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![]() Just Above Sunset
March 28, 2004 - The Meme of the Month
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If Descartes were alive today these neoconservative guys would kick that evil French fellow in the shins and beat the snot out of him, in moral outrage, or just for the fun of it. ___________________ In the magazine last Sunday
I had that item on logic - The Limitations of Empiricism in Politics with the subheading “Try this
little investigation of how the need of those in power to maintain their power trumps this empiricism business.” That’s here. The second example was
what if someone has financial facts that would mean you’d lose the vote because the damned Medicare bill is too expensive? Let that someone know if any member of congress asks him for the numbers, and he tells
them the truth, he’ll get fired. The third example, the
EPA one, was what if the proposed regulation of something toxic might cost your political contributors a bundle? Make sure the science isn’t done – forbid any studies on the matter. All this happened with the current administration. A meme is an idea that is passed on from one human generation to another.
It's the cultural equivalent of a gene, the basic element of biological inheritance. The term was coined in 1976 by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene. Dawkins speculated that human beings have an adaptive mechanism that other species
don't have. In addition to genetic inheritance with its possibilities and limitations,
humans, said Dawkins, can pass their ideas from one generation to the next, allowing them to surmount challenges more flexibly
and more quickly than through the longer process of genetic adaptation and selection.
Okay, then. But Clarke did receive a huge if unspoken acknowledgment on the morning of Sept.
11: National security adviser Condoleezza Rice declined to run the so-called principals meeting in the White House
Situation Room, choosing Clarke instead to coordinate the urgent information-gathering and to formulate the security responses
to put before the president.
Ah, Meyerson takes the
bait! The meme continues replicating! Step back a minute and look at who has left this administration or blown the whistle on it, and why. Clarke enumerates a half-dozen counterterrorism staffers, three of whom were with him in the Situation
Room on Sept. 11, who left because they felt the White House was placing too
much emphasis on the enemy who didn't attack us, Iraq, and far too little on the enemy who did. Yep, that’s everyone’s
list. In the Bush administration, you're an empiricist at your own peril. Plainly,
this has placed any number of conscientious civil servants -- from Foster, who totaled the costs on Medicare, to Clarke, who
charted the al Qaeda leads before Sept. 11 -- at risk. In a White House where
ideology trumps information time and again, you run the numbers at your own risk.
Nothing so attests to the fundamental radicalism of this administration as the disaffection of professionals such as
Foster and Clarke, each of whom had served presidents of both parties. Meyerson’s point
is that this revolt of the professionals poses one huge problem for the Bush presidency - precisely because “it
is not coming from its ideological antagonists.” Probably not. ___ Oh yeah, Jack Beatty picks it up in the March 25, 2004 issue of The Atlantic
Monthly, but give it a religious spin. See The Faith-Based Presidency, with the subheading “You can question Bush's veracity, his grip on reality,
and the rationality of his policies, but not his faith.” Beatty
is without much mercy here: George W. Bush has made rationality an antonym of Republican. His is the first faith-based presidency. Above the entrance to the Bush West Wing should be St. Paul's definition of faith—"the evidence of
things unseen." And
he goes on for pages. The idea here is Bush doesn't explain his policies because
he can't - and because they don't make sense. And Beatty explains that. And once you wade through all that you get this: You can question Bush's veracity, his grip on reality, and the rationality of his policies, but not his faith. Turning to Jesus to escape from drinking was the turning point in his life. Sincerity, unreservedly giving your heart to Jesus, is the fulcrum of life-altering faith, say people who
have experienced it. Reason, skepticism, critical thought, irony, argument -
all threaten this sustaining emotional purity. You owe your life to a miracle,
and it will go away if doubt creeps in. Well,
that’s cheery thought. Bush’s mass appeal is that he doesn’t
think – he FEELS and BELIEVES. Oh yeah, great. I have a friend in Paris who needs a roommate. Time to get out. |
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This issue updated and published on...
Paris readers add nine hours....
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