David Brooks Fails Willful Stupidity Test

Yesterday David Brooks published a column in which he questioned President Obama's ability to stand by (stubbornly) a decision to fight on in Afghanistan. Nowhere in the article does Brooks mention that our generals agree that this struggle will take another ten years, which adds up to an 18 year war to control a mountainous desert of no value to anyone. And climate change is not going to make Afghanistan more habitable.

Afghanistan has never been conquered because the place is useless and almost no one wants to live there. It's like the old daoist maxim: the useless tree lives the longest. No one wants its wood or fruit. It doesn't repay cutting down.

Obama probably understands that ten more years of war there (and another 50,000 American casualties) makes no sense, but can he block the massive current momentum and the self-willed stupidity represented by an otherwise B student like David Brooks?

Afghanistan, Mexico or Canada?

Somewhere recently I read an article in which the author wrote that if our goal is to build a sound democratic nation, gain access to oil reserves, fight narco-terrorists and free women from an extremely dominating male culture, we should pull out of Afghanistan and invade Mexico. I see a problem with that: global warming. Leaving Afghanistan is a good idea--in decades to come the deserts of the Middle East will likely be uninhabitable and no Israeli or Palestinian will want to live there. But invade Mexico? How bad will the climate be in Mexico? Meanwhile the San Joaquin Valley, the vegetable garden of the USA, is already drying up. Obviously we need to invade and annex Canada, where they have plenty of oil, a balmy climate (in the decades to come) and the Okanagan to grow our grapes. Also they have single payer health care. We'll need to adjust to people saying things like "hoser" and ending sentences with "eh?" but that's a small price to pay given the superb Chinese food available Richmond. (If you've never eaten Chinese food in Richmond, make it a point to visit.)

Willful Stupidity

The most powerful determinant of human destiny is stupidity, someone said, meaning willful stupidity. He was teaching one of those newfangled courses in stupidity at a university down south--I forget which one. When I heard about our destiny I immediately sent away for a book on stupidity, and it should come soon. Meanwhile I'm on my own.

Let's look at one issue. On a scale of 1 to 10, Mexicans give the problem of climate change a rank of 9. Citizens of the United States give it a rank of 4.7. That's willful stupidity. For example, take Senator James Inhofe (please) who announced that global warming had ended when a snowstorm hit Oklahoma: "You know God's still up there. We're now going through a cooling spell."

I don't believe that Inhofe is that stupid naturally. His kind of stupidity is an act of will. He prefers to believe that we will be saved by a very large Person up in the sky. Inhofe himself need do nothing.

Inhofe also believes that the world's scientists have joined the liberals in a conspiracy of enormous size in order to do something bad, although what that bad thing might be remains hidden.

I have figured out what it is Inhofe should fear, although I have to give most of the credit to Steven Stoll in the latest HARPER'S. Stoll's theory is that the Little Ice Age that began about 1350 was caused by the partial disappearance of humans from the planet, brought on by the black plague. So much human activity ceased that the planet cooled off.

Stoll points out that global warming by humans began 8,000 years ago.

There are no good estimates yet about how many people will die in the coming climate wobble, but it may be as much as several billion. That's Mother Nature's way of cooling Oklahoma.

One result of the Little Ice Age was, after centuries of acute human pain, a massive shift occurred in the value of the ordinary worker--workers became scarce. The old social order crumbled. Forests sprouted around vacant homes. The surviving serfs demanded and won freedoms.

I don't suppose the specific changes were inevitable, but in this instance, centuries of economic catastrophe yielded the Renaissance, a social revolution. That's what Inhofe fears, a revolution that alters the system, perhaps ending the monopoly capitalism he serves, but he's too willfully stupid to help head off climate change. He's joined in this willed stupidity--to a lesser degree--by world leaders in general. We do know how to stop climate change, but China, the United States, India and the Palestinians aren't doing it. Too bad.

Gary Goss

Victim vs. Volunteer

About a month ago I overheard some conspiracy theorists complaining that people mocked them. This brought to mind Christine Lavin's old song "Victim/Volunteer." Lavin is better known for writing and singing the funniest song of the 20th century, "Sensitive New Age Guys," but "Victim/Volunteer" has its own profundity. (You can find Lavin's songs on Amazon.com.)

The basic idea is that if you date only people who treat you badly, you aren't a victim of unpleasant people, you're a volunteer. And so on. If you go about claiming that FDR aided the Japanese attack on our fleet at Pearl Harbor or that Clinton murdered Vince Foster or that Obama was born in Kenya or that George W. Bush ordered the destruction of the Twin Towers, you are volunteering for ridicule. You aren't a victim.

It's easy for those of us on the Left to see the damage done to conservative credibility when conservatives pretend that it is sensible for their fringe groups to inquire again and again into Obama's birthplace. The credibility of the Left becomes equally suspect when people like me are silent about our own subculture of fringe ideas. Serious people on the Left have issues they would like the Middle to consider. Credibility is central to the discussion.

The Press Democrat Publishes Something Stupid

This morning's paper has a letter in it from Bill Konrad of Healdsburg in which he asks "what part of the 63,000 residents (of Sonoma County) with no access to health care are legal citizens."

I know that my sister, who died in February, descended from two families that came to America before the Revolution. She died from skin cancer because she could not afford an annual checkup. That reduces Konrad's number to 62,999.

My hope is that people who deny health care to the poor will rot in Hell.