesus-Christ-I-just-know-there's-a-zombie-behind-that-door-and-I-only-have-three-bullets-left dread.

There's the sudden shock of abject JESUSCHRISTITSAZOMBIEBLAMBLAMBLAM terror.

There's the pleasant panic of the Jesus-Christ-how-can-I-make-a-stack-of-blue-zombies-when-all-it-gives-me-are-red-ones variety.

There's the addictive sweetness of Jesus-Christ-my-zombie-just-leveled!

Occasionally, there's even the jaw-dropping emotional pang of the Jesus-Christ-my-SISTER-is-the-zombie?-type plot twist.

This extended metaphor has been brought to you by Zombie Kitty, and the fact that video games have a crapload of zombies in them.

There's also the Zen-like no-thought state the Washington Post article above refers to; where you're balanced right on the edge of being challenged just enough but not too much, so that your mind is occupied but you don't have to think. It's a pleasant absence of thought and feeling that you can access most easily with varied-repetitive-action games like Tetris or Bejeweled, but that you can get from almost any genre if the game is good and you're good enough at it. Your mind and self slip away... it's actually quite a bit like a meditative state.

Which makes it a highly desirable way to be if you don't want to think or feel. Which, if you're depressed, you often don't.

This is not to say that it addresses any of the underlying causes of an imbalanced mood, but it gives you time, which is all you need if you're furious and need to calm down, or need to get over that high school sweetheart without crying in public so much, or are thinking about killing yourself and your doc won't pick up the phone until the morning.

People have used emotionally-numbing pharmaceuticals and activities like this for centuries, the most obvious example probably being booze. Video games have the benefit of not destroying your liver, and not being physically addictive.

Although, as my parents can attest, psychological addiction is another matter entirely.

This is not to say that the way I've used games has always been healthy - far from it - and I certainly have taken some long-term physical damage in terms of my carpal tunnel issues. But compared to booze or coke or even sex, gaming looks pretty good as a way to self-medicate. Which we all need from time to time.

I'll be interested to see what the medical community does with it, especially as our understanding of the way the brain works gets deeper and more specific. Who knows? Maybe someday, someone will hand you a prescription that says Take 2 Hours of Dawn of War 5 and Call Me In the Morning.

And what a sweet day that'll be. Talk about not needing a spoonful of sugar...

-- The Prolix Wag
Jesus-Christ-IS-a-Zombie!!!

AAAAAAH!!!

Phrases That Need to Be Retired: "All Natural"

Today The Wag tackles one of the dumbest phrases of all time, "All Natural".

Hippies and Takoma Park residents with fragile constitutions may want to avert their eyes.

Actually, on second thought, stick around. You probably need this more than anyone. Your fragile constitutions are no doubt due to a lack of preservatives in your diet.

The phrase "All Natural" is meaningless on two levels, one philosophical, and the other practical. Let's start with the philosophical one:

There's no such thing as "natural".

Or, rather, there's no such thing as "not natural", which makes it a meaningless distinction.

Webster's relevant definition of "nature" is: "the external world in its entirety", which is to say, "everything but you". The only things that are not in "nature" and are therefore "natural" are:

a) You.

b) Stuff that doesn't exist.

We call anything in the "b" category "supernatural", which is another way of saying "pretend".

Therefore, to say that something is "all-natural" is to say that it exists entirely. Since I've never seen anything that only existed a little bit, that's a really dumb thing to say.

But let's say we take the more common usage of the word, that is to say "that which was not made by a human being from component parts", or "that which is not synthetic".

There's a problem with this, of course, in that synthesizing things is what humans do. Naturally. Plenty of other animals do it to, of course. Chimps fashion tools to get at termites and to brain each other with. Elephants do crazy-cool things with bark. Bower birds... make bowers.

Rare picture of the rapacious Bower Bird making nature his bitch.

We are, of course, better at it, by an order of magnitude or six. So we can make a distinction there, but it's really more quantitative than qualitative. We change our environment - and ourselves - because doing so has been very good to us in evolutionary terms. Put a human in any natural environment, and he'll start making tools and building stuff. Naturally. So in that sense, anything that human beings make is natural. Which leaves us with a meaningless distinction again.

But let's set philosophy aside, and go with the commonly accepted notion of what "natural" means, because what the heck, I'm feeling generous. We're still left with a practical issue, which is that the connotative definition of "natural" is jut flat-out wrong. This is because we usually equate "natural" with "good".

Which it most decidedly is not.

A couple brief lists:

Stuff That Is Natural

Hurricanes
Typhoid
Mental Illness
Pooping in the Woods
Deadly Nightshade
Big Things With Claws That Eat You, Like Bears
Dying In Childbirth
Dying From A Minor, But Infected, Laceration
Dying a Lot More Than We Generally Do Today
Being Very, Very Bored

Stuff That Is Not Natural

Houses
Vaccines
Wellbutrin
Indoor Plumbing
Not Eating Poisonous Flowers
Not Having To Live In The Woods With Big Things With Claws That Eat You, Like Bears
Cesarian Sections. Also, Pain Meds
Neosporin
Retirement Homes
Mad Men

Look, I understand the value of respecting and learning from complex natural systems, but there's nothing more inherently moral about that which is "natural". Sure, we screw up the synthetic all the time, but I'll take it over rampant dysentery any day of the week.

Of course, despite all this, people slap the "all-natural" label on just about anything. Because people keep buying it.

Don't believe me? Do a Google search for "all natural salt". Then marvel at the fact that you come up with ANY GODDAMN RESULTS AT ALL, never mind the twelve million or so I got.

Here's what all-natural salt looks like:


Now here's evil, corporate-controlled, genetically modified salt looks like:


Here's pure salt:


And here's plain old salt:


Notice anything? Oh, yeah: they're all exactly the same. BECAUSE IT'S ALL SALT. It's sodium chloride, maybe with a little dirt thrown in. You cannot improve on it. There is no way in which you can make salt fundamentally saltier. SALT DOES NOT CARE IF IT WAS GROWN ORGANICALLY.

Okay, you can make it Kosher by leaving the iodide out. But then you've still got the sodium ferrocyanide. And if you take THAT out, you're missing out on valuable, all-natural iodide and sodium ferrocyanide.

Now Google "all natural water" and take a gander at the hundred and twenty-six million results you get.

Don't worry. I'll still be here when you get done banging your head against the keyboard.

-- The Prolix Wag
If anyone manages to find an All-Supernatural breakfast cereal, I'm there with bells on.

Linky Linky Sunday: Dungeon Majesty Edition

Video You Must Watch

Remember my whole Ultimate Bachelor Party Fantasy? Yeah. Well, somebody did it. On public access:



Girls In Bikinis Reading Lines From Star Wars. The Internet: Making your fondest, strangest dreams come true since 1991.



Four words: Julianne Moore as Scarlett. That is all.

The Ballad of G.I. Joe from Olivia Wilde

Thanks to Topless Robot for those three.

And now, Phil Hartman's original SNL audition tape:



How to Epic Fail a kid's gameshow:



And a cute hedgehog, eating:



Links You Must Click

I humbly present to you the greatest FAQ since Topless Robot's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen FAQ: Topless Robot's GI Joe: Rise of Cobra FAQ.

Barack Obama, naked, with a magic unicorn.

"It is anticipated that his internship will be ending."

-- The Prolix Wag
I would've totally done the Dungeon Majesty thing first... I just can't pull off a cloak like that.